CSS ENGLISH LITERATURE MCQS with ANSWERS
Here, you will get English literature Mcqs with answers for CSS, PMS and all other Competitive Exams of Pakistan. Therefore, study them well.
English literature MCQs
1. Who, among the following poets, was a precursor to Romantic Poetry?
Answer: Robert Burns
2. Which novelists is widely known for his use of the stream-of –consciousness
technique?
Answer: James Joyce
3. Which year in the social history of England is associated with the Restoration?
Answer: 1660.
4. Which British dramatist attempted to reform English spelling?
Answer: G.B.Shaw
5. For God’s sake hold your tongue, and let me love
Which poem of Donne begins with these words
Answer: Cannonisation
6. How many pilgrims figure in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales?
Answer: 29
7. In which year was Henry VIII acknowledged the Supreme Head on the Earth of the
English church?
Answer: 1534
8. Identify the tragedy written by Ben Jonson
Answer: Sejanus
9. “…though we cannot make our sun / stand still, yet we will make him run”. Identify
the source of these lines from Marvell.
Answer: To His Coy Mistress
10. Which book of Paradise Lost opens with these lines:
‘Of Man’s first disobedience , and the fruit
Of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste
Brought death into the world?
Answer: Book I
11. Who said of Chaucer’s characters: ‘it is sufficient to say, according to the proverb,
that here is God’s plenty?
Answer: Dryden
12. Which poem begins with these lines :
The curfew tolls the knell of parting day
The lowing herd win slowly o’er the lea
The plowman homeward plots his weary way”?
Answer: Elegy written in a Country Churchyard
13. “ To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears”
In which poem of Wordsworth would you come across these lines?
Answer: Ode: Intimations of Immortality
14. Which novel of Joyce begins with these words: “once upon a time and very good time
it was there was a moocow coming down along the road and this moocow that was
coming down along the road met a nicens little boy named baby tuckoo….?
Answer: A Portrait of an artist as a Young Man.
15. In which novel would you come across this line: “Ralph wept for the end of
innocence, the darkness of man’s heart, and the fall through the air of the true, wise
friend called Piggy’?
Answer: Lord of the Flies
16. Name the first novel of Dorris Lessing.
Answer: The Grass is Singing (1950)
17. Which novel of D.H.Lawrence ends with these words: “But no, he would not give in.
Turning sharply, he walked towards the city’s gold phosphorescence. His fists were
shut, his mouth set fast. He would not take that direction, to the darkness, to follow
her. He walked towards the family humming, glowing town, quickly.”
Answer: Sons and Lovers.
18. “They give birth astride of a grave, the light gleams an instant, then it’s night once
more!”
Who makes this observation in Waiting for Godot?
Answer: Pozzo
19. What is the title of the second section of The Waste Land?
Answer: A Game of Chess
20. In which poem of Owen would you come across the following lines?
What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?
– only the monstrous anger of eth guns.
Only the stuttering rifles’ rapid rattle
Can patter out their hasty orisons?
Answer: Anthem for the Doomed Youth
21. Which African American spoke about ‘Double-Consciousness’?
Answer: W.E.B.Du Bois
22. I too, sing America
I am the darker brother
They send me to eat in the kitchen
When company comes”
Whose words are these?
Answer: Langston Hughes
23. Who is the author of Invisible Man?
Answer: Ellison
24. Who wrote In Search of Our Mother’s Gardens?
Answer: Alice Walker
25. Who is the first African American to be named poet laureate of USA?
Answer: Rita Dove
26. You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I’ll rise
Whose words are these?
Answer: Maya Angelou’s Still I Rise.
27. Who is the young man in Hawthorne’s “My Kinsman, Major Molineux”?
Answer: Robin
28. “In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts: they come back to
us with a certain alienated majesty.”
Answer: Emerson from Self –Reliance
29. What, according to Poe in ‘The Philosophy of Composition’, is the ‘proper length’ of a
poem?
Answer: About one Hundred Lines
30. When was Uncle Tom’s Cabin published as a book
Answer: 1852
31. “I celebrate myself, and sing myself,
For what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.”
Answer: Whitman form Song of Myself
32. In which novel do you come across Starbug and Queequeq?
Answer: Moby Dick
33. In which play of Arthur Miller do you come across the line
“A man is not an orange. You can’t eat the fruit and throw the peel away”?
Answer: Death of Salesman (Willy to Howard)
34. Which poem of Elizabeth Bishop begins with these lines:
“The art of losing isn’t hard to master;
So many things seem filled with the intent
So be lost that their loss is no disaster”?
Answer: One Art (first three lines)
35. In which novel would you come across the Shepherdsons and the Grangerfords?
Answer: Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
36. Who wrote the essay “The Art of Fiction”?
Answer: James
37. Who wrote ‘The Awakening’?
Answer: Kate Chopin
38. Which poem of Sylvia Plath opens with these lines?
“I have done it again.
One year in every ten
I manage it-“?
Answer: Lady Lazarus
39. Name the author of Gravity’s Rainbow?
Answer: Thomas Pynchon
40. Name the author Oleanna.
Answer: Mamet
41. How many songs does Gitanjali Contain?
Answer: 103
42. Which British novelist was instrumental in getting a publisher for R.K.Narayan’s first
four books?
Answer: Graham Green
43. Which poem of A.K.Ramanujam begins with the following lines?
“In Madurai,
City of temples and poets,
Who sang of cities and temples,
Every summer…”
Answer: A River
44. In which Indian drama would you come across Om and Jaya?
Answer: Harvest by Manjula Padmanabhan
45. Among the following which novel has NOT won the Booker Prize?
Answer: Fasting, Feasting (but shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1999)
46. In which of the novel of Anita Desai would you come across Nanda Kaul and Raka?
Answer: Fire on the Mountain
47. In which poem of Ezekiel would come across these words?
“A poet rascal-clown was born,
The frightened child who would not eat
Or sleep, a boy of meager bone.
He never learnt to fly a kite”.
Answer: Background, Casually
48. “We cannot write like the English. We should not. We cannot write only as Indiams.
…. Our method of expression therefore has to be a dialect which will someday prove
to be as distinctive and colourful as the Irish or the American”
Answer: Raja Rao’s in the preface to ‘Kanthapura’.
49. Which play of Dattani deals with the hijras?
Answer: Seven Steps Around the Fire
50. Which is Kamala Markandaya’s first novel?
Answer: Nectar in the Seive
51. Who established Dhvanyaloka, a centre for Indian English Literature?
Answer: C.D.Narasimhaiah in 1952.
52. Who is the author of The Perishable Empire?
Answer: Meenakshi Mukherjee
53. Which novel of Vikram Seth was inspired by Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin?
Answer: The Golden Gate
54. Who wrote The Great Indian Novel?
Answer: Shashi Tharoor
55. Name the missing novel in AMitav Ghosh’s Ibis Trilogy (Sea of Poppies, River of
Smoke, and……?)
Answer: Flood of Fire
56. Which poem of Kamala Das begins with these lines
“I don’t know politics but I know the names
Of those in power, and can repeat them like
Days of Week, or names of months….”
Answer: An Introduction
57. Who is the author of The Algebra of Infinite Justice?
Answer: Arundhati Roy
58. Name the author of So Many Hungers.
Answer: Bhabani Bhattacharya
59. Name the author of The Autobiography of an Unknown Indian.
Answer: Nirad Chaudhuri
60. Who wrote the poem “Our Casuarina Tree”?
Answer: Toru Dutt
61. What prize did Michael Ondaatje win for The English Patient?
Answer: Man Booker Prize
62. In White’s Voss, who is the patron of Voss’s expedition?
Answer: Bonner
63. Name the author of Funny Boy?
Answer: Shyam Selvadurai
64. Name the maiden novel of Chiamananda Ngozi Adichie.
Answer: Purple Hibiscus in 2003
65. In which novel of Margaret Atwood would you come across Offred and Serena Joy?
Answer: The Handmaid’s Tale
66. Who wrote The Ecstasy of Rita Joe?
Answer: George Ryga
67. Which country is referred to in these lines?
“And her five cities, like five teeming sores
Each drains her: a vast parasite-robber state
While second-hand Europeans pullulate
Timidly on the edge of alien shores”
Answer: Australia by A.D.Hope
68. Identify the author of the play Dream on Monkey Mountain.
Answer: Derek Walcott
69. Name the maiden novel of Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni.
Answer: The Mistress of Spices
70. Who edited The Arnold Anthology of Post-Colonial Literatures in English?
Answer: John Thieme
71. “The poet, he nothing affirmeth, and therefore never lieth”….
