500+ Literary Criticism MCQs – Part 5: Wordsworth & Coleridge

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This part covers Wordsworth’s Preface to Lyrical Ballads, and Coleridge’s Biographia Literaria: fancy, primary and secondary imagination, and the willing suspension of disbelief. The questions are drawn from previous UGC NET, SET and PhD entrance papers. Tap an option to check your answer and see the explanation.

William Wordsworth S.T. Coleridge Lyrical Ballads & Romantic Criticism

William Wordsworth

1. Which romantic poet coined the famous phrase ‘spots of time’?

John Keats
William Wordsworth
S.T. Coleridge
Lord Byron

Wordsworth uses ‘spots of time’ in The Prelude (Book XII) to describe vivid childhood memories that have restorative power.

2. William Wordsworth’s statement of purpose in publishing the Lyrical Ballads carries the following phrase. Complete it correctly: “to choose incidents from common life and to relate or describe them, throughout, as far as possible, ______.”

in a selection of language really used by men.
in a relation to language really used by men.
in a selection of language really used by common man.
in deference to language actually used by men.

Wordsworth’s exact words from the 1800 Preface are ‘in a selection of language really used by men’ — emphasising natural, everyday speech.

3. One English poet addressing another: “Thy soul was like a Star, and dwelt apart; / Thou hast a voice whose sound was like the sea…” Whose lines are these? To whom are they addressed?

W.H. Auden – W.B. Yeats
P.B. Shelley – William Blake
William Wordsworth – John Milton
Ben Jonson – William Shakespeare

These are from Wordsworth’s sonnet ‘London, 1802’ addressed to Milton, lamenting England’s moral decline and wishing Milton were alive.

4. The “Preface to the Lyrical Ballads” was first published in:

1798
1800
1801
1802

The Preface first appeared in the second edition of Lyrical Ballads, dated 1800. That edition reached readers in January 1801, but 1800 is the accepted date of the Preface.

5. Which of the following is not written by Wordsworth?

The Prelude
The Excursion
A Vision of Judgement
The Borderers

A Vision of Judgement was written by Robert Southey (1821), later famously parodied by Byron — it is not a Wordsworth work.

6. “The poet is a man speaking to men.” Who wrote this?

Coleridge
Shelley
Wordsworth
Dr. Johnson

7. “Poetry is emotions recollected in tranquillity.” Who has defined Poetry in these words?

Shelley
Wordsworth
Coleridge
Matthew Arnold

8. “There neither is, nor can be, any essential difference between the language of prose and metrical composition.” Who holds this view?

Wordsworth
Coleridge
Hazlitt
Lamb

9. Which edition of Lyrical Ballads is considered to be a standard critical document?

1800
1802
1815
1820

10. Who says that ‘every great poet is a teacher’?

Wordsworth
Coleridge
Keats
Pope

11. ………………… defines poetry as “spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings.”

Wordsworth
Coleridge
P. B. Shelley
Keats

Wordsworth’s famous definition from the 1800 Preface to Lyrical Ballads: “Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings; it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquillity.”

12. An Appendix on Poetic Diction was added to the Preface to the Lyrical Ballads in which year?

1800
1802
1805
1815

The third edition (1802) of Lyrical Ballads added an important Appendix on Poetic Diction, where Wordsworth further developed his argument against the artificial language used by 18th-century poets.

13. The Essay Supplementary was added to which edition of the Preface?

1800
1802
1805
1815

Wordsworth’s “Essay, Supplementary to the Preface” was added to the 1815 edition of his collected poems, where he also wrote a new preface discussing the classification of his poetry and the nature of poetic imagination.

14. What is the subtitle of Wordsworth’s The Prelude?

Growth of a Poet’s Mind
Philosophy of a Poem
Nature, Man and Society
Poetic Imagination

The Prelude, or Growth of a Poet’s Mind (published posthumously in 1850) is Wordsworth’s autobiographical poem tracing how nature and formative experiences shaped his development as a poet.

15. Wordsworth calls poetry “the breath and finer spirit of ______.”

Humanity
All knowledge
Emotions
Experience

In the Preface to Lyrical Ballads, Wordsworth writes that poetry is “the breath and finer spirit of all knowledge.” He adds that it is “the impassioned expression which is in the countenance of all Science.”

16. “There neither is, nor can be, any essential difference between the language of prose and ______.”

Poetry
Metrical composition
Rhymed verse
Poetic diction

This is Wordsworth’s claim in the Preface to Lyrical Ballads. Coleridge challenged it in Biographia Literaria, arguing that metre itself demands a language different from prose.

17. The Preface to Lyrical Ballads can be regarded as:

The manifesto of the Romantic movement in English
The first study of Romantic poetry in English
A critical analysis of pre-Romantic poetry
A defence of eighteenth-century poetic diction

Wordsworth’s Preface (1800) rejected neoclassical poetic diction and called for the real language of men. It is widely read as the manifesto of English Romanticism.

