Free Poetry MCQs with Answers

• A. King David's son
• B. A Judge of Israel
• C. Bathsheba's first husband
• D. Absalom's advisor

Explanation: In the biblical story, Achitophel was a counsellor of King David who joined Absalom's rebellion and advised him.

• A. The Duke of Monmouth
• B. Charles II
• C. The Earl of Shaftesbury
• D. Cromwell

Explanation: Absalom represents James Scott, the Duke of Monmouth, Charles II's illegitimate son and a claimant involved in opposition to the…

• A. Dryden's "Mac Flecknoe"
• B. Pope's "The Rape of the Lock"
• C. Pope's "The Dunciad"
• D. Dryden's "Absalom and Achitophel"

Explanation: The opening invokes the mock-heroic theme of a trivial quarrel arising from a lock of hair, which identifies Pope's The Rape of the Lock.

• A. Samuel Taylor Coleridge
• B. Robert Browning
• C. John Keats
• D. Walt Whitman

Explanation: These lines open Coleridge's fragmentary dream poem Kubla Khan, whose imagery centres on Xanadu and a pleasure dome.

• A. James I
• B. Mary Tudor
• C. Elizabeth Tudor
• D. Henry VII

Explanation: Spenser published The Faerie Queene during the reign of Elizabeth I, or Elizabeth Tudor, and dedicated it to her.

• A. the conviction that he was damned forever
• B. the loss of his fortune in the \South Sea Bubble\
• C. the vindication of Newtonian physics
• D. condemnation of his work by Jeremy Collier

Explanation: Cowper suffered severe religious depression and became convinced that he was eternally damned, which contributed to his breakdown and…

• A. Lord Byron
• B. Oscar Wilde
• C. Robert Browning
• D. William Wordsworth

Explanation: The speaker is the Duke in Robert Browning's dramatic monologue My Last Duchess, discussing a portrait of his deceased wife.

• A. A Song: "Men of England" and England in 1819?
• B. the organization of a working class men's choral group in Southern England
• C. the Battle of Waterloo
• D. the Peterloo Massacre
• E. the storming of the Bastille

Explanation: The Peterloo Massacre of 1819, in which a reform meeting was violently dispersed, intensified Shelley's political poetry.

• A. The Canturbury Tales
• B. The Dark Angel
• C. The Wild Swans of Coole
• D. The Second Coming

Explanation: The lines “Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold” open the second stanza of W. B.

• A. the lyric poem written in the first person
• B. the sonnet
• C. doggerel rhyme
• D. the political tract

Explanation: Wordsworth’s emphasis on personal feeling encouraged the lyric, especially the first-person poem in which the poet expresses inner…

• A. He lived in Italy until the age of 27
• B. Asthma, headaches, and spinal deformity made him an invalid
• C. He was a Catholic, and therefore forbidden from attending
• D. He just wasn't bright enough

Explanation: Pope was a Roman Catholic, and English Catholics were barred from attending the universities under the religious restrictions of the…

• A. The Bahagavad Gita
• B. The Odyssey
• C. The Illiad
• D. The Aeneid

Explanation: Pope financed his translation of Homer through subscriptions, first publishing The Iliad and later The Odyssey.

• A. Porphyria's Lover
• B. My Last Duchess
• C. The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
• D. Fra Lippo Lippi

Explanation: These opening lines belong to Browning’s dramatic monologue My Last Duchess, in which a Duke reveals his possessive and controlling…

• A. its intellectual complexity
• B. its union of thought and passion
• C. its uncompromising engagement with politics
• D. A and B

Explanation: Modernist writers admired Metaphysical poetry for its intellectual complexity and for joining thought with intense feeling rather than…

• A. L'Allegro
• B. Lycidas
• C. Paradise Lost
• D. The Divine Comedy

Explanation: Paradise Lost is Milton’s monumental blank-verse epic, drawing on classical and biblical epic while also questioning and reshaping that…

• A. the Petrarchan sonnet
• B. the classical satire
• C. the country-house poem
• D. the epigram

Explanation: The Petrarchan sonnet was an established Renaissance form rather than a new Jacobean genre.

• A. Ben Jonson
• B. Aemilia Lanyer
• C. Samuel Daniel
• D. Mary Wroth

Explanation: Mary Wroth was a poet of the prominent Sidney family, as the niece of Sir Philip Sidney and daughter of Robert Sidney.

• A. praising Roman virtues whilst endorsing Christian beliefs
• B. praising feminine virtue whilst mocking the fixation on chastity
• C. celebrating Cromwell's victories whilst inviting sympathy for the executed king
• D. celebrating the Restoration whilst regretting the frivolity of the new regime

Explanation: Marvell praises Cromwell's military success while presenting the execution of Charles I with seriousness and sympathy.

• A. courtly ideals of the good life
• B. carpe diem
• C. loyalty to the king
• D. pious devotion to religious virtues

Explanation: Cavalier poetry commonly celebrates courtly pleasures, loyalty to the king, and carpe diem enjoyment.

• A. \Air and Angels\
• B. \Satire 3\
• C. \The Apparition\
• D. \The Indifferent\

Explanation: In “Satire 3,” Donne examines religious choice with intense uncertainty, reflecting the spiritual doubts surrounding his movement from…