GRE Literature in English (REA) (44 page)

The “she” (line 1) in this poem is

1. the poet's daughter.
   
2. a murderess.
   
3. a political prisoner.
   
4. a temptress.
   
5. the poet's wife.
   

The poem contrasts the

1. woman before she became embittered, to the time afterward.
   
2. poet's idealization of the woman and her true nature.
   
3. “sea-borne” bird to the “gray gull.”
   
4. “beauty of her countryside” to the “lofty rock.”
   
5. “popular enmity” to the “little patience” of her youth.
   

The poem was written by

1. Wallace Stevens.
   
2. Gertrude Stein.
   
3. John Keats.
   
4. William Yeats.
   
5. Robert Frost.
   

I fretted the other night at the hotel at the stranger who broke into my chamber after midnight, claiming to share it. But after his lamp had smoked the chamber full and I had turned round to the wall in despair, the man blew out his lamp, knelt down at his bedside, and made in low whisper a long earnest prayer. Then was the relation entirely changed between us. I fretted no more, but respected and liked him.

Which of the following passages was also written by the author of the passage quoted above?

1. Yesterday I weeded out violets from the iris bed. The iris was being choked by thick bunches of roots, so much like fruit under the earth. I found one single very fragrant violet and some small autumn crocuses.
   

2. I had a couple of close ones during this show. On the way in, my platoon was evidently silhouetted against the night sky, and was fired on four times at a range of maybe 300 yards by an eighty-eight.
   

3. When summer opens, I see how fast it matures, and fear it will be short; but after the heats of July and August, I am reconciled, like one who has had his swing, to the cool of autumn. So will it be with the coming of death.
   

4. While taking my noon walk today, I had more morbid thoughts. What is it about death that bothers me so much? Probably the hours. Melnick says the soul is immortal and lives on after the body drops away, but if my soul exists without my body I am convinced all my clothes will be too loose-fitting.
   

5. As the least drop of wine tinges the whole goblet, so the least particle of truth colors our whole life. It is never isolated, or simply added as treasure to our stock. When any real progress is made, we unlearn and learn anew what we thought we knew before.
   

The author of the initial passage quoted above is

1. Henry David Thoreau.
   
2. Ralph Waldo Emerson.
   
3. Oliver Wendell Holmes.
   
4. Francis Parkman.
   
5. William Byrd.
   

But sires, by cause I am a burel man,
At my biginning first I you beseeche
Have me excused of my rude speeche.
I lerned nevere retorike, certain:
Thing that I speke it moot be bare and plain;

The character speaking in this Chaucer tale is

1. the Knight.
   
2. Chanticleer.
   
3. the Miller.
   
4. the Franklin.
   
5. the Friar.
   

Which of the following has two syllables when the lines are properly read aloud?

1. rude (line 3)
   
2. moot (line 5)
   
3. bare (line 5)
   
4. excused (line 3)
   
5. speke (line 5)
   

The word “burel” (line 1) may best be interpreted as meaning

1. slovenly.
   
2. pugnacious.
   
3. uneducated.
   
4. sophisticated.
   
5. brutal.
   

PEREGRINE

SIR POLITIC

PEREGRINE

The “gentleman” referred to here is

1. Candide.
   
2. Corbaccio.
   
3. Peregrine.
   
4. Shylock.
   
5. Ernest.
   

The play from which this excerpt is drawn is entitled

1. The Duchess of Malfi.
   
2. Volpone
   .
   
3. Everyman
   .
   
4. Rasselas
   .
   
5. The Secular Masque.
   

What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba,
That he should weep for her? What would he do,
Had he the motive and the cue for passion
That I have? He would drown the stage with tears
And cleave the general ear with horrid speech;
Make mad the guilty and appal the free,
Confound the ignorant, and amaze indeed
The very faculties of eyes and ears.

 

The speaker is

1. Coriolanus.
   
2. Miranda.
   
3. Antony.
   
4. Paulina.
   
5. Hamlet.
   

My worthy booksellers and friends, Messieurs Dilly in the Poultry, at whose hospitable and well-covered table I have seen a greater number of literary men than at any other, except that of Sir Joshua Reynolds, had invited me to meet Mr. Wilkes.

1. Pepys
   
2. Johnson
   
3. Boswell
   
4. Franklin
   
5. Burke
   

The commonwealth of learning is not at this time without master-builders, whose mighty designs in advancing the sciences will leave lasting monuments to the admiration of posterity: but every one must not hope to be a Boyle or a Sydenham; and in an age that produces such masters as the great Huygenius, and the incomparable Mr. Newton.

1. Pope
   
2. Locke
   
3. Ruskin
   
4. Burke
   
5. Smith
   

Everyone will be conscious of a likeness here to Wordsworth; and if Wordsworth did great things with this nobly plain manner, we must remember, what indeed he himself would always have been forward to acknowledge, that Burns used it before him.

