Literary Mergers Quiz | Literature Word Play

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1. Inspirational pamphlet for the American Revolution written by Thomas Paine; Jane Austen's 1811 novel about the Dashwood sisters.

Answer: Common Sense and Sensibility

At the time "Common Sense" was written, the only book that sold better was "The Bible." The most acclaimed adaptation of "Sense and Sensibility" for the screen was Ang Lee's in 1995 which starred Emma Thompson and Kate Winslet as the Dashwood sisters and featured Hugh Grant and Alan Rickman.

2. Louisa May Alcott's popular 1868 novel about Jo March and her three sisters; D.H. Lawrence's 1920 novel about sisters Gudrun and Ursula Brangwen.

Answer: Little Women in Love

John Bunyan's allegorical 1678 novel "The Pilgrim's Progress" is alluded in to "Little Women," in which the experiences of the March sisters enable them to conquer defects of character. Although considered tame today, at the time D.H. Lawrence was writing, "Women in Love" was very controversial due to its sexual theme.

3. Anna Sewell's 1878 novel narrated by the title character, who happens to be a horse; fairy tale in which a lovely young woman trades her freedom for her father's life and lives in the castle of a hideous creature until her love for him turns him into a prince.

Answer: Black Beauty and the Beast

"Black Beauty" was Anna Sewell's only novel written in the last years of her life when she was ill and often unable to get out of bed; when she couldn't write, she would dictate to her mother. When Jean Cocteau adapted "Beauty and the Beast" for the screen in 1946 as "La Belle Et La Bete," he added the character of Avenant, a young man who would like Belle for himself; when Disney created their full-length animated musical version in 1991, one might conjecture that Gaston was based on Cocteau's Avenant.

4. Richard Llewellyn's 1939 book about the Morgans, a Welsh mining family, the 1941 film version of which starred Walter Pidgeon, Maureen O'Hara and Roddy McDowall; Jacqueline Susann's popular 1966 book about three girls who become friends, strive for fame and fall victims to drug addiction, the 1967 film version of which starred Patty Duke and Susan Hayward.

Answer: How Green Was My Valley of the Dolls

John Ford won the Best Director Oscar for "How Green was My Valley," which was one of five Academy Awards the picture garnered; another was Best Picture. "Valley of the Dolls" was supposedly loosely based upon the real lives of celebrities such as Judy Garland and Marilyn Monroe.

5. Edgar Allan Poe's still popular 1843 gothic story about a man whose paranoia causes him to kill another man and then to reveal his deed to authorities; Joseph Conrad's 1902 novella about a man's journey into the Congo and his interest in Kurtz, an ivory procurer for the government.

Answer: Telltale Heart of Darkness

The animated television shows "The Simpsons" and "SpongeBob SquarePants" both have episodes based on Poe's "The Tell-tale Heart." Francis Ford Coppola's 1979 "Apocalypse Now" is a film version of "Heart of Darkness" set in Viet Nam instead of Africa, and Werner Herzog's 1972 "Aguirre, The Wrath of God" was likely loosely based on Conrad's novella as well.

6. Tragic 1948 Pulitzer Prize winning Tennessee Williams play centering on the antipathy between working class Stanley Kowalski and his southern belle sister-in-law Blanche DuBois; tragic 1924 Eugene O'Neill play about a woman's adulterous affair with her step-son, the film version of which starred Sophia Loren.

Answer: Streetcar Named Desire Under the Elms

Vivien Leigh won an Academy Award for her portrayal of Blanche DuBois in director Elia Kazan's 1951 version of "A Streetcar Named Desire," in which Marlon Brando played Stanley Kowalski. Burl Ives and Anthony Perkins played Sophia Loren's husband and son-in-law, respectively, in the 1958 screen adaptation of "Desire Under the Elms."

7. This Emily Dickinson poem's first line title is followed by "Winter afternoons -- that oppresses like the heft, of cathedral tunes --"; 1932 William Faulkner novel which centers on the search by a young pregnant woman to find the father of her unborn child in the small town of Jefferson, Mississippi.

Answer: Theres a Certain Slant of Light in August

"There's a Certain Slant of Light" is one of the better-known poems of the prolific and reclusive Emily Dickinson, who, with her unconventional style and prominent use of dashes, posthumously became one of the most famous American poets of the 19th Century. "Light in August" is a multi-layered examination of attitudes toward race and prejudice in the South, which ingeniously shifts back and forth in time and weaves together three different plotlines, each containing similar themes of isolation and sacrifice.

8. Final novel in J.R.R. Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy; Shakespeare's tragic play about an elderly father who devises a contest in order to determine how to split his kingdom among his three daughters.

Answer: The Return of the King Lear

The 1954-1955 "The Lord of the Rings" fantasy trilogy ("The Fellowship of the Ring," "The Two Towers" and "The Return of the King") was meant by its author to be published as one novel and was one of the most popular literary works of the 20th Century, even before the wildly popular film adaptations by director Peter Jackson in 2001, 2002 and 2003.

The greed and foolishness of the main characters result in a high body count in "King Lear," one of the most acclaimed of Shakespeare's tragedies.

9. Play by Chicagoan Lorraine Hansberry, which opened on Broadway in 1959 (the first Broadway play written by a black woman) and was nominated for four Tony awards; Ernest Hemingway's 1926 post World War I novel about the experiences of a group of Americans at a bullfighting festival in Spain.

Answer: Raisin in the Sun Also Rises

The original Broadway cast of "A Raisin in the Sun" included Sidney Portier and Louis Gossett, Jr. In an attempt to adjust to life following World War I, "The Sun Also Rises" shows the aimless group drowning their sorrows in alcohol.

10. Margaret Atwood's 1985 novel about a totalitarian society that subjugates women, the 1990 screen adaptation of which starred Natasha Richardson, Faye Dunaway and Robert Duvall; Charles Dickens' 1865 novel about the French Revolution.

Answer: Handmaids Tale of Two Cities

In "The Handmaid's Tale," the function of the handmaid is to provide a child for a married couple through a sexual act meant for procreation only. The opening line of "A Tale of Two Cities" is "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times," which is one of the most quoted lines from literature.

Source: Author susanjacosta

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Literary Mergers Trivia Quiz

Name the merged title from the description of two literary works with a word or words in common. Example, "Gone with the Wind in the Willows." "A," "An" or "The" at the beginning of any title is omitted.

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