English Literature / Unit 20 ENL 1904 worked example, 60 to 90 seconds
The Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth Century in Review
The idea
Review fifteen percent of the exam in four groups. The sixteenth century: Wyatt and Surrey's sonnets, Sidney's Astrophil and Stella and Defence, Spenser's Faerie Queene, and Marlowe's mighty line. Shakespeare: the sonnets, the comedies, histories, tragedies and romances, and his blank verse and soliloquies. The early seventeenth century: Donne's metaphysical conceits, Herbert's devotion, Jonson and the Cavaliers' carpe diem, Marvell's argument, Bacon's essays and the King James Bible. Milton: the early lyrics, "Lycidas," Areopagitica and Paradise Lost, published after the Restoration by a Commonwealth man. For any passage, test first for the sonnet, blank verse or the conceit.
In practice
Tudor poets, Shakespeare, Donne and Jonson, Milton.
Where people slip
Metaphysical and Cavalier poems share subjects. Decide by method, conceit and argument against polish and song.
Your place on the trail
Every lesson rests on earlier ones and opens later ones. Tap any to jump.
Unlocks
- Nothing yet depends on this.
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