English 261
Assessment
Part A—Critical Thinking
1. In his “A Model of Christian Charity,” Jonathan Winthrop ends his essay with the following passage:
“But if our heartes shall turne away soe that wee will not obey, but shall be seduced and worship other Gods our pleasures, and proffitts, and serve them; it is rounded unto us this day, wee shall surely perishe out of the good Land whether we passe over this vast Sea to possesse it.”
According to
a. Work hard, for God will help those who help themselves
b. Recognize that they are not in control of their own destiny
c. Make serving the community their highest priority
d. Not become worshipers of idols.
2. Consider two passages:
Emerson argues in “Nature” that the poet unfixes the land and the sea, makes them revolve around the axis of his primary thought, and disposes them anew.” The non-poet “conforms thoughts to things,” esteeming nature as “rooted and fast.”
In Hope Leslie, Catharine Maria Sedgwick groups Mr. Fletcher with “men of an ardent temperament and disinterested love of his species.” She then points out that, “These are the men of genius—the men of feeling—the men that the world calls visionaries: and it is because they are visionaries—because they have a beau-ideal in their own minds, to which they can see but a faint resemblance in the actual state of things, that they become impatient of detail, and cannot brook the slow progress to perfection. (16)
Given Emerson’s definition of a “poet,” could we conclude that Mr. Fletcher is a poet?
a. Yes, for both are interested in celebrating Nature.
b. No, Mr. Fletcher esteems nature as “rooted and fast.”
c. Yes, for the poem and Mr. Fletcher are interested in the creation of the ideal.
d. No, Mr. Fletcher isn’t interested in “unfixing the land and the sea.”
3. Consider this excerpt from the poetry of Edward Taylor:
Were
th’heavens sick? Must
we their doctors be
And physic them
with pills, our sin?
To make them
purge and vomit, see,
And
excrement out fling?
We’ve grieved
them by such physic that they shed
Their
excrements upon our lofty heads.
How might you
explain the logic of
a.
“Sin” makes
humans sick. As a result, they vomit and produce excrement.
b.
Human sin
makes the divine sick.
c.
Human sin
helps “cure” the heavens by allowing the heavens to purge itself.
d.
Humans commit
offenses so appalling that Edwards compares these acts to excrement.
4.
It was not Death, for I stood up,
And all the Dead lie, down–
It was not Night, for all the bells
Put out their tongues, for
In this poem by Emily Dickinson, what two sets of imagery
does
a. Noise and silence; death and life
b. Light and darkness; funerals and weddings
c. Life and death; light and silence
d. Reverent and rude; life and death
5.
“In his ideal and dreamy days he had considered it possible, in a certain sense, to spiritualize machinery, and to combine with the new species of life and motion thus produced a beauty that should attain to the ideal which Nature has proposed to herself in all her creatures, but has never taken pains to realize” (171).
Based on this passage describing Owen Warland from
a. An entity one must overcome
b. A creation that needs completion
c. A pattern one must emulate
d. A divine force one must acknowledge and submit to
6. These two passages come from Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself.” The first passage comes from what some readers call the “first catalog.” The second passage comes later in what is called the “second catalog.”
The runaway slave came to my house and stopped outside,
I heard his motions crackling the twigs of the woodpile,
Through the swung half-door of the kitchen I saw him limpsey and weak
I am the hounded slave….I wince at the bite of the dogs,
Hell and despair are upon me….crack and again crack the markmen,
I clutch the rails of the fence
The passages differ, and they reveal a change in the narrator’s perspective:
a. Instead of merely observing the slave, the narrator identifies with the slave.
b. Instead of speaking for the slave, the narrator allows the slave to speak for himself.
c. The passages indicate a change in time.
d. Instead of being a white plantation owner, the narrator is now a slave on the plantation.
Part B—Literary Terminology particularly relevant to this
course.
7. An epistolary novel ….
a) structures its entire plot through the exchange of letters.
b) Echoes in theme and subject matter the epistles written by Paul in the New Testament of the Bible.
c) Derives from the French episteme, meaning knowledge. As a result, an epistolary novel is preoccupied with questions of knowledge and perception.
d) Collects and creatively arranges epitaphs to generate a coherent story.
