Welcome! This sample paper is designed to help you prepare for the NET exam by providing a set of questions that reflect the level of difficulty and topics covered in the actual exam. By attempting this sample paper, you will have the opportunity to assess your knowledge and skills in areas such as literary analysis, critical theory, and historical contexts. Use this paper as a valuable tool to identify areas where you may need additional study and practice, and to familiarize yourself with the exam format. So, let's dive into the intriguing world of English literature and take a step closer to achieving success in the NET exam!
1. Match the following authors with the novels: (Name of Author) (Name of Novel)
a. Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni (i) Inheritance
b. Anita Rau Miami (ii) Listening Now
c. Anjana Appachana (iii) Sister of My Heart
d. Indira Genesan (iv) The Hero’s Walk
Code:
1. a-i, b-iii, c-ii, d-iv
2. a-iv, b-ii, c-I, d-iii
3. a-iv, b-i, c-iii, d-ii
4. a-iii, b-iv, c-ii, d-i
Answer: - 4
2. “We know now that a text is not a line of words releasing a single “theological” meaning (the “message” of the Author-God) but a multidimensional space in which a variety of writings, none of them original, blend and clash…. Literature… by refusing to assign a “secret”, an ultimate meaning to the text (and to the world as text) liberates what may be called an anti-theological activity, that is truly revolutionary since to refuse to fix meaning is, in the end to refuse God and his hypostases-reason, science, law.”
The passage comes from which of the following essays?
1. “tradition and individual talent” by T.S. Eliot
2. “discourse in the novel” by Mikhail Bakhtin
3. “the death of the author” by Roland Barthes
4. “what is an author?” by Michel Focault
Answer: - 3
3. Which of the statement is true of The Way of the World?
1. The Way of the World presents a heroine pretending to love an older man
2. Millamant and Mirabell fail to obtain the consent of Millamant’s aunt for their marriage
3. The Way of the World failed on stage
4. The Way of the World was performed and published in 1702
Answer: - 3
4. Which of the following is most accurate description of Butler English?
1. A dialect of English spoken by the descendants of Anglo-Indians
2. A pidgin, also called “Kitchen English” spoken by South Asians in Europe
3. Any non-grammatical variety of English used by menials in Commonwealth countries
4. A minimal pidgin that emerged during colonial times in the Madras Presidency
Answer: - 4
5. Albert Camus borrows the following epigraph to his novel The Plague from ——— “”It is as reasonable to represent one kind of imprisonment by another, as it is to represent anything that really exists by that which exists not.”
1. James Hogg’s The Confessions of a Justified Sinner
2. Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe
3. Robert Burton’s The Anatomy of Melancholy
4. Jeremy Bentham’s The Principles of Morals and Legislation
Answer: - 2
6. Which of the following would not be invoked to describe a form of new Historicist criticism?
1. Archaeology of Social Constructs
2. Post-structural Recovery of Authorial Intent
3. Cultural Materialism
4. Genealogy of Patriarchal Discourse
Answer: - 2
7. In traditional ELT methods and materials, the native speaker is elevated and idealized against stereotyped non-native speakers. This tendency is dubbed———by Adrian Holliday
1. The Near-Native Fallacy
2. The Non-Native Fallacy
3. Native Speakerism
4. The Native-Speaker Bias
Answer: - 3
8. The en– ending to denote the plural nouns (as in oxen, children, brethren) has survived from the:
1. Old English Practice of Making Plural Nouns
2. Anglo Norman Case of Making Plural Nouns
3. Odd Middle-English Pronouncing Custom of Plurals
4. Middle English Hymnals and Chants in English Parishes
Answer: - 1
9. Which post-war British poet ends a poem with the line “Get stewed: Books are a load of crap”?
1. Philip Larkin
2. Ted Hughes
3. Thom Gunn
4. Craig Raine
Answer: - 1
10. Nicholas Nickleby firmly established Charles Dickens as a dominant novelist of his time and the book as an unrivalled literary phenomenon. To celebrate the completion of the book, a painter noted that there had been nothing comparable to him since the days of Samuel Richardson. Identify the painter.
