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Department of English English Literature: Enlightenment, Romantic, Victorian Final Examination, January 31, 2011, 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. If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear; If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee; A wave to pant beneath they power, and share The impulse of thy strength, only less free Than thou, O Uncontrollable! If even I were as in my boyhood, and could be The comrade of thy wanderings over Heaven, As then, when to outstrip thy skiey speed Scarce seemed a vision; I would ne'er have striven As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need. Oh! lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud! I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed! 2. Learn hence for ancient rules a just esteem; To copy Nature is to copy them. Some beauties yet no precepts can declare, For there's a happiness as well as care. Music resembles poetry; in each Are nameless graces which no methods teach, And which a master-hand alone can reach. If, where the rules not far enough extend, (Since rules were made but to promote their end) Some lucky license answer to the full Th’intent proposed, that license is a rule. Thus Pegasus, a nearer way to take, May boldly deviate from the common track. Great Wits sometimes may gloriously offend, And rise to faults true Critics dare not mend; From vulgar bounds with brave disorder part, And snatch a grace beyond the reach of Art, 3. But in her web she still delights To weave the mirror's magic sights, For often through the silent nights A funeral with plumes and lights And music, went to Camelot; Or when the moon was overhead, Came two young lovers lately wed: "I am half sick of shadows," said The lady of Shalott. 4. Away! Away! For I will fly to thee, Not charioted on Bacchus and his pards, But on the viewless wings of Poesy, Though the dull brain perplexes and retards: Already with three! tender is the night, And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne, Cluster'd around by all her starry Fays; But here there is no light, Save what from heaven is with the breezes blows Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways. 5. I am always very well pleased with a country Sunday, and think, if keeping holy the seventh day were only a human institution, it would be the best method that could have been thought of for the polishing and civilizing of mankind. It is certain the country people would soon degenerate into a kind of savages and barbarians, were there not such frequent returns of a stated time, in which the whole village meet together with their best faces, and in their cleanliest habits, to converse with one another upon indifferent subjects, hear their duties explained to them, and join together in adoration of the Supreme Being. Sunday clears away the rust of the whole week, not only as it refreshes in their minds the notions of religion, but as it puts both the sexes upon appearing in their most agreeable forms, and exerting all such qualities as are apt to give them a figure in the eye of the village. A country-fellow distinguishes himself as much in the Church-yard, as a citizen does upon the Change, the whole parish-politicks being generally discussed in that place either after sermon or before the bell rings. Department of English English Literature: Enlightenment, Romantics and Victorians Final Examination, January 31, 2011, 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 with its formal and genre features. 1. Whereas the narrator of Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels develops a hatred of mankind, the speaker of Tennyson’s “In Memoriam” moves through a gloomy vision of human condition to a more hopeful idea of the future. Discuss Swift’s treatment of Gulliver’s misanthropy and Tennyson’s representation of the temporary despair of his speaker as they reflect the two authors’ concerns about the age of which they are a part. 2. Compare and contrast the poetic process in either Wordsworth's "Tintern Abbey" or Coleridge's "Frost at Midnight", as it emerges from what Wordsworth in his "Preface to Lyrical Ballads" described as looking steadily at his subject, with the structure of Arnold's "Dover Beach," a Victorian poetic meditation. To what extent does the movement of the speaker’s attention in each poem reflect the poet's poetic vision? How does this vision reflect the concerns of the poets' respective periods? Department of English English Literature: Enlightenment, Romantic, Victorian Final Examination, March 10, 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. Only that film, which fluttered on the grate, Still flutters there, the sole unquiet thing. Methinks, its motion in this hush of nature Gives it dim sympathies with me who live, Making it a companionable form, Whose puny flaps and freaks the idling Spirit By its own mood interprets, every where Echo or mirror seeking of itself, And makes a toy of Thought. 2. The groves of Eden, vanished now so long, Live in description, and look green in song: These, were my breast inspired with equal flame, Like them in beauty, should be like in fame. Here hills and vales, the woodland and the plain, Here earth and water, seem to strive again; Not Chaos like together crushed and bruised, But as the world, harmoniously confused: Where order in variety we see, And where, though' all things differ, all agree. 3. The Sea of Faith Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled. But now I only hear Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar, Retreating, to the breath Of the night wind, down the vast edges drear And naked shingles of the world. 4. Are God and Nature then at strife, That Nature lends such evil dreams? So careful of the type she seems, So careless of the single life, That I, considering everywhere Her secret meaning in her deeds, And finding that of fifty seeds She often brings but one to bear, I falter where I firmly trod . . . 5. ….Not for this Faint I, nor mourn nor murmur; other gifts Have followed; for such loss, I would believe, Abundant recompense. For I have learned To look on nature, not as in the hour Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes The still, sad music of humanity, Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power To chasten and subdue…. Department of English English Literature: Enlightenment, Romantics and Victorians Final Examination, March 10, 2011, 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 with its formal and genre features. 1. The stories told in Pope’s The Rape of the Lock and Browning’s "My Last Duchess" are based on real events. Discuss the ways in which each poet uses contemporary of historical events as poetic materials to shape his poem and explore the broader concerns of his period. 2. In both Shelley's "Ode to the West Wind" and Tennyson's "The Lady of Shalott" a stormy wind, a natural power, also serves to dramatize the meeting between the poetic power of the artist and social forces. To what extent is the treatment of natural and social forces in the two poems an expression of the poet's individual view of the world and in what ways are they associated with the concerns of the period?