Author name: amanpreetkaur6742@gmail.com

June 2012

UGC NET English June 2012 : Paper 3 (Solved Paper with Answers)

Q.1 In Ben Jonson’s Volpone, the animal imagery includes

(a) the fox and the vulture

(b) the fly and the cockroach

(c) the fly, the crow and the raven

(d) the fox, the vulture and the goat

(A) (a) and (b) are correct.

(B) only (d) is correct.

(C) (b) and (d) are correct.

(D) (a) and (c) are correct.

Answer: D

Q.2 Salman Rushdie’s “Imaginary Homelands” is _______.

(A) a discussion of imperialist assumptions.

(B) an essay that propounds an anti essentialist view of place.

(C) an existential lament on triumphant colonialism.

(D) an orientalist description of his favourite homelands.

Answer: B

Q.3 Identify the incorrect statement below :

(a) BASIC was an experiment initiated by C. K. Ogden and I. A. Richards from 1926 to about 1940.

(b) Expanded, BASIC read : Broadly Ascertained Scientific International Course.

(c) BASIC English was an attempt to reduce the number of essential words to 850.

(d) While keeping to normal constructions, BASIC failed as an experiment because its

documents were far too complicated and technical to understand.

(A) (a) ; (b)

(B) (b) ; (d)

(C) (a) ; (c)

(D) (c) ; (d)

Answer: B

Q.4 Items in a published book appear in the following order :

(A) Index, Copyright Page, Bibliography, Footnotes

(B) Copyright Page, Bibliography, Index, Footnotes

(C) Copyright Page, Footnotes, Bibliography, Index

(D) Bibliography, Copyright Page, Index, Footnotes

Answer: C

Q.5 Match the following :

(I) James Thomson, Oliver Goldsmith,William Cowper, George Crabbe

(II) George Herbert, Henry Vaughan, Andrew Marvell, Abraham Cowley, John Donne

(III) Rupert Brooke, Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon, Edmund Blunden, Robert Graves.

(IV) W. H. Davies, Walter de la Mare, John Drinkwater, Rupert Brooke

(a) Metaphysical poets

(b) Transitional Poets

(c) War Poets

(d) Georgians

(I) (II) (III) (IV)

(A) (d) (a) (c) (b)

(B) (d) (b) (d) (a)

(C) (b) (a) (c) (d)

(D) (a) (c) (d) (b)

Answer: C

Q.6 The following phrases from Shakespeare have become the titles of famous works. Identify the correctly matched group.

(I) Pale Fire

(II) The Sound and the Fury

(III) Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead

(IV) Under the Greenwood Tree

(V) Of Cakes and Ale

(a) ThomasHardy

(b) Somerset Maugham

(c) William Faulkner

(d) Tom Stoppard

(e) Vladimir Nabokov

(I) (II) (III) (IV) (V)

(A) (e) (d) (c) (a) (b)

(B) (d) (e) (b) (c) (a)

(C) (e) (c) (d) (a) (b)

(D) (c) (d) (b) (e) (a)

Answer: C

Q.7 Identify the statement that is NOT TRUE among those that explain “stagedirections” in drama.

(A) Stage directions inform readers how to stage, perform or imagine the play.

(B) The place, time of action, design of the set and at times characters’actions or tone of voice are indicated by stage directions.

(C) Stage directions are often italicized in the text of a play in order to be spoken aloud.

(D) Stage directions may appear at the beginning of a play, before a scene or attached to a line of dialogue.

Answer: C

Q.8 The emergence of the concept of “World literature” is associated with :

(a) Friedrich Schiller

(b) Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

(c) Johann Goltfried Herder

(d) Immanuel Kant

(A) (a) ; (b)

(B) (c) ; (d)

(C) (b) ; (c)

(D) (a) ; (d)

Answer: C

Q.9 Günter Grass’s Tin Drum is part of a trilogy known as the Danzig trilogy.

The other two novels are :

(A) The Flounder and Dog Years

(B) The Rat and Cat and Mouse

(C) Cat and Mouse and Dog Years

(D) Crabwalk and The Rat

Answer: C

Q.10 The hostess proudly announces that the family can afford a servant and her daughters have nothing to do with the kitchen. Who is the proud mother in this Jane Austen novel ?

(A) Mrs. Morland

(B) Lady Catherine de Burgh

(C) Mrs. Bennet

(D) Mrs. Dashwood

Answer: C

Q.11 When Keats writes about the “beaker full” of “The blushful Hippocrene”,Hippocrene is :

(A) the fountain of the horse

(B) a spring sacred to the Muses

(C) Mount Helicon produced from a blow of Pegasus

(D) Both (A) ; (B)

Answer: D

Q.12 Which of the following statements on The Prelude by William Wordsworthis/are not true ?

(a) The Prelude was published posthumously.

(b) In this poem, Wordsworth records his development as a poet.

(c) The poem runs to 14 books; at crucial stages the poet celebrates the sublime natural scenery in developing his spiritual, moral and imaginative nature.

(d) Poems like “Michael”, “The Old Cumberland Beggar”, “She dwelt among the untrodden ways”, “Nutting” etc. are the highlights of this volume.

(A) (a) to (d) are true.

(B) (a) is not true.

(C) (d) is not true.

(D) Only (c) is true.

Answer: C

Q.13 Assertion (A) : At the end of Heart of Darkness, Marlow tells a lie to the Intended about Kurtz when he tells her “The last word he pronounced was – your name”.

Reason (R) : Marlow tells this lie because he is secretly in love with the Intended and tells her what she wants to hear.

(A) Both (A) and (R) are true ; (R) is the correct explanation.

(B) Both (A) and (R) are true, but (R) is not the correct explanation.

(C) (A) is true, but (R) is false.

(D) (A) is false, but (R) is true.

Answer: B

Q.14 Ear-training in ELT is easily achieved by :

(a) composition

(b) dictation

(c) cloze tests

(d) listening exercises

(e) précis writing

(A) (c) and (e)

(B) (a), (c) and (e)

(C) (b), (c) and (d)

(D) (b) and (d)

Answer: D

Q.15 William Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, Antony and Cleopatra and Coriolanus

are based on _______.

(A) Holinshed’s Chronicles

(B) Folk-tales and legends

(C) Older Roman Plays

(D) Plutarch’s Lives

Answer: D

Q.16 The basic concept that creation was ordered, that every species exists in a hierarchy of status, from God to the lowest creature, was prevalent in the Renaissance. In this hierarchical continuum, man occupies the middle position between the animal kinds and the angels. This world view is known as :

(A) Humanism

(B) The Enlightenment

(C) The Great Chain of Being

(D) Calvinism

Answer: C

Q.17 In Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse the lighthouse does not symbolize :

(A) permanence at the heart of change.

(B) change in the unchanging world.

(C) celebration of life in the heart of death.

(D) celebration of order in the heart of chaos.

Answer: B

Q.18 “Can one imagine any private soldier, in the nineties or now, reading Barrack-Room Ballads and feeling that here was a writer who spoke for him ? It is very hard to do so. [….] When he is writing not of British but of “loyal” Indians he carries the ‘Salaam, Sahib’motif to sometimes disgusting lengths. Yet it remains true that he has far more interest in the common soldier, far more anxiety that he shall get a fair deal, than most of the “liberals” of his day and our own. He sees that the soldier is neglected, meanly underpaid and hypocritically despised by the people whose incomes he safeguards”.

(A) This is E. M. Forster’s “India, Again”.

(B) This is Malcolm Muggeridge on E. M. Forster’s India.

(C) This is T. S. Eliot on Rudyard Kipling.

(D) This is George Orwell on Rudyard Kipling.

Answer: D

Q.19 In the well-known poem “ To his coy mistress”, the word coy means

(A) shy

(B) timid

(C) voluptuous

(D) sensuous

Answer: A

Q.20 From the following list, identify “backformation”: Sulk, bulk, stoke, poke, swindle, bundle.

(A) Sulk, bulk, stoke, poke

(B) Stoke, poke, swindle, bundle

(C) Sulk, stoke, bundle

(D) Bulk, poke, bundle

Answer: * (Marks given to all)

Q.21 “It blurs distinctions among literary, non-literary and cultural texts, showing how all three intercirculate, share in, and mutually constitute each other.” Whatdoes it in this statement stand for ?

(A) Marxism

(B) Structuralism

(C) Formalism

(D) New Historicism

Answer: D

Q.22 For, though, I’ve no idea. What this accoutred frowsty ____ is worth,

It pleases me to stand in silence here. (Fill in the blank)

(A) bar

(B) barn

(C) attic

(D) alcove

Answer: B

Q.23 Which of the following novels is NOT a Partition novel ?

(A) Azadi

(B) Tamas

(C) Clear Light of the Day

(D) That Long Silence

Answer: D

Q.24 Of the following characters, which one does not belong to A House for Mr. Biswas ?

(A) Raghu

(B) Ralph Singh

(C) Dehuti

(D) Tara

Answer: B

Q.25 In English literature, the trope of the vampire was used for the first time by :

(A) Matthew Gregory Lewis

(B) John Polidori

(C) John Stagg

(D) Bram Stoker

Answer: C

Q.26 Why is “Universal grammar” so called ?

(A) It is a set of basic grammatical principles universally followed and easily recognized by people.

(B) It is a set of basic grammatical principles assumed to be fundamental to all natural

languages.

(C) It is a set of advanced grammatical principles assumed to be fundamental to all natural languages.

(D) It is a set of universally respected practices that have come, in time, to be known as “grammar”.

Answer: B

Q.27 Identify the novel with the wrong subtitle listed below :

(A) Middlemarch, a Study of Provincial Life

(B) Tess of the D’Urbervilles, A Pure Woman

(C) The Mayor of Casterbridge, A Man of Character

(D) Felix Holt, the Socialist

Answer: D

Q.28 Match List – I with List – II.

(I) David Malouf

(II) Patrick White

(III) Peter Carey

(IV) Colin Johnson

(a) The Solid Mandala

(b) Wild Cat Falling

(c) Remembering Babylon

(d) True History of the Kelly Gang

(I) (II) (III) (IV)

(A) (a) (c) (b) (d)

(B) (c) (a) (d) (b)

(C) (b) (c) (a) (d)

(D) (c) (d) (b) (a)

Answer: B

Q.29 The opening sentence of Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, “Happy families are all alike, every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” The specific cause of the unhappiness in Oblonsky’s house was the husband’s affair with :

(A) a kitchen – maid

(B) an English governess

(C) a French governess

(D) a socialite

Answer: C

Q.30 This periodical had the avowed intention “to enliven morality with wit and to temper wit with morality… to bring philosophy out of the closets and libraries, schools and colleges, to dwell in clubs and assemblies, at tea-tables and coffee houses”. It also promoted family, marriage and courtesy.

The periodical under reference is :

(A) The Tatler

(B) The Spectator

(C) The Gentleman’s Magazine

(D) The London Magazine

Answer: B

Q.31 Assertion (A) : “Tam O’ Shanter” by John Clare is about the experience of an ordinary human being and became quite popular during that time.

Reason (R) : John Clare, having suffered bouts of madness, could really feel for the misery of common man. In the context of the two statements, which of the following is correct ?

(A) Both (A) and (R) are true and (R) explains (A).

(B) Both (A) and (R) are true, but (R) does not explain (A).

(C) (A) is true but (R) is false.

(D) (A) is false but (R) is true.

Answer: B

Q.32 Alexander Pope’s An Essay in Criticism :

(a) Purports to define “wit” and “nature” as they apply to the literature of his age.

(b) Claims no originality in the thought that governs this work.

(c) is a prose essay that gives us such quotes as “A little learning is a dangerous thing !”

(d) Appeared in 1701.

(A) (c) and (d) are incorrect.

(B) (a) and (b) are incorrect.

(C) (a) to (d) are correct.

(D) only (a) and (d) are correct.

Answer: * (Marks given to all)

Q.33 What is register ?

(A) The way in which a language registers in the minds of its users.

(B) The way users of a language register the nuances of that language.

(C) A variety of language used in social situations or one specially designed for the subject it deals with.

(D) A variety of language used in non-professional or informal situations by professionals.

Answer: C

Q.34 Jeremy Collier’s Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage (1698) attacked ______.

(A) the practice of mixing tragic and comic themes in Shakespeare’s plays.

(B) the bawdiness of “low” characters in Shakespeare’s plays.

(C) the coarseness and ugliness of Restoration Theatre.

(D) irreligious themes and irreverent attitudes in the plays of the seventeenth century.

Answer: C

Q.35 One of the most important themes the speakers debate in Dryden’s An Essay on Dramatic Poesy is______.

(A) European and non-European perceptions of reality.

(B) English and non-English perceptions of reality.

(C) the relative merits of French and English theatre.

(D) the relative merits of French and English poetry.

Answer: C

Q.36 Identify the correctly matched pair :

(A) Amitav Ghosh – All About H. Halterr

(B) AnitaDesai – Inheritance of Loss

(C) Shashi Deshpande – A Bend in the Ganges

(D) Salman Rushdie – The Enchantress of Florence

Answer: D

Q.37 Match the following correctly :

(I) Langue / Parole

(II) Competence / Performance

(III) Ieonic / Indexical

(IV) Readerly / Writerly

(a) Noam Chomsky

(b) C. S. Pierce

(c) Ferdinand de Saussure

(d) Roland Barthes

(I) (II) (III) (IV)

(A) (c) (b) (a) (d)

(B) (c) (a) (b) (d)

(C) (a) (c) (d) (b)

(D) (b) (c) (a) (d)

Answer: B

Q.38 Match the following

1. Joy Kogawa

2. M. G. Vasanjee

3. Sky Lee

4. Arnold Itwaru

(a) Bloody Rites

(b) Obasan

(c) The Gunny Sack

(d) Disappearing Moon Café

1 2 3 4

(A) (d) (a) (b) (c)

(B) (a) (d) (c) (b)

(C) (b) (c) d) (a)

(D) (a) (b) (c) (d)

Answer: C

Q.39 Why does Jean Baudrillard adopt Disneyland as his own sign ?

(A) Disneyland is by far the most eminently noticeable cultural sign in the post modern world.

(B) Disneyland captures ‘essences’ and ‘non-essences’ of Reality more convincingly than other cultural venues.

(C) Disneyland is an artefact that so obviously announces its own fictiveness that it would seem to imply some counter balancing reality.

(D) Disneyland is both ‘appearance’ and ‘reality’ in the post modern visual game of handy-dandy.

Answer: C

Q.40 Which of the following statements is NOT TRUE of Dante Gabriel Rossetti ?

(A) D. G. Rossetti was a Londoner, the son of an Italian refugee who taught Italian at King’s college.

(B) Rossetti formed the Pre- Raphaelite Brotherhood with Holman Hunt, Ford Madox

Brown and Painter Millais.

(C) He married Christina Georgina who was a poet in her right.

(D) Rossetti’s “Blessed Damozel” displays his remarkable gifts as a poet and painter.

Answer: C

Q.41 Goethe’s Faust (Part I , Scene 1) opens in :

(A) heaven

(B) hell

(C) forest

(D) Faust’s study

Answer: D

Q.42 “Is it their single-mind-sized skulls or a trained Body, or genius, or a nestful of brats Gives their days this bullet and automatic purpose….” (Thrushes) In the above lines what does ‘their’ refer to and what quality of ‘their’ does the poet speak of ?

I. Human beings and their intelligence

II. The thrushes and their concentration in achieving what they set out for

III. The efficiency of the thrushes in getting at their prey

IV. All the above

(A) Only III is correct.

(B) Only IV is correct.

(C) I and II are correct.

(D) II and III are correct.

Answer: D

Q.43 Find the odd (wo)man out :

Belladonna – Eugenides – The Typist –

Marie – Madame Sosostris – the ruinbibber

– Tiresias – the Youngman Carbuncular

(A) Belladonna

(B) Madame Sosostris

(C) Tiresias

(D) The ruin – bibber

Answer: D

Q.44 Wilkie Collins’s novel, The Moonstone (1868) tells the story of ______.

(A) a detective’s exploits in Victorian England.

(B) a doctor’s adventures in a Middle-Eastern Suburb.

(C) a fabulous yellow diamond stolen from an Indian shrine.

(D) illegal mining of diamonds in eastern U.P. during British rule.

Answer: C

Q.45 Identify the correctly matched group :

(I) “Because I could not stop for death…

(II) “O Captain ! My Captain!”

(III) “Two roads diverged in a wood…”

(IV) “So much depends upon…”

(a) Walt Whitman

(b) William Carlos Williams

(d) Robert Frost

(c) Emily Dickinson

(I) (II) (III) (IV)

(A) (a) (b) (c) (d)

(B) (c) (a) (d) (b)

(C) (a) (c) (b) (d)

(D) (c) (a) (b) (d)

Answer: B

Q.46 “Now stop your noses, readers, all and some, For here’s a tun of midnight – work to come, Og, from a treason-tavern rolling home. Round as a globe and liquor’d e’vry chink, Goodly and great he rails behind his link”. In the above passage from Absalom and Achitophel, link means :

(A) a connection in the court

(B) a hired servant who carries a lighted torch

(C) a social tie

(D) a rich patron

Answer: B

Q.47 Which among the following is NOT a typical “Indian English Poem” by Nissim Ezekiel ?

(A) “How the English Lessons Ended”

(B) “The Railway Clerk”

(C) “Goodbye Party for Miss Pushpa T.S.”

(D) “The Patriot”

Answer: A

Q.48 Match the correct pair :

(I) George Eliot

(II) Saki

(III) Emily Bronte

(IV) Mark Twain

1. Ellis Bell

2. Mary Anne Evans

3. Samuel Langhorne Clemens

4. H. H. Munro

(I) (II) (III) (IV)

(A) 2 3 1 4

(B) 2 4 1 3

(C) 1 3 4 2

(D) 3 2 1 4

Answer: B

Q.49 In Canto 17 of the Inferno, the monster Geryon represents ______.

(A) fraud

(B) usury

(C) sloth

(D) gluttony

Answer: A

Q.50 I-A. Richards’s famous experiment with poems and his Cambridge students is detailed in Practical Criticism : A Study of Literary Judgement (1929). Richards was astonished by

(A) the poor quality of his students’ “stock responses”

(B) the very astute remarks made by his students

(C) the non-availability of poems, worthy of class-room attention

(D) the success of his experiment

Answer: A

Q.51 Based on the following description, identify the text in reference : This is a play in which no one comes, no one goes, nothing happens. In its opening scene a man struggles hard to remove his boot. The play was originally written in French, later translated into English. It was first performed in 1953.

(A) Look Back in Anger

(B) Waiting for Godot

(C) The Zoo Story

(D) The Birthday Party

Answer: B

Q.52 One of the following Canterbury Tales is in prose, identify.

(A) The Pardoner’s Tale

(B) The Parson’s Tale

(C) The Monk’s Tale

(D) The Knight’s Tale

Answer: B

Q.53 In his distinction between imagination and fancy, Coleridge identifies the following :

(a) it dissolves, diffuses, dissipates, in order to recreate.

(b) it has aggregative and associative power.

(c) it plays with fixities and definites.

(d) it has shaping and modifying power. The correct combination reads :

(A) (a) and (b) for fancy; (c) and (d) for imagination.

(B) (a) and (c) for fancy; (b) and (d) for imagination.

(C) (b) and (c) for fancy; (a) and (d) for imagination.

(D) (c) and (d) for fancy; (a) and (b) for imagination.

Answer: C

Q.54 Julia Kristeva’s ‘Intertextuality’ derives from :

(a) Saussure’s signs

(b) Chomsky’s deep structure

(c) Bakhtin’s dialogism

(d) Derrida’s difference

(A) (a) and (d)

(B) (a) and (c)

(C) (c) and (d)

(D) (a) and (b)

Answer: B

Q.55 Ralph Ellison enjoys subverting myths about white purity through characters like :

(a) Norton (b) Bledsoe

(c) Rhinehart (d) all of the above

(A) (a) and (b)

(B) (a), (b) and (c)

(C) (b) and (c)

(D) (a) and (c)

Answer: A

Q.56 Which of the following is NOT TRUE of Ralph Waldo Emerson ?

(A) He wrote essays on New England scenery, woodcraft and plantations.

(B) He was an eloquent pulpit orator, a member of the Unitarian Church under William Chawming.

(C) In essays like “Nature”, he elaborates on the importance of seeing familiar things in new ways.

(D) His famous “American Scholar” was delivered as an address before the Phi Beta Kappa Society at Cambridge in 1837.

Answer: A

Q.57 “Exorcism” is the title of Act III of who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf ? What is the significance of ‘exorcism’ in the context of the play ?

(A) The casting out of evil spirits

(B) Deconstructing of myths involving marriage, fertility and sons

(C) Facing life without illusions

(D) Exposing all attempts at illusionmaking

Answer: D

Q.58 “Womanist is to feminist as purple is to lavender”. This is an important statement defining the womanist perspective advanced by

(A) Toni Morrison

(B) Zora Neale Hurston

(C) Alice Walker

(D) Bell Hooks

Answer: C

Q.59 Identify the mismatched pair in the following where characters in Golding’s Lord of the Flies fit the allegorized pattern of virtues and vices.

(A) Ralph – rationality

(B) Piggy – pragmatism

(C) Jack – pity

(D) Simon – innocence

Answer: C

Q.60 A Subaltern perspective is one where

(A) Power-structures define and determine your command of language and language of

command in an uneven world.

(B) The politically dispossessed could be voiceless, written out of the historical record and ignored because their activities do not count for “Cultural” or “Structured”.

(C) You don’t know what your ‘story’ is, how to deal with a ‘story’ and therefore you are forced to put stereotyped situations in it to please your listeners.

(D) You begin to see how we live, how we have been living, how we have been led to imagine ourselves, how our language has trapped as well as liberated us.

Answer: B

Q.61

(a) “Interlanguage” is a term we owe to M.A.K. Halliday.

(b) Interlanguage develops an autonomous and self-contained grammatical system

(c) It is a distinct stage in a learner’s progress in the study of a second language.

(d) It owes nothing at all either to the learner’s native or target / second language.

(A) (d) is correct.

(B) (b) is correct.

(C) (a) and (c) are correct.

(D) (c) and (d) are correct.

Answer: C

Q.62 In a classic statement that inaugurated Feminist thought in English, we read :

“A woman writing thinks back through her mothers”. Where does this occur ?

(A) Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own

(B) Kate Millet’s Sexual Politics

(C) Gertrude Stein’s Three Lives

(D) Mary Hiatt’s The Way Women Write.

Answer: A

Q.63 Identify the correctly matched pair of translators and translations.

(I) A. K. Ramanujan

(II) Manmathanath Dutt

(III) Mohini Chatterjee

(IV) Romesh Chandra Dutt

(a) The Ramayana

(b) The Bhagavad Gita

(c) Speaking of Shiva

(d) The Mahabharata

(I) (II) (III) (IV)

(A) (c) (d) (b) (a)

(B) (d) (c) (a) (b)

(C) (d) (a) (b) (c)

(D) (b) (a) (d) (c)

Answer: A

Q.64 Assertion (A) : In The Power and the Glory, Greene shows how the Whisky Priest transcends his weakness for drink and his human fears, moving towards martyrdom.

Reason (R) : Transcendence in Greene’s novels is generally an outcome of love for humanity, but pride is also an essential ingredient in the Priest’s character.

(A) (A) is true, but (R) is false.

(B) (A) is false, but (R) is true.

(C) Both (A) and (R) are true, but (R) is not the correct explanation for (A).

(D) Both (A) and (R) are true and (R) is the correct explanation for (A).

Answer: C

Q.65 Which of the following statements on John Dryden is incorrect ?

(a) John Milton and John Dryden were contemporaries.

(b) Dryden was a Royalist, while Milton fiercely opposed monarchy.

(c) Dryden wrote a play on the Mughal Emperor Humayun.

(d) Dryden was appointed the Poet Laureate of England in 1668.

(A) (a) is incorrect.

(B) (d) is incorrect.

(C) (c) is incorrect.

(D) (b) and (c) are incorrect.

Answer: C

Q.66 “Like walking, criticism is a pretty nearly universal art; both require a constant intricate shifting and catching of balance; neither can be questioned much in process; and few perform either really well. For either a new terrain is fatiguing and awkward, and in our day most men prefer paved walks and some form of rapid transportsome easy theory or overmastering dogma.” (R.P.Blackmur, “A Critic’s Job of Work”)

(a) Blackmur compares walking with criticism because he considers both to be “arts” of a similar kind that call for attention to detail and utmost care.

(b) Blackmur admits that some people do however manage to be good critics and good walkers.

(c) Critics prefer tried and tested approaches for much the same reason as Walkers would look for paved walks and rapid transport.

(d) Blackmur does not quite give us the equivalents of “Some paved walks and some form of rapid transport” in order to press his comparison.

(A) (a) and (d) are correct.

(B) (a) and (c) are correct.

(C) only (d) is correct.

(D) only (b) is correct.

Answer: B

Q.67 The world dominated by cold and hypocritical materialists is represented by William Blake in the mythological figure of __________ .

