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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. How many people speak in "Conversation Galante"?

2. To where do the speakers of the "Journey of the Magi" come in the second stanza?

3. To whom does the speaker hand a copy of the "Boston Evening Transcript"?

4. What do "these cogitations" sometimes "still amaze" in "La Figlia che Piange"?

5. What disordered objects are left in a dusty room in "Animula"?

Short Essay Questions

1. What evidently characterizes the woman in "Hysteria"?

2. What happened to Phlebas the Phoenician, as described in Part IV of "The Waste Land"?

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

4. What is the significance of the intimacy between the footman and the second housemaid in "Aunt Helen"?

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

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

7. How has Simeon passed his life, as described in "A Song for Simeon"?

8. How does Mr. Apollinax contrast with his hosts?

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

10. What is a possible interpretation of the last two lines of "Whispers of Immortality", "But our lot crawls between dry ribs / To keep our metaphysics warm"?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

One of his most prominent poems, "Ash-Wednesday" describes the process of a man's conversion to a Catholic (albeit Anglo-Catholic) faith. Analyze the portrayal of a non-Catholic life against a Catholic life, as put forth in "Ash-Wednesday". What are the characteristics of a non-Catholic life? In what sort of action and substance does such a life consist? Alternatively, what is found in the Catholic life? What is unique to the Catholic life? What are the images Eliot uses to draw these distinctions? How are these images somewhat ambiguous, and wherein, and how, does one make them distinct individually and coherent as a whole?

Essay Topic 2

In the third part of "Four Quartets - Burnt Norton" is a line which reads, "Distracted from distraction by distraction." This line has often been quoted in reference to the condition of the modern world. Evaluate the meaning of this statement, within the context of both the particular section in which it is found, the poem in which it is a part, and the society which it describes, in a well-thought-out analytical essay. What are man's distractions? Why is he distracted from them? How is man distracted in modernity? What sort of things distract him? How is this idea fleshed out in the third part of "Burnt Norton"? How is it further fleshed out in the poem as a whole? What does this distracted condition indicate about human nature and the human condition in the modern world?

Essay Topic 3

Frequently appearing in T.S. Eliot's poetry, explicitly in the later poems such as "Animula", "Choruses from 'The Rock'", and the "Four Quartets", and implicitly by its total lack in the earlier poems, such as "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" and "The Hollow Men", is the theme of hope. Analyze the two ways in which this is a prominent topic for Eliot, drawing upon several poems as sources. What is the nature of hope? In what ways is hope lost or absent? What contributes to the loss of hope? Contrariwise, in what is hope to be found? How is hope to be had? What contributes to the possession of hope? What does hope do for human persons?

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