Authorship
Plot
Theme
Intertext
100

This poet wrote "An Irish Airman Foresees his Death"

Who is W. B. Yeats?

100

Name three things that Alexander Pope would like to spend time doing in the "Ode to Solitude".

(1) Keeping livestock

(2) Tending one's trees and fields

(3) Meditation (=study of books)

(4) Sound sleep by night

100

Historically, Eldorado originally referred to ___________, but in Edgar Allan Poe's poem "Eldorado" it came to mean ___________.

(1) A country of gold sought by the Spanish and later other European explorers in the New World

(2) A unattainable but ever-inspiring ideal.

100

Why does the airman in W. B. Yeats' poem say "those that I guard I do not love"?

Because he is Irish, but he is fighting on behalf of the British army.

200

What is unusual about the composition of Alexander Pope's "Ode to Solitude"?

Pope was only 12 years old when he composed "Ode to Solitude".

200

Before embarking on his final journey, Tennyson's Ulysses leaves ______ in charge of ________.

(a) his son Telemachus

(b) Ithaca

200

List three things that, according to John Donne, are as impossible as finding a woman both "true and fair."

(1) To catch a falling star

(2) To figure out who cleft the Devil's foot

(3) To hear mermaids singing

(4) To figure out where all the past years are

(5) To make a mandrake root pregnant with child

200

Alexander Pope's "Ode to Solitude" was likely inspired by the Roman poet ________ who liked to split his time between the city of _________ and _________.

(1) Horace

(2) Rome

(3) Countryside villa ("Villa Sabina")

300

Describe the circumstances which inspired Coleridge to compose one of his most famous poems, "Kubla Kahn".

The poet was inspired by an opium-induced dream.

300

The spirit lying closest to Satan in the burning lake is called __________, and his name means ________ in ancient Hebrew.

(a) Beelzebub

(b) Lord of the Fly/Flies

300

Name one line from Marlowe's Doctor Faustus' invocation of Helen that became famous and remains so to this day.

"The face that launched a thousand ships"

300

When Tennyson has his Ulysses say "To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield," he is likely quoting which hero from which famous poem?  Under what circumstances does this hero say that he won't yield?

(1) Satan

(2) Milton's Paradise Lost

(3) Satan refuses to yield even though he lost the battle against God.
400

Describe the circumstances under which John Donne composed "Death be not proud."

At the time, Donne was suffering from a major illness that brought him close to death.

400

In Coleridge's "Kubla Kahn," what would enable the poet to build his own magical palace with caves of ice?

Coleridge says that he would be able to build such a palace if he could only recall the music played by the Abyssinian maid in his vision.

400

Name two reasons why, according to John Donne, men should not be afraid of death.

(1) Sleep and rest bring us much enjoyment.  So death, which is their close cousin, can't be all that bad.

(2) The best men of the past have all experienced death - perhaps it was a good thing, because it relieved their souls from bodily servitude.

(3) Death makes company with nasty things like poison, war, and sickness, so it should not be proud.

(4) When men die, they actually live eternally in God.

400

In our poetry selections, when ________ says "lente, lente currite noctis equi," he is quoting the poet ________. The Latin phrase means ____________.

(1) Marlowe's Doctor Faustus

(2) Roman poet Ovid

(3) "Slowly, slowly run, you horses of the night!"

500

To whom did Byron address the poem "My boat is on the shore"?

To the Irish poet Tom More

500

When Keats says "La Belle Dame Sans Merci," by "merci" he means _____________.

Compassion/pity

500

In the famous sonnet "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day", what is the secret to the beloved's eternal life?

"THIS" = i.e., the existence of the present sonnet is the token of the addressee's immortality.

500

Give one example of a purposeful anachronism in the excerpts from Paradise Lost that we have read.

(1) Milton talks of the Muse (a Greek goddess) inspiring the Biblical Moses on Mount Sinai.

(2) Milton introduces Beelzebub as a deity honored in the ancient Near East, even though the fall of the angels that he's describing takes place before the world is even created.

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