(A) Urizen

(B) Albion

(C) Geryon

(D) Satan

Answer: A

Q.68 Identify the correctly matched group :

(A) Third Space – Wolfgang Iser

Hybridity – Edward Soja

Reception aesthetics – Ferdinand de Saussure

Langue – Homi Bhabha

(B) Third Space – Ernst Bloch

Hybridity – Edward Said

Reception aesthetics – Eve K. Sedgwick

Langue – G. S. Frazer

(C) Third Space – Edward Soja

Hybridity – Homi Bhabha

Reception aesthetics – Wolfgang Iser

Langue – Ferdinand de Saussure

(D) Third Space – G. S. Frazer

Hybridity – Eve K. Sedgwick

Reception aesthetics – Edward Soja

Langue – Edward Said

Answer: C

Q.69 Which of the following can be best described as : (i) the first statement of Bernard Shaw’s idea of Life Force; (ii) a play dealing with a woman’s pursuit of her mate; and (iii) a play whose third act called “Don Juan in Hell” is both unconventional and hilarious ?

(A) The Devil’s Disciple

(B) Man and Superman

(C) Candida

(D) Arms and the Man

Answer: B

Q.70 Identify the untrue statement on the CONTACT ZONE below :

(A) “The contact zone” is a space where disparate cultures meet, clash and grapple with each other.

(B) In Postcolonial societies “contact” suggests the historical moment when settler and

indigenous cultures first met.

(C) The idea of the Contact Zone was first proposed and defined by Mary Louise Pratt’s

Imperial Eyes : Travel Writing and Transculturation (1992)

(D) It is believed that the Contact Zone was largely instrumental in spearheading nationalist movements across the world.

Answer: D

Q.71 Name the novel in which

I. the protagonist is a war veteran called Tayo.

II. Tayo returns from World War II, thoroughly disillusioned and haunted by his violent actions of war time.

III. Tayo seeks consolation and counsel from old Betonie.

IV. The protagonist realizes the importance of harmonizing humanity and the universe.

(A) Beloved

(B) Ceremony

(C) Daisy Miller

(D) Enter, Conversing

Answer: B

Q.72 One of the following poems in Men and Women is addressed to Elizabeth Barrett Browning by the poet. Identify it.

(A) “In Three Days”

(B) “By the Fireside”

(C) “One Way of Love”

(D) “One Word More”

Answer: D

Q.73 Match List-I with List-II according to the codes given below :

I. Tennessee Williams

II. Eugene O’Neill

III. Lorraine Hansberry

IV. Arthur Miller

1. Emperor Jones

2. A Streetcar Named Desire

3. After the Fall

4. A Raisin in the Sun

I II III IV

(A) 3 1 4 2

(B) 1 3 2 4

(C) 4 2 3 1

(D) 2 1 4 3

Answer: D

Q.74 Match the correct pair :

I. Theatre of Cruelty

II. Theatre of the Oppressed

III. Expressionist Theatre

IV. Agitprop

1. Safdar Hashmi

2. Georg Kaiser

3. Jerzy Grotowsky

4. Augusto Boal

I II III IV

(A) 1 2 4 3

(B) 3 4 2 3

(C) 2 3 1 4

(D) 4 1 3 2

Answer:* (Marks given to all)

Q.75 Bertolt Brecht’s Epic Theatre

(a) turns the spectator into an observer

(b) wears down the spectator’s capacity for action

(c) relies on argument

(d) presents man as a process

(A) (a) and (d) are correct; (b) and (c) are incorrect.

(B) (a), (c) and (d) are correct; (b) is wrong.

(C) (b) and (d) are correct; (a) and (c) are incorrect.

(D) (a), (b) and (c) are correct; (d) is incorrect.

Answer: B

June 2007

UGC NET English June 2007 : Paper 2 (Solved Paper with Answers)

 Q.1 The lines :

‘Even I, a dunce of more renown than they,

Was sent before but to prepare thy way’ are quoted from :

(A) Pope’s Dunciad

(B) Dryden’s Absalom and Achitophel

(C) Dryden’s Mac Flecknoe

(D) Swift’s A Tale of a Tub

Answer: C

Q.2 Fanny Burney’s Evelina is about :

(A) a young lady’s entry into English fashionable society

(B) English refugees in Paris

(C) an English enthusiast for revolutionary liberty

(D) money and the world of the country house

Answer: A

Q.3 The unexpurgated text of Lady Chatterley’s Lover was published after Obscenity trial in

:

(A) 1958

(B) 1965

(C) 1960

(D) 1962

Answer: C

Q.4 Sir Andrew Freeport is a character in :

(A) Humphry Clinker

(B) Joseph Andrews

(C) The Coverley Papers

(D) Clarissa

Answer: C

Q.5 In which of the following novels does Stein feature as a significant character ?

(A) Under Western Eyes

(B) Lord Jim

(C) Heart of Darkness

(D) Nostromo

Answer: B

Q.6 The Grand Inquisitor is a character in :

(A) Crime and Punishment

(B) Notes from the Underground

(C) Brothers Karamazov

(D) The Idiot

Answer: C

Q.7 Which modern critic described value judgements as ‘the donkey’s carrot of literary criticism’ ?

(A) T. S. Eliot

(B) I. A. Richards

(C) William Empson

(D) Northrop Frye

Answer: D

Q.8 Select the matching pair :

(A) The Book of the Duchess : Blanche of Leicester

(B) The Canterbury Tales : The Host of the Tabard

(C) Troilus and Criseyde : Squire

(D) The Parliament of Birds : St. Agnes’s Eve

Answer: C

Q.9 ‘The Winter Morning’ forms part of a longer poem by :

(A) Cowper

(B) Blake

(C) Burns

(D) Byron

Answer: A

Q.10 Bradley Pearson is the narrator of Iris Murdoch’s novel :

(A) Under the Net

(B) Bruno’s Dream

(C) The Bell

(D) The Black Prince

Answer: D

Q.11 ‘Victorian Compromise’ is an expression first used by :

(A) David Cecil

(B) G. K. Chesterton

(C) Lytton Strachey

(D) Vincent Buckley

Answer: B

Q.12 More’s Latin Masterpiece Utopia was translated into English in :

(A) 1551

(B) 1498

(C) 1516

(D) 1532

Answer: A

Q.13 The Anxiety of Influence : A Theory of Poetry is written by :

(A) Maud Bodkin

(B) Stephen Spender

(C) Harold Bloom

(D) Frank Kernode

Answer: C

Q.14 Who among the following was not a member of the group, ‘The University Wits’ ?

(A) Thomas Nashe

(B) Ben Jonson

(C) George Peele

(D) Samuel Daniel

Answer: B

Q.15 William Beckford’s oriental fantasy Vathek was originally written in :

(A) Spanish

(B) German

(C) French

(D) Italian

Answer: C

Q.16 The term ‘American renaissance’ was first used by :

(A) R. W. B Lewis

(B) Leo Marx

(C) F. O. Matthiessen

(D) Richard Chase

Answer: C

Q.17 ‘Gladly would he learn, and gladly teach’ is a line from :

(A) Spenser’s Fairie Queen

(B) Goldsmith’s ‘The Deserted Village’

(C) Chaucer’s Prologue to Canterbury Tales

(D) Langland’s Piers Plowman

Answer: C

Q.18 Which of the following arrangement of the English plays is in correct chronological order ?

(A) Justice – The Family Reunion – Saint Joan – The Playboy of the Western World

(B) Saint Joan – Justice – The Playboy of the Western World – The Family Reunion

(C) The Family Reunion – Saint Joan – Justice – The Playboy of the Western World

(D) The Playboy of the Western World – Justice – Saint Joan – The Family Reunion

Answer: D

Q.19 The second part of The Pilgrim’s Progress was published in :

(A) 1690

(B) 1678

(C) 1686

(D) 1684

Answer: D

Q.20 The Egoist is written by :

(A) Blackmore

(B) William Thackeray

(C) Meredith

(D) Hardy

Answer: C

Q.21 Which is the correct chronological sequence of the following novels ?

(A) Decline and Fall – The Time Machine – Nineteen Eightyfour – Brave New World

(B) Nineteen Eightyfour – Decline and Fall – The Time Machine – Brave New World

(C) Brave New World – The Time Machine – Nineteen Eightyfour – Decline and Fall

(D) The Time Machine – Decline and Fall – Brave New World – Nineteen Eightyfour

Answer: D

Q.22 Roland Barthes is the author of one of the following texts :

(A) The Death of Tragedy

(B) The Death of a Hero

(C) The Death of the Author

(D) The Death of Literature

Answer: C

Q.23 The author of the Elizabethan sonnet sequence, Idea, is :

(A) Samuel Daniel

(B) Michael Drayton

(C) Edmund Spenser

(D) Fulke Greville

Answer: B

Q.24 Muriel Spark’s The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie is a rewriting of the Victorian novel :

(A) Jane Eyre

(B) Villette

(C) Wuthering Heights

(D) North and South

Answer: A

Q.25 The Romantic Imagination is the title of a book by :

(A) Harold Bloom

(B) Graham Hough

(C) C. M. Bowra

(D) M. H. Abrahms

Answer: C

Q.26 ‘Ode on the Spring’ was written by :

(A) Thomas Gray

(B) John Keats

(C) Abraham Cowley

(D) William Collins

Answer: A

Q.27 Which of the following books was not published in 1859 ?

(A) Darwin : The Origin of Species

(B) George Eliot : Adam Bede

(C) Mill : On Liberty

(D) Ruskin : Unto This Last

Answer: D

Q.28 Three Guineas is the title of a book by :

(A) E. M. Forster

(B) Virginia Woolf

(C) George Orwell

(D) G. B. Shaw

Answer: B

Q.29 Harold Pinter’s first four plays are :

(A) The Caretaker, The Room, The Homecoming, The Birthday Party

(B) The Room, The Dumb Waiter, The Birthday Party, The Caretaker

(C) The Homecoming, The Caretaker, Old Times, Betrayal

(D) The Dumb Waiter, The Caretaker, No Man’s Land, Betrayal

Answer: B

Q.30 Identify the odd character out :

(A) Bosola

(B) De Flores

(C) Iago

(D) Kent

Answer: D

Q.31 Select the matching pair :

(A) The Great Gatsby : Chicago

(B) The Old Man and the Sea : Cuba

(C) For Whom the Bell Tolls : Italy

(D) The Sound and the Fury : Boston

Answer: B

Q.32 ‘The page is printed’. This is the last line in a poem by :

(A) Sylvia Plath

(B) Dylan Thomas

(C) Philip Larkin

(D) Ted Hughes

Answer: D

Q.33 T. S. Eliot’s The Wasteland was first published in :

(A) The Criterion

(B) The Dial

(C) The Yale Review

(D) New Yorker

Answer: A

Q.34 ‘Relationship’ is a long poem by :

(A) A. K. Ramanujan

(B) R. Parthasarathy

(C) Jayanta Mahapatra

(D) Kamala Das

Answer: C

Q.35 The phrase, ‘bottomless perdition’ occurs in Milton’s Paradise Lost in :

(A) Book I

(B) Book IV

(C) Book VI

(D) Book XII

Answer: A

Q.36 Which of the following arrangements of American plays is in the correct chronological sequence ?

(A) Mourning Becomes Electra – The Hairy Ape – Death of a Salesman – A Streetcar Named Desire

(B) The Hairy Ape – Death of a Salesman – Mourning Becomes Electra – A Streetcar Named Desire

(C) A Streetcar Named Desire – The Hairy Ape – Mourning Becomes Electra – Death of a Salesman

(D) The Hairy Ape – Mourning Becomes Electra – A Streetcar Named Desire – Death of a Salesman

Answer: D

Q.37 Which of the following arrangements of famous characters is in the correct chronological order ?

(A) Vittoria Corombona – Beatrice – Christiana – Hermione

(B) Beatrice – Hermione – Vittoria Corombona – Christiana

(C) Hermione – Beatrice – Vittoria Corombona – Christiana

(D) Beatrice – Vittoria Corombona – Hermione – Christiana

Answer: B

Q.38 Which of the following is in correct chronological sequence ?

