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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. In Goblin Market, with what does Laura's sister attempt to purchase the goblin fruit?

2. Whose wings does God guide in Spring?

3. In Dream Land, towards what direction does the poem's subject face?

4. In the first line of Echo, the speaker demands that her auditor come to her in the silence of the what?

5. With what does the great lord fill the poem's speaker's heart in the first stanza of Cousin Kate?

Short Essay Questions

1. How is it that life comes out of the depths of winter according to Rossetti's Spring?

2. What is "the one certainty," as proposed in the poem of the same name?

3. Why, of all the women in A Triad, do none achieve life?

4. For what is the speaker of Echo in longing?

5. How does Maude Clare, in the poem of the same name confront the newly-wedded couple?

6. Why would the flowers given to the youth change from roses to violets after death in the first poem entitled Song?

7. What is the meaning of the phrase, "Where thirsting longing eyes / Watch the slow door / That opening, letting in, lets out no more" in Echo?

8. What does the "Spring" in the second stanza of The First Spring Day interpretatively signify?

9. What is the tone of the speaker towards death in the final poem entitled Song?

10. What is a possible interpretation of the meaning of the last four lines of Dream Land?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Goblin Market and Other Poems contains two poems which can definitively be identified as dramatic monologues: Winter: My Secret and No Thank You, John. Compose an analytical essay which examines these two works. How are they identified as dramatic monologues? Who are the speakers, and who are their auditors? What is the tone of the speakers towards their auditors? What do the speakers unwittingly reveal about themselves? What is the overall significance of each poem?

Essay Topic 2

Oftentimes the exact meaning of a poem can be difficult to discern by simply reading what is present on the page; the literal text demands that the reader make an inference based on what is written, without explicitly making it clear. This is perhaps most evident in The One Certainty, but can also be seen in Sweet Death, Dream Land and many others. Using examples from Rossetti's poetry, write an analytical essay on the process of valid inference of meaning from a poem in which the literal meaning obscures the deeper significance. What are some examples of this inference? How is this inference made? What validates such inference? What are the difficulties of making such an inference? How should such an inference be portrayed?

Essay Topic 3

Throughout a great deal of Rossetti's poetry, there is a connection drawn between life and love, between living and loving. This can be seen in At Home, A Triad, A Birthday, After Death, An End, and many others. Explicate in a thoroughly-developed analytical essay the significance of this connection. In what way are the two states or actions comparable? Why would one be linked with the other? What makes the two similar? How is this demonstrated in the various poems of Christina Rossetti? What does this connection reveal about human nature?

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