Midterm ExamPage Midterm: Monday, Feb. 10
Form of the midterm exam •The exam is divided into 2 parts.  • You should spend half of your time on each part.  • Be as specific as you can.   • Use a bluebook. • Put your name on the back of your bluebook. •Do not use books, computers, phones, notes, or any other study aids during the exam.	Part I. Choose 5 of the following 6 terms and explain the significance of each; in the course of your response, you should refer to a work or works read for the course. Example: Heroic couplets   Part II.  There will be two quotations.  Choose one and follow the directions below. (a) Identify the source of the quotation.  (b) Then paraphrase it.  (c) Then analyze it.  Use your analysis to make a claim about the quotation. Example: For his long absence Church and State did groan; Madness the Pulpit, Faction seiz'd the Throne: Experienc'd Age in deep despair was lost To see the Rebel thrive, the Loyal crost: Youth that with joys had unacquainted been Envy'd gray hairs that once good days had seen: We thought our Sires, not with their own content, Had ere we came to age our Portion spent. Nor could our Nobles hope their bold Attempt Who ruin'd Crowns would Coronets exempt:                For when by their designing Leaders taught To strike at Pow'r which for themselves they sought, The Vulgar gull'd into Rebellion, arm'd, Their blood to action by the Prize was warm'd. The Sacred Purple then and Scarlet Gown Like sanguine Dye to Elephants was shown.
Midterm sample answers	Examples of strong answers for Part I: 1. Desire is the driving force for all human actions. Hobbes’s Leviathan argues that humans have a never-ceasing desire, which is why no matter how much they accumulate, they will always be warring for more. Wycherley’s The Country Wife follows this notion in exemplifying Horner’s constant cuckoldings and even the Virtuous Gang’s façade that they are ladies of honor.  In Hobbes’s and Wycherley’s works, it is argued that in order for a society to function, this constant desire must be controlled.  In Leviathan, it is done by social contract . . .  In Wycherley’s work, it is shown that desire does not have to be entirely eliminated, but it must not be displayed when in a public setting.  It is also necessary to lie to one another about desire to prevent society from falling apart. 2. Marriage ending is a term closely linked to The Country Wife.  As marriage is a key institution to maintain societal standards, the playwright satirizes how it is seemingly a joke.  Marriage maintains order in society because it promotes inheritance, which is very important because inheritance carries on power and wealth.  To have a marriage end is like going against the social customs, and causing a great disorder.  The character Lucy especially reiterates that fact when she implores Margery Pinchwife to lie to her husband and stay married to him even though he makes her want to vomit. 3. The Marriage ending is typical of comedic plays.  It usually involves the entire cast in attendance and signifies the happy resolution of the plot.  The Country Wife, however, is a satire; therefore the marriage ending is not merely a conclusion , but a social commentary on and criticism of marriage.  All of the married couples in the play have been involved in some kind of deception (Harcout schemed to steal Alithea from his friend Sparkish; Margery loves Horner but has to protect her marriage; Mrs. Fidget and the other ladies have had their own affairs with Horner).  Pinchwife and Margery seem particularly unhappy (for Pinchwife knows he has been cuckolded and is being lied to, and Margery’s eyes are now open to the joys of desire), and there is even an indication of violence in their relationship.  A lot of the characters are restrained or unhappy by marriage, and yet they insist on the social institution of it.  The Country Wife therefore satirizes the typical marriage ending, for it is not a happy resolution at all.   Examples of strong essays for Part II: 1. This quotation is from John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester’s Satyr Against Reason and Mankind.  This stanza is approximately lines 48-71 and paraphrased is as follows: [What anger] rots your (Rochester’s) foolish mind that you rant against the elevation of reason and man over animals?  Man is blessed.  Man alone, not animals, was given a soul by Heaven and made by God in His image, and He dressed us in the ability to reason in order to make man superior to animals.  Reason, which has influenced you (R) to write this poem, argues against the senses especially in perceiving the physical world.  Reason allows man to explore unanswerable questions and go beyond the limits of the world to search the realms of G-d in order to answer these questions which give both Hope and Fear.             This section of Rochester’s poem is referred to as the “Satiric Adversary.”              The “Satiric Adversary” [gives] a counter-argument with the purpose of emphasizing the main argument.  In this section, Rochester argues against himself.  He chastises himself for “rail[ing] at Reason, and Mankind.”  Rochester would have surely had readers in support of Reason over the senses.  The satiric adversary would be their argument against the senses claiming that it is because of reason that we are superior to animals and seek out answers to mysterious questions.  It is this search that Rochester seeks to criticize.  It is an “ignis fatuus,” a false light.  Proponents of Reason spend their entire lives chasing unanswerable questions only to learn they wasted their lives.  What they should be doing is perceiving the world through the senses, not Reason, and must acknowledge equality to animals, not their sinferiority.              An equivalent to Rochester’s use of the “satiric adversary” would be a persuasive essay.  In a persuasive essay, the writer must present a counter-argument and then argue against this in order to make the main argument more convincing.  Rochester “rails” against reason, then takes sides with reason only to convince his readers that much more of the foolishness of reason.  In a sense, the “satiric adversary” can also be called the “satiric writer’s ally.”  Without it, the piece is just a poem criticizing Reason.  With it, however, there is a balance of criticism and persuasion used to bring attention to the folly of man. 2. The source of this quotation is A Satyr against Reason and Mankind by the Earl of Rochester.  