🎯 35+ questions, 70 marks: Literary Criticism and Literary Theory together bring 35+ questions to every UGC NET English cycle, more than a third of the marks you need to clear the cut-off.
Lock in these 70 marks with the complete course.
If you are preparing for UGC NET English Literature, you already know literary criticism carries serious weight in Paper 2. Most students either skip it or memorise scattered notes that don’t help on exam day.
These previous year questions cover every major area of literary criticism — from Plato, Aristotle and Longinus to Dryden, Johnson, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Arnold, T.S. Eliot, New Criticism and Indian poetics. They are drawn from UGC NET, GATE and state SET papers.
The questions are arranged critic by critic, in the order literary criticism developed — from the Greeks to the moderns. Each part opens on a separate page. Pick the critic you want to revise, or go through the parts one by one. No sign-up, no payment.
Choose a Part
1Greek CriticsPlato & AristotleMimesis, the Republic, the Poetics, tragedy, catharsis
2Graeco-Roman CriticsHorace & LonginusArs Poetica, utile dulci, On the Sublime
3Elizabethan & Restoration CriticsSidney, Ben Jonson & DrydenApology for Poetry, Gosson, Essay of Dramatic Poesy, Rymer, Collier
4Neoclassical Critics (Age of Reason)Pope, Addison & Dr JohnsonEssay on Criticism, Lives of the Poets, Preface to Shakespeare, Burke
5Romantic CriticsWordsworth & ColeridgePreface to Lyrical Ballads, Biographia Literaria, fancy and imagination
6Later Romantic & Victorian CriticsKeats, Shelley & ArnoldNegative capability, Defence of Poetry, De Quincey, Hazlitt, Arnold, Pater
7Modern CriticsT.S. Eliot & Modern CriticsTradition and the Individual Talent, objective correlative, Leavis, Woolf
8Theory & Indian PoeticsNew Criticism, Indian Poetics & Key TermsRichards, Ransom, Tate, Rasa, Dhvani, Sphota, Bacon, Hobbes, Locke
These questions test whether you understand the concepts, not just whether you memorised a definition. If you can get through all eight parts comfortably, you’re in a strong position for the criticism section of NET.
