Language Arts Exam # 2 – High School
2012-13 Governor’s Cup Practice Questions
Student Instructions:
· Write your complete ID code on your answer sheet.
· For each question, choose the BEST answer. If you change your answer, erase well.
1. This biblical heroine is the subject of an Old English poetic fragment. Which biblical character, a widow from Bethulia, saved her people by beheading an Assyrian general, Holofernes?
A. Miriam
B. Ruth
C. Judith
D. Naomi
2. This book consists of 66 chapters, with Chapters 7 through 12 sometimes called the Book of Immanuel. Which three-part Old Testament book gave the Jehovah's Witnesses their name?
A. Isaiah
B. Jeremiah
C. Ezekiel
D. Zechariah
3. This character, the guardian of a cedar forest, nearly kills an epic hero, but the sun god and the eight winds defeat him. What giant did Enkidu and Gilgamesh slay?
A. Goliath
B. Humbaba
C. Tiamat
D. Enlil
4. This collection includes 112 spiritual essays, with the earliest dating to between 800 and 400 B.C. Give the collective name for the works that include the Isha, the Katha, and the Prashna.
A. Ramayana
B. Bhagavad-Gita
C. Upanishads
D. Mahabharata
5. This poet's exile to Tomis, present-day Romania, is the subject of David Malouf's novel An Imaginary Life. Identify the author of Ars Amatoria and Metamorphoses.
A. Horace
B. Vergil
C. Catullus
D. Ovid
6. This writer's best-known work was translated in 1579 by Sir Thomas North, not from the original Greek but from the French. Who wrote Parallel Lives, about 23 pairs of famous Greeks and Romans?
A. Livy
B. Plutarch
C. Cicero
D. Ovid
7. This literary character is mentioned in Piers Plowman, and legend says a treacherous nun killed him in Yorkshire. What character, born around 1160, redistributed wealth around Nottinghamshire?
A. Robin Hood
B. Ivanhoe
C. the sheriff of Nottingham
D. the Count of Monte Cristo
8. This name from Arthurian legend was an actual title for the Welsh or British chief who held supreme power. What title is associated with King Arthur's father, Uther?
A. Thane
B. Pendragon
C. Magus
D. Heorot
9. This writer's works include History of King Richard III, as well as epigrams and controversial religious tracts written in Latin. Who wrote Utopia?
A. Sir Walter Raleigh
B. Saint Thomas Aquinas
C. Sir Thomas More
D. Saint Augustine
10. This drama's title character learns that no one born of woman can harm him. What Shakespearean tragedy tells of a king killed by someone who was "from his mother's womb untimely ripped": Macduff?
A. The Tempest
B. King Lear
C. Coriolanus
D. Macbeth
11. This dramatist wrote some 120 plays, plus more than 70 dramatic presentations about the mysteries of Holy Communion. What 17th-century Spanish dramatist wrote the 1635 play Life Is a Dream?
A. Lope de Vega
B. Calderon de la Barca
C. Jose Echegaray
D. Jacinto Benavente
12. While farming 118 acres, he wrote such poems as "The Cotter's Saturday Night." What Scottish poet also wrote "To Mary in Heaven," "To a Mouse," and "To a Louse"?
A. Robert Burns
B. Samuel Taylor Coleridge
C. George Herbert
D. Robert Browning
13. This character said, "Lost time is never found again; and what we call time enough, always proves little enough." Who also said, "God helps those who help themselves," according to the character's creator, Benjamin Franklin?
A. Eliza Dogood
B. Samuel Saunders
C. Moll Flanders
D. Poor Richard
14. Which poem by colonial writer Edward Taylor begins, "Make me, O Lord, Thy Spinning Wheel complete"?
A. "Reflections on Christ as Bridegroom"
B. "Upon a Spider Catching a Fly"
C. "Huswifery"
D. "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God"
15. This novel tells the story of the unscrupulous daughter of a penniless artist and the daughter of a wealthy businessman. What novel by William Makepeace Thackeray features Amelia Smedley and Becky Sharp?
A. Vanity Fair
B. Barchester Towers
C. The Moonstone
D. The Mysteries of Udolpho
16. This school, led by Leconte de Lisle, espoused a poetic objectivity called "impassibility." What name was given to this 19th-century school of French poets?
A. Metaphysical
B. Parnassian
C. La Pleiade
D. Fin de Siecle
17. What Russian novelist, noted for his character analysis and absurdist humor, wrote Notes from the Underground, The Idiot, and Crime and Punishment?
