Greek Gods & Other Myth Mythical
1. From which Greek word does the term ‘comedy’ derive and what does it mean?
1. Comedia, largeness of heart
2. Komoidia, revel-song
3. Comedies, commodious
4. Komedieon, light foolery
Answer: 2
2. Here is a list of early English plays imitating Greek and Latin plays. Pick the odd one out:
(A) Gorboduc
(B) Tamburlaine
(C) Ralph Roister Doister
(D) Gammer Gurton’s Needle
Answer: (B)
3. If you cannot understand an argument and remark, “It’s Greek to me”, you are quoting …………… (1) John Milton
(2) Samuel Johnson
(3) William Shakespeare
(4) John Donne
Answer: 3
4. In the spring of 1941, Nikos Kazantzakis embarked on one of his most ambitious projects, a play known as Yangtze. What English/Greek title is it now known as ?
1. Buddha
2. Brobdingnag
3. Zoroaster
4. Zorba
Answer: 1
5. Who among the following Greek Philosophers has a bearing on the composition of Shelley’s “Adonais” ?
(1) Miletus
(2) Socrates
(3) Plato
(4) Aristotle
Answer: 3
6. The Grammar Translation Method was historically used in teaching
(1) Greek and French
(2) Greek and Latin
(3) Latin and Scandinavian
(4) French and German
Answer: 2
7. In More’s Utopia, the fictional traveller Raphael Hythloday’s second name in Greek means
(A) Dispenser of Justice
(B) Dispenser of Nonsense
(C) Dispenser of Grace
(D) Dispenser of Mercy
Answer: B
8. Which of these Greek plays was a source for The Winter’s Tale ?
(1) Iphigeneia at Aulis
(2) AIcestis
(3) Medea
(4) Iphigenaia at Tauris
Answer: 2
9. From which Greek word does the term ‘comedy’ derive and what does it mean?
1. Comedia, largeness of heart
2. Komoidia, revel-song
3. Comedies, commodious
4. Komedieon, light foolery
Answer: 2
10. Which of these constitutes the only extant trilogy from ancient Greek tragedy?
A. Agamemnon, Choephori, The Eumenides
B. Agamemnon, Orestes, The Eumenides
C. King Oedipus, Oedipus at Colonus, Antigone
D. King Oedipus, Orestes, Antigone
Answer: A
MYTH AND MYTHICAL
1. ‘Demythologizing’ is a term associated with the works of
1) Claude Lévi Strauss
2) Ferdinand de Saussure
3) Rudolph Bultmann
4) Friedrich Schleiermacher
Answer: 3
2. Who among the following analysed the naturalizing of connotative meanings into myths?
1 Michel Foucault
2. Roman Ingarden
3. J. Hillis Miller
4. Ronald Barthes
Answer: 4
3. Mythologies was written by :
(A) Roland Barthes
(B) Jacques Derrida
(C) Homi K. Bhabha
(D) Ernest Dowson
Answer: A
4. In which of these plays does Edward Albee use the ‘success’ myth ?
(A) A Zoo Story
(B) Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf
(C) American Dream
(D) The Death of Bessie Smith
Answer: C
5. ‘Myth Criticism’ focuses on :
(A) a study of myths and mythology
(B) archetypes of spiritual experience
(C) recurrence of archetypal patterns
(D) the influence of different traditions
Answer: C
6. Herr God, Herr Lucifer
Beware Beware
Out of the ash
I rise with my red hair
And I eat men like air.
Lines 4 and 5 in the above evoke:
1. Christ’s resurrection
2. The fairy-tale of a girl in the woods
3. The myth of the phoenix
4. The legend of the Lady of the Lake
Answer: 3
7. A mythical norm is endemic to societies:
1. Where racial myths are prevalent and widely respected and perpetuated through utterances that establish ‘we’ and ‘they’ groups.
2. Where the superiority of one’s own culture and nation no longer emphasized openly or straightforwardly.
3. Where ‘deference’ has been a preoccupation in the representation of people who are racially, ethnically, and in terms of gender and sexual preference different from an assumed majority.
4. That believes that the norm is part of their right to defend the ways of life enjoyed by a dominant group, their traditions and customs against outsiders – not because these outsiders are inferior, but because they belong to other cultures.
(A) 1 and 4 are correct.
(B) 2 and 3 are correct.
(C) Only 4 is correct.
(D) Only 3 is correct.
Answer: (B)
8. That there are levels and grades of powerlessness in societies entertaining ‘a mythical norm’ is indicated
1. By the overall tone and tenor of the passage.
2. By the suggestion that ‘a mythical norm’ is responsible for the unequal distribution of power among people.
3. By referring to ‘other distortions around difference’.
4. By referring to white women who narrow down oppression directed only at white women.
(A) 4 is correct.
(B) 1 & 2 are correct.
(C) 3 is correct.
(D) 2 is correct.
Answer: (C)
9. Who, from among the following, has NOT been discussed by Simon-deBevoir in “The Myth of Woman in Five Authors” in The Second Sex ?
(A) Montherlant
(B) Lawrence
(C) Stendhal
(D) Kafka
Answer: D
10. Assertion (A) : Arts will often work obliquely, by myth or symbol. They may make their best criticism of life simply by being; they may best state by not stating
Reason (R) : It follows, if even only part of all this is true, that the arts do have an important social function. Arts can give greater depth to a society’s sense of itself. A country without great art might be a powerful collection of thriving earthworms hut would be a sorry society.
(1) Reason (R) is perfectly aligned with Assertion (A)
(2) Assertion (A) is unrelated to Reason (R)
(3) Assertion (A) hardly reacts Reason (R).s elaboration
(4) Reason (R), in fact, contradicts Assertion (A)
Answer: 1
11. The Bhasmasura myth is used in R.K. Narayan’s …………..
(1) The Man-Eater of Malgudi
(2) The Financial Expert
(3) The English Teacher
(4) The World of Nagaraj
Answer: 1
12. Ralph Ellison enjoys subverting myths about white purity through characters like :
(a) Norton (b) Bledsoe
(c) Rhinehart (d) all of the above
(A) (a) and (b)
(B) (a), (b) and (c)
(C) (b) and (c)
(D) (a) and (c)
Answer: A
13. The world dominated by cold and hypocritical materialists is represented by William Blake in the mythological figure of __________ .
(A) Urizen
(B) Albion
(C) Geryon
(D) Satan
Answer: A
14. Albert Camus, in his essay, ‘The Myth of Sisyphus’ conveys :
1. The concept of Naturalism
2. The Absurdity of Human Existence
3. The Futility of all Human Endeavour
4. The concept of Existentialism
(A) 1, 2 and 3 are correct
(B) 2, 3 and 4 are correct
(C) 1, 2 and 4 are correct
(D) 1, 3 and 4 are correct
Answer: B
15. Willy in Arthur Miller’s play Death of a Salesman compares Bi and Happy to the mythic characters / Figures
(A) Venus and Adonais
(B) Adonais and Hercules
(C) Jupiter and Hercules
(D) Venus and Hercules
Answer: B
16. Who among the following is not a myth critic ?
(A) Robert Graves
(B) Raymond Williams
(C) Francis Fergusson
(D) Northrop Frye
Answer: B
17. Assertion (A) : There is no unity or absolute source of the myth.
Reason (R) : The focus or the source of the myth are always shadows and virtualities which are elusive , un-actualizable, and non-existent in the first place. Any search for the discursive unity in the myth is, therefore, misplaced. In the context of the above statements :
(1) Both (A) and (R) are true and (R) is the correct explanation of (A)
(2) Both (A) and (R) are true but (R) is not the correct explanation of (A)
(3) (A) is true but (R) is false
(4) (A) is false, but (R) is true
Answer: 1
18. Using a non – linear narrative, this American novel explores the psychic damage to a veteran of World War II and shows how a measure of healing is attained through his acceptance of Laguna myths and rituals. Identify the work :
