English Literature: 40 MCQs with Answers
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0%Q31. What various traits does the passage talk about bores ?
Read the following passage and answer the question:
Of all bores the most repellent specimen is the one who comes close up: the buttonholing bore. This is the kind described by a friend of mine with a vivid sense of phrase as ‘the man who spreads birdlime all over you’. A bore who keeps a reasonable way off can be dealt with; but when they lean on you, you are done. It is worst when they fix your eyes, only a foot away, and tell a funny story that isn’t funny. Nothing is so humiliating as to have to counterfeit laughter at the bidding of a bore; but we do it. The incurable weakness and benignancy of human nature once again! Then there is the bore who begins a funny story, and although you tell him you have heard it, doesn’t stop. What should be done with him? Another of the worst types of bore is the man who says ‘Where should we be without our sense of humour?’ He is even capable of saying ‘Nothing but my unfailing sense of humour saved me.’ There is also the man who says ‘“Live and let live,” as my poor dear father used to say.’
There was once an eccentric peer — I forget both his name and the place where I read about him — who had contracted, all unconsciously, the habit of thinking aloud; and in this world of artifice, where society is cemented and sustained very largely by a compromise between what we think and what we say, his thoughts were very often at variance with his words. One of the stories in the Memoirs in which I found him describes how he met an acquaintance in St James’s Street, and, after muttering quite audibly to himself for a few minutes as they walked side by side, ‘Confound it, what a nuisance meeting this fellow. I’ve always disliked him. But now that we have met I suppose I must ask him to dinner,’ he stopped and said with every appearance of cordiality, ‘You’ll dine with us this evening, won’t you?’
Right Answer: (a) and (d) are correct
The passage shows bores as entirely unaware that they are boring: the man who asks where we should be without our sense of humour actually believes he is amusing, and the storyteller carries on happily after being told his tale is stale. That is statement (a). It also shows them as inconsiderate and uncharitable, since they lean on their victims, pin them with their eyes and force them to counterfeit laughter, which is statement (d). Nothing in the passage suggests that they are mindful of their coarseness, and calling them engaging would contradict the writer’s whole argument.
Q32. Why do listeners laugh even when the stories are not funny ?
Read the following passage and answer the question:
Of all bores the most repellent specimen is the one who comes close up: the buttonholing bore. This is the kind described by a friend of mine with a vivid sense of phrase as ‘the man who spreads birdlime all over you’. A bore who keeps a reasonable way off can be dealt with; but when they lean on you, you are done. It is worst when they fix your eyes, only a foot away, and tell a funny story that isn’t funny. Nothing is so humiliating as to have to counterfeit laughter at the bidding of a bore; but we do it. The incurable weakness and benignancy of human nature once again! Then there is the bore who begins a funny story, and although you tell him you have heard it, doesn’t stop. What should be done with him? Another of the worst types of bore is the man who says ‘Where should we be without our sense of humour?’ He is even capable of saying ‘Nothing but my unfailing sense of humour saved me.’ There is also the man who says ‘“Live and let live,” as my poor dear father used to say.’
There was once an eccentric peer — I forget both his name and the place where I read about him — who had contracted, all unconsciously, the habit of thinking aloud; and in this world of artifice, where society is cemented and sustained very largely by a compromise between what we think and what we say, his thoughts were very often at variance with his words. One of the stories in the Memoirs in which I found him describes how he met an acquaintance in St James’s Street, and, after muttering quite audibly to himself for a few minutes as they walked side by side, ‘Confound it, what a nuisance meeting this fellow. I’ve always disliked him. But now that we have met I suppose I must ask him to dinner,’ he stopped and said with every appearance of cordiality, ‘You’ll dine with us this evening, won’t you?’
Right Answer: Out of beneficence
After saying that nothing is so humiliating as having to counterfeit laughter at the bidding of a bore, the writer admits that we do it all the same and exclaims at the incurable weakness and benignancy of human nature. Benignancy means kindliness or good-natured tolerance, so the false laughter springs from an instinctive unwillingness to hurt the speaker’s feelings. It is thus an act of beneficence, however reluctant. Antipathy would produce silence or rebuff rather than laughter, and neither love nor a sense of disgrace is offered anywhere in the passage as a motive.
Q33. Choose the correct option that gives similar word from the passage for the word given below : 'Spurious'
Read the following passage and answer the question:
Of all bores the most repellent specimen is the one who comes close up: the buttonholing bore. This is the kind described by a friend of mine with a vivid sense of phrase as ‘the man who spreads birdlime all over you’. A bore who keeps a reasonable way off can be dealt with; but when they lean on you, you are done. It is worst when they fix your eyes, only a foot away, and tell a funny story that isn’t funny. Nothing is so humiliating as to have to counterfeit laughter at the bidding of a bore; but we do it. The incurable weakness and benignancy of human nature once again! Then there is the bore who begins a funny story, and although you tell him you have heard it, doesn’t stop. What should be done with him? Another of the worst types of bore is the man who says ‘Where should we be without our sense of humour?’ He is even capable of saying ‘Nothing but my unfailing sense of humour saved me.’ There is also the man who says ‘“Live and let live,” as my poor dear father used to say.’
There was once an eccentric peer — I forget both his name and the place where I read about him — who had contracted, all unconsciously, the habit of thinking aloud; and in this world of artifice, where society is cemented and sustained very largely by a compromise between what we think and what we say, his thoughts were very often at variance with his words. One of the stories in the Memoirs in which I found him describes how he met an acquaintance in St James’s Street, and, after muttering quite audibly to himself for a few minutes as they walked side by side, ‘Confound it, what a nuisance meeting this fellow. I’ve always disliked him. But now that we have met I suppose I must ask him to dinner,’ he stopped and said with every appearance of cordiality, ‘You’ll dine with us this evening, won’t you?’
