All Free English Literature MCQs with Answers

• A. "Truth is beauty ... "
• B. "Truth is stranger than fiction ..."
• C. "Familure acts are beautiful through love ..."
• D. "A little learning is a dangerous thing..."

Explanation: “A little learning is a dangerous thing” comes from Alexander Pope’s neoclassical poem An Essay on Criticism, not from the Romantic…

• A. The nature of death
• B. The French Revolution
• C. The relationship between truth and beauty
• D. The author's childhood experience

Explanation: Keats’s ode contrasts the changing, mortal world with the permanence of art and connects these ideas through the famous relationship…

• A. How nature can render someone good
• B. How nature can corrupt someone
• C. Eternal youth
• D. A dark voyage into madness

Explanation: Peter Bell presents a morally hardened man whose encounter with suffering awakens sympathy and changes him.

• A. Lord Byron
• B. William Blake
• C. William Hazlitt
• D. Percy Shelley

Explanation: Percy Bysshe Shelley called poets the “unacknowledged legislators of the world” in his essay A Defence of Poetry, suggesting that poetry…

• A. Percy Shelley
• B. John Keats
• C. William Wordsworth
• D. Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Explanation: William Wordsworth frequently examined childhood, memory, and the development of the mind, especially in poems such as the…

• A. Lord Byron
• B. Percy Shelley
• C. Samuel Taylor Coleridge
• D. William Blake

Explanation: William Blake often designed, illustrated, and printed his poems himself, making the visual appearance part of the work.

• A. 2
• B. 4
• C. 1
• D. 5

Explanation: Chaucer is generally credited with knowing four languages: English, French, Latin, and Italian.

• A. French
• B. Latin
• C. Middle english
• D. English

Explanation: The Canterbury Tales was written in Middle English, the form of English used in England from roughly the twelfth to the fifteenth century.

• A. Elliot
• B. Kipling
• C. Cummings
• D. Brooke

Explanation: The remark is associated with Rudyard Kipling, whose enormous popularity, narrative power, and cultural influence were sometimes…

• A. Owner convicted of fraud
• B. Fall in Sales
• C. Rise in taxation on magazines
• D. Shortage of paper

Explanation: Poetry Quarterly reportedly ceased publication in 1953 after its owner was convicted of fraud.

• A. Carolyn Kizer
• B. Mary Oliver
• C. Sylvia Plath
• D. Marianne Moore

Explanation: Ted Hughes married the American poet Sylvia Plath in 1956. Carolyn Kizer, Mary Oliver, and Marianne Moore were also notable American…

• A. Light verse
• B. Romantic
• C. Political satire
• D. War poems

Explanation: Rupert Brooke and Siegfried Sassoon are chiefly associated with poetry arising from the First World War.

• A. Quartet
• B. Limerick
• C. Sextet
• D. Palindrome

Explanation: A limerick is a comic five-line poem, usually with an AABBA rhyme scheme and a strong rhythm.

• A. Comfort
• B. Leisure
• C. Relaxation
• D. Tranquility

Explanation: The lines are from Walter de la Mare's poem “Leisure,” which contrasts the pressures of life with the need to pause and observe nature.

• A. Impediments
• B. Inconveniences
• C. Worries
• D. Troubles

Explanation: The line comes from Shakespeare's Sonnet 116: “Let me not to the marriage of true minds / Admit impediments.” “Impediments” means…

• A. H. W. Longfellow
• B. Ralph Waldo Emerson
• C. Dylan Thomas
• D. William Wordsworth

Explanation: Dylan Thomas described poetry as a fundamental creative act using language, stressing that poetry creates rather than merely reports…

• A. Geoffrey Chaucer
• B. Dick Whittington
• C. Thomas Lancaster
• D. King Richard II

Explanation: Geoffrey Chaucer wrote The Canterbury Tales, a frame narrative in which pilgrims tell stories while travelling to Canterbury.

• A. Glory
• B. Ruin
• C. Disaster
• D. victory

Explanation: Kipling’s line reads, “If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster / And treat those two impostors just the same.” The paired words present…

• A. Masefield
• B. Causley
• C. Hughes
• D. Larkin

Explanation: Sylvia Plath married the English poet Ted Hughes in 1956; their literary relationship is an important part of both poets’ biographies.

• A. Boer War
• B. Second World War
• C. Korean War
• D. First World War

Explanation: Rupert Brooke is chiefly associated with the First World War, especially through his idealistic war sonnets such as “The Soldier.” He died…