GRE Literature in English (REA) (28 page)

Which was written by Henry Fielding?

Which was written by D. H. Lawrence?

Which was written by E. M. Forster?

1. But if you pick up a novel, you realize immediately that infinity is just a handle to this self-same jug of a body of mine; while as for knowing, if I find my finger in the fire, I know that fire burns, with a knowledge so emphatic and vital, it leaves Nirvana merely a conjecture. Oh, yes, my body, me alive,
   knows
   , and knows intensely. And as for the sum of all knowledge, it can't be anything more than an accumulation of all the things I know in the body, and you, dear reader, know in the body.
   

2. Now a comic Romance is a comic Epic-Poem in Prose; differing from Comedy, as the serious Epic from Tragedy: its Action being more extended and comprehensive; containing a much larger Circle of Incidents, and introducing a greater Variety of Characters. It differs from the serious Romance in its Fable and Action, in this; that as in the one these are grave and solemn, so in the other they are light and ridiculous: it differs in its Characters, by introducing Persons of inferiour Rank, and consequently of inferiour Manners, whereas the grave Romance, sets the highest before us; lastly in its Sentiments and Diction; by preserving the Ludicrous instead of the Sublime.
   

3. There is one point at which the moral sense and the artistic sense lie very near together; that is in the light of the very obvious truth that the deepest quality of a work of art will always be the quality of the mind of the producer. In proportion as that intelligence is fine will the novel, the picture, the statue partake of the substance of beauty and truth. To be constituted of such elements is, to my vision, to have purpose enough. No good novel will ever proceed from a superficial mind; that seems to me an axiom which, for the artist in fiction, will cover all needful moral ground: if the youthful aspirant take it to heart it will illuminate for him many of the mysteries of “purpose.”
   

4. Fiction—if it at all aspires to be art—appeals to temperament. And in truth it must be, like painting, like music, like all art, the appeal of one temperament to all the other innumerable temperaments whose subtle and resistless power endows passing events with their true meaning, and creates the moral, the emotional atmosphere of the place and time. Such an appeal, to be effective, must be an impression conveyed through the senses; and, in fact, it cannot be made in any other way, because temperament, whether individual or collective, is not amenable to persuasion. All art, therefore, appeals primarily to the senses, and the artistic aim when expressing itself in written words must also make its appeal through the senses, if its high desire is to reach the secret spring of responsive emotions.
   

5. Yes, oh, dear, yes—the novel tells a story. That is the fundamental aspect without which it could not exist. That is the highest factor common to all novels, and I wish that it was not so, that it could be something different—melody, or perception of truth, not this low atavistic form.
   

“Ah yes, a new journal might be worth trying. There was one advertised in the
Times Literary Supplement
a little while ago. Paton or some such name the editor fellow was called. You might have a go at him, now that it doesn't seem as if any of the more established reviews have got room for your... effort. Let's see now; what's the exact title you've given it?”

Dixon looked out of the window at the fields wheeling past, bright green after a wet April. It wasn't the double-exposure effect of the last half minute's talk that had dumbfounded him, for such incidents formed the staple material of Welch colloquies; it was the prospect of reciting the title of the article he'd written. It was a perfect title, in that it crystallised the article's niggling mindlessness, its funereal parade of yawn-enforcing facts, the pseudo-light it threw upon non-problems. Dixon had read, or begun to read, dozens like it, but his own seemed worse than most in its air of being convinced of its own usefulness and significance. “In considering this strangely neglected topic,” it began. This what neglected topic? This strangely what topic? This strangely neglected what? His thinking all this without having defiled and set fire to the typescript only made him appear to himself as more of a hypocrite and fool. “Let's see,” he echoed Welch in a pretended effort of memory: “Oh yes;
The economic influence of the developments in shipbuilding techniques
,
1450 to 1485
. After all, that's what it's ...”

This passage satirizes

1. pedantic government reports.
   
2. yellow journalism.
   
3. writers who stoop to plagiarism.
   
4. trivial academic scholarship.
   
5. historians.
   

Which of the following best describes the narrative technique used in this excerpt?

1. The author uses Dixon as a kind of narrator, though in the third person; events are filtered through Dixon's consciousness by means of an inside view.
   
2. The author uses omniscient third-person narration; events are seen from the points of view of both Welch and Dixon, although we learn more about Dixon.
   
3. The author uses an objective point of view, neither commenting on nor judging events.
   
4. The author maximizes distance between Dixon and the reader, thereby reducing our sympathy for Dixon.
   
5. The author uses first-person narration in which the narrator is a primary agent in the action.
   

The author of this passage is

1. Jack Kerouac.
   
2. Woody Allen.
   
3. Joyce Cary.
   
4. Kingsley Amis.
   
5. Ken Kesey.
   

One of the chief tenets of Aestheticism (or the “Aesthetic Movement”) is that

1. any work of art is essentially utilitarian and that its “reality” must be defined by reference to objects outside the work.
   
2. art is the highest value among man's works because it is self-sufficient and has no aim other than its own perfection.
   
3. art increases in value in direct proportion to the degree to which it reflects current and redeeming social values.
   
4. art will achieve perfection when artists pay equal attention to beauty and utility.
   
5. organic form is superior to artifice because the former refers to the real world whereas the latter does not.
   

In a universe deprived of illusions and light, man feels an alien. His is an irremediable exile ... This divorce between man and his life, the actor and his setting, truly constitutes the feeling of Absurdity.

