1. Home
  2. GK Questions
  3. English Literature
  4. Dramatic & Narrative Techniques

Dramatic & Narrative Techniques — GK Questions with Answers

Current Affairs 2026 Today's GK Quiz Static GK हिन्दी
20 questions
  1. Who coined the term "stream of consciousness"? (Previous year)
    1. William James
    2. Virginia Woolf
    3. Henry James
    4. George Meredith
    Show answer

    Answer: (A) William James

    The psychologist William James coined it in The Principles of Psychology (1890). Henry James was his brother, the novelist.

  2. A narrative mode that attempts to depict the many thoughts and feelings passing through the mind of a narrator is — (Previous year)
    1. Existentialism
    2. Stream of consciousness
    3. Realism
    4. Symbolism
    Show answer

    Answer: (B) Stream of consciousness

    That description is the definition of stream of consciousness. The other three are movements, not narrative modes.

  3. A speech delivered by a character who is alone on the stage is called a —
    1. Monologue
    2. Aside
    3. Soliloquy
    4. Prologue
    Show answer

    Answer: (C) Soliloquy

    Alone on stage, thinking aloud, is a soliloquy — from Latin solus and loqui.

  4. Which is the chief difference between a soliloquy and a dramatic monologue?
    1. A soliloquy rhymes, a dramatic monologue does not
    2. In a soliloquy no listener is present; in a dramatic monologue one is
    3. A soliloquy is always shorter
    4. A dramatic monologue is spoken by the poet himself
    Show answer

    Answer: (B) In a soliloquy no listener is present; in a dramatic monologue one is

    The presence of a silent listener is the dividing line. A dramatic monologue is also spoken by a character, never by the poet.

  5. "Is this a dagger which I see before me" is a soliloquy from —
    1. Hamlet
    2. Othello
    3. Macbeth
    4. King Lear
    Show answer

    Answer: (C) Macbeth

    Macbeth speaks it alone, just before he murders Duncan.

  6. A short remark spoken to the audience which other characters on stage do not hear is an —
    1. Aside
    2. Epilogue
    3. Apostrophe
    4. Interlude
    Show answer

    Answer: (A) Aside

    That is the convention of the aside — brief, secret and directed past the other characters.

  7. Which poet is identified with perfecting the dramatic monologue?
    1. Alfred Lord Tennyson
    2. Robert Browning
    3. Matthew Arnold
    4. T. S. Eliot
    Show answer

    Answer: (B) Robert Browning

    Robert Browning made the form his own, though Tennyson and Eliot also used it.

  8. Which of these is NOT a feature of the dramatic monologue?
    1. A single speaker who is not the poet
    2. A silent listener who is present
    3. The speaker deliberately confesses his crime
    4. The speaker unintentionally reveals his character
    Show answer

    Answer: (C) The speaker deliberately confesses his crime

    The speaker is defending himself, not confessing. The reader sees what the speaker does not.

  9. My Last Duchess is a —
    1. Soliloquy
    2. Dramatic monologue
    3. Ballad
    4. Ode
    Show answer

    Answer: (B) Dramatic monologue

    A Duke speaks to a silent visitor and gives himself away — the model dramatic monologue.

  10. Tennyson’s Ulysses is written as a —
    1. Sonnet
    2. Dramatic monologue
    3. Pastoral elegy
    4. Mock epic
    Show answer

    Answer: (B) Dramatic monologue

    Ulysses speaks the whole poem to his mariners, which makes it a dramatic monologue.

  1. Interior monologue differs from stream of consciousness because it is —
    1. a movement, not a method
    2. the technique used to present the stream
    3. only used in drama
    4. always written in verse
    Show answer

    Answer: (B) the technique used to present the stream

    Stream of consciousness is the effect; interior monologue is the technique that produces it.

  2. Molly Bloom’s famous unpunctuated monologue closes which novel?
    1. Mrs Dalloway
    2. Ulysses
    3. The Waves
    4. Pilgrimage
    Show answer

    Answer: (B) Ulysses

    It is the final chapter of James Joyce’s Ulysses.

  3. Which novel sequence prompted the first literary use of "stream of consciousness"?
    1. In Search of Lost Time
    2. Pilgrimage
    3. The Sound and the Fury
    4. To the Lighthouse
    Show answer

    Answer: (B) Pilgrimage

    May Sinclair used the phrase in 1918 about Dorothy Richardson’s Pilgrimage.

  4. The Sound and the Fury was written by —
    1. James Joyce
    2. Virginia Woolf
    3. William Faulkner
    4. Marcel Proust
    Show answer

    Answer: (C) William Faulkner

    William Faulkner gives each section of the novel to a different consciousness.

  5. Joyce’s term for a sudden flash of meaning in an ordinary thing is —
    1. Epiphany
    2. Catharsis
    3. Anagnorisis
    4. Hamartia
    Show answer

    Answer: (A) Epiphany

    Epiphany. The other three are terms from Aristotle’s account of tragedy.

  6. Which playwright is credited with reviving the soliloquy in modern drama?
    1. Harold Pinter
    2. Eugene O’Neill
    3. G. B. Shaw
    4. Samuel Beckett
    Show answer

    Answer: (B) Eugene O’Neill

    Eugene O’Neill brought the device back after realistic drama had abandoned it.

  7. "Dramatic lyric" was the term used by —
    1. Tennyson for his poems
    2. Browning for his poems
    3. Eliot for his poems
    4. Arnold for his poems
    Show answer

    Answer: (B) Browning for his poems

    Browning himself used Dramatic Lyrics as a title, and questions sometimes use that phrase.

  8. In which genre does stream of consciousness mainly belong?
    1. Drama
    2. The novel
    3. The epic
    4. The sonnet
    Show answer

    Answer: (B) The novel

    It is a technique of prose fiction, developed in the modern novel.

  9. Which pair is correctly matched?
    1. Soliloquy — a poem with a silent listener
    2. Aside — a long speech to other characters
    3. Stream of consciousness — a narrative mode in fiction
    4. Monologue — a speaker alone on stage
    Show answer

    Answer: (C) Stream of consciousness — a narrative mode in fiction

    Only the third is right. The others describe the dramatic monologue, the monologue and the soliloquy.

  10. The technique in which the narrator’s voice blends with a character’s thoughts in the third person is called —
    1. Free indirect discourse
    2. Direct interior monologue
    3. Soliloquy
    4. Apostrophe
    Show answer

    Answer: (A) Free indirect discourse

    Free indirect discourse keeps the third person while taking on the character’s way of thinking.

More chapters in this subject