cultural and literary in modernity Mcqs
1. Who was Le Corbusier ?
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A. He was born Charles-Edouard Jeanneret.

B. He was an architect who designed The Chandigarh Legislative Assembly building in Punjab, India.

C. He was the architect who designed The Robie House in Chicago, Illinois.

D. Both A and B
2. The development of cubism, with its geometric and abstract concerns, can be attributed largely to which of the following two artists ?
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A. George Braque and Pablo Picasso

B. Claude Monet and douard Manet

C. Pablo Picasso and Claude Monet

D. T.S. Eliot and Wyndham Lewis

3. Jazz music is described by which of the following characteristics ?
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A. All of the above

B. A way of questioning Victorian moral conceptions

C. An example of subjective artistic expression

D. A musical invention of the modern age that allows for experimentation of form

4. Which of the following authors is considered a major theorist of deconstruction ?
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A. Raymond Williams

B. Jacques Derrida

C. Fredric Jameson

D. Both A and B

6. What is Imagism ?
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A. A and B only

B. An attempt to use the exact word instead of flowery, excessive descriptive language in poetry

C. B and C only

D. A poetic movement which hoped to offer clear expression of ideas and feelings through the use of specific visual images

7. Which of the following best describes the novel The God of Small Things?
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A. It is a lyrical novel that explores cultural identity and decline of an Indian family.

B. It is a stream-of-consciousness narrative that explores cultural identity in nineteenth-century Ireland.

C. It is a Romantic novel that explores the decline of a Russian family.

D. It is a lyrical novel that explores the decline of a Caribbean family.

8. Which of the following famous literary lines is contained in William Butler Yeats poem The Second Coming ?
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A. Hearing of harvests rotting in the valleys

B. And we rebuild our cities, not dream of islands

C. Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold

D. Mother died today

9. Which of the following is NOT a tenet of F.T. Marinettis Futurist Manifesto ?
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A. We want to sing the man who holds the steering wheel, whose ideal stem pierces the Earth, itself launched on the circuit of its orbit.

B. We want never to glorify war, the scourge of the planet.

C. The essential elements of our poetry will be courage, daring, and revolt.

D. We want to sing the love of danger, the habit of danger and of temerity.

10. Between 1890 and 1919, which of the following was a preoccupation of Western European literature ?
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A. Sexual mores

B. Bourgeois sensibility

C. All of the above

D. The importance of the irrational

11. Which of the following is NOT a characteristic of Naturalism as an artistic and literary movement ?
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A. Naturalism depicts the more animalistic tendencies of humans.

B. Naturalism considers the author or artist to be like a scientist.

C. Naturalism depicts humans as reasonable and objective.

D. Naturalism is a search for scientific certainty.

12. The last decade of the nineteenth century saw the development of a number of literary and cultural movements which amounted to a rejection of the principles of Victorianism because of which social transformations ?
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A. The shift from agriculturally-based to industrial societies in the West

B. The decline of traditional religious beliefs in Europe

C. The rise of traditional social identities and the decline of personal identity

D. Both A and B
15. Which of the following statements does NOT reflect the general characteristics of T.S. Eliots The Wasteland ?
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A. The Wasteland is often used as an excellent example of poetic realism.

B. Eliots poem takes great pains to illustrate the breakdown of stable meaning in the modern world.

C. Some academic scholars suggest that TheWasteland is an extrapolation of the search for the Holy Grail.

D. The Wasteland is an excellent example of modernist symbolism.

16. Which of the following is true of Charles Baudelaires Bndiction ?
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A. It was originally written in English.

B. It celebrates the almost divine power of the poet.

C. It suggests that poetry is demonic in nature.

D. Both A and B

17. Which of the following statements is true of the Anglo-Irish War ?
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A. The Anglo-Irish war began with the resistance of the Irish Republican Army.

B. The Anglo-Irish war never involved a guerrilla campaign.

C. All of the above

D. In the course of the Anglo-Irish War, only a few hundred members of the Irish Republican Army were actively resisting British rule.

18. Which of the following authors is NOT an important Irish writer ?
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A. E.M. Forster

B. William Butler Yeats

C. James Joyce

D. Seamus Heaney

19. Post-Modernism is often characterized by which of the following attitudes ?
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A. A fascination with the past but a past that is used out of its original context as pastiche

B. A reinforcement of master narratives

C. A rejection of master narratives

D. Both A and C
20. The poem In Flanders Fields was written by John McCrae referring to which war ?
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A. World War II

B. World War I

C. The American Civil War

D. The Franco-Prussian War

21. Which of the following is NOT a characteristic of Realism as an artistic and literary movement ?
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A. Realism depicts the tension between harsh reality and ideals.

B. Realism strives to depict humans within a certain social context.

C. Realism gives up the search for truth and instead embraces moral relativism.

D. Realism explores ethical quandaries within a social context.

22. Which of the following statements best describes Magical Realism ?
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A. Magical realism often accepts both a materialist and a supernatural view of the real.

B. Magical realism differs from fantasy and science fiction in that it considers the impossible as normal.

C. The term magical realism was first coined by Franz Roh, a German art critic.

D. All of the above
23. The literary style of Virginia Woolfs novel To the Lighthouse is best described in which of the following ways ?
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A. As an omniscient narrative of love and loss

B. As a domestic stream of consciousness narrative

C. A and B only

D. As a third-person narrative of the Great Depression

24. What are the differences between conservative modernism and progressive modernism ?
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A. All of the above

B. Conservative modernism supported the status quo, while progressive modernism was deeply engaged in political and social amelioration.

