WELD / CO Lit 2012: Beauty is Tlooth, Tlooth beauty
Packet 01
1. One character in this book has a cage full of canaries even though she hates them, because she once agreed
to take care of a canary for a friend, leading her other friends to assume that she liked canaries. Another
character accidentally addresses a letter to Ellen Sedgwick instead of Ellery Sedgwick. The narrator of this
book describes driving around and picking up “military god-sons” during the First World War. The names
of nationalities and languages are never capitalized in this book, perhaps because of the time that the main
characters spent in Paris. The narrator of this book talks about the “wives of geniuses” she has sat with, and
describes her interactions with Matisse, Picasso, and Carl Van Vechten, among others, as well as the composition of
works like Three Lives and The Making of Americans. For 10 points, name this book by Gertrude Stein which
purports to be an autobiography of her long-time lover.
ANSWER: The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas
2. Andrew McNeillie wrote a prose memoir about a year he spent in this location. Pádraig Síocháin was
deeply involved with this location and wrote a book about it. A trilogy set in this location only consists of two
plays, because the author disliked the third play so much that he never published it. That trilogy begins with
a play about the crippled Billy Claven, who gets a part in a Robert J. Flaherty documentary about this
location, and its second play is about the violent INLA member Mad Padraic, who finds out that his cat Wee
Thomas has been killed. In another play set here, Cathleen and Nora discover that their brothers Michael and Bartley
have drowned; that play is by J. M. Synge, who wrote a journal about his time living in this location. For 10 points,
name this setting of Riders to the Sea and a trilogy by Martin McDonagh, a group of islands off the west coast of
Ireland including Inishmore.
ANSWER: Aran Islands [prompt on Ireland or County Galway; accept Inishmore before “Billy Claven”]
3. In one story in this collection, a baron says “The women of those days were more than a collection of
individuals. They symbolized, or represented, Woman” while narrating the story of how he undressed a
young girl named Nathalie. The opening story of this collection contains a story-within-a-story about
Barabbas called “The Wine of the Tetrarch,” told by the Cardinal, who is actually the actor Kasparson in
disguise; in that story, four people trapped in a hayloft by a flood tell stories. It also contains a story in which a
Prioress, possessed by the title animal, tries to get Boris to rape Athena Hopballehus. In another story, Fanny and her
sister Eliza react very differently to the tales of adventure on the high seas told by the ghost of their brother Morton.
“The Old Chevalier,” “The Deluge at Norderney,” “The Monkey,” and “The Supper at Elsinore” are, for 10 points,
part of what collection by Isak Dinesen?
ANSWER: Seven Gothic Tales
4. This poet wrote that when God said “Let there be light,” “there was a little,” but most of the darkness was
not illuminated. He was accused of plagiarism because he quoted passages of Glyn Jones’ prose verbatim in
his poem “Perfect.” His major work quotes Robert Burns in describing a “red, red rose” emerging in a
section dealing with the 1926 British general strike. Much of that magnum opus is addressed to Dostoevsky,
and it is filled with images of moonlight on the title plant. That poem compares the church straying from Christ to
the modern misunderstanding of Robert Burns, and consists of the rambling, often existential, thoughts of the
speaker, who quotes the saying in vino veritas and bemoans the state of modern Scotland, which is represented by
the title plant. For 10 points, name this leader of the Scottish Renaissance who wrote A Drunk Man Looks at the
Thistle.
ANSWER: Hugh McDiarmid
5. One of this poet’s works describes how the word “blackberry” loses its meaning so that “a word is elegy to
what it signifies.” That poem, “Meditation at Lagunitas,” appears in his collection Praise. He appeared in the
largely panned film Wildflowers, reading selections from his own poetry. An essay by this poet ends with an
image of helium balloons attached to tents “occupying the air,” and describes how his wife was knocked down
by a deputy on the Berkeley campus. That essay, about the Occupy movement, is called “Poet-Bashing Police.” His
non-fiction includes the book Twentieth Century Pleasures. Known for his translations of Czeslaw Milosz and
Japanese haiku, he included a number of politically-charged poems in his Pulitzer-winning Time and Materials. For
10 points, name this former Poet Laureate of the United States from California.
