Anne Bradstreet’s
The Prologue
1. Who is the author of The Prologue?
a) Emily Dickinson
b) Anne Bradstreet
c) Phillis Wheatley
d) Mary Rowlandson
Answer: b) Anne Bradstreet
2. Anne Bradstreet is often regarded as the first published poet of:
a) England
b) Colonial America
c) Scotland
d) Puritan England
Answer: b) Colonial America
3. In which year was Anne Bradstreet’s The Prologue published in The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America?
a) 1620
b) 1630
c) 1650
d) 1678
Answer: c) 1650
4. What theme is central to The Prologue?
a) Love and betrayal
b) War and peace
c) Gender roles and women’s inferiority in poetry
d) Religion and faith
Answer: c) Gender roles and women’s inferiority in poetry
5. Anne Bradstreet belonged to which religious background?
a) Anglican
b) Puritan
c) Quaker
d) Catholic
Answer: b) Puritan
6. Which line from The Prologue shows Bradstreet’s modesty to ward off male criticism?
a) “Men have precedence and still excel”
b) “I am obnoxious to each carping tongue”
c) “Let Greeks be Greeks, and women what they are”
d) All of the above
Answer: d) All of the above
7. Anne Bradstreet’s The Prologue is written in:
a) Blank verse
b) Rhyme royal
c) Iambic pentameter with alternate rhyme (ababcc)
d) Heroic couplets
Answer: c) Iambic pentameter with alternate rhyme (ababcc)
8. In The Prologue, Bradstreet ironically downplays her work by comparing it to:
a) War songs
b) The works of Homer
c) Courtly love lyrics
d) Religious hymns
Answer: b) The works of Homer
9. Which metaphor does Bradstreet use to describe her poetry as inferior?
a) A child’s toy compared to weapons
b) A broken instrument
c) A needle compared to a pen
d) A flower compared to a tree
Answer: c) A needle compared to a pen
10. Bradstreet’s The Prologue belongs to which literary tradition?
a) Metaphysical poetry
b) Early American Puritan poetry
c) Romantic lyricism
d) Modernist poetry
Answer: b) Early American Puritan poetry
11. What attitude does Bradstreet adopt in The Prologue?
a) Humble and self-deprecating
b) Aggressive and rebellious
c) Sarcastic and ironical
d) Both a and c
Answer: d) Both a and c
12. Which early critic dismissed women’s writings as unworthy, something Bradstreet resists in The Prologue?
a) Edward Taylor
b) Nathaniel Ward
c) John Winthrop
d) Cotton Mather
Answer: d) Cotton Mather
13. Anne Bradstreet’s The Prologue was first published in London under the title:
a) Verses upon the Burning of our House
b) Several Poems
c) The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America
d) Meditations Divine and Moral
Answer: c) The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America
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