1. Which of W.M. Thackeray’s novel’s closing sentence is this?
“Which of us is happy in this world? Which of us has his desire? Or, having it, is satisfied?”
(1) The History of Henry Esmond
(2) Vanity Fair
(3) The Luck of Barry Lyndon
(4) Pendennis
Answer: B
2. Why does Lovewit in Ben Jonson’s play The Alchemist leave his house, setting the stage for his servant Face, alongwith Subtle, a fake alchemist to fleece people?
(1) To visit his father who left him long ago.
(2) To find out new sources of minting money.
(3) Because of an epidemic of plague.
(4) To make a pilgrimage.
Answer: C
3. By the end of the nineteen fifties novelists like Stan Barstow, Sid Chaplin, Alan Sillitoe and David Storey were routinely lumped together as representatives of “Kitchen-sink realism”. Who in 1954 wrote the article “The Kitchen Sink”, calling attention to the gritty and direct realism?
(1) Martin Harrison
(2) Stan Smith
(3) David Sylvester
(4) Philip Callow
Answer: C
4. Which of the following is not an allegorical character in the play Everyman?
(1) Kindred
(2) Strength
(3) Christian
(4) Discretion
Answer: C
5. Who among the following translators is notable as the first translator of Bhagavad Gita into English?
(1) Charles Wilkins
(2) Nathaniel Halhead
(3) William Jones
(4) Barbara Stoler Miller
Answer: A
6. In Biographia Literaria S.T. Coleridge defines the imagination as the faculty by which
(1) the soul perceives the phenomenal diversity of the universe.
(2) the soul perceives the spiritual unity of the universe.
(3) the mind acquires images by its associative power.
(4) the mind separates images by its discriminatory power.
Answer: B
7. Why do the Houyhnhnms have so few words in their language?
(1) Their wants and passions are fewer than human wants and passions, and they need fewer words.
(2) They consider language to be morally corrupt and prefer to remain silent.
(3) They find speech difficult because they are horses.
(4) They prefer action to words.
Answer: A
8. Identify the title of A.D. Hope’s first published book of poems.
(1) Native Companions
(2) The Wandering Islands
(3) A Midsummer Eve’s Dream
(4) The Cave and the Spring
Answer: B
9. Which of the following is an incorrect assumption in language teaching?
(1) Learners acquire language by trying to use it in real situations.
(2) Learners’ first language plays an important role in learning.
(3) Language teaching should have a focus on communicative activities.
(4) Language teaching should give importance to writing rather than speech.
Answer: D
10. The Bhasmasura myth is used in R.K. Narayan’s …………..
(1) The Man-Eater of Malgudi
(2) The Financial Expert
(3) The English Teacher
(4) The World of Nagaraj
Answer: A
11. During the Middle English period, many words were borrowed from two languages :
I. Celtic
II. Latin
III. French
IV. Old Norse
The right combination according to the code is
(1) I and II
(2) II and III
(3) II and IV
(4) III and IV
Answer: B
12. Select the right chronological sequence of the date of Bible translations.
(1) King James Version – Tyndale –Revised Standard Version – Holman Christian Standard Bible
(2) Revised Standard Version – King James Version – Tyndale – Holman Christian Standard Bible
(3) Tyndale – King James Version – Revised Standard Version – Holman Christian Standard Version
(4) Revised Standard Version – Holman Christian Standard Bible – King James Version – Tyndale
Answer: C
13. The last word in James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake is
(1) No
(2) The
(3) Morning !
(4) Jaysus
Answer: B
14. Assertion (A) : In so far as we are taught how to read, what we engage are not texts but paradigms.
Reason (R) : We appropriate meaning from a text according to what we need or desire, or, in other words, according to the critical assumptions or predispositions that we bring to it.
(1) Both (A) and (R) are true and (R) is the correct explanation of (A).
(2) Both (A) and (R) are true but (R) is not the correct explanation of (A).
(3) (A) is true, but (R) is false.
(4) (A) is false, but (R) is true.
Answer: A
15. One of the key terms in Michel Foucault’s work is discourse. This is best described as
(1) the power of persuasion in all articulations.