Answer: Sidney in “Apology for Poetry”
72. “There are four speakers in Dryden’s An Essay of Dramatic Poesy” (Eugenius, Crites,
Lisideius and …..) Who is the fourth speaker?
Answer: Neander
73. “His tragedy seems to be skill, his comedy to be instinct.” Which playwright is
referred to in this comment?
Answer: Shakespeare in Johnson’s “Preface to Shakespeare”
74. “It may be safely affirmed, that there neither is, nor can be, any essential dfference
between the languages of prose and metrical composition”. Identify the speaker.
Answer: Wordsworth in “Preface to Lyrical Ballads”
75. “Poetry is something more scientific and more serious than history, because poetry
ends o give general truths while history gives particular facts.” Whose words are
these?
Answer: Aristotle
76. Who coined the term Neo-Colonialism
?
Nkrumah in 1960’s
77. Who described pastiche as “blank parody”?
Answer: Jameson
78. Whose theoretical framework has Edward Said used in Orientalism?
Answer: Derrida
79. Who proposed the concept of the carnivalesque?
Answer: Bhaktin
80. Which essay begins with these words: “ I began with the desire to speak with the
dead”?
Answer: Stephen Greenblatt’s The Circulation of Social Energy
81. In Frye’s “The Archetypes of Literature,” what is winter associated with?
Answer: Satire
82. Who is the author of The Wretched of the Earth?
Answer: Fanon
83. Which Yale Deconstructor was accused of being a Nazi sympathizer?
Answer: De man
84. Who wrote about organic intellectuals?
Answer: Gramsci
85. Who made a distinction between RSA and ISA?
Answer: Althusser
86. When was the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies established at the
University of Birmingham?
Answer: 1964 by Richard Hoggart
87. Who declared that “Chaucer is not one of the great classics’’?
Answer: Arnold in The Study of Poetry.
88. In which essay does T.S.Eliot declare that “Criticism is as inevitable as breathing’’?
Answer: Tradition and the Individual Talent
89. Who publicized the concept of “interpretive communities”?
Answer: Fish
90. Who coined the term ecriture feminine?
Answer: Cixous
91. Who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2017?
Answer: Ishiguro
92. What is /v/ in English phonetics?
Answer: Voiced labio-dental frictive
93. How many syllables does the word “inaccessibility”?
Answer: 7 (In-ac-ces-si-bil-i-ty)
94. Who coined the term PS (Phrase Structure) Grammar?
Answer: Chomsky
95. “An unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable”-Identify the metre.
Answer: Iambic
96. “Crown” standing for the king-Identify the figure of speech.
