20 questions. Try each one, then open the answer to check yourself and read the explanation.
Which literary device involves a character speaking their thoughts aloud, regardless of any listeners?
Answer: C (Soliloquy)
In a soliloquy a character, usually alone on stage, speaks private thoughts aloud. An aside is a brief remark to the audience; a monologue is addressed to others.
The deliberate use of a phrase or word that implies the opposite of its literal meaning, often for humorous or emphatic effect, is known as:
Answer: C (Irony)
Saying one thing while meaning the opposite is (verbal) irony. A paradox only seems self-contradictory, and an oxymoron puts two opposite words side by side.
A narrative technique where the story begins at a crucial point in the action, rather than from the beginning, is called:
Answer: B (In media res)
'In media res' is Latin for 'in the middle of things': the story opens in the middle of the action and earlier events are filled in later.
The literary technique of repeating a word or phrase at the beginning of successive clauses or lines is:
Answer: B (Anaphora)
Anaphora repeats words at the start of lines or clauses; epistrophe repeats them at the end.
What is the term for a figure of speech that replaces the name of a thing with the name of something else with which it is closely associated?
Answer: B (Metonymy)
Metonymy uses an associated word in place of the thing, e.g. 'the crown' for the king. Synecdoche uses a part for the whole.
Which literary period is primarily characterized by a return to classical models, emphasis on reason, order, and wit, and often satirical social commentary?
Answer: C (Neoclassicism)
Neoclassicism (about 1660 to 1798, e.g. Pope and Dryden) imitated Greek and Roman models and valued reason, order, wit and satire.
The Harlem Renaissance was a cultural movement primarily associated with:
Answer: B (The flourishing of African American art, literature, and music in the 1920s.)
The Harlem Renaissance was the 1920s burst of Black American art, writing and music centred in Harlem, New York (e.g. Langston Hughes).
Existentialism as a philosophical and literary movement gained prominence in:
Answer: C (The post-World War II period (mid-20th century))
Existentialism became prominent after the Second World War through writers such as Sartre and Camus.
Which of these authors is NOT typically associated with the Modernist movement?
Answer: D (John Keats)
John Keats was an early 19th-century Romantic poet. Woolf, Eliot and Joyce are leading 20th-century Modernists.
Post-colonial literature often explores themes of:
Answer: B (The aftermath of colonialism, identity, and cultural hybridity.)
Post-colonial writing deals with life after colonial rule: identity, cultural mixing, oppression and independence.
________ is a typical Negritude poem.
Answer: C ("Black Woman" by Leopold Sedar Senghor)
Senghor was a founder of Negritude, and 'Black Woman' celebrates African identity and beauty, the core of Negritude poetry.
The Poem "A Government Driver on his Retirement" is replete with the following except ________.
Answer: D (Simile)
The poem relies on repetition (of 'booze'), sound words and alliteration; simile is not one of its main devices.
Which of the following is not a symbol in John Osborne's Look Back in Anger?
Answer: C (washing)
Jimmy's pipe and newspapers and Alison's ironing are recurring symbols in the play; washing is not.
Which of the following is not a technique in Wole Soyinka's The Lion and the Jewel?
Answer: D (allegory)
The play uses mime (the Lost Traveller), allusion (e.g. to Bathsheba) and irony, but it is not an allegory.
Which of the following is a common medium of communication in the novel Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte?
Answer: D (letter)
Characters in Wuthering Heights often communicate by letter, e.g. Isabella writes to Ellen and Cathy writes to young Linton.
A "bildungsroman" is a novel concerned with:
Answer: B (The moral and psychological growth of the protagonist from youth to adulthood.)
A bildungsroman is a 'novel of growth' that follows a main character from childhood to maturity.
The term "catharsis" in literary theory, originating from Aristotle's Poetics, refers to:
Answer: B (The purification or purgation of emotions experienced by the audience of a tragedy.)
Aristotle said tragedy arouses pity and fear in the audience and then releases them; this emotional cleansing is catharsis.
Which of the following is characteristic of an epic poem?
Answer: B (A lengthy narrative poem about heroic deeds, often involving divine intervention.)
An epic is a long narrative poem about a hero's great deeds, often with gods or the supernatural involved (e.g. Beowulf).
Stream of consciousness is a technique in ________.
Answer: C (prose)
Stream of consciousness, which follows a character's flow of thoughts, is mainly a technique of prose fiction, as in Joyce and Woolf.
The literary device where an author makes an indirect reference to a person, place, thing, or idea of historical, cultural, literary, or political significance is called:
Answer: D (Allusion)
An allusion is a brief, indirect reference to a well-known person, event, place or work.