Question Bank- Introduction to Literary Criticism (B. A. III Special English)

1. Aristotle and Plato belong to ____ phase of criticism.

(A) Hellenic

(B) Hellenistic

(C) Renaissance

(D) Graeco-Roman

2. Who was the first literary critic who said that “Art is twice removed from reality”?

(A) Plato

(B) Aristotle

(C) Longinus

(D) Horace

3. Who proposed that poets should be banished from the ideal Republic?

(A) Plato

(B) Aristotle

(C) Sir Philip Sidney

(D) Sir Thomas More

4. Who considers poetry ‘a mother of lies’

(A) Aristotle

(B) Plato

(C) Pope

(D) Stephen Gosson

5. Aristotle’s critical work is entitled:

(A) Ars Poetica

(B) Poetics

(C) De Arte Poetica

 (D) Art Poetique

6. Who is the author of Symposium?

(A) Aristotle

(B) Dante

(C) Longinus

(D) Plato

7. To whom “poetry is the spontaneous over-flow of powerful passion.”

(A) Keats

(B) Shelley

(C) Wordsworth

(D) Coleridge

8. Aristotle discusses the theory of Tragedy in :

(A) Art Poetique

 (B) Poetics

(C) Rhetoric

(D) Ars Poetica

9. What is the meaning of the term Hamartia as used by Aristotle in his Theory of Tragedy?

(A) Tragic end of the tragedy

(B) Working of fate against the hero

(C) A weak trait in the character of the hero

(D) A strong quality in the character of the hero

10. Who is the meaning of the term Peripeteia as used by Aristotle in his Theory of Tragedy?

(A) Change in the fortune of the hero from bad to good

(B) Change in the fortune of the hero from good to bad

(C) Constancy in the fortune of the hero

(D) Fluctuations occurring in the fortune of the hero

11. What is the meaning of the term Anagnorisis as used by Aristotle in his Theory of Tragedy?

(A) The hero’s recognition of his tragic flaw

(B) The hero’s ignorance about his tragic flaw

(C) The hero’s recognition of his adversary

(D) The hero’s recognition of his tragic end

12. What is denouement?

 (A) The ending of a tragedy

(B) The ending of a comedy

(C) The climax in a tragedy

(D) The climax in a comedy

13. Who was the originator of the Theory of Imitation in Literature?

(A) Longinus

(B) Aristotle

(C) Plato

(D) Horace

14. Who made a difference between ‘poetry’ and ‘poem’

(A) Coleridge

(B) Addison

(C) Arnold

(D) Eliot

15. Who was the most illustrious pupil of Plato?

(A) Aristotle

(B) Longinus

(C) Aristophanes

(D) Socrates

16. Who was the most illustrious disciple of Socrates?

(A) Sophocles

(B) Plautus

(C) Plato

 (D) Critus

17. From where has the term Oedipus Complex originated?

(A) Oedipus the Rex

(B) Oedipus at Colonus

(C) Antigone

(D) Jocasta, the Queen of Thebes

18. The term Electra Complex has originated from a tragedy entitled Electra. Who is the author of his tragedy?

(A) Aeschylus

(B) Sophocles

(C) Euripides

(D) Seneca

19. In which the following works Plato discusses his Theory of Poetry?

(A) Apology

(B) Ion

(C) The Republic

(D) Phaedrus

20. Who is the author of the notorious book entitled The School of Abuse?

(A) Roger Ascham

(B) Stephen Hawes

 (C) John Skelton

(D) Stephen Gosson

21. An Elizabethan Puritan critic denounced the poets as ‘fathers of lies’,’schools of abuse’ and’caterpillars of a commonwealth’. Mark him out from the following crities:

(A) William Tyndale

(B) Roger Ascham

(C) Stephen Gosson

(D) Henry Howard

22. ‘Preface to the Lyrical Ballads’ was published in

(A) 1798

(B) 1800

(C) 1802

(D) 1815

23. Philip Sidney’s Apologie for Poetrie is a defence of poetry against the charges brought against it by:

(A) Henry Howard

(B) Roger Ascham

(C) John Skelton

(D) Stephen Gosson

24. “It is not rhyming and versing that maketh a poet no more than a long gown maketh an advocate”. Whose view is this?

