Solved MCQs of English Literature 9

Random MCQs

607. In which century was Piers Plowman written?
a)14th
b)12th
c)10th
d)11th

608. Geoffrey Chaucer served which king?
a)Richard III
b)James 1
c)Edward III
d)Henry II

609. The 18th century work ‘Tom Jones” was written by whom?
a)Samuel Johnson
b)Henry Fielding
c)John Donne
d)Tobias Smollett

610. In 1905, Virginia Woolf began to write for which publication?
a)The Time’s Literary Supplement
b)The Lady’s Home Journal
c)Strand Magazine
d)Reader Magazine

611. Joyce’s novel ‘Ulysses’ takes place over what period of time?
a)A week
b)24 hours
c)A lifetime
d)6 months

612. What was the nationality of Oscar Wilde?
a)Irish
b)Scottish
c)French
d)English

613. Who wrote the poem “Requiem”?
a)Robert Louis Stevenson
b)William Shakespeare
c)Samuel Johnson
d)John Milton 

614. the prevailing feature of Chaucer’s humour is its
a)urbanity
b)crudity
c)triviality
d)sanctity 

615. who is the first great English critic-poet?
a)Shakespeare
b)Arnold
c)Sir Philip Sidney
d)Chaucer 

616. HYMN TO ADVERSITY is a poem by
a)Thomas gray
b)Alexander Pope
c)Edward gibbon
d)William Blake 

617. Who wrote the poem ‘The Seven Ages’?
a)John Milton
b)Geoffrey Chaucer
c)William Shakespeare
d)Edward Gibbon 

618. who write the story “Story Teller” ?
a)William Wordsworth
b)William Shakespeare
c)Thomas Grey
d)Saki

Restoration and The 18TH Century
619. What happened in 1707 that would forever alter the relationship between England, Wales, and Scotland?
a)the trial and execution of Mary, Queen of Scots
b)the Toleration Act
c)the failed invasion of the Spanish Armada
d)the Bishops’ War
e)the Act of Union

620. Which of the following was a major factor in the unprecedented economic wealth of Great Britain during the eighteenth century?
a)formal diplomatic relations with China
b)the exploitation of colonial resources, labor, and the slave trade
c)the American and French revolutions
d)the creation of the bourgeois novel as a commodity
e)the union of England and Wales with Scotland

621. What was “restored” in 1660?
a)the monarchy, in the person of Charles II
b)the dominance of the Tory Party
c)the “Book of Common Prayer”
d)toleration of religious dissidents
e)Irish independence.

622. What literary work best captures a sense of the political turmoil, particularly regarding the issue of religion, just after the Restoration?
a)Gay’s Beggar’s Opera
b)Butler’s Hudibras
c)Fielding’s Jonathan Wild
d)Pope’s Dunciad
e)Dryden’s Absalom and Achitophel

623. Who was deposed from the English throne in the Glorious, or Bloodless, Revolution in 1688?

a)Elizabeth I
b)James II
c)George II
d)William and Mary
e)Anne

624. Who became the first “prime minister” of Great Britain in the reign of George II?

a)Henry St. John
b)Robert Harley
c)John Churchill
d)Robert Walpole
e)Matthew Prior

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

a)abolitionists and enthusiasts for slavery
b)round-earthers and flat-earthers
c)the Welsh and the Scots
d)champions of ancient and modern learning
e)Oxfordians and Baconians

626. Which of the following best describes the doctrine of empiricism?

a)All knowledge is derived from experience.
b)Human perceptions are constructed and reflect structures of political power.
c)The search for essential or ultimate principles of reality.
d)The sensory world is an illusion.
e)God is the center of an ordered and just universe.

627. Against which of the following principles did Jonathan Swift inveigh?
a)theoretical science
b)metaphysics
c)abstract logical deductions
d)a and b only
e)a, b, and c

628. Whose great Dictionary, published in 1755, included more than 114,000 quotations?
a)William Hogarth
b)Jonathan Swift
c)Samuel Johnson
d)Ben Jonson
e)James Boswell

629. According to Samuel Johnson, “No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for…:
a)love.”
b)honor.”
c)money.”
d)his party.”
e)fun.”

