Handouts Available:
Study Questions for Review of Old English and Middle English Literature
Midterm Review Guide (Au '02)
The midterm will take place on Thursday, October 24. You need bring only a pen to the exam. I will supply you with exam booklets. The exam will cover all materials you have been assigned to read. Please don’t forget the informational handouts I’ve distributed. If you think you may have missed (or lost) a handout, come to the office and I will find a copy for you.
What follows is a sampling of the kinds of questions you might encounter on the exam. Use these as models to help you prepare. Keep in mind that I will probably choose different items for the exam itself, though these might turn up.
Section I. Periodization. (Total of 10 pts)
Identify in which period (Old English or Medieval) each of the following works was written. Use the year 1066 as the break between these periods.
1. The Canterbury Tales
2. "The Wanderer"
II. Short Answer. (Total of 40 pts)
1. Define allegory
2. Identify the usual features of elegiac poetry
3. Translate the following passage into modern English: "Whan that April with his showres soote/ The droughte of March hath perced to the roote,/ And bathed every veine in swich licour,/ Of which vertu engendred is the flowr..."
4. Identify the rhyme pattern of the previous excerpt (using A,B,C, etc).
III. Identify the author and title of each work excerpted below (10 items, 20 pts):
a. Once when he left the feast like this, he went to the cattle shed, which he had been assigned the duty of guarding that night. And after he had stretched himself out and gone to sleep, he dreamed that someone was standing at his side and greeted him, calling out his name. "Cędmon," he said, "sing me something."
IV. Analysis. (Total 30pts)
Choose two (of the ten items in III). Discuss each passage’s major themes, then comment on its significance within the work from which it was drawn, and its relationship to other works of the same literary period. You must select one item from the period before 1066 and one item from the period after 1066. Note: the best students will impress me with their range of knowledge, their ability to discuss more than one genre or type of literature, and their willingness to tackle passages in Middle English.
Old English and
Middle English Literature
Some questions to consider as you review
1. What seem to be the principle differences in world view between the literature written in Old English and the Middle English works we’ve read?
2. How did such factors as oral transmission and religious belief affect the literature we’ve read so far this quarter?
3. In what ways does the social station of the author and/or audience of a work affect its style and subject?
4. What different types (or genres) of literature have we read? Think about the "rules" which define and shape each of these genres. Have we read any works which play with the conventions of their genres by adding a new element or twist to its usual requirements?
5. What are the repeated themes in the works we’ve read? What subjects seem to concern these writers most?
6. Several of the works we’ve read have been by women -- and others have commented on women’s experience. Which works fall in this category? What do we learn about medieval English attitudes toward women from these works? What do we learn about medieval English expectations of and attitudes toward men?
7. How would you characterize the medieval view of Christian religion as it is revealed in the works we’ve read? What elements of that religion seem particularly important to various writers? (Remember that the term medieval encompasses all of the literature we've read so far, not just the Middle English works.)
More terms you should recognize and be able to define/use/apply (for help, turn to your notes and/or to reference sources like the Bedford Glossary, the section on Literary Terms at the end of the Longman Anthology, the section headings in the LA, a good dictionary, etc.):
kenning, metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche, iambic pentameter, rhyme (and rhyme scheme), convention, allegory, didacticism, genre, romance (see also chivalric romance, medieval romance), morality tale, morality play, cycle play, courtly love, dramatic irony, pilgrimage, quest
You should be prepared to demonstrate your ability to use the terminology of this course on the midterm.
The midterm will consist of several sections designed to test your knowledge and understanding of the works we’ve read. The first section will ask you to identify the period of composition for several works. The second section will ask you to give brief answers to a variety of questions about form, genre, terminology, character, theme, etc. The third section of the exam will give you a series of excerpts from the texts we’ve read and will ask you to identify the author and title of each. (In some cases, the author will be anonymous.) The fourth section of the exam will ask you to write as completely as time allows about selected passages from section three (the choice will be yours): you will discuss the significance of the passages in relation to the general body of old/middle English literature and (where appropriate) in relation to the larger works in which they appear.