MCQs

Literary criticism:

PHILIP SIDNEY TO MATHEW ARNOLD- MCQs

1. Who said "Men not afraid of God, afraid of me"?

a. Mathew Arnold

b. Philip Sidney

c. T S Eliot

d. Alexander Pope

2. Who is often considered as “Father of English Criticism”?

a. Philip Sidney

b. Mathew Arnold

c. John Dryden

d. T S Eliot

3. Who is known as ‘Little Nightingale’ for his melodious voice?

a. Philip Sidney

b. Alexander Pope

c. John Keats

d. Mathew Arnold

4.Who famously defined poetry as "the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings"?

a. Byron

b. Wordsworth

c. Coleridge

d. Keats

5. Who wrote the essay "The Function of Criticism at the Present Time"?

a. Arnold

b. Sidney

c. Pope

d. Wordsworth

6. Who introduced the concept of "objective correlative“ in the essay “Hamlet and his problems”?

a. T S Eliot

b. Spencer

c. Arnold

d. Sidney

7. Who defined criticism as “the disinterested endeavour to learn and propagate the best that is known and thought in the world"?

a. Sidney

b. Arnold

c. Pope

d. Dryden

8. Matthew Arnold's critical work "Literature and Dogma" explores the relationship between:

c. Literature and Politics

a. Literature and Philosophy

b. Literature and Science

d. Literature and Religion

9. Who is the writer of Taxophilus (Lover of the Bow)

a. Philip Sidney

b. John Dryden

c. Sir John Cheke

d. Roger Ascham

10. Who is known for the critical work "The Anxiety of Influence"?

a. Henry James

b. James Boswell

c. Mathew Arnold

d. Harold Bloom

11. According to Mathew Arnold who is “beautiful & ineffectual Angel beating in the void his luminous wings in vain”?

a. Byron

b. Keats

c. Shelly

d. Coleridge

12. The term "pathetic fallacy" was coined by:

a. Shelly

b. Ruskin

c. Wordsworth

d. Keats

13. Who wrote the critical work "Preface to Lyrical Ballads"?

a. Shelly

b. Wordsworth

c. Coleridge

d. B &C

14. According to Mathew Arnold, Who is “as a moral desperado” ?

a. Swinburne

b. Ruskin

c. Keats

d. Carlyle

15. Philip Sydney's concept of "poetry as mimesis" suggests that poetry should:

a. Express subjective emotions and experiences

b. Imitate nature and reality

c. Explore the depths of human psyche

d. Focus on social and political issues

16. Which work is known as “Neo[1]classical Manifesto”?

a. Essay on Dramatic Poesy

b. Dramatic Poesy

c. Essay on Criticism

d. Lyrical Ballads

17. “Theory of poetic diction” is associated with

a. Eliot

b. Sidney

c. Dr.Johnson

d. Wordsworth

18. Matthew Arnold's concept of "touch stones" refers to:

a. Criteria for evaluating literature

b. Literary devices used in poem

c. Historical influences on literature

d. Poetic forms and structures

19. Who wrote the critical work "An Apology for Poetry"?

a. Sidney

b. Dr. Johnson

c. Pope

d. Dryden

20. Who introduced the concept of the "death of the author" in literary criticism?

a. Philip Sidney

b. Cleanth Brooks

c. T S Eliot

d. Roland Barthes

21. Who said “What pleases the Greeks, would not satisfy an English audience.” ?

a. Pope

b. Swift

c. Dryden

d. Johnson

22. Philip Sydney's work "An Apology for Poetry" is also known by which title?

a. Defence of Poesy

b. Literary Manifesto

c. Poetic Discourse

d. Biographia Literaria

23. Arnold's concept of "high seriousness" in literature should have:

a. intellectually and morally elevated

b. Religious themes

c. Deep philosophical questions

d. Political and social issues

24. Who is known for his influential critical work "Biographia Literaria"?

a. Shelly

b. Wordsworth

c. Coleridge

d. Keats

25. Who is known for his critical work "The Essay of Dramatic Poesy"?

a. Sidney

b. Arnold

c.Dryden

d. Pope

26. Who said "Shakespeare was the man who of all modern and perhaps ancient poets had the largest and most comprehensive soul”

a. Pope

b. Johnson

c. Sidney

d. Dryden

27. Matthew Arnold's concept of "dover beach" symbolizes:

a. power of nature and its impact on human emotions

b. eternal cycle of life and death

c. beauty and serenity of coastal landscapes

d. decline of faith and spirituality in the modern world

28. Arnold’s "Culture and Anarchy" discusses the tension between:

a. Religion and Science

b. Tradition and Innovation

c. Nature and Civilization

d. Individual and Society

29. The word “mysomousoi” (the poet-hater) is used by

a. Dryden in Dramatic Poesy

b. Pope in Essay on Criticism

c. Arnold’s culture and Anarchy

d. Sidney in Defence of Poesy

30. Who said “Judge of poets is only the faculty of poets; and not of all poets, but the best”

a. Ben Jonson

b. Dryden

c. Sidney

d. Pope

31. Who is known for the critical work "The Seven Types of Ambiguity"?

a. William Empson

b. Keats

c. Shelly

d. Coleridge

32. Who said “Be Homer's works your study and delight, Read them by day and meditate by night"

a. Pope

b. Johnson

c. Sidney

d. Dryden

33. Dr.Johnson’s famous quote “He found it (English) brick and left it marble” is about?

a. Shakespeare

b. Pope

c. Sidney

d. Dryden

34. Matthew Arnold believed that literature could serve as a substitute for:

a. Science

b. Religion

c. Political issues

d. Philosophy

35. "Poetry sheds no tears, such as Angles weep, but natural and human tears” is a quote from

