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📚 Literary Criticism — PYQs Part 2 (UGC NET English)
1. For Coleridge, our power to perceive symbols gleaned from the world about us is related to the category of:
2. What, among the following, is ruled out by Longinus as a way of achieving the sublime?
3. In The Advancement of Learning Bacon noted the need for more studies of:
I. Moral knowledge
II. Forbidden knowledge
III. Civil knowledge
IV. Spiritual knowledge
The correct combination according to the code is:
4. As Sidney argues in A Defence of Poesy, which discipline is more useful and praiseworthy — history or poetry?
5. Which of the following books proposes a political theory?
6. A philosophical attitude pervading much of modern literature is:
7. ‘Fancy’ deals with:
8. With whom was Dr. Johnson intimately associated in his personal life?
9. Dr. Johnson’s “The Vanity of Human Wishes” expresses:
10. “He is not fully recognized at home; he is not recognized at all abroad. Yet I firmly believe that the poetical performance of __________ is, after that of Shakespeare and Milton, undoubtedly most considerable in our language.” To whom does Matthew Arnold refer?
11. The concept of human mind as tabula rasa or blank tablet was propounded by:
12. Which romantic poet coined the famous phrase ‘spots of time’?
13. Who, amongst the following, does not belong to the ‘Great Tradition’, enunciated by F.R. Leavis?
14. Put the following books of Pope in a sequence of publication:
(i) The Dunciad
(ii) The Rape of the Lock
(iii) An Essay on Man
(iv) An Essay on Criticism
15. The term “egotistical sublime” was coined by:
16. “The future of poetry is immense, because in poetry… our race, as time goes on, will find an ever surer and surer stay.” This claim for poetry is made in:
17. Plato censured poetry because he believed it:
18. Thomas Paine’s The Rights of Man was published in:
19. In Dryden’s Essay of Dramatic Poesy (1668), who opens the discussion on behalf of the ancients?
20. Whom did Keats regard as the prime example of ‘negative capability’?
21. “He found it [English] brick and left it marble”, remarked one great writer on another. Who were they?
22. Match the following:
1. Good sense is the body of poetic genius
2. Poetry is the breath and a finer spirit of all knowledge
3. Literary criticism is a description and evaluation of its object
4. Nature never set forth the earth in as rich a tapestry as diverse poets have done
Match with: I. Brooks, II. Sidney, III. Wordsworth, IV. Coleridge
23. “The story and the novel, the idea and the form, are the needle and thread, and I never heard of a guild of tailors who recommended the use of the thread without the needle, or the needle without the thread.” This passage is found in:
24. William Wordsworth’s statement of purpose in publishing the Lyrical Ballads carries the following phrase. Complete it correctly: “to choose incidents from common life and to relate or describe them, throughout, as far as possible, ______.”
25. One English poet addressing another: “Thy soul was like a Star, and dwelt apart; / Thou hast a voice whose sound was like the sea…” Whose lines are these? To whom are they addressed?
26. Samuel Johnson’s Lives of Poets (1781) was originally a series of introductions to the poets he wrote for a group of London publishers. They were collected as:
27. Who claimed: “I have not published a single paper that is not written in a spirit of benevolence and with a love of mankind”?
28. In the Advancement of Learning, Bacon analysed the principal obstacles to the advancement of learning. Identify the one he did NOT mention as an obstacle:
29. Who among the following theorists formulated the concept of utile dulci, profit combined with delight?
30. Out of the four humours of the body, the Jacobeans thought of themselves as especially prone to:
31. In the Defence of Poetry, what did Sidney attribute to poetry?
32. Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding is a classic statement of _________ Philosophy.
33. The Uncertainty Principle is attributed to:
34. Philosophy of Symbolic Forms is a work associated with:
35. “All Rising to Great Place is by a _____ staire.” (Francis Bacon)
36. New Science is a work associated with:
37. Which of the following works is not actually a prose essay?
38. Identify the incorrect factor in Henry James’ theory of the novel:
39. D.H. Lawrence popularized the concept of ………… in his novels.
40. In the Defense of Poesy, Sidney says: “Now as in geometry the oblique must be known as well as right…” Which form of poesy offers a foil that helps us perceive the beauty of virtue?
41. In his “Study of Poetry” Arnold cited ‘touchstones’ from Homer, Dante, Shakespeare and Milton. Which English poet did he disapprovingly call “not one of the great classics”?
42. In the lines “With gold jewels cover every part, / And hide with ornaments their want of art” (Essay on Criticism), Pope rejects:
43. The author of the essay “Silly Novels by Lady Novelists” is:
44. In which chapter of Poetics does Aristotle use the word ‘catharsis’ in his definition of tragedy?
45. Match the following critics and essays:
(a) “The Function of Criticism”
(b) “The Function of Criticism at the Present Time”
(c) The Function of Criticism: From ‘The Spectator’ to Poststructuralism
(d) “The Function of English at the Present Time”
Match with: (i) Terry Eagleton, (ii) Richard Ohmann, (iii) Matthew Arnold, (iv) T.S. Eliot
46. Samuel Johnson’s use of the term “metaphysical” in a piece of criticism was:
47. F.R. Leavis and Q.D. Leavis launched a critical journal devoted to the moral centrality of English Studies. Name the Journal.
