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This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. On what is it said that Burbank in "Burbank with a Baedeker: Bleistein with a Cigar" is meditating at the poem's end?

2. What event is spoken of in the last line of the first part of the "Preludes"?

3. What does the speaker of "La Figlia che Piange" tell his auditor to weave in her hair?

4. Which two "guardians of the faith" kept watch upon the shelves?

5. To where do the speakers of the "Journey of the Magi" come in the second stanza?

Short Essay Questions

1. What is implied by stating in "The Hippopotamus" that the "True Church need never stir / To gather in its dividends"?

2. What is the significance of the lion made tame in the final stanza of "Burbank with a Baedeker: Bleistein with a Cigar"?

3. Who are the "ladies of the corridor" in "Sweeney Erect"?

4. What is the significance of the two stanzas concerned with Donne in "Whispers of Immortality"?

5. Why is Sweeney uncomfortable in "Mr. Eliot's Sunday Morning Service"?

6. What is the relationship between the speaker and his interlocutor in "Portrait of a Lady"?

7. What evidently characterizes the woman in "Hysteria"?

8. What is a possible interpretation of the "notion of some infinitely gentle / Infinitely suffering thing" described near the end of the "Preludes"?

9. What sort of people are the "nightingales" among whom Sweeney cavorts in "Sweeney Among the Nightingales"?

10. What does the "Boston Evening Transcript" seem to symbolize in the poem of the same name?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Frequently appearing in T.S. Eliot's poetry, explicitly in the later poems such as "Animula", "Choruses from 'The Rock'", and the "Four Quartets", and implicitly by its total lack in the earlier poems, such as "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" and "The Hollow Men", is the theme of hope. Analyze the two ways in which this is a prominent topic for Eliot, drawing upon several poems as sources. What is the nature of hope? In what ways is hope lost or absent? What contributes to the loss of hope? Contrariwise, in what is hope to be found? How is hope to be had? What contributes to the possession of hope? What does hope do for human persons?

Essay Topic 2

As one of Eliot's more controversial poems, "The Hippopotamus" is a commentary on religious belief and religious practice. Analyze and provide your own interpretation of this poem. What is the overall meaning of the poem? What are the individual parts which indicate this meaning? For what does the Hippopotamus within the poem stand? What is significant about the Hippopotamus' analogous portrayal? What is significant about the Church being referred to as the "True Church"? What is meant by the "old miasmal mist"?

Essay Topic 3

As T.S. Eliot's character of the "everyman," Sweeney appears in a number of poems and in one of the fragments of the unfinished poem, the "Sweeney Agonistes". Analyze the character of Sweeney as he appears in at least one of Eliot's works, giving an overall portrayal of the character through specific instances. What are his principal traits? What does he lack as a person? In what sort of actions does he engage? How is he representative of modern man? Who and what are used as contrasts to Sweeney as a person and Sweeney's patterns of behavior?

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