All GRE Subject Test: Literature in English Resources
Example Questions
Example Question #71 : Identification
Peruvian poet César Vallejo wrote which of the following works?
The Book of Imaginary Beings
The Aleph
The Library of Babel
Los Heraldos Negros
Ficciones
Los Heraldos Negros
Only Los Heraldos Negros is by Vallejo. The rest are works by the Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges.
Example Question #71 : Identification Of Poetry
Nobel Prize-winning Mexican poet Octavio Paz wrote which of the following works?
Chronicle of a Death Foretold
The Autumn of the Patriarch
Love and Other Demons
No One Writes to the Colonel
The Labyrinth of Solitude
The Labyrinth of Solitude
Only The Labyrinth of Solitude is by Octavio Paz. The other works are all novels by Mexican writer Gabriel Garcia Márquez.
Example Question #72 : Identification
Which Latin American poet wrote the collection Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair?
Octavio Paz
César Vallejo
Jorge Luis Borges
Mario Vargas Llosa
Pablo Neruda
Pablo Neruda
This is Pablo Neruda. He employed a variety of poetic forms, including love poetry, epics, historical works, autobiography and political manifestos.
Example Question #1 : Identification Of British Prose
St. Almachus, or Telemachus:
Was a holy solitary of the East, but being excited by the ardors of a pious zeal in his desert, and pierced with grief that the impious diversion of gladiators should cause the damnation of so many unhappy souls, and involve whole cities and provinces in sin; he travelled to Rome, resolved, as far as in him lay, to put a stop to this crying evil. While the gladiators were massacring each other in the amphitheatre, he ran in among them; but as a recompense for his kind remonstrance, and entreating them to desist, he was beaten down to the ground, and torn in pieces, on the 1st of January, 404. His zeal had its desired success; for the effusion of his blood effected what till that time many emperors had found impracticable. Constantine, Constantius, Julian, and Theodosius the elder, had, to no purpose, published several edicts against those impious scenes of blood. But Honorius took occasion from the martyrdom of this saint, to enforce their entire abolition. His name occurs in the true martyrology of Bede, in the Roman and others.
The above lines are an example of which genre of medieval religious writing?
Homily
Morality Play
Autobiography
Mystical Writing
Hagiography
Hagiography
These lines discuss the life of a saint, which makes this genre of writing a hagiography. Some of the earliest hagiographies are Aelfric’s Lives of the Saints and The Vercelli Book.
Passage adapted from The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Other Principal Saints by Alban Butler (1866)
Example Question #2 : Identification Of British Prose
"And in þis he shewed me a lytil thyng þe quantite of a hasyl nott. lyeng in þe pawme of my hand as it had semed. and it was as rownde as eny ball. I loked þer upon wt þe eye of my vnderstondyng. and I þought what may þis be. and it was answered generally thus. It is all þat is made. I merueled howe it myght laste. for me þought it myght sodenly haue fall to nought for lytyllhed. & I was answered in my vnderstondyng. It lastyth & euer shall for god louyth it. and so hath all thyng his begynning by þe loue of god. In this lytyll thyng I sawe thre propertees. The fyrst is. þt god made it. þe secunde is þet god louyth it. & þe þrid is. þat god kepith it."
In the work above, Julian of Norwich writes about her experiences as a female anchorite and her visions of Jesus Christ. The excerpt best represents which category of writing?
Madrigal
Monasticism
Miracle play
Morality play
Mysticism
Mysticism
Written in the 1300s, this text, Revelations of Divine Love, is a canonical work of mysticism and is also the first English book known to have been written by a woman. The book delineates sixteen mystical visions as well as Julian’s musings about hope and divine love against a backdrop of turmoil and plague.
Passage adapted from Revelations of Divine Love by Julian of Norwich (1395)
Example Question #1 : Identification Of British Prose To 1660
Truly, said Christian, I do not know.
At this Pliable began to be offended, and angrily said to his fellow, Is this the happiness you have told me all this while of? If we have such ill speed at our first setting out, what may we expect betwixt this and our journey's end? May I get out again with my life, you shall possess the brave country alone for me. And, with that, he gave a desperate struggle or two, and got out of the mire on that side of the slough which was next to his own house: so away he went, and Christian saw him no more.
