GRE Subject Test: Literature in English : Literary Analysis of Plays
Study concepts, example questions & explanations for GRE Subject Test: Literature in English
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Example Questions
Example Question #1 : Literary Analysis Of Plays
Adapted from Timon of Athens, IV:3, lines 409-447 by William Shakespeare
The sun's a thief, and with his great attraction
Robs the vast sea: the moon's an arrant thief,
And her pale fire she snatches from the sun:
The sea's a thief, whose liquid surge resolves
The moon into salt tears: the earth's a thief,
That feeds and breeds by a composture stol'n
From general excrement: each thing's a thief:
The laws, your curb and whip, in their rough power
Have uncheck'd theft.
Which of the following is NOT exemplified in the above selection from Timon of Athens?
Sprung Rhythm
Blank Verse
Poetic Conceit
Personification
Iambic Pentameter
Sprung Rhythm
Sprung Rhythm is a system of scansion in which only stressed syllables are counted. It was invented by the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins in the late-19th century.
Blank Verse is a poetic form composed of unrhymed lines of iambic pentameter.
Iambic pentameter is a metrical form in which each line consists of five iambic feet. A metrical foot is a unit of stressed and unstressed syllables. An iambic foot consists of one unstressed syllable followed by one stressed syllable.
Personification is the attribution of human qualities to inanimate objects.
A Poetic Conceit is an extended metaphor that compares dissimilar objects in a surprising and imaginative manner.
Example Question #2 : Literary Analysis
Adapted from Timon of Athens, IV:3, lines 409-447 by William Shakespeare
The sun's a thief, and with his great attraction
Robs the vast sea: the moon's an arrant thief,
And her pale fire she snatches from the sun:
The sea's a thief, whose liquid surge resolves
The moon into salt tears: the earth's a thief,
That feeds and breeds by a composture stol'n
From general excrement: each thing's a thief:
The laws, your curb and whip, in their rough power
Have uncheck'd theft.
The above passage from Shakespeare's "Timon of Athens" is the source of the title of a novel by which twentieth century author?
Thomas Pynchon
William Faulkner
John Updike
Vladimir Nabokov
Ernest Hemingway
Vladimir Nabokov
"Timon of Athens" (one of the more obscure works by Shakespeare) is a key intertext in Vladimir Nabokov's 1962 novel Pale Fire, the title of which was drawn from the third line of the passage in question.
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