M.A. In English Comprehensive Exam and Reading List

At the close of their studies for an M.A. in English at Xavier University, students must pass a written, closed-book comprehensive examination based on works of literature, linguistics, composition, and literary theory. The exam is administered in November and April of each year. The department faculty choose fifteen of these works; the remaining three works are chosen by the student.  This reading list is revised every two years. Students wishing to sit for the exam must notify Ms. Linda Loomis, the English Department Secretary, one month in advance of an exam date. As in the past, students will be required to answer at least one comparative question and several essay questions on individual works. There will also be a section requiring specific textual analysis or explication of one or more passages from one or more of the works on the lists.

The comprehensive exam for the Master's Program in English will be given Wednesday, April 4, 2012, from 8:45 a.m. to 3:00 p.m.

Students planning to take the exam should notify the Director of the Graduate Program, Dr. Stephen Yandell (513-745-3598, yandell@xavier.edu), by Wednesday, February 29; or leave a message with the department secretary, Linda Loomis (513-745-2887, loomis@xavier.edu).  If you plan to take the exam in April, be sure to have your three individually chosen books approved by February 29.

On April 4, students should come to the English Department office (236 Hinkle) at 8:45 a.m.

Reading List for M.A. Comprehensive

(for exams given from Fall 2010, through Spring 2012)

1. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, by the Gawain-poet.

Recommended Translation:
Finch, Casey, transl. The Complete Works of the Pearl-Poet. Berkeley: U of California P, 1993.

Useful Reading:
Blanch, Robert J., and Julian N. Wasserman. “The Current State of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight Criticism.” Chaucer Review 27 (1993): 401-12.
Boyd, David L. “Sodomy, Misogyny, and Displacement: Occluding Queer Desire in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.” Arthuriana Summer 1998, 8.2: 77-113.
Gustafson, Kevin. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.” A Companion to Medieval English Literature and Culture c. 1350-c. 1500. Ed. Peter Brown. Oxford, England: Blackwell, 2007. 619-33.
Kinney, Clare R. “The (Dis)Embodied Hero and the Signs of Manhood in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.” Medieval Masculinities: Regarding Men in the Middle Ages. Ed. Clare A. Lees. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1994. 47-57.
Stanbury, Sarah. Seeing the Gawain-Poet: Description and the Act of Perception. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 1991.

2. Shakespeare, Othello. Any recent edition by Pelican, Arden, Oxford, Longman, Bedford/St. Martin's, Cambridge, or Norton.

Useful Reading:
Floyd-Wilson, Mary. "Othello's Jealousy," In English Ethnicity and Race in Early Modern Drama. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003: 132-160. Available through OhioLink.
Bartels, Emily. "Othello and the Moor." In Early Modern English Drama: A Critical Companion. Ed. Garrett A. Sullivan Jr, Patrick Cheney, and Andrew Hadfield. Oxford UP, 2006: 140-151. Available through Xavier library.
Neill, Michael. Introduction to Othello, the Moor of Venice. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2006: 1-179. Available through OhioLink.

3. Defoe, Daniel. Moll Flanders. Norton Critical Edition. Ed. Albert J. Rivero. New York: Norton, 2004. Print.

Useful Reading:
Essays by Juliet McMaster, Henry Knight Miller, Paula Backscheider, Ann Louise Kibbie, and Ellen Pollak in Norton Critical Edition.

4. Stoker, Bram. Dracula, preferably the Penguin edition, ed. Maurice Hindle.

Useful Reading:
Arata, Stephen. "The Occidental Tourist: Dracula and the Anxiety of Reverse Colonization." Victorian Studies, 33, 1990.
Carter, Margaret, ed. The Vampire and the Critics, 1988. See especially articles by Bentley, Craft, Fontana, and Weismann.
Spencer, Katherine. "Purity and Danger: Dracula the Urban Gothic, and the Late Victorian Degeneracy Crisis." English Literary History 59, 1992: 197-225.

5. Stowe, Harriet Beecher. Uncle Tom’s Cabin.

Useful Reading:
Tompkins, Jane. Sensational Designs: The Cultural Work of American Fiction, New York: Oxford UP, 1985. 122-46.
Zwarg, Christina. “Fathering and Blackface in Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” Novel: A Forum on Fiction 22.3 (1989): 274-87.
Cantave, Sophia. “Who Gets to Create the Lasting Images? The Problem of Black Representation in Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” Approaches to Teaching Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Ed. Elizabeth Ammons and Susan Belasco. New York: MLA, 2000. 93-103.

