All Free English Literature MCQs with Answers

Every English Literature question in the bank, across all chapters, each with the correct answer and a written explanation. Free and unlimited, with no account needed.

3,192 questions · page 109 of 160

  • A. "The Prelude"
  • B. "We Are Seven"
  • C. "Lines Written a few miles above Tintern Abbey"
  • D. "Lines Written in Early Spring"

Explanation: The Prelude includes passages in which Wordsworth reflects on difficulty, interruption, and the struggle to sustain poetic creation…

Correct answer: "The Prelude"
  • A. His addiction to opium
  • B. His experiences during the French Revolution
  • C. The end of his friendship with Wordsworth
  • D. His physical battle with gout

Explanation: Coleridge's long-term opium dependence damaged his health, concentration, and creative productivity, contributing substantially to his…

Correct answer: His addiction to opium
  • A. A powerful, sublime force
  • B. A peaceful force
  • C. Depressing and miserable
  • D. Controlled by gods

Explanation: In Mont Blanc, the mountain and surrounding landscape represent nature's immense, awe-inspiring, and potentially terrifying power.

Correct answer: A powerful, sublime force
  • A. Influenza
  • B. Tuberculosis
  • C. Fever
  • D. Suicide

Explanation: Keats died of tuberculosis, then commonly called consumption, in Rome in 1821.

Correct answer: Tuberculosis
  • A. Sincere and heartfelt
  • B. Mocking and satirical
  • C. Mournful and dark
  • D. Polemic and dry

Explanation: Byron’s dedication of “Don Juan” attacks and mocks fellow poets, especially Robert Southey, rather than offering a sincere tribute.

Correct answer: Mocking and satirical
  • A. Fanny Brawne
  • B. Dorothy Wordsworth
  • C. Mary Shelley
  • D. Mary Keats

Explanation: John Keats’s great love was Fanny Brawne, to whom he became engaged in 1819.

Correct answer: Fanny Brawne
  • A. William Wordsworth
  • B. Samuel Taylor Coleridge
  • C. William Blake
  • D. Lord Byron

Explanation: The celebration of satire and the openly mocking treatment of human folly are strongly associated with Lord Byron, especially in “Don…

Correct answer: Lord Byron
  • A. Percy Shelley
  • B. John Keats
  • C. Lord Byron
  • D. Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Explanation: These lines come from Shelley’s elegy “Adonais,” written to mourn John Keats.

Correct answer: John Keats
  • A. The passion between a husband and wife
  • B. The loss of innocence
  • C. The horrors of the French Revolution
  • D. How poets can bring about political revolution

Explanation: Shelley presents the West Wind as a force that can carry his ideas among humanity, like scattered leaves or sparks.

Correct answer: How poets can bring about political revolution
  • A. William Wordsworth
  • B. John Keats
  • C. Percy Shelley
  • D. William Blake?

Explanation: William Blake’s poetry is filled with visions, angels, spirits, and symbolic supernatural figures, especially in works such as “The…

Correct answer: William Blake?
  • A. William Wordsworth
  • B. William Blake
  • C. Percy Shelley
  • D. Lord Byron

Explanation: “Spots of time” is Wordsworth’s term for powerful memories that preserve emotional and spiritual insight from the past.

Correct answer: William Wordsworth
  • A. Death
  • B. Perception
  • C. Exhaustion
  • D. Love

Explanation: Duncan Wu challenges the view that Wordsworth’s Lucy poems are primarily love poems.

Correct answer: Love
  • A. The abolition of slavery
  • B. The equality of all people
  • C. The innate brilliance of children
  • D. The beauty of common language

Explanation: “The Little Black Boy” exposes racial prejudice by presenting spiritual worth as independent of skin colour.

Correct answer: The equality of all people
  • A. William Blake
  • B. Lord Byron
  • C. William Wordsworth
  • D. John Keats

Explanation: The brooding, ironic, intellectually self-conscious hero is a hallmark of Byron’s poetry, especially the Byronic hero.

Correct answer: Lord Byron
  • A. Not an atheist
  • B. In love with Lord Byron
  • C. Suicidal
  • D. Fiercely anti-war

Explanation: Shelley’s radical politics included a strong commitment to pacifism and opposition to war, making him fiercely anti-war.

Correct answer: Fiercely anti-war
  • A. An expression of love for common man.
  • B. Mockery toward William Wordsworth.
  • C. An expression of doubt and angst.
  • D. Dark humor.

Explanation: Byron often expressed sympathy for ordinary people, while his poetry is well known for satire, doubt, angst, and dark humour.

Correct answer: An expression of love for common man.
  • A. Most Romantic poets were politicians
  • B. Poets have no actual effect upon the world
  • C. Poets actually help the world grow and develop
  • D. Hardly anyone actually reads Romantic poetry

Explanation: Shelley’s phrase presents poets as forces that shape society’s ideals, values, and imagination, even without holding political office.

Correct answer: Poets actually help the world grow and develop
  • A. A celebration of the city's beauty
  • B. A protest against social inequality
  • C. An examination of the city's past
  • D. An attack on William Wordsworth

Explanation: Blake’s London exposes poverty, oppression, child exploitation, prostitution, and the restrictions imposed by social institutions.

Correct answer: A protest against social inequality
  • A. William Wordsworth
  • B. John Keats
  • C. Samuel Taylor Coleridge
  • D. Lord Byron

Explanation: Wordsworth, Keats, and Coleridge are especially identified with lyrical treatment of nature, while Byron is more strongly associated with…

Correct answer: Lord Byron
  • A. The little girl refuses to cast the dead out of her life.
  • B. The little girl is insane or delusional
  • C. The little girl's siblings have not died
  • D. The little girl herself is dead

Explanation: The child continues to count her dead siblings among the living because emotional and familial bonds remain real to her.

Correct answer: The little girl refuses to cast the dead out of her life.