LITERATURE REVIEW QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

Sir Feil Kharl Failma

1. Which sentence best expresses the idea of the lines below?

To say “Look what Life has done” is wrong,

People and things are seldom
Done to. They mostly do.
- Inside Job (Edith Tiempo)

A. Life is what we make it

B. Life is too short to be wasted
C. People must be responsible for others
D. People seldom do things right

2. This excerpt from Soyinka’s Telephone Conversation indicates the universal issue

“ARE YOU DARK? OR VERY LIGHT?” Revelation came. “You mean- like
plain or milk chocolate?” Her assent was clinical, crushing its ligh
Impersonality. Rapidly, wave length adjusted, I chose, “West African sepia.” –
and as an afterthought, “Down in my passport.”

A. Gender discrimination
B. Human rights violation
C. Colonial mentality
D. Racial discrimination

3. What does the speaker lament over in the following lines?

“What’s in a name? That which we call rose by any other name would
smell as sweet.” (Romeo and Juliet, Act II, Scene II)

A. Roses will always be roses despite variety

B. Their names keep Romeo and Juliet apart
C. Romeo and Juliet will always love one another
D. Changing names will help Romeo and Juliet

4. What does the lamb in “The Lamb” symbolize?

Little Lamb, who made thee? Dost thou know who made thee? Gave thee life, and
bid thee feed, By the stream and o’er the mead

A. Faith and Loyalty

B. Innocence and Purity
C. Weakness and Hopelessness
D. Helplessness and Dependence

5. What truth about humans do the following lines from “A Noiseless Patient Spider
reveal?

And you, O my Soul, where you stand, Surrounded, surrounded, in measureless

oceans of space, Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, --seeking the spheres, to
connect them; Till the bridge you will need, be form’d – till the ductile anchor hold;
Till the gossamer thread you fling, catch somewhere, O my Soul

A. People need food and shelter

B. People search for their meaning
C. People need friends and families
D. People endlessly seek to create

6. What do the last two lines from Freneau’s The Wind Honeysuckle reveal about
life?

From morning suns and evening dews At first thy little being came; If nothing once,
you nothing lose, For when you die you are the same; The space between is but an
hour, The frail duration of flower

A. Life is just an hour

B. Life is frail
C. Life is short
D. It is like a flower

7. What does Shakespeare want to infer in this line?

The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves

A. A statue has never been set up in honor of a critic

B. Be content with the things you have
C. Dreams don’t work unless you do
D. A great man is always willing to be little

8. Which of the following best states the theme of Ozymandias?

“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal wreck, boundless and
bare The lone and level sands stretch far away.

A. Power and arrogance are both destructive.

B. Temples and statues are witnesses to history.
C. Powerful rulers and great civilizations perish.
D. Life is short and time is fleeting.

9. According to the speaker in Sanburg’s “Chicago,” how would most others describe
the city?

They tell me you are wicked and I believe them, for I have seen your
painted women under the gas lamps luring the farm boys.

A. Admirable
B. Immoral
C. Amusing
D. Vibrant

10. What do the following lines from Wordsworth’s Psalm of Life reveal about heroes
and heroism?

Lives of great men all remind us We can make our lives sublime, And,
departing, leave behind us Footprints on the sands of time;

A. Anybody can be a hero

B. Heroes are easy to find
C. Heroes are often forgotten
D. It is easy to do heroic acts

11. What does the imagery suggest about how the Hindus regard their religion based
on the excerpt from Rigveda written below?

TO INDRA

Like violent gusts of wind the draughts that I have drunk have lifted me. Have I not
drunk of suma-juice? The draughts I drank have borne me up, As fleet-foot horses
draw a car Have I not drunk soma-juice?

A. Religion is their salvation from the earthly life

B. With their religion, they are able to escape difficulties in the world
C. Religion dictates their way of life and philosophy
D. The Hindus are intoxicated with religion which defines their
existence
12. What atmosphere is created by the image of nature when linked with the image
of the woman in this haiku by Buson?

Blossoms on the pear;

And a woman on the moonlight
Reads a letter there…

A. Romance
B. Boredom
C. Weariness
D. Excitement

12. Below is the excerpt from The Panchatantra:

THE LION-MAKERS

Scholarship is less than sense; Therefore seek intelligence: Senseless scholars in

their pride Made a lion; then they died.

What moral is expressed in this verse?

A. Intelligence is more important than scholarship

B. Too much studying can make one lose common sense

C. One should remain humble of his/her achievements

D. A person without scholarship is like a dead lion

13. Which sound device is NOT used in the stanza of Carlos Angeles’ poem Dusk?

Far from the precinct of some fatuous fire Streaking across the avenues like faith
Which reaffirms man’s genius or desire – And calmly smiles, and moves. The hour is
late.

A. Alliteration
B. Assonance
C. anaphora
D. Rhyme

14. What poetic device is exemplified in the following lines from Edward Taylor’s
“Huswifery”?

Make me, O Lord, thy Spinning Wheel complete, Thy Holy Word my
Distaff make for me. Make mine affections thy swift flyers neat and Make my
soul thy holy Spool to be. My Conversation make to be thy Reel And reel the
yarn thereon spun of thy Wheel.
 A. Irony of Statement

B. Pathetic Fallacy

C. A Literary Conceit

D. A Paradoxical Line

15. The following lines from Robert Browning’s My Last Duchess exemplify what
poetic strategy?

That’s my last Duchess painted on the wall, Looking as if she were

alive. I call That piece a wonder, now: Fra Pandolf’s hands Worked busily a
day, and there she stands. Will’t please you sit and look at her?

A. Aside
B. Dialogue
C. Monologue
D. Soliloquy

16. What type of irony does Shakespeare use in Anthony’s speech?

When that the poor have cried, Ceasar hath wept: Ambition should be made of
sterner stuff: Yet Brutus says he was ambitious; And Brutus is an honourable man.

A. Dramatic Irony
B. Causal Irony
C. Irony of Situation
D. Verbal Irony

17. What figure of speech is used in the lines below?

His bright eyes rolled, they never seemed to settle. And glittered like the flowers
beneath a kettle (Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales)

A. Simile
B. Metaphor
C. Hyperbole
D. Personification

19.”To yield is to be preserved whole.” What figure of speech is used in this the Tao
Te Ching?

A. Oxymoron
B. Paradox
C. Metonymy
D. Synecdoche
20. Which of these lines from Sakuntala is an example of irony?

A. Fear shrinks to half the body small

B. Our garden blossoms yield to these/Flower-children of the wood
C. The thing you feared as fire,/Is the jewel of your desire
D. And trustful deer/That do not run away as we draw near

21. What rhetorical device is used in this line from the Ramayana?

Dearly, loved, devoted Sita! Daughter of a royal line

A. Onomatopoeia
B. Alliteration
C. Assonance
D. Consonance

22. The Panchatantra Tale, “Mouse-Made, Made Mouse” is an example of alliteration.

What other figure of speech does it use?

A. Anaphora
B. Pun
C. Metonymy
D. Metaphor

23. What is the tone of the persona in David Diop’s “Africa”?

Africa, tell me, Africa Is this you?

This back that is bent

This back that breaks under the weight of humiliation

This back trembling with red spear’s And saying yes to the whip if the midday sun

A. Angry and bitter

B. Ironic and sarcastic
C. Envious and spiteful
D. Cautious and fearful

24. The stories of Sinbad, Alibaba and Aladdin and his Lamp is taken to what literary
piece of Arabian literature?

A. The Arabian Nights

B. Ravris
C. Kasicah
D. The Suspended

25. What is the title of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s Tale of Horror’?

 A. Bleak House
B. Frankenstein
C. Tell-Tale heart
D. Heart of Darkness

26. This is a story of a learned Brahman named Vishnusarman who used animal
fables to instruct the three dull-witted sons of a king.

A. Gitanjali
B. The Little Clay Cart
C. On Learning to be an Indian
D. Panchatantra

27.In what Shakespearean play do the following lines appear?

“What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason! How infinite in faculties! In
form and moving, how express and admirable!”

