一个ll SAT II Literature Resources
Example Questions
Example Question #1 :Genre
1 Farewell, thou child of my right hand, and joy;
2 My sin was too much hope of thee, loved boy.
3 Seven years thou wert lent to me, and I thee pay,
4 Exacted by thy fate, on the just day.
5 Oh, could I lose all father now! For why
6 Will man lament the state he should envy?
7 To have so soon 'scaped world's and flesh's rage,
8 And if no other misery, yet age!
9 Rest in soft peace, and, asked, say, "Here doth lie
10 Ben Jonson his best piece of poetry,
11 For whose sake, henceforth, all his vows be such
12 As what he loves may never like too much."
This poem is a(n)__________.
sonnet
epic poem
elegy
conceit
pastoral poem
elegy
This early-seventeenth-century poem, "On my First Son," by the Englishman, Ben Jonson, is an elegy, as it commemorates a dead person.
Example Question #1 :Genre, Style, Tone, Mood, And Other Literary Features
1 Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
2你更可爱、更温和的:
3 Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
4 And summer’s lease hath all too short a date:
5 Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
6 And often is his gold complexion dimm’d;
7 And every fair from fair sometime declines,
8 By chance, or nature’s changing course untrimm’d;
9 But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
10也失去了拥有ion of that fair thou ow’st,
11 Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
12 When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st;
13 So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
14 So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
This poem is a(n) __________.
ballad
elegy
sonnet
pastoral
epic
sonnet
This poem is a sonnet. Specifically, it is a Shakespearean or an English sonnet, characterized by 14 lines written in iambic pentameter, concluding with a rhyming couplet.
Example Question #2 :Genre: Seventeenth Century Poetry
Thy glass will show thee how thy beauties wear
1Thy glass will show thee how thy beauties wear,
2Thy dial how thy precious minutes waste;
3The vacant leaves thy mind’s impr'nt will bear,
4一个nd of this book this learning mayst thou taste:
5The wrinkles which thy glass will truly show
6Of mouthèd graves will give thee memory;
7Thou by thy dial’s shady stealth mayst know
8Time’s thievish progress to eternity.
9Look what thy memory cannot contain,
10Commit to these waste blanks, and thou shalt find
11Those children nursed, delivered from thy brain,
12To take a new acquaintance of thy mind.
13These offices, so oft as thou wilt look,
14Shall profit thee and much enrich thy book.
(1609)
This poem is a(n)__________.
Petrarchan Sonnet
挽歌
English (Shakespearean) Sonnet
Epic
Ballad
English (Shakespearean) Sonnet
This poem is an English (Shakespearean) Sonnet, which has 14 lines written in iambic pentameter and has the rhyme scheme a-b-a-b, c-d-c-d, e-f-e-f, g-g.
(Passage adapted from "Sonnet 77" by William Shakespeare)
Example Question #4 :Genre: Seventeenth Century Poetry
In pious times, e’r Priest-craft did begin,
Before Polygamy was made a Sin;
When Man on many multipli’d his kind,
E’r one to one was cursedly confin’d,
When Nature prompted and no Law deni’d (5)
Promiscuous Use of Concubine and Bride;
Then Israel’s Monarch, after Heavens own heart,
His vigorous warmth did, variously, impart
To Wives and Slaves: And, wide as his Command,
Scatter’d his Maker’s Image through the Land. (10)
(1681)
What genre of poem is this?
Satire
Kunstlerroman
Tragedy
Comedy of errors
Bildungsroman
Satire
Satire is a genre in which irony, sarcasm, humor, and parody are used to make a broader social or political point, and this is the genre we have here. The author’s use of irony and exaggeration of the benefits of polygamy are used later in the poem to make a broader point about the author’s current political climate. Bildungsromans are coming-of-age stories (e.g. J.D. Salinger’sThe Catcher in the Ryeor Charles Dickens’Great Expectations). Similarly, Kunstlerromans are coming-of-age stories specifically about artists or young people with artistic sensibilities (e.g. James Joyce’sPortrait of the Artist as a Young Man). A comedy of errors is a lighthearted and often satirical work of literature that usually involves farcical situations and cases of mistaken identity or similar misunderstanding (e.g. Shakespeare’s一个Midsummer Night’s Dream).
Passage adapted from “Absalom and Achitophel,” by John Dryden (1681)
Example Question #2 :Genre
1O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done,
2The ship has weather'd every rack, the prize we sought is won,
3The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
4While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring;
5But O heart! heart! heart!
