Q.1 Epic poetry traditionally combines heroic action
with a larger cultural or national significance. Homer's Iliad centres on the
Trojan War, Virgil's Aeneid connects Aeneas with the origins of Rome, and
Milton's Paradise Lost transforms the biblical story of the Fall into an
English Christian epic. Although these works differ greatly in subject and
period, they share several conventional features. Which of the following is NOT normally associated with the epic
tradition?
1.Invocation of muse
2.Elevated style
3.Heroic action
4.Domestic realism
Answer: 4
Explanation: Epic poetry generally employs grand
themes, heroic protagonists, supernatural machinery, elevated language,
extended narratives, and national or universal concerns. Domestic realism is
more closely associated with the development of the novel.
Q.2 The sonnet is a 14 line poem. Wyatt and Surrey
introduced and adapted the Italian tradition in England; with its distinctive
three quatrains followed by a couplet. Shakespeare subsequently developed the
English sonnet. He wrote 154 sonnets, addressed to The Fair Youth (Sonnets
1–126) and The Dark Lady (Sonnets 127–154). Which rhyme scheme is associated with the Shakespearean sonnet?
1.ABBA ABBA CDE CDE
2.ABAB CDCD EFEF GG
3.AABB CCDD EEFF GG
4.ABC ABC DEF DEF
Answer: 2
Explanation: The Shakespearean sonnet consists of
three quatrains followed by a concluding couplet, normally rhyming ABAB CDCD
EFEF GG. The final couplet often provides a conclusion, reversal, or
epigrammatic statement.
Q.3 The development of prose fiction in
eighteenth-century England is closely connected with "four wheels of the
English novel" refers to four prominent 18th-century writers—Samuel
Richardson, Henry Fielding, Tobias Smollett, and Laurence Sterne. Pamela is a
famous 1740 book by Samuel Richardson about a young maid named Pamela who refuses
to let her rich boss (Mr. B) take advantage of her, forcing him to change his
ways and marry her. Which narrative technique is most specifically associated
with Richardson's Pamela?
1.Epistolary narration
2.Frame narration
3.Stream of consciousness
4.Dramatic monologue
Answer: 1
Explanation: Pamela is an epistolary novel, meaning
that its narrative is constructed primarily through letters. Richardson's use
of letters allows readers direct access to Pamela's thoughts and experiences.
Q.4 Montaigne's Essais established a flexible prose
form based on personal reflection, observation, intellectual exploration, and
examination of everyday experience. The form later developed in English through
writers such as Francis Bacon, Addison, Steele, Charles Lamb, William Hazlitt,
and George Orwell. Unlike a formal treatise, the essay often permits movement
between personal experience and general reflection. Which writer is
particularly associated with the aphoristic English essay of the Renaissance?
1. Joseph Addison
2.Charles Lamb
3. Francis Bacon
4.William Hazlitt
Answer: 3
Explanation: Francis Bacon developed a concise,
aphoristic essay style in works such as “Of Studies,” “Of Truth,” and “Of
Friendship.” His essays are marked by compression, practical wisdom, and
memorable formulations.
Q.5 Robert Browning is a famous Victorian era poet,
renowned for his mastery of the dramatic monologue, deep psychological insight
into characters, and rich use of irony and dark humor. In “My Last Duchess,”
for instance, the Duke appears to discuss a portrait of his former wife but
inadvertently exposes his possessiveness, jealousy, pride, and authoritarian
personality. Dramatic monologue requires readers to distinguish between what
the speaker consciously says and what his language unintentionally reveals.
Which critical concept is particularly useful in analysing such a speaker?
1.Unreliable narration
2.Objective correlative
3.Negative capability
4.Intentional fallacy
Answer: 1
Explanation: The Duke can be read as an unreliable
speaker, because his account unintentionally exposes truths that contradict his
self-presentation. Dramatic monologues frequently depend on this gap between
what speakers say and what readers infer.
Q.6 In Poetics, Aristotle defines tragedy through
mimesis (the imitation of serious action) to achieve catharsis, which is the
emotional purging of pity and fear in the audience. The tragic plot revolves
around peripeteia (a sudden reversal of fortune) and anagnorisis (a critical
moment of recognition or discovery), which are typically brought about by the
protagonist’s hamartia (an error in judgment or tragic flaw) or hubris
(excessive pride). He also discusses six elements of tragedy: mythos (plot),
ethos (character), dianoia (thought/theme), lexis (diction), melos
(melody/music), and opsis (spectacle). Which component does Aristotle call the
“soul of tragedy”?
1.Character
2.Plot
3.Spectacle
4.Diction
Answer: 2
Explanation: Aristotle calls plot (mythos) the soul of
tragedy because tragedy fundamentally represents action. Character is
important, but it is revealed through and subordinated to action.
Q.7 Writers frequently create meaning by transferring
qualities from one thing to another. Shakespeare's reference to “the crown” may
signify monarchy or royal authority, while “the stage” may stand for theatrical
activity as a whole. Such expressions depend upon an established relationship
between the literal object and the larger idea it represents. Which figure is
involved?
1.Metonymy
2.Simile
3.Hyperbole
4.Litotes
Answer: 1
Explanation: Metonymy replaces a thing with something
closely associated with it. “The crown” for monarchy and “the pen” for writing
are conventional examples.
Q.8 English poets have employed different metrical
feet to organize rhythm. The iamb became particularly important in English
because its unstressed-stressed movement corresponds relatively well with
natural patterns of English speech. Shakespeare's blank verse and much of
Milton's Paradise Lost rely heavily on this metrical system. Which line
contains iambic pentameter?
1.To strive, to seek, to find and not to yield
2.Tyger Tyger, burning bright
3.Once upon a midnight dreary
4.Peter Piper picked a pepper
Answer: 1
Explanation: “To strive, to seek, to find and not to
yield” is a well-known example of iambic movement, with five metrical positions
in the full line. Iambic pentameter became the dominant meter of English
dramatic and serious verse.
Q.9 Poetic rhythm can sometimes conflict with
grammatical structure. A poet may allow a sentence to continue beyond the end
of a line rather than completing the syntactic unit at the line break. T. S.
Eliot used it extensively to mirror the psychological fragmentation, anxiety,
and disillusionment of the post-World War I era. This technique can accelerate
movement, create suspense, disrupts traditional poetic rhythm and alters
grammatical momentum. What is that technique?
1.Feminine Rhyme
2.Caesura
3.Masculine Rhyme
4.Enjambment
Answer: 4
Explanation: T. S. Eliot frequently uses “enjambment”
as part of his Modernist poetic technique. Such effects contribute to the
fragmented rhythm and shifting voices of his poetry.
Q.10 A statement may appear logically contradictory
while expressing a deeper or unexpected truth. Oscar Wilde's remark that “life
is much too important to be taken seriously” is an example of this rhetorical
strategy. Shakespeare, Donne, Blake, and many other writers use apparently
contradictory statements to provoke thought rather than merely to confuse the
reader. Which term best describes this device?
1.Paradox
2.Allegory
3.Euphemism
4.Synecdoche
Answer: 1
Explanation: A paradox is a seemingly contradictory
statement that may contain a significant truth. It differs from an oxymoron,
which usually combines contradictory words in a compact expression.
Q.11 Lyrical Ballads (1798) by William Wordsworth and
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, marked a decisive moment in English literary history, officially
launching the Romantic movement in English literature. It rejects the rigid,
intellectual formulas of 18th-century poetry, the collection focused on
ordinary people, rustic life, and the intense power of nature, written in
simple, everyday language. Wordsworth wrote 19 poems, and Coleridge wrote 4
poems. What is the opening poem?
1. Tintern Abbey
2. The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
3. Ode to Immortality
4. The Nightingale
Answer: 2
Explanation: The opening poem of the 1798 edition is
Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s masterpiece, "The Rime of the Ancient
Mariner". It is the longest poem in the collection and tells the chilling,
supernatural story of a sailor who brings a curse upon his ship after
inexplicably shooting an albatross. It contains famous line: "Water,
water, everywhere, / Nor any drop to drink."
Q.12 Coleridge’s Biographia Literaria 1817 develops a
distinction between two mental powers (Fancy and Imagination) that had often
been treated as equivalent. Fancy merely combines and rearranges existing
images, whereas imagination possesses a deeper creative and synthesizing power.
He also coined a famous phrase to describe how a reader chooses to temporarily
ignore the impossibility of supernatural elements (like ghosts or curses) in a
story in order to enjoy the emotional truth of the poetry.
1.Willing suspension of disbelief
2.Negative Capability
3.Intuition
4.Sensibility
Answer: 1
Explanation: "Willing suspension of
disbelief" is a famous phrase coined by Samuel Taylor Coleridge in Chapter
14 of his 1817 work Biographia Literaria. It describes the psychological
contract between a writer and a reader: the audience knowingly and willingly
chooses to set aside their logic and skepticism about impossible or
supernatural elements in a story, so long as the author provides human interest
and a semblance of emotional truth.
