1. In Langlands’ Piers the Plowman, Piers appears finally as :
(A) Charity
(B) The Holy Trinity
(C) Jesus
(D) The Good Samaritan
Answer: C
2. It is decided that each Canterbury pilgrim would tell in all :
(A) One story
(B) Two stories
(C) Three stories
(D) Four stories
Answer: D
3. Venus and Adonis is a long narrative poem by :
(A) Shakespeare
(B) Marlowe
(C) Drayton
(D) Sydney
Answer: A
4. The total number of poems in Shakespeare’s Sonnets is :
(A) 123
(B) 142
(C) 104
(D) 154
Answer: D
5. Which of the following plays has a Machiavellean hero ?
(A) Tamburlaine Part I
(B) Dr. Faustus
(C) Jew of Malta
(D) Edward II
Answer: C
6. Which of the following is written by Samuel Butler ?
(A) Religio Laici
(B) David Simple
(C) Hudibras
(D) Journal of the Plague Year
Answer: C
7. Which of the following poems did Milton write in Octosyllabic Couplets ?
(A) IL Penseroso
(B) On His Blindness”
(C) On the Late Massacre in Piedmont”
(D) Lycidas
Answer: A
8. Which of the following plays is not written by Congreve ?
(A) The way of the World
(B) The Old Bachelor
(C) Love for Love
(D) The Relapse
Answer: D
9. Dryden’s All For Love is an adaptation of :
(A) Philaster
(B) Romeo and Juliet
(C) Antony and Cleopatra
(D) Edward II
Answer: C
10. Which of the following books proposes a political theory ?
(A) Principia
(B) Leviathan
(C) Anatomy of Melancholy
(D) Liberty of Prophesying
Answer: B
11. Which of the following books is written by a woman ?
(A) A Vindication of the Rights of Women
(B) Social Contract
(C) A Treatise of Human Nature
(D) The Wealth of Nations
Answer: A
12. Which of the following books by Jonathan Swift is a religious allegory ?
(A) The Battle of the Books
(B) A Modest Proposal
(C) Gulliver’s Travels
(D) A Tale of a Tub
Answer: D
13. Which of the following is a “Visionary” work by William Blake ?
(A) The Song of Los
(B) Songs of Experience
(C) Poetical Sketches
(D) The Vision of the Daughters of Albion
Answer: D
14. Pope’s An Essay on Man is based on the ideas of :
(A) Lord Petrie
(B) Theobald
(C) Lord Bolingbroke
(D) Lord Harvey
Answer: C
15. Which of the following works by Johnson is an imitation of the tenth satire of Juvenal ?
(A) London
(B) Vanity of Human Wishes
(C) The Life of Savage
(D) Rasselas
Answer: B
16. The final version of Wordsworth’s The Prelude appeared in :
(A) 1798
(B) 1806
(C) 1850
(D) 1860
Answer: C
17. “To Suffer woes which Hope thinks infinite” is written by :
(A) Shelley
(B) Wordsworth
(C) Keats
(D) Byron
Answer: A
18. “A thing of beauty is a joy for ever” occurs in :
(A) “Ode on a Grecian Urn”
(B) “Ode to Autumn”
(C) “Ode to Psyche”
(D) “Endymion”
