3h Exam, 2006. Eng 301 (Specimen question)

A specimen of the English 301 (Language for Lit.) question is given below. The concerned are asked to note the pattern and type of the questions below.

[N.B.: Answer all the questions. Figures in the right margin indicate full marks.]

1. Read the following poem and answer the questions after it: 6x5=30

An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress ....

a) What type of sentence is ‘unless/ Soul clap its hands …’? (ll.2-3)How does its structure affect its meaning?


b) What kind of image does the poet create of an aged man? How do the words that make it up contribute to this imaging?


c) Does the dependent clause ('unless ... hands') create any conditional meaning in the poem? Elucidate your answer.


d) What is the grammatical name of the 'but' in the first line? How does it affect the meaning?


e) What is suggested about agedness by ' paltry thing' and 'tattered coat'?


f) How does the soul figure in the poem? How is this image constructed?

The essay of 10 marks could be on stylistic or thematic features such as follows:

What attitude to old age do you find in the poem? How does the poet use the language figuratively to suggest this attitude?

3H Course#301 Design of the Language for Literature Question Paper

Department of English, CU.
Third Year BA (Honours) Examination, 2006
Language for Literature
Course # Eng-301
Marks - 100 Time: 4 Hours

The students will be tested for their knowledge of grammatical structures and the figurative use of vocabulary in explicating literary texts, which will include both creative and expository writings. The marks will be distributed as follows:

1. Poetry - 30
2. Fiction/ Non-fiction - 30
3. Dramatic text - 30
4. A short essay exploring a stylistic element or elements in any (to be specified by the question-setter) of the above texts - 10

Why Macbeth, not Duncan

As Thomas De Quincey states at the beginning of the essay, he was intrigued by a peculiar feeling of admiration/ sympathy for the murderer (the regicide) in his boyhood when he read Shakespeare’s Macbeth. Contrary to the usual expectation that he hate and despise Macbeth for his heinous act of killing the pious and innocent Duncan, his relative and king, De Quincey, to his shock and shame, found himself filled with fascination for the murderer. This feeling is evidently immoral and undesirable in a person by any moral standard of our life. His usual reaction should have been one of hatred and rejection of Macbeth for this same reason. He felt an opposition between his understanding (rational reaction) and feeling (emotional reaction). He says, too, that knocking at the gate in Macbeth should not have impressed him at all; but he “felt that it did.” He had since been trying to explain this strange feeling in him. He “waited and clung to the problem until further knowledge” provided him with a satisfactory solution.

The case of Mr. Williams the serial killer opened his eyes and provided him with an invaluable insight into his peculiar feeling towards Macbeth : Mr. Williams, a sailor, threw London into panic by killing the two families, the Marrs and the Williamsons, in a breathtaking space of twelve days in 1811. As usual, at first he was widely condemned for this despicable immoral act. But when this wind of moral and legal condemnation and criticism settled down after a few days, he began to be lionized and hailed as a peerless artist of perfect killing by connoisseurs of homicide. For them Mr. Williams had set the standard of how finely the killer should kill. Thus, he came to be apotheosized as an artist and ceased to be condemned as a killer by the connoisseurs of murder. They would find any other homicide badly suffer by comparison with Mr. Williams’ faultless example on the ground of perfect execution of the art of killing.

In two other essays On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts, De Quincey argues that , once a murderer has been condemned and the demands of morality satisfied, the conoisseur of homicide will naturally be drawn to compare the narratives of the different cases, the degrees of finesse or brutality involved and then to pass an aesthetic judgement. De Quincey is here playing upon the divide between "beautiful" as an aesthetic as opposed to moral epithet. Presumably a "beautiful" murder signifies an act that was effective within the scope of its intentions rather than an alluring spectacle. A murder can be made into a “beautiful” artistic creation free from moral feelings when it is taken beyond the limits of what is acceptable in life. Shakespeare’s art takes Macbeth’s immoral and sinful act beyond these limits and elicit admiration from the audience for the murderer.

Now this insight helps him explain his boyhood admiration for the regicide in Macbeth. By any judgement in life Macbeth is condemnable and reproachable for killing Duncan. Shakespeare prefers Macbeth to Duncan not from any moral point of view. He chooses the former because, through the theatrical variedness of his emotion such as jealousy, ambition, vengeance, hatred and so on and so forth, he can bring out the best of Shakespeare’s dramatic genius. De Quincey implies that Shakespeare’s immediate concerns in the play are not moral. He is mainly interested in those characters and actions that would be to the best advantage to his art. Therefore, the murder of King Duncan in Macbeth belongs to the realm of fine art beyond the pale.

