1. Two of the following list are “Angry Young Men” of the 1950’s British literary
scene.
I. John Osborne
II. C.P. Snow
III. Anthony Powell
IV. Kingsley Amis
The right combination, according to the code
(A) I & II
(B) II & IV
(C) I & IV
(D) I & III
Answer: C
2. Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy contains
(A) Six volumes
(B) Nine volumes
(C) Ten volumes
(D) Four volumes
Answer: B
3. Which of the following statement is NOT true of Areopagitica?
(A) It was published in 1644.
(B) It argues for the liberty of Unlicensed Printing.
(C) It pleads for British privileges regarding Free Trade.
(D) It is a speech addressed to the Parliament of England.
Answer: C
4. Thomas Hardy’s last major novel was _______.
(A) Tess of the D’urbervilles
(B) Jude the Obscure
(C) The Return of the Native
(D) The Trumpet Major
Answer: B
5. The Hind and the Panther Transvers’d to the Story of the Country Mouse and
the City Mouse is a satire on
(A) Alexander Pope
(B) Jonathan Swift
(C) John Dryden
(D) Samuel Butler
Answer: C
6. Match the columns:
Terms Theorists
1. Matthew Arnold
2. Friedrich Nietzsche
3. G.H. Hopkins
4. S.T. Coleridge
I. Apollonian – Dionysian
II. Fancy – Imagination
III. Hellenism – Hebraism
IV. Inscape – Instress
I II III IV
(A) 2 4 1 3
(B) 2 4 3 1
(C) 1 4 2 3
(D) 4 2 1 3
Answer: A
7. In King Lear who among the following speaks in the voice of Poor Tom?
(A) Kent
(B) Edgar
(C) Edmund
(D) Gloucester
Answer: B
8. In Wordsworth’s Prelude the Boy of Winander is affected by
(A) Blindness
(B) Deafness
(C) Muteness
(D) Lameness
Answer: C
9. Which of the following is NOT mentioned as part of the London locale in The
Waste Land?
(A) St. Magnus Martyr
(B) King Arthur Street
(C) St. Mary Woolnoth
(D) Lower Thames Street
Answer: B
10. Which of the following novels is NOT written by Jean Rhys?
(A) After Leaving Mr. Mackenzie
(B) Good Morning, Midnight
(C) The Quiet American
(D) Wide Sargasso Sea
Answer: C
11. The first official royal Poet Laureate in English literary history was _______.
(A) Ben Jonson
(B) William Davenant
(C) John Dryden
(D) Thomas Shadwell
Answer: C
12. Who does Alexander Pope refer to in the following lines?
“Born to no pride; inheriting no strife,
Nor marrying discord in a noble wife,
Stranger to civil and religious rage,
The good man walked innoxious through his age.”
(A) Pope’s father
(B) Pope himself
(C) Dr. Arbuthnot
(D) The Duke of Marlborough
Answer: A
13. The Theory of Natural Selection is attributed to ________.
(A) Arthur Schopenhauer
(B) Charles Darwin
(C) A.N. Whitehead
(D) Aldous Huxley
Answer: B
14. Which character in William Golding’s Lord of the Flies maintains, “Life is
scientific”?
(A) Simon
(B) Piggy
(C) Ralph
(D) Jack
Answer: B
15. Match the authors under List – I with the titles under List – II:
1. Of Grammatology
2. The Archaeology of Knowledge
3. Structural Anthropology
4. Anatomy of Criticism
I. Claude Levi-Strauss
II. Jacques Derrida
III. Northrop Frye
IV. Michel Foucault
I II III IV
(A) 1 3 4 2
(B) 3 1 2 4
(C) 3 1 4 2
(D) 2 1 3 4
Answer: C
16. How did Chaucer’s Pardoner make his living?
(A) By selling stolen cattle from the neighbourhood ottery
(B) By selling indulgences to those who committed sins
(C) By pardoning those who stole property or committeed other crimes
(D) By assisting the Friar in Church services
Answer: B
17. From among the following, identify Coleridge’s companion in a fanciful
scheme to establish a Utopian community of free love on the banks of the
Susquehaina river ?
(A) Lord Byron
(B) Robert Southey
(C) William Hazlitt
(D) William Wordsworth
Answer: B
18. Which of the following novels by H.G. Wells is about the condition of
England as Empire?
(A) The Island of Dr. Moreau
(B) The War of the Worlds
(C) Tono-Bungay
(D) The Invisible Man
Answer: C
19. Joothan by Om Prakash Valmiki is
(A) a collection of poems
(B) a play
(C) an autobiography
(D) a novel
Answer: C
20. Listed below are some English plays across several centuries: Twelfth
Night, She Stoops to Conquer, The Importance of Being Earnest, Pygmalion and
Blithe Spirit. What is common to them?
(A) All problem plays; scheming and intrigue
(B) All tragedies; sin and redemption
(C) All ideologically framed; class and gender
(D) All romantic comedies; love and laughter
Answer: D
21. Who among the following wrote a poem comparing a lover’s heart to a
hand grenade?
(A) John Donne
(B) Abraham Cowley
(C) Wilfred Owen
(D) Robert Graves
Answer: B
22. The Uncertainty Principle is attributed to
(A) William James
(B) John Dewey
(C) Werner Heisenberg
(D) Charles Darwin
Answer: C
23. “Jabberwocky” is a creation in _______.
(A) Edward Lear’s poetry
(B) Lewis Carroll’s work
(C) Charles Dickens’s Martin Chuzzlewit
(D) Thomas Hardy’s Woodlanders
Answer: B
24. Who are Didi and Gogo?
(A) They are two characters in Endgame.
(B) They are nicknames, respectively, for Lucky and Pozzo.
(C) They are nicknames, respectively, for Vladimir and Estragon.
