LOYOLA COLLEGE (AUTONOMOUS), CHENNAI – 600 034
M.A. DEGREE EXAMINATION – ENGLISH LITERATURE
SECOND SEMESTER – APRIL 2004
EL 2800/LE 822 AMERICAN LITERATURE
Date : 02.04.04 Max : 100 marks
Duration :1 – 4 pm Hours : 3 hrs
Section A
- Answer the following questions in about 50 words (10×2 = 20 marks)
- He pierced the emblematic or spiritual character of the visible, audible, tangible word
- Who is the man referred to in this passage?
- Why does Emerson admire him?
- The time is infected with Hamlet’s unhappiness
Sicklied o’er with Hamlet’s unhappiness.
- What is Hamlet’s unhappiness?
- How does Emerson connect it with the problem of his society?
- When he can read God directly, the hour is too precious to be wasted in otherman’s transcripts of their reading.
- Explain the Context
- Is there any contradiction in the idea presented here by the author? Explain?
- Don’t use such an expression as “Dim lands of peace”, It “Dulls the Image”
What is Pound’s criticism about the expression used here? Explain.
- Be influenced by as many great artists as you can
What difference do you find, regarding the idea of influence between Pound and Emerson?
- Two roads diverged in a wood and I took the one less traveled by and that has made all the difference
- What is the choice implied in these lines?
- Explain the Universal significance of these lines?
- The carriage held but just ourselves and immortality
- Explain the link between death and immortality in these lines
- Shine! Shine! Shine!
Pour down your warmth, great Sun!
While we bask, we two together
- Explain the Universality in these lines
- I’se Emperor yit, ain’t I?
And de Emperor Jones leaves de way he comes and dat black trash don’t dare stop him-not yit, least ways.
- Explain the agony of Emperor Jones and his arrogance.
- Astrological sign. I bet you were born under Aries …. They dote in noise
- What were the feelings of Blanche expressed in these lines
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Section B
PART – A
- Answer any four of the following in about 200 words each, choosing two from each part: (4×10 = 40 marks)
- Discuss with appropriate examples the elements of horror and mystery found in Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart”
- How does Hawthorne propound his puritanical principles in his short story “ The Birth mark”?
- “Thoreau’s main task in Civil Disobedience is to assert the freedom of the American citizen”. Do you think Thoreau succeeds in his effort? Justify your answer.
- The aim of reality seems to me to be the Supreme virtue of a novel- The merit on which all its other merits helplessly and submissively depend”- Do you think Henry James justifies this statement quite consistently in his essay The Art of Fiction? Discuss
PART – B
- Eugene O’Neill is an expressionist. Illustrate the same from his plays especially with regard to his symbolism and dramatic techniques
- Anne Bradstreet is a poetess of the ordinary. Explain this statement with illustrations from her poems.
- ‘Chicago’ is a typical American poem. Comment on this criticism of the poem.
- “Emily Dickinson is a poetess of interiority and deeper questions of life and death in Because I could not Stop for Death and The Soul selects her own society”. Discuss
Section C
- Answer the following in about 500 words each (2×20=40 marks)
- What according to Emerson are the three influences that play a vital role in the making of a scholar? Discuss Or
- Consider Steinberk’s “ Of Mice and Men” as a social novel
- Compare and Contrast The Glass Menagerrie and Mourning Becomes Electra
- Sketch the Characteristics of American Poetry from the prescribed poems of Robert Frost, Whitman and Carle Sandburg
