Prose Fiction 2: Essay Questions.
Choose an essay question from one of the questions below. The essay should focus upon two texts on the course and should be 2500 words.
1) ‘The past is only ever finished, never finished with.’ Discuss the relevance of this statement to at least two texts on the course. Pay particular attention to the ways in which narratives may reconstitute memory or past ‘realities’?
2) ‘Certain ways of knowing people diminish their interest for us.’ ( Adam Phillips) Take care to explore how ‘interest’ is maintained for the reader in at least two texts on the course. You must show an awareness of narrative strategy in your response and should not restrict your answer to content based criticism.
3) ‘I cannot paint what I then was.’ (Wordsworth, ‘Tintern Abbey.) Consider what relevance of this statement to the act of recollection in at least two texts on the course.
4) ‘It is, thus, the discontinuities in life that we seek to bridge, or reconcile….’ ( Oliver Sacks) How useful is this statement in exploring the uses of ‘discontinuity’ in tow or more texts on the course. How far are these departures from continuity crucial to our understanding of the texts?
5) ‘Who is it that can tell me who I am? ‘(King Lear) Consider the problematic representation of identity in any two texts on the course. You must engage with the narrative strategies by which identity is constructed rather than just talking in terms of ‘character’ as personality.
6) ‘The Horror, the horror.’ ( Conrad) Explore the representation of ‘horror’ in any two texts on the course. Be prepared to problematise the identity of ‘horror’ in terms of secrecy, mortality even sexuality.
7) ‘I suddenly discovered that one of those boats was exactly what I want my novel to be. Not big, almost ‘grotesque’ in shape-I mean perhaps heavy – with people rather dark and seen strangely as they move into the sharp light and shadow; and I want bright shivering lights in it, and the sound of water.’ ( Katherine Mansfield) Explore the relevance of this statement to any two texts on the course. You may focus your attention on the ‘impressionistic’ aspects of narrat
ive and the ways in which such narratives create their meanings.
8) ‘I doubt whether any contemporary writer has made one feel more keenly the many kinds of personal relations in an everyday ‘happy family’ who are merely going on living their daily lives, with no crises or shocks. Yet every
individual in the household (even the children) is clinging passionately to his individual soul, is in terror of losing it in the general family flavour. As in most families, the mere struggle to have anything of one’s own, to be one’s self at all, creates an element of strain which keeps everybody almost at the breaking point. ‘(Willa Cather in Not Under Forty) To what extent is Cather’s statement relevant to any two texts on the course? Are characters living at a crisis situation and if so how are these crises represented in the narratives? You may like to consider Cather’s famous statement in terms of the representation of the domestic life in any two texts on the course.
9) ‘Things had a habit of coming alive like that.’ (