GRE Literature in English (REA) (17 page)

In Brueghel's
Icarus
, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure;

—Auden

The Greek myth referred to above is the source also for the name of a central character in

1. Joyce's
   A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
   .
   
2. Shaw's
   Man and Superman.
   
3. Shaw's
   Pygmalion.
   
4. O'Neill's
   Mourning Becomes Electra.
   
5. Chaucer's “The Knight's Tale.”
   

Auden's theme can best be paraphrased as

1. only someone educated in the classics would recognize an allusion to Greek mythology.
   
2. the archetypes of mythology are universal.
   
3. in their immediate context, heroic events often seem insignificant.
   
4. the tragic hero is punished for trying to go beyond human limitations.
   
5. true happiness lies in attending to the business of everyday life, instead of trying to be a hero.
   

Which of the following works best exemplifies “courtly love”?

1. Beowulf
   
2. Chaucer's
   Troylus and Criseyde
   
3. Shakespeare's
   Henry IV Part 2
   
4. Milton's
   Paradise Lost
   
5. Pope's “The Rape of the Lock”
   

Which of the following best exemplifies allegory?

1. Chaucer's “The Reeve's Tale”
   
2. Shakespeare's
   Richard II
   
3. Milton's
   Samson Agonistes
   
4. Spenser's “The Faerie Queene”
   
5. Wycherley's
   The Country-Wife
   

Our two souls, therefore, which are one,
Though I must go, endure not yet
A breach, but an expansion,
Like gold to airy thinness beat.

The versification of the above lines may be described as

1. iambic pentameter.
   
2. iambic tetrameter.
   
3. blank verse.
   
4. Alexandrine.
   
5. alliterative.
   

The stanza is from a poem by

1. Donne.
   
2. Keats.
   
3. Chaucer.
   
4. Ben Jonson.
   
5. Tennyson.
   

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments; love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove.
O, no, it is an ever-fixed mark 5
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wand'ring bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come; 10
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

“Impediment” (line 2) refers to

1. a barrier or wall that channels water.
   
2. a military barricade.
   
3. a legal restriction.
   
4. encumbering baggage or equipment.
   
5. a speech obstruction, a stammer, or stutter.
   

“Mark” (line 5) refers to

1. a navigational beacon.
   
2. wrinkles or scars on the face.
   
3. writing.
   
4. a distinguishing trait or quality.
   
5. a rating, an assessment of merit or ability.
   

The sonnet was written in the

1. fifteenth century.
   
2. sixteenth century.
   
3. seventeenth century.
   
4. eighteenth century.
   
5. nineteenth century.
   

“Art for art's sake” best characterizes the aesthetic philosophy of

1. Plato.
   
2. Oscar Wilde.
   
3. T. S. Eliot.
   
4. Alexander Pope.
   
5. Horace.
   

Thou, nature, art my goddess; to thy law
My services are bound. Wherefore should I
Stand in the plague of custom, and permit
The curiosity of nations to deprive me,
For that I am some twelve or fourteen moonshines
Lag of a brother? Why bastard? wherefore base?
When my dimensions are as well compact,
My mind as generous, and my shape as true,
As honest madam's issue? Why brand they us
With base? with baseness? bastardy? base, base?
Who, in the lusty stealth of nature, take
More composition and fierce quality
Than doth, within a dull, stale, tired bed,
Go to the creating a whole tribe of fops,
Got 'tween asleep and wake? Well, then,
Legitimate Edgar, I must have your land;

The above passage, taken in context, is an example of

1. a dramatic monologue by Robert Browning.
   
2. an eclogue.
   
3. the use of a persona in the Anglo-Saxon elegiac tradition.
   
4. an Elizabethan soliloquy.
   
5. a mock-epic invocation.
   

The theme of the passage can best be paraphrased as

1. illegitimate children are the responsibility of the society as a whole and should be cared for by the state.
   
2. it is perfectly acceptable for men to have adulterous affairs, but not for women.
   
3. the rights of inheritance are imposed by artificial and unnatural customs.
   
4. adultery and the consequent illegitimate offspring are violations of the natural order of society.
   
5. lechery is one of the consequences of humanity's alienation from God.
   

The speaker could best be classified as

1. Machiavellian.
   
2. an anti-hero.
   
3. a foil.
   
4. a personification.
   
5. the protagonist.
   

My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun; coral is far more red than her lips' red;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.

This passage could best be classified as

1. Petrarchan.
   
2. anti-Petrarchan.
   
3. Romantic.
   
4. mock epic.
   
5. surreal.
   

The Baroque is a style following the Renaissance, characterized by content by intense religious experience, personal emotion, and expressiveness, and characterized in form by vitality, movement, and magnificence.

 

Which of the following literary works would best illustrate the Baroque as defined above?

