GRE Subject Test: Literature in English : Contexts of World Plays
Study concepts, example questions & explanations for GRE Subject Test: Literature in English
All GRE Subject Test: Literature in English Resources
Example Questions
Example Question #21 : Contexts Of World Plays
Who of the following is not an African dramatist?
Wole Soyinka
Ngugi wa Thiong'o
Ola Rotimi
Ama Ata Aidoo
Jean Rhys
Jean Rhys
While Jean Rhys is a renowned writer, she is Dominican and not African. Moreover, she was known for writing novels (including Wide Sargasso Sea and After Leaving Mr. Mackenzie) and not plays.
Example Question #522 : Cultural And Historical Contexts
Which of these European playwrights was a staunch Marxist?
Bertolt Brecht
Henrik Ibsen
Jean Genet
Friedrich Schiller
Eugene Ionesco
Bertolt Brecht
This dramatist is Brecht, and his lifelong Marxist leanings were often visible in his aesthetics. His works include plays such as Mother Courage and Her Children, The Threepenny Opera, and Man Equals Man. He and his wife also co-founded and operated the Berliner Ensemble, an important post-war German theater company.
Example Question #523 : Cultural And Historical Contexts
Which of the following playwrights did not write work belonging to the Theatre of the Absurd?
Eugene Ionesco
Jean Genet
Fernando Arrabal
Samuel Beckett
Tennessee Williams
Tennessee Williams
Only Tennessee Williams did not write absurdist plays emphasizing the meaninglessness of human existence. (The Theatre of the Absurd was a primarily European phenomenon, and Williams was American.)
Example Question #524 : Cultural And Historical Contexts
What is the subject of the play A Doll’s House?
the miniaturization of urban life
wartime attitudes toward pacifists in Germany
social conventions surrounding treatment of the disabled
shifting political regimes in Norway
nineteenth-century marital norms
nineteenth-century marital norms
Written by Henrik Ibsen, A Doll’s House concerns what the playwright considered to be the constricting aspects of marriage, motherhood, female domesticity, and public reputation versus private morality. The work is a tragedy and takes place in Ibsen’s native Norway in the late nineteenth century.
All GRE Subject Test: Literature in English Resources
