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

[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.