How To Crack The Gre In Literature

Front 1

Alexandrine

Back 1

A line of iambic hexameter. The final line of a Spensarian stanza is this.

Front 2

Alliteration

Back 2

The use of a repeated consonant or sound, usually at the beginning of a series of words.

Front 3

Allusion

Back 3

A reference to someone or something, usually literary.

Front 4

Antagonist

Back 4

The main character opposing the protagonist. Usually the villain.

Front 5

Anthropomorphism

Back 5

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 through a literary work.

Front 6

Apostrophe

Back 6

A speech addressed to someone not present, or to an abstraction. I.e., "History! You will remember me..." The innate grandiosity of this lends itself to parody.

Front 7

Bildungsroman

Back 7

A German term meaning "a novel of education." It typically follows a young person over a period of years, from naïveté and inexperience through the first struggles with the harsher realities and hypocrisies of the adult world.

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Caesura

Back 8

The pause that breaks a line of Old English verse. Also any particularly deep pause in a line of verse.

Front 9

Decorum

Back 9

One of the neoclassical principles of drama. This is the relation of style to content in the speech of dramatic characters. For example, a character's speech should be appropriate to his or her social station.

Hint 9

Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

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Doggerel

Back 10

A derogatory term used to describe poorly written poetry of little or no literary value.

Front 11

Epithalamium

Back 11

A work, especially a poem, written to celebrate a wedding.

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Euphemism

Back 12

A word derived from Lyly's Euphues (1850) to characterize writing that is self-consciously laden with elaborate figures of speech. This is a popular and influential mode of speech and writing in the late sixteenth century.

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Feminine Rhyme

Back 13

Lines rhymed by their final two syllables. A pair of lines ending "running" and "gunning" would be an example of this. Properly (not simply a "double rhyme") the penultimate syllables are stressed and the final syllables unstressed.

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Flat Character

Back 14

Term coined by E. M. Forster to describe characters built around a single dominant trait.

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Round Character

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Term coined by E. M. Forster to describe characters shaded and developed with greater psychological complexity.

Front 16

Georgic

Back 16

Not to be confused with pastoral poetry, which idealizes life in the countryside, these poems deal with people laboring in the countryside, pushing plows, raising crops, etc.

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Hamartia

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

Front 18

Homeric Epithet

Back 18

A repeated descriptive phase, as found in Homer's epics.

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Hudibrastic

Back 19

A term derived from Samuel Butler's Hudibras. It refers specifically to the couplets of rhymed tetrameter lines (well, eight syllables long, anyway), which Butler employed in Hudibras, or more generally to any deliberate, humorous, ill-rhythmed, ill-rhymed couplets. Butler had a genius for "bad" poetry.

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Hyperbole

Back 20

A deliberate exaggeration.

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Litotes

Back 21

An understatement created through a double negative (ore more precisely, negating the negative). It sounds more complicated than it is.

Front 22

Masculine Rhyme

Back 22

A rhyme ending on the final stressed syllable (aka, regular old rhyme).

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Metonymy

Back 23

A term for a phrase that refers to a person or object by a single important feature of the person.

Front 24

Neoclassical Unities

Back 24

Principles of dramatic structure derived (and applied somewhat too strictly) from Aristotle's Poetics. They are called this because of their popularity in the neoclassical movement of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The essentials are of time, place, and action.

Hint 24

The work should take place in the span of one day, in a single locale, and should contain a single dramatic plot, with no subplots.

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Pastoral Elegy

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A type of poem that takes the form of an elegy (a lament for the dead) sung by a shepherd. In this conventionalized form, the shepherd who sings the elegy is a stand-in for the author, and the elegy is for another poet.

Hint 25

Lycidas

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Pastoral Literature

Back 26

A work that deals with the lives of people, especially shepherds, in the country or in nature.

Front 27

Pathetic Fallacy

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A term coined by John Ruskin. It refers to ascribing emotion and agency to inanimate objects.

Front 28

Personification

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Giving an inanimate object human qualities or form.

Front 29

Picaresque

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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.

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Protagonist

Back 30

Thee main character, usually the hero.