Right Answer: Counterfeit
‘Spurious’ means false, fake or not genuine. The passage supplies the word ‘counterfeit’ in the sentence about having to counterfeit laughter at the bidding of a bore, and counterfeit carries exactly that sense of something imitated in order to deceive. ‘Nuisance’ names an annoyance and not a falsehood, ‘incurable’ describes what cannot be remedied, and ‘genuine’ is the direct antonym of spurious. Note that counterfeit works here as a verb meaning to feign, though the same word also functions as an adjective and a noun with the sense of a forgery.
Q34. On the basis of your reading of the poem ‘Ode to a Nightingale’, match the following :
‘A’
a. Hippocrene
b. Dryad
c. Bacchus
d. Hemlock
‘B’
i. A fountain sacred to the Muses on Mt. Helicon
ii. God of wine
iii. A poisonous plant
iv. A tree nymph
Right Answer: a-i, b-iv, c-ii, d-iii
Keats packs the ode with classical allusions. Hippocrene is the fountain on Mount Helicon that sprang from the hoof of Pegasus and was sacred to the Muses, and the poet longs for a beaker full of the blushful Hippocrene, that is of poetic inspiration. A Dryad is a wood nymph, and he addresses the nightingale as a light-winged Dryad of the trees. Bacchus is the Roman god of wine, whose chariot was drawn by leopards, and the poet says he will fly not with Bacchus and his pards but on the viewless wings of Poesy. Hemlock is the poisonous plant of the opening line.
Q35. Match the following and choose the correct option :
‘A’
a. Phonetics
b. Phonology
c. Morphology
d. Syntax
‘B’
i. Sound system of languages
ii. Articulation of speech sounds
iii. Word system of language
iv. Sentence structure of language
Right Answer: a-ii, b-i, c-iii, d-iv
Phonetics studies speech sounds as physical events, that is how they are articulated by the organs of speech, how they travel as sound waves and how they are perceived, and it is therefore concerned with articulation. Phonology studies how those sounds function as a system within a particular language, dealing with phonemes, allophones, syllable structure and stress. Morphology studies the internal structure of words, examining morphemes, roots, affixes and word formation. Syntax studies how words combine into phrases, clauses and sentences. Semantics, which is not listed here, studies meaning.
Q36. Study of meaning in a language is known as :
Right Answer: Semantics
Semantics is the branch of linguistics that studies meaning in language: the meanings of individual words, the sense relations between them such as synonymy, antonymy, hyponymy and polysemy, and the way the meanings of words combine to give the meaning of phrases and sentences. Syntax deals with the arrangement of words into grammatical structures, and morphology with the internal structure of words. Linguistics is the general name for the scientific study of language as a whole, of which semantics is only one branch. Pragmatics, a related field, studies meaning in context.
Q37. "Therefore, on every morrow, are we wreathing ………. to bind us to the earth". Fill in the blank with the correct option on the basis of your reading of the poem 'A Thing of Beauty' by Keats :
Right Answer: A flowery band
The line comes from the opening verse paragraph of Keats’s ‘Endymion’, prescribed as ‘A Thing of Beauty’. The poet says that in spite of despondence, the inhuman dearth of noble natures and the gloomy days, some shape of beauty always moves away the pall from our dark spirits, and therefore on every morrow we are wreathing a flowery band to bind us to the earth. The metaphor turns beauty into a garland of flowers that ties us happily to life. The sun, the moon, trees, daffodils, clear rills and the grandeur of the mighty dead are his examples.
Q38. "She strokes it full, then flirts out to a branch-end Showing her barred face identity mask". Identify the figure of speech used in the above lines from the poem "The Laburnum Top" :
Right Answer: Transferred Epithet
The lines describe the goldfinch returning to her nest in the laburnum tree in Ted Hughes’s poem. In the phrase ‘her barred face identity mask’ the adjective ‘barred’ properly belongs to the markings on the bird’s plumage, yet it is attached to the compound ‘face identity mask’, and the epithet is thus shifted from the thing it literally describes to something adjacent. Such a shift of an adjective from its proper noun to a neighbouring one is a transferred epithet. The image also carries the suggestion that the bird’s markings work like a badge of identity.
Q39. From which of Shakespeare's play the poem 'Fear No More' is extracted :
Right Answer: Cymbeline
‘Fear No More the Heat o’ the Sun’ is a dirge from Shakespeare’s late romance ‘Cymbeline’, sung by Guiderius and Arviragus over the body of the disguised Imogen, whom they believe dead and know as Fidele. The song consoles by listing the troubles from which death sets us free: the heat of the sun and the furious winter’s rages, the frown of the great, the tyrant’s stroke, slander, censure and the fear of calumny. Its refrain, that golden lads and girls all must as chimney-sweepers come to dust, is among the most quoted lines in Shakespeare.
Q40. Which among the following poem is not included in lucy poems by W. Wordsworth ?
Right Answer: Solitary Reaper
The Lucy poems are a group of five short lyrics that William Wordsworth wrote mainly in Germany in 1798 and 1799 about an idealised English girl named Lucy who dies young. They are ‘Strange fits of passion have I known’, ‘She dwelt among the untrodden ways’, ‘I travelled among unknown men’, ‘Three years she grew in sun and shower’ and ‘A slumber did my spirit seal’. ‘The Solitary Reaper’, written in 1805 after a tour of the Scottish Highlands, describes a Highland girl singing as she cuts the grain and belongs to a different group altogether.
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