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GRE in Literature - Character
Character Identification
21
Literature
Graduate
08/19/2008

Additional Literature Flashcards

 


 

Cards

Term
Which work is Kinbote from?
Definition
Charles Kinbote is the unreliable narrator in Nabokov's Pale Fire. 
Term

This work is a chilling ghost story and an imaginative psychological study of a young governess confronted for the first time in her life with, at once, erotic infatuation, great responsibilities, the aftermath of human evil, and, she believes, the continued hanting presence of that evil.

 

Definition
James's "The Turn of the Screw"
Term
In the Canterbury Tales the _________ has a forked beard (perhaps symbolizing his duplicity).
Definition
Merchant
Term
In the Canterbury Tales, the ________ hunts with a horse that has bells that sound like a chapel's. He can afford to hunt and looks like an aristocrat.
Definition
the monk
Term
_________ is a darkly passionate and proud foundling boy who has a disastrous romance with Catherine Earnshaw, a natural daughter to his adoptive father. What novel is this character part of?
Definition
Heathcliff from Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights
Term
This character is the 1st narrator of the novel, a somewhat dopey tenant of nearby Thrushcross Grange, a grand house on the Yorkshire moors he is renting from the surly Heathcliff, who lives nearby. What is the name of the character and the novel?
Definition
Lockwood in Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
Term
This character is one of three people deemed sinful enough to be chewed in one of the three mouths of Satan, in the very center of Hell, for all eternity. The other two are Brutus and Judas Iscariot, the biblical betrayer of Jesus Christ (Canto XXXIV). Shakespeare depicteds him as a manipulative character.
Definition
Cassius Longinus
Term
This lovely foundling girl eventually brings joy and warmth into the life the lonely, miserly old man who takes her in, Silas Marner. Who is the author of this novel?
Definition
Eppie from George Eliot's Silas Marner
Term
This character is a young Mississippi man who harbors a deeply felt (and guilt-provoking) incestuous passion for his sister Caddy and who ultimately kills himself at Harvard.
Definition
Quentin Compson
Term
In Ovid's Metamorphoses, this character is pursued by Apollo, she prays to mother Earth to protect her and Earth turns her into a tree. Apollo breaks off a branch and wears it.
Definition

Daphne/Laurel

 

 

Term
Chief of all river deities, _________ was a suitor for Deianeira, daughter of Oeneus king of Calydon, but was defeated by Heracles, who wed her himself.
Definition
Achelous
Term
Who created of the labyrinth of King Minos that housed the Minotaur?
Definition
Daedalus
Term
Joe Christmas isone of the central characters in ________________. Raised in an orphanage, Joe Christmas knows little about his own identity. While he is presumably both black and white, Joe Christmas appears to be mostly white; in fact, there is no certainty that he is black at all, though he identifies himself as such. His search for racial identity is central to the work.
Definition
Light in August by William Faulkner
Term
The protagonist of the story. _________ starts out as a loyal servant to the King as his Knight-Marshal and is in charge of organizing entertainments at royal events. At the beginning of the play, he is a minor character, especially in relation to Lorenzo, Balthazar, and Bel-Imperia. It is not until he discovers his son Horatio's murdered body in the second Act that he becomes the protagonist of the play. His character undergoes a radical shift over the course of the play, from grieving father to Machiavellian plotter. After his son's murder, he is constantly pushes the limits of sanity, as evidenced by his erratic speech and behavior.
Definition

Hieronimo

 

The play referred to is Kyd's Spanish Tragedy 

Term
This character appears in three of Shakespeare's plays and is mentioned in a fourth. Combining the lines that he speaks in Henry IV Parts 1 and 2, ______'s role consists of more than 1,200 lines, making it the 2nd largest role in all of Shakespeare, behind that of Hamlet. He seems to be mainly a fun-maker, a character whom we both laugh with and laugh at, and almost in the same breath. Nothing has helped more to give this impression than the fat knight’s account of the double robbery at Gadshill. Even his name invites humor, as it is a sort of pun on impotence, brought on by the character's excessive consumption of alcohol.
Definition
Falstaff
Term

_________ is the alias of a trickster who poses as a selfless holy man; he induces a pious and pompous bourgeois to part with his money, his house, and his daughter's hand in marriage.

 

Who is the character and what work is he from? 

Definition
Tartuffe from Moliere's Tartuffe (a comedy)
Term

This is the character list of what play?

 

Sir Peter Teazle
Lady Teazle
Sir Oliver Surface
Joseph Surface
Charles Surface
Maria
Lady Sneerwell
Sir Benjamin Backbite
Sir Harry Bumper
Careless
Rowley
Snake
Trip
Mrs Candour
Crabtree
Moses

Definition
Sheridan's The School for Scandal
Term
Dorothea, Lygate, and Casaubon are characters in what novel?
Definition
Eliot's Middlemarch
Term
"A plague on both your houses" is a line spoken by which Shakespeare character?
Definition
Mercutio
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