English Literature Mcqs

Samuel Johnson’s Rasselas most fundamentally emphasizes which theme from Johnson’s other works or other 18thcentury works ?

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Samuel Johnson’s Rasselas most fundamentally emphasizes which theme from Johnson’s other works or other 18thcentury works ?

A. The need for linguistic correctness as exemplified in his Dictionary
B. The promise of universal knowledge as epitomized by the Encyclopédie
C. The ultimate impossibility of achieving hapess, as espoused in his poem “The Vanity of Human Wishes”
D. The need for self-sufficiency as detailed in novels like Robinson Crusoe

In Pamela, how does the epistolary style enhance the sentimental aspects of the novel ?

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In Pamela, how does the epistolary style enhance the sentimental aspects of the novel ?

A. It provides access to the heroine’s innermost reactions.
B. It does not cloud the novel with authorial intrusion that confuses the emotions.
C. It provides a sense of immediacy because the letters are written in the thick of the action.
D. All of these answers

Complete the following sentence. In the opening lines of Gerard Manley Hopkins’s “The Windhover,” the words “daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon” ?

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Complete the following sentence. In the opening lines of Gerard Manley Hopkins’s “The Windhover,” the words “daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon” ?

A. are an example of antithesis to suggest the falcon’s contradictory nature.
B. use alliterative language to draw attention to the falcon’s importance as a symbol of Christ.
C. refer to the speaker’s heart.
D. indicate the speaker’s lack of faith.

How does this quotation from Behn’s Oroonoko most suggest its status as an early novel: “I do not pretend, in giving you the history of this Royal Slave, to entertain my reader with adventures of a feigned hero, whose life and fortunes fancy may manage at the poet’s pleasure.” ?

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How does this quotation from Behn’s Oroonoko most suggest its status as an early novel: “I do not pretend, in giving you the history of this Royal Slave, to entertain my reader with adventures of a feigned hero, whose life and fortunes fancy may manage at the poet’s pleasure.” ?

A. It focuses on a royal hero.
B. It denies being imagined in favor of claims of realism.
C. It focuses on adventures.
D. It connects to poetry.

Robinson Crusoe’s isolation on a deserted island allows Defoe to explore his development in which of the following ways ?

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Robinson Crusoe’s isolation on a deserted island allows Defoe to explore his development in which of the following ways ?

A. His relationship to God and Christianity
B. His understanding of the basis of economics
C. His ability to identify with the slaves he has sold
D. Both A and B

Complete the following sentence. Keats’s “Ode to a Nightingale” is characteristically Romantic because of_____________?

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Complete the following sentence. Keats’s “Ode to a Nightingale” is characteristically Romantic because of_____________?

A. its focus on his lost love.
B. its rejection of scientific progress.
C. its elaboration of the intersecting importance of nature and the imagination.
D. its development of elements from national folklore.

Complete the following sentence. Keats’s idea of “negative capability” refers to the idea that______________?

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Complete the following sentence. Keats’s idea of “negative capability” refers to the idea that______________?

A. certain people are simply incapable of understanding poetry.
B. the true poet must be comfortable with balancing conflicting ideas.
C. the poet cannot express anything beyond his own experience.
D. it is only in the absence of experience that true poetry can emerge.

Complete the following sentence. The politics of Radcliffe’s medieval settings______________?

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Complete the following sentence. The politics of Radcliffe’s medieval settings______________?

A. indicates her longing for the older aristocracy.
B. suggests her commitment to the Catholic Church.
C. is at odds with her explicit socialist politics.
D. implies that contemporary British society has overcome the institutions leading to the horrors its characters experience.

Complete the following sentence. Wordsworth’s advocacy of poets drawing on the “language really used by men” in his preface to Lyrical Ballads represents______________?

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Complete the following sentence. Wordsworth’s advocacy of poets drawing on the “language really used by men” in his preface to Lyrical Ballads represents______________?

A. a radical break with 18th-century rules on elevated diction.
B. a continuity with poets such as Alexander Pope.
C. a rejection of nature in favor of society.
D. a defense of the use of elaborate figurative language.