faqs

Insightful reading of (and writing about) literature requires you obtain a foundation of basic facts about the history, society, and cultural contexts that produced the literature. Tests will be designed to serve as a check to make sure that you are not neglecting this aspect of the course. They will primarily cover factual material such as names, dates, terminology, and the like.

If you’re worried about the number of questions, it is probably just to ease your anxiety. Tests will be designed to be finished easily with lots of time to spare. Really. You may also be trying to perform some weird calculation about how much studying you should do. The worst thing you can do is make the number of questions an excuse to learn less. I can assess your understanding of the material regardless of the number of questions. My advice is that your make it a priority to use studying for tests as an excuse to make sure that the course material does not just go into short term memory. Remember that your education should be about personal growth.

Focusing involves narrowing your vision and letting items on the periphery fade from your consciousness. To study for tests, focus on what we have covered in our class, and let other classes and other areas of your life (temporarily) fade. But don’t do that with anything we covered in the class. To understand the material, you need to pay attention to how all the pieces of the puzzle work together. Try to create a story based on the material we covered. Some items may be less important in the story than others, but deciding which items are and aren’t important will help you learn the story without ignoring things.

You need a multi-part plan.

1. Creating a mental timeline is important. Certain things occur in order relative to each other. Who wrote texts at what point in history? What was happening–either historical events or intellectual ideas–at the time of writing that might have had an impact on the literature? How long did the events or ideas continue to be relevant to writers’ works? How are two works of literature from the same period similar and different? How do they differ from works at other times in history? Remembering some dates are important for constructing mental timelines. They may be rough benchmarks, dates indicating beginnings and ends of period, or landmarks, dates of events that had particularly consequential results for long-term literary history. If you see dates in your notes, ask yourself whether they are rough benchmarks, landmarks, or incidental events that flesh out the historical period for you. If you don’t see dates in your notes, think about what dates could serve as rough benchmarks or landmarks.
2. Understanding any period in history requires familiarity with the names of its more important people, places, events, and cultural concepts. You should able to name them (and spelling them correctly) for any given period you have studied after just a few seconds of thought. This is not just rote memorisation. You need to decide whether you can relate these names to works of literature. That is a measure of their importance.
3. You can only understand the ideas embedded literary texts if you understand the words on the most basic level. Make sure you know the plots and the names of the characters (again, you don’t really know them if you can’t spell them correctly). You need to re-read the texts and, if possible, re-read them again. Break them down into sections and write summaries of the sections. Look especially at the sections we highlighted in class. There’s a reason why I brought them to your attention or why they came out in class discsussion.
4. Know the names of the authors and the original languages of literary works. It seems obvious, but a surprisingly large number of people don’t retain this information. Failure to learn the simplest of details about a work of literature almost always correlates to a lack of understanding of its complexities.