Unit quiz: Reading at the smallest scale: one word, one line, one sound, one whole poem

Check understanding, separately from reading

5 questions · 80% to pass · no timer. This quiz checks the lessons in this unit. These authored questions assess recognition and application of the taught distinctions, not professional qualification. You may review the lessons and retry. Repeat attempts reuse the question bank; a remembered answer is not proof of transfer to a new situation.

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Question 1

An editor preparing a school anthology of Blake’s ‘London’ decides to print ‘A mark in every face I meet’ because that reading appears in a widely used 1901 edition, and adds a note saying the wording is identical in all sources. A reviewer objects. Which objection is best supported by the evidence available?The note is false and the choice is consequential: the plate transcription and the poet’s own draft both print a verb, and the noun reading changes which entity governs the clauseThe note is false because no two witnesses ever agree in early modern printing, so the editor should have collated at least twenty copies before printing

Question 2

A student analyses a blank-verse passage and reports that the poet ‘breaks the lines to create a feeling of disorder’. Asked to support the claim, the student points to a line that ends with a comma. What is the most useful diagnosis?The claim is fine, because any line ending in punctuation signals tension between metre and meaningNo boundary has been identified: the claim needs a named phrase crossing a named line-end, and a comma at the line-end marks a pause where syntax and line agree

Question 3

An essay argues that Donne’s compasses ‘show how much the lovers love each other’, citing the figure’s beauty. A tutor asks for the mapping. Which answer would most nearly satisfy the demand?Fixed foot is the beloved, moving foot is the speaker, the drawn circle is the completed relationship, and constancy in the fixed foot is what makes the completion possibleThe compasses are a technical instrument, so the figure shows that the love is precise, measured and rational rather than emotional

Question 4

A reader scans ‘God’s Grandeur’ by counting syllables, finds that the lines vary between nine and eleven, and concludes that the poem is unmetred. Which correction is best?The lines are unmetred, since a regular English line must keep a constant syllable count as in running rhythmSprung rhythm is measured by stressed feet of one to four syllables, so a variable syllable count is compatible with a fixed pattern of stresses, which must be counted instead

Question 5

A study guide states that the urn in Keats’s ode ‘delivers its famous message: Beauty is truth, truth beauty, that is all ye know on earth’. A careful student checks two witnesses and finds the closing quotation mark after ‘truth beauty,’ in both. What follows?The guide has asserted a speaker the text does not assign; the last two lines lie outside the quotation marks in the witnesses checked, so the question of voice must be argued rather than assumedThe guide is right in substance, because quotation marks in a nineteenth-century volume are compositor’s marks and carry no evidential weight

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