300+ MCQs on American and other Non-British Literature [2024]

American and other Non-British Literatures Multiple Choice Questions with Answers

1. Who wrote the famous American play The Iceman Cometh?

(a) John Osborne

(b) Eugene O’Neill

(d) Walt Whitman

2. Bob Smith is the central figure in which of the following plays of O’Neill?

(a) The Iceman Cometh

(b) The Farewell to Arms

(c) The Hairy Ape

(d) None of the above

3. How does Yank, the central character in The Hairy Ape differs from Aristotelean tragic heroes?

(a) He doesn’t meet a sad end despite his flaws

(b) He meets a sad end without having any tragic flaw

(d) None of the above

4. Who wrote the Leaves of Grass, one of the classics of world poetry?

(a) Walt Whitman

(b) Robert Frost

(d) Emily Dickinson

5. In which of his poems given below do we witness Whitman’s uninhibited treatment of sex?

(a) Children of Adam

(b) Spontaneous Me

(d) All of the above

6. Who wrote I Felt a Funeral in My Brain?

(a) Walt Whitman

(b) Eugene O’Neill

(c) Emily Dickinson

(d) Robert Frost

7. Which of the following poems is written b Robert Frost?

(a) Calamus

(b) Blueberries

(d) Modern Age Man

8. Which of the following is an elegy on the death of Abraham Lincoln?

(a) O Captain! My Captain

(b) I Hear America Singing

(d) Stopping by Woods.

9. The Old Man and the Sea recounts the 84 days’ adventure of

(a) Matadors

(b) Santiago

(d) Philip

10. Steinbeck’s novel Grapes of Wrath is the story of

(a) Quentin family

(b) The Negro community

(c) Joad family

(d) Colonialism in Africa

11. Roderick Hudson is written by

(a) James Joyce

(b) Henry James

(d) Henry Fielding

12. Who is the author of Caleb William and St. Leon?

(a) Hanah More

(b) Mrs. Inchbaid

(d) William Godwin

13. “Lives of great men all remind us

We can make our life sublime

And departing leave behind us

Footprints on the sands of time.”

Who wrote these lines?

(a) Lord Tennyson

(b) H.W. Longfellow

(d) Robert Browning

14. The Scarlet Letter is written by

(a) Mark Twain

(b) Charles Dickens

(d) Nathaniel Hawthorne

15. Who of the following is known as the pioneer of the modern detective stories?

(a) Edgar Allan Poe

(b) Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

(d) Anna K. Green

16. The Autobiography of an Unknown Indian is written by

(a) V.S. Naipaul

(b) Nirad C. Chaudhary

(d) Manohar Malgonkar

17. Age of Innocence is

(a) a book of verse by William Blake

(b) a novel by Edith Wharton

(d) an absurd drama by Edward Albee

18. Mr. Zero is the main character in

(a) Elmer Rice’s Adding Machine

(b) Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot

(d) Robert Penn Warren’s All The King’s Men

19. Isaac Asimove invented the Three Laws of Robotics in his stories which are given below. Identify the first law.

(a) A robot must obey the orders given by human beings

(b) A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

20. Tender is The Night is written by

(a) William Faulkner

(b) F.Scott Fitzgerald

(d) Walt Whitman

21. Sister Carrie is

(a) The name of a nun

(b) The heroine of Edith Wharton’s novelette summer

(c) A novel by Dresier T.

(d) A play by O’Neill

22. Who received the Commonwealth Writers Prize, 1994?

(a) Amit Chaudhary – A Strange and Sublime Address

(b) Sashi Tharoor – Show Business

(d) Vikram Seth – A Suitable Boy

23. Isabel Archer is the romantic heroine of

(a) The Portrait of a Lady – Henry James

(b) Herzog – Saul Bellow

(d) Roderick Hudson – Henry James

24. Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque is a collection of stories by

(a) O’ Henry

(b) Anton Tchekov

(c) Edgar Allan Poe

(d) Sylvia Plath

25. Which one is Sylvia Plath’s novel?

(a) Ariel

(b) The Colossus

(c) The Bell Jar

(d) Catch-22

26. What is the name of Walt Whitman’s poem celebrating the completion of the Suez Canal and the Transcontinental Railroad?

