200 MCQs- Literary Theory and Criticism

 

Literary Criticism & Theory MCQs

Q.1 Who first developed the philosophical concept of Mimesis and argued that poetry is an imitation of an imitation, making it “thrice removed from reality”?

1. Aristotle
2. Horace
3. Plato
4. Longinus

Answer: 3

Explanation: Plato introduces the concept of Mimesis in The Republic. According to his famous “Triad of Beds,” the ultimate reality is the Ideal Form, the carpenter produces its physical copy, and the painter merely imitates that copy. Therefore, poetry is thrice removed from truth, which is why Plato banishes poets from his ideal state.

 

Q.2 Aristotle regarded which element as the “soul of tragedy” in Poetics?

1. Character
2. Plot
3. Diction
4. Spectacle

Answer: 2

Explanation: Aristotle identifies six elements of tragedy—Plot, Character, Thought, Diction, Melody, and Spectacle—but clearly states that Plot (Mythos) is the soul because tragedy imitates action rather than merely depicting people.

 

Q.3 In Longinus’ theory of the Sublime, which of the following is NOT one of the five sources of sublimity?

1. Noble diction
2. Strong emotion
3. Historical accuracy
4. Great thoughts

Answer: 3

Explanation: Longinus argues that sublimity arises from greatness of thought, powerful emotion, figures of speech, noble diction, and dignified composition. Historical accuracy is never included among these aesthetic sources.

 

Q.4 Sir Philip Sidney wrote An Apology for Poetry primarily as a response to which Puritan attack on literature?

1. The Arte of Rhetorique
2. The School of Abuse
3. Timber
4. Defence of Rhyme

Answer: 2

Explanation: Stephen Gosson’s The School of Abuse (1579) condemned poetry and drama as morally corrupt. Sidney’s An Apology for Poetry (also called The Defence of Poesy) defends poetry by arguing that it teaches virtue through delight.

 

Q.5 Which Elizabethan critic wrote the first English critical essay on poetry and versification?

1. Richard Puttenham
2. Thomas Campion
3. George Gascoigne
4. Roger Ascham

Answer: 3

Explanation: George Gascoigne’s Certayne Notes of Instruction (1575) is considered the earliest English critical essay. It provides practical guidance on rhyme, meter, and poetic composition.

 

Q.6 In An Essay of Dramatic Poesy, Dryden’s spokesman Neander primarily defends:

1. Greek tragedy
2. French classical drama
3. English drama and tragicomedy
4. Medieval morality plays

Answer: 3

Explanation: The dialogue features four speakers representing different viewpoints. Neander, who represents Dryden himself, argues that English drama surpasses French drama because it successfully combines tragedy and comedy while preserving vitality and variety.

 

Q.7 Which famous quotation appears in Alexander Pope’s An Essay on Criticism?

1. Poetry is emotion recollected in tranquility.
2. The birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the author.
3. A little learning is a dangerous thing.
4. Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.

Answer: 3

Explanation: Pope’s didactic poem in heroic couplets emphasizes moderation, classical judgment, and critical taste. Its most frequently quoted line is “A little learning is a dangerous thing.”

 

Q.8 Coleridge uses the term “Esemplastic” to describe imagination because it:

1. Copies nature exactly.
2. Combines diverse elements into an organic whole.
3. Produces realistic characters.
4. Rejects emotional experience.

Answer: 2

Explanation: In Biographia Literaria, Coleridge distinguishes Fancy from Imagination. The Secondary Imagination possesses an “esemplastic” power, meaning it shapes and unifies scattered impressions into a creative organic form.

 

Q.9 The phrase “Negative Capability” was introduced by:

1. Shelley
2. Wordsworth
3. Keats
4. Hazlitt

Answer: 3

Explanation: John Keats coined “Negative Capability” in his 1817 letters. It refers to the artist’s ability to remain in uncertainty, mystery, and doubt without seeking logical resolution.

 

Q.10 Matthew Arnold’s Touchstone Method proposes that poetry should be evaluated by:

1. The author’s biography
2. Public popularity
3. Comparison with great poetic passages
4. Historical chronology alone

Answer: 3

Explanation: Arnold recommends judging poetry by comparing it with short passages from acknowledged masterpieces. These “touchstones” serve as standards of excellence and reveal a poem’s true artistic quality.

 

Q.11 Hippolyte Taine explained literature through the scientific formula:

1. Form, Structure, Meaning
2. Race, Milieu, Moment
3. Nature, Culture, Language
4. Text, Reader, Author

Answer: 2

Explanation: Taine believed literature is shaped by Race (heredity), Milieu (environment), and Moment (historical circumstance). This formula became the theoretical basis of Naturalism.

 

Q.12 Émile Zola’s Le Roman Expérimental argues that the novelist should function like a:

1. Priest
2. Philosopher
3. Scientist
4. Historian

Answer: 3

Explanation: Zola compares fiction to scientific experimentation. The novelist observes heredity and environment objectively, treating characters as subjects in a social laboratory.

 

Q.13 The famous statement “The purpose of art is to make the stone stony” belongs to:

1. Roman Jakobson
2. Bakhtin
3. Viktor Shklovsky
4. Propp

Answer: 3

Explanation: Shklovsky’s essay Art as Technique (1917) introduces the concept of Defamiliarization (Ostranenie). Art renews perception by making ordinary objects appear strange and vivid.

 

Q.14 In Russian Formalism, Fabula refers to:

1. Narrative voice
2. Artistic arrangement of events
3. Chronological story
4. Reader’s interpretation

Answer: 3

Explanation: Formalists distinguish Fabula (raw chronological events) from Syuzhet (their artistic presentation). This distinction became fundamental to narratology.

 

Q.15 Bakhtin’s concept of Heteroglossia refers to:

1. Multiple mythic archetypes
2. Variety of social voices within a novel
3. Dramatic irony
4. Linguistic ambiguity

Answer: 2

Explanation: Heteroglossia describes the coexistence of diverse languages, dialects, and ideological voices within the novel. It reflects social conflict rather than linguistic uniformity.

 

Q.16 Northrop Frye associates Tragedy with which season in his theory of Mythoi?

1. Spring
2. Summer
3. Autumn
4. Winter

Answer: 3

Explanation: Frye connects literary genres with seasonal cycles: Comedy–Spring, Romance–Summer, Tragedy–Autumn, and Satire–Winter. This cyclical structure is central to Anatomy of Criticism.

 

Q.17 The Intentional Fallacy argues that critics should avoid judging a work by:

1. Its language
2. Reader response
3. Authorial intention
4. Historical context

Answer: 3

Explanation: Wimsatt and Beardsley maintain that the meaning of a literary work resides in the text itself, not in the author’s personal intention. This principle became foundational to New Critical close reading.

 

Q.18 Which critic described poetry as “the language of paradox”?

1. Allen Tate
2. Cleanth Brooks
3. I. A. Richards
4. Empson

Answer: 2

Explanation: Cleanth Brooks’ The Well Wrought Urn argues that paradox is not decorative but essential to poetic meaning. He also coined the phrase “Heresy of Paraphrase.”

 

Q.19 According to Saussure, language should primarily be studied as a system called:

1. Parole
2. Langue
3. Syuzhet
4. Chronotope

Answer: 2

Explanation: Saussure distinguishes Langue (the underlying language system shared by a community) from Parole (individual speech acts). Structuralism focuses on the relational system rather than isolated utterances.

 

Q.20 Gérard Genette’s theory of Focalization deals with:

1. Character development
2. Narrative point of view
3. Symbolic imagery
4. Metaphorical language

Answer: 2

Explanation: In Narrative Discourse, Genette distinguishes zero, internal, and external focalization, separating the question “Who sees?” from “Who speaks?” in narrative analysis.

 

Q.21 Derrida’s concept of Différance emphasizes that meaning is:

1. Fixed by authorial intention
2. Produced through historical biography
3. Continuously deferred through difference
4. Determined by social class alone

Answer: 3

Explanation: Différance combines the ideas of difference and deferral. Every sign gains meaning only through its relation to other signs, so meaning is never final or fully present.

 

Q.22 Roland Barthes’ essay “The Death of the Author” shifts critical authority from:

1. Reader to critic
2. Author to reader
3. Text to history
4. Language to ideology

Answer: 2

Explanation: Barthes rejects the idea that authorial intention determines meaning. Instead, the reader actively produces meaning through interpretation, making reading an open process.

 

Q.23 Freud described dreams as:

1. Social performances
2. Linguistic structures
3. The royal road to the unconscious
4. Cultural myths

Answer: 3

Explanation: In The Interpretation of Dreams, Freud argues that dreams reveal unconscious desires through processes such as condensation and displacement, making them the primary path to psychoanalytic understanding.

 

Q.24 Lacan’s Mirror Stage explains the formation of:

1. Political ideology
2. National identity
3. The ego or self-image
4. Reader response

Answer: 3

Explanation: Lacan argues that infants recognize themselves in the mirror and construct an imagined unified identity. This recognition is simultaneously formative and illusory, becoming the basis of the ego.

 

Q.25 Louis Althusser’s concept of Interpellation explains how ideology:

1. Eliminates literature
2. Hails individuals into social subject positions
3. Creates archetypes
4. Produces poetic ambiguity

Answer: 2

Explanation: Interpellation describes the process through which institutions such as schools, media, and family “hail” individuals, encouraging them to recognize themselves as subjects within ideological systems.

 

Q.26 Raymond Williams’ Structure of Feeling refers to:

1. Universal human psychology
2. Formal narrative structure
3. Emerging shared cultural experience of an age
4. Classical dramatic unity

Answer: 3

Explanation: Williams uses this term to describe lived experiences and values that are widely felt within a society before they become fully articulated as ideology or tradition.

 

Q.27 Wolfgang Iser’s Textual Gaps (Leerstellen) suggest that:

1. Texts possess complete meaning independently.
2. Readers imaginatively complete missing connections.
3. Authors intentionally leave grammatical errors.
4. Meaning depends only on historical context.

Answer: 2

Explanation: Iser argues that literary texts contain indeterminacies or blanks which invite readers to participate actively in constructing meaning. Reading is therefore a creative act rather than passive reception.

 

Q.28 Stanley Fish believes literary meaning is primarily produced by:

1. Linguistic signs
2. Authorial intention
3. Interpretive communities
4. Historical documents

Answer: 3

Explanation: Fish rejects the idea of objective textual meaning. Instead, groups of readers sharing similar conventions and assumptions create meaning collectively through Interpretive Communities.

 

Q.29 Elaine Showalter coined the term:

1. Écriture féminine
2. Gynocriticism
3. Intersectionality
4. Womanism

Answer: 2

Explanation: Showalter’s Gynocriticism focuses on women as producers of literature rather than merely as characters within male-authored texts. Her book A Literature of Their Own established this critical approach.

 

Q.30 Kimberlé Crenshaw introduced the concept of Intersectionality to explain:

1. Literary symbolism
2. Class struggle alone
3. Interlocking systems of race, class, and gender oppression
4. Reader interpretation

Answer: 3

Explanation: Intersectionality argues that different forms of discrimination operate simultaneously rather than independently. It became a foundational concept in Black Feminist and contemporary gender studies.

 

Q.31 Edward Said’s Contrapuntal Reading encourages readers to:

1. Ignore imperial history.
2. Read colonial and metropolitan narratives together.
3. Focus only on authorial intention.
4. Reject historical evidence.

Answer: 2

Explanation: Said proposes reading canonical European texts alongside the histories of empire they often suppress. This method reveals how literature participates in colonial power relations.

 

Q.32 Homi K. Bhabha’s Third Space primarily refers to:

1. A geographical colony
2. Pure indigenous identity
3. An in-between cultural space where new identities emerge
4. Economic globalization

Answer: 3

Explanation: The Third Space is neither entirely colonial nor entirely native. It is a hybrid zone where meanings, identities, and cultures are negotiated, challenging rigid binaries of colonizer and colonized.

 

Q.33 Which of the following works was written by Horace and became the foundation of Roman literary criticism?

1. Poetics
2. Ars Poetica
3. Institutio Oratoria
4. De Oratore

Answer: 2

Explanation: Horace’s Ars Poetica establishes the principles of poetic decorum and introduces the famous doctrine dulce et utile (“sweet and useful”). It became the model for Neoclassical criticism.

 

Q.34 Who wrote Timber, or Discoveries, a work that foreshadows English Neoclassicism?

1. Thomas Campion
2. Ben Jonson
3. Samuel Daniel
4. Richard Puttenham

Answer: 2

Explanation: Ben Jonson’s Timber, or Discoveries advocates classical rules, artistic judgment, and disciplined craftsmanship. It strongly influenced Restoration criticism.

 

Q.35 Practical Criticism (1929), famous for its anonymous-poem experiment, was written by:

1. Cleanth Brooks
2. William Empson
3. I. A. Richards
4. F. R. Leavis

Answer: 3

Explanation: I. A. Richards asked students to interpret poems without knowing the authors. This experiment demonstrated the importance of close reading, later adopted by New Critics.

 

Q.36 Which critic wrote The Anxiety of Influence, explaining that every strong poet misreads earlier poets?

1. Stanley Fish
2. Harold Bloom
3. Wayne Booth
4. Wolfgang Iser

Answer: 2

Explanation: Harold Bloom argues that poetic creativity emerges through a productive struggle with powerful predecessors, a process he calls creative misreading.

 

Q.37 The term Chronotope, describing the fusion of time and space in narrative, belongs to:

1. Genette
2. Bakhtin
3. Barthes
4. Todorov

Answer: 2

Explanation: Bakhtin developed Chronotope to explain how narrative time and physical space work together in shaping literary meaning, especially in the novel.

 

Q.38 Which theorist introduced the distinction between Readerly and Writerly texts?

1. Derrida
2. Barthes
3. Eco
4. Saussure

Answer: 2

Explanation: In S/Z, Roland Barthes distinguishes readerly texts, which encourage passive reading, from writerly texts, which demand active participation by readers.

 

Q.39 The concept of Foregrounding is associated with:

1. Viktor Shklovsky
2. Roman Jakobson
3. Jan Mukařovský
4. Vladimir Propp

Answer: 3

Explanation: Jan Mukařovský, a member of the Prague School, explains that literature draws attention to itself through linguistic deviation, a process known as foregrounding.

 

Q.40 Who coined the term Intertextuality?

1. Hélène Cixous
2. Julia Kristeva
3. Luce Irigaray
4. Elaine Showalter

Answer: 2

Explanation: Julia Kristeva adapted Bakhtin’s dialogism and coined Intertextuality, arguing that every text is a mosaic of quotations and earlier texts.

 

Q.41 Arrange the following critics chronologically.

A. Plato

B. Horace

C. Longinus

D. Aristotle

1. A – D – B – C
2. D – A – B – C
3. A – B – D – C
4. B – A – D – C

Answer: 1

Explanation: The correct historical order is: Plato (428–347 BC) → Aristotle (384–322 BC) → Horace (65–8 BC) → Longinus (1st century AD). This sequence reflects the development from Greek to Roman criticism.

 

Q.42 Arrange these movements from earliest to latest.

A. Structuralism

B. New Criticism

C. Russian Formalism

D. Post-Structuralism

1. C – B – A – D
2. B – C – A – D
3. C – A – B – D
4. A – C – B – D

Answer: 1

Explanation: Russian Formalism (1914–30) preceded New Criticism (1940s), which was followed by Structuralism (1950s–70s) and finally Post-Structuralism (1960s onward).

 

Q.44 Assertion (A): New Critics rejected biography as the basis of literary interpretation.

Reason (R): They believed the literary text is an autonomous verbal object.

1. Both A and R are true, and R is the correct explanation.
2. Both A and R are true, but R is not the correct explanation.
3. A is true, but R is false.
4. A is false, but R is true.

Answer: 1

Explanation: New Criticism emphasizes the autonomy of the text through concepts such as Intentional Fallacy, Affective Fallacy, and Verbal Icon. Therefore, the reason correctly explains the assertion.

 

Q.45 Assertion (A): Structuralism studies literature as a system of signs.

Reason (R): Saussure argued that the relationship between signifier and signified is arbitrary.

1. Both A and R are true, and R is the correct explanation.
2. Both are true, but R is not the explanation.
3. A is true; R is false.
4. A is false; R is true.

Answer: 1

Explanation: Structuralism is grounded in Saussure’s linguistic theory. Since signs acquire meaning through relational differences rather than natural connections, literature can be studied as a structured sign system.

 

Q.46  Match List I with List II.

List I (Critic)	List II (Concept)
A. Roman Jakobson	1. Defamiliarization
B. Viktor Shklovsky	2. Polyphony
C. Mikhail Bakhtin	3. Six Functions of Language
D. Vladimir Propp	4. Thirty-one Narrative Functions

1. A–3, B–1, C–2, D–4
2. A–1, B–2, C–3, D–4
3. A–3, B–4, C–1, D–2
4. A–2, B–3, C–1, D–4

Answer: 1

Explanation: Jakobson developed the six functions of language; Shklovsky coined defamiliarization; Bakhtin introduced polyphony; and Propp identified 31 narrative functions in folktales.

 

Q.47 Match the critics with their famous works.

List I	List II
A. Walter Pater	1. The Critic as Artist
B. Oscar Wilde	2. Studies in the History of the Renaissance
C. Matthew Arnold	3. The Study of Poetry
D. F. R. Leavis	4. The Great Tradition

1. A–2, B–1, C–3, D–4
2. A–1, B–2, C–4, D–3
3. A–3, B–2, C–1, D–4
4. A–2, B–4, C–1, D–3

Answer: 1

Explanation: These works are among the most frequently matched items in NET examinations and represent Victorian, Aesthetic, and New Critical traditions.

 

Q.48 Consider the following statements about Reader-Response Theory:

1. Wolfgang Iser belongs to the Constance School.
2. Hans Robert Jauss developed the Horizon of Expectations.
3. Stanley Fish proposed Interpretive Communities.
4. Wayne Booth coined Defamiliarization.

