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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. What associations were suggested by Marx's leading symbol of industrialism?

2. How does Marx characterize Prospero and members of the court?

3. What were Beverly's sources for his history of Virginia?

4. What piece by Nathaniel Hawthorne does Marx treat as emblematic of American pastoralism?

5. How have liberal thinkers portrayed the sentimental pastoral ideal, in Marx's account?

Short Essay Questions

1. How does Marx describe the value of Shakespeare's 'The Tempest' in 'The Machine in the Garden'?

2. What characters does Marx cite as examples of people who have gone through those three stages?

3. How did Robert Beverly describe the New World in his History?

4. How did Shakespeare's characters describe the ideal society?

5. How does Marx describe the ambiguity of existence Beverly hit on?

6. How did Jefferson separate America and Europe in his Notes on Virginia?

7. When did complex pastoral ideology begin to appear in American culture?

8. How did colonists see America?

9. How long does Marx say the pastoral ideal has endured?

10. How had Shakespeare learned about conditions in America?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Is the purpose of pastoral ideology really to return to society with the knowledge that living in civilization requires killing off and destroying nature? Is the time in nature and return to society really designed to initiate people into the knowledge that civilization is destructive? Or is pastoralism the conscience's revenge against industrialism, a nostalgia that makes it impossible to accept everything industrialism provides?

Essay Topic 2

Some writers describe pastoralism as a contradiction or paradox, between the good life and civilization on one hand and savagery on the other. How do authors strike this paradox, without falling off into a fixed idea, or stable definition, on one hand, or all-encompassing overreach on the other? How do authors keep the paradox alive?

Essay Topic 3

The Bible is frequently cited as a source for the colonists' belief that they had reached a promised land where they had to have dominion and make a city on the hill, a garden out of the wilderness. Trace one biblical imperative through a few works of pastoral ideal. How does the biblical idea express itself in different works?

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This section contains 680 words (approx. 3 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample