19 questions · about 22 minutes. Press End Mock any time to see your score and the correct answers.
For the speaker of the words 'When I'm alone', being alone is:
Correct answer: A. the normal fate of a human being all his life
He speaks 'as though to be alone were nothing strange', a lifelong condition — 'life endured and known'.
Note: Passage I is Siegfried Sassoon's 'Alone' ('When I'm alone…'), which is copyrighted in many countries and not reproduced. A man's casual 'When I'm alone' sets the speaker thinking how 'strange we grow when we're alone', unlike the selves that meet and talk and say good-night. 'Alone' is the stillness where our spirits walk, 'life endured and known', which leaves only our inmost faith.
Which two statements capture the meaning of 'Alone' for thinking beings?
Correct answer: C. B and C only
'The stillness where our spirits walk' (B) and 'life endured and known' (C).
Poetry is described as one of Plato's two higher forms of divine madness. What is the other?
Correct answer: C. Love
Phaedrus: the madness of the poet and the madness of love (eros).
Note: Passage II is from Walter Pater's essay 'Dante Gabriel Rossetti' (Appreciations, 1889), summarised here. Pater recalls Plato's view of poetry as one of the higher forms of 'divine mania'. He grants that poetry may have 'a mere insanity incidental to it', the 'defect of its quality', which in Rossetti appears as a forced and almost grotesque materialising of abstractions in his personifications. He compares this with Dante's bondage to the scholastic realism of the Middle Ages.
In Rossetti, the forced personifications may be:
Correct answer: D. C and A only
The 'defect of its quality' (A), a 'forced and almost grotesque materialising of abstractions' (C).
Passage III (Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream, 1.1.58–64)
I do entreat your grace to pardon me.I know not by what power I am made bold,Nor how it may concern my modesty,In such a presence here to plead my thoughts;But I beseech your grace that I may knowThe worst that may befall me in this case,If I refuse to wed Demetrius.
Who was in love with Demetrius?
Correct answer: C. Helena
Helena dotes on Demetrius, who pursues Hermia.
Who speaks these lines?
Correct answer: D. Hermia
Hermia, refusing her father's choice, Demetrius.
To whom are the lines addressed?
Correct answer: A. Theseus
'Your grace': Theseus, Duke of Athens.
Passage IV (Dickens, Hard Times, 1854, Book I, ch. 2)
He went to work in this preparatory lesson, not unlike Morgiana in the Forty Thieves: looking into all the vessels ranged before him, one after another, to see what they contained. Say, good M'Choakumchild. When from thy boiling store, thou shalt fill each jar brim full by-and-by, dost thou think that thou wilt always kill outright the robber Fancy lurking within—or sometimes only maim him and distort him!
Which device is used in '…looking into all the vessels ranged before him'?
Correct answer: C. Metaphor
The children are figured as vessels (jars) to be filled with facts — a metaphor sustained from the Morgiana simile.
'Fancy' is opposed to which two of the following?
Correct answer: A. B and C only
Gradgrind's system sets Fact and Reason against Fancy (imagination and feeling).
Match List I with List II:
Correct answer: C. A-II, B-IV, C-I, D-III
Per the poem's imagery: hair as harp, pillows as cloud, breeze as harpist, cheeks as rose.
Note: Passage I is Stephen Spender's 'Daybreak', which is copyrighted and not reproduced. At dawn the speaker watches his beloved asleep: her hair 'a harp' played by 'the hand of a breeze', her cheek a rose on cloud-like pillows, her profile like 'the carved face' of an angel. She wakes, speaks his name, and says 'my dream has come true', and their two dreams flow together.
Correct answer: A. A-II, B-IV, C-I, D-III
A direct identification (metaphor); a breeze given hands (personification); a likeness marked by 'seems' (simile); a waking dream (oxymoron).
Which best describes the lady's face as she lies asleep at dawn?
Correct answer: B. The side-view of her face looks like that of a sculpted angel.
'Profile' (side-view) plus 'carved face' of an angel.
Passage II (Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals, 1785, Preface; tr. T. K. Abbott, 1873)
Logic cannot have any empirical part; that is, a part in which the universal and necessary laws of thought should rest on grounds taken from experience; otherwise it would not be logic, i.e. a canon for the understanding or the reason, valid for all thought, and capable of demonstration. Natural and moral philosophy, on the contrary, can each have their empirical part, since the former has to determine the laws of nature as an object of experience; the latter the laws of the human will, so far as it is affected by nature: the former, however, being laws according to which everything does happen; the latter, laws according to which everything ought to happen. Ethics, however, must also consider the conditions under which what ought to happen frequently does not.
'Logic cannot have any empirical part' because:
Correct answer: B. B and C only
Logic is 'a canon… valid for all thought, and capable of demonstration'.
Which two statements are correct?
Correct answer: D. A and D only
Natural philosophy gives the laws by which everything does happen, moral philosophy those by which everything ought to happen.
Passage III (Shakespeare, King Lear, 4.6.160–67)
Thou rascal beadle, hold thy bloody hand!Why dost thou lash that whore? Strip thine own back;Thou hotly lust'st to use her in that kindFor which thou whipp'st her. The usurer hangs the cozener.Through tatter'd clothes small vices do appear;Robes and furr'd gowns hide all. Plate sin with gold,And the strong lance of justice hurtless breaks;Arm it in rags, a pigmy's straw does pierce it.
Why is the beadle told to whip his own back instead of the prostitute's?
Correct answer: B. He himself lusts after her.
'Thou hotly lust'st to use her in that kind / For which thou whipp'st her' — the punisher shares the sin.
Note: The raw source key gives option 3; the text supports option 2.
Who speaks these lines, and to whom?
Correct answer: C. Lear to Gloucester
Mad Lear to the blinded Gloucester near Dover ('reason in madness').
About vice and sin, the speaker says that:
Correct answer: D. sin and vice are palpable in the weak and impalpable in the strong
'Through tatter'd clothes small vices do appear; / Robes and furr'd gowns hide all.'
Passage IV (Dickens, Oliver Twist, 1837–39, ch. 1)
She imprinted her cold white lips passionately on its forehead; passed her hands over her face; gazed wildly round; shuddered; fell back—and died. They chafed her breast, hands, and temples; but the blood had stopped for ever. They talked of hope and comfort. They had been strangers too long.
In 'passed her hands over her face', the 'face' belongs to:
Correct answer: D. the patient
The dying mother, Oliver's mother, passes her hands over her own face.
The implication of 'They had been strangers too long' is that:
Correct answer: C. hope and comfort had been strangers to the patient too long
Hope and comfort, offered too late, had never been part of the poor woman's life.
