Literature-In-English Exam Past Questions and Answers | JAMB, WAEC and NECO

Literature in English is the study of works written in the English language. It includes all forms of writing, such as novels, plays, short stories, and poetry. This subject involves exploring and analyzing these texts to understand their themes and meanings.

• Question 1:

  This question is based on Ernest Hemingway's The Old Man the Sea.

  The pot of the novel revolves around

  Options:
  A) the adventure of a great fish
  B) a man's adventure on the sea
  C) a man's fightwith a great fish
  D) a boy's fight with a great fish
  Show Answer
  The correct answer is B .
• Question 2:

  "There's no art

  To find the mind's construction in the face...'Based on William Shakespeare's Macbeth,the above statement means that there is no

  Options:
  A) artist who can construct a face
  B) skill of reading thoughts from the face
  C) skill of differentiating the face from the mind
  D) artist who can understand a man
  Show Answer
  The correct answer is B .
• Question 3:

  This question is based on General Literary Principles and Literary Appreciation

  In a conic-tragedy, the unknotting of the plot, the resolution of the mystery and the resolution of the misunderstanding is called

  Options:
  A) peripety
  B) exposition
  C) denouement
  D) catharsis
  Show Answer
  The correct answer is C .
• Question 4:

  This question is based on SECOND CLASS CITIZEN.
  The novel is set after which major war?

  Options:
  A) First World War (1914-1918)
  B) Aba Women Riot (1929)
  C) Second World War (1939-1945)
  D) The Nigerian Civil War (1967-1970)
  Show Answer
  The correct answer is C .
• Question 5: Based on Buchi Emecheta's The Joys of Motherhood, The little money Nnaife makes after returning from Fernando PO is used for Options:
  A) expanding Nnu Ego's business
  B) taking care of his framily
  C) sending his children to school
  D) getting more wives
  Show Answer
  The correct answer is D .
• Question 6: A poem written on a grand theme, in an appropriately grand style, dealing with heroic figures is called Options:
  A) a soliloquy
  B) a tragi-comedy
  C) an epic
  D) an epigram.
  Show Answer
  The correct answer is C .
• Question 7:

  These questions are based on Literary Appreciation'That year the harvest was sad, like a funeral and many farmers wept as they dug up the miserable yams. One man tied his clothe to a tree branch and hanged himself.

  Chinua Achebe: Things Fall Apart.

  The mood conveyed in the excerpt above is one of

  Options:
  A) frustration
  B) sympathy
  C) dilemma
  D) sadness
  Show Answer
  The correct answer is B .
• Question 8:

  This question is based on selected poems from D. Ker, C. Maduka et al (eds.): New poetry from Africa, Wole Soyinka (ed.): Poems of Black Africa, K.E. Senanu and T. Vincent (eds.): A Selection of African poetry and E.W. Parker (ed.): A Pageant of Longer Poems.

  'BEHOLD her, single in the field,

  You solitary Highland Lass!

  Reaping and singing by herself;...

  O listen! for the Vale profound

  Is overflowing with the sound.'

  The lines above from William Wordsworth's 'The Solitary Reaper' constitute

  Options:
  A) a soliloguy
  B) an aside
  C) an apostrophe
  D) an interior monologue
  Show Answer
  The correct answer is C .
• Question 9:

  This question is based on Mariama Ba's So Long a Letter .

  '...princes master their feelings to fulfil their duties 'Others' bend their heads and, in silence, accept a destiny that oppresses them. That, briefly put, is the internal ordering of our society, with its absurd divisions....'

  In the above excerpt from her letter to Mawdo Ba, Aissatou sees society as

  Options:
  A) benefiting the ruling classes
  B) unequal and unjust
  C) oppressing the working classes
  D) giving every person his just deserts
  Show Answer
  The correct answer is B .
• Question 10:

  He is a faithful liar

  The line above is an example of

  Options:
  A) euphemism
  B) antithesis
  C) epigram
  D) oxymoron
  Show Answer
  The correct answer is D .