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