English (002) MTTC Test Questions
and Answers
Upton Sinclair - ANSWER-American novelist, journalist and essayist; "The Jungle" -
attacked and exposed abuses in the Chicago meat packing industry - instrumental in
forcing the passage of the Pure Food and Drug Act; "King Coal", "Boston"; A
"muckracker"
Muckracker - ANSWER-A socially minded band of writers who decried and attacked
perceived immoral conduct in business and government
Johan Strindberg - ANSWER-Swedish novelist, playwright, essayist and short-fiction
writer; "The Red Room" - bohemian life in Sweden; Blending realism and naturalism
together in a unique manner; "The Father", "Miss Julie"; later works turned to symbolism
mixed with expressionism for "Ghost Sonata", "The Great Highway" - autobiographical
plays; An unhappy childhood followed by 3 failed marriages influenced his work
Ford Madox Ford (Ford Hermann Hueffer) - ANSWER-English novelist and critic; "The
Good Solider" narrates an unhappy marriage in English upper class; BFF's with Joesph
Conrad - Collaborated two novels "The Inheritors" and "Romance", "Parade's End" - a
trilogy of novels set in America and Europe; Fought in France in World War I
Gertrude Stein - ANSWER-American poet, essayist, novelist and short-story writer;
"Three Lives" - a novel of working class women; "Tender Objects, Food, and Rooms"
her poetry collection; "The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas" her autobiography (Alice
B. Toklas was her secretary and partner); BFF's with Picasso, Hemingway and Ford
Madox Ford; Flamboyant figure in Paris famous for her acid tongue and wit
Rabindranath Tagore - ANSWER-Indian poet, playwright, novelist, short-fiction writer
and songwriter; Best known for his spiritual poetry written in Bengali - 1st collection was
"The ideal One"; Noted for his lyrical, spiritual poetry; "Song Offerings" - Won a Novel
Prize in Literature (1911); "The Hungry Stones", "Broken Ties" - Stories of village Begal
life
D.H. Lawrence - ANSWER-English novelist, poet, essayist and short-fiction writer;
"Sons and Lovers", "The Rainbow", "Women in Love", "Lady Chatterly's Lover" - banned
in England for 30 yrs; Books focused on love, class, social standing and sexuality; The
intensity to his work and life that sometimes scandalized peers
George Bernard Shaw - ANSWER-British playwright and critic; Published his collection
of dramas in "Plays Pleasant and Unpleasant" - included some of his best work
,including his critical prefaces; "Caesar and Cleopatra", "Major Barbara", "Pygmalion",
"St. Joan"; Awarded the Nobel prize in Literature (1925); Chose controversial topics for
his drams, stressing realistic social problems - satirized social class and gender
discrimination with a light touch that made its points w/o anger
Marcel Proust - ANSWER-French novelist; "Remembrance of Things Past" - epic
seven-part masterpiece that examines the existential problem of finding meaning and
value in the maelstrom of life; uses the device of interior monologue - views the
transient nature of life and the flux of consciousness using observation of detail
Thomas Sterns Eliot - ANSWER-American poet, playwright and critic; "The Love Song
of J. Alfred Prufrock", "The Waste Land" - Struggled with his own despair at the futility of
life and the spiritual barrenness of modern life, he addressed these themes in "The
Waste Land"; "Murder in the Cathedral", "The Cocktail Party" - dramas
Robert Frost - ANSWER-American poet; Master of technical aspects of poetry while
remaining true to his New England heritage; "Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy
Evening", "The Road Not Taken", "West Running Brook", "A Witness Tree", "In the
Clearing"; Received the Pulitzer Prize 4 times; Read "The Gift Outright" at the inaugural
of John Kennedy in 1961
Frantz Kafka - ANSWER-Prague born and German writing novelist and short-story
writer; Uses powerful symbolism; Addresses anxieties and chaos of modern society;
"The Metamorphosis", "In the Penal Colony", "The Hunger Artist"; Instructed his
executor and literary agent, Max Brod, to destroy his work after his death but Brod
instead published them - "The Trial", "The Castle", "Amerika"; Fiction was dark,
wounding, arresting and sometimes painful
James Joyce - ANSWER-Irish novelist and short-story writer; Developed a style rich in
innovative literary technique and creative language; "The Dubliners", "A Portrait of the
Artist as a Young Man" - novels and dramas "Exiles" and "Ulysses"; "Finnegan's Wake"
- novel
Edna St. Vinceny Millay - ANSWER-American poet; Won a poetry contest in 1902 for
"Renascence", Won the Pulitzer Prize for her poetry "The Ballad of the Harp-weaver";
"A Few Twigs from Thistles", "Fatal Interview", "Wine From These Grapes",
"Conversation at Midnight", "Make the Bright Arrows", "Collected Poems"
Virginia Woolf (Adele Virginia Stephen) - ANSWER-English novelist, short-fiction writer,
essayist, critic; One of the most creative and influential writers of the 20th century;
"Jacobs Room" using her steam of consciousness method of interior monologues to
develop an absent character; "Mrs. Dalloway", "To This Lighthouse", "The Waves"; Her
families home was the center of the group of authors, artists and thinkers known as the
Bloomsbury Group; Committed suicide by drowning
,Sprung rhythm - ANSWER-Attempts to duplicate human speech - developed by Gerald
Manley Hopkins
Gerald Manley Hopkins - ANSWER-English poet; "The Wreck of the Deutschland", "The
Windhover", "Pied Beauty", "God's Grandeur" and "Carrion Comfort"; Poems were
written in a period of personal depression and religious doubt; He developed a style
called "sprung rhythm
Willa Cather - ANSWER-American novelist, short-story writer and essayist; "Oh
Pioneers" which narrated the story of an immigrant family's struggle in the new world;
"My Antonia" a story of a woman's struggle and eventual triumph on the prairie; Won
Pulitzer Prize in 1922 for "One of Ours"; "Death Comes for the Archbishop" - Pioneering
spirit in America; Other writing examines the topics of art, loss and disillusionment;
"Sapphira and the Slave Girl" - a novel on the American Civil War
Wilfred Owen - ANSWER-English poet; Best known as a scathing indictment against
war based on his experiences in France during World War I; His language is starkly
realistic in depicting the horrors of war; "Poems" include "Strange Meeting", "Anthem for
Doomed Youth" - Owen's verse was used in Benjamin Britten's "War Requiem"
Katherine Mansfield Beauchamp - ANSWER-New Zealand short-story writer; "In a
German Pension", "Bliss", "The Garden Party and Other Stories", "Prelude"; Her style
and strength was the complex and subtle development of her characters, probing their
psychological depths
Dame Agatha Christie - ANSWER-English novelist and playwright; Wrote over 80
detective novels; Created Hercules Poirot and Miss Jane Marple; "The Mousetrap" - the
longest running play in the history of drama
Edward Estlin Cummings (E.E. Cummings) - ANSWER-American poet and novelist;
Noted for his unique writing style, using unconventional punctuation and typography,
innovative language and imagery; "The Enormous Room"; His verse is often light and
joyful but contains a great depth of irony and complex feelings; "Tulips and Chimney's",
"50 Poems", "Ninety-Five Poems", "73 Poems"
Rene' Maria Rilke - ANSWER-German poet; Themes of life and death; Explore man's
relationship to the Divine and particularly humanity's perception of the universal; "The
Book of Images", "Duino Elegies", "Sonnets to Orpheus" and "New Plans"
Edward Morgan Forster - ANSWER-English novelist, essayist and critic; "A Room With
a View", "Howard's End", "The Longest Journey" and "Where Angels Fear To Tread" -
Addressed subjects such as social justice, materialism and spirituality and dissolution of
the English upper classes; His masterpiece "A Passage to India" was inspired by
several visits to India and Fosters service in Egypt in WWI
, Thomas Mann - ANSWER-German novelist and essayist; Focused on art and the
struggle of the artist to flourish in European society; "Buddenbrooks", "Death in Venice",
"The Magic Mountain", "Dr Faustus", "Joesph and His Brothers" ; Won Nobel Prize for
Literature in 1929
Ezra Pound - ANSWER-American poet, critic and editor; "The Cantos"; His influence as
a critic was formidable - he fostered the work of Robert Frost, Ernest Hemingway,
James Joyce and T.S. Eliot; Important imagist, advocating the use of free meter, and
the extravagant use of image; Associated with Mussolini and his fascist regime, Pound
was arrested for treasonable propganda
