EN2035

BA/DIPLOMA OF HE EXAMINATION
COMBINED DEGREE SCHEME EXAMINATION

ENGLISH

Group B Advanced Unit/Level 5 Course: Augustans and Romantics

Release date: Tuesday 9 June 2020 at 12.00 midday British Summer Time

Submission deadline: Tuesday 16 June 2020 at 12.00 midday British Summer Time

Time allowed: 7 days to submit

Answer THREE questions, ONE from EACH section (all three questions carry equal
marks). Candidates may NOT discuss the same text in more than one answer, in this
examination or in any other Advanced Level Unit/Level 5/Level 6 examination.

Answers should be typed and submitted as a single Word document to the designated
area on the VLE page for this course before the deadline. Please indicate the question
number at the top of each answer.

You are NOT permitted to consult with other people in the preparation or composition
of your answer.

© University of London 2020

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 SECTION A

1. Write on ONE of the following passages, indicating those qualities which you think
make it characteristic of the period. Pay particular attention to the subject, the form,
and the use of language and image.

a) Horace can laugh, is delicate, is clear;

You,1 only coarsely rail, or darkly sneer:
His Style is elegant, his Diction pure,
Whilst none thy crabbed Numbers can endure;
5 Hard as thy Heart, and as thy Birth obscure.
If He has Thorns, they all on Roses grow;
Thine like rude Thistles, and mean Brambles show
With this Exception, that tho’ rank the Soil,
Weeds, as they are, they seem produc’d by Toil.
10 Satire shou’d, like a polish’d Razor keen,
Wound with a Touch, that’s scarcely felt or seen.
Thine is an Oyster-Knife, that hacks and hews;
The Rage, but not the Talent to Abuse;
And is in Hate, what Love is in the Stews.2
15 ’Tis the gross Lust of Hate, that still annoys,
Without Distinction, as gross Love enjoys:
Neither to Folly, nor to Vice confin’d;
The Object of thy Spleen is Human Kind:
It preys on all, who yield or who resist;
20 To Thee ’tis Provocation to exist.
[…]
If none with Vengeance yet thy Crimes pursue,
Or give thy manifold Affronts their due;
If Limbs unbroken, Skin without a Stain,
25 Unwhipt, unblanketed, unkick’d, unslain;
That wretched little Carcass you retain:
The Reason is, not that the World wants Eyes;
But thou’rt so mean, they see, and they despise.
When fretful Porcupine, with rancorous Will,
30 From mounted Back shoots forth a harmless Quill,
Cool the Spectators stand; and all the while,

1 You: Alexander Pope. By 1733, the one-time friendship between the satirist and Lady Mary Wortley
Montagu had become acrimonious. In Pope’s Imitation of Horace’s Satire, II, i, and later in Epistle ‘To a
Lady’, Montagu appears as ‘Sappho’, a passionate slattern of dubious sexual morality.
2 Stews: brothels.

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 Upon the angry little Monster smile.
Thus ’tis with thee: — whilst impotently safe,
You strike unwounding, we unhurt can laugh.
35 Who but must laugh, this Bully when he sees,
A puny Insect shiv’ring at a Breeze?3
One over-match’d by ev’ry Blast of Wind,
Insulting and provoking all Mankind.
(LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU, from Verses Address’d to the
Imitator of the First Satire of the Second Book of Horace. By a Lady, 1733)

