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 #11 : Contexts Of British Poetry After 1925
Who is the author of Birthday Letters?
T.S. Eliot
Ted Hughes
Philip Larkin
Seamus Heaney
W.H. Auden
Ted Hughes
Birthday Letters (1998) is British poet laureate Ted Hughes’ last collection of poetry, and it’s also one of his most famous.
Example Question #11 : Cultural And Historical Contexts
The poet’s relationship with which American writer is the subject of Birthday Letters?
Anne Sexton
Marianne Moore
Sylvia Plath
Adrienne Rich
Elizabeth Bishop
Sylvia Plath
In Birthday Letters (1998), Hughes examines the suicide of his first wife, American poet Sylvia Plath. Hughes and Plath were married in 1956, and Plath died in 1963.
Example Question #1 : Contexts Of British Poetry 1660–1925
This subject of this poem is __________.
John Milton
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Lord Byron
William Wordsworth
John Keats
John Keats
This poem is an elegy for the Romantic poet John Keats, who died at age 26 of tuberculosis. Keats was one of the leading figures of the second generation of Romatic poets.
Passage adapted from Adonais: An Elegy on the Death of John Keats by Percy Bysshe Shelley, I.1-9 (1821)
Example Question #2 : Contexts Of British Poetry 1660–1925
The author of the poem "Leda and the Swan" founded Dublin's Abbey Theatre along with whom?
George Bernard Shaw
Samuel Beckett
James Joyce
Sean O'Casey
Lady Augusta Gregory
Lady Augusta Gregory
Dublin's Abbey Theatre opened in 1904 and is closely associated with the Irish Literary Revival. Key figures associated with the theatre include John Millington Synge and Sean O'Casey, but the actual founders were W. B. Yeats and Lady Augusta Gregory.
Example Question #3 : Contexts Of British Poetry 1660–1925
The woman described in W. B. Yeats' poem "Leda and the Swan" is the mother of __________.
Paris
Clytemnestra
Achilles
Agamemnon
Electra
Clytemnestra
Yeats' "Leda and the Swan" is a retelling of a Greek myth in which a Greek queen named Leda is raped by the god Zeus, who has taken the form of a swan. After the rape, Leda produces four offspring, two of whom are the children of Zeus and two of whom are the children of her husband. In the traditional myth, one of the offspring not fathered by Zeus is Agamemnon's future wife Clytemnestra, who later conspires with her lover Aegisthus to kill her husband.
Example Question #4 : Contexts Of British Poetry 1660–1925
What dire offence from am'rous causes springs,
What mighty contests rise from trivial things,
I sing — This verse to Caryl, Muse! is due:
This, ev'n Belinda may vouchsafe to view:
Slight is the subject, but not so the praise,
If She inspire, and He approve my lays.
Say what strange motive, Goddess! could compel
A well-bred Lord t' assault a gentle Belle?
O say what stranger cause, yet unexplor'd,
Could make a gentle Belle reject a Lord?
In tasks so bold, can little men engage,
And in soft bosoms dwells such mighty Rage?
During what decade was this poem published?
1810s
1710s
1760s
1610s
1660s
1710s
The poem was originally published in 1712, and revised versions were released in 1714 and 1717. Even if you didn’t know this, you could rule out the other decades because none of them fall within Pope’s lifetime (1688-1744).
Passage adapted from Alexander Pope’s The Rape of the Lock, I.1-12 (1712; ed. 1906)
Example Question #5 : Contexts Of British Poetry 1660–1925
In pious times, e’r Priest-craft did begin,
Before Polygamy was made a Sin;
When Man on many multipli’d his kind,
E’r one to one was cursedly confin’d,
When Nature prompted and no Law deni’d
Promiscuous Use of Concubine and Bride;
Then Israel’s Monarch, after Heavens own heart,
His vigorous warmth did, variously, impart
To Wives and Slaves: And, wide as his Command,
Scatter’d his Maker’s Image through the Land.
Who is the author of this poem?
John Dryden
John Milton
Sir William Davenant
Edmund Spenser
Thomas Shadwell
John Dryden
These are the opening lines of John Dryden’s political allegory Absalom and Achitophel, a book-length poem concerning the rebellion of Absalom against the Biblical King David.
Passage adapted from John Dryden's Absalom and Achitophel (1681)
Example Question #6 : Contexts Of British Poetry 1660–1925
In pious times, e’r Priest-craft did begin,
Before Polygamy was made a Sin;
When Man on many multipli’d his kind,
E’r one to one was cursedly confin’d,
When Nature prompted and no Law deni’d
Promiscuous Use of Concubine and Bride;
Then Israel’s Monarch, after Heavens own heart,
His vigorous warmth did, variously, impart
To Wives and Slaves: And, wide as his Command,
Scatter’d his Maker’s Image through the Land.
This poet wrote during which major historical period?
the English Restoration
the Hundred Years’ War
the Interregnum
the Elizabethan era
the English Reformation
the English Restoration
John Dryden lived from 1631 to 1700, and Absalom and Achitophel was written at the height of the English Restoration in 1681. The poem itself is an allegory for various Restoration-era events, including the Popish Plot and the Monmouth Rebellion.
Passage adapted from John Dryden's Absalom and Achitophel (1681)
Example Question #7 : Contexts Of British Poetry 1660–1925
In pious times, e’r Priest-craft did begin,
Before Polygamy was made a Sin;
When Man on many multipli’d his kind,
E’r one to one was cursedly confin’d,
When Nature prompted and no Law deni’d
Promiscuous Use of Concubine and Bride;
Then Israel’s Monarch, after Heavens own heart,
His vigorous warmth did, variously, impart
To Wives and Slaves: And, wide as his Command,
Scatter’d his Maker’s Image through the Land.
Which of the following was not a contemporary of the author of this passage?
William Wycherley
John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester
John Donne
Thomas Killigrew
Sir William Davenant
John Donne
The epitome of a Restoration poet, Dryden lived from 1631 to 1700. Other Restoration poets included Sir William Davenant (1606-1668), Thomas Killigrew (1612-1683), William Wycherley (1640-1715), and John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester (1647-1680). Only John Donne (1572-1631) was not a Restoration poet; instead, he is considered a leading metaphysical poet.
Passage adapted from John Dryden's Absalom and Achitophel (1681)
Example Question #8 : Contexts Of British Poetry 1660–1925
Of Man’s first disobedience, and the fruit
Of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste
Brought death into the World, and all our woe,
With loss of Eden, till one greater Man
Restore us, and regain the blissful Seat
Sing, Heavenly Muse, that, on the secret top
Of Oreb, or of Sinai, didst inspire
That Shepherd who first taught the chosen seed
In the beginning how the heavens and earth
Rose out of Chaos…
This poem is an allegory for which Biblical story?
the crucifixion of Jesus Christ
the creation of the Ten Commandments on Mount Sinai
the fall in the Garden of Eden
the exile of the Jews in Egypt
the birth of Jesus Christ
the fall in the Garden of Eden
Paradise Lost retells the Biblical story of man’s fall, beginning with the temptation of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden and continuing with their punishment and expulsion from the garden. The poem is particularly notable for humanizing Satan and for justifying God’s actions to readers.
Passage adapted from John Milton's Paradise Lost (1674)
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