Which of the following best characterizes the significance of the events in Russia?

In his essay “The Roots of Modernism,” Christopher L.C.E. Witcombe defines the modern period in the history of art as the time from roughly 1860 to 1970. How does he say modernism is typically defined?

Choose one answer.

	a. Modernism is the art produced during the modern period.
	b. Modernism is the historical period which followed the modern period.
	c. Modernism is the philosophy of modern art.
	d. Both A and C

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In the first lecture of his Modern Poetry course, what argument does Professor Langdon Hammer make about the relationship between the modern city and poetic modernism?

Choose one answer.

	a. Most modernist poets lived in large cities; therefore, they often used urban imagery in their poetry.
	b. Many languages and many forms of language were used in large cities; modernist poets often treated language not as something given and natural but as a construct which they could manipulate.
	c. Individuals often felt lost and alienated in large cities, and among poets this resulted in turning inward and focusing only on the world of one’s own imagination.
	d. All of these answers

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What are some of the surface similarities between Robert Frost’s poem “Out, Out” and John Greenleaf Whittier’s poem “Telling the Bees”?

Choose one answer.

	a. They both address the theme of death.
	b. Both use formal meter to present a narrative structure.
	c. They are both set in rural New England.
	d. All of these answers

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Which of the following features of Robert Browning’s “My Last Duchess” make it classifiable as a Victorian poem?

Choose one answer.

	a. It has a regular rhyme scheme (aa/bb/cc/dd…), which is sustained throughout the poem.
	b. It is primarily a narrative poem.
	c. It is concerned with conventional 19th-century relations between a man and a woman.
	d. All of these answers

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Which of the following poets would most likely be categorized as a modernist poet?

Choose one answer.

	a. William Carlos Williams
	b. John Greenleaf Whittier
	c. George Herbert
	d. Robert Browning

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Which of the following poets would most likely be categorized as a late-Victorian poet?

Choose one answer.

	a. John Milton
	b. Alfred Tennyson
	c. Allen Ginsberg
	d. Amy Lowell

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Which of the following was NOT a prominent theme of American and English modernist poetry?

Choose one answer.

	a. The search for a new poetic language and the idea that language can be reinvented by poets
	b. The quest to describe objects with precision and without emotion
	c. The idea that the self is neither unitary nor permanently stable
	d. The approval of the norms and values of bourgeois culture

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Complete the following sentence. Matthew Arnold’s poem “Dover Beach” is illustrative of modernist poetry, because it:

Choose one answer.

	a. employs free verse.
	b. has an undertow of nihilism.
	c. is chauvinistic about British “exceptionalism.”
	d. was composed between WW I and WW II.

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Which of the following best describes the idea of the symbol among French Symbolist poets?

Choose one answer.

	a. A symbol is an image that conveys powerful emotional states.
	b. A symbol is an emblem of the actual world endowed with supernatural meanings.
	c. A symbol is a metaphor that allows the poet to capture complex social realities.
	d. A symbol is a description of past realities.

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Which of the following images in Arthur Rimbaud’s poem “Eternity” undermines the idea that eternity is something fixed and permanent?

Choose one answer.

	a. The image of a sentinel
	b. The image of the sun reflected on the sea
	c. The image of a quest for knowledge
	d. The image of satiny embers

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Which of the following statements best characterizes the last two stanzas of Charles Baudelaire’s symbolist poem “Correspondences”?

Choose one answer.

	a. They describe the author’s experiences as a young child.
	b. They use metaphors with subtle political connotations.
	c. They ascribe colors and sounds to scents, relying on a device known as synesthesia.
	d. They describe a scene in the countryside, which symbolizes the state of the author’s soul.

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Which of the following descriptors does NOT apply to the features of French Symbolist poetry that influenced other modernist poetry?

Choose one answer.

	a. French Symbolist poetry is full of exaggerated metaphors.
	b. French Symbolist poetry has narrative clarity.
	c. French Symbolist poetry is shocking.
	d. French Symbolist poetry is formally experimental.

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According to Professor Hammer, Wallace Stevens’s understanding of the imagination has most in common with which of the following literary traditions?

Choose one answer.

	a. Imagism
	b. Classicism
	c. British Romanticism
	d. Vorticism

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Ezra Pound’s poem “In a Station of the Metro” reads: “The apparition of these faces in the crowd;/ Petals on a wet, black bough.” Which of the following statements best characterizes this poem?

Choose one answer.

	a. It seeks to diminish the distance between society and nature.
	b. It seeks to amplify the distance between society and nature.
	c. It plays with the relationship between the social, natural, and supernatural worlds.
	d. It evokes the beauty of a pastoral scene.

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Ezra Pound’s “Canto I” opens with the following lines: “And then went down to the ship,/Set keel to breakers, forth on the godly sea, and(…).” Which of the following statements best characterizes these lines and the poem as a whole?

Choose one answer.

	a. These lines set an impersonal tone which dominates the entire poem.
	b. These lines establish a rhythmical pattern, which is followed strictly throughout the poem.
	c. These lines are the only impersonal lines in the poem, the rest of which is primarily focused on the complexity of human emotions.
	d. These lines establish a personal tone, focusing on a lyrical perspective similar to late-Victorian era poetry.

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Ezra Pound’s “Cantos” may be called a modernist epic, though its form ultimately defies classification. Pound’s poem alludes to which of the following epic poems?

Choose one answer.

	a. The Mahabharata
	b. Paradise Lost
	c. The Odyssey
	d. The Aeneid

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H.D.’s poem “Oread” reads: “WHIRL up, sea—/Whirl your pointed pines./Splash your great pines/On our rocks./Hurl your green over us—/Cover us with your pools of fir.” To which of the following categories does this poem belong?

Choose one answer.

	a. Objectivist poetry
	b. Futurist poetry
	c. Imagist poetry
	d. Vorticist poetry

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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?

Choose one answer.

	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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In his essay “The Symbolism of Poetry,” William Butler Yeats argues that which of the following is the purpose of rhythm?

Choose one answer.

	a. To “amplify and clarify the indistinct emotions created by metaphorical symbols”
	b. To “prolong the moment of contemplation”
	c. To “counteract the forces of dispersal inherent in metaphorical language”
	d. To “make poetry new”

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In his first lecture on William Butler Yeats, Professor Hammer says that the young Yeats identified with King Goll. What does he mean by this?

Choose one answer.

	a. Yeats’s poetry was autobiographical, but he understood his life through the prism of myths and symbols; symbolism was therefore present in both Yeats’s life and in his poetry.
	b. Yeats believed that each person was an instance of a general cultural type or symbol.
	c. The young Yeats wished to emphasize his identity as an English poet and draw attention away from his Irish heritage.
	d. Both A and B

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In Wallace Stevens’s poem “The Man on the Dump,” one can say that the trash symbolizes which of the following?

Choose one answer.

	a. Artifacts from foreign cultures which do not fit into the American cultural context
	b. The broken dreams of the American émigré community in Paris
	c. Old poetry
	d. The failed attempt of modern poetry

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One of the dominant themes in Wallace Stevens’s poem “Sunday Morning” consists of the juxtaposition of nature against which set of cultural symbols?

Choose one answer.

	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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Professor Hammer argues that in a certain sense Wallace Stevens’s poetry is always meta-poetry. What does this mean?

Choose one answer.

	a. Stevens’s poetry is primarily, though not explicitly, concerned with metaphysics.
	b. Stevens’s poetry investigates its own rules.
	c. Stevens’s poetry always addresses several different audiences.
	d. Stevens’s poetry highlights an objective voice.

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Professor Hammer argues that Marianne Moore’s poem “England” suggests which of the following?

Choose one answer.

	a. Moore’s emotional and aesthetic attachment to England
	b. Moore’s harsh critique of the carnage of World War I
	c. Moore’s particular kind of combative American cultural nationalism
	d. Moore’s interest in England’s civilizing mission in the world

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What is the most notable characteristic of Ezra Pound’s “In a Station at the Metro”?

Choose one answer.

	a. The form of a villanelle
	b. The use of synesthesia
	c. The use of simile
	d. The use of metaphor

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What is the principal subject of Marianne Moore’s poem “An Octopus”?

Choose one answer.

	a. Death
	b. Mt. Rainier
	c. The ocean
	d. An octopus

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Which of the following descriptions does NOT pertain to the Imagists?

Choose one answer.

	a. Total freedom in choosing the subject
	b. Striving for concentrated expression and imagery
	c. Reliance on the language of common speech
	d. Creative reliance on conventional poetic forms

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Which of the following does Professor Hammer identify as one of the most important goals of Imagist poetry?

Choose one answer.

	a. The privileging of image over sound
	b. The privileging of rhythm over meaning
	c. The privileging of individual detail over the larger pattern
	d. The privileging of colors over textures

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Which of the following phrases best describes the central goal of Imagist poets?

Choose one answer.

	a. “Emotional power achieved through suggestive visual images”
	b. “Exploration of philosophical paradoxes through visual images”
	c. “Clarity of expression through the use of precise visual images”
	d. “Inclusion of natural objects as symbols”

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Which of the following statements accurately characterizes Marianne Moore’s poem “A Grave?”

Choose one answer.

	a. It juxtaposes human consciousness against the sea.
	b. It uses alliteration and iambic pentameter.
	c. It has a subtle formal structure, even though it does not use rhyme.
	d. Both A and C

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Which of the following writers was among the founders of the Imagist movement?

Choose one answer.

	a. Salvador Dali
	b. Horace Greeley
	c. Ezra Pound
	d. Rupert Brooke

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Yeats’s “Song of Wandering Aengus” ends with the lines: “And pluck till time and times are done/The silver apples of the moon/The golden apples of the sun.” Which of the following is NOT a symbolic meaning of the apples?

Choose one answer.

	a. They symbolize the return to a lost paradise.
	b. They point to alchemical elements, which in turn symbolize the body and the soul.
	c. They symbolize the coming apocalypse.
	d. They symbolize a fulfilled longing.

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Which one of the following was not a “little magazine” that primarily published and championed modernist poetry in the first half of the 20th century?

Choose one answer.

	a. The Partisan Review
	b. The Owl
	c. Poetry
	d. Blast

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According to the literary critic, Paul Fussell, which of the following was a central trope of English poetry written during the Great War?

Choose one answer.

	a. Patriotic imagery
	b. Irony
	c. Nihilism
	d. Apocalyptic imagery

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Complete the following sentence. Poetic images which idealize war and ascribe spiritual qualities to battle can be found primarily in English poems written:

Choose one answer.

	a. around 1900.
	b. in the early stages of World War I.
	c. in the late stages of World War I.
	d. in the 1920s.

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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?

Choose one answer.

	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’ deaths on the battlefield.
	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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Siegfried Sassoon’s “The Dragon and the Undying” includes the following lines: “Yet, though the slain are homeless as the breeze,/Vocal are they, like storm-bewilder’d seas.” Which of the following literary devices does Sassoon use in these lines and to what effect?

Choose one answer.

	a. Metaphor to suggest a connection between soldiers and nature
	b. Simile to suggest a connection between soldiers and nature
	c. Metonymy to describe the brutality of modern warfare
	d. Onomatopoeia to describe the brutality of modern warfare

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The poem “Dulce et Decorum Est” ends with the following lines: “My friend, you would not tell with such high zest/To children ardent for some desperate glory,/The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est/ Pro patria mori.” Which of the following statements best describes these lines?

Choose one answer.

	a. Brooke’s inclusion of a quotation from Horace in these lines serves to emphasize the distance between the ideals of Western civilization and its realities.
	b. These lines suggest the author’s anger and disillusionment with cultural norms which glorify war.
	c. In these lines, Brooke seeks to bridge the gap between individual experience and cultural norms and beliefs.
	d. All of the above

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Which of the following best describes the reasons why World War I had a profound impact on modern poetry?

Choose one answer.

	a. The devastation wrought by World War I was so enormous that it put Europe’s cultural and political norms and values into question.
	b. The mechanized killing, which took place on a massive scale during World War I, made it necessary to reflect about the effects of technological progress.
	c. World War I was the first global conflict where the distinction between combatants and civilians was erased, and this had a devastating effect on the European psyche.
	d. Both A and B

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Which of the following statements accurately compares Rupert Brooke’s “The Soldier” and Siegfried Sassoon’s “The Rear Guard”?

Choose one answer.

	a. Both poems praise Britain’s military power and its imperial ambitions.
	b. Both poems describe Britain’s civilizing mission in the world.
	c. Both poems seek to respond to the harsh political and military realities of their day.
	d. Both poems romanticize war and glorify the life of the soldier.

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Which of the following statements best describes the relationship between Georgian poetry and English World War I poetry?

Choose one answer.

	a. Georgian poetry was modeled on World War I poetry and adapted its insights to postwar realities.
	b. Unlike World War I poetry, Georgian poetry was concerned primarily with the effects of urbanization and industrialization.
	c. Unlike World War I poetry, Georgian poetry was concerned primarily with women’s rights.
	d. World War I poets like Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen adapted the Georgian poetic manner to write about modern subjects; most Georgian poets focused on individual experience and avoided writing about the upheavals of modernity.

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Which of the following statements best expresses the difference between how visual images functioned in World War I poetry and Imagist poetry?

Choose one answer.

	a. There were no significant differences in the functioning of visual images in these two types of poetry.
	b. The Imagists relied on visual images to achieve clarity of expression, whereas World War I poets relied on visual images to subtly punctuate their often desperate political messages.
	c. The Imagists valued brevity, which could be achieved with precise visual images, whereas World War I poets preferred declamatory statements in their poems.
	d. World War I poets valued clarity of expression through visual images, whereas Imagists relied on complex expression through emotional visual images.

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Which of the following statements does NOT characterize the poet e. e. cummings?

Choose one answer.

	a. Ivy League educated
	b. Active pacifist during both world wars
	c. Popularized the use of free verse
	d. A private and self-effacing person

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Which of the following writers authored the poem “Dulce et Decorum Est?”

Choose one answer.

	a. Wilfred Owen
	b. Siegfried Sassoon
	c. Rupert Brooke
	d. Rudyard Kipling

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Which of the following writers wrote about trench warfare during the Great War?

Choose one answer.

	a. Siegfried Sassoon
	b. Isaac Rosenberg
	c. Wilfred Owen
	d. All of these answers

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Wilfred Owen’s “Anthem for Doomed Youth” begins with the following lines: “What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?/ Only the monstrous anger of the guns./ Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle/Can patter out their hasty orisons.” Which of the following statements best describes these lines?

Choose one answer.

	a. These lines suggest that it was difficult to define patriotism during the Great War, but soldiers who died in battle provided the best example of patriotism.
	b. These lines suggest that the Great War lasted much longer than it should have.
	c. These lines equate humans with animals, and they anthropomorphize weapons to show a world where there is no place for human values.
	d. These lines represent a modern funeral dirge that mimics the rhythm of ancient Greek funeral dirges.

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World War I drastically changed the political and cultural climate in Europe. Which of the following was NOT among the changes brought about by World War I?

Choose one answer.

	a. Germany was defeated and blamed for causing the war.
	b. In the course of World War I, the Bolsheviks came to power in Russia.
	c. Successful parliamentary democracies were established throughout the continent and remained stable until the outbreak of World War II in 1939.
	d. By the end of the 1920s, almost every state that had participated in World War I faced an economic depression and political upheavals.

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Which of the following best describes the types of imagery used in Louis Zukofsky’s poem, “A: Seventh Movement: There Are Different Techniques”?

Choose one answer.

	a. Historic and contemporary imagery
	b. Kabalistic imagery
	c. Nationalist imagery
	d. Everyday imagery

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Which of the following figures is the author of the 1909 “Futurist Manifesto”?

Choose one answer.

	a. Umberto Boccioni
	b. Filippo Marinetti
	c. Vladimir Mayakovsky
	d. Aleksander Wat

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Which of the following political themes was explored by American Objectivist poets?

Choose one answer.

	a. Slavery
	b. American attitudes toward Jews and Israel
	c. Capitalism and social inequalities
	d. All of these answers

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Which of the following statements accurately characterizes the relationship between Italian Futurism and its historical context?

Choose one answer.

	a. The Italian Futurists were fascinated by the age of electric and chemical power, and they praised the beauty of automobiles.
	b. The Italian Futurists lived within a quickly changing social world, and they praised speed.
	c. Marinetti and other Italian Futurists supported Mussolini’s fascism.
	d. All of these answers

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Which of the following statements best characterizes the difference between Futurism and Vorticism?

Choose one answer.

	a. Members of both movements were fascinated by speed and dynamism, but unlike the Futurists, Vorticists did not celebrate technology and industrialization.
	b. Futurism was a politically-inclined movement, whereas Vorticism was free of all political entanglements.
	c. Futurism lasted for several decades, whereas Vorticism was short-lived.
	d. Vorticists celebrated technology and industrialization, whereas Futurists explored impending cultural challenges regarding technology and industrialization.

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Which of the following traditions was an important influence on Louis Zukofsky’s poetry?

Choose one answer.

	a. American Romanticism
	b. British Neo-Classicism
	c. Kabalistic Judaism
	d. Taoism

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Which of the following was an important influence on Charles Reznikoff’s shift away from romantic rhetoric?

Choose one answer.

	a. His study of ancient history
	b. His study of law
	c. His study of medicine
	d. His study of Sanskrit

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Many critics see similarities between the tenets of Futurism and which of the following political philosophies?

Choose one answer.

	a. Marxism
	b. Fascism
	c. Democracy
	d. Libertarianism

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According to Professor Hammer, which of the following is the central question explored by T.S. Eliot in “The Waste Land”?

Choose one answer.

	a. Is authentic poetry possible in the aftermath of the carnage of World War I?
	b. Given the diversity of the world’s poetic traditions, can there be a universal language of poetic symbolism?
	c. How can a shared world be created out of the fundamentally different and private experiences of individual people?
	d. Given that each person experiences trauma differently, is it possible for all to understand the modern world as a shared “waste land”?

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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:

Choose one answer.

	a. endorsement of Marxism.
	b. interest in ancient Rome.
	c. anti-capitalism.
	d. interest in Fourier’s utopian socialist thought.

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Complete the following sentence. Yeats’s “Sailing to Byzantium” is a good example of High Modernism, because it:

Choose one answer.

	a. embraces the rhythms and diction of common man’s speech.
	b. was written at the very beginning of the 20th century.
	c. attempts to create a modernist high culture.
	d. does not employ rhyme.

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Ezra Pound’s “Canto XIV” opens with the line “Io venni in luogo d'ogni luce muto” [I came to a place devoid of light]. This creates a connection between the Canto and which of the following works?

Choose one answer.

	a. Milton’s “Paradise Lost”
	b. Dante’s “Divine Comedy”
	c. Goethe’s “Faust”
	d. Thomas Mann’s “Doctor Faustus”

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In analyzing T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” Professor Hammer argues that Eliot creates something that might be called which of the following?

Choose one answer.

	a. “A meditation on contradictions”
	b. “Overheard inner speech”
	c. “Implicit dialogue with the future”
	d. “Objective correlative”

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In T.S. Eliot’s essay called “Tradition and Individual Talent,” he argues that the progress of an artist consists of which of the following?

Choose one answer.

	a. “Continual expansion of the personality and its diverse elements”
	b. “Continual self-sacrifice, a continual extinction of personality”
	c. “Continual transformation of the personality”
	d. “Continual identification with the past”

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Professor Hammer argues that Hart Crane’s poem “Voyages” is a complex reply to which of the following modernist works?

Choose one answer.

	a. Langston Hughes’ “The Negro Speaks of Rivers”
	b. Ezra Pound’s “Cantos”
	c. T.S. Eliot’s “A Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”
	d. T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land”

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Professor Hammer argues that in Hart Crane’s poem “Legend,” Crane introduces himself to his readers. The poem opens with the lines: “As silent as a mirror is believed/Realities plunge in silence by .../I am not ready for repentance;” according to Professor Hammer, Crane’s refusal to repent is an assertion of which of the following?

Choose one answer.

	a. His political views
	b. His will to imaginative freedom
	c. His will to sexual freedom
	d. Both B and C

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Professor Hammer argues that which of the following statements is true of Ezra Pound’s strong emphasis on poetic technique?

Choose one answer.

	a. It serves to effectively depersonalize Pound’s poems.
	b. It serves the greater aim of conveying both intensity and immediacy in Pound’s poetry.
	c. It is a paradoxical mixture of personal and impersonal elements.
	d. It is a means of creating a dialogue between modernity and tradition.

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Professor Hammer points out that T.S. Eliot used quotation as an important literary technique. The use of quotations, according to Professor Hammer, suggests which of the following attitudes to the past?

Choose one answer.

	a. Curiosity about the past
	b. Deference to the past
	c. Violation of the past
	d. Paradoxically both B and C

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Which of the following best characterizes T.S. Eliot’s concept of the “objective correlative”?

Choose one answer.

	a. The objective correlative refers to the correlation between the poem’s formal structure and its meaning.
	b. The objective correlative refers to the correlation between the poem’s formal structure and its rhetorical aim.
	c. The objective correlative refers to the correlation between the poem’s theme and its objective historical context.
	d. The objective correlative refers to a set of objects, situations, or events which necessarily produce a particular emotion.

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Which of the following best characterizes the contrast between Gertrude Stein’s poetry and Imagist poetry?

Choose one answer.

	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 with form.
	d. Stein sought precision and clarity in her poems, whereas the Imagists sought experimental forms that enhanced visual imagery.

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Which of the following literary devices is most prominent in Gertrude Stein’s poem “New”?

Choose one answer.

	a. Assonance and word repetition
	b. Simile
	c. Metaphor and allusion
	d. Circumlocution

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Which of the following natural forces “speaks” in the culminating passage of T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land”?

Choose one answer.

	a. An avalanche
	b. Rapids
	c. The west wind
	d. Thunder

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Which of the following statements best characterizes the role played by Gertrude Stein in American modernism?

Choose one answer.

	a. Stein was a crucially important figure in the Paris émigré community.
	b. Stein was primarily a muse for modernist poets.
	c. Stein was a proponent of low modernism.
	d. Stein was an opponent of vanguard trends.

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Which of the following statements best characterizes Ezra Pound’s poem “Hugh Selwyn Mauberley”?

Choose one answer.

	a. It is primarily a narrative poem.
	b. It uses iambic pentameter to achieve tonal fluidity.
	c. It undermines the idea of a single lyrical voice by using diverse cultural symbols and numerous phrases in various languages.
	d. Its intensity derives from the combination of modern subject matter and alexandrine couplets.

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Which of the following statements best characterizes the contrast between T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land” and the futurist aesthetic project?

Choose one answer.

	a. “The Waste Land” is primarily concerned with nature, whereas the futurists are most interested in industrial and urban landscapes.
	b. “The Waste Land” confronts the fragmentation of modernity by exploring a variety of modes and voices, whereas the futurists do not focus on the fragmentation of modern experience, praising speed and industrial progress instead.
	c. “The Waste Land” is an ironic exploration of Romantic themes, whereas the futurists incorporate ironic evocations of the classical tradition in their poetry.
	d. “The Waste Land” focuses on the personal connection between poet and speaker, whereas the futurists focus on an impersonal connection between humans and industry.

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Which of the following traditions was particularly important in Hart Crane’s modernist poetry?

Choose one answer.

	a. French Classicism
	b. British Romanticism
	c. American Romanticism
	d. German Romanticism

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What does Gertrude Stein’s term “the Lost Generation” designate?

Choose one answer.

	a. It refers to a group of talented American émigré writers who lived in Europe after World War I.
	b. It refers to the young generation whose coming of age was interrupted by World War I.
	c. It refers to English poets who sought refuge in New York City after World War I ended.
	d. Both A and B

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According to Langston Hughes’s essay “The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain” (his answer to George Schuyler’s essay “Negro Art Hokum”), what is the “mountain” that stands in the way of “any true Negro art in America”?

Choose one answer.

	a. It is the racial discrimination endemic in the white community.
	b. It is the racial segregation in the South.
	c. It is a widespread “urge toward whiteness” among African Americans.
	d. It is a widespread “urge to incorporate and neutralize other cultures” among white Americans.

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According to Professor Hammer, which of the following characteristics did Langston Hughes share with modernist poets like William Carlos Williams, Marianne Moore, Hart Crane, and Robert Frost?

Choose one answer.

	a. Hughes was very conscious that he was an American poet, and this profoundly influenced his writing.
	b. Hughes wrote about the legacy of the American Civil War and its long-term cultural consequences.
	c. Hughes introduced new subject-matter and new language into poetry.
	d. Both A and C

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According to W.E.B. Dubois in his Atlantic Monthly essay, “The Strivings of the Negro People,” what are some of the personal consequences for an African-American living in a racist society at the beginning of the 20th century?

Choose one answer.

	a. Feeling like an outcast in your own house
	b. Becoming a stuttering sycophant just to survive
	c. Wrapping yourself in the armor of anger and resentment
	d. All of the above

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Generally speaking, African-American themes were very rare in white modernist poetry. Which of the following white poets attempted to evoke elements of black experience in his or her poems?

Choose one answer.

	a. H.D.
	b. Hart Crane
	c. William Carlos Williams
	d. T.S. Eliot

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Langston Hughes was among the most important figures of the Harlem Renaissance. Which of the following is an accurate characterization of his experiences before he published his first book?

Choose one answer.

	a. He was a native New Yorker who did not travel much but who was keenly aware of New York’s complexity and diversity.
	b. He moved to New York from Alabama and the stark contrast between these places deeply influenced his writing.
	c. He was born in Missouri and traveled extensively throughout the United States and the world before he moved to New York City.
	d. He spent most of his life in Washington, DC, moving to Harlem only after he gained literary fame.

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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?

Choose one answer.

	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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What is the “double-bind” that African-American women poets encountered in the thirties and forties, according to Anthony Walton’s essay?

Choose one answer.

	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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What was the primary significance of “The Book of American Negro Poetry” (1922), edited by James Weldon Johnson?

Choose one answer.

	a. It established an authoritative and unquestionable canon of African American poetry.
	b. It inspired Harlem Renaissance writers to establish a tradition of African American poetry.
	c. It presented African American writers to a previously indifferent white audience.
	d. It provided literary criticism on African American poetry.

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Which of the following events increased the appeal of communism among American intellectuals both black and white in the years between 1918 and 1939?

Choose one answer.

	a. The Great Depression
	b. Hitler’s invasion of Poland in 1939
	c. The Russian Civil War
	d. World War I

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Which of the following literary devices are present in Langston Hughes’s poem “Ku Klux”?

Choose one answer.

	a. Irony
	b. Allegory
	c. Oxymoron
	d. Alliteration

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Which of the following statements best characterizes Langston Hughes’s poem “The Negro Speaks of Rivers”?

Choose one answer.

	a. It is a meditation on the alienation of the modern person from nature.
	b. It is a meditation on the cultural isolation of African Americans in New England.
	c. It is a meditation on the communal and historical aspects of individual identity.
	d. It is a meditation on the poet’s personal experience of assimilation.

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Which of the following statements best characterizes Langston Hughes’s poem “The Negro Speaks of Rivers”?

Choose one answer.

	a. Hughes uses a universal speaker for an exploration of a profound racial divide between blacks and whites.
	b. The poem is an analytical exploration of racial differences in the United States.
	c. Similar to Hart Crane and Whitman, Hughes uses a personal and universal “I” to address issues of history, race, and identity.
	d. The poem is an indictment of racial prejudice in Harlem.

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Which of the following statements best characterizes the formal qualities of Langston Hughes’s poem “Life is Fine”?

Choose one answer.

	a. The diction is much more polysyllabic than monosyllabic.
	b. The use of alternating end rhymes and word repetitions enhance the music of the poem and along with its occasional dissonance give it an improvisational jazz-like quality.
	c. It is written in Standard American English for middle-class readers.
	d. This poem is structured like a villanelle.

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Which of the following statements best characterizes the form of Claude McKay’s poem “The Harlem Dancer”?

Choose one answer.

	a. It is an English sonnet.
	b. It is an Italian sonnet.
	c. It is a Spenserian sonnet.
	d. It is a free verse poem.

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Which of the following statements best characterizes Georgia Douglass Johnson’s poem “Black Woman”?

Choose one answer.

	a. This poem focuses primarily on the different experiences of black and white women.
	b. This poem describes the relationship between a black woman and her child.
	c. This poem is a conversation between a black woman and a child who is not yet born.
	d. The poem is a conversation between a black woman and her ancestors.

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Which of the following statements accurately characterizes the Harlem Renaissance?

Choose one answer.

	a. It was a flowering of African American arts and culture.
	b. It took place after World War I, at a time when many African Americans were moving from the South to the industrial North.
	c. It exerted profound influence on 20th-century American culture.
	d. All of these answers

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Violet Cristoforo was honored for collecting what kind of poetry in her anthology “May Sky”?

Choose one answer.

	a. Love sonnets from the Nazi death camps
	b. American G.I. poetry from German prisoner of war camps
	c. Jewish dissident poetry from the gulags in Siberia
	d. Haiku poetry from the Japanese internment camps in the US

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What is the central theme of Keith Douglas’s “How to Kill”?

Choose one answer.

	a. Combat detaches a man from humanity.
	b. All is fair in love and war.
	c. It is honorable and just to defend your country in a war.
	d. There is a right and a wrong way to throw a hand grenade.

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Which of the following poets did NOT write about his experiences in World War II?

Choose one answer.

	a. Wilfred Owen
	b. Keith Douglas
	c. Randall Jarrell
	d. Karl Shapiro

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Which of the following poets wrote about World War II?

Choose one answer.

	a. Rupert Brooke
	b. Rudyard Kipling
	c. Karl Shapiro
	d. Hart Crane

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Which of the following statements best characterizes the central questions faced by poetry after the Holocaust?

Choose one answer.

	a. Is it possible for Romantic themes in poetry to be meaningful after the Holocaust?
	b. The horror of the Holocaust was inexpressible; how can poetry speak of what is inexpressible?
	c. Is there a relationship between poetry and rationality after the Holocaust?
	d. Is there a meaningful relationship between World War I poetry and World War II poetry?

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Which of the following statements best characterizes Randall Jarrell’s 1945 poem “The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner”?

Choose one answer.

	a. The poem contrasts the image of a child in its mother’s womb with cruel devaluation of human life in wartime.
	b. The poem praises those technological achievements which protect human life in wartime.
	c. The poem uses images of the apocalypse to criticize the cruelty of war.
	d. The poem presents the war as a natural part of the perennial cycles of human history.

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Which of the following statements best characterizes American World War II poems?

Choose one answer.

	a. They tend to use traditional rhyme schemes and rhythms, and they avoid free verse.
	b. They tend to use metaphors and avoid direct descriptive statements.
	c. They tend to use classical imagery while rejecting romantic tropes.
	d. They tend to be narrative and confront the reader with stark wartime realities.

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Which of the following statements best characterizes the difference between World War II poetry and Futurist poetry?

Choose one answer.

	a. The Futurists apotheosized technology, whereas World War II poets often focused on technology’s destructive powers.
	b. The Futurists praised speed, whereas World War II poets often evoked images of nature to describe the human condition.
	c. The Futurists privileged the part over the whole, whereas World War II poets did not deal with the problem of modernity and alienation.
	d. The Futurists focused on advancements in technology and industry, whereas World War II poets ignored advancements in technology, especially in modern warfare.

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“How can we live in this fear says one./From day to day says another.”

Choose one answer.

	a. Fear of the failure of a segregated educational system
	b. Fear of the AIDs crisis
	c. Fear of global nuclear war
	d. Fear of the economic Great Depression

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Why was World War II a defining event in the history of the 20th century?

Choose one answer.

	a. It brought unprecedented destruction and loss of life, thereby putting into question the entire cultural and political legacy of Western civilization.
	b. It was followed by Soviet domination of Eastern Europe and by the entrenchment of the Soviet totalitarian system of rule.
	c. It was followed by the Cold War, which affected international politics throughout the world.
	d. All of these answers

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Which of the following events that preceded the outbreak of the First World War best?

Which of the following aspects of the immediate historical situation in China in 1958 best explains?