Literary Criticism – Previous Year Questions (Part 5)
1. According to Lisideius in Dryden's Essay of Dramatic Poesy, the French use rhyme in place of:
Solution: Lisideius praises French drama, which is composed in rhymed verse where English dramatists mostly use blank verse. Neander (Dryden's voice) later takes up the question of rhyme in serious plays.
2. In Dryden's Essay of Dramatic Poesy, a play is defined as “a just and lively image of ______.”
Solution: Lisideius defines a play as “a just and lively image of human nature, representing its passions and humours, and the changes of fortune to which it is subject.” Its end is the delight and instruction of mankind.
3. In Dryden's Essay of Dramatic Poesy, French drama is preferred by:
Solution: Lisideius champions the French for their regularity and strict observance of the unities. Crites defends the Ancients, Eugenius the Moderns, and Neander English drama.
4. Who first objected to Wordsworth's theory of poetic language?
Solution: 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.
5. Who claimed the Preface to Lyrical Ballads to be “half a child of my own brain”?
Solution: 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.
6. About whom does Dryden remark, “I admire him, but I love Shakespeare”?
Solution: In the Essay of Dramatic Poesy, Neander compares Jonson, the correct and learned “Virgil” of English drama, with Shakespeare, its “Homer.” He admires Jonson's art but loves Shakespeare's natural genius.
7. Who among the following was Dryden's contemporary?
Solution: Thomas Rymer (1643–1713), who coined “poetic justice,” wrote criticism in the Restoration alongside Dryden. Sidney died in 1586, Jonson in 1637, and Pope's career began after Dryden's death in 1700.
8. Wordsworth calls poetry “the breath and finer spirit of ______.”
Solution: 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.”
9. “There neither is, nor can be, any essential difference between the language of prose and ______.”
Solution: 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.
10. What is T. S. Eliot's opinion of Aristotle?
Solution: 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.
11. The line “A poem should not mean / But be” comes from:
Solution: The line closes Archibald MacLeish's poem “Ars Poetica” (1926). The New Critics adopted it as a slogan for the poem as an autonomous object rather than a statement.
12. The term “New Criticism” is applied to:
Solution: New Criticism was the dominant Anglo-American movement of the 1930s–1950s, led by Ransom, Brooks, Tate, Wimsatt and Warren. It drew on the work of Eliot and I. A. Richards in Britain.
13. Match List I with List II:
(a) William Wordsworth
(b) S. T. Coleridge
(c) Matthew Arnold
(d) T. S. Eliot
1. The Study of Poetry
2. Biographia Literaria
3. Preface to Lyrical Ballads
4. Tradition and the Individual Talent
Choose the correct code (a, b, c, d):
Solution: Wordsworth wrote the Preface (1800), Coleridge Biographia Literaria (1817), Arnold “The Study of Poetry” (1880) and Eliot “Tradition and the Individual Talent” (1919). That gives the code 3, 2, 1, 4.
14. “The best poetry will be found to have a power of forming, sustaining, and delighting us.” This assertion implies:
Solution: Arnold makes this claim in “The Study of Poetry.” Great poetry forms character, sustains us in life and gives delight, so it performs several functions at once.
15. I. A. Richards' experiment with his Cambridge students, recorded in Practical Criticism (1929), astonished him because of:
Solution: Richards gave students unsigned poems and collected their written “protocols.” He found widespread misreading, sentimentality and stock responses, which led him to argue for training in close reading.
16. “Poetic licence” means:
Solution: Poetic licence is the poet's freedom to depart from ordinary rules of grammar, word order, pronunciation and diction. It covers both word choice and the norms of everyday speech, for the sake of metre, rhyme or effect.
17. “Linguistic freedom” in poetry is:
Solution: Linguistic freedom is the writer's liberty with the language itself: inventing words, bending syntax and choosing unusual diction. It is narrower than poetic licence, which also covers facts and conventions.
18. What is meant by rhetoric?
Solution: Rhetoric is the art of effective or persuasive speaking and writing, as theorised by Aristotle, Cicero and Quintilian. Longinus distinguished the sublime from mere rhetorical persuasion.
