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E212: British Literature since 1760 Thomas De Quincey Study Questions Alfred J. Drake. Office: 423 University Hall Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (1821) "To the Reader" 1. How does De Quincey distinguish his confessional text from those written by others? How, for example, does he try to lend respectability to his narrative? "Preliminary Confessions" 2. How does De Quincey define the term "philosopher," and why might it be important to him that he be considered a philosophical writer? 3. What contrasts in social class does De Quincey set up in the long preliminary section, and how does he situate himself with respect to others of lower standing than himself -- mainly the orphan girl and his friend Ann? 4. What vision of London do De Quincey's descriptions of his stay there provide? 5. How is De Quincey's meeting and subsequent loss of contact with the kind-hearted prostitute Ann characteristic of his narrative style -- his handling of events and of character? "The Pleasures of Opium" 6. In a brief preliminary note to the reader, De Quincey addresses Oxford Street? How does his address or apostrophe reflect back on the "Prelimary Confessions" and contextualize your perception of his early life? 7. How does De Quincey first come to use opium? 8. What differences does De Quincey point out between the effects of alcohol and the effects of opium? What fallacies does he lay to rest? 9. To what extent does De Quincey's praise of opium's powers remind you of romantic claims about imagination, art, and meditation? 10. What change takes place in De Quincey's opium-eating regimen in 1813? 11. After 1816, what happens that worsens De Quincey's troubles with opium? What effect does the chance meeting with a Malay have upon him? "The Pains of Opium" 12. How might De Quincey, in describing his opium-laced reveries and dreams, be considered an archetypcal romantic poet? What is he able to do, and what is he unable to accomplish? 13. Around 1817, what changes do De Quincey's dreams undergo? What sorts of dreams and visions does he have? What happens to his sense of space and time, as well as to his memory? 14. How does De Quincey explain the way he dealt with his abuse of opium? 15. Ultimately, what would you say is De Quincey's target audience? Is it really fellow opium-eaters? Do you take his purpose in writing Confessions of an English Opium-Eater to be the imparting of a moral lesson, or does he appear to be up to something else? 16. How do De Quincey's descriptions of the pleasures and pains of opium, respectively, balance out? Or is one description more significant than the other? Explain. 17. Finally, a question on the work as a whole: do you think that De Quincey's long biographical and moral prefaces outweigh the opium-related descriptions he provides, or do the descriptions outweigh the prefatory material? "On the Knocking at the Gate in Macbeth" (Norton Anthology) 18. With what attitude does De Quincey approach his object of study, the Shakespeare play Macbeth? 19. How does De Quincey explain the dramatic purpose of the drunken porter's knocking at the castle gates just after Macbeth has done his dreadful deed? "The Literature of Knowledge and the Literature of Power" from Alexander Pope (Norton) 20. What is the literature of knowledge, and what is the literature of power? How are they opposed? 21. To what degree is De Quincey offering a romantic "defence of poetry" or art more generally? Explain. Editions: De Quincey, Thomas. Confessions of an English Opium-Eater. New York: Dover, 1995. ISBN: 0486287424.
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