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]

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.