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 43 of 160

  • A. Ben Jonson
  • B. John Ruskin
  • C. Thomas Carlyle
  • D. William Hazlitt

Explanation: John Ruskin praised Shakespeare's comic heroines and observed that Shakespeare's comedies have ‘only heroines and no heroes.’ The…

Correct answer: John Ruskin
  • A. Allen Tate
  • B. J.C Ransom
  • C. I.A Richards
  • D. F. R Leavis

Explanation: Allen Tate described T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land as “a music of ideas,” highlighting how its meanings arise through recurring images…

Correct answer: Allen Tate
  • A. Walter Pater
  • B. A. C. Swinburne
  • C. Matthew Arnold
  • D. T. S. Eliot

Explanation: Matthew Arnold used this striking image in his essay “Shelley” to criticise Shelley’s idealism as beautiful but ineffective in practical…

Correct answer: Matthew Arnold
  • A. Tennyson
  • B. Charles Lamb
  • C. Lockhart
  • D. None of These

Explanation: John Gibson Lockhart attacked writers including William Hazlitt in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine by labelling them members of the Cockney…

Correct answer: Lockhart
  • A. Elizabeth I
  • B. James II
  • C. George II
  • D. William and Mary

Explanation: James II was removed during the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and replaced by William III and Mary II.

Correct answer: James II
  • A. The Pre-Raphaelites
  • B. The Post Modern
  • C. The Edwardian Period
  • D. The Georgian Period

Explanation: The reign of Edward VII, from 1901 to 1910, gives this period its name: the Edwardian Period.

Correct answer: The Edwardian Period
  • A. Elizabethan Age
  • B. Victorian Age
  • C. Restoration Period
  • D. Augustan Age

Explanation: The Elizabethan Age is called the Golden Age because English drama and poetry reached exceptional heights, especially through Shakespeare…

Correct answer: Elizabethan Age
  • A. To speak to the spiritual and cultural needs of African Americans.
  • B. To raise awareness of violence in African American youth.
  • C. To support the Back to Africa Movement.
  • D. To raise money for Sickle Cell Anemia research.

Explanation: Larry Neal saw the Black Arts Movement as a cultural counterpart to Black Power, creating art that addressed African Americans' spiritual…

Correct answer: To speak to the spiritual and cultural needs of African Americans.
  • A. Collectivism versus the authority of the individual.
  • B. The wearing away of traditional class structures.
  • C. The impact of WWI and the 1918 Bolshevik Revolution in Russia.
  • D. The disassociated, anomic self.

Explanation: McKay’s 1922 visit to Soviet Russia connects Modernism with the historical shock of World War I and the Bolshevik Revolution.

Correct answer: The impact of WWI and the 1918 Bolshevik Revolution in Russia.
  • A. African American art should exclude women.
  • B. African American images should inspire African Americans.
  • C. African American art should subvert the art of Europeans and White Americans.
  • D. African American literature should replicate educated White language.Support Black Businesses

Explanation: The Black Arts Movement sought an autonomous Black aesthetic that would strengthen Black pride and identity.

Correct answer: African American images should inspire African Americans.
  • A. Characters are not as important as plot.
  • B. Presentation is objective.
  • C. Ordinary language is used.
  • D. Events are plausible.Try Science Kits

Explanation: Realism usually gives major importance to believable characters, everyday life, ordinary language, and plausible events.

Correct answer: Characters are not as important as plot.
  • A. Its fractured, collage effect.
  • B. Its insistence on plot.
  • C. Its focus on landscape.
  • D. Its focus on modern city life.

Explanation: Cane is modernist because it combines poems, sketches, stories, and dramatic passages in a deliberately fragmented collage.

Correct answer: Its fractured, collage effect.
  • A. a romantic
  • B. a Victorian
  • C. a Pre...Raphaelite
  • D. none of these

Explanation: Tennyson was the leading poetic voice of the Victorian age, serving as Poet Laureate for much of Queen Victoria's reign.

Correct answer: a Victorian
  • A. Classical
  • B. Romantic
  • C. Victorian
  • D. Elizabethan

Explanation: Romanticism valued imagination, emotion, nature, and the artist's search for truth and beauty rather than strict classical rules.

Correct answer: Romantic
  • A. Robert Herrick
  • B. Jeremy Taylor
  • C. Samuel Richardson
  • D. Thomas Hobbes

Explanation: Samuel Richardson was an important Augustan novelist, best known for *Pamela* and *Clarissa*.

Correct answer: Samuel Richardson
  • A. classical
  • B. modern
  • C. romantic
  • D. Greek

Explanation: Wordsworth is one of the central English Romantic poets, especially known for nature, imagination, and ordinary language.

Correct answer: romantic
  • A. revival or rebirth
  • B. representation
  • C. presentation
  • D. rebel

Explanation: Renaissance means “rebirth” or “revival,” referring especially to the revival of classical learning and art in Europe.

Correct answer: revival or rebirth
  • A. the revival of learning
  • B. the revival of hard task
  • C. the revival of life
  • D. the revival of new country

Explanation: Renaissance literally means “rebirth” and refers to the revival of classical learning, art and literature in Europe.

Correct answer: the revival of learning
  • A. The Renaissance
  • B. The Non-classical
  • C. The Romantic
  • D. The Modern

Explanation: The Puritan or Commonwealth period is generally treated as a phase within the English Renaissance, following the Elizabethan and Jacobean…

Correct answer: The Renaissance
  • A. H. G. Wells
  • B. Victor Hugo
  • C. Hugo Gernsback
  • D. Jules Verne

Explanation: H. G. Wells, Hugo Gernsback, and Jules Verne are key names in the development of science fiction.

Correct answer: Victor Hugo