Class Test 1 – History of English Literature

Name: Roll No.

1. Name the author of Brut, a poem of 30,000 lines.

2. Who wrote History of Britain (1132)?

3. Who is known as “the morning star of the Reformation”?

4. Which Italian writer influenced Chaucer most?

5. Write the titles of any three important works by Chaucer.

6. Who is called “the morning star of the Renaissance”?

7. Who were Chaucer’s famous contemporaries?

8. Why Troylus stanza is often called ‘rime royal’? How many lines has it got?

9. Which work was said to have been written in “the English tongue for English men”?

10. When was Tottel’s Miscellany published? Who were the main contributors?

11. Name the four cycles of plays and the number of plays in each cycle.

12. Which plays are called ‘collective mysteries’?

14. Which was the first English comedy?

15. Who wrote “Gorboduc”?

16. Who is called “Poets’ poet”? Write his important works.

17. Which poet of Shakespeare’s time calls his poetic works as “Herculean toil”?

18. Name the playwrights who are called “the university wits.”

19. Write the titles of some of the important plays written by Christopher Marlowe.

20. How many plays are there in Shakespeare canon?

21. Which plays are called “the great tragedies” of Shakespeare?

22. Which plays by Ben Jonson are regarded as his best comedies?

23. Name some of the lesser known playwright’s (Jacobean Dramatists) of Shakespeare’s Age.

24. Name some of the playhouses of Shakespeare’s Time.

25. Which prose work of Thomas Nash is considered the earliest example of the picaresque novel?
 Class Test 1 – Answers

1. Layamon
2. Geoffrey of Monmouth
3. John Wyclif
4. Boccaccio
5. Canterbury Tales, Troylus and Cryseyde, The Boke of the Duchesse, Legende of Good Women.
6. Geoffrey Chaucer
7. John Gower and William Langland
8. James I, the King of Scotland made use of this stanza form in his King’s Quair. It has 7 lines.
9. Roger Ascham’s Toxophilus, or Schole of Shooting (1545)
10. 1557. Thomas Wyatt and Earl of Surrey. (Also Thomas Churchyard, Lord Vaux & Nicholas Grimald)
11. Chester – 25; Wakefield – 31; Coventry – 42; York – 48.
12. Corpus Christi plays.
13. A Palmer, a Pardoner, a Pothecary and a Pedlar.
14. Nicholas Udall’s Ralph Roister Doister (1552).
15. Thomas Sackville and Thomas Norton.
16. Edmund Spenser. His works are: Shepheardes Calendar, The Faery Queene, Astrophel & Amoretti
17. Michael Drayton
18. John Lyly, Christopher Marlowe, Thomas Lodge, Thomas Kyd, George Peele, Robert Greene,
Thomas Nash.
19. Tamburlaine the Great, Dr. Faustus, The Jew of Malta and Edward II.
20. 37 plays
21. Hamlet, Macbeth, King Lear, Othello and Julius Caesar.
22. The Alchemist, Volpone or the Fox, Epicene or the Silent Woman.
23. John Webster, Beaumont and Fletcher, John Ford, Philip Massinger and James Shirley.
24. The Theatre, the Curtain, the Globe and the Blackfriars.
25. Unfortunate Traveller, or The Life of Jack Wilton
 History of English Literature

