English 201 Final Examination Review Sheet
Our final exam is on Wednesday, December 8th, during our final class session. You will have one hour
and 15 minutes to take the in-class portion of this final exam. There will also be a brief take-home
portion to this exam (one essay question; please see the back of this review sheet) that will be due at this
time. You are expected to be familiar with the terms and works listed below.
Details of the in-class exam: part of the exam will ask you to look at passages and identify the name of
the work, the author, and then answer a question about the passage that relates to topics such as the
period or genre of which it is part or the themes within the larger work that this passage is illustrating.
You will also be asked to respond to several short answer questions related to the terms listed below.
Finally, there will be 1 short (6 to 10 sentence) essay.
Below are terms that have been introduced this semester and with which I will expect you to be
familiar.
Fabliau
18th Century Crime Writing
Estates Satire
Sensation Fiction
Apologia / Literary Confession
World War One
Shakespearean Sonnet
Modernism
Shakespearean Comedy
Works that we have read this semester:
Geoffrey Chaucer, from The Canterbury Tales: “The Prologue,” “Words Between the Host and the
Miller,” “The Miller’s Tale,” “The Reeve’s Prologue,” “The Reeve’s Tale,” “The Pardoner’s
Prologue,” “The Pardoner’s Tale,” “The Wife of Bath’s Prologue,” and “The Wife of Bath’s
Tale”
Please note that any passages for identification will be drawn from the edition of this work that I
ordered for our class.
William Shakespeare, Sonnet 18 (“Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?”), Sonnet 29 (“When in
disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes”), Sonnet 71 (“No longer mourn for me when I am dead”),
Sonnet 93 (“So shall I live supposing thou art true”), Sonnet 130 (“My mistress’ eyes are nothing
like the sun”), Sonnet 138 (“When my love swears that she is made of truth”), and Twelfth Night
Daniel Defoe, Moll Flanders
Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Lady Audley’s Secret
Wilfred Owen, “Dulce Et Decorum Est” and “Mental Cases”
Siegfried Sassoon, “Glory of Women”
Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway
If you miss the exam, you will not be given another opportunity to take it.
Take-Home Essay Question
Please respond to the following prompt before our final exam on Wednesday, December 8th. Your response
should be between 1 and 1 ½ double-spaced pages using Times New Roman font, and you should bring your
response with you to the final exam.
***
Virginia Woolf repeatedly alludes to Shakespeare in her writing. In her earlier incarnation in “Mrs. Dalloway in
Bond Street” (a short story that Woolf wrote before the novel) Clarissa Dalloway even specifically thinks of
“Shakespeare’s sonnets” and how “[s]he knew them by heart … and … had argued all day about the Dark Lady”
with her friend Phil (a character who doesn’t make it into the novel, but who seems to presage Peter Walsh). For
this essay question, I would like you to consider the two “Dark Lady” sonnets by Shakespeare (i.e., those
addressed to the speaker’s mistress) that we read for class and to compare the way that love is presented in these
sonnets with the way that Woolf presents love in her novel.
To successfully respond to this prompt, you must 1) decide whether you think that love as its represented in
Shakespeare’s sonnets and Woolf’s novel is primarily similar or primarily different, 2) clearly state near the
beginning of your response what this key similarity or difference is, and 3) demonstrate your claims using specific
examples from the sonnets provided below and at least 2 specific examples from Mrs. Dalloway. (Note: in your
response you may focus on one of the sonnets or refer to both.)
SONNET 130
My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips' red;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damask'd, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound;
I grant I never saw a goddess go;
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground:
And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
As any she belied with false compare.
SONNET 138
When my love swears that she is made of truth,
I do believe her, though I know she lies,
That she might think me some untutored youth,
Unlearnèd in the world's false subtleties.
Thus vainly thinking that she thinks me young,
Although she knows my days are past the best,
Simply I credit her false-speaking tongue:
On both sides thus is simple truth suppressed.
But wherefore says she not she is unjust?
And wherefore say not I that I am old?
Oh, love's best habit is in seeming trust,
And age in love loves not to have years told.
Therefore I lie with her and she with me,
And in our faults by lies we flattered by.