Literary criticism is the systematic evaluation, interpretation, and analysis of literary texts through diverse theoretical, philosophical, and historical frameworks. Spanning from classical foundations established by Plato and Aristotle to Enlightenment aesthetics and 20th-century movements like New Criticism, Structuralism, Deconstruction, Marxism, and Feminism, critical theory explores how texts construct meaning, reflect power structures, and engage readers. Mastering these critical paradigms is essential for advanced literature students, researchers, and candidates preparing for academic competitive examinations.
1. Which ancient Greek philosopher wrote 'Poetics', foundational to Western literary criticism?
Correct Answer: b) Aristotle
Explanation:
Aristotle's 'Poetics' analyzes tragedy, epic poetry, catharsis, and the structural elements of plot and character.
2. In 'Republic', which philosopher famously banished poets from his ideal state on moral and metaphysical grounds?
Correct Answer: b) Plato
Explanation:
Plato argued that poetry is twice removed from truth (imitating physical appearances, which are imitations of ideal forms) and appeals to irrational emotions.
3. Which Roman poet and critic wrote 'Ars Poetica' (The Art of Poetry), advocating that literature should both instruct and delight ('utile et dulce')?
Correct Answer: b) Horace
Explanation:
Horace's 'Ars Poetica' set neoclassical standards for decorum, unity, and the dual purpose of poetry to teach and please.
4. Which ancient critic is credited with authoring the treatise 'On the Sublime' (Peri Hypsous), focusing on emotional elevation and grandeur of thought?
Correct Answer: b) Longinus
Explanation:
Longinus defined the sublime as a certain distinction and loftiness in expression that transports the audience.
5. Which English Renaissance critic wrote 'An Apology for Poetry' (also known as 'The Defence of Poesy') around 1580?
Correct Answer: a) Sir Philip Sidney
Explanation:
Sir Philip Sidney defended poetry against Puritan attacks, arguing that poetry moves men to virtuous action better than history or philosophy.
6. Which Restoration poet and critic wrote 'An Essay of Dramatic Poesy' (1668), establishing modern English literary criticism?
Correct Answer: b) John Dryden
Explanation:
John Dryden's dialogue essay compares English and French drama and defends the use of rhyme in plays.
7. Which 18th-century critic wrote 'Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets' (1779–1781)?
Correct Answer: b) Samuel Johnson
Explanation:
Dr. Samuel Johnson provided biographical and critical evaluations of English poets from Cowley to Gray.
8. Which Romantic poet and critic wrote 'Biographia Literaria' (1817), introducing the concepts of primary and secondary imagination?
Correct Answer: b) Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Explanation:
Coleridge distinguished between fancy (mechanical association) and imagination (organic synthesis and creation).
9. Whose preface to 'Lyrical Ballads' (1800) famously defined poetry as 'the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility'?
Correct Answer: b) William Wordsworth
Explanation:
Wordsworth's Preface revolutionized English poetry by championing the language of ordinary people and rural life.
10. Which 19th-century cultural critic wrote 'Culture and Anarchy' (1869), defining culture as 'the best which has been thought and said in the world'?
Correct Answer: b) Matthew Arnold
Explanation:
Matthew Arnold used criticism to combat philistinism and promote sweetness and light through high culture.
11. Which early 20th-century critic wrote 'The Sacred Wood' (1920) and introduced the concepts of 'objective correlative' and 'dissociation of sensibility'?
Correct Answer: b) T.S. Eliot
Explanation:
T.S. Eliot spearheaded modernist criticism, emphasizing tradition, impersonality in art, and formal rigor.
12. Which American critic wrote 'The Well Wrought Urn' (1947) and was a founding figure of New Criticism?
Correct Answer: b) Cleanth Brooks
Explanation:
Cleanth Brooks championed close reading, irony, paradox, and the internal unity of poetic texts.
13. What critical fallacy, identified by W.K. Wimsatt and Monroe Beardsley, refers to the error of judging a literary work based on the author's intended meaning?
Correct Answer: b) Intentional fallacy
Explanation:
The intentional fallacy argues that an author's design or intention is neither available nor desirable as a standard for judging literary success.
14. What critical fallacy, also identified by Wimsatt and Beardsley, refers to judging a literary work by its emotional effect on the reader?
