The Rajasthan State Eligibility Test (RSET) September 2026 English Literature examination (Paper II, Q. 51 to 150) tested candidates across the comprehensive breadth of the UGC NET / SET syllabus. Far from relying on conventional biographical recall or superficial title matching, the September 2026 paper distinguished itself through an uncompromising emphasis on conceptual discrimination, multi-statement evaluative questions, modern literary theory, formal linguistics, and research methodology.
Authored, verified, and critically annotated by Mukesh Kumar (Fulbright DA-I Fellow, State Model Educator, Vice Principal at GSSS Muklawa, and Founder of LitGram), this master study guide presents the complete, fact-checked 100 Solved MCQs. Every single question has been verified against authoritative primary literary texts, critical editions, MLA guidelines, and foundational treatises from Aristotle and Horace to Derrida, Stuart Hall, and Gilbert Ryle.
📌 Key Takeaways: RSET English September 2026 Paper Profile
- Overall Difficulty Level: Moderate to High. The paper deliberately minimized simple one-liner recall in favor of multi-premise evaluation (e.g., statements a & c vs. b & d) and four-item matching grids.
- Dominance of Theory & Criticism (32%): Over 30 questions directly tested Classical Criticism (Horace, Longinus, Sidney, Ben Jonson), New Criticism (Richards, Ransom, Brooks, Eliot), Structuralism/Post-structuralism (Barthes, Derrida), and Western Marxism (Antonio Gramsci’s Hegemony).
- Linguistics & ELT Pedagogy (10%): Crucial weightage on sociolinguistics (registers, code-switching vs. code-mixing, pidgin/creole), phonology (three-term label of consonants, phonemes vs. allophones), and morphology (allomorphs).
- English in India & Postcolonialism (10%): Highlighted Salman Rushdie’s coinage of chutnification, Raja Rao’s Kanthapura narrator Achakka, the Official Languages Act 1963/65, and Braj Kachru’s Three Concentric Circles.
- Research Methodology & Academic Standards (6%): Rigorous questions testing MLA 9th edition personal name citation conventions, distinction between primary and secondary sources, Hermeneutics, and Semiotics.
- Crucial Reference: Official guidelines and syllabus benchmarks can be cross-verified via the official UGC NET examination portal.
🎬 Video Masterclass: RSET English 2026 (100 Solved MCQs)
Watch our comprehensive 69-minute synchronized video masterclass solving and analyzing all 100 questions from Paper II (Q. 51 to Q. 150) across 20 focused study slides:
1. Syllabus Mapping & Unit-Wise Question Distribution
The 100 questions of Paper II spanned all ten core pedagogical units of the higher education English curriculum. The breakdown below highlights the strategic weight distribution across sections:
| Unit | Syllabus Area | Question Count | Primary Focus Areas |
|---|---|---|---|
| Unit I | Drama | 12 MCQs | Marlowe (Dr. Faustus), Shaw (Doctor’s Dilemma, Arms and the Man), Osborne, Pinter, Albee, Kyd |
| Unit II | Poetry | 14 MCQs | Shakespeare, Spenser, Milton sonnet schemes, Blake, Tennyson (In Memoriam), Browning, Pound |
| Unit III | Fiction, Short Story | 16 MCQs | Dickens (Hard Times), Hardy (Mayor of Casterbridge), Lawrence (The Rainbow), Austen (Mansfield Park), Naipaul |
| Unit IV | Non-Fictional Prose | 8 MCQs | William Hazlitt (The Indian Jugglers), Francis Bacon (Of Love, Of Studies), Aldous Huxley (Pleasures), Russell |
| Unit V | Language: Concepts & Pedagogy | 10 MCQs | Phonetics, three-term labels, phonemes/allophones, morphemes/allomorphs, ELT gradation, registers |
| Unit VI | English in India | 7 MCQs | Official Languages Act (1963/65), Kachru’s Outer Circle, Hinglish, Chutnification, Hobson-Jobson |
| Unit VII | Cultural Studies & Digital Humanities | 6 MCQs | Stuart Hall (decoding models), Dick Hebdige (subcultures), Gilbert Ryle (thick description), Distant Reading |
| Unit VIII | Literary Criticism | 12 MCQs | Aristotle, Horace (Decorum), Longinus (Sublime), Sidney (Apology), Ben Jonson, Dryden, Arnold, Coleridge |
| Unit IX | Literary Theory Post-WWII | 10 MCQs | Gramsci (Hegemony), Barthes (S/Z, writerly text), Derrida (différance), Showalter (Gynocriticism), New Historicism |
| Unit X | Research Methods in English | 5 MCQs | MLA 9th Edition rules, Primary vs Secondary sources, Hermeneutics, Semiotics, Inscription evidence |
2. Expected Cutoff & Safe Score Analysis (RSET Sep 2026)
Given the rigorous theoretical nature of Paper II and the high percentage of analytical pairing questions, candidates who maintained high accuracy in Literary Theory (Units VIII & IX) and Linguistics (Units V & VI) will enjoy a substantial competitive cushion. Below is the projected category-wise cutoff matrix based on student performance data and historical SET/NET trends:
| Category | Expected Aggregate % (Paper I + II) | Estimated Safe Marks (out of 300) | Paper II Target Score (out of 100 Qs) |
|---|---|---|---|
| General (UR) | 57.5% – 60.5% | 172 – 182 | 58 – 63 Correct |
| OBC (NCL) | 53.0% – 55.5% | 159 – 167 | 53 – 57 Correct |
| EWS | 52.0% – 54.5% | 156 – 164 | 51 – 55 Correct |
| MBC | 49.0% – 51.5% | 147 – 155 | 48 – 52 Correct |
| SC | 47.0% – 49.5% | 141 – 149 | 45 – 49 Correct |
| ST | 45.0% – 47.5% | 135 – 143 | 43 – 47 Correct |
3. Complete Solved Paper: Questions 51 to 150 with Detailed Solutions
Below is the complete, unabridged solved paper for RSET English September 2026 (Part II: Q. 51 to Q. 150). Each question includes its verified official key alongside an exhaustive academic rationale designed to serve as an authoritative revision module for upcoming UGC NET, RPSC College Lecturer, and School Lecturer examinations.
Question 51
How does Hazlitt view the juggler’s profession compared to the artist’s?
(1) He argues that a juggler requires more genius because he performs live.
(2) He says the artist’s task is more challenging because it aims to imitate nature or superior artist.
(3) He considers both equally clever and talented.
(4) He dismisses both as poor imitators.
✅ Correct Answer: (2) He says the artist’s task is more challenging because it aims to imitate nature or superior artist.
📖 Academic Rationale & Context: In his celebrated essay ‘The Indian Jugglers’ (Table-Talk, 1821), William Hazlitt contrasts the juggler’s manual dexterity and mechanical perfection with the artist’s higher pursuit. Hazlitt argues that while the juggler achieves absolute mechanical mastery within narrow limits, the fine artist or man of genius attempts the far greater and more challenging task of imitating infinite nature and expressing ideal human passion.
Question 52
Fill in the blank with the correct option.
_____ was a precursor of modern cultural studies, who analysed the social conventions and codes.
(1) Clifford Geertz
(2) Roland Barthes
(3) Stephen Spender
(4) Michel Foucault
✅ Correct Answer: (2) Roland Barthes
📖 Academic Rationale & Context: Roland Barthes in seminal works like Mythologies (1957) and ‘The Rhetoric of the Image’ deciphered bourgeois cultural signs, advertisements, wrestling, and consumer habits as semiotic systems and codes of social convention, pioneering the field of cultural studies.
Question 53
When applying Antonio Gramsci’s theory of culture hegemony to a literary text, what is a critic
primarily analysing?
(1) How the text uncovers the universal archetypes of human psyche across cultures.
(2) The strict mathematical symmetry and structural patterns hidden within the plot.
(3) The author’s biographical intentions and personal letters written during publication.
(4) How the narrative makes the ruling class world-view seem like natural common sense.
✅ Correct Answer: (4) How the narrative makes the ruling class world-view seem like natural common sense.
📖 Academic Rationale & Context: Gramsci’s concept of hegemony posits that the ruling class maintains dominance not solely through coercion, but through ideological consensus, whereby subordinate classes accept dominant values as ‘common sense’ and universal truth.
Question 54
Fill in the blank with the correct option.
‘Decorum’ has its roots in classical theory, specially in _____.
(1) Longinus’ The Sublime
(2) Horace’s Art of Poetry
(3) Aristotle’s Poetics
(4) Milton’s ‘Of Education’
✅ Correct Answer: (2) Horace’s Art of Poetry
📖 Academic Rationale & Context: The principle of literary ‘decorum’ (fitness and propriety of style, character, metre, and subject matter) was most systematically formulated in classical Latin criticism in Horace’s Ars Poetica (Epistula ad Pisones).
Question 55
Which of the following is/are related to postmodernism?
a. Emphasis on the marginal and the fragmented.
b. Baudrillard’s notion of ‘Simulacra’.
c. Opposition to grand narratives.
d. Focus on totalizing systems of thought.
(1) a, b & c
(2) b, c & d
(3) a, c & d
(4) a, b & d
✅ Correct Answer: (1) a, b & c
📖 Academic Rationale & Context: Postmodernism celebrates fragmentation, hybridity, and the marginal (a), incorporates Baudrillard’s hyperreality and simulacra (b), and directly rejects totalizing grand narratives (c; Lyotard). It explicitly rejects totalizing systems of thought (d).
Question 56
Fill in the blank with the correct option:
Shaw borrowed the title of his play ‘The Doctor’s Dilemma’ from _____ story of the same name.
(1) Katherine Mansfield’s
(2) Austen’s
(3) Mrs. Gaskell’s
(4) Hesba Stretton’s
✅ Correct Answer: (4) Hesba Stretton’s
📖 Academic Rationale & Context: George Bernard Shaw borrowed the title for his 1906 satire ‘The Doctor’s Dilemma’ from Hesba Stretton’s 1872 novel/story of the exact same name.
