Examination Subjects

Year I, Semester 2
2018/2019

I. Explanation and exemplification of literary terms

- literary periods and trends: Puritan Age, Restoration, Mannerism, Baroque,
Neoclassisicm, Enlightenment;
- genres: Metaphysical poetry, mock-heroic epic, comedy of manners, Robinsonade,
novel of manners, travel novel, Bildungsroman, sentimental novel, epistolary
novel, picaresque novel, Gothic fiction;
- narrative techniques: showing and telling, intrusive omniscience, first-person narration,
third-person narration, unreliable narrator, metafiction;
- rhetorical devices: conceit/concetto, epic simile.
(3 terms – 3 points)

II. Text (fragment) analysis from texts discussed on the seminars: Hamlet, Macbeth,
Poems by John Donne, Robinson Crusoe, Gulliver’s Travels, Tom Jones, Pride
and Prejudice (the seminar material can be found in Delaney, Denis et al. Fields
of Vision. Literature in the English Language, London: Longman, 2003.)
(3 points)

III. Topics to expound

1. Discuss Hamlet as a tragic hero.

2. Hamlet – possibilities of interpretation.
3. Macbeth as a tragic villain.
4. Present the features of Metaphysical Poetry, and make references to John Donne’s
poems.
5. Representatives of the Baroque in English literature (John Milton, John Bunyan).
6. Representatives of Restoration literature (John Dryden and William Congreve).
7. Enlightenment ideas in Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe.
8. Generic specificities, Enlightenment ideas in Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels.
9. Bildungsroman and metafiction in Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones.
10. Features of Jane Austen’s art, Pride and Prejudice as a novel of manners.

(3 points)