DRAFT English 255 Assessment
Part A—Critical
Thinking
For questions 1-15, read the passages carefully and provide what you believe is the best answer to the question. The questions are not designed to “trick” you, but may require you to re-read all or part of the excerpts.
The following is an excerpt from John Ruskin’s The
Stones of Venice, the section called “The Savageness of Gothic
Architecture.” The book and the essay are a critique of Victorian society,
particular regarding labor and industrialization. Read the following paragraphs
from the essay and provide the best answer to the questions that follow:
And, on the other hand, go forth again to gaze upon the old
cathedral front, where you have smiled so often at the fantastic ignorance of
the old sculptors: examine once more the ugly goblins, and formless monsters,
and stern statues, anatomiless [bodiless] and rigid; but do not mock at them,
for they are signs of life and liberty of every workman who struck the stone; a
freedom of thought, and rank in scale of being, such as no laws, no charters,
no charities can secure; but which it must be the first aim of all Europe at
this day to regain for her children.
Let me not be thought to speak wildly or extravagantly. It
is verily this degradation of the operative into a machine, which, more than
any other evil of the times, is leading the mass of the nations everywhere into
vain, incoherent, destructive struggling for a freedom of which they cannot
explain the nature to themselves. Their universal outcry against wealth, and
against nobility, is not forced from them either by the pressure of famine, or
the sting of mortified pride. These do much, and have done much in all ages;
but the foundations of society were never shaken as they are at this day. It is
not that men are ill fed, but that they have no pleasure in the work by which
they make their bread, and therefore look to wealth as the only means of
pleasure.
1. Ruskin’s main complaint is that
a) there are not enough jobs for women in
Victorian England.
b) that the Irish immigrants
are not skilled enough to work in
c) that industrialization has taken craft and purpose out of work.
d) that the builders of cathedrals oppressed the workers.
2. Ruskin’s mention of the Gothic cathedral is meant to
a) condemn religion’s effect on labor.
b) celebrate the craft and imperfections of legitimate work.
c) call for higher wages for the clergy.
d) argue for women’s suffrage.
3. Ruskin’s attitude toward wealth is:
a) that only the elite should have it.
b) that it provides the highest purpose to humans.
c) that it exposes the erosion of purpose in contemporary life.
d) that no one should write or paint except for money.
4. The gargoyles in the first paragraph are
a) metaphors for corrupt employers.
b) devil figures meant to scare readers back to church.
c) signs of the life and liberty available to the medieval craftsperson.
d) frightening nudes designed to corrupt our children.
5. Ruskin’s attitude toward the machine is
a) that it is a metaphor of our lost purpose.
b) that Victorian youth should invent more of them.
c) that it will bring about great and satisfying prosperity.
d) that the Victorian Period should be known as the Machine Age.
Questions 5-10 refer to the following poem:
The Martian Sends a Postcard Home
by John Donne
Caxtons are mechanical birds with many wings
and some are treasured for their markings—
they cause the eyes to melt
or the body to shriek without pain.
I have never seen one fly, but
sometimes they perch on the hand.
Mist is when the sky is tired of flight
and rests its soft machine on the ground:
then the world is dim and bookish
like engravings under tissue paper.
Rain is when the earth is television.
It has the property of making colours darker.
Model T is a room with the lock inside—
a key is turned to free the world
for movement, so quick there is a film
to watch for anything missed.
But time is tired to the wrist
or kept in a box, ticking with impatience.
In homes, a haunted apparatus sleeps,
that snores when you pick it up.
If the ghost cries, they carry it
to their lips and soothe it to sleep
with sounds. And yet, they wake it up
deliberately, by tickling with a finger.
Only the young are allowed to suffer
openly. Adults go to a punishment room
with water but nothing to eat.
They lock the door and suffer the noises
alone. No one is exempt
and everyone’s pain has a different smell.
At night, when all the colours die,
they hide in pairs
and read about themselves—
in colour, with their eyelids shut.
6. The poem is in
a) quatrains
b) terza rima
c) couplets
d) iambic pentameter
7. The Caxtons in the first line are:
a) books
b) television shows
c) lemurs
d) children
8. The punishment rooms is
a) a prison
b) the office
c) a hospital
d) the bathroom
9. The “haunted apparatus” in line 19 is
a) a television
b) a blender
c) a telephone
d) a baby
10. The last four lines describe
a) sex
b) video phones
c) space travel
d) dreaming
Questions 11-15 refer to the following poem:
It is a beauteous evening
by
William Wordsworth
It is a beauteous evening, calm and free,
The holy time is quiet as a nun
Breathless with adoration; the broad sun
Is sinking down in its tranquility;
The gentleness of heaven broods o'er the sea:
Listen! the mighty Being is awake,
And doth with his eternal motion make
A sound like thunder - everlastingly.
