GRE Literature in English (REA) (24 page)

 

167.
(E)

It is helpful to know the poem but the choices can be narrowed from thinking again of the legend, which often remains in our consciousness from childhood. Eliminate (A) and (B)—King Arthur goes to neither place. Eliminate (C) as no battleground is mentioned in the poetry here. Eliminate (D) as Bedivere outlives King Arthur.

 

168.
(E)

Tennyson followed closely the work of Malory's
Le Morte D'Arthur
, planning eventually to write twelve books for an “Arthurian Epic.” If you do not know the poet's achievement here, eliminate Wordsworth (A) and Yeats (C), who did not work on this legend, and John Gardner (D), who adapted the legend of Beowulf into a novel,
Grendel
.

 

169.
(E)

The vowel shift in the fifteenth century changed stressed vowels upward and changed the highest vowels to diphthongs. The diphthong in modern English “how” was pronounced by Chaucer like the high-back vowel in modern English “who.” In addition, the high-front vowel in modern English, “be,” was pronounced by Chaucer like the middle-front vowel of modern English “bay.”

 

170.
(C)

The character that Chaucer describes in this passage is the Monk. Medieval monks lived in cloisters, labored with their hands in raising their own food, and studied and copied theological and other texts. In contrast, the Parson (A) lived and worked among the people, the Pardoner (B) and Friar (E) traveled from place to place, and the Clerk (D) was a scholar who studied and wrote, but who would not have worked with his hands.

 

171.
(A)

The object of the satire in the passage is the traditional topic of hypocrisy. Chaucer exposes the gap between what a monk is supposed to be, ideally, and what this monk actually is in practice. The passage is not anti-intellectual (B), because Chaucer implies that the monk ought to be in the monastery studying. The passage is not anti-religious (C) because, in ridiculing hypocrisy Chaucer reaffirms traditional religious values. Chaucer wrote prior to the Reformation and, therefore, was not expressing an explicitly Protestant view (D). As for Lollardism (E), Chaucer is not, at least in this passage, explicitly addressing the dispute concerning the publication of an English Bible or other issue of importance to Wycliff. The subject of the satire in this particular passage is more literary and traditional than that. It is part of a classical literary tradition satirizing hypocrisy in general.

 

172.
(C)

A simile is an explicit comparison using the words
like
or
as
. In this poem, “like a raisin,” “like a sore,” “like rotten meat,” “like a syrupy sweet,” and “like a heavy load” are all similes. This device is the organizing principle of the poem. Antithesis (A) is the juxtaposition of opposites. Irony (B) is meaning one thing while saying the opposite, as in “What a nice day!” when it is raining. Personification (D) is a character representing an abstraction. Understatement (E) is a form of emphasis that implies more by saying less, as in “He wasn't a bad fighter,” for someone who defeats every opponent. None of these other rhetorical devices are used in the poem.

 

173.
(E)

On the face of it, the poem might be about Freudian dream theory (A) or adolescent frustration (B). There is no obvious way of determining what sort of dream is implied in the first line. There seems no particular reason, however, to read the poem as referring to pollution (C) or the transience of love (D). To read this as a statement about racism requires knowledge that the poet, Langston Hughes, is one of the foremost black poets of American literature and that Hughes often wrote on the topic of racism.

 

174.
(B)

The phrase is from Tennyson's
In Memoriam A.H.H
. The phrase reflects the Victorian concern with a changing view of nature, particularly the effect of the writings of Charles Darwin. Nature is not a peaceful subject of contemplation as in the poetry of Wordsworth (A). On the other hand, although “tooth and claw” is a figure of speech, it is not a symbol as it might be in the poetry of Blake (C), Yeats (D), or Eliot (E). Tennyson refers to the literal violence of nature.

 

175.
(B)

The repetitions and the use of the second person pronoun suggest the language of ordinary conversation. Thus, they are colloquial. They are questions of style, not grammar. They do not reflect one way or the other on literacy (A), the ability to read and write. Both literate and illiterate speakers use a colloquial style in conversation. They are not characteristic features of a particular dialect (C), either geographic, ethnic, or socio-economic. The author is affirming the ideas being expressed, not ridiculing them. Thus, there is no irony (D). They are not specifically for emphasis (E). The language suggests a conversation in which the economic conditions are being discussed.

 

176.
(A)

The passage refers to the economic depression of the 1930s, during which farmers in Oklahoma and elsewhere lost their land and moved to California looking for work. The plight of the farmer was not a theme of literature describing periods (B) and (C). The socialist tone of the text dates it beyond periods (D) and (E).

 

177.
(C)

The passage reveals the influence of Marx. Specifically, it implies economic determinism, that human behavior is the product of economic factors and class conflict, that an individual's point of view depends on his place in the economic system. Thoreau (A) was a liberal individualist and anti-slavery moralist. He was interested in economic factors mainly in so far as he could be as independent as possible from them. Rousseau (B) believed that human nature was corrupted by civilization and was concerned with protecting the individual from the tyranny of the majority. He was not particularly concerned with economic factors. Freud (D) developed the theory of the unconscious and was concerned with psychology, not economics. Mill (E) was a nineteenth-century liberal particularly concerned with the rights of the individual.

 

178.
(C)

The context is Malory's fifteenth-century romance,
Le Morte D'Arthur
. The passage is from the description of the death of King Arthur near the end of the work. In context, then, it is a perfectly straightforward tragic and heroic passage from a medieval romance. It is not an example of irony (A) because there is no gap between what is said and what is meant. It is not mock epic (B) because it deals with an heroic past, not with everyday contemporary events. It is not estates satire (D) because it does not ridicule representatives of various classes and professions. Finally, it is not a parody of medieval literature (E), but rather it is the genuine item.

