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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. Where did Ash get the jewelry he gives to Christabel?

2. Whose horse wins the horse race?

3. How does Roland feel toward the cats?

4. What does Dr. LeMinier give Maude?

5. Where do Maud, Roland, Euan, Val, and Toby decide the letters should go?

Short Essay Questions

1. How do Maud and Roland react to Euan's phone call?

2. What does Beatrice Nest overhear?

3. How does Val feel about her new relationship?

4. Describe Cropper's lectures.

5. What is the result of the knight drinking the cup offered to him by Melusine?

6. How do Roland and Maud feel about each other?

7. What does Roland start to do at the end of Chapter 26?

8. How does Ellen Ash feel about Christabel?

9. Where has Euan located Cropper and Hildebrand?

10. How does Blanche Glover feel at the end of her life?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

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?

Essay Topic 2

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?

Essay Topic 3

In many ways, the novel is a mystery. Discuss the aspects of mystery in the novel.

1) How do the characters gather clues in order to unravel the story? How is this similar to a traditional detective story, and how is it different?

2) What mysteries do the characters resolve in the course of the story? What remains a mystery? Why are parts of the mystery left unsolved?

3) How is literature a kind of puzzle in the novel?

(see the answer keys)

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