48. In “Tradition and Individual Talent” Eliot describes the workings of the poet’s mind in terms of which of the following?
49. The pre-eminent evaluative criterion of F.R. Leavis’s Great Tradition is:
50. In “Tradition and Individual Talent”, according to T.S. Eliot, the term “Traditional” usually means:
51. Which of the Aristotelian dramatic unities does Johnson believe Shakespeare observes most successfully?
52. In his Defence of Poesy, which works does Sidney commend as good examples of English Poesy?
I. The Mirror of Magistrates
II. The Shepherd’s Calendar
III. Lament for the Makers
IV. Ballad of Scottish King
The correct combination is:
53. In “Tradition and the Individual Talent” T.S. Eliot uses the analogy of the catalyst. In the poetic process, the filament of platinum is equivalent to:
54. Samuel Johnson’s Lives of the English Poets combines the following EXCEPT:
55. In the biography of which poet in his Lives of Poets did Johnson make his famous remark about “metaphysical poets”?
56. In An Essay of Dramatic Poesy, whom does Dryden refer to as “the most learned and judicious Writer which any Theatre ever had”?
57. Francis Bacon’s New Atlantis is about a utopian state called:
58. What does Philip Sidney call poet-haters in his Defence of Poesie?
59. The four Moral Essays of Alexander Pope are addressed to carefully selected figures. Identify:
60. Where, according to T.S. Eliot, are we likely to find “not only the best, but the most individual parts of a poet’s work”?
61. Samuel Johnson criticises an English poet: “These images are marked by glittering accumulations of ungraceful ornaments… His art and his struggle are too visible.” Identify the poet.
62. Who among the ancients prescribed that poetry should both instruct and delight?
63. In his essay “The Function of Criticism at the Present Time” (1864), Matthew Arnold contended that:
64. Why did Plato banish the poet from his ideal state?
65. Identify the two correct statements in Johnson’s criticism of Shakespeare:
(a) His Athenians are not sufficiently Greek and his kings not completely royal.
(b) He sacrifices virtue to convenience and is more careful to please than to instruct.
(c) He adheres to strict chronology and gives to one age or nation only its own customs.
(d) He sacrifices reason, propriety and truth to pursue even a poor and barren quibble.
66. Which two writers have written essays on the defence of poetry?
(a) Sir Philip Sidney
(b) P.B. Shelley
(c) Matthew Arnold
(d) T.S. Eliot
67. What, in sum, is Sidney’s point in: “Nature never set forth the earth in so rich tapestry as divers poets have done… Her world is brazen, the poets only deliver a golden”?
68. Why did T.S. Eliot assert that Virgil, not Homer, is the poet of Europe?
69. Which of Plato’s beliefs/acts was Shelley countering by saying “poets are the unacknowledged legislators of mankind”?
70. Which of the following statements is correct?
71. Of the five conditions of the Sublime according to Longinus, the most important is:
72. What does Socrates mean when in Plato’s Ion, he says “Poets are nothing but the interpreters of gods”?
73. Following Plato, which two statements about ‘Phantasm and Semblance’ are correct?
1. ‘Phantasm’ is an image, while ‘Semblance is the real object’.
2. ‘Phantasm’ is the real object while ‘Semblance is only a resemblance’.
3. ‘Phantasm’ unlike semblance has the same proportions as the object.
4. Semblance is ‘unreal’ but looks ‘real’ as compared to phantasm.
74. Which of the following is true of Aristotle’s Critical Position?
75. Match the critics with their texts:
A. Horace
B. John Dryden
C. Samuel Daniel
D. Ben Jonson
I. A Defence of Rhyme, II. Timber: or, Discoveries, III. Ars Poetica, IV. Of Dramatic Poesy
76. Who said of blank verse, quoting an unnamed critic, that it is “verse only to the eye”, adding it “has neither the easiness of prose, nor the melody of numbers”?
77. Which statement is true about Aristotle’s Poetics?
78. Arrange the following in chronological order of publication:
A. Advancement of Learning
B. The Origin of Species
C. On Heroes and Hero Worship
D. The Lives of the Poets
79. Poetry according to Sir Philip Sidney is of three kinds. They are:
80. Which according to Thomas Hobbes is the only ‘science’ God has bestowed on mankind, that informs the structure of Leviathan?
81. The “Preface to the Lyrical Ballads” was first published in:
82. The theory of the impersonality of the poet was put forward by:
83. Who said “No poet, no artist of any art, has his complete meaning alone”?
84. Who in “An Essay of Dramatic Poesy” by Dryden represents the Ancients?
85. Shelley defends poetry against the attack of:
86. Among the following, identify the correct statement about New Criticism:
87. Which of the following is not written by Wordsworth?