1. Coleridge
   
2. Goethe
   
3. Dryden
   
4. Newman
   
5. Arnold
   

But we may agree to all this, and yet strongly dissent from the assumption that literature alone is competent to supply this knowledge. After having learnt all that Greek, Roman, and Eastern antiquity have thought and said, and all that modern literature has to tell us, it is not self-evident that we have laid a sufficiently broad and deep foundation...

1. Wilde's
   The Critic as Artist
   
2. Pater's
   The Renaissance
   
3. Arnold's
   Preface to Poems
   
4. Huxley's
   Science and Culture
   
5. Lawrence's
   Etruscan Places
   

What we mean by “aristocracy” is merely the richer part of the community, that live in the tallest houses, drive real carriages, (not “kerridges,”) ked-glove their hands, and French-bonnet their ladies' heads, give parties where the persons who call them by the above title are not invited, and have a provokingly easy way of dressing...

1. Thoreau's
   Walden
   
2. Emerson's
   Nature
   
3. Hawthorne's
   The Artist of the Beautiful
   
4. Holmes'
   Elsie Venner
   
5. Wharton's
   The Custom of the Country
   

A more secret, sweet, and overpowering beauty appears to man when his heart and mind open to the sentiment of virtue. Then instantly he is instructed in what is above him. He learns that his being is without bound; that, to the good, to the perfect, he is born, low as he now lies in evil and weakness.

1. Thoreau
   
2. Freneau
   
3. Poe
   
4. Lincoln
   
5. Emerson
   

Good Heavens! What liberties have I been taking with one of the potentates of the earth, and the man on whose conduct more important consequences depend than on that of any other historical personage of the century!

1. Poe
   
2. E. B. White
   
3. Hawthorne
   
4. Jefferson
   
5. Emerson
   

I was first of all the kings who drew
The knighthood-errant of this realm and all
The realms together under me, their Head,
In that fair Order of my Table Round

1. Tennyson
   
2. Mansfield
   
3. Poe
   
4. Marlowe
   
5. Arnold
   

Love________ , she alone is free;
She can teach ye how to climb
Higher than the sphery chime:
Or, if ________ feeble were,
Heaven itself would stoop to her.

Which repeated word will complete the poem?

1. Comus
   
2. Venus
   
3. Beauty
   
4. Virtue
   
5. Truth
   

The author of this poem is

1. Pope.
   
2. Dryden.
   
3. Milton.
   
4. James Legge.
   
5. Jonson.
   

Privat prayer, suche as men secreitlie offer onto God by thame selves, requyres no speciall place; althocht that Jesus Chryst commandeth when we pray to enter into out chamber, and to clois the dur, and sa to pray secretlie unto our Father.

 

The passage above is written in a dialect similar to that of

1. Chaucer.
   
2. Beowulf.
   
3. Grendel.
   
4. Burns.
   
5. Shakespeare.
   

Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and tortuous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness, with which more than half (of it) is filled, it would be more consistent that we call it the work of a demon... It is a history of wickedness that has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind.

 

In this passage

1. Mencken is discussing Shakespeare's plays.
   
2. Poe is discussing Chaucer.
   
3. Shaw is discussing
   The Book of the Dead.
   
4. Paine is discussing the Bible.
   
5. Trilling is discussing
   The Way of All Flesh.
   

Which describes Thomas Hardy?

Which describes Edgar Allan Poe?

1. His wild love for Jesus is mixed with perverse and poisonous hate of Jesus: his moral hostility to the devil is mixed with secret worship of the devil.
   

2. For though (he) consciously made the younger betrayer a plebian and an imposter, unconsciously, with the supreme justice of the artist, he made him the same as de Stancy, a true aristocrat, or as Fitzpiers, or Troy.
   

3. ... he chose to sentimentalise and glorify the most doggy sort of sex. Setting out to satirise the Forsytes, he glorifies the anti, who is one worse.
   

4. His Mr. Ashenden is also an elderly author, who becomes an agent in the British Secret Service during the War.
   

5. The absence of real central or impulsive being in himself leaves him inordinately, mechanically sensitive to sounds and effect, associations of sounds, associations of rhyme ...
   

Which of the following is a parody of Twain?

Which of the following is a parody of Salinger?

Which of the following is a parody of Camus?

1. Dear Scottish Lady,—Your problems are quite easily solved. The root cause of chronic sleep-walking is nervous tension, so please relax and above all avoid fretting about domestic matters.
   

2. But you know—I felt kinda sorry for the guy. I get like that sometimes—and when he spoke, I was damn near bawling. I really was.
   

3. As they walked on, she smelled good. She smells good, thought Perley. But that's all right, I add good. And when we get to Schrafft's, I'll order from the menu, which I like very much indeed.
   

4. I keep hoping for some dark horse to gallop over the horizon, eyes ablaze and mane slick as snake juice. I keep hoping, but I remember to say hello to the Senator when he nods my way. A body can't be too careful these days, and can't have too many friends.
   

5. Stayed in bed reading
   The Ecstasy of Indifference
   by Claude who plays on the left wing. Got half way through but couldn't be bothered to finish it.