Don't Panic! (Captain Mainwaring)

Exams start tomorrow morning, a two hour paper on the "Long Eighteenth Century". I'm horribly nervous already, which is a surprise as I don't usually get any butterflies until half an hour before the exam.

I got my essay that I had been waiting for since Christmas on Wednesday last week. Thankfully it is good enough to base my exam on as I got a First (yay!) However, I must talk about more relevant caricatures in the exam - I was commended for mentioning them in my essay, but was criticised for not talking about specific portraitures such as James Gillray's portrait of Charles James Fox "Reason and Philosophy", and Hogarth's portraits of Thomas Coram and John Wilkes. I should be just fine talking about Joshua Reynolds and Thomas Gainsborough, though I must rein in my tendency to talk all airy fairy about art.

As for my second question, I've decided to focus on the Romantic movement. I'm hoping that they'll ask about the definition of "Romanticism" as it seems to be a favourite topic in academic circles (none of them can agree with each other). Though this course is focusing primarily on Britain, I hope that it would be alright to also mention what went on the Continent as those involved in the movement, such as Wordsworth and Blake, were highly influenced by events there, especially by the French Revolution. I think it's also worth bearing in mind how this movement affected writers and artists in France and Germany, and how this related to the British. I'm also wondering whether it'd be worth talking about music too, despite the fact that the British did not produce any composers of note during this period (Elgar and Vaughan Williams though they wrote on romantic themes, unfortunately came far too late to be of relevance). However, one of the lecturers did mention Beethoven and his third symphony, "Eroica", so I think I may at least mention the Master and the reasons behind why he wrote the piece in the first place.

Ack! Ack! I wish it were over already. *bites knuckles*