Which people began their invasion and conquest of southwestern Britain around

450?
a)
b)
c)
d)

the Normans
the Geats
the Celts
the Anglo-Saxons

2.
Words from which language began to enter English vocabulary around the
time of the Norman Conquest in 1066?
a)
b)
c)
d)

French
Norwegian
Spanish
Hungarian

3.
The popular legend of which of the following figures made its earliest
appearance in Celtic literature before becoming a staple subject in French, English,
and German literatures?
a)
b)
c)
d)

Sir Gawain
King Arthur
Saint Patrick
Saint Augustine

4.
Toward the close of which century did English replace French as the language
of conducting business in Parliament and in court of law?
a)
b)
c)
d)

tenth
eleventh
twelfth
fourteenth

5. The decision of which writer to emulate French and Italian poetry in his own
vernacular prompted a changed in the status of English?
a)
b)
c)
d)

Margery Kempe
Sir Thomas Malory
Geoffrey Chaucer
William Langland

6. The Britains, after whom the English province of the Roman Empire was named
Britannia, spoke which language?
a)
b)
c)
d)

Celtic
Latin
German
French

8.
After the collapse of the Roman Empire, from where were Christian
missionaries sent to enforce the religion in Britain?

9.

a)
b)
c)
d)
What is the

Kent
Rome
Ireland
a and c only
first extended written specimen of Old English?

10.

a)
Boethius's Consolidation of Philosophy
b)
Saint Jerome's translation of the Bible
c)
Malory's Morte Darthur
d)
a code of laws promulgated by King Ethelbert
Who was the first English Christian king?

a)
Alfred
b)
Ethelbert
c)
Richard II
d)
Henry II
11.
In Anglo-Saxon heroic poetry, what is the fate of those who fail to observe
the sacred duty of blood vengeance?
a)
banishment to Asia
b)
everlasting shame
c)
conversion to Christianity
d)
b and c only
12.
Old English poets, such as the Beowulf poet, were fascinated by the tension
between which two aspects of their hybrid culture?
a)
b)
c)
d)

Islam and Christianity

insular and continental philosophy
pagan and Christian moral codes
oral and written literatures

13.
The use of "whale-road" for sea and "life-house" for body are examples of
what literary technique, popular in Old English poetry?
a)
b)
c)
d)

symbolism
simile
metonymy
kenning

15.
Which of the following best describes litote, a favorite rhetorical device in
Old English poetry?

17.

a)
embellishment at the service of Christian doctrine
b)
repetition of parallel syntactic structures
c)
ironic understatement
d)
stress on every third diphthong
Which of the following languages did not coexist in Anglo-Norman England?

a)
b)
c)
d)

Latin
German
French
Celtic

19.
To what did the word the roman, from which the genre of "romance"
emerged, initially apply?
a)
b)
c)
d)
20.

a work derived from a Latin text of the Roman Empire

a story about love and adventure
a Roman official
a work written in the French vernacular

What is the ethos of many romances, both aristocratic and popular alike?
a)
b)

a knight rescuing his wife from the other world

a knight proving his worthiness through nobility of

c)
d)

a knight declaring his high birth before a tribunal

a lord and a lady singing of the pleasures of life

character

21.
What is the climax of Geoffrey of Monmouth's The History of the Kings of
Britain?
a)
b)
c)
d)

the reign of King Arthur

the coronation of Henry II
King John's seal of the Magna Carta
the marriage of Henry II to Eleanor of Aquitaine

22.
Which of the following subjects of Early Middle English religious prose was
aimed primarily at women?
a)
b)
c)
d)

the penitence of Mary Magdalene

the woes of marriage from the husband's point of view
the heroic combats of the virgin martyrs
a and c only

24.
In addition to Geoffrey Chaucer and William Langland, the "flowering" of
Middle English literature is evident in the works of which of the following writers?
a)
b)
c)
d)
26.

Geoffrey of Monmouth
the Gawain poet
the Beowulf poet
Chrtien de Troyes

What was Geoffrey Chaucer's final work?

a)
b)

Complaint to His Purse

Troilus and Criseyde

c)
d)
27.

The Canterbury Tales

Legend of Good Women

Who is the author of Piers Plowman?

a)
b)
c)
d)

Sir Thomas Malory

Margery Kempe
Geoffrey Chaucer
William Langland

Which literary form, developed in the fifteenth century, personified vices and
virtues?
a)
b)
c)
d)

the short story

the heroic epic
the morality play
the romance

With which of the following are Julien of Norwich and Margery Kempe most
associated?
a)
b)
c)
d)

the heroic combats of the virgin martyrs

The Canterbury Tales
morality plays
a female perspective of the church and its doctrines

1.
Which of the following statements accurately reflects the status of England,
its people, and its language in the early sixteenth century?
a)
English travelers were not obliged to learn French, Italian, or
Spanish during their explorations of the Continent.
b)
English was fast supplanting Latin as the second language of
most European intellectuals.
c)
English travelers often returned from the Continent with foreign
fashions, much to the delight of moralists.
d)
Intending his Utopia for an international intellectual
community, Thomas More wrote in Latin, since English had no prestige
outside of England.
2.
Which of the following sixteenth-century works of English literature was
translated into the English language after its first publication in Latin?
a)
Christopher Marlowe's Doctor Faustus
b)
William Shakespeare's King Lear
c)
Thomas More's The History of King Richard III
d)
Thomas More's Utopia
3.
Which royal dynasty was established in the resolution of the so-called War of
the Roses and continued through the reign of Elizabeth I?

a)
b)
c)
d)

Tudor
Windsor
York
Lancaster

From which of the following Italian texts might Tudor courtiers have learned the art
of intrigue and the keys to gaining and keeping power?
a)
b)
c)
d)
8.

Who introduced the art of printing into England?

a)
b)
c)
d)

9.

Castiglione's "The Courtier"

Dante's "Divine Comedy"
Boccaccio's "Decameron"
Machiavelli's "The Prince"

Elizabeth Eisenstein
Johannes Gutenberg
Henry VIII
William Caxton

To what does the phrase "the stigma of print" refer?

a)
lead poisoning contracted from handling printer's ink
b)
the brutal punishment for printing without a license
c)
the pre-Reformation ban on printing the Bible in English
d)
the perception among court poets that printed verses
were less exclusive
10.

Which of the following sixteenth-century poets was not a courtier?

a)
b)
c)
d)

George Puttenham
Philip Sidney
Walter Ralegh
Thomas Wyatt

Which of the following statements is not an accurate reflection of education during

the English Renaissance?
a)
It was aimed primarily at sons of the nobility and gentry.
b)
Its curriculum emphasized ancient Greek, the language
of diplomacy, professions, and higher learning.
c)
It was conducted by tutors in wealthy families or in grammar
schools.
d)
It was ordered according to the medieval trivium and
quadrivium.
What impulse probably accounts for the rise of distinguished translations of works,
such as Homer's lliad and Odyssey, into English during the sixteenth century?

a)
b)
ancient Greeks
c)
d)

human reverence for the classics

the belief that the English were direct descendants of the
pride for the vernacular language
a and c only

What was the only acknowledged religion in England during the early sixteenth
century?
a)
b)
c)
d)

Atheism
Protestantism
Catholicism
Ancestor-worship

Who began to ignite the embers of dissent against the Catholic church in November
1517 in a movement that came to be known as the Reformation?
a)
b)
c)
d)

Anne Boleyn
Martin Luther
Pope Leo X
John Calvin

Which of the following describes the chief system by which writers received
financial rewards for their literary production?
a)
b)
c)
d)

charity
patronage
censorship
subscription

In the Defense of Poesy, what did Sidney attribute to poetry?

a)
b)

a magical power whereby poetry plays tricks on the reader

a divine power whereby poetry transmits a message from God to

the reader
c)
a moral power whereby poetry encourages the reader to
emulate virtuous models
d)
a defensive power whereby poetry and its figurative expressions
allow the poet to avoid censorship
Short plays called _______-staged dialogues on religious, moral, and political themeswere performed by playing companies before the construction of public theaters.
a)
b)
c)
d)

interludes
spectacles
meditations
vaudevilles

What is blank verse?

a)
b)
c)
d)

iambic pentameter in rhyming couplets

the verse form of the Shakespearean sonnet
free verse, without rhyme or regular meter
unrhymed iambic pentameter

Who succeeded Elizabeth I on the throne of England?

a)
b)
c)
d)
e)

Elizabeth II
Henry IX
James I
Charles I
Mary, Queen of Scots

James I liked to imagine himself as a modern version of which ruler?

a)
b)
c)
d)

Pericles
Genghis Khan
Richard Lionheart
Augustus Caesar

Which writer was not active under both Elizabeth I and James I?
a)
b)
c)
d)

William Shakespeare
Ben Jonson
John Donne
John Milton

The idea that God predestines human beings to be saved or damned is associated
with which Protestant reformer?
a)
b)
c)
d)
e)

Martin Luther
John Calvin
Henry VIII
Arminius
Augustine

Which of the following was not one of the four bodily humours?
a)
b)
c)
d)

choler
blood
cholesterol
black bile

Which of the following plays was not authored by Shakespeare in the Jacobean
period?
a)
b)
c)
d)

Othello
Volpone
The Tempest
King Lear

Which of the following themes or subjects was not common in the works of Cavalier
poets, such as Thomas Carew, Sir John Denham, Edmund Walter, Sir John Suckling,
James Shirely, Richard Lovelace, and Robert Herrick?
a)
b)
c)
d)

courtly ideals of the good life

carpe diem
loyalty to the king
pious devotion to religious virtues

What was the tile of Thomas Hobbes's defense of absolute sovereignty based on a
theory of social contract?
a)
b)
c)
d)

The Litany in a Time of Plague

Utopia
Leviathan
The Advancement of Learning

What is the title to Milton's blank-verse epic that assimilates and critiques the epic
tradition?
a)
b)
c)
d)

L'Allegro
Lycidas
Paradise Lost
The Divine Comedy

Who became the first "prime minister" of Great Britain in the reign of George II?
a)
b)
c)

Henry St. John

Robert Harley
John Churchill

d)
Robert Walpole
Which of the following best describes the doctrine of empiricism?
a)
b)
political power.
c)
d)

All knowledge is derived from experience.

Human perceptions are constructed and reflect structures of
The search for essential or ultimate principles of reality.
The sensory world is an illusion.

Against which of the following principles did Jonathan Swift inveigh?

a)
b)
c)
d)

theoretical science
metaphysics
abstract logical deductions
all of the above

Whose great Dictionary, published in 1755, included more than 114,000 quotations?
a)
b)
c)
d)

William Hogarth
Jonathan Swift
Samuel Johnson
Ben Jonson

According to Samuel Johnson, "No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for
_____________."
a)
b)
c)
d)

love
honor
money
his party

What name is given to the English literary period that emulated the Rome of Virgil,
Horace, and Ovid?
a)
b)
c)
d)

Augustan
Metaphysical
Romantic
Neo-Romantic

What word did writers in this period use to express quickness of mind,
inventiveness, a knack for conceiving images and metaphors and for perceiving
resemblances between things apparently unlike?
a)
b)
c)
d)

wit
sprezzatura
naturalism
gusto

Which metrical form was Pope said to have brought to perfection?

a)
b)
c)
d)

the heroic couplet

blank verse
free verse
the spondee

Which of the following is not an example of Restoration comedy?

a)
b)
c)
d)

Etherege's The Man of Mode

Wycherley's The Country Wife
Behn's The Rover
Marlowe's Doctor Faustus

Which work exposes the frivolity of fashionable London?

a)
b)
c)
d)

Defoe's Robinson Crusoe

Swift's Gulliver's Travels
Behn's Oroonoko
Pope's The Rape of the Lock

With its forbidden themes of incest, murder, necrophilia, atheism, and torments of
sexual desire, Horace Walpole's Castle of Otranto, created which literary genre?
a)
b)
c)
d)

the revenge tragedy

the Gothic romance
the epistolary novel
the comedy of manners

What served as the inspiration for Percy Bysshe Shelley's poems to the working
classes A Song: "Men of England" and England in 1819?
a)
Southern England
b)
c)
d)

the organization of a working class men's choral group in

the Battle of Waterloo
the Peterloo Massacre
the storming of the Bastille

Which poets collaborated on the Lyrical Ballads of 1798, thus demonstrating the
"spirit of the age," which, in an era of revolutionary thinking, depended on a belief
in the limitless possibilities of the poetic imagination?
a)
b)
c)
d)

Mary Wollstonecraft and William Blake

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley and Percy Bysshe Shelley
William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Charles Lamb and William Hazlitt

