University Interscholastic League
Literary Criticism Contest • Invitational A
•
Part 1: Knowledge of Literary Terms and of Literary History
1. The form of extended metaphor in which objects, persons, places, and actions in a narrative are equated
with meanings outside the narrative itself is a (n)
A) allegory.
B) allusion.
C) almanac.
D) paradox.
E) parody.
2. The term that, in drama, refers to a recounting of a
causally related series of events in the life of a person of significance, culminating in a catastrophe is
A) burlesque.
B) comedy.
C) pastoral.
D) tragedy.
E) verisimilitude.
3. A comic book or graphic novel, originally Japanese,
that, since the early 1950s, presents in book form a
story of a fantasy, science fiction, or romance represents the style known as
A) anime.
B) bunraku.
C) kabuki.
D) manga.
E) senryu.
4. The recipient of the 1983 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
for her novel The Color Purple whose recent comments regarding the Occupy Movement reflect her
hope for the future is
A) Geraldine Brooks.
B) Alison Lurie.
C) Toni Morrison.
D) Carol Shields.
E) Alice Walker.
5. The term used by E. M. Forster for a character sufficiently complex to be able to surprise the reader
without losing credibility is a
A) braggadocio.
B) flat character.
C) round character.
D) static character.
E) tritagonist.
UNIVERSITY INTERSCHOLASTIC LEAGUE
2013
30 items (1 point each)
6. Not among the common two-syllable or threesyllable units of rhythm in English-language
prosody is the
A)
B)
C)
D)
E)
anapest.
bacchius.
dactyl.
iamb.
trochee.
7. The playwright and novelist whose Our Town
(1928) and Bridge of San Luis Rey (1938) earned
him Pultizers for both drama and fiction is
A)
B)
C)
D)
E)
Horton Foote.
Neil Simon.
Thornton Wilder.
Herman Wouk.
Doug Wright.
8. The time in English literature between the period during which French as the language of
English court life and the appearance of
Modern English writings is known as the
A)
B)
C)
D)
E)
Anglo-Saxon Period.
Jacobean Age.
Middle English Period.
Old English Period.
Renaissance.
9. The nineteenth-century American author of
Omoo, Typee, Mardi, Redburn: His First
Voyage, White-Jacket; or, The World in a Manof-War, and "Bartleby the Scrivener" is
A)
B)
C)
D)
E)
Herman Melville.
Edgar Allan Poe.
Henry David Thoreau.
Mark Twain.
Walt Whitman.
10. The presentation of material in a work in such a
way, including the establishing of a mood or
atmosphere, that later events are prepared for is
A)
B)
C)
D)
E)
flashback.
foreshadowing.
in medias res.
reductio ad absurdum.
scenario.
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Literary Criticism Contest
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11. A New York literary crowd flourishing during the
first half of the nineteenth century whose principle
members included Washington Irving, William
Cullen Bryant, and James Fenimore Cooper, is the
A) Agrarians.
B) Black Mountain School.
C) Knickerbocker Group.
D) Lost Generation.
E) Muckrakers.
12. The time period of English literature that encompasses both World Wars is called the
A) Early Victorian Age.
B) Edwardian Age.
C) Late Victorian Age.
D) Modern or Modernist Period.
E) Present Postmodernist or Contemporary Period.
13. The American author of Beloved and recipient of
the 1993 Nobel Prize for Literature is
A) Pearl S. Buck.
B) Nadine Gordimer.
C) Doris Lessing.
D) Toni Morrison.
E) Nelly Sachs.
14. A pause or break in a line of verse, which in classical poetry usually occurs near the middle of a line,
is the
A) cadence.
B) caesura.
C) chiasmus.
D) elision.
E) enjambment.
15. The philosophical romanticism reaching America a
generation or two after it developed in Europe in
which living close to nature and recognizing the
dignity of manual labor are matched by the search
for intellectual companionship and a move toward
spiritual living is called
A) existentialism.
B) feminism.
C) realism.
D) transcendentalism.
E) vorticism.
UNIVERSITY INTERSCHOLASTIC LEAGUE
Invitational A 2013
•
page 2
16. A stanza of four lines, with the first and third
being iambic tetrameter (eight syllables) and
the second and fourth iambic trimeter (six syllables), rhymed abab or abcb is called
A)
B)
C)
D)
E)
antistrophe.
common measure.
heroic stanza.
long meter.
poulter's measure.
17. Not one of the elements of Freytag's structure
of the five-act tragedy is the
A)
B)
C)
D)
E)
catastrophe.
climax.
complication.
exposition.
volta.
18. A novel in which actual persons are presented
under the guise of fiction is known as a
A)
B)
C)
D)
E)
roman à clef.
roman à thèse.
roman de geste.
roman-fleuve.
roman noir.
19. The American pediatrician and general practitioner who received the 1963 Pulitzer Prize for
Poetry for his Pictures from Brueghel is
A)
B)
C)
D)
E)
John Berryman.
Robert Haas.
Howard Nemerov.
Henry Taylor.
William Carlos Williams.
20. The group of American poets and novelists of
the 1950s and 1960s, including Allen Ginsberg,
Jack Kerouac, and William Burroughs, who, in
rebellion against the prevailing culture, expressed their revolt through literary works of
loose structure and slang diction is known as the
A)
B)
C)
D)
E)
Beat Generation.
Connecticut Wits.
Harlem Renaissance.
Spasmodics.
Young Men from the Provinces.
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Literary Criticism Contest
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21. The device of repetition in which the same expression (word or words) is repeated at the beginning of
two or more lines or clauses is
A) anaphora.
B) epanalepsis.
C) epistrophe.
D) polyptoton.
E) symploce.
22. An eighteenth-century philosophical movement that
gave shape to the American Revolution and the two
basic documents of the United States, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, is the
A) Commonwealth (or Puritan) Interregnum.
B) Enlightenment.
C) Great Awakening.
D) Renaissance.
E) Romantic Movement.
23. The recipient of the 1949 Pulitzer Prize for Drama
for his Death of a Salesman, the playwright whose
Crucible serves as a comment on the 1950s' Congressional House Un-American Activities Committee, is
A) William Inge.
B) David Mamet.
C) Arthur Miller.
D) Eugene O'Neill.
E) Tennessee Williams.
24. The eighteenth-century Irish author of A Tale of the
Tub, Gulliver's Travels, and "A Modest Proposal" is
A) Daniel Defoe.
B) Henry Fielding.
C) Laurence Sterne.
D) Jonathan Swift.
E) Horace Walpole.
25. Long prose fiction that, in explaining the why of the
characters' actions, places unusual emphasis on interior characterization and on the motives, circumstances, and internal action that spring from and develop external action is called a (n)
A) epistolary novel.
B) novel of character.
C) novel of incident.
D) novel of manners.
E) psychological novel.
UNIVERSITY INTERSCHOLASTIC LEAGUE
Invitational A 2013
•
page 3
26. A false name sometimes assumed by writers and
others, often to disguise his or her true identity
is a (n)
A)
B)
C)
D)
E)
allonym.
ananym.
eponym.
heteronym.
pseudonym.
27. The movement in literary, graphic, and cinematic art emphasizing the expression of the imagination as realized in dreams and presented without conscious control is
A)
B)
C)
D)
E)
aestheticism.
cubism.
impressionism.
minimalism.
surrealism.
28. The period in American literary history ending
with the ascendancy of Jacksonian democracy
and during which the first American novel,
William Hill Brown's Power of Sympathy, was
published is the
A)
B)
C)
D)
E)
Colonial Period.
Naturalistic and Symbolistic Period.
Realistic Period.
Revolutionary and Early National Period.
Romantic Period.
29. Not representative of the Romantic Period in
English literature is
A)
B)
C)
D)
E)
George Gordon, Lord Byron.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
John Milton.
Percy Bysshe Shelley.
William Wordsworth.
30. The derogatory title applied by Blackwood's Magazine to a group of nineteenth-century British writers, including William Hazlitt, Leigh Hunt, and
John Keats, because of their alleged poor taste in
such matters as diction and rhyme is the
A)
B)
C)
D)
E)
Cockney School.
Lake School.
Martian School.
Satanic School.
Spasmodics.
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Literary Criticism Contest
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Invitational A 2013
•
page 4
Part 2: The UIL Reading List
20 items (2 points each)
Items 31-37 are associated with Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest.
Items 38-44 are associated with Carson McCullers's The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter.
Items 45-50 are associated with Samuel Taylor Coleridge's poetry (selected).
31. In Oscar Wilde's trivial comedy for serious people,
The Importance of Being Earnest, the character who
is recognized as having "been for the last three years
Miss Cardew's esteemed governess and valued companion" is
A) Lady Bracknell.
B) Miss Fairfax.
C) Miss Lane.
D) Miss Prism.
E) Miss Worthing.
36. In a conversation that notes that sensible men
would really like to be caught in the snare defined by a woman's good looks, the declaration
"I don't think I would care to catch a sensible
man" is offered by
A) Augusta.
B) Cecily.
C) Gwendolen.
D) Merriman.
E) Oscar.
32. Commenting to herself in anticipation of meeting
Ernest for the first time that she has "never really
met any really wicked person before" is
A) Lady Bracknell.
B) Miss Cardew.
C) Miss Fairfax.
D) Miss Prism.
E) Miss Worthing.
37. Lady Bracknell's reply regarding Miss Cardew's
family's standing in society, "That sounds not
unsatisfactory," is an example of
A) ambiguity.
B) equivoque.
C) hyperbole.
D) litotes.
E) paradox.
33. Very important to the plotline of Wilde's play is
Miss Prism's recognition of her initials on a
A) hand-bag.
B) handkerchief.
C) receipt for a train ticket.
D) recipe for cucumber sandwiches.
E) title page of a three-volume novel.
38. John Singer of Carson McCullers's The Heart Is
a Lonely Hunter earns a living as a (n)
A) confectioner.
B) doctor.
C) engraver.
D) musician.
E) watch repairman.
34. The character who claims to have an Aunt Cecily
living in the country at Tunbridge Wells is
A) Algernon.
B) Cecily.
C) Chasuble.
D) Gwendolyn.
E) Jack.
39. "Lov[ing] to eat more than anything else in the
world" is
A) Antonapoulos.
B) Blount.
C) Brannon.
D) Copeland.
E) Singer.
35. While in the flat in Half-Moon Street, John Worthing
declares to Algernon that he has come up from the
country to town
A) belatedly to pay his debts.
B) cautiously to visit Bunbury.
C) daringly to retrieve his cigarette case.
D) expressly to propose to Gwendolen.
E) finally to meet Cecily.
40. Jake Blount works "wearily during the long afternoons and evenings" running a flying-jenny,
which is a (n)
A) aeroplane.
B) airplane.
C) merry-go-round.
D) sewing machine.
E) spinning-wheel.
UNIVERSITY INTERSCHOLASTIC LEAGUE
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Literary Criticism Contest
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41. Through Harry Minowitz, Mick learns, to varying
degrees, about all the following except
42. Portia, drunk on gin, tells her father, accusingly,
about Willie losing his
A) eyesight.
B) feet.
C) job.
D) mind.
E) war medals.
43. The only one, other than Mick herself, who is
found in both rooms—the inside room and the
outside room—is
page 5
45. Coleridge's speaker in "Constancy to an Ideal Object" addresses Thought, which constitutes an
A) Jake Blount.
B) Bartholomew Brannon.
C) Benedict Copeland.
D) Harry Minowitz.
E) John Singer.
A) apostrophe.
B) epiphany.
C) incantation.
D) oxymoron.
E) understatement.
44. Names mean quite a bit in McCullers's story; however, the character whose actions suggest an overwhelming importance regarding how names mean is
46. The end rhyme of lines 7 and 9 of Coleridge's
"Constancy" exhibits
A) alliteration.
B) assonance.
C) consonance.
D) dissonance.
E) resonance.
A) Jake Blount.
B) Biff Brannon.
C) Benedict Copeland.
D) Mick Kelly.
E) John Singer.
Items 45-48 refer to Samuel Taylor Coleridge's
Constancy to an Ideal Object
UNIVERSITY INTERSCHOLASTIC LEAGUE
•
With answering look a ready ear to lend,
I mourn to thee and say—'Ah! loveliest friend! 16
That this the meed of all my toils might be,
To have a home, an English home, and thee!'
Vain repetition! Home and Thou are one.
The peacefull'st cot, the moon shall shine upon, 20
Lulled by the thrush and wakened by the lark,
Without thee were but a becalmèd bark,
Whose Helmsman on an ocean waste and wide
Sits mute and pale his mouldering helm beside. 24
And art thou nothing? Such thou art, as when
The woodman winding westward up the glen
At wintry dawn, where o'er the sheep-track's maze
The viewless snow-mist weaves a glist'ning haze, 28
Sees full before him, gliding without tread,
An image with a glory round its head;
The enamoured rustic worships its fair hues,
Nor knows he makes the shadow, he pursues!
32
A) diagramming sentences.
B) fascism.
C) Harry's liking Mr. Brannon.
D) human sexuality.
E) repairing watches.
Since all that beat about in Nature's range,
Or veer or vanish; why should'st thou remain
The only constant in a world of change,
O yearning Thought! that liv'st but in the brain?
Call to the Hours, that in the distance play,
The faery people of the future day—
Fond Thought! not one of all that shining swarm
Will breathe on thee with life-enkindling breath,
Till when, like strangers shelt'ring from a storm,
Hope and Despair meet in the porch of Death!
Yet still thou haunt'st me; and though well I see,
She is not thou, and only thou are she,
Still, still as though some dear embodied Good,
Some living Love before my eyes there stood
Invitational A 2013
4
8
12
47. Lines 26-27 of "Constancy" are characterized by
A) alliteration.
B) assonance.
C) consonance.
D) dissonance.
E) resonance.
48. Lines 20-24 feature a comparison, the tenor of
which is the cottage and the vehicle the bark,
the two constituent parts of one of the poem's
A) allusions.
B) hyperboles.
C) metaphors.
D) paradoxes.
E) similes.
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Literary Criticism Contest
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Items 49-50 refer to Samuel Taylor Coleridge's
Phantom
All look and likeness caught from earth,
All accident of kin and birth,
Had pass'd away. There was no trace
Of aught on that illumined face,
Upraised beneath the rifted stone
But of one spirit all her own;—
She, she herself, and only she,
Shone through her body visibly.
4
8
49. The metrical pattern of Coleridge's "Phantom" is
A) dactylic tetrameter.
B) iambic pentameter.
C) iambic tetrameter.
D) iambic trimeter.
E) trochaic pentameter.
50. The overriding structure upon which "Phantom"
depends is the
A) closed couplet.
B) couplet.
C) octameter.
D) pantoum.
E) sestet.
Invitational A 2013
•
page 6
51. The thematic concern of Elizabeth Barrett
Browning's sonnet is summed up in
A) lines 1-2.
B) lines 3-6.
C) lines 7-9.
D) lines 10-12.
E) lines 13-14.
52. The repetition of the word love, first as the verb
love and then as the possessive noun love's in
the last two lines of the poem, is an example of
A)
B)
C)
D)
E)
anaphora.
echo.
hamartia.
litotes.
ploce.
53. The sonnet form that Browning follows in this
poem is the
A)
B)
C)
D)
E)
caudate sonnet.
English sonnet.
Italian sonnet.
Miltonic sonnet.
Spenserian sonnet.
54. The rhyme scheme of lines 10, 12, and 14 is
characterized by
Part 3: Ability in Literary Criticism
15 items (2 points each)
Items 51-55 refer to Elizabeth Barrett Browning's
If thou must love me, let it be for nought
A)
B)
C)
D)
E)
anisobaric rhyme.
eye rhyme.
internal rhyme.
pararhyme.
true rhyme.
If thou must love me, let it be for nought
55. The sonnet's turn, its volta, is found at the beExcept for love's sake only. Do not say
ginning of
'I love her for her smile—her look—her way
Of speaking gently,—for a trick of thought
4
A) line 2.
That falls in well with mine, and certes brought
B) line 5.
A sense of pleasant ease on such a day'—
C) line 9.
For these things in themselves, Belovèd, may
D) line 12.
Be changed, or change for thee, —and love, so wrought,
E) line 13.
May be unwrought so. Neither love me for
Thine own dear pity's wiping my cheeks dry, —
A creature might forget to weep, who bore
Thy comfort long, and lose thy love thereby!
12
Items 56-59 refer to Edgar Allan Poe's
But love me for love's sake, that evermore
Alone
Thou mayst love on, through love's eternity.
UNIVERSITY INTERSCHOLASTIC LEAGUE
PAGE 6
Literary Criticism Contest
Alone
From childhood's hour I have not been
As others were—I have not seen
As others saw—I could not bring
My passions from a common spring.
From the same source I have not taken
My sorrow—I could not awaken
My heart to joy at the same tone—
And all I loved—I loved alone.
Then—in my childhood—in the dawn
Of a most stormy life—was drawn
From every depth of good and ill
The mystery which binds me still—
From the torrent, or the fountain—
From the red cliff of the mountain—
From the sun that round me rolled
In its autumn tint of gold—
From the lightning in the sky
As it passed me flying by—
From the thunder and the storm—
And the cloud that took the form
(When the rest of Heaven was blue)
Of a demon in my view.
•
Invitational A 2013
•
page 7
Items 60-61 refer to Robert Morgan's
Audubon's Flute
4
8
12
16
20
56. Lines 5 and 6 of Edgar Allan Poe's "Alone" feature
A) eye rhyme.
B) feminine ending.
C) Leonine rhyme.
D) masculine rhyme.
E) triple rhyme.
57. Lines 13 and 14 of Poe's poem are characterized by
A) compound rhyme.
B) feminine rhyme.
C) Leonine rhyme.
D) masculine rhyme.
E) recessed rhyme.
Audubon in the summer woods
by the afternoon river sips
his flute, his fingers swimming on
the silver as silver notes pour
4
by the afternoon river, sips
and fills the mosquito-note air
with silver as silver notes pour
two hundred miles from any wall.
8
And fills the mosquito-note air
as deer and herons pause, listen,
two hundred miles from any wall,
and sunset plays the stops of river.
12
As deer and herons pause, listen,
the silver pipe sings on his tongue
and sunset plays the stops of river,
his breath modeling a melody
16
the silver pipe sings on his tongue,
coloring the trees and canebrakes,
his breath modeling a melody
over calamus* and brush country,
20
coloring the trees and canebrakes
to the horizon and beyond,
over calamus and brush country
where the whitest moon is rising
24
to the horizon and beyond
his flute, his fingers swimming on
where the whitest moon is rising.
Audubon in the summer woods.
28
*a type of plant
58. Lines 13, 14, 15, 17, and 19 of Poe's "Alone" exhibit
A) anaphora.
B) epanalepsis.
C) epistrophe.
D) hypozeuxis.
E) tautology.
60. The imagery in Robert Morgan's "Audubon's
Flute" modulates between
A) auditory and gustatory.
B) auditory and tactile.
C) gustatory and tactile.
D) tactile and olfactory.
E) visual and auditory.
59. The words torrent and fountain and the phrases "common Spring" and "drawn from every depth" comprise a
A) barbarism.
B) claque.
C) controlling image.
D) dead metaphor.
E) pleonasm.
61. Morgan's four-line stanza poem is a fine example of a non-rhyming
A) octave.
B) pantoum.
C) quintain.
D) sestet.
E) tristich.
UNIVERSITY INTERSCHOLASTIC LEAGUE
PAGE 7
Literary Criticism Contest
Items 62-65 refer to Stevie Smith's
Private Means is Dead
Private Means is dead
God rest his soul, officers and fellow-rankers said.
Captive Good, attending Captain Ill
Can tell us quite a lot about the Captain, if he will.
Major Portion
Is a disingenuous person
And as for Major Operation well I guess
We all know what his reputation is
The crux and Colonel
Of the whole matter
(As you may read in the Journal
If it's not tattered)
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Invitational A 2013
•
page 8
62. The potential of Stevie Smith's "Private Means
is Dead" lies in its use of the
A)
B)
C)
D)
E)
euphemism.
kenning.
nonce word.
pun.
repartee.
63. The "significant" names, the names that are suggestive of the characters' qualities or physical
traits, so readily recognized in Smith's commentary on war, are
A)
B)
C)
D)
E)
carmen figurata.
errata.
malaphorisms.
malapropisms.
redende names.
A)
B)
C)
D)
E)
ambiguity.
barbarism.
hyperbole.
irony.
litotes.
Lies in the Generals Collapse Debility Panic and Uproar
Who are too old in any case to go to the War.
64. The meaning of the second stanza (lines 3-4)
finds direction in its obvious
65. The tone of Smith's poem is
A) comically sarcastic.
B) deceivingly optimistic.
C) earnestly nostalgic.
D) flippantly celebratory.
E) gently reverent.
Required tie-breaking essay prompt on the next page.
UNIVERSITY INTERSCHOLASTIC LEAGUE
PAGE 8
Literary Criticism Contest
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Invitational A 2013
•
page 9
Part 4: Tie-Breaking Essay (required)
Note well: Contestants who do not write an essay will be disqualified even if they are not involved in
any tie.
Note well: Any essay that does not demonstrate a sincere effort to discuss the assigned topic will be
disqualified. The judge(s) should note carefully this criterion when breaking ties: ranking of essays
for tie-breaking purposes should be based primarily on how well the topic has been addressed.
Three sheets of paper have been provided for this essay; your written response should reflect the Handbook's
notion that an essay is a "moderately brief discussion of a restricted topic": something more than just a few sentences.
Read Samuel Taylor Coleridge's "Fancy in Nubibus," and compose an essay that addresses Coleridge's focus on
the poet's imagination.
Fancy in Nubibus*
Or, the Poet in the Clouds
O! It is pleasant, with a heart at ease,
Just after sunset, or by moonlight skies,
To make the shifting clouds be what you please,
Or let the easily persuaded eyes
Own each quaint likeness issuing from the mould
Of a friend's fancy;* or with head bent low
And cheek aslant see rivers flow of gold
'Twixt crimson banks; and then, a traveller, go
From mount to mount through Cloudland, gorgeous land!
Or list'ning to the tide, with closèd sight,
Be that blind bard,* who on the Chian* strand
By those deep sounds possessed with inward light,
Beheld the Iliad and the Odyssee
Rise to the swelling of the voiceful sea.
4
8
12
1819
*[in the] clouds
*the imagination
*Homer
*from Chios, a Greek island famed for its
association with Homer
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