Front 31

Skeltonics

Back 31

A form of humorous poetry, using very short, rhymed lines and a pronounced rhythm, made popular by John Skelton. The only real difference between this and a doggerel is the quality of the thought expressed.

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Sprung Rhythm

Back 32

The rhythm created and used in the nineteenth century by Gerard Manley Hopkins. Like Old English verse, this fits a varying number of unstressed syllables in a line—only the stresses count in scansion.

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Synaesthesia

Back 33

A term referring to phrases that suggest an interplay of the senses. "Hot pink" and "golden tones" are examples.

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Synecdoche

Back 34

A phrase that refers to a person or object by a single important feature of that object or person.

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Voice

Back 35

The perspective from which a story is written. Literature is most often written from the first person or the third person, though there are rare instances of artists utilizing the second person or the first person plural. It is difficult to find an entire literary work that exemplifies each, as this often changes within a particular literary work.

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Ballad Stanza

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The typical stanza of the folk ballad. The length of the lines in these stanzas, just as in sprung rhythm poetry and Old English verse, is determined by the number of stressed syllables only. The rhyme scheme is abcb.

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In Memoriam

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The stanza composed of four lines of iambic tetrameter rhyming abba.

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Ottava Rima

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Eight-line stanza (usually iambic pentameter) rhyming abababcc.

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Rhyme Royal

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Seven-line iambic pentameter stanza rhyming ababbcc.

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Spenserian

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It is a nine-line stanza. The first eight lines are iambic pentameter. The final line, in iambic hexameter, is an alexandrine. The stanza's rhyme scheme is ababbcbcc.

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Terza Rima

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This form consists of three-line stanzas with an interlocking rhyme scheme proceeding aba bcb cdc ded, etc.

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Blank Verse

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Unrhymed iambic pentameter verse.

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Free Verse

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Unrhymed verse without a strict meter.

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Old English Verse

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Verse characterized by the internal alliteration of lines and a strong midline pause called a caesura.

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Petrarchan Sonnet

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Also called "Italian." A 14-line poem rhyming abbaabba cdecde. The first eight lines are called the octave. The final six lines (composed of two groups of three, or tercets) are called the sestet.

Hint 45

No final couplets

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Shakespearean Sonnet

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Also called "English." A 14-line poem rhyming abab cdcd efef gg.

Hint 46

1 final couplets

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Spenserian Sonnet

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A 14-line poem rhyming abab bcbc cdcd ee.

Hint 47

1 final couplet plus 2 couplets in the body

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Villanelle

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A 19-line form rhyming aba aba aba aba aba abaa. Its most notable characteristic is the repetition of the first and third lines throughout the poem: aba ab1 ab3 ab1 ab3 ab13.

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Sestina

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This is a 39-line poem of six lines each and a final stanza (called an envoi) of three lines. Rhyme plays no part in this. Instead, one of six words is used as the end word of each of the poem's lines according to a fixed pattern. If you see a poem of six-line stanzas based on a pattern of repeated end-words, it is this.

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Auxiliary Verb

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A "he!ping verb" (often a form of "be," "have," or "do").

Hint 50

I am working on it.

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Gerund

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A verb acting as a noun clause (usually the "-ing" form of the verb).

Hint 51

Eating worms is bad for your health.

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Imperative

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Verb used for issuing commands.

Hint 52

Do it now!

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Indicative

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Plain old verb in present tense.

Hint 53

John plays with the ball.

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Infinitive

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An unconjugated verb with "to" in front of it.

Hint 54

To be, or not to be.

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Participle

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The "-ed" form of a verb.

Hint 55

John has played with the ball many times.

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Predicate

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Further information about the subject.

Hint 56

This test is really bogus.

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Subjunctive

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Verb used to express conditional or counterfactual statements.

Hint 57

If I were a rich man...

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Subordinate Conjunction

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A word that introduces a subordinate clause.

Hint 58

Since you're awake, I'll just turn on the TV.

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Substantive

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A group of words acting as a noun.

Hint 59

Playing the banjos is extremely annoying.

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Vocative

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Expression of direct address.

