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 #2 : Identification Of British Poetry To 1660
The “Pearl Poet” is responsible for which medieval work of literature?
Piers Plowman
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
Purgatorio
Troilus and Cressida
City of God
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
The Pearl Poet is another name for the Gawain Poet, an anonymous author who is thought to have written the fourteenth-century poems Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Pearl. A classic Arthurian narrative, this poem is a chivalric romance that follows the adventures of Sir Gawain.
Example Question #3 : Identification Of British Poetry To 1660
Which early English manuscript is known for its comical and often obscene riddles?
The Exeter Book
Pearl
The Book of Kells
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
Beowulf
The Exeter Book
The Exeter Book, a tenth-century codex of Anglo-Saxon poetry, contains nearly a hundred riddles on various subjects. While the Exeter Book is also known for its lyric elegies, it is important to remember that the manuscript contains an important variety of secular writings and is one of the best known sources of extant early English poetry.
Example Question #2 : Identification Of British Poetry To 1660
In a somer seson, whan softe was the sonne,
I shoop me into shroudes as I a sheep weere,
In habite as an heremite unholy of werkes,
Wente wide in this world wondres to here.
Ac on a May morwenynge on Malverne hilles
Me bifel a ferly, of Fairye me thoghte.
I was wery forwandred and wente me to reste
Under a brood bank by a bournes syde;
And as I lay and lenede and loked on the watres,
I slombred into a slepyng, it sweyed so murye.
What is the title of the poem from which these lines are taken?
Troilus and Cressida
Piers Plowman
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
The General Prologue to The Canterbury Tales
Pyramus and Thisbe
Piers Plowman
Written in the late 1300s, this poem is titled Piers Plowman and is widely considered one of the most important works of Middle English literature. Langland used unrhymed alliterative verse to develop his satirical religious allegory featuring three men, Dobest, Dobet, and Dowel.
Passage adapted from Piers Plowman, l.1-10
Example Question #91 : Identification Of Poetry
Lo! the Spear-Danes’ glory through splendid achievements
The folk-kings’ former fame we have heard of,
How princes displayed then their prowess-in-battle.
Oft Scyld the Scefing from scathers in numbers
From many a people their mead-benches tore.
Since first he found him friendless and wretched,
The earl had had terror: comfort he got for it,
Waxed ’neath the welkin, world-honor gained,
Till all his neighbors o’er sea were compelled to
Bow to his bidding and bring him their tribute:
An excellent atheling!
These lines begin which work of literature?
Piers Plowman
The Faerie Queene
Grendel
Beowulf
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
Beowulf
Beowulf, one of the most important works of Old English literature, features the characters Scyld the Scefing, Hrothgar, Grendel, and the eponymous Beowulf of the Geats. The epic poem begins with the monster Grendel attacking Hrothgar’s mead-hall, Heorot, and follows Beowulf as he seeks vengeance.
Passage adapted from Beowulf l.1-11 (trans. Leslie Hall, 1892)
Example Question #92 : Identification Of Poetry
Lo I the man, whose Muse whilome did maske,
As time her taught, in lowly Shepheards weeds,
Am now enforst a far unfitter taske,
For trumpets sterne to chaunge mine Oaten reeds,
And sing of Knights and Ladies gentle deeds;
Whose prayses having slept in silence long,
Me, all too meane, the sacred Muse areeds
To blazon broade emongst her learned throng:
Fierce warres and faithfull loves shall moralize my song.
These lines begin which work of literature?
The Exeter Book
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
Beowulf
The Faerie Queene
Piers Plowman
The Faerie Queene
The Faerie Queene, published in the 1590s by Edward Spenser, includes an Arthurian plotline and various religious allegories. The poem is distinguishable by its nine-line Spenserian stanzas, which follows an ABABBCBCC rhyme scheme, with the first eight lines in iambic pentameter and the last in iambic hexameter.
Passage adapted from The Faerie Queene I.i.1.1-9 (1590)
Example Question #93 : Identification Of Poetry
Thou lykenest wommanes love to helle,
To bareyne lond, ther water may not dwelle.
Thou lyknest it also to wilde fyr;
The more it brenneth, the more it hath desyr
To consume every thing that brent wol be.
