I have an exam today--wish me luck.

[Lyric]

It's for my Brit Lit 2 class, the Victorian era to be specific. The authors we examined were Robert Browning, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Robert Louis Stevenson (Jekyll and Hyde), and Rudyard Kipling's "White Man's Burden"--along with a few companion texts, like a journal written the the adventurer, Sir Henry Morton Stanley.

I absolutely fell in love with Browning this unit. We examined only three of his poems (Porphyria's Lover, My Last Duchess, and Soliloquy of a Spanish Cloister) but still--his poetry is so accessible, and such a pleasure to read! Tennyson was nearly as painful to pick through (for me) as Wordsworth was when we were studying the Romantics. Ugh.

All of our exams are short essay; he gives us seven "quotes" from works we studied, and we have to identify the author/title and then explain the major thematic elements of each piece, including information about relevance to what was going on in British society at the time. One major theme we noticed: Victorians had serious issues with masculinity versus gentlemanliness, and the duality of personality.

Wish me luck!

[soleft]

1. Good luck!

My brain hurts reading your post.