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Renaissance to Metaphysical — GK Questions with Answers

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20 questions
  1. The Jacobean age is named after which English king? (Previous year)
    1. Charles I
    2. Jacob I
    3. James II
    4. James I
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    Answer: (D) James I

    Jacobean comes from Jacobus, the Latin for James, and refers to James I (1603–1625).

  2. In which play are the characters named Knowell, Brainworm, Edward and Bobadill? (Previous year)
    1. The Alchemist
    2. Every Man in His Humour
    3. The Isle of Dogs
    4. Catiline Conspiracy
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    Answer: (B) Every Man in His Humour

    They are the humour-characters of Ben Jonson’s Every Man in His Humour.

  3. Who said that in metaphysical poetry "the most heterogeneous ideas are yoked by violence together"? (Previous year)
    1. Dr. Samuel Johnson
    2. William Hazlitt
    3. John Dryden
    4. T. S. Eliot
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    Answer: (A) Dr. Samuel Johnson

    Dr. Johnson wrote it in his Life of Cowley. Dryden only first applied the word "metaphysics" to Donne.

  4. Who wrote that "about the beginning of the seventeenth century there appeared a race of writers that may be termed metaphysical poets"? (Previous year)
    1. Dr. Johnson
    2. John Dryden
    3. Helen Gardner
    4. Herbert Grierson
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    Answer: (A) Dr. Johnson

    Again Dr. Samuel Johnson, in the same Life of Cowley.

  5. Two famous metaphysical poets are — (Previous year)
    1. Donne and Pope
    2. Dryden and Pope
    3. Donne and Marvell
    4. Cowley and Tennyson
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    Answer: (C) Donne and Marvell

    Donne led the group and Marvell was its most polished member. Dryden and Pope are Neoclassical.

  6. Who among the following is NOT a dramatist of the Jacobean period? (Previous year)
    1. Thomas Kyd
    2. Thomas Middleton
    3. Thomas Heywood
    4. John Webster
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    Answer: (A) Thomas Kyd

    Thomas Kyd died in 1594, before James I came to the throne, so he is Elizabethan.

  7. The Gunpowder Plot was the result of — (Previous year)
    1. tension between the Anglican and Roman Catholic Church
    2. tension between Charles I and Oliver Cromwell
    3. tension between Charles I and his feudal lords
    4. tension between the English and French armies
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    Answer: (A) tension between the Anglican and Roman Catholic Church

    Catholics had hoped James I would ease the laws against them; the plot of 1605 followed his refusal.

  8. Which of the following does NOT belong to the Renaissance period? (Previous year)
    1. Thomas Malory’s Le Morte D’Arthur
    2. Richard Tottel’s Miscellany
    3. John Milton’s Areopagitica
    4. Holinshed’s Chronicles
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    Answer: (C) John Milton’s Areopagitica

    Areopagitica (1644) belongs to the Puritan age. The other three fall inside the Renaissance.

  9. Which statement about Bacon’s style is correct? (Previous year)
    1. Discursive
    2. Informal
    3. Intimate
    4. Terse
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    Answer: (D) Terse

    Bacon writes in short, packed, impersonal sentences — the standard word for it is terse.

  10. The first English printing press was set up by —
    1. Johannes Gutenberg
    2. William Caxton
    3. Thomas More
    4. Roger Ascham
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    Answer: (B) William Caxton

    William Caxton set up his press at Westminster in 1476.

  1. Who is called the "poet’s poet"?
    1. Christopher Marlowe
    2. Sir Philip Sidney
    3. Edmund Spenser
    4. John Donne
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    Answer: (C) Edmund Spenser

    Spenser earned the title for his musical verse and his influence on later poets.

  2. The Spanish Tragedy is important because it —
    1. introduced blank verse
    2. began the English revenge tragedy
    3. was the first English comedy
    4. was the first printed play
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    Answer: (B) began the English revenge tragedy

    Kyd’s play set the pattern of the revenge tragedy that leads to Hamlet.

  3. The Authorized Version of the Bible was published in —
    1. 1605
    2. 1611
    3. 1620
    4. 1642
    Show answer

    Answer: (B) 1611

    1611, under James I — the greatest single influence on English prose style.

  4. Bacon’s Novum Organum sets out the —
    1. deductive method
    2. inductive method
    3. dialectical method
    4. Socratic method
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    Answer: (B) inductive method

    Bacon argued for reasoning from observed facts upward — the inductive method.

  5. Which group is known as the "Sons of Ben"?
    1. The University Wits
    2. The Metaphysical poets
    3. The Cavalier poets
    4. The Lake poets
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    Answer: (C) The Cavalier poets

    The Cavaliers — Herrick, Lovelace, Suckling and Carew — took Ben Jonson as their master.

  6. English theatres were closed by the Puritans in —
    1. 1603
    2. 1625
    3. 1642
    4. 1660
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    Answer: (C) 1642

    They closed in 1642 and reopened only at the Restoration in 1660.

  7. Milton’s Areopagitica argues for —
    1. the divine right of kings
    2. the freedom of the press
    3. the reform of education
    4. the abolition of bishops
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    Answer: (B) the freedom of the press

    It is a prose attack on licensing, and so a defence of the freedom to print.

  8. Which work gave the English language the word "utopia"?
    1. Arcadia
    2. Utopia
    3. The Faerie Queene
    4. Euphues
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    Answer: (B) Utopia

    Sir Thomas More’s Utopia (1516), written in Latin, describes an imaginary perfect island.

  9. Who revived interest in the Metaphysical poets in 1921?
    1. Matthew Arnold and Walter Pater
    2. Grierson and T. S. Eliot
    3. Coleridge and Lamb
    4. Dryden and Johnson
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    Answer: (B) Grierson and T. S. Eliot

    Grierson’s anthology and Eliot’s essay, both in 1921, brought them back into favour.

  10. "Dissociation of sensibility" is a phrase coined by —
    1. Dr. Johnson
    2. John Dryden
    3. T. S. Eliot
    4. I. A. Richards
    Show answer

    Answer: (C) T. S. Eliot

    T. S. Eliot used it to describe the split between thought and feeling in poetry after the Metaphysicals.

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