Question 1 of 25
The story told in William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet is often thought to be derived from the story of .
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AP English Literature and Composition
Practice Test 5 for AP English Literature and Composition: real questions and explanations from the Varsity Tutors practice-test pool.
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Question 1 of 25
The story told in William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet is often thought to be derived from the story of .
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The story told in William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet is often thought to be derived from the story of .
Explanation: The general consensus among scholars reflects that Shakespeare derived his story and main characters for Romeo and Juliet from Ovid's story of Pyramus and Thisbe. The story of Pyramus and Thisbe depicts two tragic lovers who are separated by their families, who do not approve of their marriage. They communicate their love through a cement wall and plan to meet under a tree outside to confess their love. However, when Thisbe comes out first, she mistakes the blood of a lion for Pyramus' blood and, believing he had been killed, kills herself.
Of which country is the author of The English Patient a citizen?
Explanation: Although he was born in Sri Lanka in 1943, Michael Ondaatje is a Canadian writer. He moved to Canada in 1962.
There was a contention as far as a suit (in which, piety and dignity, religion and estimation, were mingled) which of the religious orders should ring to prayers first in the morning; and it was determined, that they should ring first that rose earliest. If we understand aright the dignity of this bell, that tolls for our evening prayer, we would be glad to make it ours, by rising early, in that application, that it might be ours as well as his, whose indeed it is. The bell doth toll for him, that thinks it doth; and though it intermit again, yet from that minute, that that occasion wrought upon him, he is united to God.
The bell mentioned in the passage can best be understood to refer to .
Explanation: The bell in this sermon is that which was traditionally rung to announce a death. Even if you weren't familiar with this piece or aware of the practice of ringing a bell to announce a death, the description of the bell's hearer as being united with God should be enough to clue you into the fact that the poem is concerned with mortality. Adapted from "Meditation XVII" in Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions, and Severall Steps in My Sicknes by John Donne (1624)
There was a contention as far as a suit (in which, piety and dignity, religion and estimation, were mingled) which of the religious orders should ring to prayers first in the morning; and it was determined, that they should ring first that rose earliest. If we understand aright the dignity of this bell, that tolls for our evening prayer, we would be glad to make it ours, by rising early, in that application, that it might be ours as well as his, whose indeed it is. The bell doth toll for him, that thinks it doth; and though it intermit again, yet from that minute, that that occasion wrought upon him, he is united to God. Who casts not up his eye to the sun when it rises? But who takes off his eye from a comet, when that breaks out? who bends not his ear to any bell, which upon any occasion rings? But who can remove it from that bell, which is passing a piece of himself out of this world?
The larger prose piece from which this passage was taken provided the title for a novel by which of the following authors?
Explanation: The line "Never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee" appears later in this sermon and provided the title for Ernest Hemingway's novel For Whom the Bell Tolls. Adapted from "Meditation XVII" in Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions, and Severall Steps in My Sicknes by John Donne (1624)
Vladimir Lensky, Tatiana Larina, and Olga Larina are all characters in a work by which Russian author?
Explanation: Lensky, Tatiana and Olga are all characters in Eugene Onegin (1833), a novel in verse by Aleksandr Pushkin (1799-1837).
If all the world and love were young,
And truth in every Shepherd’s tongue,
These pretty pleasures might me move,
To live with thee, and be thy love.
Time drives the flocks from field to fold,
When Rivers rage and Rocks grow cold,
And Philomel becometh dumb,
The rest complains of cares to come.
The flowers do fade, and wanton fields,
To wayward winter reckoning yields,
A honey tongue, a heart of gall,
Is fancy’s spring, but sorrow’s fall.
Thy gowns, thy shoes, thy beds of Roses,
Thy cap, thy kirtle, and thy posies
Soon break, soon wither, soon forgotten:
In folly ripe, in reason rotten.
Thy belt of straw and Ivy buds,
The Coral clasps and amber studs,
All these in me no means can move
To come to thee and be thy love.
But could youth last, and love still breed,
Had joys no date, nor age no need,
Then these delights my mind might move
To live with thee, and be thy love.
The author of this poem was a contemporary of which of the following poets?
Explanation: The author of this poem, Sir Walter Raleigh, was active during the Elizabethan Era and was a contemporary of William Shakespeare. He was imprisoned in the Tower of London by both Queen Elizabeth and King James I. He was eventually beheaded. Passage adapted from "The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd" by Sir Walter Raleigh (1596)
Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question . . .
Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”
In which line of the poem is there a radical shift in tone?
Explanation: This excerpt, from T. S. Eliot's much longer "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," begins with two rhyming lines that truly do read like a love song, but the third line of the poem "Like a patient etherized upon a table" introduces themes of complacency, impotence, paralysis, and sickness. Passage adapted from "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" by T. S. Elliot, 1-11 (1915)
Who is the author of Autobiography of Red?
Explanation: Autobiography of Red (1998)is a work by Anne Carson. A.E. Housman wrote Last Poems (1922), Seamus Heaney wrote Death of a Naturalist (1966), Adrienne Rich wrote Twenty-one Love Poems (1976), and Mary Oliver wrote The Night Traveler (1978).
What is the best descriptor for the type of poems in Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair?
Explanation: As is hinted at in the title, most of the works in Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair (1924)are erotic love poems. Although Neruda wrote in many different styles and forms (including prose, poetry, realism, surrealism, autobiography, and political manifesto), he is perhaps best known for his love poetry, including various sonnets and odes.
"What is the People?"
And who are you that ask the question? One of the people. And yet you would be something! Then you would not have the People nothing. For what is the People? Millions of men, like you, with hearts beating in their bosoms, with thoughts stirring in their minds, with blood circulating in their veins, with wants and appetites, with passions and anxious cares, with busy purposes and affections for others and a respect for themselves, and a desire of happiness, and a right to freedom, and a will to be free. And yet you would tear out this mighty heart of a nation, and lay it bare and bleeding at the foot of despotism: you would slay the mind of a country to fill up the dreary aching void with the old, obscene, drivelling prejudices of superstition and tyranny: you would tread out the eye of Liberty (the light of nations) like 'a vile jelly', that mankind may be led about darkling to its endless drudgery, like the Hebrew ---------- (shorn of his strength and blind), by his insulting taskmasters: you would make the throne every thing. and the people nothing, to be yourself less than nothing, a very slave, a reptile, a creeping, cringing sycophant, a court favorite, a pander to Legitimacy - that detestable fiction, which would make you and me and all mankind its slaves or victims.
Who is the character referred to in the underlined simile?
Explanation: The explanation in parenthesis ("shorn of his strength and blind") is key here. The book of Judges in the Christian Bible tells the story of Samson who was given supernatural strength by God, but was later betrayed by a woman, Delilah, who cut off his hair where his strength resided (he was "shorn of his strength") and handed him over to his enemies, who gouged out his eyes. Cain and Moses are not associated with blindness, and while Oedipus, according to Greek myth, did gouge his eyes out, he is not a "Hebrew" character. Passage adapted from "What is the People?" by William Hazlitt (1817)
Should God create another Eve, and I
Another Rib afford, yet loss of thee
Would never from my heart; no no, I feel
The Link of Nature draw me: Flesh of Flesh,
Bone of my Bone thou art, and from thy State
Mine never shall be parted, bliss or woe.
Which of the following poets wrote the excerpted lines?
Explanation: This is an excerpt from John Milton's epic poem, "Paradise Lost." The first version was published in 1667 and consisted of ten books with over ten thousand lines of verse. Passage adapted from Paradise Lost by John Milton, l.911-916 (1667)
This old town of Salem—my native place, though I have dwelt much away from it both in boyhood and maturer years—possesses, or did possess, a hold on my affection, the force of which I have never realized during my seasons of actual residence here.
… The figure of that first ancestor, invested by family tradition with a dim and dusky grandeur, was present to my boyish imagination as far back as I can remember. It still haunts me, and induces a sort of home-feeling with the past, which I scarcely claim in reference to the present phase of the town. I seem to have a stronger claim to a residence here on account of this grave, bearded, sable-cloaked, and steeple-crowned progenitor—who came so early, with his Bible and his sword, and trode the unworn street with such a stately port, and made so large a figure, as a man of war and peace—a stronger claim than for myself, whose name is seldom heard and my face hardly known. He was a soldier, legislator, judge; he was a ruler in the Church; he had all the Puritanic traits, both good and evil. He was likewise a bitter persecutor; as witness the Quakers, who have remembered him in their histories, and relate an incident of his hard severity towards a woman of their sect, which will last longer, it is to be feared, than any record of his better deeds, although these were many. His son, too, inherited the persecuting spirit, and made himself so conspicuous in the martyrdom of the witches, that their blood may fairly be said to have left a stain upon him. So deep a stain, indeed, that his dry old bones, in the Charter-street burial-ground, must still retain it, if they have not crumbled utterly to dust! I know not whether these ancestors of mine bethought themselves to repent, and ask pardon of Heaven for their cruelties; or whether they are now groaning under the heavy consequences of them in another state of being.
Who is the author of this novel?
Explanation: This excerpt is taken from the well-known first chapter of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter. Passage adapted from The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne (1850)
This British poet began one of his best-known works, a highly allusive poem about the small inner torments of a modern man, with the lines “Let us go then, you and I.”
Explanation: This poem is T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” a modernist classic. The poem represented an important shift from older forms of verse to a looser, more imagistic modern form. Eliot, who lived from 1888 to 1965, is one of the best-known British poets of his times, although he was actually born in America. He is known for his critical work such as the essay “Tradition and the Individual Talent,” his plays, and his frequently anthologized poems, including “The Waste Land,” “The Hollow Men,” “Ash Wednesday,” and “Four Quartets.” He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1948. Line adapted from "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" by T. S. Eliot, l.1 (1920)
Who is the author of “The Man-Moth”?
Explanation: Inspired by a newspaper misprint, “The Man-Moth” (1946) is a poem by the U.S. Poet Laureate Elizabeth Bishop (1911-1979). Elizabeth Gaskell wrote Sylvia's Lovers (1863), Sylvia Plath wrote The Bell Jar (1963), Amy Lowell wrote Ballads for Sale (1927), and Frank O’Hara wrote Oranges: 12 pastorals (1953).
All of the following novels are set during World War II, EXCEPT .
Explanation: Ford Maddox Ford (1873–1939) belongs to an earlier generation of writers, and did not live to see the outbreak of World War II. The Good Soldier was written during—and is set against the backdrop of—World War I. The other titles are all iconic World War II novels that in different ways portray the dehumanizing effects of war.
Who is the author of I Served the King of England?
Explanation: I Served the King of England (1971) is a novel by Bohumil Hrabal (1914-1997). Milan Kundera wrote The Joke (1969). Ota Pavel wrote Golden Eels (1985). Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn wrote Two Hundred Years Together (2002).
Blanche DuBois, Stella Kowalski, and Harold Mitchell are major characters from which of the following plays?
Explanation: These are central characters in Tennessee Williams' 1947 American play, A Streetcar Named Desire. The plot follows Blanche Dubois who abandons her previous life of aristocracy after a series of personal failures to live with her brother and sister-in-law in New Orleans. It won the Pulitzer Prize in 1948.
Which American poet was known for a playful use of language, a lack of standard orthography, a latent transcendentalism, and titles such as “i carry your heart with me (i carry it in” and “anyone lived in a pretty how town”?
Explanation: The poet described is Edward Estlin Cummings, usually known as e. e. cummings. In addition to his poetry, Cummings was known for his paintings, plays, novels and essays.
"You silly Arthur! If you knew anything about . . . anything, which you don't, you would know that I adore you. Everyone in London knows it except you. It is a public scandal the way I adore you. I have been going about for the last six months telling the whole of society that I adore you. I wonder you consent to have anything to say to me. I have no character left at all. At least, I feel so happy that I am quite sure I have no character left at all.”
Identify the title and author of the excerpt based on the content and style of the writing.
Explanation: These lines, spoken by Mabel Chiltern, are from Oscar Wilde's 1895 comedic play An Ideal Husband. The play centers on themes of political corruption and honor. Passage adapted from Act IV of An Ideal Husband by Oscar Wilde (1895)
Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question ...
Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”
This author of this poem also wrote .
Explanation: A major modernist poet, T. S. Eliot was also a highly influential critic and essayist. In his essay "Tradition and Individual Talent," Eliot rejected the inspired individualism of romantic poets like William Wordsworth in favor of a view of the poet as one who uses tradition to lift him beyond his personal experience. Passage adapted from "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" by T. S. Elliot, 1-11 (1915)
Who wrote A Raisin in the Sun?
Explanation: Playwright Lorraine Hansberry (1930-1965) wrote A Raisin in the Sun (1959).Tony Kushner wrote Angels in America (1993). Tom Stoppard wrote Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead (1966). August Wilson wrote Fences (1987). Adrienne Kennedy wrote A Lesson in Dead Language (1968). All of these authors are major award-winning, twentieth-century American playwrights.
Which of these European playwrights was a staunch Marxist?
Explanation: This dramatist is Brecht, and his lifelong Marxist leanings were often visible in his aesthetics. His works include plays such as Mother Courage and Her Children, The Threepenny Opera, and Man Equals Man. He and his wife also co-founded and operated the Berliner Ensemble, an important post-war German theater company.
On either side the river lie
Long fields of barley and of rye,
That clothe the world and meet the sky;
And thro' the field the road runs by
To many-tower'd Camelot;
And up and down the people go,
Gazing where the lilies blow
Round an island there below,
The island of Shalott.
Who is the author of this poem?
Explanation: This is Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s poem “The Lady of Shalott.” George Gordon (A.K.A Lord Byron) wrote Manfred (1817), William Wordsworth wrote The Prelude (1850), John Keats wrote Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St. Agnes, and Other Poems (1820), and Percy Bysshe Shelley wrote Zastrozzi: A Romance (1810). Passage adapted from "The Lady of Shalott" first published in Poems by Alfred Tennyson(1833).
Which of these ancient Greek playwrights was not a tragedian?
Explanation: The only one of these playwrights who did not write tragedies is Aristophanes, the comedian. His most famous works include Lysistrata, The Frogs, and The Clouds.
Who is the author of the novel The Death of Artemio Cruz?
Explanation: The Death of Artemio Cruz (1962) is a novel by the Mexican author Carlos Fuentes (1928-2012). Gabriel García Márquez wrote Leaf Storm (1955). Julia Alvarez wrote In the Time of Butterflies (1994). Salvador Plascencia wrote The People of Paper (2005). Viola Canales wrote The Tequila Worm (2005).