This Little Piggy Trivia Quiz

Answer: Circe

In Books 9-12 of "The Odyssey", Odysseus - who is a guest of Alcinous, king of the Phaeacians - tells his hosts about the adventures he and his crew had during their voyage back home from Troy. After their escape from the cannibalistic Laestrygonians, the hero and his companions reached the island of Aeaea, inhabited by the enchantress Circe, the immortal daughter of the sun god Helios. In Book 10 of the poem, Circe welcomes a group of men into her house, but feeds them a poisoned drink to make them forget their homes, and turns them into pigs with a stroke of her wand. Odysseus, however, is warned by the god Hermes, who gives him a herb that will protect him from Circe's witchcraft. The hero eventually manages to get his men turned back into human beings, and lets himself be seduced by the sorceress, with whom he remains for one year.

Another pig-related episode occurs in Book 19. Odysseus - who has finally arrived in Ithaca, but pretends to be a beggar - is recognized by his old nurse, Eurycleia, when she sees a scar on the hero's leg. The scar was the result of an encounter with a huge wild boar during a hunt when Odysseus was a young man.

Answer: J.R.R. Tolkien

Dating from the late 14th century, "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" is an Arthurian romance written by an unknown poet in alliterative verse. The story, based on a quest undertaken by the titular hero, contains a number of folk motifs, such as the beheading game and the exchange of winnings. The episode of the boar hunt is set in the framework of Sir Gawain's stay at the castle of Lord and Lady Bertilak, where the hero is subjected to a series of tests of his character. Lord Bertilak is involved in three separate hunts, which occur at the same time as his lady attempts to seduce Sir Gawain. The boar hunt is very detailed, and also somewhat graphic for the time, emphasizing the difficulty and danger of hunting such a large animal, armed with deadly tusks. The scene of Bertilak eventually cornering and killing the beast with his sword is set up to resemble a duel to the death between knights.

In 1925, J.R.R. Tolkien (who was professor of English at Oxford), together with Canadian philologist E.V. Gordon, published a scholarly edition of the poem. His translation of the poem in modern English dates from much later, and was published in 1975, two years after his death, together with translations of two other Middle English texts, "Pearl" and "Sir Orfeo".

Answer: Beauty and the Beast

The tale of "King Pig" ("Re Porco") is included in the first volume of Gianfrancesco Straparola's collection of literary fairy tales, "The Pleasant Nights" ("Le piacevoli notti", also known in English as "The Facetious Nights"), published in 1551-1553. In the story, a king and queen have a son who is turned into a pig by an enchantment, and will be freed only after he has married three times. He marries three sisters in quick succession, killing the first two (who had tried to kill him), but finally revealing himself to the third sister, who has a kind and loving nature; when his parents destroy his pigskin, he is finally freed from the spell. Straparola's tale echoes elements of the tale of Cupid and Psyche in Apuleius' "The Golden Ass"; in the Aarne-Thompson catalogue of folktale types, it is classified as type 441, named after "Hans My Hedgehog", a tale by the brothers Grimm. The story of King Pig was greatly expanded by French writer Madame D'Aulnoy, with the title "Prince Marcassin" ("Prince Wild Boar"), included in her 1698 collection "Les Fées à la Mode" ("The Fairies in Fashion").

Originally written in 1740 by Gabrielle-Suzanne de Villeneuve, the tale of "Beauty and the Beast" was appropriated a few years later by another French lady, Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont, whose version of the fairy tale - considerably shorter than the original - is the one most familiar to modern readers.

Answer: China

One of the Four Great Classical Novels of Chinese literature, "Journey to the West" is believed to have been written by Wu Cheng'en, a novelist and poet of the Ming Dynasty. The novel relates the legendary pilgrimage of Xuanzang (called Tang Sanzang in the novel), a 7th-century Buddhist monk, scholar and traveller, to the "Western Regions" (Central Asia and the Indian subcontinent) in search of some sacred texts. Buddha himself gives him the task, as well as three helpers: Sun Wukong (the Monkey King), Sha Wujing (Sand), and Zhu Wuneng ("pig who rises in power", known as Pigsy), a monstrous hybrid of man and pig, originally a heavenly general punished for having tried to seduce a goddess.

Throughout the novel, Zhu - who is nicknamed "Bajie" ("eight precepts") - gets himself and his companions in trouble on various occasions because of his lazy, gluttonous and lustful nature. However, true to his role as a protector, he often slays demons who attack the party with his deadly nine-toothed rake. At the end of the novel, unlike his other companions, he does not attain enlightenment, but is rewarded with a job as "Cleanser of the Altars", and all the leftovers he can eat.

Answer: Ben Jonson

First performed in London in 1614, "Bartholomew Fair" is considered the most experimental of Ben Jonson's comedies. The titular fair was held every year at the end of August from 1133 to 1855 at the Priory of St Bartholomew the Great in Smithfield, at the western end of the City of London. The fair, which lasted four days, was one of the biggest events of the year, drawing crowds from every walk of life, and offering a wide range of pleasures and trade goods. This colourful setting gives Jonson the opportunity to comment on London society - aiming some of his acerbic wit at Puritans, who were sworn enemies of public theatre.

The main Puritan character in the play, a man by the name of Zeal-of-the-Land Busy, is convinced to accompany amateur dramatist Littlewit and his wife to the Fair, as she pretends to have an irresistible craving for roast pig caused by pregnancy. Once at the Fair, in spite of his pious protestations against giving in to temptation, and ends up consuming two whole pigs to debunk any association of the Puritan faith with Judaism. The booth of Ursula, the pig-woman - a breeder and seller of pigs - is central to the development of the plot, providing the setting for various shenanigans. Often compared to Falstaff, and sharing many of the characteristics of her pigs, Ursula is a larger-than-life character, not only because of her enormous bodily size: she is, in fact, an independent businesswoman that holds her own in an environment that is definitely not for the faint of heart.

Of the three playwrights listed as wrong answers, only Christopher Marlowe (who died in 1593) was not active during the Jacobean era.

Answer: Jude the Obscure

First published in 1895, "Jude the Obscure" was Thomas Hardy's last complete novel. In this tragic story, working-class young man Jude Fawley aspires to become a scholar, but ends up trapped in a loveless marriage with Arabella, a coarse, materialistic girl. The episode of the slaughtering of the pig in Chapter 10 of the first part of the novel brings sharply to light the irreconcilable differences between this mismatched pair, and eventually leads to the end of their union. When the butcher they were expecting fails to show up because of bad weather, Arabella convinces her husband to do the job himself. The fear and pain of the animal, and its sense of having been betrayed by friends, are conveyed unflinchingly, as is Jude's profound upset at having to do something that goes against his nature. He finally plunges the knife into the pig's throat, instead of letting it bleed out to improve the quality of the meat. The episode is a turning point in the pair's fraught relationship, as the next day Arabella disappears from the house and (albeit temporarily) from Jude's life.

Two out of three wrong answers are also major Thomas Hardy novels; "Felix Holt, The Radical", on the other hand, was written by George Eliot.

Answer: Matilde Serao

Born in Greece in 1856, but raised in Naples, Matilde Serao was the first Italian woman to become a newspaper editor; in 1892, she founded the newspaper "Il Mattino" (still published to this day) together with her husband, author and journalist Eduardo Scarfoglio. Besides her work as a journalist, Serao published a large number of works of fiction. The short story "Canituccia" is part of the collection "Piccole anime" ("Little Souls"), published in 1883. The titular character, a seven-year-old girl, the unwanted daughter of a prostitute, works for the owners of a farm in the countryside near Naples. She forms a bond of friendship with a young pig, Ciccotto, which for a whole summer follows her like a shadow, giving her the only affection she has known in her young life. The inevitable conclusion (which I will not spoil here) will not fail to bring tears to everyone's eyes. The story has been translated into English, and is available from various Internet sources.

None of Serao's six nominations for the Nobel Prize were successful: the last one, in 1926, one year before her death, was sabotaged by Benito Mussolini, angered by Serao's anti-Fascist stance. The Prize went to another Italian female author, Grazia Deledda - who, incidentally, wrote a short story titled "Il cinghialetto" ("The Little Wild Boar"), set in her native Sardinia.

None of the three Italian ladies listed as wrong answers is known as a literary author: Maria Montessori was a physician and educator, while Donatella Versace is a fashion designer, and Monica Bellucci an actress and model.

Answer: Yes

Published in 1954, "Lord of the Flies" was William Golding's first novel, famously rejected many times before being accepted by London publishers Faber & Faber. Golding wrote it as a reaction to popular youth novels about children stranded on an island, which he believed to be unrealistic depictions of children's real behaviour. In the novel - which has often labeled as dystopian - a group of schoolboys find themselves on a deserted Pacific island after surviving a plane crash: their attempts to give themselves an organization end in dismal failure, with the boys descending into savagery and turning on each other.

The island is inhabited by wild pigs which the boys hunt for food. Believing the island to be haunted by a mythical "beast", some of the boys impale the head of a pig on a sharpened stick, presenting it as an offering to the creature - which is nothing but the "beast" that lives inside each of them. This grisly display is dubbed "Lord of the Flies", the original meaning of the name Beelzebub. The overweight, bespectacled Piggy (whose real name we never learn) tries to be a voice of reason, but is first marginalized by the group, and then eventually killed - his death symbolizing the end of the children's innocence.

Answer: Ted Hughes

"Lupercal" is Ted Hughes' second poetry collection, in which the poet explores humankind's relationship with nature, animals in particular. Through his masterful use of language, Hughes creates images that are at the same time unsettling and starkly beautiful. The pig is first described as no more than a dead weight, like an empty sack, which the poet thumps almost contemptuously. In the second half of the poem, however, the feral nature of the live animal is evoked - its blood hot like an oven, its powerful bite, its voracious eating habits ("they eat cinders, dead cats"). The last lines return to the reality of the dead animal, which is going to be scalded and scoured "like a doorstep".

In 1956, Hughes married fellow poet Sylvia Plath, from whom he separated in 1962; the following year, Plath committed suicide. In a tragic twist of fate, the woman for whom he had left Plath, Assia Wevill, killed herself and her young daughter a few years later. Nicholas, his son by Plath, also died by suicide in 2009.

Hughes was appointed Poet Laureate in December 1984, and held this office until his death in 1998. All the poets listed as wrong answers were also Poets Laureate during the 20th century.

Answer: growing human organs

Published in 2003, "Oryx and Crake" is the first book in Margaret Atwood's Madd/Adam trilogy, and - like Atwood's best-known novel, "The Handmaid's Tale" - is a work of speculative fiction with a strong dystopian element. Set in a post-apocalyptic world, after most of humankind has been wiped out by a pandemic, the story describes through flashbacks a world dominated by multinational corporations that control every aspect of life. The father of Jimmy (Snowman), the main character, through whose recollections the story is told, works in a laboratory where "pigoons" - genetically modified, highly intelligent pigs - are developed. Officially named "multiorganifers", these pigs are bred in commercial farms, where they are injected with human stem cells, so that they can grow human organs to be used in transplants meant for the most privileged members of society. Rather unsurprisingly, after the collapse of civilization, these hybrid creatures become dangerous predators that kill and eat humans whenever possible.

In the second novel of the trilogy, "The Year of the Flood" (2009), it is stated that the name "pigoon" comes from a combination of "pig" and "balloon", because of these creatures' huge size.