Professional Documents
Culture Documents
PAPER 3
JUNE 2013
A. Solomon Northrop
B. Frederick Douglass
C. Phillis Wheatley
D. Sojourner Truth
HARRIET B. STOWE
PAPER 2
DECEMBER 2015
Harriet B. Stowe had wanted to write a work based on the life of an Afro-American writer which was
later published as:
HERMAN MELVILLE
PAPER 3
AUGUST 2016
In Herman Melville’s well-known story “Bartleby the Scrivener”, what does the word “scrivener” mean?
PAPER 2
JULY 2016
What is the name of the boat that rescues Ishmael in Herman Melville’s Moby Dick?
A. Pequod
B. Rachel
C. Hagar
D. Sphinx
PAPER 3
JUNE 2015
Which of the American novelists is associated with the series of five books about Natty Bumppo, an old
hunter, also called Leatherstocking?
A. Stephen Crane
B. James Fennimore Cooper
C. Herman Melville
D. Jack London
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE
AUGUST 2016
PAPER 3
January 2017
A. Lost Lenore
B. Lost Abigail
C. Pet animal
D. Lost heritage
PAPER 3
DECEMBER 2015
Arrange the following sentences in the order in which they appear in Emerson’s Self-Reliance.
June 2012
PAPER 2
JUNE 2006
A. Walt Whitman
B. Robert Frost
C. Emerson
D. Poe
June 2008
December 2009
Which of the following options are correct?
June 2009
“Do I contradict myself? Very well then, I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes)”. The
above lines are from:
A. Walt Whitman
B. Edgar Allen Poe
C. Emerson
D. John Greenleaf Whittier
December 2012
December 2014
A. Emily Dickinson
B. Walt Whitman
C. Ralph Waldo Emerson
D. Robert Frost
WASHINGTON IRVING
PAPER 3
December 2013
The year 1828 is a landmark in the history of American language and literature because
A. Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was published in that year
B. The Southern Literary messenger gained wide circulation since that year
C. Washington Irving was adjudged the nation’s greatest writer in that year
D. Noah Webster published An American Dictionary of the English Language
EMILY DICKINSON
PAPER 3
July 2016
Emily Dickinson’s use of “open form” or “free verse” is comparable to her contemporary American poet,
A. Anne Bradstreet
B. Robert Lowell
C. Walt Whitman
D. Sylvia Plath
August 2016
The epitaph on her tombstone that Emily Dickinson composed herself reads
June 2013
June 2012
December 2012
We are likely to misunderstand an Emily Dickinson poem if we take her famous dashes to be
A. Quite specific and unambiguous
B. Ambiguous and indeterminate
C. Suggestive of both forward and backward movements in terms in sense
D. Suggestive of links but equivocally
PAPER 2
December 2018
What comes “after great pain” in the famous Emily Dickinson poem?
A. The letting go
B. A concrete simplicity
C. Substantial light
D. A formal feeling
WALT WHITMAN
PAPER 3
July 2016
In the opening stanza of “Song of Myself”, Whitman begins his spiritual awakening at the age of..
A. 37
B. 15
C. 24
D. 61
August 2016
The word “calamus”, a kind of water reed referenced in the title Calamus poems, is a symbol for
Whitman for
A. Water nymphs
B. Male companions
C. The spirit of American democracy
D. The impending American Civil War
PAPER 2
June 2008
A. Paumonak
B. Passage to India
C. O Captain, My Captain
D. Song of Myself
June 2013
Which American poet wrote: “I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world”?
A. Robert Lowell
B. Walt Whitman
C. Wallace Stevens
D. Langston Hughes
December 2018
What attitude towards death would you find in such poems as Tennyson’s “Crossing the Bar”,
Whitman’s “Death Carol”, and Kipling’s “L’Envoi”?
A. Resignation
B. Despair
C. Hope
D. Protest
PAPER 2
December 2018
J.D. SALINGER
PAPER 2
December 2011
Who amongst the following is not a Jewish-American novelist?
A. J.D. Salinger
B. Henry Greene
C. William Faulkner
D. Philip Roth
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
PAPER 3
January 2017
A. Jack Kerouac
B. Allen Ginsberg
C. Robert Lowell
D. William Burroughs
JACK KEROUAC
November 2017
Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl” a key work of the Beat Movement, was dedicated to….
A. Lucien Carr
B. Carl Solomon
C. Herbert Huncke
D. Jack Kerouac
EDWARD ALBEE
PAPER 3
December 2013
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.
Both (A) and (R) are true and (R) is the correct explanation for (A).
June 2012
“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?
PAPER 2
December 2008
A. Problems of middle-class
B. Hypocrisy of aristocracy
C. Mechanizations of politics
D. Simplicity of lower class
December 2007
In which of these plays does Edward Albee use the ‘success’ myth?
A. A Zoo Story
B. Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf
C. American Dream
D. The Death of Bessie Smith
December 2004
A. Arthur Miller
B. Eugene o’Neill
C. Edward Albee
D. Tennessee Williams
SAUL BELLOW
PAPER 2
JUNE 2006
June 2011
A. Norman Miller
B. Saul Bellow
C. Philip Roth
D. Bernard Malamud
RAY BRADBURY
Ray Bradbury has titled one of his short story collections- Golden Apples of the Sun- after the last line of
a W.B. Yeats poem
ALLEN GINSBERG
PAPER 2
December 2009
Who among the following writers belonged to the American Beat Movement?
A. Allen Ginsberg
B. Mark Beard
C. Isaac McCaslih
D. Charles Beard
December 2006
A. Robert Frost
B. Edwin Arlington Robinson
C. William Carlos Williams
D. Allen Ginsberg
ANNE SEXTON
PAPER 2
SEPTEMBER 2013
A. Wallace Stevens
B. Robert Lowell
C. Sylvia Plath
D. Anne Sexton
December 2014
What common link do you find among “The Disquieting Muses” by Sylvia Plath, “The Starry Night” by
Anne Sexton, “Mourning Picture” by Adrienne Rich, and “Musee des Beaux Arts” by W.H. Auden?
SYLVIA PLATH
PAPER 3
December 2013
A. Ernest Hemingway
B. Sylvia Plath
C. Seymour Hersh
D. Marshal McLuhan
PAPER 2
June 2008
A. Henry James
B. Sylvia Plath
C. Robert Frost
D. Wallace Stevens
June 2007
A. Sylvia Plath
B. Dylan Thomas
C. Philip Larkin
D. Ted Hughes
June 2010
Which post-war British poet was involved in a disastrous marriage with Sylvia Plath?
A. Philip Larkin
B. Ted Hughes
C. Stevie Smith
D. Geoffrey Hill
January 2017
ROBERT LOWELL
PAPER 3
December 2013
One of the following was described by its author as “a poem including history”. Identify the poem.
PAPER 2
December 2008
A. W.B. Yeats
B. Ted Hughes
C. W.H. Auden
D. Robert Lowell
ELIZABETH BISHOP
PAPER 3
January 2017
A. Conversational intimacy
B. Intellectual tenor
C. Astringent satire
D. Urban topography
WILLIAM FAULKNER
PAPER 3
June 2012
The following phrases from Shakespeare have become the titles of famous works. Identify the correctly
matched group.
I. Pale Fire
II. The Sound and the Fury
III. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead
IV. Under the Greenwood Tree
V. Of Cakes and Ale
a. Thomas Hardy
b. Somerset Maugham
c. William Faulkner
d. Tom Stoppard
e. Vladimir Nabokov
I—II—III—IV—V
A. e—d—c—a—b
B. d—e—b—c—a
C. e—c—d—a—b
D. c—d—b—e—a
PAPER 2
December 2005
A. Dickens-Manchester
B. Faulkner-Yoknapatawfa
C. Joyce- Belfast
D. Lawrence- Birmingham
The title of William Shakespeare’s The Sound and the Fury is derived from a play by:
A. Shakespeare
B. Marlowe
C. Webster
D. Ben Jonson
January 2017
William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying contains one of the shortest chapters in literary history. Which of these
sentences is the chapter in its entirety?
November 2017
Who made the comment that “All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain
called Huckleberry Finn”?
A. Henry James
B. William Faulkner
C. Jack London
D. Ernest Hemingway
ERNEST HEMINGWAY
PAPER 2
December 2006
December 2011
A. Two books
B. Three books
C. Four books
D. Five books
F.SCOTT FITZGERALD
PAPER 3
December 2015
The Gilded Age refers to a period of American history between 1870 and the first decades of the
twentieth century. Who among the following American writers is credited with the coining of the term?
A. F.Scott Fitzgerald
B. Mark Twain
C. William Dean Howells
D. Theodore Dreiser
GERTRUDE STEIN
PAPER 3
June 2013
In a classic statement that inaugurated Feminist thought in English, we read “A woman writing thinks
back through her mothers”. Where does this occur?
PAPER 2
December 2009
“The Lost Generation” is a name applied to the disillusioned intellectuals and aesthetes of the years
following the WWI. Who called them “The Lost Generation”?
A. H.L. Mecken
B. Willa Cather
C. Jack London
D. Gertrude Stein
December 2008
A. Mary Sinclair
B. Dorothy Richardson
C. William James
D. Gertrude Stein
June 2014
SINCLAIR LEWIS
PAPER 3
December 2014
TENNESSEE WILLIAMS
PAPER 3
June 2012
PAPER 2
December 2006
ARTHUR MILLER
PAPER 3
June 2014
Willy in Arthur Miller’s play Death of a Salesman compares Biff and Happy to the mythic
characters/figures
PAPER 2
December 2004
Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman relies doe its tragic seriousness on the fate of:
A. Willy Loman
B. Estragon
C. Vladimir
D. Lucky
December 2005
A. American Dream
B. American Imperialism
C. American Pragmatism
D. American Transcendentalism
EUGENE O’NEILL
PAPER 3
June 2015
What was the name of the experimental theatre group founded in 1915 by Susan Glaspell, Eugene
O’Neill and other dramatists in order to challenge Broadway’s control over American Drama?
September 2013
Which of the plays in its Preface was described by Eugene O’Neill as ‘a play of old sorrow, written in
tears and blood’?
PAPER 2
June 2014
Among the following playwrights, who was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1920?
A. Eugene O’Neill
B. Sean O’Casey
C. William Somerset Maugham
D. J.B. Priestly
SUSAN GLASPELL
ROBERT FROST
PAPER 3
November 2017
“You are your words. Your listeners see written on your face the poems they hear like letters carved
in a tree’s bark the sight and sounds of solitudes endured.” These are lines from a poem by ... on the
death of....
A. T.S. Eliot; Robert Frost
B. Siegfried Sassoon; Wilfred Owen
C. Stephen Spender; W.H. Auden
D. Dylan Thomas; Robert Bridges
PAPER 2
September 2013
Who among the following poets defined free verse as playing tennis without a net?
A. Robert Frost
B. Ezra Pound
C. Philip Larkin
D. William Carlos Williams
WALLACE STEVENS
PAPER 2
December 2009
Wallace Stevens’ “The Man with the Blue Guitar” may be linked to the work of the following artist:
A. Modigliani
B. Chagall
C. Picasso
D. Cezanne
EZRA POUND
PAPER 3
January 2017
PAPER 2
June 2009
Which of the following sets would you call the poets of the Movement?
A. Elizabeth Jennings, Philip Larkin, John Wain
B. W.H. Auden, Cecil Day Lewis, Stephen Spender
C. T.S. Eliot, Richard Aldington, Ezra Pound
D. Alan Brownjohn, C.H. Sisson, Anthony Thwaite
June 2008
A. Yeats
B. Beckett
C. Auden
D. Ezra Pound
June 2005
A. T.S. Eliot
B. Hopkins
C. Archibald Macheish
D. Ezra Pound
December 2005
T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land is dedicated to Il miglior fabro (“the better craftsman”) which refers to:
A. Ezra Pound
B. Baudelaire
C. Hopkins
D. Dante
December 2012
Who among the poets in England during the 1930s had left-leaning tendencies?
June 2014
July 2016
A. Ezra Pound
B. W.B. Yeats
C. Amy Lowell
D. T.E. Hulme
July 2018
Which of the statements on Michael Robert’s Faber Book of Modern Verse (1936) is not true?
A. His anthology canonized modern poetry and poets for quite some decades
B. The Collection begins with the poems of Robert Bridges
C. Roberts omitted the Georgian poets in his anthology
D. Yeats, Eliot, and Pound find a place in the Faber Book of 1936
H.D.
E.E. CUMMINGS
PAPER 2
December 2008
A. T.S. Eliot
B. E.E. Cummings
C. D.H. Lawrence
D. T.E. Hulme
EDITH WHARTON
HENRY JAMES
PAPER 3
June 2013
December 2013
In Henry James’ Ambassadors, there is a character who never appears in the novel. We get to know
about this significant person, however, from the other characters. Who is this character?
A. Maria Gostrey
B. Madame de vionette
C. Mrs. Newsome
D. Mrs. Sarah Pocock
PAPER 2
December 2013
“The story and the novel, the idea and the form, are the needle and thread, and I never heard of a guild
of tailors who recommended the use of the thread without the needle, or the needle without the
thread.”
December 2012
The Bloomsbury Group included British intellectuals, critics, writers and artists. Who among the
following belonged to the Bloomsbury Group?
June 2014
“The artist may be present in his work like God in creation, invisible and almighty, everywhere felt but
nowhere seen.” Henry James is talking here about the artist’s
A. Impersonality
B. Absence
C. Presence
D. Creativity
A. It should be sentimental
B. It should be objective
C. It should be realistic
D. It should be viewed as an artistic form
MARK TWAIN
PAPER 3
June 2012
PAPER 2
June 2005
June 2012
In which of the following travel books does Mark Twain give an account of his visit to India?
A. A Tramp Abroad
B. Roughing It
C. The Innocents Abroad
D. Following the Equator
JACK LONDON
STEPHEN CRANE
CHARLOTTE GILMAN PERKINS
PAPER 2
December 2015
“I kept on creeping just the same, but I looked at him over my shoulder. I’ve got out at last.’ Said I, “in
spite of you and Jane. And I’ve pulled off most of the papers, so you can’t put me back !”
Now why should that man have fainted? But he did, and right across my path by the wall, so that I had
to creep over him every time!”
THEODORE DREISER
KATE CHOPIN
AMERICAN
PAPER 3
January 2017
November 2017
Using a non-linear narrative, this American novel explores the psychic damage to a veteran of WWII and
shows how a measure of healing is attained through his acceptance of Laguna myths and rituals. Identify
the work:
A. Dred
B. Beloved
C. Ceremony
D. End Zone
December 2015
The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire in six volumes was a great achievement by Edward
Gibbon. It was published between 1776 and 1788, two significant dates that.
A. Signaled the end of the Napoleonic wars and the rise of Feudalism
B. Signaled the American Revolution and the French Revolution
C. Covered the fall of peasantry and the rise of bureaucracy in England
D. Suggest the period of Queen Anne’s reign
American Dictionary of the English Language was the work of …. Published in….
December 2014
A. British English
B. Scottish English
C. Australian English
D. American English
June 2013
September 2013
Assertion (A): In the 1950s and 60s Baldwin and Ellison returned to universal themes and focused on
innovations in literary forms.
Reason (R): In the 1930s and 40s African and American literature was mostly preoccupied with protest.
Both (A) and (R) are true and (R) is the correct explanation of (A).
December 2013
The Oxford Companions are handy reference volumes for teachers and students of English. Identify the
one volume that has NOT yet appeared in this series.
PAPER 2
December 2004
A. A Carribean writer
B. An American writer
C. An Arab writer
D. A Sri Lankan writer
June 2006
December 2007
In which of the following American novels does ‘the Valley of Ashes’ occur?
A. Huck Finn
B. The Red Badge of Courage
C. Invisible Man
D. The Great Gatsby
June 2007
A. R.W.B. Lewis
B. Leo Marx
C. F.O. Matthiessen
D. Richard Chase
Which of the following arrangements of American plays is in the correct chronological sequence?
The Hairy Ape-Mourning Becomes Electra-A Streetcar Named Desire- Death of a Salesman
December 2011
A. African-American writer
B. American-Jewish writer
C. American-Indian writer
D. American-Asian writer
December 2012