Question 57
Fill in the blank with the correct option.
Character, according to Aristotle, should be _____.
(1) mediocre, flawed, tragic
(2) heroic, good, consistent, tragic
(3) good, appropriate, lifelike, consistent
(4) appropriate, heroic, simple
✅ Correct Answer: (3) good, appropriate, lifelike, consistent
📖 Academic Rationale & Context: In Chapter 15 of Poetics, Aristotle prescribes four essential requirements for characters in tragedy: they must be (1) good (chreston), (2) appropriate (harmotton), (3) lifelike / true to life (homoion), and (4) consistent (homalon).
Question 58
When a researcher examines unpublished manuscripts, personal diaries and contemporary
correspondences of an author in a university archive, what type of research material are they utilising?
(1) Peer-reviewed sources
(2) Primary sources
(3) Secondary sources
(4) Tertiary sources
✅ Correct Answer: (2) Primary sources
📖 Academic Rationale & Context: Unpublished manuscripts, personal journals, diaries, and contemporary letters created directly by the subject constitute firsthand, original evidentiary documents classified as primary sources.
Question 59
Choose the correct option:
According to Huxley, what did entertainment call for in the past ages, such as the Elizabethan era?
(1) Lack of technology, leisure, money
(2) Reading, writing and listening
(3) Intelligence, initiative and mental exertion
(4) Opulence and leisure
✅ Correct Answer: (3) Intelligence, initiative and mental exertion
📖 Academic Rationale & Context: In Aldous Huxley’s essay ‘Pleasures’, he observes that past entertainment demanded personal participation, imagination, intelligence, initiative, and mental exertion, whereas modern passive entertainment encourages mechanized lethargy.
Question 60
Match the following:
List-I (Work)
a. ‘Sita’ (poem)
b. Sita: An Illustrated Retelling of Ramayana
c. Sitayana (epic)
d. Sita: A Tale of Ancient Love
List-II (Author)
i. Devdutt Pattanaik
ii. Toru Dutt
iii. Bhanumathi Narasimhan
iv. Amit Majmudar
(1) a-ii, b-i, c-iv, d-iii
(2) a-ii, b-i, c-iii, d-iv
(3) a-i, b-ii, c-iii, d-iv
(4) a-iv, b-ii, c-i, d-iii
✅ Correct Answer: (1) a-ii, b-i, c-iv, d-iii
📖 Academic Rationale & Context: Toru Dutt wrote the famous poem ‘Sita’ (Ancient Ballads and Legends of Hindustan) (a-ii); Devdutt Pattanaik authored ‘Sita: An Illustrated Retelling of Ramayana’ (b-i); Amit Majmudar published ‘Sitayana: A Novel’ (c-iv); and Bhanumathi Narasimhan wrote ‘Sita: A Tale of Ancient Love’ (d-iii).
Question 61
Who among the following thinkers coined the terms: ‘ethnoscapes’, ‘technoscapes’, ‘finanscapes’,
‘mediascapes’ and ‘ideoscapes’ representing the global cultural flow?
(1) Jim Miller
(2) Dick Hebdige
(3) Nancy Fraser
(4) Arjun Appadurai
✅ Correct Answer: (4) Arjun Appadurai
📖 Academic Rationale & Context: Socio-cultural anthropologist Arjun Appadurai introduced these 5 ‘scapes’ in his influential 1990 essay ‘Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy’ (later in Modernity at Large, 1996) to describe disjunctive global cultural dimensions.
Question 62
Fill in the blank with the correct option:
The three-term label for classifying consonants is _____.
(1) the state of glottis, place of articulation, manner of articulation.
(2) the height of the tongue, state of glottis and place of articulation.
(3) manner of articulation, place of articulation, position of the tongue.
(4) the place of articulation, the manner of articulation and the position of the lips.
✅ Correct Answer: (1) the state of glottis, place of articulation, manner of articulation.
📖 Academic Rationale & Context: In standard articulatory phonetics, every consonant is described by a 3-term label specifying: (1) voicing / state of the glottis (voiced/voiceless), (2) place of articulation (e.g. bilabial, alveolar), and (3) manner of articulation (e.g. plosive, fricative).
Question 63
Coined by Franco Moretti in the late 1990s and early 2000s, what methodology uses computational
data and aggregation to analyse massive literary corpuses rather than reading individual texts closely?
(1) Distant Reading
(2) Close Reading
(3) Surface Reading
(4) Deconstruction
✅ Correct Answer: (1) Distant Reading
📖 Academic Rationale & Context: Franco Moretti coined the concept of ‘Distant Reading’ in ‘Conjectures on World Literature’ (2000) and Graphs, Maps, Trees (2005) as an alternative to New Critical close reading, using big-data computational corpus analytics.
Question 64
Who among the following linguists proposed the Theory of Universal Grammar and argued that all
languages share a common underlying structure, despite surface-level differences in their grammar and
vocabulary?
(1) Noam Chomsky
(2) Ferdinand de Saussure
(3) M.A.K. Halliday
(4) Roman Jakobson
✅ Correct Answer: (1) Noam Chomsky
📖 Academic Rationale & Context: Noam Chomsky pioneered generative linguistics and proposed Universal Grammar (UG), arguing that the capacity for language syntax is an innate biological faculty possessed by all human beings.
Question 65
Who introduced the phrase ‘cultural intermediaries’?
(1) Raymond Williams
(2) Pierre Bourdieu
(3) Antonio Gramsci
(4) Stuart Hall
✅ Correct Answer: (2) Pierre Bourdieu
📖 Academic Rationale & Context: French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu introduced ‘cultural intermediaries’ (les intermédiaires culturels) in Distinction (1979) to describe workers in marketing, media, public relations, and taste-making professions.
Question 66
The work of genetic criticism in literature entails what kind of activity?
(1) To analyse and identify mutual dependence of history, environment, social background and the completed work.
(2) To investigate the internal and affective fallacies of a given text.
(3) Meticulously studying the text for symbolism and latent meaning.
(4) Examining drafts, manuscripts and revisions to understand the process of literary creation.
✅ Correct Answer: (4) Examining drafts, manuscripts and revisions to understand the process of literary creation.
📖 Academic Rationale & Context: Genetic criticism (critique génétique), originating in France in the late 1960s, analyzes the avant-texte (working drafts, manuscripts, notebooks, margin notes, and revisions) to reconstruct the author’s creative writing process.
Question 67
Choose the option which is NOT true with regard to cultural studies:
(1) Cultural studies limits the object of study exclusively to ‘high art’ or canonical texts.
(2) Culture is political.
(3) Communication creates community.
(4) Meanings are never fixed; they are arrived at through a process of negotiation and exchange.
✅ Correct Answer: (1) Cultural studies limits the object of study exclusively to ‘high art’ or canonical texts.
📖 Academic Rationale & Context: Cultural studies explicitly rejected the Leavisite elitist focus on ‘high art’ and the Western canon, defining culture broadly as ‘a whole way of life’ (Raymond Williams) and embracing popular culture, youth culture, subcultures, and mass media.
Question 68
Fill in the blanks with the correct options.
_____ by Chitra Banerjee is a retelling of _____ from _____ point of view.
(1) The Palace of Illusions, Mahabharata, Gandhari’s
(2) The Forest of Enchantments, Ramayana, Valmiki’s
(3) The Forest of Enchantments, Ramayana, Sita’s
(4) The Palace of Illusions, Mahabharata, Ved Vyas’
✅ Correct Answer: (3) The Forest of Enchantments, Ramayana, Sita’s
📖 Academic Rationale & Context: Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s novel The Forest of Enchantments (2019) is a feminist retelling of the ancient epic Ramayana entirely from Sita’s first-person perspective. (Her earlier 2008 novel The Palace of Illusions retells the Mahabharata from Draupadi’s perspective).
Question 69
What does the term ‘galliambic’ mean? Choose the correct option:
(1) A metre associated with war songs.
(2) A metre associated with the worship of Cybele, the mother goddess.
(3) A metre associated with songs in marriage ceremony.
(4) A metre associated with elegiac songs.
✅ Correct Answer: (2) A metre associated with the worship of Cybele, the mother goddess.
📖 Academic Rationale & Context: Galliambic metre is an ancient Greek and Roman lyrical metre named after the Galli (the eunuch priests of the goddess Cybele). It was famously used by Catullus in Poem 63 (Attis) and imitated in English by Tennyson in ‘Boadicea’.
Question 70
Fill in the blank with the correct option.
Cultural studies is about _____.
(1) studying and researching critical theories of culture and environment.
(2) the fashion and social environment of a particular period.
(3) reading and interpreting only famous literature writers.
(4) power, and studies how power informs all acts of cultural production and meaning generation.
✅ Correct Answer: (4) power, and studies how power informs all acts of cultural production and meaning generation.
📖 Academic Rationale & Context: A defining tenet of British Cultural Studies (associated with Stuart Hall and the CCCS at Birmingham) is that culture cannot be separated from relations of power, ideology, and social stratification.
Question 71
Ethnographic research in literature studies involves which one of the following practices?
(1) Textual analysis without reference to any biographical, historical, political background.
(2) Looking for and locating the transcendental identified in the text.
(3) Immersing oneself in the community and culture from which the literary work originates to gather contextual insights.
(4) Isolating the text from the cultural context.
✅ Correct Answer: (3) Immersing oneself in the community and culture from which the literary work originates to gather contextual insights.
📖 Academic Rationale & Context: Literary ethnography uses participant observation, fieldwork, and direct immersion into the lived community, folklore, and socio-cultural environment to understand the lived context informing texts.
Question 72
Match Column-A with Column-B correctly:
Column-A
a. Primary and secondary imagination
b. Negative capability
c. Poetry as an expression of imagination
d. Language of poetry to be the language of common man
Column-B
i. William Wordsworth
ii. P.B. Shelley
iii. John Keats
iv. S.T. Coleridge
(1) a-i, b-ii, c-iii, d-iv
(2) a-iv, b-i, c-ii, d-iii
(3) a-iv, b-iii, c-ii, d-i
(4) a-ii, b-iv, c-i, d-iii
✅ Correct Answer: (3) a-iv, b-iii, c-ii, d-i
📖 Academic Rationale & Context: Coleridge distinguished Primary vs Secondary Imagination in Biographia Literaria (a-iv); Keats coined Negative Capability in an 1817 letter (b-iii); Shelley defined poetry as the expression of imagination in ‘A Defence of Poetry’ (c-ii); and Wordsworth advocated the language really used by men in Preface to Lyrical Ballads (d-i).
Question 73
Which Victorian critic advocated for the ‘Touchstone Method’ — comparing modern lines of poetry
against passages from great masters like Homer and Dante to objectively evaluate literary merit?
(1) John Ruskin
(2) Walter Pater
(3) Matthew Arnold
(4) Thomas Carlyle
✅ Correct Answer: (3) Matthew Arnold
📖 Academic Rationale & Context: Matthew Arnold introduced the Touchstone Method in his 1880 essay ‘The Study of Poetry’, proposing that critics keep in mind lines and expressions of the great masters (Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, Milton) as touchstones to judge high poetic quality.
Question 74
Match the items in Column-‘A’ with those in Column-‘B’:
Column-A
a. Contrapuntal Reading
b. Othering
c. Negritude
d. Mimicry, hybridity, ambivalence
Column-B
i. Senghor, Césaire
ii. Homi Bhabha
iii. Edward Said
iv. Gayatri Spivak
(1) a-iv, b-ii, c-i, d-iii
(2) a-iii, b-iv, c-i, d-ii
(3) a-ii, b-iv, c-i, d-iii
(4) a-iii, b-i, c-ii, d-iv
✅ Correct Answer: (2) a-iii, b-iv, c-i, d-ii
📖 Academic Rationale & Context: Contrapuntal reading was formulated by Edward Said in Culture and Imperialism (a-iii); ‘Othering’ as a systemic postcolonial critique was developed prominently by Gayatri Spivak (b-iv); Négritude was founded by Léopold Sédar Senghor and Aimé Césaire (c-i); and mimicry, hybridity, and ambivalence are foundational terms of Homi K. Bhabha (d-ii).
Question 75
Fill in the blanks with the correct option:
As stated in his essay, ‘What I Believe’, Forster believes in an aristocracy of _____.
(1) class consciousness, merit, imperialism
(2) the sensitive, the considerate, the plucky
(3) the sympathetic, indifference and submission
(4) power, rank, influence
✅ Correct Answer: (2) the sensitive, the considerate, the plucky
📖 Academic Rationale & Context: In E.M. Forster’s famous 1938 humanist essay ‘What I Believe’, he writes: ‘I believe in aristocracy, though — if that is the right word, and if a democrat may use it. Not an aristocracy of power, based upon rank and influence, but an aristocracy of the sensitive, the considerate and the plucky.’
Question 76
Relate the following statements to their respective texts:
a. Nalini is the moniker for Rosie in her public debut as a dancer.
b. Saleem is the unreliable narrator.
c. The story is set in Kerala’s Ayemenem.
d. The title symbolizes the degradation and humiliation of the Dalit community.
(i) The God of Small Things
(ii) ‘Joothan’
(iii) Midnight’s Children
(iv) The Guide
(1) a-iv, b-iii, c-i, d-ii
(2) a-ii, b-iii, c-iv, d-i
(3) a-i, b-iv, c-i, d-iii
(4) a-iv, b-i, c-ii, d-iii
✅ Correct Answer: (1) a-iv, b-iii, c-i, d-ii
📖 Academic Rationale & Context: In R.K. Narayan’s The Guide, Rosie takes the stage name Nalini (a-iv); Saleem Sinai is the self-confessed unreliable narrator in Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children (b-iii); Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things is set in Ayemenem, Kerala (c-i); and Omprakash Valmiki’s autobiographical Joothan derives its name from scraps of leftover food symbolizing Dalit oppression (d-ii).
Question 77
Which of the following is/are correct?
a. According to Raymond Williams ‘structures of feeling’ are the meanings and values that are lived and
felt and they are found in literary texts.
b. Raymond Williams argues that ‘determinations’ are not social acts and social formulations.
c. ‘Overdetermination’ is a term in cultural studies to describe the multiple forces that influence a cultural
form.
(1) a & c
(2) a & b
(3) a, b & c
(4) b & c
✅ Correct Answer: (1) a & c
📖 Academic Rationale & Context: Williams formulated ‘structures of feeling’ in The Long Revolution and Marxism and Literature as lived, emergent social experiences caught in art (statement a is true). Williams insisted that determination IS setting limits within social practice, not external fatalism (statement b is false). ‘Overdetermination’ (borrowed by Althusser from psychoanalysis) describes complex, multi-causal determination (statement c is true).
Question 78
The Devil’s Wind (1972) is a historical fiction about the role of _____ in the first Indian War of
Independence.
(1) Nana Saheb Peshwa
(2) Rani of Jhansi
(3) Chhatrapati Shivaji
(4) Tatya Tope
✅ Correct Answer: (1) Nana Saheb Peshwa
📖 Academic Rationale & Context: The Devil’s Wind: The Nana Saheb’s Story (1972) is a celebrated historical novel by Manohar Malgonkar presenting a sympathetic first-person account of Dhondu Pant (Nana Saheb) during the 1857 uprising.
Question 79
Read the following and choose the correct option:
a. The text turns the reader into a producer.
b. The text allows the reader only to be a passive consumer of a given fixed meaning.
(1) ‘a’ defines writerly text; ‘b’ defines readerly text.
(2) ‘a’ defines readerly text; ‘b’ defines writerly text.
(3) ‘a’ defines the implied reader; ‘b’ defines the actual reader.
(4) ‘a’ defines the actual reader; ‘b’ defines the implied reader.
✅ Correct Answer: (1) ‘a’ defines writerly text; ‘b’ defines readerly text.
📖 Academic Rationale & Context: In S/Z (1970), Roland Barthes distinguishes between the readerly text (texte lisible), which renders the reader a passive consumer, and the writerly text (texte scriptible), which invites the reader to become an active producer of meaning.
Question 80
Which of the following is/are correct?
a. In Dryden’s ‘An Essay on Dramatic Poesy’ Crites stands for the French.
b. Lisideius stands for the French (and Eugenius for the Moderns).
c. Eugenius stands for the Ancients.
d. Neander is in favour of tragi-comedy.
(1) d only
(2) b & c
(3) a & b
(4) a & d
✅ Correct Answer: (1) d only
📖 Academic Rationale & Context: In John Dryden’s An Essay of Dramatic Poesy (1668): Crites defends the Ancients; Eugenius champions the Modern English; Lisideius praises French neoclassical drama; and Neander (Dryden himself) defends English drama, especially tragi-comedy and Shakespeare. Thus only (d) is correct.
Question 81
Which one of the following plays has the alternative title ‘The World Well Lost’?
(1) Webster’s ‘The Duchess of Malfi’
(2) Dryden’s ‘The Conquest of Granada’
(3) Dryden’s ‘All for Love’
(4) Massinger’s ‘The Revenger’s Tragedy’
✅ Correct Answer: (3) Dryden’s ‘All for Love’
📖 Academic Rationale & Context: John Dryden’s 1677 heroic blank-verse tragedy is fully titled: All for Love; or, The World Well Lost, an adaptation of Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra conforming to the classical unities.
Question 82
Name the three kinds of estimates for assessing literary work as explained by Arnold:
(1) race, moment and milieu
(2) the real, the historic and the personal estimate
(3) objective, historic and fallacious estimate
(4) the touchstone method, close reading and biographical criticism
✅ Correct Answer: (2) the real, the historic and the personal estimate
📖 Academic Rationale & Context: In ‘The Study of Poetry’ (1880), Matthew Arnold argues that readers often form a ‘historic estimate’ (overvaluing old works for their historical position) or a ‘personal estimate’ (swayed by personal tastes), both of which are fallacious compared to the ‘real estimate’.
Question 83
Identify the correct term for the following research method:
‘Interpreting a text by analysing how meaning is generated through systems of signs, codes,
conventions.’
(1) Hermeneutics
(2) Archival Research
(3) Discourse Analysis
(4) Semiotics
✅ Correct Answer: (4) Semiotics
📖 Academic Rationale & Context: Semiotics (founded by Saussure and Peirce) is the formal study of signs and sign systems, examining how meaning is produced through structural codes, conventions, and signifiers.
Question 84
Match the item in Column-A correctly with those in Column-B:
Column-A
a. ibid.
b. op. cit.
c. loc. cit.
d. et al.
Column-B
i. and others
ii. in the place cited
iii. in the same place
iv. in the work cited
(1) a-iii, b-iv, c-ii, d-i
(2) a-iv, b-ii, c-i, d-iii
(3) a-i, b-iv, c-ii, d-iii
(4) a-ii, b-iv, c-iii, d-i
✅ Correct Answer: (1) a-iii, b-iv, c-ii, d-i
📖 Academic Rationale & Context: In classical scholarly citation: ‘ibid.’ (ibidem) = in the same place (a-iii); ‘op. cit.’ (opere citato) = in the work cited (b-iv); ‘loc. cit.’ (loco citato) = in the place/passage already cited (c-ii); and ‘et al.’ (et alii) = and others (d-i).
Question 85
Fill in the blank with the correct option:
The five sources of sublimity, according to Longinus, are founded on _____.
(1) the theme of poetry
(2) figures of speech
(3) command of language
(4) dignity and elevation / grandeur of thought
✅ Correct Answer: (4) dignity and elevation / grandeur of thought
📖 Academic Rationale & Context: In On the Sublime (Peri Hypsous), Longinus lists five authentic sources of the sublime, of which the foundational first two are innate: (1) grandeur of conception / lofty thoughts, and (2) strong and inspired emotion, which together constitute dignity and elevation.
Question 86
Fill in the blank with the correct option:
The concept of ‘hegemony’ is closely associated with _____.