 

Works influenced by this outlook have been written by

1. Chekhov and Tolstoy.
   
2. Ibsen and Silone.
   
3. Camus and Ionesco.
   
4. Turgenev and Lermontov.
   
5. Doctorow and Malamud.
   

The term “negative capability” was introduced by

1. Dryden.
   
2. Coleridge.
   
3. Johnson.
   
4. Keats.
   
5. Hazlitt.
   

We real cool. We Left school. We

 

Lurk late. We
Strike straight. We

 

Sing sin. We
Thin gin. We

 

Jazz June. We
Die soon.

 

The author is

1. Countée Cullen.
   
2. Langston Hughes.
   
3. Gwendolyn Brooks.
   
4. Richard Wilbur.
   
5. Joyce Carol Oates.
   

From hence, ye Beauties, undeceiv'd
Know, one false step is ne‘er retriev'd,
And be with caution bold.
Not all that tempts your wand'ring eyes
And heedless hearts, is lawful prize;
Nor all, that glitters, gold.

1. Sir Walter Raleigh
   
2. Richard Lovelace
   
3. Jonathan Swift
   
4. Thomas Gray
   
5. William Blake
   

“And what in the world, my dear, did you mean by it?”—that sound, as at the touch of a spring, rang out as the first effect of Fanny's speech. It broke upon the two women's absorption with a sharpness almost equal to the smash of the crystal, for the door of the room had been opened by the Prince without their taking heed. He had apparently had time, moreover, to catch the conclusion of Fanny's act; his eyes attached themselves, through the large space allowing just there, as happened, a free view, to the shining fragments at this lady's feet. His question had been addressed to his wife, but he moved his eyes immediately afterwards to those of her visitor, whose own then held them in a manner of which neither party had been capable, doubtless, for mute penetration, since the hour spent by him in Cadogan Place on the eve of his marriage and the afternoon of Charlotte's reappearance. Something now again became possible for these communicants, under the intensity of their pressure, something that took up that tale and that might have been a redemption of pledges then exchanged.

1. Jane Austen
   
2. Edith Wharton
   
3. George Eliot
   
4. W. M. Thackeray
   
5. Henry James
   

[He] believed in the green light, the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter—tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther ... And one fine morning—

 

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

1. Melville
   
2. Dreiser
   
3. Fitzgerald
   
4. Faulkner
   
5. Porter
   

I reason, Earth is short—
And Anguish—absolute—
And many hurt,
But, what of that? ...
I reason, that in Heaven—
Somehow, it will be even—
Some new Equation, given—
But, what of that?

1. Emily Dickinson
   
2. Walt Whitman
   
3. Ezra Pound
   
4. Wallace Stevens
   
5. Dorothy Parker
   

In Dublin a week later, that would be September 19th, Neary minus his whiskers was recognized by a former pupil called Wylie, in the General Post Office contemplating from behind the statue of Cuchulainn. Neary had bared his head, as though the holy ground meant something to him. Suddenly he flung aside his hat, sprang forward, seized the dying hero by the thighs and began to dash his head against his buttocks, such as they are.

1. Jonathan Swift
   
2. James Joyce
   
3. Dylan Thomas
   
4. Samuel Beckett
   
5. J. P. Donleavy
   

She tried to go on with her letter, reminding herself that she was only an elderly woman who had got up too early in the morning and journeyed too far, that the despair creeping over her was merely her despair, her personal weakness, and that even if she got a sunstroke and went mad the rest of the world would go on. But suddenly, at the edge of her mind, Religion appeared, poor little talkative Christianity, and she knew that all its divine words from “Let there be Light” to “It is finished” only amounted to “boum.” Then she was terrified over an area larger than usual; the universe, never comprehensible to her intellect, offered no repose to her soul, the mood of the last two months took definite form at last, and she realized that she didn't want to write to her children, didn't want to communicate with anyone, not even with God.

1. D. H. Lawrence
   
2. Joseph Conrad
   
3. E. M. Forster
   
4. Virginia Woolf
   
5. Graham Greene
   

No matter: she was not happy, and never had been. Why was life so unsatisfying? Why did everything she leaned on instantly crumble into dust? ... But if somewhere there existed a strong, handsome man with a valorous, passionate and refined nature, a poet's soul in the form of an angel, a lyre with strings of bronze intoning elegiac nuptial songs to the heavens, why was it not possible that she might meet him some day? No, it would never happen! Besides, nothing was worth seeking—everything was a lie! Each smile hid a yawn of boredom, each joy a curse, each pleasure its own disgust; and the sweetest kisses only left on one's lips a hopeless longing for a higher ecstasy.

1. Zola
   
2. Proust
   
3. Flaubert
   
4. Maupassant
   
5. Anatole France
   

If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll really want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap.

1. Cheever's
   The Wapshot Chronicle
   
2. Salinger's
   The Catcher in the Rye
   
3. Roth's
   Goodbye, Columbus
   
4. Amis'
   Lucky Jim
   
5. Bellow's
   Herzog
   

O impotence of mind in body strong!
But what is strength without a double share
Of wisdom? Vast, unwieldy, burdensome,
Proudly secure, yet liable to fall
By weakest subtleties; not made to rule,
But to subserve where wisdom bears command.
God, when he gave me strength, to show withal,
How slight the gift was, hung it in my hair.

1. Everyman
   
2. Doctor Faustus
   
3. King Lear
   
4. Samson Agonistes
   
5. All for Love