Humanities (Poetry)

Question 0

What is the theme of John Milton’s Paradise Lost?

Answer 0

Expulsion from Eden. Milton set out out to write an epic poem to rival Homer’s Iliad, recreating the biblical story of the Garden of Eden—with a sympathetic slant of Lucifer.

Question 1

The poem Death, be not proud was written by ____?

Answer 1

John Donne (1572-1631) was an English poet known for his religious symbolism and elaborate metaphors.

Question 2

Born in Stratford-upon-Avon 1564, he wrote The Rape of Lucerne and Venus and Adonis.

Answer 2

William Shakespeare

Question 3

The contrasting poems The Tiger and The Lamb were by ______

Answer 3

William Blake, known for incorporating his religious visions in his work, penned this famous pair of poems.

Question 4

The Road Not Taken, The Pasture, and Birches were all written by _______.

Answer 4

Robert Frost, born in 1874, also wrote Acquired with the Night, and Fire and Ice.

Question 5

This homosexual American poet published the collection Leaves of Grass and ‘sang’ Song of Myself.

Answer 5

Walt Whitman

Question 6

Who authored the poem The Eagle?

Answer 6

Alfred Lord Tennyson

Question 7

Who wrote the bell jar?

Answer 7

Sylvia Plath

Question 8

What is the proper form of a haiku?

Answer 8

Three lines, consisting of five, seven, and five syllables, respectively

Question 9

What is a refrain?

Answer 9

Part of a poem repeated at the same position in each stanza as Shakespeare does with the final three lines of each stanza in winter.

Question 10

What is consonance?

Answer 10

The inverse of alliteration, or the repetition of the initial constant sound in a row of words.

• Alliteration refers to a repeated consonant at the beginning of the word.
• Consonance plays with consonants at the end of the words.

Question 11

The author of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland also wrote what else?

Answer 11

Lewis Carroll also wrote:
• Jabberwocky (Poem)
• Through the looking glass

Question 12

Who wrote “I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings.”

Answer 12

Maya Angelou, an African-American poet.

Question 13

What type of poem is in Memoriam by Alfred Lord Tennyson?

Answer 13

Elegy; Tennyson wrote in Memoriam after the death of his good friend Arthur Hallam.

Question 14

The units of measurement used to measure verse are ________?

Answer 14

Foot, line and stanza

Question 15

Who wrote ‘Do Not Go Gently into That Good Night’ and what type of poem is it?

Answer 15

It is one of Thomas Dylan’s best known poems.

• It is a villanelle, a French poem. Villanelle has two refrains, which are repeated in the first and last stanza, as well as alternated at the end of each stanzas in between.

Question 16

An English sonnet is composed of three ______ and one _______.

Answer 16

Quatrains, couplets.

• An English sonnet (also known as a Shakespeare sonnet) begins with three quatrains (a stanza containing 4 lines) and concludes with a couplet (two rhyming lines). It follows the rhyme scheme abab cdcd efef gg. An English sonnet is 14 lines long (divided into 4 stanzas)

Question 17

In poetry, a _______ unit is a set of two or three syllables of which only one is stressed.

Answer 17

Metric. A poem’s meter describes how it can be broken up by syllables and accents.

Question 18

What is the most commonly used English meter?

Answer 18

Iambic

Question 19

Define “deus ex machina.”

Answer 19

Dined as “god from the machine” from Latin, it refers to a sudden plot twist.

• Like an army charging up a hill, to resolve an otherwise doomed fate.

Question 20

I am a Canadian poet and novelist best known for the 1984 book, The Handmaid’s Tale.

Answer 20

Margaret Atwood

Question 21

Who wrote the poems: Elegy before Death, Thou art not lovelier than lilacs, The Suicide and The Little Ghost?

Answer 21

Edna St. Vincent Millay. She won a Pulitzer Prize for her work Harp Weaver and Other Poems.

Question 22

Dante Divine Comedy is ________?

Answer 22

A poem divided into three parts (Heaven, Purgatory, Hell)

Question 23

Italian sonnets are also known as ________ as sonnets.

Answer 23

Petrarchan because the Italian poet Petrarch used them so extensively.

Question 24

What is an Italian sonnet composed of?

