MCQs of English literature

Multiple Choice Questions

1. Which poem ends ‘I shall but love thee better after death’?
a. How do I love thee
b. Ode to a Grecian urn
c. In faith I do not love thee with mine eyes
d. Let me not to the marriage of true minds

2. Which poet is considered a national hero in Greece?
a. John keats
b. Lord Byron
c. Solan
d. Sappho

3. Which kind of poem is Edward Lear associated with?
a. Nature
b. Epics
c. Sonnets
d. Nonsense

4. In coleridge’s poem ‘The rime of the Ancient Mariner’where were the three gallants going?
a. A funeral
b. A wedding
c. Market
d. To the races

5. Harold Nicholson described which poet as ‘Very yellow and glum. Perfect manners’?
a. e. e. Cummings
b. T. S. Elliot
c. John Greenleaf Whittier
d. Walt Whitman

6. What was strange about Emily Dickinson?
a. She rarely left home
b. She wrote in code
c. She never attempted to publish her poetry
d. She wrote her poems in invisible ink

7. Rupert Brooke wrote his poetry during which conflict?
a. Boer War
b. Second World War
c. Korean War
d. First World War

8. Which Poet Laureate wrote about a church mouse?
a. Betjeman
b. Hughes
c. Marvel
d. Larkin

9. Which American writer published ‘A brave and startling truth’ in 1996
a. Robert Hass
b. Jessica Hagdorn
c. Maya Angelou
d. Micheal Palmer

10. Who wrote about the idyllic ‘Isle of Innisfree’?
a. Dylan Thomas
b. Ezra Pound
c. W. B. Yeats
d. e. e. cummings

11. A pattern of accented and unaccented syllables in lines of poetry

1. rhyme scheme
2. meter
3. alliteration

12. The repetition of similar ending sounds

1. alliteration
2. onomatopoiea
3. rhyme

13. Applying human qualities to non-human things

1. personification
2. onomatopoeia
3. alliteration

14. The repetition of beginning consonant sounds

1. rhyme
2. onomatopoeia
3. alliteration

15. A comparison of unlike things without using a word of comparison such as like or as

1. metaphor
2. simile
3. personification

16. The comparison of unlike things using the words like or as

1. metaphor
2. simile
3. personification

17. Using words or letters to imitate sounds

1. alliteration
2. simile
3. onomatopoeia

18. a description that appeals to one of the five senses

1. imagery
2. personification
3. metaphor

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

1. lyric
2. free verse
3. narrative

20. A poem with no meter or rhyme

1. lyric
2. free verse
3. narrative

21. A poem that generally has meter and rhyme

1. lyric
2. free verse
3. narrative 

22. Sylvia Plath married which English poet?
a. Masefield
b. Causley
c. Hughes
d. Larkin

23. Carl Sandburg ‘Planked whitefish’ contains what kind of imagery?
a. Sea scenes
b. Rural Idyll
c. War
d. Innocent childhood

24. Which influential American poet was born in Long Island in 1819?
a. Emily Dickinson
b. Paul Dunbar
c. John Greenleaf Whittier
d. Walt Whitman

25. In 1960 ‘The Colossus’ was the first book of poems published by which poetess?
a. Elizabeth Bishop
b. Sylvia Plath
c. Marianne Moore
d. Laura Jackson

26. In his poem Kipling said ‘If you can meet with triumph and . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ‘?
a. Glory
b. Ruin
c. Disaster
d. victory

27. Which of the following is not a literary device used for aesthetic effect in poetry?
a. Assonance
b. Onomatopaea
c. Rhyme
d. Grammar

28. True or false: Writing predates poetry.
a. True
b. False

29. What is the earliest surviving European poem?
a. The Homeric epic
b. The Gilgamesh epic
c. The Deluge epic
d. The Hesiodic ode

30. Which of the following is not a poetic tradition?
a. The Epic
b. The Comic
c. The Occult
d. The Tragic

31. What is the study of poetry’s meter and form called?
a. Prosody
b. Potology
c. Rheumatology
d. Scansion

32. Shakespeare composed much of his plays in what sort of verse?
a. Alliterative verse
b. Sonnet form
c. Iambic pentameter
d. Dactylic hexameter

33. Which poet invented the concept of the variable foot in poetry?
a. William Carlos Williams
b. Emily Dickinson
c. Gerard Manly Hopkins
d. Robert Frost

34. Who wrote this famous line: ‘Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day/ Thou art more lovely and more temperate…’
a. TS Eliot
b. Lord Tennyson
c. Charlotte Bronte
d. Shakespeare

