English literature papers ask two kinds of question. Some check that you have read the text: who wrote it, who tells it, what happens and in what order. Others check whether you can name what the writer is doing, which is where blank verse, dramatic irony and the difference between a simile and a metaphor come in.
The ten below mix both. Read the question, decide on an answer, then open the answer to see whether you were right. Nothing is scored and nothing is saved, so work through it as often as you like.
When you get one wrong, the explanation is the part worth reading. Almost no marks in this subject come from naming a device correctly. They come from explaining what it does.
Ten questions to test yourself
Who wrote Wuthering Heights?
- ACharlotte Brontë
- BEmily Brontë
- CAnne Brontë
- DElizabeth Gaskell
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B. Emily Brontë. Emily published it in 1847 under the pen name Ellis Bell. Charlotte published Jane Eyre the same year as Currer Bell, which is why the two novels, and the two sisters, get swapped so often.
How many lines does a sonnet have?
- ATen
- BTwelve
- CFourteen
- DSixteen
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C. Fourteen. Every standard form has fourteen. A Shakespearean sonnet arranges them as three quatrains and a closing couplet. A Petrarchan sonnet splits them into an octave of eight and a sestet of six, with the turn falling between the two.
What does iambic pentameter mean?
- ATen stressed syllables in a line
- BFive pairs of syllables, each an unstressed beat followed by a stressed one
- CFive rhyming words in a line
- DA line that has to rhyme with the one after it
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B. Five pairs of syllables, each an unstressed beat followed by a stressed one. That is five iambs, so ten syllables alternating light and heavy. Say "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day" aloud and you can hear the five beats land. Meter is not rhyme, and that is the distinction this question is really asking about.
Which novel opens "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife"?
- AJane Eyre
- BEmma
- CPride and Prejudice
- DMiddlemarch
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C. Pride and Prejudice. Austen published it in 1813. The irony is set up in the first sentence. That truth is not universal at all. It belongs to the mothers of the neighborhood, and Austen lets the sentence give itself away.
True or false: Paradise Lost is written in rhyming couplets.
- ATrue
- BFalse
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B. False. Milton wrote it in blank verse, which is unrhymed iambic pentameter. He added a note to later printings to defend the choice, calling rhyme the invention of a barbarous age.
Who narrates The Great Gatsby?
- AJay Gatsby
- BNick Carraway
- CTom Buchanan
- DDaisy Buchanan
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B. Nick Carraway. He is Daisy's second cousin once removed and Gatsby's neighbor. Everything you learn about Gatsby reaches you through Nick, so exam questions about how far you can trust him are common. Answering one means finding the places where he judges people while insisting that he does not.
What separates a simile from a metaphor?
- AA simile compares using like or as; a metaphor states the comparison outright
- BA metaphor compares using like or as; a simile states it outright
- CA simile compares people, a metaphor compares objects
- DNothing, the two words mean the same thing
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A. A simile compares using like or as; a metaphor states the comparison outright. His temper was like a storm is a simile. His temper was a storm is a metaphor. Naming which one you are looking at earns almost nothing on its own. The marks come from saying what the comparison does to the reader.
What is a soliloquy?
- AA long speech delivered to another character
- BA speech a character makes alone on stage, thinking aloud
- CThe closing speech of a play
- DAn exchange between two characters
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B. A speech a character makes alone on stage, thinking aloud. The character is alone and the audience overhears the thinking. To be, or not to be is the example everyone reaches for. A monologue is the neighboring term: also a long speech, but delivered to someone who is listening.
What is dramatic irony?
- AA character says the opposite of what they mean
- BThe audience knows something a character does not
- CAn event turns out worse than anyone expected
- DThe play ends unhappily
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B. The audience knows something a character does not. The gap between what the audience knows and what the character knows. In Romeo and Juliet the audience knows Juliet has taken a sleeping draught while Romeo believes she is dead, and the tomb scene runs entirely on that gap. The first option describes verbal irony instead.
Which of these was written first?
- ABeowulf
- BThe Canterbury Tales
- CHamlet
- DFrankenstein
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A. Beowulf. By a wide margin. It survives in a single manuscript copied around the year 1000 and is written in Old English. Chaucer wrote in Middle English in the late fourteenth century, Hamlet dates from about 1600, and Frankenstein was published in 1818.
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