Literary Aptitude 2

1. Father of Literature / Father of Modern English poetry Geoffrey Chaucer – Canterbury Tales
First poet to be buried in the Poets' Corner of Westminster Abbey.
2. William Shakespeare – The bard of Avon / The bard / Father of English Drama
3. Father of English criticism – John Dryden
4. Father of English Novel – Henry Fielding
5. Father of English Stream of conscious – James Joyce
6. Father of English romanticism – Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth
7. Father of English tragedy – Christopher Marlowe
8. Father of Epic Poetry – Homer
9. Father of gothic literature – edgar allen Poe
10. Henrik Ibsen – father of modern theatre / father of realism
11. Father of persian poetry – amir khusrau dehlawi
12. Father of hindi literature – Bhartendu Harishchandra
13. Father of modern Indian poetry – Nissim Ezekeil
14. TRIO Mulk raj anand + raja Rao + R K Narayan

TIMELINE
The classical period
Homeric Period (1200- 800 bce) – Homer’s Illiad and The Odyssey
Classical Greek Period (800- 200 bce)- Plato (the republic)- founder of the academy – world’s first higher learning
school, Socrates – teacher of plato, Aristotle- (school – lyceum) ,metaphysics, poetics, on the soul etc ;student of
plato teacher to alexander, Euripides, Sophocles , Aeschylus – great tragedians whose plays survived in full
Classical roman period (200 – 455 ce) – Ovid, Horace, Virgil
The medieval period 455 ce – 1485
Dark ages
Early Old English poems such as Beowulf, The Wanderer, and The Seafarer originated sometime late in the Anglo-
Saxon period.

The renaissance – 1485-1660

15th 16th and 17th century
Early Tudor Period (1485 – 1558) _ Edmund Spencer
Elizabethan Period (1558 – 1603) – Shakespeare , Christopher Marlowe (doctor Faustus) , Sir philip Sidney
Jacobean Period (1603 – 1625) – Ben Jonson< John Donne, John Webster
Caroline Age – John Milton (paradise Lost, paradise regained)

The enlightenment period – neoclassical period (1660-1790) – increase of logic and disdain for
superstition
Restoration period – british king to the throne after rule of puritan in English
John Dryden, John locke, Aphra Ben,
Augustan age – Alexander pope, Johnathan swift, volataire
The age of johnson – marking the transition into the romantic period
Samuel Johnson, Edward gibbon, also called Colonial period in America – Ben franklin, Thomas paine, thomas
Jefferson

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 Literary Aptitude 2

The romantic period – 1790-1830

Coleridge , blake, keats and shelley
Transcendental period – Emerson and Thoreau
Gothic Writing – Edgar allen Poe, Hawthorne, Horace Walpole

The Victorian period 1832 – 1901

Sentimental novels
Elizabeth browning, Alfred lord Tennyson Mathew Arnold, Charles dickens, bronte sister,
Free verse poets like walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson

The modern period 1914 - 1945

Modernist writers – W B Yeats, Virginia Woolf, Robert Frost, Flannery O’ Connor,
The lost Generation also known as the jazz age – Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Faulkner

Post modern 1945 onwards

TS eliot Bernard shaw, beckett – experimented with metafiction and fragmented poetry
Magic realists – Gabriel Garcia marquez, Salman rushdie

Indian revolutionaries and their books

Mahatma Gandhi – Hind Swaraj
 Harijan newspaper edited
 Indian opinion newspapaer
 Young india newspaper
 Navjivan
 The story of my experiments with truth
Jawaharlal nehru
 The discovery of india
 Glimpses of world history
 Toward freedom
 Letters from a father to his daughter
Misc
 Why am I an atheist – Bhagat Singh
 The golden threshold – Sarojini Naidu
 India divided – Rajendra prasad
 Unhappy india – lala Lajpat rai
 Annihilation of caste – b r ambedkar
 My unforgettable memories – mamta Banerjee
 Changing india – manmohan singh
 Citizen and society – hamid Ansari
 Citizen Delhi : My Life, My times – Sheila Dixit
 India Unmade – Yashwant singh
 Long walk to freedom – nelson mandela
 Hard choices – Hillary Clinton
 Back to work – Bill Clinton

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 The audacity of hope
 Dreams of my father – barack Obama
 Exam warriors – narendra modi

Authors of Indian scriptures

 Ramayana – Valmiki
 Mahabharata – Lord Ganesh while Ved Vyasa narrated it
 Bhagavad gita – Ved Vyasa
 Panchtantra – Vishnu Sharma
 Yoga Sutras of Patanjali – Patanjali
 Arthshastra – Chanakya aka kautilya
 Buddhacharita – Ashvagosha
 Shatkhandagama – Dharasena
 Shakuntala – kalidasa
 Meghaduta – kalidasa
 Mrichhkatika – Shudraka
 Gayatri mantra – Maharshi Vishvamitra (rigveda)
 Ramcharitramanas – Tulsidas
 Hanuman Chalisa – Tulsidas

