All GRE Subject Test: Literature in English Resources
Example Questions
Example Question #51 : Identification
I have compared thee, O my love, to a company of horses in Pharaoh's chariots.
Thy cheeks are comely with rows of jewels, thy neck with chains of gold.
We will make thee borders of gold with studs of silver.
While the king sitteth at his table, my spikenard sendeth forth the smell thereof.
A bundle of myrrh is my well-beloved unto me; he shall lie all night betwixt my breasts.
My beloved is unto me as a cluster of camphire in the vineyards of Engedi.
Behold, thou art fair, my love; behold, thou art fair; thou hast doves' eyes.
Behold, thou art fair, my beloved, yea, pleasant: also our bed is green.
The beams of our house are cedar, and our rafters of fir.
The above text is taken from which book of the Bible?
Genesis
Exodus
Ecclesiastes
Job
Song of Solomon
Song of Solomon
This text is taken from the famous Song of Solomon or Song of Songs, also known as the Canticles. This version is from the King James Bible.
Passage adapted from Song of Solomon 1.9-17 in the Oxford Standard King James Bible
Example Question #52 : Identification
Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher,
vanity of vanities! All is vanity.
What does man gain by all the toil
at which he toils under the sun?
A generation goes, and a generation comes,
but the earth remains forever.
The sun rises, and the sun goes down,
and hastens to the place where it rises.
The above text is taken from which book of the Bible?
Genesis
Song of Solomon
Ecclesiastes
Exodus
Job
Ecclesiastes
This passage is from the first chapter of Ecclesiastes and is one of the most famous Old Testament verses. Ecclesiastes is a work that many modern and contemporary writers allude to or even title their work after (e.g. Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises). The version here is taken from the King James edition of the Bible.
Adapted from Ecclesiastes 1.2-5 in the Oxford Standard King James Bible
Example Question #51 : Identification
Which major Latin poem comprises more than 250 myths about everything from the creation of the world to the ascendency of Julius Caesar?
Oedipus Rex
The Iliad
The Odyssey
The Oresteia
The Metamorphoses
The Metamorphoses
Ovid’s Metamorphoses, a collection of narrative poetry written around the year 8 CE, features a wide range of styles and subjects and, naturally, many myths about metamorphosis or change.
Example Question #52 : Identification
Arms, and the man I sing, who, forced by fate,
And haughty Juno's unrelenting hate,
Expelled and exiled, left the Trojan shore.
Long labors, both by sea and land, he bore,
And in the doubtful war, before he won
The Latian realm, and built the destined town;
His banished gods restored to rites divine,
And settled sure succession in his line,
From whence the race of Alban fathers come,
And the long glories of majestic Rome.
These lines open which epic poem?
The Aeneid
The Epic of Gilgamesh
The Odyssey
The Metamorphoses
Lamentation for Ur
The Aeneid
One of the best known lines of Latin poetry is this first line of Virgil’s Aeneid, “I sing of arms and the man.” The Aeneid was written around the 20s BCE in dactylic hexameter and recounts the legend of Aeneas, a Trojan who travelled to Italy and founded Rome.
Passage adapted from The Aeneid, l.1-10 (trans. Dryden)
Example Question #53 : Identification
Artisans, raise high the roof beam!
Tall is the bridegroom as Ares,
Taller by far than the tallest,
O Hymenæus!
Ay! towering over his fellows,
As over men of all other
Lands towers the Lesbian singer,
O Hymenæus!
Well-favored, too, is the maiden,
Eyes that are sweeter than honey,
Fair both in face and in figure,
O Hymenæus!
Based on the content of this poem, who is the likely author?
Euripides
Sappho
Aeschylus
Homer
Sophocles
Sappho
The key to this question is the mention of the singer from the island of Lesbos, which was the Greek poet Sappho’s birthplace. Sappho was a lyric poet who lived during the 600s BCE. Much of her poetry, which is characterized by the Sapphic stanza seen above, has been lost or exists only in fragments today.
Passage adapted from "Hymenaios" in The Poems of Sappho: An Interpretative Rendition Into English translated by John Myers O'Hara (1910)
Example Question #54 : Identification
What is the name of the Mesopotamian epic poem that is often considered the first great work of literature?
Lamentation for Ur
The Aeneid
The Odyssey
The Epic of Gilgamesh
The Iliad
The Epic of Gilgamesh
Written more than 4,000 years ago, The Epic of Gilgamesh discusses the works of Gilgamesh, the king of Uruk, and the wild man Enkidu. It was written on clay tablets and exists today in various forms, including the Old Babylonian version and the Akkadian version.
Example Question #55 : Identification
Which of the following works of ancient Greek poetry was written by Hesiod?
The Odyssey
The Oresteia
Metamorphoses
Works and Days
The Iliad
Works and Days
Hesiod was an ancient Greek poet who lived and wrote around the same time as Homer. His best known works of poetry are Theogeny, Works and Days, and Shield of Heracles. Works and Days is centered on a body of agrarian advice and a farmer’s almanac in which the speaker instructs his brother Perses in farming.
Example Question #57 : Identification
As I was going down impassive Rivers,
I no longer felt myself guided by haulers:
Yelping redskins had taken them as targets
And had nailed them naked to colored stakes.
I was indifferent to all crews,
The bearer of Flemish wheat or English cottons
When with my haulers this uproar stopped
The Rivers let me go where I wanted.
Into the furious lashing of the tides
More heedless than children's brains the other winter
I ran! And loosened Peninsulas
Have not undergone a more triumphant hubbub
The storm blessed my sea vigils
Lighter than a cork I danced on the waves
That are called eternal rollers of victims,
Ten nights, without missing the stupid eye of the lighthouses!
Who is the author of this poem?
Arthur Rimbaud
Émile Zola
Guillaume Apollinaire
Paul Verlaine
Stéphane Mallarmé
Arthur Rimbaud
These lines come from the opening of "The Drunken Boat,” one of Arthur Rimbaud’s most famous poems. Written in 1871, the poem was lauded as an avant-garde work for its vivid, often unsettling imagery and its fragmentary first-person narrative.
Passage adapted from "The Drunken Boat" by Arthur Rimbaud (1871)
Example Question #51 : Identification
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?
Confessions
The Iliad
The Odyssey
The Divine Comedy
The Aeneid
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 #52 : Identification
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 Odyssey
The Divine Comedy
The Iliad
The Aeneid
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)