GRE Subject Test: Literature in English : Identification of British Poetry
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Example Questions
Example Question #11 : Identification Of British Poetry
Which British poet began a poem with “April is the cruellest month, breeding / Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing” and that also included such lines as “I will show you fear in a handful of dust”?
e. e. cummings
Ezra Pound
W. B. Yeats
Ted Hughes
T. S. Eliot
T. S. Eliot
The poem, T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land,” is often cited as one of the most important literary works of the twentieth century. It is a polyphonic conglomeration of Arthurian legend, classical myth, modern social satire, and religious vision, and it discusses themes of disillusionment, despondency, death, and mortal judgment.
"April is the cruellest month, breeding / Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing": Adapted from The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot, l.1-2 (1922)
"I will show you fear in a handful of dust": Adapted from The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot, l.30 (1922)
Example Question #12 : Identification Of British Poetry
This Irish poet is better known for his plays Waiting For Godot and Endgame, but his verses show similar qualities: fragmentation, absurdism, deceptively simple diction, and a disregard for grammatical conventions. Who is he?
Seamus Heaney
Jonathan Swift
W. B. Yeats
Samuel Beckett
Oscar Wilde
Samuel Beckett
The poet and playwright in question is Samuel Beckett, who (along with Eugène Ionesco, Jean Genet, Harold Pinter, Edward Albee, and Tom Stoppard) is one of the key members of the Theatre of the Absurd. Works that belong to this so-called movement typically include nihilism, wordplay, elements of vaudevillian comedy or downright nonsense mixed with horror or tragedy, and frustration at the apparent meaninglessness of humanity’s place in the world. Although Beckett’s poetry is perhaps the least read of his various creative works, his contributions to the genre were not insignificant, and he was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1969.
Example Question #72 : Identification Of Poetry
The form of the poem is that of __________.
a curtal sonnet
a villanelle
a Spenserian sonnet
an Elizabethan sonnet
a roundel
a curtal sonnet
The poem is an example of a curtal sonnet, which consists of 3/4 the number of lines in a standard Petrarchan sonnet. This form was developed by Gerard Manley Hopkins. It is worth knowing, but it is a somewhat obscure form, so the best approach is to use process of elimination. You absolutely have to know that the Spenserian sonnet and the Elizabethan sonnet are each 14 lines, so you can rule those out right away. You also need to know that the villanelle is a 19 line form in which the first and third lines function as refrains that repeat throughout the poem. The roundel is more obscure, but it is also features a refrain at the end of every other three-line stanza.
Passage adapted from "Pied Beauty" by Gerard Manley Hopkins (1918)
Example Question #13 : Identification Of British Poetry
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 title of a work by which of the following poets is specifically referenced in the passage?
Thomas Gray
Samuel Johnson
Robert Browning
George Herbert
John Donne
Thomas Gray
Two poems are referenced by title in this passage: Andrew Marvell's "To His Coy Mistress" and Thomas Gray's "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard." Marvell is not one of the answer choices, so the only possible answer is Thomas Gray.
Example Question #14 : Identification Of British Poetry
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water. Only
There is shadow under this red rock,
(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),
And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.
Identify the poet of the following lines based on the content and style of the selection.
Walt Whitman
T. S. Eliot
William Wordsworth
Ezra Pound
John Keats
T. S. Eliot
The lines are from T. S. Eliot's 1922 poem, "The Waste Land." It is widely regarded as one of the most important poems of the twentieth century.
Example Question #11 : Identification Of British Poetry
Should God create another Eve, and I
Another Rib afford, yet loss of thee
Would never from my heart; no no, I feel
The Link of Nature draw me: Flesh of Flesh,
Bone of my Bone thou art, and from thy State
Mine never shall be parted, bliss or woe.
Which of the following poets wrote the excerpted lines?
John Milton
William Shakespeare
Anne Bradstreet
Edward Taylor
John Dryden
John Milton
This is an excerpt from John Milton's epic poem, "Paradise Lost." The first version was published in 1667 and consisted of ten books with over ten thousand lines of verse.
