MCQS-Post Modernism-II

 

MCQs- Postmodernism

Q.1 Who is most closely associated with the concept of “incredulity toward metanarratives”?

1.            Michel Foucault

2.            Jean-François Lyotard

3.            Jacques Derrida

4.            Roland Barthes

Answer: 2

Explanation: In The Postmodern Condition (1979), Lyotard defines the postmodern as incredulity toward metanarratives — the grand, totalising stories (Progress, Enlightenment, Marxism, etc.) that once legitimated knowledge and history.

Q.2 Which work is written by Jean-François Lyotard?

1.            The Order of Things

2.            The Postmodern Condition

3.            Of Grammatology

4.            Simulacra and Simulation

Answer: 2

Explanation: The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge (1979) is Lyotard’s most influential book; the other titles belong to Foucault, Derrida and Baudrillard respectively.

Q.3 Who wrote Simulacra and Simulation?

1.            Jean Baudrillard

2.            Jacques Derrida

3.            Fredric Jameson

4.            Roland Barthes

Answer: 1

Explanation: Baudrillard’s 1981 book analyses how signs and simulations have replaced reality, producing what he calls hyperreality.

Q.4 The concept of “hyperreality” is particularly associated with:

1.            Jean Baudrillard

2.            Terry Eagleton

3.            Jacques Lacan

4.            Louis Althusser

Answer: 1

Explanation: Baudrillard argues that in the postmodern age simulations become more real than reality itself; the map precedes the territory.

Q.5 Who wrote Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism?

1.            Fredric Jameson

2.            Jean Baudrillard

3.            Jean-François Lyotard

4.            Ihab Hassan

Answer: 1

Explanation: Jameson’s 1991 study links postmodern culture (pastiche, depthlessness, the waning of affect) directly to the economic stage of late (multinational) capitalism.

Q.6 Fredric Jameson views postmodernism primarily as:

1.            A return to classicism

2.            The cultural logic of late capitalism

3.            A form of romanticism

4.            A rejection of popular culture

Answer: 2

Explanation: For Jameson, postmodernism is not merely an aesthetic style but the cultural expression of a new stage of capitalism.

Q.7 Which of the following is a major characteristic of postmodern literature?

1.            Absolute certainty

2.            Fragmentation

3.            Strict realism

4.            Unified meaning

Answer: 2

Explanation: Postmodern texts characteristically break linear narrative, multiply voices and perspectives, and refuse closure or totalising meaning.

Q.8 Metafiction is fiction that:

1.            Rejects fiction completely

2.            Draws attention to its own fictional nature

3.            Imitates only classical literature

4.            Avoids narrative techniques

Answer: 2

Explanation: Metafiction self-consciously exposes its own artificiality, reminding the reader that it is a constructed text rather than a transparent window on reality.

Q.9 Who is particularly associated with the term “metafiction”?

1.            Patricia Waugh

2.            Elaine Showalter

3.            Julia Kristeva

4.            Hélène Cixous

Answer: 1

Explanation: Patricia Waugh’s Metafiction: The Theory and Practice of Self-Conscious Fiction (1984) remains the standard critical study of the form.

Q.10 Which novelist is strongly associated with postmodern fiction?

1.            Thomas Pynchon

2.            Alexander Pope

3.            William Wordsworth

4.            Samuel Richardson

Answer: 1

Explanation: Pynchon’s novels (The Crying of Lot 49, Gravity’s Rainbow) exemplify postmodern techniques: paranoia, entropy, intertextuality and radical uncertainty.

Q.11 Which of the following is a major feature of postmodernism?

1.            Grand narratives

2.            Absolute truth

3.            Plurality of meanings

4.            Fixed identity

Answer: 3

Explanation: Postmodern thought rejects single, stable meanings and celebrates the proliferation of interpretations, voices and identities.

Q.12 Pastiche in postmodern literature means:

1.            A complete rejection of earlier styles

2.            Imitation or mixing of existing styles

3.            A type of biography

4.            A strict historical narrative

Answer: 2

Explanation: Pastiche is the neutral or blank imitation and combination of earlier styles, forms or genres, without the satirical edge of parody.

Q.13 Which term refers to the mixing of different genres or styles?

1.            Hybridity

2.            Catharsis

3.            Mimesis

4.            Defamiliarization

Answer: 1

Explanation: Hybridity (or genre hybridity) describes the deliberate blending of high and low forms, literary and popular discourses, that characterises much postmodern writing.

Q.14 The term “intertextuality” was coined by:

1.            Julia Kristeva

2.            Elaine Showalter

3.            Simone de Beauvoir

4.            Judith Butler

Answer: 1

Explanation: Kristeva introduced the term in the late 1960s, drawing on Bakhtin, to describe the way every text is a mosaic of quotations from other texts.

