All GRE Subject Test: Literature in English Resources
Example Questions
Example Question #1 : Identification Of World Plays
Which of the following Greek comedies concerns a group of women who try to end the Peloponnesian War by withholding sex from their husbands and lovers?
The Frogs
Chiron
The Clouds
Lysistrata
Iphigenia
Lysistrata
This play is Lysistrata, written by Aristophanes (the “Father” or “Prince” of ancient comedy). It concerns the eponymous heroine Lysistrata, who rallies the women in their efforts to bring about peace, and serves as commentary on the relationship between men and women in patriarchal ancient Greece.
Example Question #2 : Identification Of World Plays Before 1925
Which classic Greek play genre used pranks, burlesque elements and choruses of inebriated goat-like males (often equipped with phallic props) to portray material from Greek mythology or epic poetry?
comedy
bacchanalia
satire
satyr play
tragicomedy
satyr play
The satyr play is the genre described above. It often appeared as the final play in a four-play cycle of ancient Greek tragedy, of which Sophocles’ Oedipus cycle is a famous example.
Example Question #1 : Identification Of World Plays
The play Antigone, which concerns a Theban legend of civil war and an unsanctified dead body, was written by which of the following Greek dramatists?
Sophocles
Euripides
Aeschylus
Aristophanes
Homer
Sophocles
Antigone was written by Sophocles, who, along with Aeschylus and Euripides, is one of the only ancient Greek dramatists with work surviving today. The play in question contains the familiar Greek character Tiresias, the blind prophet, as well as Creon, the new king of Thebes; the slain brothers Eteocles and Polyneices; and the sisters Antigone and Ismene. In addition to its literary significance, the play achieved political importance by speaking out against despotism and anarchy and by promoting democratic society.
Example Question #8 : Identification Of World Plays
Several nineteenth-century European plays were based on which famous novel-in-verse of the same name by the Russian poet Alexander Pushkin?
Eugene Onegin
The Seagull
Anna Karenina
A Doll’s House
Crime and Punishment
Eugene Onegin
Eugene Onegin, originally written by Alexander Pushkin, concerns the eponymous main character, the fictional poet Vladimir Lensky, the shy but passionate Tatyana, and her vain older sister Olga. The novel’s and subsequent plays’ themes include the relationship between art and life, the absurdity of social conventions such as duels, and the mortality and loneliness of man.
Example Question #9 : Identification Of World Plays
Which famous nineteenth-century Scandinavian playwright wrote A Doll’s House, The Wild Duck, Peer Gynt, and An Enemy of the People?
Halldór Laxness
Henrik Ibsen
Knut Hamsun
Friedrich Schiller
Tomas Tranströmer
Henrik Ibsen
The listed works are by Henrik Ibsen, the Norwegian dramatist, director, and poet. His work is known for its strict, often bleak realism and for its role in introducing modernism to the theater. Plays such as A Doll’s House criticized social conventions that Ibsen saw as limiting and artificial, particularly marriage, motherhood, and family life.
Example Question #2 : Identification Of World Plays
Which eighteenth-century German poet and playwright was responsible for dramas such as Wilhelm Tell, The Maid of Orleans, The Robbers, and the Wallenstein trilogy?
Friedrich Schiller
Henrik Ibsen
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Bertolt Brecht
Rainer Maria Rilke
Friedrich Schiller
Friedrich Schiller, one of the most important playwrights of the 1700s, was known for shepherding in the artistic movement known as Weimar Classicism. He did so with the help of Goethe, a friend and literary rival, and with his own work, which include the lyrics to Beethoven’s famous Ode to Joy.
Example Question #51 : Identification Of Plays
Which four-part operatic masterpiece by the German composer Richard Wagner includes use of ancient Norse sagas, mythical structures, and musical elements such as the leitmotif?
Tristan und Isolde
The Ring of the Nibelung
Don Giovanni
The Valkyries
Lohengrin
The Ring of the Nibelung
The dramatic work in question is the Ring cycle, known in German as Der Ring des Nibelungen. The work’s structure is modeled on the ancient Greek dramas that contained three tragedies and a satyr play, with a full performance lasting more than half a day. Characters include Wotan, Fricka, Freia, Siegmund, Sieglinde, Siegfried, Gunther, and Brünnhilde.
Example Question #52 : Identification Of Plays
Which famous Mozart opera is based on the legend of a seductive, lascivious Italian nobleman and has inspired such writers as Flaubert, Kierkegaard, and George Bernard Shaw?
La Bohème
The Marriage of Figaro
The Barber of Seville
The Magic Flute
Don Giovanni
Don Giovanni
This is Don Giovanni, named after the title character. Don Giovanni (or Don Juan as he is known in legend) seduces and takes advantage of many other characters in the opera before he is confronted with a ghost that kills him and carries him down to hell. This character has served as an archetype and as a common cultural reference for a young male philanderer in literature.
Example Question #53 : Identification Of Plays
This Nobel Prize-winning Caribbean poet, author of Omeros and Sea Grapes, also wrote such plays as Dream on Monkey Mountain and The Capeman. Who is it?
Ama Ata Aidoo
Stanley French
Derek Walcott
Wole Solinka
Aimé Césaire
Derek Walcott
This is the St. Lucian poet Derek Walcott, winner of the 1992 Nobel Prize in Literature. Walcott often incorporates themes of post-colonialism and national identity as well as mythical and European elements into his writing.
Example Question #54 : Identification Of Plays
This Caribbean writer’s best known play is A Tempest, based on Shakespeare’s The Tempest and written with a postcolonial slant. Who is he?
Aimé Césaire
Ama Ata Aidoo
Stanley French
Fernando Arrabal
Mario Vargas Llosa
Aimé Césaire
This is Aimé Césaire, a French-educated native of Martinique and an incipient member of the négritude ideology. His work is often preoccupied with power, colonial rule, and racial identity.
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