a. Dramatic Poesy

b. Defence of Poesy

c. Essay on criticism

d. Lyrical Ballads

36. “Pleasures of Imagination” is a work by…

a. Mathew Arnold

b. Richard Steele

c. Coleridge

d. Joseph Addison

37. “I admire him (Jonson), but I love Shakespeare.” Who said it?

a. Arnold

b. Pope

c. Johnson

d. Dryden

38. Who is known for the critical work "An Essay on Criticism"?

a. Sidney

b. Dryden

c. Johnson

d. Pope

39. Johnson’s biographer who wrote "The Life of Samuel Johnson” is………

a. Wordsworth

b. Eliot

c. Coleridge

d. Boswell

40. “Defence of Rhyme(1603)” is a book by

a. Samuel Daniel

b. George Gascoigne

c. William Webbe

d. Richard Puttenham

41. In whose work did Pope find 'unequalled fire and rapture'?

a. Virgil

b. Dante

c. Homer

d. Chaucer

42. Barbarians, Philistines, Populace appear in the work of ……..

a. Eliot

b. Arnold

c. Sidney

d. Johnson

43. According to Mathew Arnold, Who is “a pseudo Shelly”

a. Dryden

b. Swinburne

c. Carlyle

d. Ruskin

44. “when man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact & reason” is

a. Negative Capability

b. Poetic Diction

c. Objective Correlative

d. Egoistical Sublime

45. Shelly’s “A defence of Poetry (1821) is written in response to…

a. Dryden’s Dramatic Poesy

b. Sidney’s Defence of poesy

c. Peacock's Four Ages of Poetry

d. Pope’s Essay on Criticism

46. Mot Propre, Mot Juste (means precise expression) is the motto of

a. Romanticism

b. Neo-Classicism

c. Aesthetic School

d. Pre-Raphaelites

47. Keats introduced “Negative Capability” in his ……

a. Letter to George and Tom Keats, 1817

b. Letter to Benjamin Bailey,1817

c. Letter to John Taylor, 1818

d. Letter to J. H. Reynolds, 1818

48. “Little learning is dangerous thing"

“For fools rush in, where angels fear to tread.”

"To err is human, to forgive is divine” are in ……..

a. Dryden’s Dramatic Poesy

b. Pope’s Essay on Criticism

c. Sidney’s Defence of poesy

d. Peacock's Four Ages of Poetry

49. Robert Buchanan's harshly critical essay “The Fleshly School of Poetry” is about

a. Mathew Arnold’s Study of Poetry

b. T S Eliot’s Hamlet and His problems

c. William Wordsworth’s Lyrical Ballads

d. D G Rosetti’s Pre[1]Raphaelites

50. Arnolds’s “On Translating Homer (1861)” is a series of

a. Three Essays

b. Three Poems

c. Three lectures

d. Three plays

Watch this video for Answers:

MCQs- Literary Criticism from Philip Sidney to Mathew Arnold

PREVIOUS NET QUESTIONS

1. Who among the following wrote a book with the title The Age of Reason?

(A) William Godwin

(B) Edmund Burke

(D) Edward Gibbon

2.According to Matthew Arnold, 'touchstones' help us test truth and seriousness that constitute the best poetry. What are the 'touchstones'?

(A) The purple passages of lyric poetry

(B) Passages from ancient poets

(D) Passages of epic strength and vigour

3.Pope's 'Essay on Man' can best be read as a poem of:

(A) classical understanding of nature

(B) anti-romantic view of life

(D) philosophical apprehension of life

4.Virginia Woolf rubbished the idea of character and the understanding of realism of writers like Arnold Bennett, John Galsworthy and H.G. Wells. Her famous essay is called 'Mr. Bennet and Mrs. Brown'. Who is Mrs. Brown?

(A) The name Woolf gives a woman whom she happens to meet in a train.

(B) A servant in Mr. Bennett's household.

(D) Mr. Bennett's neighbour who happens to be a writer.

5.D.H. Lawrence uses the expression 'a bright book of life' to describe

(A) The novel

(B) The dramatic monologue

(D) The short lyric

6.The term "Stream of Consciousness" was taken from the book:

(A) The Human Mind

(B) The Principles of Psychology

(D) Modes of Human Behaviour

7.Which of the following works by Johnson is an imitation of the tenth satire of Juvenal ?

(A) London

(B) Vanity of Human Wishes

(D) Rasselas

8.What is the following a description of? 'A loose sally of the mind; an irregular indigested piece'

(A) Essay

(B) Autobiography

(D) Diary

9.Who distinguished between “the literature of Knowledge" and "the literature of power" ?

