Comprehensive Analysis: English Master Cadre Question Paper
A deep dive into the 150-question English Master Cadre examination reveals a highly structured and comprehensive testing pattern. The paper is designed to evaluate a candidate's grasp of chronological literary history, critical theories, textual familiarity, and linguistic concepts. Below is a detailed, topic-wise breakdown of the question paper to help decode the examiner's mindset.
1. Topic-Wise Breakdown & Weightage
| Broad Topic Category | Estimated Dominance | Key Areas Tested |
|---|---|---|
| British Literature | ~55-60% | Major authors, specific works, characters, pseudonyms, and literary eras from the Renaissance to the Modern age. |
| Indian Literature in English | ~15% | Pre & Post-independence authors, major literary awards (Sahitya Akademi, Booker, Jnanpith), and prominent contemporary novelists. |
| Literary Terms & Genres | ~10-12% | Figures of speech, poetic forms, dramatic devices, and specific literary terminology. |
| Linguistics & Phonetics | ~8-10% | Speech mechanisms, phoneme counts, morphological analysis, and major linguists. |
| Literary Criticism & Theory | ~5-8% | Foundational essays, critical concepts (e.g., Objective Correlative, Negative Capability), and notable critics. |
| World & American Literature | ~2-3% | Select major figures (e.g., John Steinbeck, Samuel Beckett's Nobel, Hemingway/Frost typically, though limited here). |
2. Detailed Topic-Wise Analysis
A. British Literature: The Core Pillar
The majority of the questions are drawn from British Literature, spanning across various periods. The questions go beyond mere author-title matching and delve into deeper textual knowledge.
- Character Identification: Students are expected to know inside details of major novels and plays. Examples: Identifying Edward Ferrars (Sense and Sensibility), Kurtz (Heart of Darkness), Sam Weller (Pickwick Papers), Ralph (Lord of the Flies), and Vladimir/Estragon (Waiting for Godot).
- Opening Lines and Quotes: Famous lines are directly quoted. Examples: "It is a truth universally acknowledged..." (Pride and Prejudice), "If music be the food of love..." (Twelfth Night), and poetic lines from Shakespeare, Shelley, and Keats.
- Pseudonyms and Dedications: A significant trend is asking about pen names and book dedications. Examples: George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans), Ellis Bell (Emily Bronte), the dedication of Jane Eyre to Thackeray, and Rape of the Lock to John Caryll.
- Chronology and Sequencing: Questions often test knowledge of when works were published or which era an author belongs to (e.g., Paradise Lost's publication year, dates of the Elizabethan era).
B. Indian Literature in English
Indian literature holds a strong presence, focusing on both the foundational trio (Raja Rao, R.K. Narayan, Mulk Raj Anand) and contemporary giants.
- Major Works and Sub-parts: Examples: Knowing that 'Songs of Love and Death' is part of Sarojini Naidu's 'The Bird of Time'.
- Awards and Honors: The examiners love award-based questions. Examples: Jhumpa Lahiri's Pulitzer for Interpreter of Maladies, Amitav Ghosh's Jnanpith Award, Salman Rushdie's Booker for Midnight's Children, and A.K. Ramanujan's Sahitya Akademi award.
- Historical Context: Tagore returning his knighthood due to the Jallianwala Bagh massacre highlights the intersection of literature and history.
C. Literary Terms, Forms, and Devices
This section tests the candidate's technical vocabulary of literature.
- Figures of Speech: Identifying Simile, Anaphora, Pathetic Fallacy, and Epic Simile from given lines or definitions.
- Genres and Forms: Clear definitions are tested. Examples: Bildungsroman/Kunstlerroman, Dystopian literature, Epistolary novels (Pamela), Dramatic Monologue, Sestet, and Portmanteau words.
D. Linguistics and Phonetics
Often considered the deciding factor for top ranks, this section requires scientific precision.
- Phonology: Exact numbers are tested (e.g., 44 phonemes, 20 vowel sounds in English). It also covers practical mechanics like voiceless sounds and the pulmonic airstream mechanism.
