Free Poetry MCQs with Answers

• A. Belial
• B. Beelzebub
• C. Venus
• D. Satan

Explanation: Belial proposes using sexual temptation, recalling how Solomon was led astray by women.

• A. A debate is held in Hell by Satan and his compatriots concerning whether to attempt to recover Heaven.
• B. Satan embarks on his passage across the great gulf of Chaos.
• C. The Narrator invokes his muse by the name of "Holy Light."
• D. The demons begin exploring Hell, engaging in philosophical debates, and entering
• E. singing competitions.

Explanation: The invocation to “Holy Light” occurs at the beginning of Book III, not Book II.

• A. Virgil, Shakespeare, and Spenser
• B. Homer, Virgil, and Spenser
• C. Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Spenser
• D. Gilgamesh, Petrarch, and Dryden

Explanation: Homer, Virgil, and Spenser are major epic poets who preceded Milton: Homer wrote the Iliad and Odyssey, Virgil the Aeneid, and Spenser The…

• A. Jesus
• B. Samson
• C. Satan
• D. Adam

Explanation: Comus combines seductive rhetoric, moral corruption, and deceptive temptation, qualities that anticipate Milton's later portrayal of Satan…

• A. Sexual desire
• B. Seeking God's Will and Guidance
• C. What it means to be the "Son of God"
• D. Temptation

Explanation: Paradise Regained focuses on Christ's spiritual testing, obedience, divine guidance, and identity as the Son of God.

• A. Samson will not fight him.
• B. He does not want to fight Samson.
• C. He must hurry to catch up with Dalila.
• D. He has been called back to his hometown of Gath.

Explanation: Harapha refuses to engage in combat with the blind Samson, regarding such a fight as beneath him.

• A. plain
• B. luminescent
• C. Latinate
• D. Sophistic

Explanation: Paradise Regained is deliberately written in a restrained, plain style that contrasts with the grander and more elaborate manner of…

• A. The fall of the Son
• B. The fall of the Rebel Angels
• C. The fall of God
• D. The death of Michael

Explanation: In Book Six, the angel Michael shows Adam the war in Heaven and the defeat and fall of the rebel angels.

• A. Pastoral elegy
• B. Prose polemic
• C. Blank verse tragedy
• D. Epic

Explanation: Paradise Lost is an epic, specifically a biblical or Christian epic written in blank verse.

• A. Heaven
• B. Hell
• C. Chaos
• D. Sunshine

Explanation: Milton places Chaos around the created universe, between Heaven and Hell, as the vast disordered space through which Satan travels.

• A. Three and Four
• B. Five and Six
• C. Eight and Nine
• D. Eleven and Twelve

Explanation: Paradise Regained uses a comparatively restrained, plain narrative style, most closely resembling Books XI and XII of Paradise Lost, where…

• A. the Chorus has just stated it hates this kind of lavish, external beauty.
• B. Samson hates this kind of lavish, external beauty.
• C. Dalila usually dresses in a more understated Puritan manner.
• D. Samson is blind.

Explanation: The description is striking because Samson cannot see Dalila's beauty: he has been physically blinded.

• A. Their surnames
• B. The names of pagan gods
• C. The names of foreign countries
• D. The names of the angels they will become

Explanation: Milton identifies the fallen angels through the names later associated with pagan deities, such as Moloch, Chemos, Belial, and Mammon.

• A. Michelangelo
• B. Charles II
• C. Galileo
• D. A and B

Explanation: During Milton's Italian tour, he visited Galileo, whom he later alludes to in Paradise Lost.

• A. iambic pentameter
• B. tetrameter couplets
• C. heroic couplets
• D. Shakespearean sonnets

Explanation: Both companion poems are built mainly from rhyming lines of four iambic feet, called tetrameter couplets.

• A. Nine
• B. Ten
• C. Eleven
• D. Twelve

Explanation: Milton originally planned Paradise Lost as a ten-book epic. The poem was later reorganised into twelve books, the form familiar from the…

• A. Death is Satan's father.
• B. Death is Satan's son.
• C. Death is Satan's brother.
• D. Death is Satan's daughter

Explanation: In Milton’s allegorical genealogy, Sin is Satan’s daughter and Death is the son born from Satan’s incestuous union with Sin.

• A. A toad
• B. A serpent
• C. A lion
• D. A tiger

Explanation: Satan enters the body of a serpent to approach Eve deceptively at the Tree of Knowledge.

• A. Adam and Eve hold hands and walk across an arid plain.
• B. Adam and Eve promise to be fruitful and multiply.
• C. Adam and Eve curse their God.
• D. Adam and Eve curse Satan.

Explanation: Paradise Lost ends with Adam and Eve leaving Eden hand in hand, taking “wandering steps and slow” into the world before them.

• A. Theist
• B. Atheist
• C. Antagonist
• D. Wrestler

Explanation: Agonistes comes from the Greek word for a contestant or wrestler, so Samson Agonistes means Samson the Wrestler or Struggler.