Languages 190 Final Exam

The final exam in this course will consist of two essays on questions that are synthetic in nature. Your goal in writing these essays should be twofold: 1) to argue coherently for an interpretive thesis that demonstrates that you have thoughtfully engaged the themes presented in this course, and 2) to demonstrate that you have a knowledge of the works we have dealt with in the class as well as a command of the terms with which we have discussed them. Elaborate studying should not be necessary, but you should review your notes as well as review details concerning the characters and plots of the novels and the play we have read and the films we've watched. Does this make you nervous? Then click here for some advice about writing an essay exam.

A Checklist of Works

First part

• François Truffaut, "The Wild Child" (1970)
• Ingmar Bergman, "Scenes from a Marriage" (1973)
• Ettore Scola, "We All Loved Each Other So Much" (1974)
• Roger Shattuck, "The Wild Boy in Film" (1981)
• Logan Pearsall Smith, "Language and Thought" (1912)
• William James, "The Self" (1892)
• Edith Zimmerman, "A New Kind of Barometer for Keeping Track of Exactly How Old You Feel" (2011)
• Peter L. Berger & Brigitte Berger, "The Experience of Society" (1972)
• Peter L. Berger & Brigitte Berger, "Becoming a Member of Society-- Socialization" (1972)
• Laurence Perrine, "Escape and Interpretation" (1959)
• Arthur C. Clarke, "The Songs of Distant Earth" (1958)
• H.E. Bates, "A German Idyll" (1932)

Second part

• Franz Kafka, The Trial (1925; mostly written 1914-1915)
• Frederick R. Karl, "Kafka as Prophet, 1915-1917" [excerpt] (1991)
• Milan Kundera, "Somewhere Behind" (1986)
• J.P. Stern, "The Law of the Trial" (1976)
• Alain Resnais, "Mon Oncle d'Amérique" (1980)
• Luis Bunuel, "The Exterminating Angel" (1962)

Third part

• James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1914-1916)
• Ezra Pound, "Letter to Joyce" (1915) and "James Joyce: At Last the Novel Appears" (1915)
• Edward Garnett, "Reader's Report" (1915)
• Harry Levin, "The Artist" (1941)
• François Truffaut, "The 400 Blows" (1959)
• Joseph Strick, "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" (1977)

Fourth part

• George Eliot, Middlemarch (1872)
• George Eliot, "Oh, May I Join the Choir Invisible" (1874)
• Edwin J. Kenney Jr., "George Eliot: Through the Looking Glass" (1977)
• Henry Staten, "Is Middlemarch Ahistorical?" (2000)
• Michael Apted, "35 Up" (1991)
• François Truffaut, "Small Change" (1976)
• Ingmar Bergman, "Wild Strawberries" (1957)

A Checklist of Important Terms and Concepts

General Ideas

• The paradoxical duality of human existence: at once both individual and social, inner and outer, subjective and objective
• Modern Europe
• Modernity (broadly characterized by 1) industrialization; 2) progress of science and technology; 3) individualism; 4) capitalism; 5) social reform movements; 6) urbanization; 7) secularization; 8) mass literacy and media; 9) representative democracy)
• Self
• Society
• Language as a constituent of human reality

Society

• Society as experience (Berger)
• Microworld & macroworld (Berger, from Schutz)
• Big surprises vs. routine events (Berger)
• Social structures (Berger)
• Individuals as representatives of institutions (Berger)
• Socialization
• Institutions -- e.g. family, school, language, etc.
• Class
• Modern problem of legitimation: conflict between traditional religious legitimation and secular legitimation inspired by the Enlightenment

Self

• Characteristics of consciousness and self-consciousness (James)
• Material self (James)
• Social self (James)
• Spiritual self (James)
• Hierarchy of selves (James)
• Potential (or ideal) social self (James)
• Conflicts and choices among aspects of the self (James)
• Depth psychology (includes notion of the unconscious)
• Evolutionary psychology (e.g. Dr. Henri Laborit in "Mon Oncle d'Amérique")

Views of the relation of society and the self

• Antagonistic: the self "against" society (Week 2), or society "against" the self (Week 3)
• Dialectical: society ==> self ==> society ==> ... or society "in" the self and the self "in" society (Week 4)

Literature

• Literature of escape (Perrine)
• Literature of interpretation (Perrine)
• Symbols and criteria for their identification
• Narrative point of view (omniscient, limited omniscient, first-person, objective)
• Literature vs. film as narrative media
• Moral imagination
• Modern "consecration of the writer" to whom "spiritual authority" is attributed as exemplified by James Joyce