West Bengal State University

West Bengal State University Model Questions for Part I (Honours & General) Examinations on the new syllabi to be effective from the academic session 2013-14.

[This model question paper is meant to provide the examinees some idea of the type of questions they are expected to answer. The paper does not indicate the questions that are likely to come in the examination.]

English Honours Paper I

Full Marks : 100 Examination Time : 4 hours.

Candidates are advised to write answers in their own language as far as practicable. Precise answers will be given special credit. Spelling and grammatical errors will be penalised.

Group A

1. Answer any one of the following questions in about 500 words: 1x15

a. Write an essay on Old English lyrics and elegies with particular reference to any three of the poems.

b. Who are the chief exponents of Old English religious poetry? Enumerate their characteristic features.

c. What do you mean by the Alliterative Revival in Middle English literature? Explain with reference to a poem you have read.

2. Answer any three of the following questions, each in about 200 words: 3x5

1 a. Assess the contribution of the Anglo Saxon Chronicle in the History of English Literature. b. What epic characteristics do you find in the extract of Beowulf prescribed in your course? c. How does Chaucer characterize the Wife of Bath? Answer with reference to the extract prescribed for you. d. Write a short note on the impact of the Black Death on Middle English Literature. e. Assess The Dream of the Rood as a Christian Dream Allegory.

Group B

a. Assess Sidney’s Loving in Truth as a typical Petrarchan Sonnet. b. Write a short essay on Shakespeare’s use of imagery with reference to the sonnets prescribed in your course. c. How does Donne maintain the balance between spiritual and erotic love in Cannonization?

a. Comment on Bacon’s style with reference to the essays prescribed in your course. b. Critically assess Bacon’s idea on death as it comes out in his essay On Death. c. How does Burton negotiate his religiosity with the necessity of deductive reasoning in The Anatomy of Melancholy? Answer with reference to the extract prescribed for you.

5. Answer any two of the following questions, each in about 200 words: 2x5

a. Comment on the use of the carpe diem in To His Coy Mistress.

2 b. Assess Wycliffe’s contribution in medieval English prose.

c. Write a short note on Roger Ascham’s The Schoolmaster.

d. Briefly discuss Richard Hakluyt’s contribution in the history of travel literature.

Group C

6. Answer any two of the following questions in about 450 words: 2x10

a. Write an essay on the Scandinavian influence on English Language.

b. What are the characteristic features of the French loan words in English?

c. Assess the role of hybrids in the development of the English Language.

d. Write a note on loanwords and loan translations of words of Indian origin into Modern English.

e. Write short notes on (i) back-formation; (ii) compounds

7. Write philological notes on any five of the following: 5x2 assassination, egg, matchbox, kindergarten, communal, cheer, military hotel, lathicharge, Gospel, daisy.

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English Honours Paper II

Full Marks: 100 Examination Time: 4 Hours

Group A 1. Answer any one of the following questions in about 500 words: 1x15

a. How far has Milton modified classical epic convention in the first 26 lines of Paradise Lost Book I to suit his own purpose?

4 b. Attempt a critical analysis of any two of Satan’s speeches in Paradise Lost Book I to show how far they reveal his state of mind. c. The greatness of Paradise Lost lies in its elevated style. Do you agree with this view? Argue with close reference to Paradise Lost Book I.

2. Answer any two of the following in about 200 words: 2x5

a. Who is Satan’s second in command in Paradise Lost Book I? Discuss his role.

b. “Mammon led them on,

Mammon, the least erected Spirit that fell

From Heaven...”- Explain with reference to the context.

c. Write a note on the Leviathan simile.

d. “Of Moloch homicide, lust hard by hate;

Till good Josiah drove them thence to Hell”- Locate and annotate.

e. Who are Satan’s chief followers? How does Satan raise them from the Lake of Fire?

Group B

3. Answer any one of the following in about 500 words: 1x15

a. Examine The Rape of the Lock as a “heroicomical” poem. b. Is Pope’s treatment of Belinda in The Rape of the Lock merely a commentary on feminine follies? Give reasons for your answer. c. What is the function of the supernatural machinery in The Rape of the Lock?

