2 Module Study Questions
DIRECTIONS:
1. Save this assignment in either Word or Rich Text with the following
name: Your Last Name. First Name. SQ2.
2. Answer the questions following each poem and do not delete the
questions: (Type your answer in a color other than this bluewhich I
will use in my response to your work. Alternatively, you can bold the
answers, so that they are easily distinguishable from the questions.)
3. Answer each question fully with support. These are not short
answer questions. You are expected to elaborate and support your
responses.
4. Grading: The questions will be evaluated on the basis of the clarity
and completeness of your original response. Unsupported
responses will not receive a high grade.
5. Note: Using literary analysis you found on the internet or some other
source in an assignment that requires your own original work is a
form of plagiarism.
(Before responding to these questions, read Tennyson/ Browning Reading
Notes carefully.)
Alfred Lord Tennyson: IN MEMORIAM
Poem 54
1.
In the first three stanzas, what does the speaker "trust" is true about life and
death? Support with specific examples.
2.
In the fifth stanza, what does he say about his ability to know what is true? What
does he compare himself to? Support with specific examples.
Poem 55
1.
What does the speaker think about God and nature?
2.
What scientific finding does Stanza 3 describe? Support.
3.
In stanzas four and five what has this new scientific knowledge (and a death he
does not understand) done to the speaker's faith? Pick out the words and phrases
that show this?
Poem 56
1.
Is nature careful of the species? What has geology revealed about "types"?
2.
What does the speaker fear will happen to man?
3.
In stanzas three through the six, speaker describes man in two different ways.
What are the two ways? Support.
4.
In the last stanza how strong is the speaker's faith? Support with examples.
Who do you think "thy voice" refers to?
Poem 124
1.
How did the speaker regain his faith? Support.
2.
Compare the "infant" in the last stanza of Poem 54 to the "child" in the fifth
stanza of Poem 124. How different does he feel?
3. Compare the image of "hands" in the last stanza to the image of speakers "hands"
in the last stanza of Poem 55, p. 1147. What does that say about how he regained
his faith?
Tennyson: Crossing the Bar
Tennyson wrote this poem three years before his death and requested that
it be published last in any anthology of his works. It shows the spiritual
attitude he held after his years of doubting.
What is the speaker's attitude toward death and what does he think will happen after
death? Support with detail from the poem.
Robert Browning: Prospice
Robert Browning was the poet who romanced and wed Elizabeth Barrett
Browning. After a fifteen year marriage, she died in Italy and this poem
was written the same year she died.
1. What is the speakers attitude toward Death? Support?
2. What does the speaker imagine death will be like? (Lines 18-end) (Note that
there are several stages described; please explain all of them.)
3. Do you think Brownings faith will help him in grieving her death? What does he
imagine an afterlife to be like? Support.
4. Compare Brownings reaction to the death of a loved one to Tennysons in In
Memoriam.
Which of the two do you think you would be most like in a similar situation?
Please explain.
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