History of English Literature MCQ

1. Who is considered as the first English poet?
a. Chaucer

b. Caedmon

c. william langland

d. robert burns

2. Who is the author of Ecclesiastical History of the English People?
a. bede

b. Chaucer

c. johnson

d. bacon

3. Name of the Anglo-Saxon Epic
a. the wanderer

b. dream of the road

c. Beowulf

d. brut

4. The Hundred Years of War between………..
a. England and France

b. England and Germany

c. France and Germany

d. Ireland and England

5. In which year did the peasant revolt happen?
a. 1381

b. 1300

c. 1350

d. 1400

6. Who is the author of ‘Piers Plowman’?
a. Caedmon

b. bede

c. william langland

d. Layamon

7. The earliest surviving English poem
a. king horn

b. piers plowman

c. brut

d. Beowulf

8. Who is the author of The Canterbury Tales?
a. william langland

b. geoffrey chaucer

c. Robert burn

d. Spenser

9. The Middle Ages was held to begin in England with……………
a. hundred years war

b. peasant revolt

c. black death

d. The Norman conquest

10. Who led The Norman Conquest?
a. James

b. William the Duke of Normand

c. julius caesar

d. william Wycliffe

11. Name of the elegy written by Chaucer on the death of Blanche, the wife of John of Gaunt
a. the House of Fame

b. troilus and criseyde

c. the book of the duchess

d. the Roman de la Rose

12. When did ‘The General Prologue’ of Canterbury Tales compose?
a. 1387.

b. 1300

c. 1400

d. 1378

13. The first English Printer, who set up the printing press in 1476
a. gower

b. Caxton

c. william bailey

d. Malory

14. In which year was the first printing press set up in England?
a. 1400

b. 1569

c. 1476

d. 1430

15. A short traditional and popular story in verse of unknown authorship is called…………
a. lyric

b. ballad

c. elegy

d. sonnet

16. Who wrote Treatise on the Astrolabe?
a. john wycliffe

b. Spenser

c. william langland

d. Chaucer

17. Confessio Amentis is the work of……………..
a. gower

b. Chaucer

c. william langland

d. Robert burn

18. The Magna Carta was signed in ………………
a. 1210

b. 1214

c. 1200

d. 1239

19. Who did start The Hundred Years War with France?
a. Edward 1

b. Edward 11

c. edward iii

d. edward iv

20. Which among these was written by Chaucer under Italian influence?
a. the legend of good women

b. Roman de la Rose

c. the book of the duchess

d. The Canterbury tales

21. A poem that generally has meter and Rhyme
a. lyric
b. free verse
c. narrative

22. Sylvia Plath married which English poet?
a. Masefield
b. Causley
c. Hughes
d. Larkin

23. What imagery does Carl Sandburg’s ‘Planked Whitefish’ contain?
a. Sea scenes
b. Rural Idyll
c. War
d. Innocent childhood

24. Which influential American poet was born in Long Island in 1819?
a. Emily Dickinson
b. Paul Dunbar
c. John Greenleaf Whittier
d. Walt Whitman

25. In 1960 ‘The Colossus’ was the first book of poems published by which
poetess?
a. Elizabeth Bishop
b. Sylvia Plath
c. Marianne Moore
d. Laura Jackson

26. In his poem, Kipling said, ‘If you can meet with triumph and . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ‘?
a. Glory
b. Ruin
c. Disaster
d. victory

27. Which of the following is not a literary device used for aesthetic effect
in poetry?
a. Assonance
b. Onomatopaea
c. Rhyme
d. Grammar

28. True or false: Writing predates poetry.
a. True
b. False

29. What is the earliest surviving European poem?
a. The Homeric Epic
b. The Gilgamesh epic
c. The Deluge epic
d. The Hesiodic ode

30. Which of the following is not a poetic tradition?
a. The Epic
b. The Comic
c. The Occult
d. The Tragic

31. What is the study of poetry’s meter and form called?
a. Prosody
b. Pathology
c. Rheumatology
d. Scansion

32. Shakespeare composed much of his plays in what sort of verse?
a. Alliterative verse
b. Sonnet form
c. Iambic pentameter
d. Dactylic hexameter

33. Which poet invented the concept of the variable foot in poetry?
a. William Carlos Williams
b. Emily Dickinson
c. Gerard Manly Hopkins
d. Robert Frost

34. Who wrote this famous line: ‘Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day/Thou art more lovely and more temperate…’
a. TS Eliot
b. Lord Tennyson
c. Charlotte Bronte
d. Shakespeare

35. From what century does the poetic form of the folk ballad date?
a. The 12th
b. The 14th
c. The 17th
d. The 19th

36. From which of Shakespeare’s plays is this famous line: ‘Did my heart love til now?/ Forswear it, sight/ For I never saw true beauty until this night.’
a. A Midsummer Night’s Dream
b. Hamlet
c. Othello
d. Romeo and Juliet

