Literary Criticism MCQs with Answers

• Aristotle and plato belonged to ________ Phase of criticism.

(a) Greco-Roman
(b) Hellenistic
(c) Renaissance
(d) Romantic

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• “SYMPOSIUM” WAS WRITTEN BY

(a) Greco-Roman
(b) Hellenistic
(c) Renaissance
(d) Romantic

Answer

• Who proposed that poets should be
  Banished from ideal republic.

(a) Aristotle
(b) Plato
(c) Socrates
(d) Dr. Johnson

Answer

• ACCORDING TO PLATO, WHAT IS THE MORAL
  PURPOSE OFART?

(a) To connect human beings with a higher ideal
(b) To entertain those who enjoy it
(c) To criticize society through satire
(d) To bring to light social oppressions
(e) All of the above answers are correct.

Answer

• How does Literary Theory resemble the practice of philosophy as it was developed by plato and Aristotle?

(a) Literary theory engages with theoretical rather than real-World isues.
(b) Literary theory asks fundamental questions about,literary interpretation, and at the same time builds specific systems of literary interpretation.
(c) Literary theory relies totally on speculation rather than history.
(d) Literary theory is detached from the reality of politics the economy.
(e) All of the above answers are correct

Answer

• Modern Literary Theory Began with the work of which the orist?

(a) Claude Lévi-Strauss
(b) Ferdinand de Saussure
(c) Viktor Shklovsky
(d) Roland Barthes
(e) Michel Foucault

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• What is mimesis?

WHAT IS MIMESIS?
(a) A reversal
(b) An imitation
(C) A satire
(d) A poetic metaphor
(e) A spectacle

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• What is the main function of literary theory?

(a) To understand the importance of the formal elementS of literary structure
(b) To formulate relationships among an author, a reader, and a literary work
(c) To understand the role of sexuality, gender, rate and ethnicity in literary study
(d) To evaluate the role of historical context in the interpretation of iterature
(e) All of the above answers are correct

Answer

• Which of the following best describe the difference between literary criticism and literary theroy?

(a) Literary criticism is concerned only with the meaning ofa literary
work, while literary theory is concerned only with the structure of a
literary work.
(b) Literary criticism draws upon research derived from sources outside
literature, while literary theory draws upon sources within a text.
(c) Literary critiçism is concerned with how characters in a text act, while
literary theory is concerned with why characters act.
(d) Literary theory is concerned with the method used to interpret a
work, while literary criticism is the application of literary theory.
(e) All of the above answers are correct

Answer

• Which of the following literary the orists is most closely associated with the concept that became known as liberarl humanism?

(a) Aristotle
(b) Viktor Shklovsky
(c) Cleanth Brooks
(d) Stanley Fish
(e) Toni Morrison

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• Which theorist is most closely associated with the idea of artas imitation?

(a) Jacques Derrida
(b) Jacques Lacan
(c) Edward Said
(d) Stephen Greenblatt
(e) Plato

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• What is Humanism?

(a) An idea traditionally associated with the Renaissance
(b) A humanity-centered view of the universe
(C) A school of theory devoted to the revival of Classical (ancient Greek and Roman) literature
(d) A theory that values restraint, form, and imitation
(e) All of the above answers are correct.
AUte

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• Which school of literary theroy shows a particular intersest in the role of testimony in literature?

(a) Trauma theory
(b) Ecotheory
(c) Chaos theory
(d) Formalism
(e) Marxist theory

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• DETRACTORS ARGUE THAT SUCH AN APPROACH CAN BETOO
  JUDGMENTAL.” SOME BELIEVE LITERATURE SHOULD BE JUDGED
  PRIMARILY (IF NOT SOLELY) ON ITS ARTISTIC MERITS. WHAT
  APPROACH POSSESS THIS DISADVANTAGE?

(a) Psychological
(b) Formalism/New Criticism
(c) Moral/Philosophical
(d) Historical/Biographical

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• Plato used the word mimesis in Relation to literature with the meaning?

(a) Copying
(b) Criticism of life
(c) Representation
(d) Interpretation

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• Horace was a ______________.

(A) Greek writer
(B) Roman Writer
(C) Italian writer
(D) English writer

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• IN DRYDEN’S ESSAY OF DRAMATIC POESY THERE ARE FOUR
  INTERLOCUTERS REPRESENTING FOUR DIFFERENT IDEOLOGIES.
  WHICH OFTHEM EXPRESSES DRYDEN’S OWN VIEWS?

(A) Lisideius
(B) Eugenius
(C) Neander
(D) Crites

Answer

• What do many conemporary theorists find peroblematic about the literary canon?

