Final Examination for College Preparatory

Course in History of English Literature

MAUD ELMA KINGSLEY, EAST MACHIAS, MAINE.

Note. This test is not meant to be given at one sitting. Any three of the questions should occupy the attention of the pupil for forty minutes.

I.

(1) When was the English language first written in a form intelligible to the modern reader? (2) How does "Modern English" differ from "Middle English"? (3) What causes produced these differences? (4) Write a passage from Wiclif's Translation of the Bible. Write ten lines from the Prologue to the Canterbury Tales. (5) Show the differences in spelling between the above passages and the corresponding modern version. Make a list of obsolete words from these passages.

II.

(1) Give in no more than fifteen words a definition of literature. (2) What is the scope of a History of English Literature? (3) Make a plan for the first and last chapters of such a history. (4) Make an index of your text book (from memory), putting two headings under each letter of the alphabet. (5) Write the entire title of the text book which you study. Write the name of its author and publisher and the date of publication.

III.

(1) Name five literary productions written before the time of Chaucer. (2) Write a paper of one hundred words on any one of them, mentioning subject, language, literary form, etc.

IV.

(1) Name the different classes of poetical composition. (2) Assign each of the following to its class. (3) Name the author of each. (4) Arrange the names of the authors in chronological order. (5) Give the meaning of each title.

Canterbury Tales, Idylls of the King, Elegy in a Country Churchyard, Childe Harold, Deserted Village, Faerie Quene, Sohrab and Rustum, Rape of the Lock, Ancient Mariner, Pied Piper of Hamelin, The Ring and the Book, The Recessional, Lalla Rookh, Paradise Lost, Intimations of Immortality, The Lady of the Lake, Midsummer Night's Dream, Comus, Adonais, Cotter's Saturday Night.

V.

(1) Write a Table of Contents for a volume of The Canterbury Tales. (2) For a volume of Idylls of the King. (3) Give five names associated in literature with the legend which is the foundation of Idylls of the King. (4) Give the names of ten poems written by the author of the Idylls of the King. (5) Give the century of each of the two authors whose works are mentioned in this question.

VI.

(1) Divide into periods the History of English Literature from Chaucer to 1880. (2) Assign to each period one poet and one prose writer, with two works of each.

VII.

(1) If you lived in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, what contemporary literature might you have read? (2) What famous persons might you have seen? (3) What forms of amusement might you have enjoyed?

VIII.

(1) How does dramatic composition differ from other literary forms? (2) Give the titles of ten famous dramatic compositions by ten different authors. (3) Name the author of each. (4) Describe in detail the stage settings and theatre arrangements for the first presentation of As You Like It. (5) Describe in detail a performance of As You Like It presented in 1920.

IX.

(1) Name the different classes of prose composition. (2) Assign to its class each composition mentioned below. (3) Give the author of each. (4) Arrange the names of the authors in chronological order. (5) Give the meaning of the title of each production.

Utopia, Sir Roger de Coverley Papers, Morte d'Arthure, On the Human Understanding, Rasselas, Robinson Crusoe, Pilgrim's Progress, Areopagitica, A Sentimental Journey, Vicar of Wakefield, Clarissa Harlow, Cranford, Gulliver's Travels, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Pride and Prejudice, Ivanhoe, Dissertation on Roast Pig, Novum Organum, The Compleat Angler.

X.

(1) What is meant by the style of a literary production? by natural style? by artificial style? by a school of poetry? (2) Name two writers of the Artificial School of Poetry. (3) What element was restored to English poetry by Robert Burns? (4) How did Wordsworth's poetry differ radically from the poetry of preceding eras? (5) Give the subjects of three of Wordsworth's

sonnets.

XI.

(1) Name five poems illustrative of Poetry of Natural Description. (2) Give five headings for an outline of the biography of Shelley, Keats, De Quincey, Mrs. Browning.

XII.

(1) Name the three great novelists of the first half of the nineteenth century. (2) Name five works of each. (3) How did they differ in choice of subject, treatment of subject, delineation of character? (4) What is the difference between a novel and a narrative? between a novel and a romance? (5) Name a work illustrative of each class.

XIII.

(1) Describe Scott's literary activity. (2) Name his three narrative poems and give the subject of each.

XIV.

(1) Imagine yourself living in 1711. What periodical would be read by you each morning? (2) Mention ten "headlines" that appear in this news sheet. (3) What dramas would you see when you went to the theatre? (4) What contemporary literature would you read? (5) What books of a generation before would you have in your library?

XV.

(1) What connection with English literature has each of the following names: Caxton, Sir Patrick Spens, Noah Webster, Hume, Richardson, Boswell, Robin Hood, Ossian, Burke, Wesley, Dryden, Ruskin, Adam Smith, King Arthur, Ben Jonson, Gay, Beowulf, Percy's Reliques, Romeo and Juliet, Cowper.

A

The New Poetry

ALDA DOROTHEA LEAW, PHILADELPHIA, PA.

T this time, when vers libre is affording the devotees of metrical poetry a target for raillery or ridicule, and the readers of prose another grudge against poetry in general, the old question, "What are the essentials of true poetry?" arises, perhaps, more frequently and insistently than ever before. We are indebted to the new school of poets for the increased curiosity and interest shown toward this subject. This school has sent forth a bountiful flowering of literary material, and has sown its seed broadcast with admirable good will. Its poetry is neither parasite nor orchid. It is cropping up in the schoolroom, the workshop, and the humblest home. It has also revived a flagging interest in the art among educators. The grammars of our grandfathers and our fathers devoted a considerable part of their contents to prosody. Grammarians saw fit to remove this subject from their later treatises of English language; but school children are again studying and writing verse as enthusiastically as they study and write prose. There must be a sufficient reason for this shifting of the poet's mantle. What is the claim of these enthusiasts who would acquaint our formal gardens with their ragged unfamiliar flowers. They root and bloom with the audacity and the tenacity of ill weeds.

We are not informed that Adam wrote poems to Eve. May we surmise his greeting was not prosy? But, if Mr. Edison had recorded these introductory speeches, should we find them rhythmical? Rhythm is a sort of order; and order, we are told, is Heaven's first law. Does not law presuppose chaos? And rhythm, which has come down to us as the language of emotion,— should we expect to find elemental emotion orderly? We may, however, be willing to agree that rhythmic sound was primitive man's method of communal emotional expression. It was time