English 462, Fall 2003
Exam 1 Study Guide
1. Format. The exam will take 50 minutes and will consist of two parts: an identification, multiple choice, and analysis section, and an essay. Each part will have several choices. The two questions in the first part may be drawn from the terms listed below, from selected passages from the works, or from materials covered during class lectures and discussions. You will write one essay and will be able to choose from 2-4 different questions.
2. Works:
· W.D. Howells, "Editha"
· James, The Turn of the Screw
· Frederic, The Damnation of Theron Ware
· Early films
· Twain, "Jim Smiley's Jumping Frog"
· Stowe, "The Minister's Housekeeper"
· Zitkala-Sa’s autobiographical works
Freeman, "A Church Mouse"
Wynne, "The Little Room"
Sui Sin Far, "Mrs. Spring Fragrance"
Crane, "The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky"
Woolson, "Miss Grief"
3. Terms and Concepts
· Realism war
Late nineteenth-century publishing; literary magazines, etc.
· “smiling aspects of life”
· The “ideal grasshopper”
· Realism (definition, background, practitioners; various authors’ ideas
of realism)
· Local color (definition, background, practitioners [some], history)
· Southwestern humor (definition)
· Basic information on early film (About when did it start? What kinds
of techniques did it use? What were its subjects?)
· Hebraism and Hellenism
Information from reports
4. Questions and Ideas
· In what ways do these works reject or satirize romanticism? What
is their vision of realism?
· Gender and space
Issues of assimilation, control, repression, self-sacrifice
· Competing visions of innocence, enlightenment, knowledge, power
· Point of view in various works and authors’ representations of characters
and their interior life; also, style and language— issues of realist style,
dialect, ironic tone, authorial distance
· Symbolic elements and image patterns (flowers, for example, in The
Damnation of Theron Ware)
· Issues of class and ethnicity, especially with regard to genre (local
color and realism); contrasting cultures