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Suggested Topics for English Literature

• Shakespeare

o Explain Macbeth as a morality play


o How does Shakespeare’s imagery make Macbeth a violent play?
o Discuss the Shakespeare authorship question
o Discuss Anthony’s genius for friendship (Anthony and Cleopatra)
o Explain Hamlet’s inability to take action throughout the play
o What is the role of the supernatural in Hamlet and Macbeth?
o How does the fool play a dramatic purpose in King Lear?
o What are the characters’ attitudes toward fate in King Lear?
o How do the Witches influence Macbeth’s actions?
o How does the role of conscience differ between Macbeth and Lady
Macbeth?
o What is the relevance of the subplot in King Lear?
o What is the unconscious irony in Macbeth?
o Who is the “Dark Lady” of Shakespeare’s sonnets?
o Discuss the imagery in Romeo and Juliet
o In King Lear, how does Shakespeare portray man finding in society the
sphere of his fulfillment?
o Explain Anthony as a tragic hero in Anthony and Cleopatra
o Exemplify anti-Semitism in The Merchant of Venice
o Illustrate Shakespeare’s use of “disguise” in As You Like It or any of his
plays
o Evaluate the character of Hamlet and his need for revenge (the theme of
revenge is in many Shakespearean plays)
o Discuss the prominence of ghosts and witches in Shakespeare’s plays
o Why is Shakespeare considered the master of puns?

• Beowulf

o How does Beowulf blend history with folklore?


o How is Beowulf now interpreted as a Christian allegory?

• Chaucer

o Discuss the use of satire in “The Nun’s Priest’s Tale”


o What are the form, texture, and meaning in “The Knight’s Tale”?
o Exemplify the symbolism of the Old Man in “The Pardoner’s Tale”
o What is Chaucer’s view of marriage as seen in his work?
o What is courtly love as seen in “The Merchant’s Tale” and “The
Franklin’s Tale”?
o What does the hero represent in “The Prioress Tale”?
o Was Chaucer accurate in his historic depictions of 14th Century Pilgrims?
o Discuss Chaucer as a moralist
Suggested Topics for English Literature

o Explain the creation and significance of the fall of the Pardoner in “The
Pardoner’s Tale”
o How does Chaucer depict the socio-economic background of the 14th
Century?
o How does Chaucer rank the Pilgrims by social classes and their perceived
moral standing as members of those classes?
o Discuss the slapstick situations which occur in “The Miller’s Tale”
o How do Chaucer’s opinions on changing social structures come out in his
works?

• John Donne

o Discuss Donne’s poetic technique


o Compare the poetic styles of John Donne and Ben Johnson
o How does Donne show the relationship between God and Man?

• Christopher Marlowe

o What is the meaning and function of pride in Doctor Faustus?


o Compare the love poetry of Marlowe and Ben Johnson
o Discuss Marlowe as an Elizabethan dramatist

• John Bunyan

o Explain the use of landscape in Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress

• Jonathan Swift

o Compare the satiric techniques of Swift with Alexander Pope


o How are the opinions of Gulliver those of Jonathan Swift?
o How did Swift attempt to mend the world with his writing?
o Gulliver’s Travels is an allegory for what?

• Restoration Drama
o By choosing a play of William Wycherley, William Congreve or John
Dryden, illustrate the comic attack on Puritan values

• Cavalier Poets

o Compare the Cavalier poets on poetic style and treatment of “love theme”
Suggested Topics for English Literature

• John Milton

o How does John Milton transform Satan through Paradise Lost?


o Discuss the meaning and function of pride in Paradise Lost
o Compare Milton’s and Shakespeare’s use of sonnet form
o Why does Eve tell her story first in Paradise Lost?

• Phillip Sidney

o What is Sidney’s moral position on poetry?

• William Sheridan

o How does Sheridan’s use of names fit his characters?

• William Cosgrove

o Discuss the wit of Cosgrove

• Lord Byron

o What is the irony of Byron in “Don Juan”?


o Compare the power of guilt in Keats’ and Byron’s poetry
o What is a “Byronic” hero?

• Bubonic Plague

o How did the plague influence literary movements in England?


o Discuss the de-coding of Samuel Pepys diaries
o What was Samuel Pepys contribution to history?

• Joseph Addison, Richard Steele, and Francis Bacon

o What moral point of view did Addison and Steele foster?


o Analyze Bacon’s theory of education

• Ben Johnson
Suggested Topics for English Literature

o Why did Johnson’s play Every Man Has His Humour change his life?

