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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 technique is used in line 899, "Bids them leave quaking, bids them fear no more"?

2. What does Venus mean when she says, in lines 649 and 650, "For where love reigns, disturbing jealousy/ Doth call himself affection’s sentinel"?

3. What does Venus tell Adonis is usually unlike her?

4. What type of human does Venus compare the boar to?

5. Where does Venus go first thing in the morning?

Short Essay Questions

1. What trick do Venus's eyes play on her after she has been looking at Adonis's body for a few minutes?

2. After Adonis's death, what does Venus predict about love?

3. What is conveyed by the personification and the simile in the passage where Venus runs through the brush toward the sounds of Adonis's hunting party?

4. What happens to Venus's eyes when she first sees Adonis's dead body?

5. What does Venus say about death when she thinks that Adonis has died?

6. How does Venus's attitude toward death change when she believes that Adonis is alive?

7. How does Venus portray Adonis having sex as a kind of selfless action and his choosing chastity as selfishness?

8. What happens to Adonis's body at the end of the poem, and how does Venus respond?

9. What is ironic about the description of the colors around the boar's mouth?

10. How does the construction of line 832, "Passion on passion deeply is redoubled," mimic the sense of what is happening in this passage?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

What is the impact of the repetition and parallelism used in Venus and Adonis? The poem is notable both for the variety of these techniques--anaphora, alliteration, assonance, antanaclasis, epistrophe, polyptoton, chiasmus, antimetabole, and antithesis, among others--and for their frequency. How do these techniques create emphasis and highlight the relationships among ideas? In a broader sense, how do they establish ethos and impact the poem's tone? Write an essay in which you analyze the impact that the frequent and varied use of techniques of repetition and parallelism has on the poem's overall effect. Support your arguments with both quoted and paraphrased evidence from throughout the poem, making sure to cite any quoted language in MLA format.

Essay Topic 2

You are aware that Shakespeare borrowed from Ovid and that Ovid borrowed from Ancient Greek stories in order to tell the tale of Venus and Adonis. But did the Ancient Greeks also borrow from other sources? Do some research into the Sumarian figures of Dumuzi and Inanna, the Babylonian figures of Tammuz and Ishtar, and the Phoenician figures of Adon and Astarte. What elements of the story stay the same, and what elements change over time? What do you suspect causes the changes in the story as it spreads from society to society? What light does this shed on Shakespeare's choices and the society that he was living in? Write an essay in which you take a position about how the gradual changes in this very old story shed light on the cultures that tell the story--including the culture of Elizabethan England. Support your assertions with evidence from Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis, Ovid's Metamorphoses, and your online historical research. Cite all sources in MLA format.

Essay Topic 3

In Western literature, red is traditionally associated with beauty, and white is traditionally associated with virtue. Shakespeare uses these colors and their traditional symbolic meanings in many of his works. Does he do so in Venus and Adonis? What statement is this poem making about virtue? Is it related to beauty in any way? Where do the colors red and white occur in the poem, and what does each seem to be associated with? Write an essay in which you take a position on whether the colors red and white represent beauty and virtue in Venus and Adonis. Support your assertions with both quoted and paraphrased evidence from the poem; cite any borrowed language in MLA format.

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