1. Leonard Woolf
2. John Cruickshank
3. Ernest Dawson
4. David Wilkie
Answer: - 4
11. Adherents of the fourteenth century religious movement associated with vernacular preaching, translation of New Testament into English, and challenges to the authority of priests and bishops were called
1. Levellers
2. Lollards
3. Deists
4. Agnostics
Answer: - 2
12. 1992 demolition of the disputed structure in Ayodhya produced two controversial literary responses. Identify them
1. Out of Place, The Algebra of Infinite Justice
2. Annals and Antiquities, Between Sunlight and Shadows
3. The Moor’s Last Sigh, Lajja
4. Chronicles of a Riot Foretold, Shame
Answer: - 3
13. In this novel by Graham Greene a double agent uses classic works of fiction to encode secret information. “He put Clarissa Harlowe back in the bookcase” is the first clue to his treachery. Then he draws on War and Peace and The Way We Live Now as matrices for secretly transmitting formation. Identify the novel.
1. The Man Within
2. Our Man in Havana
3. The Confidential Agent
4. The Human Factor
Answer: - 4
14. What is an “implied reader”?
1. The ideal audience envisioned by the author and to whom the work of literature is supposedly addressed
2. The ideal reader of a work of literature which is approximated over time by successive responses of generations of actual readers
3. The ideal “average” reader who can approach a work of literature with no preconceived ideas about the author’s life, the time of compositions.
4. A reader who embodies all those predispositions necessary for a literary work to exercise its effect.
Answer: - 4
15. In Marlow’s Doctor Faustus, what books does Valdes counsel Faustus to study in preparation for conjuring up spirits
(i) The works of Bacon and Abanus
(ii) The Hebrew Psalter and New Testament
(iii) The works of Ovid and Homer
(iv) The works of Baxter and Horst
Code:
1. i and ii
2. i and iii
3. i and iv
4. ii and iii
Answer: - 1
16. Allan Sealy’s The Trotter-Nama traces the history of the Anglo-Indian community in a chronicle of seven generations of the Trotter family, told by the seventh Trotter. This narrator is:
1. A forger of Indian miniatures
2. A quack in the Indian outback
3. An accountant in the Indian army
4. a collector of rare manuscripts
Answer: - 1
17. Who viewed Wordsworth, Southey and Coleridge as representatives of a “sect of poets… dissenters from the established system in poetry and criticism” who constituted “the most formidable conspiracy against sound judgement in matters poetical”?
1. Francis Jeffrey
2. Henry Vaughhan
3. Ralph Vaughan
4. Francisco Franco
Answer: - 1
18. In which work does William Blake say that Milton was “a true poet and of Devil’s party without knowing it”?
1. London
2. Songs of Innocence
3. The Chimney Sweeper
4. The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
Answer: - 4
19. Which interpretation of Keats’s “Beauty is truth, truth beauty” best represents the mimetic perspective?
1. The line is an ironic quotation, the equation of “beauty” and “truth” as “all we know on earth” suggests that reality is an illusory concept and that the primary function of art is to construct a world within an aesthetic reality of its own.
2. Those aspects of reality which we perceive to be “beautiful” are the only worthy subject matter of the artist, and it is the artist’s job to observe closely and isolate those sublime elements from the flux of the mundane.
3. The author’s arbitrary imposition of order upon the chaotic impressions of reality constitutes the only “truth” in a work of art.
4. A work of literature is “beautiful” insofar as it offers an accurate representation of its subject matter, with fully realized characters and vivid description of events.
Answer: - 4
20. Which of the following statements on Rajmohan’s Wife is not true?
1. By common consent, Rajmohan’s Wife is the first novel in English published by an Indian.
2. The novel was serialized in 1864 in a short-lived magazine in Calcutta.
3. Bankin Chandra published it soon after serialization and was elated in seeing its first copy.
4. His vivid descriptions of the routine of Bengali households reveal a lot about the nineteenth century.
Answer: - 3
21. “Why don’t we have a little game? Let’s pretend that we’re human beings, and that we’re actually alive.” This passage forms part of:
1. Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap
2. Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot
3. John Osborne’s Look Back in Anger
4. Harold Pinter’s The Birthday Party
Answer: - 3
22. Identify the character, a black-eyed dwarf who “constantly revealed a few discoloured fangs that were yet scattered in his mouth, and gave him the aspect of a panting dog”.
