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
(C) nostalgia and ill-concealed envy
(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
(C) appositive expression
(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
(C) Bede
(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”)
(C) parchment made of animal skin
(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
(C) the Anglo-Saxon Conquest beginning in the 1450s
(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
(C) a code of laws promulgated by King Ethelbert
(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
(C) everlasting shame
(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
(C) Romantic love is a guiding principle of moral conduct.
(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)
(c) Jane Austen
(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
(c) Eliot (English novelist)
(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)
(c) Christopher Marlowe
(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
(c) David Herbert Lawrence
(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
(c) Dryden
(d) None of these
Question’s Answer: Dryden
Through which character of Paradise Lost, Milton personified his pride & temperament?
(a) Satan
(b) Adam
(c) Eve
(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
(C) Arthur
(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
(C) thirteenth
(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
(C) the lower orders of the nobility
(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
(C) York
(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”
(C) Boccaccio’s “Decameron”
(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
(C) Boccaccio
(D) Castiglione
Question’s Answer: Castiglione
Ancrene Riwl. is a manual of instruction for
(A) translators of French romances
(B) witch-hunters and exorcists
(C) knights preparing for their first tournament
(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.
(C) a and c only
(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
(C) the Beowulf poet
(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
(C) The Dream of the Rood
(D) Dante’s Divine Comedy
Question’s Answer: Dante’s Divine Comedy
Who wrote the book Piers Plowman?
(A) William Langland
(B) Margery Kempe
(C) Sir Thomas Malory
(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
(C) the short story
(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
(C) She was a virgin martyr
(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
(C) William Langland
(D) Margery Kempe
Question’s Answer: Sir Thomas Malory
Who introduced the art of printing into En- gland?
(A) Elizabeth Eisenstein
(B) Johannes Gutenberg
(C) William Caxton
(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
(C) the reign of King Arthur
(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
(C) Thomas More’s Utopia
(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
(C) the brutal punishment for printing without a license
(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
(C) George Puttenham
(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.
(C) It was conducted by tutors in wealth families or in grammar schools.
(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
(C) pride for the vernacular language
(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
(C) Protestantism
(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
(C) Martin Luther
(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
(C) a defensive power whereby poetry and its figurative expressions allow the poet to avoid censorship
(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
(C) wine bars
(D) graffiti
Question’s Answer: bookshops
Who owned the rights to a theatrical script?
(A) the playwright(s)
(B) the acting company
(C) the printer
(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
(C) mysteries
(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
(C) heroic 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
(C) unrhymed iambic pentameter
(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
(C) The seating structure was tiered, with placement correlating to ticket cost
(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.
(C) They excited illicit sexual desires.
(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
(C) Francis Bacon
(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
(C) Pope’s Dunciad
(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
(C) the Welsh and the Scots
(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
(C) choler
(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
(C) Aemilia Lanyer
(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.
(C) Books could be recalled and burned on the basis of anonymous complaints.
(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
(C) the Petrarchan sonnet
(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
(C) The Tempest
(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”
(C) The Apparition”
(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
(C) the intimate essay
(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
(C) Lady Mary Wroth
(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
(C) the Quakers
(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
(C) the adoption of English as the official language
(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
(C) loyalty to the king
(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
(C) celebrations of religious ecstasy and divine inspiration
(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
(C) The Advancement of Learning
(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
(C) celebrating Cromwell’s victories whilst inviting sympathy for the executed king
(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
(C) the restoration of the monarchy
(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
(C) John Skelton
(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
(C) The Divine Comedy
(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.
(C) All knowledge is derived from experience.
(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
(C) abstract logical deductions
(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
(C) William Hogarth
(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
(C) condemnation of his work by Jeremy Collier
(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
(C) fun
(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
(C) Anne Finch, Anne Killigrew, and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
(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
(C) Romantic
(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
(C) the epistolary novel
(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
(C) Matthew Lewis’s The Monk
(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.
(C) Art should hold a mirror up to nature.
(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
(C) alcohol
(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
(C) naturalism
(D) gusto
Question’s Answer: wit
Which was probably not a stock phrase in eighteenth-century poetry?
