Literary Criticism: Classical to Romantic MCQs 2026

Aristotle's Poetics influenced later critics through

1. A serial novel instalments only ✓
2. B Victorian copyright law only ✓
3. C Father Brown detection only ✓
4. D analytic vocabulary for plot, character, and tragic effect ✓

Aristotle's Poetics is chiefly concerned with

1. A the English novel only ✓
2. B Modernist stream of consciousness ✓
3. C Victorian serial form ✓
4. D tragedy and epic poetry ✓

Aristotle defines tragedy as an imitation of

1. A an action that is serious, complete, and of a certain magnitude ✓
2. B a pastoral eclogue only ✓
3. C a sonnet sequence only ✓
4. D a newspaper essay only ✓

Catharsis in Aristotle refers to

1. A the use of comic puns only ✓
2. B the ban on all emotion ✓
3. C the rise of the novel ✓
4. D the purgation or clarification of pity and fear through tragedy ✓

Hamartia in Aristotle is often interpreted as

1. A perfect heroic virtue only ✓
2. B comic wordplay only ✓
3. C a tragic error or flaw leading to reversal ✓
4. D epic hexameter ✓

Aristotle prefers plot (mythos) over

1. A character as the soul of tragedy ✓
2. B language as irrelevant always ✓
3. C all spectacle ✓
4. D all thought ✓

Peripeteia means

1. A comic resolution by marriage ✓
2. B reversal of fortune for the tragic figure ✓
3. C static description of scenery ✓
4. D novelistic free indirect discourse ✓

Aristotle discusses unity of action, meaning

1. A only one character may speak ✓
2. B only one day may pass always ✓
3. C only comedy is allowed ✓
4. D events should cohere into one complete whole ✓

Samuel Johnson's Preface to Shakespeare praises Shakespeare for

1. A holding a mirror up to human nature across time ✓
2. B imitating only Greek unities slavishly ✓
3. C rejecting all kings and fools ✓
4. D avoiding moral instruction ✓

Johnson's edition of Shakespeare helped establish

1. A Newspeak grammar rules ✓
2. B Victorian serial cliffhangers ✓
3. C scholarly annotation and textual commentary in English criticism ✓
4. D Modernist stream of consciousness ✓

Johnson argues Shakespeare's tragedy lacks

1. A any moral insight ✓
2. B any comic relief ✓
3. C strict classical unities of time and place ✓
4. D any kings ✓

Johnson values Shakespeare's characters because they

1. A copy only one historical decade ✓
2. B reject all passion ✓
3. C avoid nature ✓
4. D speak the language of universal humanity ✓

Johnson's criticism belongs to

1. A eighteenth-century neoclassical and moral judgment ✓
2. B High Modernist manifestos ✓
3. C Puritan sermon cycles only ✓
4. D Victorian serial reviews only ✓

Johnson defends Shakespeare against charges that mixing tragedy and comedy

1. A proves lack of talent ✓
2. B shows ignorance of Greek ✓
3. C ends all pity ✓
4. D violates nature and truth of life ✓

Wordsworth's Preface to Lyrical Ballads (1800) defends

1. A only aristocratic diction ✓
2. B only Greek tragic chorus ✓
3. C only political jargon ✓
4. D poetry using the language of men in a state of vivid sensation ✓

Wordsworth defines poetry as

1. A the imitation of an action only ✓
2. B the purgation of pity only ✓
3. C the serial instalment of plot ✓
4. D the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings ✓

Lyrical Ballads with Wordsworth and Coleridge aimed to

1. A renew English poetry through simple subjects and language ✓
2. B restore strict neoclassical rules ✓
3. C ban all feeling ✓
4. D imitate only French tragedy ✓

Wordsworth chooses humble subjects such as

1. A courtly epic heroes only ✓
2. B rustic life and common feelings ✓
3. C factory inspectors only ✓
4. D Party officials only ✓

Wordsworth criticizes eighteenth-century poetic diction as

1. A artificial and removed from real speech ✓
2. B too plain and sincere ✓
3. C too scientific only ✓
4. D too Homeric ✓

Coleridge distinguishes primary imagination as

1. A the living power and prime agent of all human perception ✓
2. B mere fancy combining fixed images ✓
3. C only copying memory ✓
4. D only political rhetoric ✓

Coleridge defines fancy as

1. A the highest creative faculty identical to primary imagination ✓
2. B only tragic hamartia ✓
3. C the mode of memory emancipated from time and space, blending images ✓
4. D only Puritan allegory ✓

Coleridge's Biographia Literaria discusses

1. A Victorian novel serials only ✓
2. B imagination, fancy, and his collaboration with Wordsworth ✓
3. C Newspeak rules only ✓
4. D Father Brown mysteries only ✓

Coleridge's "willing suspension of disbelief" allows

1. A total rejection of all fiction ✓
2. B audience acceptance of artistic illusion for poetic faith ✓
3. C belief that stage events are literal fact ✓
4. D ban on all supernatural poetry ✓

Matthew Arnold's The Function of Criticism at the Present Time argues criticism should

1. A promote only national prejudice ✓
2. B ignore the best that is known ✓
3. C see the object as in itself it really is ✓
4. D replace all creative art ✓

