GRE Subject Test: Literature in English : History and Theory of Literary Criticism
Study concepts, example questions & explanations for GRE Subject Test: Literature in English
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Example Questions
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
Gertrude Stein
Virginia Woolf
Angela Carter
Mina Loy
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.
Example Question #1 : History And Theory Of Literary Criticism
Passage adapted from Samuel Johnson, "Preface to Shakespeare (1756)," 9-63, in Johnson on Shakespeare: Essays and Notes Selected and Set Forth with an Introduction by Walter Raleigh (London: Oxford University Press, 1969): 29.
"Whether Shakespeare knew the unities, and rejected them by design, or deviated from them by happy ignorance, it is, I think, impossible to decide, and useless to enquire. We may reasonably suppose, that, when he rose to notice, he did not want the counsels and admonitions of scholars and criticks, and that he at last deliberately persisted in a practice, which he might have begun by chance."
Which of the following is NOT one of the "unities" alluded to in the above excerpt?
Unity of Time
Unity of Action
Unity of Language
Unity of Place
Unity of Language
The three Classical Unities (also known as Aristotelian Unities) that formed the basis of much 17th and 18th century dramatic and literary criticism were: Unity of Time, Unity of Place, and Unity of Action.
Passage adapted from Samuel Johnson, "Preface to Shakespeare (1756)," 9-63, in Johnson on Shakespeare: Essays and Notes Selected and Set Forth with an Introduction by Walter Raleigh (London: Oxford University Press, 1969): 29.
Example Question #1 : Formalism / New Criticism
In the seventeenth century a dissociation of sensibility set in, from which we have never recovered; and this dissociation, as is natural, was aggravated by the influence of the two most powerful poets of the century, Milton and Dryden. Each of these men performed certain poetic functions so magnificently well that the magnitude of the effect concealed the absence of others. The language went on and in some respects improved; the best verse of Collins, Gray, Johnson, and even Goldsmith satisfies some of our fastidious demands better than that of Donne or Marvell or King. But while the language became more refined, the feeling became more crude. The feeling, the sensibility, expressed in the "Country Churchyard" (to say nothing of Tennyson and Browning) is cruder than that in the "Coy Mistress."
The essay from which the passage was taken is concerned primarily with which of the following groups of poets?
The Metaphysical Poets
The Romantic Poets
The Cavalier Poets
The Graveyard Poets
The Neoclassical Poets
The Metaphysical Poets
This passage comes from an essay entitled "The Metaphysical Poets" by T. S. Eliot (1921). The most obvious clue is the author's reference to Donne, Marvell, and King, each of whom was closely associated with what has come to be known as metaphysical poetry. The other major clue is based on the author's description of the "dissociation of sensibility" as having set in during the seventeenth century with the rise of poets such as Milton and Dryden.
Passage adapted from "The Metaphysical Poets" by T. S. Eliot (1921)
Example Question #1 : History And Theory Of Literary Criticism
In the seventeenth century a dissociation of sensibility set in, from which we have never recovered; and this dissociation, as is natural, was aggravated by the influence of the two most powerful poets of the century, Milton and Dryden. Each of these men performed certain poetic functions so magnificently well that the magnitude of the effect concealed the absence of others. The language went on and in some respects improved; the best verse of Collins, Gray, Johnson, and even Goldsmith satisfies some of our fastidious demands better than that of Donne or Marvell or King. But while the language became more refined, the feeling became more crude. The feeling, the sensibility, expressed in the "Country Churchyard" (to say nothing of Tennyson and Browning) is cruder than that in the "Coy Mistress."
The author of the passage was __________.
William Empson
Ezra Pound
Cleanth Brooks
F. R. Leavis
T. S. Eliot
T. S. Eliot
This excerpt is from an essay by the poet T. S. Eliot. While he is known primarily as a poet, Eliot was also an extremely prolific critic. His critical work greatly influenced the school of criticism known as "New Criticism," and his essay on "The Metaphysical Poets" led to a resurgence of interest in the "Metaphysical Poetry" of writers like John Donne and Andrew Marvell.
Passage adapted from "The Metaphysical Poets" by T. S. Eliot (1921)
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