British History, Novels And Prose – (Previous Year Questions NET | GATE)

Here’s a famous exchange from Arthur Conan Doyle’s Silver Blaze :
‘Is there any point to which you would wish to draw my attention ?’
‘To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.’
‘The dog did nothing in the night-time.’
What was Sherlock Holmes’ response ?
(A) ‘Nothing ? Nothing at all ? Rather unbelievable.’
(B) ‘That was the curious incident.’
(C) ‘Anything else, at all ?’
(D) ‘That sounds rather curious, don’t you think ?’
Ans: (B)

Who, among the following writers, is known for his unforgettable sense of humour and comedy ?
(A) D.H. Lawrence
(B) P.G. Wodehouse
(C) Thomas Hardy
(D) John Galsworthy
Ans: (D)

Did I request thee, Maker, from my clay To mould me man ? Did I solicit thee From darkness to promote me ? Which nineteenth-century work bears these lines from Paradise Lost as epigraph ?
(A) Wuthering Heights
(B) Frankenstein
(C) Don Juan
(D) Jude the Obscure
Ans: (B)

In Aphra Behn’s Oronooko, how does the titular character die?
(A) He disembowels himself.
(B) He is whipped to death.
(C) He is hanged in the public square.
(D) He is cut to pieces slowly by the executioner.
Ans: (D)

The narrators of Oroonoko are
I. a woman
II. Oroonoko
III. a purported eyewitness of the events described
IV. Trefy
The right combination according to the code is
(A) I and IV
(B) I and III
(C) II and III
(D) II and IV
Answer: (B)

The narrative of this novel is a meticulous, present-tense account of a woman with a death-wish who plots the circumstances of her own violent murder. Identify the novel.
(A) Iris Murdoch’s A Fairly Honourable Defeat
(B) Muriel Spark’s The Driver’s Seat
(C) Doris Lessing’s Children of Violence
(D) Angela Carter’s The Passion of the New Eve
Ans: (B)

The library where the “Battle of Books” takes place is _______.
(A) St. James’ Library
(B) King’s Library
(C) Sir William’s Library
(D) Christ Church Library
Ans: (B)

In More’s Utopia, the fictional traveller Raphael Hythloday’s second name in Greek means
(A) Dispenser of Justice
(B) Dispenser of Nonsense
(C) Dispenser of Grace
(D) Dispenser of Mercy
Ans: (B)

Essays of Elia was published in
(A) 1800
(B) 1823
(C) 1827
(D) 1850
Ans: (B)

Which of the following is an example of homosexual fiction ?
(A) The Well of Loneliness
(B) Maurice
(C) Orlando
(D) The Ballad of the Reading Gaol
Ans: (A)

The ‘Condition of England’ literature refers to
(A) The literature written by the labour class.
(B) The literature of England extolling living conditions.
(C) The literature of England depicting the vulnerability of labour classes.
(D) The literature of England depicting the imperial projects abroad.
Ans: (C)

“All fiction for me is a kind of magic or trickery – a confidence trick.” The statement has been made by
(A) Angus Wilson
(B) Anthony Powell
(C) John Fowles
(D) George Orwell
Ans: (A)

Samuel Butler’s Erewhon is an example of
(A) Feminist Literature
(B) Utopian Literature
(C) War Literature
(D) Famine Literature
Ans: (B)

The Victorian period refers to the reign of Queen Victoria of England during :
(A) 1830 – 1890
(B) 1837 – 1905
(C) 1837 – 1901
(D) 1850 – 1910
Ans: (C)

In which of the following novels by Conrad do the Gould couple and Decoud appear as characters with Costaguana as the setting ?
(A) Victory
(B) Under Western Eyes
(C) Nostromo
(D) The Nigger of the Narcissus
Ans: (C)

In November 1910 in an exhibition organized by Roger Fry, the paintings of three painters were displayed. Identify the painters :
(A) Duncan Grant, Vanessa Bell, Clive Bell
(B) Cezanne, Van Gogh, Gauguin
(C) Matisse, Picasso, Braque
(D) Cezanne, Van Gogh, Matisse
Ans: (B)

Religious controversies in England particularly during the 15th century led to the promotion of
(A) English prose
(B) The British Empire
(C) Naval power
(D) The Missionary Movement
Ans: (A)

Choose the right chronological sequence below :
(A) Victorian Period – Jacobean Period – Tudor Period – Restoration Period
(B) Edwardian Period – Tudor Period – Jacobean Period – Victorian Period
(C) Tudor Period – Jacobean Period – Restoration Period – Edwardian Period
(D) Jacobean Period – Tudor Period – Restoration Period – Edwardian Period
Ans: (C)

To whom does Francis Bacon offer the following piece of advice ?
“Let him sequester himself from the Company of his Countrymen, and diet in such Places, where there is good company of the Nation… Let him upon his Removes, … procure Recommendation, to some person of Quality, residing in the Place, whither he removeth…”
(A) The Beaux
(B) The Peddler
(C) The Traveller
(D) The Stationer
Ans: (C)

In his masterpiece, Of the Lawes of Ecclesiasticall Politie, Richard Hooker affirmed the Anglican tradition as that of a “threefold cord not quickly broken.” He specifically referred to the following EXCEPT .
(A) tradition
(B) scripture
(C) community
(D) reason
Ans: (C)

A significant development in 1662 was the establishment of The Royal Society in England. The main purpose of the society was .
(A) to set the rules for the royal court and governance
(B) to guide and promote the development of science and scientific exploration
(C) to set norms for civil society
(D) to promote theatre
Ans: (B)

How would one best describe Thomas Carlyle’s Sartor Resartus (1833) ?
(A) A combination of journal, fashion-book, and tips for advertisers
(B) A lyrical novel a la Marcel Proust
(C) A combination of novel, autobiography, and essay
(D) A satire on sartorial fashions and feibles of medieval Europe
Ans: (C)

Which of the following novels opens with the description of an accident to a hot-air balloon ?
(A) John Fowles’s The Magus
(B) Ian McEwan’s Enduring Love
(C) James Kelman’s How Late It Was, How Late
(D) Irvine Welsh’s Trainspotting
Ans: (B)

Match the columns :
(a) Robert Burton
(b) Richard Hooker
(c) Thomas Browne
(d) Thomas Nashe
(i) Urn Burial
(ii) The Unfortunate Traveller
(iii) The Anatomy of Melancholy
(iv) Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Politie
(a) (b) (c) (d)
(A) (iii) (i) (ii) (iv)
(B) (iv) (ii) (i) (iii)
(C) (iii) (iv) (i) (ii)
(D) (i) (iii) (iv) (ii)
Ans: (C)

Martha Quest was written by :
(A) Jean Rhys
(B) Doris Lessing
(C) Iris Murdoch
(D) Nadine Gordimer
Ans: (B)

The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire in six volumes was a great achievement by Edward Gibbon. It was published between 1776 and 1788, two significant dates that.
(A) Signalled the end of the Napoleonic wars and the rise of Feudalism
(B) Signalled the American Revolution and the French Revolution
(C) Covered the fall of peasantry and the rise of bureaucracy in England
(D) Suggest the period of Queen Anne.s reign
Ans: (B)

The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon is a significant work in ______ volumes.
(A) 3
(B) 4
(C) 5
(D) 6
Ans: (D)

Which of the following novels of Joseph Conrad is set in Malay ?
(A) Nigger of the Narcissus
(B) Lord Jim
(C) Nostromo
(D) Heart of Darkuess
Ans: (B)

Which novel by Joseph Conrad presents a young captain who like Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner is haunted by the “vision of a ship drifting in calm and swinging in light airs, with all the crew dying slowly about her decks” and who feels “the sickness of my soul… the weight of my sins… my sense of unworthiness” ?
(A) Under Western Eyes
(B) The Shadow Line
(C) Victory
(D) The Rescue
Ans: (B)

Who wrote the screenplay for the film version of John Fowles’s novel The French Lieutenant`s Woman?
(A) Harold Pinter
(B) Torn Stoppard
(C) David Marnet
(D) Caryl Phillips
Ans: (A)

Identify the one erroneous statement on Neoclassicism listed below :
(A) Lodovico Castelvetro and Torquato Tasso greatly influenced English writers like Milton and Dryden
(B) Neoclassicism took its final form during the reign of Louis XIV (1638-1715)
(C) Boilean’s L’Art poétique influenced Pope’s Essay, on Criticism
(D) The English relation to Neoclassicism was one of dialogue. Most literally, this dialogue is effected in Addison`s An Essay on Dramatic Poesy
Ans: (D)

What did Anthony Trollope seek to criticize through the character Mr. Slope ?
(A) Methodism
(B) Low Churchmen
(C) High Church doctrine
(D) Anglicanism
Ans: (B)

Which of the following statements on the Hogarth press is FALSE ?
(A) The Hogarth press was founded in 1917 by Leonard and Virginia Woolf
(B) Its location was their home, called Hogarth House
(C) The press was solely devoted to publishing international classics in translation
(D) The press published translations of Gorky, Chekhov, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Rilke, Svevo and others
Ans: (C)

Which of W.M. Thackeray’s novel’s closing sentence is this?
“Which of us is happy in this world? Which of us has his desire? Or, having it, is satisfied?”
(A) The History of Henry Esmond
(B) Vanity Fair
(C) The Luck of Barry Lyndon
(D) Pendennis
Ans: (B)

The novel Mary Barton is written by :
(A) Mrs. Gaskell
(B) George Eliot
(C) Emily Bronte
(D) Dickens
Ans: (A)

Towards the end of Evelyn Waugh’s A Handful of Dust the protagonist Tony Last is trapped in the jungle by the calculating crazy Mr. Todd who forces him to read and reread the novels of a particular author. Waugh has also written a short story dealing with Tony’s singular experience in the jungle. Who is the novelist referred to and what is the title of the short story?
(A) Rudyard Kipling, “Revisiting the Jungle”
(B) Joseph Conrad, “Shadows of the Dark Trees”
(C) Charles Dickens, “The Man Who Liked Dickens”
(D) Henry Fielding, “Tom Jones’s Journey into the Wild”
Ans: (C)

Which British King, having defeated the Viking invaders, consciously used the English language to create a sense of national identity and retain political control over independent countries?
(A) Alfred the Great
(B) Edward the Elder
(C) King Arthur
(D) Ethelbert of Kent
Answer: (A)

In “Politics and the English Language” George Orwell provides a list of rules to aid in curing the English language. What is the final rule?
(A) Never use a metaphor, simile or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
(B) Never use a long word where a short one will do.
(C) If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
(D) Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.
Ans: (D)

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What three Germanic tribes invaded Britons in the fifth century AD, bringing with them the roots of modern English?
(A) The Danes, Saxons and Celts
(B) The Celts, Jutes and Saxons
(C) The Saxons, Danes and Angles
(D) The Jutes, Angles and Saxons
Ans: (D)

Which of the following statements best describe the narrative perspective employed in Thomas More’s Utopia?
I. First-person narration by Raphael Hythloday
II. Third-person narration by a narrator named Thomas More
III. First-person narration by a narrator named Thomas More
IV. Third-person narration by Raphael Hythloday
The right combination according to the code is
(A) I and III
(B) II and IV
(C) II and III
(D) I and II
Ans: (A)

In the middle of the story the narrator in Oroonoko digresses from the central tale of Oroonoko’s revolt and tells of various expeditions taken in company with Oroonoko.
What is the purpose of these digressions, according to the narrator?
(A) To illustrate the richness of the country of Surinam
(B) To enliven the dullness of the central narrative
(C) To give proof of Oroonoko’s daring and curiosity
(D) To convince the reader that the narrator is indeed an eye-witness to the events described
Ans: (C)

In Beowulf, Beowulf accuses Unferth of
I. pagan beliefs
II. killing his own “kith and kin”
III. “unchecked atrocity”
IV. unprovoked war
The right combination according to the code is
(A) I and II
(B) II and III
(C) I and IV
(D) I and III
Ans: (B)

In his well-known essay “Politics and the English Language”, George Orwell provides representative examples of what common faults?
(A) Staleness of imagery and lack of precision
(B) Lack of precision and incorrect formatting
(C) Incorrect formatting and staleness of imagery
(D) Staleness of precision and lack of imagery
Ans: (A)

Which Victorian novel has the subtitle “New Foes with an Old Face”?
(A) Hypatia
(B) Sybil
(C) Pendennis
(D) Phineas Finn
Ans: (A)

Who among the following wrote a book on the life and works of Dante Gabriel Rossetti?
(A) Graham Greene
(B) Evelyn Waugh
(C) William Golding
(D) Kingsley Amis
Ans: (B)

After the Norman Conquest of 1066, Norman French was the dominant language used by
(A) ordinary people
(B) religious clerics
(C) the upper classes
(D) farmers
Ans: (C)

In More’s Utopia there are 54 cities, all built on a similar plan and distributed over the island such that each city is surrounded by agricultural lands. Who does the agricultural labour in Utopia?
(A) Agricultural labour is performed by slaves.
(B) Adulterers and other criminals are forced to work on farms.
(C) All citizens take two-year stints at farm work.
(D) Farm labourers are brought in from allied countries.
Ans: (C)

Early in Evelyn Waugh’s A Handful of Dust, while Tony and his young son, John Andrew, walk to the church, John tells his father a story he has heard from the stable manager, Ben about a mule “who had drunk his company’s rum ration” in the First World War and subsequently died. What is the mule named ?
(A) Peppermint
(B) Dopey
(C) Dynamo
(D) Pookey
Ans: (A)

The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman is notorious for its many digressions across nine volumes and its failure to deliver a complete autobiography. In which volume does Tristram Shandy finally recount his birth ?
(A) Volume III
(B) Volume V
(C) Volume VIII
(D) Volume IX
Ans: (A)

In which of these prisons is Defoe’s character, Moll Flanders born ?
(A) Gatehouse
(B) King’s Bench
(C) Newgate
(D) Ludgate
Ans: (C)

Years before, Winston Smith, the protagonist of George Orwell’s dystopia, Nineteen Eighty Four got an evidence of the party’s dishonesty. What is it ?
(A) Emmanuel Goldstein’s confession that he is a party operative; not an enemy of the party.
(B) O’ Brien’s diary entry hinting at the non-existence of Big Brother.
(C) A photograph which proves that some citizen accused of a crime was out of the country while it was committed.
(D) A colleague’s revelation that the Inner Party members have systematically destroyed all historical documents and created false documents.
Ans: (C)

Which of the following plays by David Hare is NOT part of a trilogy of ‘state of the nation’ plays ?
(A) The Absence of War
(B) Racing Demon
(C) The Power of Yes
(D) Murmuring Judges
Ans: (C)

In Tristram Shandy Corporal Trim’s brother Tom describes the oppression of a black servant in a sausage shop in Lisbon that he visited. This episode is inspired by a letter Laurence Sterne received from a black man. Sterne’s reply became an integral part of 18th century abolitionist literature.
Name the person who wrote the aforementioned letter to Sterne.
(A) William Wilberforce
(B) Ignatius Sancho
(C) William Blackstone
(D) John Hawkins
Ans: (B)

“Britons will never be slaves !” – felt proud Britons in the eighteenth century. A great many Britons, though, had no qualms about owning slaves and profiting from them. Who among the following British authors self-consciously engaged with the issue of slavery in some poems?
I. Hannah More
II. Mary Collier
III. Anna Seward
IV. Anna Yearsley
The right combination according to the code is
(A) I and III
(B) I and IV
(C) II and III
(D) III and IV
Ans: (B)