- Morphology and Syntax: Concepts like the 'Morpheme' (smallest meaningful unit), Syllable, and Immediate Constituent Analysis.
- Key Linguists: Knowing the founders of theories, such as Ferdinand de Saussure (Structuralism), Noam Chomsky (Deep/Surface structures), and William Labov (Sociolinguistics).
E. Literary Criticism & Theory
Focuses primarily on major critical treatises and concepts coined by influential critics.
- Key Concepts: T.S. Eliot's 'Objective Correlative', Keats's 'Negative Capability', and the Comedy of Humours based on Physiognomy.
- Major Critics and Works: Identifying authors of seminal works like F.R. Leavis (The Great Tradition), I.A. Richards (Practical Criticism), William Empson (Seven Types of Ambiguity), and Walter Pater.
Target 2026: Where Should Students Focus?
Based on the exact pattern of the previous paper, here is a highly targeted strategy for students aiming for the 2026 Master Cadre recruitment:
- Move Beyond Summaries: Knowing just the author and the book title is no longer enough. You must know the major characters, sub-titles of books, publication years, and opening/closing lines of canonical works (e.g., Shakespeare, Austen, Dickens, Hardy).
- Master Literary Terms & Devices: Create a glossary of literary terms (refer to M.H. Abrams' A Glossary of Literary Terms). You need to be able to identify devices from actual poetic lines, not just memorize definitions. Pay special attention to novel types (Picaresque, Gothic, Eponymous, Kunstlerroman).
- Do Not Neglect Linguistics: Many literature students skip phonetics. Don't. Memorize the 44 English phonemes, the organs of speech, airstream mechanisms, and basic structural linguistics (Chomsky, Saussure). These 10-15 questions are highly scoring and often decide the merit list.
- Compile an "Awards List": Make a dedicated chart for Indian and global authors who have won the Nobel Prize, Booker Prize, Pulitzer Prize, Sahitya Akademi Award, and Jnanpith Award. Note the specific book for which they won the award and the year.
- Learn the "Firsts" and "Pseudonyms": Examiners frequently test trivia such as the first English novel (Pamela), the first printed anthology (Tottel's Miscellany), and pen names of Victorian and Romantic writers (Ellis Bell, Boz, George Eliot, Elia).
- Focus on Critical Milestones: For Literary Criticism, focus on who coined what term. Memorize lists of works by major critics like T.S. Eliot, Matthew Arnold, I.A. Richards, and F.R. Leavis.
- Read Original Poetry: Familiarize yourself with the most famous poems of the Romantic and Victorian eras. Questions frequently feature stanzas from Keats, Shelley, Wordsworth, Tennyson, and Browning, asking for the poem's name or the literary device used.
1. Which one of the following is not written by George Eliot ?
Correct Answer: (d) The Waves
2. Which work of George Orwell offers his personal account of his experiences fighting in the Spanish Civil War ?
Correct Answer: (b) Homage to Catalonia
3. 'Songs of Love and Death' is a part of which of the following works of Sarojini Naidu?
Correct Answer: (a) The Bird of Time
4. Which literary device is used in this line: 'My love is like a sweet sweet rose' ?
Correct Answer: (d) Simile
5. The humour theory that is fundamental to the Comedy of Humours is founded in the discipline of
Correct Answer: (c) Physiognomy
6. Which work by Alexander Pope celebrates Goddess Dulness?
Correct Answer: (a) The Dunciad
7. Who wrote the Preface for Mulk Raj Anand's Untouchable?
Correct Answer: (c) E.M. Forster
8. Which 20th century poet, dramatist and critic wrote the following essays?
'Tradition and Individual Talent'
'The Metaphysical Poets'
'Hamlet and his Problems'
'Tradition and Individual Talent'
'The Metaphysical Poets'
'Hamlet and his Problems'
