COMENTARIO DE TEXTOS LITERARIOS EN LENGUA INGLESA

Prueba de Evaluación Continua

PEC 2016-2017

PART A: choose the correct answer in each case. Highlight your answers in the
Word document and upload it as a Word file onto “Entrega de tareas”. You must
have 7 correct answers out of 12 in order to pass and have PART B marked as well.
MAX: 6 POINTS (0.5 each)

1. Indicate the critical school the following quote is referring to: “……writing, by
contrast, tends to be much more emotive. Often the tone is urgent and euphoric,
and the style flamboyant and self-consciously showy”.
a) New historicist
b) Poststructuralist
c) Feminist
d) Cultural materialist

2. What discipline does structuralism derive from?

a) Philosophy.
b) Cultural criticism.
c) Anthropology.
d) Linguistics.

3. The “decentering” of our intellectual universe, as regarded by poststructuralism

and as suggested by Derrida, was primarily influenced by:
a) Nietzsche, Heidegger and Freud.
b) Barthes and Hegel.
c) Althusser and Gramsci.
d) Foucault.

4. According to the stages of the deconstructive process, the “textual stage” would
be:
a) The first.
b) The second.
c) The third.
d) The fourth.

5. Which of these philosophers and critics decisively influenced New Historicism?

a) Barthes.
b) Derrida.
c) Foucault.
d) Raymond Williams.

6. According to New historicists, “contexts” and “co-texts”

a) are different
b) are the same.
c) can be applied to fiction and poetry respectively.
d) are two categories of analysis used by New Historicism and
Cultural Materialism respectively.
7. Elizabeth Bishop was a
a) British Modernist poet.
b) American Modernist poet.
c) British Inter-War poet.
d) American post-World War II poet.

8. …… wrote that the intention and objective of his critical school was “an
intensified willingness to read all of the textual traces of the past with the
attention traditionally conferred only on literary texts”
a) Derrida
b) Greenblatt
c) Barthes
d) Foucault

9. Roland Barthes relates the ideology of capitalism to the figure of …..

a) the critic.
b) the philosopher.
c) the editor.
d) the author.

10. According to Derrida, a “transcendent reading”

a) searches for the signified outside the text.
b) searches for the spirituality within the text.
c) looks for abstraction in the signifier.
d) tries to move deep into the text.

11. From a New historicist approach Bishop’s poem “12 O’Clock News” can be
studied in relation to
a) World-War II texts.
b) First World War texts.
c) Vietnam War texts.
d) Korean War texts.

12. Who wrote that historical texts can be read as narratives that correspond to
the diverse literary genres of comedy, tragedy, romance, satire or epic?
a) Greenblatt.
b) Hayden White.
c) Barthes.
d) Foucault.

END OF PART A. PART B FOLLOWS ON THE NEXT PAGE.

INMACULADA CAMPO BRAVO – COMENTARIO DE TEXTOS LITERARIOS EN LENGUA INGLESA – PEC – Diciembre 2016

PART B: this part of the PEC must be written in full paragraphs in correct English.
Make sure that you discuss all the aspects indicated. Please write 1) CONTEXT, 2)
FORM AND CONTENT, and 3) THEORY AND CRITICISM, before you answer each
section, not exceeding the limit of words for each part. Start writing on the
following page. MAX.: 4 POINTS.

TEXT FRAGMENT FOR THE COMMENTARY

Never until […]

Shall I let pray the shadow of a sound

Or sow my salt seed
In the least valley of sackcloth to mourn

The majesty and burning of the child’s death.

I shall not murder
The mankind of her going with a grave truth
Nor blaspheme down the stations of the breath
With any further
Elegy of innocence and youth
[…]

1) CONTEXT (MAX. 70 WORDS). Indicate the author and the title of the text and explain their
historical, literary and cultural contexts. (Up to 0.5 point).

2) FORM AND CONTENT (MAX. 70 WORDS EACH QUESTION). Answer the following questions
following the instructions. (Up to 1.5 points).

• Analyze the poetic voice in this fragment and relate it briefly to the whole poem.

• Analyze the poetic devices, meter and rhythm used in lines 2, 3 and 4 of the fragment;
What does “Nor blaspheme down the stations of the breath” refer to on a metaphorical
level?

3) THEORY AND CRITICISM (MAX. 200 WORDS). Answer the following question following the
instructions. (Up to 2 points).

• From a deconstructive point of view analyze two elements of contradiction in this

fragment that reveal “breaches” or “faults” in the poetic discourse.
INMACULADA CAMPO BRAVO – COMENTARIO DE TEXTOS LITERARIOS EN LENGUA INGLESA – PEC – Diciembre 2016

WRITE YOUR ANSWERS TO PART B ON THIS PAGE (DO RESPECT THE EXTENSION LIMITS):

1. CONTEXT:

This fragment belongs to the poem “A refusal to mourn the death, by fire, of a child in London”,
written by Dylan Thomas.
It was first published in 1945, just after the end of World War II and it recalls the London Blitz.
The poem was written in the context of Modernism, a literary movement which was developed
during the first half of the 20th century.

2. FORM AND CONTENT:

• Analyze the poetic voice in this fragment and relate it briefly to the whole poem.
The poetic voice in the fragment is a first person (“I”) who expresses feelings. The speaker
says he is not going to lament the child’s death in the conventional ways of mourning
because this would be a blasphemy. He considers that he would be disrespectful to
language by writing a traditional elegy; but then, he does absolutely so and the complete
poem becomes an elegy.

• Analyze the poetic devices, meter and rhythm used in lines 2, 3 and 4 of the
fragment; What does “Nor blaspheme down the stations of the breath” refer to on a
metaphorical level?
Rhythm: abc form.
Verses 2 and 4 have four beats. Verse 3 has three beats.
Poetic devices:
- Metaphors: “the shadow of a sound”, “my salt seed” “the least valley of sackcloth”.
- Alliteration: “sow my salt seed”.
- “Nor blaspheme down the stations of the breath” is a biblical reference that evokes the
Christian Via Crucis. It refers to the stages of life but also to the sentences which form a
poem.

3) THEORY AND CRITICISM (MAX. 200 WORDS). Answer the following question following the
instructions. (Up to 2 points).

• From a deconstructive point of view analyze two elements of contradiction in this

fragment that reveal “breaches” or “faults” in the poetic discourse.

Post-structuralism looks for disunity. Shifts and breaks of various kinds in the text are
sought (they can be in tone, viewpoint, tense, time, rhythm, person or attitude). These
breaks are seen as evidence of what is passed over in silence by the text. These breaches
are also called “fault-lines”, a geological metaphor which gives evidence of previous activity
and movement.
These faults are sought in the textual stage of the deconstructive process, which takes an
overall view of the poem.

In this fragment we find the following “breaches” or “faults”:

- There is a time shift in the third stanza, which is centered on the present; the actual death
of the child (“The majesty and burning of the child’s death”). The first and second stanzas
told about the end of the world.
INMACULADA CAMPO BRAVO – COMENTARIO DE TEXTOS LITERARIOS EN LENGUA INGLESA – PEC – Diciembre 2016

- In the beginning, the poem is very impersonal and there is a break in the third stanza,
when the poem becomes more personal. This is the first time the speaker talks about the
child.

- We also find an omission since the speaker says that he refuses to mourn but he never
explains the reasons for not doing so.