(1) Pierre Macherey
(2) Richard Hoggart
(3) Antonio Gramsci
(4) Louis Althusser
✅ Correct Answer: (3) Antonio Gramsci
📖 Academic Rationale & Context: Italian Marxist theorist Antonio Gramsci developed the theory of cultural hegemony in his Prison Notebooks (Quaderni del carcere), explaining how the ruling class secures voluntary societal consent through cultural institutions.
Question 87
Choose the correct option:
Which tombstones and inscriptions are considered a satire on the dead, according to Addison?
(1) Tombstones covered with exaggerated praise and flattery.
(2) Tombstones with epitaphs in a foreign language.
(3) The empty monuments of the departed.
(4) Those that mention only the dates of birth and death.
✅ Correct Answer: (1) Tombstones covered with exaggerated praise and flattery.
📖 Academic Rationale & Context: In Spectator No. 26 (‘Reflections in Westminster Abbey’, 1711), Joseph Addison remarks that monumental inscriptions praising unworthy men with extravagant virtues read as a bitter satire on the departed.
Question 88
In which Dickens’ novel does the character named Mr. Choakumchild appear?
(1) Hard Times
(2) Nicholas Nickleby
(3) A Christmas Carol
(4) Bleak House
✅ Correct Answer: (1) Hard Times
📖 Academic Rationale & Context: Mr. M’Choakumchild is the schoolmaster in Coketown in Charles Dickens’ 1854 industrial satire Hard Times, tasked by Thomas Gradgrind with teaching exclusively cold, hard facts.
Question 89
Which theoretical framework challenges traditional anthropocentrism by examining the blurred
boundaries between humans, technology and animals in a rapidly advancing technological landscape?
(1) Formalism
(2) Psychoanalytic criticism
(3) Liberal Humanism
(4) Posthumanism
✅ Correct Answer: (4) Posthumanism
📖 Academic Rationale & Context: Posthumanism (developed by thinkers like Donna Haraway, Cary Wolfe, and Rosi Braidotti) deconstructs the human/animal and human/machine divides, critiquing Enlightenment anthropocentrism.
Question 90
Which of the following terms was first introduced by Gilbert Ryle and later was developed in the
predominant sense in which it is used today by Clifford Geertz?
(1) Bricolage
(2) Thick description
(3) Thatcherism
(4) Semiotics
✅ Correct Answer: (2) Thick description
📖 Academic Rationale & Context: The term ‘thick description’ was coined by philosopher Gilbert Ryle (1949/1968) in his analysis of a wink vs. a twitch, and famously adopted by cultural anthropologist Clifford Geertz in The Interpretation of Cultures (1973).
Question 91
Choose the correct option and fill in the blanks:
Roland Barthes’ essay ‘The Death of the Author’ begins with the analysis of a passage from _____.
(1) T.S. Eliot’s poetic drama Murder in the Cathedral
(2) Balzac’s novella Sarrasine
(3) Ernest Hemingway’s novel The Old Man and The Sea
(4) D.H. Lawrence’s novel Women in Love
✅ Correct Answer: (2) Balzac’s novella Sarrasine
📖 Academic Rationale & Context: Barthes opens ‘The Death of the Author’ (1967) quoting a line about a castrato disguised as a woman from Honoré de Balzac’s novella Sarrasine: ‘This was woman herself, with her sudden fears, her irrational whims…’
Question 92
Fill in the blank with the correct option:
The Restoration form of comedy was greatly influenced by _____.
(1) Molière
(2) Menander
(3) Aristophanes
(4) Sheridan
✅ Correct Answer: (1) Molière
📖 Academic Rationale & Context: When the English court returned from exile in France during the Restoration of 1660, playwrights like Etherege, Wycherley, and Congreve modeled their witty, satirical comedies of manners heavily on the French comedies of Molière.
Question 93
Which of the following statement(s) is/are correct about Miller’s ‘Death of a Salesman’? Choose the
correct option:
a. It is about the failure of the American Dream.
b. Happy’s real name is Harold.
c. Biff wants to get rid of his father’s ‘phoney dream’.
d. Biff was jailed for three years.
(1) d & c
(2) b & d
(3) a & c
(4) a, b & c
✅ Correct Answer: (4) a, b & c
📖 Academic Rationale & Context: Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman (1949) critiques the corrupting myth of the American Dream (a); Happy’s full name is Harold Loman (b); Biff confronts Willy’s phoney dream (‘I’m a dime a dozen, and so are you!’) (c); Biff was actually jailed for 3 months (not three years) in Kansas City for stealing a suit.
Question 94
Identify the correct statements. Choose from the given options:
a. The exclusion of nature’s participation from mourning the Shepherd’s death is a feature of the pastoral
elegy.
b. ‘The discovery of likeness in things apparently unlike’ defines the metaphysical conceit.
c. The mock-epic or heroic poem imitates the epic genre and applies it to narrate a trivial subject
mockingly.
d. Pope defined ‘True wit’ as ‘What oft was thought, but ne’er so well expressed.’
(1) a & c
(2) b & d
(3) b, c & d
(4) a & d
✅ Correct Answer: (3) b, c & d
📖 Academic Rationale & Context: Pastoral elegy INVOLVES nature’s mourning (pathetic fallacy), so (a) is false. Dr. Johnson defined conceit as finding similitude in things unlike (b); mock-epic applies high epic style to low subjects (c); and Pope coined that exact definition in An Essay on Criticism (d).
Question 95
Identify which of the following is/are correct?
a. Freud focuses on the author and/or character in a literary work.
b. Lacan does not focus on the language of the text.
c. Lacan’s distinction between the imaginary and the symbolic corresponds to Kristeva’s distinction
between the semiotic and the symbolic.
(1) b & c
(2) a & c
(3) a, b & c
(4) a & b
✅ Correct Answer: (2) a & c
📖 Academic Rationale & Context: Freudian psychoanalysis famously psychoanalyzes characters and authors (statement a). Lacan famously declared ‘the unconscious is structured like a language’, making statement (b) false. Julia Kristeva explicitly mapped her ‘semiotic’ and ‘symbolic’ onto Lacan’s imaginary and symbolic orders (statement c).
Question 96
Read the following and choose the correct option:
a. In Donne’s ‘The Sunne Rising’, ‘Saucy pedantic’ refers to the Sun, ‘ants’ to ‘country ants / farm
workers’, ‘the King’ to ‘King James I’.
b. In Marvell’s ‘The Garden’, in the lines ‘The Gods that mortal beauty chase, / Still in a tree did end their
race’, the Gods referred to are Apollo & Pan, ‘Tree’ refers to the laurel and the reed.
c. ‘Life-in-Death’ wins the Ancient Mariner in the play of dice for the ship’s crew in Coleridge’s The Rime
of the Ancient Mariner.
d. ‘There is a dark / Invisible workmanship that reconciles / Discordant elements, and makes them move /
In one society’ are lines from Wordsworth’s ‘Immortality Ode’.
(1) a & d
(2) b & c
(3) b & d
(4) a & c
✅ Correct Answer: (4) a & c
📖 Academic Rationale & Context: In Donne’s poem, ‘busy old fool, unruly sun… saucy pedantic wretch’ addresses the Sun, ‘country ants’ refers to harvesters, and ‘go tell court huntsmen that the king will ride’ refers to King James I (a is true). In Coleridge, Life-in-Death wins the Mariner while Death wins the crew (c is true). Marvell refers to Apollo/Daphne (laurel) and Pan/Syrinx (reed). The lines in (d) are from The Prelude, Book I (not Immortality Ode).
Question 97
Post-independence Indian drama is termed as ‘Theatre of Roots’ championed by Habib Tanvir, B.V.
Karanth and K.N. Panikkar. Which of the following best describes its philosophical objective?
(1) To decolonize the Indian stage by creating authentic modern Indian theatrical language.
(2) To prove that regional theatres are inferior.
(3) To strictly replicate ancient Sanskrit plays.
(4) To completely abandon native Indian aesthetic tradition.
✅ Correct Answer: (1) To decolonize the Indian stage by creating authentic modern Indian theatrical language.
📖 Academic Rationale & Context: Suresh Awasthi coined the term ‘Theatre of Roots’ in the 1970s to describe the movement where directors integrated traditional folk theatrical forms (Nautanki, Yakshagana, Kathakali, Bhavai) to decolonize Indian theatre from Western proscenium realism.
Question 98
What is the term coined by Derrida to express not only difference but endless deferment
(postponement) / endless deferral of meaning?
(1) trace
(2) logocentrism
(3) différance
(4) erasure
✅ Correct Answer: (3) différance
📖 Academic Rationale & Context: Jacques Derrida created the neographism ‘différance’ (spelled with an ‘a’) combining the two senses of the French verb différer: to differ (spatially) and to defer/postpone (temporally).
Question 99
Identify the correct option about the given play:
The Spanish Tragedy
a. is a revenge play.
b. is also known as Hieronimo is Mad Again.
c. does not have Senecan elements.
d. is written by Thomas Kyd.
(1) a, b & d
(2) a, b & c
(3) a, c & d
(4) b, c & d
✅ Correct Answer: (1) a, b & d
📖 Academic Rationale & Context: Thomas Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy (c. 1587) is the archetype of the Elizabethan revenge tragedy (a); its popular alternative title was Hieronimo is Mad Again (b); it is authored by Thomas Kyd (d); it is thoroughly saturated with Senecan elements (ghost, chorus, vengeance, soliloquies), making (c) incorrect.
Question 100
Which of the following are correct?
a. In Stanza II of Adonais by Shelley the ‘Mighty Mother’ is Urania and ‘Son’ refers to Keats.
b. In these lines from Dryden’s ‘Absalom and Achitophel’: ‘A man so various that he seem’d to be / Not
one, but all Mankind’s Epitome’ — ‘he’ refers to Titus Oates.
c. In a dramatic monologue, a single person, not the poet, utters the speech.
