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Poetic Forms — Sonnet, Ode, Elegy, Ballad — GK Questions with Answers

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20 questions
  1. Choose the option which is NOT correct about the ballad. (Previous year)
    1. A ballad was originally connected with dance.
    2. A ballad tells a story drawn from legend or folklore.
    3. A ballad was sung by a group of singers to the accompaniment of the lyre.
    4. A ballad was primarily an oral form of poetry.
    Show answer

    Answer: (C) A ballad was sung by a group of singers to the accompaniment of the lyre.

    The lyre and a trained chorus belong to the Greek lyric and the ode. A ballad was sung plainly, by ordinary people, and carried from singer to singer by memory alone.

  2. In an ode, the term "epode" refers to — (Previous year)
    1. the stanza chanted while the chorus stood still in the middle of the stage
    2. the stanza chanted while the chorus moved to the left
    3. the stanza chanted while the chorus moved to the right
    4. the stanza chanted while the chorus divided and moved both ways
    Show answer

    Answer: (A) the stanza chanted while the chorus stood still in the middle of the stage

    Epode means "after-song". The chorus moved for the strophe and antistrophe, then stood still to chant the epode.

  3. Ballads in their earliest form were — (Previous year)
    1. folk songs carried from singer to singer by memory
    2. songs about wars between gods and demons
    3. songs about the beauty of the countryside
    4. love songs written for proud ladies
    Show answer

    Answer: (A) folk songs carried from singer to singer by memory

    Nobody signed a folk ballad. It survived only because singers remembered it, and it shifted a little in every mouth it passed through.

  4. John Milton describes his Lycidas as a — (Previous year)
    1. monody
    2. dirge
    3. elegy
    4. threnody
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    Answer: (A) monody

    Milton’s own headnote calls the poem a monody — a lament uttered by a single voice.

  5. How many lines does a sonnet have?
    1. 12
    2. 14
    3. 16
    4. 10
    Show answer

    Answer: (B) 14

    A sonnet always has exactly fourteen lines, usually in iambic pentameter.

  6. The rhyme scheme abab cdcd efef gg belongs to the —
    1. Petrarchan sonnet
    2. Spenserian sonnet
    3. Shakespearean sonnet
    4. Miltonic sonnet
    Show answer

    Answer: (C) Shakespearean sonnet

    Three quatrains and a closing couplet make the Shakespearean or English sonnet.

  7. Who introduced the sonnet into English literature?
    1. Spenser and Sidney
    2. Wyatt and Surrey
    3. Shakespeare and Donne
    4. Milton and Marvell
    Show answer

    Answer: (B) Wyatt and Surrey

    Wyatt and Surrey adapted Petrarch; their sonnets appeared in Tottel’s Miscellany (1557).

  8. The "volta" in a sonnet means —
    1. the opening line
    2. the turn in thought
    3. the final couplet
    4. the rhyme scheme
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    Answer: (B) the turn in thought

    Volta is Italian for "turn" — the point where the argument of the sonnet changes direction.

  9. Which sonnet sequence was the first major one in English?
    1. Amoretti
    2. Astrophel and Stella
    3. Sonnets from the Portuguese
    4. Holy Sonnets
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    Answer: (B) Astrophel and Stella

    Sir Philip Sidney’s Astrophel and Stella was the first important sonnet sequence in English.

  10. Sonnets from the Portuguese was written by — (Previous year)
    1. G. M. Hopkins
    2. Alfred Lord Tennyson
    3. Matthew Arnold
    4. Elizabeth Barrett Browning
    Show answer

    Answer: (D) Elizabeth Barrett Browning

    They are Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s love sonnets, addressed to Robert Browning.

  1. The irregular ode was introduced into English poetry by —
    1. John Dryden
    2. Abraham Cowley
    3. Thomas Gray
    4. William Collins
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    Answer: (B) Abraham Cowley

    Abraham Cowley adapted Pindar freely, producing the irregular or Cowleyan ode.

  2. Which ode is written in terza rima?
    1. Ode to a Nightingale
    2. Ode on a Grecian Urn
    3. Ode to the West Wind
    4. Dejection: An Ode
    Show answer

    Answer: (C) Ode to the West Wind

    Shelley’s Ode to the West Wind has five sections of fourteen lines, each in terza rima.

  3. Shelley’s Adonais is an elegy on the death of —
    1. Shelley’s son
    2. John Keats
    3. Lord Byron
    4. Arthur Hallam
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    Answer: (B) John Keats

    Adonais is Shelley’s pastoral elegy for John Keats.

  4. Tennyson’s In Memoriam was written in memory of —
    1. Edward King
    2. Arthur Hugh Clough
    3. Arthur Henry Hallam
    4. Thomas Gray
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    Answer: (C) Arthur Henry Hallam

    It mourns Arthur Henry Hallam, Tennyson’s closest friend, and took seventeen years to complete.

  5. The In Memoriam stanza rhymes —
    1. abab
    2. abba
    3. aabb
    4. abcb
    Show answer

    Answer: (B) abba

    Tennyson’s stanza is abba. Gray’s elegiac stanza, which examiners confuse with it, is abab.

  6. Which of these is NOT a feature of the folk ballad?
    1. An abrupt beginning
    2. Incremental repetition
    3. Long descriptive passages
    4. A sudden, tragic ending
    Show answer

    Answer: (C) Long descriptive passages

    Ballads move fast through dialogue and action. Long description belongs to the literary epic, not the ballad.

  7. The ballad stanza has the beat pattern —
    1. 4-4-4-4
    2. 5-5-5-5
    3. 4-3-4-3
    4. 3-4-3-4
    Show answer

    Answer: (C) 4-3-4-3

    Lines 1 and 3 carry four beats, lines 2 and 4 carry three, and only lines 2 and 4 rhyme.

  8. Reliques of Ancient English Poetry (1765) was compiled by —
    1. F. J. Child
    2. Bishop Thomas Percy
    3. Sir Walter Scott
    4. Samuel Johnson
    Show answer

    Answer: (B) Bishop Thomas Percy

    Bishop Percy’s collection revived interest in old ballads and helped prepare the way for Romanticism.

  9. Which is a pastoral elegy?
    1. Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard
    2. Lycidas
    3. In Memoriam
    4. The Ballad of Reading Gaol
    Show answer

    Answer: (B) Lycidas

    Lycidas uses the shepherd convention throughout, which makes it a pastoral elegy. Gray’s Elegy does not.

  10. A "ballade" differs from a "ballad" because it —
    1. tells a longer story
    2. has three eight-line stanzas and an envoi
    3. is always about the supernatural
    4. is never sung
    Show answer

    Answer: (B) has three eight-line stanzas and an envoi

    The ballade is a French fixed form: three stanzas of eight lines on the same rhymes, closed by a short envoi.

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