English 2520 Survey of British Literature II Name_________________________
Final Exam
British Romantic, Victorian and Modern Writers
Directions: The following essay questions and sub-questions need to be answered
thoroughly by stating your major premise, interpretation, and evidence. Successful answers
to the questions will demonstrate direct responses to the essay questions that will include
themes, ideas, and well-selected examples from the reading selections and your critical
insight. The written responses need to reveal your understanding about important imagery,
allusions, tone, and diction in the texts.
CHOOSE TOPIC #1 OR TOPIC #2 (25 points): I chose topic 1
1. Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818) concerns the Romantic themes of
creation, invention, and animation. Shelley’s gothic novel utilizes overlapping levels of
narration evident in the three narrators: Robert Walton, Victor Frankenstein, and the
Creature. In 3-4 pages, you will need to consider the following:
• What is the significance of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s title Frankenstein or The
Modern Prometheus? How can Frankenstein be likened to a Byronic hero? In other
words, what is his quest? To what extent does Frankenstein fulfill his quest?
• Mary Shelley Wollstonecraft includes this epigraph from Paradise Lost beneath the
title: “Did I request thee, Maker, from my clay / To mould me
man? Did I solicit thee / From darkness to promote me?” What do these lines mean?
In other words, what sort of analogy can be drawn here between Adam and God in
comparison to the Creature and Frankenstein in this context? How does the
Creature identify himself with Adam in terms of his request? How does
Frankenstein identify himself with the “Maker”?
• After Frankenstein’s death, the Creature admits: “But I was the slave, not the
master of an impulse, which I detested, yet could not disobey” (Shelley, Norton,
1032). How would you characterize his “impulse”? Do you agree or disagree that the
Creature was a “slave” to the “impulse” that he “detested” and “could not
disobey”? Why? Or why not? Conclusions?
CHOOSE TOPIC #3 OR TOPIC #4 (25 points): I chose topic 3
3. William Butler Yeats’s lyrics Sailing to Byzantium (1926) and Byzantium (1930)
exemplify the mature stage of Yeats’s great poetry. Yeats’s images about Byzantium
constitute his attempt to create a unique vision. In 3-4 pages, you will need to consider:
• To what extent do you consider Yeats’s poems about Byzantium to be, as Paul de man
notes in “Image and Emblem in Yeats,” the “culmination and fulfillment” of the
romantic tradition” (de Man, Rhetoric of Romanticism, 149) OR an instance of a
resistance to romanticism –a sort of anti-romanticism? In other words, would you
consider Yeats to be a poet who has been influenced by romanticism? Why? How?
• What do the titles Sailing to Byzantium (1926) and Byzantium (1930) suggest? What does
the “holy city” of Byzantium represent? By “sailing the seas,” what is the speaker or
“aged man” crossing over? What does the vision of the sages in “God’s holy fire” who
“come from holy fire to be “singing masters” of the speaker’s soul suggest?
• How do you interpret the image of a golden “artificial bird” singing of “what is past, or
passing, or to come”? Do you consider these images to be romantic or anti-romantic?
Why?
THIS IS THE END OF THE FINAL EXAM. SUBMIT BOTH ESSAYS ON ONE MS
WORD FILE TO CANVAS.
