A TO Z Literary Principles from History of English Literature: Note 13

A Set of 26 Objective Questions & Answers

A.  In poetry, a tercet is a unit of three lines that usually contain end rhyme; a couplet is a two-line unit that usually contains end rhyme. Shelley wrote the tercets in a verse form called terza rima, invented by Dante Alighieri. exp: P.B. Shelley ‘s Ode to the West WindRead More A to Z (Objective Questions)

                              

B. “A man may have many moods; he has but one spirit; and this spirit he communicates in some subtle, unconscious way to all his work. It waxes and wanes with the currents of his vitality, but no more alter than a chestnut changes into an oak.” Read More A to Z (Objective Questions) FROM The Inn of Tranquility JOHN GALSWORTHY

C. Macaulay's "History of England" contains a vast amount of information, but it is not its stores of information which have attracted to it millions of readers; it is the fascinating style in which the information is conveyed, making the narrative as pleasing as a novel, and giving some passages a power of exciting the emotions which not many poems possess. Read More A to Z (Objective Questions)

D. The “Faerie Queen" was intended to have extended to twelve books, but only six books and two cantos were written at least that is all which has survived.

E. Coleridge’s Kubla Khan went unfinished because the call of a friend broke the thread of the reverie in which it was composed.

F. Goldsmith’s The Vicar of Wake-Field, went straight to the hearts of his readers the moment it was published and has been a classic ever since. Read More A to Z (Objective Questions)

G. One of the best of the metrical romances “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight” is commonly believed to be written by the same unknown author who wrote also  “The Pearl” which is a beautiful old elegy, or poem of grief, which immortalizes a father’s love for his little girl.Read More A to Z (Objective Questions)

H. “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight” and “The Pearl” were written not in the King ’s English or speech of London (which became modern English) but in a different dialect.

I. Beowulf, like almost all Anglo-Saxon poetry, is written with a great deal of alliteration. 

J. Kennings, seen in Anglo-Saxon poetry, which in modern terms is similar to euphemisms, or periphrases. Exp: whale-paths -the oceans, wave-rider- a boat or ship, ring-giver, folk-friend, or friend to the people -a king, and a word-hoard -a vocabulary. 

K. The year 1453 A.D., when the Eastern Empire the last relic of the continuous spirit of Rome fell before the Turks, used to be given as the date, and perhaps the word " Renaissance " itself " a new birth "is as much as can be accomplished shortly by way of definition.Read More A to Z (Objective Questions)

L. Chaucer's personal appearance is well known from the portrait of him by Occleve.

M. The plan of the "Canterbury Tales," a series of stories prefixed by a prologue and linked together by a framework, was probably derived by Chaucer from Boccaccio's “Decamerone." Read More A to Z (Objective Questions)

N. Raja Rao’s novel Kanthapura (1938) is influenced by the ideas of Gandhi.

O. Smith’s White Teeth is a novel about a changed place and the process of change itself.

P. Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon (1737-94), written in Latinate style AND admired for its eloquence and flashes of wit is probably the best-known historical work in the English language.Read More A to Z (Objective Questions)

Q. In 1709 Steele began to bring out the Tatler, to which Addison became almost immediately a contributor: thereafter he (with Steele) started the Spectator, the first number of which appeared on March 1, 1711.Read More A to Z (Objective Questions)

R. Horace Walpole’s Castle of Otranto ( 1765 ) introduced a highly popular genre: the Gothic novel.

S. Jane Austen’s characters, though of quite ordinary types, are drawn with such wonderful firmness and precision, and with such significant detail as to retain their individuality absolutely intact through their entire development, and they are never coloured by her own personality. Read More A to Z (Objective Questions)

T. “Cieronian” rhetoric (based on the style of Cicero) was characterized by long, elaborate, periodic sentences. There is engendered an “anti-Cieronian” reaction too which, in writers like Bacon and Ben Jonson, led to a fondness for rather brief sentences without many Latin and Greek words as possible and those who thought a pure, simple, native vocabulary should be maintained.Read More A to Z (Objective Questions)

U. Johnson’s style is “Latinate” as there is well-ordered Ciceronian structure, grandiose and Latin-derived vocabulary.

V. Famous for: Macauley’s histories, De Quincey’s opium memoirs, Ruskin’s influential praise of medieval architecture, Carlyle’s historico-philosophical musings, Pater’s musings on the Renaissance.Read More A to Z (Objective Questions)

W. Aristotle in POETICS laid down the principles of the three dramatic unities—the Unities of Time, Place and Action.  Read More A to Z (Objective Questions)

X. G. B. Shaw transformed the Don Juan legend into a play, and play-within-a-play in Man and Superman (1905).Read More A to Z (Objective Questions)

Y. PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY’S Defence of Poetry was originally written, as its title suggests, in a polemic vein, as an answer to Peacock's The Four Ages of Poetry.

Z. Amitav Ghosh 's first novel, The Circle of Reason, follows the fortune of a young weaver, Alu, who is brought up in a Bengal village.

  

  Ardhendu De