Movements, Awards & History
27 questions · Answers revealed below each question · Print this set
1.Which prize goes to a living author's whole body of work, not a single book?
- A. the Booker Prize
- B. the Goncourt
- C. the Nobel Prize in Literature
- D. the Pulitzer Prize
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the Nobel Prize in Literature
Did you know? The Nobel in Literature rewards a body of work, awarded each October in Stockholm.
2.Which Church index of prohibited books ran from 1559 to 1966?
- A. the Acta Sanctorum
- B. the Index Librorum Prohibitorum
- C. the Roman Missal
- D. the Summa Theologica
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the Index Librorum Prohibitorum
Did you know? The Index Librorum Prohibitorum listed books Catholics were forbidden to read.
3.Which handwritten notebook holds the record among books, after a 1994 sale to Bill Gates?
- A. the Gutenberg Bible
- B. the Domesday Book
- C. the Codex Leicester
- D. the Book of Kells
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the Codex Leicester
Did you know? Leonardo's Codex Leicester was bought by Bill Gates in 1994 for about 30 million dollars.
4.Which literary movement flourished in 1920s Black New York?
- A. the Harlem Renaissance
- B. Naturalism
- C. Gothic fiction
- D. the Beat Generation
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the Harlem Renaissance
Did you know? Hughes, Hurston, and Countee Cullen were Harlem Renaissance voices.
5.Which literary award has been awarded by the Swedish Academy since 1901?
- A. the Nobel Prize in Literature
- B. the International Booker Prize
- C. the Prémio Camões
- D. the Hans Christian Andersen Award
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the Nobel Prize in Literature
Did you know? The Nobel Prize in Literature is awarded in Stockholm each December.
6.Which Brazilian prize is named after the tortoise that symbolizes knowledge?
- A. the Prêmio Jabuti
- B. the Premio Casa de las Américas
- C. the Prêmio Portugal
- D. the Prêmio Camões
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the Prêmio Jabuti
Did you know? The Jabuti is Brazil's oldest and best-known literary prize.
7.Which 1719 book is widely cited as the first English novel?
- A. Gulliver's Travels
- B. Tom Jones
- C. Pamela
- D. Robinson Crusoe
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Robinson Crusoe
Did you know? Defoe's Robinson Crusoe (1719) is a traditional starting point of the English novel.
8.Who is the oldest person to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, at age eighty-eight?
- A. Doris Lessing
- B. Rudyard Kipling
- C. Toni Morrison
- D. Alice Munro
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Doris Lessing
Did you know? Doris Lessing won the 2007 Nobel at eighty-eight, the oldest laureate to date.
9.Which literary award is France's leading prize for prose?
- A. the Pulitzer Prizes
- B. the Prix Goncourt
- C. the International Booker Prize
- D. the Costa Book Awards
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the Prix Goncourt
Did you know? The Goncourt jury has awarded the prize since 1903.
10.Which literary movement chronicled postwar American counterculture?
- A. Sturm und Drang
- B. Realism
- C. Modernism
- D. the Beat Generation
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the Beat Generation
Did you know? Kerouac, Ginsberg, and Burroughs led the Beat Generation.
11.Which award gives science fiction's best novel a rocket-shaped trophy?
- A. the Pulitzer Prize
- B. the Booker Prize
- C. the Hugo Award
- D. the Nebula Award
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the Hugo Award
Did you know? The Hugo Award is voted by science fiction convention attendees.
12.Which D.H. Lawrence novel's British ban ended with a famous 1960 obscenity trial?
- A. Lady Chatterley's Lover
- B. Women in Love
- C. Sons and Lovers
- D. The Rainbow
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Lady Chatterley's Lover
Did you know? The 1960 Penguin trial acquitted Lady Chatterley's Lover and sold millions.
13.Which author's works have been adapted into film more than any other's?
- A. William Shakespeare
- B. Charles Dickens
- C. Arthur Conan Doyle
- D. Agatha Christie
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William Shakespeare
Did you know? Shakespeare is widely cited as the most filmed author in history.