1. Chaucer's
   The Canterbury Tales
   
2. Ben Jonson's
   Volpone
   
3. Milton's
   Paradise Lost
   
4. Pope's “An Essay on Man”
   
5. Wordsworth's
   The Prelude
   

Altogether the scene was somewhat peculiar, at least to Captain Delano, nor, as he saw the two thus postured, could he resist the vagary, that in the black he saw a headsman, and in the white a man at the block. But this was one of those antic conceits, appearing and vanishing in a breath, from which, perhaps, the best regulated mind is not always free.

—Melville,
Benito Cereno

 

As illustrated in the passage quoted above, Melville creates irony in
Benito Cereno
by using which of the following narrative techniques?

1. Omniscient third-person narration
   
2. Limited third-person point of view
   
3. First-person narration
   
4. Stream-of-consciousness
   
5. Allegorical personification
   

Neither a borrower nor a lender be,
For loan oft loses both itself and friend,
And borrowing dulls th'edge of husbandry.
This above all, to thine own self be true,
And it must follow as the night the day
Thou canst not then be false to any man.

What is happening in the above passage?

1. Hamlet, at the conclusion of the play, is summing up the significance of the tragedy, drawing a moral.
   
2. Portia is lecturing Shylock in the trial scene.
   
3. Polonius is giving advice to his son before Laertes returns to France.
   
4. Henry IV, shortly before his death, is giving advice to his son, Prince Hal.
   
5. Iago is giving hypocritical advice to Othello.
   

The versification in the above passage could best be classified as

1. free verse.
   
2. blank verse.
   
3. alliterative verse.
   
4. terza rima.
   
5. heroic couplets.
   

Some to conceit alone their taste confine,
And glitt'ring thoughts struck out at ev'ry line;
Pleased with a work where nothing's just or fit,
One glaring chaos and wild heap of wit.
Poets, like painters, thus unskilled to trace 5
The naked nature and the living grace,
With gold and jewels cover ev'ry part,
And hide with ornament their want of art.

In the first line, “conceit” refers to

1. pride.
   
2. narcissism.
   
3. hyperbole.
   
4. abstraction.
   
5. metaphor.
   

The poetry referred to in the above passage might best be classified as

1. mock heroic.
   
2. Romantic.
   
3. metaphysical.
   
4. Victorian.
   
5. allegorical.
   

My heart leaps up when I behold
A rainbow in the sky:
So was it when my life began;
So is it now I am a man;
So be it when I shall grow old, 5
Or let me die!
The Child is father of the Man;
And I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety.

The best paraphrase for line 7 is

1. children do not realize it, but they grow up to be parents themselves and have to discipline their own children.
   
2. parents have difficulty communicating with their children because the children lack experience.
   
3. children have difficulty communicating with their parents because adults tend to be set in their ways.
   
4. the personality of the adult is determined by the experiences he or she had as a child.
   
5. the experiences of the child are determined by the adult society in which he or she grows up.
   

By “natural piety” (line 9), the poet means

1. the appreciation of nature.
   
2. the recognition of the rainbow as the biblical symbol of God's covenant with Noah and his descendants.
   
3. the worship of God through the study of His Creation.
   
4. the belief that the universe is a mechanical device like a clock, created by God but then allowed to run on its own without further intervention.
   
5. the worship of gods and goddesses personifying natural forces and phenomena.
   

“Better to reign in hell, than serve in heav'n.”

 

The above line summarizes the point of view of

1. John Milton.
   
2. Satan in Milton's
   Paradise Lost.
   
3. Dr. Faustus in Marlowe's
   Dr. Faustus.
   
4. Machiavelli.
   
5. Othello in Shakespeare's
   Othello
   .
   

Quoth the Raven, “Nevermore.”

 

Identify the author of the above refrain.

1. William Wordsworth
   
2. Edgar Allan Poe
   
3. William Shakespeare
   
4. Edmund Spenser
   
5. Alfred Lord Tennyson
   

How soon hath Time, the subtle thief of youth,
Stolen on his wing my three and twentieth year!
My hasting days fly on with full career,
But my late spring no bud or blossom show'th.
Perhaps my semblance might deceive the truth,
That I to manhood am arrived so near,
And inward ripeness doth much less appear,
That some more timely-happy spirits endu'th.
Yet be it less or more, or soon or slow,
It shall be still in strictest measure even
To that same lot, however mean or high,
Toward which Time leads me, and the will of Heaven;
All is, if I have grace to use it so,
As ever in my great Taskmaster's eye.

This sonnet reveals that the author wrote in conformance with ______ models.

1. Shakespearean
   
2. Phrygian
   
3. Spenserian
   
4. Italian
   
5. Romanesque
   

This sonnet is characterized by each of the following with the
exception
that the author

1. avoids the final couplet.
   
2. uses enclosed instead of alternating rhyme in the octave.
   
3. does not make a sharp distinction between octave and sestet.
   
4. does not follow a pattern of
   abba, abba, cdedce
   .
   
5. alters meter and line requirements.