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Indian English Poetry — GK Questions with Answers

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24 questions
  1. The first Indian English poet is generally held to be —
    1. Toru Dutt
    2. Derozio
    3. Kashiprasad Ghose
    4. Michael Madhusudan Dutt
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    Answer: (B) Derozio

    Henry Louis Vivian Derozio, who died at twenty-two.

  2. Toru Dutt’s Ancient Ballads and Legends of Hindustan was published —
    1. in 1877
    2. in 1882, after her death
    3. in 1876
    4. in 1890
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    Answer: (B) in 1882, after her death

    1882, five years after she died, with a memoir by Edmund Gosse.

  3. "Our Casuarina Tree" consists of —
    1. four stanzas of ten lines
    2. five stanzas of eleven lines
    3. six stanzas of eight lines
    4. three stanzas of fourteen lines
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    Answer: (B) five stanzas of eleven lines

    Five stanzas of eleven lines, rhyming ababccddeee.

  4. Tagore won the Nobel Prize in —
    1. 1910
    2. 1913
    3. 1920
    4. 1930
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    Answer: (B) 1913

    1913, for Gitanjali — the first non-European to win it.

  5. The English Gitanjali carried an introduction by —
    1. Edmund Gosse
    2. W. B. Yeats
    3. Ezra Pound
    4. T. S. Eliot
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    Answer: (B) W. B. Yeats

    W. B. Yeats, who was deeply moved by the poems.

  6. "Where the Mind Is Without Fear" is which poem of Gitanjali?
    1. 1
    2. 35
    3. 50
    4. 103
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    Answer: (B) 35

    Poem 35.

  7. Sri Aurobindo’s Savitri is written in —
    1. rhymed couplets
    2. blank verse
    3. free verse
    4. terza rima
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    Answer: (B) blank verse

    Blank verse — about 24,000 lines, the longest poem in English.

  8. Sarojini Naidu is known as —
    1. the Nightingale of India
    2. the Keats of India
    3. the Poetess of the Deccan
    4. the Bard of Bengal
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    Answer: (A) the Nightingale of India

    The Nightingale of India, or Bharat Kokila.

  9. Which collection is NOT by Sarojini Naidu?
    1. The Golden Threshold
    2. The Bird of Time
    3. The Broken Wing
    4. The Striders
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    Answer: (D) The Striders

    The Striders is A. K. Ramanujan’s first collection.

  10. Modern Indian English poetry is usually dated from —
    1. Gitanjali (1912)
    2. A Time to Change (1952)
    3. The Striders (1966)
    4. Jejuri (1976)
    Show answer

    Answer: (B) A Time to Change (1952)

    Nissim Ezekiel’s first book, A Time to Change (1952).

  1. "Goodbye Party for Miss Pushpa T.S." is notable for —
    1. its use of Sanskrit metre
    2. its use of Indian English idiom
    3. its free verse
    4. its political satire
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    Answer: (B) its use of Indian English idiom

    Ezekiel writes it in Indian English, with affection rather than mockery.

  2. In "Night of the Scorpion", the mother’s final words express —
    1. anger at superstition
    2. relief that she alone was stung
    3. fear of death
    4. faith in the holy man
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    Answer: (B) relief that she alone was stung

    "Thank God the scorpion picked on me and spared my children."

  3. Kamala Das wrote in Malayalam under the name —
    1. Kamala Surayya
    2. Madhavikutty
    3. Balamani Amma
    4. Lalithambika
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    Answer: (B) Madhavikutty

    Madhavikutty; she later took the name Kamala Surayya.

  4. "The language I speak / Becomes mine" comes from —
    1. "The Looking Glass"
    2. "An Introduction"
    3. "My Grandmother’s House"
    4. "The Dance of the Eunuchs"
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    Answer: (B) "An Introduction"

    Kamala Das’s "An Introduction", her defence of Indian English.

  5. A. K. Ramanujan is also famous as a translator of —
    1. Sanskrit epics
    2. classical Tamil and Kannada vachanas
    3. Persian ghazals
    4. Bengali songs
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    Answer: (B) classical Tamil and Kannada vachanas

    The Interior Landscape and Speaking of Siva.

  6. In Ramanujan’s "A River", what do the poets fail to notice?
    1. the dry riverbed
    2. the drowned woman and cows
    3. the temple
    4. the old bridge
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    Answer: (B) the drowned woman and cows

    Both old and new poets sing only of the flood’s beauty.

  7. Jejuri was written by —
    1. Jayanta Mahapatra
    2. Arun Kolatkar
    3. Dilip Chitre
    4. Adil Jussawalla
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    Answer: (B) Arun Kolatkar

    Arun Kolatkar, 1976 — 31 poems about a temple town.

  8. The first Indian English poet to win the Sahitya Akademi Award was —
    1. Nissim Ezekiel
    2. Jayanta Mahapatra
    3. Kamala Das
    4. A. K. Ramanujan
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    Answer: (B) Jayanta Mahapatra

    Jayanta Mahapatra, in 1981, for Relationship.

  9. Who won the Hawthornden Prize at the age of nineteen?
    1. Dom Moraes
    2. Vikram Seth
    3. Agha Shahid Ali
    4. Gieve Patel
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    Answer: (A) Dom Moraes

    Dom Moraes, for A Beginning — the youngest and first non-English winner.

  10. The Golden Gate by Vikram Seth is —
    1. a collection of lyrics
    2. a novel in sonnets
    3. an epic in blank verse
    4. a verse play
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    Answer: (B) a novel in sonnets

    A novel in 590 Onegin sonnets.

  1. Who is chiefly associated with bringing the ghazal into English?
    1. Vikram Seth
    2. Agha Shahid Ali
    3. Adil Jussawalla
    4. Arvind Krishna Mehrotra
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    Answer: (B) Agha Shahid Ali

    Agha Shahid Ali, who also edited an anthology of ghazals in English.

  2. "On Killing a Tree" was written by —
    1. Gieve Patel
    2. Keki Daruwalla
    3. Dom Moraes
    4. Nissim Ezekiel
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    Answer: (A) Gieve Patel

    Gieve Patel, poet, painter and physician.

  3. The Writers Workshop, Calcutta, was founded by —
    1. P. Lal
    2. R. Parthasarathy
    3. Nissim Ezekiel
    4. Buddhadeva Bose
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    Answer: (A) P. Lal

    P. Lal, in 1958.

  4. The term now preferred for this body of writing is —
    1. Indo-Anglian literature
    2. Anglo-Indian literature
    3. Indian Writing in English
    4. Commonwealth literature
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    Answer: (C) Indian Writing in English

    "Indo-Anglian" is now avoided; Indian Writing in English is standard.

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