(A) checkered shade
(B) bounding main
(C) shining sword
(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
(C) the heroic couplet
(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
(C) Equiano
(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
(C) Behn’s The Rover
(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
(C) the bluestockings
(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
(C) Samuel Richardson’s Clarissa
(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
(C) a book of devotion
(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
(C) Decameron
(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”
(C) Richardso7n
(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
(C) the storming of the Bastille
(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
(C) “The Satanic School” of Byron, Percy Shelley, and their followers
(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
(C) Mary Wollstonecraft and William Blake
(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
(C) minstrel
(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
(C) Horace Walpole’s Castle of Otranto
(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
(C) the expansion of female characters
(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
(C) the Orientalist fantasies of Samuel Taylor Coleridge
(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
(C) the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings
(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
(C) meta-novel
(D) medieval romance
Question’s Answer: Gothic fiction
Which was a typically Ro mantic means of achieving visionary states?
(A) opium
(B) dreams
(C) childhood
(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
(C) Godwin’s Enquiry Concerning Political Justice
(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.
(C) Aristotle
(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
(C) Napoleon
(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
(C) The notoriety of the “Lake School”
(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
(C) The Edinburgh Review
(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.
(C) The play was spoken.
(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
(C) Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Remorse
(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.
(C) It lacked the classical pedigree of poetry and drama.
(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
(C) Mary Shelley and Percy Bysshe Shelley
(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
(C) the aubade
(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)
(C) Robert Burns
(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
(C) Thomas De Quincey
(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.
(C) Britain’s preeminence as a global power will depend on mastery of foreign languages.
(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
(C) the prudishness and old-fashioned ideals of her fellow Victorians
(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
(C) England and Ireland
(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
(C) John Ruskin
(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
(C) the British need to improve technology and transportation in other parts of 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.
(C) The Victorians were strongly influenced by the Romantics and experi- enced a sense of belatedness.
(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
(C) all of the above
(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
(C) the lyric
(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.
(C) a critical methodology stating that all words have a single meaningful function within a given piece of literature
(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
(C) Scientific Bibliology
(D) New Historicism:
Question’s Answer: Higher Criticism
Which authors promoted versions of socialism?
(A) William Morris
(B) John Ruskin
(C) Edward FitzGerald
(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
(C) paranoid introspection and cryptic dissent
(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.
(C) They were women writers who wrote frequently about similar topics.
(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
(C) Elizabeth Barrett Browning
(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
(C) the attempt of a protagonist to define his or her place in society
(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.
(C) It often concerned the domestic world with which women were familiar.
(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
(C) late-nineteenth-century and early-twentieth-century satirical drama
(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
(C) Robert Corrigan
(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
(C) art for intellect’s sake
(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
(C) a popular thirst for the “classics,” driv- ing contemporary writers to the margins
(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
(C) The Way of All Flesh
(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
(C) phrenology
(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
(C) Evelyn Waugh
(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
(C) Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness
(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
(C) Immanuel Kant
(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
(C) its uncompromising engagement with politics
(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
(C) popular; reverenced
(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
(C) Philip Larkin
(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
(C) Oscar Wilde
(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
(C) total recall
(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
(C) irresolute open endings
(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
(C) EM. “A Passage to India”, A Novel by E. M. Forster
(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
(C) Salman Rushdie
(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
(C) 2000
(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
(C) the Abbey 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
(C) witty paradoxes and feminist diatribe
(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
(C) happens-twice
(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
(C) Sir Philip Sidney
(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
(C) John Heywood-The Four Ps
(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
(C) Thomas Lodge
(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
(C) 1970s
(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
(C) the collapse of liberal humanist consensus in the late 1960s
(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.
(C) Regional radio and television stations appeared throughout the country.
(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
(C) novels
(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
(C) One-English only
(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
(C) Polonius
(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
(C) Kilcolman
(D) Harvey House
Question’s Answer: Kilcolman
William William Shakespeare was born on
(A) 26 April 1563
(B) 23 April 1563
(C) 23 April 1564
(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
(C) The Pour Ps
(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
(C) Cali ban in The Tempest
(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
(C) Thomas Nash
(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
(C) Fournier
(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)
(C) Cordelier in King Lear (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
(C) Fournier and Webster
(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
(C) There were no dramatists left after Ben Jonson
(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
(C) 1570
(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
(C) Antony and Cleopatra
(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
(C) Prothalamion
(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
(C) Henry VIII
(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
(C) Tragic-comedy
(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
(C) Bread Street Tavern
(D) Mermaid Tavern
Question’s Answer: Mermaid Tavern
Who wrote the book England from Noah to Elizabeth?
(A) William Warner
(B) Michael Drayton
(C) Daniel
(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
(C) The Jew of Malta
(D) Dido
Question’s Answer: The Jew of Malta
How many books are contained in The Shepherd’s Calendar?
