1. Begin with _The Spoon River Anthology_. (Cf. the preface to _Toward
the Gulf_.) How much does it owe to its model? to other literary sources?
to the central Illinois environment in which the author grew up? What are
its most conspicuous merits and defects? How do you explain each?
2. Test the sketches by your own experience of small town life. Which
seem to you truest to individual character and most universal in type?
3. Compare similar sketches of personalities by Edwin Arlington Robinson,
which Mr. Masters had not read until after his book was published.
4. Consider how far Mr. Masters has achieved his avowed purpose "to
analyze society, to satirise society, to tell a story, to expose the
machinery of life, to present a working model of the big world"; to
create beauty, and to depict "our sorrows and hopes, our religious
failures, successes and visions, our poor little lives, rounded by a
sleep, in language and figures emotionally tuned to bring all of us
closer together in understanding and affection."
5. How do you explain the sudden popularity of the _Anthology_? What are
its chances of becoming a classic?
6. Read one of Mr. Masters' later volumes and compare it with the
_Anthology_ as to merits and defects.
7. Mr. Masters has always been a great reader. Trace, as far as you can,
the influence of the following authors: Homer; the Bible; Poe; Keats;
Shelley; Swinburne; Browning.
8. Draw parallels between his work and the work of (1) Edwin Arlington
Robinson, q.v., (2) of Robert Frost, q.v., (3) of Vachel Lindsay, q.v.,
and (4) of Carl Sandburg, q.v.
9. An interesting study might be made of the effects of Mr. Masters'
legal training upon his poetry.
10. Compare _Children of the Market Place_ with the _Anthology_ or
_Domesday Book_. Is Mr. Masters more successful as poet or as novelist?