Thou seyst, that right as wormes shende a tree,
Right so a wyf destroyeth hir housbonde;
This knowe they that been to wyves bonde.
The above lines are written by which of the following authors?
Boethius
The author is anonymous.
Dante
Bede
Chaucer
Chaucer
This excerpt from Chaucer's Canterbury Tales is, like the rest of the work, unafraid to poke fun at idealized notions of romance. This particular passage is taken from the Wife of Bath's Tale. Chaucer’s poetry is distinguishable by its Middle English and The Canterbury Tales in particular can be identified by any mentions of its more famous characters, including the Wife of Bath, the Knight, the Miller, and the Reeve.
Passage adapted from the Prologue to "The Wife of Bath's Tale" l.371-378 in The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer (1475)
Example Question #841 : Gre Subject Test: Literature In English
May I for my own self song's truth reckon,
Journey's jargon, how I in harsh days
Hardship endured oft.
Bitter breast-cares have I abided,
Known on my keel many a care's hold,
And dire sea-surge, and there I oft spent
Narrow nightwatch nigh the ship's head
While she tossed close to cliffs.
These lines, originally written in Old English, are from an eleventh-century poem about a man sailing alone and his relationship to God. From which of the following poems is this passage taken?
Pyramus and Thisbe
The Seafarer
Beowulf
The Wanderer
The Canterbury Tales
The Seafarer
Translated by Ezra Pound, these are the opening lines of the anonymous 11th-century poem The Seafarer. The first-person poem appears in the Exeter Book, a canonical anthology of early poetry.
Passage adapted from The Seafarer l.1-8 (trans. Pound 1911)
Example Question #1 : Literary Analysis Of British Poetry To 1660
The reference to Philomel in line 7 serves primarily to __________.
show the psychological toll that an affair with the shepherd might take on the speaker
show the effects of the passage of time
give an example of the changing of seasons
give an example of a woman spurned
express a concern that the shepherd may harm the speaker
express a concern that the shepherd may harm the speaker
Philomela is a character from Greek mythology. In Ovid's Metamorphoses, Philomela is raped by her sister's husband, who also removes her tongue and hands so that she can not tell anyone of his crime. In the myth, she is then transformed into a nightingale.
Passage adapted from "The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd" by Sir Walter Raleigh (1596)
Example Question #241 : Overall Language Or Specific Words, Phrases, Or Sentences
Batter my heart (Holy Sonnet 14)
1 Batter my heart, three-person'd God; for you
2 As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
3 That I may rise, and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend
4 Your force, to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
5 I, like an usurp'd town, to another due,
6 Labour to admit you, but O, to no end.
7 Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
8 But is captived, and proves weak or untrue.
9 Yet dearly I love you, and would be loved fain,
10 But am betroth'd unto your enemy;
11 Divorce me, untie, or break that knot again,
12 Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
13 Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
14 Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.
The only simile throughout this sonnet is .
"like an usurp'd town" (line 5)
"Batter my heart, three-person'd God;" (line 1)
"Divorce me, untie, or break that knot again," (line 11)
"Reason, your viceroy in me," (line 7)
"betroth'd unto your enemy;" (line 10)
"like an usurp'd town" (line 5)
"like an usurp'd town" (line 5) is the only simile throughout this sonnet, as it makes a direct comparison between two apparently unlike things—the poet and an usurp'd town—with the word "like." When constructing similes, the word "as" is also used.
Example Question #1 : Literary Analysis Of British Poetry To 1660
Batter my heart (Holy Sonnet 14)
1 Batter my heart, three-person'd God; for you
2 As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
3 That I may rise, and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend
4 Your force, to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
5 I, like an usurp'd town, to another due,
6 Labour to admit you, but O, to no end.
7 Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
8 But is captived, and proves weak or untrue.
9 Yet dearly I love you, and would be loved fain,
10 But am betroth'd unto your enemy;
11 Divorce me, untie, or break that knot again,
12 Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
13 Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
14 Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.
At its most basic level, the theme of this poem is .
warfare
erotic love
romantic love
religion
reason
religion
At its most basic level, the theme of this sonnet is religion (that is, the poet's wish for God's more forceful intervention in his life).
Certified Tutor
Certified Tutor
All GRE Subject Test: Literature in English Resources