(A) 11
(B) 10
(C) 7
(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
(C) Shepherd Queen Lisa
(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
(C) Amoretti
(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
(C) 1552-1599
(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
(C) Lyly
(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
(C) Harvey
(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
(C) His daughter
(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
(C) 37
(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
(C) The Merchant of Venice
(D) Sonnets
Question’s Answer: Venus and Adonis
Name the theatre in which William Shakespeare had shares.
(A) The Universe
(B) The Theatre
(C) The Black friars
(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
(C) Modem Painters
(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
(C) Milton
(D) Earl of Surrey
Question’s Answer: Earl of Surrey
The epigraph of The Waste Land is borrowed from?
(A) Virgil
(B) Homer
(C) Seneca
(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
(C) Plutarch Lives
(D) Holinshed’s Chronicles
Question’s Answer: Holinshed’s Chronicles
How many sonnets has William Shakespeare written in toot?
(A) 150
(B) 130
(C) 120
(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
(C) Jack of Newbury by Delaney
(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
(C) Measure for Measure
(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
(C) The Tempest
(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
(C) John Webster
(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
(C) Poetaster
(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
(C) Drayton
(D) Daniel
Question’s Answer: Raleigh
Philoclea and Pamela in The Arcadia’ are the daughters of
(A) Basilisk
(B) Proclus
(C) Musidorus
(D) Earaches
Question’s Answer: Basilisk
Tennyson’s poem ‘In Memoriam was written in memory of?
(A) Wellington
(B) Edward King
(C) A.H. Hallam
(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
(C) I. A. Richards
(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
(C) Laforgue
(D) Dante
Question’s Answer: Dante
Which myths does not fig- ure in The Waste Land?
(A) Oedipus
(B) Grail Legend of Fisher King
(C) Sysyphus
(D) Philomela
Question’s Answer: Sysyphus
Joe Gargery is Pip’s?
(A) guardian
(B) brother-in-Jaw
(C) brother
(D) cousin
Question’s Answer: guardian
Estella is the daughter of?
(A) Abel Magwitch
(B) Joe Gargery
(C) Miss Havisham
(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
(C) Fors Clavigera
(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
(C) sensual
(D) erotic
Question’s Answer: erotic
Which novels has the subtitle ‘A Novel Without a Hero’?
(A) Wuthering Heights
(B) Middlemarch
(C) Vanity Fair
(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
(C) Zeus
(D) Hercules
Question’s Answer: Bacchus
Graham Greene’s novels are marked by?
(A) Paganism
(B) Protestantism
(C) Catholicism
(D) Buddhism
Question’s Answer: Catholicism
One important feature of Jane Austen’s style is?
(A) boisterous humour
(B) stream of consciousness
(C) subtlety of irony
(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
(C) The Bible
(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
(C) Satan
(D) Eve
Question’s Answer: Satan
In Sons and Lovers, Paul Morel’s mother’s name is?
(A) Susan
(B) Jane
(C) Emily
(D) Gertrude
Question’s Answer: Gertrude
The twins in Lord of the Flies are?
(A) Ralph and Eric
(8) Simon and Eric
(C) Ralph and Jack
(D) Simon and Jack
Question’s Answer: Ralph and Jack
Mr. Jaggers, in Great Expectations, is a
(A) postman
(B) lawyer
(C) Judge
(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
(C) Smyrna Merchant
(D) Tiresias
Question’s Answer: Augustine
Who invented the term ‘Sprung rhythm”?
(A) Wordsworth
(B) Tennyson
(C) Browning
(D) Hopkins
Question’s Answer: Hopkins
Who wrote the poem ‘Defence of Lucknow’?
(A) Browning
(B) Tennyson
(C) Rossetti
(D) Swinburne
Question’s Answer: Swinburne
Which plays of William Shakespeare has an epilogue?
(A) Henry IV, PtI
(B) The Tempest
(C) Hamlet
(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!
(C) Act IV, Scene III
(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
(C) Alonso
(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
(C) Or, What you Like It
(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
(C) Hamlet
(D) Twelfth Night
Question’s Answer: Hamlet
Shelley’s Adonais is an elegy on the death of?
(A) Milton
(B) Samuel Taylor Coleridge
(C) Johnson
(D) John Keats
Question’s Answer: John Keats
Which is the first novel of David Herbert Lawrence?