Thomas De Quincey warns the reader against judgment based on understanding and advises that he form his opinion on the basis of feeling. This is a Romantic principle of evaluation in art. Understanding is supported by reason but falls short when it comes to explaining feelings such De Quincey’s about Macbeth. Such feelings can only be aesthetically supported beyond the limits of morality set by black-and-white logic and crude arguments.

Language for Literature / Dispatch #4

Read the following extract that might help you make a smooth transition from narrative to drama. Decide why you would or wouldn't call it dramatic but not drama:

Mr. Carter permitted himself a wintry smile. "His grudge, therefore," he said, "is perfectly understandable."
"It was him or me, Mr. Carter."
"Of course. Is Mrs. Parker still with you?"
"No, sir. We broke up about three months ago. I heard he killed her yesterday."
"Killed her? Do you suppose he found out first where to find you?"
"She didn't know, Mr. Carter."
"You're sure of that?"
"Yes, sir."

Questions:
1. What are the implied meanings of 'wintry smile' and 'grudge' in the first sentence? What do they say about Mr. Carter’s personality?

2. What syntactical variations of the interrogative sentence do you notice in the extract? Discuss their implications.

3. By ‘Of course’ Mr. Carter implies that he is talking to the killer. True, false or difficult to tell. Give reason for your answer.

4. What was the relationship between the woman and the person being interrogated?

5. Who does Mr. Carter refer to as ‘he’ in line 5?

6. Why do you think the man has come to Mr. Carter?

7. Can you tell the name of the person Mr. Carter is talking to?

8. In line 5 we get “find” in two senses. What are they? How are the two senses constructed?

9. List all the expressions in the extract that help develop suspense and tension in the extract.

10. What is the syntactical peculiarity of the interrogative sentence in line 5? Why is this pattern of sentence particularly effective in conveying shock, surprise and other emotional outbursts?

11. Which other interrogative is mixed with surprise?

12. The speaker sounds confident in the last line. How can the syntax of the line firmly express his self-confidence?

Tutorial Assignments (Session 2006-2007)

Tutorial Assignments
1 Read the following poem and answer the questions below the text:

Gerard Manley Hopkins
Duns Scotus’s Oxford

Towery city and branchy between towers;
Cuckoo-echoing, bell-swarmèd, lark-charmèd, rook-racked, river-rounded;
The dapple-eared lily below thee; that country and town did
Once encounter in, here coped and poised powers;

Thou hast a base and brackish skirt there, sours
That neighbour-nature thy grey beauty is grounded
Best in; graceless growth, thou hast confounded
Rural rural keeping ─ folk, flocks, and flowers.

Yet ah! this air I gather and I release
He lived on; these weeds and waters, these walls are what
He haunted who of all men most sways my spirits to peace;

Of reality the rarest-veinèd unraveller; a not
Rivalled insight, be rival Italy or Greece;
Who fired France for Mary without spot.

Questions:

1. What are the appropriate meanings of the following: towery, branchy, bell-swarmèd, rook-racked, coped, brackish, confounded, reality, spot?
2. What is peculiar about the morphological character of its diction ? Which of your senses is engaged most? Why?
3. What is the syntactic explanation of once encounter in (l.4), sours/ That neighbour-nature (ll.5-6), thou hast confounded/ Rural rural keeping (ll.7-8), be rival Italy or Greece (l.13), who fired France (l.14)?
4. Who is he in line 10?
5. Which elements in the poem require you to go outside the text for interpretation? Why?
6. What is unusual about the literary form employed in the poem? How do the vocabulary and syntax support its formal departures?

________


2. Write a critical appreciation of the above poem using the techniques of practical criticism. (First show the anatomical findings in the margin of the text and then write an essay.

3. Why could one call Bradford’s Of Plymouth Plantation history rather than literature? Give adequate justification for your position.

4. Discuss the Latinate syntax of Milton’s English in the Books of Paradise Lost you have read.


Submit all your assignments to the office of the Department. Deadline for submission: September 20, 2008. No submission is acceptable after that date.

Eng-301 : Language for Literature

Despatch # 3

React to the following texts with TRUE, FALSE or CAN'T TELL and justify your answer.

A. Mary had a little lamb. Its fleece was white as snow,

And everywhere that Mary went the lamb was sure to go.

It followed her to school one day; that was against the rule.

It made the children laugh and play to see a lamb at school.

1. Mary's lamb had white fleece.

2. Mary went to school regularly.

3. The lamb followed Mary everywhere she went.

4. The lamb had a ribbon around its neck.

5. Mary was a boy.

6. Mary was a woman.

7. Maybe Mary liked to go to school.

8. Maybe Mary didn't have a lamb.

In judging a "maybe" statement, do the following: (1) read the statement without the "maybe"; (2) judge the statement without the "maybe." If the statement without the "maybe" is "can't tell" or if it is true, then the "maybe" statement is true. If the statement without the "maybe" is false, then the "maybe" statement is false.

