I will create the final exam from the questions below. You might want to write out the answers for these questions as I post them. It will help you to complete the questions while the material is still fresh, rather than waiting until the end of the course. Use these questions as a study guide in addition to your class notes.
What are the major themes of the 16th and 17th century poems we’ve studied? Discuss with reference to specific poems by Shakespeare, Done, Milton, and Marvell (mention all four).
How do the formal arrangements of poems help express their meaning? Discuss with reference to specific poems by Shakespeare, Shelley, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Louise Glück, John Donne, John Milton, Andrew Marvell, Alexander Pope (pick two).
What is Virginia Woolf’s main point about gender, genius, and artistic production in her discussion of Judith Shakespeare in A Room of One’s Own?
“Women can’t paint, women can’t write” is the refrain of Charles Tansley, a character in Virginia Woolf’s 1927 novel, To The Lighthouse. Is Mr. Tansley right? Discuss with relation to one of the following (pick one and be specific):
-- women painters from the Renaissance to today
-- women poets
-- women prose writers (fiction or drama)
Pick one of the following texts and situate it in its proper historical context (relate it to material from the Western Civilization textbook or the web site):
-- a poem by Donne, Milton, or Marvell (pick one)
-- the play by Aphra Behn
-- the poem by Alexander Pope
-- a political tract by Paine, de Gouge, Wollstonecraft (pick one)
What were the possible social positions available to women in the 17th and 18th centuries? Support your answer with specific references to both The Rover and the Western Civilization textbook/website.
According to Virginia Woolf in A Room of One’s Own, what is the importance of Aphra Behn as a writer? Be specific.