British English Critics MCQs

Sir Philip Sidney mention that ‘poetry’ consists in the art of ___ .

(a) Imitation

(b) Imagination

(d) Expression

Question’s Answer: Imitation

Sir Philip Sidney had a strong urge for reviving the canons of criticism of which of the following?

(a) Aristotle

(b) Longinus

(d) Bacon

Question’s Answer: Aristotle

Sidney say about the observance of the three dramatic unities in drama that ____.

(a) Only the unity of action should be observed

(b) It is not necessary to observe them

(d) Their observance depends upon the nature of the play concerned

Question’s Answer: They must be observed

According to ___ , “It is not rhyming and versing that maketh a poet, no more than a long gown maketh an advocate.”

(a) Shakespeare

(b) Sidney

(d) Marlowe

Question’s Answer: Sidney

Who was Sidney?

(a) A subjective critic

(b) An objective critic

(d) None of A, B, and C

Question’s Answer: A critic

Poetry is defended in Sidney’s An Apology for Poetry against the accusations made against it by

(a) Henry Howard

(b) Stephen Gosson

(d) Roger Ascham

Question’s Answer: Stephen Gosson

_____ is not written by Sidney.

(a) Arcadia

(b) Shepherd’s Calendar

(d) An Apology for Poetry

Question’s Answer: Shepherd’s Calendar

_____ classed poets with pipers and jesters and called them caterpillars of the Commonwealth.

(a) Dr. Johnson

(b) Sir Philip Sidney

(d) Stephen Gosson

Question’s Answer: Stephen Gosson

According to Sidney, poetry can be divided into _______ .

(a) Religious, historical and moral poetry

(b) Moral, dramatic and philosophical poetry

(d) None of A, B, and C

Question’s Answer: Religious, philosophic and right kind of poetry

_____ is the critical work of Ben Jonson.

(a) Discourse of English Poetrie

(b) An Apology for Poetry

(d) Discourses

Question’s Answer: Discourses

What does Ben Jonson mean by a humorous’ character?

(a) A character, who is by nature melancholy

(b) A character who is always cheerful and gay

(d) An eccentric person

Question’s Answer: A character whose temper is determined by one of the four liquids in the human body

According to __ , Poetry is an imitation of nature and its function is to teach and delight.

(a) John Dryden

(b) Ben Jonson

(d) Sir Philip Sidney

Question’s Answer: Sir Philip Sidney

In Sidney’s An Apology for Poetry the Romans have a word for poets?

(a) Vates

(b) Creator

(d) Prophets

Question’s Answer: Vates

Sidney is not in favour of which kind of writing?

(a) Comedy

(b) Tragi-comedy

(d) All of A, B, and C

Question’s Answer: Tragi-comedy

In Greek literature, what is the meaning of ‘poet’?

(a) Teacher

(b) Prophet

(d) All of A, B, and C

Question’s Answer: Maker

Dramatic criticism in England began with

(a) Ben Jonson

(b) Sidney

(d) Dr.Johnson

Question’s Answer: Sidney

Who said this? “The judge of poets is only the faculty of poets.”

(a) Sidney

(b) Dryden

(d) Ben Jonson

Question’s Answer: Ben Jonson

The term ‘comedy of humours’ was popularized by Jonson through the titles of his comedies

(a) The Alchemist

(b) Every Man in His Humour

(d) Both (b) and (c)

Question’s Answer: Both (b) and (c)

Which comedy of Ben Jonson has a story of quackery as is found in Chaucer’s “The Canon’s Yeoman’s Tale”?

(a) Volpone

(b) The Alchemist

(d) The Poetaster

Question’s Answer: The Alchemist

In Dryden’s An Essay of Dramatic Poesy there are four speakers representing four different ideologies. Which of them expresses Dryden’s own views?

(a) Neander

(b) Eugenius

(d) None of A, B, and C

Question’s Answer: Neander

Which play of Ben Jonson constituted an important contribution to the art of comedy in England?

(a) Every Man in His Humour

(b) The Alchemist

(d) None of A, B, and C

Question’s Answer: Every Man in His Humour

___ appreciated the universal appeal of Shakespeare.

(a) Alexander Pope

(b) Ben Jonson

(d) Dr. Johnson

Question’s Answer: Ben Jonson

What is the contribution of Jonson to English comedy?

