English Literature 4:

Review Questions and Themes

The Romantic Period (1785-1830)

1. Explain the social and cultural conditions that contributed to the rise of Romanticism
in Great Britain.

2. Explain the main ideas that shaped “the spirit of the age”.

3. What was the concept of poetry and the poet among the Romantics?

4. Elaborate the Romantics’ insistence on spontaneity and freedom.

5. Explain the Romantics’ understanding of the relationship between man and nature.

6. What is meant by the Romantics’ “glorification of the commonplace”?

7. Illustrate the Romantics’ love of the supernatural and “strangeness in beauty”.

8. Explain the Romantics’ insistence on individualism and nonconformity.

9. Outline briefly W. Blake’s mythical concept.

10. Give the basic features of Blake’s Songs of Innocence and of Experience.

11. Compare and contrast Blake’s poems “The Lamb” and “The Tyger”.

12. Why is R. Burns known as a “Heaven-taught plowman”?

13. Explain the influences R. Burns embraced in creating his poetic style.

14. What moral does R. Burns offer in “To a Mouse” and “To a Louse” respectively?

15. Define and explain W. Wordsworth’s notion of poetry.

16. Discuss W. Wordsworth’s notions on language and style of poetry.

17. Explain W. Wordsworth’s notion of the function of poetry and the role of the poet.
(as regards 14, 15, 16, consider the assigned excerpts from the “Preface” to the
Lyrical Ballads).

18. Discuss briefly W. Wordsworth’s understanding of the three phases of man’s attitude
towards nature (Consider the metaphors for each phase in his poem “Tintern Abbey”).

19. Discuss the role of poetic imagination (“the inward eye”) in W. Wordsworth’s poetry.

20. Discuss S. T. Coleridge’s notion of the types of imagination (Consider the relevant
excerpts on the issue from his Biographia Litararia).
21. Discuss Coleridge’s “Kubla Khan” as a metaphor for the creative process.

22. Why is “Kubla Khan” regarded as a “triumph of poetic imagination”?

23. Discuss and exemplify the main features of the “Byronic hero” or “ruling personage”.

24. List Byron’s main works and give their major characteristics (genre, style, etc.).

25. Explain Byron’s attitude towards nature (“I love not Man the less, but Nature more”).

26. Why was P. B. Shelley known as “a radical nonconformist”?

27. Explain how Shelley put together the influences of Neoplatonism and Empiricism.

28. Discuss briefly Shelley’s understanding of the function of poetry and the role of the
poet (Consider the relevant excerpts on the issues from his essay “A Defence of
Poetry”).

29. List the functions and the transformations of the cloud in Shelley’s poem of the same
title.

30. List and comment on the attributes and metaphors Shelley used for the West Wind in
the poem of the same title.

31. Define and illustrate J. Keats’s notion of “negative capability”.

32. What’s the meaning of J. Keats’s notion of “cameleon poet”?

33. Explain J. Keats’s understanding of “the authenticity of imagination”.

34. Explain and illustrate the usage of imagery in Keats’s “Ode to a Nightingale”.

35. List and comment on the attributes and metaphors Keats uses for the Grecian Urn in
the ode of the same title.

The Victorian Age (1830-1901)

36. Give a brief summary of the critical reactions to the Victorian Age.

37. Explain briefly why the early Victorian period is known as “a time of troubles”.

38. Why the mid-Victorian period is known for its “economic prosperity and religious
controversies”.

39. Why is the late Victorian period known for the “decay of Victorian values”?

40. Why are the 90s known as a decade of “degeneration”?

41. How did the technological changes affect the poetry of A. Tennyson?

42. Give evidence why A. Tennyson was haunted by what he called “passion of the past.”

43. Why does Ulysses reject the settling of old age?

44. On what grounds was R. Browning’s early poetry sacked by the critics?

45. What influences did R. Browning embrace in order to create his “dramatis personae
and dramatic monologue”?

46. Explain and illustrate R. Browning’s dramatic monologue.

47. What the personal traits of the Duke of Ferrara in “My Last Duchess”?

48. How did R. Browning experiment with language and syntax?

49. What aspects separate R. Browning’s poetry from the Victorian age?

50. Why is R. Browning known as “a forerunner of 20th c. poetry”?

51. Give the periods of M. Arnold’s development as a poet and provide a title of a work
for each period.

52. Explain why M. Arnold’s poetry “provides a record of a sick individual in a sick
society”.

53. How does M. Arnold understand the term “culture”?

54. Who are the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (poets/painters) and what are their creeds
and principles?

55. What comparisons does D. G. Rossetti use to describe the sonnet?

56. What did the Pre-Raphaelites rebel against?

57. Explain how A. C. Swinburne, as a liberal republican, revolted against traditional

moral values.

58. Define and illustrate G. M. Hopkins’s concepts of “inscape” and “instress”.

59. Define and illustrate G. M. Hopkins’s notion of “sprung rhythm”.

60. Why is G. M. Hopkins regarded as a proto-modernist poet?

POSSIBLE ESSAY TOPICS:

1. Discuss the themes of innocence / experience; beauty / terror in W. Blake’s The Book
of Thel.

2. Discuss Thel’s rejection of the realm of matter and earthly life and her unwillingness
to descend from the eternal, spiritual world.
3. Explain W. Wordsworth’s notion of the function of poetry and the role of the poet.

4. Discuss S. T. Coleridge’s Kubla Khan as a metaphor of the creative process and

imagination.
5. Discuss the stages/phases of man’s responsiveness to nature in W. Wordsworth’s
poem “Tintern Abbey”.

6. Discuss the theme of sin and repentance in S. T. Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient
Mariner.

7. Discuss the usage of supernatural elements in Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient
Mariner.

8. Discuss the notion of evil and its consequences in Coleridge’s The Rime of the
Ancient Mariner.

9. Discuss the senselessness and irrationality of evil in Coleridge’s The Rime of the
Ancient Mariner.

10. Discuss the nature symbolism in S. T. Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.

11. Discuss how the two types of imagination (primary and secondary) are reflected in
Coleridge’s Kubla Khan.

12. Discuss and illustrate how the revolutionary ideas (1789-1815) influenced the poetic
work of P. B. Shelley and G. G. Byron.

13. Discuss P. B. Shelley’s and G. G. Byron’s understanding of the power of nature

(consider the poems we have studied).
14. Discuss the relationship between nature and the poet in R. Burns’s “To a Mouse” and
in Byron’s Chile Harold’s Pilgrimage – Canto 4.

15. Discuss and illustrate the notion of “negative capability” in J. Keats’s odes you have
studied.

16. Discuss J. Keats’s views on art and life as expressed in the odes you have studied.

17. Discuss Swinburne’s poem “The Garden of Proserpine” as a paradoxical and

inextricable notion of both life and death.

18. Discuss the symbolic role of Proserpine in the transitional processes of nature.
19. Discuss G. M. Hopkins’s understanding of the role of the divine in nature (refer to the
poems and concepts you have studied).

20. Discuss the innovative / experimental nature of G. M. Hopkins’s poetry.