The Romantic period is usually dated from the 1798 publication of:

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

The Shakespearean sonnet is made up of:

Three quatrains and a closing couplet

English Literature Quiz

CPET PG English Literature: Exam Guide and Syllabus Survey

The Common Post Graduate Entrance Test, or CPET, is the entrance test used in Odisha to admit students to postgraduate programmes in the state universities, conducted through the Samartha portal for the Department of Higher Education. For the English Literature paper it is a single objective test set at bachelor's-degree level, so the way to prepare is to revise the whole span of English literary history rather than a few set texts. These notes give the exam frame and then a compact chronological survey of English literature from Old English to the modern period, with the movements, authors and key works most likely to be tested, plus the critical terms that carry easy marks. Confirm the exact pattern in the current CPET information brochure before your final revision. A 20-question practice set follows.

The Exam

CPET is a single-paper entrance test taken for admission to a specific postgraduate programme, here the Master of Arts in English. The paper is subject-specific and pitched at the level of a bachelor's degree in English, so it rewards broad, accurate coverage of the standard literary history rather than deep study of a handful of texts.

Because arrangements can change from year to year, treat the following as the general shape and confirm the numbers in the official CPET brochure on the Samartha portal for your admission year.

Mode: a single objective, multiple-choice paper, commonly answered on an OMR sheet.
Typical scale: about 100 multiple-choice questions carrying 100 marks, with a duration in the region of 80 minutes.
Marking: CPET has generally not applied negative marking, so every question should be attempted; confirm this in the current brochure.
Level: the questions test the undergraduate English literature syllabus: literary periods, major authors and works, genres and forms, literary terms, and basic criticism.
Because there is a large number of questions in a short time, speed of recall matters; the facts below are the kind that can be answered in seconds once learned.
Preparation strategy: revise by period, fixing for each period the historical span, three or four representative authors, their signature works, and the term the period is known by.

From Old English to the Renaissance

The early periods are tested mainly by dates and by matching an author or work to its period. Learn the boundaries and the landmark texts.

Old English or Anglo-Saxon period (about 450 to 1066): heroic and elegiac verse. Beowulf is the great epic; Caedmon and Cynewulf are named poets; the verse is alliterative and unrhymed.
Middle English period (1066 to about 1500): after the Norman Conquest, French and Latin dominate, then English returns. Geoffrey Chaucer, the father of English poetry, writes The Canterbury Tales; William Langland writes Piers Plowman; the anonymous Gawain poet writes Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.
The Renaissance and the Elizabethan age (about 1500 to 1660): the rebirth of classical learning. Wyatt and Surrey bring the sonnet into English; Edmund Spenser writes The Faerie Queene; Christopher Marlowe writes Doctor Faustus; William Shakespeare writes his plays and 154 sonnets; Ben Jonson writes comedies of humours; Francis Bacon writes his essays.
The metaphysical poets, led by John Donne, use the conceit, a far-fetched extended comparison; the Cavalier poets write polished court lyrics.
John Milton, the great Puritan poet, writes the epic Paradise Lost, published in 1667.
Dramatic terms to know: tragedy, comedy, the three unities, the soliloquy, the aside and dramatic irony, all of which appear in Shakespeare.

From the Restoration to the Romantics

The long eighteenth century and the Romantic revolt against it are examination favourites, because each has a clear label and a small cast of major figures.

The Restoration and the Neoclassical or Augustan age (1660 to about 1798): reason, order and satire. John Dryden leads the Restoration; Alexander Pope perfects the heroic couplet in The Rape of the Lock; Jonathan Swift writes the satire Gulliver's Travels; Samuel Johnson compiles his Dictionary of 1755.
The rise of the novel in the eighteenth century: Daniel Defoe (Robinson Crusoe), Samuel Richardson (Pamela), Henry Fielding (Tom Jones) and Laurence Sterne (Tristram Shandy).
The Romantic period (about 1798 to 1832): imagination, nature and feeling in revolt against neoclassical reason. It is usually dated from the Lyrical Ballads of 1798 by Wordsworth and Coleridge.
The older Romantics: William Wordsworth, the poet of nature, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, author of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. The younger Romantics: Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley (Ode to the West Wind) and John Keats (the great odes).
The Romantic essayists Charles Lamb and William Hazlitt, and the novelists Sir Walter Scott and Jane Austen (Pride and Prejudice), belong to the same years.
Wordsworth's definition of poetry as the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings, from the Preface to Lyrical Ballads, is a standard quotation.