A. Hamlet
B. A Midsummer Night’s Dream
C. Romeo and Juliet
D. King Henry IV

28. Identify the poem from which the following lines are taken:

Drink to me only with thine eyes. And I will pledge with me Or leave a kiss but in the
cup And I’ll not look for wine

A. Song to Celia
B. Crossing the Bar – death
C. Ode to the West Wind death and rebirth (Apostrophe)
D. She was a Phantom of Delight - William Wordsworth (Metaphor)

29. Who is alluded to as the Captain in the following lines from Whitman’s poem?

A. Abraham Lincoln
B. George Washington
C. John F. Kennedy
D. Thomas Jefferson

30. Which speech is considered of the greatest speeches for its vision of American
democracy by a U.S. political leader?

A. The Gettysburg Address

B. John F. Kennedy’s Inaugural Speech
C. Lincoln Memorial Address
 D. Patrick Henry’s Speech

31. Which novel, eventually published in 1945, was rejected by a New York publisher
stating ‘it is impossible to sell animal stories in the USA’?

A. Animal Farm
B. Black Beauty
C. Watership Down
D. The Tale of Peter Rabbit

32. Which is Chaucer’s collection of stories in verse showing his skill as a story teller
in giving a vivid picture of English society in the 1300’s?

A. The Divine Comedy

B. The New Life
C. The Song of Roland
D. The Canterbury Tales

33. The Tao Te Ching means

A. The Way to a Righteous Life

B. The Golden Mean Confucianism
C. How to Live a Life of Pleasure – Hedonism
D. Subtle Discernment – Asceticism

34. The most authentic records of Confucian teaching from which the Tao of Way
has learned the correct principles of governing both self and state is

A. Shih Ching
B. Tao Te Ching
C. Tu Fu
D. Analects

35. Varnas, the theoretical basis for the caste system of the Hindus, rests on

A. One’s birthright
B. Karma of past thought and actions
C. A person’s capacity and intelligence
D. The quality of contribution to society

36. Yukio Mishima’s four-part epic including Spring Snow, Runaway Horses, The
Temple of Dawn, and The Decay of the Angel is known as

A. The House of Sleeping Beauties

B. Snow Country
C. The Sea of Fertility
D. The Wild Geese
37. The religion of this country is based on the perception of life as a process of
continual change in which opposing forces, such as heaven and earth or light and
dark, balance one another.

A. India
B. China
C. Japan
D. Africa

39. Which novel is based on the pilgrimage of a Buddhist monk Kuangzang to India
in rich of sacred texts?

A. The Tale of Genti

B. Dream of the Red Chamber
C. Record of a Journey to the West
D. On Learning to be an Indian

40. Which of the following is the resounding theme of contemporary stories like
Hemingway’s “A Clean and Well Lighted Place” and Anderson’s “Hands”?

A. Alienation from the society

B. Melancholy in solitude

C. Respect for the old

D. Contentment in life

41. Who is ancient India’s teacher, reputed to be the storyteller in the Panchatantra?

A. Vishnusarman
B. Mahatma Gandhi
C. Ramayana
D. Priam

42.A PASSAGE TO INDIA is about the racial tensions and prejudices between
indigenous Indians and the British colonists who rule India. Who wrote this novel?

A. Virginia Woolf
B. Oscar Wilde
C. Jack London
D. E. M. Forster

43. Which of the following gothic authors wrote THE INTERVIEW WITH A VAMPIRE?

A. Anne Rice
B. Mary Shelley
C. Bram Stoker
D. Gaston Leroux
44. Who is the South African novelist and short story writer whose major themes are
on exile and alienation, won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1991.

A. Ousmane Sembene _political themes

B. Bessie Head_ reflective, peace, freedom, social change

C. Nadine Gordimer
D. Barbara Kimenye – children’s stories

45. Who was the author of the famous storybook ‘Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland’?

A. H.G. Wells
B. Lewis Carroll
C. Mark Twain
D. E.B. White

46. “The Prophet” is a book of 26 poetic essays written in English in 1923 by a

Lebanese artist named

A. Gabriel Garcia Marquez

B. Miguel de Cervantes
C. Kahlil Gibran
D. Paulo Coelho

1. Ill-Ili Tulog Anay is a/an _______ lullaby song.

A. Ilonggo
B. Biolano
C. Ilocano
D. Muslim

2. The myth Formation of the Tribes of the Karay Tribe is an example of myth under

A. Early conceptions of the universe

B. The Sun, Moon and Stars

C. Acquisition of Culture/Origin

D. Origin of Man