AP English Literature and Composition Practice Test: Practice Test 6

“In a castle of Westphalia, belonging to the Baron of Thunder-ten-Tronckh, lived a youth, whom nature had endowed with the most gentle manners. His countenance was a true picture of his soul. He combined a true judgment with simplicity of spirit, which was the reason, I apprehend, of his being called Candide. The old servants of the family suspected him to have been the son of the Baron's sister, by a good, honest gentleman of the neighborhood, whom that young lady would never marry because he had been able to prove only seventy-one quarterings, the rest of his genealogical tree having been lost through the injuries of time.

The Baron was one of the most powerful lords in Westphalia, for his castle had not only a gate, but windows. His great hall, even, was hung with tapestry. All the dogs of his farm-yards formed a pack of hounds at need; his grooms were his huntsmen; and the curate of the village was his grand almoner. They called him "My Lord," and laughed at all his stories.”

Which author wrote the above paragraphs?

I was yet enjoying the calm prospect and pleasant fresh air, yet listening with delight to the cawing of the rooks, yet surveying the wide, hoary front of the hall, and thinking what a great place it was for one lonely little dame like Mrs. Fairfax to inhabit, when that lady appeared at the door.

“What! out already?” said she. “I see you are an early riser.” I went up to her, and was received with an affable kiss and shake of the hand.

“How do you like Thornfield?” she asked. I told her I liked it very much.

“Yes,” she said, “it is a pretty place; but I fear it will be getting out of order, unless Mr. Rochester should take it into his head to come and reside here permanently; or, at least, visit it rather oftener: great houses and fine grounds require the presence of the proprietor.”

“Mr. Rochester!” I exclaimed. “Who is he?”

Who wrote this novel?

It is an ancient Mariner,

And he stoppeth one of three.

"By thy long grey beard and glittering eye,

Now wherefore stopp'st thou me?

The bridegroom's doors are opened wide,

And I am next of kin;

The guests are met, the feast is set:

May'st hear the merry din."

Who is the author of this poem?

Which of the following postcolonial novels was based on a character from, and serves as a prequel to, Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre?

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  .

Of which country is the author of The English Patient a citizen?

Which of the following is not a character from A Streetcar Named Desire?

Which of the following is not a theme of Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel Frankenstein?

Who is the author of Fahrenheit 451?

This poet, recognized as a New World Poet, was a Puritan who wrote about his or her struggles, the role of women, and mortality. In "Microcosmographia" (1615), this author writes:

What gripes of wind my infancy did pain,

What tortures I in breeding teeth sustain?

What crudityes my stomach cold has bred,

Whence vomits, flux, and worms have issued?

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.

This poem is a response to a poem by  .

Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher,

vanity of vanities! All is vanity.

What does man gain by all the toil

at which he toils under the sun?

A generation goes, and a generation comes,

but the earth remains forever.

The sun rises, and the sun goes down,

and hastens to the place where it rises.

The above text is taken from which book of the Bible?

Britain’s current (2015) Poet Laureate has published volumes including Standing Female Nude, Fleshweathercock and Other Poems, and The World’s Wife, the latter of which refigures classically male-centric myths and fairy tales to focus on the female characters. Who is she?

Oedipa Maas, Pierce Inverarity, and Dr. Hilarius are characters from which of the following works of literature?

IAGO: That Cassio loves her, I do well believe't:

That she loues him, 'tis apt, and of great Credite.

The Moore (howbeit that I endure him not)

Is of a constant, loving, Noble Nature,

And I dare thinke, he’ll prove to Desdemona

A most dear husband. Now I do love her too,

Not out of absolute Lust, (though peradventure

I stand accomptant for as great a sin)

But partly led to dyet my Revenge,

For that I do suspect the lustie Moore

Hath leap'd into my Seat. The thought whereof,

Doth (like a poysonous Minerall) gnaw my Inwardes:

And nothing can, or shall content my Soule

Till I am even'd with him, wife, for wife.

From which Shakespearean play is this monologue taken?

Which Virginia Woolf novel centers around the life of a poet who lives for hundreds of years and shifts gender from male to female?

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  .

This Dominican novelist won the 2008 Pulitzer for The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao.

What is the best descriptor for the type of poems in Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair?

Passage adapted from Samuel Johnson, "Preface to Shakespeare (1756)," 9-63, in Johnson on Shakespeare: Essays and Notes Selected and Set Forth with an Introduction by Walter Raleigh (London: Oxford University Press, 1969): 29.

"Whether Shakespeare knew the unities, and rejected them by design, or deviated from them by happy ignorance, it is, I think, impossible to decide, and useless to enquire. We may reasonably suppose, that, when he rose to notice, he did not want the counsels and admonitions of scholars and criticks, and that he at last deliberately persisted in a practice, which he might have begun by chance."

Which of the following is NOT one of the "unities" alluded to in the above excerpt?

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way – in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.

These are the opening lines to which novel?

In the seventeenth century a dissociation of sensibility set in, from which we have never recovered; and this dissociation, as is natural, was aggravated by the influence of the two most powerful poets of the century, Milton and Dryden. Each of these men performed certain poetic functions so magnificently well that the magnitude of the effect concealed the absence of others. The language went on and in some respects improved; the best verse of Collins, Gray, Johnson, and even Goldsmith satisfies some of our fastidious demands better than that of Donne or Marvell or King. But while the language became more refined, the feeling became more crude. The feeling, the sensibility, expressed in the "Country Churchyard" (to say nothing of Tennyson and Browning) is cruder than that in the "Coy Mistress."

The essay from which the passage was taken is concerned primarily with which of the following groups of poets?

Blanche DuBois, Stella Kowalski, and Harold Mitchell are major characters from which of the following plays?

The German playwright and poet Bertolt Brecht wrote which of the following important anti-war plays?

In the seventeenth century a dissociation of sensibility set in, from which we have never recovered; and this dissociation, as is natural, was aggravated by the influence of the two most powerful poets of the century, Milton and Dryden. Each of these men performed certain poetic functions so magnificently well that the magnitude of the effect concealed the absence of others. The language went on and in some respects improved; the best verse of Collins, Gray, Johnson, and even Goldsmith satisfies some of our fastidious demands better than that of Donne or Marvell or King. But while the language became more refined, the feeling became more crude. The feeling, the sensibility, expressed in the "Country Churchyard" (to say nothing of Tennyson and Browning) is cruder than that in the "Coy Mistress."

The essay from which the passage was taken is concerned primarily with which of the following groups of poets?