English Literature MCQs Set 1

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Author: Nasir Iqbal | Assistant Professor of English Literature

English Literature MCQs Set 1
Updated on: November 4, 2025
Estimated Reading Time: 16 min

English Literature MCQs

Set-1

1. Who, in the General Prologue to The Canterbury Tales, proposes that each pilgrim will tell a story on the way to Canterbury?

A. The Knight
B. The Host
C. The Parson
D. The Wife of Bath

B. The Host
Harry Bailey, the Host of the Tabard Inn, proposes the storytelling competition to make the journey entertaining.

2. Which of the following knights was a lover of Queen Guinevere?

A. Sir Gawain
B. Lancelot
C. Sir Galahad
D. Sir Percival

B. Lancelot
The adulterous love between Sir Lancelot and Queen Guinevere is a central theme in Arthurian legend.

3. Who speaks these lines? “This above all: to thine own self be true, / And it must follow, as the night the day”

A. Hamlet
B. Laertes
C. Claudius
D. Polonius

D. Polonius
Polonius delivers these famous (and slightly hypocritical) lines of advice to his son, Laertes, in Hamlet.

4. Malvolio appears in

A. Measure for Measure
B. The Merry Wives of Windsor
C. Othello
D. Twelfth Night

D. Twelfth Night
Malvolio is the puritanical steward who is tricked into wearing yellow stockings and cross-garters in Shakespeare’s comedy.
5. Which of the following sequences of plays by Ben Jonson is chronologically arranged?

A. Every Man in His Humour, Volpone, The Silent Woman, The Alchemist
B. The Alchemist, Volpone, Every Man in His Humour, The Silent Woman
C. The Silent Woman, The Alchemist, Volpone, Every Man in His Humour
D. Every Man in His Humour, Volpone, The Silent Woman, The Alchemist

D. Every Man in His Humour, Volpone, The Silent Woman, The Alchemist
This sequence follows the chronological order of the plays’ writing and initial production: Every Man in His Humour (1598), Volpone (1606), The Silent Woman (1609), The Alchemist (1610).

6. The Pilgrim’s Progress is:

A. an essay
B. a dramatic monologue
C. an allegory
D. a sonnet

C. an allegory
John Bunyan’s work is a classic religious allegory that details the spiritual journey of the Christian soul toward salvation (the Celestial City).

7. When were the theatres closed down in England?

A. 1652
B. 1562
C. 1542
D. 1642

D. 1642
The Puritan government closed all public theaters at the start of the English Civil War.

8. Dryden’s Absalom and Achitophel is based on a story from

A. Boccaccio’s Decameron
B. Homer’s Iliad
C. The Old Testament in the Bible
D. Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales

C. The Old Testament in the Bible
Dryden uses the story of Absalom and Achitophel (from 2 Samuel) as an allegory for the Exclusion Crisis in 17th-century England.

9. Which of the following is not a Metaphysical Poet?

A. Andrew Marvell
B. John Donne
C. Richard Lovelace
D. George Herbert

C. Richard Lovelace
Lovelace is a Cavalier Poet, characterized by courtly and elegant verse, contrasting with the intellectual wit of the Metaphysicals.
10. ‘The Flea’ is a poem by:

A. George Herbert
B. John Donne
C. Andrew Marvell
D. Henry Vaughan

B. John Donne
This Metaphysical poem uses the image of a flea as a clever, witty conceit to persuade a mistress to have sex.

11. Belinda appears in:

A. The Rape of the Lock
B. The Rape of Lucrece
C. Hero and Leander
D. London

A. The Rape of the Lock
Belinda is the central aristocratic character in Alexander Pope’s mock-epic poem.

12. Sophia Western is a character from:

A. Joseph Andrews
B. Pamela
C. Tristram Shandy
D. Tom Jones

D. Tom Jones
She is the beloved of the hero Tom Jones in Henry Fielding’s novel.

13. Of which 18th writer did Dr. Samuel Johnson say, “He wrote like an angel but talked like poor Poll”?

A. Richard Sheridan
B. Joseph Addison
C. Oliver Goldsmith
D. Richard Steele

C. Oliver Goldsmith
Johnson’s famous quote contrasts Goldsmith’s sublime writing talent with his awkward conversation.

14. Thomas Hardy borrowed the title of his novel, Far From the Madding Crowd, from:

A. ‘Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard’
B. ‘Ode to Evening’
C. ‘The Seasons’
D. ‘The Progress of Poesie’

A. ‘Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard’
The title comes from Thomas Gray’s poem: “Far from the madding crowd’s ignoble strife.”
15. Of the following who can be described as a man of sentiment?

