UPSC Mains ENGLISH-LITERATURE-PAPER-I 2022

The flowering of Renaissance values in Elizabethan theatre.

The moral dilemmas of the Victorian age.

The ideological preoccupations of the Romantic movement.

Factors that contributed to the rise of the English novel as a genre.

Imagery in Metaphysical Poetry.

Critically analyse the discourse of colonialism in The Tempest.

Discuss the conflict of revolutionary politics in Paradise Lost as delineated in the books prescribed for study.

Explicate on the use of irony, epigrams, anti-climax, parody, and allusion, alongside the vivid pictures of courtly life depicted in The Rape of the Lock.

John Donne reinvented love by rescuing it from its social and feudal moorings, to place it in the realms of the private and the modern. Discuss.

What is the role of hamartia in the tragedy of King Lear?

Wordsworth constitutes a sublimity out of his own overbearing subjectivity. Discuss with reference to the poems prescribed for study.

Attempt a gendered critique of A Doll's House.

“In Memorium” is a dramatization of sorrow. Discuss.

Critically assess Milton's Satan as one of the most dynamic and complicated characters in literature.

Recurrent motifs and persistent images in this poem reveal a central theme. What is it?

How does the poet play with the paradox of transience and eternity?

What is the function of art foregrounded by the poem?

What does the river signify?

Comment on the poetic diction and style that makes the poem so singular in its appeal.

Attempt an exposition of the character of Tom Jones.

Analyse the philosophical and political background of Gulliver's Travels.

Examine the late eighteenth century English class system as revealed in Pride and Prejudice.

Consider The Mill on the Floss as a subversion of the traditional bildungsroman.

Hard Times lingers around questions of Utilitarianism, education and industrialization in the Victorian era. Discuss with illustrations from the novel.

Elaborate upon the conflicting moral values and confusions of a changing society in Tess of the D'Urbervilles.

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is not about the American Dream but its paradoxes. Illustrate.

How does Pride and Prejudice satirise women's education, employment and marital status during the time of Jane Austen?

Jonathan Swift pitches Lemuel Gulliver as an unreliable narrator. Discuss with examples from Gulliver's Travels.