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Introduction To English Major

Subject : english

Instructions:

Answer 50 questions in 15 minutes.
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Match each statement with the correct term.
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This is a study tool. The 3 wrong answers for each question are randomly chosen from answers to other questions. So, you might find at times the answers obvious, but you will see it re-enforces your understanding as you take the test each time.

1. (Title and period)

2. (Title and period)
The Canterbury Tales - Middle Ages/Medieval Period - Mingles religious with secular material
Harlem Renaissance
Realistic Period
Heroic couplet - Balance - Parallelism - Caesuras - End-stopped lines

3. What is the retreat of the tide in 'Dover Beach' a metaphor for?
'To Penshurst' by Ben Jonson - Country house poem
The loss of faith in modern age
Realistic Period
Realism/Realistic Period

4. Dates of Early Modern Period/Renaissance
'The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock' by Eliot
Modernism - 'Art for art's sake'
1500-1660
Puritan culture - Restoration Period/Neoclassical Period - Earl of Rochester

5. Human nature is essentially good
Romantic Period (Britain)
Modernism - 'Art for art's sake'
Romantic Period (Britain) Characteristics: Importance of reason as an essential condition of mankind - Toll of universal truths led to new thinking about gov't: Individual rights and individual liberty - Jefferson and American Constitution - Paine an
Full of self-assertion and radical vision

6. What is the setting of 'Dover Beach'?
Augustan Age/Neoclassical Period - A popular literary genre of the age - Terse - pointed - witty statement in verse or prose - Wit
Romanticism Romantic Period (Britain)
At night - interior room - protected - at window; both window and beach as transitional/liminal spaces
Victorian Period - Belief that social institutions can be measured according to greatest happiness for most people

7. Which period's literature stresses the importance of psychology and interiority (moods - visions - reflections - meditations)
'Beware: Do Not Read this Poem' - Derives whole point from mass media influence
Realism/Realistic Period
Romantic Period (Britain)
Faith to another ('let us be true') offered as solution to crisis of faith

8. Cultural response to political upheavals and the new world of constant change
Philip Freneau - Early National Period/Early American Lit. Direct address to flower - Untouched by humans - protected by nature - But destined to die ('I grieve to see your future doom') - Life is as fleeting as a flower ('the space between - is but
Keats - 'Ode on a Grecian Urn'
Modernism
'The Second Coming' by Yeats - 20th-Century Modern Period - Images of disillusionment - everything is spiraling out of control

9. Problem/struggle of British Romantic literature's content?
Romantic Period (Britain) Characteristics: Importance of reason as an essential condition of mankind - Toll of universal truths led to new thinking about gov't: Individual rights and individual liberty - Jefferson and American Constitution - Paine an
'A Far Cry from Africa' - Transnational/Postcolonial
Victorian Period
Problem with these subjective - personal epiphanies and perceptions of beauty: difficult to describe and relatively rare (here one minute - gone the next)

10. Matthew Arnold 'Dover Beach'
Britain lost the empire --> decolonization - Beginning of US dominance
To explain and edify
Victorian Period
Valued Intellect - order - rationality - Enlightenment

11. Moving from neoclassical to Romantic (America) - (Title and period)

12. Dates of the Romantic Period (Britain)
Modernist literature
1785-1830
1. The individual author 2. Attitude towards nature (human nature/natural world) 3. Embrace of 'wonder'
'The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock' by Eliot

13. Questioning of traditional religion
Romanticism Romantic Period (Britain)
Postmodernist literature
20th-Century Modern Period
The expanded line - Form mirrors content - The expanded line can hold a complete idea - Lets the line expand so that poet can say everything necessary for the subject of that line

14. Poetry can arouse wonder by creating perspective of ignorance or innocence in the reader - the sense of novelty - freshness of sensation
'The Lynching' by McKay
Romantic Period (Britain)
Heroic couplet - Balance - Parallelism - Caesuras - End-stopped lines
Middle Ages/Medieval Period - Books are made by hand - Culture of literate orality

15. Story of the Trojan War (Title - author and period)
Refrains and repetitions give sense of purpose and insistence
The Canterbury Tales - Middle Ages/Medieval Period - Mingles religious with secular material
Augustan Age/Neoclassical Period - A questioning of traditional beliefs and institutions - Imitation of Roman Augustans
Troy Book by John Lydgate - Middle Ages/Medieval Period

16. Uses ordinary language
Modernist literature
Early Modern Period/Renaissance
Early Modern Period/Renaissance - Characteristics: Reflects the continental traffic of new ideas - Old subject matter - new form - Shows off learning and the mind of the individual
Realism/Realistic Period

17. Time of crisis - turmoil - and disillusionment for many writers
Something that operates across/beyond national boundaries
1800-1900
Realistic Period
Augustan Age/Neoclassical Period - Imagination tempered by judgment

18. Impact of WWII
Skepticism about ideas of progress and civilization - Modernism
Revolutionary Age/Early American Lit.
Britain lost the empire --> decolonization - Beginning of US dominance
Refrains and repetitions give sense of purpose and insistence

19. Thomas Hardy

20. Often compared to Thomas Gray's 'Elegy in a Country Churchyard'

21. Impact of the Crash of 1929 and the Great Depression
Writing that crosses national and cultural boundaries
'The Second Coming' - Pre-WWI
Disillusionment - depression - unemployment - dissatisfaction with capitalism - Modernism
Romantic Period (Britain) Characteristics: Writers respond to change through new forms and contents - Expressed both politically and artistically

22. Reconstruction - rapid urbanization - industrialization
Realistic Period
American Romantic Period
'The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock' by Eliot
Site of affluence and consumer culture - Whitman as radical forebear: celebration of bohemia - Contrast of America then and now in the last stanza - 'What America did you have?'

