Literary theory

1. Concept of phenomenology was introduced by

a) Husserl
b) Bradley
c) Descartes
d) Kant
2. Husserl followed and influenced by theories of
a) T.S Eliot
b) Rene Descartes
c) Leavis
d) Poulet
3. Phenomenology is based on our
a) Thinking
b) Consciousness
c) Unconsciousness
d) Views
4. In phenomenology objects are considered as
a) Things in themselves
b) intended by consciousness
c) Both
d) None
5. The act of thinking and object of thought in phenomenology are
a) Independent
b) Totally dependent
c) Mutually dependent
d) None
6. In consciousness of phenomenology, we treat objects
a) Their reality
b) Our own views
c) Our subconscious
 d) All of above
7. In bracketing off of things, we focus things generally
a) Thinking of our consciousness
b) Things we are concerned with
c) General things
d) All of the above
8. Husserl uses the word ‘eidetic’ for phenomenological reduction is derived from
a) Greek
b) Spanish
c) Roman
d) None
9. Phenomenology is based on conception of
a) Abstraction
b) Subconscious
c) Concrete
d) All of above
10. Phenomenology is a form of
a) Methodological realism
b) Methodological idealism
c) Methodological Romanticism
d) None
11. Human consciousness is purely
a) Subjective
b) Objective
c) Independent
d) All of these
12. Phenomenology is related to
a) Criticism
b) Structuralism
c) Formalism
d) Humanism
13. Husserl was supported by his colleague in his conception
a) Kant
b) Bradley
c) Heidegger
d) Arnold
14. Phenomalogical criticism aims at
a) Imminent reading of text
b) Forms of text
c) Context of text
d) All of these
15. Phenomenology was flourished in Geneva school of thought in
a) 1940-50
b) 1930-50
c) 1950-60
d) 1955-60
16. Which of the following literary theorists is most closely associated with the concept that
became known as liberal humanism?
a) Aristotle
b) Viktor Shklovsky
c) Stanley Fish
d) Toni Morrison
17. What is humanism?
a) A humanity-centered view of the universe
b) A school of theory devoted to the revival of Classical (ancient Greek and Roman)
literature
c) A theory that values restraint, form, and imitation
d) All of the above
18. The key philosophical figure in the development of classical liberalism is:
a) James Madison
b) Aristotle
c) John Stuart Mill
 d) John Locke
19. The ‘natural law’ perspective on international law is most associated with which IR
theory?
a) Realism
b) Liberalism
c) Marxism
d) Critical Theory
20. Which Humanist reacted against the structuralism of Wundt and Titchener?
a) Gordon Allport
b) Abraham Maslow
c) Carl Rogers
d) Raymond Cattell
21. Who was the most illustrious disciple of Socrates?
a) Sophocles
b) Plautus
c) Plato
d) Critus
22. What are some common criticisms of literary theory?
a) Theory has replaced literary appreciation with formulas for understanding
b) The reasoning of theory is often too circular
c) Many theories have been pushed too far into abstraction
d) All of the above answers are correct
23. What is mimesis?
a) A reversal
b) An imitation
c) A satire
d) A poetic metaphor
24. Which of the following is a key factor that distinguishes liberalism from realism?
a) Realists see liberals as idealists who ignore the basic facts about human nature.
b) All liberals believe that human beings are rational enough to learn from
their mistakes.
 c) Realism relishes conflict, not peace.
d) All realists are anarchists who do not believe in the state.
25. Which of the following statements best explains Mikhail Bakhtins philosophy of
language?
a) Language is loaded with the intentions of others.
b) Language can include socio-ideological contradictions from the past.
c) Language exhibits and is bound up in the social lives and historical context
of the people who speak it.
d) Language includes multiple social dialects and jargons.
26. According to the Classical Liberal philosophers, what brought man out of the state of
nature?
a) Cultivation and farming
b) Religion
c) The social contract and the establishment of government
d) All the above
27. What is the Classical Liberal “obstacle” to “freedom?”
a) Poverty and discrimination
b) Human flaws
c) Government
d) None of the above
28. According to Plato, what is the moral purpose of art?
a) To connect human beings with a higher ideal
b) To criticize society through satire
c) To entertain those who enjoy it
d) All of the above answers are correct.
29. Who said that Arnold was a propagandist for literature rather than a critic?
a) Carlyle
b) Ruskin
c) T. S. Eliot
d) F. R. Leavis
30. What approach to literary criticism requires the critic to know about the author’s life and
times?
a) Historical
b) Mimetic
c) Formalist
d) All of these

31. What fundamental idea does psychoanalytic criticism hold about literary texts?
a) Literary texts solely reflect an author’s intentions
b) Literary texts should not be read as a projection of the author’s psyche.
c) Literary texts reveal secret elements of an author’s unconscious.
d) All of the above answers are correct.
32. Some critics of literary theory argue that literary theory is problematic for which reason?
a) Literary theory depends on specialized knowledge that is outside the realm of
literary studies.
b) Literary theory does not offer a holistic interpretation of a text.
c) Literary theory tends to be too political.
d) All of the above answers are correct.
33. Plato has a positive view of art, in so far as_______________?
a) It shows a tragedy
b) It contributes to the spiritual growth of people
c) It represents the nature
d) It imitates nobility
34. Humanism was created as a reaction against what 2 major schools?
a) Psychoanalysis & Behaviorism
b) Behaviorism & Cognitivism
c) Biological/Developmental & Cognitivism
d) Behaviorism & Social Learning
35. Who founded Humanism?
a) Rogers, Maslow, Cattell
b) Maslow, Rogers, Allport
c) Cattell, Rogers, Allport
 d) Maslow, Allport, Cattell
36. The New Critics were:
a) Psychological Critics
b) Feminist critics
c) Formalist critics
d) Marxist critics
37. What approach to literary criticism requires the critic to know about the author's life and
times?
a) Historical
b) Formalist
c) Mimetic
d) All of these
38. Formalist critics believe that the value of a work cannot be determined by the author's
intention. What term do they use when speaking of this belief?
a) The pathetic fallacy
b) The intentional fallacy
c) The affective fallacy
d) The objective correlative
39. What poet popularized the term objective correlative, which is often used in formalist
criticism?
a) Virginia Woolf
b) C.S. Lewis
c) T.S. Eliot
d) Matthew Arnold
40. In a Freudian approach to literature, concave images are usually seen as:
a) Female symbols
b) Phallic symbols
c) Male symbols
d) Evidence of an Oedipus complex
41. He was an influential force in archetypal criticism.
a) Freud
 b) Jung
c) Richards
d) Tate
42. Seven is an archetype associated with:
a) Perfection
b) Birth
c) Astrology
d) Death
43. This feminist critic proposed that all female characters in literature are in at least one of
the following stages of development: the feminine, feminist, or female stage.
a) Virginia Woolf
b) Elaine Showalter
c) Mary Wolstencraft
d) Ellen Mores
44. A critic argues that in John Milton's "Samson Agonistes," the shearing of Samson's locks
is symbolic of his castration at the hands of Delilah. What kind of critical approach is this
critic using?
a) Formalist approach
b) Mimetic approach
c) Psychological approach
d) Historical approach
45. One archetype in literature is the scapegoat. Which of these literary characters serves that
purpose?
a) Ophelia
b) Captain Ahab
c) Billy Budd
d) Hamlet
46. One of the disadvantages of this school of criticism is that it tends to make readings too
subjective.
a) Reader Response Criticism
b) Formalist Criticism
 c) Historical Criticism
d) These are all equally subjective
47. This literary critic coined the term "fancy."
a) Samuel Taylor Coleridge
b) Virginia Woolf
c) Matthew Arnold
d) Carl Jung
48. This critical approach assumes that language does not refer to any external reality. It can
assert several, contradictory interpretations of one text.
a) Deconstructionism
b) Formalist Criticism
c) Structuralism
d) Mimetic Criticism
49. Modern literary theory began with the work of which theorist?
a) Ferdinand de Saussure
b) Roland Barthes
c) Viktor Shklovsky
d) Michel Foucault
50. One archetype in literature is the scapegoat. Which of these literary characters serves that
purpose?
a) Billy Budd
b) Captain Ahab
c) Hamlet
d) Ophelia
51. How does New Historicism differ from traditional historicism?
a) New Historicism takes a particular interest in marginalized peoples.
b) New Historicism does not make strict delineations between literary and non-
literary texts.
c) New Historicism rejects the idea that history is neutral.
d) All of the above answers are correct.
52. Who proposed that poets should be banished from the ideal Republic?
 a) Plato
b) Sir Philip Sidney
c) Aristotle
d) Sir Thomas More
53. What does gynocriticism recommend as an approach to literature?
a) Considering women’s literature outside of its historical context
b) Examining only female-authored literature more critically
c) Becoming more familiar with the history of women and women’s writing
d) All of the above answers are correct.
54. Horace was a_____________?
a) Italian writer
b) Roman Writer
c) Greek writer
d) English writer
55. A critic examining Pope’s “An Essay on Man” asks herself: How well does this poem
accord with the real world? Is it accurate? Is it moral? She is most likely a critic?
a) Formalist
b) Reader Response
c) Feminist
d) Mimetic
56. The statements below are steps on “How to Read and Understand an Expository Essay”.
Which comes in as an initial thing to do before writing an expository essay?
a) Subsequent Readings/Reviews
b) Analysis of the Author
c) Identify the Mode of Development
d) All of the above answers are correct
57. In Dryden’s Essay of Dramatic Poesy there are four interlocuters representing four
different ideologies. Which of them expresses Dryden’s own views?
a) Eugenius
b) Lisideius
c) Neander
 d) Crites
58. What do many contemporary theorists find problematic about the literary canon?
a) It includes too few works by non-white writers.
b) It includes too few works by non- European writers.
c) It includes too few works by women.
d) All of the above answers are correct
59. Which literary theorist argues that “there is nothing outside the text”?
a) Jacques Lacan
b) T.S. Eliot
c) Jacques Derrida
d) Stanley Fish
60. This feminist critic proposed that all female characters in literature are in at least one of
the following stages of development: the feminine, feminist, or female stage?
a) Mary Wolstencraft
b) Elaine Showalter
c) Virginia Woolf
d) Ellen Mores
61. Which of the following writers might be considered one of the early founders of
firstwave feminism?
a) Judith Butler
b) Helene Cixous
c) Lucy Irigaray
d) Mary Wollstonecraft
62. Poetic Diction was taken to be the standard language for poetry in______________?
a) The Romantic Age
b) The Neo-Classical Age
c) The Elizabethan Age
d) The Victorian Age
63. With which theorist is phenomenology associated?
a) Wolfgang Iser
b) Edmund Husserl
 c) Jean-Paul Sartre
d) All of the above answers are correct.
64. What does Sidney say about the observance of the three Dramatic Unities in drama ?
a) They must be observed
b) He favors the observance of the Unity of Action only
c) It is not necessary to observe them
d) Their observance depends upon the nature of the theme of the play
65. What is phenomenology ?
a) The examination of structures informing our conscious experience
b) The examination of our unconscious experience
c) The examination of desires informing our consciousness
d) The examination of intricate structures
66. Arnold’s views on poetry and criticism are discussed in?
a) On translating Homer
b) Preface to the Poems
c) “Scholar Gypsy”
d) Culture and Anarchy
67. Which of the following theorists is associated with formalism?
a) Viktor Shklovsky
b) Judith Butler
c) Cleanth Brooks
d) Mikhail Bakhtin
68. This poet might be described as a moral or philosophical critic for arguing that works
must have “high seriousness.”?
a) Elizabeth Browning
b) Matthew Arnold
c) T.S. Eliot
d) Virginia Woolf
69. Who is the father of Structuralism?
a) Ferdinand de Saussure
b) Karl Marx
 c) Sigmund Freud
d) David Kolb
70. Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure influenced this theory through examination of
language as a system of signs, called
a) Marxism
b) Simmulacra
c) Semiology
d) None of these
71. Saussure’s theory of language emphasizes that meanings are
a) Arbitrary and relational
b) Non-arbitrary and relational
c) Arbitrary and non-relational
d) Non-arbitrary and non-relational
72. Ferdinand de Saussure was born in
a) 1887
b) 1857
c) 1859
d) 1870
73. Structuralism in Europe developed in the
a) 19th century
b) 18th century
c) early 20th century
d) late 18th century
74. Structuralism is an intellectual movement, which is first seen in the work of
a) Roland Barthes and Louis Althusser
b) Levi Strauss and Roland Barthes
c) Assiter and Levi Strauss
d) Louis Althusser and Assiter
75. What is semiotics?
a) The study of signs
b) The study of language
 c) The study of symmetry
d) The sounds that we make
76. Types of signs are
a) Signifier
b) Signified
c) Both a and b
d) None of these
77. ————is a structure in which each element interacts.
a) Language
b) System
c) Structuralism
d) None of these
78. —————— seeks the process of meaning and production.
a) Simulation
b) Structuralism
c) Formalism
d) Marxism
79. The signifier is
a) Arbitrary
b) Not arbitrary
c) imitative
d) None of these
80. In literary theory, _____is an approach to analyzing the narrative material by examining
the underlying invarian structure, which is based on the linguistic sign system.
a) Structuralism
b) Formalism
c) Marxism
d) Rationalism
81. Structuralism considered language as a system of
a) Symbols
b) text
 c) Signs
d) both a and c
82. As an intellectual movement, structuralism became the heir to
a) Post-structuralism
b) Marxism
c) Existentialism
d) Formalism
83. Signified is the
a) Type of sign
b) Concept
c) Both and b
d) Meaning
84. _____combined Marxism and Structuralism to create his own brand of social analysis.
a) Louis Althusser
b) Lacan and Piaget
c) Assiter
d) Levi Strauss
85. Saussure wrote, "in language, there are only differences 'without _____ terms.'"
a) Negative
b) Positive
c) Neither a nor b
d) All of above
86. A structure can be defined as any conceptual system that has properties:
a) Wholeness
b) Transformation
c) Self-regulation
d) All of above
87. ————— is made of the union of a concept and a sound image.
a) Sign
b) Speech
c) Sound
 d) All of above
88. Major concepts associated with semiotics are
a) Denotation
b) Connotation
c) Both a and b
d) None of these
89. Which word most accurately describes la langue?
a) Speech
b) Language
c) Long
d) None of these
90. In linguistic, "Parole" means
a) Plural
b) Parallel
c) Positive
d) Post
91. _____ rejects ideas within structuralism
a) Pessimism
b) Simmulation
c) Post-structuralism
d) All of above
92. _____argues that study of underlying structure is reason of bias and misinterpretation
a) Post-structuralism
b) Formalism
c) Marxism
d) Semiotics
93. A post-structuralist approach argues that to understand an object, one must study both the
————— and the ————— that produced the object.
a) Meaning, System of knowledge
b) Object itself, System of knowledge
c) Meaning, Device
 d) None of these
94. The uncertain boundaries between structuralism and post-structuralism become further
blurred by the fact that scholars rarely label themselves as
a) Structuralists
b) Theorists
c) Both a and b
d) Post-structuralists
95. The fundamental belief of Structuralism,
a) That all human activities are constructed and not natural or essential
b) That all human activities are neither constructed and nor natural
c) That all human activities are constructed and also natural or essential.
