A TO Z Literary Principles from History of English Literature: Note 73

 Set of 26 Objective Questions & Answers

UGC NET ENGLISH QUESTION BANK

1. Who, of the following, belongs to 14th century?

(i) William Wordsworth

 (ii) William Wycherley

 (iii) William Langland

 (iv) William Watson

2. Match the following Time Line with their Historical Importance in British History:

List – A  Time Line	List – B: Historical Importance in British History
(I) 1453	1.  After the upheaval of the English Revolution a new British Parliament requested                   Charles II    to return and proclaimed him king on May 8, 1660.
(II) 1558	2. In the ensuing period Wordsworth and Coleridge collaborated on a book of poems entitled Lyrical Ballads, first published in this date. This work is generally taken to mark the beginning of the Romantic Movement in English poetry. Read More A to Z (Objective Questions)
(III) 1660	3. Elizabeth I, the first woman in British history, occupy the English throne in this year.
(IV) 1798	4. Renaissance as a movement in arts and letters is said to have started in Europe.

Which is the correct combination according to the code:

Code :I II III IV

     (A) 2 1 3 4

     (B) 3 4 2 1

     (C) 4 3 1 2

     (D) 1 2 4 3

3. The title The Sound and the Fury is taken from:

(A) Hamlet (B) Macbeth

(C) The Tempest (D) King Lear

< Note: The Sound and the Fury, published in 1929, was William Faulkner's fourth novel and is considered his first masterpiece. The story is set in the fictional county of Yoknapatawpha that Faulkner created for the setting of his third novel Sartoris. Faulkner's style in The Sound and the Fury with James Joyce's use of the subjective point of view in The Dubliners or A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man has a parallel. Read More A to Z (Objective Questions) >

4. Pecola is a character in:

(A) The Bluest Eye (B) Oliver Twist

(C) Don Quixote (D) Beloved

< Note: Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye and Alice Walker's The Color Purple are both novels about a young black girl growing up in a violent, racist society. Read More A to Z (Objective Questions) Pecola in The Bluest Eye and Celie in The Color Purple are both raped by father figures, as Maya is in I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. >

5. The year 1660 is associated with -

(i) The rise of Romanticism

(ii) The fall of classicism

(iii) The rise of drama in England

(IV) The restoration of the Stuart monarchy in England

< Note: Cromwell died on September 3, 1658, and was briefly succeeded by his son Richard. The drift toward anarchy was halted by General George Monck, commander of the army in Scotland. He marched into London with his troops and recalled the Long Parliament, which then restored (May, 1660) Charles II to the throne.>

6. The four wheels of the novel are -

(i) Swift, Richardson, Smollett and Sterne.

(ii) Read More A to Z (Objective Questions) Defoe, Smollett, Richardson, Ste me

(iii) Goldsmith, Johnson, Swift, Smollett

(iv) Richardson, Fielding, Smollett, Sterne.

< Note:   Samuel Richardson- sentimental novel Pamela (1740); Henry Fielding -satirical novel Joseph Andrews (1742);  Tobias Smollett-novel of picaresque adventure- Humphry Clinker (1771) ; Laurence Sterne- of eccentric characters  The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (1759-1767)  >

7. Who wrote ‘All For Love’?

(a) John Dryden

 (b) John Milton

(c) Spenser

(d) Alexander Pope

8. What of the following statements is not true for Richard Steele?

(A)  Steele, an ardent Whig, was involved himself in violent controversy with the Tories

(B)  He entered Parliament as a Whig but was expelled in 1714 on the charge of having committed seditious libel in his pamphlet in which he advocated the succession to the British throne of the pro-Whig elector of Hannover, later King George I. Read More A to Z (Objective Questions) However, after the death of Queen Anne and the accession of George I later that year, Steele was reelected to Parliament, knighted, and made a justice of the peace, surveyor of the royal stables, and supervisor of the Theatre Royal of Drury Lane. 

(C) Political disagreements tore apart the friendship of Addison and Steele in 1718.

(D) There his last comedy, The Crisis, was produced in 1722.

9. About whom did T. S. Eliot write “A thought to him was an experience”:

(A) Herbert (B) Marvell (C) Donne (D) Crashaw

10. The last book of Gulliver’s Travels is :

(A) “Voyage to Houyhnhnms” (B) “Voyage to Laputa”

(C) “Voyage to Brobdingnag” (D) “Voyage to Lilliput”

<  Note : In Part I, Lemuel Gulliver describes how he began undertaking voyages as ship’s surgeon, and ended up during one voyage shipwrecked in Lilliput, a land where the people are twelve times smaller than in England. He makes careful observation of the habits and politics of the people of Lilliput and the neighboring nation of Blefuscu. Eventually he is able to make seaworthy a boat brought ashore by the sea, and he returns to England, where he profits handsomely from the sale of a few Lilliputian cattle and sheep.

In Part II, another voyage takes Gulliver to Brobdingnag, a land where every living being is twelve times larger than in England. The people there and their king are far more moral and practical than they are political or war-like. He becomes the friend of the king and queen, and of a nurse assigned to care for him. Read More A to Z (Objective Questions) When a bird carries off a box in which Gulliver is being transported and drops it into the sea, Gulliver is found by a ship and returns to England.

