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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. Does Maud like Ash's poems?

2. How does Roland help Lady Joan Bailey?

3. What herb does the apparition offer the child?

4. Where did Ash meet the woman the letters are addressed to?

5. How many pictures of Ash does Roland have?

Short Essay Questions

1. What, in her own life, does Val compare Roland's work to?

2. What does Sir George plan to do at the end of the chapter?

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

4. How does Fergus Wolff know about Christabel LaMotte?

5. What is Maud's dilemma about Leonora?

6. How do the three apparitions describe themselves to the child?

7. What does Maud tell Beatrice about the importance of what she finds in Ellen's journal and papers?

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

9. How does Roland feel at the prospect of reading Christabel and Ash's letters?

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

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Discuss the metaphoric meanings in LaMotte and Ash's poems and stories as presented in the novel.

1) What is the meaning of "The Threshold," and why is it placed where it is in the story?

2) What is the meaning of the portion of "The Fairy Melusine" in the novel, and why is it placed where it is?

3) What are the meanings of the portions of "Mummy Possest" and "Swammerdam" in the novel, and why are they placed where they are?

Essay Topic 2

One of the fundamental ideas in the novel is the nature of knowledge. Discuss knowledge and unknowability in the novel.

1) How is the characters' knowledge about their poets thrown into upheaval? How does what the characters "know" differ from objective truth?

2) What knowledge do the characters have about each other? How does Roland's knowledge of Maud change over the course of the novel?

3) What does the postscript at the end of the novel say about knowledge and its limits?

Essay Topic 3

Knowledge and reality are constructed in different ways throughout the novel, and one way is by the consensus of a society. Discuss knowledge and reality as a group agreement in the novel.

1) Discuss the story of the giant that Ash writes about from Yorkshire. How do the local people create knowledge through myth? Identify other examples of this in the novel.

2) How do scholarly groups create reality through consensus in the novel? How does this affect the relationship between what is known and the objective truth?

3) What happens when the individual's perspective is different from the group consensus, as with Swammerdam?

(see the answer keys)

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