JAMB Literature in English 1999 Past Questions

This question is based on William Shakespeare's Twelfth Night.
'I' ll do my best
To woo your lady.'
What is the sincere desire of the person who made the statement above?

This question is based on William Shakespeare's Twelfth Night.
The significance of the sub-plot dealing with Feste,
Toby and Maria is the expression of life's

This question is based on William Shakespeare's Twelfth Night.
What would you consider to be the major theme of the play?

This question is based on Camara Laye's The African Child.

Laye learns early in life that his society respects

This question is based on Camara Laye's The African Child.
The father permits his son to go to Paris because he

This question is based on Camara Laye's The African Child.
The author makes the reader believe his story by using

This question is based on Camara Laye's The African Child.
The novel is a mixture of

This question is based on Camara Laye's The African Child.
Which of these features give the novel an African setting ?

This question is based on Buchi Emecheta's Second Class Citizen.
In Adah's view, the white society in the novel is one in which

This question is based on Buchi Emecheta's Second Class Citizen.
To raise the reader's anxiety about the story, the author sometimes

This question is based on Ernest Hermingway's The Old Man and the Sea.
The struggle between the old man and the fish symbolizes

This question is based on Ernest Hermingway's The Old Man and the Sea.
'''I wish the boy was here...'''
The old man's cry demonstrates

This question is based on Ernest Hermingway's The Old Man and the Sea.
One of the universal themes of the novel is the

This question is based on selected poems from R. Johnson and D. Ker et al (eds.): New Poetry from Africa : Wole Soyinka (ed.): Poems of Black Africa; K.E. Senanu and T. Vincent (eds.): A selection of African Poetry and E.W.Parker (ed.): A Pageant of Longer Poems.
Okigbo's 'Hurrah for Thunder'is a prophetic poem because it

This question is based on selected poems from R. Johnson and D. Ker et al (eds.): New Poetry from Africa : Wole Soyinka (ed.): Poems of Black Africa; K.E. Senanu and T. Vincent (eds.): A selection of African Poetry and E.W.Parker (ed.): A Pageant of Longer Poems.
'Red booth, Red pillar-box Red double-tiered Omnibus squelching tar. It was real!....'
These lines from Soyinka's 'Telephone Conversation show that the poet

This question is based on selected poems from R. Johnson and D. Ker et al (eds.): New Poetry from Africa : Wole Soyinka (ed.): Poems of Black Africa; K.E. Senanu and T. Vincent (eds.): A selection of African Poetry and E.W.Parker (ed.): A Pageant of Longer Poems.
In Rubadiri's 'Stanley Meets Mutesa' the king receives the explorer with

This question is based on selected poems from R. Johnson and D. Ker et al (eds.): New Poetry from Africa : Wole Soyinka (ed.): Poems of Black Africa; K.E. Senanu and T. Vincent (eds.): A selection of African Poetry and E.W.Parker (ed.): A Pageant of Longer Poems.
The most dominant pair of poetic device in Mtshall's 'Nightfall in Soweto'is

This question is based on selected poems from R. Johnson and D. Ker et al (eds.): New Poetry from Africa : Wole Soyinka (ed.): Poems of Black Africa; K.E. Senanu and T. Vincent (eds.): A selection of African Poetry and E.W.Parker (ed.): A Pageant of Longer Poems.
Osundare's 'They Too are the Earth' can be interpreted as

This question is based on selected poems from R. Johnson and D. Ker et al (eds.): New Poetry from Africa : Wole Soyinka (ed.): Poems of Black Africa; K.E. Senanu and T. Vincent (eds.): A selection of African Poetry and E.W.Parker (ed.): A Pageant of Longer Poems.
The villains in this poem by Osundara are

This question is based on selected poems from R. Johnson and D. Ker et al (eds.): New Poetry from Africa : Wole Soyinka (ed.): Poems of Black Africa; K.E. Senanu and T. Vincent (eds.): A selection of African Poetry and E.W.Parker (ed.): A Pageant of Longer Poems.
The recurrent nightmares in Ojaide's 'The Owl Wakes Us' suggest

This question is based on selected poems from R. Johnson and D. Ker et al (eds.): New Poetry from Africa : Wole Soyinka (ed.): Poems of Black Africa; K.E. Senanu and T. Vincent (eds.): A selection of African Poetry and E.W.Parker (ed.): A Pageant of Longer Poems.
The Owl is used by Ojaide in this poem as a

This question is based on selected poems from R. Johnson and D. Ker et al (eds.): New Poetry from Africa : Wole Soyinka (ed.): Poems of Black Africa; K.E. Senanu and T. Vincent (eds.): A selection of African Poetry and E.W.Parker (ed.): A Pageant of Longer Poems.
Gray's 'Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard' is a

