a. Modernism is the art produced during the modern period. | ||
b. Modernism is the historical period which followed the modern period. | ||
c. Modernism is the philosophy of modern art. | ||
d. Both A and C |
a. Most modernist poets lived in large cities; therefore, they often used urban imagery in their poetry. | ||
b. Many languages and many forms of language were used in large cities; modernist poets often treated language not as something given and natural but as a construct which they could manipulate. | ||
c. Individuals often felt lost and alienated in large cities, and among poets this resulted in turning inward and focusing only on the world of one's own imagination. | ||
d. All of these answers |
a. They both address the theme of death. | ||
b. Both use formal meter to present a narrative structure. | ||
c. They are both set in rural New England. | ||
d. All of these answers |
a. It has a regular rhyme scheme (aa/bb/cc/dd…), which is sustained throughout the poem. | ||
b. It is primarily a narrative poem. | ||
c. It is concerned with conventional 19th-century relations between a man and a woman. | ||
d. All of these answers |
a. William Carlos Williams | ||
b. John Greenleaf Whittier | ||
c. George Herbert | ||
d. Robert Browning |
a. John Milton | ||
b. Alfred Tennyson | ||
c. Allen Ginsberg | ||
d. Amy Lowell |
a. The search for a new poetic language and the idea that language can be reinvented by poets | ||
b. The quest to describe objects with precision and without emotion | ||
c. The idea that the self is neither unitary nor permanently stable | ||
d. The approval of the norms and values of bourgeois culture |
a. employs free verse. | ||
b. has an undertow of nihilism. | ||
c. is chauvinistic about British "exceptionalism." | ||
d. was composed between WW I and WW II. |
a. A symbol is an image that conveys powerful emotional states. | ||
b. A symbol is an emblem of the actual world endowed with supernatural meanings. | ||
c. A symbol is a metaphor that allows the poet to capture complex social realities. | ||
d. A symbol is a description of past realities. |
a. The image of a sentinel | ||
b. The image of the sun reflected on the sea | ||
c. The image of a quest for knowledge | ||
d. The image of satiny embers |
a. They describe the author's experiences as a young child. | ||
b. They use metaphors with subtle political connotations. | ||
c. They ascribe colors and sounds to scents, relying on a device known as synesthesia. | ||
d. They describe a scene in the countryside, which symbolizes the state of the author's soul. |
a. French Symbolist poetry is full of exaggerated metaphors. | ||
b. French Symbolist poetry has narrative clarity. | ||
c. French Symbolist poetry is shocking. | ||
d. French Symbolist poetry is formally experimental. |
a. Imagism | ||
b. Classicism | ||
c. British Romanticism | ||
d. Vorticism |
a. It seeks to diminish the distance between society and nature. | ||
b. It seeks to amplify the distance between society and nature. | ||
c. It plays with the relationship between the social, natural, and supernatural worlds. | ||
d. It evokes the beauty of a pastoral scene. |
a. These lines set an impersonal tone which dominates the entire poem. | ||
b. These lines establish a rhythmical pattern, which is followed strictly throughout the poem. | ||
c. These lines are the only impersonal lines in the poem, the rest of which is primarily focused on the complexity of human emotions. | ||
d. These lines establish a personal tone, focusing on a lyrical perspective similar to late-Victorian era poetry. |
a. The Mahabharata | ||
b. Paradise Lost | ||
c. The Odyssey | ||
d. The Aeneid |
a. Objectivist poetry | ||
b. Futurist poetry | ||
c. Imagist poetry | ||
d. Vorticist poetry |
a. Yes, Lowell's detailed description of nature draws attention away from human realities. | ||
b. Yes, the lyrical voice in Lowell's poem seeks to express universal rather than individual experience. | ||
c. No, Lowell's poem is not impersonal; it addresses the maker of the bowl directly and speculates about his state of mind. | ||
d. No, even though Lowell strives for impersonal expression by borrowing poetic devices from Pound, she fails to accomplish this. |
a. To "amplify and clarify the indistinct emotions created by metaphorical symbols" | ||
