Department of English
English Literature: Enlightenment, Romantic, Victorian
Final Examination, February 10, 2010, Moed Aleph
Time allowed: 4 hours
Part I: 2 hours; no books, texts, dictionaries or notes are permitted
Part II: 2 hours: books and dictionaries are permitted; no notes
Part I (50%):
Choose four out of the five passages given below, and for each 1) name the author;
2) name the work in which the passage occurs; 3) state the date (within ten years) of
publication of the work (or give the author's dates); 4) discuss the significance of the
passage in the work as a whole; and 5) briefly discuss the features of style and theme
characteristic of the writer and his period, only as arising from the particular passage;
6) if you have time left, add other analytic comments on the passage.
1.
Since then, at an uncertain hour,
That agony returns:
And till my ghastly tale is told,
This heart within me burns.
I pass, like night, from land to land;
I have strange power of speech
That moment that his face I see,
I know the man that must hear me:
To him my tale I teach.
2.
The question to be debated was whether the Yahoos should be exterminated
from the face of the earth. One of the members for the affirmative offered
several arguments of great strength and weight, alleging that, as the Yahoos
were the most filthy, noisome, and deformed animal which nature ever
produced, so they were the most restive, indocile, mischievous, and malicious;
they would privately suck the teats of the Houyhnhnms’ cows; kill and devour
their cats, trample down their oats and grass, if they were not continually
watched; and commit a thousand other extravagancies. He took notice of a
general tradition, that Yahoos had not always been in their country, but that
many ages ago, two of these brutes appeared together on the mountain;
whether produced by the heat of the sun upon corrupted mud and slime, or
from the ooze and froth of the sea, was never known. That these Yahoos
engendered, and their brood in a short time grew so numerous as to overrun
and infest the whole nation.
3.
Nay, we'll go
Together down, sir. Notice Neptune, though,
Taming a sea horse, thought a rarity,
Which Claus of Innsbruck cast in bronze for me!
4.
Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is:
What if my leaves are falling like its own!
The tumult of thy mighty harmonies
Will take from both a deep, autumnal tone,
Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce,
My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!
Drive my dead thoughts over the universe
Like withered leaves to quicken a new birth!
…….
5.
My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains
My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains
One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:
'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,
But being too happy in thine happiness,
That thou, light-winged dryad of the trees,
In some melodious plot
Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,
Singest of summer in full-throated ease.
Department of English
English Literature: Enlightenment, Romantics and Victorians
Final Examination, February 10, 2010, Moed Aleph
Part II (50%): books, texts and dictionaries permitted (no class notes)
Write a well-organized essay on one of the following topics. Give line or page
references and avoid unnecessary or long quotations. Relate the issues raised in each
work discussed to its formal and genre features.
1) 1. The term “nature” was used differently in the literature of the
Enlightenment, in Romantic Poetry, and in some of Victorian poetry. In each
corpus, however, representation of landscapes, or “nature” in general, was
closely bound up with the author’s philosophy. Compare the treatment of
nature in two of the following poems: Pope’s “Windsor Forest,”
Wordsworth’s “Tintern Abbey,” and Tennyson’s “In Memoriam,” taking into
consideration the ways in which they reflect the concerns of their periods.
2) Pope, Coleridge and Tennyson all make substantial use of the motif or image
of the mirror and/or reflection in, respectively, The Rape of the Lock, “Frost at
Midnight,” and “The Lady of Shalott.” Discuss the way two of the three poets
employ the motif of the mirror or mirroring (reflection) for their different
artistic purposes. Brief references to other relevant works are welcome.
Department of English
English Literature: Enlightenment, Romantic, Victorian
Final Examination, March 11, 2010, Moed Beth
Time allowed: 4 hours
Part I: 2 hours; no books, texts, dictionaries or notes are permitted
Part II: 2 hours: books and dictionaries are permitted; no notes
Part I (50%):
Choose four out of the five passages given below, and for each 1) name the author;
2) name the work in which the passage occurs; 3) state the date (within ten years) of
publication of the work (or give the author's dates); 4) discuss the significance of the
passage in the work as a whole; and 5) briefly discuss the features of style and theme
characteristic of the writer and his period, only as arising from the particular passage;
6) if you have time left, add other analytic comments on the passage.
1.
Alone, alone, all, all alone,
Alone on a wide wide sea!
And never a saint took pity on
My soul in agony.
The many men, so beautiful!
And they all dead did lie:
And a thousand slimy things
Lived on; and so did I.
….
I looked to heaven, and tried to pray;
But or ever a prayer had gushed,
A wicked whisper came, and made
My heart as dry as dust.
2.
Now awful Beauty puts on all its arms;
The fair each moment rises in her charms,
Repairs her smiles, awakens every grace,
And calls forth all the wonders of her face;
Sees by degrees a purer blush arise,
And keener lightnings quicken in her eyes.
The busy Sylphs surround their darling care,
These set the head, and those divide the hair,
Some fold the sleeve, whilst others plait the gown;
And Betty's praised for labors not her own.
3.
That serene and blessed mood,
In which the affections gently lead us on, -Until, the breath of this corporeal frame
And even the motion of our human blood
Almost suspended, we are laid asleep
In body, and become a living soul:
While with an eye made quiet by the power
Of harmony, and the deep power of joy,
We see into the life of things.
4.
There she weaves by night and day
A magic web with colours gay.
She has heard a whisper say,
A curse is on her if she stay
To look down to Camelot.
She knows not what the curse may be,
And so she weaveth steadily,
And little other care hath she,
The Lady of Shalott.
And moving through the mirror clear
That hangs before her all the year,
Shadows of the world appear.
There she sees the highway near
Winding down to Camelot;
There the river eddy whirls,
And there the surly village girls,
Pass onward from Shalott.
5.
Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, not light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confuses alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.
Department of English
English Literature: Enlightenment, Romantics and Victorians
Final Examination, March 11, 2010, Moed Beth
Part II (50%): books, texts and dictionaries permitted (no class notes)
Write a well-organized essay on one of the following topics. Give line or page
references and avoid unnecessary or long quotations. Relate the issues raised in each
work discussed to its formal and genre features.
1. Whereas the speaker of a Romantic poem is often a spokesman for the
historical author, in Gulliver's Travels and "My Last Duchess" the first-person
speaker expresses and embodies a point of view distinct from that of the
author. Choosing any one Romantic poem and either Gulliver's Travel's or
"My Last Duchess," discuss how these different first person speakers reflect,
whether directly or indirectly, the respective poets' ideas about poetry and
their vision of the world in its historical context.
2. Shelley's "Ode to the West Wind," Tennyson's "In Memoriam" and Arnold's
"Dover Beach" all describe a process undergone by their respective speakers
that results in a change in their mood and/or vision of the world and their place
in it. Compare and contrast both the process and the change in "Ode to the
West Wind" and either "In Memoriam" or "Dover Beach," showing, among
other things, how they reflect Romantic and Victorian attitudes in general and
those of the specific poets in particular.