GRE Literature in English (REA) (14 page)

“Well, old chap... it do appear that she had settled the most of it, which I mean ter say tied it up on Miss Estella. But she had wrote out a little coddleshell in her own hand a day or two afore the accident, leaving a cool four thousand to Mr. Matthew Pocket.”

The speaker is

1. Joseph in
   Wuthering Heights.
   
2. Joe Gargery in
   Great Expectations.
   
3. Mr. Western in
   Tom Jones.
   
4. Mrs. Malaprop in
   The Rivals.
   
5. Porfiry in
   Crime and Punishment.
   

In context of the above passage, what is the meaning of the word “coddleshell”?

1. A small bi-valve seashell
   
2. The opening lines of a will
   
3. The closing lines of a will
   
4. An appendix to a will
   
5. A small piece of shell-pink paper attached to a will
   

Which three elements best define Post-Modernism?

1. Randomness, excess, discontinuity
   
2. Flashback, fragmentation, humor
   
3. Nature, faith, solidity
   
4. Immorality, sense of loss, meaninglessness
   
5. Montage, metaphor, absurdity
   

Which did Matthew Arnold write?

Which did Coleridge write?

Which did T. S. Eliot write?

1. Finally, GOOD SENSE is the BODY of poetic genius, FANCY its DRAPERY, MOTION its Life and IMAGINATION the soul that is everywhere and in each; and forms all into one graceful and intelligent whole.
   

2. They (The Greeks) regarded the whole; we regard the parts. With them the action predominated over the expression of it; with us the expression predominates over the action.
   

3. It is essential that a work of art should be self-consistent, that an artist should consciously or unconsciously draw a circle beyond which he does not trespass: on the other hand, actual life is always the material...
   

4. What made Wordsworth's poems a medicine for my state of mind, was that they expressed, not mere outward beauty, but states of feeling, and of thought coloured by feeling, under the excitement of beauty.
   

5. What can we expect this Aristocracy of Nature to do for us? They are of two kinds: the speculative, speaking or vocal; and the practical or industrial, whose function is silent.
   

His head leaned back so far that it rested against the face of a defunct mantelpiece clock, and from this position his distraught eyes stared down at Daisy, who was sitting, frightened but graceful, on the edge of a stiff chair... his lips parted with an abortive attempt at a laugh. Luckily the clock took this moment to tilt dangerously at the pressure of his head, whereupon he turned and caught it with trembling fingers and set it back in its place...

“I'm sorry about the clock,” he said.

“It's an old clock,” I told them idiotically.

I think we all believed for a moment that it had smashed in pieces on the floor.

“We haven't met for several years,” said Daisy, her voice as matter-of-fact as it could ever be.

“Five years next November.”

Who narrates this dialogue?

1. Nick Carraway
   
2. Ernest Hemingway
   
3. Ford Maddox Ford
   
4. The Goat Boy
   
5. Italo Calvino
   

What do the details about the defunct clock and its falling reveal about these people?

1. Time is dead as far as these people are concerned.
   
2. The narrator is just killing time with these people.
   
3. Time has not mattered before but is beginning to matter now as the three become involved in a love triangle.
   
4. Time is gradually being destroyed for the two lovers who have been apart for five years.
   
5. Time is becoming short as the narrator tries to write the story of these people.
   

Who says the last line and why is the detail important?

1. The narrator, because he has known the couple five years
   
2. The other man, because the exact time has been important to him if not to Daisy
   
3. The other man, who has hated Daisy for five years and counted the time to revenge himself on her
   
4. The narrator, because it seems as if the couple has been there with him for five years
   
5. Daisy's husband, who took her away from the other man five years before
   

The author also wrote

1. Nightwood
   .
   
2. Tender is the Night
   .
   
3. The Magus
   .
   
4. A Dance to the Music of Time.
   
5. A Burnt Out Case.
   

Arnold's poem follows a linear progression from moonlit tranquility, through recognition of the loss of faith, to a view of the world as “a darkling plain.”

 

The poem is

1. “Ode to Immortality.”
   
2. “Two in the Campagna.”
   
3. “Kubla Khan.”
   
4. “Dover Beach.”
   
5. “Endymion.”
   

I met a traveler from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert...Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty and despair!”
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Which most closely describes the poet's meaning?

1. The British Empire will one day tumble like the statue Ozymandias built.
   
2. The Egyptian Empire was great but it was destroyed by one man's lust for power.
   
3. The ruined statue and the sand's reclamation exemplify the futility of man's life on earth.
   
4. No man, no matter how great, has the right to set himself up as immortal.
   
5. The ruined statue shows that men should not build “graven images” to celebrate their power.
   

What do lines 4-7 suggest about Ozymandias?