(A) In Memoriam – ‘Lycidas’ – ‘An Elegy Written on a Country Churchyard’ – Adonais

(B) Adonais – In Memoriam – ‘Lycidas’ – ‘An Elegy Written on a Country Churchyard’

(C) ‘An Elegy Written on a Country Churchyard’ – In Memoriam – Adonais ‘Lycidas’

(D) ‘Lycidas’ – ‘An Elegy Written on a Country Churchyard’ – Adonais – In Memoriam

Answer: D

Q.39 The Chartist Demonstration in London involving the third presentation of Charter took place in :

(A) 1842

(B) 1846

(C) 1848

(D) 1851

Answer: C

Q.40 ‘Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass, Stains the white radiance of Eternity, Until Death tramples it into fragments’ The above lines occur in :

(A) ‘Dejection : An Ode’

(B) Adonais

(C) In Memoriam

(D) ‘Thyrsis’

Answer: B

Q.41 Arrange the following characters in chronological sequence :

(A) Mr. Rochester – David Copperfield – Rosamond – Bathsheba

(B) David Copperfield – Rosamond – Mr. Rochester – Bathsheba

(C) Bathsheba – Mr. Rochester – David Copperfield – Becky Sharp

(D) David Copperfield – Bathsheba – Mr. Rochester – Rosamond

Answer: A

Q.42 The book, The Religion of Man is written by :

(A) Sri. Aurobindo

(B) Rabindranath Tagore

(C) A. K. Coomaraswamy

(D) V. K. Gokak

Answer: B

Q.43 In the poem ‘Windhover’ Hopkins uses :

(A) Alternate Rhyme

(B) Disyllabic Rhyme

(C) Cross Rhyme

(D) Split Rhyme

Answer: D

Q.44 Which Dickens novel attacks the New Poor Law of 1834 in the opening chapters ?

(A) Great Expectations

(B) Hard Times

(C) Oliver Twist

(D) Dombey and Son

Answer: C

Q.45 ‘Throw away thy rod, throw away thy wrath, O my God, take the gentle path’ These lines are taken from a poem by :

(A) Herbert

(B) Donne

(C) Crashaw

(D) Vaughan

Answer: A

Q.46 ‘Epithalamium’ is a :

(A) song of mourning

(B) song of eulogy

(C) nuptial song

(D) funeral song

Answer: C

Q.47 The Gutenberg Bible was first published in :

(A) 1456

(B) 1516

(C) 1449

(D) 1498

Answer: A

Q.48 Identify the odd one out :

(A) Persuasion : Anne Tilney

(B) Northanger Abbey : Catherine Price

(C) Emma : Jane Fairfax

(D) Mansfield Park : Fanny Dean

Answer: C

Q.49 Which among the following is in the correct chronological sequence ?

(A) Sexual Politics – Thinking About Women – The Second Sex – The Prisoner of Sex

(B) Thinking About Women – The Prisoner of Sex – Sexual Politics – The Second Sex

(C) The Second Sex – Thinking About Women – Sexual Politics – The Prisoner of Sex

(D) The Prisoner of Sex – The Second Sex – Sexual Politics – Thinking About Women

Answer: C

Q.50 Coleridge’s ‘Kubla Khan’ remains ‘a fragment’ because :

(A) He was called by Wordsworth who was living in Porlock at that time

(B) Dorothy Wordsworth was upset over their love affair

(C) He was interrupted by a caller, a person on business from Porlock

(D) He ran out of his stock of opium

Answer: C

December 2006

UGC NET English December 2006 : Paper 2 (Solved Paper with Answers)

Q.1 The title The Sound and the Fury is taken from :

(A) Hamlet

(B) Macbeth

(C) The Tempest

(D) King Lear

Answer: B

Q.2 Pecola is a character in :

(A) The Bluest Eye

(B) Oliver Twist

(C) Don Quixote

(D) Beloved

Answer: A

Q.3 Which of the following was associated with the “Bloomsbury Group”.

(A) T. S. Eliot

(B) W. B. Yeats

(C) T. E. Hulme

(D) Virginia Woolf

Answer: D

Q.4 Which of the following characters appear in Waiting for Godot :

(A) Jerry

(B) Lucky

(C) Jimmy Porter

(D) Ham

Answer: B

Q.5 About whom did T. S. Eliot write “A thought to him was an experience” :

(A) Herbert

(B) Marvell

(C) Donne

(D) Crashaw

Answer: C

Q.6 The last book of Gulliver’s Travels is :

(A) “Voyage to Houyhnhnms”

(B) “Voyage to Laputa”

(C) “Voyage to Brobdingnag”

(D) “Voyage to Lilliput”

Answer: A

Q.7 Who edited The Tatler :

(A) Steele and John Locke

(B) Addison and Dryden

(C) Addison and Blackmore

(D) Addison and Steele

Answer: D

Q.8 John Locke’s “Essay Concerning Human Understanding” is about :

(A) nature of human behaviour

(B) nature of the human mind

(C) nature of human society

(D) nature of human ideology

Answer: B

Q.9 Restoration Comedy marks the restoration of :

(A) women’s rights

(B) democracy

(C) monarchy

(D) human rights

Answer: C

Q.10 Which of Alexander Pope’s poems begins with the line “Shut, shut the door, good

John, fatigued I said” :

(A) “Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot”

(B) “Dunciad”

(C) “Epistles”

(D) “Rape of the Lock”

Answer: A

Q.11 The statement “One has to convey in a language that is not one’s own the spirit that is

one’s own” appears in :

(A) Ice-Candy Man

(B) The Guide

(C) Nagamandala

(D) Kanthapura

Answer: D

Q.12 Which of the following author-book pair is correctly matched :

(A) Arundhati Roy – The Autumn of the Patriarch

(B) Gabriel Garcia Marquez – Love in the Time of Cholera

(C) Umber to Eco – The Tin Drum

(D) Jhumpa Lahiri – Beloved

Answer: B

Q.13 Which of the following women writers did not receive the Noble Prize :

(A) Toni Morrison

(B) Nadine Gordiner

(C) Buchi Emcheta

(D) Doris Lessing

Answer: C

Q.14 Which of the following is not an Australian author :

(A) Margaret Laurence

(B) David Malauf

(C) Mudooroo Narogin

(D) Peter Carey

Answer: A

Q.15 The Tulsis of Naipaul’s A House for Mr. Biswas lived in :

(A) Pagotes House

(B) Hanuman Mansion

(C) Tulsiana

(D) Hanuman House

Answer: D

Q.16 The quotation “a repetition in the finite mind of the eternal act of creation in the infinite I AM” appears in :

(A) Lyrical Ballads

(B) Biographia Literaria

(C) “In Defense of Poetry”

(D) Letters of Keats

Answer: B

Q.17 “Fearful Symmetry” appears in the poem :

(A) “Introduction”

(B) “Chimney Sweeper”

(C) “The Tyger”

(D) “London”

Answer: C

Q.18 The quotation “when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts,

without any irritable reaching after fact and reasons” is a definition of :

(A) Negative capability

(B) Secondary imagination

(C) Criticism of life

(D) Dissociation of sensibility

Answer: A

Q.19 Which of the following prose-writers do not belong to the Romantic Period :

(A) Peacock

(B) De Quincey

(C) Hazlitt

(D) Gibbon

Answer: D

Q.20 In Pride and Prejudice, Lydia and Wickham eloped to :

(A) London

(B) Bath

(C) Gretna Green

(D) Glasgow

Answer: A

Q.21 Which of the following thinker-concept pairs is correctly matched :

(A) Frye ……….. Mysticism

(B) Derrida …………. Deconstruction

(C) I. A. Richards ……….. Archetypal Criticism

(D) Eagleton …………… Psychological Criticism

Answer: B

Q.22 Which of the following thinker concept pairs is correctly matched :

(A) Abhinava Gupta ………….. Dhwanyaloka

(B) Vaman ………….. Kavya Alankar

(C) Mamata ………….. Kavya Prakash

(D) Bharata ………….. Vakrokti

Answer: C

Q.23 Choose the correct sequence of the following schools of criticism :

(A) Structuralism, Deconstruction, Reader-Response, New Historicism

(B) New Historicism, Reader-Response, Deconstruction, Structuralism

(C) Deconstruction, New Historicism, Structuralism, Reader-Response

(D) Reader-Response, Deconstruction, New Historicism, Structuralism

Answer: A

Q.24 “Hamartia” means :

(A) reversal of fortunes

(B) purgation of emotions

(C) depravity

(D) error of judgement

Answer: D

Q.25 The term “gynocriticism” was coined by :

(A) Betty Friedman

(B) Elaine Showalter

(C) Luce Irigarey

(D) Susan Sontag

Answer: B

Q.26 Which is the correct sequence :

(A) D. G. Rossetti, George Eliot, Bronte Sisters, Thackeray

(B) George Eliot, D. G. Rossetti, Bronte Sisters, Thackeray

(C) Thackeray, Bronte Sisters, George Eliot, D. G. Rossetti

(D) Bronte Sisters, George Eliot, Thackeray, D. G. Rossetti

Answer: C

Q.27 Which of Dickens’ novels opens with the words “It was the best of times, it was the

worst of times …. “.

(A) A Tale of Two Cities

(B) Oliver Twist

(C) Pickwick Papers

(D) Hard Times

Answer: A

Q.28 The term “The Fleshly School of Poetry” is associated with the :

(A) Chartists

(B) Pre-Raphaelites

(C) Symbolists

(D) Imagists

Answer: B

Q.29 The line “The sea is calm tonight” occurs in :

(A) Tennyson’s “Maude”

(B) Arnold’s “Thyrsis”

(C) Tennyson’s “The Lotos-Eaters”

(D) Arnold’s “Dover Beach”

Answer: D

Q.30 The term “gothic”, a category of fiction, also applies to :

(A) architecture

(B) painting

(C) music

(D) theater

Answer: A

Q.31 The gap-toothed character in “prologue” to The Centerbury Tales is :

(A) the Prioress

(B) the Nun

(C) the Wife of Bath

(D) the Narrator

Answer: C

Q.32 Which of the following is not a Revenge Tragedy :

(A) Duchess of Malfi

(B) Volpone

(C) Hamlet

(D) Gorboduc

Answer: B

Q.33 Miracle plays are based on the lives of :

(A) Knights

(B) Crusaders

(C) Pilgrims

(D) Saints

Answer: D

Q.34 The Red cross Knight is Spenser’s Faerie Queene represents :

(A) Temperance

(B) Chastity

(C) Truth

(D) Falsehood

Answer: C

Q.35 The line “Present fears/Are less than horrible imaginings” appear in :

(A) Macbeth

(B) King Lear

(C) Othello

(D) Julius Caesar

Answer: A

Q.36 The author of Ars Poetica is :

(A) Plato

(B) Horace

(C) Virgil

(D) Aristotle

Answer: B

Q.37 Which of the following is not a work by Dr. Johnson :

(A) Preface to the English Dictionary

(B) Preface to Shakespeare

(C) Lives of English Poets

(D) Cowley

Answer: D

Q.38 Which novel of Daniel Defoe was considered to be the best by E. M. Forster ?

(A) Colonel Jack

(B) Robinson Crusoe

(C) Captain Singleton

(D) Moll Flanders

Answer: D

Q.39 Edmund Burke denounced the French Revolution in :

(A) Political Philosophy

(B) A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful

(C) Reflections

(D) The Annual Register

Answer: C

Q.40 The line “A man can be destroyed but not defeated” appears in :

(A) For Whom the Bell Tolls

(B) The Old Man and the Sea

(C) The Snows of Kilimanjaro

(D) The Sun also Rises

Answer: B

Q.41 Who among the following is called “A New England Poet” :

(A) Robert Frost

(B) Edwin Arlington Robinson

(C) William Carlos Williams

(D) Allen Ginsberg

Answer: A

Q.42 Which of the following is not a play by Tennessee Williams :

(A) Night of the Iguana

(B) A Streetcar named Desire

(C) Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

(D) The Zoo Story

Answer: D

Q.43 Margaret Atwood’s Survival is :

(A) a critical assessment of Canadian writing

(B) a thematic guide to Canadian literature

(C) a critique of Canadian polity

(D) a exposition of Canadian history

Answer: B

Q.44 The term “Negritude” was coined by :

(A) Frantz Fanon and Homi Bhabha

(B) Ngugi Wa’ Thiongo and Wole Soyinka

(C) Ainee Cesaire and Leopold Senghor

(D) K. Alfred Memi and Chinua Achebe

Answer: C

Q.45 Bertolt Brecht’s concept of theatre was influenced by :

(A) Irwin Piscator

(B) Antonin Artaud

(C) Peter Brook

(D) Eugino Barba

Answer: A

Q.46 The relationship between Othello and Iago is an example of :

(A) inversion

(B) irony

(C) innuendo

(D) invective

Answer: D

Q.47 A metrical foot consisting of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable is :

(A) dactyl

(B) trochee

(C) iamb

(D) anapaest

Answer: C

Q.48 The rhyme scheme of a Shakespearean sonnet is :

(A) abab, cdcd, efef, gg

(B) abba, cddc, effe, gg

(C) abcd, efgh, effe, hh

(D) abca, abca, bcab, dd

Answer: A

Q.49 Using “the Bench” for the judiciary is an example of :

(A) metaphor

(B) irony

(C) Synecdoche

(D) metonymy

Answer: D

Q.50 Four feet, comprising a monosyllable, trochee, dactyl and first paeon is often called :

(A) running rhythm

(B) sprung rhythm

(C) blank verse

(D) rhymed verse

Answer: B

June 2006

UGC NET English June 2006 : Paper (Solved Paper with Answers)

Q.1 Which one of the following author – book pair is correctly matched:

(A) J.M. Coetzee – Shame

(B) Saul Bellow – Herzog

(C) Salman Rushdie – Disgrace

(D) Elfriede Jelinek – The Pianist

Answer: B

Q.2 Which novel has a nameless narrator ?

(A) Invisible Man

(B) The Grapes of Wrath

(C) Moby Dick

(D) Anna Karenina

Answer: A

Q.3 Samuel Beckett wrote :

(A) Endgame

(B) Volpone

(C) Mother Courage and Her Children

(D) A Doll’s House

Answer: A

Q.4 Willy Loman is a character in :

(A) A Doll’s House

(B) The Cherry Orchard

(C) Waiting for Godot

(D) The Death of a Salesman

Answer: D

Q.5 The Plough and the Stars was written by :

(A) G.B. Shaw

(B) J.M. Synge

(C) Sean O’casey

(D) Lady Gregory

Answer: C

Q.6 The subtitle of Dryden’s Absalom and Achitophel is :

(A) There was no subtitle

(B) A satire

(C) A satire on the True Blue Protestant Poets

(D) A poem

Answer: A

Q.7 Who of the following is not a periodical essayist ?

(A) Jonathan Swift

(B) Joseph Addison

(C) Richard Steele

(D) Lancelot Andrews

Answer: D

Q.8 John Evelyn and Samuel Pepys were the famous writers of :

(A) essays

(B) editorials

(C) letters

(D) diaries

Answer: D

Q.9 Samuel Butlers Hudibras is modeled upon :

(A) “Annus Mirabilis”

(B) Endymion

(C) Don Quixote

(D) Pilgrim’s Progress

Answer: C

Q.10 Who was the last of the Christian Humanists ?

(A) Oliver Cromowell

(B) John Milton

(C) John Bunyan

(D) Richard Crashaw

Answer: C

Q.11 The narrative of Raja Rao’s Kanthapura is based on :

(A) Puranas

(B) Shastras

(C) The Ramayana

(D) The Mahabharata

Answer: A

Q.12 Which of the following author – book pair is correctly matched ?

(A) David Malouf – The City of Djins

(B) C.L.R. James – The English Patient

(C) Shashi Tharoor – Trotter Nama

(D) Arundhati Roy – Algebra of Infinite Justice

Answer: D

Q.13 Who wrote “A tiger does not proclaim its tigretude” ?

(A) Ngugi

(B) Achebe

(C) Soyinka

(D) Derek Walcott

Answer: C

Q.14 “Jindiworobak” movement relates to :

(A) Australian literature

(B) Canadian literature

(C) New Zealand literature

(D) Caribbean literature

Answer: A

Q.15 The Montreal group of poets championed the cause of :

(A) Nature poetry

(B) Symbolish poetry

(C) Imagist poetry

(D) Modernist poetry

Answer: D

Q.16 The figure of the “Abyssinian maid” appears in :

(A) “Frost at midnight”

(B) “Christabel”

(C) “Kubla Khan”

(D) “Dejection : an Ode”

Answer: C

Q.17 Coleridges statement that imagination “dissolves, diffuses, dissipates in order to recreate” relates to :

(A) fancy

(B) primary imagination

(C) secondary imagination

(D) esemplastic imagination

Answer: C

Q.18 “Did he who made the Lamb made thee” appears in :

(A) “The Tyger”

(B) “Chimney Sweeper”

(C) “London”

(D) “Introduction”

Answer: A

Q.19 “Essays of Elia” are :

(A) political ideology

(B) economic disparity

(C) literary criticism

(D) personal impressions

Answer: D

Q.20 Who among the following is a writer of historical romances ?

(A) Emily Bronte

(B) Jane Austen

(C) Walter Scott

(D) Walter Savage Lander

Answer: C

Q.21 Which of the following thinker – concept pairs is rightly matched ?

(A) Stanley Fish – Reader Response

(B) Jacques Devida – New Historicism

(C) Northrop Frye – Practical Criticism

(D) I.A. Richards – Archetypal Criticism

Answer: A

Q.22 Which of the following thinker – concept pairs is rightly matched ?

(A) Vaman – Dhwanyaloka

(B) Bharata – Natya Shastra

(C) Mamata – Vakrokti

(D) Abhinava Gupta – Kavya Alankar

Answer: B

Q.23 Choose the correct sequence of the following schools of criticism :

(A) Structuralism, New Criticism, Deconstruction, Reader Response

(B) New Criticism, Structuralism, Deconstruction, Reader Response

(C) Reader Response, Deconstruction, Structuralism, New Criticism

(D) Deconstruction, New Criticism, Structuralism, Reader Response

Answer: B

Q.24 “Peripetia” means :

(A) purgation of emotion

(B) tragic flaw

(C) reversal of fortune

(D) recognition of error

Answer: C

Q.25 “Gynocriticism” focuses on :

(A) Criticism on women

(B) Criticism by women

(C) Criticism of male writers by women writers

(D) Women as writers

Answer: D

Q.26 Which of the following sequences is correct ?

(A) Vanity Fair, Henry Esmond, Middlemarch, The Return of the Native

(B) Henry Esmond, Vanity Fair, Middlemarch, The Return of the Native

(C) Middlemarch, The Return of the Native, Vanity Fair, Henry Esmond

(D) The Return of the Native, Middlemarch, Vanity Fair, Henry Esmond

Answer: A

Q.27 Queen Victoria’s reign, after whom the Victorian period is named, spans :

(A) 1833 – 1901

(B) 1837 – 1901

(C) 1840 – 1905

(D) 1842 – 1905

Answer: B

Q.28 Pre – Raphaelite poetry is mainly concerned with :

(A) narrative and style

(B) narrative and nature

(C) form and design

(D) form and value

Answer: C

Q.29 The concept of “mad woman in the attic” can be traced to :

(A) The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

(B) Villette

(C) Wuthering Heights

(D) Jane Eyre

Answer: D

Q.30 Who among the Victorians is called “the prophet of modern society” ?

(A) Ruskin

(B) Carlyle

(C) Macaulay

(D) Arnold

Answer: D

Q.31 Who among the following is not a pilgrim in The Canterbury Tales ?

(A) the Haberdasher

(B) the Tapyser

(C) the Blacksmith

(D) the Summoner

Answer: C

Q.32 Bosola is the executioner in :

(A) The Spanish Tragedy

(B) The Duchess of Malfi

(C) The White Devil

(D) The Jew of Malta

Answer: B

Q.33 The mystery plays deal with :

(A) the life of Christ

(B) the New Testament

(C) Psalms

(D) Apocrypha

Answer: A

Q.34 The Faerie Queene is based on :

(A) Utopia

(B) Tottelis Miscellany

(C) Morte d’Arthur

(D) Orlando Furioso

Answer: D

Q.35 Choose the correct chronological sequence of the following plays :

(A) King Lear, Othello, Macbeth, Hamlet

(B) Othello, Macbeth, King Lear, Hamlet

(C) Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth

(D) Hamlet, King Lear, Othello, Macbeth

Answer: C

Q.36 Pope’s “Essay on Criticism” sums up the art of poetry as taught first by :

(A) Aristotle

(B) Horace

(C) Longinus

(D) Plato

Answer: B

Q.37 Swift’s Tale of a Tub is a satire on :

(A) science and philosophy

(B) art and morality

(C) dogma and superstition

(D) fake morals and manners

Answer: A

Q.38 Dr. Johnson started :

(A) The Postman

(B) The Spectator

(C) The Rambler

(D) The Tatler

Answer: C

Q.39 Who among the following cautioned against the dangers of popular liberty ?

(A) Mary Wollstonecraft

(B) Edmund Burke

(C) Thomas Hobbes

(D) John Locke

Answer: C

Q.40 Which famous American classic opens with “Call me Ishmael” ?

(A) Rip Van Winkle

(B) The Scarlet Letter

(C) The Grapes of Wrath

(D) Moby Dick

Answer: D

Q.41 Allen Ginsberg’s vision of America is inspired by :

(A) Walt Whitman

(B) Robert Frost

(C) Ralph Waldo Emerson

(D) Edgar A. Poe

Answer: A

Q.42 Who among the following represents the Sri Lankan diaspora ?

(A) M.G. Vassanji

(B) Cyril Debydeen

(C) Michael Ondaatje

(D) Arnold H. Itwaru

Answer: C

Q.43 Out of Africa is a film adaptation of a work by :

(A) Alice Walker

(B) Margaret Lawrence

(C) Margaret Atwood

(D) None of them

Answer: D

Q.44 The Empire writes Back was written by :

(A) Bill Ashcroft, Helen Tiffin, Ngugi Wa Thinngo

(B) Bill Ashcroft, Helen Tiffin, Stephen Slemon

(C) Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths, Chinua Achebe

(D) Bill Ashcroft, Helen Tiffin, Gareth Griffiths

Answer: D

Q.45 The theatre of cruelty is associated with :

(A) Stanislavosky

(B) Grotovsky

(C) Antonin Artand

(D) Eugino Barba

Answer: C

Q.46 A particle is :

(A) a patchwork of words, sentences, passages

(B) a satirical poem

(C) a love song

(D) a collection of lines from different poems

Answer: A

Q.47 “Careless she is with artful Care/Affecting to seem unaffected” is an example of :

(A) irony

(B) paradox

(C) simile

(D) metaphor

Answer: B

48. A metrical foot containing a stressed, followed by an unstressed, syllable is :

(A) anapaest

(B) iamb

(C) trochee

(D) dactyl

Answer: C

Q.49 The rhyme scheme of a Spenserian sonnet is :

(A) abba, cbcb, cdcd, ee

(B) abab, bccb, ccdd, ee

(C) aabb, bcbc, ccdd, ee

(D) abab, bcbc, cdcd, ee

Answer: D

Q.50 Using the expression “Crown” for the monarchy is an example of :

(A) Metonymy

(B) Synecdoche

(C) Irony

(D) Metaphor

Answer: A

December 2005

UGC NET English December 2005 : Paper 2 (Solved Paper with Answers)

Q.1 Chaucer’s The Knight’s Tale is a high romance told in :

(A) rhyme royal

(B) terza rima

(C) heroic couplets

(D) verse libre

Answer: C

Q.2 Marlowe’s first original work was :

(A) Tamburlaine the Great

(B) The Tragical History of D. Faustus

(C) The Jew of Malta

(D) The Troublesome Raigne and Lamentable Death of Edward the second

Answer: A

Q.3 Marvell pays his homage to the Protector and a tribute to the royal dignity of Charles I in :

(A) “The Garden”

(B) “The Picture of T.C.”