(A) Coleridge

(B) De Quincey

(D) Lamb

10.The line "Poetry is a criticism of life" occurs in:

(A) Culture and Anarchy

(B) Modern Painters

(D) Sartor Resartus

11.Eliot's theory of "objective correlative" appeared in his essay entitled:

(A) Three voices of Poetry

(B) Tradition and the Individual Talent

(D) Hamlet

12.Jeremy Collier's Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage (1698) attacked

(A) the practice of mixing tragic and comic themes in Shakespeare's plays.

(B) the bawdiness of "low" characters in Shakespeare's plays.

(D) irreligious themes and irreverent attitudes in the plays of the seventeenth century.

13.One of the most important themes the speakers debate in Dryden's An Essay on Dramatic Poesy is____.

(A) European and non- European perceptions of reality.

(B) English and non- English perceptions of reality.

(D) the relative merits of French and English poetry.

14.The author of the book observes "I have attempted, through the medium of biography, to present some Victorian visions to the modern eye". The four main characters in this book are Cardinal Manning, Florence Nightingale, Dr. Arnold and General Gordon. Who is this author?

(A) Mathew Arnold

(B) Robert Browning

(D) Oscar Wilde

15.In his attack delivered on the theatre in A Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage, Jeremy Collier specially arraigned and

(A) Congreve and Vanbrugh

(B) Farquhar and Vanbrugh

(D) Congreve and Etherege

16.Virginia Woolf borrowed the idea of the common reader from Dr. Johnson. To which particular work of Johnson's does she remain indebted?

A) The Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets; the essay on Milton

(B) The Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets; the essay on Gray

(D) The Patriot

17.“Nothing odd will do long. ………………. did not last long." Dr. Johnson had this to say about one of the eighteenth-century novels. Identify it from the following list:

(A) Tom Jones

(B) The Female Quixote

(D) Clarissa

18.Ben Jonson disliked…………………

I. fantastic comedy

II. Wide-ranging chronicle- history and stupendous tragedy

III. The comedies of Terence and Plautus

IV. The ability of satire to expose human vices and follies

The correct combination according to the code is:

(A) I and III are correct.

(B) III and IV are correct.

(D) I and II are correct.

19.Though Coleridge refers to "Motive hunting of a motiveless malignity", the "human villain" lago is far from "motiveless". His motives are

I. He has been disappointed of military promotion.

II. He suspects Othello of cuckolding him

III. He has been in love with Desdemona

IV. He wants to become Othello.

Find the most appropriate combination according to the code:

(A) I and II are correct

(B) I and III are correct

(D) II and IV are correct

20.What is Johnson's opinion regarding the "Violation" of the three unities in the plays of Shakespeare?

I. Shakespeare should have followed the Unities.

II. Shakespeare followed the important Unity of Action satisfactorily.

III. Shakespeare's plays suffered because they did not follow the Unities.

IV. Unity of Time and Place arise from false assumptions.

The correct combination according to the code is

(A) I and II are correct.

(B) II and IV are correct.

(D) I and III are correct

Answers:

1.C	2.C	3.D	4.A	5.A	6.B	7.B	8.A	9.B	10.C
11.D	12.C	13.C	14.C	15.A	16.B	17.C	18.D	19.A	20.B

21. “No man is truly great, who is great only in his lifetime. The test of greatness is the page of history. Nothing can be said to be great that has a distinct limit, or that borders on something evidently greater than itself. Besides, what is short lived and pampered into mere notoriety, is of a gross and vulgar quality in itself." This passage describing the quality of greatness is taken from

(A) "Of studies" by Francis Bacon

(B) "The Indian Jugglers" by William Hazlitt

(D) An Essay of Dramatic Poesy by John Dryden

22.Identify the critics and their respective works:

(A) Horace - Ars Poetica, Aristotle – Poetics, Quintillian- Institutio Oratoria, Ben Jonson – Discoveries, Sidney An Apology for Poetry, Dryden -An Essay of Dramatic Poesy

(B) Horace – Poetics, Aristotle- Ars Poetica, Quintillian- On the sublime, Longinus -Discoveries, Ben Jonson- Institutio Oratoria, Sidney -An Essay of Dramatic Poesy, Dryden – An Apology for Poetry.

(C) Horace On the sublime, Aristotle – Poetics, Quintillian – Discoveries, Longinus- Institutio Oratoria, Ben Jonson – An Essay of Dramatic Poesy, Sidney- Ars Poetica, Dryden - An Apology for Poetry

(D) Horace- Ars Poetica, Aristotle – Poetics, Quintillian Institutio Oratoria, Longinus - On the Sublime, Ben Jonson – An Apology for Poetry, Sidney - An Essay of Dramatic Poesy, Dryden- Discoveries

23. In his Introduction to The Oxford Book of Twentieth- Century English Verse (1973), Philip Larkin underlines the importance of a native tradition with seen as the major poet of the Modern Period.

(A)William Butler Yeats

(B) T.S. Eliot

(D) D.H. Lawrence

24. Philip Sidney defended poetry against such descriptions of it as "the mother of lies" and "the nurse of abuse." His main argument here is.

(A) The poet is no conjuror or illusionist and represents a world.

(B) The poet cannot lie because he is not claiming to tell us the truth.

(D) The poet is a philosopher for whom truth is a lie, and lie truth, in an imaginary world.

