Bangladesh Civil Service Preliminary Examination · English Language, Literature and National & International Affairs

English Literature, Periods and Classics

35 practice questions, each with the answer and an explanation.

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All 35 questions

  1. Which English Renaissance dramatist and poet authored the four great tragedies Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth?
  2. The iconic philosophical soliloquy beginning 'To be, or not to be, that is the question' appears in which Shakespearean tragedy?
  3. In which Shakespearean pastoral comedy does the character Jaques deliver the celebrated speech 'All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players'?
  4. Which Elizabethan dramatist pioneered English dramatic blank verse and wrote the tragic play Doctor Faustus?
  5. Which monumental epic poem written in blank verse by John Milton aims to 'justify the ways of God to men' by depicting the fall of humankind?
  6. In John Milton's Paradise Lost, which character famously declares: 'The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven'?
  7. Which 17th-century English poet was the leading figure of the Metaphysical Poets, renowned for intellectual conceits in poems like 'A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning'?
  8. Which Neoclassical poet wrote the mock-heroic narrative poem The Rape of the Lock and formulated the aphorism 'A little learning is a dangerous thing'?
  9. Which Anglo-Irish satirist wrote Gulliver's Travels and the bitter satirical essay A Modest Proposal?
  10. Which 1719 adventure novel by Daniel Defoe is widely regarded as one of the foundational works in the history of the English realistic novel?
  11. The publication of which joint poetry collection by William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge in 1798 is traditionally recognized as marking the birth of English Romanticism?
  12. Which Romantic poet famously defined poetry in his 1800 Preface as 'the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility'?
  13. Which English Romantic poet composed the haunting supernatural narrative poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and the visionary fragment Kubla Khan?
  14. Which second-generation Romantic poet concluded his celebrated poem 'Ode on a Grecian Urn' with the lines: 'Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all / Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know'?
  15. Which revolutionary English Romantic lyric poet wrote 'Ode to the West Wind' and the lyrical verse drama Prometheus Unbound?
  16. Which Romantic poet created the brooding, passionate, and cynical archetype known as the 'Byronic hero' in works like Childe Harold's Pilgrimage and Don Juan?
  17. Which 1813 classic novel of manners by Jane Austen centers on the tempestuous romantic relationship between Elizabeth Bennet and Fitzwilliam Darcy?
  18. Which eminent Victorian novelist chronicled the social inequities and industrial hardships of 19th-century England in Oliver Twist, David Copperfield, and Great Expectations?
  19. Which 1847 Victorian novel published under the pseudonym Currer Bell portrays the moral resilience and passion of an orphaned governess at Thornfield Hall?
  20. Which powerful 1847 Gothic romance set upon the windswept Yorkshire moors features the tempestuous passion between Heathcliff and Catherine Earnshaw?
  21. Which Victorian author wrote under the male pen name George Eliot and authored the panoramic provincial masterpiece Middlemarch?
  22. Which late Victorian novelist and poet created the fictional rural region of Wessex in novels like Tess of the d'Urbervilles and The Mayor of Casterbridge?
  23. Which Victorian Poet Laureate composed the sweeping elegy In Memoriam A.H.H. and the heroic narrative poem Ulysses?
  24. Which Victorian poet was renowned as the supreme master of the dramatic monologue in poems like 'My Last Duchess' and 'Fra Lippo Lippi'?
  25. Which landmark 1922 Modernist poem by T.S. Eliot opens with the line 'April is the cruellest month' and explores post-World War I spiritual disillusionment?
  26. Which Nobel Prize-winning Irish poet composed the apocalyptic poem 'The Second Coming' featuring the line 'Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold'?
  27. Which Anglo-Irish playwright won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1925 and authored Pygmalion, Arms and the Man, and Saint Joan?
  28. Which pioneering English Modernist novelist developed the stream-of-consciousness technique in novels such as Mrs Dalloway and To the Lighthouse?
  29. Which revolutionary 1922 Modernist novel by James Joyce chronicles the experiences of Leopold Bloom throughout a single day in Dublin on 16 June 1904?
  30. Which chilling 1949 dystopian novel by George Orwell depicts a totalitarian superstate ruled by the Party under the omnipresent gaze of Big Brother?
  31. Which 1945 satirical political fable by George Orwell allegorizes the Russian Bolshevik Revolution through the takeover of Manor Farm by livestock animals?
  32. Which 1924 novel by E.M. Forster examines racial prejudice and the complexities of human connection against the backdrop of the British Raj in India?
  33. Which literary device involves a deliberate play on words having multiple meanings or words that sound similar but carry different definitions?
  34. Which figure of speech makes an explicit comparison between two fundamentally dissimilar entities using connective words such as 'like' or 'as'?
  35. Which poetic figure of speech endows non-human objects, animals, or abstract concepts with human emotions, intentions, or characteristics?

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