Romantics Exam

This is the CURRENT VERSION of the study guide.

revised 02/16/2011

The exam is designed to:

• Reward students who have read works, attended class, participated in group work, and reviewed course material

• Gauge students’ ability to identify important passages from texts and explain their significance

•  Measure how well students can discuss issues and ideas associated with the Romantic Period.

 Preparation Tips:

• Spend time reviewing the reading list.  Look at particular authors and jar your memory about their works and what makes the writers distinctive. 

• Reread the introduction on the Romantic period and review the author bios.

• For essays, make sure you can remember main points and ideas.

• For poets, try to review the plots or main ideas (especially the ones we discussed in class).  Try to remember key themes and techniques. 

• Make outlines to answers for essay questions to study/practice.

• Study with classmates, but beware of breaking up the the list of questions; peers occasionally make mistakes.

Part I.  Short Answer:  Answer five of six questions with a brief response (5 x 5=25 total points).  Some will require a word or two; others will require a sentence or two.   

I'll choose from among this list.

1. In one poem we read, Wordsworth talks about something that renews him when he's depressed and in the city--specifically what cheers him up?

2. In what country is the first canto of Don Juan set?

3. In what year did the British defeat Napoleon at Waterloo?

4. In what year did the French Revolution begin?

5. Who was the famous journalist who incited violence during the French Revolution?

6. Which poet was deserted by her spouse so that she was forced to support herself by her writing?

7. Name a poem that relies mostly on the secondary imagination?

8. Name a poem that we read that explored wind as a metaphor for poetic inspiration.

9. Name an essayist who was against the French Revolution and give one of his/her reasons.

10. Name an essayist who wrote in favor of the French Revolution and give one of his her reasons.

11. What are the two main parts of Wordsworth's definition of poetry?

12. What is a lyrical ballad?

13. What is the primary imagination?

14. What is the secondary imagination?

15. Who is the most famous member of the "cockney school" of poetry?

16. Which male Romantic poet was most influenced by the neoclassical poets and had Pope as a favorite poet?

17. The Romantic Period is a great age of popular prose and many important magazines and journals were founded during the period.  What famous liberal journal was founded in 1802?

18. Which Romantic poet studied to be a doctor?

19. Who does Wordsworth address at the end of "Tintern Abbey"?

20. Who was the most politically radical of the poets we've read?

21. Who was king until 1810 when he went mad and was replaced by a regent in 1811 ?

22. Who wrote the poems in the first edition of Lyrical Ballads and in what year was the volume published?

23. Why did many sympathizers of the French Revolution remove their support in January 1793?

24. Which poet was praised by Karl Marx and Frederich Engels for his "prophetic genius"?

25. Why does the little girl in "We are Seven" insist she has seven siblings?

26. How did Keats die?

27. What does Keats mean by "negative capability"?

28. What stanza form does Byron use for Don Juan?

29. What stanza form does Keats use for Eve of St. Agnes?

30. Name a poem by a woman (author and title) that does not address topics traditionally associated with the "feminine sphere"?

31. What is one specific reason that Francis Jeffrey likes Felicia Hemans's poetry?

32. Why does the woman in Hemans's "Indian Woman's Death Song" kill herself and her child?

33. Which romantic poet died in a boat wreck?

34. Who is the political figure that both Byron and Shelley criticize?

35. Why does Keats's urn "tease us out of thought"?  

36. To what does "separate spheres" refer?

37. Who led The Terror of the French Revolution from 1793-4?

38. What is laudanum and what Romantic poet famously abused it?

39. What are "Blue Stockings"? (not stockings that are blue)

40. To what do the "prison doors" refer in Barbauld's "To A Little Invisible Being"?

41. According to Wollstonecraft, what is one way that educating women benefits men?

42. Byron famously (and sexistly) mused over Voltaire's suggestion that  "the composition of a tragedy requires testicles" and said that a famous female playwright (also a poet) must have "borrowed" hers because one of tragedies was so good.  To whom was he referring?

43. What famous critic said that "female poetry" is "infinitely sweet, elegant, and tender--touching , perhaps, and contemplative, rather than vehement and overpowering"?  He was talking about particular poet, but generalizing about women's poetry.

44. What event led to passage of the Six Acts and why were they important?

45. What is the difference between an essentialist and a social explanation of gender creation?

46. What classic (not classical) metaphor does Blake use in "The School Boy" to discuss freedom?

The most effective and useful way to study for this section of the test is to read over the list of questions and then review all of your notes, the book's introduction, and the author biographies.  Then try to answer as many of the questions as you can on your own.  After that, get with some classmates and try to track down answers to the others.  The educational benefit of this part of the test is to encourage you to review all of your notes and the introductions and notice ideas and facts that you may not have noticed the first time around. 

