Philip Holden (email: ellhpj@nus.edu.sg)
Chitra Sankaran (email: ellcs@nus.edu.sg)
The examination will be closed book. You'll be asked to write two essay-length questions. The first will be a compulsory "practical criticism" exercise of a poem or a passage from a novel in which you are invited to make links between formal, thematic, and historical or socio-political elements of the text. The second will offer a choice from a series of more wide-ranging questions.
The focus in the examination will be on the texts in the final part of the module, This Place Called Absence and After the Fire, since the other texts have been covered by other forms of assessment. However, we will also be interested in your ability to make links with other texts studied earlier in the module.
1. The examination in EN3263 carries less weight than the examination in many other modules of this level. It will be designed to test your analytical abilities, rather than the simple reproduction of content from lectures and tutorials. At the same time, however, a knowledge of the content will be a useful basis for your analysis. In revision, aim for an understanding of the issues at stake in the texts we have read, not for memorisation of facts only, and try to engage with the critical concepts that have been used to support discussions in the module.
2.You do not need to memorise quotes and plot structures in great detail. However, an ability to refer with evident knowledge to texts and critical concepts you have studied will be a useful foundation for argument. For a novel such as This Place Called Absence it would be useful to know the basic plot or plots, the names of characters, and to be able to recall in detail key episodes or features of the text that will enable you to make critical arguments about it. For a collection of poems such as After the Fire, you should be able to talk knowledgeably about a number of poems and the way that they represent stages in Boey's career and his response to changed historical and socio-political circumstances. With this foundation, you can then think bout critical concepts or approaches we have discussed--for instance, struggles over the representation of history, or the problematic status of literary texts under globalization.
Last updated: 20 February, 2007