Princeton Review Facts Flashcards

0
Q

“But at my back I always hear Time’s winged chariot hurrying near.”

A

Andrew Marvell from “To His Coy Mistress”

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1
Q

List these authors in order of the dates they were active, from past to present:

Charles Lamb
Elizabeth Gaskell
Sherwood Anderson
Andrew Marvell
Ernest Hemingway
A
Andrew Marvell 1621-1678
Charles Lamb 1775-1834
Elizabeth Gaskell 1810-1865
Sherwood Anderson 1876-1941
Ernest Hemingway 1899-1961
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2
Q

“No coward soul is mine

No trembler in the world’s storm-troubled sphere”

A

Emily Bronte, from

“No Coward Soul Is Mine”

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3
Q

“Make use of time, let not advantage slip;
Beauty within itself should not be wasted;
Fair flowers that are not gather’d in their prime
Rot and consume themselves in little time.”

A

Shakespeare, from Venus and Adonis

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4
Q

“Two girls discover the secret of life in a sudden line of poetry.”

A

Denise Levertov, 1964

“The Secret”

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5
Q

This alludes to another famous work, what is it?

The Sound and The Fury
By William Faulkner

A

The Sound and The Fury alludes to the lines: “it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing,” from Shakespeare’s Macbeth.

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6
Q

What famous work does this allude to?

Tender is the Night
By F. Scott Fitzgerald

A

Tender Is the Night alludes to a phrase from Keats’s “Ode to a Nightingale.”

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7
Q

What famous work does this allude to?

For Whom the Bell Tolls
By Ernest Hemingway

A

For Whom the Bell Tolls alludes to: “Do not ask for whom the bell tolls. It tolls for thee,” from a sermon by John Donne.

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8
Q

What famous work does this allude to?

Things Fall Apart
By Chinua Achebe

A

Things Fall Apart alludes to the line, “Things fall apart; the center cannot hold,” from William Butler Yeats’s “The Second Coming.”

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9
Q

The stanza below comes from which poem? Who wrote it?

“Young Juan wandered by the glassy brooks
Thinking unutterable things; he threw
Himself at length within the leafy nooks
Where the wild branch of the cork forest grew;
There poets find material for their books,
And every now and then we read them through,
So that their plan and prosody are eligible
Unless, like Wordsworth, they prove unintelligible.”

A

The stanza comes from Don Juan, Lord Byron’s long, comic masterpiece. The verse form employed is ottava rima. By the way, Byron (and his pals Keats ans Shelley) genuinely disliked Wordsworth; they felt betrayed by the political turnabout that saw the once freethinking Wordsworth become a crusty reactionary in his later years.

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10
Q

What are the three main schools of literary theory?

A

The three main schools of literary theory are Marxist, Linguistic, and Psychological.

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11
Q

What does Marxist theory concentrate on?

A

Marxist theory concentrates on the economic situation in which literature is written and read.

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12
Q

What does Psychological concentrate on?

A

Psychological criticism investigates the personality and the biography of the author and reader as sources of overarching meaning.

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13
Q

What does Linguistic theory concentrate on?

A

Linguistic criticism examines the philosophy of language and linguistics.

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14
Q

Whose epitaph is this?

Good friend for Jesus’ sake forbeare,
To digg the dust enclosed heare.
Bless be ye man yt spares thes stones.
And curst be he yt moves my bones.

A

William Shakespeare’s epitaph

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15
Q

The Iliad in 39 words:

A

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

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16
Q

The Odyssey in 45 words:

A

Odysseus tries to return home after sacking Troy (see 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.

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17
Q

Agamemnon in 26 words:

A

Clytemnestra, angry with husband Agamemnon for sacrificing their daughter and for bringing home his prescient love slave Cassandra, conspires with her lover Aegisthus to murder Agamemnon.

18
Q

Choephoroe (“The Libation Bearers”) in 36 words:

A

Based on the advice of an oracle, Orestes (Agamemnon and Clytemnestra’s exiled son) decides to avenge his father’s murder. He and sister Electra murder Clytemnestra and her lover Aegisthus, but Orestes is tormented by the Furies.

19
Q

The Eumenides (“Benevolent Ones”) in 41 words:

A

Athena presides over a precedent-setting murder trial: Orestes vs. 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.

