Reading Criticism and Identifying Periods

Part one ended on the Romantic signature, the inward turn from a scene to the mind. This second part finishes the signatures and puts them to work. The unit's governing idea pays off here: identification questions punish one careless clue, so confirm every answer with a second before you choose. We move in two steps. First, the last signatures, Victorian and Modernist, and what spelling and diction tell you about date. Second, five procedures: putting works in order, dating an unfamiliar passage, ten openings, ten lines, and the knowledge questions, followed by the common errors and the capstone.

We begin with the last two signatures, and with spelling and diction as clues to date.

First, the Victorian signature.

ENL 1821 The Signature of Victorian Verse

Victorian verse favours the dramatic monologue, in which a character reveals himself, as in "That's my last Duchess painted on the wall," and themes of faith and doubt, social reform, medievalism and art. Its music ranges from Tennyson's smoothness to Browning's roughness and Hopkins's sprung rhythm. Monologue, doubt, medievalism. Speaker and poet differ.

Next, the Modernist signature.

ENL 1822 The Signature of Modernist Writing

Modernist writing fragments narrative and verse, uses stream of consciousness, many voices and dense allusion, and favours precise images over statement, as in "April is the cruellest month." Its settings are urban and post-war, and it questions coherent identity. Fragment, allusion, stream. Fragmentation is the method.

Spelling and diction date a passage.

ENL 1823 Spelling, Diction and Date

Spelling and diction help date a passage. Middle English spellings point before about fifteen hundred; thee, thou, doth and hath point before the eighteenth century; Latinate polish suggests the Augustans; plain diction of common life suggests the Romantics; colloquial speech and fragments suggest the twentieth century. Spelling and word choice as clues. Modernized texts hide old spelling.

Now five procedures that turn the signatures into answers, and the capstone.

Here is the method for ordering works.

ENL 1824 Putting Works in Order

To put works in chronological order, place each in its period: Beowulf in Old English, Chaucer in Middle English, Shakespeare and Spenser in the sixteenth century, Donne and Milton in the seventeenth, Pope and Johnson in the eighteenth, Wordsworth and Keats in the Romantic period, Tennyson and Dickens in the Victorian, Joyce and Eliot in the twentieth. Use landmark dates: Lyrical Ballads in seventeen ninety-eight, Paradise Lost in sixteen sixty-seven, The Waste Land in nineteen twenty-two. Order the periods, then the works inside each, one pair at a time. Milton published after the Restoration.

Here is the method for an unfamiliar passage.

ENL 1825 Dating an Unfamiliar Passage

When a passage is unfamiliar, combine four clues. Form: alliterative half-lines, rhyme royal, the sonnet, blank verse, the heroic couplet, the dramatic monologue or free verse. Spelling and diction, as the previous entry described. Subject and stance: heroic fate, courtly love, metaphysical argument, Augustan satire, Romantic nature, Victorian doubt or Modernist fragmentation. Any allusion to a datable event, such as Darwin or the First World War. Eliminate periods that contradict any clue and choose the one that fits all four, since a modern writer can imitate an old form.

Here are ten openings to practise on.

ENL 1826 Which Period? Ten Openings

Practise on ten openings. "When that Aprilis, with his showers swoot" is Chaucer's Middle English. "Death be not proud" is Donne, metaphysical. "Gather ye rose-buds while ye may" is Herrick, Cavalier. "Of Man's first disobedience" is Milton's epic. "What dire offence from am'rous causes springs" is Pope's mock epic. "Tyger Tyger, burning bright" is Blake. "I wandered lonely as a cloud" is Wordsworth. "It is a truth universally acknowledged" is Austen, Romantic-period prose, not Victorian. "That's my last Duchess painted on the wall" is Browning. "April is the cruellest month" is Eliot. For each, name the clue that dates it.

Here are ten lines and their authors.

ENL 1827 Who Wrote It? Ten Lines

Practise naming authors. "A little learning is a dang'rous thing": Pope. "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold": Yeats. "Glory be to God for dappled things": Hopkins. "Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven": Milton's Satan. "Beauty is truth, truth beauty": Keats. "The mind-forg'd manacles": Blake. "Ah, love, let us be true / To one another!": Arnold. "To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield": Tennyson. "If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?": Shelley. "Had we but World enough, and Time": Marvell. A character's line belongs to its author, but a question may ask for the speaker: Satan speaks; Milton wrote it.

Here is how to prepare for knowledge questions.

ENL 1828 The Knowledge Questions: Authors and Works

About thirty-five to forty percent of the exam tests knowledge: authors, works, periods, terms and critics. Learn each period's major authors and two works each, from the matching entries in every unit. Learn the landmark dates, from the First Folio of sixteen twenty-three to The Waste Land. Learn the terms: conceit, heroic couplet, dramatic monologue, stream of consciousness, epiphany, objective correlative. Learn who said what, from Sidney to Said. On the exam, eliminate options from the wrong period first, since wrong options often come from the right genre and the wrong period.

Four errors need correcting.

ENL 1829 Common Errors on Identification Questions

Four errors recur. Confusing speaker with poet in a monologue. Dating Milton's epic to the Commonwealth rather than after the Restoration. Swapping the Brownings, the Rossettis or the Brontës. And taking a modern imitation of an old form for an old poem. Four common corrections. Check names within families.

The capstone says what these questions reward.

ENL 1830 What the Criticism and Period Questions Reward

The criticism and identification questions reward organized knowledge applied with care. English criticism is a long argument about what literature is for. Sidney said poetry teaches and delights; Dryden called satire the correction of vice; Johnson judged Shakespeare faithful to life, faults and all. Wordsworth located poetry in feeling recollected in tranquillity; Coleridge set imagination above fancy; Shelley called poets legislators, and Keats praised uncertainty. Arnold made culture a cure for the Philistines; Pater and Wilde answered with art for art's sake; Eliot demanded tradition and impersonality, and Woolf a room of one's own. Then the schools: the New Critics read the text alone, Gilbert and Gubar found the angel and the monster, and Said, Bhabha and Spivak read empire. Each period has a signature, from Old English kennings to the Modernist fragment. Read a critic for the claim and the turn, combine clues to date a passage, and confirm with a second clue before you choose.

This second part put the signatures to work. We named the Victorian monologue and the Modernist fragment. We used spelling and diction to date a passage. We put works in order by period and landmark, and dated an unfamiliar passage by four agreeing clues. We practised ten openings and ten lines, keeping speaker and author apart. And we prepared for the knowledge questions, avoided the family errors, and closed on the capstone: organized knowledge, confirmed by a second clue. Unit twenty, Capstone and Course Close, gathers the whole course.