GRE Subject Test: Literature in English : GRE Subject Test: Literature in English
Study concepts, example questions & explanations for GRE Subject Test: Literature in English
All GRE Subject Test: Literature in English Resources
Example Questions
Example Question #811 : Gre Subject Test: Literature In English
This poet, recognized as a New World Poet, was a Puritan who wrote about his or her struggles, the role of women, and mortality. In "Microcosmographia" (1615), this author writes:
What gripes of wind my infancy did pain,
What tortures I in breeding teeth sustain?
What crudityes my stomach cold has bred,
Whence vomits, flux, and worms have issued?
Anne Bradstreet
Jack London
Harriet Beecher Stowe
Washington Irving
Emily Dickinson
Anne Bradstreet
Anne Bradstreet was declared the first female New World Poet for her works. She was born in England in 1612 to an affluent family. Both her father and husband would be Governors of Massachusetts after they arrived in America in 1630. Some of her most famous works include A Dialogue Between Old England and New, A Letter to Her Husband, Absent Upon Public Employment, and Contemplation.
Although Bradstreet did not have a very pleasant life, most of her poems were hopeful and positive, with a hint of sarcasm.
Passage adapted from "Microcosmographia" by Anne Bradstreet (1615)
Example Question #812 : Gre Subject Test: Literature In English
A)
It is the thirty-first of March,
A gusty evening—half-past seven;
The moon is shining o’er the larch,
A simple shape—a cock’d-up arch,
Rising bigger than a star,
Though the stars are thick in Heaven.
Gentle moon! how canst thou shine
Over graves and over trees,
With as innocent a look
As my own grey eyeball sees,
When I gaze upon a brook?
B)
O intellectual ingurtilations of creeds!
To such I am antiseptic.
I met a man.
Where?
In a gutter. We were at once friends.
O homogeneities of contemporaneous antiloxodromachy!
C)
When hope, love, life itself, are only
Dust - spectral memories - dead and cold -
The unfed fire burns bright and lonely,
Like that undying lamp of old:
And by that drear illumination,
Till time its clay-built home has rent,
Thought broods on feeling's desolation -
The soul is its own monument.
D)
Once upon a midnight chilling, as I held my feet unwilling
O'er a tub of scalding water, at a heat of ninety-four;
Nervously a toe in dipping, dripping, slipping, then out-skipping
Suddenly there came a ripping whipping, at my chamber's door.
"'Tis the second-floor," I muttered, "flipping at my chamber's door—
Wants a light—and nothing more!"
Which is a parody written in the style of Walt Whitman?
B
C
D
A
B
Breaking away from traditional form and meter, Whitman tried to invent what he called "a new and national declamatory expression" in Leaves of Grass.
Parody B mimics Whitman both in terms of style (abortive, seemingly disorganized and unplanned lines, prophetic apostrophe) and content (distrust for creeds and theory).
A: Adapted from Peter Bell: A Tale in Verse by William Wordsworth (1819)
B: Adapted from a parody in Once a Week (London, December 12th, 1868). Can be found in Volume 5 of Parodies of the Works of English & American Authors (1888; ed. Reeves and Turner)
C: Adapted from Nightmare Abbey by Thomas Love Peacock (1818)
D: Adapted from "The Vulture: An Ornithological Study" in Graham's Magazine (1853)
Example Question #25 : Literary Analysis Of American Poetry Before 1925
A)
It is the thirty-first of March,
A gusty evening—half-past seven;
The moon is shining o’er the larch,
A simple shape—a cock’d-up arch,
Rising bigger than a star,
Though the stars are thick in Heaven.
Gentle moon! how canst thou shine
Over graves and over trees,
With as innocent a look
As my own grey eyeball sees,
When I gaze upon a brook?
B)
O intellectual ingurtilations of creeds!
To such I am antiseptic.
I met a man.
Where?
In a gutter. We were at once friends.
O homogeneities of contemporaneous antiloxodromachy!
C)
When hope, love, life itself, are only
Dust - spectral memories - dead and cold -
The unfed fire burns bright and lonely,
Like that undying lamp of old:
And by that drear illumination,
Till time its clay-built home has rent,
Thought broods on feeling's desolation -
The soul is its own monument.
