The Circus Animals’ Desertion Quizzes

The Circus Animals' Desertion Quiz

1 Which is not a characteristic of the carnivalesque?
Performance

Order

Ephemerality

Transgression
2 What was Yeats's first published work (outside of magazines)?
The Faerie Queene

The Countess Cathleen

The Second Coming

The Wanderings of Oisin
3 What mythological land does this poem reference?
Narnia

The Upside Down

Oisin

Faerie
4 What is the speaker searching for in vain?
A theme

Love

Home

A quest
5 Which is not one of the enchanted islands?
Vain battle

Vain gaiety

Vain romance

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

The dream

The Irish landscape

The painted stage
7 Which of these characters was Yeats' own creation?
The Countess Cathleen

The Fool

Oisin

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

Yeats' imagination

Christianity

Helena Blavatsky's occultism
9 What does "burnished" mean?
Rusty

Polished

Gilded

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

Undying love

Inspiration

Aging
11 When was "The Circus Animals' Desertion" published?
1901

1917

1989

1939
12 Which artistic transition is Yeats' poetry often understood to mark?
Nihilism to romanticism

Individualism to collectivism

Capitalism to communism

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

The fairy bride

Maud Gonne

The Countess Cathleen
14 What was Maud Gonne's principal cause?
Feminism

Irish nationalism

Socialism

Animal rights
15 Yeats was most interested in what form of thought and belief?
Esoteric Judaism

Nihilism

Occultism

Christianity
16 Who originated the term carnivalesque?
Mikhail Bakhtin

Fyodor Dostoevsky

Helena Blavatsky

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

The end

The beginning

Unknown
18 Which poem shares "The Circus Animals' Desertion"'s poetic structure?
"The Second Coming"

"The Lake Isle of Innisfree"

"Sailing to Byzantium"

"The Song of Wandering Aengus"
19 What is the poetic structure of "The Circus Animals' Desertion"?
Trochaic tetrameter

Dactylic hexameter

Iambic pentamenter

Anapestic trimeter
20 In what year did Yeats die?
1967

1916

1939

1942
21 Which artistic tendency does "The Circus Animals' Desertion" NOT fit into?
Postmodernism

Modernism

Classicism

Romanticism
22 What is a central argument of "The Circus Animals' Desertion"?
Ideas and mythologies are illusions, and reality is cold and destitute

The world is changing irreversibly

Yeats regrets his past writings

There is a better reality beyond this one
23 Cuchulain was...
A Norse god

An Irish saint

A mythological trickster

An ancient Celtic hero
24 How long was Yeats searching for a theme?
Six days or so

Five lives or so

Six years or so

Six weeks or so
25 Where was Yeats from?
Northern Ireland

England

Ireland

Scotland

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