Answer 24

Composed of an octave (eight lines) with rhyme scheme abbaabba and a sestet (six lines) with a scheme cdcdcd.

Question 25

Define metonymy.

Answer 25

A part of speech in which one word or phase is substituted for another with which it is closely associated.

• Using a related item to refer to an item itself

Question 26

Define synecdoche.

Answer 26

Using a part to define a whole

Question 27

_______ poetry is written to install knowledge or values in the reader.

Answer 27

Didactic

Question 28

Husband to Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein at 18, ________ wrote the poem Ozymandias.

Answer 28

Percy Shelley

Question 29

Dante’s Divine Comedy, at almost 900 pages, and Homer’s The Illad, at close to 700 pages, are examples of ______ poems.

Answer 29

Epic.

Question 30

A(n) _______ is a stanza made up of two lines.

Answer 30

Couplet

Question 31

A(n) _______ is a stanza made up of three lines

Answer 31

Tercet

Question 32

A(n) _______ is a stanza made up of four lines.

Answer 32

Quatrains

Question 33

A(n) _______ is a stanza made up of five lines.

Answer 33

Cinquains

Question 34

A(n) _______ is a stanza made up of six lines.

Answer 34

Sestets

Question 35

“Through” and “trough” are an example of a(n) _____ rhyme.

Answer 35

Eye. Although the two words look like rhymes, they make distinctly different end sounds.

Question 36

An unrhymed poem written iambic pentameter is known as _____ _____.

Answer 36

Blank verse

Question 37

“To be, or not to be—that is the question” begins Hamlet’s famous ___________.

Answer 37

Soliloquy. A soliloquy is where a character talks to himself or herself or reveals his or her thoughts without addressing a listener.

Question 38

A Transcendentalist and close friend to Henry David Thoreau, ________ wrote such poems as Nature and The Snowstorm.

Answer 38

Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Question 39

The poet ________ is known for his characteristic use of only lowercase letters.

Answer 39

e.e cummings.

Question 40

________ eloped with her husband Robert, also a well-known poet, a few years before publishing her collection of love poems, Sonnets from the Portuguese. One of her most famous poems starts with “How do I love thee? Let me count the ways…”, which was also the title of the poem.

Answer 40

Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

Question 41

The _______ of “Save the whales” is “Wave the sales.”

Answer 41

Spoonerism. When the initial consonant sounds of two words are inadvertently switches, forming a new phrase, it is known as spoonerism.

Question 42

Though not a recognized poet during his life (1844-1889), ________ was recognized as an esteemed poet after his death for such works as The Wreck of the Deutschland and The Caged Skylark.

Answer 42

Gerard Manley Hopkins.

Question 43

A jazz critic on the side, _________ was considered one of the most original poets of the late twentieth-century, with works including North Ship, The Whitsun Weddings and High Windows.

Answer 43

Philip Larkin.

Question 44

_________ turned to poetry in search of a greater means of expression, after a scandal erupted over his novel Jude the Obscure regarding his openness about free sexual relations between the sexes.

Answer 44

Thomas Hardy. A 19th-century English writer, he abandoned fiction writing altogether after Jude the Obscure and wrote poetry.

Question 45

In Edwin Arlington Robinson’s Richard Cory, the fact that Richard, a successful and revered businessman, commits suicide is an example of ______ irony.

Answer 45

Situational. When the outcome completely differs from what one expects to happen, it is known as situational irony.

Question 46

Define dramatic irony.

Answer 46

Describes a situation where the speaker’s words and the poem’s meaning contradict one another.

• William Blake’s The Chimney Sweeper.

Question 47

What is a octave?

Answer 47

A poem with eight lines.

Question 48

A close friend of Percy Shelley, poet _______ was eventually ostracized from society after discovered to be having sexual affairs with both his sister and fellow men. Considered one of the greatest Romantic poets, he wrote English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, The Dream and Don Juan.

Answer 48

Lord Byron. Rumors of Byron having an incestuous relationship with his half-sister resulted in him leaving England.

Question 49

A poem free of conventions is _____ _______.

Answer 49

Free verse. Though still poetry, free verse does not follow a prescribed pattern and allows the author more freedom when composing.

Question 50

________ wrote Those Winter Sunday’s, about a son finally recognizing all the little things his father did for him out of love.

Answer 50

Robert Hayden.