A. Charles Surface
B. Oliver Surface
C. Joseph Surface
D. Sir Peter Teazle

C. Joseph Surface
In Sheridan’s The School for Scandal, Joseph is the hypocritical villain who masks his malice behind a facade of “sentiment” and morality.

16. Who followed Wordsworth as the poet laureate?

A. Robert Bridges
B. Alfred Austin
C. Tennyson
D. W. H. Auden

C. Tennyson
Alfred, Lord Tennyson succeeded William Wordsworth as Poet Laureate in 1850.

17. Jane Austen’s novels were written during the:

A. Anglo-Dutch naval encounters
B. Hundred years war
C. Wars of the Roses
D. Napoleonic wars

D. Napoleonic wars
Her novels, though primarily domestic, are set against the backdrop of the Napoleonic Wars (1799–1815), which subtly influenced society and characters.

18. With whom is the phrase ‘Negative Capability’ associated?

A. Keats
B. Blake
C. Byron
D. Shelley

A. Keats
John Keats coined this phrase in a letter, referring to the poet’s capacity to be in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact & reason.

19. Which of the following is not written by Charles Lamb?

A. A Dream Children
B. Old and New Schoolmasters
C. Selected Snobberies
D. Valentine’s Day

C. Selected Snobberies
“Selected Snobberies” is a title that reflects William Makepeace Thackeray’s work, including The Book of Snobs.
20. The poem by Keats in which an allusion to Ruth occurs is:

A. ‘Ode to Autumn’
B. ‘Ode to a Nightingale’
C. ‘Ode to Psyche’
D. ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’

B. ‘Ode to a Nightingale’
The speaker briefly references the biblical Ruth “standing in tears amid the alien corn” in the 7th stanza of the poem.

21. The major trait of Arnold’s temperament as evident in his poetry is:

A. Optimism
B. Courage
C. Melancholy
D. Gaiety

C. Melancholy
Matthew Arnold’s poetry often expresses a deep melancholy, reflecting the loss of religious faith in the Victorian era (e.g., “Dover Beach”).

22. Who wrote The Picture of Dorian Gray?

A. Thomas Hardy
B. Thackery
C. Oscar Wilde
D. Jane Austen

C. Oscar Wilde
This novel is a classic of Gothic and Aesthetic literature.

23. Who wrote Jane Eyre?

A. Mrs. Gaskell
B. Emily Bronté
C. Anne Brontë
D. Charlotte Brontë

D. Charlotte Bronte
Jane Eyre (1847) is Charlotte Brontë’s most famous novel.

24. What is the fictional name of Mary Ann Evans?

A. Charlotte Brontë
B. George Eliot
C. Emily Bronte
D. Jane Austen

B. George Eliot
Mary Ann Evans adopted the male pseudonym George Eliot to ensure her serious work was taken seriously by Victorian critics.
25. To which literary school did William Morris belong?

A. Georgian
B. Imagist
C. Pre-Raphaelite
D. Oxford Movement

C. Pre-Raphaelite
Morris was closely associated with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (including Dante Gabriel Rossetti), advocating a return to medieval art and spirituality.

26. A work by an English writer articulating feminist concerns in the twentieth century is:

A. A Room with a View
B. A View from the Bridge
C. A Room of One’s Own
D. Jacob’s Room

C. A Room of One’s Own
Virginia Woolf’s famous 1929 essay argues that “a woman must have money and a room of her own” to write fiction.

27. Adela Quested is a character in a novel by:

A. Virginia Woolf
B. E.M. Forster
C. James Joyce
D. Paul Scott

B. E.M. Forster
Adela is the young Englishwoman whose accusation drives the plot of A Passage to India.

28. The French Symbolist poet who exercised the greatest influence on T. S. Eliot was:

A. Mallarme
B. La Forgue
C. Bandelaire
D. Verlaine

B. La Forgue
Jules Laforgue’s cynical wit and detached style were a direct influence on Eliot’s early poems (like “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”).

29. Which of the following is not written by D. H. Lawrence?

A. Sons and Lovers
B. Women in Love
C. The Rainbow
D. The Golden Gate

D. The Golden Gate
The Golden Gate (1986), a novel in verse, was written by Vikram Seth.
30. “Sweet Thames, run softly till I end my song” is a line from Spenser used by the modern writer:

A. Stephen Spender
B. Ezra Pound
C. T. S. Eliot
D. Wallace Stevens

C. T. S. Eliot
Eliot quotes this line from Spenser’s Prothalamion in his monumental poem The Waste Land.

31. Seven Steps in the Sky is the translation of a feminist novel in Gujarati by:

A. Bindu Bhatt
B. Himanshi Shelat
C. Saroop Dhruv
D. Kundanika Kapadia

D. Kundanika Kapadia
The original Gujarati title is Saat Pagla Akashman.

32. The ‘chutneyfication’ of the English language is attributed to:

A. Salman Rushdie
B. Amitav Ghosh
C. Shashi Tharoor
D. Suniti Namjoshi

A. Salman Rushdie
The term refers to Rushdie’s mixing of Indian languages and English in a lively, hybrid style, particularly in Midnight’s Children.

33. The Golden Gate is a novel in verse written by:

A. Seamus Heaney
B. Fleur Adcock
C. Vikram Seth
D. Hugo Williams

C. Vikram Seth
This novel (1986) is composed entirely of iambic tetrameter sonnets and is set in California.

34. The present poet laureate of England is:

A. Geoffrey Hill
B. Glyn Maxwell
C. James Fenton
D. Andrew Motion

D. Andrew Motion
(Note: Andrew Motion was the Poet Laureate from 1999–2009. The current Poet Laureate as of 2025 is Simon Armitage.) Andrew Motion is the correct answer based on the provided key.
35. Which of the following contemporary novelists has also written philosophical works?

A. Iris Murdoch
B. Doris Lessing
C. Nadine Gordimer
D. Penelope Lively

A. Iris Murdoch
Murdoch was a philosophy tutor and wrote extensively on moral philosophy, themes which pervade her novels.

36. Ayemenem is the name of a place in:

A. The God of Small Things
B. Small Remedies
C. Storm in Chandigarh
D. Fire on the Mountain

A. The God of Small Things
Ayemenem, in Kerala, is the childhood home and primary setting for Arundhati Roy’s novel.

37. The statement “All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn” is made by:

A. Ernest Hemingway
B. William Faulkner
C. Henry James
D. Herman Melville

A. Ernest Hemingway
Hemingway made this famous and provocative claim in The Green Hills of Africa.

38. Of the following, the novel written by Margaret Atwood is:

A. Rich Like Us
B. Possession
C. The Bluest Eye
D. Surfacing

D. Surfacing
Surfacing (1972) is Margaret Atwood’s second novel, dealing with national and personal identity.

39. Things Fall Apart is written by:

A. Chinua Achebe
B. Ngugi Wa Thiong’o
C. Doris Lessing
D. John Masters

A. Chinua Achebe
This seminal work of modern African literature chronicles the tragic clash between Igbo traditions and European colonialism.
40. Silence! The Court is in Session is a play written by:

A. Badal Sircar
B. Vijay Tendulkar
C. Girish Karnad
D. Mahesh Dattani

B. Vijay Tendulkar
This is one of the major plays by the celebrated Marathi playwright.

41. Longinus’s Treatise on the Sublime is a rejoinder to:

A. Horace
B. Cicero
C. Quintillian
D. Caecillus

D. Caecillus
The treatise On the Sublime by Longinus is a direct critique of the dry, technical treatise on the sublime by Caecilius of Calacte.

42. In An Essay of Dramatic Poesy, Neander stands for:

A. John Dryden
B. Sir Charles Sedley
C. Sir Robert Howard
D. The Earl of Shaftesbury

A. John Dryden
Dryden represents his own views on English drama through the character Neander (meaning “new man”).

43. ‘Tension’ is simultaneous co-existence with:

A. Denotative and literal meanings
B. Connotative and metaphorical meanings
C. Literal and abstract meanings
D. Denotative and connotative meanings

D. Denotative and connotative meanings
In New Criticism, Tension (coined by Allen Tate) is the simultaneous existence and pressure between a word’s literal (denotative) meaning and its suggested (connotative) meaning.

44. Eliot’s views on the “pastness of the past and its presence” are associated with:

A. Classicism
B. Metaphysical poetry
C. Romanticism
D. Tradition

D. Tradition
This famous phrase comes from T. S. Eliot’s seminal essay “Tradition and the Individual Talent.”
45. The terms ‘texuality of history’ and ‘historicity of text’ are associated with:

A. The Textual Approach
B. Historicism
C. New Historicism
D. A historicism

C. New Historicism
New Historicism (associated with Stephen Greenblatt) argues that history is inseparable from its textual representation (the textuality of history) and that texts are products of historical discourse (the historicity of the text).

46. “His honour rooted in dishonour stood / And faith unfaithful kept him falsely true.” The above is an example of:

A. Periphrasis
B. Transferred epithet
C. Climax
D. Oxymoron

D. Oxymoron
The phrase employs contradictory terms (honour in dishonour, faith unfaithful, falsely true) placed side by side to create a paradox, a hallmark of the Oxymoron.

47. The figure of speech in which the sound echoes the sense is:

A. Metonymy
B. Simile
C. Onomatopoeia
D. Euphemism

C. Onomatopoeia
Onomatopoeia is the formation of a word from a sound associated with what is named (e.g., buzz, hiss, cuckoo).

48. The ballad stanza has:

A. Four lines
B. Six lines
C. Eight lines
D. Two lines

A. Four lines
The ballad stanza (or standard measure) is a quatrain (four lines) typically alternating iambic tetrameter and iambic trimeter (4/3/4/3) with an ABCB or ABAB rhyme scheme.

49. “The Assyrian came down like a wolf on the fold” is a line written in:

A. Anapaestic metre
B. Iambic metre
C. Trochaic metre
D. Dactylic metre

A. Anapaestic metre
The stress pattern of the line is unstressed-unstressed-stressed (anapest), with four feet in the line (e.g., The As-SYR-ian came DOWN like a WOLF on the FOLD).
50. In English prosody, a foot consisting of a stressed syllable followed by two unstressed syllables is called:

A. Iambic
B. Dactylic
C. Anapaestic
D. Trochaic

B. Dactylic
The Dactylic foot consists of one stressed syllable followed by two unstressed syllables: DUM-da-da (e.g., PO-e-try).

Overview

These 50 multiple-choice questions test a broad range of knowledge in English Literature. The questions follow a clear historical progression.

They begin with foundational works, such as Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales and Arthurian legends. The quiz then delves heavily into the Renaissance, covering Shakespearean plays (Hamlet, Twelfth Night), Ben Jonson, and the Metaphysical poets, including John Donne.

Next, it covers the Restoration and the 18th century, testing authors such as Dryden, Pope, Fielding, and Goldsmith. The Romantic and Victorian periods are well-represented with questions on Keats, Jane Austen, the Brontës, Hardy, and Oscar Wilde.

The 20th century is represented by Modernists such as T.S. Eliot and D.H. Lawrence, as well as postcolonial and contemporary writers including Chinua Achebe, Salman Rushdie, and Margaret Atwood.

The final section tests concepts from literary theory, such as New Historicism and ‘Negative Capability’, as well as technical poetic terms, including ‘oxymoron’, ‘onomatopoeia’, and ‘dactylic’ metre.

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