1. Mulberry Hawk in Nicholas Nickleby
2. Rigand in Little Dorrit
3. Mr. Crook in Bleak House
4. Daniel Quilp in The Old Curiosity Shop
Answer: - 4
23. The following lines are W.B. Yeats’s metaphor for an old man:
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress
Here, the aged man is_____, and
his “soul …. in its mortal dress,” is____.
1. Point, Counterpoint
2. Tenor, Vehicle
3. Analogy, Analogue
4. Vehicle, Tenor
Answer: - 2
24. This poet was of the Auden generation and was only briefly a member of the Communist party. In his poem, “The Pylons”, he averred that the Pylons are “Bare like nude giant girls that have no secret”. This prompted the label, Pylon Poets, for the new generation of poets who were happy to use the gas works or pistons of a steam-engine as poetic imagery. (Name this poet.)
1. Cecil Day Lewis
2. Christopher Isherwood
3. Louis MacNeice
4. Stephen Spender
Answer: - 4
25. Which ancient Greek writer, name is directly mentioned in Lord Byron, poem “The Isles of Greece“?
1. Euripides
2. Sophocles
3. Sappho
4. Aeschylus
Answer: - 3
26. The Norman Conquest was a significant landmark in English history. What French did the Normans speak and what was it known as?
1. They spoke a dialectal French (also called Anglo-Frisian), somewhat closer to the Parisian.
2. They spoke Norman French (Anglo-Norman). Theirs was certainly not the standard French.
3. They spoke standard French (of mainland France). Their French was very sweet and musical.
4. They spoke normal French, rather distinct from Anglo-Norman, another standard language.
Answer: - 2
27. One of the most flexible metres_____is a five foot line. It was introduced by Geoffrey Chaucer in the fourteenth century and has since then become the commonest of metres in English poetry.
1. Iambic
2. Trochaic
3. Hexameter
4. Pentameter
Answer: - 4
28. Alas! What boots it with uncessant care,
To tend the homely slighted shepherd’s trade,
And strictly meditate the thankless Muse?
Were it not better done as others use,
To sport with Amaryllis in the shade,
Or with the tangles of Neaera’s hair?
Who are Amaryllis and Neaera in the above extract from John Milton’s Lycidas?
1. Both were goddess of love and ware respectively appearing in Greek pastoral poetry.
2. Amaryllis is a shepherdess mentioned in Shakespeare’s romantic comedies; Neaera, a minor character in Love’s Labour’s lost
3. Both were one-time lovers of Lycidas, the dead shepher4.
4. Amaryllis is a shepherdess mentioned in ancient pastoral poetry, notably Eclogues; Neaera, a nymph who appears in Virgil’s Eclogues.
Answer: - 4
29. David Malouf’s novel Ransom is based on:
1. A War Memoir by Edmund Blunden
2. An Episode in Trojan War
3. A War Poem by Yevgeny Yevtushenko
4. An Episode in The Mahabharata
Answer: - 2
30. Which of the following had the alternative title “Things as They Are”?
1. Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto
2. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein
3. William Godwin’s Caleb Williams
4. Sir Walter Scott’s Waverley
Answer: - 3
31. In which of his novels does Italo Calvino construct his narrative through a tarot pack of cards and reinterpret the Western canon providing new versions of Oedipus Rex, Faust, Hamlet, Macbeth and King Lear?
1. Our Ancestors
2. The Castle of Crossed Destinies
3. Invisible Cities
4. The Path to the Nest of Spiders
Answer: - 2
32. The following epitaph was written by Rudyard Kipling during the War of 1814- 18.
HINDU SEPOY IN FRANCE
This man in his own country prayed we know not to what Powers.
We pray Them to reward him for hie bravery in ours.
“Powers” here refers to_____“Them” to_____and “ours” to____.
1. The Hindus, the French, the British
2. The Divine, the Powers, our Country
3. The Military, the Hindu Sepoys, Powers
4. Authorities, his Compatriots, our Country
Answer: - 2
33. Who among the following are referred to as the “Scottish Chaucerians”?
a. Thomas Hoccelve
b. Robert Henryson
c. John Lydgate
d. William Dunbar
Code:
1. b and d
2. a and b
3. b and c
4. c and d
Answer: - 1
34. The title of Dylan Thomas’s Deaths and Entrances was taken from?
1. William Shakespeare’s Macbeth
2. Rudyard Kipling’s A Death-Bed
3. John Donne’s Death’s Duell
4. T.S. Eliot’s Murder in the Cathedral
Answer: - 3
35. Arnold Wesker is associated with “kitchen-sink drama”, a rather condescending title applied to the then new-wave realistic drama depicting the family lives of working-class characters, on stage and in broadcast plays. Two of the following plays begin with one character doing the dishes in a kitchen sink.