Which of the following adjectives will not apply to Becky Sharp, a major character in Vanity Fair?
(A) ambitious
(B) energetic
(C) wellborn
(D) scheming
Ans: (C)

Which chilling novel of surveillance and entrapment had the alternative title Things as They Are?
(A) Horace Walpole’s Castle of Otranto.
(B) Matthew Gregory Lewis’s The Monk.
(C) Thomas Love Peacock’s Nightmare Abbey.
(D) William Godwin’s Caleb Williams.
Ans: (D)

 Identify the correct chronological sequence of the following early English texts :
(A) Troilus and Criseyde – The Owl and The Nightingale – Utopia – Morte d’Arthur
(B) Troilus and Criseyde – Utopia – Morte d’Arthur – The Owl and the Nightingale
(C) The Owl and the Nightingale – Troilus and Criseyde – Morte d’Arthur – Utopia
(D) The Owl and the Nightingale – Morte d’Arthur – Troilus and Criseyde – Uttopia
Ans: (C)

Which of Kazuo Ishiguro’s novels are set mostly in Japan?
I. The Unconsoled
II. The Remains of the Day
III. An Artist of the Floating World
IV. A Pale View of Hills
The right combination according to the code is
(A) I and III
(B) II and III
(C) III and IV
(D) I and IV
Ans: (C)

Which among the following texts purports to be the autobiography of a mad German philosopher edited by an equally fictitious editor?
(A) Sartos Resartus
(B) The Dream of Gerontius
(C) The Professor
(D) Felix Holf
Ans: (A)

What does the title Morte d’Arthur mean?
(A) Arthur mortified
(B) Death of Arthur
(C) Castle of Arthur
(D) Burial of Arthur
Ans: (B)

Assertion (A) : Characters in novels are people whose secret lives are visible or might be visible. We are people whose secret lives are invisible.
Reason (R) : Even when novels are about wicked people, they can solace us; they suggest a more manageable human race, they give us the illusion of seeing clearly and of power.
In the light of the statements above
(a) Both (A) and (R) are correct and (R) is the correct explanation of (A).
(b) Both (A) and (R) are correct but (R) is not the correct explanation of (A).
(c) (A) is right, but (R) is wrong.
(d) (A) is wrong, but (R) is right.
Ans: (a)

’Imagism’ is associated with :
(A) T. S. Fliot
(C) E. E. Cummings
(B) D. H. Lawrence
(D) T. E. Hulme
Ans: (D)

Which of the following is written by Samuel Butler ?
(A) Religio Laici
(B) David Simple
(C) Hudibras
(D) Journal of the Plague Year
Ans: (C)

Who of the following is known for aphoristic prose style ?
(A) William Hazlitt
(B) Francis Bacon
(C) John Ruskin
(D) G. K. Chesterton
Ans: (B)

The confessions of an English Opium Eater was written by :
(A) William Hazlitt
(B) S. T. Coleridge
(C) Landor
(D) De Quincey
Ans: (D)

Ireland emerges as the most important metaphor in :
(A) Seamus Heaney
(B) Elizabeth Jennigs
(C) Arnold Wesker
(D) Edward Albee
Ans: (A)

The major contribution of the Restoration period is in the field of :
(A) Philosophical writings
(B) Poetry
(C) Drama
(D) Letters
Ans: (C)

The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner is a novel by :
(A) Alan Sillitoe
(B) Paul Scott
(C) Peter Porter
(D) Muriel Spark
Ans: (A)

 The term ‘Victorian’ evokes the attitudes of :
(A) philistinism
(B) moral earnestness
(C) licentiousness
(D) transcendentalism
Ans: (B)

The French Revolution had a significant impact on :
(A) Victorian Literature
(B) Romantic Literature
(C) Neo-classic Literature
(D) Modern Literature
Ans: (B)

The most important of the ‘evolutionists’ during the Victorian period was :
(A) Erasmus Darwin
(B) Robert Chambers
(C) Charles Darwin
(D) Alfred Russell Wallace
Ans: (C)

The word ‘nature’ in the eighteenth century literature stands for :
(A) Nature of writing
(B) External nature
(C) Human nature
(D) The Universe
Ans: (C)

 Who is given credit for first using the term“romantic?
(A) Friedrich Schlegel
(B) Kant
(C) Coleridge
(D) Schiller
Ans: (A)

Sartor Resartus is a text by :
(A)Ruskin
(B) Arnold
(C) Carlyle
(D) Burke
Ans: (C)

Victorian Age witnessed a clash between :
(A) faith and reason
(B) tradition and modernity
(C) oriental and occidental civilization
(D) romanticism and neo romanticism
Ans: (A)

The historical novel began in ;
(A)Restoration Period
(B) Augustan Age
(C) Victorian Period
(D) Romantic Period
Ans: (D)

Jabberwocky is a character in….
(A) The Importance of Being Earnest
(B) Fra Lippo Lippi
(C) Through the Looking Glass
(D) Goblin Market
Ans: (C)

Doris Lessing’s interest in __________ is widely recognized :
(A) Hinduism
(B) Sufism
(C)Zen
(D)Judaism
Ans: (B)

The following writers have something in common : What is it ?
Mary Seacole J.A. Froude
Mary Kingsley Anthony Trollope

(I) They are all victorians
(ii) They are all writers of children’s fiction
(iii) They are all members of one literary guild
(iv) They are all travel writers

(A) (i) and (ii)
(B) (iii) and (iv)
(C) ii) and (iv)
D) (i) and (iv)
Ans: (D)

What century is variously called The Age of Enlightenment, The Age of Sensibility, The Augustan Age and The Age of Prose and Reason?
(A) sixteenth century
(B) seventeenth century
(C) eighteenth century
(D) nineteenth century
Ans: (C)

Politics and the English Language is an essay by :
(A) F.R. Leavis
(B) Terry Eagleton
(C) George Orwell
(D) Raymond Williams
Ans: (C)

The Crystal Palace, a key exhibit of the Great Exhibition, was designed by
(A) Charles Darwin
(B) Edward Moxon
(C) Joseph Paxton
(D) Richard Owen
Ans: (C)

The Augustan Age is called so because
(A) King Augustus ruled over England during this period
(B) The English writers imitated the Roman writers during this period
(C) The English King was born in the month of August
(D) This was an age of sensibility
Ans: (B)

Reformation was predominantly a movement in
(A) politics
(B) literature
(C) religion
(D) education
Ans: (C)

Charles Darwin’s Origin of the Species was published in the year
(A) 1859
(B) 1879
(C) 1845
(D) 1866
Ans: (A)

Who among the following Victorian poets disliked his middle name ?
(A) Arthur Hugh Clough
(B) Dante Gabriel Rossetti
(C) Gerard Manley Hopkins
(D) Algernon Charles Swinburne
Ans: (C)

Which among the following works by Daniel Defoe landed him in prison and the pillory ?
(A) The True-Born Englishman
(B) Captain Singleton
(C) The Shortest Way with Dissenters
(D) Moll Flanders
Ans: (C)

About which nineteenth century English writer was it said that “He had succeeded as a writer not by conforming to the Spirit of the Age, but in opposition to it” ?
(A) Lord Byron on Coleridge
(B) Coleridge on Keats
(C) Hazlitt on Lamb
(D) De Quincey on Crabbe
Ans: (C)

 Muriel Spark has written a dystopian novel called
(A) Memento Mori
(B) The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
(C) Robinson
(D) The Ballad of Peckham Rye
Ans: (C)

Which of the following authorbook pair is correctly matched ?
(A) Muriel Spark – Under the Net
(B) William – Girls of Golding Slender Means
(C) Angus Wilson – Lucky Jim
(D) Doris Lessing – The Grass is Singing
Ans: (D)

