English Literature MCQs Set 3

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Author: Nasir Iqbal | Assistant Professor of English Literature

English Literature MCQs Set 3
Updated on: November 4, 2025
Estimated Reading Time: 16 min

English Literature MCQs

Set-3

1. Chaucer’s work, The Canterbury Tales, was influenced by:

A. The Decameron
B. The Aeneid
C. The Divine Comedy
D. The Confessio Amantis

B. The Decameron
Boccaccio’s The Decameron (1353) uses a frame narrative where a group of people tell stories to pass the time, directly influencing Chaucer’s framework.

2. Authorised texts of Shakespeare’s plays published, perhaps with Shakespeare’s approval, are known as:

A. The Good Quartos
B. The Bad Quartos
C. The First Folio
D. The Authorised Version

A. The Good Quartos
The Good Quartos are early single-play editions considered relatively accurate, often contrasted with the corrupted “Bad Quartos.”

3. Hero and Leander is:

A. a dramatic monologue
B. a narrative poem
C. a tragedy
D. a lyric poem

B. a narrative poem
Christopher Marlowe’s Hero and Leander is a long, romantic narrative poem based on the Greek myth.

4. Identify the play in which the ‘Porter Scene’ occurs:

A. Hamlet
B. King Lear
C. Macbeth
D. Othello

C. Macbeth
The Porter Scene (Act 2, Scene 3) provides comic relief immediately after King Duncan’s murder.
5. Which of the following can be classified as a political allegory ?

A. The Faerie Queene
B. Tamburlaine the Great
C. The Spanish Tragedy
D. Doctor Faustus

A. The Faerie Queene
Edmund Spenser’s epic poem is a vast political allegory, primarily praising Queen Elizabeth I (Gloriana) and the Tudor regime.

6. Who wrote the metaphysical poem entitled “The Retreat”?

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

A. Henry Vaughan
Henry Vaughan, a Metaphysical Poet, explores childhood innocence and a longing for a spiritual return in “The Retreat.”

7. Duke Ferdinand is a character in:

A. The White Devil
B. Volpone
C. The Duchess of Malfi
D. The Alchemist

C. The Duchess of Malfi
Duke Ferdinand is the incestuously obsessed and insáne twin brother of the Duchess in John Webster’s tragedy.

8. Lycidas is an elegy, written on the death of:

A. Edward King
B. John Milton’s wife
C. Thomas Young
D. Charles Diodati

A. Edward King
John Milton’s pastoral elegy Lycidas (1637) mourns the death of his Cambridge contemporary Edward King.

9. Which Restoration play was a reworking of Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra?

A. All for Love
B. The Indian Queen
C. The Conquest of Granada
D. Aureng-Zebe

A. All for Love
John Dryden’s All for Love (1678) is a famous Neoclassical adaptation, strictly adhering to the classical unities.
10. Horner is a character in:

A. Love for Love
B. The Country Wife
C. The Way of the World
D. The Man of Mode

B. The Country Wife
Horner is the notorious rake in William Wycherley’s play who pretends to be impotent to gain access to other men’s wives.

11. “If Pope be not a poet, where is poetry to be found?” Who said it?

A. Lord Byron
B. Dr. Johnson
C. Alexander Pope
D. John Dryden

B. Dr. Johnson
Dr. Samuel Johnson offered this hyperbolic praise for Alexander Pope in his Lives of the Poets.

12. In Gulliver’s Travels, Swift intended to satirize:

A. The Tories
B. The Irish
C. The Whigs
D. The French

C. The Whigs
Jonathan Swift primarily targets the Whigs (the political party he opposed) in the first two books, specifically through his satire of the court of Lilliput.

13. Which of the following periodicals commenced publication in 1711?

A. The Tatler
B. The Spectator
C. The Guardian
D. The Review

B. The Spectator
The Spectator, edited by Joseph Addison and Richard Steele, began publication on March 1, 1711.

14. “Read over your compositions and wherever you meet with a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out.” Who gave this advice?

A. Alexander Pope
B. Samuel Johnson
C. John Dryden
D. Dr. Johnson

D. Dr. Johnson
Dr. Samuel Johnson offered this witty advice, warning against writers becoming excessively self-conscious and ornate.
15. Which of the following plays deals with low and criminal life?

