Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1722-1834)

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1722-1834) was a major British Romantic poet and a close friend of William Wordsworth. He and Wordsworth are both considered "Lake Poets."

For the GRE Literature exam, associate the following works with Coleridge. Works in bold should be read twice. For the "Rime of the Ancient Mariner" and the Biographia Literaria, a summary will suffice.

1. "Frost at Midnight"
2. "On Donne's Poetry"
3. "Kubla Khan"
4. "Rime of the Ancient Mariner"
-In ballad stanzas.
5. Biographia Literaria

Robert Lowell (1917-1977)

Robert Lowell (1917-1977) was a major postwar American poet and the founder of the confessionalist school. He taught Anne Sexton & Sylvia Plath; he was friends with, but often criticized by, Elizabeth Bishop.

Robert Lowell is slightly more likely than other late-20th-century American poets to appear on the GRE Literature exam. Read the poems below at least once; poems in bold should be read at least twice.

1. "The Drunken Fisherman"
2. "Skunk Hour (for Elizabeth Bishop)"
3. "Mr. Edwards and the Spider"
-A reference to the colonial American preacher and theologian Jonathan Edwards.

John Milton (1608-1674)

John Milton (1608-1674) was a major English poet and writer of the Commonwealth period. He is guaranteed to show up on the GRE Literature exam.

His two most important works are also his longest & most famous:

1. Paradise Lost
-Distinctive style: Latinate, syntactically-complex, heavily-enjambed blank verse
2. Areopagitica (treatise against censorship)

If you're doing any heavy reading to prepare for the GRE, and you haven't read them before, these should be on your list. You can get both in one volume if you buy the Norton Critical Edition.

Otherwise, you can rely on summaries and a sense of the styles of the works.

One or two of the following works may also appear on the exam. The poems listed in bold are particularly likely to show up. Read the short works at least once. For the long ones, simply read the summaries.

1. "On Shakespeare"
2. "When I Consider How My Life Is Spent"
-On Milton's blindness
3. "How Soon Hath Time"
4. "On the Late Massacre in Piedmont" (sonnet)
5. Comus
-An early masque; young girl seduced by supernatural being
6. Of Education
-A treatise in support of the liberal arts
7. Samson Agonistes
-Play; Hebrew Samson, after betrayal by Delilah
8. Lycidas (long--read excerpts)
-Most famous example of the pastoral elegy; to colleague Edward King
9. Paradise Regained
-The sequel to Paradise Lost; temptation of Christ; not terribly important

Thomas Carew (1595-1640)

Thomas Carew (1595-1640) was an English Cavalier poet, whose works were usually typically sexual.

However, his one work likely to appear on the GRE Literature exam is an exception:

"An Elegy upon the Death of the Dean of St. Paul's, Dr. John Donne"

Because the GRE is in love with poems about other poets, read this one at least twice.

Andrew Marvell (1621-1678)

Andrew Marvell (1621-1628) was an English metaphysical poet and a contemporary of John Donne's.

For the GRE Literature test, associate the following works with Andrew Marvell. Works in bold should be read multiple times before the exam.

1. "To his Coy Mistress"
2. "The Definition of Love"
3. "On Milton's Paradise Lost"
4. The "Mower" poems
-"The Mower, against Gardens"
-"Damon the Mower"
-"The Mower to the Glo-worms"
-"The Mower's Song"
-"The Garden"
5. "An Horatian Ode: Upon Cromwell's Return from Ireland"

John Dryden (1631-1700)

John Dryden (1631-1700) was a poet, critic, and playwright in Restoration England.

For the GRE Literature exam, associate Dryden with the works below. For "Absalom & Achitophel" and All For Love, simply read summaries plus one or two short excerpts. Poems in bold should be read multiple times before the exam.

1. "MacFlecknoe" (Wikipedia--link to full text at bottom)
2. "Absalom & Achitophel"
3. "Epigram on Milton"
4. "A Song for St. Cecilia's Day"
5. "All For Love" (Antony & Cleopatra)

T.S. Eliot (1888-1965)

T.S. Eliot (1888-1965) was an American-born modernist poet who spent most of his career in the United Kingdom. He is one of the foremost figures of modernism.

Associate the following works with T.S. Eliot. For The Waste Land and Four Quartets, read a short excerpt to get a feel for the style of the work. Read the other poems at least once before the exam. The quotes listed below are especially likely to appear on the test.

1. The Waste Land
"April is the cruelest month, breeding / Lilacs out of the dead land"
2. "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"
"Let us go then, you and I, / when the evening is spread out against the sky / Like a patient etherized upon a table"
3. Four Quartets
"Time present and time past . . . all time is unredeemable"
4. "The Journey of the Maji"
-Written after Eliot's conversion to Christianity

"To the memory of my beloved master, William Shakespeare"

"To the memory of my beloved master, William Shakespeare," by Ben Jonson (1623)

Written in heroic couplets. Thick with comparisons to prominent poets, especially classical.

The source of many famous quotes on Shakespeare:
-"He was not of an age, but for all time"
-"Soul of the age"
-"Thou art a monument without a tomb"
-"For a good poet's made, as well as born"
-"Sweet Swan of Avon"

*This poem is an ETS favorite. Read it several times before the exam.