a. The sublime | ||
b. The supernatural | ||
c. Love | ||
d. The manners and traditions of the upper classes |
a. A member of the royalty | ||
b. A lowborn, wandering adventurer | ||
c. A member of the middle class engaging in self-exploration | ||
d. A child as he or she develops into an adult |
a. begins at the apparent end of the story. | ||
b. introduces the characters of the play one by one. | ||
c. opens by plunging the viewer into a crucial series of events. | ||
d. begins with a preview of the play's conclusion. |
a. A minimalist stage and strict adherence to the script | ||
b. Video clips and the use of popular music | ||
c. Nonlinear storytelling and the embracement of popular culture | ||
d. A pastiche of different literary and historical sources |
a. Marxist theory | ||
b. psychoanalytic theory | ||
c. postcolonial theory | ||
d. deconstruction |
a. psychoanalytic criticism. | ||
b. Marxist criticism. | ||
c. New Criticism. | ||
d. structuralism. |
a. Marxist criticism | ||
b. Reader-response criticism | ||
c. Psychoanalytic criticism | ||
d. New Criticism |
a. Using informal language | ||
b. Demonstrating a mastery of the topic | ||
c. Appealing to the reader's emotions | ||
d. Using logic and reason |
a. Shakespeare presents political rulers as flawless, perfect human beings. | ||
b. Shakespeare presents political rulers as often meeting ruinous and violent endings. | ||
c. Shakespeare only presents fictional political rulers and does not explore any political realities. | ||
d. Shakespeare considers all political rulers to be corrupt. |
a. A historical narrative and a historical novel are the same thing. | ||
b. A historical narrative tells only part of the story surrounding a historical event; a historical novel tells the whole story. | ||
c. A historical novel focuses on providing the reader with only the central truth of a historical event, while a historical narrative attempts to tell the entire truth of a historical event. | ||
d. Faruqi actually argues that historical novels do not exist. |
a. A narrative based entirely on verifiable facts | ||
b. A narrative that does not analyze characters on a situation-by-situation basis | ||
c. A narrative without characters | ||
d. A narrative that takes place in the past. |
a. The language in which they are written | ||
b. The way they view reality | ||
c. The way they are structured | ||
d. The type of people who write them |
a. wanted to subvert middle class values. | ||
b. accepted middle class values. | ||
c. wrote in a hyperrealistic fashion. | ||
d. had a negative view of human nature. |
a. the author or speaker was of good mind and character. | ||
b. the author or speaker was emotionally involved in the topic at hand. | ||
c. the author or speaker has provided proper logic and evidence in support of his topic. | ||
d. the author or speaker maintained the appropriate critical distance from the topic. |
a. An awareness of the historical circumstances surrounding a text's production | ||
b. A set of objective criteria for critical analysis | ||
c. An awareness of the economic circumstances surrounding a literary text | ||
d. Strict criteria for evaluating the quality of a literary text |
a. An understanding of the various conceptions and understandings of gender that have carried throughout various cultures | ||
b. An understanding of gender as a human construct | ||
c. An understanding of how standard histories of western societies are presented in terms of heterosexual identity | ||
d. All of these. |
a. Hamlet's father's ghost is not really a ghost. | ||
b. Hamlet feels a sense of desire for both his mother and his father. | ||
c. Hamlet is truly insane in the play. | ||
d. Hamlet is an impossible play to truly understand. |
a. Emotional arguments | ||
b. Political arguments | ||
c. Deductive arguments | ||
d. Inductive arguments |
a. How women are portrayed in literary texts | ||
b. The psychologies of female writers | ||
c. How women have been socially oppressed in literary texts | ||
d. All of these |
a. passive readers and critics of literary texts. | ||
b. involved in critical conversations about literary texts. | ||
c. capable of realizing that the viewpoints of some critics are more important than others. | ||
d. aware that Hamlet is a remarkable work of literature. |
a. As a crazed fool | ||
b. As a profound philosophical genius | ||
c. As boyish and immature | ||
d. As a brilliant warrior |
a. Hamlet cannot be staged properly because of the complexity of the play's use of language. | ||
