ENG 219 Final, Spring 1998

English 219: The Age of Romanticism. FINAL EXAMINATION Spring 1998 Time: 2 Hours Choose one of the following questions. 1. One critic has said about Romanticism that . Lt was a health-restoring revival cf the instinctuat wife, in contradistinction to eighteenth-century restraints that sought to sublimate the instincts in the united names of reasons and society. Explain the above view then demonstrate the degree to which it holds both for the first and second-generation romantics. Refer in depth to three poets. English poets of the fifties were notoriously anti- Romanticism. In a poem appropriately entitled “Against Romanticism,” Kingsley Amis explains the reasons. i. Analyze the excerpts from the two poems in depth. ii. Explore the main thoughts in the first poem, then defend or counter this anti-Romantic sentiment, making use of images and ideas from Wordsworth’s Prelude. “Against Romanticism” A traveller who walks a temperate zone - Woods devoid of beasts, roads that please the foot- Finds that its decent surface grows too thin: Something unperceived fumbles at his nerves. To please an ingrown taste of anarchy Torrid images circle in the wood, And sweat for recognition up the road. Cramming close the air with their bookish cries. All senses then are glad to gasp: the eye Smeared with garish paints, tickled up with ghosts That brandish warnings or an abstract noun; Melodies from shards, memories from coal, Or saws from powdered tombstones thump the ear; Bodies rich with heat wiggle to the touch, And verbal scents made real spellbind the nose; Incense, frankincense; legendary the taste Of drinks or fruits or tongues laid on the tongue. Over all, a grand meaning fills the scene, And sets the brain raging with prophecy, Raging to discard real time and place Raging to build a better time and place Than the ones which give prophecy its field To work, the calm material for its rage, And the context which makes it prophecy. From The Prelude It was a splendid evening, and my soul Once more made trial of her strength, nor lacked Aeolian visitations; but the harp Was soon defrauded, and the banded host Of harmony dispersed in straggling sounds, And lastly utter silence! ‘Be it so; Why think of any thing but present good?’ So, like a home-bound labourer I pursued My way beneath the mellowing sun, that shed Mild influence; nor let in me one wish Again to bend the Sabbath of that time To a servile yoke. What need of many words? A pleasant loitering journey, through three days Continued, brought me to my hermitage. I spare to tell of what ensued, the life In common things the endless store of things, Rare, or at least seeming, every day Found all about me in one neightbourhood— The self-congratulation, and, from morn To night, unbroken cheerfulness serene. But speedily an earnest longing rose To brace myself to some determined aim, Reading or thinking; either to lay up New stores, or rescue from decay the old By timely interference: and therewith Came hopes higher, that with outward life I might endue some airy phantasies That had been floating loose about for years, And to such beings temperately deal forth The many feelings that oppressed my heart.