Lesson 4.2.2.20

4.2.2.20 Selected Poems 2013 Edition by Tony Harrison Quiz: AQA English Literature A, Unit 2

20 questions

Written by Revision Ninja · Last reviewed 11 October 2026

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Lesson 4.2.2.20, Selected Poems 2013 Edition by Tony Harrison: 20 multiple choice questions for the AQA English Literature A (7712), Unit 2: Texts in shared contexts, written with Revision Ninja.

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The 20 questions

  1. Which city is most closely associated with Tony Harrison's poetry, and where he grew up?

    • Manchester
    • Sheffield
    • Leeds
    • Bradford

  2. Which poetic form does Harrison use in his celebrated sonnet sequence V.?

    • The ballad
    • The sestina
    • The villanelle
    • The sonnet

  3. What is the subject of Harrison's poem V.?

    • The vandalism of his parents' grave in a Leeds cemetery
    • A journey across the Atlantic by ship
    • A dispute between two factory workers
    • The death of a soldier in the First World War

  4. What is characteristic of Harrison's use of language?

    • He avoids all dialect and colloquial speech
    • He writes only in standard Received Pronunciation
    • He draws on the working-class dialect of Yorkshire alongside formal literary diction
    • He writes exclusively in Latin and Greek

  5. Which central theme links many of Harrison's poems?

    • The relationship between class, language and cultural identity
    • The history of the Roman Empire
    • The pleasures of a rural childhood
    • The science of astronomy

  6. Which of the following is a feature of Harrison's sonnets?

    • Their focus on natural landscapes alone
    • Their use of nursery rhyme metre
    • Their use of colloquial, dialect speech within a formal structure
    • Their use of free verse with no rhyme

  7. What does Harrison's poetry suggest about the relationship between education and class?

    • Education can open access to culture but may also create a painful sense of separation from one's origins
    • Education is only valuable for those born into wealth
    • Education has no effect on a person's accent or identity
    • Education removes all class differences in society

  8. What is the effect of Harrison's use of the sonnet form in V.?

    • It contains a violent subject within a disciplined and controlled structure
    • It makes the poem a simple celebration of nature
    • It removes any sense of emotion from the poem
    • It makes the poem feel light and comic

  9. Which statement best describes Harrison's engagement with the past?

    • He ignores the past in favour of the present
    • He writes only about the ancient world
    • He focuses only on his own childhood experiences
    • He connects personal memories of his parents with wider questions of social history

  10. What does Harrison's poetry say about violence in society?

    • Violence is always caused by individual criminality alone
    • Violence is a natural part of rural life and nothing more
    • Violence is a rare event with no social cause
    • Violence can be both a personal and a social problem, rooted in class and culture

  11. How does Harrison use the image of the grave in his poetry?

    • As a symbol of memory, loss and the connection between generations
    • As a symbol of religious doubt alone
    • As a symbol of economic success
    • As a symbol of a holiday destination

  12. What does Harrison's use of dialect achieve in his poems?

    • It shows that dialect is a sign of ignorance
    • It removes the political meaning from his language
    • It makes his poems easier for a non-English audience to read
    • It gives voice to a working-class speaker and challenges the authority of standard English

  13. Which feature of the sonnet form does Harrison use to create irony in some poems?

    • The contrast between the traditional form and the coarse subject matter
    • The use of a single long sentence throughout
    • The use of a repeated refrain in every stanza
    • The use of prose dialogue between two speakers

  14. How does Harrison present the relationship between himself and his parents?

    • As an easy, uncomplicated friendship
    • As a relationship of total hostility
    • As a complicated bond shaped by love, loss and the class gap that separates them
    • As a relationship that has no influence on his writing

  15. What is the significance of the poem's public setting in V.?

    • It places private grief within a wider public world of vandalism and social disorder
    • It suggests that the poem is about a war memorial
    • It shows that the poem is set in a rural village
    • It makes the poem a celebration of civic pride

  16. Which best describes the tone of many poems in the Selected Poems?

    • Cold, detached and indifferent
    • Formal, distant and abstract
    • Light, playful and carefree
    • Angry, defiant and tender at once

  17. What does Harrison suggest about the relationship between poetry and political feeling?

    • Poetry is only valuable when it is apolitical
    • Poetry must avoid all political content
    • Poetry can express political anger and social injustice
    • Poetry has no connection to social life

  18. Which idea is central to Harrison's use of classical allusion?

    • It connects contemporary working-class experience with a wider tradition of literature
    • It shows that classical literature is irrelevant to modern life
    • It is a way of displaying his own wealth
    • It proves that he is a scholar of ancient Greek only

  19. What does the poem V. reveal about cultural conflict?

    • The clash between an educated poet and those who vandalise his family's grave
    • The conflict between two countries at war
    • The conflict between two rival poets
    • The conflict between two factory unions

  20. How does Harrison's poetry relate to his sense of identity?

    • It explores the divided self, shaped by background, education and language
    • It presents identity as fixed and unchanging
    • It treats identity as irrelevant to art
    • It suggests identity is determined only by wealth

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