Correct Answer: (a) T.S. Eliot
9. Which of these is a work by Sarojini Naidu ?
Correct Answer: (b) Palanquin Bearers
10. Who called Jonson 'The father of English comedy'?
Correct Answer: (d) John Dryden
11. Which celebrated writer wrote "In Custody" which was later made into a movie by Merchant Ivory Productions?
Correct Answer: (c) Anita Desai
12. Who wrote "Every Man out of his Humour" ?
Correct Answer: (c) Ben Jonson
13. "The Castle Spectre" is a work by _______
Correct Answer: (c) Matthew Gregory Lewis
14. Which of the following has written 'The Striders' and 'Second Sight' ?
Correct Answer: (a) A.K. Ramanujan
15. Which of the following is not a poem by John Keats ?
Correct Answer: (d) To a Skylark
16. Choose the correct option as an example of 'Ballad' which is a folk song or orally transmitted poem in a direct manner some popular story usually taken from an incident in the local history or legend.
Correct Answer: (a) Coleridge's Rime of the Ancient Mariner
17. The Shepheardes Calender appeared in which of the following years?
Correct Answer: (c) 1579
18. Which of these genres was largely inconspicuous in the Augustan age ?
Correct Answer: (b) Drama
19. "Northanger Abbey" is a satire on _______
Correct Answer: (a) Gothic Novel
20. Ted Hughes' Shakespeare and the Goddess of Complete Being is inspired by Robert Graves' _______
Correct Answer: (b) The White Goddess
21. "A Vindication of the Rights of Woman" was written as a pathbreaking treatise on women's freedom. Who wrote this work?
Correct Answer: (b) Mary Wollstonecraft
22. Samuel Beckett won the Nobel Prize in Literature in the year _______
Correct Answer: (c) 1969
23. Who wrote "Fire on the Mountain" ?
Correct Answer: (c) Anita Desai
24. "A Tale of a Tub" was published in the year _______
Correct Answer: (a) 1704
25. Kurtz is a successful ivory trader in the novel Heart of Darkness written as a critique of European colonial rule in Africa. Who is the novelist?
Correct Answer: (c) Joseph Conrad
26. Which one of the following is not an example of Dramatic Monologue ?
Correct Answer: (d) Ode to the Westwind
27. Sir Richard Steele and Joseph Addison contributed some of the most illuminating essays in the Century. Name the Periodical Essays they started.
Correct Answer: (a) The Tatler and The Spectator
28. Name the last novel written by Thomas Hardy which was burnt in the streets of London and focu on the issues of class, education, religion, morality and marriage in the Victorian age.
Correct Answer: (d) Jude, the Obscure
29. Which of the following writers wrote the novel "The Dark Room"?
Correct Answer: (c) R.K. Narayan
30. Elizabethan Age sees the height of what is called the period of _______ in English literature art.
Correct Answer: (a) Renaissance
31. "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be want of a wife."
Which of the following famous novels begins with this sentence?
Which of the following famous novels begins with this sentence?
Correct Answer: (c) Pride and Prejudice
32. "The Waverly Novels" were written by _______.
Correct Answer: (a) Sir Walter Scott
33. In which of these dramatists' work will you find the characters Vladimir and Estragon ?
Correct Answer: (a) Samuel Beckett
34. Which of the following has not been written by the great metaphysical poet John Donne?
Correct Answer: (c) 'To his Coy Mistress'
35. Choose the term for an elaborately formal lyric poem addressed to a person or an abstract entity which is serious and elevated in tone.
Correct Answer: (c) Ode
36. Which of the George Eliot novels is described by Virginia Woolf as "one of the few English novels written for grown-up people"?
Correct Answer: (d) Middlemarch
37. Novel on Yellow Paper is written by _______.
Correct Answer: (c) Stevie Smith
38. Written in an Epistolary technique, Pamela is credited with being the first novel in English written in 1740. Who wrote it ?
Correct Answer: (b) Samuel Richardson
39. Which of the following was Coleridge's attempt to elucidate his own philosophical insights as a reaction to Wordsworth's theory of poetry as enunciated in his Preface to Lyrical Ballads.