b) The Necessity of Education

But, my Lord, the fairest Diamonds are rough till they are polished, and the purest
Gold must be run and washed, and sifted in the ore. We are untaught by Nature, and
the finest Qualities will grow wild and degenerate, if the Mind is not formed by
Discipline, and cultivated with an early Care. In some Persons, who have run up to
5 Men without a liberal Education, we may observe many great Qualities darken’d and
eclips’d; their Minds are crusted over like Diamonds in the Rock, they flash out
sometimes into an irregular Greatness of Thought, and betray in their Actions an
unguided Force, and unmanaged Virtue; something very Great and very Noble may
be discerned, but it looketh cumbersome and awkward, and is alone of all Things
10 the worse for being natural. Nature is undoubtedly the best Mistriss, and the aptest
Scholar, but Nature herself must be civilized, or she will look savage, as she appears
in the Indian Princes, who are vested with a native Majesty, a surprizing Greatness
and Generosity of Soul, and discover what we always regret, Fine Parts, and
excellent natural Endowments without Improvement. In those Countries, which we
15 call Barbarous, where Art and Politeness are not understood, Nature hath the greater
Advantage in this, that Simplicity of Manners often secureth the Innocence of the
Mind; and as Virtue is not, so neither is Vice civilized and refined; But in these Politer
Parts of the World, where Virtue excelleth by Rules and Discipline, Vice also is more
instructed, and with us good Qualities will not spring up alone: Many hurtful Weeds
20 will rise with them, and choak them in their Growth, unless removed by some skilful
Hand; nor will the Mind be brought to a just Perfection, without cherishing every
hopeful Seed, and repressing every superfluous Humour: The Mind is like the Body
in this Regard, which cannot fall into a decent and easy Carriage, unless it be
fashioned in Time: An untaught Behaviour is like the People that use it, truly rustic,
25 forced, and uncouth, and Art must be applied to make it Natural. […] The Entrance
into Knowledge is oftentimes very Narrow, Dark, and Tiresome, but the Rooms are
Spacious, and gloriously furnished: The Country is admirable, and every Prospect
entertaining.
(HENRY FELTON, from A Dissertation on Reading the Classics, 1713)

3Who […] Breeze?: A couplet quoted from Pope’s Epistle to Burlington, in which Montagu has replaced ‘the
Master’ with ‘this Bully’.
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 c) The poet, the man of strong feelings, only gives us a picture of his mind when he
was actually alone, conversing with himself, and marking the impression which
nature made on his own heart. If, during these sacred moments, the idea of some
departed friend, some tender recollection, when the soul was most alive to
5 tenderness, intruded unawares into his mind, the sorrow which it produces is
artlessly, but poetically expressed; and who can avoid sympathizing?
Love of man leads to devotion. Grand and sublime images strike the imagination.
God is seen in every floating cloud, and comes from the misty mountains to receive
the noblest homage of an intelligent creature — praise. How solemn is the moment,
10 when all affections and remembrances fade before the sublime admiration which the
wisdom and goodness of God inspires, when he is worshipped in a temple not made
with hands, and the world seems to contain only the mind that formed and
contemplates it. These are not the weak responses of ceremonial devotion; nor to
express them would the poet need another poet’s aid. No: his heart burns within him,
15 and he speaks the language of truth and nature, with resistless energy.
Inequalities, of course, are observable in his effusions; and a less vigorous
imagination, with more taste, would have produced more elegance and uniformity.
But as passages are softened and expunged, during the cooler moments of
reflection, the understanding is gratified at the expense of those involuntary
20 sensations which, like the beauteous tints of an evening sky, are so evanescent, that
they melt into new forms before they can be analysed. For, however eloquently we
may boast of our reason, man must often be delighted he cannot tell why, or his
blunt feelings are not made to relish the beauties which nature, poetry, or any of the
imitative arts afford.
25 […]
These hints will assist the reader to trace some of the causes why the beauties of
nature are not forcibly felt, when civilization and its canker-worm, luxury, have made
considerable advances. Those calm emotions are not sufficiently lively to serve as
a relaxation to the voluptuary, or even for the moderate pursuers of artificial
30 pleasures. In the present state of society, the understanding must bring the feelings
back to nature, or the sensibility must have attained such strength, as rather to be
sharpened than destroyed by the exercise of passions.
(MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT, from On Poetry, and Our Relish for
the Beauties of Nature, 1797)

d) The Haunted Beach

Upon a lonely desert beach

Where the white foam was scattered,
A little shed upreared its head,
Though lofty barks were shattered.
The seaweeds gath’ring by the door
A sombre patch displayed,
And all around, the deaf’ning roar
Re-echoed on the chalky shore,

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 By the green billows made.

Above, a jutting cliff was seen

Where seabirds hovered, craving,
And all around the crags were bound
With weeds, forever waving;
And here and there, a cavern wide
Its shad’wy jaws displayed,
And near the sands, at ebb of tide,
A shivered mast was seen to ride
Where the green billows strayed.

And often, while the moaning wind

Stole o’er the summer ocean,
The moonlight scene was all serene,
The waters scarce in motion;
Then while the smoothly slanting sand
The tall cliff wrapped in shade,
The fisherman beheld a band
Of spectres gliding hand in hand,
Where the green billows played.

And pale their faces were as snow,

And sullenly they wandered;
And to the skies, with hollow eyes,
They looked, as though they pondered.
And sometimes from their hammock shroud
They dismal howlings made;
And while the blast blew strong and loud
The clear moon marked the ghastly crowd
Where the green billows played.

