Note to moderator: Please read the answerline for the first part carefully.Opponents of this decision include the author’s friend Jonathan Greenleaf Whittier, who wrote that he would have preferred a prose romance such as the author’s 1839 novel Hyperion. For 10 points each:
[10h] Identify this oft-criticized poetic decision, which produced regular lines like “Waste are those pleasant farms, and the farmers forever departed!” and “Thousands of weary feet, where theirs have completed their journey!”
ANSWER: Longfellow writing Evangeline in dactylic hexameter [accept writing Evangeline in epic meter; accept descriptions of writing Evangeline in classical, Homeric, or Virgilian form; prompt on writing Evangeline or equivalents by asking “in what manner?”; prompt on Longfellow using dactylic hexameter or acceptable metrical synonyms by asking “in what poem?”; prompt on Longfellow using weird meter or equivalents by asking “what specific meter and in what specific poem?”]
[10e] Though Longfellow has taken a lot of flak for writing his epic Evangeline in dactylic hexameter, he did produce a very quotable opening in which he describes an Acadian forest with this adjective.
ANSWER: primeval [accept “This is the forest primeval.”]
[10m] Classical dactylic hexameter lines end in either a trochee or one of these feet, which are two consecutive long syllables. Because English verse is accentual, Longfellow’s feet of this type consist of two stressed syllables.
ANSWER: spondee
<Henry Atkins, American Literature>