I. Multiple choices
A 1.In 1066, ____, with his Norman army, succeeded in invading and defeating England.
A. William the Conqueror B. Julius Caesar C. Alfred the Great D. Claudius
D 2. In the 14th century, the most important writer (poet) is ____ .
A. Langland B. Wycliffe C. Gower D. Chaucer
C 3. The prevailing form of Medieval English literature is ____.
A. novel B. drama C. romance D. Essay
C 4. ______ was the greatest of English religious reformers and the first translator of the Bible.
A. Langland B. Gower C. Wycliffe D. Chaucer
A 5. ______, the “father of English poetry” and one of the greatest narrative poets of England, was born in London in about 1340.
A. Geoffrey Chaucer B. Sir Gawain C. Francis Bacon D. John Dryden
A 6. _____ was the first to introduce the sonnet into English literature.
a. Thomas Wyatt b. William Shakespeare
c. Phillip Sidney d. Thomas Campion
A 7. The epoch of Renaissance witnessed a particular development of English Drama. It was _______ who made blank verse the principal vehicle of expression in drama.
a. Christopher Marlowe b. Thomas Loge c. Edmund Spenser d. Thomas More
B 8. At the beginning the 16th century the outstanding humanist_____ wrote his Utopia in which he gave a profound and truthful picture of the people‟s suffering and put forward his ideal of a future happy society.
a. Christopher Marlowe b. Thomas More c. Phillip Sidney d. Edmund Spencer
B 9. Renaissance Period was an age of ____ .
a. prose and novel b. poetry and drama
c. essays and journals d. ballads and songs
A 10.“Shall I compare thee to a summer‟s day?” This line is taken from one of Shakespeare‟s____________.
a. Sonnet 18 b. the tragedy King Lear
c. a long poem Venus and Adonis d. the comedy As You Like It
D 11. From the following choose the one______ that is not by Francis Bacon.
a. The Advancement of Learning b. The New Instrument
c. Of Studies d. The rape of the Lock
A 12. Elizabethan poetry is remarkable. England then became “a nest of singing birds”. The famous poet of that period was_______.
a. Edmund Spenser b. Thomas Kyd
c. Earl of Surry d. Thomas More
A 13. Which play is not a comedy?
a. The Jew of Malta b. Every One in His Humor
c. A Midsummer Night’s Dream d. Much Ado about Nothing
D 14. The Tragic History of Doctor Faustus is one of ______ „s best plays.
a. Shakespeare b. Thomas Kyd
c. Ben Jonson d. Christopher Marlowe
D 15. The name “the father of English poetry” was given to the greatest poet born in London about 1340 and the one who did much in making the dialect of London (Midland dialect the language of the court, the learned and the well-to do) the foundation for modern English language.
a. Shakespeare b. Spenserc. C. Philip Sidney d. Chaucer
A 16. The basic note of Chaucer‟s style is_______.
a. the fusion of humor and genial satire b. the fusion of irony with sarcasm
c. the fusion of humor with epigrams d. the fusion of humor with irony
D 17. _____was the first buried in the Poet‟s Corner of Westminster Abby.
a. Southy b. Francis Bacon c. Shakespeare d. Chaucer
A 18. Macbeth by Shakespeare is a ______.
a. tragedy b. comedy c. tragicomedy d. historical play
19. “To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether „tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune
Or to take arms against a sea of trouble,
D And by opposing end them...” are the famous lines in Hamlet which expresses the Hamlet‟s ______ character.
a.. resolute b. resolute and hesitant c. stubbon d. indecisive and hesitant
D 20. Protestants refers to all the religious sects except ________.
a.Church of England b. Puritanism c.Calvinism d. Catholicism
B 21. Though Beowulf was introduced by Angles, the events and _____ are Scandinavian.
a.belief b. characters c. idea d. God
A 22. In 1066, ___ led the Norman army to invade and defeat England.