19. Who among the following is regarded as a pioneer (forerunner) of New Criticism?
Solution: I. A. Richards' Principles of Literary Criticism (1924) and Practical Criticism (1929) laid the ground for close reading. Along with T. S. Eliot, he is treated as a forerunner of the American New Critics.
20. Principles of Literary Criticism (1924) was written by:
Solution: I. A. Richards wrote Principles of Literary Criticism, which offered a psychological theory of value in poetry. It also introduced his distinction between emotive and referential language.
21. Which book gave its name to the movement called New Criticism?
Solution: John Crowe Ransom's The New Criticism (1941) discussed Richards, Eliot, Empson and Winters. Its title became the name of the whole movement.
22. In which poets does T. S. Eliot find the unification of sensibility to the greatest extent?
Solution: 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.
23. A Defence of Poetry was written by:
Solution: Shelley wrote A Defence of Poetry in 1821 in reply to Peacock's “The Four Ages of Poetry.” It ends by calling poets “the unacknowledged legislators of the world.”
24. Biographia Literaria (1817) was originally conceived in 1814–15 as a preface to:
Solution: 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.
25. The Preface to Lyrical Ballads can be regarded as:
Solution: 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.
26. In explaining the sublime, Longinus places emphasis on the great spirit of the:
Solution: Longinus calls sublimity “the echo of a great soul.” The first and most important source of the sublime is the writer's capacity for great conceptions.
27. 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:
Solution: 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.
28. I. A. Richards developed his theory of criticism by evaluating poetry through which method?
Solution: Richards asked readers to respond to unsigned poems and analysed their protocols. This method of close reading became the basis of Practical Criticism and the New Critical method.
29. According to Indian poetics, the different Rasas are created by:
Solution: Bharata's Natyashastra says Rasa arises from the union of Vibhavas, Anubhavas and Vyabhicari Bhavas. The Sthayi Bhava (dominant emotion) behind each is what turns into a particular Rasa.
30. The grammarians' theory of Sphota was adopted to explain poetics by:
Solution: Anandavardhana modelled his theory of Dhvani (suggestion) on the grammarians' Sphota. Just as Sphota reveals meaning beyond sounds, Dhvani reveals meaning beyond the literal sense.
31. Lyrical Ballads was first published in:
Solution: 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.
32. 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:
Solution: 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.
33. Dhvanyaloka is a critical treatise by:
Solution: Anandavardhana (9th century) wrote Dhvanyaloka, which makes Dhvani (suggestion) the soul of poetry. Abhinavagupta later wrote the commentary Locana on it.
34. The theory of Sphota was systematically formulated by:
Solution: Bhartrhari developed the Sphota theory in his Vakyapadiya, holding that meaning flashes forth from the word or sentence as an indivisible whole. Earlier grammarians had only hinted at it.
35. 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:
Solution: 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.
36. The following passage is taken from:
The Greeks called him ‘a poet’… It cometh of this word Poiein, which is ‘to make’: wherein, I know not whether by luck or wisdom, we Englishmen have met with the Greeks in calling him ‘a maker’.
Solution: Sidney traces the word poet to the Greek poiein, “to make,” to show that the poet is a creator. Unlike nature's brazen world, the poet delivers a golden one.
37. In “The Function of Criticism at the Present Time,” why does Matthew Arnold say the English poetry of the first quarter of the nineteenth century “did not know enough”?
Solution: Arnold argues that creative genius needs materials, and those materials are ideas prepared by criticism. Romantic poetry had energy but lacked a national “glow of life and thought,” so Byron seemed empty and Shelley incoherent.
38. 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…
Solution: 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.
39. A deliberate poetic device in which a single word or expression signifies two or more distinct references, or expresses diverse attitudes or feelings, is called:
Solution: This is M. H. Abrams' definition of ambiguity. William Empson made it central to criticism in Seven Types of Ambiguity (1930), treating it as a source of poetic richness.
40. Which school of critics opposes the over-politicised, abstruse theory and identity politics that, in its view, marginalise literary imagination and creativity?
Solution: 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.
41. Match the Sanskrit Rasa with its closest English equivalent:
I. Hasya
II. Bibhatsa
III. Adbhuta
IV. Karuna
a. Repulsive / disgust
b. Marvellous / wonder
c. Compassion / pathos
d. Humorous / comic
Choose the correct code:
Solution: Hasya is the comic, Bibhatsa the odious, Adbhuta the marvellous and Karuna the pathetic Rasa. These are four of Bharata's eight Rasas.
42. Match the theory with its theorist:
I. Aucitya
II. Vakrokti
III. Dhvani Siddhanta
IV. Sphota
a. Anandavardhana
b. Bhartrhari
c. Kshemendra
d. Kuntaka
Choose the correct code:
Solution: Kshemendra wrote on Aucitya (propriety), Kuntaka on Vakrokti (oblique expression), Anandavardhana on Dhvani (suggestion) and Bhartrhari on Sphota. So the code is I-c, II-d, III-a, IV-b.
43. The distinction between ‘Fancy’ and ‘Imagination’ is discussed in:
Solution: In Chapter 13 of Biographia Literaria, Coleridge separates the creative Imagination (primary and secondary) from Fancy. Fancy only rearranges “fixities and definites.”
44. Wordsworth says that poetry is “the spontaneous overflow of powerful ______.”
Solution: The exact phrase in the Preface is “the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings.” It “takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquillity.”
45. ‘Art for Art's sake’ is the cardinal doctrine of:
Solution: The Aesthetic Movement, led by Pater, Wilde and Swinburne, held that art needs no moral or social justification. The slogan comes from the French l'art pour l'art of Gautier.
46. In Bhartrhari's view, the word or sentence taken as a single, indivisible meaningful unit is called:
Solution: For Bhartrhari, Sphota is the indivisible meaning-bearer that bursts forth when the sounds are heard in full. Meaning is grasped as a whole, not built up letter by letter.
47. The deviations of expression that make an utterance poetic are studied in the theory of:
Solution: Kuntaka's Vakrokti (“oblique” or deviant speech) makes striking departure from ordinary expression the essence of poetry. He studies it at every level, from the syllable to the whole work.
48. Who declared that criticism is “a disinterested endeavour to learn and propagate the best that is known and thought in the world”?
Solution: Arnold gives this definition in “The Function of Criticism at the Present Time” (1864). It aims to establish “a current of fresh and true ideas.”
49. Who is accused of calling poetry “the mother of lies,” a charge Sidney answers in his Apology?
Solution: The Puritan Stephen Gosson attacked poets in The School of Abuse (1579). Sidney answers the charge that poetry is “the mother of lies” by saying the poet “nothing affirms, and therefore never lieth.”
50. Aristotle's critical work is entitled:
Solution: Aristotle's Poetics (c. 335 BCE) is the earliest surviving work of Western literary theory, dealing mainly with tragedy. Ars Poetica is by Horace and On the Sublime by Longinus.
51. Who was the most illustrious pupil of Plato?
Solution: Aristotle studied at Plato's Academy for about twenty years. Socrates was Plato's teacher, not his pupil.
52. Longinus declares that the true sublime pleases all and pleases:
Solution: Longinus says that true sublimity “pleases all and pleases always.” Its lasting appeal across readers and ages is the test of genuine greatness.
53. What does Longinus mean by ‘Puerility’?
Solution: For Longinus, puerility is a fault of pedantic, over-elaborate thought that ends in frigid failure. It comes from trying to be clever and striking.
54. Who remarked, “There abide these three, Aristotle, Longinus and Coleridge”?
Solution: George Saintsbury, in his History of Criticism, named these three as the supreme critics. He echoes St Paul's “now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three.”
55. In Dryden's Essay of Dramatic Poesy, who is meant in the remark “if he had seen ours, might have changed his mind”?
Solution: Neander argues that Aristotle's rules were drawn from Greek plays only. Had Aristotle seen English drama, he might have changed his mind about those rules.
56. Which English dramatic form is most objected to by Lisideius?
Solution: Lisideius condemns English tragi-comedy for mixing mirth and sorrow in one play. In his view this breaks unity of action and spoils both effects.
57. According to Lisideius, the greatest weakness of English drama is its violation of:
Solution: Lisideius praises the French for observing the unities of time, place and action. He faults the English for crowding their plays with many plots and long time spans.
