The Scholar Gipsy
by Mathew Arnold
1. What kind of the poem is "The Scholar Gipsy"? [NU 2016]
Ans: "The Scholar Gipsy" is a pastoral elegy.
2. What is the poem ‘The Scholar Gipsy’ about?
Ans: The poem ‘The Scholar Gipsy’ is about a legendary Oxford scholar who gives up his academic life to roam the world with a band of Gypsies, absorbing their customs and seeking the source of their wisdom.
3. What is the source of the poem "The Scholar Gipsy"? [NU 2017]
Ans: The source of the poem "The Scholar Gipsy" is a 17th-century Oxford story found in Joseph Glanvill's The Vanity of Dogmatizing.
4. Who was Joseph Glanvill?
Ans: Joseph Glanvill was a strict moralist of the seventeenth century.
5. What is ‘the gipsy-lore’? [NU 2015]
Ans: ‘The gipsy lore’ is the secret knowledge of the gypsies regarding how to read the thoughts of others.
6. Who was the Scholar Gypsy? [NU 2012]
Ans: The Scholar Gypsy is an Oxford scholar who gives up his academic life to roam the world with a band of Gypsies, absorbing their customs and seeking the source of their wisdom.
7. What kind of man is the Scholar Gipsy?
Ans: The Scholar Gipsy is a man ‘of pregnant parts and quick inventive brain’.
8. What was the aim of the Scholar Gipsy?
Ans: The aim of the Scholar Gipsy was to learn the gipsy lore and reveal this knowledge to the people of the world.
9. What does the Scholar Gypsy symbolize?
Ans: The Scholar Gypsy symbolizes the singularity of aim, business and desire in search of spiritual quest and idealism.
10. Whom did the Scholar Gypsy live with?
Ans: The Scholar Gypsy lived with a group of gypsy people.
11. What does Arnold criticize in “The Scholar Gipsy”?
Ans: In “The Scholar Gipsy”, Arnold criticizes the life of the Victorian people.
12. How was the religious faith of the Victorians? [NU 2015]
Ans: According to Arnold, the Victorians were half-believers of casual creeds. They never felt the religion deeply.
13. What is Oxford movement?
Ans: Oxford movement is a movement within the Church of England, originating at Oxford University in 1833, that sought to link the Anglican Church more closely to the Roman Catholic Church.
14. Who is 'The Oxford Scholar Poor’?
Ans: 'The Oxford Scholar Poor’ refers to the Scholar Gipsy who left Oxford University because of poverty and joined the gypsy people.
15. What was the rumour about the Scholar Gipsy?
Ans: The rumour that spread about the Scholar Gipsy was that he was seen in the same hat and cloak as the gipsies wore.
16. How did the bathers recognize the Scholar Gipsy?
Ans: The bathers recognized the Scholar Gipsy from his strange dress of a Gypsy, dark eyes and thoughtful looks.
17. What kind of area did the Scholar Gipsy love? [NU 2013]
Ans: The Scholar Gipsy loved ‘retir’d’ or isolated area.
18. What is Bablock-hithe? [NU 2013]
Ans: Bablock-hithe is a small hamlet in Oxfordshire, situated 5 miles west of Oxford city centre. There was formerly an important vehicle ferry across the River Thames at Bablock-hithe.
19. What is Fyfield?
Ans: Fyfield is the name of a village which is close to Oxford.
20. What is Godstow bridge?
Ans: Godstow Bridge is a road bridge across the River Thames in England at Godstow near Oxford.
21. Why can't the Victorians live fully?
Ans: The Victorians can’t live fully because they become exhausted running after thousand schemes.
22. How is Victorian life?
Ans: Victorian life is full of mental strife, full of destructions and divided aims.
23. What is the strange disease of the modern life? [NU 2014]
Ans: The strange disease of the modern life is its sick hurry along with its divided aims, overtaxed heads and palsied hearts.
24. Who was Dido?
Ans: Dido is the queen of Carthage. She fell in love with Aeneas, a Trojan hero, and burnt herself on a pyre.
25. Why did Dido run away from Aeneas in the underworld?
Ans: Dido ran away from Aeneas in the underworld because she was treacherously deserted by him in the upper world.
26. What two worlds does "The Scholar Gipsy" juxtapose?
Ans: "The Scholar Gipsy" juxtaposes the ideal world of Gipsy and the sick world of the Victorian people.
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