(2) the selective language powerful people use.
(3) conceptual frameworks which enable some mode of thought and deny or severely constrain certain others.
(4) the ability to suggest transcendental levels of meaning in an utterance.
Answer: C
16. The narrators of Oroonoko are
I. a woman
II. Oroonoko
III. a purported eyewitness of the events described
IV. Trefy
The right combination according to the code is
(1) I and IV
(2) I and III
(3) II and III
(4) II and IV
Answer: B
17. Which character of Henrik Ibsen speaks the following lines : “The life of a normally constituted idea is generally about seventeen or eighteen years, at the most twenty?”
(1) Nora in A Doll’s House
(2) Dr. Thomas Stockman in An Enemy of the People
(3) John Rosmer in Rosmerscholm
(4) Oswald in Ghosts
Answer: B
18. In literary studies structuralism promotes
(1) new interpretations of literary works.
(2) the view that literature is one signifying practice among others.
(3) a systematic account of literary archetypes.
(4) unstable structures of systems of signification.
Answer: B
19. P.B. Shelley’s Julian and Maddalo is a conversation between Julian and Count Maddalo.
Who do these two characters represent?
(1) Julian represents Keats and Count Maddalo, Byron
(2) Julian represents Shelley and Count Maddalo, Byron
(3) Julian represents Shelley and Count Maddalo, William Godwin
(4) Julian represents Mary Shelley and Count Maddalo, William Godwin
Answer: B
20. What is practical criticism?
(1) The close analysis of literary texts in such a way as to bring out their political meaning.
(2) A movement which wished to make literary criticism more relevant.
(3) The close analysis of poems without taking account of any external information.
(4) The study of ambiguity.
Answer: C
21. Which of the following does not describe some of the practices/beliefs of feminist literary criticism?
(1) Feminist criticism recuperates female writers ignored by the canon.
(2) Feminist literary critics offer a criticism of the construction of gender.
(3) Feminist literary critics argue that the traditional canon is justified.
(4) Feminist literary critics mostly reject the essentialising of ‘male’ and ‘female’.
Answer: C
22. Which work by Franz Kafka is also known as The Man Who Disappeared?
(1) The Castle
(2) “Metamorphosis”
(3) “In the Penal Colony”
(4) Amerika
Answer: D
23. Towards the end of Evelyn Waugh’s A Handful of Dust the protagonist Tony Last is trapped in the jungle by the calculating crazy Mr. Todd who forces him to read and reread the novels of a particular author. Waugh has also written a short story dealing with Tony’s singular experience in the jungle. Who is the novelist referred to and what is the title of the short story?
(1) Rudyard Kipling, “Revisiting the Jungle”
(2) Joseph Conrad, “Shadows of the Dark Trees”
(3) Charles Dickens, “The Man Who Liked Dickens”
(4) Henry Fielding, “Tom Jones’s Journey into the Wild”
Answer: C
24. At the beginning of the Restoration period, there was a seismic shift in the social, political and religious attitudes of the English. Which of the following statements best describes that shift?
(1) England shifted from an aristocratic Catholic monarchy to a parliamentary democracy.
(2) England shifted from an atheistic oligarchy to a deistic squirearchy.
(3) England shifted from a Republican Puritan Commonwealth to an aristocratic Anglican monarchy.
(4) England shifted from a parliamentary democracy to an aristocratic Catholic tyranny.
Answer: C
25. The Grammar-Translation Method in English Language Teaching stresses on
(1) Fluency
(2) Accuracy
(3) Appropriateness
(4) Listening Skill
Answer: B
26. “[They] then heaved out,/ away with a will in their wood-wreathed ship.” This line describing Beowulf’s departure from Geatland, is typical of the poem’s form and Old English poetic technique because
I. it features alliteration
II. it rhymes
III. it features onomotopoeia
IV. it has four strong stresses
The right combination according to the code is
(1) I and II
(2) II and III
(3) I and IV
(4) II and IV
Answer: C
27. Identify the poet, translator, publisher and essayist who founded a press in the 1950s called Writers’ Workshop and provided a publishing outlet for Indians writing in English.
(1) P. Lal
(2) A.K. Mehrotra
(3) Vinay Dharwadkar
(4) A.K. Ramanujan
Answer: A
28. Antagonised by what he considered to be the provinciality of the Lake Poets, Byron wrote the preface to which of his works as a rebuke to Wordsworth’s own introduction to “The Thorn”?
(1) The Prisoner of Chillon
(2) Don Juan
(3) Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage
(4) The Vision of Judgement
Answer: B
29. Which of the following theoretical movements claimed that “the device is the only hero of literature”?
(1) Russian formalism
(2) New Criticism
(3) Phenomenology
(4) Deconstruction
Answer: A
30. In Jean Francois Lyotard’s works the term “language games”, sometimes also called “phrase regimens” denotes :
I. the multiplicity of communities of meaning.
II. the breakdown of communities of meaning.
III. the innumerable and incommensurable separate systems in which meanings are produced.
IV. the singular system in which meanings are dispersed and displaced.
The right combination according to the code is
(1) I and IV
(2) I and III
(3) II and IV
(4) II and III
Answer: B
31. What part of Canada is Alice Munro most famous for depicting?
(1) Vancouver
(2) Montreal
(3) Ontario
(4) Quebec
Answer: C
32. In John Gay’s Beggar’s Opera what is Peachum’s occupation?
I. Pimp
II. Lawyer
III. Fencer of stolen goods, and master of a gang of thieves
IV. Impeader of less powerful criminals
The right combination according to the code is
(1) III & IV
(2) II & III
(3) I & IV
(4) II & IV
Answer: A
33. In the opening stanza of “Song of Myself”, Whitman begins his spiritual awakening at the age of …………….
(1) 37
(2) 15
(3) 24
(4) 61
Answer: A
34. In which of the following poems does Tennyson describe and condemn the spirit of aestheticism whose sole religion is the worship of beauty and of knowledge for their own sake and which ignores human responsibility and obligations of one’s fellowmen?
(1) “The Princess”
(2) “The Lady of Shalott”
(3) “The Palace of Art”
(4) “Tithonus”
Answer: C
35. Luigi Pirandello’s Six Characters in Search of an Author deliberately blurs the boarder lines between the world of the theatre and the world of ‘real life’ by carefully chiselled dialogues like :
“Don’t you feel the ground beneath your feet as you reflect that this ‘you’ which you feel today, all this present reality of yours, is destined to seem a mere illusion to you tomorrow?”
Who is the speaker? Who is it addressed to?
(1) Stepdaughter to Father
(2) Father to Stage Manager
(3) Stage Manager to Director
(4) Mother to Director
Answer: B
36. In a poem in memory of Major Robert Gregory, Lady Gregory’s son, W.B. Yeats mentions an Irish writer who had found his inspiration “In a most desolate stony place” that he came “Towards nightfall upon a race/ passionate and simple like his heart.” Who is the writer?
(1) J.M. Barrie
(2) J.M. Synge
(3) Isaac Bickerstaffe
(4) Thomas More
Answer: B
37. Jacques Derrida’s work received some criticism from analytical philosophers. Who below was a critic of Derrida?
(1) John Searle
(2) Jean-Francois Lyotard
(3) Emmanuel Levinas
(4) Paul de Man
Answer: A
38. Who among the following bought and renovated the house of the Anglican poet, George Herbert, near Salisbury, England, in 1996?