Hint 60

Sit, Ubu, sit!

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Lacanian Criticism

Back 61

Begun with "The Mirror Stage in the Formation of the I" by Jacques Lacan, in which Lacan suggests that a child's first (mis)recognition (méconnaisance) of him- or herself in the mirror is the point at which the child becomes alienated from him- or herself, because it is the point at which the child enters the symbolic order. Language comes first and shapes, or "structures," the unconscious. In some ways this criticism is the perfect bridge between psychoanalytic and linguistic criticisms, and might be thought of as Freud and Hegel read through Saussure.

Hint 61

Keywords: mirror, phallus, signifier/signified, substitution, desire, jouissance, objet petit a, and the three orders: imaginary, symbolic, and real.

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Marxist Criticism

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Left-wing view of literature and the economic situation from which literature emerges and in which it was and is consumed.

Hint 62

Keywords: base (material economic reality), superstructure (cultural superstructure built on the base), class, proletariat, means of production, bourgeoisie, imperialism, dialectical materialism

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Marxist Influence on Criticism

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Texts are not timeless, fixed creations subject to universal standards of evaluation and interpretation, nor does Man possess essential, unchanging qualities that works of "great literature" address across the ages. Rather, a given individual , his consciousness, and the products of that consciousness are themselves the products of a specific cultural and historical context, and thus that context must be addressed.

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New Historicism

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The institutions (in the broadest sense—for example, language is an institution) of a given society produce discernible effects in the consciousness, such as literature. The major term for the social-constitutional presence in consciousness is ideology. The presence and effects of ideology in literature are not artificial layers of fluff to be stripped away in order to get at the essential and "the real," rather, the cultural-ideological layer is the proper object of analysis itself. What the perceptive critic finds in a text, above all, is the encoded ideology supporting the dominant class and also the struggling voice of the oppressed ideological subject.

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Identity Criticisms

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Includes feminist criticism, black criticism, post-colonial criticism. All are New Historicist-influenced critical modes, each with its own emphasis, that often investigate definitions or constructions of self.

Front 66

Psychological Criticism

Back 66

Examines and emphasizes precisely those things Marxist-influenced criticism does not. Concerned with universals of human consciousness and the ways in which essential aspects of the human psyche manifest themselves in literature. Considers the personality and biographical particulars of the individual author as legitimate fields of inquiry, something both the Marxist-influenced and linguistic critics typically do not.

Front 67

Psychoanalytic Criticism

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Also known as Freudian Criticism. Look for Freudian jargon.

Hint 67

Keywords: Oedipal/Elektral complexes, libido, I'd, ego, superego, subconscious, repression, resistance

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Harold Bloom

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Psychoanalytic (Freudian) critic who theorized authorial production. Authors subconsciously position their work against that of another, earlier author who functions as a kind of literary father figure.

Hint 68

Keyword: strong-poet

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Myth Criticism

Back 69

Also known as Archetype Criticism. Drawn from Freud and Jung and anthropologist James G. Frazer, particularly his encyclopedic study of myth and ritual, The Golden Bough. Critics Joseph Campbell and Northrop Frye are important figures in the subsequent development of this school. Looks for recurring symbols, motifs, character types and plots, finding them in sources as disparate as "The Epic of Gilgamesh," Superman comics, Arthurian legend, and T. S. Eliot's The Wasteland. Campbell's The Hero with a Thousand Faces is a transcultural examination of the surprisingly consistent figure of the mythic hero. This criticism believes that the existence of these persistent, powerful, ever-repeated stories and characters points to the needs and urges deep within the human psyche, and that the study of such stories can reveal the collective unconscious of humankind.

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Linguistic Criticism

Back 70

The broad area of critical thought concerned with language. Includes formalist criticism, new criticism, structuralism, post-structuralism, and reader-response criticism.

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Formalist Criticism

Back 71

Predominately Russian school of the 1920s. Attempted to discern the underlying laws that shape a literary text, the objectively discernible features that make it, in fact, literature. Much of this analysis centered around the concept of defamiliarization. Literature employs devices of plot, story, and voice, that makes language unfamiliar, and thus signals to the reader that writing is an aesthetic—literary—object.

