July - 2017 UGC NET EXAMAMINATION - PAPER III SOLVED 1 TO 75
UGC NET EXAMAMINATION - July - 2017
PAPER - III
ENGLISH
1. This Byron work revolves around a wife whose husband is presumed lost at sea and she takes
a lover in his absence. Everybody behaves agreeably on the husband’s return. Byron’s technical
skills in verse is in display here as the work counterpoints the colloquial and the formal. Identify
the work :
(A) Manfred
(B) Don Juan
(C) Beppo
(D) The Bride of Abydos
Beppo: A Venetian Story is a lengthy poem by Lord Byron, written in Venice in
1817. Beppo marks Byron's first attempt at writing using the Italian ottava rima
metre, which emphasized satiric digression. It is the precursor to Byron's most
famous and generally considered best poem, Don Juan.
The poem tells the story of a Venetian lady, Laura, whose husband, Giuseppe (or
"Beppo" for short), has been lost at sea for the past three years. According to
Venetian customs she takes on a Cavalier Servente, simply called "the Count".
When the two of them attend the Venetian Carnival, she is closely observed by a
Turk who turns out to be her missing husband. Beppo explains that he has been
captured and enslaved, and was freed by a band of pirates that he subsequently
joined. Having accumulated enough money he left piracy and returned to reclaim
his wife and be re-baptized. Laura rejoins Beppo and befriends the Count.
2. Who is the author of the poem, “Our Casuarina Tree” ?
(A) Sarojini Naidu
(B) Toru Dutt
(C) Rabindranath Tagore
(D) Kamala Das
Our Casuarina Tree, a poem written in English by the Indian writer Toru Dutt,
celebrates a huge tree that the speaker (resembling Dutt herself) associates with
the happiness of her childhood in India.
Our Casuarina Tree is a poem published in 1881 by Toru Dutt, an Indian poet.
In this poem Toru Dutt celebrates the majesty of the Casuarina Tree that she
used to see by her window, and remembers her happy childhood days spent under
it and revives her memories with her beloved siblings. It still remains one of the
most popular poems [1] in modern Indian literature.
Toru says the flowers of the tree are hung in crimson clusters. Toru tells us that
her Casuarina Tree, a haven for the winged, birds and insects, is almost visibly
alive, alive with the buzz of bees and with the chirping of birds
3. In this Jacobean play the Black King and his men, representing Spain and the Jesuits, are
checkmated by the White Knight, Prince Charles. This political satire drew crowds to the Globe
Theatre until the Spanish ambassador protested and James I suppressed the play.
Identify the play :
(A) The Wonderful Yeare
(B) A Game at Chess
(C) A King and No King
(D) The Knight of the Burning Pestle
Thomas Middleton, (born April, 1580, London, Eng.—died July 4, 1627,
Newington Butts, Surrey), late-Elizabethan dramatist who drew people as he saw
them, with comic gusto or searching irony. A popular playwright, he was often
commissioned to write and produce lord mayors pageants and other civic
entertainments, and in 1620 he was appointed city chronologer. His chief stage
success was A Game at Chess (1625), in which the Black King and his men,
representing Spain and the Jesuits, are checkmated by the White Knight, Prince
Charles. This political satire drew crowds to the Globe Theatre until the Spanish
ambassador protested and James I suppressed the play.
Thomas Middleton, (born April, 1580, London, Eng.—died July 4, 1627,
Newington Butts, Surrey), late-Elizabethan dramatist who drew people as he saw
them, with comic gusto or searching irony. A popular playwright, he was often
commissioned to write and produce lord mayors pageants and other civic
entertainments, and in 1620 he was appointed city chronologer. His chief stage
success was A Game at Chess (1625), in which the Black King and his men,
representing Spain and the Jesuits, are checkmated by the White Knight, Prince
Charles. This political satire drew crowds to the Globe Theatre until the Spanish
ambassador protested and James I suppressed the play.
4. Frederic Jameson associated postmodern culture with __________ capitalism.
(A) market
(B) monopoly
(C) imperialist
(D) multinational
According to Frederic Jameson, modernism and postmodernism are cultural formations
which accompany particular stages of capitalism. Jameson outlines three primary phases of
capitalism which dictate particular cultural practices, including the production of art and
literature :
1. Market capitalism (18th – late 19th centuries) – Associated with realism.
2. Monopoly Capitalism (late 19th – mid 20th centuries) – Associated with modernism.
3. Multinational / Consumer Capitalism (current) – Associated with postmodernism.
5. Early in Evelyn Waugh’s A Handful of Dust, while Tony and his young son, John Andrew,
walk to the church, John tells his father a story he has heard from the stable manager, Ben about
a mule “who had drunk his company’s rum ration” in the First World War and subsequently
died. What is the mule named ?
(A) Peppermint
(B) Dopey
(C) Dynamo
(D) Pookey
If Evelyn Waugh had opened A Handful of Dust with the first line from Ford
Madox Ford’s The Good Soldier, he would have been quite justified, for Waugh's
story is definitely and truly one of the saddest ever told - and not only sad, but
funny and brilliantly written.
When the novel opens, Tony Last and his wife Brenda, the book's central figures,
are living quietly - alas, a little too quietly for Brenda’s taste - in the 19th century
“Gothic-style” Garden of Eden that is Hetton Abbey, the Last family seat. Their
small son John lives there with them and thinks of nothing except his pony and
the tales told him by Ben, the newly promoted “stud groom” - these revolve
mostly around a strawberry roan called Thunderclap who “killed two riders and
won the local point-to-point four years running” and Peppermint, the mule, “who
had drunk the company’s rum ration, near Wipers in 1917.”
6. The Oxford English Dictionary was published in twelve volumes with its current title in the
year :
(A) 1928
(B) 1930
(C) 1933
(D) 1915
In 1933, the title The Oxford English Dictionary fully replaced the former name
in all occurrences in its reprinting as twelve volumes with a one-volume
supplement.
7. The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman is notorious for its many digressions
across nine volumes and its failure to deliver a complete autobiography. In which volume does
Tristram Shandy finally recount his birth ?
(A) Volume III
(B) Volume V
(C) Volume VIII
(D) Volume IX
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman is notorious for its many
digressions across nine volumes and its failure to deliver a complete
autobiography. In Volume III Tristram Shandy finally recount his birth. Tristram
Shandy consists of nine volumes but has neither a beginning nor an end. The
main character acts as the narrator and describes his ‘life and opinions in a willful
manner. The reader is forewarned by Tristram at the beginning of his
‘autobiography that in his narration, he will not follow any rules of literary
composition, will not stick to the conventions of the genre, and will not follow
the chronological order of the events.
How did Laurence Sterne, send up Robert Burton, author of the 17th-century
classic The Anatomy of Melancholy? Sterne borrowed liberally from Burton and
rearranged his words into the text
"’Pray, my Dear,’ quoth my mother, ‘have you not forgot to wind up the clock?’
‘Good G—!’ cried my father, making an exclamation, but taking care to moderate
his voice at the same time — ‘Did ever woman, since the creation of the world,
interrupt a man with such a silly question?’” Which critical moment had
Tristram’s mother interrupted? The moment of Tristram's conception
At one point in the novel, Tristram turns his thoughts towards to the “pagan
establishment”. Tristram is particularly engrossed by the facial hair of the many
ancient gods – “every beard of which claimed the rights and privileges of being
stroken and sworn by.” How many sacred pagan beards did Tristram claim there
were? 30,000
Samuel Johnson once stated "Nothing odd will do long. Tristram Shandy did not
last." Which German philosopher later rebutted Johnson’s attack by claiming
"The man Sterne is worth 1,000 Pedants and commonplace-fellows like Dr J”?
Schopenhauer’’
Tristram is considered an unlucky name by Tristram’s father Walter, being
derived from the Latin for woe – “tristis” – and thereby condemning his son to a
life of disappointment. How did he end up with such a miserable name in the first
place? The family maid bungled the pronunciation of the intended name
“Trismegistus” to the local curate’
Sterne sought to portray the limits of the written word with an original device
employed throughout the book. How did he challenge his readers? Blank pages
In Volume Three of each first edition Sterne inserted a page with no direct
bearing to the novel. What was displayed on this page? A marble pattern
Which Reformation-era Humanist did Sterne greatly admire and whose
influence) can be discerned throughout Tristram Shandy? Rabelais
8. Miguel de Cervantes’s inimitable Don Quixote, foreshadows metafictional moorings when the
novelist,
(a) says that the first chapters of the narrative are recreated from the Archive of
La Mancha
(b) says that it is a faithful rendering of a Catalan text in Spanish
(c) says that part of it has been translated from the Arabic by the Moorish author
Cide Hamete Benengeli
(d) says that he is rewriting the history of a medieval knight altering the heroic
vein with a farcical mode
The right combination according to the code is :
(A) (a) and (b)
(B) (b) and (c)
(C) (a) and (c)
(D) (b) and (d)
In Don Quixote, the most common one on the fictional Cervantes list is Cide Hamete
Benengeli, the author of the Arabic manuscript from which don Quixotes story was
translated. Fermín Caballero said that if you make an anagram of Cide Hamete Benengeli
you get Migel de Cebante, and five letters left over. Cervantes always wrote his name
with a b instead of a v, which bolsters Caballeros theory. But if Cervantes had added all
the missing letters of his name and called his historian something like Cide Hasmete
Bernengueli, it would have been clever, but it would not have made Benengeli into the
fictional Cervantes. The reason that Cide Hamete cannot be the fictional Cervantes is
partly because Cide Hamete wrote only in Arabic, and Cervantes wrote only in Spanish;
and Cervantes, in the real world, created a book of fiction called The ingenious hidalgo
Don Quixote de La Mancha, written by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, but in the world
of fiction, Cide Hamete Benengeli created a book of history called History of don
Quixote de La Mancha, by Cide Hamete Benengeli, Arabic historian.
9. In his theory of Mimesis, Plato says that all art is mimetic by nature; art is an imitation of life.
To argue his case he gives the example of a:
(A) cloud
(B) chair
(C) tree
(D) river
In his theory of mimesis, Plato says that all art is mimetic by nature; art is an imitation of
life. He believed that ‘idea is ultimate reality. Art imitates idea and so it is imitation of
reality. He gives an example of a carpenter and a chair. The idea of ‘chair first came in
the mind of carpenter. He gave physical shape to his idea and created a chair. The painter
imitated the chair of the carpenter in his picture of chair. Thus, painters chair is twice
removed from reality. Hence, he believed that art is twice removed from reality.
10. The translation of Geeta into English in 1784 called Bhagvit - Geeta marked, in William
Jones’s opinion, an “event that made it possible for the first time to have a reliable impression of
Indian Literature”. Who was the translator ?
(A) Charles Wilkins
(B) H. J. Colebrooke
(C) Rammohan Roy
(D) Nathaniel Halhed
Sir Charles Wilkins, KH, FRS (1749 � 13 May 1836), was an English typographer and
Orientalist, and founding member of the The Asiatic Society. He is the inventor of the
shape of modern Bengali and French typefaces.
He is notable as the first translator of Bhagavad Gita into English, and as the creator,
alongside Panchanan Karmakar,of the first Bengali typeface. In 1784, Wilkins helped William
Jones establish the Asiatic Society of Bengal.
In his preface Wilkins argued that the Gita was written to encourage a form of monotheist
"unitarianism" and to draw Hinduism away from the polytheism he ascribed to the Vedas.
His translation of the Gita was itself soon translated into French (1787) and German
(1802). It proved to be a major influence on Romantic literature and on European
perception of Hindu philosophy. William Blake later celebrated the publication in his
picture The Bramins, exhibited in 1809, which depicted Wilkins and Brahmin scholars
working on the translation.
11. One of the plays among the following contains the characters Coll, Gib, Dan and Mak.
Identify the play :
(A) Everyman
(B) The Castle of Perseverance
(C) The Second Shepherd’s Play
(D) The Marshals
The biblical portion of the play, a retelling of the Visitation of the Shepherds,
comes only after a longer, invented story that mirrors it, in which the shepherds,
before visiting the holy baby outside in a manger, must first rescue one of their
sheep that has been hidden in a cradle indoors by a comically evil sheep-stealing
couple. Once they have discovered and punished the thieves, the storyline
switches to the familiar one of the three shepherds being told of the birth of Christ
by an angel, and going to Bethlehem to offer the true Child gifts.
o The Second Shepherds Play contains the characters Coll, Gib, Dan and
Mak. Although there are no divisions of scene or act in The Second
Shepherds' Play, the play falls easily into three distinct parts. The first
section contains the three Shepherds' soliloquies. The play's first speaker is
Coll, who begins his soliloquy complaining of the cold weather.
o Gib soon enters the stage. He does not initially see Coll and begins to
grumble about the terrible weather.
o The second part of the play is the longest section. Mak enters the stage in
disguise, with his head covered and using a southern accent. He is a thief
and does not want the shepherds to be on guard.
o The Second Shepherds' Play (also known as The Second Shepherds'
Pageant) is a famous medieval mystery play which is unique manuscript
of the Wakefield Cycle.
The Somonyng of Everyman (The Summoning of Everyman), usually referred to
simply as Everyman, is a late 15th-century morality play. Like John Bunyan's
1678 Christian novel The Pilgrim's Progress, Everyman uses allegorical
characters to examine the question of Christian salvation and what Man must do
to attain it.
The manuscript of The Castle of Perseverance has been dated from about 1440. It
is now housed in the Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington D.C. The standard
text is edited by Mark Eccles in The Macro Plays (Early English Text Society, OS
262, 1969). This modernization is based on an acting edition by the late David
Parry
The Marshal is an American action-drama television series that aired on ABC for
two seasons in 1995. The show starred Jeff Fahey as the title character, a United
States Marshal charged with pursuing fugitives across the nation.
12. Tereza, in Milan Kundera’s novel The Unbearable Lightness of Being, troubled by Tomas’s
promiscuity, falls an easy prey to jealousy, fear and nightmares. Which of the following are the
terrible dreams she has ?
(a) She dreams of cats attacking her.
(b) She dreams of wolves attacking her.
(c) She dreams that she is dead and buried in a common grave where she lies with the corpses of
strangers.
(d) She dreams that she is dead, stripped of her clothes and plagued by other naked corpses.
The right combination according to the code is :
(A) (a) and (c)
(B) (a) and (d)
(C) (b) and (c)
(D) (b) and (d)
Tereza, in Milan Kunderas novel The Unbearable Lightness of Being, troubled by
Tomass promiscuity, falls an easy prey to jealousy, fear and nightmares. She
dreams cats attack her (it is worthwhile to note that in Czech, the word "cat" is
slang for a pretty woman), that Thomas forces her to perform humiliating acts
along with other women, and that she is dead, stripped of her clothes, and plagued
by other naked corpses.
13. The opening lines of Wordsworth’s “Immortality Ode”:
“There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,
The earth, and every common sight,
To me did seem
Appareled in celestial light
The glory and freshness of a dream”,
Closely resembles Coleridge’s lines:
“There was a time when earth, and sea, and skies,
The bright green vale, and the forest’s dark recess,
With all things, lay before mine eyes
In steady loveliness”.
Identify the Coleridge poem :
(A) “Fears In Solitude”
(B) “The Mad Monk”
(C) “To William Wordsworth”
(D) “Dejection : An Ode”
S T Coleridge is the leading poet of the Romantic Movement in English
Literature. His romanticism is quite vivid in his gothic, exotic and preternatural
dispositions. The medieval life and culture immensely influenced the romantics.
The poem is based on the poem "Anselmo: The Hermit of the Alps" by Mary
Robinson (1758-1800), wherein the hermit secretly loves Rosa, a noviate.
This minor poem was produced between Christabel and the Dejection ode,
consists of a crazed lament by the protagonist, framed by the reactions of the
narrator who overhears him on 'Etna's side'. In his soliloquy the Monk cries out
for freedom from the ghost of Rosa, whom he has murdered when she rejected
him in favour of another suitor. But the image of the murdered Rosa acquires
preternatural proportions, turning the red flowers into drops of her blood, the
setting sun and surrounding sky into a great wound and bleeding corpse. In
desperation the Monk protests, 'I only ask for peace' and finally, 'O let me lie in
peace and be forever dead'.
14. Christina Rossetti’s “Goblin Market”, a rare blend of allegory and fairytale world presents
the story of two sisters, Laura and Lizzie. Which of the following is NOT true about the
enchanted world that the poem unravels?
(A) Laura buys fruits from the goblins in exchange of her “golden lock” of hair and a
“tear more rare than pearl”
(B) Jeanie, a girl who ate the goblins’ fruits, “pined away” and “sought them by night
and day”
(C) Laura, who goes to the market again, does not see the goblins but hears only “their
shrill cry piercing the air”
(D) Laura’s hair “grew thin and grey” and she wanes like the full moon to “swift decay”
Christina Rossettis Goblin Market, a rare blend of allegory and fairytale world
presents the story of two sisters, Laura and Lizzie. Laura's transgression, as she
partakes of the Goblins' fruit, paying them with a symbolic lock of her golden hair
and returns home gratified :
Buy from us with a golden curl.
She clipped a precious golden lock,
She dropped a tear more rare than pearl.
The story of Jeanie as an example to deter Laura from going astray. Lizzie gently
but firmly admonishes Laura, recalling how, even nature, withdraws its nurturing
care from transgressions of indulgence:
Do you not remember Jeanie.........
She pined and pined away;
Sought them by night and day,
Found them no more but dwindled and grew grey;
Then fell with the first snow,
While to this day no grass will grow
Where she lies low.
Like Jeanie whose grave cannot even sustain plant life, Lauras fluids cannot grow
fruit; she loses her reproductive potential as she essentially dries up and withers
away as a consequence of her sexual promiscuity. Her hair grew thin and
grey;/She dwindled, as the fair full moon doth turn/ To swift decay and burn/ Her
fire away and her tree of life drooped from the root.
15. In which of these prisons is Defoe’s character, Moll Flanders born ?
(A) Gatehouse
(B) King’s Bench
(C) Newgate
(D) Ludgate
Moll Flanders is a novel by Daniel Defoe, first published in 1722. By 1721,
Defoe had become a recognised novelist, with the success of Robinson Crusoe in
1719.
The novel is based partially on the life of Moll King, a London criminal whom
Defoe met while visiting Newgate Prison.
Moll Flanders is a story about the fall and rise of a beautiful woman who was
born in Newgate Prison. Because of her determination to be someone other than a
servant, and because of her great greed, she sought to marry a wealthy man.
Defoe’s Moll Flanders details the life of the irresistible Moll and her struggles
through poverty and sin in search of property and power. Born in Newgate Prison
to a picaresque mother, Moll propels herself through marriages, periods of
success and destitution, and a trip to the New World and back, only to return to
the place of her birth as a popular prostitute and brilliant thief. The story of Moll
Flanders vividly illustrates Defoe’s themes of social mobility and predestination,
sin, redemption and reward.
16. In which poem does Judith Wright lament the erasure of native culture in the following lines
? “The song is gone; the dance Is secret with the dancers in the earth, The ritual useless, and the
tribal story Lost in an alien tale”.
(A) “The Five Senses”
(B) “Legend”
(C) “Bullocky”
(D) “Bora Ring”
Judith Arundell Wright (31 May 1915 – 25 June 2000) was an Australian poet,
environmentalist and campaigner for Aboriginal land rights.[1] She was a
recipient of the Christopher Brennan Award.
