Anecdotes, Mockery, Scandals In Literature Quiz

Quiz Answer Key and Fun Facts

1. When epic stories were very fashionable there always were people who felt they should mock at the genre. Already in Homer's Greece there was a famous 'mock-epic' the 'Batrachomyomachia'. What heroic war did it report on?

Answer: mice against frogs

This parody of Homer's "Iliad" describes a war that is fought over the accidental drowning of a mouse prince while being carried across a lake by the frog king. The Greek gods get involved, but it is all over by sunset. The term has come to be applied to any altercation over something trivial.

2. Also Pope wrote a mock heroic poem about the stealing of a few hairlocks. What was, in the poem, the fictional name of the victim of that 'rape'?

Answer: Belinda

"Christabel" is a poem by Coleridge (1816). The real person behind the name Belinda was Arabella Fermor, to whom Alexander Pope dedicated the poem.

3. Literary prizes always have been a great source of gossip, scandal and debate. Which of these authors accepted the Nobel Prize in 1930, but NOT the Pulitzer Prize in 1925?

Answer: Sinclair Lewis

Shaw accepted the honour of the Nobel Prize in 1925, but at first refused the money. Later he accepted it with the explicit reservation that he wanted to keep it until he found some useful cause to donate it to. Jean Paul Sartre in 1964 made a lot of fuss about his rejection of the prize, and tried to prove he was above such neo-capitalistic institutions etc.

Hemingway, in 1954, as a good sport said it was all OK with him and cashed in. And so did Faulkner in 1949 and Steinbeck in 1962.

4. Some of the recognised 'top authors of world literature' never won the Nobel Prize. Which of these never did?

Answer: James Joyce

Other famous non-winners are Joseph Conrad, Henry James, Marcel Proust. In short the real 'cream of the cream'. Among the forgotten winners: Rudolf Eucken(1908); Paul Heyse (1910); Verner von Heidenstamm (1916). Even among the more recent winners some are hardly remembered any longer. Pearl Buck (1938) may still have her readership but among critics she is no longer hot news.

A winner such as Kipling (first English-writing winner in 1907) was later, rightly or wrongly, criticised as an 'imperialist'.

5. A little bit of scandal has always won extra readership. Writing a roman a clef always was helpful to get some extra success. In which of these novels can one of the heroes be seen as a thinly disguised portrait of D.H. Lawrence?

Answer: Huxley's 'Point Counterpoint'

In 'Point Counterpoint' Mark Rampion is D.H.Lawrence; John Middleton Murry is Denis Burlap. In 'Cakes and Ale' Thomas Hardy and Hugh Walpole can be found. 'The Moon and Sixpence' seems to be about Paul Gauguin. Marx, Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin are referred to in 'Animal Farm'.

6. Literature and especially the theatre often caused some scandal. When Shakespeare created a 'Miles Gloriosus' character (braggart soldier as in Latin literature) he first gave it the name Oldcastle but had to change that name because of complaints by the family. What was the new name?

Answer: Falstaff

Other versions are that the name was based on one Sir John Fastolf, who indeed occurs in 1 Henry VI. Pistol, Nym and Bardolph occur in Henry V. Falstaff does not. Other versions of the Miles Gloriosus are: Captain Brazen in 'Farquhar's Recruiting Officer'; Udall in 'Ralph Roister Doister' and Bobadill in Ben Jonson's 'Every Man in His Humour'.

7. Who was the Japanese author that shocked the world with his public suicide in 1970?

Answer: Yukio Mishima

Mishima's 'Temple of the Golden Pavilion' (1956) has become a classic story in Japanese literature. Oe (b.1935) became a Nobel Prize Winner in 1994. One of his best works is 'The Silent Cry' (1987). Endo (b.1923) is the author of a book about Christian martyrs in Japan, called 'Silence'(1969).

Another work of his is 'Stained Glass Elegies' (1984). Tanazaki (1886-1965) was successful with his novel 'The Makioka Sisters'.

8. Not only plagiarism caused scandals in literature, but also downright falsifications. Probably the most successfully faked text was the one attributed to Fingal's son, the bard Ossian. Who was the real author of this so-called 'ancient epic poem'?

Answer: Thomas Macpherson

Fingal's Cave was supposed to have been on the Isle of Staffa. Bishop Thomas Percy's 'Reliques of Ancient English Poetry' (1765) was an authentic collection of traditional ballads. James Macpherson 'discovered' the Ossian poems in 1762. They were 'poor translations into Gaelic' of some of his own verse and made of the Irish Oisin a Scottish Ossian.

9. The Rise of the Novel took place within a rather Puritanic context. As theatre and fiction were still not well digested by the Puritanic mind in the early 18th century, the first novelists seem to have tried to suggest that they reported 'real life events', and had a 'moralistic-didactic purpose'. Which of these was the first of such novels that depicted the past loose morality of a 'converted sinner' in a pseudo-moralistic tone?

Answer: Moll Flanders

'Moll Flanders'(1722) is the only story of these that not only claimed to report a 'real events' story, but also was about a converted sinner. 'Robinson Crusoe' (1717) had a moralising tone and was about 'real life events' indeed, but it was not about loose morality or converted sinners. Neither was Smollet's 'Roderick Random' (1748). Goldsmith's 'Vicar' was a most innocent story from 1766.

10. In the Middle-Ages the re-birth of the theatre took place literally within the church, and developed especially from the Easter liturgy. Because of the 'profanity' of some Biblical scenes, such theatre caused scandal and was soon moved to more public places. As what are those plays commonly known?

Answer: Mystery Plays

Miracle Plays were about miracles performed by saints and were never part of the liturgy. Morality Plays and Allegory Plays found their origins in the 'Chambers of Rhetoric' rather than among the clergy. Mystery Plays dealt with the 'Mysteries' of Faith, in practice the great events in the history of Salvation.

Pro-fane literally means 'in front of the temple' and that was indeed where the Mystery Plays first had to move to: the steps of churches and cathedrals.

Source: Author flem-ish

This quiz was reviewed by FunTrivia editor nerthus before going online.
Any errors found in FunTrivia content are routinely corrected through our feedback system.

Some sensationalism also colours the history of writing. - Literature often shocks. Readers seem to love scandal and authors like to mock. This quiz is about those aspects of books, authors etc.

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