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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 feeling characterized the beginning of Mark Twain's writing career?

2. What does Marx say about people who live pastoral lives?

3. How did Americans see westward expansion, in Marx's account?

4. How did nature continue to redeem individuals in pastoral ideology?

5. How did Emerson describe the relationship between the east and the west?

Short Essay Questions

1. What is the purpose of an epilogue?

2. What was John Orvis' reaction to industrialism?

3. What was Mark Twain's stance on technology and nature in Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court?

4. What is Ishmael's relationship with Ahab, in Melville's Moby Dick?

5. How did Thoreau reconcile machines and nature?

6. How would you characterize Marx's own view about pastoralism?

7. What is complex pastoral ideology, and where does Marx see it in evidence?

8. How would you describe the genre shift at the end of 'The Machine in the Garden'?

9. What was the dark side of industrialism, in most writers' eyes?

10. How does Marx characterize the modern response to pastoralism?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Is there an essential pastoralism, or is each person's or culture's pastoralism unique to its own context? Does the similarity of symbols and associations apply in every time and case? Read one of the stories or novels Marx analyzes, to see how the pastoral themes might be unique to the individual work.

Essay Topic 2

Read the dialogue between Tityrus and Meliboeus in Virgil's Eclogues, and describe what makes American pastoralism uniquely American. Is pastoralism really an eternal theme in civilized culture, or is there a uniquely American strain to it?

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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