Q.15 Intertextuality refers to:

1.            The isolation of a text

2.            The relationship of one text with other texts

3.            The rejection of language

4.            The biography of an author

Answer: 2

Explanation: No text exists in isolation; meaning arises from the network of relations a text establishes with prior and contemporary texts.

Q.16 Who famously declared “The Death of the Author”?

1.            Roland Barthes

2.            Michel Foucault

3.            Jacques Derrida

4.            Jean Baudrillard

Answer: 1

Explanation: In his 1967 essay Barthes argues that the author’s intention should not control meaning; the text is a tissue of quotations activated by the reader.

Q.17 Who wrote “What Is an Author?”?

1.            Michel Foucault

2.            Roland Barthes

3.            Jean Baudrillard

4.            Ihab Hassan

Answer: 1

Explanation: Foucault’s 1969 lecture examines the “author-function” — the institutional and discursive role that the name of the author performs.

Q.18 The “author-function” is associated with:

1.            Michel Foucault

2.            Roland Barthes

3.            Jacques Lacan

4.            Paul de Man

Answer: 1

Explanation: Foucault shows that the author is not a simple origin of meaning but a function that classifies, limits and authenticates discourse.

Q.19 Who is most closely associated with deconstruction?

1.            Jacques Derrida

2.            Jean Baudrillard

3.            Fredric Jameson

4.            Lyotard

Answer: 1

Explanation: Derrida developed deconstruction as a method of reading that exposes the internal contradictions and hierarchical oppositions within texts.

Q.20 Which work is associated with Jacques Derrida?

1.            Of Grammatology

2.            The Postmodern Condition

3.            Simulacra and Simulation

4.            The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism

Answer: 1

Explanation: Of Grammatology (1967) is Derrida’s foundational critique of Western logocentrism and the privileging of speech over writing.

Q.21 The concept of différance is associated with:

1.            Derrida

2.            Foucault

3.            Barthes

4.            Lyotard

Answer: 1

Explanation: Différance (with an ‘a’) names the endless deferral and difference that constitute meaning; no sign ever fully coincides with itself.

Q.22 Who is associated with the concepts of power/knowledge and discourse?

1.            Michel Foucault

2.            Jacques Derrida

3.            Roland Barthes

4.            Jean Baudrillard

Answer: 1

Explanation: Foucault argues that power and knowledge are mutually constitutive; discourses produce the objects and subjects they claim merely to describe.

Q.23 According to Foucault, knowledge is closely related to:

1.            Power

2.            Nature only

3.            Religion only

4.            Aesthetic beauty

Answer: 1

Explanation: Knowledge is never neutral; it is always implicated in relations of power that shape what can be said and thought.

Q.24 Which Foucault work examines systems of knowledge?

1.            The Order of Things

2.            The Postmodern Condition

3.            The Anxiety of Influence

4.            The Well-Wrought Urn

Answer: 1

Explanation: The Order of Things (1966) analyses successive historical “epistemes” — the underlying rules that organise knowledge in different periods.

Q.25 Postmodernism generally questions:

1.            Absolute truth and universal explanations

2.            Multiple perspectives

3.            Cultural diversity

4.            Fragmentation

Answer: 1

Explanation: The postmodern stance is sceptical of any claim to final, universal, or foundational truth.

Q.26 Which of the following is NOT generally associated with postmodernism?

1.            Fragmentation

2.            Irony

3.            Plurality

4.            Absolute certainty

Answer: 4

Explanation: Absolute certainty is a hallmark of the very Enlightenment or modernist projects that postmodernism critiques.

Q.27 Parody in postmodern literature often involves:

1.            Imitating and transforming existing forms

2.            Rejecting all previous literature

3.            Writing without language

4.            Avoiding humour

Answer: 1

Explanation: Postmodern parody reworks earlier texts or genres, often with critical or playful intent, rather than simply discarding them.

Q.28 Which critic distinguishes modernism and postmodernism through a list of contrasting features in The Dismemberment of Orpheus?

1.            Ihab Hassan

2.            Fredric Jameson

3.            Terry Eagleton

4.            Christopher Norris

Answer: 1

Explanation: Hassan’s book and later essays famously tabulate binary pairs (hierarchy/anarchy, design/chance, presence/absence, etc.) to map the shift from modernism to postmodernism.

Q.29 Who wrote The Dismemberment of Orpheus?

1.            Ihab Hassan

2.            Jean Baudrillard

3.            Lyotard

4.            Foucault

Answer: 1

Explanation: Hassan’s 1971 study of the avant-garde is one of the earliest sustained attempts to theorise postmodern literature.