(1) a & c
(2) a & b
(3) b & c
(4) a, b & c
✅ Correct Answer: (1) a & c
📖 Academic Rationale & Context: In Shelley’s Adonais, the Mighty Mother is the heavenly muse Urania mourning Keats (a is true). In Dryden’s Absalom and Achitophel, the famous character ‘Zimri’ represents George Villiers, 2nd Duke of Buckingham (not Titus Oates, who is Corah) (b is false). M.H. Abrams defines dramatic monologue as spoken by a single person distinct from the poet (c is true).
Question 101
Which of the following is/are correct?
a. [b] is an allophone of /p/.
b. /p/ and /b/ are phonemes.
c. The smallest unit at the level of the word is a phoneme.
d. Each language has its own set of phonemes.
(1) a & b
(2) a & c
(3) c & d
(4) b & d
✅ Correct Answer: (4) b & d
📖 Academic Rationale & Context: In English, /p/ and /b/ are distinct phonemes because they form minimal pairs (e.g. pat/bat) (b is correct). Every human language has its own distinct inventory of phonemes (d is correct). [b] is not an allophone of /p/ (aspirated [p■] and unaspirated [p] are allophones of /p/). The smallest unit of grammatical/lexical meaning is a morpheme (c is inaccurate).
Question 102
Fill in the blanks with the correct option:
In Austen’s Mansfield Park, _____ initially falls in love with Mary; and Julia elopes with _____.
(1) Edmund, Yates
(2) Yates, Henry
(3) Henry, Edmund
(4) Norris, Tom
✅ Correct Answer: (1) Edmund, Yates
📖 Academic Rationale & Context: In Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park (1814), Edmund Bertram initially falls in love with Mary Crawford, while Julia Bertram elopes with Mr. John Yates (following Maria’s scandal with Henry Crawford).
Question 103
Which famous 1886 glossary stands as a definitive historical record of Anglo-Indian words and
phrases?
(1) The Oxford English Dictionary
(2) Hobson-Jobson
(3) Johnson’s Dictionary
(4) Webster’s Dictionary
✅ Correct Answer: (2) Hobson-Jobson
📖 Academic Rationale & Context: Hobson-Jobson: A Glossary of Colloquial Anglo-Indian Words and Phrases, and of Kindred Terms, compiled by Sir Henry Yule and Arthur Coke Burnell, was published in 1886.
Question 104
Which of the following is/are correct?
a. The word ‘Unlikely’ has two morphemes: ‘Un’ and ‘likely’.
b. A morpheme may have one or more allomorphs.
c. Allomorphs cannot be described in terms of morphemes.
d. Allomorphs occur in predictable environments.
(1) a & b
(2) a & c
(3) b & d
(4) a & d
✅ Correct Answer: (3) b & d
📖 Academic Rationale & Context: ‘Unlikely’ contains three morphemes: un- + like + -ly (a is false). A morpheme often has positional variants called allomorphs (e.g. English plural /-s/, /-z/, /-■z/) (b is true), which are phonologically or morphologically conditioned in predictable environments (d is true).
Question 105
Fill in the blank with the correct option:
Pope’s critical theory is based on _____.
(1) study of the ancient models and their methods
(2) morality and didactism
(3) delight and instruction
(4) imitation of the Moderns and their criticism
✅ Correct Answer: (1) study of the ancient models and their methods
📖 Academic Rationale & Context: In An Essay on Criticism (1711), Alexander Pope famously advises critics: ‘Learn hence for ancient rules a just esteem; / To copy Nature is to copy them’ — advocating the careful study of ancient Greco-Roman rules and classical masters.
Question 106
Fill in the blanks with the correct option:
The principle of Gradation involves simplifying the matter, grading of language materials on the basis of
_____.
(1) Simplicity, ignorance and entry level
(2) Teachability, familiarity, accuracy and correction
(3) Simplicity, familiarity and teachability
(4) Active and passive vocabulary and practice drills
✅ Correct Answer: (3) Simplicity, familiarity and teachability
📖 Academic Rationale & Context: In English Language Teaching (ELT) methodology and syllabus design, gradation entails selecting and ordering linguistic items according to principles of simplicity (from simple to complex), familiarity (from known to unknown), and teachability.
Question 107
Which of the following is/are correct?
a. T.E. Hulme and Ezra Pound were associated with the Imagist movement.
b. ‘Art for Art’s sake’ is defined as ‘adventures of a soul among masterpieces’ by Anatole France.
c. Lytton Strachey defined a work of art by a definable critical principle.
d. The term New Criticism was coined by John Crowe Ransom.
(1) a, c & d
(2) a, b & d
(3) b, c & d
(4) a, b & c
✅ Correct Answer: (2) a, b & d
📖 Academic Rationale & Context: Hulme, Pound, and H.D. were central founders of Imagism (a); Anatole France celebrated aesthetic impressionism as ‘the adventures of a soul among masterpieces’ (La vie littéraire) (b); John Crowe Ransom established the label with his 1941 book The New Criticism (d).
Question 108
When applying Dick Hebdige’s theory of subcultures to a contemporary novel, what is a critic
most likely exploring?
(1) How marginalised groups appropriate and recontextualize everyday style and language as a form of symbolic
resistance.
(2) The traditional folklore and mythological origins of the nation state.
(3) The psychological process of a singular completely isolated individual.
(4) The formal poetic structures of traditional sonnets written by elite authors.
✅ Correct Answer: (1) How marginalised groups appropriate and recontextualize everyday style and language as a form of symbolic resistance.
📖 Academic Rationale & Context: In Subculture: The Meaning of Style (1979), Dick Hebdige analyzes how youth subcultures (punks, mods, rastas) utilize bricolage to resignify commodities and styles as forms of symbolic rebellion against dominant bourgeois hegemony.
Question 109
Choose the option which is NOT correct regarding Vorticism:
(1) The dominant figure in this movement was Wyndham Lewis.
(2) The movement was disbanded in 1939.
(3) It was a radical movement in the visual arts and literature.
(4) The magazine Blast published the manifesto of the movement.
✅ Correct Answer: (2) The movement was disbanded in 1939.
📖 Academic Rationale & Context: Vorticism was short-lived: founded in 1914 by Wyndham Lewis and Ezra Pound, it dissolved shortly after World War I around 1915–1919 (its second and final issue of Blast appeared in July 1915). It was certainly not disbanded in 1939.
Question 110
Which poets use the following rhyme schemes in their sonnets? Choose the correct option:
a. abab, cdcd, efef, gg
b. abab, bcbc, cdcd, ee
c. abba, abba, cde, cde
(1) a – Shakespeare; b – Spenser; c – Milton
(2) a & b – Milton; c – Spenser
(3) a – Shakespeare; b – Milton; c – Spenser
(4) a – Spenser; b – Shakespeare; c – Milton
✅ Correct Answer: (1) a – Shakespeare; b – Spenser; c – Milton
📖 Academic Rationale & Context: The English or Shakespearean sonnet rhymes abab cdcd efef gg; the Spenserian sonnet uses interlocking rhymes abab bcbc cdcd ee; and the Italian / Petrarchan / Miltonic sonnet typically uses an octave abba abba and a sestet cde cde.
Question 111
Fill in the blank with the correct option:
Henchard in Hardy’s ‘The Mayor of Casterbridge’ entrusts Lucetta’s letters to _____.
(1) Newson
(2) Joshua Jopp
(3) Susan
(4) Elizabeth-Jane
✅ Correct Answer: (2) Joshua Jopp
📖 Academic Rationale & Context: In Thomas Hardy’s The Mayor of Casterbridge (Chapter 36), Michael Henchard asks Joshua Jopp to deliver Lucetta’s compromising love letters to her. Jopp bears a grudge, opens the letters, and publicly reads them at Peter’s Finger, sparking the disastrous Skimmity-ride.
Question 112
Fill in the blanks with the correct option:
In Lawrence’s ‘The Rainbow’ Tom marries _____ who is _____.
(1) Anna, English
(2) Lydia, Austrian
(3) Ursula, German
(4) Lydia, Polish
✅ Correct Answer: (4) Lydia, Polish
📖 Academic Rationale & Context: In D.H. Lawrence’s The Rainbow (1915), Tom Brangwen of Marsh Farm falls in love with and marries Lydia Lensky, a widowed Polish refugee and curate’s housekeeper.
Question 113
Which one of the following defines a language variety typical of certain disciplines, topic fields,
occupations and social roles played by the speaker?
(1) register
(2) dialect
(3) pidgin
(4) creole
✅ Correct Answer: (1) register
📖 Academic Rationale & Context: In sociolinguistics, a ‘register’ is a functional language variety defined by the social context, field/domain of discourse, occupational purpose, and relationship between speakers (e.g. legal register, medical register).
Question 114
Match the characters correctly with the texts they occur in:
Column-A
a. Provis
b. The Gentleman of Bath
c. Molly Seagrim
d. Becky Sharp
Column-B
i. Tom Jones
ii. Vanity Fair
iii. Great Expectations
iv. Moll Flanders
(1) a-iv, b-i, c-ii, d-iii
(2) a-ii, b-iv, c-i, d-iii
(3) a-iii, b-iv, c-i, d-ii
(4) a-i, b-ii, c-iv, d-iii
✅ Correct Answer: (3) a-iii, b-iv, c-i, d-ii
📖 Academic Rationale & Context: Provis (Magwitch) is Pip’s benefactor in Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations (a-iii); ‘The Gentleman of Bath’ is one of Moll’s lovers in Daniel Defoe’s Moll Flanders (b-iv); Molly Seagrim is Tom’s first lover in Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones (c-i); and Becky Sharp is the antiheroine of Thackeray’s Vanity Fair (d-ii).
Question 115
Match the following:
List-I (Character)
a. Raina Petkoff
b. Helena
c. Krogstad
d. Helena Charles
List-II (Play)
i. A Doll’s House
ii. Look Back in Anger
iii. A Midsummer Night’s Dream
iv. Arms and the Man
(1) a-iv, b-ii, c-i, d-iii
(2) a-ii, b-i, c-iv, d-iii
(3) a-iv, b-iii, c-i, d-ii
(4) a-ii, b-iv, c-i, d-iii
✅ Correct Answer: (3) a-iv, b-iii, c-i, d-ii
📖 Academic Rationale & Context: Raina Petkoff is the heroine of G.B. Shaw’s Arms and the Man (a-iv); Helena loves Demetrius in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream (b-iii); Nils Krogstad is the blackmailing clerk in Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House (c-i); and Helena Charles is Alison’s actress friend in John Osborne’s Look Back in Anger (d-ii).
Question 116
Read the following and choose the correct option:
A. A child acquires proficiency in the mother tongue as a result of natural and random exposure to
language.
B. A child acquires proficiency in a language through language teaching, exposure being in the form of
graded structures.
(1) ‘A’ is language learning, ‘B’ is language acquisition.
(2) ‘A’ is language acquisition, ‘B’ is language learning.
(3) A is the result of B.
(4) B is the result of A.
✅ Correct Answer: (2) ‘A’ is language acquisition, ‘B’ is language learning.
📖 Academic Rationale & Context: In Stephen Krashen’s Second Language Acquisition theory, ‘acquisition’ is the subconscious, natural process of developing fluency through immersion and comprehensible input (Statement A), whereas ‘learning’ is the conscious, formal process resulting from explicit instruction and graded pedagogical drills (Statement B).
Question 117
Fill in the blank with the correct option:
The poet, according to Ben Jonson, is _____ and poetry is _____.
(1) marker, feigner, fiction
(2) maker, feigner, fiction
(3) symbolist, poet, experience
(4) realist, imitator, real
✅ Correct Answer: (2) maker, feigner, fiction
📖 Academic Rationale & Context: In Timber; or, Discoveries (1640), under the section De Poetica, Ben Jonson defines the poet: ‘A poet is that which by the Greeks is called a maker, or a feigner: his art, an art of imitation or feigning; expressing the life of man in fit measure, numbers, and harmony according to nature: from the word poiein, which signifies to make, or feign… Hence he is called a maker: so his work is called a poem; the art of the work, poesy; and the matter of it, fiction.’
Question 118
Match Column-A with Column-B correctly:
Column-A
a. ‘Not fierce Othello in so loud a strain / Roar’d for the Handkerchief that caus’d his pain’
b. ‘Thy dewy fingers draw / The gradual dusky veil.’
c. ‘Th’ applause of list’ning senates to command, / The threats of pain and ruin to despise’
d. ‘Caught in that sensual music all neglect / Monuments of unageing intellect.’
Column-B
i. Thomas Gray
ii. Alexander Pope
iii. W.B. Yeats
iv. William Collins
(1) a-i, b-iv, c-i, d-iii
(2) a-ii, b-iv, c-i, d-iii
(3) a-ii, b-i, c-iii, d-iv
(4) a-i, b-ii, c-iv, d-iii
✅ Correct Answer: (2) a-ii, b-iv, c-i, d-iii
📖 Academic Rationale & Context: Lines from Pope’s The Rape of the Lock (Canto V, lines 105-106) (a-ii); William Collins’ ‘Ode to Evening’ (lines 39-40) (b-iv); Thomas Gray’s ‘Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard’ (stanza 16) (c-i); and W.B. Yeats’ ‘Sailing to Byzantium’ (stanza 1) (d-iii).
Question 119
Fill in the blanks with the correct option:
If you use Hindi for one friend, and English for another in conversation, it is called _____. If you use a
language and mix words, phrases and sentences from another language, it is called _____.
(1) code switching, code mixing
(2) code mixing, code switching
(3) diglossia, bidialectism
(4) pidgin, creole
✅ Correct Answer: (1) code switching, code mixing
📖 Academic Rationale & Context: In sociolinguistics, alternating between whole languages depending on interlocutor or social setting is code switching (inter-sentential alternation), whereas inserting elements, vocabulary, or clauses from one language into another within an utterance is code mixing (intra-sentential insertion).
Question 120
Which one of the following is correct with reference to Bacon’s ‘Of Love’?
(1) Nuptial love corrupts and debases mankind, friendly love makes it and wanton love perfects it.
(2) Wanton love corrupts mankind, nuptial love demeans it, friendly love extols it.
(3) Friendly love corrupts mankind, wanton love makes it, nuptial love perfects it.
(4) Nuptial love makes mankind, friendly love perfects it and wanton love corrupts and debases it.
✅ Correct Answer: (4) Nuptial love makes mankind, friendly love perfects it and wanton love corrupts and debases it.
📖 Academic Rationale & Context: In the concluding sentence of Francis Bacon’s essay ‘Of Love’ (Essays, 1625), he writes: ‘Nuptial love maketh mankind; friendly love perfecteth it; but wanton love corrupteth, and embaseth it.’
Question 121
Who among the following wrote the essay ‘A Proposal for Correcting, Improving and Ascertaining
the English Tongue’ (1712)?
(1) Paul Thomas Mann
(2) Alexander Pope
(3) Jonathan Swift
(4) Richard Steele
✅ Correct Answer: (3) Jonathan Swift
📖 Academic Rationale & Context: Jonathan Swift addressed his famous 1712 proposal to the Earl of Oxford, advocating for an English Academy (similar to the Académie Française) to fix and stabilize the English language against slang and corruption.
Question 122
Choose the correct option indicating William Blake’s poem which begins with the following lines:
‘I was angry with my friend; / I told my wrath, my wrath did end.’
(1) ‘A Poison Tree’
(2) ‘The Sick Rose’
(3) ‘The Voice of the Ancient Bard’
(4) ‘The Garden of Love’
✅ Correct Answer: (1) ‘A Poison Tree’
📖 Academic Rationale & Context: William Blake’s poem ‘A Poison Tree’ (from Songs of Experience, 1794) opens with: ‘I was angry with my friend; / I told my wrath, my wrath did end. / I was angry with my foe: / I told it not, my wrath did grow.’
Question 123
Which one of the following poems mourns the death of Arthur H. Hallam?
(1) Tennyson’s ‘The Lotos Eaters’
(2) Browning’s ‘Andrea del Sarto’
(3) Tennyson’s ‘In Memoriam’
(4) Arnold’s ‘Dover Beach’
✅ Correct Answer: (3) Tennyson’s ‘In Memoriam’
📖 Academic Rationale & Context: Alfred Lord Tennyson composed In Memoriam A.H.H. over 17 years to mourn the sudden death of his Cambridge Apostle friend Arthur Henry Hallam in 1833.
Question 124
Fill in the blank with the correct option:
The blending of Hindi, other regional languages and English vocabulary and syntax in daily informal
communication is defined as _____.
(1) Hinglish
(2) King’s English
(3) Queen’s English
(4) Butler English
✅ Correct Answer: (1) Hinglish
📖 Academic Rationale & Context: Hinglish is the popular portmanteau designating the hybrid variety combining Hindi and English lexical, grammatical, and phonological features widely used across contemporary urban India.
Question 125
Fill in the blank with the correct option:
In literary research primary sources refer to _____.
(1) the author’s original fiction/non-fiction texts under study.
(2) articles in journals that discuss the background of the author’s works, and his/her intention.
(3) biographical materials and critical books about the author under study.
(4) all published critiques of the author’s works.
✅ Correct Answer: (1) the author’s original fiction/non-fiction texts under study.
📖 Academic Rationale & Context: In literary studies and textual research, primary sources are the original literary artifacts, poems, plays, and novels themselves that are subjected to interpretation, whereas secondary sources are the critiques and commentaries written about them.
Question 126
Choose the correct option:
Which of these are characteristics of bad writing according to Orwell?
a. Verbal false limbs
b. Pretentious Diction
c. Varied Vocabulary
d. Short Sentences
(1) c & d
(2) b & c
(3) a & b
(4) a & d
✅ Correct Answer: (3) a & b
📖 Academic Rationale & Context: In George Orwell’s 1946 essay ‘Politics and the English Language’, he catalogues four major swindles of bad prose: (1) Dying metaphors, (2) Operators or verbal false limbs, (3) Pretentious diction, and (4) Meaningless words. Orwell strongly advocated short words and short sentences.
Question 127
Which of the following is/are correct?
a. New Historicism discourages the parallel reading of literary and non-literary texts.
b. New Historicism is not a ‘theory’ or an ‘approach’, in the sense that applies to psychoanalysis or
deconstruction.
c. Stephen Greenblatt used the term ‘New Historicism’ initially.
d. The British counterpart of New Historicism is Cultural Materialism.
(1) c, a & d
(2) a, b & d
(3) b, c & d
(4) a, b & c
✅ Correct Answer: (3) b, c & d
📖 Academic Rationale & Context: New Historicism actively promotes (rather than discourages) the parallel reading of literary and non-literary archival texts (Louis Montrose’s ‘the historicity of texts and textuality of history’), making (a) false. Stephen Greenblatt popularized the term in 1982 (c); it resists being a rigid systematic doctrine (b); and British Cultural Materialism (Dollimore, Sinfield) is its Marxist/cultural materialist counterpart (d).
Question 128
Which school of literary theory arising in the 1980s through figures like Stephen Greenblatt
insists that literature must be studied parallel to its non-literary historical context?
(1) Russian Formalism
(2) New Historicism
(3) The Frankfurt School
(4) Deconstruction
✅ Correct Answer: (2) New Historicism
📖 Academic Rationale & Context: New Historicism emerged in American Renaissance studies in the early 1980s led by Stephen Greenblatt, reading literary texts side-by-side with court records, medical documents, travelogues, and political tracts.
Question 129
What is the primary objective of Hermeneutics in literary research?
(1) The quantitative assessment of word frequency using computer algorithm.
(2) The legal verification of intellectual property ownership and copyright expiration.
(3) The theory and methodology of interpretation especially for textual meaning.
(4) The physical restoration of degraded parchment and leather book binding.
✅ Correct Answer: (3) The theory and methodology of interpretation especially for textual meaning.
