The Senior Exercise for English Majors
Shakespeare, The Tempest
Aphra Behn, Oroonoko
Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre
Herman Melville, Moby Dick
James Joyce, Dubliners
Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own
Leslie Marmon Silko, Ceremony
I'm also supposed to have read widely in the works of Donne, Wordsworth, Dickinson, and Yeats. I read Wordsworth and Silko this break, and everything else I've read in a college course, though it may have been three years ago. At this point I think I'm only going to skim through Moby Dick again (what makes you think that?). And I just realized that I've never read A Room of One's Own, I only think I have because it has been quoted and excerpted and talked about in so many things I've read.
The list is rather strange. I mean, this can't be what they think are the eight most important works of fiction (although a better case could be made for the poets). The English department is really composed of little factions, so I can see that everybody fought to have at least one of "his" authors on the list. Everyone seems to pass, I think, so I shouldn't be too worried about the exam, but I am, especially about writing essays analyzing the poems. But soon it will be over, and then I can start working on the Classics stuff.