35. From what century does the poetic form the folk ballad date?
a. The 12th
b. The 14th
c. The 17th
d. The 19th

36. From which of Shakespeare’s plays is this famous line: ‘Did my heart love til now?/ Forswear it, sight/ For I never saw a true beauty until this night’
a. A Midsummer Night’s Dream
b. Hamlet
c. Othello
d. Romeo and Juliet

37. What is a poem called whose first letters of each line spell out a word?
a. Alliterative
b. Epic
c. Acrostic
d. Haiku

38. Auld Lang Syne is a famous poem by whom?
a. Sir Walter Scott
b. William Butler Yeats
c. Henry Longfellow
d. Robert Burns

39. How has Stephen Dunn been described in ‘the Oxford Companion to 20th Century Poetry?
a. A poet of middleness
b. Capturing a sense of spiritual marooness
c. One of the leading prairie poets
d. Has some distinction as a critic

40. ‘The Cambridge school’ refers to a group who emerged when?
a. The 1900′s
b. The 1960′s
c. The 1920′s
d. The 1930′s

41. Margaret Atwood was born in which Canadian city?
a. Vancouver
b. Toronto
c. Ottowa
d. Montreal
42. Which of the following words describe the prevailing attitude of High-Modern Literature?
a.Skeptical
b.Authoritative
c.Impressionistic
d.Confident
e.Both a & c

43. Which Welsh poet wrote “Under Milk Wood?”
a.Anthony Hopkins
b.Richard Burton
c.Tom Jones
d.Dylan Thomas

44. Who wrote Canterbury Tales?
a.Geoffrey Chaucer
b.Dick Whittington
c.Thomas Lancaster
d.King Richard II

45. Who wrote “The Hound of the Baskervilles?”
a.Agatha Christie
b.H Ryder-Haggard
c.P D James
d.Arthur Conan Doyle

46. Wlliam Shakespeare is not the author of:
a.Titus Andronicus
b.Taming of the Shrew
c.White Devil
d.Hamlet

47. ___________is a late 20th century play written by a woman?
a.Queen Cristina
b.Top Girls
c.Camille
d.The Homecoimg

48. Which of the following writers wrote historical novels?
a.Jane Austen and Charlotte Bronte
b.Sir Walter Scott and Maria Edgeworth
c.William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge
d.Mary Shelley and Percy Bysshe Shelley

49. Who wrote “Ten Little Niggers?”
a.Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
b.Irvine Welsh
c.Agatha Christie
d.None of above

50. Which of the following are Thomas Hardy books?
a.The Poor Man and the Lady
b.The Return of Native
c.Chollttee
d.None of the above

51. Which of the following is not a work of John Keats?
a.Endymion
b.To some ladies
c.To hope
d.None of above

52. Who wrote the poems, “On death” and “Women, Wine, and Snuff?”
a.John Milton
b.John Keats
c.P.B. Shelley
d.William Wordsworth

53. “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:
a.Paradise Lost
b.Paradise Regained
c.Samson Agonistes
d.Divorce Tracts

54. William Shakespeare was born in the year:
a.1564
b.1544
c.1578
d.1582

55. Which of the following is not a Shakespeare tragedy?
a.Titus Andronicus
b.Othello
c.Macbeth
d.Hamlet
e.None of the above

56. Who wrote ‘The Winter’s Tale?’
a.George Bernard Shaw
b.John Dryden
c.Christopher Marlowe
d.William Shakespeare 

57. 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 uses as or like to make a comparison and a metaphor doesn’t.
d) A simile must use animals in the comparison. 

58. What is the word for a “play on words”?
a) pun
b) simile
c) haiku
d) metaphor 

59. Which represents an example of alliteration?
a) Language Arts
b) Peter Piper Picked Peppers
c) I like music.
d) A beautiful scenery with music 

60. What is the imitation of natural sounds in word form?
a) Personification
b) Hyperboles
c) Alliteration
d) Onomatopoeia

61. The theme is …?
a) a plot.
b) an character
c) an address
d) the point a writer is trying to make about a subject. 

62. Concentrate on these elements when writing a good poem.
a) characters, main idea, and theme
b) purpose and audience
c) theme, purpose, form, and mood.
d) rhyme and reason 

63. Which is not a poetry form?
a) epic
b) tale
c) ballad
d) sonnet 

64. Which is an example of a proverb?
a) Get a “stake” in our business.
b) You can’t have your cake and eat it, too
c) The snow was white as cotton.
d) You’re driving me crazy. 

