Poetry Context

Question 1

What other poems of Wyatt’s feature unobtainable love?

Answer 1

‘And Wilt Thou Leave Me Thus?’ - Features a male speaker begging a woman to stay with him, repeating ‘say nay, say nay’.
‘They Flee from Me’ - Features a male speaker reflecting on women who seek him at night for sexual/romantic affairs and then leave.

Question 2

How does ‘Who So List to Hount I Know Where Is An Hynde’ reflect Wyatt’s life?

Answer 2

Wyatt was rumoured to have been involved in an affair with Anne Boleyn, thus the poem could represent his pursuit of her despite her being owned by Henry IIIV.

Question 3

What is ‘Cesar’ a reference to in ‘Who So List to Hount I Know Where Is An Hynde’?

Answer 3

Julius Caesar, a politically powerful Roman politician renowned for military accomplishments.

Question 4

How many sonnets did Shakespeare publish in total?

Answer 4

154

Question 5

What were remarriage rates like in Renaissance England?

Answer 5

They were typically high, due to a higher death rate.

Question 6

What is powerful in the notion of a ‘Tempest’ to Renaissance readers?

Answer 6

Tempests and storms were much more threatening due to a lesser quality of shipcrafting, and the literate classes who would have been able to read Shakespeare would have had experience (be it as traders or nobility) at sea given the rise of colonialism and expansive foreign trading (e.g. with the Ottoman Empire) in the Early Modern era

Question 7

What other works of Shakespeare feature tempests and storms?

Answer 7

• ‘The Tempest’ opens in a ship caught in a powerful storm.

- ‘Twelfth Night’ opens with Viola being shipwrecked due to a storm.

Question 8

What other Shakespeare works feature personified abstract concepts? (As Shakespeare does to ‘Love’ in Sonnet 116)

Answer 8

In ‘Romeo and Juliet’, Romeo cries ‘I Am Fortune’s Fool!’. Fortune is personified in this play as an entity.

Question 9

What other Renaissance poems present love as timeless?

Answer 9

In John Donne’s ‘The Sun Rising’, the speaker says ‘Love, all alike, no season knows nor clime’

Question 10

What does metaphysical poetry value?

Answer 10

Carpe Diem messages

Question 11

What other Donne poems feature opening imperatives?

Answer 11

‘The Canonization’

Question 12

How did S letters appear in Renaissance manuscript typography?

Answer 12

They would resemble the letter f in lower case

Question 13

What other poems by Donne feature interrogatives which silence/persuade other personas?

Answer 13

• ‘Woman’s Constancy’ - where the speaker assumes of what the female speaker may say to deny him.
• ‘The Canonization’ - where the speaker asks why he cannot love and what harm it could do.

Question 14

What does Michael Donkor suggest about the speaker in ‘The Flea’ continuing to speak after the flea’s death?

Answer 14

The speaker is ‘more enamoured with the artistry of his own conceits’ than the lady

Question 15

What is a syllogism?

Answer 15

Two arguments bridged together into a conclusion, used in ‘To His Coy Mistress’

Question 16

What other Lovelace poetry uses hair imagery?

Answer 16

The speaker of ‘Song to Amarantha’ begs for Amarantha to unbraid her hair so that it can be free and admired for its beauty.

Question 17

What features of Wilmot’s poetry are constant?

Answer 17

Sexual promiscuity, satire, and breaking cultural taboos

Question 18

What aspects of Wilmot’s life impact his poetry?

Answer 18

Wilmot was known for his immense sexuality within the court, and constantly falling in and out of favour with the king for his antics and satire.

Question 19

What was Blake’s personal view on Church and Religion?

Answer 19

Blake himself was a sworn Christian, though he did not believe the Church as an institution was a proper manifestation of Christianity and was inherently corrupt.

Question 20

What happened during the Industrial era of Blake’s writing?

Answer 20

With the onset of capitalist society in the turn of the century, private landlords began to own green space that had previously been public communal ground.

Question 21

What is the partner poem for ‘The Garden of Love’?

Answer 21

‘The Echoing Green’ - A poem of nostalgia for one’s youth, as a community spanning three generations gather in public green space to play sport, and the elderly generation remember their youth.

Question 22

What is Blake’s poetry collection that ‘The Garden of Love’ comes from?

Answer 22

‘Songs of Innocence and Experience’, a poetry collection of partner poems depicting an innocent perception of the world that is childlike and an experienced, cynical perception of the world affected by society.

Question 23

As well as being an edenic reference, what does the ‘Garden of Love’ refer to?

Answer 23

It is reminiscent of the ‘Song of Solomon’ in the Bible, which cherishes sexuality as the female speaker invites the male to the garden to try her fruits, metaphorical for sexual love.

Question 24

What other contemporary literature to ‘The Ruined Maid’ draws on the fallen woman archetype?

Answer 24

• ‘Vanity Fair’: A satire depicting Becky Sharp, an orphan who uses her powers of seduction to enter upper class gentry circles and earn riches.

Question 25

What is a rose a symbol of?

Answer 25

Aphrodite, Greek Goddess of Love

Question 26

What does Duke Orsino say in the opening of Twelfth Night? How does this link to Dowson’s poem?

Answer 26

‘If music be the food of love, play on.’ - Like the speaker in Dowson’s poem begs for ‘madder music’

Question 27

What does Tess of the d’Urbervilles reveal about Hardy’s attitude towards fallen women?

Answer 27

In his novel, Hardy depicts Tess as a fallen woman due to being raped, and after struggling through hard poverty the entire novel, eventually becomes the mistress of her rapist at the end of the novel to be financially stable. Thus, despite the satirical tone of ‘The Ruined Maid’, there is an underlying sense of sympathy for the plight of fallen women.

Question 28

What is one of Blake’s ‘Proverbs of Hell’ in his book ‘The Marriage of Heaven and Hell’?

Answer 28

‘The priest lays his curse on the fairest joys’

Question 29

Why was Restoration poetry bawdy and sexual?

Answer 29

It followed a period of Puritan rule which focused on moral absolution and shunned sin, sex, and theatre

Question 30

How did Samuel Pepys describe John Wilmot?

Answer 30

‘So idle a rogue’

Question 31

What does Alexander Larman write about Wilmot’s reputation?

Answer 31

He was regarded as “the wickedest man in England”

Question 32

How does the speaker in Wilmot’s ‘A Satyr Against Reason and Mankind’ promote hedonism?

Answer 32

“Our sphere of action is life’s happiness, //

And he that thinks beyond, thinks like an ass”

Question 33

Who was Fitzgerald’s favourite poet?

Answer 33

John Keats

Question 34

What did Hardy’s female Bathsheba say in his novel ‘Far from the Madding Crowd’?

Answer 34

“It is difficult for a woman to define her feelings in a language which is chiefly made by men to express theirs.”

Question 35

Which poems use moonlight to frame a romantic setting?

Answer 35

‘So We’ll Go No More A-Roving’ and ‘She Walks in Beauty’ by Lord Byron

Question 36

What drama depicts widows remarrying?

Answer 36

In John Webster’s ‘The Duchess of Malfi’, the eponymous Duchess is under incredible pressure to remarry after being widowed.

Question 37

What drama depicts an arranged marriage?

Answer 37

In ‘The Maid’s Tragedy’ by Beaumont and Fletcher, Evadne is married to further the King’s goals.

Question 38

What drama is chastity mocked in?

Answer 38

In James Shirley’s 1632 ‘Hyde Park’, the waiting-woman’s chastity is mocked and dubbed useless in court.