GRE Subject Test: Literature in English : Literary Analysis of American Poetry
Study concepts, example questions & explanations for GRE Subject Test: Literature in English
All GRE Subject Test: Literature in English Resources
Example Questions
Example Question #41 : Literary Analysis Of Poetry
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,---
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of someone gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
"'Tis some visitor," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door:
Only this, and nothing more."
Oh! distinctly I remember, it was in the bleak December,
And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.
Eagerly I wished the morrow;--- vainly I had sought to borrow
From my books surcease of sorrow,--- sorrow for the lost Lenore,---
For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels named Lenore,---
Nameless here forever more.
Which of the following was NOT written by the author of the above excerpt?
"The Bells"
"Ulalume"
The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket
"The Murders in the Rue Morgue"
Benito Cereno
Benito Cereno
Benito Cereno (1855) is a novella by Herman Melville. All of the other works listed were written by Edgar Allen Poe.
Passage adapted from The Raven (Boston: Richard G. Badger & Co., 1898): I-IV by Edgar Allen Poe
Example Question #32 : Literary Analysis Of American Poetry Before 1925
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,---
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of someone gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
"'Tis some visitor," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door:
Only this, and nothing more."
Oh! distinctly I remember, it was in the bleak December,
And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.
Eagerly I wished the morrow;--- vainly I had sought to borrow
From my books surcease of sorrow,--- sorrow for the lost Lenore,---
For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels named Lenore,---
Nameless here forever more.
Name the dominant metrical pattern of the above lines.
Trochaic Octameter
Dactylic Hexameter
Iambic Pentameter
Anapestic Tetrameter
Spondaic Trimeter
Trochaic Octameter
The above lines (excerpted from "The Raven," by Edgar Allen Poe) are written in Trochaic Octameter -- 8 metrical feet per line, with each foot consisting of 1 stressed followed by 1 unstressed syllable, e.g.:
"ONCE u-PON a MID-night DREA-ry, WHILE i PON-dered WEAK and WEA-ry..."
Metrical patterns are described in terms of the kind and number of metrical feet that make up each regular line. Metrical feet are units of stressed and unstressed syllables. Different kinds of metrical feet combine stresses and unstresses in different combinations. For instance, an iamb is one unstressed syllable followed by one stressed syllable (da DUM), and a trochee is one stressed syllable followed by one unstressed syllable (DUM da). The number of feet per line is indicated by words with latinate prefixes followed by the word "meter." Pentameter, for instance, indicates that each line contains five feet. Hence, iambic pentameter describes a rhythm in which each line is made up of five iambic feet, and trochaic octameter (the correct answer) describes a pattern in which each standard line is made up of eight trochees.
Passage adapted from The Raven (Boston: Richard G. Badger & Co., 1898): I-IV by Edgar Allen Poe
Example Question #33 : Literary Analysis Of American Poetry Before 1925
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,---
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of someone gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
"'Tis some visitor," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door:
Only this, and nothing more."
Oh! distinctly I remember, it was in the bleak December,
And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.
Eagerly I wished the morrow;--- vainly I had sought to borrow
From my books surcease of sorrow,--- sorrow for the lost Lenore,---
For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels named Lenore,---
Nameless here forever more.
Which of the following is NOT a feature of the above excerpt?
Internal rhyme
Caesura
Feminine rhyme
Enjambment
Apostrophe
Apostrophe
Apostrophe is an address in the second person to an absent person or entity as though he/she/it were present. Although Lenore's name is invoked and her absence is noted, the poem is not structured in such a way as to suggest that the narrator is speaking directly to her.
Caesura is (in post-classical verse) a pause in the middle of a line, frequently written as an em-dash.
Enjambment is when a sentence or phrase runs over from one line to the next.
Feminine rhyme is two-syllable rhyme (e.g., remember/December).
Internal rhyme is a set of rhyming sounds occurring within a single line of verse (e.g., dreary/weary.)
Passage adapted from The Raven (Boston: Richard G. Badger & Co., 1898): I-IV by Edgar Allen Poe
Example Question #42 : Literary Analysis Of Poetry
In which line of the poem is there a radical shift in tone?
Line 3
Line 2
Line 10
Line 6
Line 8
Line 3
This excerpt, from T. S. Eliot's much longer "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," begins with two rhyming lines that truly do read like a love song, but the third line of the poem "Like a patient etherized upon a table" introduces themes of complacency, impotence, paralysis, and sickness.
Passage adapted from "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" by T. S. Elliot, 1-11 (1915)
Example Question #813 : Gre Subject Test: Literature In English
A)
It is the thirty-first of March,
A gusty evening—half-past seven;
The moon is shining o’er the larch,
A simple shape—a cock’d-up arch,
Rising bigger than a star,
Though the stars are thick in Heaven.
Gentle moon! how canst thou shine
Over graves and over trees,
With as innocent a look
As my own grey eyeball sees,
When I gaze upon a brook?
B)
O intellectual ingurtilations of creeds!
To such I am antiseptic.
I met a man.
Where?
In a gutter. We were at once friends.
O homogeneities of contemporaneous antiloxodromachy!
C)
When hope, love, life itself, are only
Dust - spectral memories - dead and cold -
The unfed fire burns bright and lonely,
Like that undying lamp of old:
And by that drear illumination,
Till time its clay-built home has rent,
Thought broods on feeling's desolation -
The soul is its own monument.
D)
Once upon a midnight chilling, as I held my feet unwilling
O'er a tub of scalding water, at a heat of ninety-four;
Nervously a toe in dipping, dripping, slipping, then out-skipping
Suddenly there came a ripping whipping, at my chamber's door.
"'Tis the second-floor," I muttered, "flipping at my chamber's door—
Wants a light—and nothing more!"
Which is a parody written in the style of William Wordsworth?
A
B
C
D
A
A is a parody of the kinds of poems Wordsworth wrote and included in Lyrical Ballads (1798).
The ballad-like form, the apostrophe to nature (moon and brook), the serene scene (the moon shining over the larch) and the idolization of innocence are all features found in many of Wordsworth's poems.
A: Adapted from Peter Bell: A Tale in Verseby William Wordsworth (1819)
B: Adapted from a parody in Once a Week(London, December 12th, 1868). Can be found in Volume 5 of Parodies of the Works of English & American Authors (1888; ed. Reeves and Turner)
C: Adapted from Nightmare Abbey by Thomas Love Peacock (1818)
D: Adapted from "The Vulture: An Ornithological Study" in Graham's Magazine (1853)
All GRE Subject Test: Literature in English Resources