Correct Answer: (a) Biographia Literaria
40. Which of the following airstream mechanisms is used for producing sounds in English ?
Correct Answer: (c) Pulmonic airstream mechanism
41. Who is acknowledged as the founder of modern linguistics and semiology who laid the foundation Structuralism and Post-Structuralism?
Correct Answer: (d) Ferdinand de Saussure
42. At the end of "As You Like It", which of the following appears as the deus ex machine, a god intervenes to resolve an impasse at the end of the plot of a play?
Correct Answer: (b) Hymen
43. "Others abide our question. Thou art free."
Arnold wrote this in a famous sonnet. To whom is it addressed to?
Arnold wrote this in a famous sonnet. To whom is it addressed to?
Correct Answer: (d) Shakespeare
44. Mahatma Gandhi was influenced by Ruskin's book and he recounts this experience in autobiography "My Experiments with Truth". Name Ruskin's book.
Correct Answer: (a) Unto this Last
45. Which of the following is a verse drama written by Robert Browning?
Correct Answer: (c) Pippa Passes
46. Name the Nobel Laureate and Pulitzer Prize Winner, a great novelist, who wrote "The Grapes Wrath", a novel set against the backdrop of the Great Depression.
Correct Answer: (c) John Steinbeck
47. Emily Bronte wrote under the pseudonym _______
Correct Answer: (b) Ellis Bell
48. Elizabethan Age is marked as the period from _______ .
Correct Answer: (d) 1558-1603
49. In 2000, London-born Indian-American writer Jhumpa Lahiri won the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction for her debut short story collection. Name the collection.
Correct Answer: (a) Interpreter of Maladies
50. Identify the term for the literary works which trace the growth of historical personages, artists, musicians or writers.
Correct Answer: (d) Kunstler roman
51. Which incident forced Rabindranath Tagore to return his knighthood for services to Literature which he was awarded in 1915 by King George-V?
Correct Answer: (b) Jallianwala Bagh Massacre
52. Which character speaks these lines about life ?
"It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing."
"It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing."
Correct Answer: (d) Macbeth
53. The Social Stratification of English in New York City is well known work on sociolinguistics by
Correct Answer: (b) William Labov
54. In which year, the first version of "Paradise Lost" was published ?
Correct Answer: (b) 1667
55. A. K. Ramanujan was awarded Sahitya Akademi Award for _______
Correct Answer: (d) Selected Poems
56. Which of the following is not a work by Mary Shelley ?
Correct Answer: (c) Sanditon
57. Joseph Addison helped _______ form the Kitcat Club.
Correct Answer: (c) Richard Steele
58. Who has written following lines?
"O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wand'ring bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken."
"O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wand'ring bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken."
Correct Answer: (b) William Shakespeare
59. Essays of Elia have been written by this fine essayist who blends wisdom and romanticism writings. Choose the correct answer.
Correct Answer: (c) Charles Lamb
60. Which of the following playwrights is known for writing the 'Comedy of Menace', a term coined the drama critic Irving Wardle ?
Correct Answer: (c) Harold Pinter
61. Choose the correct term for an extended comparison which is elaborated at length so as to oversh the main action of a narrative work. Milton uses these extensively in Paradise Lost.
Correct Answer: (d) Epic simile
62. Which of these writers is a part of the group 'University wits' ?
Correct Answer: (b) Christopher Marlowe
63. Whose murder is the subject of T S Eliot's "Murder in the Cathedral" ?
Correct Answer: (b) Thomas Becket
64. Sam Weller is a fictional character from Dickens' _______
Correct Answer: (a) Pickwick Papers
65. Who wrote the Introduction for Tagore's Gitanjali ?
Correct Answer: (a) W.B. Yeats
66. Bernard Shaw was awarded an Academy Award for the Best Screenplay and Dialogue of the cinematic adaptation of which of his following plays?
Correct Answer: (b) Pygmalion
67. Which of the following writers is the first English Language writer to be awarded the prestigious Jnanpith Award for his outstanding contribution to the enrichment of Indian Literature in English ?
Correct Answer: (c) Amitav Ghosh
68. "Sartor Resartus" was written by _______
Correct Answer: (d) Thomas Carlyle
69. Lewis Carroll coined this term in Through the Looking Glass (1871) and was used extensively by Joyce in Finnegans Wake wherein two different words are fused together to form a new word as in 'brunch' which combines 'breakfast' and 'lunch'. Choose the correct option.
Correct Answer: (d) Portmanteau word
70. John Dryden marks the beginning of the age of _______
Correct Answer: (b) Prose and reason
71. Which one of the following works of Milton was also known as 'On His Blindness'?
Correct Answer: (c) When I Consider How My Light Is Spent
72. Which character in Marlowe exudes deep interest in learning but soon turns to Necromancy ?
Correct Answer: (b) Faustus
73. Songes and Sonettes, usually called Tottel's Miscellany, is presumably the first printed anthology of English poetry. Who published it?
Correct Answer: (d) Richard Tottel
74. Which of the following is not a winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature ?
Correct Answer: (d) D.H. Lawrence
75. Appreciations, with an Essay on Style was written by _______
Correct Answer: (d) Walter Pater
76. From which famous poem have following lines been taken ?
Weavers, weaving at break of day
Why do you weave a garment so gay?
Blue as the wing of a halcyon wild
We weave the robes of a new-born child.
Weavers, weaving at break of day
Why do you weave a garment so gay?
Blue as the wing of a halcyon wild
We weave the robes of a new-born child.
Correct Answer: (a) Indian Weavers
77. "No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be; Am an attendant lord"
Whose words are these?
Whose words are these?
Correct Answer: (c) Prufrock in the 'Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock'
78. "Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last gray hairs,
Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies;
Where but to think is to be full of sorrow
And leaden-eyed despairs,
Where Beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes."
Identify the term for the repetition of 'Where' in these lines from Keats 'Ode to a Nightingale' heightens the transitory nature of human life in this world.
Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies;
Where but to think is to be full of sorrow
And leaden-eyed despairs,
Where Beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes."
Identify the term for the repetition of 'Where' in these lines from Keats 'Ode to a Nightingale' heightens the transitory nature of human life in this world.
Correct Answer: (c) Anaphora
79. "Story of Rimini" is a poem by _______
Correct Answer: (a) Leigh Hunt
80. Which of the following was not written by John Webster, the Jacobean Dramatist?
Correct Answer: (a) The Changeling
81. Which English poet wrote these lines :
"A little knowledge is a dangerous thing:
Drink deep or taste not the Pierian spring"
"A little knowledge is a dangerous thing:
Drink deep or taste not the Pierian spring"
Correct Answer: (a) Alexander Pope
82. Full title of Doctor Faustus is _______
Correct Answer: (d) The Tragical History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus
83. Edward Ferrars is a character from Jane Austen's _______
Correct Answer: (b) Sense and Sensibility
84. Which one of the following is not a work by Harold Pinter ?
Correct Answer: Both (c) Sleuth and (d) The Doctor's Dilemma (Note: Neither of these are by Pinter)
85. Which one of the following plays is not by Shakespeare?
Correct Answer: (a) Edward II
86. Second Edition of Jane Eyre was dedicated to _______
Correct Answer: (c) William Makepeace Thackeray
87. Name the great Victorian writer who published her works under a pseudonym but her real name was Mary Anne Evans.
Correct Answer: (d) George Eliot
88. Which one of the following is the first book by Raja Rao?
Correct Answer: (c) Kanthapura
89. John Donne belongs to the school of _______
Correct Answer: (a) Metaphysical poetry
90. Which one of the following is Wordsworth's first publication ?
Correct Answer: (b) An Evening walk and Descriptive Sketches
91. Which of the following works of Milton is a poetic drama ?
Correct Answer: (d) Samson Agonistes
92. Which of the following is not a work by Jonathan Swift?
Correct Answer: (b) The Mistaken Husband
93. Which one of the following is an example of Existential literature ?
Correct Answer: (b) The Outsider
94. Name the term used to refer to six lines of verse forming the part of a sonnet following the octave.
Correct Answer: (b) Sestet
95. Mary Shelley's Frankenstein was published in the year _______
Correct Answer: (b) 1818
96. Name the smallest meaningful lexical item in a language.
Correct Answer: (b) Morpheme
97. Name the poetic convention coined by Ruskin whereby natural phenomena which cannot feel humans do are described as if they could, as the clouds may 'weep' or flowers may 'smile'.
