GRE Subject Test: Literature in English : Contexts of American Plays After 1925
Study concepts, example questions & explanations for GRE Subject Test: Literature in English
All GRE Subject Test: Literature in English Resources
Example Questions
Example Question #11 : Contexts Of American Plays
During what decade was Death of a Salesman first performed?
1930s
1940s
1920s
1900s
1910s
1940s
This play not only premiered in but also won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1949. If you didn’t know this, you could still eliminate some of the answer choices if you knew that Arthur Miller wasn’t born until 1915.
Example Question #12 : Contexts Of American Plays
Which of the following literary devices does not appear in Angels in America?
Hallucinatory visions
Religious allusions
Deus ex machina
Monologue
Doubling
Deus ex machina
Angels in America features doubling (one actor playing two or more roles), Biblical allusions and visitations from angels, monologues by several of the main characters, and hallucinatory visions. It does not include deus ex machina, which is a theatrical device whereby something unexpected and unexplained intervenes to fix a plot problem and drastically alter the course of the play. (A famous deus ex machina occurs in Hamlet in the form of the pirates.)
Example Question #71 : Contexts Of Plays
When was Long Day’s Journey Into Night first performed?
1980s
1940s
1970s
1950s
1960s
1950s
Although it was written a decade earlier, the play did not debut until 1956. It won the Pulitzer Prize in 1957.
Example Question #72 : Contexts Of Plays
When was Our Town first performed?
1970s
1930s
1950s
1960s
1940s
1930s
Although it was set several decades earlier, the play debuted in 1938 and won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama the same year.
Example Question #491 : Cultural And Historical Contexts
Who wrote A Raisin in the Sun?
Tom Stoppard
Adrienne Kennedy
Tony Kushner
Lorraine Hansberry
August Wilson
Lorraine Hansberry
Playwright Lorraine Hansberry (1930-1965) wrote A Raisin in the Sun (1959). Tony Kushner wrote Angels in America (1993). Tom Stoppard wrote Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead (1966). August Wilson wrote Fences (1987). Adrienne Kennedy wrote A Lesson in Dead Language (1968). All of these authors are major award-winning, twentieth-century American playwrights.
Example Question #492 : Cultural And Historical Contexts
The title of A Raisin in the Sun was based on a poem by which American author?
Gertrude Stein
ee cummings
Gwendolyn Brooks
Maya Angelou
Langston Hughes
Langston Hughes
Langston Hughes’ famous poem “Harlem” (also called “A Dream Deferred”) (1951) likens a delayed dream to a grape that withers into a raisin in the sun.
Example Question #75 : Contexts Of Plays
When was A Raisin in the Sun first performed?
1950s
1940s
1920s
1960s
1930s
1950s
A Raisin in the Sun was the first play by an African-American playwright to debut on Broadway, and it did so in 1959.
Example Question #493 : Cultural And Historical Contexts
What is the setting of A Raisin in the Sun?
Oklahoma City
San Francisco
Chicago
Harlem
New Orleans
Chicago
The play is set in midcentury Chicago and reflects, among other social concerns of that (and this) time, racist housing policies. While the play was inspired by Langston Hughes' poem "Harlem" (1951), the play was definitively set in Chicago, and the connection to "Harlem" was based on a metaphorical image (of a grape withering in the sun).
Example Question #494 : Cultural And Historical Contexts
Who wrote Long Day’s Journey Into Night?
Arthur Miller
Tony Kushner
Henrik Ibsen
Tennessee Williams
Eugene O’Neill
Eugene O’Neill
American playwright Eugene O’Neill (1888-1953) wrote Long Day’s Journey Into Night (1956), one of his most famous plays. Arthur Miller wrote Death of a Salesman (1949). Tennessee Williams wrote Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955). Tony Kushner wrote Angels in America (1993). Henrik Ibsen (the only non-American in the answer options) wrote Hedda Gabler (1890).
Example Question #495 : Cultural And Historical Contexts
What is the setting of Long Day’s Journey Into Night?
A Milwaukee slaughterhouse
A Brooklyn tenement
A Wyoming ranch
A Connecticut home
A New Orleans factory and nightclub
A Connecticut home
The play takes place over the course of a single day in the lives of a dysfunctional Connecticut family. Although the play is extremely lavish in its description of the setting, all of the action of the play is restricted to that one location.
All GRE Subject Test: Literature in English Resources