25. In 1668, Dryden wrote Of Dramatic Poesie: An Essay which uses separate characters to dramatize the conflicting viewpoints which new theatrical activity had produced

(A) three

(B) two

(D) six

26. In his famous letter to Benjamin Bailey (November 22, 1817) John Keats wrote: "I am certain of nothing but the holiness of the Heart's affections and the truth of Imagination What the imagination seizes as Beauty must be truth." Which of the following sentences follows this passage?

(A) Now I am sensible all this is a mere sophistication, however it may neighbour to any truths, to excuse my own indolence...

(B) The Imagination may be compared to Adam's dream - he woke and found it true.

(C) This however I am persuaded of, that nothing beside Imagination can give us sweet sensations and pleasurable thoughts.

(D) My pains at last some respite shall afford, while I behold the battles Imagination maintains.

27. Who is the author of the statement: "The nineteenth century dislike of Realism is the rage of Caliban seeing his own face in the glass"?

(A)Arthur Symons

(B) Benjamin Disraeli

(D) Oscar Wilde

28. …………………….. is a theological term brought into literary criticism by

(A) Entelechy, St. Augustine

(B) Ambiguity, William Empson

(D) Epiphany, James Joyce

29. “Nature and Nature’s laws lay hid in night,

God said let Newton be! And all was Light”

Alexander Pope’s famous couplet impressively captures.

(A) Newton’s confirmation of the Genesis passage where God ordains Light.

(B) Newton’s empirical observations of Philosophia Naturalis Principia Mathematica

(D)Newton's discovery that all colors are contained in white light

30. In which of the following volumes do you find a charming appreciation of the Wordsworth household by Thomas de Quincey?

(A) The Confessions of an English Opium-Eater

(B) Lives and Letters, Far Away and Long Ago

(D) Reminiscences of the English Lake Poets

31. "I suffered from impaired eye-sight, depression and poverty and left Oxford without a degree. After a period as a teacher and my marriage to a widow twice my age, I left for London, to begin writing for a magazine, I produced my own journal" Choose the correct answer, identifying the writer, the magazine and the journal.

(A)John Milton, The Examiner's Magazine, London Magazine

(B)Joseph Addison, The Freeholder, The Tatler

(C)Richard Steele, The Guardian, The Spectator

(D)Samuel Johnson, The Gentlemen's Magazine, The Rambler

32. In John Dryden's Essay on Dramatic Poesy Neander defends the English invention of

(A) romantic comedy

(B) action tragedy

(D) morality plays

33. Pope's An Essay on Man is based on the ideas of:

(A) Lord Petrie

(B) Theobald

(D) Lord Harvey

34. "In the seventeenth century," writes T. S. Eliot in "The Metaphysical Poets," "a dissociation of sensibility set in, from which we have never recovered; and this dissociation, as is natural, was aggravated by the influence of the two most powerful poets of the century, Land

(A) Ben Jonson and Abraham Cowley

(B) George Herbert and Henry Vaughan

(D) John Milton and John Dryden

35. The term 'poetic justice' was coined by

(A) Samuel Taylor Coleridge

(B) Thomas Rymer

(D) William Wordsworth

36. Where there is leisure for fiction, there is little grief., was Samuel Johnson's criticism of a famous poem. Which poem was it?

(A) P.B. Shelley's "Adonais"

(B) Philip Sidney's "Astrophel and Stella"

(D) John Miltion's "Lycidas"

37. How all their plays be neither right tragedies, nor right comedies, mingling kings and clowns, not because the matter so carrieth it, but thrust in the clown by bead and shoulders to play a part in majestical matters. What term does Philip Sidney use to characterize such plays and which of the unities of Aristotle do they violate?

(A) mongrel tragicomedy: unity of action

(B) mixed tragedies; unity of action

(D) mingled yarn; unity of place

38. According to Coleridge, “the secondary imagination dissolves, diffuses,……………… ., in order to recreate.” Choose the right word for the blank.

(A) disintegrates

(B) dissipates

(D) dissociates

39. A famous challenge to the Neoclassical tenets of form and reason in aesthetic considerations came from Edmund Burke. His work was titled:

(A) An Enquiry into the Philosophical Origin of, Our Ideas of the sublime and the Beautiful

(B) Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin Of Our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful

(D) Philosophical Enquiry into Our Original Ideas of the Beautiful and the Sublime

40. In Biographia Literaria S.T. Coleridge defines the imagination as the faculty by which

(A) the soul perceives the phenomenal diversity of the universe.

(B) the soul perceives the spiritual unity of the universe.

(D) the mind separates. images by its discriminatory power.

Answers:

21.B	22.A	23.C	24.B	25.C	26.B	27.D	28.D	29.D	30.D
31.D	32.C	33.C	34.D	35.B	36.D	37.A	38.B	39.B	40.B

41.In An Essay of Dramatic Poesy to whom does Dryden refer with the phrase "he needed not the spectacles of books to read Nature"?

(A) Ben Jonson

(B) Ovid

(D) Geoffrey Chaucer

42. 11,396 definitions of romanticism were given by

(A) Friedrich Schlegel

(B) Victor Hugo

(D) F. L. Lucas

43. The term 'a stream of consciousness' is derived from the writing of:

(A) Mary Sinclair

(B) Dorothy Richardson

(D) Gertrude Stein

44. In his Defence of Poesy what is the "best and most accomplished kind of poetry" in Sidney's estimation?

(A) Heroical, or epic poetry

(B) Lyric poetry

(D) Elegiac poetry

45. Which of the following ancient critics does Alexander Pope commend as exemplary in Essay on Criticism?

(A) Aristotle, Quintilian, Dryden, Dionysius, Horace

(B) Aristotle, Longinus, Quintilian, Durfey, Dryden

(D) Aristotle, Horace, Durfey, Quintilian, Longinus

46. "In honoured poverty thy voice did weave

songs consecrate to truth and liberty,

Deserting these, thou leavest me to: grieve"

are lines from "To Wordsworth". Who is the poet?

(A) Coleridge

(B) Shelley

(D) Keats

47. In Thomas Hobbes's grand metaphor in Leviathan, a commonwealth is like

(A) a great ship piloted by one man, but managed by the efforts of many.

(B) an artificial man imbued with the strength of many men.

(D) an ostrich, which thrusts its head in the sand to avoid danger and self examination.

48. The form of Dryden's Essay of Dramatic Poesy is

(A) an essay

(B) an epic poem

(D) a play

49.Which work by a famous poet does Thomas de Quincey refer to as "the feeblest and least interesting" of his writings "being substantially a mere versification, like a metrical multiplication table, of common places,

the most mouldy with which criticism has baited its rat-traps"?

(A) John Dryden's An Essay of Dramatic Poesy

(B) Alexander Pope's An Essay on Criticism

(D) Sidney's An Apologie for Poetry

50.……………………… attempted to draw a distinction between two kinds of Truth, a theological Truth 'drawn from the word and oracles of God' and determined by faith, and a 'scientific' Truth based on the light of nature and the dictates of reason.

(A) Treatise on the laws of Ecclesiastical Piety

(B) Literature and Pulpit in Medieval England

(D) The New Atlantis

51.In Defence of Poesy what arguments does Sidney make for considering the Biblical Psalms poetry?

I. They are written in meter.

II. They originated in Church choirs

III. They were written by a single author

IV. David uses imagery and personification to portray faith.

The right combination according to the code is

(A) II and III

(B) I and III

(D) II and IV

52.The critical concept of a "Willing suspension of disbelief" owes its origin to Chapter.............. of Biographia Literaria.

(A) IX

(B) XIV

(D) XV

53.Thomas Carlyle coined two evocative phrases, 'Everlasting Nay' and 'Everlasting Yea' to suggest the swing in the national mood of his times. The phrases came from

(A) On Heroes, Hero- Worship and the Heroic in History

(B) Past and Present

(D) The French Revolution

54.Which of these lines is NOT in Pope's Essay on Criticism?

(A) "Wretches hang that jury men may dine"

(B) "A little learning is a dangerous thing"

(D) "The sound must seem an echo to the sense"

55.For Coleridge, our power to perceive symbols gleaned from the world about us is related to the category of:

(A) primary imagination

(B) secondary imagination

(D) intuition

56.As Sidney argues in A Defence of Poesy which discipline is more useful and praiseworthy - history or poetry?

(A) History "being captivated to truth" is more useful than poetry.

(B) Poetry where man can see "virtue exalted and vice punished" is more useful than history

(D) History and poetry are synonymous, and so both are useful.

57.Which of the following books proposes a political theory?

(A) Principia

(B) Leviathan

(D) Liberty of Prophesying

58.The phrase disassociation of sensibility was first used by:

(A) Philip Sydney

(B) T. S. Eliot

(D) Mathew Arnold

59.A philosophical attitude pervading much of modern literature is :

(A) Absurdism

(B) Dadaism

(D) Surrealism

60. 'Fancy' deals with:

(A) Fixities and definities

(B) Imagination and Reason

(D) Structure and Superstructure

Ans:

41.C	42.D	43.C	44.A	45.C	46.B	47.B	48.C	49.B	50.C
51.C	52.B	53.C	54.A	55.A	56.B	57.B	58.B	59.A	60.A

61.The most obvious feature of Johnson's The Lives of the Poets is the equipoise between :

(A) Language and form

(B) Style and content

(D) Myth and archetype

62.With whom was Dr. Johnson intimately associated in his personal life?

(A) Boswell

(B) Dryden

(D) Lord Bolingbroke

63.Philip Sidney wrote An Apology for Poetry in immediate response to

(A) Plato's Republic

(B) Aristotle's Poetics

(D) Jeremy Collier's Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage.

64.Dr. Johnson's "The Vanity of Human Wishes" expresses

(A) Epicureanism

(B) Humanism

(D) Cynicism

65.(A): Dr Johnson's The Lives of the Poets carries critical and biographical studies of poets he admired. It does not, however, carry a life of William Wordsworth.

Reason (R): Dr. Johnson singled out poets whom he not only admired but also adored. This explains his omission of Wordsworth.

(A) (A) is wrong but (R) is correct.

(B) (A) is true but (R) is false.

(D) Neither (A) nor (R) is true.

