GRE Subject Test: Literature in English : Identification of World Poetry Before 1925
Study concepts, example questions & explanations for GRE Subject Test: Literature in English
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Example Questions
Example Question #11 : Identification Of World Poetry
Bestir thee now, and with thy speech ornate,
And with what needful is for his release,
Assist him so, that I may be consoled.
Beatrice am I, who do bid thee go;
I come from there, where I would fain return;
Love moved me, which compelleth me to speak.
When I shall be in presence of my Lord,
Full often will I praise thee unto him.'
Then paused she, and thereafter I began . . .
The above lines belong to which work of literature?
The Iliad
The Aeneid
The Odyssey
The Divine Comedy
Confessions
The Divine Comedy
This is Dante Alighieri’s Inferno, one of three books in epic poem The Divine Comedy. Dante’s masterpiece, which was written in the fourteenth century, includes several main characters: Beatrice, who is Dante’s muse; Virgil, who guides the narrator on his journey through Heaven, Hell, and Purgatory; and the narrator himself, who embarks on an allegorical/metaphysical journey from sinfulness to God.
Passage adapted from The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri l.67-75 (trans. Longfellow 1867)
Example Question #12 : Identification Of World Poetry
Achilles' wrath, to Greece the direful spring
Of woes unnumber'd, heavenly goddess, sing!
That wrath which hurl'd to Pluto's gloomy reign
The souls of mighty chiefs untimely slain;
Whose limbs unburied on the naked shore,
Devouring dogs and hungry vultures tore.
Since great Achilles and Atrides strove,
Such was the sovereign doom, and such the will of Jove!
These lines open which epic poem?
The Aeneid
The Odyssey
The Iliad
The Divine Comedy
The Epic of Gilgamesh
The Iliad
This is the opening of Homer’s Iliad, a poem written in dactylic hexameter and set during the ten-year Trojan War. The poem centers on the battles and events that arise from a quarrel between King Agamemnon and the warrior Achilles and includes the characters Patroclus, Odysseus, Helen, Hector, Paris, and Menelaus. Written around the 1100s BCE, the poem is known for beginning in media res.
Passage adapted from The Iliad by Homer, l.1-8 (trans. Pope 1715)
Example Question #11 : Identification Of World Poetry Before 1925
Which when Ulysses heard, Hero renown’d,
Adjusting close the lid, he cast a cord
Around it which with many a mazy knot
He tied, by Circe taught him long before.
And now, the mistress of the household charge
Summon’d him to his bath; glad he beheld
The steaming vase, uncustom’d to its use
E’er since his voyage from the isle of fair
Calypso, although, while a guest with her,
Ever familiar with it, as a God.
These lines are from which epic poem?
The Odyssey
The Divine Comedy
The Epic of Gilgamesh
The Iliad
The Aeneid
The Odyssey
This excerpt is identifiable as Homer’s Odyssey because of the characters mentioned: Ulysses (Odysseus), a Greek hero who fought in the Trojan War and is on a ten-year journey to return home to his native Ithaca; Circe, an enchantress and Ulysses’ lover; and Calypso, a beautiful nymph who falls in love with and imprisons Ulysses. Other characters in this epic poem, which was written around the same time as the Iliad, are Penelope, Telemachus, Polyphemus, Scylla, Charybdis, Zeus, and Tiresias.
Passage adapted from The Odyssey, l.547-556 (trans. Cowper 1791)
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