Archive for June, 2009»
Tom Jones audio book – book 2 ch. 1-3
Scroll down to see the see the GRE flash card for Tom Jones.
Note: this audio recording jumps ahead to book 2, chapters 1-3. To hear more visit Librivox.org.
To read Tom Jones online, visit the Project Gutenberg e-text.
Tom Jones – audio book – ch. 4-6
Scroll down to see the see the GRE flash card for Tom Jones.
The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, known simply as Tom Jones, is a comic novel by the English playwright and novelist Henry Fielding. It is ranked number 25 on the GRE reading list.
Synopsis
Tom Jones is a foundling discovered on the property of Squire Allworthy, a kind wealthy landowner, who decides to raise the boy himself. Tom grows into an attractive, lusty youth. He is often in trouble and generally somewhat selfish and impulsive, but is nevertheless honest and kind at heart. He falls in love with his neighbor’s daughter, Sophia Western, but his status as a bastard causes Sophia’s father and Allworthy to oppose their love.
Note: I’d advise you not to try to read this book. It is extremely long, and unless you plan to study for three years prior to the test it will take up way too much of your time. Study the synopsis below, learn the characters, and listen to the audio book of Tom Jones in this and the following posts.
Tom Jones: GRE Flash Card
-First published on 28 February 1749
-Tom Jones is among the earliest English prose works describable as a novel.
-Main Characters:
- Tom Jones (a bastard and ward of Squire Allworthy)
- Squire Allworthy (a wealthy squire with an estate in Somersetshire)
- Mrs. Bridget Allworthy-Blifil (Squire Allworthy’s sister)
- Captain Blifil (Captain and Mrs. Blifil’s husband)
- Master Blifil (ill-natured son of Captain Blifil and Bridget)
- Black George Seagrim (a gamekeeper)
- Molly Seagrim (Black George’s second daughter)
- Squire Western (a hunting man)
- Sophia Western (the Squire’s only daughter)
- Honour (Sophia’s maid)
- listen to the audio file of Tom Jones.
Listen to the audiobook of chapters 4-5 of The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy. If you’d like to hear more, visit Librivox.org.
Laurence Sterne - The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy - ch. 4-5 [7:29m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | DownloadLaurence Sterne (1713 – 1768) was an Irish-born English novelist and an Anglican clergyman. He is best known for his novels The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, and A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy.
For the GRE Literature, focus on Tristram Sha andy. It is very very likely to appear on the test.
Notable for its bawdy humor and inventive narrative devices, Tristram Shandy is ostensibly Tristram’s narration of his life story. But it is one of the central jokes of the novel that he cannot explain anything without endless diversions, and so we do not even reach Tristram’s own birth until Volume III.
Tristram Shandy – GRE flash card
notable characteristics: bawdy humor, dense satire, unconventional narrative devices
primary characters:
Walter – Tristram’s father
Uncle Toby – his uncle
Trim – Toby’s servant
Doctor Slop
Parson Yorick
allusions:
- Pope and Swift are frequently satirized.
- references to Cervantes, particularly Don Quixote are also present in the frequent references to Rosinante (the horse), the “quixotic” character of Uncle Toby and Sterne’s own description of his characters’ “Cervantic humor.”
-The novel also references John Locke’s theories of empiricism, or the way we assemble what we know of ourselves and our world from the “association of ideas” that come to us from observation and our senses.
Click below to listen to chapters 1-3 of The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy.
Novels on the GRE literature
Now we move on to the big stuff. When studying for the GRE literature, it’s important to remember that you’re not going to know everything. Depending on how much time you plan to spend on studying, the best plan is to focus your attention on things that will take the least time. Vocabulary, poetic forms and meter, and poems themselves are well worth spending time on. Novels, however, are more problematic. The best approach is to memorize the names of characters and a brief plot outline. If you try to read everything by Charles Dickens or Charlotte Bronte, you’re going to run into some time problems.
As someone who refused to use spark notes or cliff notes in high school, I feel a little cheap recommending them now. But if you are the sort of person who can memorize facts from such bare bones outlines, these might serve you well. If you need a little more substance to make things stick, audio books are your answer. For the next several weeks I’ll be posting audio books of 18th and 19th century British prose and novels which are likely to appear on the GRE. I’m not going to post the whole book, because honestly you don’t have to read the whole book. Just getting a sense of the prose style and characters will probably be enough. Happy listening!