Institutt f or litteratur, områdestudier og europeiske språk
WRITTEN EXAMINATON
2013/SPRING
11 pages
ENG 2305 – The Victorian Period
4 hours
Friday, 24 May
You are allowed to use an English–English dictionary
You must answer the question in English.
The answer must be written on copy-sheets.
Answer ONE question
1. Write an essay on Tennyson’s In Memoriam A. H. H, lyrics 123 and 124 (text provided),
relating the main themes, arguments and poetic imagery to In Memoriam as a whole. You are
encouraged to draw thematic comparisons to other works on your syllabus.
OR
2. Write an essay on the narrator’s speculative commentary in the excerpt given below from
Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles (text provided), relating the passage’s concerns to themes
explored in the novel as a whole.
OR
3. In which ways can Browning’s Caliban Upon Setebos (text provided) be read as a
commentary on contemporary debates in Victorian society and intellectual culture? Be sure to
support your argument with frequent references to the text of the poem.
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Text 1: Tennyson, In Memoriam A. H. H, lyrics 123 and 124
CXXIII.
2605 There rolls the deep where grew the tree.
2606
O earth, what changes hast thou seen!
2607
There where the long street roars, hath been
2608 The stillness of the central sea.
2609 The hills are shadows, and they flow
2610
From form to form, and nothing stands;
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They melt like mist, the solid lands,
2612 Like clouds they shape themselves and go.
2613 But in my spirit will I dwell,
2614
And dream my dream, and hold it true;
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For tho' my lips may breathe adieu,
2616 I cannot think the thing farewell.
CXXIV.
2617 That which we dare invoke to bless;
2618
Our dearest faith; our ghastliest doubt;
2619
He, They, One, All; within, without;
2620 The Power in darkness whom we guess;
2621 I found Him not in world or sun,
2622
Or eagle's wing, or insect's eye;
2623
Nor thro' the questions men may try,
2624 The petty cobwebs we have spun:
2625 If e'er when faith had fall'n asleep,
2626
I heard a voice 'believe no more'
2627
And heard an ever-breaking shore
2628 That tumbled in the Godless deep;
2629 A warmth within the breast would melt
2630
The freezing reason's colder part,
2631
And like a man in wrath the heart
2632 Stood up and answer'd 'I have felt.'
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2633 No, like a child in doubt and fear:
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But that blind clamour made me wise;
2635
Then was I as a child that cries,
2636 But, crying, knows his father near;
2637 And what I am beheld again
2638
What is, and no man understands;
2639
And out of darkness came the hands
2640 That reach thro' nature, moulding men.
Text 2: from Thomas Hardy, Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Darkness and silence ruled everywhere around. Above them rose the primeval yews and oaks
of the Chase, in which were poised gentle roosting birds in their last nap; and around them the
hopping rabbits and hares. But where was Tess’s guardian angel? where was Providence?
Perhaps, like that other god of whom the ironical Tishbite spoke, he was talking, or he was
pursuing, or he was in a journey, or peradventure he was sleeping and was not to be awaked.
Already at that hour some sons of the forest were stirring and striking lights in not
very distant cottages; good and sincere hearts among them, patterns of honesty and devotion
and chivalry. And powerful horses were stamping in their stalls, ready to be let out into the
morning air. But no dart or thread of intelligence inspired these men to harness and mount, or
gave them by any means the least inkling that their sister was in the hands of the spoiler; and
they did not come that way.
Why it was that upon this beautiful feminine tissue, sensitive, as gossamer, and
practically blank as snow as yet, there should have been traced such a coarse pattern as it was
doomed to receive; why so often the coarse appropriates the finer thus, many thousand years
of analytical philosophy have failed to explain to our sense of order. One may, indeed, admit
the possibility of a retribution lurking in the catastrophe. Doubtless some of Tess
D’Urberville’s mailed ancestors rollicking home from a fray had dealt the same wrong even
more ruthlessly upon peasant girls of their time. But though to visit the sins of the fathers
upon the children may be a morality good enough for divinities, it is scorned by average
human nature; and it therefore does not mend the matter.
As Tess’s own people down in those retreats are never tired of saying among each
other in their fatalistic way: ‘It was to be.’ There lay the pity of it. An immeasurable chasm
was to divide our heroine’s personality thereafter from that previous self of hers who stepped
from her mother’s door to try her fortune at Trantridge poultry-farm.