My First Acquaintance with Poets, an unforgettable account of meeting with literary heroes, is written by
(A) Charles Lamb
(B) Thomas de Quincey
(C) Leigh Hunt
(D) William Hazlitt
Ans: (D)

Elizabeth Gaskell’s novel Mary Barton is sub-titled
(A) The Two Nations
(B) A Tale of Manchester Life
(C) A Story of Provincial Life
(D) The Factory Girl
Ans: (B)

Which of the following novels has a great impact on the formal experimentation in contemporary fiction ?
(A) Thomas Nashe’s The Unfortunate Traveller
(B) Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones
(C) Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy
(D) Samuel Richardson’s Pamela
Ans: (C)

Which of the following books is by Margaret Atwood ?
(A) The Stone Angel
(B) No Fixed Address
(C) The Edible Woman
(D) Halfbreed
Ans: (C)

The Enlightenment believed in the universal authority of
(A) Religion
(B) Tradition
(C) Reason
(D) Sentiments
Ans: (C)

Which of the following is not an apocalyptic novel ?
(A) Doris Lessing’s The Four-Gated City
(B) L.P. Hartley’s Facial Justice
(C) Anthony Burgess’s The Wanting Seed
(D) V.S. Naipaul’s A House for Mr Biswas
Ans: (C)

 “It was a bright cold day in April and the clocks were striking thirteen” – is the opening sentence of
(A) Ulysses
(B) Nostromo
(C) Chrome Yellow
(D) Nineteen Eighty-Four
Ans: (D)

The subtitle of William Godwin’s Caleb Williams is
(A) Man As He Is Not
(B) Man As He Is
(C) Things As They Are
(D) The Pupil of Nature
Ans: (C)

“On the Knocking at the Gate in Macbeth” is a longer essay by
(A) G. Wilson Knight
(B) A. C. Bradley
(C) Thomas De Quincey
(D) F. R. Leavis
Ans: (C)

Which of the following is not about a dystopia ?
(A) George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four
(B) Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World
(C) William Golding’s Lord of the Flies
(D) R.M. Ballantyne’s The Coral Island
Ans: (D)

The author of the pamphlet Short View of Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage (1698) was
(A) John Bunyan
(B) Jeremy Collier
(C) William Wycherley
(D) John Vanbrugh
Ans: (B)

The Castle of Otranto is an example of
(A) Gothic fiction
(B) Romance
(C) Comic fiction
(D) Bildungsroman
Ans: (A)

You Can’t Do Both is a novel by
(A) John Fowles
(B) Doris Lessing
(C) Kingsley Amis
(D) Irish Murdoch
Ans: (C)

Margaret Drabble is the author of
(A) The Memoirs of a Survivor
(B) The Witch of Exmoor
(C) The Service of Clouds
(D) The Godless in Eden
Ans: (B)

W.M. Thackeray’s Vanity Fair owes its title to
(A) Browning’s Fifine at the Fair
(B) Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice
(C) Goldsmith’s Vicar of Wakefield
(D) Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress
Ans: (D)

The Puritans shut down all theatersin England in
(A) 1642
(B) 1640
(C) 1659
(D) 1660
Ans: (A)

 The Enlightenment was characterized by
(A) Accelerated industrial production and general well–being of the public.
(B) A belief in the universal authority of reason and emphasis on scientific experimentation.
(C) The Protestant work ethic and compliance with Christian values of life.
(D) An undue faith in predestination and neglect of free will.
Ans: (B)

Match the following pairs of books and authors:
I. Condition of the Working Class in England
II. London Labour and the London Poor
III. Past and Present
IV. Theunto This Last

i. John Ruskin
ii. Henry Mayhew
iii. Thomas Carlyle
iv. Friedrich Engels

Codes:
I II III IV
(A) iv i ii iii
(B) iv ii iii i
(C) ii iv i ii
(D) iii ii iv iv
Ans: (B)

Confessions of an English Opium Eater is a literary work by
(A) S. T. Coleridge
(B) P. B. Shelley
(C) Thomas De Quincey
(D) Lord Byron
Ans: (C)

Madam Merle is a character in
(A) The Great Gatsby
(B) The Portrait of a Lady
(C) The Jungle
(D) The Heart is a Lonely Hunter
Ans: (B)

Examine the following statements and identify one of them which is not true.
(A) Rudyard Kipling died in the year 1936.
(B) He was born in India but schooled in England.
(C) He returned to India as a police constable in Burma.
(D) He is the author of Jungle Book and Barrack Room Ballads.
Ans: (C)

Which among the following novels has more than one ending?
(A) Lucky Jim
(B) The Prime of Jean Brodie
(C) The French Lieutenant’s Woman
(D) The Clockwork Orange
Ans: (C)

Who among the following is not an Irish writer?
(A) Oscar Wilde
(B) Oliver Goldsmith
(C) Edmund Burke
(D) Thomas Gray
Ans: (D)

Entries in The Diary of Samuel Pepys begins after
(A) The Restoration
(B) The Glorious Revolution
(C) The Reformation
(D) The French Revolution
Ans: (A)

It is unimaginable that all the following events happened in one year:
1. Arthur Evans discovered the first European civilization; his excavations in Crete revealed a culture that was far older than either Attic Greece or Ancient Rome.
2. Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch published the Oxford Book of English Verse.
3. Pablo Picasso stepped off the Barcelona train at Gare d’ Orsay, Paris.
4. Max Planck unveiled the Quantum Theory.
5. Hugo de Vries identified what would later come to be called genes.
6. Sigmund Freud published The Interpretation of Dreams.
7. Coca-cola arrived in Britain.
Identify the year:
(A) 1899
(B) 1900
(C) 1901
(D) 1903
Ans: (B)

Brother to a Prince and fellow to a beggar if he be found worthy.
This is the epigraph to
(A) T.S. Eliot’s “The Hollow Men”
(B) Rudyard Kipling’s “The Man Who Would be the King”
(C) George Eliot’s Silas Marner
(D) E.M. Forster’s Howard’s End
Ans: (B)

The Elizabethan Settlement established during the reign of Elizabeth I
I. ensured the supremacy of the Church of England.
II. allowed Christians to acknowledge the authority of the Pope.
III. allowed the extremer Protestants to be part of the Anglican church.
IV. created a group known as the Roundheads.
The correct combination according to the code is:
(A) I and III are correct.
(B) I and II are correct.
(C) II and III are correct.
(D) III and IV are correct.
Ans: (A)

The following postmodernist novel has an unusual protagonist whose gender is not revealed. So much so, that we keep wondering whether that person’s relationships are homo /hetero-sexual:
(A) The French Lieutenant’s Woman
(B) English Music
(C) Written on the Body
(D) Enduring Love
Ans: (C)

In Lord of the Flies which character comes to realize that the ‘beast’ is actually the evil inside the boys themselves and it is that which is breaking things up?
(A) Jack
(B) Simon
(C) Roger
(D) Ralph
Ans: (B)

Which text exemplifies the anti- Victorian feeling prevalent in the early twentieth century?
I. Eminent Victorians
II. Jungle Book
III. Philistine Victorians
IV. The Way of All Flesh
The correct combination according to the code is
(A) II and IV are correct.
(B) I and IV are correct.
(C) III and IV are correct.
(D) II and III are correct.
Ans: (B)

How does John Stuart Mill define ‘happiness’?
(A) Doing what one wants to do
(B) Leading a fulfilling life
(C) Pleasure and the absence of pain
(D) Virtuous activity
Ans: (C)

What did Thomas Carlyle mean by “Close thy Byron; open thy Goethe”?
(A) Britain’s pre-eminence as a global power will depend on mastery of foreign languages.
(B) Abandon the introspection of the Romantics and turn to the higher moral purpose found in Goethe.
(C) Even a foreign author is better than a home-grown scoundrel.
(D) Leave England and immigrate to Germany.
Ans: (B)

