Literatura Inglesa III: Pensamiento y Creación

Literaria en la 1.ª Mitad del Siglo XX

PRUEBA DE EVALUACIÓN CONTINUA (PEC) 2023

INSTRUCCIONES:

 Conteste en las hojas de la PEC. SE HA DE ENTREGAR EL ENUNCIADO.

 Conteste UNA de las dos preguntas de desarrollo que aparecen a
continuación (Máximo 350 palabras).
 Redacte la PEC en inglés, de forma clara y ordenada (introducción,
desarrollo y conclusión), siguiendo un estilo académico. Preste atención a los
errores gramaticales, revise bien el texto antes de enviarlo.
 Entregue esta PEC, en formato Word, con sus apellidos + nombre a través
del curso virtual (tenga en cuenta que la hora límite que figura es horario
peninsular español).
 Recuerden que en ningún caso se aceptará el plagio (parcial o total). En
caso de detectarse, la PEC quedará suspensa.

Esta PEC representa el 10% de la nota final del curso (la prueba
presencial representa el 90%). Si entrega esta PEC, la nota obtenida
(sobre 1 puntos) se sumará a su nota de examen (sobre 9 puntos),
siempre que haya obtenido un mínimo de 5 puntos en el examen. Si
no entrega la PEC, la nota máxima a la que podrá aspirar en este
curso será la del examen, es decir, 9 puntos.

 PLAZO DE ENTREGA: 13 DE DICIEMBRE DE 2023 INCLUSIVE

CHOSE ONE OF THE FOLLOWING TWO QUESTIONS:

1. Taking into account the contents studied in Unit 1 and after having read
the play, write an essay analysing how Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of
Being Earnest engages with the discussion on womanhood that takes
place in Great Britain at the turn of 19 th to 20th centuries. Please use some
quotes from the literary text and make references to the contents of the
course for your arguments.

Within the whole carnival of absurdity in which is wrapped Oscar

Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnst, femininity and gender roles are
discussed as a cornerstone of the changes befallen in society and its moral
values at the turn of 19th to 20th centuries. The female characters in the play
act out Victorian values ascribed to them condensed and retorted, according
to the play’s farcical denouncement, that serve as mockery in the light of
the new ideas about womanhood that began to arise at the fin de siècle in
Great Britain.

Lady Bracknell represents the Victorian classist rigidity, but hints in Act
I her conveyance with consumerist values when she advices Jack to acquire
some relations in order to marry Gwendolen meaning that being the
economic issue secured his social status can be rigged. Gwendolen being a
product of her breed, regards traditional values as when she expresses her
commitment to marriage and finding an earnest husband, but also shows
revelry to her mother’s mandates and incoherences and slips in her speech,
for instance in her first meeting with Cecily or when she reverses the
Victorian motto coined by Coventry Patmore. Miss Prism’s character
incarnates the Victorian moral rectitude being a pious learned obliging
governess that notwithstanding below her outer exemplary layer hides a
passionate woman that writes sentimental novels, longs for the love of Dr.
Chasuble and hides secrets about her past. Cecily on her part embodies the
lightness of the wealthy youth that dreams awake in reveries of chivalric
romantic love while Miss Prism tries to domesticate her.

These four women and the interactions between them present a picture of
womanhood at the time the play was composed that aims to convey the
nonsense of the limiting patterns associated to a given gender as male
characters incur in similar inconsistences and are subject to the same moral
faults.

CITED WORKS

Robson, Catherine, and Stephen Greenblatt. “The Importance of Being Earnest.” The
Norton Anthology of English Literature, E, W.W. Norton & Company, New York,
2018, pp. 824–867.

2. Read Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness and having the contents of Unit
2 into account, write an essay considering Marlow as an embodied
epitome of the dilemma contemporaries may encounter regarding
Empire. Please use some quotes from the literary text and make
references to the contents of the course for your arguments.