65. Which is an exaggeration?
a) Alliteration
b) Haiku
c) Hyperbole
d) Prose 

66. Which of the following is not a poet?
a) William Shakespeare
b) Terry Saylor
c) Elizabeth B. Browning
d) Emily Dickinson

67. Who has defined ‘poetry’ as a fundamental creative act using languages?
a. H. W. Longfellow
b. Ralph Waldo Emerson
c. Dylan Thomas
d. William Wordsworth

68. What is a sonnet?
a. A poem of six lines
b. A poem of eight lines
c. A poem of twelve lines
d. A poem of fourteen lines

69. What is study of meter, rhythm and intonation of a poem called as?
a. Prosody
b. Allegory
c. Scansion
d. Assonance

70. Which figure of speech is it when a statement is exaggerated in a poem?
a. Onomatopeia
b. Metonymy
c. Alliteration
d. Hyperbole

71. There was aware of her true 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. Metaphor
b. Synecdoche
c. Euphemism
d. Irony

72. Which culture is known for their long, rhymic poetic verses known as Qasidas?
a. Hindu
b. Celtic
c. Arabic
d. Arameic

73. Complete this Shakespearan line – Let me not to the marriage of true minds bring:
a. Impediments
b. Inconveniences
c. Worries
d. Troubles

74. Which of the following is a Japanese poetic form?
a. Jintishi
b. Villanelle
c. Ode
d. Tanka

75. 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

76. Which of the following is not an English poet (i. e.  from England)?
a. Victor Hugo
b. Alexander Pope
c. John Milton
d. Samuel Taylor Coleridge

77. Who was often called as the Romantic Poet as most of his poems revolved around nature?
a. William Blake
b. William Shakespeare
c. William Morris
d. William Wordsworth

78. What is a funny poem of five lines called?
a. Quartet
b. Limerick
c. Sextet
d. Palindrome

79. How did W. H. Auden describe poetry?
a. An awful way to earn a living
b. A game of knowledge
c. The soul exposed
d. An explosion of language

80. Sassoon and Brooke wrote what kind of poetry?
a. Light verse
b. Romantic
c. Political satire
d. War poems

81. Where did T. S. Eliot spend most of his childhood?
a. Denver
b. St Louis
c. Cuba
d. Toronto

82. Ted Hughes was married to which American poetess?
a. Carolyn Kizer
b. Mary Oliver
c. Sylvia Plath
d. Marianne Moore

83. How old was Rupert Brooke at the time of his death?
a. 24
b. 31
c. 21
d. 28

84. In what form did Dylan Thomas’s ‘Under Milk Wood’ first become known?
a. Book of poetry
b. A radio play
c. A stage play
d. a short film

85. The magazine ‘Contemporary Poetry and Prose’ was inspired by which exhibition?
a. The Festival of Britain
b. The Surrealist Exhibition
c. People of the 20th Century
d. Drawing the 20th CEntury

86. Why did ‘Poetry Quarterly’ cease publication in 1953?
a. Owner convicted of fraud
b. Fall in Sales
c. Rise in taxation on magazines
d. Shortage of paper

87. Aldous Huxley was a poet, but was better known as what?
a. Politician
b. Dramatist
c. Novelist
d. Architect

88. Of which poet was it said ‘Even if he’s not a great poet, he’s certainly a great something’?
a. Elliot
b. Kipling
c. Cummings
d. Brooke

1.which of these is magnum opus of chaucer?
A. Troilus and criseyde
b. House of fame
c. The canterbury tales
d. Parliament of fowls.

89. Where were the pilgrims going in the canterbury tales?
A. To the shrine of st. Peter at canterbury cathedral
b. To the shrine of saint thomas becket at canterbury cathedral

90.in which language the stories of canterbury tale are written?
A. French
b. Latin
c. Middle english
d. English

91.chaucer’s franklin was guilty of which sin?
A. Lust
b. Corruption
c. Theft
d. Gluttony

92. How many languages did chaucer know?
A.2
b.4
c.1
d.5

93.from which language the name ”chaucer” has been driven?
A.french
b.latin
c.italian
d.english

94. Where did chaucer bury?
A.westminster abbey
b.kent church
c.chapel at windsor
95.chaucer was imprisoned during———————-?
A.hundred years’ war
b. Black death
c. Peasant revolt

96 .how many children chaucer had?
A.4
b.1
c.0
d.2

Solved MCQs of English Literature