ENGL 3653: English Literature II

John M. Mercer, Professor of English

Northeastern State University, Broken Arrow, Oklahoma

Study Guide 10: Victorian Novel, Rossetti, and Hopkins

Revised 3-25-09

 

Victorian Novel

  1. What is meant by “serial” publication?  What are “three-volume editions”? How did these circumstances of publication affect the content of Victorian novels?  
  2. What important characteristics of the Victorian novel does your textbook identify?
  3. Frequently the plot of Victorian novels concerns whose search for fulfillment despite limited opportunities?
  4. During the Victorian Period, what was the most widely read genre of literature?
  5. Who was the best-loved Victorian novelist?  What are the distinctive characteristics of his or her novels?
  6. What are the names of the three Brontë sisters who published novels?  Under what pseudonym did each publish her work? What is the best-known novel by each?
  7. In what two genres did Emily Brontë write?
  8. What other women were important Victorian novelists? What novels did they write? Which woman (like the Brontë sisters) published her novels under a male pseudonym?
  9. What is a “realistic novel”?  What are some examples of realistic Victorian novels?

 

Not completely answered in textbook: Match the following list of authors and titles:

  1. ___ Charlotte Brontë                            a. Barchester Towers
  2. ___ Emily Brontë                                  b. Jane Eyre
  3. ___ Charles Dickens                            c. Middlemarch
  4. ___ George Eliot                                  d. The Pickwick Papers
  5. ___ Thomas Hardy                               e. The Picture of Dorian Gray
  6. ___ William Makepeace Thackeray      f.  Tess of the D’Urbervilles
  7. ___ Anthony Trollope                           g. Vanity Fair
  8. ___ Oscar Wilde                                  h.  Wuthering Heights

 

Christina Rossetti

  1. Christina Rossetti’s religion was “Anglo-Catholic.”  What does this term mean?  (See study guide for John Henry Newman.)  At what point in his life was Newman an Anglo-Catholic?
  2. Rossetti is known for paradoxically renouncing the world to devote herself to her Anglo-Catholic religion but also writing very sensuous poems (appealing to the senses).  What are some specific examples of the “sensuous” quality of Rossetti’s poetry?
  3. For each assigned poem by Rossetti, identify the following:
    1. the speaker of the poem
    2. in your own words, the main point expressed by the speaker
    3. the primary emotion expressed in the poem
    4. any unanswered questions with which the poem leaves you
  4. What is the poetic form of “In an Artist’s Studio”?  How can you tell?
  5. In “Winter: My Secret,” what reason does the speaker give for not telling her secret?  What justification does the speaker give for this reason?

 

Gerard Manley Hopkins

As an English poet writing about specifically Christian themes, Hopkins is second only to the 17th-century poets John Donne, George Herbert, and John Milton.

  1. What religious conversion did Hopkins undergo—from what church to what church?
  2. Although Hopkins was born and died in the Victorian Period, why he has not traditionally been classified as a “Victorian” poet?
  3. What was Hopkins’s primary occupation?
  4. Besides religion, what other subject is prevalent in Hopkins’s poetry?
  5. Why would Hopkins have felt so free to be so experimental in his poetic techniques?

 

Hopkins’s Poetic Theory

What information does the textbook’s introduction to Hopkins give concerning the following original terms that Hopkins coined to describe his poetry?  To what extent does it agree with, disagree with, and/or supplement my definitions below?  How does each term apply to at least one particular poem?

  1. “Inscape” = the distinctive essence or unique quality of a thing
  2. “Instress” = the act of recognizing a thing’s distinctive essence (inscape), or the divine force that allows one to recognize and write about it

 

Hopkins’s Meter

Hopkins’s style is based on the above concepts; he uses original poetic forms to describe the uniqueness of the universe.  What information about the following terms do you find in the textbook?  To what extent does it agree with, disagree with, and/or supplement my definitions below?  How does each term apply to at least one particular poem?

  1. “Sprung rhythm” = an experimental meter in which the number of stressed syllables is consistent from line to line but the number of unaccented syllables varies widely (similar to Old English alliterative verse, which had four accented syllables per line and a varying number of unaccented syllables).  Hopkins’s use of “sprung rhythm” has the following results:

·        It produces a mixture of different kinds of poetic feet in a single line.

·        It sometimes leaves the reader wondering which syllables should be accented.

·        It prompts the poet to write accents over syllables he wants to be accented; often these accents appear in surprising places.

  1. “Counterpointing” = the contrast between the “heard rhythm” of specific feet and the “expected rhythm” or basic meter of the rest of a line or poem

 

Hopkins’s Use of Sound Devices

  1. Hopkins makes more extensive use than most poets of traditional poetic sound devices.  Give specific examples of Hopkins’s use of each of the following:
    1. perfect rhyme
    2. imperfect rhyme (also called approximate rhyme, slant rhyme, half rhyme, or eye rhyme)
    3. end rhyme
    4. internal rhyme
    5. assonance
    6. alliteration
    7. consonance     
  2. Give specific examples of lines in which Hopkins uses these devices to create parallel structures.  (For example, in “God’s Grandeur,” line 7, “And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell,” Hopkins uses internal rhyme, word repetition, and alliteration to create two parallel phrases.)

