Literature Quiz

Finals

Question 1.

• ’X’ or ‘The Woman’ was born in New Jersey in the 1850s. She followed a career in opera as a contralto, performing at La Scala in Milan, Italy, and a term as prima donna in the Imperial Opera of Warsaw. It was there that she became the lover of Wilhelm Gottsreich Sigismond von Ormstein, Grand Duke of Cassel-Felstein and King of Bohemia, who was staying in Warsaw for a period. The King describes her as "a well-known adventuress" (a term widely used at the time in ambiguous association with “courtesan” )and also says that she had "the face of the most beautiful of women and the mind of the most resolute of men". The King eventually returned to his court in Prague. ‘X’, then in her late twenties, retired from the opera stage and moved to London. Who is ‘X’ ?

Answer 1.

• Irene Adler

Question 2.

• Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, was an Engishwriter, Mathematician, logician and photographer. His famous works contain examples of the genre of ‘literary nonsense’. How is he popularly known?

Answer 2.

• Lewis Carroll- author of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass.

Question 3.

• Connect

Answer 3.

• James Bond and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, are both creations of author Ian Fleming.

Question 4.

• Bellyfeel• Ungood• Unperson• Crimethink• Duckspeak• Ownlife• Thoughtcrime• IngsocThese are words from a fictional language created by ‘X’ for

his1949 dystopian novel strongly influenced by contemporary political developments. Name X and the language.

Answer 4.

X- George Orwell

Language is Newspeak created for his book Nineteen Eighty Four.

Question 5.

• The case of Ed Gien of Wisconsin influenced two popular fictional killers. Ed Gien lived with his domineering mother and was charged for the murder of two women in the 1950s. He was also known to have exhumed the bodies of various women and made trophies and keepsakes from their skin and bones. Name the two fictional killers he inspired.

Answer 5.

• Norman Bates and Buffalo Bill

Question 6.

• Kautilya, author of Arthshastra has often been referred to as the Indian X. This comparison springs from their matching political pragmatism and their encouragement of harshness in a leader. Give X.

Answer 6.

• Niccolo Machiavelli

Question 7.“Then the worst thing happened, that big, dark, hunky boy, the

only one there huge enough for me, who had been hunching around over women, and whose name I had asked the minute I had come into the room, but no one told me, came over and was looking hard in my eyes and it was X ... And then it came to the fact that I was all there, wasn't I, and I stamped and screamed yes ... and I was stamping and he was stamping on the floor, and then he kissed me bang smash on the mouth and ripped my hair band off, my lovely red hairband scarf which had weathered the sun and much love, and whose like I shall never again find, and my favorite silver earrings: hah, I shall keep, he barked. And when he kissed my neck I bit him long and hard on the cheek, and when we came out of the room, blood was running down his face.”

Id the speaker and X.

Answer 7.

• Sylvia Plath

• X – Ted Hughes.

Question 7.

Connect

Answer 7.

• The title for the book ‘Things Fall Apart’ was taken from a line in the poem ‘The Second Coming’ by W.B. Yeats.

• “Turning and turning in the widening gyreThe falcon cannot hear the falconer;Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;”

Question 8.

Give fundaand the person who’s name has been blanked out.

Answer 8.

• Truman Capote’s name has been blanked out.

• Many believe that Harper Lee’s ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ was actually written by Truman Capote. These tweets followed the announcement that Harper Lee was finally publishing a new book.

Question 9.

• 10:04 – Ben Lerner• All My Puny Sorrows – Miriam Toews• Department of Speculation – Jenny Offill• Dust – Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor• Family Life – Akhil Sharma• How to Be Both – Ali Smith• Nora Webster – Colm Toibin• Outline – Rachel CuskConnect

Answer 9.

• Shortlisted for the 2015 Folio Prize.

Question 10.

• “The parameters: English language novels published anywhere in the world since 1923.....

• ... Lev Grossman and I each began by drawing up inventories of our nominees. Once we traded notes, it turned out that more than 80 of our separately chosen titles matched. We decided then that we would more or less divide the remaining slots between us. That would allow each of us to include books that the other might not have chosen....

Answer 10.

• The making of the TIME Magazine All-Time 100 Novels List.

Question 11.

• In The Boy Next Door, Jennifer Lopez stars as a high school classics teacher who becomes involved with her younger neighbor, a student.

• In one scene, he gives her a “first edition” copy of an epic which he supposedly found at a garage sale.

• Sadly for the film’s fans, this particular epic, was composed around 700BC, long before the invention of the printing press in 1440. The oldest complete text is from the end of the 10th century, the Venetus A manuscript, with the work not widely disseminated in English until George Chapman’s 17th-century translation, immortalised by John Keats’s poem.

• Id this piece of writing.

Answer 11.

Homer’s The Illiad.

Question 12.

• “There is more than one way to burn a book. And the World is full of people running about with lit matches”

• This is what the author X had to say about censorship and banned books.

• Id. X

Answer 12.

• Ray Bradbury

Question 13.

• “Perumal Murugan, the writer is dead. He will not resurrect as he is not God. He also has no faith in rebirth. He will live as an ordinary teacher, P Murugan,”

• This was posted by Tamil author PerumalMurugan on his Facebook page sometime in January. Give funda.

Answer 13.

• This ‘obituary’ was posted by Murugan after he was forced to pull down his book Mathorubhagan following protests by fringe Hindu groups.

Question 14.

• 1973- The Siege of Krishnapur - J.G. Farrell

• 1974- The Conservationist - Nadine Gordimer

• ____ - X – Y

• 1988 - Oscar and Lucinda – Peter Carrey

• 1995 – The Ghost Road - Pat Barker

• 1999 – Disgrace – J.M. Coetzee

Answer 14.

X- Midnight’s Children

Y- Salman Rushdie

Question 15.

One afternoon in August 1937, X strode into the New York office of a Scribner’s editor and slapped a book across Max Eastman’s face. He then “bared his chest to Mr. Eastman and asked him to look at the hair and say whether it was false,” Next, he “persuaded Mr. Eastman to bare his chest and commented on its comparatively hairless condition.” The cause of the literary tussle? X was simply very pissed off about a manhood-challenging review that Eastman had written for The New Republic four years earlier. Eastman repeatedly jabbed at X, saying that his literary style is the equivalent “of wearing false hair on the chest.”Id X

Answer 15.

• Ernest Hemingway

Question 16.

• X takes its title from 17th century Haiku poet Matsuo Basho's famous Haibun, Oku no Hosomichi, best known in English as X, the novel is epic in form and chronicles an Australian century, with one horrific day at its heart on the Burma railway in August 1943. As that day builds to its climax, the novel grows to encompass the post war lives of Japanese and Korean prison guards as well as Australian far East prisoners of war.

Answer 16.

• The Narrow Road to the Deep North.

Question 17.

• Richard Burbage

• Cuthbert Burbage

• William Shakespeare

• John Heminges

• Augustine Phillips

• Thomas Pope

Give Funda

Answer 17.

• List of original Stakeholders of the Globe Theatre.

Question 18.

• In the Marvel comics, she is Loki’s mother. Her name has an uncanny resemblance to a prominent figure in Hindu Mythology. In Norse Mythology however, the genders of Loki’s parents is actually reversed, X actually being the name of Loki’s father.

Answer 18.

• Faurbati

Question 19.

• X was an American author of novels and short stories, whose works are the paradigmatic writings of the Jazz Age. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest American writers of the 20th century. X is considered a member of the "Lost Generation" of the 1920s. X was also the first cousin of Mary Surratt, hanged in 1865 for conspiring to assassinate Abraham Lincoln. In The last years of X he had an affair with SheilahGraham, the Hollywood gossip columnist, which became the theme of the movie Beloved Infidel.

Answer 19.

• F. Scott Fitzgerald

Question 20.

• This is the first edition cover of which book?

Answer 20.

• The Time Machine – H.G. Wells

Question 21.