Which statements are correct?

1. 1, 2 and 3 only
2. 1 and 4 only
3. 2 and 3 only
4. All four

Answer: 1

Explanation: Statements 1–3 are correct. Statement 4 is incorrect because Defamiliarization was introduced by Viktor Shklovsky, not Wayne Booth.

 

Q.49 Which of the following belong to French Psychoanalytic Feminism?

1. Julia Kristeva
2. Hélène Cixous
3. Luce Irigaray
4. Elaine Showalter

1. 1, 2 and 3 only
2. 2 and 4 only
3. 1 and 4 only
4. All four

Answer: 1

Explanation: Kristeva, Cixous, and Irigaray constitute the major French psychoanalytic feminist trio. Elaine Showalter belongs to the Anglo-American tradition and developed Gynocriticism.

 

 

Q.50 Who among the following is NOT a member of the Yale School of Deconstruction?

1. Paul de Man
2. J. Hillis Miller
3. Geoffrey Hartman
4. Raymond Williams

Answer: 4

Explanation: The Yale School includes Paul de Man, J. Hillis Miller, Geoffrey Hartman, Harold Bloom, and Barbara Johnson. Raymond Williams is associated with Marxism and Cultural Materialism.

 

 

Literary Criticism & Theory MCQs- SET-2

Q.1 Who made the famous statement that “Poetry is more philosophical than history”?

1. Plato
2. Aristotle
3. Horace
4. Longinus

Answer: 2

Explanation: In Poetics, Aristotle argues that history deals with particular events, whereas poetry represents universal truths. Therefore, poetry is more philosophical and significant than history.

 

Q.2 The quotation “Ut pictura poesis” means:

1. Poetry is divine inspiration.
2. Poetry is imitation.
3. As is painting, so is poetry.
4. Poetry is emotion recollected in tranquility.

Answer: 3

Explanation: Horace’s Ars Poetica compares painting and poetry, arguing that both arts should be judged aesthetically rather than merely morally. The phrase became central to Renaissance aesthetics.

 

Q.3 Which fault of the Sublime refers to exaggerated grandiloquence?

1. Puerility
2. Bombast
3. Peripeteia
4. Bathos

Answer: 2

Explanation: Longinus identifies three principal faults opposing sublimity: Bombast (inflated language), Puerility (childish ornamentation), and Parenthyrsus (misplaced emotional excess).

 

Q.4 Which Puritan writer attacked poetry in The School of Abuse?

1. Ben Jonson
2. Stephen Gosson
3. Thomas Campion
4. Samuel Daniel

Answer: 2

Explanation: Stephen Gosson condemned poetry and drama as immoral. Sidney’s Defence of Poesy was written directly in response to this Puritan criticism.

 

Q.5 Who defended rhyme against Thomas Campion in Defence of Rhyme?

1. Roger Ascham
2. Richard Puttenham
3. Samuel Daniel
4. George Gascoigne

Answer: 3

Explanation: Thomas Campion preferred classical quantitative metre, while Samuel Daniel argued that rhyme naturally suits the English language.

 

Q.6 Which famous remark about Dryden was made by Samuel Johnson?

1. He was the prince of paradox.
2. He found English criticism brick and left it marble.
3. He created the sublime.
4. He was the father of imagination.

Answer: 2

Explanation: Samuel Johnson praised Dryden by saying he “found English criticism brick and left it marble,” recognizing his foundational role in English literary criticism.

 

Q.7 In An Essay of Dramatic Poesy, who represents the French classical tradition?

1. Neander
2. Eugenius
3. Lisideius
4. Crites

Answer: 3

Explanation: The four speakers symbolize different positions: Crites (Ancients), Eugenius (Moderns), Lisideius (French drama), and Neander (Dryden defending English drama).

 

Q.8 Which work is popularly called the Manifesto of Romanticism?

1. Biographia Literaria
2. A Defence of Poetry
3. Preface to Lyrical Ballads
4. The Four Ages of Poetry

Answer: 3

Explanation: Wordsworth’s Preface to Lyrical Ballads revolutionized English poetry by emphasizing ordinary language, nature, imagination, and emotion over classical rules.

 

Q.9 Who described Shakespeare as the “myriad-minded man”?

1. Hazlitt
2. Coleridge
3. Keats
4. Shelley

Answer: 2

Explanation: Coleridge’s Shakespeare lectures praise Shakespeare’s extraordinary imaginative range and psychological insight, leading him to call the dramatist “myriad-minded.”

 

Q.10 The statement “Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world” appears in:

1. Biographia Literaria
2. Preface to Lyrical Ballads
3. A Defence of Poetry
4. The Four Ages of Poetry

Answer: 3

Explanation: Shelley concludes his essay by asserting that poets shape moral imagination and social progress, even if society fails to recognize their influence.

 

 

Q.11 Which theorist developed the concepts of Hybridity, Mimicry, Ambivalence, and Third Space?

1. Edward Said
2. Gayatri Spivak
3. Homi K. Bhabha
4. Frantz Fanon

Answer: 3

Explanation: Homi Bhabha explains colonial identity as fluid rather than fixed. His concepts challenge binary oppositions such as colonizer/colonized and emphasize cultural negotiation.

 

Q.12 Who wrote the celebrated line “To burn always with this hard, gem-like flame”?

1. Oscar Wilde
2. Walter Pater
3. Matthew Arnold
4. Ruskin

Answer: 2

Explanation: Walter Pater’s Studies in the History of the Renaissance became the manifesto of Aestheticism, celebrating intense aesthetic experience above moral utility.

 

Q.13 Who is known as the Father of American Realism?

1. Henry James
2. Theodore Dreiser
3. William Dean Howells
4. Mark Twain

Answer: 3

Explanation: William Dean Howells insisted that realism meant the truthful representation of ordinary life without romantic exaggeration.

 

Q.14 Which novel is regarded as the classic example of French Realism?

1. Germinal
2. Madame Bovary
3. Nana
4. Sister Carrie

Answer: 2

Explanation: Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary presents psychological realism and objective narration, becoming the defining realist novel of nineteenth-century France.

 

Q.15 The term “Correspondances” is associated with:

1. Mallarmé
2. Verlaine
3. Baudelaire
4. Rimbaud

Answer: 3

Explanation: Baudelaire’s poem “Correspondances” proposes mystical relationships between sensory experience and spiritual reality, becoming the foundation of Symbolism.

 

Q.16 The philosophical opposition between the Apollonian and Dionysian appears in:

1. Thus Spoke Zarathustra
2. The Birth of Tragedy
3. Beyond Good and Evil
4. Ecce Homo

Answer: 2

Explanation: Nietzsche explains Greek tragedy as a balance between Apollonian order and Dionysian passion, profoundly influencing Expressionism.

 

Q.17 The concept of Literariness (Literaturnost) belongs to:

1. Propp
2. Jakobson
3. Shklovsky
4. Tynyanov

Answer: 2

Explanation: Roman Jakobson defines literariness as the quality that makes a text specifically literary rather than merely communicative.

 

Q.18 Who distinguished Bound Motifs and Free Motifs?

1. Bakhtin
2. Boris Tomashevsky
3. Eikhenbaum
4. Genette

Answer: 2

Explanation: Tomashevsky argues that some motifs are essential to plot progression while others merely enrich narrative texture.

 

Q.19 Who called the death-rebirth myth the “archetype of archetypes”?

1. Jung
2. Frye
3. Frazer
4. Campbell

Answer: 3

Explanation: Sir James Frazer’s The Golden Bough traces recurring fertility and resurrection myths across cultures, greatly influencing archetypal criticism.

 

Q.20 The expression Collective Unconscious belongs to:

1. Freud
2. Lacan
3. Jung
4. Adler

Answer: 3

Explanation: Jung proposes that humanity shares inherited symbolic patterns called archetypes, stored within the collective unconscious rather than individual memory.

 

Q.21 Who coined the expression “Heresy of Paraphrase”?

1. Wimsatt
2. Eliot
3. Brooks
4. Richards

Answer: 3

Explanation: Cleanth Brooks argues that a poem’s meaning cannot be reduced to ordinary prose because its structure and language are inseparable from its meaning.

 

Q.22 The term Verbal Icon belongs to:

1. Allen Tate
2. Wimsatt
3. Empson
4. Richards

Answer: 2

Explanation: Wimsatt’s The Verbal Icon defines the literary work as an autonomous verbal object whose meaning resides within its formal structure.

 

Q.23 Who introduced the distinction between Tenor and Vehicle in metaphor?

1. Brooks
2. Empson
3. Richards
4. Eliot

Answer: 3

Explanation: I. A. Richards’ The Meaning of Meaning explains metaphor through Tenor (underlying idea) and Vehicle (image conveying it).

 

Q.24 Who is regarded as the Father of Modern Linguistics?

1. Peirce
2. Chomsky
3. Saussure
4. Jakobson

Answer: 3

Explanation: Ferdinand de Saussure established modern structural linguistics through concepts such as langue, parole, and the arbitrary nature of the sign.

 

Q.25 The three sign-types Icon, Index, and Symbol were proposed by:

1. Eco
2. Barthes
3. Peirce
4. Saussure

Answer: 3

Explanation: Charles Sanders Peirce developed a triadic model of signs based on resemblance, causal connection, and arbitrary convention.

 

Q.26 Which work begins Derrida’s challenge to Structuralism through the famous lecture delivered in 1966?

1. Of Grammatology
2. Writing and Difference
3. Structure, Sign and Play
4. Dissemination

Answer: 3

Explanation: Derrida’s lecture “Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences” marks the symbolic beginning of Post-Structuralism.

 

Q.27 Who wrote Mythologies, analyzing everyday cultural objects as ideological signs?

1. Eco
2. Barthes
3. Foucault
4. Baudrillard

Answer: 2

Explanation: Barthes demonstrates how advertisements, wrestling, fashion, and popular culture function as modern myths that naturalize ideology.

 

Q.28 The concept of the Panopticon is central to:

1. The Order of Things
2. Discipline and Punish
3. Madness and Civilization
4. The History of Sexuality

Answer: 2

Explanation: Foucault adopts Bentham’s prison design as a metaphor for modern surveillance, demonstrating how power becomes internalized within individuals.

 

Q.29 Which theorist uses Disneyland as the classic example of Hyperreality?

1. Foucault
2. Derrida
3. Baudrillard
4. Lyotard

Answer: 3

Explanation: Baudrillard argues that simulations replace reality itself, making Disneyland an emblem of a world where copies become more real than originals.

 

Q.30 Who coined the concept of Hegemony?

1. Marx
2. Althusser
3. Gramsci
4. Eagleton

Answer: 3

Explanation: Antonio Gramsci explains that ruling classes maintain power not merely through force but by securing the consent of the governed through culture and ideology.

 

Q.31 Which work introduced Ideological State Apparatuses (ISA)?

1. The German Ideology
2. Marxism and Literature
3. Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses
4. The Political Unconscious

Answer: 3

Explanation: Louis Althusser distinguishes coercive institutions (RSA) from ideological institutions such as schools, family, religion, and media.

 

Q.32 Who founded the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies?

1. Stuart Hall
2. Richard Hoggart
3. Raymond Williams
4. Dick Hebdige

Answer: 2

Explanation: Richard Hoggart established the Birmingham Centre in 1964, laying the institutional foundation for Cultural Studies in Britain.

 

Q.33 The model of Encoding and Decoding belongs to:

1. Hall
2. Williams
3. Hebdige
4. Bourdieu

Answer: 1

Explanation: Stuart Hall explains that audiences may adopt dominant, negotiated, or oppositional readings of media texts rather than simply receiving fixed meanings.

 

Q.34 The Horizon of Expectations was developed by:

1. Iser
2. Fish
3. Jauss
4. Rosenblatt

Answer: 3

Explanation: Hans Robert Jauss argues that readers approach texts with historically shaped expectations, which influence interpretation and literary reception.

 

Q.35 Louise Rosenblatt’s theory is known as:

1. Reception Theory
2. Transactional Theory
3. Dialogic Theory
4. Semiotic Theory

Answer: 2

Explanation: Rosenblatt sees reading as a transaction between reader and text, emphasizing that meaning emerges through their interaction rather than existing independently.

 

Q.36 The distinction between Constative and Performative utterances belongs to:

1. Grice
2. Searle
3. Austin
4. Wittgenstein

Answer: 3

Explanation: J. L. Austin demonstrates that some utterances do not merely describe reality but actually perform actions, such as promising, marrying, or apologizing.

 

Q.37 Who declared “Existence precedes essence”?

1. Camus
2. Heidegger
3. Sartre
4. Kierkegaard

Answer: 3

Explanation: Sartre argues that human beings are not born with predetermined purposes; instead, they create their identities through free choices and responsibility.

 

Q.38 The phrase “Hell is other people” comes from:

1. Being and Nothingness
2. No Exit
3. The Myth of Sisyphus
4. Being and Time

Answer: 2

Explanation: Sartre’s existential drama No Exit explores human freedom and interpersonal conflict through the famous declaration “Hell is other people.”

 

Q.39 Who is called the Grandmother of British Feminism?

1. Virginia Woolf
2. Simone de Beauvoir
3. Mary Wollstonecraft
4. Mary Astell

Answer: 3

Explanation: Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792) argues for women’s education and equality, becoming the foundational text of British feminism.

 

Q.40 Which book argues that “One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman”?

1. The Feminine Mystique
2. The Second Sex
3. Sexual Politics
4. Gender Trouble

Answer: 2

Explanation: Simone de Beauvoir distinguishes biological sex from socially constructed womanhood, laying the philosophical basis for later feminist and gender theories.

 

Q.41 Who coined the term Orientalism?

1. Bhabha
2. Fanon
3. Said
4. Spivak

Answer: 3

Explanation: Edward Said argues that the West constructs the East through stereotypical representations that justify colonial domination. Orientalism remains the foundational text of postcolonial criticism.

 

Q.42 Which pair is incorrectly matched?

1. Bakhtin — Carnivalesque
2. Genette — Focalization
3. Barthes — Objective Correlative
4. Derrida — Différance

Answer: 3

Explanation: Objective Correlative was coined by T. S. Eliot in Hamlet and His Problems, whereas Barthes is associated with Death of the Author, Mythologies, and S/Z.

 

Q.43 A critic argues that literature should be read alongside government records, travel accounts, and legal documents because all are cultural texts. This approach is best described as:

1. Structuralism
2. New Criticism
3. New Historicism
4. Formalism

Answer: 3

Explanation: Stephen Greenblatt’s New Historicism rejects the separation of literary and non-literary texts. Historical documents become co-texts that reveal the circulation of power within culture.

 

Q.44 Which sequence correctly represents the development of feminist literary criticism?

1. Wollstonecraft → Woolf → Showalter → Butler
2. Woolf → Wollstonecraft → Butler → Showalter
3. Showalter → Woolf → Wollstonecraft → Butler
4. Butler → Woolf → Showalter → Wollstonecraft

Answer: 1

Explanation: The historical progression begins with Mary Wollstonecraft (1792), followed by Virginia Woolf (1929), Elaine Showalter (1977), and finally Judith Butler (1990), whose theory of gender performativity transformed contemporary gender studies.

 

Q.445 The German term Verstehen is associated with:

1. Husserl
2. Dilthey
3. Gadamer
4. Heidegger

Answer: 2

Explanation: Wilhelm Dilthey distinguishes Verstehen (human understanding) from scientific explanation, making it fundamental to hermeneutic criticism.

 

Q.46 Who first called herself a professional woman writer and was described by Simone de Beauvoir as “the first woman to take up her pen in defence of her sex”?

1. Mary Astell
2. Aphra Behn
3. Christine de Pizan
4. Virginia Woolf

Answer: 3

Explanation: Christine de Pizan’s The Book of the City of Ladies is one of the earliest systematic defenses of women in European literary history.

 

Q.47 Sexual Politics (1970) was written by:

1. Betty Friedan
2. Kate Millett
3. Shulamith Firestone
4. Adrienne Rich

Answer: 2

Explanation: Kate Millett demonstrates how literature reinforces patriarchal ideology, making Sexual Politics the landmark text of political feminist criticism.

 

Q.48 Who argued that gender is produced through repeated stylized acts?

1. Sedgwick
2. Rich
3. Butler
4. Wittig

Answer: 3

Explanation: Judith Butler’s theory of Gender Performativity rejects gender as a natural identity and explains it as repeated social performance.

 

 

Q.49 The term Négritude is associated with:

1. Fanon
2. Bhabha
3. Aimé Césaire
4. Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o

Answer: 3

Explanation: Aimé Césaire founded the Négritude movement to celebrate Black identity, language, and culture against colonial assimilation.

 

Q.50 Who coined the term Neo-colonialism?

1. Frantz Fanon
2. Kwame Nkrumah
3. Edward Said
4. Chinua Achebe

Answer: 2

Explanation: Kwame Nkrumah explains that former colonies often remain economically and politically controlled despite achieving formal political independence.

 

 

Literary Criticism & Theory MCQs- SET-3

Q.1 Dante explains the Four Levels of Meaning in which work?

1. Divine Comedy
2. Letter to Can Grande
3. Il Convivio
4. De Monarchia

Answer: 2

Explanation: Dante’s Letter to Can Grande explains the four methods of biblical and literary interpretation: Literal, Allegorical, Moral (Tropological), and Anagogical. This became the foundation of medieval hermeneutics.

 

Q.2 Which is the correct sequence of Dante’s four levels of interpretation?

1. Literal → Moral → Allegorical → Anagogical
2. Literal → Allegorical → Moral → Anagogical
3. Allegorical → Literal → Moral → Anagogical
4. Moral → Literal → Allegorical → Anagogical

Answer: 2

Explanation: Medieval critics believed every sacred text possessed four simultaneous meanings. The highest level, Anagogical, refers to spiritual or heavenly significance.

 

Q.3 Who attempted to replace English rhyme with classical quantitative metre?

1. George Gascoigne
2. Richard Puttenham
3. Thomas Campion
4. Samuel Daniel

Answer: 3

Explanation: In Observations in the Art of Poesie (1602), Campion argued that English poetry should imitate Greek and Latin quantitative verse instead of rhyme.

 

Q.4 Matthew Arnold’s distinction between Hellenism and Hebraism appears in:

1. The Function of Criticism
2. Culture and Anarchy
3. The Study of Poetry
4. On Translating Homer

Answer: 2

Explanation: Arnold contrasts Hellenism (knowledge, beauty, intellectual freedom) with Hebraism (conduct, morality, discipline), arguing that civilization requires both forces.

 

Q.5 The phrase “Sweetness and Light” is associated with:

1. Walter Pater
2. Ruskin
3. Matthew Arnold
4. Carlyle

Answer: 3

Explanation: Arnold uses “Sweetness and Light” in Culture and Anarchy to define culture as the harmonious pursuit of beauty and intelligence.

 

Q.6 Gérard Genette distinguishes Story, Narrative, and Narrating in:

1. Structural Anthropology
2. Narrative Discourse
3. Grammar of the Decameron
4. Morphology of the Folktale

Answer: 2

Explanation: Genette separates the events (story), their textual presentation (narrative), and the act of telling (narrating), making his work central to modern narratology.

 

Q.7 The narrative technique Zero Focalization refers to:

1. First-person narration
2. Objective narration only
3. Omniscient narration
4. Interior monologue

Answer: 3

Explanation: Genette identifies zero focalization with an all-knowing narrator whose knowledge exceeds that of any character, unlike internal or external focalization.

 

Q.8 In Semiotics, Denotation refers to:

1. Hidden ideological meaning
2. Literal meaning of a sign
3. Emotional response
4. Mythic symbolism

Answer: 2

Explanation: Roland Barthes distinguishes Denotation (primary literal meaning) from Connotation (secondary cultural or ideological meaning).

 

Q.9 Which semiotician wrote The Open Work and emphasized the active reader?

1. Peirce
2. Eco
3. Barthes
4. Saussure

Answer: 2

Explanation: Umberto Eco argues that literary works remain open to multiple legitimate interpretations, making readers collaborators in meaning production.

 

Q.10 Derrida borrowed the expression “Metaphysics of Presence” from:

1. Saussure
2. Heidegger
3. Nietzsche
4. Husserl

Answer: 2

Explanation: Derrida critiques the Western philosophical preference for presence over absence, adapting Heidegger’s critique of metaphysics into deconstructive theory.

 

Q.11 The deconstructive term Trace means:

1. Historical evidence
2. The author’s intention
3. The absent presence of other signs within meaning
4. Reader psychology

Answer: 3

Explanation: Every sign carries traces of other signs; therefore meaning is relational and never completely self-contained. This idea supports Derrida’s concept of différance.

 

Q.12 According to Michel Foucault, Power and Knowledge are:

1. Opposing forces
2. Identical concepts
3. Mutually constitutive
4. Independent systems

Answer: 3

Explanation: Foucault argues that knowledge produces power while power simultaneously produces accepted forms of knowledge and truth. Neither exists independently.

 

Q.13 Which process is NOT part of Freud’s Dream-work?

1. Condensation
2. Displacement
3. Interpellation
4. Symbolization

Answer: 3

Explanation: Interpellation belongs to Louis Althusser’s Marxist theory. Freud’s dream-work includes condensation, displacement, symbolism, and secondary revision.

 

Q.14 Lacan famously stated that “The unconscious is structured like…”

1. Myth
2. Culture
3. Language
4. Desire

Answer: 3

Explanation: Lacan reinterprets Freud through Saussurean linguistics, arguing that unconscious desire functions according to linguistic structures and signification.

 

Q.15 The term Culture Industry was developed by:

1. Walter Benjamin
2. Adorno and Horkheimer
3. Herbert Marcuse
4. Raymond Williams

Answer: 2

Explanation: In Dialectic of Enlightenment, Adorno and Horkheimer criticize mass-produced culture for encouraging conformity and passive consumption.

 

Q.16 Who wrote “The Author as Producer”?

1. Benjamin
2. Brecht
3. Marcuse
4. Adorno

Answer: 1

Explanation: Walter Benjamin argues that revolutionary literature should transform the means of production rather than merely expressing political themes.

 

Q.17 Brecht’s Verfremdungseffekt literally aims to:

1. Increase emotional identification
2. Prevent critical thinking
3. Create emotional distance for social criticism
4. Restore Aristotelian catharsis

Answer: 3

Explanation: The Alienation Effect discourages audience immersion so that spectators analyze social conditions rationally instead of identifying emotionally with characters.

 

Q.18 The concept of Habitus belongs to:

1. Stuart Hall
2. Hebdige
3. Bourdieu
4. Hoggart

Answer: 3

Explanation: Pierre Bourdieu defines habitus as the internalized system of dispositions that shapes taste, posture, speech, and cultural behavior according to social class.

 

Q.19 Cultural Capital refers to:

1. Economic wealth only
2. Political power
3. Educational and cultural assets producing social advantage
4. State ideology

Answer: 3

Explanation: Bourdieu expands the idea of capital beyond economics to include education, language, taste, and credentials that confer symbolic power.

Q.20 Stephen Greenblatt originally used the term:

1. Historical Materialism
2. Cultural Poetics
3. Cultural Marxism
4. Social Historicism

Answer: 2

Explanation: Before “New Historicism” became popular, Greenblatt preferred the expression Cultural Poetics, emphasizing literature as one discourse among many cultural practices.

 

Q.21 The anthropological method of Thick Description belongs to:

1. Greenblatt
2. Geertz
3. Montrose
4. Dollimore

Answer: 2

Explanation: Clifford Geertz advocates detailed cultural interpretation, and his methodology profoundly influenced New Historicist criticism.

 

Q.22 Which philosopher classified illocutionary acts into Assertive, Directive, Commissive, Expressive, and Declarative?

1. Austin
2. Searle
3. Grice
4. Wittgenstein

Answer: 2

Explanation: John Searle systematized Austin’s theory by categorizing speech acts according to their communicative functions.

 

Q.23 H. P. Grice is famous for:

1. Reader-response theory
2. Cooperative Principle and Conversational Implicature
3. Structural semantics
4. Phenomenology

Answer: 2

Explanation: Grice explains how speakers imply meanings beyond literal words through conversational maxims such as Quantity, Quality, Relation, and Manner.

 

Q.24 The Hermeneutic Circle suggests that interpretation depends upon:

1. Authorial biography alone
2. Parts and whole understanding each other reciprocally
3. Historical chronology only
4. Reader emotion only

Answer: 2

Explanation: Hermeneutics proposes that readers understand individual parts through the whole text, while the whole becomes meaningful through its parts.

 

Q.25 Fusion of Horizons is the central idea of:

1. Husserl
2. Gadamer
3. Schleiermacher
4. Dilthey

Answer: 2

Explanation: Gadamer argues that interpretation occurs when the historical horizon of the reader meets that of the text, producing new understanding rather than recovering original meaning alone.

 

Q.26 Elaine Showalter’s three phases of women’s writing are:

1. Feminine, Female, Feminist
2. Female, Feminist, Feminine
3. Feminine, Feminist, Female
4. Feminist, Feminine, Female

Answer: 3

Explanation: Showalter identifies Feminine (1840–80), Feminist (1880–1920), and Female (1920 onwards) as successive stages in women’s literary tradition.

 

Q.27 The Madwoman in the Attic interprets which character as a symbol of repressed female rage?

1. Jane Eyre
2. Catherine Earnshaw
3. Bertha Mason Rochester
4. Dorothea Brooke

Answer: 3

Explanation: Gilbert and Gubar reinterpret Bertha as Jane Eyre’s psychological double, challenging patriarchal readings of Victorian fiction.

 

Q.28 Who coined the term Womanism?

1. bell hooks
2. Alice Walker
3. Adrienne Rich
4. Kimberlé Crenshaw

Answer: 2

Explanation: Alice Walker distinguishes Womanism from mainstream feminism by centering Black women’s experiences and cultural identity.

 

Q.29 The concept of Homosocial Desire belongs to:

1. Judith Butler
2. Adrienne Rich
3. Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick
4. Foucault

Answer: 3

Explanation: Sedgwick argues that patriarchal society is structured through intense same-sex social bonds, which often conceal or regulate desire.

 

Q.30 The metaphor of The Closet refers to:

1. Colonial identity
2. Hidden sexual identity and disclosure
3. Reader interpretation
4. Female domesticity

Answer: 2

Explanation: In Epistemology of the Closet, Sedgwick examines secrecy, visibility, and the politics of revealing queer identity.

 

Q.31 Strategic Essentialism was proposed by:

1. Said
2. Bhabha
3. Spivak
4. Fanon

Answer: 3

Explanation: Gayatri Spivak suggests that marginalized groups may temporarily adopt a unified identity for political action, while recognizing that such identities are socially constructed.

