HRLP 1/2 Mid-term Eng IV
How to Read Literature Like a Professor
Answer using information found in the text. - 50% of Mid-Term
Intoduction
1. In Lorraine Hanberry’s A Raisin in the Sun (1959) in what way would Walter Lee be selling his soul by accepting the check offered for his home? List four conventions of poetry.
2. What three items separate the professional reader from the rest of the crowd?
Chapter One
3. What is the real reason for a quest?
4. What five elements make up the quest structure?
Chapter Two
5. In literature, whenever people eat or drink together – what is that called?
6. In Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones (1749) what is the eating scene really about?
7. In which story did the mother’s effort to get her family together for a meal only occur after her death?
Chapter Three
8. Name three things other than vampirism that vampires represent in literature.
9. In what way does the Henry James’s Daisy Miller employ a figurative vampire?
Chapter Four
10. What is the line number and meter structure of a sonnet?
11. What does Foster claim is true of short poems compared to long ones?
Chapter Five
12. When O’Brien has his character fall through the road, which piece of literature is he comparing his story to?
13. John Gardner reworked the classic Beowulf into what postmodern masterpiece?
14. In which Shakespearean play does a character let her friends stage her death and funeral in order to teach her fiancé a lesson?
Chapter Six
15. What is the title of the musical based on Romeo and Juliet?
16. Quote three lines by Shakespeare.
17. What two books did pioneer families usually have?
Chapter Seven
18. In Toni Morrison’s Beloved, what are the four white men on horseback compared to Biblically?
19. What Biblical personage is Grendal a descendent of?
Chapter Eight
20. Name two Slavic folktales that were made into Disney movies.
21. We want ____________________ in our stories, but we want ___________________________, too.
Chapter Nine
22. In literature, what does myth mean?
23. List three town or team names that come from Greek or Roman myths.
.
24. What four struggles of the human being are present in the story of Odysseus’s return home?
Chapter Ten
25. Which Victorian novelist is credited with the line, “It was a dark and stormy night”?
26. If you have a character walk through the rain to get somewhere, what are you most likely trying to symbolically portray?
27. What is the main function of the image of the rainbow?
Chapter Eleven
28. Explain the two categories that violence falls into in literature.
29. They’re __________________________ only on the inside of the novel–on the outside they’re planned, plotted, and executed by somebody, with malice aforethought.
Chapter Twelve
30. Symbols have one definite meaning in what type of writing?
31. In The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn the river is a road and the raft trip a quest. What is gained by Huck?
32. What other than objects and images can be symbolic?
Chapter Thirteen
33. What is the name of the British social thinker who felt that helping the poor was a bad idea?
34. What mixture does Foster call Ezra Pound’s politics?
35. Which stratum of society does Edgar Allan Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher deal with?
36. In Mrs. Dalloway (1925) two political guests are invited to lunch. What is her purpose?
Chapter Fourteen
37. List three features that might make a character a Christ figure.
38. Which Hemingway character is seen as a Christ figure?
Chapter Fifteen
39. If a person is suspended in air, even briefly, it has meaning. List three possible meanings.
40. Flight is _______________________.
Chapter Sixteen
41. Blame it on _____________________.
42. List three female sexual symbols in literature.
43. Which short story by Lawrence does Foster contend may have Oedipal elements?
Chapter Seventeen
44. What is it called when a writer writes about sex and means strickly sex?
45. List three literary meanings often represented by sex.
Chapter Eighteen
46. Generally, what three things does baptism (submersion in water) represent in literature?
Chapter Nineteen
47. When characters go south, what does that generally mean?
48. What does the flatland usually symbolize?
Chapter Twenty
49. In literature, define the meaning of spring (three min.).
50. In literature, define the meaning of winter (three min.).
51. In The Wasteland, which month is called the cruelest?
Chapter Twenty-One
52. In literature scars and imperfections usually mirror moral, emotional, or psychological scars or imperfections. List three characters that have scars or imperfections.
53. List three pieces of literature where characters make a pack with the devil.
Chapter Twenty-Two
55. _________________________is blind sees the whole story, _________________________ is blind
to the truth and eventually blinds himself.
56. How do we know early on that Indiana Jones is afraid of snakes?
Chapter Twenty-Three
57. List three literary meanings of heart disease.
Chapter Twenty-Four
58. Like the character in James Joyce’s book, how is Dublin paralyzed?
59. List the four principles governing disease in literature.
60. What figurative “bad air” does Daisy Miller suffer from?
Chapter Twenty-Five
61. What does “don’t read with your eyes” mean?
62. What is the point of the last-chance-for chance story?
63. If read through Greek eyes, what does the story of The Iliad teach us about Achilles?
Chapter Twenty-Six
64. ________________trumps everything.
65. What does Didi and Gogo not taking the road in Waiting for Godot indicate?
66. Why is the rain at the end of A Farewell to Arms ironic?
67. What irony chiefly involves is a _________________ from _______________.
68. Which work is sited as a negative model of Christ?
Chapter Twenty-Seven
69. What does the test story signify?
70. What metaphor is used to signify the above answer?
