GRE Literature in English (REA) (48 page)

When that rich soul which to her heaven is gone,
Whom all do celebrate who know they have one
(for who is sure he hath a soul, unless
It see, and judge, and follow worthiness,
And by deeds praise it? He who doth not this,
May lodge an inmate soul, but 'tis not his);
When that queen ended here her progress time,
And, as to her standing house, to heaven did climb,
Where, loath to make the saints attend her long,
She's now a part both of the choir and song

Line 9 indicates that the subject of the poem

1. was always considerate.
   
2. was always in a hurry.
   
3. never received the attention she deserved.
   
4. lived an eventful life.
   
5. died early.
   

The poem might best be described as

1. an invocation to the Muse.
   
2. a declaration of love.
   
3. a commemorative.
   
4. an epigram.
   
5. an encomium.
   

The poem was written by

1. John Donne.
   
2. John Dryden.
   
3. Ben Jonson.
   
4. John Milton.
   
5. Sir Francis Bacon.
   

“The object of the imitation is not only a complete action but such as stir up pity and fear, and this is best achieved when the events are unexpectedly interconnected. This, more than what happens accidentally and by chance, will arouse wonder.”

—Aristotle,
Poetics

 

On the basis of the above observation, Aristotle might be expected to object most strongly to which of the following?

1. Hardy's
   The Return of the Native.
   
2. Shakespeare's
   Macbeth
   .
   
3. Steinbeck's
   The Grapes of Wrath.
   
4. O'Neill's
   Long Day's Journey into Night.
   
5. Ibsen's
   The Wild Duck.
   

“The concentration of attention upon matter-of-fact is the supremacy of the desert. Any approach to such triumph bestows on learning a fugitive, and a cloistered virtue, ...”

—Alfred North Whitehead,
Modes of Thought

 

In the above passage, Whitehead borrows a phrase from

1. Mill's
   On Liberty.
   
2. Milton's
   Areopagitica.
   
3. Thoreau's
   Civil Disobedience
   .
   
4. Aristotle's
   Ethics
   .
   
5. Rousseau's
   The Social Contract.
   

He answered, “I don't know how to sing; for that was the reason I left the entertainment and came out to this place, because I couldn't sing.” The other who talked to him replied, “All the same, you shall sing for me.” “What must I sing?” he asked. “Sing the beginning of created things!” said the other. Hereupon he at once began to sing verses which he had never heard before, to the praise of God the creator.

—Bede,
Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum

The singer in the above passage is

1. Beowulf.
   
2. Sir Gawain.
   
3. Caedmon.
   
4. Chaucer.
   
5. Dante.
   

The versification of the song is

1. alliterative.
   
2. iambic pentameter.
   
3. ballad stanza.
   
4. free verse.
   
5. heroic couplets.
   

The passage itself could best be classified as an example of

1. epic simile.
   
2. comic relief.
   
3. classical allusion.
   
4. mock epic.
   
5. dream vision.
   

O God, O Venus, O Mercury, patron of thieves,
Give me in due time, I beseech you, a little tobacco-shop
With the little bright boxes
piled up neatly upon the shelves
And the loose fragrant cavendish
and the shag,
And the bright Virginia
loose under the bright glass cases,
And a pair of scales not too greasy,
And the whores dropping in for a word or two in passing,
For a flip word, and to tidy their hair a bit.

 

O God, O Venus, O Mercury, patron of thieves,
Lend me a little tobacco-shop,
or install me in any profession
Save this damned profession of writing,
where one needs one's brains all the time.

The title of the poem refers to

1. the place where the poem was written.
   
2. the birth of Venus.
   
3. a poem by W. B. Yeats.
   
4. a brand of tobacco.
   
5. the place where the poet would like to go on vacation.
   

The poem might be classified as

1. Petrarchan.
   
2. Romantic.
   
3. anti-Petrarchan.
   
4. anti-Romantic.
   
5. pre-Raphaelite.
   

The end then of learning is to repair the ruins of our first parents by regaining to know God aright and out of that knowledge to love Him, to imitate Him, to be like Him, ...

The passage is from

1. St. Augustine's
   The City of God.
   
2. More's
   Utopia
   .
   
3. Mill's
   On Liberty.
   
4. Dewey's
   Experience and Education.
   
5. Milton's
   On Education.
   

The metaphor “repair the ruins” depends for its meaning on

1. Freud's theory of the Oedipal Complex.
   
2. the etymology of “ruin” which is derived from Latin “ruo, ruere,” meaning “to fall.”
   
3. knowledge about archaeological sites.
   
4. reference to the tearing down of medieval churches by Protestants during the Reformation.
   
5. reference to Greek and Roman temples.
   

Sailor, can you hear
The Pequod's sea wings, beating landward, fall
Headlong and break on our Atlantic wall
Off 'Sconset, where the yawing S-boats splash
The bellbuoy, ...

—Robert Lowell,
The Quaker Graveyard in Nantucket

 

In the above lines, Lowell alludes to

1. the biblical story of Jonah.
   