This question is based on selected poems from R. Johnson and D. Ker et al (eds.): New Poetry from Africa : Wole Soyinka (ed.): Poems of Black Africa; K.E. Senanu and T. Vincent (eds.): A selection of African Poetry and E.W.Parker (ed.): A Pageant of Longer Poems.
The Duke's precious gift to the Duchess in Browning's 'My Last Duchess 'is

This question is based on selected poems from R. Johnson and D. Ker et al (eds.): New Poetry from Africa : Wole Soyinka (ed.): Poems of Black Africa; K.E. Senanu and T. Vincent (eds.): A selection of African Poetry and E.W.Parker (ed.): A Pageant of Longer Poems.
In Browning's 'My Last Duchess', the Duke complains that his wife is

This question is based on General Literary Principles
'Nightfall! Nightfall!
You are my mortal enemy'.
The figurative name for the manner in which nightfall is directly addressed as though present in Mtshali's 'Nightfall inSoweto' is

This question is based on General Literary Principles
The line 'under snakeskin shoes and Mercedes tyres' in Osundare's 'They Too are the Earth' is a good example of

This question is based on General Literary Principles
A denouement in a play

This question is based on General Literary Principles
A couplet refers to

This question is based on General Literary Principles
A foil in drama is also known as

This question is based on General Literary Principles
'Whereat: with blade, with bloody blameful blade.
He bravely broached his boiling bloody best'.
The dominant figure of speech in the lines above is

This question is based on General Literary Principles
A humorous play based on an unrealistic situation is considered in drama as

This question is based on General Literary Principles.
The device used by writers to give truths by indirection is called

This question is based on General Literary Principles.
The arrangement of incidents in a novel in which one action precipitates another is called

This question is based on General Literary Principles.
The theme of a literary work is the

This question is based on General Literary Principles.
A metaphor in which objects, persons and events in a story are equated with meanings that lie outside the narrative itself is

This question is based on Literary Principles.
The commissioner, who was also the local magistrate, peered at the two men. He did not go near because fastidiously he too wished to avoid the odour of travel that clung to them. Except for the alpaca jacket which he wore in the office, he was a model of starched and expensive neatness from his lean skull to the gleaming toes of his formal shoes'.
Alex La Guma, 'Time of the Butcherbird'
From the italicized lines above, the writer condemns the Commissioner by employing a

This question is based on Literary Principles.
'Standing on the veranda, I see my sons Alioune and Malick arriving in tears. They are in a pitiable state; torn clothes, bodies covered in dust from a fall, knees bleeding beneath the shorts. There is a larg hole in the right sleeve of Malick's sweater; the arm on the same side hangs down limply. One of the boys supporting him explained to me:
'A motorcyclist knocked down Malick and Alioune.
We were playing football'''
Mariama Ba, 'So Long a Letter'
The use of the present tense in the passage

This question is based on Literary Principles.
'At the most remote end of the crypt there appeared another less spacious. Its walls had been lined with human remains piled to the vault overhead. In the fashion of the great catacombs of Paris. Three sides of this interior crypt were still ornamented in this manner. From the fourth the bones had been thrown down , and lay promiscuously upon the earth, forming at one point a mound of some size',
E. Pope, 'Cask of Amontillado'
In the passage above, the author evokes the atmosphere of

This question is based on Literary Principles.
'He always thought of the sea as a la mar which is what people call her in Spanish when they love her. Sometimes those who love her say bad things of her but they are always said as though she were a woman'.
Hemingway, 'The Old Man and the Sea'
In the passage above, the sea is

This question is based on Literary Principles.
'Ibadan,
running splash of rust
and gold - flung and scattered
among seven hills like broken
china in the sun.'
J.P Clark, 'Ibadan'
The poem above is memorable for its

This question is based on Literary Principles.
'There was another, Sule. He put himself in uniform, made one for his five-year-old son, and marched with the infant from dawn till noon every market day on the main road singing 'Kayiwawa beturi, ''the theme song of his Burmese days.
Kofi Awoonor, '' This Earth, My Brother'
The character in the poem above is obviously a

This question is based on Literary Principles.
'You amble on
we can no longer
wait for nature's course
we must deliver
you
with
force'
Amelia House, 'Our Sun Rises'
The mood in the lines above is one of

This question is based on General Literary Principles.

In drama, the term climax is used

This question is based on William Shakespeare's Twelfth Night.

She bore a mind that envy could not but call fair The statement above characterizes.

This question is based on William Shakespeare's Twelfth Night.

According to the play, the Duke of lllyria is fascinated by

This question is based on William Shakespeare's Twelfth Night.

DUKE:...Thou know'st no less but all; I have unclasped To thee the book even of my secret soul.
What exactly has the Duke unclasped?

This question is based on Femi Osofisan's Morountodun.

In the play, social change is achieved through

This question is based on Femi Osofisan's Morountodun.

Titubi joins the farmers' revolt

This question is based on Femi Osofisan's Morountodun.

The re-enactment of the Moremi legend in the play can be descried as

This question is based on Femi Osofisan's Morountodun.

The stage direction at the end of the play reveals