Conrad’s Heart of Darkness presents two conflicting discourses present in his own culture. Identify the two discourses from the following:
(A) Modernism and anticolonialism
(B) Modernism and structuralism
(C) Anti-colonialism and Eurocentricism
(D) Material culturalism and tribalism
Ans: (C)

What literary work best captures a sense of the political turmoil particularly regarding the issue of religion just after the Restoration?
(A) Gay’s Beggar’s Opera
(B) Butler’s Hudibras
(C) Pope’s Dunciad
(D) Dryden’s Absalom and Achitophel
Ans: (D)

How does Lord Jim end?
(A) Jim is shot through the chest by Doramin.
(B) Jim kills himself with a last unflinching glance.
(C) Jim answers “the call of exalted egoism” and betrays Jewel.
(D) Jim surrenders himself to Doramin.
Ans: (A)

“Where I lacked a political purpose, I wrote lifeless books.” To which of the following authors can we attribute the above admission?
(A) Graham Greene
(B) George Orwell
(C) Charles Morgan
(D) Evelyn Waugh
Ans: (B)

Modernism has been described as being concerned with “disenchantment of our culture with culture itself”. Who is the critic?
(A) Stephen Spender
(B) Malcolm Bradbury
(C) Lionel Trilling
(D) Joseph Frank
Ans: (C)

Samuel Pepys kept his diary from
(A) 1660 to 1669
(B) 1649 to 1660
(C) 1662 to 1689
(D) 1660 to 1689
Ans: (A)

Match the author with the work:
(Authors)
I. Kingsely Amis
II. Allan Silletoe
III. Doris Lessing
IV. Jean Rhys
(Works)
1. Saturday and Sunday Morning
2. The Golden Note Book
3. The Left Bank
4. Lucky Jim
Which is the correct combination according to the code?
Code:
I II III IV
(A) 3 4 1 2
(B) 4 1 2 3
(C) 2 3 1 4
(D) 1 2 3 4
Ans: (B)

Which of the following statements best describes Sir Thomas Browne’s Religion Medici?
(A) It is a story of conversion or providential experiences.
(B) It emphasizes Browne’s love of mystery and wonder.
(C) It is full of angst, melancholy and dread of death.
(D) It reports the facts of Browne’s life.
Ans: (A) and (B)

Which one of the following best describes the general feeling expressed in literature during the last decade of the Victorian era?
(A) Studied melancholy and aestheticism
(B) The triumph of science and morbidity
(C) Sincere earnestness and Protestant zeal
(D) Raucous celebration combined with paranoid interpretation
Ans: (A)

With Bacon the essay form is
(A) An intimate, personal confession
(B) Witty and boldly imagistic
(C) The aphoristic expression of accumulated public wisdom
(D) Homely and vulgar
Ans: (C)

Evelyn Waugh’s Trilogy published together as Sword of Honour is about
(A) The English at War
(B) The English Aristocracy
(C) The Irish question
(D) Scottish nationalism
Ans: (A)

Who coined the phrase “The Two Nations” to describe the disparity in Britain between the rich and the poor?
(A) Charles Dickens
(B) Thomas Carlyle
(C) Benjamin Disraeli
(D) Frederick Engels
Ans: (C)

Sir Thomas More creates the character of a traveller into whose mouth the account of Utopia is put. His name is
(A) Michael
(B) Raphael
(C) Henry
(D) Thomas
Ans: (B)

Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy contains
(A) Six volumes
(B) Nine volumes
(C) Ten volumes
(D) Four volumes
Ans: (B)

The first official royal Poet Laureate in English literary history was _______.
(A) Ben Jonson
(B) William Davenant
(C) John Dryden
(D) Thomas Shadwell
Ans: (C)

Evelina was published in 1778
(A) posthumously
(B) using the name Fanny Burney
(C) anonymously
(D) under apseudonym
Ans: (C)

The Theory of Natural Selection is attributed to ________.
(A) Arthur Schopenhauer
(B) Charles Darwin
(C) A.N. Whitehead
(D) Aldous Huxley
Ans: (B)

Which character in William Golding’s Lord of the Flies maintains, “Life is scientific” ?
(A) Simon
(B) Piggy
(C) Ralph
(D) Jack
Ans: (B)

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
Ans: (C)

“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
Ans: (B)

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
Ans: (C)

A Young Lady’s Entrance into the World is the sub-title of _______.
(A) Belinda
(B) Cecilia
(C) Evelina
(D) Camilla
Ans: (C)

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)
Ans: (D)

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
Ans: (C)

It has been described as a “novel without predecessors”, the product of an original mind and became immediately popular. It is a peculiar blend of pathos and humour, though the pathos is sometimes overdone to the point of becoming offensively sentimental.
The novel was published in 1760. What is the name of the novel ?
(A) Gulliver’s Travels
(B) The Castle of Otranto
(C) Tristram Shandy
(D) A Tender Husband
Ans: (C)

The son of a joiner, he was apprenticed as a printer. He remained a printer throughout his life. He was asked to prepare a series of modern letters for those who could not write for themselves. This humble task taught him the art of expressing himself in letters. Who is the novelist?
(A) Daniel Defoe
(B) Samuel Richardson
(C) Henry Fielding
(D) Tobias Smollett
Ans: (B) 

“Competence to age is supplementary to youth, a sorry supplement indeed, but I fear the best that is to be had. We must ride where we formerly walked : live better and be softer and shall be wise to do so – than we had means to do in the good old days you speak of.”
Who speaks these words and to whom?
(A) Lamb to Bridget
(B) Wordsworth to Dorothy
(C) Dorothy to Bridget
(D) Lamb to Dorothy
Ans: (A)

Which of the following authors wrote Studies in the History of the Renaissance?
(A) Walter Pater
(B) Oscar Wilde
(C) Thomas Carlyle
(D) John Ruskin
Ans: (A)

While compiling what sort of book did Samuel Richardson conceive of the idea for his Pamela or Virtue Rewarded?
(A) an account of the plague in London
(B) an instruction manual for manners
(C) a book of devotion
(D) a book of model letters
Ans: (D)

An English architect and stage-designer – Beginning 1605, joined Jacobean court to design masques — contributed significantly to the spectacular theatre which succeeded the commonwealth after his death – the first designer to use revolving screens to indicate scene-changes on the English stage.
Identify this artist/designer.
(A) Henry Irving
(B) Inigo Jones
(C) Henry Arthur Jones
(D) William Inge
Ans: (B)

Chartism, a political movement that took its name from the People’s Charter had six points. Identify the one point on the following list that was NOT Chartist:
(a) universal manhood sufferage
(b) equal electoral districts
(c) comprehensive insurance scheme for labour
(d) vote by secret ballot
(e) payment of MPs
(f) no property qualifications for MPs
(g) Annual parliaments
Codes:
(A) (e)
(B) (g)
(C) (c)
(D) (d)
Ans: (C)

The ‘monster’ in Frankenstein is NOT responsible for the death of:
(A) Clerval
(B) Justine
(C) Elizabeth
(D) Alphonse Frankenstein
Ans: (D)

To whom is Mary Shelley’s famous work Frankenstein dedicated ?
(A) Lord Byron
(B) Claire Clairmont
(C) William Godwin
(D) P.B. Shelley
Ans: (C)

 The following is the classic ending of a celebrated novella in English:
“I kept on creeping just the same, but I looked at him over my shoulder. I’ve got out at last’, said I, “in spite of you and Jane. And I’ve pulled off most of the papers, so you can’t put me back !“
Now why should that man have fainted? But he did, and right across my path by the wall, so that I had to creep over him every time !“
(A) Yellow Woman (Leslie Mormon Silko)
(B) The Yellow Wallpaper (Charlotte P.Gilman)
(C) Johny Panic and the Bible of Dreams (Sylvia Plalth)
(D) Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been? Joyce C. Oates)
Ans: (B)

