English Literature Important Multiple Choice Questions Answers

Christian writers like the Beowulf poet looked back on their pagan ancestors with which of the following?

(A) admiration and elegiac sympathy

(B) bewilderment and visceral loathing

(D) bigotry and shallow triumphalism

Question’s Answer: admiration and elegiac sympathy

The use of “whale-road” for sea and “life-house” for body are examples of what literary technique, popular in Old English poetry?

(A) symbolism

(B) metonymy

(D) keening

Question’s Answer: keening

Who would be called the English Homer and father of English poetry?

(A) Geoffrey Chaucer

(B) Sir Thomas Malory

(D) Caedmon

Question’s Answer: Geoffrey Chaucer

What was vellum?

(A) unrhymed iambie pentameter

(B) the service owed to a lord by his peasants (“villeins”)

(D) a prized ink used in the illumination of prestigious manuscripts

Question’s Answer: parchment made of animal skin

Only a small proportion of medieval books survive, large numbers having been destroyed in:

(A) the Dissolution of the Monasteries in the 1530s

(B) the Peasant Uprising of 1381

(D) the wave of contempt for manuscripts that followed the beginning of printing in 1476

Question’s Answer: the Dissolution of the Monasteries in the 1530s

What is the first extended written specimen of Old English?

(A) Boethius’s Consolidation of Philosophy

(B) Saint Jerome’s translation of the Bible

(D) Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People

Question’s Answer: a code of laws promulgated by King Ethelbert

In Anglo-Saxon heroic poetry, what is the fate of those who fail to observe the sacred of blood vengeance?

(A) banishment to Asia

(B) conversion to Christianity

(D) being buried alive

Question’s Answer: everlasting shame

Which statements is not an accurate description of Old English poetry?

(A) Irony is a mode of perception, as much as it was a figure of speech.

(B) Its formal and dignified use of was distant from everyday use of language

(D) Its idiom remained remarkably uniform for nearly three centuries.

Question’s Answer: Romantic love is a guiding principle of moral conduct.

Whose descriptive painting of social surroundings, is strong and vivid, rich in detail, of a less intense quality than that of Dickens and more faithful to average truth?

(a) Thomas Hardy

(b) William Makepeace Thackeray (British novelist)

(d) Eliot (English novelist)

Question’s Answer: William Makepeace Thackeray (British novelist)

Which novelist was well-acquainted with the psychology of the Utilitarianism and had readily accepted the “Doctrine of Evolution”?

(a) Virginia Woolf

(b) Thomas Hardy

(d) Charles Dickens

(e) None of these

Question’s Answer: Eliot (English novelist)

Who has the most famous tragic- comedies to his credit?

(a) William Shakespeare

(b) Alexander Pope (English poet)

(d) Jonathan Dr Jonathan Swift

(e) None of these

Question’s Answer: William Shakespeare

About whom it is said that his “work is among those in which the men and women of our time have found their own restlessness most accurately mirrored”?

(a) Charles Dickens

(b) Thomas Hardy

(d) Leigh Hunt

(e) None of these

Question’s Answer: David Herbert Lawrence

Who had placed the deeper vitality of the William Shakespearean plays in the creation of characters

(a) Dr. Johnson

(b) A.C. Bradley

(d) None of these

Question’s Answer: Dryden

Through which character of Paradise Lost, Milton personified his pride & temperament?

(a) Satan

(b) Adam

(d) None of these

Question’s Answer: Satan

Which hero made his earliest appearance in Celtic literature before becoming a staple subject in French, English, and German lit- eratures?

(A) Beowulf

(B) Caedmon

(D) Augustine of Canterbury

Question’s Answer: Arthur

Toward the close of which century did English replace French as the language of conducting business in Parliament and in court of law?

(A) tenth

(B) fourteenth

(D) twelfth

Question’s Answer: twelfth

Popular English adaptations of romances appealed primarily to

(A) the royal family and upper orders of the nobility

(B) agricultural laborers

(D) the clergy

Question’s Answer: the lower orders of the nobility

Which royal dynasty was established in the resolution of the so-called War of the Roses and continued through the reign of Elizabeth I ?

(A) Windsor

(B) Tudor

(D) Lancaster

Question’s Answer: Tudor

From Which Italian texts might Tudor courtiers have learned the art of intrigue and the keys to gaining and keep- ing power?

(A) Dante’s “Divine Comedy”

(B) Machiavelli’s “The Prince”

(D) Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso”

Question’s Answer: Machiavelli’s “The Prince”

Who written II Cortigiano (The Courtier), a book that was highly influential in the En- glish court, providing subtle guidance on self-display?

(A) Machiavelli

(B) Pirandello

(D) Castiglione

Question’s Answer: Castiglione

Ancrene Riwl. is a manual of instruction for

(A) translators of French romances

(B) witch-hunters and exorcists

(D) women who have chosen to live as religious recluses

Question’s Answer: women who have chosen to live as religious recluses

The styles of The Owl and the Nightingale and Ancrene Riwle show what about the poetry and prose written around the year 1200?

(A) They were written for sophisticated a d and well-educated readers.

(B) Writing continued to benefit only readers fluent in Latin and French.

(D) Their readers’ primary language was English.

Question’s Answer: a and c only

In addition to Geoffrey Chaucer and William Langland, the “flowering” of Middle English literature is evident in the works of

Which writers?

(A) Geoffrey of Monmouth

(B) Chrétien de Troyes

(D) the Gawain poet

Question’s Answer: the Gawain poet

Which influential medieval text purported to reveal the secrets of the afterlife?

(A) Chaucer’s Legend of Good Women

(B) Boccaccio’s Decameron

(D) Dante’s Divine Comedy

Question’s Answer: Dante’s Divine Comedy

Who wrote the book Piers Plowman?

(A) William Langland

(B) Margery Kempe

(D) Geoffrey of Monmouth

Question’s Answer: William Langland

Which literary form, developed in the fif- teenth century, personified vices and vir- tues?

(A) the morality play

(B) the heroic epic

(D) the romance

Question’s Answer: the morality play

Which statements about Julian of Norwich is correct?

(A) She sought unsuccessfully to restore classical paganism

(B) She is the first known woman writer in the English vernacular

(D) She made pilgrimages to Jerusalem, Rome, and Santiago

Question’s Answer: She is the first known woman writer in the English vernacular

Which authors is known as a devotee to chivalry, as it is personi- fied in Sir Lancelot?

(A) Julian of Norwich

(B) Sir Thomas Malory

(D) Margery Kempe

Question’s Answer: Sir Thomas Malory

Who introduced the art of printing into En- gland?

(A) Elizabeth Eisenstein

(B) Johannes Gutenberg

(D) Henry VIII

Question’s Answer: William Caxton

What is the climax of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s The History of the Kings of Britain?

(A) King John’s seal of the Magna Carta

(B) the coronation of Henry II

(D) the marriage of Henry II to Eleanor of Aquitaine

Question’s Answer: the reign of King Arthur

Which sixteenth-century works of English literature was translated into the English language after its first pub- lication in Latin?

(A) Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus

(B) William William Shakespeare’s King Lear

(D) Thomas More’s The History of King Richard III

Question’s Answer: Thomas More’s Utopia

To what does the phrase “the stigma of print” refer?

(A) lead poisoning contracted from handling printer’s ink

(B) the perception among court poets that printed verses were less exclusive

(D) all of the above

Question’s Answer: the perception among court poets that printed verses were less exclusive

Which sixteenth-century poets was not a courtier?

(A) Thomas Wyatt

(B) Philip Sidney

(D) all of the above

Question’s Answer: George Puttenham

Which statements is not an accurate reflection of education during the English Renaissance?

(A) It was aimed primarily at sons of the nobility and gentry.

(B) It was ordered according to the medieval trivium and quadrivium.

(D) Its curriculum emphasized ancient Greek, the language of diplomacy, professions, and higher learning.

Question’s Answer: Its curriculum emphasized ancient Greek, the language of diplomacy, professions, and higher learning.

What impulse probably accounts for the rise of distinguished translations of works, such as Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, into English

during the sixteenth century?

(A) human reverence for the classics

(B) the belief that the English were direct descendants of the ancient Greeks

(D) a and c only

Question’s Answer: a and c only

What was the only acknowledged religion in England during the early sixteenth century?

(A) Atheism

(B) Catholicism

(D) Judaism

Question’s Answer: Catholicism

Who began to ignite the embers of dissent against the Catholic church in November 1517 in a movement that came to be known as the Reformation?

(A) Anne Boleyn

(B) Ulrich Zwingli

(D) John Calvin

Question’s Answer: Martin Luther

In the Defense of Poesy, what did Sidney at- tribute to poetry?

(A) amagical power whereby poetry plays tricks on the reader

(B) a divine power whereby poetry transmits a message from God to the reader

(D) a moral power whereby poetry encourages the reader to emulate virtuous models

Question’s Answer: a moral power whereby poetry encourages the reader to emulate virtuous models

The churchyard of St. Paul’s Cathedral was well-known for its:

(A) ruinous condition

(B) bookshops

(D) graffiti

Question’s Answer: bookshops

Who owned the rights to a theatrical script?

(A) the playwright(s)

(B) the acting company

(D) the patron of the acting company, e.g the Lord Chamberlain

Question’s Answer: the acting company

Short plays called_____-staged dialogues on religious, moral, and political themes-were performed by playing compa- nies before the construction of public the- aters.

(A) spectacles

(B) interludes

(D) vaudeville

Question’s Answer: interludes

To what subgenre did the Senecan influence give rise, as evidenced in the first English tragedy Gorboduc, or Ferrex and Porrex?

(A) villain tragedy

(B) revenge tragedy

(D) poetic tragedy

Question’s Answer: revenge tragedy

What is blank verse?

(A) iambic pentameter in rhyming couplets

(B) free verse, without rhyme or regular meter

(D) alliterative iambic tetrameter

Question’s Answer: unrhymed iambic pentameter

Which is correct about public theaters in Elizabethan England?

(A) They relied on admission charges, an innovation of the period.

(B) They were located outside the city limits of London

(D) all of the above

Question’s Answer: all of the above

Which was not an objection raised against the public theaters in the Elizabethan pe- riod?

(A) They caused excessive noise and traf- fic.

(B) They drew young people away from work.

(D) They charged too much.

Question’s Answer: They charged too much.

Which writer was not active under both Elizabeth I and James 1?

(A) William William Shakespeare

(B) John Milton

(D) John Donne

Question’s Answer: John Milton

What literary work best captures a sense of the political turmoil, particularly regarding the issue of religion, just after the Restora- tion?

(A) Gay’s Beggar’s Opera

(B) Dryden’s Absalom and Achitophe

(D) Butler’s Hudibras

Question’s Answer: Dryden’s Absalom and Achitophel

In the late seventeenth century, a “battle of the books” erupted between which two groups?

(A) round-earthers and flat-earthers

(B) champions of ancient and modern learning

(D) Oxfordians and Baconians

Question’s Answer: champions of ancient and modern learning

Which was not one of the four bodily humours?

(A) cholesterol

(B) blood

(D) phlegm

Question’s Answer: cholesterol

Which poet was a member of the powerful and culturally influential Sidney family?

(A) Mary Wroth

(B) Samuel Daniel

(D) George Herbert

Question’s Answer: Mary Wroth

What was the licensing system?

(A) Poets were required to have a univer- sity diploma (the original “poetic li cense”).

(B) All books had to be submitted for offi- cial approval before publication.

(D) All books had to be dedicated to a noble or royal patron.

Question’s Answer: All books had to be submitted for offi- cial approval before publication.

Which was not among the genres promoted by poets such as Jonson, Donne, and Herbert?

