My Answers to Those Burning Essay Questions

Well, folks, I successfully completed my first grad school essay exam. For the first section of the test, I said that the Samuel Johnson poem-- "On the Death of Dr. Robert Levet"-- was an example of 18th-century Neo-Classicism, with its strict adherence to poetic style conventions and pretentious tone. The Wordsworth poem-- "Extempore Effusion on the Death of James Hogg"-- on the other hand, is characteristically written in a 19th-century Romanticist manner, with its nature and religious imagery, as well as its cast of "common-folk" characters. To answer the second question, I discussed Blake's "The Chimney Sweeper" from Songs of Innocence and "London" from his companion work-- Songs of Experience. Lastly, I wrote about the "spots of time" concept in Wordsworth's The Prelude and then related the concept to three of his other poems: "I wandered lonely as a cloud," The Old Cumberland Beggar, and "Strange fits of passion I have known." Ultimately, I concluded that Wordsworth's message is that life is tough, and we must savor life's simple pleasures in order to pull us through. Boy, I'm sure glad that's over! Next on the agenda is to survive "Research Paper Hell."