Identify the pair.
a. The Kitchen
b. Chicken Soup with Barley
c. Roots
d. Menace
Code:
1. b and c
2. b and d
3. a and d
4. a and b
Answer: - 1
36. One of the less noticed and acknowledged distinction of The Canterbury Tales is that
1. It upheld the idea that we cannot divorce poetry from knowledge because poetry itself is an object of knowledge.
2. Instead of revealing England’s divisions, it reveled in its diversity.
3. It alerted us to the term auctor, someone who is both ‘an originator and one who gives increase’, the best description for Chaucer himself.
4. It married domesticity to divinity, the baker’s Loaf with the Bread of Life.
Answer: - 2
37. Which of the following themes was not common to the works of Cavalier poets such as Thomas Carew, Sir John Denham, Edmund Waller, Sir John Suckling, James Shirley, Richard Lovelace, and Robert Herrick?
1. Loyalty to the King
2. Pious devotion to the religious virtues
3. Country ideals of the good life
4. Carpe diem
Answer: - 2
38. “Search the heads of the greatest rivers in the world, you shall find them but bubbles of water.”
Who is the author of this line?
1. Oscar Wilde
2. Francis Bacon
3. R.2. Sheridan
4. John Webster
Answer: - 4
39. As a boy growing up in Squire Allworth’s estate, Tom gets one of the following characters into trouble. Identify the character.
1. Black George
2. Partridge
3. Nightingale
4. Blifil
Answer: - 1
40. The titular figure of Federico Gracia Lorca’s elegy “Lament for Ignacio Sanchez Mejias” was
1. A revolutionary who was associated with Che Guevara
2. A popular matador and writer
3. A spy who helped the revolutionaries during the Spanish Civil War
4. A popular priest and poet
Answer: - 2
41. Which Walter Scott novel is set in France in the 15th Century?
1. Redgauntlet
2. Ivanhoe
3. The Antiquarry
4. Quentin Durward
Answer: - 4
42. Jonathan Swift arrived London in 1710 and confronted a rapidly changing world in the new Tory ministry. His reactions to this world are vividly recorded in his Journal to Stella, series of letters addressed to
a. Hester Vanhoinrigh
b. Esther Johnson
c. Rebecca Dingley
d. Lady Mary Montagu
Code:
1. a and b
2. b and d
3. c and d
4. b and c
Answer: - 4
43. Deconstructionist critics argue that texts are never free from
1. The equivocal and ironically unstable worldview of the author
2. The material conditions that determine the production and reception
3. Distortions inherent in the rhetoricity of language
4. The interpretations bestowed by the totalizing critic
Answer: - 3
44. Full many a lady I have eyed with best regard and many a time
The harmony of their tongues hath into bondage
Brought my too diligent ear: for several virtues
Have I liked several women; never any
With so fun soul, but some defect in her
Did quarrel with the noblest grace she owed
And put it to the foil: but you, O you,
So perfect and so peerless, are created
Of every creature’s best!
This passage admiring the perfect matching of inner and outward beauty of a woman is taken from:
1. Shakespeare’s The Tempest
2. Marlowe’s Dr. Faustus
3. John Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi
4. Thomas Middleton’s Women Beware Women
Answer: - 1
45. Given below are two statements labelled as Assertion (A) and the other labelled as Reason (R).
Read the statements and choose the correct answer using the code given below:
Assertion (A): Gender studies do not see an urgent need to help us navigate the various pitfalls of racism, ethnocentrism, cultural relativism, and plain ignorance that flow from using “culture” as an explanatory tool.
Reason (R): Issues relating to women’s rights, gender roles, sexuality and family obligations are centrally implicated in the so called clash of civilizations between Christianity or Secularism, and Islam.