• Piloting gave him his pen name, X, from, the leadsman's cry for a measured river depth of ___ fathoms, which was safe water for a steamboat. Hence we got one of the most recognisable names in English literature

• X also patented three inventions, including an "Improvement in Adjustable and Detachable Straps for Garments" (to replace suspenders) and a history trivia game.[ Most commercially successful was a self-pasting scrapbook; a dried adhesive on the pages needed only to be moistened before use.

Answer 21.

• Mark Twain

Question 22.

Answer 22.

• They’ve all been made into movies directed by Alfred Hitchcock

Question 23.

In 1908 X wrote, and Y read, A Letter to a Hindu, which outlines the notion that only by using love as a weapon through passive resistance could the native people overthrow the colonial Empire. Y wrote to X seeking advice and permission to republish A Letter to a Hindu in his native language, ______. X responded and the two continued a correspondence until X's death.

Answer 23.

• X – Leo Tolstoy

• Y – Mahatma Gandhi

Question 24.

• “I don’t know Urdu, but have a knowledge of detective novels of the sub-continent. There is only one original writer – X.”

- Agatha Christie

• Id X

Answer 24.

• X – Ibn-e-Safi

Question 25.

X were a tribe of 3,000 amiable black pygmies who have been imported by Mr. _______ from 'the very deepest and darkest part of the African jungle where no white man had been before.' Mr._______ keeps them in the factory, where they have replaced the sacked white workers. ________’s little slaves are delighted with their new circumstances, and particularly with their diet of chocolate. Before they lived on green caterpillars, beetles, eucalyptus leaves, and the bark of the bong–bong tree." This depiction of X by Y landed him in trouble. Y was accused of racism . Y ultimately offered an apology and change the depiction of X to their present state. Give X and Y.

Answer 25.

• X – Oompa Loompas

• Y – Roald Dahl

Question 26.

• The X is a collection of largely Scientific writings by Y. The X is named after Thomas Coke, later created Earl of __________, who purchased it in 1719. Of Y’s 30 scientific journals, the X may be the most famous of all.

• Id X and Y

Answer 26.

• X – The Codex Leicester

• Y – Leonardo da Vinci

Question 27.

• Which author is this Google doodle dedicated to?

Answer 27.

• Jules Verne

Question 28.

During The Emergency, Jayaprakash Narayan had attracted a gathering of one lakh people at the Ramlila grounds and recited X's famous poem . The present Prime Minister of India, NarendraModi wrote a message appreciating the translation of Rashmirathi into English by the Mauritian cultural activist Leela Gujadhur Sarup. In 2008, as a mark of respect for him, his portrait was unveiled in the Central Hall of Parliament of India by the then Prime Minister of India, Dr. Manmohan Singh on his centenary.

Answer 28.

• Dinkar

Question 29.

• An English librarian named Abel Joshua X established X after allegedly arriving in India as a British stowaway. X is India's oldest bookstore in existence which was renamed X from Wesleyan book shop in 1844.In March 1859, in a letter to Lord Macaulay, Lord Trevelyan, the Governor of Madras wrote:

• “Among the many elusive and indescribable charms of life in Madras City, is the existence of my favourite book shop 'X' on Mount Road. In this bookshop I can see beautiful editions of the works of Socrates, Plato, Euripides, Aristophanes, Pindar, Horace, Petrarch, Tasso, Camoyens, Calderon and Racine. I can get the latest editions of Victor Hugo, the great French novelist. Amongst the German writers, I can have Schiller and Goethe. Altogether a delightful place for the casual browser and a serious book lover.”

Answer 29.

• Higginbotham’s

Question 30.

Most nursery rhymes are known to have dark origins. This rhyme dates back to 16th Century Britain when persecution of Catholics by the zealous protestants was common, forcing them to say their prayers in secret ‘priest holes’. This rhyme served to teach a lesson to those who didn’t say their prayers ‘right’.

Answer 30.

Goosey Goosey Gander• Goosey Goosey Gander where shall I wander,

Upstairs, downstairs and in my lady's chamberThere I met an old man who wouldn't say his prayers,I took him by the left leg and threw him down the stairs.