1000+ Literary Theory MCQs – Part 6: New Criticism & Practical Criticism

1. I.A. Richards pioneered the technique called ________, which was also the title of his 1929 book.

1. Sociological Criticism
2. Allegorical Interpretation
3. Reception Theory
4. Practical Criticism

2. Who defined literary language as emotive language?

1. W. K. Wimsatt
2. William Empson
3. Monroe C. Beardsley
4. I. A. Richards

3. What is practical criticism?

1. The close analysis of poems without taking account of any external information.
2. A movement which wished to make literary criticism more relevant.
3. The close analysis of literary texts in such a way as to bring out their political meaning.
4. The study of ambiguity.

4. The term ‘Practical Criticism’ was coined by

1. William Empson
2. I.A. Richards
3. W.K. Wimsatt, Jr.
4. F.R. Leavis

5. In his Practical Criticism I.A. Richards suggests that there are several kinds of meanings and that the “total meaning” is a blend of contributory meanings of different types. He identified four kinds of meaning, i.e. the total meaning of a word depends upon four factors. Choose the right combination as proposed by Richards.

1. Sense, Feeling, Tone and Intention
2. Image, Feeling, Tone and Intention
3. Sound, Sense, Tone and Matter
4. Sense, Feeling, Tone and Matter

6. Who distinguishes between the referential and emotive uses of language?

1. F.R. Leavis
2. R.P. Warren
3. I.A. Richards
4. J.C. Ransom

7. ____ is often labelled as the father of the New Criticism.

1. Horace
2. Pope
3. Allen Tate
4. I. A. Richards

8. I. A. Richards’s Practical Criticism inaugurated a new phase in the history of English critical thought. What is the book’s subtitle?

1. A Study of Critical Judgement
2. A Study of Literary Judgement
3. A Study of Theoretical Judgement
4. Studies in Poetry

9. The author(s) of The Meaning of Meaning:

1. Christopher Caudwell
2. I.A. Richards
3. Christopher Caudwell and Helena Sheehan
4. I.A. Richards and C.K. Ogden

10. Which two of the following are works by I.A. Richards?

1. A and B only
2. A and D only
3. B and C only
4. B and D only

11. Who distinguishes between the referential and the emotive uses of language?

1. I.A. Richards
2. R.P. Warren
3. J.C. Ransom
4. F.R. Leavis

12. Who presented I.A. Richards with the manuscript of the book published in 1930 as Seven Types of Ambiguity?

1. George Zebrowski
2. Wilfred Owen
3. William Empson
4. Kurt Vonnegut

13. William Empson’s Seven Types of Ambiguity is

1. A structuralist study of narrative
2. A piece of psychoanalytic criticism
3. A study of the media
4. An analysis of poetic ambivalence

14. Which of the following is not a critical study by William Empson?

1. Seven Types of Ambiguity
2. Milton’s God
3. The Dyer’s Hand
4. Some Versions of Pastoral

15. Seven Types of Ambiguity is concerned with the effects of ambiguity on:

1. English verse
2. English prose
3. English drama
4. English words

16. The term used in criticism to identify “a deliberate poetic device: the use of a single word or expression to signify two or more distinct references, or to express two or more diverse attitudes or feelings” is:

1. Portmanteau
2. Ambiguity
3. Paradox
4. Pun

17. Which of the following terms does not form a part of the seven types of ambiguity propounded by William Empson?

1. Pun
2. Metaphor
3. Simulacra
4. Simile

18. Understanding Poetry used to be a classic textbook that encapsulates the principles of

1. New Criticism
2. New Aristotelianism
3. New Historicism
4. The New Left

19. Identify the New Critic who served as the cultural attaché at the American Embassy in London from 1964 to 1966:

1. John Crowe Ransom
2. Cleanth Brooks
3. Allen Tate
4. Robert Penn Warren

20. The New Criticism, published in 1941, was written by

1. Cleanth Brooks
2. Allen Tate
3. Robert Penn Warren
4. John Crowe Ransom

21. In New Criticism, the key term ‘tension’ is associated with:

1. Cleanth Brooks
2. John Crowe Ransom
3. Allen Tate
4. Austin Warren

22. Which of the following New Critics put forward the idea of the ‘heresy of paraphrase’?

1. Allen Tate
2. Monroe C. Beardsley
3. W.K. Wimsatt
4. Cleanth Brooks

23. John Crowe Ransom once made a useful distinction between structure and texture. The distinction referred to

1. the devices employed to enlighten objects and materials in a narrative, and the objects and material themselves, respectively.
2. the main line of a narrative, argument, etc., and the rhetorical, stylistic, metaphorical and other devices, respectively.
3. objects and materials on which a narrative casts light, and the devices employed to enlighten them, respectively.
4. the rhetorical, stylistic, metaphorical and other devices, and the main line of a narrative, argument, etc., respectively.

