Past Papers

2013 December UGC NET Solved Question Paper in English Paper 2

1. ____ the very word is like a bell

To toll me back from thee to my sole self!

Which word?

(A) Bird

(B) Immortal

(C) Forlorn

(D) Fancy

Answer: (C)

 

2. In poems like “The Altar” and “Easter Wings” ________ exploits _______.

(A) John Donne, alliteration

(B) Robert Herrick, trimetre

(C) G.M. Hopkins, sprung rhythm

(D) George Herbert, typographic space

Answer: (D)

 

3. No, no thou hast not felt the lapse of hours!

For what wears out the life of mortal men?

 ‘Tis that repeated shocks, again, again,

Exhaust the energy of strongest souls

And numb the elastic powers …

Who does the poet address here?

(A) The Scholar Gipsy

(B) Telemachus

(C) The Nightingale

(D) The Poet’s Sister, Dorothy

Answer: (A)

 

4. The roman a clef (French for “novel with a key”) uses contemporary historical figures as its chief characters. They are of course given fictional names. One example is Aldous Huxley’s Point Counter Point.

Its Mark Rampion is modelled onM_______.

(A) D.H. Lawrence

(B) E.M. Forster

(C) Wyndham Lewis

(D) Arnold Bennett

Answer: (A)

 

5. She was a worthy woman al hir lyve,

Housbondes at chirche-dore she hadde fyve,

In the ‘Prologue’ Chaucer represents the Wife of Bath as:

I. crude and vulgar

II. outspoken and boastfully licentious

III. a witness to masculine oppression

IV. bubbling with vitality

Find the correct combination according to the code:

(A) I, II and III are correct.

(B) I, II and IV are correct.

(C) I, III and IV are correct.

(D) II, III and IV are correct.

Answer: (B)

 

6. The novel tells the story of twin brothers, Waldo, the man of reason and intellect, and Arthur, the innocent half-wit, the way their lives are inextricably intertwined. Which is the novel?

(A) The Tree of Man

(B) Voss

(C) The Solid Mandala

(D) The Vivisector

Answer: (C)

 

7. Who among the following was NOT a member of the Scriblerus Club?

(A) Thomas Parnell

(B) Alexander Pope

(C) Joseph Addison

(D) John Gay

Answer: (C)

 

8. _______ is a theological term brought into literary criticism by _______.

(A) Entelechy, St. Augustine

(B) Ambiguity, William Empson

(C) Adequation, Fr Walter Ong

(D) Epiphany, James Joyce

Answer: (D)

 

9. ________ the Almighty Power Hurled headlong flaming from th’ Ethereal Sky,

With hideous ruin and combustion down

To bottomless perdition, there to dwell

In Adamantine Chains and penal Fire Who durst defy th’ Omnipotent to Arms.

(Paradise Lost, I.44-49.)

Choose the appropriate word:

(A) Him

(B) He

(C) Satan

(D) The Fiend

Answer: (A)

 

10. Which of the following works does not have a mad woman as a character in it?

(A) The Yellow Wallpaper

(B) The Mad Woman in the Attic

(C) Jane Eyre

(D) Wide Sargasso Sea

Answer: (B)

11. Which of the following is NOT a quest narrative?

(A) Shelley’s Alastor

(B) Byron’s Manfred

(C) Coleridge’s Christabel

(D) Keats’s Endymion

Answer: (C)

 

12. The novel has a scene where African American students are made to compete and fight with each other as they rush for the gold coins tossed on an electric blanket. Identify the novel.

(A) Richard Wright: Native Son

(B) James Baldwin: Another Country

(C) Ralph Ellison: Invisible Man

(D) Toni Morrison: Bluest Eye

Answer: (C)

 

13. G.M. Hopkins’s “Windhover” is dedicated:

(A) To Christ, our Lord

(B) To Christ our lord

(C) To no one

(D) To Christ, the Lord

Answer: (B)

 

14. Match List – I with List – II according to the code given below:

List – I (Authors)                                List – II (Poems)

i. Ted Hughes                                      1. “The Otter”

ii. Seamus Heaney                               2. “Snake”

iii. W.H. Auden                                  3. “Ghost Crabs”

iv. D.H. Lawrence                              4. “Prevent the Dog from Barking with a Juicy Bone.”