A. The School for Scandal
B. The Beggar’s Opera
C. She Stoops to Conquer
D. The Conscious Lovers

B. The Beggar’s Opera
John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera (1728) is a ballad opera that satirizes Italian opera by setting its story among thieves, próstitutes, and criminals.

16. One of the connecting links between German and English romanticism is:

A. William Wordsworth
B. S. T. Coleridge
C. Lord Byron
D. S.T. Coleridge

D. S.T. Coleridge
Samuel Taylor Coleridge traveled to Germany (1798–99) and was crucial in introducing German Romantic philosophy and ideas (like Kant) to England.

17. Who is the author of the following lines? “To see a world in a grain of sand, / And a heaven in a wild flower.”

A. Lord Byron
B. William Wordsworth
C. William Blake
D. S. T. Coleridge

C. William Blake
These lines are from William Blake’s poem “Auguries of Innocence,” expressing his belief in the Infinite Vision of the Imagination.

18. A Vindication of the Rights of Women was written by:

A. Jane Austen
B. Virginia Woolf
C. Margaret Atwood
D. Mary Wollstonecraft

D. Mary Wollstonecraft
Mary Wollstonecraft’s treatise (1792) is a foundational text of feminist philosophy.

19. Harriet Smith is a character in:

A. Pride and Prejudice
B. Sense and Sensibility
C. Emma
D. Mansfield Park

C. Emma
Harriet Smith is the naive friend of the protagonist, Emma Woodhouse, in Jane Austen’s novel.
20. Identify the poem from which the following lines are extracted: “Oh, lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud! / I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed !”

A. Ode to a Nightingale
B. Ode to Psyche
C. Ode to the West Wind
D. Ode on a Grecian Urn

C. Ode to the West Wind
These lines are from the final stanza of Percy Bysshe Shelley’s famous ode, expressing the poet’s agony and desire for imaginative transformation.

21. The Oxford Movement renewed the Catholic inheritance of:

A. The Puritan Church
B. The Presbyterian Church
C. The Methodist Church
D. The Church of England

D. The Church of England
The Oxford Movement (or Tractarian Movement) sought to restore Catholic doctrines and traditions within the Anglican Church (Church of England).

22. Lady Windermere’s Fan is a:

A. Comedy of Errors
B. Farce
C. Comedy of Manners
D. Problem Play

C. Comedy of Manners
Oscar Wilde’s Lady Windermere’s Fan (1892) satirizes the social conventions and morality of the Victorian upper class.

23. Which of the following characters is described as a pure woman by Thomas Hardy?

A. Tess of the d’Urbervilles
B. Sue Bridehead
C. Bathsheba Everdene
D. Eustacia Vye

A. Tess of the d’Urbervilles
Hardy controversially subtitled his novel Tess of the d’Urbervilles as “A Pure Woman Faithfully Presented.”

24. Who is not a Pre-Raphaelite writer?

A. Christina Rossetti
B. Dante Gabriel Rossetti
C. William Morris
D. Robert Browning

D. Robert Browning
Robert Browning was a major Victorian poet but was not a member or associate of the later Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.
25. Samuel Butler’s Erewhon is a:

A. Utopia
B. Dystopia
C. Romance
D. Allegory

A. Utopia
Erewhon (1872) is a satirical novel about a seemingly perfect society (Utopia is “no place” or “good place”) that critiques Victorian social norms.

26. Name the novel that does not have an artist as an important character:

A. Sons and Lovers
B. To the Lighthouse
C. Point Counter Point
D. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

D. Sons and Lovers
Sons and Lovers (D. H. Lawrence) focuses on the social and emotional life of Paul Morel (who is a painter).
27. Name the writer who is concerned with peasant life in the context of the Celtic Revival:

A. W. B. Yeats
B. Sean O’Casey
C. Lady Gregory
D. J.M. Synge

D. J.M. Synge
John Millington Synge is famed for his depictions of the lives and lyrical speech of the Irish peasantry in his plays (The Playboy of the Western World, Riders to the Sea).

28. Identify the writer who is not an Imagist?

A. Ezra Pound
B. Edward Thomas
C. Amy Lowell
D. H. D. (Hilda Doolittle)

B. Edward Thomas
Edward Thomas was a Georgian poet who wrote pastoral lyrics, unlike the modernist, objective, and minimalist Imagists (Pound, Lowell, H.D.).

