UGC NET English November 2017
https://www.gkseries.com/english-multiple-choice-questions-answers/6-english-multiple-choice-
questions-and-answers
ENGLISH
PAPER - II
1. In Frances Burney’s novel, Evelina, the eponymous heroine comes out in society in
two locations. They are :
(a) Bath
(b) Bristol
(c) Leeds
(d) London
The right combination according to the code is :
(1) (a) and (b) (2) (b) and (c) (3) (a) and (d) (4) (b) and (d)
Evelina or The History of a Young Lady's Entrance into the World is a novel written by
English writer Frances Burney and first published in 1778. The novel first came out secretly,
but the poet George Huddesford revealed that Burney was the writer of Evelina in what
Burney called a "vile poem". When it was known that Burney had written Evelina, it
immediately made her very famous. In this novel of letters, beautiful Evelina Anville, the
heroine, leaves her quiet home for the first time to go to London.
Evelina often feels paralyzed by public attention; even at the end of the novel she cannot avoid
London gossip. When the protagonist visits the spas at Bristol Hotwells,
Burney writes:“We went first to the pump-room. It was full of company! And the moment we
entered, I heard a murmuring of, “That’s she!” and, to my great confusion, I saw every eye
turned towards me. I pulled my hat over my face, and, by the assistance of Mrs. Selwyn,
endeavoured to screen myself from observation: nevertheless, I found I was so much the object
of general attention, that I entreated her to hasten away.”
2. Which of the following lines by Shakespeare is repeated several times in Virginia
Woolf’s novel Mrs. Dalloway ?
(1) “If music be the food of love, play on”.
(2) “Fear no more the heat of the sun, Nor the furious winter’s rages”.
(3) “Those are pearls that were his eyes”.
(4) “There is a tide in the affairs of man”.
Mrs Dalloway (published on 14 May 1925[1]) is a novel by Virginia Woolf that details a day
in the life of Clarissa Dalloway, a fictional high-society woman in post–First World War
England.
Clarissa Dalloway goes around London in the morning, getting ready to host a party that
evening. Mrs. Dalloway covers one day from morning to night in one woman's life. Clarissa
Dalloway, an upper-class housewife, walks through her London neighborhood to prepare for
the party she will host that evening. When she returns from flower shopping, an old suitor and
friend, Peter Walsh, drops by her house unexpectedly
3. Identify the important theatres of the Elizabethan period :
(a) Peacock
(b) Globe
(c) Swan
(d) Grand
The right combination according to the code is :
(1) (a) and (b) (2) (b) and (c) (3) (b) and (d) (4) (a) and (d)
The Globe Theatre was a theatre in London associated with William Shakespeare. It was built
in 1599 by Shakespeare's playing company, the Lord Chamberlain's Men, on land owned by
Thomas Brend and inherited by his son, Nicholas Brend and grandson Sir Matthew Brend, and
was destroyed by fire on 29 June 1613
A second Globe Theatre was built on the same site by June 1614 and closed by an Ordinance
issued on 6 September 1642.
A modern reconstruction of the Globe, named "Shakespeare's Globe", opened in 1997
approximately 750 feet (230 m) from the site of the original theatre.
From 1909, the current Gielgud Theatre was called "Globe Theatre", until it was renamed (in
honour of John Gielgud) in 1994.
The Swan Theatre was built by Francis Langley about 1594, south of the Thames, close to the
Rose, in Surrey. The Swan was a theatre in Southwark, London, England, built in 1595 on top
of a previously standing structure,during the first half of William Shakespeare's career.
4. In which poem does Matthew Arnold express the dilemma of :
“Wandering between two worlds, one dead, The other powerless to be born” ?
(1) “Self - Dependence” (2) “Stanzas from the Grande
Chartreuse”
(3) “To a Republican Friend” (4) “Dover Beach”
“Stanzas from the Grande Chartreuse” (1855) is a poem by Victorian poet and writer Matthew
Arnold. It has 210 lines divided into thirty-five stanzas and could have been drafted as early as
1851 when Arnold visited the Grand Chartreuse, a Carthusian monastery in southern France.
The poem revolves around the themes of monastery life, faith (and loss of faith), and religious
life.
Each stanza is six lines of iambic tetrameter and follows a rhyme scheme of “ababcc.” Iambic
tetrameter comprises four iambic feet (unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable
which makes a “foot”), whereas the more recognizable iambic pentameter (Shakespeare often
uses it) is the same pattern, but with five feet.
5. Who made the comment that, “All modern American literature comes from one book by
Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn” ?
(1) Henry James (2) William Faulkner
(3) Jack London (4) Ernest Hemingway
American author Mark Twain was called the "Father of American Literature" by William
Faulkner and it was a title well deserved.
With classic tales like The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,
Twain set the standard for childhood adventure.
Mark Twain was a defender of women’s rights and he was against the slavery, he hated the
hypocrisy and the oppression.
Moreover, great twentieth-century author Ernest Hemingway claimed all modern American
literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn. There was nothing
before. There has been nothing as good since.
There are still lessons for us to learn from his writings today. The work should be especially
noted for its temporally transcendent dealing with America’s most prominent cultural
conundrum: race.
All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn
SUMMARY: It was William Faulkner who called Mark Twain the “Father of American
Literature” for his classic writings, Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Adventures of Huckleberry
Finn.
Secondly, Ernest Hemingway wrote in an essay, “All modern American literature comes from
one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn.”
The title is well-deserving, according to them, because the books before and after them could
not compare.
So, there are two great writers confirming this title on Mark Twain and pointing tothe same
book that highlighted race, “America's most difficult cultural conundrum.”
Meaning of conundrum: a confusing and difficult problem or question.
6. The Emblem is a poetic genre containing a symbolic picture with a text and a verse
exposition popular in the early 17 TH century. Who popularised this kind of poetry through
the work Emblems [1635] ?
(1) Robert Southwell (2) Francis Quarles
(3) John Davies (4) Joseph Sylvester
Francis Quarles, (baptized May 8, 1592, Romford, Essex, England—died September 8, 1644,
London), religious poet remembered for his Emblemes, the most notable emblem book in
English.
The son of a minor court official, Quarles was educated at the University of Cambridge and at
Lincoln’s Inn, London. The wealth of Quarles’s family at first allowed him to live a leisured
and studious life, but in the late 1620s he served as secretary to Archbishop James Ussher in
Ireland. In 1640 Quarles became chronologer to London, virtually abandoning poetry to
employ his pen more lucratively. He died in relative poverty.
With Emblemes (1635) Quarles produced a new type of emblem book (traditionally a
collection of symbolic pictures, usually accompanied by mottoes and expositions in verse and
by a prose commentary). Each emblem consisted of a grotesque engraving and a paraphrase of
Scripture in ornate and metaphysical language and concluded with an epigrammatic verse.
Emblemes was so successful that Quarles produced another emblem book, Hieroglyphikes of
the Life of Man (1638). The two were printed together in 1639, and this work became possibly
the most popular book of verse of the 17th century.
7. Which Byron work begins thus :
“I want a hero: an uncommon want, when every year and month sends forth a new one
.........” ?
(1) Beppo (2) Cain (3) Manfred (4) Don Juan
SOMETIMES A POET FOR A HERO, SOUTHEY MIGHT HAVE ADDED, HAD HE
written Letters from England (1807) after Byron published the first installment of Don Juan
(1819). "I WANT a hero," (1) Byron advertises in the first line of canto I of Don Juan--one of
the most celebrated overtures not only in "Romantic" poetry but in the entire Western literary
tradition. (2) I use the word "advertises" literally, and not merely as a synonym for
"announces" or as a trope for the blatant publicity of Byron's epic complaint, because I will
argue that in announcing his "WANT"--i.e., his "lack" or "desire" (CPW 5.673n)--of and for a
hero, Byron is almost certainly parodying several types of early advertising and advertising-
related discourse: namely, the newspaper "want ad" and military recruitment propaganda.
8. The title of Sir Thomas Browne’s famous treatise, Religio Medici means :
(1) Religion of a Doctor (2) Religion of Magician
(3) Religion of Divinity (4) Religion of Meditation
Religio Medici, the most celebrated work of one of the great seventeenth century stylists of
English prose, Sir Thomas Browne (1605-1682). Although never originally intended for print,
this meditative essay proved to be immensely popular and established Browne's fame as a
writer. Variously described as a prose-poem, confession of faith and 'sort of private diary of
the soul', the Religio Medici ('The Religion of a Physician') is hard to categorize. Although an
exploration of religious thought, it cannot be described as theological, and although written by
a physician, neither is it medical or scientific; indeed, as Browne explores the central themes of
faith and charity, he acknowledges the need to keep religion separate from science for 'many
things are true in Divinity, which are neither inducible by reason nor confirmable by sense'.
9. Which among the following recent novels is a retelling of Sophocles’s Antigone ?
(1) Kamila Shamsie, Home Fire (2) Fiona Mozley, Elmet
(3) Zadie Smith, Swing Time (4) Mohsin Hamid, Exit West
A contemporary remaining of Sophocles' Antigone, Home Fire is an urgent, fiercely
compelling story of loyalties torn apart when love and politics collide – confirming Kamila
Shamsie as a master storyteller of our times.
10. Identify the two important works of Paul de Man from the following list :
(a) Blindness and Insight
(b) Allegories of Reading
(c) Theoretical Essays
(d) Criticism and Ideology
The right combination according to the code is :
(1) (a) and (b) (2) (a) and (c) (3) (b) and (c) (4) (b) and (d)
Paul de Man (b. 1919–d. 1983) was one of the most influential literary theorists of the second
half of the 20th century. He is most commonly associated with the so-called Yale School of
criticism, which included his colleagues J. Hillis Miller, Geoffrey Hartman, Harold Bloom,
and Jacques Derrida. De Man spent his formative years in Belgium before immigrating to the
United States after World War II in 1948. After some time working as a teacher of French,
freelance writer, and in clerical jobs, he gained his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1960
with an audacious dissertation titled “Mallarmé, Yeats and the Post-Romantic Predicament.”
He taught at Cornell University between 1960 and 1969. In the late 1960s he also held a post at
the University of Zurich and from 1968 to 1970 he was a professor of humanities at John
Hopkins University in Baltimore. He then moved to Yale, where in 1979 he was made Sterling
Professor of Comparative Literature and French. During his life de Man published two ground
breaking books, Blindness and Insight: Essays in the Rhetoric of Contemporary Criticism
(1971, revised edition 1983) and Allegories of Reading: Figural Language in Rousseau,
Nietzsche, Rilke, and Proust (1979).
11. Samuel Johnson denounced the metaphysical poets saying, “About the beginning of the
seventeenth century appeared a race of writers that may be termed the metaphysical
poets”. In the biography of which of the following poets in his Lives of Poets did
Johnson make this remark?
(1) John Dryden (2) Thomas Parnell
(3) Abraham Cowley (4) Alexander Pope
Metaphysical poets "A term used to group together certain 17th-century poets, usually
DONNE, MARVELL, VAUGHAN and TRAHERNE, though other figures like ABRAHAM
COWLEY are sometimes included in the list.
they share common characteristics of wit, inventiveness, and a love of elaborate stylistic
manoeuvres. Metaphysical concerns are the common subject of their poetry, which
investigates the world by rational discussion of its phenomena rather than by intuition or
mysticism.
DRYDEN was the first to apply the term to 17th-century poetry when, in 1693, he criticized
Donne: 'He affects the Metaphysics... in his amorous verses, where nature only should reign;
and perplexes the minds of the fair sex with nice speculations of philosophy, when he should
engage their hearts.' He disapproved of Donne's stylistic excesses, particularly his extravagant
conceits (or witty comparisons) and his tendency towards hyperbolic abstractions.
JOHNSON consolidated the argument in THE LIVES OF THE POETS, where he noted (with
reference to Cowley) that 'about the beginning of the seventeenth century appeared a race of
writers that may be termed the metaphysical poets'.
He went on to describe the far-fetched nature of their comparisons as 'a kind of discordia
concors; a combination of dissimilar images, or discovery of occult resemblances in things
apparently unlike'. Examples of the practice Johnson condemned would include the extended
comparison of love with astrology (by Donne) and of the soul with a drop of dew (by Marvell).
12. The terms of the contract are not
disagreeable to me. The above sentence
contains an example of :
(1) enumeratio (2) litotes (3) anaphora (4) metonymy
Enumeratio is a rhetorical term for the listing of details—a type of amplification and division.
Also called enumeration or dinumeratio. Etymology from the Latin, "counting up"
Litotes, derived from a Greek word meaning “simple,” is a figure of speech that employs an
understatement by using double negatives or, in other words, a positive statement expressed by
negating its opposite expressions.
o Litotes - makes an understatement by denying the opposite of a word that may have
been used - The terms of the contract are not disagreeable to me. Example #1: A Tale
of a Tub (By Jonathan Swift)
“I am not unaware how the productions of the Grub Street brotherhood have of late years
fallen under many prejudices.”
Anaphora is the repetition of a certain word or phrase at the beginning of successive lines of
writing or speech. It can be used in novels and short stories, but it's most commonly seen in
poetry, essays, and formal speeches.
o A Tale of Two Cities (By Charles Dickens)
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of
foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it
was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.”
o Tintern Abbey (By William Wordsworth)
This technique is employed by William Wordsworth in “Tintern Abbey“:
“Five years have passed;
Five summers, with the length of
Five long winters! and again I hear these waters…”
Metonymy is a type of figurative language in which an object or concept is referred to not by
its own name, but instead by the name of something closely associated with it. For example, in
"Wall Street prefers lower taxes," the New York City street that was the original home of the
New York Stock Exchange stands in for (or is a "metonym" for) the entire American financial
industry.
MARCELLUS: Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.
(Hamlet by William Shakespeare)
Shakespeare used metonymy in many of his plays and poems. This line from Hamlet is often
repeated. We are made to understand that “the state of Denmark” stands in for the whole royal
system and government. The rottenness is not widespread over the entire country, but instead
is limited to the dealings of those in power. In this case, the character Claudius has come to
power in a suspicious way, and those surrounding him feel unease at the new order.
13. Who is the author of the following
lines ? “To see a World in a Grain of
Sand And a Heaven in a Wild Flower
Hold Infinity in the palm of your
hand
And Eternity in an hour...”.
(1) Thomas Gray (2) William Blake (3) William Collins (4) William Cowper
This poem, To See a World in a Grain of Sand, by William Blake, has endless meanings.
The idea, the idea of seeing the world as one grain of sand, is quite amazing. Think of the
world as one, just one, not many. Everyone thinks the world is huge, the biggest thing, so to
think of the world as one small grain of sand, hasn't ever crossed my mind.]
The poem is called “Auguries of Innocence”, and was only published after William Blake’s
death.
It’s about imagination, vision, seeing the big picture from a detail. The grain of sand is tiny ad
the world is huge. The implication is that Heaven is also huge so that a single flower is a tiny
reflection of a much greater beauty. A sense of wonder and of awe. For Blake, these small
things, the grain of sand and the flower, each of them both reflects and contains aspects of the
whole, so that there is God in the flower and God that made the world made the grain of sand
which is itself a whole world.
The grain of sand and the flower become metaphors for hidden beauty and for divinity in the
mundane. It’s our lack of imagination that holds us back. But for Blake there’s also a spiritual
side, the child-like delight of looking at simple things connects with the divine - what T S Eliot
called The Unattended Moment, when, entirely absorbed and not thinking about yourself, you
are most truly yourself.
14. In Women in Love what is Winifred’s pekinese dog called ?
(1) Bismarck (2) Looloo (3) Lucky (4) Buddy
A woman in Love (1920) is a novel by British author D. H. Lawrence. It is a sequel to his
earlier novel The Rainbow (1915), and follows the continuing loves and lives of the Brangwen
sisters, Gudrun and Ursula.
Gudrun was very calm. She also did not take these things very seriously. A new occasion was
mostly spectacular to her. However, Winifred was a detached, ironic child, she would never
attach herself. Gudrun liked her and was intrigued by her. The first meetings went off with a
certain humiliating clumsiness. Neither Winifred nor her instructress had any social grace.
Soon, however, they met in a kind of make-belief world. Winifred did not notice human beings
unless they were like her, playful and slightly mocking. She would accept nothing but the
world of amusement, and the serious people of her life were the animals she had for pets. On
those she lavished, almost ironically, her affection and her companionship. To the rest of the
human scheme she submitted with a faint bored indifference.
She had a pekinese dog called Looloo, which she loved.
‘Let us draw Looloo,’ said Gudrun, ‘and see if we can get his Looliness, shall we?’
When does the story take place ? early 20th century
Where do the Brangwen sisters live ? Beldover, Shortlands is the Criches' home, Willery
Water is the little lake nearby, and Breadalby is Hermione's father's house.
Who are the two main couples in the story ? Ursula and Birkin, Gudrun and Gerald,
Rupert Birkin is a self-portrait of Lawrence himself !
What does Ursula Brangwen do ? teacher and her sister Gudrun is an artist.
What happens at the end of the book ? Gerald kills himself
Where do the two couples go on holiday ? They go on a skiing holiday in the Austrian Alps.
Who teaches Winnifred ? Gudrun teaches the child to paint and to work with clay.
When Gerald's father dies, who takes on the colliery business ? Gerald works really hard to
keep the business going.
What is Winnifred's pekinese dog called ? Bismarck is her rabbit's name, Laika is my dog's
name and the other one, well, you know who that one is Looloo!
What is the title of the book that comes before 'Women in Love'? 'Women in Love' is the
sequel to 'The Rainbow', and the others are just other books by Lawrence that I suggest you
read.
15. Which of the following New Critics put forward the idea of the ‘heresy of paraphrase’ ?
(1) Allen Tate (2) Cleanth Brooks
(3) W.K. Wimsatt (4) Monroe C Beardsley
Cleanth Brooks in this essay the “Heresy of Paraphrase” tries to put forward is that any
reductionist attempt to transform poetic meaning to a prose statement such as descriptive or
thematic interpretative is to do injustice to a poem. It is one's failure to recognize the poem as a
poem.
16. Edmund Spenser’s Colin Clout’s Come Home Again is a fine example of :
(1) carpe diem (2) sonnet sequence
(3) georgic poetry (4) pastoral eclogue
Colin Clouts Come Home Againe (also known as Colin Clouts Come Home Again) is a
pastoral poem by the English poet Edmund Spenser and published in 1595. It has been the
focus of little critical attention in comparison with the poet's other works such as The Faerie
Queene, yet it has been called the "greatest pastoral eclogue in the English language". In a
tradition going back to Petrarch, the pastoral eclogue contains a dialogue between shepherds
with a narrative or song as an inset, and which also can conceal allegories of a political or
ecclesiastical nature.
17. In An Essay of Dramatic Poesy whom does John Dryden refer to as “the most learned
and judicious Writer which any Theater ever had” ?
(1) John Webster (2) Christopher Marlowe
(3) Ben Jonson (4) William Shakespeare
Neander extends his criticism of French drama - into his reasoning for his preference for
Shakespeare over Ben Jonson. Shakespeare "had the largest and most comprehensive soul,"
while Jonson was "the most learned and judicious writer which any theater ever had."
18. Which of the following is NOT true of the ideal state in Thomas More’s Utopia ?
(1) Personal property, money and vice are effectively abolished.
(2) The root causes of crime, ambition and political conflict, are eliminated.
(3) There is only one religion guided by the principle of a benevolent Supreme Being.
(4) Its priesthood, which includes some women, is limited in number.
There is only one religion guided by the principle of a benevolent Supreme Being.
Utopia shelters numerous religions. The people therein have belief in a single god, but the
nature of that god is very different, ranging from a sort of animism, to worship of an ancient
hero, to worship of the sun or moon, to belief in a single omnipotent, ineffable god. This last
religion, according to Hyt-hloday, is in the process of becoming dominant, though all the
religions practice complete tolerance of all the other religions. After Hythloday and his fellows
spoke to the Utopians about Christ, a good number converted and began to learn as much as
they could. These converts also were treated with the utmost respect by the faithful of other
Utopian religions. In fact, the only belief that is not tolerated is atheism, as it is seen as
immoral.
19. This Australian poet was raised in New South Wales and grew up in rural Australian
landscape. In 1946 she published her first book of poems. In 1962, she became cofounder
and president of the Wild Life Preservation Society of Queensland and served as its
president several times thereafter. Identify the poet.
(A) Dorothy Hewett
(B) Nettie Palmer
(C) Judith Wright
(D) Amy Witting
Wright was born May 31, 1915, and raised outside Armidale in Australia’s most populous
state, New South Wales. She grew up in the rural Australian landscape, the oldest child of
three in a well-off and literate family. In 1946, the editor of Meanjin published Wright’s first
book of poems, The Moving Image, a major success in Australian poetry. Two years before,
Wright had met her husband, the philosopher J. P. McKinney, who was a large influence on
Wright’s work. Before McKinney died in 1966, he and Wright became the parents of one
daughter. In 1962, she became cofounder and president of the Wild Life Preservation Society
of Queensland and served as its president several times thereafter. In this capacity she was
instrumental in the effort to save The Great Barrier Reef located off Australia’s northeastern
coast.
20. Which character created by Coleridge makes the following account of her harrowing
experience ?
“Five warriors seized me yestermorn, Me,
even me, a maid forlorn :
They choked my cries with force and fright,
And tied me on a palfrey white”.
(1) Geraldine
(2) Christabel
(3) Christabel’s mother
(4) The maid who appeared in Christabel’s dream
The first part of Christabel poem By Samuel Taylor Coleridge, was written in the year 1797, at
Stowey, in the county of Somerset.
The second part after my return from Germany, in the year 1800, at Keswick, Cumberland. It
is probable that if the poem had been finished at either of the former periods, or if even the first
and second part had been published in the year 1800, the impression of its originality would
have been much greater than I dare at present expect. But for this, I have only my own
indolence to blame. The dates are mentioned for the exclusive purpose of precluding charges
of plagiarism or servile imitation from myself. For there is amongst us a set of critics, who
seem to hold, that every possible thought and image is traditional; who have no notion that
there are such things as fountains in the world, small as well as great and who would therefore
charitably derive every rill they behold flowing, from a perforation made in some other man's
tank. I am confident however, that as far as the present poem is concerned, the celebrated poets
whose writings I might be suspected of having imitated, either in particular passages, or in the
tone and the spirit of the whole, would be among the first to vindicate me from the charge, and
who, on any striking coincidence, would permit me to address them in this doggerel version of
two monkish Latin hexameters.
Yes mine and it is likewise yours;
But an if this will not do;
Let it be mine, good friend for I
Am the poorer of the two.
I have only to add, that the metre of the Christabel is not, properly speaking, irregular, though
it may seem so from its being founded on a new principle: namely, that of counting in each
line the accents, not the syllables. Though the latter may vary from seven to twelve, yet in each
line the accents will be found to be only four. Nevertheless this occasional variation in number
of syllables is not introduced wantonly, or for the mere ends of convenience, but in
correspondence with some transition, in the nature of the imagery or passion.
My sire is of a noble line,
And my name is Geraldine:
Five warriors seized me yestermorn,
Me, even me, a maid forlorn:
They choked my cries with force and fright,
And tied me on a palfrey white.
The palfrey was as fleet as wind,
And they rode furiously behind.
21. Which novel of Thomas Hardy begins with the sombre description of Egdon Heath ?
(1) Jude the Obscure (2) The Return of the Native
(3) Far from the Madding Crowd (4) Under the Greenwood Tree
Egdon Heath is the fictional part of Wessex (also fictional) in which The Return of the Native
takes place. It is a large, uninhabited expanse covered with gorse and heather and few trees.
One of the most prominent figures in Hardy’s The Return of the Native is not a human
character, but the physical landmark- Egdon Heath. The heath's central role is obvious from
the beginning. The novel opens with an extensive description of the heath at dusk. Hardy
begins by saying: “A Saturday afternoon in November was approaching the time of twilight,
and the vast tract of unenclosed wild known as Egdon Heath embrowned itself moment by
moment”.
Even though the main story focuses on the relationships between Eustacia Vye, Clym
Yeobright, Wildeve and Thomasin, the Heath is the central figure.
22. The metrical form of Gower’s Confessio Amantis is :
(1) iambic pentameter (2) anapestic trimeter
(3) octosyllabic couplets (4) trochaic tetrameter
Confessio amantis, late 14th-century poem by John Gower. The Confessio (begun about 1386)
runs to some 33,000 lines in octosyllabic couplets and takes the form of a collection of
exemplary tales of love placed within the framework of a lover’s confession to a priest of
Venus. The priest, Genius, instructs the poet, Amans, in the art of both courtly and Christian
love.
23. What happens to the lock of hair at the end of Alexander Pope’s The Rape of the Lock ?
(1) It is given back to its rightful owner.
(2) It is preserved in a monument.
(3) It turns into a star.
(4) It is presented to the poet as a token of gratitude.
The Rape of the Lock is a 'heroi-comical' mock-epic poem written by Alexander Pope. The
central character in the poem is Belinda, a young woman from the English aristocracy who, up
until the events of the poem, has led a carefree life of leisure and maintained a good reputation.
Belinda is considered a great beauty and is particularly admired for the two curly locks of hair
which hang down onto her neck. A man known only as the Baron desires to take one of the
locks so that he can boast of its possession. With the help of his lady friend Clarissa, he cuts
off one of the locks. A fop named Sir Plume is sent to ask the Baron to give it back but the
Baron refuses. A fight ensues, during which the lock disappears, rises up into the sky and is
transformed into a star.
The poem was inspired by real events. Lord Petre cut off a lock of hair from Arabella Fermor.
This led to a feud between the Petre abd Fermor families. Alexander Pope was asked to write a
poem about the events, in order to point out how trivial the matter really was and to put an end
to the feud.
24. The Bard. The Iron Lady.
The King. The above are
examples of :
(1) anacoluthon (2) aposiopesis (3) asyndenton (4) antonomasia
In rhetoric, antonomasia is a kind of metonymy in which an epithet or phrase takes the place of
a proper name, such as "the little corporal" for Napoleon I. Conversely, antonomasia can also
be using a proper name as an archetypal name, to express a generic idea.
ANTONOMASIA The Bard. The Iron Lady. The King. Ol’ Blue Eyes. When you
substitute a proper name for an epithet or a nickname, that’s antonomasia.
Rhetoric is often defined as “the art of language.” That might sound like a bit of a cliché
(which it is), but it’s actually quite a nice way of saying that rhetorical devices and figures of
speech can transform an ordinary piece of writing or an everyday conversation into something
much more memorable, evocative, and enjoyable. Hundreds of different rhetorical techniques
and turns of phrase have been identified and described over the centuries—of which the 21
listed here are only a fraction—but they’re all just as effective and just as useful when
employed successfully.
1. ADYNATON
You’ll no doubt have heard of hyperbole, in which an over-exaggeration is used for rhetorical
effect, like, “he’s as old as the hills,” “we died laughing,” or “hyperbole is the best thing ever.”
But adynaton is a particular form of hyperbole in which an exaggeration is taken to a ridiculous
and literally impossible extreme, like “when pigs fly!” or “when Hell freezes over!”
2. ANACOLUTHON
Often used in literature to create a stream-of-consciousness style in which a character’s
thoughts flit from one idea to the next, anacoluthon describes a sudden and unexpected break in
a sentence that leads to it being concluded in a different way than might have been expected.
Although it can sometimes be due to nothing more than a speaker losing their train of thought,
in practice anacoluthon can also be OH MY GOD I’VE LEFT THE GAS ON.
3. ANADIPLOSIS
Anadiplosis is an ingenious and memorable rhetorical device in which a repeated word or
phrase is used both at the end of one sentence or clause and at the beginning of the next. As
with practically all rhetorical devices, William Shakespeare liked using it (“She being none
of your flesh and blood, your flesh and blood has not offended the king”), but you can thank
George Lucas for what is now probably the best-known example: “Fear leads to anger. Anger
leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.”
4. ANTHYPOPHORA
You know when you pose a question for dramatic effect and then immediately answer it
yourself? That’s anthypophora.
5. ANTIMERIA
If you’ve ever friended or texted someone, emailed or DMed something, tabled a meeting
or motorwayed your way across country, then you’ll be familiar with antimeria, a rhetorical
device in which an existing word is used as if it were a different part of speech. More often
than not this involves using a noun as if it were a verb, a semantic process better known as
“verbing” (which is actually a perfect example of itself). Slang (and modern English in general,
for that matter) loves antimeria, but it is Shakespeare who remains the undisputed master of
it. Cake, drug, kitchen, squabble, ghost, blanket, graze, elbow, and crank were all only ever
used as nouns before he got hold of them.
6. ANTIPROSOPOPOEIA
Prosopopoeia is just a more formal name for personification, in which inanimate objects are
either described in human terms or given human characteristics. The opposite of that
is antiprosopopoeia, a figure of speech in which a person is compared to an inanimate object.
That might sound odd, but it’s actually a very effective form of metaphor able to confer a great
deal of detail or information in a clever and often witty way—think about what it means to call
someone a doormat, a tank, a firecracker, a mattress, or a garbage disposal and you’ll see
precisely how effective it can be.
7. ANTONOMASIA
The Bard. The Iron Lady. The King. Ol’ Blue Eyes. When you substitute a proper name for an
epithet or a nickname, that’s antonomasia.
8. APOSIOPESIS
In Act 2 of King Lear, the eponymous king rages against two of his daughters in a disjointed
speech that ends with the famous lines, “I will have such revenges on you both that all
the world shall—I will do such things—what they are yet, I know not, but they shall be the
terrors of the earth!” The point at which Lear’s threat of revenge trails off, restarts, and trails
off again is a perfect example of aposiopesis, a rhetorical ploy in which an idea is left unsaid or
a sentence is left incomplete purely for emphatic effect. Why I oughta…
9. ASTERISMOS
Right. Okay. Here goes. Asterismos is the use of a seemingly unnecessary word or phrase to
introduce what you’re about to say. Semantically it’s fairly pointless to say something like
“listen!” before you start talking to someone, because they are (or at least should be) already
listening. Rhetorically, however, asterismos is a seriously clever way of subconsciously
drawing attention to what you’re about to say.
10. ASYNDETON
“We got there, the weather was bad, we didn’t stay long, we got back in the car, we came
home, end of story.” When you deliberately miss out the conjunctions between successive
clauses, you’re left with a choppy and abrupt series of phrases that energetically push things
forward, an effect properly known as asyndeton. The opposite is called polysyndeton, when you
add more conjunctions to a phrase or clause than are strictly necessary, often with the effect of
intentionally dragging it out: “We ate and drank and talked and laughed and talked and laughed
and ate some more.”
11. CHIASMUS
Apart from the fact that it’s part of a great speech, one of the reasons why John F. Kennedy’s
famous “ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country” line
is so striking is that is a fine example of chiasmus, a clever rhetorical formation in which the
order of a pair of words or phrases in one clause (your country, you) is inverted in the next
(you, your country). This gives a rhythmic and instantly memorable criss-cross pattern, AB-
BA, which appropriately enough takes its name from the X-shaped Greek letter chi.
12. CONGERY
Congery is a form of tautology, the rhetorical use of repetition. It refers to a writer or speaker
using a number of different and successive words or phrases that all effectively mean the same
thing, purely to emphasise the point. That’s it. That’s all. Done. Finished. Finito.
13. DIALOGISMUS
In a dialogismus, a speaker either imagines what someone or something else might be thinking
(“I bet that guy’s thinking, ‘what am I doing here?’”), or else paraphrases someone’s earlier
words (“‘Don’t worry!’ she told me. ‘Everything will be fine!’”). In either case, the speaker
ends up talking not as themselves just for rhetorical effect.
14. DYSPHEMISM
If a euphemism is a nicer turn of phrase used in place of a more offensive or embarrassing one
(like “call of nature” or “bought the farm”), then a dysphemism is an offensive or detrimental
phrase deliberately used in place of a nicer one. This applies to everything from using an insult
instead of someone’s name, to phrases like frankenfood and junk food that try to influence what
we should think of genetically modified crops and take-out restaurants with just a few choice
words.
15. EUTREPISMUS
First, we need to explain what this is. Second, we need to show how it works. And third, we
need to explain what it achieves. Eutrepismus is the numbering or ordering of a series of
phrases that are all under consideration, and it’s used to structure arguments and speeches more
clearly, making them easier for an audience to take in and follow your train of thought.
16. EXPEDITIO
An expeditio is that instantly recognisable figure of speech in which you list a number of
alternatives, and then proceed to eliminate all but one of them. “We can go for Italian,
Mexican, or Chinese. But I had Chinese last night and you hate garlic, so it’s going to have to
be Mexican.”
17. HYPOCATASTASIS
When you say that something is like something else (“as busy as a bee”), that’s a simile. When
you say that something actually is something else (“a heart of stone”) that’s a metaphor. But
when you just go all out and label something as something that it actually isn’t (“You
chicken!”), that’s a hypocatastasis.