Answer: D
19. Which of the following novels is a satire on the Gothic novel ?
(A) Pride and Prejudice
(B) Emma
(C) Sense and Sensibility
(D) Northanger Abbey
Answer: D
20. Who distinguished between 11the literature of Knowledge” and “the literature of power” ?
(A) Coleridge
(B) De Quincey
(C) Hazlitt
(D) Lamb
Answer: B
21. Who among the following Victorian poets is the most sensitive to the conflict between the old and the new ?
(A) Tennyson
(B) Rossetti
(C) Browning
(D) Swinburne
Answer: A
22. Under the Greenwood Tree is written by :
(A) Mrs. Gaskell
(B) George Eliot
(C) Thomas Hardy
(D) Emily Bronte
Answer: C
23. The Office of Circumlocution occurs in :
(A) Little Dorrit
(B) Bleak House
(C) Great Expectations
(D) Hard Times
Answer: A
24. The novel Mary Barton is written by :
(A)Mrs. Gaskell
(B) George Eliot
(C) Emily Bronte
(D) Dickens
Answer: A
25. The line”Poetry is a criticism of life” occurs in :
(A) Culture and Anarchy
(B) Modern Painters
(C) The Study of Poetry
(D) Sartor Resartus
Answer: C
26. Martha Quest was written by :
(A) Jean Rhys
(B) Doris Lessing
(C) Iris Murdoch
(D) Nadine Gordimer
Answer: B
27. The term “Stream of Consciousness” was taken from the book :
(A) The Human Mind
(B) The Principles of Psychology
(C) The Mind of Man
(D) Modes of Human Behaviour
Answer: B
28. G.S. Fraser’s The Golden Bough focusses on :
(A) Images
(B) Metaphors
(C) Symbols
(D) Archetypes
Answer: D
29. Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman relies for its tragic seriousness on the fate of :
(A) Willy Loman
(B) Estragon
(C) Vladimir
(D) Lucky
Answer: A
30. The character Leopald Bloom makes an appearance in the novel :
(A) The Sound and the Fury
(B) Ulysses
(C) To the Lighthouse
(D) The Europeans
Answer: B
31. Who of the following authors represents the Sri Lankan diaspora ?
(A) Cyril Dabydeen
(B) Michael Ondaatje
(C) Arnold H. Itwaru
(D) M.G. Vassanji
Answer: B
32. Australian aborigines receive a sympathetic treatment in :
(A) Les Murray
(B) Gwen Harwood
(C) Judith Wright
(D) A.D. Hope
Answer: C
33. Margaret Atwood’s Survival makes a case for :
(A) Canadian literary studies
(B) Canadian nationalism
(C) The future of Canadian literature
(D) The past of Canadian literature
Answer: C
34. V.S. Naipaul’s latest book is :
(A) The Mystic Masseur
(B) A Bend in the River
(C) Among the Believers
(D) Half a Life
Answer: D
35. Which of the following books by Salman Rushdie refers to the 15th Century Spain as a starting point ?
(A) Haroun and the Sea of Stories
(B) The Moor’s Last Sigh
(C) Shame
(D) Grimus
Answer: D
36. Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf is written by :
(A) Arthur Miller
(B) Engene O Neil
(C) Edward Albee
(D) Tennessee Williams
Answer: C
37. Imamu Amiri Baraka is :
(A) A Carribean writer
(B) An American writer
(C) An Arab writer
(D) A Sri Lankan writer
Answer: B
38. The Miscellany was published from :
(A) Sahitya Akademi
(B) The Writers Workshop
(C) PEN
(D) Dhwanyalok
Answer: B
39. Who of the following writers recreates the life of the Yoruba/Ibo community ?
(A) Derek Walcott
(B) Wole Soyinka
(C) Chinna Achebe
(D) Okot
Answer: B
40. Who of the following White female authors are sympathetic to the cause of the Blacks ?
(A) Margaret Drabble
(B) Nadine Gordimer
(C) Muriel Spark
(D) Jean Rhys
Answer: B
41. New Criticism considers text as a :
(A) Cultural construct
(B) Historical construct
(C) Linguistic construct
(D) Autotelic
Answer: D
42. Mythologies was written by :
(A) Roland Barthes
(B) Jacques Derrida
(C) Homi K. Bhabha
(D) Ernest Dowson
Answer: A
43. The word “Catharsis” signifies :
(A) Pontification
(B) Personification
(C) Purgation
(D) Publication
Answer: C
44. The rejection of “Universalism” is a mark of :
(A) Deconstruction
(B) New Historicism
(C) Structuralism
(D) Postcolonial criticism
Answer: D
45. Eliot’s theory of “objective correlative” appeared in his essay entitled :
(A) Three voices of Poetry
(B) Tradition and the Individual Talent
(C) The Metaphysical Poets
(D) Hamlet
Answer: D
46. Sprung Rhythm is an example of :
(A)Verse
(B) Syllable
(C) Stress
(D) Meter
Answer: D
47. “More is thy due than more than all can pay” is an example of :
(A) Weak – ending
(B) Inversion
(C) Alexandrine
(D) Extra Syllable
Answer: B
48. Unrhymed metrical composition consisting of five iambic measures in each line is called :
(A) Rhyme royal
(B) Run-on-lines
(C) Blank verse
(D) Spenserian stanza
Answer: C
49. Verse stories dealing with chivalry, Knight, errantry, enchantments, and love are known as :
(A) The epic
(B) The ballad
(C) The ode
(D) The metrical romances
Answer: D
50. “He is a citizen of no mean city” is an example of :
(A) Periphrasis
(B) Tautology
(C) Prolepsis
(D) Litotes
Answer: D
