This feisty pilgrim spends a long time discussing her experience within the institution of marriage.
Who is the Wife of Bath?
100
This inhospitable cyclops imprisons Odysseus and his men in a cave.
Who is Polyphemus?
100
This genre of poetry tends to convey an individual's emotion rather than telling a story.
What is a lyric, or lyric poetry?
100
Tradition has it that this blind epic poet composed both The Iliad and The Odyssey.
Who is Homer?
100
Poems by this author provide a firsthand perspective of womanhood in ancient Greece.
Who is Sappho?
200
This faithful wife awaits her husband's return to Ithaca, testing his identity when he finally arrives by pushing him to reveal a secret about their bed.
Who is Penelope?
200
This feathered monster who has "an eye that never sleeps and as many tongues as eyes" spreads stories about Dido's love for Aeneas.
Who is Rumor?
200
This literary form occurs when an author embeds shorter stories within an overarching narrative, as in The Canterbury Tales.
What is a frame tale, or a frame narrative?
200
This lyric poet lived on the Greek isle of Lesbos.
Who is Sappho?
200
This ancient culture valued authority over individual autonomy.
What is Roman culture?
300
Catullus invokes the Greek poet Sappho when he gives this name to his tempestuous lover, who's thought to represent a real Roman woman named Clodia Metella.
Who is Lesbia?
300
These lovely but dangerous creatures use their beautiful singing voices to seduce and kill sailors who hear them.
Who are the Sirens?
300
This genre of poetry involves action on a grand scale and conflicts among gods and men.
What is an epic, or epic poetry?
300
Augustus Caesar commissioned this poet to compose a distinctly Roman epic.
Who is Virgil?
300
This ancient culture valued individualism, self-awareness, and moderation in all things.
What is Greek culture?
400
This goddess looks out for her son Aeneas after he lands in Carthage.
Who is Venus?
400
This six-headed sea monster seizes Odysseus's men from their ship and eats them.
Who is Scylla?
400
This feature of epic poetry involves extended descriptions that take readers outside of an epic's own plot to help readers better understand what's happening within it.
What is an epic simile?
400
This innovative poet was among the first to compose a literary masterpiece in his vernacular language: English.
Who is Geoffrey Chaucer?
400
This author depicts the complex social structures of medieval Europe in his writings.
Who is Geoffrey Chaucer?
500
This beautiful woman is often blamed for beginning the Trojan War when she flees Sparta with her Trojan lover, Paris.
Who is Helen?
500
This violent character--described as the "vilest man alive"--is Dido's brother, who kills her beloved first husband.
Who is Pygmalion?
500
Lyric poems feature these uniformly structured stanzas, rather than the verse paragraphs of varied lengths that we find in epics.
What are strophic verses?
500
This lyric poet produced deliberately apolitical poetry and struggled against traditional Roman values.
Who is Catullus?
500
This tale invites its audience to reflect on the importance of female sovereignty and the true meaning of gentility.