.1em;”>Your job in Exam Two is to show me how your study of the times and cultures inwhich Blake Dickens and Wilde wrote informed your understanding of their works.Again I left you pretty much on your own to define lists of terms associated witheach author and these terms should play a role in this exam. You obviously won’t beable to include your understanding of all these terms but you’ll want to includethose that work to support the representation of literary history you create. Youneed only to incorporate the literary periods we’ve touched upon in this course sofar (Romantic Victorian and Decadent) and include only the authors and theirworks we’ve read. It should indeed show that you have some comprehensiveknowledge of what you’ve studied (and you don’t have to treat each period withequal weight) but more important it should demonstrate your interests and theconnections you can make across these sources.The expectation is that you’ll write at least 1.75 pages single-spaced. Rememberthat this is not a formal essay but more like you’re “thinking on the page” (like aBlue Book essay). And the language can be more conversational. Some revision willprobably be necessary especially in terms of organization; the real focus however should be the development and support of your ideas/claims.I also recommend that you begin with some topic in mind. This will help keep yourfocus narrow and the project manageable. For example many of you have alreadycommented on the treatment of women in several of the sources read. We’ve read allmale authors in this course. What can you say about the female characters theycreate? Especially in the context of the time each was written? Or what could yousay about representations of class across these authors? Across their time periods?Much of the video you watched about their lives touts their genius and howimportant each is for understanding English literature today. It seems significantthat each came from relatively humble middle-class beginnings. How does this affectthe way we read their works?Of course gender and class are “go to” topics for an exam like this. You’re alsoencouraged to explore topics less conventional. See how creative you can be. Whatabout representations of “violence ” or “family ” or even “betrayal” across thecenturies?Final note: Beware the “data dump.” It won’t be acceptable to dress up and drop insome big chunks of information one finds on the web. Much of what you’ll include inthese narrative concerning literary history I can predict as you’ll need to definethings like the time periods and their literary conventions this is necessary to youlearning these; but more than that a component of context exams asks you topersonalize the narrative you present. This isn’t to say that you’re to make it aboutyou but rather those things that you found that interested you. You’ll also have to tieresearch to the sources we’ve read.
