MCQOPTIONS
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MCQOPTIONS
This section includes 450 Mcqs, each offering curated multiple-choice questions to sharpen your English Literature knowledge and support exam preparation. Choose a topic below to get started.
| 101. |
Who was the first English Christian king ? |
| A. | Alfred |
| B. | Richard III |
| C. | Richard II |
| D. | Ethelbert |
| Answer» E. | |
| 102. |
Who was the first Tudor King ? |
| A. | Henry VIII |
| B. | Henry VII |
| C. | George III |
| D. | James I |
| Answer» C. George III | |
| 103. |
Who was the leader of Pre-Raphaelite group of artists in England ? |
| A. | D.G Rossetti |
| B. | Swinburne |
| C. | Christina Rossetti |
| D. | Morris |
| Answer» B. Swinburne | |
| 104. |
Who was the mother of Elizabeth I ? |
| A. | Catherine of Aragon |
| B. | Jane Seymour |
| C. | Catherine Howard |
| D. | Anne Boleyn |
| Answer» E. | |
| 105. |
Who was the sister of Mary I ? |
| A. | Isabella |
| B. | Victoria |
| C. | Anne |
| D. | Elizabeth I |
| Answer» E. | |
| 106. |
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» B. Anglicans and Methodists | |
| 107. |
Who were the Two Nations_x005F_x000D_eferred 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» B. Anglicans and Methodists | |
| 108. |
Who would be called the English Homer and father of English poetry ? |
| A. | Sir Thomas Malory |
| B. | Geoffrey Chaucer |
| C. | Caedmon |
| D. | John Gower |
| Answer» C. Caedmon | |
| 109. |
Who wrote: “Beauty is truth, truth beauty.” ? |
| A. | John Keats |
| B. | William Shakespeare |
| C. | Samuel Butler |
| D. | Samuel Taylor Coleridge |
| Answer» B. William Shakespeare | |
| 110. |
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» C. Ernest Hemingway | |
| 111. |
Who wrote: “I would prefer not to.” ? |
| A. | Edgar Allan Poe |
| B. | Herman Melville |
| C. | Thomas Gray |
| D. | Henry David Thoreau |
| Answer» C. Thomas Gray | |
| 112. |
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 |
| Answer» B. Robert Browning | |
| 113. |
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 |
| Answer» C. William Woodsworth | |
| 114. |
Who wrote: “Reader, I married him.” ? |
| A. | Jane Austen |
| B. | Charlotte Bronte |
| C. | Edith Wharton |
| D. | Emily Bronte |
| Answer» C. Edith Wharton | |
| 115. |
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 |
| Answer» D. William Wordsworth | |
| 116. |
Who wrote the dystopian novel Nineteen- Eighty-Four in which Newspeak demonstrates the heightened linguistic selfconsciousness of modernist writers ? |
| A. | George Orwell |
| B. | Virginia Woolf |
| C. | Evelyn Waugh |
| D. | Orson Wells |
| Answer» B. Virginia Woolf | |
| 117. |
Who wrote The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, a novel that abandons clock time for psychological time ? |
| A. | Henry Fielding |
| B. | Laurence Sterne |
| C. | Samuel Richardson |
| D. | Tobias Smollett |
| Answer» C. Samuel Richardson | |
| 118. |
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 |
| Answer» E. | |
| 119. |
Who wrote: “Things fall apart; the center cannot hold ” ? |
| A. | William Butler Yeats |
| B. | James Joyce |
| C. | Thomas Moore |
| D. | Edgar Allan Poe |
| Answer» B. James Joyce | |
| 120. |
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» D. Ben Jonson | |
| 121. |
Why did the rebels of 1381 target the church, beheading the archbishop of Canterbury ? |
| A. | Their leaders were Lollards, advocating radical religious reform. |
| B. | The common people were still essentially pagan. |
| C. | They believed that writing, a skill largely confined to the clergy, was a form of black magic |
| D. | The church was among the greatest of oppressive landowners. |
| Answer» E. | |
| 122. |
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» E. | |
| 123. |
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 |
| Answer» D. He just wasn’t bright enough | |
| 124. |
Wild’s drama Woman of No Importance appared in __________? |
| A. | 1884 |
| B. | 1893 |
| C. | 1879 |
| D. | 1904 |
| Answer» C. 1879 | |
| 125. |
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» C. the epistolary novel | |
| 126. |
With which enormously influential perspective or practice is the early-twentiethcentury thinker Sigmund Freud associated ? |
| A. | eugenics |
| B. | psychoanalysis |
| C. | phrenology |
| D. | anarchism |
| Answer» C. phrenology | |
| 127. |
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 |
| Answer» B. Norwegian | |
| 128. |
Wordsworth described all good poetry as______________? |
| A. | the rhythmic expression of moral intuition |
| B. | the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings |
| C. | the polite patter of a corrupted age |
| D. | the divine gift of grace |
| Answer» C. the polite patter of a corrupted age | |
| 129. |
Wordsworth described all good poetry as_______________? |
| A. | the rhythmic expression of moral intuition |
| B. | the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings |
| C. | the polite patter of a corrupted age |
| D. | the divine gift of grace |
| Answer» C. the polite patter of a corrupted age | |
| 130. |
Which of the following statements accurately reflects the status of England, its people, and its language in the early sixteenth century ? |
| A. | English travelers were not obliged to learn French, Italian, or Spanish during their explorations of the Continent. |
| B. | English was fast supplanting Latin as the second language of most European intellectuals. |
| C. | English travelers often returned from the Continent with foreign fashions, much to the delight of moralists. |
| D. | Intending his Utopia for an international intellectual community, Thomas More wrote in Latin, since English had no prestige outside of England. |
| Answer» E. | |
| 131. |
Which of the following statements about The Canterbury Tales is true ? |
| A. | The Wife of Bath, The Clerk, Sir Gawain and The Franklin are characters and tale-tellers in this work. |
| B. | “The General Prologue’ is appended to The Canterbury Tales. |
| C. | In all, Chaucer tells thirty tales in this work. |
| D. | The Canterbury Tales remained unfinished at the time of its author’s death. |
| Answer» C. In all, Chaucer tells thirty tales in this work. | |
| 132. |
Which of the following statements about Julian of Norwich is true ? |
| A. | She sought unsuccessfully to restore classical paganism. |
| B. | She was a virgin martyr. |
| C. | She is the first known woman writer in the English vernacular. |
| D. | She made pilgrimages to Jerusalem, Rome, and Santiago. |
| Answer» D. She made pilgrimages to Jerusalem, Rome, and Santiago. | |
| 133. |
Which of the following sixteenth-century poets was not a courtier ? |
| A. | George Puttenham |
| B. | Philip Sidney |
| C. | Walter Ralegh |
| D. | Thomas Wyatt |
| Answer» B. Philip Sidney | |
| 134. |
Which of the following sixteenth-century works of English literature was translated into the English language after its first publication in Latin ? |
| A. | Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus |
| B. | William Shakespeare’s King Lear |
| C. | Thomas More’s The History of King Richard III |
| D. | Thomas More’s Utopia |
| Answer» E. | |
| 135. |
Which of the following shifts began in the reign of Henry VII and continued under his Tudor successors ? |
| A. | the growing authority of the Pope over domestic English affairs |
| B. | the expansion of England’s colonial possessions |
| C. | the rise in the power and confidence of the aristocracy |
| D. | the countering of feudal power structures by a stronger central authority |
| Answer» E. | |
| 136. |
Which of the following refers to the small area of Ireland, extending north from Dublin, over which the English government could claim effective control ? |
| A. | Ulster |
| B. | the Protectorate |
| C. | the Pale |
| D. | West Britain |
| Answer» D. West Britain | |
| 137. |
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» E. | |
| 138. |
Which of the following plays was actually performed on stage ? |
| A. | Byron’s Manfred |
| B. | Coleridge’s Remorse |
| C. | Shelley’s Prometheus Unbound |
| D. | Shelley’s The Cenci |
| Answer» C. Shelley’s Prometheus Unbound | |
| 139. |
Which of the following plays was not authored by Shakespeare in the Jacobean period ? |
| A. | Othello |
| B. | Volpone |
| C. | King Lear |
| D. | Antony and Cleopatra |
| Answer» C. King Lear | |
| 140. |
Which of the following phrases best characterizes the late-nineteenth century aesthetic movement which widened the breach between artists and the reading public, sowing the seeds of modernism ? |
| A. | art for intellect’s sake |
| B. | art for God’s sake |
| C. | art for the masses |
| D. | art for art’s sake |
| Answer» E. | |
| 141. |
Which of the following periodical publications (reviews and magazines) appeared in the Romantic era ? |
| A. | London Magazine |
| B. | The Spectator |
| C. | The Edinburgh Review |
| D. | A and C only |
| Answer» E. | |
| 142. |
Which of the following periodical publications (reviews and magazines) first appeared in the Romantic era ? |
| A. | London Magazine |
| B. | The Spectator |
| C. | The Edinburgh Review |
| D. | a and c only |
| Answer» E. | |
| 143. |
Which of the following novels display postwar nostalgia for past imperial glory ? |
| A. | E. M. Forster’s A Passage to India |
| B. | Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea |
| C. | Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness |
| D. | Paul Scott’s Staying On |
| Answer» E. | |
| 144. |
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» B. Charles Dickens | |
| 145. |
Which of the following might be addressed/represented by pastoral poetry ? |
| A. | shepherd and shepherdesses who fall in love and engage in singing contests |
| B. | heroic stories in epic form |
| C. | a celebration of the humility, contentment, and simplicity of living in the country |
| D. | A and C only |
| Answer» E. | |
| 146. |
Which of the following languages did not coexist in Anglo-Norman England ? |
| A. | Latin |
| B. | Dutch |
| C. | French |
| D. | Celtic |
| Answer» C. French | |
| 147. |
Which of the following is true about public theaters in Elizabethan England ? |
| A. | They relied on admission charges, an innovation of the period. |
| B. | The early versions were oval in shape. |
| C. | They were located outside the city limits of London. |
| D. | all of the above |
| Answer» E. | |
| 148. |
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» D. Ann Radcliffe’s The Italian | |
| 149. |
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» C. Alexander Pope | |
| 150. |
Which of the following is not associated with high modernism in the novel ? |
| A. | stream of consciousness |
| B. | free indirect style |
| C. | irresolute open endings |
| D. | narrative realism |
| Answer» E. | |