English Literature MCQs Set 5

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Author: Nasir Iqbal | Assistant Professor of English Literature

English Literature MCQs Set 5
Updated on: November 4, 2025
Estimated Reading Time: 16 min

English Literature MCQs

Set-5

1. Which of the following plays of Shakespeare is considered a ‘problem play’?

A. A Midsummer Night’s Dream
B. Measure for Measure
C. Much Ado About Nothing
D. Twelfth Night

B. Measure for Measure
Problem plays, written around 1600-1604, are characterised by their challenging tones and ambiguous endings; Measure for Measure is a prime example.

2. Identify the dramatist who wrote only tragedies :

A. Thomas Kyd
B. John Webster
C. Christopher Marlowe
D. Thomas Dekker

C. Christopher Marlowe
Marlowe’s major dramatic works—Tamburlaine, Dr. Faustus, The Jew of Malta, and Edward II—are all tragedies.

3. Arcadia is a:

A. Tragedy
B. Play
C. Allegory
D. Romance

D. Romance
Sir Philip Sidney’s Arcadia is a pastoral prose romance, a long, fictional narrative focusing on love and adventure.

4. The twelve Knights in Faerie Queene represent twelve :

A. Disciplines
B. Virtues
C. Castles
D. Passions

B. Virtues
Edmund Spenser’s epic poem was intended to have twelve books, with each of the twelve titular knights embodying a specific moral virtue (e.g., Holiness, Temperance).
5. The Mystery Plays dealt with:

A. Biblical themes
B. Moral allegories
C. Lives of saints
D. History of the monarchy

A. Biblical themes
Mystery Plays (or Cycle Plays) dramatized the central stories of the Bible, from Creation to the Last Judgment.

6. What is the central theme in the Restoration Comedy ?

A. War and Politics
B. Religion and Morality
C. Money and Matrimony
D. Peasants and Power

C. Money and Matrimony
Restoration Comedy focuses heavily on the witty, mercenary pursuit of wealth through marriage.

7. Who was the wife of Antony ?

A. Octavia
B. Cleopatra
C. Fulvia
D. Charmian

A. Octavia
In Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra, Antony marries Octavia (sister of Octavius Caesar) for political convenience, despite his love for Cleopatra.

8. The character of Sin in Milton’s Paradise Lost is portrayed as

A. Satan’s loyal servant
B. A beautiful angel
C. The daughter-cum-beloved of Satan
D. A neutral observer

C. The daughter-cum-beloved of Satan
Sin sprang fully formed from Satan’s head and later bore him his son, Death, emphasizing the perverse genealogy of evil.

9. Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress (Part I) was published in the year :

A. 1660
B. 1675
C. 1678
D. 1684

C. 1678
The first part, chronicling Christian’s journey, was published in 1678.
10. Leviathan is authored by

A. John Locke
B. David Hume
C. Francis Bacon
D. Thomas Hobbes

D. Thomas Hobbes
Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan (1651) is a seminal work of political philosophy, arguing for an absolute sovereign power.

11. Who among the following is one of the four wheels of the English novel?

A. Jane Austen
B. Walter Scott
C. Charles Dickens
D. George Eliot

A. Jane Austen
The “Four Wheels of the English Novel” usually refers to Richardson, Fielding, Smollett, and Sterne. However, among the great early novelists, Jane Austen is often grouped with the canonical figures who shaped the form.

12. In which poet’s poem does the character of Belinda occur?

A. John Dryden
B. Jonathan Swift
C. Alexander Pope
D. John Milton

C. Alexander Pope
Belinda is the heroine in Pope’s mock-epic The Rape of the Lock.

13. Whose name is associated with The Spectator:

A. Jonathan Swift
B. Joseph Addison
C. Samuel Johnson
D. Alexander Pope

B. Joseph Addison
Joseph Addison was the co-founder and major contributor to The Spectator (with Richard Steele).

14. “When lovely woman stoop to folly” appears in a work by

A. Alexander Pope
B. Samuel Johnson
C. Oliver Goldsmith
D. George Eliot

D. Goldsmith
This quote is from the final stanza of Oliver Goldsmith’s poem “When Lovely Woman Stoops to Folly,” famously adapted by T. S. Eliot.
15. Who has written the treatise On Liberty?