18. PLEONASM
When you use more words than are in actual fact absolutely really strictly necessary in order to
communicate and make your point effectively and efficiently, that’s a pleonasm. It needn’t be
as clumsy and as long-winded as that, of course, and more often than not the term pleonasm is
used to apply to what is otherwise called “semantic redundancy,” in which extra qualifying
words are used to force a point home—like “empty space,” “boiling hot,” or “totally unique.”
19. SYNECDOCHE
A synecdoche is a figure of speech in which a part or component of something is used to
represent that whole—like calling a car your “wheels,” the staff of a company the “hands,” or
the film industry as a whole “Hollywood.”
20. TMESIS
Tmesis is the proper name for that fan-bloody-tastic technique of splitting a word in half by
inserting another word inside it. More often than not, the word being inserted in the other is a
swearword (you can provide your own examples for that), but it needn’t always be—tmesis can
be used any-old-how you like.
21. ZEUGMA
There are several different forms and definitions of precisely what a zeugma is, but in basic
terms it describes a figure of speech in which one word (usually, but not always, a verb)
governs or is directly related to two or more other words in the same sentence. So you
can run out of time, and out of the room. You can have a go, and a laugh. And, to paraphrase
Charles Dickens, you can go home in floods of tears and a sedan-chair.
25. Which of the following novels by Margaret Atwood depicts the historical event of
the notorious murders committed in 1843 ?
(1) The Blind Assassin (2) Alias Grace
(3) Cats Eye (4) Oryx and Crake
Alias Grace is a novel of historical fiction by Canadian writer Margaret Atwood. First
published in 1996 by McClelland & Stewart, it won the Canadian Giller Prize and was
shortlisted for the Booker Prize. The story fictionalizes the notorious 1843 murders of Thomas
Kinnear and his housekeeper Nancy Montgomery in Upper Canada. Two servants of the
Kinnear household, Grace Marks and James McDermott, were convicted of the crime.
McDermott was hanged and Marks was sentenced to life imprisonment.
26. Which of the following poems by W. B. Yeats repudiates the sensual world in favour of
“the artifice of eternity”?
(1) “Under Ben Bulben” (2) “Among School Children”
(3) “Sailing to Byzantium” (4) “After Long Silence”
"Sailing to Byzantium" is one of Yeats's most inspired works, and one of the greatest poems of
the twentieth century. It is Yeats's definitive statement about the agony of old age and the
imaginative and spiritual work required to remain a vital individual even when the heart is
"fastened to a dying animal" (the body). Yeats's solution is to leave the country of the young
and travel to Byzantium, where the sages in the city's famous gold mosaics (completed mainly
during the sixth and seventh centuries) could become the "singing-masters" of his soul. He
hopes the sages will appear in fire and take him away from his body into an existence outside
time, where, like a great work of art, he could exist in "the artifice of eternity." In the
astonishing final stanza of the poem, he declares that once he is out of his body he will never
again appear in the form of a natural thing; rather, he will become a golden bird, sitting on a
golden tree, singing of the past ("what is past"), the present (that which is "passing"), and the
future (that which is "to come").
27. Which of the following characters in Moby Dick falls overboard and turns insane as a
result?
(1) Pip (2) Queequeg (3) Starbuck (4) Tashtego
Pip, a young black boy, character in Moby Dick, who fills the role of a cabin boy or jester on
the Pequod. Pip has a minimal role in the beginning of the narrative but becomes important
when he goes insane after being left to drift alone in the sea for some time.
Moby-Dick; or, The Whale is an 1851 novel by American writer Herman Melville. The book
is sailor Ishmael's narrative of the obsessive quest of Ahab, captain of the whaling ship
Pequod, for revenge on Moby Dick, the giant white sperm whale that on the ship's previous
voyage bit off Ahab's leg at the knee.
Moby-Dick was published to mixed reviews, was a commercial failure, and was out of print at
the time of the author's death in 1891. Its reputation as a "Great American Novel" was
established only in the 20th century, after the centennial of its author's birth. William Faulkner
said he wished he had written the book himself,[1] and D. H. Lawrence called it "one of the
strangest and most wonderful books in the world" and "the greatest book of the sea ever
written".[2] Its opening sentence, "Call me Ishmael", is among world literature's most famous.
28. Which of the following poems by Seamus Heaney is dedicated to the Irish poet Paul
Muldoon ?
(1) “The Loaning” (2) “The Sandpit” (3) “A Migration” (4) “Widgeon”
The poem is ‘Widgeon’ in the collection Station Island (1984). Heaney helped the young Paul
Muldoon get published after first meeting him in the late 1960s. His poem, in which a bird is
unnaturally made to sing, may be a comment on the forced lyricism of Muldoon’s verse.
Muldoon doesn’t only produce responses to the medieval in reaction to Heaney : ‘Immram’
from Muldoon’s previous volume Why Brownlee Left has debts to the medieval Irish Imram
Curaig Maile Duin (Voyag of Muldoon) via Tennyson, and (as Heaney notes) Yeats. There
may be another response to Heaney’s versions of the medieval in Muldoon’s brief poem ‘The
Briefcase’, a poem dedicated to Heany and a matching pair for Heaney’s ‘Widgeon’ (dedicate
to Muldoon).
29. In William Golding’s Lord of the Flies which of the following characters is put to death ?
(1) Piggy (2) Ralph (3) Simon (4) Jack
All of the characters in Lord of the Flies, by William Golding, are young boys ranging in age
from five or six to about thirteen. They are on an island after a plane crash, and there are no
adults to who they must answer. This environment provides the opportunity for almost
anything to happen, including murder. Three boys lose their lives in the course of this novel.
The first boy dies in a fire. Early in the story, the boys, in their enthusiasm, light a fire that gets
out of control. The fire becomes a conflagration which consumes a lot of land plus a little boy
with a mulberry birthmark. If he had not had this distinctive marking, it is possible no one
would have missed him.
The second death on the island is Simon's. On a dark, stormy night, Simon crawls out of the
forest and tries to warn the others that they are the thing they should be most afraid of--they are
the only beasts on the island. In a frenzied moment, all of the boys kill Simon, something they
would probably not have done in different circumstances.
Piggy is the last boy to die on the island. His death, unlike the other two, is deliberate. Roger
murder Piggy by dropping a huge boulder on him, crushing both Piggy and the conch.
Undoubtedly Ralph would have been the next boy to die if they had not been rescued. Ralph
weeps for "end of innocence, the darkness of man’s heart" at the end of the novel. Though the
boys will leave the island, what happened to all of the boys--and particularly the three who
died--will undoubtedly never be forgotten.
Piggy dies after he asks whether it is better to have rules or hunt and kill. After asking this
question, Roger rolls a boulder onto him. Simon dies after his conversation with the Lord of
the Flies, when he finds out the beast is inside all the boys. Excited by their hunt, the other
boys kill Simon as he tries to explain his finding. The other boy who dies on the island is the
boy with the mulberry birthmark.
30. In Canterbury Tales who has a red face full of sores ?
(1) the Summoner (2) the Shipman (3) the Yeoman (4) the Reeve
In Canterbury Tales, the Summoner, had a red face full of sores, ate onions, and drank too
much. He took bribes, carried a cake around like a shield, and wore a garland of flowe...
Pardoner of the General Prologue. He is depicted as smooth, delicate, lady-like and honey-
tongued, duplicitous in his supposedly holy dealings, extremely rich from his deceitful
profession and as a man whose very being is totally incongruous with his career as a servant of
the Church.
31. The pace of speech is called :
(1) syllable (2) loudness (3) tempo (4) pitch
32. Match the title with the author :
(a) Sexual Politics (i) Mary Ellman
(b) A Literature of Their Own (ii) Elaine Showalter
(c) Thinking About Women (iii) Helene Cixous
(d) The Laugh of the Medusa (iv) Kate Millet
Code :
(a) (b) (c) (d)
(1) (iv) (iii) (i) (ii)
(2) (iv) (ii) (i) (iii)
(3) (iii) (iv) (i) (ii)
(4) (iv) (i) (ii) (iii)
33. Which of the following historical events does Tennyson’s poem “The Charge of the
Light Brigade” describe ?
(1) The Battle of Hastings (2) The Wars of the Roses
(3) The Battle of Waterloo (4) The Crimean War
34. Northrop Frye’s influential work, Anatomy of Criticism includes, as the subtitle
indicates, four essays. Which of the following is NOT one among them ?
(1) “Archetypal Criticism: Theory of Myths”
(2) “Typological Criticism: Theory of Types”
(3) “Historical Criticism : Theory of Modes”
(4) “Ethical Criticism : Theory of Symbols”
35. “The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the
truth”. The above is an example of :
(1) ploce (2) epizeuxis (3) plurisignation (4) diaeresis
36. In Robert Browning’s “Andrea del Sarto”, with which of the following painters does
Andrea NOT
compare himself with ?
(1) Michelangelo (2) Leonardo da Vinci
(3) Rembrandt (4) Raphael
37. In Jonathan Swift’s Gullivers Travels Gulliver refers to William Dampier, the famous
writer of two voyages, as :
(1) master (2) brother (3) cousin (4) uncle
38. Who among the following is NOT a character in Pride and prejudice ?
(1) Mr. Darcy (2) Miss Bingley (3) Miss Bates (4) Mr. Collins
39. “All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players”,
occurs in Shakespeare’s As You Like It. Which character says the line ?
(1) Jacques (2) Celia (3) Rosalind (4) Touchstone
40. Which of the following rivers are mentioned in Andrew Marvell’s poem “To His Coy
Mistress” ?
(1) Thames and Rhine (2) Thames and Ganges
(3) Ganges and Humber (4) Thames and Humber
41. Which of the following images is NOT part of W.H. Auden’s poem “In Memory of W.B.
Yeats” ?
(1) Mercury sinking in the mouth of the dying day
(2) Wolves running through evergreen forests
(3) Silence invading the suburbs
(4) Memory scattering like the beads
42. Who among the following is the author of Steps to the Temple ?
(1) John Donne (2) Richard
Crashaw
(3) George Herbert (4) Henry Vaughan
43. Match the character with the work :
(a) Jim Dixon (i) Room at the Top
(b) Jimmy Porter (ii) Hurry on Down
(c) Joe Lampton (iii) Look Back In Anger
(d) Charles Lumley (iv) Lucky Jim
Code :
(a) (b) (c) (d)
(1) (iv) (iii) (i) (ii)
(2) (iv) (iii) (ii) (i)
(3) (iii) (iv) (i) (ii)
(4) (iii) (i) (ii) (iv)
44. In the opening book of The Prelude Wordsworth mentions famously that he was “fostered
alike by
and ”.
Pick out the right pair.
(a) nature
(b) fear
(c) imagination
(d) beauty
The right combination according to the code is :
(1) (a) and (c) (2) (d) and (b) (3) (d) and (c) (4) (a) and (d)
45. The title of Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s Petals of Blood is derived from a poem by Derek Walcott.
Identify the poem.
(1) “A Far Cry from Africa” (2) “The Swamp”
(3) “Goats and Monkeys” (4) “Midsummer”
46. Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko is set in __________.
(A) Surinam
(B) Abyssinia
(C) Egypt
(D) Assyria
https://www.gkseries.com/english-multiple-choice-questions-answers/6-english-multiple-choice-
questions-and-answers
ENGLISH
PAPER - II
1. In Frances Burney’s novel, Evelina, the eponymous heroine comes out in society in
two locations. They are :
(a) Bath
(b) Bristol
(c) Leeds
(d) London
The right combination according to the code is :
(1) (a) and (b) (2) (b) and (c) (3) (a) and (d) (4) (b) and (d)
Evelina or The History of a Young Lady's Entrance into the World is a novel written by
English writer Frances Burney and first published in 1778. The novel first came out secretly,
but the poet George Huddesford revealed that Burney was the writer of Evelina in what
Burney called a "vile poem". When it was known that Burney had written Evelina, it
immediately made her very famous. In this novel of letters, beautiful Evelina Anville, the
heroine, leaves her quiet home for the first time to go to London.
Evelina often feels paralyzed by public attention; even at the end of the novel she cannot avoid
London gossip. When the protagonist visits the spas at Bristol Hotwells,
Burney writes:“We went first to the pump-room. It was full of company! And the moment we
entered, I heard a murmuring of, “That’s she!” and, to my great confusion, I saw every eye
turned towards me. I pulled my hat over my face, and, by the assistance of Mrs. Selwyn,
endeavoured to screen myself from observation: nevertheless, I found I was so much the object
of general attention, that I entreated her to hasten away.”
2. Which of the following lines by Shakespeare is repeated several times in Virginia
Woolf’s novel Mrs. Dalloway ?
(1) “If music be the food of love, play on”.
(2) “Fear no more the heat of the sun, Nor the furious winter’s rages”.
(3) “Those are pearls that were his eyes”.
(4) “There is a tide in the affairs of man”.
Mrs Dalloway (published on 14 May 1925[1]) is a novel by Virginia Woolf that details a day
in the life of Clarissa Dalloway, a fictional high-society woman in post–First World War
England.
Clarissa Dalloway goes around London in the morning, getting ready to host a party that
evening. Mrs. Dalloway covers one day from morning to night in one woman's life. Clarissa
Dalloway, an upper-class housewife, walks through her London neighborhood to prepare for
the party she will host that evening. When she returns from flower shopping, an old suitor and
friend, Peter Walsh, drops by her house unexpectedly
3. Identify the important theatres of the Elizabethan period :
(a) Peacock
(b) Globe
(c) Swan
(d) Grand
The right combination according to the code is :
(1) (a) and (b) (2) (b) and (c) (3) (b) and (d) (4) (a) and (d)
The Globe Theatre was a theatre in London associated with William Shakespeare. It was built
in 1599 by Shakespeare's playing company, the Lord Chamberlain's Men, on land owned by
Thomas Brend and inherited by his son, Nicholas Brend and grandson Sir Matthew Brend, and
was destroyed by fire on 29 June 1613
A second Globe Theatre was built on the same site by June 1614 and closed by an Ordinance
issued on 6 September 1642.
A modern reconstruction of the Globe, named "Shakespeare's Globe", opened in 1997
approximately 750 feet (230 m) from the site of the original theatre.
From 1909, the current Gielgud Theatre was called "Globe Theatre", until it was renamed (in
honour of John Gielgud) in 1994.
The Swan Theatre was built by Francis Langley about 1594, south of the Thames, close to the
Rose, in Surrey. The Swan was a theatre in Southwark, London, England, built in 1595 on top
of a previously standing structure,during the first half of William Shakespeare's career.
4. In which poem does Matthew Arnold express the dilemma of :
“Wandering between two worlds, one dead, The other powerless to be born” ?
(1) “Self - Dependence” (2) “Stanzas from the Grande
Chartreuse”
(3) “To a Republican Friend” (4) “Dover Beach”
“Stanzas from the Grande Chartreuse” (1855) is a poem by Victorian poet and writer Matthew
Arnold. It has 210 lines divided into thirty-five stanzas and could have been drafted as early as
1851 when Arnold visited the Grand Chartreuse, a Carthusian monastery in southern France.
The poem revolves around the themes of monastery life, faith (and loss of faith), and religious
life.
Each stanza is six lines of iambic tetrameter and follows a rhyme scheme of “ababcc.” Iambic
tetrameter comprises four iambic feet (unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable
which makes a “foot”), whereas the more recognizable iambic pentameter (Shakespeare often
uses it) is the same pattern, but with five feet.
5. Who made the comment that, “All modern American literature comes from one book by
Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn” ?
(1) Henry James (2) William Faulkner
(3) Jack London (4) Ernest Hemingway
American author Mark Twain was called the "Father of American Literature" by William
Faulkner and it was a title well deserved.
With classic tales like The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,
Twain set the standard for childhood adventure.
Mark Twain was a defender of women’s rights and he was against the slavery, he hated the
hypocrisy and the oppression.
Moreover, great twentieth-century author Ernest Hemingway claimed all modern American
literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn. There was nothing
before. There has been nothing as good since.
There are still lessons for us to learn from his writings today. The work should be especially
noted for its temporally transcendent dealing with America’s most prominent cultural
conundrum: race.
All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn
SUMMARY: It was William Faulkner who called Mark Twain the “Father of American
Literature” for his classic writings, Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Adventures of Huckleberry
Finn.
Secondly, Ernest Hemingway wrote in an essay, “All modern American literature comes from
one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn.”
The title is well-deserving, according to them, because the books before and after them could
not compare.
So, there are two great writers confirming this title on Mark Twain and pointing tothe same
book that highlighted race, “America's most difficult cultural conundrum.”
Meaning of conundrum: a confusing and difficult problem or question.
6. The Emblem is a poetic genre containing a symbolic picture with a text and a verse
exposition popular in the early 17 TH century. Who popularised this kind of poetry through
the work Emblems [1635] ?
(1) Robert Southwell (2) Francis Quarles
(3) John Davies (4) Joseph Sylvester
Francis Quarles, (baptized May 8, 1592, Romford, Essex, England—died September 8, 1644,
London), religious poet remembered for his Emblemes, the most notable emblem book in
English.
The son of a minor court official, Quarles was educated at the University of Cambridge and at
Lincoln’s Inn, London. The wealth of Quarles’s family at first allowed him to live a leisured
and studious life, but in the late 1620s he served as secretary to Archbishop James Ussher in
Ireland. In 1640 Quarles became chronologer to London, virtually abandoning poetry to
employ his pen more lucratively. He died in relative poverty.
With Emblemes (1635) Quarles produced a new type of emblem book (traditionally a
collection of symbolic pictures, usually accompanied by mottoes and expositions in verse and
by a prose commentary). Each emblem consisted of a grotesque engraving and a paraphrase of
Scripture in ornate and metaphysical language and concluded with an epigrammatic verse.
Emblemes was so successful that Quarles produced another emblem book, Hieroglyphikes of
the Life of Man (1638). The two were printed together in 1639, and this work became possibly
the most popular book of verse of the 17th century.
7. Which Byron work begins thus :
“I want a hero: an uncommon want, when every year and month sends forth a new one
.........” ?
(1) Beppo (2) Cain (3) Manfred (4) Don Juan
SOMETIMES A POET FOR A HERO, SOUTHEY MIGHT HAVE ADDED, HAD HE
written Letters from England (1807) after Byron published the first installment of Don Juan
(1819). "I WANT a hero," (1) Byron advertises in the first line of canto I of Don Juan--one of
the most celebrated overtures not only in "Romantic" poetry but in the entire Western literary
tradition. (2) I use the word "advertises" literally, and not merely as a synonym for
"announces" or as a trope for the blatant publicity of Byron's epic complaint, because I will
argue that in announcing his "WANT"--i.e., his "lack" or "desire" (CPW 5.673n)--of and for a
hero, Byron is almost certainly parodying several types of early advertising and advertising-
related discourse: namely, the newspaper "want ad" and military recruitment propaganda.
8. The title of Sir Thomas Browne’s famous treatise, Religio Medici means :
(1) Religion of a Doctor (2) Religion of Magician
(3) Religion of Divinity (4) Religion of Meditation
Religio Medici, the most celebrated work of one of the great seventeenth century stylists of
English prose, Sir Thomas Browne (1605-1682). Although never originally intended for print,
this meditative essay proved to be immensely popular and established Browne's fame as a
writer. Variously described as a prose-poem, confession of faith and 'sort of private diary of
the soul', the Religio Medici ('The Religion of a Physician') is hard to categorize. Although an
exploration of religious thought, it cannot be described as theological, and although written by
a physician, neither is it medical or scientific; indeed, as Browne explores the central themes of
faith and charity, he acknowledges the need to keep religion separate from science for 'many
things are true in Divinity, which are neither inducible by reason nor confirmable by sense'.
9. Which among the following recent novels is a retelling of Sophocles’s Antigone ?
(1) Kamila Shamsie, Home Fire (2) Fiona Mozley, Elmet
(3) Zadie Smith, Swing Time (4) Mohsin Hamid, Exit West
A contemporary remaining of Sophocles' Antigone, Home Fire is an urgent, fiercely
compelling story of loyalties torn apart when love and politics collide – confirming Kamila
Shamsie as a master storyteller of our times.
10. Identify the two important works of Paul de Man from the following list :
(a) Blindness and Insight
(b) Allegories of Reading
(c) Theoretical Essays
(d) Criticism and Ideology
The right combination according to the code is :
(1) (a) and (b) (2) (a) and (c) (3) (b) and (c) (4) (b) and (d)
Paul de Man (b. 1919–d. 1983) was one of the most influential literary theorists of the second
half of the 20th century. He is most commonly associated with the so-called Yale School of
criticism, which included his colleagues J. Hillis Miller, Geoffrey Hartman, Harold Bloom,
and Jacques Derrida. De Man spent his formative years in Belgium before immigrating to the
United States after World War II in 1948. After some time working as a teacher of French,
freelance writer, and in clerical jobs, he gained his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1960
with an audacious dissertation titled “Mallarmé, Yeats and the Post-Romantic Predicament.”
He taught at Cornell University between 1960 and 1969. In the late 1960s he also held a post at
the University of Zurich and from 1968 to 1970 he was a professor of humanities at John
Hopkins University in Baltimore. He then moved to Yale, where in 1979 he was made Sterling
Professor of Comparative Literature and French. During his life de Man published two ground
breaking books, Blindness and Insight: Essays in the Rhetoric of Contemporary Criticism
(1971, revised edition 1983) and Allegories of Reading: Figural Language in Rousseau,
Nietzsche, Rilke, and Proust (1979).
11. Samuel Johnson denounced the metaphysical poets saying, “About the beginning of the
seventeenth century appeared a race of writers that may be termed the metaphysical
poets”. In the biography of which of the following poets in his Lives of Poets did
Johnson make this remark?
(1) John Dryden (2) Thomas Parnell
(3) Abraham Cowley (4) Alexander Pope
Metaphysical poets "A term used to group together certain 17th-century poets, usually
DONNE, MARVELL, VAUGHAN and TRAHERNE, though other figures like ABRAHAM
COWLEY are sometimes included in the list.
they share common characteristics of wit, inventiveness, and a love of elaborate stylistic
manoeuvres. Metaphysical concerns are the common subject of their poetry, which
investigates the world by rational discussion of its phenomena rather than by intuition or
mysticism.
