THE MANCHESTERMETROPOLITANUNIVERSITY
MMU CHESHIRE
RESIT EXAMINATIONS 2008
UNIT NO: 84522215
LITERATURE AND SOCIETY
TIME ALLOWED: 3 HOURS
Answer TWO questions, ONE from EACH SECTION.
SECTION A
In this section you should answer on a different author from the one(s) you chose for your coursework essay on Romanticism.
1.How important is it to read the poems in Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience as expressions of Blake’s theory of ‘contraries’?
2.What are the roles of women in Blake’s Songs? Refer to specific poems in your discussion.
3.“[T]he miniature scale of the sonnet allows it to release powerful energies by turning them into harmony” (J Hillis Miller). Discuss, referring EITHER to Wordsworth’s ‘Sonnet Composed upon WestminsterBridge’ OR to Shelley’s ‘Ozymandias’.
4.EITHER: “In the course of the poem not a word is said about the French Revolution, or about the impoverished and dislocated country poor” (McGann). What are the effects of these omissions from Wordsworth’s ‘Tintern Abbey’, and what does the poem offer instead?
OR: Mary Wollstonecraft calls, in Vindication of the Rights of Woman, for “a revolution in female manners”. Outline some of the conditions of women’s lives to which she was responding, and discuss some of the implications of her demand for Romantic women writers.
5.Referring in detail to the poem, outline some of the ways in which ‘This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison’ contributes to Coleridge’s project of ‘articulating the world in the face of the world’s failure to be articulate’ (Barbara Harman).
6.In relation to Shelley’s ‘Mont Blanc’, outline some of the key features of the Romantic conception of the sublime.
7.“He is traditionally thought of as the poet of the senses” (Watson). How important is sensuality in Keats’s work? Refer to specific examples in your discussion.
8.Referring to specific examples, outline how Clare constructs natural creatures as symbols of innocence and freedom. How does this construction relate to the central concerns of Romanticism?
9.“Like the proletariat, he is a collective and artificial creature” (Moretti). In what ways is the monster in Frankenstein a symbol of Mary Shelley’s political anxieties? Refer closely to specific incidents from the novel.
10.“One Power alone makes a Poet: Imagination, the Divine Vision” (Blake). Referring to specific examples, outline some of the ways Romantic writers have explored the potential of the human imagination.
SECTION B
11.Write a critical analysis of the following poem, Coleridge’s ‘Sonnet to the River Otter’ (probably written 1791). What features of the poem are typically Romantic?
Dear native brook! wild streamlet of the West!
How many various-fated years have passed,
What happy and what mournful hours, since last
I skimmed the smooth thin stone along thy breast,
Numbering its light leaps! Yet so deep impressed
Sink the sweet scenes of childhood, that mine eyes
I never shut amid the sunny ray,
But straight with all their tints thy waters rise,
Thy crossing plank, thy marge* with willows grey, *margin
And bedded sand that, veined with various dyes,
Gleamed through thy bright transparence! On my way,
Visions of childhood! oft have ye beguiled
Lone manhood’s cares, yet waking fondest sighs:
Ah! that once more I were a careless child!
12.Write a critical analysis of the following passage from Wordsworth’s 1800 ‘Preface’ to Lyrical Ballads. What are the key features of Wordsworth’s definition of the poet? What elements of his definition relate to your understanding of Romanticism?
Taking up the subject, then, upon general grounds, let me ask, what is meant by the word Poet? What is a Poet? to whom does he address himself? and what language is to be expected from him? – He is a man speaking to men: a man, it is true, endowed with more lively sensibility, more enthusiasm and tenderness, who has a greater knowledge of human nature, and a more comprehensive soul, than are supposed to be common among mankind; a man pleased with his own passions and volitions, and who rejoices more than other men in the spirit of life that is in him; delighting to contemplate similar volitions and passions as manifested in the goings-on of the Universe, and habitually impelled to create them where he does not find them. To these qualities he has added a disposition to be affected more than other men by absent things as if they were present; an ability of conjuring up in himself passions, which are indeed far from being the same as those produced by real events, yet (especially in those parts of the general sympathy which are pleasing and delightful) do more nearly resemble the passions produced by real events, than anything which, from the motions of their own minds merely, other men are accustomed to feel in themselves: whence, and from practice, he has acquired a greater readiness and power in expressing what he thinks and feels, and especially those thoughts and feelings which, by his own choice, or from the structure of his own mind, arise in him without immediate external excitement.
13.Write a critical analysis of the following passage from Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818). What do we learn of Walton’s character, and of the novel’s themes? How does the passage relate to the central themes of Romanticism?
I have no friend, Margaret: when I am glowing with the enthusiasm of success, there will be none to participate my joy; if I am assailed by disappointment, no one will endeavour to sustain me in dejection. I shall commit my thoughts to paper, it is true; but that is a poor medium for the communication of feeling. I desire the company of a man who could sympathize with me, whose eyes would reply to mine. You may deem me romantic, my dear sister, but I bitterly feel the want of a friend. I have no one near me, gentle yet courageous, possessed of a cultivated as well as of a capacious mind, whose tastes are like my own, to approve or amend my plans. How would such a friend repair the faults of your poor brother! I am too ardent in execution and too impatient of difficulties. But it is a still greater evil to me that I am self-educated: for the first fourteen years of my life I ran wild on a common and read nothing but our Uncle Thomas’ books of voyages. At that age I became acquainted with the celebrated poets of our own country; but it was only when it had ceased to be in my power to derive its most important benefits from such a conviction that I perceived the necessity of becoming acquainted with more languages than that of my native country. Now I am twenty-eight and am in reality more illiterate than many schoolboys of fifteen. It is true that I have thought more and that my daydreams are more extended and magnificent, but they want (as the painters call it) keeping; and I greatly need a friend who would have sense enough not to despise me as romantic, and affection enough for me to endeavour to regulate my mind.
R:\EXAMS\08 EXAMS\August Resit Exams 2008\84522215 Literature & Society.doc