1. He "sacrifices virtue to convenience... he seems to write without moral purpose". Who made this observation about Shakespeare?
Correct Answer: (c) Samuel Johnson
2. Which of the following authors belong to the Augustan age?
I. Richard Steele
II. Oliver Goldsmith
III. Alexander Pope
IV. Jonathan Swift
I. Richard Steele
II. Oliver Goldsmith
III. Alexander Pope
IV. Jonathan Swift
Correct Answer: (c) I, III and IV
3. Which of the following is NOT a poem written by Alexander Pope?
Correct Answer: (a) The Dream
4. Who is the author of the critical study Restoration Comedy?
Correct Answer: (b) Bonamy Dobree
5. Who is author of the satire A Modest Proposal?
Correct Answer: (d) Jonathan Swift
6. 21. Match the following authors and books (Rearrange the second column in the right order)
I. Henry Fielding 1. Joseph Andrews
II. Alexander Pope 2. Essay on Criticism
III. Jonathan Swift 3. Drapier's Letters
IV. Samuel Richardson 4. Pamela
I. Henry Fielding 1. Joseph Andrews
II. Alexander Pope 2. Essay on Criticism
III. Jonathan Swift 3. Drapier's Letters
IV. Samuel Richardson 4. Pamela
Correct Answer: (c) 1, 2, 3, 4
7. Who gives Baron a pair of scissors in Rape of the Lock?
Correct Answer: (a) Clarissa
8. Which of the following terms is NOT appropriate for Rape of the Lock?
Correct Answer: (c) Epic
9. Which of the following is NOT written by Jonathan Swift?
Correct Answer: (d) Cato
10. Who founded The Spectator in 1711?
Correct Answer: (d) Addison and Steele
11. Which of the following was a magistrate?
Correct Answer: (b) Henry Fielding
12. Who is the creator of the island Lilliput?
Correct Answer: (c) Jonathan Swift
13. In which novel Gradgrind and Bounderby are characters?
Correct Answer: (a) Hard Times
14. Which of the following is an epistolary novel?
Correct Answer: (c) Clarissa
15. Who is the author of the novel A Pair of Blue Eyes?
Correct Answer: (b) Thomas Hardy
16. Into how many books is the novel Tom Jones divided?
Correct Answer: (d) 18
17. Who is the mother of Tom Jones in Fielding's novel?
Correct Answer: (c) Bridget Allworthy
18. What is an eponymous novel?
Correct Answer: (d) Named after a character in the work
19. Who is writer of the book Aspects of the Novel?
Correct Answer: (b) E. M. Forster
20. Which of the following is a distinctive feature of the Romantic poetry?
Correct Answer: (c) Expression of personality of the poet
21. Which of the following poets wrote an epic about Milton?
Correct Answer: (a) William Blake
22. "And we are put on earth a little space,/ That we may learn to bear the beams of love". From which poem of Blake is this quote taken?
Correct Answer: (b) The Little Black Boy
23. Which of the following poems by William Blake is shortest?
Correct Answer: (d) The Sick Rose
24. How many poems written by William Wordsworth were included in the first edition of Lyrical Ballads?
Correct Answer: (c) 19
25. In which poem of S T Coleridge does 'albatross' appear as a symbolic presence?
Correct Answer: (b) The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
26. When was Coleridge's book Biographia Literaria first published?
Correct Answer: (c) 1817
27. Which of the following poems is written by Wordsworth?
Correct Answer: (a) The Prelude
28. Who has written the line "I love not Man the less, but Nature more" in one of his poems?
Correct Answer: (d) Lord Byron
29. Which poem was abandoned and left incomplete by John Keats?
Correct Answer: (a) Hyperion
30. Who does Shelley blame for Keats' death in Adonais?
Correct Answer: (b) The critics and reviewers
31. Who has written the poem "Ozymandias"?
Correct Answer: (c) P B Shelley
32. In which of the following poems, William Wordsworth refers to Dorothy Wordsworth?
Correct Answer: (b) Tintern Abbey
33. Which novel of Jane Austen was published first?
Correct Answer: (a) Sense and Sensibility
34. Which character in Pride and Prejudice observes "Happiness in marriage is entirely a matter of chance"?
Correct Answer: (b) Charlotte Lucas
35. What is the nationality of Sir Walter Scott?
Correct Answer: (c) Scottish
36. Which of the following novels is NOT written by Sir Walter Scott?
Correct Answer: (d) The Return of the Native
37. Which of the following is considered a Gothic novel?
Correct Answer: (b) Frankenstein
38. Which of the following novels belong to the Victorian Period?
I. Jane Eyre
II. The Pickwick Papers
III. Under the Greenwood Tree
IV. Orlando: A Biography
I. Jane Eyre
II. The Pickwick Papers
III. Under the Greenwood Tree
IV. Orlando: A Biography
Correct Answer: (d) I, II and III
39. Who has written the poem 'The Darkling Thrush'?
Correct Answer: (a) Thomas Hardy
40. Which is the last novel written by Thomas Hardy?
Correct Answer: (b) Jude the Obscure
41. "Where youth grows pale, spectre thin, and dies;/ Where but to think is to be full of sorrow". Who is the writer of this line?
Correct Answer: (d) John Keats
42. Which of the following poems is written by Thomas Hardy?
Correct Answer: (c) The Oxen
43. Which poem of Robert Browning preaches that promises must be kept?
Correct Answer: (b) The Pied Piper of Hamelin
44. Which of the following poems of Robert Browning is known for its obscurity?
Correct Answer: (a) Sordello
45. "God's in his heaven -All's right with the world". In which work of Robert Browning this assertion is made?
Correct Answer: (a) Pippa Passes
46. Who has written Aurora Leigh?
Correct Answer: (d) Elizabeth B Browning
47. When were the lectures making up "On Heroes, Hero worship and Heroic in History" delivered in public?
Correct Answer: (b) 1840
48. How many chapters are there in the book Unto this Last
Correct Answer: (a) 4
49. Match the following authors and books (Rearrange the second column in the right order)
I. John Ruskin 1. In Memoriam
II. Thomas Carlyle 2. The French Revolution
III. E B Browning 3. Aurora Leigh
IV. Alfred Tennyson 4. Unto This Last
I. John Ruskin 1. In Memoriam
II. Thomas Carlyle 2. The French Revolution
III. E B Browning 3. Aurora Leigh
IV. Alfred Tennyson 4. Unto This Last
Correct Answer: (b) 4, 2, 3, 1
50. Who is the author of Sesame and Lilies?
Correct Answer: (c) John Ruskin
51. Who is the author of the novel The Monk: A Romance?
Correct Answer: (d) Matthew Gregory Lewis
52. Who does 'Una' in Florence Nightingale's Una and the Lion represent?
Correct Answer: (b) Agnes Elizabeth Jones
53. What is the most distinctive characteristic of "Art for art's sake" movement?
Correct Answer: (c) That art should eschew any utilitarian motive
54. Which novelist makes her heroine assert: "I am no bird; and no net ensnares me: I am a free human being with an independent will"?
Correct Answer: (a) Charlotte Bronte
55. Who is the protagonist of the novel Wuthering Heights?
Correct Answer: (d) Heathcliff
56. In which novel of Thomas Hardy Fanny Robin, Boldwood and Troy are characters?
Correct Answer: (c) Far from the Madding Crowd
57. Who is Pip's benefactor in Charles Dickens' novel Great Expectations?
Correct Answer: (b) Abel Magwitch
58. What is the meaning of the word 'Gerontion' in T S Eliot's poem?
Correct Answer: (a) A little old man
59. In which of his essays T S Eliot asserts that "Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion"?
Correct Answer: (b) Tradition and Individual Talent
60. In which poem of Eliot, the speaker remarks, "I have measured out my life with coffee spoons"?
Correct Answer: (a) Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock
61. Virginia Woolf's novel The Waves has soliloquies by some characters. How many characters speak?
Correct Answer: (c) 6
62. What kind of fiction did Virginia Woolf write?
Correct Answer: (d) Stream of consciousness
63. Which is the river alluded to in Heart of Darkness?
Correct Answer: (a) Congo
64. What is Nostromo in Conrad's novel?
Correct Answer: (c) Name of a Character
65. Which of the following is written by E M Forster?
Correct Answer: (a) A Room with a View
66. What happens to Mrs Moore in the end in A Passage to India?
Correct Answer: (b) She dies on the ship
67. Match the following authors and books (Rearrange the second column in the right order)
I. E. M. Forster 1. Under Western Eyes
II. James Joyce 2. Where Angels Fear to Tread
III. D H Lawrence 3. Dubliners
IV. Joseph Conrad 4. Sons and Lovers
I. E. M. Forster 1. Under Western Eyes
II. James Joyce 2. Where Angels Fear to Tread
III. D H Lawrence 3. Dubliners
IV. Joseph Conrad 4. Sons and Lovers
Correct Answer: (d) 2, 3, 4, 1
68. Match the following characters and novels they appear in (Rearrange the second column in the right order)
I. Adela Quested 1. Lord Jim
II. Oliver Mellors 2. Ulysses
III. Marlow 3. A Passage to India
IV. Molly Bloom 4. Lady Chatterley's Lover
I. Adela Quested 1. Lord Jim
II. Oliver Mellors 2. Ulysses
III. Marlow 3. A Passage to India
IV. Molly Bloom 4. Lady Chatterley's Lover
Correct Answer: (a) 3, 4, 1, 2
69. Who is disguised as a swan in Yeats' poem "Leda and Swan"?
Correct Answer: (c) Zeus
70. "Labour is blossoming or dancing where/ the body is not bruised to pleasure the soul,/ Nor beauty born out of its own despair..." From which poem of Yeats, these lines are taken?
Correct Answer: (b) Among School Children
71. Who was involved in setting up of Irish Literary Theatre?
Correct Answer: (d) All three of them above
72. In which play of G B Shaw King Magnus and Joe Proteus are main characters?
Correct Answer: (b) The Apple Cart
73. "Happy is the man who can make a living by his hobby." From which play of G B Shaw this quote has been taken?
Correct Answer: (a) Pygmalion
74. In which of the following plays, Raina, Bluntschli and Sergius are the main characters?
Correct Answer: (d) Arms and the man
75. Who, of the following, published his early work under the pseudonym Brunette Coleman?
Correct Answer: (b) Philip Larkin
76. Match the following poets and their works (Rearrange the second column in the right order)
I. Stevie Smith 1. An Arundel Tomb
II. Philip Larkin 2. Death of a Naturalist
III. Seamus Heaney 3. The Hawk in the Rain
IV. Ted Hughes 4. Novel on Yellow Paper
I. Stevie Smith 1. An Arundel Tomb
II. Philip Larkin 2. Death of a Naturalist
III. Seamus Heaney 3. The Hawk in the Rain
IV. Ted Hughes 4. Novel on Yellow Paper
Correct Answer: (a) 4, 1, 2, 3
77. Who is writer of the poem "The Thought Fox"?
Correct Answer: (c) Ted Hughes
78. Which of the following is written by Stevie Smith?
Correct Answer: (a) Not Waving but Drowning
79. Which of the following is written by Eavan Boland?
Correct Answer: (d) A Woman without a Country
80. Who is writer of the essay "Politics and the English Language"?
Correct Answer: (c) George Orwell
81. Which of the following is dystopian novel?
Correct Answer: (b) Nineteen Eighty-four
82. Match the following novelists and their works (Rearrange the second column in the right order)
I. George Orwell 1. The Fifth Child
II. William Golding 2. Homage to Catalonia
III. Graham Greene 3. The end of the Affair
IV. Doris Lessing 4. Lord of the Flies
I. George Orwell 1. The Fifth Child
II. William Golding 2. Homage to Catalonia
III. Graham Greene 3. The end of the Affair
IV. Doris Lessing 4. Lord of the Flies
Correct Answer: (c) 2, 4, 3, 1
83. Which regime is satirised in Animal Farm?
Correct Answer: (d) Russian Revolution
84. Which of the following novelists was born in India?
Correct Answer: (a) George Orwell
85. In which of the following novels, Whisky Priest is an important character?
Correct Answer: (d) The Power and the Glory
86. In which country was Doris Lessing born?
Correct Answer: (b) Iran
87. Which of the following writers did not win the Noble Prize?
Correct Answer: (c) Salman Rushdie
88. In which of the following novels, Salim, Zabeth, Ferdinand and Big Man are characters?
Correct Answer: (d) Bend In the River
89. Which country did Stephen Leacock belong to?
Correct Answer: (a) Canada
90. What, according to Aristotle, is the soul of tragedy?
Correct Answer: (b) Plot
91. What is 'rhapsody'?
Correct Answer: (b) Enthusiastic expression of feeling
92. What does the term 'denouement' of a play mean?
Correct Answer: (c) The resolution of the sequence of events
93. What figure of speech has been used in the sentence, "The pen is mightier than sword"?
Correct Answer: (a) Metonymy
94. What is 'bildungsroman'?
Correct Answer: (c) Story of growth of a person from childhood to maturity
95. What meter does 'blank verse' usually employ?
Correct Answer: (b) Unrhymed iambic pentameter
96. What is 'diction' in a literary work?
Correct Answer: (a) Choice of words used in it
97. What constitutes 'elision' in a poem?
Correct Answer: (d) Deliberate omission of one or more sounds
98. What does the term 'Hamartia' mean?
Correct Answer: (c) A tendency 'to err' in a tragic character
99. For which authors the epithet 'lost generation' is often used?
Correct Answer: (a) Expatriate Americans living in Paris in 1920's
100. What is 'onomatopoeia'?
Correct Answer: (c) Forming a word by imitating the sound made by its referent
101. What are the sounds produced with the lip and teeth called?
Correct Answer: (c) Labio-dental
102. How is the vowel phoneme in word 'fool' described?
Correct Answer: (b) Back, close rounded
103. How many centring diphthongs are there in English?
Correct Answer: (d) 3
104. What is the total number of semi-vowel consonant phonemes in English?
Correct Answer: (a) 2
105. In which of the following words, the first sound is a 'voiceless, dental fricative'?
Correct Answer: (b) Thin
106. What is the nature of release stage in production of 'Affricate' phonemes?
Correct Answer: (c) Accompanied by friction
107. How is the final phoneme in the English word 'thousand' described?
Correct Answer: (a) Voiced alveolar plosive
108. How many monophthongs are there in R. P. English?
Correct Answer: (b) 12
109. What is the position of vocal folds while eating or drinking?
Correct Answer: (a) Tightly closed
110. What produces a nasalised sound?
Correct Answer: (d) Velum is lowered to allow free airflow
111. What is not a component of Saussurean concept of linguistic sign?
Correct Answer: (c) Referent
112. What is the area of study of Morphology?
Correct Answer: (b) Words and rules of their formation
113. What type of affix is 'sub' in the word 'insubordination'?
Correct Answer: (c) Prefix
114. What is the area of study 'psycholinguistics'?
Correct Answer: (a) Mental aspects of language
115. When were Chomsky's 'phrase structure rules' first proposed?
Correct Answer: (b) 1957
116. Which branch of linguistics deals with the study of mutual interactions of society and language?
Correct Answer: (a) Sociolinguistics
117. What is sociolinguistic competence?
Correct Answer: (c) Ability to use language as per social context
118. How is the first phoneme in English word 'wine' classified?
Correct Answer: (a) Voiced labiovelar approximant
119. What is distinctive of a dialect?
Correct Answer: (d) All of the above
120. What is a variety of language, used in a specific communicative situation for particular purpose, called in sociolinguistics?
