500+ Literary Criticism MCQs – Part 7: T.S. Eliot & Modern Critics

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This part covers T.S. Eliot’s tradition, impersonality, objective correlative and dissociation of sensibility, F.R. Leavis, Virginia Woolf, D.H. Lawrence and later critics. The questions are drawn from previous UGC NET, SET and PhD entrance papers. Tap an option to check your answer and see the explanation.

T.S. Eliot F.R. Leavis Woolf, Lawrence, Shaw & Other Moderns Frye, Bloom & Later Critics

T.S. Eliot

1. Eliot’s theory of “objective correlative” appeared in his essay entitled:

Three Voices of Poetry
Tradition and the Individual Talent
The Metaphysical Poets
Hamlet

T.S. Eliot introduced the concept of ‘objective correlative’ in his 1919 essay on Hamlet and His Problems.

2. The phrase ‘dissociation of sensibility’ was first used by:

Philip Sidney
T.S. Eliot
John Dryden
Matthew Arnold

T.S. Eliot coined ‘dissociation of sensibility’ in his 1921 essay ‘The Metaphysical Poets’ to describe the split between thought and feeling.

3. T.S. Eliot in “The Metaphysical Poets” says: “a dissociation of sensibility set in…aggravated by the influence of the two most powerful poets of the century, ___ and ___.”

Ben Jonson and Abraham Cowley
George Herbert and Henry Vaughan
John Donne and Andrew Marvell
John Milton and John Dryden

Eliot blamed Milton and Dryden for worsening the split between thought and feeling that he believed damaged English poetry.

4. In “Tradition and Individual Talent”, according to T.S. Eliot, the term “Traditional” usually means:

Something positive
Something negative
Something historical
Something old

Eliot notes that ‘traditional’ is usually used as a term of disapproval — something negative or old-fashioned — before redefining it positively.

5. In “Tradition and the Individual Talent” T.S. Eliot uses the analogy of the catalyst. In the poetic process, the filament of platinum is equivalent to:

The language of the poet
The mind of the poet
The soul of the poet
The life of the poet

The poet’s mind, like platinum, acts as a catalyst — it enables the combination of experiences and emotions into art without itself being altered.

6. Where, according to T.S. Eliot, are we likely to find “not only the best, but the most individual parts of a poet’s work”?

In the poet’s juvenilia or rejected drafts.
In the best anthologies and scrap-books.
In those parts where the dead poets assert their immortality.
In those parts where the living poets depart from their ancestors.

Eliot argues in ‘Tradition and the Individual Talent’ that a poet’s most individual work is found where the dead poets assert their immortality through influence.

7. Why did T.S. Eliot assert that Virgil, not Homer, is the poet of Europe?

There are some initial moral concerns in Virgil
Virgil belongs to the Roman period
Homer was a pagan who was a renegade
Virgil wrote in Latin while Homer wrote in Greek

Eliot argued Virgil embodies initial moral concerns and a sense of civilisation’s weight that makes him more relevant to European Christian culture than Homer.

8. The theory of the impersonality of the poet was put forward by:

Samuel T. Coleridge
Samuel Johnson
T.S. Eliot
W.S. Merwin

T.S. Eliot’s ‘Tradition and the Individual Talent’ (1919) argues poetry is an escape from personality, not an expression of it.

9. Who said “No poet, no artist of any art, has his complete meaning alone”?

T.S. Eliot
I.A. Richards
F.R. Leavis
Raymond Williams

Eliot wrote this in ‘Tradition and the Individual Talent’ — arguing every poet’s significance is understood only in relation to the literary tradition.

10. “Honest criticism and sensitive appreciation is directed not upon the poet but upon the poetry.” These lines are from which essay of T. S. Eliot?

“Tradition and the Individual Talent”
“The Metaphysical Poets”
“Hamlet and his Problems”
“Frontiers of Criticism”

11. What is common amongst these three critical expressions — ‘Objective correlative’, ‘Dissociation of sensibilities’, ‘Unification of sensibilities’?

All three come from T. S. Eliot
All three come from I. A. Richards
All three come from F. R. Leavis
All three come from William Empson

12. In whose opinion “Poetry is the most highly organised form of intellectual activity”?

G. B. Shaw
W. B. Yeats
T. S. Eliot
D. H. Lawrence

13. By the term ‘dissociation of sensibility’ Eliot meant the separation of thought and feeling in post-17th-century poetry. The UNIFIED state (before dissociation) that he admired involved:

The unification of thought and feeling
The unification of thought and intellect
The unification of intellect and reason
The unification of emotions and feelings

14. Who has criticised most of Eliot’s theory of objective correlative?

Washington Allston
W.B. Yeats
Eliseo Vivas
None of the above

15. Who is the author of The Sacred Wood?

T. S. Eliot
I. A. Richards
Walter Pater
Matthew Arnold

The Sacred Wood: Essays on Poetry and Criticism (1920) by T. S. Eliot contains his key critical essays including “Tradition and the Individual Talent” and “Hamlet and His Problems.”

16. Who called Shakespeare’s Hamlet “an artistic failure”?

I. A. Richards
F. R. Leavis
Aldous Huxley
T. S. Eliot

T. S. Eliot in “Hamlet and His Problems” (1919) called Hamlet “an artistic failure” because Shakespeare could not find an adequate “objective correlative” for Hamlet’s emotion — the emotion seemed to exceed what the play’s situation could justify.

17. In which essay did T. S. Eliot put forward the idea of “dissociation of sensibility”?

Tradition and Individual Talent
Hamlet and His Problems
The Metaphysical Poets
Poetry and Drama

“Dissociation of sensibility” appears in Eliot’s essay “The Metaphysical Poets” (1921), where he argues that after the 17th century, poets lost the ability to feel their thought — thought and feeling became separated.

18. Eliot believed that only a person who believed in the doctrine of ……………… could understand his writings.

Objective Correlative
Impersonality of poetry
Dissociation of sensibility
Original sin

Eliot, a devout Anglo-Catholic, stated that belief in Original Sin was essential to understanding his work — his poetry is steeped in Christian theology, the fallen state of humanity, and the need for redemption.

19. Which essay/article by T. S. Eliot is considered the “unofficial manifesto” of his criticism?

“Tradition and the Individual Talent”
The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism
“The Metaphysical Poets”
“The Function of Criticism”

“Tradition and the Individual Talent” (1919) is Eliot’s most influential critical manifesto, outlining his theory of impersonality in poetry, the importance of tradition, and the idea of a “simultaneous order” of literature.

20. In the essay “Tradition and the Individual Talent,” Eliot compares the mind of a poet to:

A receptacle
A fountain
A catalyst
Sulphurous acid

Eliot uses the analogy of platinum as a catalyst in the presence of oxygen and sulphur dioxide — the poet’s mind combines emotions and feelings into new compounds without itself being affected, embodying the theory of poetic impersonality.

21. Eliot was the editor of which journal?

Criterion
Scrutiny
The Egoist
None of these

T. S. Eliot founded and edited The Criterion (1922–1939), one of the most influential literary journals of the 20th century; Scrutiny was F. R. Leavis’s journal, not Eliot’s.

22. The essay “Hamlet and His Problems” is famous for its concept of:

Dissociation of sensibility
Objective correlative
Art emotion and life emotion
Metaphysical wit

“Hamlet and His Problems” (1919) is where Eliot introduced the term Objective Correlative — arguing that to express emotion in art, the writer must find “a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events” that will evoke exactly that emotion.

23. By the term “dissociation of sensibility,” Eliot meant:

The unification of thought and feeling
The unification of thought and intellect
The separation of intellect from feeling/emotion
The unification of emotions and feelings

Eliot argued that before the 17th century, poets like Donne could “feel their thought” — thought and feeling were unified. After the Civil War, this unity broke down: intellect and emotion became dissociated, a “split” that damaged English poetry.

