Free Literary Terms and Devices MCQs with Answers

• 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…

• A. The golden torque
• B. Hurnting
• C. Comitatus ethic
• D. Kenning

Explanation: The statement refers to the comitatus ethic, the Germanic bond in which a lord protects his loyal warriors and his retainers stand by him…

• A. Giving inanimate objects human qualities
• B. A metaphorical compound
• C. A reparational payment demanded of a person guilty of homicide
• D. The image used to share qualities in a metaphor or simile

Explanation: Wergild was the monetary compensation paid to a victim's family for a killing, helping prevent private blood revenge in Anglo-Saxon…

• A. A pause or break in a line of poetry
• B. Giving inanimate objects human qualities
• C. A metaphorical compound
• D. The image used to share qualities in a metaphor or simile

Explanation: A caesura is a deliberate pause or break within a line of poetry, often marked by punctuation or a strong natural pause in the rhythm.

• A. Stroller, idler, walker
• B. An inhabitant of a rural village
• C. A religious believer
• D. Both A and B

Explanation: A flâneur is an urban stroller or idle observer who walks through the city, particularly as a figure associated with modern Paris.

• A. Stream of consciousness often relies upon "free association" of ideas.
• B. Stream of consciousness is the capturing of the interior monologue of the narrator.
• C. Stream of consciousness attempts to accurately capture the external dialogue of various characters in a realistic setting by an objective observer.
• D. A and B only

Explanation: Stream-of-consciousness writing represents the mind’s shifting inner flow and commonly uses free association and interior monologue.

• A. Literature that relies on devices like irony, sarcasm, and humor
• B. A work of literature that attempts to improve society
• C. A text that exposes serious flaws under the veil of comedy
• D. All of these answers

Explanation: Satire uses irony, sarcasm, humour, and related techniques to expose faults, often with the aim of encouraging social improvement.

• A. A reversal
• B. An imitation
• C. A satire
• D. A poetic metaphor

Explanation: Mimesis is the representation or imitation of reality in art and literature.

• A. Aristotle's Poetics
• B. Leo Tolstoy's The Kreutzer Sonata
• C. John Keats's "Ode on a Grecian Urn"
• D. Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness

Explanation: Defamiliarization makes ordinary objects or experiences seem strange so that readers perceive them afresh.

• A. A story in which the author provides an explicit moral
• B. A story that takes place in the distant past
• C. A light-hearted, humorous story in which viewers are shown proper ways to behave
• D. A story told to little children

Explanation: A fable is a short instructive story, often using talking animals or personified objects, that conveys a moral, frequently stated…

• A. Questions for which the answers are obvious
• B. Persuasive writing and speaking
• C. Writing that is complicated and scholarly
• D. Logical writing and speaking

Explanation: Rhetoric is the art of using language effectively to persuade an audience in speech or writing.

• A. All dogs have four legs, all creatures do not have four legs, hence all creatures with four legs are dogs.
• B. All men breathe air, all dogs breathe air, hence all men are dogs.
• C. All mammals are warm-blooded, all dogs are mammals, hence all dogs are warm-blooded.
• D. All dogs have hair, all people have hair, hence anything with hair is a dog or a person.

Explanation: A syllogism contains premises leading to a necessary conclusion: if all mammals are warm-blooded and all dogs are mammals, all dogs must…

• A. Logos refers to a writer's presentation of character and image.
• B. Logos refers to a writer's ability to present evidence.
• C. Logos refers to a writer's ability to inspire action in readers.
• D. Logos refers to a writer's ability to inspire emotional responses in readers.

Explanation: Logos is the appeal to reason, typically achieved through evidence, facts, and logical argument.