• Samuel Taylor Coleridge

o Discuss how “Kubla Khan” was (or was not) part of a dream
o Explain how “Rime of the Ancient Mariner” is a parable
o Compare “Phantom or Fact” with “Kubla Khan”
o Compare Coleridge’s conception of silence in “Frost at Midnight” with
Keats’ “Ode to a Grecian Urn”
o Compare the ballads of Coleridge and Wordsworth

• Mary Shelley

o Why is Frankenstein rightly subtitled “A Modern Prometheus”?


o Why is Shelley the master of Gothic literature?

• Percy Bysshe Shelley, Alfred Lord Tennyson, John Keats, William Blake,
William Wordsworth

o How is “Prometheus Unbound” a political poem as well as a depiction of


human struggle throughout history?
o Compare Tennyson’s with Sir Thomas Malory’s portrayal of King Arthur
o How does Keats show his love of nature in his odes?
o How does Wordsworth show vision of the Divine in ordinary people and
places?
o How did William Blake show vision in his poetry?

• Lake Poets

o What common themes and common lodging were shared by the Lake
Poets?
o How do the Lake Poets exemplify the English Romantic movement?

• Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Browning

o How does Robert Browning create implied dramatic situation in his


poetry?
o Explain Robert Browning’s use of dramatic monologue in his poetry
o Compare Robert Browning’s “Prospice” with Tennyson’s “Crossing the
Bar”
Suggested Topics for English Literature

o Contrast Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s sonnets with her “Aurora Leigh”


o How do Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s images in her sonnets reveal her
preoccupations?

• Lewis Carroll

o Show how Lewis Carroll understands children’s logic


o How does Lewis Carroll makes sense out of nonsense?

• Thomas Hardy

o How does Hardy editorialize in Tess of the D’Urbervilles?


o Discuss how naturalism was shown in many of Hardy’s poems
o Show how Far from the Madding Crowd is a dramatic pastoral tale
o Explain Thomas Hardy’s use of folklore
o How is Return of the Native a tragic comedy?

• Jane Austen

o Explain how Jane Austen mastered unintrusive humor


o Show how Pride and Prejudice is a novel of manners
o Discuss the literary forms employed in Pride and Prejudice

• Emily Bronte, Anne Bronte

o Discuss how Emily and Anne Bronte shared a childhood imaginary world
which inspired later writings
o What is the effect of multiple narrators in Wuthering Heights?
o How is Jane Eyre a feminist novel?
o How does Jane Eyre explore the Victorian dilemma?

• George Eliot

o Describe how Eliot focused on the drama of ordinary people in realistic


plots
o In Silas Marner, how did Eliot serve as a moralist?

• Joseph Conrad

o Show how Conrad was colonial, not imperialistic in his novels


o Discuss how “Jim” is a heroic character in Lord Jim
Suggested Topics for English Literature

o Explain how Heart of Darkness depicts the nature of evil

• Rudyard Kipling

o Show how Kipling was an apostle of Imperialism


o How is Kim a Victorian “coming of age” novel?

• Sir Walter Scott

o How did Scott bring about a 19th Century revival of chivalric ideals?
o Why is Scott credited with inventing the modern historic novel?

• Charles Dickens

o Explain how Dickens represents the Bildungsroman Movement in novels


with his main characters in Great Expectations and David Copperfield
o Explain how Dickens sought social reform
o Discuss the theme of regeneration in Dickens’ novels
o Discuss the theme of resurrection in A Tale of Two Cities
o Show how Sydney Carlton was a true hero in A Tale of Two Cities

• Daniel Defoe

o Explain how Defoe shows realism in Robinson Crusoe


o Show how Friday depicts White Man’s feeling of superiority at that time

• Robert Louis Stevenson

o How was A Child’s Garden of Verses autobiographical?


o Explain how Treasure Island is a romantic adventure

• Arthur Conan Doyle

o Explain Doyle’s cause of spiritualism as seen in his novels


o How are Doyle’s heroes portrayed as eccentric souls often exhibiting
psychological problems?
o Doyle invented the detective mystery; show how modern writers model
him

• Virginia Woolf

o How did Virginia Woolf portray cultural mockery in Mrs. Dalloway?


