RET/ENG4022/JULY2019/2
ST MARY’S UNIVERSITY
TWICKENHAM, LONDON
BA/BSc Degree Examination students registered for
Level FOUR
Title: Contemporary Fiction
Code: ENG4022
Semester: Resit
Date: 4th July 2019
Time: 09:30- 11:30 AM
TIME ALLOWED: TWO HOURS
Answer TWO questions. Each question is worth 50% of the marks. In the exam as
a whole, you should make substantial reference to at least two novels, of
which at least one must be either Julian Barnes’s The Sense of an Ending or
Zadie Smith’s White Teeth; you may also draw on any of the other novels we
have read on the course.
Please mark clearly on your answer book which questions you are attempting.
All questions carry equal marks.
1) ‘Modern narrative, like the modern world, is constructed out of a plurality of
voices’. Discuss.
2) To what extent do characters in any one or two texts you have read on this
module grow wiser when they grow older?
3) ‘Contemporary fiction is often ‘reflexive’ or ‘meta-fictive’; that is to say, it often
consists more of stories about stories, rather than stories about the world.’
Discuss.
4) Write an essay on characters’ attempts to atone for past mistakes, in any one
or two novels you have read on this module.
5) ‘In fiction, location is often a kind of character in itself; and, in contemporary
fiction, both cities and the countryside are usually represented as dark,
isolating, alienating places’. Discuss the presentation of location in one or two
novels we have read on this course, concentrating if you wish on ‘the city’
and/or ‘the countryside’.
6) ‘Despite successive waves of literary feminism in the twentieth century, female
characters in contemporary fiction are all too often little more than plot devices
or aids to the main consciousness of the novel, which is dominatingly
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ST MARY’S UNIVERSITY
TWICKENHAM, LONDON
BA/BSc Degree Examination students registered for
Level FOUR
Title: Contemporary Fiction
Code: ENG4022
Semester: Resit
Date: 4th July 2019
Time: 09:30- 11:30 AM
TIME ALLOWED: TWO HOURS
Answer TWO questions. Each question is worth 50% of the marks. In the exam as
a whole, you should make substantial reference to at least two novels, of
which at least one must be either Julian Barnes’s The Sense of an Ending or
Zadie Smith’s White Teeth; you may also draw on any of the other novels we
have read on the course.
Please mark clearly on your answer book which questions you are attempting.
All questions carry equal marks.
1) ‘Modern narrative, like the modern world, is constructed out of a plurality of
voices’. Discuss.
2) To what extent do characters in any one or two texts you have read on this
module grow wiser when they grow older?
3) ‘Contemporary fiction is often ‘reflexive’ or ‘meta-fictive’; that is to say, it often
consists more of stories about stories, rather than stories about the world.’
Discuss.
4) Write an essay on characters’ attempts to atone for past mistakes, in any one
or two novels you have read on this module.
5) ‘In fiction, location is often a kind of character in itself; and, in contemporary
fiction, both cities and the countryside are usually represented as dark,
isolating, alienating places’. Discuss the presentation of location in one or two
novels we have read on this course, concentrating if you wish on ‘the city’
and/or ‘the countryside’.
6) ‘Despite successive waves of literary feminism in the twentieth century, female
characters in contemporary fiction are all too often little more than plot devices
or aids to the main consciousness of the novel, which is dominatingly
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