Solved MCQs of English Literature

MIDDLE AGES

97. Which people began their invasion and conquest of southwestern Britain around 450?
a) the Normans
b) the Geats
c) the Celts
d) the Anglo-Saxons
e) the Danes

98. Words from which language began to enter English vocabulary around the time of the Norman Conquest in 1066?
a) French
b) Norwegian
c) Spanish
d) Hungarian
e) Danish

99. Which hero made his earliest appearance in Celtic literature before becoming a staple subject in French, English, and German literatures?
a) Beowulf
b) Arthur
c) Caedmon
d) Augustine of Canterbury
e) Alfred

100. 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) eleventh
c) twelfth
d) thirteenth
e) fourteenth

101. Which king began a war to enforce his claims to the throne of France in 1336?
a) Henry II
b) Henry III
c) Henry V
d) Louis XIV
e) Edward III

102. Who would be called the English Homer and father of English poetry?
a) Bede
b) Sir Thomas Malory
c) Geoffrey Chaucer
d) Caedmon
e) John Gower

103. What was vellum?
a) parchment made of animal skin
b) the service owed to a lord by his peasants (“villeins”)
c) unrhymed iambic pentameter
d) an unbreakable oath of fealty
e) a prized ink used in the illumination of prestigious manuscripts

104. Only a small proportion of medieval books survive, large numbers having been destroyed in:
a) the Anglo-Saxon Conquest beginning in the 1450s.
b) the Norman Conquest of 1066.
c) the Peasant Uprising of 1381.
d) the Dissolution of the Monasteries in the 1530s.
e) the wave of contempt for manuscripts that followed the beginning of printing in 1476.

105. 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) Malory’s Morte Darthur
d) Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People
e) a code of laws promulgated by King Ethelbert

106. Who was the first English Christian king?
a) Alfred
b) Richard III
c) Richard II
d) Henry II
e) Ethelbert

107. In Anglo-Saxon heroic poetry, what is the fate of those who fail to observe the sacred duty of blood vengeance?
a) banishment to Asia
b) everlasting shame
c) conversion to Christianity
d) mild melancholia
e) being buried alive

108. Christian writers like the Beowulf poet looked back on their pagan ancestors with:
a) nostalgia and ill-concealed envy.
b) bewilderment and visceral loathing.
c) admiration and elegiac sympathy.
d) bigotry and shallow triumphalism.
e) the deepest reluctance.

109. 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) simile
c) metonymy
d) kenning
e) appositive expression

110. Which of the following statements is not an accurate description of Old English poetry?
a) Romantic love is a guiding principle of moral conduct.
b) Its formal and dignified use of speech was distant from everyday use of language.
c) Irony is a mode of perception, as much as it was a figure of speech.
d) Christian and pagan ideals are sometimes mixed.
e) Its idiom remained remarkably uniform for nearly three centuries.

111. Which of the following best describes litote, a favorite rhetorical device in Old English poetry?
a) embellishment at the service of Christian doctrine
b) repetition of parallel syntactic structures
c) ironic understatement
d) stress on every third diphthong
e) a compound of two words in place of a single word

112. How did Henry II, the first of England’s Plantagenet kings, acquire vast provinces in southern France?
a) the Battle of Hastings
b) Saint Patrick’s mission
c) the Fourth Lateran Council
d) the execution of William Sawtre
e) his marriage to Eleanor of Aquitaine

113. Which of the following languages did not coexist in Anglo-Norman England?
a) Latin
b) Dutch
c) French
d) Celtic
e) English

114. Which twelfth-century poet or poets were indebted to Breton storytellers for their narratives?
a) Geoffrey Chaucer
b) Marie de France
c) Chrétien de Troyes
d) a and c only
e) b and c only

116. Popular English adaptations of romances appealed primarily to
a) the royal family and upper orders of the nobility
b) the lower orders of the nobility
c) agricultural laborers
d) the clergy
e) the Welsh

117. What is the climax of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s The History of the Kings of Britain?
a) the reign of King Arthur
b) the coronation of Henry II
c) King John’s seal of the Magna Carta
d) the marriage of Henry II to Eleanor of Aquitaine
e) the defeat of the French by Henry V

118. Ancrene Riwle is a manual of instruction for
a) courtiers entering the service of Richard II
b) translators of French romances
c) women who have chosen to live as religious recluses
d) knights preparing for their first tournament
e) witch-hunters and exorcists

119. 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 and well-educated readers.
b) Writing continued to benefit only readers fluent in Latin and French.
c) Their readers’ primary language was English.
d) a and c only
e) a and b only

120. In addition to Geoffrey Chaucer and William Langland, the “flowering”of Middle English literature is evident in the works of which of the following writers?
a) Geoffrey of Monmouth
b) the Gawain poet
c) the Beowulf poet
d) Chrétien de Troyes
e) Marie de France

121. Why did the rebels of 1381 target the church, beheading the archbishop of Canterbury?
a) Their leaders were Lollards, advocating radical religious reform.
b) The common people were still essentially pagan.
c) They believed that writing, a skill largely confined to the clergy, was a form of black magic.
d) The church was among the greatest of oppressive landowners.
e) a and c only

