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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. The "voice" in the second part of "Portrait of a Lady" says that her auditor, the poem's speaker, has no what?

2. Who spreads a pink and white checkered cloth over a rusty table in "Hysteria"?

3. At what time does "Rhapsody on a Windy Night" begin?

4. The speaker of "Ash Wednesday" informs a lady in Part II that what sat under a juniper tree?

5. Whom does the speaker claim is inane in "Conversation Galante"?

Short Essay Questions

1. How does the simple soul begin its life, according to the first 13 lines of "Animula"?

2. What is the tone of the speaker towards his life in "Rhapsody on a Windy Night", and how is this indicated in the poem?

3. What characterizes the speech of the stuffed men in "The Hollow Men"?

4. For what does Simeon hope in his encounter with the Christ child?

5. What is a possible interpretation of the "notion of some infinitely gentle / Infinitely suffering thing" described near the end of the "Preludes"?

6. Why does the speaker not want Pipit in Heaven in "A Cooking Egg"?

7. What is the significance of the two stanzas concerned with Donne in "Whispers of Immortality"?

8. Why is Sweeney uncomfortable in "Mr. Eliot's Sunday Morning Service"?

9. For what is the speaker yearning in "La Figlia che Piange", and what indicates this?

10. Who are the "ladies of the corridor" in "Sweeney Erect"?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Though a persistent if implicit consideration in all of Eliot's poetry, and explicit in all of the "Four Quartets", "The Dry Salvages" speaks of the "intersection of the timeless with time." Analyze and explicate this abstract and metaphysical statement in the context of either "The Dry Salvages" alone or of all of the "Four Quartets". What does it mean to say that time and the timeless intersect? What happens at such a point? What is to be found in time? What is to be found in the timeless? Who discerns this point? What does this indicate about the nature of humanity? How is this notion contextualized in the "Four Quartets"?

Essay Topic 2

In "Choruses from 'The Rock'", it is postulated that man without the Church at the center of his life is lost. Analyze this claim in a critical essay that evaluates the messages put forth in all ten of the choruses. What is the Church itself? What does the Church provide man that the rest of the world cannot? What happens to the rest of the world, particularly insofar as men interact with it, if men put the Church at the center of their lives? What does this indicate about the nature of humanity, at least in the way that Eliot perceives it and portrays it in "Choruses from 'The Rock'"?

Essay Topic 3

As one of Eliot's more controversial poems, "The Hippopotamus" is a commentary on religious belief and religious practice. Analyze and provide your own interpretation of this poem. What is the overall meaning of the poem? What are the individual parts which indicate this meaning? For what does the Hippopotamus within the poem stand? What is significant about the Hippopotamus' analogous portrayal? What is significant about the Church being referred to as the "True Church"? What is meant by the "old miasmal mist"?

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