(a) A Passage to India

(b) Passage to India

(d) Indian Wonderland

27. Grapes of Wrath is written by

(a) John Steinbeck

(b) F. Scott. Fitzgerald

(d) Nathaniel Hawthorne

28. An Indian-born Canadian poet and novelist received one of the following awards in 1993. Identify the award.

(a) Poet of Peace

(b) Encore Prize

(d) Asan Prize

29. Joan Brady, a former ballet dancer received one of the following prizes for her book Theory of War. She is the first woman to get this prize. Name the prize.

(a) Asan Prize

(b) Whitebread Book of the Year

(d) Encore Prize

30. Name the Indian-English writer who got the Austrian State Prize for European Literature in 1993.

(a) Vikram Seth

(b) Amitav Ghose

(c) Salman Rushdie

(d) Nirad C. Chaudhary

31. Who wrote under the pen-name Saki?

(a) H.H. Munro

(b) N.E. McNeile

(d) K.A. Abbas

32. V.S. Naipaul’s The Mimic Men is about

(a) an exiled Roman king

(b) an exiled Caribbean politician

(d) an expatriate

33. The Naked and the Dead is written by

(a) Ernest Hemingway

(b) Norman Mailer

(d) PG. Wodehouse

34. Finnegans Wake is

(a) a poem by Robert Browning

(b) a prose work by Jonathan Swift

(d) a prose work by James Joyce

35. Who translated Omar Khayyam into English?

(a) Edward Fitzgerald

(b) Scott Fitzgerald

(d) Ford Madox Ford

36. Name the mathematician and philosopher who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1950

(a) Bertrand Russell

(b) Aldous Huxley

(d) James Joyce

37. Which one of the following is a verse novel?

(a) Golden Gate

(b) The Great Indian Novel

(d) Ulysses

38. Kenaburo Oe of Japan received the Nobel Prize for literature 1994 for creating an imaginary world where life and myth condense to give a picture of the human situation. What kind of a world does he imagine?

(a) Utopian – ideal like Sir Thomas More’s Utopia

(b) Arcadian – an earthly paradise as in Sir Philip Sidney’s Arcadia

(c) Totally disconcerting picture of human predicament

(d) Selfish as described by Hobbes in Leviathan

American and Other Non-British Literatures

39. Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolf? Is a

(a) novel by Melville

(b) play by Edward Albee

(c) critical study on Virginia Woolf s novels

(d) a poem by Toru Dutt

40. Who wrote under the pseudonym Mark Twain?

(a) Washington Irving

(b) Samuel Langhorne Clemens

(d) Arthur Conan Doyle

41. The Prophet is written by

(a) Salman Rushdie

(b) Franz Kafka

(c) Khalil Gibran

(d) Abul Fazal

42. Albert Camus was a French existentialist. Given below is the list of his novels. Identify the novels not written by him.

(a) The Trial

(b) The Plague

(d) None of the above

43. “I think I could turn and love with animals.” These are the opening lines of a poem. Who is the poet?

(a) Walt Whitman

(b) Robert Frost

(d) Ted Hughes

44. The author of Portrait of India is

(a) V.S. Naipaul

(b) N.C. Chaudhary

(c) Ved Mehta

(d) E.M. Forster

45. Who wrote My True Faces, Azadi, into another Dawn, the Crown and the Loincloth?

(a) SudhirGhose

(b) Khushwant Singh

(c) Manohar Malgaonkar

(d) Chaman Nahal

46. Which of the following is not Anita Desai’s work?

(a) In Custody

(b) Vices in the City

(c) A Silence of Desire

(d) Clear Light of Day

47. Edwin Markham once saw Millet’s painting of a bowed, broken toiler. Making the French painting a symbol for the workers, he wrote a poem. Identify it.