 

Q.32 The concept of Imagined Communities belongs to:

1. Benedict Anderson
2. Edward Said
3. Kwame Nkrumah
4. Frantz Fanon

Answer: 1

Explanation: Anderson argues that nations are socially imagined through print capitalism, newspapers, and shared cultural narratives rather than direct personal interaction.

 

Q.33 “There is no such thing as a moral or immoral book” appears in:

1. The Critic as Artist
2. Intentions
3. Preface to The Picture of Dorian Gray
4. The Decay of Lying

Answer: 3

Explanation: Oscar Wilde’s preface declares that books are only well or badly written, expressing the central principle of Art for Art’s Sake.

 

Q.34 Who called Shakespeare’s Iago the embodiment of “motiveless malignity”?

1. A. C. Bradley
2. Coleridge
3. Eliot
4. Hazlitt

Answer: 2

Explanation: Coleridge famously describes Iago’s evil as “motiveless malignity,” emphasizing irrational and self-generating wickedness.

 

Q.35 Thomas Love Peacock described the modern poet as:

1. An inspired prophet
2. A semi-barbarian in a civilized society
3. A legislator of the world
4. A creator of sublime beauty

Answer: 2

Explanation: Peacock’s satirical essay The Four Ages of Poetry argues that poetry has become obsolete in the scientific age, provoking Shelley’s famous reply in A Defence of Poetry.

 

Q.36 Who wrote The Road to Xanadu, tracing the sources of Coleridge’s imagination?

1. René Wellek
2. John Livingston Lowes
3. A. C. Bradley
4. Geoffrey Hartman

Answer: 2

Explanation: Lowes demonstrates how Coleridge transformed numerous readings and experiences into poetic imagination, especially in Kubla Khan and The Ancient Mariner.

 

Q.37 Which of Arnold’s estimates is considered the only valid method of judging poetry?

1. Personal estimate
2. Historical estimate
3. Real estimate
4. Moral estimate

Answer: 3

Explanation: Arnold distinguishes real, historical, and personal estimates, insisting that only the real estimate evaluates poetry on intrinsic literary excellence.

 

Q.38 Ian Watt’s concept of Formal Realism appears in:

1. The Art of Fiction
2. The Rise of the Novel
3. Middlemarch
4. Criticism and Fiction

Answer: 2

Explanation: Ian Watt argues that the English novel became distinctive through realistic characterization, particularized settings, and chronological narration.

 

Q.39 Who introduced the term Symbolisme through the Symbolist Manifesto?

1. Baudelaire
2. Mallarmé
3. Jean Moréas
4. Arthur Symons

Answer: 3

Explanation: Jean Moréas published the Symbolist Manifesto in Le Figaro (1886), formally naming the literary movement that opposed Realism and Naturalism.

 

Q.40 Arthur Symons dedicated The Symbolist Movement in Literature to:

1. Eliot
2. Yeats
3. Joyce
4. Pound

Answer: 2

Explanation: Symons introduced French Symbolism to English readers and dedicated his influential study to W. B. Yeats, who later adapted Symbolist techniques into English poetry.

 

Q.41 OPOYAZ stands for:

1. Organization of Poetic Analysis
2. Society for the Study of Poetic Language
3. Russian Linguistic Circle
4. Institute of Literary Studies

Answer: 2

Explanation: Founded in 1916, OPOYAZ (Society for the Study of Poetic Language) became the principal organization of Russian Formalism led by Viktor Shklovsky.

 

Q.42 Who founded the Moscow Linguistic Circle and later co-founded the Prague School?

1. Bakhtin
2. Jakobson
3. Propp
4. Mukařovský

Answer: 2

Explanation: Roman Jakobson connects Russian Formalism with European Structuralism, making him one of the most influential linguists of the twentieth century.

 

Q.43 Which work is called Northrop Frye’s magnum opus on the Bible and literature?

1. Anatomy of Criticism
2. The Great Code
3. Fearful Symmetry
4. Words with Power

Answer: 2

Explanation: While Anatomy of Criticism is Frye’s most famous theoretical work, The Great Code is regarded as his monumental study of biblical influence on literature.

 

Q.44 Who is known as the Father of Imagism and an early influence on New Criticism?

1. Ezra Pound
2. T. E. Hulme
3. Allen Tate
4. Richards

Answer: 2

Explanation: Hulme’s essays advocate precision, objectivity, and classical restraint, preparing the intellectual ground for New Critical aesthetics.

 

Q.45 Which journal was founded by F. R. Leavis?

1. The Criterion
2. Kenyon Review
3. Scrutiny
4. Transition

Answer: 3

Explanation: Scrutiny became Britain’s leading journal of practical criticism and promoted Leavis’s canon of serious English literature.

 

Q.46 The Fugitive Group was associated with which American university?

1. Harvard
2. Yale
3. Vanderbilt
4. Princeton

Answer: 3

Explanation: The Southern Agrarians—including Ransom, Brooks, Tate, Warren, and Davidson—met at Vanderbilt University during the 1920s.

 

Q.47 The Chicago School is also known as:

1. Reader-Oriented School
2. Neo-Aristotelian School
3. Yale School
4. Birmingham School

Answer: 2

Explanation: Led by R. S. Crane, the Chicago School revived Aristotle’s emphasis on rhetoric, genre, and pluralistic critical methods.

 

Q.48 Who coined the term Narratology?

1. Genette
2. Todorov
3. Greimas
4. Barthes

Answer: 2

Explanation: Tzvetan Todorov introduced the word Narratology while developing structural theories of narrative grammar and genre.

 

Q.49 The opposition between Bricoleur and Engineer belongs to:

1. Saussure
2. Lévi-Strauss
3. Chomsky
4. Greimas

Answer: 2

Explanation: Lévi-Strauss contrasts the bricoleur, who constructs meaning from available materials, with the idealized engineer who creates systematically.

 

Q.50 Who translated Derrida’s Of Grammatology into English?

1. Julia Kristeva
2. Gayatri Spivak
3. Barbara Johnson
4. Judith Butler

Answer: 2

Explanation: Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s translation made Derrida’s deconstruction widely accessible to English-speaking scholars and includes an influential critical introduction.

 

 

Literary Criticism & Theory MCQs- SET-4

Q.1 Match List I with List II.

List I (Critic)	List II (Work)
A. Cicero	1. Metamorphoses
B. Ovid	2. De Oratore
C. Quintilian	3. Frogs
D. Aristophanes	4. Institutio Oratoria

1. A–2, B–1, C–4, D–3
2. A–1, B–2, C–3, D–4
3. A–2, B–4, C–1, D–3
4. A–3, B–2, C–4, D–1

Answer: 1

Explanation: Cicero wrote De Oratore; Ovid wrote Metamorphoses; Quintilian wrote Institutio Oratoria; Aristophanes wrote Frogs.

 

Q.2 Match List I with List II.

List I (Concept)	List II (Critic)
A. Organic Unity	1. Longinus
B. Sublime	2. Aristotle
C. Dulce et Utile	3. Horace
D. Triad of Beds	4. Plato

1. A–2, B–1, C–3, D–4
2. A–1, B–2, C–4, D–3
3. A–3, B–4, C–2, D–1
4. A–2, B–3, C–1, D–4

Answer: 1

Explanation: Organic Unity belongs to Aristotle; Sublime to Longinus; Dulce et Utile to Horace; Triad of Beds to Plato.

 

Q.3 Match List I with List II.

List I (Critic)	List II (Contribution)
A. William Webbe	1. Defence of Plain English
B. Roger Ascham	2. Historical Survey of English Poetry
C. Thomas Wilson	3. Opposition to Inkhorn Terms
D. Sir John Cheke	4. Cambridge Humanist

1. A–2, B–4, C–3, D–1
2. A–3, B–2, C–1, D–4
3. A–2, B–1, C–4, D–3
4. A–1, B–3, C–2, D–4

Answer: 1

Explanation: William Webbe surveyed English poetry; Ascham was the Cambridge humanist; Wilson opposed Inkhorn terms; Cheke defended plain English.

 

Q.4 Match List I with List II.

List I	List II
A. Walter Benjamin	1. Culture Industry
B. Herbert Marcuse	2. The Author as Producer
C. Adorno	3. Mass Culture Critique
D. Horkheimer	4. Dialectic of Enlightenment

1. A–2, B–3, C–1, D–4
2. A–1, B–2, C–4, D–3
3. A–3, B–4, C–1, D–2
4. A–2, B–1, C–3, D–4

Answer: 1

Explanation: Benjamin wrote The Author as Producer; Marcuse criticized mass culture; Adorno developed Culture Industry; Horkheimer co-authored Dialectic of Enlightenment.

 

Q.5 Match List I with List II.

List I (Theory)	List II (Key Term)
A. Cultural Studies	1. Thick Description
B. New Historicism	2. Habitus
C. Hermeneutics	3. Fusion of Horizons
D. Phenomenology	4. Intentionality

1. A–2, B–1, C–3, D–4
2. A–1, B–2, C–4, D–3
3. A–3, B–4, C–2, D–1
4. A–2, B–3, C–1, D–4

Answer: 1

Explanation: Habitus belongs to Cultural Studies; Thick Description to New Historicism; Fusion of Horizons to Hermeneutics; Intentionality to Phenomenology.

 

Q.6 Match List I with List II.

List I (Critic)	List II (Famous Book)
A. Judith Fetterley	1. Sexual/Textual Politics
B. Toril Moi	2. The Resisting Reader
C. Sandra Gilbert	3. The Madwoman in the Attic
D. Mary Ellmann	4. Thinking About Women

1. A–2, B–1, C–3, D–4
2. A–1, B–2, C–4, D–3
3. A–3, B–4, C–1, D–2
4. A–2, B–3, C–1, D–4

Answer: 1

Explanation: These four works represent Reader-Response Feminism, French Feminist criticism, and Gynocriticism.

 

Q.7 Match List I with List II.

List I (Critic)	List II (Concept)
A. Julia Kristeva	1. Écriture Féminine
B. Hélène Cixous	2. Semiotic
C. Luce Irigaray	3. Speculum
D. Monique Wittig	4. Gender as Social Construction

1. A–2, B–1, C–3, D–4
2. A–1, B–2, C–4, D–3
3. A–3, B–4, C–2, D–1
4. A–2, B–3, C–1, D–4

Answer: 1

Explanation: Kristeva developed Semiotic theory; Cixous proposed Écriture Féminine; Irigaray wrote Speculum; Wittig viewed gender as socially constructed.

 

Q.8 Match List I with List II.

List I (Postcolonial Term)	List II (Critic)
A. Contrapuntal Reading	1. Bhabha
B. Neo-colonialism	2. Nkrumah
C. Double Consciousness	3. Du Bois
D. Mimicry	4. Said

1. A–4, B–2, C–3, D–1
2. A–1, B–3, C–2, D–4
3. A–4, B–3, C–1, D–2
4. A–2, B–1, C–4, D–3

Answer: 1

Explanation: Contrapuntal Reading belongs to Said; Neo-colonialism to Nkrumah; Double Consciousness to Du Bois; Mimicry to Bhabha.

 

Q.9 Match List I with List II.

List I (School)	List II (Founder)
A. Birmingham School	1. Stephen Greenblatt
B. New Historicism	2. Richard Hoggart
C. Chicago School	3. R. S. Crane
D. Yale School	4. Paul de Man

1. A–2, B–1, C–3, D–4
2. A–1, B–2, C–4, D–3
3. A–3, B–4, C–1, D–2
4. A–2, B–3, C–1, D–4

Answer: 1

Explanation: Hoggart founded Birmingham School; Greenblatt founded New Historicism; Crane led Chicago School; Paul de Man became the central Yale deconstructionist.

 

Q.10 Match List I with List II.

List I (Book)	List II (Critic)
A. Keywords	1. Terry Eagleton
B. Why Marx Was Right	2. Raymond Williams
C. The Political Unconscious	3. Fredric Jameson
D. Marxism and Literary Criticism	4. Terry Eagleton

1. A–2, B–4, C–3, D–1
2. A–1, B–2, C–4, D–3
3. A–2, B–3, C–1, D–4
4. A–3, B–1, C–2, D–4

Answer: 1

Explanation: Raymond Williams wrote Keywords; Terry Eagleton wrote both Why Marx Was Right and Marxism and Literary Criticism; Jameson wrote The Political Unconscious.

 

Part B: Which of the Following is TRUE / NOT TRUE (10 MCQs)

Q.11 Which of the following statements is TRUE about Longinus?

1. He believed poetry should imitate ordinary language.
2. He developed the theory of the Sublime.
3. He introduced Catharsis.
4. He founded Realism.

Answer: 2

Explanation: Longinus’ On the Sublime explains how elevated thought and language transport readers beyond ordinary experience.

 

Q.12 Which of the following is NOT TRUE about Sir Philip Sidney?

1. He answered Stephen Gosson.
2. He believed poetry teaches through delight.
3. He rejected the value of imagination.
4. He described the poet as a maker.

Answer: 3

Explanation: Sidney celebrates imagination and presents the poet as a creative “maker” who surpasses both philosopher and historian.

 

Q.13 Which statement is TRUE regarding Naturalism?

1. It rejects heredity.
2. It emphasizes free will above environment.
3. It applies scientific determinism to literature.
4. It is identical with Symbolism.

Answer: 3

Explanation: Naturalism views human behavior as largely determined by heredity, environment, and social forces. Zola calls the novelist an experimental scientist.

 

Q.14 Which of the following is NOT TRUE about Bakhtin?

1. He coined Heteroglossia.
2. He developed Chronotope.
3. He wrote Rabelais and His World.
4. He introduced Différance.

Answer: 4

Explanation: Différance belongs to Jacques Derrida. Bakhtin’s major concepts are Polyphony, Heteroglossia, Carnivalesque, and Chronotope.

 

Q.15 Which statement is TRUE about T. S. Eliot?

1. He rejected literary tradition completely.
2. He supported autobiographical poetry.
3. He proposed the Impersonality Theory.
4. He founded Reader-Response Theory.

Answer: 3

Explanation: Eliot argues that poetry should escape personal emotion and become part of an evolving literary tradition.

 

Q.16 Which of the following is NOT TRUE about Saussure?

1. He distinguished Langue and Parole.
2. He proposed Signifier and Signified.
3. He developed Icon–Index–Symbol.
4. He emphasized the arbitrariness of the sign.

Answer: 3

Explanation: Icon, Index, and Symbol belong to Charles Sanders Peirce, whereas Saussure developed the dyadic model of the linguistic sign.

 

Q.17 Which statement is TRUE about Roland Barthes?

1. He founded Russian Formalism.
2. He introduced Readerly and Writerly texts.
3. He coined Interpellation.
4. He wrote The Order of Things.

Answer: 2

Explanation: Barthes’ major contributions include Death of the Author, Mythologies, S/Z, and the distinction between Readerly and Writerly texts.

 

Q.18 Which of the following is NOT TRUE about Raymond Williams?

1. He developed Structure of Feeling.
2. He coined Cultural Materialism.
3. He wrote Keywords.
4. He founded Deconstruction.

Answer: 4

Explanation: Deconstruction was founded by Jacques Derrida. Raymond Williams belongs to Marxism and Cultural Studies.

 

Q.19 Which statement is TRUE about Elaine Showalter?

1. She coined Intersectionality.
2. She founded Gynocriticism.
3. She wrote Gender Trouble.
4. She developed Womanism.

Answer: 2

Explanation: Showalter’s Gynocriticism studies women as producers of literature and reconstructs a female literary tradition.

 

Q.20 Which of the following is NOT TRUE about Homi K. Bhabha?

1. He proposed Third Space.
2. He developed Mimicry.
3. He coined Orientalism.
4. He theorized Hybridity.

Answer: 3

Explanation: Orientalism belongs to Edward Said, while Bhabha developed Hybridity, Mimicry, Ambivalence, and Third Space.

 

 

Q.21 Arrange the following Renaissance critics chronologically.

A. Roger Ascham

B. George Gascoigne

C. Richard Puttenham

D. Thomas Campion

1. A → B → C → D
2. B → A → C → D
3. A → C → B → D
4. B → C → A → D

Answer: 1

Explanation: Ascham (1550s) preceded Gascoigne (1575), Puttenham (1589), and Campion (1602).

 

Q.22 Arrange the following Romantic works chronologically.

A. Preface to Lyrical Ballads

B. The Four Ages of Poetry

C. Biographia Literaria

D. A Defence of Poetry

1. A → C → B → D
2. C → A → B → D
3. A → B → C → D
4. B → A → C → D

Answer: 1

Explanation: Wordsworth (1800), Coleridge (1817), Peacock (1820), Shelley (1821).

 

Q.23 Arrange these critical movements chronologically.

A. Symbolism

B. Realism

C. Naturalism

D. Expressionism

1. B → C → A → D
2. A → B → C → D
3. B → A → C → D
4. C → B → A → D

Answer: 1

Explanation: Realism (1848 onward), Naturalism (1865 onward), Symbolism (1857–1900 but as a later reaction), Expressionism (1910–25).

 

Q.24 Arrange the following books chronologically.

A. Practical Criticism

B. The New Criticism

C. The Well Wrought Urn

D. The Verbal Icon

1. A → B → C → D
2. B → A → C → D
3. A → C → B → D
4. C → A → B → D

Answer: 1

Explanation: Richards (1929), Ransom (1941), Brooks (1947), Wimsatt (1954).

 

Q.25 Arrange the Structuralists chronologically.

A. Saussure

B. Lévi-Strauss

C. Genette

D. Todorov

1. A → B → D → C
2. B → A → C → D
3. A → D → B → C
4. D → A → B → C

Answer: 1

Explanation: Saussure (1916), Lévi-Strauss (1958), Todorov (1969), Genette (1972).

 

Q.26 Arrange these Post-Structuralist works chronologically.

