EN 470: New England Literature & Culture SPRING/ 2015
FINAL EXAM: due May 19 (Word attachment to shaun.oconnell@umb.edu)
NOTE: All writings must be in by May 19.
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PART ONE 30%
Comment (300-400 words or one solid paragraph each) on the significance of two of the following passages. Write on two different authors . Discuss the ways each quotation informs the work from which it is taken and reveals the writer’s vision of New England.
1]
“He shall make us a praise and glory, that men shall say of succeeding plantations: ‘the Lord makes it like that of
New England.’ For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill, the eyes of all people are upon us.” –
John Winthrop, from “A Model of Christian Charity”
2]
“The chief charm of New England was harshness of contrasts and extremes of sensibility—a cold that froze the blood, and a heat that boiled it—so that the pleasure of hating—one’s self if no better victim offered—was not its rarest amusement; but the charm was a true and natural child of the soil, not a cultivated weed of the ancients.” –
Henry Adams, from The Education of Henry Adams
3]
“It was late in the afternoon, and the light was waning…There seemed to be a gentle stir arising over everything for the mere sake of subsidence—a very premonition of rest and hush and night. This soft diurnal commotion was over Louisa Ellis also.” – Mary Wilkins Freeman, from “A New England Nun”
4] Harmon Gow, stage driver, speaking of Ethan Frome: "Guess he's been in Starkfield too many winters. Most of the smart ones get away." -- Wharton, Ethan Frome
Stage Manager: “Nice town y’know what I mean?” – Thornton Wilder, from
"I was back in Southie, ‘the best place in the world,’ as Ma used to say before the kids died.” – Michael Patrick
MacDonald, from All Souls: A Family Story from Southie
Our Town
“On a thousand small town New England greens, the old white churches held their air of sparse, sincere rebellion, frayed flags quilt the graveyards of the Grand Army of the Republic.
[Now] giant finned cars nose forward like fish, a savage servility slides by on grease.” -- Lowell, “For the Union Dead”
“All praise is due to Allah that I went to Boston when I did. If I hadn’t, I’d probably still be brainwashed black Christian.” -- from The Autobiography of Malcolm X

PART TWO 30%
Discuss the New England dimension in the following poem by Robert Frost & Emily Dickinson.
Dickinson: # 258 Frost: Stopping By Woods on A Snowy Evening
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
There's a certain Slant of light,
On winter afternoons —
That oppresses, like the Heft
Of cathedral Tunes —
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
Heavenly Hurt it gives us
We can find no scar,
Where the Meanings
None may teach it —Any—
'Tis the Seal Despair,
An imperial affliction
Sent us of the Air —
But internal differences
, are
—
—
When it comes, the Landscape listens —
Shadows —hold their breath—
When it goes, 'tis like the Distance
On the look of Death —
PART THREE 40%
Write on one of the following:
1] Samuel Danforth, in “A Brief Recognition of New England’s Errand Into the Wilderness” (1670), wrote: “To what purpose did the children of Israel leave their cities and houses in Egypt and go forth into the wilderness?...Was it not to see that burning and shining light which God had raised up?” He wants “to sadly consider” whether the N.E. mission has been sustained – “let us call to remembrance the former days and consider whether ‘it was not then better with us that it is now’ [Hos. 2:17].” Which two or more 20 th century writers, in your view, best address the theme of the New England mission.
What do they say about it?
2] Critic and Wharton biographer R.W.B. Lewis has written that in Ethan Frome
“she was recreating the spell that the New England landscape had laid upon her, its dark somber beauty, its atmosphere (for her) of the haunted and tragic.” Discuss two or more 20 th century writers who agree or disagree with
Wharton’s view of New England.
3]
In “What Became of New England” (1937), Robert Frost wrote, “the thing New England gave most to
America was the thing I am talking about: a stubborn clinging to meaning; to purify words until they meant again what they should mean. Puritanism had that meaning entirely; a purifying of words and a renewal of meaning.” Is Frost’s sense of a New England emphasis on language and meaning reflected in other New England writers we have read?
4] How has the idea of N.E. changed from the Puritan to the modern era in the minds of its writers (in conception and in expression)? Illustrate your conclusions through discussion of two writers read in this course. +