Q.13 Postcolonial criticism examines the cultural
consequences of colonialism, including representation, language, identity,
power, hybridity, and resistance. Hybridtiy describes how cultures mix during
and after colonization to create new, blended identities instead of keeping
cultures pure or separate. Which theorist developed the concept of hybridity as
an important part of postcolonial theory?
1.Homi K. Bhabha
2.Edward Said
3.Frantz Fanon
4.Gayatri Spivak
Answer: 1
Explanation: Homi K. Bhabha developed influential
concepts such as hybridity, the Third Space, mimicry, and ambivalence.
Q.14 Samuel Taylor Coleridge's contribution to Lyrical
Ballads was particularly important because he experimented with the
supernatural while attempting to make supernatural events psychologically
convincing. In The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, an old sailor stops a wedding
guest and narrates the disastrous consequences of killing an albatross. In
Kubla Khan, Coleridge presents an elaborate visionary landscape, while
“Christabel” combines Gothic atmosphere, psychological ambiguity, and
supernatural suggestion. Which of these works remained famously unfinished?
1.Kubla Khan
2.The Ancient Mariner
3.Frost at Midnight
4.Dejection: An Ode
Answer: 1
Explanation: “Kubla Khan” is an unfinished poem.
Coleridge claimed that its composition was interrupted by the arrival of the
“person from Porlock.” The poem's dreamlike imagery, fragmentary structure, and
exotic setting have made it central to discussions of Romantic imagination.
Q.15 John Keats produced some of the most celebrated
odes in English literature during the remarkable poetic period of 1819. “Ode to
a Nightingale,” “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” “Ode to Psyche,” “Ode on Melancholy,”
and “To Autumn” explore beauty, mortality, imagination, art, nature, and the
tension between permanence and transience. Keats died in Rome in 1821 at the
age of only twenty-five. Which of the following odes contains the famous
meditation on the relationship between beauty and truth?
1.Ode to Psyche
2.Ode on a Grecian Urn
3.To Autumn
4.Ode on Melancholy
Answer: 2
Explanation: “Ode on a Grecian Urn” concludes with the
famous statement concerning “Beauty is truth, truth beauty.” The urn becomes a
symbol of artistic permanence in contrast to the transience of human life.
Q.16 Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure's linguistic
theory became foundational to structuralism. His posthumous publication of
Course in General Linguistics in 1916 started the structuralism. He
distinguishes between the sound-image and the concept associated with it and
argues that linguistic meaning depends upon differences within a system rather
than on isolated words. He defines the linguistic sign as a combination of the sound-image/written
word and the mental concept it represents. Which pair represents this
distinction?
1.Signifier and signified
2.Langue and parole
3.Competence and performance
4.Text and context
Answer: 1
Explanation: Saussure divides the linguistic sign into
signifier and signified. The signifier is the sound-image or form, while the
signified is the associated concept.
Q.17 Lord Byron's poetry helped establish the image of
the Romantic poet as a rebellious, passionate, individualistic figure. His
works include Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, Don Juan, “She Walks in Beauty,” and
“The Prisoner of Chillon.” Byron's literary influence extended across Europe,
and the term “Byronic hero” came to describe a proud, alienated, mysterious,
rebellious, and often morally ambiguous protagonist. Which of Byron's major
poems is an example of a mock-epic written in ottava rima?
1.Don Juan
2.Childe Harold
3.Manfred
4.Cain
Answer: 1
Explanation: Don Juan is Byron's unfinished comic and
satirical poem written in ottava rima. Rather than presenting the traditional
heroic ideal, Byron uses irony, wit, digression, and satire to undermine
conventional notions of heroism and morality.
Q.18 The Victorian novel developed alongside
industrialization, urban growth, expanding literacy, social reform, and the
rise of the middle class. Charles Dickens used fiction to expose poverty, child
exploitation, inadequate education, debt, and bureaucratic institutions. Oliver
Twist, David Copperfield, Hard Times, and Bleak House all contain significant
social criticism. Which Dickens novel is particularly associated with the
fictional industrial town of Coketown?
1. Bleak House
2.Oliver Twist
3. Hard Times
4.Great Expectations
Answer: 3
Explanation: Hard Times (1854) is set largely in the
industrial town of Coketown and critiques utilitarianism, industrial
capitalism, mechanization, and an educational system based on facts rather than
imagination. Thomas Gradgrind represents the rigid philosophy of “facts.”
Q.19 George Eliot's fiction combines psychological
insight with detailed representations of provincial society. Her novels
frequently examine the relationship between individual desire and social
expectations. Adam Bede, The Mill on the Floss, Silas Marner, and Middlemarch
demonstrate her interest in moral choice, community, gender, education, and
social change. Which of the following is generally regarded as Eliot's
masterpiece and is subtitled “A Study of Provincial Life”?
1.Middlemarch
2.Silas Marner
3.Adam Bede
4.Daniel Deronda
Answer: 1
Explanation: Middlemarch (1871–72) is subtitled “A
Study of Provincial Life.” It presents a complex network of characters and
relationships and examines marriage, reform, intellectual ambition, money,
class, and social expectations.
Q.20 The Victorian dramatic tradition includes writers
who attempted to move beyond melodrama toward psychological and social
complexity. Oscar Wilde, associated with Aestheticism and the fin-de-siècle
period, became famous for his witty comedies. His plays frequently use paradox,
epigram, mistaken identity, and social satire to expose the conventions of
Victorian respectability. Which play centres on the characters Jack Worthing
and Algernon Moncrieff, became source for famous Telugu movie “Asta Chemma”?
1.Lady Windermere's Fan
2.Salome
3.The Importance of Being Earnest
4.An Ideal Husband
Answer: 3
Explanation: The Importance of Being Earnest (1895)
centres on Jack Worthing and Algernon Moncrieff, who use invented identities to
escape social responsibilities. Wilde satirizes Victorian marriage, morality,
class, manners, and respectability.
Q.21 Thomas Hardy's novels frequently portray
individuals whose aspirations collide with social convention, class structures,
sexuality, and forces of circumstance. The Mayor of Casterbridge, Tess of the
d'Urbervilles, and Jude the Obscure are notable for their tragic treatment of
human vulnerability. Hardy's final completed novel, Jude the Obscure, provoked
controversy because of its treatment of marriage, sexuality, education, and
religion. What is the name of the university city that Jude dreams of entering
in the novel?
1.Oxford
2.Cambridge
3.Christminster
4.Casterbridge
Answer: 3
Explanation: Jude dreams of studying at the fictional
university city of Christminster, which clearly represents Oxford. His
inability to enter its intellectual world reflects the barriers created by
class, education, and social circumstances.
Q.22 Gerard Manley Hopkins developed an innovative
poetic style that combined religious devotion with striking experiments in
rhythm and sound. He coined or popularized technical terms such as sprung
rhythm, inscape, and instress to describe aspects of his poetic perception. His
poems include “God's Grandeur,” “The Windhover,” “Pied Beauty,” and “Spring and
Fall.” Which term did Hopkins use for the distinctive inner quality or
individuality of an object perceived by the poet?
1.Inscape
2.Instress
3.Sprung rhythm
4.Counterpoint
Answer: 1
Explanation: Inscape refers to the distinctive design
or individual essence of a thing. Instress refers broadly to the force by which
this distinctive quality is perceived or apprehended. Sprung rhythm is
Hopkins's distinctive rhythmic system.
Q.23 The early twentieth century witnessed a radical
transformation in English literary form. World War I, psychoanalysis, new
scientific theories, urbanization, technological development, and the decline
of confidence in inherited values contributed to a sense of cultural
fragmentation. Modernist writers responded by experimenting with narrative
structure, language, perspective, and representations of consciousness. Which
philosophical work most directly introduced the concept of the “unconscious”
into a major system of psychoanalysis?
1.Being and Time
2.The World as Will
3.The Phenomenology of Spirit
4.The Interpretation of Dreams
Answer: 4
Explanation: Sigmund Freud's The Interpretation of
Dreams (1899/1900) was foundational to psychoanalysis. Freud's theories of the
unconscious, repression, dreams, and desire had a major influence on
twentieth-century literature and Modernist representations of consciousness.
Q.24 James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young
Man traces Stephen Dedalus's intellectual and artistic development, while
Ulysses transforms one ordinary day in Dublin into a vast modernist counterpart
to Homer's Odyssey. Joyce's final novel, Finnegans Wake, pushes linguistic
experimentation even further through multilingual wordplay, dream logic, and
invented expressions. What is the date of publication of Ulysses?
1.1914
2.1922
3.1927
4.1939
Answer: 2
Explanation: James Joyce's Ulysses was published in
1922, the same year as T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land. The novel became one of
the defining works of literary Modernism.
Q.25 Virginia Woolf's fiction is deeply concerned with
consciousness, memory, time, gender, social convention, and the limitations
imposed upon women. Mrs Dalloway takes place largely within a single day, while
To the Lighthouse uses shifting perspectives and a famous middle section to
represent the passage of time. Woolf also wrote the influential feminist essay
A Room of One's Own. According to Woolf's argument, what material condition,
apart from a room of her own, does a woman need in order to write fiction?
1. A university education
2. five hundred pounds a year
3. Political power
4. A publishing contract
Answer: 2
Explanation: In
A Room of One's Own (1929), Woolf argues that a woman needs money and a
room of her own—economic independence (£500 a year) and physical space—to write
fiction. The essay connects literary production with gender and material
conditions.
Q.26 T. S. Eliot's poetry represents one of the major
developments in Modernist literature. “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”
explores anxiety, indecision, urban alienation, and self-consciousness, while
The Waste Land presents cultural fragmentation and spiritual exhaustion.
Eliot's later Four Quartets moves toward questions of time, spirituality, and
religious experience. Which of the following poem contains he line "This is the way the
world ends/ Not with a bang but a whimper.”?
1.The Waste Land
2.Ash Wednesday
3.The Hollow Men
4.The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
Answer: 3
Explanation: “The Hollow Men” was first published in
1925 and is included in Poems 1909–1925. Its famous opening, “We are the hollow
men,” presents a world of spiritual emptiness and failed communication.
Q.27 W. B. Yeats's poetry changed significantly over
the course of his career. His early poems are associated with Celtic mythology
and romantic symbolism, while his later poetry becomes more political,
philosophical, and historically conscious. “The Second Coming,” written in the
aftermath of World War I, presents a world in which traditional order appears
to be collapsing. It has a famous line: "Turning and turning in the
widening gyre/The falcon cannot hear the falconer;” Chinua Achebe’s took the
title for his famous novel from this poem. What is that novel?
1.No Longer at Ease
2.Things Fall Apart
3.Arrow of God
4.Anthills of the Savannah
Answer: 2
Explanation: Things Fall Apart (1958) is his
universally acclaimed masterpiece. Set in the 1890s, it follows the proud
warrior Okonkwo as his traditional Igbo village is permanently fractured by
British colonial administrators and Christian missionaries. Taken from second
coming
"Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world..."
Q.28 The post-war period produced British writers who
questioned traditional assumptions about class, identity, morality, history,
and social institutions. Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot, John Osborne's
Look Back in Anger, Harold Pinter's The Birthday Party, and Tom Stoppard's
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead represent different forms of post-war
theatrical experimentation. Which movement is John Osborne's Look Back in Anger
most closely associated with?
1.Angry Young Men
2.Bloomsbury Group
3.Oxford Movement
4.Pre-Raphaelites
Answer: 1
Explanation: John Osborne's Look Back in Anger (1956)
became a landmark work associated with the “Angry Young Men” phenomenon. The
movement expressed dissatisfaction with class structures, social conformity,
and post-war British society.
Q.29 Postmodern British fiction frequently questions
the authority of the narrator and the stability of historical truth. John
Fowles's The French Lieutenant's Woman, for example, interrupts its Victorian
narrative with authorial commentary and offers alternative endings. The novel
simultaneously imitates and questions the conventions of the Victorian novel.
Which term best describes a work that self-consciously exposes its own
fictional construction?
1.Impressionism
2.Naturalism
3.Sentimentalism
4.Metafiction
Answer: 4
Explanation: Metafiction is fiction that draws
attention to its own status as a constructed narrative. John Fowles uses
authorial intervention and alternative endings to make readers conscious of the
processes of storytelling.
Q.30 The New Critics emphasized close reading and
argued that literary meaning should be established through the language and
structure of the text rather than through external information about the
author. W. K. Wimsatt and Monroe Beardsley particularly challenged the practice
of treating an author's intended meaning as decisive evidence. Which essay
presents this argument?
1.The Intentional Fallacy
2.Tradition and the Individual Talent
3.The Death of the Author
4.What Is an Author?
Answer: 1
Explanation: Wimsatt and Beardsley's “The Intentional
Fallacy” argues that an author's intention should not be treated as the final
standard for determining literary meaning.
Q.31 Indian Writing in English developed through
several historical phases, from colonial education and early Indian prose to
nationalist writing and post-independence experimentation. Henry Derozio, Toru
Dutt, Sarojini Naidu, Sri Aurobindo, and later writers such as R. K. Narayan,
Mulk Raj Anand, Raja Rao, Kamala Das, and Nissim Ezekiel contributed to the
development of the tradition. Who is generally regarded as the first major
Indian English poet?
