GRE Literature in English (REA) (34 page)

By contrast, a Greek temple or even a Romanesque abbey is a completed whole, and in both the observer's eye eventually can come to rest. The appeal of the Gothic lies in the very restlessness that prevents this sense of completion. The observer is caught and swept up in the general stream of movement and from the initial impulse gets the desire to continue it. The completion, however, can only be in the imagination, since there were, in fact, no finished cathedrals.

—William Fleming,
Arts and Ideas

 

Which of the following literary works comes closest to illustrating the structural aesthetic ascribed in the above passage to the Gothic cathedral?

1. Dante's
   The Divine Comedy
   
2. Chaucer's
   The Canterbury Tales
   
3. Milton's
   Paradise Lost
   
4. Boccaccio's
   The Decameron
   
5. Shakespeare's
   Hamlet
   

Roland Barthes is associated with which school of criticism?

1. Formalism
   
2. Reader-response criticism
   
3. Psychoanalytical criticism
   
4. The New Criticism
   
5. Deconstruction
   

The measure is
English
Heroic Verse without Rime, as that of
Homer
in
Greek
, and of
Virgil
in
Latin
; Rime being no necessary Adjunct or true Ornament of Poem or good Verse, in longer Works especially, but the Invention of a barbarous Age, to set off wretched matter and lame Meter; grac't indeed since by the use of some famous modern Poets, carried away by Custom, but much to their own vexation, hindrance, and constraint to express many things otherwise, and for the most part worse than else they would have exprest them.

 

In the above passage

1. Milton defends his use of blank verse in
   Paradise Lost.
   
2. Marlowe defends his use of blank verse in
   Tamburlaine Part I.
   
3. Ezra Pound defends his use of free verse in
   The Cantos.
   
4. John Dryden discusses his translation of Virgil's
   Aeneid.
   
5. Edmund Spenser discusses versification in “The Faerie Queene.”
   

Batter my heart, three-personed God; for you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise, and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend
Your force, to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like an usurped town, to another due,
Labor to admit you, but Oh, to no end,
Reason your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captived, and proves weak or untrue.
Yet dearly I love you, and would be loved fain,
But am betrothed unto your enemy:
Divorce me, untie, or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I
Except you enthral me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

The best paraphrase of the second quatrain (lines 5-8) would be

1. If I acted rationally, I would do what is right, but my mind is overpowered by evil motives.
   
2. I am in love with another woman, but I am not willing to admit it.
   
3. If the government were more rational in its policies, ordinary citizens wouldn't become traitors.
   
4. Religion is one of the principal causes of conflict in the world.
   
5. This town, London, is now controlled by the Puritans.
   

The “enemy” in line 10 is

1. Satan.
   
2. Spain, a country with which England was at war.
   
3. the Anglican Church.
   
4. the poet's rival.
   
5. the poet's wife.
   

“What is honor? A word. What is that word honor? Air—a trim reckoning! Who hath it? He that dies a Wednesday. Doth he feel it? No. Doth he hear it? No. ‘Tis insensible then? Yea, to the dead. But will it not live with the living? No. Why? Detraction will not suffer it. Therefore I'll none of it. Honor is a mere scutcheon—and so ends my catechism.”

 

The philosophical position that Falstaff assumes in the above speech might best be classified as

1. stoicism.
   
2. the Donatist heresy.
   
3. Calvinism.
   
4. neo-Platonism.
   
5. nominalism.
   

For a theory of tragedy as the “catharsis” of emotions, one should read

1. Sidney,
   Defence of Poesie.
   
2. Tolstoy,
   What Is Art?
   
3. Aristotle,
   Poetics.
   
4. Freud,
   The Psychopathology of Everyday Life.
   
5. A. C. Bradley,
   Shakespearean Tragedy.
   

In Jane Austen's
Sense and Sensibility,
“sense” refers to

1. any one of the faculties of perception, sight, hearing, taste, smell, feeling, as the basis for empirical knowledge.
   
2. sensuousness.
   
3. sensuality.
   
4. a practical and reasonable regard for one's own self-interest.
   
5. aesthetic appreciation transcending moral conventions.
   

“Beauty is truth, truth beauty,”—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.

 

Critics have disagreed as to exactly what “ye” refers to in the poem. Which of the following are possible solutions?

1. Either the nightingale or the poet
   
2. Either the nightingale or humanity
   
3. Either the urn or humanity
   
4. Either the rose or the woman the poet loves
   
5. Either the rose or humanity
   

An alternation of heroic and comic scenes is typical of the drama of which of the following playwrights?

1. Sophocles
   
2. Racine
   
3. Shakespeare
   
4. Dryden
   
5. Congreve
   

Shakespeare wrote
Macbeth
in response to

1. the ascension to the throne of England of James I.
   
2. the death of Elizabeth I.
   
3. the execution of Charles I.
   
4. the defeat of the Spanish Armada.
   
5. the execution of Mary, Queen of Scots.
   

Which of the following works could best be characterized as existentialist?