Suggested Topics for English Literature

o Show how Woolf led the feminist movement with her characters
o What are the themes used in To the Lighthouse?
o Compare the isolation of George Eliot with that of Virginia Woolf

• George Orwell

o Discuss how Animal Farm is a political fable stemming from world


history at the time it was written
o Which elements of Orwell’s political prophesy in 1984 came to pass?
o The term “Orwellian” comes from what political views of Orwell?

• William Golding

o Show how an understanding of humanity is portrayed in Lord of the Flies


o How does Golding rely on Homeric images in Lord of the Flies?
o Discuss why the ending is appropriate in Lord of the Flies

• George Bernard Shaw

o Show how Pygmalion is a comic treatment of a class society


o Explain how Shaw employs irony in Major Barbara

• James Joyce

o Explain how Joyce uses “epiphany” in Portrait of the Artist as a Young


Man
o How is the main character in Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man a blend
of James Joyce and his father?
o Show how Joyce is a master of “stream of consciousness”

• Daphne du Maurier

o Explain du Maurier’s use of flashback in Rebecca


o In Rebecca, how has the make-up of the heroine become the staple for the
modern romance novel?

• Samuel Beckett

o How is comic within the tragic in shown in Waiting for Godot?


o Discuss Beckett’s use of puns

• C. S. Forester

o How is Captain Horatio Hornblower the hero of escape fiction?


Suggested Topics for English Literature

• D. H. Lawrence

o In Sons and Lovers, Explain how Lawrence has life and death open
straight onto each other
o In Sons and Lovers, explore the character Paul’s Oedipus Complex

• Bram Stoker

o How does Dracula exemplify Gothic horror?

• E. M. Forster

o Explain how Howard’s End critiques class struggle and Edwardian culture
o Show how Passage to India portrays Hindu and nationalistic news

• T. S. Eliot

o Explain the nature of the journey in “The Waste Land”


o How did Eliot use literary criticism to create readers who would
appreciate poetry on his level?

• H. G. Wells

o How does Wells master time and space in Time Machine?


o Explain why Wells is considered the father of modern science fiction

• Oscar Wilde

o How is The Picture of Dorian Gray Wilde’s self-revelation?


o Explain how The Importance of Being Ernest is both a comedy and a farce

• Evelyn Waugh

o Explain how Waugh showed suspicion and disdain for the world around
him
o How do comedy, farce, and pessimism characterize Waugh’s novels?
Suggested Topics for English Literature

• Graham Greene
o How is one man’s struggle to maintain his faith shown in The Power and
the Glory?

• Aldous Huxley

o What doom-laden news is seen in Huxley’s prophetic Brave New World?

• Agatha Christie

o Using one of her novels as an example, tell why Christie was named “The
Master of Mystery”

• Fantasy

o J. R. R. Tolkien vs. C. S. Lewis vs. J. K. Rowling


o The Hobbit is a story of a quest for what?
o Tolkien’s religious character is shown in The Hobbit
o Discuss how Tolkien created a mythology for England in his novels
o Show how might makes right in C. S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia
o What are the elements of Christianity in the works of C. S. Lewis?
o Is Harry Potter healthy or unhealthy reading for children
o Did Richard Adams write Watership Down as a fable or a myth?

• Current Living Novelists

o In The English Patient, show how Michael Ondaatje portrays relationships


between past and present, and how national identity shapes an individual’s
ideal of home

• Salman Rushdie

o In Midnight’s Children, show how Rushdie employs several narrative


devices to exemplify many opportunities of independence offered to India

• Harold Pinter

o Why is Pinter considered one of the most important playwrights in the


post World War II generation?
Suggested Topics for English Literature

• Frank McCourt

o How does McCourt show the fortitude of the human spirit in Angela’s
Ashes?

• Roddy Doyle

o How is Doyle’s “coming of age” tale Paddy Clarke: ha ha ha typical of


adolescence anytime, anywhere?

• Maeve Binchy

o Compare Binchy’s “coming of age” tale in Circle of Friends with Roddy


Doyle’s in Paddy Clarke: ha ha ha

• Rosamunde Pilcher

o In The Shell Seekers, how does Rosamunde Pilcher realistically describe


the passions, joys, and strengths that bind the Keeling family through three
generations?

• Nicholas Evans

o Compare Evans’ love of animals and suspense in The Horse Whisperer


and The Loop

• Novels of Espionage

o John Le Carré, Ken Follett, Len Deighton and Frederick Forsyth wrote
suspenseful novels of spying during the Cold War; select one to show the
technique used

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