18. William Wordsworth wrote the Preface to Lyrical Ballads because he wished to:

I. Justify living amidst nature

II. Create a revolution

III. Put forth new guidelines for writing poetry

IV. Justify philosophical and emotional involvement with daily life

The correct combination according to the code is:

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

The Preface sets out new principles of subject and diction for poetry, choosing incidents from common life. It defends the poet’s emotional and reflective engagement with ordinary experience.

19. Fill in the blanks from Wordsworth’s Preface:

______ and ______ life was generally chosen, because, in that condition, the essential ______ of the heart find a better soil in which they can attain their maturity…

Humble, rustic, passions
Simple, frugal, emotions
Ordinary, uneventful, feelings
Modest, everyday, sentiments

Wordsworth wrote “Humble and rustic life was generally chosen” because there “the essential passions of the heart” speak a plainer language. Such feelings are less restrained and closer to nature.

20. Wordsworth says that poetry is “the spontaneous overflow of powerful ______.”

Emotions
Reflections
Thoughts
Feelings

The exact phrase in the Preface is “the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings.” It “takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquillity.”

S.T. Coleridge

21. Coleridge’s statement that imagination “dissolves, diffuses, dissipates in order to recreate” relates to:

Fancy
Primary imagination
Secondary imagination
Esemplastic imagination

Coleridge attributes the active power to dissolve and recreate specifically to the secondary imagination in Biographia Literaria Ch. XIII.

22. The quotation “a repetition in the finite mind of the eternal act of creation in the infinite I AM” appears in:

Lyrical Ballads
Biographia Literaria
In Defence of Poetry
Letters of Keats

This famous definition of primary imagination comes from Chapter XIII of Coleridge’s Biographia Literaria (1817).

23. The phrase ‘the willing suspension of disbelief’ occurs in:

Biographia Literaria
Preface to Lyrical Ballads
In Defence of Poetry
Poetics

Coleridge coined this famous phrase in Chapter XIV of Biographia Literaria (1817) while discussing poetic faith.

24. Though Coleridge refers to “Motivehunting of a motiveless malignity”, the “human villain” Iago’s motives are:

I. He has been disappointed of military promotion

II. He suspects Othello of cuckolding him

III. He has been in love with Desdemona

IV. He wants to become Othello

The correct combination is:

I and II are correct
I and III are correct
I and IV are correct
II and IV are correct

Iago explicitly states two motives in the play: being passed over for promotion (Cassio got the job) and suspecting Othello slept with Emilia.

25. According to Coleridge, the secondary imagination dissolves, diffuses, _________, in order to recreate. Choose the right word:

Disintegrates
Dissipates
Displaces
Dissociates

The exact quote from Biographia Literaria Ch. XIII reads: ‘It dissolves, diffuses, dissipates, in order to recreate.’

26. In Biographia Literaria, Coleridge defines imagination as the faculty by which:

The soul perceives the phenomenal diversity of the universe
The soul perceives the spiritual unity of the universe
The mind acquires images by its associative power
The mind separates images by its discriminatory power

For Coleridge, imagination is the unifying power through which the soul perceives the underlying spiritual unity behind the world’s diversity.

27. The critical concept of “willing suspension of disbelief” owes its origin to Chapter _____ of Biographia Literaria.

Coleridge introduces the concept of ‘willing suspension of disbelief’ in Chapter XIV of Biographia Literaria.

28. For Coleridge, our power to perceive symbols gleaned from the world about us is related to the category of:

Primary imagination
Secondary imagination
Fancy
Intuition

Coleridge’s primary imagination is the basic human faculty of perception — it processes the external world into meaningful symbols.

29. ‘Fancy’ deals with:

Fixities and definites
Imagination and Reason
Judgement and Memory
Structure and Superstructure

Coleridge describes Fancy as dealing with ‘fixities and definites’ — it rearranges existing material mechanically, unlike the creative power of imagination.

30. As propounded by Coleridge in Biographia Literaria, match the qualities of poetic genius:

Column A:

(i) Good Sense (ii) Fancy (iii) Motion (iv) Imagination

Column B:

(a) Life (b) Soul (c) Drapery (d) Body

(i)–(d) Body, (ii)–(c) Drapery, (iii)–(a) Life, (iv)–(b) Soul
(i)–(a) Life, (ii)–(b) Soul, (iii)–(c) Drapery, (iv)–(d) Body
(i)–(b) Soul, (ii)–(a) Life, (iii)–(d) Body, (iv)–(c) Drapery
(i)–(c) Drapery, (ii)–(d) Body, (iii)–(b) Soul, (iv)–(a) Life

31. Who distinguished between the primary and secondary imagination?

William Wordsworth
S.T. Coleridge
Robert Southey
De Quincey

32. Biographia Literaria was published in:

1817
1805
1815
1800

33. Who is the author of Biographia Literaria?

William Hazlitt
P. B. Shelley
Dr. Johnson
S. T. Coleridge

Biographia Literaria (1817) by S. T. Coleridge is his autobiographical and philosophical work containing his most important critical ideas, including the distinction between Imagination and Fancy.

34. “I write in meter because I am about to use a language different from that of prose.” Who says this?

