GRE Literature in English (REA) (13 page)

I have looked upon those brilliant creatures,
And now my heart is sore.
All's changed since I, hearing at twilight,
The first time on this shore,
The bell-beat of their wings above my head,
Trod with a lighter tread.

 

Unwearied still, lover by lover,
They paddle in the cold
Companionable streams or climb the air;
Their hearts have not grown old;
Passion or conquest, wander where they will,
Attend upon them still.

The stanzas embody which aspect of the poet's world view?

1. That the world is in a constant state of flux, which he hates
   
2. That man can never achieve happiness in this world
   
3. That man can never be as free and happy as the birds who stay the same always
   
4. That man needs love and companionship
   
5. That man changes and grows old but Nature renews herself and appears constant
   

“Those brilliant creatures” are

1. peacocks.
   
2. swans.
   
3. ducks.
   
4. geese.
   
5. doves.
   

In the meantime let's try and converse calmly, since we're incapable of remaining silent.

You're right, we're inexhaustible.

It's so we won't think.

We have that excuse.

It's so we won't hear.

We have our reasons.

The two speakers are

1. Ponzo and Lucky.
   
2. Molloy and Moran.
   
3. Vladimir and Estragon.
   
4. Clov and Hamm.
   
5. Biff and Happy.
   

What does the dialogue reveal?

1. The two are bored with each other and hide their boredom in idle chatter.
   
2. The characters wish to hide their fear of life by listening to one another.
   
3. The two enjoy chatting with one another.
   
4. The two hope to forget their fear of life by talking.
   
5. The characters are strangers and have nothing vital to say.
   

In this book the hero is just arriving at manhood with the freshness of feeling that belongs to that interesting period of life, and with the power to please that properly characterizes youth. As a consequence he is loved; and, what denotes the real waywardness of humanity, more than it corresponds with theories and moral propositions, he is loved by one full of art, vanity and weakness, and loved principally for his sincerity, his modesty, and his unerring truth and probity.

Which hero does this preface to the novel describe?

1. Tom Jones
   
2. Heathcliff
   
3. The Deerslayer
   
4. The Reverend Dimsdale
   
5. Theron Ware
   

A contemporary of the author of the preface is

1. Samuel Richardson.
   
2. Henry Fielding.
   
3. Edgar Allan Poe.
   
4. Charles Brockden Brown.
   
5. Samuel Langhorne Clemens.
   

Marlow is terrified of well-bred women, although he has no problem with “females of another class.” His shyness—certainty an absurd foible for a young man about town in this day and age—is soon demonstrated when he meets Miss___.

Supply the name that completes this criticism.

1. Hardcastle
   
2. Earnshaw
   
3. Booby
   
4. Andrews
   
5. Teazle
   

The play referred to in the above criticism is

1. Venice Preserv'd.
   
2. The Rover.
   
3. The Way of the World.
   
4. She Stoops to Conquer.
   
5. The Winter's Tale.
   

“An ‘Image' is that which presents an intellectual and emotional complex in an instant of time. I use the word ‘complex' rather in the technical sense employed by the newer psychologists.”

 

The “I” here is

1. T. S. Eliot.
   
2. Wyndham Lewis.
   
3. Ezra Pound.
   
4. Archibald MacLeish.
   
5. Robert Lowell.
   

Which did Pound write?

Which did Robert Lowell write?

1. There is a moment when we lie
   Bewildered, wakened out of sleep,
   When light and sound and all reply
   That moment time must tame and keep.
   

2. So far for what it's worth
   I have my background;
   And you had your background.
   

3. One dark night,
   my Tudor Ford climbed the hill's skull;
   I watched for love-cars. Lights turned down,
   they lay together, hull to hull,
   where the graveyard shelves on the town...
   

4. I am moved by fancies that are curled
   Around these images and cling:
   

5. I too am a rare
   Pattern. As I wander down
   The garden paths.
   

Lady Sneerwell, Mrs. Candour, Sir Oliver Surface, Snake, and Careless are all characters from which Restoration play?

1. The Beaux Stratagem
   
2. All for Love
   
3. The Way of the World
   
4. School for Scandal
   
5. Love's Last Shift
   

Such names as above are based on which dramatic tradition?

1. The Greek Chorus
   
2. The Furies
   
3. The Humours
   
4. Deus ex machina
   
5. The Peripeteia
   

Dryden said, “‘Tis sufficient to say, according to the proverb, that here is God's plenty.”

 

According to Dryden, where is God's plenty?

1. In the Bible
   
2. In a book of Proverbs
   
3. In Dryden's essays
   
4. In Chaucer's
   The Canterbury Tales
   
5. In Shakespeare's history plays
   

He told Hawthorne that his book has been broiled in hell-fire and secretly baptized not in the name of God but in the name of the Devil. He named his tragic hero after the Old Testament ruler who “did more to provoke the Lord God of Israel to anger than all the Kings of Israel that were before him.”

 

This tragic hero is

1. Ahab.
   
2. Ishmael.
   
3. Isaiah.
   
4. Lucifer.
   
5. Job.
   

Two Handmaids wait the Throne: Alike in Place,
But diff'ring far in Figure and in Face.
Here stood III-nature like an ancient Maid,
Her wrinkled Form in Black and White array'd;
With store of Pray'rs, for Mornings, Nights and Noons,
Her Hand is fill'd; her Bosom with Lampoons.