D)
Once upon a midnight chilling, as I held my feet unwilling
O'er a tub of scalding water, at a heat of ninety-four;
Nervously a toe in dipping, dripping, slipping, then out-skipping
Suddenly there came a ripping whipping, at my chamber's door.
"'Tis the second-floor," I muttered, "flipping at my chamber's door—
Wants a light—and nothing more!"
What literary technique is used in D to parodic effect?
Dramatic irony
Paranomasia
Hyperbole
Bathos
Bathos
Turning the fear and trepidation felt during the spiritual standoff between speaker and raven in Poe's poem into a standoff between speaker and a tub of hot water is an example of conscious bathos—the anticlimax experienced when the sublime turns into the ridiculous.
The parody does not feature paranomasia (puns and wordplay), hyperbole (exaggeration for rhetorical effect) or dramatic irony (when the audience knows or suspects something that the speaker/character does not know).
A: Adapted from Peter Bell: A Tale in Verseby William Wordsworth (1819)
B: Adapted from a parody in Once a Week(London, December 12th, 1868). Can be found in Volume 5 of Parodies of the Works of English & American Authors (1888; ed. Reeves and Turner)
C: Adapted from Nightmare Abbey by Thomas Love Peacock (1818)
D: Adapted from "The Vulture: An Ornithological Study" in Graham's Magazine (1853)
Example Question #812 : Gre Subject Test: Literature In English
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,---
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of someone gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
"'Tis some visitor," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door:
Only this, and nothing more."
Oh! distinctly I remember, it was in the bleak December,
And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.
Eagerly I wished the morrow;--- vainly I had sought to borrow
From my books surcease of sorrow,--- sorrow for the lost Lenore,---
For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels named Lenore,---
Nameless here forever more.
Which of the following was NOT written by the author of the above excerpt?
"The Bells"
"Ulalume"
Benito Cereno
The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket
"The Murders in the Rue Morgue"
Benito Cereno
Benito Cereno (1855) is a novella by Herman Melville. All of the other works listed were written by Edgar Allen Poe.
Passage adapted from The Raven (Boston: Richard G. Badger & Co., 1898): I-IV by Edgar Allen Poe
Example Question #42 : Literary Analysis Of Poetry
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,---
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of someone gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
"'Tis some visitor," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door:
Only this, and nothing more."
Oh! distinctly I remember, it was in the bleak December,
And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.
Eagerly I wished the morrow;--- vainly I had sought to borrow
From my books surcease of sorrow,--- sorrow for the lost Lenore,---
For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels named Lenore,---
Nameless here forever more.
Name the dominant metrical pattern of the above lines.
Spondaic Trimeter
Iambic Pentameter
Dactylic Hexameter
Anapestic Tetrameter
Trochaic Octameter
Trochaic Octameter
The above lines (excerpted from "The Raven," by Edgar Allen Poe) are written in Trochaic Octameter -- 8 metrical feet per line, with each foot consisting of 1 stressed followed by 1 unstressed syllable, e.g.:
"ONCE u-PON a MID-night DREA-ry, WHILE i PON-dered WEAK and WEA-ry..."
Metrical patterns are described in terms of the kind and number of metrical feet that make up each regular line. Metrical feet are units of stressed and unstressed syllables. Different kinds of metrical feet combine stresses and unstresses in different combinations. For instance, an iamb is one unstressed syllable followed by one stressed syllable (da DUM), and a trochee is one stressed syllable followed by one unstressed syllable (DUM da). The number of feet per line is indicated by words with latinate prefixes followed by the word "meter." Pentameter, for instance, indicates that each line contains five feet. Hence, iambic pentameter describes a rhythm in which each line is made up of five iambic feet, and trochaic octameter (the correct answer) describes a pattern in which each standard line is made up of eight trochees.
Passage adapted from The Raven (Boston: Richard G. Badger & Co., 1898): I-IV by Edgar Allen Poe
Example Question #51 : Literary Analysis
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,---
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of someone gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
"'Tis some visitor," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door:
Only this, and nothing more."
Oh! distinctly I remember, it was in the bleak December,
And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.
Eagerly I wished the morrow;--- vainly I had sought to borrow
From my books surcease of sorrow,--- sorrow for the lost Lenore,---
For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels named Lenore,---
Nameless here forever more.
Which of the following is NOT a feature of the above excerpt?