(a) ‘Song of the Shirt’

(b) Two Tramps in Mud Time’

(c) The Man with the Hoe’

48. Only one of the following is not a collection of short stories. Identify it.

(a) The Policeman and the Rose

(b) Into another Dawn

(d) Bombay Beware

49. Which of the following is V.S. Naipaul’s comic novel of colonial politics?

(a) A House for Mr. Biswas

(b) The Mystic Masseur

(d) In a Free State

50. Too Long in the West is written by

(a) V.S. Naipaul

(b) Kamala Markandaya

(c) Nirad C. Chaudhary

51. V.S. Naipaul’s the Mystic Masseur received a prestigious prize. Name it.

(a) Booker’s

(b) Commonwealth

(d) Rhys Memorial

52. Where is R.K. Narayan’s imaginary town Malgudi located?

(a) In the territory of the Nizam of Hydrabad

(b) In Madras Presidency

(d) In Mysore State

53. When a Beginning, his first book of verse appeared, the poet was just 199. He received the Hawthornden prize the next year and became the youngest poet to get it. Name him.

(a) Keki N. Daruwala

(b) Dom Moraes

(d) A.K. Ramanujan

54. Who wrote Tughlaq, a successful stage play?

(a) Girish Kamad

(b) Badal Sirkar

(d) Vijay Tendulkar

55. In one of his novels Manohar Malgaonkar writes the story from the point of view of a Pakistani captain placed in Bangladesh (then East Pakistan). Name it.

(a) Distant Drums

(b) Cactus Country

(d) A Bend in the Ganges

56. Who is the author of Raj?

(a) Geeta Mehta

(b) Rama Mehta

(d) Nargis Dalai

57. Dominique Lapierre wrote an appealing account of the sordid squalor of an Indian city. Identify the city.

(a) Calcutta

(b) Bombay

(d) Delhi

58. Who is the author of following poems?

“The Gift of India”, “Bangle-seller”,

“The Anthem of Love”, “Palanquin Bearers”

(a) Kamala Das

(b) Sarojini Naidu

(d) Nissim Ezekiel

59. Who wrote the hard-hitting poem “Sita

Speak” indicating the society for the injustice meted out to women down the ages

(a) Bina Agarwal

(b) Kamala Das

(d) Sarojini Naidu

60. In which of the following poems of Ezekiel do we get a moving picture of a mother’s suffering ?

(a) ‘The Couple’

(b) ‘Night of the Scorpion’

(d) ‘Philosophy’

61. Who is the author of Two Virgins?

(a) Kamala Markandaya

(b) Kamala Das

(d) Shastri Deshpande

62. Name the Indo-English novelist who wrote A Suitable Boy.

(a) Vikram Seth

(b) Amitav Ghose

(d) Anita Desai

63. Two Indian writers living abroad created furor – one was Vikram Seth who got an unprecedented amount as an advance for his novel, the other who came under ‘fatwa’, for one of his controversial novels, issued by Muslim countries, was

(a) Amitav Ghose

(b) Bharati Mukherjee

(d) Salman Rushdie

64. Name Salman Rushdie’s latest Novel.

(a) The Moor’s Last Sigh

(b) Fury

(d) Satanic Verses

65. Of the following novels one does not portray the Gandhian Age and the impact of Gandhi. Which one?

(a) K.A. Abbas’s Inquilab

(b) Venu Chitale’s In Transit

(c) R.K. Narayan’s The Dark Room

(d) K. Nagarajan’s Chronicles of Kedaram

66. Who is the author of the following books: The Foreigner, The Apprentice, The Last Labyrinth, The City and the River?

(a) Ruth P. Jhabvala

(b) Amitav Ghose

(d) Arun Joshi

67. Whose collections of poems are these: A Time to Change, Sixty Poems, The Third, The Unfinished Man?

(a) P. Lai

(b) Nissim Ezekiel

(d) Bina Aggarwal

68. Listed below are the works of Bhabani Bhattacharya of which only one is his collection of short stories. Identify it.

(a) So Many Hungers

(b) A Dream in Hawaii

(c) Sea Hawk

(d) Shadow from Ladakh

69. Baumgartner’s Bombay is a novel about a German Jew who remains an outsider all his life, in his country because he is a Jew and in India, where he is a firangi. Who wrote this moving novel?

