Answer Questions
1.What role do ghosts serve in WWI poetry? You might want to look at these poems: “Strange Meeting,” “The Troops,” “On Passing New Menin Gate,” “Exposure.” You can choose any others you like. (100 words)
2.Both the WWI poets and Conrad emphasize the hypocrisy of society. How is this emphasis consistent with Modernist concerns? You might want to look at poems such as “They,” “The General,” “Apologia Pro Poemate Meo,” “Anthem for Doomed Youth,” and at the statements about the glories of colonialism by Marlow’s aunt and various members of the company in Heart of Darkness. (100 words)
3.3.A. E. Housman’s “Terence this is Stupid Stuff,” is a dramatic dialogue between two young men drinking in a bar. The first complains that his friend Terence writes poetry that’s much too depressing. Terence then responds with a defense of depressing poetry. What is his argument and how does it clarify Modernist ideas about the purpose of art? Be sure to point to specific lines and images. (100 words)
Terence this is stupid stuff.docx
4.Isaac Rosenberg, in “Dead Man’s Dump” uses an image alluding to the crucifixion of Christ.
The plunging limbers over the shattered track
Racketed with their rusty freight,
Stuck out like many crowns of thorns,
And the rusty stakes like sceptres old
To stay the flood of brutish men
Upon our brothers dear.
In “Tortoise Shout” D.H. Lawrence compares sexuality to a crucifixion.
The cross,
The wheel on which our silence first is broken,
Sex, which breaks up our integrity, our single inviolability, our deep silence
Tearing a cry from us.
While both poets use the crucifixion of Christ to reveal the ugly truth about human physicality, they come to different conclusions about the spirituality inherent in physical suffering. Explain. (100 words)
5.How would “The Horse Dealer’s Daughter” have been different if Charlotte Bronte had written it? (100 words)
6.Extra Credit Up to 5 points
In this passage from the end of Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse Lily Briscoe, the painter, is finishing a painting of Mrs. Ramsay and her son James that she started at the very beginning of the book. How does the description of her artistic activity express Modernist ideas?
Quickly, as if she were recalled by something over there, she turned to
her canvas. There it was—her picture. Yes, with all its greens and blues,
its lines running up and across, its attempt at something. It would be
hung in the attics, she thought; it would be destroyed. But what did that
matter? she asked herself, taking up her brush again. She looked at the
steps; they were empty; she looked at her canvas; it was blurred. With a
sudden intensity, as if she saw it clear for a second, she drew a line there,
in the centre. It was done; it was finished. Yes, she thought, laying down
her brush in extreme fatigue, I have had my vision.
