English 375 —British Romanticism 1770-1830

Professor
J. Jennifer Jones

This is a take-home quiz, so you are free to spend as much time on it as you like, though it should be possible to complete it in 1 hour or less. You are free to discuss your answers with classmates if you wish, because such discussion promotes the type of intellectual engagement that we are concerned to enact and practice in this course; and you may consult your reading and class notes. However, you may NOT perform any outside research to answer the questions of the exam, whether that be internet research or traditional research, be that at the library or your own home or anywhere. Your answers must come entirely from your own thinking (either in isolation or in dialogue) and the materials of the course. If you have ANY questions about the strictures of this exam, you are welcome to post your questions to our class listserv. You are bound by the honor code of the University of Rhode Island and your own conscience to conduct yourself honorably in every regard where this exam is concerned.

1. a.) To whom does P.B. Shelley address the following poem? Name three characteristics of the poem that support your answer of whom Shelley addresses here and explain HOW and WHY these characteristics serve as support. b.) This poem is written in the form of a sonnet. Please support the following thesis by analyzing the poem’s formal structure as a sonnet:

“In this poem, P.B. Shelley deviates from the formal conventions of the English sonnet as a means to underscore his argument that Wordsworth has himself deviated from his greatness as a poet.”

Poet of Nature, thou hast wept to know
That things depart which never may return:
Childhood and youth, friendship and love's first glow,
Have fled like sweet dreams, leaving thee to mourn.
These common woes I feel. One loss is mine
Which thou too feel'st, yet I alone deplore.
Thou wert as a lone star, whose light did shine
On some frail bark in winter's midnight roar:
Thou hast like to a rock-built refuge stood
Above the blind and battling multitude:
In honoured poverty thy voice did weave
Songs consecrate to truth and liberty,--
Deserting these, thou leavest me to grieve,
Thus having been, that thou shouldst cease to be.

2. Please close-read the following passage. Choose three characteristics of the passage and explain their significance to your overall understanding and interpretation of the passage. Remember to read the language and syntax of the passage as carefully as possible and to tie your ideas directly and precisely to the passage.

How hideously
Its shapes are heaped around! — rude, bare, and high,
Ghastly, and scarred, and riven. Is this the scene
Where the old earthquake-demon taught her young
Ruin? Were these their toys? Or did a sea
Of fire envelop once this silent snow?
None can reply — all seems eternal now.
The wilderness has a mysterious tongue
Which teaches awful doubt, or faith so mild,
So solemn, so serene, that man may be
But for such faith with nature reconciled.
Thou hast a voice, great mountain, to repeal
Large codes of fraud and woe — not understood
By all, but which the wise, and great, and good
Interpret, or make felt, or deeply felt. (69-83)

3. What is the significance of these last lines of Shelley’s “Mont Blanc”? Please paraphrase the lines and then analyze (close-read) the language of the lines as carefully as you can, explaining how they affect the rest of the poem. In other words, what is the effect of the poem ending this way as opposed to any other possible way?

And what were thou, and earth, and stars, and sea,
If to the human mind’s imaginings
Silence and solitude were vacancy?

4. Define the following terms: first-generation romantics and second-generation romantics. Which category do the three poets we have studied thus far fit into and why?

5. Please analyze the following passage closely. Find an example of metaphor and of simile in the passage, define them, and then discuss the ways in which these different figures affect the poem. What do they mean? How do they mean? As a thought experiment, consider the following: would be the effect if the simile you found had been a metaphor and the metaphor had been a simile? To what degree is meaning tied to the figures employed in language?

O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn’s being,
Thou from whose unseen presence the leaves dead
Are driven like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,

Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,
Pestilence-stricken multitudes! O Thou
Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed

The winged seeds, where they lie cold and low,
Each like a corpse within its grave, until
Thine azure sister of Spring shall blow

Her clarion o’er the dreaming earth, and fill
(Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air)
With living hues and odours plain and hill: