Graduate Progam Information:
Marnie Leonard (970) 491-2403 Marnie.Leonard@colostate.edu
Graduate Study
Department of English Study Guide for Graduate Students in Literature including Prototype Master's Examination
The Comprehensive Exam
You should take the comprehensive exam by the end of the semester before the one in which you plan to complete your thesis or project. This exam, for which you will prepare your own reading list, will ask questions about the history, content, and implications of literatures in English; it will assume that you are familiar with recent literary theories.
You should make your reading list with help from your advisor, your professors, past students’ lists on file in the department office, and the professor who is in charge of approving these lists; then you must have your list approved before you take the exam. For each of the following eleven categories, your list should include three works that are typically regarded as major or canonical and one work that would be considered minor or relatively unknown, for a total of 44 “works.” You should aim for a reasonable balance between male and female writers, among writers from different social, economic, ethnic, and cultural groups, and among the genres of poetry, fiction, drama, and literary non-fiction. What constitutes a “work” may be obvious (as in the case of a novel), but when it is not, you should put together an arguably equivalent body of material: for instance, a “work” might mean one long play (King Lear) or three short ones (the Oedipus trilogy); three ordinary-length short stories or essays; at least ten mid-length lyric poems (though a long one like T. S. Eliot’s Wasteland” might count for two or three); the Prologue and two tales from Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales; or one book of Spenser’s Faerie Queene.
Categories
- Classical in the broad sense, including Greek, Roman, Judaic-Christian, other early cultures
- Medieval, focused on Britain
- Renaissance, focused on Britain
- Restoration and 18th Century, focused on Britain and Ireland
- l9th-Century Britain and Ireland
- 20th-Century Britain and Ireland
- Pre-1800 U.S.
- l9th-Century U.S.
- 20th-Century U.S.
- International literature in translation from cultural traditions other than U.S. and Britain.
- Anglophone literature, that is, international literature originally in English but not from Britain or the US; this might include Australia, Canada, India, Kenya, and so forth.
Instructions for the exam will typically say something like this: Choose two of the following questions and write a lucid, direct, and shapely essay in response to each. Your essays should be well-organized and clearly focused, and they should demonstrate both your literary thoughtfulness and the breadth of your knowledge—your wide acquaintance with specific works and movements in literature as well as with recent developments in literary theory. Choose questions and examples that allow you to cross the bounds of genre and time; show, for example, that you can write about drama and poetry as well as prose, early works as well as recent, canonical works as well as lesser-known works, British and American works. Include specific and exact information about writers and works you discuss. You may but need not limit yourself to the works on your list. Budget your time carefully!
Questions might be something like these:
- Choose three different theories about the nature of literature and/or its interpretation, and compare and contrast the different views these theories allow of a single specific work of literature. Be sure you explain the theoretical bases for your comments, though not necessarily at length.
- Discuss the shifting role of the “father” in literature, as reflected in at least three works on your reading list. How do you account for the changes you describe?
- Write an essay in which you assess the need to know cultural context in interpreting three major examples from your list.
Click here for an example of the exam.
For information about course offerings and registration procedures for the upcoming semester or summer session, please view the Rambler, the Department's student newsletter.
This information is not intended to replace your advisor or the information in the CSU General Catalog, the Class Schedule, or the Department Checksheets.
Fine Print: Colorado State University Disclaimer | Equal Opportunity Statement | College of Liberal Arts