20
Q

Oedipus the King in 56 words:

A

The Oracle prophesies that King Laius will have a son who 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.

21
Q

Oedipus at Colonus in 21 words:

A

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

22
Q

Antigone in 33 words:

A

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.

23
Q

Beowulf in 19 words:

A

Beowulf slays monster Grendel and becomes king. Years later, he is killed by a dragon and Wiglaf becomes king.

24
Q

“Authors, like coins, grow dear as they grow old
It is the rust we value, not the gold
Chaucer’s worst ribaldry is learn’d by rote
And beastly Skelton heads of houses quote.”

A

Alexander Pope

25
Q

The Knight’s Tale in 13 words:

A

Arcite and Mars fight Palamon and Venus for Emily. Arcite wins but dies.

26
Q

“The Prioress’s Tale” in 14 words:

A

Jews kill a Christian boy; he continues to sing after his throat is slit.

27
Q

“The Nun’s Priest’s Tale” in 22 words:

A

Chaunticleer the rooster is kidnapped by Sir Russell, a sweet-tongued fox. Chaunticleer gets away when the fox opens his mouth to brag.

28
Q

“The Merchant’s Tale in 27 words:

A

Knight January is old and blind. His young wife, May, cheats on him, but when his sight is restored, May says she did it to cure him.

29
Q

“The Wife of Bath’s Tale” in 30 words:

A

King Arthur’s knight commits rape. To escape sentencing, he must discover what women desire most. He marries an old witch for the answer (sovereignty); she turns into a beautiful woman.

30
Q

“The Miller’s Tale” in 19 words:

A

A cuckold is tricked into sleeping on his roof in a washtub while his wife consorts with various suitors.

31
Q

“The Pardoner’s Tale” in 16 words:

A

Three drunkards search for death but instead find a treasure, over which they murder each other.

32
Q

Gawain in 52 words:

A

A Green Knight shows up at a New Year’s party and issues a challenge: Anyone who desires can behead him, but he who fails must in turn be beheaded. Gawain succeeds, but the knight re-heads himself. Gawain shows up for his beheading, but the Green Knight (really a lord) spares him.

33
Q

What verse form is The Faerie Queen written in?

A

The Faerie Queen is written in Spenserian stanzas: ababbcbcc.

34
Q

Restoration comedies are ribald riffs on…?

A

Restoration comedies are ribald riffs on sex and society.

35
Q

James Boswell (1740-1795) wrote a gushing biography on…?

A

James Boswell (1740-1795) wrote a gushing biography of Samuel Johnson (1709-1784).

36
Q

“Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?”

A

“The Tyger”

William Blake, 1794

37
Q

“Fate sits on these dark battlements and frowns,
And as the portal opens to receive me,
A voice in hollow murmur through the courts
Tells of a nameless dead.”

A

Motto to Ann Radcliffe’s

The Mysteries of Udolpho

38
Q

“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.”

A

Pride and Prejudice

Jane Austen, 1813

39
Q

“Water, water, every where,
And all the boards did shrink;
Water, water, every where,
Nor any drop to drink.”

A

“The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1798

40
Q

“For not this man and that man, but all men make up mankind, and their united tasks the task of mankind.”

A

Sartor Resartus

Thomas Carlyle, 1831

41
Q

“Such, I say, is the wonderful virtue of even the beginnings of perfection, of having conquered even the plain faults of our animality, that the religious organisation which has helped us to do it can seem to us something precious, salutary, and to be propagated, even when it wears such a brand of imperfection on its forehead as this.”

A

Culture and Anarchy

Matthew Arnold, 1869

42
Q

“Warmest climes but nurse the cruellest fangs: the tiger of Bengal crouches in spaced groves of ceaseless verdure. Skies the most effulgent but basket the deadliest thunders: gorgeous Cuba knows tornadoes that never swept tame northern lands. So, too, it is, that in these resplendent Japanese seas the mariner encounters the direst of all storms, the Typhoon. It will sometimes burst from out that cloudless sky, like an exploding bomb upon a dazed and sleepy town.”

A

Moby-Dick
Chapter 119, “The Candles,”
Herman Melville, 1851

43
Q

“I celebrate myself;
And what I assume you shall assume;
For every atom belonging to me, as good belongs to you.”

A

“Song of Myself”
Leaves of Grass
Walt Whitman
1900