All Free English Literature MCQs with Answers

• A. Coleridge
• B. Keats
• C. Wordsworth
• D. None of these

Explanation: Wordsworth held that a long poem could be understood as a succession or combination of shorter poetic compositions, each producing its own…

• A. Bradley
• B. Dr. Johnson
• C. Nicoll
• D. None of these

Explanation: A. C. Bradley stressed that Shakespearean character and destiny work together, rather than destiny being completely separate from…

• A. Eliot
• B. Pater
• C. I. A. Richards
• D. F. R. Leavis

Explanation: F. R. Leavis attacked Arnold’s critical style as “high pamphleteering,” suggesting that Arnold often argued polemically rather than with…

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

Explanation: The statement comes from Percy Bysshe Shelley's *A Defence of Poetry*, where he distinguishes poetic inspiration from deliberate…

• A. A.C. Bradley
• B. Palmer D.J.
• C. Dr.Johnsofl
• D. None of these

Explanation: D. J. Palmer wrote the critical study Shakespeare's Later Comedies. A. C.

• A. Arnold
• B. Shelley
• C. Pope
• D. Dryden

Explanation: Matthew Arnold proposed the touchstone method in his essay The Study of Poetry, using great lines from earlier poetry as standards for…

• A. Shelley
• B. Oscar Wilde
• C. T. S. Eliot
• D. None of these

Explanation: T. S. Eliot’s essay argues that strong poetry depends on literary tradition as well as the poet’s individual contribution.

• A. Arnold
• B. T. S. Eliot
• C. Shelley
• D. None of these

Explanation: T. S. Eliot’s essay “The Metaphysical Poets” reassessed the intellectual quality of seventeenth-century poets such as Donne.

• A. To "amplify and clarify the indistinct emotions created by metaphorical symbols"
• B. To "prolong the moment of contemplation"
• C. To "counteract the forces of dispersal inherent in metaphorical language"
• D. To "make poetry new"

Explanation: Yeats argues that rhythm helps prolong the moment of contemplation, allowing the mind to remain absorbed in the emotion or image created…

• A. Curiosity about the past
• B. Deference to the past
• C. Violation of the past
• D. Paradoxically both B and C

Explanation: Eliot's quotations show respect for inherited tradition while also removing older words from their original settings and reshaping their…

• A. "Continual expansion of the personality and its diverse elements"
• B. "Continual self-sacrifice, a continual extinction of personality"
• C. "Continual transformation of the personality"
• D. "Continual identification with the past"

Explanation: For Eliot, artistic maturity requires the poet to surrender private personality rather than express it more fully.

• A. The objective correlative refers to the correlation between the poem's formal structure and its meaning.
• B. The objective correlative refers to the correlation between the poem's formal structure and its rhetorical aim.
• C. The objective correlative refers to the correlation between the poem's theme and its objective historical context.
• D. The objective correlative refers to a set of objects, situations, or events which necessarily produce a particular emotion.

Explanation: Eliot defined the objective correlative as a set of objects, situations, or events that serves as the formula for producing a particular…

• A. FR Leavis
• B. Harold Bloom
• C. William Empson
• D. Mariella Frostrup

Explanation: F. R. Leavis was the critic who accused Milton of “callousness to the intrinsic nature of English,” while T. S.

• A. a renewed secularism in the twentieth century
• B. modern literary criticism
• C. late nineteenth-century and earlytwentieth- century satirical drama
• D. the surrealist movement

Explanation: Arnold's moral and cultural evaluation of literature and Pater's emphasis on aesthetic experience helped establish the contrasting…

• A. New Criticism
• B. Critical Inquiry
• C. Scientific Bibliology
• D. Higher Criticism

Explanation: Higher Criticism applies historical, linguistic, and scientific methods to the Bible, treating its books as documents that can be studied…

• A. A picture is worth a thousand words.
• B. Poetry is the supreme artistic form.
• C. Art should hold a mirror up to nature.
• D. Poetry ought to be a visual as well as a verbal art.

Explanation: The Latin phrase ut pictura poesis means “as is painting, so is poetry.” It was understood to suggest that poetry should create vivid…

• A. All knowledge is derived from experience.
• B. Human perceptions are constructed and reflect structures of political power.
• C. The search for essential or ultimate principles of reality.
• D. The sensory world is an illusion.

Explanation: Empiricism holds that knowledge is grounded primarily in sense experience and observation.

• A. eugenics
• B. psychoanalysis
• C. phrenology
• D. all of the above

Explanation: Freud founded psychoanalysis, the study of unconscious desires, repression, and mental conflict.

• A. a magical power whereby poetry plays tricks on the reader
• B. a divine power whereby poetry transmits a message from God to the reader
• C. a moral power whereby poetry encourages the reader to emulate virtuous models
• D. a defensive power whereby poetry and its figurative expressions allow the poet to avoid censorship

Explanation: Sidney argues that poetry teaches by delighting and presents virtuous examples that readers may imitate.

• A. Sigmund Freud
• B. Edmund Lewis
• C. Edmund Burke
• D. Mary Shelley

Explanation: The concept of the uncanny is most closely associated with Sigmund Freud, whose essay "The Uncanny" examines the disturbing return of what…