All Free English Literature MCQs with Answers

• A. To formulate relationships among an author, a reader, and a literary work
• B. To understand the role of sexuality, gender, race, and ethnicity in literary study
• C. To evaluate the role of historical context in the interpretation of literature
• D. All of the above.

Explanation: Literary theory examines literature through several relationships, including author, reader, text, history, gender, race, and sexuality.

• A. No fixed, stable meaning is possible.
• B. Language must be studied in conjunction with history in order to create meaning.
• C. There is no potential for multiple and differing meanings in a work of literature.
• D. Literature is timeless, and thus meaning does not change.

Explanation: Derrida’s deconstruction rejects the idea that words possess one permanently fixed meaning, because meaning is produced through changing…

• A. As an aesthetic object that is independent of historical context
• B. As an aesthetic object that is influenced by historical context
• C. As a historical object that is also aesthetic
• D. As a historical object that is not necessarily aesthetic

Explanation: New Critics treated the literary work as an autonomous aesthetic object whose meaning should be found through close reading rather than…

• A. The names of authors serve a classificatory function.
• B. The author is not a source of infinite meaning.
• C. The author may not always exist.
• D. All of the above.

Explanation: Foucault’s “author function” makes the author’s name a way of classifying texts, limits the idea of the author as an unlimited source of…

• A. How writers conceptualize natural environments and the representation of environmental issues in literature and culture
• B. How writers have damaged the environment
• C. How the environment can be repaired
• D. Who is responsible for damaging the environment

Explanation: Ecotheory or ecocriticism studies how literature and culture represent nature, place, and environmental problems.

• A. Trauma theory
• B. Ecotheory
• C. Game theory
• D. Marxist theory

Explanation: Among the listed theories, ecotheory most directly examines the relationship between literary representation and physical environments or…

• A. mirrors our physical evolution as human beings.
• B. prevents us from communicating through writing or speech.
• C. involves a constant process of deferred meaning.
• D. evolved exclusively as a function of our individual psyche.

Explanation: Derrida’s différance suggests that meaning is continually postponed because each sign gains meaning through its difference from other…

• A. Jacques Lacan
• B. Edward Said
• C. Stephen Greenblatt
• D. Plato

Explanation: Plato describes artistic representation as mimesis, or imitation, especially in his discussions of poetry and painting.

• A. Theodor W. Adorno
• B. Claude Lévi-Strauss
• C. Julia Kristeva
• D. Jacques Derrida

Explanation: New Historicists drew on Claude Lévi-Strauss's structural anthropology and its conception of culture as a system whose elements operate in…

• A. Sigmund Freud
• B. Carl Jung
• C. William James
• D. Theodor W. Adorno

Explanation: Theodor W. Adorno uses identity thinking for the tendency to force different objects into fixed conceptual categories.

• A. Language is inseparable from its historical context.
• B. There are five phases of linguistic development.
• C. Language can be analyzed as a formal system of elements.
• D. Linguistics is too complicated to be distilled to a formula.Books & Literature

Explanation: Saussure treats language synchronically as a structured system of signs whose elements gain value through their differences from one…

• A. Performance is the ultimate objective of all human beings.
• B. Language is used to indicate action as well as thought.
• C. Individuals perform gender actively.
• D. Individuals develop consciousness through speech

Explanation: Austin's performativity theory distinguishes utterances that merely describe something from speech acts that do something, such as…

• A. Women should write for and about themselves in order to counter phallocentric texts.
• B. Women should write, but they should do so only within the existent male canon.
• C. Women should primarily dedicate themselves to studying women's literature from the past.
• D. Women should be unconcerned with the struggle for identity.Philosophy

Explanation: Cixous urges women to write themselves and their experiences into language, challenging the male-centred or phallocentric literary…

• A. Claude Lévi-Strauss
• B. Ferdinand de Saussure
• C. Viktor Shklovsky
• D. Roland Barthes

Explanation: Saussure's structural account of language provided the conceptual foundation for modern literary theory, especially structuralism.

• A. Literary theory often depends on esoteric knowledge to be properly understood.
• B. Literary theory is employed mostly by academics.
• C. Literary theory should not be an academic focus in English departments.
• D. Literary theory is the only proper way to conceptualize literary texts.

Explanation: Ricks would reject the dogmatic claim that literary theory is the only legitimate way to understand literary texts.

• A. To connect human beings with a higher ideal
• B. To entertain those who enjoy it
• C. To criticize society through satire
• D. To bring to light social oppressions

Explanation: For Plato, art has value when it directs the soul toward truth, virtue, and the higher ideal of the Forms.

• A. To rectify the double experiences of certain racial groups
• B. To reconcile cultural identity with individual identity
• C. To expand the canon to include works authored by different racial groups
• D. All of the above.

Explanation: Ethnic criticism addresses racial and cultural exclusion by reconciling identities, correcting the distorted experiences of minority…

• A. Both sets of critics look for an objective way to view texts.
• B. Both sets of critics study the underlying forms of texts.
• C. Both sets of critics focus on evaluating literature in a scientific manner.
• D. All of the above.

Explanation: Formalism and structuralism both seek systematic, relatively objective methods and examine the underlying structures or forms of texts…

• A. Suggesting that the study of literature is based on the breakdown of language into signs
• B. Arguing that language, and therefore literary texts, relies on the difference between terms and therefore constantly defers meaning.
• C. Calling into question the capacity of language to communicate
• D. All of the above.

Explanation: Deconstruction examines how language depends on unstable differences between terms, so meaning is continually deferred rather than fixed.

• A. New Historicism does not make strict delineations between literary and nonliterary texts.
• B. New Historicism takes a particular interest in marginalized peoples.
• C. New Historicism is interested in how texts help us understand economic realities.
• D. All of the above.

Explanation: New Historicism reads literary and nonliterary documents together and studies how texts reflect power, economics, and the experiences of…