14.Which literary award is Britain's leading award for English-language fiction?
- A. the National Book Award
- B. the Prémio Camões
- C. the International Booker Prize
- D. the Booker Prize
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the Booker Prize
Did you know? The Booker Prize has been awarded annually since 1969.
15.Which literary movement treats the marvellous as everyday fact?
- A. magical realism
- B. Brazilian Modernism
- C. the Theatre of the Absurd
- D. the Harlem Renaissance
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magical realism
Did you know? Magical realism flowered in Latin American fiction of the 1960s.
16.Which ancient library's destruction is a byword for lost knowledge?
- A. the Villa of the Papyri
- B. the Library of Alexandria
- C. the Library of Congress
- D. the Bodleian Library
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the Library of Alexandria
Did you know? The Library of Alexandria was the ancient world's most famous library.
17.Which book series is commonly cited as the best-selling of all time, with over 500 million copies?
- A. The Lord of the Rings
- B. The Chronicles of Narnia
- C. Sherlock Holmes
- D. Harry Potter
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Harry Potter
Did you know? The Harry Potter series has sold over 500 million copies worldwide, per publisher counts.
18.Which literary award is the top award for Portuguese-language literature?
- A. the Prémio Camões
- B. the Pulitzer Prizes
- C. the Prix Goncourt
- D. the National Book Award
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the Prémio Camões
Did you know? The Camões Prize was first awarded in 1989.
19.Which literary movement revived classical learning across Europe in the 1500s?
- A. Indigenism
- B. the Renaissance
- C. Victorian literature
- D. Decadentism
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the Renaissance
Did you know? Rabelais and Montaigne wrote in the French Renaissance.
20.Which modernist novel was banned in the United States until a 1933 court ruling?
- A. Mrs Dalloway
- B. Ulysses
- C. Naked Lunch
- D. Lady Chatterley's Lover
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Ulysses
Did you know? A 1933 federal ruling let Ulysses enter the United States legally.
21.Which book was the first major work printed with movable type in the West?
- A. the Bay Psalm Book
- B. the Nuremberg Chronicle
- C. the Diamond Sutra
- D. the Gutenberg Bible
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the Gutenberg Bible
Did you know? Gutenberg's 42-line Bible was printed in Mainz around 1455.
22.Which literary movement spanned Britain's reign of Queen Victoria?
- A. Decadentism
- B. Existentialism
- C. Victorian literature
- D. the Harlem Renaissance
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Victorian literature
Did you know? Dickens, the Brontës, and Tennyson wrote in the Victorian era.
23.Which author is the most translated individual author in the world?
- A. Leo Tolstoy
- B. William Shakespeare
- C. Agatha Christie
- D. Jules Verne
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Agatha Christie
Did you know? UNESCO's translation index ranks Agatha Christie as the most translated author.
24.Which literary movement prized emotion and nature over Enlightenment reason?
- A. Romanticism
- B. the Enlightenment
- C. Existentialism
- D. Decadentism
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Romanticism
Did you know? Romanticism dominated European letters in the early nineteenth century.
25.Which literary movement broke with tradition in the early twentieth century?
- A. Victorian literature
- B. Modernism
- C. the Theatre of the Absurd
- D. the Beat Generation
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Modernism
Did you know? Modernism produced Woolf, Joyce, and Eliot.
26.Which literary movement sought to depict everyday life without idealization?
- A. Victorian literature
- B. Gothic fiction
- C. Realism
- D. the Harlem Renaissance
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Realism
Did you know? Flaubert and Balzac are counted among Realism's founders.
27.Which U.S. president won the Pulitzer Prize for Biography in 1957?
- A. John F. Kennedy
- B. Jimmy Carter
- C. Theodore Roosevelt
- D. Barack Obama
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John F. Kennedy
Did you know? Kennedy's Profiles in Courage won the 1957 Pulitzer for Biography.
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