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

English Literature MCQ (Multiple Choice Questions)

 Que- The Oxford Movement was started by______________? 

a. The people of the Oxford area  

b. The Scholars of the Oxford University  

c. The clergymen of Oxford  

d. The University Wits 


Answer- The Scholars of the Oxford University


Que- What is common amongst Cardinal Newman, John Keble, Henry Newman and Stanley ? 

a. They were all poets  

b. They were all associated with Pre- Raphaelite School  

c. They were all atheists  

d. They were all associated with the Oxford Movement 


Answer- They were all associated with the Oxford Movement


Que- What does the phrase \White Man's Burden,\ coined by Kipling, refer to ? 

a. Britain's manifest destiny to colonize the world  

b. the moral responsibility to bring civilization and Christianity to the peoples of the world  

c. the British need to improve technology and transportation in other parts of the world  

d. the importance of solving economic and social problems in England before tackling the world's problems 


Answer- the moral responsibility to bring civilization and Christianity to the peoples of the world


Que- From where Matthew Arnold took the story for his Sohras and Rustam ? 

a. Arabian Nights  

b. Canterbury Tales  

c. Shah Namah  

d. Pilgrims Progress 


Answer- Shah Namah


Que- Wild's drama Woman of No Importance appared in __________? 

a. 1884 

b. 1893 

c. 1879 

d. 1904 


Answer- 1893


Que- Which one is Gaskell's first novel ? 

a. Mary Barton  

b. Ruth  

c. Cranford  

d. North and South 


Answer- Mary Barton


Que- Which of the following Victorian writers regularly published their work in periodicals ? 

a. Thomas Carlyle  

b. Matthew Arnold  

c. Charles Dickens  

d. all of the above 


Answer- all of the above


Que- Which best describes the general feeling expressed in literature during the last decade of the Victorian era ? 

a. studied melancholy and aestheticism  

b. sincere earnestness and Protestant zeal  

c. raucous celebration mixed with selfcongratulatory sophistication  

d. paranoid introspection and cryptic dissent 


Answer- studied melancholy and aestheticism


Que- Which contemporary discussions on women's rights did Tennyson's The Princess address ? 

a. the grueling working conditions for women in textile factories  

b. the debate on women's suffrage  

c. the need to enlarge and improve educational opportunities for women, resulting in the establishment of the first women's college in London  

d. the question of monarchical succession and if a woman should hold royal power 


Answer- the need to enlarge and improve educational opportunities for women, resulting in the establishment of the first women's college in London


Que- Which event did not occur as part of the rise of the British Empire under Queen Victoria ? 

a. Between 1853 and 1880, 2,466,000 emigrants left Britain, many bound for the colonies.  

b. In 1876, Queen Victoria was named empress of India  

c. To save costs and maximize profits, the day-to-day government of India was transferred from Parliament to the private East India Company.  

d. From 1830 to 1870, the sum total of investments abroad by British capitalists had risen from £ 300 billion to £ 800 billion. 


Answer- To save costs and maximize profits, the day-to-day government of India was transferred from Parliament to the private East India Company.


Que- Which event did not occur as part of the rise of the British Empire under Queen Victoria ? 

a. Between 1853 and 1880, 2,466,000 emigrants left Britain, many bound for the colonies.  

b. In 1876, Queen Victoria was named empress of India.  

c. To save costs and maximize profits, the day-to-day government of India was transferred from Parliament to the private East India Company.  

d. From 1830 to 1870, the sum total of investments abroad by British capitalists had risen from £300 billion to £800 billion. 


Answer- To save costs and maximize profits, the day-to-day government of India was transferred from Parliament to the private East India Company.


Que- Which of the following novelists best represents the mid-Victorian period's contentment with the burgeoning economic prosperity and decreased restiveness over social and political change ? 

a. Anthony Trollope  

b. Charles Dickens  

c. John Ruskin  

d. Friedrich Engels 


Answer- Anthony Trollope


Que- What best describes the subject of most Victorian novels?  

a. the representation of a large and comprehensive social world in realistic detail_____________? 

b. a surrealist exploration of alternate states of consciousness  

c. the attempt of a protagonist to define his or her place in society  

d. A and C 


Answer- A and C


Que- The Song of the Lotus is a poem by____________? 

a. Coleridge  

b. Eliot  

c. Tennyson  

d. Keats 


Answer- Tennyson


Que- The basic theme of Arnold's Literature and Dogma is____________? 

a. Contemporary literary criticism  

b. Art and Literature  

c. Theology  

d. Social changes in the Victorian Age 


Answer- Theology


Que- What does the phrase "White Man's Burden," coined by Kipling, refer to ? 