(A) Sons and Lovers
(B) The Trespasser
(C) The White Peacock
(D) Women in Love
Question’s Answer: The White Peacock
In the poem Tintern Abbey, ‘dearest friend” refers to?
(A) Nature
(B) Wye
(C) Samuel Taylor Coleridge
(D) Dorothy
Question’s Answer: Dorothy
Who is Thomas Percy in Henry IV, Pt I?
(A) Earl of Douglas
(B) Earl of March
(C) Earl of Northumberland
(D) Earl of Worcester
Question’s Answer: Earl of Northumberland
Paradise Lost was originally written in?
(A) ten books
(B) eight books
(C) nine books
(D) eleven books
Question’s Answer: eight books
In Pride and Prejudice, Lydia elopes with?
(A) Darcy
(B) William Collins
(C) Wickham
(D) Charles Bingley
Question’s Answer: Wickham
Who coined the phrase ‘Egotistical Sublime”?
(A) William Wordsworth
(B) P. B. Shelley
(C) John Keats (English poet of the second generation of Romantic poets)
(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
(C) Philip Pirrip
(D) Philips Pirip
Question’s Answer: Philip Pip
The novel The Power and the Glory is set in?
(A) Germany
(B) Italy
(C) France
(D) Mexico
Question’s Answer: Mexico
Which is Golding’s first novel?
(A) The Inheritors
(B) Pyramid
(C) Pincher Martin
(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
(C) Mrs. Morel
(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
(C) Jane Austen
(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
(C) Shelley
(D) Byron
Question’s Answer: Wordsworth
Which poems of Samuel Taylor Coleridge is a ballad?
(A) Work Without Hope
(B) Frost at Midnight
(C) Youth and Age
(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)
(C) William Hazlitt (English essayist)
(D) Percy Bysshe Shelley
Question’s Answer: Percy Bysshe Shelley
John Keats’s Endymion is dedicated to?
(A) Leigh Hunt
(B) Milton
(C) William Shakespeare
(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
(C) 1834
(D) 1826
Question’s Answer: 1833
Which poets does not belong to the ‘Lake School’?
(A) Robert Southey
(B) Samuel Taylor Coleridge
(C) Wordsworth
(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
(C) Leigh Hunt
(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
(C) Let me not to the marriage of correct minds
(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
(C) Solan
(D) Sappho
Question’s Answer: Lord Byron
Which kind of poem is Edward Lear linked with?
(A) Nature
(B) Epics
(C) Nonsense
(D) Sonnets
Question’s Answer: Nonsense
A poem that tells a story with plot,setting,and characters
(A) narrative
(B) free verse
(C) lyric
(D) ode
Question’s Answer: narrative
A poem with no meter or rhyme
(A) lyric
(B) ode
(C) narrative
(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
(C) Market
(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
(C) John Greenleaf Whittier
(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
(C) She never attempted to publish her poetry
(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
(C) Korean 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
(C) Jessica Hagdom
(D) Micheal Palmer
Question’s Answer: Maya Angelou
Who wrote about the idyllic ‘Isle of Innisfree?
(A) W. B. Yeats
(B) Ezra Pound
(C) Dylan Thomas
(D) E. E. Cummings
Question’s Answer: W. B. Yeats
The repetition of similar ending sounds is ___ .
(A) alliteration
(B) onomatopoeia
(C) assonance
(D) rhyme
Question’s Answer: rhyme
Applying human qualities to non-human things
(A) alliteration
(B) onomatopoeia
(C) personification
(D) inversion
Question’s Answer: personification
The repetition of beginning consonant sounds is _______.
(A) rhyme
(B) onomatopoeia
(C) assonance
(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
(C) metaphor
(D) analogy
Question’s Answer: metaphor
Using “like” or “as” to compare two things that are not alike
(A) simile
(B) metaphor
(C) personification
(D) analogy
Question’s Answer: simile
Using words or letters to imitate sounds
(A) alliteration
(B) simile
(C) onomatopoeia
(D) phonetics
Question’s Answer: onomatopoeia
A description that attracts to one of the five senses is the _________.
(A) visualization
(B) personification
(C) metaphor
(D) imagery
Question’s Answer: imagery
A poem that has meter and rhyme is ___.
(A) narrative
(B) free verse
(C) lyric
(D) ode
Question’s Answer: lyric
Carl Sandburg (American poet) ‘Planked whitefish having what kind of imagery?
(A) War
(B) Rural Idyll
(C) Sea scenes
(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
(C) Marianne Moore (American poet)
(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
(C) Glory
(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
(C) Grammar
(D) Rhyme
Question’s Answer: Grammar
What is the earliest surviving European poem?
(A) The Gilgamesh epic
(B) The Homeric epic
(C) The Deluge epic
(D) The Hesiodic ode
Question’s Answer: The Homeric epic
Which is not a poetic tradition?
(B) The Comic
(A) The Occult
(C) The Epic
(D) The Tragic
Question’s Answer: The Occult
What is the study of poetry’s meter and form called?
(A) Rheumatology
(B) Potology
(C) Prosody
(D) Scansion
Question’s Answer: Prosody
Who wrote “The Hound of the Baskervilles” ?
(A) Agatha Christie
(B) Arthur Conan Doyle
(C) PD James
(D) HRyder-Haggard
Question’s Answer: Arthur Conan Doyle
William William Shakespeare is not the author of:
(A) Titus Andronicus
(B) White Devil
(C) Taming of the Shrew
(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
(C) Dactylic hexameter
(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
(C) William Carlos Williams
(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
(C) Charlotte Bronte
(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
(C) The 17th
(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
(C) Othello
(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
(C) Epic
(D) Haiku
Question’s Answer: Acrostic
Auld Lang Syne is a famous poem by whom?
(A) Sir Walter Scott
(B) Robert Burns
(C) Henry Longfellow
(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
(C) One of the leading prairie poets
(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
(C) The 1920’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
(C) Impressionistic
(D) Both (A) & (C)
Question’s Answer: Both (A) & (C)
“Under Milk Wood” was written by _____.
(A) Anthony Hopkins
(B) Dylan Thomas
(C) Tom Jones
(D) Richard Burton
Question’s Answer: Dylan Thomas
Who wrote Canterbury Tales?
(A) Thomas Lancaster
(B) Dick Whittington
(C) Geoffrey Chaucer
(D) King Richard II
Question’s Answer: Geoffrey Chaucer
______is a late 20th century play written by a woman?
(A) Queen Cristina
(B) Camille
(C) Top Girls
(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
(C) William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Samuel Taylor Coleridge
(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
(C) Irvine Welsh
(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
(C) To hope
(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
(C) P. B. Shelley
(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.
(C) The snow was white as cotton.
(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
(C) Alliteration
(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
(C) Paradise Regained
(D) Divorce Tracts
Question’s Answer: Paradise Lost
Which is not a William Shakespeare tragedy?
(A) Titus Andronicus
(B) Othello
(C) Macbeth
(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
(C) Marlowe
(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.
(C) A simile must use animals in the com- parison.
(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
(C) haiku
(D) metaphor
Question’s Answer: pun
Which denotes an example of alliteration?
(A) Language Arts
(B) I like music.
(C) Peter Piper Picked Peppers
(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
(C) Alliteration
(D) Personification
Question’s Answer: Onomatopoeia
The theme is …??
(A) a plot
(B) the point a writer is trying to make about a subject.
(C) an address
(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
(C) characters, main idea, and theme
(D) rhyme and reason
Question’s Answer: theme, purpose, form, and mood
Which is not a poetry form?
(A) epic
(B) sonnet
(C) ballad
(D) tale
Question’s Answer: tale
Which is not a poet?
(A) William William Shakespeare
(B) Elizabeth B. Browning
(C) Terry Saylor
(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
(C) William Wordsworth
(D) Dylan Thomas
Question’s Answer: Dylan Thomas
What is a sonnet?
(A) A poem of six lines
(B) A poem of fourteen lines
(C) A poem of twelve 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
(C) Scansion
(D) Prosody
Question’s Answer: Prosody
Funny poem of five lines is called as ________.
(A) Quartet
(B) Sextet
(C) Limerick
(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
(C) A game of knowledge
(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
(C) Hyperbole
(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
(C) Euphemism
(D) Irony
Question’s Answer: Synecdoche
Which culture is known for their long, rhymic poetic known as Qasidas?
(A) Hindu
(B) Arabic
(C) Celtic
(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
(C) Worries
(D) Troubles
Question’s Answer: Impediments
Which is a Japanese poetic form?
(A) Tanka
(B) Villanelle
(C) Ode
(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
(C) Relaxation
(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
(C) William Morris
(D) William Blake
Question’s Answer: William Wordsworth
What kind of poetry was written by Sassoon and Brooke?
