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British Literature 2323 Midterm Extra Credit

You can add up to 20 points to your midterm exam grade depending on how
well you answer these questions. Write your paragraph answers underneath the
quotes. Email it to me as an attachment by 8:40 a.m. on Tuesday, October
18. Make sure all answers are your own.

II. Quote Identification: Read the following quotations and then tell the following
things about them in a paragraph: title and author, who is speaking (to whom if
applicable), what the quote means in the context of the work (i.e. what is happening
at this point), and what its significance is both literally and figuratively to the work
as a whole. (5 points each)

1. “I was angry with my friend;

I told my wrath, my wrath did end.
I was angry with my foe:
I told it not, my wrath did grow.”

A poison tree by William Blake. The guy in the poem is speaking in his mind so no
one can hear him. This quate means in context of the work is how he had a friend
he was angry with, but he told his friend how he felt, and his anger and emotions
stopped but where he was mad at his enemy and never spoke up about his anger and
it continued to grow. This is important because this is a real issue, we have a lot of
emotions as humans and if we never communicate how we feel nobody can help. In
literature I have read a lot about how people jump straight to killing someone but
if they would have just expressed how they felt their story might have a different
outcome.

2. “And there she lulled me asleep,

And there I dreamed—Ah! woe betide!”
The latest dream I ever dream’d
On the cold hill’s side.

La belle dame sans merci: a ballad by John Keats. The man is talking to us reading
about his encounter with a beautiful lady. The quote in context means the women
sung lullabies until the man fell asleep but his dreams were nightmares, He woke up
on the cold hill side to the lady being gone. This is important because earlier in the
poem it said how she looked at him liked she loved him but if she truly did love him,
she wouldn’t have left him in his sleep. You see this in the present day because
there have been many girlfriends leaving their boyfriends for no explanation. I
believe she was just using him for something, and you see this all around you
nowadays.

3. “What is the end of Fame? ‘tis but to fill

A certain portion of uncertain paper:
Some liken it to climbing up a hill,
Whose summit, like all hills, is lost in vapor;
For this men write, speak, preach, and heroes kill,
And bards burn what they call their ‘midnight taper,’
To have, when the original is dust,
A name, a wretched picture, and worse bust.”

4. “I was buried for a thousand years, in stone coffins, with mummies and
sphinxes, in narrow chambers at the heart of eternal pyramids. I was kissed,
with cancerous kisses, by crocodiles; and laid, confounded with all
unutterable slimy things, amongst reeds, and Nilotic mud.”

Confessions of an English opium- eater by Thomas De Quincy. The quote in context

is talking about a man who has been captured and prosecuted from the power of
treason. He is trapped and won’t be let out exactly like a death penalty. This quote
is significant in the literature because its his consequence and it gave him lots of
pain and agony.
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