GRE Literature Study Blog

"Elegy Written in a Country Church-Yard" (1751)

2009-05-17T21:37:00.003+01:00

Thomas Gray's "Elegy Written in a Country Church-Yard" (1751) was an immensely popular meditation on mortality that had a major influence on the early Romantics. The work has led Thomas Gray to be classified among the pre-Romantic Graveyard Poets.

"Elegy" is almost guaranteed to show up on the GRE Literature exam. Read this full text at least three times.

The poem is in four-line stanzas (ABAB), iambic pentameter.

Associate the following quotes with "Elegy:"

1. "Some mute, inglorious Milton here may rest / Some Cromwell guiltless of his country's blood."

2. "The paths of glory lead but to the grave."

3. "Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife"

William Cowper (1731-1800)

2009-05-17T00:42:00.002+01:00

William Cowper (1731-1800), pronounced "cooper," was an popular English poet and hymnodist. His focus as a poet on the everyday life of the English countryside influenced the early Romantics. He famously suffered from severe depression. He was also a zealous evangelical Christian.

Cowper also translated Homer into blank verse--don't confuse him with Chapman.

On the GRE Literature exam, you're mostly likely to need to identify the following Cowper quotes:

1. "variety's the very spice of life"
2. "God made the country, and man the town"
3. "God moves in a mysterious way / His wonders to perform"

Cowper is not worth adding to your GRE reading list.

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926)

2009-05-17T00:36:00.002+01:00

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926) was a German poet and prose stylist, often considered the most important German poet of the 20th century.

One of the following works may appear on the GRE Literature exam. Read each linked summary once; read "Der Panther" twice.

1. Letters to a Young Poet

2. The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge (Novel)

3. "Der Panther" (Translation)

Rilke is not worth adding to your GRE reading list.

"Tintern Abbey" (1798)

2009-05-16T00:07:00.003+01:00

William Wordsworth's "Lines composed a few miles above Tintern Abbey" (1798) is one of the major early texts of the Romantic movement.

It is a textbook example of Wordsworth's definition of poetry as "the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings from emotions recollected in tranquility."

This poem is almost guaranteed to appear on the GRE Literature exam. You should read the full text (Wikisource) of the poem at least twice before the exam.

The Lucy poems (1789-1801)

2009-05-15T23:55:00.003+01:00

William Wordsworth's Lucy poems (1789-1801) are five short lyrics originally published in the second edition of the Lyrical Ballads alongside the work of Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

The Lucy poems were central in establishing the early popularity of Romantic poetry, and one or more is almost guaranteed to appear on the GRE Literature exam. It's almost worth memorizing them. (Luckily, each mentions Lucy at or near the end.)

1. "Strange fits of passion I have known"
2. "She dwelt among the untrodden ways"
3. "I travelled among unknown men"
4. "Three years she grew in sun and shower"
5. "A slumber did my spirit seal"

The Prelude (1805, 1850)

2009-05-15T23:49:00.003+01:00

William Wordsworth's The Prelude, aka the "Poem to Coleridge," is one of the major works of English Romanticism.

It exists in three versions, of which the unpolished, radical 1805 version and the posthumous 1850 version are the most commonly used for modern publications. (The 1799 version is much shorter.)

The poem, written entirely in blank verse, is a kind of "spiritual autobiography" (Wikipedia).

Famous passages include:

1. Opening journey to the Vale of Grasmere
2. Crossing of the Alps near Mont Blanc in Book VI
3. Climactic ascent of Snowdon in Wales

The poem is important in that it considers man's own mind, as opposed to history or the will of (the) god(s), a worthy subject of an epic.

The Prelude may be worth adding to your GRE reading list, but not as a high priority. I recommend William Wordsworth - The Major Works (Oxford World's Classics).

William Wordsworth (1770-1850)

2009-05-15T23:37:00.004+01:00

William Wordsworth (1770-1850) was a major English Romantic poet. His Lyrical Ballads, published with Samuel Taylor Coleridge in 1798, is widely credited with launching the Romantic movement in England.

He famously sought to write poetry in "the real language of men," and defined poetry as "the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings from emotions recollected in tranquility."

Wordsworth is a major figure on the GRE Literature exam.

1. "It is a Beauteous Evening (Calm and Free)"

2. "My heart leaps up (when I behold)"

3. "The world is too much with us"
-loosely follows the form of an Italian sonnet

4. "Lines composed a few miles above Tintern Abbey"
-Part of the Lyrical Ballads
(link goes to separate entry)

5. The "Lucy" poems
-Part of the Lyrical Ballads
(link goes to separate entry)

6. The Prelude
(link goes to separate entry)

The Prelude may be worth adding to your GRE reading list, but not as a high priority. I recommend William Wordsworth - The Major Works (Oxford World's Classics).

Lord Byron (1788-1824)

2009-05-14T11:56:00.003+01:00

George Gordon Byron (1788-1824) was an English Romantic poet. Despite his literary celebrity, Byron is not a major figure on the GRE. He's as famous for his tumultuous lifestyle--and for his namesake brooding "Byronic hero"--as he is for his poetry. He died of a fever while fighting for (oddly enough) Greek independence from the Ottomans.

For the GRE Literature exam, associate the following with Byron.

1. "She Walks in Beauty"

2. Manfred (dramatic poem)
-Part of a ghost story craze; based on the Faust legend

3. Childe Harold's Pilgrimages (narrative poem)
-about masculinity; protagonist is typical Byronic hero
-four of the cantos are written in Spenserian stanzas

4. Don Juan (narrative poem)
-identifiable by its distinctive rhyme scheme: ab ab ab cc (link)

Byron is not worth adding to your GRE Literature reading list.

A.E. Housman (1859-1936)

2009-05-12T21:45:00.002+01:00

Alfred Edward Housman (1859-1936) was an English poet whose most famous work was completed in the late 19th century. His melancholy, bucolic poem cycle A Shropshire Lad was extremely popular in the years before and after World War I, and was frequently set to music.

For the GRE Literature exam, associate the following works with Housman. Read each linked poem at least once.

1. "When I was one-and-twenty"
2. "To an athlete dying young"
3. "Terence, this is stupid stuff"

Walt Whitman (1819-1892)

2009-05-12T21:37:00.002+01:00

Walt Whitman (1819-1892) was an American poet. He was a major innovator in the use of free verse. Politically, he was a strong supporter of abolition. Some of his work was unusually sexual for his time.

For the GRE Literature exam, associate the following works with Walt Whitman. Read each linked poem at least once.

1. Leaves of Grass
-Grew with each new edition published during his lifetime

2. "Song of Myself"

3. "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd"
-A poem about Lincoln's assassination

4. "O Captain, My Captain"
-Another poem about Lincoln's assassination

5. "Pioneers! O Pioneers"

6. "When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer"

George Herbert (1593-1633)

2009-05-09T22:39:00.000+01:00

George Herbert (1593-1633) was a Welsh Metaphysical poet and a priest. His work is known for complicated visual metaphors and the frequent use of "shape poems" (see "Easter-Wings" and "The Altar" below).

For the GRE Literature exam, associate the following works with George Herbert. Read each linked text at least once.

1. "The Pulley"
-"yet wearinesse may toss him to my breast"

2. "The Collar"
-"I will abroad"; "Call in thy death's head there" ; "Childe: And I reply'd, My Lord."

3. "Easter-Wings"
-Shaped like angel's wings, rotated 90 degrees.

4. "The Altar"
-Shaped like an altar; altar = heart

Richard Lovelace (1618-1657)

2009-05-09T22:32:00.001+01:00

Richard Lovelace (1618-1657) was an English Cavalier poet.

For the GRE Literature exam, associate the following works with Richard Lovelace. Read each linked text at least once.

1. "To Lucasta. Going to the Warres"
-"I could not love thee Dear so much, / Lov'd I not honour more"

2. "To Althea, From Prison"
-"Stone walls do not a prison make, / nor iron bars a cage."

Anton Chekhov (1860-1904)

2009-05-08T22:02:00.002+01:00

Anton Chekhov (1860-1904) was a Russian playwright and short story writer. For the GRE Literature exam, he's mostly referenced as a playwright, but sometimes the fact that his stories included early experiments in stream-of-consciousness shows up.

For the GRE Literature exam, associate the following works with Anton Chekhov. Read each linked plot summary at least once.

1. The Seagull (1896)
-Irina Arkadina (fading leading lady); Konstantin Treplyov (experimental playwright); Trigorin (famous middlebrow fiction author)
-Strong intertextual relationship with Hamlet

2. The Three Sisters (1901)
-Olga, Masha, Irina, & Andrey Prozorov
-Left stranded in a provincial backwater after the death of their father, a General; starts on the first anniversary of his death

3. The Cherry Orchard (1904)
-Lyubov Ranevskaya, adopted daughter Varya & daughter Anya; nobility in decline; lack of money; family cherry orchard sold

4. "The Lady with the Dog" (1899, short story)
-Adultery in Yalta between young married woman and banker on vacation.

Chekhov may be worth adding to your GRE reading list--his plays are short, and you're almost guaranteed to get a Chekhov question or two on the exam. I recommend Chekhov: The Major Plays, which has all three plays above in one volume.

Henry James (1843-1916)

2009-05-06T21:57:00.002+01:00

Henry James (1843-1916) was an American novelist who spent most of his career in Britain. He was a realist, and his work is remarkable for its creative use of interior monologue and unreliable narrators. His essay "The Art of Fiction" argued for greater creative freedom for writers.

Henry James has many works that could appear on the exam. For the GRE Literature exam, focus on the following. Read each linked summary at least once.

1. Daisy Miller (1878)
-Seduced into improper behavior by the cad Winterbourne

2. The Portrait of a Lady (1881)
-Heiress Isabel Archer in Italy

3. The Turn of the Screw (1898)
-Ghost story; unreliable narrator.
-Flora, Miles, Miss Jessel, Quint

4. The Beast in the Jungle (1903)
-John Marcher & May Bartram await the grand fate John is sure will befall him, but which never does.

5. The Ambassadors (1903)
-Lambert Strether; the Newsomes; Chad Newsome; Countess Madame de Vionnet
-Strether tries to bring Chad back to New England from Paris.

Several of Henry James' novellas are worth adding to your GRE reading list. I recommend the Signet Classics Edition, which includes Daisy Miller, The Beast in the Jungle, and The Turn of the Screw.

E. M. Forster (1879-1970)

2009-05-04T22:59:00.002+01:00

E. M. Forster (1879-1970) was an early-20th-century English novelist, short story writer, and essayist. He was a secular humanist. His Aspects of the Novel broached the idea of "flat" and "round" characters.

For the GRE Literature exam, associate the following works with E. M. Forster. Read each linked summary at least once.

1. Where Angels Fear to Tread (1905)
-Caroline Abbott; Lilia Herriton; Lilia falls in love w/ Italian on trip to Italy; marries, starts family, dies.

2. A Room with a View (1908)
-Charlotte Bartlett, Lucy Honeychurch, Mr. Emerson, George Emerson, Mr. Beebe, Eleanor Lavish, Cecil Vyse; young Englishwoman's romantic encounter in Florence impedes marriage.

3. Howards End (1910)
-Maragaret, Helen, & Tibby Schlegel; Charles, Paul, & Evie Wilcox; Schlegel (sentimentality) vs. Wilcox (pragmatism); epigraph: "Only connect."

4. A Passage to India (1924)
-Dr. Aziz, Adela Quested, the Marabar Caves; murder plot

E. M. Forster's Howard's End may be worth adding to your GRE reading list. I recommend the Dover Thrift Edition.

George Eliot (1819-1880)

2009-05-02T23:30:00.003+01:00

George Eliot (1819-1880), aka Mary Anne Evans, was a Victorian realist novelist. Her works usually take place in the English countryside.

For the GRE Literature exam, associate the following works with George Eliot. Be sure to read the linked plot summaries at least twice before the exam.

1. Adam Bede (1859)
-Seth, Dinah, Mr. Irwine, Lisbeth, Hetty, Arthur

2. The Mill on the Floss (1860)

3. Silas Marner (1861)
-Silas Marner, Godfrey Cass, Molly, Eppie

4. Middlemarch (1871-2)
-Dorothea Brooke
-famously admired by Virginia Woolf as "one of the few English novels written for grown-up people"

Middlemarch may be worth adding to your GRE Literature reading list. I recommend the Barnes & Noble Classics Edition.

Samuel Butler (1835-1902)

2009-05-02T23:24:00.003+01:00

Samuel Butler (1835-1902) was a Victorian novelist.

Don't confuse him with the 17th-century poet who wrote Hudibras.

For the GRE Literature Exam, associate the following works with Samuel Butler:

1. Erewhon (1872, aka "Nowhere")
-Satire of Victorian society; parody of Utopia; similar to Gulliver's Travels

2. The Way of All Flesh (1903)
-Four generations of the Pontifex family; attacks Victorian-era (sexual) hypocrisy

Samuel Butler is not worth adding to your GRE Literature reading list.

Eudora Welty (1909-2001)

2009-05-01T22:05:00.004+01:00

Eudora Welty (1909-2001) was a Southern Gothic novelist.

For the GRE Literature exam, associate the following works and characters with Eudora Welty.

1. Delta Wedding
-The Fairchild family; George. Whole family voices the story.

2. The Optimist's Daughter (Pulitzer winner)
-Laurel Hand, Fay McKelva, Judge Clint McKelva, Becky McKelva

3. "Why I Live at the P.O." (short story)
-Sister (that's her name) tells why Mr. Whitaker broke up with her to marry her sister, Stella-Rondo.
-Sister said she was bigger-breasted on one side.

Eudora Welty is not worth adding to your reading list for the GRE Literature exam.

Gothic Novels (18th Century)

2009-04-27T21:58:00.002+01:00

The Gothic novels of the 18th century were a combination of horror and romance. Almost universally, they contain some apparently supernatural plot elements, usually associated somehow with Catholicism, that later turn out to have natural explanations, a technique known as the gothic explique.

These novels were often criticized (and parodied) for their melodramatic tone.

For the GRE Literature exam, associate the following authors and works with the Gothic novel:

Horace Walpole (father of the form)
-The Castle of Otranto: Manfred, Conrad, Isabella

Anne Radcliffe (cited most often in the 19th century)
-The Mysteries of Udolpho: Montoni, Emily
-The Italian: VincentinoVivaldi, Ellena Rosalba

M.G. Lewis (events actually were supernatural)
-The Monk: Ambrosio, Mathilda

Jane Austen (parodying Radcliffe)
-Northanger Abbey: Catherine Morland, the Allens, Henry Tilney, John Thorpe

Reader-Response Criticism

2009-04-25T23:16:00.001+01:00

Reader-Response Criticism and the related Reception Theory focus on the ways readers create meaning from a text. They are fundamentally opposed to the other linguistic criticisms, which exclude the reader's experience from literary analysis.

Associate the following ideas and people with Reader Response Criticism:

-reader's experience = central literary event
-books have an "implied reader" or "ideal reader," discernible through the book's implicit assumptions about how the reader will read
-aesthetic impact (breaking the "horizon of expectations")

Note that Reception Theory and Reader-Response Criticism makes heavy use of terms and ideas from a variety of other critical fields.

For more information, I recommend Culler's Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction.

Deconstruction

2009-04-25T23:09:00.001+01:00

Deconstruction is the most prominent example of the post-structuralist criticisms, which both use and critique structuralism.

Deconstruction focuses on the displacements and gaps in the meaning structures generated by structuralism, which structuralists dismiss as exceptions. In other words, every text includes irreconcilable differences in meaning, and is therefore essentially meaningless--which is why people hate Deconstruction so much.

Associate the following terms and people with Deconstruction:

-erasure, trace, bracketing, differance, slippage, dissemination, logocentrism, indeterminacy, decentering
-(Structuralism) mimesis, alterity, marginality, desire, lack
-Jacques Derrida

For more information, I recommend Culler's Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction.

Structuralist Criticism

2009-04-25T23:04:00.001+01:00

Structuralism operates from the assumption that meaning is not inherent in any word, sign, type, etc, but rather that meaning is produced by the structure of relationships among terms.

In literary criticism, the focus is on the "grammar of literature," or the set patterns of plot and character that recur across time and genre.

The classic example compares Romeo & Juliet and West Side Story:

(boy +LOVE girl)(boy's group -LOVE girl's group)

Associate the following terms and people with Structuralism:

-Ferdinand de Saussure & Semiotics
-sign, signifier, signified, relative difference
-binary oppositions, spatial metaphors, equations

For more information, I recommend Culler's Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction.

New Criticism

2009-04-25T22:58:00.001+01:00

New Criticism, an outgrowth of Formalism, was the dominant mode of criticism in the English-speaking world from about 1920 to 1960. It is still widely practiced at an undergraduate level today.

New Criticism focuses on features of the text to the total exclusion of authorial intention or socioeconomic influence. Ambiguity is a major criterion for evaluation; close reading is the main method.

For the GRE Literature exam, associate the following terms and people with New Criticism:

-intentional fallacy, affective fallacy, the heresy of paraphrase, close reading
-T.S. Eliot, Robert Penn Warren, Cleanth Brooks, I.A. Richards, John Crowe Ransom, F.R. Leavis

For more information, I recommend Culler's Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction.

Formalist Criticism

2009-04-25T22:52:00.001+01:00

Formalism, especially as practiced by the Russians, was a predecessor to Structuralism and New Criticism in that it focused primarily on the features of the text itself.

The goal was to find objectively discernible features that made a work of literature Literature.

For the GRE Literature exam, associate the following terms and people with Formalism:

-defamiliarization; devices
-Viktor Shklovsky

For more information, I recommend Culler's Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction.

Identity Criticisms

2009-04-25T22:46:00.001+01:00

Identity Criticisms, like Marxism, are sociological criticisms in that they see literature as primarily the product of social forces. However, instead of focusing on class struggle, they allow for various forms of identity beyond that of the social class.

There are three main types. Each is a vibrant field of critical debate, but on the GRE Literature exam, you'll rarely be asked to do more than identify a caricature almost certain to include the buzzwords below.

1. Feminist Criticism
-phallocratic hegemony, patriarchy
2. Black Criticism
-Euro-American patriarchy
3. Post-Colonial Criticism
-subaltern; marginalization of the other
-Edward Said, Orientalism

For more information, I recommend Culler's Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction.