ENGL 364 Dr. Helen Bittel "Dover Beach" Study Guide Instructions: Complete any 4 of the following 8 question clusters. Please note that these questions were designed to accommodate a diverse group with different types and levels of prior experience, and not every student will feel well prepared to answer every cluster. Use your best judgment to choose the clusters that seem most likely to enhance your understanding of the poem and to best address your own interests. FYI, the "smaller" questions within each cluster are intended as prompts or suggestions and not as a definitive outline. You are not expected to answer each systematically (or to cover as much ground as the prompts themselves), but only to provide substantive and well-supported responses to the poems, responses that goes beyond "what" and into "why it matters" (i.e. go beyond identifying the rhyme scheme or recurrent imagery and speculate on their significance within the poem). Who? 1. What does the poem directly reveal about the speaker (i.e. through actions, descriptions, and assertions)? Indirectly (i.e. through language choices, style, assumptions, implied attitudes)? Whom does the speaker seem to be addressing? What is the speaker's attitude toward the audience? What? 2. Argument. Why is the speaker so troubled? And what does he propose as a solution? How might you paraphrase his "message" in your own words? How? 3. Rhyme and meter. What is the rhyme scheme and how does it contribute to the "feel " of the poem? Why might Arnold have used such an irregular meter and particularly such varied lines lengths? How does this, too, contribute to the "feel" of the poem? And how does it complement the subject and message? 4. Sound and Sense. Where does Arnold use "sound effects" like alliteration, assonance, and onomatopoeia? And how do these affect your experience of the poem? How does Arnold make use of caesura, enjambment, and punctuation? Again, what are the effects on the reader? 5. Words and Images. How do the author's word choices establish tone, and what does this contribute to the development of the poem? Are there any words that are especially striking? Why might the author have chosen that word and not another? Why might Arnold have chosen the sea as a point-of-departure for this meditation? Why? 6. Putting the poem in context. How does your knowledge of the poem's historical, literary, or cultural context enhance your understanding of the poem? Illuminate its motive/s? What events, situations, debates, or anxieties might the author be responding to? In particular, why might the "Sea of Faith" no longer seem "full" to the Victorians? Implications for readers today. 7. Is there anything in the poem that you think might speak especially powerfully to people in our own time and culture? What and why? Do you think that it speaks to today's readers for similar reasons and in similar ways, or in different ones? How so? Is there anything in the poem that---due to differences in cultural context---might be especially difficult for contemporary readers to appreciate or sympathize with? What and why? Potpourri 8. Is there any else that you think might be important in understanding how the poem works that we have not covered above? What and why? Contact the English Department at: 570-348-6219. E-mail: English@marywood.edu.

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Last update August 19, 2004
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