And then above the haunted hut,

The curlews, screaming, hovered;

And the low door, with furious roar,

The frothy breakers covered.
For in the fisherman’s lone shed
A murdered man was laid,
With ten wide gashes on his head;
And deep was made his sandy bed
Where the green billows played.
(MARY ROBINSON, from Lyrical Tales, 1800)

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SECTION B

Answer ONE question. For the purposes of this examination, Jane Austen will be deemed
a nineteenth-century author.

2. In 1694, Charles Gildon was of the opinion that ‘if men must not be told their faults,
they’ll never mend ’em; and general Reflections will never do the business, because
the devilish good opinion ev’ry Man has of himself furnishes him with an evasion’.
Consider the ways in which one eighteenth-century satirist attempted to deprive
readers of the comfort of such evasions.

3. ‘A glance at the prefaces written by [eighteenth-century novelists] indicates […] an

urgent need to define their own approach […] to the nature of fictional truth’ (CLIVE
PROBYN). Discuss the work of any one novelist of the eighteenth or nineteenth
century in terms of the treatment of fictionality.

4. Consider the ways in which one writer of the period has exploited the particular
qualities of one of the following:
(a) the epistle
(b) blank verse
(c) the ballad

5. ‘The country seat was the fixed centre of the landed family, the outward sign of its
social, financial and political standing, the custodian of its traditions’ (PETER
DIXON). What light does this observation throw upon the work of one poet or novelist
of the period?

6. It has been suggested that the title ‘Romantic precursor’ has been handed out with
more enthusiasm than proof. Does the verse of one of the following poets encourage
you to concur or disagree with this opinion: Thomas Gray, William Collins, William
Cowper?

7. Write a critical account of what you consider to be the distinctive qualities of the
comic drama of the second half of the eighteenth century. Your discussion should
refer to the work of one dramatist.

8. ‘[It was] the privilege of genius to carry on the feelings of childhood into the powers
of manhood; to combine the child’s sense of wonder and novelty with the
appearances which every day […] had rendered familiar’ (SAMUEL TAYLOR
COLERIDGE). To what extent does the work of one Romantic poet subscribe to
such an idea?

9. ‘Scenery is fine—but human nature is finer. The Sward is richer for the tread of a
real, nervous, english foot—the eagles nest is finer for the Mountaineer has look’d
into it’ (JOHN KEATS). With Keats’s words in mind, discuss the ways in which one
writer of the period has explored the natural world.

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SECTION C

Answer ONE question.

Your answer in this section should refer to AT LEAST TWO authors. For the purposes of
this examination, Jane Austen will be deemed a nineteenth-century author.

10. ‘Propaganda and advertising […] promote particular ideas and desires through the
use of idealised stereotypes (young, happy, healthy etc.). Satire seizes upon and
reverses those self-same stereotypes for its own subversive purposes’ (DAVID
NOKES). Consider the ways in which at least two satirists of the eighteenth century
employ the parodic techniques suggested in this quotation.

11. Examine the ways in which at least two novelists of the eighteenth century used
established genres within their narratives, for example mock-heroic, letters,
periodical essay, dramatic dialogue, travel-writing.

12. ‘Prudence and circumspection are necessary even to the best of men. They are,
indeed, as it were, a guard to Virtue, without which she can never be safe’ (HENRY
FIELDING). Write a critical commentary on the work of at least two novelists of the
period who are concerned to explore this proposal.

13. ‘But our cities’ […] streets are not the avenues for the passing and procession of a
happy people, but the drains for the discharge of a tormented mob […] and every
creature is only one atom in a drift of human dust’ (JOHN RUSKIN). In what ways
did urban life have a metaphorical presence in the writings of at least two authors
of the period?

14. Write an essay which explores the work of at least two writers of the period who
have set out in search of the sublime.

15. ‘None can usurp this height,’ returned that shade,

‘But those to whom the miseries of the world
Are misery, and will not let them rest.’
(JOHN KEATS)

Consider the work of at least two authors of the period who, in their various ways,
have confronted ‘the miseries of the world’.

16. ‘You know I always seek in what I see the manifestation of something beyond the
present and tangible object’ (PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY). Write on the verse of at
least two Romantic poets whose imaginations are similarly inspired. (One of the two
may be Shelley).

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17. Drawing upon the work of at least two authors of the period, discuss the treatment
of either chaos and order or transgression and guilt.

END OF PAPER

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