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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. America was depicted as a paradise that was also what, in Marx's account?

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

3. For what occasion did Jefferson write his Notes on Virginia?

4. What is the heart of the pastoral ideal?

5. What did colonists find in America?

Short Essay Questions

1. What is the pastoral ideal?

2. How did colonists see America?

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

4. What feature of American culture allowed Jefferson's ideal to survive for 100 years?

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

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

7. What is the sentimental pastoral ideal?

8. In what way does the railroad symbolize the industrial intrusion into a pastoral idyll?

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

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

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Manufacturing was both an evil and a source of national strength in the 18th century. How did manufacturing change the idea of industrialism, and did the acquisition of manufacturing strength redeem the loss of natural land? Who argued that it did? Who argued that it did not?

Essay Topic 2

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 3

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?

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