English Literature MCQs
1) Which American writer published ‘A brave and startling truth’ in 1996
a) Robert Hass
b) Jessica Hagdorn
c)Maya Angelou
d) Micheal Palmer
Answer: c)
2) What is a poem called whose first letters of each line spell out a word?
a)Alliterative
b) Epic
c)Acrostic
d) Haiku
Answer: c)
3) What is a funny poem of five lines called?
a) Quartet
b)Limerick
c)Sextet
d) Palindrome
Answer: b)
4) Who succeeded Lyly?
a)Robert Greene
b)John Milton
c)Philip Sidney
d)Christopher Marlowe
Answer: a)
5) Which famous Shakespeare play does the quote,”Neither a borrower nor a lender be” come from?
a)Cymbeline
b)Hamlet
c)Titus Andronicus
d)Pericles, Prince of Tyre
Answer: b)
6) In which century was Shakespeare born?
a)16th
b)14th
c)15th
d)17th
Answer: a)
7) Who is Mr. Tench in The Power and the Glory?
a) A teacher
b) A clerk
c) A thief
c) A dentist
Answer: c)
8) Who said ‘Keats was a Greek’?
a) Wordsworth
b) Coleridge
c) Lamb
c) Shelley
Answer: b)
9) Which of the following is Hamlet’s mother?
a) Beatrice
b) Margaret
c) Gertrude
d) Rosalind
Answer: c)
10) Which of the following was Elizabeth known as?
a) Unintelligent
b) Rude
c) Stingy
d) Fanatic
Answer: c)
11) For whom it is said: “sensuousness is a paramount bias of his genius”:
a) Blake
b) Keats
c) Tennyson
d) Shelley
e) None of these
Answer: b)
12) ‘Desert Places’ is a:
a) Poem
b) Play
c) Novel
Answer: a)
13) Francis Bacon died in:
a) 1616
b) 1626
c) 1648
Answer: b)
14) Who is the villain in “Hamlet”?
a) Horatio
b) Iago
c) Claudius
Answer: c)
15) Which of the following poems by Tennyson is a monodrama?
a) Ulysses
b) Break, Break, Break
c) Maud
d) Crossing the Bar
Answer: c)
16) Moral choice is everything in the works of:
a) Dickens
b) George Eliot
c) Hardy
Answer: a)
17) Which one of the following poets was appointed Poet Laureate in the year 1813?
a) Tennyson
b) Byron
c) Southey
d) Wordsworth
Answer: c)
18) Who believed that poetry is the spontaneous overflow of emotions?
a) Blake
b) Byron
c) Wordsworth
d) Keats
Answer: c)
19) Which of the following is not a play by Shakespeare?
a) Hamlet
b) Macbeth
c) Dr. Faustus
Answer: c)
20) In which of the following Genres did Victorian Literature achieve its greatest success:
a) Drama
b) Epic Poetry
c) Lyric Poetry
d) The Essay
(e) The Novel
Answer: e)
21. A poem that generally has meter and rhyme
A. lyric
B. free verse
C. 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/ Thouart 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
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