1.“The great English novelists are Jane Austen, George Eliot, Henry James
and Joseph Conrad.” Which one of the following critical texts begins with the
above assertion?
1. Walter Allen, The English Novel
2. Terry Eagleton, The English Novel
3. F. R. Leavis, The Great Tradition
4. Ian Watt, Rise of the Novel
Answer: 3
2. Where does Conrad’s Heart of Darkness begin?
(1) The Congo
(2) The Thames
(3) Belgium
(4) The Atlantic
Answer: 2
3.He wrote an essay called “Conrad’s Darkness” where he praises the
earlier writer for offering him a vision of the world’s “half-made societies’.
Identify the writer.
(A) Chinua Achebe
(B) V.S. Naipaul
(C) Salman Rushdie
(D) Ngugi wa Thiongo
Answer: B
4.Which of the following novels by V.S. Naipaul is set in Africa and carries
echoes of Joseph Conrad ?
(A) The Mystic Masseur
(B) A Bend in the River
(C) A House for Mr. Biswas
(D) The Mimic Men
Answer: B
5. Conrad’s Heart of Darkness presents two conflicting discourses present
in his own culture. Identify the two discourses from the following:
(A) Modernism and anticolonialism
(B) Modernism and structuralism
(C) Anti-colonialism and Eurocentricism
(D) Material culturalism and tribalism
Answer: (C)
6. Who in his preface to Joseph Conrad’s The Secret Agent makes the
following remark?
“the achievement of modern art is that it has ceased to recognize the
categories of tragic and comic or the dramatic classifications ‘tragedy’ and
‘comedy’, and views of life as tragicomedy.”
(1) August Strindberg
(2) Luigi Pirandello
(3) D.H. Lawrence
(4) Thomas Mann
Answer: 4
7.Who among the following postcolonial critics worked on the fiction of
Joseph Conrad in his/her early career?
(1) Edward Said
(2) G.C. Spivak
(3) Homi Bhabha
(4) Dipesh Chakrabarty
Answer: 1
8.Which of the following novels of Joseph Conrad is set in Malay ?
(1) Nigger of the Narcissus
(2) Lord Jim
(3) Nostromo
(4) Heart of Darkness
Answer: 2
9. Towards the end of Evelyn Waugh’s A Handful of Dust the protagonist
Tony Last is trapped in the jungle by the calculating crazy Mr. Todd who
forces him to read and reread the novels of a particular author. Waugh has
also written a short story dealing with Tony’s singular experience in the
jungle. Who is the novelist referred to and what is the title of the short
story?
(1) Rudyard Kipling, “Revisiting the Jungle”
(2) Joseph Conrad, “Shadows of the Dark Trees”
(3) Charles Dickens, “The Man Who Liked Dickens”
(4) Henry Fielding, “Tom Jones’s Journey into the Wild”
Answer: 3
10.Which one of Joseph Conrad’s novels expresses the contrast between the
solidarity of shipboard life and the profound underlying loneliness of
existence thus : “loneliness impenetrable and transparent, elusive and
everlasting…. that surrounds, envelops, clothes every human soul from the
cradle to the grave, and perhaps beyond”?
(1) The Heart of Darkness
(2) The Nigger of the Narcissus
(3) Lord Jim
(4) Nostromo
Answer: * Marks to All
11.Which novel by Joseph Conrad presents a young captain who like
Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner is haunted by the “vision of a ship drifting in
calm and swinging in light airs, with all the crew dying slowly about her
decks” and who feels “the sickness of my soul… the weight of my sins… my
sense of unworthiness” ?
(1) Under Western Eyes
(2) The Shadow Line
(3) Victory
(4) The Rescue
Answer: 2
12.“The great English novelists are Jane Austen, George Eliot, Henry James
and Joseph Conrad.” Which one of the following critical texts begins with the
above assertion?
1. Walter Allen, The English Novel
2. Terry Eagleton, The English Novel
3. F. R. Leavis, The Great Tradition
4. Ian Watt, Rise of the Novel
Answer: 3
GEORGE ORWELL
1. Which of the following works is reviewed in George Orwell’s essay, Inside the Whale?
1. Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer
2. James Joyce’s Ulysses
3. D. H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover
4. Anais Nin’s Delta of Venus
ANSWER:1
2. Politics and the English Language is an essay by :
(A) F.R. Leavis
(B) Terry Eagleton
(C) George Orwell
(D) Raymond Williams
ANSWER:C
3. “Where I lacked a political purpose, I wrote lifeless books.” To which of the following authors can we attribute the above admission?
(A) Graham Greene
(B) George Orwell
(C) Charles Morgan
(D) Evelyn Waugh
ANSWER:B
4. In his well-known essay “Politics and the English Language”, George Orwell provides representative examples of what common faults?
(1) Staleness of imagery and lack of precision
(2) Lack of precision and incorrect formatting
(3) Incorrect formatting and staleness of imagery
(4) Staleness of precision and lack of imagery
ANSWER:1
5. In “Politics and the English Language” George Orwell provides a list of rules to aid in curing the English language. What is the final rule?
(1) Never use a metaphor, simile or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
(2) Never use a long word where a short one will do.
(3) If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
(4) Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.
ANSWER:4
6. “Can one imagine any private soldier, in the nineties or now, reading Barrack-Room Ballads and feeling that here was a writer who spoke for him ? It is very hard to do so. [….] When he is writing not of British but of “loyal” Indians he carries the ‘Salaam, Sahib’motif to sometimes disgusting lengths. Yet it remains true that he has far more interest in the common soldier, far more anxiety that he shall get a fair deal, than most of the “liberals” of his day and our own. He sees that the soldier is neglected, meanly underpaid and hypocritically despised by the people whose incomes he safeguards”.
(A) This is E. M. Forster’s “India, Again”.
(B) This is Malcolm Muggeridge on E. M. Forster’s India.
(C) This is T. S. Eliot on Rudyard Kipling.
(D) This is George Orwell on Rudyard Kipling.
ANSWER:D
7. Years before, Winston Smith, the protagonist of George Orwell’s dystopia, Nineteen Eighty Four got an evidence of the party’s dishonesty. What is it ?
(1) Emmanuel Goldstein’s confession that he is a party operative; not an enemy of the party.
(2) O’ Brien’s diary entry hinting at the non-existence of Big Brother.
(3) A photograph which proves that some citizen accused of a crime was out of the country while it was committed.
(4) A colleague’s revelation that the Inner Party members have systematically destroyed all historical documents and created false documents.
ANSWER:3
8. Which of the following works is reviewed in George Orwell’s essay, Inside the Whale?
1. Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer
2. James Joyce’s Ulysses
3. D. H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover
4. Anais Nin’s Delta of Venus
ANSWER:1
9. In “Politics and the English Language” which two of the following ‘tricks’ are mentioned by George Orwell as ‘bad habits’ of English use?
A. obsolete words
B. pretentious diction
C. dying metaphors
D. false modifiers
Choose the correct answer from the options given below:
- A and B only B.
- B and C only
- C. B and D only
- D. C and D only
ANSWER:B
10. Who is the author of the essay “Lear, Tolstoy and the Fool”
A. Aldous Huxley
B. George Orwell
C. Somerset Maugham
D. D.
ANSWER:B
11. The “grammar bullies” – you read them in places like the New York Times – and they tell you what is correct.
You must never use “hopefully, we will be going there on Thursday.” That is incorrect and wrong and you are basically an ignorant pig if you say it. This is judgementalism . The game that is being played there is a game of social class. It has nothing do with the morality of writing and speaking and thinking clearly, of which George Orwell, for instance, talked so well.
To which famous essay of Orwell does the author refer here ?
1. “Inside the Whale”
2. “Politics and the English Language
3. “Reflections on Gandhi”
4. “Why I Write”
ANSWER:2
VIRGINIA WOOLF
1. Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf is written by :
(A) Arthur Miller
(B) Engene O Neil
(C) Edward Albee
(D) Tennessee Williams
ANSWER:C
2. Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse begins in a piece of dialogue:
“Yes, of course, if it’s ne tomorrow”, said Mrs. Ramsay. “But you’ll have to be up with lark”, she added.
Present among the listeners of her remark is ……………
(1) her father
(2) her nephew
(3) her son
(4) her driver
ANSWER:3
3. Who among the following dismissed Ulysses as “a misre” ?
(1) Virginia Woolf
(2) Wyndham Lewis
(3) E.M. Forster
(4) D.H. Lawrence
ANSWER:1
4. Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse has a tripartite structure. The three parts are named the following EXCEPT :
(1) The Sky
(2) The Window
(3) Time Passes
(4) The Lighthouse
ANSWER:1
5. Three Guineas is the title of a book by :
(A) E. M. Forster
(B) Virginia Woolf
(C) George Orwell
(D) G. B. Shaw
ANSWER:B
6. In her essay “Professions for Women” Virginia Woolf finds an analogy between the act of writing and …………….
(1) driving a motor car
(2) riding a horse
(3) fishing
(4) gardening
ANSWER:B
7. Which of the following lines by Shakespeare is repeated several times in Virginia Woolf’s novel Mrs. Dalloway ?
(1) “If music be the food of love, play on”.
(2) “Fear no more the heat of the sun, Nor the furious winter’s rages”.
(3) “Those are pearls that were his eyes”.
(4) “There is a tide in the affairs of man”
ANSWER:2
8. Shel is a character in Virginia Woolf’s novel ……………
(1) Mrs. Dalloway
(2) To the Lighthouse
(3) The Waves
(4) Orlando
ANSWER:4
9. Who is the author of the poems “Elegy for Mrs. Virginia Woolf” and “William Butler in Limbo”?
(1) Keith Douglas
(2) W.H. Auden
(3) Sidney Keyes
(4) Stephen Spender
ANSWER:3
10. “On or about December 1910 human character changed,” Virginia Woolf wrote. A more assertive declaration, “It was in 1915 the old world ended”, was made by a novelist in one of his/her novels, picking a date of far more historical moment, the point when an entire cultural tradition seemed to end in war. Name the novelist and the novel.
(1) D.H. Lawrence – Kangaroo
(2) Aldous Huxley – Brave New World
(3) Virginia Woolf – Mrs. Dalloway
(4) James Joyce – Ulysses
ANSWER:1
11. Virginia Woolf rubbished the idea of character and the understanding of realism of writers like Arnold Bennett, John Galsworthy and H.G. Wells. Her famous essay is called ‘Mr. Bennet and Mrs. Brown’. Who is Mrs. Brown?
(A) The name Woolf gives a woman whom she happens to meet in a train.
(B) A servant in Mr. Bennett’s household.
(C) A character in a Bennett story.
(D) Mr. Bennett’s neighbour who happens to be a writer.
ANSWER:A
12. Identify the text in the following list which offers a fictionalized survey of English Literature from Elizabethan times to 1928:
(A) E.M. Forster, the Eternal Moment
(B) Virginia Woolf, Orlando
(C) Robert Graves, Goodbye to All That
(D) David Jones, In Parenthesis
ANSWER:B
13. Virginia Woolf borrowed the idea of the common reader from Dr. Johnson. To which particular work of Johnson’s does she remain indebted?
(A) The Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets; the essay on Milton
(B) The Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets; the essay on Gray
(C) Preface to Shakespeare
(D) The Patriot
ANSWER:B
14. Here are sentences labelled Assertion (A) and Reason (R):
Assertion (A): In who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? George and Martha’s blue and green-eyed son is a myth.
Reason (R): He is a creation of the couple’s imagination originating from their sense of sterility and vacuum in life.
In the light of (A) and (R), which of the following is correct?
A) Both (A) and (R) are true and (R) is the correct explanation of (A).
(B) Both (A) and (R) are true, but (R) is not the correct explanation of (A).
(C) (A) is true, but (R) is false.
(D) (A) is false, but (R) is true.
ANSWER:A
15. While foregrounding the marginal presence of women in history in A Room of One’s Own, Virginia Woolf refers to ______ History of England.
(A) Campbell’s
(B) Trevelyan’s
(C) Sander’s
(D) Carter’s
ANSWER:B
16. Yet it is the masculine values that prevail., observed a famous writer Speaking cruelly, she continued, football and sport are important., the worship of fashion, the buying of clothes trivial. Name the author and the text.
(1) Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
(2) Audre Lorde Age, Race, Class….
(3) Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own
(4) Jean Rhys, After Leaving Mr. Mackenzie
ANSWER:3
17. In Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse the lighthouse does not symbolize :
(A) permanence at the heart of change.
(B) change in the unchanging world.
(C) celebration of life in the heart of death.
(D) celebration of order in the heart of chaos.
ANSWER:B
18. “Exorcism” is the title of Act III of who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf ? What is the significance of ‘exorcism’ in the context of the play ?
(A) The casting out of evil spirits
(B) Deconstructing of myths involving marriage, fertility and sons
(C) Facing life without illusions
(D) Exposing all attempts at illusion making
ANSWER:D
19. In a classic statement that inaugurated Feminist thought in English, we read :
“A woman writing thinks back through her mothers”. Where does this occur ?
(A) Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own
(B) Kate Millet’s Sexual Politics
(C) Gertrude Stein’s Three Lives
(D) Mary Hiatt’s The Way Women Write.
ANSWER:A
20. Who among the following writers describes novels as “not form which you see but emotion which you feel”?
(A) D.H. Lawrence
(B) Jean Rhys
(C) Virginia Woolf
(D) Joseph Conrad
ANSWER:C
21. In which novel of Virginia Woolf does a painter in the act of painting actually figure as a character ?
(A) The Voyage Out
(B) The Waves
(C) Jacob’s Room
(D) To the Lighthouse
ANSWER:D
22. In which essay does Virginia Woolf observe that “if a writer were a free man [sic] and not a slave” to the conventions of the literary market-place, there would be “no plot, no comedy, no tragedy, no love interest, or catastrophe in the accepted style, and perhaps not a single button sewn on as the Bond Street tailors would have it” ?
(1)”How it Strikes a Contemporary”
(2) “Modern Fiction”
(3) “The Russian Point of View”
(4) “Mr. Bennett and Mr. Brown”
ANSWER:2
23. Which two of the following are part of Virginia Woolf’s collection of autobiographical ?
(A )” A Will to Word It.’
(B) A Sketch the Part “
(C) A Font Hue of the Past
(D) Am I smob’
Choose the cod are from the options we below
- ( A ) and ( B) Only
- (A ) and ( C ) Only
- (B) and Only
- (B ) and ( D) Only
ANSWER:D
24. In “Mr Bennett and Mrs Brown” Virginia Woolf:
A. analyses the state of modern fiction by contrasting two generations of writers.
B. criticises book buying preferences of the educated English class.
C. presents modernity as a stable and coherent project uniting all artists.
D. responds to E.M Forster’s remarks on character in fiction
ANSWER:A
25. Erich Auerbach’s Mimesis (1946) ends with a chapter on:
A. George Eliot’s Middlemarch.
B. James Joyce’s Ulysses.
C. Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse.
D. Wyndham Lewis’s The Apes of God
ANSWER:C
26. Virginia Woolf’s Orlando opens in 1588 and Orlando, a sixteen-year-old boy, writes a poem called:
A. “The Evergreen Tree”.
B. “The Magic Tree”.
C. “The Oak Tree”.
D. “The Poison Tree”.
ANSWER:D