On, on, on cried the leaders at the back

[venta]

Can someone with a better knowledge of English literature[*] help me out here ?

I've been doing the BBC magazine's mini quizzes of multiple-guess GCSE questions. I did better than expected at my GCSE PE quiz, and got extremely cross with one of the questions in the GCSE maths quiz which I consdered to be impossible to answer.

Today it's English literature. I did pretty badly on it, mostly because I don't significantly remember Jane Eyre, haven't read To Kill A Mockingbird and apparently have inadvertently expunged all knowledge of Shakespeare from my brain. However, I take issue with this question:

In his poem The Charge of the Light Brigade, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, writes: "Volleyed and thunder'd; Storm'd at with shot and shell." Why does he use such violent verbs?

The answers you're offered are:

1. To reinforce the danger faced by soldiers.
2. To reinforce the anger of the soldiers.
3. To reinforce the noise of battle.

I've read, but not studied, The Charge of the Light Brigade. I reckoned on 3 being the most plausible answer.

Says the BBC:

WRONG! He uses the verbs to reinforce the danger faced by the soldiers.

I can understand how you could argue for that, but I also think you could make a reasonable case for my answer (and probably even the remaining other answer). Either way, I simply don't understand how you can make a question like that have an such an absolute answer. Unless, of course, dear Alfred left copious notes indicating exactly what had been behind his choice of verbs.

Am I missing something ? Is there a good reason why answer 1 is the only correct answer ? Or is it just further evidence that multiple-guess questions are a ridiculous testing mechanism for some subjects ?

[*] I mean "the subject of Eng. lit. as taught in schools", rather than just "the body of literature in the English language". That these are so distinct may be telling.

Comments

[serpentstar.livejournal.com]

Answer 1 is the correct answer, because according to the particular prejudices of whichever literature professor the Beeb got to write/mark the quiz, backed up by whichever high-falutin' but essentially bogus lit crit theory is currently in vogue, Answer 1 is the correct answer.

Unfortunately, the idea that there can be multiple correct answers to a lit crit question... is not currently one of the high-falutin' but essentially bogus lit crit theories that is in vogue. Maybe back in the 60s & 70s.

[serpentstar.livejournal.com]

Oh, possibly it's back in vogue, in some universities -- or at least, was back when you were an undergrad. Give it another year or two... ;)

[lanfykins.livejournal.com]

Speaking as someone who spent a lot of time learning about statistics, experimental design and subject selection, and doing practicals, I object to the inclusion of psychology in that list :)

[lanfykins.livejournal.com]

That's all right then, and you're right; there's as much fashion in sciences as there is in arts.

I've just spent so much time arguing with people who regard psychology as closely allied to flower arranging that these days when it seems to be equated with arts subjects I tend to go all rabid pitbull at people.

This is not, incidentally, to imply anythign negative about arts subjects. Arts subjects require all sorts of cleverness, and I'm always way impressed by the stuff Eng Lit graduates know and write :) Arts subjects just require an entirely different philosophy and attitude, which I twitch at when I think they're being ascribed to a science subject like psych.

[lanfykins.livejournal.com]

I realise that now :)

And in any case, correlation wouldn't have implied causation ;)

[leathellin.livejournal.com]

And in any case, correlation wouldn't have implied causation ;)

The latest interwebnet fad these days is to state that about pretty much any stats graph/table (correlation or not) and declare the research invalid. Assuming the writer disagrees with the conclusions anyway :-)

I may drift into stats related despair.

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

I may drift into stats related despair.

Heh. I have the opposite reaction to that. If people are finally waking up to the interactions between causation and statistics, I think that's great!

(Plus I just wanted to add another comment to see if we can push venta's thread up to 100 responses.)

[venta.livejournal.com]

If people are finally waking up to the interactions between causation and statistics, I think that's great!

I don't think they are! I think they've just discovered a phrase which is somehow a get-out-of-jail card which means you can ignore all statistical data :)

[serpentstar.livejournal.com]

I was told several times that essays based around currently unpopular theories wouldn't be marked as highly as those that agreed with currently popular theories. Admittedly, that was a while back, but it was at what was then regarded as one of the top Eng. Lit. unis (Manchester).

Given that the study of literature is inherently subjective, I prefer your approach -- but suspect that like so many other things, it's a fashion thing, and that many of the current generation of Eng. Lit. academics (who will have done their degrees around the time I did mine) may be rebelling against the "one true way" approach. If that's right, the next generation may well be back to "one true way", hating what they perceived as the overly inclusive, anything-goes approach of their own lecturers...

[serpentstar.livejournal.com]

Well, although the same may to some extent be true of science subjects, at least with the sciences, it's possible for factually incorrect ideas to be eventually disproven. That can be a lot tougher with literature, unless actual new evidence shows up (like period documents for older literature, or a statement from the author for contemporary literature).

If one (for example) argues that in "A savage place! as holy and enchanted/As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted/By woman wailing for her demon-lover!" the "woman wailing for her demon-lover" is a powerful poetic simile to enhance both the savagery & enchantedness of the place described, given that even human love is both savage and enchanted (and presumably demon love all the more so), but one's tutor considers any mention of a woman by Coleridge to relate directly and solely to the poet's place in the phallocratic patriarchy of 18th century England & thus inherent sexism (despite his pantisocratic ambitions), because one's tutor interprets all literature through a Marxist & feminist lit crit lens, one can't really prove one's point -- because Marxist feminist lit crit says that all literature has to be interpreted that way...

[serpentstar.livejournal.com]

Incidentally, the Coleridge one is just one of several examples I could think of from my uni days, and the bloke in question was not as elderly as most, or as hidebound as some, of the academic staff at that time & place.

[taimatsu]

I've been told throughout my education in English lit, from GCSE in 1997 to final degree exams in 2009, that there is no one right answer to literary-critical questions. Of course there are trends and fashions in literary theories (there's a great introduction to them all the way from the inception of the idea of literary theory itself, in 'Beginning Theory' by Peter Barry) but certainly in the last fifty years (or thereabouts) I think the idea that multiple valid interpretations exist would not have been seriously challenged. I really can't see where you're getting this from.

[serpentstar.livejournal.com]

Hey, I wastld that there was no right answer at GCE and A-level.

But "where I'm getting this from" is more than one tutor during my university years who said I'd lose marks if my work didn't fit in with an examiner or essay marker's personal prejudices and/or the prevailing literary theories (I think the word "fashionable" was even used, more than once), EVEN IF I could back up my arguments.

Add in the then head of Eng. Lit. at Manchester University telling the Arthurian Romance class that although "some woman" had EVEN written _Mists of Avalon_ as a take on Arthurian Romance written from the perspective of the female characters, "that just couldn't ever work" (not that he'd read the book...), and, well, you probably have some idea why I'm v. cynical about Eng. Lit. As She Is Taught At Yer Universities.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Why does one never get low-falutin' theories ? Is the proponent of such theories a falautist ? Have you ever faluted ?

Enquiring minds need to know.

[d-floorlandmine.livejournal.com]

Is the proponent of such theories a falautist?

Dyslexic players of woodwind instruments excluded? [grin]