📖 Academic Rationale & Context: Hermeneutics (from Hermes, the messenger god) is the formal theory, methodology, and philosophy of textual interpretation, exploring how meaning is understood across historical distances (Schleiermacher, Dilthey, Gadamer, Ricoeur).
Question 130
According to Bertrand Russell, what is the danger of purely classical (literary) education?
(1) It leads to viewing things more practically and strengthens endurance.
(2) It can encourage philistinism and teach to cope with problems.
(3) It leads to too little engagement with philosophy and spiritualism and prepare us to face reality.
(4) It can lead to undue worship of the past and a sense of remoteness from actual life in the present.
✅ Correct Answer: (4) It can lead to undue worship of the past and a sense of remoteness from actual life in the present.
📖 Academic Rationale & Context: In On Education (1926) and In Praise of Idleness, Bertrand Russell warned that an exclusively classical, literary curriculum risks fostering an excessive veneration of antiquity, making students alienated from contemporary scientific and social realities.
Question 131
Which among the following is the unfinished work of Mary Wollstonecraft?
(1) Maria: or, The Wrongs of Woman
(2) A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
(3) Mary: A Fiction
(4) Thoughts on the Education of Daughters
✅ Correct Answer: (1) Maria: or, The Wrongs of Woman
📖 Academic Rationale & Context: Maria: or, The Wrongs of Woman was left unfinished at Mary Wollstonecraft’s untimely death in 1797 following childbirth, and was posthumously edited and published in 1798 by her husband William Godwin.
Question 132
Which of the following are correct? Choose the correct option:
a. Okonkwo is not the protagonist in Achebe’s Things Fall Apart.
b. Homer and some of the characters in the Iliad are loosely referenced in Derek Walcott’s Omeros.
c. Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale is a dystopian novel narrated by Ofglen.
d. The narrator in Raja Rao’s Kanthapura is a woman from the village — Achakka.
(1) a & c
(2) c & d
(3) a & b
(4) b & d
✅ Correct Answer: (4) b & d
📖 Academic Rationale & Context: Okonkwo IS the protagonist of Things Fall Apart (a is false). Derek Walcott’s Caribbean epic Omeros (1990) loosely reworks Homer and characters like Philoctete and Achille (b is true). The narrator of Atwood’s novel is Offred, not Ofglen (c is false). Kanthapura is narrated by the old village matriarch Achakka (d is true).
Question 133
Fill in the blank with the correct option:
Absurdist literature views _____.
(1) the human condition real and literature fictitious
(2) both human condition and literature as absurd.
(3) the human condition as divine and literature as absurd
(4) the human condition as absurd and literature as divine.
✅ Correct Answer: (2) both human condition and literature as absurd.
📖 Academic Rationale & Context: Martin Esslin in The Theatre of the Absurd explains that absurdist writers (Beckett, Ionesco, Camus) abandon rational cause-and-effect dramaturgy because they view the human condition itself as inherently devoid of metaphysical meaning (absurd), creating literature that formally reflects that absurdity.
Question 134
Match the items in Column-A with those in Column-B correctly:
Column-A
a. dissociation of sensibility
b. pseudo statements
c. structure and texture
d. paradox and irony
Column-B
i. I.A. Richards
ii. J.C. Ransom
iii. Cleanth Brooks
iv. T.S. Eliot
(1) a-ii, b-iii, c-i, d-iv
(2) a-ii, b-iv, c-ii, d-i
(3) a-iv, b-i, c-ii, d-iii
(4) a-iv, b-ii, c-iii, d-i
✅ Correct Answer: (3) a-iv, b-i, c-ii, d-iii
📖 Academic Rationale & Context: T.S. Eliot coined ‘dissociation of sensibility’ in ‘The Metaphysical Poets’ (a-iv); I.A. Richards formulated ‘pseudo-statements’ in Science and Poetry (b-i); John Crowe Ransom established ‘structure and texture’ in The World’s Body (c-ii); and Cleanth Brooks championed ‘paradox and irony’ in The Well Wrought Urn (d-iii).
Question 135
Read the following and choose the correct option:
a. ‘I, Too’ is written by Langston Hughes protesting American racism.
b. A.D. Hope in his poem ‘Australia’ describes his country as a nation of buildings and stones.
c. ‘O Captain! My Captain!’ mourns the death of Thomas Jefferson.
d. The curtal sonnet was invented by G.M. Hopkins.
(1) c & d
(2) a & d
(3) a & b
(4) b & c
✅ Correct Answer: (2) a & d
📖 Academic Rationale & Context: Langston Hughes wrote ‘I, Too’ (‘I, too, sing America / I am the darker brother’) (a is true). A.D. Hope described Australia as ‘without songs, architecture, history’ — NOT a nation of buildings (b is false). Whitman’s ‘O Captain! My Captain!’ mourns Abraham Lincoln, not Jefferson (c is false). Hopkins invented the 10.5-line curtal sonnet in ‘Pied Beauty’ (d is true).
Question 136
According to the Official Languages Act, what was the status of English after 1965?
(1) It was to be completely replaced by Hindi.
(2) It was to be phased out gradually.
(3) It was to be retained as an associate language.
(4) It was designated as an official language.
✅ Correct Answer: (3) It was to be retained as an associate language.
📖 Academic Rationale & Context: Under Section 3 of the Official Languages Act 1963 (amended 1967), English was provided indefinite continuation as an ‘associate additional official language’ alongside Hindi for official purposes of the Union and in Parliament.
Question 137
In Kachru’s Model which circle includes countries where English is primarily an institutionalized
Second Language (L2) often due to historical colonial contact?
(1) Expanding circle
(2) Outer circle
(3) Central circle
(4) Inner circle
✅ Correct Answer: (2) Outer circle
📖 Academic Rationale & Context: Braj Kachru’s Three Concentric Circles of English (1985) classifies: Inner Circle (norm-providing, L1, e.g. UK, USA); Outer Circle (norm-developing, institutionalized L2 colonial history, e.g. India, Nigeria, Singapore); and Expanding Circle (norm-dependent, EFL, e.g. China, Japan).
Question 138
Which digital tool or approach is commonly used in digital humanities for analyzing word
frequencies, patterns and thematic distributions across massive literary data sets?
(1) Close Reading
(2) Distant Reading
(3) Text Encoding Initiative (TEI)
(4) Version Control
✅ Correct Answer: (2) Distant Reading
📖 Academic Rationale & Context: Distant Reading uses macro-computational analytics, text-mining, concordance algorithms, and topic-modeling to identify structural patterns and vocabulary distributions across thousands of literary texts.
Question 139
Fill in the blanks with correct option:
The Return of the Druses is a tragedy in blank verse written by _____.
(1) Charles Palliser
(2) Robert Browning
(3) John Dryden
(4) Arthur Morrison
✅ Correct Answer: (2) Robert Browning
📖 Academic Rationale & Context: The Return of the Druses (1843) is a five-act verse tragedy set on a Syrian island written by Victorian poet Robert Browning, published as part of Bells and Pomegranates No. IV.
Question 140
Fill in the blank with the correct option:
The linguistic evolution of Indian English was accelerated by ‘chutnification’ coined by _____.
(1) Nirad C. Chaudhuri
(2) Salman Rushdie
(3) R.K. Narayan
(4) Raja Rao
✅ Correct Answer: (2) Salman Rushdie
📖 Academic Rationale & Context: Salman Rushdie coined ‘chutnification’ in Midnight’s Children (1981), where Saleem Sinai preserves pickle jars: ‘the process of chutnification of history; the art of making memories into edible sauces’ reflecting the vernacular hybridization of Indian English.
Question 141
Choose the correct option, after reading the following lines:
‘Lyric Apollo nameless, how should spring / He was a man born with thy face and throat… / Long he lived
/ To take note follow…’
The above lines are from _____.
(1) Browning’s ‘A Grammarian’s Funeral’
(2) Arnold’s ‘The Scholar Gypsy’
(3) Tennyson’s ‘Ulysses’
(4) Browning’s ‘Porphyria’s Lover’
✅ Correct Answer: (1) Browning’s ‘A Grammarian’s Funeral’
📖 Academic Rationale & Context: These lines are from Robert Browning’s dramatic monologue ‘A Grammarian’s Funeral: Shortly After the Revival of Learning in Europe’ (1855), celebrating the devoted scholar who pursued higher intellectual learning despite physical mortality.
Question 142
In Biographia Literaria (1817), Coleridge distinguishes between ‘Primary imagination’, ‘Secondary
imagination’ and Fancy. According to Coleridge, what does Fancy do?
(1) It is a mere mode of memory emancipated from the order of time and space, playing with fixed and dead objects.
(2) It dissolves, diffuses and dissipates in order to recreate new artistic unities.
(3) It acts as prime agent of all human perception and repetition of eternal act of creation.
(4) It acts as a purely logical faculty.
✅ Correct Answer: (1) It is a mere mode of memory emancipated from the order of time and space, playing with fixed and dead objects.
📖 Academic Rationale & Context: In Chapter 13 of Biographia Literaria, Coleridge defines: ‘FANCY, on the contrary, has no other counters to play with, but fixities and definities. The fancy is indeed no other than a mode of memory emancipated from the order of time and space… playing with dead objects.’
Question 143
Stuart Hall outlines three hypothetical positions from which decoding can be made (developed
from Parkin’s work). Identify the correct option:
(1) deconstructive reading, subaltern decoding and oppositional position.
(2) dominant-hegemonic position, negotiated position and oppositional reading position.
(3) close reading, interpellation and negotiated reading.
(4) reflection, intention and oppositional reading.
✅ Correct Answer: (2) dominant-hegemonic position, negotiated position and oppositional reading position.
📖 Academic Rationale & Context: In ‘Encoding and Decoding in the Television Discourse’ (1973/1980), Stuart Hall identified three decoding positions: (1) Dominant-hegemonic code, (2) Negotiated code, and (3) Oppositional code.
Question 144
Which of the following is/are correct?
a. ‘Écriture féminine’ is a coinage by Kate Millett.
b. The three phases of women’s writing that Showalter describes are: the feminine, the feminist and the
female.
c. ‘Chora’ concept was coined by H. Cixous.
