All Free English Literature MCQs with Answers

• A. a poem of fourteen lines
• B. a stanza of fourteen lines
• C. a stanza of six lines
• D. a stanza of four linesExplore Top Audiobooks

Explanation: A quatrain is a stanza made up of four lines, whether it rhymes or not.

• A. A Protestant Poem
• B. A Petrarchan Sonnet
• C. An extended metaphor
• D. A pastoral poem

Explanation: A pastoral poem idealizes shepherds, rural landscapes, and rustic life, often contrasting them with the corruption of court or city life.

• A. Octave
• B. Volta
• C. Iambic Pentameter
• D. Petrarchan

Explanation: A volta is the turn or change in thought, argument, or emotional tone in a sonnet, often appearing after the octave in a Petrarchan…

• A. the expurgation of indelicate language
• B. the modernization of archaic vocabulary
• C. the insertion of bawdy songs
• D. the misspelling of simple words like \the\and \and\Literary Classics

Explanation: To bowdlerize means to remove or alter material considered indecent or offensive, especially from a literary text.

• A. wit
• B. sprezzatura
• C. naturalism
• D. gusto

Explanation: Wit denotes intellectual quickness and the inventive ability to discover striking comparisons, images, and metaphors.

• A. 10
• B. 16
• C. 14
• D. 22

Explanation: A sonnet traditionally has fourteen lines, usually arranged in an Italian octave and sestet or in three quatrains followed by a couplet.

• A. It has universal appeal.
• B. It can stand the test of time.
• C. It makes connections.
• D. All of the above.

Explanation: A classic remains meaningful beyond its original period, appeals across audiences, and connects with later readers, ideas, and texts.

• A. choler
• B. blood
• C. cholesterol
• D. black bile

Explanation: The traditional four humours were blood, phlegm, yellow bile or choler, and black bile.

• A. iambic pentameter in rhyming couplets
• B. the verse form of the Shakespearean sonnet
• C. free verse, without rhyme or regular meter
• D. unrhymed iambic pentameter

Explanation: Blank verse is unrhymed iambic pentameter, the metre used extensively in Shakespearean drama and Milton's Paradise Lost.

• A. embellishment at the service of Christian doctrine
• B. repetition of parallel syntactic structures
• C. ironic understatement
• D. stress on every third diphthong

Explanation: Litotes expresses an idea through deliberate understatement, often by denying its opposite, and it may create irony.

• A. symbolism
• B. simile
• C. metonymy
• D. kenning

Explanation: A kenning is a compact, metaphorical compound or phrase used in Germanic poetry, such as “whale-road” for the sea.

• A. parchment made of animal skin
• B. the service owed to a lord by his peasants("villeins")
• C. unrhymed iambic pentameter
• D. an unbreakable oath of fealty

Explanation: Vellum is a fine writing material made from prepared animal skin, traditionally calfskin.

• A. The uncanny
• B. The fallen world
• C. The "Other"
• D. The sublime

Explanation: The uncanny often arises when an apparently supernatural event receives a rational or psychological explanation, making the familiar seem…

• A. A hero who is known for being aristocratic, moody, and secretive
• B. A character who is essentially kind but performs a horrible act by accident
• C. A hero-villain who defies the laws of God's universe
• D. A hero who is usually defined by his fatal attraction to women

Explanation: A Satanic hero is a rebellious hero-villain who challenges or defies God's moral and cosmic order.

• A. As a term associated only with religious written literature
• B. As a device used to describe the flaws in the oral tradition
• C. As a technique that became popular after the invention of the printing press
• D. As a method of composing stories in the oral tradition

Explanation: An oral-formulaic method uses recurring phrases, patterns, and traditional units to help performers compose and remember stories during…

• A. The repetition of words
• B. The use of epithets with character's names
• C. An episodic structure
• D. All of the Above

Explanation: Oral-formulaic composition relies on repeated phrases, stock epithets such as a character's descriptive title, and episodic narrative…

• A. the literary form linked closely with courtly love
• B. a method of creating a mystical union
• C. a term associated with oral transmission
• D. the writing and studying of saints' lives

Explanation: Hagiography is the writing or study of saints' lives, usually presenting their virtues, miracles and martyrdoms.

• A. a heroine who used female attributes to become a saint
• B. a saint who was NOT the humble, pious, and chaste figure she was expected to be
• C. an asexual female saint
• D. an anchorite

Explanation: A virago was a woman who adopted conventionally masculine strength, courage, or independence, and the term was sometimes applied to female…

• A. The Book of Margery Kempe
• B. "The Wooing of Our Lord"
• C. "An Orison to Almighty God"
• D. The Romance of the Rose

Explanation: The Romance of the Rose is a classic medieval allegory in which abstract ideas and experiences are represented through personified…

• A. assonance
• B. allegory
• C. litotes
• D. simile

Explanation: Allegory gives the whole work its structure: abstract qualities and arguments appear as personified women who build and defend the City of…