(a) Structure and coherence

(b) A firm plot

(d) All of A, B, and C

Question’s Answer: All of A, B, and C

Ben Jonson has talked about humours in the human body, they are

(a) Four

(b) Three

(d) Six

Question’s Answer: Four

The Latin meaning of ‘humours’ is

(a) Mood

(b) Character

(d) Liquid

Question’s Answer: Liquid

Which work of Jonson satirizes the humours of the court?

(a) Every Man in His Humour

(b) The Poctaster

(d) The Alchemist

Question’s Answer: Cynthia’s Revels

Jonson expounds his theory of ‘Comedy of Humours in the Introduction to his play

(a) Every Man in His Humou

(b) The Alchemist

(d) The Silent Woman

Question’s Answer: Every Man in His Humour

Which humours is also called ‘yellow bile”?

(a) Blood

(b) Melancholy

(d) Choler

Question’s Answer: Choler

What does Dryden say about the observance of the three classical dramatic unities?

(a) He advocates their strict observance

(b) Every dramatist should decide it for himself

(d) He is silent regarding this issue

Question’s Answer: He does not advocate their strict observance

Dryden’s An Essay of Dramatic Poesy is a work of

(a) Interpretative criticism

(b) Textual criticism

(d) Legislative criticism

Question’s Answer: Legislative criticism

Which does not come under four principal humours in the body?

(a) Phlegm

(b) Sweat

(d) Blood

Question’s Answer: Sweat

Who called Dryden the father of English criticism?

(a) Joseph Addison

(b) Coleridge

(d) Matthew Arnold

Question’s Answer: Dr. Johnson

“They wholly mistake the nature of criticism who think, its business is I principally to find fault. Criticism as it was first instituted by Aristotle was meant a standard of judging well.” Who said this?

(a) Pope

(b) Ben Jonson

(d) Dryden

Question’s Answer: Dryden

Who has defined drama “as a just and lively image of human nature, representing its passions and humours, and the changes of fortune to which it is subject for the delight and

instruction of mankind”?

(a) John Dryden

(b) Dr. Johnson

(d) None of A, B, and C

Question’s Answer: John Dryden

Dryden with all his critical allurement of classical love was unconsciously a forerunner of

(a) Objective criticism

(b) Neo-classicism

(d) None of A, B, and C

Question’s Answer: Romantic criticism

These lines are written by _____ , “What pleases the Greeks, would not satisfy an English audience.”

(a) Sidney

(b) Pope

(d) Dryden

Question’s Answer: Dryden

One of the most eminent critics of neo-classical school refused to abide by the rules of the classical masters. Who was he?

(a) Dryden

(b) Dr. Johnson

(d) Addison

Question’s Answer: Dryden

Of the following works, which is not written by John Dryden?

(a) Essay on Criticisin

(b) Discourse on Satire

(d) Of Heroic Plays

Question’s Answer: Essay on Criticisin

“Shakespeare was the man who of all modern and perhaps ancient poets had the largest and most comprehensive Who has paid the tribute to

Shakespeare in the above line?

(a) Ben Jonson

(b) John Dryden

(d) T.S. Eliot

Question’s Answer: John Dryden

Dryden as a critic

(a) Synthesized classical and romantic qualities

(b) Fovoured classical qualities

(d) Approved of neither classical nor romantic qualities

Question’s Answer: Synthesized classical and romantic qualities

______ is the founder of descriptive criticism in English.

(a) Sidney

(b) Ben Jonson

(d) Dryden

Question’s Answer: Dryden

Dryden calls comedy “a representation of human life in inferior persons and low subjects”. In this regard, he followed

(a) Aristotle

(b) Horace

(d) 1.A. Richards

Question’s Answer: Aristotle

Which work of Pope is modelled on Horace’s Ars Poetica?

(a) Preface to the Translation of the Iliad

(b) An Essay on Criticism

(d) The Art of Sinking

Question’s Answer: Preface to the Works of Shakespeare

“Be Homer’s works your study and delight. Read them by day and meditate by night.” is the advice given to the poets by __ .