Answer: Metonymy
97. The word “Pram” is derived from “perambulator”. What is this process known as?
Answer: Syncopation
98. To what family (of languages) does French belong?
Answer:caltic
99. What is an Alexandrine with reference to metre”?
Answer: A line of six iambic feet
100. Who wrote Refractions:Essays in Comparative Literature?
Answer: Harry LevinTamilnadu
English literature Mcqs with answer
1. Whose Age is called the Jacobean Age? The Age of James I
2. Who headed the Puritan Government formed after the execution of Charles I? Cromwell
3. Who was appointed the Latin Secretary during the Puritan Government? Milton
4. Samson Agonistes is: an epic written by Milton
5. Milton wrote Areopagitica: to defend people’s Freedom of Speech
6. How many Books are there in Paradise Lost? 12
7. In which Book of Paradise Lost, Adam and Evemeet for the first time? Book IV
8. The author of Hudibras is: Samuel Butler
9. The term ‘Metaphysical School of Poets’ was first applied to Donne and his companion poets by: Dr. Johnson
10. –––– was not a Caroline prose writer: John Bunyan
11. Which of the following was the author of ‘Religio Medici? Sir Thomas Browne
12. ‘Fame is the last infirmity of noble mind’. Taken from Milton’s poem: Lycidas
13. Name the woman whom Samson Agonistes loved and who betrayed him: Delilah
14. Milton became blind at the age of: 44
15. Lycidas is a pastoral elegy written by Milton on the death of his friend: Edward King
16. Who says of Milton: ‘Thy soul was like a star and dwelt apart’? Wordsworth
17. ‘Milton, thou shouldst be living at this hour!’ Who says this? Wordsworth
18. How many times did Milton marry? Three times
19. In which year did Dryden die? 1700
20. Dryden’s Essay of Dramatic Poesy is: a critical treatise on dramatic art developed through dialogues
21. Dryden’s Essay of Dramatic Poesy develops through dialogues amongst four interlocutors. They are: Eugenius, Crites, Neander, Lisideius
22. In Dryden’s Essay of Dramatic Poesy Neander speaks for: Modern English Dramatists
23. ––––– is a play written by Dryden: Conquest of Granada
24. Dryden’s All For Love is based on: Antony and Cleopatra
25. Who is the author of The Essay on Human Understanding? John Locke
26. Who is the author of Mr. Badman? Bunyan
27. The central theme of Dryden’s The Hind and the Panther is: Defence of Roman Catholicism
28. Dryden said in one of his critical treatises: “Our numbers (Versification) were in their nonage till these two appeared.” Whom does Dryden refer to? Waller and Denham
29. Samuel Butler’s Hudibras is a satire on: Puritanism
30. One of the works of John Bunyan is autobiographical. Which is it? Grace Abounding
31. Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress is: an allegory
32. Who is the author of the play ‘Venice Preserved? Thomas Otway
33. ‘Gather ye rose – buds while ye may’. This is the opening line of a popular lyric written by Robert Herrick. Which of the following? ‘Counsel to Girls’
34. ––– is written by William Congreve: The Way of the World
35. Poets siding with Charles I against Parliament are called: Cavalier Poets/Caroline Poets
36. The author of The Rival Queens i: Nathaniel Lee
37. “Here is God’s plenty”. Who is Dryden referringto in this remark? Chaucer
38. The Faerie Queene, Divina Comedia, and Pilgrim’s Progress are alike in one respect: All are allegories
39. The Restoration playwright who gave a happy ending to King Lear is: Nahum Tate
40. The theatres were closed down during the Commonwealth period in England. They were reopened in? 1660
41. In The Age of Restoration –––was restored to the English throne: Charles II
42. There are four interlocutors in Dryden’s Essay of Dramatic Poesy. Which of them represents Dryden? Neander
43. “Here lies my wife, here let her rest!
Now she is at rest, and so am I!”
This was a proposed epitaph to be engraved on the tomb of his wife. Who was he? John Dryden
44. Dryden’s The Medal is a personal satire on: Shaftesbury
45. –––– is a Cavalier poet. Richard Lovelace
46. Which is hailed as ‘The Father of English Criticism’ by Dr. Johnson? Dryden
47. Name the most important Caroline poet: Robert Herrick
48. “The Restoration marks the real moment of birth of our Modern English Prose.” M. Arnold
