9 questions. Try each one, then open the answer to check yourself and read the explanation.
Which of the following statements best describes comedy?
Answer: D (A play which ends happily)
In literary terms a comedy is a play with a happy ending, usually after confusion and conflict are sorted out; not every comedy is mainly funny.
One major narrative technique a novel shares with drama is
Answer: B (dialogue)
Both novels and plays present characters talking to each other, i.e. dialogue.
A stanza of three lines linked by rhyme is generally called a
Answer: C (tercet)
A tercet is a three-line stanza; a couplet has two lines and a quatrain four.
The purgation of the emotions of pity and fear in tragedy is called
Answer: A (catharsis)
Aristotle called the release of pity and fear that a tragedy brings about catharsis.
The stylistic device that uses the name of one thing to describe another is called a
Answer: B (metonym)
Metonymy replaces a thing's name with something closely linked to it, e.g. 'the crown' for the king.
A creative process in which abstract entities such as virtues and vices are used with intended double meaning is called
Answer: C (allegory)
In an allegory, characters stand for ideas such as virtues and vices, so the story has a second, hidden meaning.
What basically distinguishes Literature from other disciplines is its
Answer: A (use of creative imagination)
Other subjects also explain experience and ideas; literature is marked out by its imaginative, creative use of language.
Which of the following are literary genres?
Answer: B (Fiction, poetry and drama)
The three main genres of literature are prose fiction, poetry and drama.
A story which explains the origin of a natural phenomenon is a
Answer: D (myth.)
Myths are traditional stories that explain how things in nature or the world came to be.