Thursday 16 May 2013

UGC NET Solved Question Paper (English): December 2012 Paper II With additional notes and explanations


1. Identify the work below that does not belong to the literature of the eighteenth century:
(A) Advancement of Learning
(B) Gulliver’s Travels
(C) The Spectator
    (D) An Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot
Answer:
(A) Advancement of Learning
Notes:
Advancement of Learning (Francis Bacon – Essay 17th C.)
Gulliver’s Travels ( Jonathan Swift – Fictional Travelogue – 1726 - 18th C.)
The Spectator ( Journal – 1711 - 18th C. by Addison and Steele)
An Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot (Poem by Alexander Pope 1735 - 18th C.)
2. Which, among the following, is a place through which John Bunyan’s Christian does NOT pass ?
(A) The Slough of Despond
(B) Mount Helicon
(C) The Valley of Humiliation
(D) Vanity Fair
Answer: (B) Mount Helicon
Notes:
The Slough of Despond : a deep bog into which the character Christian sinks under the weight of his sin
Mount Helicon is a mountain in the region of Thespiai in Boeotia, Greece celebrated in Greek mythology.
The Valley of Humiliation :The place where Christian encountered Apollyon, just before he came to the “Valley of the Shadow of Death.”
Vanity Fair : a great and ancient festival in the city of Vanity where tawdry products are traded and Beelzebub is worshipped. At Vanity Fair, the characters Faithful and Christian are mocked, smeared with dirt, and thrown in a cage. They are condemned to death for belittling Vanity’s false religion. Faithful is burned at the stake and carried off to heaven but Christian from there.
( Vanity Fair is also the title of a novel without a hero by William Makepeace Thackeray, first published in 1847–48)
3. The period of Queen Victoria’s reign is
(A) 1830–1900
(B) 1837–1901
(C) 1830–1901
(D) 1837–1900
Answer:
(B) 1837–1901
Notes:
Queen Victoria's nearly 64-year reign (1837-1901) was the longest in British history.
4. Which of the following statements about The Lyrical Ballads is NOT true ?
(A) It carried only one ballad proper, which was Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.
(B) It also carried pastoral and other poems.
(C) It carried a “Preface” which Wordsworth added in 1800.
(D) It also printed from Gray’s Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard.
Answer:
(D) It also printed from Gray’s Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard.
5. One of the following texts was published earlier than 1955. Identify the text:
(A) William Golding, The Inheritors
(B) Philip Larkin, The Less Deceived
(C) William Empson, Collected Poems
(D) Samuel Becket, Waiting for Godot
Answer:
(D) Samuel Becket, Waiting for Godot
Notes:
William Golding, The Inheritors (1955 Golding's Second concerns the extinction of one of the last remaining tribes of Neanderthals at the hands of the more sophisticated (and malevolent) Homo sapiens )
Philip Larkin, The Less Deceived (1955 his best known poems"Church Going," - visit of a cyclist to a church , and "Toads" – where we see the man beaten by work )
William Empson, Collected Poems ( (1949; rev. ed. 1955) - William Empson is best known for his Seven Types of Ambiguity (1930; rev. ed. 1953), an influential critical works which insisted a close examination of poetic texts. The book helped lay the foundation for New Criticism.)
Samuel Becket, Waiting for Godot (initial production in 1953)
6. Who among the poets in England during the 1930s had left–leaning tendencies ?
(A) T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, Richard Aldington
(B) Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon, Rupert Brooke
(C) W. H. Auden, Louis MacNeice, Cecil Day Lewis
(D) J. Fleckner, W. H. Davies, Edward Marsh
Answer:
(C) W. H. Auden, Louis MacNeice, Cecil Day Lewis
Notes:
T. S. Eliot : Early modernist poet - Eliot's poem The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (1915) was considered a masterpiece of the Modernist movement
Ezra Weston Loomis Pound: an American expatriate poet and critic of the early modernist movement. His contribution to poetry began with his promotion of Imagism
Imagists stressed clarity, precision and economy of language.
Richard Aldington ( modernists and imagists, Richard Aldington best known for his nove “Death of a Hero”)
Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon, Rupert Brooke :War poets in England
War poets were English poets who were also soldiers, writing about their experiences of war. The term, which is applied especially to those in military service during World War I.
A number of them died on the battlefield, most famously Rupert Brooke, Edward Thomas, Isaac Rosenberg, Wilfred Owen, and Charles Sorley.
W. H. Auden, Louis MacNeice, Cecil Day Lewis were also known as Auden Group

W. H. Davies and Edward Marsh were also known as Georgian poets – who wrote in a series of anthology
John A. Fleckner is the author of Archives & Manuscripts and the senior archivist at the National Museum of American History