EFT 2018 - Specific Question Discussion

[ryanrosenberg]

Could I see the tossups on Henry Fielding, Toni Morrison, and George Eliot? Despite all of these authors being quite prominent, I remember being lost for the majority of these tossups, and judging from the stats (0, 1, and 2 powers, respectively), it seems like this wasn't unique to me.

Ian Watt analyzed this author’s claim that a novel is a “comic epic in prose” in The Rise of the Novel. This author wrote a chapter “containing five pages of paper” in which he chides authors of histories that should be read with “a tankard of good ale.” This author asserted that an author should, like a host of a feast, give a menu before beginning. The title character of a novel by this author worries that he has impregnated the daughter of the gamekeeper (*) Black George, Molly Seagrim, before competing for the love of another women with Bilfil. The title character of a novel by this author is raised by Squire Allworthy and goes on to marry Sophia Western. For 10 points, name this author of Joseph Andrews and Tom Jones.

ANSWER: Henry Fielding

In one novel by this author, a soldier shoots a little girl who tells him “yum-yum” because he is tempted by her offer. In the opening chapter of that novel by this author, a brother and sister watch a fight between two horses that rose up on their hind legs “like men.” One of this author’s protagonists rescues his sister Ycidra and brings her back to their hometown of Lotus, Georgia. This creator of (*) Frank Money wrote a novel in which Robert Smith crafts blue silk wings to fly off the roof of Mercy Hospital before the birth of the protagonist, who travels to Shalimar to learn more about the history of his family. This author of Home created a protagonist nicknamed “Milkman” for an earlier novel. For 10 points, name this Nobel Prize-winning American author of Song of Solomon and Beloved.

ANSWER: Toni Morrison [or Chloe Ardelia Wofford]

A stalkerish contemporary fan of this novelist, Alexander Main, collected aphorisms from this author’s works in a book called Wise, Witty, and Tender Sayings. Main’s admiration of this writer is recounted in a Rebecca Mead book inspired by one of this author’s novels, titled My Life in [that novel]. Virginia Woolf called a book by this author “one of the few English novels written for (*) grown-up people.” In that novel, the idea that doctors shouldn’t dispense medicines themselves earns Tertius Lydgate disapproval in the title town in the Midlands. In that novel by this author, the desire to help with research for the project The Key to All Mythologies inspires Dorothea Brooke to marry the elderly Edward Casaubon. For 10 points, name this author of Middlemarch.

ANSWER: George Eliot [or Mary Ann Evans]

[Carlos Be]

I don't think the bonus part on Things Fall Apart did a good job testing knowledge of Things Fall Apart. The way it was written, it was essentially "can you name these minor characters that show up in the first ten pages." Someone who carded the Sparknotes character list would have a better shot at thirtying this than someone who had actually read the book.

On the other hand, I liked the content in the "prologue to the Prose Edda" bonus, although I was surprised that it was not categorized under lit.