Renaissance Poetry Review
for all classes
Description of test
• 50 scantron questions (including
information from the notes quiz, matching
authors/titles, and multiple choice
questions about the poems
• 5 short discussion questions for everyone:
you will be given a quote from a poem,
and you must identify the poetic device in
the quote and explain it
• 1 longer discussion question for AP only
• Please note that the
questions in this review are
similar (not necessarily
identical) to the types of
questions that will be on the
test.
• To what does the pronoun “his” refer in the
following lines: “Love’s not Time’s fool,
though rosy lips and cheeks within his
bending sickle’s compass come.”
• Answer: Time
• What literary device is used to describe
despair in the following line: “With shield
of proof shield me from out the prease of
those fierce darts Despair at me doth
throw?”
• Answer: personification
• What literary device is used in the
following line: “…not yet a breach, but an
expansion, like gold to airy thinness beat”
• Answer: simile
• What device is used in the following line:
“the indifferent judge between the high and
low?”
• Answer: personification
• In “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning,”
what does “dull sublunary lovers’ love”
refer to?
• Answer: love based on physical attraction
or physical presence
• What literary device is used in this line: “a
chamber deaf to noise and blind to light”:
• Answer: personification
• What Renaissance literary device is used
in the last 3 stanzas of “A Valediction:
Forbidding Mourning” ?
• Answer: metaphysical conceit
• What type of poem is sonnet 39; or, what
literary device is the whole poem an
example of?
• Answer: apostrophe
• What does the simile in the first two verses
of “A Valediction” compare?
• Answer: the dying of a “virtuous” man to
the parting of two lovers—the farewell will
be quiet and calm.
• In sonnet 39, what do “high” and “low”
refer to in the line, “the indifferent judge
between the high and low” ?
• Answer: “high” means the upper class;
“low” means the lower or working class—
the line generally refers to the idea that the
“high” will often be privileged by a judge,
though not by one who is indifferent.
• This was published in 1611:
• King James Bible
• What does “rosy lips and cheeks” stand for
in the following lines: “Love’s not Time’s
fool, though rosy lips and cheeks within his
bending sickle’s compass come.”
• Answer: physical beauty, which is
destroyed by time
• What literary device is present in the
following lines: “I, like an usurped town, to
another due, labor to admit you, but oh, to
no end.”
• Answer: simile
• What does “usurped” mean in the
following lines: “I, like an usurped town, to
another due, labor to admit you, but oh, to
no end.”
• Answer: seized or taken over unlawfully
• The English navy defeated _______ in
1588.
• Spanish Armada
• In sonnet 75, the line, “but came the tide,
and made my pains his prey,” the pronoun
“his” refers to
• Answer: the tide
• In sonnet 75 the line, “but came the tide,
and made my pains his prey,” “my pains”
refers to…
• Answer: the author’s writing of the
woman’s name in the sand
• This man brought the printing press to
England
• William Caxton
• True or false: Renaissance writers
believed poetry should fit expected forms
and patterns.
• true
• In this poem, the Christian belief in the
soul’s afterlife is a supporting idea but is
not discussed in detail.
• Answer: sonnet 10, “Death be not Proud”
• “The Passionate Shepherd to his Love” is
this type of poem:
• Answer: pastoral
• What literary device is contained in the
following line: “Nor ever chaste, except
you ravish me.”
• Answer: paradox
• Who brought the sonnet to England?
• Thomas Wyatt
• What literary device is contained in the
following lines: “Yet dearly I love you, and
would be loved fain, but am betrothed unto
your enemy. Divorce me, untie, or break
that knot again,”
• Answer: metaphor
• Name the poetic device contained in the
following lines: “and then my state, like to
the lark at break of day arising from sullen
earth, sings hymns at heaven’s gate”
• Answer: simile
• Writer who first wrote sonnets in the
1300’s
• Petrarch
• From sonnet 75, the line, “My verse your
virtues rare shall eternize,” means that
• Answer: the writer’s poetry will make the
woman’s goodness and beauty (‘virtues’)
last forever
• In “The Passionate Shepherd to his Love,”
the lines “by whose falls/ melodious birds
sing madrigals” is an example of what
poetic device?
• Answer: hyperbole (exaggeration)
• Type of sonnet which has three quatrains
and a couplet, and it has a new rhyme
scheme for each quatrain
• Shakespearean
• This poem contains a simile in which the
speaker compares the woman he loves to
ice.
