Quizbowl Literature

Camus

Algerian author who wrote The Stranger, "The Rebel," and The Plague.

Chaucer

Author who wrote The Book of the Duchess, Canterbury Tales, and House of Fame.

Paradise Lost

Name this epic poem by John Milton that ends with with the first humans being exiled from the Garden of Eden.

Milton

This author was an English poet who wrote Paradise Lost and Areopagitica.

Faulkner

This American author wrote about a woman's murder in "A Rose for Emily." Name this man who wrote As I Lay Dying and The Sound and the Fury

Apollo

This Greek god killed the Python. He is known as the Greek god of music, light, and prophecy, and his twin sister is Artemis.

Artemis

This Greek goddess turned Actaeon into a stag and wields a silver bow. Name this twin sister of Apollo and the goddess of the moon and of the hunt.

Atalanta

This huntress lost in a footrace by being distracted by golden apples. Name this only female Argonaut.

Hercules

Name this child of Zeus who slew the Nemean Lion and captured Cerberus in his 12 labors.

Dionysus

This Greek god was reborn from Zeus's thigh. Name the Greek god of wine and revelry.

Athena

This daughter of Metis was born from Zeus's head. Name this Greek god of wisdom and war.

Zeus

This Greek god forced his father, Cronus, to vomit up his siblings. Name this Greek thunder god, who is the leader of the Greek gods.

Poseidon

This Greek god is known as the Earthshaker. Name this Greek god of the sea who wields a trident.

Hades

This Greek god's wife is Persephone. Name this Greek god of the underworld.

Aristotle

This man was the tutor of Alexander the Great. Name this Greek philosopher who wrote Poetics.

Plato

This man wrote The Republic and The Allegory of the Cave. Name this ancient Greek philosopher, student of Socrates

Euripides

This man was an ancient Greek author. He wrote about Jason's wife in Medea and also wrote The Bacchae.

Aristophanes

In one of this man's plays, animals chant,"Brekekekex koax koax." Name this Greek playwright of The Birds, The Frogs, and The Wasps.

Fitzgerald

This man wrote the Beautiful and the Damned. He also wrote about Nick Carraway in The Great Gatsby.

Dostoyevsky

Name this author who wrote The Brothers Karamazov and told about Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment.

Flaubert

Name this French author of Sentimental Education and Madame Bovary.

Grass

Name this German author whose Danzig Trilogy contains his most famous work, The Tin Drum.

Frost

Name this author of "Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening" who wrote in "Mending Wall" that "good fences make good neighbors."

Hawthorne

Identify this author of the collection Twice-Told Tales who wrote of Hester Prynne in The Scarlet Letter.

The Scarlet Letter

Name this novel by Nathaniel Hawthorne in which Hester Prynne is branded with a red emblem.

Les Miserables

Name this massive French novel centering on Inspector Javert and the escaped conflict Jean Valjean, by Victor Hugo.

Hugo

Name this French novelist who wrote about the thief Jean Valjean in Les Miserables and about Quasimodo in The Hunchback of Notre Dame.

Dos Passos

Name this author of The 42nd Parallel, 1919 and The Big Money, which make up his U.S.A Trilogy.

Sophocles

Name this Athenian playwright of the Theban Trilogy, including Oedipus Rex.

Oedipus Rex

Name this tragedy about a ruler of Thebes who learns that he killed Laius and married his mother, written by Sophocles.

E. Bronte

Name this author of Wuthering Heights, the sister of Anne and Charlotte.

Shakespeare

Name this Elizabethan writer whose 154 sonnets include one which begins "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?"

King Lear

Name this play about Cordelia and her sisters, daughters of the title monarch in this work by William Shakespeare.

Hamlet

This work by William Shakespeare features a Prince of Denmark who loses his love, Ophelia.

The Taming of the Shrew

Name this comedy by Shakespeare centering on Petruchio's courtship of Katherina, the title figure.

Dickens

Name this English writer of Bleak House and Great Expectations, who also wrote A Christmas Carol.

Bleak House

Name this Charles Dickens novel centering on Esther Summerson who lives in the title location.

H. James

Name this author of The Portrait of a Lady and Daisy Miller. He also wrote a ghost story.

Kami

Identify these Shinto deities that include Ryujin, Raijin, Uzume, and Amaterasu.

Tale of Genji

Name this Japanese novel about Heian court life, written by Murasaki Shikibu.

A Tale of Two Cities

Name this Charles Dickens novel about Charles Darnay that begins, "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times."

Tolstoy

Identify this author of "The Kreutzer Sonata" and Anna Karenina, Leo. He also wrote War and Peace.

The Color Purple

Name this novel consisting mostly of letters written to God and Nettie by Celie, the best-known work of Alice Walker.

To Kill a Mockingbird

Name this novel about the defense of Tom Robinson against false rape accusations by Atticus Finch, a work of Harper Lee.

Gogol

Name this Russian author of "The Nose," "The Overcoat," and Dead Souls.

Amaterasu

This daughter of Izanagi and sister of the storm god Susanoo is considered to be one of the most important kami. Name this Shinto sun goddess.

Susanoo

This deity retrieved the sword Kusanagi after slaying the eight-headed monster Orochi. Name this brother of Amaterasu, the kami of the oceans and storms.

Hinduism

This religion includes the concept of samsara, whose escape, called moksha, is dependent on good karma. Name this Indian religion.

Vishnu

Identify this Hindu "preserver" god, who forms the Trimurti (treh-MORE-tee) with the creator Brahma and destroyer Shiva.

The Catcher in the Rye

Name this novel about the phony-hating Holden Caulfield by J.D. Salinger

Hermes

Identify this Greek counterpart of the Roman Mercury, who flew about with his winged sandals.

Hephaestus

Name this ugly husband of Aphrodite, the lame son of Hera whose forge was said to be located below Mount Aetna.

Aphrodite

This Greek goddess is the wife of Hephaestus as well as the goddess of love and beauty.

Pegasus

Identify this winged horse from Greek mythology, who was tamed by Bellorophon.

The Canterbury Tales

Name this poetry collection narrated by pilgrims at the Tabard Inn, written by Geoffrey Chaucer.

Shintoism

Name this belief system centered on worshipping the kami, or nature spirits, of Japan.

The Song of Roland

Name this French medieval epic, a "song" named after a soldier in the army of Charlemagne.

Buddhism

Name this religion created by Siddhartha Gautama in which adherents attempt to break the cycle of samsara and achieve nirvana.

Sikhism

Name this Indian religion whose scripture is the Adi Granth and whose Golden Temple is found in Amritsar.

Chinua Achebe

Name this creator of the character Okonkwo, the Nigerian author of Things Fall Apart.

Things Fall Apart

Name this work set in Umuofia and starring Okonkwo, written by Chinua Achebe.

Horus

Name this Egyptian god, the son of Isis and Osiris who is depicted with the head of a falcon.

Sobek

Identify this Egyptian god of the Nile whose animal form is suggested by the name of another of his major cult centers, Crocodilopolis.

Hera

Name this Greek goddess of marriage and birth who was the husband of Zeus.

Theseus

Name this Athenian hero who took Ariadne's golden thread and killed the Minotaur as well as founded Athens.

Mending Wall

Name this poem which includes the line "Good fences make good neighbors," written by Robert Frost.

Conrad

Name this Polish-born British author of Lord Jim who detailed the corruption and death of Mr. Kurtz in Heart of Darkness.

Heart of Darkness

What novella in which the last words "The horror, the horror!" are uttered by Kurtz to Marlow in the Belgian Congo, written by Joseph Conrad?

Twain

Name this American author who also created the characters Becky Thatcher, Tom Sawyer, and Huckleberry Finn.

O. Henry

Name this author of short stories such as "The Ransom of Red Chief" and "The Gift of the Magi."

Tennyson

Name this poet of "Tithonus" and "Crossing the Bar," who wrote "Into the valley of Death rode the six hundred" in a memorial written after a Crimean War loss, his "Charge of the Light Brigade."

Kipling

Name this author of "Mandalay," "If," and "Gunga Din," who created the characters of Akela, Bagheera, and Mowgli in The Jungle Book.

Dickinson

Name this Belle of Amherst who wrote "I heard a fly buzz when I died" and "Because I could not stop for Death."

The Tempest

Name this play in which Prospero conjures the title storm in an attempt to regain the Duchy of Milan, written by Shakespeare.

Macbeth

Name this Shakespeare tragedy in which the titular Thane of Cawdor murders King Duncan, often referred to as the "Scottish Play."

Jane Eyre

Name this novel, in which the insane Bertha Mason is kept in an attic by Mr. Rochester, written by Charlotte Bronte.

Antigone

Identify this third of Sophocles's Theban plays, centering on a daughter of Oedipus.

Ymir

Name this Norse ice giant, who was eventually killed by the sons of Bor.

Odin

Name this Norse deity who wields the spear Gungnir, rides the eight-legged horse Sleipnir, and controls the ravens Hugin and Munin.

Thor

Name this wielder of Mjollnir, the Norse god of thunder. He is expected to be killed at Ragnorak by the World Serpent.

Freyja

Name this member of the Vanir who slept with four dwarves in order to obtain the necklace Brisingamen, the Norse goddess of love and the sister of Frey.

Loki

This Norse god's wife, Sigyn, catches the poison that falls on him. Name this Norse trickster god.

Frey

Name this Norse god of fertility whose twin sister is Freyja. Among his possessions include the magic ship Skidbladnir.

Frigg

Name this Norse goddess who was distraught over the death of her son Balder, the queen of Asgard and the wife of Odin.

Orwell

Name this English author who wrote the dystopian 1984 and Animal Farm.

Animal Farm

Name this novel in which a bunch of sheep bleat "Four legs good, two legs bad!" and Stalin is allegorized as the pig Napoleon in a "fairy story" by George Orwell.

1984

Name this dystopian work about Winston Smith's life under Big Brother, a novel by George Orwell.

Poe

Name this American author of "The Cask of Amontillado," the "Tell Tale Heart," and "The Raven."

Death of a Saleman

Name this play which ends shortly after the suicide of the title character, Willy Loman, written by Arthur Miller.

Miller

Name this American playwright who wrote The Crucible and created Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman.

Hemingway

Name this author of The Sun Also Rises, For Whom the Bell Tolls, and The Old Man and the Sea.

The Old Man and the Sea

Name this novella about the Cuban fisherman Santiago, written by Ernest Hemingway.

"The Snows of Kilimanjaro"

Name this story by Hemingway in which Harry imagines a plane taking him to the title mountain.

The Sun Also Rises

Name this novel about the veteran Jake Barnes, written by Ernest Hemingway.

For Whom the Bell Tolls

Name this novel about Robert Jordan which is set during the Spanish Civil War, a work of Ernest Hemingway.

Othello

Name this Shakespeare play in which the title character murders Desdemona due to the machinations of Iago.

Steinbeck

Name this author of Travels with Charlie, Of Mice and Men, and The Grapes of Wrath

The Grapes of Wrath

Name this Depression era novel about the Joad family's travels from Oklahoma to California, a work of John Steinbeck.

The Pearl

Name this novella by John Steinbeck in which Kino finds the title object inside of a large oyster.

Aeneid

Name this work in which Queen Dido commits suicide, an epic about the titular Trojan hero by Vergil.