All Free English Literature MCQs with Answers

• A. Samuel Taylor Coleridge
• B. Virginia Woolf
• C. Matthew Arnold
• D. Carl Jung

Explanation: Samuel Taylor Coleridge made “fancy” a central critical term by distinguishing it from the creative power of imagination in Biographia…

• A. F. R. Leavis
• B. Allen Tate
• C. John Crowe Ransom
• D. R. P. Blackmur

Explanation: John Crowe Ransom wrote The New Criticism, published in 1941, and gave the New Critical movement its name. Allen Tate and R. P.

• A. Drama
• B. Narrative mode
• C. Poetry
• D. Dialogue

Explanation: Plato's Republic presents philosophical arguments through conversations, mainly involving Socrates and other speakers.

• A. Mimetic approach
• B. Formalist approach
• C. Historical approach
• D. Psychological approach

Explanation: Interpreting Samson's shorn locks as a symbolic castration focuses on unconscious sexual symbolism and psychological conflict.

• A. Dryden
• B. Pope
• C. Dr. Johnson
• D. Addison

Explanation: Dr Samuel Johnson gave comedy a high value because it presents general human life and familiar manners, while he also defended…

• A. Joseph Addison
• B. Dr. Johnson
• C. Coleridge
• D. Matthew Arnold

Explanation: Dr Samuel Johnson called John Dryden the “Father of English Criticism,” recognising Dryden’s major role in establishing English critical…

• A. Plato
• B. Aristotle
• C. Longinus
• D. Horace

Explanation: Plato argued that art imitates physical objects, which are themselves imperfect imitations of ideal Forms; therefore art is twice removed…

• A. Interpretative Criticism
• B. Legislative Criticism
• C. Comparative Criticism
• D. Textual Criticism

Explanation: Dryden compares English, French, and classical dramatic practices in An Essay of Dramatic Poesy, making it a notable example of…

• A. 14
• B. 15
• C. 12
• D. 13

Explanation: Coleridge develops his famous distinction between fancy and imagination in Chapter 13 of Biographia Literaria.

• A. the meaning of a text always relies on context.
• B. texts are always heterogeneous.
• C. any system for the production of meaning is inevitably bound by context, yet also limitless.
• D. All of the above answers are correct.

Explanation: Deconstruction treats meaning as dependent on context, internally divided, and never finally limited to one stable interpretation.

• A. Moral/Philosophical
• B. Formalism/New Criticism
• C. Historical/Biographical
• D. Psychological

Explanation: The historical-biographical approach explains literature through an author's life and the period in which the work was produced.

• A. Historical
• B. Feminist
• C. Tory
• D. Psychological

Explanation: The critic compares the play's conspiracy with the historical Popish Plot and investigates the author's political and historical…

• A. Freud
• B. Tate
• C. Richards
• D. Jung

Explanation: Carl Jung strongly influenced archetypal criticism through ideas such as the collective unconscious, archetypes, and recurring symbolic…

• A. Change in the fortune of the hero from bad to good
• B. Change in the fortune of the hero from good to bad
• C. Constancy in the fortune of the hero
• D. Fluctuations occurring in the fortune of the hero

Explanation: Peripeteia is the reversal of the dramatic situation or the hero’s fortune, conventionally presented in tragedy as a movement from…

• A. A term for the false neuroses expressed in dreams
• B. A feminist term for the state that occurs when texts written by women are not considered in the study of literature
• C. Another term for the unconscious
• D. An ideology that involves dominating the consciousness of exploited classes

Explanation: In Marxist theory, false consciousness occurs when exploited people accept ideas that conceal or justify their exploitation, usually the…

• A. The unifying power
• B. Ability to coin new word
• C. Power of imagination
• D. Negative capability

Explanation: Coleridge used “esemplastic” for the imagination’s power to shape diverse elements into a coherent unity.

• A. Elaine Showalter
• B. Ellen Moors
• C. Julia Kristeva
• D. Kate Millet

Explanation: Elaine Showalter coined and developed gynocriticism, which studies women's writing and the female literary tradition.

• A. Three
• B. Four
• C. Five
• D. Six

Explanation: Longinus identifies five principal sources of sublimity: greatness of thought, strong emotion, noble diction, dignified composition, and…

• A. Greek
• B. Latin
• C. Hebrew
• D. Italian

Explanation: Longinus's On the Sublime survives as a Greek treatise, probably from the first century.

• A. Arnold
• B. Shelley
• C. Byron
• D. Hazlitt

Explanation: Matthew Arnold described Keats’s letters as resembling the letters of a surgeon’s apprentice, pointing to their direct, personal, and…