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New Criticism

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The words are on the page; one need only examine them closely. If a phrase or word is found to be ambiguous, this school doesn't ask what the author "actually" meant but rather studies the ambiguity in order to discern how the several readings affect the totality of the peace.

Hint 72

Critics: T. S. Eliot, Robert Penn Warren, Cleanth Brooks, I. A. Richards, John Crowe Ransom, F. R. Leavis

Keywords: intentional fallacy, affective fallacy. Heresy of paraphrase, close reading

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Structuralism

Back 73

Derived from the theories of linguist Ferdinand de Saussure, among others. Closely related to semiotics, this school holds that meaning is never or rarely intrinsic—meaning is only produced by structure. The fundamental unit of structure is relative difference. This type of criticism will often describe a text in terms of binary opposition, often spatial metaphors: the center and the periphery, the vertical axis and the horizontal axis, etc.

Hint 73

Keywords: signifier, signified, sign

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Post-Structuralism

Back 74

Schools that both make use of structuralist theory and critique it. The most important for this test is deconstruction. Whereas structuralism posits a tidy, orderly structure to meaning, deconstruction focuses on the displacements, the excesses, and the gaps, that structuralists dismiss as exceptional. Deconstruction it's hold that these "exceptions" are absolutely integral to the creation of meaning.

Hint 74

Keywords: erasure, trace, bracketing, differance, slippage, dissemination, logocentrism, indeterminacy, decentering, mimesis, alterity, marginality, desire, lack

Front 75

Reader-Response Criticism

Back 75

Insists that the reader's experience of a text is the literary event—literature is what happens inside a reader's head, not what occurs on the page. One notion is that literary works involve an implied or ideal reader. Other critics examine the aesthetic impact of a work, judging whether the work broke with the aesthetic horizons of expectations of its time. This school is closely allied with Reception Aesthetics and individual critics make use of Marxist, Psychological, and Linguistic theory.

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400-1300

Back 76

Old English (c. 1000, the English language became strongly influenced by medieval French)

Battle of Hastings (1066)

Representative Authors: Caedmon c. 670, author of Beowulf c. 750

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1300-1500

Back 77

Middle English

Battle of Agincourt (1415)

Gutenberg Bible (1456)

Representative Authors: William Langland (1380), Geoffrey Chaucer (1380), Thomas Malory (1450)

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1500-1558

Back 78

Early Tudor period

Reigns of Henry VII, Henry VIII, Edward VI, and Mary (Queen of Scots, Bloody Mary)

Representative Authors: John Skelton, Thomas More

Front 79

1558-1603

Back 79

Elizabethan period

Reign of Elizabeth I

Representative Authors: Philip Sidney, Edmund Spenser, John Lyly, Christopher Marlowe, William Shakespeare

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1603-1625

Back 80

Jacobean period

Reign of James I

Representative Authors: Ben Jonsom

Front 81

1625-1649

Back 81

Caroline period

Reign of Charles I

Representative Authors: John Donne, John Webster

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1649-1660

Back 82

Charles I executed (1649)

Cromwell and the Interregnum

Representative Authors: John Milton, Robert Herrick, Andrew Marvell

Front 83

1660-1714

Back 83

Restoration period

Reign of Charles II (1660-1702)

Representative Authors: William Congreve, George Etherege, John Bunyan, John Dryden

Front 84

1714-1727

Back 84

Reign of Anne (1702-1714), the last Stuart monarch

Representative Authors: Daniel Defoe, Alexander Pope

Front 85

1727-1760

Back 85

Reign of George I of the House of Hanover

Representative Authors: Jonathan Swift, Henry Fielding, Thomas Gray

Front 86

1760-1790

Back 86

Reign of George II

The Enlightenment

First 30 years of the reign of George III

American Revolution (1775-1783)

The Gothic Novel

Representative Authors: Samuel Johnson, Lawrence Stern, Horace Walpole, Thomas Chatterton, Mary Wollstonecraft, William Cowper

Front 87

1790-1820

Back 87

Early Romantic period

Second 30 years of George III's reign

Sturm und Drang in Germany

Representative Authors: Anne Radcliffe, William Blake, William Wordsworth, Samuel Coleridge, Percy Bysshe Shelly, John Keats, Charles Lamb, Jane Austen

Front 88

1820-1837

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Middle Romantic period

Reign of George IV (1820-1830)

Reign of William IV (1830-1837)

Representative British Authors: Thomas Carlyle, Alfred Tennyson

Representative American Authors: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe

Front 89

1837-1869

Back 89

Late Romantic and Victorian periods

First 32 years of the reign of Victoria

Transcendentalism in the United States

Representative British Authors: Thomas Macaulay, Charlotte Brontë, Emily Brontë, Charles Dickens, Robert Browning

Representative American Authors: Nathaniel Hawthorne, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Walt Whitman, Herman Melville

Front 90

1869-1901

Back 90

Second 30 years of the reign of Victoria

Realism

Representative British Authors: John Ruskin, George Meredith, Charles Swinburne, George Eliot Gerard, M. Hopkins, Thomas Hardy

Representative American Authors: Mark Twain, Henry James

Front 91

1901-1939

Back 91

Modernism

Representative British Authors: William Butler Yeats, Joseph Conrad, D. H. Lawrence, W. H. Auden, James Joyce, Virginia Woolf

Representative American Authors: Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, W. E. B. Du Bois

Front 92

Epic Invocation

Back 92

Also known as the "epic question." The beginning of an epic through a request for a muse to help the poet remember the past.

Front 93

In Medias Res

Back 93

Epics begin this way, in the midst of things. Background information is provided as the narrative unfolds.

Front 94

Epic Catalogs

Back 94

Convention of the epic. Background information and descriptions of equipment or participants in the form of long lists.

Front 95

Epic Simile

Back 95

Convention of the epic. Highly stylized and lengthy comparison beginning with "like" or "as."

Front 96

Divine Intervention

Back 96

Convention of the epic. Involves interfering or interested supernatural beings who, in some sense, toy with the hu!man participants.

Front 97

Epic Conclusion

Back 97

Convention of the epic. Resolution of the poem through a great battle, contest, or deed.

Front 98

The Iliad

Back 98

Agamemnon and Achilles of Sparta besiege Troy because Paris of Troy stole and married Helen of Sparta. Achilles' best friend dies as the Trojans beat back the Spartan Greeks (including Odysseus). Achilles avenges his death by killing Paris' brother, Hector.

Front 99

Zeus

Back 99

Jupiter

Chief god, god of the sky

Front 100

Poseidon

Back 100

Neptune

Lord of the sea

Front 101

Hades

Back 101

Pluto

Lord of the dead, the underworld (but not death itself)

Front 102

Hestia

Back 102

Vesta

Goddess of the hearth

Front 103

Hera

Back 103

Juno

Protector of marriage

Front 104

Ares

Back 104

Mars

God of war

Front 105

Athena

Back 105

Minerva

Goddess of wisdom

Front 106

Aphrodite

Back 106

Venus

Goddess of love and beauty

Front 107

Hermes

Back 107

Mercury

Messenger god (leads dead to underworld; creator of music)

Front 108

Artemis

Back 108

Diana

Goddess of the hunt; twin to Apollo/Phoebus

Front 109

Apollo

Back 109

Phoebus

God of healing, intellectual pursuits, fine arts, prophesy, and, in later years, sun and light; twin to Artemis/Diana

Front 110

Hephaestus

Back 110

Vulcan

God of smiths and weavers

Front 111

Demeter

Back 111

Ceres

Goddess of the harvest

Front 112

Persephone

Back 112

Proserpine

Goddess of the underworld

Front 113

Dionysius

Back 113

Bacchus

God of wine

Front 114

Eros

Back 114

Cupid

God of love

Front 115

Eris

Back 115

Goddess of strife

Front 116

Pan

Back 116

God of goatherds and shepherds (plays fife and has a goat-like appearance)