A. Leo Tolstoy
B. Feodor Dostoevsky
C. Nikolai Gogol
D. Alexander Pushkin
18. This writer became famous, as the author himself put it, for traveling a lot in his hometown. What Concord, New Hampshire native wrote Walden?
A. Ralph Waldo Emerson
B. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
C. William Cullen Bryant
D. Henry David Thoreau
19. What poet's work as a Civil War hospital attendant gave him material for the collection Drum-Taps?
A. James Russell Lowell
B. Walt Whitman
C. Sidney Lanier
D. John Greenleaf Whittier
20. This poet collected his works in The Weatherboard Cathedral and Killing the Black Dog. What Australian poet won the T.S. Eliot Prize in 1996 for Subhuman Redneck Poems?
A. Les Murray
B. Patrick White
C. David Malouf
D. Banjo Paterson
21. What British novelist of The Honorary Consul and The Third Man won a Hawthornden Prize for The Power and the Glory?
A. Graham Greene
B. Anthony Burgess
C. Martin Amis
D. Robert Graves
22. Which French painter, who created many of his masterpieces while living in Tahiti, is the subject of Mario Vargas Llosa's novel The Way to Paradise?
A. Henri Toulouse-Lautrec
B. Paul Cezanne
C. Henri Matisse
D. Paul Gauguin
23. Which South African author was the first person to win two Booker Prizes, one for Life & Times of Michael K and one for Disgrace?
A. Nadine Gordimer
B. Alan Paton
C. J. M. Coetzee
D. Athol Fugard
24. This novel opens in 1903 with the main character's desire to design cars and marry Fran Volker. Name this 1929 novel by Nobel Laureate Sinclair Lewis.
A. Babbitt
B. Main Street
C. Elmer Gantry
D. Dodsworth
25. This poet and novelist's first book, Schoolboy Lyrics, was privately published when he was still a teenager. What Nobel Laureate wrote Departmental Ditties, Plain Tales from the Hills, and The Jungle Book?
A. Rabindranath Tagore
B. Seamus Heaney
C. Rudyard Kipling
D. Wole Soyinka
26. What short novel by Ernest Hemingway tells of Santiago's struggle to bring his magnificent catch back to harbor?
A. A Farewell to Arms
B. For Whom the Bell Tolls
C. The Old Man and the Sea
D. Death in the Afternoon
27. This dramatist wrote a collection of essays, Shiksa Goddess, and plays entitled Isn't It Romantic and An American Daughter. Who won a Drama Pulitzer in 1989 for The Heidi Chronicles?
A. Wendy Wasserstein
B. Marsha Norman
C. Lillian Hellman
D. Paula Vogel
28. This writer, first known for short stories, had a stage hit in 1938 with My Heart's in the Highlands. What playwright won a Pulitzer Prize for his second play, The Time of Your Life?
A. Maxwell Anderson
B. Robert E. Sherwood
C. William Inge
D. William Saroyan
29. His poems include "Stop All the Clocks," "Lullaby," and "The Shield of Achilles." What Anglo-American poet won the 1948 Pulitzer Prize for The Age of Anxiety?
A. T. S. Eliot
B. W. H. Auden
C. E. E. Cummings
D. E. A. Robinson
30. Match the author to the work for which he or she won a Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.
1. / Robert Hass / x. / The Shadow of Sirius2. / Natasha Trethewey / y. / Native Guard
3. / W. S. Merwin / z. / Time and Materials
A. 1 – z; 2 – x; 3 – y
B. 1 – x; 2 – z; 3 – y
C. 1 – z; 2 – y; 3 – x
D. 1 – y; 2 – x; 3 – z
31. She was the first woman to win a Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Which author achieved that honor in 1921 for her novel The Age of Innocence?
A. Edith Wharton
B. Edna Ferber
C. Margaret Mitchell
D. Laura Ingalls Wilder
32. This book is divided into two parts, "Western Voices" and "Eastern Voices." What work about condemned killer Gary Gilmore won a 1980 Pulitzer Prize for Norman Mailer?
A. In Cold Blood
B. An American Dream
C. The Naked and the Dead
D. The Executioner's Song
33. This heroine is, according to one critic, "willful, defiant, and manipulative." Identify the central character of the novel that won a 1937 Pulitzer Prize, Gone with the Wind.
