UPSC Mains ENGLISH-LITERATURE-PAPER-I 2016

The influence of Renaissance on Shakespeare's imagination.

Self-conscious structuring of images in metaphysical poetry.

The Preface to Lyrical Ballads and the notion of poetic diction.

Social life and the 19th century fiction.

Treatment of Nature by George Eliot and Thomas Hardy in their novels.

Describe in detail the mock-heroic elements introduced by Pope in The Rape of the Lock.

Comment on the theme of appearance and reality in King Lear.

John Donne uses disparate images in his poems about physical and spiritual love. Discuss with specific reference to Canonization and To his Mistress going to bed.

What aspects of William Wordsworth's poetry can be of special interest to Indian readers ?

Can you offer an interpretation of the major characters and events in Paradise Lost as metaphors related to conflicts in human consciousness ?

Sketch the character of Caliban in Shakespeare's The Tempest in the light of the larger context of freedom and imprisonment.

Can Tennyson be called a poet of the personal and evolutionary past? Elucidate your answer with examples from 'In Memoriam'.

Compare and contrast the attitudes of Mrs Linde and Nora with respect to their roles as women in A Doll's House.

How does Alexander Pope make The Rape of the Lock a sophisticated poem in terms of its structure and language ?

What is the poet's view of art and beauty ?

How does the poet describe human existence ?

What does the poet appear to desire from life?

Describe the images created in the poem,

Comment on the rhyme scheme of the poem and the purpose it serves.

On what grounds can you justify the division of the novel, Hard Times, into three parts with separate titles ?

Critically comment on 'point of view' as a narrative technique in The Mill on the Floss.

Describe Gullivers' Travels as an individual's constant attempt to integrate himself into a society in which he doesn't belong.

Do Tess's major actions arise out of her desire for social climbing or from her determination to exist?

Within the narrow limits she set for herself, she achieved a finished realism with qualities of the highest wit and elegance." Discuss with reference to Jane Austen's art.

The river is one of the most powerful motifs in Huckleberry Finn. Show its relationship to the lives of Huck and Jim.

Sketch the development of the travel motif through the novel Tom Jones.

Critically examine the comment that Pride and Prejudice is a journey into self-understanding and a realistic assessment of an earlier misjudgement.

How does Thomas Hardy dramatize his ideas of man's cruelty to woman in Tess of the d' Urbervilles?