Correct Answer: b) Affective fallacy
Explanation:
The affective fallacy confuses the text itself with its psychological or emotional results in the audience.
15. Which Swiss linguist is considered the father of modern structuralism and semiotics, introducing signifier and signified?
Correct Answer: b) Ferdinand de Saussure
Explanation:
Saussure's 'Course in General Linguistics' revolutionized literary theory by viewing language as a system of relational signs.
16. Which French philosopher and critic declared 'The Death of the Author' (1967), shifting focus from creator to readerly interpretation?
Correct Answer: b) Roland Barthes
Explanation:
Roland Barthes argued that the birth of the reader must be ransomed by the death of the author, freeing texts from biographical constraints.
17. Which French philosopher founded deconstruction, arguing that language is inherently unstable and ridden with binary oppositions?
Correct Answer: b) Jacques Derrida
Explanation:
Jacques Derrida introduced deconstruction, showing how texts undermine their own stable meanings through différance and endless play.
18. Which German philosopher and sociologist is the most prominent figure of the Frankfurt School of critical theory?
Correct Answer: b) Theodor Adorno
Explanation:
Theodor Adorno (alongside Max Horkheimer) critiqued the culture industry, mass media, and modern capitalist alienation.
19. Which Marxist literary critic wrote 'Marxism and Literary Criticism' and pioneered cultural materialism in Britain?
Correct Answer: b) Raymond Williams
Explanation:
Raymond Williams founded cultural studies, examining 'structures of feeling' and the relationship between culture and society.
20. Which feminist literary critic wrote 'A Literature of Their Own' (1977), mapping the history of British women novelists?
Correct Answer: b) Elaine Showalter
Explanation:
Elaine Showalter pioneered 'gynocriticism', studying women as writers rather than merely analyzing female characters portrayed by men.
21. Which feminist masterpiece by Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar (1979) examined 19th-century women writers through the metaphor of 'the madwoman in the attic'?
Correct Answer: b) The Madwoman in the Attic
Explanation:
Gilbert and Gubar explored how Victorian female authors wrestled with patriarchal literary norms and confinement.
22. Which founding text of second-wave feminism by Simone de Beauvoir (1949) famously stated, 'One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman'?
Correct Answer: b) The Second Sex
Explanation:
Simone de Beauvoir's existentialist feminist treatise dissected how patriarchal society constructs female 'Otherness'.
23. Which Palestinian-American literary theorist wrote 'Orientalism' (1978), founding post-colonial studies?
Correct Answer: b) Edward Said
Explanation:
Edward Said demonstrated how Western academic and literary discourses constructed a patronizing, exoticized view of the 'Orient'.
24. Which post-colonial theorist introduced the concept of 'mimicry', 'hybridity', and the 'Third Space'?
Correct Answer: b) Homi K. Bhabha
Explanation:
Homi Bhabha analyzed the ambivalent cultural spaces created by colonial encounters and mimicry.
25. Who authored the influential post-colonial essay 'Can the Subaltern Speak?' (1988)?
Correct Answer: b) Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak
Explanation:
Gayatri Spivak examined how marginalized post-colonial subjects (especially women) are systematically silenced by institutional discourse.
26. Which psychoanalytic theorist re-read Freud through linguistics, arguing that 'the unconscious is structured like a language'?
Correct Answer: b) Jacques Lacan
Explanation:
Jacques Lacan merged psychoanalysis with structuralism, introducing the Imaginary, the Symbolic, and the Real.
27. Which critical theorist founded reader-response criticism, emphasizing the active role of the reader in creating meaning ('Is There a Text in This Class?')?
Correct Answer: b) Stanley Fish
Explanation:
Stanley Fish championed interpretive communities, arguing that texts do not possess fixed meaning independent of readers' interpretive strategies.
28. What is the critical practice of examining historical documents, political tracts, and non-literary texts alongside literary works called?
Correct Answer: a) New Historicism
Explanation:
Pioneered by Stephen Greenblatt, New Historicism examines literature within its broader cultural and historical power dynamics.
29. Which critic wrote 'The Anatomy of Criticism' (1957), classifying literary genres based on myth, archetype, and modes of fiction?
Correct Answer: a) Northrop Frye
Explanation:
Northrop Frye pioneered mythic and archetypal criticism, linking literature to recurrent universal patterns and seasonal myths.
30. What term did T.S. Eliot coin to describe 'a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events which shall be the formula of that particular emotion'?
Correct Answer: b) Objective correlative
Explanation:
Eliot argued that poetry must evoke emotion through concrete physical equivalents rather than direct emotional outpouring.
31. Which Renaissance critic wrote 'Observations on the Art of English Poesie' and formulated rules for neoclassical drama?
Correct Answer: b) Ben Jonson
Explanation:
Ben Jonson championed neoclassical decorum, unity of time and place, and learned wit in English drama.
32. Which 18th-century Scottish philosopher and critic wrote 'A Treatise of Human Nature' and essays on taste and tragedy?
Correct Answer: b) David Hume
Explanation:
David Hume's essay 'Of the Standard of Taste' explored aesthetics, subjectivity, and universal critical consensus.
33. Which Romantic essayist wrote 'A Defence of Poetry' (1821), proclaiming poets as 'the unacknowledged legislators of the world'?
Correct Answer: b) Percy Bysshe Shelley
Explanation:
Shelley's passionate essay defended the imaginative, moral, and revolutionary power of poetry against utilitarian materialism.
34. Which Victorian critic wrote 'The Function of Criticism at the Present Time' (1864), defining criticism as 'a disinterested endeavor to learn and propagate the best that is known and thought in the world'?
Correct Answer: b) Matthew Arnold
Explanation:
Matthew Arnold advocated for critical detachment and intellectual openness free from immediate political partisanship.
35. Which early 20th-century critic wrote 'The Principles of Literary Criticism' (1924) and founded practical criticism?
Correct Answer: b) I.A. Richards
Explanation:
I.A. Richards analyzed students' close readings of anonymous poems, separating textual evaluation from biographical noise.
36. Which critic wrote 'Seven Types of Ambiguity' (1930), pioneering close reading and verbal complexity in modern poetry?
Correct Answer: b) William Empson
Explanation:
William Empson demonstrated how multiple nuances, ambiguities, and puns enrich poetic language.
37. Which American critic wrote 'The Mirror and the Lamp' (1953), categorizing literary theories into mimetic, pragmatic, expressive, and objective orientations?
Correct Answer: b) M.H. Abrams
Explanation:
M.H. Abrams provided a masterly taxonomy of critical theories based on whether they focus on the universe, audience, artist, or work.
38. Which Russian Formalist coined the term 'defamiliarization' (ostranenie) to describe the artistic technique of making familiar things strange?
Correct Answer: b) Viktor Shklovsky
Explanation:
Shklovsky argued that the purpose of art is to strip away habitual perception and restore sensory intensity to objects.
39. Which Russian philosopher and dialogic theorist introduced the concepts of 'carnivalisation', 'polyphony', and 'heteroglossia'?
Correct Answer: b) Mikhail Bakhtin
Explanation:
Bakhtin analyzed how novels incorporate multiple competing voices (polyphony) and subvert hierarchical authority (carnival).
40. Which structuralist folklorist analyzed Russian folktales in 'Morphology of the Folktale' (1928), identifying thirty-one recurring narrative functions?
Correct Answer: b) Vladimir Propp
Explanation:
Vladimir Propp's structural analysis of folktale characters and plots laid groundwork for narratology.
41. Which French structuralist anthropologist applied linguistic methods to myths in 'Structural Anthropology', influencing literary criticism?
Correct Answer: b) Claude Lévi-Strauss
Explanation:
Claude Lévi-Strauss examined cultural myths as binary systems of universal cognitive structures.
42. Which French historian and philosopher wrote 'Discipline and Punish' and 'The History of Sexuality', examining power, discourse, and surveillance?
Correct Answer: b) Michel Foucault
Explanation:
Michel Foucault analyzed how institutions generate power through knowledge systems and discursive practices.
43. Which French philosopher defined postmodernism as 'incredulity toward metanarratives' in 'The Postmodern Condition' (1979)?
Correct Answer: b) Jean-François Lyotard
Explanation:
Jean-François Lyotard diagnosed the collapse of grand foundational ideologies and grand historical narratives.
44. Which French theorist introduced the concepts of 'simulacra' and 'hyperreality', arguing that signs have replaced genuine reality?
Correct Answer: b) Jean Baudrillard
Explanation:
Jean Baudrillard analyzed media culture, where copies and simulations precede and supersede original reality.
45. Which psychoanalytic critic founded 'archetypal criticism', linking literature to universal psychological patterns and the collective unconscious?
Correct Answer: b) Carl Jung
Explanation:
Carl Jung's theory of archetypes and the collective unconscious deeply influenced mythic and literary interpretation.
46. What is the primary focus of Marxist literary criticism?
Correct Answer: b) The socio-economic conditions, class struggle, and ideology embedded in literary texts
Explanation:
Marxist criticism evaluates how literature reflects, masks, or challenges capitalist economic structures and class power.
47. What is the primary focus of Reader-Response criticism?
Correct Answer: b) The psychological and active interpretive role of the reader in creating meaning
Explanation:
Reader-response shifts attention from text-as-object to text-as-experience realized by the reader.
48. What is the primary focus of New Historicism?
Correct Answer: b) The mutual interaction between literary texts and contemporary cultural discourses, power structures, and history
Explanation:
New Historicism rejects rigid historical separation, viewing literature as both a product of and participant in cultural power.
49. What is 'différance', a key term coined by Jacques Derrida?
Correct Answer: b) A combination of differing and deferring, showing that meaning is never fully present or fixed
Explanation:
Derrida's neologism 'différance' captures how signs differ from each other while constantly deferring absolute presence.
50. Which critical movement, dominant in America from the 1940s to 1960s, treated the literary work as an autonomous verbal object independent of authorial intent?
Correct Answer: a) New Criticism
Explanation:
New Criticism practiced close reading, treating poems as self-contained aesthetic objects filled with tension, irony, and paradox.
51. Which literary theorist wrote 'The Gutenberg Galaxy' (1962) and coined the phrase 'the medium is the message'?
Correct Answer: b) Marshall McLuhan
Explanation:
Marshall McLuhan pioneered media ecology and cultural studies regarding print and electronic communications.
52. Which American literary critic wrote 'The Anxiety of Influence' (1973), examining how poets struggle against the shadow of their precursors?
Correct Answer: b) Harold Bloom
Explanation:
Harold Bloom analyzed poetic influence through Freudian defense mechanisms, proposing six revisionary ratios.
53. Which critic wrote 'The Liberal Imagination' (1950), defending complexity, moral realism, and literature against dogmatic ideology?
Correct Answer: b) Lionel Trilling
Explanation:
Lionel Trilling was a leading American intellectual critic championing nuance, liberalism, and moral psychology.
54. What is eco-criticism (or environmental literary criticism)?
Correct Answer: b) The study of literature and the environment, exploring how nature and ecological concerns are represented in texts
Explanation:
Eco-criticism investigates human-nature relationships, environmental degradation, and pastoral representation.
55. What is queer theory in literary criticism?
Correct Answer: b) An approach that critiques heteronormativity, examines gender and sexual fluidity, and deconstructs rigid binary identities
Explanation:
Queer theory questions stable categories of sex, gender, and sexuality in cultural and literary texts.
56. What is 'gynocriticism', a term coined by Elaine Showalter?
Correct Answer: b) The study of women as writers, including the history, themes, genres, and structures of literature by women
Explanation:
Gynocriticism focuses on developing a distinct female literary tradition rather than merely critiquing male oppression.
57. What is the 'hermeneutic circle' in literary and philosophical interpretation?
Correct Answer: b) The interdependent relationship between understanding the parts of a text and understanding the whole work
Explanation:
Hermeneutics posits that we understand details through the whole context, and the whole through its specific details.
58. Which German philosopher founded modern hermeneutics as a general theory of textual interpretation?
Correct Answer: b) Friedrich Schleiermacher
Explanation:
Schleiermacher argued that interpretation requires reconstructing both the grammatical and psychological horizon of the author.
59. Which German philosopher developed phenomenological hermeneutics and ontology in 'Being and Time'?
Correct Answer: b) Martin Heidegger
Explanation:
Heidegger viewed language as 'the house of being', shifting interpretation toward ontological disclosure.
60. Which German philosopher and sociologist continued the Frankfurt School tradition, developing the theory of communicative action and the public sphere?
Correct Answer: b) Jürgen Habermas
Explanation:
Jürgen Habermas defended Enlightenment rationality and democratic discourse against postmodern skepticism.
