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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. The narrator describes which of the following as his thinking part (l. 34)?
2. The narrator describes hail as which of the following (ll. 32-33)?
3. The narrator describes his thoughts as doing which of the following (ll. 33-34)?
4. How many stressed / emphasized syllables occur in the opening comment of the poem, “I sing a true song of myself” (l. 1)?
5. The narrator notes that which of the following darkened (l. 31)?
Short Essay Questions
1. The narrator comments that “they compel me now, / my heart-thoughts, to try for myself / the high seas, the tossing salt streams; / my heart’s desire urges my spirit / time and again to travel, so that I might seek / far from here a foreign land” (ll. 33-38). What tone is conveyed in the passage?
2. The poem opens with the narrator saying “I sing a true song of myself, / tell of my journeys” (ll. 1-2). What rhetorical appeal/s does the narrator make in doing so?
3. What tone is set by the first 26 lines of the poem? How do they do so?
4. Consider the kenning for hail, “coldest of grains” (l. 33). How does the kenning construct meaning?
5. The narrator states that “The night-shadow darkened; snow came from the north, / frost bound the ground, hail fell on earth, / coldest of grains” (ll. 31-33). What rhetorical appeal/s does the narrator make in the statement?
6. The opening passages of the poem has the narrator state that “in days of toil / I’ve often suffered troubled times, / hard heartache” (ll. 2-4). What rhetorical appeal/s does the narrator make in doing so?
7. Consider the symbolism of the seabirds the narrator catalogs (ll. 20-23). What rhetorical appeal/s does the narrator make in evoking it?
8. The narrator remarks that “he who has tasted life’s joy in towns, / suffered few sad journeys, scarcely believes, / proud and puffed up with wine, what I, weary, / have often had to endure in my suffering” (ll. 27-30). What rhetorical appeal/s does the narrator make in doing so?
9. The narrator remarks that “he who has tasted life’s joy in towns, / suffered few sad journeys, scarcely believes, / proud and puffed up with wine, what I, weary, / have often had to endure in my suffering” (ll. 27-30). What tone is conveyed in the passage?
10. Consider the symbolism of the swan-song the narrator mentions (ll. 19-20). What rhetorical appeal/s does the narrator make in evoking it?
Essay Topics
Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:
Essay Topic 1
Consider the circumstances in which the original text of “The Seafarer” exists, notably the historical and physical contexts of the work. Who would the expected primary audience be? What in the text and its physical and historical contexts suggests it? How do they do so?
Essay Topic 2
Liuzza remarks that there is a shift in the poem so drastic that it has been taken in the past to indicate two narrators at work in the poem (19n5). While Liuzza adds that scholarship generally rejects the idea, there is still a pronounced shift in tone in the poem. Where is it, and what in the text places it at that point, rather than at another point?
Essay Topic 3
Liuzza translates the Old English “forþon” as “and so” throughout his rendering, emphasizing the uncertainty of relationships between ideas in it (19n4). What effects does such ambiguity have for CURRENT readers (that is, those hearing / reading the text today)? How does it enact those effects?
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This section contains 1,043 words (approx. 4 pages at 300 words per page) |
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