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. What does Blackadder tell Fergus when Fergus asks where Roland is?

2. What does Blackadder discover Ash asked Christabel at a séance?

3. What document have Toby and Euan uncovered?

4. What does Dr. LeMinier give Maude?

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

Short Essay Questions

1. What does Roland think about Blackadder's letter?

2. What happens at Sabine's house when Christabel disappears?

3. How does Val feel about her new relationship?

4. What do Roland and Maud decide to do at the end of Chapter 18?

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

6. Where has Euan located Cropper and Hildebrand?

7. What is Maud and Roland's relationship in France like?

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

9. How does Blackadder feel about his work?

10. How does Ellen Ash feel about Christabel?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

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 2

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?

Essay Topic 3

Discuss understanding a text through an intermediary, such as Cropper's biography of Ash.

1) How does Cropper create a different reality of Ash, by imposing himself in Ash's story?

2) How does Maud interpret The Great Ventriloquist? How does she separate Cropper from Ash in what she reads? What meanings does the title The Great Ventriloquist take on in this context?

3) How do Blackadder's writings on Ash differ from Croppers? How does Blackadder try to keep his personal self out of his interpretive readings, and is this possible?

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 807 words (approx. 3 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample