Quiz Answer Key and Fun Facts
1. While it is not the last poem he ever wrote, this poet requested that "Crossing the Bar" appear as the final poem in any collection of his work, and so it has been. What is the name of this once Poet Laureate of England, who also penned "In Memoriam, A. H. H." and "Idylls of the King"?
2. Matthew Arnold wrote more literary and social criticism and religious and educational commentary than he did poetry. Nevertheless, one of his poems is perhaps the most quintessential Victorian poem. What is the title of the dramatic monolgue with these lines: "And we are here as on a darkling plain / Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, / Where ignorant armies clash by night"?
3. This poet's verse novel "Aurora Leigh" was immensely popular during her own time yet also rejected by many as immoral because of its portrayal of a young woman who rejects a marriage proposal to be free to pursue her passion for writing. Who is this poet, who is also known for her famous sequence of 44 sonnets presented as having been written by someone from Portugal?
4. This writer's works are among the most widely translated pieces in the world, from the collection of poems "A Child's Garden of Verses", which contains "The Land of Counterpane" based on his own recollections of a childhood illness, to the novella "Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde", which has had such a cultural impact that many use the character's alternating names to refer to anyone who switches from one moral position to another capriciously. What is the name of this writer?
5. This writer remains one of the most famous critics of art, architecture, literature, society, and even economics. What is the name of this individual who created controversy with his attack of the use of the pathetic fallacy in both art and literature in "Modern Painters" and with his attack on contemporary capitalists and their self-serving attitudes in "Unto This Last"?
6. What deacon of the Anglican Church, lecturer in mathematics at Oxford, and pioneer of portrait photography published a book in 1871 that included a scene in which Humpty Dumpty, who is celebrating his unbirthday, attempts to explain the meaning of the poem "Jabberwocky"?
7. After publishing his first poem--"Pauline"--at age 21, this poet abandoned poetry following John Stuart Mill's review accusing him of an "intense and morbid self-consciousness". When he returned to writing verse, he became the master of dramatic monologues--such as "Andrea del Sarto", "Caliban upon Setebos", and "Porphyria's Lover"--allowing him to create characters that expressed themselves without his having to express anything about himself. Who was this poet?
8. While this individual is mostly known for her one novel, she also wrote several poems in her short life, including "I'm Happiest When Most Away", "No Coward Soul Is Mine", and "The Night-Wind". Who is this person who, with her literary siblings, experienced the birth of her desire to write after her father gave them a box of wooden soldiers to whom they gave names and about whom they then wrote plays and stories?
9. In this most Victorian novel, we encounter a naive, self-absorbed youth who trades his life of innocence in the marshes of the County Kent for the opportunity to become a gentleman in London. Growing disillusioned, he remarks, "We Britons had at that time particularly settled that it was treasonable to doubt our having and our being the best of everything: otherwise, while I was scared by the immensity of London, I think I might have had some faint doubts whether it was not rather ugly, crooked, narrow, and dirty". What novel, written by a man whose father spent time in prison for being in debt, am I discussing here?
10. Despite achieving fame as a writer of novels such as "The Ordeal of Richard Feverel" and "The Egoist", George Meredith preferred writing poetry. What is the name of his sonnet sequence about the misery suffered by both a husband and a wife as their marriage is crumbling--a long poem that is now considered a brilliant work of art while a review from Meredith's own time considered it "a grave moral mistake"?
11. This Jesuit priest's collection of poems was not published during his lifetime, but twenty-nine years after his death. In fact, after his conversion to Roman Catholicism, he burned almost all of the poetry he had previously written. Who is this poet who appealed to the Moderns because of his playful coinage of words and syntactical creativity in such poems as "God's Grandeur", "Pied Beauty", and "The Windhover"?
12. Which poet, who so immersed herself in religious life that she gave up theater, opera, chess, and two separate engagements to marry, devoted herself to writing poetry such as "Dead before Death", "In an Artist's Studio", "An Apple Gathering", and "Goblin Market"?
13. Oscar Wilde is certainly famous for his epigrams, such as "We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars" and "I can resist everything except temptation". In which of Wilde's plays would you find these two quotations?
14. Clym Yeobright comes back home; then he and Eustacia Vye are married and enjoy a short span of happiness before all falls apart. Eustacia, who wants to leave the country, is frustrated because Clym wants to stay. Eventually, they separate when Clym mistakenly accuses her of adultery and his mother's death. Clym eventually attempts reconciliation, but his letter arrives too late, and Eustacia drowns herself. What Thomas Hardy novel am I discussing here?
15. In yet one more dramatic monologue from the Victorian age, we encounter a well-known hero who has grown bored with old age and his administrative responsibilities. He attempts to arouse his crew and convince them to join him once more "to sail beyond the sunset, and the baths / Of the western stars" by reminding them their hearts have been "Made weak by time and fate", but they are still "strong in will / To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield". What companion piece to "The Lotos-Eaters" am I talking about here?
Source: Author
alaspooryoric
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looney_tunes before going online.
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