Arts and Literature Trivia Questions and Answers.

Arts and Literature trivia questions and answers.

What famous novel opens with the line: "Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a moocow coming down along the road..."?
AL A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce.

What famous artist served as a war correspondent for Harper's Weekly magazine during the Civil War?
A: Winslow Homer. As an artist-reporter for the magazine, he covered a number of campaigns with the Union Army.

What American artist named most of his 17 children after famous artists--including Rembrandt, Titian, Rubens, and Raphael?
A: Charles Wilson Peale. The four children named all achieved prominence as artists.

How many of Shakespeare's heroines disguise themselves as males?
A: Five--Rosalind in As You Like It; Julia in Two Gentlemen of Verona; Portia in The Merchant of Venice; Viola in Twelfth Night; Imogen in Cymbeline.

The first published drawings of what famous children's book author-illustrator appeared in a physics text entitled Atomics for the Millions?
A: Maurice Sendak. The text was written by one of his high-school teachers, who Sendak said gave him a passing grade and small fee for his illustrations.

In the book Gone With the Wind, how many months actually pass during Melanie's' pregnancy?
A: 21--based on the battles mentioned. When this was pointed out to author Margaret Mitchell, she reportedly replied that a Southerner's pace is slower than that of a Yankee.

What Alfred Hitchcock movie title is drawn from Shakespeare's Hamlet?
A: The 1959thriller, North by Northwest, in which Cary Grant feigns madness. The title is taken from Hamlet's words: "I am but mad north-northwest; when the wind is southerly, I know a hawk from a handsaw.

Who was Sir Galahad's father?
A: Sir Lancelot.

What was the name of French writer Alexandre Dumas' palatial home in Paris?
A: Monte-Cristo, after his famous novel The Count of Monte Cristo.

What piece of tableware is upset in Leonardo da Vinci's famous painting of the Last supper?
A: A salt cellar near Judas Iscariot.

What was the estate tax paid to the French government by Pablo Picasso's heirs after the artist died in 1973 at age 91?
A: They paid $78.5 million. The value of the artwork, properties and investments he left was estimated for tax purposes at $312 million, but in reality they were worth well over $1 billion.

In the Ernest Hemingway classic The Old Man and the Sea, what famous athlete does the old man say he would like to take fishing?
A: The Great DiMaggio.

What is the name of the principal city in Hell--"the high capital of Satan and his peers"--in John Milton's epic poem Paradise Lost?
A: Pandemonium.

What did writer Edgar Allan Poe and rock n' roller Jerry Lee Lewis have in common in their choice of wives?
A: Each Married a 13-year-old cousin.

Who was the inspiration for the popular sixteenth-century nursery rhyme Little Miss Muffet?
A: Patience Muffet, the daughter of the poem's creator, Dr. Thomas Muffet, and entomologist who wrote about spiders more often than he did about his little girl.

What was Goldilock's name when the hungry little girl was first introduced in the famous children's fairy tale The Three Little Bears over a hundred years ago?
A: Silver Hair, From that she became Golden Hair, and finally Goldilocks.