Free Literary Movements and Periods MCQs with Answers

529 Literary Movements and Periods MCQs from English Literature, each with the correct answer and a written explanation of why it is correct. Free and unlimited, with no account needed.

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  • 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
  • A. The Elizabethan Age
  • B. The Commonwealth Period
  • C. The Jacobean Age
  • D. The Middle English Period

Explanation: Chronologically, the Elizabethan Age came first, followed by the Jacobean Age; the Commonwealth Period came later, in the mid-seventeenth…

Correct answer: The Commonwealth Period
  • A. William Shakespeare
  • B. Sir Philip Sidney
  • C. Christopher Marlowe
  • D. Sir Thomas Malory

Explanation: Sir Thomas Malory belonged to the late medieval period and wrote before the English Renaissance.

Correct answer: Sir Thomas Malory
  • A. John Skelton
  • B. William Shakespeare
  • C. Sir Thomas Wyatt
  • D. Thomas Carew

Explanation: Thomas Carew was a seventeenth-century Cavalier poet, so he did not write during the sixteenth century.

Correct answer: Thomas Carew

Literary Movements and Periods MCQs: common questions

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There are 529 Literary Movements and Periods MCQs in the English Literature bank, shown 20 to a page with the correct answer and an explanation on each.

Does every Literary Movements and Periods MCQ have an explanation?

Yes. Each Literary Movements and Periods question shows the correct option and a written explanation of why it is correct, so a wrong answer teaches you something rather than just being marked wrong.

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