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Arnold to the New Critics — GK Questions with Answers

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27 questions
  1. Matthew Arnold defines poetry as —
    1. the spontaneous overflow of feelings
    2. a criticism of life
    3. an escape from personality
    4. a speaking picture
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    Answer: (B) a criticism of life

    The phrase is from The Study of Poetry (1880).

  2. Arnold’s touchstone method requires the critic to —
    1. apply fixed rules of composition
    2. keep lines of the great masters in mind and compare
    3. consult the author’s intention
    4. measure a poem’s popularity
    Show answer

    Answer: (B) keep lines of the great masters in mind and compare

    Touchstone lines of the masters are applied to other poetry as a test of quality.

  3. Which of Arnold’s three estimates is the valid one?
    1. The historic estimate
    2. The personal estimate
    3. The real estimate
    4. The popular estimate
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    Answer: (C) The real estimate

    The historic and personal estimates are both fallacies.

  4. Arnold called Dryden and Pope —
    1. classics of our poetry
    2. classics of our prose
    3. the grand style
    4. philistines
    Show answer

    Answer: (B) classics of our prose

    A famous and much-disputed judgement from The Study of Poetry.

  5. In Culture and Anarchy, Arnold calls the middle class —
    1. Barbarians
    2. Philistines
    3. Populace
    4. Hellenes
    Show answer

    Answer: (B) Philistines

    Barbarians = aristocracy, Philistines = middle class, Populace = working class.

  6. "Hebraism" in Arnold stands for —
    1. spontaneity of consciousness
    2. strictness of conscience
    3. the grand style
    4. disinterestedness
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    Answer: (B) strictness of conscience

    Hebraism is doing; Hellenism is seeing — spontaneity of consciousness.

  7. "Tradition cannot be inherited, and if you want it you must obtain it by great labour" is from —
    1. The Sacred Wood preface
    2. Tradition and the Individual Talent
    3. The Metaphysical Poets
    4. Hamlet and His Problems
    Show answer

    Answer: (B) Tradition and the Individual Talent

    Eliot’s 1919 essay, collected in The Sacred Wood.

  8. Eliot compares the poet’s mind to —
    1. a mirror
    2. a lamp
    3. a shred of platinum
    4. a fading coal
    Show answer

    Answer: (C) a shred of platinum

    The platinum catalyst brings about the reaction but remains unchanged.

  9. Eliot’s "objective correlative" was introduced in his essay on —
    1. Milton
    2. Hamlet
    3. Dante
    4. the Metaphysical poets
    Show answer

    Answer: (B) Hamlet

    Hamlet and His Problems (1919).

  10. According to Eliot, the dissociation of sensibility set in during the —
    1. sixteenth century
    2. seventeenth century
    3. eighteenth century
    4. nineteenth century
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    Answer: (B) seventeenth century

    From The Metaphysical Poets (1921) — the split between thought and feeling.

  1. "Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion" states Eliot’s —
    1. theory of the objective correlative
    2. impersonal theory of poetry
    3. historical sense
    4. auditory imagination
    Show answer

    Answer: (B) impersonal theory of poetry

    The impersonal theory, directly opposed to Wordsworth’s expressive view.

  2. The term "defamiliarisation" belongs to —
    1. Jakobson
    2. Shklovsky
    3. Propp
    4. Bakhtin
    Show answer

    Answer: (B) Shklovsky

    Viktor Shklovsky, in Art as Technique (1917); also called ostranenie.

  3. Who wrote Morphology of the Folktale?
    1. Shklovsky
    2. Propp
    3. Todorov
    4. Greimas
    Show answer

    Answer: (B) Propp

    Vladimir Propp, 1928, identifying 31 functions in Russian fairy tales.

  4. "Heteroglossia" and "carnivalesque" are terms of —
    1. Lukács
    2. Bakhtin
    3. Jakobson
    4. Eichenbaum
    Show answer

    Answer: (B) Bakhtin

    Mikhail Bakhtin, who found polyphony in Dostoevsky and the carnivalesque in Rabelais.

  5. Practical Criticism (1929) was written by —
    1. Empson
    2. I. A. Richards
    3. Brooks
    4. Ransom
    Show answer

    Answer: (B) I. A. Richards

    I. A. Richards reported his experiment of giving students unsigned poems.

  6. Seven Types of Ambiguity is by —
    1. Richards
    2. Empson
    3. Tate
    4. Blackmur
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    Answer: (B) Empson

    William Empson, 1930 — Richards’s pupil at Cambridge.

  7. The "heresy of paraphrase" was named by —
    1. Wimsatt
    2. Cleanth Brooks
    3. Ransom
    4. Leavis
    Show answer

    Answer: (B) Cleanth Brooks

    Cleanth Brooks in The Well Wrought Urn (1947).

  8. Judging a poem by the author’s stated purpose commits the —
    1. affective fallacy
    2. intentional fallacy
    3. pathetic fallacy
    4. genetic fallacy
    Show answer

    Answer: (B) intentional fallacy

    The intentional fallacy of Wimsatt and Beardsley (1946).

  9. Judging a poem by its emotional effect on the reader commits the —
    1. intentional fallacy
    2. affective fallacy
    3. pathetic fallacy
    4. imitative fallacy
    Show answer

    Answer: (B) affective fallacy

    The affective fallacy (1949) — exactly what reader-response theory later defended.

  10. Which book named the New Criticism?
    1. The Well Wrought Urn
    2. The Verbal Icon
    3. The New Criticism
    4. Practical Criticism
    Show answer

    Answer: (C) The New Criticism

    John Crowe Ransom’s The New Criticism (1941).

  1. F. R. Leavis edited the journal —
    1. The Criterion
    2. Scrutiny
    3. The Egoist
    4. Essays in Criticism
    Show answer

    Answer: (B) Scrutiny

    Scrutiny, 1932–1953. The Criterion was Eliot’s.

  2. Which novelist is NOT in Leavis’s The Great Tradition?
    1. Jane Austen
    2. George Eliot
    3. Charles Dickens
    4. Joseph Conrad
    Show answer

    Answer: (C) Charles Dickens

    The four are Austen, George Eliot, James and Conrad. Dickens was admitted only for Hard Times.

  3. In Frye’s Anatomy of Criticism, the mythos of winter is —
    1. comedy
    2. romance
    3. tragedy
    4. irony and satire
    Show answer

    Answer: (D) irony and satire

    Spring = comedy, summer = romance, autumn = tragedy, winter = irony and satire.

  4. The idea of the archetype in literary criticism derives chiefly from —
    1. Freud
    2. Jung
    3. Lacan
    4. Adler
    Show answer

    Answer: (B) Jung

    Carl Jung and the collective unconscious, with Frazer’s anthropology.

  5. "Flat" and "round" characters is a distinction made by —
    1. Percy Lubbock
    2. E. M. Forster
    3. Wayne Booth
    4. Henry James
    Show answer

    Answer: (B) E. M. Forster

    E. M. Forster, Aspects of the Novel (1927).

  6. "The king died and then the queen died of grief" is Forster’s example of —
    1. a story
    2. a plot
    3. a theme
    4. a fable
    Show answer

    Answer: (B) a plot

    Adding causality turns a story into a plot.

  7. How Many Children Had Lady Macbeth? attacks the method of —
    1. G. Wilson Knight
    2. A. C. Bradley
    3. Dr Johnson
    4. Coleridge
    Show answer

    Answer: (B) A. C. Bradley

    L. C. Knights attacked Bradley’s treatment of characters as real people.

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