MIDDLE AGES
1. Which people began their invasion and conquest of southwestern Britain around 450?
a) the Normans
b) the Geats
c) the Celts
d) the Anglo-Saxons
e) the Danes
2. Words from which language began to enter English vocabulary around the time of the Norman Conquest in 1066?
a) French
b) Norwegian
c) Spanish
d) Hungarian
e) Danish
3. Which hero made his earliest appearance in Celtic literature before becoming a staple subject in French, English, and German literatures?
a) Beowulf
b) Arthur
c) Caedmon
d) Augustine of Canterbury
e) Alfred
4. Toward the close of which century did English replace French as the language of conducting business in Parliament and in court of law?
a) tenth
b) eleventh
c) twelfth
d) thirteenth
e) fourteenth
5. Which king began a war to enforce his claims to the throne of France in 1336?
a) Henry II
b) Henry III
c) Henry V
d) Louis XIV
e) Edward III
6. Who would be called the English Homer and father of English poetry?
a) Bede
b) Sir Thomas Malory
c) Geoffrey Chaucer
d) Caedmon
e) John Gower
7. What was vellum?
a) parchment made of animal skin
b) the service owed to a lord by his peasants ("villeins")
c) unrhymed iambic pentameter
d) an unbreakable oath of fealty
e) a prized ink used in the illumination of prestigious manuscripts
8. Only a small proportion of medieval books survive, large numbers having been destroyed in:
a) the Anglo-Saxon Conquest beginning in the 1450s.
b) the Norman Conquest of 1066.
c) the Peasant Uprising of 1381.
d) the Dissolution of the Monasteries in the 1530s.
e) the wave of contempt for manuscripts that followed the beginning of printing in 1476.
9. What is the first extended written specimen of Old English?
a) Boethius's Consolidation of Philosophy
b) Saint Jerome's translation of the Bible
c) Malory's Morte Darthur
d) Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People
e) a code of laws promulgated by King Ethelbert
10. Who was the first English Christian king?
a) Alfred
b) Richard III
c) Richard II
d) Henry II
e) Ethelbert
11. In Anglo-Saxon heroic poetry, what is the fate of those who fail to observe the sacred duty of blood vengeance?
a) banishment to Asia
b) everlasting shame
c) conversion to Christianity
d) mild melancholia
e) being buried alive
12. Christian writers like the Beowulf poet looked back on their pagan ancestors with:
a) nostalgia and ill-concealed envy.
b) bewilderment and visceral loathing.
c) admiration and elegiac sympathy.
d) bigotry and shallow triumphalism.
e) the deepest reluctance.
13. The use of "whale-road"for sea and "life-house"for body are examples of what literary technique, popular in Old English poetry?
a) symbolism
b) simile
c) metonymy
d) kenning
e) appositive expression
14. Which of the following statements is not an accurate description of Old English poetry?
a) Romantic love is a guiding principle of moral conduct.
b) Its formal and dignified use of speech was distant from everyday use of language.
c) Irony is a mode of perception, as much as it was a figure of speech.
d) Christian and pagan ideals are sometimes mixed.
e) Its idiom remained remarkably uniform for nearly three centuries.
15. Which of the following best describes litote, a favorite rhetorical device in Old English poetry?
a) embellishment at the service of Christian doctrine
b) repetition of parallel syntactic structures
c) ironic understatement
d) stress on every third diphthong
e) a compound of two words in place of a single word
16. How did Henry II, the first of England's Plantagenet kings, acquire vast provinces in southern France?
a) the Battle of Hastings
b) Saint Patrick's mission
c) the Fourth Lateran Council
d) the execution of William Sawtre
e) his marriage to Eleanor of Aquitaine
17. Which of the following languages did not coexist in Anglo-Norman England?
a) Latin
b) Dutch
c) French
d) Celtic
e) English
18. Which twelfth-century poet or poets were indebted to Breton storytellers for their narratives?
a) Geoffrey Chaucer
b) Marie de France
c) Chrétien de Troyes
d) a and c only
e) b and c only
19. To what did the word the roman, from which the genre of "romance"emerged, initially apply?
a) a work derived from a Latin text of the Roman Empire
b) a story about love and adventure
c) a Roman official
d) a work written in the French vernacular
e) a series of short stories
20. Popular English adaptations of romances appealed primarily to
a) the royal family and upper orders of the nobility
b) the lower orders of the nobility
c) agricultural laborers
d) the clergy
e) the Welsh
21. What is the climax of Geoffrey of Monmouth's The History of the Kings of Britain?
a) the reign of King Arthur
b) the coronation of Henry II
c) King John's seal of the Magna Carta
d) the marriage of Henry II to Eleanor of Aquitaine
e) the defeat of the French by Henry V
22. Ancrene Riwle is a manual of instruction for
a) courtiers entering the service of Richard II
b) translators of French romances
c) women who have chosen to live as religious recluses
d) knights preparing for their first tournament
e) witch-hunters and exorcists
23. The styles of The Owl and the Nightingale and Ancrene Riwle show what about the poetry and prose written around the year 1200?
a) They were written for sophisticated and well-educated readers.
b) Writing continued to benefit only readers fluent in Latin and French.
c) Their readers' primary language was English.
d) a and c only
e) a and b only
24. In addition to Geoffrey Chaucer and William Langland, the "flowering"of Middle English literature is evident in the works of which of the following writers?
a) Geoffrey of Monmouth
b) the Gawain poet
c) the Beowulf poet
d) Chrétien de Troyes
e) Marie de France
25. Why did the rebels of 1381 target the church, beheading the archbishop of Canterbury?
a) Their leaders were Lollards, advocating radical religious reform.
b) The common people were still essentially pagan.
c) They believed that writing, a skill largely confined to the clergy, was a form of black magic.
d) The church was among the greatest of oppressive landowners.
e) a and c only
26. Which influential medieval text purported to reveal the secrets of the afterlife?
a) Dante's Divine Comedy
b) Boccaccio's Decameron
c) The Dream of the Rood
d) Chaucer's Legend of Good Women
e) Gower's Confessio Amantis
27. Who is the author of Piers Plowman?
a) Sir Thomas Malory
b) Margery Kempe
c) Geoffrey Chaucer
d) William Langland
e) Geoffrey of Monmouth
28. What event resulted from the premature death of Henry V?
a) the Battle of Agincourt
b) the Battle of Hastings
c) the Norman Conquest
d) the Black Death
e) the War of the Roses
29. Which literary form, developed in the fifteenth century, personified vices and virtues?
a) the short story
b) the heroic epic
c) the morality play
d) the romance
e) the limerick
30. Which of the following statements about Julian of Norwich is true?
a) She sought unsuccessfully to restore classical paganism.
b) She was a virgin martyr.
c) She is the first known woman writer in the English vernacular.
d) She made pilgrimages to Jerusalem, Rome, and Santiago.
e) She probably never met Margery Kempe.
31. Which of the following authors is considered a devotee to chivalry, as it is personified in Sir Lancelot?
a) Julian of Norwich
b) Margery Kempe
c) William Langland
d) Sir Thomas Malory
e) Geoffrey Chaucer
- d) the Anglo-Saxons
- a) French
- b) Arthur
- e) fourteenth
- e) Edward III
- c) Geoffrey Chaucer
- a) parchment made of animal skin
- d) the Dissolution of the Monasteries in the 1530s.
- e) a code of laws promulgated by King Ethelbert
- e) Ethelbert
- b) everlasting shame
- c) admiration and elegiac sympathy.
- d) kenning
- a) Romantic love is a guiding principle of moral conduct.
- c) ironic understatement
- e) his marriage to Eleanor of Aquitaine
- b) Dutch
- e) b and c only
- d) a work written in the French vernacular
- d) the clergy
- a) the reign of King Arthur
- c) women who have chosen to live as religious recluses
- d) a and c only
- b) the Gawain poet
- d) The church was among the greatest of oppressive landowners.
- a) Dante's Divine Comedy
- d) William Langland
- e) the War of the Roses
- c) the morality play
- c) She is the first known woman writer in the English vernacular.
- d) Sir Thomas Malory