English 10A Final Exam Sample McEachern Part A Please match the term with the definition 1 volta 2 prosopopoeia 3 mystery 4 poetic foot 5 wergyld 6 quem queritas trope 7 spondee 8 heptarchy 9 caesura 10 gentilesse 11 alexandrine 12 humanism 13 memento mori 14 psychomachia 15 kenning 16 romance 17 Reformation 18 soliloquy 19 alliteration 20 meter Part B Instructions For each of eight 8 of the following ten passages please provide the following information author if applicable title genre lyric epic drama sonnet etc the character who is speaking if applicable the addresses and in what situation 3 10pts Then go on to provide a succinct discussion 7 pts of the significant stylistic and thematic and historical features of the passage in question refer to diction imagery verse structure in supporting your answer Consider its place in the literary history this course has described its relation to other works we have studied imitation revision its exhibition of features typical of its place in literary history style thematic concerns etc In other words tell us as much as you can about what the passage in question reveals about the work or body of work to which it belongs its place in literary history and its author s use of language and form Each answer should take up at least one page of a blue book Example 1 At first he was faultless in his five sense Nor found ever to fail in his five fingers And all his fealty was fixed upon the five wounds That Christ got on the cross as the creed tells And wherever this man in melee took part His one thought was of this past all things else That all his force was founded on the five joys That the high Queen of heaven had in her child And therefore as I find he fittingly had On the inner part of his shield her image portrayed That when his look on it lighted he never lost heart A proper answer might include in COMPLETE SENTENCES the following information Answer Anon Pearl Poet Gawain and the Green Knight Medieval romance belonging to alliterative revival of NW England 13 14thc cf Wife of Bath s tale French Courtly influence Norman contribution to English vocab and social mores Arthurian subject matter This is a description of the meanings of the pentangle on G s shield which occurs near line 625 5x5x5x5 a placement important in a poem obsessed with formal order and what it takes to maintain and interrupt it Formal order present in diction in repeated consonant sounds of alliteration The pentangle symbolizes Gawain s imitation of Christ who is himself a figure with a properly Christian relation to the body in it embodied but also aware of its insignificance in the transcendent scheme of things thus aware of eternal virtues unending cyclical like the pentangle This image appears on the outside of his shield which is to say the side an enemy will see the inside defensive side of the shield portrays Mary mother of Jesus the person to whom the warrior must resort in moments where he fears for the fate of his eternal soul Gawain s flinching before the blow of the Green Knight demonstrates that he is not always able to keep the Christian view of the transcendent eternal virtues in view The fact that there is a difference between inside and outside of shield points to fact of formal order in poem way it attempts to regulate and recognize the bodily Character in this poem and in middle ages concerned with typological conformity to Christ rather than idiosyncracy attachment to your own body as something unique Example 2 I know you all and will awhile uphold The unyoked humor of your idleness Yet herein will I imitate the sun Who doth permit the base contagious clouds To smother up his beauty from the world That when he please again to be himself Being wanted he may be more wondered at By breaking through the foul and ugly mists Of vapors that did seem to strangle him So when this loose behavior I throw off And pay the debt I never promised By how much better than my word I am By so much shall I falsify men s hopes And like bright metal on a sullen ground My reformation glitt ring o er my fault Shall show more goodly and attract more eyes Than that which hath no foil to set it off Answer Shakespeare 1Henry IV history play Hal s soliloquy blank verse in which he reveals his own staging of the myth of his own prodigality how he will perform his own reformation and thus use his past as a foil to his future cf Shakespeare s use of Falstaff and Hotspur as foils unlike Everyman or Faustus however Hal in charge of his own morality play here Personhood as highly theatrical layered deceptive and good kingship as an ability to manipulate signs like the sun Contrast Henry IV s understanding of being like a rarely seen comet or Hal s comment to Falstaff about the sun being a wench in flame colored taffeta Hal s soliloquy suggests that values in this play religious political natural personhood no longer transcendent fixed or stable but signs stages scripts and stories Heroism here the ability not to take things too literally unlike Hotspur but to recognize them as signs to be performed Hal s prodigal son sun narrative a rewriting of everyman narrative where goal not death but rebirth Psychological interiority