Poets and Poetry (Part Two) Quiz

Question: Which of these contains the largest collection of Old English poetry?

Answer: The Exeter Book is the largest extant collection of Old English poetry. Copied circa 975, the manuscript was given to Exeter Cathedral by Bishop Leofric (died 1072).

Question: Who wrote the poem Metamorphoses?

Answer: The ancient Roman poet Ovid wrote Metamorphoses, a long 15-book poem in hexameter verse. It totals nearly 12,000 lines.

Question: Who was Beowulf?

Answer: The Old English poem Beowulf narrates the battles of Beowulf, a prince of the Geats (a tribe in what is now southern Sweden), against the monstrous Grendel, Grendel’s mother, and a fire-breathing dragon.

Question: Which man addressed his poetry to an idealized beloved named Laura?

Answer: Petrarch was the 14th-century Italian scholar, poet, and humanist who addressed his poems to Laura, an idealized beloved. Attempts to tie her to a historical person have failed.

Question: Which poet of the Romantic era argued that poets are “the unacknowledged legislators of the world”?

Answer: Percy Bysshe Shelley’s revolutionary spirit, coupled with a zeal for the liberation of humankind and a passion for poetry, caused him to claim in his critical essay A Defence of Poetry (1821, published 1840) that “the most unfailing herald, companion, and follower of the awakening of a great people to work a beneficial change in opinion or institution, is poetry” and that poets are “the unacknowledged legislators of the world.”

Question: Which poet is known for his classic formulation of the children’s tale “The Three Bears”?

Answer: Robert Southey was poet laureate of Britain from 1813 to 1843. Among his many works was the anonymously published The Doctor, 7 vol. (1834–47), a sprawling miscellany that includes the children’s classic “The Story of the Three Bears.”

Question: Which of these books of poetry did T.S. Eliot write?

Answer: T.S. Eliot published the collection of poetry Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats in 1939. It became the basis of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical Cats (1981).

Question: What does Richard Tottel’s Miscellany consist of?

Answer: Though all but unknown outside of academia, Richard Tottel’s Miscellany (1557) is significant because it made lyric poetry—which is what the book consists of—publicly available in England. This type of poetry had previously circulated only among select members of the English court.