English Multiple Choice Questions(MCQs) and Answers | English Quiz Set 1

Questions
1 Which narrative poem by Lord Tennyson presents the story of a fisherman turned merchant-sailor who, after a shipwreck, is marooned on a desert island ?
1 “Crossing the Bar”
2 “Tithonus”
3 “Enoch Arden”
4 “Maud”

Answer: “Enoch Arden”
2 In “Memorial Verses” Matthew Arnold pays tribute to three great poets. Who are they ?
1 Goethe, Shakespeare, Wordsworth
2 Goethe, Shakespeare, Milton
3 Shakespeare, Milton, Wordsworth
4 Goethe, Wordsworth, Byron

Answer:Goethe, Wordsworth, Byron

⭐ Make GKSeries Your Preferred Source on Google

Add GKSeries as Preferred Source
3 Who among the following English playwrights wrote screenplays on novels such as Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time, John Fowles’s French Lieutenant’s Woman, and Margaret Atwood’s Handmaid’s Tale ?
1 John Arden
2 Edward Bond
3 Harold Pinter
4 David Hare

Answer:Harold Pinter
4 The years in English literary history between 1649 and 1660 are known as __________.
1 the Neo-classical period
2 the Commonwealth period
3 the Stuart period
4 the Jacobean period

Answer: the Commonwealth period
5 In R.K. Narayan’s Swami and Friends, which game offers Swami the best kind of emotional release from the strains and pressures of disagreeable circumstances ?
1 cricket
2 football
3 tennis
4 hockey

Answer:cricket
6 William Blake expressed the importance of the particular when he said that “To Generalize is to be __________. To particularize is the alone Distinction of Merit.” Fill in the blank.
1 an idiot
2 a poet
3 a dreamer
4 a skunk

Answer:an idiot
7 Which of the following was not a dialect of Old English ?
1 Irish
2 Northumbrian
3 Mercian
4 Kentish

Answer:Irish
8 Anthony Burgess’s last novel, published in 1993, is called A Dead Man in Deptford. Who is the central character to whom the title refers ?
1 Sir Walter Raleigh
2 Sir Philip Sidney
3 Christopher Marlowe
4 Earl of Southampton

Answer: Christopher Marlowe
9 Choose the correct chronological order :
1 William Caxton prints the first English book - William Shakespeare’s First Folio - John Milton’s Areopagitica - “Tottel’s Miscellany” (Songs and Sonnets).
2 “Tottel’s Miscellany” (Songs and Sonnets) - William Shakespeare’s First Folio - William Caxton prints the first English book - John Milton’s Areopagitica.
3 William Caxton prints the first English book - “Tottel’s Miscellany” (Songs and Sonnets) - William Shakespeare’s First Folio - John Milton’s Areopagitica.
4 William Shakespeare’s First Folio - John Milton’s Areopagitica - William Caxton prints the first English book - “Tottel’s Miscellany” (Songs and Sonnets).

Answer:William Caxton prints the first English book - “Tottel’s Miscellany” (Songs and Sonnets) - William Shakespeare’s First Folio - John Milton’s Areopagitica.
10 What does the phrase ut pictura poesis from Horace’s Art of Poetry mean ?
1 “as in painting, so in poetry”.
2 “poetry beggars pictorial description”.
3 “as in poetry, so in painting”.
4 “picture above all poetry”.

Answer: “as in painting, so in poetry”.
11 Who among the following is the author of Account of the Augustan Age in England (1759) ?
1 John Gay
2 William Hazlitt
3 Oliver Goldsmith
4 Samuel Johnson

Answer: Oliver Goldsmith
12 In how many parts did Cervantes publish his novel, Don Quixote ?
1 three
2 five
3 two
4 twelve

Answer:two
13 Lytton Strachey’s Eminent Victorians carries biographical sketches of writers and public figures. Identify the list below that correctly mentions those Eminent Victorians.
1 Cardinal Manning, Florence Nightingale, Thomas Arnold and General Gordon.
2 A.E.W. Mason, Sir Arthur Quiller Couch, Matthew Arnold, Robert Bridges.
3 E.F. Benson, Cardinal Manning, Lord Tennyson, Beatrice Webb.
4 George Harding, General Gordon, Robert Browning, Mrs Humphrey Ward.

Answer:Cardinal Manning, Florence Nightingale, Thomas Arnold and General Gordon.
14 One of the following statements about the eponymous saint of Dryden’s “Song for St. Cecilia’s Day” is incorrect. Identify that statement.
1 St. Cecilia was a Roman lady, an early Christian martyr.
2 St. Cecilia was an Armenian devotee of the Christian faith.
3 St. Cecilia’s festival is celebrated on 22 November in England.
4 St. Cecilia was a patroness of music who was fabled to have invented the organ.

Answer: St. Cecilia was an Armenian devotee of the Christian faith.
15 Which of the statements on Michael Roberts’s Faber Book of Modern Verse (1936) is not true ?
1 His anthology canonized modern poetry and poets for quite some decades.
2 The collection begins with the poems of Robert Bridges.
3 Roberts omitted the Georgian poets in his anthology.
4 Yeats, Eliot and Pound find a place in the Faber Book of 1936.

Answer:The collection begins with the poems of Robert Bridges.

View All English Practice Test Sets

apsc complete general studies course