630. What name is given to the English literary period that emulated the Rome of Virgil, Horace, and Ovid?
a)Augustan
b)Metaphysical
c)Romantic
d)Neo-Romantic
e)Caesarian

631. Horace’s doctrine “ut pictura poesis” was interpreted to mean:
a)A picture is worth a thousand words.
b)Poetry is the supreme artistic form.
c)Art should hold a mirror up to nature.
d)Poetry ought to be a visual as well as a verbal art.
e)Paintings of poets should be prized over those of kings.

632. What was most frequently considered a source of pleasure and an object of inquiry by Augustan poets?
a)civilization
b)woman
c)God
d)alcohol
e)nature

633. What word did writers in this period use to express quickness of mind, inventiveness, a knack for conceiving images and metaphors and for perceiving resemblances between things apparently unlike?
a)wit
b)sprezzatura
c)naturalism
d)gusto
e)metaphysics

634. Which of the following was probably not a stock phrase in eighteenth-century poetry?
a)verdant mead
b)checkered shade
c)simian rivalry
d)shining sword
e)bounding main

635. Which metrical form was Pope said to have brought to perfection?
a)the heroic couplet
b)blank verse
c)free verse
d)the ode
e)the spondee

636. Which poet, critic and translator brought England a modern literature between 1660 and 1700?
a)Addison
b)Bunyan
c)Crabbe
d)Dryden
e)Equiano

637. Which of the following is not an example of Restoration comedy?
a)Etherege’s The Man of Mode
b)Wycherley’s The Country Wife
c)Behn’s The Rover
d)Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus
e)Congreve’s Love for Love

638. Which group of intellectual women established literary clubs of their own around 1750 under the leadership of Elizabeth Vesey and Elizabeth Montagu?

a)the Behnites
b)the bluestockings
c)the coteries of plenty
d)the Pre-Raphaelites
e)the tattlers and spectators

639. Which work exposes the frivolity of fashionable London?
a)Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe
b)Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels
c)Behn’s Oroonoko
d)Richardson’s Clarissa
e)Pope’s The Rape of the Lock

640. What London locale, where many poor writers lived, became synonymous with hacks and scandal mongers?
a)Elephant and Castle
b)Grub Street
c)Covent Garden
d)Cheapside
e)Piccadilly Circus

641. 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 Gothic romance
c)the epistolary novel
d)the comedy of manners
e)the mystery play

642. Which of the following is not indebted to the Gothic genre?
a)William Beckford’s Vathek
b)Matthew Lewis’s The Monk
c)Tobias Smollett’s Roderick Randsom
d)Ann Radcliffe’s The Italian
e)William Godwin’s Caleb Williams

643. While compiling what sort of book did Samuel Richardson conceive of the idea for his Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded?
a)a history of everyday life
b)an instructional manual for manners
c)a book of devotion
d)a book of model letters
e)a chapbook

644. Who was the ancient Gaelic warrior-bard considered by Napoleon and Thomas Jefferson to have been greater than Homer?
a)Macpherson
b)Merlin
c)Decameron
d)Taliesin
e)Ossian

645. John Donne is, in some sense, the originator of metaphysical poetry. But who is most closely associated with the “founding” of neoclassical poetry?
a)William Wordsworth
b)Alexander Pope
c)Ben Jonson
d)George Herbert

646. Which of the following is not generally considered to be a neoclassical poet?
a)John Dryden
b)Henry Vaughan
c)Alexander Pope
d)Ben Jonson

647. Which of the following is not a common feature of neoclassical poetry?a)Imitation of classical forms and allusion to mythology
b)An effort to represent human nature
c)Use of the rhymed couplet
d)Fantastic comparisons

648. Neoclassicists tended to view poetry as the result of genius overflowing from the mind out onto the page. They also considered poetry to be an expression of the individual, inner self.
a)True
b)False

649. Most neoclassical poets viewed the world in terms of a strictly ordered hierarchy. What was this hierarchy called?
a)The Way of the World
b)The Foundational Ladder
c)The Order of Angels
d)The Great Chain of Being

650. He wrote both religious and secular poetry. One of his poems urged virgins to make the most of their time.
a)Ben Jonson
b)Alexander Pope
c)Robert Herrick
d)John Dryden

651. Why didn’t Alexander Pope attend an English university?
a)He lived in Italy until the age of 27
b)Asthma, headaches, and spinal deformity made him an invalid
c)He was a Catholic, and therefore forbidden from attending
d)He just wasn’t bright enough