(A) the country-house poem

(B) the classical satire

(D) the epigram

Question’s Answer: the Petrarchan sonnet

Which plays was no! written by William Shakespeare in the Jacobean period?

(A) Othello

(B) Antony and Cleopatra

(D) Volpone

Question’s Answer: Volpone

Which poem testifies to the profound doubts and uncertainties attending Donne’s conversion from Catholicism to Protestantism?

(A) “Satire 3”

(B) “Air and Angels”

(D) “You Don’t Change Horses in the Middle of the Stream”

Question’s Answer: “Satire 3”

What major new prose genre emerged in the Jacobean era?

(A) the novel

(B) the sermon

(D) the familiar essay

Question’s Answer: the familiar essay

Which female authors of the Jacobean era wrote a work that became the “first” of its kind to be published by an English woman?

(A) Rachel Speght

(B) Elizabeth Cary, Lady Falkland

(D) all of the above

Question’s Answer: all of the above

Which group of radicals got their name from their penchant for prophecy?

(A) the 5th period Monarchists

(B) the Ranters

(D) the Roarers

Question’s Answer: the Ranters

What was one of the first acts of Parliament after the outbreak of hostilities in the First Civil War?

(A) the consolidation of power in an abso- lute monarch

(B) the conversion of the English church to Catholicism

(D) the abolishment of public plays and sports

Question’s Answer: the abolishment of public plays and sports

Which themes or subjects was not common in the works of Cavalier poets, such as Thomas Carew, Sir John Denham, Edmund Walter, Sir John Suck- ling, James Shirely, Richard Lovelace, and Robert Herrick?

(A) courtly ideals of the good life

(B) pious devotion to religious virtues

(D) carpe diem

Question’s Answer: pious devotion to religious virtues

What was the general subject of the Welsh poet Katherine Philips’s work?

(A) celebrations of the transience of all life and beauty

(B) celebrations of lesbian sexuality in terms that did not imply a male readership

(D) celebrations of female friendship in Platonic terms normally reserved for male friendships

Question’s Answer: celebrations of female friendship in Platonic terms normally reserved for male friendships

What was the title of Thomas Hobbes’s defense of absolute sovereignty based on a theory of social contract?

(A) The Litany in a Time of Plague

(B) The Obedience of a Christian Man

(D) Leviathan

Question’s Answer: Leviathan

What is the delicate balancing act of Marvell’s “Horatian Ode”?

(A) praising feminine virtue whilst mocking the fixation on chastity

(B) celebrating the Restoration whilst re- gretting the frivolity of the new regime

(D) satirizing John Milton whilst appearing to praise him

Question’s Answer: celebrating Cromwell’s victories whilst inviting sympathy for the executed king

Which did Milton not ad- vocate in print in the 1640s and 1650s?

(A) the disestablishment of the church and the removal of bishops

(B) the free circulation of ideas without prior censorship

(D) the right to divorce on the grounds of incompatibility

Question’s Answer: the restoration of the monarchy

Who written the scholarly biography, Life of Donne?

(A) Katherine Philips

(B) Izaak Walton

(D) Isabella Whitney

Question’s Answer: Izaak Walton

What is the title to Milton’s blank-verse epic that assimilates and critiques the epic tra- dition?

(A) Lycidas

(B) The Beggar’s Opera

(D) Paradise Lost

Question’s Answer: Paradise Lost

Which best describes the doctrine of empiricism?

(A) The search for essential or ultimate principles of reality.

(B) Human perceptions are constructed and reflect structures of political power.

(D) God is the center of an ordered and just universe.

Question’s Answer: All knowledge is derived from experience.

Against Which principles did Jonathan Dr Jonathan Swift inveigh?

(A) theoretical science

(B) metaphysics

(D) a, b, and c

Question’s Answer: a, b, and c

Whose great Dictionary, published in 1755, included more than 114,000 quotations?

(A) Samuel Johnson

(B) Jonathan Dr Jonathan Swift

(D) James Boswell

Question’s Answer: Samuel Johnson

What drove William Cowper to break down and become a recluse?

(A) the loss of his fortune in the “South Sea Bubble”

(B) the conviction that he was damned forever

(D) his skewering in Pope’s Dunciad

Question’s Answer: the conviction that he was damned forever

According to Samuel Johnson, “No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for….

(A) love

(B) honor

(D) money

Question’s Answer: money

Which women exposed themselves to scandal by writing racy stories for the popular press?

(A) Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Mary Wroth, and Elizabeth Cary

(B) Rachel Speght, Katherine Philips, and Frances Burney

(D) Aphra Behn, Delarivier Manley, and Eliza Haywood

Question’s Answer: Aphra Behn, Delarivier Manley, and Eliza Haywood

What name is given to the English literary period that emulated the Rome of Virgil,Horace, and Ovid?

(A) Neo-Romantic

(B) Metaphysical

(D) Augusta

Question’s Answer: Augusta

With its forbidden themes of incest, murder,necrophilia, atheism, and torments of sexual

desire, Horace Walpole’s Castle of Otranto,created which literary genre?

(A) the revenge tragedy

(B) the comedy of manners

(D) the Gothic romance

Question’s Answer: the Gothic romance

Which is not indebted to the Gothic genre?

(A) William Beckford’s Vathek

(B) Scottish poet “Tobias Smollett”’s Roderick Randsom

(D) Ann Radcliffe’s The Italian

Question’s Answer: Scottish poet “Tobias Smollett”’s Roderick Randsom

Horace’s doctrine “ut pictura poesis” was interpreted to mean:

(A) A picture is worth a thousand words.

(B) Poetry ought to be a visual as well as a verbal art.

(D) Poetry is the supreme artistic form.

Question’s Answer: Poetry ought to be a visual as well as a verbal art

What was most frequently known as a source of pleasure and an object of inquiry by Augustan poets?

(A) civilization

(B) nature

(D) woman

Question’s Answer: nature

What word did writers in this period use to express quickness of mind, inventiveness, a knack for conceiving images and meta phors and for perceiving resemblances be tween things apparently unlike?

(A) sprezzatura

(B) wit

(D) gusto

Question’s Answer: wit

Which was probably not a stock phrase in eighteenth-century poetry?

(A) checkered shade

(B) bounding main

(D) simian rivalry

Question’s Answer: simian rivalry

Which metrical form was Pope said to have brought to perfection?

(A) the ode

(B) blank verse

(D) the sponder

Question’s Answer: the heroic couplet

Which poet, critic and translator brought England a modern literature between 1660 and 17007

(A) Addison

(B) Crabbe

(D) Dryden

Question’s Answer: Dryden

Which is not an example of Restoration comedy?

(A) Etherege’s The Man of Mode

(B) Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus

(D) Wycherley’s The Country Wife

Question’s Answer: Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus

Which group of intellectual women estab- lished literary clubs of their own around 1750 under the leadership of Elizabeth Vesey and Elizabeth Montagu?

(A) the Behnites

(B) the coteries of plenty

(D) the tattlers and spectators

Question’s Answer: the bluestockings

Which work exposes the frivolity of fashionable London?

(A) Pope’s The Rape of the Lock

(B) Behn’s Oroonoko

(D) Dr Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels

Question’s Answer: Pope’s The Rape of the Lock

While compiling what sort of book did Richardso7n conceive of the idea for his Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded?

(A) an instructional manual for manners

(B) a history of everyday life

(D) a book of model letters

Question’s Answer: an instructional manual for manners

Who was the ancient Gaelic warrior-bard known as by Napoleon and Thomas Jefferson to have been greater than Homer?

(A) Merlin

(B) Taliesin

(D) Ossian

Question’s Answer: Decameron

Who wrote The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, a novel that abandons clock time for psychological time?

(A) Laurence Steme

(B) English novelist “Henry Fielding”

(D) Scottish poet “Tobias Smollett”

Question’s Answer: Laurence Steme

What served as the inspiration for Percy Bysshe Shelley’s poems to the working classes A Song: “Men of England” and En- gland in 1819?

(A) the organization of a working class men’s choral group in Southern En- gland

(B) the Battle of Waterloo

(D) the Peterloo Massacre

Question’s Answer: the Peterloo Massacre

Who applied the term “Romantic” to the lit- erary period dating from 1785 to 1830?

(A) Wordsworth because he wanted to distinguish his poetry and the poetry of his friends from that of the ancien régime, especially satire

(B) English historians half a century after the period ended

(D) Oliver Goldsmith in The Deserted Village (1770)

Question’s Answer: English historians half a century after the period ended

Which poets collaborated on the Lyrical Bal- lads of 1798?

(A) William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Samuel Taylor Coleridge

(B) Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley and Percy Bysshe Shelley

(D) Dorothy Wordsworth and Sally Ashburner

Question’s Answer: William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Looking to the ancient past, many Roman- tic poets identified with the figure of the

(A) bard

(B) skald

(D) troubadour

Question’s Answer: bard

Which chilling novel of surveillance and en- trapment had the alternative title Things as They Are?

(A) Jane Austen’s Emma

(B) Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein

(D) William Godwin’s Caleb Williams

Question’s Answer: William Godwin’s Caleb Williams

Thomas and Henrietta Bowdler’s edition of The Family William Shakespeare gave rise to the verb “bowdlerize.” What does it mean?

(A) the misspelling of simple words like “the” and “and”

(B) the modernization of archaic vocabulary

(D) the expurgation of indelicate language

Question’s Answer: the expurgation of indelicate language

What did Byron deride with his scathing reference to “Peddlers,’ and ‘Boats, and “Wagons’!”?

(A) Wordsworth’s devotion to the ordinary and everyday

(B) the clumsiness of William Shakespeare’s plots

(D) the neo-classical influence of Pope and Dryden

Question’s Answer: Wordsworth’s devotion to the ordinary and everyday

Wordsworth described all good poetry as:

(A) the expression of moral intuition

(B) the polite patter of a corrupted age

(D) the divine gift of grace

Question’s Answer: the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings

Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto initi- ated which literary tradition?

(A) epistolary novel

(B) Gothic fiction

(D) medieval romance

Question’s Answer: Gothic fiction

Which was a typically Ro mantic means of achieving visionary states?

(A) opium

(B) dreams

(D) a, b and c

Question’s Answer: a, b and c

Which texts published in the 1790s did not epitomize the radical so- cial thinking stimulated by the French Revo- lution?

(A) Wollstonecraft’s Vindication of the Rights of Men

(B) Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France

(D) none of the above

Question’s Answer: Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France

Which philosopher had a particular influence on Samuel Taylor Coleridge?

(A) Immanuel Kant

(B) David Hume.

(D) Bertrand Russell

Question’s Answer: Immanuel Kant

Which was not known as a type of the alienated, romantic visionary?

(A) Prometheus

(B) George III

(D) Cain

Question’s Answer: George III

Which factors did not con- tribute to the growth of the reading public in 19th century?

(A) Innovations in retailing, such as the cut-price sale of remaindered books

(B) Technological developments, such as the steam-driven printing press

(D) Increased literacy, thanks in large part to Sunday schools

Question’s Answer: The notoriety of the “Lake School”

Which periodical publica- tions (reviews and magazines) first ap- peared in the Romantic era?

(A) London Magazine

(B) The Spectator

(D) a and c only

Question’s Answer: a and c only

According to a theater licensing act, repealed in 1843, what was meant by “legitimate” drama?

(A) All of the actors were male.

(B) All of the actors were British.

(D) The play had to be a full musical or produced in full pantomime.

Question’s Answer: The play was spoken.

Which plays was actually performed on stage?

