Exam Review

NOTE THAT THE EXAM IS OPEN TEXTBOOK. MAKE SURE YOU BRING YOUR TEXTS TO THE EXAM. I WILL NOT BE PROVIDING TEXTS IF YOU FORGET. YOU MAY MAKE MARGINAL NOTES AND USE STICKY TABS TO MARK SIGNIFICANT POINTS IN YOUR TEXTS. YOU MAY NOT CONSULT YOUR NOTEBOOKS / COURSE NOTES DURING THE EXAM.


Tonight we brainstormed major issues to do with each section of the course, and then we worked on the first two sample questions I handed out. The sample questions are very closely related to the format of the exam. The brainstorming notes and notes that we made as we discussed sample essay questions are below. Note that the sample answers we worked out are point form notes that suggest several of the many directions you could take when formulating your answer. You would choose one or two of these points to expand on the exam itself, and should follow the exam instructions re: how to format your answers.

Click here to access the sample exam questions.

Note that the exam format is as follows:

Three exam questions worth 30%. The first three questions on the exam will follow exam sample questions 1 and 2 in terms of format.

One exam question worth 10%. The third sample question strongly resembles the question on the exam worth 10%.

*microcosm / macrocosm
*Great Chain of Being
*humanism

Government and Politics
*Queen E a unique role as a monarch; mixed gender role
*political turmoil and instability
*religious turmoil Catholicism vs. Protestantism
*vacillation between Catholicism and Protestantism

Public life
*Elizabeth I's self-presentation
*Mary Queen of Scots, published sonnets
*syphilis

*More's Utopia - Utopia vs dystopia; England / Europe as dystopian
*problem with private property
*satire; (gold e.g.) away from sermonizing toward more persuasive forms
*social order and discipline more important than liberty
*clear division of labour

*economy: move to urban centres; increased mercantile activy
*travel and colonization
*gender

Religion and Devotional Life
*religious turmoil Catholicism vs. Protestantism
*vacillation between Catholicism and Protestantism
*governed by Parliament and the monarch rather than the Pope
*antitransubstantiationism
*increasing focus on predestination
*emphasis on good works, direct relationship with God
*Protestantism positions Catholicism negatively, including:
idea that Catholics practice idolatry
corruption in clergy and the church
indulgence=bad idea
*antisemitism (The Unfortunate Traveller)
*Protestant translation of the Bible into English
*microcosm / macrocosm
*Great Chain of Being
*concept of the seven deadly sins
*personification of sins (Pierce Penniless, Faerie Queene)
*allegory (FQ Bk 1)
*gendering of the soul; soul as eventually married to Christ
*husband as head of the wife / family, as Christ is head of the church
*developing interest in philosophy, emergence of rational thought; division between church and rationality

Culture and Entertainment
Sidney
*emergence of English criticism / theories of English literature (Sidney)
*purpose of poetry to teach and delight
*poet as vates (prophet); maker
*poet as creating second nature

*national sentiment: new ideas that English was okay for poetry
*publication / print culture
*poetry often distributed in manuscript
*pamphlets, small treatises, accessibly short works become popular

*emergence of the theatre as separate from church activities
*(entertainment as a way of exploring) roles of marriage and patrimony
*problem play; form of a comedy without the satisfaction of a comedy
*experiment in form
*gendering on the stage ("all-male" stage)
*cure of the king: medicine, sexuality??, witchcraft

Skelton
*skeltonic verse: choppy, short lines
*not looking a beauty
*voyeuristic look at women's alehouse shenanigans
*standard of living
*celebration of drunkeness; catalogue of worldly goods
*community

Nashe
The Terrors of the Night
*warning people against imbalance
*mix of superstition and rational approaches to the problem of nightmares

Pierce Penniless
*seven deadly sins (modern forms)
*satire
*appeal to the devil

Bacon's essay
*rise of rationalism / humanist

Poetry / poetic terms
*blazon: list of characteristics, usually describing a woman's beauty

Sonnet and Lyric
*fourteen lines
*Petrarchan vs. English / Shakespearean sonnet
*Pet: octave + sestet (8+6); English: 3 quatrains (3 sections, 4 lines each) + couplet

Sonnet sequences
*sequence of sonnets involving the same(ish) love object and the same narrator
*Spenser innovates by adding the marriage song to the end of Amoretti
*Shakespeare's sequence includes discontent; parody??

Hero and Leander
* epic poetry style; borrowing from mythology
*tone?
*Leander as object of desire

Travel and Colonization
* positioning of new world peoples as associated with the European past (Adam and Eve; historical past)
*Eurocentric viewpoint
*xenophobia? reported native fascination with "trifles"
* spread of religion; promotion of Christianity; devaluation of native religious concepts
*flora and fauna; laundry list of what could be used for colonization / immediate consumption or commodification
*fantasy of riches

Faerie Queene
* religious focus; protestant allegory
*personification of religious concepts
*gender transgression
*light and dark; complex association to good and evil
*appearance vs. reality
*citing medieval romance / England's national mythology
*union of Arthur and Queen E. as "the faerie queene"
*monsters and monstrousness


Exam sample question #1
1. The passage describes how Sifara is an amazing general, and can't be defeated, but one woman manages to defeat him. Deborah prophesizes that Barack will defeat Sifara that day. Sifara flees to Jael's house where she gives him milk to drink. When he falls asleep, she drives a "great nail" (or "great nayle") into his head and kills him.

2. Possible techniques or themes used in the passage:
*gender: woman as not totally feeble all the time = Elizabeth, Britomart
*deceptive nature of women = Hellenore; Duessa / Fidessa
*misogyny?
*"don't trust women because they'll put nails in your head"??!?
*title of the pamphlet is the deceit of women
*apparent misogyny in the title, but pro-woman sentiment on the inside
*women's deceit as a tool against (bad) men

3.
*deceit as a trait commonly attributed to women; in some representation, viewed as a necessary coping mechanism (Helen, All's Well)
*Judeo Christian religious zeal (Protestant flavour)
*mixed gendering of the woman in the story; Elizabeth's strategic gendering as sometimes masculine

Sample Question #2
1. Stubbe Peter is a werewolf who is caught and threatened with torture. Before he is put to the rack, he confesses that he's been murdering women, men and children for 25 years. He murders by wearing a girdle he received from the devil that lets him turn into a wolf. The magistrates go to look for the girdle in the valley where Stubbe Peter says he left it, but they can't find it. He's imprisoned, and meanwhile his daughter Stubbe Beell and his "gossip" Katherine Trompkin are found to be accessories to many of the murders. All three are condemned to die - Stubbe Peter by being broken on the wheel, beheaded and burned; his daughter and Katherine Trompkin are condemned to be burned.

2 / 3
*monsters, monstrosity (error)
*personification of evil (FQ; Nashe's seven deadly sins)
*magic girdle (Florimell's girdle that binds the hyena of slander?)
*crime and punishment (Mary Queen of Scots)
*impacts of torture and the threat of torture (Parolles)
*16th century attitudes toward difference (Unfortunate Traveller's execution scenes, portrayal of Jews)