In the totalising movements which construct the temporal monoculture, the
stratigraphic, synchronous presence of Aboriginal culture and the agency of
Aboriginal people disappear. New England poet Judith Wright lamented the
impact of colonization in her poem ‘Bora Ring :
The song is gone; the dance
is secret with the dancers in the earth,
the ritual useless, and the tribal story
lost in an alien tale.
17. Years before, Winston Smith, the protagonist of George Orwell’s dystopia, Nineteen Eighty -
Four got an evidence of the party’s dishonesty. What is it ?
(A) Emmanuel Goldstein’s confession that he is a party operative; not an enemy of the
party.
(B) O’ Brien’s diary entry hinting at the non-existence of Big Brother.
(C) A photograph which proves that some citizen accused of a crime was out of the
country while it was committed.
(D) A colleague’s revelation that the Inner Party members have systematically destroyed
Nineteen Eighty-Four: A Novel, often published as 1984, is a dystopian novel by
English novelist George Orwell. It was published in June 1949 by Secker &
Warburg as Orwell's ninth and final book completed in his lifetime.
The story was mostly written at Barnhill, a farmhouse on the Scottish island of
Jura, at times while Orwell suffered from severe tuberculosis.
18. The Indian Queen is :
(A) a heroic tragedy in rhymed couplets by John Dryden
(B) a long poem in free verse by Keki Daruwalla
(C) an autobiography of an Indian princess in exile
(D) a fictional account of the Life of Maharani Gayatri Devi
The Indian Emperour, or the Conquest of Mexico by the Spaniards, being the
Sequel of The Indian Queen is an English Restoration era stage play, a heroic
drama written by John Dryden that was first performed in the Spring of 1665.
The play has been considered a defining work in the sub-genre of heroic drama,
in which "rhymed heroic tragedy comes into full being."
19. In J. M. Coetzee’s Disgrace David Lurie is working on an opera on the life of one of the
Romantic poets. Who is the poet ?
(A) Blake
(B) Shelley
(C) Byron
(D) Coleridge
Disgrace is a novel by J. M. Coetzee, published in 1999. It won the Booker Prize.
The writer was also awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature four years after its
publication.
At the close of Coetzee's novel Disgrace, Professor David Lurie retreats into a
state of alienation. He chooses both a physical and psychic reality removed from
a functioning democratic South Africa. In this state he attempts to compose an
opera on Lord Byron and Teresa Guiccioli, which becomes representative on
many levels of David's private and public relationship to his nation. Using
Jacqueline Rose's work as a tool for understanding the link between fantasy and
political identity, the article focuses on David's opera and its role in
communicating reflections on identity, exile, and political meaning within the
mind of a newly disenfranchised member of South Africa's nation.
David Lurie is a South African professor of English who loses everything: his
reputations, his job, his peace of minds, his dreams of artistic success, and finally
even his ability to protect his own daughter. He is twice-divorced and dissatisfied
with his job as a 'communications' lecturer, teaching a class in romantic literature
at a technical university in Cape Town in post-apartheid South Africa. Lurie's
sexual activities are all inherently risky. Before the sexual affair that will ruin
him, he becomes attached to a prostitute and attempts to have a romantic
relationship with her (despite her having a family), which she rebuffs. He then
seduces a secretary at his university, only to completely ignore her afterwards.
His "disgrace" comes when he seduces one of his more vulnerable students, a
girl named Melanie Isaacs, playing her with alcohol and other actions that
arguably amount to rape; later, when she stops attending his class as a result, he
falsifies her grades. Lurie refuses to stop the affair, even after being threatened
by Melanie's erstwhile boyfriend, who knocks the papers off Lurie's desk, and
her father, who confronts him but whom David runs from. This affair is
thereafter revealed to the school, amidst a climate of condemnation for his
allegedly predatory acts, and a committee is convened to pass judgment on his
actions. David refuses to read Melanie's statement, defend himself, or apologizes
in any sincere form and so is forced to resign from his post. Lurie is working on
an opera concerning Lord Byron's final phase of life in Italy which mirrors his
own life in that Byron is living a life of hedonism and excess and is having an
affair with a married woman……….
20. Assertion (A) :
There is no unity or absolute source of the myth.
Reason (R) :
The focus or the source of the myth are always shadows and virtualities which are elusive
,unactualizable, and nonexistent in the first place. Any search for the discursive unity in
the myth is, therefore, misplaced. In the context of the above statements :
(A) Both (A) and (R) are true and (R) is the correct explanation of (A)
(B) Both (A) and (R) are true but (R) is not the correct explanation of (A)
(C) (A) is true but (R) is false
(D) (A) is false, but (R) is true 21. Which of the following landscap
21. Which of the following landscapes of England figures prominently in the poetry of Ted
Hughes ?
(A) Cornish cliffs
(B) Dorset moors
(C) Yorkshire moors
(D) Chesil Beach
Ted Hughes (1930-1998) was born in Mytholmroyd, West Yorkshire, in 1930.
Hughes had an opportunity to experience the beautiful landscapes, Rock
Mountains and the moors of Yorkshire. His nature poems reflect the omnipresent
power of nature. He studied Archaeology and Anthropology at Cambridge which
became determinant factors and the bases in his literary and mythological studies.
22. The title of M.C. Chagla’s autobiography is :
(A) Memoirs of my Working Life
(B) Without Fear or Favour
(C) Roses in December
(D) The Pen as My Sword
In 1973, Chagla published his autobiography, Roses in December, with the help
of his son Iqbal.
23. Who/Which among the following gave the expression, “a leopard can’t change its spots,” to
English language ?
(A) The King James Bible
(B) Geoffrey Chaucer
(C) Shakespeare
(D) The Royal Society
The King James Bible is the book that taught us that "a leopard can't change its
spots", that "a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush", that 'a wolf in sheep's
clothing' is harder to spot than you would imagine and how annoying it is to have
'a fly in your ointment.
24. Which of the following is NOT true about Albert Camus’s novel, The Plague ?
(A) Dr. Rieux describes the phenomenon of dying rats using the metaphors of disease,
especially the bubonic plague.
(B) Paneloux interprets the plague in his first sermon as a sign of the Apocalypse.
(C) M. Michel is the first victim of the plague.
(D) Tarrou thinks that the plague symbolizes human indifference.
Albert Camus's novel The Plague is about an epidemic of bubonic plague that
takes place in the Algerian port city of Oran. The narrator of The Plague
announces that he is to relate the unusual events that happened during one year in
the 1940s in the town of Oran, a large French port on the Algerian coast in North
Africa. The story begins in mid-April when Dr. Bernard Rieux discovers a dead
rat in the building where he lives. Within a week, thousands of rats are emerging
from their hiding places and dying in the street.
M. Michel is the concierge of the building in which Rieux lives. An old man, he is
the first victim of the plague.
Camus struggled with the very same concepts that Tarrou lies forth in The Plague.
Tarrou has his idea on how to attain peace: "The path of sympathy" (Camus 230).
Tarrou follows this path throughout his life, struggling to overcome the
indifference to suffering, struggling for the cause of helping others. Through
Tarrou, Camus thus presents his own particular variety of Existentialism: A man
gives himself and his life meaning through the good deeds which he performs for
the welfare of others. No man can attain peace in any other way. Good actions
must replace the conscious and unconscious indifference which plagues mankind.
Camus alters Existentialism to fit into this ideal of his.
25. John Lydgate begins his Siege of Thebes with a prologue of 176 lines in which he imagines
himself joining Chaucer’s pilgrims in Canterbury, where he speaks with the Host and agrees to
tell the first tale on homeward journey. The story that Lydgate tells as the pilgrims depart from
Canterbury is meant to be a companion piece to:
(A) The Pardoner’s Tale
(B) The Wife of Bath’s Tale
(C) The Knight’s Tale
(D) The Miller’s Tale
The work's chief interest has been its relationship to Chaucer's Canterbury Tales,
whose decasyllabic or "heroic" couplets were adapted by Lydgate with mixed
success. Based on some version of the French Roman de Thèbes and entitled in
several manuscripts "The Destruction of Thebes," the main body of the work is a
sprawling 4540-line exemplum chronicling the disastrous careers of a series of
deeply flawed kings: Edippus, his sons Ethyocles and Polymyte, and finally
Creon. The end of the three-part Theban tragedy is extended to those episodes
treated by Chaucer at the beginning of The Knight's Tale. Indeed, Lydgate drew
material directly from his master in ten specific passages, intent on making the
two histories dovetail with one another, using narrative congruence and verbal
echoes to knit up the end of his tale with the beginning of Chaucer's.
26. Stephen Krashen’s theory of second language acquisition consists of six main hypotheses.
Which of the following is NOT one of them ?
(A) The Input Hypothesis
(B) The Affective Filter Hypothesis
(C) The Monitor Hypothesis
(D) The Writing Hypothesis
Krashen's theory of second language acquisition consists of five main hypotheses:
o the Acquisition-Learning hypothesis;
o the Monitor hypothesis;
o the Input hypothesis;
o and the Affective Filter hypothesis;
o the Natural Order hypothesis.
27. Among Derek Walcott’s plays, which one is an exploration of colonial relationships through
the Robinson Crusoe story?
(A) Pantomime
(B) Dream on Monkey Mountain
(C) Ti-Jean and His Brothers
(D) The Charlatan
Walcott was best known for his poetry, beginning with In a Green Night: Poems
1948–1960 (1962). This book is typical of his early poetry in its celebration of the
Caribbean landscape’s natural beauty.
Of Walcott’s approximately 30 plays, the best-known are Dream on Monkey
Mountain (produced 1967), a West Indian’s quest to claim his identity and his
heritage; Ti-Jean and His Brothers (1958), based on a West Indian folktale about
brothers who seek to overpower the Devil; and
Pantomime (1978), an exploration of colonial relationships through the Robinson
Crusoe story. The play Pantomime was written in 1978 by the prolific West
Indian poet and playwright Derek Walcott. The short two-act play dissects the
relationship between an English hotel owner and his Creole servant in Tobago,
Trinidad.
In Act I, a frustrated Englishman named Harry Trewe rehearses a play in the
lobby of the hotel he recently bought. The play is intended to entertain new hotel
clientele; however, the rehearsals are not going very well. Trewe’s assistant,
Jackson Phillip, who has more hotel experience than Trewe, urges him to shift his
focus to polishing up the hotel, which is not in good condition. Trewe jokes about
committing suicide to escape doing the work, and Jackson tells him not to because
he would get blamed for it.
Trewe persists in his rehearsal of the play, an adaptation of Robinson Crusoe.
Jackson does not want to be a part of the play and is angry that the hotel’s parrot
has picked up racial slurs from the actors. Trewe tries to manipulate Jackson into
helping him by reminding him of his past as a talented calypsonian performer.
Jackson uses the opportunity to transform the play into a message about racial
equality, hijacking the character of Robinson Crusoe and turning him into an
imperialist. Trewe, who is playing the role of Crusoe’s servant, is taken aback.
28. ‘Anti - foundationalism’ holds that :
(A) Every theory poses different questions and, therefore, what counts as ‘fact’
and ‘truth’ differs in every case.
(B) All truth claims can be judged true or false, usually against empirical facts.
(C) Causal statements about the relationship between dependent and independent
variables can be made.
(D) Truth is the foundation of all representational experience.
Antifoundationalists have been criticised for attacking all general claims except
their own; for offering a localizing rhetoric contradicted in practice by their own
globalizing style.
Edward Said condemned radical anti-foundationalism for excessive cultural
relativism and overdependence on the linguistic turn at the expense of human
realities
Anti-foundationalists use logical or historical or genealogical attacks on
foundational concepts (see especially Nietzsche and Foucault), often coupled with
alternative methods for justifying and forwarding intellectual inquiry, such as the
pragmatic subordination of knowledge to practical action.[2] Foucault dismissed
the search for a return to origins as Platonic essentialism, preferring to stress the
contingent nature of human practices
29. The interaction hypothesis is a theory of second language acquisition which states that the
development of language proficiency is promoted by face-to-face interaction and
communication. The idea is usually credited to :
(A) David Nunan
(B) Michael Long
(C) Alastair Pennycook
(D) Claire Kramsch
The Interaction hypothesis is a theory of second-language acquisition which states
that the development of language proficiency is promoted by face-to-face
interaction and communication. The idea existed in the 1980s, but is usually
credited to Michael Long for his 1996 paper. The role of the linguistic
environment in second language acquisition.
30. In Pinter’s Birthday Party Stanley is terrorised by two visitors to a seaside boarding house.
Identify the two
(a) McGrath (b) Goldberg (c) McCann (d) Robinson
The right combination according to the code is :
(A) (a) and (b) (B) (b) and (c)
(C) (a) and (d) (D) (b) and (d)
Pinter's career was saved by a loyal wife, a visionary critic, a sympathetic friend
and the BBC Third Programme. But why did The Birthday Party provoke such
hostility from the daily critics? Today, there seems nothing strange about its plot,
in which a truculent loner, Stanley, is terrorised by two visitors to a seaside
boarding-house, Goldberg and McCann, and ultimately carted off. At the time,
however, the reaction was one of bewildered hysteria. The cryptically initialled
MWW in the Manchester Guardian wrote of characters who "speak in non
sequiturs, half-gibberish and lunatic ravings".
31. Match the phrase to the ode :
(a) beechen green (i) “Ode on a Grecian Urn” 4
(b) gathering swallows (ii) “Ode on Melancholy” 3
(c) globed peonies (iii) “Ode to a Nightingale 1
(d) green altar (iv) “To Autumn” 2
(A) (iii) (ii) (iv) (i)
(B) (iv) (ii) (iii) (i)
(C) (iv) (iii) (ii) (i)
(D) (iii) (iv) (ii) (i)
32. Which 19th century novelist expressed a wish to “exterminate the race” of Indians following
the 1857 Mutiny in India ?
(A) William Makepeace Thackeray
(B) Charles Dickens
(C) George Eliot
(D) Anthony Trollope
Peters is a specialist in nineteenth-century literature and this book examines
literature, journalism, and letters written by Charles Dickens in order to produce a
thoroughgoing, sharp, and surprising examination of his often controversial views
on the subject of racial difference. Dickens wrote in a letter that I [Dickens] wish I
were Commander in Chief over there [India]! and showed his desire to
exterminate the race [Indians] from the face of the earth[Dickens to Angela
Burdett-Coutts, 4 October 1875].
33. The second part of Pilgrim’s Progress deals with the pilgrimage of Christian’s wife,
Christiana. She has a companion and a guide in this journey. Pick out the pair’s names from the
following list.
(a) Patience
(b) Tenderheart
(c) Mercy
(d) Greatheart
The right combination according to the code is :
(A) (c) and (d)
(B) (b) and (c)
(C) (a) and (d)
(D) (b) and (d)
the Second Part of The Pilgrim's Progress presents the pilgrimage of Christian's
wife, Christiana; their sons; and the maiden, Mercy
The hero of the story is Greatheart, a servant of the Interpreter, who is the pilgrims'
guide to the Celestial City. He kills four giants called Giant Grim, Giant Maul,
Giant Slay-Good, and Giant Despair and participates in the slaying of a monster
called Legion that terrorizes the city of Vanity Fair.
34. In which play by Eugene Ionesco do you find the grotesque image of the leg of a corpse
thrusting onto the stage, and, which begins to grow larger as the play progresses in a menacing
manner ?
(A) The Bald Soprano
(B) Amede or How to Get Rid of It
(C) Exit the King
(D) The Lesson
Amédée, or How to Get Rid of It is a play written by Eugène Ionesco in 1954
based on his earlier short story entitled "Oriflamme". The play is about Amédée, a
playwright, and his wife Madeleine, a switchboard operator. They discuss how to
deal with a continually growing corpse in the other room. The corpse is causing
mushrooms to sprout all over the apartment and is apparently arousing suspicion
among the neighbors. The audience is given no clear reason why the corpse is
there. Madeleine suggests he was the lover Amédée murdered; Amédée gives
several alternate explanations. At the end of the play Amédée attempts to drag the
corpse away to dump it in the river. He is seen by many passers-by; one of the
witnesses is referred to as "Eugene" and is likely the author himself. When
Amédée becomes tangled in the legs, the corpse floats away with Amédée
attached.
35. Which of the following characters finds that complete happiness is elusive and that “while
you are making the choice of life, you neglect to live” ?
(A) Lovelace in Samuel Richardson’s Clarissa
(B) Rasselas in Samuel Johnson’s Rasselas
(C) Matthew Bramble in Tobias Smollett’s Humphry Clinker
(D) Harley in Henry Mackenzie’s The Man of Feeling
Rasselas, in full The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia, philosophical
romance by Samuel Johnson published in 1759 as The Prince of Abissinia.
Supposedly written in the space of a week, with the impending expenses of
Johnsons mother’s funeral in mind, Rasselas explores and exposes the vanity of
the human search for happiness. The work is addressed to those who listen with
credulity to the whispers of fancy and pursue with eagerness the phantoms of
hope. Hoping to learn how he should live, Rasselas meets with men of varied
occupations and interests—scholars, astronomers, shepherds, hermits, and
poets—and explores their manner of life. He finds that complete happiness is
elusive and that while you are making the choice of life, you neglect to
live—which is, perhaps, the most important moral to be drawn from the tale.
36. Arrange the following in the chronological order of publication :
(A) In Memoriam - A Christmas Carol - Men and Women - Henry Esmond
(B) A Christmas Carol - In Memoriam - Men and Women - Henry Esmond
(C) A Christmas Carol - In Memoriam - Henry Esmond - Men and Women
(D) In Memoriam - A Christmas Carol - Henry Esmond - Men and Women
Publication Dates :
A Christmas Carol (1843)
In Memoriam (1850)
Henry Esmond (1852)
Men and Women (1855)
A Christmas Carol. In Prose. Being a Ghost Story of Christmas, commonly
known as A Christmas Carol, is a novella by Charles Dickens, first published in
London by Chapman & Hall in 1843 and illustrated by John Leech.
In Memoriam A.H.H." is a poem by the British poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson,
completed in 1849. It is a requiem for the poet's beloved Cambridge friend Arthur
Henry Hallam, who died suddenly of a cerebral hemorrhage in Vienna in 1833,
aged 22, The original title of the poem was "The Way of the Soul".
The History of Henry Esmond is a historical novel by William Makepeace
Thackeray, originally published in 1852. The book tells the story of the early life
of Henry Esmond, a colonel in the service of Queen Anne of England. Henry
Esmond, in full The History of Henry Esmond, Esq., historical novel by William
Makepeace Thackeray, published in three volumes in 1852.
o The story, narrated by Esmond, begins in 1691 when he is 12 and
ends in 1718. Its complexity of incident is given unity by Esmond
and his second cousin Beatrix, who stand out against a background
of London society and the political life of the time. Beatrix
dominates the book. She is seen first as a charming child and
develops beauty combined with a power that is fatal to the men she
loves. One of Thackeray’s great creations, she is a heroine of a
new type, emotionally complex and compelling but not a pattern of
virtue. Esmond, a sensitive, brave, aristocratic soldier, falls in love
with her but is finally disillusioned. Befriended as an orphan by
Beatrix’s parents, Lord and Lady Castlewood, Henry initially
adores Lady Castlewood as a mother and eventually, in his
maturity, marries her.
Men and Women is a collection of fifty-one poems in two volumes by Robert
Browning, first published in 1855.
37. Which one of Alice Munro’s short stories is about the domestic erosions of Alzheimer’s
disease ?
