1 UGC ENGLISH LITERATURE

Wednesday, April 18, 2012


UGC NET English Solved Paper II. Dec 2009



Note : This paper contains fifty (50) objective type questions, each question carrying two (2) marks. Attempt all the questions.


1. A classical influence on Ben Jonson’s Volpone is

                             (A) Juvenal
(B) Aristophanes
(C) Plautus
(D) Terence



2. Kipling’s “The White Man’s Burden” is addressed to

(A) The American imperial mission in the Philippines.
(B) The Belgian colonial expansion in the Congo.
(C) The British Imperial presence in Nigeria.
(D) The British colonial entry into Afghanistan.

3. Poetry : A Magazine of Verse was founded by Harriet Monroe in

(A) 1922
(B) 1920
(C) 1918
 (D) 1912

4. Who among the following was Geoffrey Chaucer’s contemporary?

(A) Thomas Chatterton
(B) John Gower
(C) Thomas Shadwell
(D) John Gay

5. Which of the following is NOT written by Walter Scott?

(A) Ivanhoe
(B) Lady of the Lake
(C) Heart of Midlothian
(D) The English Mail Coach
(The English Mailcoach (1849) is written by Thomas De Quincey (1785-1859).)

6. “Provincializing Europe” is a concept propounded by

(A) Edward Said
(B) Paul Gilroy
(C) Abdul R. Gurnah
(D) Dipesh Chakravarty

(First published in 2000, Dipesh Chakrabarty's influential Provincializing Europe addresses the mythical figure of Europe that is often taken to be the original site of modernity in many histories of capitalist transition in non-Western countries. This imaginary Europe, Dipesh Chakrabarty argues, is built into the social sciences. The very idea of historicizing carries with it some peculiarly European assumptions about disenchanted space, secular time, and sovereignty. Measured against such mythical standards, capitalist transition in the third world has often seemed either incomplete or lacking. Provincializing Europe proposes that every case of transition to capitalism is a case of translation as well--a translation of existing worlds and their thought--categories into the categories and self-understandings of capitalist modernity. Now featuring a new preface in which Chakrabarty responds to his critics, this book globalizes European thought by exploring how it may be renewed both for and from the margins.)


7. The earliest tract on feminism is

(A) Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex
(B) Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own
(C) Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
(D) Mary Astell’s A Serious Proposal to the Ladies

(A Vindication of the Rights of Woman: with Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects (1792), written by the 18th-century British feminist Mary Wollstonecraft, is one of the earliest works of feminist philosophy. In it, Wollstonecraft responds to those educational and political theorists of the 18th century who did not believe women should have an education. She argues that women ought to have an education commensurate with their position in society, claiming that women are essential to the nation because they educate its children and because they could be "companions" to their husbands, rather than mere wives. Instead of viewing women as ornaments to society or property to be traded in marriage, Wollstonecraft maintains that they are human beings deserving of the same fundamental rights as men.)


8. Match the imaginary location with its creator:

1. Emily Bronte
2. Thomas Hardy
3. Lowood Parsonage
4. Charles Dickens
5. Wessex
6. Egdon Heath
7. Coketown
8. Charlotte Bronte

(A) 1-7 2-5 4-6 3-8 (B) 1-6 2-5 3-8 4-7

(C) 1-5 2-6 3-8 4-7 (D) 2-5 1-7 3-4 6-8

(Author set Novels  in
Thomas Hardy Wessex
Emily Bronte Egdon Heath
Charles Dickens Coketown
Charlotte Bronte Lowood Parsonage)

9. Which Chaucerian text parodies Dante’s The Divine Comedy?

(A) The Canterbury Tales
(B) The Book of the Duchess
(C) The House of Fame
(D) Legend of Good Women

(The House of Fame is over 2,000 lines long in three books and takes the form of a dream vision composed in octosyllabic couplets. The poem is regarded as the first of Chaucer's Italian-influenced period and there are echoes of the works of Ovid, Virgil's Aeneid and particularly Dante's Divine Comedy. The three part structure and the reference to various personalities suggest to some that the poem was meant as a parody of the Divine Comedy.)



10. Essays of Elia was published in

(A) 1800
(B) 1823
(C) 1827
 (D) 1850


11. Which of the following is an example of homosexual fiction?

(A) The Well of Loneliness
(B) Maurice
(C) Orlando
(D) The Ballad of the Reading Gaol

(Maurice is a novel by E. M. Forster. A tale of homosexual love in early 20th century England, it follows Maurice Hall from his schooldays, through university and beyond. It was written from 1913 onwards. Although it was shown to selected friends, such as Christopher Isherwood, it was only published in 1971 after Forster's death.)