William Butler Yeats - ANSWER-Irish poet and playwright; "The Countess Cathleen",
"The Land of Heart's Desire", "Cathleen in Houlihan"; Spare, realistic style with much
symbolism - "Easter 1916" - celebrating the Easter rising in Dublin - "The Second
Coming"; Nobel Prize in Literature (1923); In love with Maud Gonne but it was
unrequited; Founder of Abbey theatre
William Faulkner - ANSWER-American novelist and short-story writer; Wrote almost
solely about southern history in his fiction; "Sartoris", "The Sound and The Fury", "As I
Lay Dying", "Absalom, "Absolom", "Sanctuary", "Go Down, Moses"; Nobel Prize in
Literature in 1949; Won two Pulitzer Prizes; Recurring themes include Southern
aristocracy's attempt to survive in the modern world, racial inequality in the South and
burdens of slavery carried by his characters
Hart Crane - ANSWER-American poet; "The Bridge" - 18 part epic poem based on the
Brooklyn Bridge celebrates America's muscular industrial strength in a manner that
precedes Carl Sandburg - combines cold imagery with technical dexterity; Committed
suicide by jumping off of the ship into the ocean
John Dos Passos - ANSWER-American novelist; Wrote sobering fiction and prose
about the decline of the US both spiritually and socially; "U.S.A." - Trilogy of novels; His
jaundiced view of America is based on his observations of a country deeply divided by
class and coarsened by commercialism; Worked with Ernest Hemingway; Recurring
theme of a negative view of American society
Aldous Huxley - ANSWER-English novelist and social critic; Created a hellish vision of
the future in "Brave New World" - describing a society based on technology and social
control, summation of a generation's fears about the future; "Island" reflecting his
interest in eastern spirituality and metaphysics; "After Many A Summer Dies The Swan"
indicates growing distrust of politics and social trends
Henry Miller - ANSWER-American novelist, short-fiction writer and essayist; Banned
initially in the US - "Tropic of Cancer" and "Tropic of Capricorn" - two autobiographical
novels caused an uproar because of their controversial treatment of sex; "The Rosy
Crucifixion" - trilogy based on Miller's life
and Answers
Upton Sinclair - ANSWER-American novelist, journalist and essayist; "The Jungle" -
attacked and exposed abuses in the Chicago meat packing industry - instrumental in
forcing the passage of the Pure Food and Drug Act; "King Coal", "Boston"; A
"muckracker"
Muckracker - ANSWER-A socially minded band of writers who decried and attacked
perceived immoral conduct in business and government
Johan Strindberg - ANSWER-Swedish novelist, playwright, essayist and short-fiction
writer; "The Red Room" - bohemian life in Sweden; Blending realism and naturalism
together in a unique manner; "The Father", "Miss Julie"; later works turned to symbolism
mixed with expressionism for "Ghost Sonata", "The Great Highway" - autobiographical
plays; An unhappy childhood followed by 3 failed marriages influenced his work
Ford Madox Ford (Ford Hermann Hueffer) - ANSWER-English novelist and critic; "The
Good Solider" narrates an unhappy marriage in English upper class; BFF's with Joesph
Conrad - Collaborated two novels "The Inheritors" and "Romance", "Parade's End" - a
trilogy of novels set in America and Europe; Fought in France in World War I
Gertrude Stein - ANSWER-American poet, essayist, novelist and short-story writer;
"Three Lives" - a novel of working class women; "Tender Objects, Food, and Rooms"
her poetry collection; "The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas" her autobiography (Alice
B. Toklas was her secretary and partner); BFF's with Picasso, Hemingway and Ford
Madox Ford; Flamboyant figure in Paris famous for her acid tongue and wit
Rabindranath Tagore - ANSWER-Indian poet, playwright, novelist, short-fiction writer
and songwriter; Best known for his spiritual poetry written in Bengali - 1st collection was
"The ideal One"; Noted for his lyrical, spiritual poetry; "Song Offerings" - Won a Novel
Prize in Literature (1911); "The Hungry Stones", "Broken Ties" - Stories of village Begal
life
D.H. Lawrence - ANSWER-English novelist, poet, essayist and short-fiction writer;
"Sons and Lovers", "The Rainbow", "Women in Love", "Lady Chatterly's Lover" - banned
in England for 30 yrs; Books focused on love, class, social standing and sexuality; The
intensity to his work and life that sometimes scandalized peers
George Bernard Shaw - ANSWER-British playwright and critic; Published his collection
of dramas in "Plays Pleasant and Unpleasant" - included some of his best work
,including his critical prefaces; "Caesar and Cleopatra", "Major Barbara", "Pygmalion",
"St. Joan"; Awarded the Nobel prize in Literature (1925); Chose controversial topics for
his drams, stressing realistic social problems - satirized social class and gender
discrimination with a light touch that made its points w/o anger
Marcel Proust - ANSWER-French novelist; "Remembrance of Things Past" - epic
seven-part masterpiece that examines the existential problem of finding meaning and
value in the maelstrom of life; uses the device of interior monologue - views the
transient nature of life and the flux of consciousness using observation of detail
Thomas Sterns Eliot - ANSWER-American poet, playwright and critic; "The Love Song
of J. Alfred Prufrock", "The Waste Land" - Struggled with his own despair at the futility of
life and the spiritual barrenness of modern life, he addressed these themes in "The
Waste Land"; "Murder in the Cathedral", "The Cocktail Party" - dramas
Robert Frost - ANSWER-American poet; Master of technical aspects of poetry while
remaining true to his New England heritage; "Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy
Evening", "The Road Not Taken", "West Running Brook", "A Witness Tree", "In the
Clearing"; Received the Pulitzer Prize 4 times; Read "The Gift Outright" at the inaugural
of John Kennedy in 1961
Frantz Kafka - ANSWER-Prague born and German writing novelist and short-story
writer; Uses powerful symbolism; Addresses anxieties and chaos of modern society;
"The Metamorphosis", "In the Penal Colony", "The Hunger Artist"; Instructed his
executor and literary agent, Max Brod, to destroy his work after his death but Brod
instead published them - "The Trial", "The Castle", "Amerika"; Fiction was dark,
wounding, arresting and sometimes painful
James Joyce - ANSWER-Irish novelist and short-story writer; Developed a style rich in
innovative literary technique and creative language; "The Dubliners", "A Portrait of the
Artist as a Young Man" - novels and dramas "Exiles" and "Ulysses"; "Finnegan's Wake"
- novel
Edna St. Vinceny Millay - ANSWER-American poet; Won a poetry contest in 1902 for
"Renascence", Won the Pulitzer Prize for her poetry "The Ballad of the Harp-weaver";
"A Few Twigs from Thistles", "Fatal Interview", "Wine From These Grapes",
"Conversation at Midnight", "Make the Bright Arrows", "Collected Poems"
Virginia Woolf (Adele Virginia Stephen) - ANSWER-English novelist, short-fiction writer,
essayist, critic; One of the most creative and influential writers of the 20th century;
"Jacobs Room" using her steam of consciousness method of interior monologues to
develop an absent character; "Mrs. Dalloway", "To This Lighthouse", "The Waves"; Her
families home was the center of the group of authors, artists and thinkers known as the
Bloomsbury Group; Committed suicide by drowning
,Sprung rhythm - ANSWER-Attempts to duplicate human speech - developed by Gerald
Manley Hopkins
Gerald Manley Hopkins - ANSWER-English poet; "The Wreck of the Deutschland", "The
Windhover", "Pied Beauty", "God's Grandeur" and "Carrion Comfort"; Poems were
written in a period of personal depression and religious doubt; He developed a style
called "sprung rhythm
Willa Cather - ANSWER-American novelist, short-story writer and essayist; "Oh
Pioneers" which narrated the story of an immigrant family's struggle in the new world;
"My Antonia" a story of a woman's struggle and eventual triumph on the prairie; Won
Pulitzer Prize in 1922 for "One of Ours"; "Death Comes for the Archbishop" - Pioneering
spirit in America; Other writing examines the topics of art, loss and disillusionment;
"Sapphira and the Slave Girl" - a novel on the American Civil War
Wilfred Owen - ANSWER-English poet; Best known as a scathing indictment against
war based on his experiences in France during World War I; His language is starkly
realistic in depicting the horrors of war; "Poems" include "Strange Meeting", "Anthem for
Doomed Youth" - Owen's verse was used in Benjamin Britten's "War Requiem"
Katherine Mansfield Beauchamp - ANSWER-New Zealand short-story writer; "In a
German Pension", "Bliss", "The Garden Party and Other Stories", "Prelude"; Her style
and strength was the complex and subtle development of her characters, probing their
psychological depths
Dame Agatha Christie - ANSWER-English novelist and playwright; Wrote over 80
detective novels; Created Hercules Poirot and Miss Jane Marple; "The Mousetrap" - the
longest running play in the history of drama
Edward Estlin Cummings (E.E. Cummings) - ANSWER-American poet and novelist;
Noted for his unique writing style, using unconventional punctuation and typography,
innovative language and imagery; "The Enormous Room"; His verse is often light and
joyful but contains a great depth of irony and complex feelings; "Tulips and Chimney's",
"50 Poems", "Ninety-Five Poems", "73 Poems"
Rene' Maria Rilke - ANSWER-German poet; Themes of life and death; Explore man's
relationship to the Divine and particularly humanity's perception of the universal; "The
Book of Images", "Duino Elegies", "Sonnets to Orpheus" and "New Plans"
Edward Morgan Forster - ANSWER-English novelist, essayist and critic; "A Room With
a View", "Howard's End", "The Longest Journey" and "Where Angels Fear To Tread" -
Addressed subjects such as social justice, materialism and spirituality and dissolution of
the English upper classes; His masterpiece "A Passage to India" was inspired by
several visits to India and Fosters service in Egypt in WWI
, Thomas Mann - ANSWER-German novelist and essayist; Focused on art and the
struggle of the artist to flourish in European society; "Buddenbrooks", "Death in Venice",
"The Magic Mountain", "Dr Faustus", "Joesph and His Brothers" ; Won Nobel Prize for
Literature in 1929
Ezra Pound - ANSWER-American poet, critic and editor; "The Cantos"; His influence as
a critic was formidable - he fostered the work of Robert Frost, Ernest Hemingway,
James Joyce and T.S. Eliot; Important imagist, advocating the use of free meter, and
the extravagant use of image; Associated with Mussolini and his fascist regime, Pound
was arrested for treasonable propganda
William Butler Yeats - ANSWER-Irish poet and playwright; "The Countess Cathleen",
"The Land of Heart's Desire", "Cathleen in Houlihan"; Spare, realistic style with much
symbolism - "Easter 1916" - celebrating the Easter rising in Dublin - "The Second
Coming"; Nobel Prize in Literature (1923); In love with Maud Gonne but it was
unrequited; Founder of Abbey theatre
William Faulkner - ANSWER-American novelist and short-story writer; Wrote almost
solely about southern history in his fiction; "Sartoris", "The Sound and The Fury", "As I
Lay Dying", "Absalom, "Absolom", "Sanctuary", "Go Down, Moses"; Nobel Prize in
Literature in 1949; Won two Pulitzer Prizes; Recurring themes include Southern
aristocracy's attempt to survive in the modern world, racial inequality in the South and
burdens of slavery carried by his characters
Hart Crane - ANSWER-American poet; "The Bridge" - 18 part epic poem based on the
Brooklyn Bridge celebrates America's muscular industrial strength in a manner that
precedes Carl Sandburg - combines cold imagery with technical dexterity; Committed
suicide by jumping off of the ship into the ocean
John Dos Passos - ANSWER-American novelist; Wrote sobering fiction and prose
about the decline of the US both spiritually and socially; "U.S.A." - Trilogy of novels; His
jaundiced view of America is based on his observations of a country deeply divided by
class and coarsened by commercialism; Worked with Ernest Hemingway; Recurring
theme of a negative view of American society
Aldous Huxley - ANSWER-English novelist and social critic; Created a hellish vision of
the future in "Brave New World" - describing a society based on technology and social
control, summation of a generation's fears about the future; "Island" reflecting his
interest in eastern spirituality and metaphysics; "After Many A Summer Dies The Swan"
indicates growing distrust of politics and social trends
Henry Miller - ANSWER-American novelist, short-fiction writer and essayist; Banned
initially in the US - "Tropic of Cancer" and "Tropic of Capricorn" - two autobiographical
novels caused an uproar because of their controversial treatment of sex; "The Rosy
Crucifixion" - trilogy based on Miller's life
