The Literary World

Question: Which of T. S. Eliot's play's most striking feature was the use of a chorus?

Answer: Murder in the Cathedral is the most successful play by American English poet T.S. Eliot. It is a poetic drama in two parts, with a prose sermon interlude. The play was performed at Canterbury Cathedral in 1935 and published the same year. The play’s most striking feature is the use of a chorus in the Classical Greek manner. The poor women of Canterbury who make up the chorus nervously await Thomas’s return from his seven-year exile, fretting over his volatile relationship with King Henry II.

Question: Who wrote The Canterbury Tales?

Answer: The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer was written in Middle English in 1387–1400. Probably influenced by French syllable-counting in versification, Chaucer developed for The Canterbury Tales, a line of 10 syllables with alternating accent and regular end rhyme—an ancestor of the heroic couplet.

Question: Which Japanese literary prize is awarded semiannually for the best work of fiction by a new or rising author?

Answer: Japanese literary prize Akutagawa Prize, is awarded semiannually for the best work of fiction by a promising new Japanese writer. The prize is generally considered, along with the Naoki Prize (for the best work of popular fiction), Japan’s most prestigious and sought-after literary award. Novellas win the prize more frequently than do full-length novels.

Question: Which novel by Charles Dickens tells the story of the Jarndyce family?

Answer: Bleak House by British author Charles Dickens is the story of the Jarndyce family, who wait in vain to inherit money from a disputed fortune in settlement of the extremely long-running lawsuit between Jarndyce and Jarndyce. It was published serially in 1852–53 and book form in 1853 and considered to be among the author’s best work.

Question: What is the English title of the great Chinese classic Lunyu?

Answer: Lunyu is one of four texts of Confucianism that, when published together in 1190 by the Neo-Confucian philosopher Zhu Xi, became the great Chinese classic known as Sishu (“Four Books”). Lunyu has been translated into English as The Analects of Confucius.

Question: Which of the following is considered one of the first detective stories?

Answer: The Murders in the Rue Morgue is a short story by Edgar Allan Poe, published in Graham’s magazine in 1841. It is considered one of the first detective stories.

Question: Who is considered the master of realistic fiction?

Answer: Russian author Leo Tolstoy was considered a master of realistic fiction and one of the world’s greatest novelists. Tolstoy is best known for his two longest works, War and Peace (1865–69) and Anna Karenina (1875–77), which are commonly regarded as among the finest novels ever written.

Question: Who coined the term abstract poem?

Answer: The abstract poem is a term coined by Edith Sitwell to describe a poem in which the words are chosen for their aural quality rather than specifically for their sense or meaning.

Question: What is the literary technique where the audience knows something that the characters don't?

Answer: Dramatic irony is a literary device by which the audience’s or reader’s understanding of events or individuals in a work surpasses that of its characters. Dramatic irony is a form of irony that is expressed through a work’s structure: an audience’s awareness of the situation in which a work’s characters exist differs substantially from that of the characters’, and the words and actions of the characters therefore take on a different—often contradictory—meaning for the audience than they have for the work’s characters.

Question: Which of these Indian drama treatises deals with all aspects of classical Sanskrit theatre?

Answer: Natyashastra is an Indian drama treatise and handbook on dramatic art that deals with all aspects of classical Sanskrit theatre. It is believed to have been written by the mythic Brahman sage and priest Bharata (1st-century BCE–3rd-century CE).

Question: Which American social and literary movement originated in the 1950s and centered in the bohemian artist communities?

Answer: American social and literary movement Beat movement, also called Beat Generation, originated in the 1950s and centered in the bohemian artist communities of San Francisco’s North Beach, Los Angeles’ Venice West, and New York City’s Greenwich Village. Its adherents, self-styled as “beat” (originally meaning “weary,” but later also connoting a musical sense, a “beatific” spirituality, and other meanings) and derisively called “beatniks,” expressed their alienation from conventional, or “square,” society by adopting a style of dress, manners, and “hip” vocabulary borrowed from jazz musicians.

Question: Name the book that is a collection of Indian animal fables?