Wherefore Christian was left to tumble in the Slough of Despond alone: but still he endeavoured to struggle to that side of the slough that was still further from his own house, and next to the wicket-gate; the which he did, but could not get out, because of the burden that was upon his back: but I beheld in my dream, that a man came to him, whose name was Help, and asked him, What he did there?
Sir, said Christian, I was bid go this way by a man called Evangelist, who directed me also to yonder gate, that I might escape the wrath to come; and as I was going thither I fell in here.
But why did not you look for the steps? [Help asked.]
Fear followed me so hard, that I fled the next way, and fell in[, Christian replied.]
What early English work is this?
The Seafarer
The Consolation of Philosophy
Beowulf
The Pilgrim’s Progress
The Canterbury Tales
The Pilgrim’s Progress
John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress (full name: The Pilgrim's Progress from This World to That Which Is to Come; Delivered under the Similitude of a Dream) is an early example of English prose. Published in 1678, it constructs an elaborate moral allegory featuring Christian, the protagonist, and a host of personified virtues and sins that Christian encounters on his journey.
Passage adapted from The Pilgrim's Progress from This World to That Which Is to Come; Delivered under the Similitude of a Dream by John Bunyan (1678)
Example Question #1 : Identification Of Prose
Published in 1962, this dystopian novel features a protagonist named Alex, a gang of violently antisocial teenagers, and Nadsat, a fictional slang with Slavic derivations.
The Handmaid’s Tale
Brave New World
1984
A Clockwork Orange
Fahrenheit 451
A Clockwork Orange
The novel is Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange. The work, which was later adapted into a film by Stanley Kubrick, is set in a futuristic English society with a subculture of violent young gangs. A Clockwork Orange examines, among other issues, drug use, prison conditions, the role of language and music in culture, and psychological brainwashing and aversion therapy. One of the novel’s most salient features is Burgess’s use of the invented slang Nadsat, which includes words such as "horrorshow" (good), "droog" (friend), and "starry" (old).
Example Question #2 : Identification Of Prose
What famous dystopian novel is a direct allegory for the rise of communism in the Soviet Union?
The Handmaid’s Tale
Fahrenheit 451
1984
Animal Farm
Brave New World
Animal Farm
George Orwell’s Animal Farm, published in 1945, uses pigs, horses, dogs, and other animals on the fictitious Manor Farm to create an elaborate allegory of the 1917 Russian Revolution and subsequent rise of communism. In the novel, certain animals are meant to directly represent Communist Party leaders; for example, the pig Napoleon represents Joseph Stalin, the pig Snowball represents Leon Trotsky, and the human Mr. Jones represents the assassinated Tsar Nicholas. Although Orwell was a critic of capitalism and a proponent of socialism, he was inspired to condemn Russian communism in the novel because of its tyranny, despotism, and systematic manipulation of language to serve those in power.
Example Question #3 : Identification Of Prose
What dystopian novel contains such inventions as hormone chewing gum, “feelies,” and children raised in hatcheries?
Animal Farm
Fahrenheit 451
1984
Brave New World
Lord of the Flies
Brave New World
Published in 1932, Brave New World was written by Aldous Huxley. The title was taken from Shakespeare’s The Tempest (V.i.187-190): “Oh, wonder! / How many goodly creatures are there here! / How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world, / That has such people in ’t!” The novel itself is concerned with advancements in reproductive technology and loss of individual identity in a mass-produced culture. In Huxley’s society, population is strictly limited and children are bred to belong to certain castes so as not to disrupt the harmonious consumer culture.
Example Question #4 : Identification Of British Prose After 1925
Which Virginia Woolf novel centers around the life of a poet who lives for hundreds of years and shifts gender from male to female?
Mrs. Dalloway
Orlando: A Biography
To the Lighthouse
A Room of One’s Own
Jacob’s Room
Orlando: A Biography
Published in 1928, Orlando: A Biography is Virginia Woolf’s classic examination of feminism, gender roles, and social satire. The best-known characters are Orlando; Princess Sasha; Marmaduke Bonthrop Shelmerdine, Esquire (aka Shel); and the transgender Archduchess Henrietta/Archduke Harry.