Section I: (Suggested Time: 30 Minutes): Choose three of the following four quotations. Identify the excerpt (author and text), then state the significance of the quotation (5 points each; 3 X 5 = 15 points).
all good poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings
William Wordsworth, Preface to the Lyrical Ballads. The Romantics, unlike the 18th-century poets that came before them who were interested in maintaining decorum and the status quo, wanted to explore the dark side of humanity. The Romantics looked at extreme emotion, violence, powerful feelings, and melancholy. Wordsworth clarified that these feelings should be recollected in tranquillity and thought about long and deeply. These feelings could also come from the subconscious, which the Romantics began to explore and Samuel Coleridge illustrated when he wrote "Kubla Kahn." Wordsworth wanted his poetry to speak to everyday people. These powerful feelings expressed in "good poetry" must avoid the high diction of poetry that had gone before that was intended to be enjoyed by a select, elite few. (Grade: 5+)
"Beauty is truth, truth beauty"
Keats had this line in his poem enclosed in quotation marks to indicate that the urn itself is speaking. Beauty was important to the Romantics (not to be confused with the sublime). The Romantics found beauty in nature, in art, and in everyday things. The significance of the line in this poem is that we are told that you can discover true truth, or faith, or God through art. The poem places art above the sciences: "That is all ye know on earth and all ye need to know" (emphasis mine). In a historical context, when Keats was writing this it was a time of scientific discovery so he was putting poetry and art in an elevated position. (Grade: 5+)
nothing can bring back the hour/ Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower
This line is significant in several ways. Firstly, it deals with nature, which the Romantics were very much concerned with. Secondly, the line (and the whole poem) are about childhood recollections. The Romantics discovered the significance of childhood and childhood events and wrote about them. Previously, children hadn't been considered even properly human until they were grown. The Romantics helped to change this idea (for example, Coleridge's conversation poem, "Frost at Midnight," addressed to his sleeping child that he sat up rocking). "The child is father of the Man," wrote Wordsworth. The line suggests that there is a connection to nature that you lose as you get older, which "nothing can bring back." Many of the romantics wrote about the idea of nothing being permanent, everything eventually fading away. (Grade: 5+)
Section II (Suggested Time: 30 minutes): Choose three of the following four terms and explain the significance of each (5 points each; 3 X 5 = 15 points).
Lord Byron was hugely popular. He created a figure—not necessarily one particular character, but a mixture of traits—known as the Byronic hero. Similar to Milton's Satanic hero, the Byronic hero wasn't full of redeeming qualities. He was a dashing reprobate, sexually promiscuous who believed in personal liberty at all costs and followed no code of conduct but his own (unlike Scott's Marmion). That said, the Byronic hero as illustrated in Childe Harold's Pilgrimage was still willing to help others and fight for marginalized groups. Byron himself was likened to Childe Harold and he did say that Childe Harold's character was somewhat autobiographical. We know that Byron himself had many lovers (which was scandalous at the time) but he also believed in revolution and went to Greece to help the Greeks fight. (Grade: 5+)
The conversation poem is written in blank verse (unrhymed iambic pentameter) and deals with meditation or description of a subject in a conversational tone, addressed to a silent auditor. "Frost at Midnight" and "The Eolian Harp" by Samuel Coleridge and "Tintern Abbey" by William Wordsworth are examples of conversation poems. The conversation poem was the precursor of the dramatic monologue used by the Victorians. (Grade: 5)
Sublime, it should be said, is not the same as beautiful. Kant linked beauty to the finite and the sublime to the infinite. A sublime landscape or scenery might be Northern wastelands, a storm at sea, chasms, mountains, or a ruined building. These scenes, thought of as properly ugly in the 18th century, were seen by the Romantics as a valid and awe-inspiring experience. To be in a sublime landscape, such as Turner painted in his "Passage through the St. Gothard," reminded one of his or her own mortality. It can make you feel fear and trepidation but also inspires feelings of courage, fearlessness, and a sense of man's indominable will. The sublime experience is one where previously a world in which everything made sense and had balance and order is suddenly turned upside down. There is chaos, blindness, and nothing makes sense anymore. You emerge from the experience with heightened and elevated understanding of something within. Shelley in "Mont Blanc" and Wordsworth in "Tintern Abbey" and in describing his passage through the Alps both use the sublime experience. After Wordsworth passed through the Alps he said, "I now can say I recognize thy power" (or words to that effect). (Grade: 5++)
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