English 331--Final Exam Preparation guide

Part 1 50%--60 minutes

In five of the eight following quotations, listed in chronological order, do four of the five following tasks. [All quotations will be passages read, performed or discussed in class]

1. Identify author and/or title.
2. provide a clear paraphrase
3. the mood or character of the speaker
4. state one or more themes
5. mention a striking bit of language how or why it works

Example

But there, where I have garner'd up my heart,
Where either I must live, or bear no life;
The fountain from the which my current runs,
Or else dries up; to be discarded thence!
Or keep it as a cistern for foul toads
To knot and gender in! Turn thy complexion there,
Patience, thou young and rose-lipp'd cherubin,-
Ay, there, look grim as hell!

Answer:

2. There where I live or die, the source of my energy--to be rejected from there or to have disgusting creatures have sex in it--Desdemona's body--that will make my patience turn to rage.

3. Othello has completely succumbed to jealousy and rage, because as he admits, his sexual desire for Desdemona is the central core of his being.

4. One theme is the power of love to turn to hate; another is demonic possession

5. The passage is full of extreme contrasts--fountain turned to cistern, cherubs looking grim as hell, patience turning grim. "Foul toads to knot and gender in" is a an image of Desdemona's body being used for filthy purpose by gross creatures showing the infection of Othello's imagination.

Part 2 50%--60 minutes

Three of the topics listed below will be on the final exam. You will choose one of them for an essay of about 500 words. Dont spend many words on introduction or conclusion.

1. Obedience and rebellion are each rendered attractive by revolutionary changes taking place in society and culture during the Early Modern period(1500-1660): Renaissance--the rebirth of learning--and Reformation--the breakdown of central religious authority. Writers of the period portray rebels both as heroic and as damned. Discuss the competing claims of obedience [self-sacrifice, humility, order, tradition] and rebellion [individualism, ambition, freedom, innovation] as displayed in three of the following:

2. Romantic love is a central theme in many works read this quarter. Compare and contrast the joys and pains of three of the following pairs:

Othello and Desdemona
Ferdinand and Miranda
The speakers in the Song of Solomon
Mary Wroth's Pamphilia and Amphilanthus
Milton's Adam and Eve

3. In L'Allegro and Il Penseroso, Milton celebrates the contrasting pleasures of Mirth and Melancholy. What are some of these, and how do three out of the following works read this quarter generate such contrasting pleasures in their plots, language and themes:

Exodus or Psalms
The Tempest
Poems of George Herbert
Poems of Ben Jonson
Paradise Lost

4. Discuss the representations of error and false reasoning in three of the following works

Othello
Novum Organum by Bacon [the Idols of the Mind]
The poems of John Donne--e.g. "the Flea," "the Canonization," sonnet 5
Paradise Lost

5. Compare and contrast images and significances of a "New World" found in three of the following: Thomas More's Utopia, Sir Walter Ralegh's Voyages, the New Testament's "Kingdom of Heaven," The Tempest's "Brave New World," and Milton's new world of Earth.

6. Training in persuasion or rhetoric was a central feature of humanistic education during the early modern period. Discuss occasions in which persuasion is portrayed in three of the following works and how writers demonstrate some of its techniques and show them working or failing

The writings of Queen Elizabeth
Othello
The poems of John Donne
The poems of Ben Jonson and Robert Herrick
Paradise Lost

7. Compare and contrast the motivations, attitudes, and claims of three "evil" characters: Iago, Caliban and Satan

8. "Thou art a figurative, a metaphorical god...in whose words there is such a height of figures, such voyages such pergrinations to fetch remote and precious metaphors, such extensions, such spreadings, such curtains of allegories, such third heavens of hyperboles, so harmonious elocutions, so retired and reserved expressions..." John Donne, Expostulation 19

"The idols imposed by words on the understanding are of two kinds: they are either names of things which do not exist...or they are names of things which exist,but yet confused and ill defined and hastily and irregularly derived from realities...which spring out of a faulty and unskillful abstraction..." Francis Bacon, "The Idols of the Mind.'

Using these comments by Donne and Bacon as extreme positions, discuss early modern writers’ attitudes toward and/or uses of language.