Summer 2010 examination LN250 English Literature and Society Suitable for all candidates Instructions to candidates ‘Time allowed: 3 hours, This paper contains seventeen questions. Answer two questions. Both questions will be given ‘equal weight (37.5% of the final mark). In this examination texts covered in your first answer should not be used in your second essay. in addition you shoutd not base either of your answers in this examination on any of the texts you have already used in your assessed coursework essay. Calculators are not allowed in this examination © LSE 2010/.N 250 Page t of ¢1 AUDEN “Everything that is most distinctive about Auden can be traced to hi (Mendelson) To what extent would you agree with this statement? s absorption in the present” Answer by reference to a representative selection of Auden’s work, 2. BECKETT “The war had a lasting effect on Becket’s personal philosophy and his writing, Many aspects of his later works were born out of his experiences of uncertainty, disorientation, danger, deprivation, and exile.” (James Knowlson) Consider Beckett's work in the light of this remark. (You should refer to at least twa works.) 3. CONRAD “Conrad cartied a large freight of pessimism which sometimes invited parody.” (Cedric Watts) 1s the pessimism in Conrad's work excessive? (You should refer to at least two works.) 4. ELIOT ‘The confusion and vulgarity of the civilization became the object of your scathing criticism, But beneath that criticism there lay profound and painful disillusionment, and out of this disillusionment there grew forth a feeting of sympathy, and out of that sympathy was born a growing urge to rescue from the ruins of the confusion the fragments from which order and stability might be restored,” (Nobel Prize Commendation 1943) Have you found evidence of this in your reading of Eliot’s work? You should base your answer on at least three of the shorter poems, or on The Waste Land or Four Quartets in isolation. 5. FORSTER ‘He distrusted size, pomp, the Establishment, empires, politics, the upper classes, planners, institutions. He put his trust in individuals, small groups and insignificant people, the life of the heart and mind, persona! relations.’ (Noel Anna} Do you agree with this verdict on Foster? Answer by reference to at least two of his novels. 6. GREENE ‘Orwell found no evidence in the novel [The Heart of the Matter| of the “ordinary human decency” that fhe vafued so much in fife and literature. Indeed, he detected a certain snobbishness in Greene on the ‘question of hell: ‘He appears to share the idea, which has been floating around ever since Baudelaire, that there is something eather alscingud in being damned; Fell is @ sort of high-class nightelub, emtry tO which is reserved for Catholies only™" (New Yorker). Does the religious factor limit the relevance of Greene’s work in general? Answer by reference to at least two novels. © LSE 2010/LN 250 Page 2 of 47. HEANEY “There is a tension between the public poet ~ the laureited voice of wisdom — and the man trying to write poems in his Dublin attic. “I’ve been working at that separation for a lifetime. That separation is a Hfetiae achievement also,” he adds,” (Sameet Rahim} Discuss the tension between the public and the private in Heaney’s work Answer by reference 10 a range of his poems. 8, JOYCE “he conceived of the world of culture as a huge jigsaw of interlocking pieces in which no one narrative, still less one national tradition or one religious dispensation, easily prevailed.’ (Bruce Stewart) Is this confirmed by your reading of Joyce's work? (You should base your answer on both Dubliners and A Portrait of the Artist As A Young ‘Man, ot alternatively on Ulysses ot Finnegans Wake in isolation.) 9. KIPLING “The labels that are conventionally attached to Kipling—timperialist’, ‘racist’, ‘jingoist’—express a very superficial knowledge of his work, which eludes all labels in its range and variety.” (Thomas Pinney) Do you agree with this assessment? (You should answer by reference to at least two works.) 10, LARKIN Philip Larkin really was the greatest poet of his time, and he really did say noxious things, But he didn't say them in his poems, which he though¢ of as a realm of responsibility in which he would fave to answer for what he said, and answer forever.’ (Clive James) Does Larkin’s poetry confirm this, and is ita strength or a limitation? Answer by reference to a range of Larkin's poetry UL. LODGE, “To begin the novel | need to discover the structural idea that will generate the story.” (David Lodge) ‘What are the structural ideas in Lodge's novels? Answer by reference to at least two novels 12, MANSFIELD “She is praised for her economy and speed in assembling and dissolving a scene; for her wit, and touch of the surreal; for her divination of the hatred and cruelties beneath the sweet surfaces of family life.” (Claire Tomalin) ment? Do you agree with this asses (You should answer by reference to a range of her short stories.) @ LSE 2010/LN 250 Page 3 of 413, ORWELL ‘Liberty is telling people what they do not want to hear.’ (Orwell) What things does Orwell reveal which his contemporaries did not want to heat? (You should refer to at least two novels.) 14. PINTER “The curtain would rise on a realistic, domestic situation but within minutes the truth about it — and whatever might be gleaned of the people in it — would be called unconsciously into question by their statements.” Do you agreement with this assessment in the Daily Telegraph obituary? Answer by reference to at feast two of his plays. 15, SHAW “Shaw left no school of playwrights although much of the drama of his time and after ‘was indirectly in his debt.’ (Stanley Weintraub) How did Shaw make innovations in drama? Answer by reference to at least two plays. 16, SPARK “She juggled with time to reveal the ineluctable working of consequence, For there was in her always, beneath the fun and the glitter, a grim sense — Calvinist? Jewish? — that you ane ‘what you make of yourself that character is destiny.” (Allan Massie) How centrat is this feature to an understanding of Spark’s work? Answer by reference to at least two of her novels. 17, WOOLF “She also followed Henry James in her conviction that dramas of interior life were as momentous and dangerous as visibfe ones,’ (Lyndall Gordon) On the basis of your reading of Woolf's novels would you agree with this verdict? Answer by reference to at least two novels. © LSE 2010/LN 250 Page 4 of 4