OLLSCOIL NA hÉIREANN, GAILLIMH
NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF IRELAND, GALWAY
AUTUMN EXAMINATIONS, 2007/2008
THIRD & FOURTH ARTS EXAMINATION
EN386: Literature and Culture: (Post) Modernism
Professor A. Minnis
Professor G. Watson
Professor H. McDermott
Dr. S. Mooney
Dr. J. Kenny
TIME ALLOWED: THREE HOURS
ANSWER TWO QUESTIONS: ONE FROM EACH SECTION
PLEASE USE A SEPARATE ANSWER BOOK FOR EACH
SECTION
SECTION A: Modernism (Dr Mooney)
1. To what extent is the social and cultural background to modernist writing
significant to an understanding of any two texts on the course?
2. ‘Modernist literature both celebrates and deplores modernity.’ Discuss in relation
to at least two authors on the course.
3. Choose one of the modernist ‘manifestoes’ studied on the course and discuss (i)
the manifesto as a text in its own right and (ii) its significance for an understanding of
any one literary text on the course.
4. A preoccupation with the urban as theme or setting is characteristic of modernist
writing. Discuss in relation to two authors on the course.
5. ‘[I]f a writer were a free man and not a slave, if he could write what he chose, not
what he must, if he could base his work upon his own feeling and not upon
convention, there would be no plot, no comedy, no tragedy, no love interest or
catastrophe in the accepted style…’ (Virginia Woolf, ‘Modern Fiction’). Discuss the
significance of this statement for any two texts on the course.
Contd./…
