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UNIT 2 — POETRY
🔵 MEDIEVAL & EARLY RENAISSANCE POETS
1. In The Canterbury Tales, which tale is often described as the earliest example of English fabliau tradition?
(A) The Knight’s Tale
(B) The Pardoner’s Tale
(C) The Miller’s Tale
(D) The Prioress’s Tale
Answer: (C)
Explanation: The Miller’s Tale is a classic fabliau—comic, bawdy, lower-class humour.
2. Which poetic device is prominently used in Langland’s Piers Plowman?
(A) Blank verse
(B) Alliterative verse
(C) Heroic couplet
(D) Trochaic tetrameter
Answer: (B)
Explanation: Langland revives Old English alliterative tradition.
3. Spenser’s The Faerie Queene employs which stanza form?
(A) Rhyme Royal
(B) Spenserian Stanza
(C) Terza Rima
(D) Ottava Rima
Answer: (B)
Explanation: Spenser invented the 9-line Spenserian stanza: ABABBCBCC.
4. Sir Thomas Wyatt’s “Whoso List to Hunt” is an adaptation of:
(A) Dante
(B) Virgil
(C) Petrarch
(D) Horace
Answer: (C)
Explanation: Wyatt translated Petrarch’s Rime 190.
5. Surrey’s translation of Aeneid introduced which major innovation?
(A) Spenserian stanza
(B) Blank verse
(C) Elegiac couplets
(D) Terza rima
Answer: (B)
Explanation: Surrey introduced blank verse into English poetry.
🔵 METAPHYSICAL & CAVALIER POETS
6. Which of the following images best exemplifies a metaphysical conceit?
(A) Comparing a lover to a rose
(B) Comparing lovers to legs of a compass
(C) Comparing time to a thief
(D) Comparing life to a river
Answer: (B)
Explanation: Donne’s compass image is the classic metaphysical conceit.
7. In Donne’s “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning,” the lovers’ union is symbolized through:
(A) Gold beaten thin
(B) A broken mirror
(C) A phoenix
(D) A celestial sphere
Answer: (A)
Explanation: The lovers “expand” like beaten gold without breaking.
8. Which poem of George Herbert uses shape/visual poetry?
(A) The Collar
(B) The Pulley
(C) The Altar
(D) Love (III)
Answer: (C)
Explanation: “The Altar” is a famous pattern poem.
9. “Had we but world enough and time” is the opening of:
(A) The Garden
(B) To His Coy Mistress
(C) Bermudas
(D) Upon Appleton House
Answer: (B)
Explanation: Marvell’s poem is the classic carpe diem persuasion.
10. Which Cavalier poet wrote “Gather ye rosebuds while ye may”?
(A) Richard Lovelace
(B) Thomas Carew
(C) Robert Herrick
(D) Sir John Suckling
Answer: (C)
Explanation: It appears in Herrick’s Hesperides.
🔵 RESTORATION & AUGUSTAN POETRY
11. Absalom and Achitophel is a political allegory based on:
(A) The Popish Plot
(B) The Exclusion Crisis
(C) The Civil War
(D) The Glorious Revolution
Answer: (B)
Explanation: Dryden allegorizes the Exclusion Crisis through biblical characters.
12. Which poem is an example of mock-heroic satire?
(A) The Dunciad
(B) Essay on Criticism
(C) The Vanity of Human Wishes
(D) Rule, Britannia!
Answer: (A)
Explanation: Pope’s Dunciad is a mock epic attacking dullness.
13. Pope’s Essay on Criticism advocates:
(A) Pure imagination
(B) Originality over tradition
(C) Classical rules and judgment
(D) Confessional honesty
Answer: (C)
Explanation: Pope upholds classical order and the critic’s rational judgment.
14. Samuel Johnson’s poem “The Vanity of Human Wishes” is modeled on:
(A) Juvenal
(B) Horace
(C) Virgil
(D) Ovid
Answer: (A)
Explanation: It is a moral parody of Juvenal’s Tenth Satire.
15. James Thomson’s The Seasons is important because:
(A) It is the first blank verse epic
(B) It anticipates Romantic nature poetry
(C) It is the first printed collection of odes
(D) It established heroic couplets as dominant
Answer: (B)
Explanation: Thomson’s detailed natural descriptions strongly influenced Wordsworth.
🔵 ROMANTIC POETS
16. Which of the following pairs is correct?
(A) Coleridge – Negative capability
(B) Keats – Defence of poetry
(C) Shelley – Prometheus Unbound
(D) Byron – Kubla Khan
Answer: (C)
Explanation: Prometheus Unbound is Shelley’s lyrical drama.