Facts about Shakespeare

 37 poems, 154 sonnets
 Wife – anne Hathaway
 He cursed his grave, daring anyone to move the body

Good friend for Jesus’ sake forbear,

To dig the dust enclosed here:
Blest be the man that spares these stones,
And curst be he that moves my bones

 Shortest play – The comedy of errors

 Longest – hamlet
 Last play - The Two Noble Kinsmen
Comedy plays –
 Midsummer night’s dream
 As you like it
 Merchant of venice
 Much ado about nothing
 Twelfth night
 The tempest
Elements –
 Mistaken identity/ misconceptions
 Reason vs emotions
 Fate and the fantastical
 Idyllic setting

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 Separation and reconciliation
 Happy endings
Tragic plays
 Julius Caesar
 Romeo Juliet
 Hamlet
 King lear
 Macbeth
 Othello
 Antonio and cleopetra
Elements of Tragedy
 A tragic hero
 A dichotomy of good and evil
 A tragic waste
 Hamartia (the hero’s tragic flaw)
 Issues of fate or fortune
 Greed
 Foul revenge
 Supernatural elements
 Internal and external pressures
 The paradox of life

Shakespeare followed a Freytag pyramid of dramatic structure

Exposition (intro and inciting elements) – rising movement – climax( fullest energy of character is portrayed
whether good or bad) – falling action (things start to look good before they turn bad) – denouement/catastrophe
(main character undone by their choice)

Beyond Religion: Ethics for a Whole World Dalai Lama

I Witness: Partial Observations Kapil Sibal
The Art of Living - A Guide to Contentment, Joy and Fulfilment Dalai Lama
Pax Indica: India and the world of the 21st Century Dr. Shashi Tharoor
The Day I Stopped Drinking Milk Sudha Murthy
A Better India: A Better World NR Narayana Murthy
India - My Beloved Dominique Lapierre
Dare to Do: For the New Generation Kiran Bedi
Azadi: Freedom, Fascism, Fiction Arundhati Roy
The Shadow Of The Crescent Moon Fatima Bhutto
The Oath of the Vayuputras Amish Tripathi
The Great Gatsby F Scott Fitzgerald
The Great Indian Novel, The new world disorder, the battle of
Shashi Tharoor
belonging

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Go Set a Watchman Harper Lee
And Then One Day: a memoir Naseeruddin Shah
Getting India Back on Track Ratan Tata
One Life is Not Enough Natwar Singh
Not Just an Accountant: The diary of the nation's conscience keeper Vinod Rai (Former CAG)
Half Lion: How PV Narsimha Rao transformed India Vinay Satpati
D. Subba Rao (Former RBI
Who Moved my Interest Rate
governor)
One Arranged Murder Chetan Bhagat
Mrs. Funnybones Twinkle Khanna
The Case that Shook India Prashant Bhushan
Lone Fox Dancing Ruskin Bond
Guns and Thighs Ram Gopal Varma
Karan Johar with Poonam
An Unsuitable Boy
Saxena
Atalji ne kaha Brijendra Rehi
Moving On, Moving Forward Venkaiah Naidu
The Upside Down King Sudha Murthy
Pyjamas are Forgiving Twinkle Khanna
The Paradoxical Prime Minister Shashi Tharoor
The Last Girl: My story of captivity and fight against the Islamic State Nadia Murad
I Do What I Do Raghuram Rajan
And Then One Day Naseeruddin Shah
We are Displaced Malala Yousafzai
The Third Pillar Dr. Raghuram Rajan
Quichotte Salman Rushdie

Indian booker prize winners

Salman Rushdie –
 Midnight’s children (1981)
 Satanic Verses
 The moor’s last sigh
 The ground beneath her feet
Arundhati Roy
 God of small things (1997)
 Broken republic
 The end of imagination
 Listening to grasshoppers

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Arvind Adiga
 The white tiger (2008)
 Between the assassinations
 The elephant
 Last man in tower
Kiran Desai
 The inheritance of loss (2006)
 Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard

Ramayana Valmiki Sanskrit

Mahabharata Ved Vyas Sanskrit
Ramcharit Manas Tulsidas Hindi
Illiad Homer Greek
Odyssey Homer Greek
Aeneid Virgil Latin
Divine Comedy Dante Italian
Don Quixote Servantes Spanish
Utopia Thomas More Latin
Paradise Lost John Milton, wrote a work on his own blindness English
The Rubaiyat Omar Khayyam Persian

