LITERATURE Flashcards
Look Homeward, Angel (1929) was the debut work of which major American novelist whose early death (at 37) and enormous size (he was almost 7’ tall) - not to mention his prodigious talent - have made him a cult figure amongst the American literati?
Thomas WOLFE
According to Homer’s Odyssey, which island - curiously lacking in consonants - was the home of the sorceress Circe?
AEAEA
Named for a 19th century German philologist, Bekker numbers are used to catalogue the works of which philosopher?
ARISTOTLE
Influenced by Thomas de Quincey’s Confessions of an English Opium-Eater and Suspiria de Profundis, which 1860 book by Charles Baudelaire discusses the effects of hashish and opium?
ARTIFICIAL PARADISES
By what description is the medical officer Dr. Thomas Stockmann known in the title of an 1882 play?
ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE
Who was Ibsen’s Master Builder
HALVARD SOLNESS
The first German book ever to top the New York Times best-seller list, Der Vorleser (The Reader) was a 1995 novel by which law professor and judge?
Bernhard SCHLINK
The Nag Hammadi library is a collection of 12 papyrus codices - containing 52 (mostly Biblical) texts - discovered at the namesake Egyptian town in 1945. The best-known of these texts is almost certainly a gospel consisting of 114 sayings attributed to Jesus. This gospel is named for which of the Twelve Apostles who, according to the text’s introduction, authored it?
ST THOMAS
What is the name of the cowboy known to ‘shoot faster than his shadow’ who was created by Belgian cartoonist Maurice De Bevere - better known as Morris – and at one time written by René Goscinny?
LUCKY LUKE
The (translated) first line of which 1890 novel is: “It was during the time I wandered about and starved in Christiania: Christiania, this singular city, from which no man departs without carrying away the traces of his sojourn there.”?
HUNGER (Knut Hamsun)
Translated into English by Christopher Fry with the title Tiger at the Gates, the 1935 play La guerre de Troie n’aura pas lieu (literally ‘The Trojan War Will Not Take Place’) is among the best-known works of which French playwright?
Jean GIRADOUX
. Aeschylus’s famous tragedy The Persians is set during, and in the immediate aftermath of, which battle?
SALAMIS
The Italian Regency of Carnaro was a self-proclaimed state in the city of Fiume (now Rijeka in Croatia) which was founded in 1919 by which poet of the Decadent movement whose influence on Mussolini has led to him being dubbed ‘the John the Baptist of Italian Fascism’?
Gabriele D’ANNUNZIO
In Voltaire’s novel Candide, what is the name of the Manichaean scholar whom the title character meets in Suriname? The exact opposite of Pangloss, he is convinced that the world is full of fools.
MARTIN
which muse of Giovanni Boccaccio? She was the titular subject of his 1344 novel and is mentioned frequently in The Decameron.
FIAMETTA
