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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 derogatory term used to describe poetry whose subject is trite and whose rhythm and sounds are monotonously heavy-handed.
Hyperbole
Skeltonics
Pastoral Elegy
Doggerel
2. 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
Caesura
First-person plural
Pastoral Elegy
Apostrophe
3. 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
Hudibrastic
Decorum
English - or Shakespearean - Sonnet
Alexandrine
4. 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.'
Ballad stanza
Synecdoche
Pathetic Fallacy
Ottava Rima
5. 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
Skeltonics
Pathetic Fallacy
Flat and Round Characters
6. 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
Neoclassical Unities
Sestina
Allusion
Free Verse
7. 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'
Anthropomorphism
Epithalamium
Villanelle
Allusion
8. 14-line poem rhyming abab bcbc cdcd ee Example: 'One Day I Wrote Her Name Upon the Strand' by Edmund Spenser
Bildungsroman
Spenserian Sonnet
Second Person Voice
Villanelle
9. 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
Caesura
Synecdoche
Picaresque
First Person Voice
10. 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'
Blank Verse
Euphuism
Alliteration
Pastoral Literature
11. 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'
Litotes
Bildungsroman
Allusion
Villanelle
12. 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
First Person Voice
Hyperbole
Rhyme Royal
13. 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
Italian - or Petrarchan - Sonnet
Antagonist
Synaesthesia
Euphuism
14. 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)
Allusion
Italian - or Petrarchan - Sonnet
Litotes
Epithalamium
15. 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
English - or Shakespearean - Sonnet
Decorum
Georgic
Neoclassical Unities
16. Couplets of rhymed tetrameter lines (Samuel Butler) or to any deliberate - humorous - ill-rhythmed - ill-rhymed couplets. From Butler'S Hudibras
Apostrophe
Hudibrastic
Synecdoche
Doggerel
17. Line of iambic hexameter Example: 'That like a wounded snake - drags its slow length along' (Pope'S 'Essay on Criticism')
Alliteration
Alexandrine
Free Verse
Ottava Rima
18. 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'
First Person Voice
English - or Shakespearean - Sonnet
Litotes
Alexandrine
19. 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
Sprung Rhythm
Third Person Voice
Bildungsroman
Pastoral Literature
20. 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
Synecdoche
Metonymy
Spenserian Sonnet
First Person Voice
21. Unrhymed iambic pentameter Example: Alfred Lord Tennyson'S 'Ulysses'; John Milton'S Paradise Lost
Blank Verse
Pastoral Literature
Doggerel
In Memoriam stanza
22. Unrhymed verse without a strict meter Example: 'Song of Myself' by Walt Whitman
Old English Verse
Sprung Rhythm
Protagonist
Free Verse
23. A pause or break within a line of poetry - esp. in Old English verse.
Litotes
Ballad stanza
Caesura
Italian - or Petrarchan - Sonnet
24. Narrator speaks using pronoun 'you -' thereby making reader an active participant in the work. Rarely used.
Flat and Round Characters
Second Person Voice
Decorum
English - or Shakespearean - Sonnet
25. Work narrated using a name or third-person pronoun (he - she - etc). Example: Most of Jane Austen'S novels - including Pride and Prejudice
Third Person Voice
Epithalamium
Old English Verse
Ottava Rima
26. 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
Decorum
Alliteration
Anthropomorphism
Sprung Rhythm
27. 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
Rhyme Royal
Spenserian stanza
Synaesthesia
Caesura
28. 14-line poem rhyming abab cdcd efef gg Example: Shakespeare'S sonnets
English - or Shakespearean - Sonnet
Hamartia
Flat and Round Characters
Hudibrastic
29. 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
Georgic
Villanelle
Epithalamium
Euphuism
30. 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
Spenserian Sonnet
Villanelle
Terza Rima
Sprung Rhythm
31. The character who works against the protagonist in the story Example: Iago in Othello
Ottava Rima
Feminine Rhyme
First Person Voice
Antagonist
32. Giving human characteristics to inanimate objects
Synecdoche
Personification
Neoclassical Unities
Euphuism
33. 7-line iambic pentameter stanza rhyming ababbcc Example: 'They Flee from Me That Sometime Did Seek: by Sir Thomas Wyatt
Decorum
Terza Rima
Skeltonics
Rhyme Royal
34. Lines rhymed by their final two syllables. Properly - the penultimate syllables are stressed and the final syllables are unstressed. Example: Shakespeare'S Sonnet 20
Skeltonics
Villanelle
Feminine Rhyme
Pathetic Fallacy
35. Four lines of iambic tetrameter rhyming abba Example: can be found in a stanza of Tennyson'S 'In Memoriam A.H.H.'
Euphuism
Apostrophe
Sprung Rhythm
In Memoriam stanza
36. 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
Pathetic Fallacy
Hamartia
Bildungsroman
Italian - or Petrarchan - Sonnet
37. 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
Euphuism
Hamartia
Hudibrastic
Flat and Round Characters
38. 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')
Alexandrine
Alliteration
Rhyme Royal
Apostrophe
39. Verse form that consists of 3-line stanzas with interlocking rhyme scheme: aba bcb cdc ded - etc Example: Dante'S Divine Comedy
First-person plural
Personification
In Memoriam stanza
Terza Rima
40. 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
Caesura
Metonymy
Synecdoche
Pastoral Literature
41. The repetition of initial consonant sounds Example: 'I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet' (Robert Frost 'Acquainted with the Night')
Alliteration
Personification
Spenserian stanza
Free Verse
42. Narrator uses pronoun 'we.' This voice forces the reader to concentrate more on what the story is about than who is telling it.
Picaresque
Alliteration
First-person plural
Spenserian stanza
43. A deliberate exaggeration Example: 'Her once embattled farmers stood / And fired the shot heard round the world' (Emerson'S 'The Concord Hymn)
Allusion
Hyperbole
Rhyme Royal
Flat and Round Characters
44. Used in folk ballad. Length determined by stressed syllables only. Rhyme scheme: abcb Example: 'The Rime of the Ancient Mariner' by Coleridge
Decorum
Ballad stanza
Pathetic Fallacy
Masculine Rhyme
45. A term referring to phrases that suggest an interplay of senses. Example: 'Hot pink' and 'golden tones'
Synaesthesia
Epithalamium
Ottava Rima
First-person plural
46. A poem written to celebrate a wedding. Example: Edmund Spenser'S 'Epithalamium'
Ottava Rima
Euphuism
First Person Voice
Epithalamium
47. Verse characterized by the internal alliteration of lines and a strong midline pause called a caesura Example: Beowulf
Doggerel
Feminine Rhyme
Rhyme Royal
Old English Verse
48. A repeated descriptive phrase - as found in Homer'S epics. Example: 'The wine dark sea'
Homeric Epithet
Anthropomorphism
Pastoral Literature
Flat and Round Characters
49. The principal character in a work of fiction Example: Othello in Othello
Bildungsroman
Pastoral Elegy
Alliteration
Protagonist
50. A rhyme ending on the final stressed syllable (aka regular old rhyme) Example: 'Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening' by Robert Frost
Flat and Round Characters
Masculine Rhyme
Allusion
Doggerel