Free Poetry MCQs with Answers
889 Poetry 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. Robert Browning
- B. D.G Rossetti
- C. Tennyson
- D. Christina Rossetti
Explanation: The Blessed Damozel is by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, a leading Pre-Raphaelite poet and painter.
Correct answer: D.G Rossetti- A. Arthur Hallam
- B. Milton
- C. Edward King
- D. Hugh Clough
Explanation: Arnold’s Thyrsis is an elegy for his friend Arthur Hugh Clough, who died in 1861.
Correct answer: Hugh Clough- A. the use of pictorial description to construct visual images to represent the emotion or situation of the poem
- B. sound as a means to express meaning
- C. perspective, as in the dramatic monologue
- D. all of the above
Explanation: Victorian poets experimented with visual imagery, sound patterns, and shifting perspectives such as the dramatic monologue.
Correct answer: all of the above- A. a narrative poem
- B. a sonnet
- C. an elegy
- D. a wedding hymn
Explanation: An epithalamion is a poem written to celebrate a marriage or wedding, and Spenser’s poem celebrates his own wedding.
Correct answer: a wedding hymn- A. Hugh Clough
- B. Arthur Hallam
- C. Lord Byron
- D. Keats
Explanation: Tennyson wrote In Memoriam A.H.H. after the sudden death of his close friend Arthur Hallam in 1833.
Correct answer: Arthur Hallam- A. John Milton
- B. Charles Bacon
- C. John Donne
- D. Herbert Spencer
Explanation: John Donne is generally regarded as the foremost poet of the Jacobean age and the major English metaphysical poet.
Correct answer: John Donne- A. Iliad
- B. Odyssey
- C. Beowulf
- D. Canterbury Tales
Explanation: Beowulf, the major surviving Old English epic, contains the dragon fought by Beowulf in the final part of the poem.
Correct answer: Beowulf208. What did Byron deride with his scathing reference to \'Peddlers,' and 'Boats,' and 'Wagons'!\ ?
- A. the neo-classical influence of Pope and Dryden
- B. the clumsiness of Shakespeare's plots
- C. the Orientalist fantasies of Coleridge
- D. Wordsworth's devotion to the ordinary and everyday
Explanation: Byron's references to 'Peddlers,' 'Boats,' and 'Wagons' mock Wordsworth's preference for humble subjects and ordinary rural life.
Correct answer: Wordsworth's devotion to the ordinary and everyday- A. the fractal
- B. the figment
- C. the fragment
- D. the aubade
Explanation: The fragment, an incomplete or deliberately unfinished poetic form, suited Romantic interest in imagination, mystery, and suggestiveness.
Correct answer: the fragment- A. Mary Wollstonecraft and William Blake
- B. Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley and Percy Bysshe Shelley
- C. William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge
- D. Charles Lamb and William Hazlitt
Explanation: Lyrical Ballads was jointly published by William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge in 1798, a landmark collection in the emergence of…
Correct answer: William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge- A. William Blake
- B. Alfred Lord Tennyson
- C. Samuel Johnson
- D. William Wordsworth
Explanation: Wordsworth made rustic people, social outsiders, and ordinary language central to poetry, especially in the Preface to Lyrical Ballads.
Correct answer: William Wordsworth- A. the organization of a working class men's choral group in Southern England
- B. the Battle of Waterloo
- C. the Peterloo Massacre
- D. the storming of the Bastille
Explanation: The Peterloo Massacre of 1819, when cavalry attacked a reform meeting in Manchester, inspired Shelley's political poems including England…
Correct answer: the Peterloo Massacre- A. the rhythmic expression of moral intuition
- B. the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings
- C. the polite patter of a corrupted age
- D. the divine gift of grace
Explanation: In the preface to Lyrical Ballads, Wordsworth defined poetry as the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings, recollected in…
Correct answer: the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings214. Looking to the ancient past, many Romantic poets identified with the figure of the______________?
- A. troubadour
- B. skald
- C. chorister
- D. bard
Explanation: Romantic poets often looked back to the bard as the inspired poet-prophet who preserved a people's history and cultural memory.
Correct answer: bard- A. the lyric poem written in the first person
- B. the sonnet
- C. doggerel rhyme
- D. the political tract
Explanation: The lyric poem, often written in the first person, became the characteristic Romantic form because it centres on the poet's personal…
Correct answer: the lyric poem written in the first person- A. John Clare
- B. John Keats
- C. Robert Burns
- D. A and C only
Explanation: John Clare and Robert Burns are both traditionally described as peasant poets because their poetry grew from rural life and working-class…
Correct answer: A and C only- A. The Rape of the Lock
- B. Solitude: An Ode
- C. The Dunciad
- D. Eloisa to Abelard
Explanation: These lines open Pope's *Eloisa to Abelard*, where Eloisa's secluded religious life is disturbed by memories of Abelard.
Correct answer: Eloisa to Abelard218. Complete this famous quote by John Dryden: "Who think too little, and who talk too __________" ?
- A. often
- B. long
- C. much
- D. fast
Explanation: Dryden contrasts poor thinking with excessive speech in the line, “Who think too little, and who talk too much.” The balanced structure…
Correct answer: much- A. Addison
- B. Bunyan
- C. Crabbe
- D. Dryden
Explanation: John Dryden dominated English literary life after the Restoration as a poet, critic and translator, so the period from 1660 to 1700 is…
Correct answer: Dryden- A. Macpherson
- B. Merlin
- C. Decameron
- D. Ossian
Explanation: Ossian was the legendary Gaelic warrior-bard whose poems were presented in the eighteenth century through James Macpherson's alleged…
Correct answer: Ossian