37. What poem is called whose first letters of each line spell out a word?
a. Alliterative
b. Epic
c. Acrostic
d. Haiku

38. Auld Lang Syne is a famous poem. By whom is it?
a. Sir Walter Scott
b. William Butler Yeats
c. Henry Longfellow
d. Robert Burns

39. How has Stephen Dunn been described in ‘The Oxford Companion to 20th Century Poetry?
a. A poet of middleness
b. Capturing a sense of spiritual marooned
c. One of the leading prairie poets
d. Has some distinction as a critic

40. ‘The Cambridge school’ refers to a group that emerged when?
a. The 1900’s
b. The 1960’s
c. The 1920’s
d. The 1930’s

41. George Herbert’s _______  shows his zeal for the Church of England and concern with practical theology.
a. To his Coy Mistress
b. The Collar
c. The Temple

42. Andrew Marvell was a tutor to the daughter of_________.
a. Lord John

b. Lord Foxfair
c. Lord Fairfax

43. ________ assisted Milton in his duties as secretary for Foreign Tongues.
a. George Herbert
b. Andrew Marvell
c. Donne

44. ________ loved Nature and the freshness of gardens in his work.
a. Milton
b. George Herbert
c. Andrew Marvell

45. To his Coy Mistress is written by ____________.
a. George Herbert
b. Andrew Marvell
c. Donne

46. The theme of the Song: “Goe and Catch a Falling Stare is___inconstancy.
a. Man’s 
b. Woman’s 
c. Parents’

47. In the poem________Donne breaks away from the Petrarchan tradition of Woman–worship.
a. The Good -Marrow 
b. The Sunne Rising
c. Song: Goe and Catch a Falling Starre

48. _______ is a didactic poem by George Herbert.
a. Love (III)
b. Virtue 
c. Hunter

49. Which word is repeatedly used in the third stanza of the poem “Virtue”?
a. Sweet
b. Music
c. Spring

50. In the last lines of the poem Virtue, Herbert metaphorically compares a  to the virtuous Soul.
a. Seasonal flower
b. Seasoned timber
c. Seasonal food

51. Which of the following is not a work of John Keats?
a. Endymion
b. To some ladies
c. To hope
d. None of the above

52. Who wrote the poems “On Death” and “Women, Wine, and
Snuff?”
a. John Milton
b. John Keats
c. P.B. Shelley
d. William Wordsworth

53. “Of Man’s first disobedience, and the fruit Of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste Brought death into the world, and all our woe, With the loss of Eden.” This is an extract from:
a. Paradise Lost
b. Paradise Regained
c. Samson Agonistes
d. Divorce Tracts

54. William Shakespeare was born in the year:
a. 1564
b. 1544
c. 1578
d. 1582

55. Which of the following is not a Shakespeare tragedy?
a. Titus Andronicus
b. Othello
c. Macbeth
d. None of the above

56. Who wrote ‘The Winter’s Tale?’
a. George Bernard Shaw
b. John Dryden
c. Christopher Marlowe
d. William Shakespeare 

57. What is the difference between a simile and a metaphor?
a. No difference. Simply two different ways of referring to the same thing.
b. A simile is more descriptive.
c. A simile is used as or like to make a comparison, and a metaphor doesn’t.

d. A simile must use animals in the comparison.

58. What is the word for a “play on words”?
a. pun
b. simile
c. Haiku
d. metaphor

59. Which represents an example of Alliteration?
a. Language Arts
b. Peter Piper Picked Peppers
c. I like Music.
d. A beautiful scenery with Music

60. What is the imitation of natural sounds in word form?
a. Personification
b. Hyperboles
c. Alliteration
d. Onomatopoeia

61. The theme is …?
a. a plot.
b. a character
c. an address
d. the point a writer is trying to make about a subject.

62. Concentrate on these elements when writing a good poem.
a. characters, main idea, and theme
b. purpose and audience
c. theme, purpose, form, and mood.
d. Rhyme and reason

63. Which is not a poetry form?
a. Epic
b. tale
c. ballad
d. sonnet

64. Which is an example of a proverb?
a. Get a “stake” in our business.
b. You can’t have your cake and eat it, too
c. The snow was white as cotton.
d. You’re driving me crazy.

65. Which is an exaggeration?
a. Alliteration
b. Haiku
c. Hyperbole
d. Prose

66. Which of the following is not a poet?
a. William Shakespeare
b. Terry Saylor
c. Elizabeth B. Browning
d. Emily Dickinson

67. Who has defined ‘poetry’ as a fundamental creative act using languages?
a. H. W. Longfellow

b. Ralph Waldo Emerson
c. Dylan Thomas
d. William Wordsworth

68. What is a sonnet?
a. A poem of six lines

b. A poem of eight lines
c. A poem of twelve lines
d. A poem of fourteen lines

69. What is the study of a poem’s meter, rhythm, and intonation?

a. Prosody
b. Allegory
c. Scansion
d. Assonance

70. Which figure of speech is used when a statement is exaggerated in a poem?
a. Onomatopeia
b. Metonymy
c. Alliteration
d. Hyperbole