GRE Subject Test: Literature in English : Contexts of British Prose
Study concepts, example questions & explanations for GRE Subject Test: Literature in English
All GRE Subject Test: Literature in English Resources
Example Questions
Example Question #17 : Contexts Of British Prose 1660–1925
Outside Dorlcote Mill
A wide plain, where the broadening Floss hurries on between its green banks to the sea, and the loving tide, rushing to meet it, checks its passage with an impetuous embrace. On this mighty tide the black ships, laden with the fresh-scented fir-planks, with rounded sacks of oil-bearing seed, or with the dark glitter of coal, are borne along to the town of St. Ogg’s, which shows its aged, fluted red roofs and the broad gables of its wharves between the low wooded hill and the river brink, tinging the water with a soft purple hue under the transient glance of this February sun. Far away on each hand stretch the rich pastures and the patches of dark earth, made ready for the seed of broad-leaved green crops, or touched already with the tint of the tender-bladed autumn-sown corn.
Who is the author of this novel?
Henry Fielding
George Eliot
D.H. Lawrence
George Gordon, Lord Byron
Wilkie Collins
George Eliot
The Mill on the Floss is George Eliot’s novel, her second of seven.
George Gordon wrote Manfred (1817), Henry Fielding wrote Shamela (1741), D.H. Lawrence wrote Sons and Lovers (1913), and Wilkie Collins wrote No Name (1862).
(Passage adapted from The Mill on the Floss, (1860) by George Eliot)
Example Question #21 : Contexts Of British Prose
Outside Dorlcote Mill
A wide plain, where the broadening Floss hurries on between its green banks to the sea, and the loving tide, rushing to meet it, checks its passage with an impetuous embrace. On this mighty tide the black ships, laden with the fresh-scented fir-planks, with rounded sacks of oil-bearing seed, or with the dark glitter of coal, are borne along to the town of St. Ogg’s, which shows its aged, fluted red roofs and the broad gables of its wharves between the low wooded hill and the river brink, tinging the water with a soft purple hue under the transient glance of this February sun. Far away on each hand stretch the rich pastures and the patches of dark earth, made ready for the seed of broad-leaved green crops, or touched already with the tint of the tender-bladed autumn-sown corn.
What is the author of this passage's real name?
Elizabeth Carter
Mary Ann Evans
Anne Brontë
Elizabeth Gaskell
Frances Burney
Mary Ann Evans
Also known as Mary Anne or Marian Evans, George Eliot (1819-1880) published under a male pseudonym to ensure that her works would be well received and read carefully by critics. The other names on this list are all female British authors.
Frances Burney was also known as Fanny Burney and Madame d'Arblay. Elizabeth Gaskell was often called Mrs. Gaskell in literary circles. As a member of the Bluestockings Society, Elizabeth Carter sometimes wrote under the name Eliza. Anne Brontë wrote under the name Acton Bell.
(Passage adapted from The Mill on the Floss (1860) by George Eliot)
Example Question #22 : Contexts Of British Prose
Outside Dorlcote Mill
A wide plain, where the broadening Floss hurries on between its green banks to the sea, and the loving tide, rushing to meet it, checks its passage with an impetuous embrace. On this mighty tide the black ships, laden with the fresh-scented fir-planks, with rounded sacks of oil-bearing seed, or with the dark glitter of coal, are borne along to the town of St. Ogg’s, which shows its aged, fluted red roofs and the broad gables of its wharves between the low wooded hill and the river brink, tinging the water with a soft purple hue under the transient glance of this February sun. Far away on each hand stretch the rich pastures and the patches of dark earth, made ready for the seed of broad-leaved green crops, or touched already with the tint of the tender-bladed autumn-sown corn.
Which of the following works was not also written by this author?
Daniel Deronda
Middlemarch
Silas Marner
Ethan Frome
Adam Bede
Ethan Frome
George Eliot wrote Middlemarch (1874), Daniel Deronda (1876), Silas Marner (1861), and Adam Bede (1859). Ethan Frome is a 1911 novel by the American writer Edith Wharton.
