ENG 214 Final, Spring 2005

American University of Beirut English Department Final Examination- English 214 Professor Nassar canes Soren June 10, 2005 rv) Duration: Two Hours Part One (40%) Choose two of the following quotations. In each case: (1) Analyze the quotation (2) Link one of its ideas or stylistic devices to another idea or stylistic device you have come across this semester. 1. The presence that rose thus so strangely beside the waters, is expressive of what in the ways of a thousand years men had came to desire. Hers is the head upon which “all the ends of the world are come,” and the eyelids are a little weary. It is a beauty wrought out from within upon the flesh, the deposit, little cell by cell, of strange thoughts and fantastic reveries and exquisite passions. Set it for a moment beside one of those white Greek goddesses or beautiful women of antiquity, and how they would be troubled by this beauty, into which the soul with all its maladies has passed! (Walter Pater, The Renaissance) . JACK. My dear Algy, I don’t know whether you will be able to understand my real motives. You are hardly serious enough. When one is placed in the position of guardian, one has to adopt a very high moral tone on all subjects. And as a high moral tone can hardly be said to conduce very much to either one’s health or one’s happiness, in order to get up to town I have always pretended to have a younger brother of the name of Ernest, who lives in the Albany, and gets into the most dreadful scrapes. (Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest) . MRS WARREN. Oh, the injustice of it, the injustice, the injustice! I always wanted to be a good woman. I tried honest work; and I was slave-driven until I cursed the day I ever heard of honest work. I was a good mother; and because I made my daughter a good woman she turns me out as if I was a leper. VIVIE. If I had been you, mother, I might have done as you did; but I should not have lived one life and believed in another. You are a conventional woman at heart. That is why I am bidding you good-bye now. (G.B. Shaw, Mrs. Warren’s Profession) PART TWO (60%): Choose one of the following essay questions and write a well-organized essay. The information you give should be relevant, deep and comprehensive. Awe we . 1. T mn lation (... from oneself, from other people, and from God...) is c y works you read this semester. Explore this theme as it app y@ftee authors of your choice. 2. The Victorian period was dominated by religious confusion. Carlyle because a pantheist, Tennyson regained his Christian faith through a mystical reunion with Hallam, Arnold lost his faith, and so on. Explore the Victorian religious crisis through at least three of the writers you read this semester. } LIRW ck =~ £