Samuel Johnson’s “Dissertation upon Poetry” is part of which of his following works?
(A) the final section of his preface to Shakespeare
(B) a chapter of his novel Rasselas
(C) the epilogue of his Lives of Poets
(D) one of his Rambler essays
Ans: (B)

In Tristram Shandy the narrator’s presentation of his life and opinions is ………….
(A) linear
(B) digressive
(C) chronological
(D) rounded
Ans: (B)

Samuel Pepys began his diary on ……………
(A) New Year’s Day 1660
(B) All Saints’ Day 1662
(C) Thanksgiving Day 1665
(D) New Year’s Day 1667
Ans: (A)

Which of the following is NOT a characteristic of the Victorian Age?
(A) The rise of a highly competitive industrial technology
(B) An emphasis on strictly controlled social behavior
(C) A romantic focus on home and family
(D) The growth of rural traditions and movement from large cities
Ans: (D)

The unquenchable spirit of Robinson Crusoe struggling to maintain a substantial existence on a lonely island reflects ……………
(A) man’s desire to return to nature
(B) the author’s criticism of colonization
(C) the ideal of rising bourgeoisie
(D) the aristocrat’s disdain for the harsh social reality
Ans: (C)

In medieval England a …………….. was understood to be a trained craftsman, one who worked under a master who owned the business.
(A) pardoner
(B) summoner
(C) journeyman
(D) manciple
Ans: (C)

Identify the TRUE statement on Thomas More’s Utopia.
(A) Utopia is divided into four parts, each dealing with Raphael Hythloday’s adventures in the four suburbs of Antwerp.
(B) Utopia is divided into two parts; the first records a conversation between Thomas More and Raphael Hythloday, and the second is Hythloday’s discourse on the institutions and practices of Utopia.
(C) Utopia is divided into two parts; the first is Thomas More’s discourse on the institutions and practices of Utopia, and the second a conversation between More and Hythloday.
(D) Utopia is divided into four parts, each dealing with the ordered patterns of towns and cities in Antwerp.
Ans: (B)

The ascension of King James I in ………….. inaugurated the Jacobean age.
(A) 1600
(B) 1601
(C) 1603
(D) 1609
Ans: (C)

“It used to be said,” began a famous English writer, “everyone had a novel in them … Just now, though, in 1999, you would probably be obliged to doubt the basic proposition: What everyone has in them, these days, is not a novel but a memoir”. Identify the source
(A) Martins Amis, Experience
(B) Michel Butor, Passing Time
(C) John Fowles, The French Lieutenant’s Woman
(D) Julian Barnes, Flaubert’s Parrot
Ans: (A)

Ernest Pontifex is a character in …………..
(A) Tono Bungay
(B) The Man of Property
(C) The Way of All Flesh
(D) Nostromo
Ans: (C)

What is common to writers such as Sam Selvon (The Lonely Londoners), Timothy Mo (Sour Sweet), and Hanif Kureishi (The Black Album) ?
(A) All of them are brilliant writers of autobiographies who tell stories and write poetry.
(B) They use Standard English with some Creole inflections peculiar to the Caribbean.
(C) They are diasporic writers who depict postcolonial London very different from its colonial representations.
(D) They contrast the ‘First Nations’ with local populations of their respective countries.
Ans: (C)

 From the following list identify the two novels published by John Henry Newman
I. The Grammar of Assent
II. Apologia pro vita sua
III. Loss and Gain
IV. Callista
The right combination according to the code is :
(A) I and II
(B) II and III
(C) III and IV
(D) I and IV
Ans: (C)

In More’s Utopia what religion is practised by the Utopians?
(A) Belief in a single, infinite power and sun, moon and planetary worship
(B) Islam
(C) Judaism
(D) Buddhism
Ans: (A)

Where does Conrad’s Heart of Darkness begin?
(A) The Congo
(B) The Thames
(C) Belgium
(D) The Atlantic
Ans: (B)

Who among the following addresses the reader in a substantial Preface to Robert Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy?
(A) Zelotopia
(B) Democritus Junior
(C) Democritus
(D) Solitudo
Ans: (B)

Which of the following is NOT written by Rudyard Kipling?
(A) Just So Stories
(B) Puck of Pook’s Hill
(C) The Secret Garden
(D) Rewards and Faeries
Ans: (C)

Lewis Carroll is a pseudonym that refers to
(A) E.L. Woodward
(B) Charles Lutwidge Dodson
(C) Michael Brock
(D) W.E. Houghton
Ans: (B)

Who among the following was born in India ?
(A) Paul Scott
(B) Lawrence Durrell
(C) E.M. Forster
(D) V.S. Naipaul
Ans: (B)

Who narrates Heart of Darkness?
(A) Marlow
(B) Director of Companies
(C) Kurtz
(D) An unnamed narrator
Ans: (D)

Which novel of Doris Lessing ends with a projection forward in time after a devastating
atomic war?
(A) The Grass is Singing
(B) The Golden Notebook
(C) The Four-Gated City
(D) A Proper Marriage
Ans: (C)

 In Thomas More’s Utopia which of the following leisure pastimes is not a favourite
among Utopians?
(A) Music
(B) Public lectures
(C) Conversation
(D) Dicing and cards
Ans: (D)

In which year did the Great Exhibition take place?
(A) 1851
(B) 1857
(C) 1861
(D) 1871
Ans: (A)

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
(a) D A C B
(b) C A D B
(c) B C A D
(d) B A C D
Ans: (b)

Which of the following works Daniel Defoe offered his readers as a collection of “Strange Surprising Adventures” ?
(A) Moll Flanders
(B) Robinson Crusoe
(C) Roxana
(D) Captain Singleton
Ans: (B)

Richardson’s Pamela had its origin in
(A) the real case of a woman born to lower-middle-class parents
(B) an elementary letter-writing manual
(C) the general plight of English women
(D) the suggestion of a friend to defend middle-class values
Ans: (B)

In the second ending of John Fowles’s The French Lieutenant’s Woman Charles Smithson’s lawyer finds that Sarah has been living in the house of
(A) William Morris
(B) William Holman Hunt
(C) D.G. Rossetti
(D) James Collinson
Ans: (C)

Match the author with the work :
Author
A. John Locke
B. William Dampier
C. Jeremy Collier
D. Thomas Rhymer
Work
I. A Short View of the Immorality and Profanity of the Stage
II. Two Treatises on Government
III. A Short View of Tragedy
IV. Voyages
A B C D
(a) II I IV III
(b) III IV I II
(c) II IV I III
(d) IV III II I
Ans: (c)

In Frances Burney’s novel, Evelina, the eponymous heroine comes out in society in two locations. They are :
(a) Bath
(b) Bristol
(c) Leeds
(d) London
The right combination according to the code is :
(A) (a) and (b)
(B) (b) and (c)
(C) (a) and (d)
(D) (b) and (d)
Ans: (D)

The title of Sir Thomas Browne’s famous treatise, Religio Medici means :
(A) Religion of a Doctor
(B) Religion of Magician
(C) Religion of Divinity
(D) Religion of Meditation
Ans: (A)

Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko is set in __________.
(A) Surinam
(B) Abyssinia
(C) Egypt
(D) Assyria
Ans: (A)

Samuel Richardson named his heroine Pamela after one of the characters in __________.
(A) Edmund Spenser’s Faerie Queene
(B) William Shakespeare’s Venus and Adonis
(C) Philip Sidney’s Arcadia
(D) Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales
Ans: (C)

Which of the following is NOT true of the ideal state in Thomas More’s Utopia ?
(1) Personal property, money and vice are effectively abolished.
(2) The root causes of crime, ambition and political conflict, are eliminated.
(3) There is only one religion guided by the principle of a benevolent Supreme Being.
(4) Its priesthood, which includes some women, is limited in number.
Answer: 3

In William Golding’s Lord of the Flies which of the following characters is put to death ?
(A) Piggy
(B) Ralph
(C) Simon
(D) Jack
Ans: (A) & (C)