(A) It includes too few works by non- European writers.
(B) It includes too few works by non-white writers.
(C) It includes too few works by women.
(D) All of the above answers are correct.

Answer

• What did sigmund freud believe about the unconscious?

(a) a. It contains secret instincts and desires that are repressed.
(b) It is the only significant aspect of the human psyche.
(c) It can never be accessed.
(d) All of the above answers are correct.

Answer

• In her Essay “The poem as Event,” Louise M.Rosenblatt seesthe reader as performing what function?

(a) The reader participates in a transaction with the text.
(b) The reader is acted upon by the text.
(c) The reader acts upon the text.
(d) All of the above answers are correct.

Answer

• How did the new critics view literature?

(a) As an aesthetic object that is independent of historical context
(b) As an aesthetic object that is influenced by historical context
(c) As a historical object that is also aesthetid
(d) As a historical object that is not necessarily aesthetic

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• What do structuralist and formalist crtics have in common?

(a) Both sets of critics reject the importance of historical context in studying literature.
(b) Both sets of critics look for an objective way to view texts.
(c) Both sets of critics study the underlying forms of texts.
(d) Both sets of critics focus on evaluating literature in a scientific
manner.
(e) All of the above answers are correct.

Answer

• What is avvective fallacy?

(a) A term first used by literary theorists William Wimsatt and Monroe Beardsley
(b) A term that suggests that a critic should study the structural and thematic elements of a poem rather than the effect it has on the emotions of the reader
(C) A term that describes the confusion between a poem and its result
(d) An important term in the field of New Histaicisa
(e) All of the above answers are correct

Answer

• Which of the following descriptions best defines the literary theory known as formalism?

(a) An approach that emphasizes literary devices in a text
(b) An approach that emphasizes the historical context of a text
(c) An approach that emphasizes the biographical intent of text
(d) An approach that emphasizes racial issues in a text
(e) An approach that emphasizes the representatiern of the economy in a text

Answer

• Which of the following figures is considered to be the father of the ligusitic theory known as structuralism?

(a) Cleanth Brooks
(b) Ferdinand de Saussure
(c) Karl Marx
(d) Sigmund Freud
(e) Toni Morrison

Answer

• Which of the followinf texts is the best example of the argument that a work’s meaning does not come entirely from the imagination of the author?

(a) Plato’s The Republic
(b) T.S. Eliot’s “Tradition and the Individual Talent”
(C) Jacques Derrida’s Of Grammatology
(d) Roland Barthes’s “The Death of the Author”
(e) Jacques Lacan’s “The Mirror Stage… ”

Answer

• Which of the following texts provides the best example of defamiliarization?

(a) Aristotle’s Poetics
(b) Leo Tolstoy’s The Kreutzer Sonata
(c) John Keats’s “Ode on a Grecian Urn”
(d) Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness
(e) W.E.B. Du Bois’s The Souls of Black Folk

Answer

• Which of the following theorists is associated with formalism?

(a) Viktor Shklovsky
(b) Cleanth Brooks
(c) Terry Eagleton
(d) Judith Butler
(e) Mikhail Bakhtin

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• Which school of literary theory is associated with the pharese ” To make the Stones Sonier”?

(a) Humanism
(b) Formalism
(c) Structuralism
(d) Poststructuralism
(e) Marxism

Answer

• What is the central idea of FERDINAND DE
  SAUSSURE’S course in general lingusistics?

(a) Language is inseparable from its historical context.
(b) There are five phases of linguistic development.
(c) Language can be analyzed as a formal system elements.
(d) Linguistics is too complicated to be distilled to a formula.
(e) All of the above answers are correct.

Answer

• ACCORDING TO JACQUES LACAN, THE MIRROR STAGE
  ISTHE POINT AT WHICH A CHILD:

(a) refuses maternal bonds.
(b) is able to separate the “” from the “Other.”
(c) looks into a mirror for the first time.
(d) first engages with speech.
(e) All of the above answers are correct.

Answer

• TO WHAT IDEA DOES THE ANCIENT GREEK TERM
  APORIA REFER IN TERMS OF DECONSTRUCTION THEORY?

(a) The ability of a text to contain truth
(b) The “undecidability” and essentially unstable nature of a text
(c) The idea that a text has a specific meaning that be understood through a process of deconstructid
(d) Jacques Derrida’s style of writing
(e) All of the above answers are correct.

Answer

• ULTIMATELY, THE LITERARY THEORY OF
  DECONSTRUCTION ARGUES THAT:

(a) the meaning of a text always relies on context.
(b) texts are always heterogeneous.
(C) the instability of a text is actually evident in the text itself.
(d) any system for the production of meaning is inevitably bound by context, yet also limitless.
(e) All of the above answers are correct

Answer

• THE MOST IMPORTANT ELEMENT OF A
  TRAGEDY, IN ARISTOTLE’S VIEW, IS

(a) Catharsis
(b) Plot
(c) Characters
(d) Diction

Answer

• WHICH ACADEMY COLLEAGUE LEFT WITH ARISTOTLE
  AFTER PLATO’S DEATH AND ACCOMPANIED HIM IN SOME
  OF HIS TRAVELS?

(A) Xenocrates
(B) Antipater
(C) Pixodarus
(D) Hermeias

Answer

• ARISTOTLE IS CONSIDERED THE FOUNDER
  OF WHAT?

(A) Modern Biology
(B) Modern Physics
(C) Modern Chemistry
(D) Modern Anatomy

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• WHO MADE A DIFFERENCE BETWEEN POETRY’ AND ‘POEM

(A) Coleridge
(B) Addison
(C) Arnold
(D) None

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• WORDS wORTH’S PREFACE TO THE LYRICAL BALLADS IS
  BELIEVED TO BETHE PREAMBLE TO ROMANTIC CRITICISM. IN WHICHYEAR WAS IT PUBLISHED?

(A) 1798
(B) 1800
(C) 1801
(D) 1802

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• GYNOCRITICISM’ IS ASSOCIATED WITH

(A) Elaine Showalter
(B) Ellen Moors
(C) Julia Kristeva
(D) Kate Millet

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• THE END OFWRITING IS TO INSTRUCT, THE
  END OF POETRY IS TO INSTRUCT BY PLEASING.”
  WHOSE VIEW IS THIS?

(A) Wordsworth’s
(B) Coleridge’s
(C) Dr. Johnson’s
(D) Matthew Arnold’s

Answer

• POETIC DICTION WAS TAKEN TO BETHE
  STANDARD LANGUAGE FOR POETRY IN:

(A) The Elizabethan Age
(B) The Neo- Classical Age
(C) The Romantic Age
(D) The Victorian Age

Answer

• THE TERM ELECTRA COMPLEX HAS ORIGINATED
  FROMATRAGEDY ENTITLED ELECTRA. WHO IS
  THE AUTHOR OF THIS TRAGEDY?

(A) Aeschylus
(B) Sophocles
(C) Euripides
(D) Seneca

Answer

• WHO REMARKED, “NO SPENSER NO
  LANGUAGE.”

(A) Pope
(B) Arnold
(C) Dr. Johnson
(D) Ben Jonson

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• WHO WAS THE MOST ILLUSTRIOUS DISCIPLE OF SOCRATES?

(A) Sophocles
(B) Plautus
(C) Plato
(D) Critus

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• ARISTOTLE BELIEVED, unlike PLATO that art is

(a) Greco-Roman
(b) Imitation
(c) Classic
(d) Romantic

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• ACCORDING TO ARISTOTLE, TRAGEDY CAME FROM THE EFFORTS OF
  POETSTO PRESENT MEN AS ‘NOBLER,’ OR ‘BETTER’THANTHEY ARE IN ___________.

(a) Imagination
(b) Real Life
(c) Heaven
(d) Hades

Answer

• COMEDY, ON THE OTHER HAND, SHOWSA ‘LOWER TYPE’
  OF PERSON, AND REVEALS HUMANS TO BE _________ THAN THEY ARE IN AVERAGE

(a) Better
(b) Greater
(c) Worse
(d) Romantic

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• ARISTOTLE LAYS OUT ELEMENTS OF
  TRAGEDY

(a) 2
(b) 6
(c) 8
(d) 10

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• 6 ELEMENTS ARE PLOT, CHARACTER,
  DICTION, THOUGHT, AND SONG.

(a) Theme
(b) Story
(c) Spectacle
(d) Review

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• ACCORDING TO ARISTOTLE, PLOT IS THE
  OF TRAGEDY

(a) Theme
(b) Story
(c) Soul
(d) Review

Answer

Answer

• ACCORDING TO ARISTOTLE, PLOT MUST
  HAVE ________.

(a) Beginning, Middle, End
(b) Middle, End
(c) Beginning, Middle
(d) Beginning, End

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• CORDING TO ARISTOTLE, PERIPATETIA
  MEANS _____.

(a) Reversal
(b) Discovery
(c) Song
(d) Situation

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• _______ is an Ironic twist or change by which the mainaction of the story comes full circle.

(a) Reversal
(b) Discovery
(c) Song
(d) Situation

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