(C) “Bermudas”

(D) “Horatian ode upon Cromewells’ Return From Ireland”

Answer: D

Q.4 The Life and Death of Mr. Badman was written by :

(A) Sir Henry Wotton

(B) John Bunyan

(C) Jeremy Taylor

(D) Richard Baxter

Answer: B

Q.5 Dr. Johnson’s A Dictionary of the English Language was published in :

(A) 1755

(B) 1756

(C) 1757

(D) 1758

Answer: A

Q.6 The main idea of The Dunciad was taken from :

(A) The Hind and the Panther

(B) Religio Laici

(C) Mac-Flecknoe

(D) The Medal

Answer: C

Q.7 The character of the leech gatherer appears in :

(A) The Recluse

(B) The Prelude Book

(C) Laodamia

(D) Resolution and Independence

Answer: D

Q.8 Table-Talk is a collection of essays by :

(A) Lamb

(B) Hunt

(C) Hazlitt

(D) De Quincey

Answer: C

Q.9 Carlyle’s Sartor Resartus was written under the influence of :

(A) Italian romance

(B) German romance

(C) French romance

(D) British romance

Answer: B

Q.10 The image of the Neptune taming the sea horse appears in :

(A) “Abt Vogler”

(B) “Prospice”

(C) “Andrea del Sarto”

(D) “My Last Duchess”

Answer: D

Q.11 T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land is dedicated to Il miglior fabro (“The better Craftsman”) which refers to :

(A) Ezra Pound

(B) Baudelaire

(C) G.M. Hopkins

(D) Dante

Answer: A

Q.12 The locale of Riders to the Sea is :

(A) Dublin

(B) Aran Island

(C) Galway

(D) Belfast

Answer: B

Q.13 The “Bog” poems are associated with :

(A) Ted Hughes

(B) Elizabeth Jennings

(C) Tony Harrison

(D) Seamus Heaney

Answer: D

Q.14 Edward Bond’s Bingo deals with the life of :

(A) Dryden

(B) Shakespeare

(C) Ben Jonson

(D) Marlowe

Answer: B

Q.15 Arthur Millers The Death of a Salesman is mainly about :

(A) American dream

(B) American imperialism

(C) American pragmatism

(D) American transcendentalism

Answer: A

Q.16 The patient in Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient is :

(A) Almasy

(B) Caravaggio

(C) Kirpal Singh

(D) Hana

Answer: A

Q.17 Mimetic criticism views literary work as :

(A) personalisation

(B) depersonalization

(C) imitation

(D) interpretation

Answer: C

Q.18 The concept of “arche writing” is developed by :

(A) Fish

(B) Foucault

(C) Derrida

(D) Paul de Man

Answer: C

Q.19 A figure of speech in which two terms opposite in meaning are placed side by side in one phrase is known as :

(A) paradox

(B) oxymoron

(C) sarcasm

(D) antithesis

Answer: B

Q.20 A stanza of eight iambic pentametres on the pattern of ab, ab, ab, cc is known as :

(A) Rhyme royal

(B) Ottava rima

(C) Tennysonian stanza

(D) Spenserian stanza

Answer: B

Choose the correct chronological sequence in question numbers 21 to 30 :

(A) Love’s Labour’s Lost, Twelfth Night, Othello, The Tempest

(B) Twelfth Night, Love’s Labour’s Lost, The Tempest, Othello

(C) Love’s Labour’s Lost, Othello, The Tempest, Twelfth Night

(D) Othello, Twelfth Night, Love’s Labour’s Lost, The Tempest

Answer: A

(A) Ralph Roister Doister, Utopia, Astrophel and Stella, Shepherds Calendar

(B) Astrophel and Stella, Ralph Roister Doister, Shepherds Calendar

(C) Shepherds Calendar, Astrophel and Stella, Utopia, Ralph Roister Doister

(D) Utopia, Ralph Roister Doister, Shepherds Calendar, Astrophel and Stella

Answer: D

(A) Sonnet, periodical essay, gothic novel, absurd play

(B) Gothic novel, periodical essay, sonnet, absurd play

(C) Periodical essay, gothic novel, absurd play, sonnet

(D) Sonnet, gothic novel, periodical essay, absurd play

Answer: A

(A) Stephen Spender, T.S. Eliot, Philip Larkin, Ted Hughes

(B) T.S. Eliot, Stephen Spender, Philip Larkin, Ted Hughes

(C) Philip Larkin, T.S. Eliot, Ted Hughes, Stephen Spender

(D) T.S. Eliot, Philip Larkin, Ted Hughes, Stephen Spender

Answer: B

(A) Negative capability, sublime, dissociation of sensibility, heteroglossia

(B) Sublime, negative capability, heteroglossia, dissociation of sensibility

(C) Sublime, negative capability, dissociation of sensibility, heteroglossia

(D) Heteroglossia, dissociation of sensibility, sublime, negative capability

Answer: C

(A) Thyrsis, Adonais, Lycidas, In Memory of W.B. Yeats

(B) Lycidas, Thyrsis, Adonais, In Memory of W.B. Yeats

(C) Lycidas, Adonais, Thyrsis, In Memory of W.B. Yeats

(D) Adonais, In Memory of W.B. Yeats, Lycidas, Thyrsis

Answer: C

(A) “Sign, Structure and Play”, “Signs Taken for Wonder”, “The Death of the Author”, “Two Uses of Language”

(B) “Two Uses of Language”, “The Death of the Author”, “Sign, Structure and Play”, “Signs Taken for Wonder”

(C) “The Death of the Author”, “Two Uses of Language”, “Signs Taken for Wonder”, “Sign, Structure and Play”

(D) “Two Uses of Language”, “The Death of the Author”, “Sign, Structure and Play”, “Signs Taken for Wonder”

Answer: B

(A) “The Burial of the Dead”, “A Game of Chess”, “Fire Sermon”, “Death by Water”

(B) “A Game of Chess”, “The Burial of the Dead”, “Fire Sermon”, “Death by Water”

(C) “Fire Sermon”, “The Burial of the Dead”, “Death by Water”, “A Game of Chess”

(D) “The Burial of the Dead”, “Fire Sermon”, “Death by Water”, “A Game of Chess”

Answer: A

(A) Midnight’s Children, Nectar in a Sie’ve, Kanthapura, Calcutta Chromosome

(B) Kanthapura, Midnight’s Children, Nectar in a Sieve, Calcutta Chromosome

(C) Kanthapura, Midnight’s Children, Calcutta Chromosome, Nectar in a Sie’ve

(D) Kanthapura, Nectar in a Sie’ve, Midnight’s Children, Calcutta Chromosome

Answer: D

(A) The English Novel : Form and Function, The Craft of Fiction, Aspects of the Novel, The Sense of an Ending

(B) Craft of Fiction, Aspects of the Novel, The English Novel : Form and Function, The Sense of an Ending

(C) The Sense of an Ending, The English Novel : Form and Function, Craft of Fiction, Aspects of the novel

(D) Aspects of the Novel, Craft of Fiction, The Sense of an Ending, The English Novel : Form and Function

Answer: B

Select the matching pairs in question numbers 31 to 40 :

(A) Sohrab and Rustum – Arnold

(B) The Princess – Browning

(C) Hugh Selwyn Mauberly – Hopkins

(D) The Excursion – Shelley

Answer: A

(A) Middlemarch – Picaresque

(B) Women in Love – Historical

(C) Pamela – Epistolary novel

(D) Pride and Prejudice – Autobiographical

Answer: C

(A) Dickens – Manchester

(B) Faulkner – Yoknapatawfa

(C) Joyce – Belfast

(D) Lawrence – Birmingham

Answer: B

(A) Naturalism – Zola

(B) Symbolism – T.E. Hulme

(C) Expressionism – V. Woolf

(D) Magic realism – Graham Greene

Answer: A

(A) Audrey Thomas – The Stone Angel

(B) Robert Kroetsch – The Burning Water

(C) Margaret Lawrence – What the Crow Said

(D) Margaret Atwood – The Blind Assassin

Answer: D

(A) Marlowe – Faust

(B) Fletcher – The White Devil

(C) Congreve – The Old Bachelor

(D) Ben Jonson – The Maid’s Tragedy

Answer: C

(A) Nadine Gordimer – Nigeria

(B) Chinua Achebe – Kenya

(C) Judith Wright – Australia

(D) Peter Carey – Canada

Answer: C

(A) Campus novel – Margaret Drabble

(B) Travelogue – Macaulay

(C) Diary writing – Samuel Pepys

(D) Periodical essay – Lamb

Answer: C

(A) Girish Karnad – Kannada

(B) A.K. Ramanujan – Telugu

(C) Kamala Das – Tamil

(D) R. Parthasarathy – Malayalam

Answer: A

(A) Mrs. Malaprop – The School for Scandal

(B) Nora – The Seagull

(C) Lydia Languish – She Stoops to Conquer

(D) Eliza Doolittle – Pygmalion

Answer: D

Q.41 In the assertion “Four out of five people suffer from dreaded pyorrhoea”, the writer wants to arouse the feeling of :

(A) Sympathy

(B) Fear

(C) Hatred

(D) Ill-will

Answer: B

Q.42 “John is six feet tall and 240 lb” is an assertion of :

(A) a fact

(B) a judgement

(C) an opinion

(D) an inference

Answer: D

Q.43 X : “He’s mean and stingy.

Y : “Oh, I wouldn’t say that. He is just thrifty”. The above dialogue asserts that he :

(A) is too careful with his money

(B) never spends money

(C) is so careful with his money that everyone admires him for good management

(D) is careful with his money

Answer: A

Q.44 “I wandered lonely as a cloud” makes an assertion that :

(A) The poet travelled with the cloud

(B) The poet moved aimlessly with the cloud

(C) Both the poet and the cloud were lonely

(D) The poet moved as aimlessly as the cloud

Answer: D

Q.45 “Death is here, and death is there Death is busy everywhere All around, within, beneath, Above, is death – and we are death” The effect of rhythm, sound, word-order and stress in the above lines

(A) assist the communication of meaning

(B) hinder the communication of meaning

(C) reflect meaning and mood

(D) reflect a mechanical regularity

Answer: C

Read the following passage and answer the questions that follow based on your understanding of the passage.

All of us live in a society, and are members of a nationality wtih its own language, tradition, historical situation. To what extent are intellectuals servants of these actualities, to what extent enemies ? The same is true of intellectuals’ relationship with institutions (academy, church, professional guild) and with wordly powers, which in our times have co-opted the intelligentsia to an extraordinary degree. Thus in my view the principal intellectual duty is the search for relative independence from such pressures. Hence my characterization of the intellectual as an exile and marginal, as amateur, and as the author of a language that tries to speak the truth to power.

Q.46 Name four important sources to which an intellectual is related basically :

(A) Society, institutions, wordly powers, and government

(B) Institutions, language, truth, and power

(C) Nationality, language, tradition, and historical situation

(D) Nationality, truth, language, and tradition

Answer: C

Q.47 What is the meaning of intellectuals being ‘servants’ ?

(A) The intellectual may be appropriated by his tradition, historical and other actualities of his nation and society

(B) The intellectual may be inappropriately Co-opted by agencies of the government

(C) The intellectual may be sent into exile and made marginal

(D) The intellectual may be forced into accepting the unacceptable propositions

Answer: A

Q.48 What are the four important institutions that Co-opt an intellectual ?

(A) society, institutions, wordly powers, and truth

(B) academy, church, professional guild, and wordly power

(C) society, professional guild, wordly power, truth

(D) academy, wordly power, truth, government

Answer: B

Q.49 What is the meaning of ‘relative independence’ ?

(A) liberating oneself from the pressures of government and institutions

(B) liberating oneself from the pressures of religion and state

(C) liberating oneself from the pressures of institutions and wordly powers

(D) liberating oneself from all religious and secular pressures

Answer: C

Q.50 What is the duty of an intellectual and how many identities does he acquire to perform his role ?

(A) to achieve complete independence and be characterised as an exile, marginal, and amateur

(B) to achieve partial independence and be characterised as the author of a language

(C) to manoeuvre independence and be characterised as a keeper of his own conscience

(D) to search for relative independence and be characterised as exile and marginal, as amateur, and author

Answer: D

June 2005

UGC NET English June 2005 : Paper 2 (Solved Paper with Answers)

Q.1 The Nun’s Priest Tale had its origin in:

(A) The French Roman de Renart

(B) The Italian Boccaccio’s Teseida

(C) The English John Gower’s Confessio Amantis

(D) The German Goethe’s Faust

Answer: A

Q.2 The first folio of Shakespeare’s plays appeared in:

(A) 1664

(B) 1631

(C) 1623

(D) 1650

Answer: C

Q.3 Restorian comedy begins with:

(A) Congreve

(B) Sheridan

(C) Dryden

(D) Etherege

Answer: D

Q.4 The author of The Progress of the Soul is:

(A) John Bunyan

(B) John Donne

(C) Henry Vaughan

(D) Richard Crashaw

Answer: B

Q.5 Dr. Johnson’s The Lives of the Poets is an example of:

(A) Psychological criticism

(B) Biographical criticism

(C) Historical criticism

(D) Archetypal criticism

Answer: B

Q.6 The picaresque novel with a female picaroon is:

(A) Tom Jones

(B) Clarissa

(C) Moll Flanders

(D) Amelia

Answer: C

Q.7 The expression “ancestral voices prophesying war” occurs in:

(A) Kubla khan

(B) Frost at Midnight

(C) Christabel

(D) Rime of the Ancient Mariner

Answer: A

Q.8 The posthumously published novel of Jane Austen is:

(A) Sense and Sensibility

(B) Mansfield Park

(C) Emma

(D) Northanger Abbey

Answer: D

Q.9 Carlyle’s Sartor Resartus means:

(A) Satan’s story retold

(B) The tailor retailored

(C) I know not where

(D) A set of elegant clothes

Answer: B

Q.10 The character not created by Hardy is:

(A) Sue Bridehead

(B) Bathsheba Everdene

(C) Besty Trostwood

(D) Thomasin

Answer: C

Q.11 The poet who described poetry as “inspired mathematics” is:

(A) T.S. Eliot

(B) Hopkins

(C) Archibald Macheish

(D) Ezra Pound

Answer: D

 Q.12 The woman character who is an artist by profession in Virgnniia Woolf’s To The Lighthouse is :

(A) Lily Briscoe

(B) Mrs. Ramsay

(C) Mrs. Dalloway

(D) Miriam

Answer: A

Q.13 The poet who said, “My poems are not about violence, but vitality,” is :

(A) Philip Larkin

(B) Ted Hughes

(C) C.D. Lewis

(D) Thom Gunn

Answer: B

Q.14 Pinter’s Care Taker can be called a:

(A) comedy of manners

(B) comedy of menace

(C) comedy of errors

(D) comedy of humours

Answer: B

Q.15 Toni Morrison used male narrator for the first time in :

(A) Song of Solomon

(B) Tar Baby

(C) Jazz

(D) The Bluest Eye

Answer: A

Q.16 The author of The Hungry Tide is :

(A) Vikram Seth

(B) Shobha De

(C) Amitav Ghosh

(D) Upamanyu Chatterjee

Answer: C

Q.17 The soul of tragedy, according to Aristotle is :

(A) Thought

(B) Character

(C) Plot

(D) Spectacle

Answer: C

Q.18 The discussion of Fabula/Syuzhet occurs in :

(A) New criticism

(B) Deconstruction

(C) Structuralism

(D) Formalism

Answer: D

Q.19 “United we stand, divided we fall” is an example of :

(A) Antithesis

(B) Bathos

(C) Tautology

(D) Litotes

Answer: A

Q.20 A metre in which an unaccented syllable precedes the accented is called :

(A) anapaestic

(B) dactylic

(C) catalectic

(D) iambic

Answer: D

Choose the correct chronological sequence in question numbers 21-30 :

21. Choose the correct chronological sequence

(A) Northanger Abbey , Pride and Prejudice , Sense and Sensibility , Mansfield Park

(B) Mansfield Park , Sense and Sensibility , Northanger Abbey , Pride and Prejudice

(C) Pride and Prejudice , Northanger Abbey , Mansfield Park , Sense and Sensibility

(D) Sense and Sensibility , Pride and Prejudice , Mansfield Park , Northanger Abbey

Answer: D

22. Shakespeare criticism by :

(A) Spurgeon – T.S. Eliot -Stephen Greenblatt – Bradley

(B) Bradley – Spurgeon – T.S. Eliot – Stephen Greenblatt

(C) T.S. Eliot – Stephen Greenblatt – Bradley – Spurgeon

(D) Stephen Greenblatt – Bradley – T.S. Eliot – Spurgeon

Answer: B

23. Choose the correct chronological sequence

(A) Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, Oxford Movement, Movement Poetry, Imagism

(B) Oxford Movement, Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, Imagism, Movement Poetry

(C) Imagism, Movement Poetry, Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, Oxford Movement

(D) Movement Poetry, Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, Oxford Movement, Imagism

Answer: B

24. Choose the correct chronological sequence

(A) Closet drama, Epic Theatre, Theatre of the Absurd, Portable Theatre

(B)Epic Theatre, Portable Theatre, Theatre of the Absurd, Closest drama

(C)Portable Theatre, Closet drama, Epic Theatre, Theatre of the Absurd

(D)Theatre of the Absurd, Portable Theatre, Closet drama, Epic Theatre

Answer: A

25. Choose the correct chronological sequence

(A) Thomas Nashe, Ben Jonson, Kyd, Marlowe

(B)Ben Jonson, Thomas Kyd, Marlowe, Thomas Nashe

(C)Thomas Kyd, Marlowe, Thomas Nashe, Ben Jonson

(D)Marlowe, Thomas Nashe, Thomas Kyd, Ben Jonson

Answer: C

26. Choose the correct chronological sequence

(A) Essay on Dramatic Poesy , Areopagitica , Urn Burial , Religio Medici

(B)Areopagitica , Urn Burial , Religio Medici , Essay on Dramatic Poesy

(C)Religio Medici , Areopagitica , Urn Burial , Essay on Dramatic Poesy

(D)Urn Burial , Essay on Dramatic Poesy , Areopagitica , Religio Medici

Answer: C

27. Choose the correct chronological sequence

(A) Kamala Das, Sarojini Naidu, Toru Dutt, Meena Alexander

(B)Meena Alexander, Toru Dutt, Sarojini Naidu, Kamala Das

(C)Sarojini Naidu, Kamala Das, Meena Alexander, Toru Dutt

(D)Toru Dutt, Sarojini Naidu, Kamala Das, Meena Alexander

Answer: D

28. Choose the correct chronological sequence

(A) Jude, Lady Havisham, Dorothea, Mrs. Morel

(B)Dorothea, Mrs. Morel, Jude, Lady Havisham

(C)Dorothea, Jude, Mrs. Morel, Lady Havisham

(D)Lady Havisham, Dorothea, Jude, Mrs. Morel

Answer: D

29. Choose the correct chronological sequence

(A) The Well-Wrought Urn , The Verbal Icon , Theory of Literature , Literary Theory : An Introduction

(B)The Well-Wrought Urn , Theory of Literature , The Verbal Icon , Literary Theory : An Introduction

(C)The Verbal Icon , The Well-Wrought Urn , Literary Theory : An Introduction , Theory of Literature

(D)Literary Theory : An Introduction , The Well-Wrought Urn , Theory of Literature , The Verbal Icon

Answer: A

30. Nobel Prize Winners in Literature :

(A)Seamus Heaney, T.S. Eliot, Nadine Gordimer, W.B. Yeats

(B)W.B. Yeats, T.S. Eliot, Nadine Gordimer, Seamus Heaney

(C)T.S. Eliot, Seamus Heaney, W.B. Yeats, Nadine Gordimer

(D)Nadine Gordimer, Seamus Heaney, W.B. Yeats, T.S. Eliot,

Answer: B

Select the matching pair in question numbers 31 to 40 :

31. Select the matching pair

(A) A Idylls of the King – Browning

(B)The Diverting History of John Gilpin – William Cowper

(C)The Tower – T.S. Eliot

(D)The Fall of Hyperion – Shelley

Answer: B

32. Select the matching pair

(A) Hard Times – Psychological novel

(B)To The Light-house – Picaresque novel

(C)The Castle of Otranto – Gothic novel

(D)Wuthering Heights – Historical novel

Answer: C

33. Select the matching pair

(A) Emily Bronte – Yorkshire Moors

(B)Hardy – Scotland

(C)Walter Scott – Ireland

(D)Mark Twain – Yoknapatawfa

Answer: A

34. Select the matching pair

(A) Surrealism – Tristan Tzara

(B)Imagism – Spender

(C)Naturalism – Yeats

(D)Magic Realism – Galriel Garcia Marquez

Answer: D

35. Select the matching pair

(A) Victor Shklovsky – Carnivalesque

(B)Stanley Fish – Aphasia

(C)Hjelmslev – Glossematics

(D)Roland Barthes – Affective Stylistics

Answer: C 

36. Select the matching pair

(A) Bessie Head – Newzealand

(B)Derek Walcott – South Africa

(C)A.D. Hope – Australia

(D)Ondaatje – Nigeria

Answer: C

37. Select the matching pair

(A) T.S. Eliot – The Birthday Party

(B)Osborne – The Entertainer

(C)Bernard Shaw – Luther

(D)Tom Stoppard – Lear

Answer: B

38. Select the matching pair

(A) Periodical Essays – Bacon

(B)Confessional Poetry – Ted Hughes

(C)Science Fiction – David Lodge

(D)Pre-Raphaelites – William Morris

Answer: D

39. Select the matching pair

(A) Nissim Ezekiel – Persian

(B)Gieve Patel – Gujarati

(C)Dilip Chitre – Sanskrit

(D)Adil Jussawallah – Urdu

Answer: B

40. Select the matching pair

(A) Pearl- The Scarlet Letter

(B) Raka- The God of Small Things

(C) Raphael- The Great Expectations

(D)Pip- Fire on the Mountain

Answer: A

Q.41 The assertion, “We had a very restful holiday,” implies :

(A) We didn’t exert ourselves

(B) We did nothing

(C) We were very lazy

(D) We had a very dull time

Answer: A

Q.42 “The progress of an artist is an continual self sacrifice, a continual extinction of personality. “This assertion implies :

(A) Merely by a continual extinction of personality an artist is sure to make progress

(B) An artist is likely to make progress through continual self sacrifice and extinction of personality

(C) Continual self sacrifice and extinction of personality will undermine the progress of the artist

(D) An artist must have a personality to create art

Answer: B

Q.43 “The best poetry will be found to have a power of forming, sustaining and delighting us”. This assertion implies :

(A)Poetry has multiple functions to perform

(B)Poetry is more useful than other arts

(C)All other arts including poetry have their limitations

(D)Poetry has no role to play

Answer: B

Q.44 “Human beings, and especially human beings as an integral part of a social organisation are regarded as primary subject matter of literature”. This assertion implies :

(A)Human beings alone can be the subject matter of literature

(B)All living beings-animal and human, contribute towards the creation of literature

(C)Humans as social beings are the nucleus of all literary exercise

(D)Literature transcends the human and the non-human.

Answer: C

Q.45 “We must learn to see more, to hear more, to feel more”. The assertion implies :

(A)Human beings have only three faculties at their command to comprehend all knowledge

(B)A sharpening of three faculties mentioned would help human beings to become better

(C)Only with the combination of all senses, we may become better

(D)Seeing, hearing and feeling are not enough to become better human beings

Answer: B

Read the passage below, and Answer the questions that follow based on your understanding of the passage :

John Dryden in the late seventeenth century defined poetic license as “The liberty which poets have assumed to themselves, in all ages, of speaking things in verse which are beyond the severity of prose”. In its most common use the term is confined to diction alone, to justify the poet’s departure from the rules and conventions of standard spoken and written prose in matters such as syntax, word order, the use of archaic or newly coined words, and the conventional use of eye-rhymes. The degree and kinds of linguistic freedom assumed by poets have varied according to the conventions of each age, but in every case the justification of the freedom lies in the success of the effect.

In a broader sense, “Poetic License” is applied not only to language, but to all the ways in which poets and other literacy authors are held to be free to violate, for special effects, the ordinary norms not only of common discourse but also of literal and historical truth, including the devices of metre and rhyme, the recourse to literary conventions, and the representation of fictional characters and events.

Q.46 ‘Poetic license’ means :

(A) liberty with diction, alone

(B) liberty with diction and norms of common discourse

(C) liberty with historical truth

(D) liberty with representations of fictional characters

Answer: A

Q.47 ‘Linguistic freedom’ is :

(A) freedom with diction, newly-coined words, syntax

(B) freedom with the use of colloquial language

(C) freedom with the use of figurative construction

(D) freedom with literal truth

Answer: A

Q.48 How do you justify the linguistic freedom taken ?

(A) on the basis of scholarship embedded

(B) on the basis of form

(C) on the basis of the success of the effect

(D) on the basis of the thematic grandeur

Answer: C

Q.49 “Diction” means :

(A) severity of prose

(B) devices of metre and rhyme

(C) poetic license

(D) syntax and word order

Answer: D

Q.50 “Poetic license” applies to :

(A) Poets alone

(B) All literary

(C) Dramatists only

(D) Epic writers only

Answer: B

December 2004

UGC NET English December 2004 : Paper 2 (Solved Paper with Answers)

Q.1 In Langland’s Piers the Plowman, piers appear finally as:

  1. Charity
  2. The Holy Trinity
  3. Jesus
  4. The Good Samaritan

Answer: 3

Q.2 It is decided that each canterbury pilgrim would tell in all:

  1. 1 story
  2. Two Stories
  3. Three Stories
  4. Four Stories

Answer: 4

Q.3 “Venus and Adonis” is a long narrative poem by:

  1. Shakespeare
  2. Marlowe
  3. Drayton
  4. Sydney

Answer: 1

Q.4 The total number of poems in Shakespeare’s sonnets is:

  1. 123
  2. 142
  3. 104
  4. 154

Answer: 4

Q.5 Which of the following plays has a Machiavellian Hero:

  1. Tamburlaine Part Ⅰ
  2. Dr. Faustus
  3. Jew of Malta
  4. Edward Ⅱ

Answer: 3

Q.6 Which of the following is written by Samuel Butler?

  1. Religio Laici
  2. David Simple
  3. Hudibras
  4. A Journal of the Plague Year

Answer: 3

Q.7 Which of the following poems did Milton wrote in octasyllabic couplets?

  1. IL Penseroso
  2. On his Blindness
  3. On the Late Massacre in Piedmont
  4. Lycidas

Answer: 1

Q.8 Which of the following plays is not written by Congreve?

