Literary Genre Questions

Sample 70 mark questions:

  • “The unexpected is essential to the craft of story-telling.”Compare how the authors of the comparative texts you have studied used the unexpected in their texts. You may confine your answer to key moments in the texts.
  • “The creation of memorable characters is part of the art of good story-telling.” Write an essay comparing the ways in which memorable characters were created and contributed to your enjoyment of the stories in the texts you have studied for your comparative course. It will be sufficient to refer to the creation of one character from each of your chosen texts.    (70)
  • Write a talk to be given to Leaving Certificate students in which you explain the term Literary Genre and show them how to compare the telling of stories in at least two texts from the comparative course.    (70)
  • “Literary Genre is the way in which a story is told.” Choose at least two of the texts you have studied as part of your comparative course and, in the light of your understanding of the term Literary Genre, write a comparative essay about the ways in which their stories are told. Support the comparisons you make by reference to the texts.    (70)
  • Write an essay on one or more of the aspects of literary genre (the way texts tell their stories) which you found most interesting in the texts you studied in your comparative course. Your essay should make clear comparisons between the texts you choose to write about.

Sample 30/40 mark questions

“Aspects of narrative contribute to your response to a text.”
(a)With reference to one of your chosen texts, identify at least two aspects ofnarrative and discuss how those aspects contributed to your response to that text.    (30)
(b)With reference to two other texts compare how aspects of narrative contributed to your response to these texts.
In answer to question (b) you may use the aspects of narrative discussed in (a) above or any other aspects of narrative.    (40)

“A good text will have moments of great emotional power.”
(a)With reference to a key moment in one of your texts show how this emotional power was created.    (30)
(b)Take key moments from the other two texts from your comparative course and compare the way in which the emotional power of these scenes was created. (40)

“Powerful images and incidents are features of all good story-telling.”
(a)Show how this statement applies to one of the texts on your comparative course.    (30)
(b)Compare the way in which powerful images and incidents are features of the story-telling in two other texts on your comparative course. Support the comparisons you make by reference to the texts. (40)

“No two texts are exactly the same in the manner in which they tell their stories.”
(a)Compare two of the texts you have studied in your comparative course in the light of the above statement. Support the comparisons you make by reference to the texts.    (40)
(b)Write a short comparative commentary on a third text from your comparative study in the light of your discussion in part (a) above.    (30)

“Texts tell their stories differently.”

(a)Compare two of the texts you have studied in your comparative course in the light of the above statement.    (40)
(b)Write a short comparative commentary on a third text from your comparative study in the light of your answer to question (a) above.    (30)

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