First a description of the midterm, then an explanation of how you can respond to this post.
The midterm exam will be take-home. I'll give you the questions Friday in class; you can e-mail your response on Monday by the end of our usual class period. (You can also hand in a hard copy to my box--but e-mail alone is fine.) We will not hold class on Monday (the syllabus says you should come to class, but I've changed my mind.)
The exam is open-book and open-note. It will give you the opportunity to demonstrate your growing skill in comprehending and analyzing texts from the restoration and eighteenth century. You are free to work with one another to formulate your responses to the questions, but you must make a note on the exam of who you worked with and you must write your answers in your own words.
Expect the exam itself to take a while. There's no effective way to study for it, so the time you would ordinarily spend preparing for an in-class midterm should go into devising your answers to the exam questions.
The exam will consist of two to five essay-type questions of varying length. Some will ask you to bring together or analyze course readings in new ways, others will ask you to respond to a text from the period that we have not discussed in class but that bears on issues and concerns that we have discussed. You will have choices.
You can respond to this blog post by suggesting a question for the midterm exam. For full credit, the question should be one that can be answered in 250 - 500 words, involve two or more of the course readings (but not two readings assigned for the same day), and provide an the opportunity to show both what you have learned about the Enlightenment and how well you can interpret the course readings.
Deadline: Friday (10/9), start of class.
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6 comments:
How do the Enlightenment readings that we have read speak on the issue of reason versus faith? Is faith logical? What are the general issues that arise in the period with regards to miracles and what does each author have to say about them?
Your instructor here. You may feel that Whitney has effectively cornered the market on potential exam questions covering the most recent three weeks of the semester, but never fear! She's left plenty of room for other responses concerning this cluster of readings. Note that, while these are excellent questions, a thorough response that displayed a thorough-going knowledge of the particular texts in question, would have to go well over 500 words and take on at least five different readings. There wouldn't be room to put much else on the midterm!
So feel free to craft a more narrowly focused question (perhaps one more directed towards close reading of particular authors we've studied) that deals with the issue of religion and God.
How do the the readings from Eliza Haywood's "Fantomina; Or Love in a Maze" and Denis Diderot's "Enjoyment and Tahiti" differ in their portrayal of both female sexuality and the relationship between Christianity and marriage? Do these works support the Enlightenment trend of a shift away from structured religion? Do they critique or support religion as a whole?
Taking a look at Addison's Spectator essays, do we hear his voice on the idea of reason and/or religion? Now take a look at the Isaac Newton reading we had; he speaks of these topics in a very different manner. Even though these two men were writing with very different purposes in mind and to very different audiences, how do they both speak to the ideas and culture of the Enlightenment? Does it complicate the picture or help make it a more complete, well-rounded vision of the period?
In what ways do Piozzi and Hume (and, if you so choose, other authors/texts such as Locke's Some Thoughts concerning Education) differ in opinion on the topic of education? In what ways are they similar? Is one more "right" than the other? Which is more similar to the type of teaching used today. As always, support your statements with quotes (and/or anecdotes and examples).
In his Critique on Progress, Jean-Jacques Rousseau says, "Whilst the government and laws provide for the safety and well-being of a people assembled; the sciences, letters, and arts, less arbitrary, tho' perhaps more powerful, strow garlands of the flowers on their iron fetters, smother those sentiments of original liberty, with which they would seem to have been born, make them in love with their slavery, and so form, what we call, a polish'd nation" (Portable Enlightenment, p. 364-365). What do you think Isaac Newton would respond to this idea of science being just a "decoration" of society, and not very important to the well-being of the people?
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