Inventing mundanity
13 Nov 2006I just discovered (thanks Tori) the past papers for ENGL1025 from 2005 and 2004, to bitter disappointment. The texts are different enough from the bulk of the ones we’ve looked at that the focus is mainly unhelpful, and the wording of the questions fall victim to the vicissitudes of academics constantly trying to out-perform themselves in turgidity and profuse obscurity”
‘The texts of modernity seem transfixed between an ardent longing for certainties and the knowledge that certainties are impossible to discover.’
Explore this conundrum in two or more texts on the unit.
That is an amusing example: who would have thought one would encounter the word “conundrum” in an examination context? It is simply indulgent and the opposite extreme of last week’s featured administrative prose from the same institution. A happy compromise, if indeed there is one, is not immediately apparent!
But, let it be noted, this particular textual brutality appears to be vastly more prevalent amongst the modernists (and onwards) in the English department … but maybe that’s just me being prejudiced against certain ways of thinking ;-)