a. William the conqueror b. Julius Caesar
c. Alfred the Great d. Claudius
C 23. Of many contemporaries and successors of Shakespeare, the most important and well known was ______who became the Poet Laureate in 1616.
a. John Dryden b. Samuel Johnson
c. Ben Jonson d. Robert Southy
A 24. The main literary form of seventeenth century was poetry. Among the poets, _______was the greatest.
a. Milton b. Bunyan c. the Metaphysical poets d. the Cavalier poets 25. Choose the poets who belong to the Cavalier group.
a. Sir John Suckling b. Richard Lovelace
c. Thomas Carew d. George Herbert
D 26.The title of “Poet‟s poet” is given to the writer of the following work __ _____.
a. Death Be Not Proud b. Venus and Adonis
c. Romeo and Juliet d. The Faerie Queen
A 27. The Merchant of Venice belongs to Shakespearian plays of_______.
a. comedy b. sequence of sonnets
c. tragedy d. historical play
C 28.Chaucer was the first important poet of a royal court to write in______ after the Norman conquest.
a. French b. Latin c. English d. Celt
A 29. “He was not of an age, but for all the time”. “He” here refers to _____.
a. S hakespeare b. Chaucerc. C.John Milton d. Ben Jonson
C 30. The father of the school of Metaphysical poets is _______.
a.Thomas More b. Spenser c.John Donne d. Wyatt
D 31.The most important prose writer of Elizabethan Age was _______, who was also the founder of the English materialistic philosophy.
a. Thomas More b. Spenser c. John Donne d. Francis Bacon
A 32. The culmination of all Renaissance translation is ________.
a. K ing James Bible b. New Instrument
c. O f Study d. The Reason of Church Government
A 33. Donne‟s poetry is full of metaphors, original images, wit and______, except ingenuity, dexterous use of colloquial speech, considerable flexibility of rhythm and meter, complex themes and caustic humor.
a.conceits b. Petrarchen images
c.rhetorics d. brevity
B 34. The Cavaliers mostly dealt in short songs on the flitting joys of the day, but underneath their light-heartedness lies some foreboding of _____ to enjoy the present day. This is typical of pessimism and cynicism.
a. philosophical thought b. impending doom
c. intellectual idea d. expecting happiness. Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes were the poems written by _______.
a. Milton b. William Shakespeare
c. Ben Jonson d. Marlowe
C 36. In Paradise Lost the author eulogizes the spirit of ______ that is though lost, but the ______cannot be conquered, and the pursuit of revenge, immortal hate towards god will never be overcome.
a. pessimism, knowledge b. optimism, ideal
c. rebellion, will d. cynicism, concept
B 37. Blank verse was first used by ______ as the principle instrument of English drama.
a. the Earl of Surry b. Christopher Marlowe
c. Samuel Johnson d. Shakespeare
C 38.The theme of the sonnet Death Be Not Proud is that ________.
a. death is predestined b. death is the most dreadful thing
c. d eath you are nothing to be feared d. death is gentle towards me
C 39. _____has been called the summit of the English Renaissance.
A. Christopher Marlow B. Francis Bacon
C. W. Shakespeare D. Ben Johnson
B 40. Shakespeare is one of the founders of ____.
A. romanticism B. realism C. naturalism D. classicism
A 41.Among many poetic forms, Shakespeare was especially at home (good at) with the _______.
A. dramatic blank verse B. song C. sonnet D. couplet
A 42._____is one of the forerunners of modern socialist thought.
A. Phillip Sidney B. Edmund Spenser
C. Thomas More D. Walter Raleigh
D 43.____ was a forerunner of classicism in English literature.
A. Ben Johnson B. William Shakespeare
C. Thomas More D. Christopher Marlowe
D 44. The most gifted of the “university wits” was ____.
A. Lyly B. Peele C. Greene D. Marlowe
D 45. ____was the forerunner of the English classical school of literature in the 19th
century.