(A) “Dear Life”
(B) “Runaway”
(C) “The Bear Came Over the Mountain”
(D) “Dance of the Happy Shades”
Munros short story about the domestic erosions of Alzheimers disease, The Bear
Came over the Mountain, originally published in Hateship, Friendship, Courtship,
Loveship, Marriage (2001), was made into the critically acclaimed film Away
from Her (2006), directed by Sarah Polley and starring Julie Christie and Michael
Murphy.
38. What work begins thus: “It befell in the days of Uther Pendragon, when he was king of all
England, and so reigned, that there was a mighty duke in Cornwall that held war against him
long time”?
(A) Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
(B) Le Morte D’arthur
(C) Confessio Amantis
(D) Piers Plowman
Le Morte d'Arthur is a reworking by Sir Thomas Malory of existing tales about
the legendary King Arthur, Guinevere, Lancelot, Merlin and the Knights of the
Round Table. Malory interpreted existing French and English stories about these
figures and added original material.
39. __________ is the subject of Asif Currimbhoy’s play, Inquilab.
(A) The Naxalite movement
(B) The Freedom movement
(C) The Non-Cooperation movement
(D) The Khilafat movement
The Naxalite rebellion has been a significant political movement of our time and
has interested many writers creatively. It has occupied the centre stage for the
better part of the century in the ongoinh political discussions and creative
writings. The Naxalite movement is the subject of Asif Currimbhoys Inquilab. It
throws light upon the origin and development of the revolutionaries activities. The
play present the violent Naxalite revolt that overtook Calcutta in 1970. At that
time Calcutta was burning.
"Inquilab" is one of the most effective realistic play by Asif Currimbhoy
regarding the social issue. Asif Currimbhoy (1928-1975) has his unique
recognition to produce the crucial realistic play for contemporary India through
his own transparent and impartial vision. He used to construct the plot of his play
inter winded with social, political, moral, and religious issues along with pathos,
sentiment, irony, and social criticism. Asif Currimbhoy is considered India's first
authentic voice in theatre writing plays of dissent. All his social issues through
local in color are of universal appeal drawing attention to problems of man
everywhere such as denial of human rights, justice, and freedom. He had explored
universal human predicament through his social, moral, religious and political
concerns in the play. And for this excellence, he achieved appreciation from every
corner of the world.
Inquilab has been set in the background of the Naxalite revolt that haunted West
Bengal. The play is an assessment of the Naxal movement grew powerful in
Calcutta in the 1970 duration. Charu Majumdar who established the communist
(Marxist-Leninist) of India and organized several armed risings of landless
agriculture laborers, especially in eastern India in 1967. It comes to be known as
"Naxalite - Movement" named after the village of "Naxalbari" in West Bengal
where it first began. Eventually, it developed into an urban guerrilla movement,
especially in Calcutta.
40. Tom Stoppard’s play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, being Meta theatrical, lays
bare the constructed nature of theatrical performance. In referring to Hamlet’s end and the
Elizabethan stage conditions lacking curtains one of the characters of Stoppard’s play says: “No
one gets up after death - there is no applause - there is only silence and some second hand
clothes, and that’s death”. Who makes this statement?
(A) Rosencrantz
(B) Guildenstern
(C) The Player
(D) Hamlet
Tom Stoppard was born in Czechoslovakia in 1937. He began his career as a
newspaper reporter and a theatre critic, and eventually became a playwright.
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead remains his most famous play ever. The
play is unique in giving life to two minor, almost negligible, characters in
Hamlet…who wait in the wings to be called for brief moments only to be
forgotten by the audience the next moment. In the very beginning it is made clear
by Stoppard that the action of his play takes place within and around the action of
Hamlet. If Hamlet revolves around the fate of Denmark and of course that of
Prince Hamlet, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead revolves around the fate
of these two minor characters from Shakespeare’s tragic masterpiece Hamlet. The
whole worldview changes in Stoppard’s play.
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are characters in William Shakespeare's tragedy
Hamlet. They are childhood friends of Hamlet, summoned by King Claudius to
distract the prince from his apparent madness and if possible to ascertain the
cause of it.
As the protagonists of Tom Stoppard's play and film, they are confused by the
events of Hamlet and seem unaware of their role in the larger drama. Stoppard
also littered his play with jokes that refer to the common thespian tendency to
swap Rosencrantz and Guildenstern in the midst of the play because the
characters are basically identical. He does this by making Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern unsure of who is who, as well as having the other players (Claudius,
Hamlet, Gertrude) refer to them frequently by the wrong names. Because of the
play's similarity to Waiting for Godot, Rosencrantz is sometimes compared to
Estragon (one of the tramps who wait for Godot), and who shares his dim
perception of reality, while Guildenstern parallels Vladimir, who shares his
analytical perception.
GUIL: (Fear, vengeance, scorn) Your experience?--Actors! (He snatches a dagger
from the PLAYER's belt and holds the point at the PLAYER's throat: the
PLAYER backs and GUIL advances, speaking more quietly.)I'm talking about
death-and you've never experienced that. And you cannot act it. You die a
thousand casual deaths-with none of that intensity which squeezes out life . . . and
no blood runs cold anywhere. Because even as you die you know that you will
come back in a different hat. But no one gets up after death-there is no applause-
there is only silence and some second-hand clothes, and that's death.
41. Who among the following, has translated the classic Malayalam novel, Chemmeen ?
(A) A. K. Ramanujan
(B) Anita Nair
(C) Nandini Nopany
(D) Gita Krishnankutty
Chemmeen has been translated into English many times. Narayana Menon's
translation titled Anger of the Sea-Goddess remains very popular even to this day.
Other English translations are by T. S. Pillai and Anita Nair, both titled
Chemmeen. It has gone into several editions and is readily available at bookshops
all over India.
42. Which Victorian poet is the author of the following lines ? “God himself is the best Poet,
And the Real is His song.”
(A) Lord Tennyson
(B) Robert Browning
(C) Matthew Arnold
(D) Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Elizabeth Barrett Browning's "The Dead Pan" (1844) and "A Musical Instrument"
(Cornhill Magazine, 1860) draw on the figure of the goat-god Pan to deal with
aesthetic issues of poetic process and product, with theological issues of belief
and godhead, and with complex cultural issues of sexual desire and violation of
the woman. "God Himself is the best Poet, And the Real is His song." - Elizabeth
Barrett Browning.
43. “You are your words. Your listeners see Written on your face the poems they hear Like
letters carved in a tree’s bark The sight and sounds of solitudes endured”. These are lines from a
poem by __________ on the death of __________.
(A) T. S. Eliot ; Robert Frost
(B) Siegfried Sassoon ; Wilfred Owen
(C) Stephen Spender ; W. H. Auden
(D) Dylan Thomas ; Robert Bridges
You are your words. Your listeners see Written on your face the poems they hear
Like letters carved in a trees bark The sight and sounds of solitudes endured.
These are lines from a poem Auden's Funeral by Stephen Spender on the death of
W. H. Auden. Stephen Spender was a member of the generation of British poets
who came to prominence in the 1930s, a group—sometimes referred to as the
Oxford Poets—that included W. H. Auden, Christopher Isherwood, C. Day
Lewis, and Louis MacNeice.
44. Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl”, a key work of the Beat Movement, was dedicated to __________.
(A) Lucien Carr
(B) Carl Solomon
(C) Herbert Huncke
(D) Jack Kerouac
"Howl", also known as "Howl for Carl Solomon", is a poem written by Allen
Ginsberg in 1954–1955 and published in his 1956 collection Howl and Other
Poems. The poem is dedicated to Carl Solomon. Ginsberg began work on "Howl"
in 1954. In the Paul Blackburn Tape Archive at the University of California, San
Diego, Ginsberg can be heard reading early drafts of his poem to his fellow
writing associates. "Howl" is considered to be one of the great works of American
literature. It came to be associated with the group of writers known as the Beat
Generation.
45. In his views on the death of Cordelia in King Lear, which is the ground NOT specifically
cited by Samuel Johnson ?
(A) It is contrary to the natural ideas of justice.
(B) It is contrary to neoplatonic idea of decorum.
(C) It is contrary to the hope of the reader.
(D) It is contrary to the faith of chronicles.
King Lear is at once the most highly praised and intensely criticized of all
Shakespeare's works. Samuel Johnson said it is "deservedly celebrated among the
dramas of Shakespeare" yet at the same time he supported the changes made in
the text by Tate in which Cordelia is allowed to retire with victory and felicity.
"Shakespeare has suffered the virtue of Cordelia to perish in a just cause, contrary
to the natural ideas of justice, to the hope of the reader, and, what is yet stranger,
to the faith of chronicles." A.C. Bradley's judgement is that King Lear is
"Shakespare's greatest work, but it is not...the best of his plays."
46. Which of the following plays by David Hare is NOT part of a trilogy of ‘state of the nation’
plays ?
(A) The Absence of War
(B) Racing Demon
(C) The Power of Yes
(D) Murmuring Judges
Sir David Hare (born 5 June 1947) is an English playwright, screenwriter and
theatre and film director. Best known for his stage work, Hare has also enjoyed
great success with films, receiving two Academy Award nominations for Best
Adapted Screenplay for writing The Hours in 2002, based on the novel written by
Michael Cunningham, and The Reader in 2008, based on the novel of the same
name written by Bernhard Schlink. In the West End, he had his greatest success
with the plays Plenty, which he adapted into a film starring Meryl Streep in 1985,
Racing Demon (1990), Skylight (1997), and Amy's View (1998). The four plays
ran on Broadway in 1982–83, 1996, 1998 and 1999 respectively, earning Hare
three Tony Award nominations for Best Play for the first three and two Laurence
Olivier Award for Best New Play. Other notable projects on stage include A Map
of the World, Pravda, Murmuring Judges, The Absence of War and The Vertical
Hour. He wrote screenplays for the film Wetherby and the BBC drama Page Eight
(2011).
47. Chimamanda Adichie’s last novel, Americanah (2013) centres on the romantic and
existential struggles of a young Nigerian woman studying in the United States and finding
success as a blogger. What is her blogging about ?
(A) poverty
(B) development
(C) race
(D) religion
Americanah, the third novel by the Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie,
follows Ifemelu, a young Nigerian woman who moves to the United States and
finds a certain amount of fame as a blogger writing candidly about issues of race
and nationality. In her review in The Times, Janet Maslin called the books first
half tough-minded and clear, but expressed disappointment in the simple romance
of what followed. In a recent e-mail interview, Ms. Adichie discussed the state of
American fiction, the tropes she wanted to avoid in writing about race and more.
48. Why does Father Dolan punish Stephen with the pandybat in Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as
a young Man?
(A) Stephen is talking to another student to get the answer to a Latin problem.
(B) Stephen is not doing his work because his glasses are broken.
(C) Stephen is looking out of the window towards the infirmary.
(D) Stephen is lost in remembering his mother’s farewell and cannot hear Father Dolan
calling out his name.
James Joyce's novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916) is entirely
concerned with the development of its main character, Stephen Dedalus.
49. Using a non - linear narrative, this American novel explores the psychic damage to a veteran
of World War II and shows how a measure of healing is attained through his acceptance of
Laguna myths and rituals. Identify the work:
(A) Dred
(B) Beloved
(C) Ceremony
(D) End Zone
Silko‘s Ceremony is highly praised as the most important Native American novel
that has had a vast impact upon the reading community in America and the
overseas. Native American writers show division of opinion as regards the critical
literary assessment and methods to be applied to Native American Literature.
Many critics insist upon using mainstream assessment tools and literary models
for an analysis of these texts while others demand literary assessment to be based
upon tribal literary perspectives and understandings. The novel emphasizes the
important role that storytelling plays within the Pueblo culture. It also accurately
summarizes the repeated attempts of white groups to demolish the Pueblo culture
by destroying its ceremonies. Despite these attempts, which began in 1540 and
continued until the 1930s, the basic elements of Pueblo myth and ritual managed
to survive. As Silko reveals in Ceremony, however, the years from the World War
II to the present have presented new threats to the Pueblos, which, although more
subtle than the early Spanish conquests, are even more dangerous, and must be
fought if the Pueblo culture is to continue. In order to explain fully the threats of
the modern world poses to the ceremonial life of the Pueblos. It is “the first
necessity to present a background of the Pueblo geography, basic mythology, and
its corresponding ritual.
The novel reveals the story of Tayo, a veteran of Laguna and white ancestry
returning from fighting against Japan in The World War II. Upon returning to the
poverty-stricken Laguna Reservation after a stint at a Los Angeles VA hospital
recovering from injuries sustained in World War II, Tayo continues to suffer from
battle fatigue (shell-shock), and is haunted by memories of his cousin Rocky who
died in the conflict during the Bataan Death March of 1942. Seeking an escape
from his pain, Tayo initially takes refuge in alcoholism. However, with the
support of Old Grandma, he is helped by ceremonies conducted by the mixed-
blood Navajo Shaman Betonie. As a result, Tayo comes to a greater
understanding of the world and his own place within it as a Laguna man
50. What illusion does Lyuba Ranevsky in Anton Chekhov’s play The Cherry Orchard have as
she looks at the orchard ?
(A) She sees it gleaming with a bluish aura.
(B) She sees her dead mother walking through the orchard.
(C) She sees it full of ripe fruits without a trace of leaves.
(D) She sees her childhood friends playing in the orchard.
The orchard is also identified with Gayev's and Ranevsky's personal memories.
Gayev asks Lyuba if she remembers how the orchard's avenue "gleams on
moonlit nights you can't have forgotten?" Ranevsky literally sees an emblem of
those memories—her dead mother walking through the orchard—before she
realizes it is an illusion; merely "a little white tree which has learnt over, and
looks like a woman." Ranevsky shows herself, and will continue to show herself,
to be someone willing to believe in pleasant illusions, such as the illusion of
security provided by her childhood home.
51. From which source did Swift get the idea of writing “Verses on the Death of Dr. Swift” ?
(A) In a conversation with John Gay
(B) After a reading of a maxim by la Rochefoucauld
(C) While taking a walk near Dublin’s St. James’s graveyard
(D) After reading Richard Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy
In “Verses on the Death of Dr. Swift, D.S.P.D.” satirist Jonathan Swift is inspired
by a maxim, “In the misfortune of our best friends we always find something that
does not displease us,” by Francois de la Rochefoucauld. He begins by arguing
that Rochefoucauld’s cynical maxims are based upon the truth of human nature,
and proceeds to cite several examples—some demonstrating a passive state of
being “not displeased,” and others showing an active effort to raise self by
lowering others—proving his point. In addition to supporting the maxim, he uses
his verses to cynically question the values, follies, and customs of humanity.
52. Two of the following words were borrowed from French after the Norman Conquest.
(a) mutton (b) pork
(c) sheep (d) swine
The right combination according to the code is :
(A) (a) and (b)
(B) (a) and (c)
(C) (b) and (d)
(D) (c) and (d)
The Norman Conquest made French the language of the official class in England.
Therefore, it is not astonishing that many words that have to do with government
and administration are of French origin. One example is the word government
itself, along with ME amynistre. Others include attorney, chancellor, country,
court and crime. Furthermore, English titles of nobility except for king, queen,
earl, lord and lady - namely prince, duke, marquess, viscount, baron and their
feminine equivalents - date from the period when England was in the hands of a
Norman French ruling class. In military usage army, captain, corporal, lieutenant,
sergeant and soldier are all of French origin. French words were borrowed not
only for various animals, when served up as food at Norman tables, like beef,
mutton, pork and veal for instance, but also to the cooking techniques by which
the English cow, sheep, pig and calf were prepared for human consumption, for
instance boil, broil, fry, roast and stew.
53. Which of the following is NOT true regarding the Oresteia trilogy by Aeschylus ?
(A) Cassandra, cursed by Apollo predicts the death of Agamemnon, though her prophecy
is ignored.
(B) Aegisthus’s vengeful feelings for Agamemnon results from their rivalry for the hand
of Clytemnestra.
(C) Orestes, who has come back with the intention of murdering Clytemnestra
unexpectedly meets her, and pretending to be a stranger, tells her that Orestes is dead.
(D) Orestes, pursued by the Furies, flees from them when they fall asleep. Then,
Clytemnestra’s ghost appears to wake them up.
Agamemnons father (Atreus) was responsible for the killing of Aegisthuss father
(Thyestes). It was the main cause of rivalry between agamemnon and Aegisthus.
54. The first instance of female cross-dressing with the disconcerting nuances of a boy actor
dressing as a boy while playing the role of a woman in the dramatic world of Shakespeare occurs
in __________.
(A) The Two Gentlemen of Verona
(B) As you Like It
(C) Twelfth Night
(D) A Midsummer Night’s Dream
The first instance of female cross-dressing with the disconcerting nuances of a
boy actor dressing as a boy while playing the role of a woman in the dramatic
world of Shakespeare occurs in the Two Gentlemen of Verona. Female cross-
dressing was greeted with "mounting sarcasm and hysteria" because, Jackson
says, it was an undermining of "customs around which society is organized".
55. For Coleridge, our power to perceive symbols gleaned from the world about us is related to
the category of :
(A) primary imagination
(B) secondary imagination
(C) fancy
(D) intuition
Primary Imagination: (Living power and prime agent of all human perception).
Coleridge asserts that the mind is active in perception. This activity which is
subconscious and it the common birth right of all men, is the work of the Primary
Imagination, which may be defined as the inborn power of perceiving that makes
it possible for us to know things. The Primary Imagination is a repetition in the
finite mind of the eternal art of creation in the infinite I AM. The power of
perception, Coleridge called as Primary Imagination whereas the poetic
imagination as the Secondary Imagination. It differs from the Primary
Imagination in degree, but not in kind. While all men possess the Primary, only
some men possess the heightened degree of the universally human power to
which the poet lays claim.
56. After independence, although English was not an Indian language, it was accorded the status
of an :
(A) Additional language
(B) Ancilliary language
(C) Associate language
(D) Administrative language
On August 15, 1947, India achieved independence, although the country was
immediately partitioned into two separate countries: Hindu India and Muslim
Pakistan. The following year, Mahatma Gandhi was assassinated by a Hindu
extremist, and the disappearance of the inspirational force behind independence
ushered in a new period in Indian history. Nonetheless, on January 26, 1950, India
adopted a new constitution that created a federal state known as the Indian Union,
a democratic lay republic and member of the British Commonwealth.
The Constitution adopted in 1950 stipulated that English and Hindi would be used
for the Union's official business for a period of fifteen years (s. 343(2) and
343(3)). After that time, Hindi was supposed to become the sole official language
of the Union. It proved impossible to replace English with Hindi, however,
because of strong opposition from the southern states, where Dravidian languages
were spoken. They felt that the federal government was trying to impose Hindi
across the country, including the south, and preferred to continue using English,
which they found more "acceptable" because, unlike Hindi, it was not associated
with any particular ethnic group. Later, the Official Languages Act legally
established Hindi and English as the languages used in Congress, while leaving
states and territories free to choose their own official languages.
57. Which English journal announced that it was “principally intended for the use of Politick
Persons who are so publick - spirited as to neglect their own Affairs to look into Transactions of
State” but failed to live up to this and amused readers with “accounts of Gallantry, Pleasure and
Entertainment “ ?
(A) The Spectator
(B) The Tatler
(C) The Daily Courant
(D) The Review
The Tatler was a British literary and society journal begun by Richard Steele in 1709
and published for two years.