1. Development of Drama: The early plays were performed by the priests either in the porch or
in the churchyard. Later they were performed by the trading guilds on special occasions. Four
cycles of these early plays namely, the Chester Cycle of 25 plays, the Coventry cycle of 42
plays, the Wakefield cycle of 31 plays and the York cycle of 48 plays are extant. The subject
matter was religious. Thus they were called miracle plays, mystery plays and morality plays.
The life of saints and the miracles performed by them were highlighted in the miracle plays.
But the mystery plays were about the virgin birth of the Christ and His resurrection. The most
popular among them was the passion play or the Corpus Christi play which was performed
during the season of Lent. In the morality plays, virtues and vices were personified as
characters. Everyman is a very good example of morality play. Interludes are short plays
which developed later. John Heywood’s Four P’s is an amusing interlude.
2. The University Wits:They were a group of playwrights educated either at the Cambridge or
Oxford University. They used their academic learning to write some of the best plays in
English Literature. If John Lyly wrote comedies like Campaspe , Endymion , and Gallathea
with intellectual tone then Thomas Kyd wrote The Spanish Tragedy with all the ingredients
of gut and gore plays. George Peele, Thomas Lodge, Robert Greene, Christopher Marlowe
and Thomas Nash were the other members of this group. Among them, Christopher Marlowe
stands out for his exceptional plays like The Jew of Malta, Dr.Faustus, Edward II, and
Tamburlaine the Great. He used bombast and extravagance in his carefully crafted plays.
Robert Greene is remembered today for his scurrilous attack on Shakespeare. He was jealous
of Shakespeare’s success and called him “Johannes Factotum” and “upstart crow.” Many of
the contemporaries of the university wits and later dramatists imitated their model of writing
like blank verse and heroic couplets in their plays as well.
3. Metaphysical Poets: The term was coined by Dr. Johnson to refer to a group of poets who
wrote in the beginning of the 17th century. Their work is packed with affectations and conceits.
Besides they used strained metaphors, far-fetched similes and extravagant hyperboles. Their
poems are found to be lacking in propriety. John Donne, George Herbert, Richard Crashaw,
Henry Vaughan, Abraham Cowley, and Thomas Traherne were all metaphysical. John
Donne’s ‘Canonization’ is still remembered as one of the best pieces of Metaphysical poetry.
His collection called ‘Holy Sonnets’ is full of religious verve effectively concealing the carnal
desires. George Herbert wrote what is called ‘concrete poetry’, that is poetry in the form of
the subject matter. His collection of lyrics is called The Temple. Richard Crashaw was a
passionate writer. For example, he describes Mary Magdalene’s sorrowing eyes as “two
walking baths, two weeping motions”. However, the metaphysical poetry is well remembered
today for its profundity of thought.
4. Four Periods of Milton’s Poetry: The college period ending in 1632 was marked by
experimental writing. His ‘Ode on the Morning of Christ’s Nativity’ is a remarkable poem
though a reader can spot conceits. To the next period termed as Horton period, closing with
his departure for the continent in 1638, belong four minor poems. ‘L’Allegro’ and ‘Il
 Penseroso’ are written in an unprecedented form in English poetry called synkriseis or
debating situation. Comus is a masque of rare beauty and Lycidas is a pastoral elegy written
on the death of his friend Edward King. In these works can be seen a rare blend of Puritanism
and the generous culture of the Renaissance. The third period of his writing lasted for twenty
years from 1640 to1660. Areopagitica is a splendid piece of prose writing in support of
freedom of thought and speech. However, the fourth period was a period of his great
achievement. The epic Paradise Lost , the ‘English heroic verse without rime,’ is still regarded
as the greatest English poem and Paradise Regained is an exposition on Puritan theology.
5. The early Satirists: Satire is a mode of writing that exposes the failings of individuals,
institutions, or societies by ridiculing them. John Dryden’s Absalom and Achitophel makes
fun of the Duke of Monmouth under the name Absalom and the Earl of Shaftsbury under the
name Achitophel. The Medal is another invective against Shaftsbury. In his McFlecnoe,
Dryden launches a personal attack on a fellow poet named Thomas Shadwell. The next
important satirist was Alexander Pope who began writing satires with Satires and Epistles of
Horace Imitated. The Prologue to these, the Epistle to Dr.Arbuthnot, contains the character
study of Addison under the name of Atticus. However, in The Dunciad Pope satirises all the
‘dunces’ or the poetasters, pedants and pretentious critics of his time, especially Lewis
Theobald and Colley Cibber. The third important satirist of the period was Jonathan Swift.
His The Battle of the Books is a powerful satire on the merits of ancient and modern literatures
in the form mock-heroic description. A Tale of a Tub is a satire on modern Christianity as
he describes allegorically the Roman Church as Peter, the English Church as Martin and the
Calvinists as Jack. Though termed as children’s book Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels is one of the
bitterest satires on mankind.

6. Gothic Fiction (Revival of Romance): Horace Walpole began writing his Castle of Otranto
as a ‘Gothic’ romance as he called it with the aim of mixing supernaturalism and his obsession
with Gothic architecture. It has some unusual descriptions like the picture that descends from
the frame and a statue that bleeds at the nose. Clara Reeve imitated him in her Old English
Baron with a lot of sensationalism thrown in. But it was Ann Radcliffe in her Romance of the
Forest , The Mysteries of Udolpho and in The Italian created thrilling stories with complicated
plots, full of horrors. Matthew Gregory Lewis wrote Ambrosio, or The Monk which was a
great success as a Gothic tale. These writers were followed by Thomas Love Peacock who
wrote Nightmare Abbey and Jane Austen who parodied this work in her Northanger Abbey.
The Gothic novel, or Gothic romance, emphasized mystery and horror and was filled with
ghost-haunted rooms, underground passages, and secret stairways. Later the vampire stories
developed from these writings.
7. Characteristics of the Classical School of Poetry: The poets of Augustan age showed
interest in writing satires and didactic poetry. Intelligence took precedence over emotion. As
a result these poems are full of arguments and criticism. It is what we call ‘town’ poetry and
the subject matter is usually related to urban socio-cultural problems. They show no interest
in nature, landscape and country folks. In other words, they lack enthusiasm and romanticism.
They remain hostile to the poets of the middle ages and their chivalrous romance, idealism
and strong religious faith. Extreme devotion to form, artificial style, and a stereotyped poetic
diction marked the writings of this age. Grandiloquent phrases, circumlocutions and sheer
ornamentation made these writings gaudy and inane. The absence of simplicity, naturalness
and direct expressions made these poems sound pompous. However, the classical poetry
followed the closed couplet form which produced an epigrammatic terseness. Though
popular, it became monotonous in the long run and reduced the scope for passion or
imagination in poetry. Alexander Pope, Mathew Prior and John Gay were some of the popular
poets of this age. Their traditions were continued by Samuel Johnson and Oliver Goldsmith.
8. Romanticism: It was a movement of reaction against Augustan ideals. It believed in
spontaneity in literature, assertion of individuality, rejection of the rules of art and in the
inspirational power of the poet. Victor Hugo called it ‘liberalism in literature.’ Romantic
poetry created a mood in which passion, sensibility, and even melancholy are visible. Watts-
Dunston called it the ‘renaissance of wonder and mystery.’ The romantic writing awakened
taste for the marvellous. For example, Keats’ Endymion is in couplet form and it did away
with the canons of the Augustan form. Thomas Gray’s Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard
is full of romantic melancholy, Walter Scott’s Lay of the Last Minstrel is a fantastic narrative
and S.T.Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner is known for its supernaturalism. A medieval or Gothic
revival, especially interest in the ballads and in the world of Celtic antiquity which is well
reflected in the Ossianic poems of James Macpherson changed the whole idea of nature, place
and poetry. The desire to get ‘back to nature’ and the primitive past and break free from
artificial society was very strong and that led to a great romantic revival. The forerunners were
Robert Burns, William Blake, William Cowper and Thomas Love Peacock. But Lyrical
Ballads published in 1798 was an epoch making book. Wordsworth chose incidents and
situations from common life and wrote them in a simpler and plainer language. The poem
Michael is a good example of humble rustic life. The French Revolution of 1789 instilled the
democratic spirit in everyone.
9. Romantic Poets: Wordsworth, Coleridge, Dorothy Wordsworth and Robert Southey form
what we call the ‘Lake Poets.’ If Wordsworth spoke of spontaneous overflow of powerful
feelings in poetry then Coleridge talked of fancy and imagination in poetry. Wordsworth’s
poems like Tintern Abbey, Ode on Intimations of Immortality, and Lucy Poems are well
remembered for their simplicity and sentimentality. Coleridge wrote poems like Christabel,
Kublakhan, and Dejection: An Ode, (a personal poem) which revived supernaturalism without
sensationalism. Robert Southey showed great interest in romantic heroes of the past. He wrote
narrative poems like Thalaba, the Destroyer, Roderick, and The Curse of Kehama. James
 Hogg, nicknamed ‘the Ettrick Shepherd’ is remembered today for his Scottish vernacular
poems like Kilmeny and The Queen’s Wake. However, it is the poets of the younger
revolutionary group, often condemned as the ‘Satanic school of poets,’ Byron, Shelley and
Keats who breathed fresh life into poetry. Byron’s Childe Harold, Vision of Judgement, and
the unfinished Don Juan are some of the best poems well regarded for their vitality and power.
Shelley, on the contrary, was a poetic prophet of faith and hope. He was dismissed from the
Oxford University for writing the pamphlet The Necessity of Atheism. His writings are full
of lightness, grace and verbal magic. The Skylark, The Cloud, Ode to the West Wind and his
lyrical drama Prometheus Unbound are widely read and enjoyed for their lyrical beauty. But
for sensuous beauty we have to turn to Keats. His Endymion, Lamia, The Eve of St. Agnes,
the fragmentary Hyperion and La Belle Dame Sans Merci are full of ‘glory and loveliness.’
So are his famous odes To Autumn, To a Nightingale and On a Grecian Urn. Keats is the most
romantic of the romantic poets. With him poetry devotes itself to the service of beauty.
10. Victorian Novel: Charles Dickens sprang into literary fame with his first novel Pickwick
Papers in 1837. His novels like David Copperfield, Oliver Twist and The Great Expectations
are known for their autobiographical strains in them. His other novels like Bleak House, Little
Dorrit, Hard Times etc., are also loaded with sentiment and pathos. His novels belong to the
humanitarian movement of the Victorian era and the beginner was Benjamin Disraeli’s Sybil.
On the other hand, Dickens’ contemporary William Thackeray wrote about snobbery,
affectation and humbug of the upwardly mobile in his novels like Vanity Fair, Pendennis,
Henry Esmond, The Newcomes and The Virginians. He developed satire into an art form
using colloquial prose. The next important writer was Mary Ann Evans who wrote under the
pseudonym George Eliot. Except her novel Romola, which is set in Renaissance Florence, all
her works like Adam Bede, The Mill on the Floss, Silas Marner and Middlemarch are full of
delicate humour and unforced pathos. She writes poignant tragedies, full of purifying sadness.
Besides these three writers there were others who had left theirs imprints in the literary field
of Victorian era. Fredrick Marryat wrote Peter Simple and Mr.Midshipman Easy, two
amusing sea stories. Edward Bulwer Lytton became famous with his historical romance The
Last Days of Pompeii. Mrs. Elizabeth Gaskell wrote a pathetic story of factory life in her
Mary Barton. But Anthony Trollope’s Barchester Towers and Dr.Thorne present a picture
perfect provincial life. The Bronte sisters chose themes unusual for their times and received
instant recognition as talented writers. Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre is noted for its intensity
of passion and frankness of description. Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights is a Gothic
masterpiece. Anne Bronte wrote two memorable novels – Agnus Grey and The Tenant of
Wildfell Hall. Wilkie Collins, the greatest master of sensation and plot, wrote The Woman in
White and The Moonstone. However, it was R.L.Stevenson who wrote Treasure Island,
Kidnapped, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and The Master of Ballantrae earned a name for himself
for making the move from realism to romance.