Autumn (John Clare poem) Quizzes

Autumn (John Clare poem) Autumn

By Claire Adler · Edited by James Cooper · Last reviewed September 13, 2022

1 Who of the following was NOT a contemporary of John Clare?

George Byron

Percy Shelly

Silvia Plath

John Keats
2 What poetry movement does John Clare belong to?

Romantic

Gothic

Modernist

None of the above
3 When was John Clare born?

Late eighteenth century

Early nineteenth century

Mid eighteenth century

Early eighteenth century
4 Which of the following characteristics of Clare's poetry was typical of the Romantics?

Working-class background

Focus on the English countryside

Rejection of fantastical elements

Celebrating the natural landscape
5 Which of the following contemporary phenomena has drawn new attention to John Clare's writing?

Invention of the internet

Worsening wealth inequality

Environmental crisis

Migration to cities
6 How did John Clare's social status change over the course of his life?

He gradually became well-known over the course of his career

He never achieved success in his life

His first book made him famous and successful for life

His first book was a runaway success, but then he faded into obscurity
7 Which of the following is John Clare NOT known for?

Descriptions of vast and awe-inspiring landscapes

Simple yet sophisticated verse

Close attention to the natural world

Melancholy tone
8 What is the meter of "Autumn"?

Iambic pentameter (five pairs of one unstressed and one stressed syllable)

Iambic hexameter (six pairs of one unstressed and one stressed syllable)

Free verse (no fixed meter)

Trochaic hexameter (six pairs of one stressed and one unstressed syllable)
9 What is the rhyme scheme of "Autumn"?

AABC

ABAB

AABB

No fixed rhyme scheme
10 What does the absence of a first-person singular suggest in "Autumn"?

The poem is written from God's perspective

The speaker has forgotten himself and needs the landscape to remember who he is

The poem is written by a group of people

The speaker has to forget himself to experience the sublime
11 What is "thistledown"?

The flowers of thistles

Sheep's wool studded with thistle spines

Floating thistle seeds akin to dandelion seeds

Cloth made from thistles
12 In the context of "Autumn," what is "gossamer"?

A delicate fabric

A kind of bird

Whispering

Cobwebs
13 What is the "greensward"?

Land designated for farming

The manor house

Fields left empty

Grassy land
14 Which of the following best describes the tone of the first stanza?

Awe-struck

Mournful

Celebratory

Matter-of-fact
15 Which line subtly blurs the boundaries between the landscape and the speaker?

The ground parched and cracked is like overbaked bread

Whoever looks round sees Eternity there

And the rivers we're eying burn to gold as they run

On the green grass now lying, now mounting the hill
16 What is the mood of the second stanza?

Cheerful

Melancholy

Sublime

None of the above
17 In the context of the second stanza, the line "The fallow fields glitter like water indeed" is an example of what literary device?

Juxtaposition

Metaphor

Parallelism

Irony
18 What idea does the second stanza INTRODUCE?

The autumnal landscape remains touched by heat

It's worth looking closely at the natural world

The natural world can be awe-inspiring

The human gaze can allow opposites to coexist
19 Which line most emphatically emphasizes the disastrous impacts of the autumn on the landscape?

The greensward all wracked is, bents dried up and dead.

And gossamers twitter, flung from weed unto weed.

The ground parched and cracked is like overbaked bread,

The fallow fields glitter like water indeed,
20 Which of the following does not suggest the power of the human gaze?

And gossamers twitter, flung from weed unto weed

Whoever looks round sees Eternity there

And the rivers we're eying burn to gold as they run

The fallow fields glitter like water indeed
21 Which two lines most closely resemble one another in their use of figurative language?

Lines 3 and 11

Lines 5 and 7

Lines 3 and 5

Lines 3 and 9
22 Which literary device does NOT appear in line 11, "burning hot is the ground, liquid gold is the air"

Metaphor

Alliteration

Parallel

Syntactical inversion
23 Which of the following contains an example of alliteration?

The greensward all wracked is, bents dried up and dead.

And the rivers we're eying burn to gold as they run;

The spring from the fountain now boils like a pot;

Whoever looks round sees Eternity there.
24 Which of the following best describes the significance of "Eternity" in the final line?

A sense of one's own mortality in comparison to the natural world

A loss of the ordinary world in favor of the sublime

The presence of the Christian God

A sense of something bigger than oneself in the ordinary world
25 What is the primary conflict of "Autumn"?

Between summer's heat and winter's cold

Between the speaker and God

Between the speaker's desire to find the landscape beautiful and the reality of its ugliness

Between the harshness of the autumnal landscape and its beauty

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