DRYDEN was the first to apply the term to 17th-century poetry when, in 1693, he criticized
Donne: 'He affects the Metaphysics... in his amorous verses, where nature only should reign;
and perplexes the minds of the fair sex with nice speculations of philosophy, when he should
engage their hearts.' He disapproved of Donne's stylistic excesses, particularly his extravagant
conceits (or witty comparisons) and his tendency towards hyperbolic abstractions.
JOHNSON consolidated the argument in THE LIVES OF THE POETS, where he noted (with
reference to Cowley) that 'about the beginning of the seventeenth century appeared a race of
writers that may be termed the metaphysical poets'.
He went on to describe the far-fetched nature of their comparisons as 'a kind of discordia
concors; a combination of dissimilar images, or discovery of occult resemblances in things
apparently unlike'. Examples of the practice Johnson condemned would include the extended
comparison of love with astrology (by Donne) and of the soul with a drop of dew (by Marvell).
12. The terms of the contract are not
disagreeable to me. The above sentence
contains an example of :
(1) enumeratio (2) litotes (3) anaphora (4) metonymy
Enumeratio is a rhetorical term for the listing of details—a type of amplification and division.
Also called enumeration or dinumeratio. Etymology from the Latin, "counting up"
Litotes, derived from a Greek word meaning “simple,” is a figure of speech that employs an
understatement by using double negatives or, in other words, a positive statement expressed by
negating its opposite expressions.
o Litotes - makes an understatement by denying the opposite of a word that may have
been used - The terms of the contract are not disagreeable to me. Example #1: A Tale
of a Tub (By Jonathan Swift)
“I am not unaware how the productions of the Grub Street brotherhood have of late years
fallen under many prejudices.”
Anaphora is the repetition of a certain word or phrase at the beginning of successive lines of
writing or speech. It can be used in novels and short stories, but it's most commonly seen in
poetry, essays, and formal speeches.
o A Tale of Two Cities (By Charles Dickens)
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of
foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it
was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.”
o Tintern Abbey (By William Wordsworth)
This technique is employed by William Wordsworth in “Tintern Abbey“:
“Five years have passed;
Five summers, with the length of
Five long winters! and again I hear these waters…”
Metonymy is a type of figurative language in which an object or concept is referred to not by
its own name, but instead by the name of something closely associated with it. For example, in
"Wall Street prefers lower taxes," the New York City street that was the original home of the
New York Stock Exchange stands in for (or is a "metonym" for) the entire American financial
industry.
MARCELLUS: Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.
(Hamlet by William Shakespeare)
Shakespeare used metonymy in many of his plays and poems. This line from Hamlet is often
repeated. We are made to understand that “the state of Denmark” stands in for the whole royal
system and government. The rottenness is not widespread over the entire country, but instead
is limited to the dealings of those in power. In this case, the character Claudius has come to
power in a suspicious way, and those surrounding him feel unease at the new order.
13. Who is the author of the following
lines ? “To see a World in a Grain of
Sand And a Heaven in a Wild Flower
Hold Infinity in the palm of your
hand
And Eternity in an hour...”.
(1) Thomas Gray (2) William Blake (3) William Collins (4) William Cowper
This poem, To See a World in a Grain of Sand, by William Blake, has endless meanings.
The idea, the idea of seeing the world as one grain of sand, is quite amazing. Think of the
world as one, just one, not many. Everyone thinks the world is huge, the biggest thing, so to
think of the world as one small grain of sand, hasn't ever crossed my mind.]
The poem is called “Auguries of Innocence”, and was only published after William Blake’s
death.
It’s about imagination, vision, seeing the big picture from a detail. The grain of sand is tiny ad
the world is huge. The implication is that Heaven is also huge so that a single flower is a tiny
reflection of a much greater beauty. A sense of wonder and of awe. For Blake, these small
things, the grain of sand and the flower, each of them both reflects and contains aspects of the
whole, so that there is God in the flower and God that made the world made the grain of sand
which is itself a whole world.
The grain of sand and the flower become metaphors for hidden beauty and for divinity in the
mundane. It’s our lack of imagination that holds us back. But for Blake there’s also a spiritual
side, the child-like delight of looking at simple things connects with the divine - what T S Eliot
called The Unattended Moment, when, entirely absorbed and not thinking about yourself, you
are most truly yourself.
14. In Women in Love what is Winifred’s pekinese dog called ?
(1) Bismarck (2) Looloo (3) Lucky (4) Buddy
A woman in Love (1920) is a novel by British author D. H. Lawrence. It is a sequel to his
earlier novel The Rainbow (1915), and follows the continuing loves and lives of the Brangwen
sisters, Gudrun and Ursula.
Gudrun was very calm. She also did not take these things very seriously. A new occasion was
mostly spectacular to her. However, Winifred was a detached, ironic child, she would never
attach herself. Gudrun liked her and was intrigued by her. The first meetings went off with a
certain humiliating clumsiness. Neither Winifred nor her instructress had any social grace.
Soon, however, they met in a kind of make-belief world. Winifred did not notice human beings
unless they were like her, playful and slightly mocking. She would accept nothing but the
world of amusement, and the serious people of her life were the animals she had for pets. On
those she lavished, almost ironically, her affection and her companionship. To the rest of the
human scheme she submitted with a faint bored indifference.
She had a pekinese dog called Looloo, which she loved.
‘Let us draw Looloo,’ said Gudrun, ‘and see if we can get his Looliness, shall we?’
When does the story take place ? early 20th century
Where do the Brangwen sisters live ? Beldover, Shortlands is the Criches' home, Willery
Water is the little lake nearby, and Breadalby is Hermione's father's house.
Who are the two main couples in the story ? Ursula and Birkin, Gudrun and Gerald,
Rupert Birkin is a self-portrait of Lawrence himself !
What does Ursula Brangwen do ? teacher and her sister Gudrun is an artist.
What happens at the end of the book ? Gerald kills himself
Where do the two couples go on holiday ? They go on a skiing holiday in the Austrian Alps.
Who teaches Winnifred ? Gudrun teaches the child to paint and to work with clay.
When Gerald's father dies, who takes on the colliery business ? Gerald works really hard to
keep the business going.
What is Winnifred's pekinese dog called ? Bismarck is her rabbit's name, Laika is my dog's
name and the other one, well, you know who that one is Looloo!
What is the title of the book that comes before 'Women in Love'? 'Women in Love' is the
sequel to 'The Rainbow', and the others are just other books by Lawrence that I suggest you
read.
15. Which of the following New Critics put forward the idea of the ‘heresy of paraphrase’ ?
(1) Allen Tate (2) Cleanth Brooks
(3) W.K. Wimsatt (4) Monroe C Beardsley
Cleanth Brooks in this essay the “Heresy of Paraphrase” tries to put forward is that any
reductionist attempt to transform poetic meaning to a prose statement such as descriptive or
thematic interpretative is to do injustice to a poem. It is one's failure to recognize the poem as a
poem.
16. Edmund Spenser’s Colin Clout’s Come Home Again is a fine example of :
(1) carpe diem (2) sonnet sequence
(3) georgic poetry (4) pastoral eclogue
Colin Clouts Come Home Againe (also known as Colin Clouts Come Home Again) is a
pastoral poem by the English poet Edmund Spenser and published in 1595. It has been the
focus of little critical attention in comparison with the poet's other works such as The Faerie
Queene, yet it has been called the "greatest pastoral eclogue in the English language". In a
tradition going back to Petrarch, the pastoral eclogue contains a dialogue between shepherds
with a narrative or song as an inset, and which also can conceal allegories of a political or
ecclesiastical nature.
17. In An Essay of Dramatic Poesy whom does John Dryden refer to as “the most learned
and judicious Writer which any Theater ever had” ?
(1) John Webster (2) Christopher Marlowe
(3) Ben Jonson (4) William Shakespeare
Neander extends his criticism of French drama - into his reasoning for his preference for
Shakespeare over Ben Jonson. Shakespeare "had the largest and most comprehensive soul,"
while Jonson was "the most learned and judicious writer which any theater ever had."
18. Which of the following is NOT true of the ideal state in Thomas More’s Utopia ?
(1) Personal property, money and vice are effectively abolished.
(2) The root causes of crime, ambition and political conflict, are eliminated.
(3) There is only one religion guided by the principle of a benevolent Supreme Being.
(4) Its priesthood, which includes some women, is limited in number.
There is only one religion guided by the principle of a benevolent Supreme Being.
Utopia shelters numerous religions. The people therein have belief in a single god, but the
nature of that god is very different, ranging from a sort of animism, to worship of an ancient
hero, to worship of the sun or moon, to belief in a single omnipotent, ineffable god. This last
religion, according to Hyt-hloday, is in the process of becoming dominant, though all the
religions practice complete tolerance of all the other religions. After Hythloday and his fellows
spoke to the Utopians about Christ, a good number converted and began to learn as much as
they could. These converts also were treated with the utmost respect by the faithful of other
Utopian religions. In fact, the only belief that is not tolerated is atheism, as it is seen as
immoral.
19. This Australian poet was raised in New South Wales and grew up in rural Australian
landscape. In 1946 she published her first book of poems. In 1962, she became cofounder
and president of the Wild Life Preservation Society of Queensland and served as its
president several times thereafter. Identify the poet.
(A) Dorothy Hewett
(B) Nettie Palmer
(C) Judith Wright
(D) Amy Witting
Wright was born May 31, 1915, and raised outside Armidale in Australia’s most populous
state, New South Wales. She grew up in the rural Australian landscape, the oldest child of
three in a well-off and literate family. In 1946, the editor of Meanjin published Wright’s first
book of poems, The Moving Image, a major success in Australian poetry. Two years before,
Wright had met her husband, the philosopher J. P. McKinney, who was a large influence on
Wright’s work. Before McKinney died in 1966, he and Wright became the parents of one
daughter. In 1962, she became cofounder and president of the Wild Life Preservation Society
of Queensland and served as its president several times thereafter. In this capacity she was
instrumental in the effort to save The Great Barrier Reef located off Australia’s northeastern
coast.
20. Which character created by Coleridge makes the following account of her harrowing
experience ?
“Five warriors seized me yestermorn, Me,
even me, a maid forlorn :
They choked my cries with force and fright,
And tied me on a palfrey white”.
(1) Geraldine
(2) Christabel
(3) Christabel’s mother
(4) The maid who appeared in Christabel’s dream
The first part of Christabel poem By Samuel Taylor Coleridge, was written in the year 1797, at
Stowey, in the county of Somerset.
The second part after my return from Germany, in the year 1800, at Keswick, Cumberland. It
is probable that if the poem had been finished at either of the former periods, or if even the first
and second part had been published in the year 1800, the impression of its originality would
have been much greater than I dare at present expect. But for this, I have only my own
indolence to blame. The dates are mentioned for the exclusive purpose of precluding charges
of plagiarism or servile imitation from myself. For there is amongst us a set of critics, who
seem to hold, that every possible thought and image is traditional; who have no notion that
there are such things as fountains in the world, small as well as great and who would therefore
charitably derive every rill they behold flowing, from a perforation made in some other man's
tank. I am confident however, that as far as the present poem is concerned, the celebrated poets
whose writings I might be suspected of having imitated, either in particular passages, or in the
tone and the spirit of the whole, would be among the first to vindicate me from the charge, and
who, on any striking coincidence, would permit me to address them in this doggerel version of
two monkish Latin hexameters.