Apostrophe
Internal rhyme
Feminine rhyme
Enjambment
Caesura
Apostrophe
Apostrophe is an address in the second person to an absent person or entity as though he/she/it were present. Although Lenore's name is invoked and her absence is noted, the poem is not structured in such a way as to suggest that the narrator is speaking directly to her.
Caesura is (in post-classical verse) a pause in the middle of a line, frequently written as an em-dash.
Enjambment is when a sentence or phrase runs over from one line to the next.
Feminine rhyme is two-syllable rhyme (e.g., remember/December).
Internal rhyme is a set of rhyming sounds occurring within a single line of verse (e.g., dreary/weary.)
Passage adapted from The Raven (Boston: Richard G. Badger & Co., 1898): I-IV by Edgar Allen Poe
Example Question #813 : Gre Subject Test: Literature In English
In which line of the poem is there a radical shift in tone?
Line 8
Line 10
Line 6
Line 3
Line 2
Line 3
This excerpt, from T. S. Eliot's much longer "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," begins with two rhyming lines that truly do read like a love song, but the third line of the poem "Like a patient etherized upon a table" introduces themes of complacency, impotence, paralysis, and sickness.
Passage adapted from "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" by T. S. Elliot, 1-11 (1915)
Example Question #2 : Literary Analysis Of American Poetry After 1925
A)
It is the thirty-first of March,
A gusty evening—half-past seven;
The moon is shining o’er the larch,
A simple shape—a cock’d-up arch,
Rising bigger than a star,
Though the stars are thick in Heaven.
Gentle moon! how canst thou shine
Over graves and over trees,
With as innocent a look
As my own grey eyeball sees,
When I gaze upon a brook?
B)
O intellectual ingurtilations of creeds!
To such I am antiseptic.
I met a man.
Where?
In a gutter. We were at once friends.
O homogeneities of contemporaneous antiloxodromachy!
C)
When hope, love, life itself, are only
Dust - spectral memories - dead and cold -
The unfed fire burns bright and lonely,
Like that undying lamp of old:
And by that drear illumination,
Till time its clay-built home has rent,
Thought broods on feeling's desolation -
The soul is its own monument.
D)
Once upon a midnight chilling, as I held my feet unwilling
O'er a tub of scalding water, at a heat of ninety-four;
Nervously a toe in dipping, dripping, slipping, then out-skipping
Suddenly there came a ripping whipping, at my chamber's door.
"'Tis the second-floor," I muttered, "flipping at my chamber's door—
Wants a light—and nothing more!"
Which is a parody written in the style of William Wordsworth?
B
C
D
A
A
A is a parody of the kinds of poems Wordsworth wrote and included in Lyrical Ballads (1798).
The ballad-like form, the apostrophe to nature (moon and brook), the serene scene (the moon shining over the larch) and the idolization of innocence are all features found in many of Wordsworth's poems.
A: Adapted from Peter Bell: A Tale in Verseby William Wordsworth (1819)
B: Adapted from a parody in Once a Week(London, December 12th, 1868). Can be found in Volume 5 of Parodies of the Works of English & American Authors (1888; ed. Reeves and Turner)
C: Adapted from Nightmare Abbey by Thomas Love Peacock (1818)
D: Adapted from "The Vulture: An Ornithological Study" in Graham's Magazine (1853)
Example Question #1 : Literary Analysis Of World Poetry Before 1925
Vladimir Lensky, Tatiana Larina, and Olga Larina are all characters in a work by which Russian author?
Leo Tolstoy
Nikolai Gogol
Mikhail Lermontov
Ivan Turgenev
Aleksandr Pushkin
Aleksandr Pushkin
Lensky, Tatiana and Olga are all characters in Eugene Onegin (1833), a novel in verse by Aleksandr Pushkin (1799-1837).
Example Question #1 : Feminist Criticism
The premise that women need space of their own to write originated in an essay by which British author?
Djuna Barnes
Mina Loy
Gertrude Stein
Angela Carter
Virginia Woolf
Virginia Woolf
This premise is the central tenet of Virginia Woolf’s 1929 essay A Room of One’s Own. The extended essay examines the idea that women need not only a literal room of their own for escaping the domestic roles assigned to them but also a figurative space in the traditionally male-dominated literary canon. Although the work uses a fictional narrator to make its points, it was first presented by Woolf as a series of lectures at Cambridge University.
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All GRE Subject Test: Literature in English Resources
