UPSC Mains ENGLISH-LITERATURE-PAPER-II 2024

Critically comment in about 150 words on each of the following: somewhere in sands of the desert. A shape with lion body and the head of a man, A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun, Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.

There was a Birth, certainly, We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death, But had thought they were different; this Birth was Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.

That girls are raped, that two boys knife a third, Were axioms to him, who'd never heard Of any world where promises were kept, Or one could weep because another wept.

Only one ship is seeking us, a black- Sailed unfamiliar, towing at her back A huge and birdless silence. In her wake No waters breed or break.

under the bridges with patches of repair all over them the wet stones glistening like sleepy crocodiles, the dry ones shaven water-buffaloes lounging in the sun The poets only sang of the floods.

Bring out the dichotomy between body and soul presented by W.B. Yeats in the poems "Sailing to Byzantium" and "Byzantium".

T.S. Eliot exploits the potential of myth and history to comment on his contemporary society. Analyse the statement in reference to the poems prescribed in the syllabus.

Illustrate the distinctive features of colonialism and post-colonialism in reference to some literary texts.

Discuss W.H. Auden's engagement with contemporary social, political and religious issues in reference to some of his poems prescribed for your study.

Critically examine Philip Larkin's portrayal of the turmoils of post-war scenario in the poems prescribed in your syllabus.

Explain the meaning of feminism, and discuss its various phases of evolution in the 20th century.

Bring out the elements of Indian sensibility as reflected in A.K. Ramanujan's poems prescribed in your syllabus.

Analyse critically the depiction of a woman in the institution of marriage by Osborne in the play Look Back in Anger.

Illustrate the characteristic features of Absurd Theatre with special reference to the play Waiting for Godot.

Comment on the ending of the novel Sons and Lovers after the death of Gertrude Morel.

Discuss Raja Rao's success in fusing 'history' and 'myth' in the novel Kanthapura.

Analyse James Joyce's interweaving of 'myth' in the narrative of his novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.

Illustrate the use of 'stream of consciousness' as a narrative technique in the novel Mrs. Dalloway.

Comment on the significance of the title of the novel A House for Mr Biswas.

Discuss the role of Marlow as a narrator in Lord Jim.

Comment on the portrayal of women characters in E.M. Forster's novel A Passage to India from a feminist perspective.

Critically analyse the father son relationships as depicted in A House for Mr Biswas in the context of tradition and exile.

Bring out the conflicts arising out of Paul Morel's relationships with three women characters, namely Gertrude, Miriam and Clara in the novel Sons and Lovers.

Critically analyse how the elements of realism and fantasy are conflated in Conrad's Lord Jim in order to produce an image of the Orient through Patusan.

Comment on Raja Rao's delineation of Gandhian ideology in the novel Kanthapura.

The concluding statement of A Passage to India – “Not now, not yet" locates the estrangement between individuals on the axis of power. Do you agree? Give the answer on the basis of your understanding of the novel.

Discuss Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway as a feminist novel.

Critically examine the reflections of the religious, political and cultural contexts discernible across the narrative in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.