Victorian literature essay

PRIFYSGOL CYMRU : UNIVERSITY OF WALES, BANGOR

DEGREE EXAMINATIONS 2006-07, semester 2
ARHOLIADAU GRADD 2006-07, semester 2

ENGLISH

Pre-released question paper

QXE2005: VictorianLiterature

Time allowed: three hours

Answer THREE questions. Each response should refer substantially to at least TWO writers studied on this course. You should not use material in answering onequestion which you have used in answering another.

1. EITHER: ‘Irony is a crucial ingredient in the dramatic monologue as Browning practises it. Indeed, irony is an important part of the post-Romanticmoment that he occupies’. To what extent can the work of any TWO of the following poets, Arnold, Tennyson, Robert Browning, be thought of as ‘post-Romantic’?

OR, ‘It matters for a full understandingof a dramatic monologue by Robert Browning that the reader should take it as the utterance of some person other than the author, either because the interest is in the expression of a state of mindthat is historically or culturally remote, or because there are ways in which the speaker betrays rather than consciously expresses aspects of his or her state of mind’. To what extent do you agree withthis description of Browning’s verse and how useful do you think it is as a description of the dramatic monologue more generally? You must refer to the work of at least TWO poets studied on thiscourse in your answer.

2. ‘Are God and Nature then at strife,
That nature lends such evil dreams?’
(Tennyson, In Memoriam, Section 55).

How do any TWO writers studied on thiscourse discuss ideas of doubt provoked by new ideas about science, nature, or religion?

3. ‘No period was used so promiscuously and unhistorically in the nineteenth century as the middle ages’(Robin Gilmour). How do any TWO writers studied on this course make use of the mediaeval period AND / OR medieval texts?

4. ‘Great Expectations reveals Dickens’s deepening fascination with the...