CEL 24 I CA

Section A: context (poetry)

Answer one question only

Either

1. Comment on the following extract relating it to the work from which it has been taken.

• I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
  That music hath a far more pleasing sound;
  I grant I never saw a goddess go;
  My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground.
  And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
  As any she belied with false compare.

Or

2. Comment on the following extract relating it to the work from which it has been taken.

•  What the hammer? what the chain,
  In what furnace was thy brain?
  What the anvil? what dread grasp.
  Dare its deadly terrors clasp?

Section B: Context (Prose)

Answer one question only

Either

1. Comment on the following extract relating it to the work from which it has been taken.

• The wife of a rich man fell sick, and as she felt that her end was drawing near, she called her only daughter to her
  bedside and said, dear child, be good and pious, and then the good God will always protect you, and I will look
  down on you from heaven and be near you. Thereupon she closed her eyes and departed. Every day the maiden
  went out to her mother's grave, and wept, and she remained pious and good. When winter came the snow spread a
  white sheet over the grave, and by the time the spring sun had drawn it off again, the man had taken another wife.
  The woman had brought with her into the house two daughters, who were beautiful and fair of face, but vile and
  black of heart.

Or

2. Comment on the following extract relating it to the work from which it has been taken.

• She danced till it was evening, and then she wanted to go home. But the king's son said, I will go with you and bear
  you company, for he wished to see to whom the beautiful maiden belonged. She escaped from him, however, and
  sprang into the pigeon-house. The king's son waited until her father came, and then he told him that the unknown
  maiden had leapt into the pigeon-house. The old man thought, can it be Cinderella. And they had to bring him an
  axe and a pickaxe that he might hew the pigeon-house to pieces, but no one was inside it.

Section C: Criticism (Poetry)

Answer one question only

Either

1. Analyse the portrayal of 18th-century society in poetry by examining and contrasting the depictions of social norms, class structures, and religious values in three distinct poems from that period. 

Or

2. Examine the contradictory interpretations present in any poem from your syllabus, analysing how the deeper meanings contrast with the explicit messages conveyed by the poet.

Section D: Criticism (Prose)

Answer one question only

Either

1. Evaluate the character of the stepmother in the Brothers Grimm's "Cinderella." Is she inherently wicked, or could her actions be interpreted as those of a mother whose behaviour is perceived as villainous through the subjective lens of a child with a complex psychological background?

Or

2. Critically evaluate the psychological dimensions of two characters in the Brothers Grimm's "Cinderella."