1. Home
  2. GK Questions
  3. English Literature
  4. American Literary Periods & Movements

American Literary Periods & Movements — GK Questions with Answers

Current Affairs 2026 Today's GK Quiz Static GK हिन्दी
32 questions
  1. The first published American poet was —
    1. Edward Taylor
    2. Anne Bradstreet
    3. Phillis Wheatley
    4. Philip Freneau
    Show answer

    Answer: (B) Anne Bradstreet

    Anne Bradstreet, The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America (1650).

  2. Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God was preached by —
    1. Cotton Mather
    2. Jonathan Edwards
    3. William Bradford
    4. Increase Mather
    Show answer

    Answer: (B) Jonathan Edwards

    Jonathan Edwards, 1741, in the Great Awakening.

  3. The hero of the Leatherstocking Tales is —
    1. Rip Van Winkle
    2. Natty Bumppo
    3. Ichabod Crane
    4. Uncas
    Show answer

    Answer: (B) Natty Bumppo

    Natty Bumppo, also called Hawkeye and Deerslayer, in Cooper’s five novels.

  4. "The American Scholar" was delivered by —
    1. Thoreau
    2. Emerson
    3. Whitman
    4. Fuller
    Show answer

    Answer: (B) Emerson

    Emerson, 1837 — called America’s intellectual declaration of independence.

  5. The "transparent eyeball" image appears in —
    1. Walden
    2. Nature
    3. Self-Reliance
    4. The Over-Soul
    Show answer

    Answer: (B) Nature

    Emerson’s Nature (1836).

  6. Thoreau’s "Civil Disobedience" directly influenced —
    1. Lincoln
    2. Gandhi
    3. Roosevelt
    4. Jefferson
    Show answer

    Answer: (B) Gandhi

    Gandhi, and through him Martin Luther King Jr.

  7. The "American Renaissance" refers to —
    1. the 16th century in England
    2. the years around 1850–1855 in America
    3. the Harlem Renaissance
    4. post-war American writing
    Show answer

    Answer: (B) the years around 1850–1855 in America

    F. O. Matthiessen’s name for the five years that produced The Scarlet Letter, Moby-Dick, Walden and Leaves of Grass.

  8. The first modern detective story is generally held to be —
    1. "The Tell-Tale Heart"
    2. "The Murders in the Rue Morgue"
    3. "The Gold-Bug"
    4. "The Purloined Letter"
    Show answer

    Answer: (B) "The Murders in the Rue Morgue"

    Poe’s "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" (1841), introducing Dupin.

  9. Moby-Dick is dedicated to —
    1. Emerson
    2. Hawthorne
    3. Whitman
    4. Poe
    Show answer

    Answer: (B) Hawthorne

    Melville dedicated it to Nathaniel Hawthorne.

  10. Leaves of Grass was first published in —
    1. 1845
    2. 1855
    3. 1865
    4. 1875
    Show answer

    Answer: (B) 1855

    1855; Whitman kept revising it for the rest of his life.

  1. Which poet is known for slant rhyme and dashes, with only about ten poems published in her lifetime?
    1. Marianne Moore
    2. Emily Dickinson
    3. Anne Bradstreet
    4. Amy Lowell
    Show answer

    Answer: (B) Emily Dickinson

    Emily Dickinson, who left nearly 1,800 poems.

  2. "All modern American literature comes from one book called Huckleberry Finn" was said by —
    1. Faulkner
    2. Hemingway
    3. Fitzgerald
    4. Steinbeck
    Show answer

    Answer: (B) Hemingway

    The judgement is Hemingway’s.

  3. The "international theme" is associated with —
    1. Mark Twain
    2. Henry James
    3. Edith Wharton
    4. William Dean Howells
    Show answer

    Answer: (B) Henry James

    Henry James — Americans encountering Europe.

  4. Naturalism differs from realism chiefly in its —
    1. use of dialect
    2. determinism
    3. regional settings
    4. first-person narration
    Show answer

    Answer: (B) determinism

    Naturalism adds determinism — heredity and environment decide.

  5. The Red Badge of Courage was written by —
    1. Frank Norris
    2. Stephen Crane
    3. Theodore Dreiser
    4. Jack London
    Show answer

    Answer: (B) Stephen Crane

    Stephen Crane, 1895.

  6. The Jungle (1906), which exposed the meat-packing industry, is by —
    1. Dreiser
    2. Upton Sinclair
    3. Norris
    4. London
    Show answer

    Answer: (B) Upton Sinclair

    Upton Sinclair — a muckraking novel.

  7. The phrase "the Lost Generation" is attributed to —
    1. Hemingway
    2. Gertrude Stein
    3. Fitzgerald
    4. Pound
    Show answer

    Answer: (B) Gertrude Stein

    Gertrude Stein; Hemingway used it as the epigraph to The Sun Also Rises.

  8. Who named the "Jazz Age"?
    1. Hemingway
    2. F. Scott Fitzgerald
    3. Dos Passos
    4. Sinclair Lewis
    Show answer

    Answer: (B) F. Scott Fitzgerald

    Fitzgerald, whose Tales of the Jazz Age appeared in 1922.

  9. Hemingway’s "iceberg theory" means that —
    1. stories should be cold in tone
    2. most of the meaning is left unstated
    3. novels should be long
    4. dialogue should dominate
    Show answer

    Answer: (B) most of the meaning is left unstated

    Seven-eighths of the meaning lies below the surface.

  10. Faulkner’s fictional county is called —
    1. Jefferson
    2. Yoknapatawpha
    3. Winesburg
    4. Maycomb
    Show answer

    Answer: (B) Yoknapatawpha

    Yoknapatawpha County, with Jefferson as its county seat.

  1. The first American to win the Nobel Prize for Literature was —
    1. Eugene O’Neill
    2. Sinclair Lewis
    3. Pearl S. Buck
    4. William Faulkner
    Show answer

    Answer: (B) Sinclair Lewis

    Sinclair Lewis, in 1930.

  2. The manifesto of the Harlem Renaissance was —
    1. The Souls of Black Folk
    2. The New Negro
    3. Cane
    4. Home to Harlem
    Show answer

    Answer: (B) The New Negro

    Alain Locke’s anthology The New Negro (1925).

  3. "Double consciousness" was formulated by —
    1. Langston Hughes
    2. W. E. B. Du Bois
    3. Alain Locke
    4. Booker T. Washington
    Show answer

    Answer: (B) W. E. B. Du Bois

    Du Bois, in The Souls of Black Folk (1903).

  4. "What happens to a dream deferred?" opens a poem by —
    1. Countee Cullen
    2. Langston Hughes
    3. Claude McKay
    4. Jean Toomer
    Show answer

    Answer: (B) Langston Hughes

    Langston Hughes, in "Harlem".

  5. Imagism was founded by —
    1. T. S. Eliot
    2. Ezra Pound
    3. Amy Lowell
    4. William Carlos Williams
    Show answer

    Answer: (B) Ezra Pound

    Ezra Pound, who later gave it up when Amy Lowell took it over.

  6. "No ideas but in things" is the motto of —
    1. Wallace Stevens
    2. William Carlos Williams
    3. Marianne Moore
    4. Hart Crane
    Show answer

    Answer: (B) William Carlos Williams

    William Carlos Williams, in Paterson.

  7. The term "Beat Generation" was coined by —
    1. Allen Ginsberg
    2. Jack Kerouac
    3. William Burroughs
    4. Lawrence Ferlinghetti
    Show answer

    Answer: (B) Jack Kerouac

    Kerouac, playing on beaten down and beatific.

  8. "I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness" opens —
    1. On the Road
    2. Howl
    3. Naked Lunch
    4. Kaddish
    Show answer

    Answer: (B) Howl

    Allen Ginsberg’s Howl (1956).

  9. The term "confessional poetry" was coined by —
    1. Robert Lowell
    2. M. L. Rosenthal
    3. Sylvia Plath
    4. John Berryman
    Show answer

    Answer: (B) M. L. Rosenthal

    M. L. Rosenthal, reviewing Lowell’s Life Studies in 1959.

  10. Invisible Man (1952) was written by —
    1. Richard Wright
    2. Ralph Ellison
    3. James Baldwin
    4. Toni Morrison
    Show answer

    Answer: (B) Ralph Ellison

    Ralph Ellison.

  11. The first African American woman to win the Nobel Prize for Literature was —
    1. Alice Walker
    2. Maya Angelou
    3. Toni Morrison
    4. Zora Neale Hurston
    Show answer

    Answer: (C) Toni Morrison

    Toni Morrison, in 1993.

  12. Arrange chronologically: (i) The Great Gatsby (ii) Leaves of Grass (iii) Beloved (iv) The Scarlet Letter
    1. iv, ii, i, iii
    2. ii, iv, i, iii
    3. iv, i, ii, iii
    4. ii, i, iv, iii
    Show answer

    Answer: (A) iv, ii, i, iii

    1850 → 1855 → 1925 → 1987.

More chapters in this subject