12. W.B. Yeat’s “Easter 1916” is

(A) a response to a major political uprising
(B) a reminiscence of his visit to a nursery school
(C) a love poem for Maud Gonne
(D) an ode to his native country

13. William Empson’s Seven Types of Ambiguity is

(A) A structuralist study of narrative
(B) A piece of psychoanalytic criticism
(C) A study of the media
(D) An analysis of poetic ambivalence

(Empson published Seven Types of Ambiguity (1930), an influential text which analyzes in detail the meanings and effects of English poetry.)



14. Who among the following is associated with the ideology of Utilitarianism?

(A) J.A. Froude
(B) Charles Kingsley
(C) J.S. Mill
(D) Cardinal Newman

15. The ‘Condition of England’ literature refers to

(A) The literature written by the labour class.
(B) The literature of England extolling living conditions.
(C) The literature of England depicting the vulnerability of labour classes.
(D) The literature of England depicting the imperial projects abroad.

The term the “Condition-of-England novels” refers largely to industrial novels, social novels, or social problem novels, published in Victorian England during and after the period of the Hungry Forties. this type of novels deals with the contemporary social and political issues related to deteriorating social scenario after the Industrial Revolution in England in the early 19th century.

16. Philip Sidney wrote An Apology for Poetry in immediate response to

(A) Plato’s Republic
(B) Aristotle’s Poetics
(C) Stephen Gosson’s The School of Abuse
(D) Jeremy Collier’s Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage.

Stephen Gosson (1554-1624). —Poet, actor, and satirist wrote The School of Abuse (1579), directed against "poets, pipers, players, jesters, and such-like Caterpillars of a Commonwealth." Dedicated to Sir P. Sidney, it was not well received by him, and is believed to have evoked his Apologie for Poetrie (1595).

17. Silence ! The Court is in Session is a _________ play translated into English.
(A) Gujarati
(B) Bengali
(C) Marathi
(D) Kannada


18. Arrange the following in ascending order in terms of size :

1. epic
2. epigram
3. stanza
4. sonnet

(A) 1 2 3 4
(B) 2 1 3 4
(C) 2 3 4 1
(D) 1 3 4 2

19. “Fail I alone in words and deeds? /
      Why, all men strive and who succeeds?” These lines are from

(A) “Rabbi Ben Ezra”
(B) “Fra Lippo Lippi”
(C) “Caliban upon Setebos”
(D) “The Last Ride Together”

Read the Poem The Last Ride Together


20. Dr. Johnson’s “The Vanity of Human Wishes” expresses
(A) Epicureanism
(B) Humanism
(C) Stoicism
(D) Cynicism



21. “A trivial comedy for serious people” was the subtitle for

(A) Everyman in His Humour
(B) Blythe Spirit
(C) The Way of the World
(D) The Importance of Being Earnest.



22. Which famous elegy closes with the following lines?

“In the deserts of the heart/Let the healing fountain start,/In the prison of his days,/
Teach the free man how to praise.”

(A) In Memoriam
(B) Thyrsis
(C) “In Memory of W.B. Yeats”
(D) “Verses on the Death of T.S. Eliot”

Read the Poem In Memory of W.B Yeats


23. The Temple is a collection of poems by
(A) Thomas Carew
(B) Robert Herrick
(C) George Herbert
(D) Richard Crashaw

24. Ben Jonson’s comedies are
(A) Volpone, Bartholomew Fair, The Shoemaker’s Holiday
(B) Volpone, The Alchemist, Epicoene
(C) Volpone, The Alchemist, The Knight of the Burning Pestle
(D) Volpone, Epicoene, The Shoemaker’s Holiday

The Shoemakers' Holiday, or the Gentle Craft is an Elizabethan play written by Thomas Dekker. While The Knight of the Burning Pestle is a play by Francis Beaumont.

25. What is ‘L’ Allegro’s’ companion piece called ?

(A) Lamia
(B) Hyperion
(C) Il Penseroso
(D) Thyrsis

26. Match the character with the novel :

1. Caddy                          5. The Sound and the Fury

2. Lennie                          6. Of Mice and Men

3. Jake Barnes                  7. The Sun Also Rises

4. Tommy Wilhelm            8. Seize the Day

Codes :

(A) 1-5 2-6 3-7 4-8
(B) 2-7 1-8 3-5 4-6
(C) 3-5 4-6 2-8 1-7
(D) 4-5 3-8 2-7 1-8

Caddy-- The Sound and the Fury

Lennie---- Of Mice and Men

Jake Barnes--- The Sun Also Rises

Tommy Wilhelm--- Seize the Day


27. Who among the following writers belonged to the American Beat Movement ?

(A) Allen Ginsberg

(B) Mark Beard

(C) Isaac McCaslih

(D) Charles Beard


28. “The Lost Generation” is a name applied to the disillusioned intellectuals and aesthetes of the years following the First World War. Who called them “The Lost Generation” ?

(A) H.L. Mencken

(B) Willa Cather

(C) Jack London

(D) Gertrude Stein

The term was popularized by Ernest Hemingway who used it as one of two contrasting epigraphs for his novel, "The Sun Also Rises." In that volume Hemingway credits the phrase to Gertrude Stein, who was then his mentor and patron.


29. Hyperbole is

1. an extravagant exaggeration

2. a racist slur

3. a metrical skill

4. a figure of speech

(A) 1 is correct
(B) 1 and 4 are correct
(C) 1 and 3 are correct
(D) 3 is correct

30. “Imagined Communities” is a concept propounded by

(A) Benedict Anderson

(B) Homi Bhabha

(C) Aijaz Ahmed

(D) Partha Chatterjee


31. The New Historicists include

(A) Greenblatt, Showalter, Montrose

(B) Greenblatt, Sinfield, Butler

(C) Greenblatt, Montrose, Goldberg

(D) Williams, Greenblatt, Belsey

Stephen Greenblatt ,Jonathan Goldberg, Stephen Orgel, Lisa Jardine, and Louis Montrose are the notable New Historicists.


32. Wallace Stevens’ “The Man with the Blue Guitar” may be linked to the work of the following artist :

(A) Modigliani

(B) Chagall

(C) Picasso

(D) Cezanne

“The Man with the Blue Guitar” 1937 is one of Stevens’ best composition series. The poem series is related to Picasso’s painting of the same title.


33. The author of Gender Trouble is

(A) Elaine Showalter

(B) Helene Cixous

(C) Michele Barrett

(D) Judith Butler


34. The structural analysis of signs was practised by

(A) Michel Foucault

(B) Jacques Lacan

(C) Julia Kristeva

(D) Roland Barthes


35. Which of the following is a spoof of a Gothic novel ?

(A) Frankenstein

(B) Northanger Abbey

(C) Castle of Otranto

(D) Mysteries of Udolfo

Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey is a satire on the contemporary craze for Gothic novels and their characteristic themes of horror, picturesque ruins, medievalism, terrible secrets, and the supernatural. Northanger Abbey recounts the career of the heroine Catherine Morland.


36. The “madwoman in the attic” is a specific reference to

(A) The narrator of “Goblin Market”

(B) Augusta Egg’s 1858 narrative painting

(C) The Heroine of The Yellow Wallpaper

(D) Bertha Mason of Jane Eyre


37. Assertion (A) : Dr Johnson’s The Lives of the Poets carries critical and biographical studies of poets he admired. It does not, however, carry a life of William Wordsworth.

 Reason (R) : Dr. Johnson singled out poets whom he not only admired but also adored. This explains his omission of Wordsworth.

(A) (A) is wrong but (R) is correct.

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

(C) (A) and (R) are true.

(D) Neither (A) nor (R) is true.

Johnson's last major work, The Lives of the English Poets, was begun in 1778, when he was nearly 70 years old, and completed—in ten volumes—in 1781. It comprises short biographies and critical appraisals of 52 poets, most of whom lived during the eighteenth century. It is arranged, approximately, by date of death. On the other hand, Wordsworth’s Lifetime (1770-1850) does not focus Johnson’s critical era.


38. What is the correct chronological sequence of the following?

(A) Moll Flanders, Pamela, Joseph Andrews, Tristram Shandy

(B) Joseph Andrews, Tristram Shandy, Pamela, Moll Flanders

(C) Tristram Shandy, Moll Flanders, Pamela, Joseph Andrews

(D) Pamela, Moll Flanders, Joseph Andrews, Tristram Shandy

Moll Flanders : Daniel Defoe published Moll Flanders in 1722 .


Pamela: Pamela; or Virtue Rewarded (1740) by Samuel Richardson


Richardson's Joseph Andrews (1742),


The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (1759-1767)


39. “How can what an Englishman believes be heresy? It is a contradiction in terms.” This means

1. An Englishman does not know what heresy is.

2. An Englishman has no beliefs.

3. And, therefore, there is no question of his heresy.

4. And, therefore, there cannot be any question of his acting his beliefs.

(A) 1 and 4 are correct
(B) 2 and 1 are correct
(C) 1 and 3 are correct
(D) 2 and 4 are correct


Saint Joan ~ Scene IV

written by George Bernard Shaw

WARWICK. I am a soldier, not a churchman. As a pilgrim I saw something of the Mahometans. They were not so ill-bred as I had been led to believe. In some respects their conduct compared favorably with ours.

CAUCHON [displeased] I have noticed this before. Men go to the East to convert the infidels. And the infidels pervert them. The Crusader comes back more than half a Saracen. Not to mention that all Englishmen are born heretics.

THE CHAPLAIN. Englishmen heretics!!! [Appealing to Warwick] My lord: must we endure this? His lordship is beside himself. How can what an Englishman believes be heresy? It is a contradiction in terms.

CAUCHON. I absolve you, Messire de Stogumber, on the ground of invincible ignorance. The thick air of your country does not breed theologians.

WARWICK. You would not say so if you heard us quarrelling about religion, my lord! I am sorry you think I must be either a heretic or a blockhead because, as a travelled man, I know that the followers of Mahomet profess great respect for our Lord, and are more ready to forgive St Peter for being a fisherman than your lordship is to forgive Mahomet for being a camel driver. But at least we can proceed in this matter without bigotry.

CAUCHON. When men call the zeal of the Christian Church bigotry I know what to think.

WARWICK. They are only east and west views of the same thing.

CAUCHON [bitterly ironical] Only east and west! Only!!

WARWICK. Oh, my Lord Bishop, I am not gainsaying you. You will carry The Church with you, but you have to carry the nobles also. To my mind there is a stronger case against The Maid than the one you have so forcibly put. Frankly, I am not afraid of this girl becoming another Mahomet, and superseding The Church by a great heresy. I think you exaggerate that risk. But have you noticed that in these letters of hers, she proposes to all the kings of Europe, as she has already pressed on Charles, a transaction which would wreck the whole social structure of Christendom?

CAUCHON. Wreck The Church. I tell you so.


40. Which of the following is an essentially Freudian concept?

(A) Archetype

(B) The Uncanny

(C) The Absurd

(D) The Imaginary

The Uncanny (“the opposite of what is familiar") is a Freudian concept of an instance where something can be familiar, yet foreign at the same time, resulting in a feeling of it being uncomfortably strange or uncomfortably familiar. Because the uncanny is familiar, yet strange, it often creates cognitive dissonance within the experiencing subject due to the paradoxical nature of being attracted to, yet repulsed by an object at the same time. This cognitive dissonance often leads to an outright rejection of the object, as one would rather reject than rationalize.


41. He wrote an essay called “Conrad’s Darkness” where he praises the earlier writer for offering him a vision of the world’s “half-made societies’. Identify the writer.

(A) Chinua Achebe
(B) V.S. Naipaul
(C) Salman Rushdie
(D) Ngugi wa Thiongo


42. “Magic Realism” is closely associated with

(A) Italo Calvino

(B) Gabriel Garcia Marquez

(C) Anita Desai

(D) Rohinton Mistry

(A and B are possible)



43. Who among the following combines anthropology, history and fiction?

(A) Kamala Markandya

(B) Mulk Raj Anand

(C) Upmanyu Chatterjee

(D) Amitav Ghosh


44. Which of the following is NOT a Partition novel?

(A) Train to Pakistan

(B) Sunlight on a Broken Column

(C) The Shadow Lines

(D) In Custody

Khushwant Singh’s English novel Train to Pakistan (1956) is one of the earliest novels to evoke the horrors of the violence that accompanied partition.


Attia Hosain's 'Sun Light on A Broken Column' also deals with partition politics.


Amitav Ghosh's novel The Shadaw Lines (1988) portrays the pre independence and post independence partition politics in ironic terms.


While Anita Desai's In Custody is the story of a college lecturer seeking to meet the great poet who has been his hero since childhood. It was made into a motion picture in 1993.


45. Which of the following options is correct?

(i) Transcendentalism was a philosophical and literary movement.

