Test for next week:

For any chosen topic, address the prompt in such a way that not only makes reference to works,
authors, lectures, films, and/or texts covered in class and in home readings, but also incorporates a
healthy dose of your own original thoughts and views. You may address one of the given prompts.
combine 2 or more of them to create your own prompt, or you may suggest something entirely new
(however, check with me first). You may prepare for these at home, but the (short) essay will be
written in class.

When writing, remember quality is worth far more than quantity. Two well-written, insightful
paragraphs is worth far more than ten rambling, mind-numbing paragraphs. Again, it's not how
much you write, but rather what you write, and how clearly and cogently you express your ideas.

Suggested prompts:

1.) Do you consider yourself more a child of the Enlightenment or a Romantic (in the
literary/philosophical sense)?

2.) Considering the age in which we currently live, do you believe this current generation has been
greater influenced by the worldview of the Enlightenment or the Romantic Era?

3.) “To sentence a man of true genius to the drudgery of a school is to put a racehorse on a
treadmill.” -- Samuel Taylor Colerdige.

4.) “Art is the tree of life. Science is the tree of death.” -- William Blake

5.) “Whoso would be a man, must be a nonconformist” -- Ralph Waldo Emerson

6.) “Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members.” --
R.W. Emerson

7.) “A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and
amusements of mankind ” -- Henry David Thoreau

8.) "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation." -- H.D. Thoreau

9.) “(Modern man) has no time to be anything but a machine”

-- H.D. Thoreau

10.) “A morning-glory at my window satisfies me more than the metaphysics of books.” --Walt
Whitman

11.) “If we admit that human life can be ruled by reason, then all possibility of life is destroyed.” --
Christopher McCandless (Into the Wild)

12.) “Much madness is divinest sense” --Emily Dickinson

13.) “The soul should always stand ajar, ready to welcome the ecstatic experience.” -- Emily
Dickinson