The Circus Animals’ Desertion Quizzes

The Circus Animals' Desertion Quiz

1 Which is not a characteristic of the carnivalesque?

Performance

Order

Transgression

Ephemerality
2 What was Yeats's first published work (outside of magazines)?

The Wanderings of Oisin

The Countess Cathleen

The Second Coming

The Faerie Queene
3 What mythological land does this poem reference?

Faerie

The Upside Down

Oisin

Narnia
4 What is the speaker searching for in vain?

Home

A quest

A theme

Love
5 Which is not one of the enchanted islands?

Vain gaiety

Vain romance

Vain battle

Vain repose
6 Which does not take the speaker's love?

The painted stage

The fairy bride

The dream

The Irish landscape
7 Which of these characters was Yeats' own creation?

The Countess Cathleen

Oisin

The Fool

Cuchulain
8 The Fool and the Blind Man are from what?

Helena Blavatsky's occultism

Tarot

Christianity

Yeats' imagination
9 What does "burnished" mean?

Gilded

Rusty

Polished

Burnt
10 Which is not a central theme of "The Circus Animals' Desertion"?

Dreams versus reality

Undying love

Aging

Inspiration
11 When was "The Circus Animals' Desertion" published?

1901

1939

1989

1917
12 Which artistic transition is Yeats' poetry often understood to mark?

Individualism to collectivism

Capitalism to communism

Nihilism to romanticism

Romanticism to modernism
13 Who was Yeats' longtime unrequited love?

The fairy bride

Maud Gonne

The Countess Cathleen

Juliet Capulet
14 What was Maud Gonne's principal cause?

Feminism

Socialism

Animal rights

Irish nationalism
15 Yeats was most interested in what form of thought and belief?

Christianity

Esoteric Judaism

Nihilism

Occultism
16 Who originated the term carnivalesque?

Helena Blavatsky

Mikhail Bakhtin

Fyodor Dostoevsky

William Butler Yeats
17 "The Circus Animals' Desertion" was written during what part of Yeats' career?

Unknown

The middle

The beginning

The end
18 Which poem shares "The Circus Animals' Desertion"'s poetic structure?

"The Second Coming"

"The Song of Wandering Aengus"

"The Lake Isle of Innisfree"

"Sailing to Byzantium"
19 What is the poetic structure of "The Circus Animals' Desertion"?

Trochaic tetrameter

Dactylic hexameter

Anapestic trimeter

Iambic pentamenter
20 In what year did Yeats die?

1916

1967

1942

1939
21 Which artistic tendency does "The Circus Animals' Desertion" NOT fit into?

Romanticism

Modernism

Postmodernism

Classicism
22 What is a central argument of "The Circus Animals' Desertion"?

There is a better reality beyond this one

Ideas and mythologies are illusions, and reality is cold and destitute

Yeats regrets his past writings

The world is changing irreversibly
23 Cuchulain was...

A Norse god

An ancient Celtic hero

A mythological trickster

An Irish saint
24 How long was Yeats searching for a theme?

Six days or so

Six years or so

Six weeks or so

Five lives or so
25 Where was Yeats from?

Ireland

Northern Ireland

Scotland

England

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Yeats & The Circus Mind in “The Circus Animals’ Desertion”