Mr. Ferrebee – January 2009
12th grade Final Exam Topic Outline –
Spring 2009
From the Anglo-Saxon Period…
- Beginning and end dates
- “The Seafarer” / “The Wanderer”
- Themes
- wandering and exile
- faith in God will be rewarded
- caesura
- kenning
- scop
- Beowulf
- Pagan v. Christian influence
- Theme
- struggle between good and evil
- Characters / Places
- Beowulf
- King Hrothgar
- Grendel
- ancestry
- Mrs. Grendel
- Herot
- Geatland v. Denmark
- Terms
- legendary hero
- epic hero
- epic poem
- scop
From the Middle Ages…
- Beginning and end dates
- “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight”
- extraordinary events
- rhymed couplet / heroic couplet
- the terms and result of the Green Knight’s challenge
- the game at the castle between Sir Gawain and the castle’s lord
- theme – discovery of one’s character
- literary terms
- chivalric hero
- chivalry
- “The Canterbury Tales” and Geoffrey Chaucer
- “The Prologue”
- Theme – variety in human nature and tendency of variety to diminish stereotypes
- purpose
- “The Pardoner’s Tale”
- Theme – greed
- the Pardoner’s primary motivation for telling his tale
- “The Wife of Bath’s Tale”
- knight’s crime
- answer to the question – “What do women desire most?”
From the Renaissance…
- Shakespearean sonnets
- sonnet form
- significance of last two lines
- “Sonnet 116”
- description of love as eternal
- theme – true love never dies
- “Sonnet 130”
- theme – love is blind
- The Globe Theater
- How plays were staged
- Macbeth and William Shakespeare
- Themes – ambition; blood
- Characters
- the three witches
- apparitions
- Macbeth
- motivation for killing Banquo
- cause of strange behavior at banquet
- Lady Macbeth
- motivation for killing herself
- King Duncan
- Malcolm and Donalbain
- Malcolm’s test of Macduff
- Macduff
- Banquo
From the Turbulent Time Unit…
- The Industrial revolution
- Generally, what societal shift happened in England?
- “Holy Sonnet 10”
- message the author wants to convey to audience
- How might one wake to eternal life after death?
- “To His Coy Mistress” / “To the Virgins, to Make Most of Time”
- carpe diem
- “A Valediction Forbidding Mourning”
- compass metaphor
- Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift
- Lilliputian wars – how satire?
- Lilliputian war – subject of dispute
- Big-endian v. Little-endian
- king of Brodingnag – target of satire?
- “A Modest Proposal” by Jonathan Swift
- satirical techniques used
- main purpose in writing his essay
From Romanticism…
- Dates of era and significant publication that inspired the movement
- Elements of romantic writing
- “Tintern Abbey” by Wordsworth
- message about nature
- the power of memory
- “Rime of the Ancient Mariner” by Coleridge
- the moral of the Ancient Mariner’s story
- cause of the curse
- Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
- Elements of Gothicism
- type of narrative structure
- themes: dangers of “playing God,” the need for companionship
- character quotes
From A Time of Rapid Change (1901-present)…
- Modernism – view of reality in fragments of images and speech
- “To An Athlete Dying Young”
- Theme – tragedy of an early death; fleeting glory
- “When You are Old” by William Butler Yeats
- WWI poems – “The Soldier” “The Wirers” “Anthem for Doomed Youth”
- Theme and tone of each poem
- “Eveline” by James Joyce
- Choice made by Eveline – Whether or not to go with Frank
- Conflict – internal (man versus self)
- “The Rocking Horse Winner”
- Why Paul bets on horses
- symbol of luck – horse-racing
- theme – the psychology of materialism