Which of the following best describes the sort of language and tone most often used
when Romantic writers discuss the French Revolution?
a)
b)
c)
d)

snide indifference
biblical reverence
condemning censure
satirical derision

Given the popularity of the Gothic novel and the novel of purpose, which of the
following novelists wrote fiction that is closer in subject matter to the novel of
manners than it is to the writing of her own era?
a)
b)
c)
d)

Fanny Burney
Mary Wollstonecraft
Anna Letitia Barbauld
Jane Austen

Which two writers can be described as writing historical novels?

a)
b)
c)
d)

Mary Shelley and Percy Bysshe Shelley

William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Sir Walter Scott and Maria Edgeworth
Jane Austen and Charlotte Bront

In which of the following works is the social outcast represented and addressed?
a)
b)
c)
d)

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley's Frankenstein

William Wordsworth's Lyrical Ballads
Samuel Taylor Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
all of the above

Which ruler's reign marks the approximate beginning and end of the Victorian
era?
a)
b)
c)
d)

King Henry VIII

Queen Elizabeth I
Queen Victoria
King John

Which city became the perceived center of Western civilization by the middle of the
nineteenth century?
a)
b)
c)
d)

Paris
Tokyo
London
Amsterdam

Which of the following novelists best represents the mid-Victorian period's

contentment with the burgeoning economic prosperity and decreased restiveness
over social and political change?
a)
b)
c)
d)

Anthony Trollope
Charles Dickens
John Ruskin
Oscar Wilde

Which of the following best defines Utilitarianism?

a)

a farming technique aimed at maximizing productivity with the

fewest tools
b)
a moral arithmetic, which states that all humans aim to
maximize the greatest pleasure to the greatest number
c)
a critical methodology stating that all words have a single
meaningful function within a given piece of literature
d)
a philosophy dictating that we should only keep what we use on
a daily basis.
Fill in the blanks from Tennyson's The Princess.
Man for the field and woman for the _____:
Man for the sword and for the _____ she:
Man with the head and woman with the _____:
Man to command and woman to _____.
a)
b)
c)
d)

crop; scabbard; foot; agree

throne; scepter; soul; decree
school; scalpel; pen; set free
hearth; needle; heart; obey

For what do Matthew Arnold's moral investment in nonfiction and Walter Pater's
aesthetic investment together pave the way?
a)
b)
c)

a renewed secularism in the twentieth century

modern literary criticism
latenineteenth-century and earlytwentieth-century satirical

d)

the surrealist movement

drama
Which of the following phrases best characterizes the late-nineteenth century
aesthetic movement which widened the breach between artists and the reading
public, sowing the seeds of modernism?
a)
b)
c)
d)

art for intellect's sake

art for God's sake
art for the masses
art for art's sake

With which enormously influential perspective or practice is the earlytwentieth-century thinker Sigmund Freud associated?
a)
b)
c)
d)

eugenics
psychoanalysis
phrenology
anarchism

Which best describes the imagist movement, exemplified in the work of T. E. Hulme
and Ezra Pound?
a)

a poetic aesthetic vainly concerned with the way words appear

on the page
b)
an effort to rid poetry of romantic fuzziness and facile
emotionalism, replacing it with a precision and clarity of imagery
c)
an attention to alternate states of consciousness and uncanny
imagery
d)
the resurrection of Romantic poetic sensibility
Which phrase indicates the interior flow of thought employed in high-modern
literature?
a)
b)
c)
d)

automatic writing
confused daze
total recall
stream of consciousness

Which novel did T. S. Eliot praise for utilizing a new "mythical method" in
place of the old "narrative method" and demonstrates the use of ancient mythology
in modernist fiction to think about "making the modern world possible for art"?
a)
b)
c)
d)

Virginia Woolf's The Waves

Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness
James Joyce's Finnegan's Wake
James Joyce's Ulysses

Who wrote the dystopian novel Nineteen-Eighty-Four in which Newspeak

demonstrates the heightened linguistic self-consciousness of modernist writers?
a)
b)
c)
d)

George Orwell
Virginia Woolf
Evelyn Waugh
Orson Wells

What did Henry James describe as "loose baggy monsters"?

a)
b)

novels
plays

c)
d)

the English
publishers