Identifying an Author From a Quotation

The idea

The board says some questions ask you to identify the author of a representative quotation. Treat the quotation as evidence and narrow by stages. First, date it by form and language: a heroic couplet points to the Restoration or eighteenth century, blank verse with dense imagery to Shakespeare or Milton, sprung rhythm to Hopkins, free verse to the twentieth century. Second, look at subject and stance: nature and the self suggest the Romantics, faith and doubt the Victorians, fragmentation the modernists. Third, look for signatures: a metaphysical conceit points to Donne, a dramatic monologue to Browning, a refrain-heavy dense lyric to Yeats. Fourth, eliminate choices from other periods, which usually leaves two. Fifth, decide between them on the most specific signature. The sample question asking which line is by Keats rewards this: one choice is a Pope couplet, one Wyatt, one Shelley's elegy, one Hopkins, and the Keats line sounds like an ode's address to an urn.