There Affectation with a sickly Mien
Shows in her Cheek the roses of Eighteen,
Practis'd to Lisp and hang the Head aside,
Faints into Airs, and languishes with Pride;
On the rich Quilt sinks with becoming Woe,
Wrapt in a Gown for Sickness and for Show.
The Fair-ones feel such Maladies as these,
When each new Night-Dress gives a new Disease.

The stanzas are written in

1. free verse.
   
2. couplets.
   
3. heroic couplets.
   
4. blank verse.
   
5. octosyllabic couplets.
   

Which best paraphrases the second half of line 6?

1. Her bosom is arrayed with exotic flowers.
   
2. Her bosom overflows with political tracts written to flatter a politician.
   
3. Her bosom is stuffed with anadromous fishes allegorizing love.
   
4. Her bosom is filled with satirical writings which ridicule an enemy.
   
5. Her bosom rested against a Grecian lamp.
   

The “Fair-ones” feel such “maladies” (line 13) because

1. ladies then never received enough air or exercise and were often sickly but still wanted to look fashionable in bed.
   
2. the Plague was rampant at this time and fashionable nightdresses were made in which ladies received visitors discreetly.
   
3. ladies often received company in their bedrooms, so they became “ill” when they had a new nightdress to show off.
   
4. the fashion was so highly corseted then ladies often fainted and had to wear loose flowing nightdresses.
   
5. fashion was so elaborate then that ladies “fell ill” to avoid seeing people they did not want to see.
   

In context, which word best replaces “Mien” in line 7?

1. Bent
   
2. Posture
   
3. Pallor
   
4. Gait
   
5. Appearance
   

The poet's purpose is

1. to vent his misogyny.
   
2. to show male superiority in his day.
   
3. to ridicule the fashionable world of his day.
   
4. to hurt a woman he once loved, who scorned him.
   
5. to take revenge for a trivial trick played on him.
   

The scene was a plain, bare, monotonous vault of a schoolroom, and the speaker's square forefinger emphasized his observations by underscoring every sentence with a line on the schoolmaster's sleeve. The emphasis was helped by the speaker's square wall of a forehead, which had his eyebrows for its base, while his eyes found commodious cellarage in two dark caves, overshadowed by the wall. The emphasis was helped by the speaker's mouth, which was wide, thin, and hard set. The emphasis was helped by the speaker's voice, which was inflexible, dry, and dictatorial. The emphasis was helped by the speaker's hair, which bristled on the skirts of his bald head, a plantation of firs to keep the wind from its shining surface, all covered with knobs, like the crust of a plum pie, as if the head had scarcely warehouse-room for the hard facts stored inside. The speaker's square carriage, square legs, square shoulders—nay, his very neckcloth, trained to take him by the throat with an unaccommodating grasp, like a stubborn fact, as it was—all helped the emphasis. 15

The speaker's name is Mr. Gradgrind—how does the repetition in the passage add to the name's connotation?

1. The word
   emphasis
   repeated adds to the harshness of the name.
   
2. The repetition of
   speaker
   emphasizes how important the name is.
   
3. The repeated
   square
   emphasizes how old-fashioned the speaker is.
   
4. The repeated
   square
   adds to the name by suggesting how harsh reason will grind everyone down.
   
5. The repeated
   square
   suggests how hard facts in schooling will grind down reason and make for nonsense.
   

Which term best describes the author's language?

1. Descriptive
   
2. Allegorical
   
3. Metaphorical
   
4. Symbolic
   
5. Prosodic
   

Which figures of speech do lines 10-12 contain?

1. A metaphor and a simile
   
2. Two metaphors
   
3. Oxymoron and a simile
   
4. Pastoral and a metaphor
   
5. Paradox and a simile
   

The author of this passage also wrote

1. The Way of All Flesh.
   
2. Fathers and Sons.
   
3. Villette.
   
4. The Mystery of Edwin Drood.
   
5. Adam Bede.
   

Which did George Bernard Shaw write?

1. She takes the Captain by the arm and coaxes him down into the chair, where he remains sitting dully. Then she takes the straitjacket and goes behind the chair.
   

2. Same room. Beside the piano the Christmas tree now stands stripped of ornament, burned down candle stubs on its ragged branches.
   

3. The laughter is loud now, and he moves into a brightening area at the left, where THE WOMAN has come from behind the scrim and is standing, putting on her hat, looking into a mirror and laughing.
   

4. The office of the old professor, which also serves as a dining room. To the left, a door opens onto the apartment stairs; upstage, to the right, another door opens onto a corridor of the apartment. Upstage, a little left of center, a window, not very large, with plain curtains; on the outside sill of the window are ordinary potted plants.
   

5. A lady's bedchamber in Bulgaria, in a small town near the Dragoman Pass, late in November in the year 1885. Through an open window with a little balcony a peak of the Balkans, wonderfully white and beautiful in the starlit snow, seems quite close at hand, though it is really far away.