Part II. Identification:  Choose 4 of the 5 quotations or images and identify author/artist and title of the work (2 pts.).  Then in two or three sentences explain the significance of the lines (why the lines are especially important to the work) or important features of the image (if it's a painting). (6 pts.). (4x8=32 total points)

Example:

"But they are dead; those two are dead!

Their spirits are in heaven!"

'Twas throwing words away; for still

The little Maid would have her will,

…."

Wordsworth's "We Are Seven"

This poem depicts a conflict between a man who uses reason to count and a little girl who counts with her heart.  When the man asks her how many brothers and sisters she has, she says "seven," but "two are dead," so the man thinks she has five siblings.  Wordsworth gives the little girl the last line asserting that "We are seven" and suggests that emotion is an important factor in experiencing the world and questions the value of only relying on the neoclassical value of reason. 

If people lose points on this part of the test, it is because they don't explain the significance of the passage--they just identify it and move on or simply tell how it fits with the plot of the poem.

Part III. Essay:  Choose 1 of 2 and answer in a brief essay.  (43 total points).  Make sure to plan your answer before writing it.  Begin your answer with a clear thesis statement that forecasts your answer (no need for an extensive introduction, but you may if you want to), and then develop your thesis with organized paragraphs that include topic sentences, use specific references (concrete details, not necessarily quotes) to the texts, have clear analysis which explains your answer to the question or addresses the topic.  Take time to proofread your answer before you turn it in.  These questions test both your ability to write in depth about particular ideas and make connections across genres and periods. 

I'll choose TWO at random from among this list to include on the exam--you will answer ONE.

1. As we've discussed on numerous occasions, the French Revolution was a significant influence on several writers of the Romantic period.  Pick two poets and explain how the ideas of the French Revolution influenced each of their work in two or three different ways.  Make sure to use specific examples.

2. We've spent a fair amount of time talking about imagination (and the book's introduction spends several pages discussing this important concept).  Using Coleridge's concepts of the Primary and Secondary Imagination, discuss how two different writers display characteristics of the primary and/or secondary imagination.  As part of your answer, you'll need to define these two important concepts.

3. One of the old-fashioned takes on the Romantics is that they are poets of isolation and solitude; however, several of the poems we have read this semester emphasize the importance of sympathy and/or community.  Select two of those poems (by different authors) and explain how each poet stresses the importance of community in different ways.

4. The nineteenth century was a period of significant religious change in Great Britain.  Dissenting groups were gradually given more religious freedom and some competed with the Church of England for members. Select two poems that deal with Christianity and explain what attitude they express and how they express that attitude differently.

5. For obvious reasons, Wordsworth is often called the "Poet of Nature."  Using two of his poems explain how/why Nature is so significant to him.

6. Romantic poets besides Wordsworth also value nature—select two poets (besides Wordsworth) and explain how/why Nature is significant to them.

7. Select two essayists with opposing views about the French Revolution and explain the reasons behind their different views.

8. Byron's Don Juan was often criticized as being immoral, but in many ways this is a very moral poem.  Pick two social issues the poem addresses and explain how the poem subtly makes a moral comment on them. 

9. Byron's Don Juan was partially written as a comic piece—in Byron's own words, "to make [people] giggle."  Explain three comic strategies/methods he uses and illustrate them with specific examples.

10. We saw a strain of sexism in some of the poems we read this semester.  Choose poems by two different authors and explain how their poems might appear sexist to twenty-first century readers.  In other words, how did the poets depict women in different ways that seem sexist today?

11. Pick two poems by different authors and explain how they use very different strategies or styles in their works to encourage people to revolt against the status quo. 

12. One pattern we saw in the work of John Keats was his struggle between reality and dreams, between things as they are and an idealized world in which he'd like to live.  Select one of his poems and explain how he negotiates this struggle.  What are the strengths and benefits of each side and how does he resolve this struggle?

13. Like many poets, Keats is very interested in issues of permanence (immortality) vs. impermanence (mortality).  Explain how Keats explores this conflict in a poem from our reading list and why this conflict is so important to him.

14. Some of the female poets we read reinforce traditional gender stereotypes and roles while others challenge those roles.  Compare and contrast a poem that reinforces traditional gender roles with a poem that challenges such roles.