66."He is not fully recognized at home; he is not recognized at all abroad. Yet I firmly believe that the poetical performance of is, after that of Shakespeare and Milton, undoubtedly most considerable in our language." To whom does Matthew Arnold refer in the above statement?

(A) Edmund Spenser

(B) John Keats

(D) S.T. Coleridge

67.The concept of human mind as tabula rasa or blank tablet was propounded by

(A) Bishop Berkley

(B) David Hume

(D) John Locke

68. The phrase 'the willing suspension of disbelief' occurs in

(A) Biographia Literaria

(B) Preface to Lyrical Ballads

(D) Poetics

69. Which romantic poet coined the famous phrase 'spots of time'?

(A) John Keats

(B) William Wordsworth

(D) Lord Byron

70. Who, amongst the following, does not belong to the 'Great Tradition', enunciated by F. R. Leavis?

(A) Joseph Conrad

(B) James Joyce

(D) George Eliot

71. Put the following books of Pope in a sequence of publication. Answer the question with the help of the Code given below:

(i) The Dunciad

(ii) The Rape of the Lock

(iii) An Essay on Man

(iv) An Essay on Criticism

Code:

(A) (ii), (iii), (i), (iv)

(B) (i), (ii), (iii), (iv)

(D) (ii), (i), (iv), (iii)

72. The term "egotistical sublime" was coined by

(A) S.T. Coleridge

(B) John Keats

(D) William Hazlitt

73. "The future of poetry is immense, because in poetry.... our race, as time goes on, will find an ever surer and surer stay." - This claim for poetry is made in

(A) Arnold's "The Study of Poetry"

(B) Shelley's "A Defence of Poetry"

(D) Eliot's of Poetry and Poets

74. Eliot uses the term "objective correlative" in his essay.

(A) "The Metaphysical Poets"

(B) "Hamlet"

(D) "Dante"

75. In Dryden's Essay of Dramatic Poesy (1668), who opens the discussion on behalf of the ancients?

(A) Lisideius

(B) Crites

(D) Neander

76. Whom did Keats regard as the prime example of 'negative capability'?

(A) John Milton

(B) William Wordsworth

(D) P.B. Shelley

77. "He found it [English] brick and left it marble", remarked one great writer on another. Who were they?

(A) Milton on Shakespeare

(B) Dryden on Milton

(D) Jonson on Shakespeare

78. Match the following:

List - I

1. Good sense is the body of poetic genius

2. Poetry is the breath and a finer spirit of all knowledge

3. Literary criticism is a description and evaluation of its object

4. Nature never set forth the earth in as rich a tapestry as diverse poets have done

List - II

I. Brooks, "The Formalist Critic"

II. Sidney, Defence/ An Apology for Poetry

III. Wordsworth, Preface to Lyrical Ballads

IV. Coleridge, Biographia Literaria

1 2 3 4

(A) IV III I II

(B) II IV III I

(D) IV II I III

79. "The story and the novel, the idea and the form, are the needle and thread, and I never heard of a guild of tailors who recommended the use of the thread without the needle, or the needle without the thread" This famous passage describing the relation of idea to form is found in

(A) Sir Philip Sidney, An Apology for Poetry

(B) Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Biographia Literaria

(D) L.A. Richards, Principles of Literary Criticism

80. William Wordsworth's statement of purpose in publishing the Lyrical Ballads carries the following phrase. (Complete the phrase correctly). "to choose incidents from common life and to relate or describe them, throughout, as far as possible,

(A) in a selection of language really used by men.

(B) in a relation to language really used by men.

(D) in deference to language actually used by men.

Ans:

61.C	62.A	63.C	64.D	65.D	66.C	67.D	68.A	69.B	70.B
71.C	72.B	73.A	74.B	75.B	76.C	77.C	78.A	79.C	80.A

81. One English poet addressing another:

Thy soul was like a Star, and dwelt apart;

Thou hast a voice whose sound was like the sea:

Pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free,

So didst thou travel on life's common way,

In cheerful godliness....

Whose lines are these? To whom are they addressed?

(A) W.H. Auden - W.B. Yeats

(B) P.B. Shelley – William Blake

(D) Ben Jonson William Shakespeare

82. Samuel Johnson's Lives of Poets (1781) was originally a series of introductions to the poets he wrote for a group of London publishers. They were collected as:

(A) Lives of English Poets: Critical and Biographical Essays.

(B) Prefaces, Biographical and Critical, to the Works of English Poets.

(D) Lives of English Poets: Biographical and Critical Notes.

83. Who claimed: "I have not published a single paper that is not written in a spirit of benevolence and with a love of mankind"?

(A) Pope

(B) Dryden

(D) Addison

84. Why did T. S. Eliot assert that Virgil, not Homer, is the poet of Europe?

(A) There are some initial moral concerns in Virgil

(B) Virgil belongs to the Roman period

(D) Virgil wrote in Latin while Homer wrote in Greek

85. In the Advancement of Learning Bacon attempted a preliminary survey of the entire field of learning, by analyzing the principal obstacles to its advancement. Identify from among the following choices the one that he did not mention as an obstacle:

(A) Rhetoric

(B) Medieval scholasticism

(D) Pseudo sciences

86. Out of the four humours of the body, the Jacobeans thought of themselves as especially prone to

(A) Choler

(B) Blood

(D) Melancholy

87. In the Defence of Poetry, what did Sydney attribute to poetry?

(A) A magical power whereby poetry plays tricks on the reader.

