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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. When does Val cook complex meals?

2. What does Blackadder do when Roland tells him about the notes in the book?

3. How does Roland feel about the library?

4. What attraction of Roland's apartment is forbidden to him?

5. What hotel is Cropper staying at?

Short Essay Questions

1. What is Swammerdam's situation at the end of his life?

2. In her diary, how does Ellen describe the visit she gets while Ash is away?

3. How does Fergus describe Maud?

4. What does Roland read at the end of the chapter?

5. What is Roland's initial reaction to the letters?

6. What do Roland and Maud do on their day trip?

7. Who are Ask and Embla?

8. What does Roland like about the library?

9. Why is Mrs. Wapshott unwilling to sell Ash's letters to Cropper?

10. What are Maud and Roland concerned might happen to their find in Christabel's room?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

In the novel, reading is an active experience, which is greatly influenced by not only the writer's perspective but the reader's perspective. Discuss the role of the reader's bias in the novel.

1) How does Roland's life influence how he interprets Ash? How does this dynamic cause Blackadder, Roland, and Cropper to all have distinctive experiences of Ash?

2) How do the characters' readings of Ash and LaMotte change over the course of the novel, not because of what they learn about the poets, but because of changes in themselves? How do the characters' personal experiences and biases prevent objective understandings of the authors' intentions?

3) How do formal perspectives, like feminism, create a group bias in the reading of LaMotte? What other examples of this dynamic are there in the novel?

Essay Topic 2

Compare Ash and LaMotte's relationship to Maud and Roland's.

1) How are the two couples' experiences in Yorkshire similar? How are they different? What does this show about the characters?

2) What allows Maud and Roland to come together in a relationship, while Ash and LaMotte's relationship can only be fleeting and secret?

3) What compels Ash and LaMotte together? What needs do they fulfill in each other? How does this compare to Maud and Roland, and the forces that compel them toward each other?

Essay Topic 3

The novel follows two parallel stories, one in the past and one in the present. Discuss the relationship of the past and the present in the novel.

1) How is communication possible between the past and the present?

2) What drives the characters to try to understand the past? Why does Roland study the past?

3) What do parallels between the past and the present say about human experience?

(see the answer keys)

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