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
What author, known for his three laws of robotics, wrote such works as I, Robot and Foundation, along with a large
number of essays and factual books?
(Isaac) Asimov
Name the literary technique by which a character is duplicated or divided into two distinct, usually opposite
personalities, such as seen in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
Doppelganger
A fish, a tortoise, and a boar are three of the ten incarnations - or avatars - of which Hindu preserver god who forms a
trinity with Brahma and Shiva?
Vishnu
Identify and spell the name of the Norse god of mischief.
L-O-K-I
Which American novel by what author has a main character called “Big Nurse” or “Nurse Ratched”?
One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey
What type of poem, such as “The Death of the Hired Man” by Robert Frost, tells a story using elements of character,
setting, and plot to develop a theme?
The narrative or a narrative poem
Name the poetic foot that has a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed syllable.
trochaic or trochee
In Benet’s story, “The Devil and Daniel Webster,” define “shade” from the line “I’ve fought John C. Calhoun,
madam. And I’ve fought Henry Clay. And by the great shade of Andrew Jackson, I’d fight ten thousand devils to
save a New Hampshire man!”
A Ghost or Spirit
Name the Cavalier poet who penned the line “Gather ye rosebuds while ye may, Old time is still a-flying” in his
poem “To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time.”
(Robert) Herrick
Name the author who influenced the work of both Ernest Hemingway and William Faulkner, and is most likely
remembered for the book Winesburg, Ohio.
(Sherwood) Anderson
What type of literature is characterized by darkness, gloom, and sometimes supernatural occurrences in characters,
setting, and plots?
Gothic
As he is dying in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, who says, “A plague on both your houses!”?
Mercutio
What figure of speech is employed when a speaker uses a part of something to refer to the whole thing as in “gray
beard” for an older man or “long hair” for a hippie?
Synecdoche (pronounced sin neck do key)
What American novelist is buried in the Poet’s Corner of Westminster Abbey and is the author of Daisy Miller and
The Turn of the Screw?
(Henry) James
Name the hated protagonist/anti-hero in Emily Bronte’s only novel.
Heathcliff
Give both first and last names of the Southern American author whose short story illustrates a woman’s descent into
madness after her father’s death.
“A Rose for Emily” by William Faulkner
What literary work by James Joyce provided the inspiration for the naming of the subatomic particles called “quarks”?
Finnegan’s Wake
In what meter are both Homer’s Odyssey and Virgil’s Aeneid written?
Dactylic hexameter or heroic hexameter
Identify the literary device that is a two-word metaphorical name for something else. For example, in Beowulf, the
ocean is described as a “sea-road.”
Kenning
According to Washington Irving’s story, what war did Rip Van Winkle sleep through?
Revolutionary (War)
Name the three books in the Old Testament of the King James Bible that are each divided into two books?
Samuel, Kings and Chronicles (can be named in any order)
What type of adjective follows a linking verb?
predicate adjective
Name the poem by Robert Frost which expresses the thought that courage does not follow rutted pathways.
“The Road Not Taken”
What 17th century author wrote about Doubting Castle and the Valley of the Shadow of Death in an allegory about
Christian in The Pilgrim’s Progress?
(John) Bunyan
Which of the lands visited by the mythological Odysseus was known for its magic food that caused people to forget
their homeland?
Land of the lotus-eaters
A person can find an index in the back of a book. Spell both of the acceptable plurals of the word “index.”
i-n-d-i-c-e-s and i-n-d-e-x-e-s
Name the unfortunate character sealed behind a wall in the Montresor family vaults in Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Cask of Amontillado”(pronounce a manh tee ah doe).
Fortunato
Revise this sentence into active voice: The chips were eaten by Jack.
Jack ate the chips.
Name the American author, born in Virginia, who wrote about the lives of Bohemian, Norwegian, Danish, and
Swedish settlers on the plains of Nebraska as in the novel O Pioneers!
(Willa) Cather
What character in John Milton’s Paradise Lost claims, “The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of
hell, a hell of heaven”?
Satan (also accept Lucifer but not the Devil)
What kind of verb always has a direct object?
transitive verb
Who was the Greek god of fear, dread, and terror?
Deimos
What J. D. Salinger character is expelled from Prency Prep?
(Holden) Caulfield
In 1846 Henry David Thoreau spent a night in jail for refusing to pay a poll tax as an act of protest against the US government. Name EITHER of the two issues he was protesting against.
Slavery or The Mexican-American War
What term is given to scrollwork, engravings, and carvings done in bone or ivory that Herman Melville describes in Moby Dick as “lively sketches of whales and whaling-scenes, graven by the fishermen themselves”?
Scrimshaw
What name is given to the late 15th-century morality play that, like John Bunyan’s 1678 Christian novel Pilgrim’s Progress, uses allegorical characters to examine the question of Christian salvation and what Man must do to attain it?
Everyman or The Summoning of Everyman
Name the American poet who penned these lines: “I, too, sing America./I am the darker brother./They send me to eat
in the kitchen/When company comes,/But I laugh,/And eat well,/And grow strong.”
(Langston) Hughes
Which punctuation mark is used to identify an editorial correction or clarification?
Brackets
In Beowulf, the monster, Grendel, is descended from what biblical figure?
Cain
In which famous Steinbeck novel would one read the following: “How can you frighten a man whose hunger is not only in his own cramped stomach but in the wretched bellies of his children? You can’t scare him–he has known a fear beyond every other.”
THE GRAPES OF WRATH
Give the Latin term that describes a literary technique used in works such as Oedipus Rex, meaning “in the midst of things.”
in medias res
What was William Wordsworth describing when he wrote, “When all at once I saw a crowd/….Beside the lake, beneath the trees/Fluttering and dancing in the breeze”?
daffodils
What character from a short work by Herman Melville shouted from the gallows at his hanging, “God bless Captain Vere”?
“Billy Budd”
Name the type of phrase that begins with a verb but acts as an adjective.
Participle (Phrase)
Name the Christian apologist and author who wrote Mere Christianity, The Screwtape Letters, and The Chronicles of Narnia.
(C.S.) Lewis
John Steinbeck’s OF MICE AND MEN takes its title from a poem by what Scottish poet?
(Robert) Burns
What is the name of the foot of poetry characterized by an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable?
Iamb(ic)
Which author wrote a novel of Hitler’s Germany titled The Tin Drum?
(Gunter) Grass
What American author wrote the line, “Trust thyself, every heart vibrates to that iron string”?
(Ralph Waldo) Emerson
The sentence “I will have been walking by the time you read this” is an example of which verb tense?
Future perfect progressive (tense)
Name this nineteenth century German novelist who saw common patterns in the plots of stories and novels and developed a diagram to analyze them.
(Gustav) Freytag
The title of Lorraine Hansbury’s play A RAISIN IN THE SUN comes from which Langston Hughes poem?
“Harlem”
What name is given to an error in speech or a play on words in which corresponding consonants or vowels are switched between two words in a phrase? For example, saying, “The Lord is a shoving leopard” instead of “The Lord is a loving shepherd.”
Spoonerism
Which character appears more than any other in Shakespeare’s plays?
(Sir John) Falstaff
What American poet once worked as a nurse for wounded Union soldiers and wrote a group of poems published in 1865 entitled DRUM TAPS?
(Walt) Whitman
The novel Dracula by Bram Stoker is presented as a series of letters, diary entries, and ships’ log entries. What
adjective is used to describe novels written in this form?
Epistolary
Name the Irish author best known for Ulysses, a landmark work in which the episodes of Homer’s Odyssey are paralleled in an array of contrasting literary styles, perhaps most prominent among these the stream of consciousness technique he perfected.
(James) Joyce
Who is the young adult author from Tulsa, Oklahoma, who wrote the novels TEX and THE OUTSIDERS?
(S.E.) Hinton (or Susan Eloise Hinton)
Find the subordinate conjunction in the following: Elmer will wash the dishes while you finish the laundry.
while
Mrs. Hudson appears in what BBC show, based on the works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, which also stars Benedict Cumberbatch as the title character opposite Martin Freeman’s Dr. Watson?
Sherlock
Name the controversial 1852 novel that created a storm of anti-slavery sentiment and was the first book to sell a million copies.
UNCLE TOM’S CABIN
What rhetorical device is Thomas Jefferson using in the lines: “We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness…”?
Parallelism
Name the short novel by Polish novelist Joseph Conrad that is written as a frame narrative and concerns Charles Marlow’s life as an ivory transporter down the Congo River in Central Africa.
Heart of Darkness
In what William Faulkner novel do we find the following characters: Caddy, a sweet and loving teenager who becomes pregnant; Benjy, the mentally disabled child who is a source of grief and shame for his family; and Mrs. Compson, an abusive hypochondriac?
THE SOUND AND THE FURY
What Anglo-Saxon figurative device is noteworthy for its prolific use of a special kind of compound metaphor; for example, the phrase “path of whales” to denote the ocean or “battle-sweat” to denote blood?
Kenning
Name the Matthew Arnold poem that is featured in Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, where it is read by protagonist Guy Montag to his wife Mildred and a group of her friends.
“Dover Beach”
Which controversial novel is about a young boy with water on his brain who wants to go to school off the Indian reservation where he lives?
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian
To whom was the Ancient Library of Alexandria dedicated when it was constructed in the third century BC?
The Muses
To what famous British writer can phrases such as “Off with his head,” “The game is up,” and “Fight fire with fire” be attributed?
(William) Shakespeare
Name the short story by Katherine Anne Porter that has been called a classic study in stream-of-consciousness because of its elderly female protagonist’s frequent departures from the present to the past.
“The Jilting of Granny Weatherall”
What name is assigned to the verb tense which expresses the earlier of two past actions?
Past Perfect (Tense)
Give the full name of the author who wrote under the pseudonym Ellis Bell and, along with her siblings, created imaginary lands such as Angria, Gondal, and Gaaldine.
Emily Bronte
Name the title and author of the novel where the main character believes he is invisible because of how people
overlook him due to his race.
THE INVISIBLE MAN by Ralph Ellison
In Egyptian mythology, which goddess was the wife of Osiris and mother of Horus?
Isis
Name the Chilean poet and author of Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair who won the 1971 Nobel Prize.
(Pablo) Neruda
Name the famous abolitionist and women’s rights advocate that is most famous for her speech “And Ain’t I a Woman?”
(Sojourner) Truth
What term is given to words such as “nonetheless” and “henceforth” when they are used to connect two sentences together?
Conjunctive Adverbs
Name the Persian poet whose Rubaiyat was translated into English by Edward Fitzgerald.
Omar Khayyam
What modernist poet was also a medical doctor and is most remembered for his poem “The Red Wheelbarrow,” found in the 1923 collection SPRING AND ALL?
(William Carlos) Williams
What literary movement is defined by attacks on notions of hierarchy; experimentation in new forms of narrative, such as stream of consciousness; and attention to alternative viewpoints?
Modernism
Well-known works of what author include Midnight’s Children and The Satanic Verses?
Salman Rushdie
What do we call a word or phrase that is spelled the same backward and forward?
A palindrome
Name the American writer who wrote a total of 27 books, received the Novel Prize for Literature in 1962, and wrote the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Grapes of Wrath.
(John) Steinbeck
Name the famous diary writer who documented the colorful and turbulent period of the Restoration in England.
(Samuel) Pepys (Peeps)
What figure of speech is illustrated in the following sentence? The grass bends with every wind; so does John.
Metaphor
Moby Dick, written by Herman Melville and published in 1851, received terrible reviews. Almost 70 years later, literary scholars consider it to be one of the two greatest American novels of the nineteenth century. What was the other greatest American novel of that time, which was written by Mark Twain?
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
What was the magic phrase in the Arabic tale “Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves” that opens that way to hidden treasures?
“Open Sesame”
What three parts of speech can an adverb modify?
Adjective, adverb, and verb
Name the American author who won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1954 and used both war and sports as metaphors for the workings of daily life.
(Ernest) Hemingway
Name the Henrik Ibsen play which has been called the first true feminist play and which is sharply critical of the form that marriage takes for two main characters, Nora and Torvald.
A Doll’s House
Bang, clang, and hiss are all examples of what type of figurative language?
Onomatopeia
Who was the Massachusetts writer, poet, and philosopher who wrote a short patriotic verse about the Battle of Concord in 1775 that was titled “Concord Hymn”?
(Ralph Waldo) Emerson
Name the beautiful youth of classical mythology who fell in love with his own reflection in a pool.
Narcissus
What figure of speech is used when expressions do not make literal sense, such as: “Mom is tied up in the kitchen?”
Idiom
