English Literature MCQ (Multiple Choice Questions) - Schoolingaxis.com

English Literature MCQ (Multiple Choice Questions)

 Que- In which of the following works is the social outcast represented and addressed ? 

a. Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley's Frankenstein  

b. William Worsworth's Lyrical Ballads  

c. John Keats's "To Autumn"  

d. all but C 


Answer- all but C


Que- Which of the following would not have been an appropriate protagonist for a Romantic literary text ? 

a. a French revolutionary  

b. a Greek or Roman mythological figure  

c. a monster fabricated in a laboratory  

d. All would have been appropriate protagonists for a Romantic literary text. 


Answer- All would have been appropriate protagonists for a Romantic literary text.


Que- Who is termed as "The Morning Star of Renaissance" ? 

a. Spenser  

b. John Gower  

c. Chaucer  

d. Langland 


Answer- Chaucer


Que- 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 


Answer- Kubla Khan


Que- Who exemplified the role of the "peasant poet" ? 

a. John Clare  

b. John Keats  

c. Robert Burns  

d. A and C only 


Answer- A and C only


Que- Which poet asserted in practice and theory the value of representing rustic life and language as well as social outcasts and delinquents not only in pastoral poetry, common before this poet's time, but also as the major subject and medium for poetry in general ? 

a. William Blake  

b. Alfred Lord Tennyson  

c. Samuel Johnson  

d. William Wordsworth 


Answer- William Wordsworth


Que- What was the name of the Bronte sister's only brother ? 

a. Anderson  

b. Branwell  

c. Richard  

d. Pearson 


Answer- Branwell


Que- Looking to the ancient past, many Romantic poets identified with the figure of the____________? 

a. troubadour  

b. skald  

c. chorister  

d. bard 


Answer- bard


Que- 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 creation of the bourgeois novel as a commodity  

d. the union of England and Wales with Scotland 


Answer- the union of England and Wales with Scotland


Que- How many lines are there in a Sonnet ? 

a. 10 

b. 16 

c. 14 

d. 22 


Answer- 14


Que- 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 


Answer- the Gothic romance


Que- A side note: Which drug/substance was Samuel Taylor Coleridge addicted to ? 

a. Heroine  

b. Cocaine  

c. Alcohol  

d. Opium 


Answer- Opium


Que- Becky sharp was the heroine in which novel ? 

a. Vanity Fair  

b. Sense and Sensibility  

c. Pride and Prejudice  

d. Mansfield Park 


Answer- Vanity Fair


Que- Which work exposes the frivolity of fashionable London ? 

a. Defoe's Robinson Crusoe  

b. Swift's Gulliver's Travels  

c. Behn's Oroonoko  

d. Pope's The Rape of the Lock 


Answer- Pope's The Rape of the Lock


Que- 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. Dryden's Absalom and Achitophel 


Answer- Dryden's Absalom and Achitophel


Que- 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. Ossian 


Answer- Ossian


Que- Which poets collaborated on the Lyrical Ballads of 1798, thus demonstrating the "spirit of the age," which, in an era of revolutionary thinking, depended on a belief in the limitless possibilities of the poetic imagination ? 

a. Mary Wollstonecraft and William Blake 

b. Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley and Percy B. Shelley  

c. William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge  

d. Charles Lamb and William Hazlitt 


Answer- William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge


Que- Which metrical form was Pope said to have brought to perfection ? 

a. the heroic couplet  

b. blank verse  

c. free verse  

d. the ode 


Answer- the heroic couplet


Que- 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 


Answer- Tobias Smollett's Roderick Randsom


Que- 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 


Answer- champions of ancient and modern learning


Que- Which metrical form was Pope said to have brought to perfection ? 

a. the heroic couplet  

b. blank verse  

c. free verse  

d. the ode 


Answer- the heroic couplet


Que- According to Samuel Johnson, "No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for_____________? 

a. love."  

b. honor."  

c. money."  

d. his party." 


Answer- money."


Que- 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 


Answer- Ode on a Grecian Urn


Que- 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 


Answer- Abraham Cowley


Que- Which chilling novel of surveillance and entrapment had the alternative title Things as They Are ____________? 

a. Jane Austen's Emma  

b. Mary Shelley's Frankenstein  

c. William Godwin's Caleb Williams  

d. Sir Walter Scott's Waverley 


Answer- William Godwin's Caleb Williams


Que- 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. 


Answer- Poetry ought to be a visual as well as a verbal art.


Que- 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 


Answer- Robert Herrick


Que- 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 


Answer- Thomas Gray


Que- Who wrote: "Things fall apart; the center cannot hold " ? 

a. William Butler Yeats  

b. James Joyce  

c. Thomas Moore  

d. Edgar Allan Poe 


Answer- William Butler Yeats


Que- Which of the following poems describe or celebrate an apocalyptic regeneration of humanity and the world effected by the creative capacity of the human mind ? 

a. Coleridge's Dejection: An Ode  

b. Blake's "Prophetic Books"  

c. Wollstonecraft's Vindication of the Rights of Woman  

d. all but C 


Answer- all but C


Que- 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. both A and C 


Answer- both A and C


Que- 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 


Answer- Robert Walpole


Que- Which bird did the Ancient Mariner kill ? 

a. Seagull  

b. Albatross  

c. Humming Bird  

d. Crow 


Answer- Albatross


Que- 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 


Answer- Augustan


Que- 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 


Answer- champions of ancient and modern learning


Que- 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 


Answer- Henry Vaughan


Que- 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 


Answer- Augustan


Que- 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 Act of Union 


Answer- the trial and execution of Mary, Queen of Scots


Que- 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 


Answer- William and Mary


Que- 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 


Answer- T.S. Eliot


Que- According to a theater licensing act, repealed in 1843, what was meant by "legitimate" drama ? 

a. The dramaturge and playwright had to be related.  

b. All of the actors were male.  

c. All of the actors were British.  

d. The play was spoken. 


Answer- The play was spoken.


Que- Which work exposes the frivolity of fashionable London ? 

a. Defoe's Robinson Crusoe  

b. Swift's Gulliver's Travels  

c. Behn's Oroonoko  

d. Pope's The Rape of the Lock 


Answer- Pope's The Rape of the Lock


Que- Which setting could you not imagine a work of Romantic literature employing ? 

a. a field of daffodils  

b. the "Orient"  

c. a graveyard  

d. All of the above would be appropriate settings for Romantic literature. 


Answer- All of the above would be appropriate settings for Romantic literature.


Que- 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 


Answer- the bluestockings


Que- 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 


Answer- Let not the sun go down upon your wrath


Que- The Catcher in the Rye takes place in what city ? 

a. New York City  

b. Stanford, Connecticut  

c. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania  

d. Boston, Massachusetts 


Answer- New York City


Que- 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 


Answer- London and Paris


Que- Which social philosophy, dominant during the Industrial Revolution, dictated that only the free operation of economic laws would ensure the general welfare and that the government should not interfere in any person's pursuit of their personal interests ? 

a. economic independence  

b. the Rights of Man  

c. laissez-faire  

d. enclosure 


Answer- laissez-faire


Que- Which of the following factors contributed to literature becoming a profitable business ? 

a. Commercial and public lending libraries were established in order to provide for an enlarged reading public  

b. Education reform increased literacy, thus creating a demand for commercial and public lending libraries.  

c. A new aesthetics of valuing literature for its own sake emphasized reading for pleasure.  

d. all of the above 


Answer- all of the above


Que- Whose great Dictionary, published in 1755, included more than 114,000 quotations ? 

a. William Hogarth  

b. Jonathan Swift  

c. Samuel Johnson  

d. Ben Jonson 


Answer- Samuel Johnson

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