Correct Answer: (c) Register
121. In which of the following novels, Saleem Sinai is the protagonist?
Correct Answer: (b) Midnight's Children
122. Which of the following books is written by Mulk Raj Anand?
Correct Answer: (c) Seven Summers
123. Who is the writer of the novel In a Free State?
Correct Answer: (a) V S Naipaul
124. In which of the following novels, Margayya is the protagonist?
Correct Answer: (d) The Financial Expert
125. Which of the following poems is NOT written by Sarojini Naidu?
Correct Answer: (a) Waiting
126. In which year was Rabindranath Tagore's work Dak Ghar first published?
Correct Answer: (c) 1912
127. For which of the following novels, the term 'sthala-purana' is used?
Correct Answer: (d) Kanthapura
128. Who has written the novel Fasting, feasting?
Correct Answer: (a) Anita Desai
129. Which, of the following, does the novel In Custody deal with?
Correct Answer: (d) Sordid life of a poet
130. In which novel does R K Narayan employ the myth of Bhasmasura?
Correct Answer: (b) The Man-Eater of Malgudi
131. Who is the writer of the book India: A Wounded civilisation?
Correct Answer: (d) V S Naipaul
132. Who wrote the introduction to Gitanjanli: Song offerings, the English translation of Rabindranath Tagore's poems?
Correct Answer: (b) William Butler Yeats
133. Which of the following authors employs parapsychology and communication with the dead wife of the protagonist as a background to the plot of a novel?
Correct Answer: (c) R K Narayan
134. In which of the following novels, Hukum Chand, the District magistrate, is a major character?
Correct Answer: (a) The Train to Pakistan
135. Match the following authors and books (Rearrange the second column in the right order)
I. Khushwant Singh 1. Grandmother's Tale
II. Sarojini Naidu 2. Truth, Love and a Little Malice
III. R K Narayan 3. The Broken Wing
IV. Mulk Raj Anand 4. The Morning Face
I. Khushwant Singh 1. Grandmother's Tale
II. Sarojini Naidu 2. Truth, Love and a Little Malice
III. R K Narayan 3. The Broken Wing
IV. Mulk Raj Anand 4. The Morning Face
Correct Answer: (d) 2, 3, 1, 4
136. Which of the following authors was the first winner of Sahitya Akademi Award (English)?
Correct Answer: (b) R K Narayan
137. Who has written, The Twice Born Fiction, a critical work on Indian Writing in English?
Correct Answer: (a) Meenakshi Mukherjee
138. Which of the following writers collaborated during the Jacobean era?
Correct Answer: (b) Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
139. Whose reign is referred to as Caroline era in English and Scottish history?
Correct Answer: (a) Charles I
140. Which of the following are regarded cavalier poets?
I. Thomas Carew
II. Ben Jonson
III. Richard Lovelace
IV. John Suckling
I. Thomas Carew
II. Ben Jonson
III. Richard Lovelace
IV. John Suckling
Correct Answer: (d) I, III and IV
141. Which of the following is regarded as a major writer of Restoration comedy?
Correct Answer: (b) William Wycherley
142. In which John Donne poem, the line, "love, all alike, no season knows, nor clime", occurs?
Correct Answer: (a) The Sun Rising
143. "When by thy ...., O murd'ress, I am dead/ And that thou think'st thee free..." What is the missing word in this line from a John Donne poem?
Correct Answer: (d) scorn
144. In which poem does John Donne argue "Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind"?
Correct Answer: (d) No Man is an Island
145. What was John Donne's professional position at the time of his death?
Correct Answer: (b) Dean of St. Paul's
146. When was John Milton's Paradise Lost first published?
Correct Answer: (c) 1667
147. Who does Milton invoke for inspiration in Paradise Lost book 1?
Correct Answer: (d) The Holy Spirit
148. How can Milton's poem "Lycidas" be best described?
Correct Answer: (a) A pastoral elegy
149. Which of the following writings by Milton is regarded as a defence of freedom of speech?
Correct Answer: (c) Areopagitica
150. What caused to the closure of theatres in England in 1642?
Correct Answer: (a) An order by Long Parliament
