Cultural sources of English Literature

CULTURAL SOURCES OF ENGLISH LITERATURE
Professor Juan Ignacio Guijarro
First Partial Exam
4 February 1995
Please, follow the directions, write clearly in good English, and do not write more than permitted −be
concise!!!
1) ESSAY. Choose 2 of the following 3 topics and write a paragraph (12−15 lines) on each (50 pts):
• Anglo−Saxon literature.
• The reign of Richard II.
• Scotland in the Seventeenth century.
2) READING. Write a paragraph (8−10 lines) commenting on the following fragment of A Man of All
Seasons, making specific references to the rest of the play and to the historical context if possible (20 points):
It was a sin I admit it; I repent. And God has punished me; I have no son Son after son she's
borne me all dead at birth, or dead within the month. I never saw the hand of God so clear in
anything.
3) TEXT. (20 points)
Do the following with this text:
• Locate it historically and identify it (2−3 lines).
• Summarize its main contents (4−5 lines).
• Question (2−3 lines): Explain the meaning of the sentence which is underlined in the text:
The force of her own gift alone drove her to it. She made up a small parcel of her belongings, let herself down
by a rope one summer's night and took the road to London. She was not seventeen. The birds that sang in the
hedge were not more musical than she was. She had the quickest fancy, a gift like her brother's, for the tune of
words. Like him, she had a taste for the theatre. She stood at the stage door; she wanted to act, she said. Men
laughed in her face. The manager −a fat, loose−lipped man− guffawed. He bellowed something about poodles
dancing and women acting −no woman, he said, no training in her craft. Could she even seek her dinner in a
tavern or roam the streets at midnight? Yet her genius was for fiction and lusted to feed abundantly upon the
lives of men and women and the study of their ways.
4) MAP. Clearly mark 10 of the following 11 geographical items in a map of the UK that you are must draw
(1 point each):
London; Hebrides Islands; Hastings; Canterbury; Dublin; Ben Nevis; Humber; Belfast; Edinburgh;
Cardiff; Glasgow.
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