6. Wharton, Edith. The House of Mirth.

Useful Reading:
Wolff, Cynthia Griffin. A Feast of Words: The Triumph of Edith Wharton. New York: Oxford UP, 1977. 109-38.
Showalter, Elaine. “The Death of the Lady (Novelist): Wharton’s House of Mirth.” Representations 9 (1985): 133-49.
Blair, Amy L. “Misreading The House of Mirth.” American Literature 76 (2004): 149-75.

7. Joyce, James. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Norton Critical Edition. Ed. John Paul Riquelme. New York: W.W. Norton, 2007.

Useful Reading:
See the essays in the Critical Edition.

8. Crane, Hart. The Bridge. The Complete Poems of Hart Crane or The Complete Poems and Selected Letters and Prose of Hart Crane.

Useful Reading:
Crane, Hart. "General Aims and Theories" and letter to Otto Kahn (9/12/27) in The Complete Poems and Selected Letters and Prose of Hart Crane. Ed. Brom Weber. New York: Liverwright, 1966.
Bloom, Harold. “Hart Crane’s Gnosis.” Agon: Toward a Theory of Revisionism. New York: Oxford UP, 1982. 252-269.
Chapters on Crane and/or The Bridge in
Paul, Sherman. Hart’s Bridge. Urbana: U of Illinois P, 1972.
Yingling, Thomas. Hart Crane and the Homosexual Text. Chicago: U Chicago P, 1990.
Vincent, John E. Queer Lyrics: Difficulty and Closure in American Poetry. New York: Palgrave, 2002.

9. Woolf, Virginia. A Room of One’s Own. Ed. Susan Gubar. New York: Harcourt Brace, 2005. Print.

Secondary Reading:
Froula, Christine. Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Avant-Garde: War, Civilization, Modernity. New York: Columbia University Press, 2005.
Marcus, Jane. Virginia Woolf and the Languages of Patriarchy. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987.

10. Parks, Suzan-Lori. In the Blood, reprinted in The Red Letter Plays. New York: Theatre Communications Group, 2001.

Useful Reading:
Geis, Debora R. Suzan-Lori Parks. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 2008.
Wetmore, Kevin J., ed. Suzan-Lori Park, A Casebook. New York: Routledge, 2007.

11. Bradley, David. The Chaneysville Incident.

Pavlic, Edward. "Synthetic Redemption: Above-underground emergence in David Bradley's The Chaneysville Incident." African American Review, Vol. 30, Issue 2, Summer 1996.
Kubitschek, Missy Dean. "'So you want a history, do you?” Epistemologies of The Chaneysville Incident." Mississippi Quarterly, Vol. 49, Issue 4.
Egan, Phillip J. "Unraveling misogyny and forging the new self: Mother, lover and storyteller in The Chaneysville Incident." Papers on Language and Literature, Vol. 33, Issue 3, Summer 1997.

12. Freud, Sigmund. “The Relation of the Poet to Daydreaming,” “The Uncanny,” “The Theme of the Three Caskets.” The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, edited by James Strachey. London: Hogarth Press, 1953.

Note: “The Uncanny” and “The Theme of the Three Caskets” can also be found in: Freud, Sigmund. Writings on Art & Literature. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1997.

Useful Reading:
Eagleton, Terry. “Psychoanalysis.” Literary Theory: An Introduction. 2nd ed. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1996. 131-168.
“Psychoanalytic Theory and Criticism. 1. Traditional Freudian Criticism.” The John Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory & Criticism. Online through the Xavier Library Electronic Databases.

13. Litosseliti, Lia. Gender and Language: Theory and Practice. New York: Oxford UP. 2006.

14. Walters, K. and M. Brody. What’s Language Got to Do With It?

15. Berlin, James A. Rhetorics, Poetics, and Cultures: Reconfiguring College English Studies. West Lafayette, IN: Parlor P, 2003. Print.

Useful Reading:
Bizzell, Patricia. "Beyond Anti-Foundationalism to Rhetorical Authority: Problems Defining 'Cultural Literacy.'" College English 52.6 (1990): 661-75. Print.
Hairston, Maxine. “Diversity, Ideology, and Teaching Writing.” CCC 43.2 (1992): 179-93. Print.
Lauer, Janice M. “Composition Studies: Dappled Discipline.” Rhetoric Review 3.1 (1984): 20-29. Print.
 

These titles are to be recorded in the student's file in the chair's office at least a month before he/she takes the exam. Each student will answer at least one question on at least one of these three works or groups of works.

Revised:  4/20/10