(Passage adapted from The Mill on the Floss (1860) by George Eliot)
Example Question #23 : Contexts Of British Prose
The family of Dashwood had long been settled in Sussex. Their estate was large, and their residence was at Norland Park, in the centre of their property, where, for many generations, they had lived in so respectable a manner as to engage the general good opinion of their surrounding acquaintance. The late owner of this estate was a single man, who lived to a very advanced age, and who for many years of his life, had a constant companion and housekeeper in his sister. But her death, which happened ten years before his own, produced a great alteration in his home; for to supply her loss, he invited and received into his house the family of his nephew Mr. Henry Dashwood, the legal inheritor of the Norland estate, and the person to whom he intended to bequeath it.
From which novel is this passage excerpted?
Sense and Sensibility
Brideshead Revisited
A Passage to India
The Pickwick Papers
Villette
Sense and Sensibility
These are the opening lines of Jane Austen's 1811 novel Sense and Sensibility.
The Pickwick Paper (1836) is by Charles Dickens, A Passage to India (1924) is by E.M Forster, Brideshead Revisited (1945) is by Evelyn Waugh, and Villette (1853) is by Charlotte Brontë.
Example Question #24 : Contexts Of British Prose
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way – in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.
These are the opening lines to which novel?
Pride and Prejudice
A Tale of Two Cities
Middlemarch
Wuthering Heights
Great Expectations
A Tale of Two Cities
This passage is adapted from Charles Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities (1859).
Great Expectations (1891) is by Charles Dickens, Wuthering Heights (1847) is by Emily Brontë, Middlemarch (1874) is by George Eliot, and Pride and Prejudice (1813) is by Jane Austen.
Example Question #1 : Contexts Of British Prose After 1925
Which of the following is not a dystopian novel?
A Clockwork Orange
Brave New World
Finnegans Wake
1984
Lord of the Flies
Finnegans Wake
The only one of these novels not set in a fictional dystopia is James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake, an incredibly experimental work that vaguely follows various characters through a dreamlike, nebulous plot.
Example Question #2 : Contexts Of British Prose After 1925
Which of the following recent British novels did not win the Booker Prize?
The Narrow Road to the Deep North
The Gathering
White Teeth
The Luminaries
The Inheritance of Loss
White Teeth
Only Zadie Smith’s White Teeth has not won the Booker Prize. Anne Enright’s The Gathering won in 2007, Eleanor Catton’s The Luminaries won in 2013, Richard Flanagan’s The Narrow Road to the Deep North won in 2014, and Kiran Desai’s The Inheritance of Loss won in 2006.
Example Question #3 : Contexts Of British Prose After 1925
George Orwell’s 1945 novel Animal Farm is an elaborate political allegory for which of the following?
The rise of materialism in the United States
The rise of Nazism in Germany
The rise of colonialism in India
The rise of imperialism in Western Europe
The rise of communism in Russia
The rise of communism in Russia
Orwell’s famous Animal Farm uses pigs, horses, dogs, and other animals to allegorize the 1917 Russian Revolution and subsequent rise of communism. In the novel, specific animals such as Napoleon and Snowball stand in for major political figures such as Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin, and Leon Trotsky.
Example Question #4 : Contexts Of British Prose After 1925
Which of the following is the setting for Hilary Mantel’s two-time Booker Prize-winning Wolf Hall trilogy?
The English Reformation
The English Restoration
The Louisiana Purchase
The French Revolution
The War of the Austrian Succession
The English Reformation
Considered one of the best works of English historical fiction in the last century, Mantel’s trilogy is set during the English Reformation and follows the rise of the Church of England and the machinations of historical characters such as Thomas Cromwell, Anne Boleyn, Cardinal Wolsey, and Henry VIII.
Example Question #1 : Contexts Of British Prose After 1925
Which of the following is an integral literary device in To the Lighthouse?
Dialogue
Dialect
Stream-of-consciousness
Absurdism
Allegory
Stream-of-consciousness
The novel, written by Virginia Woolf in 1927, is a classic example of modernist stream-of-consciousness. Although the plot centers around a family’s vacations to a Scottish island, it is much more concerned with consciousness, emotions, and perceptions than with fast-paced action or plot.
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