Table of Contents
Question 70
Which among the following are not the slave narratives?
A. Black Boy by Richard Wright
B. An Untamed State by Roxane Gay
C. Behind the Scenes by Elizabeth Keckley
D. The Nature of Blood by Caryl Phillips
E. Up From Slavery by Booker T. Washington
Choose the correct answer from the options given below:
The texts that do NOT belong to the autobiographical/memoir genre of slave narratives (or early 20th-century African American memoirs rooted in that legacy) are B and D.
(B) An Untamed State (2014) is Roxane Gay's debut fiction novel about a woman of Haitian descent who is kidnapped.
(D) The Nature of Blood (1997) by Caryl Phillips is a postmodern novel exploring themes of exclusion through the lens of the Holocaust and a reimagining of Othello.
Other Explanations: Elizabeth Keckley's Behind the Scenes (1868) and Booker T. Washington's Up From Slavery (1901) are classic autobiographical slave narratives. Richard Wright's Black Boy (1945) is a highly influential autobiographical memoir chronicling his life in the Jim Crow South.
Question 71
Harlem Renaissance manifests the blossoming of African-American culture. Which among the following are the key features of the movement?
A. It advocated freedom from Victorian moral values
B. The movement emerged in the early nineteenth century.
C. The movement started from the Harlem district of New York city.
D. The magazines such as The Crisis, Opportunity and The Messengers were crucial for the movement
E. Harlem was formerly a Black residential district that gradually became virtually a White city.
Choose the correct answer from the options given below.
The true features of the Harlem Renaissance are:
- (A) True: It challenged and advocated freedom from stifling Victorian morals and bourgeois shame.
- (C) True: It was centered in the Harlem district of Manhattan, New York City.
- (D) True: Magazines like The Crisis (NAACP), Opportunity (National Urban League), and The Messenger were instrumental in publishing and promoting Black writers.
Why B and E are wrong: The movement emerged in the early twentieth century (1918–1937), not the nineteenth century (B). Harlem was initially a white, middle-class neighborhood that evolved into a predominantly Black cultural hub due to the Great Migration, which is the exact opposite of statement E.
Question 72
Who said about Northrop Frye that “he did not lock Literature into an ivory tower, instead he emphasized its centrality to the development of a civilised humane society”?
This quote was spoken by Margaret Atwood, the acclaimed Canadian author of The Handmaid's Tale, paying tribute to her former professor and mentor.
Herman Northrop Frye (author of Anatomy of Criticism and Fearful Symmetry) was a towering figure in Canadian literature and 20th-century mythic/archetypal criticism. Atwood's reflection in The Globe and Mail highlighted Frye's belief that literature was not an elitist, isolated pursuit, but a foundational element of human civilization and empathy.
Question 73
Given below are two statements:
Statement I: Toni Morrison's Beloved is based on true story of a black slave woman.
Statement II: Beloved is a novel about the trauma of apartheid.
In the light of the above statements, choose the correct answer from the options given below:
Statement I is True: Toni Morrison's 1987 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Beloved is directly inspired by the historical true story of Margaret Garner, an enslaved African American woman who escaped to Ohio and killed her own daughter to prevent her from being returned to slavery.
Statement II is False: Beloved deals with the trauma, legacy, and haunting aftermath of American chattel slavery. The trauma of "apartheid" (the system of institutionalized racial segregation in South Africa) is explored by completely different authors, most notably Nadine Gordimer and J.M. Coetzee.
Frequently Asked Questions
What was the Harlem Renaissance?
The Harlem Renaissance was a cultural, social, and artistic explosion that took place in Harlem, New York, spanning the 1920s and 1930s. It is considered a golden age in African American culture, manifesting in literature, music, stage performance, and art.
Who was Margaret Garner?
Margaret Garner was an enslaved African American woman in pre-Civil War America who escaped slavery. When cornered by slave catchers, she attempted to kill her children rather than see them returned to bondage. Her tragic story formed the historical basis for Toni Morrison's novel Beloved.
What is Northrop Frye famous for?
Northrop Frye was a pivotal Canadian literary critic, most famous for his 1957 book Anatomy of Criticism, which proposed an overarching framework for literary theory based on archetypes, myths, and seasonal cycles (comedy, romance, tragedy, irony/satire).
Which famous African American magazines promoted the Harlem Renaissance?
Crucial publications included The Crisis (edited by W.E.B. Du Bois for the NAACP), Opportunity: A Journal of Negro Life (published by the National Urban League), and The Messenger (founded by A. Philip Randolph and Chandler Owen).