(A) Byron s Manfred

(B) Shelley’s Prometheus Unbound

(D) all of the above

Question’s Answer: Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Remorse

Which charges were commonly levelled at the novel by its detractors at the dawn of the Romantic era?

(A) Too many of its readers were women.

(B) It required less skill than other genres.

(D) all of the above

Question’s Answer: all of the above

Which two writers can be described as writing historical novels?

(A) Sir Walter Scott and Maria Edgeworth

(B) William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Samuel Taylor Coleridge

(D) Jane Austen and Charlotte Brontë

Question’s Answer: Sir Walter Scott and Maria Edgeworth

Which is a typically Ro- mantic poetic form?

(A) the fractal

(B) the figment

(D) the fragment

Question’s Answer: the fragment

Who exemplified the role of the “peasant poet”?

(A) John Clare

(B) John Keats (English poet of the second generation of Romantic poets)

(D) a and c only

Question’s Answer: a and c only

Who in the Romantic period developed a new novelistic language for the workings of the mind in flux?

(A) Maria Edgeworth

(B) Jane Austen

(D) Sir Walter Scott

Question’s Answer: Jane Austen

What did Thomas Carlyle mean by “Close thy Byron; open thy Goethe”?

(A) Abandon the introspection of the Ro- mantics and turn to the higher moral purpose found in Goethe.

(B) Even a foreign author is better than a homegrown scoundrel.

(D) In a carefully veiled critique of the mon- archy, Byron and Goethe stand in sym- bolically for Queen Victoria and Charles Darwin respectively.

Question’s Answer: Abandon the introspection of the Ro- mantics and turn to the higher moral purpose found in Goethe

Elizabeth Barrett’s poem The Cry of the Chil dren is concerned with which major issue attendant on the Time of Troubles during the 1830s and 1840s?

(A) chartism

(B) child labor

(D) insurrection in the colonies

Question’s Answer: child labor

Who were the “Two Nations” referred to in the subtitle of Disraeli’s Sybil (1845)?

(A) the industrial north and the agrarian south

(B) Anglicans and Methodists

(D) the rich and the poor

Question’s Answer: the rich and the poor

Which novelists best repre- sents the mid-Victorian period’s content- ment with the burgeoning economic prosperity and decreased restiveness over social and political change?

(A) Charles Dickens

(B) Anthony Trollope

(D) Friedrich Engels

Question’s Answer: Anthony Trollope

What does phrase “White Man’s Bur- den,” coined by Kipling, refer to?

(A) the moral responsibility to bring civilization and Christianity to the peoples of the world

(B) Britain’s manifest destiny to colonize the world

(D) the importance of solving economic and social problems in England before tackling the world’s problems

Question’s Answer: Britain’s manifest destiny to colonize the world

What was the relationship between Victo- rian poets and the Romantics?

(A) The Victorians were disgusted by the immorality and narcissism of the Ro- mantics.

(B) The Romantics were seen as gifted but crude artists belonging to a distant, semi-barbarous age.

(D) The Victorians were aware of no dis- tinction between themselves and the Romantics; the distinction

was only created by critics in the twentieth century.

Question’s Answer: The Victorians were strongly influenced by the Romantics and experi- enced a sense of belatedness.

Experimentation in Which areas of poetic expression characterize Victorian poetry

and allow Victorian poets to represent psychology in a different way?

(A) the use of pictorial description to con- struct visual images to represent the emotion or situation of the poem

(B) perspective, as in the dramatic monologue

(D) none of the above: Victorians were not experimental in their poetry.

Question’s Answer: all of the above

What type of writing did Walter Pater de- fine as “the special and opportune art of the modern world”?

(A) the novel

(B) nonfiction prose

(D) comic drama

Question’s Answer: nonfiction prose

Which best defines Utili- tarianism?

(A) a farming technique aimed at maximiz- ing productivity with the fewest tools

(B) a philosophy dictating that we should only keep what we use on a daily basis.

(D) a moral arithmetic, which states that all humans aim to maximize the greatest pleasure to the greatest number

Question’s Answer: a moral arithmetic, which states that all humans aim to maximize the greatest pleasure to the greatest number

Which terms is defined as the application of a scientific attitude of

mind toward studying the Bible, seen as a mere text of history and not an infallibly sacred document?

(A) Critical Inquiry

(B) Higher Criticism

(D) New Historicism:

Question’s Answer: Higher Criticism

Which authors promoted versions of socialism?

(A) William Morris

(B) John Ruskin

(D) all but C

Question’s Answer: all but C

Which best describes the general feeling expressed in literature during the last decade of the Victorian era?

(A) raucous celebration mixed with self-congratulatory sophistication

(B) stupass away melancholy and aestheticism

(D) all of the above

Question’s Answer: stupass away melancholy and aestheticism

Which contemporary discussions on women’s rights did Tennyson’s The Princess address?

(A) the debate on women’s suffrage

(B) the need to enlarge and improve educa- tional opportunities for women, resulting in the establishment of the first women’s college in London

(C)the question of monarchical succession and if a woman should hold royal power

(D) the establishment of a civil divorce court

Question’s Answer: the need to enlarge and improve educa- tional opportunities for women,=resulting in the establishment of the first women’s college in London

What did Victorian journalists mean by terrn- ing certain women “surplus” or “redun- dant”?

(A) They remained unhappily married due to a population imbalance between the sexes

(B) Their willingness to work for low wages resulted in a surplus of textiles, causing them to drop in price.

(D) They prostituted themselves as a way to make money in a market economy

Question’s Answer: that didn’t provide extensive job oppor tunities to women.They remained unhappily married due to a population imbalance between the sexes

Which Victorian writers regularly published their work in periodi- cals?

(A) Thomas Carlyle

(B) Charles Dickens

(D) all of the above: In addition to short fiction,

most Victorian novels appeared se- rialized in periodicals.

Question’s Answer: all of the above: In addition to short fiction,

most Victorian novels appeared se- rialized in periodicals.

What best describes the subject of most Vic- torian novels?

(A) the representation of a large and com- prehensive social world in realistic de- tail

(B) a surrealist exploration of alternate states of consciousness

(D) a and c

Question’s Answer: a and c

Why did the novel seem a genre particularly well-suited to women?

(A) it did not carry the burden of an august tradition like poetry.

(B) It was seen as a frivolous form where one shouldn’t make serious statements about society.

(D) all but c

Question’s Answer: all but c

For what do Matthew Amold’s moral invest- ment in nonfiction and Walter Pater’s aes- thetic investment together pave the way?

(A) a renewed secularism in the twentieth century

(B) modern literary criticism

(D) none of the above: Victorian prose was mostly forgotten until recently and had little impact on literature of or after its time.

Question’s Answer: modern literary criticism

Which comic playwrights made fun of Victorian values and preten- sions?

(A) W.S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan

(B) George Bernard Shaw

(D) all but c

Question’s Answer: all but c

Which phrases best char- acterizes the late-nineteenth century aes- thetic movement which widened the breach between artists and the reading public, sow- ing the seeds of modernism?

(A) art for art’s sake

(B) art for the masses

(D) art for sale

Question’s Answer: art for art’s sake

What was the impact on literature of the Education Act of 1870, which made elemen- tary schooling compulsory?

(A) the emergence of a mass literate popu- lation at whom a new mass-produced literature could be directed

(B) a new market for basic textbooks which paid better than sophisticated novels or plays

(D) none of the above

Question’s Answer: the emergence of a mass literate popu- lation at whom a new mass-produced literature could be directed

Which text exemplifies the anti-Victorianism prevalent in the early twentieth century?

(A) Eminent Victorians

(B) Philistine Victorians

(D) both a and c

Question’s Answer: both a and c

With which enormously influential perspec- tive or practice is the early-twentieth-cen- tury thinker Sigmund Freud associated?

(A) psychoanalysis

(B) eugenics

(D) all of the above

Question’s Answer: psychoanalysis

Who wrote the dystopian novel Nineteen-Eighty-Four in which Newspeak demonstrates the heightened linguistic self consciousness of modernist writers?

(A) Virginia Woolf

(B) George Orwell

(D) Orson Wells

Question’s Answer: George Orwell

Which novels display post- war nostalgia for past imperial glory?

(A) Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea

(B) Paul Scott’s Staying On

(D) b and c

Question’s Answer: Paul Scott’s Staying On

Which thinker had a major impact on early- twentieth-century writers, leading them to reimagine human identity in radically new ways?

(A) Sigmund Freud

(B) Sir James Frazer

(D) all but C

Question’s Answer: all but C

What characteristics of seventeenth-century Metaphysical poetry sparked the enthusi- asm of modernist poets and critics?

(A) its intellectual complexity

(B) its union of thought and passion

(D) a and b

Question’s Answer: a and b

In the 1930s, younger writers such as W. H. Auden were more______but less_____than older modernists such as Eliot and Pound.

(A) radical; inventive

(B) brash; confident

(D) anxious; haunting

Question’s Answer: radical; inventive

Which poet could be described as part of “The Movement” of the 1950s?

(A) Thom Gunn

(B) Dylan Thomas

(D) both A and C

Question’s Answer: both A and C

Which writers did not come from Ireland?

(A) W. B. Yeats

(B) Seamus Heaney

(D) none of the above; all came from Ireland

Question’s Answer: none of the above; all came from Ireland

Which phrase indicates the interior flow of thought employed in high-modern literature?

(A) automatic writing

(B) stream of consciousness

(D) confused daze

Question’s Answer: stream of consciousness

Which is not linked with high modernism in the novel?

(A) narrative realism

(B) free indirect style

(D) stream of consciousness

Question’s Answer: narrative realism

Which novel did T. S. Eliot praise for utiliz- ing a new “mythical method” in place of the old

“narrative method” and demonstrates the use of ancient mythology in modernist fiction to think about

“making the modern world possible for art”?

(A) James Ulysses,a Novel by James Joyce

(B) Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness

(D) Virginia Woolf’s The Waves

Question’s Answer: James Ulysses,a Novel by James Joyce

Which would be consid- ered post-colonial novelists, defined as com- ing historically after the era of England’s large-scale imperialism?

(A) Rabindranath Tagore

(B) Joseph Conrad

(D) a and c

Question’s Answer: Salman Rushdie

When was the ban finally lifted on David Herbert Lawrence’s novel Lady Chatterley’s Lover,written in 1928.

(A) 1960

(B) 1945

(D) The ban has not yet been formally lifted.

Question’s Answer: 1960

Which was originally the Irish Literary Theatre?

(A) the Irish National Theatre

(B) the Independent Theatre

(D) both a and c

Question’s Answer: both a and c

What did T. S. Eliot attempt to combine, though not very successfully, in his plays Murder in the Cathedral and The Cocktail Party?

(A) lanibic pentameter and sexual innuendo

(B) religious symbolism and society comedy

(D) all of the above

Question’s Answer: religious symbolism and society comedy

How did one critic sum up Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot?

(A) “kitchen sink drama”

(B) “political correctness gone mad

(D) “better than Cats”

Question’s Answer: happens-twice

Who wrote the introductory Sonnet to Spencer’s Fairy Queen?

(A) Sir Walter Raleigh

(B) Leicester

(D) Spencer himself

Question’s Answer: Sir Walter Raleigh

He was a musician in the court of Henry VIII. His aim was to amuse and not moralise. His interludes were hilarious and they paved the way for comedy. Name the writer and his work.

(A) Bishop Bale-King John

(B) Skeleton-Magnificence

(D) Lindsay-Satire of the Three Estates

Question’s Answer: John Heywood-The Four Ps

Name the dramatist of Campuses, Edition, Love’s Metamorphoses.

(A) Thomas Nash

(B) Robert Greene

(D) John Lyly

Question’s Answer: John Lyly

In what decade did the “angry young men come to prominence on the theatrical scene?

