Dr. Prinsky

English 3002: Renaissance English Literature

Quiz on the Works of John Milton (in NAEL)

1. Like Alexander Pope in the Restoration and Eighteenth-Century (or Augustan or Neoclassical) period of British literature, John Milton modeled his career on the precursor in Roman literature: (a) Vergil (b) Propertius (c) Ovid (d) Horace (e) Catullus

2. Co-founder of modern poetry in English, American poet Ezra Pound offered homage to: (a) Vergil (b) Propertius (c) Ovid (d) Horace (e) Catullus

3. Milton was especially influenced by which Renaissance British poet: (a) Richard Crashaw (b) Samuel Daniel (c) George Herbert (d) Edmund Spenser

4. Milton composed and published his poem Lycidas when he was about how many years old: (a) 20 (b) 25 (c) 30 (d) 35

5. As pointed out in NAEL and HTL/PDLT, the poetic genre of Milton’s Lycidas is: (a) ode (b) pastoral elegy (c) aubade (d) carmen figuratum

6. As implied by the NAEL introduction to Lycidas, the poem’s genre has an advantage of combining: (a) blank verse and rhyme (b) Greco-Roman and Christian traditions (c) prose and poetry (d) English and French history

7. As implied by the NAEL introduction to Lycidas (and hinted in HTL/PDLT), one characteristic of the genre of Lycidas, including the poem itself, is its: (a) third-person point of view (b) tranquil tone (c) many conventions (d) use of understatement

8. In his critical biography (the form combining biography and literary criticism) of Milton, Samuel Johnson criticizes Lycidas (in the assigned NAEL very brief selection) for all of the following except which one: (a) diction is harsh (b) rhymes are uncertain (c) sincerity is deficient (d) religious content is heretical

9. The typography of Lycidas shows that the various divisions (e.g., lines 1-14) are composed of what is known as: (a) verse paragraphs (b) irregular stanzas (c) heroic octaves (d) rime royals

10. The number of divisions referred to in the immediately preceding question is: (a) 5 (b) 8 (c) 11 (d) 14

11. The concluding section of Lycidas (lines 186-193) marks a distinctive shift in point of view from: (a) third to first person (b) first to third person (c) from third to second person (d) from second to third person

12. Several sections of Lycidas (e.g., lines 1 ff. [and following], 15 ff., 37 ff., 85 ff., 132 ff., 165 ff.) utilize the figure of speech: (a) synecdoche (b) paradox (c) hyperbole (d) apostrophe

13. As usual with the figure of speech referred to in the immediately preceding question, it reveals most about the social, psychological, and emotional state of the: (a) poem’s speaker (b) poem’s addressee (c) poem’s society (d) poem’s coterie of readers

14. Naturally enough, given the cause of Edward King’s death, several deities referred to in the Lycidas, often at length, are those connected to: (a) earth (b) wind (c) fire (d) water (e) medicine

15. As noted in PDLT/HTL, the lines from Lycidas — "Blind mouths! that scarce themselves know how to hold/ a sheep-hook"(119-20) — exemplify the rhetorical figure: (a) anadiplosis (b) catachresis (c) polyptoton (d) zeugma

16. The figure of speech referred to in the immediately preceding question helps suggest about corrupt clergy an evil that is: (a) subtle (b) grotesque (c) superficial (d) grandiose

17. As shown in the NAEL Appendix “Poems in Process,” plus the finished “Lycidas” in the regular part of NAEL, Milton in an early draft of “Lycidas” wrote in but then deleted the mythological personage: (a) Alpheus (b) Hippotades (c) Narcissus (d) Orpheus (e) Phoebus

18. As noted in the general NAEL Milton introduction, as well as the NAEL introduction to Milton’s Areopagitica, this prose work is an extremely important document in the history of the subject of: (a) technical study of poetry (b) freedom of the press (c) ancient Roman history (d) theocratic governmental systems

19. In subject and theme, the sonnets of John Milton are most akin to those of: (a) Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (b) Philip Sidney (c) Edmund Spenser (d) Michael Drayton

20. Milton’s sonnet “On the New Forcers of Conscience Under the Long Parliament” is the unusual form known as: (a) caudated (b) Italian (c) Petrarchan (d) Spenserian (e) terza rima

21. The form referred to in the immediately preceding question is appropriate because of all of the following except which one: (a) length of the parliament in question (b) the unconscionable delay in publishing the new official prayerbook (c) ass jokes in the poem about certain parliamentarians (d) ass jokes about post-rebellion English citizens

22. The extended metaphor of the first quatrain of “To the Lord General Cromwell” — what Cromwell is said to have “ploughed” through — helps convey about Cromwell an attitude that is mainly: (a) enthusiastically admiring (b) neutral (c) mildly skeptical (d) scientifically oriented

23. The placement of the main verb in the first quatrain of “To the Lord General Cromwell” (that is, where the main verb, the verb of the main clause, is placed within the four lines) helps convey about the overall action described in the quatrain its: (a) difficulty (b) straightforwardness (c) ease (d) deviousness

24. In the octave of “When I Consider How My Light Is Spent,” the main clause is: (a) “I consider” (line 1) (b) “one talent . . . / Lodged” (lines 3-4) (c) “my soul more bent/ To serve . . . and present” (lines 4-5) (d) “he returning chide” (line 6) (e) ”I fondly ask” (line 8)

25. The grammar or syntax of the octave of the sonnet referred to in the immediately preceding question helps convey the speaker’s: (a) tranquility (b) thankfulness (c) turbulence (d) thoughtlessness

26. In “When I Consider How My Light Is Spent,” the relative speed of Patience in “preventing” the speaker’s murmur is suggested in part by: (a) soothing assonance in lines 8-9 (b) entering before the official sestet (c) the sibilance or sigmatism of lines 8-9 (d) entering after the official sestet

27. Probably the most amusing satire (Horatian rather than Juvenalian) of Milton — and of teaching Milton — in a campus film comedy occurs in: (a) Teacher’s Pet (b) Real Genius (c) Back to School (d) Animal House

28. As indicated by p. 1817 and its NAEL footnotes (the first page of Paradise Lost in NAEL), Milton could be considered to have written the first: (a) blank verse (b) heroic couplets (c) prose poem (d) Cliffs Notes (e) theodicy

29. The opening of Paradise Lost (lines 1-26) contains all the following except which one: (a) recurrent application of Milton’s knowledge about modern science (b) initiation of the work’s light vs. dark imagistic motif (c) justification of Milton’s style in the work (d) initiation of the work’s rising vs. falling imagistic motif (e) typological symbolism connecting Judaic and Christian traditions

30. The narrator’s references to how the first parents would come “to fall off/ From their Creator” (lines 30-31) and how Lucifer “raised impious war in Heav’n” (line 43) contain or express all of the following except which one: (a) punning (b) internal rhyming (c) incorporation of the rising vs. falling imagistic motif (d) paradoxical contrast in how one thing led to another thing

31. The narrator’s reference to God as “the Most High” (line 40), the “Almighty Power” (line 44), and “th’Omnipotent” (line 49) exemplifies the figure of speech: (a) simile (b) metaphor (c) hyperbole (d) antonomasia

32. The figure of speech referred to in the immediately preceding question helps convey or express Milton’s or the narrator’s: (a) slightly heretical interpretation of God’s power (b) sympathy for the underdog (c) ironic humor regarding Satan’s foolishness (d) alluding more to the New Testament than the Hebrew Scriptures (Old Testament)

33. The narrator’s reference to the rebel’s “battle proud/ With vain attempt” (lines 42-43) contains or expresses all of the following except which one: (a) post-positional adjective (b) underlying admiration for the rebel (c) Satan’s pride (d) pun on “vain” (e) the combined vanity and futility of Satan’s endeavor

34. In the narrator’s wording such as “he it was” (line 34) and “Him the Almighty Power/ Hurled” (lines 44-45) is exemplified the grammatical device of: (a) polysyndeton and asyndeton (b) anacoluthon or aposiopesis (cutting off or abruptly shifting the grammar) (c) inverted sentence order (hyperbaton, anastrophe) (d) anaphora and anadiplosis

35. The rhetorical or grammatical figure referred to in the immediately preceding question primarily helps convey: (a) the First Parents’ innocence (b) Satan’s pride (c) Christ’s mildness (d) God’s grandeur

36. The length of the sentence underlying the lines beginning “Him the Almighty Power/ Hurled” (lines 44-45) primarily helps convey: (a) the great effort involved (b) the great distance involved (c) the great learning involved (d) the great speed involved

37. The literary device in the description of the length of time as “Nine times the space that measures day and night/ To mortal men” (lines 50-51) might be classified as: (a) oxymoron (b) understatement (c) metonymy (d) periphrasis

38. The literary device referred to in the immediately preceding question helps convey or express: (a) the connection between distance and duration (b) the underlying similarity between natural and supernatural (c) Milton’s or the narrator’s relativism in morality (d) the rebel’s increasingly measured response to God’s power