1. Which people began
their invasion and conquest of south western Britain around 450?
a) the Normans
b) the Geats
c) the Celts
d) the Anglo-Saxons
e) the Danes
2. Words from which language began to enter English vocabulary around the time of the Norman Conquest in 1066?
a) French
b) Norwegian
c) Spanish
d) Hungarian
e) Danish
3. Which hero made his earliest appearance in Celtic literature before becoming a staple subject in French, English, and German literature?
a) Beowulf
b) Arthur
c) Caedmon
d) Augustine of Canterbury
e) Alfred
4. Toward the close of which century did English replace French as the language of conducting business in Parliament and in court of law?
a) tenth
b) eleventh
c) twelfth
d) thirteenth
e) fourteenth
5. Which king began a war to enforce his claims to the throne of France in 1336?
a) Henry II
b) Henry III
c) Henry V
d) Louis XIV
e) Edward III
6. Who would be called the English Homer and father of English poetry?
a) Bede
b) Sir Thomas Malory
c) Geoffrey Chaucer
d) Caedmon
e) John Gower
7. What was vellum?
a) parchment made of animal skin
b) the service owed to a lord by his peasants ("villeins")
c) unrhymed iambic pentameter
d) an unbreakable oath of fealty
e) a prized ink used in the illumination of prestigious manuscripts
8. Only a small proportion of medieval books survive, large numbers having been destroyed in:
a) the Anglo-Saxon Conquest beginning in the 1450s.
b) the Norman Conquest of 1066.
c) the Peasant Uprising of 1381.
d) the Dissolution of the Monasteries in the 1530s.
e) the wave of contempt for manuscripts that followed the beginning of printing in 1476.
9. What is the first extended written specimen of Old English?
a) Boethius's Consolidation of Philosophy
b) Saint Jerome's translation of the Bible
c) Malory's Morte Darthur
d) Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People
e) a code of laws promulgated by King Ethelbert
a) Alfred
b) Richard III
c) Richard II
d) Henry II
e) Ethelbert
11. In Anglo-Saxon heroic poetry, what is the fate of those who fail to observe the sacred duty of blood vengeance?
a) banishment to Asia
b) everlasting shame
c) conversion to Christianity
d) mild melancholia
e) being buried alive
12. Christian writers like the Beowulf poet looked back on their pagan ancestors with:
a) nostalgia and ill-concealed envy.
b) bewilderment and visceral loathing.
c) admiration and elegiac sympathy.
d) bigotry and shallow triumphalism.
e) the deepest reluctance.
13. The use of "whale-road"for sea and "life-house"for body are examples of what literary technique, popular in Old English poetry?
a) symbolism
b) simile
c) metonymy
d) kenning
e) appositive expression
14. Which of the following statements is not an accurate description of Old English poetry?
a) Romantic love is a guiding principle of moral conduct.
b) Its formal and dignified use of speech was distant from everyday use of language.
c) Irony is a mode of perception, as much as it was a figure of speech.
d) Christian and pagan ideals are sometimes mixed.
e) Its idiom remained remarkably uniform for nearly three centuries.
15. Which of the following best describes litote, a favorite rhetorical device in Old English poetry?
a) embellishment at the service of Christian doctrine
b) repetition of parallel syntactic structures
c) ironic understatement
d) stress on every third diphthong
e) a compound of two words in place of a single word
16. How did Henry II, the first of England's Plantagenet kings, acquire vast provinces in southern France?
a) the Battle of Hastings
b) Saint Patrick's mission
c) the Fourth Lateran Council
d) the execution of William Sawtre
e) his marriage to Eleanor of Aquitaine
17. Which of the following languages did not coexist in Anglo-Norman England?
a) Latin
b) Dutch
c) French
d) Celtic
e) English
18. Which twelfth-century poet or poets were indebted to Breton storytellers for their narratives?
a) Geoffrey Chaucer
b) Marie de France
c) Chrétien de Troyes
d) a and c only
e) b and c only
19. To what did the word the roman, from which the genre of "romance"emerged, initially apply?
a) a work derived from a Latin text of the Roman Empire
b) a story about love and adventure
c) a Roman official
d) a work written in the French vernacular
e) a series of short stories
20. Popular English adaptations of romances appealed primarily to
a) the royal family and upper orders of the nobility
b) the lower orders of the nobility
c) agricultural laborers
d) the clergy
e) the Welsh
21. What is the climax of Geoffrey of Monmouth's The History of the Kings of Britain?
a) the reign of King Arthur
b) the coronation of Henry II
c) King John's seal of the Magna Carta
d) the marriage of Henry II to Eleanor of Aquitaine
e) the defeat of the French by Henry V
22. Ancrene Riwle is a manual of instruction for
a) courtiers entering the service of Richard II
b) translators of French romances
c) women who have chosen to live as religious recluses
d) knights preparing for their first tournament
e) witch-hunters and exorcists
23 The styles of The Owl and the Nightingale and Ancrene Riwle show what about the poetry and prose written around the year 1200?
a) They were written for sophisticated and well-educated readers.
b) Writing continued to benefit only readers fluent in Latin and French.
c) Their readers' primary language was English.
d) a and c only
e) a and b only
24. In addition to Geoffrey Chaucer and William Langland, the "flowering"of Middle English literature is evident in the works of which of the following writers?
a) Geoffrey of Monmouth
b) the Gawain poet
c) the Beowulf poet
d) Chrétien de Troyes
e) Marie de France