b. Hamlet is not relevant to the Romantic age. | ||
c. The role of Hamlet cannot be properly played by any actor. | ||
d. Hamlet is a work that was written to be read, not performed. |
a. Stark and sterile | ||
b. Flowery and ornate | ||
c. Futuristic and technologically advanced | ||
d. Ancient and sophisticated |
a. Hamlet is placed in a position that can be conceptualized as feminine. | ||
b. Hamlet despises his mother and suspects she has killed his father. | ||
c. Hamlet is entirely masculinized throughout the play, and thus, is ultimately unlike his mother in terms of his position in the play. | ||
d. Hamlet has a personality disorder. |
a. Historically, writers have been considered liars or at the very least irrelevant. | ||
b. Fictionalizing reality is a basic human need. | ||
c. Every text includes traces from the outside world, including social, historical, and literary remnants. | ||
d. All of these. |
a. A hypothesis about how literary texts can be understood | ||
b. A methodology for applying ideas to literary texts | ||
c. The practice of interpreting literary texts | ||
d. A trend in university English departments |
a. Typically poetic and fanciful language | ||
b. Ancient languages | ||
c. Complicated and difficult language | ||
d. Common, everyday language |
a. a line. | ||
b. a foot. | ||
c. a measure. | ||
d. a meter. |
a. For revenge | ||
b. To change the weather | ||
c. To bring forth life-in-death | ||
d. It is never directly stated why he does so. |
a. There is such a thing as an afterlife. | ||
b. Dreams always tell the truth. | ||
c. There are some aspects of existence that cannot be explained through reason. | ||
d. Heaven exists on earth. |
a. Compares his love to a winter storm | ||
b. Compares his love to a summer's day | ||
c. Compares his love to a turbulent sea | ||
d. Compares his love to his fear of death |
a. The conflict between marriages based on love and those based on money | ||
b. The ways in which appearances don't always match realities | ||
c. The danger in not recognizing the difference between reality and fiction | ||
d. All of these |
a. A romantic awaiting true love | ||
b. A cynic awaiting the world's destruction | ||
c. A delusional girl with no grasp on reality | ||
d. A young girl with a particularly dark mindset |
a. The political and social meanings of literary texts | ||
b. Characters who are sympathetic to issues facing the working classes | ||
c. The relationship between economics and the production of literary texts | ||
d. All of these |
a. the psychologies of individual authors. | ||
b. the typographical structures of literary texts. | ||
c. translation issues. | ||
d. how children relate to their parents in terms of literary texts. |
a. readers choose their favorite works of literature. | ||
b. readers experience a literary work. | ||
c. readers decide which works of literature to read. | ||
d. readers develop their own unique and personal critical discourses. |
a. A comedic play | ||
b. A tragic play | ||
c. A modern play | ||
d. A tragi-comedy |
a. Fate and free will | ||
b. The corruptive force of technology | ||
c. The power of religious faith | ||
d. Disobedient children |
a. a feeling of being disconnected from the world. | ||
b. a sense of something being familiar and foreign at once. | ||
c. terror at the thought of death. | ||
d. a realization of one's empowered position in the world. |
a. Simplicity in language, brevity in form, and humorousness in attitude | ||
b. Complexity in language, lengthiness in form, and seriousness in attitude | ||
c. Simplicity in language, lengthiness in form, and humorousness in attitude | ||
d. Complexity in language, brevity in form, and humorousness in attitude |
a. What is literature? | ||
b. Why do people write literature? | ||
c. What are the effects of literature? | ||
d. All of these. |
a. Introduce the main characters | ||
b. Preview the play's conclusion | ||
c. Provide insight into the play's mythological background | ||
d. Remind the viewers of what kind of play they are viewing |
a. He is suggesting that artists serve to develop culture. | ||
b. He is suggesting that all artists are from high social classes. | ||
c. He is suggesting that artists are repressed throughout society. | ||
d. He is suggesting that the making of laws is itself an art. |
a. An ode | ||
b. An elegy | ||
c. An epitaph | ||
d. A ballad |
a. A system for categorizing books | ||
b. The psychological study of authors | ||
c. The study of textual interpretation | ||
d. A reader-response test |
a. They involve the solving of a crime. | ||
b. They explore mysterious religious topics. | ||
c. They were written by medieval mystics. | ||
d. They were produced by medieval craft guilds, which were knows as "mysteries". |
a. All novelists are painters at heart. | ||
b. George du Maurier felt that black-and-white illustrators could be as important as novelists and painters. | ||
c. George du Maurier attacked the social position of the novelist in his illustrations. | ||
d. George du Maurier was a tremendous influence on Victorian novelists. |
a. Traditional literary criticism is mainly focused on exploring gender issues. | ||
b. Traditional literary criticism only examines pre-20th-century literary texts. | ||
c. Traditional literary criticism focused on tracking influences and textual allusions and considering the historical contexts of literary texts. | ||
d. Traditional literary criticism attempted to consider the psychological aspects of literary texts. |
a. New Historicism was a reaction against New Criticism, which was seen as too narrowly focused on text rather than context. | ||
b. Both fields of literary study are American in origin. | ||
c. New Historicism is simply an early form of Cultural Materialism. | ||
d. Both fields of study are strictly focused on how readers interpret and invent meanings for literary texts. |
a. Character | ||
b. Setting | ||
c. Plot | ||
d. All of these |
a. Investigating the relationship between words and objective reality | ||
b. Comparing the Bible to folk tales from other cultures | ||
c. Researching an author's biography for clues about how to understand his or her writing | ||
d. Researching what previous critics have said about a literary work |
a. Lines of text with words that rhyme at the end | ||
b. A continuous block of text | ||
c. Unrhymed lines | ||
d. All of these |
a. Poetry should be written in the common language of ordinary people. | ||
b. Poetry should focus on the lives and thoughts of elite people. | ||
c. Poetry should never concern itself with the natural world. | ||
d. Poetry should rhyme. |
a. Epic theater is plot-driven theater. | ||
b. Epic theater turns the passive spectator into an active observer. | ||
c. Epic theater privileges feeling over reason. | ||
d. Epic theater maintains the illusion of realism. |
a. Plot | ||
b. Poetic diction | ||
c. Song composition | ||
d. Stage design |
a. Hamlet is depressed yet highly intelligent. | ||
b. Hamlet is naive and simple minded. | ||
c. Hamlet is spoiled and manipulative. | ||
d. Hamlet is intellectually passive and deeply frightened of his father's ghost. |
a. It offers a critique of Romantic poetry and ideology. | ||
b. It serves to parody gothic novels. | ||
c. It is a horror novel. | ||
d. It is a memoir based on Jane Austen's childhood. |
a. An atmosphere of dread, fear, and darkness | ||
b. An isolated protagonist | ||
c. A hero or protagonist who is tempted by a villain | ||
d. All of these |
a. "To be or not to be, that is the question." | ||
b. "And the world didn't even think of stopping for me." | ||
c. "I played about the front gate, pulling flowers." | ||
d. "I wandered lonely as a cloud." |
a. "She is a woman of beauty and wonder." | ||
b. "Death, that which feels nothing." | ||
c. "Milton, thou shouldst be living at this hour: / England hath need of thee." | ||
d. "I wandered lonely as a cloud." |
a. Another character | ||
b. The protagonist | ||
c. Society | ||
d. All of these |
a. A narrative poem is vague and difficult in style. | ||
b. A narrative poem is a poem that does not have a plot or tell a story. | ||
c. A narrative poem has a plot and tells a story. | ||
d. A narrative poem is a poem written in the style of a conversation. |
a. A recurring element in a story that is symbolically significant | ||
b. A character's fatal flaw | ||
c. A rhyme scheme | ||
d. A character's moment of self-realization in a narrative |
a. A narrative that introduces readers to the main characters of a story | ||
b. A narrative that summarizes the plot of the novel | ||
c. A story within a story | ||
d. A story that reminds the reader that the story is fictional |
a. A story in which the author provides an explicit moral | ||
b. A story that takes place in the distant past | ||
c. A light-hearted, humorous story in which viewers are shown proper ways to behave | ||
d. A story told to little children |
a. A play in which characters make humorous remarks | ||
b. A play in which characters experience reversals of fortune, usually for the better | ||