Mowgli Rudyard Kipling

Miss Marple, Hercule Poirot Agatha Christie
Don Quixote, Sancho Panza Cervantes
Swami RK Narayan
David Copperfield, Oliver Twist Charles Dickens
Sherlock Holmes Arthur Conan Doyle
James Bond Ian Fleming
Robinson Crusoe Daniel Defoe
Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn Mark Twain, first one to use the typewriter
Amar Chitra Katha Anant Pai
Chacha Choudhary Pran Kumar Sharma
Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck Walt Disney
Winnie the Pooh A. A. Milne
Garfield Jim Davis
Popeye E.C. Segar
Archie Bob Montana

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Tarzan Edgar Rice Burroughs
Spiderman Stan Lee
Phantom Lee Falk
Tom and Jerry William Hanna and Joseph Barbara
Flintstones William Hanna and Joseph Barbara
Superman Joe Shuster and Jerry Siegel
Batman Bob Kane

Pseudonyms
Eric Arthur blair – George Orwell
Mary Anne Evans – George Eliot
Charlotte Bronte – Currer Bell
Stephen King – Richard Bachman (deliberately changed the name for Thinner)
C.S Lewis – Clive Hamilton and N W Clerk (The chronicles of narnia)
Agatha Christie – Mary Westmacott
Samuel Langhorne Clemens – Mark Twain
Sylvia Plath – Victoria Lucas
Charles Lutwidge Dodgson – Lewis Carroll (Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland)
Joanne Rowlling – JK Rowling, Robert Galbraith (Cormoran Strike series)

Catch-22 Joseph Heller

The Catcher in the Rye JD Salinger
Gone with the Wind Margaret Mitchell
Lolita Vladimir Nobokov
1984, Animal Farm George Orwell
A Passage to India EM Forster
To Kill a Mocking Bird Harper Lee
The Old Man and the Sea Ernest Hemingway
Waiting for Godot Samuel Beckett
Ulysses James Joyce
The Lord of the Rings J.R.R. Tolkien
Midnight's Children Salman Rushdie
Lady Chatterley's Lover, Sons and lovers, The
D.H. Lawrence
rainbow
The Testaments, The Hand Maids Tale Margaret Atwood
One hundred years of solitude Gabriel Garcia Marquez

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Nobel Laureates
Rudyard Kipling
TS Eliot
Winston Churchill
Rabindranath Tagore, Nobel Prize in Literature (1913)
C.V. Raman, Nobel Prize in Physics (1930)
Har Gobind Khorana, Nobel Prize in Medicine (1968)
Mother Teresa, Nobel Peace Prize (1979)
Subrahmanyam Chandrasekhar, Nobel Prize in Physics (1983)
Amartya Sen, Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences (1998)
Venkatraman Ramakrishnan, Nobel Prize in Chemistry (2009)
Kailash Satyarthi, Nobel Peace Prize (2014)
Abhijit Banerjee, Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences (2019)

I wonder as lonely as a cloud – william wordsworth (daffodils)

Seasons of mists and mellow fruitfulness – John Keats (to Autumn)
Water water everywhere nor any drop to drink – Samuel taylor Coleridge – rime of the ancient mariner
If I should die, think only this of me – Rupert Brooke The Soldier
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I – I took the road less travelled by Robert Frost The road not taken
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams Yeats (Aedh Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven)
Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all – Tennyson In memorian AHH
To be or not to be that is the question – Shakespeare hamlet
Hope is the thing with feathers – Emily dickinson
If music be the food of love, play on – Shakespeare
Shall I compare thee to a summers day – Shakespeare
A thing of beauty is a joy forever – keats
Beauty is truth truth is beauty that is all – keats
And miles to go before I sleep – robert frost
To err is human to forgive divine – alexander pope
A little learning is a dangerous thing – Alexander Pope

1. First novel form in English Language - ___Pamela___________

2. First Indian woman to win Nobel Laureate - __Mother Teresa__________
3. First Indian novel published in English - __Raj Mohan’s office__________
4. First Sahitya Akademi Award Winner - _____RK Narayan__________
5. Poet receiving Sahitya Akademi Award 2020- _________Arundhati Subramaniam____
6. Aphra ben
7. KM Ganguli first to translate Mahabharat into English

Figures of speech
1. Simile
2. Metaphor
3. Metonymy
4. Synecdoche
5. Irony

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6. Hyperbole
7. Onomatopoeia
8. Oxymoron
9. Litotes
10. Paradox
11. Transferred Epithet

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