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1) The first stanza of Countee Cullen’s “A Brown Girl Dead” reads: “With two white roses on her breasts,/White candles at head and feet,/Dark Madonna of the grave she rests;/Lord Death has found her sweet.” Which of the following statements accurately characterizes these lines ? a. These lines evoke Christian imagery to emphasize the dignity of the girl who died. b. These lines evoke Christian imagery to suggest that death erases racial divisions. c. These lines present the problem of racial prejudice in an ironic mode. d. Both A and B
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2) One of the dominant themes in Wallace Stevens’s poem “Sunday Morning” consists of the juxtaposition of nature against which set of cultural symbols ? a. The ideal of courtly love b. Elements of the Christian narrative of salvation c. The alchemical concept of the philosopher’s stone d. The Renaissance concept of humanism
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3) According to the literary critic, Paul Fussell, which of the following was a central trope of English poetry written during the Great War ? a. Patriotic imagery b. Irony c. Nihilism d. Apocalyptic imagery
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4) Which of the following best characterizes the contrast between Gertrude Stein’s poetry and Imagist poetry ? a. Stein experimented only with the sound qualities of language, whereas the Imagists focused on visual imagery. b. Stein experimented with language that skirted the edges of sense, whereas the Imagists sought precision and clarity of expression. c. Stein sought to combine classical poetic form with contemporary content, whereas the Imagists used traditional poetic subject matter but experimented d. Stein sought precision and clarity in her poems, whereas the Imagists sought experimental forms that enhanced visual imagery.
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5) Rupert Brooke’s “The Soldier” opens with the following lines: “If I should die, think only this of me:/That there’s some corner of a foreign field/That is for ever England.” Which of the following statements best describes these lines and Brooke’s poem as a whole ? a. These lines and the poem as a whole use both the political concept of a nation and the spiritual concept of eternity to give meaning to soldiers’ de b. These lines and the poem as a whole are primarily concerned with the extension of Britain’s imperial power. c. These lines and the poem as a whole seek to directly express the horrors of war. d. These lines and the poem as a whole rely on assonance to magnify the critique of war expressed in the poem.
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6) According to Professor Hammer, Wallace Stevens’s understanding of the imagination has most in common with which of the following literary traditions ? a. Imagism b. Classicism c. British Romanticism d. Vorticism
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7) Complete the following sentence. Professor Hammer argues that Ezra Pound’s interest in fascism and his anti-Semitic views were likely an outcome of his______________? a. endorsement of Marxism. b. interest in ancient Rome. c. anti-capitalism. d. interest in Fourier’s utopian socialist thought.
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8) What is the “double-bind” that African- American women poets encountered in the thirties and forties, according to Anthony Walton’s essay ? a. Being overworked in menial jobs having to raise large families b. Being a subordinated woman in a male dominated culture and a member of a suppressed minority race in the middle of a dominant white culture c. Having little formal education with little access to publishers d. Being ignored by a traditional poetry reading public because what they wrote about was the travails of subsistence living
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9) In Amy Lowell’s imagist poem, “This Green Bowl,” a handmade bowl is compared to a pond in the woods. Can one say that, as in Pound’s “Cantos,” this poem’s dominant tone is impersonal? Why, or why not ? a. Yes, Lowell’s detailed description of nature draws attention away from human realities. b. Yes, the lyrical voice in Lowell’s poem seeks to express universal rather than individual experience. c. No, Lowell’s poem is not impersonal; it addresses the maker of the bowl directly and speculates about his state of mind. d. No, even though Lowell strives for impersonal expression by borrowing poetic devices from Pound, she fails to accomplish this
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10) Which of the following best describes the types of imagery used in Louis Zukofsky’s poem, “A: Seventh Movement: There Are Different Techniques” ? a. Historic and contemporary imagery b. Kabalistic imagery c. Nationalist imagery d. Everyday imagery
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