1.Henry Derozio
2.Toru Dutt
3.Sarojini Naidu
4.Sri Aurobindo
Answer: 1
Explanation: Henry Louis Vivian Derozio (1809–1831) is
generally regarded as one of the earliest significant Indian poets writing in
English. His poetry was influenced by Romanticism, and his association with the
Young Bengal movement is important in Indian intellectual history.
Q.32 Toru Dutt occupies an important position in
nineteenth-century Indian English literature. Although she died at the age of
twenty-one, she produced poetry and prose in English and French. Her poetry
frequently combines Indian mythology with European literary forms. Ancient
Ballads and Legends of Hindustan, published posthumously, contains poems based
on Indian legendary and mythological material. Which of the following work by
Toru Dutt has a subtitle “the Spanish Maiden”?
1.Our Casuarina Tree
2.Lakshman
3.Sita
4.Bianca
Answer: 4
Explanation: Bianca, or the Young Spanish Maiden is an
unfinished novel written by Toru Dutt and is widely celebrated as the first
novel written in English by an Indian woman.Discovered by her father among her
papers after her tragic death from tuberculosis at age 21, it was published
posthumously as a serial in the Bengal Magazine
Q.33 Sri Aurobindo was simultaneously a nationalist
thinker, philosopher, yogi, and major English-language poet. His long
philosophical epic Savitri: A Legend and a Symbol transforms the story into an
exploration of consciousness, evolution, death, and spiritual transformation. It
is widely considered one of the longest and most significant spiritual poems in
the English language, consisting of nearly 24,000 lines. What is the basis for
this work?
1.Ramayana
2.Vedas
3.Mahabharata
4.Bhagavata Purana
Answer: 3
Explanation: Savitri: A Legend and a Symbol is an epic
poem in blank verse by Sri Aurobindo. Consisting of nearly 24,000 lines, it is
based on the legend of Savitri and Satyavan in the Mahabharata, which Sri
Aurobindo reinterpreted as a symbolic myth of the Vedic cycle.
Q.34 New Historicism, associated particularly with
Stephen Greenblatt, rejects the idea that literary texts exist independently of
the social and political structures of their time. It examines how literary
works participate in networks of power, ideology, institutions, and cultural
practices. Louis Montrose summarized this approach through two complementary
formulations concerning texts and history. Which pair is associated with
Montrose?
1.Historicity of texts / textuality of history
2.Authorial intention / reader response
3.Form / content
4.Signifier / signified
Answer: 1
Explanation: Louis Montrose's formulations—“the
historicity of texts” and “the textuality of history”—capture the reciprocal
relationship between literary representation and historical discourse.
Q.35 Amitav Ghosh's fiction frequently connects
individual lives with large historical movements such as colonialism,
migration, war, and displacement. The Shadow Lines explores memory,
nationalism, borders, and the Partition of India and East Pakistan, while The
Glass Palace covers colonial Burma and India across several generations. Which
major historical event forms an important background to The Shadow Lines?
1.Partition
2.Sepoy Mutiny
3.Emergency
4.Green Revolution
Answer: 1
Explanation: Partition and the communal violence
surrounding the creation of India and Pakistan are central to The Shadow Lines.
Ghosh questions the apparent solidity of national borders and explores how
memory constructs histories of violence.
Q.36 Matthew Arnold's criticism sought standards by
which literary excellence could be evaluated. In “The Study of Poetry,” he
recommends comparing passages with the finest examples of poetry to develop
sound judgment. He also emphasizes the importance of high seriousness and
poetic truth. What is this comparative method called?
1.Historical method
2.Mythical method
3.Touchstone method
4.Psychoanalytic method
Answer: 3
Explanation: Arnold's touchstone method involves using
passages from acknowledged masterpieces as standards against which other poetry
can be critically evaluated.
Q.37 Derek Walcott's poetry explores the complex
cultural inheritance of the Caribbean, where African, European, Asian, and
indigenous histories intersect. His long poem Omeros reworks Homeric epic by
placing Caribbean fishermen and island communities at the centre of an epic
narrative. Walcott's work repeatedly addresses colonialism, slavery, migration,
memory, language, and cultural identity. In which Caribbean island was Walcott
born?
1.Jamaica
2.St Lucia
3.Nigeria
4.Grenada
Answer: 2
Explanation: Derek Walcott was born in Saint Lucia in
1930, Walcott received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1992 and is one of the
most important Caribbean literary figures.
Q.38 Frantz Fanon's “The Wretched of the Earth”
examines colonialism, psychological violence, revolutionary struggle, and the
formation of national consciousness. Fanon argues that colonialism operates not
only through political and economic domination but also through the
internalization of racial hierarchies. His earlier work “Black Skin, White
Masks” focuses more directly on the psychological consequences of racism and
colonial identity. Which discipline was Fanon professionally trained in before
becoming a major anti-colonial thinker?
1.Psychiatry
2.Economics
3.Linguistics
4.Anthropology
Answer: 1
Explanation: Frantz Fanon was trained as a
psychiatrist and his medical and psychological background strongly influenced
his analysis of colonial violence, racism, alienation, and identity.
Q.39 Toni Morrison's novels frequently examine African
American history, memory, slavery, race, gender, and the psychological
consequences of historical trauma. Beloved centres on Sethe, an escaped
enslaved woman haunted by the memory of slavery and by the death of her
daughter. The novel moves between past and present rather than presenting
history chronologically. Which historical event provides the background to
Sethe's story?
1.American Civil War
2.Reconstruction
3.Fugitive Slave Act era
4.Great Depression
Answer: 3
Explanation: Beloved is rooted in the history of
American slavery and the Fugitive Slave Act, particularly the experiences of
enslaved people escaping to free states. Morrison was inspired in part by the
historical case of Margaret Garner.
Q.40 Gabriel GarcÃa Márquez's One Hundred Years of
Solitude chronicles several generations of the BuendÃa family in Macondo. The
novel combines political violence, civil war, technological change, colonial
and capitalist intervention, family memory, myth, and supernatural events.
Names recur across generations, and the narrative repeatedly suggests that
history may repeat itself. Which Spanish-language literary movement is most
closely associated with the international success of Márquez, Julio Cortázar and
other writers of the 1960s and 1970s?
1.Latin American Boom
2.Lost Generation
3.Harlem Renaissance
4.Beat Generation
Answer: 1
Explanation: The Latin American Boom refers to the
international prominence of writers such as GarcÃa Márquez, Julio Cortázar,
Mario Vargas Llosa, and Carlos Fuentes, particularly during the 1960s and
1970s. Magical realism became especially influential during this period.
Q.41 The Grammar-Translation Method dominated formal
language education for a long period and was especially associated with the
teaching of Latin and Greek. Students learned grammatical rules, memorized
vocabulary, translated passages, and often studied written literary texts. The
method was later criticized because learners could possess considerable
grammatical knowledge without being able to communicate effectively in ordinary
situations. Which language skill receives the strongest emphasis in this method?
1.Reading
2.Speaking
3.Listening
4.Pronunciation
Answer: 1
Explanation: The Grammar-Translation Method places
strong emphasis on reading and writing, particularly through translation and
grammatical analysis. Speaking and listening are comparatively neglected.
Q.42 The Audio-Lingual Method became influential in
the United States during the mid-twentieth century and was associated with
structural linguistics and behaviourist psychology. Language learning was
understood as the formation of correct habits. Teachers used dialogues,
repetition, substitution drills, transformation drills, and immediate
reinforcement. Which psychologist's theory of behaviourism is most closely associated
with the learning principles underlying this method?
1.B. F. Skinner
2.Jean Piaget
3.Noam Chomsky
4.Lev Vygotsky
Answer: 1
Explanation: B. F. Skinner's behaviourist psychology
influenced the Audio-Lingual emphasis on stimulus, response, reinforcement, and
habit formation. Chomsky later strongly criticized behaviourist explanations of
language acquisition.
Q.43 Communicative Language Teaching shifted the focus
of language education from mastery of isolated grammatical structures toward
the ability to use language appropriately in meaningful situations. Learners
participate in pair work, role play, information-gap activities,
problem-solving tasks, and authentic communication. The approach draws on the
distinction between grammatical knowledge and the ability to use language
effectively in social contexts. Which linguist introduced the influential
concept of communicative competence that challenged a purely grammatical
definition of language ability?
1.Dell Hymes
2.Leonard Bloomfield
3.Ferdinand de Saussure
4.Charles Fries
Answer: 1
Explanation: Dell Hymes introduced the influential
concept of communicative competence, arguing that knowing a language involves
knowing how to use it appropriately within social contexts.
Q.44 Stephen Krashen's comprehensive model relies on
five highly influential hypotheses regarding how the human brain processes a
new language. Humans acquire language only when they understand messages that
are just one step beyond their current level of competence. Which of Krashen's
hypotheses explains this?
1.Affective Filter Hypothesis
2.Natural Order Hypothesis
3.Input Hypothesis
4.Monitor Hypothesis
Answer: 3
Explanation: The input hypothesis states
that learners progress in their knowledge of the language when they comprehend
language input that is slightly more advanced than their current level. Krashen
called this level of input "i+1", where "i" is the
learner's interlanguage and "+1" is the next stage of language
acquisition.
Q.45 Noam Chomsky's critique of behaviourist
approaches to language learning transformed modern linguistics. In Syntactic
Structures and later writings, he argued that human beings possess an innate
capacity for language and that the complexity of language cannot be explained
adequately as a collection of learned habits. His ideas strongly influenced
subsequent theories of first-language acquisition. Which term is most closely
associated with Chomsky's theory of an innate human capacity for language?
1.Language Acquisition Device
2.Affective Filter
3.Interlanguage
4.Communicative Competence
Answer: 1
Explanation: The Language Acquisition Device (LAD) is
the term traditionally associated with Chomsky's proposal that humans possess
an innate capacity supporting language acquisition. His theory challenged
strict behaviourist explanations of language learning.
Q.46 Literary research generally begins with a clearly
defined problem rather than simply with a broad interest in a subject. After
identifying the problem, the researcher formulates objectives and research
questions, reviews existing scholarship, selects primary and secondary sources,
establishes a suitable theoretical framework, and determines an appropriate
method of analysis. A strong research question should narrow the field
sufficiently to permit sustained investigation. Which section of a research thesis
normally explains the existing scholarship relevant to the research problem?
1.Literature Review
2.Methodology
3.Appendix
4.Abstract
Answer: 1
Explanation: The Literature Review surveys and
evaluates existing scholarship related to the research problem. It helps
establish what has already been studied, identify gaps, and position the
present research within the field.
Q.47 A researcher working on a comparative study of
Indian military fiction may use novels as primary texts, scholarly books and
journal articles as secondary sources, historical documents for contextual
information, and a theoretical framework drawn from trauma studies,
postcolonial studies, gender studies, or military studies. The researcher must
document sources consistently and distinguish original arguments from borrowed
ideas. Which citation style is particularly associated with literary studies in
English?
1.MLA
2.APA
3.Chicago Author-Date
4.Vancouver
Answer: 1
Explanation: MLA style is widely used in English
literature and humanities research. The MLA Handbook, 9th edition (2021)
provides guidelines for in-text citations, Works Cited entries, quotations,
formatting, and documentation.
Q.48 The Russian Formalists redirected literary study
away from biography, psychology, and broad social history toward the
distinctive features of literary language and form. Viktor Shklovsky argued
that habitual perception makes the world automatic and that literature renews
perception by making familiar things appear strange. Roman Jakobson and Boris
Eichenbaum were also important members of the movement. Which term did
Shklovsky use for this artistic process of making the familiar appear strange?
1.Defamiliarization
2.Dialogism
3.Différance
4.Archetype
Answer: 1
Explanation: Shklovsky called the process
defamiliarization (ostranenie). Literature slows down habitual perception and
forces readers to experience objects, language, and reality afresh.
Q.49 Roland Barthes's critical development
demonstrates the movement from structuralism toward post-structuralism. In
Mythologies, he examines everyday cultural signs and ideological meanings; in
“The Death of the Author,” he challenges the authority traditionally granted to
the author's intention; and in later work he emphasizes the plurality of
textual meanings. Which concept describes the network of relationships through
which one text echoes, transforms, or incorporates other texts?
1.Intertextuality
2.Intentionality
3.Organic unity
4.Defamiliarization
Answer: 1
Explanation: Intertextuality is strongly associated
with Julia Kristeva, who developed the concept from Bakhtinian ideas of
dialogism. It suggests that texts are not isolated objects but are constituted
through relationships with other texts and cultural discourses.
Q.50 Feminist literary criticism developed through
several stages, from the recovery of neglected women writers to analyses of
patriarchy, representation, language, sexuality, identity, and
intersectionality. Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own examines the material
conditions affecting women's writing, Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex
analyses the cultural construction of woman as “Other,” and Elaine Showalter
later distinguished between women-centered literary history and broader
feminist criticism. Which term did Showalter use for the study of women's
literary tradition and its development?
1.Gynocriticism
2.Ecocriticism
3.Narratology
4.New Historicism
Answer: 1
Explanation: Elaine Showalter coined the term
gynocriticism for the study of women's writing from a woman-centred
perspective. It seeks to construct models for analysing women's literary
production rather than merely examining women writers in relation to male
literary traditions.
0 comments:
Post a Comment