Q 01/05

Which novelist's surname became an adjective for nightmarish predicaments like those in his novel The Trial?

A) George Orwell

B) Franz Kafka

C) Charles Dickens

D) Lewis Carroll

Answer · why

B) Franz Kafka

Franz Kafka gave English the word 'Kafkaesque', though he asked for his unpublished works to be destroyed. His friend Max Brod ignored the request and...

Q 02/05

Which Russian playwright advised that a rifle hanging on the wall in the first act must go off by the third?

A) Leo Tolstoy

B) Nikolai Gogol

C) Anton Chekhov

D) Maxim Gorky

Answer · why

C) Anton Chekhov

Anton Chekhov repeated the advice in several letters to young playwrights. The rule now carries his name: nothing should appear in a story unless it w...

Q 03/05

Which fourteen-line poem, mastered by Petrarch and Shakespeare, takes its name from the Italian for 'little song'?

A) Sestina

B) Canzone

C) Madrigal

D) Sonnet

Answer · why

D) Sonnet

Sonnet comes from the Italian sonetto, and the form reached English through Sir Thomas Wyatt and the Earl of Surrey, who translated and imitated Petra...

Q 04/05

Which word for a perfect society did Thomas More coin from Greek roots that literally mean 'no place'?

A) Utopia

B) Arcadia

C) Elysium

D) Shangri-La

Answer · why

A) Utopia

Utopia was the name More gave an imaginary island in his 1516 book. The word also echoes the Greek for 'good place', a pun More himself pointed out.

Q 05/05

Which Japanese poem of three short phrases in a five-seven-five pattern is tied above all to Matsuo Bashō?

A) Tanka

B) Renga

C) Haiku

D) Chōka

Answer · why

C) Haiku

Haiku began as hokku, the opening verse of a longer linked poem. The writer Masaoka Shiki gave the form its modern name at the end of the 19th century...