Mock 2 – Renaissance to Victorian Criticism (Part 1)

Which quotations are correctly matched with their texts?

1. A. Poets are 'the right popular philosophers' — An Apology for Poetry
2. B. The critic must halt at the frontier of metaphysics — 'The Metaphysical Poets'
3. C. 'Frantic novels, sickly and stupid German tragedies' — Preface to Lyrical Ballads
4. D. 'For poetry the idea is everything' — 'The Study of Poetry'
5. E. A fool might once himself alone expose; now one in verse makes many more in prose — An Essay on Man

Which work by Arnold preaches that 'the kingdom of God is within you'?

Since the publication of Samuel Johnson's 'Preface to Shakespeare' (1765), which of the Unities have been regarded as optional devices, available to playwrights in England to achieve special effects of dramatic concentration?

Who said that 'Shakespeare was the Homer, or father of our dramatic poets; Jonson was the Virgil, the pattern of elaborate writing'?

Who described his criticism as a 'by-product' of his 'private poetry-workshop' and as 'a prolongation of the thinking that went into the formation of my own verse'?

In which text do these lines occur? 'Of all the causes which conspire to blind / Man's erring judgment, and misguide the mind, / What the weak head with strongest bias rules, / Is pride, the never-failing vice of fools.'

Arrange the following works in chronological order of publication:

1. A. Culture and Anarchy
2. B. The Anatomy of Melancholy
3. C. A Defence of Poetry
4. D. Leviathan
5. E. Studies in the History of the Renaissance

Match List I with List II:

In Dryden's Of Dramatic Poesy: An Essay (1668), Neander represents:

What prompted Sidney to write An Apology for Poetry?

Who called Dryden 'the father of English criticism'?

Pope's line usually quoted as 'A little knowledge is a dangerous thing' comes from:

Who defined taste as 'that faculty of the soul, which discerns the beauties of an author with pleasure, and the imperfections with dislike'?

Who denounced literary works as the works of the devil?

Which of the following statements about Sidney's The Defence of Poesy are NOT true?

1. A. It was published posthumously in 1595.
2. B. It is also titled An Apology for Poetry.
3. C. Sidney criticises Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde and Spenser's The Shepheardes Calender.
4. D. It is among the first major works of literary criticism in English.
5. E. It defends Plato's banishment of poets from the Republic.

Who complained that poetry had fallen from the highest estimation of learning to be 'the laughing-stock of children'?

'A little learning is a dang'rous thing; / Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring.' Who wrote these lines?

Arrange the following works of criticism in order of publication:

1. A. Sidney, An Apologie for Poetrie
2. B. Wilson, The Arte of Rhetorique
3. C. Wordsworth, Preface to Lyrical Ballads
4. D. Pope, An Essay on Criticism
5. E. Eliot, 'The Metaphysical Poets'

What does Johnson's phrase 'discordia concors' (Life of Cowley) imply?

1. A. Ironic inversion of residual ideology in a text
2. B. A combination of two philosophically similar discourses
3. C. A term for diminishing metaphor
4. D. A combination of dissimilar images
5. E. A combination of contradictory ideas and concepts

Which of the following statements are NOT relevant to Coleridge's Biographia Literaria?

1. A. The first volume recounts his friendship with Robert Southey and William Blake.
2. B. A later edition (1847) carried notes by his daughter Sara.
3. C. It is a two-volume work.
4. D. It discusses the difference between fancy and imagination.
5. E. The first volume acknowledges Aristotle and Plato as his chief teachers.

Who defined the ideal poet as one who 'brings the whole soul of man into activity'?

'Did not Shakespeare hate and despise Iago and Edmund?' Identify the book in which this question appears.

Which among the following are NOT mentioned as aspects of the novel by E. M. Forster?

1. A. Story
2. B. Imagination
3. C. Plot
4. D. Harmony
5. E. Prophecy

Arrange the following works in chronological order of publication:

1. A. Raymond Williams, Culture and Society
2. B. Matthew Arnold, Culture and Anarchy
3. C. Herbert Read, To Hell with Culture
4. D. Christopher Caudwell, Studies in a Dying Culture
5. E. T. S. Eliot, Notes towards the Definition of Culture

'Some are bewildered in the maze of schools, / And some made coxcombs Nature meant but fools.' From which work are these lines?

Arrange the following writers by year of birth:

1. A. James Boswell
2. B. Edward Gibbon
3. C. Samuel Johnson
4. D. Edmund Burke
5. E. Richard Brinsley Sheridan