 

179.
(A)

Auden is referring to the myth of Daedalus. In the myth, Daedalus and his son, Icarus, escape from Crete by attaching feathers to their arms with wax. With the feathers, they are able to fly. Not heeding his father's warning, Icarus flies too near the sun, the wax melts, and he falls into the sea and drowns. Joyce refers to the myth by naming the central character in his semiautobiographical novel Stephen Dedalus. Shaw's
Man and Superman
(B) is based on the story of Don Juan. Shaw's
Pygmalion
(C) uses the Greek myth of the sculptor whose work of art comes alive for the title. O'Neill's
Mourning Becomes Electra
(D) is a modern adaptation of the
Oresteia
. Chaucer's “The Knight's Tale” (E) includes references to classical gods and goddesses. None of these works, however, refers to the myth of Daedalus.

 

180.
(C)

Auden uses examples of famous paintings to show how great artists portrayed heroic events. He finds that great artists juxtaposed tragic suffering with the indifference of the immediate context. In this case, the ploughman is busy with his work and is indifferent to the fate of Icarus. The point is not that the ploughman lacks education (A). It is his indifference, not his lack of knowledge, that determines his reaction. The image of Icarus falling from the sky may or may not be universal (B). In some respects, he does fit the pattern of the hero who reaches beyond human limitations (D). These are not, however, questions that concern Auden in this particular poem. Nor does he concern himself with the relative happiness of the ploughman in contrast to Icarus (E). The theme is the apparent insignificance of heroic action in its immediate context.

 

181.
(B)

The term “courtly love” refers to the medieval tradition of a knight's worship of a lady, expressed in feudal and religious metaphors. A good example would be the relationship depicted in Chaucer's romance,
Troylus and Criseyde
. In
Beowulf
(A), women are not the object of worship or of literary cults. In Shakespeare's
Henry IV Part
2 (C), the focus is on the relationship between Hal and Falstaff, not courtly love, although there is some parody of romance in the scenes involving Falstaff and Doll Tearsheet. It is a minor element and the relationship is the opposite of “courtly.” Milton's
Paradise Lost
(D) deals with the relationship between the sexes before and after the fall. The approach is theological, but not medieval. Pope's “The Rape of the Lock” (E) ridicules the behavior of both sexes in contemporary society.

 

182.
(D)

Allegory is an extended metaphorical narrative with characters that are personifications. Spenser's work is allegorical throughout. Chaucer's “The Reeve's Tale” (A) is a fabliau, a short, humorous, “realistic” story about a student's tricking a miller and sleeping with his wife and daughter. The characters are not personifications and the narrative is not an extended metaphor. Shakespeare's
Richard II
(B) uses metaphor and symbolism throughout, but as figures of speech. The story itself is based on historical events. Milton's
Samson Agonistes
(C) is based on the biblical story of Samson, with parallels to Milton's own blindness. Wycherley's
The Country-Wife
(E) is a Restoration comedy satirizing contemporary society. Although characters in the other works might be said to personify certain virtues and vices, only in “The Faerie Queene” is the narrative metaphorical throughout in a consistent and systematic fashion.

 

183.
(B)

The verse is iambic tetrameter. Each line consists of eight syllables alternating unstressed and stressed. Each pair of syllables constitutes a foot. The pattern of unstressed syllable followed by stressed syllable is an iamb. Since there are four of these in each line, it is iambic tetrameter. If there were ten syllables in each line, making five iambs, it would be iambic pentameter (A). If the poem had meter, but lacked rhyme, it would be blank verse (C). A line with twelve syllables, typically iambic hexameter, would be an Alexandrine (D). Alliterative poetry (E) has a varying number of syllables in each line, but typically has four stressed syllables with a repetition of the initial sound in the first three of these.

 

184.
(A)

The stanza is from “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning” by John Donne. The unusual and original comparison of the separated souls to beaten gold is typical of seventeenth-century metaphysical poetry in general, and of Donne's poetry in particular. Chaucer (C) writes in Middle English typically in iambic pentameter and uses proverbs more than similes. He tends also to write narrative rather than lyric poetry. Ben Jonson (D), a contemporary of Donne's, wrote in a plainer, more straightforward neoclassical style. Both Keats (B) and Tennyson (E), as is typical of nineteenth-century poets, use more nature imagery and focus more on evoking moods and feelings. This particular detachment, analyzing a psychological situation from a theological point of view, is particularly typical of Donne.

 

185.
(C)

In the first two lines, Shakespeare uses a phrase from the marriage service. In this context “impediments” refers to legal restrictions that might keep the marriage from taking place, such as, for example, a previous marriage that is still in effect. The word
impediment
can have other meanings [a barrier (A), a barricade (B), a stammer (E)], but none of these are relevant to this poem. The meaning here is determined by the metaphor (“marriage of true minds”) and the reference to the marriage service.

 

186.
(A)

In this context, “mark” refers to a manmade aid to navigation. A typical example from the Elizabethan period would be a pile of stones onshore by which one could determine one's position at sea. Although “mark” could have numerous other meanings, the navigational metaphor is continued throughout the quatrain.

 

187.
(B)

Shakespeare wrote his sonnets in the 1590s. Thus, they are dated at the end of the sixteenth century. The fifteenth century (A) is still, for the most part, the Middle Ages in England. Shakespeare was not born yet and no one was writing sonnets in English. Shakespeare lived on into the seventeenth century (C) and continued to write plays, but not sonnets. During the eighteenth century (D), the neoclassical period, sonnet writing went out of style altogether. The Romantic poets of the nineteenth century (E) wrote sonnets, but they tended to write about nature and they did not use the complicated metaphors characteristic of Renaissance poetry.