Free Literary Terms and Devices MCQs with Answers

• A. an idea about writing
• B. the choice of words
• C. choice of poem
• D. arrangement of the incidents

Explanation: A plot is the structured arrangement of the events or incidents in a story or play.

• A. Oxymoron
• B. Synaesthesia
• C. Sensuousness
• D. Contrast

Explanation: Synaesthesia combines sensations from different senses, as when a colour is described as “heard” or a smell as “seen.” Oxymoron instead…

• A. having no rhyming end
• B. having no rhythmic flow
• C. having no significance
• D. having no blanks in the verse

Explanation: Blank verse is unrhymed verse, traditionally written in iambic pentameter, so its defining feature is the absence of end rhyme.

• A. Fable
• B. Epic
• C. Elegy
• D. None of these

Explanation: An elegy is a poem of mourning or reflection on the death of a person, as in Gray's Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard.

• A. Elege
• B. Sonnet
• C. Ode
• D. Epic

Explanation: A sonnet is a fixed poetic form of fourteen lines, commonly arranged in an Italian or English rhyme scheme.

• A. Simile
• B. Conceit
• C. Metaphor
• D. Couplet

Explanation: The two lines form a rhyming pair, with wind and unkind creating the couplet.

• A. a pair of rhyming iambic pentameter
• B. a two line stanza
• C. a poem of lamentation
• D. a song for mourning

Explanation: A heroic couplet consists of two rhyming lines written in iambic pentameter, often expressing a complete thought.

• A. a thing stands for whole thing
• B. pity and fear
• C. Self-contradictory speech
• D. long speech

Explanation: Synecdoche uses a part to represent the whole, as in “hands” for workers, or sometimes the whole to represent a part.

• 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.