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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. At dinner, what does Christabel seem like to Ash?

2. What does Roland discover happened to his landlady?

3. What does Blackadder discover Ash asked Christabel at a séance?

4. What does Roland say to Blackadder after the meeting?

5. What does Cropper entice Sir George by offering?

Short Essay Questions

1. How does Blackadder feel about talking about Ash on television?

2. What is Ash's opinion on spiritualist mediums?

3. What does Beatrice Nest overhear?

4. Describe Cropper's lectures.

5. What do Roland and Maud decide to do at the end of Chapter 18?

6. How does the subject of Christabel and Ash's letters come up at the race track?

7. How does Val feel about her new relationship?

8. What similarities are there between Christabel and Ash's trip and Roland and Maud's trip?

9. What do Leonora and Blackadder do when Cropper's Mercedes passes them on the road?

10. How does Ellen Ash feel about Christabel?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Discuss communication in the novel.

1) How does literature and poetry function as communication in the novel? How does a reader or scholar know that he or she is communicating with an author like Ash or LaMotte?

2) How do the characters communicate with each other? How do they often not communicate, and exist at cross-purposes with each other?

3) How does communication build knowledge in the novel?

Essay Topic 2

In the novel, the characters are scholars who study two Victorian poets. Discuss the importance of poetry in the novel.

1) Why does Roland decide to write poems, and find a poetic voice, at the end of the novel? How is writing poetry different than studying and analyzing it?

2) What do poets accomplish with their poems in the novel? Who are the poems written for?

3) What causes poetry to persist over time in the novel? Why do the characters study poetry that is written far in the past?

Essay Topic 3

Discus the role of objects in the story, and how they are and are not invested with meaning.

1) What gives an object meaning? How do the letters that Roland finds have meaning, and why is the meaning only identified when Roland reads the letters?

2) How does context relate to meaning? Why can Maud only interpret Christabel's doll poem correctly in the context of Christabel's room? What other examples are there in the novel of context giving meaning to objects or words?

3) What meanings do the physical objects in Ash's box have? How are these meanings different for different people, in different contexts?

(see the answer keys)

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