(á) Sidney

(b) Dryden

(d) Pope

Question’s Answer: Pope

Alexander Pope has an undying craving to conform to the laws of

(a) Nature

(b) Prose and reason

(d) None of A, B, and C

Question’s Answer: Nature

Pope was a great critic of the age of

(a) Prose

(b) Reason

(d) Prose and reason

Question’s Answer: Prose and reason

In whose work did Pope find ‘unequalled fire and rapture”?

(a) Homer

(b) Virgil

(d) Dr. Johnson

Question’s Answer: Homer

Which poet has observed “Men not afraid of God, afraid of me”?

(a) Dr. Johnson

(b) Dryden

(d) Pope

Question’s Answer: Pope

Which poet was called in fondness the little Nightingale”?

(a) Dryden

(b) Burns

(d) Pope

Question’s Answer: Pope

Which poet was from his birth constitution tender and delicate? of

(a) Milton

(b) Pope

(d) Collins

Question’s Answer: Pope

Pope’s Essay on Criticism is divided into how many parts?

(a) 5 parts

(b) 2 parts

(d) 3 parts

Question’s Answer: 3 parts

Which critics preferred Shakespeare’s comedies to his tragedies?

(a) Dr.Johnson

(b) Pope

(d) Addison

Question’s Answer: Dr. Johnson

Dr. Johnson gave a new interpretation to the term of

(a) Imitation

(b) Fancy

(d) Photographic reproduction

Question’s Answer: Imitation

Which is not written by Dr. Johnson?

(a) Lives of the Poets

(b) Essay on Criticism

(d) Preface to the Plays of Shakespeare

Question’s Answer: Essay on Criticism

Regarding the observance of the three classical unities in a play Dr. Johnson observes that

(a) Only the unity of action should be observed

(b) Only the unity of place should be observed

(d) All the three unities should be observed

Question’s Answer: Only the unity of action should be observed

Dr. Johnson meticulously looked for the correctness of

(a) Form

(b) Ideas

(d) None of A, B, and C

Question’s Answer: Form

According to ____, “essay is a loose sally of mind, an irregular undigested piece,not a regular and orderly performance?”

(a) Ben Jonson

(b) Dryden

(d) Dr. Johnson

Question’s Answer: Dr. Johnson

Who is without doubt a neo-classical critic but it does not mean a ‘blind surrender’ to authority of ancient or modern, rather he is for liberty?

(a) Dryden

(b) Pope

(d) Dr Johnson

Question’s Answer: Dr Johnson

Who is the author of the Dictionary of English Language the first ambitious attempt at an English lexicon?

(a) John Dryden

(b) James Boswell

(d) Dr. Johnson

Question’s Answer: Dr. Johnson

The end of writing is to instruct, the end of poetry is to instruct by pleasing Who has said this?

(a) Wordsworth

(b) Dr.Johnson

(d) Arnold

Question’s Answer: Dr.Johnson

Johnson’s Literary Club, which had Burke, Gibbon, Goldsmith and indeed all the great literary men and politicians of the time as members, was formed in the year

(a) 1764

(b) 1762

(d) 1761

Question’s Answer: 1764

Dr. Johnson observes that “Poetry is an imitation of particular, with which it deals, but, through it, the universal”. This definition of poetry occurs in

(a) Preface to Shakespeare

(b) Lives of the Poets

(d) None of A, B, and C

Question’s Answer: Preface to Shakespeare

Which of the unities Dr. Johnson found justified by reason?

(a) Unity of time

(b) Unity of action

(d) All of A, B, and C

Question’s Answer: Unity of action

____ is the author of the famous biography Life of Johnson.

(a) Addison

(b) Gibbon

(d) Boswell

Question’s Answer: Boswell

From which king Dr. Johnson received annual pension of three hundred pounds?

(a) George I

(b) George II

(d) None of A, B, and C

Question’s Answer: George III

Johnson started the publication of two journals. They are

(a) “The Rambler and The Idler”

(b) “The Tatler and The Rambler”

(d) “The Idler” and “The Tatler”

Question’s Answer: “The Rambler and The Idler”

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