 The years in English literary history between 1649 and 1660 are known as
(A) the Neo-Classical period
(B) the Commonwealth period
(C) the Stuart period
(D) the Jacobean period
Ans: (B)

Which of the following was not a dialect of Old English ?
(A) Irish
(B) Northumbrian
(C) Mercian
(D) Kentish
Ans: (A)

Anthony Burgess’s last novel, published in 1993, is called A Dead Man in Deptford. Who is the central character to whom the title refers ?
(A) Sir Walter Raleigh
(B) Sir Philip Sidney
(C) Christopher Marlowe
(D) Earl of Southampton
Ans: (C)

Who among the following is the author of Account of the Augustan Age in England (1759) ?
(A) John Gay
(B) William Hazlitt
(C) Oliver Goldsmith
(D) Samuel Johnson
Ans: (C)

Lytton Strachey’s Eminent Victorians carries biographical sketches of writers and public figures. Identify the list below that correctly mentions those Eminent Victorians.
(A) Cardinal Manning, Florence Nightingale, Thomas Arnold and General Gordon.
(B) A.E.W. Mason, Sir Arthur Quiller Couch, Matthew Arnold, Robert Bridges.
(C) E.F. Benson, Cardinal Manning, Lord Tennyson, Beatrice Webb.
(D) George Harding, General Gordon, Robert Browning, Mrs Humphrey Ward.
Ans: (A)

Sir Thomas Browne’s Urn Burial was prompted by
(A) The Discovery of ancient buial-urns near Norwich.
(B) The Contemporary researches on burial rites in Norway.
(C) The Death of St. Francis of Assissi and his burial.
(D) The Publication of the English Book of Common Prayer.
Ans: (A)

Fanny Burney’s Evelina carries the subtitle:
(A) or a Naive Lady’s Entrance into the World.
(B) or a Young Lady’s Entrance into the World.
(C) or a Young Lady’s Exit into the World.
(D) or a Bold Lady’s Entrance into the Hall.
Ans: (B)

Robert Burton`s Anatomy of Melancholy was published in 1621 and expanded and altered in _________________ subsequent editions
(A) two
(B) four
(C) six
(D) five
Ans: (D)

During the years 1830 to 1850, the illusion of peace in Victorian England was broken by such incidents as
(A) the Revolution in France and the Chartist Movement in England.
(B) the General Strike of 1835 and the Rail Tragedy of 1847.
(C) the visionary libertarianism of poets and the lawless embodiment of revolution.
(D) the disaster of the Indian Mutiny and the incompetent bungling of the Crimean War
Ans: (D)

In 1660, a group of 12 people including Robert Boyle and Christopher Wren formed what they called the Royal Society. In 1663, it became The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge. What was the Society’s motto?
(A) “In Him we trust”
(B) “In the words of no one”
(C) “Lighted to lighten”
(D) “Love conquers all”
Ans: (B)

During the reign of Norman Kings, it was fashionable to speak ___________ in upper-class circles in England.
(A) Norse
(B) Latin
(C) Danish
(D) French
Ans: (D)

The “grammer bullies” – you read them in places like the New York Times – and they tell you what is correct.
You must never use “hopefully, we will be going there on Thrusday.” That is incorrect and wrong and you are basically an ignorant pig if you say it.
This is judgementalism . The game that is being played there is a game of social class. It has nothing do with the morality of writing and speaking and thinking clearly, of which George Orwell, for instance, talked so well.
To which famous essay of Orwell does the author refer here ?
(A) “Inside the Whale”
(B) “Politics and the English Language
(C) “Reflections on Gandhi”
(D) “Why I Write”
Ans: (B)

The Romantic period produced a fair amount of dramatic criticism. A notable examples is “on the Knocking at the Gate in Macbeth.” Who is the author?
(A) Thomas de Quincey
(B) Edmund Kean
(C) William Hazlitt
(D) William Charles Macready
Ans: (A)

It was the first narrative on the life of a black woman slave to be published in England in 1831. It has profound influence on the abolition movement in Britain. Identify the book and its author
(A) Mary Prince – The History of Mary Prince
(B) Mattie Jane Jackson – The Story of Mattie J. Jackson
(C) Elizabeth – Memoir of Old Elizabeth, a coloured Woman
(D) Harriet Jacobs – Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl
Ans: (A)

“The good thing about words, “Hanif Kureishi remarks in “loose tongues”, “is that their final effect is incalculable. […] you can never know what your words might turn out to mean for yourself or for someone else; or what the world they make will be like. Anything could happen. The problem with silence is that we know exactly what it will be like.”
Kureishi, in sum, suggests:
(a) There is always some risk involved in writing/speaking.
(b) It is better to avoid using words than to risk miscommunication.
(c) Words being predictable, are always open to misinterpretation.
(d) The unpredictable, in deed, is the strength of words.

Determine the correct combination according to the code:
A. (a) and (c)
B. (b) and (d)
C. (b) and (c)
D. (a) and (d)
Ans: (D)

The Norman Conquest was a significant landmark in English history. What French did the Normans speak and what was it known as?
(A) They spoke a dialectal French (also called Anglo-Frisian), somewhat closer to the Parisian.
(B) They spoke Norman French (Anglo-Norman). Theirs was certainly not the standard French.
(C) They spoke standard French (of mainland France). Their French was very sweet and musical.
(D) They spoke normal French, rather distinct from Anglo-Norman, another standard language.
Ans: (B)

Match the writer with the work:
(Name of work)
(1) Leviathan
(2) The Practice of Piety
(3) The Art of English Poesy
(4) The History of the Royal Society

(Writer)
(a) George Puttenham
(b) Thomas Spart
(c) Lewis Bayly
(d) Thomas Hobbes

(A) (a)-(3), (b)-(4), (c)-(1), (d)-(2)
(B) (a)-(3), (b)-(4), (c)-(2), (d)-(1)
(C) (a)-(4), (b)-(3), (c)-(2), (d)-(1)
(D) (a)-(3), (b)-(2), (c)-(4), (d)-(1)
Ans: (B)

Which of the following is not indebted to the Gothic genre?
(A) Tobias Smollett’s Roderick Random
(B) Ann Radcliffe’s The Italian
(C) Mathew Lewis’s The Monk
(D) William Beckford’s Vathek
Ans: (A)

In Thomas Moore’s Utopia (Book2) , the reader is told that in this new world there are few mistakes in marriage because
(A) there is an extensive courtship period preceding the actual wedding.
(B) the family gods are invoked before finalizing the nuptials.
(C) there is a community get together where prospective husbands and wives announce wedding plans endorsed by elders.
(D) prospective husbands and wives see one another naked before agreeing to the match.
Ans: (D)

 “Reality is that nothing happens. How many of the events of history have occurred, ask yourselves, for this and for that reason, but for no other reason, fundamentally, than the desire to make things happen? I present to you History, the fabrication, the diversion, the reality-obscuring drama.”
Which postmodern novel thus subverts the truth claims of traditional historiography?
(A) A.S. Byatt’s possession
(B) John Fowles’s The French Lieutenant’s Woman
(C) Graham Swift’s Waterland
(D) Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient
Ans: (C)

As a boy growing up in Squire Allworth’s estate, Tom gets one of the following characters into trouble. Identify the character.
(A) Partridge
(B) Black George
(C) Nightingale
(D) Blifil
Ans: (B)

Which of the following acts were not passed during the Victorian Era?
(A) The Married Women’s property Rights Act
(B) A series of Factory acts
(C) The Custody Act
(D) The Women’s Suffrage Act
Ans: (D)

For which one of the following reasons, in Oscar Wilde’s novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, Gray breaks down when he sees his finished portrait?
(A) Overwhelmed by the beauty of the portrait
(B) Overjoyed by the feeling that his beauty will be known to all
(C) Distraught by the fact that his beauty will fade while the portrait stays beautiful
(D) Distraught by the badly drawn portrait
Ans: (C)