Answer: The Panchatantra is a collection of Indian animal fables, which has had extensive circulation both in the country of its origin and throughout the world. In Europe, the work was known under the name The Fables of Bidpai (for the narrator, an Indian sage, Bidpai, called Vidyapati in Sanskrit), and one version reached the West as early as the 11th century.

Question: For which work did Thornton Wilder win Pulitzer Prize for drama in 1938?

Answer: Our Town is a drama in three acts by Thornton Wilder. The play is considered a classic portrayal of small-town American life. Wilder won a Pulitzer Prize for Our Town, becoming the only person to receive the award in both the fiction and drama categories.

Question: Which of the following is considered the Estonian national epic?

Answer: Kalevipoeg is the Estonian national epic compiled in 1857–1861 by the Estonian physician, folklorist, and poet F. Reinhold Kreutzwald, during a period referred to as the national awakening. The work became the focus of the nascent 19th-century Estonian nationalism and independence movement and subsequently exercised considerable influence on the country’s literature, art, and music. It was translated as Kalevipoeg: An Ancient Estonian Tale (1982).

Question: Which was H.G. Wells's first novel?

Answer: H.G. Wells was an English novelist, journalist, sociologist, and historian best known for such science fiction novels as The Time Machine and The War of the Worlds and such comic novels as Tono-Bungay and The History of Mr. Polly. The Time Machine (1895) was published in book form in 1895. The novel is considered one of the earliest works of science fiction and the progenitor of the “time travel” subgenre.

Question: What describes the borogoves in "Jabberwocky"?

Answer: "All mimsy were the borogroves," proclaims Lewis Carroll’s poem "Jabberwocky," written with nonsense words.

Question: Which is Cervantes's famous novel?

Answer: Don Quixote is a novel published in two parts (part 1, 1605, and part 2, 1615) by Spanish writer Miguel de Cervantes, one of the most widely read classics of Western literature. Originally conceived as a parody of the chivalric romances that had long been in literary vogue, it describes realistically what befalls an aging knight who, his head bemused by reading such romances, sets out on his old horse Rocinante, with his pragmatic squire, Sancho Panza, to seek adventure.

Question: In which year was the Greek dramatist Aristophanes born?

Answer: Aristophanes was born in c. 450 BCE. He is the greatest representative of ancient Greek comedy and the one whose works have been preserved in the greatest quantity.

Question: Which of John Milton's works is a plea for the free expression of opinion?

Answer: Areopagitica is a pamphlet by John Milton, published in 1644 to protest an order issued by Parliament the previous year requiring government approval and licensing of all published books. The title of the work derives from “Areopagus” (“Hill of Ares”), the name of the site from which the high court of Athens administered its jurisdiction and imposed general censorship.

Question: How many chapters are in the Qur’an?

Answer: The Qur’an is composed of 114 chapters called suras, which are (with the exception of the first sura) arranged from longest to shortest.

Question: Which of these is not part of the Vedas?

Answer: The Brahmanas, the Aranyakas, and the Upanishads are part of the Vedas. The Dhammapada is a Buddhist text.

Question: For which work is Bram Stoker best known?

Answer: Irish writer Bram Stoker is best known as the author of the Gothic horror tale Dracula. The popular novel enjoyed equal success in several versions as a play and as a film.

Question: Which novel is considered the first Gothic novel in the English language?

Answer: The Castle of Otranto is considered the first Gothic novel in the English language, and it is often said to have founded the horror story as a legitimate literary form. The Castle of Otranto is a novel by Horace Walpole, which was published under a pseudonym in 1764.

Question: Which of these literary movements was concerned with clear, direct expression?

Answer: The 20th-century U.S. and English poets of the movement known as imagism sought to replace vague abstractions in poetry with clarity and directness.

Question: Which British novelist created the iconic character James Bond?

Answer: James Bond is a British literary and film character, a peerless spy, notorious womanizer, and masculine icon. The designated Agent 007 (always articulated as “double-oh-seven”) in the British Secret Intelligence Service, or MI6, was the creation of British novelist Ian Fleming. James Bond became one of the most successful and widely imitated heroes of 20th-century popular fiction.

Question: Who among the following Japanese poets is considered the greatest haiku poet?

Answer: Haiku is an unrhymed poetic form consisting of 17 syllables arranged in three lines of 5, 7, and 5 syllables respectively. Haiku first emerged in Japanese literature during the 17th century. The form gained distinction early in the Tokugawa period (1603–1867) when the great master Bashō elevated the hokku to a highly refined and conscious art. The supreme Japanese haiku poet Bashō greatly enriched the 17-syllable haiku form and made it an accepted medium of artistic expression.

Question: What kind of book is a Nebula Award given for?

Answer: The Nebula Award is given annually for a book of science fiction. The first was given to Frank Herbert for Dune in 1965.

Question: Which of the following works is considered the world's first true novel?

Answer: The Tale of Genji is a masterpiece of Japanese literature by Murasaki Shikibu. It was written at the start of the 11th century and generally considered the world’s first novel. Arthur Waley was the first to translate The Tale of Genji into English (6 vol., 1925–33).

Question: Which English poetry group of the mid-17th-century sided with King Charles I against the parliament?

Answer: Cavalier poets were any of a group of English gentlemen poets, called Cavaliers because of their loyalty to Charles I (1625–49) during the English Civil Wars, as opposed to Roundheads, who supported Parliament. They were also cavaliers in their style of life and counted the writing of polished and elegant lyrics as only one of their many accomplishments as soldiers, courtiers, gallants, and wits. The term embraces Richard Lovelace, Thomas Carew, Sir John Suckling, Edmund Waller, and Robert Herrick.

Question: Who is regarded as the father of the English novel?

Answer: Novelist and playwright Henry Fielding, who, with Samuel Richardson, is considered a founder of the English novel. Among his major novels are Joseph Andrews (1742) and Tom Jones (1749).

Question: Which of Shakespeare’s plays is based on Plutarch’s Bioi parallēloi?

Answer: Antony and Cleopatra is a tragedy in five acts by William Shakespeare, written in 1606–07 and published in the First Folio of 1623. It is considered one of Shakespeare’s richest and most moving works. The principal source of the play was Sir Thomas North’s Parallel Lives (1579), an English version of Plutarch’s Bioi parallēloi.

Question: Which prize is awarded to the most distinguished American picture book for children?

Answer: Caldecott Medal is an annual prize awarded “to the artist of the most distinguished American picture book for children.” It was established in 1938 by Frederic G. Melcher, chairman of the board of the R.R. Bowker Publishing Company, and named for the 19th-century English illustrator Randolph Caldecott. It is presented at the annual conference of the American Library Association along with the Newbery Medal for children’s literature.

Question: What is the name for a record of a period in a person’s life?

Answer: Diaries are written by people to record their day-to-day lives. Perhaps the most famous is The Diary of Anne Frank, by a Jewish girl who hid from the Nazis during World War II.

Question: Which is the last book in Gulliver's Travels?

Answer: Gulliver’s Travels was a four-part satirical work by Anglo-Irish author Jonathan Swift, published anonymously in 1726 as Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World. The story tells about Lemuel Gulliver, a surgeon and sea captain who visits remote regions of the world, and it describes four adventures. In the first one, Gulliver is the only survivor of a shipwreck, and he swims to Lilliput, where he is tied up by people who are less than 6 inches (15 cm) tall. His second voyage takes him to Brobdingnag, inhabited by a race of giants, followed by his next, where he is set adrift by pirates and eventually ends up on the flying island of Laputa. In his last journey, he visits the Houyhnhnms, a land of intelligent horses and a degenerate humanoid race called Yahoos.

Question: Which poet authored Shāh-nāmeh, the Persian national epic?

Answer: Ferdowsī, also spelled Firdawsī, Firdusi authored the Shāh-nāmeh (“Book of Kings”), the Persian national epic, to which he gave a final and enduring form, although he based his poem mainly on an earlier prose version. Written for Sultan Maḥmūd of Ghazna and completed in 1010, the Shāh-nāmeh is a poem of nearly 60,000 verses, mainly based on the Khvatay-nāmak, a history of the kings of Persia in Pahlavi (Middle Persian) from mythical times down to the 7th century.

Question: Which Shakespearean play features the characters Bianca, Cassio and Iago?

Answer: Othello, or Othello, the Moor of Venice, is a tragedy in five acts by William Shakespeare. It was written in 1603–04 and published in 1622 in a quarto edition from a transcript of an authorial manuscript.

Question: In which country might you attend a Kabuki performance?

Answer: Kabuki is a ritualized, stylized form of theater developed in Japan.

Question: Who is the author of The Spirit of Laws?

Answer: French political philosopher Montesquieu principal work, The Spirit of Laws, was a major contribution to political theory. It consisted of two quarto volumes, comprising 31 books in 1,086 pages.

Question: Who founded the naturalist movement?

Answer: Émile Zola was a French novelist, critic, and political activist who was the most prominent French novelist of the late 19th century. He was noted for his theories of naturalism, which underlie his monumental 20-novel series Les Rougon-Macquart, and for his intervention in the Dreyfus Affair through his famous open letter, “J’accuse.”

Question: Who wrote the epic poems Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained?

Answer: John Milton (1608–74) is considered the most significant English writer after William Shakespeare. Milton is best known for Paradise Lost, widely regarded as the greatest epic poem in English. Together with Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes, it confirms Milton’s reputation as one of the greatest English poets.

Question: In which century did science fiction become a major type of writing?

Answer: A few authors, such as Jules Verne and H.G. Wells, wrote science fiction in the 1800s or even earlier. But science fiction did not become a major type of writing until the 1900s.

Question: Who won the Prix Goncourt for Les Mandarins?

Answer: Simone de Beauvoir was a French writer and feminist, a member of the intellectual fellowship of philosopher-writers who have given a literary transcription to the themes of existentialism. She won the Prix Goncourt for her work of fiction The Mandarins (1954), which chronicles the attempts of post-World War II intellectuals to leave their “mandarin” (educated elite) status and engage in political activism.

Question: Which of these writers often deals with the experience of Indian immigrants in the United States?

Answer: Jhumpa Lahiri, the daughter of Bengali immigrants to the United States, often writes of the Indian experience in America.

Question: Which theatre in London is associated with Shakespeare?

Answer: Globe Theatre is a famous London theatre in which after 1599 the plays of William Shakespeare were performed. Early in 1599, Shakespeare, who had been acting with the Lord Chamberlain’s Men since 1594, paid into the coffers of the company a sum of money amounting to 12.5 percent of the cost of building the Globe. He did so as a chief shareholder in the company, and by doing so, he helped to establish a uniquely successful form of commercial operation for the actors of the time.

Question: Pip is the main character of which book by Charles Dickens?

Answer: Great Expectations was a novel by Charles Dickens that was first was first published serially in All the Year Round in 1860–61 and issued in book form in 1861. The classic novel was one of its author’s greatest critical and popular successes. The story records the coming of age of the orphan Pip while also addressing issues such as social class and human worth.

Question: Which work by Ovid is a collection of mythological stories?

Answer: Metamorphoses is a poem in 15 books, written in Latin about 8 CE by Ovid, written in hexameter verse. The work is a collection of mythological and legendary stories, many taken from Greek sources, in which transformation (metamorphosis) plays a role, however minor.

Question: Which historical event does Charles Dickens’s novel A Tale of Two Cities concern?

Answer: A Tale of Two Cities is an adventure set in the years of the French Revolution.

Question: Which literary and artistic movement originated with a group of French poets in the late 19th century?

Answer: Symbolism was a loosely organized literary and artistic movement that originated with a group of French poets in the late 19th century, spread to painting and the theatre, and influenced the European and American literature of the 20th century to varying degrees.

Question: Who among the following wrote under the pen name Saki?

Answer: Saki is the pseudonym of Hector Hugh Munro. He was a Scottish writer and journalist whose stories depict the Edwardian social scene with a flippant wit and power of fantastic invention used both to satirize social pretension, unkindness, and stupidity and to create an atmosphere of horror.

Question: Name the American journalist who created the genre known as gonzo journalism.

Answer: Hunter S. Thompson was an American journalist and author who created the genre known as gonzo journalism, a highly personal style of reporting that made Thompson a counterculture icon.

Question: The tales of Aladdin, Ali Baba, and Sindbad the Sailor are part of which collection of stories?

