{"id":519,"date":"2022-12-16T05:20:05","date_gmt":"2022-12-16T05:20:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ajdrake.com\/education\/?page_id=519"},"modified":"2023-03-27T06:59:08","modified_gmt":"2023-03-27T13:59:08","slug":"e212-questions-wwi-poets-spr-2011","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.ajdrake.com\/academic\/e212-questions-wwi-poets-spr-2011\/","title":{"rendered":"E212 Questions – WWI Poets – Spr. 2011"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

EMAIL<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0|\u00a0SYLLABUS<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0|\u00a0POLICIES<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0| QUESTIONS<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0|\u00a0PRESENTATIONS<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0|\u00a0JOURNALS<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0|\u00a0PAPER<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0|\u00a0EXAM<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

RUPERT BROOKE<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe Soldier\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.  Compare this sonnet\u2019s representation of \u201cEngland\u201d and death with the representation of nationality and death in another WWI poem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

EDWARD THOMAS<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAdelstrop,\u201d \u201cTears,\u201d \u201cThe Owl,\u201d \u201cRain,\u201d \u201cThe Cherry Trees,\u201d \u201cAs the Team\u2019s Head Brass\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

2.  In any of Thomas\u2019 selected poems, examine the effects of war\u2019s shadow on the people and landscape\u2014how does it transform Thomas\u2019 and others\u2019 sensibilities and thoughts? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

SIEGFRIED SASSOON<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThey\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

3.  How might this poem be a reflection on the contrast between experiencing something and talking about it?  For example, how does the Bishop describe the change that has come over the men after their war experience?  How do the men reply? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

4.  How is the poem a reflection on the concept of individual experience?  Why do the men seem to speak as a chorus rather than as individuals? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

5.  Does the Bishop understand what the men say?  What does his manner of processing their reply revel about his understanding? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe Rear-Guard\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

6.  How does the speaker deal with the difficulty of comprehending his own experience even as it happens, down in the trenches, and then back in the light? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

7.  How does the speaker convey his experience to readers who have not gone through it?  To what extent does he \u201csimply describe,\u201d and to what extent does he resort to traditional literary language and devices? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

8.  How does the poem pit an individual\u2019s sensibilities against a situation proper to mechanized mass warfare? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe General\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

9.  What figure does the General cut in this poem?  How does the speaker, evidently an enlisted man, perceive him? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

10.  How would relations between officers and ordinary soldiers differ in modern warfare from the relations that held in pre-technological times?  (Say, Caesar and his men, or Alexander the Great?)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe Glory of Women\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

11.  What is the speaker\u2019s attitude towards the women\u2014mothers, sisters, lovers, etc. \u2014who he addresses?  Does he accuse them of naivet\u00e9 or something worse? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cEveryone Sang\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

12.  What is the poem\u2019s situation?  What traditional literary analogies does the speaker employ in describing it? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

13.  Is the poem suggesting a momentary victory of the spirit over gross material circumstance?  How do the final two lines complicate this possibility? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOn Passing the New Menin Gate\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

14.  What is the basis for the speaker\u2019s condemnation of civilian attempts to memorialize those who die in war?  How do the New Menin Gate\u2019s inscriptions lie? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

15.  If you have ever visited a war memorial\u2014Pearl Harbor, Arlington National Cemetery, the Vietnam Wall in Washington, D.C., etc. \u2014what did you see as the purpose of the place, of the words you read? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

IVOR GURNEY<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cTo His Love\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

16.  Who is the speaker?  In what sense does the poem deal harshly with generic expectations for such writing? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe Silent One\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

17.  How is this poem an exploration of \u201cantiheroic\u201d sentiment about the psychology of trench-and-barbed-wire warfare\u2014what\u2019s the cost here of survival? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

ISAAC ROSENBERG<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBreak of Day in the Trenches,\u201d \u201cLouse Hunting,\u201d \u201cReturning, We Hear the Larks\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

18.  In one or more of these poems, how does Rosenberg enlist the perspective of animals and the presence of nature to reflect on his own experience of war? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dead Man\u2019s Dump\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

19.  Rosenberg evidently chose to write this poem with rather \u201cclassical\u201d syntax, with archaic inversions and so forth.  What does this style bring home about the nature of the situation and experience he describes? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

WILFRED OWEN<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAnthem for Doomed Youth\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