(A) 1910s

(B) 1930s

(D) 1950s

Question’s Answer: 1950s

What event allowed mainstream theater companies to commission and perform work that was politically, socially, and sexu- ally controversial without fear of censor- ship?

(A) the abolition of the Lord Chamberlain’s office in 1968

(B) the illegal performance of work by Howard Brenton and Edward Bond

(D) the foundation of the Field Day Theater Company in 1980

Question’s Answer: the abolition of the Lord Chamberlain’s office in 1968

Which events in and after the 1960s con- tributed significantly to the decentralization of England from London to a more regional focus, ultimately also making way for a less homogenous vision of England and the popularity of post-colonial fiction?

(A) Radio announcers were permitted to speak in regional dialects and multicultural accents.

(B) The Arts Council designated many of its resources to supporting regional arts councils.

(D) all of the above

Question’s Answer: all of the above

What did Henry James describe as “loose baggy monsters”?

(A) the English

(B) plays

(D) publishers

Question’s Answer: novels

Into how many periods can we divide Chaucer’s works?

(A) Two-French and English

(B) Three French, English and Italian

(D) Four-French, English, Italian and Latin

Question’s Answer: Four-French, English, Italian and Latin

Who in William Shakespeare’s Hamlet mumbles a song from the “Book of Songs and Sonnets” known as Total’s Miscellany?

(A) One of the two clowns, a grave-digger

(B) Hamlet himself

(D) Gertrude

Question’s Answer: One of the two clowns, a grave-digger

Name the castle where Spenser lived and finished the first three books of Fairy Queen.

(A) Leicester House

(B) Lord Grey’s Castle

(D) Harvey House

Question’s Answer: Kilcolman

William William Shakespeare was born on

(A) 26 April 1563

(B) 23 April 1563

(D) 3 May 1564

Question’s Answer: 23 April 1564

Identify the first English comedy written by a headmaster of Eton.

(A) Grammar Gorton’s Needle

(B) Wit and Science

(D) Ralph Roister Roister

Question’s Answer: Ralph Roister Roister

“The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, But in ourselves that we are underlings.” Who said this and in which play?

(A) Antony in Julius Caesar

(B) Cassius in Julius Caesar

(D) Antony in Antony and Cleopatra

Question’s Answer: Cassius in Julius Caesar

Whom would you assign the line “Drink to me only with thane eyes.”?

(A) John Lyly

(B) William William Shakespeare

(D) Ben Jonson

Question’s Answer: Ben Jonson

One contemporary of Jonson had a bitter and extravagant style. In his Poetaster Jonson gives him a purge which makes him vomit his learned and bombastic words. Who is this poet?

(A) George Chapman

(B) Thomas Dekker

(D) Marston

Question’s Answer: Marston

About whom these words are uttered: “Cover her face; mine eyes dazzle: She pass away young.”

(A) Duchess in The Duchess of Mali (Webster)

(B) Juliet in Romeo and Juliet (William Shakespeare)

(D) Anne in A Woman Killed with Kindness (Thomas Heywood)

Question’s Answer: Duchess in The Duchess of Mali (Webster)

Name the famous pair of writers who gained popularity by their joint ventures.

(A) Ben Jonson and George Chapman

(B) Beaumont and Fletcher

(D) George Chapman and Marston

Question’s Answer: Beaumont and Fletcher

“Farewell! Othello’s occupation’s gone”, What does this cry signify?

(A) The British Parliament closed the theatre as Puritans came to power

(B) The dramatists were taking other occu- pations

(D) People preferred poetry

Question’s Answer: The British Parliament closed the theatre as Puritans came to power

did Spenser’s Shepherd’s Calendar appear?

(A) 1596

(B) 1580

(D) 1579

Question’s Answer: 1579

in which of William Shakespeare’s plays the follow- ing lines appear: “Blow, blow, thou winter wind Thou art not so unkind As man’s ingratitude…”?

(A) All’s Well That Ends Well

(B) King Lear

(D) As You Like It

Question’s Answer: As You Like It

Which work records Spenser’s experiences of his first visit to England in 1589-90 when he was introduced by Sir Walter Raleigh to the Queen?

(A) Strophes

(B) Amoretti

(D) Colin Clout’s Come Home Again

Question’s Answer: Colin Clout’s Come Home Again

Name the play in which William Shakespeare and Fletcher collaborated.

(A) The Two Noble Kinsmen

(B) Griselda

(D) The Maid’s Tragedy

Question’s Answer: Henry VIII

How would you classify The Knight of the Burning Pestle by Beaumont and Fletcher?

(A) Comedy

(B) Farce

(D) Tragedy

Question’s Answer: Farce

This public place was made famous and immortal by William Shakespeare, Seldon, Donne, Beaumont, Fletcher and Ben Jonson. Name it.

(A) The Friday Street Club

(B) Will’s Coffee House

(D) Mermaid Tavern

Question’s Answer: Mermaid Tavern

Who wrote the book England from Noah to Elizabeth?

(A) William Warner

(B) Michael Drayton

(D) Christopher Marlowe

Question’s Answer: William Warner

Barabbas is ruined by Christians. He plans a revenge by resorting to incredible cruel- ties until he falls into a cauldron of boiling water prepared for his enemies. This is in short, the story of a play by Marlowe. Identify the play.

(A) Edward II

(B) The Massacre of Paris

(D) Dido

Question’s Answer: The Jew of Malta

How many books are contained in The Shepherd’s Calendar?

(A) 11

(B) 10

(D) 12

Question’s Answer: 12

In The Shepherd’s Calendar, England is rep- resented as a big sheep farm ruled by

(A) Queen Elizabeth

(B) Shepherded Queen Elisa

(D) Mother Nature

Question’s Answer: Shepherded Queen Elisa

Which poem of Spenser was praised by Samuel Taylor Coleridge for its “Swan-Like Movement”?

(A) Epithalamion

(B) Strophe

(D) Prothalamjon

Question’s Answer: Prothalamjon

Edmund Spenser is known as the best poet of Elizabethan age. Identify his period,

(A) 1551-1560

(B) 1557-1590

(D) 1552-1596

Question’s Answer: 1552-1599

Who wrote the romance Rosalinda which supplied the plot for William Shakespeare’s As You Like It?

(A) Lodge

(B) Greene

(D) Nash

Question’s Answer: Lodge

Edmund Spenser dedicated his Shepherd’s Calendar to his friend describing him as “the distinguished and virtuous gentleman most worthy of all titles both of learning and chivalry.” Who was this friend?

(A) Sir Philip Sidney

(B) Leicester

(D) Sir Walter Raleigh

Question’s Answer: Sir Philip Sidney

Arcadia, a pastoral romance, was the creation of its author to entertain

(A) The queen

(B) His sister, the Countess of Pembroke

(D) His friend Spenser

Question’s Answer: His sister, the Countess of Pembroke

How many plays are attributed to William Shakespeare in toot?

(A) 21

(B) 36

(D) 154

Question’s Answer: 37

Which books marks the beginning of William Shakespeare’s success?

(A) Love’s Labor Lost

(B) Venus and Adonis

(D) Sonnets

Question’s Answer: Venus and Adonis

Name the theatre in which William Shakespeare had shares.

(A) The Universe

(B) The Theatre

(D) The Rose

Question’s Answer: The Black friars

Identify the work by Ruskin which began as a defence of contemporary landscape artist especially Turner?

(A) The Stones of Venice

(B) The Two Paths

(D) The Seven Lamps of Architecture

Question’s Answer: Modem Painters

Identify the writer who first used blank verse in English poetry?

(A) Sir Thomas Wyatt

(B) William William Shakespeare

(D) Earl of Surrey

Question’s Answer: Earl of Surrey

The epigraph of The Waste Land is borrowed from?

(A) Virgil

(B) Homer

(D) Fetronius

Question’s Answer: Homer

William Shakespeare depended primarily on two sources for his legendary and historical plays. Which is the most important one?

(A) King Arthur’s legend

(B) Legends of Charlemagne

(D) Holinshed’s Chronicles

Question’s Answer: Holinshed’s Chronicles

How many sonnets has William Shakespeare written in toot?

(A) 150

(B) 130

(D) 154

Question’s Answer: 154

Name the romance which is known as by some critics as the first Elizabethan novel.

(A) Rosalinda by Lodge

(B) Jack Wilton or The Unfortunate Traveler by Nash

(D) Euphuism’s Golden Legacy by Lodge

Question’s Answer: Jack Wilton or The Unfortunate Traveler by Nash

Queen Elizabeth, it is said, desired to see Falstaff in Love. So at her behest Shakes- peare wrote a comedy entitled.

(A) Taming of the Shrew

(B) Comedy of Errors

(D) Merry Wives of Windsor

Question’s Answer: Merry Wives of Windsor

In which play does William Shakespeare introduced us to the world of fairies, with the roguish imp of folklore, Puck?

(A) Twelfth Night

(B) As You Like It

(D) A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Question’s Answer: Twelfth Night

Name the writer of the Elizabethan period who completed Marlowe’s Hero and Leander and collaborated with Jonson and Marston in Eastward Hol

(A) Thomas Dekker

(B) Thomas Heywood

(D) George Chapman

Question’s Answer: George Chapman

Which of Ben Jonson’s work is a seething satire on false poets of the age?

(A) Vulpine, The Fox

(B) Cynthia’s Revel

(D) Epicene or The Silent Woman

Question’s Answer: Poetaster

Who among the following was a friend of Edmund Spenser and offered hints for the perpetration of Spenser’s The Fairies Queen indicating a plan of 12 books in all that was never completed?

(A) Bacon

(B) Raleigh

(D) Daniel

Question’s Answer: Raleigh

Philoclea and Pamela in The Arcadia’ are the daughters of

(A) Basilisk

(B) Proclus

(D) Earaches

Question’s Answer: Basilisk

Tennyson’s poem ‘In Memoriam was written in memory of?

(A) Wellington

(B) Edward King

(D) P.B. Shelley

Question’s Answer: A.H. Hallam

Who called ‘The Waste Land’ a music of ideas’?

(A) J. C. Ransom

(B) Allen Tate

(D) F. R Leavis

Question’s Answer: Allen Tate

S. Eliot has borrowed the term ‘Unreal City’ in the first and third sections from?

(A) Baudelaire

(B) Irving Babbit

(D) Dante

Question’s Answer: Dante

Which myths does not fig- ure in The Waste Land?

(A) Oedipus

(B) Grail Legend of Fisher King

(D) Philomela

Question’s Answer: Sysyphus

Joe Gargery is Pip’s?

(A) guardian

(B) brother-in-Jaw

(D) cousin

Question’s Answer: guardian

Estella is the daughter of?

(A) Abel Magwitch

(B) Joe Gargery

(D) Bentley Drumnile

Question’s Answer: Joe Gargery

Which book of John Ruskin influenced Mahatma Gandhi?

(A) Sesame and Lilies

(B) The Seven Lamps of Architecture

(D) Unto This Laist

Question’s Answer: Unto This Laist

The following lines are an example of ……… image. “The river sweats Oil and tar’

(A) visual

(B) kinetic

(D) erotic

Question’s Answer: erotic

Which novels has the subtitle ‘A Novel Without a Hero’?

(A) Wuthering Heights

(B) Middlemarch

(D) Oliver Twist

Question’s Answer: Vanity Fair

In ‘Leda and the Swan’, who wooes Leda in guise of a swan?

(A) Mars

(B) Bacchus

(D) Hercules

Question’s Answer: Bacchus

Graham Greene’s novels are marked by?

