Summer reading list from hell
Sep. 13th, 2003 02:26 pmPicked up the reading list for my senior comps today. *shudder* Kenyon tries to be English in every way possible, so we have senior comps as a holdover from the whole giant final exam thing that many British universities apparently put their students through. For English majors, it consists of two parts: a 9-12 page critical essay (or creative project if you take two or more CW classes) due at the beginning of the second semester and a two-part exam based on the reading list they come out with in the fall of your sophomore year, which takes place the Saturday after spring break. So yes, I have two years to read all these things, and there isn't all that many, but uuuuugh.
Beowulf
A Midsummer Night's Dream (read it, but long ago--it's quite possibly my least-favorite Shakespeare play, and I don't really care for Shakespeare in general)
Paradise Lost (*shudder*)
Alexander Pope's The Rape of the Lock and "The Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot" (Pope's okay, I guess)
Jane Austen's Persuasion
Godawful amounts of William Blake (Ew, ew, ew, ew, ew....I despise Blake)
Henry James, The Turn of the Screw
Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway
V. S. Naipaul, A House for Mr. Biswas (Huh?)
Audre Lorde, Zami, A New Spelling of My Name (Huh?)
Various George Herbert poems (reading some for poetry this year)
Various Eavan Boland poems (reading much for Irish Lit. this year)
Meh. Not really looking forward to, oh, most of that...
Beowulf
A Midsummer Night's Dream (read it, but long ago--it's quite possibly my least-favorite Shakespeare play, and I don't really care for Shakespeare in general)
Paradise Lost (*shudder*)
Alexander Pope's The Rape of the Lock and "The Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot" (Pope's okay, I guess)
Jane Austen's Persuasion
Godawful amounts of William Blake (Ew, ew, ew, ew, ew....I despise Blake)
Henry James, The Turn of the Screw
Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway
V. S. Naipaul, A House for Mr. Biswas (Huh?)
Audre Lorde, Zami, A New Spelling of My Name (Huh?)
Various George Herbert poems (reading some for poetry this year)
Various Eavan Boland poems (reading much for Irish Lit. this year)
Meh. Not really looking forward to, oh, most of that...
no subject
Date: 2003-09-13 01:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-09-13 08:30 pm (UTC)I'm not really a fan of most of the authors on there...Austen I like, but that's about it. There are a few I haven't read and am thus reserving judgement on, but overall I'm just not looking forward to this giant test--even if it were on a bunch of authors I loved, I still wouldn't want to take this test...