All Free English Literature MCQs with Answers

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

Explanation: Plato first formulated the theory that art is an imitation of reality, while Aristotle later developed and defended it in his Poetics.

• A. Formalist
• B. Historical
• C. Feminist
• D. Mimetic

Explanation: The historical approach interprets literature through the period, events, beliefs, and social conditions in which it was produced.

• A. Ars Poetica
• B. Poetics
• C. De Arte Poetica
• D. Art Poetique

Explanation: Aristotle’s major work on literary theory is the Poetics, especially important for its analysis of tragedy, plot, character, and…

• A. Historical/Biographical Approach
• B. Reader Response Approach
• C. Formalism
• D. Mimetic Approach

Explanation: Reader-response criticism treats literature as an interaction between the words on the page and the reader’s mind, experience, and…

• A. Judith Butler's Gender Trouble
• B. W.E.B. Du Bois's The Souls of Black Folk
• C. Roland Barthes's "The Death of the Author"
• D. Jacques Lacan's "The Mirror Stage . . . "

Explanation: Lacan’s “Mirror Stage” explains how an infant develops a sense of identity by identifying with an image outside itself and distinguishing…

• A. Art Poetique
• B. Poetics
• C. Rhetoric
• D. Ars Poetica

Explanation: Aristotle examines the nature and structure of tragedy in the Poetics, including plot, character, catharsis, and the unity of action.

• A. Saintsbury
• B. Murray
• C. Atkins
• D. Tyllard

Explanation: George Saintsbury praised Aristotle as “the very Alexander of criticism,” linking Aristotle’s commanding influence in criticism with…

• A. It suggests that the suppression of women is part of a historical climate that will naturally fade away.
• B. It suggests that gender roles are conditioned by the possession of money and power.
• C. It suggests that gender has power over class.
• D. All of the above answers are correct.

Explanation: Woolf argues that women’s intellectual and creative freedom depends on material independence, especially money and private space.

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

Explanation: Matthew Arnold defined criticism as an effort “to see the object as in itself it really is,” stressing disinterested and accurate…

• A. Charles Lamb
• B. Joseph Conrad
• C. Coleridge
• D. Wordsworth

Explanation: Samuel Taylor Coleridge introduced the phrase “willing suspension of disbelief” in Biographia Literaria to explain how readers accept the…

• A. Should arise from the circumstances of the plot itself
• B. By supernatural machinery
• C. By narration
• D. By the choral odes

Explanation: Aristotle requires the plot’s resolution, or unravelling, to grow from the plot’s own circumstances and causal structure.

• A. Philiph Sidney
• B. Shelley
• C. Aristlotle
• D. Keats

Explanation: Philip Sidney calls Plato “of all philosophers the most poetic” in An Apology for Poetry, recognising the imaginative and literary quality…

• A. Book 7
• B. Book 10
• C. Book 1
• D. Book 5Books

Explanation: Plato’s banishment of poets appears in Book X of the Republic, where he attacks imitative poetry for being distant from truth and morally…

• A. Only the Unity of Time should be observed
• B. Only the Unity of Place should be observed
• C. Only the Unity of Action should be observed
• D. All the three Unities should be observed

Explanation: Dr. Johnson regarded the Unity of Action as essential because a play should develop one coherent plot.

• A. Wordsworth's
• B. Coleridge's
• C. Dr. Johnson's
• D. Matthew Arnold's

Explanation: Dr. Johnson combines instruction with pleasure in defining the purpose of poetry, reflecting the classical idea that literature should…

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

Explanation: Ars Poetica is Horace’s verse treatise on poetic art and literary principles.

• A. Aristotle
• B. Plato
• C. Pope
• D. Stephen Gosson

Explanation: Stephen Gosson attacks poetry in The School of Abuse and calls it a “mother of lies.” Plato also criticizes poetry as deceptive, but this…

• A. The Function of Criticism
• B. The Study of Poetry
• C. Preface to Eighteen Fifty Three poems
• D. Essay on Wordsworth

Explanation: Arnold makes this argument in “The Function of Criticism at the Present Time,” where he presents creative and critical powers as necessary…

• A. Hellenic
• B. Hellenistic
• C. Renaissance
• D. Graeco-Roman

Explanation: Plato and Aristotle belong to the Hellenic, or classical Greek, phase of literary criticism.

• A. Deconstructionism
• B. Formalist Criticism
• C. Structuralism
• D. Mimetic Criticism

Explanation: Deconstructionism questions stable meaning and rejects the idea that language transparently refers to a fixed external reality.