 

Hopkins’s Experimentation with Language

Hopkins’s unconventional use of language sometimes sacrifices clarity for originality.  In the assigned poems by Hopkins, find examples of each of the following experimental techniques:

  1. Distortion of normal syntax (word order)
  2. Unconventional hyphenation
  3. Omission of words that are understood to be implied (a device sometimes called ellipsis)
  4. Coinage (making up) of new words

 

“God=s Grandeur,” 1516

  1. Poetic form
    1. How many lines does the poem have?
    2. What is the basic meter?
    3. What is the rhyme scheme?  Into what two main parts does the rhyme scheme divide the poem?  What name is given to each of these two main parts?
    4. What name is given to a poem written in this form?
  2. Content
    1. What problem does the speaker describe in lines 1-8?
    2. What solution to the problem does the speaker present in lines 9-14?
  3. Figures of speech
    1. What is meant by “like shining from shook foil”?  What figure of speech is this?
    2. What is meant by “like the ooze of oil / Crushed”?  What figure of speech is this?
    3. What is the denotation of “reck” (line 4)?  What is meant by “reck his rod”?  What figure of speech is this?
    4. What human activities are suggested in lines 5-7?
    5. What is the denotation of “shod” (line 8)?  What is meant by “nor can foot feel, being shod”?
    6. What natural phenomena are described in lines 11-12?  Taken together, of what are these phenomena a symbol?
    7. In lines 13-14, to what is the Holy Ghost compared?  Is there any precedent for such a comparison?  Why does the poet use it?
  4. Find examples in this poem of all the sound devices listed above under “Hopkins’s Use of Sound Devices,” 1a-g.  What are the effects of using these devices?

 

“Spring,” 1517

  1. What is the poetic form of this poem?  (See questions 1a-d for “God’s Grandeur.”)
  2. What situation is described in lines 1-8? 
  3. What explanation for this situation is presented in lines 9-14?
  4. What characteristic devices does Hopkins use in this poem?  (See discussion of Hopkins’s poetic techniques earlier in this study guide.)

 

“The Windhover,” 1518

Of all his poems, this was Hopkins’s favorite.  Critics also discuss it prominently.  (Extra-credit research: Do research to find critical interpretations of this poem.)  I find it to be, however, one of his most difficult poems. 

  1. What is the poetic form of this poem?  (See questions 1a-d for “God’s Grandeur.”)
  2. What is a windhover?  Extra-credit research: Learn more about this bird, and relate what you learn to the poem.
  3. In lines 1-7a, the speaker reports his observation of the windhover “this morning.”  What does he report about the bird? 
  4. In lines 7b-8, the speaker reports his response to seeing the bird.  What is that response?  Critics explain that his heart responds “in hiding” because, as a priest, he feels guilty about his response.  (See also “more dangerous” in line 11.) Why would he feel guilty?
  5. In line 8, the verb “achieve” is used in place of what noun?
  6. The footnote for “Buckle” (line 10) identifies three different definitions of this word.  Explain the relevance of all three definitions in the context of the poem. 
  7. According to the poem’s title, to whom is the poem addressed?  Who is “thee” (line 10)? Who is “my chevalier” (line 11)?  What is a “chevalier”?  Why does the speaker use this metaphor?
  8. Describe the two visual images presented in lines 12-14.  What truth do these images both symbolize?  How do they relate to the speaker’s experience with the windhover?

  

“Pied Beauty,” 1518

  1. What central idea for the poem is announced in line 1?
  2. What is the definition of “pied,” “dappled,” “brinded,” and “stipple”?  What common element do all these definitions share?
  3. Explain the meaning of each of the following hyphenated coinages: “couple-colour,” “rose-moles” (“rose” here is a color), and “fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls” (hint: think of the Christmas song that begins “Chestnuts roasting on an open fire”).  What do these three images have in common?
  4. Whereas all the images in lines 2-5 come from nature, lines 6-9 are broader in their application.  To what aspects of human life do these lines refer? What do they have in common with lines 2-5?
  5. How do lines 10-11, along with line 1, provide a “frame” for the content of the rest of the poem?  What do the poem’s opening and closing lines have in common? 
  6. Line 10 states a paradox (a contradictory statement that nevertheless is true).  What is the contradiction?  What is the underlying truth that resolves the contradiction?
  7. How does this poem demonstrate Hopkins’s concept of “inscape”?

 

“Spring and Fall,” 1521

  1. To whom is this poem addressed?  What does the poem tell us about this person?  What is she doing?  Why?
  2. What is meant by the coinages “Goldengrove unleaving” (line 2) and “wanwood leafmeal” (line 8)?  What do these two images have in common?
  3. According to lines 5-8, how will the listener’s response be different when she is older? Why?  What similar idea does Wordsworth express in “Ode: Intimations of Immortality”?
  4. Explain the last two lines: “It ís the blight man was born for, / It is Margaret you mourn for.”  To what “blight” (according to Christian theology) is the speaker referring?  In what sense is Margaret grieving for herself without even being aware of it?

 

“Thou Art Indeed Just, Lord,” 1524

  1. What is the poetic form of this poem?
  2. In contrast to the other assigned poems by Hopkins, this one is said to be written in a “plain style.”  What is different about the style of this poem?
  3. What is the speaker’s complaint against God in most of the poem?
  4. With what prayer does the poem end?