Examination: answers due April 18 2008, 9:00 am in HC 2-11
Answer one question. An essay of approximately 3 pages (double spaced) is required, based on the term work (no additional reading is expected).
- Coleridge makes frequent use of dream or daydream in his poetry. Explain the structural and thematic issues this raises.
- What is conversational about Coleridge's "Conversation Poems," such as "Eolian Harp" and "Frost at Midnight"?
- Hazlitt refers to Wordsworth's "levelling muse." Discuss how far Wordsworth's poetry represents an attempt at eliminating class distinctions, whether in style or subject matter.
- Discuss the differences you perceive in the poetic styles of Coleridge and Wordsworth by comparing and contrasting "Kubla Khan" and "Tintern Abbey."
- Both Wordsworth and Coleridge wrote a number of ballads. To what extent do their different poems in this mode show a common style or purpose?
- Both Wordsworth in Lyrical Ballads and Blake in Songs of Innocence and Experience adapt a familiar existing genre for their own purposes. Compare and contrast their achievements in these forms.
- "Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive," said Wordsworth, speaking of his feelings in 1790. Trace some of the more significant responses to the French Revolution and its aftermath in the writings of the period.
- "Without contraries is no progression." Discuss the implications of this motto of Blake's for understanding his poetry.
- Do you believe Radcliffe is advocating for improvements in women' position in her writing?
- Discuss Radcliffe's distinction between terror and horror, and show to what exent it applies to Radcliffe's narrative techniques in The Italian.
- Is Byron's own personality and history a sufficient focus of interest in his poetry, in your view? Include discussion of Childe Harold and/or Manfred in your answer.
- Consider the role of the imagination in Frankenstein. How far does this reflect the prevailing ideas on imagination in the Romantic period?
- The myth of Frankenstein has had an extraordinary popular success since the publication of Mary Shelley's novel. To what extent are the sources of this myth to be found in the novel itself?
- Discuss the representation of Percy Shelley's character that occurs in two or more of his major poems, and show its relation to the purpose of each poem.
- Discuss Percy Shelley's concept of the sublime, and analyse its presence in two or more of his poems.
- Keats is famed for the sensory richness of his diction. But what role does this play in the larger concerns and/or structure of his poetry?
- Compared with other Romantic poets, Keats is said to be a sceptic in relation to transcendental ideas. Is this a helpful way of reading his poetry?
- Keats contrasts two ways of being a poet in his letters when he refers to the "egotistical sublime" of Wordsworth and the "negative capability" of Shakespeare. Is this a helpful framework for understanding the Romantic poets in general?
- According to Shelley, the poet "beholds the future in the present, and his thoughts are the germs of the flower and the fruit of latest time." Does Romantic poetry help to show the direction taken by history during, or even after, the period in which it was written?
- Wordsworth genders nature as female in "Tintern Abbey" ("nature never did betray / The heart that loved her"), and Byron in Childe Harold refers to "Maternal Nature." Discuss the implications of this phenomenon for the writers of the Romantic period, including, if you wish, the female writers you have studied.
- The Romantic writers emphasise an "organic" theory of poetry. Discuss what this means, and show what implications this had for the way they wrote poetry.
- Discuss the meaning and functions of the sublime in Romantic writing. You may refer to poetry or prose or both in your answer.
Document created April 10th 2008