24. Eliot’s “Objective Correlative” explains how:

Feelings and emotions should not be separated in poetry
The poet should depersonalise his creation
The writer succeeds in evoking the right emotions in the reader/spectator
To trigger objective thinking in the reader

Eliot’s Objective Correlative is “a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events” that functions as a formula for a particular emotion — when presented in art, it automatically evokes that emotion in the reader without the author stating it directly.

25. Who introduced the term “Objective Correlative” in formalist criticism?

T. S. Eliot
Arnold
Virginia Woolf
C. S. Lewis

T. S. Eliot introduced “Objective Correlative” in his 1919 essay “Hamlet and His Problems,” arguing that Hamlet fails because Shakespeare could not find an adequate objective correlative for Hamlet’s overwhelming sense of disgust.

26. “Tradition and Individual Talent” is a critical essay by:

Shelley
Dryden
Eliot
Derrida

“Tradition and the Individual Talent” (1919) by T. S. Eliot, published in The Egoist and later collected in The Sacred Wood, argues that individual poets must surrender their personality to “tradition” — the living presence of the literary past.

27. What is T. S. Eliot’s opinion of Aristotle?

Artificial in ideas
The perfect critic
A mere theorist
An outdated moralist

In “The Perfect Critic” (The Sacred Wood, 1920), Eliot presents Aristotle as the model of an intelligent, disinterested critic. He praises Aristotle for looking solely and steadfastly at the object.

28. In which poets does T. S. Eliot find the unification of sensibility to the greatest extent?

The Victorian poets
The Romantic poets
The Classical poets
The Metaphysical poets

In “The Metaphysical Poets” (1921), Eliot argues that Donne and his contemporaries could “feel their thought as immediately as the odour of a rose.” After them, a dissociation of sensibility set in.

29. In “Tradition and the Individual Talent,” T. S. Eliot feels that:

I. Tradition is inherited

II. Tradition cannot be inherited

III. Tradition has to be obtained by great labour

IV. Tradition involves the historical sense

The correct combination according to the code is:

I, II and IV only
I, II and III only
II, III and IV only
I, III and IV only

Eliot says tradition “cannot be inherited, and if you want it you must obtain it by great labour.” It involves the historical sense, a perception of the past and its presence.

30. Which of the following statements about T. S. Eliot is/are correct?

1. Tradition acts strongly even in poets considered avant-garde.

2. Tradition cannot be taken as a lump.

3. Poetry is an escape from emotion, not a turning loose of emotion.

4. The objective correlative refers to the way emotion is represented.

Choose the correct option:

Statements 2, 3 and 4 are correct
Statements 1 and 2 are correct
Only statement 1 is correct
All statements are correct

All four come from Eliot: the past is alive in the most individual poets, it cannot be taken “as a lump,” and poetry is “an escape from emotion.” The objective correlative is his formula for expressing emotion in art.

F.R. Leavis

31. Who, amongst the following, does not belong to the ‘Great Tradition’, enunciated by F.R. Leavis?

Joseph Conrad
James Joyce
Jane Austen
George Eliot

Leavis’s Great Tradition (1948) includes Jane Austen, George Eliot, Henry James, and Joseph Conrad — but excludes James Joyce.

32. F.R. Leavis and Q.D. Leavis launched a critical journal devoted to the moral centrality of English Studies. Name the Journal.

The English Historical Review
The Criterion
Scrutiny
The Edinburgh Review

Scrutiny (1932–53) was the Leavises’ influential journal that applied rigorous moral and aesthetic standards to literary criticism.

33. The pre-eminent evaluative criterion of F.R. Leavis’s Great Tradition is:

Moral purpose
Sublime subject matter
Reader-response
Truth to life

For Leavis, ‘moral purpose’ — a novelist’s deep engagement with life’s ethical complexities — was the supreme criterion of literary greatness.

Woolf, Lawrence, Shaw & Other Moderns

34. The author who wrote “I have attempted, through the medium of biography, to present some Victorian visions to the modern eye” about Cardinal Manning, Florence Nightingale, Dr. Arnold, and General Gordon is:

Matthew Arnold
Robert Browning
Lytton Strachey
Oscar Wilde

This describes Lytton Strachey’s Eminent Victorians (1918), which revolutionised biographical writing with its ironic approach.

35. _______ is a theological term brought into literary criticism by _______.

Entelechy, St. Augustine
Ambiguity, William Empson
Adequation, Fr Walter Ong
Epiphany, James Joyce

James Joyce borrowed ‘Epiphany’ from theology (a divine manifestation) and used it in literary criticism to describe sudden moments of insight.

36. In Virginia Woolf’s essay ‘Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown’, who is Mrs. Brown?

A woman Woolf happens to meet in a train
A servant in Mr. Bennett’s household
A character in a Bennett story
Mr. Bennett’s neighbour who happens to be a writer

Mrs. Brown is a fictional name Woolf gives to an old woman she encountered in a railway carriage, used to illustrate how character should be depicted.

37. D.H. Lawrence uses the expression ‘a bright book of life’ to describe:

The novel
The dramatic monologue
The Bible
The short lyric

D.H. Lawrence called the novel ‘the one bright book of life’ in his essay ‘Why the Novel Matters’.

38. In his Introduction to The Oxford Book of Twentieth-Century English Verse (1973), Philip Larkin underlines the importance of a native tradition with _____ seen as the major poet of the Modern Period.

William Butler Yeats
T.S. Eliot
Thomas Hardy
D.H. Lawrence

Larkin championed Thomas Hardy over Eliot and Yeats as the true major modern poet, emphasising a native English poetic tradition.

39. 11,396 definitions of romanticism were given by:

Friedrich Schlegel
Victor Hugo
Edgar Allan Poe
F.L. Lucas

F.L. Lucas in his book The Decline and Fall of the Romantic Ideal (1936) famously compiled 11,396 definitions of romanticism.

40. D.H. Lawrence popularized the concept of ………… in his novels.

Realism
Naturalism
Primitivism
Expressionism

Lawrence championed primitivism — celebrating instinct, blood-consciousness, and natural impulses over the constraints of industrial civilisation.

41. Who said, “For art’s sake alone I would not face the toil of writing a single sentence”?

T. S. Eliot
George Bernard Shaw
John Galsworthy
John Masefield

42. ………………… is Virginia Woolf’s contribution to feminist criticism.

The Voyage Out
A Room of One’s Own
Between the Acts
The Common Reader

A Room of One’s Own (1929) is Woolf’s landmark feminist essay arguing that women need financial independence and private space to create literature — it introduced Judith Shakespeare as a symbol of thwarted female genius.

Frye, Bloom & Later Critics

43. Which modern critic described value judgements as ‘the donkey’s carrot of literary criticism’?

T.S. Eliot
I.A. Richards
William Empson
Northrop Frye

Northrop Frye, in Anatomy of Criticism (1957), dismissed value judgements as the ‘donkey’s carrot’ that distracts from systematic literary study.

44. Harold Bloom put forth the theory ………………… based on the Oedipus Complex.

Diachronic Approach
The Anxiety of Influence
Diegesis
Hermeneutics

Harold Bloom’s The Anxiety of Influence (1973) argues that poets are haunted by their strong predecessors — like an Oedipal struggle, they must “misread” or swerve away from their poetic fathers to establish their own identity.

45. Which school of critics opposes the over-politicised, abstruse theory and identity politics that, in its view, marginalise literary imagination and creativity?

Cultural theory critics
Identity theorists
Liberal humanist critics
New Historicists

Liberal humanist critics hold that great literature speaks to a timeless human nature. They see heavy theorising as a threat to imaginative response, as Peter Barry describes in Beginning Theory.

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