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mothwingThe set text for my exam were an excerpt from Room with a View, something I didn't even glance because the author was US American and I'm an anglist (turns out it was a quite interesting short story by a gay POC author on freedom), and The Solitary Reaper by Wordsworth.
William Wordsworth. Huh.
Obviously, given his popularity, I prepared pretty much everything BUT him.
Also, my professor is a big fan of texts being "very much concise and to the point", and I think that my 17-page, rambling, at times essayistic text quite cuts that. Gnaagh.
William Wordsworth. Huh.
Obviously, given his popularity, I prepared pretty much everything BUT him.
Also, my professor is a big fan of texts being "very much concise and to the point", and I think that my 17-page, rambling, at times essayistic text quite cuts that. Gnaagh.
The Solitary Reaper
William Wordsworth
Behold her, single in the field,
Yon solitary Highland Lass!
Reaping and singing by herself;
Stop here, or gently pass!
Alone she cuts and binds the grain,
And sings a melancholy strain;
O listen! for the Vale profound
Is overflowing with the sound.
No Nightingale did ever chaunt
More welcome notes to weary bands
Of travellers in some shady haunt,
Among Arabian sands:
A voice so thrilling ne'er was heard
In spring-time from the Cuckoo-bird,
Breaking the silence of the seas
Among the farthest Hebrides.
Will no one tell me what she sings?--
Perhaps the plaintive numbers flow
For old, unhappy, far-off things,
And battles long ago:
Or is it some more humble lay,
Familiar matter of to-day?
Some natural sorrow, loss, or pain,
That has been, and may be again?
Whate'er the theme, the Maiden sang
As if her song could have no ending;
I saw her singing at her work,
And o'er the sickle bending;--
I listened, motionless and still;
And, as I mounted up the hill,
The music in my heart I bore,
Long after it was heard no more.
no subject
Date: Monday, February 1st, 2010 06:47 pm (UTC)This only confirms my determination to take either the drama or the prose text. I hope it wet well for you!
no subject
Date: Tuesday, February 2nd, 2010 10:29 am (UTC)- two texts by English authors
- one poem, one prose text (passage from a novel or short story), a third text that's either a part of a drama, a letter, a speech, diary entry, etc.
- one exam for students whose main field is Linguistics
- one text by a US author
- two texts by English authors.
It was clear that I'd go for the poem in any case, regardless of the author's nationality. There's no way I'd have been as happy with E.M. Forster's Room with a View, or the third text, which, as I said, was an extract of a short story by a US author I didn't recognised and whom the people who choose to write about him apparently had to look up in their dictionaries. o.O