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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. When did the assault on American pastoralism begin, in Marx's account?

2. What would people live on, in Gonzalo's ideal world?

3. What contradictory aspects of the American landscape came to characterize American pastoralism?

4. How did Barlowe describe the indigenous people he encountered?

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

Short Essay Questions

1. How did Jefferson change his view on industrialism?

2. When did the pastoral ideal become a part of American culture?

3. What contradiction marks the early accounts of the New World, according to Marx?

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

5. What view did the colonists take of the New World in the early years of colonization?

6. How does Shakespeare demonstrate the impossibility of the pastoral ideal?

7. What is the sentimental pastoral ideal?

8. What is the consequence of the pastoral ideal?

9. What does Marx mean when he says that America offered a middle way for men?

10. Where has the pastoral ideal been apparent in American culture?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Which literary forms are most appropriate to the pastoral life, poetry, fiction or the non-fiction essays like Emerson and Thoreau wrote? Is there a literature form that corresponds to experience?

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

Do you think that there was ever a 'good place in nature' or is this concept itself a nostalgic imposition on the experience of loss, and the acquisition of civilization?

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This section contains 671 words (approx. 3 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample