UPSC Mains ENGLISH-LITERATURE-PAPER-II 2023

Hearts with one purpose alone Through summer and winter seem Enchanted to a stone To trouble the living stream.

For I have known then all already, known them all : Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons, I have measured out my life with coffee spoons; I know the voices dying with a dying fall Beneath the music from a farther room.

He was married and added five children to the population Which our Eugenist says was the right number for a parent of his generation And our teachers report that he never interfered with their education. Was he free? Was he happy? The question is absurd : Had anything been wrong, we should certainly have heard.

For you would hardly care That you were less deceived, out on that bed, Than he was, stumbling up the breathless stair To burst into fulfillment's desolate attic.

Sister-in-law and I were rather blank, cut-outs fitted to our respective slots in a room really nowhere as the two of you got down to the floor to draw blueprints of a house from memory

Yeats' purpose was to write out the heart of the Irish common people.” Comment on this statement with reference to some of the poems prescribed for your study.

To be conscious is not to be in time.” Comment on this line by Eliot from Burnt Norton.

Discuss Modernism as a literary and cultural movement.

Analyse W. H. Auden's poetry as a fusion of the private and public worlds'.

Comment on the themes and concerns in Larkin's poetry.

The poets of the thirties expressed that they had no time to be difficult...; the political situation was too urgent." Elaborate the statement with examples from the poets of the period.

Analyse Jimmy's relationship with Helena and Alison. What does his relationship with the two women reveal about his personality?

Write a note on the confessional element in Ramanujan's poetry.

Beckett captures 'the endless, tedious nature of human experience itself, where actions do not always have a goal or meaning'." Discuss the statement with reference to the play, Waiting for Godot.

Jim (in the novel, Lord Jim) embodies Conrad's finest moral vision." Argue for or against the statement.

Discuss A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man as a Bildungsroman.

Would you agree that the exegesis of Sons and Lovers as a presentation of Oedipus complex robs the novel of some of its nuances? Answer with illustrative references.

The gender of the narrator affects the narration at the lexical level in Kanthapura. Discuss.

The theme of sexuality, especially interracial sexual attraction, and its possibilities, is coded into the theme of Adela's 'molestation'." Analyse Forster's A Passage to India in the light of the above statement.

Discuss Patusan as a psychological landscape in Lord Jim.

A House for Mr Biswas depicts the exile's desire to strike roots and attain an authentic selfhood." Examine the statement with reference to Naipaul's novel.

What are the chief symbols that Joyce has woven into the structure and texture of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man?

Clarissa Dalloway endeavours “to balance a need for privacy with a need for communication with other people”. Do you agree? Give a reasoned response.

Lawrence's characters illustrate the class contradictions at the heart of modern industrial society." Discuss the statement with reference to Sons and Lovers.

Write an essay on the aptness of the title of the novel, A Passage to India

Is the ending of Kanthapura symptomatic of the socio-economic predicament of a colonised society? Give reasons.

What is the significance of the title, A House for Mr Biswas?

Examine the narrative style used by Virginia Woolf in Mrs Dalloway.