1. Tolstoy's
   War and Peace
   
2. Milton's
   Paradise Lost
   
3. Sartre's
   No Exit
   
4. Dante's
   The Divine Comedy
   
5. Marlowe's
   Doctor Faustus
   

If it were done when ‘tis done, then 'twere well
It was done quickly: if the assassination
Could trammel up the consequence, and catch
With his surcease success; that but this blow
Might be the be-all and the end-all here,
We'd jump the life to come.

 

In the above context, “success” (line 4) means

1. victory.
   
2. wealth.
   
3. fame.
   
4. the act or process of becoming entitled as a legal beneficiary to the property of a deceased person.
   
5. any result or outcome.
   

The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore
Lay like folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.

 

The author compares a withdrawing wave of the ocean to

1. a general loss of religious faith.
   
2. his personal loss of religious faith.
   
3. a loss of trust between himself and someone he loves.
   
4. a loss of self-confidence, of faith in himself.
   
5. a general decrease in patriotism.
   

There was never a sound beside the wood but one,
And that was my long scythe whispering to the ground.
What was it it whispered? I knew not well myself;
Perhaps it was something about the heat of the sun,
Something, perhaps about the lack of sound—
And that was why it whispered and did not speak.
It was no dream of the gift of idle hours,
Or easy gold at the hand of fay or elf:
Anything more than the truth would have seemed too weak
To the earnest love that laid the svvale in rows,
Not without feeble-pointed spikes of flowers
(Pale orchises), and scared a bright green snake.
The fact is the sweetest dream that labor knows,
My long scythe whispered and left the hay to make.

 

Which of the following best summarizes the author's concern?

1. The secrets of nature surround us and can be revealed to anyone who will take time out and listen.
   
2. One benefit of physical labor can be psychic revelation.
   
3. Humans must work hard at discovering the truth; it will not come to the passive observer.
   
4. The secrets of life are hinted at, yet never quite revealed.
   
5. Mankind's role on Earth is to labor; to know anything beyond this is impossible.
   

The conventional divisions of pastoral elegy include each of the following EXCEPT

1. invocation of the muse.
   
2. an admonition to Death.
   
3. an expression of grief.
   
4. a digression, usually about the church.
   
5. an admission that everyone is mortal.
   

If I can stop one Heart from breaking
I shall not live in vain
If I can ease one Life the Aching
Or cool one Pain
Or help one fainting Robin
Unto his Nest again
I shall not live in Vain.

The most important characteristic of the poetry demonstrated here is the tendency toward

1. an emphasis on nature.
   
2. didacticism.
   
3. empathy with the greater world.
   
4. reclusiveness.
   
5. lament for lost love.
   

The poet's use of capital first letters (exclusive of the first words of each line and “I”) may be accounted for by

1. the poet's love of hidden puzzles.
   
2. personification of concepts.
   
3. remnant eighteenth-century convention.
   
4. the random quality of free verse.
   
5. thematic emphasis.
   

The philanthropic tone is related to the traditions of

1. the eighteenth-century Enlightenment.
   
2. American Free Thinking.
   
3. Hobbesian materialism.
   
4. evangelical messianism.
   
5. late Puritan literary climate.
   

The author of the poem above is

1. Walt Whitman.
   
2. Edna St. Vincent Millay.
   
3. Emily Dickinson.
   
4. Ogden Nash.
   
5. Carl Sandburg.
   

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

 

This poem illustrates a style and theme best termed

1. Johnsonian.
   
2. euphemistic.
   
3. Freudian.
   
4. Wordsworthian.
   
5. Dickinsonian.
   

Some artists, whether by theoretical knowledge or by long practice, can represent things by imitating their shapes and colours, and others do so by the use of the voice; in the arts I have spoken of the imitation as produced by means of rhythm, language, and music, these being used either separately or in combination.

 

The author describes artists in

1. a predominantly Expressionistic mode.
   
2. an Aristotelian ideal.
   
3. a prevailing Pindaric attitude.
   
4. a basically Impressionistic pattern.
   
5. an Atomistic code.
   

Which of the following is an example of interior monologue?

1. I knew it. I knew if came to this dinner, I'd draw something like this baby on my left. They've been saving him up for me for weeks. Now we've simply got to have him—his sister was so sweet to us in London: we can stick him next to Mrs. Parker—she talks enough for two.
   

2. Up until I learned my lesson in a very bitter way, I never had more than one friend at a time, and my friendships, though ardent, were short.
   

3. An extraordinary thing happened today. I got up rather late, and when Marva brought my boots, I asked her for the time. Hearing that ten had struck quite a while before, I dressed in a hurry.
   

4. Well, I want to tell you, Mrs. Babbitt, and I know Mrs. Schmaltz heartily agrees with me, that we've never enjoyed a dinner more—that was some of the finest fried chicken I ever tasted in my life—and it certainly is a mighty great pleasure to be able to just have this quiet evening with you and George.
   

5. I know what is being said about me and you can take my side or theirs, that's your own business. It's my word against Eunice's and Olivia Ann's, and it should be plain enough to anyone with two good eyes which one of us has their wits about them.