Take this Exam: A-Level English Literature: context and criticism | Zestly

Question 1

Which of the following best describes 'genre' as a context for reading?

Accepted Answer

Genre provides a framework of expectations that helps the reader interpret the conventions and purposes of the work.

Answer

Genre is a set of rules that must be strictly followed by the author.

Answer

Genre is irrelevant to the reader's experience.

Answer

Genre is determined solely by the date the work was published.

Question 2

Which of the following statements represents an arguable claim rather than a simple factual recitation?

Accepted Answer

The protagonist's tragic flaw is arguably a manifestation of his inability to reconcile public duty with private desire.

Answer

The play was written in 1606.

Answer

The book has five chapters.

Answer

The author was born in London.

Question 3

Two candidates write about 'The Merchant of Venice'. One says: 'The play is antisemitic and therefore not worth studying.' The other says: 'Everybody thought that way in 1600, so there is nothing here to discuss.' What is wrong with both?

Accepted Answer

Both replace reading with a verdict. The first refuses the play; the second refuses the question — and the text answers neither, since it gives Shylock the speech about eyes, hands and organs and then strips him of his money, his daughter and his religion.

Answer

Nothing is wrong with the second: a work can only ever be judged by the standards of its own time.

Answer

Nothing is wrong with the first: a modern reader has no obligation to consider the period at all.

Answer

Both are right, which is why the play has been dropped from serious study.

Question 4

In 1681 Nahum Tate rewrote 'King Lear' so that Cordelia survives and marries Edgar and Lear is restored to his throne. For roughly a century and a half, that was the version English audiences saw on stage. What is the best description of what Tate did?

Answer

A mistake, caused by working from a corrupt copy of the play.

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A restoration of Shakespeare's true intention, which earlier printers had lost.

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A translation, since the English of 1606 could no longer be understood.

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An interpretation: he found the ending unjust and unbearable, and rewrote the play to supply the justice he thought tragedy owed — which tells us a great deal about what his age wanted from the form.

Question 5

'King Lear' was written about 1606. Between 1681 and the 1830s English audiences saw Tate's adaptation, in which Cordelia lives; since then Shakespeare's ending has been restored to the stage. Which statement correctly distinguishes the context in which a work was produced from the context in which it is received?

Answer

They are the same thing, since a play means whatever its audience takes it to mean.

Answer

Production is the circumstances in which the play was written and first performed; reception is what later readers and audiences have made of it — so the century and a half of Tate's ending is a fact about reception, and tells us nothing about 1606.

Answer

Reception context means the present day only; anything before 1900 belongs to production context.

Answer

Production context stops mattering once a work has been adapted.

Question 6

In 'The Merchant of Venice' (5.1) Portia says: 'How far that little candle throws his beams! / So shines a good deed in a naughty world.' A reader today hears 'naughty' as mild, even childish. What has happened to the word, and what does it do to the line?

Answer

Nothing has happened: the word meant the same then, and Portia is being playful.

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The word has grown stronger: it was milder in 1600 than it is now.

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The word has weakened. It then meant wicked or worthless, so the line sets one small good act against a world that is genuinely evil rather than merely mischievous.

Answer

The word was coined by Shakespeare and had no meaning before this line.