1. He was a lifeless old man.
   
2. He was conceited and arrogant.
   
3. The sculptor captured the man's coldness and arrogance.
   
4. The sculptor hated him and so executed a perfect likeness.
   
5. The sculptor outlived the model.
   

The poet also wrote

1. “To a Skylark.”
   
2. “Cristabel.”
   
3. “Ode on a Grecian Urn.”
   
4. “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard.”
   
5. “The Magi.”
   

Readers feel the same lack of credibility with the too sweet heroine, ______, of
A Room With
A View
. Mr. Emerson, her “guardian,” guides her into the correct choice of love. Readers grasp the “physical” message of the novel, the scene in the violets and the bathing pool make it clear but the rest of the novel does not support the thesis, especially when the other “guardian,” ___, turns out to be on the lovers' side after all!

 

Complete the passage with the ladies' names.

1. Lucy Honeychurch and Mrs. Allen
   
2. Caroline Abbott and Mrs. Moore
   
3. Jordan Baker and Daisy Buchanan
   
4. Caroline Abbott and Mrs. Fairfax
   
5. Lucy Honeychurch and Miss Bartlett
   

Which of the following words does E. M. Forster use to express the puzzlement of life in most of his novels?

1. Chaos
   
2. Riddle
   
3. Muddle
   
4. Confusion
   
5. Mayhem
   

And they, as storms of snow descend to the ground incessant
on a winter's day, when Zeus of the counsels, showing
before men what shafts he possesses, brings on a snowstorm
and stills the winds asleep in the solid drift, enshrouding
the peaks that tower among the mountains and the shoulders out-jutting,
and the low lands with their grasses, and the prospering work of men's hands,
and the drift falls along the grey sea, the harbours and beaches,
and the surf that breaks against it is stilled, and all things elsewhere
it shrouds from above, with the burden of Zeus' rain heavy upon it;
so numerous and incessant were the stones volleyed from both sides,
some thrown on Trojans, others flung against the Achaians
by Trojans, so the whole length of wall thundered beneath them.

Name the poet and work.

1. Homer's
   The Odyssey
   
2. Homer's
   The Iliad
   
3. Tennyson's
   Idylls of the King
   
4. Chaucer's “The Knight's Tale”
   
5. T. S. Eliot's
   Murder in the Cathedral
   

Who are the Achaians?

1. The Greeks
   
2. The Barbarians
   
3. An ancient race of Britons
   
4. The Romans
   
5. The Goths
   

Who is the hero on each side of the battle?

1. Beowulf and Hrothgar
   
2. Boadicea and Caesar
   
3. Jason and Priam
   
4. Achilles and Patroklos
   
5. Achilles and Hector
   

Which best defines the way the entire simile functions?

1. The stones come down like snow without causing damage, like snow which hushes, not harms—the simile works through likeness.
   

2. The stones are like snow because they descend in an infinite quantity but the difference between the two, soft and brutal, in reality is a shock—the simile works through contrast.
   

3. The stones are as white as snow and multiply so they look like snowflakes—the snow simile works visually.
   

4. The stones hurtle down like snow and cause death just as snow deadens all the countryside—the simile works through likeness.
   

5. The stones crash down unlike snow which softens all the countryside—the simile works through contrast.
   

Which modern writer uses a similar effect of rain or snow in which work?

1. Robert Frost in “Stopping by Woods On a Snowy Evening”
   
2. T. S. Eliot in
   Preludes
   
3. James Joyce in
   The Dead
   
4. Robert Creeley in “The Rain”
   
5. Sartre in
   Nausea
   

... thanks to the limited desire for its company expressed by the step-parent, the law of its little life, its being entertained in rotation by its father and its mother, wouldn't easily prevail. Whereas each of these persons had at first vindictively desired to keep it from the other, so at present the remarried relative sought now rather to be rid of it—that is to leave it as much as possible, and beyond the appointed times and seasons, on the hands of the adversary...

 

This is Henry James's preface to which of his novels?

1. The American
   
2. The Bostonians
   
3. The Turn of the Screw
   
4. What Maisie Knew
   
5. The Golden Bowl
   

Now I am a lake. A woman bends over me,
Searching my reaches for what she really is.
Then she turns to those liars, the candles or the moon.
I see her back and reflect it faithfully.
She rewards me with tears and an agitation of hands. 5
I am important to her. She comes and goes.
Each morning it is her face that replaces the darkness.
In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman
Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish.

Which best defines the “I” of the initial metaphor?

1. The lake is a mirror to reflect back the woman's true image of herself.
   
2. The lake is the mirror to be rewarded for giving back a soothing image.
   
3. The lake acts as a portrait which flatters the woman.
   
4. The lake is too deep to give back a true image, so it lies.
   
5. The lake waits for the young woman to drown herself in it.