(A) Shakespeare’s

(B) Marlowe’s

(C) Spenser’s

(D) Sidney’s

35. What does Sidney say about the observance of the three Dramatic Unities in drama?

(A) They must be observed

(B) It is not necessary to observe them

(C) He favours the observance of the Unity of Action only

(D) Their observance depends upon the nature of the theme of the play

26. Poetic Diction was taken to be the standard language for poetry in:

(A) The Elizabethan Age

(B) The Neo-Classical Age

(C) The Romantic Age

(D) The Victorian Age

27. Plato equated poetry with painting, and Aristotle equated it with

(A) drama

(B) music

(C) dance

(D) none

28. “Poetry is emotions recollected in tranquility.” Who has defined poetry in these words?

(A) Shelley

(B) Wordsworth

(C) Coleridge

(D) Matthew Arnold

29. Which of the following is not a literary tradition?

 Platonic

 Neo Platonic

 Aristotelian

 Shakespearean

30. What according to Aristotle is the soul of a tragedy?

 Plot

 Spectacle

 Story

 Characters

31. Which of the following is not a key component of tragedy according to Aristotle?

 Plot

 Character

 Costume

 Spectacle

32. To what does Aristotle compare tragedy?

 Painting

 Dance

 Furniture

 Black Magic

33. Aristotle is the first critical thinker to see the connection between the,

 Audience and the text

 Writer and the audience

 Writer and the text

 Audience and the stage

34. Which element of tragedy is the least artistic and least connected with the art of poetry?

 Story

 Spectacle

 Song

 Diction

35. Which of the following elements are important for the beauty of tragedy?

 Magnitude and order

 Magnitude and diction

 Chronology and Plot

 Dance and Spectacle

36. Which Greek play does Aristotle use as an example while talking about the unity of plot?

 Medea

 Lysistrata

 Odyssey

 Agememnon

37. How does Aristotle define a Complex Plot?

 One where there is no Reversal and Recognition

 One that has no beginning, middle and end

 One where there is both Reversal and Recognition

 One that has both Plot and Story

38. Which of the following is not part of Tragedy according to Aristotle?

 Prologue

 Episode

 Choric Song

 Soliloquy

39. Philip Sidney wrote An Apology for Poetry in defense to,

 Stephen Gosson’s “School of Abuse”

 Stephen Bausson’s “School of Poetry”

 Lodovico Castelverto’s “The Poetics of Aristotle”

 Aristotle’s “Poetics”

40. How does Sidney translate the Greek word poiein?

 To think

 To believe

 To make

 To write

41. How does Sidney define imagination?

 A combination of invention and wit

 A combination of invention and fancy

 A combination of wit and creativity

 A combination of creativity and skill

42. What are the three kinds of frameworks that Sidney attributes to imitative poetry?

 Religious, Political, Historical

 Divine, Philosophical, Instructive

 Creative, Witty, Formalist

 Empirical, Philosophical, Political

43. How does Sidney depart from the traditional and classical understanding of poetry?

 He calls it a mistress to amuses the readers

 He calls it a medium to teach and delight

 He calls it a prayer to God

 He calls it a commandment of God

44. To Sidney, why is it mistaken to say poets can lead society astray?

 No one listens to them

 Poets have the backing of Elizabeth's court

 They cannot literally lie, because they actually affirm nothing

 Poets work with historians and philosophers to say only true things.

45. To Sidney, what is the primary reason poetry is the most important discipline?

 Poetry makes women fall in love with you

 Poetry possesses a beauty not found in other studies

 Poets have a unique power to create and drive men to virtue

 Poetry requires the most skill to make

46. Which of the following is a false statement?

 Poetry deals with the universal

 Poetry deals with the particular

 History deals with the particular

 The aim of poetry is to teach and delight

47. What metaphor is Sidney reintroducing when he writes that poetry must be “gently led, or rather it must lead”?

 Poetry as compared to horsemanship

 Poetry as a vehicle for self-understanding

 Poetry as a woman or mother

 Poetry as a rope

48. Which is the correct definition of a poet?

 Imitate to teach and delight

 Imagine to teach and delight

 Imitate to teach only

 Imagine and Imitate to teach

49. Why does Coleridge not agree with the ideas presented by Wordsworth in Lyrical Ballads?

 He does not agree with the idea of ‘language of the rustics’ and selection

 He does not agree with the content of Wordsworth’s poems and his form

 He did not like that he had only 4 poems in the collection

 He did not like Wordsworth’s credit hogging ideas

50. Which of the following statements of Coleridge is not true?

 Rhyme is the soul of poetry

 Meter is the basic difference between prose and poetry

 Content is superficial, what matters is form

 Language has no role to play in poetry

51. While Wordsworth gave the theory of poetic diction in Lyrical Ballads, which theory does Coleridge put forth in Biographia Literaria.

 Theory of Creative Imagination

 Theory of Creativity

 Theory of Imagination

 Theory of Suspension of Disbelief

52. What is the basic premise of Coleridge in his work Biographia Literaria?

 Defines objective and subjective as nature and self

 Denouncing Wordsworth

 Defines poetry as golden and world as brazen

 Wants poetry to lead society

53. Which of the following is not true about Coleridge’s idea of fancy?

 Fancy is a pejorative term for him

 Fancy is of a lower faculty than imagination

 Fancy developed from the eighteenth century idea of the mechanical

 Fancy is of a higher faculty than imagination

54. What does Shelley in his essay A Defence of Poetry call “the highest political hope that it can enter into the mind of man to conceive”?

 The universal suffragette movement

 Abolition of personal slavery

 The worker’s revolution

 The colonial expansion of Great Britain

55. According to Shelley, Chaucer was writing when the English language was in its:

 Infancy

 Adolescence

 Adulthood

 Old age

56. The chief reason that Romantic poets could harbour revolutionary sentiments, and state pleasure as the supreme function of poetry is because:

 Art was starting to be consumed only for leisure

 There was a clear split in the fields of culture and politics

 They didn’t require patronage from the court and the church

 The poets were all outlawed from contemporary society

57. According to Shelley, “Tragedy delights by affording a”:

 Isolating pangs of pain from delights of pleasure

 Shadow of the pleasure which exists in pain

 View of pleasure as composed of pain

 View of the world that is independent of pain and pleasure

58. Which of the following events does Shelley think would have exacerbated if not for poetry?

 A mindless pursuit of life filled with hedonism

 An extremely Epicurean way of life filled with unlimited cons umption

 Implementation of severe austerity measures in society

 More nonsense being spoken, and more women and children burnt as heretics

59. According to Matthew Arnold, which of the following is the most important quality that a literary critic must possess?

 Passion

 discernment

 disinterestedness

 insightfulness

60. What does Matthew Arnold consider to be the two most prevalent critical fallacies?

 Personal and political estimate

 Historic and social estimate

 Biographical and personal estimate

 Personal and historic estimate

61. Matthew Arnold contends that when it comes to distinction, “Everything depends on the reality of a poet’s ……….”

 Moral character

 Classic character

 Social character

 Inherent character

62. Which of the following preachers does Matthew Arnold quote as saying “To make reason and the will of God prevail!”?

 Bishop Wilson

 Bishop Temple

 Bishop Benson

 Bishop Davidson

63. Arnold perceives his contemporary culture, in comparison to that of the classical age, as being more:

 spiritual and internal

 utilitarian and moral

 mechanical and external

 aesthetic and utilitarian

64. What makes Eliot’s work “Tradition and Individual Talent” so different from the others?

 Combination of literary modernism and political conservatism

 Combination of modernistic style and classical language

 Combination of criticism and theory

 Combination of personal experience and literariness.

65. What makes tradition more agreeable and modern?

 Science

 Archeology

 Anthropology

 Literature

66. Which of the following is not true with respect to tradition?

 Tradition cannot be blindly imitated

 Tradition cannot be inherited

 Tradition is obtained by great labour

 Tradtion is intrinsic to the author

67. Eliot compares a poet to which of the following?

 Catalyst

 Chemical

 Buffer

 Inert