College of Letters 
Wesleyan University 

Junior Comprehensive Examination, Spring Term 2009 

Examiners: 
Carolyn Dean, Brown University 
Larry Scanlon, Rutgers University 

Over three days you will have the chance to think and write about the texts you have read 
dealing with ancient, medieval, and twentieth-century culture. Please pick two of each of 
the questions listed for each day. Please think both analytically and creatively in your 
answers, and feel free to use examples that range across the various periods you have 
studied. The more detailed you can be in your responses when it comes to historical 
specifics such as names, dates, and places, the better; yet each of your answers should 
have an overall, coherent argument. 

Feel free to consult the specific texts as you write up your responses. 

Please refer to the guidelines for specific word limit, deadline, and formatting 
instructions. Be sure to include your name and the exam day. Write no more than 1800 
words on each question, approximately six double-spaced pages. Be sure your word 
processor numbers the pages. 

II. Examination Day Two: History, Epoch, Crisis 
1. 
How do you interpret the meaning of �historical crisis� or a �predicament of 
culture� and how is it reflected in various forms of literature and philosophy and 
in how questions of �identity� and selfhood are posed? How do novels and critics 
who grapple with torture and violence define those moments as a historical crisis? 
Again, the emphasis is on the concept of historical crisis: you may use any texts 
you have read to address the question, though some will be more relevant than 
others. 
2. 
What does the present owe to the past? In Theses on the Philosophy of History, 
Benjamin objects to the ideal of traditional historiography, that is, to understand 
�the way it really was,� and particularly to the empathy with previous epochs that 
such a goal entails. �It is a process of empathy whose origin is the indolence of 
the heart, acedia, which despairs of grasping and holding the genuine historical 
image as it flares up briefly. Among medieval theologians it was regarded as the 
root cause of sadness. Flaubert, who was familiar with it, wrote: �Peu de gens 
devineront combine il a fallu �tre triste pour ressuciter Carthage [Few will be 
able to guess how sad one had to be in order to resuscitate Carthage].� The nature 
of this sadness stands out more clearly if one asks with whom the adherents of 
historicism actually empathize. The answer is inevitable: with the victor.� 

Picking one of the traditions or historical periods you have studied, assess 
Benjamin�s claim. Does �holding the genuine historical image as it flares up� 
always require reading against the grain, as Benjamin argues? Or is empathy 
sometimes necessary after all? 

3. 
Many critics are very uncomfortable with the dangers posed by writing about the 
Holocaust and other human catastrophes in other than documentary terms. How 
valid do you feel this position is? Does testimony of whatever sort (historical, 
literary, legal) about an event or experience (catastrophe, colonization, genocide, 
fratricide) pose ethical problems if it is not in documentary form and how or why? 
In short, does the documentary form allow us to capture extreme events in history 
more truthfully than other kinds of language? You may use any primary sources 
you have read that seem relevant, including literature that implicitly militates 
against this view. 
4. 
In the Confessions, as Augustine recounts the history of his own conversion to 
Christianity, one of the central signs of the pagan culture he would eventually 
renounce was his fierce devotion to the theater. Augustine�s rejection would 
prove prophetic. With some notable exceptions (such as the mystery cycles of 
later medieval England), ancient and medieval Christianity, which appropriated so 
much of classical culture, remained hostile to drama, and initiated nearly a 
millennium of literary culture that largely did without drama. Using Augustine�s 
discussion in Book II, chapters 1 and 2 of the Confessions as your point of 
departure, and the drama of fifth-century Athens as your proof-texts, compare 
Christian and classical attitudes to drama, theatricality and performance. Is it 
simply the clash between the excessive piety of Christianity and the worldliness 
of ancient drama, as is often claimed? Or do we have a contrast between two 
different forms of piety, and�for that matter�two different forms of worldiness?