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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 does Marx say is the central theme of pastoral literature?

2. What is the second reaction Marx describes to industrialism?

3. What is the heart of the pastoral ideal?

4. What does the end of Shakespeare's 'The Tempest' demonstrate, in Marx's interpretation?

5. What virtues did Jefferson associate with the civilization?

Short Essay Questions

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

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

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

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

5. What are the three spatial stages a person goes through in pastoral ideal?

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

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

8. What is the pastoral ideal?

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

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

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

From driving to National Parks, or seeing wildlife in zoos or managing environments for the sake of wildfires or endangered species, Americans seem to be able to reconcile a high level of science and industry with a high sense of nature and pristineness. What arts or cultural developments have allowed Americans to endure the paradoxes of their industrial lifestyles?

Essay Topic 2

How did the frontier resolve the tension between pastoralism and industrialism? How did it make the tension worse?

Essay Topic 3

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?

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 597 words (approx. 2 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample