Persiflage prelims answers

The Karnataka Quiz Association

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PERSIFLAGE

The Blossom Book House Lit Quiz2011

1.He once prophesied, “I shall probably die alone at midnight, in a hotel, to the great annoyance of the management”.

On 28 September 1973, he died alone, of a heart attack, in the Altenburgerhof, a Vienna hotel. The reaction of the management went unrecorded.

Identify this poet, famous for a meditation on a painting by Breughel and for a tribute occasioned by the death of another poet, which contained among other things, the laconic line. “He became his admirers”.

ANSWERW.H. AUDEN

2.This effort began in 1660 and ended in 1669 because the author feared that he was going blind. As it turned out, he didn’t, and lived up to 1703 in full possession of his faculties, but never found within himself the desire to go back to his project. It was published only in 1825, and is now available as a 11-volume work brought out by the University of California. Identify this Royal Navy official and the work.

ANSWERThe Diary of Samuel

Pepys

3. This work by Van der Weyden shares its title with a poem by TS Eliot, a novel by Henry James and an essay in the ISC syllabus by Khushwant Singh on his grandmother. What title?

ANSWERPortrait of a Lady

4.“English literature has no adequate account of the British soldier, of what he thought of his officers, between Henry V and _____ _____.” This is MM Kaye’s tribute to whom?

ANSWERRudyard Kipling

5. 2 pointsThis fairly famous act of borrowal has inspired quiz questions before—including one on University Challenge that caused some heartburn in British newspapers. The writer intended the borrowed term to stand in for a specific Christian concept .Most Christians in India encounter this concept for the first time in a high-energy song for children where musical requirements abbreviate it to the rather exotic peesapassa. Borrowal and concept, please.

ANSWERShantih,shantih shantih in The

Wasteland. “The peace that passeth all understanding”.

6. 2 pointsThe first available references for this word date back to the 1300s—when it denoted the vernacular language of France, as opposed to Latin. It later came to denote a composition in the vernacular (French, etc.), in contrast with works in Latin. A little later it came to denote narrative that was distant from ordinary life, and that sense of the word continues to exist. In some European languages, a form of this word is the default term for the novel. Give English term and related European term.

ANSWERRomance, roman

7. 2 pointsThis term figures in an 1836 work, the first published book by the major English novelist of the 19th century. The OED cites this title while defining the word as “a short or superficial essay or study, freq. in pl. as a title.”. The term is widely used in music, theatre and the visual arts and owes its origins to the Latin term for extempore poetry, derived in turn from ‘schedia’ , the word for ‘raft’. What term? Name work?

ANSWERSketch and

Sketches by Boz

8.8The literature produced during the first half of the 18th century, ending in the 1740s when the major writers of this generation died, is not known by the names of the then rulers-- Queen Anne, King George I, and George II—but by the name of a foreign king. What name is this?

ANSWER Augustan

9.Churchill borrowed the title of an 1847 novel to dismiss Baron Reith of the BBC, a political opponent and a tall man. What did he call him?

ANSWER“That Wuthering Height”.

10. 2 pointsThe abusive phrases ‘a hyena in petticoats’ and ‘the philosophizing serpent’ were both flung at the same person, perhaps because of the famous pamphlet that she wrote. Who? Which pamphlet?

ANSWERMary Wollstonecraft,

Vindication of the Rights of Women

11. 2 points X comes from the Anglo-Saxon for ‘to know’, while Y is derived from the Latin for ‘moisture’. X is based on the recognition of resemblances while Y arises from recognising incongruities. Shakespeare and the Metaphysical poets are said to have embodied X. Hobbes defined the former as a combination of fancy and judgement and did not deign to define the latter.

Both were seen as frivolities by the Romantics and never really recovered their eminence as artistic methods. In comedy, where the terms survive, the former is expressed by dialogue than by situation, and verbal inventiveness rather than type-characters. Identify X and Y.

ANSWERWit & Humour

12.After the success of Oranges are not the Only Fruit, her semi-autobiographical account of growing up in Pentecostal Jesus-love and finding a different sexual orientation, Jeanette Winterson wrote a quickly thrown together work titled Boating for Beginners. Which story that features in the Bible inspired this book?

ANSWERNoah’sArk/The Flood

13.This 1908 novel features three bachelors living the easy lives of Edwardian gentry on the banks of the Thames. Some distaste for social changes in the offing may be deduced from the fact that these characters fight a battle to reclaim property from distinctly proletarian interlopers originally from the Wild Wood. The novel was adapted for the stage in 1929 and has seen many revivals thus. Which novel?

ANSWERThe Wind in the

Willows

14. 2 points He was born in Bombay and became a schoolmaster after completing his education at Cambridge. One of his lesser-known works, Mistress Masham’s Repose, features the descendants of the Lilliputians from Gulliver’s Travels. His best known work is a four-part series which combined his pacifist political beliefs and his interest in the medieval. This work was completed during World War II, and was inspired by a 1485 work which according to him, narrated the futility of war. Name writer and series.

ANSWERTH White, The Once

and Future King

15. 2 pointsThis is a modern name, applied by book-collectors and others to specimens of the popular literature which was formerly circulated by itinerant dealers or ______, consisting chiefly of small pamphlets of popular tales, ballads, tracts. The name for such dealers is much older, and survives as a surname shared between a 1980s assassin and a translator/publisher of one work from long ago who figures in the title of another. Surname and title, please.

ANSWERChap-books, Chapman

(Mark David and George of On Looking

into Chapman’s Homer fame).

16.His consistent use of the locale-a-clef, a slight change in real place-names that nevertheless left them recognisable, came from a desire to create a ‘partly real, partly dream’ landscape. Which 19th century English novelist?

ANSWERThomas Hardy

17. Fay Weldon’s Sacred Cows is a 1989 work that examines the relationship between religion and society. What event was the primary inspiration for this work?

ANSWERRushdie/Satanic

Verses

18.

Charles Dickens has attempted ‘historical’ fiction just twice. All the others were set around the Victorian present. Name either these two novels or the two historical events that provide the background.

ANSWERTale of Two Cities,

Barnaby Rudge

French Revolution,Gordon Riots

19.The full designation is ____ _____ Consultant to the Library of Congress. It was created in 1986 and first conferred upon Robert Penn Warren. Other honorees include Howard Nemerov, Mark Strand, Joseph Brodsky and Mona van Duyn. What honor? Don’t fill blank. Answer in six words.

ANSWERPoet Laureate of the

United States

20. 2 pointsHe was the son of a Prime Minister and wrote over 4000 letters to his friends. These are considered his most notable work. He is remembered for having started off two crazes. One arose from the many years he spent on redoing his house, Strawberry Hill, and the gardens. The other was the result of a novel. Both crazes had the same name. Many of his contemporaries held him responsible for the suicide of the forger and poet Thomas Chatterton. Who? What craze?

ANSWERHorace Walpole,

The Gothic

21. Not too many people can be described as ‘biographer and piscatorial writer’ like X is. Wrote biographies of Donne, Henry Wotton and Richard Hooker. Best known for a 1675 work --the title of which retains its idiosyncratic spelling from those days. Name either writer or work.

ANSWERIzaak Walton,

The Compleat Angler

22. Jomo Kenyatta is known to have had a walk-on part in the film Sanders of the River. This film was based on one of an eleven-novel series by a best-selling author of the early 20th century. Who?

ANSWEREdgar Wallace

23. 2 pointsAs a form, this sort of novel hasn’t had too many takers in the 20th century, though the 1982 Pulitzer winner, later filmed, is an exception. The best-known example is a 1740 book. Amitav Ghosh’s River of Smoke and John Updike’s S. use this narrative mode minimally. What form? Also name 1982 work

ANSWEREpistolary Novel,The Colour Purple

24.Ellen Terry starred in the 1878 play Olivia, a hit of sorts in those times. What connects this random fact to the poems Elegy on the Death of a Mad Dog and When Lovely Woman Stoops to Folly?

ANSWERThe Vicar of Wakefield.

Olivia is the Vicar’s daughter, and these

poems by Goldsmith first appeared here.

25. 2 points Wrote in German, and then translated his books into English himself, with some assistance. His best-known book was written in 1927,and was titled Der Schatz der ____ ____ and filmed in 1947. Also wrote Die Bauwollflucker ( The Cotton-pickers) and Das Totenschiff ( the Death-Ship) in the 1920s. Who? Fill blanks

ANSWERB. Traven,

Sierra Madre

26He wrote a book titled On the Astrolabe, dedicated to his son. Borrows from Arabic and Latin works. Nevertheless, the first known complex scientific work written in English. By whom?

ANSWERChaucer

27From an article on the Bronte Sisters:

“Meanwhile, their brother Branwell was drinking himself to death after the collapse of his love affair with an older woman called (a gift of a name) ___ ____. He died in September 1848. Emily followed three months later and Anne five months after that.” Fill blanks. Think 1967!

ANSWERMrs. Robinson

28She took a three-part name of which I will give you two: Pamela Lyndon. Spent thirteen years as actress and dancer in England and retired in 1936, two years after success with another venture. Who? What venture?

ANSWERPL Travers,

Mary Poppins

29. Anybody attempting a phonetic analysis of this long term could decide that its about a genre of music that allows you to get high and about showing your teeth. Not too far off the mark from the woolliness that marked its use outside philosophy in the period 1830-1850. Properly applied to Kant and his followers. What term?

ANSWERTranscendentalism

30In 1971, Michael Hart was given an operator's account with $100,000,000 of computer time in it by the operators of the Xerox Sigma V mainframe at the Materials Research Lab at the University of Illinois. Hart decided there was nothing he could do that would repay the huge value of the computer time he had been given so he had to create $100,000,000 worth of value in some other manner. An hour and 47 minutes later, he announced that the greatest value created by computers would not be computing, but something else. To prove his case, he tried to send an example he had worked on to everyone on the networks--a not so narrow miss at creating an early version of what was later called the "Internet Virus." What began thus? What appropriately chosen artefact was used to test-drive the idea?

ANSWERProject Gutenberg,

Declaration of Independence

31Identify the poet. The device used here is associated with another writer. Who?

“As BeesIn spring time, when the Sun with Taurus rides,Pour forth their populous youth about the HiveIn clusters; they among fresh dews and flowersFlie to and fro, or on the smoothed Plank,The suburb of their Straw-built Citadel,New rub'd with Balm, expatiate and conferTheir State affairs”

ANSWERMilton,

Homeric simile.

322 points

Famous punishment, now phrase. Who? What phrase?

ANSWERAncient Mariner,Albatross around

one’s neck.

33ID illustrator.

For extra points, what fake botanical name (11,10) did he give this plant?

ANSWEREdward Lear, Manypeeplia upsidedownia.

34Montaigne’s essays were first translated into English by John Florio, an Italian refugee who had fled to England because he was Protestant . Of these essays, one titled Of the Cannibals is thought to have inspired which unforgettable character in a Shakespeare play?

ANSWERCaliban in The

Tempest.

35. 2 pointsThe 1861 sequel to his successful 1857 novel sent the protagonist to Oxford—but bombed badly. He and Charles Kingsley espoused an ideology they described as Christian Socialism. Kingsley thought the 1857 work was the jolliest ever written. The author’s own views, a sort of muscular Christianity , are suggested by the title of another book he wrote: The Manliness of Christ. Who? Name 1857 book.

ANSWERThomas Hughes,

Tom Brown’s School Days.