(B) A divine power whereby poetry transmits a message from God to the reader.

(D) A realistic power that cannot be made to seem like mere illusion and trickery.

88. Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding is a classic statement of Philosophy.

(A) Aesthetic

(B) Empiricist

(D) Realist

89. Who among the following English poets defined poetic imagination as "a repetition in the finite mind of the eternal act of creation in the infinite 'I AM' "?

(A) Blake

(B) Wordsworth

(D) Shelley

90. "All Rising to Great Place is by a ……………. stair." (Francis Bacon)

(A) Murky

(B) Winding

(D) Sinister

91. New Science is a work associated with ……………..

Which of the following works is not actually a prose essay?

(A) Essay of Dramatic Poesy

(B) Essay on Man

(D) An Essay Towards a New Theory of Vision

92. Identify the incorrect factor in Henry James' theory of the novel:

(A) It should be sentimental

(B) It should be objective

(D) It should be viewed as an artistic form

93. D.H. Lawrence popularized the concept of ……………….. in his novels.

(A) Realism

(B) Naturalism

(D) Expressionism

94. Who, among the following, advanced the theory that the mind is a tabula rasa at birth, and acquires all ideas by experience?

(A) John Locke

(B) John Wesley

(D) Denis Diderot

95. In the Defense of Poesy, Sidney says: "Now as in geometry the oblique must be known as well as right and in arithmetic, the odd as well as the even, so in the actions of our life who seeth not the filthiness of evil wanteth a great foil to perceive the beauty of virtue". Which of the following forms of poesy offers a foil that helps us perceive the beauty of virtue?

(A) Pastorals

(B) Parody

(D) Tragedy

96. Matthew Arnold's "touchstones" were "short passages, even single lines" of classic poetry beside which the lines of other poets may be placed in order to detect the presence or absence of high poetic quality. In his "Study of Poetry" Arnold cited "touchstones" from such non-English poets as Homer and Dante and also from the English poets, Shakespeare and Milton. Which English poet did he disapprovingly call "not one of the great classics" in the list below?

(A) Chaucer

(B) Sidney

(D) Donne

97. In the lines "With gold jewels cover every part, /And hide with ornaments their want of art" (Essay on

Criticism), Pope rejects

(A) the 'Follow Nature' fallacy

(B) artificiality

(D) poor taste

98. The author of the essay "Silly Novels by Lady Novelists" is

(A) George Eliot

(B) Henry James

(D) Richard Steele

99. Match the following:

List - I

(a) "The Function of Criticism"

(b) "The Function of Criticism at the Present Time”

(d) "The Function of English at the Present Time"

List - II

(1) Terry Eagleton

(ii) Richard Ohmann

(iii) Matthew Arnold

(iv) T. S. Eliot

The right matching according to the code is:

(a) (b) (c) (d)

(A) (iv) (iii) (i) (ii)

(B) (i) (ii) (iii) (iv)

(D) (ii) (iii) (iv) (i)

100. Samuel Johnson's use of the term "metaphysical" in a piece of criticism was

(A) approving

(B) disapproving

(D) accidental

Answers:

81.C	82.B	83.D	84.A	85.C	86.D	87.C	88.B	89.C	90.B
91.B	92.A	93.C	94.A	95.C	96.A	97.B	98.A	99.A	100.B

101. F. R. Leavis and Q. D. Leavis launched a critical journal devoted to the moral centrality of English Studies. Name the Journal.

(A) The English Historical Review

(B) The Criterion

(D) The Edinburgh Review

102. In "Tradition and Individual Talent" Eliot describes the workings of the poet's mind in terms of which of the following?

(A) Natural selection

(B) A chemical reaction

(D) A cornucopia

103. The pre-eminent evaluative criterion of FR. Leavis's Great Tradition is

(A) moral purpose

(B) sublime subject matter

(D) truth to life

104. In "Tradition and Individual Talent", according to T.S. Eliot, the term "Traditional" usually means

(A) something positive

(B) something negative

(D) something old

105. Shakespeare famously neglects to observe Aristotle's rules concerning the three dramatic unities, and Samuel Johnson undertakes to defend Shakespeare from these criticisms in his Preface to Shakespeare. Which of the Aristotelian dramatic unities does Johnson believe Shakespeare to observe most successfully?

(A) Time

(B) Place

(D) Johnson does not feel that the Aristotelian dramatic unities are important

106. In his Defence of Poesy which of the following works does Sidney commend as good examples of English Poesy?

I. The Mirror of Magistrates

II. The Shepherd's Calendar

III. Lament for the Makers

IV. Ballad of Scottish King

The right combination according to the code is:

(A) I and III

(B) I and IV

(D) II and III

107. In "Tradition and the Individual Talent" TS Eliot uses the analogy of the catalyst to elucidate his theory of impersonal poetry. He cites the example of a filament of platinum and, in the poetic process this is equivalent to

(A) the language of the poet

(B) the mind of the poet

(D) the life of the poet

108. Samuel Johnson's Lives of the English Poets combines the following except

(A) analytical criticism

(B) literary history

(D) Socratic dialogue

109. Samuel Johnson denounced the metaphysical poets saying, "About the beginning of the seventeenth century

appeared a race of writers that may be termed the metaphysical poets". In the biography of which of the following poets in his Lives of Poets did Johnson make this remark?

