English 244E–Essay 1.

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Please choose one of the questions below and write an 800-word essay in response to it. Use the notes in the Longman anthology to assist you, and be sure to consult a dictionary about the meaning of words from the poem that you may not know. You need not use any other sources in completing this assignment.

Essays in response to question 1 are due in class (not in the English dept. drop box) on October 7; essays on question 2 are due in class October 12. Please choose the topic whose due date best fits your schedule; there will be no extensions on this assignment.

Question 1) In Wordsworth’s "Elegiac Stanzas Suggested by a picture of Peele Castle, in a storm, painted by Sir George Beaumont" the speaker stands before a painting of Peele Castle. Discuss the significance of this dramatic situation. What is the relation between the painting and the speaker’s memory of the actual castle?

800 words. Papers on this topic must be turned in the start of class on October7.

Question 2)

And that simplest lute,
Placed length-wise in the clasping casement, hark!
How by the desultory breeze caressed,
Like some coy maid half yielding to her lover,
It pours such sweet upbraiding, as needs must
Tempt to repeat the wrong!

                                                    (Coleridge, "The Eolian Harp" 12-17.)

 

Explain the simile in these lines–how is the lute (or harp) like a "coy maid"? Then discuss the meaning of the harp itself as a symbol in the poem as a whole. You may wish to consider the connection between the simile quoted above and the dramatic situation represented in the poem.

800 words. Papers on this topic must be turned in at the start of class on October 12.


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update 9/15/04