(1) Dred
(2) Beloved
(3) Ceremony
(4) End Zone
Answer: 3
19. Who among the following analysed the naturalizing of connotative meanings into myths?
1 Michel Foucault
2. Roman Ingarden
3. J. Hillis Miller
4. Ronald Barthes
Answer: 4
20. To which mythological character is Faustus compared in the Prologue of Dr. Faustus?
1. Perseus
2. Theseus
3. Icarus
4. Achilles
Answer: 3
Homer
1. Besides being a playwright, who among the following has translated homer?
{1] Ben Johnson
{2] Thomas Dekker
[3] Thomas Heywood
(4] George Chapman
Answer: 4
2. Why did T. S. Eliot assert that Virgil, not Homer, is the poet of Europe?
1. There are some initial moral concerns in Virgil
2. Virgil belongs to the Roman period
3. Homer was a pagan who was a renegade
4. Virgil wrote in Latin while Homer wrote in Greek
Answer: 1
3. Who among the following translated Homer?
(1) Thomas Gray
(2) Samuel Johnson
(3) Oliver Goldsmith
(4) Alexander Pope
Answer: 4
4. Why did T. S. Eliot assert that Virgil, not Homer, is the poet of Europe?
1. There are some initial moral concerns in Virgil
2. Virgil belongs to the Roman period
3. Homer was a pagan who was a renegade
4. Virgil wrote in Latin while Homer wrote in Greek
Answer: 1
Aeschylus
1. Which of the following is NOT true regarding the Oresteia trilogy by Aeschylus ?
(1) Cassandra, cursed by Apollo predicts the death of Agamemnon, though her prophecy is ignored. (2) Aegisthus’s vengeful feelings for Agamemnon results from their rivalry for the hand of Clytemnestra.
(3) Orestes, who has come back with the intention of murdering Clytemnestra unexpectedly meets her, and pretending to be a stranger, tells her that Orestes is dead.
(4) Orestes, pursued by the Furies, flee from them when they fall asleep. Then, Clytemnestra’s ghost appears to wake them up.
Answer: 2
Sophocles
1. Which among the following recent novels is a retelling of Sophocles’s Antigone ?
(1) Kamila Shamsie, Home Fire
(2) Fiona Mozley, Elmet
(3) Zadie Smith, Swing Time
(4) Mohsin Hamid, Exit West
Answer: 1
2. In Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex the first scene finds Oedipus
(A) in conversation with a priest
(B) in consultation with a general
(C) giving audience to an ambassador
D) in consultation with a minister
Answer: A
3. In Sophocles’s play King Oedipus Laius, the erstwhile ruler of Thebes, was murdered
(1) at the edge of the forest on his way to Delphi
(2) at the edge of the forest as he returned from Delphi
(3) at the crossroads as he returned from Delphi
(4) at the crossroads on his way to Delphi
Answer: 4
Euripides
1. Which is the correct statement about Euripides’s Medea? In Euripides’s Medea the chorus consists of
(A) Fifteen Corinthian women who are Medea’s next door neighbours
(B) Fifteen Athenian elders
(C) Fifteen Spartan women
(D) Fifteen Sicilian Women
Answer: (A)
2. From whose work did John Milton take the epigraph to his Areopagitica?
1. Sophocles
2. Euripides
3. Plato
4. More
Answer: 2
Aristophanes
1. A classical influence on Ben Jonson’s Volpone is
(A) Juvenal
(B) Aristophanes
(C) Plautus
(D) Terence
Answer: B
2. Which among the following plays by Aristophanes is an attack on ‘modern’ education and morals as imparted and taught by the radical intellectuals known as The Sophists ?
(A) Clouds
(B) Wasps
(C) Acharnians
(D) Knights
Answer: A