(D) They are two characters in Breath.
Answer: C
25. Who among the following theorists talks about “the circulation of social
energy”?
(A) Raymond Williams
(B) Stephen Greenblatt
(C) Antonio Gramsci
(D) Haydon White
Answer: B
26. How many legends of good women could Chaucer complete in his ‘The
Legend of Good Women’?
(A) Six
(B) Seven
(C) Eight
(D) Nine
Answer: D
27. The Round Table is a collection of essays jointly written by ________.
(A) Charles Lamb and William Hazlitt
(B) Charles Lamb and Leigh Hunt
(C) William Hazlitt and Leigh Hunt
(D) William Hazlitt and Thomas de Quincey
Answer: C
28. Dylan Thomas is associated with the group _______.
(A) The New Apocalypse
(B) The Black Arts
(C) The Movement
(D) Deep Image Poetry
Answer: A
29. Which of the following writers writes from Canada?
(A) V.S. Naipaul
(B) Margaret Atwood
(C) Derek Walcott
(D) James Joyce
Answer: B
30. “The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power,
And all that beauty, all that wealth e’er gave,
Awaits alike the inevitable hour
The paths of glory lead but to the grave.”
What is the subject of awaits ?
(A) Hour
(B) The things mentioned in the first 2 lines.
(C) “And all that beauty, all that wealth e’er gave”
(D) Grave
Answer: A
31. “Heav’n has no rage, like love to hatred turn’d / Nor Hell a fury, like a
woman scorn’d.”
Identify the text in which the above quote occurs:
(A) The Double-Dealer
(B) The Way of the World
(C) The Mourning Bride
(D) Love for Love
Answer: C
32. A Young Lady’s Entrance into the World is the sub-title of _______.
(A) Belinda
(B) Cecilia
(C) Evelina
(D) Camilla
Answer: C
33. “The old order changeth, yielding place to new” is from ________.
(A) “Morte d’Arthur”
(B) “Idylls of the King”
(C) “Paracelsus”
(D) “Asolando”
Answer: B
34. Which of the following cannot be classified as fantasy fiction ?
(A) The Inheritors (William Golding)
(B) The Magus (John Fowles)
(C) The Lord of the Rings (J.R.R. Tolkein)
(D) The History Man (Malcolm Bradbury)
Answer: D
35. Philosophy of Symbolic Forms is a work associated with _______.
(A) Wilhelm von Humboldt
(B) Ernst Cassirer
(C) Immanuel Kant
(D) Battista Vico
Answer: B
36. Which of the following facts is NOT true of Spenser?
(A) He is a kind of English Homer, telling stories of heroic confrontations.
(B) He fashioned an original verse form : The Spenserian Stanza.
(C) He opposed England’s break with the Roman Catholic Church.
(D) He is a Christian poet.
Answer: C
37. William Blake developed the ideas of “Prolifics” and “Devourers” in
(A) Jerusalem
(B) Milton
(C) Marriage of Heaven and Hell
(D) Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience
Answer: C
38. Surrealism is associated with
(A) Ernst Cassirer
(B) Tristan Tzara
(C) Henrik Ibsen
(D) Andre Breton
Answer: D
39. “And miles to go before I sleep” is a line from a poem by
(A) Emily Dickinson
(B) Walt Whitman
(C) Ralph Waldo Emerson
(D) Robert Frost
Answer: D
40. What common link do you _nd among
“The Disquieting Muses” by Sylvia Plath,
“The Starry Night” by Anne Sexton,
“Mourning Picture” by Adrienne Rich, and
“Musee des Beaux Arts” by W.H. Auden?
(A) They inspired paintings.
(B) They are confessional poems.
(C) They are all inspired by paintings.
(D) They are all inspired by Van Gogh’s paintings.
Answer: C
41. “All Rising to Great Place is by a _____ staire.” (Francis Bacon)
(A) Murky
(B) Winding
(C) Crooked
(D) Sinister
Answer: B
42. In Jeremy Collier’s 1698 pamphlet attacking the immorality and
profaneness of the English stage, who among the following was the principal
target ?
(A) William Congreve
(B) John Dryden
(C) John Vanbrugh
(D) William Wycherley
Answer: C
43. Charles Dickens’s visit to the United States produced _________.
(A) Hard Times
(B) Nicholas Nickleby
(C) Martin Chuzzlewit
(D) Oliver Twist
Answer: C
44. Who among the following is a working-class poet?
(A) John Betjeman
(B) Tony Harrison
(C) Thom Gunn
(D) Robert Graves
Answer: B
45. New Science is a work associated with _______.
(A) Ernest Cassirer
(B) Wilhelm von Humboldt
(C) G. Battista Vico
(D) Immanuel Kant
Answer: C
46. Identify Petrarch’s sonnet sequence from among the following:
(A) Rine Sparse
(B) Astrophel and Stella
(C) Amoretti
(D) Delia
Answer: A
47. The island setting of Latmos figures in Keats’s
(A) Endymion
(B) The Eve of St. Agnes
(C) Lamia
(D) Hyperion
Answer: A
48. The Artist Hero is a theatrical creation emphasized by ________.
(A) W.B. Yeats
(B) Charles Baudelaire
(C) Oscar Wilde
(D) Andre Gide
Answer:* (Marks given to all)
49. Which of the following African writers won the Nobel Prize for Literature ?
(A) Chinua Achebe
(B) Nadine Gordimer
(C) Ngugi wa Thiong’o
(D) Bessie Head
Answer: B
50. “My lute, be as thou wert when thou didst grow
With thy green mother in some shady groove” – William Drummond
The above quote is an example of _______.
(A) End-stopped rhyme
(B) Alliteration
(C) Run-on line
(D) Tercet
Answer: C