49. Samuel Pepy’s Diary was written in coded language. When was it deciphered? 1825
50. Zimri, Duke of Buckingham, is a character appearing in Dryden’s: Absolem and Achitophel.
50 Mcqs of English literature
1. The epithet ‘Augustan’ was first applied to Dryden by: Dr. Johnson
2. The eighteenth century in English literature is also called: The Age of Reason
3. The term ‘Augustan’ was first applied to a School of Poets by: Dr. Johnson
4. Who said “Our admirable and indispensable Eighteenth Century”? Matthew Arnold
5. Who called the eighteenth century ‘the Age of Prose and Reason’? Matthew Arnold
6. ‘Dryden found English poetry brick and left it marble.’ Who made this remark? Dr. Johnson
7. ‘If Pope be not a poet, where is poetry to be found? Who made this observation? Dr. Johnson
8. The Neo – Classical Age in English Literature follows the models of: Roman Literature
9. In which poet’s ‘Life’ Dr. Johnson applied the term ‘Metaphysical School of Poets’? Cowley
10. James II ascended the throne after: Charles II
11. Who started the Journal The Tatler ? Steele
12. “I shall endeavor to enlighten morality with wit, and to temper wit with morality.” Who made this endeavor? Addison
13. Referring to one of his novels, Jonathan Swift said, “Good God! What a genius I had when I wrote that book! “Which novel was he referring to? A Tale of the Tub
14. In a letter to Pope, Swift wrote: “I heartily hate and detest that animal called man.”This is the central theme of one of his novels. Which is it? Gulliver’s Travels
15. Swift wrote in one of his works: “A young healthy child, well nursed, is at a year old, a most delicious nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled.” Where does he make this observation? A Modest Proposal
16. Who said “The proper study of mankind is man?” A. Pope
17. Iliad and Odyssey were translated into English by: A. Pope
18. Which of the following deals with the Popish Plot’? Absolem and Achitophel
19. Who wrote, ‘True wit is what oft was thought but never so well expressed?” A. Pope
20. Thomas Rhymer was a: Critic
21. The Elegie in praise of John Donne was written By: Thomas Carew
22. The play by Marston that foreshadows Shakespeare’s The Tempest is: The Malcontent
23. In Joseph Andrews Fielding parodies: Richardson’s Pamela
24. ‘Four Wheels of the Van of the English Novel are: Fielding, Smollett, Sterne, Richardson
25. ‘Pope can fix in one couplet more sense than I can do in six’. Who said this? J. Swift
26. The ‘Coffee House Culture’ flourished in: The Age of Dr. Johnson
27. “A little knowledge is a dangerous thing
Drink deep or taste not the Pierian Spring.”
Whose observation is this? A. Pope
28. A certain critic says that Pope’s Essay on Criticism is ‘all stolen’. By: Lady M.W.Montagu
29. Matthew Prior’s The Town and Country Mouse is a parody of Dryden’s: The Hind and the Panther
30. Who is the author of Moll Flanders? Daniel Defoe
31. The ‘Lives’ of how many poets were written by Dr. Johnson in his “Lives of the Poets’? 52
32. Dr. Johnson left out one important poet in his Lives of the Poets. Who was he? Goldsmith
33. Who is the author of The School for Scandal? Sheridan
34. Who is the author of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire? Edward Gibbon
35. Who is the author of Inquiry Concerning Political Justice? William Godwin
36. Who is the author of Castle of Otranto? Horace Walpole
37. The Mysteries of Udolpho is a: Gothic Novel
38. What is a Picaresque Novel? a novel whose hero is a wandering rogue
39. Who called Milton “the mighty-mouthed inventor of harmonies”? Tennyson
40. Fielding’s Joseph Andrews is a burlesque based on: Richardson’s Pamela
41. James Thomson’s Seasons is a Nature poem divided into: four parts
42. Who is the author of the poem Grongar hill? John Dyer
43. Thomas Browne, the greatest prose writer of the puritan age, was by profession: a doctor
44. Thomas Chatterton died at the age of: 18
45. Bishop Percy became famous as an antiquarian by writing: Reliques of Ancient Minstrels
46. Which poem begins with the line “The curfew tolls the knell of parting day”? Gray’s Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard
47. Gray’s The Bard and The Progress of Poesy are: Pindaric Odes
48. The theme of Gray’s Bard is the curse inflicted upon King Edward I and his progeny by: some poets killed by him
49. ‘Nor second He, that rode sublime
Upon the seraph-wings of Ecstasy”
They allude to – Milton
50. Louix XVI of France was executed by the Revolutionaries in: 1793
*Regards*
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Milton became blind at the age of 43. According to google.