(A) Paganism

(B) Protestantism

(D) Buddhism

Question’s Answer: Catholicism

One important feature of Jane Austen’s style is?

(A) boisterous humour

(B) stream of consciousness

(D) humour and pathos

Question’s Answer: humour and pathos

The title of the poem “The Second Coming is taken from?

(A) The German mythology

(B) The Irish mythology

(D) The Greek mythology

Question’s Answer: The Bible

The main character in Paradise Lost Book 1 and Book II is?

(A) God

(B) Adam

(D) Eve

Question’s Answer: Satan

In Sons and Lovers, Paul Morel’s mother’s name is?

(A) Susan

(B) Jane

(D) Gertrude

Question’s Answer: Gertrude

The twins in Lord of the Flies are?

(A) Ralph and Eric

(8) Simon and Eric

(D) Simon and Jack

Question’s Answer: Ralph and Jack

Mr. Jaggers, in Great Expectations, is a

(A) postman

(B) lawyer

(D) School teacher

Question’s Answer: lawyer

What does ‘I’ stand for in the following line? To Carthage then I came

(A) Buddha

(B) Augustine

(D) Tiresias

Question’s Answer: Augustine

Who invented the term ‘Sprung rhythm”?

(A) Wordsworth

(B) Tennyson

(D) Hopkins

Question’s Answer: Hopkins

Who wrote the poem ‘Defence of Lucknow’?

(A) Browning

(B) Tennyson

(D) Swinburne

Question’s Answer: Swinburne

Which plays of William Shakespeare has an epilogue?

(A) Henry IV, PtI

(B) The Tempest

(D) Twelfth Night

Question’s Answer: The Tempest

Hamlet’s famous speech “To be, or not to be; that is the question’ occurs in?

(A) Act II, Scene I

(B) Act III, Scene!

(D) Act III, Scene III

Question’s Answer: Act III, Scene!

Identify the character in The Tempest who is referred to as an honest old counselor

(A) Gonzalo

(B) Ariel

(D) Stephano

Question’s Answer: Gonzalo

What is the sub-title of the play Twelfth Night?

(A) Or, What is you Will

(B) Or, What you Think

(D) Or, What you Will

Question’s Answer: Or, What you Will

Which plays of William Shakespeare, according to T. S. Eliot, is ‘artistic failure’?

(A) The Tempest

(B) Henry IV, Ptl

(D) Twelfth Night

Question’s Answer: Hamlet

Shelley’s Adonais is an elegy on the death of?

(A) Milton

(B) Samuel Taylor Coleridge

(D) John Keats

Question’s Answer: John Keats

Which is the first novel of David Herbert Lawrence?

(A) Sons and Lovers

(B) The Trespasser

(D) Women in Love

Question’s Answer: The White Peacock

In the poem Tintern Abbey, ‘dearest friend” refers to?

(A) Nature

(B) Wye

(D) Dorothy

Question’s Answer: Dorothy

Who is Thomas Percy in Henry IV, Pt I?

(A) Earl of Douglas

(B) Earl of March

(D) Earl of Worcester

Question’s Answer: Earl of Northumberland

Paradise Lost was originally written in?

(A) ten books

(B) eight books

(D) eleven books

Question’s Answer: eight books

In Pride and Prejudice, Lydia elopes with?

(A) Darcy

(B) William Collins

(D) Charles Bingley

Question’s Answer: Wickham

Who coined the phrase ‘Egotistical Sublime”?

(A) William Wordsworth

(B) P. B. Shelley

(D) S. T. Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Question’s Answer: S. T. Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Who is commonly known as ‘Pip’ in Great Expectations?

(A) Philip Pip

(B) Filip Pirip

(D) Philips Pirip

Question’s Answer: Philip Pip

The novel The Power and the Glory is set in?

(A) Germany

(B) Italy

(D) Mexico

Question’s Answer: Mexico

Which is Golding’s first novel?

(A) The Inheritors

(B) Pyramid

(D) Lord of the Flies

Question’s Answer: Lord of the Flies

Identify the character who is a supporter of Women’s Rights in Sons and Lovers?

(A) Miriam

(B) Annie

(D) Clara Dawes

Question’s Answer: Mrs. Morel

Vanity Fair is a novel by?

(A) W. M.William Makepeace Thackeray (British novelist)

(B) Charles Dickens

(D) Thomas Hardy

Question’s Answer: W. M.William Makepeace Thackeray (British novelist)

Who, among the following, is not the second generation of British Romantics?

(A) Wordsworth

(B) John Keats

(D) Byron

Question’s Answer: Wordsworth

Which poems of Samuel Taylor Coleridge is a ballad?

(A) Work Without Hope

(B) Frost at Midnight

(D) The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

Question’s Answer: The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

Identify the writer who was expelled from Oxford for circulating a pamphlet?

(A) Samuel Taylor Coleridge

(B) Charles Lamb (English essayist)

(D) Percy Bysshe Shelley

Question’s Answer: Percy Bysshe Shelley

John Keats’s Endymion is dedicated to?

(A) Leigh Hunt

(B) Milton

(D) Thomas Chatterton

Question’s Answer: Thomas Chatterton

When the second series of Essays of Elia by Charles Lamb (English essayist) was published?

(A) 1840

(B) 1833

(D) 1826

Question’s Answer: 1833

Which poets does not belong to the ‘Lake School’?

(A) Robert Southey

(B) Samuel Taylor Coleridge

(D) John Keats

Question’s Answer: John Keats

___________ was not educated at Christ’s Hospital School, London.

(A) William Wordsworth

(B) S. T. Samuel Taylor Coleridge

(D) Charles Lamb (English essayist)

Question’s Answer: Charles Lamb (English essayist)

Which poem ends with the “I shall but love thee better after death”?

(A) In faith I do not love thee with mine eyes

(B) Ode to a Grecian urn

(D) How do I love thee

Question’s Answer: How do I love thee

Which poet is known as a national hero in Greece?

(A) John Keats (English poet of the second generation of Romantic poets)

(B) Lord Byron

(D) Sappho

Question’s Answer: Lord Byron

Which kind of poem is Edward Lear linked with?

(A) Nature

(B) Epics

(D) Sonnets

Question’s Answer: Nonsense

A poem that tells a story with plot,setting,and characters

(A) narrative

(B) free verse

(D) ode

Question’s Answer: narrative

A poem with no meter or rhyme

(A) lyric

(B) ode

(D) free verse

Question’s Answer: free verse

In Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem The rime of the Ancient Mariner’ where were the three gallants going?

(A) A wedding

(B) A funeral

(D) To the races

Question’s Answer: A wedding

Harold Nicholson described which poet as “Very yellow and glum. Perfect manners?

(A) E. E. Cummings

(B) Walt Whitman

(D) T.S. Elliot

Question’s Answer: T.S. Elliot

What was strange about Emily Dickinson?

(A) She wrote in code

(B) She rarely left home

(D) She wrote her poems in invisible ink

Question’s Answer: She rarely left home

Rupert Brooke wrote his poetry during which conflict?

(A) Boer War

(B) First World War

(D) Second World War

Question’s Answer: First World War

In 1996, “A Brave and Startling Truth” was written by which American author?

(A) Robert Hass

(B) Maya Angelou

(D) Micheal Palmer

Question’s Answer: Maya Angelou

Who wrote about the idyllic ‘Isle of Innisfree?

(A) W. B. Yeats

(B) Ezra Pound

(D) E. E. Cummings

Question’s Answer: W. B. Yeats

The repetition of similar ending sounds is ___ .

(A) alliteration

(B) onomatopoeia

(D) rhyme

Question’s Answer: rhyme

Applying human qualities to non-human things

(A) alliteration

(B) onomatopoeia

(D) inversion

Question’s Answer: personification

The repetition of beginning consonant sounds is _______.

(A) rhyme

(B) onomatopoeia

(D) alliteration

Question’s Answer: alliteration

A comparison of things that are not the same, without using a word like “like” or “as”

(A) personification

(B) simile

(D) analogy

Question’s Answer: metaphor

Using “like” or “as” to compare two things that are not alike

(A) simile

(B) metaphor

(D) analogy

Question’s Answer: simile

Using words or letters to imitate sounds

(A) alliteration

(B) simile

(D) phonetics

Question’s Answer: onomatopoeia

A description that attracts to one of the five senses is the _________.

(A) visualization

(B) personification

(D) imagery

Question’s Answer: imagery

A poem that has meter and rhyme is ___.

(A) narrative

(B) free verse

(D) ode

Question’s Answer: lyric

Carl Sandburg (American poet) ‘Planked whitefish having what kind of imagery?

(A) War

(B) Rural Idyll

(D) Innocent childhood

Question’s Answer: War

In 1960, The Colossus’ was the first book of poems published by ________ .

(A) Elizabeth Bishop

(B) Laura Jackson

(D) Sylvia Plath (American poet)

Question’s Answer: Sylvia Plath (American poet)

In his poem Kipling said ‘If you can meet 2 with triumph and……..?

(A) Disaster

(B) Ruin

(D) victory

Question’s Answer: Disaster

Which of the following is not a literary device used to make poetry look good?

(A) Assonance

(B) Onomatopoeia

(D) Rhyme

Question’s Answer: Grammar

What is the earliest surviving European poem?

(A) The Gilgamesh epic

(B) The Homeric epic

(D) The Hesiodic ode

Question’s Answer: The Homeric epic

Which is not a poetic tradition?

(B) The Comic

(A) The Occult

(D) The Tragic

Question’s Answer: The Occult

What is the study of poetry’s meter and form called?

(A) Rheumatology

(B) Potology

(D) Scansion

Question’s Answer: Prosody

Who wrote “The Hound of the Baskervilles” ?

(A) Agatha Christie

(B) Arthur Conan Doyle

(D) HRyder-Haggard

Question’s Answer: Arthur Conan Doyle

William William Shakespeare is not the author of:

(A) Titus Andronicus

(B) White Devil

(D) Hamlet

Question’s Answer: White Devil

William Shakespeare composed much of his plays in what sort of verse?

(A) Alliterative verse

(B) Sonnet form

(D) lambic pentameter

Question’s Answer: lambic pentameter

Which poet invented the concept of the variable foot in poetry?

(A) Gerard Manly Hopkins

(B) Emily Dickinson

(D) Robert Frost.

Question’s Answer: William Carlos Williams

‘Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day/Thou art more lovely and more temperate… Who wrote this well-known quote?

(A) T.S Eliot

(B) William Shakespeare

(D) Lord Tennyson

Question’s Answer: William Shakespeare

“the folk ballad date” is a type of poetry that dates back to what century?

(A) The 14th

(B) The 12th

(D) The 19th

Question’s Answer: The 12th

‘Did my heart love til now?/ Forswear it, sight/ For 1 never saw a correct beauty until this night’ This famous line comes from which of William Shakespeare’s plays:

(A) Romeo and Juliet

(B) Hamlet

(D) A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Question’s Answer: Romeo and Juliet

What is a poem called whose first letters of each line spell out a word?

(A) Alliterative

(B) Acrostic

(D) Haiku

Question’s Answer: Acrostic

Auld Lang Syne is a famous poem by whom?

(A) Sir Walter Scott

(B) Robert Burns

(D) William Butler Yeats

Question’s Answer: Robert Burns

How does “The Oxford Companion to 20th Century Poetry” describe Stephen Dunn?

(A) A poet of middleness

(B) Has some distinction as a critic

(D) Capturing a sense of spiritual marooness

Question’s Answer: A poet of middleness

The Cambridge school’ refers to a group who emerged in _____ .

(A) The 1960’s

(B) The 1900’s

(D) The 1930’s

Question’s Answer: The 1960’s

Which words best describe the way High-Modern Literature makes people feel?

