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. Renaissance
  • B. Jacobean Period
  • C. Restoration Period
  • D. Romantic Age

Explanation: The period beginning with the restoration of Charles II in 1660 is called the Restoration Period.

Correct answer: Restoration Period
  • A. 18th Century
  • B. 19th Century
  • C. 20th Century
  • D. None of these

Explanation: The Victorian Age corresponds mainly to the reign of Queen Victoria, from 1837 to 1901, and therefore falls within the nineteenth century.

Correct answer: 19th Century
  • A. T.S. Eliot
  • B. Siegfried Sassoon
  • C. Wilfred Owen
  • D. Oscar Wilde

Explanation: Oscar Wilde died in 1900, fourteen years before the First World War began.

Correct answer: Oscar Wilde
  • A. Bede's "An Ecclesiastical History of the English People"
  • B. Julian of Norwhich's "Book of Showings"
  • C. Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales"
  • D. Sir Thomas More's "Utopia"Get Language Courses

Explanation: Bede’s Ecclesiastical History was completed around 731, centuries before Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, Julian of Norwich’s Book of Showings…

Correct answer: Bede's "An Ecclesiastical History of the English People"
  • A. The Restoration
  • B. Jacobean Age
  • C. The Augustan Age
  • D. The Age of Sensibility

Explanation: The Jacobean Age belongs to the early seventeenth century and precedes the Neoclassical period.

Correct answer: Jacobean Age
  • A. Charles II was restored to the throne
  • B. The French Revolution
  • C. The Great Fire of London
  • D. The Exclusion Bill Crisis

Explanation: The Restoration period began with Charles II’s return in 1660 and included the Great Fire of London and the Exclusion Bill Crisis.

Correct answer: The French Revolution
  • A. John Milton's "Paradise Lost"
  • B. George Herbert's "The Temple"
  • C. William Shakespeare's "Tempest"
  • D. Ben Jonson's "Volpone"

Explanation: Paradise Lost was completed around 1665 and published in 1667, later than The Temple, Volpone, and The Tempest.

Correct answer: John Milton's "Paradise Lost"
  • A. Beowulf
  • B. Canterbury Tales
  • C. The Domesday Book
  • D. Sons and Lovers

Explanation: Beowulf is an Old English epic composed before 1066, the year of the Battle of Hastings.

Correct answer: Beowulf
  • A. Middle English
  • B. German
  • C. Old English
  • D. Modern English

Explanation: Shakespeare wrote in Early Modern English, the form of English used during the Renaissance and distinct from both Old English and Middle…

Correct answer: Modern English
  • A. The leading characteristic of the age
  • B. Monarchs or political events
  • C. The primary author of the age
  • D. The language of the age

Explanation: Many conventional period names refer to rulers or major political events, as in the Elizabethan Age, the Jacobean Age, the Restoration…

Correct answer: Monarchs or political events
  • A. John Milton
  • B. Thomas Otway
  • C. Sir Walter Scott
  • D. John Dryden

Explanation: The Restoration period began in 1660 and includes writers such as Dryden and Otway; Milton also continued writing during this period.

Correct answer: Sir Walter Scott
  • A. "Emotional power achieved through suggestive visual images"
  • B. "Exploration of philosophical paradoxes through visual images"
  • C. "Clarity of expression through the use of precise visual images"
  • D. "Inclusion of natural objects as symbols"

Explanation: Imagism sought precision, economy and clarity by presenting exact images rather than explaining abstract ideas or emotions.

Correct answer: "Clarity of expression through the use of precise visual images"
  • A. Marxism
  • B. Fascism
  • C. Democracy
  • D. Libertarianism

Explanation: Futurism glorified speed, technology, violence and authoritarian energy, ideas that strongly overlapped with Italian Fascism.

Correct answer: Fascism
  • A. Germany was defeated and blamed for causing the war.
  • B. In the course of World War I, the Bolsheviks came to power in Russia.
  • C. Successful parliamentary democracies were established throughout the continent and remained stable until the outbreak of World War II in 1939.
  • D. By the end of the 1920s, almost every state that had participated in World War I faced an economic depression and political upheavals.

Explanation: World War I produced defeat, revolution, economic crisis and political instability, not stable parliamentary democracies across Europe.

Correct answer: Successful parliamentary democracies were established throughout the continent and remained stable until the outbreak of World War II in 1939.
  • A. Stein experimented only with the sound qualities of language, whereas the Imagists focused on visual imagery.
  • B. Stein experimented with language that skirted the edges of sense, whereas the Imagists sought precision and clarity of expression.
  • C. Stein sought to combine classical poetic form with contemporary content, whereas the Imagists used traditional poetic subject matter but experimented with form.
  • D. Stein sought precision and clarity in her poems, whereas the Imagists sought experimental forms that enhanced visual imagery.

Explanation: Stein often pushed language toward repetition, fragmentation, and the limits of ordinary sense, whereas Imagism aimed at precise, clear…

Correct answer: Stein experimented with language that skirted the edges of sense, whereas the Imagists sought precision and clarity of expression.
  • A. Members of both movements were fascinated by speed and dynamism, but unlike the Futurists, Vorticists did not celebrate technology and industrialization.
  • B. Futurism was a politically-inclined movement, whereas Vorticism was free of all political entanglements.
  • C. Futurism lasted for several decades, whereas Vorticism was short-lived.
  • D. Vorticists celebrated technology and industrialization, whereas Futurists explored impending cultural challenges regarding technology and industrialization.

Explanation: Both movements valued energy, movement and dynamism, but Vorticism did not share Futurism’s enthusiastic celebration of machines…

Correct answer: Members of both movements were fascinated by speed and dynamism, but unlike the Futurists, Vorticists did not celebrate technology and industrialization.
  • A. Modernism is the art produced during the modern period.
  • B. Modernism is the historical period which followed the modern period.
  • C. Modernism is the philosophy of modern art.
  • D. Both A and C

Explanation: Modernism can refer both to the art produced during the modern period and to the ideas or philosophy shaping that art.

Correct answer: Both A and C
  • A. William Carlos Williams
  • B. John Greenleaf Whittier
  • C. George Herbert
  • D. Robert Browning

Explanation: William Carlos Williams is associated with American modernism, especially its preference for contemporary subjects, colloquial language…

Correct answer: William Carlos Williams
  • A. John Milton
  • B. Alfred Tennyson
  • C. Allen Ginsberg
  • D. Amy Lowell

Explanation: Alfred Tennyson was Poet Laureate during the Victorian period and remained a major poetic figure in its later decades.

Correct answer: Alfred Tennyson
  • A. Slavery
  • B. American attitudes toward Jews and Israel
  • C. Capitalism and social inequalities
  • D. All of these answers

Explanation: Objectivist poets often linked poetry with social and political realities, including economic exploitation, inequality, slavery, and…

Correct answer: All of these answers