Passage identification

Passage identifications are one of the most common types of questions asked in humanities exams. You are usually given 10 to 20 quotes from the works on your course's reading list, and asked to identify the:

• author
• name of the work
• date or historical period, usually with some degree of leeway (e.g. +/- 5 years)
• context
• meaning/significance

You're usually only required to identify a certain number of the quotes, but if the instructor is especially cruel, you might be required to identify all of them.