61. Which German cultural critic associated with the Frankfurt School wrote 'The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction'?
Correct Answer: b) Walter Benjamin
Explanation:
Walter Benjamin explored how mass reproduction destroys the 'aura' of original artworks while democratizing culture.
62. What is 'intertextuality', a term coined by Julia Kristeva?
Correct Answer: b) The shaping of a text's meaning by other texts through allusion, quotation, and shared cultural codes
Explanation:
Kristeva argued that all texts are mosaics of prior texts, dismantling the idea of completely isolated authorship.
63. Which French psychoanalytic feminist theorist wrote 'The Laugh of the Medusa', championing 'écriture féminine' (women's writing)?
Correct Answer: b) Hélène Cixous
Explanation:
Hélène Cixous urged women to reclaim their bodies and desires through revolutionary fluid writing ('écriture féminine').
64. What is reader-reception theory as developed by Wolfgang Iser?
Correct Answer: b) The study of the text's 'implied reader' and the 'gaps' or indeterminacies that the actual reader must mentally fill
Explanation:
Wolfgang Iser showed how literary texts contain gaps (blanks) that require creative co-creation by readers.
65. Which critical approach examines how race, racism, and institutional power are constructed and maintained in literary and legal texts?
Correct Answer: a) Critical Race Theory
Explanation:
Critical Race Theory analyzes how racial hierarchies and systemic racism operate invisibly through cultural narratives and laws.
66. What is post-humanist literary criticism?
Correct Answer: b) A critique of anthropocentrism, exploring the porous boundaries between human, animal, machine, and nature
Explanation:
Post-humanism challenges the traditional Western definition of the autonomous human subject in light of technology and ecology.
67. Which critical methodology applies evolutionary biology and psychology to interpret universal narrative themes and human universals?
Correct Answer: a) Darwinian literary criticism (Evolutionary literary study)
Explanation:
Evolutionary literary criticism examines how literature reflects adaptive human behaviors, mate selection, and survival strategies.
68. What is 'patronage' study in historical criticism?
Correct Answer: b) Examining how financial sponsorship, royal courts, and publishing markets shaped authors' literary production
Explanation:
Materialist criticism and historical scholarship analyze the economic and institutional conditions of literary patronage.
69. What is 'rhizome' in literary theory, as introduced by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari?
Correct Answer: b) A non-hierarchical, decentralized network of multiple interconnected entry points and meanings
Explanation:
Deleuze and Guattari contrasted root/tree models of knowledge with rhizomatic, multiple, non-linear connections.
70. What is 'hauntology', a term coined by Jacques Derrida?
Correct Answer: b) The persistence of past cultural or political ghosts, lost futures, and spectral echoes in the present
Explanation:
Hauntology explores how the past continues to haunt contemporary culture, especially unfulfilled political and social ideals.
71. What is the primary objective of comparative literature as a discipline?
Correct Answer: b) Studying literature across national boundaries, linguistic divisions, cultural contexts, and interdisciplinary arts
Explanation:
Comparative literature transcends single national traditions to examine global literary movements, themes, and translations.
72. What is 'translation studies' in relation to literary criticism?
Correct Answer: b) The academic study of the cultural, linguistic, and ideological transformations involved in translating literary texts
Explanation:
Translation studies views translation not as mere word-replacement, but as a complex act of cultural interpretation and rewriting.
73. What is 'close reading' (explication de texte)?
Correct Answer: b) Careful, sustained analytical interpretation of a brief text passage, focusing on diction, syntax, tone, and figurative language
Explanation:
Close reading is the foundational method of New Criticism and formalist analysis.
74. What is the difference between 'fabula' and 'syuzhet' in Russian Formalist narratology?
Correct Answer: b) Fabula is the raw chronological sequence of events; syuzhet is the artistic, plotted arrangement of those events in the text.
Explanation:
Formalists distinguished between story (chronology) and plot (artistic presentation).
75. What is 'parody' and 'pastiche' in postmodern literary theory?
Correct Answer: a) Parody mocks with a satirical edge; pastiche imitates a style without satirical mockery or judgment.
Explanation:
Fredric Jameson noted that postmodernism favors pastiche (blank parody) due to the exhaustion of unique authorial styles.
76. What is 'psychoanalytic literary criticism'?
Correct Answer: b) Interpreting literary texts by applying psychoanalytic concepts such as the unconscious, repression, dreams, desires, and Oedipal conflicts
Explanation:
Psychoanalytic criticism reads texts like dreams, uncovering latent psychological motifs and authorial or character neuroses.
77. What is 'biographical criticism'?
Correct Answer: b) Analyzing a literary work by utilizing knowledge of the author's personal life, historical experiences, and psychological background
Explanation:
Biographical criticism connects real-world authorial events to textual themes, though New Critics cautioned against its excesses.
78. What is 'moral criticism' (or ethical criticism)?
Correct Answer: b) Evaluating literature based on its ethical teachings, moral character development, and philosophical worldview
Explanation:
Ethical criticism (advocated by figures like F.R. Leavis and Wayne Booth) examines the moral weight and human consequences depicted in narratives.
79. What is 'narratology'?
Correct Answer: b) The structural study of narrative forms, plot mechanics, point of view, time, and storytelling devices
Explanation:
Narratology (developed by Genette, Todorov, and Propp) analyzes the formal grammar of how stories are told.
80. What is 'focalization', a term introduced by Gérard Genette?
Correct Answer: b) The perspective through which the narrative is perceived (distinguishing who sees from who speaks)
Explanation:
Genette refined narrative point of view by separating the narrator's voice from the character's perceptual lens (focalizer).
81. What is 'canon formation' in literary criticism?
Correct Answer: b) The historical process by which certain literary works are selected, valued, and institutionalized as 'great classics' to be studied
Explanation:
Canon debate explores how cultural, political, and institutional forces determine which authors are included or excluded from academic study.
82. What is 'subaltern' studies in post-colonial criticism?
Correct Answer: b) An academic focus on the history and literature of lower-class, marginalized, and colonized populations excluded from elite dominant narratives
Explanation:
Subaltern studies (inspired by Gramsci and popularized by the Subaltern Studies Group) recovers the agency of the oppressed.
83. What is 'double consciousness', a concept coined by W.E.B. Du Bois?
Correct Answer: b) The internal psychological experience of African Americans viewing themselves through the prejudiced eyes of a white racist society
Explanation:
Du Bois described this dual identity as an American and a Black person facing systemic racial oppression.
84. What is 'semiotics' (or semiology)?
Correct Answer: b) The philosophical and structural study of signs, symbols, and communication systems in culture and literature
Explanation:
Semiotics (founded by Saussure and Peirce) analyzes how cultural meaning is constructed through signifiers and codes.
85. What is 'stylistics' in literary analysis?
Correct Answer: b) The application of linguistics to the study of literary texts, examining linguistic choices, syntax, and phonology
Explanation:
Stylistics uses rigorous linguistic tools to analyze how authors achieve stylistic effects and literary meaning.
86. What is 'reception aesthetics' (Rezeptionsästhetik)?
Correct Answer: b) A school of literary criticism originating in Constance, Germany, focusing on how literary texts are historically received by readers
Explanation:
Pioneered by Hans Robert Jauss and Wolfgang Iser, reception aesthetics examines the horizon of expectations of different reading publics.
87. What is 'ideology' in Marxist and cultural literary criticism?
Correct Answer: b) The systemic set of beliefs, values, and assumptions through which a society understands the world, often serving dominant class interests
Explanation:
Ideology shapes how texts normalize power relations, hegemony, and social hierarchies without appearing political.
88. What is 'hegemony', a concept developed by Antonio Gramsci?
Correct Answer: b) The cultural and ideological dominance of a ruling class over society, maintained through consent rather than pure coercion
Explanation:
Gramsci argued that ruling classes maintain power not just through force, but by shaping cultural norms, education, and literature.
89. What is 'discourse' in Foucauldian criticism?
Correct Answer: b) A socially constructed system of statements, knowledge, and institutions that determines what can be thought, said, or known
Explanation:
Discourse analysis investigates how language and power intertwine to produce historical truths and social subjects.
90. What is 'archaeology and genealogy' in the critical method of Michel Foucault?
Correct Answer: b) Tracing the historical mutations of knowledge systems (archaeology) and how power relations produced them (genealogy)
Explanation:
Foucault's historical method uncovers the unacknowledged discursive shifts that govern human institutions and sciences.
91. What is 'performance theory' in literary and cultural studies?
Correct Answer: b) An approach viewing identity, gender, and literature not as fixed essences, but as enacted, performative rituals and embodied actions
Explanation:
Performance theory (influenced by J.L. Austin's speech-act theory and Judith Butler's gender performativity) analyzes texts as acts.
92. What is 'speech-act theory', developed by J.L. Austin and John Searle?
Correct Answer: b) The analysis of how language does things (locutionary, illocutionary, and perlocutionary acts) rather than merely stating facts
Explanation:
Speech-act theory shows that utterances like 'I promise' or 'I pronounce you married' perform actions upon being spoken.
93. What is 'rhizomatic reading' in postmodern criticism?
Correct Answer: b) An open, non-linear method of connecting texts, ideas, and contexts across multiple branching pathways without a single central root
Explanation:
Inspired by Deleuze and Guattari, rhizomatic reading defies rigid teleological interpretations.
94. What is 'trauma theory' in literary criticism?
Correct Answer: b) The study of how catastrophic historical events, violence, and collective trauma are represented, repressed, or narrated in literature
Explanation:
Trauma theory examines narrative fragmentation, bearing witness, and the difficulty of articulating extreme historical violence.
95. What is 'cognitive literary criticism'?
Correct Answer: b) An approach integrating cognitive science, psychology, and neuroscience to understand how readers process narratives and imagine fictional worlds
Explanation:
Cognitive criticism investigates theory of mind, blending, and neurological responses to literary art.
96. What is 'digital humanities' in literary scholarship?
Correct Answer: b) The use of computational tools, database analysis, and data mining to study large corpuses of literary texts (distant reading)
Explanation:
Digital humanities (championed by Franco Moretti) uses quantitative analysis to examine historical trends across thousands of texts.
97. What is 'world literature' as a critical framework?
Correct Answer: b) The circulation, translation, and study of literary works across national boundaries on a global scale
Explanation:
World literature (theorized by David Damrosch and Pascale Casanova) examines how texts travel, translate, and gain transnational resonance.
98. What is 'cultural studies' as an interdisciplinary critical movement?
Correct Answer: b) An examination of the political dynamics of contemporary culture, including mass media, popular culture, race, class, and gender
Explanation:
Cultural studies (originating at the Birmingham Centre) expands criticism beyond elite literature to encompass all cultural artifacts.
99. What is 'auttheory' (autofiction) in contemporary literary discourse?
Correct Answer: b) A hybrid genre and critical approach blending autobiography and fiction, questioning the boundary between real life and invention
Explanation:
Autofiction (practiced by Knausgaard, Ernaux, and Coetzee) complicates authorial sincerity and confessional narrative truth.
100. What is 'ethical turn' in contemporary literary criticism?
Correct Answer: b) A resurgence of interest in literature's moral dimensions, alterity, responsibility, and the reader's interpersonal obligation to the text
Explanation:
The ethical turn (influenced by Emmanuel Levinas) revives questions of human responsibility and hospitality in reading.
101. What is 'speculative realism' and 'object-oriented ontology' (OOO) in literary philosophy?
Correct Answer: b) A philosophical movement challenging human-centric criticism by asserting that non-human objects exist independently of human perception
Explanation:
OOO extends literary and philosophical inquiry beyond human subjects to encompass the agency and reality of inanimate things.
102. What is 'new materialism' in cultural and literary theory?
Correct Answer: b) An approach emphasizing the material agency of nature, bodies, technology, and matter, moving beyond purely linguistic or social constructivism
Explanation:
New materialism re-evaluates the physical world's active role in shaping culture, resisting purely textual deconstruction.
103. What is 'animal studies' (critical animal studies) in literary criticism?
Correct Answer: b) An interdisciplinary approach examining how non-human animals are represented, exploited, and conceptualized in literature and culture
Explanation:
Animal studies interrogates anthropocentrism and speciesism in literary traditions.
104. What is 'dark ecology' or 'anthropocene criticism'?
Correct Answer: b) Literary analysis confronting climate change, ecological catastrophe, and human geological dominance over the planet
Explanation:
Anthropocene criticism addresses literature in an era where human activity is the dominant influence on Earth's climate and ecosystems.
