An original GRE Verbal practice test on literary criticism — 5 Text Completion, 5 Sentence Equivalence, and 10 Reading Comprehension questions, 20 questions in 30 minutes.

সাহিত্য সমালোচনা বিষয়ক একটি মৌলিক GRE ভার্বাল প্র্যাকটিস টেস্ট।

30min
Timeসময়
20
Questionsপ্রশ্ন
130–170
Scaled Scoreস্কোর

How to use it: Start the timer, complete all sections, then check your answers.

ব্যবহারের নিয়ম: টাইমার শুরু করে সব সেকশন শেষ করুন।

30:00
Text Completion

Questions 1–5.

1 The novel's plot is almost ; readers return to it chiefly for the precision of its prose rather than for what happens.

2 Critics initially the poem as derivative and clumsy, only to reassess it decades later as a genuine innovation.

3 The author's prose style is (i) , favoring short declarative sentences over the (ii) constructions common among her contemporaries.

4 Far from being a straightforward hero, the protagonist is a deeply figure whose motives remain unclear until the final chapter.

5 The playwright's late works mark a striking departure from his earlier, more style, embracing fragmented structure and unreliable narration.

Sentence Equivalence

Questions 6–10. Select the TWO correct answer choices.

6 The critic's review was so ______ that the playwright reportedly refused to read another word of it after the first paragraph.

7 Though the novel's ending seems ______ on a first reading, careful readers note that every clue was planted from the opening chapter.

8 The memoir's tone is remarkably ______, describing even the author's most painful memories without a trace of self-pity.

9 The translator's rendering was criticized as ______, sacrificing the original's rhythm for a literal, word-for-word accuracy.

10 Despite its brevity, the essay is remarkably ______, addressing the entire history of the debate in under ten pages.

Reading Comprehension — Passage 1

Questions 11–15 are based on the passage below.

Literary critics have long debated whether an author's stated intentions should govern the interpretation of a text, a question given its sharpest formulation in a mid-twentieth-century essay that labeled reliance on authorial intention "the intentional fallacy." Proponents of this view argued that a poem or novel, once published, becomes a public object whose meaning is available for readers to discover through close attention to the text itself, independent of what the author may have privately intended or later claimed to have meant. Critics of this position countered that entirely disregarding intention risks license for arbitrary interpretation, since a text considered wholly apart from its historical and biographical context can be made to mean almost anything a sufficiently inventive reader wishes. A middle position, associated with reader-response theory, sidesteps the dispute somewhat by relocating meaning not in the author's intention nor in the text alone, but in the interaction between text and reader, acknowledging that different readers, shaped by different experiences, may reasonably arrive at different, equally defensible readings of the same passage. This third position has itself drawn criticism for potentially collapsing into the same problem of interpretive license it was meant to avoid, since if every reading is equally valid, the concept of a "wrong" interpretation becomes difficult to sustain.

📚 Glossary · কঠিন শব্দের অর্থ
Wordবাংলা অর্থEnglish meaning
intentional fallacyউদ্দেশ্যগত ভ্রান্তিthe idea that author's intent shouldn't determine meaning
arbitraryখেয়ালখুশিমতোbased on random choice, not reason
sidestepএড়িয়ে যাওয়াto avoid dealing with directly
sustainটিকিয়ে রাখাto maintain or keep going

11 The primary purpose of the passage is to

12 According to the passage, proponents of the "intentional fallacy" view believed that

13 The criticism of reader-response theory described in the final sentence centers on the concern that

14 Select all statements the passage would support. (Select all that apply.)

15 The passage's tone toward all three positions discussed is best described as

Reading Comprehension — Passage 2

Questions 16–20 are based on the passage below.

The unreliable narrator, a device by which a story is told by a voice whose account the reader has reason to distrust, has become so common in contemporary fiction that its once-startling effect risks becoming a predictable convention in its own right. Early influential uses of the device relied on readers gradually noticing inconsistencies the narrator seemed unaware of, producing a slow, unsettling recognition that events were not as the narrator described them. As the technique proliferated, however, many novels began signaling unreliability from the outset — through a narrator's evident instability, self-contradiction, or overt admission of dishonesty — trading the original effect of gradual discovery for an upfront acknowledgment that primes readers to expect deception from the first page. Some critics argue this shift represents a loss: when unreliability is announced rather than discovered, the reader's active interpretive labor, once essential to the device's power, becomes largely unnecessary. Others counter that announced unreliability opens new creative possibilities unavailable to the earlier, more covert approach, allowing authors to explore not whether a narrator can be trusted but the more interesting question of why they lie and what that dishonesty reveals about their psychology.

📚 Glossary · কঠিন শব্দের অর্থ
Wordবাংলা অর্থEnglish meaning
proliferateবিস্তার লাভ করাto increase rapidly in number
covertগোপনhidden; not openly shown
interpretive laborব্যাখ্যামূলক পরিশ্রমthe mental work of figuring out meaning

16 The primary purpose of the passage is to

17 According to the passage, early uses of the unreliable narrator relied on

18 The critics mentioned who see the newer approach as "a loss" believe that

19 Those who defend the newer, "announced" approach argue that it allows authors to

20 The passage's overall structure can best be described as