Q.30 Which of the following is associated with Ihab Hassan?

1.            Indeterminacy

2.            Catharsis

3.            Objective correlative

4.            Negative capability

Answer: 1

Explanation: Hassan lists “indeterminacy” (along with immanence, fragmentation, etc.) among the defining tendencies of postmodernism.

Q.31 “Grand narratives” are also called:

1.            Metanarratives

2.            Microtexts

3.            Discourses

4.            Paratexts

Answer: 1

Explanation: Lyotard uses the terms interchangeably for the large-scale legitimating stories of modernity.

Q.32 Which novelist wrote The Crying of Lot 49?

1.            Thomas Pynchon

2.            Don DeLillo

3.            John Barth

4.            Kurt Vonnegut

Answer: 1

Explanation: Pynchon’s 1966 novella is a classic of American postmodernism, organised around conspiracy, entropy and the search for meaning that may not exist.

Q.33 Who wrote White Noise?

1.            Don DeLillo

2.            Thomas Pynchon

3.            John Fowles

4.            Salman Rushdie

Answer: 1

Explanation: DeLillo’s 1985 novel explores media saturation, simulation, the fear of death and the blending of high and low culture.

Q.34 Who wrote The French Lieutenant’s Woman?

1.            John Fowles

2.            John Barth

3.            Thomas Pynchon

4.            Don DeLillo

Answer: 1

Explanation: Fowles’s 1969 novel is a key example of historiographic metafiction, offering multiple endings and a self-conscious Victorian narrator.

Q.35 Which novel by John Barth is commonly associated with metafiction and postmodernism?

1.            Lost in the Funhouse

2.            Sons and Lovers

3.            A Passage to India

4.            The Rainbow

Answer: 1

Explanation: The 1968 collection (especially the title story) is a landmark of American metafiction, constantly drawing attention to its own narrative devices.

Q.36 Which writer is associated with the postmodern novel Midnight’s Children?

1.            Salman Rushdie

2.            V. S. Naipaul

3.            Amitav Ghosh

4.            R. K. Narayan

Answer: 1

Explanation: Rushdie’s 1981 novel blends magical realism, national allegory and self-reflexive narrative in a distinctly postmodern mode.

Q.37 Midnight’s Children is notable for its use of:

1.            Magical realism and historiographic play

2.            Pure realism

3.            Classical epic form only

4.            Naturalism

Answer: 1

Explanation: The novel rewrites the history of modern India through a narrator whose life is fantastically intertwined with the nation’s, while constantly questioning the reliability of both memory and history.

Q.38 The term “historiographic metafiction” is associated with:

1.            Linda Hutcheon

2.            Elaine Showalter

3.            Julia Kristeva

4.            Gayatri Spivak

Answer: 1

Explanation: Hutcheon coined the term to describe novels that are both intensely self-reflexive and yet also grounded in historical events and personages.

Q.39 Who wrote A Poetics of Postmodernism?

1.            Linda Hutcheon

2.            Patricia Waugh

3.            Ihab Hassan

4.            Fredric Jameson

Answer: 1

Explanation: Hutcheon’s 1988 book is a major theoretical statement on postmodern fiction, especially historiographic metafiction.

Q.40 Historiographic metafiction combines:

1.            History and self-conscious fiction

2.            Poetry and drama only

3.            Myth and biography only

4.            Science and mathematics

Answer: 1 

Explanation: It simultaneously asserts and problematises the status of historical knowledge, showing history itself as a form of narrative construction.

Q.41 Which statement best describes postmodernism?

1.            It accepts one universal truth.

2.            It emphasizes plurality, fragmentation, irony and uncertainty.

3.            It completely rejects popular culture.

4.            It strictly follows traditional literary forms.

Answer: 2

Explanation: Postmodernism is characterised by scepticism toward fixed truths, delight in plurality and irony, and the blurring of boundaries between high and popular culture.

Q.42 Which one of the following pairs is NOT correctly matched?

1.            Lyotard — Metanarrative

2.            Baudrillard — Hyperreality

3.            Foucault — Power/Knowledge

4.            Jameson — Différance

Answer: 4

Explanation: Différance belongs to Derrida; Jameson is associated with the cultural logic of late capitalism and pastiche.

Q.43 Which of the following best explains Lyotard’s “incredulity toward metanarratives”?

1.            Rejection of all forms of storytelling

2.            Rejection of universal explanations of history and knowledge

3.            Acceptance of traditional religious narratives

4.            Preference for realistic fiction

Answer: 2

Explanation: Lyotard is not against stories as such, but against the large, legitimating narratives that claim universal validity.