A. Mythologies

B. Structure, Sign and Play

C. Of Grammatology

D. S/Z

1. A → B → C → D
2. B → A → C → D
3. A → C → B → D
4. C → A → B → D

Answer: 1

Explanation: Barthes (1957), Derrida lecture (1966), Of Grammatology (1967), S/Z (1970).

 

Q.27 Arrange these Marxist critics chronologically.

A. Marx

B. Gramsci

C. Althusser

D. Jameson

1. A → B → C → D
2. B → A → C → D
3. A → C → B → D
4. A → B → D → C

Answer: 1

Explanation: Marx (1840s), Gramsci (1920s–30s), Althusser (1969), Jameson (1981 onward).

 

Q.28 Arrange the following Reader-Response critics chronologically.

A. Louise Rosenblatt

B. Wolfgang Iser

C. Hans Robert Jauss

D. Stanley Fish

1. A → B → C → D
2. A → C → B → D
3. C → A → B → D
4. B → C → A → D

Answer: 2

Explanation: Rosenblatt (1938), Jauss (1967), Iser (1972), Fish (1980).

 

Q.29 Arrange these feminist works chronologically.

A. A Vindication of the Rights of Woman

B. A Room of One’s Own

C. The Second Sex

D. Gender Trouble

1. A → B → C → D
2. B → A → C → D
3. A → C → B → D
4. A → B → D → C

Answer: 1

Explanation: Wollstonecraft (1792), Woolf (1929), Beauvoir (1949), Butler (1990).

 

Q.30 Arrange the following postcolonial theorists chronologically.

A. Frantz Fanon

B. Edward Said

C. Homi K. Bhabha

D. Gayatri Spivak

1. A → B → C → D
2. B → A → C → D
3. A → C → B → D
4. B → C → A → D

Answer: 1

Explanation: Fanon (1950s–60s) influenced Said (1978), followed by Bhabha (1980s) and Spivak’s major postcolonial interventions in the 1980s.

 

Q.31 Which dialogue of Plato discusses divine inspiration and compares the poet to a magnet transmitting the power of the Muse?

1. The Republic
2. Ion
3. Phaedrus
4. Symposium

Answer: 2

Explanation: In Ion, Plato explains poetic creation through the theory of divine inspiration. The Muse inspires the poet, who in turn inspires the rhapsode and finally the audience, like magnetic rings transmitting power.

 

Q.32 Aristotle’s Poetics originally consisted of how many chapters?

1. 18
2. 24
3. 26
4. 30

Answer: 3

Explanation: Poetics contains 26 chapters and is the earliest systematic treatise on literary criticism. It primarily analyzes tragedy while the section on comedy is believed to be lost.

 

Q.33 Quintilian’s Institutio Oratoria aims to produce the ideal:

1. Poet
2. Dramatist
3. Orator
4. Historian

Answer: 3

Explanation: Quintilian emphasizes that the perfect orator must be both eloquent and morally virtuous, making rhetoric an ethical discipline rather than merely persuasive speech.

 

Q.34 Who praised Wyatt and Surrey for enriching English poetry in The Art of English Poesie?

1. George Gascoigne
2. William Webbe
3. Richard Puttenham
4. Roger Ascham

Answer: 3

Explanation: Puttenham’s treatise is one of the most comprehensive studies of Elizabethan poetics and celebrates Wyatt and Surrey for refining English verse.

 

Q.35 Which Yale critic wrote Blindness and Insight?

1. Geoffrey Hartman
2. J. Hillis Miller
3. Paul de Man
4. Harold Bloom

Answer: 3

Explanation: Paul de Man argues that critics often reveal contradictions they themselves fail to recognize, making rhetorical instability central to interpretation.

 

Q.36 Which Marxist critic defended nineteenth-century realism against Modernism?

1. Jameson
2. Eagleton
3. Lukács
4. Williams

Answer: 3

Explanation: Georg Lukács believed realist fiction better represented total social reality than fragmented modernist experimentation.

 

Q.37 Keywords was written by:

1. Stuart Hall
2. Terry Eagleton
3. Raymond Williams
4. Richard Hoggart

Answer: 3

Explanation: Raymond Williams analyzes historically changing meanings of important cultural terms, making Keywords indispensable in Cultural Studies.

 

Q.38 Which critic divided reading into Artistic Pole and Aesthetic Pole?

1. Fish
2. Rosenblatt
3. Iser
4. Jauss

Answer: 3

Explanation: Wolfgang Iser distinguishes the text created by the author (artistic pole) from the realization of meaning by the reader (aesthetic pole).

 

Q.39 Which theorist introduced the concept of “Episteme”, referring to the underlying system of knowledge governing a historical period?

1. Jacques Derrida
2. Michel Foucault
3. Roland Barthes
4. Louis Althusser

Answer: 2

Explanation: Michel Foucault developed the concept of Episteme in The Order of Things to describe the historical framework that determines how knowledge is organized and understood in different eras.

 

Q.40 The phrase “Copies without originals” best describes which postmodern concept?

1. Intertextuality
2. Heteroglossia
3. Simulacra
4. Defamiliarization

Answer: 3

Explanation: Jean Baudrillard’s concept of Simulacra refers to representations that no longer imitate reality but replace it, creating a condition of Hyperreality.

 

Q.41 According to Louis Althusser, which of the following is an Ideological State Apparatus (ISA)?

1. Army
2. Police
3. Judiciary
4. School

Answer: 4

Explanation: Althusser distinguishes ISAs (schools, family, religion, media) from Repressive State Apparatuses such as the army, police, and legal system. Schools are among the most powerful institutions for reproducing ideology.

 

Q.42 The concept of Reification, which explains the “thingification” of human relations under capitalism, was developed by:

1. Antonio Gramsci
2. Georg Lukács
3. Terry Eagleton
4. Raymond Williams

Answer: 2

Explanation: Georg Lukács introduced Reification in History and Class Consciousness, arguing that capitalist society transforms human relationships into object-like commodities.

 

Q.43 Who proposed the media reading positions Dominant, Negotiated, and Oppositional?

1. Dick Hebdige
2. Stuart Hall
3. Pierre Bourdieu
4. Richard Hoggart

Answer: 2

Explanation: Stuart Hall’s Encoding/Decoding model explains that audiences actively interpret media messages rather than simply accepting them, producing three principal reading positions.

 

Q.44 Which feminist theorist coined the term “The Male Gaze”, describing the objectification of women in visual representation?

1. Elaine Showalter
2. Laura Mulvey
3. Sandra Gilbert
4. Toril Moi

Answer: 2

Explanation: Although not part of Gynocriticism, Laura Mulvey’s influential essay Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema introduced The Male Gaze, a major concept in feminist cultural theory. It is also listed as an important term in the notes.

 

Q.45 The term “Abrogation” in postcolonial criticism refers to:

1. The celebration of hybridity
2. Rejecting the colonizer’s standard language
3. Mixing indigenous and colonial cultures
4. Translating European classics

Answer: 2

Explanation: Postcolonial writers use Abrogation to reject the linguistic authority of Standard English, while Appropriation reshapes English for indigenous cultural expression.

 

Q.46 Which postcolonial critic is associated with the concept of “Worlding”?

1. Edward Said
2. Homi Bhabha
3. Gayatri Spivak
4. Frantz Fanon

Answer: 3

Explanation: Spivak uses Worlding to describe how colonial discourse constructs colonized territories as objects of European knowledge and control, linking it with epistemic violence.

 

Q.47 In Reader-Response criticism, Interpretive Communities suggest that meaning is primarily determined by:

1. The author’s intention
2. The text’s formal structure
3. Shared reading conventions of communities
4. Historical chronology

Answer: 3

Explanation: Stanley Fish argues that readers belonging to similar cultural or academic communities employ common interpretive strategies, making meaning socially produced rather than purely textual.

 

Q.48 Julia Kristeva’s concept of the Semiotic is primarily associated with:

1. The paternal symbolic order
2. The maternal pre-linguistic realm
3. Colonial discourse
4. Reader reception

Answer: 2

Explanation: Kristeva distinguishes the Semiotic (rhythmic, bodily, maternal energies preceding language) from the Symbolic, which represents the structured paternal order of language and culture.

Q.49 Which theorist describes society as a Rhizome, emphasizing non-hierarchical and interconnected structures?

1. Michel Foucault
2. Jacques Derrida
3. Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari
4. Jean Baudrillard

Answer: 3

Explanation: In A Thousand Plateaus, Deleuze and Guattari propose the Rhizome as a model of knowledge without a central root, replacing hierarchical systems with networks of multiple connections.

 

Q.50 Which of the following best represents the central concern of Cultural Materialism?

1. Recovering authorial intention
2. Studying universal archetypes
3. Reading literary texts as sites of political and ideological struggle
4. Analyzing only linguistic structures

Answer: 3

Explanation: Developed chiefly by Raymond Williams and later Jonathan Dollimore and Alan Sinfield, Cultural Materialism examines literature in relation to power, ideology, class, and contemporary political contexts rather than treating texts as autonomous objects.