Dear Child! dear Girl! that
walkest with me here,
If thou appear untouched by solemn thought,
Thy nature is not therefore less divine:
Thou liest in Abraham's bosom all the year,
And worship'st at the
God being with thee when we know it not.
11. This poem is
a. a sonnet
b. a ballad
c. a limerick
d. an epic
12. The action in the poem that is most characteristic of the Romantic lyric is
a. the presence of a young girl
b. the human observation and comment on nature
c. the reference to an Old Testament figure
d. the absence of birds
13. Children in Wordsworth’s cosmology are best described as
a. being representations of evil in this fallen world
b. in need of rigorous and traditional education
c. representative of the observant world that adults have fallen from
d. sneaky as well as intelligent
14. Women in this and other Romantic poems are
a. often silent
b. often the speakers of the poem
c. sneaky and intelligent
d. deserving of a formal and rigorous education
15. The statement that best describes the speaker of the poem is
a. that he is angry with both nature and nuns
b. that he seeks to find in nature a solace to offer to others
c. that he
thinks the French revolution was good for
d. that nature is representative of humankind’s more base characteristics.
Part B Appreciating the contributions of literature to our perceptions of ourselves and our world via English Literary History. Please identify the author of the quotes given and offer a one-sentence description of the main idea, argument, or theme of the larger text:
16.
Is this a holy thing to see,
In a rich and fruitful land,
Babes reduced to misery,
Fed with cold and usurous hand?
This excerpt is by:
a) William Blake
b) Mary Wollstonecraft
c) Percy Bysshe Shelley
d) John Keats
The main idea, argument, theme of the larger work is:
17.
My own sex, I hope, will excuse me, if I treat them like rational creatures, instead of flattering their fascinating graces, and viewing them as if they were in a state of perpetual childhood, unable to stand alone.
This excerpt is by:
a) William Blake
b) Mary Wollstonecraft
c) Percy Bysshe Shelley
d) William Wordsworth
The main idea, argument, theme of the larger work is:
18.
These beauteous forms,
Through a long absence, have not been to me
As is a landscape to a blind man’s eye:
But oft, in lonely rooms, and ‘mid the din
Of towns and cities, I have owed to them
In hours of weariness, sensations sweet,
Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart;
This excerpt is by:
a) William Blake
b) Mary Wollstonecraft
c) Samuel Taylor Coleridge
d) William Wordsworth
The main idea, argument, theme is:
19.
The Mariner, whose eye is bright,
Whose beard is age with hoar,
Is gone: and now the Wedding-Guest
Turned from the bridegroom’s door.
He went like one that hath been stunned,
And is of sense forlorn:
A sadder and a wiser man,
He rose the morrow morn.
This excerpt is by:
a) William Blake
b) Mary Wollstonecraft
c) Samuel Taylor Coleridge
d) William Wordsworth
The main idea, argument, theme is:
20.
“Farewell,
He said.
“Sir, you were married long ago.
You have a wife already whom you love,
Your social theory. Bless you both,
I say.
For my part, I am scarcely meek enough
To be the handmaid to a lawful spouse.”
This excerpt is by
a) Alfred Lord Tennyson
b) Elizabeth Barrett Browning
c) Emily Bronte
d) Charles Dickens
The main idea, argument, theme of the larger work is:
21.
It may be that we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew,
Though much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Move earth and heaven, that which we are, we are—
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
This excerpt is by
a) Alfred Lord Tennyson
b) Elizabeth Barrett Browning
c) Emily Bronte
d) Charles Dickens
The main idea, argument, theme of the larger work is:
22.
1801—I have just returned from a visit to my landlord—the
solitary neighbor that I shall be troubled with. This is certainly a beautiful
country! In all
This excerpt is by
a) Alfred Lord Tennyson
b) Elizabeth Barrett Browning
c) Emily Bronte
d) Charles Dickens
The main idea, argument, theme of the larger work is:
23.
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues—
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie, Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.
This excerpt is by
a) T.S. Eliot
b) Virginia Woolf
c) Wilfred Owen
d) William
The main idea, argument, theme of the larger work is:
24.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in the sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of indignant desert
birds.
This excerpt is by
a) T.S. Eliot
b) Virginia Woolf
c) Wilfred Owen
d) William
The main idea, argument, theme of the larger work is:
25.
a woman must have money and a room of her own is to write fiction.
This excerpt is by
e) T.S. Eliot
f) Virginia Woolf
g) Wilfred Owen
h) William
The main idea, argument, theme of the larger work is: