CLEP Humanities : Analyzing the Content of Nineteenth-Century Poetry
Study concepts, example questions & explanations for CLEP Humanities
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Example Questions
Example Question #1 : Poetry
Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon in front of them
Volley'd and thunder'd;
Storm'd at with shot and shell,
Boldly they rode and well,
Into the jaws of Death,
Into the mouth of Hell
Rode the six hundred.
The above lines are from which poem?
The Battle of Marathon
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
"The Charge of the Light Brigade"
"Kubla Kahn"
"Crossing the Bar"
"The Charge of the Light Brigade"
The poem "The Charge of the Light Brigade" was written in 1854 to commemorate the same event in the Crimean War, where a British brigade made a nearly suicidal charge at the Battle of Balaclava. Published just six weeks after the event, Alfred, Lord Tennyson's poem is a famous poetic depiction of heroic soldiering from the mid-nineteenth century, with its recitation of the marching, drilling, and cannon fire of the battle.
Example Question #2 : Poetry
Passage adapted from "Because I could not stop for Death" by Emily Dickinson (1890)
Because I could not stop for Death—
He kindly stopped for me—
The Carriage held but just Ourselves—
And Immortality.
We slowly drove—He knew no haste
And I had put away
My labor and my leisure too,
For His Civility—
What is the rhyme scheme for the above poem?
AAAB CCCD
AABB CCDD
ABCD ABCD
ABBA CDDC
ABAB CDCD
ABAB CDCD
A rhyme scheme identified by letter describes each rhyme with the same letter. Thus, since the poem's first and third lines rhyme, the first stanza should be marked as ABAB. Because the second stanza has a new rhyming word, the second stanza should be marked CDCD.
Example Question #1 : Poetry
Passage adapted from "Because I could not stop for Death" by Emily Dickinson (1890)
Because I could not stop for Death—
He kindly stopped for me—
The Carriage held but just Ourselves—
And Immortality.
We slowly drove—He knew no haste
And I had put away
My labor and my leisure too,
For His Civility—
In this poem, what is the poetic device that Dickinson uses in reference to "Death"?
Objectification
Alliteration
Simile
Consonance
Personification
Personification
In this poem, Dickinson has death something that has "stopped for me," a thing that can know, and that has "Civility." These are all features of a person, despite "death" technically being an event or abstract idea. Making an abstract idea have human traits is called "personification."
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