29. Who, among the following, has been described as a poet of imperialism?

A. Alfred, Lord Tennyson
B. Rudyard Kipling
C. W. B. Yeats
D. Matthew Arnold

B. Rudyard Kipling
Rudyard Kipling’s work is renowned (and sometimes controversial) for its celebratory themes regarding the British Empire and imperialism.
30. The character of the Phoenician Sailor appears in the poem:

A. Sailing to Byzantium
B. The Waste Land
C. The Second Coming
D. The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

B. The Waste Land
The Phoenician Sailor (Phlebas the Phoenician) appears in the fourth section, “Death by Water,” of T. S. Eliot’s poem.

31. Name the novel classified by Graham Greene as ‘entertainment’:

A. Brighton Rock
B. The Power and the Glory
C. The End of the Affair
D. Our Man in Havana

D. Our Man in Havana
Graham Greene famously divided his works into serious “novels” and lighter, often satirical “entertainments”; Our Man in Havana (1958) is one of the latter.

32. “Nothing happens, nobody comes, nobody goes, it’s awful!” This line appears in:

A. The Caretaker
B. Endgame
C. Waiting for Godot
D. The Birthday Party

C. Waiting for Godot
This line, spoken by Estragon, perfectly encapsulates the play’s central themes of boredom, inaction, and the Absurd.

33. Which of the following characters has been described as an angry young man?

A. Jimmy Porter
B. George Dillon
C. Bill Walker
D. Luther

B. Jimmy Porter
Jimmy Porter, the protagonist of Look Back in Anger, is the defining figure of the mid-20th-century “Angry Young Men” movement.

34. Identify the poet who wrote about the bog people in his/her poems:

A. Seamus Heaney
B. Ted Hughes
C. Anne Sexton
D. Robert Lowell

A. Seamus Heaney
Seamus Heaney used the archaeological discoveries of preserved Bog People to create powerful metaphors for the violence in Northern Ireland.
35. Which of the following arrangements of novels is in the correct chronological sequence?

A. French Lieutenant’s Woman, Lucky Jim, Midnight’s Children, Possession
B. Lucky Jim, French Lieutenant’s Woman, Midnight’s Children, Possession
C. Possession, Midnight’s Children, Lucky Jim, French Lieutenant’s Woman
D. Midnight’s Children, Lucky Jim, French Lieutenant’s Woman, Possession

B. Lucky Jim (1954), French Lieutenant’s Woman (1969), Midnight’s Children (1981), Possession (1990)
This sequence is correct: Kingsley Amis (1954), John Fowles (1969), Salman Rushdie (1981), and A. S. Byatt (1990).

36. Margaret Atwood is the author of:

A. The Blind Assassin
B. The Golden Notebook
C. The Edible Woman
D. The Grass is Singing

A. The Blind Assassin
The Blind Assassin (2000) is one of Margaret Atwood’s most famous novels, winning the Booker Prize.

37. Identify an epistolary novel from the following:

A. Middlemarch
B. The Color Purple
C. The Mayor of Casterbridge
D. Jane Eyre

B. The Color Purple
Alice Walker’s The Color Purple (1982) is an epistolary novel, told through letters written by the protagonist, Celie.

38. Name the novel in which the river figures prominently?

A. The Grapes of Wrath
B. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
C. The Catcher in the Rye
D. The Great Gatsby

B. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
The Mississippi River is the central setting and symbol of freedom in Mark Twain’s classic novel.

39. Okonkwo is a character in:

A. Things Fall Apart
B. Arrow of God
C. The Joys of Motherhood
D. The River Between

A. Things Fall Apart
Okonkwo is the proud, tragic protagonist in Chinua Achebe’s novel.
40. Savitri by Sri Aurobindo is:

A. a collection of lyrics
B. an epic
C. a play
D. a novel

B. an epic
Savitri: A Legend and a Symbol is a monumental, unfinished epic poem (in blank verse) based on the Hindu legend of Savitri and Satyavan.

41. Which of the following is not a linguistic approach to literature:

A. Structuralism
B. Russian Formalism
C. Reader’s response theory
D. Stylistics

C. Reader’s response theory
Reader’s Response focuses on the reader’s subjective experience and interpretation, in contrast to the text- and language-focused theories of Structuralism, Formalism, and Stylistics.

42. Longinus is a…… critic:

A. Classical
B. Medieval
C. Renaissance
D. Neoclassical

A. Classical
The author of On the Sublime is generally referred to as a Classical or Graeco-Roman critic.

43. Which of the unities is not mentioned in Poetics?

A. the unity of action
B. the unity of time
C. the unity of place
D. the unity of impression

D. the unity of impression
Aristotle mentions the unity of action (required) and implies the unity of time (suggested). The unity of place was a later neoclassical invention, and the unity of impression is a later critical term (Henry James).

44. “A poem defamiliarises a familiar reality.” Who said it?

A. A Russian formalist
B. A New Critic
C.  A Post-structuralist
D. An Aesthetic critic

A. a Russian formalist
The concept of Defamiliarization (ostranenie) was central to the theories of Viktor Shklovsky, a key Russian Formalist.
45. Who, according to Arnold, is a classic of prose?

A. Milton
B. Swift
C. Dryden
D. Pope

D. Pope
Matthew Arnold admired the clarity and precision of Alexander Pope’s prose style.

46. Match the following (Feet per line): I. Four feet per line, II. Six feet per line, III. Seven feet per line, IV. Eight feet per line

A. I-Iambic, II-Trochaic, III-Anapaestic, IV-Dactylic
B. I-Tetrameter, II-Trimeter, III-Hexameter, IV-Pentameter
C. I-Trimeter, II-Tetrameter, III-Pentameter, IV-Hexameter
D. I-Tetrameter, II-Hexameter, III-Heptameter, IV-Octameter

D. I-Tetrameter, II-Hexameter, III-Heptameter, IV-Octameter
The metrical equivalents are: I. Four feet (Tetrameter); II. Six feet (Hexameter / Alexandrine); III. Seven feet (Heptameter); IV. Eight feet (Octameter).

47. Linked tercets rhyming aba bcb cdc…….. are called.

A. Ballad stanza
B. terza rima
C. Ottava rima
D. Spenserian Stanza

B. terza rima
Terza rima is the three-line stanza form used by Dante in The Divine Comedy.

48. Identify the figure of speech: “O, my luve is like the melodie / That sweetly played in tune.”

A. Metaphor
B. Personification
C. Hyperbole
D. Simile

D. Simile
The comparison uses the word “like” (my love is like the melodie), making it a Simile.

49. Match the following (Sanskrit Dramatists): I. Bhavbhuti II. Kalidasa III. Sudraka IV. Bhasa

A. I-I, II-II, III-III, IV-IV
B. I-II, II-I, III-III, IV-IV
C. I-III, II-II, III-I, IV-IV
D. I-IV, II-III, III-II, IV-I

C. I-III, II-II, III-I, IV-IV
The correct matches are: I. Bhavbhuti (Malati Madhava); II. Kalidasa (Abhijñānaśākuntalam); III. Sudraka (Mṛcchakaṭika/The Little Clay Cart); IV. Bhasa (Swapnavasavadattam).
50. Identify the figure of speech: “No, the day has wept for the fate of the nation.”

A. Personification
B. Metonymy
C. Synecdoche
D. Apostrophe

A. Personification
The abstract/inanimate object (day) is given human qualities (wept), a key characteristic of Personification.

Overview

This set of 50 multiple-choice questions spans the Medieval and Renaissance eras, testing authors such as Chaucer, Spenser, and Shakespeare.

It then moves chronologically into the 17th century, exploring questions about Milton, Dryden, and Jacobean drama. The 18th-century section focuses on writers such as Swift and Pope, as well as the rise of periodicals. The Romantic period is represented by Blake, Shelley, and Jane Austen.

Victorian literature is examined through the works of Hardy, Oscar Wilde, and the Oxford Movement. The 20th century includes Modernists like T.S. Eliot and Rudyard Kipling, alongside post-war figures like Samuel Beckett and Seamus Heaney.

The quiz also features important post-colonial and American authors, such as Chinua Achebe and Mark Twain. The final questions shift to literary theory, covering Aristotle, Russian Formalism, and definitions of poetic forms, such as terza rima and simile.

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