Testing The Literary

Alexander Des Forges reads shiwen from a literary perspective, showing how the examination essay redefined prose aesthetics, transformed the work of writing, and marked the aesthetic as a key arena for contestation of authority as candidates, examiners, and critics joined to form a dominant social class of literary producers.

The opening volume in the New York Times bestselling Testing trilogy. In Cia's dystopian society, it's an honor to be chosen for The Testing. But it’s not enough to pass the Test. Cia will have to survive it. It’s graduation day for sixteen-year-old Malencia Vale, and the entire Five Lakes Colony (the former Great Lakes) is celebrating. All Cia can think about—hope for—is whether she’ll be chosen for The Testing, a United Commonwealth program that selects the best and brightest new graduates to become possible leaders of the slowly revitalizing post-war civilization. When Cia is chosen, her father finally tells her about his own nightmarish half-memories of The Testing. Armed with his dire warnings (”Cia, trust no one”), she bravely heads off to Tosu City, far away from friends and family, perhaps forever. Danger, romance—and sheer terror—await. “The Testing is a chilling and devious dystopian thriller that all fans of The Hunger Games will simply devour. Joelle Charbonneau writes with guts and nerve but also great compassion and heart. Highly recommended.”—Jonathan Maberry, New York Times bestselling author of Rot & Ruin and Flesh & Bone The Testing trilogy is: The Testing Independent Study Graduation Day

"The civil service examination essay-known as shiwen (modern or contemporary prose) or bagu wen (eight-legged essay) for its complex structure-was the most widely read and written literary genre in early modern China (1450-1850). As the primary mode of expression in which educated individuals were schooled, shiwen epitomized the literary enterprise even beyond the walls of the examination compound. But shiwen suffered condemnation in the shift in discourse on literary writing that followed the fall of the Ming dynasty, and were thoroughly rejected in the May Fourth iconoclasm of the early twentieth century. Challenging conventional disregard for the genre, Alexander Des Forges reads the examination essay from a literary perspective, showing how shiwen redefined prose aesthetics and transformed the work of writing. A new approach to subjectivity took shape: the question "who is speaking?" resonated through the essays' involuted prose style, foregrounding issues of agency and control. At the same time, the anonymity of the bureaucratic evaluation process highlighted originality as a literary value. Finally, an emphasis on questions of form marked the aesthetic as a key arena for contestation of authority as candidates, examiners, and critics joined to form a dominant social class of literary producers"--

Originally published in 1965, this volume was immediately judged to be one of the main contributions to the intellectual life of the Italian Sixties. Three years later, in 1968, it became clear that it had anticipated many of the themes of the New Left and the student revolt. Ex-partisan, poet, literary critic and teacher, Fortini had been immersed for more than twenty years in the cut and thrust of ideological debate. In these pages, besides discussing problems of cultural organization and the consciousness industry, he described the end of militant anti-fascism and the alliance between progressivism and literature, the end of the social mandate of writers and the beginning of a 'revolution of civilization'. In writing, Fortini did not intend to speak to the young but the young, perhaps in the spirit of contradiction, listened to him. Apart from some of the crucial interventions into the literary and critical debates of the Sixties, the volume includes essays on Kafka, Pasternak, Spitzer, Auerbach, Lukacs, Lu Xun, Proust and Brecht.

Provides techniques for achieving high scores on the AP English literature exam and includes two full-length practice tests.