ENG 230 Midterm review ENG 230 Midterm Review

ENG 230 Midterm review

ENG 230: Midterm Review • Exam: Thursday 11/1 (in class) • 15% of final grade • Covers the first half of the course (weeks 1 -6), and will be based on the content of course readings, key terms, lecture material, and discussion.

ENG 230: Midterm Review • Format: multiple choice with explanatory follow-up questions, identification and short answer, long answer. • The works and passages we’ve focused on in class will be emphasized, but the exam may contain content from all course readings.

ENG 230: Midterm Review • Some suggestions for prep: • Be familiar enough with each writer we’ve read to recognize a typical example of their writing. • Tip: A good sense of each author’s main points or goals might help you recognize their work because the excerpts will be typical. • Ex. Think about the difference between Crevecoeur’s main argument and Rowlandson’s. .

ENG 230: Midterm Review • Some suggestions for prep: • Review key phrases or terms we discussed with each reading, particularly terms or phrases. • Ex. Darwin’s metaphors, such as “struggle for existence”; or Emerson’s transcendentalism and correspondences. • Review Buell’s glossary, especially those terms we have used in this class. • Some terms to note: wilderness, pastoral, sublime, georgic, anthropocentrism, ecocentrism • Be able to define, describe, or recognize examples of terms or movements we’ve discussed and to recall and provide specific examples from the literary texts that illustrate those terms.

ENG 230: Midterm Review • Some suggestions for prep: • Practice paraphrasing short passages of text. • Review “What is Close Reading? ” handout and be ready to practice close reading (particularly on short essay questions). • Know who wrote what.

Test-taking Strategies • Manage time • Review the exam first • Answer questions that you are sure about—don’t leave those points on the table • Understand the weighting of the exam (ex. short essay question is worth more than multiple choice questions), and use your time appropriately.

Test-taking Strategies • Understand the scoring system: This exam penalizes an unanswered question the same as an incorrect one. If you are totally stumped, you might as well guess! • Consider reading the short essay prompts early, even if you don’t start on them right away. • Write legibly. Ambiguously written answers will be incorrect.

“An Entangled Bank” Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species

Central ideas: natural selection and struggle for existence • Pressures for survival mean that individuals with certain characteristics have a higher likelihood of survival and reproduction. • “Struggle for Existence” • Their reproduction will result in a gradual modification of the species – perhaps even a new species. • Extinction and divergence of character (14). • These variations are not the product of divine intent – they are random, adaptable, changing, multiple forces interacting, not stable or static or simply reactive. We understand now that genetics and probability play a big role in changes to species. (See pages 12 -13 in Introduction)

Literary Technique and Scientific Theory “I should premise that I use the term Struggle for Existence in a large and metaphorical sense, including dependence of one being on another, and including (which is more important) not only the life of the individual, but success in leaving progeny. . . As the missletoe is disseminated by birds, its existence depends on birds; and it may metaphorically be said to struggle with other fruit-bearing plants, in order to tempt birds to devour and thus disseminate its seeds rather than those of other plants” (65).

Literary Technique and Scientific Theory “The acceptability of his account depended on its plausibility and its ability to explain in very general terms the sort of process which was involved. He could neither show evolution at work nor provide a complete example of the stages by which it had worked. The former process was too slow while the record of its having occurred was too fragmentary. Darwin’s task was to explain away the lack of evidence while repeatedly stressing the greater plausibility of this theory over that of special creation. ” -Robert Young, Darwin’s Metaphor

Literary Technique and Scientific Theory “Nothing is easier than to admit in words the truth of the universal struggle for life, or more difficult—at least I have found it so—than constantly to bear this conclusion in mind. Yet unless it be thoroughly engrained in the mind, I am convinced that the whole economy of nature, with every fact on distribution, rarity, abundance, extinction, and variation, will be dimly seen or quite misunderstood” (65). “The chief cause of our natural unwillingness to admit that one species has given birth to other and distinct species, is that we are always slow in admitting any great change of which we do not see the intermediate steps … The mind cannot possibly grasp the full meaning of the term of a hundred million years” (419 -420)

Literary Technique and Scientific Theory: why metaphor matters “When we no longer look at an organic being as a savage looks at a ship, as at something wholly beyond his comprehension; when we regard every production of nature as one which has had a history; when we contemplate every complex structure and instinct as the summing up of many contrivances, each useful to the possessor, nearly in the same way as when we look at any great mechanical invention as the summing up of the labour, the experience, the reason, and even the blunders of numerous workmen; when we thus view each organic being, how far more interesting, I speak from experience, will the study of natural history become!” (423)

Literary Technique and Scientific Theory Find a moment in the text (the sections we have read together) where Darwin uses metaphor and answer the following: How does the metaphor work? What is the process Darwin is trying to explain through the metaphor? Or in other words, how does the WRITING itself get us to be aware of, to be perceptually attuned to and perceptually open to, the processes and theory that Darwin is explaining?

Darwin’s classification diagram: You can find it pp. 112 -113 This one’s fromhttp: //darwin-online. org. uk/content/frameset? viewtype=side&item. ID=F 391&pageseq=430

Literary Technique and Scientific Theory • How does Darwin's theory challenge a pastoral conception of nature? Does it also continue to use pastoral formulations?

How does Darwin’s theory challenge a pastoral conception of nature? Pastoral: • Nature is escape (either literal or imaginative). • Nature is timeless, edenic, pure, something lost. • Opposed to city, opposed to what is human. • “At the root of pastoral is the idea of nature as a stable, enduring counterpoint to the disruptive energy and change of human societies” –Greg Garrard

Darwin reading questions for next Tuesday: • How does Darwin address his critics in the conclusion? How does he see the potential of his theory? • Is there a way in which Darwin’s language is consistent with a spiritual worldview, rather than opposed to it? • We might assume that Darwinism presents a “bleak” view of the world, as without spiritual meaning or higher purpose. But is there a way in which Darwin’s outlook is joyful? Look in particular at his description of the “entangled bank” that ends the book. Compare this passage in Darwin to the “sandbank” scene in the “Spring” chapter of Thoreau’s Walden? • The philosopher Slavoj Zizek has said that “we are still not ready for the revolutionary message of Darwin, which is that nature is not natural. ” What do you make of this statement?