All Free English Literature MCQs with Answers

• A. Lamentation, in which the speaker demonstrates grief
• B. Praise and admiration for the dead
• C. Consolation and solace
• D. All of these

Explanation: The traditional elegy moves through grief or lamentation, praise of the dead, and consolation or solace.

• A. "To be or not to be, that is the question."
• B. "And the world didn't even think of stopping for me."
• C. "I played about the front gate, pulling flowers."
• D. "I wandered lonely as a cloud."

Explanation: The line begins with the regular iambic pattern of unstressed and stressed syllables and contains five beats: “To BE / or NOT / to BE /…

• A. "Into my head there will come / a beach of cotton, a dock where from."
• B. "To kiss the sky / to be the sun / is to live forever."
• C. "I heard a car crash / just as I died."
• D. "Death comes for all of us / even you."

Explanation: A couplet consists of two consecutive lines, commonly linked by rhyme or a shared syntactic and rhythmic unit.

• A. A poem that has no rhyme scheme
• B. A poem that eulogizes the dead
• C. A poem that carries a pattern on two rhymes and offers an alternating refrain
• D. A poem that celebrates the life of a cruel person

Explanation: A villanelle is built on two rhyme sounds and repeated lines that function as alternating refrains.

• A. He is suggesting that artists serve to develop culture.
• B. He is suggesting that all artists are from high social classes.
• C. He is suggesting that artists are repressed throughout society.
• D. He is suggesting that the making of laws is itself an art.

Explanation: Shelley's phrase means that poets shape society's moral imagination and cultural values even when they do not make formal laws.

• A. Art serves a particular worldly purpose.
• B. Art's supreme function is to entertain the public.
• C. Artists are dangerous to social order.
• D. Artists serve to construct the foundations of culture.

Explanation: In A Defence of Poetry, Shelley treats poets and artists as imaginative forces that shape moral awareness and establish the foundations of…

• A. A narrative poem is vague and difficult in style.
• B. A narrative poem is a poem that does not have a plot or tell a story.
• C. A narrative poem has a plot and tells a story.
• D. A narrative poem is a poem written in the style of a conversation.

Explanation: Narrative poetry is defined by its storytelling function: it presents a plot, characters, and events, often in verse.

• A. Compares his love to a winter storm
• B. Compares his love to a summer's day
• C. Compares his love to a turbulent sea
• D. Compares his love to his fear of death

Explanation: The sonnet opens with the famous comparison, “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” Shakespeare then argues that the beloved’s beauty…

• A. Simplicity in language, brevity in form, and humorousness in attitude
• B. Complexity in language, lengthiness in form, and seriousness in attitude
• C. Simplicity in language, lengthiness in form, and humorousness in attitude
• D. Complexity in language, brevity in form, and humorousness in attitude

Explanation: The ode traditionally uses elevated or complex language, considerable length, and a serious, reflective attitude.

• A. Typically poetic and fanciful language
• B. Ancient languages
• C. Complicated and difficult language
• D. Common, everyday language

Explanation: Wordsworth argued that poetry should use the real language of ordinary people, especially as found in common rural life, rather than…

• A. Greek writer
• B. Roman Writer
• C. Italian writer
• D. English writer

Explanation: Horace was a Roman poet and critic of the Augustan age, best known in literary study for works such as Ars Poetica.

• A. Interpret the Poem.
• B. Introduce External Support.
• C. Analyze the Elements of the Poem
• D. Evaluate the Poem.

Explanation: Interpretation normally follows analysis of the poem’s elements and comes immediately before evaluation in the sequence of explication.

• A. Excursion
• B. Tintern Abbey Lines
• C. Preface to the Lyrical Ballads
• D. Immortality Ode

Explanation: Wordsworth presents his theory that poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings recollected in tranquillity in the 1802…

• A. Keats
• B. Shelley
• C. Wordsworth
• D. Coleridge

Explanation: Wordsworth defines poetry as the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings, recollected in tranquillity, in the Preface to Lyrical…

• A. Horace
• B. Quintillion
• C. Cicero
• D. Virgil

Explanation: Horace's work is properly an epistle to the Pisones, but the title Ars Poetica was later attached to it, traditionally through…

• A. Wordsworth
• B. Coleridge
• C. Southey
• D. Shelly

Explanation: Wordsworth wrote the Preface to Lyrical Ballads, especially the expanded 1800 and 1802 versions, to explain the collection's theory of…

• A. 1780
• B. 1798
• C. 1815
• D. 1805

Explanation: The first edition of Lyrical Ballads appeared in 1798, written by William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

• A. 1798
• B. 1800
• C. 1802
• D. 1815

Explanation: Wordsworth's Preface to Lyrical Ballads first appeared in the 1800 edition and was substantially expanded in 1802.

• A. Alexander the Great
• B. Emperor Augustus
• C. Julius Caesar
• D. Pompey

Explanation: The Roman poet Horace lived during the reign of Emperor Augustus and was connected with his circle through the patron Maecenas.

• A. Shelley
• B. Wordsworth
• C. Coleridge
• D. Matthew Arnold

Explanation: Wordsworth defines poetry as the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings recollected in tranquillity in the Preface to Lyrical Ballads.