Discuss how Melville’s “Benito Cereno” comments on the difficulties humans face when they look for signs in the world.

Use only works on the course
guide from the following authors: Emerson,
Thoreau, Melville, Whitman, Dickinson.
Do not use any outside sources and refer only to the works by the
writers, not any background material in the textbook.

For each of the following
questions write a developed response of about 200 – 250 words. 25 points max each.

1. Contrast the poetry of Walt
Whitman and Emily Dickinson giving examples from each. Focus on subject matter,
verse form, or tone.

2. How does Thoreau, in the chapter
“Spring” from Walden, make practical some
of the ideas in Emerson’s “Self –Reliance”? Discuss both Emerson’s
transcendentalist ideas and Thoreau’s use of them.

3. Discuss how Melville’s
“Benito Cereno” comments on the difficulties humans face when they look for
signs in the world.

4. Select any two writers on
the course guide from Emerson to Whitman and compare how they incorporate one of the following aspects of
American Romanticism:
a. Valuing intuition over
reason
b. Nature as a source of
knowledge
c. Valuing the individual over
the group
d. Experimentation in forms of
writing

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