b. To "prolong the moment of contemplation" | ||
c. To "counteract the forces of dispersal inherent in metaphorical language" | ||
d. To "make poetry new" |
a. Yeats's poetry was autobiographical, but he understood his life through the prism of myths and symbols; symbolism was therefore present in both Yeats's life and in his poetry. | ||
b. Yeats believed that each person was an instance of a general cultural type or symbol. | ||
c. The young Yeats wished to emphasize his identity as an English poet and draw attention away from his Irish heritage. | ||
d. Both A and B |
a. Artifacts from foreign cultures which do not fit into the American cultural context | ||
b. The broken dreams of the American émigré community in Paris | ||
c. Old poetry | ||
d. The failed attempt of modern poetry |
a. The ideal of courtly love | ||
b. Elements of the Christian narrative of salvation | ||
c. The alchemical concept of the philosopher's stone | ||
d. The Renaissance concept of humanism |
a. Stevens's poetry is primarily, though not explicitly, concerned with metaphysics. | ||
b. Stevens's poetry investigates its own rules. | ||
c. Stevens's poetry always addresses several different audiences. | ||
d. Stevens's poetry highlights an objective voice. |
a. Moore's emotional and aesthetic attachment to England | ||
b. Moore's harsh critique of the carnage of World War I | ||
c. Moore's particular kind of combative American cultural nationalism | ||
d. Moore's interest in England's civilizing mission in the world |
a. The form of a villanelle | ||
b. The use of synesthesia | ||
c. The use of simile | ||
d. The use of metaphor |
a. Death | ||
b. Mt. Rainier | ||
c. The ocean | ||
d. An octopus |
a. Total freedom in choosing the subject | ||
b. Striving for concentrated expression and imagery | ||
c. Reliance on the language of common speech | ||
d. Creative reliance on conventional poetic forms |
a. The privileging of image over sound | ||
b. The privileging of rhythm over meaning | ||
c. The privileging of individual detail over the larger pattern | ||
d. The privileging of colors over textures |
a. "Emotional power achieved through suggestive visual images" | ||
b. "Exploration of philosophical paradoxes through visual images" | ||
c. "Clarity of expression through the use of precise visual images" | ||
d. "Inclusion of natural objects as symbols" |
a. It juxtaposes human consciousness against the sea. | ||
b. It uses alliteration and iambic pentameter. | ||
c. It has a subtle formal structure, even though it does not use rhyme. | ||
d. Both A and C |
a. Salvador Dali | ||
b. Horace Greeley | ||
c. Ezra Pound | ||
d. Rupert Brooke |
a. They symbolize the return to a lost paradise. | ||
b. They point to alchemical elements, which in turn symbolize the body and the soul. | ||
c. They symbolize the coming apocalypse. | ||
d. They symbolize a fulfilled longing. |
a. The Partisan Review | ||
b. The Owl | ||
c. Poetry | ||
d. Blast |
a. Patriotic imagery | ||
b. Irony | ||
c. Nihilism | ||
d. Apocalyptic imagery |
a. around 1900. | ||
b. in the early stages of World War I. | ||
c. in the late stages of World War I. | ||
d. in the 1920s. |
a. These lines and the poem as a whole use both the political concept of a nation and the spiritual concept of eternity to give meaning to soldiers' deaths on the battlefield. | ||
b. These lines and the poem as a whole are primarily concerned with the extension of Britain's imperial power. | ||
c. These lines and the poem as a whole seek to directly express the horrors of war. | ||
d. These lines and the poem as a whole rely on assonance to magnify the critique of war expressed in the poem. |
a. Metaphor to suggest a connection between soldiers and nature | ||
b. Simile to suggest a connection between soldiers and nature | ||
c. Metonymy to describe the brutality of modern warfare | ||
d. Onomatopoeia to describe the brutality of modern warfare |
a. Brooke's inclusion of a quotation from Horace in these lines serves to emphasize the distance between the ideals of Western civilization and its realities. | ||
b. These lines suggest the author's anger and disillusionment with cultural norms which glorify war. | ||
c. In these lines, Brooke seeks to bridge the gap between individual experience and cultural norms and beliefs. | ||
d. All of the above |
a. The devastation wrought by World War I was so enormous that it put Europe's cultural and political norms and values into question. | ||
b. The mechanized killing, which took place on a massive scale during World War I, made it necessary to reflect about the effects of technological progress. | ||
c. World War I was the first global conflict where the distinction between combatants and civilians was erased, and this had a devastating effect on the European psyche. | ||
d. Both A and B |
a. Both poems praise Britain's military power and its imperial ambitions. | ||
b. Both poems describe Britain's civilizing mission in the world. | ||
c. Both poems seek to respond to the harsh political and military realities of their day. | ||
d. Both poems romanticize war and glorify the life of the soldier. |
a. Georgian poetry was modeled on World War I poetry and adapted its insights to postwar realities. | ||
b. Unlike World War I poetry, Georgian poetry was concerned primarily with the effects of urbanization and industrialization. | ||
c. Unlike World War I poetry, Georgian poetry was concerned primarily with women's rights. | ||
d. World War I poets like Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen adapted the Georgian poetic manner to write about modern subjects; most Georgian poets focused on individual experience and avoided writing about the upheavals of modernity. |
a. There were no significant differences in the functioning of visual images in these two types of poetry. | ||
b. The Imagists relied on visual images to achieve clarity of expression, whereas World War I poets relied on visual images to subtly punctuate their often desperate political messages. | ||
c. The Imagists valued brevity, which could be achieved with precise visual images, whereas World War I poets preferred declamatory statements in their poems. | ||
d. World War I poets valued clarity of expression through visual images, whereas Imagists relied on complex expression through emotional visual images. |
a. Ivy League educated | ||
b. Active pacifist during both world wars | ||
c. Popularized the use of free verse | ||
d. A private and self-effacing person |
a. Wilfred Owen | ||
b. Siegfried Sassoon | ||
c. Rupert Brooke | ||
d. Rudyard Kipling |
a. Siegfried Sassoon | ||
b. Isaac Rosenberg | ||
c. Wilfred Owen | ||
d. All of these answers |
a. These lines suggest that it was difficult to define patriotism during the Great War, but soldiers who died in battle provided the best example of patriotism. | ||
b. These lines suggest that the Great War lasted much longer than it should have. | ||
c. These lines equate humans with animals, and they anthropomorphize weapons to show a world where there is no place for human values. | ||
d. These lines represent a modern funeral dirge that mimics the rhythm of ancient Greek funeral dirges. |
a. Germany was defeated and blamed for causing the war. | ||
b. In the course of World War I, the Bolsheviks came to power in Russia. | ||
c. Successful parliamentary democracies were established throughout the continent and remained stable until the outbreak of World War II in 1939. | ||
d. By the end of the 1920s, almost every state that had participated in World War I faced an economic depression and political upheavals. |
a. Historic and contemporary imagery | ||
b. Kabalistic imagery | ||
c. Nationalist imagery | ||
d. Everyday imagery |
a. Umberto Boccioni | ||
b. Filippo Marinetti | ||
c. Vladimir Mayakovsky | ||
d. Aleksander Wat |
a. Slavery | ||
b. American attitudes toward Jews and Israel | ||
c. Capitalism and social inequalities | ||
d. All of these answers |
a. The Italian Futurists were fascinated by the age of electric and chemical power, and they praised the beauty of automobiles. | ||
b. The Italian Futurists lived within a quickly changing social world, and they praised speed. | ||
c. Marinetti and other Italian Futurists supported Mussolini's fascism. | ||
d. All of these answers |
a. Members of both movements were fascinated by speed and dynamism, but unlike the Futurists, Vorticists did not celebrate technology and industrialization. | ||
b. Futurism was a politically-inclined movement, whereas Vorticism was free of all political entanglements. | ||
c. Futurism lasted for several decades, whereas Vorticism was short-lived. | ||
d. Vorticists celebrated technology and industrialization, whereas Futurists explored impending cultural challenges regarding technology and industrialization. |
a. American Romanticism | ||
b. British Neo-Classicism | ||
c. Kabalistic Judaism | ||
d. Taoism |
a. His study of ancient history | ||
b. His study of law | ||
c. His study of medicine | ||
d. His study of Sanskrit |
a. Marxism | ||
b. Fascism | ||
c. Democracy | ||
d. Libertarianism |
a. Is authentic poetry possible in the aftermath of the carnage of World War I? | ||
b. Given the diversity of the world's poetic traditions, can there be a universal language of poetic symbolism? | ||
c. How can a shared world be created out of the fundamentally different and private experiences of individual people? | ||
d. Given that each person experiences trauma differently, is it possible for all to understand the modern world as a shared "waste land"? |
a. endorsement of Marxism. | ||
b. interest in ancient Rome. | ||
c. anti-capitalism. | ||
d. interest in Fourier's utopian socialist thought. |
a. embraces the rhythms and diction of common man's speech. | ||
b. was written at the very beginning of the 20th century. | ||
c. attempts to create a modernist high culture. | ||
d. does not employ rhyme. |
a. Milton's "Paradise Lost" | ||
b. Dante's "Divine Comedy" | ||
c. Goethe's "Faust" | ||
d. Thomas Mann's "Doctor Faustus" |
a. "A meditation on contradictions" | ||
b. "Overheard inner speech" | ||
c. "Implicit dialogue with the future" | ||
d. "Objective correlative" |
a. "Continual expansion of the personality and its diverse elements" | ||
b. "Continual self-sacrifice, a continual extinction of personality" | ||
c. "Continual transformation of the personality" | ||
d. "Continual identification with the past" |
a. Langston Hughes' "The Negro Speaks of Rivers" | ||
b. Ezra Pound's "Cantos" | ||
c. T.S. Eliot's "A Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" | ||
d. T.S. Eliot's "The Waste Land" |
a. His political views | ||
b. His will to imaginative freedom | ||
c. His will to sexual freedom | ||
d. Both B and C |
a. It serves to effectively depersonalize Pound's poems. | ||
b. It serves the greater aim of conveying both intensity and immediacy in Pound's poetry. | ||
c. It is a paradoxical mixture of personal and impersonal elements. | ||
d. It is a means of creating a dialogue between modernity and tradition. |
a. Curiosity about the past | ||
b. Deference to the past | ||
c. Violation of the past | ||
d. Paradoxically both B and C |
a. The objective correlative refers to the correlation between the poem's formal structure and its meaning. | ||
b. The objective correlative refers to the correlation between the poem's formal structure and its rhetorical aim. | ||
c. The objective correlative refers to the correlation between the poem's theme and its objective historical context. | ||
d. The objective correlative refers to a set of objects, situations, or events which necessarily produce a particular emotion. |
a. Stein experimented only with the sound qualities of language, whereas the Imagists focused on visual imagery. | ||
b. Stein experimented with language that skirted the edges of sense, whereas the Imagists sought precision and clarity of expression. | ||
c. Stein sought to combine classical poetic form with contemporary content, whereas the Imagists used traditional poetic subject matter but experimented with form. | ||
d. Stein sought precision and clarity in her poems, whereas the Imagists sought experimental forms that enhanced visual imagery. |
a. Assonance and word repetition | ||
b. Simile | ||
c. Metaphor and allusion | ||
d. Circumlocution |
a. An avalanche | ||
b. Rapids | ||
c. The west wind | ||
d. Thunder |
a. Stein was a crucially important figure in the Paris émigré community. | ||
b. Stein was primarily a muse for modernist poets. | ||
c. Stein was a proponent of low modernism. | ||
d. Stein was an opponent of vanguard trends. |
a. It is primarily a narrative poem. | ||
b. It uses iambic pentameter to achieve tonal fluidity. | ||
c. It undermines the idea of a single lyrical voice by using diverse cultural symbols and numerous phrases in various languages. | ||
d. Its intensity derives from the combination of modern subject matter and alexandrine couplets. |
a. "The Waste Land" is primarily concerned with nature, whereas the futurists are most interested in industrial and urban landscapes. | ||
b. "The Waste Land" confronts the fragmentation of modernity by exploring a variety of modes and voices, whereas the futurists do not focus on the fragmentation of modern experience, praising speed and industrial progress instead. | ||
c. "The Waste Land" is an ironic exploration of Romantic themes, whereas the futurists incorporate ironic evocations of the classical tradition in their poetry. | ||
d. "The Waste Land" focuses on the personal connection between poet and speaker, whereas the futurists focus on an impersonal connection between humans and industry. |
a. French Classicism | ||
b. British Romanticism | ||
c. American Romanticism | ||
d. German Romanticism |
a. It refers to a group of talented American émigré writers who lived in Europe after World War I. | ||
b. It refers to the young generation whose coming of age was interrupted by World War I. | ||
c. It refers to English poets who sought refuge in New York City after World War I ended. | ||
d. Both A and B |
a. It is the racial discrimination endemic in the white community. | ||
b. It is the racial segregation in the South. | ||
c. It is a widespread "urge toward whiteness" among African Americans. | ||
d. It is a widespread "urge to incorporate and neutralize other cultures" among white Americans. |
a. Hughes was very conscious that he was an American poet, and this profoundly influenced his writing. | ||
b. Hughes wrote about the legacy of the American Civil War and its long-term cultural consequences. | ||
c. Hughes introduced new subject-matter and new language into poetry. | ||
d. Both A and C |
a. Feeling like an outcast in your own house | ||
b. Becoming a stuttering sycophant just to survive | ||
c. Wrapping yourself in the armor of anger and resentment | ||
d. All of the above |
a. H.D. | ||
b. Hart Crane | ||
c. William Carlos Williams | ||
d. T.S. Eliot |
a. He was a native New Yorker who did not travel much but who was keenly aware of New York's complexity and diversity. | ||
b. He moved to New York from Alabama and the stark contrast between these places deeply influenced his writing. | ||
c. He was born in Missouri and traveled extensively throughout the United States and the world before he moved to New York City. | ||
d. He spent most of his life in Washington, DC, moving to Harlem only after he gained literary fame. |
a. These lines evoke Christian imagery to emphasize the dignity of the girl who died. | ||
b. These lines evoke Christian imagery to suggest that death erases racial divisions. | ||
c. These lines present the problem of racial prejudice in an ironic mode. | ||
d. Both A and B |
a. Being overworked in menial jobs having to raise large families | ||
b. Being a subordinated woman in a male dominated culture and a member of a suppressed minority race in the middle of a dominant white culture | ||
c. Having little formal education with little access to publishers | ||
d. Being ignored by a traditional poetry reading public because what they wrote about was the travails of subsistence living |
a. It established an authoritative and unquestionable canon of African American poetry. | ||
b. It inspired Harlem Renaissance writers to establish a tradition of African American poetry. | ||
c. It presented African American writers to a previously indifferent white audience. | ||
d. It provided literary criticism on African American poetry. |
a. The Great Depression | ||
b. Hitler's invasion of Poland in 1939 | ||
c. The Russian Civil War | ||
d. World War I |
a. Irony | ||
b. Allegory | ||
c. Oxymoron | ||
d. Alliteration |
a. It is a meditation on the alienation of the modern person from nature. | ||
b. It is a meditation on the cultural isolation of African Americans in New England. | ||
c. It is a meditation on the communal and historical aspects of individual identity. | ||
d. It is a meditation on the poet's personal experience of assimilation. |
a. Hughes uses a universal speaker for an exploration of a profound racial divide between blacks and whites. | ||
b. The poem is an analytical exploration of racial differences in the United States. | ||
c. Similar to Hart Crane and Whitman, Hughes uses a personal and universal "I" to address issues of history, race, and identity. | ||
d. The poem is an indictment of racial prejudice in Harlem. |
a. The diction is much more polysyllabic than monosyllabic. | ||
b. The use of alternating end rhymes and word repetitions enhance the music of the poem and along with its occasional dissonance give it an improvisational jazz-like quality. | ||
c. It is written in Standard American English for middle-class readers. | ||
d. This poem is structured like a villanelle. |
a. It is an English sonnet. | ||
b. It is an Italian sonnet. | ||
c. It is a Spenserian sonnet. | ||
d. It is a free verse poem. |
a. This poem focuses primarily on the different experiences of black and white women. | ||
b. This poem describes the relationship between a black woman and her child. | ||
c. This poem is a conversation between a black woman and a child who is not yet born. | ||
d. The poem is a conversation between a black woman and her ancestors. |
a. It was a flowering of African American arts and culture. | ||
b. It took place after World War I, at a time when many African Americans were moving from the South to the industrial North. | ||
c. It exerted profound influence on 20th-century American culture. | ||
d. All of these answers |
a. Love sonnets from the Nazi death camps | ||
b. American G.I. poetry from German prisoner of war camps | ||
c. Jewish dissident poetry from the gulags in Siberia | ||
d. Haiku poetry from the Japanese internment camps in the US |
a. Combat detaches a man from humanity. | ||
b. All is fair in love and war. | ||
c. It is honorable and just to defend your country in a war. | ||
d. There is a right and a wrong way to throw a hand grenade. |
a. Wilfred Owen | ||
b. Keith Douglas | ||
c. Randall Jarrell | ||
d. Karl Shapiro |
a. Rupert Brooke | ||
b. Rudyard Kipling | ||
c. Karl Shapiro | ||
d. Hart Crane |
a. Is it possible for Romantic themes in poetry to be meaningful after the Holocaust? | ||
b. The horror of the Holocaust was inexpressible; how can poetry speak of what is inexpressible? | ||
c. Is there a relationship between poetry and rationality after the Holocaust? | ||
d. Is there a meaningful relationship between World War I poetry and World War II poetry? |
a. The poem contrasts the image of a child in its mother's womb with cruel devaluation of human life in wartime. | ||
b. The poem praises those technological achievements which protect human life in wartime. | ||
c. The poem uses images of the apocalypse to criticize the cruelty of war. | ||
d. The poem presents the war as a natural part of the perennial cycles of human history. |
a. They tend to use traditional rhyme schemes and rhythms, and they avoid free verse. | ||
b. They tend to use metaphors and avoid direct descriptive statements. | ||
c. They tend to use classical imagery while rejecting romantic tropes. | ||
d. They tend to be narrative and confront the reader with stark wartime realities. |
a. The Futurists apotheosized technology, whereas World War II poets often focused on technology's destructive powers. | ||
b. The Futurists praised speed, whereas World War II poets often evoked images of nature to describe the human condition. | ||
c. The Futurists privileged the part over the whole, whereas World War II poets did not deal with the problem of modernity and alienation. | ||
d. The Futurists focused on advancements in technology and industry, whereas World War II poets ignored advancements in technology, especially in modern warfare. |
a. Fear of the failure of a segregated educational system | ||
b. Fear of the AIDs crisis | ||
c. Fear of global nuclear war | ||
d. Fear of the economic Great Depression |
a. It brought unprecedented destruction and loss of life, thereby putting into question the entire cultural and political legacy of Western civilization. | ||
b. It was followed by Soviet domination of Eastern Europe and by the entrenchment of the Soviet totalitarian system of rule. | ||
c. It was followed by the Cold War, which affected international politics throughout the world. | ||
d. All of these answers |