ANSWER: Robert Hass
6. This playwright only wrote one comedy, Woe to Him Who Lies, which was a failure. In one of his tragedies,
the title character is killed by Seyfried in revenge for having ordered the execution of his father Merenberg.
This author of a play about Ottokar II adapted the story of Hero and Leander into Waves of the Sea and of
Love, and also wrote a trilogy about the Golden Fleece beginning with a prelude called The Guest Friend. He was
greatly influenced by the Spanish Golden Age playwrights, as evidenced by the Calderón-like The Dream, a Life
and a play about Rahel la Fermosa entitled The Jewess of Toledo. For 10 points, name this Austrian playwright who
also lends his name to a pension in The World According to Garp.
ANSWER: Franz Grillparzer
7. One of this author’s novels contains characters like Laura Treadwell and Malcolm Dudley, and its title
refers to Henry French’s desire to eliminate racism in the city of Clarendon. This author’s early works were
praised by William Dean Howells, who nonetheless criticized one of his later works as being “bitter, bitter.”
The title character of one of his stories, Liza Jane, is the subject of a speech given by Mr. Ryder to the Blue
Veins Society. The first published story by this author of The Colonel’s Dream and “The Wife of His Youth” was
entitled “The Goophered Grapevine.” He wrote a novel in which Sandy Campbell nearly gets lynched after being
framed by Tom Delamere, who also murders Ms. Ochiltree. Those events, as well as the racism of Olivia and her
husband Major Carteret, incite race riots based on the ones which took place in Wilmington, North Carolina. For 10
points, name this author of The Marrow of Tradition.
ANSWER: Charles Waddell Chesnutt
8. When one character in this play says that he used to profit by miseries and misfortunes, another character
responds by asking if he was a lawyer and a doctor at the same time. Near the beginning of this play, one
character repeatedly insults another, interpolating his insults by saying “though he is my friend.” The fact
that the Italian Signor Ritornello has a French interpreter leads to much linguistic confusion in one scene. A play
within this play includes a scene in which Burleigh enters and exits the stage without saying a word, and features a
love story involving Tilburina and Don Ferolo Whiskerandos. The second half of this play focuses on a rehearsal of
Mr. Puff’s play The Spanish Armada at the Drury Lane Theatre, attended by Dangle, Sneer, and Sir Fretful Plagiary.
For 10 points, name this satire of the world of theater by Richard Brinsley Sheridan.
ANSWER: The Critic
9. The introduction to the first issue of this periodical says that it “sets out to be an avenue for all those vivid
and violent ideas that could reach the Public in no other way.” Poems printed in this periodical include a
parody of “Sumer is Icumen In” called “Ancient Music,” and it also featured a bizarre play about Arghol and
Hanp called Enemy of the Stars. Featuring illustrations by Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, Edward Wadsworth, and
others, its first issue had a gaudy pink cover, while its second issue was called the “War Number” and its cover
featured a geometrical woodcut by its founder. Its first issue contained an excerpt from Ford Madox Ford’s The
Saddest Story, which later became The Good Soldier, as well as a manifesto including a list of things to be blessed,
which was highly critical of Futurism. For 10 points, name this short-lived Vorticist magazine with an explosive
name, created by Wyndham Lewis.
ANSWER: BLAST
10. This poem describes a beach with “black, funereal” sand with “piles of rotting muck” and “furtive rumps
relieving themselves.” It asks “but can one kill Remorse, a perfect stupefied face of an English lady
discovering a Hottentot skull in her soup tureen?” The speaker of this poem says that “Christmas was not
like other holidays” because “it didn’t like to gad about the streets.” This poem ends with the neologism
verrition, which comes from a Latin word meaning “to sweep.” Near the end of this poem, the speaker says that he
accepts his “race pitted with blemishes,” along with a litany of other things including the shackles, the rack, the
cippus, and the head screw. The speaker of this poem says “my negritude is neither tower nor cathedral,” and repeats
refrains like “in this inert town” and “at the end of daybreak.” For 10 points, name this long poem by Aimé Césaire.
