ENLIGHTENMENT AGE CRITICS

John Dryden

1. The phrase disassociation of sensibility was first used by :

(A) Philip Sydney

(B) T. S. Eliot

(C) John Dryden

(D) Mathew Arnold

Answer: B

2.The English satirist who used the sharp edge of praise to attack his victims was

(A) Ben Jonson

(B) John Donne

(C) John Dryden

(D) Samuel Butler

Answer: A

3.The Hind and the Panther Transvers’d to the Story of the Country Mouse and the City Mouse is a satire on

(A) Alexander Pope

(B) Jonathan Swift

(C) John Dryden

(D) Samuel Butler

Answer: C

4.The first  official royal Poet Laureate in English literary history was _______.

(A) Ben Jonson

(B) William Davenant

(C) John Dryden

(D) Thomas Shadwell

Answer: C

5.John Dryden described a major English poet as “a rough diamond, and must first be polished ere he shines …..” Identify him:

(1) Geoffrey Chaucer

(2) John Gower

(3) George Herbert

(4) Robert Herrick

Answer: 1

6.Identify the group below which is known as the “Sons of Ben”.

(1) Noel Coward, E.G. Craig, William Macready, Matheson, Lang

(2) John Dryden, the Earl of Rochester, Samuel Butler

(3) William Cartwright, Richard Corbett, Thomas Randolph

(4) William Holman hunt, John E. Millais, D.G. Rossetti, William Morris

Answer: 3

7.The term, “poetic justice,” to designate the idea that the good are rewarded and the evil punished, was devised by

(1) Aristotle

(2) John Dryden

(3) Thomas Rhymer

(4) Ben Jonson

Answer: 3

8.The Medall, a poem written by John Dryden in 1681, is sub-titled

(1) A Satire against Sedition 

(2) A Satire against Tyranny

(3) A Satire against Greed

(4) A Satire against Apostasy

Answer: 1

9.John Dryden’s Absalom and Achotophel a

(A) religious tract

(B) political allegory

(C) comic verse epic

(D) comedy

Answer: (B)

10.John Dryden in his heroic tragedy All for Love takes the story of Shakespeare’s

(A) Troilus and Cressida

(B) The Merchant of Venice

(C) Antony and Cleopatra

(D) Measure for Measure

Answer: (C)

11.In An Essay of Dramatic Poesy whom does John Dryden refer to as “the most learned and judicious Writer which any Theatre ever had” ?

(1) John Webster

(2) Christopher Marlowe

(3) Ben Jonson

(4) William Shakespeare

Answer: 3

12.John Dryden’s two philosophic-religious poems are

I. Absalom and Achitophel

II. A Layman’s Faith

III. Annus Mirabilis

IV. The Hind and the Panther

The right combination according to the code is

(1) I and II

(2) III and I

(3) II and III

(4) II and IV

Answer: 4

13.Which of the following statements on John Dryden is incorrect ?

(a) John Milton and John Dryden were contemporaries.

(b) Dryden was a Royalist, while Milton fiercely opposed monarchy.

© Dryden wrote a play on the Mughal Emperor Humayun.

(d) Dryden was appointed the Poet Laureate of England in 1668.

(A) (a) is incorrect.

(B) (d) is incorrect.

© © is incorrect.

(D) (b) and (c) are incorrect.

Answer: C

14.“No man is truly great, who is great only in his lifetime. The test of greatness is the page of history. Nothing can be said to be great that has a distinct limit, or that borders on something evidently greater than itself. Besides, what is short lived and pampered into mere notoriety, is of a gross and vulgar quality in itself.” This passage describing the quality of greatness is taken from

(A) “Of studies” by Francis Bacon

(B) “The Indian Jugglers” by William Hazlitt

(C) Preface to Shakespeare by Samuel Johnson

(D) An Essay on Dramatic Poesy by John Dryden

Answer: B

15.A poet laureate said “I do not think that since Shakespeare there has been such a master of the English language as I.” Who is the poet ?

(1)Stephen Spender

(2) John Dryden

(3) Alfred Lord Tennyson

(4) Ted Hughes

Answer: 3

16.In John Dryden’s Essay on Dramatic Poesy Neander defends the English invention of __________.

(1) romantic comedy

(2) action tragedy

(3) tragi-comedy

(4) morality plays

Answer: 3

17.“In the seventeenth century,” writes T. S. Eliot in “The Metaphysical Poets,” “a dissociation of sensibility set in, from which we have never recovered; and this dissociation, as is natural, was aggravated by the influence of the two most powerful poets of the century, ___________and __________ .

(1)Ben Jonson and Abraham Cowley

(2)George Herbert and Henry Vaughan

(3)John Donne and Andrew Marvell

(4)John Milton and John Dryden

Answer: 4

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