Yes mine and it is likewise yours;
But an if this will not do;
Let it be mine, good friend for I
Am the poorer of the two.
I have only to add, that the metre of the Christabel is not, properly speaking, irregular, though
it may seem so from its being founded on a new principle: namely, that of counting in each
line the accents, not the syllables. Though the latter may vary from seven to twelve, yet in each
line the accents will be found to be only four. Nevertheless this occasional variation in number
of syllables is not introduced wantonly, or for the mere ends of convenience, but in
correspondence with some transition, in the nature of the imagery or passion.
My sire is of a noble line,
And my name is Geraldine:
Five warriors seized me yestermorn,
Me, even me, a maid forlorn:
They choked my cries with force and fright,
And tied me on a palfrey white.
The palfrey was as fleet as wind,
And they rode furiously behind.
21. Which novel of Thomas Hardy begins with the sombre description of Egdon Heath ?
(1) Jude the Obscure (2) The Return of the Native
(3) Far from the Madding Crowd (4) Under the Greenwood Tree
Egdon Heath is the fictional part of Wessex (also fictional) in which The Return of the Native
takes place. It is a large, uninhabited expanse covered with gorse and heather and few trees.
One of the most prominent figures in Hardy’s The Return of the Native is not a human
character, but the physical landmark- Egdon Heath. The heath's central role is obvious from
the beginning. The novel opens with an extensive description of the heath at dusk. Hardy
begins by saying: “A Saturday afternoon in November was approaching the time of twilight,
and the vast tract of unenclosed wild known as Egdon Heath embrowned itself moment by
moment”.
Even though the main story focuses on the relationships between Eustacia Vye, Clym
Yeobright, Wildeve and Thomasin, the Heath is the central figure.
22. The metrical form of Gower’s Confessio Amantis is :
(1) iambic pentameter (2) anapestic trimeter
(3) octosyllabic couplets (4) trochaic tetrameter
Confessio amantis, late 14th-century poem by John Gower. The Confessio (begun about 1386)
runs to some 33,000 lines in octosyllabic couplets and takes the form of a collection of
exemplary tales of love placed within the framework of a lover’s confession to a priest of
Venus. The priest, Genius, instructs the poet, Amans, in the art of both courtly and Christian
love.
23. What happens to the lock of hair at the end of Alexander Pope’s The Rape of the Lock ?
(1) It is given back to its rightful owner.
(2) It is preserved in a monument.
(3) It turns into a star.
(4) It is presented to the poet as a token of gratitude.
The Rape of the Lock is a 'heroi-comical' mock-epic poem written by Alexander Pope. The
central character in the poem is Belinda, a young woman from the English aristocracy who, up
until the events of the poem, has led a carefree life of leisure and maintained a good reputation.
Belinda is considered a great beauty and is particularly admired for the two curly locks of hair
which hang down onto her neck. A man known only as the Baron desires to take one of the
locks so that he can boast of its possession. With the help of his lady friend Clarissa, he cuts
off one of the locks. A fop named Sir Plume is sent to ask the Baron to give it back but the
Baron refuses. A fight ensues, during which the lock disappears, rises up into the sky and is
transformed into a star.
The poem was inspired by real events. Lord Petre cut off a lock of hair from Arabella Fermor.
This led to a feud between the Petre abd Fermor families. Alexander Pope was asked to write a
poem about the events, in order to point out how trivial the matter really was and to put an end
to the feud.
24. The Bard. The Iron Lady.
The King. The above are
examples of :
(1) anacoluthon (2) aposiopesis (3) asyndenton (4) antonomasia
In rhetoric, antonomasia is a kind of metonymy in which an epithet or phrase takes the place of
a proper name, such as "the little corporal" for Napoleon I. Conversely, antonomasia can also
be using a proper name as an archetypal name, to express a generic idea.
ANTONOMASIA The Bard. The Iron Lady. The King. Ol’ Blue Eyes. When you
substitute a proper name for an epithet or a nickname, that’s antonomasia.
Rhetoric is often defined as “the art of language.” That might sound like a bit of a cliché
(which it is), but it’s actually quite a nice way of saying that rhetorical devices and figures of
speech can transform an ordinary piece of writing or an everyday conversation into something
much more memorable, evocative, and enjoyable. Hundreds of different rhetorical techniques
and turns of phrase have been identified and described over the centuries—of which the 21
listed here are only a fraction—but they’re all just as effective and just as useful when
employed successfully.
1. ADYNATON
You’ll no doubt have heard of hyperbole, in which an over-exaggeration is used for rhetorical
effect, like, “he’s as old as the hills,” “we died laughing,” or “hyperbole is the best thing ever.”
But adynaton is a particular form of hyperbole in which an exaggeration is taken to a ridiculous
and literally impossible extreme, like “when pigs fly!” or “when Hell freezes over!”
2. ANACOLUTHON
Often used in literature to create a stream-of-consciousness style in which a character’s
thoughts flit from one idea to the next, anacoluthon describes a sudden and unexpected break in
a sentence that leads to it being concluded in a different way than might have been expected.
Although it can sometimes be due to nothing more than a speaker losing their train of thought,
in practice anacoluthon can also be OH MY GOD I’VE LEFT THE GAS ON.
3. ANADIPLOSIS
Anadiplosis is an ingenious and memorable rhetorical device in which a repeated word or
phrase is used both at the end of one sentence or clause and at the beginning of the next. As
with practically all rhetorical devices, William Shakespeare liked using it (“She being none
of your flesh and blood, your flesh and blood has not offended the king”), but you can thank
George Lucas for what is now probably the best-known example: “Fear leads to anger. Anger
leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.”
4. ANTHYPOPHORA
You know when you pose a question for dramatic effect and then immediately answer it
yourself? That’s anthypophora.
5. ANTIMERIA
If you’ve ever friended or texted someone, emailed or DMed something, tabled a meeting
or motorwayed your way across country, then you’ll be familiar with antimeria, a rhetorical
device in which an existing word is used as if it were a different part of speech. More often
than not this involves using a noun as if it were a verb, a semantic process better known as
“verbing” (which is actually a perfect example of itself). Slang (and modern English in general,
for that matter) loves antimeria, but it is Shakespeare who remains the undisputed master of
it. Cake, drug, kitchen, squabble, ghost, blanket, graze, elbow, and crank were all only ever
used as nouns before he got hold of them.
6. ANTIPROSOPOPOEIA
Prosopopoeia is just a more formal name for personification, in which inanimate objects are
either described in human terms or given human characteristics. The opposite of that
is antiprosopopoeia, a figure of speech in which a person is compared to an inanimate object.
That might sound odd, but it’s actually a very effective form of metaphor able to confer a great
deal of detail or information in a clever and often witty way—think about what it means to call
someone a doormat, a tank, a firecracker, a mattress, or a garbage disposal and you’ll see
precisely how effective it can be.
7. ANTONOMASIA
The Bard. The Iron Lady. The King. Ol’ Blue Eyes. When you substitute a proper name for an
epithet or a nickname, that’s antonomasia.
8. APOSIOPESIS
In Act 2 of King Lear, the eponymous king rages against two of his daughters in a disjointed
speech that ends with the famous lines, “I will have such revenges on you both that all
the world shall—I will do such things—what they are yet, I know not, but they shall be the
terrors of the earth!” The point at which Lear’s threat of revenge trails off, restarts, and trails
off again is a perfect example of aposiopesis, a rhetorical ploy in which an idea is left unsaid or
a sentence is left incomplete purely for emphatic effect. Why I oughta…
9. ASTERISMOS
Right. Okay. Here goes. Asterismos is the use of a seemingly unnecessary word or phrase to
introduce what you’re about to say. Semantically it’s fairly pointless to say something like
“listen!” before you start talking to someone, because they are (or at least should be) already
listening. Rhetorically, however, asterismos is a seriously clever way of subconsciously
drawing attention to what you’re about to say.
10. ASYNDETON
“We got there, the weather was bad, we didn’t stay long, we got back in the car, we came
home, end of story.” When you deliberately miss out the conjunctions between successive
clauses, you’re left with a choppy and abrupt series of phrases that energetically push things
forward, an effect properly known as asyndeton. The opposite is called polysyndeton, when you
add more conjunctions to a phrase or clause than are strictly necessary, often with the effect of
intentionally dragging it out: “We ate and drank and talked and laughed and talked and laughed
and ate some more.”
11. CHIASMUS
Apart from the fact that it’s part of a great speech, one of the reasons why John F. Kennedy’s
famous “ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country” line
is so striking is that is a fine example of chiasmus, a clever rhetorical formation in which the
order of a pair of words or phrases in one clause (your country, you) is inverted in the next
(you, your country). This gives a rhythmic and instantly memorable criss-cross pattern, AB-
BA, which appropriately enough takes its name from the X-shaped Greek letter chi.
12. CONGERY
Congery is a form of tautology, the rhetorical use of repetition. It refers to a writer or speaker
using a number of different and successive words or phrases that all effectively mean the same
thing, purely to emphasise the point. That’s it. That’s all. Done. Finished. Finito.
13. DIALOGISMUS
In a dialogismus, a speaker either imagines what someone or something else might be thinking
(“I bet that guy’s thinking, ‘what am I doing here?’”), or else paraphrases someone’s earlier
words (“‘Don’t worry!’ she told me. ‘Everything will be fine!’”). In either case, the speaker
ends up talking not as themselves just for rhetorical effect.
14. DYSPHEMISM
If a euphemism is a nicer turn of phrase used in place of a more offensive or embarrassing one
(like “call of nature” or “bought the farm”), then a dysphemism is an offensive or detrimental
phrase deliberately used in place of a nicer one. This applies to everything from using an insult
instead of someone’s name, to phrases like frankenfood and junk food that try to influence what
we should think of genetically modified crops and take-out restaurants with just a few choice
words.
15. EUTREPISMUS
First, we need to explain what this is. Second, we need to show how it works. And third, we
need to explain what it achieves. Eutrepismus is the numbering or ordering of a series of
phrases that are all under consideration, and it’s used to structure arguments and speeches more
clearly, making them easier for an audience to take in and follow your train of thought.
16. EXPEDITIO
An expeditio is that instantly recognisable figure of speech in which you list a number of
alternatives, and then proceed to eliminate all but one of them. “We can go for Italian,
Mexican, or Chinese. But I had Chinese last night and you hate garlic, so it’s going to have to
be Mexican.”
17. HYPOCATASTASIS
When you say that something is like something else (“as busy as a bee”), that’s a simile. When
you say that something actually is something else (“a heart of stone”) that’s a metaphor. But
when you just go all out and label something as something that it actually isn’t (“You
chicken!”), that’s a hypocatastasis.
18. PLEONASM
When you use more words than are in actual fact absolutely really strictly necessary in order to
communicate and make your point effectively and efficiently, that’s a pleonasm. It needn’t be
as clumsy and as long-winded as that, of course, and more often than not the term pleonasm is
used to apply to what is otherwise called “semantic redundancy,” in which extra qualifying
words are used to force a point home—like “empty space,” “boiling hot,” or “totally unique.”
19. SYNECDOCHE
A synecdoche is a figure of speech in which a part or component of something is used to
represent that whole—like calling a car your “wheels,” the staff of a company the “hands,” or
the film industry as a whole “Hollywood.”
20. TMESIS
Tmesis is the proper name for that fan-bloody-tastic technique of splitting a word in half by
inserting another word inside it. More often than not, the word being inserted in the other is a
swearword (you can provide your own examples for that), but it needn’t always be—tmesis can
be used any-old-how you like.
21. ZEUGMA
There are several different forms and definitions of precisely what a zeugma is, but in basic
terms it describes a figure of speech in which one word (usually, but not always, a verb)
governs or is directly related to two or more other words in the same sentence. So you
can run out of time, and out of the room. You can have a go, and a laugh. And, to paraphrase
Charles Dickens, you can go home in floods of tears and a sedan-chair.
25. Which of the following novels by Margaret Atwood depicts the historical event of
the notorious murders committed in 1843 ?
(1) The Blind Assassin (2) Alias Grace
(3) Cats Eye (4) Oryx and Crake
Alias Grace is a novel of historical fiction by Canadian writer Margaret Atwood. First
published in 1996 by McClelland & Stewart, it won the Canadian Giller Prize and was
shortlisted for the Booker Prize. The story fictionalizes the notorious 1843 murders of Thomas
Kinnear and his housekeeper Nancy Montgomery in Upper Canada. Two servants of the
Kinnear household, Grace Marks and James McDermott, were convicted of the crime.
McDermott was hanged and Marks was sentenced to life imprisonment.
26. Which of the following poems by W. B. Yeats repudiates the sensual world in favour of
“the artifice of eternity”?
(1) “Under Ben Bulben” (2) “Among School Children”
(3) “Sailing to Byzantium” (4) “After Long Silence”
"Sailing to Byzantium" is one of Yeats's most inspired works, and one of the greatest poems of
the twentieth century. It is Yeats's definitive statement about the agony of old age and the
imaginative and spiritual work required to remain a vital individual even when the heart is
"fastened to a dying animal" (the body). Yeats's solution is to leave the country of the young
and travel to Byzantium, where the sages in the city's famous gold mosaics (completed mainly
during the sixth and seventh centuries) could become the "singing-masters" of his soul. He
hopes the sages will appear in fire and take him away from his body into an existence outside
time, where, like a great work of art, he could exist in "the artifice of eternity." In the
astonishing final stanza of the poem, he declares that once he is out of his body he will never
again appear in the form of a natural thing; rather, he will become a golden bird, sitting on a
golden tree, singing of the past ("what is past"), the present (that which is "passing"), and the
future (that which is "to come").
27. Which of the following characters in Moby Dick falls overboard and turns insane as a
result?
(1) Pip (2) Queequeg (3) Starbuck (4) Tashtego
Pip, a young black boy, character in Moby Dick, who fills the role of a cabin boy or jester on
the Pequod. Pip has a minimal role in the beginning of the narrative but becomes important
when he goes insane after being left to drift alone in the sea for some time.
Moby-Dick; or, The Whale is an 1851 novel by American writer Herman Melville. The book
is sailor Ishmael's narrative of the obsessive quest of Ahab, captain of the whaling ship
Pequod, for revenge on Moby Dick, the giant white sperm whale that on the ship's previous
voyage bit off Ahab's leg at the knee.
Moby-Dick was published to mixed reviews, was a commercial failure, and was out of print at
the time of the author's death in 1891. Its reputation as a "Great American Novel" was
established only in the 20th century, after the centennial of its author's birth. William Faulkner
said he wished he had written the book himself,[1] and D. H. Lawrence called it "one of the
strangest and most wonderful books in the world" and "the greatest book of the sea ever
written".[2] Its opening sentence, "Call me Ishmael", is among world literature's most famous.
28. Which of the following poems by Seamus Heaney is dedicated to the Irish poet Paul
Muldoon ?
(1) “The Loaning” (2) “The Sandpit” (3) “A Migration” (4) “Widgeon”
The poem is ‘Widgeon’ in the collection Station Island (1984). Heaney helped the young Paul
Muldoon get published after first meeting him in the late 1960s. His poem, in which a bird is
unnaturally made to sing, may be a comment on the forced lyricism of Muldoon’s verse.
Muldoon doesn’t only produce responses to the medieval in reaction to Heaney : ‘Immram’
from Muldoon’s previous volume Why Brownlee Left has debts to the medieval Irish Imram
Curaig Maile Duin (Voyag of Muldoon) via Tennyson, and (as Heaney notes) Yeats. There
may be another response to Heaney’s versions of the medieval in Muldoon’s brief poem ‘The
Briefcase’, a poem dedicated to Heany and a matching pair for Heaney’s ‘Widgeon’ (dedicate
to Muldoon).
29. In William Golding’s Lord of the Flies which of the following characters is put to death ?
(1) Piggy (2) Ralph (3) Simon (4) Jack
All of the characters in Lord of the Flies, by William Golding, are young boys ranging in age
from five or six to about thirteen. They are on an island after a plane crash, and there are no
adults to who they must answer. This environment provides the opportunity for almost
anything to happen, including murder. Three boys lose their lives in the course of this novel.
The first boy dies in a fire. Early in the story, the boys, in their enthusiasm, light a fire that gets
out of control. The fire becomes a conflagration which consumes a lot of land plus a little boy
with a mulberry birthmark. If he had not had this distinctive marking, it is possible no one
would have missed him.
The second death on the island is Simon's. On a dark, stormy night, Simon crawls out of the
forest and tries to warn the others that they are the thing they should be most afraid of--they are
the only beasts on the island. In a frenzied moment, all of the boys kill Simon, something they
would probably not have done in different circumstances.
Piggy is the last boy to die on the island. His death, unlike the other two, is deliberate. Roger
murder Piggy by dropping a huge boulder on him, crushing both Piggy and the conch.
Undoubtedly Ralph would have been the next boy to die if they had not been rescued. Ralph
weeps for "end of innocence, the darkness of man’s heart" at the end of the novel. Though the
boys will leave the island, what happened to all of the boys--and particularly the three who
died--will undoubtedly never be forgotten.
Piggy dies after he asks whether it is better to have rules or hunt and kill. After asking this
question, Roger rolls a boulder onto him. Simon dies after his conversation with the Lord of
the Flies, when he finds out the beast is inside all the boys. Excited by their hunt, the other
boys kill Simon as he tries to explain his finding. The other boy who dies on the island is the
boy with the mulberry birthmark.
30. In Canterbury Tales who has a red face full of sores ?
(1) the Summoner (2) the Shipman (3) the Yeoman (4) the Reeve
In Canterbury Tales, the Summoner, had a red face full of sores, ate onions, and drank too
much. He took bribes, carried a cake around like a shield, and wore a garland of flowe...
Pardoner of the General Prologue. He is depicted as smooth, delicate, lady-like and honey-
tongued, duplicitous in his supposedly holy dealings, extremely rich from his deceitful
profession and as a man whose very being is totally incongruous with his career as a servant of
the Church.
31. The pace of speech is called :
(1) syllable (2) loudness (3) tempo (4) pitch
32. Match the title with the author :
(a) Sexual Politics (i) Mary Ellman
(b) A Literature of Their Own (ii) Elaine Showalter
(c) Thinking About Women (iii) Helene Cixous
(d) The Laugh of the Medusa (iv) Kate Millet
Code :
(a) (b) (c) (d)
(1) (iv) (iii) (i) (ii)
(2) (iv) (ii) (i) (iii)
(3) (iii) (iv) (i) (ii)
(4) (iv) (i) (ii) (iii)
33. Which of the following historical events does Tennyson’s poem “The Charge of the
Light Brigade” describe ?
(1) The Battle of Hastings (2) The Wars of the Roses
(3) The Battle of Waterloo (4) The Crimean War
34. Northrop Frye’s influential work, Anatomy of Criticism includes, as the subtitle
indicates, four essays. Which of the following is NOT one among them ?
(1) “Archetypal Criticism: Theory of Myths”
(2) “Typological Criticism: Theory of Types”
(3) “Historical Criticism : Theory of Modes”
(4) “Ethical Criticism : Theory of Symbols”
35. “The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the
truth”. The above is an example of :
(1) ploce (2) epizeuxis (3) plurisignation (4) diaeresis
36. In Robert Browning’s “Andrea del Sarto”, with which of the following painters does
Andrea NOT
compare himself with ?
(1) Michelangelo (2) Leonardo da Vinci
(3) Rembrandt (4) Raphael
37. In Jonathan Swift’s Gullivers Travels Gulliver refers to William Dampier, the famous
writer of two voyages, as :
(1) master (2) brother (3) cousin (4) uncle
38. Who among the following is NOT a character in Pride and prejudice ?
(1) Mr. Darcy (2) Miss Bingley (3) Miss Bates (4) Mr. Collins
39. “All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players”,
occurs in Shakespeare’s As You Like It. Which character says the line ?
(1) Jacques (2) Celia (3) Rosalind (4) Touchstone
40. Which of the following rivers are mentioned in Andrew Marvell’s poem “To His Coy
Mistress” ?
(1) Thames and Rhine (2) Thames and Ganges
(3) Ganges and Humber (4) Thames and Humber
41. Which of the following images is NOT part of W.H. Auden’s poem “In Memory of W.B.
Yeats” ?
(1) Mercury sinking in the mouth of the dying day
(2) Wolves running through evergreen forests
(3) Silence invading the suburbs
(4) Memory scattering like the beads
42. Who among the following is the author of Steps to the Temple ?
(1) John Donne (2) Richard
Crashaw
(3) George Herbert (4) Henry Vaughan
43. Match the character with the work :
(a) Jim Dixon (i) Room at the Top
(b) Jimmy Porter (ii) Hurry on Down
(c) Joe Lampton (iii) Look Back In Anger
(d) Charles Lumley (iv) Lucky Jim
Code :
(a) (b) (c) (d)
(1) (iv) (iii) (i) (ii)
(2) (iv) (iii) (ii) (i)
(3) (iii) (iv) (i) (ii)
(4) (iii) (i) (ii) (iv)
44. In the opening book of The Prelude Wordsworth mentions famously that he was “fostered
alike by
and ”.
Pick out the right pair.
(a) nature
(b) fear
(c) imagination
(d) beauty
The right combination according to the code is :
(1) (a) and (c) (2) (d) and (b) (3) (d) and (c) (4) (a) and (d)
45. The title of Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s Petals of Blood is derived from a poem by Derek Walcott.
Identify the poem.
(1) “A Far Cry from Africa” (2) “The Swamp”
(3) “Goats and Monkeys” (4) “Midsummer”
46. Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko is set in __________.
(A) Surinam
(B) Abyssinia
(C) Egypt
(D) Assyria
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