The Victorian and Modern Periods

The last two great periods carry many questions, because they contain the most-read novels and the landmark works of modern poetry and drama.

The Victorian period (1832 to 1901): the age of the novel and of doubt. Poets: Alfred Tennyson (In Memoriam), Robert Browning (the dramatic monologue) and Matthew Arnold (Dover Beach). Novelists: Charles Dickens, the Bronte sisters, George Eliot and Thomas Hardy. Oscar Wilde leads the aesthetic movement.
The modern period (about 1901 to 1945): experiment and fragmentation after the First World War. Poetry: W. B. Yeats, T. S. Eliot (The Waste Land, 1922) and W. H. Auden. Fiction: Joseph Conrad, D. H. Lawrence, James Joyce (Ulysses, 1922) and Virginia Woolf, who use the stream-of-consciousness technique.
Modern drama: George Bernard Shaw writes plays of ideas; the Irish dramatic revival produces J. M. Synge.
The post-war and contemporary period: the Theatre of the Absurd (Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot), the Angry Young Men (John Osborne's Look Back in Anger, 1956), and postcolonial and postmodern writing.
Literary criticism and theory, often tested: Aristotle's terms (mimesis, catharsis, hamartia); T. S. Eliot's objective correlative; and the twentieth-century schools of New Criticism, structuralism, feminism and postcolonialism.
Indian writing in English also appears: Rabindranath Tagore (Nobel Prize, 1913), the trio of Mulk Raj Anand, R. K. Narayan and Raja Rao, and later Salman Rushdie and Arundhati Roy.

Key Terms

Sonnet: A fourteen-line lyric poem in iambic pentameter. The Petrarchan (Italian) form divides into an octave and a sestet; the Shakespearean (English) form has three quatrains and a closing couplet.
Heroic couplet: A pair of rhymed lines in iambic pentameter, perfected by Dryden and Pope and the dominant verse form of the Augustan age.
Stream of consciousness: A narrative technique that presents the continuous, unedited flow of a character's thoughts, associated with the modernist fiction of James Joyce and Virginia Woolf.
Dramatic monologue: A poem in which a single speaker, not the poet, addresses a silent listener and unintentionally reveals character, perfected by Robert Browning in poems such as My Last Duchess.

Practice Quiz — 20 Questions

correct out of 20

Beowulf belongs to which period of English literature?
- A.Middle English
- B.Old English
- C.Renaissance
- D.Romantic
B. Old English — Beowulf is the great epic of the Old English or Anglo-Saxon period.
The father of English poetry, author of The Canterbury Tales, is:
- A.William Langland
- B.Geoffrey Chaucer
- C.John Gower
- D.Thomas Malory
B. Geoffrey Chaucer — Chaucer, of the Middle English period, is called the father of English poetry.
The Faerie Queene was written by:
- A.Edmund Spenser
- B.Christopher Marlowe
- C.Philip Sidney
- D.Ben Jonson
A. Edmund Spenser — Edmund Spenser wrote the allegorical epic The Faerie Queene in the Elizabethan age.
Paradise Lost, the great English epic published in 1667, is by:
- A.John Dryden
- B.John Milton
- C.John Donne
- D.John Bunyan
B. John Milton — John Milton wrote Paradise Lost; its first edition of 1667 had ten books.
The metaphysical poets are led by:
- A.John Donne
- B.George Herbert
- C.Andrew Marvell
- D.Henry Vaughan
A. John Donne — John Donne is regarded as the head of the metaphysical school, known for the conceit.
The heroic couplet was perfected in the Augustan age by Dryden and:
- A.Swift
- B.Pope
- C.Johnson
- D.Defoe
B. Pope — Alexander Pope perfected the heroic couplet, as in The Rape of the Lock.
Gulliver's Travels is a satire by:
- A.Daniel Defoe
- B.Jonathan Swift
- C.Henry Fielding
- D.Laurence Sterne
B. Jonathan Swift — Jonathan Swift wrote the satire Gulliver's Travels.
The Romantic period is usually dated from the 1798 publication of:
- A.The Prelude
- B.Lyrical Ballads
- C.Songs of Innocence
- D.The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
B. Lyrical Ballads — Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, 1798, conventionally opens the Romantic age.
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner was written by:
- A.William Wordsworth
- B.Samuel Taylor Coleridge
- C.Lord Byron
- D.John Keats
B. Samuel Taylor Coleridge — Coleridge wrote The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, included in Lyrical Ballads.
Pride and Prejudice is a novel by:
- A.Charlotte Bronte
- B.Jane Austen
- C.George Eliot
- D.Mary Shelley
B. Jane Austen — Jane Austen wrote Pride and Prejudice, published in 1813.
The dramatic monologue as a poetic form is chiefly associated with:
- A.Alfred Tennyson
- B.Robert Browning
- C.Matthew Arnold
- D.Dante Gabriel Rossetti
B. Robert Browning — Robert Browning perfected the dramatic monologue, as in My Last Duchess.
Which novelist is a leading figure of the Victorian period?
- A.Daniel Defoe
- B.Charles Dickens
- C.Henry Fielding
- D.Joseph Conrad
B. Charles Dickens — Charles Dickens is one of the central novelists of the Victorian age.
The Waste Land, a landmark of modern poetry published in 1922, is by:
- A.W. B. Yeats
- B.T. S. Eliot
- C.W. H. Auden
- D.Ezra Pound
B. T. S. Eliot — T. S. Eliot published The Waste Land in 1922, the same year as Joyce's Ulysses.
The stream-of-consciousness technique is associated with James Joyce and:
- A.Thomas Hardy
- B.Virginia Woolf
- C.George Eliot
- D.Rudyard Kipling
B. Virginia Woolf — Virginia Woolf and James Joyce are the great modernist users of stream of consciousness.
Waiting for Godot, a key play of the Theatre of the Absurd, is by:
- A.Harold Pinter
- B.Samuel Beckett
- C.John Osborne
- D.Tom Stoppard
B. Samuel Beckett — Samuel Beckett wrote Waiting for Godot.
The play that gave rise to the phrase Angry Young Men is:
- A.Look Back in Anger
- B.The Birthday Party
- C.Murder in the Cathedral
- D.Saint Joan
A. Look Back in Anger — John Osborne's Look Back in Anger, staged in 1956, launched the Angry Young Men.
The terms mimesis, catharsis and hamartia come from the criticism of:
- A.Horace
- B.Longinus
- C.Aristotle
- D.Plato
C. Aristotle — These terms are from Aristotle's Poetics.
The term objective correlative was coined by:
- A.I. A. Richards
- B.T. S. Eliot
- C.Matthew Arnold
- D.F. R. Leavis
B. T. S. Eliot — T. S. Eliot introduced the objective correlative in his essay Hamlet and His Problems.
Which Indian writer in English won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913?
- A.R. K. Narayan
- B.Rabindranath Tagore
- C.Mulk Raj Anand
- D.Sri Aurobindo
B. Rabindranath Tagore — Rabindranath Tagore won the Nobel Prize in 1913, chiefly for Gitanjali.
The Shakespearean sonnet is made up of:
- A.An octave and a sestet
- B.Three quatrains and a closing couplet
- C.Two tercets and an octave
- D.Fourteen unrhymed lines
B. Three quatrains and a closing couplet — The English or Shakespearean sonnet has three quatrains followed by a rhyming couplet.

References

Odisha Department of Higher Education, CPET admission portal (Samartha) — https://pg.samsodisha.gov.in/
The Norton Anthology of English Literature — https://wwnorton.com/books/9780393603026
M. H. Abrams and Geoffrey Galt Harpham, A Glossary of Literary Terms — https://www.cengage.com/
Andrew Sanders, The Short Oxford History of English Literature — https://global.oup.com/
Encyclopaedia Britannica, English literature — https://www.britannica.com/art/English-literature