Literature

Question 1

Nathaniel Winkle, Tracy Tupman, and Augustus Snodgrass all feature in which novel?

Answer 1

The Pickwick Papers (1837)

Question 2

What is the aim of the Pickwickians on their travels in provincial England?

Answer 2

They foil the attempt of Alfred Jingle to elope with Rachael Wardle of Dingley Dell

Question 3

Who is known for grotesquely humorous sayings such as “out with it, as the father said to his child, when he swallowed a farthing.”?

Answer 3

Sam Weller from Pickwick Papers

Question 4

Who is sent to work at Dotheboys Hall by his cruel uncle Ralph?

Answer 4

Nicholas Nickleby, after his father dies

Question 5

Wackford Squeers, Madame Mantalini and Sir Mulberry Hawk feature in which Dickensian novel?

Answer 5

Nicholas Nickleby

Question 6

Nell Trent is the central character in which Novel?

Answer 6

The Old Curiosity Chop

Question 7

Which was Dicken’s favourite of his own books?

Answer 7

David Copperfield (it is the most autobiographical)

Question 8

Which character is tormented by Creakle, finds comfort in his friendships with Tommy Traddles and James Steerforth and befriends the optimistic but indebted Mr. Micawber?

Answer 8

David Copperfield

Question 9

Which novel revolves around the Chancery case Jarndyce and Jarndyce, which has dragged on for many years as family members fight over an inheritance?

Answer 9

Bleak House

Question 10

Who is Dicken’s only female narrator?

Answer 10

Esther Summerson, Bleak House

Question 11

The merchant Krook dies of spontaneous human combustion in which Dickens novel?

Answer 11

Bleak House

Question 12

Thomas Gradgrind is a fact-obsessed utilitarian from Coketown from which Dickens novel?

Answer 12

Hard Times

Question 13

Joe Gargery, Abel Magwitch and Bentley Drummle feature in which novel?

Answer 13

Great Expectations

Question 14

Which author wrote Tale of Genji (Genji monogatari), the first known novel; the diary Murasaki Shikibu nikki; and a collection of tanka poems?

Answer 14

Lady Murasaki Shikibu

Question 15

Who wrote the Pillow Book (Makura no soshi), which is considered the best source of information about life at the Japanese court during the Heian period (784–1185)?

Answer 15

Sei Shonagon (c. 966 – c. 1013)

Question 16

Who revised the works of his father Kan’ami, such as Wind in the Pines, and wrote a number of his own dramas, including the samurai play Atsumori? His Fushi kaden (The Transmission of the Flower of Acting Style) is a manual for his pupils.

Answer 16

Zeami

Question 17

Who is known as the master of the haiku form? He wrote ‘The Narrow Road to the Deep North’

Answer 17

Matsuo Basho

Question 18

Who wrote ‘A life in four chapters’ and ‘Confessions of a Mask’? He comitted ritual suicide and organized the Tate no kai — a right-wing society stressing physical fitness and the martial arts.

Answer 18

Yukio Mishima

Question 19

Who won the 1968 Nobel Prize for Literature and wrote ‘Thousand Cranes’, ‘The Tale of Genji; The Sound of the Mountain’ and ‘Snow Country’?

Answer 19

Kawabata Yasunari (1899–1972)

Question 20

Which Japanese writer converted to Catholicism at the age of 11, and wrote ‘White Man’, ‘Yellow Man’, ‘Silence’ and ‘The Samurai’?

Answer 20

Endo Shusaku (1923–1996)

Question 21

Who was the recipient of the 1994 Nobel Prize for Literature, writing ‘Shiiku’ (The Catch) and ‘A personal matter’. His early works are filled with insanity, abuse, perverse sex, and violence

Answer 21

Oe Kenzaburo

Question 22

Who were Mary Shelley’s parents?

Answer 22

William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft (A Vindication of the Rights of Woman)

Question 23

Who wrote the 1826 novel The Last Man, which describes Lionel Verney’s efforts to survive a 21st-century plague that devastates human civilization?

Answer 23

Mary Shelley

Question 24

Who created these characters (and in which novels would they each be found)? Professor Lidenbrock, Pierre Aronnax and Phileas Fogg?

Answer 24

Jules Verne (Journey to the Center of the Earth, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea and Around the World in Eighty Days)

Question 25

Who wrote the Island of Dr Moreau?

Answer 25

Herbert George Wells (1866–1946)

Question 26

Who wrote Brave New World and Crome Yellow?

Answer 26

Aldous Huxley

Question 27

Who first introduced the word ‘robot’, which featured in his 1920 play R.U.R?

Answer 27

Karel Čapek

Question 28

Which science fiction writer came up with the “Three Laws of Robotics”?

Answer 28

Isaac Asimov

Question 29

Who wrote The Caves of Steel, Pebble in the Sky, and The Stars, Like Dust?

Answer 29

Isaac Asimov

Question 30

Who wrote Slaughterhouse 5, Cat’s cradle and Mother Night?

Answer 30

Kurt Vonnegut

Question 31

Who wrote Oryx and Crake, The Year of the Flood, and MaddAddam, as well as the Penelopiad?

Answer 31

Margaret Attwood