B. Little Red Riding Hood's grandmother was ill, and Red decided to take her a basket of goodies to help her get well. The big bad wolf saw Red walking through the woods on her way to the grandmother's house, and he ran ahead to the grand­mother's house and ate the grandmother. Although Red didn't recognize the wolf when she arrived at her grandmother's house, she screamed in time to be rescued by a nearby woodsman.

1. Red's grandmother is alive when the story starts.

2. Red's mother fixed the basket of goodies for Red to take.

3. Red recognized the wolf in time to be rescued.

.

4. Red was taking the goodies to her grandmother's house when the wolf saw her in the woods.

5. The wolf was bad.

6. Maybe Red saw the wolf in the woods at the same time the wolf saw her.

7. Red didn't like her grandmother.

8. Red ran all the way from her house to her grandmother's house.

9. Maybe Red had her bicycle with her.

10. Maybe Red's grandmother wasn't really ill but was testing Red to see what Red would do.

11. Red noticed immediately that the wolf was not the grandmother.

12. Red couldn't have been in a big hurry to get to her grandmother's house, or she would have been running, not walking, through the woods.

13. Red was rescued by a passing woodsman.

C. An aged man is but a paltry thing,

A tattered coat upon a stick, unless

Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing

For every tatter in its mortal dress ....

1. How many meanings of ‘paltry’ do you know? Which of them fits into this context? Justify your answer.

2. The word ‘thing’(l.1) refers to an object. Which object does it refer to?

Give reasons for your choice.

3. The word ‘but’ is important because it enhances what the speaker suggests about aged man.

a) True b) False c) Can’t tell.

Justify your answer.

4. How are ‘paltry’ (l.1), and ‘tatter’ (l.4) related? ‘Tatter’ is used in two parts of speech’. What are they and how do they enhance the idea of age in the poem?

5. What structural difference do you notice between the first line and ‘…unless/ Soul clap … louder sing’? Do you notice any grammatical difference in the use of verbs in those two sentences? How do they affect the senses?

6. What is ‘mortal dress’? (l.4) What relationship is established between ‘tattered coat’ and ‘mortal dress’? How are they similar or dissimilar? If tears are implied by tatter/tattered, in what sense is the mortal dress torn?

7. Establish a relationship between ‘tattered coat’, ‘stick’ and old age.

8. Is the voice personal or impersonal? Is there respect or disrespect, or pity for old age in the poem? Which words suggest the speaker’s attitude to old age and how?

D. Blessed be God that I have wedded five,

Of whiche I have piked out the beste,

Bothe of hir nether purs and of hir cheste.

Diverse scoles maken parfit clerkes,

And diverse practikes in sondry werkes

Maken the werkman parfit sikerly:

Of five housbondes scoleying am I.

Welcome the sixte whan that evere he shal!

1. Note all the differences that you notice between modern English and the English of the text. What peculiarities do you find about spelling?

2. How do they affect your reading?

3. Find out all the modern substitutes for the words in the text.

4. Which word(s) have long since lost the meaning used in the text?

5. What is the dominant grammatical pattern in the poem? Explain the effect of the shift of grammatical pattern from perfect to indefinite in the poem.

6. How is the speaker's joyous and triumphant mood created in the poem?

7. What is a bawdy word? Do you find any bawdy expression in the poem?

8. Summarize the speaker's argument.

______

Talking Point: Mephistopheles is a foreshadowing of the latter Dr. Faustus. (Discuss.)

I saw there a question about Dr.Faustus, my flame.I've still got a lot to talk about it. But how can I post my ideas on the notice board? Anyway I think there's a glimmer of human sympathy for Faustus in Mephisto discernible right at the start that persists throughout the play. (Did you listen to the play on the cassette? If not, you should). While talking to Faustus he has the painful memory of his own downfall for pride and arrogance at the ack of his mind. We can imagine an excited, effusive, vociferous Mephisto before his fall while joining the renegade team and perhaps delivering speeches like Faustus now. These two characters counterpoint each other: excitement and calm, perversity and circumspection, joy and sorrow are played off against each other in their encounters and engagements. Compare the lines where Mephisto's nostalgia about the face of his creator and Faustus's tearful, prayerful supplication for the mercy of God in the end of the play. Now you should be able to see the latter Faustus in the cool and sad Mephisto when the fallen divine teaches the devil manliness and fortitude.

I hope you get my point. You could elaborate on it with critical illustrations from the text.