GRE Subject Test: Literature in English : Contexts of 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 #12 : Contexts Of American Plays After 1925
When was Long Day’s Journey Into Night first performed?
1940s
1980s
1970s
1960s
1950s
1950s
Although it was written a decade earlier, the play did not debut until 1956. It won the Pulitzer Prize in 1957.
Example Question #22 : Contexts Of American Plays
When was Our Town first performed?
1940s
1950s
1970s
1930s
1960s
1930s
Although it was set several decades earlier, the play debuted in 1938 and won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama the same year.
Example Question #71 : Contexts Of Plays
Who wrote A Raisin in the Sun?
Adrienne Kennedy
Tony Kushner
August Wilson
Lorraine Hansberry
Tom Stoppard
Lorraine Hansberry
Playwright Lorraine Hansberry (1930-1965) wrote A Raisin in the Sun (1959). Tony Kushner wrote Angels in America (1993). Tom Stoppard wrote Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead (1966). August Wilson wrote Fences (1987). Adrienne Kennedy wrote A Lesson in Dead Language (1968). All of these authors are major award-winning, twentieth-century American playwrights.
Example Question #72 : Contexts Of Plays
The title of A Raisin in the Sun was based on a poem by which American author?
Maya Angelou
ee cummings
Gertrude Stein
Gwendolyn Brooks
Langston Hughes
Langston Hughes
Langston Hughes’ famous poem “Harlem” (also called “A Dream Deferred”) (1951) likens a delayed dream to a grape that withers into a raisin in the sun.
Example Question #25 : Contexts Of American Plays
When was A Raisin in the Sun first performed?
1940s
1930s
1950s
1960s
1920s
1950s
A Raisin in the Sun was the first play by an African-American playwright to debut on Broadway, and it did so in 1959.
Example Question #72 : Contexts Of Plays
What is the setting of A Raisin in the Sun?
Chicago
San Francisco
Harlem
Oklahoma City
New Orleans
Chicago
The play is set in midcentury Chicago and reflects, among other social concerns of that (and this) time, racist housing policies. While the play was inspired by Langston Hughes' poem "Harlem" (1951), the play was definitively set in Chicago, and the connection to "Harlem" was based on a metaphorical image (of a grape withering in the sun).
Example Question #73 : Contexts Of Plays
Who wrote Long Day’s Journey Into Night?
Henrik Ibsen
Tony Kushner
Eugene O’Neill
Tennessee Williams
Arthur Miller
Eugene O’Neill
American playwright Eugene O’Neill (1888-1953) wrote Long Day’s Journey Into Night (1956), one of his most famous plays. Arthur Miller wrote Death of a Salesman (1949). Tennessee Williams wrote Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955). Tony Kushner wrote Angels in America (1993). Henrik Ibsen (the only non-American in the answer options) wrote Hedda Gabler (1890).
Example Question #74 : Contexts Of Plays
What is the setting of Long Day’s Journey Into Night?
A Connecticut home
A Milwaukee slaughterhouse
A Brooklyn tenement
A New Orleans factory and nightclub
A Wyoming ranch
A Connecticut home
The play takes place over the course of a single day in the lives of a dysfunctional Connecticut family. Although the play is extremely lavish in its description of the setting, all of the action of the play is restricted to that one location.
Example Question #75 : Contexts Of Plays
To what genre does Long Day’s Journey Into Night belong?
Post-structuralism
Realism
Absurdism
Postmodernism
Surrealism
Realism
Inspired by the works of realist playwrights such as Anton Chekhov and Henrik Ibsen, Long Day’s Journey Into Night is a highly realist work of drama. The work, as it is realist, cannot also be surrealist. Postmodernism and post-structuralism are near synonyms, and are anachronous to O'Neil's play.
Example Question #76 : Contexts Of Plays
Who wrote Our Town?
Thornton Wilder
Sam Shepard
August Strindberg
Lorraine Hansberry
August Wilson
Thornton Wilder
Our Town (1938) is by the American playwright Thornton Wilder (1897-1975). It is one of his earlier works. August Strindberg wrote A Dream Play (1901). Sam Shepard wrote The Right Stuff (1983). August Wilson wrote The Coldest Day of the Year (1989). Lorraine Hansberry wrote The Drinking Gourd (1960). Aside from Strindberg, all of these playwrights are American.
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All GRE Subject Test: Literature in English Resources