ANSWER: Notebook of a Return to the Native Land [or Notebook of a Return to My Native Land; or Cahier d’un
retour au pays natal]
11. One character in this play suggests a powder ground from the skull of an ant as a cure for a bad leg, and
that character dreams that she is a flower hidden in the grass. According to the prologue of this play, it is
based on a story told by a wood sylph who had escaped from a Shakespeare play. Scorpy the drunken
woodcutter enrages the main characters by eating a worm, and also threatens to eat the title character. In this
play, one character tries to convince her son to marry Sylvia, but he says he is in love with a star. The title character
of this play claims that dewdrops and grains of sand speak to her, and the Boybeetle asks “Why aren’t you listening
to my song of love?” when she tries to fly away despite her broken wing. For 10 points, name this first play by
Federico García Lorca.
ANSWER: The Butterfly’s Evil Spell [or El maleficio de la mariposa]
12. In one of this author’s last novels, Maria commits suicide because her face is destroyed when a gang
attacks her and her boyfriend Bobby, who befriends a Holocaust survivor named Moishe. He called one of his
own novels “the most disturbing book ever written,” and could not read it for years after he wrote it. That
novel explores the psyche of an enraged man who is in jail for a crime he claims not to have committed. This
author of The Willow Tree and The Room wrote a novel ending with a coda called “Landsend” and including
sections titled “The Queen Is Dead” and “Another Day, Another Dollar,” which includes a controversial scene in
which a prostitute named Tralala is gang-raped. He also wrote a novel about the drug addicts Harry, Marion,
Tyrone, and Sara, which was made into a movie by Darren Aronofsky. For 10 points, name this author of Requiem
for a Dream and Last Exit to Brooklyn.
ANSWER: Hubert Selby, Jr.
13. One character in this novel takes a forty-mile train ride and walks nine miles every year just so she can
see a certain gentleman. Another character asks if she should replace a misplaced expression in her
calculations while discussing whether or not she should assent to a marriage proposal. Divided into three
books called “Sowing,” “Reaping,” and “Garnering,” it features a character who is dissatisfied with his
marriage to a drunken wife and desires to marry Rachael instead. That character dies after falling into Old Hell
Shaft, and is named Stephen Blackpool. In this novel, a circus performer abandons his daughter, Sissy Jupe, who is
taken in by the father of Louisa, or Loo. Other characters include Josiah Bounderby and the fact-obsessed Thomas
Gradgrind. For 10 points, name this Dickens novel.
ANSWER: Hard Times
14. This novel includes the story of a “survival game” taking place at a school, which ironically results in the
death of a paralytic. The protagonist of this novel enjoys looking at maps with a stereoscope, which makes
them look three-dimensional. In this novel, Sengoku creates a theory about manholes and is known as the
“sweet-potato man.” The protagonist of this novel becomes obsessed with an insect which slowly rotates in a
circle, eating its own feces, known as the clockbug or eupcaccia. For almost a third of this novel, the protagonist’s
leg is stuck in a toilet in the title structure, which is taken over by the Broom Brigade and is built in an abandoned
quarry. For 10 points, name this novel in which a man nicknamed Pig or Mole captains a ship which is meant to be
used as a shelter in case of nuclear war, a work by Kobo Abe.
ANSWER: The Ark Sakura [or Hakobune sakura maru]
15. In this story’s final paragraph, the protagonist drives around in a carriage in despair, saying “I’ll never
come home at this rate.” A choir of schoolchildren in this story sings a song with the words “Take his clothes
off, then he’ll heal, and if he doesn’t cure, then kill him.” A groom insists that he stay with the maid Rosa
instead of going along with the title character of this story, which opens with the title character trying to find a
horse because his own horse had died the previous night. Another character in this story whispers “Let me die” to
the title character. Mysterious happenings in this story include the title character being transported ten miles almost
instantly, and the title character finding a bloody wound in the side of his patient, despite having earlier declared him
to be perfectly healthy. For 10 points, name this surrealistic story by Franz Kafka.
ANSWER: “A Country Doctor” [or “Ein Landarzt”]
16. This author wrote a novel whose protagonist is in love with Ann Rush and works at a nameless penal
colony inhabited by prisoners such as Quinn and Thomas Ewers. In addition to that novel about Phelim
Halloran, he wrote a novel about an unconventional priest named Father Maitland. Historical events which
formed the basis for works by this author include the 1918 peace talks in the Forest of Compiègne and the
Battle of Antietam. He won the Miles Franklin Award two years in a row for Bring Larks and Heroes and Three
Cheers for the Paraclete. He also wrote a novel in which Mort and Jackie Smolders are caught up in the violent rage
of the title character, an Aboriginal man who goes on a killing spree. He won the Booker Prize for a historical novel
including characters like Amon Goeth. For 10 points, name this author of The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith and
Schindler’s Ark.