20.  The poem\u2019s title suggests that it is a poem appropriate in form to those it commemorates.  What tone and conventions does it set forth as appropriate to the \u201cdoomed youth\u201d?  How does it ironize or undercut this conventionality? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cApologia Pro Poemate Meo\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

21.  How does Owen adapt the conventional meaning of certain words and actions to suit his experience of war? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

22.  The last two stanzas address civilian readers: what is the speaker\u2019s final judgment on the possibility of conveying or representing his experience to others who have not been through similar ones? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

23.  Is the problem simply one of language\u2014i.e. there are no proper words to deal with war\u2019s violence and terror\u2014or does the problem lie elsewhere?  Explain. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMiners\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

24.  How does this poem\u2019s analogy between miners\u2019 work and soldiering undercut nineteenth-century narratives about the inevitability of progress, the triumph of civilization over material obstacles, of the human spirit over what Tennyson calls in In Memoriam A.H.H.  \u201cthe ape and tiger {in us}\u201d? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

25.  How, according to the poem by implication, is \u201cforgetting\u201d integral to the process of civilization? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDulce et Decorum Est\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

26.  It is sometimes said that language cannot describe extreme violence or suffering.  To what extent does this poem attempt to do so?  What is the strategy of representation? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

MAY WEDDERBURN CANNAN<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

27.  In \u201cRouen\u201d and the excerpt from Grey Ghosts and Voices, what view does Cannan set forth in opposition to the sort of criticism we find in Sassoon and some other WWI poets?  Does it seem convincing as one possible way to make sense of how many people \u201cprocessed\u201d the Great War, or too limited in perspective to be convincing? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

ROBERT GRAVES<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

From Goodbye to All That<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

28.  Graves recounts his wounding during the Battle of the Somme in mid-1916.  What attitude does he describe himself as having taken towards this episode when it happened?  How does the excerpt testify both to the confusion that besets any wartime event and to a certain determination to achieve clarity about what has happened?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe Dead Fox Hunter\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

29.  How does this poem reconfigure \u201cheaven\u201d for the sake of the Major\u2019s battlefield bravery and the kind of life he led?  How does its tone resemble \u201cGeorgian\u201d poetry like that of Rupert Brooke, while yet taking on a harder edge in its representation of death and violence?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cRecalling War\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

30.  In this poem, looking back at the \u201cGreat War\u201d and revised during the 1936-39 Spanish Civil War that preceded the outbreak of yet another World War in 1939 (Hitler\u2019s forces invaded Poland on Sept. 1 of that year), Graves reflects on how the passage of time affects people\u2019s understanding of wartime violence and pain.  Discuss some of those reflections\u2014which seem most valuable, and why?  In addition, how do you interpret the poem\u2019s final four lines?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

DAVID JONES<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

31.  In the Preface to In Parenthesis,\u201d what explanation does Jones provide for his choice of title\u2014what is \u201cin parenthesis\u201d with regard to WWI?  (In your response, consider the ways in which a parenthetical phrase can relate to the sentence surrounding it.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Edition: <\/strong>Abrams, M. H. et al, eds.  The Norton Anthology of English Literature.  <\/em>8th ed.  Vol. F.  New York: Norton, 2006.  ISBN Package 3 (Vols. DEF) 0-393-92834-9.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

RUPERT BROOKE \u201cThe Soldier\u201d 1.  Compare this sonnet\u2019s representation of \u201cEngland\u201d and death with the representation of nationality and death in another WWI poem. EDWARD THOMAS \u201cAdelstrop,\u201d \u201cTears,\u201d \u201cThe Owl,\u201d \u201cRain,\u201d \u201cThe Cherry Trees,\u201d \u201cAs the Team\u2019s Head Brass\u201d 2.  In any of Thomas\u2019 selected poems, examine the effects of war\u2019s shadow on the people […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_eb_attr":"","footnotes":""},"wf_page_folders":[43],"class_list":["post-519","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ajdrake.com\/academic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/519","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ajdrake.com\/academic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ajdrake.com\/academic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ajdrake.com\/academic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ajdrake.com\/academic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=519"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.ajdrake.com\/academic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/519\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4693,"href":"https:\/\/www.ajdrake.com\/academic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/519\/revisions\/4693"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ajdrake.com\/academic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=519"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"wf_page_folders","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ajdrake.com\/academic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/wf_page_folders?post=519"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}