8. Gothic and Gothic novel refer to …
a) works that are barbaric, ill-formed, and unpolished, reminiscent of the German tribes, the Goths.
b) Works focusing on medieval Christian themes and subject matter, for the name gothic comes from gothic cathedrals built between 1100 and 1400 AD.
c) Novels that convey a general mood of decay, portray violent or disturbing actions, and set events in grandiose, if not gloomy and bleak settings.
d) Dark, brooding works where the central theme is always death.
9. A slave narrative is …
a) A story told to and written down by southern plantation owners.
b) A narrative written by former slaves and recount life as a slave and the eventually escape from slavery.
c) A story slaves told each other to ease the burden of slavery. Brer Rabbit and Fox is just one example.
d) A story written by northern abolitionists who used the narratives to fight for the end of slavery.
10. A historical romance…
a) is a love story set in remote and exotic location
b) is simply a prose narrative, for it derives from the French word roman, meaning novel.
c) focuses an individual’s heroic struggle to achieve a goal (often a love interest), in a historical setting, with elements of the supernatural and intense passions playing a part.
d) Refers to a fact-laden, realistic depiction of a real love affair.
11. A captivity narrative…
a) recounts a single individual’s story of being kidnapped by Catholics or Native Americans, often containing four sections: Separation, Torment, Transformation, and Return.
b) is another name for a slave narrative.
c) Describes a criminal’s confessions, a mandatory step before returning to the Puritan community.
d) Presents spiritual confessions, otherwise known as “conversion narratives.”
12. A sentimental novel …
a) Derives from the corruption of the word “sediment.” This etymology makes more sense because a sentimental novel lays down the foundation or groundwork, otherwise known as a “foundational work.”
b) First appeared after the Civil War and usually describes the grief of widows.
c) Describe the personal confessions of lovers, often through letters.
d)
was a reaction against
the “excess, impropriety, and debauchery of the Restoration Age” (1660-1700) in
13. Based on an ancient hermeneutic [interpretive] method, typology is the interpretation of Old Testament events, persons, and ceremonies as signs which prefigured Christ's fulfillment and new covenant with the apostolic church. The concepts arose from those of the skia (shadow) and typos (type). Typology involves identification both of a type or figura, a figure, concept, ceremony, or event as an Old Testament precursor, and an anti-type, a New Testament historical figure or event that follows and fulfills the promise of the type. (In other words, a type is the shadow; an antitype is the fulfillment.)
Puritans, of course, used typology in their literary works, but what other literary movement found a correspondence between nature and truth?
a)
Revolutionary War political writers (i.e. Paine,
Jefferson, Adams,
b) Romantics (i.e. Emerson, Hawthorne, Thoreau, Sedwick)
c)
Slave narratives (i.e. Jacobs,
d) Realists (i.e. Davis, Howell, Dreiser)
14. Consider the following structure or organizational pattern:
A. Exordium, or introduction.
B. Narration, or Statement of the Case. Causes and circumstances of the text.
C. Proposition or Partition of the Case. Statement of the doctrine or theological position.
D. Confirmation or Proof. Demonstration of the truth of the position to the intellect.
E. Refutation. Rebuttal of objections and heresies.
F. Peroration. Recapitulation and amplification of the argument designed to arouse emotion in the listener.
Where are we mostly likely to find the above organizational pattern?
a) sentimental novel
b) slave narrative
c) historical romance
d) sermon
15. A “myth” (as in the phrase “Native American myth”) refers to …
a) Tall-tales, or stories that are factually inaccurate.
b) Narratives that have a didactic purpose and usually feature animal characters.
c) Foundational stories that explain a natural or cosmic phenomenon, origin, or relationship.
d) A deep rooted belief
16. In what period of American literature are you more likely to find descriptive travel narratives?
a) Pre-Colonial
b) Colonial but pre-Revolutionary War
c) Late 18th century
d) Early 19th century
e) Late 19th century