(ii) It flourished in the Southern States of America in the 19th century.

(iii) It was a reaction against 18th century rationalism and the skeptical philosophy of Locke.

(iv) Among the major texts of Transcendentalist thought are the essays of Emerson, Thoreau’s Walden and the writings of Margaret Fuller.

(A) (i) and (iv) are correct. (B) (ii) and (iii) are correct.

(C) (iii) and (iv) are correct. (D) (iv) is correct.

Transcendentalism, in philosophy and literature, belief in a higher reality than that found in sense experience or in a higher kind of knowledge than that achieved by human reason.

In its most specific usage, transcendentalism refers to a literary and philosophical movement that developed in the U.S. in the first half of the 19th century. While the movement was, in part, a reaction to certain 18th-century rationalist doctrines, it was strongly influenced by Deism, which, although rationalist, was opposed to Calvinist orthodoxy. Transcendentalism also involved a rejection of the strict Puritan religious attitudes that were the heritage of New England, where the movement originated. In addition, it opposed the strict ritualism and dogmatic theology of all established religious institutions.

American transcendentalism began with the formation (1836) of the Transcendental Club in Boston. Among the leaders of the movement were the essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson, the feminist and social reformer Margaret Fuller, the preacher Theodore Parker, the educator Bronson Alcott, the philosopher William Ellery Channing, and the author and naturalist Henry David Thoreau.


Read the following passage carefully, and select the right answers from the alternatives given


below in the question 46 to 50 :

It would be more accurate to say that discourse, rather than language, plays a crucial part in structuring our experience. The whole idea of ‘language’ is something of a fiction : what we normally refer to as ‘language’ can more realistically be seen as heterogeneous  collection of discourses. Each of us has access to a range of discourses, and it is these different discourses which give us access to, or enable us to perform, different ‘selves’. A discourse can be conceptualized as a ‘system of statements which cohere around common meanings and values’. So, for example, in contemporary Britain there are discourses which can be labelled ‘conservative’ – that is, discourses which emphasize values and meanings where the status quo is cherished : and there are discourses which can be labelled ‘patriarchal’ – that is, discourses which emphasize meanings and values which assume the superiority of males. Dominant discourses such as these appear ‘natural’ : they are powerful precisely because they are able to make invisible the fact that they are just one among many
different discourses.

Theorizing language in this way is still new in linguistics (to the extent that many linguists would not regard analysis in terms of discourses as being part of linguistics). One of the advantages of talking about discourses rather than about language is that the concept ‘discourse’ acknowledges the value-laden nature of language. There is no neutral discourse : whenever we speak we have to choose between different systems of meaning, different setsof values. This process allows us to show how language is implicated in our construction ofdifferent ‘selves’ : different discourses position us in different ways in relation to the world.

Questions :

46. Which of the following is True in the light of this passage?

(A) Language is inaccurate.

(B) Discourse is accurate.

(C) Language comprises discourse.

(D) Discourse comprises language.


47. What words/phrases suggest the plurality of discourse in this passage?

I. different selves

II. range

III. system of statements

IV. heterogeneous collection

(A) II and IV

(B) (B) II and III

(C) (C) III and IV

(D) (D) I


48. Having called language “something of a fiction”, how does the author suggest its

opposite ? By using the phrase

(A) conceptualized as a system

(B) more accurate to say

(C) range of discourses

(D) more realistically be seen


49. Which among the following statements is NOT true ?

(A) Conservative discourses plead for the status quo.

(B) Patriarchal discourses privilege male values.

(C) Dominant discourses are natural.

(D) Dominant discourses seem natural.


50. What does this passage plead for ?

(A) Theorizing language in a new way.

(B) Theorizing language in terms of discourses.

(C) Studying language as discourse.

(D) Studying discourse as language.

http://www.classroomthoughts.com/



3 comments:

anamika said...

37. B.A IS TRUE, R IS FALSE. IS THE ANS BECAUSE WORDSWOTH WAS ONLY 11 YRS OLD AT THE TIME OF PUBLICATION OF LIVES OF ENGLISH POETS..... WHOEVER HAS ANSWERED FORGOT TO CHECK THE DATES.

Anonymous said...

MULK RAJ ANAND WROTE SIMPLE STORIES ON SOCIAL PROBLEMS AND HE IS ALSO KNOWN FOR HIS PECULIAR LITERAL TRANSLATION.DSCHAND

Kiran said...

Classic influence for Volpone is Juvenal's Satire X