The Spectator was a daily publication founded by Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
in England, lasting from 1711 to 1712. These were collected into seven volumes. The
paper was revived without the involvement of Steele in 1714, appearing thrice weekly
for six months, and these papers when collected formed the eighth volume. Eustace
Budgell, a cousin of Addison's, and the poet John Hughes also contributed to the
publication.
58. The grammar-translation method of language teaching does NOT include :
(A) focus on grammar rules
(B) vocabulary memorization
(C) inductive teaching
(D) focus on written language
The grammar–translation method is a method of teaching foreign languages derived
from the classical (sometimes called traditional) method of teaching Greek and Latin.
In grammar–translation classes, students learn grammatical rules and then apply those
rules by translating sentences between the target language and the native language.
The method has two main goals: to enable students to read and translate literature
written in the source language, and to further students' general intellectual
development.
Grammar–translation classes are usually conducted in the students' native language.
Grammatical rules are learned deductively; students learn grammar rules by rote, and
then practice the rules by doing grammar drills and translating sentences to and from
the target language.
59. Who is the narrator in Kamala Markandaya’s Nectar in a Sieve ?
(A) Premala
(B) Saroja
(C) Rukmani
(D) Mira
Ruku is a poor, Indian village woman who serves as the novel’s protagonist and
narrator. She tells the story of her life from her days as a nervous young bride of 12 to
her twilight years as an old widow. Along the way she endures much: infertility,
rumors about her morality, the death of children, floods and droughts, her daughter’s
prostitution and albino child and the death of her beloved husband.
At first, Ruku is reluctant to face change but she learns that one must adapt if one
wants to survive. Her simple wisdom, her ability to hope in the face of hopelessness
and her courage to find joy in the everyday are an inspiration. As a narrator, Ruku is
usually truthful, even about her own shortcomings. She reveals that she does not
always understand the world but she refuses to be defeated by it.
60. How would a New Historicist critic interpret Derrida’s statement, “there is nothing outside
the text” ?
(A) historicist critics should restrict their attention to a culture’s literary productions,
all other data is irrelevant to the critic’s task
(B) language conditions the way we see the world, and there is no reality beyond the
‘prison house’ of language
(C) there is no meaning outside of textual meaning (contrary to the mimeticist’s
position)
(D) “Literature” encompasses all cultural artifacts and all the values, power relations,
and ways of seeing reflected in those artifacts; there is nothing outside of the “text”
broadly conceived
New Historicism envisages and practices a mode of study where the literary text and
the non-literary context are given equal weighting, whereas old historicism considers
history as a background of facts to the foreground of literature. While Old historicism
follows a hierarchical approach by creating a historical framework and placing the
literary text within it, New Historicism, upholding the Derridean view that there is
nothing outside the text, or that everything is available to us in textual or narrative
form, breaks such hierarchies, and follows a parallel reading of literature and history,
and looks at history as represented and recorded in literary texts. In short, while Old
Historicism is concerned with the world of the past, New Historicism deals with the
word of the past.
61. Pick out two Austen heroines from the following list who are right-minded but neglected in
the beginning but gradually are acknowledged to be correct by characters who have previously
looked down on them.
(a) Elizabeth Bennet
(b) Fanny Price
(c) Emma Woodhouse
(d) Anne Elliot
The right combination according to the code is :
(A) (a) and (c)
(B) (b) and (d)
(C) (c) and (d)
(D) (a) and (d)
Austen uses, essentially, two standard plots. In one of these a right-minded but
neglected heroine is gradually acknowledged to be correct by characters that have
previously looked down on her (such as Fanny Price in Mansfield Park and Anne
Elliot in Persuasion). In the other an attractive but self-deceived heroine (such as
Emma Woodhouse in Emma or Elizabeth Bennet in Pride and Prejudice) belatedly
recovers from her condition of error and is rewarded with the partner she had
previously despised or overlooked.
62. The variety of English used between non-native speakers who do not share a first language is
called :
(A) English for specific purposes
(B) English for basic purposes
(C) English as a lingua Franca
(D) English as a language tool
The term "ESL" has been seen by some to indicate that English would be of
subordinate importance; for example, where English is used as a lingua franca in a
multilingual country. The term can be a misnomer for some students who have
learned several languages before learning English. The terms "English language
learners" (ELL), and, more recently, "English learners" (EL), have been used instead,
and the students' native languages and cultures are considered important
63. Identify the story for which E. M. Forster wrote the libretto for its opera version:
(A) Heart of Darkness
(B) The Man Who Would Be the King
(C) Billy Budd
(D) Death in Venice
Billy Budd, Op. 50, is an opera by Benjamin Britten to a libretto by the English
novelist E. M. Forster and Eric Crozier, based on the short novel Billy Budd by
Herman Melville. Originally in four acts, it was first performed at the Royal Opera
House, London, on 1 December 1951; it was later revised as a two-act opera with a
prologue and an epilogue.
64. Who, among the following Prem Chand translators has NOT translated Godan ?
(A) Jai Ratan
(B) P. Lal
(C) Gordon C. Roadarmel
(D) Christopher R. King
First translation of Godaan was done by Jai Ratan Singh and Purushottama Lal in
1957 while the second translation was accomplished by Gordon Charles Roadarmel
in 1968 when it was commissioned by UNESCO.
65. “When Fred got into debt, it always seemed to him highly probable that something or other -
he did not necessarily conceive what - would come to pass enabling him to pay in due time”.
Why is Fred Vincy in debt in Middle march ?
(A) He takes out a large loan to enable him to woo Mary Garth.
(B) He is an inveterate gambler.
(C) He is paying off a blackmailer.
(D) He runs a charity that has got into trouble.
Fred Vincy is an inveterate gambler. When Fred got into debt, it always seemed to
him highly probable that something or other he did not necessarily conceive what
would come to pass enabling his to pay in due time. And now that the providential
occurrence was apparently close at hand, it would have been sheer absurdity to think
that the supply would be short of the need: as absurd as a faith that believed in half a
miracle for want of strength to believe in a whole one.
QUIZ
“Take then thy bond, take thou thy pound of flesh; / But, in the cutting it, if thou dost
shed / One drop of Christian blood, thy lands and goods / Are, by the laws of
Venice, confiscate / Unto the state of Venice.” Portia speaks eloquently
in his defence, but whose flesh is Shylock preparing to take in place of
his unpaid debt in Shakespeare’s A Merchant of Venice?
Antonio
Bassanio
Lorenzo
Balthazar
What is the name of the debtor’s prison in Dickens’s Little Dorrit, in
which William Dorrit – and, in real life, Dickens’s own father – are
incarcerated?
Kings’ Bench Prison
Fleet Prison
Marshalsea Prison
Coldbath Fields Prison
“Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen
and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual
expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery. The blossom is
blighted, the leaf is withered, the god of day goes down upon the dreary
scene, and – and in short you are for ever floored. As I am!" Says which
of Dickens’s debtors?
Pip
Martin Chuzzlewit
Mr Micawber
William Dorrit
“When Fred got into debt, it always seemed to him highly probably that
something or other – he did not necessarily conceive what – would
come to pass enabling him to pay in due time.” Why is Fred Vincy in
debt in Middlemarch?
He takes out a large loan to enable him to woo Mary Garth
He is an inveterate gambler
He is paying off a blackmailer
He gives all his money to the poor
Which fictional character says that debt "is the whole Cement whereby
the Race of Mankind is kept together; yea, of such Vertue and Efficacy
that, I say, the whole progeny of Adam would very suddenly perish
without it"?
Samuel Johnson’s Rasselas
Voltaire’s Candide
Voltaire’s Pangloss
Rabelais’s Panurge
What is the name of the merchant and moneylender who leads Emma
Bovary into hopelessly deep debt?
Lheureux
Dupuis
Homais
Vladimir
Moneylenders frequent the novels of Anthony Trollope, but how did the
author get into debt himself?
He was fired from his job at the post office for writing rather than
working
He lost a high profile game of cards with a bank manager
He did not deliver a novel to his publisher for which he had been paid
an advance
He could not pay a tailor’s bill and ended up owing £200 because of
the high interest charged by a moneylender
Which Booker prize-winning novelist has also written a discourse on
debt called Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth?
Peter Carey
Salman Rushdie
Margaret Atwood
Penelope Lively
In which of the Canterbury Tales does a wife repay her debt of 100
francs by sleeping with a friar and then her husband?
The Shipman’s Tale
The Friar’s Tale
The Wife of Bath’s Tale
The Merchant’s Tale
Which famous author went bankrupt owing £17,000 in 1692, penning his
best known work to escape from debt?
Jonathan Swift
Daniel Defoe
Walter Scott
John Milton
66. William Blake has a rare elan to provide telling images in arresting phrases. Match the
phrases with the poems they belong to :
(a) “mind forg’d manacles” (i) “The Tyger” 3
(b) “eternal winter” (ii) “The Sick Rose” 4
(c) “fearful symmetry” (iii) “London” 1
(d) “crimson joy” (iv) “Holy Thursday” 2
(A) (ii) (iv) (i) (iii)
(B) (iii) (i) (iv) (ii)
(C) (iii) (iv) (i) (ii)
(D) (iv) (i) (ii) (iii)
The poem "London" depicts a world of life in death. "London" represents the fallen
world; it is a world where there is no imagination. The narrator says, "I wander thro'
each charter'd street". The urban grid is an external, concrete image of the "mind-
forg'd manacles" where imaginative vision is transformed into something void of
thought. The urban setting is restrictive to the imaginative, according to Blake. As
Blake portrays the urban setting, it is filling of sorrow and despair and lacking
imagination and energy. The narrator says, "In every cry of every Man./In every
infant's cry of fear,/In every voice, in every ban,/The mind-forg'd manacles I hear".
London is crawling with weakness, with misdirected cries of people who do not know
how to express themselves of how to attain a sense of individuality. The person of
experience is doomed to carry out a predestined life cycle because he cannot perceive
anything further than what his senses tell him.
William Blakes Holy Thursday is part of his Songs of Experience collection of
poems. Blake states that It is eternal winter rather than It is similar to eternal winter,
clearly underlining that the conditions are grave and challenging.
Fearful symmetry is a nuanced trait which has dual allusions, one for the tyger and
the other referring to divine deity. As apparent, the sublime characteristic refers to an
entity extremely big and powerful yet mysterious.
67. In the debate between the two birds in the Middle English poem The Owl and the
Nightingale who acts as the arbiter?
(A) Master Henry of Shrewsbury
(B) Master William of Hereford
(C) Master Freeman of Stamford
(D) Master Nicholas of Guildford
Generally regarded as one of the earliest and finest examples of a popular
medieval literary debate, The Owl and the Nightingale takes the form of a
spirited dispute between two birds on the subject of the relative beauty and
merit of their songs. Comprised of approximately 2,000 lines of verse in
rhymed, octosyllabic couplets, this allegorical and didactic poem is usually
ascribed to Master Nicholas of Guildford, an obscure Englishman of whom
very little is known outside the context of the poem.
NICHOLAS OF GUILDFORD (fl. 1250), English poet, the supposed
author of The Owl and the Nightingale, an English poem of the 13th century.
This work, which displays genuine poetical and imaginative qualities, is
written in the southwestern dialect, and is one of the few 13th-century English
poems not devoted entirely to religious topics. The nightingale sitting on a
branch covered with blossom sees the owl perched on a bough overgrown
with ivy, and proceeds to abuse him for his general habits and appearance.
The birds decide to refer the consequent dispute to Master Nicholas de
Guildford, who is skilled in such questions, but they first of all engage in a
regular debat in the French fashion. The owl is the best logician, but the
nightingale has a fund of abuse that equalizes matters. Finally, when the
argument threatens to become a fight, the wren interferes, and the two go to
the house of Master Nicholas at Portisham in Dorset. He judges, they say,
many right judgments, and composes and writes much wisdom, and it is
lamentable that so learned and worthy a man should gain no preferment from
his bishop. The poet, whoever he was, wrote the octosyllabic couplet with
ease and smoothness. He borrows something from Alexander of
Neckham's De naturis serum, and was certainly familiar with contemporary
French poetry. The piece is a general allegory of the contest between
asceticism and a more cheerful view of religion, and is capable of a particular
application to the differences between the regular orders and the secular
clergy. The nightingale defends her singing on the ground that heaven is a
place of song and mirth, while the owl maintains that much weeping for his
many sins is man's best preparation for the future.
68. In the first scene in which Goethe’s Faust appears he is dejected by the study of Philosophy,
Law, Medicine and Theology, turns to Magic art to acquire infinite knowledge. But he fails and
in desperation attempts to commit suicide, but refrains at the final moment. What prevents Faust
from committing suicide ?
(A) The intervention of archangel Gabriel
(B) His attendant Wagner persuades him to revoke the decision
(C) The chiming of the bells announcing Easter festivities
(D) Mephistopheles appears and offers to initiate him into magic art
69. Which novel by Joseph Conrad presents a young captain who like Coleridge’s Ancient
Mariner is haunted by the “vision of a ship drifting in calm and swinging in light airs, with all the
crew dying slowly about her decks” and who feels “the sickness of my soul... the weight of my
sins... my sense of unworthiness” ?
(A) Under Western Eyes
(B) The Shadow Line
(C) Victory
(D) The Rescue
70. “Our almost-instinct almost true : What will survive of us is love.” Identify the poem by
Philip Larkin that ends with the above lines :
(A) “This Be the Verse”
(B) “An Arundel Tomb”
(C) “High Windows”
(D) “Next, Please”
An Arundel Tomb is almost a love poem written by Larkin in 1956 and first
published in the book The Whitsun Weddings of 1964. It focuses on the 14th
century tomb (actually a memorial effigy in Chichester Cathedral, Sussex, which
Larkin visited) of a noble couple, one Richard Fitzalan, Earl of Arundel, and
Eleanor of Lancaster, his second wife.
71. In the epilogue to Congreve’s Way of the World there is a warning: Others there is whose
malice we’d prevent, Such, who watch plays, with scurrilous intent To mark out who by
characters are meant. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . These, with false glosses
feed their own ill - nature, And turn to libel, what was meant a satire. What does this warning
mean ?
(A) Critics should not be ill-natured and malicious.
(B) Critics should not look for portrait of real people in the play’s characters and
remember that the play is a social satire.
(C) Critics should avoid writing malicious reviews, lest they be charged with libel.
(D) Critics should try to identify the real-life equivalent for each character.
Others there are whose malice wed prevent: Such, who watch plays, with
scurrilous intent To mark out who by characters are meant: And though no perfect
likeness they can trace, Yet each pretends to know the copied face. These, with
false glosses, feed their own ill—nature, And turn to libel what was meant a
satire. May such malicious fops this fortune find, To think themselves alone the
fools designed: If any are so arrogantly vain, To think they singly can support a
scene, And furnish fool enough to entertain. For well the learned and the judicious
know, That satire scorns to stoop so meanly low, As any one abstracted fop to
show. For, as when painters form a matchless face, They from each fair one catch
some different grace, And shining features in one portrait blend, To which no
single beauty must pretend: So poets oft do in one piece expose Whole BELLES
ASSEMBLEES of coquettes and beaux.
72. Which of the following is an elegy on John Donne’s wife, who died in 1617 ?
(A) “Death, be not proud”
(B) “Thou hast made me”
(C) “Holy Sonnet 17”
(D) “At the round earth’s imagined corners”
John Donne (22 January 1572– 31 March 1631) was an English poet and cleric in
the Church of England.
He is considered the pre-eminent representative of the metaphysical poets. His
works are noted for their strong, sensual style and include sonnets, love poems,
religious poems, Latin translations, epigrams, elegies, songs, satires andsermons.
His poetry is noted for its vibrancy of language and inventiveness ofmetaphor,
especially compared to that of his contemporaries. Donne's style is characterised
by abrupt openings and various paradoxes, ironies and dislocations. These
features, along with his frequent dramatic or everyday speech rhythms, his tense
syntax and his tough eloquence, were both a reaction against the smoothness of
conventional Elizabethan poetry and an adaptation into English of European
baroque and mannerist techniques. His early career was marked by poetry that
bore immense knowledge of English society and he met that knowledge with
sharp criticism. Another important theme in Donne's poetry is the idea of true
religion, something that he spent much time considering and about which he often
theorized. He wrote secular poems as well as erotic and love poems. He is
particularly famous for his mastery of metaphysicalconceits.
Despite his great education and poetic talents, Donne lived in poverty for several
years, relying heavily on wealthy friends. He spent much of the money he
inherited during and after his education on womanising, literature, pastimes, and
travel. In 1601, Donne secretly married Anne More, with whom he had twelve
children.[3] In 1615, he became an Anglican priest, although he did not want to
take Anglican orders. He did so because King James I persistently ordered it. In
1621, he was appointed the Dean of St Paul's Cathedral in London. He also served
as a member of Parliament in 1601 and in 1614.
The Holly Sonnets were published two years after Donne's death. John Donne
wrote Holy Sonnet XVII in 1617 after the death of his wife Anne More.
Just as Donne's fortunes seemed to be improving, Anne Donne died, on 15
August, 1617, aged thirty-three, after giving birth to their twelfth child, a
stillborn. Seven of their children survived their mother's death. Struck by grief,
Donne wrote the seventeenth Holy Sonnet, "Since she whom I lov'd hath paid her
last debt." According to Donne's friend and biographer, Izaak Walton, Donne was
thereafter 'crucified to the world'. Donne continued to write poetry, notably his
Holy Sonnets (1618), but the time for love songs was over.
73 to 75 Read the following poem and answer questions:
Bored
Margaret Atwood
All those times I was bored
out of my mind. Holding the log
while he sawed it. Holding
the string while he measured, boards,
distances between things, or pounded
stakes into the ground for rows and rows
of lettuces and beets, which I then (bored)
weeded. Or sat in the back
of the car, or sat still in boats,
sat, sat, while at the prow, stern, wheel
he drove, steered, paddled. It
wasn’t even boredom, it was looking,
looking hard and up close at the small
details. Myopia. The worn gunwales,
the intricate twill of the seat
cover. The acid crumbs of loam, the granular
pink rock, its igneous veins, the sea-fans
of dry moss, the blackish and then the graying
bristles on the back of his neck.
Sometimes he would whistle, sometimes
I would. The boring rhythm of doing
things over and over, carrying
the wood, drying
the dishes. Such minutiae. It’s what
the animals spend most of their time at,
ferrying the sand, grain by grain, from their tunnels
shuffling the leaves in their burrows. He pointed
such things out, and I would look
at the whorled texture of his square finger, earth under
the nail. Why do I remember it as sunnier
all the time then, although it more often
rained, and more birdsong ?
I could hardly wait to get
the hell out of there to
anywhere else. Perhaps though
boredom is happier. It is for dogs or
groundhogs. Now I wouldn’t be bored.
Now I would know too much.
Now I would know
“All those times” - the opening words of the poem locate the speaker in :
(A) a city suburb
(B) a mountain resort
(C) a natural environment
(D) a highway motel
74. Which pair of words best describes the repetitive tenor of the speaker’s unpretentious yet
oppressive life ?
(a) details (b) the car
(c) the wood (d) the minutae
The right combination according to the code is :
(A) (a) and (b)
(B) (a) and (d)
(C) (b) and (c)
(D) (c) and (d)
75. Which of the following approximates closely a thematic statement of the poem ?
(A) Dogs or groundhogs lead a better life than men or women
(B) Irrespective of the place, the boring rhythm of doing things over and over in human
life cannot be escaped
(C) Myopia is the result if you live life in the lap of nature
(D) Knowledge cures existential boredom
PAPER - III
ENGLISH
1. This Byron work revolves around a wife whose husband is presumed lost at sea and she takes
a lover in his absence. Everybody behaves agreeably on the husband’s return. Byron’s technical
skills in verse is in display here as the work counterpoints the colloquial and the formal. Identify
the work :
(A) Manfred
(B) Don Juan
(C) Beppo
(D) The Bride of Abydos
Beppo: A Venetian Story is a lengthy poem by Lord Byron, written in Venice in
1817. Beppo marks Byron's first attempt at writing using the Italian ottava rima
metre, which emphasized satiric digression. It is the precursor to Byron's most
famous and generally considered best poem, Don Juan.
The poem tells the story of a Venetian lady, Laura, whose husband, Giuseppe (or
"Beppo" for short), has been lost at sea for the past three years. According to
Venetian customs she takes on a Cavalier Servente, simply called "the Count".
When the two of them attend the Venetian Carnival, she is closely observed by a
Turk who turns out to be her missing husband. Beppo explains that he has been
captured and enslaved, and was freed by a band of pirates that he subsequently
joined. Having accumulated enough money he left piracy and returned to reclaim
his wife and be re-baptized. Laura rejoins Beppo and befriends the Count.
2. Who is the author of the poem, “Our Casuarina Tree” ?
(A) Sarojini Naidu
(B) Toru Dutt
(C) Rabindranath Tagore
(D) Kamala Das
Our Casuarina Tree, a poem written in English by the Indian writer Toru Dutt,
celebrates a huge tree that the speaker (resembling Dutt herself) associates with
the happiness of her childhood in India.
Our Casuarina Tree is a poem published in 1881 by Toru Dutt, an Indian poet.
In this poem Toru Dutt celebrates the majesty of the Casuarina Tree that she
used to see by her window, and remembers her happy childhood days spent under
it and revives her memories with her beloved siblings. It still remains one of the
most popular poems [1] in modern Indian literature.
Toru says the flowers of the tree are hung in crimson clusters. Toru tells us that
her Casuarina Tree, a haven for the winged, birds and insects, is almost visibly
alive, alive with the buzz of bees and with the chirping of birds
3. In this Jacobean play the Black King and his men, representing Spain and the Jesuits, are
checkmated by the White Knight, Prince Charles. This political satire drew crowds to the Globe
Theatre until the Spanish ambassador protested and James I suppressed the play.
Identify the play :
(A) The Wonderful Yeare
(B) A Game at Chess
(C) A King and No King
(D) The Knight of the Burning Pestle
Thomas Middleton, (born April, 1580, London, Eng.—died July 4, 1627,
Newington Butts, Surrey), late-Elizabethan dramatist who drew people as he saw
them, with comic gusto or searching irony. A popular playwright, he was often
commissioned to write and produce lord mayors pageants and other civic
entertainments, and in 1620 he was appointed city chronologer. His chief stage
success was A Game at Chess (1625), in which the Black King and his men,
representing Spain and the Jesuits, are checkmated by the White Knight, Prince
Charles. This political satire drew crowds to the Globe Theatre until the Spanish
ambassador protested and James I suppressed the play.
Thomas Middleton, (born April, 1580, London, Eng.—died July 4, 1627,
Newington Butts, Surrey), late-Elizabethan dramatist who drew people as he saw
them, with comic gusto or searching irony. A popular playwright, he was often
commissioned to write and produce lord mayors pageants and other civic
entertainments, and in 1620 he was appointed city chronologer. His chief stage
success was A Game at Chess (1625), in which the Black King and his men,
representing Spain and the Jesuits, are checkmated by the White Knight, Prince
Charles. This political satire drew crowds to the Globe Theatre until the Spanish
ambassador protested and James I suppressed the play.
4. Frederic Jameson associated postmodern culture with __________ capitalism.
(A) market
(B) monopoly
(C) imperialist
(D) multinational
According to Frederic Jameson, modernism and postmodernism are cultural formations
which accompany particular stages of capitalism. Jameson outlines three primary phases of
capitalism which dictate particular cultural practices, including the production of art and
literature :
1. Market capitalism (18th – late 19th centuries) – Associated with realism.
2. Monopoly Capitalism (late 19th – mid 20th centuries) – Associated with modernism.
3. Multinational / Consumer Capitalism (current) – Associated with postmodernism.
5. Early in Evelyn Waugh’s A Handful of Dust, while Tony and his young son, John Andrew,
walk to the church, John tells his father a story he has heard from the stable manager, Ben about
a mule “who had drunk his company’s rum ration” in the First World War and subsequently
died. What is the mule named ?
(A) Peppermint
(B) Dopey
(C) Dynamo
(D) Pookey
If Evelyn Waugh had opened A Handful of Dust with the first line from Ford
Madox Ford’s The Good Soldier, he would have been quite justified, for Waugh's
story is definitely and truly one of the saddest ever told - and not only sad, but
funny and brilliantly written.
When the novel opens, Tony Last and his wife Brenda, the book's central figures,
are living quietly - alas, a little too quietly for Brenda’s taste - in the 19th century
“Gothic-style” Garden of Eden that is Hetton Abbey, the Last family seat. Their
small son John lives there with them and thinks of nothing except his pony and
the tales told him by Ben, the newly promoted “stud groom” - these revolve
mostly around a strawberry roan called Thunderclap who “killed two riders and
won the local point-to-point four years running” and Peppermint, the mule, “who
had drunk the company’s rum ration, near Wipers in 1917.”
6. The Oxford English Dictionary was published in twelve volumes with its current title in the
year :
(A) 1928
(B) 1930
(C) 1933
(D) 1915
In 1933, the title The Oxford English Dictionary fully replaced the former name
in all occurrences in its reprinting as twelve volumes with a one-volume
supplement.
7. The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman is notorious for its many digressions
across nine volumes and its failure to deliver a complete autobiography. In which volume does
Tristram Shandy finally recount his birth ?
(A) Volume III
(B) Volume V
(C) Volume VIII
(D) Volume IX
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman is notorious for its many
digressions across nine volumes and its failure to deliver a complete
autobiography. In Volume III Tristram Shandy finally recount his birth. Tristram
Shandy consists of nine volumes but has neither a beginning nor an end. The
main character acts as the narrator and describes his ‘life and opinions in a willful
manner. The reader is forewarned by Tristram at the beginning of his
‘autobiography that in his narration, he will not follow any rules of literary
composition, will not stick to the conventions of the genre, and will not follow
the chronological order of the events.
How did Laurence Sterne, send up Robert Burton, author of the 17th-century
classic The Anatomy of Melancholy? Sterne borrowed liberally from Burton and
rearranged his words into the text
"’Pray, my Dear,’ quoth my mother, ‘have you not forgot to wind up the clock?’
‘Good G—!’ cried my father, making an exclamation, but taking care to moderate
his voice at the same time — ‘Did ever woman, since the creation of the world,
interrupt a man with such a silly question?’” Which critical moment had
Tristram’s mother interrupted? The moment of Tristram's conception
At one point in the novel, Tristram turns his thoughts towards to the “pagan
establishment”. Tristram is particularly engrossed by the facial hair of the many
ancient gods – “every beard of which claimed the rights and privileges of being
stroken and sworn by.” How many sacred pagan beards did Tristram claim there
were? 30,000
Samuel Johnson once stated "Nothing odd will do long. Tristram Shandy did not
last." Which German philosopher later rebutted Johnson’s attack by claiming
"The man Sterne is worth 1,000 Pedants and commonplace-fellows like Dr J”?
Schopenhauer’’
Tristram is considered an unlucky name by Tristram’s father Walter, being
derived from the Latin for woe – “tristis” – and thereby condemning his son to a
life of disappointment. How did he end up with such a miserable name in the first
place? The family maid bungled the pronunciation of the intended name
“Trismegistus” to the local curate’
Sterne sought to portray the limits of the written word with an original device
employed throughout the book. How did he challenge his readers? Blank pages
In Volume Three of each first edition Sterne inserted a page with no direct
bearing to the novel. What was displayed on this page? A marble pattern
Which Reformation-era Humanist did Sterne greatly admire and whose
influence) can be discerned throughout Tristram Shandy? Rabelais
8. Miguel de Cervantes’s inimitable Don Quixote, foreshadows metafictional moorings when the
novelist,
(a) says that the first chapters of the narrative are recreated from the Archive of
La Mancha
(b) says that it is a faithful rendering of a Catalan text in Spanish
(c) says that part of it has been translated from the Arabic by the Moorish author
Cide Hamete Benengeli
(d) says that he is rewriting the history of a medieval knight altering the heroic
vein with a farcical mode
The right combination according to the code is :
(A) (a) and (b)
(B) (b) and (c)
(C) (a) and (c)
(D) (b) and (d)
In Don Quixote, the most common one on the fictional Cervantes list is Cide Hamete
Benengeli, the author of the Arabic manuscript from which don Quixotes story was
translated. Fermín Caballero said that if you make an anagram of Cide Hamete Benengeli
you get Migel de Cebante, and five letters left over. Cervantes always wrote his name
with a b instead of a v, which bolsters Caballeros theory. But if Cervantes had added all
the missing letters of his name and called his historian something like Cide Hasmete
Bernengueli, it would have been clever, but it would not have made Benengeli into the
fictional Cervantes. The reason that Cide Hamete cannot be the fictional Cervantes is
partly because Cide Hamete wrote only in Arabic, and Cervantes wrote only in Spanish;
and Cervantes, in the real world, created a book of fiction called The ingenious hidalgo
Don Quixote de La Mancha, written by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, but in the world
of fiction, Cide Hamete Benengeli created a book of history called History of don
Quixote de La Mancha, by Cide Hamete Benengeli, Arabic historian.
9. In his theory of Mimesis, Plato says that all art is mimetic by nature; art is an imitation of life.
To argue his case he gives the example of a:
(A) cloud
(B) chair
(C) tree
(D) river
In his theory of mimesis, Plato says that all art is mimetic by nature; art is an imitation of
life. He believed that ‘idea is ultimate reality. Art imitates idea and so it is imitation of
reality. He gives an example of a carpenter and a chair. The idea of ‘chair first came in
the mind of carpenter. He gave physical shape to his idea and created a chair. The painter
imitated the chair of the carpenter in his picture of chair. Thus, painters chair is twice
removed from reality. Hence, he believed that art is twice removed from reality.
10. The translation of Geeta into English in 1784 called Bhagvit - Geeta marked, in William
Jones’s opinion, an “event that made it possible for the first time to have a reliable impression of
Indian Literature”. Who was the translator ?
(A) Charles Wilkins
(B) H. J. Colebrooke
(C) Rammohan Roy
(D) Nathaniel Halhed
Sir Charles Wilkins, KH, FRS (1749 � 13 May 1836), was an English typographer and
Orientalist, and founding member of the The Asiatic Society. He is the inventor of the
shape of modern Bengali and French typefaces.
He is notable as the first translator of Bhagavad Gita into English, and as the creator,
alongside Panchanan Karmakar,of the first Bengali typeface. In 1784, Wilkins helped William
Jones establish the Asiatic Society of Bengal.
In his preface Wilkins argued that the Gita was written to encourage a form of monotheist
"unitarianism" and to draw Hinduism away from the polytheism he ascribed to the Vedas.
His translation of the Gita was itself soon translated into French (1787) and German
(1802). It proved to be a major influence on Romantic literature and on European
perception of Hindu philosophy. William Blake later celebrated the publication in his
picture The Bramins, exhibited in 1809, which depicted Wilkins and Brahmin scholars
working on the translation.
11. One of the plays among the following contains the characters Coll, Gib, Dan and Mak.
Identify the play :
(A) Everyman
(B) The Castle of Perseverance
(C) The Second Shepherd’s Play
(D) The Marshals
The biblical portion of the play, a retelling of the Visitation of the Shepherds,
comes only after a longer, invented story that mirrors it, in which the shepherds,
before visiting the holy baby outside in a manger, must first rescue one of their
sheep that has been hidden in a cradle indoors by a comically evil sheep-stealing
couple. Once they have discovered and punished the thieves, the storyline
switches to the familiar one of the three shepherds being told of the birth of Christ
by an angel, and going to Bethlehem to offer the true Child gifts.
o The Second Shepherds Play contains the characters Coll, Gib, Dan and
Mak. Although there are no divisions of scene or act in The Second
Shepherds' Play, the play falls easily into three distinct parts. The first
section contains the three Shepherds' soliloquies. The play's first speaker is
Coll, who begins his soliloquy complaining of the cold weather.
o Gib soon enters the stage. He does not initially see Coll and begins to
grumble about the terrible weather.
o The second part of the play is the longest section. Mak enters the stage in
disguise, with his head covered and using a southern accent. He is a thief
and does not want the shepherds to be on guard.
o The Second Shepherds' Play (also known as The Second Shepherds'
Pageant) is a famous medieval mystery play which is unique manuscript
of the Wakefield Cycle.
The Somonyng of Everyman (The Summoning of Everyman), usually referred to
simply as Everyman, is a late 15th-century morality play. Like John Bunyan's
1678 Christian novel The Pilgrim's Progress, Everyman uses allegorical
characters to examine the question of Christian salvation and what Man must do
to attain it.
The manuscript of The Castle of Perseverance has been dated from about 1440. It
is now housed in the Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington D.C. The standard
text is edited by Mark Eccles in The Macro Plays (Early English Text Society, OS
262, 1969). This modernization is based on an acting edition by the late David
Parry
The Marshal is an American action-drama television series that aired on ABC for
two seasons in 1995. The show starred Jeff Fahey as the title character, a United
States Marshal charged with pursuing fugitives across the nation.
12. Tereza, in Milan Kundera’s novel The Unbearable Lightness of Being, troubled by Tomas’s
promiscuity, falls an easy prey to jealousy, fear and nightmares. Which of the following are the
terrible dreams she has ?
(a) She dreams of cats attacking her.
(b) She dreams of wolves attacking her.
(c) She dreams that she is dead and buried in a common grave where she lies with the corpses of
strangers.
(d) She dreams that she is dead, stripped of her clothes and plagued by other naked corpses.
The right combination according to the code is :
(A) (a) and (c)
(B) (a) and (d)
(C) (b) and (c)
(D) (b) and (d)
Tereza, in Milan Kunderas novel The Unbearable Lightness of Being, troubled by
Tomass promiscuity, falls an easy prey to jealousy, fear and nightmares. She
dreams cats attack her (it is worthwhile to note that in Czech, the word "cat" is
slang for a pretty woman), that Thomas forces her to perform humiliating acts
along with other women, and that she is dead, stripped of her clothes, and plagued
by other naked corpses.
13. The opening lines of Wordsworth’s “Immortality Ode”:
“There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,
The earth, and every common sight,
To me did seem
Appareled in celestial light
The glory and freshness of a dream”,
Closely resembles Coleridge’s lines:
“There was a time when earth, and sea, and skies,
The bright green vale, and the forest’s dark recess,
With all things, lay before mine eyes
In steady loveliness”.
Identify the Coleridge poem :
(A) “Fears In Solitude”
(B) “The Mad Monk”
(C) “To William Wordsworth”
(D) “Dejection : An Ode”
S T Coleridge is the leading poet of the Romantic Movement in English
Literature. His romanticism is quite vivid in his gothic, exotic and preternatural
dispositions. The medieval life and culture immensely influenced the romantics.
The poem is based on the poem "Anselmo: The Hermit of the Alps" by Mary
Robinson (1758-1800), wherein the hermit secretly loves Rosa, a noviate.
This minor poem was produced between Christabel and the Dejection ode,
consists of a crazed lament by the protagonist, framed by the reactions of the
narrator who overhears him on 'Etna's side'. In his soliloquy the Monk cries out
for freedom from the ghost of Rosa, whom he has murdered when she rejected
him in favour of another suitor. But the image of the murdered Rosa acquires
preternatural proportions, turning the red flowers into drops of her blood, the
setting sun and surrounding sky into a great wound and bleeding corpse. In
desperation the Monk protests, 'I only ask for peace' and finally, 'O let me lie in
peace and be forever dead'.
14. Christina Rossetti’s “Goblin Market”, a rare blend of allegory and fairytale world presents
the story of two sisters, Laura and Lizzie. Which of the following is NOT true about the
enchanted world that the poem unravels?
(A) Laura buys fruits from the goblins in exchange of her “golden lock” of hair and a
“tear more rare than pearl”
(B) Jeanie, a girl who ate the goblins’ fruits, “pined away” and “sought them by night
and day”
(C) Laura, who goes to the market again, does not see the goblins but hears only “their
shrill cry piercing the air”
(D) Laura’s hair “grew thin and grey” and she wanes like the full moon to “swift decay”
Christina Rossettis Goblin Market, a rare blend of allegory and fairytale world
presents the story of two sisters, Laura and Lizzie. Laura's transgression, as she
partakes of the Goblins' fruit, paying them with a symbolic lock of her golden hair
and returns home gratified :
Buy from us with a golden curl.
She clipped a precious golden lock,
She dropped a tear more rare than pearl.
The story of Jeanie as an example to deter Laura from going astray. Lizzie gently
but firmly admonishes Laura, recalling how, even nature, withdraws its nurturing
care from transgressions of indulgence:
Do you not remember Jeanie.........
She pined and pined away;
Sought them by night and day,
Found them no more but dwindled and grew grey;
Then fell with the first snow,
While to this day no grass will grow
Where she lies low.
Like Jeanie whose grave cannot even sustain plant life, Lauras fluids cannot grow
fruit; she loses her reproductive potential as she essentially dries up and withers
away as a consequence of her sexual promiscuity. Her hair grew thin and
grey;/She dwindled, as the fair full moon doth turn/ To swift decay and burn/ Her
fire away and her tree of life drooped from the root.
15. In which of these prisons is Defoe’s character, Moll Flanders born ?
(A) Gatehouse
(B) King’s Bench
(C) Newgate
(D) Ludgate
Moll Flanders is a novel by Daniel Defoe, first published in 1722. By 1721,
Defoe had become a recognised novelist, with the success of Robinson Crusoe in
1719.
The novel is based partially on the life of Moll King, a London criminal whom
Defoe met while visiting Newgate Prison.
Moll Flanders is a story about the fall and rise of a beautiful woman who was
born in Newgate Prison. Because of her determination to be someone other than a
servant, and because of her great greed, she sought to marry a wealthy man.
Defoe’s Moll Flanders details the life of the irresistible Moll and her struggles
through poverty and sin in search of property and power. Born in Newgate Prison
to a picaresque mother, Moll propels herself through marriages, periods of
success and destitution, and a trip to the New World and back, only to return to
the place of her birth as a popular prostitute and brilliant thief. The story of Moll
Flanders vividly illustrates Defoe’s themes of social mobility and predestination,
sin, redemption and reward.
16. In which poem does Judith Wright lament the erasure of native culture in the following lines
? “The song is gone; the dance Is secret with the dancers in the earth, The ritual useless, and the
tribal story Lost in an alien tale”.
(A) “The Five Senses”
(B) “Legend”
(C) “Bullocky”
(D) “Bora Ring”
Judith Arundell Wright (31 May 1915 – 25 June 2000) was an Australian poet,
environmentalist and campaigner for Aboriginal land rights.[1] She was a
recipient of the Christopher Brennan Award.
In the totalising movements which construct the temporal monoculture, the
stratigraphic, synchronous presence of Aboriginal culture and the agency of
Aboriginal people disappear. New England poet Judith Wright lamented the
impact of colonization in her poem ‘Bora Ring :
The song is gone; the dance
is secret with the dancers in the earth,
the ritual useless, and the tribal story
lost in an alien tale.
17. Years before, Winston Smith, the protagonist of George Orwell’s dystopia, Nineteen Eighty -
Four got an evidence of the party’s dishonesty. What is it ?
(A) Emmanuel Goldstein’s confession that he is a party operative; not an enemy of the
party.
(B) O’ Brien’s diary entry hinting at the non-existence of Big Brother.
(C) A photograph which proves that some citizen accused of a crime was out of the
country while it was committed.
(D) A colleague’s revelation that the Inner Party members have systematically destroyed
Nineteen Eighty-Four: A Novel, often published as 1984, is a dystopian novel by
English novelist George Orwell. It was published in June 1949 by Secker &
Warburg as Orwell's ninth and final book completed in his lifetime.
The story was mostly written at Barnhill, a farmhouse on the Scottish island of
Jura, at times while Orwell suffered from severe tuberculosis.
18. The Indian Queen is :
(A) a heroic tragedy in rhymed couplets by John Dryden
(B) a long poem in free verse by Keki Daruwalla
(C) an autobiography of an Indian princess in exile
(D) a fictional account of the Life of Maharani Gayatri Devi
The Indian Emperour, or the Conquest of Mexico by the Spaniards, being the
Sequel of The Indian Queen is an English Restoration era stage play, a heroic
drama written by John Dryden that was first performed in the Spring of 1665.
The play has been considered a defining work in the sub-genre of heroic drama,
in which "rhymed heroic tragedy comes into full being."
19. In J. M. Coetzee’s Disgrace David Lurie is working on an opera on the life of one of the
Romantic poets. Who is the poet ?
(A) Blake
(B) Shelley
(C) Byron
(D) Coleridge
Disgrace is a novel by J. M. Coetzee, published in 1999. It won the Booker Prize.
The writer was also awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature four years after its
publication.
At the close of Coetzee's novel Disgrace, Professor David Lurie retreats into a
state of alienation. He chooses both a physical and psychic reality removed from
a functioning democratic South Africa. In this state he attempts to compose an
opera on Lord Byron and Teresa Guiccioli, which becomes representative on
many levels of David's private and public relationship to his nation. Using
Jacqueline Rose's work as a tool for understanding the link between fantasy and
political identity, the article focuses on David's opera and its role in
communicating reflections on identity, exile, and political meaning within the
mind of a newly disenfranchised member of South Africa's nation.
David Lurie is a South African professor of English who loses everything: his
reputations, his job, his peace of minds, his dreams of artistic success, and finally
even his ability to protect his own daughter. He is twice-divorced and dissatisfied
with his job as a 'communications' lecturer, teaching a class in romantic literature
at a technical university in Cape Town in post-apartheid South Africa. Lurie's
sexual activities are all inherently risky. Before the sexual affair that will ruin
him, he becomes attached to a prostitute and attempts to have a romantic
relationship with her (despite her having a family), which she rebuffs. He then
seduces a secretary at his university, only to completely ignore her afterwards.
His "disgrace" comes when he seduces one of his more vulnerable students, a
girl named Melanie Isaacs, playing her with alcohol and other actions that
arguably amount to rape; later, when she stops attending his class as a result, he
falsifies her grades. Lurie refuses to stop the affair, even after being threatened
by Melanie's erstwhile boyfriend, who knocks the papers off Lurie's desk, and
her father, who confronts him but whom David runs from. This affair is
thereafter revealed to the school, amidst a climate of condemnation for his
allegedly predatory acts, and a committee is convened to pass judgment on his
actions. David refuses to read Melanie's statement, defend himself, or apologizes
in any sincere form and so is forced to resign from his post. Lurie is working on
an opera concerning Lord Byron's final phase of life in Italy which mirrors his
own life in that Byron is living a life of hedonism and excess and is having an
affair with a married woman……….
20. Assertion (A) :
There is no unity or absolute source of the myth.
Reason (R) :
The focus or the source of the myth are always shadows and virtualities which are elusive
,unactualizable, and nonexistent in the first place. Any search for the discursive unity in
the myth is, therefore, misplaced. In the context of the above statements :
(A) Both (A) and (R) are true and (R) is the correct explanation of (A)
(B) Both (A) and (R) are true but (R) is not the correct explanation of (A)
(C) (A) is true but (R) is false
(D) (A) is false, but (R) is true 21. Which of the following landscap
21. Which of the following landscapes of England figures prominently in the poetry of Ted
Hughes ?
(A) Cornish cliffs
(B) Dorset moors
(C) Yorkshire moors
(D) Chesil Beach
Ted Hughes (1930-1998) was born in Mytholmroyd, West Yorkshire, in 1930.
Hughes had an opportunity to experience the beautiful landscapes, Rock
Mountains and the moors of Yorkshire. His nature poems reflect the omnipresent
power of nature. He studied Archaeology and Anthropology at Cambridge which
became determinant factors and the bases in his literary and mythological studies.
22. The title of M.C. Chagla’s autobiography is :
(A) Memoirs of my Working Life
(B) Without Fear or Favour
(C) Roses in December
(D) The Pen as My Sword
In 1973, Chagla published his autobiography, Roses in December, with the help
of his son Iqbal.
23. Who/Which among the following gave the expression, “a leopard can’t change its spots,” to
English language ?
(A) The King James Bible
(B) Geoffrey Chaucer
(C) Shakespeare
(D) The Royal Society
The King James Bible is the book that taught us that "a leopard can't change its
spots", that "a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush", that 'a wolf in sheep's
clothing' is harder to spot than you would imagine and how annoying it is to have
'a fly in your ointment.
24. Which of the following is NOT true about Albert Camus’s novel, The Plague ?
(A) Dr. Rieux describes the phenomenon of dying rats using the metaphors of disease,
especially the bubonic plague.
(B) Paneloux interprets the plague in his first sermon as a sign of the Apocalypse.
(C) M. Michel is the first victim of the plague.
(D) Tarrou thinks that the plague symbolizes human indifference.
Albert Camus's novel The Plague is about an epidemic of bubonic plague that
takes place in the Algerian port city of Oran. The narrator of The Plague
announces that he is to relate the unusual events that happened during one year in
the 1940s in the town of Oran, a large French port on the Algerian coast in North
Africa. The story begins in mid-April when Dr. Bernard Rieux discovers a dead
rat in the building where he lives. Within a week, thousands of rats are emerging
from their hiding places and dying in the street.
M. Michel is the concierge of the building in which Rieux lives. An old man, he is
the first victim of the plague.
Camus struggled with the very same concepts that Tarrou lies forth in The Plague.
Tarrou has his idea on how to attain peace: "The path of sympathy" (Camus 230).
Tarrou follows this path throughout his life, struggling to overcome the
indifference to suffering, struggling for the cause of helping others. Through
Tarrou, Camus thus presents his own particular variety of Existentialism: A man
gives himself and his life meaning through the good deeds which he performs for
the welfare of others. No man can attain peace in any other way. Good actions
must replace the conscious and unconscious indifference which plagues mankind.
Camus alters Existentialism to fit into this ideal of his.
25. John Lydgate begins his Siege of Thebes with a prologue of 176 lines in which he imagines
himself joining Chaucer’s pilgrims in Canterbury, where he speaks with the Host and agrees to
tell the first tale on homeward journey. The story that Lydgate tells as the pilgrims depart from
Canterbury is meant to be a companion piece to:
(A) The Pardoner’s Tale
(B) The Wife of Bath’s Tale
(C) The Knight’s Tale
(D) The Miller’s Tale
The work's chief interest has been its relationship to Chaucer's Canterbury Tales,
whose decasyllabic or "heroic" couplets were adapted by Lydgate with mixed
success. Based on some version of the French Roman de Thèbes and entitled in
several manuscripts "The Destruction of Thebes," the main body of the work is a
sprawling 4540-line exemplum chronicling the disastrous careers of a series of
deeply flawed kings: Edippus, his sons Ethyocles and Polymyte, and finally
Creon. The end of the three-part Theban tragedy is extended to those episodes
treated by Chaucer at the beginning of The Knight's Tale. Indeed, Lydgate drew
material directly from his master in ten specific passages, intent on making the
two histories dovetail with one another, using narrative congruence and verbal
echoes to knit up the end of his tale with the beginning of Chaucer's.
26. Stephen Krashen’s theory of second language acquisition consists of six main hypotheses.
Which of the following is NOT one of them ?
(A) The Input Hypothesis
(B) The Affective Filter Hypothesis
(C) The Monitor Hypothesis
(D) The Writing Hypothesis
Krashen's theory of second language acquisition consists of five main hypotheses:
o the Acquisition-Learning hypothesis;
o the Monitor hypothesis;
o the Input hypothesis;
o and the Affective Filter hypothesis;
o the Natural Order hypothesis.
27. Among Derek Walcott’s plays, which one is an exploration of colonial relationships through
the Robinson Crusoe story?
(A) Pantomime
(B) Dream on Monkey Mountain
(C) Ti-Jean and His Brothers
(D) The Charlatan
Walcott was best known for his poetry, beginning with In a Green Night: Poems
1948–1960 (1962). This book is typical of his early poetry in its celebration of the
Caribbean landscape’s natural beauty.
Of Walcott’s approximately 30 plays, the best-known are Dream on Monkey
Mountain (produced 1967), a West Indian’s quest to claim his identity and his
heritage; Ti-Jean and His Brothers (1958), based on a West Indian folktale about
brothers who seek to overpower the Devil; and
Pantomime (1978), an exploration of colonial relationships through the Robinson
Crusoe story. The play Pantomime was written in 1978 by the prolific West
Indian poet and playwright Derek Walcott. The short two-act play dissects the
relationship between an English hotel owner and his Creole servant in Tobago,
Trinidad.
In Act I, a frustrated Englishman named Harry Trewe rehearses a play in the
lobby of the hotel he recently bought. The play is intended to entertain new hotel
clientele; however, the rehearsals are not going very well. Trewe’s assistant,
Jackson Phillip, who has more hotel experience than Trewe, urges him to shift his
focus to polishing up the hotel, which is not in good condition. Trewe jokes about
committing suicide to escape doing the work, and Jackson tells him not to because
he would get blamed for it.
Trewe persists in his rehearsal of the play, an adaptation of Robinson Crusoe.
Jackson does not want to be a part of the play and is angry that the hotel’s parrot
has picked up racial slurs from the actors. Trewe tries to manipulate Jackson into
helping him by reminding him of his past as a talented calypsonian performer.
Jackson uses the opportunity to transform the play into a message about racial
equality, hijacking the character of Robinson Crusoe and turning him into an
imperialist. Trewe, who is playing the role of Crusoe’s servant, is taken aback.
28. ‘Anti - foundationalism’ holds that :
(A) Every theory poses different questions and, therefore, what counts as ‘fact’
and ‘truth’ differs in every case.
(B) All truth claims can be judged true or false, usually against empirical facts.
(C) Causal statements about the relationship between dependent and independent
variables can be made.
(D) Truth is the foundation of all representational experience.
Antifoundationalists have been criticised for attacking all general claims except
their own; for offering a localizing rhetoric contradicted in practice by their own
globalizing style.
Edward Said condemned radical anti-foundationalism for excessive cultural
relativism and overdependence on the linguistic turn at the expense of human
realities
Anti-foundationalists use logical or historical or genealogical attacks on
foundational concepts (see especially Nietzsche and Foucault), often coupled with
alternative methods for justifying and forwarding intellectual inquiry, such as the
pragmatic subordination of knowledge to practical action.[2] Foucault dismissed
the search for a return to origins as Platonic essentialism, preferring to stress the
contingent nature of human practices
29. The interaction hypothesis is a theory of second language acquisition which states that the
development of language proficiency is promoted by face-to-face interaction and
communication. The idea is usually credited to :
(A) David Nunan
(B) Michael Long
(C) Alastair Pennycook
(D) Claire Kramsch
The Interaction hypothesis is a theory of second-language acquisition which states
that the development of language proficiency is promoted by face-to-face
interaction and communication. The idea existed in the 1980s, but is usually
credited to Michael Long for his 1996 paper. The role of the linguistic
environment in second language acquisition.
30. In Pinter’s Birthday Party Stanley is terrorised by two visitors to a seaside boarding house.
Identify the two
(a) McGrath (b) Goldberg (c) McCann (d) Robinson
The right combination according to the code is :
(A) (a) and (b) (B) (b) and (c)
(C) (a) and (d) (D) (b) and (d)
Pinter's career was saved by a loyal wife, a visionary critic, a sympathetic friend
and the BBC Third Programme. But why did The Birthday Party provoke such
hostility from the daily critics? Today, there seems nothing strange about its plot,
in which a truculent loner, Stanley, is terrorised by two visitors to a seaside
boarding-house, Goldberg and McCann, and ultimately carted off. At the time,
however, the reaction was one of bewildered hysteria. The cryptically initialled
MWW in the Manchester Guardian wrote of characters who "speak in non
sequiturs, half-gibberish and lunatic ravings".
31. Match the phrase to the ode :
(a) beechen green (i) “Ode on a Grecian Urn” 4
(b) gathering swallows (ii) “Ode on Melancholy” 3
(c) globed peonies (iii) “Ode to a Nightingale 1
(d) green altar (iv) “To Autumn” 2
(A) (iii) (ii) (iv) (i)
(B) (iv) (ii) (iii) (i)
(C) (iv) (iii) (ii) (i)
(D) (iii) (iv) (ii) (i)
32. Which 19th century novelist expressed a wish to “exterminate the race” of Indians following
the 1857 Mutiny in India ?
(A) William Makepeace Thackeray
(B) Charles Dickens
(C) George Eliot
(D) Anthony Trollope
Peters is a specialist in nineteenth-century literature and this book examines
literature, journalism, and letters written by Charles Dickens in order to produce a
thoroughgoing, sharp, and surprising examination of his often controversial views
on the subject of racial difference. Dickens wrote in a letter that I [Dickens] wish I
were Commander in Chief over there [India]! and showed his desire to
exterminate the race [Indians] from the face of the earth[Dickens to Angela
Burdett-Coutts, 4 October 1875].
33. The second part of Pilgrim’s Progress deals with the pilgrimage of Christian’s wife,
Christiana. She has a companion and a guide in this journey. Pick out the pair’s names from the
following list.
(a) Patience
(b) Tenderheart
(c) Mercy
(d) Greatheart
The right combination according to the code is :
(A) (c) and (d)
(B) (b) and (c)
(C) (a) and (d)
(D) (b) and (d)
the Second Part of The Pilgrim's Progress presents the pilgrimage of Christian's
wife, Christiana; their sons; and the maiden, Mercy
The hero of the story is Greatheart, a servant of the Interpreter, who is the pilgrims'
guide to the Celestial City. He kills four giants called Giant Grim, Giant Maul,
Giant Slay-Good, and Giant Despair and participates in the slaying of a monster
called Legion that terrorizes the city of Vanity Fair.
34. In which play by Eugene Ionesco do you find the grotesque image of the leg of a corpse
thrusting onto the stage, and, which begins to grow larger as the play progresses in a menacing
manner ?
(A) The Bald Soprano
(B) Amede or How to Get Rid of It
(C) Exit the King
(D) The Lesson
Amédée, or How to Get Rid of It is a play written by Eugène Ionesco in 1954
based on his earlier short story entitled "Oriflamme". The play is about Amédée, a
playwright, and his wife Madeleine, a switchboard operator. They discuss how to
deal with a continually growing corpse in the other room. The corpse is causing
mushrooms to sprout all over the apartment and is apparently arousing suspicion
among the neighbors. The audience is given no clear reason why the corpse is
there. Madeleine suggests he was the lover Amédée murdered; Amédée gives
several alternate explanations. At the end of the play Amédée attempts to drag the
corpse away to dump it in the river. He is seen by many passers-by; one of the
witnesses is referred to as "Eugene" and is likely the author himself. When
Amédée becomes tangled in the legs, the corpse floats away with Amédée
attached.
35. Which of the following characters finds that complete happiness is elusive and that “while
you are making the choice of life, you neglect to live” ?
(A) Lovelace in Samuel Richardson’s Clarissa
(B) Rasselas in Samuel Johnson’s Rasselas
(C) Matthew Bramble in Tobias Smollett’s Humphry Clinker
(D) Harley in Henry Mackenzie’s The Man of Feeling
Rasselas, in full The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia, philosophical
romance by Samuel Johnson published in 1759 as The Prince of Abissinia.
Supposedly written in the space of a week, with the impending expenses of
Johnsons mother’s funeral in mind, Rasselas explores and exposes the vanity of
the human search for happiness. The work is addressed to those who listen with
credulity to the whispers of fancy and pursue with eagerness the phantoms of
hope. Hoping to learn how he should live, Rasselas meets with men of varied
occupations and interests—scholars, astronomers, shepherds, hermits, and
poets—and explores their manner of life. He finds that complete happiness is
elusive and that while you are making the choice of life, you neglect to
live—which is, perhaps, the most important moral to be drawn from the tale.
36. Arrange the following in the chronological order of publication :
(A) In Memoriam - A Christmas Carol - Men and Women - Henry Esmond
(B) A Christmas Carol - In Memoriam - Men and Women - Henry Esmond
(C) A Christmas Carol - In Memoriam - Henry Esmond - Men and Women
(D) In Memoriam - A Christmas Carol - Henry Esmond - Men and Women
Publication Dates :
A Christmas Carol (1843)
In Memoriam (1850)
Henry Esmond (1852)
Men and Women (1855)
A Christmas Carol. In Prose. Being a Ghost Story of Christmas, commonly
known as A Christmas Carol, is a novella by Charles Dickens, first published in
London by Chapman & Hall in 1843 and illustrated by John Leech.
In Memoriam A.H.H." is a poem by the British poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson,
completed in 1849. It is a requiem for the poet's beloved Cambridge friend Arthur
Henry Hallam, who died suddenly of a cerebral hemorrhage in Vienna in 1833,
aged 22, The original title of the poem was "The Way of the Soul".
The History of Henry Esmond is a historical novel by William Makepeace
Thackeray, originally published in 1852. The book tells the story of the early life
of Henry Esmond, a colonel in the service of Queen Anne of England. Henry
Esmond, in full The History of Henry Esmond, Esq., historical novel by William
Makepeace Thackeray, published in three volumes in 1852.
o The story, narrated by Esmond, begins in 1691 when he is 12 and
ends in 1718. Its complexity of incident is given unity by Esmond
and his second cousin Beatrix, who stand out against a background
of London society and the political life of the time. Beatrix
dominates the book. She is seen first as a charming child and
develops beauty combined with a power that is fatal to the men she
loves. One of Thackeray’s great creations, she is a heroine of a
new type, emotionally complex and compelling but not a pattern of
virtue. Esmond, a sensitive, brave, aristocratic soldier, falls in love
with her but is finally disillusioned. Befriended as an orphan by
Beatrix’s parents, Lord and Lady Castlewood, Henry initially
adores Lady Castlewood as a mother and eventually, in his
maturity, marries her.
Men and Women is a collection of fifty-one poems in two volumes by Robert
Browning, first published in 1855.
37. Which one of Alice Munro’s short stories is about the domestic erosions of Alzheimer’s
disease ?