Front 117

Aglaia

Back 117

Daughter of Zeus and Eurynome; Grace of Splendor

Front 118

Euphrosyne

Back 118

Daughter of Zeus and Eurynome; Grace of Mirth

Front 119

Thalia

Back 119

Daughter of Zeus and Eurynome; Grace of Good Cheer

Front 120

Clio

Back 120

Daughter of Zeus and Mnemosyne; known for music that brings joy to any who hear it; Muse of History

Front 121

Urania

Back 121

Daughter of Zeus and Mnemosyne; known for music that brings joy to any who hear it; Muse of Astronomy

Front 122

Melpomene

Back 122

Daughter of Zeus and Mnemosyne; known for music that brings joy to any who hear it; Muse of Tragedy

Front 123

Thalia

Back 123

Daughter of Zeus and Mnemosyne; known for music that brings joy to any who hear it; Muse of Comedy

Front 124

Terpsichore

Back 124

Daughter of Zeus and Mnemosyne; known for music that brings joy to any who hear it; Muse of Dance

Front 125

Calliope

Back 125

Daughter of Zeus and Mnemosyne; known for music that brings joy to any who hear it; Muse of Epic Poetry

Front 126

Erato

Back 126

Daughter of Zeus and Mnemosyne; known for music that brings joy to any who hear it; Muse of Love Poetry

Front 127

Polyhymnia

Back 127

Daughter of Zeus and Mnemosyne; known for music that brings joy to any who hear it; Muse of Songs to the Gods

Front 128

Euterpe

Back 128

Daughter of Zeus and Mnemosyne; known for music that brings joy to any who hear it; Muse of Lyric Poetry

Front 129

The Furies

Back 129

Punish crime in Greco-Roman mythology

Front 130

The Fates

Back 130

Choose a man's destiny and life span in Greco-Roman mythology

Front 131

Titans

Back 131

Ruled the earth before the Olympians overthrew them

Front 132

Chronos

Back 132

Saturn

Ruler of the Titans

Front 133

Naiads

Back 133

One of three classes of water nymphs, along with the Nereides and Oceanides

Front 134

Greek God Family Tree

Back 134

Front 135

Family Tree of the Cursed House of Atreus

Back 135

From the Oresteia by Aeschylus

Front 136

House of Thebes

Back 136

Front 137

The Odyssey

Back 137

Odysseus tries to return home after sacking Troy (see the Iliad). Cursed by Poseidon, he drifts at sea for ten years, has various adventures, and finally gets home to find wife Penelope fending off avid suitors. He and son Telemachus get rid of the lot.

Front 138

Agamemnon

Back 138

Part of the Oresteia. Clytemnestra, angry with husband Agamemnon for sacrificing their daughter and for bringing home his prescient love slave Cassandra, conspires with love to murder Agamemnon.

Front 139

Choephoroe

Back 139

"The Libation Bearers." Part of the Oresteia. Based on the advice of an oracle, Orestes (exiles son of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra) decides to avenge his father's murder. He and sister Electra murder Clytemnestra and her lover Aegisthus, but Orestes is tormented by the Furies (Eumenides).

Front 140

The Eumenides

Back 140

"The Benevolent Ones." Part of the Oresteia. Athena presides over a precedents setting murder trial: Orestes v. the Furies for the murder of Clytemnestra and Aegisthus. The jury is hung. Athena decides in favor of Orestes but placates the Furies by offering to share the ruling of Athens.

Front 141

Oedipus the King

Back 141

The Oracle prophesies that King Laius will have a son that will kill Laius and marry Queen Jocasta. But instead of killing newborn Oedipus to avoid the prophesy, they give him up for adoption. Grown-up Oedipus solves a sphinx's riddle and marries the Queen. When the incest is revealed, Jocasta commits suicide and Oedipus blinds himself.

Front 142

Oedipus at Colonus

Back 142

Oedipus goes to Colony's with daughters Antigone and Ismene. His sons fight each other to the death for his vacated throne.

Front 143

Antigone

Back 143

Despite penalty of death, Antigone attempts to bury her brother Polyneices. King Creon, her uncle, banishes her to a cave where she hangs herself. Creon's son Haemon, her lover, stabs himself in grief.