Figurative language in “The Lady of Shalott?” Consider what the people viewed in the mirror represent to the Lady. Why does Tennyson include these details?
- Explain how Tennyson uses imagery in “The Lady of Shalott” to comment on how difficult it is for an artist to live in “the real world.”
- How does “My Last Duchess” emphasize Victorian ideals of women and allow readers to understand how they were objectified?
- Discuss how “The Bishop Orders His Tomb at Saint Praxed’s Cathedral” displays corruption in the Catholic Church.
- “Goblin Market” has long been popular as a children’s poem. To what extent is it appropriate for younger children? Are there aspects of the poem that could only be understood by older, more mature adults?
- “The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde”: Having read Dr. Jekyll’s version of events (and assuming we believe him), how much blame can we assign him? Should we blame his oppressive society or his lack of moral character? Another way of asking this: is Dr. Jekyll a sympathetic character?
- Explain what “The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde” reveals about one or more of the following topics:
• Good vs. Evil
• Repression
• Friendship
• Appearances
• Science
• Curiosity
• Lies and Deceit
• Violence
• Religion
• Women and Femininity
- Oscar Wilde uses humor in The Importance of Being Earnest to suggest flaws he sees with Victorian society. Choose two or more aspects of the culture that he thinks should be changed, and use a couple of examples to illustrate each point.
- One of the issues we discussed was the decline of religion during the Victorian period. Compare and contrast how two literary works show the decline of Christianity and its replacement with a secularized version of some Christian values.
- Discuss the treatment of one of the following in the work of any writer(s) you have studied in the second half of the semester: urban life; work; technological change; families; nostalgia for the past.
- One of the social responses to the Industrial Revolution was a “counter-revolution” in arts and literature. Explain what that counter-revolution was and illustrate your answer with at least three different examples (from different works).
- “Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold.” Is modern literature complicit in the process of disintegration referred to by Yeats, or does it merely reflect this aspect of the society in which it exists? Support your ideas with two or more literary works.
- Discuss any work studied in the second half of this semester in close relation to a relevant aspect or aspects of the social / political / historical context in which it was written.
- “blood shaking my heart / The awful daring of a moment’s surrender” (T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land, ll 402-03). Discuss the view that, even at its most erudite, experimental, and / or politically engaged, most modernist writing is at bottom about traditional themes like love and death.
- D.H. Lawrence said that “in 1915 the old world ended.” Show how works you studied in the second part of this semester represent a world conceived of as new, or continue an older tradition, or both.
- Which of the poets studied in the second half of this semester seems to you to respond most interestingly to the challenges of innovation?
- Discuss the question of whether the subject of “The Waste Land” is less the breakdown of Europe than a process of breakdown and reintegration as it occurs in the individual psyche.
- Examine how two or more literary works from the Victorian era address one of the common topics of that time:
• Industrialization
• Empire
• The Woman Question
• Nostalgia
• Utilitarianism
• Reform
• Class
• Progress
• Science vs. Religion
- Examine how two or more literary works exemplify one or more of the characteristics of modernism:
• Rejection of Victorian notions of the artist’s moral and educational duties
• Repudiation of conventional notions of respectability
• Skeptical irresolution
• Bleak sense of the modern world (as “hard and dry”)
• Decentering of Western religion
• Instability, restlessness, and experimentation
• Post-war disillusionment
• Criticism of modernity (scientific materialism and depersonalization)
- According to our anthology, Thomas Hardy was “a pivotal figure between Victorianism and modernism” (1888). Examine Hardy’s connections to both the Victorian and modernist literary movements through an examination of two or more of his literary works.
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