Correct Answer: (b) Pathetic fallacy
98. Wordsworth became Poet Laureate in the year _______
Correct Answer: (c) 1843
99. Virginia Woolf wrote this novel in stream of consciousness technique to depict the interplay feminine and masculine forces in the universe through Ramsay family. Name this novel.
Correct Answer: (b) To the Lighthouse
100. Which sounds in English language are produced when the vocal chords do not vibrate?
Correct Answer: (a) Voiceless
101. Who was offered the position of Poet Laureate, but he declined ?
Correct Answer: (c) Philip Larkin
102. Who wrote "The Necessity of Atheism" ?
Correct Answer: (d) Percy Bysshe Shelley
103. Name a system of grammatical analysis in Linguistics that divides sentences into successive layers constituents, until, in the final layer, each constituent consists of only a word or meaningful part word.
Correct Answer: (b) Immediate Constituent Analysis
104. For which novel was Salman Rushdie awarded Booker Prize?
Correct Answer: (b) Midnight's Children
105. Whose book "Aspects of the Theory of Syntax" developed the idea of Deep and Surface Structures?
Correct Answer: (b) Noam Chomsky
106. With which much-acclaimed work do you associate the characters of Iqbal Singh, Juggat(Jugga) Singh, Nooran and Hukum Chand ?
Correct Answer: (b) Train to Pakistan
107. Which of these is not a work by V S Naipaul ?
Correct Answer: (c) The Ground Beneath her Feet
108. Which one of the following is a sonnet by P. B. Shelley ?
Correct Answer: (b) Ozymandias
109. Which one of the following is not by Henry Fielding?
Correct Answer: (d) Clarissa
110. Stephen Dedalus is the protagonist in which of the following novels?
Correct Answer: (a) Ulysses
111. John Ruskin's essay on defense of the works of J. M. W. Turner was published as _______
Correct Answer: (b) Modern Painters
112. The Faerie Queene by Edmund Spenser refers to _______
Correct Answer: (b) Queen Elizabeth I
113. In which year was "The Lyrical Ballads", published jointly by Wordsworth and Coleridge ?
Correct Answer: (b) 1798
114. "Aspects of the Novel" is a compilation of the lectures on the art of fiction writing. Choose the correct name of its writer.
Correct Answer: (b) E.M. Forster
115. "We look before and after,
And pine for what is not:
Our sincerest laughter
With some pain is fraught;
Our sweetest songs are those that tell
Of saddest thought."
Which poet wrote these philosophical lines in a poem?
And pine for what is not:
Our sincerest laughter
With some pain is fraught;
Our sweetest songs are those that tell
Of saddest thought."
Which poet wrote these philosophical lines in a poem?
Correct Answer: (b) P.B. Shelley
116. Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights as a novel of passion, violence and moral degradation traces the journey of the Earnshaws and the Lintons. Name the narrator who recounts the turbulence of their lives.