23. Rebellious movement
Modernism
Age of Sensibility/Neoclassical Period - Loss of enchantment from Enlightenment
'The Darkling Thrush' - Pre-WWI
Transnational/Postcolonial literature

24. Realistic details of 'Richard Cory'
Transnational/Postcolonial
Victorian Period
Pavement - sole of shoe - meat - bread
Writing that crosses national and cultural boundaries

25. Reformist bent
Romantic Period (Britain)
Realism/Realistic Period
Age of Sensibility/Neoclassical Period - Resulted in a lot of darkness in poetry
Victorian Period literature

26. Emergence of distinctively American literature
Refrains and repetitions give sense of purpose and insistence
Early National Period/Early American Lit.
Emotion > intellect - Individual > society - Imagination > logic - Wild and natural > tame and civilized - Transcendentalism
1500-1660

27. Conscious efforts to innovate
'Richard Cory' - Realistic Period
Postmodernist literature
Middle Ages/Medieval Period - Characteristic of literature - Canterbury Tales
1500-1660

28. Modernist features of 'The Weary Blues'
'The Darkling Thrush' - Pre-WWI
Augustan Age/Neoclassical Period - Epigram
Experimental form - Alienation of artist/bluesman - Privileging of art
Old English/Anglo-Saxon - Anglo-Norman - Middle English

29. Theme of 'Richard Cory'
Class conflict
1500-1660
Postmodernism
Early Modern Period/Renaissance - Characteristics: Literally - a 'seize the day' poem - Emphasizes uncertainty of life and need to live in the present - Represents a scaling back of hopes and suspicion about future - Aftermath of all the chaos of Eng

30. Twist at the end of 'The Darkling Thrust' =
There is hope (not confident about this)
Age of Sensibility/Neoclassical Period - Resulted in a lot of darkness in poetry
Interest in imagination
Postmodernist literature

31. How does 'A Supermarket in California' reflect the post-war conditions of the US?

32. Interest in the unconscious
'Richard Cory' - Realistic Period
Old English/Anglo-Saxon - Anglo-Norman - Middle English
The loss of faith in modern age
20th-Century Modern Period

33. What type of interpretation is Troy Book? Why?
Pressure toward cultural homogeneity - Discontent beneath surface = opening foray of resistance/counterculture - Postmodernism
Realistic Period
Highly medieval interpretation of Trojan War - Assumes the historical truth of the story - Stresses the moral and exemplary force of the story
Book of Mergery Kempe - Middle Ages/Medieval Period - 'Here begins a short treatise and a comforting one for sinful wretches...'

34. Focus on the fight for survival in a world of urban decay
'The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock' by Eliot
'The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock' - 20th-Century Modern Period
Naturalism/Realist Period
Victorian Period literature

35. Beat Generation
Colonial Period/Early American Lit. - Literature of Contact
Age of Sensibility/Neoclassical Period
Early Modern Period/Renaissance - Development of the printing press
Postmodernism

36. What does the line 'the space between - is but an hour' mean?

37. Emphasis on spontaneity rather than convention or formalism
Harlem Renaissance
Writing that crosses national and cultural boundaries
Romantic Period (Britain)
20th-Century Modern Period

38. Assumptions of postcolonial/transnational literature

39. 'This poem has had up to here; this poem is the reader and the reader the poem'

40. (Period and definition)
Early Modern Period/Renaissance - (Interregnum)
Augustan Age/Neoclassical Period - A popular literary genre of the age - Terse - pointed - witty statement in verse or prose - Wit
Emily Dickinson - American Romantic Period
Modernist literature

41. What is the tone of 'Dover Beach'?
'The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock' by Eliot
Iroquois prayer-song
20th-Century Modern Period
Serious - directive

42. Freud and psychoanalysis
Middle Ages/Medieval Period - Characteristic of literature - Canterbury Tales
Literature does not transcend history - Literature does not stand in history's foreground - Literature does not reflect history
'To His Coy Mistress' by Andrew Marvell - Politicized sonnet
20th-Century Modern Period

43. The Age of Reason in action
Revolutionary Age/Early American Lit.
'The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock' by Eliot
Augustan Age/Neoclassical Period - Their 'ideals of moderation - decorum - and urbanity'
The working of misogyny - Woman = supreme object of desire AND most loathed object because she is the obstacle to masculine power and mastery - The same style - reveal 'urbanity - wit - licentiousness'

44. Transition from Victorian to Modernist

45. From Jamestown to the American Revolution
Colonial Period/Early American Lit.
Early Modern Period/Renaissance - Development of lyric poetry
Heroic couplet - Balance - Parallelism - Caesuras - End-stopped lines
At night - interior room - protected - at window; both window and beach as transitional/liminal spaces

46. (Author and period)

47. Subdivisions of Middle Ages/Medieval Period
Realism/Realistic Period
Old English/Anglo-Saxon - Anglo-Norman - Middle English
'The Second Coming' by Yeats
Very vivid - slightly irreverent - Clearly using reason and judgment - Balanced and measured and constrained lines - Reliance on analytic reason

48. Seriousness and sobriety
Interest in imagination
Victorian Period
Puritan culture - Restoration Period/Neoclassical Period - Earl of Rochester
Early Modern Period/Renaissance

49. Rejection of 18th-century emphasis on neoclassical - reason - constraint - order - etc.
Male-centered: rejection of Virgin Mary and family hierarchy
Fusing mind and nature
Romantic Period (Britain)
Age of Sensibility/Neoclassical Period - Resulted in a lot of darkness in poetry

50. Repetition in Iroquois prayer-song
Augustan Age/Neoclassical Period - Epigram
Creates intensity
Interest in imagination
Postmodernist literature