Brief-2016
a. What is catharsis?
Ans: Catharsis is the pity and fear from the audience for the tragic character.
b. What is the unity of time?
Ans. The unity of time means that the action of a tragedy should remain confined within twenty four hours.
e. What is hamartia?
Ans: Hamartia is the fatal flaw of the tragic character.
d. What are the constituents of a tragedy?
Ans: Six constituents,
- plot
- character
- Diction
- Through
- Spectacle and
- Song or Music.
e. How does Sidney prove that poets are not liars?
Ans: The poet does not affirm anything he says what may be or should be. So the question of lying does not arise at all.
f. Who is Sophocles?
Ans: Sophocles is one of the most famous writers of tragedy in ancient Greece.
g. What is Dr. Johnson’s opinion about Shakespeare’s dramas?
Ans: According to Dr. Johnson, Shakespeare has neither true tragedy nor true comedy but a special kind of drama known as tragi-comedy.
h. To what school of criticism does Dr. Johnson belong?
Ans: Dr. Johnson belongs to the neo-classical school of criticism.
i. What are the primary passions of human life?
Ans: The primary passions of human life are love, hate, desire, joy, wonder and sorrow.
j. What is the main difference between a poet and a common man?
Ans: The main difference between a poet and a common man according to Wordsworth, is not in nature but in degree. A poet is a man who has greater sensibility, imagination, knowledge of human nature, comprehensiveness, and zest for life and power of communication than a common man.
k. What is Coleridge’s idea of “fancy”?
Ans: According to Coleridge, fancy is indeed no other than a mode of memory emancipated from the order of time and space.
l. What does Aristotle mean by imitation?
Ans: By the term ‘imitation, Aristotle means the process of creation by which the poet drawing his material from the phenomenal world, makes something new out of it.
Brief-2017
a. What, according to Aristotle, is the most important element of tragedy?
Ans: Plot
b. What according to Sidney, is the aim of poetry?
Ans: To teach and to delight.
c. Who is Stephen Gosson?
Ans: Stephen Gosson is an English satirist who attacked poetry in his book “The School of Abuse”.
d. What is an epic?
Ans: An epic is a long narrative poem that tells in grand style the history and aspirations of a national hero.
e. Who coined the expression “Willing suspension of disbelief”?
Ans: Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
f. What is “The Preface to Shakespeare”?
Ans: “The Preface to Shakespeare” by Samuel Johnson is a critical work on Shakespearean dramas.
g. How does Wordsworth define a poet?
Ans: According to Wordsworth, a poet is a man speaking to men.
h. How many stages are there in Wordsworth’s poetic process?
Ans: Four.
i. What is meant by the term “Vates”?
Ans: The term “Vates” means a diviner, foreseer or prophet.
j. Why does Johnson call Shakespeare “Poet of Nature”?
Aus: Because he faithfully represents human nature in his plays.
k. What is Stasimon?
Ans: A stasimon is a choral song without anapaests or trochees.
l. How does Coleridge define “Imagination”?
Ans: Imagination is an act of human mind in which different images are fused and unified to create something new.
Brief-2018
a. What is catharsis?
Ans: Catharsis is the pity and fear from the audience for the tragic character.
b. What does Aristotle mean by imitation?
Ans: By the term ‘imitation, Aristotle means the process of creation by which the poet drawing his material from the phenomenal world, makes something new out of it.
c. What is Dr. Johnson’s opinion about Shakespeare’s dramas”?
Ans: According to Dr. Johnson, Shakespeare has neither true tragedy nor true comedy but a special kind of drama known as tragi-comedy.
d. What is hamartia?
Ans: Fatal flaw of the tragic character.
e. What are the constituents of a tragedy?
Ans: Six constituents,
- Plot
- Character
- Diction
- Through
- Spectacle and
- Song or Music.
f. What do you mean by the unity of action”?
Ans: The unity of action means that a play should follow a single line of action without incorporating any subplot.
g. What are the major elements of a tragedy?
Ans: The major elements of a tragedy are plot, character, thought, diction, music and spectacle.
h. How does Sidney prove that poets are not liars?
Ans: The poet does not affirm anything he says what may be or should be. So the question of lying does not arise at all.
i. What is mimesis?