652. Alexander Pope coined many a modern day cliché. Which of the following did not originate with him?
a)To err is human, to forgive divine
b)Let not the sun go down upon your wrath
c)A little learning is a dangerous thing
d)Fools rush in where angels fear to tread

653. John Dryden wrote “Absalom and Achitophel.” Who was Achitophel, historically speaking?
a)King David’s son
b)A Judge of Israel
c)Bathsheba’s first husband
d)Absalom’s advisor

654. Who did Dryden use Absalom to represent, allegorically, in his satire “Absalom and Achitophel”?
a)The Duke of Monmouth
b)Charles II
c)The Earl of Shaftesbury
d)Cromwell

655. Complete this famous quote by John Dryden: “Who think too little, and who talk too ____”
a)often
b)long
c)much
d)fast

656. What Pope poem begins, “In these deep solitudes and awful cells, / Where heav’nly-pensive contemplation dwells, / And ever-musing melancholy reigns; / What means this tumult in a vestal’s veins?”
a)The Rape of the Lock
b)Solitude: An Ode
c)The Dunciad
d)Eloisa to Abelard

657. Pope made money by selling subscriptions to his translation of this classical epic.
a)The Bahagavad Gita
b)The Odyssey
c)The Illiad
d)The Aeneid

658. This famous neoclassical poet wrote on profound themes such as death, but he also had a lighter side. He once wrote an ode to a cat drowned in a tub of gold fishes.
a)Alexander Pope
b)William Collins
c)Thomas Gray
d)Ben Jonson

659. His “To Penthurst” is considered to be one of the primary texts of the neoclassical movement.
a)Sir John Denham
b)Ben Jonson
c)Thomas Carew
d)John Dryden

660. Sir John Denham commemorated this poet, referring to him as “Old Chaucer” who, “like the morning star”, descends “to the shades,” so that “Darkness again the Age invades.”
a)William Shakespeare
b)John Donne
c)Abraham Cowley
d)John Dryden

661. What mock epic begins: “What dire offence from am’rous causes springs, / What mighty contests rise from trivial things”?
a)Dryden’s “Mac Flecknoe”
b)Pope’s “The Rape of the Lock”
c)Pope’s “The Dunciad”
d)Dryden’s “Absalom and Achitophel”

662.When the Parliament, controlled by the puritans, took power in England, one of the acts that greatly influenced Literature of that time was

a)The closing of theatres
b)The return of the King.
c)King Arthurs’ dead
d)King to exile 

663:Who wrote: “Reader, I married him.”?
a)Jane Austen
b)Charlotte Bronte
c)Edith Wharton
d)Emily Bronte

664.Who wrote: “Things fall apart; the center cannot hold.”?
a)William Butler Yeats
b)James Joyce
c)Thomas Moore
d)Edgar Allan Poe

665.In which work do you read: “Things fall apart; the center cannot hold.”?
a)The Canturbury Tales
b)The Dark Angel
c)The Wild Swans of Coole
d)The Second Coming

666.Who wrote: “Beauty is truth, truth beauty.”?
a)John Keats
b)William Shakespeare
c)Samuel Butler
d)Samuel Taylor Coleridge

667.In which work do you read: “Beauty is truth, truth beauty.”?
a)Adonais
b)Bright Star
c)Ode on a Grecian Urn
d)La Bell Dame Sans Merci

668.Who wrote: “In Xanadu did Kubla Khan / A stately pleasure dome decree…”?
a)Samuel Taylor Coleridge
b)Robert Browning
c)John Keats
d)Walt Whitman

669.In which work do you read: “In Xanadu did Kubla Khan / A stately pleasure dome decree…”?
a)Kubla Khan
b)Hellas
c)The Phoenix and the Turtle
d)The Castaway

670.A side note: Which drug/substance was Samuel Taylor Coleridge addicted to?
a)Heroine
b)Cocaine
c)Alcohol
d)Opium

671.Who wrote: “I would prefer not to.”?
a)Edgar Allan Poe
b)Herman Melville
c)Thomas Gray
d)Henry David Thoreau
672.Who wrote: “There can be no freedom or beauty about a home life that depends on borrowing and debt.”?
a)Henry David Thoreau
b)Benjamin Franklin
c)Robert Browning
d)Henrik Ibsen

673.In which work do you read: “There can be no freedom or beauty about a home life that depends on borrowing and debt.”?
a)A Doll’s House
b)Riders to the Sea
c)A Handful of Dust
d)The Fatal Curiosity

