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Test your basic knowledge |
GRE Literature: Literary Terms
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Subjects
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gre
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literature
Instructions:
Answer 50 questions in 15 minutes.
If you are not ready to take this test, you can
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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 rhyme ending on the final stressed syllable (aka regular old rhyme) Example: 'Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening' by Robert Frost
Spenserian Sonnet
Masculine Rhyme
Spenserian stanza
Alliteration
2. 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
Third Person Voice
Caesura
Personification
Sestina
3. 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
Georgic
Sprung Rhythm
Protagonist
Spenserian stanza
4. A deliberate exaggeration Example: 'Her once embattled farmers stood / And fired the shot heard round the world' (Emerson'S 'The Concord Hymn)
Hyperbole
First Person Voice
Feminine Rhyme
Ballad stanza
5. 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
Picaresque
Ottava Rima
Personification
Allusion
6. 14-line poem rhyming abab bcbc cdcd ee Example: 'One Day I Wrote Her Name Upon the Strand' by Edmund Spenser
Spenserian Sonnet
Hamartia
Third Person Voice
Masculine Rhyme
7. Unrhymed iambic pentameter Example: Alfred Lord Tennyson'S 'Ulysses'; John Milton'S Paradise Lost
Epithalamium
Blank Verse
Free Verse
Antagonist
8. Verse characterized by the internal alliteration of lines and a strong midline pause called a caesura Example: Beowulf
Old English Verse
Doggerel
Bildungsroman
Personification
9. A repeated descriptive phrase - as found in Homer'S epics. Example: 'The wine dark sea'
Caesura
Apostrophe
Homeric Epithet
Pathetic Fallacy
10. 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
Synecdoche
Hamartia
Flat and Round Characters
Caesura
11. 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'
Pastoral Literature
Litotes
Alliteration
Villanelle
12. 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
Personification
Anthropomorphism
Georgic
Alliteration
13. 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.'
Pathetic Fallacy
Pastoral Elegy
Villanelle
Sestina
14. 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
Flat and Round Characters
Pastoral Elegy
Euphuism
Apostrophe
15. Narrator uses pronoun 'we.' This voice forces the reader to concentrate more on what the story is about than who is telling it.
First-person plural
Apostrophe
Neoclassical Unities
Villanelle
16. Work narrated using a name or third-person pronoun (he - she - etc). Example: Most of Jane Austen'S novels - including Pride and Prejudice
Decorum
Antagonist
Personification
Third Person Voice
17. The repetition of initial consonant sounds Example: 'I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet' (Robert Frost 'Acquainted with the Night')
Alliteration
Ottava Rima
Villanelle
Hamartia
18. A poem written to celebrate a wedding. Example: Edmund Spenser'S 'Epithalamium'
Neoclassical Unities
Epithalamium
Pastoral Elegy
Homeric Epithet
19. Couplets of rhymed tetrameter lines (Samuel Butler) or to any deliberate - humorous - ill-rhythmed - ill-rhymed couplets. From Butler'S Hudibras
Metonymy
Hudibrastic
Spenserian Sonnet
Sprung Rhythm
20. 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
Sprung Rhythm
Bildungsroman
Flat and Round Characters
Third Person Voice
21. A term referring to phrases that suggest an interplay of senses. Example: 'Hot pink' and 'golden tones'
Terza Rima
Anthropomorphism
Hyperbole
Synaesthesia
22. 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)
Spenserian stanza
Synecdoche
Litotes
English - or Shakespearean - Sonnet
23. Lines rhymed by their final two syllables. Properly - the penultimate syllables are stressed and the final syllables are unstressed. Example: Shakespeare'S Sonnet 20
Sprung Rhythm
Masculine Rhyme
Italian - or Petrarchan - Sonnet
Feminine Rhyme
24. Line of iambic hexameter Example: 'That like a wounded snake - drags its slow length along' (Pope'S 'Essay on Criticism')
Skeltonics
Alexandrine
Antagonist
Protagonist
25. Used in folk ballad. Length determined by stressed syllables only. Rhyme scheme: abcb Example: 'The Rime of the Ancient Mariner' by Coleridge
Allusion
First-person plural
Ballad stanza
Apostrophe
26. 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')
Hudibrastic
Protagonist
Epithalamium
Apostrophe
27. 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
Blank Verse
Doggerel
Synecdoche
Bildungsroman
28. Giving human characteristics to inanimate objects
In Memoriam stanza
Personification
Protagonist
Sestina
29. 7-line iambic pentameter stanza rhyming ababbcc Example: 'They Flee from Me That Sometime Did Seek: by Sir Thomas Wyatt
Second Person Voice
Blank Verse
Rhyme Royal
Old English Verse
30. 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'
Feminine Rhyme
Terza Rima
First Person Voice
Anthropomorphism
31. 14-line poem rhyming abab cdcd efef gg Example: Shakespeare'S sonnets
Terza Rima
Rhyme Royal
Feminine Rhyme
English - or Shakespearean - Sonnet
32. 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'
Georgic
Protagonist
Italian - or Petrarchan - Sonnet
Antagonist
33. Narrator speaks using pronoun 'you -' thereby making reader an active participant in the work. Rarely used.
Allusion
Decorum
Bildungsroman
Second Person Voice
34. 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
Second Person Voice
Euphuism
Terza Rima
Doggerel
35. A pause or break within a line of poetry - esp. in Old English verse.
Hamartia
Rhyme Royal
Caesura
Alexandrine
36. Verse form that consists of 3-line stanzas with interlocking rhyme scheme: aba bcb cdc ded - etc Example: Dante'S Divine Comedy
Terza Rima
In Memoriam stanza
Hamartia
Apostrophe
37. Four lines of iambic tetrameter rhyming abba Example: can be found in a stanza of Tennyson'S 'In Memoriam A.H.H.'
Old English Verse
Terza Rima
Ottava Rima
In Memoriam stanza
38. 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
Neoclassical Unities
Caesura
Hamartia
Litotes
39. Unrhymed verse without a strict meter Example: 'Song of Myself' by Walt Whitman
English - or Shakespearean - Sonnet
Sestina
Free Verse
Picaresque
40. The character who works against the protagonist in the story Example: Iago in Othello
Antagonist
Georgic
Euphuism
Villanelle
41. 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
Third Person Voice
Synecdoche
Epithalamium
Metonymy
42. 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
Personification
Feminine Rhyme
Decorum
Sestina
43. 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
Sprung Rhythm
Rhyme Royal
First Person Voice
Anthropomorphism
44. The principal character in a work of fiction Example: Othello in Othello
Allusion
Protagonist
First Person Voice
Caesura
45. 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
Skeltonics
Alliteration
Metonymy
Alexandrine
46. 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
Second Person Voice
Bildungsroman
Decorum
Spenserian stanza
47. 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'
Homeric Epithet
Old English Verse
Villanelle
Feminine Rhyme
48. 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'
Hudibrastic
Second Person Voice
Allusion
First Person Voice
49. 8-line stanza (usually iambic pentameter) rhyming abababcc Example: Lord Byron'S Don Juan
Ottava Rima
Euphuism
Villanelle
Feminine Rhyme
50. A derogatory term used to describe poetry whose subject is trite and whose rhythm and sounds are monotonously heavy-handed.
Allusion
Caesura
Doggerel
Sprung Rhythm