Academic Decathlon 2023-2024 (Literature) –
Final| 337 QUESTIONS| WITH
COMPLETE SOLUTIONS
How has water been used in literature? Correct Answer: 1 -- develop plots; 2 -- drive conflict; 3 -- create imagery; 4 -- establish themes
Where did early civilizations and budding empires emerge? Correct Answer: On the shores of important waterways such as the Nile, Ganges, and Mediterranean.
Why did water become an important element in religious narratives? Correct Answer: Because of its life-sustaining nature (sea for food, rain for crops)
As the religious nature of water developed, what did religious myths explain? Correct Answer: The capricious whims of water
Stories of water deities showed what about their personalities? Correct Answer: They could be vengeful, playful, and fickle (reflecting the various conditions of water).
What did the stories of water deities explain? Correct Answer: Origins of local water features or meteorological events
Some of the earliest recorded stories beyond hieroglyphics and early religious texts are what? Correct Answer: Sea narratives
What was the title of an ancient Egyptian text (circa 1300 BCE)? Correct Answer: The Tale of the Ship-Wrecked Sailor
What is The Tale of the Ship-Wrecked Sailor about? Correct Answer: A high-ranking official who returns from a failed sailing expedition.
Ancient Greek culture produced what early sea narrative (roughly 800 BCE)? Correct Answer: The Odyssey
What is The Odyssey about? Correct Answer: Odysseus's return home from the Trojan War via the sea.
What does Odysseus encounter on his voyage home? Correct Answer: Shipwrecks, sea monsters, storms, and whirlpools
What did Plato declare water to be? Correct Answer: "The first form of matter" and "the liquid of the whole verification." Who wrote Geographia? Correct Answer: Mathematician and astronomer Ptolemy
What did Ptolemy's work Geographia include? Correct Answer: A reflection on the bounds of the Atlantic and Indian Oceans with maps for his contemporary seafarers.
Throughout the Middle Ages, sea narratives became more what? Correct Answer: Overtly religious.
What were three popular early poems about sea travel which provided a framework for spiritual growth and understanding? Correct Answer: "The Seafarer," "The Voyage of Saint Brendan," and "The Pilgrim's Sea Voyage and Sea Sickness"
By the fifteenth century, ____________ history had begun to develop in earnest. Correct Answer: nautical
What was the Age of Discovery? Correct Answer: An era focused on exploration, colonization, and adventures on the sea.
What occurrences encouraged merchants and explorers to turn to the sea? Correct Answer: Political turmoil on land and settlement of new nations on the Atlantic shores of Europe.
When was the Age of Discovery? Correct Answer: 15th-17th centuries (1400s through 1600s)
What poem written in English makes a case for England to govern the seas surrounding its coast and to build a strong navy to exercise control over trade? Correct Answer: "Libelle of Englyshe Polycye" (1436/7)
During the Age of Discovery, literature about the sea expanded beyond _______________ and began to treat water as a ________________ and _______________ space. Correct Answer: religion; a political and economic space
In 1609, Dutch lawyer and philosopher Hugo Grotius published what? Correct Answer: Mare Liberum (Freedom of the Seas)
What did Grotius argue in Mare Liberum? Correct Answer: That the seas are an international territory open for trade.
In 1635, John Selden, an English jurist (lawyer) published what? Correct Answer: Mare Clausum
What did Selden argue in Mare Clausum? Correct Answer: That seas were an extension of terrestrial empires.
What poem did John Milton write about the sea, and what was it about? Correct Answer: "Lycidas" (1638) about a fatal shipwreck What poem did Edmund Waller write about the sea, and what was it about? Correct Answer: "The Battle of the Summer Islands" (1645) about island life
What poem did Andrew Marvell write about the sea, and what was it about? Correct Answer: "Bermudas" (1681) about the Caribbean
Which of Shakespeare's plays include storms and shipwrecks as important plot points? Correct Answer: Twelfth Night (1602), Pericles (1609), and The Tempest (1623)
By the 18th century, what industries had developed on the water? Correct Answer: Fur trappers, whalers, spice traders, slavers, pirates, and armies.
During the late 1700s, an explosion of literature sought to capture what about life on the water? Correct Answer: Its excitement, danger, and inhumanity.
In 1719, Daniel Defoe wrote what novel? Correct Answer: Robinson Crusoe
What is Robinson Crusoe considered to be? Correct Answer: One of the first modern novels.
Where does the novel have Crusoe leave from to begin his voyage? Correct Answer: England
What three things happen to Crusoe? Correct Answer: On 1st voyage, he is caught in a storm and shipwrecked. On 2nd voyage, he is captured by pirates. On 3rd voyage, he is again shipwrecked by a storm and marooned on an island.
What other books did Defoe write about the sea? Correct Answer: The Life, Adventures, and Piracies of the Famous Captain Singleton, and A General History of the Pyrates, a biographic collection of English pirates.
In 1748, Tobias Smollett, drawing from his experience in the navy, published what? Correct Answer: The Adventures of Roderick Random, about the misadventures of a young man who ends up working on two British ships.
In 1789, Olaudah Equiano wrote what? Correct Answer: The Interesting Narrative of the Life of
Olaudah Equiano, Or Gustavus Vassa, The African; the book described his experience as a slave,
including his voyage from Africa to America to England.
In 1798, Samuel Taylor Coleridge published his ill-received but famous poem entitled what? Correct Answer: "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner," a first-person narrative about a dark and difficult sea voyage.
By the early 19th century, the era of _____________ came to a close as older sailing vessels gave way to more technologically advanced crafts, including ________________ and ___________________. Correct Answer: sail; submarines and steam ships