(A) “Dear Life”
(B) “Runaway”
(C) “The Bear Came Over the Mountain”
(D) “Dance of the Happy Shades”
Munros short story about the domestic erosions of Alzheimers disease, The Bear
Came over the Mountain, originally published in Hateship, Friendship, Courtship,
Loveship, Marriage (2001), was made into the critically acclaimed film Away
from Her (2006), directed by Sarah Polley and starring Julie Christie and Michael
Murphy.
38. What work begins thus: “It befell in the days of Uther Pendragon, when he was king of all
England, and so reigned, that there was a mighty duke in Cornwall that held war against him
long time”?
(A) Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
(B) Le Morte D’arthur
(C) Confessio Amantis
(D) Piers Plowman
Le Morte d'Arthur is a reworking by Sir Thomas Malory of existing tales about
the legendary King Arthur, Guinevere, Lancelot, Merlin and the Knights of the
Round Table. Malory interpreted existing French and English stories about these
figures and added original material.
39. __________ is the subject of Asif Currimbhoy’s play, Inquilab.
(A) The Naxalite movement
(B) The Freedom movement
(C) The Non-Cooperation movement
(D) The Khilafat movement
The Naxalite rebellion has been a significant political movement of our time and
has interested many writers creatively. It has occupied the centre stage for the
better part of the century in the ongoinh political discussions and creative
writings. The Naxalite movement is the subject of Asif Currimbhoys Inquilab. It
throws light upon the origin and development of the revolutionaries activities. The
play present the violent Naxalite revolt that overtook Calcutta in 1970. At that
time Calcutta was burning.
"Inquilab" is one of the most effective realistic play by Asif Currimbhoy
regarding the social issue. Asif Currimbhoy (1928-1975) has his unique
recognition to produce the crucial realistic play for contemporary India through
his own transparent and impartial vision. He used to construct the plot of his play
inter winded with social, political, moral, and religious issues along with pathos,
sentiment, irony, and social criticism. Asif Currimbhoy is considered India's first
authentic voice in theatre writing plays of dissent. All his social issues through
local in color are of universal appeal drawing attention to problems of man
everywhere such as denial of human rights, justice, and freedom. He had explored
universal human predicament through his social, moral, religious and political
concerns in the play. And for this excellence, he achieved appreciation from every
corner of the world.
Inquilab has been set in the background of the Naxalite revolt that haunted West
Bengal. The play is an assessment of the Naxal movement grew powerful in
Calcutta in the 1970 duration. Charu Majumdar who established the communist
(Marxist-Leninist) of India and organized several armed risings of landless
agriculture laborers, especially in eastern India in 1967. It comes to be known as
"Naxalite - Movement" named after the village of "Naxalbari" in West Bengal
where it first began. Eventually, it developed into an urban guerrilla movement,
especially in Calcutta.
40. Tom Stoppard’s play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, being Meta theatrical, lays
bare the constructed nature of theatrical performance. In referring to Hamlet’s end and the
Elizabethan stage conditions lacking curtains one of the characters of Stoppard’s play says: “No
one gets up after death - there is no applause - there is only silence and some second hand
clothes, and that’s death”. Who makes this statement?
(A) Rosencrantz
(B) Guildenstern
(C) The Player
(D) Hamlet
Tom Stoppard was born in Czechoslovakia in 1937. He began his career as a
newspaper reporter and a theatre critic, and eventually became a playwright.
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead remains his most famous play ever. The
play is unique in giving life to two minor, almost negligible, characters in
Hamlet…who wait in the wings to be called for brief moments only to be
forgotten by the audience the next moment. In the very beginning it is made clear
by Stoppard that the action of his play takes place within and around the action of
Hamlet. If Hamlet revolves around the fate of Denmark and of course that of
Prince Hamlet, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead revolves around the fate
of these two minor characters from Shakespeare’s tragic masterpiece Hamlet. The
whole worldview changes in Stoppard’s play.
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are characters in William Shakespeare's tragedy
Hamlet. They are childhood friends of Hamlet, summoned by King Claudius to
distract the prince from his apparent madness and if possible to ascertain the
cause of it.
As the protagonists of Tom Stoppard's play and film, they are confused by the
events of Hamlet and seem unaware of their role in the larger drama. Stoppard
also littered his play with jokes that refer to the common thespian tendency to
swap Rosencrantz and Guildenstern in the midst of the play because the
characters are basically identical. He does this by making Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern unsure of who is who, as well as having the other players (Claudius,
Hamlet, Gertrude) refer to them frequently by the wrong names. Because of the
play's similarity to Waiting for Godot, Rosencrantz is sometimes compared to
Estragon (one of the tramps who wait for Godot), and who shares his dim
perception of reality, while Guildenstern parallels Vladimir, who shares his
analytical perception.
GUIL: (Fear, vengeance, scorn) Your experience?--Actors! (He snatches a dagger
from the PLAYER's belt and holds the point at the PLAYER's throat: the
PLAYER backs and GUIL advances, speaking more quietly.)I'm talking about
death-and you've never experienced that. And you cannot act it. You die a
thousand casual deaths-with none of that intensity which squeezes out life . . . and
no blood runs cold anywhere. Because even as you die you know that you will
come back in a different hat. But no one gets up after death-there is no applause-
there is only silence and some second-hand clothes, and that's death.
41. Who among the following, has translated the classic Malayalam novel, Chemmeen ?
(A) A. K. Ramanujan
(B) Anita Nair
(C) Nandini Nopany
(D) Gita Krishnankutty
Chemmeen has been translated into English many times. Narayana Menon's
translation titled Anger of the Sea-Goddess remains very popular even to this day.
Other English translations are by T. S. Pillai and Anita Nair, both titled
Chemmeen. It has gone into several editions and is readily available at bookshops
all over India.
42. Which Victorian poet is the author of the following lines ? “God himself is the best Poet,
And the Real is His song.”
(A) Lord Tennyson
(B) Robert Browning
(C) Matthew Arnold
(D) Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Elizabeth Barrett Browning's "The Dead Pan" (1844) and "A Musical Instrument"
(Cornhill Magazine, 1860) draw on the figure of the goat-god Pan to deal with
aesthetic issues of poetic process and product, with theological issues of belief
and godhead, and with complex cultural issues of sexual desire and violation of
the woman. "God Himself is the best Poet, And the Real is His song." - Elizabeth
Barrett Browning.
43. “You are your words. Your listeners see Written on your face the poems they hear Like
letters carved in a tree’s bark The sight and sounds of solitudes endured”. These are lines from a
poem by __________ on the death of __________.
(A) T. S. Eliot ; Robert Frost
(B) Siegfried Sassoon ; Wilfred Owen
(C) Stephen Spender ; W. H. Auden
(D) Dylan Thomas ; Robert Bridges
You are your words. Your listeners see Written on your face the poems they hear
Like letters carved in a trees bark The sight and sounds of solitudes endured.
These are lines from a poem Auden's Funeral by Stephen Spender on the death of
W. H. Auden. Stephen Spender was a member of the generation of British poets
who came to prominence in the 1930s, a group—sometimes referred to as the
Oxford Poets—that included W. H. Auden, Christopher Isherwood, C. Day
Lewis, and Louis MacNeice.
44. Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl”, a key work of the Beat Movement, was dedicated to __________.
(A) Lucien Carr
(B) Carl Solomon
(C) Herbert Huncke
(D) Jack Kerouac
"Howl", also known as "Howl for Carl Solomon", is a poem written by Allen
Ginsberg in 1954–1955 and published in his 1956 collection Howl and Other
Poems. The poem is dedicated to Carl Solomon. Ginsberg began work on "Howl"
in 1954. In the Paul Blackburn Tape Archive at the University of California, San
Diego, Ginsberg can be heard reading early drafts of his poem to his fellow
writing associates. "Howl" is considered to be one of the great works of American
literature. It came to be associated with the group of writers known as the Beat
Generation.
45. In his views on the death of Cordelia in King Lear, which is the ground NOT specifically
cited by Samuel Johnson ?
(A) It is contrary to the natural ideas of justice.
(B) It is contrary to neoplatonic idea of decorum.
(C) It is contrary to the hope of the reader.
(D) It is contrary to the faith of chronicles.
King Lear is at once the most highly praised and intensely criticized of all
Shakespeare's works. Samuel Johnson said it is "deservedly celebrated among the
dramas of Shakespeare" yet at the same time he supported the changes made in
the text by Tate in which Cordelia is allowed to retire with victory and felicity.
"Shakespeare has suffered the virtue of Cordelia to perish in a just cause, contrary
to the natural ideas of justice, to the hope of the reader, and, what is yet stranger,
to the faith of chronicles." A.C. Bradley's judgement is that King Lear is
"Shakespare's greatest work, but it is not...the best of his plays."
46. Which of the following plays by David Hare is NOT part of a trilogy of ‘state of the nation’
plays ?
(A) The Absence of War
(B) Racing Demon
(C) The Power of Yes
(D) Murmuring Judges
Sir David Hare (born 5 June 1947) is an English playwright, screenwriter and
theatre and film director. Best known for his stage work, Hare has also enjoyed
great success with films, receiving two Academy Award nominations for Best
Adapted Screenplay for writing The Hours in 2002, based on the novel written by
Michael Cunningham, and The Reader in 2008, based on the novel of the same
name written by Bernhard Schlink. In the West End, he had his greatest success
with the plays Plenty, which he adapted into a film starring Meryl Streep in 1985,
Racing Demon (1990), Skylight (1997), and Amy's View (1998). The four plays
ran on Broadway in 1982–83, 1996, 1998 and 1999 respectively, earning Hare
three Tony Award nominations for Best Play for the first three and two Laurence
Olivier Award for Best New Play. Other notable projects on stage include A Map
of the World, Pravda, Murmuring Judges, The Absence of War and The Vertical
Hour. He wrote screenplays for the film Wetherby and the BBC drama Page Eight
(2011).
47. Chimamanda Adichie’s last novel, Americanah (2013) centres on the romantic and
existential struggles of a young Nigerian woman studying in the United States and finding
success as a blogger. What is her blogging about ?
(A) poverty
(B) development
(C) race
(D) religion
Americanah, the third novel by the Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie,
follows Ifemelu, a young Nigerian woman who moves to the United States and
finds a certain amount of fame as a blogger writing candidly about issues of race
and nationality. In her review in The Times, Janet Maslin called the books first
half tough-minded and clear, but expressed disappointment in the simple romance
of what followed. In a recent e-mail interview, Ms. Adichie discussed the state of
American fiction, the tropes she wanted to avoid in writing about race and more.
48. Why does Father Dolan punish Stephen with the pandybat in Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as
a young Man?
(A) Stephen is talking to another student to get the answer to a Latin problem.
(B) Stephen is not doing his work because his glasses are broken.
(C) Stephen is looking out of the window towards the infirmary.
(D) Stephen is lost in remembering his mother’s farewell and cannot hear Father Dolan
calling out his name.
James Joyce's novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916) is entirely
concerned with the development of its main character, Stephen Dedalus.
49. Using a non - linear narrative, this American novel explores the psychic damage to a veteran
of World War II and shows how a measure of healing is attained through his acceptance of
Laguna myths and rituals. Identify the work:
(A) Dred
(B) Beloved
(C) Ceremony
(D) End Zone
Silko‘s Ceremony is highly praised as the most important Native American novel
that has had a vast impact upon the reading community in America and the
overseas. Native American writers show division of opinion as regards the critical
literary assessment and methods to be applied to Native American Literature.
Many critics insist upon using mainstream assessment tools and literary models
for an analysis of these texts while others demand literary assessment to be based
upon tribal literary perspectives and understandings. The novel emphasizes the
important role that storytelling plays within the Pueblo culture. It also accurately
summarizes the repeated attempts of white groups to demolish the Pueblo culture
by destroying its ceremonies. Despite these attempts, which began in 1540 and
continued until the 1930s, the basic elements of Pueblo myth and ritual managed
to survive. As Silko reveals in Ceremony, however, the years from the World War
II to the present have presented new threats to the Pueblos, which, although more
subtle than the early Spanish conquests, are even more dangerous, and must be
fought if the Pueblo culture is to continue. In order to explain fully the threats of
the modern world poses to the ceremonial life of the Pueblos. It is “the first
necessity to present a background of the Pueblo geography, basic mythology, and
its corresponding ritual.
The novel reveals the story of Tayo, a veteran of Laguna and white ancestry
returning from fighting against Japan in The World War II. Upon returning to the
poverty-stricken Laguna Reservation after a stint at a Los Angeles VA hospital
recovering from injuries sustained in World War II, Tayo continues to suffer from
battle fatigue (shell-shock), and is haunted by memories of his cousin Rocky who
died in the conflict during the Bataan Death March of 1942. Seeking an escape
from his pain, Tayo initially takes refuge in alcoholism. However, with the
support of Old Grandma, he is helped by ceremonies conducted by the mixed-
blood Navajo Shaman Betonie. As a result, Tayo comes to a greater
understanding of the world and his own place within it as a Laguna man
50. What illusion does Lyuba Ranevsky in Anton Chekhov’s play The Cherry Orchard have as
she looks at the orchard ?
(A) She sees it gleaming with a bluish aura.
(B) She sees her dead mother walking through the orchard.
(C) She sees it full of ripe fruits without a trace of leaves.
(D) She sees her childhood friends playing in the orchard.
The orchard is also identified with Gayev's and Ranevsky's personal memories.
Gayev asks Lyuba if she remembers how the orchard's avenue "gleams on
moonlit nights you can't have forgotten?" Ranevsky literally sees an emblem of
those memories—her dead mother walking through the orchard—before she
realizes it is an illusion; merely "a little white tree which has learnt over, and
looks like a woman." Ranevsky shows herself, and will continue to show herself,
to be someone willing to believe in pleasant illusions, such as the illusion of
security provided by her childhood home.
51. From which source did Swift get the idea of writing “Verses on the Death of Dr. Swift” ?
(A) In a conversation with John Gay
(B) After a reading of a maxim by la Rochefoucauld
(C) While taking a walk near Dublin’s St. James’s graveyard
(D) After reading Richard Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy
In “Verses on the Death of Dr. Swift, D.S.P.D.” satirist Jonathan Swift is inspired
by a maxim, “In the misfortune of our best friends we always find something that
does not displease us,” by Francois de la Rochefoucauld. He begins by arguing
that Rochefoucauld’s cynical maxims are based upon the truth of human nature,
and proceeds to cite several examples—some demonstrating a passive state of
being “not displeased,” and others showing an active effort to raise self by
lowering others—proving his point. In addition to supporting the maxim, he uses
his verses to cynically question the values, follies, and customs of humanity.
52. Two of the following words were borrowed from French after the Norman Conquest.
(a) mutton (b) pork
(c) sheep (d) swine
The right combination according to the code is :
(A) (a) and (b)
(B) (a) and (c)
(C) (b) and (d)
(D) (c) and (d)
The Norman Conquest made French the language of the official class in England.
Therefore, it is not astonishing that many words that have to do with government
and administration are of French origin. One example is the word government
itself, along with ME amynistre. Others include attorney, chancellor, country,
court and crime. Furthermore, English titles of nobility except for king, queen,
earl, lord and lady - namely prince, duke, marquess, viscount, baron and their
feminine equivalents - date from the period when England was in the hands of a
Norman French ruling class. In military usage army, captain, corporal, lieutenant,
sergeant and soldier are all of French origin. French words were borrowed not
only for various animals, when served up as food at Norman tables, like beef,
mutton, pork and veal for instance, but also to the cooking techniques by which
the English cow, sheep, pig and calf were prepared for human consumption, for
instance boil, broil, fry, roast and stew.
53. Which of the following is NOT true regarding the Oresteia trilogy by Aeschylus ?
(A) Cassandra, cursed by Apollo predicts the death of Agamemnon, though her prophecy
is ignored.
(B) Aegisthus’s vengeful feelings for Agamemnon results from their rivalry for the hand
of Clytemnestra.
(C) Orestes, who has come back with the intention of murdering Clytemnestra
unexpectedly meets her, and pretending to be a stranger, tells her that Orestes is dead.
(D) Orestes, pursued by the Furies, flees from them when they fall asleep. Then,
Clytemnestra’s ghost appears to wake them up.
Agamemnons father (Atreus) was responsible for the killing of Aegisthuss father
(Thyestes). It was the main cause of rivalry between agamemnon and Aegisthus.
54. The first instance of female cross-dressing with the disconcerting nuances of a boy actor
dressing as a boy while playing the role of a woman in the dramatic world of Shakespeare occurs
in __________.
(A) The Two Gentlemen of Verona
(B) As you Like It
(C) Twelfth Night
(D) A Midsummer Night’s Dream
The first instance of female cross-dressing with the disconcerting nuances of a
boy actor dressing as a boy while playing the role of a woman in the dramatic
world of Shakespeare occurs in the Two Gentlemen of Verona. Female cross-
dressing was greeted with "mounting sarcasm and hysteria" because, Jackson
says, it was an undermining of "customs around which society is organized".
55. For Coleridge, our power to perceive symbols gleaned from the world about us is related to
the category of :
(A) primary imagination
(B) secondary imagination
(C) fancy
(D) intuition
Primary Imagination: (Living power and prime agent of all human perception).
Coleridge asserts that the mind is active in perception. This activity which is
subconscious and it the common birth right of all men, is the work of the Primary
Imagination, which may be defined as the inborn power of perceiving that makes
it possible for us to know things. The Primary Imagination is a repetition in the
finite mind of the eternal art of creation in the infinite I AM. The power of
perception, Coleridge called as Primary Imagination whereas the poetic
imagination as the Secondary Imagination. It differs from the Primary
Imagination in degree, but not in kind. While all men possess the Primary, only
some men possess the heightened degree of the universally human power to
which the poet lays claim.
56. After independence, although English was not an Indian language, it was accorded the status
of an :
(A) Additional language
(B) Ancilliary language
(C) Associate language
(D) Administrative language
On August 15, 1947, India achieved independence, although the country was
immediately partitioned into two separate countries: Hindu India and Muslim
Pakistan. The following year, Mahatma Gandhi was assassinated by a Hindu
extremist, and the disappearance of the inspirational force behind independence
ushered in a new period in Indian history. Nonetheless, on January 26, 1950, India
adopted a new constitution that created a federal state known as the Indian Union,
a democratic lay republic and member of the British Commonwealth.
The Constitution adopted in 1950 stipulated that English and Hindi would be used
for the Union's official business for a period of fifteen years (s. 343(2) and
343(3)). After that time, Hindi was supposed to become the sole official language
of the Union. It proved impossible to replace English with Hindi, however,
because of strong opposition from the southern states, where Dravidian languages
were spoken. They felt that the federal government was trying to impose Hindi
across the country, including the south, and preferred to continue using English,
which they found more "acceptable" because, unlike Hindi, it was not associated
with any particular ethnic group. Later, the Official Languages Act legally
established Hindi and English as the languages used in Congress, while leaving
states and territories free to choose their own official languages.
57. Which English journal announced that it was “principally intended for the use of Politick
Persons who are so publick - spirited as to neglect their own Affairs to look into Transactions of
State” but failed to live up to this and amused readers with “accounts of Gallantry, Pleasure and
Entertainment “ ?
(A) The Spectator
(B) The Tatler
(C) The Daily Courant
(D) The Review
The Tatler was a British literary and society journal begun by Richard Steele in 1709
and published for two years.