(a) Vikram Seth

(b) Anita Desai

(d) Ruth P. Jhabvala

70. In which novel does R.K. Narayan focus on family planning?

(a) The Guide

(b) Mr. Sampath

(d) The Painter of Signs

71. In the Guide we come across a dancer. What is her name?

(a) Daisy

(b) Bharati

(c) Rosie

(d) Savitri

72. Who wrote these lines?

“Woman is the earth, air, ether, sound; woman is the microcosm of the mind “?

(a) Raja Rao

(b) R.K. Narayan

(d) Kamala Das

73. Arthur Symons wrote about this person, “All the life of the tiny figure seemed to concentrate 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) Sarojini Naidu

(d) Rabindra Nath Tagore

74. 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) Toru Dutt

(d) Manmohan Ghose

75. An Indo-English poet once remarked that his disciplines (i.e., linguistics and anthropology) and his education give him his “Outer” form, whereas his Indian origin, first thirty years in India and knowledge of Kannada and Tamil give him his “inner” form. Who said this?

(a) A.K. Ramanujan

(b) Kamala Das

(d) Raja Gopal Parthasarathy

76. Who wrote Jejurithe Commonwealth Poetry Prize winner work?

(a) Shiv K. Kumar

(b) Arun Kolatkar

(d) Jayant Mahapatra

77. In which of Anita Desai’s novel an insane wife kills her husband?

(a) Voices in The City

(b) In Custody

(c) Cry, The Peacock

(d) Baumgartner’s Bombay

78. 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 Big Heart

(b) The Sword and The Sickle

(d) The Road

79. Who was the first recipient of the Sahitya Academi Award for English literature?

(a) Mulk Raj Anand

(b) Nayantara Sehgal

(c) R.K. Narayan

(d) Raja Rao

80. Following novels except one, describe the condition of Westners living in India. Mark the one which does not.

(a) Heat and Dust

(b) The Princess

(d) A Passage to India

81. Which of the following novels focuses on the question of rape?

(a) The Bending Vine

(b) Voices in The City

(d) A Time to Be Happy

82. Who is the author of the following novels: A Bend in The Ganges, The Princes, Distant Drums, Devil’s Wind, A Combat of Shadows?

(a) Mulk Raj Anand

(b) Bhabani Bhattacharya

(c) Manohar Malgaonkar

(d) Salman Rushdie

83. Who wrote “Our Casuarina Tree” a splendid Keatsian poem?

(a) Toru Dutt

(b) Romesh Chander Dutt

(d) Sri Aurobindo

84. To whom do we assign following works – The Lake of Palms, A History of Civilization of Ancient India, The Slave-Girl of Agra?

(a) Manmohan Ghose

(b) Romesh Chander Dutt

(d) Sharat Chandra

85. Which one of the following is a collection of Anita Desai’s short stories?

(a) Voices in the City

(b) Games at Twilight

(d) Cry, the Peacock

86. 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 does the epic contain?

(a) 24,000 (b) 21,500

87. Toru Dutt, Romesh Chander Dutt and Aurobindo, all wrote on one common theme taken out from the Mahabharata. Identify the story which the tree found irresistible.

(a) Kama and Kunti

(b) Nal-Damyanti

(c) Savitri

(d) Gandhari

88. Who of the following was highly influenced by French Romanticism, French language and literature?

(a) Romesh Chander Dutt

(b) Michael Madhusudan Dutt

(c) Toru Dutt

(d) Govind Dutt

89. About an Indian poet writing in English, a critic, George Sampson says that a reader of his poems “Would readily take them as the work of an English poet trained in the classical tradition.” An Indian critic feels that his poetry has no imagery or sentiment that can be termed as Indian. Who was this poet?

(a) Michael Madhusudan Dutt

(b) Romesh Chander Dutt

(d) Manmohan Ghose

90. The Fakir ofJhungheera was written by one of the first Indo-Anglian poets. The poem is often hailed as a “Competent narrative verse with Byronic echoes.” Identify the writer.

(a) Toru Dutt

(b) Henry Derozio

(d) Hasan Ali

91. He was the first Indian poet to have published a regular volume of English verse. He also edited an English Weekly The Hindu Intelligence. Name him.

