Skills practice questions.

The difference between tone and mood is best captured as:

• They are identical terms
• Tone is the author's attitude toward the subject; mood is the atmosphere the reader feels
• Tone is the reader's own emotional feeling, while mood is simply the overall sequence of plot events
• Tone is a type of rhyme; mood is a type of metre

Answer: Tone is the author's attitude toward the subject; mood is the atmosphere the reader feels

Tone reflects the attitude conveyed through diction and style; mood is the atmosphere or feeling that atmosphere produces in the reader.

An allegory is a narrative in which:

• All of the narrative's events are deliberately told out of their normal chronological sequence
• Characters, settings and events consistently represent abstract ideas or a hidden meaning
• The narrator cannot be trusted
• The poem is limited to fourteen lines

Answer: Characters, settings and events consistently represent abstract ideas or a hidden meaning

Allegory sustains a systematic second level of meaning; Orwell's 'Animal Farm' allegorises political history.

Intertextuality refers to:

• The use of long sentences
• The rhyme scheme of a sonnet
• The deliberate physical arrangement and visual shape of a poem's individual lines on the printed page
• The way a text echoes or refers to other texts through allusion, quotation, or imitation

Answer: The way a text echoes or refers to other texts through allusion, quotation, or imitation

Intertextuality is the network of relationships a work has with other texts, shaping meaning through allusion, parody, or reference.

In a comparative literary study, the strongest analysis focuses primarily on:

• Retelling the complete plot of each work in turn, scene by scene, and summarising every event in order
• How each author's choices create meaning, drawing similarities and differences around a shared issue
• Listing the biographical facts of both authors
• Counting how many characters each work contains

Answer: How each author's choices create meaning, drawing similarities and differences around a shared issue

Effective comparison is analytical and integrated: it links works through a common concern and examines authorial technique, not mere summary.

A 'global issue' suitable for organising a comparison of literary works is best understood as:

• A small, trivial and incidental plot detail that appears only briefly within one single text
• A significant idea of wide relevance (belonging, power, identity) explored across works
• The publication date of a book
• A single character's name

Answer: A significant idea of wide relevance (belonging, power, identity) explored across works

A global issue is a broad, transnational concern that lets you compare how different texts and contexts address the same human question.

Identify the term for a deliberate contrast placed in close proximity for effect, as in pairing splendour with squalor in a single description.

• Juxtaposition
• Metonymy (association)
• Zeugma
• Anaphora

Answer: Juxtaposition

Juxtaposition sets contrasting elements side by side so their differences sharpen meaning; the other terms name substitution, shared-verb, and repetition devices.