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Text 3: Robert Browning, CALIBAN UPON SETEBOS; OR, NATURAL THEOLOGY IN
THE ISLAND.
“Thou thoughtest that I was altogether such a one as thyself.”
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[’Will sprawl, now that the heat of day is best,
Flat on his belly in the pit’s much mire,
With elbows wide, fists clenched to prop his chin.
And, while he kicks both feet in the cool slush,
And feels about his spine small eft-things course,
Run in and out each arm, and make him laugh:
And while above his head a pompion-plant,
Coating the cave-top as a brow its eye,
Creeps down to touch and tickle hair and beard,
And now a flower drops with a bee inside,
And now a fruit to snap at, catch and crunch, —
He looks out o’er yon sea which sunbeams cross
And recross till they weave a spider-web
(Meshes of fire, some great fish breaks at times)
And talks to his own self, howe’er he please,
Touching that other, whom his dam called God.
Because to talk about Him, vexes—ha,
Could He but know! and time to vex is now,
When talk is safer than in winter-time.
Moreover Prosper and Miranda sleep
In confidence he drudges at their task,
And it is good to cheat the pair, and gibe,
Letting the rank tongue blossom into speech.]
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Setebos, Setebos, and Setebos!
’Thinketh, He dwelleth i’ the cold o’ the moon.
’Thinketh He made it, with the sun to match,
But not the stars; the stars came otherwise;
Only made clouds, winds, meteors, such as that:
Also this isle, what lives and grows thereon,
And snaky sea which rounds and ends the same.
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’Thinketh, it came of being ill at ease:
He hated that He cannot change His cold,
Nor cure its ache. ’Hath spied an icy fish
That longed to ’scape the rock-stream where she lived,
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And thaw herself within the lukewarm brine
O’ the lazy sea her stream thrusts far amid,
A crystal spike ’twixt two warm walls of wave;
Only, she ever sickened, found repulse
At the other kind of water, not her life,
(Green-dense and dim-delicious, bred o’ the sun)
Flounced back from bliss she was not born to breathe,
And in her old bounds buried her despair,
Hating and loving warmth alike: so He.
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’Thinketh, He made thereat the sun, this isle,
Trees and the fowls here, beast and creeping thing.
Yon otter, sleek-wet, black, lithe as a leech;
Yon auk, one fire-eye in a ball of foam,
That floats and feeds; a certain badger brown
He hath watched hunt with that slant white-wedge eye
By moonlight; and the pie with the long tongue
That pricks deep into oakwarts for a worm,
And says a plain word when she finds her prize,
But will not eat the ants; the ants themselves
That build a wall of seeds and settled stalks
About their hole—He made all these and more,
Made all we see, and us, in spite: how else?
He could not, Himself, make a second self
To be His mate; as well have made Himself:
He would not make what he mislikes or slights,
An eyesore to Him, or not worth His pains:
But did, in envy, listlessness or sport,
Make what Himself would fain, in a manner, be—
Weaker in most points, stronger in a few,
Worthy, and yet mere playthings all the while,
Things He admires and mocks too, —that is it.
Because, so brave, so better though they be,
It nothing skills if He begin to plague.
Look now, I melt a gourd-fruit into mash,
Add honeycomb and pods, I have perceived,
Which bite like finches when they bill and kiss, —
Then, when froth rises bladdery, drink up all,
Quick, quick, till maggots scamper through my brain;
Last, throw me on my back i’ the seeded thyme,
And wanton, wishing I were born a bird.
Put case, unable to be what I wish,
I yet could make a live bird out of clay:
Would not I take clay, pinch my Caliban
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Able to fly? —for, there, see, he hath wings,
And great comb like the hoopoe’s to admire,
And there, a sting to do his foes offence,
There, and I will that he begin to live,
Fly to yon rock-top, nip me off the horns
Of grigs high up that make the merry din,
Saucy through their veined wings, and mind me not.
In which feat, if his leg snapped, brittle clay,
And he lay stupid-like, —why, I should laugh;
And if he, spying me, should fall to weep,
Beseech me to be good, repair his wrong,
Bid his poor leg smart less or grow again, —
Well, as the chance were, this might take or else
Not take my fancy: I might hear his cry,
And give the mankin three sound legs for one,
Or pluck the other off, leave him like an egg,
And lessoned he was mine and merely clay.
Were this no pleasure, lying in the thyme,
Drinking the mash, with brain become alive,
Making and marring clay at will? So He.
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’Thinketh, such shows nor right nor wrong in Him,
Nor kind, nor cruel: He is strong and Lord.
