Brief Questions Literature and Society
Published: Nov 06, 2025
Updated: Apr 17, 2026
Brief Questions: Literature and Society
- What responds comfortably to the undirected formula?
Ans: Certain major interests of the writer himself respond comfortably to the undirected formula.
- What did the writer have no difficulty in?
Ans: He had no difficulty in deciding what suited him best to do.
- What does Mr. Eliot’s early prose emphasize?
Ans: It emphasizes not only individual talent but also external influences and conditions.
- Who formulated the idea of Tradition?
Ans: T. S. Eliot formulated the idea of Tradition.
- Where did the Augustan tradition originate?
Ans: It originated in the great changes of civilization in the late seventeenth century that emphasized social order and good form.
- What was closely associated with the code of Good Form in the Augustan Age?
Ans: The essential modes and idioms of Augustan culture were closely linked with the code of Good Form.
- What was the Queen Anne period confident of?
Ans: It was confident of its flourishing cultural health and refinement.
- Whom does Leavis consider a genius in the late eighteenth century?
Ans: He considers William Blake a genius of that period.
- What did Blake essentially do?
Ans: He reversed the shift of emphasis from the social to the individual.
- What was the nature of Blake’s reversal?
Ans: It was the movement of stress from the social to the personal or individual.
- What did not make Blake self-sufficient?
Ans: The support of language and culture did not make him self-sufficient; he needed a deeper social support he lacked.
- What was Bunyan’s aim in The Pilgrim’s Progress?
Ans: His aim was to preach his Puritan religious ideals.
- What did Christian ask Faithful?
Ans: He asked Faithful whether he had heard any news about his neighbour Pliable.
- What did Faithful answer?
Ans: He answered that Pliable had fallen into the Slough of Despond.
- How did the Southern Appalachians acquire their culture?
Ans: Their culture, language, and manners were passed down through generations.
- What does Bunyan himself show?
Ans: He shows how popular culture could merge with literary culture at a high artistic level.
- How do Blake and Wordsworth differ?
Ans: Blake was interested in the people and their spirit, while Wordsworth focused on nature and the external world.
- What happened after Wordsworth’s death?
Ans: The Industrial Revolution destroyed traditional folk culture.
- What can only trained familiarity with literature bring?
Ans: It brings sensitivity to language and insight into the link between abstract thought and real experience.
- When will social and political thinking lose its power?
Ans: When it lacks the literary sensitivity to language and human experience.
- What are the “other things” present in literary history and criticism?
Ans: They are social influences, environments, and extra-literary conditions affecting art.
- What did the Romantic critical tradition stress?
Ans: It stressed inspiration and the power of individual genius.
- How does the Marxist approach to literature appear?
Ans: It appears unprofitable to Leavis.
- What is The Pilgrim’s Progress?
Ans: It is the greatest work of John Bunyan and the most widely read book in English.
- What should the poet be alert to?
Ans: He should realize that art never improves, though its material and the human mind evolve.
- Who wrote The Pilgrim’s Progress?
Ans: John Bunyan wrote The Pilgrim’s Progress.
- What did the Romantic poets emphasize, according to Leavis?
Ans: They emphasized inspiration and individual genius.
- What was Eliot’s early prose directed against?
Ans: It was directed against the Romantic tradition.
- What does Leavis call the Romantic critical tradition?
Ans: He calls it an atmosphere of the unformulated and vague.
- Whom does Leavis regard as a genius in the late eighteenth century?
Ans: He regards William Blake as a genius of that age.
- What is Marxist literature?
Ans: Literature based on Karl Marx’s economic theory is called Marxist literature.
Ans: He was an English preacher and author of The Pilgrim’s Progress (1678).
- Why does Leavis consider the phrase “The Romantic attitude” misleading?
Ans: Because it gives a vague and inaccurate idea of Romantic thought and criticism.