(1) Daljit Nagra
(2) Vikram Seth
(3) Amitava Kumar
(4) Arundhati Roy
Answer: B
39. Which pair of novels by Anita Desai take as their subject the suppression and oppression of Indian women?
I. Where Shall We Go This Summer?
II. The Zigzag Way
III. Cry, the Peacock
IV. Baumgartner’s Bombay
The right combination according to the code is
(1) I and II
(2) I and III
(3) II and III
(4) III and IV
Answer: B
40. From among the following identify the two Indian English authors who received appreciation and encouragement from their British counterparts :
I. R.K. Narayan, Graham Greene
II. Nirad C. Chaudhuri, Evelyn Waugh
III. Mulk Raj Anand, E.M. Forster
IV. Raja Rao, Iris Murdoch
The right combination according to the code is
(1) I and II
(2) II and IV
(3) I and III
(4) III and IV
Answer: C
41. Match the character with the work :
Character
I. Count Fosco
II. Margaret
III. Lucy Snowe
IV. Maggie Tulliver
Work
A. Villette
B. Adam Bede
C. The Woman in White
D. North or South
Codes :
I II III IV
(1) C D A B
(2) D C A B
(3) C A D B
(4) C A B D
Answer: * Marks given to all
42. This poet was accidently killed in Burma by a pistol shot in 1944. His posthumously published collection of poems Ha ! Ha ! Among the Trumpets is divided into three sections.
The first section describes a tense, waiting England and the second the voyage to the East. In the third section he uncomfortably comes to terms with the alien contours, the harsh light and the dry wastes of India as evident in poems like “The Maratta Ghats”, “Indian Day” and “Observation Post : Forward Area”. Who is the poet?
(1) Keith Douglas
(2) Sidney Keyes
(3) David Gascoyne
(4) Alun Lewis
Answer: D
43. As Adam and Eve leave Paradise, “hand in hand with wand’ring steps and slow” (Book XII, Paradise Lost) what is their consolation?
(1) They are comforted by their love for one another.
(2) They are comforted by their foreknowledge of the coming of Christ as Redeemer of mankind.
(3) They are comforted by God, who travels before them in the form of a pillar of fire.
(4) They are comforted by the angel, who holds each of them by the hand.
Answer: B
44. In An Essay of Dramatic Poesy to whom does Dryden refer with the phrase “he needed not the spectacles of books to read Nature”?
(1) Ben Jonson
(2) Ovid
(3) William Shakespeare
(4) Geoffrey Chaucer
Answer: C
45. Emily Dickinson’s use of “open form” or “free verse” is comparable to her contemporary American poet,
(1) Anne Bradstreet
(2) Robert Lowell
(3) Walt Whitman
(4) Sylvia Plath
Answer: C
46. In “A Letter of the Authors” Edmund Spenser writes that two characters in Faerie Queene represent Queen Elizabeth. Who are they?
I. Britomart
II. Cynthia
III. Belphoebe
IV. The Faerie Queene
The right combination according to the code is
(1) III and IV
(2) I and IV
(3) I and III
(4) II and III
Answer: A
47. Who among the following African novelists was a student of philosophy and literature in India?
(1) Nuruddin Farah
(2) Ben Okri
(3) Helon Habila
(4) Benjamin Kwakye
Answer: A
48. In particular William Blake was influenced by the religious writings of
I. Martin Luther
II. Jacob Boehme
III. Emanuel Swedenborg
IV. Confucious
The right combination according to the code is
(1) I and IV
(2) I and II
(3) II and III
(4) III and IV
Answer: C
49. Which British King, having defeated the Viking invaders, consciously used the English language to create a sense of national identity and retain political control over independent countries?
(1) Alfred the Great
(2) Edward the Elder
(3) King Arthur
(4) Ethelbert of Kent
Answer: A
50. In “Politics and the English Language” George Orwell provides a list of rules to aid in curing the English language. What is the final rule?
(1) Never use a metaphor, simile or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
(2) Never use a long word where a short one will do.
(3) If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
(4) Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.
Answer: D
51. In his Defence of Poesy what is the “best and most accomplished kind of poetry” in Sidney’s estimation?
(1) Heroical, or epic poetry
(2) Lyric poetry
(3) Pastoral poetry
(4) Elegiac poetry
Answer: A
52. Which writer of the Romantic period makes the following comment : “The poet is far from dealing only with these subtle and analogical truths. Truth of every kind belongs to him, provided it can bud into any kind of beauty, or is capable of being illustrated and impressed by poetic faculty”?
(1) Wordsworth in Preface to the Lyrical Ballads
(2) William Hazlitt in “On the Feeling of Immortality in Youth”
(3) Leigh Hunt in What is Poetry?
(4) Keats in one of his letters to his brother
Answer: C
53. In his poem “Whispers of Immortality” T.S. Eliot says that a dramatist “was much possessed by death / And saw the skull beneath the skin” and a poet “knew the anguish of the marrow / The ague of the skeleton.” Who are the dramatist and the poet referred to by Eliot?
(1) Christopher Marlowe and Andrew Marvell
(2) John Webster and John Donne
(3) Seneca and Homer
(4) Thomas Kyd and Henry Vaughan
Answer: B
54. Functional Communicative Approach in English Language Teaching is in opposition to
(1) Structural Approach
(2) Comprehensive Approach
(3) Translation and Grammar Method
(4) Functional Approach
Answer: A
55. According to Julia Kristeva, it is the eruption of the ………… within the …………… that provides the creative and innovative impulse of modern poetic language.
(1) individual, tradition
(2) specific, generic
(3) semiotic, symbolic
(4) particular, general
Answer: C
56. In Crime and Punishment which character speaks the following words. Who/what are they addressed to?
“I waited for you impatiently…. all this blasted psychology is a double-edged weapon.”
(1) Svidrigailov to the pistol with which he shoots himself
(2) Katherine Ivanovna to Marmeladov
(3) Porfiry Petrovich to Raskolnikov
(4) Raskolnikov to the Bible he finds in the prison cell in Siberia
Answer: C
57. What three Germanic tribes invaded Britons in the fifth century AD, bringing with them the roots of modern English?
(1) The Danes, Saxons and Celts
(2) The Celts, Jutes and Saxons
(3) The Saxons, Danes and Angles
(4) The Jutes, Angles and Saxons
Answer: D
58. Which of the following is not a part of the series of poems called Jejuri, written by Arun Kolatkar?
(1) “Yeshwant Rao”
(2) “Chaitanya”
(3) “The Priest”
(4) “An Old Man”
Answer: D
59. Bertolt Brecht’s concept of alienation was a rejection of the idea that realism was the only mode of art a critique of capitalist society should produce. Alienation is best described as
(1) making the audience feel that they do not belong.
(2) distancing artistic conventions to prevent an emotional catharsis.
(3) scripting unnatural behaviour on stage.
(4) a rejection of capitalism or the market.
Answer: B
60. Ngugi wa Thiongo changed the medium of his writing from English to …………..
(1) Swahili
(2) Yoruba
(3) Xhosa
(4) Gikuyu
Answer: D
61. Which of the following ancient critics does Alexander Pope commend as exemplary in Essay on Criticism?
(1) Aristotle, Quintilian, Dryden, Dionysius, Horace
(2) Aristotle, Longinus, Quintilian, Durfey, Dryden
(3) Aristotle, Horace, Dionysius, Quintilian, Longinus
(4) Aristotle, Horace, Durfey, Quintilian, Longinus
Answer: C
62. Which of the following poems by Philip Larkin is best described as a self-elegy, anticipating the poet’s death?
(1) “The Old Fools”
(2) “Aubade”
(3) “Ambulances”
(4) “Faith Healing”
Answer: B
63. In John Bunyan’s Pilgrims Progress what is the first obstacle encountered by Christian on his progress?
(1) The Slough of Despond
(2) Vanity Fair
(3) The River of Death
(4) The Swamp of Despair
Answer: A
64. Identify the correct chronological sequence of publication of the four parts of The Four Quartets.
(1) Burnt Norton – The Dry Salvages – East Coker – Little Gidding
(2) Burnt Norton – Little Gidding –The Dry Salvages – East Coker
(3) Burnt Norton – East Coker – The Dry Salvages – Little Gidding
(4) Little Gidding – Burnt Norton – The Dry Salvages – East Coker
Answer: C
65. Which of the following is not true of the novels of Charles Dickens?
(1) They deal with the problems of the discontents of an urban civilization.
(2) The plots are strikingly tight-knit.
(3) They share a sense of fun and determining optimism.
(4) They incorporate elements of popular contemporary culture.