(A) Skeptical

(B) Authoritative

(D) Both (A) & (C)

Question’s Answer: Both (A) & (C)

“Under Milk Wood” was written by _____.

(A) Anthony Hopkins

(B) Dylan Thomas

(D) Richard Burton

Question’s Answer: Dylan Thomas

Who wrote Canterbury Tales?

(A) Thomas Lancaster

(B) Dick Whittington

(D) King Richard II

Question’s Answer: Geoffrey Chaucer

______is a late 20th century play written by a woman?

(A) Queen Cristina

(B) Camille

(D) The Homecoming

Question’s Answer: Camille

Which writers wrote historical novels?

(A) Jane Austen and Charlotte Bronte

(B) Mary Shelley and Percy Bysshe Shelley

(D) Sir Walter Scott and Maria Edgeworth

Question’s Answer: Sir Walter Scott and Maria Edgeworth

Who wrote “Ten Little Niggers?”

(A) Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

(B) Agatha Christie

(D) None of above

Question’s Answer: Agatha Christie

Which is not a creation of John Keats (English poet of the second generation of Romantic poets)?

(A) Endymion

(B) To some ladies

(D) None of above

Question’s Answer: None of above

Who wrote the poems, “On death” and “Women, Wine, and Snuff?”

(A) John Keats (English poet of the second generation of Romantic poets)

(B) John Milton

(D) William Wordsworth

Question’s Answer: John Keats (English poet of the second generation of Romantic poets)

Which is an example of a proverb?

(A) Get a “stake” in our business.

(B) You’re driving me crazy.

(D) You can’t have your cake and eat it, too

Question’s Answer: You can’t have your cake and eat it, too

Which is an exaggeration?

(A) Hyperbole

(B) Haiku

(D) Prose

Question’s Answer: Hyperbole

“Of Man’s first disobedience, and the fruit Of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste Brought death into the world, and all our woe, With loss of Eden.” This is an extract from which of the following?

(A) Paradise Lost

(B) Samson Agonistes

(D) Divorce Tracts

Question’s Answer: Paradise Lost

Which is not a William Shakespeare tragedy?

(A) Titus Andronicus

(B) Othello

(D) None of the above

Question’s Answer: None of the above

Who wrote The Winter’s Tale?’

(A) George Bernard Shaw

(B) William William Shakespeare

(D) John Dryden

Question’s Answer: William William Shakespeare

What is the difference between a simile and a metaphor?

(A) No difference. Simply two different ways in referring to the same thing.

(B) A simile is more descriptive.

(D) A simile uses as or like to make a com- parison and a metaphor doesn’t.

Question’s Answer: A simile uses as or like to make a com- parison and a metaphor doesn’t.

What is the word for a “play on words”?

(A) simile

(B) pun

(D) metaphor

Question’s Answer: pun

Which denotes an example of alliteration?

(A) Language Arts

(B) I like music.

(D) A beautiful scenery with music

Question’s Answer: Peter Piper Picked Peppers

What is the imitation of natural sounds in word form?

(A) Onomatopoeia

(B) Hyperboles

(D) Personification

Question’s Answer: Onomatopoeia

The theme is …??

(A) a plot

(B) the point a writer is trying to make about a subject.

(D) an character

Question’s Answer: the point a writer is trying to make about a subject.

Concentrate on these elements when writ ing a good poem.

(A) theme, purpose, form, and mood

(B) purpose and audience

(D) rhyme and reason

Question’s Answer: theme, purpose, form, and mood

Which is not a poetry form?

(A) epic

(B) sonnet

(D) tale

Question’s Answer: tale

Which is not a poet?

(A) William William Shakespeare

(B) Elizabeth B. Browning

(D) Emily Dickinson

Question’s Answer: Terry Saylor

Who has defined ‘poetry’ as a fundamental creative act using languages?

(A) H. W. Longfellow

(B) Ralph Waldo Emerson

(D) Dylan Thomas

Question’s Answer: Dylan Thomas

What is a sonnet?

(A) A poem of six lines

(B) A poem of fourteen lines

(D) A poem of eight lines

Question’s Answer: A poem of fourteen lines

Which is the study of meter, rhythm and intonation of a poem?

(A) Assonance

(B) Allegory

(D) Prosody

Question’s Answer: Prosody

Funny poem of five lines is called as ________.

(A) Quartet

(B) Sextet

(D) Palindrome

Question’s Answer: Limerick

How did Wystan Hugh Auden describe poetry?

(A) An awful way to earn a living

(B) The soul exposed

(D) An explosion of language

Question’s Answer: A game of knowledge

Which figure of speech is it when a statement is exaggerated in a poem?

(A) Onomatopoeia

(B) Metonymy

(D) Alliteration

Question’s Answer: Hyperbole

There was aware of her correct love, at length- come riding by – This is a couplet from the Bailiff’s Daughter of Islington. What figure of speech is used by the poet?

(A) Synecdoche

(B) Metaphor

(D) Irony

Question’s Answer: Synecdoche

Which culture is known for their long, rhymic poetic known as Qasidas?

(A) Hindu

(B) Arabic

(D) Arameic

Question’s Answer: Arabic

Complete this William Shakespearean line – Let me not to the marriage of correct minds bring:

(A) Inconveniences

(B) Impediments

(D) Troubles

Question’s Answer: Impediments

Which is a Japanese poetic form?

(A) Tanka

(B) Villanelle

(D) Jintishi

Question’s Answer: Jintishi

What is the title of the poem that begins thus -‘What is this life, if full of care, we have no time to stand and stare”?

(A) Comfort

(B) Leisure

(D) Tranquility

Question’s Answer: Leisure

Who was known as the Romantic Poet because so many of his poems were about nature?

(A) William Wordsworth

(B) William William Shakespeare

(D) William Blake

Question’s Answer: William Wordsworth

What kind of poetry was written by Sassoon and Brooke?

(A) War poems

(B) Romantic

(D) Light verse

Question’s Answer: War poems

Ted Hughes was happily married to which American poetess?

(A) Sylvia Plath (American poet)

(B) Mary Oliver

(D) Marianne Moore (American poet)

Question’s Answer: Sylvia Plath (American poet)

In what form did Dylan Thomas’s ‘Under Milk Wood’ first become known?

(A) Book of poetry

(B) a short film

(D) A radio play

Question’s Answer: A radio play

The magazine ‘Contemporary Poetry and Prose’ was inspired by which exhibition?

(A) The Festival of Britain

(B) Drawing the 20th Century

(D) The Surrealist Exhibition

Question’s Answer: The Surrealist Exhibition

Why did ‘Poetry Quarterly’ cease publication in 1953?

(A) Rise in taxation on magazines

(B) Fall in Sales

(D) Shortage of paper

Question’s Answer: Owner convicted of fraud

Aldous Huxley was a poet, but was better known as what?

(A) Novelist

(B) Dramatist

(D) Architect

Question’s Answer: Novelist

Ladies Coupe is a novel by.

(A) Amrita Pritam

(B) Jhumpa Lahiri

(D) Anita Desai

Question’s Answer: Anita Nair

Whom does Dryden’s Eugenius take up the case for?

(A) the French

(B) the Medievals

(D) the Moderns

Question’s Answer: the Moderns

Of which poet was it said ‘Even if he’s not a great poet, he’s certainly a great something?

(A) Elliot

(B) Brooke

(D) Kipling

Question’s Answer: Kipling

“The Everlasting Yea” is linked with which of the following?

(A) Carlyle

(B) Browning

(D) Macaulay

Question’s Answer: Carlyle

In which William Shakespearean play do you find the lines? Men must endure Their going hence, even as their coming hither: Ripeness is all.

(A) Horatio in Hamlet

(B) Brutus in Julius Caesar

(D) Edgar in King Lear

Question’s Answer: Edgar in King Lear

“Marius, the Epicurean” was the creation of

(A) A.C. Ward

(B) TS. Eliot

(D) Saintsbury

Question’s Answer: Walter Pater

Whose philosophy is the following? “The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ, Moves or: nor all your Piety nor Wit Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line, Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it.”

(A) Omar Khayyam

(B) Aristotle

(D) Epicure

Question’s Answer: Omar Khayyam

Kunstleroman is a novel on the development of

(A) an individual

(B) a woman

(D) an artist

Question’s Answer: an artist

The Georgian poets are called after______

(A) George V

(B) George IV

(D) Eliot (English novelist)

Question’s Answer: George V

Which writers is linked with the concept of ‘tension’ in poetry?

(A) Allen Tate

(B) John Crowe Ransom

(D) Robert Penn Warren

Question’s Answer: Allen Tate

Who called Shelley A beautiful but ineffec- tual angel beating in a void his luminous wings in vain’?

(A) T.S. Eliot

(B) Cleanth Brooks

(D) Arnold

Question’s Answer: Arnold

Who criticized Paradise Lost for its lack of human interest?

(A) Pope

(B) Arnold

(D) Eliot

Question’s Answer: Johnson

Asolando was the creation of______

(A) Browning

(B) Scott

(D) John Keats

Question’s Answer: Browning

Which novels ends with the word “Tomorrow”?

(A) The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

(B) God of Small Things

(D) Jude the Obscure

Question’s Answer: God of Small Things

Morose and Cutbeard are characters in________

(A) The Silent Woman

(B) Everyman in His Humour

(D) The Alchemist

Question’s Answer: The Silent Woman

The Gunny Sack was the creation of______

(A) Rohinton Mistry

(B) Vikram Seth

(D) M.G. Vassanji

Question’s Answer: M.G. Vassanji

Eric Blair wrote under the pen name______

(A) George Orwell

(B) William Golding

(D) O.Henry

Question’s Answer: George Orwell

Who of the following did not belong to the “Lost Generation”?

(A) Henry James

(B) Ezra Pound

(D) Ernest Hemingway

Question’s Answer: Henry James

Name Salman Rushdie’s latest Novel.

(A) The Moor’s Last Sigh

(B) Satonic Verses

(D) Fury

Question’s Answer: Fury

Of the following novels one does not portray the Gandhian Age and the impact of Gandhi. Which one?

(A) KA. Abbas’s Inquilab

(B) R.K. Narayan’s The Dark Room

(D) K Nagarajan’s Chronicles of Kedaram

Question’s Answer: R.K. Narayan’s The Dark Room

______introduced the concept of ‘defamiliarization’.

(A) Mikhail Bakhtin

(B) Roland Barthes

(D) Viktor Shklovsky

Question’s Answer: Viktor Shklovsky

Who introduced Rabindranath Tagore to European readers?

(A) T.S. Eliot

(B) W.B. Yeats

(D) Harold Bloom

Question’s Answer: W.B. Yeats

Who wrote “A Tale of a Tub?”

(A) Dickens

(B) Defoe

(D) Dr Jonathan Swift

Question’s Answer: Dr Jonathan Swift

Which school of critics have been called Neo-Aristotleians?

(A) Myth Criticism

(B) Chicago Critics

(D) New Historicism

Question’s Answer: Chicago Critics

Who made this statement “An aged man is a paltry thing”?

(A) Wystan Hugh Auden

(B) TS. Eliot

(D) Philip larkin

Question’s Answer: W.B. Yeats

Who wrote the book Raj?

(A) Shobha De

(B) Rama Mehta

(D) Nargis Dalai

Question’s Answer: Geeta Mehta

Dominique Lapierre wrote an appealing ac- count of the sordid squalor of an Indian city.Identify the city.