122. Which influential medieval text purported to reveal the secrets of the afterlife?
a) Dante’s Divine Comedy
b) Boccaccio’s Decameron
c) The Dream of the Rood
d) Chaucer’s Legend of Good Women
e) Gower’s Confessio Amantis

123. Who is the author of Piers Plowman?
a) Sir Thomas Malory
b) Margery Kempe
c) Geoffrey Chaucer
d) William Langland
e) Geoffrey of Monmouth

124. What event resulted from the premature death of Henry V?
a) the Battle of Agincourt
b) the Battle of Hastings
c) the Norman Conquest
d) the Black Death
e) the War of the Roses

125. Which literary form, developed in the fifteenth century, personified vices and virtues?
a) the short story
b) the heroic epic
c) the morality play
d) the romance
e) the limerick

126. Which of the following statements about Julian of Norwich is true?
a) She sought unsuccessfully to restore classical paganism.
b) She was a virgin martyr.
c) She is the first known woman writer in the English vernacular.
d) She made pilgrimages to Jerusalem, Rome, and Santiago.
e) She probably never met Margery Kempe.

127. Which of the following authors is considered a devotee to chivalry, as it is personified in Sir Lancelot?
a) Julian of Norwich
b) Margery Kempe
c) William Langland
d) Sir Thomas Malory
e) Geoffrey Chaucer

128.what was the occupation of Chaucer’s father?
a. leather merchant
b.civil servant
c. a vintner

129. Chaucer became a page to which king’s daughter-in-law?
a. Edward III
b. Richard II
c. Henry IV

130. which of these is not certain about Chaucer?
a. his birth date
b. his death year
c. his father’s name

131. which of these kings was not served by Chaucer?
a. Edward III
b. Henry II
c. Richard II

132.what was the duration of hundred year’s war?
a.1300 to 1350
b.1337 to 1453
c. 1302 to 1343

133.what did Chaucer’s wife use to do?
a. lady-in-waiting to Queen Philip pa of Hainaut
b. nurse of royal court
c. governess to Henry IV

134.one of Chaucer’s daughter was…………?
a. a musician
b. an astronomer
c. a nun

135. in which year chaucer was imprisoned by the French?
a. 1360
b. 1357
c. 1378

136.chaucer was fined in 1367 or 1366 for…………..?
a. beating a friar in a London street
b. for writing poetry against the church
c. for crossing the border of Great Britain 

137. Chaucer was made in-charge of many palaces,which of these was not in his charge?
a. Westminster Palace
b. Tower of London
c. St. George’s chapel at Windsor
d. Buckingham Palace

138. Chaucer acted as a controller of custom during………….?
a. 1374 to 1385
b. 1350 to 1360
c. 1360 to 1400

139. Chaucer was released from legal action by …………………… in a deed of May 1, 1380 from rape and abduction?
a. Miss Cecily Chaumpaigne
b. Philippa de Roet of Flanders
c. Agnes de Copton

140. Chaucer became a member of Parliament in………..?
a. 1386
b. 1300
c. 1343

141. Chaucer buried in a corner of Westminster, which came to know as………?
a. Chaucer’s corner
b. poet’s corner
c. legend’s corner

142. what was chaucer’s profession?
a. a poet
b. a merchant
c. a civil servant

143)One of Marlowe’s earliest published works was his translation of the epic poem ‘Pharsalia’, written by which Roman poet?
a)Ovid
b)Lucan
c)Virgil
d)Horace

144) Marlowe’s poem ‘The Passionate Shepherd to His Love’ begins with the line “Come live with me and be my love”; which other English author wrote a famous poem beginning with this line?
a)William Shakespeare
b)Thomas Kyd
c)John Dryden
d)John Donne

145)In Marlowe’s play, what was the name of the Jew of Malta?
a)Lazarus
b)Solomon
c)Barabas
d)Shylock

146How many years of happiness was Dr Faustus promised by the Devil?
a)16
b)20
c)24
d)28

147) Which of these Kings was the subject of a play by Marlowe?
a)Henry V
b)Richard III
c)Edward II
d)John

148)One of Marlowe’s most famous poems was an account of which lovers?
a)Anthony and Cleopatra
b)Hero and Leander
c)Troilus and Cressida
d)Apollo and Hyacinth

149) Marlowe’s play ‘Tamburlaine the Great’ was based loosely on the life of which Asian ruler?
a)Zhu Yuanzhang
b)Genghis Khan
c)Timur
d)Kublai Khan

150)What was the title of the play by Marlowe that portrayed the events surrounding the Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacre in 1572?
a)The Massacre at Berlin
b)The Massacre at Rome
c)The Massacre at Copenhagen
d)The Massacre at Paris

151)In the title of Marlowe’s play, of where was Dido the Queen?
a)Troy
b)Carthage
c)Sparta
d)Persia

152)Christopher Marlowe was England’s first official Poet Laureate.
a)True
b)False
(It was John Dryden-appointed in 1670)

Solved MCQs of English Literature