c. A play in which no characters die or suffer | ||
d. A play in which elite members of society are mocked |
a. Members of the audience who comment on the play's actions | ||
b. Characters who remind the audience that the play is fictional | ||
c. A group of characters who comment on the actions of the play while participating in them | ||
d. A group of characters who comment on the actions of the play while not participating in them |
a. A play that depicts the downfall of a noble person | ||
b. A play in which someone gets revenge | ||
c. A play in which a hero faces likely defeat and overcomes it | ||
d. A play in which no form of humor appears |
a. Persuasion is the art of making readers or listeners believe what the writer or speaker is stating. | ||
b. Persuasion is the art of lying to good effect. | ||
c. Persuasion is the opposite of rhetoric. | ||
d. Persuasion is the use of syllogisms to influence the opinions of readers and listeners. |
a. Logos refers to a writer's presentation of character and image. | ||
b. Logos refers to a writer's ability to present evidence. | ||
c. Logos refers to a writer's ability to inspire action in readers. | ||
d. Logos refers to a writer's ability to inspire emotional responses in readers. |
a. Pathos refers to a writer's presentation of character and image. | ||
b. Pathos refers to a writer's ability to present evidence. | ||
c. Pathos refers to a writer's ability to inspire action in readers. | ||
d. Pathos refers to a writer's ability to inspire emotional responses in readers. |
a. Ethos refers to a writer's presentation of character and image. | ||
b. Ethos refers to a writer's ability to present evidence. | ||
c. Ethos refers to a writer's ability to inspire action in readers. | ||
d. Ethos refers to a writer's ability to inspire emotional responses in readers. |
a. Literary theory involves coming to a precise understanding of a writer's psychology. | ||
b. Literary theory involves measuring the quality of a literary work. | ||
c. Literary theory involves considering the publication history of literary texts. | ||
d. Literary theory involves describing the underlying principles of a literary work. |
a. Pound's "In a Station of the Metro" | ||
b. Bishop's "One Art" | ||
c. Auden's "Paysage Moralisé" | ||
d. William Shakespeare's "Sonnet 18" |
a. "Into my head there will come / a beach of cotton, a dock where from." | ||
b. "To kiss the sky / to be the sun / is to live forever." | ||
c. "I heard a car crash / just as I died." | ||
d. "Death comes for all of us / even you." |
a. Lamentation, in which the speaker demonstrates grief | ||
b. Praise and admiration for the dead | ||
c. Consolation and solace | ||
d. All of these |
a. Formalism focuses on examining how a text exemplifies its writer's psychology. | ||
b. Formalism focuses on examining the structural dynamics of poems. | ||
c. Formalism focuses on examining the use of literary devices within a literary text. | ||
d. Formalism focuses on examining the historical contexts and backgrounds of literary texts. |
a. Hamlet is deeply disturbed by his father's death. | ||
b. It is never proven within the play that Claudius murdered King Hamlet. | ||
c. Hamlet doubts the proper course of action to take. | ||
d. Ophelia dies by drowning. |
a. A poem that has no rhyme scheme | ||
b. A poem that eulogizes the dead | ||
c. A poem that carries a pattern on two rhymes and offers an alternating refrain | ||
d. A poem that celebrates the life of a cruel person |
a. She is mature and realistic. | ||
b. She is insane and delusional. | ||
c. She is immature and has difficulty recognizing the difference between fact and fiction. | ||
d. She is a matchmaker trying to set up romances between her friends, all the while unable to find true love herself. |
a. The world is a bright and interesting place. | ||
b. Universal truth doesn't exist, and audience members must discover truth for themselves. | ||
c. The world is so complex that it does not require literature or theater. | ||
d. Mainstream audiences are so shallow that it is not worth writing plays for them. |
a. Satan was ultimately heroic. | ||
b. The fall of Adam and Eve was a tragic event. | ||
c. Adam and Eve were driven to evil by their children. | ||
d. God abandoned the realm of Eden without reason. |
a. The world can be fully understood if people listen closely to what others are saying. | ||
b. Good things, including salvation, come to those who are patient. | ||
c. Redemption comes from surrendering to a higher power. | ||
d. People are fundamentally unable to realize any sort of inherent meaning in existence. |
a. Hamlet desires his mother, not Ophelia. | ||
b. Hamlet desires revenge, not Ophelia. | ||
c. Hamlet desires Ophelia, but only when she is unattainable. | ||
d. Hamlet desires attaining the throne of Denmark, of which Ophelia is a symbol. |
a. Hamlet is a tragedy focusing on the plight of the early-modern self. | ||
b. Hamlet is a tragedy that reflects Shakespeare's own political circumstances. | ||
c. Hamlet is a tragedy that focuses on the Elizabethan era's loss of faith in humanity's ability to govern itself without violence. | ||
d. Hamlet is a tragedy that reflects upon enlightened and progressive political systems that developed during Shakespeare's time. |
a. According to research, 22 percent of the American population owns an unsecured handgun. | ||
b. I own a handgun and keep it in a secure place in my house. | ||
c. Every month in the United States, at least 100 children are wounded or killed as a result of unsecured handguns. | ||
d. Handguns don't kill people, people do. |
a. I began driving at the age of 16 and have never been involved in a serious car accident. | ||
b. No one under the age of 18 should be allowed to drive. | ||
c. Research has demonstrated that some people under the age of 18 do not have the proper judgment skills to handle operating a car. | ||
d. Every year countless people are killed by drivers under the age of 18. |
a. All dogs have four legs, all creatures do not have four legs, hence all creatures with four legs are dogs. | ||
b. All men breathe air, all dogs breathe air, hence all men are dogs. | ||
c. All mammals are warm-blooded, all dogs are mammals, hence all dogs are warm-blooded. | ||
d. All dogs have hair, all people have hair, hence anything with hair is a dog or a person. |
a. A story of one person's fall from grace and into destruction | ||
b. A story of one person's growth and development within a particular social order | ||
c. A story of one person's success within a capitalistic economic system | ||
d. A story of one person's self-realization and attempt to return to innocence |
a. A novel set in the past | ||
b. A novel that consists entirely of dialogue | ||
c. A novel that is set in the countryside of Europe | ||
d. A novel that consists of a series of documents, such as diary entries, letters, and newspaper articles |
a. A novel that attacks the lower classes | ||
b. A novel set in Europe in the 18th century | ||
c. A novel that explores the behavior and values of a particular class of people | ||
d. A novel that explores class conflict |
a. In a Greek tragedy, evil people are vanquished by the forces of good. | ||
b. In a Greek tragedy, characters undergo reversals of fortune, usually for the worse. | ||
c. In a Greek tragedy, the hero suffers but always survives at the end of the play. | ||
d. In a Greek tragedy, the tragic hero dies at the end of the play. |
a. A noble person who becomes completely corrupted | ||
b. A cowardly person who doubts himself or herself despite possessing great wealth and political power | ||
c. A cowardly person who shows some personal strength when faced with a crisis | ||
d. A noble person who makes a costly mistake |
a. Questions for which the answers are obvious | ||
b. Persuasive writing and speaking | ||
c. Writing that is complicated and scholarly | ||
d. Logical writing and speaking |
a. Art serves a particular worldly purpose. | ||
b. Art's supreme function is to entertain the public. | ||
c. Artists are dangerous to social order. | ||
d. Artists serve to construct the foundations of culture. |
a. Deconstruction | ||
b. Marxist theory | ||
c. Reader-response theory | ||
d. Queer theory |
a. A narrative that emphasizes character development | ||
b. A narrative with a unified, plausible plot structure | ||
c. A narrative that conveys the illusion of reality | ||
d. All of these |
a. logical in terms of plot and structure. | ||
b. complex in terms of plot and structure. | ||
c. without any sort of moral insight. | ||
d. sad. |
a. a disturbed and insane man. | ||
b. a man of tremendous humor, simplicity, and innate goodness and kindness. | ||
c. a depressed but ultimately good and nonviolent man. | ||
d. a wicked and manipulative man. |
a. They were not popular with ancient Greek audiences. | ||
b. They were usually set in the past. | ||
c. They were almost never set in the past. | ||
d. They were often done in honor of the Greek god Zeus. |