2023 Literature-in-English
- A limerick has
- A. ornate style, humour, irony and seven lines
- B. formal and elaborate style and humour
- C. humour, rhyme scheme and five lines
- D. a stinging climax, rhyme scheme, and five lines
- The process of creating characters and endowing them with certain attitude is ……
- A. Action
- B. Character
- C. Characterization
- D. Dramatis personae
- This question is based on BAT.
Read the excerpt and answer the question:
“Bat!
Creatures that hang themselves up like an old rag, to sleep, And disgustingly upside down.”
The theme of this excerpt is____
- A. All of the above
- B. the poet’s right to Individual choice
- C. the poet’s admiration of the beauty of nature
- D. the poet’s appalling remarks about the bird
- The writing convention in which the events in a narrative are scrambled as they come to the writer’s mind without any attempt to arrange them in orderly sequence is called
- A. psycho-consciousness styles
- B. narrator’s mind style
- C. shifting style
- D. stream of consciousness
- Using the name of one thing for something else with which it is closely associated in an instance is
- A. paradox
- B. parody
- C. parallelism
- D. metonymy
- Which of these is the oldest genre of literature?
- A. Aroma
- B. Poetry
- C. Drama
- D. Prose
- The tragic character is the person whose experiences arouse pity and
- A. sympathy
- B. terror
- C. horror
- D. frustration
- ‘As virtuous men pass mildly away,
And whisper to their souls, to go
Whilst some of their sad friends do say,
The breadth goes now, and some say, “No”.’
John Donne: A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning
The tone of this poem is generally
- A. conversational
- B. imaginative
- C. serious
- D. appreciative
- Cast in a play refers to
- A. three of the actors
- B. a few of the actors
- C. an exclusive social class in the play
- D. all the actors
- A panegyric poem is composed to
- A. condemn
- B. elaborate
- C. abuse
- D. praise
- Jibunoh was simply a difficult man. He was hated by all his neighbours and deserted by his relations. He was the first and only person to beat a policeman in the entire village. He also had ten cases instituted against him for either stealing or violating the rights of others. He had no regard for deanery or normal conduct. No lover of peace or order could be his friends. It is not surprising that his death elicited jubilation rather than mourning’
The passage above reveals that Jibunoh symbolizes
- A. insanity
- B. wickedness
- C. lawlessness
- D. isolation
- The part of a play when climax approaches is known as
- A. Catastasis
- B. Catharsis
- C. protasis
- D. Epitasis
- ‘And so Tom awoke and we rose in the dark
And got with our bags and our brushes to work
Though the morning was cold, Tom was happy and warm;
So if all do their duty they need not fear harm.‘
In the lines above, Tom is warm because he
- A. is working indoors
- B. is wearing warm clothes
- C. is doing his duty
- D. has just woken from sleep
- The term given to a type of incident or device which recurs frequently in Literature is
- A. concept
- B. myth
- C. ritual
- D. motif
- An extended fictional narrative which is realistic is known as a
- A. short story
- B. diary
- C. novella
- D. novel
- A Government Driver on His Retirement is a poem of thirty-three lines divided into _______ stanzas.
- A. six
- B. four
- C. three
- D. five
- This question is based on THE JOURNEY OF THE MAGI.
Read the excerpt and answer question
“And running away, and wanting their liquor and women,
And the night-fires going out, and the lack of shelters,
And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly”
The dominant device in this excerpt is ___
- A. metaphor
- B. synecdoche
- C. simile
- D. paradox
- The sides of a stage are called
- A. both sides
- B. the ways
- C. the wings
- D. the pits
- Be him English
Be him African
Be him Nigerian
The lines above are an example of
- A. epigram
- B. anaphora
- C. epitaph
- D. tautology
- When he gave me the bottle, and I opened it,
I was shocked by the odour that hit my nose:
I immediately corked it again, and spat on the floor..
Isidore Okpewho, The Last Duty.
The reaction in the passage above is that of
- A. anger
- B. protest
- C. rejection
- D. nausea
- A formal dignified speech or writing praising a person or a thing for past or present deeds is
- A. lampoon
- B. eulogy
- C. premiere
- D. anthology
- A character that is always against the interest of the protagonist is
- A. opposition
- B. heroine
- C. villain
- D. hero
- “…Rage is Chief
Rage drags rags after you, of Charity
Laughter, sweetness and light, Rage is thief
Enemy of equanimity”
The figure of speech dominant in these lines is _____
- A. apostrophe
- B. personification
- C. metaphor
- D. simile
- ‘… Not a few of us ended our application letter like this: ‘if you are kind enough to accomodate this humble application, Sir/Madam, I shall do my uttermost best to rendered you the greatest services which it is at my desposition to your best satisfactory. Yours obediently servant…’ yet without English, you had no education fit for a white collar job
Cameron Daodu: The Gab Boys
The tone of the passage above is
- A. Melancholic
- B. Ironic
- C. Harsh
- D. Derisive
- A trilogy is the
- A. set of three one-act drama written by related authors
- B. series of related stories divided into three equal parts
- C. sequence of three plays written by the same author
- D. collection of three poems of equal length
- Dramatis personae in a play refers to
- A. cast list
- B. list of characters
- C. portagonist and antagonist
- D. order of appearance
- This question is based on SECOND CLASS CITIZEN.
“She swallowed it all, just like a nasty pill.” The literary device employed here is
- A. alliteration
- B. metaphor
- C. simile
- D. apostrophe
- ‘My heart is a quiet drum, sometimes it flares like a parched thunder cracking through a damask sky it lifts me in its fired spectacle.’
-Cynthia James; Drumology
The imagery in the excerpt above is largely
- A. olfactory and visual
- B. auditory and visual
- C. tactile and auditory
- D. olfactory and tactile
- “She wanted to split herself. But she checked herself. ‘Get dressed,’ she said earnestly. ‘Get dressed and let’s go. You know I have a lot of things to do. And if we are going to meet again like this… ‘She slapped the bed, ‘then it won’t be here. It will be at the Samson and Delilah.'”–
Festus Iyayi; Violence
In the passage above, the speaker can be described as
- A. hungry
- B. domineering
- C. friendly
- D. treacherous
- This question is based on THE LION AND THE JEWEL.
The indication that Soyinka’s “The Lion and the Jewel” is culturally set is its use of_____
- A. dance and songs
- B. flashback.
- C. foreshadowing
- D. irony
- This question is based on THE LEADER AND THE LED.
” The hyena says the crown is made for him” in the above excerpt, the use of the word “crown ” is a good deployment of ____
- A. oxymoron
- B. imagery
- C. personification
- D. synedoche
- The exclusive right given to authors to protect their works from unlawful production is
- A. an authority to write
- B. a copyright
- C. an author’s right
- D. a constitutional provision
- The narrative style in which the hero tells his own story directly is the
- A. objective
- B. first-person
- C. subjective
- D. third-person
- Lineation refers to
- A. the arrangement of lines in verse form
- B. the grouping together of a number of units of rhythm
- C. the unit in the rhythmic structure of verse
- D. tracing family descent of poeple in verse
- The subject matter of a literary work is the
- A. theme
- B. plot
- C. structure
- D. setting
- A structural arrangement of unit of composition by which one element of equal importance with another is similarly placed is called
- A. repetition
- B. paradox
- C. refrain
- D. parallelism
- This question is based on CAGED BIRD.
“for the caged bird/sings of freedom.”,
The poetic device used in this expression is____
- A. metaphor
- B. irony
- C. hyperbole
- D. paradox
- ‘Will college make you a better Olokun priest?
Will it make you serve our ancestors better?
Look at me. An able-bodied, strong-hearted priest of Olokun.
Did I go to college?
Gracy Osifo:Dizzy Angel
The literary device used in the passage above is
- A. onomatopoeia
- B. parallelism
- C. metaphor
- D. simile
- This question is based on RAIDER OF THE TREASURE TROVE.
“To fly flags of joy” Two figures of speech used here are
- A. alliteration and personification
- B. onomatopoeia and simile
- C. metaphor and alliteration
- D. simile and personification
- This question is based on THE SONG OF THE WOMEN OF MY LAND.
Use the excerpt to answer this question
“they sang in the forlorn fields
about their lives; songs
of how they ploughed the terrain of their landscape
for memories of lyrics lost in the vast void of time,
in those days when a song beheld their lives;
when servitude cuffed the ankles of their soul,
and dereliction decapitated the epic of their lives.”
The theme of this excerpt is____
- A. All of the above
- B. the oppression of women
- C. Joys of motherhood
- D. colonization
- Jose Palacios, his oldest servant, found him floating naked with his eyes open in the purifying waters of his bath and thought he had drowned. He knew this was, one of the many ways the General meditated, but the ecstasy in which he lay drifting seemed that of a man no longer of this world.
Gabriel Garcia Marquez, The General in His Labyrinth
The master in the passage above is obviously in a state of
- A. trance
- B. drowning
- C. forgetfulness
- D. labyrinth
- A metrical pause occurring in the middle of a line in a poem is called
- A. tetrametre
- B. rhythm
- C. caesura
- D. assonance
- ‘The fair breeze blew
The white foam flew
The furrow followed free
We were the first that ever burst
Into that silent sea.’
The dominant figure of speech in the above passage is
- A. repitition
- B. alliteration
- C. paradox
- D. rhyme scheme
- Careened’,
These oily tears
Dripping down the tears on your depressed face,
Will one day be staunched, I swear!
Ibiwari Ikiriko, Oily Tears.
The tone of the poet is
- A. supplicatory
- B. optimistic
- C. sympathetic
- D. piteous
- CYCLIST gets down and begins to prop his bicycle.
CYCLIST: All right. If you’re sure it won’t take long.
BARBER: I am known for my lightning clippers. Even the soldiers know me. I can shave the head of an entire battalion between one coup and the next. Sit down and relax your back. Cycling is not easy
when you’ve abandoned it for some time.
Wole Soyinka, The Beautification of Area Boy.
The literary devices in the dialogue above are
- A. hyperbole and allusion
- B. irony and parody
- C. allusion and paradox
- D. humour and irony
- “I had not taken the first step in knowledge, I had not learnt to let go with the hands”.The above lines is an example of a
- A. Alliteration
- B. Apostrophe
- C. Repetition
- D. Assonance
- This question is based on CAGED BIRD.
Read this excerpt from the poem and answer questions .
“The free bird thinks of another
breeze / and the trade winds
soft through the sighing trees”
What is the effect of the trees sighing in this verse?
- A. It shows where the bird sleeps
- B. It shows the tree is sleeping
- C. It indicates that the bird is carefree
- D. It indicates that it is still early in the day
- Don’t panic. Be calm. If you are somehow upset…try to regain your composure.
The speaker in the excerpt above is
- A. hopeless
- B. afraid
- C. confident
- D. uncertain
- This question is based on A GOVERNMENT DRIVER ON HIS RETIREMENT.
“I shall booze and zoom” contains a device called
- A. alliteration
- B. imagery
- C. onomatopoeia
- D. hyperbole
- “The sun used to smile in my hut”.
The line is an example of
- A. Apostrophe
- B. personification
- C. Rhetorical Question
- D. Zeugma