Correct Answer: (a) Nelly
117. What is a prominent theme in Eavan Boland's work ?
Correct Answer: (a) Irish national identity
118. "The Great Tradition" is a work of literary criticism by _______
Correct Answer: (a) F. R. Leavis
119. Molloy, Endgame and Unnamable are the famous plays of which of the following playwrights?
Correct Answer: (c) Samuel Beckett
120. Mrs. Higgins is a character from Shaw's _______
Correct Answer: (b) Pygmalion
121. Christopher Marlowe was one of the first practitioners of _______
Correct Answer: (c) Blank Verse
122. Tennyson wrote "In Memorium" in the memory of _______
Correct Answer: (a) Arthur Henry Hallam
123. Ralph is a character from William Golding's _______
Correct Answer: (c) Lord of the Flies
124. Name the 20th Century Imagist poet who coined the phrase 'objective correlative'?
Correct Answer: (d) T.S. Eliot
125. Identify the literary term which can be used for the following novels?
When the Sleeper Wakes
The Clockwork Orange
1984
Frankenstein
When the Sleeper Wakes
The Clockwork Orange
1984
Frankenstein
Correct Answer: (c) Dystopia
126. "The Rape of The Lock" was dedicated to _______
Correct Answer: (a) John Caryll
127. Which of these is not a work by John Milton ?
Correct Answer: (b) Songs of Innocence
128. Which Shakespearean play begins with this famous sentence ?
If music be the food of love, play on...
If music be the food of love, play on...
Correct Answer: (b) Twelfth Night
129. Lord Byron died before finishing _______
Correct Answer: (d) Don Juan
130. Name the term which is ascribed to the real or fictional person after whom a book, film or place is named as in the novel Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy, the narrative revolves around the life of Anna.
Correct Answer: (b) Eponymous
131. This poet is known as one of the founders of Abbey Theatre _______
Correct Answer: (a) W. B. Yeats
132. What do you call is a unit of pronunciation having one vowel sound, with or without surrounding consonants, forming the whole or a part of a word?
Correct Answer: (c) Syllable
133. In Rainbow, D H Lawrence focusses particularly on the individual's struggle to growth and fulfilment within the claustrophobic strictures of English social life. Name the sequel to this novel.
Correct Answer: (c) Women in Love
134. Whose words are these:
"English is not really an alien language to us. It is the language of our intellectual make-up...not our emotional make-up...."
"English is not really an alien language to us. It is the language of our intellectual make-up...not our emotional make-up...."
Correct Answer: (d) Raja Rao
135. W.H. Auden's poem 'The Shield of Achilles' draws on a shield with barren and inhuman representation of the modern world. Who had painted the original shield which Achilles wore in Homer's epic Iliad ?
Correct Answer: (b) Hephaestus
136. "Wessex Novels" is credited to _______
Correct Answer: (c) Thomas Hardy
137. Choose the work that has not been written by Harold Pinter who had a string of awards to his credit for literary productions:
(i) The Room
(ii) The Caretaker
(iii) Waiting for Godot
(iv) The Birthday Party
(i) The Room
(ii) The Caretaker
(iii) Waiting for Godot
(iv) The Birthday Party
Correct Answer: (c) (iii)
138. What, in Linguistics, is the term for variation in pitch used to indicate the speaker's attitudes and emotions, to highlight or focus an expression ?
Correct Answer: (b) Intonation
139. 'Tis better to have loved and lost, than to have never loved at all' are famous lines from Tennyson's _______
Correct Answer: (a) In Memoriam A.H.H.
140. Name the critic whose works "Practical Criticism" and "The Meaning of Meaning" shaped the vision of New Criticism.
Correct Answer: (b) I.A. Richards
141. How many phonemes are there in English language?
Correct Answer: (d) 44
142. Which work of Seamus Heaney won the Gregory Award ?
Correct Answer: (a) Death of a Naturalist
143. Which one of the following works of Donne was published posthumously?
Correct Answer: (a) Biathanatos
144. Which of the following critics is widely known for writing "Seven Types of Ambiguity"?
Correct Answer: (a) William Empson
145. "Dryden's All for Love" was published in the year _______
Correct Answer: (c) 1678
146. "The Country Wife", a Restoration Comedy, was considered too explicit for stage performance but is now regarded as a classic work of the stage. Who wrote it?
Correct Answer: (a) William Wycherley
147. How many vowel sounds does the English Sound System have?
Correct Answer: (d) 20
148. In which award-winning novel do you meet the characters named Rahel and Estha?
Correct Answer: (b) The God of Small Things
149. Ben Jonson co-wrote _______ play with Thomas Nashe.
Correct Answer: (b) The Isle of Dogs
150. Negative Capability was used as a technique in his poems by _______ .
Correct Answer: (b) John Keats