• Answer: Spenser’s sonnet 30, “My love is
like to ice”
• What literary device is contained in the
following line: “Thou art slave to fate,
chance, kings, and desperate men”
• Answer: personification
• Type of sonnet which has three quatrains
and a couplet, and has an interlocking
rhyme scheme
• Spenserian
• What literary device is used in the
following line from sonnet 116?
• “It is the star to every wandering bark”
• Answer: metaphor
• This poetic device is a direct comparison
between two unlike things.
• Metaphor
• Type of sonnet which has an octave and a
sestet
• Italian sonnet
• Four lines of poetry which make up a
section of a sonnet
• quatrain
• The speaker of this poem compares
himself to fire.
• Answer: Spenser’s sonnet 30, “My love is
like to ice”
• What two things are compared in the
following lines: “and then my state, like to
the lark at break of day arising from sullen
earth, sings hymns at heaven’s gate”
• Answer: the speaker’s state of mind is
compared to a lark singing beautiful songs
to heaven
• The poetic form that portrays an idealized
rural setting
• pastoral
• This poem contains a paradox describing
unusual interactions of fire and ice.
• Answer: Spenser’s sonnet 30, “My love is
like to ice”
• In Shakespeare’s sonnet 130 the speaker
is making fun of other Renaissance poetry.
What aspect of those poems does he
mock?
• Answer: the exaggerated comparisons
used in other poems to idealize a woman’s
beauty
• the use of exaggeration to make a point,
create humor, or express emotion is called
_____________.
• hyperbole
• “Death be not Proud” is an example of
which literary device, used to address an
entity who will not answer the speaker?
• Answer: apostrophe
• From “Death be not Proud,” what does
“thee” refer to in this line: “From rest and
sleep, which but thy pictures be, much
pleasure, then from thee much more must
flow”
• Answer: death
• a statement that seems impossible or
contradictory, but is true in the context in
which it is written is a _________.
• paradox
• John Donne and Andrew Marvell wrote
this type of poetry:
• Metaphysical
• The concluding couplet of this poem states
that love is so powerful that it can alter the
laws of nature.
• Answer: Spenser’s sonnet 30, “My love is
like to ice”
• What two things are compared in the
following line from sonnet 116: “It is the
star to every wandering bark”
• Answer “it” is love; love is compared to a
star that guides a wandering ship
• Why was Thomas More executed?
• He opposed Henry VIII’s divorce
• In which sonnet does the speaker explain
that his flames are “increased manifold” by
being exposed to extreme cold?
• Answer: Spenser’s sonnet 30, “My love is
like to ice”
• One of the first English translations of the
Bible was written in the 1520’s and 1530’s
by ___.
• William Tyndale
• The Lord Chamberlain’s Men built
___________ in 1599.
• The Globe Theatre
• Give a paraphrase of the following line:
• “With what I most enjoy contented least”
• Answer: The things that I usually enjoy
now give me absolutely no pleasure.
• What poetic device is contained in the
following line: “imprison me, for I, except
you enthrall me, never shall be free”
• Answer: paradox
• Who helped spark the Protestant
Reformation in 1517?
• Martin Luther
• In “The Nymph’s Reply to the Shepherd,”
how does the speaker describe the gifts
offered by the shepherd?
• She says they will not last; they are full of
folly.
• What two things are compared in the
following line:
• “It is an ever-fixed mark, that looks on
tempests and is never shaken.”
• Answer: love is compared to a landmark
that will always be fixed in place.
• This was a movement supporting the idea
that human beings can achieve greatness
on their own abilities (as opposed to
having everything controlled by God)
• Humanism
• Name the poetic devices in the following
line: “But came the tide, and made my
pains his prey.”
• Answer: personification and metaphor
(tide is personified as a predator; writing is
compared to prey)
• In which sonnet does the speaker describe
his hatred of his own life and his envy for
what other men have?
• Answer: Shakespeare’s sonnet 29
• This was a time when people showed
“renewed interest in science, art, and all
learning,” and it helped England and
Europe “transition” from the middle ages
into the modern era.
• renaissance
• Which sonnet contains a conversation
between a man and a woman?
• Answer: sonnet 75 by Edmund Spenser,
“One day I wrote her name”
• What important Renaissance idea about
poetry is expressed in the following line:
• “my verse your virtues rare shall eternize”
• Answer: Poetry can immortalize the
goodness and beauty of a loved one.
• Which word means ‘rebirth’ in French?
• Renaissance
• What literary device is contained in the
following line:
• “Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips
and cheeks within his bending sickle’s
compass come.”
• Answer: personification