11/06/2010

【比較文學】期中考essay questions

Choose two questions to answer. Allow no less than 2 pages (single-spaced) for each answer. Cite the texts to support your argument.

1. According to Mary Russo, making a spectacle out of oneself appears to be "a specifically feminine danger" (318). How does Cindy Sherman negotiate this "feminine danger" in her bold affirmations of feminine performance, bodily exposure, and gender masquerade? What does the idea of the "grotesque" and its subversive implications have to do with her various boundary transgressions?

2. Compare and contrast the representation of the grotesque in Kafka and Sherwood Anderson.

3. Compare and contrast Kafka's punishment fantasies in "In the Penal Colony" with CJ Chen's aesthetic of horror.

Please print out your essays and drop them in my departmental mailbox BEFORE 5 pm Friday,November 19th. Late papers are not accepted.

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