Arnold describes the critical effort as

1. A partisan shouting for one school ✓
2. B a disinterested endeavour to learn and propagate the best ✓
3. C pure market advertising ✓
4. D rejection of all standards ✓

Arnold contrasts creative epochs with uncreative ones needing

1. A criticism to sift and circulate ideals ✓
2. B only more propaganda ✓
3. C only Gothic terror ✓
4. D only serial novels ✓

Arnold is associated with the critical standard

1. A Newspeak simplicity only ✓
2. B Puritan law only ✓
3. C high seriousness and touchstones of excellence ✓
4. D Gothic shock only ✓

Aristotle's concept of mimesis means

1. A pure random ornament ✓
2. B imitation or representation of action and character ✓
3. C only historical chronicle without art ✓
4. D only moral fable without drama ✓

Aristotle ranks epic below tragedy in emotional power because tragedy is

1. A always longer and therefore stronger ✓
2. B purely comic ✓
3. C more concentrated and performed ✓
4. D without hamartia ✓

Johnson edited Shakespeare in

1. A the Anglo-Saxon era ✓
2. B the year 1719 only ✓
3. C the Oceania Ministry ✓
4. D the eighteenth century, establishing scholarly annotation ✓

Wordsworth's "emotion recollected in tranquillity" describes

1. A the poetic process of reflecting on past feeling ✓
2. B instant automatic writing without thought ✓
3. C pure political pamphleteering ✓
4. D Gothic shock without memory ✓

Coleridge's secondary imagination

1. A only stores fixed images unchanged ✓
2. B dissolves, diffuses, dissipates, in order to recreate ✓
3. C rejects all art ✓
4. D equals fancy exactly ✓

Arnold criticizes contemporary English culture for

1. A too much classical learning only ✓
2. B too much Homeric study only ✓
3. C philistinism and inadequate standards of judgment ✓
4. D too much Gothic architecture only ✓

The classical unities (time, place, action) are associated with

1. A Romantic lake poetry only ✓
2. B neoclassical dramatic theory influenced by Aristotle ✓
3. C Modernist stream of consciousness ✓
4. D Victorian triple-decker novels only ✓

Johnson praises Shakespeare's universality because his works

1. A please many ages and nations ✓
2. B obey one afternoon only ✓
3. C reject all kings ✓
4. D avoid nature entirely ✓

Wordsworth and Coleridge are central figures in

1. A English Romantic literary theory ✓
2. B Puritan Boston fiction ✓
3. C Victorian factory reports only ✓
4. D High Modernist manifestos only ✓

Aristotle says the tragic hero should be

1. A a comic fool only ✓
2. B better than average yet not perfectly virtuous ✓
3. C a divine being without flaw ✓
4. D an anonymous chorus only ✓

Catharsis is achieved through

1. A random digression without plot ✓
2. B pure description of scenery ✓
3. C novelistic serial cliffhangers only ✓
4. D the structured arousal and resolution of pity and fear ✓

Johnson's moral criticism asks whether literature

1. A must avoid all characters ✓
2. B must copy Greek language ✓
3. C conveys beneficial truth about life ✓
4. D must ban comedy ✓

Wordsworth rejects poetic diction borrowed from

1. A real men in vivid sensation ✓
2. B common rural speech ✓
3. C artificial eighteenth-century conventions ✓
4. D sincere feeling ✓

Coleridge's table talk and lectures influenced

1. A Newspeak design only ✓
2. B Victorian bankruptcy law only ✓
3. C Romantic theories of symbol and imagination ✓
4. D Puritan embroidery only ✓

Arnold's touchstone method compares new work to

1. A only bestselling serials ✓
2. B short passages from acknowledged masterpieces ✓
3. C only political slogans ✓
4. D only Gothic chapbooks ✓

Hamartia differs from simple villainy because it involves

1. A comic punning only ✓
2. B error within a figure of stature, not mere evil ✓
3. C Pastoral description only ✓
4. D Newspeak only ✓

Aristotle prefers endings that evoke

1. A pity and fear followed by catharsis, not mere shock ✓
2. B unrelieved comic marriage only ✓
3. C pure propaganda ✓
4. D random deus ex machina without logic ✓

Johnson notes Shakespeare's plots are often

1. A invented without any precedent ✓
2. B copied exactly from Poetics ✓
3. C written in Newspeak ✓
4. D loosely drawn from history and romance sources ✓

Wordsworth's preface attacks the "gaudy and inane phraseology" of

1. A plain speech of rustics ✓
2. B spontaneous feeling ✓
3. C lyrical ballads ✓
4. D pseudo-poetic diction ✓

Coleridge credits Wordsworth with showing that

1. A only kings deserve poetry ✓
2. B only Greek is poetic ✓
3. C low subjects can carry profound feeling ✓
4. D only prose essays matter ✓

Arnold's "disinterestedness" means criticism should avoid

1. A practical and political urgencies that distort judgment ✓
2. B all learning ✓
3. C all comparison ✓
4. D all reading ✓

Romantic criticism shifts emphasis toward

1. A strict neoclassical rules only ✓
2. B imagination, emotion, and the poet's creative role ✓
3. C ban on feeling ✓
4. D exclusive didactic fable ✓