All Free English Literature MCQs with Answers
Every English Literature question in the bank, across all chapters, each with the correct answer and a written explanation. Free and unlimited, with no account needed.
3,192 questions · page 41 of 160
- A. Mimetic
- B. Psychological
- C. Historical/Biographical
- D. Mythological/Archetypal
Explanation: The mythological or archetypal approach looks for recurring myths, symbols, and archetypes across cultures and periods.
Correct answer: Mythological/Archetypal- A. 1817
- B. 1818
- C. 1718
- D. 1717
Explanation: Coleridge's Biographia Literaria was published in 1817. It is a major work of Romantic criticism, discussing imagination, poetry, and…
Correct answer: 1817- A. Disintrestedness
- B. Intresedness
- C. Purification
- D. Civilization
Explanation: Arnold’s ideal critic must be ‘disinterested’, meaning free from personal, political, or practical bias while judging literature.
Correct answer: Disintrestedness- A. Aristotle
- B. Longinus
- C. Aristophanes
- D. Socrates
Explanation: Aristotle was Plato’s most illustrious pupil and later developed major ideas in logic, ethics, politics, and literary theory.
Correct answer: Aristotle- A. Pope
- B. Arnold
- C. Dr. Jhonson
- D. Ben Jonson
Explanation: Ben Jonson is credited with the dismissive remark that Spenser ‘writes no language’, reflecting Jonson’s criticism of Spenser’s archaic or…
Correct answer: Ben Jonson- A. Critical faculty
- B. Modifying power
- C. A psychological experience
- D. A product of intellect
Explanation: For Coleridge, imagination is an active and shaping power that transforms and unifies experience, whereas fancy mainly rearranges existing…
Correct answer: Modifying power- A. Wordsworth
- B. Coleridge
- C. Keats
- D. Charles Lamb
Explanation: Biographia Literaria is Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s major work on poetry, imagination, and literary theory, published in 1817.
Correct answer: Coleridge- A. Wordsworth
- B. Coleridge
- C. Southey
- D. Hazlitt
Explanation: Coleridge famously distinguished imagination from fancy in Biographia Literaria: imagination creatively unifies and transforms material…
Correct answer: Coleridge- A. 2 sources
- B. 3 sources
- C. 4 sources
- D. 5 sources
Explanation: In On the Sublime, Longinus identifies five principal sources of sublimity, including grandeur of thought, strong emotion, noble diction…
Correct answer: 5 sources- A. 1st Century BC
- B. 1st Century AD
- C. 2nd Century AD
- D. 3rd Century AD
Explanation: On the Sublime, traditionally attributed to Longinus, is generally dated to the 1st century AD, although its exact authorship and date…
Correct answer: 1st Century AD- A. Tragic end of the tragedy
- B. Working of fate against the hero
- C. A weak trait in the character of the hero
- D. A strong quality in the character of the hero
Explanation: Hamartia means the error or flaw in judgment that contributes to a tragic hero's downfall, and it is conventionally described as a…
Correct answer: A weak trait in the character of the hero- A. Agathon
- B. Aeschylus
- C. Sophocles
- D. Euripides
Explanation: Aristotle called Euripides the most tragic of the Greek poets because his plays powerfully produce pity and fear, even when their…
Correct answer: Euripides- A. A term that describes how literature exposes its own artificiality
- B. An idea explored by Viktor Shklovsky
- C. A term that describes the capacity of art to counter the effects of habit
- D. All of the above answers are correct.
Explanation: Defamiliarization, a concept developed by Viktor Shklovsky, makes familiar things seem strange so that habitual perception is disrupted…
Correct answer: All of the above answers are correct.- A. The pathetic fallacy
- B. The intentional fallacy
- C. The affective fallacy
- D. The objective correlative
Explanation: The intentional fallacy is the error of judging a work by the author's stated or supposed intention rather than by the work itself.
Correct answer: The intentional fallacy- A. Discourse of English Poetry
- B. Discoveries
- C. Arte of English Poesie
- D. An Apologie for Poetrie
Explanation: Discoveries is Ben Jonson's collection of critical and literary observations, also known as Timber.
Correct answer: Discoveries- A. tingle our senses
- B. stir our intellect
- C. restore our skills for the art
- D. instill in us the sense of the art
Explanation: The highest art is commonly understood to engage and stimulate the intellect rather than merely produce sensory pleasure.
Correct answer: stir our intellect- A. Unity of effect
- B. Ratiocinactive effect
- C. Cataleptic effect
- D. Didactic effect
Explanation: The passage illustrates Poe's principle of unity of effect: every detail, including the narrator's growing superstition, intensifies the…
Correct answer: Unity of effect- A. To help resolve a question, problem, or difficulty in the readin
- B. To help decide which is the better of two conflicting readings.
- C. To enable to form judgments about literature.
- D. All of the above answers are correct.
Explanation: The historical approach is being used to explain a difficulty in the play: why Otway sympathizes with conspirators while condemning their…
Correct answer: To help resolve a question, problem, or difficulty in the readin- A. Reader Response
- B. Feminist
- C. Mimetic
- D. Formalist
Explanation: A formalist studies features inside the work, such as imagery, symbols, characterization, figurative language, and narrative point of…
Correct answer: Formalist- A. To help resolve a question, problem, or difficulty in the reading.
- B. To help decide which is the better of two conflicting readings.
- C. To enable to form judgments about literature.
- D. All of the above answers are correct.
Explanation: The passage sets two competing interpretations of Lord of the Flies against each other and proposes testing them against textual evidence.
Correct answer: To help decide which is the better of two conflicting readings.