(B) Delhi

(A) Calcutta

(D) Bombay

Question’s Answer: Bombay

Who wrote the book following poems? “The Gift of India”, “Bangle-seller”, “The Anthem of Love”, “Palanquin Bearers”

(A) Kamala Das

(B) Nissim Ezekiel

(D) Sarojini Naidu

Question’s Answer: Sarojini Naidu

Who wrote the hard-hitting poem “Sita Speak” indicating the society for the injus- tice meted out to women down the ages

(A) Sarojini Naidu

(B) Kamala Das

(D) Bina Agarwal

Question’s Answer: Bina Agarwal

In Which poems of Ezekiel do we get a moving picture of a mother’s suffering?

(A) The Couple’

(B) The Visitor’

(D) ‘Philosophy’

Question’s Answer: ‘Night of the Scorpion

Who wrote the book Two Virgins?

(A) Kamala Markandaya

(B) Shastri Deshpande

(D) Kamala Das

Question’s Answer: Kamala Markandaya

Name the Indo-English novelist who wrote A Suitable Boy.

(A) Amitav Ghose

(B) Vikram Seth

(D) Anita Desai

Question’s Answer: Vikram Seth

Who wrote the books listed below? The Foreigner, The Apprentice, The Last Laby rinth, The City and the River?

(A) Arun Joshi

(B) Amitav Ghose

(D) Rath P. Jhabvala

Question’s Answer: Arun Joshi

Which of the following is the collection of short stories written by Bhabani Shattacharya?

(A) So Many Hungers

(B) A Dream in Hawaii

(D) Sen Hawk

Question’s Answer: Sen Hawk

In which novel does R.K. Narayan focus on family planning?

(A) The Painter of Signs

(B) Mr. Sampath

(D) The Guide

Question’s Answer: The Painter of Signs

In the Guide we come across a dancer. What is her name?

(A) Rosie

(B) Bharati

(D) Savitri

Question’s Answer: Rosie

Who came up with these words? “Woman is the earth, air, ether, sound;woman is the microcosm of the mind “?

(A) Kamala Markandaya

(B) R.K. Narayan

(D) Kamala Das

Question’s Answer: Raja Rao

Arthur Symons wrote about this person, “All the life of the tiny figure seemed to concen- trate itself in the eyes: they turned towards beauty as the sunflower turns towards the sun.” Who is the person referred to?

(A) Toru Dutt

(B) Aru Dutt

(D) Sarojini Naidu

Question’s Answer: Sarojini Naidu

H.A.L. Fisher wrote about this person.”…. this child of the green valley of the Ganges has by sheer force of native genius earned for herself the right to be enrolled in the great fellowship of English poets.” Who is the poet?

(A) Sarojini Naidu

(B) Michael Madhusudan’

(D) Manmohan Ghose

Question’s Answer: Toru Dutt

“The Lake of Palms”, “A History of Civilization of Ancient India”, “The Slave-Girl of Agra” are the works of ______.

(A) Romesh Chander Dutt

(B) Manmohan Ghose

(D) Sharat Chandra

Question’s Answer: Romesh Chander Dutt

Which of the following is a collection of Anita Desai’s short stories?

(A) Cry, the Peacock

(B) Games at Twilight

(D) Voices in the City

Question’s Answer: Voices in the City

Who wrote Jejurithe Commonwealth Prize winner work?

(A) Shiv K. Kumar

(B) Jayant Mahapatra

(D) Arun Kolatkar

Question’s Answer: Arun Kolatkar

In which of Anita Desai’s novel an insane wife kills her husband?

(A) Cry, The Peacock

(B) In Custody

(D) Baumgartner’s Bombay

Question’s Answer: Cry, The Peacock

In which novel does the hero sing the refrain? “This is the machine age, sons This is the machine age

We are the men who will master it”?

(A) The Sword and The Sickle

(B) The Big Heart

(D) The Road

Question’s Answer: The Big Heart

Who was the first recipient of the Sahitya Academi Award for English literature?

(A) Mulk Raj Anand

(B) Nayantara Sehgal

(D) RK. Narayan

Question’s Answer: RK. Narayan

Following novels except one, describe the condition of Westerners living in India Mark the one which does not.

(A) Heat and Dust

(B) “A Passage to India”, A Novel by E. M. Forster

(D) The Princess

Question’s Answer: The Princess

Which novels focuses on the question of rape?

(A) Some Inner Fury

(B) Voices in The City

(D) A Time to Be Happy

Question’s Answer: The Bending Vine

Who wrote the book the following novels: A Bend in The Ganges, The Princes, Distant Drums, Devil’s Wind, A Combat of Shadows?

(A) Manohar Malgaonkar

(B) Bhabani Bhattacharya

(D) Salman Rushdie

Question’s Answer: Manohar Malgaonkar

Who wrote “Our Casuarina Tree” a splendid John Keatsian poem?

(A) Sri Aurobindo

(B) Romesh Chander Dut

(D) Toru Dutt

Question’s Answer: Toru Dutt

Browning’s The Ring and the Book is a long- poem having about 21,000 lines, but Aurobindo’s Savitri is longer. How many lines are there in the epic?

(A) 21,500

(B) 24,000

(D) 22,000

Question’s Answer: 24,000

Toru Dutt, Romesh Chander Dutt and Aurobindo, all wrote about one theme from the Mahabharata . Identify the story which the three found irresistible.

(A) Kama and Kunti

(B) Nal-Damyanti

(D) Savitri

Question’s Answer: Savitri

Who of the following was highly influenced by French Romanticism, French language and literature?

(A) Romesh Chander Dutt

(B) Michael Madhusudan Dutt

(D) Toru Dutt

Question’s Answer: Toru Dutt

The “Fakir of hungheera” is a long poem of the _________. The poem is

often hailed as a “Competent narrative verse with Byronic echoes.”

(A) Toru Dutt

(B) Michael Madhusudan Dutt

(D) Hasan Ali

Question’s Answer: Henry Derozio

He was the first Indian poet to put out a regular collection of English poetry.

He also ran an English newspaper called “The Hindu.”

(A) Kashiprasad Ghose

(B) Mohan Lai

(D) Michael Madhusudan Dutt

Question’s Answer: Kashiprasad Ghose

__________ is the creation of Michael Madhusudan Dutt.

(A) The Captive Ladie

(B) The Shair and Other Poems

(D) Lays of Ancient India

Question’s Answer: The Captive Ladie

What is the full title of “Aurobindo’s Savitri”?

(A) Savitri-An Epic

(B) Savitri

(D) Savitri-A and a Symbol

Question’s Answer: Savitri-A and a Symbol

Who is the poet of “Kali, the Mother.”?

(A) Sri Aurobindo

(B) Subramaniam Bharathi

(D) Swami Vivekanand

Question’s Answer: Swami Vivekanand

He is a Sahitya Akademi Award Winner and he loves to write for children. Who is he?

(A) R. K. Narayan

(B) Ruskin Bond

(D) Upamanyu Chatterjee

Question’s Answer: Ruskin Bond

Whose autobiography is entitled My Father’s Son?

(A) Nirad Chaudhury

(B) Frank Moraes

(D) V.S. Naipaul

Question’s Answer: Dom Moraes

Mulk Raj Anand, about one of his female characters says, “Gauri is my tribute to In- In which novel does

dian womanhood” Gauri appear?

(A) The Road

(B) The Sword and The Sickle

(D) The Old Woman and The Cow

Question’s Answer: The Old Woman and The Cow

Name the author who has been described by a critic as an “outsider inside.”

(A) Ruth Jhabvala

(B) Salman Rushdie

(D) Anita Desai

Question’s Answer: Ruth Jhabvala

Following novels, except one, describes the condition of Indians settled abroad Mark the one which does not.

(A) The Nowhere Man

(B) The Guide

(D) Bye-Bye, Blackbird

Question’s Answer: The Guide

The Angel of Misfortune is a poem of about 5000 lines, written by Nagesh Vishwanath Pai. Whose story is narrated in this book?

(A) Saturn, the Dark Angel

(B) King Vikramaditya

(D) Kamadeva

Question’s Answer: King Vikramaditya

Name the author of The Gardener, The Fugitive, Chitra, Sacrifice, The Post Office.

(A) Romesh Chander Dutt

(B) Bankim Chandra

(D) Rabindra Nath Tagore

Question’s Answer: Rabindra Nath Tagore

Name the two prizes, one in literature and another in History, awarded to young Aurobindo while studying in England

(A) Butterworth in Literature and Bedford in History

(B) Bookers in Literature and Butterworth in History

Question’s Answer: Pulitzer Prizes in Literature and Bedford Prize in History

Who Murugan, The Tiller and Kandan, the Patriot, Jatadharan and The Next Rung?

(A) ShankerRam

(B) K.S. Venkataramani

(D) K. Subba Rao

Question’s Answer: K.S. Venkataramani

The Devil’s Wind is a historical novel by _________ and depicts the events of our First War of Independence (1857 mutiny). Who wrote the book this novel?

(A) Shanker Ram

(B) Sasthi Brata

(D) Manohar Malgaonkar

Question’s Answer: Manohar Malgaonkar

Which novel tells the Bengal famine?

(A) A Time to be Happy

(B) A Handful of

(D) Athawar House

Question’s Answer: So Many Hungers

Who wrote Ilion?

(A) Virgil

(B) Homer

(D) Rabindra Nath Tagore

Question’s Answer: Aurobindo

Who wrote the book Love of Dust?

(A) Ruth P. Jhabvala

(B) Humayun Kabir

(D) Shanker Ram

Question’s Answer: Shanker Ram

The term ‘stream-of-consciousness’ was first used by which of the following?______.

(A) James Joyce

(B) Virginia Woolf

(D) T.S. Eliot

Question’s Answer: William James

“Milton” is a symbolic poem by______.

(A) Yeats

(B) Gray

(D) Auden

Question’s Answer: Blake

Which is Ngugi wa Thoingo’s novel writ- ten against the backdrop of Mau Mau Rebellion?

(A) Weep Not, Child

(B) A Grain of Wheat

(D) All of these

Question’s Answer: A Grain of Wheat

The Great Indian Novel is a reworking of which of the following?

(A) The Ramayana

(B) Kathasaritsagara

(D) Panchatantra

Question’s Answer: The Mahabharata

The rhyme scheme of a Spenserian stanza is_______.

(A) abbcabbcc

(B) ababbcbcd

(D) ababbebec

Question’s Answer: ababbebec

Who called Kyd “Sporting Kyd”?

(A) Dr. Johnson

(B) Ben Jonson

(D) Dryden

Question’s Answer: Ben Jonson

Angry Young Man is the autobiography of_______.

(A) John Osborne

(B) Kingsley Amis

(D) John Wain

Question’s Answer: Leslie Paul

Caesar and Cleopatra is a play by______.

(A) William Shakespeare

(B) Dryden

(D) Drinkwater

Question’s Answer: Bernard Shaw

Esemplastic in Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s theory refers to______.

(A) shaping power

(B) flexible

(D) force of imagination

Question’s Answer: shaping power

“And I am dumb to tell the lover’s tomb How at my sheet goes the same crooked worm.”

These lines are taken from aa poem by which of the following poet?

(A) R.S. Thomas

(B) Philip Larkin

(D) Robert Graves

Question’s Answer: Dylan Thomas

The setting of Hardy’s The Dynasts is______.

(A) Napoleanic wars

(B) Spanish Civil War

(D) American Civil War

Question’s Answer: Napoleanic wars

Who wrote the verse drama Becket?

(A) Oscar Wilde

(B) Osborne

(D) Yeats

Question’s Answer: Tennyson

Who are the Trench poets?

Siegfried Sassoon
Issac Rosenberg
Rupert Brooke
Wilfred Owen
Wystan Hugh Auden

Where do you find these lines, “When composition begins, inspiration is already on the decline”?

(A) Biographia Literaria

(B) Arnold’s Essays in Criticism

(D) F.R. Leavis’s The Great Tradition

Question’s Answer: Shelley’s A Defence of Poetry

Who wrote the verse drama Becket?

(A) Oscar Wilde

(B) Osborne

(D) Yeats

Question’s Answer: Tennyson

Who are the Trench poets?

Siegfried Sassoon
Issac Rosenberg
Rupert Brooke
Wilfred Owen
Wystan Hugh Auden

Millament is the heroine in______.

(A) She Stoops to Conquer

(B) The Way of the World

(D) The Rivals

Question’s Answer: The Way of the World

The line “My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun” is an example for______.

(A) Hyperbole

(B) Simile

(D) Personification

Question’s Answer: Simile

Existentialism in its religious aspect goes back to______.

(A) Sartre

(B) Camus

(D) Hegel

Question’s Answer: Kierkegaard

The Dark Lady of the Sonnets is a one-act play by______.

(A) J. M. Synge

(B) W.B. Yeats

(D) Bernard Shaw

Question’s Answer: J. M. Synge

The last (sixth) book of The Faerie Queene deals with_______.

(A) The adventures of Redcrosse Knight

(B) The legend of Chastity

(D) The adventures of Sir Calidore

Question’s Answer: The adventures of Sir Calidore

Which classical writers did Chaucer translate into English?

(A) Boethius

(B) Aristotle

(D) Bede

Question’s Answer: Boethius

Which classical writer was Pope’s Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot modelled on?

(A) Homer

(B) Theophrastus

(D) Horace

Question’s Answer: Horace

Who was the founder editor of the periodical “The Examiner”?

(A) Johnson

(B) Lockhart

(D) William Hazlitt (English essayist)

Question’s Answer: Leigh Hunt

“Yo! We have heard tell of the majesty of the Speardanes, of the Folk-kings, how the princes did valorous deeds.” These lines are taken from which of the following?

(A) Caedmon’s Hymn

(B) Canterbury Tales

(D) Piers Plowman

Question’s Answer: Beowulf

Who finished “Hero and Leander,” a poem by Marlowe that was left unfinished?

(A) John Marston

(B) Sir Philip Sidney

(D) George Chapman

Question’s Answer: George Chapman

“Hudibras” is:

an English mock heroic and narrative poem
from the 17th century
written by Samuel Butler
from the 18th century

In Prologue and Canterbury Tales Chaucer employed the

(A) Ottawa Rhyme

(B) Rhyme Royal

(D) Both A and C

Question’s Answer: Heroic Couplet

Chaucer has been criticized for presenting an incomplete picture of his times, because

(A) he overemphasizes the rights of the lower class

(B) he exaggerates the courtly benevolence

(D) he supports the Lolland and the Pear ant Revolution too fervently

Question’s Answer: he writes for the court and cultivated classes and neglects the suffering of the poor

“…the error of evaluating a poem by its ef- fects-especially its emotional effects- upon the reader” is:

(A) Affective Fallacy

(B) Intentional Fallacy

(D) Pathetic Fallacy

Question’s Answer: Affective Fallacy

According to S.T. Samuel Taylor Coleridge:

Primary imagination has the “esem- plastic” power.
On the way to the supernatural from natural if the poet fails to carry on he ends up as a “materialist”.

Allegory is superior to symbol.

Who translated the “Seafarer”?

(A) Ezra Pound

(B) A.L. Tennyson

(D) Sylvia Plath (American poet)

Question’s Answer: Ezra Pound

Marlowe’s tragedies are:

(A) one-man tragedies

(B) love tragedies

(D) revenge plays

Question’s Answer: one-man tragedies

Who coined the phrase, “Marlowe’s mighty line?

(A) Richard Steele

(B) Samuel Johnson

(D) Ben Jonson

Question’s Answer: Ben Jonson

From the four main dialects that were popular before Chaucer, the one that became standard English during Chaucer’s time was _____

(A) the Northern

(B) the Southern

(D) the East-Midland

Question’s Answer: the East-Midland

Which statements is incor rect regarding medieval literature?

(A) Chaucer exploited the dream-vision convention in The Canterbury Tales.

(B) The dream-vision convention was prevalent

(D) There was often an undercurrent of moral and dialectic strain.

Question’s Answer: Chaucer exploited the dream-vision convention in The Canterbury Tales.

According to_____, the writer should be “outside the whale”, because otherwise, the state or society could swallow the writer up, as the whale had swallowed Jonah.

(A) Andrew Marvell

(B) S.T.Samuel Taylor Coleridge

(D) T.S.Eliot

Question’s Answer: George Orwell

“I have used similitude.” _____said this about _______.

(A) Thomas Hobbes about ‘Leviathan’.

(B) Alexander Pope (English poet) about ‘The Dunciad’

(D) Bunyan about ‘The Pilgrim’s Progress’

Question’s Answer: Bunyan about ‘The Pilgrim’s Progress’

Which is wrong?

(A) Samuel Johnson-The Vanity of Human Wishes-Imitation of Juvenal’s 10th satire

(B) Jonathan Dr Jonathan Swift-A Modest Proposal-Pamphlet-1728

(D) Henry Feilding-Tom Jones-Story of a foundling

Question’s Answer: Jonathan Dr Jonathan Swift-A Modest Proposal-Pamphlet-1728

Who are the two gentlemen in “the Two Gentlemen of Verona”?

(A) Douglas and Calvin

(B) Lovelace and Herrick

(D) Valentine and Protons

Question’s Answer: Valentine and Protons

What is the meaning of the word ‘testament?

(A) the word ‘testament’ comes from the Latin, and is a translation of the Greek word meaning covenant

(B) the word ‘testament’ comes from the Greek language and it means a religious story

(D) None of the above

Question’s Answer: the word ‘testament’ comes from the Latin, and is a translation of the Greek word meaning covenant

Which statements can be considered as correct?

(A) Koine language reflects the influence of the language that was the common

tongue of the Palestinian and which Jesus himself employed

(B) “Revelation” is the first book in The Bible

(D) None of the above

Question’s Answer: Koine language reflects the influence of the language that was the common

tongue of the Palestinian and which Jesus himself employed

Who popularized the inductive method for arriving at a conclusion through his Novum Organum?

(A) Ben Jonson

(B) Dr.Johnson

(D) Francis Bacon

Question’s Answer: Francis Bacon

Thomas Hardy’s life and career are obliquely depicted in:

(A) The Return of the Native

(B) Tess of the d’Urbervilles

(D) The Mayor of Casterbridge

Question’s Answer: Jude the Obscure

In Homer’s Iliad Achilles refuses to take fur ther part in a war. What could be the reason?

(A) Achilles felt tired

(B) Agamemnon, the commander-in-chief of the Achaean Army

had seized Briseis, the slave concubine of Achilles

(D) none of the above

Question’s Answer: Agamemnon, the commander-in-chief of the Achaean Army

had seized Briseis, the slave concubine of Achilles

In the context of Aeschylus Agamemnon, Which statement is correct?

(A) Agamemnon was the king of Argos. He happily married Clytemnestra and was elected

commander of the Greek Host that went to Troy to recover Helen

(B) Helen was the wife of Agamemnon’s brother Menelaus

(D) all the above statements are correct

Question’s Answer: all the above statements are correct

In the context of Sophocles Oedipus, the King, which statements can be considered as correct?

(A) Oedipus was the son of Laius, king of Thebes and Jocasta

(B) Oedipus’ father was informed by an oracle that he must perish at his son’s hands

(D) all the above statements can be considered as correct

Question’s Answer: all the above statements can be considered as correct

Which statements is correct in the context of More’s Utopia?

(A) All the cities in Utopia are built on the same plan and are of about the same size

(B) the streets are very dirty, not well- drained

(D) in Utopia nobody is required to work on the farms or in trade

Question’s Answer: All the cities in Utopia are built on the same plan and are of about the same size

What events don’t mentioned in “War and Peace” by Leo Tolstoy?

(A) Napoleon had been proclaimed Em- peror of the French

(B) Napoleon had annexed Genoa, seized Hanover from the British

(D) Russia was friend of Napoleon

Question’s Answer: Russia was friend of Napoleon

What is God’s plan for man in Faust?

(A) man may be tempted and beguiled but he cannot be misled forever

because he retains the instinct for the one correct divine way

(B) man errs

(D) man created in the image of God, so ba- sically he is good

Question’s Answer: man may be tempted and beguiled but he cannot be misled forever

because he retains the instinct for the one correct divine way

The Wild Duck is based on

(A) the idea of a wild a goose chase

(B) the legend that when a wild duck is wounded it does not return to

the flock but dives deep and fastens itself to sea- weed

(D) the spirit of wilderness, freedom

Question’s Answer: the legend that when a wild duck is wounded it does not return to

the flock but dives deep and fastens itself to sea- weed

The Prince advocates that

(A) a state should run strictly on the principles of truth and non-violence

(B) a state is free to do anything necessary to strengthen itself

the unfair means may be for the welfare of the state

(D) none of these

Question’s Answer: a state is free to do anything necessary to strengthen itself

Which statements can be considered as correct in the context of Maupassant’s Pierre Et Jean?

(A) Madame Rosenilly is a neighbour of Monsieur Roland

(B) Monsieur Marechal of Paris is a former friend of the Rolands

(D) all the above statements are correct

Question’s Answer: all the above statements are correct

In Maupassant’s Pierre Et Jean what was the suspicion in the mind of Pierre?

(A) his younger brother Jean was conspiring to kill him

(B) his younger brother was not his father’s son

(D) none of these

Question’s Answer: his younger brother was not his father’s son

Which parts of “The Playboy of the Western World” by Synge might not be true?

(A) Christy said that he had killed his father, but his father appeared alive

(B) Christy had killed his father

(D) Mahon, Christy’s father, is proud to be led off by the son who has become a man

Question’s Answer: Christy had killed his father

Which statements can be considered as correct in the context of Dante’s The Divine Comedy?

(A) The Divine Comedy is a description of the Trojan War

(B) The Divine Comedy is a description of heaven, hell and purgatory

(D) The Divine Comedy is a mock epic pre- senting the war between man and women

Question’s Answer: The Divine Comedy is a mock epic presenting the war between man and woman

What happens after Wang Lung’s death in The Good Earth?

(A) the sons remain wealthy and powerful through inheritance

(B) the sons divorce their lives from the soil and lose their pre-eminence for they lacked the vigour and intensity

(D) the good earth is neglected

Question’s Answer: the sons divorce their lives from the soil and lose their pre-eminence for they lacked the vigour and intensity

Lolita became famous because

(A) it presents an unusual sexual story

(B) it presents a story of a mature man’s sexual fantasy – which attracts as well as repels

(D) a unique story of love and sex between 13 year old girl and her step father of 56 years

Question’s Answer: it presents a story of a mature man’s sexual fantasy – which attracts as well as repels

What happens in A Doll’s House (1879)?

(A) a woman declares independence

(B) Nora awakens to her responsibility and leaves her husband to be herself

(D) new-world order

Question’s Answer: Nora awakens to her responsibility and leaves her husband to be herself

English Literature Important Multiple Choice Questions Answers

English literature MCQs

Famous English Authors MCQs

More English Literature MCQs

English Comprehension & Composition MCQs

Download Book

10,000+ English MCQs Homepage

Related Posts:

English literature MCQs

Famous English Authors MCQs

More English Literature MCQs

English Comprehension & Composition MCQs

Download Book

10,000+ English MCQs Homepage

Related Posts:

Contents Copyrights reserved by T4Tutorials