What you should know for the midterm (about first half of semester): identification of characters and text passages, explanation of terms and ideas, mini essay. For advice on writing this kind of exam, also see Shannon pp. 64-71. Here are some sample questions and things to study:

Identifications: - In which text (author, title, language) does Hippolyte occur; who is he? and what is his function in this text?
- Identify the above text passage (author, title, language) and explain its meaning in the context of the whole work.
Terms and Ideas: What is Romanticism? How does it differ from Enlightenment and from Realism? Give some examples from literary texts you’ve read.
Mini-Essay: Interpret the following poem/text passage in the context of its literary period/ the whole text. State the author’s topic and describe how poetic means (images, language, rhyme, point of view, style …) are used to bring out certain aspects of the topic.

Things to study:

- Calvino: issues and figures in his text “Serpents and Skulls”
- Enlightenment as a period; Voltaire’s Candide: satire, picaresque novel, educational novel, the voyage, utopia
- Romanticism as a period; Rousseau’s Confessions: autobiography as a genre, the self, descriptions of Paris, nature, love; Goethe’s Faust: the Faust tradition and theme, Goethe’s treatment, romantic elements in Faust, the characterisation of Gretchen, other figures, the question of responsibility for the tragedy; Blake’s Songs of Innocence and Experience (excerpts) and Heine’s poem “The Silesian Weavers”: social criticism and poetic means in all these poems.
- realism as a period; Flaubert’s Madame Bovary: characters and characterization, family and love relationships, the social world and social types, romantic and realist elements in the novel.

The test will focus on the issues we discussed in class. Review your notes and the texts to refresh your memory of the characters’ names, major issues, and important text passages. Also, reread the introductions to the literary periods in the anthology. And: get some sleep the night before!

What you should know for the final exam (about the 2nd half of the semester): same format as midterm: identification of characters (make sure you know their EXACT names!) and text passages, explanation of terms and ideas, mini essay(s).

Modernism: move away from Realism, fragmentation of forms, influence of psychoanalysis, modern work world, new writing styles, transformations of and in the world, etc.
Mann: meaning of the setting; motif of traveling; representation of beauty and art, of homosexual love; meaning of disease in the context of the story and its themes; how Mann connects these themes and motifs.
Rilke: term “thing poem”; be able to explain the poems we read: their imagery, language, etc.
Joyce: the Irish problem versus the continental European, cosmopolitan attitude; Gabriel’s character; his position and relations with others; the women; theme of death; Gabriel’s “epiphany.”
Woolf: genre issues in this text, with examples; Woolf’s main arguments; how Woolf treats the theme of women in literary history; explain her stream-of-consciousness technique.
Kafka: Gregor’s relationship to family members; to his job; motifs of food, space, picture, music, etc.; Kafka’s unique use of  metaphor;  possible reasons for the metamorphosis and different interpretations.
Brecht: “Epic Theatre:” principles and alienation effects and how these are used in The Good Woman of Setzuan; nature and function of the gods; function of the water seller; function of the love story; the ending.