Essay Questions

Tennyson, Robert Browning and G. M. Hopkins:

Discuss one of the following themes related to “The Lady of Shalott”: art and nature, isolation,
relation to the past.
Rewriting the original myth in “The Lady of Shalott.”
Describe the interplay between speaker and audience in the poem “My Last Duchess.”
Discuss whether or not the speaker manages to remain in control of his rhetoric in the poem,
“My Last Duchess.”
Explain the expression “the spot of joy” in the poem “My Last Duchess.”
What are the main themes that appear in “Spring” by Hopkins?
Analyze the poetic form of Hopkins’s poem.
Explain the thematic parallels between the first and the second part of “Spring.” How does the
first part prepare the second?

Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

Wuthering Heights as a gothic novel.

Isabelle’s role in Wuthering Heights.
The language and narrative form of Wuthering Heights.
The narrators’ roles in Wuthering Heights.
Analysis of a freely-chosen character in Wuthering Heights.
Analyze Great Expectations as an example of the Bildungsroman.
Analyze the character of Joe Gargery as a major vehicle of Dickens’s moral insight.
Discuss the concept of guilt in Great Expectations as the moral element of a child as soon as he
becomes self-aware.
Explain the notion of a “developing moral vision” through an analysis of the characters Miss
Havisham and Magwitch. How does Pip help them to become better people?
Explain the concept of the gentleman in Dickens’s novel: in the end, Pip becomes what he
wanted to be, a true “gentleman,” how?
Which ending of Great Expectations do you prefer and why?

G. B. Shaw’s Mrs. Warren’s Profession

What is the subject of Shaw’s preface to his play?

Analyze Shaw’s statement according to which the new drama arises through “a conflict of
unsettled ideals” (see his Quintessence of Ibsenism) by giving examples from his play.
Who is the villain and who is the hero in Mrs. Warren’s Profession?
Prove through textual examples that it is in the ending that Shaw’s true meaning in Mrs.
Warren’s Profession is revealed.
Discuss Mrs Warren’s Profession as a conflict between youthful ideas and economic realities.
Analyze the character of Vivie as the prototype of the New Woman.
Choose two characters and examine them from the aspects of how they revolt against their
established position in life, as daughters or wives, and, also, how they challenge their expected
role in the story as heroes, villains, or victims.
Argue for or against one of these statements, quoted from Ch. Berst (“Propaganda and Art in
Mrs. Warren’s Profession.” ELH 33.3 (1966): 390-404):
“Shaw’s intention is to reveal that the guilt for prostitution lies more upon society than upon
immoral women. Shaw’s premise, that prostitutes are forced into their profession by social
deprivation and not by natural inclination, is inaccurate. Contrary to scandalized contemporary
reaction, the play is highly moral.”

W. B. Yeats’s poems, “Easter 1916” and “Innisfree”

What is Yeats’s attitude towards the heroes of the rising as shown in the poem “Easter 1916”?
Explain the lines, “All changed, changed utterly / A terrible beauty is born” (ll. 15-16).
Discuss the symbols, stone, green, mother-child relationship in the poem “Easter 1916.”
Why do you think Yeats decided to “write in verse” the names of “MacDonagh and MacBride /
And Connolly and Pearse”?
Discuss the utopistic elements of “Innisfree.”
Analyze “Innisfree” as a fine example of Yeats’s early poetry. What poetic innovations,
linguistic and thematic, can you detect in the poem?
Draw parallels between Yeats’s poem “Innisfree” and H. D. Thoreau’s Walden.

“Modern Fiction” by Virginia Woolf, A Passage to India by E. M. Forster, and Heart of

Darkness by Joseph Conrad:

Why do earlier writers such as Jane Austen or Henry Fielding show “a strange air of simplicity”
in their novels? Do you agree with Woolf?
What does Woolf mean by “moments of being”? Explain.
The style of Forster’s novel.
The narrator’s role in A Passage to India.
Analyze one of the following themes and motifs related to A Passage to India (taken from
Knowledge Notes): religion and mysticism, chaos and order, athmosphere versus characters,
connections / divisions, East versus West.
Explain the title of Forster’s novel.
Explain the title of Joseph Conrad’s novel.
Empire and national identity in Heart of Darkness.
The narrator’s role in Heart of Darkness.
Heart of Darkness as a modernist work.

T. S. Eliot and W. H. Auden:

Analyze the “The Love Song” as a dramatic monologue.

Conceits and metaphors in “The Love Song.”
The singer’s hesitation in “The Love Song,” explain. Does Prufrock sing the song?
Intertextual references in “The Love Song.” How do they deepen meaning?
Explain the refrain, the recurring lines in “The Love Song.”
Describe the speaker, J. Alfred Prufrock.
Explain the ironic contrast of “love song” in the title and the prosaic character of Prufrock.
Explain the motto. How is it related to the rest of the poem?
An analysis of Eliot’s “Wasteland” as a modernist poem.
Analyze one of the following themes and motifs related to “The Waste Land” (taken from
Knowledge Notes): religion, love, loss, women, urban landscapes, class, ambiguity,
intertextuality.
Explain the epigraph at the beginning of “The Waste Land”.
Explain the title of “The Waste Land”.
Compare Brueghel’s piece of art, Icarus, with the theme of Auden’s poem.
Explain the notion of “suffering” in Auden’s poem.
Explain the line “a boy falling out of the sky” in Auden’s poem.

The French Lieutenant’s Woman by John Fowles.

The French Lieutenant’s Woman as a parody of the Victorian Novel. Explain and give examples.
Metafictional elements in The French Lieutenant’s Woman.
The French Lieutenant’s Woman as a postmodern novel.
Compare the characters of Sarah Woodruff and Ernestina Freeman.
Describe Charles’s character as the prototype of the Victorian gentleman.
Compare the characters of Charles and Tina’s father.
Explain the title of the book.
Why is Sarah called the French Lieutenant’s Woman? Give examples from the text.
Why are there different endings of the novel? Which one do you prefer and why?

Philip Larkin, Ted Hughes, and Seamus Heaney:

Analyze the main theme of “Church Going” by Philip Larkin.

Religious imagery in “Church Going,” explain.
Explain the title of Larkin’s poem.
Analyze “Pike” by Ted Hughes as a parable.
Visual elements and images in “Pike.”
Explain the title of Seamus Heaney’s poem, “Punishment.”
Explain “bog” as the main metaphor in the poem “Punishment” by Seamus Heaney.
Explain the term “your betraying sisters” in Heaney’s poem.

Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett (see Literature Online, Knowledge Notes):

Waiting for Godot as a series of “meditations,” discuss.

Why did Beckett subtitle his play a “tragicomedy”? Explain.
Explain the multiple concepts of time in the play.
Search for Meaning: the fragmentation and ambiguity of Godot.
Analyze the notions of “Self” and “Identity” as they appear in the play.
Relationships in Waiting for Godot (Estragon and Vladimir). Give examples and analyze them.