Short Answer Questions: These are straightforward. I’ll supply a term and ask you to define it, or I may ask you to characterize something like Aestheticism or Darwin’s view of nature. So be sure you know the meaning of important terms and concepts such as dramatic monologue, natural theology and natural selection, Oxford Movement, Aestheticism, agnosticism, gothic revival, Pre Raphaelite Brotherhood, instress/inscape, natural supernaturalism, pastoral elegy, The Woman Question, Decadent Movement, “to see the object as in itself it really is,” theodicy, etc. The only thing to beware of is spending a disproportionate amount of time answering these questions--don't, for example, use up 50% of the exam time answering the short answer questions if they only count for 20% of the points.
ID Questions: I provide you with a short passage and ask you to identify the author and title of the work, then to discuss briefly the significance of the passage. I always choose important passages that we have discussed in class, so you don't have to worry about me delving into obscure nooks and crannies for passages you've never seen before. As with short answer questions, be careful not to spend too much time on the IDs unless you have the time to spare. Answer those questions you can identify immediately; come back to ones you can't. If you have trouble, look for context clues. Save time by simply naming the author and work (i.e. Tennyson, "Locksley Hall") rather than putting them into a sentence (i.e. "This is from Tennyson's ‘Locksley Hall’").
Then, in complete sentences, discuss the significance of the passage. This is where students kill themselves. People who have done the reading and come to class generally don't have much trouble identifying the work, but they too often don't get the significance because they don't think about the passage's relationship to larger issues. Explaining significance may require some explanation of the content and situation of the passage, but simply re-stating the passage in your own words is not the point. Rather, significance means relating the passage to key points about the author, the work, and especially to the period. Say as much as you can about the passage within your time limit but be sure to hit the most important points.
For example, if I gave you:
Vanity, saith the preacher, vanity!A bad answer would be this: R. Browning, "The Bishop Orders His Tomb." The speaker is the Bishop, who is dying. He wants his sons to be sure to have a nice tomb made for him, and he mentions their mother, whom his former rival envied because she was so beautiful.
Draw round my bed: is Anselm keeping back?
Nephews--sons mine . . . ah God, I know not! Well--
She, men would have to be your mother once,
Old Gandolf envied me, so fair she was!
This merely summarizes content. It doesn't identify the poem as a dramatic monologue, mention its critical portrait of Renaissance Catholicism, or comment on its mingling of Christianity and pagan sensuality. A full answer would thus be:
R. Browning, "The Bishop Orders His Tomb." These are the opening lines of a dramatic monologue, the form for which Browning was best known. Browning exposes the corruption and materialism of the Catholic Church of the Renaissance by having his dying bishop give his "nephews" (illegitimate sons) the specifications for his tomb. This is underscored by the ironic opening line, an echo of Ecclesiastes, which emphasizes the emptiness of worldly things--a lesson the bishop hasn't learned and isn't applying even on his death bed. Like Ruskin, who admired the poem very much, Browning also criticizes, albeit indirectly, the present-day Catholic Church and the Anglo-Catholicism of the Oxford Movement. As is typical of a Browning monologue, the speaker is a flawed individual who reveals himself indirectly. In this case, Browning captures both the wanderings of the bishop's mind and his focus on a life of sexuality and jealousy.
Receiving full credit doesn’t require something this extensive, but it does require making some of these kinds of points, and usually there is a particular point (here, the identification of the poem as a dramatic monologue, and Browning as the master of that form) that must be made for full credit. I offer these examples primarily to emphasize the kind of answer you should provide.
Or, if I gave you:
In this age, the mere example of non-conformity, the mere refusal to bend the knee to custom, is itself a service. Precisely because the tyranny of opinion is such as to make eccentricity a reproach, it is desirable, in order to break through that tyranny, that people should be eccentric.A bad answer would be: Mill, On Liberty. Mill defends the value of not an individual not thinking or acting like other people. He thinks that it is difficult for most people to be different from others, but that they need to do so.
Again, this merely re-states the content. A better answer would be one that focuses on the ways in which this passage is representative of Mill's thought and of the place of his thought in Victorian culture:
Mill, On Liberty. Mill is one of the 19th century's strongest defenders of liberalism--the values of tolerance and individual liberty. As a Utilitarian, he believes that people should have the freedom to do anything they like, so long as it does not interfere with the liberty of others. This will ultimately be beneficial to society, because it is only through questioning and debate that social problems can be solved in the best way. Mill places great faith in the human mind and its reasoning powers. For him, unlike for Carlyle, Ruskin, Arnold, and Newman, the problem in Victorian society is too little freedom rather than too much: custom and the tyranny of "what everyone thinks" are so powerful that eccentricity is valuable even if it doesn't have any immediate effect.
Essay Questions: These of course require more sustained and integrated thought. If you're given a choice of questions, take a little time to read and think about each one before choosing which to write about. Then take the time to think about what you want to say: brainstorm, jot down notes, construct a scratch outline, write down a thesis statement. Whatever you do, don't start writing immediately. If you're not sure of exactly what your thesis will be, leave a blank space for the introductory paragraph and write it last. A good exam essay has the same characteristics as a good paper: a clear, specific, non-trivial thesis that responds to the question; a carefully developed argument with unified paragraphs and supporting evidence; and an introduction and conclusion. An exam essay, obviously, simply goes into less depth and detail and is not as highly polished as a paper.
The essay questions I choose for this course tend to fall into the following categories:
In light of this, I suggest that in studying for the final exam you
be sure that you are familiar with all the works on the syllabus, able
to identify major passages (ones we singled out in class discussion) and
major themes, able to relate them to their cultural contexts. (The best
way to prepare for the IDs is to select a passage you think makes a good
candidate and see if you can identify it and explain its significance;
doing this with another person is especially helpful.) I also recommend
re-reading the assigned sections of the Norton, and using the discussion
questions.