C. Conservative modernism came to look to the past for inspiration and hope, while progressive modernism looked to the future.

D. Conservative modernism celebrated aesthetic formalism, while progressive modernism celebrated innovation and attacked aesthetic formalism.

25. Which of the following artists did NOT produce Surrealist photography ?
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A. Man Ray

B. Ansel Adams

C. Hans Bellmer

D. Maurice Tabard

26. According to Dr. Dino Fellugas General Introduction to Postmodernism, Roland Barthes, in his work The Death of the Author, argues which of the following points ?
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A. The modern writer (scriptor) is born simultaneously with his text.

B. Once the Author is gone, the claim to decipher a text is quite simple.

C. A text never consists of multiple writings, it is always the product of a monolithic culture.

D. Both A and B

27. Which of the following statements best describes the British East India Company ?
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A. The British East India Company was originally a group of London businessmen engaged in importing spices from South Asia.

B. The British East India Company first entered South Asia as importers of British Tea.

C. The British East India Company was essentially a covert British army.

D. Both A and B

28. According to Dr. Dino Fellugas General Introduction to Postmodernism, what is the meaning of the term simulacra ?
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A. A stable referent to a knowable original cultural artifact

B. A basic affirmation of everyday reality

C. Something that replaces reality with its representation

D. An exact imitation of the material world

29. The term Lost Generation can be applied to which of the following groups ?
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A. A and B only

B. A group of self-imposed American expatriates living in Paris that included Ernest Hemingway, Hart Crane, and Henry Miller

C. A group of artists and writers who were deeply marked by the traumas of World War I

D. Any American in self-exile in Europe to avoid fighting in World War I

30. According to Max Simon Nordau in his work Degeneration, which of the following best describes the term Fin de Sicle ?
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A. A confession and a complaint

B. All of the above

C. The impotent despair of a sick man, who feels himself dying by inches in the midst of an eternally living nature blooming insolently forever

D. A term that means nothing except for the signification given to it by the user

31. Which of the following is NOT a characteristic of Modernism ?
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A. A radical project of experimentation with literary and artistic form

B. A belief in the power of the natural world to communicate transcendent truth

C. The use of irony and parody

D. Both A and B

33. Which novelist is NOT commonly thought of as producing Post-Colonial work ?
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A. Arundhati Roy

B. Seamus Heaney

C. Vladimir Nabokov

D. Salman Rushdie

35. According to Dr. Dino Fellugas module on Freud, Sigmund Freuds work on transference and trauma argues which of the following points ?
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A. Most victims of trauma do not exhibit the compulsion of the human psyche to repeat traumatic events over and over again.

B. Talk therapy will not help cure ones psychological neuroses concerning past trauma.

C. There is an undeniable tension between the death-instinct and the sexual instincts.

D. Repetition-compulsion does not help to come to terms with ones own mortality.

36. What is Post-Modernism ?
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A. A term used to describe contemporary cultural production

B. An attempt to break down the barriers between high and low culture

C. All of the above

D. A literary movement concerned with extreme self-reflexivity

38. Which of the following artists was NOT influenced by Surrealism ?
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A. Salvador Dal

B. Marcel Duchamp

C. Paul Gauguin

D. Giorgio de Chirico

41. T.S. Eliot considered which of the following one of the greatest short stories ever written ?
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A. The Heart of Darkness

B. To the Lighthouse

C. The Dead

D. The Surrealist Manifesto

42. Why does the Flneur begin to disappear as a Parisian phenomenon ?
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A. Because of the advent of arcade projects

B. Because of the increasing prominence of department stores in Paris

C. Because they began to purchase products as they walked the urbanscape

D. Because they were threatened by police with jail

44. E.M. Forster wrote which of the following novels ?
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A. Daniel Deronda

B. Pale Fire

C. A Passage to India

D. On the Road

46. Siegfried Sassoons poem To Victory is concerned primarily with which of the following themes ?
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A. His death and escape from suffering.

B. His ability to finally kill an enemy soldier

C. His safe return home

D. The defeat of the Germans

47. Who wrote the collection of poems entitled The Wind Among the Reeds ?
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A. W.B. Yeats

B. Charles Baudelaire

C. Jorge Luis Borges

D. Mario Vargas Llosa

48. According to Walter Benjamin in The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, which of the following is true ?
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A. Even the most perfect reproduction of a work of art is lacking in one element: its presence in time and space, its unique existence at the place where it happens to be.

B. The feeling of strangeness that overcomes the actor before the camera, as Pirandello describes it, is basically of the same kind as the estrangement felt before ones own image in the mirror.

C. All art work, even mass produced art, clearly links to an original referent that has a stable and knowable meaning.

D. Both A and B
49. What is Mimesis ?
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A. It is a philosophical term which means imitation or mimicry.

B. A and C only

C. It is a critical term, which describes the act of expression and the presentation of self-identity, theorized by academics, such as Erich Auerbach.

D. It is a philosophical and critical term meaning otherness.

50. Which of the following is true of Arthur Rimbauds poem Eternity ?
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A. It ends with the lines: Eternity./It is the sea run off/ With the sun.

B. The poem speaks of the necessity of seeking human approval and communal acceptance.

C. It begins with the lines: I kissed the dawn of summer.

D. It suggests that the quest for knowledge and enlightenment is deeply satisfying.