Pope's Essay on Man and Johnson's Rasselas, Chapter 1-26

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Rasselas was published in:
1726
1749
1759
1769
Rasselas is considered:
A philosophical fable
A tragedy
An epic
A beat fable
A fabliau
Rasselas resembles a type of literature very much in vogue at this period of English literature: what is that type and what was the leading example of it?
Novel; Tom Jones
Tragedy; King Lear
Oriental tale; Arabian Nights
Gothic horror tales; Aphra Behn.s Orinooko
To whom is Rasselas addressed?
To people who listen to the "whispers of fancy" and pursue the "phantoms of hope"
To people who do not listen to the "whispers of fancy" and pursue the "phantoms of hope"
To Rasselas and his sisters
To Henry St. John, Lord Bolingbroke
The princes and princesses of Abyssinia live in:
The Happy Valley, only during their youth
The Happy Valley, all their lives
The capital city of Abyssinia
One person is the most noticeably and actively discontented with life in the valley: who is it?
Rasselas
The Emperor
Pekuah
The name of the teacher of this discontented person is:
Imlac
Rasselas
The Emperor
Pekuah
Nekayah
Recall that Rasselas becomes interested in a professor who maintains that the way to happiness in the "government of passions" and the rulership of the intellect over all aspects of one's life. What is it that discredits this teacher's point of view for Rasselas?
His reaction to the death of his daughter
The fact that he takes money for his teachings
The fact that he gambles his money away
Rassleas, Imlac, and the rest of the party of seekers observe a scene of "pastoral simplicity" as another possibility of attaining true happiness. What does this way of life refer to?
A life of religious meditation
A life of religious service to the poor and the sick
A life led in the country, tending sheep
In Rasselas's eyes, what discredits the hermit, who has lived fifteen years apart from society?
The fact that he is so unhappy
The fact that he welcomes Rasselas and his party so enthusiastically
The fact that he has decided to return to society and give up his hermitage
Recall that Rasselas visits a society of learned men, one of which says that the way to happiness is to "live according to nature." What discredits this man and his idea in Rasselas's eyes?
The learned man lives such a false, petty, hypocritical lifestyle.
The learned man cannot explain what he means by "living according to nature" to Rasselas' satisfaction
The learned man takes money for his teachings.
Who says this: "In families where there is or is not poverty, there is commonly discord. If a kingdom be...a great family, a family likewise is a little kingdom, torn with factions and exposed to revolutions. An unpracticed observer expects the love of parents and children to be constant and equal; but this kindness seldom continues beyond the years of infancy: in a short time the children become rivals to their parents. Benefits are allayed by reproaches, and gratitude debased by envy"?
Imlac
Rasselas
Nekayah
Pekuah
The learned scholar
Someone interviewed by one of the main characters
Who says this: "To live according to nature, is to act always with due regard to the fitness arising from the relations and qualities of causes and effects; to concur with the great and unchangeable scheme of universal felicity; to co-operate with the general disposition and tendency of the present system to things"?
Imlac
Rasselas
Nekayah
Pekuah
The learned scholar
The hermit
Who suggests that they divide the task of checking out the different possibilities for attaining happiness in life?
Imlac
Rasselas
Nekayah
Pekuah
Who says this: "Very few...live by choice. Every man is placed in his present condition by causes which acted without his foresight, and with which he did not always willingly cooperate; and therefore you will rarely meet one who does not think the lot of his neighbor better than his own"?
Imlac
Rasselas
Nekayah
Pekuah
Who says this: "Human life is everywhere a state in which much is to be endured, and little to be enjoyed"?
Imlac
Rasselas
Nekayah
Pekuah
In all of this journeying and investigating, Rasselas is trying to do something very specific:
Determine his choice of life.
Find out how to get back into the Happy Valley
Learn how to become wealthy
Find out how to gain rulership over a large empire
The author of An Essay on Man is:
Jonathan Swift
Alexander Pope
Samuel Johnson
John Dryden
Lemuel Gulliver
An Essay on Man is a philosophical poem attempting to vindicate God's ways to man. In this respect, An Essay on Man is very much like another work we have studied this semester:
Gulliver's Travels
King Lear
Paradise Lost
Canterbury Tales
Beowulf
As one of his purposes in writing An Essay on Man the poet claims to:
Vindicate the ways of God to man
Vindicate the ways of man to God
Vindicate the ways of Nature to man
Vindicate the ways of man to Nature
In An Essay on Man, the poet calls upon us to "Expatiate free o'er all this scene of man;/A mighty maze! But not without a:"
Plan
Flaw
Law
God
Man
Design
To the question "Why [was man] formed so weak, so little, and so blind?" the poet answers that:
We are meant to steadily improve ourselves and our reasoning powers until we overcome this starting condition.
This is our punishment for Adam and Eve's original sin in the Garden of Eden.
This is our right and proper place in nature, our rank among the creatures of the world.
The famous final lines of the first epistle of An Essay on Man read: "And, spite of pride, in erring reason's spite,/One truth is clear: Whatever IS, is":
Night
Right
Flight
Trite
Plight
Natural
In the portion of Epistle 2 from An Essay on Man that we have in the anthology, we hear that man is "Born but to" do something and "reasoning but to" do something else. The line should read as follows:
"Born but to die, reasoning but to err"
"Born but to err, reasoning but to die"
"Born but to live, reasoning but to see"
"Born but to see, reasoning but to live"
From the excerpt from Epistle 2 of An Essay on Man, we also read a reference to "The glory, the jest, the riddle of the world!" Who is this a reference to?
Man
God
Woman
Nature
Reason

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