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This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. What does Marx say about people who live pastoral lives?

2. What was unique about American manufacturing, in Coxe's view?

3. Who does Marx offer as examples of 'complex pastoralism' in America literature?

4. What skill did Twain idealize?

5. What was Daniel Webster's take on industrialism?

Short Essay Questions

1. What is the role of industry in Melville's Moby Dick?

2. How did the pastoral ideal redeem the horrors of industrialism?

3. What is complex pastoral ideology, and where does Marx see it in evidence?

4. How did Thoreau reconcile machines and nature?

5. How would you describe the genre shift at the end of 'The Machine in the Garden'?

6. What were the roles of men of understanding and men of reason in Emerson's vision?

7. What was John Orvis' reaction to industrialism?

8. What is the purpose of an epilogue?

9. What was America's first response to steam power in England?

10. How did Emerson react to industrialism?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Is there an essential pastoralism, or is each person's or culture's pastoralism unique to its own context? Does the similarity of symbols and associations apply in every time and case? Read one of the stories or novels Marx analyzes, to see how the pastoral themes might be unique to the individual work.

Essay Topic 2

Which literary forms are most appropriate to the pastoral life, poetry, fiction or the non-fiction essays like Emerson and Thoreau wrote? Is there a literature form that corresponds to experience?

Essay Topic 3

Is pastoralism a state of tension between nature and family on one hand and civilization on the other--is it something open-ended and eternal--or is it a goal, a way of life that can be lived if the right balances can be struck? What forces tend toward that balance? What forces tend to disturb or prevent it?

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 757 words (approx. 3 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample