Final Exam Review in English 05-06 Scanlon
• from Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe
All the rest of the day I spent in afflicting myself at the dismal circumstances I was brought to-viz. I had neither food, house, clothes, weapon, nor place to fly to; and in despair of any relief, saw nothing but death before me-either that I should be devoured by wild beasts, murdered by savages, or starved to death for want of food. At the approach of night I slept in a tree, for fear of wild creatures; but slept soundly, though it rained all night.
• from Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe
It was about the beginning of September, 1664, that I, among the rest of my neighbours, heard in ordinary discourse that the plague was returned again in Holland; for it had been very violent there, and particularly at Amsterdam and Rotterdam, in the year 1663, whither, they say, it was brought, some said from Italy, others from the Levant, among some goods which were brought home by their Turkey fleet; others said it was brought from Candia; others from Cyprus. It mattered not from whence it
came; but all agreed it was come into Holland again.
• from A Modest Proposal by Jonathan Swift
The number of souls in this kingdom being usually reckoned one million and a half, of these I calculate there may be about two hundred thousand couple whose wives are breeders; from which number I subtract thirty thousand couples who are able to maintain their own children, although I apprehend there cannot be so many, under the present distresses of the kingdom; but this being granted, there will remain an hundred and seventy thousand breeders. I again subtract fifty thousand for those women who miscarry, or whose children die by accident or disease within the year. There only remains one hundred and twenty thousand children of poor parents annually born. The question therefore is, how this number shall be reared and provided for, which, as I have already said, under the present situation of affairs, is utterly impossible by all the methods hitherto proposed.
• from The Preface to A Dictionary of the English Language by Samuel Johnson
As language was at its beginning merely oral, all words of necessary or common use were spoken before they were written; and while they were unfixed by any visible signs, must have been spoken with great diversity, as we now observe those who cannot read to catch sounds imperfectly, and utter them negligently. When this wild and barbarous jargon was first reduced to an alphabet, every penman endeavoured to express, as he could, the sounds which he was accustomed to pronounce or to receive, and vitiated in writing such words as were already vitiated in speech. The powers of the letters, when they were applied to a new language, must have been vague and unsettled, and therefore different hands would exhibit the same sound by different combinations.
ENTRY WORD: cant: a word used to describe language that the writer or speaker disapproves of
• from Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
“You glanced at me with a slight trouble -- a hovering doubt: you did not know what my caprice might be -- whether I was going to play the master and be stern, or the friend and be benignant. I was now too fond of you often to simulate the first whim; and, when I stretched my hand out cordially, such bloom and light and bliss rose to your young, wistful features, I had much ado often to avoid straining you then and there to my heart."
• from An Essay on Man by Alexander Pope
Created half to rise, and half to fall;
Great lord of all things, yet a prey to all;
Sole judge of truth, in endless error hurled:
The glory, jest, and riddle of the world!
• from An Essay on Criticism by Alexander Pope
True ease in writing comes from art, not chance,
As those move easiest who have learned to dance.
“Tis not enough no harshness gives offense,
The sound must seem an echo to the sense.
+ The Lucy Poems by William Wordsworth
• STRANGE fits of passion have I known:
And I will dare to tell,
But in the Lover's ear alone,
What once to me befell.
When she I loved looked every day
Fresh as a rose in June,
I to her cottage bent my way,
Beneath an evening-moon.
Upon the moon I fixed my eye,
All over the wide lea;
With quickening pace my horse drew nigh
Those paths so dear to me.
And now we reached the orchard-plot;
And, as we climbed the hill,
The sinking moon to Lucy's cot
Came near, and nearer still.
In one of those sweet dreams I slept,
Kind Nature's gentlest boon!
And all the while my eyes I kept
On the descending moon.
My horse moved on; hoof after hoof
He raised, and never stopped:
When down behind the cottage roof,
At once, the bright moon dropped.
What fond and wayward thoughts will slide
Into a Lover's head!
"O mercy!" to myself I cried,
"If Lucy should be dead!"
• SHE dwelt among the untrodden ways
Beside the springs of Dove,
A Maid whom there were none to praise
And very few to love:
A violet by a mossy stone
Half hidden from the eye!
--Fair as a star, when only one
Is shining in the sky.
She lived unknown, and few could know
When Lucy ceased to be;
But she is in her grave, and, oh,
The difference to me!
• A SLUMBER did my spirit seal;
I had no human fears:
She seemed a thing that could not feel
The touch of earthly years.
No motion has she now, no force;
She neither hears nor sees;
Rolled round in earth's diurnal course,
With rocks, and stones, and trees.
• from “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”
by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
At length did cross an Albatross,
Thorough the fog it came ;
As if it had been a Christian soul,
We hailed it in God's name.
. . .
The fair breeze blew, the white foam flew,
The furrow followed free ;
We were the first that ever burst
Into that silent sea.
• LITERARY PERIODS in chronological order, their defining characteristics, authors, (and their works above)
• The Renaissance:
A rebirth of interest in the classical learning of ancient Greece and Rome:
Shakespeare
• The Restoration:
The age of reason:
Defoe, Swift, Pope, Johnson
• The Romantic Period:
A time of interest in nature, the mind, and the imagination:
Wordsworth, Coleridge, Bronte
Reading:
-Tell which answer explains the meaning of a given sentence from literature
Speaking
-Know what to do when speaking in front of a large group
Writing
-Be able to identify a good thsis statement for an essay
-Be able to identify examples of formal essays
-Know the differences between formal and informal essays
-Be able to identify a tightly organized paragraph
