ENG 4623/5623

Spring 2005

Study Guide for Second Examination (29 March 2005)

I. Identifications I. These will be handled as on the first examination. I’ll provide characterizations, and you’ll provide the appropriate term from the following list, which will appear on the exam as a word bank (5 items @ 3 points each).

• tropological approach to myth
• theory of functional maintenance
• dysfunction
• theory of functional relationships
• syncretism
• revitalization movement
• rite de passage
• liminality
• communitas
• myth-ritual approach

II. Identification II. You should know the important characters in Ceremony. I will select characters whose role in the novel you should be able to explain in a couple of sentences (5 items @ 5 points each).

III. Essay I. I will choose two of the following topics and expect you to write an essay on one of them. Your essay should have a clearly stated thesis which responds to the question and is supported by examples from the novel. Those examples should be specific and detailed (30 points).

• 1. How Tayo’s healing experience corresponds with Campbell’s concept of monomyth (separation-initiation-return).
• 2. Tayo’s experience as ritual ingress into liminality, communitas, and/or sacred time.
• 3. The parallels between the poetic interludes and Tayo’s experience.
• 4. The etiology (in mythological terms) of Tayo’s illness.

IV. Essay II. I will also choose two of the following topics and expect you to write an essay on one of them. Again, you need a thesis which responds to the questions and which you support with specifics (30 points).

• 1. How myth contributes to social stability.
• 2. What is lost by considering only the "text" of myths (like the armchair scholars
• criticized by Malinowski).
• 3. How myth relates to the two types of primordiality distinguished by Eliade.
• 4. How myth’s plasticity responds to culture change (with examples from Firth and Van Baaren).