GRE Subject Test: Literature in English : Contexts of World Poetry 1660–1925
Study concepts, example questions & explanations for GRE Subject Test: Literature in English
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Example Questions
Example Question #11 : Contexts Of World Poetry 1660–1925
Mute sat Giray, with downcast eye,
As though some spell in sorrow bound him,
His slavish courtiers thronging nigh,
In sad expectance stood around him.
The lips of all had silence sealed,
Whilst, bent on him, each look observant,
Saw grief's deep trace and passion fervent
Upon his gloomy brow revealed.
Which of the following is not a genre that this author wrote in?
Play
Short story
Novel
Autobiography
Fairytale
Autobiography
Pushkin was a multifaceted writer who wrote novels, short stories, dramas, and fairytales in addition to poems. He did not, however, write autobiographies.
Passage adapted from Alexander Pushkin’s The Bakchesarian Fountain, transl. William D. Lewis (1849)
Example Question #12 : Contexts Of World Poetry 1660–1925
Le Bateau Ivre
Comme je descendais des Fleuves impassibles
Je ne me sentis plus guidé par les haleurs;
Des Peaux-Rouges criards les avaient pris pour cibles,
Les ayant cloués nus aux poteaux de couleurs.
(As I floated the impassible rivers
I no longer felt myself guided by the haulers;
The gaudy Redskins had taken them for targets,
And had nailed them naked to totem poles.)
Who is the author of this poem?
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Paul Verlaine
Arthur Rimbaud
Paul Valéry
Rainer Maria Rilke
Arthur Rimbaud
This is Arthur Rimbaud’s 1871 poem “Le Bateau Ivre” (“The Drunken Boat”). Comprising 25 alexandrine quatrains, the poem is one of Rimbaud’s best-known works and includes vivid sensory details narrated from the point of view of the boat itself.
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