Codes:

       i ii iii iv

(A) 1 2 4 3

(B) 2 3 1 4

(C) 3 1 4 2

(D) 3 2 1 4

Answer: (C)

 

15. His cooks with long disuse their trade forgot;

Cool was his kitchen, though his brains were hot.

Who is this character whose stinginess passed into a proverb?

(A) Corah

(B) Shimei

(C) Zimri

(D) Achitophel

Answer: (B)

 

16. “The story and the novel, the idea and the form, are the needle and thread, and I never heard of a guild of tailors who recommended the use of the thread without the needle, or the needle without the thread.”

This famous passage describing the relation of idea to form is found in

(A) Sir Philip Sidney, An Apology for Poetry

(B) Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Biographia Literaria

(C) Henry James, “The Art of Fiction”

(D) I.A. Richards, Principles of Literary Criticism

Answer: (C)

 

17. Identify the correctly matched set below:

(A) The Norman Conquest – 1066

William Caxton and the introduction of printing – 1575

The King James Bible – 1611

Dr. Johnson’s English Dictionary – 1755

The Commonwealth Period/ the Protectorate – 1649-1660

(B) The Norman Conquest – 1066

William Caxton and the introduction of printing – 1475

The King James Bible – 1611

Dr. Johnson’s English Dictionary - 1755

The Commonwealth Period/ the Protectorate – 1649-1660

(C) The Norman Conquest – 1016

William Caxton and the introduction of printing- 1475

The King James Bible – 1564

Dr. Johnson’s English Dictionary -1780

The Commonwealth Period/ the Protectorate – 1649-1660

(D) The Norman Conquest – 1013

William Caxton and the introduction of printing – 1575

The King James Bible – 1627

Dr. Johnson’s English Dictionary – 1746

The Commonwealth Period/ the Protectorate – 1624-1660

Answer: (B)

 

18. Leopold Bloom in Ulysses is

(A) a Great War veteran

(B) a Dublin bar owner

(C) a Jewish advertising agent

(D) an Irish nationalist

Answer: (C)

 

19. “Late capitalism”, by which is meant accelerated technological development and the massive extension of intellectually qualified labour, was first popularised by ______.

(A) Terry Eagleton

(B) Ernst Mandel

(C) Raymond Williams

(D) Stanley Fish

Answer: (B)

 

20. Which of the following arrangements is in the correct chronological sequence?

(A) Native Son by Richard Wright – Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison – Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neil Hurston – Another Country by James Baldwin

(B) Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neil Hurston – Native Son by Richard Wright – Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison – Another Country by James Baldwin

(C) Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison – Native Son by Richard Wright – Another Country by James Baldwin – Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neil Hurston

(D) Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neil Hurston – Another Country by James Baldwin – Native Son by Richard Wright – Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison

Answer: (B)

21. Metaphor is so widespread that it is often used as an umbrella term to include other figures of speech such as metonyms which can be technically distinguished from it in its narrower usage.

Identify the metaphorical phrase in this sentence:

(A) narrower usage

(B) technically distinguished

(C) figures of speech

(D) umbrella term

Answer: (D)

 

22. Along the shore of silver streaming Thames;

Whose rutty bank, the which his river hems,

Was painted all with variable flowers,…

Fit to deck maidens’ bowers

And crown their paramours

Against their bridal day, which is not long;

Sweet Thames! run softly till I end my song.

(Spenser’s Prothalamion)

Another poet fondly recalls these lines but cannot conceal their heavily ironic tone in:

(A) Marianne Moore’s “Spenser’s Ireland”

(B) Sylvia Plath’s “Morning Song”

(C) W.H. Auden’s “In Praise of Limestone”

(D) T.S. Eliot’s Waste Land

Answer: (D)

 

23. The tramp in Pinter’s first big hit,

The Caretaker, often travels under an assumed name. It is

(A) Bernard Jenkins

(B) Roly Jenkins

(C) Jack Jenkins

(D) Peter Jenkins

Answer: (A)

 

24. Here is a list of early English plays imitating Greek and Latin plays. Pick the odd one out:

(A) Gorboduc

(B) Tamburlaine

(C) Ralph Roister Doister

(D) Gammer Gurton’s Needle

Answer: (B)

 

25. Where does Act I Scene 1 of William Congreve’s Way of the World open?

(A) A Chocolate-House

(B) A Pub

(C) A Carrefour

(D) The drawing room of Sir Willfull’s mansion

Answer: (A)

 

26. While “a well-boiled icicle” for “a well-oiled bicycle” is an example of Spoonerism, someone saying “Congenital food” for ‘Continental food’ is an example of ______.

(A) Malaproprism

(B) Pleonasm

(C) Neologism

(D) Archaism

Answer: (A)

 

27. 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

Answer: (B)

 

28. 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

Answer: (B)

 

29. Robert Graves’s “In Broken Images” ends thus:

He in a new confusion of his understanding;

I in a new understanding of my confusion.

The figure of speech here is _______.

(A) Chiasmus

(B) Catachresis

(C) Inversion

(D) Zeugma

Answer: (A)

 

30. The phrase “leaves dancing” is an example of ________.

(A) pathetic fallacy

(B) hyperbole

(C) pun

(D) conceit

Answer: (A)

 

31. At the end of The Great Gatsby, the narrator Nick Carraway observes:

“They were careless people”. Who were they?

(A) Tom and Daisy

(B) The Wilsons

(C) Gatsby and his friends

(D) The people of East Egg

Answer: (A)

 

32. William Wordsworth’s statement of purpose in publishing the Lyrical Ballads carries the following phrase. (Complete the phrase correctly).

“to choose incidents from common life and to relate or describe them, throughout, as far as possible, ______.”

(A) in a selection of language really used by men.

(B) in a relation to language really used by men.

(C) in a selection of language really used by common man.

(D) in deference to language actually used by men.

Answer: (A)

 

33. Match List – I with List – II according to the code given below:

List – I (Novels)                                                                      List – II (Last lines)

i. Lord Jim                                                                               1. ‘It was done; it was finished. Yes, she thought laying down her brush in extreme fatigue, I have had my vision.’

ii. To the Lighthouse                                                               2. ‘April 27. Old father, old artificer, stand me now and ever in good stead…’

iii. A Passage to India                                                             3. ‘He feels it himself and says often that he is “preparing to leave all this; preparing to leave,...”, while he waves his hands sadly at his butterflies.’

iv. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man                           4. ‘ “No not yet,” and the sky said, “No, not there”.’

Codes:

       i ii iii iv

(A) 2 4 3 1

(B) 3 2 4 1

(C) 3 1 4 2

(D) 2 3 1 4

Answer: (C)

 

34. Identify the incorrect description/s of “Sprung Rhythm” from the following:

1. This rhythm causes ideas to spring in our minds – hence Sprung Rhythm.

2. In Sprung Rhythm the feet are of equal length.

3. A foot may have one to four syllables in Sprung Rhythm.

4. Its metre is derived from the metre of Anglo-Saxon poetry which was based on accent and linked by alliteration.

(A) 4 is incorrect.

(B) 1 & 4 are incorrect.

(C) 3 is incorrect.

(D) 1 is incorrect.

Answer: (D)

 

35. Who among the following proposes that the unconscious comes into being only in language?

(A) Sigmund Freud

(B) Jacques Lacan

(C) Stuart Hall

(D) Paul de Man

Answer: (B)

 

36. 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.

Answer: (A)

 

37. Which of the following poems by Tennyson does NOT speak of old age and death?

(A) “The Beggar Maid”

(B) “The Lotus-Eaters”

(C) “Ulysses”

(D) “Tithonus”

Answer: (A)

 

38. One English poet addressing another:

Thy soul was like a Star, and dwelt apart;

Thou hast a voice whose sound was like the sea:

Pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free,

So didst thou travel on life’s common way,

In cheerful godliness….

Whose lines are these? To whom are they addressed?

(A) W.H. Auden – W.B. Yeats

(B) P.B. Shelley – William Blake

(C) William Wordsworth – John Milton

(D) Ben Jonson – William Shakespeare

Answer: (C)

 

39. Samuel Johnson’s Lives of Poets (1781) was originally a series of introductions to the poets he wrote for a group of London publishers. They were collected as:

(A) Lives of English Poets: Critical and Biographical Essays.

(B) Prefaces, Biographical and Critical, to the Works of English Poets.

(C) Notes, Biographical and Critical, on the Works of English Poets.

(D) Lives of English Poets: Biographical and Critical Notes.

Answer: (B)

 

40. Which of the following is NOT mentioned in Northrop Frye’s four ‘generic plots’?

(A) The comic

(B) The tragic

(C) The lyric

(D) The ironic

Answer: (C)

 

41. Arrange the sections of The Waste Land in the order in which they appear in the poem:

1. The Fire Sermon

2. Death by Water

3. A Game of Chess

4. What the Thunder Said

5. The Burial of the Dead

(A) 3, 2, 1, 5, 4

(B) 5, 1, 2, 3, 4

(C) 5, 2, 3, 1, 4

(D) 5, 3, 1, 2, 4

Answer: (D)

 

42. Sir Plume is a character in ____ .sa

(A) Dryden’s Absalom and Achitophel

(B) Congreve’s The Way of the World

(C) Pope’s The Rape of the Lock

(D) Farquhar’s The Beaux’ Strategem

Answer: (C)

 

43. Steeling herself to the murder, Lady Macbeth calls on ______ to “unsex me here”. (Macbeth I.5.39)

Choose the right option to fill in the blank:

(A) God

(B) the spirits of hell

(C) the angels in heaven

(D) no one in particular

Answer: (B)

 

44. You will find the following lines in an English poem:

Thou by the Indian Ganges’ side

Shouldst rubies find; I by the side

Of Humber would complain.

Which poem? Who is the poet?

(A) “Lonely Hearts.” Wendy Cope

(B) “Holy Thursday.” William Blake

(C) “Tiger Mask Ritual.” Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

(D) “To His Coy Mistress.” Andrew Marvell

Answer: (D)

 

45. Teach me half the gladness

That thy brain must know,

Such harmonious madness

From my lips would flow

The world should listen then, as I am listening now.

Whose lines are these? To whom are they addressed?

(A) John Keats. The Nightingale

(B) P.B. Shelley. The Skylark

(C) William Wordsworth. The Wye Valley

(D) Robert Browning. The Grammarian

Answer: (B)

 

46. Match List – I with List – II according to the code given below:

List – I (Novel)                                               List – II (Major symbol)

i. Dombey and Son                                         1. fog

ii. The Return of the Native                            2. train

iii. Bleak House                                               3. heath

iv. Tess                                                            4. mist

Codes:

      i ii iii iv

(A) 2 3 1 4

(B) 4 2 3 1

(C) 2 3 4 1

(D) 1 3 4 1

Answer: (A)

 

47. 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

Answer: (C)

 

48. Which novel of Graham Greene in the following list does NOT end in some form of suicide by the protagonist?

(A) The Heart of the Matter

(B) England Made Me

(C) Brighton Rock

(D) The Power and the Glory

Answer: (B)

 

49. Who among the following gave a happy ending to King Lear?

(A) James Quin

(B) Nahum Tate

(C) Peg Woffington

(D) Charles Macklin

Answer: (B)

 

50. Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice starts with the famous statement: “It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a life.”

As we get to read the novel this statement seems to be made from the point of view of:

I. the surrounding families

II. Mrs Bennet

III. Mr Bennet

IV. The women of Jane Austen’s age and society

Find out the correct combination according to the code:

(A) I, II and III are correct.

(B) I, II and IV are correct.

(C) II, III and IV are correct.

(D) I, III and IV are correct.

Answer: (B)