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Neoclassical to Modern — GK Questions with Answers

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20 questions
  1. Which of these works is NOT a mock-epic? (Previous year)
    1. The Rape of the Bucket
    2. The Rape of Philomela
    3. Mac Flecknoe
    4. The Rape of the Lock
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    Answer: (B) The Rape of Philomela

    The other three treat trivial matters in a grand epic manner. The Rape of Philomela is not a mock-epic.

  2. Certain aspects of Romanticism did NOT include — (Previous year)
    1. The cult of the noble savage
    2. Tamed and orderly scenery
    3. Increasing interest in nature
    4. Need for spontaneity in thought and action
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    Answer: (B) Tamed and orderly scenery

    Neat, ordered scenery was the Neoclassical taste. Romantics wanted nature wild and free.

  3. Which thoughts influenced Victorian writing? (a) Positivism (b) Feminism (c) Sectarian controversy (d) Symbolist Movement (Previous year)
    1. (b) and (c)
    2. (a) and (b)
    3. (a), (b) and (c)
    4. (b), (c) and (d)
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    Answer: (C) (a), (b) and (c)

    Positivism, feminism and religious controversy all shaped Victorian writing. Symbolism was a later, French-led movement.

  4. Which statement about Victorian poetry is NOT correct? (Previous year)
    1. There was a stringent intellectualism colouring the flights of imagination.
    2. There was less spontaneous sympathy with emotion.
    3. There is a more elaborate perfection of form.
    4. There is an element of Romanticism in all the Victorian poets.
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    Answer: (D) There is an element of Romanticism in all the Victorian poets.

    The word all makes it false — Arnold in particular set himself against Romantic feeling.

  5. Which statement about Modernism is NOT correct? (Previous year)
    1. The Golden Bough had a profound influence on Modernism.
    2. The working of the conscious mind became an important subject.
    3. It is essentially post-Darwinian.
    4. It was influenced by the psychological works of Sigmund Freud.
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    Answer: (B) The working of the conscious mind became an important subject.

    It was the unconscious mind, opened by Freud, that became the great modern subject.

  6. Charles Dickens and Tennyson belonged to — (Previous year)
    1. The Modern Age
    2. The Post-modern Age
    3. The Victorian Age
    4. The Jacobean Age
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    Answer: (C) The Victorian Age

    Both are central Victorian figures.

  7. "Fragmentation and inconclusiveness" are a mark of the — (Previous year)
    1. Modern period
    2. Post-modern period
    3. Victorian period
    4. Neo-classical period
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    Answer: (A) Modern period

    Broken form and refusal of neat endings are marks of Modernism.

  8. Two important characteristics of the Victorian Age were — (Previous year)
    1. Realism and materialism
    2. Heroism and classicism
    3. Idealism and love of nature
    4. Classicism and materialism
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    Answer: (A) Realism and materialism

    The age was marked by close realism and by the materialism of an industrial, money-making society.

  9. Two important novelists of the Romantic Age were — (Previous year)
    1. Thomas Hardy and Melville
    2. Francis Bacon and Thomas Moore
    3. Jane Austen and Sir Walter Scott
    4. Charles Lamb and Hardy
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    Answer: (C) Jane Austen and Sir Walter Scott

    Austen and Scott are the two great novelists of the Romantic period.

  10. The Waverley novel (1814) by Sir Walter Scott deals with — (Previous year)
    1. Scottish history
    2. Pastoral romance
    3. Supernatural forces
    4. The plight of the common man
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    Answer: (A) Scottish history

    Waverley is a historical novel set in Scotland, and it began the historical novel in English.

  1. Which of these does NOT belong to the contemporary dramatic period? (Previous year)
    1. Tom Stoppard
    2. Oscar Wilde
    3. Harold Pinter
    4. Samuel Beckett
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    Answer: (B) Oscar Wilde

    Oscar Wilde is a late Victorian dramatist; the other three belong to post-war drama.

  2. Angela Carter, Margaret Drabble and A. S. Byatt are fiction writers of the — (Previous year)
    1. Modernist period
    2. Post-modernist period
    3. Romantic period
    4. Victorian period
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    Answer: (B) Post-modernist period

    All three are post-war, post-modernist novelists.

  3. Which statement is true? (Previous year)
    1. Theatre of the Absurd belongs to the Victorian period.
    2. Postmodern writers such as Borges, Beckett and Nabokov keep to traditional literary rules.
    3. The term postmodernism is applied to literature and art after the First World War.
    4. Postmodernism in literature and the arts has parallels with post-structuralism in theory.
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    Answer: (D) Postmodernism in literature and the arts has parallels with post-structuralism in theory.

    Only the last is correct. The Absurd is post-war, postmodern writers break the rules, and the term applies after the Second World War.

  4. The Neoclassical Age is also known as the —
    1. Age of Imagination
    2. Age of Reason
    3. Age of Faith
    4. Age of Doubt
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    Answer: (B) Age of Reason

    Reason and the rules of the ancients ruled the age, so it is the Age of Reason.

  5. The Augustan Age is named after —
    1. King Augustus of England
    2. The Roman Emperor Augustus
    3. St. Augustine
    4. The town of Augusta
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    Answer: (B) The Roman Emperor Augustus

    English writers compared their age to the reign of Augustus, when Latin literature was at its height.

  6. Who created the periodical essay?
    1. Bacon and Hooker
    2. Addison and Steele
    3. Johnson and Boswell
    4. Lamb and Hazlitt
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    Answer: (B) Addison and Steele

    Steele founded The Tatler (1709) and with Addison produced The Spectator (1711).

  7. Lyrical Ballads (1798) was written by —
    1. Wordsworth and Southey
    2. Byron and Shelley
    3. Wordsworth and Coleridge
    4. Coleridge and Lamb
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    Answer: (C) Wordsworth and Coleridge

    Wordsworth and Coleridge — the book that opened the Romantic age.

  8. Who called poetry "the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings"?
    1. Coleridge
    2. Wordsworth
    3. Shelley
    4. Keats
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    Answer: (B) Wordsworth

    Wordsworth, in his Preface to Lyrical Ballads — adding "recollected in tranquillity".

  9. Darwin’s On the Origin of Species was published in —
    1. 1832
    2. 1850
    3. 1859
    4. 1871
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    Answer: (C) 1859

    1859 — the single greatest blow to Victorian religious confidence.

  10. Who invented the "touchstone method" of judging poetry?
    1. T. S. Eliot
    2. Matthew Arnold
    3. Walter Pater
    4. John Ruskin
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    Answer: (B) Matthew Arnold

    Matthew Arnold proposed comparing a poem with lines from the acknowledged masters.

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