d) That all human activities are not constructed but natural or essential
96. Levi-strauss died in
a) 2000
b) 2008
c) 2009
d) 2006
97. Who is the father of post-structuralism?
a) Jacques Darrida
b) Ferdinand de Sassure
c) Roland Barthes
d) Micheal Foucault
98. Who gave the concept of post-structuralism?
a) Roland Barthes
b) Michael Foucault
c) Judith Butler
d) All of above
99. Russian Formalism is a school of literary criticism that orginiated in the former Russia
around
a) 1916
b) 1915
 c) 1920
d) 1917
100. Who is the father of formalism?
a) Victor Shklvosky
b) Osip brik
c) Roman Jakobson
d) None of these
101. An interpretive approach that emerged in Russia during WWI and spread to
Europe after WWII
a) Structuralism
b) New criticism
c) Russian Formalism
d) Marxism
102. —————focuses on form, not content, on language, not on Exophora.
a) Russian formalism
b) Structuralism
c) New-criticism
d) Semiotics
103. The intense intellectual activity of Russian Formalism ended in the late
a) 1880s
b) 1920s
c) 2000
d) None of these
104. Victor Shklovsky born in
a) 1890
b) 1889
c) 1896
d) 1893
105. Poetic language or literary language has no practical function at all ,it is
a) Impractical
b) Literature
 c) Both a and b
d) Formalism
106. ——————is the artistic technique of presenting to audiences common things
in an unfamiliar or strange way, in order to enhance perception of the familiar.
a) Formalism
b) Criticism
c) Defamiliarization
d) Structuralism
107. Which country is most associated with the theory of Formalism?
a) Britain
b) France
c) America
d) Russia
108. Which of these features of a text would a Formalist be most interested in?
a) Context
b) Structure
c) Author's biographical information
d) Meaning of words
109. Which type of text would be the most useful when applying Formalism?
a) Poem
b) Play
c) Novel
d) Non-fiction
110. Which term Formalists use to describe a text that exhibits a special use of
language?
a) Literariness
b) Literal
c) Linguist
d) Languaness
111. Which of these people is connected with defamiliarization, a feature of some
Formalist texts?
 a) Victor Shklovsky
b) Stanley Fish
c) Roman Abramovich
d) Vladimir Putin
112. Which of these literary theories DOES NOT oppose Formalism?
a) New Criticism
b) Ideological
c) Reader-response
d) New Historicism
113. In which of these possible modules of an English literature course would you be
most likely to study Formalism?
a) American Literature
b) Renaissance Literature
c) Theory and Practice
d) Creative Writing
114. Russian formalism focuses on
a) Form
b) Form and content
c) Content
d) All of above
115. The ————— also causes defamiliarization
a) Literariness
b) Literal
c) Linguist
d) Languaness
116. Formalism is a
a) School of chemistry
b) School of army
c) School of literary criticism
d) School of structuralism
117. The —————collapse the distinction between form and content.
 a) Structuralists
b) Formalists
c) Post-structuralists
d) Artists
118. ——————is the opposite of automatization.
a) Defamiliarization
b) Robotization
c) Industrialization
d) Reputation
119. Which school of literary theory is associated with the phrase "to make the stones
stonier"?
a) Humanism
b) Formalism
c) Criticism
d) Marxism
120. Who introduced the concept of defamiliarization?
a) Victor Shklovsky
b) Stanley Fish
c) Roman Abramovich
d) Vladimir Putin
121. Victor Shklovsky introduced the concept of defamiliarization in his
a) Theory of prose
b) Art as device
c) Memoirs
d) Third Factory
122. Defamiliarization means
a) No change
b) Beginning
c) Making it strange
d) Planning
123. —————refers to the chronological order in which the events of a story take
place: the timeline, in other words.
a) Fabula
b) Syuzhet
c) Formalism
d) All of them
124. ——————refers to the sequence in which the author chooses to relate those
events, which we could describe as the storyline or the plot.
a) Fabula
b) Syuzhet
c) Formalism
d) All of them
125. One Fabula can produce many
a) Fabula
b) Syuzhet
c) Both a and b
d) None of these