6O the bleeding drops of red,
7Where on the deck my Captain lies,
8Fallen cold and dead.
(1865)
What type of poem is this?
Eulogy
Ode
挽歌
Epic
Haiku
挽歌
Though similar in function, the elegy is distinct from the epitaph, the ode, and the eulogy: the epitaph is very brief; the ode solely exalts; and the eulogy is most often written in formal prose. Also, the elegy is typically written in response to the death of a person.
(Passage adapted from "O Captain! My Captain!" by Walt Whitman, ln. 1-8, 1865)
Example Question #1 :Genre: Eighteenth And Nineteenth Century Poetry
'Hard by yon Wood, now frowning as in Scorn,
'Mutt'ring his wayward Fancies he wou'd rove,
'Now drooping, woeful wan, like one forlorn,
'Or craz'd with Care, or cross'd in hopeless Love.
'One morn I miss'd him on the custom'd Hill, (5)
'Along the Heath, and near his fav'rite Tree;
'Another came; nor yet beside the Rill,
'Nor up the Lawn, nor at the Wood was he.
'The next with Dirges due in sad Array
'Slow thro' the Church-way Path we saw him born. (10)
'Approach and read (for thou canst read) the Lay,
'Grav'd on the Stone beneath yon aged Thorn.
(1751)
What genre of poem is this?
挽歌
Ode
Pantoum
Sonnet
Villanelle
挽歌
Based on the mournful tone, the narrative content, and the use of words like “Dirges,” we can assume that this is an elegiac poem. An ode is a lyric poem expressing love for someone or something, and a sonnet is generally a 14-line love poem. A villanelle is a 19-line poem that follows specific rules of repeating lines, and a pantoum is a similar poetic form.
Excerpt adapted from Thomas Gray’s挽歌Written in a Country Churchyard.(1751)
Example Question #3 :Genre
On either side the river lie
Long fields of barley and of rye,
That clothe the wold and meet the sky;
一个nd thro' the field the road runs by
To many-tower'd Camelot; (5)
一个nd up and down the people go,
Gazing where the lilies blow
Round an island there below,
The island of Shalott.
(1833)
Based on these lines, in what genre is this poem written?
Pastoral
Bildungsroman
Encomium
Confessional
挽歌
Pastoral
The poem is idealizing rural, agrarian life in these lines. This is a classic feature of a pastoral. An elegy is a poem mourning someone’s death. An encomium is a speech that enthusiastically and formally praises someone or something. Bildungsromans are coming-of-age stories (e.g. J.D. Salinger’sThe Catcher in the Rye(1951)or Charles Dickens’Great Expectations(1861)).
Passage adapted from “The Lady of Shalott,”Poems by Alfred Tennyson(1833).
Example Question #2 :Genre
This poem contains elements of what genre?
Pastoral
Burlesque
Shakespearean sonnet
Gothic
Parody
Pastoral
This poem contains strong elements of the pastoral genre. Pastoral poetry or literature takes as its subject matter rural life. Shepherds are often the main characters, and the setting is usually the countryside or a forest. In addition, these elements are idealized in pastoral; rural life is presented as being perfect, peaceful, and blissful--never gritty realism, etc.
Passage adapted from John Keats' "Ode on a Grecian Urn" (1819)
Example Question #51 :Extrapolating From The Passage
1 Two households, both alike in dignity,
在公平的维罗纳,我们把场景,
From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,
Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.
5 From forth the fatal loins of these two foes
一个pair of star-cross'd lovers take their life;
Whose misadventured piteous overthrows
Do with their death bury their parents' strife.
9 The fearful passage of their death-mark'd love,
一个nd the continuance of their parents' rage,
Which, but their children's end, nought could remove,
Is now the two hours' traffic of our stage;
13 The which if you with patient ears attend,
What here shall miss, our toil shall strive to mend.
(1595)
Judging from the plot summary contained in lines 1-11, the genre of the story as a whole is most likely________________.
didactic
comedy
tragedy
sonnet
satire
tragedy
The broadest definition of the genre "tragedy" is that it is a story that ends unhappily. It is clear that this story ends unhappily because the two innocent lovers die at the end. Another major feature of tragedy as a genre is that the unhappy end is brought about by a character flaw in one or more characters. In this case, the two households' hatred of each other brings about the tragic end. The genre of the play from which this passage is taken is therefore clearly tragedy.
Passage adapted from William Shakespeare'sRomeo and Juliet(1595).
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