(a) Michael Madhusudan Dutt

(b) Mohan Lai

(d) Kashiprasad Ghose

92. Paying a tribute to a Bengali poet who wrote in English also, Sri Aurobindo said, “The God himself took up thy pen and wrote.” Who was he?

(a) Michael Madhusudan Dutt

(b) Henry Derozio

(d) Kashiprasad Ghose

93. One of the following works is written by Michael Madhusudan Dutt. Identify which one?

(a) The Shair and Other Poems

(b) The Captive Ladie

(d) Lays of Ancient India

94. Name the poet of “Kali, the Mother.”

(a) Swami Vivekanand

(b) Subramaniam Bharathi

(d) Sri Aurobindo

95. He is a Sahitya Akademi Award Winner and he loves to write for children. Who is he?

(a) R. K. Narayan

(b) Manohar Malgaonkar

(c) Ruskin Bond

(d) Upamanyu Chatterjee

96. Whose autobiography is entitled My Father’s Son?

(a) Dom Moraes

(b) Frank Moraes

(d) VS. Naipaul

97. Mulk Raj Anand, about one of his female characters says, “Gauri is my tribute to Indian womanhood.” In which novel does Gauri appear?

(a) The Road

(b) The Old Woman and The Cow

(d) The Sword and The Sickle

98. Read the following passage and identify the novel and its author: “Lago, I am as meek as Moses, but I have just heard that you have been mishandled by that Bhatta Govinda. Whip me, ye devils! Roast me in sulphur! Gall, worse than gall! A rascally Yea-for-smooth knave! Three Judases, each one thrice worse than Judas! Falstaff speaking. I am as subject to heat as butter.”

(a) In Custody by Anita Desai

(b) Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie

(c) All About H. Hatter by G.V. Desani

(d) Vermillion Boat by Sudhir Ghosh

99. Name the author who has been described by a critic as an “outsider inside.”

(a) Anita Desai

(b) Salman Rushdie

(d) Ruth Jhabvala

100. Following novels, except one, describes the condition of Indians settled abroad. Mark the one which does not.

(a) The Nowhere Man

(b) Bye-Bye, Blackbird

(d) The Guide

101. 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 Arthur of the Holy Grail

(c) King Vikramaditya

(d) Kamadeva

102. Name the author of The Gardener, The Fugitive, Chitra, Sacrifice, The Post Office.

(a) Rabindra Nath Tagore

(b) Bankim Chandra

(d) Romesh Chander Dutt

103. Name the two prizes, one in literature and another in History, awarded to young Aurobindo while studying in England.

(a) Pulitzer Prizes in Literature and Bedford Prize in History

(b) Bookers in Literature and Butterworth in History

104. Name Sarojini Naidu’s last collection of poems.

(a) The Broken Wing

(b) The Golden Threshold

(d) The Temple

105. What is the full title of Aurobindo’s Savitri?

(a) Savitri – An Epic

(b) Savitri

(c) Savitri – A Legend and a Symbol

(d) Savitri – A Poem in Three Parts

106. Who wrote Murugan, The Tiller and Kandan, the Patriot, Jatadharan and The Next Rung?

(a) K.S. Venkataramani

(b) ShankerRam

(d) K. Subba Rao

107. The Devil’s Wind depicts the events of our First War of Independence (1857 mutiny). Who is the author of this novel?

(a) Shanker Ram

(b) Manohar Malgaonkar

(d) Sasthi Brata

108. Which novel highlights the Bengal famine?

(a) So Many Hungers

(b) A Handful of Rice

(d) Athawar House

109. Who wrote Ilion?

(a) Virgil

(b) Aurobindo

(d) Rabindra Nath Tagore

110. Who is the author of Love of Dust?

(a) Ruth P. Jhabvala

(b) Humayun Kabir

(c) Shanker Ram

(d) K.S. Venkataramani

300+ MCQs on American and other Non-British Literature

American and other Non-British Literatures Multiple Choice Questions with Answers

American & other Non-British Literatures objective questions with answers pdf download online exam test

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