Ans: Mimesis is a Greek word that means imitation.
j. How does Coleridge define a poem?
Ans: According to Coleridge, a poem is that species of composition which is opposed to the works of science by proposing for its immediate object pleasure not truth.
k. What is poetic diction?
Ans: Poetic diction is the term used to refer to the linguistic style, the vocabulary and the metaphors used in the writing of poetry.
l. What is Coleridge’s idea of fancy?
Ans: According to Coleridge, fancy is indeed no other than a mode of memory emancipated from the order of time and space.
Brief-2019
a. What does Aristotle mean by epic?
Ans: According to Aristotle, an epic is the representation of a heroic action in the most elegant style in which the mind is inspired with a desire to be worthy.
b. Who, according to Wordsworth, is a poet?
Ans: According to Wordsworth, a poet is a man speaking to men, endowed with more lively sensibility.
c. What is Sydney’s notion about tragi-comedy?
Ans: Sydney thinks that it is neither right comedy nor true tragedy.
d. What is the first fault of Shakespeare that Dr. Johnson mentioned in his “The Preface to Shakespeare”?
Ans: Shakespeare, according to Dr.Johnson, sacrifices virtue to convenience and is much more careful to please that to instruct.
e. What is the most important element of a tragedy?
Ans: Plot.
f. What is “Willing Suspension of Disbelief?
Ans: “Willing Suspension of Disbelief” means a willingness to suspend one’s critical faculties and believe the unbelievable.
g. What do you mean by Heroic couplet?
Ans: Heroic couplet is a pair of poetical lines each of which has five iambic feet and ends with the same sound.
h. What is organic unity?
Ans: A coherent relation between the parts and the whole of a writing in prose or in poetry is called organic unity.
i. Who was Seneca?
Ans: Seneca was a Roman writer and philosopher.
j. What, according to Aristotle, is the common feature of all art?
Ans: Imitation is the common feature of all art according to Aristotle.
k. What is Dr Johnson’s allegation about the plots of Shakespeare’s dramas?
Ans: Dr. Johnson alleges that Shakespeare’s plots are loosely connected. It is partly true but he is careful
about the main parts of the story.
l. How does Sydney differentiate between ‘laughter” and “delight”?
Ans: According to Sydney, there can be delight without laughter and it is not the cause of laughter although laughter may sometimes accompany delight.
Brief-2020
a. What is “touchstone”?
Ans: Touchstone is a stone used to judge the purity of gold.
b. Who remarked that Chaucer’s poetry had “gold dew drops of speech”?
Ans: Matthew Arnold remarked that Chaucer’s poetry had “gold dew drops of speech”.
c. What is poetic diction?
Ans: Poetic diction is the term used to refer to the linguistic style, the vocabulary and the metaphors used in the writing of poetry.
d. Who was Stephen Gosson?
Ans: Stephen Gosson is an English satirist who attacked poetry in his book “The School of Abuse”.
e. To whom does Sidney compare the haters of poetry?
Ans: Sidney compares the haters of poetry to vipers who kill their parents just on birth and to the hedge- hags who first drive away their shelter.
f. What is hymn?
Ans: Hymn is a religious song or poem for the praise of God.
g. What is catharsis?
Ans: Pity and fear from the audience for the tragic character.
h. Why did Dr. Johnson wrote The Preface to Shakespeare?
Ans: To introduce Shakespeare’s dramas edited by him in 1765 to the reader Johnson wrote this Preface.
i. What type of poet, according to Dr. Johnson, is Shakespeare, above all?
Ans: Shakespeare is above all writers, at least above all modern writers, the poet of nature and the poet.
j. What type of critic is Dr. Johnson?
Ans: Dr. Johnson, the neo-classical scholar, is one of the renowned critics of Shakespeare.
k. What is “Lyrical Ballads”?
Ans: “Lyrical Ballads” is a collection of poems written by Wordsworth and Coleridge jointly opposed against the contemporary taste and manners.
l. What is fancy?
Ans: Fancy is a mode of memory emancipated from the order of time and space and it only combines images that it perceives with beautiful shapes in which they exist separately.
