Final Exam for Engl 105: English and American Fiction

Spent much of the evening writing a final exam for my Engl 105 (English and American Fiction) class, "Narrative, Textuality, Subjectivity: The Transatlantic Postmodern Novel from 1950 to 2001." It's a take-home exam, so I can post the questions here with a clean conscience.

Final Exam: Angela Carter's Love and Don DeLillo's The Body Artist

Part I. Short Answer Questions (50 pts. each)
Type (single spaced, 11 or 12 pt, Times or Times New Roman font) short answers to the following questions. Be as specific as possible and make a point of interpreting specific phrases and sentences from within the texts.

1. a. In your own terms, define the term metonymy, explaining how this figure of speech functions.
b. Following the MLA citation format, quote a sentence or short passage from either Love or The Body Artist that contains an example of metonymy.
c. Briefly contextualize the metonymy you've quoted, explaining how the metonymic relationship therein functions within the section of the novel from which it has been extracted.

2. Reread the short section on "Irony and Antiphrasis" in Reading Novels where Hughes quotes a short passage from E.M. Forester's A Passage to India and then explains the irony in Forester's narration (210). Then, using Hughes's reading as a model, provide a similar close reading of a passage from Love or The Body Artist where the narrator makes use of antiphrasis or irony.

3. Reread the section from Reading Novels titled "Types of Description: Production" (69-70). Using Hughes's discussion of a passage from Beckett's Watt as a model, identify a metafictional moment from The Body Artist. Type up the passage, and then proceed to explain how the prose works here to foreground its own production &/or consumption. In other words, pick a passage that, however subtly, encourages readers to reflect upon the process of writing and/or interpretation.

4. Imagine that you have been hired by Simon & Schuster as an online copywriter. Write a short synopsis (250-400 words) of The Body Artist that will be published in the academic section of the website. Your synopsis will be written for an audience of professors and teachers who, you can assume, are familiar with literary-critical terms. Your assignment is to describe the book in a way that emphasizes its literariness.


Part II. Take Home Essay (200 pts.)
Type a short (1.5-2 pages, single spaced, 11 or 12 pt, Times or Times New Roman font) essay responding to the following question.

5. Write an essay subtitled "[Insert Your Title:] Signification and Subjectivity in The Body Artist" (you will have to provide a title). Your essay, in other words, should discuss the process of meaning making and its relation to the phenomenon of subjectivity in DeLillo's novel. I will leave it to you to work out the details, though here are some questions to address that will enable you to better formulate your arguments about the meaning and significance of The Body Artist.

First, as we discussed in class, in postmodern discourse, "the concept of the subject is...frequently invoked to undermine the notion that an innate sense of 'self' can provide a stable personal identity or be the focus of experience...It is both a grammatical term (the subject of a sentence) and a political-legal category (a British subject), and at once active (subject of) and passive (subject or subjected to)" (Macey 369). How does DeLillo engage with the theme of subjectivity? In what ways are both Lauren Hartke and Mr. Tuttle emblematic postmodern subjects?

Second, explain the significance of the novel's title The Body Artist. As you do this, pay close attention to the numerous references to bodies, body parts, artists and types of art forms and artistic experiences. How do they relate to the novel's concern with meaning and subjectivity?

Finally, in your response, advance a coherent thesis and be as specific as possible. Make a point of interpreting individual phrases and sentences from within the text. Below, I have provided you with four bulleted quotes that might provide useful entry points into the novel. Interpret and contextualize at least two of them

- "He violates the limits of the human" (102).

- "She thought maybe he lived in a kind of time that had no narrative quality" (67).

- "She didn't know the meaning of this feed but took it as an act of floating poetry" (40).

- "Maybe this man experiences another kind of reality where he is here and there, before and after, and he moves from one to the other shatteringly, in a state of collapse, minus an identity, a language, a way to enjoy the savor of the honey-coated toast she watches him eat" (66-7).


Format: Type your questions and the essay. Use Times or Times New Roman, 11 or 12 pt. font. Margins 1" on all sides. Be sure to give your essay a title and subtitle that gives readers a sense of what your thesis is. Staple a copy of the grading matrix to the back page of your questions and the essay. If the grading matrix is missing you will automatically lose 5 pts. If your pages are not stapled you will lose 5 pts. Inscribe your name on all of the pages.

Due: At the beginning of class, Thursday, April 29. No later.

Tips: You are advised to schedule an appointment at the Writing Center during which you workshop a draft of your paper. Make sure you know the proper MLA format for creating a bibliography. Follow the advice given by UIC English Professor Gerald Graff in his short piece, "How to Write an Argument: What Students and Teachers Really Need to Know." If you workshop your paper at the Writing Center, write the date, time, and name of the person with whom you met at the Writing Center in the "Notes" section of the Grading Matrix.

Relax, I know you've learned a lot. Take plenty of breaks as you compose your responses. Make sure to give yourself time to reread and edit your responses.


References: The following books may be of assistance as your work on this exam.

Belsey, Catherine. Poststructuralism : A Very Short Introduction. Very Short Introductions 73. Oxford ; New York: Oxford University Press, 2002.
Carter, Angela. Love : A Novel. Rev. ed. New York: Penguin Books, 1988.
DeLillo, Don. The Body Artist: A Novel. New York: Scribner, 2001.
Hughes, George. Reading Novels. 1st ed. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2002.
Lentricchia, Frank, and Thomas McLaughlin. Critical Terms for Literary Study. 2nd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995.
Macey, David. The Penguin Dictionary of Critical Theory. London ; New York: Penguin Books, 2001.