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

2. What does Roland do with the letters?

3. Does Roland show Maud the letters?

4. What does Roland accidentally see?

5. What is Maud's suggestion for herself and Roland to read the letters?

Short Essay Questions

1. How do Beatrice Nest's students view her?

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

3. How do Christabel and Ash feel about meeting secretly?

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

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

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

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

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

9. What does Ash ask for, in his letters to the unknown woman?

10. What is Roland researching at the library?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

In the novel, scholars are in competition with each other, but they also must cooperate to find truths. Discuss competition versus cooperation in the novel.

1) Why do the characters keep information to themselves, as a possession? Why does Roland keep the letters, and why does Cropper "steal" photos of other letters of Ash? How does secrecy affect knowledge, both of the individual and society?

2) Why is Roland and Maud's picture of Ash and LaMotte incomplete without information from others? If they did not go to other scholars for cooperation, how would their final knowledge be different?

3) How does Cropper's attitude toward cooperation and competition differ from the other scholars in 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

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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