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. With whom does Val go to the horse race?

2. What does Roland read after he gets back to his apartment?

3. Who does Euan believe rightfully owns Christabel and Ash's letters today?

4. How many job application acceptances does Roland find in his mail?

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

Short Essay Questions

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

2. Describe Cropper's lectures.

3. What does Maud fear in relationships?

4. What does Beatrice Nest overhear?

5. What does Maud tell Roland about other people's perceptions of what the two are doing?

6. What offer does Blackadder make to Roland?

7. What similarities are there between Christabel and Ash's trip and Roland and Maud's trip?

8. What do Leonora and Blackadder do when Cropper's Mercedes passes them on the road?

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

10. What does the knight tell Melusine when he first sees her?

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

Discuss sexuality in the novel.

1) How is sexuality related to identity? What meanings does sexuality take on that are based on cultural perspectives? How is sexuality politicized? How does this affect Maud's life and relationships?

2) How is sexuality intertwined with intellectual experience, for Roland, Ash, Maud, and LaMotte?

3) What internal and external forces cause characters in the novel to act outside of the expected societal norm, in terms of sexuality? Discuss Leonora, Maud, Ash, Blanche, and Christabel's experiences of their own sexuality.

Essay Topic 3

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?

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 698 words (approx. 3 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample