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Test your basic knowledge |
GRE Literature: Literary Terms
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gre
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literature
Instructions:
Answer 50 questions in 15 minutes.
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Match each statement with the correct term.
Don't refresh. All questions and answers are randomly picked and ordered every time you load a test.
This is a study tool. The 3 wrong answers for each question are randomly chosen from answers to other questions. So, you might find at times the answers obvious, but you will see it re-enforces your understanding as you take the test each time.
1. A word derived from Lyly'S Euphues (1580) to characterize writing that is self-consciously laden with elaborate figures of speech. This was a popular and influential mode of speech and writing in the late sixteenth century. Example: Polonius in Hamle
Free Verse
Pathetic Fallacy
Euphuism
Georgic
2. A phrase that refers to a person or object by a single important feature of that object or person Example: 'I should have been a pair of ragged claws / Scuttling across the floors of silent seas' (TS Eliot'S 'Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock'). The cla
Litotes
In Memoriam stanza
Synecdoche
Sprung Rhythm
3. Giving human characteristics to inanimate objects
Epithalamium
Apostrophe
Personification
Ottava Rima
4. Not to be confused with pastoral poetry - which idealizes life in the countryside - georgic poems deal with people laboring in the countryside - pushing plows - raising crops - etc. Example: Virgil'S Georgics
Old English Verse
Antagonist
Georgic
Spenserian Sonnet
5. A deliberate exaggeration Example: 'Her once embattled farmers stood / And fired the shot heard round the world' (Emerson'S 'The Concord Hymn)
Hyperbole
Ottava Rima
Epithalamium
Second Person Voice
6. 7-line iambic pentameter stanza rhyming ababbcc Example: 'They Flee from Me That Sometime Did Seek: by Sir Thomas Wyatt
Bildungsroman
Rhyme Royal
First-person plural
Doggerel
7. A work that deals with the lives of people - especially shepherds - in the country or in nature Example: Marlow'S 'The Passionate Shepherd to his Love'
Second Person Voice
Anthropomorphism
Pastoral Literature
Spenserian stanza
8. Work narrated using a name or third-person pronoun (he - she - etc). Example: Most of Jane Austen'S novels - including Pride and Prejudice
First Person Voice
Synecdoche
Third Person Voice
Antagonist
9. A reference to another work of literature - person - or event Example: title of Faulkner'S novel The Sound and the Fury is an allusion to Shakespeare'S Macbeth: '...it is a tale / told by an idiot - full of sound and fury - / signifying nothing'
Masculine Rhyme
Neoclassical Unities
Allusion
Italian - or Petrarchan - Sonnet
10. 14-line poem rhyming abab cdcd efef gg Example: Shakespeare'S sonnets
Flat and Round Characters
Apostrophe
English - or Shakespearean - Sonnet
Antagonist
11. A novel - typically loosely constructed along an incident-to-incident basis - that follows the adventures of a more or less scurrilous rogue whose primary concerns are filling his belly and staying out of jail. Examples: Twain'S Huckleberry Finn; Def
Protagonist
Alexandrine
Pastoral Literature
Picaresque
12. German: 'novel of education.' It typically follows a young person over a period of years - from naivete and inexperience through the first struggles with the harsher realities and hypocrisies of the adult world. Example: A Portrait of the Artist as a
Sestina
Terza Rima
Anthropomorphism
Bildungsroman
13. A figure of speech in which one directly addresses an absent or imaginary person - or some abstraction Example: 'Busy old fool - unruly sun - / Why does thou thus - / Through windows - and through curtains call on us?' (John Donne'S 'The Sun Rising')
Apostrophe
Allusion
Skeltonics
Decorum
14. 9-line stanza. First 8 are iambic pentameter. The final line - in iambic hexameter - is an alexandrine. Rhyme scheme: ababbcbcc Example: The Faerie Queene - by Edmund Spenser
Epithalamium
Pastoral Elegy
Spenserian stanza
Homeric Epithet
15. A pause or break within a line of poetry - esp. in Old English verse.
Pastoral Elegy
Terza Rima
Caesura
Spenserian stanza
16. Four lines of iambic tetrameter rhyming abba Example: can be found in a stanza of Tennyson'S 'In Memoriam A.H.H.'
Protagonist
Free Verse
In Memoriam stanza
Hudibrastic
17. 19-line form rhyming aba aba aba aba aba abaa. Repetition of first and third lines throughout: aba ab1 ab3 ab1 ab3 ab13 Example: Dylan Thomas'S 'Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night'
Villanelle
Ottava Rima
Alexandrine
Euphuism
18. Line of iambic hexameter Example: 'That like a wounded snake - drags its slow length along' (Pope'S 'Essay on Criticism')
Skeltonics
Hyperbole
Alexandrine
Old English Verse
19. A derogatory term used to describe poetry whose subject is trite and whose rhythm and sounds are monotonously heavy-handed.
Picaresque
Terza Rima
Apostrophe
Doggerel
20. The repetition of initial consonant sounds Example: 'I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet' (Robert Frost 'Acquainted with the Night')
Rhyme Royal
Apostrophe
Alexandrine
Alliteration
21. Lines rhymed by their final two syllables. Properly - the penultimate syllables are stressed and the final syllables are unstressed. Example: Shakespeare'S Sonnet 20
Feminine Rhyme
Epithalamium
Second Person Voice
Georgic
22. 39-line poem of six stanzas of six lines each and a final stanza (called an envoi) of three lines. Rhyme plays no part in the sestina. Instead - one of six words is used as the end word of each of the poem'S lines according to a fixed pattern. Examp
Villanelle
Neoclassical Unities
Homeric Epithet
Sestina
23. A repeated descriptive phrase - as found in Homer'S epics. Example: 'The wine dark sea'
Homeric Epithet
Euphuism
Terza Rima
Masculine Rhyme
24. Used in folk ballad. Length determined by stressed syllables only. Rhyme scheme: abcb Example: 'The Rime of the Ancient Mariner' by Coleridge
Ballad stanza
Euphuism
First-person plural
Hamartia
25. A term for a phrase that refers to a person or object by a single important feature of the person - Example: 'The pen is mightier than the sword' - pen=written word; sword=violent acts
Metonymy
Sprung Rhythm
Terza Rima
Picaresque
26. The character who works against the protagonist in the story Example: Iago in Othello
Pastoral Elegy
Terza Rima
Neoclassical Unities
Antagonist
27. A term referring to phrases that suggest an interplay of senses. Example: 'Hot pink' and 'golden tones'
Third Person Voice
Blank Verse
Synaesthesia
Alliteration
28. A form of humorous poetry - using very short - rhymed lines and a pronounced rhythm - made popular by John Skelton. The only real difference between a skeltonic and doggerel is the quality of the though expressed. Example: 'How the Doughty Duke of Al
Homeric Epithet
Alexandrine
Rhyme Royal
Skeltonics
29. A poem written to celebrate a wedding. Example: Edmund Spenser'S 'Epithalamium'
Alexandrine
Caesura
English - or Shakespearean - Sonnet
Epithalamium
30. 14-line poem rhyming abbaabba cdecde. First 8 lines called octave. Last six called sestet. Example: John Milton'S 'When I Consider How My Light Is Spent'
Italian - or Petrarchan - Sonnet
Terza Rima
Hudibrastic
Rhyme Royal
31. One of the neoclassical principles of drama - calling for a relation of style to content in the speech of dramatic characters. For example - a character'S speech must be styled according to her social station - and in accordance to the situation. Exa
Old English Verse
Decorum
Antagonist
Metonymy
32. Verse characterized by the internal alliteration of lines and a strong midline pause called a caesura Example: Beowulf
Old English Verse
Pathetic Fallacy
Terza Rima
Hamartia
33. The principal character in a work of fiction Example: Othello in Othello
Protagonist
Hudibrastic
Free Verse
Anthropomorphism
34. Narrator speaks using pronoun 'you -' thereby making reader an active participant in the work. Rarely used.
Personification
Neoclassical Unities
Second Person Voice
Blank Verse
35. Work narrated using pronoun 'I.' Narrator can be protagonist - or an omniscient speaker who is not even a clear character in the story. Example: Edgar Allan Poe'S 'The Tell-Tale Heart'
Picaresque
Ballad stanza
First Person Voice
Bildungsroman
36. Narrator uses pronoun 'we.' This voice forces the reader to concentrate more on what the story is about than who is telling it.
Caesura
Old English Verse
First-person plural
Synecdoche
37. A term coined by John Ruskin. It refers to ascribing emotion and agency to inanimate objects Example: Ruskin'S famous line: 'The cruel crawling foam.'
Sprung Rhythm
Hudibrastic
Terza Rima
Pathetic Fallacy
38. Verse form that consists of 3-line stanzas with interlocking rhyme scheme: aba bcb cdc ded - etc Example: Dante'S Divine Comedy
Spenserian Sonnet
Terza Rima
First-person plural
Hyperbole
39. A term coined by Aristotle to describe some error or frailty in character which brings about misfortune in Greek tragedy. Roughly equivalent to a tragic flaw - except that hamartia implies fate. Example: Oedipus; Macbeth
Spenserian stanza
Synecdoche
Hamartia
First-person plural
40. 8-line stanza (usually iambic pentameter) rhyming abababcc Example: Lord Byron'S Don Juan
Masculine Rhyme
Flat and Round Characters
Epithalamium
Ottava Rima
41. Unrhymed iambic pentameter Example: Alfred Lord Tennyson'S 'Ulysses'; John Milton'S Paradise Lost
Villanelle
Ottava Rima
Pathetic Fallacy
Blank Verse
42. A rhyme ending on the final stressed syllable (aka regular old rhyme) Example: 'Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening' by Robert Frost
In Memoriam stanza
Caesura
Masculine Rhyme
Sprung Rhythm
43. Unrhymed verse without a strict meter Example: 'Song of Myself' by Walt Whitman
In Memoriam stanza
Free Verse
Doggerel
Sprung Rhythm
44. Understatement for rhetorical effect (especially when expressing an affirmative by negating its contrary - 'a citizen of no ordinary city' (Paul in the book of Acts)
Blank Verse
Sprung Rhythm
Litotes
Masculine Rhyme
45. The rhythm created and used in the 19th century by Gerard Manley Hopkins. Like Old English verse - sprung rhythm fits a varying number of unstressed syllables in a line - only stresses count in scansion Example: 'Pied Beauty' by Hopkins
Euphuism
Sprung Rhythm
Alliteration
Pastoral Literature
46. Terms coined by EM Forster to describe characters built around a single dominant trait (flat characters) - and those shaded and developed with greater psychological complexity (round characters). Example of flat: Mrs Micawber in Dickens' David Copper
Flat and Round Characters
Allusion
Italian - or Petrarchan - Sonnet
Free Verse
47. Aristotle'S principles of dramatic structure applied (perhaps too rigidly) in neoclassical drama of the 17th 18th centuries. The essential unities are time - place - and action: To observe unity of time - a work should take place within the span of o
Masculine Rhyme
Feminine Rhyme
Synecdoche
Neoclassical Unities
48. Couplets of rhymed tetrameter lines (Samuel Butler) or to any deliberate - humorous - ill-rhythmed - ill-rhymed couplets. From Butler'S Hudibras
Hyperbole
Hudibrastic
Italian - or Petrarchan - Sonnet
Pastoral Elegy
49. The assigning of human attributes - such as emotions or physical characteristics - to nonhumans - most often plants and animals. It differs from personification in that it is an intrinsic premise and an ongoing pattern applied to a nonhuman character
Caesura
Pastoral Literature
Alliteration
Anthropomorphism
50. A type of poem that takes the form of an elegy (a lament for the dead) sung by a shepherd. The shepherd who sings the elegy is a stand-in for the poet - and the elegy is for another poet Example: Milton'S 'Lycidas' and Shelley'S 'Adonais' (lament for
Old English Verse
Spenserian Sonnet
Blank Verse
Pastoral Elegy