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. Jacques Derrida
  • B. Terry Eagleton
  • C. Fredric Jameson
  • D. Stephen Greenblatt

Explanation: Stephen Greenblatt is widely credited with coining and developing the term New Historicism, a method that reads literature alongside the…

Correct answer: Stephen Greenblatt
  • A. An atmosphere of dread, fear, and darkness
  • B. An isolated protagonist
  • C. A hero or protagonist who is tempted
  • D. by a villain
  • E. All of these

Explanation: Gothic fiction commonly combines a dark, fearful atmosphere with isolation, psychological temptation, and threatening villains.

Correct answer: All of these
  • A. The sublime
  • B. The supernatural
  • C. Love
  • D. The manners and traditions of the upper classes

Explanation: Gothic fiction regularly uses the sublime, supernatural forces, and intense or forbidden love.

Correct answer: The manners and traditions of the upper classes
  • A. The Elizabethan Age
  • B. The Neo-Classical Age
  • C. The Romantic Age
  • D. The Victorian Age

Explanation: The Neoclassical Age treated poetic diction as a special, elevated language governed by decorum and classical models.

Correct answer: The Neo-Classical Age
  • A. Inspiration
  • B. Imagination
  • C. Fancy
  • D. Decorum

Explanation: Imagination is the defining Romantic faculty because Romantic poets treated it as a creative power that transforms experience and…

Correct answer: Imagination
  • A. June 14,1789
  • B. June 14, 1798
  • C. July 14, 1789
  • D. July 14,1798

Explanation: The Bastille was stormed on 14 July 1789, an event traditionally regarded as the symbolic beginning of the French Revolution.

Correct answer: July 14, 1789
  • A. Wordsworth
  • B. Coleridge
  • C. Carlyle
  • D. Schlegel

Explanation: The German critic Friedrich Schlegel was among the first to use and theorise the terms romantic and romanticism in their modern literary…

Correct answer: Schlegel
  • A. Beat to his size
  • B. Beat to his stomach
  • C. Beat to his socks
  • D. Beat to his Shoe

Explanation: The expression “beat to his socks” means utterly exhausted or worn out, and it helped supply the popular phrase behind “Beat Generation.”…

Correct answer: Beat to his socks
  • A. Text
  • B. Doctrine
  • C. Bibliography
  • D. None of the above

Explanation: The usual Puritan sermon structure includes the text, doctrine, uses and application. Bibliography is not one of these sermon parts.

Correct answer: Bibliography
  • A. Black humor; metafiction.
  • B. Metaphors; verbal irony.
  • C. Hyperbole; Personification.
  • D. Symbolism; Imagery.

Explanation: Postmodern writing commonly combines black humor, which treats disturbing subjects ironically, with metafiction, which draws attention to…

Correct answer: Black humor; metafiction.
  • A. Reason
  • B. Individualism
  • C. Political thinking, philosophical, and social movement
  • D. Deism, skepticism

Explanation: Transcendentalism was a nineteenth-century philosophical, religious, literary, and social movement that stressed intuition, individual…

Correct answer: Political thinking, philosophical, and social movement
  • A. Transcendentalism
  • B. Communism
  • C. Totalitarianism
  • D. Feudalism

Explanation: Transcendentalism stressed intuition, the spiritual value of nature, and the unity of God, humanity, and the natural world.

Correct answer: Transcendentalism
  • A. Interest in the common man
  • B. Celebration of the individual
  • C. Age of reason
  • D. Both A and B

Explanation: Romanticism valued ordinary people and strong individual feeling, imagination, and freedom.

Correct answer: Both A and B
  • A. Total equality
  • B. Unconditional love
  • C. Individualism
  • D. Irresistible grace

Explanation: Puritan theology was strongly influenced by Calvinism, whose doctrines include irresistible grace.

Correct answer: Irresistible grace
  • A. An examination of life as it actually is.
  • B. A romantic portrayal of life.
  • C. An examination of the countryside versus the city.
  • D. A sad and depressing view of reality.

Explanation: American Realism presents ordinary life, social conditions, and human behaviour without romantic idealisation, so it examines life as it…

Correct answer: An examination of life as it actually is.
  • A. Nature as a source of secular and spiritual knowledge, emotion as truth, and exploration of the self.
  • B. Scientific exploration.
  • C. Love and romance.
  • D. The philosophy of how to run a new country.

Explanation: Romantic writers valued nature, emotion, imagination, and the inner self as sources of knowledge and truth.

Correct answer: Nature as a source of secular and spiritual knowledge, emotion as truth, and exploration of the self.
  • A. Transcendentalism, Symbolism, and Dark Romanticism.
  • B. The Harlem Renaissance, The Lost Generation, and Confessional Poetry.
  • C. There were no movements during the modernist time period.
  • D. Symbolism, Naturalism, and Postmodernism.

Explanation: The Harlem Renaissance and the Lost Generation are strongly associated with modernism, while confessional poetry developed from the…

Correct answer: The Harlem Renaissance, The Lost Generation, and Confessional Poetry.
  • A. The placement of the action in the past and in a foreign country
  • B. The grandiose threatening setting that requires ingenious stagecraft
  • C. The focus on wrongdoing at the highest level of authority
  • D. The use of real historical resources by Shelley for the foundation of his play

Explanation: Gothic writing often uses a remote historical setting, threatening grandeur, and abuses of power, but using genuine historical sources is…

Correct answer: The use of real historical resources by Shelley for the foundation of his play
  • A. Age of reason
  • B. Political thinking
  • C. Celebration of individual
  • D. Philosophical movment

Explanation: The Enlightenment is commonly called the Age of Reason because it placed reason, observation, and critical inquiry above superstition and…

Correct answer: Age of reason
  • A. A Bird in the Hand
  • B. Hands of Satan
  • C. Sinners in the Hand...
  • D. Sins of the World

Explanation: The famous Puritan sermon is Jonathan Edwards’s “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” a classic expression of Puritan fear of divine…

Correct answer: Sinners in the Hand...