GRE Subject Test: Literature in English : Identification

Study concepts, example questions & explanations for GRE Subject Test: Literature in English

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All GRE Subject Test: Literature in English Resources

1 Diagnostic Test 158 Practice Tests Question of the Day Flashcards Learn by Concept

Example Questions

Example Question #32 : Identification Of British Prose

Manfred, Prince of Otranto, had one son and one daughter: the latter, a most beautiful virgin, aged eighteen, was called Matilda. Conrad, the son, was three years younger, a homely youth, sickly, and of no promising disposition; yet he was the darling of his father, who never showed any symptoms of affection to Matilda. Manfred had contracted a marriage for his son with the Marquis of Vicenza’s daughter, Isabella; and she had already been delivered by her guardians into the hands of Manfred, that he might celebrate the wedding as soon as Conrad’s infirm state of health would permit.

Manfred’s impatience for this ceremonial was remarked by his family and neighbours. The former, indeed, apprehending the severity of their Prince’s disposition, did not dare to utter their surmises on this precipitation. Hippolita, his wife, an amiable lady, did sometimes venture to represent the danger of marrying their only son so early, considering his great youth, and greater infirmities; but she never received any other answer than reflections on her own sterility, who had given him but one heir. His tenants and subjects were less cautious in their discourses. They attributed this hasty wedding to the Prince’s dread of seeing accomplished an ancient prophecy, which was said to have pronounced that the castle and lordship of Otranto “should pass from the present family, whenever the real owner should be grown too large to inhabit it.” It was difficult to make any sense of this prophecy; and still less easy to conceive what it had to do with the marriage in question.

Which of the following is not a classic Gothic trope that appears in this novel?

Possible Answers:

Unexplained noises

A decaying building

Doors opening and closing of their own volition

A long voyage

A beautiful heroine

Correct answer:

A long voyage

Explanation:

Long voyages are not a Gothic device. Real Gothic tropes include a lascivious male character, superstitions and curses, caves or subterranean passages, characters with mysterious pasts, prophecies and omens, approaching footsteps, and damsels in distress.

Adapted from The Castle of Otranto, A Story. Translated by William Marshal, Gent. From the Original Italian of Onuphrio Muralto, Canon of the Church of St. Nicholas at Otranto by Horace Walpole (1764; ed. 1901)

Example Question #33 : Identification Of British Prose

Manfred, Prince of Otranto, had one son and one daughter: the latter, a most beautiful virgin, aged eighteen, was called Matilda. Conrad, the son, was three years younger, a homely youth, sickly, and of no promising disposition; yet he was the darling of his father, who never showed any symptoms of affection to Matilda. Manfred had contracted a marriage for his son with the Marquis of Vicenza’s daughter, Isabella; and she had already been delivered by her guardians into the hands of Manfred, that he might celebrate the wedding as soon as Conrad’s infirm state of health would permit.

Manfred’s impatience for this ceremonial was remarked by his family and neighbours. The former, indeed, apprehending the severity of their Prince’s disposition, did not dare to utter their surmises on this precipitation. Hippolita, his wife, an amiable lady, did sometimes venture to represent the danger of marrying their only son so early, considering his great youth, and greater infirmities; but she never received any other answer than reflections on her own sterility, who had given him but one heir. His tenants and subjects were less cautious in their discourses. They attributed this hasty wedding to the Prince’s dread of seeing accomplished an ancient prophecy, which was said to have pronounced that the castle and lordship of Otranto “should pass from the present family, whenever the real owner should be grown too large to inhabit it.” It was difficult to make any sense of this prophecy; and still less easy to conceive what it had to do with the marriage in question.

Which of the following authors did not later write a work in the same genre?

Possible Answers:

Clara Reeve

Mary Shelley

Edgar Allan Poe

Ann Radcliffe

Charles Dickens

Correct answer:

Charles Dickens

Explanation:

Reeve, Poe, Shelley, and Radcliffe all published Gothic novels in the nineteenth century. Dickens’ novels, which include Great Expectations, The Pickwick Papers, A Christmas Carol, A Tale of Two Cities, and David Copperfield, did not write Gothic literature, but rather Victorian works with elements of realism, social commentary, comedy, melodrama, and eloquent description.

Adapted from The Castle of Otranto, A Story. Translated by William Marshal, Gent. From the Original Italian of Onuphrio Muralto, Canon of the Church of St. Nicholas at Otranto by Horace Walpole (1764; ed. 1901)

Example Question #34 : Identification Of British Prose

Manfred, Prince of Otranto, had one son and one daughter: the latter, a most beautiful virgin, aged eighteen, was called Matilda. Conrad, the son, was three years younger, a homely youth, sickly, and of no promising disposition; yet he was the darling of his father, who never showed any symptoms of affection to Matilda. Manfred had contracted a marriage for his son with the Marquis of Vicenza’s daughter, Isabella; and she had already been delivered by her guardians into the hands of Manfred, that he might celebrate the wedding as soon as Conrad’s infirm state of health would permit.

Manfred’s impatience for this ceremonial was remarked by his family and neighbours. The former, indeed, apprehending the severity of their Prince’s disposition, did not dare to utter their surmises on this precipitation. Hippolita, his wife, an amiable lady, did sometimes venture to represent the danger of marrying their only son so early, considering his great youth, and greater infirmities; but she never received any other answer than reflections on her own sterility, who had given him but one heir. His tenants and subjects were less cautious in their discourses. They attributed this hasty wedding to the Prince’s dread of seeing accomplished an ancient prophecy, which was said to have pronounced that the castle and lordship of Otranto “should pass from the present family, whenever the real owner should be grown too large to inhabit it.” It was difficult to make any sense of this prophecy; and still less easy to conceive what it had to do with the marriage in question.

Which of the following authors did not publish a novel during the late nineteenth-century revival of this same genre?

Possible Answers:

Bram Stoker

Oscar Wilde

Robert Louis Stevenson

Rudyard Kipling

Henry James

Correct answer:

Rudyard Kipling

Explanation:

Stoker’s Dracula, Stevenson’s Jekyll and Hyde, Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, and James’ The Turn of the Screw are all fin-de-siècle Gothic novels. Although Rudyard Kipling was writing at the same time, his work was concerned with British India and did not contain overtly Gothic elements.

Adapted from The Castle of Otranto, A Story. Translated by William Marshal, Gent. From the Original Italian of Onuphrio Muralto, Canon of the Church of St. Nicholas at Otranto by Horace Walpole (1764; ed. 1901)

Example Question #181 : Identification

Glory be to God for dappled things –
   For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
      For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
   Landscape plotted and pieced – fold, fallow, and plough;
      And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim.
 
All things counter, original, spare, strange;
   Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
      With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
                                Praise him.

The form of the poem is that of __________.

Possible Answers:

an Elizabethan sonnet

a curtal sonnet

a villanelle

a Spenserian sonnet

a roundel

Correct answer:

a curtal sonnet

Explanation:

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 #182 : Identification

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?

Possible Answers:

Thomas Gray

Samuel Johnson

George Herbert

John Donne

Robert Browning

Correct answer:

Thomas Gray

Explanation:

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 #183 : Identification

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.

Possible Answers:

William Wordsworth

Ezra Pound

Walt Whitman

John Keats

T. S. Eliot

Correct answer:

T. S. Eliot

Explanation:

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 #184 : Identification

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?

Possible Answers:

John Dryden

Edward Taylor

Anne Bradstreet

John Milton

William Shakespeare

Correct answer:

John Milton

Explanation:

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 #185 : Identification

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?

Possible Answers:

Joseph Addison

William Cowper

John Dryden

Thomas Gray

Thomas Merton

Correct answer:

Thomas Gray

Explanation:

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 #186 : Identification

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?

Possible Answers:

Oliver Goldsmith’s “The Deserted Village”

John Cunningham’s “An Elegy on a Pile of Ruins”

Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “A Summer Evening Churchyard, Lechlade, Gloucestershire”

John Donne’s “Death Be Not Proud”

Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s In Memoriam

Correct answer:

John Donne’s “Death Be Not Proud”

Explanation:

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 #187 : Identification

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?

Possible Answers:

Mortality

Human accomplishment

Agrarian reform

Human obscurity

Christian faith

Correct answer:

Agrarian reform

Explanation:

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)

All GRE Subject Test: Literature in English Resources

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