LITERATURA INGLESA IV: EL GIRO A LA POSMODERNIDAD—PEC 2024-2025
READ THESE INSTRUCTIONS ATTENTIVELY BEFORE YOU BEGIN
The deadline to send this PEC via the virtual course in Ágora is May 5, 2025. Notice
that, in order to pass the PEC, you must complete both parts A (text commentary)
and B (you have to choose and write about ONE out of the two questions
proposed in this section). Please send a Word (not a PDF) text, use Times New
Roman 12 font size, 1,5 space, and justify column text. Remember that book titles
should be italicized. Your PEC will be marked by your corresponding "Intercampus
Tutor" before May 15.
As a good exercise for your final exam, try to write it in approximately two hours, after
you have prepared and carried out the pertinent research. There is no word limit, but
please take into consideration that the answers to the different parts of both the
PEC and the exam should be accurately balanced. Obviously, writing a few
fragmentary paragraphs will not do; the answers should be coherent and well
structured. Please limit your answers to the explicit topics you are asked to write about.
And, of course, revise both the contents and the style carefully before sending the PEC,
for spelling mistakes and grammar errors will be penalized.
Resorting to plagiarism will entail that the PEC will be marked with a 0. Consequently,
all sources duly quoted in the text (if any) must appear in a "References" section at the
end of the PEC. Similarly, the use of Generative Artificial Intelligence tools for the
completion of this assignment is not allowed.
Remember that the PEC is not compulsory and, in case you complete it, it will constitute
the 10% of your final grade. In case you do not deliver the PEC, the only mark will be
that of the final exam, where you can get a 100% of the final mark. This means that you
will not be penalized for not writing the PEC.
PART A: TEXT COMMENTARY
Comment on the following text, taking into consideration the most significant
formal and thematic aspects, and the interrelationship between them both.
Once a year the same letter is born from the flames. Tod sits there, direly staring at the grate, and
watches the fire’s rumour of bared throats and wagging tongues. His larynx gives the complicated
click of nausea. Into Tod’s mind, of course, I cannot see. But I am the hidden sharer of his body.
What’s it going through? This: a torment, an outright sepsis of the lowest fear. And relief —ignoble
relief. Then the letter unbuckles, turning from black to even white in the heat and delivering itself
into our outstretched hand.
The letter always has the same thing to say. Yes, it’s rather the kind of correspondence
one might expect Tod Friendly to go in for: unvarying, homourless and one-way, like junk mail. It
has this to say:
Dear Tod Friendly: I hope you are well, as we are. It pleases me to inform you that the
weather here continues to be temperate!
Yours sincerely. The hysterical signature, under which the following name and title is
complacently typed: The Reverend Nicholas Kreditor. ‘Here’ (where the weather is ever
temperate) is New York, according to the letter head — more specifically the Imperial Hotel, on
Broadway.
And that’s it […].
PART B:
Choose ONE out of the two following topics and write coherent essays on them.
Substantiate your answers with relevant examples taken from the specific texts
involved.
1. Analyze the use of irony and parody in Possession. How are they related to the
postmodern theory you have studied throughout the course?
2. Compare and contrast the representation of otherness and alienation in ‘The
Prophet’s Hair’ and ‘My Son the Fanatic’.
