37 questions. Try each one, then open the answer to check yourself and read the explanation.
In We must Learn Again to Fly, Ofeimum exhorts the reader
Answer: A (not to lose hope in the face of adversity)
Ofeimun's poem urges people who have been knocked down to rise and try again, so it is a call not to lose hope when things go badly.
Keats' On the Grasshopper and Cricket is best described as
Answer: A (romantic)
John Keats is one of the great English Romantic poets, and this sonnet celebrates the never-ending 'poetry of earth' in nature, a typical Romantic theme.
Apart from his lover, the poet in Senghor's I will Pronounce Your Name is also concerned with his
Answer: B (continent)
While praising his beloved, Senghor fills the poem with images of Africa, so he is also celebrating his continent.
In Houseman's To an Athlete Dying Young, the poet sees the death of the young athlete as
Answer: D (timely)
Housman calls the athlete a 'smart lad' to die at the height of his glory, before his fame could fade, so he sees the death as timely.
Brutus' A Troubadour I Traverse paints the picture of
Answer: B (love in a hostile environment)
The speaker is a wandering lover singing of his land as his mistress while dodging arrests and the police: love that survives in a hostile, oppressive setting.
Milton's On His Blindness teaches human beings to
Answer: A (discountenance physical disabilities)
Milton concludes that 'they also serve who only stand and wait': a disability should not be allowed to stop anyone serving God, so physical handicaps are set aside as no barrier.
In Clark's Agbor Dancer, the drum is central to the message because it
Answer: B (reminds the poet of his cultural roots)
Watching the dancer move in tune with the drum makes the poet long to be at one again with the traditions he has drifted from, so the drum stands for his cultural roots.
From the passage above, the character being described is
Answer: C (cynical)
This describes Benjamin the donkey, who works exactly as before the revolution, never more and never less, because he believes nothing will really change: he is cynical.
The extract above is an example of
Answer: A (elegy)
An elegy is a sad, reflective poem about death. These lines lament that the hunter and the blacksmith die and leave nothing but poverty behind.
The passage above achieves a mock-heroic effect through the use of
Answer: C (allusion)
Comparing a schoolboy's stolen grapefruit to the apple that tempted Eve in Paradise Lost is an allusion; setting a trivial act beside a grand biblical story makes it mock-heroic.
The literary device used in the lines above is
Answer: D (assonance)
The same long 'ee' vowel sound is repeated in 'fleeting', 'gleam', 'dream' and 'cream'; repetition of vowel sounds is assonance.
The subject matter of the speech above is
Answer: A (regicide)
Richard speaks of 'the death of kings', of kings deposed, slain and poisoned. The killing of a king is regicide.
The dominant mood in the excerpt above is that of
Answer: D (terror)
Broken walls, bats, shadows of a stranger and an abandoned gate create an eerie, frightening atmosphere, so the mood is one of terror.
A device used in the second line of the excerpt above is
Answer: A (simile)
The line compares the speaker's jealousy to Jehovah's using 'like', which makes it a simile.
The tone of the passage above is
Answer: A (derisive)
The writer quotes the job-seekers' clumsy English ('Yours obediently servant') to laugh at them, so the tone is mocking, i.e. derisive.
The device used in the excerpt above is
Answer: C (metaphor)
The childless person is directly called 'the cold nests' where no eggs are laid, without 'like' or 'as': this is a metaphor.
In Thomas Hardy's Tess of the d'Urbervilles, Angel Clare prefers Tess to Mercy Chant as a wife because she
Answer: C (understands farm life)
Angel plans to be a farmer, and he argues to his parents that a dairymaid like Tess, who knows farm work, will suit him better than the pious, ladylike Mercy Chant.
In Thomas Hardy's Tess of the d'Urbervilles, most of Tess' misery as a girl-mother comes from the thought of
Answer: B (the world's concern about her breaking social law)
Hardy says most of Tess's misery came from imagining what the world thought of her for breaking its social rules, not from her own feelings.