Q.44 A novelist presents several contradictory versions of the same historical event and refuses to identify one version as the absolute truth. This technique is most consistent with:

1.            Classicism

2.            Modernism

3.            Postmodernism

4.            New Criticism

Answer: 3

Explanation: The refusal of a single authoritative version of history is a hallmark of postmodern historiographic metafiction.

Q.45 A novel suddenly reminds the reader that it is a constructed fictional work. Which postmodern technique is being used?

1.            Metafiction

2.            Catharsis

3.            Mimesis

4.            Objective correlative

Answer: 1

Explanation: Metafiction breaks the illusion of realism by exposing the text’s own artificial status.

Q.46 Consider the following statements:

A. Postmodernism questions the idea of a single, stable meaning.

B. Postmodernism frequently employs irony and parody.

C. Postmodernism necessarily rejects all forms of narrative.

Which of the above is/are correct?

1.            A only

2.            A and B only

3.            B and C only

4.            A, B and C

Answer: 2

Explanation: Postmodernism multiplies narratives rather than abolishing them; statement C is false.

Q.47 Which sequence correctly represents the concepts and thinkers?

1.            Lyotard—metanarrative; Baudrillard—hyperreality; Derrida—différance

2.            Lyotard—hyperreality; Baudrillard—différance; Derrida—metanarrative

3.            Derrida—hyperreality; Foucault—différance; Lyotard—pastiche

4.            Baudrillard—metanarrative; Lyotard—différance; Derrida—hyperreality

Answer: 1

Explanation: Each thinker is correctly paired with the concept for which he is most famous.

Q.48 Match the following:

Thinker | Concept

A. Lyotard | i. Hyperreality

B. Baudrillard | ii. Metanarratives

C. Derrida | iii. Différance

D. Foucault | iv. Power/Knowledge

1.            A-ii, B-i, C-iii, D-iv

2.            A-i, B-ii, C-iv, D-iii

3.            A-iii, B-iv, C-i, D-ii

4.            A-iv, B-iii, C-ii, D-i

Answer: 1

Explanation: The correct matching is Lyotard–metanarratives, Baudrillard–hyperreality, Derrida–différance, Foucault–power/knowledge.

Q.49 Which statement most accurately distinguishes modernism from postmodernism?

1.            Modernism celebrates certainty, while postmodernism rejects literature.

2.            Modernism often searches for order amid fragmentation, whereas postmodernism frequently embraces fragmentation and questions stable order.

3.            Modernism uses prose, whereas postmodernism uses poetry.

4.            Modernism is historical, whereas postmodernism is never concerned with history.

Answer: 2

Explanation: Modernist works (Eliot, Joyce, Woolf) typically seek or lament a lost order; postmodern works tend to accept, play with, or celebrate fragmentation itself.

Q.50 Which of the following combinations contains only postmodern/poststructuralist-associated concepts?

1.            Hyperreality, metanarrative, différance

2.            Objective correlative, organic unity, touchstone

3.            Negative capability, fancy, imagination

4.            Catharsis, decorum, mimesis

Answer: 1

Explanation: The concepts in option 1 are central to Baudrillard, Lyotard and Derrida; the others belong to earlier critical traditions.

Q.51 According to Fredric Jameson, pastiche differs from parody in that pastiche is:

1.            Always politically subversive

2.            A blank or neutral imitation without satirical intent

3.            Restricted to high culture only

4.            Identical to classical mimesis

Answer: 2

Explanation: Jameson calls pastiche “blank parody” — stylistic imitation that has lost the critical distance and satirical force of traditional parody.

Q.52 Baudrillard’s successive stages of the image (or orders of simulacra) culminate in a stage where the image:

1.            Faithfully reflects a basic reality

2.            Masks and denatures a basic reality

3.            Masks the absence of a basic reality

4.            Bears no relation to any reality whatsoever (pure simulacrum)

Answer: 4

Explanation: In the fourth order the image is a pure simulacrum that no longer stands in any relation to a real referent.

Q.53 Which of the following is a characteristic feature listed by Ihab Hassan in his modernist/postmodernist schema?

1.            Hierarchy / Anarchy

2.            Design / Chance

3.            Presence / Absence

4.            All of the above

Answer: 4

Explanation: Hassan’s famous tables pair modernist and postmodernist tendencies across numerous axes, including hierarchy/anarchy, design/chance and presence/absence.

Q.54 Linda Hutcheon’s concept of “complicitous critique” refers to the way postmodern texts:

1.            Completely escape ideology

2.            Simultaneously participate in and critique the systems they represent

3.            Reject all historical reference

4.            Aim only at formal purity

Answer: 2

Explanation: Hutcheon argues that postmodern art is never purely outside the culture it criticises; it is both implicated in and critical of the very systems it represents.