‘Am strong myself compared to yonder crabs
That march now from the mountain to the sea,
‘Let twenty pass, and stone the twenty-first,
Loving not, hating not, just choosing so.
‘Say, the first straggler that boasts purple spots
Shall join the file, one pincer twisted off;
‘Say, this bruised fellow shall receive a worm,
And two worms he whose nippers end in red;
As it likes me each time, I do: so He.
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Well then, ’supposeth He is good i’ the main,
Placable if His mind and ways were guessed,
But rougher than His handiwork, be sure!
Oh, He hath made things worthier than Himself,
And envieth that, so helped, such things do more
Than He who made them! What consoles but this?
That they, unless through Him, do nought at all,
And must submit: what other use in things?
’Hath cut a pipe of pithless elder-joint
That, blown through, gives exact the scream o’ the jay
When from her wing you twitch the feathers blue:
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Sound this, and little birds that hate the jay
Flock within stone’s throw, glad their foe is hurt:
Put case such pipe could prattle and boast forsooth
‘I catch the birds, I am the crafty thing,
‘I make the cry my maker cannot make
‘With his great round mouth; he must blow through mine!’
Would not I smash it with my foot? So He.
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But wherefore rough, why cold and ill at ease?
Aha, that is a question! Ask, for that,
What knows, —the something over Setebos
That made Him, or He, may be, found and fought,
Worsted, drove off and did to nothing, perchance.
There may be something quiet o’er His head,
Out of His reach, that feels nor joy nor grief,
Since both derive from weakness in some way.
I joy because the quails come; would not joy
Could I bring quails here when I have a mind:
This Quiet, all it hath a mind to, doth.
’Esteemeth stars the outposts of its couch,
But never spends much thought nor care that way.
It may look up, work up, —the worse for those
It works on! ’Careth but for Setebos
The many-handed as a cuttle-fish,
Who, making Himself feared through what He does,
Looks up, first, and perceives he cannot soar
To what is quiet and hath happy life;
Next looks down here, and out of very spite
Makes this a bauble-world to ape yon real,
These good things to match those as hips do grapes.
’T is solace making baubles, ay, and sport.
Himself peeped late, eyed Prosper at his books
Careless and lofty, lord now of the isle:
Vexed, ’stitched a book of broad leaves, arrow-shaped,
Wrote thereon, he knows what, prodigious words;
Has peeled a wand and called it by a name;
Weareth at whiles for an enchanter’s robe
The eyed skin of a supple oncelot;
And hath an ounce sleeker than youngling mole,
A four-legged serpent he makes cower and couch,
Now snarl, now hold its breath and mind his eye,
And saith she is Miranda and my wife:
’Keeps for his Ariel a tall pouch-bill crane
He bids go wade for fish and straight disgorge;
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Also a sea-beast, lumpish, which he snared,
Blinded the eyes of, and brought somewhat tame,
And split its toe-webs, and now pens the drudge
In a hole o’ the rock and calls him Caliban;
A bitter heart that bides its time and bites.
’Plays thus at being Prosper in a way,
Taketh his mirth with make-believes: so He.
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His dam held that the Quiet made all things
Which Setebos vexed only: ’holds not so.
Who made them weak, meant weakness He might vex.
Had He meant other, while His hand was in,
Why not make horny eyes no thorn could prick,
Or plate my scalp with bone against the snow,
Or overscale my flesh ’neath joint and joint,
Like an orc’s armour? Ay, —so spoil His sport!
He is the One now: only He doth all.
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’Saith, He may like, perchance, what profits Him.
Ay, himself loves what does him good; but why?
’Gets good no otherwise. This blinded beast
Loves whoso places flesh-meat on his nose,
But, had he eyes, would want no help, but hate
Or love, just as it liked him: He hath eyes.
Also it pleaseth Setebos to work,
Use all His hands, and exercise much craft,
By no means for the love of what is worked.
’Tasteth, himself, no finer good i’ the world
When all goes right, in this safe summer-time,
And he wants little, hungers, aches not much,
Than trying what to do with wit and strength.
’Falls to make something: ’piled yon pile of turfs,
And squared and stuck there squares of soft white chalk,
And, with a fish-tooth, scratched a moon on each,
And set up endwise certain spikes of tree,
And crowned the whole with a sloth’s skull a-top,
Found dead i’ the woods, too hard for one to kill.
No use at all i’ the work, for work’s sole sake;
’Shall some day knock it down again: so He.
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’Saith He is terrible: watch His feats in proof!
One hurricane will spoil six good months’ hope.
He hath a spite against me, that I know,
Just as He favours Prosper, who knows why?
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So it is, all the same, as well I find.
’Wove wattles half the winter, fenced them firm
With stone and stake to stop she-tortoises
Crawling to lay their eggs here: well, one wave,
Feeling the foot of Him upon its neck,
Gaped as a snake does, lolled out its large tongue,
And licked the whole labour flat: so much for spite.
’Saw a ball flame down late (yonder it lies)
Where, half an hour before, I slept i’ the shade:
Often they scatter sparkles: there is force!
’Dug up a newt He may have envied once
And turned to stone, shut up inside a stone.
Please Him and hinder this? —What Prosper does?
Aha, if He would tell me how! Not He!
There is the sport: discover how or die!
All need not die, for of the things o’ the isle
Some flee afar, some dive, some run up trees;
Those at His mercy, —why, they please Him most
When . . when . . well, never try the same way twice!
Repeat what act has pleased, He may grow wroth.
You must not know His ways, and play Him off,
Sure of the issue. ’Doth the like himself:
’Spareth a squirrel that it nothing fears
But steals the nut from underneath my thumb,
And when I threat, bites stoutly in defence:
’Spareth an urchin that contrariwise,
Curls up into a ball, pretending death
For fright at my approach: the two ways please.
But what would move my choler more than this,
That either creature counted on its life
To-morrow and next day and all days to come,
Saying, forsooth, in the inmost of its heart,
‘Because he did so yesterday with me,
And otherwise with such another brute,
So must he do henceforth and always.’ —Ay?
Would teach the reasoning couple what ‘must’ means!
’Doth as he likes, or wherefore Lord? So He.
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’Conceiveth all things will continue thus,
And we shall have to live in fear of Him
So long as He lives, keeps His strength: no change,
If He have done His best, make no new world
To please Him more, so leave off watching this, —
If He surprise not even the Quiet’s self
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Some strange day, —or, suppose, grow into it
As grubs grow butterflies: else, here are we,
And there is He, and nowhere help at all.
’Believeth with the life, the pain shall stop.
His dam held different, that after death
He both plagued enemies and feasted friends:
Idly! He doth His worst in this our life,
Giving just respite lest we die through pain,
Saving last pain for worst, —with which, an end.
Meanwhile, the best way to escape His ire
Is, not to seem too happy. ’Sees, himself,
Yonder two flies, with purple films and pink,
Bask on the pompion-bell above: kills both.
’Sees two black painful beetles roll their ball
On head and tail as if to save their lives:
Moves them the stick away they strive to clear.
Even so, ’would have Him misconceive, suppose
This Caliban strives hard and ails no less,
And always, above all else, envies Him;
Wherefore he mainly dances on dark nights,
Moans in the sun, gets under holes to laugh,
And never speaks his mind save housed as now:
Outside, ’groans, curses. If He caught me here,
O’erheard this speech, and asked ‘What chucklest at?’
’Would, to appease Him, cut a finger off,
Or of my three kid yearlings burn the best,
Or let the toothsome apples rot on tree,
Or push my tame beast for the orc to taste:
While myself lit a fire, and made a song
And sung it, ‘What I hate, be consecrate
To celebrate Thee and Thy state, no mate
For Thee; what see for envy in poor me?’
Hoping the while, since evils sometimes mend,
Warts rub away and sores are cured with slime,
That some strange day, will either the Quiet catch
And conquer Setebos, or likelier He
Decrepit may doze, doze, as good as die.
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[What, what? A curtain o’er the world at once!
Crickets stop hissing; not a bird—or, yes,
There scuds His raven that has told Him all!
It was fool’s play, this prattling! Ha! The wind
Shoulders the pillared dust, death’s house o’ the move,
And fast invading fires begin! White blaze—
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A tree’s head snaps—and there, there, there, there, there,
His thunder follows! Fool to gibe at Him!
Lo! ’Lieth flat and loveth Setebos!
’Maketh his teeth meet through his upper lip,
Will let those quails fly, will not eat this month
One little mess of whelks, so he may ’scape!]
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For an explanation of the mark obtained, please contact the exam coordinator Kristin Berstad
(k.m.berstad@ilos.uio.no) within one week after the exam results have been published.
Remember to include your candidate number. The examiner will decide whether to give a
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