American literature MCQ, Eng. Honours, UGB_2020

 American and Indian literature MCQ

What is American Literature?

American Literature refers to works of literature Inthe English language in America. Washington Irving and James Fnimone Cooper were the first few writers. William Hill Brown wrote the first American novel "The Power of Sympathy. The period from 1820 - 1860s is known as the Romantic Period of American Literature or the American Renaissance.

Major writers of American Literature are :

  1. Nathaniel Hawthorne
  2. Herman Melville
  3. Ralph Waldo Emerson
  4. David Thoreau
  5. Walt Whitman

Major writers of the Modern American Literature are:

  1. Robert Frost
  2. Ernest Hemingway
  3. William Faulkner
  4. Carl Sandburg
  5. Edward Albee
  6. Arthur Miller
  7. Tennessee Williams

American Literature MCQs

20 top MCQ on American literature 

1. Who  said  this  about  America  :  “How  little  do  my  countrymen  know  what precious  blessings  they  are  in  possession  of,  which  no  other  people  on  earth enjoy”? 

(A) Herbert  Hoover 

(B) Thomas  Jefferson 

(C) Benjamin  Franklin 

(D) James  Monroe 


Ans. B


2. Thoreau  lived    the  life  of    a  hermit  and  wrote  a  classic  named 

(A) Concord 

(B) Walden 

(C) The  Scarlet  Letter 

(D) Autocrat  of  the  Breakfast  Table 

Ans. B


3. Which  of  the  following  novels  is  known  by  the  name  of  “propaganda  novel”?

 (A) Dred  :  A  Tale  of  the  Great  Dismal  Swamp 

(B) Uncle  Tom’s  Cabin 

(C) Tom  Sawyer 

(D) Aunt  Phillis’s  Cabin

Ans. B


4. The story of ‘Rip Van Winkle’ shows 

(A) the life in the early days before independence 

(B) the life during the Civil War 

(C) the life after the Civil War 

(D) how life changed after the Civil War 


5. Who called Poe “three-fifths genius and two-fifths sheer fudge”? 

(A) Emerson 

(B) Yeats 

(C) Lowell 

(D) Cooper 


Ans. C

6. “The Raven” was written by 

(A) Robert Frost 

(B) Emily Dickinson 

(C) Edgar Allan Poe 

(D) Walt Whitman 

Ans. C


7. Who wrote the following line: “I am of old and young, of the foolish as much as the wise...”? 

(A) Walt Whitman 

(B) Robert Frost 

(C) Emily Dickinson 

(D) Carl Sandburg

Ans. A


8. In which poem does Emerson demonstrate his understanding of Vishnu Purana and Bhagavad Gita? 

(A) “Days” 

(B) “Brahma” 

(C) “Earth Song” 

(D) “The Problem” 

Ans. B


9. In which poem does Ezra Pound write : “Let us express our envy of the man with a steady job and no worry about the future” ? 

(A) “Salutation” 

(B) “Further Instructions” 

(C) “The Rest” 

(D) “Ballad of the Goodly Fere” 

Ans. B


10. In which poem Frost wrote: “Good fences make good neighbours”? 

(A) “Reluctance” 

(B) “Mending Wall” 

(C) “The Pasture” 

(D) “In Hardwood Groves” 

Ans. B


11. Cleopatra is a character in which of the following plays by Aurobindo? 

(A) Perseus, the Deliverer 

(B) Rodogune 

(C) Vasavadutta 

(D) None of the above

Ans. B


12. Hali is a short poetic play written by 

(A) A.S.P. Ayyar 

(B) Bharati Sarabhai 

(C) T.P.Kailasam 

(D) G.V.Desani 

Ans. D


13. In Tendulkar’s play Kanyadan, Arun Athavale, a young dalit boy falls in love with 

(A) Jyoti 

(B) Seva 

(C) Savitri 

(D) Binny 


14. The Story of My Experiments with Truth, the autobiography of Mahatma Gandhi was published in the year 

(A) 1924 

(B) 1925 

(C) 1926 

(D) 1927 

15. In which of the following novels Lalu is a central character?

(A) The Big Heart 

(B) Untouchable

(C) The Village 

(D) The Death of a Hero


16. Which of the following is the first novel of Manohar Malgonkar? 

(A) Distant Drum 

(B) A Bend in the Ganges 

(C) Combat of Shadows 

(D) The Princes 


17. In which of the following novels the city of Bombay is used as the backdrop? 

(A) Fire on the Mountain 

(B) Clear Light of Day 

(C) Voices in the City 

(D) Baumgartner's Bombay 


18. Karma is the central character in which of the following novels? 

(A) Sisters 

(B) Snapshots 

(C) Socialite Evenings 

(D) Second Thoughts 


19. The setting of The God of Small Things is 

(A) Kerala 

(B) Karnataka 

(C) Tamil Nadu 

(D) Andhra Pradesh 


20. Sunlight on a Broken Column is the first novel written by 

(A) Attia Hosain 

(B) Ruth Prawer Jhabvala 

(C) Jhumpa Lahiri 

(D) Salman Rushdie