English Literature / Unit 20 ENL 1907 worked example, 60 to 90 seconds
The Victorian Period in Review
The idea
Review twenty percent of the exam in poetry, fiction, prose and drama. Poetry: Tennyson's In Memoriam and "Ulysses," Browning's dramatic monologues, Barrett Browning's sonnets and Aurora Leigh, Arnold's "Dover Beach," the Rossettis and "Goblin Market," Hopkins's sprung rhythm, Hardy, Housman and Kipling. Fiction: Dickens, the Brontës, Thackeray, Gaskell, George Eliot, Trollope, Collins, Hardy and Stevenson, published in serials and three volumes for a mass readership. Prose: Carlyle's condition of England, Ruskin, Mill on liberty, Newman's Apologia, Arnold's culture and Pater's gem-like flame. Drama: Wilde's Earnest and Shaw's plays of ideas. For any passage, separate speaker from poet, and narrator from character, and ask how the work meets the age's doubt or its social questions.
In practice
Monologue, realism, argument, wit.
Where people slip
Check pen names and families: Currer Bell, George Eliot, the Brownings and the Rossettis.
Your place on the trail
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Unlocks
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