The Spectator was a daily publication founded by Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
in England, lasting from 1711 to 1712. These were collected into seven volumes. The
paper was revived without the involvement of Steele in 1714, appearing thrice weekly
for six months, and these papers when collected formed the eighth volume. Eustace
Budgell, a cousin of Addison's, and the poet John Hughes also contributed to the
publication.
58. The grammar-translation method of language teaching does NOT include :
(A) focus on grammar rules
(B) vocabulary memorization
(C) inductive teaching
(D) focus on written language
The grammar–translation method is a method of teaching foreign languages derived
from the classical (sometimes called traditional) method of teaching Greek and Latin.
In grammar–translation classes, students learn grammatical rules and then apply those
rules by translating sentences between the target language and the native language.
The method has two main goals: to enable students to read and translate literature
written in the source language, and to further students' general intellectual
development.
Grammar–translation classes are usually conducted in the students' native language.
Grammatical rules are learned deductively; students learn grammar rules by rote, and
then practice the rules by doing grammar drills and translating sentences to and from
the target language.
59. Who is the narrator in Kamala Markandaya’s Nectar in a Sieve ?
(A) Premala
(B) Saroja
(C) Rukmani
(D) Mira
Ruku is a poor, Indian village woman who serves as the novel’s protagonist and
narrator. She tells the story of her life from her days as a nervous young bride of 12 to
her twilight years as an old widow. Along the way she endures much: infertility,
rumors about her morality, the death of children, floods and droughts, her daughter’s
prostitution and albino child and the death of her beloved husband.
At first, Ruku is reluctant to face change but she learns that one must adapt if one
wants to survive. Her simple wisdom, her ability to hope in the face of hopelessness
and her courage to find joy in the everyday are an inspiration. As a narrator, Ruku is
usually truthful, even about her own shortcomings. She reveals that she does not
always understand the world but she refuses to be defeated by it.
60. How would a New Historicist critic interpret Derrida’s statement, “there is nothing outside
the text” ?
(A) historicist critics should restrict their attention to a culture’s literary productions,
all other data is irrelevant to the critic’s task
(B) language conditions the way we see the world, and there is no reality beyond the
‘prison house’ of language
(C) there is no meaning outside of textual meaning (contrary to the mimeticist’s
position)
(D) “Literature” encompasses all cultural artifacts and all the values, power relations,
and ways of seeing reflected in those artifacts; there is nothing outside of the “text”
broadly conceived
New Historicism envisages and practices a mode of study where the literary text and
the non-literary context are given equal weighting, whereas old historicism considers
history as a background of facts to the foreground of literature. While Old historicism
follows a hierarchical approach by creating a historical framework and placing the
literary text within it, New Historicism, upholding the Derridean view that there is
nothing outside the text, or that everything is available to us in textual or narrative
form, breaks such hierarchies, and follows a parallel reading of literature and history,
and looks at history as represented and recorded in literary texts. In short, while Old
Historicism is concerned with the world of the past, New Historicism deals with the
word of the past.
61. Pick out two Austen heroines from the following list who are right-minded but neglected in
the beginning but gradually are acknowledged to be correct by characters who have previously
looked down on them.
(a) Elizabeth Bennet
(b) Fanny Price
(c) Emma Woodhouse
(d) Anne Elliot
The right combination according to the code is :
(A) (a) and (c)
(B) (b) and (d)
(C) (c) and (d)
(D) (a) and (d)
Austen uses, essentially, two standard plots. In one of these a right-minded but
neglected heroine is gradually acknowledged to be correct by characters that have
previously looked down on her (such as Fanny Price in Mansfield Park and Anne
Elliot in Persuasion). In the other an attractive but self-deceived heroine (such as
Emma Woodhouse in Emma or Elizabeth Bennet in Pride and Prejudice) belatedly
recovers from her condition of error and is rewarded with the partner she had
previously despised or overlooked.
62. The variety of English used between non-native speakers who do not share a first language is
called :
(A) English for specific purposes
(B) English for basic purposes
(C) English as a lingua Franca
(D) English as a language tool
The term "ESL" has been seen by some to indicate that English would be of
subordinate importance; for example, where English is used as a lingua franca in a
multilingual country. The term can be a misnomer for some students who have
learned several languages before learning English. The terms "English language
learners" (ELL), and, more recently, "English learners" (EL), have been used instead,
and the students' native languages and cultures are considered important
63. Identify the story for which E. M. Forster wrote the libretto for its opera version:
(A) Heart of Darkness
(B) The Man Who Would Be the King
(C) Billy Budd
(D) Death in Venice
Billy Budd, Op. 50, is an opera by Benjamin Britten to a libretto by the English
novelist E. M. Forster and Eric Crozier, based on the short novel Billy Budd by
Herman Melville. Originally in four acts, it was first performed at the Royal Opera
House, London, on 1 December 1951; it was later revised as a two-act opera with a
prologue and an epilogue.
64. Who, among the following Prem Chand translators has NOT translated Godan ?
(A) Jai Ratan
(B) P. Lal
(C) Gordon C. Roadarmel
(D) Christopher R. King
First translation of Godaan was done by Jai Ratan Singh and Purushottama Lal in
1957 while the second translation was accomplished by Gordon Charles Roadarmel
in 1968 when it was commissioned by UNESCO.
65. “When Fred got into debt, it always seemed to him highly probable that something or other -
he did not necessarily conceive what - would come to pass enabling him to pay in due time”.
Why is Fred Vincy in debt in Middle march ?
(A) He takes out a large loan to enable him to woo Mary Garth.
(B) He is an inveterate gambler.
(C) He is paying off a blackmailer.
(D) He runs a charity that has got into trouble.
Fred Vincy is an inveterate gambler. When Fred got into debt, it always seemed to
him highly probable that something or other he did not necessarily conceive what
would come to pass enabling his to pay in due time. And now that the providential
occurrence was apparently close at hand, it would have been sheer absurdity to think
that the supply would be short of the need: as absurd as a faith that believed in half a
miracle for want of strength to believe in a whole one.
QUIZ
“Take then thy bond, take thou thy pound of flesh; / But, in the cutting it, if thou dost
shed / One drop of Christian blood, thy lands and goods / Are, by the laws of
Venice, confiscate / Unto the state of Venice.” Portia speaks eloquently
in his defence, but whose flesh is Shylock preparing to take in place of
his unpaid debt in Shakespeare’s A Merchant of Venice?
Antonio
Bassanio
Lorenzo
Balthazar
What is the name of the debtor’s prison in Dickens’s Little Dorrit, in
which William Dorrit – and, in real life, Dickens’s own father – are
incarcerated?
Kings’ Bench Prison
Fleet Prison
Marshalsea Prison
Coldbath Fields Prison
“Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen
and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual
expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery. The blossom is
blighted, the leaf is withered, the god of day goes down upon the dreary
scene, and – and in short you are for ever floored. As I am!" Says which
of Dickens’s debtors?
Pip
Martin Chuzzlewit
Mr Micawber
William Dorrit
“When Fred got into debt, it always seemed to him highly probably that
something or other – he did not necessarily conceive what – would
come to pass enabling him to pay in due time.” Why is Fred Vincy in
debt in Middlemarch?
He takes out a large loan to enable him to woo Mary Garth
He is an inveterate gambler
He is paying off a blackmailer
He gives all his money to the poor
Which fictional character says that debt "is the whole Cement whereby
the Race of Mankind is kept together; yea, of such Vertue and Efficacy
that, I say, the whole progeny of Adam would very suddenly perish
without it"?
Samuel Johnson’s Rasselas
Voltaire’s Candide
Voltaire’s Pangloss
Rabelais’s Panurge
What is the name of the merchant and moneylender who leads Emma
Bovary into hopelessly deep debt?
Lheureux
Dupuis
Homais
Vladimir
Moneylenders frequent the novels of Anthony Trollope, but how did the
author get into debt himself?
He was fired from his job at the post office for writing rather than
working
He lost a high profile game of cards with a bank manager
He did not deliver a novel to his publisher for which he had been paid
an advance
He could not pay a tailor’s bill and ended up owing £200 because of
the high interest charged by a moneylender
Which Booker prize-winning novelist has also written a discourse on
debt called Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth?
Peter Carey
Salman Rushdie
Margaret Atwood
Penelope Lively
In which of the Canterbury Tales does a wife repay her debt of 100
francs by sleeping with a friar and then her husband?
The Shipman’s Tale
The Friar’s Tale
The Wife of Bath’s Tale
The Merchant’s Tale
Which famous author went bankrupt owing £17,000 in 1692, penning his
best known work to escape from debt?
Jonathan Swift
Daniel Defoe
Walter Scott
John Milton
66. William Blake has a rare elan to provide telling images in arresting phrases. Match the
phrases with the poems they belong to :
(a) “mind forg’d manacles” (i) “The Tyger” 3
(b) “eternal winter” (ii) “The Sick Rose” 4
(c) “fearful symmetry” (iii) “London” 1
(d) “crimson joy” (iv) “Holy Thursday” 2
(A) (ii) (iv) (i) (iii)
(B) (iii) (i) (iv) (ii)
(C) (iii) (iv) (i) (ii)
(D) (iv) (i) (ii) (iii)
The poem "London" depicts a world of life in death. "London" represents the fallen
world; it is a world where there is no imagination. The narrator says, "I wander thro'
each charter'd street". The urban grid is an external, concrete image of the "mind-
forg'd manacles" where imaginative vision is transformed into something void of
thought. The urban setting is restrictive to the imaginative, according to Blake. As
Blake portrays the urban setting, it is filling of sorrow and despair and lacking
imagination and energy. The narrator says, "In every cry of every Man./In every
infant's cry of fear,/In every voice, in every ban,/The mind-forg'd manacles I hear".
London is crawling with weakness, with misdirected cries of people who do not know
how to express themselves of how to attain a sense of individuality. The person of
experience is doomed to carry out a predestined life cycle because he cannot perceive
anything further than what his senses tell him.
William Blakes Holy Thursday is part of his Songs of Experience collection of
poems. Blake states that It is eternal winter rather than It is similar to eternal winter,
clearly underlining that the conditions are grave and challenging.
Fearful symmetry is a nuanced trait which has dual allusions, one for the tyger and
the other referring to divine deity. As apparent, the sublime characteristic refers to an
entity extremely big and powerful yet mysterious.
67. In the debate between the two birds in the Middle English poem The Owl and the
Nightingale who acts as the arbiter?
(A) Master Henry of Shrewsbury
(B) Master William of Hereford
(C) Master Freeman of Stamford
(D) Master Nicholas of Guildford
Generally regarded as one of the earliest and finest examples of a popular
medieval literary debate, The Owl and the Nightingale takes the form of a
spirited dispute between two birds on the subject of the relative beauty and
merit of their songs. Comprised of approximately 2,000 lines of verse in
rhymed, octosyllabic couplets, this allegorical and didactic poem is usually
ascribed to Master Nicholas of Guildford, an obscure Englishman of whom
very little is known outside the context of the poem.
NICHOLAS OF GUILDFORD (fl. 1250), English poet, the supposed
author of The Owl and the Nightingale, an English poem of the 13th century.
This work, which displays genuine poetical and imaginative qualities, is
written in the southwestern dialect, and is one of the few 13th-century English
poems not devoted entirely to religious topics. The nightingale sitting on a
branch covered with blossom sees the owl perched on a bough overgrown
with ivy, and proceeds to abuse him for his general habits and appearance.
The birds decide to refer the consequent dispute to Master Nicholas de
Guildford, who is skilled in such questions, but they first of all engage in a
regular debat in the French fashion. The owl is the best logician, but the
nightingale has a fund of abuse that equalizes matters. Finally, when the
argument threatens to become a fight, the wren interferes, and the two go to
the house of Master Nicholas at Portisham in Dorset. He judges, they say,
many right judgments, and composes and writes much wisdom, and it is
lamentable that so learned and worthy a man should gain no preferment from
his bishop. The poet, whoever he was, wrote the octosyllabic couplet with
ease and smoothness. He borrows something from Alexander of
Neckham's De naturis serum, and was certainly familiar with contemporary
French poetry. The piece is a general allegory of the contest between
asceticism and a more cheerful view of religion, and is capable of a particular
application to the differences between the regular orders and the secular
clergy. The nightingale defends her singing on the ground that heaven is a
place of song and mirth, while the owl maintains that much weeping for his
many sins is man's best preparation for the future.
68. In the first scene in which Goethe’s Faust appears he is dejected by the study of Philosophy,
Law, Medicine and Theology, turns to Magic art to acquire infinite knowledge. But he fails and
in desperation attempts to commit suicide, but refrains at the final moment. What prevents Faust
from committing suicide ?
(A) The intervention of archangel Gabriel
(B) His attendant Wagner persuades him to revoke the decision
(C) The chiming of the bells announcing Easter festivities
(D) Mephistopheles appears and offers to initiate him into magic art
69. Which novel by Joseph Conrad presents a young captain who like Coleridge’s Ancient
Mariner is haunted by the “vision of a ship drifting in calm and swinging in light airs, with all the
crew dying slowly about her decks” and who feels “the sickness of my soul... the weight of my
sins... my sense of unworthiness” ?
(A) Under Western Eyes
(B) The Shadow Line
(C) Victory
(D) The Rescue
70. “Our almost-instinct almost true : What will survive of us is love.” Identify the poem by
Philip Larkin that ends with the above lines :
(A) “This Be the Verse”
(B) “An Arundel Tomb”
(C) “High Windows”
(D) “Next, Please”
An Arundel Tomb is almost a love poem written by Larkin in 1956 and first
published in the book The Whitsun Weddings of 1964. It focuses on the 14th
century tomb (actually a memorial effigy in Chichester Cathedral, Sussex, which
Larkin visited) of a noble couple, one Richard Fitzalan, Earl of Arundel, and
Eleanor of Lancaster, his second wife.
71. In the epilogue to Congreve’s Way of the World there is a warning: Others there is whose
malice we’d prevent, Such, who watch plays, with scurrilous intent To mark out who by
characters are meant. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . These, with false glosses
feed their own ill - nature, And turn to libel, what was meant a satire. What does this warning
mean ?
(A) Critics should not be ill-natured and malicious.
(B) Critics should not look for portrait of real people in the play’s characters and
remember that the play is a social satire.
(C) Critics should avoid writing malicious reviews, lest they be charged with libel.
(D) Critics should try to identify the real-life equivalent for each character.
Others there are whose malice wed prevent: Such, who watch plays, with
scurrilous intent To mark out who by characters are meant: And though no perfect
likeness they can trace, Yet each pretends to know the copied face. These, with
false glosses, feed their own ill—nature, And turn to libel what was meant a
satire. May such malicious fops this fortune find, To think themselves alone the
fools designed: If any are so arrogantly vain, To think they singly can support a
scene, And furnish fool enough to entertain. For well the learned and the judicious
know, That satire scorns to stoop so meanly low, As any one abstracted fop to
show. For, as when painters form a matchless face, They from each fair one catch
some different grace, And shining features in one portrait blend, To which no
single beauty must pretend: So poets oft do in one piece expose Whole BELLES
ASSEMBLEES of coquettes and beaux.
72. Which of the following is an elegy on John Donne’s wife, who died in 1617 ?
(A) “Death, be not proud”
(B) “Thou hast made me”
(C) “Holy Sonnet 17”
(D) “At the round earth’s imagined corners”
John Donne (22 January 1572– 31 March 1631) was an English poet and cleric in
the Church of England.
He is considered the pre-eminent representative of the metaphysical poets. His
works are noted for their strong, sensual style and include sonnets, love poems,
religious poems, Latin translations, epigrams, elegies, songs, satires andsermons.
His poetry is noted for its vibrancy of language and inventiveness ofmetaphor,
especially compared to that of his contemporaries. Donne's style is characterised
by abrupt openings and various paradoxes, ironies and dislocations. These
features, along with his frequent dramatic or everyday speech rhythms, his tense
syntax and his tough eloquence, were both a reaction against the smoothness of
conventional Elizabethan poetry and an adaptation into English of European
baroque and mannerist techniques. His early career was marked by poetry that
bore immense knowledge of English society and he met that knowledge with
sharp criticism. Another important theme in Donne's poetry is the idea of true
religion, something that he spent much time considering and about which he often
theorized. He wrote secular poems as well as erotic and love poems. He is
particularly famous for his mastery of metaphysicalconceits.
Despite his great education and poetic talents, Donne lived in poverty for several
years, relying heavily on wealthy friends. He spent much of the money he
inherited during and after his education on womanising, literature, pastimes, and
travel. In 1601, Donne secretly married Anne More, with whom he had twelve
children.[3] In 1615, he became an Anglican priest, although he did not want to
take Anglican orders. He did so because King James I persistently ordered it. In
1621, he was appointed the Dean of St Paul's Cathedral in London. He also served
as a member of Parliament in 1601 and in 1614.
The Holly Sonnets were published two years after Donne's death. John Donne
wrote Holy Sonnet XVII in 1617 after the death of his wife Anne More.
Just as Donne's fortunes seemed to be improving, Anne Donne died, on 15
August, 1617, aged thirty-three, after giving birth to their twelfth child, a
stillborn. Seven of their children survived their mother's death. Struck by grief,
Donne wrote the seventeenth Holy Sonnet, "Since she whom I lov'd hath paid her
last debt." According to Donne's friend and biographer, Izaak Walton, Donne was
thereafter 'crucified to the world'. Donne continued to write poetry, notably his
Holy Sonnets (1618), but the time for love songs was over.
73 to 75 Read the following poem and answer questions:
Bored
Margaret Atwood
All those times I was bored
out of my mind. Holding the log
while he sawed it. Holding
the string while he measured, boards,
distances between things, or pounded
stakes into the ground for rows and rows
of lettuces and beets, which I then (bored)
weeded. Or sat in the back
of the car, or sat still in boats,
sat, sat, while at the prow, stern, wheel
he drove, steered, paddled. It
wasn’t even boredom, it was looking,
looking hard and up close at the small
details. Myopia. The worn gunwales,
the intricate twill of the seat
cover. The acid crumbs of loam, the granular
pink rock, its igneous veins, the sea-fans
of dry moss, the blackish and then the graying
bristles on the back of his neck.
Sometimes he would whistle, sometimes
I would. The boring rhythm of doing
things over and over, carrying
the wood, drying
the dishes. Such minutiae. It’s what
the animals spend most of their time at,
ferrying the sand, grain by grain, from their tunnels
shuffling the leaves in their burrows. He pointed
such things out, and I would look
at the whorled texture of his square finger, earth under
the nail. Why do I remember it as sunnier
all the time then, although it more often
rained, and more birdsong ?
I could hardly wait to get
the hell out of there to
anywhere else. Perhaps though
boredom is happier. It is for dogs or
groundhogs. Now I wouldn’t be bored.
Now I would know too much.
Now I would know
“All those times” - the opening words of the poem locate the speaker in :
(A) a city suburb
(B) a mountain resort
(C) a natural environment
(D) a highway motel
74. Which pair of words best describes the repetitive tenor of the speaker’s unpretentious yet
oppressive life ?
(a) details (b) the car
(c) the wood (d) the minutae
The right combination according to the code is :
(A) (a) and (b)
(B) (a) and (d)
(C) (b) and (c)
(D) (c) and (d)
75. Which of the following approximates closely a thematic statement of the poem ?
(A) Dogs or groundhogs lead a better life than men or women
(B) Irrespective of the place, the boring rhythm of doing things over and over in human
life cannot be escaped
(C) Myopia is the result if you live life in the lap of nature
(D) Knowledge cures existential boredom
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