Varsity - Language Arts Flashcards
Name the American poet who achieved literary stardom at age 21 with the appearance of his poem “Old Ironsides,” which was written to protest the planned destruction of a ship that fought in the War of 1812.
(Oliver Wendell) Holmes
What type of foot in poetic meter comes from the Greek for “finger” and is compromised of one long syllable followed by two short syllables?
Dactyl or Dactylic
What descendant of an African slave, often called “The Father of Modern Russian Literature,” wrote plays and poems in the early 19th century?
(Alexander) Pushkin
Name the poet and the poem in which the following lines are found: “Something there is that doesn’t love a wall.”
(Robert) Frost, “Mending Wall”
Identify the type of sonnet in which the octave typically introduces the theme or problem using a rhyme scheme of a-b-b-a-a-b-b-a, and the sestet provides resolution.
Petrarchan or Italian (Sonnet)
Name the Greek playwright, known as the “Father of Comedy,” who wrote the plays The Clouds and The Frogs.
Aristophanes
Which character in Arthur Miller’s THE CRUCIBLE spurs her only living daughter to witchcraft in order to conjure the spirits of her seven deceased babies?
Goody Putnam (OR Mrs. Putnam)
Name the pair of marine terrors — one a horrible six-headed monster who lived on a rock on one side of a narrow strait, the other a whirlpool on the other side — that Aeneas, Jason, and Odysseus all had to pass between on their respective sea voyages.
Scylla and Charybdis (SIL-uh; kuh-RIB-dis)
In the novel 1984, what technology item was used to spy on the population of Airstrip One?
Telescreens
Diana Moonglompers held what position in Kurt Vonnegut’s short story “Harrison Bergeron”?
Handicapper General
What is the name of the complement that follows a direct object and either identifies, explains, or describes that object?
Objective (complement)
Who is the Russian author who was sentenced to work-camps in Siberia, exiled from his home country, and wrote the Gulag Archipelago and One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich?
(Alexander) Solzhenitsyn
Name the title and the author of the book that ends with the following: “His submachine gun lay across his saddle…Robert Jordan lay behind the tree…He was waiting until the officer reached the sunlit place…He could feel his heart beating against the pine needle floor of the forest.”
FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS, (Ernest) Hemingway
Name the term invented by the Greeks for a sudden, unlikely resolution to a conflict that appears to come from nowhere.
Deus ex Machina (accept phonetic pronunciation)
What is the title of the Shakespearean play from which the novel The Fault in Our Stars gets its title?
Julius Caesar
Thomas is the newborn son of Cherokee Sal, who dies in childbirth at a gold prospecting camp in California, in what short story by Bret Harte?
“The Luck of Roaring Camp”
What literary term from the Greek for “simple” refers to an ironical understatement in which an affirmative is expressed by negating its opposite, as seen in the following example: “I was not a little upset”?
Litotes (light-a-tease)
According to legend, this Chinese poet of “The Drinking Song of Earth’s Sorrows” died while trying to seize the moon’s reflection in a river.
Li Po (OR Li Bo; Li Bai)
Name the Edgar Allan Poe short story that alludes to the epidemic of bubonic plague that killed more than a quarter of Europe’s population during the 14th century?
“The Masque of the Red Death”
Name the literary genre that, like Alexander Pope’s The Rape of the Lock, parodies common classical stereotypes of heroes and heroic literature.
Mock-epic
Name the 1886 Robert Louis Stevenson novel that concerns a bipolar title-character whose evil alter ego kills a member of Parliament.
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
From what Paul Laurence Dunbar poem did Maya Angelou take the title of her book I KNOW WHY THE CAGED BIRD SINGS?
Sympathy
Identify the adjective in literature which refers to works that focus on rural subjects and aspects of life in the countryside among shepherds, cowherds, and other farm workers as seen in Christopher Marlowe’s “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love.”
Pastoral
What adjective that describes a person who is well-intentioned, impractical, and a foolish dreamer comes from the title character of a Cervantes novel?
Quixotic (quicksotic)
The main action of James Fenimore Cooper’s LAST OF THE MOHICANS takes place during which conflict?
The French and Indian War
In Norse mythology, name the winged women who were the “choosers of the slain.”
Valkyries
What novel was written by Chinua Achebe about a wrestling champion and his family in Nigeria?
Things Fall Apart
What author’s experiences of being shipwrecked off the coast of Florida led to his writing of the short story “The Open Boat”?
(Stephen) Crane
Give the name from Greek mythology of the enchantress who married Jason, leader of the Argonauts, and helped him obtain the Golden Fleece.
Medea
Name the legendary Sumerian king who quested across the known world for eternal life in the epic tale named for him.
Gilgamesh
Give the first and last names of Nathanial Hawthorne’s character to whom a group of “goodwives” refer when they say: “What ye think, gossips? If the hussy stood up for judgment before us five?”
Hester Prynne
What type of irony is seen in a literary work when readers know more about a situation than the characters themselves, as though the writer is letting the reader in on a secret that the characters aren’t privy to?
Dramatic (irony)
What Greek play illustrates dramatic irony as the main character, a king, discovers that his past deeds include regicide, parricide, and incest?
Oedipus (the King) OR Oedipus (Rex)
In what town and state would you find the characters from Harper Lee’s TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD?
Maycomb, Georgia
Name the book by American mythologist Joseph Campbell which discusses the author’s theory of the journey of the archetypal hero.
The Hero with a Thousand Faces
James Joyce wrote, “He is the true prototype of the British colonist, the manly independence, the unconscious cruelty”, about what character created by Daniel Defoe.
Robinson Crusoe
Name the short story, which is set on Ship Trap Island, that includes the characters Ivan, General Zaroff, and Rainsford.
“The Most Dangerous Game” OR “The Hounds of Zaroff”
Give the poetic term seen in William Cullen Bryant’s “Thanatopsis” that describes the ending of a line without a pause, which is meant to mimic human speech.
Enjambment
In the epic form of poetry, it is traditional for the poet to invoke his muse at the beginning of the work. Who is invoked in Milton’s epic, Paradise Lost?
The Holy Spirit (Ghost)
Originally published as a serial in REEDY’S MIRROR in 1914, what work is compromised of 244 epitaphs regarding life and death in a fictional small town?
SPOON RIVER ANTHOLOGY
Name the literary technique used in David Mitchell’s 2004 novel Cloud Atlas that is sometimes simply called a story within a story, whereby an introductory or main narrative is presented for the purpose of setting the stage for a more emphasized second narrative.
Frame story, Frame tale, Frame narrative, or Frame
What is the framing device in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales?
A group of pilgrims, or strangers, headed to the shrine of Thomas Becket
Described in a poem by Longfellow, what ship that sailed on a wintry sea ends up all sheathed in ice and gored in her side by cruel rocks?
HESPERUS
What name is given to an action verb that does not take an object?
Intransitive (verb)
What science fiction author invented the satellite communication system?
Arthur C. Clarke
Name the American poet who meditated from her bedroom on life and death, writing such famous lines as, “Much Madness is divinest Sense.”
(Emily) Dickinson
In the English Language, what grammatical structure uses the word “to” followed by some form of a verb and can serve as a noun, an adjective, or an adverb?
Infinitive
Name the author known for using the theme of the dependence of women on marriage to secure social standing and economic security in such works as Emma and Northanger Abbey.
(Jane) Austen
Name the author and title of the short story that caused a stir when it appeared in 1904 because the author’s family and friends objected to the fictional portrait of her real-life Aunt Franc who lived in Nebraska.
(Willa) Cather, “A Wagner Matinee”
What term is used to denote a poetic stanza that is four lines long?
Quatrain
What became of the title bird in Boccaccio’s (Boh-cah-chee-ohs) “The Tale of a Falcon?”
He is cooked for dinner (accept answers that mean the same)
Give the author and title of the novel originating the following quotation: “I hope she’ll be a fool—that’s the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool.”
F. Scott Fitzgerald, THE GREAT GATSBY
What is a gliding monosyllabic speech sound that starts at or near the articulatory position and moves to or toward the position of another?
Diphthong
Name the English author of the Elizabethan period who wrote The Tragical History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus, a play based on a German story in which a man sells his soul to the devil for power and knowledge.
(Christopher) Marlowe
Captain Flint and First Mate Billy Bones are characters from what novel?
Treasure Island
What word refers to a statement that seems contradictory or absurd but is actually true, such as “You’ve got to be cruel to be kind”?
Paradox
Name the literary selection that ends with the final appeal, “Therefore let everyone that is out of Christ, now awakened fly from the earth to come”?
“Sinner in the Hands of an Angry God”
Name the author who penned the following line “Christmas won’t be Christmas without any presents,” in her novel Little Women.
(Louisa May) Alcott
Name the European city that served as the setting for THE DIARY OF ANNE FRANK
Amsterdam
What term describes a question asked merely for effect with no answer expected?
Rhetorical question
What literary term derived from the Greek for “before the word”, describes an opening to a story that establishes the setting and provides background details before the story begins?
Prologue
What essay by Henry David Thoreau ends with this famous line: “If a plant cannot live according to its nature, it dies; and so a man”?
Civil Disobedience
Ian Fleming wrote a children’s story about a flying car in CHITTY-CHITTY BANG BANG. However, he is much better known for what character who also drives nifty cars?
James Bond
It was sold at auction for 2.43 million dollars which gave it the distinction of being the most expensive literary manuscript in history. Name this book, typed in 1951 during a two-week amphetamine-fueled rush by its author, Jack Kerouac.
On the Road
In 1948, which late and anti-apartheid (a part-tied) author wrote Cry, the Beloved Country?
(Alan) Paton
What two-word term describes a pair of rhyming lines written in iambic pentameter?
Heroic Couplet
Give the title and the author of the work described in this plot summary: A coming-of-age tale gone wrong after a group of English schoolboys is stranded on an island and forced to fend for themselves without adult supervision.
Lord of the Flies
The American writer Maya Angelou wrote and recited what poem at whose presidential inauguration?
On the Pulse of Morning, (Bill) Clinton
In what novel do the characters Fantine, Cosette, and Javert (Jah-vare) appear?
LES MISERABLES
The following is an example of what figure of speech “My dog is so ugly, I have to tie a pork chop around his neck to get other dogs to play with him!”
Hyperbole
The Ramayana, the Mahabharata, the Iliad, the Odyssey, and Beowulf are all classified as what type of poem?
Epic
Name two of the four Fireside Poets of American literature.
(James Russell) Lowell, (Henry Wadsworth) Longfellow, (Henry Wadsworth) (Oliver Wendell) Holmes,(James Greenleaf) Whittier
Give the author and title of the book where you would find this first paragraph. “There is one mirror in my house. It is behind a sliding panel in the hallway upstairs. Our faction allows me to stand in front of it on the second day of every third month, the day my mother cuts my hair.”
Veronica Roth, DIVERGENT
Who did Atticus Finch defend in To Kill a Mockingbird?
(Tom) Robinson
Name the 19th-century Russian author of works including Motley Stories, In the Twilight, The Three Sisters, and The Cherry Orchard.
(Anton) Chekhov
Name both of the characters in Shakespeare’s tragedies who received kisses from their killers just before they were killed.
(Julius) Caesar and Desdemona
What poetic meter can be simply described as “unrhymed iambic pentameter”
Blank Verse
What dramatic device often employed by Shakespeare allows the character to express his or her thoughts to the audience without addressing any of the other characters?
Soliloquy
Name the poem by John Greenleaf Whittier that includes the following stanza: “I stood and watched by the window/The noiseless work of sky,/And the sudden flurries of snowbirds,/like brown leaves whirling by.”
Snowbound
Who wrote Maggie: A Girl of the Streets, “The Blue Hotel,” and The Red Badge of Courage?
(Stephen) Crane
Name the Shakespearean character who said “A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.”
Juliet
What type of impromptu speech is delivered with little or no advance preparation?
Extemporaneous
Name the Greek playwright whose most famous tragedies (generally known as the Thean plays) are OEDIPUS and ANTIGONE
Sophocles
Name the subject in the following sentence: From the far-off hills came the lonely cry of the whippoorwill.
Cry
In Egyptian mythology, who was the jack-headed guide of souls to Amenti, and the son of Osiris?
Anubis
“Turn up the light, I don’t want to go home in the dark” were the last words of which American author when he wrote “The Ransom of Red Chief”?
(William Sydney) Porter (OR O. Henry)
What term is a substitution for an expression that may offend the receiver, using instead an agreeable or less offensive expression as when the government calls “torture” an “enhanced interrogation technique”?
Euphemism
What short story begins with this dialogue?
“Off there to the right - somewhere - is a large island,” said Whitney.
“It’s rather a mystery.”
“What island is it?” Rainsford asked.
“The Most Dangerous Game”
Name the 14th-century Italian Renaissance poet whose many poems have as their subject the idealized woman, “Laura.”
(Francesco) Petrarch
What point of view is used when the narrator is outside of the story’s action and knows the thoughts and feelings of the main characters?
Third person omniscient
Give the author and title of the book set in the early 1960s in Jackson, Mississippi about African American maids working in white households.
The Help and (Kathryn) Stockett
Name the poet whose line of poetry, “The best laid plans of mice and men gang aft agley,” inspired the title of John Steinbeck’s novel Of Mice and Men.
(Robert) Burns
Which poet, brought over on a slave ship in 1761, is considered the first black American female poet?
(Phillis) Wheatly
Name the Greek playwright whose most famous tragedies (generally known as the Theban plays) are OEDIPUS and
ANTIGONE.
Sophocles
In Egyptian mythology, who was the jackal-headed guide of souls to Amenti, and the son of Osiris?
Anubis
“Turn up the light, I don’t want to go home in the dark” were the last words of which American author when he
wrote “The Ransom of Red Chief”?
(William Syndey) Porter (OR O. Henry)
Name the author who, under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith, shifted away from the wizarding world and penned an
adult mystery in 2013.
(J.K.) Rowling
The idiom “Crossing the Rubicon” means to pass the point of no return. Give the full name of the Roman general
associated with this idiom?
Julius Caesar
Name the American female author whose stories of the American South include the novels WISE BLOOD and THE
VIOLENT BEAR IT AWAY, as well as many short stories including “The Life You Save May Be Your Own.”
(Flannery) O’Connor
Name two of the three ways that a pronoun must agree with its antecedent.
Person, number, and gender (do not accept case)
Name the object in William Golding’s Lord of the Flies that symbolizes democracy, civility, and order within the
group of boys on the island—all of which is lost when it is smashed into pieces near the novel’s conclusion.
Conch
Give the literary word for a story in which the characters and actions are used as symbols to convey a hidden meaning,
such as in John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress.
Allegory
Give the author and the name of the novel that describes the suffering of mental patients to which one character
complains, “We are victims of a matriarchy here.”
(Ken) Kesey, ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO’S NEST
Identify the character whose jealousy leads her to vow vengeance after Jason deserts her and marries Glauce in a play
by Euripides.
Medea
Who are the parents of the Greek god Zeus?
Cronus (father) Rhea (mother)
Name the novel, the author, AND the vessel aboard which a reader would find the shipmates Starbuck, Stubb, and
Flask.
MOBY DICK by (Herman) Melville; Pequod (the vessel)
Name the two female storytellers in Chaucer’s CANTERBURY TALES?
Name the two female storytellers in Chaucer’s CANTERBURY TALES?
Taking place in the late 18th to early 19th centuries, this literary movement came about in response to the
enlightenment and emphasized emotion, the triumph of the individual, and a return to nature.
Romanticism (do not accept transcendentalism)
In which short story does a female character see that other women are forced to creep and hide behind the domestic
“patterns” of their lives as she stares at the wallpaper in her bedroom?
The yellow wallpaper
What Scottish author of the eighteenth century is known only for his biography, The Life of Samuel Johnson?
(James) Boswell
What pair of words describes both the dictionary definition of a word and the emotional associations connected to a
word?
Denotation and Connotation
As Ponyboy lies dying at the conclusion of THE OUTSIDERS, Johnny Cade tells him to “Stay gold.” This
quotation is an allusion to what Robert Frost poem?
“Nothing Gold Can Stay”
In the Charles Dickens novel OLIVER TWIST, what is the name of the Jewish man who takes in homeless boys
and turns them into pickpockets?
Fagin
March 26, 1920, saw the publication of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s first novel immediately launching the then 23-year-old Fitzgerald to fame and fortune. Name Fitzgerald’s first novel.
This Side of Paradise
What is the reversal of sounds in two words often having a humorous effect such as “May I sew you another sheet?” instead of “May I show you another seat?”
Spoonerism
Actually Irish, this writer wrote primarily in French and was noted for his work with the French Resistance during World War II. A prolific writer, he is best known for his play he wrote for the theatre of the absurd, Waiting for
Godot.
(Samuel) Beckett
To Kill a Mockingbird is a novel written by Harper Lee. What is the name of the fictional town in Alabama that is its setting?
Maycomb
Give the term that is derived from a character in Thomas Sheridan’s comedy The Rivals who, in the attempt to show off her vast vocabulary, came up with lines like “he is the very pineapple of politeness.”
Malapropism
What is the name of the African author who wrote Things Fall Apart?
(Chinua) Achebe
What are the three types of irony?
Verbal, Dramatic, Irony of Situation (accept situation or situational)
Name the short novel by Joseph Conrad in which Marlow goes to Africa in search of a mad adventurer named Kurtz.
Heart of Darkness
After being attacked by her mother’s boyfriend, the shock left this person mute from ages 8 to 13. Who is this person, the author of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings?
(Maya) Angelou
Name 2 of the 3 types of conjunctions.
(Must name 2) coordinating, correlative, subordinating
What Chilean author is known for the novels The Daughter of Fortune and House of the Spirits?
(Isabel) Allende
Chapter nine of Melville’s Moby Dick is a sermon and hymn about which Biblical figure who was swallowed by a big fish?
Jonah
Name the author who was called the “American Kipling” at age 24 and who was a prize winning stock breeder and a self-made millionaire who participated in the Klondike gold rush.
(Jack) London
What is the reflexive form of the pronoun “she”?
herself
Which of Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales tells the story of three men searching for Death?
“The Pardoner’s Tale”
What is the title and author of the satirical novel in which the reader encounters Doctor Pangloss?
Candide by Voltaire
What American poet wrote the poem that begins, “The fog comes in on little cat feet…”?
(Carl) Sandburg
What literary term, often described as chronological inconsistency in a given piece of art or literature, is seen in the following example from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar?
“The clock has stricken three.”
Anachronism (The setting of Julius Caesar was 44 A.D, and there were no mechanical clocks.)
What Shakespearean tragedy contains a play within a play in which the villainous king is invited to “The
Mousetrap” to see a reenactment of the murder of his brother?
Hamlet
What river runs through the central part of Illinois and is the name of an anthology of poems written by Edgar Lee Masters?
Spoon River
What name is given to words that can trace their origins to the name of a person or a place—such as the word sadism, which is derived from the name of Marquis de Sade?
Eponym
“I wish I were” is an example of the verb “to be” in what mood?
Subjunctive
Name the famous existentialist who wrote the novel, The Stranger.
(Albert) Camus
What author whose character Miles Coverdale narrates his satire of Brook Farm in The Blithedale Romance also wrote Fanshawe and The Scarlet Letter?
(Nathaniel) Hawthorne
What poem written in Middle English tells the story of a bet between King Arthur and a stranger who has arrived in the middle of a festival?
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
Which author stated that “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.”
(Henry David) Thoreau
What is the term for a break or pause in a line of verse?
Caesura
What Hemingway novel is narrated by Jake Barnes, an expatriate living in Paris who travels to Pamplona, Spain, for the bull fights?
The Sun Also Rises
Give the term for words formed by accident or for deliberate humorous effect by combining two words into one, such “smog” from smoke and fog.
Portmanteau (word)
For what literary genre is the Golden Dagger award given?
mystery
What literary term describes the semblance of reality in dramatic or nondramatic fiction and implies that the action represented in a work of fiction must be convincing to the reader?
Verisimilitude
Give the author and title of the poem from which the following lines are taken: “Water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink.”
(Samuel Taylor) Coleridge and Rime of the Ancient Mariner
What American poet is known as “Harlem’s Bard”?
(Langston) Hughes
In John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men, what is the last name of Lennie, the character with tremendous physical
strength and limited mental abilities?
Small
Name the young Brahmin and title character of a Herman Hesse novel who wanders in search of inner truth in a story
that loosely parallels the early life of Buddha.
Siddhartha
What term derived from a classic Spanish novel describes a person who tries to accomplish idealistic goals, even if the chance of success is very slim?
quixotic
What term—originating from the name of a pastor who removed parts from his book Family Shakespeare that he
considered “unfit to be read by a gentleman in the company of ladies”—can be described as the editing of a literary
work for profanity, sexually illicit material, or unacceptable political sentiment?
Bowdlerization
Give both the first and last name of the author and the title of the work in which one would find the following
quotation: “You are my creator, but I am your monster.”
Mary Shelley and Frankenstein
Name the man known primarily as an author who first wrote using the pen name Thomas Jefferson Snodgrass,
worked as a printer’s apprentice and as a steam boat pilot, and was called by Faulkner the “Father of American
Literature.”
(Mark) Twain or (Samuel) Clemens
Name the Shakespearean character who was Thane of Glames, Thane of Cawdor, and King.
Macbeth
Name the three Massachusetts poets of the 1830s called the New England Triumvirate or the Boston Brahmins.
(Oliver Wendell) Holmes, (Henry Wadsworth) Longfellow, (James Russell) Lowell (Last names only acceptable; any order acceptable )
In what poetic form is John Milton’s Paradise Lost written?
Blank Verse or unrhymed iambic pentameter