  1. The Way of the World
  2. The Old Bachelor
  3. Love for Love
  4. The Relapse

Answer: 4

Q.9 Dryden’s All for Love is an adaption of:

  1. Philaster
  2. Romeo & Juliet
  3. Antony and Cleopatra
  4. Edward Ⅱ

Answer: 3

Q.10 Which of the following books proposes a political theory?

  1. Principia
  2. Leviathan
  3. Anatomy of Melancholy
  4. Liberty of Prophesying

Answer: 2

Q.11 Which of the following books is written by a woman?

  1. A Vindication of the Rights of Women
  2. Social Contract
  3. A Treatise of Human Nature
  4. The Wealth of Nations

Answer: 1

Q.12 Which of the following books by Jonathan Swift is a religious allegory?

  1. The Battle of the Books
  2. A Modest Proposal
  3. Gulliver’s Travels
  4. A Tale of a Tub

Answer: 4

Q.13 Which of the following is a visionary work by William Blake?

  1. The Song of Los
  2. Songs of Experience
  3. Poetical Sketches
  4. The Vision of the Daughters of Albion

Answer: 4

Q.14 Pope’s An Essay on Man is based on the idea of:

  1. Lord Petrick
  2. Theobald
  3. Lord Bolingbroke
  4. Lord Harvey

Answer: 3

Q.15 Which of the following works by Johnson is an imitation of the tenth satire of juvenal?

  1. London
  2. Vanity of Human Wishes
  3. The Life of Savage
  4. Rasselas

Answer: 2

Q.16 The final version of Wordsworth is The Prelude appeared in:

  1. 1798
  2. 1806
  3. 1850
  4. 1860

Answer: 3

Q.17 “To Suffer Woes Which Hope thinks infinite” is written by:

  1. Shelley
  2. Wordsworth
  3. Keats
  4. Byron

Answer:1

Q.18 “A thing of beauty is a joy forever” occurs in:

  1. Ode to a Grecian Urn
  2. Ode to Automn
  3. Ode to Psyche
  4. Endymion

Answer: 4

Q.19 Which of the following novel is a satire on the Gothic Novel?

  1. Pride and Prejudice
  2. Emma
  3. Sense of Sensibility
  4. Northanger Abbey

Answer: 4

Q.20 Who distinguished between 11th literature of knowledge and the literature of power?

  1. Coleridge
  2. De Quincey
  3. Hazlitt
  4. Lamb

Answer: 2

Q.21 Who among the following Victorian poets is the most sensitive to the conflict between the old and the new?

  1. Tennyson
  2. Browning
  3. Rossetti
  4. Swinburne

Answer: 1

Q.22 Under the Greenwood Tree is Written by:

  1. Mrs. Gaskell
  2. George Eliot
  3. Thomas Hardy
  4. Emily Bronte

Answer: 3

Q.23 The office of circumlocution occurs in:

  1. Little Dorrit
  2. Bleak House
  3. Great Expectations
  4. Hard Times

Answer: 1

Q.24 The novel Mary Barton is written by:

  1. Mrs. Gaskell
  2. George Eliot
  3. Emily Bronte
  4. Dickens

Answer: 1

Q.25 The line “Poetry is criticism of life” occurs in:

  1. Culture and Anarchy
  2. Modern Painters
  3. The Study of Poetry
  4. Sartor Resartus

Answer: 3

Q.26 Martha Quest was Written by:

  1. Jean Rhys
  2. Doris Lessing
  3. Iris Murdoch
  4. Nadine Gordimer

Answer: 2

Q.27 The term Stream of Consciousness was taken from the book:

  1. The Human Mind
  2. The Principles of Psychology
  3. The Mind of Man
  4. Modes of Human Behaviour

Answer: 2

Q.28 G.S. Frazer’s The Golden Bough focuses on:

  1. Images
  2. Metaphors
  3. Symbols
  4. Archetypes

Answer: 4

Q.29 Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman relies for its tragic seriousness on the fate of:

  1. Willy Loman
  2. Estragon
  3. Vladimir
  4. Lucky

Answer: 1

Q.30 The character Leopold Bloom makes an appearance in the novel:

  1. The Sound and the Fury
  2. Ulysses
  3. To the Lighthouse
  4. The Europeans

Answer: 2

Q.31 Who of the following authors represents the Sri Lankan diaspora:

  1. Cyrill Dabydeen
  2. Michael Ondaatje
  3. Arnold H. Itwaru
  4. M.G. Vassanji

Answer: 2

Q.32 Australian Aboriginals receive a sympathetic treatment in:

  1. Les Murray
  2. Gwen Harwood
  3. Judith Wright
  4. A.D. Hope

Answer: 3

Q.33 Margaret Atwood’s Survival makes a case for:

  1. Canadian Literary Studies
  2. Canadian Nationalism
  3. The Future of Canadian Literature
  4. The Past of Canadian Literature

Answer: 3

Q.34 V.S Naipaul’s latest book is:

  1. The Mystic Masseur
  2. A Bend in the River
  3. Among the Believrs
  4. Half a Life

Answer: 4

Q.35 Which of the following books by Salman Rushdie refers to the 15th century Spain as a starting point?

  1. Haroun and the Sea of Stories
  2. The Moor’s Last Sigh
  3. Shame
  4. Grimus

Answer: 4

Q.36 Who is Afraid of Virginia Woolf is written by:

  1. Arthur Miller
  2. Eugene O’ Nell
  3. Edward Albee
  4. Tennessee Williams

Answer: 3

Q.37 Imamu Amiri Baraka is:

  1. A Caribbean Writer
  2. An American Writer
  3. An Arab Writer
  4. A Sri Lankan Writer

Answer: 2

Q.38 The Miscellany was published from:

  1. Sahitya Academi
  2. The Writers Workshop
  3. PEN
  4. Dhawanyalok

Answer: 2

Q.39 Who of the following writers recreates the life of the Yoruba/Ibo Community?

  1. Derak Walcott
  2. Wole Soyinka
  3. Chinua Achebe
  4. Okot

Answer: 2

Q.40 Who of the following white female authors are sympathetic to the cause of the blacks?

  1. Margaret Drabble
  2. Nadine Gordimer
  3. Murial Spark
  4. Jean Rhys

Answer: 2

Q.41 New criticism considers text as a:

  1. Cultural construct
  2. Historical construct
  3. Linguistic construct
  4. Autotelic

Answer: 4

Q.42 “Mythologies” was written by:

  1. Roland Barthes
  2. Jacques Derrida
  3. Homi K. Bhabha
  4. Ernest Dowson

Answer: 1

Q.43 The word Catharsis signifies:

  1. Pontification
  2. Personification
  3. Purgation
  4. Publication

Answer: 3

Q.44 The rejection of Universalism is a mark of:

  1. Deconstruction
  2. New-Historicism
  3. Structuralism
  4. Postcolonial Criticism

Answer: 4

Q.45 Eliot’s theory of Objective Correlative appeared in his essay entitled:

  1. Three Voices of Poetry
  2. Tradition and the Individual Talent
  3. The Metaphysical Poets
  4. Hamlet

Answer: 4

Q.46 Spring Rhythm is an example of:

  1. Verse
  2. Syllable
  3. Stress
  4. Meter

Answer: 4

Q.47 “More is thy due than more than all can play” is an example of:

  1. Weak ending
  2. Inversion
  3. Alexandrine
  4. Extra Syllable

Answer: 2

Q.48 Unrhymed metrical composition consisting of five iambic measures in each line is called:

  1. Rhyme Royal
  2. Run-on-Lines
  3. Blank Verse
  4. Spenserian Stanza

Answer: 3

Q.49 Verse stories dealing with Chivalry, knight, errantry, enchantments and love are known as:

  1. The Epic
  2. The Ballad
  3. The Ode
  4. The Metrical Romances

Answer: 4

Q.50 “He is a citizen of no mean city” is an example of:

  1. Periphrasis
  2. Tautology
  3. Prolepsis
  4. Litotes

Answer: 4

Anglo Norman Period

Anglo Norman Period (1066AD-1350AD)

The Anglo-Norman period is an important stage in the history of English literature and language. It began in 1066 when William the Conqueror, the Duke of Normandy, defeated King Harold of England at the Battle of Hastings. After this victory, William became the king of England, and Norman rule started. This period continued until about 1350 AD, when English again became the main language of the people and the government.

The Normans were originally from France, and they spoke a form of French called Norman French. When they came to England, they became the ruling class. The kings, nobles, and officials spoke French, while common people continued to speak Old English. As a result, England became a bilingual country. French was used in courts, government, and literature, while English was spoken by ordinary people. Over time, these two languages mixed and formed Middle English.

During this period, English society changed greatly. The Normans introduced a strong feudal system, where land was controlled by the king and given to nobles in return for loyalty and military service. New castles, churches, and courts were built. Norman rulers also brought new laws and administration, which made England more organized.

Literature during the Anglo-Norman period was written mainly in Latin and French. Latin was used for church writings and education, while French was used for poetry, history, and court literature. English was not completely lost, but it was used mostly by common people and in oral traditions. Slowly, English writers began to use Middle English in written form.

Many important literary forms developed during this time. One of the most popular was the romance, which told stories of knights, love, adventure, and bravery. These stories were influenced by French culture and were about heroic deeds and noble behavior. The legends of King Arthur and his knights also became popular during this period.

Religion continued to play a major role in life. The church had great power, and monasteries were centers of learning. Many books were copied and written by monks, which helped in preserving literature and history. Religious writings, prayers, and moral stories were common.

The English language changed a lot during the Anglo-Norman period. Thousands of French words entered English, especially in areas like law, government, art, food, and fashion. Words like court, judge, beauty, dinner, and government came from French. This made English richer and more flexible.

By the end of this period, English slowly returned as the main language of England. Writers like Geoffrey Chaucer later used Middle English to write great literary works, which showed that English had become strong again.

The Anglo-Norman period was very important because it connected Old English with Middle English. It changed English culture, language, and literature in a deep way. Even though French dominated at first, the mixing of languages helped create the modern English we speak today.

References

Long, William J. English Literature: Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English-Speaking World. Ginn and Company.

Anglo Saxon Period

Anglo Saxon Period in English Literature

Introduction

The Anglo-Saxon period is one of the earliest and most important phases in the history of English literature and culture. It covers the time from about 450 AD to 1066 AD. It began when Germanic tribes came to England and it ended with the Norman Conquest. After the Romans left Britain around 410 AD, three Germanic tribes called the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes came from present-day Germany and Denmark and settled in Britain.

They formed small kingdoms and their language, called Old English, became the base of the English language. The culture of the Anglo-Saxons was based on war, loyalty, bravery, and family ties. Life was often dangerous because of wars and invasions. Society was ruled by kings and warriors, and people strongly believed in fate, honor, and courage.

This period is called the Dark Ages because very little written material from this time has survived. It does not mean the people were uncivilized, but it means there is little historical information available. One reason is that most people could not read or write and history was passed by speaking instead of writing. Another reason is that after the Romans left, many roads, cities, and schools were destroyed and learning declined. Britain also faced many wars and invasions, which made life unstable. Education was limited mainly to monks and church scholars. Even though it is called a dark period, great literary works like Beowulf were created during this time.

Religion and Culture

In the early Anglo-Saxon period, people followed pagan religions and believed in many gods. Later, Christianity was brought by missionaries like St. Augustine in 597 AD. Christianity changed society by encouraging learning, writing, and moral values. Monasteries became centers of education, and monks wrote many poems and religious texts. Because of this, much Anglo-Saxon literature was preserved.

Anglo-Saxon literature was written in Old English and included epic poems, elegies, religious writings, and historical records. The most famous work is Beowulf, which tells the story of a brave hero who fights monsters to protect his people. Common themes in this literature include heroism, loyalty to one’s lord, the fight between good and evil, fate which was called wyrd, and belief in God and religion.

Dialects of Old English

Old English had four main dialects that were spoken in different parts of England. West Saxon was spoken in the south and west, and most surviving Old English writings are in this dialect. Mercian was spoken in central England. Northumbrian was spoken in the north. Kentish was spoken in the southeast. These dialects were different in spelling, pronunciation, and vocabulary, just like modern regional accents and languages.

The Anglo-Saxon period ended in 1066 when William the Conqueror from Normandy defeated King Harold in the Battle of Hastings. After this, French influence entered England and the language slowly changed into Middle English.

The Anglo-Saxon period is very important because it formed the base of the English language and literature. Even though it is called the Dark Ages, it was a time of strong storytelling, powerful values, and cultural growth, and the Old English dialects and heroic spirit of the Anglo-Saxons still influence English literature today.

References

Long, William J. English Literature: Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English-Speaking World. Ginn and Company, 1909.

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