17. Wordsworth defined poetry as:
(A) “Spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings”
(B) “A criticism of life”
(C) “The best words in the best order”
(D) “A raid on the inarticulate”
Answer: (A)
Explanation: From the Preface to Lyrical Ballads.
18. Which poem begins with “My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains / My sense…”?
(A) Tintern Abbey
(B) Christabel
(C) Ode to a Nightingale
(D) Ode to the West Wind
Answer: (C)
Explanation: Keats’s ode opens with this expression of weariness.
19. Who is the Byronic hero typically modeled on?
(A) The medieval knight
(B) Satan in Milton’s Paradise Lost
(C) Classical warriors
(D) Cavalier poets
Answer: (B)
Explanation: The heroic rebel figure parallels Milton’s Satan.
20. Which poem embodies the “Aeolian harp” metaphor for poetic inspiration?
(A) Kubla Khan
(B) Dejection: An Ode
(C) Frost at Midnight
(D) Rime of the Ancient Mariner
Answer: (C)
Explanation: Coleridge uses the Aeolian harp as symbol of imaginative receptivity.
🔵 VICTORIAN POETS
21. “’Tis better to have loved and lost / Than never to have loved at all” appears in:
(A) Ulysses
(B) The Lotos-Eaters
(C) In Memoriam
(D) Maud
Answer: (C)
Explanation: A famous line from Tennyson’s elegy.
22. Browning’s dramatic monologues often feature:
(A) Detached philosophical narrators
(B) A speaker revealing more than intended
(C) Purely lyrical introspection
(D) Anonymous collective voices
Answer: (B)
Explanation: Browning’s speakers are unreliable and self-revelatory.
23. Arnold’s “Dover Beach” expresses:
(A) Celebration of scientific progress
(B) Faith in nature’s harmony
(C) Crisis of faith in the modern age
(D) Support for industrialization
Answer: (C)
Explanation: The poem laments the retreat of religious faith.
24. Which poet is associated with Pre-Raphaelite sensuousness?
(A) Matthew Arnold
(B) Dante Gabriel Rossetti
(C) Tennyson
(D) Christina Rossetti
Answer: (B)
Explanation: D. G. Rossetti is central to the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.
25. Hopkins’ concept of “inscape” refers to:
(A) Moral order
(B) Social landscape
(C) The unique inner essence of things
(D) The emotional tone of poetry
Answer: (C)
Explanation: Inscape expresses individuality of created forms.
🔵 MODERNIST POETS
26. “April is the cruellest month” opens which poem?
(A) Prufrock
(B) The Second Coming
(C) The Waste Land
(D) Hugh Selwyn Mauberley
Answer: (C)
Explanation: The iconic opening of Eliot’s Waste Land.
27. Yeats’s symbol of the “gyre” represents:
(A) Cyclical history
(B) Urban decay
(C) Romantic imagination
(D) Patriarchal violence
Answer: (A)
Explanation: Gyres symbolize historical cycles and shifting civilizations.
28. Which poem ends with “Shall I at least set my lands in order?”
(A) Prufrock
(B) The Waste Land
(C) Sailing to Byzantium
(D) September 1, 1939
Answer: (B)
Explanation: Lines from the concluding section of The Waste Land.
29. “In a Station of the Metro” exemplifies:
(A) Confessional poetry
(B) Imagism
(C) Romantic symbolism
(D) Cavalier lyricism
Answer: (B)
Explanation: Pound’s two-line poem is a model imagist text.
30. Which poet used pararhyme extensively?
(A) Auden
(B) Owen
(C) Lawrence
(D) Hardy
Answer: (B)
Explanation: Owen’s signature technique includes slant rhyme.
🔵 POSTMODERN & CONTEMPORARY POETS
31. Sylvia Plath’s “Daddy” uses which poetic mode?
(A) Mock epic
(B) Pastoral elegy
(C) Confessional monologue
(D) Concrete poetry
Answer: (C)
Explanation: Plath’s work is deeply autobiographical and confrontational.
32. Ted Hughes’s Crow sequence is known for:
(A) Feminist imagery
(B) Religious allegory and violent mythology
(C) Celebration of nature’s peace
(D) Political satire
Answer: (B)
Explanation: Crow is mythic, violent, and existential.
33. Allen Ginsberg’s Howl was influenced by:
(A) Neo-classicism
(B) Imagism
(C) Whitman’s free verse
(D) Cavalier lyricism
Answer: (C)
Explanation: Whitman’s long, free, breath-driven lines shaped Ginsberg’s style.