2. Homer's
   Odyssey
   .
   
3. Sinbad.
   
4. Melville's
   Moby Dick.
   
5. Shakespeare's
   The Tempest.
   

Which of the following plays by Eugene O'Neill is based on the myth of Hippolytus?

1. Mourning Becomes Electra
   
2. Moon for the Misbegotten
   
3. Strange Interlude
   
4. Desire Under the Elms
   
5. The Emperor Jones
   

Now, as there is an infinity of possible universes in the ideas of God, and as only one of them can exist, there must be a sufficient reason for the choice of God, which determines him to select one rather than another.

And this reason can be found in the fitness, or in the degrees of perfection that these worlds contain, each possible world having a right to claim existence in proportion to the measure of perfection which it possesses.

 

The idea expressed above is most directly ridiculed in

1. Aristophanes'
   The Clouds.
   
2. Swift's
   Gulliver's Travels.
   
3. Voltaire's
   Candide
   .
   
4. Molière's
   Tartuffe
   .
   
5. Oscar Wilde's
   The Importance of Being Earnest.
   

Which of the following poets did NOT write sonnets?

1. Robert Frost
   
2. Edna St. Vincent Millay
   
3. John Milton
   
4. John Donne
   
5. Alexander Pope
   

The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not.—Great God! I'd rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.

The poem can best be classified as

1. Petrarchan.
   
2. anti-Petrarchan.
   
3. deist.
   
4. pantheist.
   
5. satirical.
   

An understanding of the last two lines is helped most by the knowledge that

1. the adjective “protean,” meaning “variable,” is derived from “Proteus.”
   
2. the prefix “tri-” means “three.”
   
3. the prefix “pro-” means “for.”
   
4. Proteus and Triton are sea gods from classical mythology.
   
5. Menelaus tells about an encounter with Proteus in Homer's Odyssey.
   

Human sacrifice is a theme in

1. Oedipus Rex
   by Sophocles.
   
2. Antigone
   by Sophocles.
   
3. The Eumenides
   by Aeschylus.
   
4. Iphigenia in Aulis
   by Euripides.
   
5. The Dead
   by James Joyce.
   

Let observation, with extensive view,
Survey mankind, from China to Peru;
Remark each anxious toil, each eager strife,
And watch the busy scenes of crowded life;
Then say how hope and fear, desire and hate,
O‘erspread with snares the clouded maze of fate,
Where wav'ring man, betrayed by vent‘rous pride
To tread the dreary paths without a guide,
As treach'rous phantoms in the mist delude,
Shuns fancied ills, or chases airy good.
How rarely reason guides the stubborn choice,
Rules the bold hand, or prompts the suppliant voice;
How nations sink, by darling schemes oppressed,
When vengeance listens to the fool's request.

—from Dr. Samuel Johnson,
The Vanity of Human Wishes

Which of the following statements best summarizes the theme that Johnson expresses in these fourteen lines?

1. Because human beings are governed by pride instead of reason, they create many problems for themselves.
   
2. Placing too much faith in human reason leads to tragedy.
   
3. Most of the problems that humanity faces are the result of archaic social institutions and outmoded customs.
   
4. In China and Peru, human progress is being held back by religious superstition, while, by implication, England is moving ahead economically because it is governed rationally.
   
5. Although there are many problems in the world, through education and technological progress, we will be able to find solutions for these problems.
   

The break in line 10 between “ills” and “or” is referred to as

1. enjambment.
   
2. a troche.
   
3. elision.
   
4. ellipsis.
   
5. a caesura.
   

The scene harks back to the fabliaux in its superficial features, but it is more broadly meaningful than any scene in that literature. In the context of the
Prologue's
doctrinal material, we behold not only a magnificently natural creature in domestic squabble; she is also the embodiment of experience ripping out the pages of the book of authority, and of militant feminism fetching traditional masculine domination a healthy blow on the cheek. The symbolism of her position could not have been made secure without the naturalistic style whereby Chaucer creates and then protects it.

—Charles Muscatine,
Chaucer and the French Tradition

The character referred to above is

1. Criseyde in
   Troylus and Criseyde.
   
2. Alison in “The Miller's Tale.”
   
3. Emelye in “The Knight's Tale.”
   
4. May in “The Merchant's Tale.”
   
5. The Wife of Bath.
   

For an example of a fabliau that illustrates the point Muscatine makes in the first sentence, one might refer to

1. “The Pardoner's Tale.”
   
2. “The Nun's Priest's Tale.”
   
3. “The Reeve's Tale.”
   
4. “The Monk's Tale.”
   
5. “The Knight's Tale.”
   

The most rigorous defense of the unities of time, place, and action is to be found in

1. Antonin Artaud's
   The Theater and its Double.
   
2. Dr. Samuel Johnson's
   Preface to Shakespeare.
   
3. Dryden's
   An Essay of Dramatic Poesy.
   
4. T. S. Eliot's
   Tradition and the Individual Talent.
   
5. Sir Philip Sidney's
   The Defense of Poesie.