a. Britain's manifest destiny to colonize the world  

b. the moral responsibility to bring civilization and Christianity to the peoples of the world  

c. the British need to improve technology and transportation in other parts of the world  

d. the importance of solving economic and social problems in England before tackling the world's problems 


Answer- the moral responsibility to bring civilization and Christianity to the peoples of the world


Que- Why did the novel seem a genre particularly well-suited to women ? 

a. It did not carry the burden of an august tradition like poetry.  

b. It was a popular form whose market women could enter easily.  

c. It was seen as a frivolous form where one shouldn't make serious statements about society.  

d. all but C 


Answer- all but C


Que- Which one is the unfinished novel of Charles Dickens____________? 

a. Dombey and Son  

b. Little Dorrit  

c. Our Mutual Friend  

d. Edwin Drood 


Answer- Edwin Drood


Que- Which of the following terms is defined as the application of a scientific attitude of mind toward studying the Bible, seen as a mere text of history and not an infallibly sacred document? 

a. New Criticism  

b. Critical Inquiry  

c. Scientific Bibliology  

d. Higher Criticism 


Answer- Higher Criticism


Que- The Battle of Baladava in the Crimean War finds its reference in the poem__________? 

a. In Memorium  

b. 1st September  

c. Ultima Ratio Regum  

d. The Charge of the Light Bridge 


Answer- The Charge of the Light Bridge


Que- Which contemporary discussions on women's rights did Tennyson's The Princess address ? 

a. the grueling working conditions for women in textile factories  

b. the debate on women's suffrage  

c. the need to enlarge and improve educational opportunities for women, resulting in the establishment of the first women's college in London  

d. the question of monarchical succession and if a woman should hold royal power 


Answer- the need to enlarge and improve educational opportunities for women, resulting in the establishment of the first women's college in London


Que- Jane Fairfax and Frank Churchill are characters from the novel____________? 

a. Cranford  

b. Hard Times  

c. Emma  

d. Great Expectation 


Answer- Emma


Que- Queen Victoria became the Empress of India in_____________? 

a. 1843 

b. 1854 

c. 1892 

d. 1876 


Answer- 1876


Que- What did Thomas Carlyle mean by \Close thy Byron; open thy Goethe\ ? 

a. Britain's preeminence as a global power will depend on mastery of foreign languages.  

b. Even a foreign author is better than a homegrown scoundrel.  

c. Abandon the introspection of the Romantics and turn to the higher moral purpose found in Goethe.  

d. In a carefully veiled critique of the monarchy, Byron and Goethe stand in symbolically for Queen Victoria and Charles Darwin respectively. 


Answer- Abandon the introspection of the Romantics and turn to the higher moral purpose found in Goethe.


Que- By 1890, what percentage of the earth's population was subject to Queen Victoria ? 

a. 1% 

b. 10% 

c. 15% 

d. 25% 


Answer- 25%


Que- Cocktown is an imaginary industrial town in the novelfirst_____________? 

a. Cranford  

b. Hard Times  

c. Ruth  

d. Vanity Fair 


Answer- Hard Times


Que- Elizabeth Barrett's poem The Cry of the Children is concerned with which major issue attendant on the Time of Troubles during the 1830s and 1840s ? 

a. women's rights and suffrage  

b. child labor  

c. Chartism  

d. the prudishness and old-fashioned ideals of her fellow Victorians 


Answer- child labor


Que- Who was appointed as Poet-Laureate after William Wordsworth ? 

a. D.G Rossetti  

b. Tennyson  

c. Robert Browning  

d. George Eliot 


Answer- Tennyson


Que- To whom did the Reform Bill of 1832 extend the vote on parliamentary representation ? 

a. the working classes  

b. women  

c. the lower middle classes  

d. slaves 


Answer- the lower middle classes


Que- Maud is a poem written by_________________? 

a. Pope  

b. Tennyson  

c. Swineburne  

d. Byron 


Answer- Tennyson


Que- Arnold's Culture and Anarchy deals with the subject of_____________? 

a. Religion  

b. Civilization  

c. Tehology  

d. Education 


Answer- Education


Que- The Golden Jubilee of Queen Victoria's reign was celebrated in______________? 

a. 1842 

b. 1837 

c. 1871 

d. 1859 


Answer- 1837


Que- Which ruler's reign marks the approximate beginning and end of the Victorian era ? 

a. King Henry VIII  

b. Queen Elizabeth I  

c. Queen Victoria  

d. King John 


Answer- Queen Victoria


Que- Which one of Gaskell's novels has been called a Victorian Much Ado About Nothing ? 

a. Cranford  

b. North and South  

c. Ruth  

d. Mary Barton 


Answer- Cranford


Que- Heathcliff is a character from_____________? 

a. Emma  

b. Jane Eyre  

c. Vanity Fair  

d. Wuthering Heights 


Answer- Wuthering Heights


Que- Who were the "Two Nations" referred to in the subtitle of Disraeli's Sybil (1845) ? 

a. the rich and the poor  

b. Anglicans and Methodists  

c. England and Ireland  

d. Britain and Germany 


Answer- the rich and the poor


Que- Fill in the blanks from Tennyson's The Princess. Man for the field and woman for the …..: Man for the sword and for the ___________ she: Man with the head and woman with the __________Man to command and woman to _____________? 

a. crop; scabbard; foot; agree  

b. throne; scepter; soul; decree  

c. school; scalpel; pen; set free  

d. hearth; needle; heart; obey 


Answer- hearth; needle; heart; obey


Que- What best describes the subject of most Victorian novels ? 

a. the representation of a large and comprehensive social world in realistic detail  

b. a surrealist exploration of alternate states of consciousness  

c. the attempt of a protagonist to define his or her place in society  

d. A and C 


Answer- A and C


Que- Who, among the following, was a Catholic novelist, an Intelligence Officer, a film critic and set his fictions in far-away places wrecked by political conflicts ? 

a. Graham Greene  

b. Anthony Powell  

c. Evelyn Waugh  

d. William Golding 


Answer- Graham Greene


Que- What factors contributed to the increased popularity of nonfiction prose ? 

a. a new market position for nonfiction writing and an exalted sense of the didactic function of the writer  

b. a Puritanical distrust of fictions and a thirst for trivia  

c. the forbiddingly high cost of threevolume novels and the difficulty of finding poetry in bookshops outside of London  

d. the deconstruction of the truth-fiction dichotomy and an accompanying relativistic sense that every opinion was of equal value 


Answer- a new market position for nonfiction writing and an exalted sense of the didactic function of the writer


Que- Which of th following novels is called a "Novel without a hero" ? 

a. Vanity Fair  

b. Mill on the Floss  

c. Northanger Abbey  

d. Pickwick Papers 


Answer- Vanity Fair


Que- Why did the novel seem a genre particularly well-suited to women ? 

a. It did not carry the burden of an august tradition like poetry.  

b. It was a popular form whose market women could enter easily.  

c. It was seen as a frivolous form where one shouldn't make serious statements about society.  

d. all but C 


Answer- all but C


Que- Which of the following comic playwrights made fun of Victorian values and pretensions ? 

a. W. S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan  

b. Oscar Wilde  

c. Robert Corrigan  

d. all but C 


Answer- all but C


Que- Which of the following contributed to the growing awareness in the Late Victorian Period of the immense human, economic, and political costs of running an empire ? 

a. the India Mutiny in 1857  

b. the Boer War in the south of Africa  

c. the Jamaica Rebellion in 1865  

d. all of the above 


Answer- all of the above


Que- Which of the following discoveries, theories, and events contributed to Victorians feeling less like they were a uniquely special, central species in the universe and more isolated ? 

a. geology  

b. evolution  

c. discoveries in astronomy about stellar distances  

d. all of the above 


Answer- all of the above


Que- Which poem by Chaucer was written on the death of Blanche, Wife of John of Gaunt ? 

a. The Legend of Good Women  

b. The House of Fame  

c. The Book of Duchess  

d. Troilus and Criseyde 


Answer- The Book of Duchess


Que- What factors contributed to the increased popularity of nonfiction prose ? 

a. a new market position for nonfiction writing and an exalted sense of the didactic function of the writer  

b. a Puritanical distrust of fictions and a thirst for trivia  

c. the forbiddingly high cost of threevolume novels and the difficulty of finding poetry in bookshops outside of London  

d. the deconstruction of the truth-fiction dichotomy and an accompanying relativistic sense that every opinion was of equal value 


Answer- a new market position for nonfiction writing and an exalted sense of the didactic function of the writer


Que- Who is the author of Blessed Damozel ? 

a. Robert Browning  

b. D.G Rossetti  

c. Tennyson  

d. Christina Rossetti 


Answer- D.G Rossetti


Que- Which movement revived under Whitefield and Wesley ? 

a. Methodist  

b. Imagism  

c. Oxford Movement  

d. Pre-Raphaelite 


Answer- Methodist


Que- Matthew Arnold;s Thyrsis is an elegy written on the death of______________? 

a. Arthur Hallam  

b. Milton  

c. Edward King  

d. Hugh Clough 


Answer- Hugh Clough

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