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320 Job-Ready English Literature Quick Points

This collection of quick points in English literature will hep you prepare for tests and interviews if you are a literature major.
1. Wordsworth's Prelude is an Autobiographical poem.
2. Cowper wrote, "God made the country and man made the town."
3. "We are laid asleep in body and become a living soul." This line occurs in Wordsworth’s Tintern Abbey.
4. Collins's poem "In Yonder Grave a Druid lies" is an elegy on the death of James Thomson.
5. Thomas Love Peacock satirises Shelley and Coleridge in Nightmare Abbey.
6. "It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife". This line occurs in Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen.
7. The phrase, "willing suspension of disbelief" is applied to Coleridge.
8. "When lovely woman stoops to folly" occurs in a play written by Oliver Goldsmith. (She Stoops to Conquer)
9. "Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive. But to be young was very heaven." This line occurs in Wordsworth’s The Prelude.
10. According to Shelley "Hell is a city much like London."
11. The Mariner kills an albatross in The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.
12. Robert Southey’s A Vision of Judgment is a ludicrous eulogy of George II.
13. Shelley was expelled from the Oxford University for the publication of On the Necessity of Atheism.
14. Lord Byron was the poet who woke one morning and found himself famous.
15. Matthew Arnold called Shelley "an ineffectual angel beating in the void his luminous wings in vain".

16. Walter Scott’s novels are called Waverly Novels.
17. 'Elia' is a pen-name assumed by De Quincey.
18. Shelley's Defense of Poetry is a rejoinder (reply) to Love Peacock's The Four Ages of Poetry.
19. Adonais is a Pastoral Elegy written by Shelley on the death of Keats.
20. Madeline is the heroine in Eve of St. Agnes by John Keats.
21. Matthew Arnold said about Keats, "He is with Shakespeare".
22. Keats said himself, "My name is writ in water."
23. Coleridge said. "I have a smack of Hamlet myself".
24. Shelley's death was caused by drowning.
25. "Life, like a dome of many coloured glass, Stains the white radiance of Eternity Until death tramples it to fragments, die." These lines occur in Shelley’s Adonais.
26. Keats’ Ode on a Grecian Urn ends with the line: "For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair.”
27. "A thing of beauty is a joy forever ." This line is in Keats’s Endymion.
28. Charles Lamb has written Tales from Shakespeare.
29. Walter Scott is considered to be the most remarkable Historical Novelist of the Romantic Period.
30. Ode of wit is a small masterpiece of Abraham Cowley.
31. The first poet laureate of England was Ben Jonson (unofficial).
32. After Walter Scott’s refusal the Poet Laureateship was conferred on Robert Southey .
33. Dryden's Absalom and Achitophel, dealt with the people's plan to prevent James from coming to the throne and make Duke of Monmouth the king, which is known as the Popish plot.
34. The title of poet of laureate was first conferred by letters patent to John Dryden.
35. Queen Victoria succeeded to the throne of England after William IV.
36. D.G.Rossetti was the leader of the Pre-Raphaelite group of artists in England. (Pre-Raphaelites : D.G.Rossetti, Christina Rossetti, Morris and Swinburne)
37. Elizabeth Barret Browning is the author of Aurora Leigh.
38. The basic theme of Arnold’s Literature and Dogma is Theology.
39. Arnold’s Culture and Anarchy deals with the subject of Education.
40. The subtitle of Vanity Fair is “Novel Without a Hero”.
41. George Eliot's novel Romola is a Historical novel.
42. Charles Dickens left Edwin Drood (his novel) unfinished.
43. Voltaire wrote: "If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him.’
44. In Memoriam Tennyson mourns the death of Arthur Hallam.
45. Matthew Arnold's Thyrsis is an elegy written on the death of Hugh Clough.
46. Arnold defines Poetry as "Poetry is a criticism of life, under the conditions fixed for such a criticism by the laws of poetic truth and poetic beauty".
47. The Dynasts is an epic drama written by Hardy. It deals with The Napoleonic Wars.
48. The scene of a wife's auction takes place in Hardy's The Mayor of Casterbridge.
49. The phrase 'Stormy Sisterhood' is applied to Bronte Sisters-Charlotte, Emily, and Anne.
50. "Happiness is but an occasional episode in the general drama of pain." This line appears in Thomas Hardy’s The Mayor of Casterbridge .
51. Charles Dicken’s David Copperfield is most autobiographical.
52. Wilkie Collins is the author of the novel No Name.
53. In Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities', the two cities referred to are : London and Paris.
54. Tennyson's Queen Mary is a drama.
55. Browning's Rabbi Ben Ezra begins with the lines: "Grow old along with me ! The best is yet to be ."
56. "Truth sits upon the lips of dying men." This line occurs in Matthew Arnold’s Sohrab and Rustum.
57. War Poets : Rupert Brooke, Julian Grenfell and Siegfried Sassoon
58. Rudyard Kipling said "Oh, East is East, and West is West, And never the twain can meet."
59. The Waste Land by T S Eliot is dedicated to Ezra Pound.
60. The Waste Land is divided into five parts.
61. The Waste Land ends with the line, "Datta, Dayadhvam, Damyata, Shanti, Shanti, Shanti."
62. D.H.Lawrence’s Sons and Lovers has autobiographical overtones.
63. D.H.Lawrence called one of his novels Kangaroo as “Thought Adventure".
64. The phrase ‘religion of the blood' is associated with D.H.Lawrence.
65. A character in Virginia Woolf’s novel Orlando changes his sex. Charles II is characterised in this novel.
66. A woman's search for a fitting mate is the central theme of Bernard Shaw's Man and Superman.
67. ‘Chocolate cream hero' appears in Shaw’s Arms and the Man.
68. The phrase 'Don Juan in Hell' occurs in Shaw’s Man and Superman.
69. Prostitution is the central theme of Shaw's Mrs. Warren's Profession.
70. Labour and Capital conflict is the central theme of Galsworthy’s Strife.
71. "The law is what it is -a majestic edifice sheltering all of us, each stone of which rests on another." These lines occur in Galsworthy’s Justice.
72. Bernard Shaw was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1925.
73. Joseph Conrad's novels are generally set in the background of the sea.
74. Rudyard Kipling wrote the poem “ If”
75. The term 'Stream of consciousness' was first used by William James.
76. The terms 'Inscape' and 'Instress' are associated with Hopkins.
77. 'Sprung Rhythm' was originated by Hopkins.
78. T .S. Eliot called 'Hamlet' an artistic failure.
79. The World Within World is an autobiography of Stephen Spender.
80. G. B. Shaw said, "For art's sake alone I would not face the toil of writing a single sentence”.
81. Aldous Huxley borrowed the title ‘Brave New World’ from Shakespeare’s The Tempest.
82. William Morris is the author of The Earthly Paradise.
83. T S Eliot was believed to be "a classicist in literature, royalist in politics and anglo-catholic in religion”.
84. Virginia Woolf was the founder of the Bloomsbury Group, a literary club of England.
85. George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty – Four and Aldous Huxley's Brave New World are prophetic novels.
86. Plato said, ‘Art is twice removed from reality'.
87. Plato proposed in his Republic that poets should be banished from the ideal Republic.
88. Five principal sources of Sublimity are there according to Longinus.
89. In Dryden's Essay of Dramatic Poesy there are four speakers representing four different ideologies. Neander expresses Dryden's own views.
90. Dr. Johnson called Dryden 'the father of English criticism'
91. Shelley said, "poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world”.
92. Dr . Johnson preferred Shakespeare's comedies to his Tragedies.
93. Coleridge said, "I write in metre because I am about to use a language different from that of prose."
94. Heroic Couplet is a two-line stanza having two rhyming lines in Iambic Pentameter.
95. Alexandrine is a line of six iambic feet occasionally used in a Heroic couplet.
96. Terza Rima is a run-on three-line stanza with a fixed rhyme-scheme.
97. Rhyme Royal stanza is a seven-line stanza in iambic pentameter.
98. Ottawa Rima is an eight-line stanza in iambic pentameter with a fixed rhyme-scheme.
99. Spenserian stanza is a nine-line stanza consisting of two quatrains in iambic pentameter, rounded off with an Alexandrine.
100. Blank verse has a metre but no rhyme.
101. Simile is a comparison between two things which have at least one point common.
102. Hyperbole is an exaggerated statement for the sake of emphasis.
103. The poem by Chaucer known to be the first attempt in English to use the Heroic Couplet is The Legend of Good Women.
104. Chaucer introduced the Heroic couplet in English verse and invented Rhyme Royal.
105. The invention of the genre, the Eclogues (pastoral poetry) is attributed to Alexander Barclay.
106. Mort D' Arthur is the first book in English in poetic prose.
107. First to use blank verse in English drama Thomas Sackville.
108. The first English play house called The Theatre was founded in London, 1576.
109. Thomas Wyatt introduced the sonnet form to England.
110. Thomas Nash was the creator of the picaresque novel. ( The Unfortunate Traveler)
111. Francis Bacon is the first great stylist in English prose.
112. Marlowe wrote only tragedies.
113. Sir Walter Raleigh wrote the introductory sonnet to Spencer's Fairy Queen.
114. Wordsworth viewed that "poetry divorced from morality is valueless".
115. Longinus is called the first romantic critic.
116. Dr. Johnson defined poetry as "Metrical Composition".
117. Carlyle defined poetry as 'Musical thought'.
118. Bacon is known as the father of English essay.
119. Imaginary characters were first introduced in the periodical essay of Addison and Steele.
120. Montaigne is known as the father of Essay.
121. To Arnold, Nature is , “A Calm refuge and solace to the troubled heart”.
122. Father of Greek tragedy – Aeschylus
123. Father of Comedy – Aristophanes
124. Father of English Poetry - Geoffrey Chaucer
125. Father of English Printing - William Caxton
126. Father of detective story - Edgar Allen Poe
127. Father of English Prose - King Alfred
128. Morning Star of Reformation - John Wycliffe
129. Wolf Hall (2009) is a historical novel by English author Hilary Mantel.
130. Boz is the pen name of Charles Dickens.
131. Henry James described novels as "loose baggy monsters".
132. T. S. Eliot has made attempt to combine religious symbolism and society comedy in his plays Murder in the Cathedral and The Cocktail Party.
133. In 1960, the ban finally lifted on D. H. Lawrence's novel Lady Chatterley's Lover, written in 1928.
134. James Joyce's Ulysses is based on the pattern of Homer’s Odyssey.
135. Strophe, antistrophe and epode are the components of Pindaric ode. a. Strophe : Dancers danced from the right to the left b. Antistrophe : Left to the right or counter turn c. Epode: When the dancers were fixed in the stage.
136. Pneumonia was the cause of William’s death in Sons and Lovers.
137. ‘Brevity is the soul of wit’ is a quotation from William Shakespeare.
138. Sir Toby Belch speaks the lines : “Dost thou think, because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale.” in Twelfth Night.
  • In Paradise Lost, Book I, Satan is the embodiment of Milton’s Spirit of revolt.
    139. Wordsworth called poetry “the breadth and finer spirit of all knowledge”.
    140. Twelfth Night opens with the speech of Duke.
    141. Kubla Khan of Coleridge is an opium dream. (Xanadu is a place in this poem)
    142. Shelley used Terza rima stanza form in his famous poem ‘Ode to the West Wind’.
    143. The phrase ‘Pathetic fallacy’ is coined by John Ruskin.
    144. Five soliloquies are spoken by Hamlet in the play Hamlet.
    145. “The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.” These lines are from “The Second Coming” by W. B Yeats.
    146. Sensuousnessisthe most notable characteristic of Keats’ poetry.
    147. Optimismisthe key-note of Browning’s philosophy of life.
    148. The title of Carlyle’s ‘Sartor Resartus’ meansTailor Repatched.
    149. “Epipsychidion” is composed by Shelley.
    150. “The better part of valour is discretion” occurs in Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part I.
    151. Graham Greeneused a pseudonym, Michael Angelo Titmarsh, for much of his early work.
    152. Pride and Prejudice was originally a youthful work entitled‘First Impressions’.
    153. There’s a special providence in the fall of a sparrow.” The line given above occurs inHamlet.
    154. Sir John Falstaff is one of Shakespeare’s greatest comic figures. (The character appears both in Henry IV Part 1 and The Merry Wives of Windsor)
    155. Samuel Pepys began his diary in New Year’s Day 1660 and wrote till 1669.
    156. Blakesaid “That Milton was of the Devil’s party without knowing it”.
    157. Women’s Education and Rights isthe theme of Tennyson’s Poem ‘The Princess’.
    158. Oedipus complex and Electra complex are the terms used by Carl Jung.
    159. D. H. Lawrence wrote“My own great religion is a belief in the blood, the flesh as being wiser than the intellect.”
    160. Globe and the Rose theatres associated with William Shakespeare.
    161. In Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, Shakespeare writes the following lines: Brutus: Peace! Count the clock. Cassius: The clock has stricken three (Act II, scene I, lines 193-94).
    162. Nietzsche said, "Talent is an adornment; an adornment is also a concealment."
    163. Ann Landers once claimed, "The poor wish to be rich, the rich wish to be happy, the single wish to be married, and the married wish to be dead."
    164. Samuel Johnson writes,"Labour and care are rewarded with success, success produces confidence, confidence relaxes industry, and negligence ruins the reputation which diligence had raised" (Rambler No. 21).
    165. The character of Yoda states in Star Wars, Episode I: "Fear leads to anger; anger leads to hatred; hatred leads to conflict; conflict leads to suffering."
    166. Beowulf, in which a hero with the strength of thirty men wrestles with the monster Grendel.
    167. In medias res (Latin for “in the midst of things”) means Opening of the plot in the middle of the action.
    168. Tetrameter – a verse in a poem consisting of four metric feet.
    169. Tercet – a grouping of three consecutive lines of poetry that may or may not rhyme.
    170. Trimeter –a line of a poem that contains three metric feet.
    171. The autobiography of Mohandas K. Gandhi, My Experiments with Truth, originally written in Gujarati between 1927 and 1929, is now considered a classic.
    172. Poetry of Percy Bysshe Shelley, whose elegy on the death of John Keats (Adonais, 1821) contains a prophetic vision of his own death.
    173. Benjamin Kurtz’s The Pursuit of Death (1930) is on Shelley.
    174. “The Owl and the Nightingale” (c. 1220), in which two birds, the symbols of love and religion, debate their respective values.
    175. David Hume’s Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (1779)
    176. John Donne compared two separated lovers to the twin legs of a compass in his poem “The Anniversary.”
    177. Plato called Archilochus “the prince of Sages”.
    178. George Eliot’s pen name is Mary Ann Evans. Her famous debut novel is Adam Bede.
    179. A Doll’s House is a three act play in prose by Henrik Ibsen.
    180. A House’s Tale is a novel by Mark Twain. His pen name is Samuel Clemens.
    181. A Marriage Proposal is a one-act play (Farce) by Anton Chekhov written in 1888-1889 and first performed in 1890. Natalia, Stepan Stepanovitch Chubokov, Ivan are the characters in this play.
    182. A Tale of a Tub is a satire by Jonathan Swift. It is a prose parody which divided into sections of “Digression” and “A Tale” of three brothers Peter, Martin and Jack.
    183. Aeschylus is often described as “the father of tragedy”.
    184. Alexander Pope translated Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey. Pope is the third most frequently quoted writer in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, after Shakespeare and Tennyson. The Rape of the Lock is dedicated to his friend John Caryll. Pope also contributed to Addison’s play Cato. The Rape of the Lock was published in 1712; with a revised version published in 1714. It is a mock epic which satirizes high society quarrel between Arabella Fermor (Belinda) and Lord Petre. Belinda is compared to the Sun in the poem. “An Essay on Criticism” (1711) and “Windsor Forest” (1713) are also his works.
    184. Arms and the Man is a comedy by George Bernard Shaw. The title was borrowed from Virgil’s Aeneid in Latin ( Arms and the man I Sing). Raina is a character in the play. Shaw’s other works are Candida, You Never Can Tell, The Man of Destiny.
    185. Between the Acts is the final novel by Virginia Woolf published in 1941 shortly after her suicide.
    186. George Bernard Shaw’s Candida set in the month of October.
    187. Confidence is a novel by Henry James in 1879.
    188. Death in Venice (1912) is a novella by German author Thomas Mann.
    189. Dream of Four to Middling Women is Samuel Beckett’s first novel. It is an autobiographical novel. The main character Belacqua is a writer and teacher in the novel.
    190. Edgar Allan Poe began his own journal “The Penn”. ( Later it was renamed as “The Stylus”)
  • Thomas Hardy first employed the term “Wessex” in Far from the Madding Crowd.
    191. Franklin Evans or The Inebriate is the only novel ever written by Walt Whitman.
    192. George Bernard Shaw is the only person to have been awarded both a Nobel Prize in literature ( 1925) and an Oscar (1938). Shaw wrote 63 plays. His first novel Immaturity was written in 1879 but last one to be printed in 1931. His last significant play was In Good King Charles Golden Days.
    193. George Eliot’s pen name was Mary Ann Evans. Her works- Adam Bede(1859), The Mill on the Floss (1860), Silas Marner (1861), Romola (1866), Felix Holt, the Radical (1866), Middlemarch(1871-72), Daniel Doronda (1876).
    194. Jonathan Swift wrote “Drapier’s Letters” in 1724.
    195. Gustav Flaubert was a French writer and well known for his first published novel, Madame Bovary (1857).
    196. Happy Days is a play in two acts by Samuel Beckett. Winnie, Willie are the characters in the play.
    197. Henrik Ibsen is often regarded to as “the father of realism” and one of the founders of Modernism in Theatre.
    198. Love in Several Masques was Henry Fielding’s first play.
    199. Chaucer lived during the reigns of : Edward III, Richard II and Henry IV
    200. William Langland was the closest contemporary of Chaucer.
    201. The Hundred Year's War was fought between England and France.
    202. The War of Roses figures in the works of Shakespeare.
    203. John Wycliffe is called 'the morning star of the Reformation'.
    204. Twenty Nine pilgrims in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales were going on the pilgrimage from the Tabard Inn.
    205. Three pilgrims in the Prologue to the Canterbury Tales represent the military profession.
    206. Eight ecclesiastical characters are portrayed in the Prologue in Canterbury Tales.
    207. It is believed that the Host at the Inn was a real man. His name was Harry Bailly.
    208. The pilgrims were going to Shrine of St. Thomas Becket at Canterbury.
    209. Three women characters figure in the Prologue to the Canterbury Tales.
    210. “The Parson's Tale” is in prose in Canterbury Tales.
    211. “Bath” is the name of the town to which she belonged in Chaucer’s “Wife of Bath”.
    212. "He was as fresh as the month of May " .This line occurs in the Prologue. This is referred to the Squire.
    213. Treatise on the Astrolabe is Chaucer's prose work.
    214. The War of Roses was fought between The House of York and The House of Lancaster
    215. The followers of Wycliffe were called “ the Lollards”
    216. John Wycliffe was the first to render the Bible into English in 1380.
    217. The Piers the Plowman is a series of visions seen by its author Langland. ‘The Vision of a 'Field Full of Folks' was the first vision that he saw.
    218. Occleve in The Governail of Princes wrote a famous poem mourning the death of Chaucer.
    219. Caxton was the first to set up a printing press in England in 1476.
    220. William Tyndale’s English New Testament is the earliest version of the Bible.
    221. Tottle's Miscellany is a famous anthology of 'Songs and Sonnets' by Wyatt and Surrey.
    222. Amoretti contained 88 sonnets of Spenser.
    223. Thomas Mores' Utopia was first written in Latin in 1516. It was rendered into English in 1551.
    224. Roister Doister is believed to be the first regular comedy in English by Nicholas Udall.
    225. Gorboduc is believed to be the first regular tragedy in English by Sackville and Norton in collaboration.
    226. Chaucer's Physician in the Doctor of Physique was heavily dependent upon Astrology.
    227. Spenser described Chaucer as "The Well of English undefiled’.
    228 Chaucer's pilgrims go on their pilgrimage in the month of April.
    229. Forest of Arden appears in the play As You Like It by William Shakespeare.
    230. Globe Theatre was built in 1599.
    231. When Sidney died, Spenser wrote an elegy on his death called “Astrophel”
    232. Spenser’s Epithalamion is a wedding hymn.
    233. The first tragedy Gorboduc was later entitled as Ferrex and Porrex.
    234. Sidney's “Apologie for Poetrie” is a reply to Gosson's “School of Abuse”.
    235. In his Apologie for Poetrie, Sidney defends the Three Dramatic Unities.
    236. Christopher Marlowe wrote only tragedies. He first used Blank Verse in his Jew of Malta.
    237. "Was this the face that launched a thousand ships” . This line occurs in Doctor Faustus by Marlowe.
    238. Ben Jonson used the phrase 'Marlowe's mighty line' for Marlowe's Blank Verse.
    239. Ruskin said, "Shakespeare has only heroines and no heroes".
    240. The phrase 'The Mousetrap' used by Shakespeare in Hamlet. It is the play within the play.
    241. Spenser dedicates the Preface to The Faerie Queene to Sir Walter Raleigh.
    242. The Faerie Queene is an allegory .In this Queen Elizabeth is allegorized through the character of Gloriana.
    243. Charles Lamb called Spenser the 'Poets' Poet'.
    244. Spenser first used the Spenserian stanza in Faerie Queene.
    245. In the original scheme or plan of the Faerie Queene as designed by Spenser, it was to be completed in Twelve Books. But he could not complete the whole plan. Only six books exist now.
    246. Twelve Cantos are there in Book I of the Faerie Queene.
    247. In the Dedicatory Letter, Spenser Says that the real beginning of the allegory in the Faerie Queene is to be found in Book XII.
    248. The Faerie Queene is basically a moral allegory. Spenser derived this concept of moral allegory from Aristotle.
    249. Ben Jonson said 'Spenser writ no language.'
    250. Spenser divided his ‘Shepheardes Calender’ into twelve Ecologues. They represent twelve months of a year.
    251. Bacon's Essays are modelled on the Essais of Montaigne.
    252. Bacon is the author of Novum Organum.
    253. Spenser dedicated his Shepheards Calendar to Sir Philip Sidney.
    254. Ten Essays were published in Bacon's First Edition of Essays in 1597.
    255. 58 essays of Bacon were published in his third and last edition of Essays in 1625.
  • "......... a mixture of falsehood is like alloy in coin of gold and silver, which may make the metal work the better , but it embaseth it". These lines occur in Bacon’s “Of Truth”.
    256. Hamlet said "Frailty thy name is woman” in Hamlet by Shakespeare.
    257. "Life is a tale, told by an idiot, Full of sound and fury signifying nothing." These lines occur in Macbeth by Shakespeare.
    258. "The lunatic, the lover, and the poet, Are of imagination all compact." These lines occur in A Mid - Summer Night's Dream.
    259. "Neither a borrower nor a lender be”. This line was told by Polonius in Hamlet.
    260. "Life is but a walking shadow, a poor player, That struts and frets his hour upon the stage And then is heard no more." These lines are in Macbeth.
    261. Ben Jonson's comedies are called 'Comedies of Humour' because each of them deals with a particular 'Humour' in human nature.
    262. The Age of James I is called the Jacobean Age.
    263. Samson Agonistes is an epic written by John Milton.
    264. Milton wrote Areopagitica to defend people's Freedom of Speech.
    265. Twelve books are there in Paradise Lost. In Book IV of Paradise Lost, Adam and Eve meet for the first time. Paradise was first published in 1667 in ten books. The Second Edition was followed in 1674 in twelve books. The longest book is BOOK IX with 1,189 lines and the shortest book is BOOK VII with 640 lines. It was written in blank verse. Satan is considered as the “Hero” in Paradise Lost. The story opens in Hell. Eve was created by God taken from one of Adam’s ribs.
    266. Milton became blind in 1652 (at the age of 44) and he wrote Paradise Lost through dictation with the help of Amanuenses and friends.
    267. The term 'Metaphysical School of Poets' was first applied to Donne and this companion poets by Dr. Johnson.
    268. ‘Fame is the last infirmity of noble mind'. This line occurs in Milton’s Lycidas.
    269. “Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven”. Satan says this line in Paradise Lost.
    270. Samson Agonistes loved Delilah and he was betrayed by her in Samson Agonistes.
    271. Lycidas is a pastoral elegy written by Milton on the death of his friend Edward King.
    272. Wordsworth says of Milton: 'Thy soul was like a star, and dwelt apart'.
    273. 'Milton, thou shouldst be living at this hour!’. Wordsworth remembers Milton in one of his sonnets.
    274. Dryden's Essay of Dramatic Poesy is a critical treatise on dramatic art developed through dialogues.
    275. Dryden's Essay of Dramatic Poesy develops through dialogues amongst four interlocutors. They are - Eugenius, Crites, Neander , Lisideius.
    276. In Dryden’s Essay of Dramatic Poesy Neander speaks for Modern English Dramatists. (Neander is Dryden in Essay of Dramatic Poesy)
    277. Conquest of Granada is a play written by Dryden.
    278. Dryden's All For Love is based on Antony and Cleopatra.
    279. John Locke is the author of The Essay on Human Understanding.
    280. The central theme of Dryden's The Hind and the Panther is Defence of Roman Catholicism.
    281. Samuel Butler's Hudibras is a satire on Puritanism.
    282. Grace Abounding is an autobiographical work by John Bunyan.
    283. Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress is an allegory.
    284. 'Gather ye rose - buds while ye may'. This is the opening line of 'Counsel to Girls' written by Robert Herrick.
    285. "Here is God's plenty". Dryden refers Chaucer in the line.
    286. Nahum Tate gave a happy ending to King Lear.
    287. The theatres were closed down during the Commonwealth period in England. In 1660 they were reopened.
    288. "Here lies my wife, here let her rest ! Now she is at rest, and so am I ! " This was a proposed epitaph to be engraved on the tomb of John Dryden’s wife.
    289. Dryden's The Medal is a personal satire on Shaftesbury.
    300. Dryden is hailed as 'The Father of English Criticism' by Dr. Johnson.
    301 "The Restoration marks the real moment of birth of our Modern English Prose." Matthew Arnold says this.
    302. The term 'Augustan' was first applied to a School of Poets by Dr. Johnson.
    303 Matthew Arnold called the eighteenth century "Our admirable and indispensable Eighteenth Century".
    304. Matthew Arnold called the eighteenth century 'the Age of Prose and Reason'.
    305. 'Dryden found English poetry brick and left it marble.' Dr. Johnson remarked this.
    306. 'If Pope be not a poet, where is poetry to be found? This observation was made by Dr.Johnson.
    307. "I shall endeavour to enlighten morality with wit, and to temper wit with morality." Addison made this endeavor.
    308. Richard Steele started the journal The Tatler.
    309. The ‘Four Wheels of the Van of the English Novel are- Fielding, Smollett, Sterne, Richardson.
    310. Referring to one of his novels, Jonathan Swift said, "Good God! What a genius I had when I wrote that book! “He was referring A Tale of the Tub.
    311. Pope said "The proper study of mankind is man”.
    312. Absolem and Achitophel deals with the Popish Plot'.
    313. The Elegie in praise of John Donne was written by Thomas Carew.
    314. In Joseph Andrews Fielding parodies Richardson's Pamela.
    315. Swift said 'Pope can fix in one couplet more sense than I can do in six'.
    316. The 'Coffee House Culture' flourished in The Age of Dr. Johnson.
    317. Pope observed, "A little knowledge is a dangerous thing Drink deep or taste not the Pierian spring."
    318. Lady M.W .Montagu said Pope's Essay on Criticism is 'all stolen'.
    319. Matthew Prior's The Town and Country Mouse is a parody of Dryden's The Hind and the Panther.
    320. Dr. Johnson wrote the “Lives” of 52 poets in his "Lives of the Poets”.
    321. Dr. Johnson left out Goldsmith in his Lives of the Poets.
    322. Tennyson called Milton "the mighty-mouthed inventor of harmonies".
    333. James Thomson’s Seasons is a Nature poem divided into four parts.
    334. John Dyer is the author of the poem Grongar hill.
    335. Thomas Gray’s “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard” begins with the line "The curfew tolls the knell of parting day".
    336. 1798 was taken to be the year of the beginning of the Romantic Movement because Wordsworth’s Lyrical Ballads was published in the year.

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