1) Discuss Marlowe’s “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love” and Raleigh’s “The Nymph’s Reply to the Shepherd” in respect to the pastoral tradition and its conception of an idealized or Golden Age.
2) What does Shakespeare tell us about the significance of poetry, and thus the significance of the human imagination, in Sonnet 18?
3) The early Italian Renaissance poet Petrarch established a norm for writing poems about love in the Renaissance. How does Shakespeare respond to that norm in one or more of his sonnets that we read?
4) Compare John Donne’s manner of writing in “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning” with that of Shakespeare in the sonnets we read. You may want to consider such elements as the kinds of images that are used, the smooth or rough rhythms of lines, or the characteristics of the speaker in the poems.
5) There was a greatly increasing interest in science in the early 17th century. Discuss how this is reflected in Donne’s “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning.”
6) Candide expresses Voltaire’s response to disasters–events typically described as evil. These events may be natural (e.g., the Lisbon earthquake), manmade (e.g., the seemingly endless series of wars in Europe), or some combination of the two (e.g., the thievery that occurs in the aftermath of natural disasters). Discuss Voltaire’s attitude in Candide to the nature of evil.
7) Voltaire ends his book with Candide’s assertion that “we must cultivate our garden.” Looking at this statement in the context provided by the rest of the book, explain the meaning of this avowal.
8) What is worse in Candide: reality or the denial of reality?
9) What does William Blake think of the English society of his time? Your essay may include commentary on his attitude to religion, government, racism, the burgeoning industrial age, and / or anything else you consider relevant.
10) Discuss the contrasting states of innocence and experience in Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience by comparing, among the poems we read in class, two or three of the Songs of Innocencewith two or three of the Songs of Experience. You may want to think about the kinds of people who serve as narrators in the poems you discuss.
11) Discuss Blake’s attitude to the imagination as it is expressed in one or more of the poems we read.
12) Discuss the attitude to nature expressed in one or more of the Wordsworth poems we read.
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