 “He that is not with us is against us. He that is not against us is with us.” Who said this?
(A) Charles Lamb
(B) Samuel Johnson
(C) Francis Bacon
(D) R. W. Emerson
Ans: (C)

Who is the author of the essay, The Rationale of the Copy-Text?
(A) Fredson Bums
(B) W. W. Greg
(C) R. B. McKerrow
(D) Paul Maas
Ans: (B)

Which of the following books is written by an Englishman in universal Latin, is further added to by the Flemish Peter Giles, is revised by the Dutch Erasmus, is printed at Louvain in 1516, later at Paris, still later at Basie, where it was illustrated by two woodcuts from the hand of the German Holbein?
(A) The Golden Legend
(B) Confessio Amantis
(C) Utopia
(D) Erewhon
Ans: (C)

Which of the following works is reviewed in George Orwell’s essay, Inside the Whale?
(A) Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer
(B) James Joyce’s Ulysses
(C) D. H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover
(D) Anais Nin’s Delta of Venus
Ans: (A)

Which novel by J . G. Farrell describes the experiences of a polio Victim?
(A) Troubles
(B) The Singapore Grip
(C) The Lung
(D) The Hill Station
Ans: (C)

Which of the following novels by Iris Murdoch tells the story of an ageing theatre celebrity who withdraws into a life of seclusion and writes a diary/journal/novel?
(A) The Sandcastle
(B) Under the Net
(C) The Sea, the Sea
(D) Flight from the Enchanter
Ans: (C)

Match the Novelist with the Publisher :
(a) Laurence Sterne
(b) Henry Fielding
(c) Frances Burney
(d) Daniel Defoe

(i) Thomas Lowndes
(ii) Andrew Millar
(iii) William Taylor
(iv) Robert Dodsley

Choose the correct option from those given below :
(A) (a)-(iii); (b)-(i); (c)-(ii); (d)-(iv)
(B) (a)-(ii); (b)-(iv); (c)-(i); (d)-(iii)
(C) (a)-(iv); (b)-(ii); (c)-(i); (d)-(iii)
(D) (a)-(ii); (b)-(iii); (c)-(iv); (d)-(i)
Ans: (C)

The epithet “a comic epic in prose” is best applied to
(A) Richardson’s Pamela
(B) Sterne’s A Sentimental Journey
(C) Fielding’s Tom Jones
(D) Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe
Answer: C

What is the correct chronological sequence of the following ?
(A) Moll Flanders, Pamela, Joseph Andrews, Tristram Shandy
(B) Joseph Andrews, Tristram Shandy, Pamela, Moll Flanders
(C) Tristram Shandy, Moll Flanders, Pamela, Joseph Andrews
(D) Pamela, Moll Flanders, Joseph Andrews, Tristram Shandy
Ans: (A)

Which of the following poets does William Hazlitt call ‘Don Quixote-like’ in his essay, My First Acquaintance with Poets?
(A) William Wordsworth
(B) Samuel Taylor Coleridge
(C) William Cowper
(D) Lord Byron
Ans: (A)

Who is referred to as ‘beast’ in the quote ‘Kill the beast! Cut his throat! Spill his blood’ in William Golding’s Lord of the Flies
(A) Ralph
(B) Piggy
(C) Simon
(D) Roger
Ans: (C)

In which of the following essays did Charles Lamb first use the pseudonym/persona, Elia?

(A) “My First Play”

(B) “The Two Races of Men”

(C) “New Year’s Eve”

(D) “The South Sea House”

Ans: (D)

What was Charles Lamb’s connection with India?
(A) He was fascinated by the Indian jugglers and trades-people in London and wrote an essay on them
(B) He was fascinated by Eastern mystical religions, especially Buddhism
(C) He was a clerk for thirty three years in the East India Company
(D) He was clerk in South Sea house that prepared patents and documents for British trading companies in India
Ans: (D)

Which of the following work by Henry Fielding begins as a parody of Samuel Richardson’s Pamela?

(A) Tom Jones

(B) Don Quixote

(C) Amelia

(D) Joseph Andrews

Ans: (D)

Which one of the following has two heroes with the same name?

(A) The Island of the Mighty

(B) The German Goddess

(C) Animal Farm

(D) Armadale

Ans: (D)

which of the following periods of English Literature is also called “Puritan Interregnum”?

(A) The Neoclassical Period

(B) The Caroline Age

(C) The Restoration

(D) The Commonwealth Period

Ans: (D)

Who made the remark: “Great literature is simply language charged with meaning to the utmost possible degree”?

(A) Rabindranath Tagore

(B) Ezra Pound

(C) W.B. Yeats

(D) T.S. Eliot

Ans: (B)

Which two principal kinds of melancholy are proposed by Robert Burton in volume III of Anatomy of melancholy?

1. ‘Love’
2. ‘Religious’
3. ‘Morbid’
4. ‘Psychic’

The correct option is:

(A) (a) and (b)

(B) (a) and (c)

(C) (b) and (d)

(D) (c) and (d)

Ans: (A)

Which two names from R.M Ballantyne’s Coral Island are repeated in William Golding’s reworking of the same text as Lord of the Flies?

1. Ralph
2. Roger
3. Jack
4. Simon

The correct option is:

(A) (a) and (d)

(B) (a) and (c)

(C) (c) and (d)

(D) (b) and (d)

Ans: (B)

Which one of W.M Thackeray’s novels has the following as the closing sentence? “Which of us I happy in this world? Which of us has his desire? Or having it is satisfied”?

(A) The Luck of Barry Lyndon

(B) Pendennis

(C) Vanity Fair

(D) The History of Henry Esmond

Ans: (C)

Which two of the following novels belong to the Victorian Age in English Literature?

1. Pendennis
2. The Way of All Flesh
3. The Battle of the Books
4. Barchester Towers

Choose the correct option:

(a) and (c)

(b) and (d)

(c) and (d)

(a) and (d)

Ans: (a) and (d)

Which two of the following are the titles of the sections in Thomas De Quincey’s ‘The English Mail – Coach’?
A. The Glory of Mobility
B. The Vision of Sudden Death
C. The Glory of Motion
D. The Vision of Unexpected Truth

Choose the correct answer from the options given below:
a) A and B only
b) A and D only
c) B and C only
d) B and D only
Ans: (c)

Which two of the following inspired the rise of the periodical essay?
A. Robert Burton
B. Francois Rabelais
C. Francis Bacon
D. Michel de Montaigne

Choose the most appropriate answer from the options given below:
a) C and A only
b) A and B only
c) C and D only
d) B and D only
Ans: (c)

Which one of the following essays holds that “As a method, realism is a complete failure’?
A. Virginia Woolf, “The Mark on the Wall”
B. Oscar Wilde, “The Decay of Lying”
C. D H Lawrence, “Why the Novel Matters”
D. Mary McCarthy, “My Confession”
Ans: (B)

Which two of the following books are explorations of the art of the novel by novelists?
A. The Brief Compass
B. The Naive and the Sentimental Novelist
C. The Visionary Company
D. Testaments Betrayed

Choose the most appropriate answer from the options given below
a) A and B only
b) A and C only
c) B and C only
d) B and D only
Answer: (d)

Which two of the following events are described in Samuels Pepys’s Diary?
A. The Plague in London
B. The Great Fire of London
C. The War of Spanish Succession
D. Essex Rebellion

Choose the correct answer from the options given below:
a) A and B only
b) A and C only
c) B and C only
d) B and D only
Ans: (a)

The lives of which of the following writers have been the subject matter of novels by Anthony Burgess?
A. Milton
B. Marlowe
C. Shelley
D. Keats

Choose the correct answer from the options given below:
a) A and B only
b) A and D only
c) B and C only
d) B and D only
Ans: (d)