Genre conventions and transformations practice questions.

Which of the following is a standard convention of dystopian fiction?

• A wholly benevolent government that carefully protects all individual freedoms and rights
• An oppressive regime maintaining control through surveillance, propaganda and fear
• A nostalgic celebration of rural community life
• A guaranteed comic ending that restores social harmony

Answer: An oppressive regime maintaining control through surveillance, propaganda and fear

Dystopias conventionally depict a controlled, dehumanising society — surveillance, propaganda, suppressed individuality — as a warning about present tendencies.

In the conventions of the Shakespearean (English) sonnet, where does the decisive turn or resolution most typically arrive?

• In the opening quatrain
• Between lines 4 and 5
• In the final rhyming couplet
• In a sestet beginning at line 9

Answer: In the final rhyming couplet

The English sonnet's three quatrains build an argument that the closing couplet conventionally resolves, undercuts or summarises; the sestet turn at line 9 belongs to the Petrarchan form.

Which set of features most clearly signals the conventions of an obituary?

• A chronological account of a life, tributes from others and a respectful, elevated register
• Insistent second-person imperative commands repeatedly urging the reader to take immediate action now
• Speech bubbles, panels and gutters
• Rhyming quatrains ending in a volta

Answer: A chronological account of a life, tributes from others and a respectful, elevated register

Obituaries conventionally narrate a life in order, quote tributes, list surviving family and sustain a formal, respectful register.

A poet writes a strict Petrarchan sonnet about queueing at a supermarket checkout. What is the most likely intended effect of this genre choice?

• To prove to the reader that the poet has fully mastered rhyme and strict metre
• Ironic tension between the elevated form and the mundane subject matter
• To hide the subject matter from casual readers
• To satisfy the formal requirements of publication

Answer: Ironic tension between the elevated form and the mundane subject matter

Pairing a prestigious form with trivial content exploits the reader's genre expectations: the mismatch generates irony, humour or an elevation of the everyday.

A story opens with 'Once upon a time' and a princess in a tower — who then rescues herself and rejects marriage. What is the writer doing?

• Faithfully following every traditional fairy-tale convention exactly and without change
• Invoking fairy-tale conventions in order to subvert the audience's expectations
• Switching text type from narrative to argument
• Committing plagiarism of earlier fairy tales

Answer: Invoking fairy-tale conventions in order to subvert the audience's expectations

The opening deliberately activates the genre's expectations so that the reversal is felt as a challenge to the values the genre traditionally carries.

Which element does NOT belong to the conventional repertoire of Gothic fiction?

• Decaying castles or isolated houses
• Wild, sublime and threatening landscapes
• Cheerful suburban realism and routine domestic comfort
• Supernatural, or at least seemingly supernatural, uncanny events

Answer: Cheerful suburban realism and routine domestic comfort

Gothic convention trades in dread, decay, isolation and the supernatural; comfortable everyday realism is the opposite of its atmosphere of terror and mystery.