In these lines, the “satiric adversary” makes a claim for mankind’s true superiority to all other creatures, because God gave man alone a soul and a capacity for reason, in his own image.  The satiric adversary (a clergyman in this poem) says that with his God-given reason man can “take a flight beyond material sense” and can explore life’s mysteries, through which he has access to truth, “Hope” and “Fear.”             Rochester writes in heroic couplets, in which the rhyme schemes draw attention to end words, for example, in the first rhyming couplet, “mind” and “mankind” rhyme, drawing attention to the importance of the mind, and then, arguably, of reason in and for mankind.  The rhyme holds the couplet together, unites the two lines into a pair, so the words serve as book ends to the argument the satiric adversary makes, and emphasize its main point: the mind is absolutely essential to man and is god’s greatest gift to him alone!             In the same way, the end rhymes in lines 3-4 work together to emphasize and collaborate with the adversary’s point.  “Heav’n” and “giv’n” emphasize the status of “Blest Glorious Man!” who not only has “an everlasting Soul”” but to whom reason has been given right from Heaven.  The rhymes in these couplets are inextricable from the points they are meant to emphasize.             Contrastingly, in lines 7-8, the end rhymes are “Drest” and “Beast,” which signifies Richester’s total control over even his adversary’s point.  Though the adversary argues favorably for reason and describes it as a “shining” sort of robe or cloak, which “dignifies” his “nature above Beast,” Rochester calls attention to a parallel between the negative “beast” and the idea or image of being “drest” in reason.  A “dress” is something that someone can remove, after all, and is not an inextricable attribute of being.  Rochester implies through end rhyme in these lines that a man is nothing more than beast dressed up in reason, thus using the adversary’s own argument against him.             And if it was not enough to imply the adversary’s arguments’ flaws through manipulation of end rhyme, Rochester also does this through diction.  Words like “flight,” “dive,” “soaring,” “flaming limits,” “heaven,” and Hell” all draw attention away fom mankind and emphasize the otherworldliness of reason.  While the satiric adversary sees the otherworldly nature or properties of Reason as good, Rochester specifically points out that reason is not so inhernet or special to man---it does not even come from man himself and it does not appear to have much use besides in “the flaming limits of the universe.”  In other words, reason is optional, a robe that can be taken off.  Because of this, it cannot be all that the adversary makes it out to be.             Thus: While in these lines the satiric adversary is allowed to air his grievancs against Rochester’s satire and is allowed to sing Reasons’ praises, Rochester turs the adversary’s own words and devices against himself, and so strengthens his own argument by ostensibly allowing for disagreement.  This section of verse takes the appearance of counterclaim, but it also disables its own argument. 3. Quotation: John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, Satyr Against Reason and Mankind.             The speaker of the poem is the satiric adversary, the figure that refutes the satire and criticism of the first voice which up until now has been blaming man’s capacity for reasoning for his misery.  The speaker opens with a question, asking what rage could have caused such an outburst against reason and mankind.  He does not wait for an answer, but instead launches into a defense, relying heavily on biblical evidence.  He begins by stating that man was made by God in his image, finally giving him reason to elevate him above beast, which [i.e., beast] the original speaker had been defending in the first place. Then following is a defining of reason and what it allows one to do if employed properly.  He begins by stating that reason allows mankind to think beyond the physical senses and needs.  It allows one to ponder the mysteries of the universe and he ends religiously.  The last two lines beginning with “Search Heav’n and hell, find out what’s acted there” is a basis for reason to reflect on religious matters in order to find some meaning in the world and life.             As Rochester intended, the passage is a departure from the previous thread of the poem where the speaker elevates animals above man BECAUSE of their inability to reason but instead follow their senses.  In short they are purer in their existence because they are incapable of deception or evil,  two by-products of reason.  What’s interesting to note about the passage given is that the satiric adversary seems to have completely ignored the speaker’s attack on mankind and reason.  The opening of the rhetorical question (one he doesn’t really want an answer to as he immediately launches into his own argument) goes to show that he has not been actively attending in their supposed dialogue because many of the arguments he makes in favor of reason have already been cut down by the satirist.  While the retelling of the Genesis tory and the argument that God bestowed reason on mankind may seem like a sound and noble defense, in face of the reductive nature of the previous section it becomes laughable.  As the satirist already stated, it’s silly to think mankind may use the faculty of reason properly because he was created in God’s image, because that falsely assumes God and Man are on some level equals, which they are clearly not.  On its own the quotation may seem to make a sensible argument and if the discourse of the poem were to some degree serious it would be the winning argument.  However, in the landscape of the satire—and because of the very nature of satire—the quotation loses all power and aids the reductive nature of the poem by becoming ridiculous.  It is as if the two are speaking a different language.  The character of the satiric adversary becomes a puppet to the satire and plays nicely into the original attack on reason by proving how attempted reason has failed.
Midterm grad graph Two grades not yet included	Standard Graph Statistics Zeros counted in statistic calculations Mean: B Median: B+ Mode: B+ Maximum: A+ Minimum: D+ # scores: 40