Hebdomadal topics (week 15) (Updated 5/8)

Topic 1.

How effectively can literature respond to political problems? Consider how authors answer this question by means of texts themselves (e.g. Disgrace) and by means of illustrating the effect of literature through texts within texts (e.g. Byron in Disgrace or Byron in Arcadia). You can write about Disgrace alone or about Disgrace and any of the texts we have read this semester.

Here is one way you might think about this problem. Coetzee, Beckett, and T. S. Eliot won Nobel Prizes for literature. Unlike more literary prizes -- the Man Booker Award, the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, the National Book Critics' Circle Award, etc. -- the Nobel generally honors writers whose work has a social relevance and not merely an aesthetic relevance. How might the Nobel committee have seen in their work a social commentary absent from the writings of some of their contemporaries -- Stoppard, Auden, Yeats?

This prompt comes close to Final Exam Study Question #5. Feel free to use this hebdomadal as a run-through of that question.

Topic 2.

Develop a thorough answer to any of the essay questions that might appear on the final exam. You must write on Disgrace.

Note that you will have 45 minutes to write each essay during the exam, and that I will expect in the vicinity of 1,000 words for each essay. You might want to time yourself as you practice writing out your answer to one of the prompts.