A. John Dryden B. Richard Steele
C. Joseph Addison D. Alexander Pope
B 46. _____is the first philosopher of industrial science.
A. Christopher Marlow B. Francis Bacon
C. W. Shakespeare D. Ben Johnson
A 48. ____has six knights representing 6 virtues: holiness , Temperance, Chastity, Friendship, Justice and Courtesy.
a. The Faerie Queen b. The Pilgrim’s Progress c. Paradise Lost D. Essays
II. Literary terms
1. Blank verse
Unrhymed iambic pentameter. See also Meter. In Gorboduc (1561), Thomas Sackville and Thomas Norton introduced blank verse into the drama, whence it soared with Marlowe and Shakespeare in the 1590s. Milton forged it anew for the epic in Paradise Lost (1667).
2. Epic
A long narrative poem, typically a recounting of history or legend or of the deeds of a national hero and of reflecting the values of the society from which it originated. Many epics were drawn from an oral tradition and were transmitted by song and recitation before they were written down. Later on this literary genre was written down by the poets, such as Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained. Two of the greatest epics are Homer‟s Iliad and Odyssey . While in British literary history, the national epic is Beowulf .
3. Metaphysical Poetry
T he poetry of John Donne and other seventeenth-century poets who wrote in a similar style. Metaphysical poetry is characterized by verbal wit and excess, ingenious structure, irregular meter, colloquial language, elaborate imagery, and a drawing together of dissimilar ideas.
4. Sentimentalism
Sentimentalism originated in the 18th century, and was a direct reaction against the cold, hard commercialism and rationalism that had dominated people‟s life since the last decades of the 17th century. Besides, it seemed to have appeared hand in hand with the rise of realistic English novel. Sentimentalism often relates to sentimentality and sensibility in some literary works such as Richardson‟s Pamela; Goldsmith‟s The Vicar of Wakefield; Sterne‟s A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy. In Poetry, we have Thomas Gray‟s “An Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard”, Goldsmith‟s “The Deserted Village”, and Cowper‟s “Task”, not mention the various odes of sensibility which flourished in the later half of the century.
5. Humanism
Humanism refers to the main literary trend and is the keynote of English Renaissance. Humanists took interest in human life and human activities and gave expression to the new feeling of admiration for human beauty, human achievement.
6. Puritanism
The term is used in a narrow sense of religious practice and attitudes, and in a broad sense of an ethical outlook, which is much less easy to define.
1). In its strict sense, “Puritan” was applied to those Protestant reformers who rejected Queen Elizabeth‟s religious settlement of 1560. This settlement sought a middle way between Roman Catholicism and the extreme spirit of reform of Geneva. The Puritans, influenced by Geneva, Zurich, and other continental centers, objected to the retention of bishops and to any appearance of what they regarded as superstition in church worship---the wearing of vestments by the priests, and any kind of religious image. Apart from their united opposition to Roman Catholicism and their insistence on simplicity in religious forms, Puritans disagreed among themselves on questions of doctrine and church organization. Puritans were very strong in the first half of 17th century and reached its peak of power after the Civil War of 1642-6, a war, which was ostensibly religious, although it was also political.
2). In the broad sense of a whole way of life, Puritanism has always represented strict obedience to the dictates of conscience and strong emphasis on the virtue of self-denial. The word “Puritan” is often thought to imply hostility to arts, but this is not necessarily true.
7.Renaissance
It is a cultural movement of the rising bourgeoisie. The key word for it is humanism, which emphasizes the belief in human beings, his environment and doings and his brave fight for the emancipation of man from the tyranny of the church and religious dogmas. It originally indicates a revival of classical arts and learning after the dark ages of medieval obscurantism. Its aim is to get rid of those old feudalist ideas in medieval time and introduce new ideas that express the interests of the rising bourgeoisie. Shakespeare, Spenser, and Marlowe are all famous literary figures in this period.
I. Multiple choices
A 1.In 1066, ____, with his Norman army, succeeded in invading and defeating England.
A. William the Conqueror B. Julius Caesar C. Alfred the Great D. Claudius
D 2. In the 14th century, the most important writer (poet) is ____ .
A. Langland B. Wycliffe C. Gower D. Chaucer
C 3. The prevailing form of Medieval English literature is ____.
A. novel B. drama C. romance D. Essay
C 4. ______ was the greatest of English religious reformers and the first translator of the Bible.
A. Langland B. Gower C. Wycliffe D. Chaucer
A 5. ______, the “father of English poetry” and one of the greatest narrative poets of England, was born in London in about 1340.
A. Geoffrey Chaucer B. Sir Gawain C. Francis Bacon D. John Dryden
A 6. _____ was the first to introduce the sonnet into English literature.
a. Thomas Wyatt b. William Shakespeare
c. Phillip Sidney d. Thomas Campion
A 7. The epoch of Renaissance witnessed a particular development of English Drama. It was _______ who made blank verse the principal vehicle of expression in drama.
a. Christopher Marlowe b. Thomas Loge c. Edmund Spenser d. Thomas More
B 8. At the beginning the 16th century the outstanding humanist_____ wrote his Utopia in which he gave a profound and truthful picture of the people‟s suffering and put forward his ideal of a future happy society.
a. Christopher Marlowe b. Thomas More c. Phillip Sidney d. Edmund Spencer
B 9. Renaissance Period was an age of ____ .
a. prose and novel b. poetry and drama
c. essays and journals d. ballads and songs
A 10.“Shall I compare thee to a summer‟s day?” This line is taken from one of Shakespeare‟s____________.
a. Sonnet 18 b. the tragedy King Lear
c. a long poem Venus and Adonis d. the comedy As You Like It
D 11. From the following choose the one______ that is not by Francis Bacon.
a. The Advancement of Learning b. The New Instrument
c. Of Studies d. The rape of the Lock
A 12. Elizabethan poetry is remarkable. England then became “a nest of singing birds”. The famous poet of that period was_______.
a. Edmund Spenser b. Thomas Kyd
c. Earl of Surry d. Thomas More
A 13. Which play is not a comedy?
a. The Jew of Malta b. Every One in His Humor
c. A Midsummer Night’s Dream d. Much Ado about Nothing
D 14. The Tragic History of Doctor Faustus is one of ______ „s best plays.
a. Shakespeare b. Thomas Kyd
c. Ben Jonson d. Christopher Marlowe
D 15. The name “the father of English poetry” was given to the greatest poet born in London about 1340 and the one who did much in making the dialect of London (Midland dialect the language of the court, the learned and the well-to do) the foundation for modern English language.
a. Shakespeare b. Spenserc. C. Philip Sidney d. Chaucer
A 16. The basic note of Chaucer‟s style is_______.
a. the fusion of humor and genial satire b. the fusion of irony with sarcasm
c. the fusion of humor with epigrams d. the fusion of humor with irony
D 17. _____was the first buried in the Poet‟s Corner of Westminster Abby.
a. Southy b. Francis Bacon c. Shakespeare d. Chaucer
A 18. Macbeth by Shakespeare is a ______.
a. tragedy b. comedy c. tragicomedy d. historical play
19. “To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether „tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune
Or to take arms against a sea of trouble,
D And by opposing end them...” are the famous lines in Hamlet which expresses the Hamlet‟s ______ character.
a.. resolute b. resolute and hesitant c. stubbon d. indecisive and hesitant
D 20. Protestants refers to all the religious sects except ________.
a.Church of England b. Puritanism c.Calvinism d. Catholicism
B 21. Though Beowulf was introduced by Angles, the events and _____ are Scandinavian.
a.belief b. characters c. idea d. God
A 22. In 1066, ___ led the Norman army to invade and defeat England.
a. William the conqueror b. Julius Caesar
c. Alfred the Great d. Claudius
C 23. Of many contemporaries and successors of Shakespeare, the most important and well known was ______who became the Poet Laureate in 1616.
a. John Dryden b. Samuel Johnson
c. Ben Jonson d. Robert Southy
A 24. The main literary form of seventeenth century was poetry. Among the poets, _______was the greatest.
a. Milton b. Bunyan c. the Metaphysical poets d. the Cavalier poets 25. Choose the poets who belong to the Cavalier group.
a. Sir John Suckling b. Richard Lovelace
c. Thomas Carew d. George Herbert
D 26.The title of “Poet‟s poet” is given to the writer of the following work __ _____.
a. Death Be Not Proud b. Venus and Adonis
c. Romeo and Juliet d. The Faerie Queen
A 27. The Merchant of Venice belongs to Shakespearian plays of_______.
a. comedy b. sequence of sonnets
c. tragedy d. historical play
C 28.Chaucer was the first important poet of a royal court to write in______ after the Norman conquest.
a. French b. Latin c. English d. Celt
A 29. “He was not of an age, but for all the time”. “He” here refers to _____.
a. S hakespeare b. Chaucerc. C.John Milton d. Ben Jonson
C 30. The father of the school of Metaphysical poets is _______.
a.Thomas More b. Spenser c.John Donne d. Wyatt
D 31.The most important prose writer of Elizabethan Age was _______, who was also the founder of the English materialistic philosophy.
a. Thomas More b. Spenser c. John Donne d. Francis Bacon
A 32. The culmination of all Renaissance translation is ________.
a. K ing James Bible b. New Instrument
c. O f Study d. The Reason of Church Government
A 33. Donne‟s poetry is full of metaphors, original images, wit and______, except ingenuity, dexterous use of colloquial speech, considerable flexibility of rhythm and meter, complex themes and caustic humor.
a.conceits b. Petrarchen images
c.rhetorics d. brevity
B 34. The Cavaliers mostly dealt in short songs on the flitting joys of the day, but underneath their light-heartedness lies some foreboding of _____ to enjoy the present day. This is typical of pessimism and cynicism.
a. philosophical thought b. impending doom
c. intellectual idea d. expecting happiness. Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes were the poems written by _______.
a. Milton b. William Shakespeare
c. Ben Jonson d. Marlowe
C 36. In Paradise Lost the author eulogizes the spirit of ______ that is though lost, but the ______cannot be conquered, and the pursuit of revenge, immortal hate towards god will never be overcome.
a. pessimism, knowledge b. optimism, ideal
c. rebellion, will d. cynicism, concept
B 37. Blank verse was first used by ______ as the principle instrument of English drama.
a. the Earl of Surry b. Christopher Marlowe
c. Samuel Johnson d. Shakespeare
C 38.The theme of the sonnet Death Be Not Proud is that ________.
a. death is predestined b. death is the most dreadful thing
c. d eath you are nothing to be feared d. death is gentle towards me
C 39. _____has been called the summit of the English Renaissance.
A. Christopher Marlow B. Francis Bacon
C. W. Shakespeare D. Ben Johnson
B 40. Shakespeare is one of the founders of ____.
A. romanticism B. realism C. naturalism D. classicism
A 41.Among many poetic forms, Shakespeare was especially at home (good at) with the _______.
A. dramatic blank verse B. song C. sonnet D. couplet
A 42._____is one of the forerunners of modern socialist thought.
A. Phillip Sidney B. Edmund Spenser
C. Thomas More D. Walter Raleigh
D 43.____ was a forerunner of classicism in English literature.
A. Ben Johnson B. William Shakespeare
C. Thomas More D. Christopher Marlowe
D 44. The most gifted of the “university wits” was ____.
A. Lyly B. Peele C. Greene D. Marlowe
D 45. ____was the forerunner of the English classical school of literature in the 19th
century.
A. John Dryden B. Richard Steele
C. Joseph Addison D. Alexander Pope
B 46. _____is the first philosopher of industrial science.
A. Christopher Marlow B. Francis Bacon
C. W. Shakespeare D. Ben Johnson
A 48. ____has six knights representing 6 virtues: holiness , Temperance, Chastity, Friendship, Justice and Courtesy.
a. The Faerie Queen b. The Pilgrim’s Progress c. Paradise Lost D. Essays
II. Literary terms
1. Blank verse
Unrhymed iambic pentameter. See also Meter. In Gorboduc (1561), Thomas Sackville and Thomas Norton introduced blank verse into the drama, whence it soared with Marlowe and Shakespeare in the 1590s. Milton forged it anew for the epic in Paradise Lost (1667).
2. Epic
A long narrative poem, typically a recounting of history or legend or of the deeds of a national hero and of reflecting the values of the society from which it originated. Many epics were drawn from an oral tradition and were transmitted by song and recitation before they were written down. Later on this literary genre was written down by the poets, such as Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained. Two of the greatest epics are Homer‟s Iliad and Odyssey . While in British literary history, the national epic is Beowulf .
3. Metaphysical Poetry
T he poetry of John Donne and other seventeenth-century poets who wrote in a similar style. Metaphysical poetry is characterized by verbal wit and excess, ingenious structure, irregular meter, colloquial language, elaborate imagery, and a drawing together of dissimilar ideas.
4. Sentimentalism
Sentimentalism originated in the 18th century, and was a direct reaction against the cold, hard commercialism and rationalism that had dominated people‟s life since the last decades of the 17th century. Besides, it seemed to have appeared hand in hand with the rise of realistic English novel. Sentimentalism often relates to sentimentality and sensibility in some literary works such as Richardson‟s Pamela; Goldsmith‟s The Vicar of Wakefield; Sterne‟s A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy. In Poetry, we have Thomas Gray‟s “An Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard”, Goldsmith‟s “The Deserted Village”, and Cowper‟s “Task”, not mention the various odes of sensibility which flourished in the later half of the century.
5. Humanism
Humanism refers to the main literary trend and is the keynote of English Renaissance. Humanists took interest in human life and human activities and gave expression to the new feeling of admiration for human beauty, human achievement.
6. Puritanism
The term is used in a narrow sense of religious practice and attitudes, and in a broad sense of an ethical outlook, which is much less easy to define.
1). In its strict sense, “Puritan” was applied to those Protestant reformers who rejected Queen Elizabeth‟s religious settlement of 1560. This settlement sought a middle way between Roman Catholicism and the extreme spirit of reform of Geneva. The Puritans, influenced by Geneva, Zurich, and other continental centers, objected to the retention of bishops and to any appearance of what they regarded as superstition in church worship---the wearing of vestments by the priests, and any kind of religious image. Apart from their united opposition to Roman Catholicism and their insistence on simplicity in religious forms, Puritans disagreed among themselves on questions of doctrine and church organization. Puritans were very strong in the first half of 17th century and reached its peak of power after the Civil War of 1642-6, a war, which was ostensibly religious, although it was also political.
2). In the broad sense of a whole way of life, Puritanism has always represented strict obedience to the dictates of conscience and strong emphasis on the virtue of self-denial. The word “Puritan” is often thought to imply hostility to arts, but this is not necessarily true.
7.Renaissance
It is a cultural movement of the rising bourgeoisie. The key word for it is humanism, which emphasizes the belief in human beings, his environment and doings and his brave fight for the emancipation of man from the tyranny of the church and religious dogmas. It originally indicates a revival of classical arts and learning after the dark ages of medieval obscurantism. Its aim is to get rid of those old feudalist ideas in medieval time and introduce new ideas that express the interests of the rising bourgeoisie. Shakespeare, Spenser, and Marlowe are all famous literary figures in this period.