course guidelines path one calendar class discussion path two calendar essay prompts reference pages


ornamental line

Faith and the Ineffable

"The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full . . ." (ll.21-22)
"Dover Beach" (1867)

Points for Reflection

E. B. Browning's "The Soul's Expression" (1844)

  1. which sonnet form has EBB employed here? The Shakespearean/English sonnet (three quatrains & concluding couplet), Petrarchan/Italian sonnet (octave & sestet), or the Spenserian sonnet (rhyming ababbcbccdcdee)?
  2. what is that "music" of the narrator's "nature" which she struggles to express?
  3. what would happen to this narrator, were s/he successful in expressing her/his innermost soul?

E. B. Browning's "Exaggeration" (1844)

  1. according to the narrator, why was humanity given imaginative powers?
  2. what abuses of the imagination preoccupy our narrator?
  3. what romantic poets also tapped the nightingale as a likely symbol of the poetic imagination?
  4. which of the various metaphors employed by the narrator most powerfully convey the narrator's thesis (ll.4-10)?
  5. upon what type of grief should humans presumably focus, and what forms of grief should we eschew?


M. Arnold's "Dover Beach" (1867)

  1. who is the poem's auditor/audience?
  2. what tone dominates this poem?
  3. does the sound of pebbles rolling across the sand spark the same thoughts in the narrator that they apparently sparked in Sophocles?
  4. as posed by the narrator, does romantic affection seem a powerful substitute for religious faith?


M. Arnold's "Stanzas from the Grande Chartreuse" (c.1852; 1855)

  1. why is the narrator of this poem (who speaks with Arnold's own voice) surprised to find himself at this Carthusian monastery in the Alps (l.66)?
  2. why is the narrator crying (ll.85-90)?
  3. explain the irony threaded into lines 91-108.
  4. does the narrator value the “mood of sadness” (l.153) spun by the Romantic poets Byron and Shelley?
  5. to what purpose does Arnold put the two epic similes found in lines 80-84 and 169-92?


E. Dickinson's "207" [214]

  1. what extended conceit does Dickinson deploy to transform enjoyment of Nature into something scandalous?
  2. does the tone one identifies in stanza four of this poem depend on the seriousness with which one takes religion? Do you read this poem as playful or satiric, gently indecorous or blatantly defiant?


E. Dickinson's "236" [324]

  1. does this poem constitute an act of apostasy? Is Dickinson rejecting institutionalized religion, and/or celebrating God's presence in Nature?
  2. does this poem reify or destabilize the Christian concept of an afterlife?


E. Dickinson's "598" [632]

  1. does ED’s celebration of the human intellect constitute mere metaphor and hyperbole, or is her audacious claim accurate?
  2. the first two stanzas of this poem celebrate the human mind's imaginative capacity. The third stanza goes a (large) step further and suggests that the Divine too can be encompassed by an individual's cognitive muscles. How might Dickinson's religious contemporaries have reacted to this poem, had they read it?
  3. does ED’s concluding simile deepen or ameliorate the poem’s apparent apostasy?.
  4. how might metaphysical poets George Herbert and John Donne have reacted to the topical content of this poem?


E. Dickinson's "1773" [1732]

  1. how might the narrator's life have already "closed twice" prior to death (l.1)?
  2. is the dominant tone of this poem playful, meditative, or something else?
  3. does Dickinson's attention to the limits of human knowledge bind her firmly to human experience, pain, and loss? Because she refuses to conceive something she cannot immediately experience (the afterlife), is she bound to despair?


G. M. Hopkins's "Pied Beauty" (1877; 1918)

  1. does Hopkins limit his praise of spots to those found in Nature?
  2. how does stanza two constitute an elaboration of the simple principle proposed in stanza one?
  3. applying the concept of sprung rhythm to this poem, how many metrical feet can you identify in each line? Remember that the length of each foot may vary: you're looking for the number of stressed syllables. (One stressed syllable = one metrical foot, regardless of the number of total syllables.)
  4. does Hopkins' use of alliteration draw attention to itself, or does it add subtle, aural effects to the images he describes?
  5. why might lines 6-7 lack the alliteration and assonance that characterize the other lines of the poem?
  6. to what end does Hopkins generate this celebration of Nature's beauty? What is his goal?


C. A. Eastman's "The Great Mystery" (1911)

  1. Eastman declares at the end of this excerpt from The Soul of the Indian (1911) that "the spirit of Christianity and of our ancient religion is essentially the same." What elements of religious practice among the Dakota Sioux, from which Eastman heralds, does he find in Christianity?
  2. Eastman observes that modernity is as antithetical to the ideals of the Sioux as it is to Christianity. What elements of modernism does he find particularly troubling?
  3. what role do words, buildings, and elaborate rituals play in Sioux worship?
  4. which does the Sioux value more, the physical mind or spiritual mind?
  5. does Eastman implicitly praise or scorn the Sioux’s wiliness to see miracles in Nature?


sktech of a mill near a canyon next to the Grande Chartreuse monastery
Mill Near the Grand Chartreuse
(composition study, c.1807-19)
J. M. W. Turner


Dr. Paul Marchbanks
pmarchba@calpoly.edu