GRE Subject Test: Literature in English : Literary Analysis of British Poetry 1660–1925
Study concepts, example questions & explanations for GRE Subject Test: Literature in English
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Example Questions
Example Question #11 : Literary Analysis Of Poetry
Of Man's first disobedience, and the fruit
Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste
Brought death into the world, and all our woe,
With loss of Eden, till one greater Man
Restore us, and regain the blissful seat,
Sing, heavenly Muse, that on the secret top
Of Oreb, or of Sinai, didst inspire
That Shepherd, who first taught the chosen seed,
In the beginning, how the Heavens and Earth
Rose out of Chaos: or if Sion hill
Delight thee more, and Siloa's brook that flow'd
Fast by the oracle of God: I thence
Invoke thy aid to my adventrous song,
That with no middle flight intends to soar
Above the Aonian mount, while it pursues
Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme.
(John Milton, Paradise Lost, Book I.)
Which of the following terms best describes the style of verse in which the above excerpt was written?
Blank Verse
Terza rima
Sprung Rhythm
Sonnet
Free Verse
Blank Verse
Milton's Paradise Lost (the source of the above quotation) is entirely in blank verse: a form with a fixed meter (usually iambic pentameter) but without a prescribed rhyme structure.
This should not be confused with free verse, which has neither a regular meter nor a pattern of end-stopped rhymes.
Terza rima is a form written in three-line stanzas composed of three interlocking ending rhymes.
Sprung rhythm is a pattern of verse in which only stressed syllables are counted, but the number of stresses is consistent from line to line.
A sonnet is a poem of fourteen lines of consistent length and one of several conventional rhyming patterns.
Adapted from Paradise Lost: A Poem, in Twelve Books (London: J. & H. Richter, 1794): 1-2 by John Milton
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