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 #2 :literary Analysis
Adapted fromTimon 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 fromTimon of Athens?
Blank Verse
Poetic Conceit
Personification
Iambic Pentameter
Sprung Rhythm
Sprung Rhythm
Sprung Rhythmis 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 Verseis a poetic form composed of unrhymed lines of iambic pentameter.
Iambic pentameteris 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.
Personificationis the attribution of human qualities to inanimate objects.
APoetic Conceitis an extended metaphor that compares dissimilar objects in a surprising and imaginative manner.
Example Question #1 :literary Analysis Of British Plays
Adapted fromTimon 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?
Vladimir Nabokov
John Updike
William Faulkner
Thomas Pynchon
Ernest Hemingway
Vladimir Nabokov
"Timon of Athens" (one of the more obscure works by Shakespeare) is a key intertext in Vladimir Nabokov's 1962 novelPale Fire, the title of which was drawn from the third line of the passage in question.
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