A. Melanie Wilkes
B. Scarlett O'Hara
C. "Bonnie Blue" Butler
D. Belle Watling
34. Match the characters to the George Bernard Shaw play in which they appear.
1. / Stephen Undershaft, Jenny Hill / x. / Pygmalion2. / Henry Higgins, Eliza Doolittle / y. / Man and Superman
3. / John Tanner, Ann Whitefield / z. / Major Barbara
A. 1 – y; 2 – x; 3 – z
B. 1 – z; 2 – y; 3 – x
C. 1 – z; 2 – x; 3 – y
D. 1 – x; 2 – z; 3 – y
35. Name the historian who has won two Pulitzer Prizes for biographies of U.S. presidents: in 1993 for Truman and in 2002 for John Adams?
A. Barbara Tuchman
B. Carl Sandburg
C. David McCullough
D. Frank McCourt
36. Robert A. Caro won a National Book Award in 2002 for a biography titled Master of the Senate. This book profiled which senator, who later became President of the United States?
A. Richard Nixon
B. Lyndon Johnson
C. Gerald Ford
D. Calvin Coolidge
37. This book opens with Lt. Pete Conrad finding the body of a friend, Bud Jennings, after a plane crash. What book about test pilots and the Mercury astronauts won a 1980 National Book Award for Tom Wolfe?
A. Bonfire of the Vanities
B. Wild Blue Yonder
C. The Right Stuff
D. X-15
38. This character accompanies his father, a doctor, who performs an impromptu Caesarian to deliver a Native American baby. Which character appears in the stories "Indian Camp," "The Three Day Blow," and "The Battler," by Ernest Hemingway?
A. Frederic Henry
B. Jake Barnes
C. Robert Jordan
D. Nick Adams
39. This short story was originally published in 1937 under the title "The Place of the Gods." In what Stephen Vincent Benet story does the narrator, the son of a priest, go to a Dead Place in search of metal?
A. "By the Waters of Babylon"
B. "A Canticle for Leibowitz"
C. "Dr. Heidegger's Experiment"
D. "There Will Come Soft Rains"
40. This story opens on a Sunday morning in spring, with Georg Bendemann having just written a letter to a friend in St. Petersburg, Russia. In what short story by Franz Kafka does Bendemann eventually commit suicide by jumping from a bridge?
A. "The Castle"
B. "The Judgment"
C. "The Trial"
D. "The Metamorphosis"
41. Match the National Book Award-winning biography or history with its author.
1. / Robert Kennedy and His Times / x. / Henry A. Kissinger2. / The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich / y. / Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.
3. / The White House Years / z. / William L. Shirer
A. 1 – x; 2 – y; 3 – z
B. 1 – z; 2 – y; 3 - x
C. 1 – y; 2 – z; 3 – x
D. 1 – z; 2 – x; 3 – y
42. This division usually comes near the middle of a line of Greek or Latin verse. What word, which comes from the Latin for "break off," refers to a pause in the middle of a line of English verse?
A. asyndeton
B. chiasmus
C. ellipsis
D. caesura
43. This type of poem derives from nonsense verses each man at a drinking party was expected to sing. What five-line humorous poem has a rhyme scheme of A-A-B-B-A?
A. cinquain
B. clerihew
C. limerick
D. doggerel
44. What literary device uses a physical object to represent a general idea, such as using "Hollywood" to represent the film industry?
A. kenning
B. sobriquet
C. malapropism
D. metonymy
45. This verb form indicates whether the state or action the verb expresses is a fact, a wish, a command, or a possibility. Which form of a verb can be imperative, indicative, or subjunctive?
A. tense
B. mood
C. person
D. case
46. What kind of pronoun appears in the sentence, "This is the trophy the team won"?
A. demonstrative
B. personal
C. reflexive
D. indefinite
47. What word names the sign used to show that the second of two vowels is to be pronounced separately, as in the word "naïve"?
A. umlaut
B. cedilla
C. hacek
D. dieresis
48. This military term traces its roots to a Latin word that means "order." What word refers to artillery or to military weapons, along with the ammunition and equipment needed to use and maintain them?
A. ordinance
B. arsenal
C. ordnance
D. magazine
49. Which Greek word for "glory" or "renown" refers to prestige or acclaim based on high position or notable achievement?
A. encomium
B. kudos
C. panegyric
D. laud
50. Which of the following phobias refers specifically to an unreasoning fear of dogs?
A. cynophobia
B. ailurophobia
C. zoophobia
D. arachnophobia
2012-13 Governor’s Cup Practice Questions – Page 8
2012-13 Governor’s Cup Practice Questions – Page 8
High School – Language Arts - Exam # 2
2012-13 Governor’s Cup Practice Questions
1. C
2. A
3. B
4. C
5. D
6. B
7. A
8. B
9. C