All SAT II Literature Resources
Example Questions
Example Question #91 : Literary Terminology And Devices
I wonder, by my troth, what thou and I
Did, till we loved? Were we not weaned till then?
But sucked on country pleasures, childishly?
Or snorted we in the Seven Sleepers’ den?
’Twas so; but this, all pleasures fancies be.
If ever any beauty I did see,
Which I desired, and got, ’twas but a dream of thee.
And now good-morrow to our waking souls,
Which watch not one another out of fear;
For love, all love of other sights controls,
And makes one little room an everywhere.
Let sea-discoverers to new worlds have gone,
Let maps to other, worlds on worlds have shown,
Let us possess one world, each hath one, and is one.
My face in thine eye, thine in mine appears,
And true plain hearts do in the faces rest;
Where can we find two better hemispheres,
Without sharp north, without declining west?
Whatever dies, was not mixed equally;
If our two loves be one, or, thou and I
Love so alike, that none do slacken, none can die.
(1633)
“Country pleasures” best exemplifies which of the following?
Pastoral allusion
Metonymy
None of these
Alliteration
Double entendre
Double entendre
The term double entendre is derived from French and means, literally, "heard twice." It refers to a play on words that can be heard as having two meanings--usually one of which is sexual. "Country pleasures" refers to both a simpler, more naive pastoral life, but it's also a play on a euphemism for the female anatomy that was commonly used at the time.
Passage adapted from John Donne's "The Good Morrow" (1633).
Example Question #92 : Sat Subject Test In Literature
I wonder, by my troth, what thou and I
Did, till we loved? Were we not weaned till then?
But sucked on country pleasures, childishly?
Or snorted we in the Seven Sleepers’ den?
’Twas so; but this, all pleasures fancies be.
If ever any beauty I did see,
Which I desired, and got, ’twas but a dream of thee.
And now good-morrow to our waking souls,
Which watch not one another out of fear;
For love, all love of other sights controls,
And makes one little room an everywhere.
Let sea-discoverers to new worlds have gone,
Let maps to other, worlds on worlds have shown,
Let us possess one world, each hath one, and is one.
My face in thine eye, thine in mine appears,
And true plain hearts do in the faces rest;
Where can we find two better hemispheres,
Without sharp north, without declining west?
Whatever dies, was not mixed equally;
If our two loves be one, or, thou and I
Love so alike, that none do slacken, none can die.
(1633)
Which lines contains the best example of parallelism?
“Where can we find two better hemispheres,/ Without sharp north, without declining west?”
"If ever any beauty I did see, / Which I desired, and got, ’twas but a dream of thee."
“For love, all love of other sights controls, / And makes one little room an everywhere.”
“If our two loves be one, or, thou and I/ Love so alike, that none do slacken, none can die.
None of these
“Where can we find two better hemispheres,/ Without sharp north, without declining west?”
In addition to having a parallel structure of "preposition adjective noun," "without sharp north, without declining west" underscores that parallelism with the repetition of "without" and the fact that both nouns are cardinal directions.
It might be tempting to choose “Let maps to other, worlds on worlds have shown,/ Let us possess one world, each hath one, and is one," for the repetition of the imperative "let." These sentences do not, however, have parallel syntactical structures.
Passage adapted from John Donne's "The Good Morrow" (1633).
Example Question #91 : Sat Subject Test In Literature
I wonder, by my troth, what thou and I
Did, till we loved? Were we not weaned till then?
But sucked on country pleasures, childishly?
Or snorted we in the Seven Sleepers’ den?
’Twas so; but this, all pleasures fancies be.
If ever any beauty I did see,
Which I desired, and got, ’twas but a dream of thee.
And now good-morrow to our waking souls,
Which watch not one another out of fear;
For love, all love of other sights controls,
And makes one little room an everywhere.
Let sea-discoverers to new worlds have gone,
Let maps to other, worlds on worlds have shown,
Let us possess one world, each hath one, and is one.
My face in thine eye, thine in mine appears,
And true plain hearts do in the faces rest;
Where can we find two better hemispheres,
Without sharp north, without declining west?
Whatever dies, was not mixed equally;
If our two loves be one, or, thou and I
Love so alike, that none do slacken, none can die.
(1633)
Which of the following contains a double entendre?
"Let sea-discoverers to new worlds have gone"
None of these
"Let us possess one world, each hath one, and is one"
"Love so alike, that none do slacken, none can die"
"I wonder, by my troth, what thou and I / Did, till we loved?"
"Love so alike, that none do slacken, none can die"
"Slacken" may refer to flaccidity, and "die" was a common literary euphemism for female orgasm in the Early Modern Period.
Passage adapted from John Donne's "The Good Morrow" (1633).
Example Question #94 : Sat Subject Test In Literature
What poetic device is used throughout the poem?
Apostrophe
Allegory
Free verse
Onomatopoeia
Hyperbole
Apostrophe
Apostrophe is used throughout the poem. Apostrophe is when the speaker in a literary work addresses, or speaks directly to, something or someone who cannot hear it. This addressee can be an inanimate object (as in this poem, where the speaker addresses a Greek urn), an abstract idea, or an absent person.
Examples of apostrophe being used in this poem include but are not limited to uses of "Thou" in lines 1, 2, and 47, and "O Attic shape!" (line 41).
Passage adapted from John Keats' "Ode on a Grecian Urn" (1819)
Example Question #95 : Sat Subject Test In Literature
The ends of lines 32 and 34 form an example of ________________.
dactyl
true rhyme
internal rhyme
slant rhyme
metonymy
slant rhyme
The words at the ends of lines 32 and 34--"priest" and "drest," respectively--are an example of a slant rhyme. A slant rhyme consists of two words that sound very similar, but do not actually end in identical sounds. Here, the consonants in these last syllables match. In both cases, the consonant preceding final the vowel is an "r" and the ending consonant sound is "st." The vowels, however, while similar, are not identical: "priest" has a long "e" sound, but "drest" has a short "e" sound.
Since the sounds of the final words are similar but do not quite match, this is a slant rhyme.
Passage adapted from John Keats' "Ode on a Grecian Urn" (1819)
Example Question #96 : Sat Subject Test In Literature
In what meter is this poem written?
Iambic tetrameter
Spondaic pentameter
Dactylic hexameter
Iambic pentameter
Dactylic hexameter
Trochaic hexameter
Trochaic hexameter
Iambic pentameter
Iambic tetrameter
Spondaic pentameter
Iambic pentameter
The meter of this poem is iambic pentameter. The "meter" of a poem refers to the rhythm and quantity of syllables in each line.
"Pentameter" means that there are five metrical "feet" in each line. A metrical "foot" is a metrical unit of which any given meter is comprised. "Iambic" refers to the fact that most of the metrical feet in this poem are iambs. An iamb is a very common foot in English. It is comprised of one unstressed syllable followed by one stressed syllable.
Here is the first line of the poem divided into its five metrical feet: "Thou still / unrav / ish'd bride / of qui / etness." Each of those five segments consists of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable--that is, an iamb.
Passage adapted from John Keats' "Ode on a Grecian Urn" (1819)
Example Question #97 : Sat Subject Test In Literature
Lines 8-10 are an example of ______________.
motif
aphorism
metonymy
anaphora
hyperbole
anaphora
In poetry, anaphora refers to a specific type of repetition. It is the repetition of the same word or group of words at the beginning of two or more sentences in a row. In lines 8-10, six sentences in a row start with "What." This is a perfect example of anaphora.
Passage adapted from John Keats' "Ode on a Grecian Urn" (1819)
Example Question #98 : Sat Subject Test In Literature
I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day.
What hours, O what black hours we have spent
This night! what sights you, heart, saw; ways you went!
And more must, in yet longer light's delay.
With witness I speak this. But where I say
Hours I mean years, mean life. And my lament
Is cries countless, cries like dead letters sent
To dearest him that lives alas! away.
I am gall, I am heartburn. God's most deep decree
Bitter would have me taste: my taste was me;
Bones built in me, flesh filled, blood brimmed the curse.
Selfyeast of spirit a dull dough sours. I see
The lost are like this, and their scourge to be
As I am mine, their sweating selves; but worse.
(1918)
The transition between the highlighted lines is best described as __________.
The volta
None of these
The vellum
The rhetorical shift
The concession
The volta
The volta is a turn or shift in sonnet. In this case, Hopkins turns from self-examination and begins to make more broad generalizations about "the lost."
While this could also be described as a rhetorical shift, the fact that this is a sonnet makes volta a more precise, more accurate term.
Passage adapted from "[I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day]" (1918) by Gerald Manley Hopkins.
Example Question #91 : Literary Terminology And Devices
I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day.
What hours, O what black hours we have spent
This night! what sights you, heart, saw; ways you went!
And more must, in yet longer light's delay.
With witness I speak this. But where I say
Hours I mean years, mean life. And my lament
Is cries countless, cries like dead letters sent
To dearest him that lives alas! away.
I am gall, I am heartburn. God's most deep decree
Bitter would have me taste: my taste was me;
Bones built in me, flesh filled, blood brimmed the curse.
Selfyeast of spirit a dull dough sours. I see
The lost are like this, and their scourge to be
As I am mine, their sweating selves; but worse.
(1918)
"Selfyeast" (line 12) is an example of __________.
An elision
None of these
An allision
A montresor
A portmanteau
A portmanteau
A portmanteau is the blending or combining of two separate words to from a new, invented word. (For example "Bennifer" for Ben Affleck and Jennifer(s) Lopez and, later, Garner.)
An elision might seem like a tempting answer since it means an omission of some kind, usually of a vowel. In this case, though, the important thing is not the omission of the space, but the combination of the words to form a new idea. The other two answers are made-up words.
Passage adapted from "[I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day]" (1918) by Gerald Manley Hopkins.
Example Question #91 : Literary Terminology Describing Poetry
The first line of the third stanza provides an example of _________________.
Personification
Imagery
Foreshadowing
Irony
Alliteration
Alliteration
The first line of the third stanza contains a strong example of alliteration in the repetition of the initial consonant sounds in cobbles, clattered, and clashed. Although the line does invoke the image of the highwayman entering the dark inn-year, it is not a strong image, and the line focuses much more on invoking the sound of him entering the yard, hence the repetition of the hard c, which sounds a bit like horse hooves. The line contains no examples of irony, personification, or foreshadowing.
Passage adapted from Alfred Noyes' "The Highwayman" (1906)