Part III was written last of the four. In this section, Gulliver visits the islands of Laputa, Balnibarbi, Luggnagg, Glubbdubdribb, and Japan. Laputa, the Flying Island, is an allegory of the court and government of George I. The center piece of the satire is the Academy of Projectors, which is partly directed at the scientists of the Royal Society and the Dublin Philosophical Society. Through meeting the rare struldbrugs, immortal humans withered by time and loss of faculties, Gulliver loses his fear of a natural death. Once again, Gulliver eventually returns to England.

In Part IV, Gulliver journeys to the land of the Houyhnhnms, rational horses, and the Yahoos, appallingly irrational humans. In this most complex section, Swift speaks out on the subjects of war, colonization, and ethics. The Houyhnhnms are what men could be if they lived reasonably, and the Yahoos are what men will become if they are not controlled by a strict but human morality. When Gulliver eventually returns to England, he leads a rather isolated life, enjoying the company of horses living on his property.>

11. Who of the under mentioned is not a Victorian poet?

(I) A. C. Swinburne

 (ii)T.S. Eliot

(iii) E.G. Browning

 (iv) M. Arnold

12. Who was the first English Printer?

(a) Holinshed

 (b) William Caxton

(c) John Dewy

(d) Horace

13. Which of the following has not been written by Alexander Pope?

(a) Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot

(b) Tue Dunciad

(c)The Rape of the Lock

(d)Morte D.Arthur

14. Which of the following was associated with the “Bloomsbury Group”.

(A) T. S. Eliot (B) W. B. Yeats

(C) T. E. Hulme (D) Virginia Woolf

  Bloomsbury Group, popular collective designation for a number of English intellectuals prominent in the first quarter of the 20th century, the name of the group is derived from a residential district near the British Museum in central London where most of the members lived.

Read More A to Z (Objective Questions) They included the writers Virginia Woolf and her husband, Leonard Sidney Woolf; the art critics Roger Fry and Clive Bell; the economist John Maynard Keynes; the biographer Lytton Strachey; the literary and drama critic Desmond MacCarthy; the novelist and essayist E. M. Forster; and the painters Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant. >

15.  Which of them is not a Victorian novelist?

(a) Meredith

(b) Thackeray

(c) Dickens

 (d) Austen

16. Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding is a classic statement of _________ Philosophy.

(A) Aesthetic

(B) Empiricist

(C) Nationalist

(D) Realist

  English philosopher John Locke explained his theory of empiricism, a philosophical doctrine holding that all knowledge is based on experience, in An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690). Locke believed the human mind to be a blank slate at birth that gathered all its information from its surroundings—starting with simple ideas and combining these simple ideas into more complex ones. His theory greatly influenced education in Great Britain and the United States. Locke believed that education should begin in early childhood and should proceed gradually as the child learns increasingly complex ideas. >

17. Who edited The Tatler?

(A) Steele and John Locke

(B) Addison and Dryden

(C) Addison and Blackmore

(D) Addison and Steele

   Mixing politics, serious essays, and sly satire, the 18th-century periodicals The Tatler and The Spectator, founded by the statesmen and literary figures Richard Steele and Joseph Addison, were enormously popular and influential. The Tatler and The Spectator provide an entertaining and historically invaluable picture of 18th-century London life, both high and low.   >

18. Match the following authors with their works:

List – A                         List – B

(Authors)                     (Works)

I. Alice Walker              1. Invisible Man

II. Ralph Ellison             2. The Color Purple

III. Richard Wright        3. Their Eyes Were Watching God

IV. Zora Neale Hurston 4. Native Son

Which is the correct combination according to the code:

Code :I II III IV

     (A) 2 1 3 4

     (B) 3 4 2 1

     (C) 4 3 1 2

     (D) 1 2 4 3

 

Ralph Ellison, one of the most famous black writers of the twentieth century, was virtually unknown as a writer when, in 1952, his novel Invisible Man won the National Book Award and made him an instant celebrity. Read More A to Z (Objective Questions)

The Color Purple, Alice Walker's third novel, was published in 1982. The novel brought fame and financial success to its author. It also won her considerable praise and much criticism for its controversial themes. Many reviewers were disturbed by her portrayal of black males, which they found unduly negative. When the novel was made into a film in 1985 by Steven Spielberg, Walker became even more successful and controversial. While she was criticized for negative portrayal of her male characters, Walker was admired for her powerful portraits of black women. Reviewers praised her for her use of the epistolary form, in which written correspondence between characters comprises the content of the book, and her ability to use black folk English.

When Their Eyes Were Watching God first appeared in 1937, it was well-received by white critics as an intimate portrait of southern blacks, but African American reviewers rejected the novel as pandering to white audiences and perpetuating stereotypes of blacks as happy-go-lucky and ignorant. Unfortunately, the novel and its author, Zora Neale Hurston, were quickly forgotten. But within the last twenty years it has received renewed attention from scholars who praise its unique contribution to African American literature, and it has become one of the newest and most original works to consistently appear in college courses across the country and to be included in updated versions of the American literary canon. The book has been admired by African Americanists for its celebration of black culture and dialect and by feminists for its depiction of a woman's progress towards self-awareness and fulfillment.

Richard Wright's Native Son was the first novel by an American writer to deeply explore the black struggle for identity and the anger blacks have felt because of their exclusion from society. Read More A to Z (Objective Questions) Many black American voices would echo Wright—James Baldwin, Ralph Ellison, Malcolm X, Toni Morrison, and Maya Angelou, to name a few—in telling the story of an alienated protagonist whose search for self-identity and the freedom it brings must be achieved at all costs. Violence, drugs, and even religion serve as escape mechanisms for blacks who cannot face the fact that society considers them non-beings.>

19. Which of these plays by Shakespeare does not use ‘cross-dressing’ as a device?

(A) As You Like It

(B) Julius Caeser

(C) Cymbeline

(D) Two Gentlemen of Verona

  ‘cross-dressing’ by Rosalind who disguises herself as a man (Ganymede) in order to woo her love, Orlando in  As You Like It. Julia has disguised as a page in Cymbeline. >

20. Which of the following works cannot be categorized under postcolonial theory?

(A) Nation and Narration

(B) Orientalism

(C) Discipline and Punish

(D) White Mythologies

  Bhabha's Nation and Narration (1990) is primarily an intervention into "essentialist" readings of nationality that attempt to define and naturalize Third World.

Edward Said’s  Orientalism (1978)  discusses the attitude of Western intellectuals toward the East, and in particular toward the Middle East. Said argued that Westerners have a limited, oversimplified concept of the Middle East and its history. This view, he said, goes hand in hand with political imperialism.

Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (French: Surveiller et punir: Naissance de la Prison) is a 1975 book by the French philosopher Michel Foucault.

Robert J. C. Young’s  first book, White Mythologies: Writing History and the West (1990) argues that Marxist philosophies of history had claimed to be world histories but had really only ever been histories of the West, seen from a Eurocentric—even if anti-capitalist—perspective. >

21. Which of the following technique was popularized by Christopher Marlowe?

(a) Elegy

 (b) Ode

(c) Lyric

 (d) Blank verse

22. “Power circulates in all directions, to and from all social levels, at all times.” Who said this?

(A) Edward Said

(B) Michel Foucault

(C) Jacques Derrida

(D) Roland Barthes

  Michel Foucault (1926-1984), French philosopher, who attempted to show that the basic ideas which people normally take to be permanent truths about human nature and society change in the course of history. Read More A to Z (Objective Questions) His studies challenged the influence of German political philosopher Karl Marx and Austrian psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud. Foucault offered new concepts that challenged people's assumptions about prisons, the police, insurance, care of the mentally ill, gay rights, and welfare.>

23. What of the following statements is not true for Chaucer?  

(A) He was a courtier and civil servant under the English kings Edward III and Richard II.

(B) After Chaucer’s death, he was buried in the Abbey (an honor for a commoner), in what has since become the Poets' Corner.

(C) The Canterbury Tales is composed of more than 18,000 lines of poetry.

(D) It was John Donne called Chaucer the father of English poetry.

24. What of the following statements is not true for Shakespeare?  

(A) Shakespeare lived almost 400 years ago.

(B) Shakespeare composed his plays during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I only.

(C) Read More A to Z (Objective Questions) Contemporary of Shakespeare was Edmund Spenser, and Christopher Marlowe.

 (D) Shakespeare was a shareholder in the Globe, and his career as a playwright was closely associated with the theater.

25. What of the following statements is not true for Rape of the Lock? 

(A)   The Rape of the Lock was published in1712; revised edition in 1714.

(B)  The Rape of the Lock pokes gentle fun at aristocrats who like Belinda, the woman whose lock of hair is taken, spends so much time on appearances. Read More A to Z (Objective Questions) Astronomically Belinda is small satellite of the planet Uranus.

(C) It is Pope's single best brilliant satiric masterpiece.

 (D) The Rape of the Lock makes an epic theme of a trifling drawing-room episode: the contention arising from a young lord's having covertly snipped a lock of hair from a young lady's head.

26. Which of the following characters appear in Waiting for Godot?

(A) Jerry (B) Lucky (C) Jimmy Porter (D) Ham

  Beckett’s En attendant Godot (1953; translated as Waiting for Godot, 1954) portrays two tramps waiting for a character named Godot. They are not sure who Godot is, whether he will show up to meet them, and indeed whether he actually exists, but they spend each day waiting for him and trying to understand the world in which they live. Beckett often reduced character, plot, and dialogue to a minimum in an effort to highlight fundamental questions of human existence.  >

Ardhendu De

Ref: 1. History of English Literature- Albert     

        2. The Concise Cambridge History of English Literature

        3. UGC NET OLD QUESTION PAPERS http://www.ugcnetonline.in/previous_question_papers.php