Coleridge
Byron
Keats
None of the above

This statement is Coleridge’s from Biographia Literaria, where he distinguishes the language of poetry from prose and reflects on why metrical composition demands a different kind of language and attention.

35. Which of the following critics has most elaborately discussed the concept of Imagination?

Freud
Walter Pater
Ruskin
S. T. Coleridge

Coleridge’s theory of Imagination — dividing it into Primary, Secondary, and Fancy in Biographia Literaria — is the most detailed and influential Romantic discussion of imaginative faculty in English criticism.

36. Who made a difference between “Poetry” and “Poem”?

Coleridge
Addison
Arnold
None of the above

Coleridge in Biographia Literaria carefully distinguished between “a poem” (a specific composition with metrical form) and “poetry” (a broader mode of imaginative expression that need not be written in verse).

37. Coleridge’s chief contribution to literary criticism is:

Lectures on Shakespeare and Milton
Criticism on Wordsworth
Biographia Literaria
Lectures on the poets of the 17th Century

Biographia Literaria (1817) is Coleridge’s masterpiece of criticism, containing his theory of Imagination and Fancy, his critique of Wordsworth’s poetic theory, and his philosophical basis for literary judgment.

38. For S. T. Coleridge, ………………… is “the arbitrary bringing together of things that lie remote and forming them into a unity.”

Primary Imagination
Secondary Imagination
Fancy
Poetic Diction

Coleridge defined Fancy as a mechanical faculty that merely aggregates and associates fixed, “dead” materials — contrasting it with the living, organic, creative power of the Imagination.

39. “The design of the collaborators was to include in it two different kinds of poetry; in the one ‘the incidents and agents were to be in part at least, Supernatural,’ in the other, ‘subjects were to be chosen from ordinary life’.” Who made this comment and about which book?

Wordsworth on the Lyrical Ballads
Coleridge on the Lyrical Ballads
Coleridge on the Ancient Mariner
Wordsworth on the Prelude

This is Coleridge’s account of the division of labour in Lyrical Ballads, written in Biographia Literaria — Coleridge took the supernatural (e.g., “Ancient Mariner”) while Wordsworth took ordinary life, giving each credibility of a “willing suspension of disbelief.”

40. Who first objected to Wordsworth’s theory of poetic language?

F. W. Bateson
Keats
Atkins
Coleridge

In Biographia Literaria (Chapters 17–18), Coleridge disputed that rustic speech is the best language for poetry. He also denied that there is no essential difference between the language of prose and metrical composition.

41. Who claimed the Preface to Lyrical Ballads to be “half a child of my own brain”?

S. T. Coleridge
William Collins
Thomas Gray
Robert Southey

Coleridge said this in a 1802 letter, since the Preface grew out of his conversations with Wordsworth. He later disagreed with parts of it in Biographia Literaria.

42. Biographia Literaria (1817) was originally conceived in 1814–15 as a preface to:

Lyrical Ballads
Table Talk
Sibylline Leaves
Christabel

Coleridge began Biographia Literaria as a preface to his collected poems, Sibylline Leaves. It grew into a two-volume literary autobiography and both were published in 1817.

43. The distinction between ‘Fancy’ and ‘Imagination’ is discussed in:

Preface to Lyrical Ballads
De Profundis
Biographia Literaria
Preface to the Fables

In Chapter 13 of Biographia Literaria, Coleridge separates the creative Imagination (primary and secondary) from Fancy. Fancy only rearranges “fixities and definites.”

Lyrical Ballads & Romantic Criticism

44. Arrange the following in the right chronological order: Lyrical Ballads, Biographia Literaria, Preface to Lyrical Ballads, Adonais.

Lyrical Ballads → Biographia Literaria → Preface to Lyrical Ballads → Adonais
Lyrical Ballads → Preface to Lyrical Ballads → Biographia Literaria → Adonais
Preface to Lyrical Ballads → Lyrical Ballads → Biographia Literaria → Adonais
Biographia Literaria → Adonais → Lyrical Ballads → Preface to Lyrical Ballads

45. Match the statements on imagination with the poets/critics who made them:

List I (Statements):

I. “One power alone makes a poet – The Imagination, The Divine Vision”

II. “…what the imagination seizes on beauty must be the truth”

III. “The great instrument of moral good is the imagination”

IV. “Works of imagination should be written in a very plain language”

List II (Poets/Critics): 1. Shelley 2. Coleridge 3. Blake 4. Keats

I–2, II–1, III–3, IV–4
I–3, II–4, III–1, IV–2
I–1, II–3, III–2, IV–1
I–4, II–1, III–3, IV–2

46. The two great Romantic poets behind the creation of Lyrical Ballads are:

Wordsworth and Coleridge
Keats and Wordsworth
Collins and Gray
Byron and Shelley

Lyrical Ballads (1798) was jointly published by Wordsworth and Coleridge — Coleridge contributing supernatural poems like “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” and Wordsworth contributing poems of everyday rural life.

47. Lyrical Ballads was first published in:

1798
1789
1793
1785

Wordsworth and Coleridge published Lyrical Ballads anonymously in 1798, opening with “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.” The famous Preface was added to the second edition in 1800.

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