View a FREE sample

This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. Does Ash think that Christabel can be both a muse and a poet?

2. What is the title of the book Roland looks at?

3. Where do Roland and Maud decide to go together to further their investigation?

4. What is the library at Seal Court like?

5. How long have Maud and Roland given themselves to work?

Short Essay Questions

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

2. How does Roland compare Maud to Christabel?

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

4. How does Cropper feel about Blackadder?

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

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

7. What is the weather like on Roland and Maud's day trip away from Ash and Christabel?

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

9. Who are Ask and Embla?

10. How does Fergus describe Maud?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Discuss the structure of the novel.

1) Why and how does the novel use letters, excerpts of poems, and journal entries in its telling of the story?

2) How does the novel gradually reveal the story of Ash and Maud?

3) How do the characters of Roland and Maud change over the course of the novel?

Essay Topic 2

The novel is subtitled "a romance." Discuss the ways in which the novel is a romance.

1) How is intellectual investigation a kind of romance? How are the characters obsessed and entranced by what they are investigating?

2) How do the characters make romantic connections with each other? What is romance, in the context of the novel?

3) How is the novel a romance, in the sense of being a fantasy?

Essay Topic 3

Discus the role of objects in the story, and how they are and are not invested with meaning.

1) What gives an object meaning? How do the letters that Roland finds have meaning, and why is the meaning only identified when Roland reads the letters?

2) How does context relate to meaning? Why can Maud only interpret Christabel's doll poem correctly in the context of Christabel's room? What other examples are there in the novel of context giving meaning to objects or words?

3) What meanings do the physical objects in Ash's box have? How are these meanings different for different people, in different contexts?

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 682 words (approx. 3 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample