Gre Literature In English Subject Test

Front 1

Alexandrine

Back 1

a line of iambic hexameter, e.g. final line of a Spensarian stanza:

"A needless alexandrine ends the song
that like a wounded snake, drags its slow length along."
-- Alexander Pope's "Essay on Criticism", 2nd line is an alexandrine

Front 2

Decorum

Back 2

one of the neoclassical principles of drama - the relation of style to content in the speech of dramatic characters, e.g., a characters' speech should be appropriate to his or her social station

Front 3

Doggerel

Back 3

derogatory term used to describe poorly written poetry of little or no literary value, such as Shakespeare's intentional doggeral in dialogue between the Dromio twins in "The Comedy of Errors"

Front 4

Epithalamium

Back 4

a work, esp. a poem, written to celebrate a wedding:
Spenser's "Epithalamium":

Song! made in lieu of many ornaments,
With which my love should duly have been dect,
Which cutting off through hasty accidents,
Ye would not stay your dew time to respect,
But promist both to reconpens;
Be unto her a goodly ornament,
And for short time an endlesse moniment.

Front 5

Ottava rima

Back 5

eight iambic lines (usually iambic pentameter) with three alternating rhymes and final couplet: abababcc; originally used for long poems on heroic themes, later in mock-heroic form

Front 6

Euphuism

Back 6

word derived from Lyly's "Euphues" (1580) to describe writing self-consciously laden with elaborate figures of speech; popular and influential of speech/writing in late 16th century; e.g., Polonius in "Hamlet"

Front 7

Feminine Rhyme

Back 7

lines rhymed by their final two syllables (not simply a "double rhyme"), properly with penultimate syllables stressed and final syllables unstressed:

Sonnet 20, "A woman's face with nature's own hand"
A woman's face with Nature's own hand painted
Hast thou, the master-mistress of my passion;
A woman's gentle heart, but not acquainted
With shifting change, as is false woman's fashion...

Front 8

Flat and Round Characters

Back 8

terms coined by E.M. Forster, describe character build around single dominant trait (flat, e.g., Mrs. Micawber in 'David Copperfield'), and those shaded/developed with greater psychological complexity (round, e.g., Anna Karenina of Tolstoy)

Front 9

Georgic

Back 9

poems dealing with people laboring in the countryside - pushing plows, raising crops, etc.; not to be confused with pastoral poetry which idealizes life in the countryside;

from Virgil's 'Georgics', a poem about the virtues of farming life

Front 10

Hamartia

Back 10

Aristotle's term for what is popularly called 'the tragic flaw'; hamartia differs from the tragic flaw in that it implies fate, whereas tragic flaw implies an inherent psychological flaw in the tragic character

e.g. Oedipus, in his hasty temper, and Macbeth, in his lust for power, are tragically flawed

Front 11

Homeric Epithet

Back 11

a repeated descriptive phrase as found in Homer's epics, e.g., "rosy-fingered dawn", "the wine-dark sea", and "the ever-resourceful Odysseus"

Front 12

Hudibrastic

Back 12

term derived from Samuel Butler's 'Hudibras"; refers specifically to the couplets of rhymed tetrameter lines (or eight syllables long), which he uses, or more generally to any deliberate, humorous, ill-rhymed, ill-rhythmed couplets:

We grant, although he had much wit
he was very shy of using it
As being loath to wear it out
And therefore bore it no about,
Unless on holidays, or so
As men their best apparel do.
Beside, tis' known he could speak Greek
As naturally as pigs squeak.

Front 13

Litotes

Back 13

an understatement created through a double negative (or more precisely, negating the negative);

e.g., Acts 21:39: "Paul answered, 'I am a Jew, from Tarsus in Colicia, a citizen of no ordinary city. Please let me speak to the people."

Front 14

Masculine Rhyme

Back 14

a rhyme ending on the final stressed syllable (aka, regular old rhyme):

e.g., Robert Frost, Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening:
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

Front 15

Metonymy

Back 15

a phrase that refers to a person or object by a single important feature of the person;

e.g., "The pen is mightier than the sword", from Edward Bulwer-Lytton's play "Richelieu" - 'the pen' represents the written word, and 'the sword' represents violent acts

Front 16

Neoclassical Unities

Back 16

principles of dramatic structure derived from Aristotle's 'Poetics'; v. popular in neoclassical movement of the 17th&18th centuries; essential unities are of time (a work should take place within the span of one day); place (should take place within the confines of a single locale); and action (should contain a single dramatic plot, with no subplots)

Front 17

Pastoral Elegy

Back 17

a lament for the dead sung by a shepherd, who is a stand-on for the author; the elegy is for another poet

e.g., Milton's 'Lycidas' (Edward King) and Shelley's 'Adonais' (for John Keats)

Front 18

Pastoral Literature

Back 18

deals with the lives of people, especially shepherds, in the country or in nature

e.g., Marlowe's poem 'The Passionate Shepherd to his Love'

Front 19

Pathetic Fallacy

Back 19

term coined by John Ruskin, referring to ascribing emotion and agency to inanimate objects;

e.g., Ruskin's line "The cruel crawling foam"

Front 20

Picaresque

Back 20

a novel loosely constructed along an incident-to-incident basis, following a scurrilous rogue concerned with filling his belly and staying out of jail; e.g., 'Huckleberry Finn', Defoe's 'Moll Flanders' is female picaresque

Front 21

Skeltonics

Back 21

humorous poetry with shorty, rhymed lines and pronounced rhythm made popular by John Skelton; differs from doggerel in quality of idea expressed;

Skelton's "How the Doughty Duke of Albany"
O ye wretched Scots,
Ye puant pisspots,
It shall be you lots
To be knit up with knots.

Front 22

Sprung Rhythm

Back 22

created and used by Gerard Manly Hopkins; like OE verse, only stresses count in scansion

Front 23

Synaesthesia

Back 23

interplay of the senses - e.g., hot pink, golden tones:

Keats' "Ode to a Nightingale":
Tasting of Flora and the country green,
Dance, and Provencal song, and sunburnt mirth!
O for a beaker of the warm South...

Front 24

Synecdoche

Back 24

phrase that refers to a person or object by a single important feature:

"I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas."

Front 25

Ballad stanza

Back 25

typical of fold ballad; like in OE verse/sprung rhythm, length of lines determined by number of stressed syllables only; rhyme scheme is abcb

e.g., "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" by Coleridge

Front 26

In Memoriam stanza

Back 26

four lines of iambic tetrameter rhyming abba

e.g., Tennyson's "In Memoriam A.H.H."

Front 27

Rhyme Royal

Back 27

seven-line iambic pentameter rhyming ababbcc

e.g., "They Flee from Me that Sometime Did Me Seek" by Sir Thomas Wyatt

They flee from me that sometime did me seek
With naked foot stalking in my chamber.
I have seen them gentle, tame, and meek,
That now are wild, and do not remember.

Front 28

Spenserian

Back 28

nine-line stanza - first eight are iambic pentameter, final line is iambic hexameter (alexandrine); ababbcbcc

stanza Spenser created fro "The Faerie Queene"

Front 29

Terza Rima

Back 29

three-line stanzas with interlocking rhyme scheme: aba bcb cdc ded, etc.,

invented by Dante for "Divine Comedy":
Midway on our life's journey, I found myself
In dark woods, the right road lost. To tell
About those woods is hard - so tangled and rough...

Front 30

Blank verse

Back 30

unrhymed iambic pentameter verse, e.g., Tennyson's "Ulysses"

Front 31

Free Verse

Back 31

without strict meter

Front 32

OE Verse

Back 32

internal alliteration of lines and strong midline caesura

e.g., Beowulf:
Protected in war; so warriors earn
Their fame, and wealth is shaped with a sword

Front 33

Sonnet

Back 33

14 lines of rhyming iambic pentameter

Front 34

Italian or Petrarchan sonnet

Back 34

0 final couplets
rhyming abbaabba cdecde; first 8 the octave, final 6 are two tercets, one sestet

e.g., Milton's "When I Consider How My Light is Spent"

Front 35

English or Shakespearean

Back 35

1 final couplet
abab cdcd efef gg

Shakespeare's Sonnet 73

Front 36

Spenserian

Back 36

1 final couplet, plus 2 in the body
abab bcbc cdcd ee

Front 37

Villanelle

Back 37

19-line, aba aba aba aba aba abaa, repetition of first and third lines:
aba ab1 ab3 ab1 ab3 ab13

e.g. Dylan Thomas "Do not Go Gentle Into That Dark Night"

Front 38

Sestina

Back 38

39-line, 6 stanzas, 6 lines each, final stanza (envoi) of 3 lines; no rhyme, one of 6 words used as end of each line

Front 39

Gerund

Back 39

verb acting as noun:

Eating worms is bad for your health.

Front 40

Indicative

Back 40

Present tense

Front 41

Participle

Back 41

"-ed" form

John has played ball.

Front 42

Substantive

Back 42

group of words acting as noun

Playing the banjo is way cool.

Front 43

Vocative

Back 43

expression of direct address

Sit, blast you, sit!

Front 44

Freudian/Psychoanalytic critic

Back 44

Oedipal complex, libido, id, ego, superego, subconscious, repression, resistance, et al,

e.g. Harold Bloom - literary fathers/strong poet

Front 45

Archetype/Myth Criticism

Back 45

draws from Carl Jung, James Frazer
e.g. Joseph Campbell, Northrop Frye
finds recurring symbols/motifs, looks for collective unconscious of mankind

Front 46

400-1300

Back 46

Old English (c. 1000 Eng. influence by medieval French)
Battle of Hastings 1066

Hint 46

Cademon c. 670
Author of Beowulf c. 750

Front 47

1300-1500

Back 47

Middle English
Battle of Agincourt 1415
Gutenburg Bible 1456

Hint 47

William Langland 1380
Geoffrey Chaucer 1380
Thomas Malory 1450

Front 48

1500-1558

Back 48

Early Tudor period
Reigns of Henry VII, Henry VII, Edward VI, and Mary

Hint 48

John Skelton
Thomas More

Front 49

1558-1603

Back 49

Elizabethan period

Hint 49

Philip Sidney
Edmund Spenser
John Lyly
Christopher Marlowe
William Shakespeare

Front 50

1603-1625

Back 50

Jacobean period
James I

Hint 50

Ben Jonson

Front 51

1625-1649

Back 51

Caroline period
Charles I

Hint 51

John Donne
John Webster

Front 52

1649-1660

Back 52

Charles I executed 1649
Cromwell and the Interregnum

Hint 52

John Milton
Robert Herrick
Andrew Marvel

Front 53

1660-1714

Back 53

Restoration
Reign of Charles II 1660-1702

Hint 53

William Congreve
George Etherege
John Bunyan
John Dryden

Front 54

1714-1727

Back 54

Reign of Anne 1702-1714, last Stuart monarch

Hint 54

Daniel Defoe
Alexander Pope

Front 55

1727-1760

Back 55

Reign of George I, House of Hanover

Hint 55

Jonathan Swift
Henry Fielding
Thomas Gray

Front 56

1760-1790

Back 56

Reign of George II
The Enlightenment
First 30 years of George III
American Revolution 1775-1783
The Gothic Novel

Hint 56

Samuel Johnson
Lawrence Sterne
Horace Walpole
Thomas Chatterton
Mary Wollstonecraft
William Cowper

Front 57

1790-1820

Back 57

Early Romantic period
Second 30 years of George III
Sturm und Drang in Germany

Hint 57

Anne Radcliffe
William Blake
William Wordsworth
Samuel Coleridge
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Lord Byron
John Keats

Front 58

1820-1837

Back 58

Middle Romantic period
Reign of George IV 1820-1830
Reign of William IV 1830-1837

Hint 58

Charles Lamb
Jane Austen
Thomas Carlyle
Alfred Tennyson
Washington Irving USA
Edgar Allen Poe USA

Front 59

1837-1869

Back 59

Late Romantic and Victorian
First 32 years of Victoria

Hint 59

Thomas Macaulay
Emily and Charlotte Brontë
Charles Dickens
Robert Browning

Front 60

1837-1869

Back 60

Trancendentalism in the USA

Hint 60

Nathaniel Hawthorne
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Henry David Thoreau
Walt Whitman
Herman Melville

Front 61

1869-1901

Back 61

Second 30 years of Victoria
Realism

Hint 61

John Ruskin
George Meredith
Charles Swinburne
George Eliot
Gerard Manly Hopkins
Thomas Hardy
Mark Twain USA
Henry James USA

Front 62

1901-1939

Back 62

Modernism

Hint 62

William Butler Yeats
Joseph Conrad
D.H. Lawrence
W.H. Auden
James Joyce
Virgina Woolf
Ernest Hemingway USA
F. Scott Fitzgerald USA
Gertrude Stein USA
T.S. Eliot USA
Ezra Pound USA
W.E.B. Du Bois

Front 63

Heroic couplet

Back 63

pair of masculine rhyming iambic pentameter lines, closed - not enjambed

e.g., Alexander Pope

Front 64

Gothic explique

Back 64

process of summing up and revealing at the work's end the true causes of seeming impossibilities

e.g., Radcliffe's Mysteries of Udolpho, Poe's "The Purloined Letter", "The Murders on the Rue Morgue"

Front 65

The Knight

Back 65

knightly

1st tale: Arcite and Palamon fall for Emily, Arcite gets Mars to help, Palamon gets Venus, Arcite wins but dies

Front 66

The Prioress

Back 66

dainty, materialistic, sentimental, coral rosary, gold brooch

tale: Jews murder xtian boy for singing hymn, keeps singing afters slit throat - "MURDER WILL OUT"

Front 67

Thu Nun's Priest(s)

Back 67

Chaunticleer and Perteltote; Sir Russell the fox, mock-heroic

Front 68

The Merchant

Back 68

wears motley, beaver hat, talks about profitable business (he's in debt)

January (old knight) and May marry, he goes blind jealous, she cheats on him in tree

Front 69

The Wife of Bath

Back 69

deaf, gap-toothed, plump, ruddy

tale: knight of King Arthur rapes maiden, has to answer what women desire most, marries witch who says 'sovereignty'