Passage adapted from Paradise Lost by John Milton, l.911-916 (1667)
Example Question #16 : Identification Of British Poetry
If chance, by lonely Contemplation led,
Some hidden Spirit shall inquire thy Fate,
Haply some hoary-headed Swain may say,
"Oft have we seen him at the Peep of Dawn
Brushing with hasty Steps the Dews away
To meet the Sun upon the upland Lawn.
There at the Foot of yonder nodding Beech
That wreathes its old fantastic Roots so high,
His listless Length at Noontide wou'd he stretch,
And pore upon the Brook that babbles by."
Who wrote this poem?
John Dryden
Joseph Addison
William Cowper
Thomas Gray
Thomas Merton
Thomas Gray
These are some of the final lines of Thomas Gray’s famous Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard.
Passage adapted from "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard" by Thomas Gray, ln.95-104 (1751)
Example Question #17 : Identification Of British Poetry
If chance, by lonely Contemplation led,
Some hidden Spirit shall inquire thy Fate,
Haply some hoary-headed Swain may say,
"Oft have we seen him at the Peep of Dawn
Brushing with hasty Steps the Dews away
To meet the Sun upon the upland Lawn.
There at the Foot of yonder nodding Beech
That wreathes its old fantastic Roots so high,
His listless Length at Noontide wou'd he stretch,
And pore upon the Brook that babbles by."
Which of the following poems could not be described as a reaction to this work?
Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “A Summer Evening Churchyard, Lechlade, Gloucestershire”
Oliver Goldsmith’s “The Deserted Village”
John Cunningham’s “An Elegy on a Pile of Ruins”
John Donne’s “Death Be Not Proud”
Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s In Memoriam
John Donne’s “Death Be Not Proud”
All of the poems are arguably inspired by or draw elements from Gray’s poem except for John Donne’s famous sonnet, which was published in 1633.
Passage adapted from "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard" by Thomas Gray, ln.95-104 (1751)
Example Question #18 : Identification Of British Poetry
If chance, by lonely Contemplation led,
Some hidden Spirit shall inquire thy Fate,
Haply some hoary-headed Swain may say,
"Oft have we seen him at the Peep of Dawn
Brushing with hasty Steps the Dews away
To meet the Sun upon the upland Lawn.
There at the Foot of yonder nodding Beech
That wreathes its old fantastic Roots so high,
His listless Length at Noontide wou'd he stretch,
And pore upon the Brook that babbles by."
Which of the following is not a prevalent theme in the poem?
Human accomplishment
Mortality
Christian faith
Human obscurity
Agrarian reform
Agrarian reform
Although the poem is set in a country churchyard, it does not discuss rural problems, including agrarian reform. Rather, the setting provides an idyllic backdrop for the deeper existential musings of the poem.
Passage adapted from "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard" by Thomas Gray, ln.95-104 (1751)
Example Question #19 : Identification Of British Poetry
If chance, by lonely Contemplation led,
Some hidden Spirit shall inquire thy Fate,
Haply some hoary-headed Swain may say,
"Oft have we seen him at the Peep of Dawn
Brushing with hasty Steps the Dews away
To meet the Sun upon the upland Lawn.
There at the Foot of yonder nodding Beech
That wreathes its old fantastic Roots so high,
His listless Length at Noontide wou'd he stretch,
And pore upon the Brook that babbles by."
Which of the following is a line from the poem that later became the title for an 1874 English novel?
“'One Morn I miss'd him on the custom'd Hill”
“Ev'n from the Tomb the Voice of Nature cries”
“Can Honour's Voice provoke the silent Dust”
“Far from the madding Crowd's ignoble Strife”
“The rude Forefathers of the Hamlet sleep”
“Far from the madding Crowd's ignoble Strife”
The novel in question is Thomas Hardy’s Far From the Madding Crowd, which concerns a love triangle between a shepherd, a wealthy farmer, and a young woman named Bathsheba.
Passage adapted from "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard" by Thomas Gray, ln.95-104 (1751)
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