Literature for grades 11–12: questions with answers
The Literature questions for grades 11–12 from the game, with the correct answers and an explanation for each.
Which novel opens with the words "It is a truth universally acknowledged"?
- Emma
- Pride and Prejudice
- Sense and Sensibility
- Middlemarch
Correct answer: Pride and Prejudice — The sentence continues: "that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife."
Which Tolstoy novel begins "Happy families are all alike"?
- War and Peace
- Anna Karenina
- Resurrection
- The Kreutzer Sonata
Correct answer: Anna Karenina — The full line reads: "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."
In which year was the first part of Don Quixote published?
- 1550
- 1605
- 1635
- 1700
Correct answer: 1605 — The second part followed in 1615, partly in response to an unauthorised sequel by another writer.
In which year was Mary Shelley's Frankenstein published?
- 1798
- 1808
- 1818
- 1837
Correct answer: 1818 — The first edition appeared anonymously in three volumes; Shelley's name was added only in the 1823 edition.
Who wrote the Duino Elegies?
- Rainer Maria Rilke
- Paul Celan
- Georg Trakl
- Hugo von Hofmannsthal
Correct answer: Rainer Maria Rilke — Rilke began the ten elegies at Duino Castle near Trieste in 1912 and finished them a decade later in Switzerland.
Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther is a key work of which movement?
- Sturm und Drang
- Expressionism
- Realism
- Naturalism
Correct answer: Sturm und Drang — The 1774 novel of unrequited love made Goethe famous at 24 and started a fashion for Werther's blue coat and yellow waistcoat.
Who wrote the play Mother Courage and Her Children?
- Friedrich Dürrenmatt
- Max Frisch
- Gerhart Hauptmann
- Bertolt Brecht
Correct answer: Bertolt Brecht — Brecht wrote the play in exile in 1939, setting it in the Thirty Years' War as a warning against the coming war.
Who wrote Six Characters in Search of an Author?
- Luigi Pirandello
- Carlo Goldoni
- Gabriele D'Annunzio
- Eugenio Montale
Correct answer: Luigi Pirandello — The 1921 play, in which unfinished characters interrupt a rehearsal, caused a riot at its Rome premiere; Pirandello won the Nobel Prize in 1934.
Which Italian author wrote Invisible Cities?
- Umberto Eco
- Primo Levi
- Cesare Pavese
- Italo Calvino
Correct answer: Italo Calvino — In the 1972 book Marco Polo describes fifty-five imaginary cities to Kublai Khan.
Which French poet wrote A Season in Hell (Une saison en enfer)?
- Charles Baudelaire
- Paul Verlaine
- Arthur Rimbaud
- Paul Valéry
Correct answer: Arthur Rimbaud — Rimbaud wrote all his poetry before the age of 21, then abandoned literature and became a trader in Africa.
Who wrote the novel Nausea (1938)?
- Albert Camus
- Jean-Paul Sartre
- Simone de Beauvoir
- André Malraux
Correct answer: Jean-Paul Sartre — Sartre's first novel is a founding text of existentialism; in 1964 he refused the Nobel Prize.
Who wrote The Red and the Black?
- Honoré de Balzac
- Gustave Flaubert
- Stendhal
- Alfred de Musset
Correct answer: Stendhal — The 1830 novel follows the ambitious Julien Sorel; the title refers to the army and the Church, the two paths to success.
Who wrote A Hero of Our Time?
- Alexander Pushkin
- Ivan Goncharov
- Mikhail Lermontov
- Alexander Griboyedov
Correct answer: Mikhail Lermontov — The 1840 novel's bored officer Pechorin is the model "superfluous man"; Lermontov, like Pushkin, died in a duel.
Who wrote Fathers and Sons, the novel of the nihilist Bazarov?
- Ivan Goncharov
- Nikolai Leskov
- Alexander Herzen
- Ivan Turgenev
Correct answer: Ivan Turgenev — The 1862 novel made the word "nihilist" famous across Europe; Turgenev spent much of his life in France.
Who wrote the tragedy Medea?
- Aeschylus
- Sophocles
- Euripides
- Aristophanes
Correct answer: Euripides — Euripides' play of 431 BC shows Medea killing her own children to punish Jason for abandoning her.
Which Roman poet coined the phrase "carpe diem" in his Odes?
- Virgil
- Horace
- Ovid
- Catullus
Correct answer: Horace — The phrase, usually translated "seize the day", appears in Horace's Odes (Book 1, poem 11), written around 23 BC.
Which Peruvian novelist won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2010?
- Mario Vargas Llosa
- Octavio Paz
- Gabriel García Márquez
- Carlos Fuentes
Correct answer: Mario Vargas Llosa — Vargas Llosa, author of The Time of the Hero and The Feast of the Goat, also ran for president of Peru in 1990.
Who wrote The Tale of Genji, often called the world's first novel?
- Sei Shōnagon
- Matsuo Bashō
- Yasunari Kawabata
- Murasaki Shikibu
Correct answer: Murasaki Shikibu — Murasaki Shikibu, a lady-in-waiting at the Japanese imperial court, wrote the tale in the early 11th century.
Wordsworth and Coleridge's Lyrical Ballads (1798) launched which movement?
- Romanticism
- Modernism
- Classicism
- Symbolism
Correct answer: Romanticism — The collection opened with Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner; Wordsworth's preface called for poetry in "the real language of men".
Who wrote the play A Doll's House?
- August Strindberg
- Knut Hamsun
- Anton Chekhov
- Henrik Ibsen
Correct answer: Henrik Ibsen — Nora slamming the door on her marriage at the end of the 1879 play scandalised audiences across Europe.