GRE Subject Test: Literature in English : Cultural and Historical Contexts
Study concepts, example questions & explanations for GRE Subject Test: Literature in English
All GRE Subject Test: Literature in English Resources
Example Questions
Example Question #131 : Cultural And Historical Contexts
Who is the author of “The Man-Moth”?
Elizabeth Gaskell
Frank O’Hara
Elizabeth Bishop
Sylvia Plath
Amy Lowell
Elizabeth Bishop
Inspired by a newspaper misprint, “The Man-Moth” (1946) is a poem by the U.S. Poet Laureate Elizabeth Bishop (1911-1979).
Elizabeth Gaskell wrote Sylvia's Lovers (1863), Sylvia Plath wrote The Bell Jar (1963), Amy Lowell wrote Ballads for Sale (1927), and Frank O’Hara wrote Oranges: 12 pastorals (1953).
Example Question #132 : Cultural And Historical Contexts
Which of the following is the title of a Pulitzer Prize-winning book of poems by the author of “The Man-Moth”?
Brotherhood
Poems: North & South/A Cold Spring
Last Dawn
As One Listens to the Rain
Between Going and Coming
Poems: North & South/A Cold Spring
Poems: North & South/A Cold Spring is Bishop’s 1956 Pulitzer Prize-winning collection. The rest are the titles of individual poems by Octavio Paz.
Example Question #133 : Cultural And Historical Contexts
Which of the following poets was a major influence on the author of “The Man-Moth”?
Mary Shelley
Mary Dudley
Mary Wollstonecraft
Marianne Moore
Marilyn Robinson
Marianne Moore
Marianne Moore, whom Bishop met as a student at Vassar, was a mentor and friend to Bishop. Critics observe distinct similarities in the two poets’ oeuvres.
Mary Shelley was a 19th-century novelist, Mary Wollstonecraft was a 19th-century essayist and seminal feminist thinker, Marilyn Robinson is a 20th-century novelist, and Mary Dudley was not a writer, but was rather a confidante of Queen Elizabeth I.
Example Question #1 : Contexts Of World Poetry
Canto I
Midway upon the journey of our life
I found myself within a forest dark,
For the straightforward pathway had been lost.
Ah me! how hard a thing it is to say
What was this forest savage, rough, and stern,
Which in the very thought renews the fear.
So bitter is it, death is little more;
But of the good to treat, which there I found,
Speak will I of the other things I saw there.
Who is this author?
Chaucer
Shakespeare
Petrarch
Boccaccio
Dante
Dante
This is an excerpt from Dante Alighieri’s The Divine Comedy – specifically, the famous opening lines of The Inferno. Even if you didn’t recognize these lines, you could have noticed that the work is written in couplets and that it is a canto, both of which are identifying features of The Divine Comedy.
Passage adapted from Dante Alighieri’s The Divine Comedy, trans. Charles Eliot Norton (1920)
Example Question #2 : Contexts Of World Poetry
Canto I
Midway upon the journey of our life
I found myself within a forest dark,
For the straightforward pathway had been lost.
Ah me! how hard a thing it is to say
What was this forest savage, rough, and stern,
Which in the very thought renews the fear.
So bitter is it, death is little more;
But of the good to treat, which there I found,
Speak will I of the other things I saw there.
What country is this author from?
Turkey
Morocco
Spain
Italy
Greece
Italy
Dante was from Florence, Italy.
Passage adapted from Dante Alighieri’s The Divine Comedy, trans. Charles Eliot Norton (1920)
Example Question #3 : Contexts Of World Poetry
Canto I
Midway upon the journey of our life
I found myself within a forest dark,
For the straightforward pathway had been lost.
Ah me! how hard a thing it is to say
What was this forest savage, rough, and stern,
Which in the very thought renews the fear.
So bitter is it, death is little more;
But of the good to treat, which there I found,
Speak will I of the other things I saw there.
During what century was this work written?
1200s
1100s
1400s
1300s
1500s
1300s
Although Dante was born in the 1200s (exact date unknown), The Divine Comedy was begun around 1308 and completed in 1320. Dante died in 1321.
Passage adapted from Dante Alighieri’s The Divine Comedy, trans. Charles Eliot Norton (1920)
Example Question #1 : Contexts Of World Poetry
Canto I
Midway upon the journey of our life
I found myself within a forest dark,
For the straightforward pathway had been lost.
Ah me! how hard a thing it is to say
What was this forest savage, rough, and stern,
Which in the very thought renews the fear.
So bitter is it, death is little more;
But of the good to treat, which there I found,
Speak will I of the other things I saw there.
One of the major characters in this work is the author of which epic poem?
The Lusiads
Metamorphoses
Paradise Lost
The Aeneid
The Iliad
The Aeneid
Virgil, the Roman author of The Aeneid (19 BCE), serves as the narrator’s guide through Heaven, Hell, and Purgatory in Dante’s Divine Comedy.
Homer's The Illiad, John Milton's Paradise Lost (1674), Luis Vaz de Camoens's The Lusiads (1572), and Ovid's Metamorphoses were all used as alternative answer choices.
Passage adapted from Dante Alighieri’s The Divine Comedy, trans. Charles Eliot Norton (1920)
Example Question #5 : Contexts Of World Poetry
Arms and the Heroes, who from Lisbon’s shore,
Thro’ seas where sail was never spread before,
Beyond where Ceylon lifts her spicy breast,
And waves her woods above the wat’ry waste,
With prowess more than human forc’d their way
To the fair kingdoms of the rising day:
What wars they wag’d, what seas, what dangers pass’d,
What glorious empire crown’d their toils at last,
Vent’rous I sing…
Who is the author of this work?
Luís Vaz de Camões
António Ferreira
Fernando Pessoa
Miguel de Cervantes
Francisco de Quevedo
Luís Vaz de Camões
These are the opening lines of Luís Vaz de Camões’s The Lusiads, an epic poem written in response to and as a creative reimagining of the widespread 15th- and 16th-century European maritime explorations – particularly to India.
Passage adapted from Luís Vaz de Camões Os Lusíadas, trans. William Julius Mickle (1877)
Example Question #6 : Contexts Of World Poetry
Arms and the Heroes, who from Lisbon’s shore,
Thro’ seas where sail was never spread before,
Beyond where Ceylon lifts her spicy breast,
And waves her woods above the wat’ry waste,
With prowess more than human forc’d their way
To the fair kingdoms of the rising day:
What wars they wag’d, what seas, what dangers pass’d,
What glorious empire crown’d their toils at last,
Vent’rous I sing…
What country is this work from?
Spain
Romania
Greece
Portugal
Italy
Portugal
Luís Vaz de Camões is Portuguese and one of his country’s most famous poets, and The Lusiads is often referred to as Portugal’s national epic.
Passage adapted from Luís Vaz de Camões Os Lusíadas, trans. William Julius Mickle (1877)
Example Question #7 : Contexts Of World Poetry
Arms and the Heroes, who from Lisbon’s shore,
Thro’ seas where sail was never spread before,
Beyond where Ceylon lifts her spicy breast,
And waves her woods above the wat’ry waste,
With prowess more than human forc’d their way
To the fair kingdoms of the rising day:
What wars they wag’d, what seas, what dangers pass’d,
What glorious empire crown’d their toils at last,
Vent’rous I sing…
In what century was this work written?
1600s
1700s
1300s
1500s
1400s
1500s
The work was published in 1572, and Luís Vaz de Camões lived from around 1524 to 1580.
Passage adapted from Luís Vaz de Camões Os Lusíadas, trans. William Julius Mickle (1877)
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