24. The Fugitives and the Agrarians are linked to

1. New Criticism at Vanderbilt University
2. New Criticism at Yale University
3. Chicago Aristotelians and New Criticism
4. New Historicism at Berkeley

25. Mark Schorer in his “Technique as Discovery” considers art as different from life because art carries the stamp of

1. objectivity, universality, dramatization and evaluation
2. impersonality, technique, discovery and evaluation
3. objectivity, impersonality, resonance and dramatization
4. objectivity, paradox, irony and displacement

26. Which of the following is an accepted tenet of New Criticism?

1. The context of the text is important
2. The intention of the author is relevant to the analysis of the text
3. The literary text has a distinctive ontological status
4. The response of the reader is part of the text’s interpretation

27. Who among the following did not belong to the school of New Criticism?

1. J.C. Ransom
2. W.K. Wimsatt
3. Cleanth Brooks
4. Yvor Winters

28. According to Cleanth Brooks, ____ are the most important elements in poetry.

1. Irony and paradox
2. Themes and motifs
3. Imagery and diction
4. None of these

29. Whose poem does Cleanth Brooks close-read to arrive at his concept of “the well-wrought urn”?

1. William Wordsworth
2. John Donne
3. John Keats
4. Alfred Tennyson

30. Which of the following is not a tenet of the New Criticism?

1. The literary text has a special ontological status
2. The intention of the author should not affect the interpretation of the text
3. The paraphrase of a poem is not its meaning
4. The ideology of the author determines the meaning of the text

31. The term ‘Intentional Fallacy’ was first used by

1. William Empson
2. Wimsatt and Beardsley
3. Wellek and Warren
4. Northrop Frye

32. The error of interpreting a literary work by referring to evidence outside of itself, such as the design and purpose of the author, is called

1. Intentional fallacy
2. Affective fallacy
3. Authorial fallacy
4. Synecdochic fallacy

33. Who coined the terms “intentional fallacy” and “affective fallacy”?

1. T.S. Eliot
2. William Empson
3. W.K. Wimsatt
4. Cleanth Brooks

34. A reading of a literary work that is determined by its effect or emotional impact on the reader has been termed

1. Dissociation of sensibility
2. Aporia
3. Intentional fallacy
4. Affective fallacy

35. Formalist critics were against the ________.

1. Intentional Fallacy
2. Poetic Fallacy
3. Personal Fallacy
4. Pathetic Fallacy

36. The intentional fallacy is a concept supported by ____.

1. feminist literary theory
2. New Criticism
3. neo-Marxist theory
4. subaltern studies

37. Which of the following essays is T.S. Eliot best known for?

1. A Sketch of the Past
2. A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
3. Tradition and the Individual Talent
4. Minute on Education

38. Who among the following critics discerned in the Shelleyan lyric the signs of adolescence?

1. F.R. Leavis
2. T.S. Eliot
3. Cleanth Brooks
4. I.A. Richards

39. Which one of the following is the source of the passage given below? “I have observed with growing anxiety the career of this word culture during the past six or seven years. We may find it natural, and significant, that during a period of unparalleled destructiveness, this word should come to have an important role…”

1. F.R. Leavis, Mass Civilisation and Minority Culture
2. Raymond Williams, Culture and Society
3. T.S. Eliot, Notes Towards the Definition of Culture
4. Stuart Hall, Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices

40. Which novel did T.S. Eliot admire for its mythical method?

1. Ulysses
2. Finnegans Wake
3. The Waves
4. Heart of Darkness

41. Which critic was of the opinion that “the greatness of literature cannot be determined solely by literary standards; though we must remember that whether it is literature or not can be determined only by literary standards”?

1. Matthew Arnold
2. Allen Tate
3. I.A. Richards
4. T.S. Eliot

42. Which of F.R. Leavis’s teachings was essentially a syllabus, manageable within a year-long undergraduate course?

1. Great Explorations
2. Great American Literature
3. Great Tradition
4. Great Expectations

43. What term suggests a range of negative attributes, such as “non-Marxist”, “non-feminist” and “non-theoretical”?

1. Absurdism
2. Dialogism
3. Modernism
4. Humanism

44. “The great English novelists are Jane Austen, George Eliot, Henry James and Joseph Conrad.” Which one of the following critical texts begins with the above assertion?

1. F.R. Leavis, The Great Tradition
2. Terry Eagleton, The English Novel
3. Walter Allen, The English Novel
4. Ian Watt, The Rise of the Novel

45. While commenting on Theodore Francis Powys’ literary works, who said, “It does not seem likely that it will ever again be possible for a distinguished mind to be framed, as Mr. Powys has been, on the rhythms, sanctioned by nature and time, of rural culture”?

1. G. B. Harrison
2. F. R. Leavis
3. Herbert Read
4. J. B. Priestley

46. Who is the author of The Great Tradition?

1. F. R. Leavis
2. I. A. Richards
3. Matthew Arnold
4. Franz Kafka

47. F.R. Leavis dismisses Bradley’s interpretation of Othello by arguing that:

1. i and ii are correct
2. i, ii and iii are correct
3. iii and iv are correct
4. ii and iv are correct

48. __________ is not included in F.R. Leavis’s novelists of the great tradition.

1. George Eliot
2. D.H. Lawrence
3. Jane Austen
4. Charles Dickens

49. Which is the only novel by Dickens analysed in detail by F.R. Leavis in The Great Tradition?

1. Oliver Twist
2. Hard Times
3. The Old Curiosity Shop
4. A Tale of Two Cities

50. The formalist critic __________ mocked the character-based criticism of __________ by posing a famous question, “How many children had Lady Macbeth?”

1. F.R. Leavis, E.K. Chambers
2. Cleanth Brooks, F.L. Lucas
3. L.C. Knights, A.C. Bradley
4. Monroe Beardsley, Kenneth Burke

51. These critics oppose the intrusion of overly politicised and often abstruse theory into the field of literary criticism, and the use of identity politics. They feel that the importance of literary imagination and creativity is marginalised by such theorising. Which school of critics are we talking about?

1. Cultural Theory Critics
2. Identity Theorists
3. Liberal Humanist Critics
4. New Critics

52. In recasting the canon of English poetry in New Bearings in English Poetry, which of the following pairs was downgraded by F.R. Leavis?

1. Browning and Arnold
2. Tennyson and Swinburne
3. Pound and Hopkins
4. Milton and Shelley

53. In The Great Tradition (1948), F.R. Leavis reassessed English fiction, proclaiming Jane Austen, George Eliot, Henry James and Joseph Conrad as the great novelists of the past and ________ as their only successor.

1. D.H. Lawrence
2. Thomas Hardy
3. Charles Dickens
4. James Joyce

54. Which writer is not included by F.R. Leavis in his The Great Tradition?

1. Jane Austen
2. Emily Brontë
3. Joseph Conrad
4. George Eliot

55. Leavis’ New Bearings in English Poetry and Revaluation show the strong influence of which poet and writer?

1. Milton
2. T.S. Eliot
3. D.H. Lawrence
4. William Wordsworth

56. Which of these novels did F.R. Leavis call a ‘sport’?

1. Emma
2. Middlemarch
3. Great Expectations
4. Wuthering Heights

57. In his famous essay ‘Literature and Society’, F.R. Leavis offers a critique of Marxism and ____.

1. Classicism
2. Modernism
3. Romanticism
4. Feminism

58. The emergence of New Criticism as a theory can be related to which of the following events?

1. the First World War
2. the French Revolution
3. the Second World War
4. the Glorious Revolution

59. New Criticism considers the text as:

1. Cultural construct
2. Historical construct
3. Autotelic
4. Linguistic construct

60. Two among the following critical journals became strongly associated with New Criticism. Identify them.

1. I and II
2. I and IV
3. II and III
4. III and IV

61. Who among the following is not a formalist critic?

1. Allen Tate
2. Stanley Fish
3. Cleanth Brooks
4. William Empson

62. Match the following:

1. a – 4, b – 1, c – 3, d – 2
2. a – 4, b – 3, c – 1, d – 2
3. a – 4, b – 3, c – 2, d – 1
4. a – 3, b – 4, c – 1, d – 2

63. Identify the term that is not associated with New Criticism:

1. Ambiguity
2. Paradox
3. Close reading
4. Trace

64. A critic examining John Milton’s Paradise Lost focuses on the physical description of the Garden of Eden, on the symbols of hands, seed and flower, and on the characters of Adam, Eve, Satan and God. He pays special attention to the epic similes and metaphors and the point of view from which the tale is told. He looks for meaning in the text itself and does not refer to any biography of Milton. He is most likely a ____ critic.

1. formalist
2. feminist
3. reader-response
4. mimetic

65. Which approach is described in the following? Users of this approach believe that all information essential to the interpretation of a work must be found within the work itself; there is no need to bring in outside information about the history, politics or society of the time, or about the author’s life.

1. Formalism
2. Moral/Philosophical approach
3. Historical/Biographical approach
4. Psychological approach