34. Margaret Atwood’s poetry frequently explores:
(A) Italian Renaissance aesthetics
(B) Religious mysticism
(C) Gender, power, and ecology
(D) Neo-classical satire
Answer: (C)
Explanation: Atwood’s themes revolve around feminism and environmentalism.
🔵 FORM, GENRE, AND TECHNICAL TERMS
35. Ottava rima was used extensively by:
(A) Wordsworth
(B) Milton
(C) Byron
(D) Donne
Answer: (C)
Explanation: Byron’s Don Juan is in ottava rima.
36. Terza rima appears in:
(A) Ode to the West Wind
(B) Kubla Khan
(C) In Memoriam
(D) The Dunciad
Answer: (A)
Explanation: Shelley uses terza rima in “Ode to the West Wind.”
37. A “sprung rhythm” line counts:
(A) Only unstressed syllables
(B) Only stressed syllables
(C) Total syllables equally
(D) No rhythmic pattern
Answer: (B)
Explanation: Hopkins counts stresses, not syllables.
38. Which of the following BEST describes a dramatic monologue?
(A) A dialogue poem
(B) A poem depicting a battle
(C) A single speaker revealing character to an implied listener
(D) Anonymous chorus narrating events
Answer: (C)
Explanation: Essential features of Browning’s monologues.
39. Which poet is most associated with the “mythic method”?
(A) Keats
(B) Tennyson
(C) Eliot
(D) Auden
Answer: (C)
Explanation: Eliot defined and practiced the mythic method.
40. Ekphrasis refers to:
(A) Poetic praise of nature
(B) A poem describing a work of art
(C) Narrative verse
(D) Dialogue in verse
Answer: (B)
Explanation: Keats’s “Ode on a Grecian Urn” is a prime example.
🔵 AUTHOR–WORK MATCHING & INTERTEXTUALITY
41. Match the poet with the correct poem:
-
Hopkins
-
Arnold
-
Wordsworth
-
Hardy
A. Dover Beach
B. The Ruined Maid
C. Pied Beauty
D. Tintern Abbey
Answer: 1–C, 2–A, 3–D, 4–B.
42. “Death, be not proud” belongs to which collection?
(A) Songs and Sonnets
(B) Holy Sonnets
(C) Hesperides
(D) Lyrical Ballads
Answer: (B)
Explanation: Donne’s Holy Sonnets explore mortality and repentance.
43. “Sailing to Byzantium” addresses:
(A) Childhood memory
(B) The collapse of civilization
(C) Artistic immortality
(D) Despair in war
Answer: (C)
Explanation: Byzantium symbolizes spiritual permanence.
44. Which poem begins with “Because I could not stop for Death—”?
(A) A narrow fellow in the grass
(B) Because I liked you better
(C) The Lady of Shalott
(D) None (Emily Dickinson—not in syllabus)
Answer: (D)
Explanation: Dickinson is not part of this syllabus; question tests caution.
45. In “The Waste Land,” the phrase “Shantih shantih shantih” signifies:
(A) Irony and mockery
(B) Liturgical benediction
(C) Political protest
(D) Romantic ecstasy
Answer: (B)
Explanation: Eliot calls it “the peace which passeth understanding.”
🔵 CONCEPTUAL, ANALYTICAL, HIGH-DIFFICULTY QUESTIONS
46. Which poet’s work is an early example of “proto-modernism”?
(A) Tennyson
(B) Hopkins
(C) Thomson
(D) Wordsworth
Answer: (B)
Explanation: Hopkins anticipates Modernist experimentation.
47. Blake’s “Marriage of Heaven and Hell” primarily challenges:
(A) Metaphysical poetry
(B) Christian dualism
(C) Pastoral tradition
(D) Italian sonnet structure
Answer: (B)
Explanation: Blake rejects rigid oppositions of good/evil.
48. Which Romantic poet is most associated with revolutionary political ideals?
(A) Keats
(B) Coleridge
(C) Shelley
(D) Wordsworth
Answer: (C)
Explanation: Shelley’s works openly call for political reform.
49. Auden’s “The Shield of Achilles” contrasts:
(A) Mythic heroism vs modern brutality
(B) Classical love vs modern cynicism
(C) Nationalism vs cosmopolitanism
(D) Free verse vs blank verse
Answer: (A)
Explanation: The poem juxtaposes mythic expectations with violent modern reality.
50. Yeats’s “The Second Coming” uses which central symbol?
(A) The Phoenix
(B) The Leviathan
(C) The Falcon and falconer
(D) The Phoenix and dove
Answer: (C)
Explanation: Symbolizes loss of control and chaos.