(A) John Dryden

(B) Thomas Parnell

(D) Alexander Pope

110. In An Essay of Dramatic Poesy whom does John Dryden refer to as "the most learned and judicious Writer which any Theater ever had"?

(A) John Webster

(B) Christopher Marlowe

(D) William Shakespeare

111. Francis Bacon's New Atlantis is about a utopian state called

(A) Asgard

(B) Avalon

(D) Baltia

112. What does Philip Sidney call poet-haters in his Defence of Poesie ?

(A) Misogynists

(B) Misanthropes

(D) Mysomousoi

113. The four Moral Essays of Alexander Pope are addressed to carefully selected figures. Identify

(A) Timons, Newton, Martha Blount, Wellington

(B) Lord Cobham, Robert Walpole, Houghton Hall, Chandos

(D) William III, John Haydn, Joseph Addison, John Dennis

114. Where, according to T.S. Eliot, are we likely to find "not only the best, but the most individual parts of a poet's work"?

(A) in the poet's juvenilia or rejected drafts

(B) in the best anthologies and scrap-books.

(D) in those parts where the living poets depart from their ancestors.

115. Samuel Johnson has the following to say about an English poet:

"These images are marked by glittering accumulations of ungraceful ornaments: they strike, rather than please. The images are magnified by affectation: the language is labored into harshness. The mind of the writer seems to work with unnatural violence -'Double, double, toil and trouble'. He has a kind of strutting dignity, and is tall by walking on tiptoe. His art and his struggle are too visible, and there is too little appearance of ease and nature." Identify the poet.

(A) Thomas Gray

(B) John Dryden

(D) Thomas Wyatt

116. In imitation of which classical poet did Samuel Johnson write bis London and The Vanity of Human Wishes?

(A) Horace

(B) Homer

(D) Tasso

117. In his essay "The Function of Criticism at the Present Time" (1864) Matthew Arnold contended that

(A) Creative and critical powers should be ranked equally

(B) Creative and critical powers are not comparable in any way

(D) Creative power should be ranked higher than critical power

118. From among the following, identify the two correct statements in Johnson's criticism of Shakespeare:

(a) His Athenians are not sufficiently Greek and his kings not completely royal.

(b) He sacrifices virtue to convenience and is more careful to please than to instruct.

(d) He sacrifices reason, property and truth to pursue even a poor and barren quibble.

Choose the correct option:

(A) (a) and (b)

(B) (a) and (c)

(D) (b) and (d)

119. Which two writers have written essays on the defence of poetry?

(a) Sir Philip Sidney

(b) P. B. Shelley

(d) T. S. Eliot

Choose the correct option:

(A) (a) and (d)

(B) (a) and (c)

(D) (a) and (b)

120. What, in sum, is Sidney's point in the following? "Nature never set forth the earth in so rich tapestry as divers poets have done; neither with pleasant rivets, fruitless trees, sweet -smelling flowers, not what so ever else may make the too-much-loved earth more lovely. Her world is brazen, the poets only deliver a golden" (Philip Sidney)

(A) Works of art are superior to the natural world they represent

(B) Works of art can often compete with the natural world represented by them

(D) The natural world is far superior to the works of art that represent it

121. Match List I and List II

List I-Critics

A. Horace

B. John Dryden

C. Samuel Daniel

D. Ben Jonson

List II- Text

I. A Defence of Rhyme

II. Timber: or, Discoveries

III. Ars Poetica

IV. Of Dramatic Poesy

Choose the correct answer from the options given below:

(a)AII, BI, C-IV, D-III

(b) A III, BIV, C-II, D-I

(a) A-II, B-IV, C-I, D-III

122. Who said of the blank verse, quoting an unnamed critic, that it is -...verse only to the eye", adding further that it "has neither the easiness of prose, nor the melody of numbers"?

(A) John Dryden

(B) Alexander Pope

(D) Samuel Johnson

123. Arrange the following in the chronological order of publication:

A. Advancement of Learning

B. The Origin of Species

C. On Heroes and Hero Worship

D. The Lives of the Poets

Choose the correct answer from the options given below:

a. D, A, C, B

b. D, A, B, C

c. A D, C, B

d. A D, B, C

124. Poetry according to Sir Philip Sidney is of three kinds. They are:

(A) religious, dramatic, romantic

(B) classical, romantic, neo- classical

(D) religious, philosophical, imaginative

125. Which according to Thomas Hobbes is the only 'science' God has bestowed on mankind, that informs the structure of his monumental work, Leviathan?

(A) Astronomy

(B) Architecture

(D) Geometry

Answers:

101.C	102.B	103.A	104.B	105.C	106.C	107.B	108.D	109.C	110.C
111.C	112.D	113.C	114.C	115.A	116.C	117.D	118.D	119.D	120.A
121.C	122.D	123.C	124.D	125.D

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Monday, 19 June 2023

MCQs - Literary criticism: PHILIP SIDNEY TO MATHEW ARNOLD

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