4. Answer any two of the following, each in about 200 words: 2x5

5 a. What is ‘billet doux’? Mention at least three instances in the poem where ‘billet doux’ has been mentioned and to what effect. b. “Or, as Ixion fixed...” Elucidate the allusion involved in the line. c. “Fear the just Gods, and think of Scylla’s fate...” Who was Scylla? What happened to Scylla and why? d. “The Powers gave ear, and granted half his prayer.” Whose prayer was half granted? How did the person pray? How was the prayer half granted? e. Give two examples of Pope’s use of anti-climax (do not quote from the text).

Group C

5. Answer any one of the following in about 500 words: 1x15 a. Is Gray’s Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard a compromise between objective and personal poetry? Substantiate your answer with reference to the text. b. Discuss The Solitude of Alexander Selkirk as a pre- romantic poem. c. Discuss Blake as a lyric poet with reference to Introduction to Songs of Innocence and The Lamb.

6. Answer any three of the following, each in about 200 words: 3x5

a. Annotate “In the forests of the night”.

b. Where do you find the expression ‘fearful symmetry’? Explain the phrase.

c. Why does Blake use the word ‘charter’d’ twice in the poem London ?

d. Write a short note on the main images used in London.

e. How is the harmony between man and Nature suggested at the end of The Solitude of Alexander Selkirk?

6 f. “Some village Hampden...” Where do you find the line? Write a short note on ‘Hampden’.

g. What is an epitaph? What is the speciality of the epitaph at the end of Gray’s Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard?

Group D

7. Identify, define and explain the figures of speech from any one of the passages given below:

a. What Passing bells for those who die as cattle?

Only the monstrous anger of the guns

Only the stuttering rifle’s rapid rattle

Can patter out their hasty orisons.

b. Come, thick Night,

And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of Hell,

That my keen knife see not the wound it makes,

Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark,

To cry, ‘Hold, hold!’

8. Scan any one of the following passages and name the metre. 5

7 a. And the soul of the rose went into my blood,

And the music clashed in the hall

And long by the garden lake I stood

For I heard you rivulet fall.

b. But such a tide as moving seems asleep,

Too full for sound and foam,

When that which drew from out the boundless deep

Turns again home.

[Continued on next page]

English General Paper I

Full Marks: 100 Examination Time: 3 Hours

[ Group A]

8 1. Answer any four questions from the following, each in about 500 words: 4x15=60

a). How did Nature educate Lucy? Elucidate by critically analyzing the poem.

b). How does Wordsworth express his romantic cynicism in the poem “The World is

too much with us; late and soon”?

c) What is the central theme of Hardy’s “In Time of the Breaking of Nations?

d) Discuss how Shelley’s “Ode to the West Wind” becomes a medium for inspiring people? e) Show how Keats transforms a mere nightingale bird into a metaphor for discussing deeper truths? f) “to strive, to seek, to find and not to yield”. How far does this line reflect the Victorian spirit? Discuss with close reference to the poem. g) Would you regard “Porphyria’s Lover” to be an expression of male chauvinism? h) Yeats is a modern poet with the touch and feel of a romantic. How far does the poem “Lake Isle of Innisfree” reflect this? i) “Where dogs go on with their doggy lives…” sums up the entire poem “Musee des Beaux Arts” by Auden. Do you agree?

2. Answer any three of the following, each in about 200 words: 3x5=15

a. Explain the lines - “Myself will to my darling be Both law and impulse..” b. Why is the West Wind termed “destroyer” and “preserver”?

c. Explain with reference to the context: “Adieu the fancy cannot cheat so well As she is famed to do, deceiving elf.”

d. Locate and annotate: “That moment she was mine, mine, fair, Perfectly pure and gold: I found”. e. Explain with reference to the context- “ And live alone in the bee –loud glee, And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,…” f. Explain the term “Sea of Faith” as mentioned in the poem “Dover Beach” by M. Arnold.

Group B

9 3. Identify the figures of Speech in any five of the following: 5x2=10

i. My, love is a red, red rose… ii. He is now in the sunset of his days. iii. He succeeded to the crown. 1v.The news you bring is a dagger to my heart. v. He manages to earn his bread. vi. Dost sometimes counsel take – and sometimes tea. – Pope. vii. And trembling Tiber dived beneath his bed. viii. He can bribe, but he cannot seduce; he can buy, but he cannot gain; he can lie, but he cannot deceive. ix. The child is father of the man. x. A strong man struggling with the storms of fate.

4. Write an application to the manager of a corporate office applying for the post of a Receptionist. 15 Or,

Write an application to the Municipal Corporation requesting the authority in charge to make a permanent solution for your locality which is suffering from the problem of water scarcity.