General Lit questions - Shakespeare - New Grub Street - Austen - Bechdel -

[JeanLucBergman]

Question 1


In George Gissing's New Grub Street, to what does "Grub Street" refer?

The pest problem in London.

A circulating library.

The London publishing and literary industry.

The British empire.

A slum area of London.
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Question 2


Which of these events occurred first?

The circulation of the first version of Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales.

The first performance of William Shakespeare's The Tempest.

The rise of the periodical press.

The invention of the printing press by Johannes Gutenberg.

The publication of Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey.
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Question 3


Which two of the following statements are correctly punctuated?

Semicolons cannot be used before dependent clauses; because of the rules of grammar.

Jane Austen's Catherine Moreland does not exhibit the characteristics of the conventional heroine: beauty, fragile health, intelligence, and good manners.

A Visit from the Goon Squad doesn't have a chronological structure, its really confusing.

In William Shakespeares play, "the tempest" represent's Prosperos power.

In Fun Home, Bechdel takes quotes from other texts as her chapter titles; this is a form of intertextuality.
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Question 4


In literary theory, what is meant by the phrase "The Death of the Author"? What does this mean for literary criticism? Write approximately 100 words.



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Question 5


George Gissing's New Grub Street engages with which of these literary genres? Choose all correct answers.

Tragedy.

Metafiction.

Naturalism.

Journalism.

Realism.
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Question 6


Which of these ways of reproducing texts raises concerns about a lack of consistency and authoritativeness? Choose two correct answers.

Digitisation by manual copying or scanning of print texts.

Mechanical printing.

Serialisation in a periodical.

Early modern hand copying.

Electronic publishing.
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Question 7


Define intertextuality with reference to Alison Bechdel's Fun Home. Write approximately 100 words.



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Question 8


Which two of the following statements can be correctly applied to Geoffrey Chaucer's "The Wife of Bath's Prologue"?

It was written in the Victorian period.

It is narrated in the first person.

It is written in Old English.

It is written in Middle English.

It is an autobiography.
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Question 9


Which two of the following quotes is correctly referenced in MLA style?

"But for women, I thought, looking at the empty shelves, these difficulties were infinitely more formidable" (Woolf 60-1).

"So glad of this as they I cannot be" (III.I 110).


"Nineteen eighty is almost here, thank God" (Egan, 40).

"My spirits, as in a dream, are all bound up" (2.1 570).

"This juxtaposition of the last days of childhood with those of Nixon and the end of that larger, national innocence may see, trite. But it was only one of many heavy-handed plot devices to befall my family during those strange hot months" (155).
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Question 10


Who or what is "the goon" in Jennifer Egan's A Visit from the Goon Squad?

Chronos.

Lou.

Music.

Time.

Cocaine.
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Question 11


Which of these poetic forms does William Shakespeare employ in The Tempest? Choose all correct answers.

Blank verse.

Rhyming couplets.

Song.

Sonnet.

Iambic pentameter.
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Question 12


In this line of iambic pentamenter from William Shakespeare's The Tempest, which of these sets of words are all unstressed?

"What great hope have you! No hope that way is" (II.I 265)

Great, hope, you.

Great, hope, you, way, is.

What, hope, you, hope, way.

What, hope, you, hope, is.

great, have, no, that, is.
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Question 13


In Fun Home, the Bechdel family home functions as a symbol for the novel's engagement with which literary genre?

Tragedy.

The graphic novel.

Postmodernism.

The Gothic.

Realism.
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Question 14


According to T. S. Eliot's "Tradition and the Individual Talent," literature should be:

Individual and subjective.

Repetitive.

Contained by tradition.

Conceptualised in relation to all that has been rewritten in the past.

The work of a solitary genius.
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Question 15


In which one of the following lines from Bobbi Sykes "Lament for the Strikers" is caesura used?

"Like that history didn't happen /"

"The day you took on your manhood /"

"You have watched / while we / your sisters"

"Manacled / guns held at temples /"

"And you want for that to be as if it never did happen?"
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Question 16


Define the concept of the Romantic Author. Write approximately 100 words.



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Question 17


Which of these poems uses a singular first person speaker?

"Ala" by Grace Nichols.

"Caged Bird" by Maya Angelou.

"An Abandoned Bundle" by Oswald Mtshali.

"Waterpot" by Grace Nichols.

"A Woman Speaks" by Audre Lorde.
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Question 18


What form of English does Geoffrey Chaucer use in "The Wife of Bath's Prologue"? How is this evident in spelling? Write approximately 100 words and use an example from the text to substantiate your claims.



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Question 19


Define metafiction with reference to George Gissing's New Grub Street. Write approximately 100 words.



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Question 20


Which of the following course texts has a non-chronological narrative structure?

The Tempest.

Fun Home.

"The Wife of Bath's Prologue".

New Grub Street.

Northanger Abbey.

[Jackson Richardson]

Are you expecting us to answer your exam questions? Do your own work.

However for what it's worth I'll answer the first question, as the multiple choice questions seem to miss the point.

Grub Street in the City of London was renamed Milton Street. In Alexander Pope's poem The Dunciad it stands as the home of bad, hack journalists. It was not particularly a slum but I suppose that is the answer required. Nowadays we say "Fleet Street" to cover the press, as that is where in the recent past most newspapers in London where based. "Grub Street" is used by Pope in a similar way.

You can read about Pope's great poem here https://www.theguardian.com/books/2008/may/10/poetry3

[JeanLucBergman]

I was leaning towards "The London publishing and literary industry." as a potential symbolic response however that appears too broad, the slum response is fairly vague and inaccurate too, not a fan of some of these questions.

[OrphanPip]

Are you expecting us to answer your exam questions? Do your own work.

However for what it's worth I'll answer the first question, as the multiple choice questions seem to miss the point.

Grub Street in the City of London was renamed Milton Street. In Alexander Pope's poem The Dunciad it stands as the home of bad, hack journalists. It was not particularly a slum but I suppose that is the answer required. Nowadays we say "Fleet Street" to cover the press, as that is where in the recent past most newspapers in London where based. "Grub Street" is used by Pope in a similar way.

You can read about Pope's great poem here https://www.theguardian.com/books/2008/may/10/poetry3

The answer is c the London publishing industry for the reasons you gave. It wasn't so much only a home of journalist since journalism didn't quite exist yet in Pope's time, but all sorts of authors. People like Eliza Haywood (Ms. Novel in Pope's Dunciad) or Defoe wrote everything from moral guidebooks, novels, essays, and political propaganda. What was reprehensible about them in Pope's eyes was that they were writers for profit, and also mostly Whig supporters. Pope himself was a bit of a hypocrite because he also dabbled in the emerging literary marketplace at the time, even as he imagined himself as something more refined. Neither Pope's poem or Gissing's novel involve slums but are entirely about the British publishing industry.

The theme of the poster's questions seems to be authorship the course must have been designed around works that handle questions of authorship. Bechdel's Fun Home is an autobiography about the process of writing a biography about her father. Gissing's novel is about the publishing industry and questions of ethics in writing. Prospero in the Tempest is often taken to represent Shakespeare himself. Catherine is a kind of author in her imagined construction of a gothic tale around herself in Northanger Abbey. The Wife of Bath is a storyteller like all the characters in The Canterbury Tales.

It's an interesting reading list. The questions are obvious and very easy to answer.