A. Thomas Hobbes
B. John Stuart Mill
C. John Locke
D. Edmund Burke

B. John Stuart Mill
On Liberty (1859) is J. S. Mill’s foundational essay defending individual freedom against the authority of the state and social coercion.

16. “We are laid asleep in body and become a living soul.” In which poem of Wordsworth do these lines occur?

A. “The Prelude”
B. “Immortality Ode”
C. “Tintern Abbey”
D. “The Excursion”

C. “Tintern Abbey”
These lines describe the tranquil, profound spiritual state achieved through communion with nature.

17. Who is the author of Biographia Literaria ?

A. S.T. Coleridge
B. William Wordsworth
C. Thomas De Quincey
D. Charles Lamb

A. S.T. Coleridge
Biographia Literaria (1817) contains Coleridge’s famous discussion of imagination and fancy.

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

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

C. Mary Wollstonecraft
Wollstonecraft’s 1792 treatise is a foundational text of feminist thought.

19. Arrange the following in the right chronological order:

A. Preface to Lyrical Ballads – Lyrical Ballads – Biographia Literaria – Adonais
B. Biographia Literaria – Lyrical Ballads – Preface to Lyrical Ballads – Adonais
C. Lyrical Ballads – Preface to Lyrical Ballads – Biographia Literaria – Adonais
D. Adonais – Lyrical Ballads – Preface to Lyrical Ballads – Biographia Literaria

C. Lyrical Ballads (1798) – Preface to Lyrical Ballads (1800) – Biographia Literaria (1817) – Adonais (1821)
This is the correct publication sequence of these canonical Romantic works.
20. “Elia” is a pen-name assumed by:

A. Thomas De Quincey
B. William Hazlitt
C. Leigh Hunt
D. Charles Lamb

D. Charles Lamb
Charles Lamb used the pseudonym “Elia” for his famous collection of essays.

21. In one of his novels Hardy says, “Happiness is but an occasional episode in the general drama of pain.” In which novel do these lines appear ?

A. Jude the Obscure
B. Tess of the d’Urbervilles
C. The Return of the Native
D. The Mayor of Casterbridge

A. Jude the Obscure
This bleak, fatalistic line summarizes the pessimistic philosophy of Thomas Hardy’s last major novel.

22. Eugene Marchbanks is a character in Shaw’s:

A. Pygmalion
B. Arms and the Man
C. Major Barbara
D. Candida

D. Candida
Eugene Marchbanks is the young, romantic poet competing for the affection of Candida in George Bernard Shaw’s play.

23. Who defines poetry as a “criticism of life” :

A. Matthew Arnold
B. T.S. Eliot
C. S.T. Coleridge
D. William Hazlitt

A. Matthew Arnold
Matthew Arnold offers this famous, didactic definition of poetry in his essay “The Study of Poetry.”

24. Which work of Dickens has as many as three hundred and fifty six characters:

A. Hard Times
B. Bleak House
C. Great Expectations
D. David Copperfield

B. Bleak House
Bleak House (1852-53) is notable for its vast social scope and huge cast of characters.
25. Who has used these words: “that monstrous tuberosity of Civilizéd Life the Capital of England”?

A. Thomas Carlyle
B. Charles Dickens
C. William Wordsworth
D. Ruskin

D. Ruskin
John Ruskin, the Victorian art critic, used this highly critical and visceral phrase to condemn the ugliness and chaos of London.

26. “The poem must become more and more comprehensive, more more indirect, in order to force, to dislocate if necessary, language into its meaning.” Who wrote this:

A. Ezra Pound
B. W.B. Yeats
C. T.S. Eliot
D. Wallace Stevens

C. T.S. Eliot
This statement comes from T. S. Eliot’s critical writings, advocating for the difficulty and innovative technique of Modernist poetry.

27. “A terrible beauty is born” is a line from:

A. W.B. Yeats’ Easter 1916
B. T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land
C. James Joyce’s Ulysses
D. Seamus Heaney’s North

A. W.B. Yeats’ Easter 1916
This famous line captures the poet’s complex reaction to the Easter Rising (1916) in Dublin.

28. “The Comedy of Menace” is a term we associate with:

A. Arthur Miller
B. Eugene Ionesco
C. Harold Pinter
D. Samuel Beckett

D. Harold Pinter
The critic Irving Wardle coined this term to describe Harold Pinter’s plays, which often combine surface comedy with underlying menace and fear.

29. What is the source of the line: “Nothing happens, nobody comes, nobody goes, it’s awful!”

A. Pinter’s The Dúmb Waiter
B. Beckett’s Waiting for Godot
C. Shaw’s Widowers’ Houses
D. Ionesco’s The Chairs

B. Beckett’s Waiting for Godot
This line, spoken by Estragon, famously summarizes the plot (or lack thereof) of the Theatre of the Absurd play.
30. Choose the correct chronological order of the following events:

A. Beginning of the First World War, Easter Rising in Ireland, The Russian Revolution, The Publication of The Wasteland
B. Easter Rising in Ireland, Beginning of the First World War, The Russian Revolution, The Publication of The Wasteland
C. Beginning of the First World War, The Russian Revolution, Easter Rising in Ireland, The Publication of The Wasteland
D. The Russian Revolution, Beginning of the First World War, Easter Rising in Ireland, The Publication of The Wasteland

A. Beginning of the First World War (1914), Easter Rising in Ireland (1916), The Russian Revolution (1917), The Publication of The Wasteland (1922)

31. The Feminine Mystique is a work by:

A. Simone de Beauvoir
B. Germaine Greer
C. Betty Frieden
D. Kate Millett

C. Betty Frieden
Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique (1963) is a major text that sparked the second-wave feminist movement in the US.

32. “Dying is an art and I do it exceptionally well.” These lines are by :

A. T.S. Eliot
B. Anne Sexton
C. Ted Hughes
D. Sylvia Plath

D. Sylvia Plath
This defiant line comes from Sylvia Plath’s famous poem “Lady Lazarus.”

33. Which of the following is a dystopian novel?

A. Brave New World
B. The Great Gatsby
C. Nineteen Eighty Four
D. Women in Love

C. Nineteen Eighty Four
George Orwell’s novel (1949) depicts a totalitarian, oppressive future state.

34. Name the author of The Loneliness of Long Distance Runner:

A. John Osborne
B. Alan Sillitoe
C. Alan Sillitoe
D. Kingsley Amis

C. Alan Sillitoe
Alan Sillitoe’s short story (1959) is a classic example of working-class literature and the “Angry Young Men” period.
35. Which of the following novelists has won the Booker Prize twice?

A. J.G. Ballard
B. V.S. Naipaul
C. J.M. Coetzee
D. Nadine Gordimer

C. J.M. Coetzee
J. M. Coetzee is one of the few writers to have won the Booker Prize twice (for Life & Times of Michael K in 1983 and Disgrace in 1999).

36. Name the author of The Golden Notebook :

A. Iris Murdoch
B. Muriel Spark
C. Doris Lessing
D. Margaret Drabble

C. Doris Lessing
The Golden Notebook (1962) is Doris Lessing’s experimental novel and a key text in feminist and anti-colonial literature.

37. The narrative style of Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children shows the influence of :

A. Naturalism
B. Magic realism
C. Social realism
D. Stream of consciousness

B. Magic realism
Salman Rushdie’s style, blending fantastic elements with historical reality, is strongly linked to Magic Realism.

38. Which of the following novels is by Rohinton Mistry:

A. Such a Long Journey
B. A Fine Balance
C. The Golden Gate
D. Fasting, Feasting

A. Such a Long Journey
Such a Long Journey (1991) is Rohinton Mistry’s debut novel, set in Bombay (Mumbai).

39. Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys is a rewriting of :

A. Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice
B. Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights
C. Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the d’Urbervilles
D. Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre

D. Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre
Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea (1966) tells the backstory of Bertha Mason, the “mad woman in the attic” from Jane Eyre.
40. Gitanjali was selected for the Nobel Prize for literature in the year :

A. 1913
B. 1916
C. 1919
D. 1923

A. 1913
Rabindranath Tagore won the Nobel Prize in 1913 for Gitanjali (Song Offerings).

41. Who has suggested the idea of tenor and vehicle in the analysis of ‘Metaphor’:

A. Cleanth Brooks
B. I.A. Richards
C. Northrop Frye
D. Allen Tate

B. I.A. Richards
I. A. Richards coined the terms tenor (the idea conveyed) and vehicle (the image conveying it) in The Philosophy of Rhetoric (1936).

42. ‘Deconstruction’ is a term we associate with:

A. Michel Foucault
B. Jacques Derrida
C. Roland Barthes
D. Jacques Lacan

B. Jacques Derrida
Jacques Derrida is the French philosopher whose work is synonymous with the theory of Deconstruction.

43. Who called Shelley “an ineffectual angel beating in the void his luminous wings in vain”?

A. T.S. Eliot
B. Matthew Arnold
C. S.T. Coleridge
D. William Hazlitt

B. Matthew Arnold
Matthew Arnold offered this famous, critical assessment of Percy Bysshe Shelley in Essays in Criticism: Second Series.

44. Who among the following is not considered a New Critic?

A. Terry Eagleton
B. Cleanth Brooks
C. W.K. Wimsatt
D. Allen Tate

A. Terry Eagleton
Terry Eagleton is a leading figure in Marxist and Post-structuralist criticism, explicitly opposed to New Criticism.
45. The book, The Mad Woman in the Attic, is an example of:

A. Structuralism
B. Feminist Criticism
C. New Historicism
D. Psychoanalytic Criticism

B. Feminist Criticism
The Madwoman in the Attic (1979) by Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar is a landmark text of Feminist Criticism, analyzing female representation in 19th-century literature.

46. ‘Caesura’ means :

A. the break in a stanza
B. a strong pause in a line
C. the end of a line
D. a line with a feminine ending

B. a strong pause in a line
A Caesura is a break or pause near the middle of a line of verse, often marked by punctuation.

47. ‘Iamb’ is a metre with:

A. a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed one
B. two unstressed syllables followed by a stressed one
C. two stressed syllables
D. an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed one

D. an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed one
The Iambic foot is composed of two syllables: da-DUM.

48. Synaesthesia is:

A. the confusion of ideas
B. the mixing of metaphors
C. the interpretation of one sense in terms of another.
D. the blending of different genres

C. the interpretation of one sense in terms of another.
Synaesthesia describes one sense experience in terms of another (e.g., “loud colors,” “sweet sounds”).

49. Pastoral poetry deals with:

A. The life of shepherds and shepherdesses
B. urban problems
C. historical events
D. political satire

A. the life of shepherds and shepherdesses
Pastoral poetry idealizes the lives of shepherds and the simple, innocent life of the countryside.
50. Petrarchan sonnet uses the following rhyme scheme:

A. abba abba cdc dcd
B. abba abba cde cde
C. abab cdcd efef gg
D. abab bcbc cdcd ee

B. abba abba cde cde
The Petrarchan (or Italian) sonnet is divided into an octave (abbaabba) and a sestet (cde cde or cdcdcd).

Overview

This set of 50 multiple-choice questions begins with the Renaissance and tests knowledge of Shakespeare’s ‘problem plays’, Marlowe’s tragedies, and Spenser’s Faerie Queene.

The quiz moves to the 17th century, covering Milton’s Paradise Lost and Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress. Figures like Alexander Pope and Joseph Addison represent the 18th century.

A large portion covers the Romantic period (Wordsworth, Coleridge) and the Victorian era (Hardy, Dickens, Matthew Arnold).

The 20th century is marked by questions about Modernists such as T.S. Eliot and W.B. Yeats, as well as post-war figures like Samuel Beckett and Harold Pinter. The quiz also features contemporary and post-colonial writers, including Salman Rushdie, J.M. Coetzee, and Jean Rhys.

The final section is dedicated to literary theory, featuring terms such as ‘Deconstruction’ and ‘Feminist Criticism’, as well as technical poetic devices like ‘caesura’, ‘iamb’, and the ‘Petrarchan sonnet’.

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