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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 lies on the table in the first stanza of "A Cooking Egg"?

2. What is the last time mentioned in "Rhapsody on a Windy Night"?

3. Who is claimed as "our sentimental friend" in "Conversation Galante"?

4. Behind what does the "small soul" of "Animula" curl up?

5. Under what did the poem's speaker look for Mr. Apollinax's head to roll?

Short Essay Questions

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

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

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

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

5. What is meant in The Hippopotamus by stating that the "True Church remains below / Wrapt in the old miasmal mist"?

6. What is the tone of the speaker in "Morning at the Window" and why?

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

8. What is implied by stating in "The Hippopotamus" that the "True Church need never stir / To gather in its dividends"?

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

10. What is the apparent distinction between the two speakers in "Conversation Galante"?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

A persistent theme throughout Eliot's later poetry, from "Ash-Wednesday" onwards, is the power of faith in the decaying world, which is the theme of Eliot's earlier poetry. Provide your own critical analysis of this theme, drawing upon texts from several of Eliot's poems. What is the essential nature of the world around man as described in Eliot's poems? How does modernity contribute to this nature? What is there for man to find in the modern world? In contradistinction, what is found in faith? How does faith contradict the nature of the modern world? What is described as lacking in Eliot's early poems but found in a different way in his later poems?

Essay Topic 2

A subtle and often misinterpreted poem, "Mr. Eliot's Sunday Morning Service" features a complexity of thought on which the poem itself reflects. Examine this poem and provide an in-depth analysis of the poem's overall significance. What is the poem saying in its two individual halves? What is being said in each individual stanza? What is the meaning of the various images throughout the poem? How do they relate to one another? What is the overall literal significance of the poem? What does this overall literal significance indicate about the poem's deeper meaning? Most importantly, what is the significance of Sweeney in the poem?

Essay Topic 3

The majority of T.S. Eliot's poetry is written in the deliberately unstructured form of free verse. Prior to Eliot, many poets considered this an inferior form, and in some cases, not a form at all. Evaluate Eliot's use of free verse in one or more of his poems, and judge whether or not it is truly poetic. What does free verse enable the poet to do that regularly structured meter does not? What effects does the free verse employed by Eliot produce? How does the free verse employed by Eliot produce effects? In the poem chosen, what particular effects does the free verse used produce? Why is this fitting for the poem's overall meaning? In what way is the poem truly or not truly poetic because of the free verse form?

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