Paper 2 Topics :

Paper 2 (2-3 pages) must be on one of the following works: Arden of Faversham; a poem (or perhaps two poems) by either Wyatt, Sidney, Shakespeare, Wroth, Herbert, Donne, Jonson, or Marvell; or Jonson’s Volpone.

1. How is the language of love used to further lust or vice versa? What distinguishes love and lust? Define your terms and draw specifically from the language of the text(s).

2. Choose a compelling word or image in a work and discuss its significance. Be sure to pay close attention to the historical meaning of any words you consider (i.e., consult the O.E.D.), and pay close attention to the language that surrounds the word or conveys the image.

3. What is the relation between the material and the spiritual or the secular and the religious? Are they always opposites? Does one in some way “serve” the other?

4. In a genre almost exclusively made up of men addressing women, how does the fact that Wroth is a women writing a sonnet sequence change how one reads her poems? That is, how does her gender subvert the genre in which she is writing? Or does it? Make sure you avoid generalizations and cite specific textual evidence.

5. Choose a minor character in Volpone and discuss him or her. What function does this character serve in the play? How is he or she a reflection upon the main character, Volpone, or upon a theme of the play?

6. What is the function of ornament in poetry? If what the poet speaks is Truth, why does he need to dress it up? If the lady addressed is beautiful, why does she need verbal mascara?

7. What is justice? Is justice served in Arden of Faversham or in V olpone?

8. Rhyme and reason. What is the reasoning behind the rhyme scheme and rhyming words used in a particular poem? How does the rhyme further the reasoning (the meaning) of the poem? Again, be attentive to Renaissance meanings of words (consult the O.E.D.).

9. Objects. How does a specific object impel the plot or imagery of a work? What’s valuable about the object? What’s in the thing? Would another thing by another name work as well? In what ways is the literary work itself an object and like or not like the object represented within it?

10. Many poems are addressed to a particular person. What is the objective of the author in writing the poem to that person? How does the character of the addressee influence the way the poem is formulated? Imagine another person being addressed. How might the poem change?

11. Why is writing poetry so difficult? Focusing on one poem, discuss why the poet talks so much about the difficulty of writing his or her poem. Is this a strategy, and if so, to achieve what?

12. Discuss a poet’s work in terms of his or her response to tradition. How does the poem negotiate the fashions of its literary context. Be sure to define your terms.

13. Yeats says that rhetoric is when we argue with other people, and poetry is when we argue with ourselves. Use this notion of poetry as a means to discuss one poem of your choosing (do not choose “They flee from me” or the Jordan poems).