(1) c
(2) b
(3) a
(4) a, b & c
✅ Correct Answer: (2) b
📖 Academic Rationale & Context: In A Literature of Their Own (1977), Elaine Showalter delineated three historic phases of women’s writing: Feminine (1840–1880), Feminist (1880–1920), and Female (1920–present) (b is correct). ‘Écriture féminine’ was coined by Hélène Cixous in ‘The Laugh of the Medusa’ (not Kate Millett). The semiotic ‘chora’ was theorized by Julia Kristeva in Revolution in Poetic Language (not Cixous).
Question 145
Sir Philip Sidney’s ‘An Apology for Poetry’ (also known as The Defence of Poesie) was written in
direct response to which Puritan attack on the arts?
(1) Jeremy Collier’s ‘Short View’
(2) William Prynne’s ‘Histriomastix’
(3) Stephen Gosson’s ‘The Schoole of Abuse’
(4) John Milton’s ‘Areopagitica’
✅ Correct Answer: (3) Stephen Gosson’s ‘The Schoole of Abuse’
📖 Academic Rationale & Context: In 1579, Puritan writer Stephen Gosson published The Schoole of Abuse, containing a pleasant invective against Poets, Pipers, Players, Jesters and such like Caterpillars of a Commonwealth, dedicating it without permission to Sir Philip Sidney. Sidney responded around 1580 with his masterpiece An Apology for Poetry.
Question 146
Match Column-A with Column-B correctly:
Column-A
a. ‘Rather to destroy, niggard in charity, / Pull down thy vanity.’
b. ‘Sophocles long ago / Heard it on the Aegean, and it brought / to his mind the turbid ebb and flow / Of
human misery’
c. ‘I have measur’d my life in coffee spoons’
d. ‘He gives his harness bells a shake / To ask if there is some mistake.’
Column-B
i. Eliot, T.S.
ii. Pound, Ezra
iii. Robert Frost
iv. Matthew Arnold
(1) a-ii, b-i, c-iv, d-iii
(2) a-iv, b-i, c-ii, d-iii
(3) a-ii, b-iv, c-i, d-iii
(4) a-ii, b-iv, c-iii, d-i
✅ Correct Answer: (3) a-ii, b-iv, c-i, d-iii
📖 Academic Rationale & Context: Ezra Pound’s Canto LXXXI (‘Pull down thy vanity’) (a-ii); Matthew Arnold’s ‘Dover Beach’ (b-iv); T.S. Eliot’s ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’ (c-i); and Robert Frost’s ‘Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening’ (d-iii).
Question 147
Choose the correct option with regard to the use of titles with personal names (MLA 9th edition):
(1) Generally omit a title associated with a personal name when the name is mentioned in the discussion.
(2) Always prefix the title with personal name.
(3) Use it as a suffix.
(4) Use the title when we are writing the name of a classical writer.
✅ Correct Answer: (1) Generally omit a title associated with a personal name when the name is mentioned in the discussion.
📖 Academic Rationale & Context: According to the MLA Handbook (9th edition, Section 5.6): ‘In general, do not use titles, affiliations, or degrees that precede or follow an author’s name (e.g. Sir, Dame, Dr., Ph.D., Professor) when referring to individuals in research papers or the Works Cited list.’
Question 148
Match Column-‘A’ with Column-‘B’ correctly:
Column-A
a. The bear and the squirrel episode
b. Lord Augustus and Lady Erlynne
c. Fun & Games, The Exorcism
d. The Birthday Party
Column-B
i. Comedy of menace
ii. Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
iii. Look Back in Anger
iv. Lady Windermere’s Fan
(1) a-i, b-i, c-ii, d-i
(2) a-iv, b-ii, c-i, d-ii
(3) a-i, b-ii, c-iv, d-i
(4) a-ii, b-iv, c-i, d-i [Paper typo; correct literary alignment: a-iii, b-iv, c-ii, d-i]
✅ Correct Answer: (4) a-ii, b-iv, c-i, d-i (Intended key; Note: Paper contains misprinted roman numeral indices for a & c)
📖 Academic Rationale & Context: The factual literary correspondences are: (a) ‘The bear and the squirrel episode’ occurs in John Osborne’s Look Back in Anger (iii); (b) Lord Augustus and Lady Erlynne are characters in Oscar Wilde’s Lady Windermere’s Fan (iv); (c) ‘Fun & Games’ and ‘The Exorcism’ are Act titles in Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (ii); (d) The Birthday Party is Harold Pinter’s classic comedy of menace (i). In the printed question paper, the options contain typographical misprints in the index numbering, with Option (4) being the intended key matching b-iv and d-i.
Question 149
Which one of these characters in Naipaul’s ‘A House for Mr. Biswas’ is born the wrong way with
an extra finger?
(1) Shama
(2) Pundit Jayaram
(3) Mohun
(4) Prasad
✅ Correct Answer: (3) Mohun
📖 Academic Rationale & Context: In V.S. Naipaul’s masterpiece A House for Mr Biswas (1961), Mohun Biswas is born ‘in the wrong way’ with six fingers on each hand (an extra sixth finger), leading the midwife and astrologer to forecast misfortune.
Question 150
Identify the text from the given options from which the following lines have been taken:
‘Fair Nature’s eye, rise, rise again and make / Perpetual day; or let this hour be but / A year, a month, a
week, a natural day… / The stars move still, time runs, the clock will strike…’
(1) As You Like It
(2) Dr. Faustus
(3) Tamburlaine
(4) Every Man in His Humour
✅ Correct Answer: (2) Dr. Faustus
📖 Academic Rationale & Context: These immortal lines are spoken by Faustus during his final agonizing soliloquy in Scene 14 (or Act V, Scene 2) of Christopher Marlowe’s The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus (c. 1592), as midnight approaches and the devil comes to claim his soul.
4. Critical Examination Traps & Key Ambiguities
Several questions in the September 2026 RSET English paper featured subtle nuances where hasty reading leads to negative marking. Here are five crucial questions analyzed:
- Q. 87 (Primary vs. Secondary Sources in Research): Candidates often assume that physical artifacts like tombstones are strictly primary sources. However, in historiography and literary research, tombstones covered with extended narrative or commentary function as secondary interpretative records, whereas simple dates and names remain primary direct records.
- Q. 109 (Vorticism Movement Facts): The question tested what was NOT correct about Vorticism. Option (2) claimed the movement disbanded immediately after one year; in reality, while Vorticism was short-lived and disrupted by World War I, its members produced two issues of BLAST (1914 and 1915) and held their major exhibition in London in 1915 and New York in 1917.
- Q. 136 (Official Languages Act 1963 Status of English): English was designated as an associate official language under Section 3 of the 1963 Act (amended in 1967) for an indefinite transitional period, rather than being completely phased out in 1965 as originally contemplated under Article 343(2) of the Constitution.
- Q. 144 (Showalter vs. Cixous vs. Kristeva): Statement (a) falsely credited écriture féminine to Kate Millett (it was coined by Hélène Cixous in 1975). Statement (c) falsely credited the concept of Chora to Cixous (it belongs to Julia Kristeva in Revolution in Poetic Language, 1974). Hence, only (b) is correct (Showalter’s Feminine, Feminist, Female phases).
- Q. 148 (Typographical Discrepancy in Drama Matching): In the original question paper, Column B contained repeated Roman numerals (`i` instead of distinct indices). Factually, John Osborne’s Look Back in Anger features the bear and squirrel game (Jimmy and Alison), Oscar Wilde’s Lady Windermere’s Fan features Lord Augustus and Mrs. Erlynne, Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? has the acts “Fun and Games” and “The Exorcism”, and Harold Pinter’s The Birthday Party is the quintessential comedy of menace. Candidates can claim bonus/representation if scoring strictly by printed numbering.
5. Scholarly References & Authoritative Sources
To delve deeper into the theoretical frameworks tested in this paper, candidates are strongly advised to consult the following authoritative treatises:
- Gramscian Hegemony & Cultural Theory: Consult the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on Western Marxism and Ideology for a thorough breakdown of hegemony and relative autonomy.
- Classical Literary Theory: Refer to Aristotle’s Poetics (Penguin Classics) and Horace’s Ars Poetica for foundational principles of mimesis, katharsis, and decorum.
- MLA Documentation Handbook (9th Edition): Authoritative rules for personal name titles and citation standards are available via the Modern Language Association style center.
- Modernist Poetics & Imagism: Explore primary texts and critical introductions at the Poetry Foundation archive.
6. Frequently Asked Questions (RSET English 2026)
What was the overall difficulty level of RSET English September 2026 Paper II?
The paper was of moderate-to-high difficulty. It shifted significantly away from rote biographical trivia toward conceptual discrimination questions, requiring close familiarity with literary theory, linguistics, and research methodology.
What is the expected qualifying cutoff for RSET English 2026?
For the General (Unreserved) category, the expected cutoff is projected between 57.5% and 60.5% (approx. 172–182 marks out of 300 across Paper I and Paper II combined). Reserved categories (OBC, EWS, SC, ST) are estimated between 45% and 55%.
How many questions in RSET English 2026 came from Literary Theory and Criticism?
Over 30 questions out of 100 in Paper II were directly drawn from Literary Criticism (Classical, Renaissance, Romantic, Victorian) and Post-WWII Literary Theory (Marxism, Structuralism, Deconstruction, Feminism, New Historicism).
Are there any questions eligible for objection or bonus marks in RSET English 2026?
Yes. Question 148 (matching modern drama works with their features) contained misprinted roman numeral indices in Column B across certain paper sets. Candidates can cite authoritative textual editions of Osborne, Wilde, Albee, and Pinter when submitting official objections.
How does RSET English Paper II help in UGC NET and RPSC Assistant Professor preparation?
RSET adheres closely to the 10-unit UGC NET curriculum. Solving this verified 100-question paper provides direct practice for UGC NET December 2026 and RPSC College Lecturer exams, particularly in mastering statement-evaluative question patterns.