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Quiz about Literary Heavyweights
Quiz about Literary Heavyweights

Literary Heavyweights Trivia Quiz


Having been overweight for most of my life, I tend to feel sympathetic towards generously proportioned literary figures. Can you identify these literary references?

A multiple-choice quiz by TabbyTom. Estimated time: 4 mins.
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Author
TabbyTom
Time
4 mins
Type
Multiple Choice
Quiz #
357,182
Updated
Dec 03 21
# Qns
10
Difficulty
Average
Avg Score
6 / 10
Plays
391
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Question 1 of 10
1. Which Shakespearean title character said, "Let me have men about me that are fat"? Hint


Question 2 of 10
2. Which Shakespearean character "sweats to death, and lards the lean earth as he walks along"? Hint


Question 3 of 10
3. Whom does Robert Browning describe as "looking little, though wondrous fat"? Hint


Question 4 of 10
4. "You are old," said the youth, "as I mentioned before,
And have grown most uncommonly fat ...."

Who is being addressed by the young man in this poem by Lewis Carroll?
Hint


Question 5 of 10
5. "For some of us are out of breath
And all of us are fat!"

In Lewis Carroll's "The Walrus and the Carpenter", which creatures speak these words to the title characters?
Hint


Question 6 of 10
6. Which schoolboy is described by his creator as "the Fat Owl of the Remove"?
Hint


Question 7 of 10
7. I don't know whether the author Rex Stout lived up to his surname, but he created a famously fat detective, who cultivated orchids and had gourmet tastes in food. Who is this sleuth? Hint


Question 8 of 10
8. Who is subject to the dictates of the Fat Controller? Hint


Question 9 of 10
9. Who wrote a novel entitled "One Fat Englishman"? Hint


Question 10 of 10
10. Who proclaimed that "Fat is a Feminist Issue"? Hint



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Most Recent Scores
Mar 17 2024 : dellastreet: 10/10
Jan 30 2024 : Montgomery1: 8/10

Score Distribution

quiz
Quiz Answer Key and Fun Facts
1. Which Shakespearean title character said, "Let me have men about me that are fat"?

Answer: Julius Caesar

"Let me have men about me that are fat,
Sleek-headed men, and such as sleep o' nights.
Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look:
He thinks too much; such men are dangerous."

Caesar seems to take the conventional view that fat people are easy-going, indolent and unlikely to cause trouble, while their thinner counterparts are likely to be more active, ambitious and unscrupulous. He is certainly right to distrust Cassius: just before he speaks these words, we have seen Cassius sowing the seeds of conspiracy in Brutus' ear.
2. Which Shakespearean character "sweats to death, and lards the lean earth as he walks along"?

Answer: Falstaff

Falstaff's fatness, along with his appetite for drink, are often referred to jokingly in the two parts of Shakespeare's "Henry IV". But this only goes to show, as Falstaff says, that "I am not only witty in myself, but the cause that wit is in other men."
3. Whom does Robert Browning describe as "looking little, though wondrous fat"?

Answer: The Mayor of Hamelin

Although Browning's poem is set in Germany, his description of the Mayor as fat, bleary-eyed and gluttonous seems to follow our conventional British caricatures of our local dignitaries.
4. "You are old," said the youth, "as I mentioned before, And have grown most uncommonly fat ...." Who is being addressed by the young man in this poem by Lewis Carroll?

Answer: Father William

Robert Southey wrote a poem called "The Old Man's Comforts and How He Gained Them", one of those "improving" pieces of moralizing that Victorian children were often made to learn by heart. I imagine they were delighted to see the poem parodied so amusingly by Carroll, an Oxford don and a deacon of the Church of England.
5. "For some of us are out of breath And all of us are fat!" In Lewis Carroll's "The Walrus and the Carpenter", which creatures speak these words to the title characters?

Answer: oysters

In "Through the Looking-Glass", the sequel to "Alice in Wonderland", the poem "The Walrus and the Carpenter" is recited by Tweedledum and Tweedledee to Alice. The title characters invite a number of young oysters to leave their oyster-beds and join them for a walk along the sands - a walk that ends with the walrus and carpenter making a hearty meal of the oysters.
6. Which schoolboy is described by his creator as "the Fat Owl of the Remove"?

Answer: Billy Bunter

Charles Hamilton (using the pen-name Frank Richards) published his first Billy Bunter stories in a boys' magazine called "The Magnet" in 1908. After that magazine closed in 1940, Hamilton produced a number of Bunter books, continuing until his death in 1961, with some titles appearing posthumously. The stories have also been adapted for radio and television.

Though he was fat, greedy, lazy and mendacious, Bunter had a strange comic appeal which persisted for generations.
7. I don't know whether the author Rex Stout lived up to his surname, but he created a famously fat detective, who cultivated orchids and had gourmet tastes in food. Who is this sleuth?

Answer: Nero Wolfe

Created in 1934, Wolfe appeared in 33 novels and 39 short stories between then and 1974, many of which were adapted for cinema, radio and TV. Like Sherlock Holmes, he has his adventures told by his sidekick. Unlike Holmes, however, he does not roam the city: indeed, he rarely leaves his luxurious brownstone house.
8. Who is subject to the dictates of the Fat Controller?

Answer: Thomas the Tank Engine, in the books of the Rev. W. Awdry

There are a good many locomotives and other vehicles in the 42-book "Railway Series" written by the Rev. Wilbert Awdry and his son Christopher Awdry, but Thomas is undoubtedly the best known. Their human boss, originally called the Fat Director, became a Controller when the British railway network was nationalized in 1948.

Many resurrected "heritage" steam railways hold "Thomas days" at regular intervals: they are usually excellent money-spinners.
9. Who wrote a novel entitled "One Fat Englishman"?

Answer: Kingsley Amis

Roger Micheldene, the title character, is an English publisher visiting an out-of-the-way American university, where he manages to alienate everyone with his rudeness, snobbery, gluttony and general anti-American attitudes. David Lodge, writing some forty years after the novel appeared and several years after Amis' death, described the character as "in many respects a devastating and prophetic self-portrait."
10. Who proclaimed that "Fat is a Feminist Issue"?

Answer: Susie Orbach

Described by one critic as "the anti-diet guide to weight loss", Ms Orbach's book, first published in 1978, deals with the very complex reasons for compulsive eating and gives a programme for combating it.
Source: Author TabbyTom

This quiz was reviewed by FunTrivia editor looney_tunes before going online.
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