Reference no: EM132194379

Final Exam Review Sheet

The final exam for EH223 will consist of three sections. In the first, you will be required to identify the author and work for a number of passages taken from texts we have read this term. The second section, in which you will write a take home essay, will ask you to think about specific themes we have discussed in relation to the works listed below.

A. Ben Franklin: The Autobiography (1771)

1. How do Franklin's principles encourage young men do the right thing after the Revolutionary War, a time when democracy was a new experiment? Is there anything potentially unsettling about Franklin's manipulation of appearances, or his obsession with utility?

B. Hannah Foster: The Coquette (1797)

1. How is The Coquette a kind of conduct book, or a kind of disciplinary form, for women in early America? How does it also express a subversive critique of women's roles and opportunities?

2. What kinds of lessons might early American readers have taken from Charlotte?

C. Edgar Allan Poe

1. How do Poe's writings illustrate the dark underside of human psychology? How do they represent an alternative to the philosophical optimism of writers like Thoreau and Whitman?

D. Henry David Thoreau: from Walden (1855)

1. How does Walden fit into the culture of reform in the mid-nineteenth century? What is Thoreau's personal vision for reform?

2. How does Thoreau connect self-renewal to social renewal? Where does nature fit in?

E. Frederick Douglass: Narrative (1845)

1. What are some key stages or key moments in Douglass's life that help lead him to freedom?

2. What are some of Douglass's most powerful arguments against American slavery?

F. Herman Melville: "Bartleby, the Scrivener" (1853)

1. Why does the narrator of "Bartleby" refuse to fire Bartleby?

2. What does Bartleby's "preference not to" symbolize in the context of nineteenth-century America?

G. Nathaniel Hawthorne: "The Minister's Black Veil," "The Birth Mark," "Rappacini's Daughter"

1. How does Hawthorne view the relationship between the interior, private self and public society?

2. Why is science so threatening to Hawthorne? What can go wrong with science?

3. Think about the plot sequences of the individual stories, their allegorical meanings etc.

H. E.D.E.N. Southworth, "The Wife's Victory" (1853)

1. What does "The Wife's Victory" tell us about women's experience in pre-Civil War America? Is her story empowering for women? Is it entirely conservative and reactionary, or does it also critique the ways women were encouraged to behave in early America?

I. Walt Whitman: from Song of Myself (1855, 1881)

1. How would we characterize the "I" of Whitman's poetry?

2. How is Whitman a poet of democracy, and how does his democratic vision attempt to reconcile many of the fundamental oppositions that have historically defined American culture?