674.Who wrote: “My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings / Look on my works ye mighty, and despair!”?
a)Lord Byron
b)Percy Bysshe Shelley
c)William Woodsworth
d)Emily Dickinson

675.In which work do you read: “My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings / Look on my works ye mighty, and despair!”?
a)The Man of Feeling
b)In Memoriam
c)Song to Aella
d)Ozymandias

676.Who wrote: “That’s my last Duchess painted on the wall / looking as if she were alive.”?
a)Lord Byron
b)Oscar Wilde
c)Robert Browning
d)William Wordsworth

677.In which work do you read: “That’s my last Duchess painted on the wall /looking as if she were alive.”?
a)Porphyria’s Lover
b)My Last Duchess
c)The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
d)Fra Lippo Lippi

678.Who wrote: “I have measured out my life with coffee spoons.”?

a)William Carlos Williams
b)T.S. Eliot
c)Ernest Hemingway
d)Hart Crane

679.In which work do you read: “I have measured out my life with coffee spoons.”?
a)Lovesong of J.Alfred Prufrock
b)Sonnets from the Portuguese
c)Prelude
d)The Last Decalogue

680.A “classic” book is usually one that possesses what quality?
a)It has universal appeal.
b)It can stand the test of time.
c)It makes connections.
d)All of the above.

681. A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens involves which two cities?
a)London and Rome
b)Paris and Rome
c)London and Paris
d)Berlin and London

682.The Catcher in the Rye takes place in what city?
a)New York City
b)Stanford, Connecticut
c)Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
d)Boston, Massachusetts

683.Which book was not written by Jane Austen?
a)Sense and Suspensibility
b)Emma
c)Pride and Prejudice
d)Mansfield Park

684.What is Shakespeare’s longest play?
a)Taming of the Shrew
b)Romeo and Juliet
c)A Midsummer Night’s Dream
d)Hamlet

685)The poem ‘The Battle of Maldon’ celebrates events which took place in the 10th century, but who was it between
a)Danes and English
b)Dutch and English
c)Normans and English
d)French and English
686)The Faerie Queene was written during the reign of which monarch?
a)James I
b)Mary Tudor
c)Elizabeth Tudor
d)Henry VII

687)Becky sharp was the heroine in which novel?
a)Vanity Fair
b)Sense and Sensibility
c)Pride and Prejudice
d)Mansfield Park

688) How many children were there in the Bronte family?
a)3
b)4
c)5
d)6

689)Who composed The Preludes?
a)S T Coleridge
b)William Wordsworth
c)William Shakespeare
d)William Blake

690)Who is termed as “The Morning Star of Renaissance”?
a)Spenser
b)John Gower
c)Chaucer
d)Langland

691)Who began the tradition of revenge play ?
a)Goorge peele
b)Samuel daniel
c)Phineas fletcher
d)Thomas kyd

692)How many lines are there in a Sonnet?
a)10
b)16
c)14
d)22

693)What are the names of the two feuding families in Romeo and Juliet?
a)Capulet And Montague
b)Breslow and Felsher
c)Fuech and Goodside
d)Dawson and Hurley
694)Which bird did the Ancient Mariner kill?
a)Seagull
b)Albatross
c)Humming Bird
d)Crow

695)What was the name of the Bronte sister’s only brother?
a)Anderson
b)Branwell
c)Richard
d)Pearson

696)In which county was Jane Austin born?
a)Sussex
b)Hampshire
c)Yorkshire
d)Norfolk
697)In which Dickens novel does Pip appear?
a)Bleak House
b)Great Expectations
c)A Tale of Two Cities
d)The Pickwick Papers

698. Which of the following English groups were supportive of the French Revolution during its early years?
a) Tories
b) Republicans
c) Liberals
d) Radicals
e) both c and d

699. Which statement(s) about inventions during the Industrial Revolution are true?
a) Hand labor became less common with the invention of power-driven machinery.
b) Velcro replaced buttons and snaps.
c) Steam, as opposed to wind and water, became a primary source of power.
d) The invention of textile processing machines marked the end of the Industrial Revolution.
e) both a and c

700. What is the name for the process of dividing land into privately owned agricultural holdings?
a) partition
b) segregation
c) enclosure
d) division
e) subtraction

Solved MCQs of English Literature 8