ANSWER: Thomas Keneally
17. One character in this play is asked by a woman where seagulls sleep at night. One scene in this play ends
with a character yelling “You slut!” at his wife before a pause which is punctuated by a cry of “Ahoy there!”
from his brother. One character in this play says that he is called by “the beauty of the far off and unknown”
and “the mystery and spell of the East.” That character crawls into a ditch so he can die watching the sun rise,
shortly after his brother returns from Buenos Aires after losing most of his fortune speculating in wheat. Robert is a
bookish romantic who marries Ruth, a woman who takes care of her wheelchair-bound mother, rather than join
Uncle Dick on the Sunda, but he turns out to be unsuited to the farming life. For 10 points, name this play about the
Mayo family, a Pulitzer-winning 1918 play by Eugene O’Neill.
ANSWER: Beyond the Horizon
18. In one story, this character becomes a slave for a man who makes him shoot elephants with a bow and
arrow. In an episode reminiscent of the story of Polyphemus and Odysseus, this character uses two iron spits
to blind a beast which has been eating his companions. When he becomes trapped in a cave with his wife’s
corpse, he kills the other people who are thrown into the cave and takes their supplies in order to survive until he
can escape. At one point, he becomes the king of a city whose inhabitants turn into birds every month. He
encounters an island which turns out to be a whale with trees growing on its back. He attaches a piece of meat to his
back in order to be carried away by a roc, but he is later attacked by rocs, who drop boulders on his ship. For 10
points, name this killer of the Old Man of the Sea, a sailor whose seven voyages are narrated in Arabic folklore.
ANSWER: Sinbad the Sailor
19. When one character in this poem is wounded by an arrow, he breaks off the shaft of the arrow with his
shield and then stabs the man who had shot the arrow. That character makes a dying speech in which he asks
God that “the fiends of Hell shall not be permitted to harm me.” Another character in this poem makes a
speech saying “Our hearts must grow resolute, our courage more valiant, our spirits must be greater, though
our strength grows less.” Three brothers in this poem show their cowardice by fleeing from battle, one of them
riding on his lord’s horse. Much controversy stems from the proper translation of this poem’s word ofermode, which
is variously translated as “pride” or “arrogance,” and which is used in describing Byrhtnoth’s decision to allow the
Vikings to cross over to the mainland. For 10 points, name this Old English poem about a 991 battle.
ANSWER: “The Battle of Maldon”
20. A warrior in this poem asks for the head of the man who had mortally wounded him, and when he
receives it, he proceeds to chew on it. A bad omen occurs in this poem when an arrow is shot at a tree and
then returns to land at the mouth of its quiver. In one episode in this poem, two tigers are killed by Aconteus
after they kill another character’s charioteer. At the beginning of this poem, the poet considers writing about
the death of Ino and Cadmus’s foundation of Thebes, but decides to tackle a different subject. It isn’t the
Argonautica, but this poem tells of Hypsipyle, who neglects the child Archemorus, allowing him to be killed by a
snake. The action of this poem begins when one character asks Tisiphone to curse his two sons, leading to a war in
which one side is led by figures like Adrastus and Polynices. For 10 points, name this epic about the Seven Against
Thebes by Publius Statius.
ANSWER: Thebaid [or Thebaïs]
TB. One author of works of this type was patronized by an emperor who supposedly said “Good, good! Then
we shall have a virgin muse” upon discovering that the former had not written any plays. Plays like Le philtre
and Adriana Lecouvreur were adapted into works of this type, and were originally written by a French author
who perfected the well-made play and is also known for his original works of this type. One author of these
works was patronized by Marianna Bulgarelli; his first original work of this type was based on the abandonment of
Dido by Aeneas, and he also wrote a popular work about Demofonte. Another author of these works used the
pseudonym Tobia Gorrio and also wrote Mefistofele. Those aforementioned authors are Lorenzo da Ponte, Eugène
Scribe, Metastasio and Arrigo Boito. For 10 points, name these operatic texts.
ANSWER: librettos