Answer: The Thousand and One Nights, also called The Arabian Nights, is a collection of largely Middle Eastern and Indian stories of uncertain date and authorship. Its tales of Aladdin, Ali Baba, and Sindbad the Sailor have almost become part of Western folklore, though these were added to the collection only in the 18th century in European adaptations.

Question: Who wrote the epic poem The Divine Comedy?

Answer: The Divine Comedy, original name La commedia, is a long narrative poem written in Italian circa 1308–21 by Italian poet Dante. It is usually held to be one of the world’s great works of literature. Divided into three major sections—Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso—the narrative traces the journey of Dante from darkness and error to the revelation of the divine light, culminating in the Beatific Vision of God.

Question: In which year was the Lyrical Ballads published?

Answer: Lyrical Ballads was first published in 1798 by Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth, the appearance of which is often designated by scholars as a signal of the beginning of English Romanticism. The work included Coleridge’s “Rime of the Ancient Mariner” and Wordsworth’s “Tintern Abbey,” as well as many controversial common-language poems by Wordsworth, such as “The Idiot Boy.” The “Preface” to the second edition (1800) contains Wordsworth’s famous definition of poetry as the “spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings” and his theory that poetry should be written in “the language really used by men.”

Question: Which of the following words reflects the character's name to their personality or occupation?

Answer: Aptronym is a name that fits some aspect of a character. The term aptronym was allegedly coined by the American newspaper columnist Franklin P. Adams by an anagrammatic reordering of the first letters of patronym (to suggest apt) to denote surnames that suit the occupation of the name’s bearer (such as Baker for a baker). Examples include Mr. Talkative and Mr. Worldly Wiseman in John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress or Mrs. Malaprop in Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s play The Rivals.

Question: Who was the author of the Greek epic poem Argonautica?

Answer: Apollonius of Rhodes was a Greek poet and grammarian who was the author of the Argonautica. Argonautica, an epic in four books, tells the story of Jason and the Argonauts and their pursuit for the Golden Fleece. Apollonius adapted the language of Homer to the needs of a romantic epic with considerable success. In recounting Medea’s love for Jason, he shows sympathetic analysis not found in earlier Greek literature.

Question: In which year was The Defence of Poesie published?

Answer: The Defence of Poesie, the literary criticism by Sir Philip Sidney was written in about 1582 and published posthumously in 1595. Another edition of the work, published the same year, is titled An Apologie for Poetrie.

Question: To which country does the Njáls saga and the Gísla saga belong?

Answer: Icelanders’ sagas, also called family sagas, are a class of heroic prose narratives written during 1200–20 about the great families who lived in Iceland from 930 to 1030. Among the most important such works are the Njáls saga and the Gísla saga.

Question: Which form of theatre was associated with French poet Antonin Artaud?

Answer: Theatre of Cruelty was a project for an experimental theatre that was proposed by the French poet, actor, and theorist Antonin Artaud that became a major influence on avant-garde 20th-century theatre. Artaud attempted to replace the “bourgeois” classical theatre with his “theatre of cruelty,” a primitive ceremonial experience intended to liberate the human subconscious and reveal man to himself.

Question: Which American literary awards honors African American writers and illustrators of outstanding books for children or young adults?

Answer: The Coretta Scott King Book Awards is any of a series of awards given in the United States by the American Library Association (ALA) to African American writers and illustrators of books for children or young adults. It seeks to recognize books that best exemplify African American life and culture. The Coretta Scott King Book Award was founded in 1969 to honor the life and work of Martin Luther King, Jr., and his wife, Coretta Scott King. The award is given to an author or illustrator in even years; in odd years, it is given to a practitioner (such as a librarian) who actively engages children through African American literature. The award recipients are chosen by members of the Ethnic and Multicultural Information Exchange Round Table of the ALA.

Question: Who completed Christopher Marlowe’s poem Hero and Leander?

Answer: George Chapman, English poet and dramatist, whose translation of Homer long remained the standard English version. Chapman’s conclusion to Christopher Marlowe's unfinished poem Hero and Leander (1598) emphasized the necessity for control and wisdom. The joint work of the two poets was published in 1598.