1. Which British University figures in William Wordsworth’s Prelude ?

(1) Durham

(2) Glasgow

(3) Cambridge

(4) Oxford

Answer: 3

2. Who is the author of A Woman Killed with Kindness ?

(1) John Marston

(2) Thomas Middleton

(3) John Fletcher

(4) Thomas Heywood

Answer: 4

3. In William Congreve’s The Way of the World identify the speaker of the line : “One’scruelty is one’s power, and when one parts with one’s cruelty, one parts with one’s power.”

(1) Mirabell

(2) Witwoud

(3) Millamant

(4) Mincing

Answer: 3

4. T.S. Eliot found spiritual support in

(1) Christianity

(2) Hinduism

(3) Buddhism

(4) Judaism

Answer: 1

5. By what name is Gulliver known in Brobdingnag ?

(1) Grildrig

(2) Glumdalclitch

(3) Splacknuck

(4) Mannikin

Answer: 1

6. Who among the following was born in India ?

(1) Paul Scott

(2) Lawrence Durrell

(3) E.M. Forster

(4) V.S. Naipaul

Answer: 2

7. What metaphor does Edmund Spenser employ (Faerie Queene Book 1 Canto 12) to frame his tale and to describe the relationship between the tale and its readers?

(1) That of a caravan of lost souls, traversing a desert.

(2) That of a stagecoach, which picks up diverse passengers along the way.

(3) That of a ship filled with jolly mariners.

(4) That of a riderless horse, following his own direction.

Answer: 3

8. Who among the following is not associated with Russian formalism?

(1) Roman Jakobson

(2) Georges Poulet

(3) Boris Eichenbaum

(4) Victor Shklovsky

Answer: 2

9. Which character in Dickens keeps on hoping that “something will turn up”?

(1) Barkis

(2) Micawber

(3) Uriah Heep

(4) Miss Havisham

Answer: 2

10. What is the name of the boat that rescues Ishmael in Herman Melville’s Moby Dick?

(1) Pequod

(2) Rachel

(3) Hagar

(4) Sphinx

Answer: 2

11. Northanger Abbey is a parody of the ………….. romance.

(1) Oriental

(2) French

(3) Gothic

(4) Popular

Answer: 3

12. Who among the following authors were greatly influenced by Thomas Carlyle’s writings?

I. Charles Dickens

II. Elizabeth Gaskell

III. Emily Bronte

IV. Oscar Wilde

The right combination according to the code is

(1) I and II

(2) II and III

(3) I and IV

(4) I and III

Answer: 1

13. Which of the following is another term to describe “art for art’s sake”?

(1) Aestheticism

(2) Didacticism

(3) Realism

(4) Neo-realism

Answer: 1

14. The statement that there are “none so credulous as infidels” is an illustration of

(1) Oxymoron

(2) Antithesis

(3) Paradox

(4) Metonomy

Answer: 3

15. Who narrates Heart of Darkness?

(1) Marlow

(2) Director of Companies

(3) Kurtz

(4) An unnamed narrator

Answer: 4

16. The Mistakes of a Night is the subtitle of

(1) The Conscious Lovers

(2) The Good Natur’d Man

(3) She Stoops to Conquer

(4) The Rivals

Answer: 3

17. Identify the first novel written by Patrick White :

(1) The Living and the Dead

(2) The Tree of Man

(3) Happy Valley

(4) The Aunt’s Story

Answer: 3

18. In King Lear for what reason does Kent assume a disguise?

(1) To continue to serve Lear, though Lear has banished him.

(2) To spy on Edmund.

(3) To antagonize Goneril and Regan.

(4) To revenge upon Lear for banishing him.

Answer: 1

19. What is a feminine rhyme?

(1) A rhyme on two syllables in which the last syllable is unstressed.

(2) A rhyme on two syllables.

(3) A rhyme on three syllables.

(4) A poem in which every third syllable rhymes.

Answer: 1

20. Identify two of the following written by Christopher Fry :

I. French Without Tears

II. The Lady’s Not for Burning

III. Venus Observed

IV. The Deep Blue Sea

The right combination according to the code is

(1) II and III

(2) I and III

(3) II and IV

(4) I and IV

Answer: 1

21. In “Tradition and Individual Talent”, according to T.S. Eliot, the term “Traditional” usually means

(1) something positive

(2) something negative

(3) something historical

(4) something old

Answer: 2

22. Who of the following is a Cavalier poet?

(1) George Herbert

(2) John Donne

(3) Robert Herrick

(4) Andrew Marvell

Answer: 3

23. Which of the following is not Jacques Derrida’s work?

(1) Of Spirit : Heidegger and the Question

(2) The Transcendence of the Ego

(3) Of Grammatology

(4) The Work of Mourning

Answer: 2

24. In Paradise Lost which character narrates the story of the making of Eve from a rib in Adam’s side?

(1) Adam

(2) Eve

(3) Raphael

(4) God

Answer: 1

25. A.S. Byatt’s Possession attempts the imitation of the work of two Victorian poets, loosely based on

I. Alfred Tennyson

II. Robert Browning

III. Christina Rossetti

IV. William Morris

The right combination according to the code is

(1) I and II

(2) II and IV

(3) II and III

(4) III and IV

Answer: 3

26. The Dark Lady of the Sonnets is a short comedy by

(1) Bernard Shaw

(2) W.B. Yeats

(3) J.M. Synge

(4) John Osborne

Answer: 1

27. John Milton’s description of gold as a “precious bane” (Paradise Lost, Book II) is best described as

(1) a dactyl

(2) an oxymoron

(3) enjambment

(4) zeugma

Answer: 2

28. There is a play on the name of Machiavelli in the prologue to Christopher Marlowe’s

(1) Doctor Faustus

(2) The Jew of Malta

(3) Tamburlaine, the Great

(4) Edward II

Answer: 2

29. Shakespeare famously neglects to observe Aristotle’s rules concerning the three dramatic unities, and Samuel Johnson undertakes to defend Shakespeare from these criticisms in his Preface to Shakespeare. Which of the Aristotelian dramatic unities does Johnson believe Shakespeare to observe most successfully?

(1) Time

(2) Place

(3) Action

(4) Johnson does not feel that the Aristotelian dramatic unities are important

Answer: 3

30. Who among the following was praised and patronized as a “Ploughman Poet”?

(1) John Clare

(2) George Crabbe

(3) Robert Burns

(4) Walter Scott

Answer: 3

31. Which novel of Doris Lessing ends with a projection forward in time after a devastating atomic war?

(1) The Grass is Singing

(2) The Golden Notebook

(3) The Four-Gated City

(4) A Proper Marriage

Answer: 3

32. Name the dominant meter of the following quatrain :

The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,
The lowing herd winds slowly o’er the lea,
The plowman homeward plods his weary way,
And leaves the world to darkness and to me.

(1) Iambic Hexameter

(2) Trochaic Pentameter

(3) Iambic Pentameter

(4) Terza Rima

Answer: 3

33. Which two novels of Buchi Emecheta provide a fictionalized portrait of poor, young Nigerian women struggling to bring up their children in London?

I. The Slave Girl

II. The Joys of Motherhood

III. Second Class Citizen

IV. In the Ditch

The right combination according to the code is

(1) I and II

(2) II and III

(3) III and IV

(4) I and IV

Answer: 3

34. In John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress who keeps Christian’s head above water in the River of Death?

(1) Hopeful

(2) Helpful

(3) Faithful

(4) Cheerful

Answer: 1

35. Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage is a

(1) religious allegory

(2) fairy tale

(3) long poem

(4) Utopian novel

Answer: 3

36. In Thomas More’s Utopia which of the following leisure pastimes is not a favourite among Utopians?

(1) Music

(2) Public lectures

(3) Conversation

(4) Dicing and cards

Answer: 4

37. Which of the following statements does not describe Michel Foucault’s position?

(1) In Foucault’s work sexuality is literally written on the body.

(2) Power operates through discourse.

(3) There is connection between power and knowledge.

(4) Where there is power, it is possible to find resistance.

Answer: 1

38. In which year did the Great Exhibition take place?

(1) 1851

(2) 1857

(3) 1861

(4) 1871

Answer: 1

39. When Fidessa says, “O but I fear the fickle freakes …./ Of fortune false, and oddes of armes in field” (Faerie Queene, Book I, Canto 5), this is a fine example of

(1) Alliteration

(2) Allegory

(3) Assonance

(4) Antithesis

Answer: 1

40. Match the work with author :

I. “The Excursion”

II. “Christabel”

III. Milton

IV. Queen Mab

A. S.T. Coleridge

B. P.B. Shelley

C. William Wordsworth

D. William Blake

I II III IV

(1) C A B D

(2) C A D B

(3) B C A D

(4) B A C D

Answer: 2

41. Which of the following phrases is not found in Thomas Gray’s “Elegy written in a Country Churchyard”?

(1) “Far from the madding crowd”

(2) “A youth to Fortune and Fame unknown”

(3) “Full many a flower is born to blush unseen”

(4) “All nature is but art, unknown to thee”

Answer: 4

42. Robert Browning’s “Rabbi Ben Ezra” is a defence of

(1) youth against old age

(2) old age against youth

(3) power against knowledge

(4) knowledge against power

Answer: 2

43. In Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, the pilgrims, like the medieval society of which they are a part, are made up of three social groups or “estates”. What are the three estates?

(1) Nobility, church and commoners

(2) Royalty, nobility and peasantry

(3) Royalists, republicans and peasants

(4) Country, city and commons

Answer: 1

44. Which novel of Toni Morrison tells the wrenching story of a protagonist who murders her child rather than to allow him/her to live as a slave?

(1) Sula

(2) Tar Baby

(3) Song of Solomon

(4) Beloved

Answer: 4

45. Who among the following translated Homer?

(1) Thomas Gray

(2) Samuel Johnson

(3) Oliver Goldsmith

(4) Alexander Pope

Answer: 4

46. Shyam Selvadurai’s Funny Boy is a

(1) Picaresque novel

(2) Epistolary novel

(3) Diary novel

(4) Coming-of-age novel

Answer: 4

47. When was the English ban on James Joyce’s Ulysses lifted?

(1) 1924

(2) 1945

(3) 1936

(4) 1962

Answer: 3

48. Who among the following is not an imagist?

(1) Ezra Pound

(2) W.B. Yeats

(3) Amy Lowell

(4) T.E. Hulme

Answer: 2

49. Thomas Carew’s Poems appeared in print in 1640 and contain a variety of amorous addresses to and reflections on, a fictional mistress known as

(1) Celia

(2) Julia

(3) Anne

(4) Melanie

Answer: 1

50. Match the novelists with their work :

I. William Golding

II. Salman Rushdie

III. Graham Swift

IV. Peter Ackroyd

A. Grimus

B. Hawksmoor

C. Darkness Visible

D. Waterland

I II III IV

(1) D A C B

(2) C A D B

(3) B C A D

(4) B A C D

Answer: 2