In Thomas Hardy's Tess of the d'Urbervilles, the theme of chance is graphically demonstrated by the
Answer: A (meeting of Parson Tringham and Mr. Durbeyfield)
The whole tragedy begins with a chance encounter: Parson Tringham happens to meet John Durbeyfield on the road and tells him he descends from the noble d'Urbervilles.
In Ayi Kwei Armah's Fragments, the message State Express 555 is an advertisement for
Answer: B (a brand of elitist cigarette)
State Express 555 is a brand of expensive cigarettes; in the novel its advertisement stands for the imported status symbols Ghana's elite crave.
In Ayi Kwei Armah's Fragments, the fact that Baako ultimately goes mad indicates that
Answer: A (the visionary is usually a sacrificial lamb)
Baako refuses to join the materialistic scramble and is broken by his family and society; Armah shows the person of vision being sacrificed by a corrupt society.
In William Shakespeare's Hamlet, the king who is poisoned in the Garden in the play-within-the-play is
Answer: A (Gozango)
Hamlet explains during the performance: 'He poisons him i' the garden for his estate. His name's Gonzago.' The scene copies Claudius's murder of King Hamlet.
In William Shakespeare's Hamlet, Ghost serves to
Answer: C (initiate dramatic conflict)
The ghost reveals the murder and orders Hamlet to take revenge, which sets the whole conflict of the play in motion.
The ghost exhorts young Hamlet not to kill his mother because
Answer: B (the ghost wishes her to be left to the torment of her conscience)
Right after these lines the ghost tells Hamlet to 'leave her to heaven, and to those thorns that in her bosom lodge': Gertrude is to be punished by her own guilty conscience.
In William Shakespeare's Hamlet, the king's clown whose skull is exhumed by Grave-digger is
Answer: B (Yorick)
The gravedigger digs up the skull of Yorick, the old king's jester, and Hamlet says 'Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio.'
In William Shakespeare's Hamlet, the seeming shifty structure of the play is used to
Answer: B (sustain the reader's interest)
The many twists, delays and sub-plots keep the audience guessing what Hamlet will do next, which sustains interest throughout the play.
In Ahmed Yerima's Attahiru, from the viewpoint of the British government, the attack on the Sokoto Caliphate is
Answer: A (one of superiority)
To Lugard and the British, conquering Sokoto was a matter of showing that the white man's power was superior and must be accepted.
Ahmed Yerima's Attahiru is historical because it deals with
Answer: B (real personages and places)
Historical drama is built on real people and places from the past; Attahiru shows real figures such as Caliph Attahiru and Lugard and real places such as Sokoto and Burmi.
An anti-social action taken by the tragic hero which results in a catastrophe is called
Answer: C (harmatia)
Hamartia is the tragic hero's error or flaw that leads to his downfall; anagnorisis is the moment of recognition.
A work which takes place in a non-existent world or which concerns an incredible character is
Answer: B (fantasy)
Fantasy is fiction set in imaginary worlds or full of impossible beings and events.
A humorous scene, incident or speech in the course of a serious fiction or drama is a
Answer: C (comic relief)
Comic relief is a funny moment placed inside a serious work to ease the tension, like the gravediggers in Hamlet.
A travelogue is
Answer: B (a record of the writer's experiences during a journey)
A travelogue is a piece of writing (or film) describing the places and experiences of the writer's travels.
Flashback in a literary work helps to
Answer: A (fill the missing link)
A flashback goes back in time to show past events that explain the present, supplying information the story would otherwise be missing.
An address to a metaphysical source of inspiration by a poet is called
Answer: C (invocation)
An invocation is the poet's call to a muse or god for help, as at the start of epics like Paradise Lost.
The sides of a stage are called
Answer: D (the wings.)
The wings are the areas at the sides of a stage, hidden from the audience, where actors wait to enter.
A metrical pause occurring in the middle of a line in a poem is called
Answer: D (caesura.)
A caesura is a break or pause inside a line of poetry, often marked by punctuation.
A complex plot can be described as the plot structure that has
Answer: B (strands of events runnings concurrently)
A complex plot has several lines of action (a main plot and sub-plots) running side by side, unlike a simple plot with one line.