(A) War poems
(B) Romantic
(C) Political satire
(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
(C) Carolyn Kizer
(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
(C) A stage play
(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
(C) People of 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
(C) Owner convicted of fraud
(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
(C) Politician
(D) Architect
Question’s Answer: Novelist
Ladies Coupe is a novel by.
(A) Amrita Pritam
(B) Jhumpa Lahiri
(C) Anita Nair
(D) Anita Desai
Question’s Answer: Anita Nair
Whom does Dryden’s Eugenius take up the case for?
(A) the French
(B) the Medievals
(C) the Ancients
(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
(C) Cummings
(D) Kipling
Question’s Answer: Kipling
“The Everlasting Yea” is linked with which of the following?
(A) Carlyle
(B) Browning
(C) Ruskin
(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
(C) Enobarbus in Antony and Cleopatra
(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
(C) Walter Pater
(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
(C) Russel
(D) Epicure
Question’s Answer: Omar Khayyam
Kunstleroman is a novel on the development of
(A) an individual
(B) a woman
(C) a thief
(D) an artist
Question’s Answer: an artist
The Georgian poets are called after______
(A) George V
(B) George IV
(C) George VI
(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
(C) Cleanth Brooks
(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
(C) Lockhart
(D) Arnold
Question’s Answer: Arnold
Who criticized Paradise Lost for its lack of human interest?
(A) Pope
(B) Arnold
(C) Johnson
(D) Eliot
Question’s Answer: Johnson
Asolando was the creation of______
(A) Browning
(B) Scott
(C) Shelley
(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
(C) Lady Chatterley’s Lover
(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
(C) Volpone
(D) The Alchemist
Question’s Answer: The Silent Woman
The Gunny Sack was the creation of______
(A) Rohinton Mistry
(B) Vikram Seth
(C) VS. Naipaul
(D) M.G. Vassanji
Question’s Answer: M.G. Vassanji
Eric Blair wrote under the pen name______
(A) George Orwell
(B) William Golding
(C) Oscar Wilde
(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
(C) F. Scott Fitzgerald
(D) Ernest Hemingway
Question’s Answer: Henry James
Name Salman Rushdie’s latest Novel.
(A) The Moor’s Last Sigh
(B) Satonic Verses
(C) The Ground beneath Her Feet
(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
(C) Vena Chitale’s In Transit
(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
(C) Jan Mukarovsky
(D) Viktor Shklovsky
Question’s Answer: Viktor Shklovsky
Who introduced Rabindranath Tagore to European readers?
(A) T.S. Eliot
(B) W.B. Yeats
(C) Ezra Pound
(D) Harold Bloom
Question’s Answer: W.B. Yeats
Who wrote “A Tale of a Tub?”
(A) Dickens
(B) Defoe
(C) Hardy
(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
(C) New Criticism
(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
(C) W.B. Yeats
(D) Philip larkin
Question’s Answer: W.B. Yeats
Who wrote the book Raj?
(A) Shobha De
(B) Rama Mehta
(C) Geeta 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
(C) Udaipur
(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
(C) Toru Dutt
(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
(C) P.Lai
(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’
(C) ‘Night of the Scorpion’
(D) ‘Philosophy’
Question’s Answer: ‘Night of the Scorpion
Who wrote the book Two Virgins?
(A) Kamala Markandaya
(B) Shastri Deshpande
(C) Anita Desai
(D) Kamala Das
Question’s Answer: Kamala Markandaya
Name the Indo-English novelist who wrote A Suitable Boy.
(A) Amitav Ghose
(B) Vikram Seth
(C) Upamanyu Chatterjee
(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
(C) Dom Moraes
(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
(C) Shadow from Ladakh
(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
(C) Bachelor of Arts
(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
(C) Daisy
(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
(C) Raja Rao
(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
(C) Rabindra Nath Tagore
(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’
(C) Toru Dutt
(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
(C) Bankim Chandra Chatterjee
(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
(C) Village by the Sea
(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
(C) Keki N. Daruwala
(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
(C) Voices in The City
(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
(C) Two Leaves and a Bud
(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
(C) Raja Rao
(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
(C) Coffer Dam
(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
(C) The Bending Vine
(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
(C) Mulk Raj Anand
(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
(C) Swami Vivekanand
(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
(C) 30,000
(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
(C) Gandhari
(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
(C) Govind 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
(C) Henry Derozio
(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
(C) Romesh Chander Dutt
(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
(C) Bianca
(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
(C) Savitri-A Poem in Three Parts
(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
(C) Swami Ramakrishna Paramhans
(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
(C) Manohar Malgaonkar
(D) Upamanyu Chatterjee
Question’s Answer: Ruskin Bond
Whose autobiography is entitled My Father’s Son?
