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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. Which of the following will "urge the eager-hearted / spirit to travel" (ll. 48-52)?
2. Which of the following is NOT hanging "in the balance before its due time" (ll. 68-70)?
3. What does the narrator note a man will have from his seafaring (l. 42)?
4. In the line “my spirit moves with the sea-flood” (l. 59), how many relatively stressed / emphasized syllables are present?
5. With what does the narrator remark a brother may wish to bury his brother (ll. 97-99)?
Short Essay Questions
1. Consider the comment that “the lone flier cries out, / incites my heart irresistibly to the whale’s path / over the open sea” (ll. 62-64). What is the lone flier? How do you know?
2. Consider the narrator’s assertion that “Always, for everyone, one of three things / hangs in the balance before its due time: / illness or age or attack by the sword / wrests life away from one doomed to die” (ll. 68-71). What tone is conveyed by the passage, and how is it conveyed?
3. What tone is present in the following passage, and how is it conveyed? “The days are lost, / and all the pomp of this earthly kingdom; / there are now neither kings nor emperors / nor gold-givers as there once were, / when they did the greatest glorious deeds / and lived in most lordly fame” (ll. 80-85)?
4. The narrator asserts that “And so no man on earth is so proud in spirit, / nor so gifted in grace or so keen in youth, / nor so bold in deeds, nor so beloved of his lord, / that he never has sorrow over his seafaring, / when he sees what the Lord might have in store for him” (ll. 39-43). Line 40 stands out from the surrounding lines in using the conjunction “or” instead of “nor,” implying a different relationship between “so gifted in grace” and “so keen in youth” than between “bold in deeds” and “beloved of his lord” (l. 41). What is the implied relationship, and how is it implied?
5. The narrator asserts that “And so no man on earth is so proud in spirit, / nor so gifted in grace or so keen in youth, / nor so bold in deeds, nor so beloved of his lord, / that he never has sorrow over his seafaring, / when he sees what the Lord might have in store for him” (ll. 39-43). What tone is conveyed in the assertion, and how?
6. In ll. 55-57, the narrator returns to something of a motif in the poem, stating that “He does not know, / the man blessed with ease, what those endure / who walk most widely in the paths of exile.” What tone is conveyed by the motif? What purpose does it serve as it follows the previous few sentences that speak to longing for the sea?
7. Consider ll. 58-102 as a unit. What is the overall tone of the passage, and how is it conveyed?
8. The narrator comments that “He has no thought of the harp or the taking of rings, / nor the pleasures of woman or joy in the world, / nor anything else but the tumbling waves— / he always has longing who hastens to sea” (ll. 44-47). What rhetorical appeal/s does the narrator make in the comment?
9. The narrator comments that “He has no thought of the harp or the taking of rings, / nor the pleasures of woman or joy in the world, / nor anything else but the tumbling waves— / he always has longing who hastens to sea” (ll. 44-47). What tone is conveyed in the comment, and how?
10. What is the strongest pattern of alliteration in line line 42, "that he never has sorrow over his seafaring," and why?
Essay Topics
Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:
Essay Topic 1
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 2
Consider the central message of "The Seafarer." Argue how the message and / or its support is incorrect; identify the weaknesses in the poem's central message and / or the way it presents the message, articulating why the identified weaknesses are, in fact, weaknesses.
Essay Topic 3
Consider how effectively "The Seafarer" puts across its central message to its PRESUMED PRIMARY AUDIENCE (that is, the people at Exeter Cathedral who would have read or heard the text in the Middle Ages). Consider also how effectively the poem puts across its central message for YOU as a current reader. What do the similarities / differences in the poem's effectiveness suggest about the differences between the audiences? How do they do so? (In effect, you are being asked to compare / contrast the audiences in terms of how and why "The Seafarer" does and does not convey its central message clearly.)
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This section contains 1,375 words (approx. 5 pages at 300 words per page) |
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