The passage is from my CAT practice material
Fantasy has the longest and richest literary heritage of all the forms of genre fiction. Indeed, fantasy could be said to be the progenitor of all other forms of storytelling. Fantasy’s habit of taking real – life situations and characters and introducing them into a world where unexpected (and unexplainable) things happen has enthralled its readers since the earliest days. If we look at the history of literature, it is full of stories involving magic, paranormal phenomena and terrible monsters. Such stories existed in spoken (oral literature) forms, long before the advent of printed literature. It is also a fact that fantasy and realistic fiction co-existed and a great many realistic stories first played out in a fantastical form in the author’s mind before being written down in a realistic form. Adventures, magic, gods, heroes, and troubles overcome with a touch of the supernatural, etc, were very common in many tales of yore.
Interestingly, the very early recorded literary works in history were fantasy works: the Epic of Gilgamesh, Homer’s Odyssey. The Book of a Thousand and one Nights and countless others were the prototypes upon which modern literature was formed. Many of the most enduring works of popular and literary fiction fall squarely within the realm of fantasy, such as Sir Thomas Mallory’s Le Morte D’ Arthur, Rudyard Kipling’s, The Jungle Book and Sir Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe. Despite this, fantasy today has an image of being a genre literary inconsequence. It has to be borne in mind that Lewis Carroll’s books Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the looking Glass, for instance, have defied description since they first were published over 100 years ago. The books were unquestionably written for a child – the original Alice, who was the daughter of a friend of Carroll’s – but they are just as often read by adults looking for an escape back to a simpler time.
Fantasies allow the reader to circumnavigate and speculate on central and sometimes painfully realistic themes in a way that is more palatable than in realistic fiction or art. The fantastic nature of characters and settings removes readers to an emotional distance that gives them room to consider sensitive and important ideas more objectively than in other genres. To be precise, fantasies provide great escapes from reality, and paradoxically they also provide objective insights into reality which are won by means of looking at it through the unrealistic lens of impersonalisation. An irony about fantasy is that despite the fanciful characters, strange imaginary lands, and bizarre situations encountered in it, it has the power to help us better understand reality.
1. Which of the following adjectives is most suitable to refer to the tone of the passage?
a) Caustic
b) Humorous
c) Satirical
d) Descriptive
2. Why does fantasy literature enthrall its readers?
a) Because it’s full of stories involving super natural elements.
b) Because, fantasy has the longest and richest literary heritage of all forms of the genre fiction.
c) Because of fantasy’s habit of taking real life characters and events and placing them in a supernatural world, where unexpected things could ensue.
d) Many of the most enduring books in the history of literature belong to this genre.
3. In the last sentence of the first para, the expression, “tales of yore” indicates
a) tales of gods.
b) tales based on myths.
c) stories of the contemporary.
d) stories or tales told in the past.
4. Which one of these is not a prototype upon which modern literature was formed?
a) Le Morte D’Arthur
b) Epic of Gilgamesh
c) Homer’s Odyssey
d) The Book of a Thousand and one Nights
5. According to the passage, which of these statements is true, regarding Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland?
a) It was written after ‘the book through the Looking Glass’ was published.
b) It was written for the original Alice, the daughter of one of Caroll’s friends.
c) It was first published more than a decade ago.
d) It finds favour both with adults and children.