(A) Nirad Chaudhury
(B) Frank Moraes
(C) Dom 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
(C) Untouchable
(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
(C) Nirad C.Chaudhary
(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
(C) The Serpent And The Rope
(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
(C) King Arthur of the Holy Grail
(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
(C) Aurobindo Ghose
(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
(C) Pulitzer Prizes in Literature and Bedford Prize 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
(C) Humayun Kabir
(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
(C) R.K. Narayan
(D) Manohar Malgaonkar
Question’s Answer: Manohar Malgaonkar
Which novel tells the Bengal famine?
(A) A Time to be Happy
(B) A Handful of
(C) So Many Hungers
(D) Athawar House
Question’s Answer: So Many Hungers
Who wrote Ilion?
(A) Virgil
(B) Homer
(C) Aurobindo
(D) Rabindra Nath Tagore
Question’s Answer: Aurobindo
Who wrote the book Love of Dust?
(A) Ruth P. Jhabvala
(B) Humayun Kabir
(C) K.S. Venkataramani
(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
(C) William James
(D) T.S. Eliot
Question’s Answer: William James
“Milton” is a symbolic poem by______.
(A) Yeats
(B) Gray
(C) Blake
(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
(C) Petals of Blood
(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
(C) The Mahabharata
(D) Panchatantra
Question’s Answer: The Mahabharata
The rhyme scheme of a Spenserian stanza is_______.
(A) abbcabbcc
(B) ababbcbcd
(C) abbaabbaa
(D) ababbebec
Question’s Answer: ababbebec
Who called Kyd “Sporting Kyd”?
(A) Dr. Johnson
(B) Ben Jonson
(C) T.S. Eliot
(D) Dryden
Question’s Answer: Ben Jonson
Angry Young Man is the autobiography of_______.
(A) John Osborne
(B) Kingsley Amis
(C) Leslie Paul
(D) John Wain
Question’s Answer: Leslie Paul
Caesar and Cleopatra is a play by______.
(A) William Shakespeare
(B) Dryden
(C) Bernard Shaw
(D) Drinkwater
Question’s Answer: Bernard Shaw
Esemplastic in Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s theory refers to______.
(A) shaping power
(B) flexible
(C) fancy
(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
(C) Dylan Thomas
(D) Robert Graves
Question’s Answer: Dylan Thomas
The setting of Hardy’s The Dynasts is______.
(A) Napoleanic wars
(B) Spanish Civil War
(C) World War I
(D) American Civil War
Question’s Answer: Napoleanic wars
Who wrote the verse drama Becket?
(A) Oscar Wilde
(B) Osborne
(C) Tennyson
(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
(C) Shelley’s A Defence of Poetry
(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
(C) Tennyson
(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
(C) The White Devil
(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
(C) Euphemism
(D) Personification
Question’s Answer: Simile
Existentialism in its religious aspect goes back to______.
(A) Sartre
(B) Camus
(C) Kierkegaard
(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
(C) Galsworthy
(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
(C) The adventures of the Knight of Temperance
(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
(C) Homer
(D) Bede
Question’s Answer: Boethius
Which classical writer was Pope’s Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot modelled on?
(A) Homer
(B) Theophrastus
(C) Boccaccio
(D) Horace
Question’s Answer: Horace
Who was the founder editor of the periodical “The Examiner”?
(A) Johnson
(B) Lockhart
(C) Leigh Hunt
(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
(C) Beowulf
(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
(C) Richard Marriot
(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
(C) Heroic Couplet
(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
(C) he writes for the court and cultivated classes and neglects the suffering of the poor
(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
(C) Both A and B
(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
(C) T.S.Eliot
(D) Sylvia Plath (American poet)
Question’s Answer: Ezra Pound
Marlowe’s tragedies are:
(A) one-man tragedies
(B) love tragedies
(C) tragedies of noble men
(D) revenge plays
Question’s Answer: one-man tragedies
Who coined the phrase, “Marlowe’s mighty line?
