The final exam writing is due to the course writing assignments. You may turn in the exam writing before that deadline but not after it.
The exam writing is a two-page essay that develops one of these topics:
• Topic 1: Contrast the value of wealth and social position as understood by the Romantic writers and by the Victorians we met (the Brownings and Dickens)
To develop this topic you will choose among these Romantic works: “The World is Too Much With Us”; “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud”: “London” by Blake. You will use Hard Times as the primary Victorian source but might also use some of Robert Browning’s poems we considered in class.
Purpose of the essay: To describe the ways that Romantic writers and Dickens or Browing differed or did not differ in their thinking about wealth and social position..
The paper has an introduction ending with a clear thesis; two content paragraphs focusing on the differences you see. Each content paragraph develops one difference and provides both the Romantic and Dickensian views. The paper ends with a paragraph that comes to a conclusion about how and why the Romantics and Victorians as represented by Dickens are remarkably similar or that they are quite different.
You will use no outside sources, focusing on the elements of Romantic and Victorian thinking and the works we considered together. Do NOT summarize the poems or the novel. Use the poems and novel as examples in your paragraphs to support your idea that the two periods were very different or similar.
• Topic 2: A discussion of changing or onging similar ideas about the importance of imagination as the Romantics and Victorian’s understood it. Use Wordsworth’s “I Wandered Lonely” and “Tintern Abbey” as sources, along with and Shelley’s Frankenstein, Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner. and Dickens’s Hard Times. You must choose two Romantic writers and Dickens.
The paper is two pages with an introduction, two content paragraphs, and a conclusion. The focus of the paper is to explain the operations of the imagination as the Romantics understood it and as the characters in Hard Times understood it. Each paragraph focuses on one aspect of imagination and explains the ideas of Wordsworth, Shelley and/or Coleridge, contrasting them with the ideas of the characters in Dickens’s novel. You will identify characters and events in the novel by Dickens to develop the contrast (difference) or comparison (similarity)
The ending paragraph (paragraph 4) is the conclusion where you will offer a general summary of the argument of the paper and you will state an inference that develops the reasons why the writers from two different eras share similar ideas or have completely different thoughts.
You will use no outside sources, focusing on the elements of Romantic and Victorian thinking and the works we considered together. Do NOT summarize the poems or the novel. Use the poems and novel as examples in your paragraphs to support your idea that the two periods were very different or similar.
3. Topic 3: A discussion of attitudes toward organized education in terms of its benefits and downsides in view of the Romantics and Victorians. Use Shelley’s Frankenstein as a representative of the Romantic viewpoint and Dickens’s view in Hard Times.
The paper is two pages with an introduction, two content paragraphs, and a conclusion. The focus of the paper is the impact or result of education on people. Each paragraph will explore how the two writers had similar or different ideas. Each paragraph will name one idea about education popular in the Day and then add in one result or impact of education on people (or one class of persons) in the two eras. Neither paragraph is a summary of the plots of the two works of fiction.
Be sure to avoid summarizing plot. Each paragraph offers two ways in which the Victorians and Romantics were similar or different. The last paragraph, the conclusion, summarizes the similarity or differences and develops an inference or idea about why and how the two eras stayed together or they were accepting very different ideas. This paragraph will answer why you think the ideas of the Victorians and Romantics had differing or similar views.
No sources are to be used beyond the works of literature. You may read Discussion Board postings throughout the term to give you ideas, and you must include information on plot and characters from relevant sections of both novels, connecting these ideas to the works you read, the author’s general ideas, and the historical times in which both were in the public eye.