INTRODUCTION

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Opening Questions
ÖABT İNGİLİZCE’de İngilizce Edebiyat alanından yaklaşık 10 soru gelmekte ve konular şöyle dağılım göstermektedir:

Literature and Language: Figures of Speech (Edebiyat ve Dil: Söz Sanatları)

Literary Forms and Genres (Edebi Biçim ve Türler)

Elements and Devices of Textual Analysis (Metin İncelemesinde Kullanılan Öğeler ve Edebi Araçlar)

Literary Periods and Authors (İngilizce Edebiyatta Dönemler ve Yazarlar)

Literary Movements (Edebi Akımlar)

Literature and Language Teaching (Edebiyat ve Dil Öğretimi)

ÖABT İngilizce’de neden İngilizce Edebiyat alanından sorular var?

Edebiyat her yerdedir. Günlük hayatta konuştuğumuz dil, yazdığımız mesajlar, izlediğimiz dizi ya da filmler, okuduğumuz kitaplar,
sosyal ve profesyonel ilişkilerimiz dilden ve edebiyattan bağımsız düşünülemez. Lütfen edebiyatı yalnızca kalın romanlar okumak
ya da yazar isimlerini ezbere bilmek olarak algılamayınız. Bunun yerine, daha yapıcı bir bakış açısı benimsemek ve bu çalışmanın
kendinizi ve dil becerilerinizi geliştirmek amacına hizmet ettiğini düşünmek ÖABT’ye hazırlanırken işlerinizi kolaylaştıracaktır.

Bir dilin edebiyatını anlayabiliyorsanız, o dili iyi biliyorsunuz demektir. ÖABT’deki birincil amaçlarınızdan bir tanesi, öğretmek
üzere yıllardır eğitimini aldığınız İngilizce dilini iyi bildiğinizi ve anladığınızı gösterebilmektir. Söz sanatları konusundan gelen
sorular size bu fırsatı verir.

Edebiyat bir dili öğretirken başvurabileceğimiz en önemli authentic materyal kaynağıdır. Meslek yaşamınızda buna ihtiyacınız
olacak.

Edebiyat kültürle ilişkilidir. Bir dili öğretmek, onun kültürünü de bilmeyi ve öğretmeyi gerektirir.

ÖABT İngilizce hazırlığımda İngilizce Edebiyat alanına nasıl çalışmalıyım?

Siyasi tarih ile ilgili (krallar, kraliçeler, savaşlar vs.) herhangi bir sorumluğunuz bulunmadığını, yalnızca edebiyatı etkileyen belli
başlı önemli olayları bilmeniz gerektiğini hatırlayınız.

Söz sanatları ve edebi araçlar zamanla kafanızda oturacaktır. Bol soru çözerek kendinize zaman veriniz.

Çalışırken çok fazla detaya girmekten kaçınınız.

INTRODUCTION 1
 PART 1: LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE
1.1. BASICS
Literature
Fiction and Non-fiction
Denotation and Connotation
Literal and Figurative Language
1.2. COMMON FIGURES OF SPEECH
1. Metaphor and Simile
2. Metonymy and Synecdoche
3. Hyperbole
4. Personification
5. Oxymoron
6. Imagery
7. Irony
8. Symbol
9. Anachronism
10. Euphemism
11. Allusion
12. Rhetorical Question
13. Apostrophe
14. Anaphora
15. Chiasmus

1.1. BASICS
Literature
Literature refers to literary productions that have artistic value. As an art,
literature is the oral and written form of words that aim to give pleasure and to
instruct, directly or indirectly. The term ‘literature’ may also stand for the
writings of a country or nation such as Turkish Literature, English Literature,
American Literature, and Russian Literature.
In its simplest form English literature is literature written in English. It does
not refer only to the literary works produced in England but also to the works
created in the colonies of the British Empire. In this respect, literary works of
America, Canada, Africa, India, Australia and many other colonies which are
written in English, come together under one umbrella: English Literature (or
Anglophone Literature).
Fiction and Non-fiction
Fiction is the type of book or story which is written about
imaginary characters and events and not necessarily based
on real people and facts. Non-fiction, on the other hand, is
writing that is about real events and facts, rather than stories
which have been invented. Common forms of non-fiction are
biographies, auto-biographies, works of history, letters,
journals, memoirs, interviews, diaries as well as essays and
articles on social, religious, political and/or literary topics.
Although there is a separation, fiction and non-fiction are
often inclusive of each other. That is, fiction may often make
use of facts although it is generally concerned with invented

Oral literature is the product of illiterate or semi-literate societies. A
surprising variety of oral literature may be found both among ancient peoples
and among peoples that are mostly primitive with little or no written literature.
The term ‘written literature’ is often used to distinguish written works of
literature from oral literature. Common forms of oral literature are heroic
epics, songs in praise of priests and/or kings, love song lyrics, tales of
adventure and heroism, ballads and folk tales, elegies, animal fables, riddles,
proverbs, mythological stories of gods and/or semi-gods.
characters, sayings, or doings. For example, a novel may not
be about the real world, but it may still deal with real or life-
like characters and with incidents that have actually taken
place. Likewise, a writer may bring a non-fiction work close
to fiction with a mastery of handling the subject matter.
Therefore, the line separating fiction and non-fiction is quite
obscure.

Denotation and Connotation Literal and Figurative Language

Language is doubtless the most important element when it comes to Literal (denotative) language is the usage of words with their
understanding literature. In literature analysis, it is vital to understand original, basic meanings or denotations. Figurative (connotative)
language in depth and be familiar with the devices used while language represents the use of associated meanings of a word or
producing literature. intentional departure from literal or plain usage of language.

PART 1: LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE 1

 Denotation is a word’s primary meaning or dictionary definition.
Connotation is the associations surrounding a word, as opposed to its
literal meaning. Depending on the context, the connotation of a word
can change the meaning of a sentence considerably. For example, the
word “lion” denotes “a large wild animal of the cat family with
yellowish brown fur which lives in Africa and southern Asia.”
However, it may connote someone who is important, successful,
brave, or powerful.
Examples
1. The lion in the zoo looked really sad. (literal)
2. Jeremy was a lion on the battleground. (figurative)
3. The sun was shining brightly that day. (literal)
4. ‘You’re my sun,’ he said to his wife. (figurative)
5. Her father’s heart disease really upsets Susan. (literal)

6. It breaks my heart to see him so unhappy. (figurative)

Figurative language is a departure from what users of the language apprehend as the standard meaning of words, or else the
standard order of words, to achieve some special meaning or effect. Figurative language has often been divided into two classes:
TROPES or Figures of thought: In tropes, words or SCHEMES or Figures of Speech / Rhetorical Figures: In schemes, the
phrases are used in a way that effects an important departure from standard usage is not primarily in the meaning of words,
change in their standard meaning. but in the syntactical order or pattern of the words.

1.2. COMMON FIGURES OF SPEECH

Below, you will find a list of tropes, schemes, and other literary devices frequently used in literature. While working on these, please
remember that:

figurative language is not exclusive to literature, and may be found even in our daily speech (as when we say, “I’m so hungry I
could eat a horse.”), and

more than one figure of speech may be present even in a single sentence.

1. Metaphor and Simile

Simile is an explicit comparison between two unlike objects always
including the words ‘like’ or ‘as’ as well as ‘look like, seem etc.’ A
metaphor is an implicit comparison in which one thing is described
in terms of another.Unlike metaphors that make comparisons by
saying one thing is something else, similes work by saying something
is similar to something else.

Examples

1. ‘John is as cunning as a fox,’ is an example of simile; here, John

and a fox are compared with each other in terms of their
cunningness.

2. I wandered lonely as a cloud. (Wordsworth)

3. She sings like a nightingale.

4. He was one step beyond an open window when the light of the
bomb was reflected, like a gigantic photographic flash, in the
corridor. (from Hiroshima by John Hershey)
5. “All the world is a stage,” is an example of metaphor. Here, the
world is compared to a stage.
Remember that simile is an explicit comparison
whereas metaphor is an implicit comparison.
Without the use of words ‘as, like etc.,’ a
comparison is always implicit, thus creating a
metaphor.

All the world is a stage. (implicit comparison /

metaphor)

All the world is like a stage. (explicit

comparison / simile)

PART 1: LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE 2

 Implied metaphor occurs when two
things are compared without
mentioning one of them. The
unmentioned item is implied through
words that recall it.
Extended metaphor or conceit is an
unusual, far-fetched, and much
elaborated metaphor or simile. It is
often intended to surprise, shock and
delight by its wit and ingenuity. The
faculty of wit and the capacity to find
likeness between apparently unlike
items/ideas is central to conceit.
Conceit was widely used by the prose
writers and Metaphysical poets of the
16th and 17th centuries.
2. Metonymy and Synecdoche
Metonymy and synecdoche are quite
similar literary devices. In synecdoche
(Greek for “taking together”), the part
stands for the whole, whole for the part,
species for genus, genus for species and
something else is understood within the
thing mentioned. In metonymy (Greek for
“a change of a name”), the thing really
meant is represented by something closely
associated with it.
3. Hyperbole
Hyperbole or Overstatement is
exaggeration for emphasis, and it
can be used for dramatic effect. In
hyperbole, what is meant is
emphasised by saying more than
what is literally meant.
Hyperbole is a common device
not only in literature but also in
daily speech.
PART 1: LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE
Examples
1. The sentence “Time flies,” is an example of implied metaphor. In this comparison, “time” is
likened to something that flies (ie. a bird). However, the word “bird” is not given in comparison;
instead, it is implied with the word “fly.”
2. Crossly, Martha barked commands at her child. (compares Martha to a dog)
3. The blonde woman purred over the lavish present. (compares the woman to a cat)
4. The loving words nourished his bruised ego. (compares words to food)
5. Racism infects the soul. (compares bigotry to a disease)
Examples
1. In “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning,” John Donne uses ‘compass’ as a conceit:
If they be two, they are two so
As stiff twin compasses are two;
Thy soul, the fix'd foot, makes no show
To move, but doth, if th' other do.
And though it in the centre sit,
Yet, when the other far doth roam,
It leans, and hearkens after it,
And grows erect, as that comes home.
2. Another Metaphysical poet Richard Crashaw uses conceit in a rather forced and absurdly
hyperbolic way in his poem “The Weeper.” He likens eyes to baths:
Two walking baths; two weeping motions; / Portable, and compendious oceans...
Examples
1. In the sentence ‘Give us our daily bread,’ bread stands for or represents food (part for the
whole).
2. In the sentence ‘England beat Germany,’ England and Germany stand for the football
teams (whole for the part) thus creating synecdoche.
3. ‘Ten hands’ for ten workmen.
4. The pen is mightier than the sword.
5. An actor says “The stage is my life.” The stage in this example does not refer to the
physical stage, but rather the profession of acting.
6. ‘The crown’ can be used to stand for a king.
7. ‘Milton’ can be used to signify the writings of Milton: I have read all of Milton.
Examples
1. “I’m so hungry I could eat a horse, and “I’m dying of hunger,”” are examples of hyperbole from
daily life.
2. He was sweating to death as he worked under the sun.
3. Notice the exaggerated tone of the poem:
An hundred years should go to praise
Thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze;
Two hundred to adore each breast,
But thirty thousand to the rest;
3
 An age at least to every part,
And the last age should show your heart.
(from “To his Coy Mistress” by Andrew Marwell)

Understatement is the opposite of hyperbole (or overstatement).
In understatement, something is described in a way that makes it
seem less important, serious, bad, etc. than it really is. There are
two types of understatement which are Litotes and Meiosis.
Meiosis and litotes are both forms of understatement and are quite
similar in nature. However, litotes is associated with use of a
negative statement instead of a positive one. It is unlikely that you
will be asked to discriminate between them.
Litotes is a form of understatement that is associated with the use of a
negative expression instead of a positive one. Saying “not ugly” instead
of “beautiful” or “not bright” instead of “stupid” are expressions of
understatement. Compared with litotes, meiosis is often used in an ironic
or humorous way. In Romeo and Juliet, Mercutio declares his mortal
wounds to be merely "a scratch".
Someone referring to Albert Einstein (known to be one of the most
clever people ever lived) and just saying “Well, I’ve heard that he is a
smart fellow” is also an example of meiosis.

4. Personification
Personification is a kind of metaphor; speaking of an abstract quality or a thing as if it
were a person. In personification, human feelings or characteristics are attributed to abstract
ideas or things. Personification is one of the most frequently-used literary devices.
Examples

1. In the following poem, ‘love’ is attributed human traits:

Love is not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle’s compass come
(Shakespeare, Sonnet 116)

2. Sky lowered, and muttering thunder, some sad drops

Wept at completing of the mortal sin.

5. Oxymoron
An oxymoron is a very concise paradox, a paradox often compressed 7. A famous example occurs in Romeo and Juliet, when Romeo
into two words. In an oxymoron, two words or phrases of opposite or jests about love:
contrasting meaning are placed together for effect. Here’s much to do with hate, but more with love.
Examples Why then, O brawling love! O loving hate!
O anything! of nothing first create!
1. orderly confusion
O heavy lightness! serious vanity!
2. agonising joy
Mis-shapen chaos of well-seeming forms!
3. old boy
4. walking dead
5. dear enemy
6. known secret

A paradox is an apparently self-contradictory, even absurd statement which, on closer

inspection, is found to contain a truth. Paradoxes are true and false at the same time, and, in fact
this definition itself is a paradox. The purpose of paradox is to provoke fresh thought.
Remember that there are always opposite or contradictory words in paradoxical statements and
these words may help you while analysing paradoxes.

1. A rich man is no richer than a poor man.

2. I have the simplest tastes. I am always satisfied with the best.

3. A short cut is often the longest way round.

4. Less is more.

5. I know one thing: that I know nothing. (Socrates)

5. CECILY: To be natural is such a very difficult pose to keep up. (The Importance of Being
Earnest by Oscar Wilde)

PART 1: LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE 4

 6. Imagery
Imagery is a mental picture (an image) drawn in mind through words. Examples
The use of language in imagery aims to represent objects, actions,
1. This is a picture of a white snowflake suddenly vanishing
feelings, thoughts, ideas, states of mind and sensory or extra-sensory
forever. (visual imagery)
experience. In other words, it is the creation of mental images.
2. The bed linens might just as well be ice and the clothes
Imagery may be visual (related to seeing), olfactory (related to the sense
snow. (tactile imagery)
of smell), tactile (related to the sense of touch), auditory (related to
sounds), gustatory (related to the sense of taste), thermal (related to heat 3. He couldn’t hold the cup in his hand because it was too hot.
and cold), and kinaesthetic (related to sensations of movement). (thermal imagery)

4. After being pushed in the pool, Joe's mouth filled with the
burning taste of chlorinated water. (visual and gustatory
imagery)

7. Irony
Irony is a contrast between appearance and reality. It includes an element of saying or implying the reverse of or more than the literal meaning
of the words used. Verbal irony, situational irony, and dramatic irony are some important types of irony.

In verbal irony one meaning is stated and a different, usually
antithetical or opposite, meaning is intended. Many authors use irony
to heighten the drama of unfolding events. Also, please remember
that verbal irony is a tool for sarcasm.
Examples
1. You say “Oh, fantastic!” when the situation is actually very poor.
2. You cannot watch your favourite TV programme because you
have lots of homework, and you say “I just love lots of
homework when my favourite programme is on.”
3. You are very uncomfortable and you say “This chair is as
comfortable as sitting on nails.”
4. You get a parking fine and say “Thanks for the ticket officer you
just made my day!”
5. You are supposed to read the seven-hundred-page-long financial
report of a huge company and say “I can’t wait to read the seven-
hundred-page report.”
6. Looking at her son's messy room, a mom says, "Wow, you could
win an award for cleanliness!"
Situational irony (or irony of situation) exists when the actual
outcome of a situation is the opposite of what is expected.
Examples
1. A police officer is getting arrested.
2. A fire station is burning down.
3. You go to a dietician and he/she is very fat.
4. The Turkish idiom: “yağmurdan kaçarken doluya tutulmak”
5. The Turkish proverb: “Terzi kendi söküğünü dikemez.”
Dramatic irony exists when the reader is aware of the events and
circumstances in a story while the characters on the stage have no
knowledge of such events.
Examples
1. In Shakespeare’s famous tragedy Othello, the reader knows that
the wicked character Iago is plotting against Iago although
Othello is unaware of the situation.
2. In Romeo and Juliet, the audience is told in the opening chorus
that the young lovers are doomed to die and thus we spend the
play waiting for an unavoidable disaster.

Sarcasm is the use of scornful and Examples

ironic language, usually in a clever
1. If you say “You look very busy” to a person who is watching television and doing nothing, this
way.
would be a sarcastic remark. There is also verbal irony because what is implied has the opposite
meaning of what is actually said.

2. I’m trying to imagine you with a personality.

5. When someone does something wrong - Very good, well done, nice! (also verbal irony)

6. When something bad happens - That's just what I need, great! Terrific! (also verbal irony)

7. Tyrion Lannister in Game of Thrones says: I’m not questioning your honour, Lord. I’m denying its
existence.” (This sentence bears powerful sarcasm.)

PART 1: LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE 5

 8. Symbol
A symbol is an object or abstraction that stands for or represents something Examples
else. Symbolism is the use of symbols to signify ideas and qualities by giving
1. Scales may represent justice.
them symbolic meanings that are different from their literal sense.
2. A lion may represent strength and courage.

3. A rose may represent love or beauty.

4. A lily may represent purity.

5. Water may represent purification.

6. Fire may represent civilisation.

9. Anachronism
Anachronism is placing an
event, person, item, or
expression in a period that it
does not belong to.
Anachronisms in a work of
fiction can either be deliberate
(to create humorous effect) or
accidental.
Examples
1. Someone using a mobile phone in a 15th-century film/novel
would be an example of anachronism.
2. In Shakespeare’s play Hamlet, even, there are examples of
accidental anachronisms. Hamlet, the protagonist, is the Prince
of Denmark and it is said that he has been attending the
University of Halle-Wittenberg. However, it is a historical fact
that this institute was established in 1502 AD. Although the
time depicted in the play was that of the 7th or 13th century.

3. Some of Shakespeare’s works display accidental anachronisms.

He refers to the clock in Julius Caesar, to billiards in Anthony
and Cleopatra, and to a cannon in King John although the given
items did not exist when the story in the plays actually took
place.

10. Euphemism
Euphemism is the substitution of a mild, pleasant and often indirect expression for a Dysphemism is the opposite of euphemism; it
harsh, blunt and direct one. emphasises defects and usually humiliates its
Examples subject. It is usually a derogatory or unpleasant
term used instead of a pleasant or neutral one.
1. “passed away” or “departed” for “died”
Examples
2. “developing country” for a “backward country”
1. Saying “kick the bucket” instead of “die.”
3. “correctional facility” instead of “jail”
2. Saying “boynuzlamak” in Turkish instead of
4. “adult entertainment” for “pornography” “aldatmak.”
5. “big-boned” for “heavy” or “overweight” 3. “tekmeyi basmak,” “kapının önüne koymak”
6. “the rest room” for “the bathroom” 4. Saying “You, pig!” while addressing a person.
7. “senior citizen” for “old person”

11. Allusion

PART 1: LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE 6

 Allusion is an indirect or implicit reference to another piece of literature, art,
music, or history. The reference could be to a character, place, or situation as
well as a part/line in another work.
Examples
1. Describing someone as ‘Romeo’ is an allusion to the famous lover in
Shakespeare’s play Romeo and Juliet.
2. William Makepeace Thackeray’s famous 19th-century novel The Vanity
Fair alludes to a place in John Bunyan’s 18th-century work Pilgrim’s
Progress.
3. The rise in poverty will unlock Pandora’s box of crimes. (This sentence
is an allusion to one of Greek Mythology’s origin myth, “Pandora’s
box”.)
4. This place is like a Garden of Eden. (This is a biblical allusion to the
“garden of God” in the Book of Genesis.)
12. Rhetorical Question
A rhetorical question is a sentence in the grammatical form of a
question which is not asked in order to request information or to
invite a reply, but to achieve an expressive force different from, and
usually more effective than, a direct question.
Examples
1. Our parents’ question “Geldin mi?” (Oh, you’re here?) when we
go home is a rhetorical question which does not actually expect a
response, for the answer is obvious.
2. In everyday discourse, if we utter the rhetorical question “Isn’t it
a shame?” (Ne ayıp/kötü değil mi?) it functions as an alternative
to “It’s a shame.”
3. O, Wind
If winter comes, can Spring be far behind?
14. Anaphora
Anaphora in literature is the repetition of a word or expression at the
beginning of successive phrases or sentences.
Examples
1. An example of anaphora would be “My life is my purpose. My
life is my goal. My life is my inspiration,” as the phrase “my life
is” is repeated.
2. Another example is the famous beginning of A Tale of Two Cities
by Charles Dickens. In the excerpt below, we see that the phrase
“it was” is repeated several times:
“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.”
PART 1: LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE
5. The Sound and the Fury is a novel written by the
American author William Faulkner. The title of the novel
is taken from Macbeth's famous soliloquy of Act 5, Scene
5 of William Shakespeare's Macbeth:
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
13. Apostrophe
Apostrophe in poetry and rhetoric is the addressing of an absent
person or a personified object or abstraction, a place, or an idea.
Notice the words thee, thou, thy, you, your etc. when there is
apostrophe in the poem. Read the examples above again: every one of
them has one of the given words.
Examples
1. “Ey Türk Gençliği!” is an example of apostrophe.
2. In the line “Thou Paradise of Exiles, Italy!” from Julian and
Maddalo by Shelley, the speaker of the poem directs the speech
to ‘Italy.’
3. Another example is from Edgar Allan Poe’s sonnet: “Science!
True daughter of Old Time thou art!” Here, the speaker of the
poem directs his speech to ‘science’ which is an abstract concept.
15. Chiasmus
Chiasmus refers to an inverted relationship between syntactic
elements of parallel phrases. The function of chiasmus is to reverse
grammatical structure or ideas of sentences given that the same words
and phrases are not repeated. In other words, we use “Word A” and
“Word B” [But many that are first / Shall be last] in a sentence and
then use it again in the reverse order as “Word B” and “Word A”
[And many that are last / Shall be first.]
Examples
1. Examples can be found in Biblical scripture: “But many that are
first / Shall be last, / And many that are last / Shall be first.”
2. “Beauty is truth, truth beauty,” is another example from John
Keats’s poem “Ode on a Grecian Urn.”
3. “Do I love you because you’re beautiful?
Or are you beautiful because I love you?”
7
 English Literature – Subject Test 1 8. I'll love you, dear, I'll love you till China and Africa meet,
Figures of Speech And the river jumps over the mountain
And the salmon sing in the street,
1. Which of the following sentences does not employ figurative I'll love you till the ocean
language? Is folded and hung up to dry
And the seven stars go squawking
A) The wise owl looked at the man as if it understood him.
Like geese about the sky. (W.H. Auden)
B) I’ve worked with children for ages, but I still learn something new
Which of the following is NOT a figure of speech used in the lines
every day.
above?
C) You can take the patriot out of the country, but you cannot take the
A) Hyperbole
country out of the patriot.
B) Personification
D) He possessed a cold fire in his eyes.
C) Simile
E) This lovely house was built by the family members themselves.
D) Metaphor
E) Synecdoche
2. Which of the following sentences contains a metaphor?
A) There was an old patch of snow in the corner.
9. Sarcasm is a form of verbal irony.
B) I was so ashamed my face turned into a boiler.
Which statement below demonstrates sarcasm?
C) The success of the little giants pleased every one of the spectators.
A) A basketball fan remarks, "Watching Michael Jordan play ball
D) I’ve heard that Einstein is a smart guy.
knocks my socks off!"
E) He was fierce as a dog with his bad temper.
B) A soccer fan remarks, "That goalie is in way over his head."
C) A football fan remarks, "That receiver's face was as white as a ghost,
3. Which of the following sentences about irony is not correct? as the ball whizzed past his hands."
A) “Soft like a brick” is an ironic expression. D) A baseball fan remarks, "I just love lots of homework on opening
B) In dramatic irony, the characters know more than the audience. night of the World Series!"
C) When in response to a foolish idea, we say, “What a great idea!”, it E) An ice-hockey fan remarks, “This game was in the bag even before it
started.”
is verbal irony.
D) Irony is a figure of speech in which words are used in such a way that
their intended meaning is different from the actual meaning of the
10. “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of
words.
wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was
E) Situational irony occurs when what actually occurs differs from what
the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season
the reader expects to happen.
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
4. An oxymoron is an expression that conjoins contradictory, mutually direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way.” (Charles
exclusive terms. Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities)
Which of the following is not an oxymoronic expression? What are the two figures of speech used in the excerpt above?
A) artificial reality A) anti-thesis and anaphora
B) deafening silence B) anaphora and synecdoche
C) synecdoche and euphemism
C) little giant
D) euphemism and metonymy
D) sweet peace
E) metonymy and anti-thesis
E) living dead

5. Which of the following sentences is not an example of paradox? 11. We talked with each other about each other
A) I must be cruel only to be kind. Though neither of us spoke –
B) Dark with excessive bright thy skirts appear. (Emily Brontë)
What is the figure of speech in the lines above?
C) She makes the black night bright by smiling on it.
D) I came; I saw; I conquered. A) Metonymy
E) Everything screams in silence here. B) Oxymoron
C) Hyperbole
D) Paradox
6. “I was surprised his nose was not growing like Pinocchio’s.” E) Apostrophe
What is the figure of speech used in the excerpt above?
A) Synecdoche
12. The figure of speech in which the author makes an obvious
B) Allusion
exaggeration for emphasis or to create some specific effect is
C) Apostrophe
called ----.
D) Litotes
A) simile
E) Metaphor
B) anti-thesis
C) irony
7. Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears. (Shakespeare, D) consonance
E) hyperbole
Julius Caesar)
The underlined figure of speech is an example of ----.
A) metonymy
B) pun
C) allusion
D) irony
E) oxymoron
13. ---- is a word or phrase used to avoid an unpleasant or harsh 20. In which of the following sentences is the word ‘heart’ used in its
word. An example is saying ‘senior citizen’ instead of ‘old denotative meaning?
person.’ A) The boy across the street has a heart as big as all outdoors.
A) Metaphor B) My sister has a heart of stone.
B) Pun C) Isabel’s heart was beating fast with fright.
C) Paradox D) He said he'd never marry but he had a change of heart when he met
D) Irony her.
E) Euphemism E) It really breaks my heart to see her so unhappy.

14. Hope is the thing with feathers, 21. Which of the following sentences uses figurative language?
That perches in the soul.” (Emily Dickinson) A) There was a picture of the Trevi fountain on the front of the book.
What type of comparison is used in the lines above? B) They also sell garden ornaments such as statues and lamps.
A) Metonymy C) An abandoned baby was found in a box on the hospital steps.
B) Simile D) Chicago is a city that is fierce as a dog with tongue lapping for
C) Implied metaphor action.
D) Analogy E) She walked home by herself, although she knew that it was
E) Allegory dangerous.

15. “Life is like a box of chocolates; you never know what you’re going 22. ---- is a means of expression that suggests a different, usually
to get.” humorous, or angry, meaning for the given words.
Which figure of speech is used above? A) Symbol
A) Metaphor B) Chiasmus
B) Pun C) Irony
C) Simile D) Motif
D) Symbol E) Mood
E) Paradox

23. ---- is a rhetorical figure in which incongruous or contradictory

16. “That woman is the cancer of my dreams and aspirations.” terms are combined as in the examples of ‘deafening silence’
Which literary device is used above? and ‘mournful optimist.’
A) Simile A) Simile
B) Metaphor B) Paradox
C) Pun C) Metaphor
D) Paradox D) Oxymoron
E) Symbol E) Pun

17. In Beowulf there are some elements used repeatedly such as 24. The truest poetry is the most feigning. (Shakespeare)
“fire and water”, and “life and death”. This is an example of ----. The statement above is an example of ----.
A) Simile A) metaphor
B) Rhyme B) paradox
C) Metaphor C) allusion
D) Oxymoron D) hyperbole
E) Pun E) symbol

18. ---- is using an object or action that means something more than 25. Which of the following is not an example of personification?
its literal meaning. A) The star I wished on winked at me.
A) Symbol B) The sun was warm on the child's face.
B) Parallelism C) The trout danced on the water's surface.
C) Irony D) The radio stopped singing and looked at me.
D) Motif E) The angry mirror showed every wrinkle on his face.
E) Mood

19. ---- is an association that comes along with a particular word. It Subject Test X – Answer Key
relates not to a word’s actual meaning but rather to the ideas or
qualities that are implied by that word. A good example is the word 1. 6. 11. 16. 21.
“gold” which associates the ideas such as greed, luxury, or avarice. 2. 7. 12. 17. 22.
Choose the option which best completes the statement. 3. 8. 13. 18. 23.
A) Denotation
4. 9. 14. 19. 24.
B) Literal meaning
C) Connotation 5. 10. 15. 20. 25.
D) Expressive meaning
E) Extra-textual meaning

ÖABT English Literature Subject Tests pg.1

 PART 2: LITERARY FORMS AND GENRES
Literary form refers to the way a literary product is created and the pattern it has. In that sense, literature is often categorised into three major
forms.

Briefly, poetry is a form of writing that uses figurative language and a certain rhythmical pattern to present ideas. Prose refers to language in its
ordinary/everyday form. Unlike poetry, prose uses an unmetered and unrhymed language. On the other hand, drama, in its broadest sense, refers
to a work of literature that is designed to be acted on stage. In the following sections, each literary form will be analysed in detail.

2.1. POETRY
Poetry, as a distinct and interesting art form, comprises a number
of elements that are worth considering while analysing and
understanding a poetic text. Poetry rhyme, figurative language,
sound devices, and meter in order to evoke a wide array of
meanings.
The language of poetry is not always straightforward. It guides
readers to reach a conclusion but never gives out any details
explicitly. With the knowledge of the important poetry elements, we
can understand a poem’s message and appreciate the text more
effectively.

Elements of Poetry
1. Verse
Verse is the language of poetry, and it refers to the regular rhythmic pattern of language used in poetry. A text can be written in either prose
or verse. (“Prose” is “nesir” and “verse” is “nazım” in Turkish.)

Free Verse is a kind of poetry that does
not conform to any regular metre: the
length of its lines is irregular. This is the
most widely practised verse form in
English currently.
Blank Verse is a very flexible English verse form in which there are
unrhymed lines of iambic pentameter: blank lines of ten syllables
each, the even number of syllables bearing the accents (iambic). Late
in the 16th century it became the standard medium of English drama
as seen in Shakespeare and Marlowe’s plays. In the 17th century,
Milton used blank verse in Paradise Lost.

2. Line and Stanza

A poem consists of subdivisions called stanzas. A stanza (“kıta” in Turkish)
is a group of lines written in verse (“mısra” in Turkish). A stanza may be of A couplet is a stanza with two rhyming lines.
any number but a stanza of more than twelve lines is not very common in A tercet is a stanza with three rhyming or non-
literature. The commonest number of lines in a stanza is four. rhyming lines. A quatrain is a stanza with four
Canto is a stanza pattern found in long medieval and modern poetry. It is a rhyming or non-rhyming lines. A refrain is a
subdivision of an epic or other narrative poem, equivalent to a chapter in a short part of a song or poem that is repeated,
prose work. especially between or at the end of stanzas.

Enjambment (or enjambement) is the running over of the sense and The first and fifth lines in the following poem, taken
grammatical structure from one verse line or couplet to the next without a from John Keats’s Endymion, are end-stopped while
punctuated pause. In other words, in an enjambed line (also called a ‘run-on the lines in between are enjambed:
line’), the completion of a phrase, clause, or sentence is held over to the following A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:
line so that the line ending is not emphasised as it is in an end-stopped line.
Its loveliness increases; it will never

Pass into nothingness; but still will keep

A bower quiet for us, and a sleep

PART 2: LITERARY FORMS AND GENRES 1

 Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet
Anlaşılması güç bir söz sanatı olduğundan, bu kavramı bir de Türkçe
breathing.
açıklayalım. Enjambment dilimizde “artlama,” “ulantı” anlamlarına
gelir ve bir şiirde, anlam tamamlanmasa da, anlamı tamamlayacak
kelimelerin bir sonraki mısrada yer almasını ifade eder. Bu anlamda,
“end-stopped line”ın tam tersini ifade eder.

3. Rhythm and Meter

Rhythm is basically a repeating pattern/structure
in which a poet chooses to arrange the stressed and
unstressed syllables in every line of a poem, for the
creation of oral patterns. A poet may use sound
devices to create the rhythmic pattern in a poem.
The repetition of sound patterns that creates
rhythm in poetry is called meter. The patterns are
based on the number of syllables and accents.
The repetition of sound patterns that creates rhythm in poetry is called
meter. The patterns are based on the number of syllables and accents.
Rhythm, meter and types of rhyme are advanced fields of prosody, not
to be covered here.
Remember that Rhyme and Rhythm refer to different elements of
poetry. Rhyme is explained in the next section.

4. Speaker (Persona, Voice) and Addressee

The speaker in a poem is the voice that speaks and it is not necessarily the poet The addressee is the person(s) that the speaker
himself. The speaker may be the poet himself; however, to give a very simple addresses to in a poem. A poem is not always
example, a poem may also be written from the perspective of an animal or an addressed to a particular person.
elderly poet may use the voice of a teenager.

5. Tone and Mood

Tone (also Tone of Voice) refers to the speaker’s attitude towards a certain
theme or subject. The tone in a poem can be mournful, happy, serious or ironic
etc. Remember that tone does not depend on theme. For instance, while a
speaker’s tone in a poem about summer is mournful, another’s tone in a poem
about winter may be happy.
Mood, on the other hand, is the atmosphere created in
a story/poem. Choice of words, length of lines,
rhythm, and all other elements contribute to creating a
certain mood. Tone and mood are often closely linked
in a poem. For example, a poet may use an ironic tone
and create a humorous mood or atmosphere.

6. Theme
The theme is a recurring idea or a pervading thought in a
work of literature. Poetry themes include some common ideas
such as love, nature, beauty, and as complex as death,
spirituality, and immortality. An understanding of the theme
helps readers to identify the core message of the poem or the
poet’s purpose for writing the poem.
For example, the following lines of Robert Burns’ “A Red, Red Rose”
exemplify the theme as well as the underlying message of the entire
poem. This piece is written in admiration of the speaker’s beloved.
Therefore, the main themes of the poem are beauty, love, and admiration:
O my Luve is like a red, red rose
That’s newly sprung in June;
O my Luve is like the melody
That’s sweetly played in tune.

Sound Devices Used in Poetry

1. Rhyme
Rhyme is a literary device, featured particularly in poetry, in which identical or Internal Rhyme is a poetic device by which two
similar concluding syllables in different words are repeated. Rhyme most often or more words rhyme within the same line of
occurs at the ends of poetic lines. In addition, rhyme is principally a function of verse.
sound rather than spelling. For example, words rhyme that end with the same vowel
I went to town to buy a gown.
sound but have different spellings: day, prey, weigh, bouquet. This is true for words

PART 2: LITERARY FORMS AND GENRES 2

 with the same consonant ending as well: vain, rein, lane. Rhyme is therefore While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly
predominantly independent of the way words look or are spelled. Writers use rhymes there came a tapping, / As of someone gently
as a way to create sound patterns in order to emphasise certain words and their rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
relationships with others in an artistic manner.
Eye Rhyme is a type of rhyme that depends on
Limericks are short poems written in light verse and quite popular in English. They spelling and not on sound. Eye rhyme is not real
usually contain five lines with a rhyme scheme of aabba. Here is an example by rhyme. It only looks like rhyme to the eye:
Edward Lear: beat/great, tomb/bomb, rough/though,
There was an Old Man with a beard (a) cough/bough, death/wreath etc.
Who said, 'It is just as I feared! (a) End rhyme is the regular rhyming of words at the
Two Owls and a Hen, (b) ends of lines of verse.
Four Larks and a Wren, (b)
Have all built their nests in my beard! (a)

2. Alliteration
Also known as head rhyme, alliteration is a very old
sound device and is common in verse. It is the close
repetition of consonant sounds at the beginning or middle
of the words. It is used to enforce the meaning as well as
its melodic beauty. Most Old English poems were written
in alliterative verse.

In the line “Carrie's cat clawed her couch, creating

chaos.” the consonant ‘c’ is repeated at the beginning
of each word (initial alliteration) and this repetition
creates an aural effect.

Crawl like a creepy crawly caterpillar.

When the sessions of sweet silent thought
I summon up remembrance of things past,
I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,
And with old woes new wail my dear time’s waste
(Shakespeare, Sonnet 30)
TEACHING TIP
Alliteration is most easily explained to students through looking
at a few simple tongue twisters, such as:
Peter Piper or She Sells Seashells.
Betty Botter bought a bit of butter
But, the bit of butter Betty Botter bought was bitter
So Betty Botter bought a better bit of butter

3. Assonance
Assonance is also a sound device used in poetry. It is the close repetition of similar
vowel sounds as in the following poem: TEACHING TIP
The Lotos blooms below the barren peak, Assonance is often referred to as
The Lotos blows by every winding creek ‘vowel rhyme’. It is very common in
All day the wind breathes low with mellower tone, many forms of popular music,
Thro every hollow cave and alley lobe especially rap. Challenge your students
Round and round the spicy downs the yellow to find examples of assonance in the
Lotos dust is blown music they listen to and share them
(Lord Alfred Tennyson, “The Lotos Eaters”) with the class. They may also want to
try their hand at writing their own
The rain in Spain falls mainly in the plains.
examples too.

4. Consonance
Also known as half rhyme or slant rhyme, consonance is also a sound device, “Out of this house” – said rider to reader,
and it refers to the repetition of a sequence of two or more consonants. The “Your never will” – said farer to fearer,
intervening vowel between the repeated consonants must be changed like in the “They’re looking for you” said hearer to horror,

PART 2: LITERARY FORMS AND GENRES 3

 examples of slip – slop, creak – croak, lean – alone, black – block, and live – As he left them there, as he left them there.
love. (W.H. Auden – “O where are you going?”)

The crow struck through the thick cloud like a rocket

5. Onomatopoeia
Onomatopoeia is a sound device. It is the formation or use of words that imitate or sound like the natural
sounds associated with the objects or actions they refer to as in the examples of splash, hiss, cuckoo, bang,
thump, meow, quack, snort etc. Aside from animal noises, the names of sounds themselves are often
onomatopoeic, for example: Bang! Thud! Crash!

TEACHING TIP
For many language learners, the first introduction to onomatopoeia goes back to learning animal
sounds as an infant. Words such as Oink! Chirp! Woof! and Meow! can all be thought of as
onomatopoeic. Be sure to examine these elements of poetry with your younger students first.

Onomatopoeia adds effect to poetry. If the sound does not match sense, we should consider such poetry
imperfect. Notice the use of onomatopoeic words in the following poem:
And ere three shrill notes the pipe uttered,
You heard as if an army muttered;
And the muttering grew to grumbling;
And the grumbling grew to a mighty rumbling;
And out of the houses the rats came tumbling.
(The Pied Piper of Hamelin by Robert Browning)

6. Pun
Pun is a play upon words. It is one of the earliest and commonest types of wordplay. It can be done in
two ways:
The first one is by using homophones: The words “here” and “hear” or “sun” and “son” may be used
to create pun because they have the same pronunciation (homophones) thus creating an intended
ambiguity.

The second one is by using homonyms: Words with more than one meaning such as “grave” and
“bow”.

'And how many hours a day did you do lessons?' said Alice, in a hurry to change the subject. 'Ten
hours the first day,' said the Mock Turtle: 'nine the next, and so on.' 'What a curious plan!'
exclaimed Alice. 'That's the reason they're called lessons,' the Gryphon remarked: 'because they
lessen from day to day.'

Ask for me tomorrow and you shall find me a grave man. (Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet)

Types of Poetry
Regardless of the specific type of poetry in question, most likely a poem will fit into one of these three overarching types of poetry: lyric,
narrative, and descriptive.

Lyric poetry is characterised by the subjective thoughts,
feelings, and attitude of a poet. It is often melodic and
traditionally refers to poems written to be sung. Common
themes found in lyric poetry are love, war and peace,
nature as well as grief and loss. Lyric poetry concerns
itself largely with the emotional life of the poet, that is, it’s
written in their voice and expresses strong thoughts and
emotions. There is only one voice in a lyric poem and we
see the world from that single perspective. Most modern
Narrative poetry refers to poems that tell a story in verse form. Just as in a
prose story, a narrative poem will most likely follow the conventions of plot
including elements such as conflict, rising action, climax, resolution etc.
Again, as in prose stories, narrative poems will most likely be peopled with
characters to perform the actions of the tale.
Dramatic Poetry is drama written in verse which employs elements of
drama. In dramatic poetry, one or more characters speak to other characters,
to themselves, or directly address the reader. This type of poetry often

PART 2: LITERARY FORMS AND GENRES 4

 poetry is lyric poetry in that it is personal and
introspective.
1. Sonnet
Sonnets are fourteen-line love poems with a special meter which
originated in Italy. The most famous early Italian sonneteer was
Petrarch (also known as Petrarca). The first sonnets of English
Literature were written by Earl of Surrey, Henry Howard and Sir
Thomas Wyatt during the Renaissance Period and not Shakespeare
but of course, Shakespeare is one of the most important sonnet
writers in English Literature. Sidney, Spenser, and Shakespeare
experimented with the sonnet form and each poet introduced
something new to the form or content.
The first major sonnet cycle in English literature was Sir Philip
Sidney’s Astrophil and Stella (1591), followed by Spenser’s
Amoretti and Shakespeare’s Sonnets (1609). Milton, Wordsworth,
Keats, Elizabeth Barret Browning and Christina Rossetti also wrote
notable sonnets and sonnet sequences in both English and Italian
forms.
3. Elegy
An elegy is a poem of mourning an individual, or a lament for some
tragic event; contemplation of the tragic aspects of life. Most
common themes are death, war and love. The adjective elegiac is
also often used in relation with elegies. Many elegies were
originally songs lamenting people. Thomas Carew’s “Elegy on John
Donne” is one of the most famous elegies of English Literature.
The excerpt below is taken from W.H. Auden’s
elegy named “In Memory of W.B. Yeats”:
He disappeared in the dead of winter:
The brooks were frozen, the airports almost
deserted,
And snow disfigured the public statues;
The mercury sank in the mouth of the dying day.
What instruments we have agree
The day of his death was a dark cold day.
A dirge is a song of lamentation in mourning for
someone’s death; or a poem in the form of such a song,
and usually less elaborate than an elegy.
5. Dramatic Monologue
A dramatic monologue is a lyric poem in which there is one imaginary speaker
addressing an imaginary and silent addressee. There is an attempt to imitate natural
speech. One of the most famous dramatic monologues in English Literature is “My Last
Duchess” by Robert Browning.
PART 2: LITERARY FORMS AND GENRES
includes emotional conflicts, and characterisation. Plays written in verse,
such as Shakespeare’s plays, are examples of dramatic poetry.
2. Ode
Ode is a formal lyric poem written in celebration or dedication of
something with specific intent. Odes were originally intended to be
sung. Nowadays, though no longer sung, the term ode still refers to
a type of lyrical poem that addresses and often praises a certain
person, thing, or event. Odes were written mostly during the
Romantic Period.
A hymn is a song or lyric poem set to music in praise of
a divine or venerated being. The title is sometimes given
to a poem on an elevated subject, like Shelley’s “Hymn
to Intellectual Beauty”, or praising a historical hero.
4. Ballad
Ballads (“türkü” or “koşuk” in Turkish) are short narrative poems
or songs that tell a short story. They are characterised by a repeated
refrain and simple language. The theme is often tragic. Ballads
nearly always tell a story connected to community life, local and
national history, legends and folklore. Often the story is concerned
with violent and horrifying incidents. Literary ballads were quite
popular in England during the 19th century, especially during the
Romantic Period.
The folk ballad (or popular ballad) was composed to be
sung and it is anonymous. It was passed along orally
from singer to singer, from generation to generation, and
from one region to another.
The literary ballad is a narrative poem created by a
poet in imitation of the old anonymous folk ballad. The
literary ballad is not anonymous. It is written down by a
poet as he composes it. Usually, the literary ballad is
more elaborate and complex. Coleridge’s Rime of the
Ancient Mariner, Keats’s La Belle Dame sans Merci and
Oscar Wilde’s Ballad of Reading Gaol are literary
ballads.
6. Pastoral Poem
A pastoral poem explores the fantasy of
withdrawing from modern life to live in an
idyllic rural setting. No matter the form or
structure the poetry takes, this focus on idyllic
country life is what characterises it as pastoral
poetry.
5
 Notice the addressee and how the poet tells about his thoughts and feelings in the
An eclogue is a short pastoral
following “dramatic monologue “My Last Duchess” by Robert Browning:
poem, often in the form of a
Even had you skill shepherds’ dialogue or a soliloquy.
In speech—(which I have not)—to make your will The form appears in English in
Quite clear to such an one, and say, ‘Just this Spenser’s The Shepherd’s Calendar.
Or that in you disgusts me; here you miss,
Or there exceed the mark’ -- and if she let
Herself be lessoned so, nor plainly set 7. Epic Poem
Her wits to yours, forsooth, and made excuse, Epics are long narrative poems about the
—E’en then would be some stooping... adventures of a hero or a person of historic
importance. The term epic poetry is used to
refer to all poems that bear the qualities of an
epic.

Some well-known epic poems are Homer’s

Illiad and Odyssey, John Milton’s Paradise
Lost and the anonymous Beowulf.

8. Haiku 9. Villanelle
Haikus are lyric poems that express a single idea, image, or feeling. This Japanese Typically, a villanelle is a nineteen-line poem
form consists of three lines of five, seven, and five syllables respectively. that consists of five three-lined stanzas (tercets)
and a final four-lined stanza (quatrain).
Here is a Turkish haiku by Orhan Veli:
Gemliğe doğru
Denizi göreceksin
Sakın şaşırma
(Orhan Veli)

10. Limerick 11. Clerihew 12. Acrostic

Limericks are short poems written in light
verse and quite popular in English. They
usually contain five lines with a rhyme
scheme of aabba.
Here is an example by Edward Lear. Notice
the rhyme scheme:
There was an Old Man with a beard
Who said, 'It is just as I feared!
Two Owls and a Hen,
Four Larks and a Wren,
Have all built their nests in my beard!
Clerihews are unusual and often funny, four-line Acrostics are poems in which
biographical poems. the initial letters of each line
can be read down the page to
Here is an example by Edmund Clerihew Bentley
(who invented the form): spell either an alphabet, a
name (often that of the author,
John Stuart Mill,
a patron, or loved one), or
By a mighty effort of will,
some other concealed
Overcame his natural bonhomie message.
And wrote Principles of Political Economy

2.2. PROSE
Prose is the ordinary form of language that is direct and unadorned unlike verse or the language of poetry. Therefore, it is an inclusive term
for all discourse, spoken or written, which is not patterned into the lines either of metric verse or of free verse. There are many types of prose
writing in literature including fictional and non-fictional prose.

Prose fiction is an imaginary story that is told/narrated in everyday language. Novels, novellas (short novels), and short stories belong to this
category. Drama can also be written in prose (and sometimes in verse); however, it will be discussed in more detail in the following parts.

Non-fictional Prose

1. Biography 3. Essay Other

Travel writing

PART 2: LITERARY FORMS AND GENRES 6

 English Literature – Subject Test 2 Answer Question 7 and 8 according to the poem below.
Literary Genres: Poetry
That time of year thou mayst in me behold
1. "O judgment! Thou art fled to brutish beasts. O death! Come soon." When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
What is the figure of speech used in the excerpt given above? Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
A) Alliteration Bare ruin’d choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
B) Onomatopoeia In me thou seest the twilight of such day
C) Euphemism As after sunset fadeth in the west,
D) Apostrophe Which by and by black night doth take away,
E) Simile Death’s second self, that seals up all in rest.
In me thou see’st the glowing of such fire
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie, (*doth: does)
2. The moan of doves in immemorial elms, As the death-bed whereon it must expire
And murmuring of innumerable bees. Consumed with that which it was nourish’d by.
Which of the given figures of speech is created through the This thou perceivest, which makes thy love more strong,
underlined words in the poem? To love that well which thou must leave ere long.
A) Onomatopoeia
B) Juxtaposition
C) Irony 7. The poem above written by Shakespeare is a/an ----.
D) Consonance A) ode
E) Sarcasm B) elegy
C) ballad
D) sonnet
3. In Act I of Romeo and Juliet, Tybalt says that Benvolio, who is standing E) parable
with his sword among the fighting men is, “drawn among these heartless
hinds.” “Heartless hinds” means “cowards,” but the word “hinds” also
means a female deer.
8. What is the rhyme scheme of the first four lines in the poem?
This type of use of a word is an example of ----.
A) abab
A) pun
B) aabb
B) metaphor
C) aaba
C) simile
D) abba
D) personification
E) abbb
E) apostrophe

4. I'd love to take a poem to lunch 9. My little horse must think it queer
or treat it to a wholesome brunch To stop without a farmhouse near
of fresh cut fruit and apple crunch.” (Denise Rogers) Between the woods and frozen lake
Which of the following is not correct according to the lines given The darkest evening of the year.”
above? (Robert Frost)
A) There is personification in the poem. What is the rhyme scheme of the given poem?
B) The poem makes use of onomatopoeic words. A) aaba
C) All the lines are rhymed with each other. B) abab
D) The word fruit is used figuratively. C) abba
E) The concept of poem is attributed human traits. D) aabc
E) abac

5. Phrases like “living dead” and “artificial reality” are examples

of ----. 10. ---- is a short narrative poem or a song that tells a short story. It is
A) metaphor characterized by a repeated refrain and simple language. It is
B) pun common in traditional folk poetry and songs. This form enjoyed a
C) oxymoron revival in the Romantic period with such poems as Samuel Taylor
D) conceit Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.
E) symbol Choose the poetic form which best completes the sentence.
A) Epic
B) Clerihew
6. An emerald is as green as grass, C) Ballad
A ruby red as blood; D) Elegy
A sapphire shines as blue as heaven; E) Haiku
A flint lies in the mud. (Christina Rosetti)
What is the figure of speech used in the lines above?
A) oxymoron
B) simile
C) allusion
D) irony
E) pun

ÖABT English Literature Subject Tests pg.2

11. Busy old fool, unruly Sun, 16. ---- is a genre that does not attempt to tell a story but instead is of a
Why dost thou thus, more personal nature. Poems in this genre tend to be shorter,
Through windows, and through curtains, call on us? melodic, and contemplative. Rather than depicting characters and
Which two figures of speech are used in the lines above? actions, it portrays the poet’s own feelings, states of mind and
A) Apostrophe and Allusion perceptions.
B) Allusion and Oxymoron Choose the option which best completes the sentence.
C) Oxymoron and Paradox A) Speculative poetry
D) Paradox and Personification B) Narrative poetry
E) Personification and Apostrophe C) Prose poetry
D) Lyric poetry
E) Elegy
12. In the most high and palmy state of Rome,
A little ere the mightiest Julius fell,
The graves stood tenantless and the sheeted dead 17. His sorrow goes
Did squeak and gibber in the Roman streets. Like mountain snows
In waters sweet and clear.
The above lines are from Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Here, Horatio uses Identify the figure of speech in the lines above.
a notable literary device by giving a reference to Julius Caesar while A) simile
comparing the Ghost’s (Julius Caesar’s) arrival to that of the B) metaphor
eruption of the graves. C) onomatopoeia
D) repetition
This literary device is ----. E) anaphora
A) Allusion
B) Alliteration
C) Fantasy 18. The main features are an elaborate stanza structure, a marked
D) Irony formality and stateliness in tone and style (which make it
E) Kenning ceremonious), and lofty sentiments and thoughts. It is an
elaborately structured poem praising or glorifying an event or
individual, describing nature intellectually as well as emotionally.
13. The ---- is an Italian-origin poetry style which began to appear in Which poetic form is defined above?
England at the beginning of the Renaissance Period, and became A) Haiku
very popular due to the remarkable influence of Italy in the B) Limerick
Renaissance Period. C) Ode
Which of the following best completes the sentence above? D) Ballad
A) ballad E) Sonnet
B) epic
C) romance
19. Which of the following sentences is an example of alliteration?
D) riddle
A) I’m so hungry I could eat a horse.
E) sonnet
B) Fifty famous flavours for fifty famous flowers.
C) This room cries for cleaning.
D) He is gentle as a lamb.
14. I. Onomatopoeia
E) Do you want to pass the exam?
II. Simile
III. Metaphor
IV. Allusion 20. ---- is drama written in verse to be spoken or sung, and appears in
V. Assonance varying, sometimes related forms in many cultures.
Which of the figures of speech above is/are composed through Choose the option which best completes the sentence.
play on sounds? A) Speculative poetry
A) I and V B) Dramatic poetry
B) IV and V C) Prose poetry
C) I, II and III D) Narrative poetry
D) II, III and IV E) Elegy
E) II, III and V

21. To see a World in a Grain of Sand

15. The tear-drop trickled to his chin: And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,
There was a meaning in her grin. Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
What is the figure of speech created through the underlined And Eternity in an hour” (William Blake)
words in the given excerpt? What is the rhyme scheme of the poem above?
A) hyperbole A) abaa
B) rhyme B) aabb
C) repetition C) abac
D) simile D) abba
E) metaphor E) abab

ÖABT English Literature Subject Tests pg.3

22. Which poetic sound device do the word pairs group/grope, English Literature – Subject Test 3
middle/muddle, wonder/wander, cut/cat exemplify? Figures of Speech and Poetry
A) Assonance
B) Consonance
C) Onomatopoeia 1. The expression “a parachutist smashed like a bug on a
D) Connotation windshield” is an example of ----.
E) Alliteration A) hyperbole
B) simile
C) inference
23. Oh stay! three lives in one flea spare D) metaphor
E) irony
Where we almost, yea more than married are.
This flea is you and I, and this
Our marriage-bed and marriage-temple is. 2. In ---- poetry, there is the description of series of events and its
aim is to tell a story.
In the given excerpt from “The Flea” by John Donne, the poet tells A) tragic
his lover that she has no reason to deny him intercourse, as the flea B) dramatic
has already sucked blood from both of them, and that their blood C) fictional
has mingled in its gut. Thus, the flea comes to stand for the lovers’ D) narrative
“wedding bed,” although they are not married yet. E) lyric

What kind of comparison is this?

3. The wind stood up and gave a shout.
A) Epiphany
He whistled on his fingers and
B) Chiasmus
Kicked the withered leaves about.
C) Analogy (J. Stephens)
D) Simile What is the figure of speech in the poem above?
E) Conceit A) Irony
B) Simile
C) Personification
24. The phrases 'the humming bee', 'the cackling hen', and 'the D) Metonymy
buzzing saw' are examples of ----. E) Apostrophe
A) alliteration
B) rhyme
C) onomatopoeia 4. Which of the following is not often associated with poetry?
D) consonance A) Figures of speech
B) Mood
E) assonance
C) Plot structure
D) Tone
E) Voice
25. John Milton’s Paradise Lost and Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey are
examples of ----.
A) epic 5. What is the figure of speech in the line “Time is a dressmaker
B) elegy specializing in alterations” by F. Baldwin?
C) sonnet A) Simile
D) villanelle B) Oxymoron
E) limerick C) Euphemism
D) Symbol
E) Metaphor

6. Which of the following is not a difference of poetry from other

genres?
A) Figures of speech are used extensively to provoke emotions.
Subject Test X – Answer Key B) Setting and actions are identified in detail.
C) Language is used economically for artistic creation.
1. 6. 11. 16. 21.
D) Play on words and ungrammatical word order create an effect.
2. 7. 12. 17. 22. E) Different interpretations are possible due to distinctive use of
3. 8. 13. 18. 23. language and style.
4. 9. 14. 19. 24.
5. 10. 15. 20. 25.
7. Joseph Conrad emphasizes the passing of time in the novel Heart of
Darkness: I had to wait in the station for ten days–an eternity.
Identify the figure of speech in the given sample.
A) Limerick
B) Simile
C) Oxymoron
D) Parody
E) Hyperbole

ÖABT English Literature Subject Tests pg.4

8. Which of the following is not an example of personification?
A) I love the sound of raindrops walking on the roof. 16. ---- is a brief and indirect reference to a person, place, thing, or idea
B) The sun was warm on the child's face. of historical, cultural, literary, or political significance. It does not
C) The trout danced on the water's surface. describe in detail the person or thing to which it refers. It is usually
D) The radio stopped singing and looked at me. just a passing comment, and the writer expects the reader to possess
E) The angry mirror showed every wrinkle on his face. enough knowledge to spot the allusion and grasp its importance in a
text. For instance, you make a literary ---- the moment you say, “I do
not approve of this quixotic idea,” where “quixotic” means stupid
9. The speaker of a poem is referred to as the ----. and impractical derived from Cervantes’s Don Quixote, the story of a
A) poetic voice foolish knight and his misadventures.
B) poet himself/herself Choose the option which best completes the statement.
C) addressee A) Analogy
D) narrator B) Aphorism
E) author C) Alienation
D) Anagram
E) Allusion
10. Two figures of speech that involve comparisons are ----.
A) simile and metonymy
B) metonymy and metaphor 17. His sorrow goes
C) personification and hyperbole Like mountain snows
D) simile and metaphor In waters sweet and clear
E) litotes and metonymy What is the figure of speech in the lines above?
A) simile
B) metaphor
11. Which of the following best describes litotes, a favourite C) onomatopoeia
rhetorical device in Old English poetry? D) repetition
A) embellishment at service of Christian doctrine E) anaphora
B) repetition of parallel syntactic structures
C) ironic understatement
18. “Well now, one winter it was so cold that all the geese flew
D) stress on every third diphthong
backward, and all the fish moved south and even the snow turned
E) a compound of two words in place of a single word
blue. Late at night, it got so frigid that all spoken words froze solid
afore they could be heard. People had to wait until sunrise to find out
what folks were talking about the night before.”
12. The similarity between syllable sounds at the end of two or more
Which literary device is used in this passage?
lines is called ----.
A) Hyperbole
A) stanza
B) Simile
B) tone
C) Euphemism
C) theme
D) Oxymoron
D) alliteration
E) Anaphora
E) rhyme

19. “Hope is the thing with feathers,

13. “Bright star! Would I were steadfast as thou art.” That perches in the soul.” (Emily Dickinson)
Considering that there is an address to some bright star in the What type of comparison is used in the lines above?
line above by John Keats, what is the figure of speech employed A) Metonymy
here? B) Simile
A) Oxymoron C) Metaphor
B) Euphemism D) Oxymoron
C) Onomatopoeia E) Allegory
D) Pun
E) Apostrophe
20.Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
14. ---- is the attitude of the poet to the subject matter of the poem And be one traveller, long as I stood
and it is usually expressed by using certain adjectives. And looked down one as far as I could
A) Plot To where it bent in the undergrowth. (R. Frost)
B) Rhyme What is the rhyme scheme of this poem?
C) Addressee A) ababb
D) Voice B) ababa
E) Tone C) abaac
D) aaaab
E) abaab
15. What is the figure of speech in the line “Wisdom calls aloud in
the street”?
A) Irony
B) Allusion
C) Pun
D) Personification
E) Oxymoron

ÖABT English Literature Subject Tests pg.5

21. A poem of fourteen ten-syllable lines, a form popular during the English Literature – Subject Test 4
English Renaissance, is called a ----. Figures of Speech and Poetry
Choose the option which best completes the sentence.
A) sonnet
1. When you, my Dear, are away, away,
B) rhyme
C) meter How wearily goes the day.
D) free verse A year drags after morning, and night
E) inversion Starts another year.
Identify the poetic device that is most clearly being used.
A) Metaphor
22. “But the house on Mango Street is not the way they told it at all. It’s B) Onomatopoeia
small and red with tight steps in front and windows so small you’d C) Irony
think they were holding their breath.”
D) Hyperbole
Identify the figure of speech used in the given sentence.
E) Simile
A) Irony
B) Allusion
C) Pun
D) Personification 2. Chicago is a city that is fierce as a dog with tongue lapping for
E) Allegory action.
Identify the poetic device that is most clearly being used.
A) Enjambment
23. I. The Epic of Gilgamesh and Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey can be B) Metaphor
considered early examples of narrative poetry.
C) Repetition
II. Lyric poetry involves the voice of an imaginary character
D) Simile
presented with direct speech without any intervention by the author.
III. One of the outstanding examples of dramatic poetry is D.H. E) Hyperbole
Lawrence’s Piano in which the speaker recalls his feelings
associated with an object.
Which of the above is false about the given types of poetry? 3. Gracefully she sat down sideways,
A) Only I With a simper* smile. (*simper: to smile in a silly or annoying way)
B) I and II Identify the poetic device that is most clearly being used.
C) I and III A) rhyme
D) II and III B) simile
E) I, II and III C) metaphor
D) personification
24. What did we say to each other E) alliteration
that now we are as the deer
who walk in single file
with heads high. 4. Drip – hiss – drip – hiss – fall the raindrops.
Identify the figure of speech in the lines above. Identify the poetic device that is most clearly being used.
A) Metaphor A) metaphor
B) Simile B) hyperbole
C) Pun C) personification
D) Paradox D) onomatopoeia
E) Oxymoron E) simile

25. An hundred years should go to praise

Thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze; 5. The fountain tossed its water,
Two hundred to adore each breast, Up and up, like silver marbles.
But thirty thousand to the rest; Identify the poetic device that is most clearly being used.
An age at least to every part, A) simile
And the last age should show your heart. B) hyperbole
(from “To his Coy Mistress” by Andrew Marwell) C) rhyme
What is the figure of speech used in the poem below? D) metaphor
A) parody E) idiom
B) hyperbole
C) analogy
D) conflict 6. Falstaff* sweats to death, as he walks along;
E) oxymoron
Were’t not for laughing, I should pity him.
(*Falstaff is the name of a person.)
Subject Test X – Answer Key Identify the poetic device that is most clearly being used.
1. 6. 11. 16. 21. A) rhyme
2. 7. 12. 17. 22. B) personification
3. 8. 13. 18. 23. C) simile
4. 9. 14. 19. 24. D) metaphor
5. 10. 15. 20. 25.
E) hyperbole

ÖABT English Literature Subject Tests pg.6

7. Lives of great men remind us 13. We must wait to hear from the crown until we make any further
We can make our lives sublime; decisions.
And, departing, leave behind us Identify the poetic device that is most clearly being used.
footprints on the sands of time. A) hyperbole
Identify the poetic device that is most clearly being used. B) imagery
A) simile C) pun
B) metaphor D) metaphor
C) onomatopoeia E) metonymy
D) personification
E) understatement
14. What is the difference between a conductor and a teacher?
The conductor minds the train, and a teacher trains the mind.
8. All night long with rush and lull Identify the poetic device that is most clearly being used.
The rain kept drumming on the roof A) metaphor
Identify the poetic device that is most clearly being used. B) chiasmus
A) simile C) alliteration
B) hyperbole D) personification
C) repetition E) hyperbole
D) personification
E) rhyme
15. “The giant sat back down on the soft sofa, which sagged under his
weight, in the room that was warm with the fire left in the stove. He
9. The child, with her infinite energy, would run her parents to the began taking all sorts of things out of the pockets of his coat: a
ground. copper kettle, a squashy package of sausages, a poker, a teapot,
Identify the poetic device that is most clearly being used. several chipped mugs, and a bottle of some amber liquid that he
A) metaphor took a loud swig from before starting to make tea.”
B) simile Which of the following is not used in the foregoing excerpt?
C) hyperbole A) visual imagery
D) personification B) gustatory imagery
E) repetition C) tactile imagery
D) auditory imagery
E) thermal imagery
10. My love is like a red, red rose.
Identify the poetic device that is most clearly being used.
A) repetition 16. Which of the following refers to the metrical composition and
B) personification rhythmical use of language in poetry?
C) onomatopoeia A) Stanza
D) metaphor B) Rhyme
E) rhyme C) Verse
D) Parody
E) Rhetoric
11. There’s a patch of old snow in a corner.
Identify the poetic device that is most clearly being used.
A) simile 17. ---- is a type of rhyme scheme that involves words that are similar
B) metaphor in spelling but not in sound, such as ‘stone’ and ‘none.’
C) imagery A) Eye Rhyme
D) irony B) Masculine Rhyme
E) repetition C) Internal Rhyme
D) Half Rhyme
E) Slant Rhyme
12. Why, so didst thou: seem they grave and learned?
Why, so didst thou: come they of noble family?
Why, so didst thou: seem they religious? 18. I saw a big cat,
Identify the poetic device that is most clearly being used. He wore a big hat!”
A) onomatopoeia Which sound device is used above?
B) anaphora A) Alliteration
C) consonance B) Assonance
D) rhyme C) Rhyme
E) verse D) Consonance
E) Onomatopoeia

ÖABT English Literature Subject Tests pg.7

 Answer Question 19 and 20 according to the poem below. 25. 'To err is human, to forgive divine.'
What is the figure of speech created through the inverted use of
Let us go then, you and I, the underlined words used in the given excerpt?
When the evening is spread out against the sky A) anti-thesis
Like a patient etherised upon a table; B) litotes
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets, C) irony
The muttering retreats D) simile
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels E) paradox
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells

19. What is the rhyme scheme of the poem?

A) aabccdd
B) aabbccd
C) aabbcdd
D) abcbcdd Subject Test X – Answer Key
E) aabcccc
1. 6. 11. 16. 21.
2. 7. 12. 17. 22.
20. Which of the following is not a figure of speech used in the 3. 8. 13. 18. 23.
poem? 4. 9. 14. 19. 24.
A) Personification 5. 10. 15. 20. 25.
B) Simile
C) Onomatopoeia
D) Alliteration
E) Allusion

21. “Pitching pennies with the Pittsburgh Pirates in a pitter-patter of

rain outside the Pitti Palace.” (James Thurber, Lanterns and
Lances)
What is the figure of speech in the lines above?
A) Paradox
B) Alliteration
C) Pun
D) Oxymoron
E) Litotes

22. ---- is the repetition of vowel sounds to create an effect, whereas ----
is the repetition of the same consonant sounds.
Choose the option which best completes the sentence.
A) Assonance / rhyme
B) Rhyme / consonance
C) Consonance / onomatopoeia
D) Onomatopoeia / alliteration
E) Assonance / alliteration

23. ---- is the speaker of the poem, and it may be the poet himself or
a character created by the poet.
A) Addressee
B) Mood
C) Tone
D) Voice
E) Atmosphere

24. ---- poetry includes expressions of thoughts and feelings of a

single speaker, and it is suitable for music and singing.
A) Gothic
B) Dramatic
C) Narrative
D) Sentimental
E) Lyric

ÖABT English Literature Subject Tests pg.8

 Notice the addressee and how the poet tells about his thoughts and feelings in the
An eclogue is a short pastoral
following “dramatic monologue “My Last Duchess” by Robert Browning:
poem, often in the form of a
Even had you skill shepherds’ dialogue or a soliloquy.
In speech—(which I have not)—to make your will The form appears in English in
Quite clear to such an one, and say, ‘Just this Spenser’s The Shepherd’s Calendar.
Or that in you disgusts me; here you miss,
Or there exceed the mark’ -- and if she let
Herself be lessoned so, nor plainly set 7. Epic Poem
Her wits to yours, forsooth, and made excuse, Epics are long narrative poems about the
—E’en then would be some stooping... adventures of a hero or a person of historic
importance. The term epic poetry is used to
refer to all poems that bear the qualities of an
epic.

Some well-known epic poems are Homer’s

Illiad and Odyssey, John Milton’s Paradise
Lost and the anonymous Beowulf.

8. Haiku 9. Villanelle
Haikus are lyric poems that express a single idea, image, or feeling. This Japanese Typically, a villanelle is a nineteen-line poem
form consists of three lines of five, seven, and five syllables respectively. that consists of five three-lined stanzas (tercets)
and a final four-lined stanza (quatrain).
Here is a Turkish haiku by Orhan Veli:
Gemliğe doğru
Denizi göreceksin
Sakın şaşırma
(Orhan Veli)

10. Limerick 11. Clerihew 12. Acrostic

Limericks are short poems written in light
verse and quite popular in English. They
usually contain five lines with a rhyme
scheme of aabba.
Here is an example by Edward Lear. Notice
the rhyme scheme:
There was an Old Man with a beard
Who said, 'It is just as I feared!
Two Owls and a Hen,
Four Larks and a Wren,
Have all built their nests in my beard!
Clerihews are unusual and often funny, four-line Acrostics are poems in which
biographical poems. the initial letters of each line
can be read down the page to
Here is an example by Edmund Clerihew Bentley
(who invented the form): spell either an alphabet, a
name (often that of the author,
John Stuart Mill,
a patron, or loved one), or
By a mighty effort of will,
some other concealed
Overcame his natural bonhomie message.
And wrote Principles of Political Economy

2.2. PROSE
Prose is the ordinary form of language that is direct and unadorned unlike verse or the language of poetry. Therefore, it is an inclusive term
for all discourse, spoken or written, which is not patterned into the lines either of metric verse or of free verse. There are many types of prose
writing in literature including fictional and non-fictional prose.

Prose fiction is an imaginary story that is told/narrated in everyday language. Novels, novellas (short novels), and short stories belong to this
category. Drama can also be written in prose (and sometimes in verse); however, it will be discussed in more detail in the following parts.

Non-fictional Prose

1. Biography 3. Essay Other

Travel writing

PART 2: LITERARY FORMS AND GENRES 6

 A thorough description of a person’s life is referred to
as his/her biography. It is a kind of prose that is full of
basic information about all the highs and lows in a
person’s life, including anecdotes and memoirs.
Biography example: The Life of Samuel Johnson by
James Boswell.
2. Autobiography
Autobiography is also a kind of prose ,and as the term
suggests, it is the self-written account of one’s life. It is
very similar to a biography, except it is written by the
same person whose story it is about. The person can
also seek guidance or help from another writer or hire a
ghostwriter if required. An autobiography example is
The Story of My Life by Helen Keller.
Essay is a prose composition of a moderate Letter
length which discusses formally or informally, a
Diary
topic or a variety of topics. Essay is a very
flexible and adaptable literary form. Montaigne History
applied the form to a volume of informal pieces Anecdote
in 1580s. Francis Bacon, Joseph Addison and
Memoir
Richard Steele, William Hazlitt, and Walter
Pater are the famous essayists in English
literature. In the 20th century, T.S. Eliot, George
Orwell, Graham Greene, and W. H. Auden
published notable essays.

Fictional Prose

1. Short Story 3. Novel

A short story is a work of prose fiction shorter than the short novel
(novella) and more restricted in terms of characters and events. Short
stories are often no more than about 10.000 words in length though
there would be many exemptions to such classification. A short story is
usually concerned with not more than a few effects, problems,
characters, and/or themes. Because of its limited length, a short story
usually has only one plot and not many characters unlike a novel which
can tackle multiple sub-plots and themes, and a number of characters.
Unlike the novel, the short story does not develop characters fully.
Generally, a single aspect of a character’s personality undergoes change
or is revealed as a result of some incident, confrontation or conflict. “A
Christmas Carol” by Charles Dickens and “The Lottery” by Shirley
Jackson are well-known short stories. Some of the most famous short
story writers of the world literature are Edgar Allan Poe, Anton
Chekhov, Rudyard Kipling, Franz Kafka, James Joyce, and D.H.
Lawrence.
2. Novella
A novella is a short and well-structured prose tale often realistic and
satiric in tone. It was popular in Italy in the medieval period and was
concerned mainly with the city life. Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness,
Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, and Robert Louis
Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde are modern novellas.
Novels are extended works of narrative prose fiction with a
main plot and sub-plots as well as a number of characters. They
are often longer and more complex compared to short stories
and/or novellas. The most important characteristic of the novel
is that they represent characters and events as if in real life.
In England, Daniel Defoe is regarded as the founder of the
English novel with his Robinson Crusoe (1719) and Moll
Flanders (1722). Despite a number of similar predecessors, the
first novel in English literature is considered to be Robinson
Crusoe (1719) by Daniel Defoe. The reason why Robinson
Crusoe is considered to be the first English novel is primarily
its realism and truthful narration.
The novel portrays the average middle-class man (Robinson
Crusoe), a man of no particular importance, in a subtly realistic
manner and discloses, at the same time, his negative traits, thus
allowing the 18th-century reader with a character that he can
easily identify with.
The novel reached its fullest development during the 19th (the
Victorian Period) and early 20th (the Modern Period) centuries.
In this period, the narrative technique of the novel refined and a
deeper interest in human personality and behaviour developed.
The 19th century in English Literature is also known as the
Golden Age of the English Novel.

Types of Novel
1. Bildungsroman
Also known as the Apprenticeship Novel, Coming-of-age Novel, Novel of Jane Eyre (1847) by
Development, and/or Formation Novel, the Bildungsroman first originated Charlotte Brontë,
in Germany and later flourished in Europe. The German word
The Catcher in the Rye
‘Bildungsroman’ means ‘novel of development/formation’. Therefore, this
(1951) by J.D. Sallinger,
type of novels narrates the story of a character’s maturation and moral growth
typically brought about through a series of encounters and experiences. The David Copperfield (1849) by
protagonist of the Bildungsroman has to learn a vital lesson that brings about Charles Dickens,
his/her maturation.

PART 2: LITERARY FORMS AND GENRES 7

 When the novel describes the formation of a young artist, as in Joyce’s A Sons and Lovers (1913) by
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, it may also be called a D.H. Lawrence.
Künstlerroman.

2. Epistolary Novel
The word ‘epistle’ means ‘letter’. Therefore, an epistolary novel is a type of
novel in which the story is told through letters (or sometimes diary entries) Samuel Richardson’s Pamela, or Virtue
written by one or more characters. This kind of communication between Rewarded features Pamela who is a
characters adds to the realistic atmosphere of the novel. The epistolary novel simple fifteen-year-old country girl with a
was particularly popular during the 18th century.
strong tendency for self-analysis. She is
Dracula (1897) by Bram Stoker and Frankenstein (1818) by Mary Shelley are
the maiden servant of a wealthy woman.
epistolary novels. Samuel Richardson’s Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded (1740) is
another famous example.
After his lady dies, her son chases Pamela
with the intention of seducing her. She
resists his advances and convinces him to
marry her and sets about to reform him.
The story is told in a series of letters from
Pamela to her parents.

3. Gothic Novel
The term ‘Gothic’ is an adjective derived
from ‘Goth,’ the name of a Germanic tribe
of ancient and medieval times (from 3rd
century onwards). The term ‘Gothic’ refers
to:
1. A style of architecture which
originated in France and persisted
from the 12th century to the 16th
century. Gothic architecture is
characterised by ribbed vaults, pointed
arches, elaborate decoration and fine
woodwork and masonry.
2. A style in literature characterised by
mystery, horror, violence, and
supernatural effects. Gothic novels
were often set in gloomy and isolated
medieval castles.
Gothic novels are characterised by a mixture of horror and
romance. They often include supernatural and violent
elements. The atmosphere in such novels is usually full of
terror and dread.
Horace Walpole was the originator of the Gothic novel
in English Literature with his Castle of Otranto
(1764). Its setting is in a medieval castle which has
secret underground passages, trap doors, dark and
winding stairways, and mysterious rooms whose doors
slam unexpectedly at times.
The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794) by Ann Radcliffe,
Frankenstein (1817) by Mary Shelley and Dracula
(1897) by Bram Stoker are renowned gothic novels.

4. Science-fiction
Science-fiction is a type of fiction which is concerned with the future condition of
man and society. Science-fiction may be based on known scientific and social data The originators of the form were Jules
but it may also be a product of pure fantasy. Often set in a post-apocalyptic, Verne (1828-1905; French writer) and
dystopian future, sci-fi novels imagine the worlds of far-flung future or alternate H.G. Wells (1866-1946). In his
universes. Science fiction books can have a historical setting, but most are set in the
extraordinary stories of adventure,
future and deal with the ramifications of technological and scientific advancement.
Jules Verne used some scientific
Major themes and subjects of science-fiction are:

PART 2: LITERARY FORMS AND GENRES 8

 space travel to and from other planets, solar systems and galaxies, elements. Two of his best known
exploration, settlement and exploitation of other worlds, works are A Voyage to the Centre of
encounters with and/or between extra-terrestrial life forms, the Earth (1864) and Twenty
time travel to the future or past, Thousand Leagues Under the Sea
travel to other universes,
(1869). H.G. Wells had a wide
knowledge of scientific subjects. The
psychological and biological changes in man and/or animals/plants brought
about by nature or science, Time Machine (1895), Island of Dr.
Moreau (1896), The War of the Worlds
supernormal powers and talents which may be achieved either through
technology or the advancement of the branches of other sciences such as (1898) and The First Man on the
psychology or parapsychology, Moon (1901) are his famous science-
science applied to human relations for other constructive or destructive (i.e. fiction novels.
war) purposes.

Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World

(1932) (also a dystopia) and Ray
Bradbury’s (1920-2012) The Sliver
Locusts (1951) and Fahrenheit 451
(1954) are also examples of the
science-fiction novel.

5. Picaresque Novel
Picaresque novel is the term applied to a type of fiction
that deals with the adventures of rogues/rascals. This type The Fortunes and Misfortunes of
of novels tells the story of a part or the whole of the life of the Famous Moll Flanders (1722)
a rogue person. The plot is often a series of episodes by Daniel Defoe is the
(episodic structure) which are slightly connected. There is
autobiography of a woman called
little character development. It is generally realistic,
drawing upon the facts of the life of a rogue. The story is Moll Flanders. Soon after her birth,
presented in vivid details. Sometimes the aim is to satirise her mother was transported to
the society or some national or racial peculiarities. The Virginia for theft. The novel
hero/heroine is generally a likable character, a trickster or
narrates Moll Flanders’s seduction,
a rascal, but never an actual criminal.
her subsequent marriage and her
The first picaresque novel in English was Thomas Nashe’s
The Unfortunate Traveller (1594) followed by Daniel
love affairs. She visits Virginia and
Defoe’s Moll Flanders (1722) which deals with a female finds her mother there. She
trickster. Henry Fielding’s Joseph Andrews (1742) and The discovers that she has unknowingly
History of Tom Jones (1749) as well as The Adventures of
married her own brother. She
Tom Sawyer and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884)
by Mark Twain are famous picaresque novels.
returns to England and becomes a
successful pickpocket and thief.
Soon, however, she is caught and
transported to Virginia with one of
her former husbands, a
highwayman. With the
considerable amount of money
each has saved, they settle in
Virginia and become farmers. They
spend their life in prosperity.

PART 2: LITERARY FORMS AND GENRES 9

 6. Novel of Manners
Also called Realistic Novel, novels of manners feature complex characters, their multifaceted
emotions as well as their particular behaviour arising out of their social class. The characters are often
portrayed in their everyday life with their everyday experiences. Novels by Jane Austen and Charles
Dickens are categorised within realistic fiction.

7. Historical Novel
In historical novels, events and characters are placed in the past.
The intention is to create an atmosphere of the past through
historical places, time, and setting. Most historical novels feature
real historical figures as characters. What we usually specify as the
historical novel began in the 19th century with Sir Walter Scott.
Sir Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe (1819) was set in the period of
Norman domination of the Saxons at the time of Richard I.
Charles Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities (1859) is a historical
novel set in Paris and London during the French Revolution.
Tolstoy’s War and Peace (1869) was set during Napoleon’s
invasion of Russia.

8. Psychological Novel 9. Sentimental Novel

The Psychological Novel, also known as Novel of Character, is a
vague term to describe that kind of fiction which is for the most part
concerned with the spiritual, emotional and mental lives of the
characters and with the analysis of character rather than with the plot
and the action. Many novelists during the last two hundred years have
written psychological novels. Virginia Woolf’s modernist novels are
usually considered psychological novels.
Sentimental Novel is a form of fiction popular in 18th-century
England. It concentrated on the distresses of the virtuous and
attempted to show that a sense of honour and moral behaviour
were justly rewarded. It also attempted to show that effusive
emotion was evidence of kindness and goodness. Samuel
Richardson’s Pamela or Virtue Rewarded (1740) can also be
considered a sentimental novel.

10. Anti-novel
This kind of fiction tends to be
experimental and breaks with
the traditional story-telling
methods and form of the novel.
Often there is little attempt to
create an illusion of realism or
naturalism for the reader. It
establishes its own conventions
and a different kind of realism
which deters the reader from
self-identification with the
characters, yet at the same time
persuades him to ‘participate’
but not vicariously.
Some of the principal features of the anti-novel are lack of an
obvious plot; diffused episode; minimal development of character;
detailed surface analysis of objects; many repetitions; innumerable
experiments with vocabulary, punctuation and syntax; variations of
time sequence; alternative endings and beginnings. Some of the
more extreme features are detachable pages; pages which can be
shuffled like cards; coloured pages; blank pages; collage effects;
drawings; hieroglyphics. Fabulation is also a term used to describe
the anti-novel.
We can see the process of anti-novel innovation at work in the
major experiments of James Joyce in Ulysses and Finnegan’s Wake,
in several novels by Virginia Woolf (e.g. Mrs Dalloway, The Waves
and To the Lighthouse) and in the early fiction of Samuel Beckett
(e.g. Molloy and Murphy). However, it may be that the possibilities
were perceived long before by Laurence Sterne. Tristram Shandy
(1760-7) might be cited as a kind of anti-novel.

Other Types of Prose Fiction

1. Fable

PART 2: LITERARY FORMS AND GENRES 10

 Fables are short, epigrammatic and allegorical moral tales The Animal Farm by George Orwell
written in prose (and sometimes in verse). The characters of
is an excellent novel depicting the
a fable may be animals, men, goods, and/or lifeless objects.
In fables, human qualities are projected onto inanimate situation of Russia post-war through
objects or animals. Their themes reflect the commonsense animals in a satirical form.
ethics of ordinary life, and therefore didactic.
Earliest examples of the fable belong
to Aesop, a Greek beast-fable writer
of the 6th century.

2. Parable
A parable is a brief, educational, didactic story, written in the form of prose or
verse, that explains one or more informative lessons or teachings. It differs from Peygamberi dağa doğru koşarken
a fable as fables employ animals, plants, inanimate objects, or forces of nature as görenler, "Ey İsa! Aslandan mı
key figures, whereas parables have human characters. A parable is a kind of kaçıyorsun?" diye sormuşlar. "Hayır!"
metaphorical analogy. Parables in literature impart a moral lesson to the readers.
demiş İsa. "Kaplandan ejderhadan mı
It is excellent for teaching because stories are easier to recall with clarity and
interest. “The Boy Who Cried Wolf” is a parable that warns towards lying kaçıyorsun?" diye sormuşlar. O yine
because of its impending consequences. "Hayır," demiş ve eklemiş, "ben
peygamberim, aslandan kaplandan
korkmam." "Peki, o zaman neden
kaçıyorsun?" diye sormuşlar.
"Ahmaklardan kaçıyorum," demiş İsa,
"çünkü onlarla baş edemem."
(Zülfü Livaneli’nin Son Ada adlı
romanından alınmıştır.)

3. Folktale
Folktale is popular or legendary stories, familiar to a
specific group or culture reflecting their values and
ideas. They are usually passed down verbally from
one generation to another. These stories carry a moral
or lesson to be absorbed by the audience.
“The Frog King” is one of the oldest German folktales. In the
story, a princess promises a frog that she will make him her
companion if he retrieves her favourite toy from the bottom of
the deep spring. The moral of “The Frog King” is that one
should honour their promises and will be rewarded. The frog
honoured his promise to retrieve the ball and the princess
(unwillingly) honoured her promise to the frog.

4. Legend
Legends can be considered a sub-genre of folktales. The legend may
be a traditional story or a group of stories with a sound message for the Some well-known of legends are the tales of
audience. They may include supernatural beings, elements of Odysseus from Ancient Greece, Beowulf from
mythology, or explanations of natural phenomena, but they are linked the Norse lands, King Arthur and his Knights of
with a particular locality or person and are told as a matter of antiquity.
the Round Table from Old England, and the
famous Robin Hood.

5. Fairy Tale
Fairy tales are traditional stories written for children. They usually involve
imaginary creatures such as fairies, elves, goblins, mermaids and sprites as • Cinderella

PART 2: LITERARY FORMS AND GENRES 11

 well as magic. Some celebrated writers of fairy tales are Jacob and Wilhelm • Rapunzel
Grimm (the Brothers Grimm), Hans Christian Andersen, and Rudyard Kipling
• Little Red Riding Hood
in English Literature.
• Snow White
• Hansel and Gratel
• The Little Mermaid

6. Romance
Romances are fictional stories in verse or prose that relate improbable adventures
of idealised characters in some remote or enchanted setting; or, more generally, a
tendency in fiction opposite to that of realism. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
is a famous middle-English chivalric romance.

7. Myth
Myth is a traditional story or tale full of symbols. These superficially relate to
reality or actual events and are especially associated with religious beliefs and
traditions. The key figures in myths are gods, demigods, or supernatural
humans with unrealistic powers and talents entangled in extraordinary events or
circumstances in an unknown period. Mythology is a body of myths shared by
members of a given people or religion.

Pandora’s Box is an artefact in Greek mythology connected with the myth of

Pandora in Hesiod’s Works and Days.

2.3. DRAMA
The term ‘drama’ means simply to act or perform. Any work in prose or verse, designed to be performed on a stage by actors is drama. In a
drama, a story is related by means of dialogue and action, and is represented with accompanying gesture, costume, and scenery, as in real
life. Action in a novel is the journeys and battles in which individuals engage; in drama that is only a secondary sense, action must primarily
mean the movement of actors on the stage.

It is generally accepted that drama dates back to Ancient Greece. The early plays were performed in festivals held in honour of Dionysus,
the god of wine in Greek mythology. First known plays in English Literature belong to the Medieval Period. The drama of this period is also
known as liturgical drama because of the highly religious content of the plays performed on religious fests. The golden age of English
Drama was the Age of Renaissance when such celebrated playwrights as William Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe, Edmund Spenser, and
Ben Jonson produced their great works.

Elements and Techniques in Drama

PART 2: LITERARY FORMS AND GENRES 12

 1. Play and Playwright
A play is a piece of writing that is
intended to be acted on stage. A
playwright is an author who writes
plays to be performed.
2. Stage Directions
Stage directions are descriptive
notes that give information about the
setting and actions of the actors.
While early playwrights used them
only sparsely to give information,
modern playwrights such as Henrik
Ibsen or Bernard Shaw used stage
directions more intensely and to give
messages as well.
3. Act and Scene
An act is a major section in a play and acts
are often divided into a number of scenes
which are minor parts in a play. Not every
play has scenes. Traditionally, plays were
generally constructed of five acts. However,
modern works generally have no more than
three acts.
4. Music and Spectacle
Music in drama refers not only to music but
also to all kinds of sounds used for theatrical
purposes including the actors’ use of their
voice. The spectacle in drama refers to the
visual elements used in staging including
lightning, costumes, and special effects.
5. Chorus
Chorus is originally the group of dancers and
singers in religious festivals and ceremonies,
from which the Greek drama developed. It was
essential in Greek drama but its importance
diminished as drama progressed.
A full scale chorus has seldom been used in
English drama. It has been reduced into a
single person as in Shakespeare’s Henry V.
Chorus are rare in modern plays. In T.S. Eliot’s
Murder in the Cathedral (1935), the chorus of
the women of Canterbury take part in the
action, comment and provide mood and
atmosphere. Brecht, in The Caucasian Chalk
(1943), and Arthur Miller, in A View from the
Bridge (1955), use a single chorus as a
commentator on the action moving in and out
of the play.

6. Aside and Soliloquy

An aside is a comment or speech made by an
actor on the stage that is directed to the
audience. It is assumed that other actors on
stage do not hear the remark. Soliloquy is a
dramatic convention which allows a character
to speak his thoughts aloud, apparently unheard
by others on stage. A soliloquy is a monologue
that is used to give information to the audience
about a character’s inner thoughts and feelings
when the character is alone on the stage.
A soliloquy and an aside are similar, but not the same. They are similar
because they are both ways in which the writer can have a character tell the
audience what he or she is thinking. The main difference is that a soliloquy
is a long speech while an aside is a short comment. A soliloquy is a speech
in which the character reveals feelings or thoughts, but does so without
speaking to any other character in the play. An aside has the same purpose,
but it is very brief -- it is meant to reveal a short thought, not a complex one.

6. Deus Ex Machina 7. The Unities

Deus ex machina is the ‘god from a machine’ who was lowered on to the stage
by mechanical contrivance in some ancient Greek plays to solve the problems of
the plot at a stroke. The term is now used pejoratively for any improbable or
unexpected contrivance by which an author resolves the complications of the plot
in a play or novel, and which has not been convincingly prepared for in the
preceding action.
The three unities were the unity of time, the unity of
place, and the unity of action. In fact, Aristotle in his
discussion of tragedy insists only on the unity of
action. According to Italian and French critics of the
16th century, the unities required that any serious play
should have a unified action, without the distractions
of a subplot, representing events in a single day (24
hours, or 12, or ideally the same time as the duration
of the performance itself) within a single setting –
which could include different parts of the same city.

Types of Drama
The major dramatic genres, especially in the west, are comedy and tragedy, but several other kinds of dramatic work fall outside these
categories. Those other dramatic forms will be listed at the end of this section.

PART 2: LITERARY FORMS AND GENRES 13

 Tragedy
A tragedy is a serious or sorrowful play involving a conflict with a fatal conclusion. It is also known as the fall of a famous or noble man.
This fall is sometimes the workings of the providence, and at times the operation of an arbitrary fate. This fall is supposed to teach humans a
lesson: the insignificance of worldly power or success. Traditionally, tragedies help evoke pity and fear in the audience. Christopher
Marlowe’s Dr. Faustus (1604) and Shakespeare’s Hamlet (1603) are famous examples.

Based on Aristotle’s definition of the concept, at the beginning of a tragedy there is order in society. However, the order is disrupted by
something the source of which leads to chaos and disorder. Tragedies are characterised by extreme emotions. All feelings (love, anger, hate,
rivalry etc.) are experienced to the fullest.

Elements of Tragedy
1. Tragic Hero
Tragic hero is the central character in a tragedy (often a person of nobility) who has a character flaw (hamartia).

2. Hamartia 3. Hubris
Hamartia refers to tragic flaw or, more accurately, error of judgement that Hubris is the most common tragic flaw in tragedies. It is
the tragic flaw causes. His hamartia usually prevents the tragic hero from characterised by excessive pride; being very proud of one’s
seeing things as they are. (King Lear, for example, ) Tragic flaw is some own self.
kind of weakness in character. The tragic flaw of the tragic hero in classical
tragedies is usually overweening pride or confidence, also called hubris.

4. Anagnorisis
Anagnorisis is the Greek word for 'recognition' or 'discovery', used by Aristotle in his
Poetics to denote the turning point in a drama at which a character (usually the
protagonist) recognizes the true state of affairs, having previously been in error or
ignorance. The classic instance is Oedipus' recognition, in Oedipus Tyrannus, that he
himself has killed his own father Laius, married his mother Jocasta, and brought the
plague upon Thebes.
5. Peripeteia
Peripeteia is a sudden reversal of a character's
circumstances and fortunes, usually involving the
downfall of the protagonist in a tragedy, and often
coinciding with the 'recognition' or anagnorisis.

The anagnorisis is usually combined with the play's peripeteia or reversal of fortunes,
in comedy as in tragedy. Similarly, the plots of many novels involve crucial
anagnorises, e.g. Pip's discovery, in Great Expectations, that Magwitch rather than
Miss Havisham has been his secret benefactor.

6. Catastrophe
Catastrophe is the conclusion of a story or a play, particularly a tragedy.
Since the term is usually used in connection with a tragedy and involves
the death of the hero, it is sometimes used to mean an unhappy ending
in novels and stories, and even in life.
7. Catharsis
Catharsis is a word used by Aristotle in his Poetics to describe
the desired effect of tragedy, the ‘’purgation’’ of the emotions
of pity and fear; that is in feeling pity and fear for the tragic
hero, the viewer’s own emotional tensions are released and

In Shakespeare’s Othello, catastrophe is that part of the play when temporarily resolved. In short, it is a feeling that the audience
Othello murders Desdemona and commits suicide. feel when the initial balance and order are restored at the end of
a tragedy.

Types of Tragedy
1. Bourgeois or Domestic Tragedy
Domestic tragedy is a kind of tragedy in which the
leading characters belong to the middle class rather than
to the royal or noble ranks usually represented in tragic
drama, and in which the action concerns family affairs
rather than public matters of state.
2. Revenge Tragedy
Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi
(Mina Urgan’ın İngiliz Edebiyatı Tarihi isimli eserinden derlenmiştir. pp. 297-
300)
Webster’ın ikinci büyük tragedyası olan The Duchess of Malfi, yazarın
neredeyse Shakespeare’in düzeyine yaklaşan bir tragedya yazarı olduğunu
gösterir. Bu eser Revenge Tragedy türünün güzel bir örneği kabul edilebilir.
Eserde genç bir dul olan Malfi Düşesi, erdemli bir adam olan kâhyası
Antonio’ya sevdalanır. Düşesin abileri Kardinal ile Dük Ferdinand, hem böyle

PART 2: LITERARY FORMS AND GENRES 14

 Inspired by the Italian playwright Seneca, tragedies of
this kind are also known as ‘Tragedy of Blood’.
Revenge tragedies include a quest for vengeance,
excessive violence, bizarre criminal acts, intrigue and
insanity, scenes in graveyards, severed limbs and
mutilation. Revenge tragedies were popular during the
Elizabethan Age and the following 17th century.
bir evliliği soylu sınıftan gelen bir kadına yakıştıramadıkları, hem de kız
kardeşlerinin servetinde gözleri olduğu için düşesin evlenmesine izin
vermezler. Ama Düşes, kâhyasıyla gizlice nikâh kıyar, çocukları olur. Abileri,
Düşesin konağına yerleştirdikleri hafiyeleri Bosola sayesinde durumu
öğrenince, genç kadını korkunç bir biçimde cezalandırırlar. Delirmesi için
aklın alamayacağı işkenceler yaparlar, örneğin. Evi bir tımarhaneden alınan
akıl hastalarıyla doldurulur; kocasıyla çocuklarına tıpkı benzeyen

Examples: balmumundan yapılmış, canlı izlenimini veren heykeller kullanılarak,

Thomas Kyd’s Spanish Tragedy
William Shakespeare’s Hamlet
Christopher Marlowe’s The Jew of Malta
John Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi
sevdiklerinin nasıl öldürüldüğü Düşese gösterilir. Abilerinden biri, bir
perdenin arkasından düşese elini uzatıyormuş gibi yapar ama Düşesin
yakaladığı bu el, adamın kendi eli değil, bir ölünün kesilmiş elidir. Ne var ki,
Düşes son dakikaya değin aklını ve vakarını korur. Son olarak Bosola’ya
“Now what you please; what death?” (“Şimdi istediğini yap; nasıl öleceğim?”)
diye sorar. Bosola şöyle cevap verir: “Strangling” (“Boğularak”).
Oyunun başlangıcında sıradan bir kadın olan Düşes, acı çektikçe yücelir,
kötülüğe kurban giden gerçek bir tragedya kahramanına dönüşür. Düşese,
eşine ve çocuklarına bunca kötülük eden hainler de cezalarını bulurlar elbette.
Kız kardeşini delirtmek isteyen Ferdinand kendi delirir. Licanthropia illetine
tutulur; yani kendini kurt sanıp geceleri mezarlara saldırır, ölüleri topraktan
çıkarır, ceset parçalarını sırtına vurup, uluyarak koşup durur. Vicdan azabına
kapılan Bosola, Kardinali öldürür; deliren Ferdinand da Bosola’yı.

Comedy
Comedy in drama refers to a play written in a light and humorous style with laughable incidents and characters with a happy ending. As a
form of drama, comedy often deals with issues, either light or serious, in a humorous manner. The purpose of comedy is sometimes
entertainment and sometimes criticism through satire and/or irony.

The type of comedy that aims at laughter through witty remarks and
sometimes sarcasm is high comedy. In order for the audience to
understand high comedy, they should have an intellectual
background because high comedies often contain sophisticated
remarks. Shows by Cem Yılmaz are good examples of high
comedy.
On the other hand, low comedy aims at simple laughter and relies
mostly on physical humour (such as slipping on a banana peel or
getting punched in the face). Low comedies are for everyone and do
not require the audience to have an intellectual background.

Types of Comedy
1. Comedy of Errors
A comedy of errors is characterised by a series of comic events that are
caused by mistakes and mistaken identities. Dramatic irony is an
important component in this type of plays.
Shakespeare’s Comedy of Errors is one of the most popular examples.
The Comedy of Errors is one of William Shakespeare's early plays. It is
a short and farcical play with mistaken identity problems. The play tells
2. Comedy of Humours
During the Middle Ages and the Renaissance in England, the
term ‘humours’ referred to the four fluids of the body: blood,
phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile. If one fluid was dominant
then an imbalance would occur and affect the behaviour of the
person accordingly. In drama, the humours came to be used by
writers who designed types based on the theory of the

the story of two sets of twins that were separated at birth accidentally.
Antipholus of Syracuse and his servant, Dromio of Syracuse, arrive in
Ephesus, which turns out to be the home of their twin brothers,
Antipholus of Ephesus and his servant, Dromio of Ephesus. When the
imbalance of the fluids. By the 17th century, humour meant
‘mood’ or peculiarity. Comedy of Humours depicted humorous
characters whose behaviours were determined by a single trait
or humour.

Syracusans encounter the friends and families of their twins, a series of This genre is closely associated with Ben Jonson, a 17th-
wild mishaps based on mistaken identities lead to wrongful beatings, a century writer. His plays Everyman in his Humour and
near-seduction, the arrest of Antipholus of Ephesus, and false Everyman out of his Humour are examples.
accusations of infidelity, theft, madness, and demonic possession.

3. Comedy Of Manners 4. Sentimental Comedy

PART 2: LITERARY FORMS AND GENRES 15

 It is a type of comedy concerned with the intrigues, love
affairs, and behaviour of the elegant, witty, and sophisticated
members of the middle and upper classes. These plays
explore a universe where all values are bound up with
appearances. The actions of the characters who oppose or
ineptly and unsuccessfully imitate the manners of an
aristocratic society are the subjects of much ridicule and
laughter. Comedy of manners is closely associated with
Restoration Drama because the Restoration (the 18th
century) was the period when many comedies of manners
were written to criticise the newly-emerging upper-class
people and their wannabe manners.
Etherege’s The Man of Mode (1676) and Congreve’s The
Way of the World (1700) are plays of this type.
Sentimental comedies often end happily and depict good and bad
characters with extraordinary simplicity. The hero is ever magnanimous,
honourable, and hypersensitive to the sensibilities of other people. It
follows on from Restoration comedy and was a kind of reaction against
what was regarded immoral in the latter. In these plays, tears of the
spectators are stimulated by portraying virtue, first in distress but
eventually triumphant.
Sir Richard Steele’s The Conscious (1722) and Richard Cumberland’s The
West Indian (1771) are sentimental comedies.
5. Romantic Comedy
Romantic comedies are humorous plays in which love is the main theme.
Plays of this type often end in a happy marriage.
Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, As You Like It and Twelfth
Night are romantic comedies.

6. Comedy of Menace
The title “Comedy of Menace” immediately brings contradictions to mind because comedy is
generally something that makes people laugh. The word "menace," however, implies something
threatening and dangerous. In this type of comedies, comedy is used during a dangerous situation
to cause audiences to draw judgments about a particular character or communication. Irving
Ward, a critic in the 1950s, used "comedy of menace" in a review of several of Pinter's works.
Some plays are able to successfully mingle drama with comedy.

As a playwright, Harold Pinter is the innovator of this new kind of drama which becomes
famous as the comedy of menace. Harold Pinter begins his plays in our known, familiar world,
but gradually makes us move into the trajectory and psychodynamics of a world which is beyond
our comprehension. In Pinter's comedies of menace, the laughter and delight of the audience in
the same or all situations are immediately followed by a feeling of some impending disaster. The
feelings of insecurity and uncertainty throughout the play also enhance the menacing atmosphere
of Pinter's The Birthday Party.

Pinter's The Birthday Party is a perfect example of comedy of menace. Throughout the play, we
find that the hint of menace is inflected upon the individual freedom of a person, and it juxtaposes
the comic element drastically dilutes the comic appeal. Pinter shows his state in the existential
view that danger prevails everywhere and life cannot escape from it.

7. Farce
Farce provokes enjoyment of the simplest and most
basic kind. It is a form of popular low-comedy in The three terms Burlesque, Parody and Travesty are often used
which characters become involved in unlikely interchangeably.
situations. Physical actions, characters, and situations
Burlesque is a type of writing that tries to make something
in farcical plays are often exaggerated. Situations and
serious seem stupid.
events are improbable, impossible, and even fantastic.
Parody is a type writing, music, art, speech, etc. which
Unexpected appearances create surprises.
intentionally copies the style of someone famous or copies a
Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew (1592, The Merry
particular situation, making the features or qualities of the
Wives of Windsor (1602), and Twelfth Night (1623) are
original more noticeable in a way that is humorous.
farces.
Travesty is something which fails to represent the values and
qualities that it is intended to represent, in a way that is shocking
or offensive.

Other Dramatic Forms

PART 2: LITERARY FORMS AND GENRES 16

 1. Masque
A masque was a fairly elaborate form of
courtly entertainment which was particularly
popular in the reigns of Elizabeth I, James I,
and Charles I. The masque combined poetic
drama, song, dance and music. The costumes
were often sumptuous. The structure was
usually simple.
2. Melodrama
The term literally means " a play with music," and at one time it was applied to the opera
in a broad sense. Melodrama came into widespread use in England in the nineteenth
century as a device to circumvent the Licensing Act, which restricted "legitimate" plays
to the patent theatres which allowed musical entertainments in other theatres. The use of
songs, recitative, and incidental music disguised the dramatic nature of popular stage
pieces, and they came to be known as melodramas. The modern sense of melodrama
derives: an emotionally exaggerated conflict of pure maidenhood and scheming villainy
in a plot full of suspense.

3. Tragicomedy 4. Closet Drama

A tragicomedy is a play that combines elements of tragedy and comedy,
either by providing a happy ending to a potentially tragic story or by some
more complex blending of serious and light moods. In its broadest sense, the
term may be applied to almost any kind of drama that does not conform
strictly to comic or tragic conventions. The convention of tragicomedy
appears to have influenced Shakespeare's later plays, including The Winter's
Tale and Cymbeline, although the tragicomic pattern of sudden release from
deadly danger had appeared before in his Measure for Measure and The
Merchant of Venice.
A closet drama is a literary composition written in the
form of a play (usually as a dramatic poem), but intended
—or suited—only for reading in a closet (i.e. a private
study) rather than for stage performance. Senecan Tragedy
is thought to have been written for private recitation, and
there are several important examples of closet drama in
English, including Milton's Samson Agonistes (1671),
Byron's Manfred (1817), Shelley's Prometheus Unbound
(1820), and Arnold's Empedocles on Etna (1852).

5. Heroic Drama 6. Problem Play

A heroic drama is a kind of tragedy or tragicomedy that
came into vogue with the Restoration of the English
monarchy in 1660. Influenced by French classical tragedy
and its dramatic unities, it aimed at epic (thus 'heroic')
grandeur, usually by means of bombast, exotic settings,
and lavish scenery. The noble hero would typically be
caught in a conflict between love and patriotic duty,
leading to emotional scenes presented in a manner close to
opera. The leading English exponent of heroic drama was
John Dryden. His The Conquest of Granada (1670-1) and
Aureng-Zebe (1675) were both written in heroic couplets.
A problem play usually deals with a particular social problem in a realistic
manner designed to change public opinion; also called a thesis play.
Significant examples are Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House (1879), on women's
subordination in marriage, and George Bernard Shaw's Mrs Warren's
Profession (1902) on prostitution. In studies of Shakespeare, however, the
term has been used to designate a group of his plays written in the first years
of the 17th century: the 'dark comedies' Measure for Measure and All's Well
That Ends Well, and the tragicomedy Troilus and Cressida. Critics have
often been disturbed by the sombre and cynical mood of these plays, which
seems to clash oddly with their comic conventions.

PART 2: LITERARY FORMS AND GENRES 17

 PART 3: NARRATIVE ELEMENTS
1. Theme
Theme is the central or dominating idea in a literary work. It is also the message and moral implicit a literary work conveys. A theme is
often a generalisation about life and it can be summarised in a few words. A narrative does not necessarily have only one theme and may
have several.

For example, in most of Jane Austen’s novels marriage and love are central themes. The theme of Keats’s “Ode on a Grecian Urn” is ‘the
permanence of art and the shortness of human life.’ A recurrent theme in Chekhov’s short stories is ‘the loneliness of human soul’.

2. Setting, Atmosphere, Tone

Setting is the time and place in which the events in a literary work occur. There may be more than one setting in a story. The elements of
setting may include geographic location, physical and social environments, cultural attitudes, and the historical time in which the action takes
place.

Atmosphere is the prevailing emotional aura or tone in a literary work. It is the feelings that the narrative conveys to the reader through
setting and word choice. For example, an author might create a sinister atmosphere by using the night and an isolated place or a humorous
atmosphere by vivid colours, funny objects, strange clothes and/or light-hearted dialogues.

Closely related to atmosphere, tone is the writer or narrator’s attitude toward the subject of the passage. Tone may be communicated through
words and details that express particular emotions and evoke an emotional response in the reader. The tone of a writer may be serious,
joking, funny or harsh. The narrative tone may change throughout the story and it may also suggest pity, mercy or hostility towards a certain
matter.

3. Conflict
Conflict is the force that drives a story. The conflict in a work of fiction is the struggle between opposing forces in the plot of a story. This
struggle can occur between a character and an outside force, such as another character, society, nature, or fate. It can also take place within a
character faced with conflicted feelings or indecision about how to act. The most common types of conflict that are found in literary works
are as follows:

1. Person vs. Person

In this type of external conflict, there is disagreement between two characters (usually between the protagonist and the antagonist). In
William Golding’s novel The Lord of the Flies, for example, Ralph (the leader of the “good guys” and also the novel’s protagonist)
steadily comes into conflict with Jack (a bully who later forms a tribe of hunters, the antagonist).

2. Person vs. Self

This type of conflict is an internal one in which a character struggles with his own self and often has trouble deciding what to do. In
Shakespeare’s famous play Hamlet, Hamlet, the protagonist, suffers from this type of conflict. Although he knows that he needs to make
a move and avenge his father’s death by killing his uncle Claudius, he struggles with his doubts about whether he can trust the ghost and
whether killing Claudius is the appropriate thing to do.

3. Person vs. Society

In this type of external conflict, there is disagreement between the character and the society or culture (school, laws, traditions, religion
etc.) he lives in. A black person ostracised by the white society is an example of this type of conflict. Also, in 1984 by George Orwell,
the protagonist Winston Smith is in conflict with the uniform society he lives in. He is in conflict with society because of his views about
individuality, freedom of expression and free thinking. His ideas put him in conflict with the repressive methods of the Party and Big
Brother.

4. Person vs. Nature

This is also a type of external conflict in which a character has trouble with a part of the nature (an animal, a storm, the sea etc.). For
example, in Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea, the old man Santiago struggles against nature embodied in a fish. On the other

PART 3: NARRATIVE ELEMENTS 1

 hand, In Herman Melville's classic novel Moby Dick, Captain Ahab hunts the giant whale Moby Dick. In a more contemporary example,
Finding Nemo, the clownfish Marlin struggles against the vastness and danger of the ocean to find his son Nemo.

4. Plot
Plot is the sequence of events in a story. It is the organisation of incidents and characters in a work of literature; the plan, design, and/or
pattern of events. In The Poetics, Aristotle argues that a good plot has a beginning, middle and an end. It should be constructed in such a way
that no incident can be displaced or omitted without destroying the unity of the whole. This is the ideal, well-knit plot distinguished from the
‘episodic’ plot which is consisted of disconnected incidents succeeding one another without probable or necessary sequence. Whatever its
structural arrangement, a plot usually contains conflict which provides basis for action. Today, a plot is more flexible than the definition
provided by Aristotle. No definition or theory of plot can cover adequately the variety of works produced by modern novelists like James
Joyce, Virginia Woolf, Joseph Conrad and Franz Kafka.

The most common way of analysing a traditional (triangular) plot is

by using a pyramid devised by the German critic Gustav Freytag,
also known as Freytag’s pyramid. Freytag’s pyramid divides the
plot into five parts which are exposition, rising action, climax,
falling action, and denouement.

Freytag’s Pyramid

It is traditionally assumed that a plot has a triangular pattern as implied by Freytag’s Pyramid. However, if there is no climax in a story and
if the events follow a linear, chronological order this is called a linear plot. The circular plot, on the other hand, is very similar to the
triangular plot structure with only one difference: in circular plots, the action ends in where it has started. If a story ends with the climax and
offers no resolution, thus leaving the reader with suspense, this type of plot structure is called open-ended plot structure.

1. Exposition
The part of a work in which the audience is prepared to the work. The setting is given and some of the characters and other information
necessary to the understanding of the story are introduced in the exposition. In other words, this is the part where the reader is given
some background information.

2. Rising Action
Rising action is the part of the play that precedes the climax. This is also the part where struggle or conflict in a story begins to arise.
Often, the protagonist begins to have a problem that leads to the development and intensifying of the conflict. The rising action continues
through successive stages of conflict up to the climax or the turning point.
The hesitating failure of Hamlet to kill Claudius at prayer in Hamlet is the rising action.

3. Climax (Turning Point)

Climax is the moment in a story when there is a definite change in direction and one becomes aware that the story is now about to move
towards its end. It is also a moment where the tension reaches a peak.
The deaths of Romeo and Juliet in the Capulet tomb is the climactic moment in Romeo and Juliet.

An anti-climax occurs when an event or experience in a story causes disappointment because it is less exciting than was
expected or because it happens immediately after a much more interesting or exciting event.

4. Falling Action
Falling action is the part of a story which follows climax. In the falling action, the tension lessens and the story begins to move towards
its conclusion. This is the part where the crisis in a story is resolved. In the fairy tale Cinderella, Cinderella goes to live with Prince
Charming in a beautiful castle on a hill in the falling action part.

5. Resolution (Denouement)
Denouement (French for “unknotting”) is the part of resolution where all mystery in a story is solved and the story is concluded. In
Shakespeare’s As You Like It, couples are married, evildoers repent, the identities of disguised characters are revealed and the order is

PART 3: NARRATIVE ELEMENTS 2

 restored.

5. Narrator
The teller of a story in a short story or a novel is called narrator. The author and the narrator may not be the same person. (Remember the
difference between poet and speaker!) The narrative point of view in a work of fiction refers to the perspective through which the story is
told. It is also the position a writer assumes while narrating or discussing a subject.
It is the eye through which the reader looks at the events in a story. The narrator may be a character in the story (the protagonist, or a minor
character, or an outsider) or simply an outside voice. Narration may also alternate between different voices.

Although in modern fiction many writers use a combination of a variety of points of view, major narrative points of view used in
literature are first-person and third-person points of view.

1. First-Person Narrator
The story is told in the first person, using ‘I’ and/or ‘we’. The first-person narrator is usually a character in the story but may or may not
be directly involved in the narrated story. Also, the narrator may be the protagonist or a minor character in the story. The following
paragraph is written in first person:
“I didn’t say anything. I just stared and hoped that he could read my face. It was a flat, squat house with dingy grey walls. Everything
about it was ugly. Its windows were grey, with slatted shades, and its door had a cheap plastic welcome mat. It didn’t even have a proper
lawn, just some patchy grass and a few scraggly dandelions. I couldn’t imagine ever calling this place home.”

2. Second-Person Narrator
In second-person narration, the narrator uses the pronoun ‘you’ to address the reader directly. There are some stories written in second-
person (addressing the audience); however, they are not very common. Second-person narration is more likely to be found in guidebooks,
manuals, advertisements etc.

Examples:
“To make lemonade, add the juice of lemons to water and sugar."

“To add oil to your car engine, unscrew the cap, place a funnel inside, and slowly add the oil.”
“You must be the change you wish to see in the world.” Mahatma Gandhi

3. Third-Person Narrator
In third-person narration, the narrator is an outsider and not a participant in the story and he/she narrates the story from outside the
perspective of any character in the story. The narrator refers to the characters in the story by using ‘he,’ ‘she,’ or ‘it.’ The third-person
narrator may be omniscient, limited (selective) omniscient, or objective.

Omniscient narrator
The omniscient narrator narrates the story from a god-like, all-knowing perspective. He knows everything about all of the characters
in the story: what they have done, what they feel and think, what they will do etc. The perspective changes from one character to
another. The writer can see into the minds of characters and their inner thoughts. Omniscient narration is common in fairy tales.
Notice how the narrator can read the character’s mind in the following excerpt:
“John stared grimly at the shabby house. He noticed the peeling paint, the cheap doormat. His eyes caught sight of a piece of plastic
sticking out from the dirt. It was a child’s truck. Somehow, the sight of this truck made him terribly sad. He felt overwhelmed by a
sense of loss.”

Limited (selective) omniscient narrator

In this type of narration, the god-like, all-knowing narration is limited to only one character (usually the protagonist) or a few major
characters in the story. These characters are called focus characters. The narrator tells the reader everything about the selected
character(s) and does not mention much about the others. For example, in Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, the story is told in
third person; however, Elizabeth Bennet serves as the character through whose perspective the reader looks at the events (focus
character).

Objective narrator

PART 3: NARRATIVE ELEMENTS 3

 In this type of narration (also called dramatic point of view), the narrator is like a person who watches everything from the outside.
The narrator does not know about the feelings or thoughts of the characters. The objective narrator is almost like a recorder and only
tells us what he sees and/or hears.

KEY POINT
The fallible or unreliable narrator is one whose perception, interpretation, and evaluation of the matters he/she narrates do not
coincide. The narrator deliberately misdirects and confuses us. The unnamed narrator in Chuck Palahniuk’s suffers from a wicked
case of insomnia, deep depression, and existential confusion, which immediately calls his viewpoint into question. Our suspicions
deepen when he joins an underground fight club as a form of therapy, a cult-like group that participates in terrorist activities. The
reader is left wondering about his moral compass. Later, the novel’s big reveal makes us question everything we’ve been told.

6. Character
Characters are the people, animals, or animate objects in a story and the plot mostly evolves around the actions of characters. It is possible to
group characters according to their function in a story.

Characters according to Function in Narrative

1. Protagonist
The protagonist is the most important character in a play, story, or another literary work. He/she is the central or principal character in
a story. It serves as the focus. Traditionally, the protagonist is also referred to as the hero (female heroine) in literature. Heroes in
stories typically possess admirable qualities such as idealism, honesty, and/or courage. The protagonist does not necessarily have to
be a good character. For example, in Richard III by Shakespeare, the protagonist Richard III is an evil character.

KEY POINT: An anti-hero is the central character who does not conform to the pattern of the traditional hero. An anti-hero is not
necessarily capable of heroic deeds, dashing, strong, brave and resourceful. The anti-hero is often bound to fail. An early example is
Cervantes’s . The principal male characters in several of the novels by Graham Greene and Kingsley Amis are also anti-heroes.

2. Antagonist
The antagonist is the rival of a protagonist. It is the major character in opposition to the protagonist of a narrative. The antagonist
does not necessarily have to be a bad character.

In Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Prince Hamlet is the protagonist and Claudius is the antagonist.
In Othello, Othello is the protagonist and Iago is the antagonist.

3. Confidant(e)
A confidant (female-confidante) is a person in whom secrets, especially love affairs are confided. A confidant is a character in drama
or fiction whose function is to listen to the intimate feelings and intentions of the protagonist. Traditionally, maids or elderly people
serve as confidant(e)s in stories.
In Hamlet, Horatio is Hamlet’s trusted friend and thus serves as a confidant.

4. Foil
A foil serves as a mirror and serves to bring out the qualities of another. A foil makes another character seem better, more prominent,
or different in an important way. The foil makes another character’s good or bad characteristics more noticeable.
In Hamlet, Laertes, a man of action, is a foil to Hamlet who is a man of contemplation.

5. Fool
A fool is a character (especially in drama) who speaks wisely under the appearance of folly. The fool character is more associated
with drama as vehicles for social satire. Historically, fools were attendants at court. From medieval times until the 17th century, fools
or jesters were kept at court, and frequently by wealthy nobles.
In King Lear, the fool is a strangely wise companion to Lear. He travels in the storm with Lear and comments on the behaviours of
the mankind.

Character Types
1. Flat Character

PART 3: NARRATIVE ELEMENTS 4

 Flat characters are one-dimensional characters that the reader does not know much about in a story. A flat character is also called a
type or a caricature.
Mr. Filch in Harry Potter, the caretaker of Hogwart's School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, is a flat character, his only undying
obsession being finding students breaking school rules. He does not serve any other purpose throughout the story.
Charles Dickens also uses types and caricatures, people whom we recognise the moment they appear in the story.

2. Round Character
Round characters are multifaceted, complex characters in a story. They often serve as central characters.

In Harry Potter, Harry Potter, Ronald Weasley, Hermione Granger, Ginny Weasley and Severus Snape are round characters.

3. Stock/Stereotype Character
Stock or stereotype characters are familiar figures who appear regularly in certain literary forms. These are often universally-
recognised stereotypical characters (archetypes), and are also often flat.

Among the most familiar stereotype characters of contemporary fiction and cinema are tough, realistic, and cynical detective, the
golden-hearted whore, the absent-minded professor, and the strong, silent man of West who rides out of dawn, rights a wrong, and
rides into the sunset.

4. Dynamic Character
A dynamic character is a developing character that changes, grows and develops in the course of the story. Characters of this type
often learn a vital lesson.

5. Static Character
Static characters do not change throughout the story. They can be either flat characters or round characters that resist the urge to
change.

7. Motif
Motif is a literary technique that consists of a repeated element that has symbolic significance to a literary work. Sometimes, it is a recurring
image. Other times, it is a repeated word, phrase, or topic expressed in language. A motif can be a recurring situation or action. It can be a
sound or smell, a temperature, even a colour. The key aspect is that a motif repeats, and through this repetition helps to illuminate the
dominant ideas, central themes, and deeper meaning of a story.

In Francis Ford Coppola’s Godfather series, oranges are a visual motif. Oranges are repeatedly featured on screen just before a character
dies.

In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, wealth and finance (the corruption of the American Dream), time and clocks (our relationship
with the past and future) are motifs.

8. Suspense
Suspense is a feeling of excitement mixed with anxiety or tension. Suspense is also an element used by authors to create anxiety and
excitement in the reader. For example, a badly-wounded protagonist creates suspense in the course of the story, and makes the reader ask:
“What next?”

9. Literary Devices in Prose Writing

1. Flashback
Flashback is also a device pertaining to plot. It is a scene inserted into a film, novel, story, or play showing events which happened at an
earlier time. In a fictional passage when a character pauses to remember something that happened prior to current action is called
flashback.

The purpose is to make a comparison between the present action and something that happened in the past or to provide additional
background information about the characters and/or events. This technique may also add suspense to the narrative. It is frequently used in
modern cinema and fiction.

2. Flash-Forward
Flash-forward is the opposite of flashback. It is the use of a future scene that disrupts the plot in its chronological order. In A Christmas
Carol by Charles Dickens, the protagonist Scrooge (a very stingy and ill-tempered character) is taken forward in time to visit his own

PART 3: NARRATIVE ELEMENTS 5

 funeral. He sees that everybody is happy and that no one is sad about his death. After he comes back from the visit, he decides to become
a kinder person.
KEY POINT: Foreshadowing and flash-forward are different literary devices. Foreshadowing is only a hint (a shadow) of the events to
come. Flash-forward is a complete scene from the future. Remember that the chronological sequence and/or scene must change when
flash-forward is used as a technique.

3. Foreshadowing
Foreshadowing is a device pertaining to plot. It is a device in which the writer places clues in a story to prepare the reader for events that
are going to happen later. Foreshadowing may clearly foretell an event or merely hint at it. It can create a feeling of suspense, help draw
the reader into the story, or add layers of meaning that are fully revealed at the conclusion of the tale.

When we look at this sentence, “He was crying in the middle of everyone not knowing that the incident that made him cry like a child
that day was also going to turn him into a monster,” we, as the reader, have a clue/hint that the person will become a monster in the
future, although we do not yet know how.
An example of foreshadowing can be found in “The Story of an Hour” by Kate Chopin. In the introductory sentence, the author states
that Mrs. Mallard, the protagonist, was "afflicted with a heart trouble" and "great care was taken to break to her as gently as possible the
news of her husband's death.” In the end, her husband walks through the door, unharmed, and Mrs. Mallard is so shocked that she has a
heart attack and dies. Therefore, the statement that she had heart trouble was a subtle hint of what was to come in the end.

KEY POINT: Suspense is a feeling of excitement mixed with anxiety or tension. Suspense is also an element used by authors to create
anxiety and excitement in the reader. For example, a badly-wounded protagonist creates suspense and makes the reader ask “What next?”

4. In Medias Res
In medias res is a Latin expression that means ‘into the middle of things’. The writer starts in the middle of the action at some point,
when a good deal has already happened, as in most epics like the Old English epic Beowulf. The reader is then able to go back and forth
in time between incidents. John Milton also uses the method in Paradise Lost by beginning his narrative in Hell, after the fall of the rebel
angels.

5. Stream Of Consciousness
Stream of consciousness is a term generally used synonymously with ‘interior monologue’. It is a technique in literature which is used to
depict the various thoughts and feelings passing through the mind of a character. Practitioners of the stream-of-consciousness technique
assume that the significant existence of man can be found in his mind, in the thoughts and feelings which pass through his mind, rather
than in the outside world, and that these thoughts and feelings do not follow any logical pattern and they are determined by free
psychological association.
The stream-of-consciousness technique was used and developed by James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, and William Faulkner. The most
famous novels written with this technique are: Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway (1925) and To the Lighthouse (1927), Joyce’s Ulysses (1922) and
Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury (1931).

Ulysses is a novel by the Irish writer James Joyce. It is the account of the events of one day in the lives of its three leading characters:
Leopold Bloom, his wife Molly and Stephen Dedalus. The novel is set in Dublin in June 1904. The plot follows the wanderings of
Leopold and Stephen in Dublin and their eventual meeting. These wanderings are matched by inward wanderings into consciousness.
The last chapter of the novel is a monologue by Molly Bloom. The various chapters roughly correspond to the episodes of Homer’s
Odyssey: Stephen representing Telemachus, Bloom Odysseus and Molly Penelope. In the extract given below, Bloom’s thoughts and
feelings are narrated through the stream-of-consciousness technique:

‘’Didn’t let her see me in her profile. Still, you never know. Pretty girls and ugly men marrying. Beauty and the beast. Besides I can’t be
so if Molly. Took off her hat to show her hair. Wide brim bought to hide her face, meeting someone might know her, bend down or carry
a bunch of flowers to smell…’’

6. Authorial Intrusion
Authorial or narrative intrusion is an interesting narrative technique whereby the author of a text directly speaks to the reader or
comments on a certain object or event that occurs or happens in the story. For example, while narrating the story of a poor family, the
narrator may stop to express his/her personal opinion on how poor families are actually an outcome of wrong political strategies.

Throughout Northanger Abbey, Austen passes judgement on the characters, 18th-century society and the disillusioned readers of gothic
novels. The following intrusion made by Austen mocks the character Mrs Thorpe who tends to talk too much especially when it is
regarding herself: "This brief account of the family is intended to supersede the necessity of a long and minute detail from Mrs Thorpe
herself, of her past adventures and sufferings, which might otherwise be expected to occupy the three or four following chapters."

PART 3: NARRATIVE ELEMENTS 6

 In Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, Jane Eyre is the first-person narrator, but Brontë often intrudes and speaks to the reader directly, even
using the word “reader." For example, Brontë writes: “A new chapter in a novel is something like a new scene in a play; and when I draw
up the curtain this time, reader, you must fancy you see a room in the George Inn at Millcote, with such large figured papering on the
walls as inns have; such a carpet, such furniture, such ornaments on the mantle-piece…”

Metafiction
Magic Realism

magic realism: : Magical realism is a genre of literature that depicts the real world as having an undercurrent of magic or fantasy. Within a
work of magical realism, the world is still grounded in the real world, but fantastical elements are considered normal in this world. Like fairy
tales, magical realism novels, novellas, and short stories blur the line between fantasy and reality.

PART 3: NARRATIVE ELEMENTS 7

 English Literature – Subject Test 5 5. The major conflict in Charles Dickens’ autobiographical novel
Literary Genres: Prose and Drama David Copperfield is that David struggles to become a man in a
cruel world, with little money and few people to guide him.
What type of conflict is explicated above?
1. The ---- is an early form of the novel, usually a first-person narrative,
A) man vs. man
relating the episodic adventures of a rogue or lowborn adventurer.
B) man vs. self
The hero drifts from place to place and from one social milieu to
C) man vs. society
another in an effort to survive. Nikolay Gogol’s Dead Souls (1842),
D) man vs. nature
Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn (1884), and Thomas Mann’s E) man vs. fate
Confessions of Felix Krull (1954) are examples to this type of novel.
Choose the option which best completes the statement.
A) Bildungsroman 6. ---- is a narrative technique that allows a writer to present past
B) anti-novel events during current events, in order to provide background for
C) epistolary novel the current narration. By giving material that occurred prior to the
D) novel of manners present event, the writer provides the reader with insight into a
E) picaresque novel character’s motivation and or background to a conflict. This is done
by various methods, narration, dream sequences, and memories.
Which literary device used in prose fiction is defined above?
2. “He is young Leopold, as in a retrospective arrangement, a mirror A) Flashback
within a mirror (hey, presto!), he beholdeth himself. That young B) Flash-forward
figure of then is seen, precious manly, walking on a nipping C) Revelation
morning from the old house in Clambrassil to the high school, his D) Telegraphing
book satchel on him bandolier wise, and in it a goodly hunk of E) In medias res
wheaten loaf, a mother’s thought.”
The foregoing excerpt from Ulysses by James Joyce uses ---- as its 7. - A woman has been saving painfully to buy a golden watch. Just
narrative technique. hours after buying the watch, her daughter arrives home with the
A) authorial Intrusion same watch as a gift for her!
B) in medias res - A man branches from the main road to avoid being hit by a
C) unreliable narration speeding car and is suddenly hit by a truck!
D) objective narration What type of irony do the foregoing incidents exemplify?
E) stream of consciousness A) Romantic Irony
B) Dramatic Irony
C) Verbal Irony
3. The genre of ---- was very popular during the Elizabethan and D) Situational Irony
Jacobean periods in English Literature. An early example is Thomas E) Cinematic Irony
Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy; probably the most famous example is
Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Seneca’s works were first translated into the
English language in 1559, and by 1581 Senecan tragedies had 8. ---- is a literary form, usually characterized by its treatment of
circulated widely among the English literate. chivalry, that came into being in France in the mid-12th century. It
Choose the option which best completes the statement. had antecedents in many prose works from classical antiquity, but as
A) revenge tragedy a distinctive genre it was developed in the context of the aristocratic
B) tragicomedy courts of such patrons as Eleanor of Aquitaine.
C) bourgeois tragedy Choose the option which best completes the statement.
D) Greek tragedy A) Tragedy
E) cathartic tragedy B) Comedy
C) Tragicomedy
D) Satire
4. Hansel walked ahead of Gretel; after all, he knew he belonged in the E) Romance
front because Gretel was just a girl. Gretel dropped breadcrumbs
behind her as she went, knowing that her bumbling brother
couldn’t be counted on to find his way home from the outhouse, let 9. The ---- is usually the wicked character in a story, and, in an
alone from the middle of the woods. Ahead of them, an old witch important and special sense, the evil machinator or plotter in a play.
waited, her stomach rumbling at the thought of what a delicious Choose the option which best completes the sentence.
dinner the two plump children would make. A) foil
What is the narrative point of view employed in the foregoing B) protagonist
excerpt? C) villain
A) Objective narration D) fool
B) Subjective narration E) archetype
C) First-person point of view
D) Third-person omniscient
E) Selective narration

ÖABT English Literature Subject Tests pg.9

10. ---- is a personal error in a protagonist’s personality that brings
about his tragic downfall in a tragedy. This defect in a hero’s
personality is also known as a “tragic flaw”. Aristotle used the word
in his Poetics where it is taken as a mistake or error in judgment.
The term envelops wrongdoings which may be accidental or
deliberate.
Which literary device is defined?
A) Pastiche
B) Nemesis
C) Epiphany
D) Hamartia
E) Hubris
11. ---- is a genre of novels that have an exciting undertaking
involving risk and physical danger, as its main storyline.
A) Adventure novel
B) Absurd fiction
C) Comic novel
D) Juvenile literature
E) Tragedy
12. ---- is an artistic form in which human or individual vices, folly,
abuses, or shortcomings are held up to censure by means of
ridicule, derision, burlesque, irony, or other methods, sometimes
with an intent to bring about improvement. Literature and drama
are its chief vehicles, but it is also found in such mediums as film,
the visual arts (e.g., caricatures), and political cartoons.
Choose the literary device that best completes the statement.
A) Hyperbole
B) Tragedy
C) Satire
D) Cosmic Irony
E) Metaphor
13. ---- is a modern term invented as the opposite of a word of Latin
origin meaning “nowhere land”. It is also applied to any alarmingly
unpleasant imaginary world, usually of the projected future. The
term is also applied to fictional works depicting such worlds
Choose the option which best completes the sentence.
A) Utopia
B) Paradise
C) Conceit
D) Dystopia
E) Magic realism
14. I. Larry does not want his father at home in the short story “My
Oedipus Complex.”
II. Angela in “Legacy” commits suicide because she cannot decide
whether her love for a man who is not her husband is right or wrong.
III. The old man in “The Old Man and the Sea” tries to survive and
struggle with the sea.
What types of conflicts are observed in the given situations
respectively?
A) person vs. society / person vs. self / person vs. society
B) person vs. person / person vs. self / person vs. nature
C) person vs. person / person vs. self / person vs. society
D) person vs. society / person vs. person / person vs. nature
E) person vs. nature / person vs. self / person vs. society
15. ---- refers to a genre of dramatic comedy that focuses on a character
or range of characters, each of whose two or more overriding traits
dominate their personality, desires, and conduct. Ben Jonson’s
Every Man in His Humour is one of the most popular examples of
this genre in English literature.
Choose the comedy type which best completes the statement.
A) Tragicomedy
B) Comedy of Manners
C) Farce
D) Comedy of Humours
E) Melodrama
16. In Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, before Mr. Rochester and Jane’s
wedding day, the chestnut tree is split up in thunder. This event
indicates that something unpleasant will probably happen in the
upcoming marriage ceremony of Mr. Rochester and Jane.
This is an example of ----.
A) irony
B) foreshadowing
C) metaphor
D) personification
E) euphemism
17. Which of the following is a characteristic of the Gothic Novel?
A) There are elements of mystery and terror.
B) Reason is the central subject matter.
C) Challenging life conditions are described in detail.
D) Ordinary characters are turned into real heroes.
E) Scientific motifs are an essential part of such works.
18. A novel that has as its setting a period of history and that attempts to
convey the spirit, manners, and social conditions of a past age with
realistic detail and fidelity (which is in some cases only apparent
fidelity) to historical fact. The work may deal with actual historical
personages, as does Robert Graves’s I, Claudius, or it may contain a
mixture of fictional and historical characters.
Which novel type is explicated above?
A) Western
B) Historical
C) Bildungsroman
D) Epistolary
E) Picaresque
19. ---- is a common form of third-person narration in which the teller
of the tale, who often appears to speak with the voice of the author
himself, assumes an all-knowing perspective on the story being
told: diving into private thoughts, narrating secret or hidden events,
jumping between spaces and times.
Choose the option which best completes the given statement.
A) Unreliable narration
B) Objective narration
C) Omniscient narration
D) Limited narration
E) Intrusive narration
ÖABT English Literature Subject Tests pg.10
20. Which of the given situations exemplifies a different type of 25. ---- places greater emphasis on physical action and gags, and its
conflict? verbal jokes do not require much intellect to understand.
A) In The Lord of the Flies by William Golding, Ralph steadily comes A) High comedy
into conflict with Jack. Jack and his tribe give in to their savage B) Satiric comedy
instinct and make attempts to hunt or kill the civilized batch of boys C) Sentimental comedy
headed by Ralph. D) Comedy of manners
B) In Harper Lee’s novel To Kill a Mockingbird, an honest lawyer E) Low comedy
Atticus Finch goes up against the racist culture in which he lives
because he has the courage to defend a black man.
C) In Hamlet by Shakespeare, Hamlet wants to kill his father’s
murderer Claudius, but he also looks for a proof to decide and Subject Test X – Answer Key
justify his action ultimately ruining his life and the lives of his loved
1. 6. 11. 16. 21.
ones.
D) In Doctor Faustus by Christopher Marlowe, Faustus thinks honestly 2. 7. 12. 17. 22.
about repenting, acting upon the advice of “the good angel” but 3. 8. 13. 18. 23.
“the bad angel” or the evil inside him distracts him by saying that it 4. 9. 14. 19. 24.
is all too late. 5. 10. 15. 20. 25.
E) Because Othello promotes a person other than him, Iago, in the
play Othello by Shakespeare, sets up scenarios in which Othello
confronts insurmountable obstacles.

21. Which of the following is a difference between a play and a prose

work of fiction?
A) Plays are composed of only narrative.
B) Plays are written to be read by a certain audience.
C) Plays are generally addressed not to readers but to spectators.
D) Plays are more realistic than a work of fiction.
E) Plays do not make use of descriptions.

22. Especially in ancient Greek Drama, the group of people who

commented on events that took place on the stage was the ----.
A) chorus
B) protagonist
C) confidante
D) narrator
E) foil

23. In which type of irony does the audience know something that
the character on the stage does not?
A) Intentional Irony
B) Cosmic Irony
C) Verbal Irony
D) Dramatic Irony
E) Situational Irony

24. How like a fawning* publican he looks! (*fawn: yalakalık etmek)

I hate him for he is a Christian;
But more, for that in low simplicity
He lends out money gratis, and brings down
The rate of usance* here with us in Venice. (*usance: faiz)

The speech above given by Shylock in The Merchant of Venice by

Shakespeare is inaudible to the other characters on stage and it
is about his hatred of Antonio. The speech is also directed to the
audience. This is an example of ----.
A) aside
B) prologue
C) dialogue
D) paradox
E) epigram

ÖABT English Literature Subject Tests pg.11

 English Literature – Subject Test 6 8. A/an ---- character in a novel or other forms of literature is a
Literary Genres: Prose and Drama character that does not remain the same throughout the story.
A) static
B) foil
C) antagonist
1. Purgation or purification of emotions in drama, usually at the end of
D) dynamic
a tragedy, is called ----.
E) confidant
Choose the option which best completes the sentence.
A) catastrophe
B) hamartia
9. What type of character is often associated with stereotypicality in
C) tragic flaw
a work of literature?
D) catharsis
A) Stock character
E) hubris
B) Protagonist
C) Round character
D) Dynamic character
2. Which component of drama indicates that there will be a small
E) Foil
change in theme, setting, or characters?
A) scene
B) irony
10. In what type of novel does the author function as the editor of
C) aside
letters?
D) soliloquy
A) Gothic novel
E) allusion
B) Picaresque novel
C) Historical novel
D) Realistic novel
3. In ----, the morality and behaviours of the upper-middle and
E) Epistolary novel
upper classes are ridiculed and satirised.
A) Comedia dell’Arte
B) Sentimental Comedy
11. What is the death or destruction of the tragic hero called in
C) Comedy of Manners
drama?
D) Satiric Comedy
A) tragic flaw
E) Comedy of Errors
B) catharsis
C) hamartia
D) catastrophe
4. The religious plays of the medieval ages are often categorised
E) hubris
under ----.
A) literary drama
B) heroic drama
12. In ---- novel, the atmosphere is created through supernatural
C) liturgical drama
and mystic elements like monsters, angels, ghosts, and demons.
D) mysterious drama
A) Realistic
E) moral drama
B) Historical
C) Epistolary
D) Gothic
5. Which of the following refers to the plot section that refers to the
E) Psychological
most important or exciting point in a story or situation, usually
happening near the end of a literary work?
A) falling action
13. In ----novels , the focus is on the thoughts, feelings, motives, and
B) plot
inner states of characters.
C) resolution
A) gothic
D) climax
B) epistolary
E) protagonist
C) psychological
D) picaresque
E) detective
6. The plot of Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë consists elements of
the ---- which is the type of a novel that tells about the
maturation of a child from childhood towards adulthood.
14. In the play Our Day Out by Willy Russel, Carol says to Mr. Briggs
A) psychological novel
“I’ve seen you goin’ home in your car, passin’ us on the street. And
B) epistolary novel
the way y’look at us. You hate all kids.” At the end of the play Mr.
C) Bildungsroman
Briggs really passes by Carol in his car and does not recognise her.
D) gothic novel
This can be considered an example of ----.
E) picaresque novel
A) flashback
B) aside
C) conflict
7. ---- is a device that allows the writer to present events that
D) flash-forward
happened before the time of the current events in a story.
E) foreshadowing
A) foreshadowing
B) climax
C) flashback
D) conflict
E) plot

ÖABT English Literature Subject Tests pg.12

15. A ---- is an extended and detailed work of prose fiction 21. Also known as the fallible narrator, a/an ---- is a narrator, whether in
containing several characters, action, as well as a plot and literature, film, or theatre, whose credibility is compromised. The
subplots. point of using this type of a narrator is to reveal in an interesting way
A) short story the gap between appearance and reality, and to show how human
B) novel beings distort or conceal the latter.
C) poem Choose the option which best completes the statement.
D) satire A) intrusive narrator
E) tragedy B) unreliable narrator
C) omniscient narrator
D) objective narrator
16. Among the common fiction genres, ---- can be described as E) external narrator
fiction in which events evoke a feeling of dread in both the
characters and the reader.
A) humour 22. A/an ---- is a story, play, poem, picture, or other work in which the
B) horror characters and events represent particular qualities or ideas, related
C) fiction in verse to morals, religion, or politics. One of the most popular works of
D) legend this type is Animal Farm by George Orwell.
E) mystery Choose the option which best completes the sentence.
A) assonance
B) caricature
17. ---- is the feeling of excitement or nervousness which you have C) burlesque
when you are waiting for something to happen and are uncertain D) archetype
about what is going to be. E) allegory
A) Catharsis
B) Climax
C) Hubris 23. The ---- is a work of fiction that re-creates a social world, conveying
D) Suspense with finely detailed observation the customs, values, and mores of a
E) Flashback highly developed and complex society. Some novelists who wrote
this type of novels are Jane Austen and Charles Dickens.
Choose the novel type that best completes the statement.
18. One of the characters in a story or poem who deceives frustrates, A) Apprenticeship Novel
or works against the main character is called ----. B) Epistolary Novel
A) antagonist C) Novel of Manners
B) dynamic D) Historical Novel
C) protagonist E) Novel of Society
D) static
E) round
24. A person or thing that appears or is introduced into a situation
suddenly and unexpectedly and provides an artificial or contrived
19. He had no idea of the disastrous chain of events to follow. solution to an apparently insoluble difficulty. The term was first used
What may the given sentence imply in a novel? in ancient Greek and Roman drama, where it meant the timely
A) The antagonist informs the reader about the promising future of the appearance of a deity to unravel and resolve the plot.
protagonist who is in a desperate situation. Which of the following literary terms is described above?
B) One of the flat characters learns that s/he is going to be defeated by A) In medias res
the protagonist in the later chapters. B) Deus ex machina
C) The readers are informed that the novel will have a bad end for the C) Brevis in longo
major characters. D) Dramatis personae
D) There are several events in the novel that round and flat characters E) Magnum opus
will go through.
E) Unaware of the further developments, the reader learns that
something tragic is about to happen to/for the protagonist. 25. In dramatic plays that are written within the conventions of ----, the
morality and behaviours of the upper-middle and upper classes are
ridiculed and satirised.
20.In literary criticism, ---- is a narrative mode that seeks to portray an Choose the option which best completes the sentence.
individual’s point of view by giving the written equivalent of the A) Commedia dell’Arte
character’s thought process, either in a loose interior monologue, or B) Sentimental Comedy
in connection to his or her actions. This type of writing is usually C) Comedy of Manners
regarded as a special form of interior monologue and is D) Satiric Comedy
characterised by associative leaps in thought and lack of E) Comedy of Errors
punctuation. Virginia Woolf is one of the best-known users of this
writing style. Subject Test X – Answer Key
Choose the option which best completes the sentence.
A) narrative hook 1. 6. 11. 16. 21.
B) plot twist 2. 7. 12. 17. 22.
C) stream of consciousness 3. 8. 13. 18. 23.
D) paradox
4. 9. 14. 19. 24.
E) story within story
5. 10. 15. 20. 25.

ÖABT English Literature Subject Tests pg.13

 English Literature – Subject Test 7 7. The most important or exciting point in a story or situation, which
Revision: Figures of Speech and Literary Genres usually happens near the end of a literary work is called ----.
Choose the option which best completes the sentence.
A) falling action
B) plot
1. The essential information for the reader in the short story
C) resolution
‘Mother’ is provided through frequent ---- when the narrator
interrupts the present time and returns to the past. D) climax
E) protagonist
A) personifications
B) metaphors
C) symbols
8. A/an ---- is the story of a person's life in the words of another
D) flashbacks
person, and it is typically written in third-person narration. Some
E) inferences
examples are Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, John Adams by David
McCullough, and James Joyce by Richard Ellmann. On the other
2. In which type of irony does the audience know something that hand, a/an ---- is the story of a person's life in his own words, and it
the character on the stage does not? is typically written in first person. Some examples are William
A) Intentional Irony Hazlitt's Liber Amoris (1823), and Virginia Woolf’s Moments of
B) Cosmic Irony Being.
C) Verbal Irony Choose the option which best completes the statement.
D) Dramatic Irony A) biography – autobiography
E) Situational Irony B) autobiography – biography
C) journal – autobiography
D) autobiography – diary
3. A/an ---- character is a secondary or minor character in a literary E) biography – journal
work who contrasts or clashes with the main character to make the
other’s positive/negative qualities more prominent.
Choose the option which best completes the sentence. 9. I couldn’t forgive [Tom] or like him, but I saw that what he had done
A) stock was, to him, entirely justified. It was all very careless and confused.
B) dynamic They were careless people, Tom and Daisy – they smashed up things
C) flat and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast
D) foil carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together and let other
E) static people clean up the mess they had made.
Which of the following adjectives defines the tone of the excerpt
above from The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald?
4. ---- is a technique, usually associated with Modernist literature, A) menacing
that is used to reflect the thoughts and feelings of a character as B) optimistic
they occur. C) mournful
A) Verbal irony D) frustrated
B) Redundancy E) ecstatic
C) Witticism
D) Stream of Consciousness
E) Symbolism 10. I wear my patience like a light-green dress and wear it thin. (E.
Grosholz)
What is the figure of speech in the line above?
5. A paradox is a statement which seems on its face to be logically A) Oxymoron
contradictory or absurd, yet turns out to be interpretable in a way B) Simile
that makes good sense. C) Allusion
Which of the following cannot be an example of paradox? D) Irony
A) One short sleep past, we wake eternally / And death shall be no E) Pun
more; Death, thou shalt die.
B) Your enemy’s friend is your enemy.
11. ---- is a term given to fictional writing which self-consciously and
C) It is not easy to determine the nature of music, or why anyone should
systematically draws attention to its status as an artefact to pose
have a knowledge of it.
questions about the relationship between fiction and reality. In other
D) What a pity that youth must be wasted on the young.
E) A rich man is no richer than a poor man. words, it is a type of fiction that discusses, describes, or analyses a
work of fiction or the conventions of fiction.
Choose the literary device that best completes the statement.
A) Metafiction
6. A character in drama and, occasionally, in fiction who has little effect
B) Stream of consciousness
on the action, but whose function is to listen to the intimate feelings
C) Science-fiction
and intentions of the protagonist. He is often a reliable friend, like
D) Deconstruction
Hamlet’s friend Horatio in Shakespeare’s famous play Hamlet.
E) Authorial intrusion
Which character type is explicated above?
A) Flat character
B) Confidant 12. The weakness of character in tragic hero is traditionally called ----.
C) Antagonist A) anagnorisis
D) Fool B) hamartia
E) Archetype C) catastrophe
D) purgation
E) catharsis

ÖABT English Literature Subject Tests pg.14

13. You are not the kind of guy who would be at a place like this at this 19. The ---- novel is concerned with the escapades of a carefree rascal
time of the morning. But here you are, and you cannot say that the who lives by his wits and shows little if any alteration in character
terrain is entirely unfamiliar, although the details are fuzzy. through the long succession of his adventures. Some novels of this
What type of narrator is displayed in the given excerpt? type are Thomas Nashe’s The Unfortunate Traveller, Mark Twain’s
A) First-person Narrator The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, and Thomas Mann’s Felix Krull.
B) Second-person Narrator Choose the option which best completes the sentence.
C) Third-person Narrator A) epistolary
D) Omniscient Narrator B) gothic
E) Erratic Narrator C) social
D) picaresque
E) apprenticeship
14. A novel consisting of letters written by one character or several
characters. The form allows for the use of multiple points of view
toward the story and the ability to dispense with an omniscient 20.---- is a form of comedy that aims to expose and ridicule the follies,
narrator. Examples are Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Robert vices, and shortcomings of society, and of individuals who represent
Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. society.
Which type of novel is this? Choose the option which best completes the sentence.
A) Historical Novel A) Satirical comedy
B) Psychological Novel B) Sentimental comedy
C) Epistolary Novel C) Romantic comedy
D) Gothic Novel D) Tragicomedy
E) Romantic Novel E) Comedy of Errors

15. The expressions or statements in a story or poem that act as a 21. The ----, originally a form of Italian origin that has developed into an
warning or sign of a future event are a part of ----. independent lyric form, is usually defined nowadays as fourteen lines
A) flashback of iambic pentameter. Those written in the Elizabethan period by
B) irony such poets as Sidney, Spenser, and Shakespeare dealt mainly with
C) metonymy love.
D) flash-forward Choose the option which best completes the sentence.
E) foreshadowing A) ballad
B) limerick
C) sonnet
16. The chief person in a modern novel or play whose character is very D) ode
much unlike from that which we associate with the traditional E) elegy
protagonist or hero of a serious literary work. Instead of manifesting
largeness, dignity, power, or heroism, this character is petty,
disreputable, passive, ineffectual, and/or dishonest. 22. Busy old fool, unruly Sun,
Which literary term is described above? Why dost thou thus,
A) Confidant Through windows, and through curtains, call on us?"
B) Anti-hero (John Donne)
C) Antagonist Which two figures of speech are used in the lines above?
D) Archetype A) Apostrophe and Allusion
E) Anti-thesis B) Allusion and Oxymoron
C) Oxymoron and Paradox
D) Paradox and Personification
17. Which one of the literary forms given below satirises the E) Personification and Apostrophe
conducts and behaviours of a social class or classes, often
represented by stock characters, as in Oscar Wilde’s The
Importance of Being Earnest? 23. ---- is a type of rhyme that involves words that are similar in
A) Romance Novel spelling but not in sound, such as stone and none, move and love,
B) Comedy of Manners bough and though, come and home, and laughter and daughter.
C) Tragicomedy A) feminine rhyme
D) Interlude B) slant rhyme
E) Melodrama C) eye rhyme
D) internal rhyme
E) end rhyme
18. A/an ---- is a story within a story, within sometimes yet another
story, as in The Thousand and One Nights; the narrated stories are
collected under the story of Scheherazade, who avoids death by
telling her king-husband a story every night and leaving it
incomplete.
Choose the option which best completes the sentence.
A) Parable
B) Literary Ballad
C) Frame Narrative
D) Beast Fable
E) Novella

ÖABT English Literature Subject Tests pg.15

24. “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of English Literature – Subject Test 8
wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it Revision: Figures of Speech and Literary Genres
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
1. The figure of speech in which the author makes an obvious
were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other exaggeration for emphasis or to create some specific effect is
way.” (Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities) called ----.
What are the two figures of speech used in the excerpt above? A) simile
A) antithesis and anaphora B) anti-thesis
B) anaphora and synecdoche C) irony
C) synecdoche and euphemism D) consonance
D) euphemism and metonymy E) hyperbole
E) metonymy and antithesis

2. In a novel, ---- is a device that allows the writer to present events

25. Sarcasm is the use of irony to mock or convey contempt. that happened before the time of the current narration or the
Which of the following sentences does not display sarcasm? current events in the fiction.
A) Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go. A) foreshadowing
(Oscar Wilde) B) climax
B) Sometimes I need what only you can provide: your absence. C) flashback
(Ashleigh Brilliant) D) conflict
C) The best way to cheer yourself up is to try to cheer somebody else E) plot
up. (Mark Twain)
D) I like long walks, especially when they are taken by people who
annoy me. (Fred Allen) 3. A/an ---- character in a work of fiction serves as a mirror and
E) I never forget a face, but in your case, I'll be glad to make an makes another character’s good or bad characteristics more
exception. (Groucho Marx) noticeable.
A) dynamic
B) antagonist
C) foil
D) fool
E) protagonist
Subject Test X – Answer Key
1. 6. 11. 16. 21. 4. Well son, I’ll tell you:
Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.
2. 7. 12. 17. 22.
It had tacks in it,
3. 8. 13. 18. 23. And splinters,
4. 9. 14. 19. 24. And boards torn up,
5. 10. 15. 20. 25. And places with no carpet on the floor—
Bare.” (Langston Hughes, “Mother to Son”)
What is the figure of speech used in the poem above?
A) synecdoche
B) metaphor
C) irony
D) pun
E) hyperbole

5. The type of novel that narrates the story of a character’s maturation

and moral growth typically brought about through a series of
encounters and experiences is called ----. Some famous examples are
Jane Eyre (1847) by Charlotte Brontë and The Catcher in the Rye
(1951) by J.D. Salinger.
Choose the option which best completes the statement.
A) Epistolary Novel
B) Picaresque Novel
C) Bildungsroman
D) Autobiographical Novel
E) Realistic Novel

6. The library has been very helpful to the students this morning.
The use of the underlined word in the given sentence creates
a/an ----.
A) paradox
B) apostrophe
C) metaphor
D) simile
E) synecdoche

ÖABT English Literature Subject Tests pg.16

7. In tragedies, the hero is a person of noble stature who has a 13. “He laid down his bundle and thought of his misfortune. ‘And just
weakness and, because of it, becomes isolated and suffers a downfall. what pleasure have I found, since I came into this world?’ he asked.”
Because the protagonist's fall is not entirely his or her own fault, the What is the narrative point of view employed in the given
audience may end up pitying him or her and undergo ----, a purging excerpt?
of emotions, after experiencing pity, fear, shock, and other strong A) objective narration
feelings. B) second-person narration
Choose the option which best completes the statement. C) first-person narration
A) catastrophe D) omniscient narration
B) catharsis E) subjective narration
C) hubris
D) denouement
E) hamartia 14. Macbeth, the lead character of Shakespeare’s famous play Macbeth
has a fatal flaw that almost seems like a virtue. He suffers from the
flaw of blind ambition, which leads directly to his becoming named
8. Someone is talking about Bill Gates (known to be the richest person the King of Scotland but also leads him to kill innocent people, and
on earth) and says, “Well, I’ve heard that he earns something.” ultimately to his death.
This remark is an example of ----. This type of tragic flaw of the hero/ine in a tragedy is
A) simile traditionally called ----.
B) hyperbole A) pathos
C) euphemism B) catastrophe
D) understatement C) catharsis
E) anachronism D) purgation
E) hubris

9. In the film The Most Dangerous Game, Rainsford is first placed 15. ---- is the product of illiterate or semi-literate societies. A variety of
against the sea when the ship wrecks. Then, he faces the jungle this literature is found both among the ancient peoples and among
along with all the elements within it. the surviving peoples that are mostly primitive with little or no
The type of this conflict is ----. written literature.
A) person vs. person Choose the option which best completes the statement.
B) person vs. nature A) Fantastic literature
C) person vs. universe B) Oral literature
D) person vs. society C) Colonial literature
E) person vs. self D) Post-colonial literature
E) Heroic literature
10. The ---- narrator may be in error in his or her understanding or
report of things and thus leaves readers without the guides essential 16. “And how many hours a day did you do lessons?” said Alice, in a
for making judgments about the character and the actions with any hurry to change the subject. “Ten hours the first day,” said the Mock
confidence that their conclusions are those intended by the author. Turtle, “nine the next, and so on.” “What a curious plan!”
Choose the option which best completes the statement. exclaimed Alice. “That's the reason they're called lessons,” the
A) omniscient narrator Gryphon remarked: “because they lessen from day to day.”
B) unreliable narrator What is the figure of speech created through the underlined
C) selective narrator words in the given excerpt from Lewis Carroll’s Alice in
D) second-person narrator Wonderland?
E) objective narrator A) Ode
B) Hyperbole
C) Onomatopoeia
11. ---- entails a certain incongruity between what a person says, D) Pun
believes, or does on stage, and how, unbeknownst to that person, E) Rhyme
things actually are. Oedipus vows to discover Laius' murderer,
unaware that Laius was his father and that he himself is guilty of
patricide. 17. Which literary tradition does Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein
Choose the option which best completes the statement. represent?
A) Fatal Irony A) Gothic Novel
B) Dramatic Irony B) Epistolary Novel
C) Linguistic Irony C) Historical Novel
D) Tragic Irony D) Autobiographical Novel
E) Verbal Irony E) Picaresque Novel

18. ----, also known as Romantic irony in the context of Romantic works
12. ---- are short, allegorical narratives in which animals or
of literature, uses literary techniques to draw attention to itself as a
inanimate objects serve as characters to convey a message.
work of art, while exposing the “truth” of a story.
A) Biographies
Choose the option which best completes the sentence.
B) Parables
A) Metafiction
C) Essays
B) Comedy of Manners
D) Fairy tales
C) Juvenile literature
E) Fables
D) Farce
E) Literary Criticism

ÖABT English Literature Subject Tests pg.17

19. When you, my Dear, are away, away, 25. “Common as railroads are now in all places as a means of transit, and
How wearily goes the day. especially in Manchester, Mary had never been on one before; and
A year drags after morning, and night she felt bewildered by the hurry, the noise of people and bells and
Starts another year. horns; the whiz and the scream of the arriving trains.”
Identify the figure of speech in the underlined section of the According to the foregoing excerpt, which of the following best
given stanza. describes the Victorian author Elizabeth Gaskell’s attitude
A) Conceit towards her period?
B) Onomatopoeia A) Gaskell was suffering from alienation to her times as her character
C) Irony was ‘’bewildered.’’
D) Oxymoron B) Gaskell is aware of the problems of industrialism and innovations
E) Hyperbole brought by industrialism.
C) Gaskell’s character’s bewilderment could be identified by Gaskell’s
distance to social issues.
20.The imaginary voice transmitting the story in a novel or another D) Gaskell’s main concern in her novels is the female question.
form of prose fiction is called the ----. E) Gaskell’s attitude is unrealistic as the ‘’bewilderment’’ is
Choose the option which best completes the sentence. exaggerated in the text.
A) Chorus
B) Foil
C) Narrator
D) Mood Subject Test X – Answer Key
E) Commentator
1. 6. 11. 16. 21.
21. Which of the following literary forms or genres primarily refers 2. 7. 12. 17. 22.
to a work that aims to interest and amuse an audience? 3. 8. 13. 18. 23.
A) Drama
4. 9. 14. 19. 24.
B) Fairy Tale
C) Fable 5. 10. 15. 20. 25.
D) Comedy
E) Myth

22. A lyric poem, usually of some length. The main features are an
elaborate stanza structure, a marked formality and stateliness in tone
and style (which make it ceremonious), and lofty sentiments and
thoughts. In short, it is rather a grand poem, a full-dress poem.
However, this said, we can distinguish two basic kinds: the public
and the private. The public is used for ceremonial occasions, like
funerals, birthdays, state events; the private often celebrates rather
intense, personal, and subjective occasions; it is inclined to be
meditative, reflective.
Which poetic form is defined above?
A) Haiku
B) Limerick
C) Ode
D) Ballad
E) Sonnet

23. An oxymoron is an expression that conjoins contradictory, mutually

exclusive terms.
Which of the following is not an oxymoronic expression?
A) death in life
B) a scream of silence
C) dear enemy
D) bitter tears
E) walking dead

24. “The Wicked Witch of the West went her own way.”
The repetition of the /w/ sound in the given sentence creates a
sound device known as ----.
A) alliteration
B) anthropomorphism
C) antithesis
D) aphorism
E) analogy

ÖABT English Literature Subject Tests pg.18

 English Literature – Subject Test 9 D) Motif
Revision: Figures of Speech and Literary Genres E) Simile

7. -- Look at my car. She is a beauty, isn’t it so?

1. “Life is like a box of chocolates; you never know what you’re going
-- The wind whispered through dry grass.
to get.”
-- The flowers danced in the gentle breeze.
Identify the figurative element in the given sentence.
Which of the following literary devices is used in these
A) Metaphor
sentences?
B) Pun
A) Oxymoron
C) Simile
B) Euphoria
D) Symbol
C) Personification
E) Oxymoron
D) Hyperbole
E) Cataphora
Verilen cümlede “life” (yaşam) ile “a box of chocolates” (bir kutu
çikolata) arasında bir benzetme ilişkisi kurulduğunu görüyoruz. Bu
benzetmede “like” kullanıldığı için bu bir “simile” örneğidir.
8. In writing or speech, the deliberate repetition of the first part of the
Cevap: C
sentence in order to achieve an artistic effect is known as anaphora.
Elizabethan and Romantic writers brought this device into practice.
2. Identify the sentence which displays hyperbole.
It is common for us to use anaphora in our everyday speech to lay
A) Betty bought butter, but the butter was bitter.
emphasis on the idea we want to convey or for self-affirmation.
B) The sun played hide and seek with the clouds.
Which of the following is not an example of anaphora?
C) Shall I Compare Thee to a summer’s Day?
A) “Every day, every night, in every way, I am getting better and
D) I am trying to solve a million issues these days.
better.”
E) Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover
B) “My life is my purpose. My life is my goal. My life is my inspiration.”
everybody's face but their own.
C) “Buying nappies for the baby, feeding the baby, playing with the
baby: This is what your life is when you have a baby.”
D) “I want my money right now, right here, all right?”
3. “The truest poetry is the most feigning*.” (Shakespeare)
E) “I want to have a more relaxed life. I wish I were a rich person.”
(*feign: to pretend)
Which figure of speech is created through the emphasised words
in the given sentence?
9. ---- consists of a repetition of accented sounds in words, usually
A) Anachronism
those falling at the end of verse lines. It is often associated with
B) Paradox
poetry.
C) Allusion
Choose the option which best completes the sentence.
D) Hyperbole
A) Rhythm
E) Symbol
B) Rhyme
C) Alliteration
D) Onomatopoeia
4. “When Detroit increased auto production recently, Wall Street
E) Stanza
applauded, and the White House took credit.”
Which figure of speech is created through the underlined
words/phrases in the given excerpt?
10. 'Twinkle, twinkle, little star,
A) eponymy
How I wonder what you are.
B) simile
Up above the world so high,
C) anaphora
Like a diamond in the sky.
D) paradox
Twinkle, twinkle, little star,
E) metonymy
How I wonder what you are!'
What is the rhyme scheme of the poem given above?
A) aabbcc
5. ---- is a figure of speech in which words that are harsh and impolite
B) abcbbc
are substituted by those that are more acceptable and polite. Here is
C) abcbaa
an example from Shakespeare’s Anthony and Cleopatra “He
D) ababaa
ploughed her, and she cropped.” The word “cropped” is used to
E) aabbaa
mean “gave birth.”
Choose the option which best completes the paragraph.
A) Metonymy
11. “And how many hours a day did you do lessons?” said Alice, in a
B) Juxtaposition
hurry to change the subject. “Ten hours the first day,” said the Mock
C) Analogy
Turtle, “nine the next, and so on.” “What a curious plan!”
D) Euphemism
exclaimed Alice. “That's the reason they're called lessons,” the
E) Irony
Gryphon remarked: “because they lessen from day to day.”
What is the figure of speech created through the underlined
words in the given excerpt from Lewis Carroll’s Alice in
6. ---- is using an object or action that means something more than its
Wonderland?
literal meaning. A red rose, or the colour red, might stand for love or
A) Ode
romance in a novel.
B) Archaism
Choose the literary device which best completes the statement.
C) Metaphor
A) Symbol
D) Pun
B) Parallelism
E) Catharsis
C) Irony

ÖABT English Literature Subject Tests pg.19

12. Which of the following types of poems is characterized by
subjective thoughts, feelings, and attitude of a poet, and
generally deals with the themes of love, war, peace, nature, and
loss?
A) Epic poem
B) Lyric poem
C) Epistle
D) Limerick
E) Pastoral poem

13. Which of the given poem types may depict rural life in a peaceful
and idealized way?
A) Pastoral
B) Ballad
C) Haiku
D) Sonnet
E) Dirge

14. ---- in literature is a plot device in which the audience’s or reader’s

knowledge of events or individuals surpasses that of the characters.
The words and actions of the characters therefore take on a different
meaning for the audience or reader than they have for the play’s
characters. This may happen when, for example, a character reacts in
an inappropriate or foolish way or when a character lacks self-
awareness and thus acts under false assumptions.
Choose the type of irony which best completes the passage.
A) Dramatic Irony
B) Situational Irony
C) Verbal Irony
D) Cosmic Irony
E) Sarcastic Irony

15. Macbeth, the lead character of Shakespeare’s famous play Macbeth

has a fatal flaw that almost seems like a virtue. He suffers from the
flaw of blind ambition, which leads directly to his becoming named
the King of Scotland but also leads him to kill innocent people, only
to end in his own death.
This type of tragic flaw (or hamartia) of the hero/ine is
traditionally called ----.
A) anagnorisis
B) catastrophe
C) catharsis
D) purgation
E) hubris

16. ---- designates literary forms which diminish or derogate a subject by

making it ridiculous and by evoking toward it amusement, or scorn,
or indignation. Some famous practitioners of this form are
Alexander Pope and Jonathan Swift.
Choose the option which best completes the sentence.
A) Allusion
B) Satire
C) Fable
D) Mock epic
E) Anecdote

17. What type of novel that became popular in the 18th century deals
with lives of thieves and/or rogues?
A) Anti-Novel
B) Epistolary Novel
C) Picaresque Novel
D) Dystopian Novel
E) Apprenticeship Novel

ÖABT English Literature Subject Tests pg.20

18. The term “----” encompasses novels and short stories that represent 23. One of the characters in a story or poem who deceives, frustrates, or
an imagined reality that is radically different in its nature and works against the main character is called ----.
functioning from the world of our ordinary experience. Often the Choose the character type which best completes the sentence.
setting is another planet, or this earth projected into the future, or A) round
an imagined parallel universe. Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1818) is B) dynamic
often considered a precursor of this genre. C) protagonist
Choose the option which best completes the passage. D) static
A) gothic E) antagonist
B) cyberpunk
C) stream-of-consciousness
D) dystopia 24. The ---- is a major character who lacks conventional nobility of mind
E) science-fiction and who struggles for value not deemed universally admirable.
He/she is characterised by a lack of traditional heroic qualities, such
as idealism or courage and finally gives in to the goals and desires of
19. A novel faithful to a particular geographic region and its people, a hero.
including behaviour, customs, speech, and history. Examples are Choose the option which best completes the passage.
Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird and Mark Twain’s Huckleberry A) Protagonist
Finn. B) Antagonist
Which type of novel is described above? C) Anti-hero
A) Novel of Manners D) Narrator
B) Historical Novel E) Foil
C) Epistolary Novel
D) Utopian Novel
E) Adventure Novel 25. The short story “A Glowing Future” by Ruth Rendell is a story that
centres on romantic relationships and their disappointing or
problematic outcomes on personal and social levels.
20.---- is an interesting literary device wherein the author penning the Which of the following statements regarding the author cannot
story, poem or prose steps away from the text and speaks out to the possibly be inferred from the given sentence?
reader. The use of this technique establishes a one-to-one A) She generally writes fantasies for teenagers.
relationship between the writer and the reader where the latter is no B) She is known for creating characters based on social observation.
longer a secondary player or an indirect audience to the progress of C) She highlights the role of women in society.
the story but is the main subject of the author’s attention. D) She is famous for her psychological stories.
Choose the option which best completes the passage. E) She addresses the issue of man-woman relationships.
A) Metafiction
B) Authorial Intrusion
C) Stream of consciousness
D) In medias res Subject Test X – Answer Key
E) Narrative perspective
1. 6. 11. 16. 21.
2. 7. 12. 17. 22.
21. ---- is a common form of third-person narration in which the teller of 3. 8. 13. 18. 23.
the tale, who often appears to speak with the voice of the author 4. 9. 14. 19. 24.
himself, assumes an all-knowing perspective on the story being told,
diving into private thoughts, narrating secret or hidden events 5. 10. 15. 20. 25.
jumping between spaces and times.
Choose the option which best completes the paragraph.
A) Objective narration
B) Limited narration
C) Unreliable narration
D) Intrusive narration
E) Omniscient narration

22. ---- is the moment in a play, novel, short story, or narrative poem at
which the crisis reaches its point of greatest intensity and is
thereafter resolved. It is also the peak of emotional response from a
reader or spectator and usually the turning point in the action.
Choose the option which best completes the passage.
A) Exposition
B) Rising action
C) Denouement
D) Climax
E) Falling action

ÖABT English Literature Subject Tests pg.21

 PART 4: A Survey of English Literature [TABLE]
**This table is based on the
chronology presented by the
Norton Anthologies of English
Literature.
LITERARY PERIOD
450-1066 THE OLD
ENGLISH PERIOD (The
Anglo-Saxon Period)
1066-1500s THE MIDDLE
ENGLISH PERIOD
PART 4: A Survey of English Literature [TABLE]
**Remember that there are
thousands of other works
which can be added to this list;
however, this table is intended
to give you the basics and most
notable works of English and
American Literatures.
GENERAL INFORMATION
• Primitive life. • Introduction
to Christianity and Church. •
Old English (Anglo-Saxon) as
language among people.
GENERAL INFORMATION
• The period begins with the
Norman Conquest (1066). •
Feudalism*, Catholic Church,
Scholastic thought, Black
Death mark the age. • The
period is considered to end
with the arrival of the printing
press in England.
** Key words and literary terms
are highlighted in blue
throughout this table. Pay close
attention to them. Key words will
help you find your way while
working on period questions.
LITERARY CONVENTIONS
• Latin as the language of
instruction and religious
teaching.
LITERARY CONVENTIONS
• English as vernacular • French
and Latin influence
* See the following Glossary
for literary movements and
philosophies with an asterisk*
in this list.
POETRY PROSE DRAMA
• Kenning and alliteration used
• Chronicles and history works
in poetry. • Elegiac mood is • No drama in the period.
written in prose.
common. • Dream narratives
• Beowulf Probably, the most
important work in Old English
is Beowulf. It is considered to
be the oldest myth in Europe. Alfred the Great [known as the
Its author is unknown. Written Father of English Prose] • The
around ca.1000, Beowulf is a Anglo-Saxon Chronicle The
long heroic/epic poem about Anglo-Saxon Chronicle,
Hrothgar (King of the Danes) compiled by King Aelfred,
and a hero called Beowulf who gives an account of the early
fights against monsters history of the country; a record
(Grendel) and dragons. It has of the history of England from
unrhymed alliterative and Caesar’s invasion to its end.
stressed lines. The poem
contains many examples of
kenning.
• The Wanderer [an elegy] The
Wanderer is an Old English
poem preserved only in an
anthology known as the Exeter
Venerable Bede • The
Book, a manuscript dating
Ecclesiastical History of
from the late 10th century. It
English People King Alfred
comprises 115 lines of
translated The Ecclesiastical
alliterative verse. As is often
History of English People from
the case with Anglo-Saxon
Latin into English.
verse, the composer and
compiler are anonymous, and
within the manuscript the
poem is untitled.
• “The Dream of the Rood”
[a dream narrative] The Dream
of the Rood is an allegorical
religious poem. The rood is
Christ’s Cross and it is first
covered with gold and jewels
and later with blood.
• “The Seafarer”
• “The Wife’s Lament” [an
elegy]
• “Caedmon’s Hymn” [a
dream narrative]
POETRY PROSE DRAMA
• Drama in English literature
begins in this period. •
• Chivalric romances usually
Miracle/Mystery Plays and
written in alliterative verse.
Morality plays written in
abundance.
William Langland [b.1332] • Sir Thomas Malory [b.1400?] • • Everyman [late 15th century;
The Vision of Piers Plowman The Death of Arthur morality play, allegorical]
[a dream narrative; religious Originally written in French;
allegory; social satire] The first published work in English.
Vision of Piers the Ploughman One of the most important
describes the life and sorrows prose works of Middle English
of the poor. Vices and virtues is Le Morte d’Arthur (The
appear as characters. The Death of Arthur) by Sir
1

1500s-1603 THE
SIXTEENTH CENTURY
(Elizabethan / Renaissance
Literature) 1500s-1558: Early
Tudor 1558-1603: Elizabethan
Age
1603 – 1660 THE EARLY
17TH CENTURY 1603-1625:
The Jacobean Age 1625-1649:
The Caroline Age 1649-1660:
The Commonwealth Period
PART 4: A Survey of English Literature [TABLE]
GENERAL INFORMATION
• The period lasts until the
death of Queen Elizabeth I in
1603. • Both the Renaissance
and the Reformation
movements indicate a move
towards a more humanitarian
attitude in literature and arts.
GENERAL INFORMATION
• This is a period of political
and religious chaos. • The
Commonwealth was led by
Oliver Cromwell (a puritan
leader).
LITERARY CONVENTIONS
• Humanism* as the keynote of
the Renaissance movement is
important.
LITERARY CONVENTIONS
powerfully-portrayed Thomas Malory. The best
corruption, exploitation, known work of Arthurian
cheating, and cruelty precede Literature, it is a story about
the time Langland wrote the King Arthur, his Knights of the
poem. Round Table, Guinevere and
Lancelot. Malory wrote the
work based on a French book
which contained the story of
King Arthur and the Knights of
the Round Table.
Geoffrey Chaucer [b.1340?] •
The Canterbury Tales [frame
tale, social satire] • The
Legend of Good Women • The
Parliament of Fowls • The
House of Fame
Gawain-poet • Sir Gawain and
Green Knight [14th century;
chivalric romance]
POETRY PROSE DRAMA
• The Golden Age of English
• Sonnets written in Drama • Shakespeare and
abundance. Marlowe • Pastoral comedies
and revenge tragedies written.
William Shakespeare [1564-
1616] [tragedies] • Romeo and
Edmund Spenser [b.1552] •
Juliet • Hamlet • Macbeth •
The Faerie Queene [epic
Sir Thomas More [b.1478] • Othello • King Lear
poem, allegory] •
Utopia [comedies] • The Merchant of
Epithalamion [pastoral poem]
Venice [tragicomedy] • The
• sonnets
Tempest • As You Like It • A
Midsummer Night’s Dream
Christopher Marlowe [1564-
Thomas Nashe [b.1567] • The 1593] • Doctor Faustus [a
Sir Philip Sidney [b.1554] •
Unfortunate Traveller, or the tragedy] • Tamburlaine, the
Astrophil and Stella [sonnet
Life of Jack Wilton [first Great [a tragedy] • The Jew of
collection]
picaresque novel] Malta [a tragedy] • Queen of
Cartage [a tragedy]
William Shakespeare [1564-
1616] • sonnets [William
Shakespeare wrote 154
sonnets.]
Others Sir Thomas Wyatt
[b.1503; one of first sonnet
writers] Henry Howard, the
Earl of Surrey [b.1516; one of
first sonnet writers]
POETRY PROSE DRAMA
• Cavalier* Poetry and
Metaphysical* Poetry mark
the age. Unlike the Cavaliers
who were supporters of the
• When the Puritan government
court, Metaphysical poets of
shuts down theatres, the golden
the 17th century supported
• Essays age of drama comes to an end.
Puritan leader Oliver Cromwell
• Revenge tragedies still
and his philosophy. While
written in abundance.
Cavalier Poetry stressed grace
and charm, Metaphysical
Poetry emphasised intellect
and wit.
John Donne [b.1572; best-
Sir Francis Bacon [b.1561] • Thomas Kyd [b.1558] • The
known Metaphysical poet] •
Essays • The New Atlantis [a Spanish Tragedy (revenge
“The Flea” • “A Valediction
utopia] tragedy)
Forbidding Mourning”
Ben Jonson [b.1572; associated
Ben Jonson [b.1572; best-
Thomas Hobbes [b.1588] • with comedy of humours] •
known Cavalier poet] • “Song:
Leviathan Volpone, or the Fox [satiric
To Celia”
play] • The Alchemist
John Webster [b.1580] • The
George Herbert [b.1593;
Duchess of Malfi (revenge
Metaphysical poet] • “The
tragedy) • The White Devil
Altar”
(revenge tragedy)
John Milton [1608-1674] •
Paradise Lost [monumental
epic poem]
2

GENERAL INFORMATION
• After a period of political
chaos, this period is
1660 – 1785 THE
characterised by the restoration
RESTORATION and THE
of monarchy. • Scepticism,
18TH CENTURY 1660-1700:
Freethinking, and Deism* are
The Restoration 1700-1745:
common among intellectuals. •
The Augustan Age 1745-1785:
Reason over emotion;
The Age of Sensibility
Rationalism* sets the common
(Reason / Enlightenment*)
perspective in intellectual and
literary circles.
GENERAL INFORMATION
1785 – 1830 THE
ROMANTIC PERIOD
PART 4: A Survey of English Literature [TABLE]
LITERARY CONVENTIONS
• Neoclassicism* in literature
refers to works inspired by
ancient (Greek and Roman)
civilisations but written later in
the 18th century. Neoclassical
works are usually satiric and
characterised by rules, order,
proportion, and decorum.
LITERARY CONVENTIONS
• A reaction to the Rationalism
of the previous era,
Romanticism* emphasised
emotions, imagination, and the
individual. Also see:
Pantheism* in Glossary
Andrew Marwell [b.1621;
Metaphysical poet] • “To His
Coy Mistress”
POETRY
• The poetry of the period is
also mostly satiric, but odes are
also produced. • Edward
Young, Robert Blair, and
Thomas Gray are recognised
names of the Churchyard
School of Poetry*.
John Dryden [b.1631] •
MacFlecknoe • Absalom and
Achitophel [both satiric
poems]
Alexander Pope [b.1688] • The
Rape of the Lock [a mock
epic] • The Dunciad [a mock
epic]
Thomas Gray [b.1716; belongs
to the Churchyard School]
POETRY
• Emotions and nature in
Romantic Poetry • Odes and
ballads written in abundance. •
Plain and simple language
made literature more
accessible.
William Blake [b.1757] • The
Songs of Innocence
[collection] • The Songs of
Experience [collection] • “The
Lamb” • “The Sick Rose” •
“The Chimney Sweeper” [a
poem about child labour] •
“The Tyger”
Robert Burns [b.1759] • “A
Red, Red Rose” • “A Fond
Kiss” • “To a Mouse”
William Wordsworth [b.1770]
• “Daffodils” • The Prelude
[massive autobiographical
poem] * Lyrical Ballads [co-
writer]
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
[1772] • The Rime of Ancient
Mariner • Kubla Khan •
PROSE DRAMA
• This is the age of satire
(Jonathan Swift is the most
important satirist of the time.) •
• Restoration Drama is usually
Essays are written in
associated with comedies of
abundance. • Daniel Defoe’s
manners.
Robinson Crusoe is usually
considered to be the first novel
in English.
John Bunyan [b.1628] • William Congreve [b.1670] •
Pilgrim’s Progress [a The Way of the World
theological allegory] (comedy of manners)
John Dryden [b.1631] • All for
John Dryden [b.1631] • “An Love • The Conquest of
Essay on Dramatic Poesy” Granada • Marriage à la
Mode
Alexander Pope [b.1688] •
“An Essay on Criticism” •
“An Essay on Man”
Daniel Defoe [b.1660] •
Robinson Crusoe [first novel
in English] • Moll Flanders [a
picaresque novel]
Jonathan Swift [b.1667; great
satirist] • Gulliver’s Travels •
“A Modest Proposal”
[pamphlet)
Samuel Richardson [b.1689] •
Pamela [epistolary novel] •
Clarissa
Henry Fielding [b.1707] •
Shamela [a parody of
Richardson’s Pamela] • Joseph
Andrews [a picaresque novel] •
Tom Jones [a picaresque
novel]
Laurence Sterne [b.1713] •
Tristram Shandy
Others Aphra Behn,
Oroonoko Samuel Pepys, The
Diary John Locke, Essays
PROSE DRAMA
• Gothic novels • Jane Austen
wrote realistic fiction (novel of
manners) • Essays
Horace Walpole [b.1717] • The
Castle of Otranto (first gothic
novel)
Mary Wollstonecraft [b. 1759;
Mary Shelley’s mother] • A
Vindication of the Rights of
Woman [proto-feminist
manifesto]
Ann Radcliffe [b.1764] • The
Mysteries of Udolpho [gothic
novel]
Sir Walter Scott [b.1771; father
of the English historical novel]
• Ivanhoe [a historical novel] •
3

GENERAL INFORMATION
• The Victorian Age was a time
of upheaval and change. • The
industry and the Industrial
Revolution shaped the age. A
working class began to appear.
• Charles Darwin introduced
1830-1901 THE
his controversial ideas of
VICTORIAN AGE
evolution, natural selection,
and survival of the fittest. •
The Woman Question was an
important issue. • Victorian
society was conservative and
censored works of literature.
PART 4: A Survey of English Literature [TABLE]
LITERARY CONVENTIONS
• Realism* and Naturalism*
dominated prose fiction. •
Aestheticism* was a reaction to
this. • Transcendentalism* in
American Literature
Christabel * Lyrical Ballads
[co-writer]
Lord Byron [b.1788; real
name: George Gordon] •
“Manfred” [a dramatic poem]
• “Don Juan” • “She Walks
in Beauty” • “When We Two
Parted”
Percy Bysshe Shelley [b. 1792;
Mary Shelley’s husband] •
“Ozymandias” • “Ode to the
West Wind” • “To a Skylark”
• “Hymn to Intellectual
Beauty” • “Prometheus
Unbound” [a lyrical drama]
John Keats [b.1795] • “Ode on
a Grecian Urn” • “Ode on
Melancholy” • “To Autumn”
• “Endymion: A Poetic
Romance” • Lamia
Edgar Allan Poe [b.1809] •
“Annabel Lee” • “The
Raven”
POETRY
Elizabeth Barret Browning
[b.1806] • “The Cry of the
Children”
Lord Alfred Tennyson [b.1809;
associated with Pre-
Raphaelitism*] • “In
Memoriam” • “The Lady of
Shallott”
Robert Browning [b.1812] •
“My Last Duchess” (dramatic
monologue poem)
Others Dante Gabriel Rossetti
[b.1828] Gerard Manley
Hopkins [b.1844]
The Lady of the Lake [a
historical novel]
Jane Austen [b.1775; wrote
novels of manners] • Pride and
Prejudice • Emma • Sense and
Sensibility • Mansfield Park •
Persuasion
Thomas De Quincey [b.1785;
essayist] • Confessions of an
Opium Eater
Mary Shelley [b.1797; Percy
Byshhe Shelley’s wife] •
Frankenstein [gothic novel,
also an attempt at science
fiction]
Edgar Allan Poe [b.1809] •
“The Black Cat” • “Murders
in the Rue Morgue” • “The
Cask of Amontillado” are
Poe’s gothic short stories from
Tales of Mystery and
Imagination
PROSE DRAMA
The Victorian era was the great
age of the English novel. The
novels written in this period
were realistic, thickly plotted,
crowded with characters, and
long. It was the ideal form to
describe contemporary life and
to entertain the middle class.
Nathaniel Hawthorne [b.1804;
Oscar Wilde [b.1854] • The
American Transcendentalist] •
Importance of Being Earnest •
The Scarlet Letter • “The
An Ideal Husband • A Woman
Young Goodman Brown”
of No Importance
(short story)
William Makepeace Thackeray
[b.1811] • Vanity Fair
Charles Dickens [b.1812] • A
Tale of Two Cities [a historical
novel] • Oliver Twist • A
Christmas Carol • Hard Times
[a factory novel] • David
Copperfield [a semi-
autobiographical
Bildungsroman] • Great
Expectations [a
Bildungsroman]
Charlotte Brontë [b.1816] •
Jane Eyre [a Bildungsroman]
Emily Brontë [b.1818] •
Wuthering Heights
George Eliot [b.1819] • The
Mill on the Floss • Silas
Marner • Middlemarch •
Adam Bede
Lewis Carroll [b.1832] •
Alice’s Adventures in
Wonderland
Thomas Hardy [b.1840;
associated with Naturalism] •
Far from the Madding Crowd
• Tess of the D’Urbervilles •
4

GENERAL INFORMATION
• Global War was the main
theme. • World War I (1914-
THE 20TH CENTURY 1918) • World War II (1938-
1900s-1945: The Modern 1945) • Rise of Fascism in
Period 1945-Present: The Europe • Great Depression
Post-modern Period after 1945 • Nihilism* and
Existentialism* marked the
philosophy of art.
PART 4: A Survey of English Literature [TABLE]
LITERARY CONVENTIONS
• Modernism* (till 1950s; break
with tradition) and Post-
modernism* (after 1950s) were
artistic movements of the
century. Also see:
Expressionism* Surrealism*,
and Imagism* in Glossary. In
20th-century American
Literature: • The Lost
Generation* (1918-1930s; loss
of American Dream) • Beat
Generation* (1950s) • Harlem
Renaissance* (1918–1937)
POETRY
• Modernist poetry • War
poetry • Beat poets
(Confessional Poets) in
American Literature
William Butler Yeats [b.1865]
• “Sailing to Byzantium”
T. S. Eliot [b.1888; notable
modernist] • The Love Song of
J. Alfred Prufrock • The
Waste Land
Robert Frost [b.1874] • “The
Road Not Taken” • “Fire and
Ice”
Robert Graves [b.1895]
War poetry: Siegfried Sassoon
[b.1886] Rupert Brooke
[b.1887] Wilfred Owen
[b.1893]
Ted Hughes [b.1930; American
Beat poet and writer associated
with Modernism; Confessional
poet; Sylvia Plath’s husband]
Sylvia Plath [b.1932;
American Beat poet and writer
associated with Feminism and
Modernism; Confessional
poet] • The Bell Jar [novel] •
Ariel [poetry collection]
Jude the Obscure • The
Return of the Native
Bram Stoker [b.1847] •
Dracula [gothic novel;
epistolary]
Robert Louis Stevenson
[b.1850; aesthete] • The
Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and
Mr Hyde
Oscar Wilde [b.1854; aesthete]
• The Picture of Dorian Gray
[novella; its preface is the
manifesto of the Aesthetic
Movement led by Wilde]
Rudyard Kipling [b.1865] •
The Jungle Book • Kim
Others Thomas Carlyle
[b.1795; essayist] Charles
Darwin [b.1809] John Ruskin
[b.1819]
PROSE DRAMA
• Theatre of the Absurd (see:
absurdism*) was an important
dramatic movement
• Modernist & post-modernist (influenced by Existentialist
novels experimenting with philosophy) • Comedy of
style and technique. • Post- Menace (Pinter) • Kitchen-sink
colonialist* novels (see: post- Drama (see: kitchen-sink
colonialism*) realism*) and Angry Young
Men* • Epic theatre* &
Bertolt Brecht • In-yer-face*
theatre
Bertolt Brecht [b.1898;
Joseph Conrad [b.1857] •
German playwright; associated
Heart of Darkness [post-
with Epic theatre] • Life of
colonialist novel] • Almayer’s
Galileo • Mother Courage and
Folly • Lord Jim
Her Children
Virginia Woolf [b.1866;
Samuel Beckett [b.1906;
modernist] • To the
associated with Absurdism] •
Lighthouse • Mrs. Dalloway •
Waiting for Godot [absurdist
A Room of One’s Own •
play] • Endgame
Orlando • The Waves
H. G. Wells [b.1866; known
for his science-fiction novels;
John Osborne [b.1929;
most of his characters are
associated with Kitchen-sink
lower-class characters] • The
Realism and Angry Young
War of the Worlds • The Time
Men] • Look Back in Anger
Machine • The Invisible Man
• The First Man on the Moon
Jack London [b.1876; Harold Pinter [b.1930;
American writer associated associated with Absurdism and
with Naturalism] • White Teeth comedy of menace] • The
• Call of the Wild • Martin Birthday Party • The Dumb
Eden Waiter • The Homecoming
E. M. Forster [b.1879] • A George Bernard Shaw [b.1950]
Passage to India [post- • Pygmalion [best-known play
colonialist novel] • A Room of the writer] • Major Barbara
with a View • Arms and the Man
James Joyce [b.1882;
modernist; associated with
stream of consciousness] • A
Portrait of the Artist as a
Young Man [a Künstlerroman]
• Dubliners [short story
collection] • Ulysses [stream of
consciousness, anti-novel] •
Finnegan’s Wake
D. H. Lawrence [b.1885] •
Sons and Lovers [a sensational
bildungsroman] • Lady
Chatterley’s Lover
J. R. R. Tolkien [b.1892] • The
Lord of the Rings [a fantastic
5
 trilogy] • The Hobbit •
Silmarillion

Aldous Huxley [b.1894] •

Brave New World [a dystopian
novel] • The Doors of
Perception [an
autobiographical book]

F. Scott Fitzgerald [b.1896;

American writer associated
with the Lost Generation] •
The Great Gatsby

William Faulkner [b.1897;

American writer] • As I Lay
Dying • Sound and the Fury

Ernest Hemingway [b.1899;

American writer associated
with Modernism] • For Whom
the Bell Tolls • A Farewell to
Arms • The Sun Also Rises •
The Old Man and the Sea
[novella]

Langston Hughes [b.1901;

Black American writer
associated with Harlem
Renaissance]
John Steinbeck [b.1902;
American writer] • Of Men
and Mice • The Grapes of
Wrath
George Orwell [b.1903;
political writer; known for his
“Big Brother”] • Animal Farm
[1954; satire, allegory] • 1984
[a dystopian novel]

William Golding [b.1911;

associated with symbolism*] •
The Lord of the Flies [1954]

J. D. Sallinger [b.1919;
American writer associated
with Modernism] • The
Catcher in the Rye

PART 4: A Survey of English Literature [TABLE] 6

 English Literature – Subject Test 10 6. The tale begins with a tale of the Red Crosse Knight who travels
Literary Periods: Old English, Middle English, and through the wilderness with a beautiful and chaste young woman
while on his way to do battle with Errour, a giant half-woman, half-
Renaissance serpent beast.
What is the title of the six-book allegorical masterpiece written
by Edmund Spenser for Queen Elizabeth that is a combination
1. ---- is a conventional figure of speech particularly used in Anglo- of epic and romance poetry?
Saxon Literature. It is usually a phrase used for or in addition to the A) The Faerie Queene
usual name of a person or thing. Some examples are the use of “head B) Hamlet
jewels” for “eyes,” “bone house” for “body,” “wave traveller” for C) Comedy of Errors
“boat,” and “whale path” for “sea.” D) Dr. Faustus
Choose the option which best completes the sentence.
E) The Queen’s Farm
A) Metaphor
B) Allusion
C) Synecdoche
7. Which Old English story is about a man who rescued the people
D) Kenning
of Denmark from a monster called Grendel?
E) Alliteration
A) The Wife’s Lament
B) The Seafarer
C) The Wanderer
2. ---- is the outstanding English poet before Shakespeare and “the
D) Patience
first finder of our language.” He contributed greatly to the second
half of the 14th century to the management of public affairs as E) Beowulf
courtier, diplomat, and civil servant. His ---- ranks as one of the
greatest poetic works in English in which he gives a vivid panorama
of medieval life in England via a group of travellers. 8. Which of the following cannot be categorised as one of
Choose the option which best completes the sentence. Shakespeare’s tragedies?
A) William Langland – Piers the Ploughman A) The Merchant of Venice
B) Geoffrey Chaucer – Canterbury Tales B) Othello
C) Geoffrey Chaucer – Legend of Good Women C) King Lear
D) Sir Gawain – Canterbury Tales D) Richard III
E) William Langland – Troilus and Criseyde E) Romeo and Juliet

9. Which of the following is not among the main themes used in

3. ---- were religious plays that emerged around the 15th century. They
Middle English Literature?
were about Biblical stories and/or the lives of important Christian
personages. A) Religion
Choose the option which best completes the sentence. B) Arthurian Legends
A) Mystery plays C) Nationalism
B) Morality plays D) Courtly love
C) Interludes E) Chivalry
D) Tragedies
E) Farces
10. Which of the following is not among the literary works of the
Middle English Period in literature?
4. Which of the following is not correct regarding Old English A) Patience
Literature? B) Beowulf
A) Humanism is very central to the works written in this period. C) Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
B) There is no drama of importance produced in this period. D) Piers the Ploughman
C) Alliteration is the most common figurative device used in literature. E) Morte D’Arthur
D) Sermons, religious works, and chronicles are the chief legacy.
E) Descriptions of sad events and cruel situations are common.
11. The mode of literature in the 16th-century England that valued
the presentation of a simple and humble life in the country and
5. Especially popular during the medieval times, the --- was a verse mainly narrated the lives of shepherds and shepherdesses is
narrative of adventure, usually about a knightly hero on a quest to called ----.
gain a lady’s favour, who encounters both natural tribulations and A) Satirical
supernatural marvels. One of the most popular examples of this B) Elegiac
genre is --- written by an anonymous writer during the Middle Ages. C) Pastoral
Choose the option which best completes the sentence. D) Lyric
A) narrative poem / Sir Gawain and the Green Knight E) Dramatic
B) romance / Paradise Lost
C) romance / Odyssey
D) novel / Paradise Lost 12. The sonnet, one of the most important poetic genres in the
Renaissance period of English literature was first introduced in
E) romance / Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
England by ----.
A) Shakespeare
B) Sir Thomas Wyatt
C) Queen Elizabeth
D) Francis Bacon
E) Sir Thomas More

ÖABT English Literature Subject Tests pg.22

13. Which of the following is an Old English writer? 19. A ---- is a story within a story, within sometimes yet another story, as
A) Venerable Bede in The Thousand and One Nights; the narrated stories are collected
B) Beowulf under the story of Scheherazade, who avoids death by telling her
C) Geoffrey Chaucer king-husband a story every night and leaving it incomplete.
D) John Milton Choose the option which best completes the sentence.
E) William Caxton A) parable
B) literary ballad
C) frame narrative
14. Which famous play by Christopher Marlowe, both because of a D) beast fable
significant pact between the main character and Satan and E) novella
because of its scenes filled with devils and necromancy, created
as much of a sensation among London's audiences in the 16th
century? 20.---- is a work of fiction and political philosophy by Sir Thomas More
A) The Duchess of Malfi (1478–1535) published in 1516 in Latin. The book is a frame narrative
B) Volpone, the Fox primarily depicting a fictional island society and its religious, social,
C) The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus and political customs.
D) The Alchemist Choose the literary work which best completes the passage.
E) Tamburlaine A) Everyman
B) Erewhon
C) Dystopia
15. Which of the following describes the chief system by which D) Ecotopia
writers received financial support for their literary production? E) Utopia
A) Charity
B) Patronage
C) Censorship 21. ---- is a long, usually serious, speech in a play in which the character
D) Subscription speaks to him – or herself or to the people watching rather than to
E) Fund the other characters to reveal his or her thoughts or emotions. The
one given by Macbeth that begins with “To be, or not to be / that is
the question” is one of the most famous examples.
16. One of the first manuscripts in English language, Beowulf is Choose the option which best completes the passage.
a/an ----. A) Soliloquy
A) satire B) Astray
B) allegory C) Hamartia
C) novel D) Hubris
D) epic E) Dialogue
E) parody

22. The Canterbury Tales (1386) is Chaucer’s masterpiece based on the

17. They were dramatized allegories of a representative Christian life in custom of pilgrimages to holy shrines during Crusades. It is a
the plot form of a quest for salvation, in which the crucial events are collection of stories told by 23 pilgrims resting in a tavern on their
temptations, sinning, and the climactic confrontation with death. way to the shrine of Thomas Becket, the archbishop murdered in
The usual protagonist represents Mankind, or Everyman; among the 1170 in Canterbury by the Norman King Henry II. Chaucer was
other characters are personifications of virtues, vices, and Death, as influenced by Boccaccio’s Decameron. However, the style is unique
well as angels and demons who contest for the prize of the soul of for the narrative is not mechanical but lively with the interactive
Mankind. The best-known example of this type of plays is the dialogues among a social group chosen carefully from all classes of
fifteenth-century Everyman, which is still given an occasional society. The device of the religious duty, pilgrimage becomes an
performance. entertaining one in Chaucer’s writing. The pilgrims reveal a
The passage above is best associated with ----. panorama of medieval life as the tales reveal a satirical depiction of
A) Miracle plays the corruption of church in Medieval England.
B) Mystery plays Which of the following statements is correct according to the
C) Morality plays passage?
D) Cycle Plays A) The Canterbury Tales is about Thomas Becket’s pilgrimage to
E) Military Plays Canterbury.
B) Chaucer is not original, for he was influenced by Boccaccio’s
Decameron.
18. Which play by Shakespeare is known to be based on the C) Medieval life was entertaining as it was based on storytelling.
relationship between an aging king and his three daughters D) Chaucer is not only a powerful writer but also a good critic of his
Cordelia, Goneril, and Reagan? time.
A) Pericles E) The Canterbury Tales gathers a selected minority to take on a
B) King John religious journey.
C) A Midsummer Night’s Dream
D) King Lear
E) Hamlet 23. Who is the author of Piers Plowman?
A) Sir Thomas Malory
B) Margery Kempe
C) Geoffrey Chaucer
D) William Langland
E) Geoffrey of Monmouth

ÖABT English Literature Subject Tests pg.23

24. Which of the following is not a comedy by Shakespeare?
A) The Taming of the Shrew
B) King Lear
C) The Merchant of Venice
D) The Merry Wives of Windsor
E) Twelfth Night

25. Which of the following Shakespearean plays is based on the

jealousy of a commander who smothers his innocent wife,
Desdemona?
A) Romeo and Juliet
B) Julius Caesar
C) Macbeth
D) Hamlet
E) Othello

Subject Test X – Answer Key

1. 6. 11. 16. 21.
2. 7. 12. 17. 22.
3. 8. 13. 18. 23.
4. 9. 14. 19. 24.
5. 10. 15. 20. 25.

ÖABT English Literature Subject Tests pg.24

 PART 5: Glossary and Timeline of Movements and Philosophies
[TABLE]
Movement Period & Time Description Associated Figures

Classicism Classicism refers to the aesthetic attitudes and principles manifested in the art, architecture, and
literature of Ancient Greece and Rome and characterised by emphasis on form, simplicity, rule, order, proportion,
Classicism Antiquity Philosophy and restraint. Homer’s epic poems Illiad and Odyssey, Horace’s works of satire, Greek tragedies (such as Oedipus • Homer • Horace
the Rex and Medea) and/or comedies (such as Lysistrata) are classical works of literature. These form the basis for
the Neoclassicist movement of the 18th century in English Literature.
Humanism Humanism is a philosophy that places faith in the dignity of humankind and rejects the medieval
perception (scholastic thought) of the individual as a weak, fallen creature. Humanists typically believe in the
• Sir Philip Sidney • Sir
16th century Philosophy perfectibility of human nature and view reason and education as the means to that end. English Humanism
Humanism Thomas More • William
& Arts flourished in two stages: (1) the first, a basically academic movement that had its roots in the 15th century and
Shakespeare • Ben Jonson
culminated in the work of Sir Thomas More, Sir Thomas Elyot, and Roger Ascham, and (2) the second, a poetic
revolution led by Sir Philip Sidney and William Shakespeare.
Cavalier Poetry A group of poets who supported King James I during the English Civil War were known as
Cavalier Poets. They represented an extension of Elizabethan courtly poetry in the 17th century. Some
characteristics of their writings were simple and straightforward language, typically short poems as well as light
Cavalier Poetry 17th century Poetry 1630s • Ben Jonson
and polished diction. Cavalier Poets often focused on living in the moment (the Carpe Diem philosophy) and their
main concern was pleasure. The best known of Cavalier Poets were Ben Jonson, Robert Herrick, Richard Lovelace,
Thomas Carew, Sir John Suckling and Edmund Waller.
Metaphysical Poetry The Metaphysical poets were a group of 17th-century poets who combined direct language
with ingenious metaphor (or conceits) drawn from different areas of life. The metaphysical poets mainly focused on
• John Donne • Andrew
Metaphysical Poetry 17th century Poetry 1630s two subjects: romantic love and religious faith; and sometimes, they blended these two. John Donne, George
Marwell
Herbert, Henry Vaughan, Andrew Marvell, Richard Crashaw, and Abraham Cowley are the best-known poets of the
Metaphysical School of poetry.
Enlightenment The Enlightenment, also known as the Age of Reason, was an intellectual and cultural movement
in the eighteenth century (especially in France). This movement emphasised reason, science, and sceptical thinking
over superstition and blind faith. Many consider the Enlightenment a major turning point in Western civilisation, an • Thomas Hobbes • John
18th century Philosophy
Enlightenment age of light replacing an age of darkness. Major names associated with the movement include Thomas Hobbes, Locke • Jean-Jacques
1660s-1790s
John Locke, Isaac Newton, Voltaire, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and René Descartes. They questioned accepted Rousseau
knowledge and spread new ideas about openness, investigation, and religious tolerance throughout Europe and the
Americas.
Rationalism At least three basic meanings may be distinguished: (1) the theory or doctrine that human reason can
provide a priori knowledge without intermediary sense data; (2) the theory or doctrine that reason can pursue and
attain truth for its own sake; (3) the idea or conviction that a rational order can be found in reality; and,
Rationalism 18th century Philosophy alternatively, that reason can impose an order on reality. Rationalism, rationalist and rational are often used fairly
loosely. For example, the 18th century is referred to as a period of rationalism; a rationalist may be a person who
depends on reason rather than feeling and intuitive perception; being rational may mean using the brain and
ratiocinative processes rather than any others. All three terms are occasionally used pejoratively.
Deism Deism (Natural Religion) became a widespread way of seeing things among the intellectuals of the
18th century Philosophy
Deism Restoration Era (the 18th century) in English Literature. For Deists, one did not need any guidance to understand
& Faith
God. They believed that every little detail on earth was already a signifier of a divine being.
Neoclassicism Neoclassicism is a literary movement of the 18th century, inspired by the rediscovery of classical
works of ancient Greece and Rome (Classicism*). It was a revival of the classical style but with a new (neo)
perspective. In this context, Classicism refers either to the art produced in antiquity or to later art inspired by that of
antiquity; Neoclassicism always refers to the art produced later but inspired by antiquity. Neoclassical writers
18th century Literature & • John Dryden • Alexander
Neoclassicism typically reacted against the intensity and enthusiasm of the Renaissance period. They wrote works that appealed to
Arts 1660s-1800s Pope • Jonathan Swift
the intellect, using elevated language and classical literary forms such as satire and the ode. Neoclassical works
were often governed by the classical goal of instruction. Neoclassicism marked a return to order, proportion,
restraint, logic, accuracy, and decorum. English neo-classicists include John Dryden, Alexander Pope, Jonathan
Swift, Joseph Addison, and Sir Richard Steele.
The Churchyard School of Poetry aka. Graveyard Poetry; Churchyard Poetry The Graveyard Poets (or
Churchyard Poets) were a group of English poets of the pre-Romantic Era. They usually treated death as their
Churchyard Poetry 18th century Poetry • Thomas Gray
subject-matter, hence the school’s name. The ‘graveyard poets’ are often recognized as precursors of the Gothic
literary genre, as well as the Romantic movement.
Romanticism Romanticism refers to a European intellectual and artistic movement of the late 18th and early 19th
centuries that sought greater freedom of personal expression than that allowed by the strict rules of literary form • William Wordsworth •
and logic of the eighteenth-century neo-classicists. Nature was the source of poetic inspiration for the Romantic Samuel Taylor Coleridge •
19th century Poetry &
Romanticism writers. It focused on the individual rather than the factual information. It also focused on nature and distant times John Keats • Percy Bysshe
Literature 1798-1830s
and places. English Romanticism and American Transcendentalism* are closely related literary movements. Shelley • William Blake •
Prominent Romantics include Jean-Jacques Rousseau (French), Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (German), William Lord Byron
Blake, Lord Byron, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, John Keats, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and William Wordsworth.
Pantheism Pantheism is the idea that all things are both a manifestation or revelation of God and a part of God at
19th century Philosophy the same time. Pantheism was a common attitude in the early societies of Egypt, India, and Greece. It later became
Pantheism
& Faith a significant part of the Christian faith. William Wordsworth and Ralph Waldo Emerson are among the many
writers who have expressed the pantheistic attitude in their works.

PART 5: Glossary and Timeline of Movements and Philosophies [TABLE] 1

 Movement Period & Time Description Associated Figures

Transcendentalism An American philosophical and spiritual movement, based in New England,

Transcendentalism had its roots in Romanticism and focused on the primacy of the individual conscience and • Ralph Waldo Emerson •
19th century American rejected materialism in favour of closer communion with nature. Basically religious, it emphasised the role and Walt Whitman • Emily
Transcendentalism
Literature 1830s-1860s importance of the individual conscience, and the value of intuition in matters of moral guidance and inspiration. Dickinson • Nathaniel
Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “Self-Reliance” and Henry David Thoreau’s Walden are famous transcendentalist works. Hawthorne
Other transcendentalist American writers include Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, and Nathaniel Hawthorne.

Realism Realism is a 19th-century European literary movement that sought to portray familiar characters,
situations, and settings in a realistic and faithful manner. Fundamentally, in literature, Realism is the portrayal of
life with fidelity. It is thus not concerned with idealisation, with rendering things as beautiful when they are not, or
19th century Earlier in any way presenting them in any guise as they are not. This was done primarily by using an objective narrative • Charles Dickens • George
Realism
Prose point of view and through the build-up of accurate detail. Realism was the anti-thesis of Romanticism and its Eliot • Jane Austen
sentimentality; and Naturalism took it a step further. Novels by Lev Tolstoy (Russian; 1828-1910), Honoré de
Balzac (French; (1799-1850) are considered realistic fiction. In English literature, novels (novel of manners) by
Charles Dickens, George Eliot, and Jane Austen usually take on a realist attitude.

Naturalism Naturalism is a literary movement of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It was similar to Realism,
but the movement's major theorist, French novelist Emilé Zola, envisioned a type of fiction that would examine
human life with the objectivity of scientific inquiry. In their works, the Naturalists generally ignored the highest
levels of society and focused on the ugly aspects of life; degradation, poverty, alcoholism, prostitution, insanity,
19th century Later Prose and disease were common themes. The Naturalists typically displayed a fatalistic and pessimistic worldview, and • Emilé Zola • Thomas
Naturalism
1860s-1900s viewed human beings as either the products of "biological determinism," ruled by hereditary instincts and engaged Hardy • Jack London
in an endless struggle for survival, or as the products of "socioeconomic determinism," ruled by social and
economic forces beyond their control. Naturalism influenced authors throughout the world, including Henrik Ibsen
and Thomas Hardy. In the United States, Naturalism had a profound impact. Among the authors who embraced its
principles are Eugene O'Neill, Stephen Crane, and Jack London.
Aestheticism Aestheticism was a literary and artistic movement of the 19th century. It rejected traditional,
religious, and moral norms of the society and advocated the idea that art should not serve political, social, religious,
or moral purposes. Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) was an Irish author and one of the best-known “aesthetes” who wrote
19th century Philosophy • Oscar Wilde • Robert
Aestheticism a few works of fiction, the most important being The Picture of Dorian Gray. This novella contained the manifesto
& Arts 1870s-1900s Louis Stevenson
of Wilde’s aesthetic views, and Oscar Wilde later became the leader of the Aesthetic Movement which adopted the
motto “Art for Art’s Sake.” Wilde’s following statement summarises his aesthetic views: “There is no such thing as
a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written or badly written.”

Pre-Raphaelitism Associated with the Aesthetic Movement and Symbolism. A group of artists founded the Pre-
Raphaelites movement in the 1840s. Inspired by the artists before Raphael* (1483–1520), they were seeking a
simpler form of art. The poets were considerably under the influence of Spenser. Also, Tennyson stimulated their
interest in medievalism. The poetry of the Pre-Raphaelites showed a distinct liking for medievalism, 18th-century • Lord Alfred Tennyson •
19th century Poetry
Pre-Raphaelitism ballads, archaic diction, symbolism, and sensuousness. Christina Rossetti and Dante Gabriel Rossetti were leading Christina Rossetti • Dante
1840s-1870s
Pre-Raphaelite poets. *Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino, known as Raphael, was an Italian painter and architect of the Gabriel Rossetti
High Renaissance. His work is admired for its clarity of form, ease of composition, and visual achievement of the
Neoplatonic ideal of human grandeur. Together with Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci, he forms the traditional
trinity of great masters of that period.
Existentialism Existentialism is a predominantly twentieth-century philosophy concerned with the nature and
perception of human existence. Existentialism is associated with the that the individual is alone in a godless
universe and that the basic human condition is one of suffering and loneliness. Nevertheless, because there are no
fixed values, individuals can create their own characters — indeed, they can shape themselves — through the • Jean-Paul Sartre • Albert
exercise of free will. Existentialist thought culminates in and is popularly associated with the works of Jean-Paul Camus • Franz Kafka •
Existentialism 20th century Philosophy
Sartre: • Existence cannot be fully understood or described through empirical effort. • Anguish is a universal Fyodor Dostoyevsky •
element of life. • Individuals must bear responsibility for their actions (because they have—or are cursed with—free Samuel Beckett
will). • There is no common standard of behaviour or perception for religious and ethical matters. Existentialist
thought figures prominently in the works of such authors as Franz Kafka, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Simone de
Beauvoir, Samuel Beckett, and Albert Camus.

Nihilism Nihilism is the belief that traditional morals, ideas, beliefs, etc., have no worth or value. It is usually
associated with German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. According to Nihilism, a society's political, social, and/or
Nihilism 20th century Philosophy religious institutions should be destroyed; and there are no principles or beliefs which have any meaning or can be
true. Dostoevsky’s The Possessed (or The Devils, 1871–2) can be considered a nihilist work. Some of the worst
aspects of nihilism were exemplified in the immoral and unscrupulous character Peter Verkhovensky.
Fascism Fascism involves blind nationalism and racism. It is a complex political ideology and mass movement that
dominated many parts of central, southern, and eastern Europe between 1919 and 1945 and that also had adherents
20th century Politics &
Fascism in western Europe, the United States, South Africa, Japan, Latin America, and the Middle East. There are many • Adolf Hitler
Philosophy
definitions of fascism; most definitions agree that fascism is authoritarian and promotes nationalism at all costs, but
its basic characteristics are a matter of debate.

Modernism Modernism refers to the principles of a literary school that lasted from roughly the beginning of the
twentieth century until the end of World War II (1945). Especially in literature, Modernism is defined by its
rejection of the literary conventions of the 19th century and by its opposition to conventional morality, taste,
traditions, and economic values. Modernist writers experimented with new forms of narrative such as stream of • T.S. Eliot • James Joyce •
20th century Literature &
Modernism consciousness. They were suspicious about the existence of knowable and objective reality. They employed Virginia Woolf • Marcel
Arts 1900s-1945
different viewpoints and modes of thinking in their works. Modernism took form in the 1900s, but High Proust
Modernism (the 1920s) was considered the golden age for modernist literature. This movement broke with the
traditional aspects of Western conventions. Popular works during this time include James Joyce's Ulysses, T.S.
Eliot's The Waste Land, Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway and Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time.
The Bloomsbury Group The Bloomsbury Group was an informal circle of artists, writers, and intellectuals who
lived in the Bloomsbury section of London in the early 20th century. Bloomsbury group frequently socialised at the
homes of the novelist Virginia Woolf and her sister Vanessa Bell, who lived in Bloomsbury. Perhaps the
20th century Literature Bloomsbury Group's most important artistic contribution was the focus and support it gave to young artists. In this,
Bloomsbury Group • Virginia Woolf
1906-1930s its role was central to the development of art during the early 20th century. The group is commonly associated with
Modernism* and High Modernism in English Literature. The group members included E. M. Forster, Virginia
Woolf, Woolf’s sister Vanessa Bell and her husband Clive Bell, Woolf’s husband Leonard Woolf, and Lytton
Strachey.

PART 5: Glossary and Timeline of Movements and Philosophies [TABLE] 2

 Movement Period & Time Description Associated Figures

Post-modernism Post-modernism refers to the writing from the 1950s forward characterised by experimentation
and continuing to apply some of the fundamentals of Modernism, which included Existentialism and alienation.
Post-modernists have gone a step further in the rejection of tradition begun with the Modernists by also rejecting • John Fowles • Salman
20th century Literature & traditional forms, preferring the anti-novel over the novel, the anti-hero over the hero, and the unreliable narrator Rushdie • Julian Barnes •
Post-modernism
Arts 1945 & on over a traditional one. Post-modern literature is noted for its incoherence, discontinuity, parody, and metafiction as Kurt Vonnegut • Oğuz Atay
well as a fragmented use of high and low culture, an absence of tradition and structure and a world of technology • Gabriel Garcia Marquez
and consumerism. Post-modern writers include John Fowles, Salman Rushdie, Julian Barnes, Kurt Vonnegut, Oğuz
Atay, and Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
Post-colonialism ‘Post-colonialism’ (covering the terms ‘Post-colonial studies’, ‘Post-colonial theory’ and ‘Post-
colonial literature’) is an interdisciplinary academic field devoted to the study of European colonialism and its
impact on the society, culture, history, and politics of the formerly colonized regions such as the African continent,
the Caribbean, the Middle East, South-Asia, and the Pacific. The aims of Post-colonial literature are, roughly, as • Edward Said • Homi
20th century Philosophy follows: (1) to expand the traditional canon of Western literature, (2) to challenge Eurocentric assumptions about Bhabha • Gayatri C. Spivak
Post-colonialism
& Literature 1950s & on literature, and (4) to question the concepts of otherness, identity, and race through literature. Colonial discourse • Chinua Achebe • Salman
analysis was inaugurated by Edward Said’s Orientalism (1978). Other prominent Post-colonial theorists include Rushdie • Joseph Conrad
Homi Bhabha, Marxist critics such as Aijaz Ahmad, Robert J. C. Young and Neil Lazarus, and feminist critics such
as Gayatri C. Spivak and Anne McClintock. Some noteworthy examples of Post-colonial Literature are Chinua
Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children, and Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness.
Absurdism Absurdism is a philosophy based on the belief that man exists in an irrational and meaningless universe
and that his search for order brings him into conflict with his universe. Absurdist fiction is a genre of literature that
uses non-chronological storytelling, Surrealism, and comedy to explore themes like Existentialism and the human
condition. The absurd in literature often follows main characters who feel purposeless, or have developed a
20th century Esp. Drama • Samuel Beckett • Harold
Absurdism disillusionment with their lives, religion, or society. Samuel Beckett (1906-1989) belongs to the school of Absurd
1930s-1970s Pinter • Edward Albee
Theatre in English Literature, the writers of which were mainly concerned in the individual’s search for identity in
an unfriendly outside world. Other notable works of absurdist theatre are: • Waiting for Godot and Endgame by
Samuel Beckett, • The Birthday Party, The Dumbwaiter, and The Homecoming by Harold Pinter, and • The Zoo
Story by Edward Albee (in American Literature).

Surrealism An avant-garde movement mainly in visual arts, Surrealism was based primarily in France, and it
sought to break down the boundaries between rational and irrational, conscious and unconscious, through a variety
of literary and artistic experiments. The surrealists attempted to express in art and literature the workings of the
20th century Arts 1920s– unconscious mind and to synthesise these workings with the conscious mind. The surrealists were particularly • Samuel Beckett • William
Surrealism
1930s interested in the study and effects of dreams and hallucinations and also in the interpenetration of the sleeping and Burroughs • Franz Kafka
waking conditions on the threshold of the conscious mind, that kind of limbo where strange shapes materialise in
the gulfs of the mind. Salvador Dalí, Pablo Picasso, Joan Miró, and René Magritte are well-known surrealist
artists. The work of Franz Kafka, Samuel Beckett, and William Burroughs is usually considered surrealistic.

Expressionism Expressionism is a style of art, literature, and music which uses symbols and exaggeration to
represent emotions, rather than representing physical reality. As an indistinct literary term, Expressionism was
originally used to describe an early twentieth-century school of German painting. The term now applies to almost
• Franz Kafka • James
Expressionism 20th century Arts any mode of unconventional, highly subjective writing that distorts reality in some way. Expressionism in literature
Joyce
arose as a reaction against materialism, self-righteous bourgeois prosperity, rapid mechanisation and urbanisation,
and the domination of the family within pre-World War I European society. In the novel, the term is closely allied to
the writing of Franz Kafka and James Joyce (and stream of consciousness).
Kitchen-Sink Realism A term coined to describe a British cultural movement that developed in the late 1950s and
early 1960s in theatre, art, novels, film, and television plays, whose protagonists usually could be described as
20th century Esp. Drama
Kitchen-Sink Realism angry young men* (see below). It used a style of Social Realism, which often depicted the domestic situations of
1950s-2000s
working-class Britons living in cramped rented accommodation and spending their off-hours drinking in grimy
pubs, to explore social issues and political controversies.
The Angry Young Men The Angry Young Men were a group of authors mainly in British Theatres, or a term
applied to the main characters of some novels and plays, and it implied protest against the values of the middle
class. The group's leading figures included John Osborne and Kingsley Amis. The best-known example in British
20th century Drama Literature is John Osborne’s play Look Back in Anger (1956). Following the success of the Osborne play, the label
Angry Young Men • John Osborne
1950s-1980s "angry young men" was later applied by British media to describe young writers who were characterised by a
disillusionment with traditional British society. The term, always imprecise, began to have less meaning over the
years as the writers to whom it was originally applied became more divergent, and many of them dismissed the
label as useless. The movement is associated with Kitchen-sink Realism.
In-yer-face Theatre The School of In-yer-face Theatre* describes a wave of writing, especially in the 1990s,
which was aggressive, raw, confrontational, and angry. In-yer-face theatre explores the gut-wrenching extremes of
20th century Drama
In-yer-face Theatre the human condition and rammed the most extreme excesses of contemporary society down its throat. It was
1990s & on
designed specifically to assault the audience’s sensibilities. *In-yer-face Theatre is known as “Suratına Tiyatro” or
“Yüzevurumcu Tiyatro” in Turkish.

The Lost Generation The Lost Generation, as a term, was in regular use after the First World War in reference to
the host of young men who were killed in it, and also to the young men who survived and who thereafter were
• Gertrude Stein • Ernest
20th century American adrift – morally and spiritually (and in many other ways). The phrase is believed to have been invented by Gertrude
Lost Generation Hemingway • F. Scott
Literature 1918-1930s Stein (1874–1946), a supporter and publicizer of artists and writers who were active in the avant-garde movements
Fitzgerald
of her period. The mood of the lost generation (a mood of disenchantment, disillusionment and, sometimes,
cynicism) was well represented by some American novelists such as Ernest Hemingway and Scott Fitzgerald.
Harlem Renaissance Harlem* Renaissance is a blossoming (c. 1918–37) of African American culture,
particularly in the creative arts, and the most influential movement in African American literary history. Embracing
literary, musical, theatrical, and visual arts, participants sought to reconceptualise “the Negro” apart from the white
stereotypes that had influenced black peoples’ relationship to their heritage and to each other. They also sought to
20th century American break free of Victorian moral values and bourgeois shame about aspects of their lives that might, as seen by whites,
Harlem Renaissance • Langston Hughes
Literature 1918-1940s reinforce racist beliefs. Never dominated by a particular school of thought, but rather characterized by intense
debate, the movement laid the groundwork for all later African American literature and had an enormous impact on
subsequent black literature and consciousness worldwide. *While the renaissance was not confined to the Harlem
district of New York City, Harlem attracted a remarkable concentration of intellect and talent and served as the
symbolic capital of this cultural awakening.

PART 5: Glossary and Timeline of Movements and Philosophies [TABLE] 3

 Movement Period & Time Description Associated Figures

Beat Generation The term ‘beat’, in this restricted sense, is generally believed to have been devised by Jack
Kerouac (1922–69), and denotes a group of American writers (especially poets) who became prominent in the
1950s. They are particularly associated with San Francisco, USA, and their generally accepted father-figures were
Kenneth Rexroth, Henry Miller and William Burroughs. The Beat writers (and many of the ‘Beat generation’)
developed their own slang and a highly idiosyncratic style. Their convictions and attitudes were unconventional, • Jack Kerouac • Allen
20th century American provocative, anti-intellectual, anti-hierarchical and anti-middle-class (the ‘squares’). They were influenced by jazz, Ginsberg • William
Beat Generation
Literature 1950s by Zen Buddhism and by American Indian and Mexican Peyote cults, and their Bohemian lifestyle was popularly Burroughs • Sylvia Plath •
associated with drugs, ‘free’ sex, drink, and permissive living in general. It was in some respects anarchic and Ted Hughes
provoked considerable hostility. The generation is also known for their deep connection to nature, embodied in the
Hippie culture. Allen Ginsberg’s Howl and Other Poems (1956) represents as well as anything the disillusionment
of the Beat movement with modern society, its materialism and militarism and its outmoded, stuffed-shirt, middle-
class values and mores.
Imagism Imagism was a movement in early-20th-century Anglo-American poetry that favoured precision of
imagery and clear, sharp language. It gave Modernism its first start, and is considered to be the first organised
modernist literary movement in the English language. In contrast to the contemporary Georgian poets, who were • Ezra Pound • Ford
20th century American
Imagism generally content to work within that tradition, Imagists called for a return to more Classical values, such as Maddox Ford • D. H.
Poetry
directness of presentation, economy of language, and a willingness to experiment with non-traditional verse forms; Lawrence
Imagists used free verse. Some important names associated with Imagism in English and American Literatures were
Ezra Pound, Ford Maddox Ford, and D.H. Lawrence.

Movement Period & Time Description Associated Figures

Classicism Classicism refers to the aesthetic attitudes and principles manifested in the art, architecture, and
literature of Ancient Greece and Rome and characterised by emphasis on form, simplicity, rule, order,
Classicism Antiquity Philosophy proportion, and restraint. Homer’s epic poems Illiad and Odyssey, Horace’s works of satire, Greek tragedies • Homer • Horace
(such as Oedipus the Rex and Medea) and/or comedies (such as Lysistrata) are classical works of literature.
These form the basis for the Neoclassicist movement of the 18th century in English Literature.
Humanism Humanism is a philosophy that places faith in the dignity of humankind and rejects the medieval
perception (scholastic thought) of the individual as a weak, fallen creature. Humanists typically believe in the
• Sir Philip Sidney • Sir
16th century Philosophy & perfectibility of human nature and view reason and education as the means to that end. English Humanism
Humanism Thomas More • William
Arts flourished in two stages: (1) the first, a basically academic movement that had its roots in the 15th century and
Shakespeare • Ben Jonson
culminated in the work of Sir Thomas More, Sir Thomas Elyot, and Roger Ascham, and (2) the second, a poetic
revolution led by Sir Philip Sidney and William Shakespeare.

Cavalier Poetry A group of poets who supported King James I during the English Civil War were known as
Cavalier Poets. They represented an extension of Elizabethan courtly poetry in the 17th century. Some
characteristics of their writings were simple and straightforward language, typically short poems as well as light
Cavalier Poetry 17th century Poetry 1630s • Ben Jonson
and polished diction. Cavalier Poets often focused on living in the moment (the Carpe Diem philosophy) and
their main concern was pleasure. The best known of Cavalier Poets were Ben Jonson, Robert Herrick, Richard
Lovelace, Thomas Carew, Sir John Suckling and Edmund Waller.
Metaphysical Poetry The Metaphysical poets were a group of 17th-century poets who combined direct
language with ingenious metaphor (or conceits) drawn from different areas of life. The metaphysical poets
• John Donne • Andrew
Metaphysical Poetry 17th century Poetry 1630s mainly focused on two subjects: romantic love and religious faith; and sometimes, they blended these two. John
Marwell
Donne, George Herbert, Henry Vaughan, Andrew Marvell, Richard Crashaw, and Abraham Cowley are the best-
known poets of the Metaphysical School of poetry.
Enlightenment The Enlightenment, also known as the Age of Reason, was an intellectual and cultural
movement in the eighteenth century (especially in France). This movement emphasised reason, science, and
sceptical thinking over superstition and blind faith. Many consider the Enlightenment a major turning point in • Thomas Hobbes • John
18th century Philosophy
Enlightenment Western civilisation, an age of light replacing an age of darkness. Major names associated with the movement Locke • Jean-Jacques
1660s-1790s
include Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Isaac Newton, Voltaire, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and René Descartes. Rousseau
They questioned accepted knowledge and spread new ideas about openness, investigation, and religious
tolerance throughout Europe and the Americas.
Rationalism At least three basic meanings may be distinguished: (1) the theory or doctrine that human reason
can provide a priori knowledge without intermediary sense data; (2) the theory or doctrine that reason can
pursue and attain truth for its own sake; (3) the idea or conviction that a rational order can be found in reality;
Rationalism 18th century Philosophy and, alternatively, that reason can impose an order on reality. Rationalism, rationalist and rational are often used
fairly loosely. For example, the 18th century is referred to as a period of rationalism; a rationalist may be a
person who depends on reason rather than feeling and intuitive perception; being rational may mean using the
brain and ratiocinative processes rather than any others. All three terms are occasionally used pejoratively.

Deism Deism (Natural Religion) became a widespread way of seeing things among the intellectuals of the
18th century Philosophy &
Deism Restoration Era (the 18th century) in English Literature. For Deists, one did not need any guidance to
Faith
understand God. They believed that every little detail on earth was already a signifier of a divine being.
Neoclassicism Neoclassicism is a literary movement of the 18th century, inspired by the rediscovery of classical
works of ancient Greece and Rome (Classicism*). It was a revival of the classical style but with a new (neo)
perspective. In this context, Classicism refers either to the art produced in antiquity or to later art inspired by
that of antiquity; Neoclassicism always refers to the art produced later but inspired by antiquity. Neoclassical
18th century Literature & • John Dryden • Alexander
Neoclassicism writers typically reacted against the intensity and enthusiasm of the Renaissance period. They wrote works that
Arts 1660s-1800s Pope • Jonathan Swift
appealed to the intellect, using elevated language and classical literary forms such as satire and the ode.
Neoclassical works were often governed by the classical goal of instruction. Neoclassicism marked a return to
order, proportion, restraint, logic, accuracy, and decorum. English neo-classicists include John Dryden,
Alexander Pope, Jonathan Swift, Joseph Addison, and Sir Richard Steele.
The Churchyard School of Poetry aka. Graveyard Poetry; Churchyard Poetry The Graveyard Poets (or
Churchyard Poets) were a group of English poets of the pre-Romantic Era. They usually treated death as their
Churchyard Poetry 18th century Poetry • Thomas Gray
subject-matter, hence the school’s name. The ‘graveyard poets’ are often recognized as precursors of the Gothic
literary genre, as well as the Romantic movement.

PART 5: Glossary and Timeline of Movements and Philosophies [TABLE] 4

 Movement Period & Time Description Associated Figures

Romanticism Romanticism refers to a European intellectual and artistic movement of the late 18th and early
19th centuries that sought greater freedom of personal expression than that allowed by the strict rules of literary
• William Wordsworth •
form and logic of the eighteenth-century neo-classicists. Nature was the source of poetic inspiration for the
Samuel Taylor Coleridge •
19th century Poetry & Romantic writers. It focused on the individual rather than the factual information. It also focused on nature and
Romanticism John Keats • Percy Bysshe
Literature 1798-1830s distant times and places. English Romanticism and American Transcendentalism* are closely related literary
Shelley • William Blake •
movements. Prominent Romantics include Jean-Jacques Rousseau (French), Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Lord Byron
(German), William Blake, Lord Byron, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, John Keats, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and
William Wordsworth.

Pantheism Pantheism is the idea that all things are both a manifestation or revelation of God and a part of God
19th century Philosophy & at the same time. Pantheism was a common attitude in the early societies of Egypt, India, and Greece. It later
Pantheism
Faith became a significant part of the Christian faith. William Wordsworth and Ralph Waldo Emerson are among the
many writers who have expressed the pantheistic attitude in their works.

Transcendentalism An American philosophical and spiritual movement, based in New England,

Transcendentalism had its roots in Romanticism and focused on the primacy of the individual conscience and
• Ralph Waldo Emerson •
rejected materialism in favour of closer communion with nature. Basically religious, it emphasised the role and
19th century American Walt Whitman • Emily
Transcendentalism importance of the individual conscience, and the value of intuition in matters of moral guidance and inspiration.
Literature 1830s-1860s Dickinson • Nathaniel
Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “Self-Reliance” and Henry David Thoreau’s Walden are famous transcendentalist
Hawthorne
works. Other transcendentalist American writers include Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, and Nathaniel
Hawthorne.

Realism Realism is a 19th-century European literary movement that sought to portray familiar characters,
situations, and settings in a realistic and faithful manner. Fundamentally, in literature, Realism is the portrayal of
life with fidelity. It is thus not concerned with idealisation, with rendering things as beautiful when they are not,
or in any way presenting them in any guise as they are not. This was done primarily by using an objective • Charles Dickens • George
Realism 19th century Earlier Prose
narrative point of view and through the build-up of accurate detail. Realism was the anti-thesis of Romanticism Eliot • Jane Austen
and its sentimentality; and Naturalism took it a step further. Novels by Lev Tolstoy (Russian; 1828-1910),
Honoré de Balzac (French; (1799-1850) are considered realistic fiction. In English literature, novels (novel of
manners) by Charles Dickens, George Eliot, and Jane Austen usually take on a realist attitude.

Naturalism Naturalism is a literary movement of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It was similar to
Realism, but the movement's major theorist, French novelist Emilé Zola, envisioned a type of fiction that would
examine human life with the objectivity of scientific inquiry. In their works, the Naturalists generally ignored
the highest levels of society and focused on the ugly aspects of life; degradation, poverty, alcoholism,
prostitution, insanity, and disease were common themes. The Naturalists typically displayed a fatalistic and
19th century Later Prose • Emilé Zola • Thomas
Naturalism pessimistic worldview, and viewed human beings as either the products of "biological determinism," ruled by
1860s-1900s Hardy • Jack London
hereditary instincts and engaged in an endless struggle for survival, or as the products of "socioeconomic
determinism," ruled by social and economic forces beyond their control. Naturalism influenced authors
throughout the world, including Henrik Ibsen and Thomas Hardy. In the United States, Naturalism had a
profound impact. Among the authors who embraced its principles are Eugene O'Neill, Stephen Crane, and Jack
London.
Aestheticism Aestheticism was a literary and artistic movement of the 19th century. It rejected traditional,
religious, and moral norms of the society and advocated the idea that art should not serve political, social,
religious, or moral purposes. Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) was an Irish author and one of the best-known
19th century Philosophy & “aesthetes” who wrote a few works of fiction, the most important being The Picture of Dorian Gray. This • Oscar Wilde • Robert
Aestheticism
Arts 1870s-1900s novella contained the manifesto of Wilde’s aesthetic views, and Oscar Wilde later became the leader of the Louis Stevenson
Aesthetic Movement which adopted the motto “Art for Art’s Sake.” Wilde’s following statement summarises his
aesthetic views: “There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written or badly
written.”
Pre-Raphaelitism Associated with the Aesthetic Movement and Symbolism. A group of artists founded the
Pre-Raphaelites movement in the 1840s. Inspired by the artists before Raphael* (1483–1520), they were seeking
a simpler form of art. The poets were considerably under the influence of Spenser. Also, Tennyson stimulated
their interest in medievalism. The poetry of the Pre-Raphaelites showed a distinct liking for medievalism, 18th- • Lord Alfred Tennyson •
19th century Poetry 1840s-
Pre-Raphaelitism century ballads, archaic diction, symbolism, and sensuousness. Christina Rossetti and Dante Gabriel Rossetti Christina Rossetti • Dante
1870s
were leading Pre-Raphaelite poets. *Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino, known as Raphael, was an Italian painter and Gabriel Rossetti
architect of the High Renaissance. His work is admired for its clarity of form, ease of composition, and visual
achievement of the Neoplatonic ideal of human grandeur. Together with Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci,
he forms the traditional trinity of great masters of that period.

Existentialism Existentialism is a predominantly twentieth-century philosophy concerned with the nature and
perception of human existence. Existentialism is associated with the that the individual is alone in a godless
universe and that the basic human condition is one of suffering and loneliness. Nevertheless, because there are
no fixed values, individuals can create their own characters — indeed, they can shape themselves — through the • Jean-Paul Sartre • Albert
exercise of free will. Existentialist thought culminates in and is popularly associated with the works of Jean-Paul Camus • Franz Kafka •
Existentialism 20th century Philosophy
Sartre: • Existence cannot be fully understood or described through empirical effort. • Anguish is a universal Fyodor Dostoyevsky •
element of life. • Individuals must bear responsibility for their actions (because they have—or are cursed with— Samuel Beckett
free will). • There is no common standard of behaviour or perception for religious and ethical matters.
Existentialist thought figures prominently in the works of such authors as Franz Kafka, Fyodor Dostoyevsky,
Simone de Beauvoir, Samuel Beckett, and Albert Camus.

Nihilism Nihilism is the belief that traditional morals, ideas, beliefs, etc., have no worth or value. It is usually
associated with German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. According to Nihilism, a society's political, social,
Nihilism 20th century Philosophy and/or religious institutions should be destroyed; and there are no principles or beliefs which have any meaning
or can be true. Dostoevsky’s The Possessed (or The Devils, 1871–2) can be considered a nihilist work. Some of
the worst aspects of nihilism were exemplified in the immoral and unscrupulous character Peter Verkhovensky.

Fascism Fascism involves blind nationalism and racism. It is a complex political ideology and mass movement
that dominated many parts of central, southern, and eastern Europe between 1919 and 1945 and that also had
20th century Politics &
Fascism adherents in western Europe, the United States, South Africa, Japan, Latin America, and the Middle East. There • Adolf Hitler
Philosophy
are many definitions of fascism; most definitions agree that fascism is authoritarian and promotes nationalism at
all costs, but its basic characteristics are a matter of debate.

PART 5: Glossary and Timeline of Movements and Philosophies [TABLE] 5

 Movement Period & Time Description Associated Figures

Modernism Modernism refers to the principles of a literary school that lasted from roughly the beginning of the
twentieth century until the end of World War II (1945). Especially in literature, Modernism is defined by its
rejection of the literary conventions of the 19th century and by its opposition to conventional morality, taste,
traditions, and economic values. Modernist writers experimented with new forms of narrative such as stream of • T.S. Eliot • James Joyce •
20th century Literature &
Modernism consciousness. They were suspicious about the existence of knowable and objective reality. They employed Virginia Woolf • Marcel
Arts 1900s-1945
different viewpoints and modes of thinking in their works. Modernism took form in the 1900s, but High Proust
Modernism (the 1920s) was considered the golden age for modernist literature. This movement broke with the
traditional aspects of Western conventions. Popular works during this time include James Joyce's Ulysses, T.S.
Eliot's The Waste Land, Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway and Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time.

The Bloomsbury Group The Bloomsbury Group was an informal circle of artists, writers, and intellectuals
who lived in the Bloomsbury section of London in the early 20th century. Bloomsbury group frequently
socialised at the homes of the novelist Virginia Woolf and her sister Vanessa Bell, who lived in Bloomsbury.
20th century Literature Perhaps the Bloomsbury Group's most important artistic contribution was the focus and support it gave to young
Bloomsbury Group • Virginia Woolf
1906-1930s artists. In this, its role was central to the development of art during the early 20th century. The group is
commonly associated with Modernism* and High Modernism in English Literature. The group members
included E. M. Forster, Virginia Woolf, Woolf’s sister Vanessa Bell and her husband Clive Bell, Woolf’s
husband Leonard Woolf, and Lytton Strachey.

Post-modernism Post-modernism refers to the writing from the 1950s forward characterised by
experimentation and continuing to apply some of the fundamentals of Modernism, which included
Existentialism and alienation. Post-modernists have gone a step further in the rejection of tradition begun with • John Fowles • Salman
20th century Literature & the Modernists by also rejecting traditional forms, preferring the anti-novel over the novel, the anti-hero over the Rushdie • Julian Barnes •
Post-modernism
Arts 1945 & on hero, and the unreliable narrator over a traditional one. Post-modern literature is noted for its incoherence, Kurt Vonnegut • Oğuz Atay
discontinuity, parody, and metafiction as well as a fragmented use of high and low culture, an absence of • Gabriel Garcia Marquez
tradition and structure and a world of technology and consumerism. Post-modern writers include John Fowles,
Salman Rushdie, Julian Barnes, Kurt Vonnegut, Oğuz Atay, and Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

Post-colonialism ‘Post-colonialism’ (covering the terms ‘Post-colonial studies’, ‘Post-colonial theory’ and
‘Post-colonial literature’) is an interdisciplinary academic field devoted to the study of European colonialism
and its impact on the society, culture, history, and politics of the formerly colonized regions such as the African
continent, the Caribbean, the Middle East, South-Asia, and the Pacific. The aims of Post-colonial literature are,
• Edward Said • Homi
roughly, as follows: (1) to expand the traditional canon of Western literature, (2) to challenge Eurocentric
20th century Philosophy & Bhabha • Gayatri C. Spivak
Post-colonialism assumptions about literature, and (4) to question the concepts of otherness, identity, and race through literature.
Literature 1950s & on • Chinua Achebe • Salman
Colonial discourse analysis was inaugurated by Edward Said’s Orientalism (1978). Other prominent Post-
Rushdie • Joseph Conrad
colonial theorists include Homi Bhabha, Marxist critics such as Aijaz Ahmad, Robert J. C. Young and Neil
Lazarus, and feminist critics such as Gayatri C. Spivak and Anne McClintock. Some noteworthy examples of
Post-colonial Literature are Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children, and
Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness.
Absurdism Absurdism is a philosophy based on the belief that man exists in an irrational and meaningless
universe and that his search for order brings him into conflict with his universe. Absurdist fiction is a genre of
literature that uses non-chronological storytelling, Surrealism, and comedy to explore themes like Existentialism
and the human condition. The absurd in literature often follows main characters who feel purposeless, or have
20th century Esp. Drama • Samuel Beckett • Harold
Absurdism developed a disillusionment with their lives, religion, or society. Samuel Beckett (1906-1989) belongs to the
1930s-1970s Pinter • Edward Albee
school of Absurd Theatre in English Literature, the writers of which were mainly concerned in the individual’s
search for identity in an unfriendly outside world. Other notable works of absurdist theatre are: • Waiting for
Godot and Endgame by Samuel Beckett, • The Birthday Party, The Dumbwaiter, and The Homecoming by
Harold Pinter, and • The Zoo Story by Edward Albee (in American Literature).

Surrealism An avant-garde movement mainly in visual arts, Surrealism was based primarily in France, and it
sought to break down the boundaries between rational and irrational, conscious and unconscious, through a
variety of literary and artistic experiments. The surrealists attempted to express in art and literature the workings
of the unconscious mind and to synthesise these workings with the conscious mind. The surrealists were
20th century Arts 1920s– • Samuel Beckett • William
Surrealism particularly interested in the study and effects of dreams and hallucinations and also in the interpenetration of
1930s Burroughs • Franz Kafka
the sleeping and waking conditions on the threshold of the conscious mind, that kind of limbo where strange
shapes materialise in the gulfs of the mind. Salvador Dalí, Pablo Picasso, Joan Miró, and René Magritte are
well-known surrealist artists. The work of Franz Kafka, Samuel Beckett, and William Burroughs is usually
considered surrealistic.

Expressionism Expressionism is a style of art, literature, and music which uses symbols and exaggeration to
represent emotions, rather than representing physical reality. As an indistinct literary term, Expressionism was
originally used to describe an early twentieth-century school of German painting. The term now applies to
Expressionism 20th century Arts almost any mode of unconventional, highly subjective writing that distorts reality in some way. Expressionism • Franz Kafka • James Joyce
in literature arose as a reaction against materialism, self-righteous bourgeois prosperity, rapid mechanisation and
urbanisation, and the domination of the family within pre-World War I European society. In the novel, the term
is closely allied to the writing of Franz Kafka and James Joyce (and stream of consciousness).

Kitchen-Sink Realism A term coined to describe a British cultural movement that developed in the late 1950s
and early 1960s in theatre, art, novels, film, and television plays, whose protagonists usually could be described
20th century Esp. Drama
Kitchen-Sink Realism as angry young men* (see below). It used a style of Social Realism, which often depicted the domestic
1950s-2000s
situations of working-class Britons living in cramped rented accommodation and spending their off-hours
drinking in grimy pubs, to explore social issues and political controversies.

The Angry Young Men The Angry Young Men were a group of authors mainly in British Theatres, or a term
applied to the main characters of some novels and plays, and it implied protest against the values of the middle
class. The group's leading figures included John Osborne and Kingsley Amis. The best-known example in
20th century Drama British Literature is John Osborne’s play Look Back in Anger (1956). Following the success of the Osborne
Angry Young Men • John Osborne
1950s-1980s play, the label "angry young men" was later applied by British media to describe young writers who were
characterised by a disillusionment with traditional British society. The term, always imprecise, began to have
less meaning over the years as the writers to whom it was originally applied became more divergent, and many
of them dismissed the label as useless. The movement is associated with Kitchen-sink Realism.

PART 5: Glossary and Timeline of Movements and Philosophies [TABLE] 6

 Movement Period & Time Description Associated Figures

In-yer-face Theatre The School of In-yer-face Theatre* describes a wave of writing, especially in the 1990s,
which was aggressive, raw, confrontational, and angry. In-yer-face theatre explores the gut-wrenching extremes
20th century Drama 1990s
In-yer-face Theatre of the human condition and rammed the most extreme excesses of contemporary society down its throat. It was
& on
designed specifically to assault the audience’s sensibilities. *In-yer-face Theatre is known as “Suratına Tiyatro”
or “Yüzevurumcu Tiyatro” in Turkish.

The Lost Generation The Lost Generation, as a term, was in regular use after the First World War in reference
to the host of young men who were killed in it, and also to the young men who survived and who thereafter were
adrift – morally and spiritually (and in many other ways). The phrase is believed to have been invented by • Gertrude Stein • Ernest
20th century American
Lost Generation Gertrude Stein (1874–1946), a supporter and publicizer of artists and writers who were active in the avant-garde Hemingway • F. Scott
Literature 1918-1930s
movements of her period. The mood of the lost generation (a mood of disenchantment, disillusionment and, Fitzgerald
sometimes, cynicism) was well represented by some American novelists such as Ernest Hemingway and Scott
Fitzgerald.
Harlem Renaissance Harlem* Renaissance is a blossoming (c. 1918–37) of African American culture,
particularly in the creative arts, and the most influential movement in African American literary history.
Embracing literary, musical, theatrical, and visual arts, participants sought to reconceptualise “the Negro” apart
from the white stereotypes that had influenced black peoples’ relationship to their heritage and to each other.
20th century American They also sought to break free of Victorian moral values and bourgeois shame about aspects of their lives that
Harlem Renaissance • Langston Hughes
Literature 1918-1940s might, as seen by whites, reinforce racist beliefs. Never dominated by a particular school of thought, but rather
characterized by intense debate, the movement laid the groundwork for all later African American literature and
had an enormous impact on subsequent black literature and consciousness worldwide. *While the renaissance
was not confined to the Harlem district of New York City, Harlem attracted a remarkable concentration of
intellect and talent and served as the symbolic capital of this cultural awakening.
Beat Generation The term ‘beat’, in this restricted sense, is generally believed to have been devised by Jack
Kerouac (1922–69), and denotes a group of American writers (especially poets) who became prominent in the
1950s. They are particularly associated with San Francisco, USA, and their generally accepted father-figures
were Kenneth Rexroth, Henry Miller and William Burroughs. The Beat writers (and many of the ‘Beat
generation’) developed their own slang and a highly idiosyncratic style. Their convictions and attitudes were • Jack Kerouac • Allen
20th century American unconventional, provocative, anti-intellectual, anti-hierarchical and anti-middle-class (the ‘squares’). They were Ginsberg • William
Beat Generation
Literature 1950s influenced by jazz, by Zen Buddhism and by American Indian and Mexican Peyote cults, and their Bohemian Burroughs • Sylvia Plath •
lifestyle was popularly associated with drugs, ‘free’ sex, drink, and permissive living in general. It was in some Ted Hughes
respects anarchic and provoked considerable hostility. The generation is also known for their deep connection to
nature, embodied in the Hippie culture. Allen Ginsberg’s Howl and Other Poems (1956) represents as well as
anything the disillusionment of the Beat movement with modern society, its materialism and militarism and its
outmoded, stuffed-shirt, middle-class values and mores.
Imagism Imagism was a movement in early-20th-century Anglo-American poetry that favoured precision of
imagery and clear, sharp language. It gave Modernism its first start, and is considered to be the first organised
modernist literary movement in the English language. In contrast to the contemporary Georgian poets, who were • Ezra Pound • Ford
20th century American
Imagism generally content to work within that tradition, Imagists called for a return to more Classical values, such as Maddox Ford • D. H.
Poetry
directness of presentation, economy of language, and a willingness to experiment with non-traditional verse Lawrence
forms; Imagists used free verse. Some important names associated with Imagism in English and American
Literatures were Ezra Pound, Ford Maddox Ford, and D.H. Lawrence.

PART 5: Glossary and Timeline of Movements and Philosophies [TABLE] 7