(A) Richard Steele
(B) Samuel Johnson
(C) OR.L.Stevenson
(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
(C) the West-Midland
(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
(C) Allegory was frequent and usual
(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
(C) George Orwell
(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’
(C) Milton about ‘Paradise Lost’
(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
(C) Robinson Crusoe Friday-Colonialism
(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
(C) Henry Bailey and Davenant
(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
(C) the word ‘testament’ means words of God
(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
(C) Jesus Christ is the author of The New Testament
(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
(C) Addison and Steel
(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
(C) Jude the Obscure
(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
(C) Achillies knew that the army was very strong
(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
(C) Helen was carried off by Paris
(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
(C) in ignorance of his parentage, Oedipus slew Lais, his father and happily married his mother, Jocasta
(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
(C) the houses are built without any planning
(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
(C) England was Napoleon’s enemy
(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
(C) man falls but is capable of arising
(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
(C) the belief that a wild duck can never be tamed or caged
(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
(C) a state should perish but never adopt unfair means even though
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
(C) Monsieur Marechal has pass away and has left all his money to jean
(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
(C) his younger brother Jean was conspiring to kill his
(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
(C) Christy was engaged to Pegeen
(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
(C) The Divine Comedy is a mock epic presenting the war between man and woman
(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
(C) the sons join other ways of livelihood and lose contact with reality
(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
(C) it tells of Humbert seducing his own step daughter
(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
(C) it deals with woman emancipation
(D) new-world order
Question’s Answer: Nora awakens to her responsibility and leaves her husband to be herself
English literature MCQs
Famous English Authors MCQs
- William Wordsworth MCQs
- William Shakespeare MCQs
- Robert Browning MCQs
- W B Yeats MCQs
- Edmund Spenser MCQs
- Chaucer MCQs
- John Milton MCQs
- S T Coleridge MCQs
- Lord Byron MCQs
- PB Shelley MCQs
- John Dryden MCQs
- John Keats MCQs
- Charles Dicken MCQs
- Alfred Lord Tennyson MCQs
- Charles Lamb MCQs
- D.H Lawrence MCQs
- Thomas Hardy MCQs
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- John Galsworthy MCQs
- George Bernard Shaw MCQs
- T.S Eliot MCQs
- Ben Jonson MCQs
- Francis Bacon MCQs
- Alexander Pope MCQs
- Oliver Goldsmith MCQs
- Joseph Addison MCQs
- Dr Samuel Johnson MCQs
- Henry Fielding MCQs
- Sir Walter Scott MCQs
- Jane Austen MCQs
- Dr. Samuel Johnson MCQs
- English Comedy MCQs (Oliver Goldsmith)
- Alexander Pope MCQs (Neo-Classical Age of English Poetry)
- Daniel Defoe MCQs
- Dr. Jonathan Swift MCQs
- Richard Steele MCQs
- English Drama MCQs
- Elizabethan Drama MCQs [14th to 17th century]
- Elizabethan Prose MCQs
More English Literature MCQs
- English Poetry MCQs
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- Sentimental Novels MCQs
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- Legends Of English Literature MCQs
- English Literature Important Multiple Choice Questions Answers
- Sons And Lovers by D H Lawrence MCQs
- The Waste Land, A Poem by T. S. Eliot MCQs
- Drama Origin MCQs
- English Pros MCQs
- Non-Dramtic Poets Of The Elizabethan Age MCQs
- The Cavalier Poets of 17th-century MCQs
- Metaphysical Poets of 17th century MCQs
- Renaissance Period of 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries MCQs
- Puritan Poet MCQs
- Restoration Comedy by William Congreve & Wycherley MCQs
- Satire MCQs – Renaissance Period by John Dryden
- English Essayists MCQs
- Romantic Period of Romantic Poets MCQs
- English language MCQs
- English Humour MCQs [American Literature]
- Early Writers of American Literature MCQs
- History of American Literature MCQs
- American Prose MCQs [English Realism ]
- American English Critics
- New Englanders Authors MCQs
- MCQs on American Literature After Independence
- American Playwrights MCQs
- New American Poetry MCQs
- British English Critics MCQs
- Ancient English literature MCQs
- Important English Literature MCQs for Public Service Commission
- English Literature Repeated Important MCQs
- CSS English Literature MCQs
- History of Early Period MCQs
- The Anglo-Saxon period MCQs
- The Age of Chaucer in the Early Period MCQs
- The Anglo-Norman Period of French Writers MCQs
- Metrical Romances MCQ (Anglo-Saxon Period)
- Revival of Learning MCQs (1400-1550)
- Applied Linguistics MCQs
- Language Change MCQs