ENGLISH 2310 FINAL EXAM STUDY GUIDE

GRADY FALL 2011

A. Terms you should be able to identify (5 of 7; 20%):

felix culpa

carpe diem

uxoriousness

in medias res

epic simile

prevenient grace

Petrarch

B. Passages you should be able to identify (6 of 8, roughly 36%)—they will be drawn from Paradise Lost, Books 1-5, 8-10, 12; Pope’s Rape of the Lock; the poetry of Donne (“The Canonization,” “The Indifferent,” “The Flea,” "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning") and Marvell (“To His Coy Mistress); and sonnets by Sidney, Spenser, and Shakespeare.

C. A surprise section worth 7-9 points!

D. One of the following essay questions will appear on the exam (roughly 36%):

1. Compare Milton's account of the rewards and dangers of love--human love--in Paradise Lost with the view of love in the work of at least two other poets of the seventeenth or eighteenth century.

2. Epic poems are typically heroic poems--think Beowulf--but although Milton models Paradise Lost on the epic poems of Homer and Vergil, his subject requires him to develop a different account of heroism than that usually found in the epic tradition. What sort of actions does Milton portray as heroic in Paradise Lost? What is his attitude toward the traditional notion of heroic behavior described in other poems? Does Paradise Lost even have a hero? Does it have more than one? (Note: not questions to answer in sequence!)

3. Does it matter—is it significant—that Milton gives Eve the last speech of Paradise Lost? If so, why? If not, why not?