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 #41 : Cultural And Historical Contexts
Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
When was this poem first published?
1750s
1770s
1760s
1790s
1780s
1790s
The poem was first published in 1794.
Passage adapted from William Blake’s Songs of Experience (1794).
Example Question #42 : Cultural And Historical Contexts
Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
Who is the author of this poem?
Christina Rossetti
Matthew Arnold
William Blake
William Cowper
John Keats
William Blake
This is “The Tyger,” one of the best known poems by the English poet William Blake (1757-1827).
William Cowper wrote John Gilpin (1782), John Keats wrote Poems (1816), Christina Rossetti wrote Goblin Market (1862), and Matthew Arnold wrote Empedocles on Etna, and Other Poems (1852).
Passage adapted from William Blake’s Songs of Experience (1794).
Example Question #31 : Contexts Of British Poetry 1660–1925
Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
What collection is this poem taken from?
Songs of Experience
Songs of Ecstasy
Songs of Eagerness
Songs of Innocence
Songs of Ecclesiastes
Songs of Experience
William Blake wrote both Songs of Experience and Songs of Innocence, but “The Tyger” is from the former collection. (The other titles are invented.)
Passage adapted from William Blake’s Songs of Experience (1794).
Example Question #32 : Contexts Of British Poetry 1660–1925
Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
Which of the following is not another work by this poet?
The Book of Los
Europe a Prophecy
The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
An Island in the Moon
Lamia
Lamia
The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1793), The Book of Los (1795), Europe a Prophecy (1794), An Island in the Moon (1785) are all by William Blake. Lamia is an 1820 narrative poem by John Keats.
Passage adapted from William Blake’s Songs of Experience (1794).
Example Question #33 : Contexts Of British Poetry 1660–1925
Morning and evening
Maids heard the goblins cry:
'Come buy our orchard fruits,
Come buy, come buy:
Apples and quinces,
Lemons and oranges,
Plump unpecked cherries,
Melons and raspberries…
Who is the author of this poem?
Joanna Baillie
Matthew Arnold
John Keats
William Wordsworth
Christina Rossetti
Christina Rossetti
This is "Goblin Market,” a poem by the English author Christina Rossetti (1830-1894). It is a fantastical narrative poem about two sisters, Laura and Lizzie, and the cries they hear from magical goblin merchants. The poem is often read as an elaborate metaphor for loss of sexual innocence, although Rossetti stated that the poem was really intended for children.
William Wordsworth wrote The Excursion (1814), Matthew Arnold wrote Culture and Anarchy (1869), John Keats wrote Poems (1816), and Joanna Baillie wrote Plays on the Passions (1798).
Passage adapted from Christina Rossetti's Goblin Market (1862).
Example Question #34 : Contexts Of British Poetry 1660–1925
Morning and evening
Maids heard the goblins cry:
'Come buy our orchard fruits,
Come buy, come buy:
Apples and quinces,
Lemons and oranges,
Plump unpecked cherries,
Melons and raspberries…
The author of this passage wrote the words to which Christmas carol?
“Silent Night”
“God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen”
“Away in a Manger”
“Good King Wenceslas”
“In the Bleak Midwinter”
“In the Bleak Midwinter”
Following publication of Rossetti’s 1872 poem “In the Bleak Midwinter” in Scribner’s Monthly, Gustav Holst adapted the work to music.
Passage adapted from Christina Rossetti's Goblin Market (1862).
Example Question #35 : Contexts Of British Poetry 1660–1925
Morning and evening
Maids heard the goblins cry:
'Come buy our orchard fruits,
Come buy, come buy:
Apples and quinces,
Lemons and oranges,
Plump unpecked cherries,
Melons and raspberries…
When was this poem first published?
1840s
1920s
1880s
1860s
1900s
1860s
The poem was first published in 1862, although it was written several years earlier in the late 1850s.
Passage adapted from Christina Rossetti's Goblin Market (1862).
Example Question #36 : Contexts Of British Poetry 1660–1925
Morning and evening
Maids heard the goblins cry:
'Come buy our orchard fruits,
Come buy, come buy:
Apples and quinces,
Lemons and oranges,
Plump unpecked cherries,
Melons and raspberries…
Which famous artist was the illustrator of this poem?
Caspar David Friedrich
William Holman Hunt
Dante Gabriel Rossetti
J. M. W. Turner
John Constable
Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Christina Rossetti’s brother, illustrated the text. He was a poet himself and a leading founder of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, an artistic movement that rejected Mannerism and embraced lush, sensual details and rich colors in painting.
Passage adapted from Christina Rossetti's Goblin Market (1862).
Example Question #37 : Contexts Of British Poetry 1660–1925
Five years have passed; five summers, with the length
Of five long winters! and again I hear
These waters, rolling from their mountain-springs
With a sweet inland murmur. —Once again
Do I behold these steep and lofty cliffs,
Which on a wild secluded scene impress
Thoughts of more deep seclusion; and connect
The landscape with the quiet of the sky.
Who is the author of this poem?
William Blake
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Christina Rossetti
Matthew Arnold
William Wordsworth
William Wordsworth
This is William Wordsworth’s “Lines Written a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey, on Revisiting the Banks of the Wye During a Tour, July 13, 1798.”
Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote Kubla Khan (1816), Matthew Arnold wrote The Strayed Reveller and Other Poems (1849), William Blake wrote The Four Zoas (1797), and Christina Rossetti wrote Speaking Likenesses (1874).
Passage adapted from Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth’s Lyrical Ballads, With a Few Other Poems (1798).
Example Question #38 : Contexts Of British Poetry 1660–1925
Five years have passed; five summers, with the length
Of five long winters! and again I hear
These waters, rolling from their mountain-springs
With a sweet inland murmur. —Once again
Do I behold these steep and lofty cliffs,
Which on a wild secluded scene impress
Thoughts of more deep seclusion; and connect
The landscape with the quiet of the sky.
When was this poem published?
1790s
1830s
1820s
1810s
1800s
1790s
As noted in the full title of the poem, “Lines Written a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey” was published in 1798. Wordsworth lived from 1770 to 1850.
Passage adapted from Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth’s Lyrical Ballads, With a Few Other Poems (1798).
All GRE Subject Test: Literature in English Resources