Answer: B
66. Published in 1604, the first monolingual English Dictionary was
(1) Nathaniel Bailey’s Universal Etymological Dictionary of the English Language
(2) Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary of the English Language
(3) Robert Cawdrey’s Table Alphabetical
(4) Thomas Blount’s Glossographia
Answer: C
67. Which of the following statements best describe the narrative perspective employed in Thomas More’s Utopia?
I. First-person narration by Raphael Hythloday
II. Third-person narration by a narrator named Thomas More
III. First-person narration by a narrator named Thomas More
IV. Third-person narration by Raphael Hythloday
The right combination according to the code is
(1) I and III
(2) II and IV
(3) II and III
(4) I and II
Answer: A
68. In the opening pages of one of Thomas Mann’s novels we can see space itself becoming a form of time : “Space, like time, engenders forgetfulness but it does so by setting us bodily free from our surroundings and giving us back our primitive unattached state.”
Which is the novel?
(1) Doctor Faustus
(2) Death in Venice
(3) The Confessions of Felix Krull
(4) The Magic Mountain
Answer: D
69. Match the lines with the titles of the poems :
Lines
I. The boa-constrictor’s coil/ Is a fossil
II. My manners are tearing off heads /The allotment of death
III. More coiled steel than living
IV. Time in the sea eats its tail
Titles of the poems
A. “Thrushes”
B. “The Jaguar”
C. “Relic”
D. “Hawk Roosting”
Codes :
I II III IV
(1) A D A C
(2) B D A C
(3) C D B A
(4) D B C A
Answer: B
70. Which one of Joseph Conrad’s novels expresses the contrast between the solidarity of shipboard life and the profound underlying loneliness of existence thus : “loneliness impenetrable and transparent, elusive and everlasting…. that surrounds, envelops, clothes every human soul from the cradle to the grave, and perhaps beyond”?
(1) The Heart of Darkness
(2) The Nigger of the Narcissus
(3) Lord Jim
(4) Nostromo
Answer: * Marks to All
71. John Dryden’s two philosophico-religious poems are
I. Absalom and Achitophel
II. A Layman’s Faith
III. Annus Mirabilis
IV. The Hind and the Panther
The right combination according to the code is
(1) I and II
(2) III and I
(3) II and III
(4) II and IV
Answer: D
Read the following poem and answer the questions, 72 to 75 :
Stray Cats
They are not exactly homeless.
They are dissidents who have lost their faith
in furnished interiors, morning walks,
the cake and the cutlery.
When you have nine lives to live
you learn to take things in your stride.
You learn to stretch your body
at full length and yawn at domestic
fictions. And for this reason
you figure in horror films
in the mandatory moment
between the flash of lightning
and the appearance of the ghost.
The light is darkish blue and you see
yourself in the iris of the burning
eye. The horror is in the seeing.
What you see is altered by the act
of seeing. The mystery does not stop
there. The seer is in turn altered
by what he sees. Having known this,
stray cats jump from roof to roof.
They monitor the world from treetops
and hold their weekly meetings
in the graveyard, like wandering mendicants.
And when they walk out of the mirror
of the sun and cross the crowded road
in a flash, for a shining moment,
they lurk in the light like a giant shadow
of doubt. Ill-omens to those who cannot
see beyond what they see.
72. The poem constructs its account of stray cats by way of a contrast with
(1) wild cats
(2) ominous cats
(3) domestic cats
(4) mysterious cats
Answer: C
73. In the overall context, what do “furnished interiors, morning walks,/ the cake and the cutlery” represent?
(1) Ordinary life
(2) “Domestic fictions”
(3) “A giant shadow of doubt”
(4) Creaturely comforts
Answer: B
74. The last two lines suggest that cats crossing the crowded road
(1) is an unexceptionable superstition.
(2) is not necessarily the ill-omen it is held out to be.
(3) is an example of human obsession.
(4) is indicative of the homelessness of stray cats.
Answer: B
75. From among the following select two words that help accentuate the enigmatic character of stray cats :
I. Doubt
II. Mandatory
III. Faith
IV. Mystery
The right combination according to the code is
(1) I and II
(2) I and IV
(3) II and IV
(4) III and IV
Answer: B
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