CSS English Literature Past Paper 2009
Paper-I
PART-II (Subjective) 80 Marks
Attempt ONLY FOUR Questions from PART-II selecting TWO questions from EACH
SECTION. (20×4)
PART-II
SECTION-I
Q. 2 The 19th-century Romantic Movement has been variously interpreted as ‘the convalescence of the feeling of beauty,’ ‘renaissance of wonder,’ ‘split religion,’ and ‘erotic nostalgia.’ Comment on the aspects giving your own assessment of the movement as it relates to the prescribed poets.
Q. 3 “To many readers Shelley’s genius is primarily lyrical: which commonly implies emotional. This is very doubtful – intense and unremitting intellectual activity seems to have been the main characteristic of his mind.” Justify or refute this remark by Graham Hough illustrating from the poems you have read.
Q. 4 ‘Wordsworth’s philosophy of nature is nothing more than a case of pathetic fallacy because he cannot shake off his egocentricity even when he tends to be philosophical’. Comment.
Q. 5 Keats has been called ‘a mystic through the medium of the senses.’ Examine the statement in relation to his major odes.
SECTION-II
Q. 6 Hardy is neither an optimist nor a pessimist. He is essentially a meliorist. Discuss in relation to Hardy’s novels that you have read.
Q. 7 Charles Lamb’s essays are called ‘Lyric Poems in Prose’. Give your own comments on this statement referring to Lamb’s Essays of Elia.
Q. 8 Write a detailed critical note on Browning’s Dramatic Monologue with special reference to The Last Ride Together and My Last Duchess.
Paper-II
PART-II (Subjective) 80 Marks
Attempt ONLY FOUR Questions from PART-II selecting TWO questions from EACH
SECTION. (20×4)
PART-II
SECTION-I
Q. 2 “The time is out of joint! O cursed sprite / That ever I was born to set it right.” Explain why Hamlet feels so.
Q. 3 In Beckett’s play Waiting for Godot, the pattern for waiting is an ingenious combination of expectations and let-downs, uncertainty, and a gradual run-down without end. How far do you agree with this view?
Q. 4 “Liza Doolittle transforms herself by knocking Higgins off his god-like perch.” Do you agree? Substantiate your answer.
Q. 5 “Gulliver himself is a touchstone, a standard, a reporting agent, but he is not a person.” Explain and discuss with reference to Gulliver’s Travels.
SECTION-II
Q. 6 “Poems begin in delight and end in wisdom and deep understanding.” Discuss in light of this Frost statement in The Tuft of Flowers and Mending Wall.
Q. 7 “Here is a limited world; but she interprets it with the penetrating insight of the creative artist.” Discuss this remark about Jane Austen in the light of Pride and Prejudice.
Q. 8 Stock says of ‘The Second Coming’ that in this poem Yeats sets his own age in the perspective of eternity and condenses a whole philosophy of history into it so that it has the force of prophecy. Discuss.