Samuel Johnson
In his views on the death of Cordelia in King Lear, which is the ground NOT specifically cited by Samuel Johnson ?
(1) It is contrary to the natural ideas of justice.
(2) It is contrary to neoplatonic idea of decorum.
(3) It is contrary to the hope of the reader.
(4) It is contrary to the faith of chronicles.
Answer: 2
Who said of the blank verse, quoting an unnamed critic, that it is -…verse only to the eye”, adding further that it “has neither the easiness of prose, nor the melody of numbers”?
1. John Dryden
2. Alexander Pope
3. Samuel Taylor Coleridge
4. Samuel Johnson
Answer: 4
In imitation of which classical poet did Samuel Johnson write his London and The Vanity of Human Wishes?
1. Horace
2. Homer
3. Juvenal
4. Tasso
Answer: 3
Samuel Johnson has the following to say about an English poet:
“These images are marked by glittering accumulations of ungraceful ornaments : they strike, rather than please. The images are magnified by affectation : the language is labored into harshness. The mind of the writer seems to work with unnatural violence -‘Double, double, toil and trouble’. He has a kind of strutting dignity, and is tall by walking on tiptoe. His art and his struggle are too visible, and there is too little appearance of ease and nature.”
Identify the poet.
1. Thomas Gray
2. John Dryden
3. John Milton
4. Thomas Wyatt
Answer: 1
Samuel Johnson’s Lives of the English Poets combines the following except
(1) analytical criticism
(2) literary history
(3) personal biography
(4) Socratic dialogue
Answer: 4
Samuel Johnson denounced the metaphysical poets saying,
“About the beginning of the seventeenth century appeared a race of writers that may be termed the metaphysical poets”. In the biography of which of the following poets in his Lives of Poets did Johnson make this remark ?
(1) John Dryden
(2) Thomas Parnell
(3) Abraham Cowley
(4) Alexander Pope
Answer: 3
Shakespeare famously neglects to observe Aristotle’s rules concerning the three dramatic unities, and Samuel Johnson undertakes to defend Shakespeare from these criticisms in his Preface to Shakespeare. Which of the Aristotelian dramatic unities does Johnson believe Shakespeare to observe most successfully?
(1) Time
(2) Place
(3) Action
(4) Johnson does not feel that the Aristotelian dramatic unities are important
Answer: 3
Samuel Johnson wrote London in imitation of ……………
(1) Horace
(2) Ovid
(3) Juvenal
(4) Moschus
Answer: 3
Samuel Johnson’s use of the term “metaphysical” in a piece of criticism was ………….
(1) approving
(2) disapproving
(3) positive
(4) accidental
Answer: 2
Samuel Johnson’s “Dissertation upon Poetry” is part of which of his following works?
(1) the final section of his preface to Shakespeare
(2) a chapter of his novel Rasselas
(3) the epilogue of his Lives of Poets
(4) one of his Rambler essays
Answer: 2
Samuel Johnson’s “Dissertation upon Poetry” is part of which of his following works?
(1) the final section of his preface to Shakespeare
(2) a chapter of his novel Rasselas
(3) the epilogue of his Lives of Poets
(4) one of his Rambler essays
Answer: 2
Who, among the following is credited with the making of the first authoritative Dictionary of the English Language?
(A) Bishop Berkeley
(B) Samuel Johnson
(C) Edmund Burke
(D) Horace Walpole
Answer: (B)