1. R does not follow logically from A
2. A is only partly addressed in R
3. R is A and vice versa
4. A and R are most logically related
Answer: - 1
46. Match the writer with the work
a. George Puttenham i. Leviathan
b. Thomas Sprat ii. The Practice of Piety
c. Lewis Bayly iii. The Art of English Poesy
d. Thomas Hobbes iv. History of the Royal Society
1. a-iii, b-iv, c-i, d-ii
2. a-iv, b-iii, c-ii, d-i
3. a-iii, b-ii, c-iv, d-i
4. a-iii, b-iv, c-ii, d-i
Answer: - 4
47. Early African-American texts like slave narratives were often described as told to narratives as their ‘authors’ dictated their experiences. The persons who noted these experiences are
1. Abolitionists
2. Translators
3. Amanuenses
4. Slave-drives
Answer: - 3
48. Match the character with the work:
a. Rupert Birkin i. Sons and Lovers
b. Lydia Lensky ii. Kangaroo
c. Mirian Leivers iii. Women in Love
d. Richad Somers iv. The Rainbow
Code:
1. a-iii, b-iv, c-i, d-ii
2. a-i, b-ii, c-iv, d-iii
3. a-ii, b-iii, c-iv, d-i
4. a-iv, b-i, c-ii, d-iii
Answer: - 1
49. Who among the ancients prescribed that poetry should both instruct and delight?
1. Longinus
2. Plotinus
3. Horace
4. Aristotle
Answer: - 3
50. Who among the following exemplified the role of the “peasant poet”?
a. John Clare
b. John Keats
c. William Cobbett
d. Robert Burns
Code:
1. a and b
2. c and d
3. b and c
4. a and d
Answer: - 4
51. What tone will be best suited to the following poem?
THE COMING OF WISDOM WITH TIME
Though leaves are many, the root is one;
Through all the lying days of my youth
I swayed my leaves and flowers in the sun;
Now I may wither into the truth.
1. Excitement
2. Revulsion
3. Exultation
4. Regret
Answer: - 4
52. The fault of Cowley, and perhaps of all the writers of the metaphysical race, is that of pursuing his thoughts to their last ramifications, by which he loses the grandeur of generality, for of the greatest things the parts are little; what is little can be but pretty, and by claiming dignity becomes ridiculous. Thus all the power of description is destroyed by a scrupulous enumeration; and the force of metaphors is lost when the mind by the mention of particulars is turned more upon the original than the secondary sense, more upon that from which the illustration is drawn than that to which it is applied.
What Dr. Johnson actually faults here is:
1. The force of metaphors that blunts description
2. The mind that goes astray toward the original
3. The metaphysical poets’ tendency to saunter away
4. The metaphysical insistence on the particular than the general
Answer: - 3
53. The enigmatic castle which K. attempts to reach in vain in Fanz Kafka’s The Castle belongs to?
1. Count Aloofwest
2. Count Eastwest
3. Count Westwest
4. Count Strangewest
Answer: - 3
54. “The chapter on the Fall of the Rupee you may omit. It is somewhat too sensational. Even these metallic problems have their melodramatic side.” The fall of the Indian rupee in the final decades of 19th century is referred to one of Oscar Wilde’s plays. Identify the play.
1. Lady Windermere’s Fan
2. An Ideal Husband
3. A Woman of No Importance
4. The Importance of Being Earnest
Answer: - 4
55. Match the plays to their setting:
a. Krapp’s Last Tape i. A country road; a tree
b. Happy Days ii. Bare interior; two small windows high up; grey light
c. Waiting for Godot iii. Expanse of scorched grass forming a low mound; blinding light
d. Endgame iv. A late evening in future; white light
Code:
1. a-iii, b-iv, c-i, d-ii
2. a-ii, b-iii, c-i, d-iv
3. a-ii, b-iv, c-iii, d-i
4. a-iv, b-iii, c-I, d-ii
Answer: - 4
56. The term ‘Digger’ is associated with a group of agrarian communists who flourished in England in 1649-50 and were led by
1. Laurence Clarkson
2. Gerrard Winstanley
3. John Lilburne
4. George Fox
Answer: - 2
57. What comes “after great pain” in the famous Emily Dickinson poem?
1. The letting go
2. A concrete simplicity
3. Substantial light
4. A formal feeling
Answer: - 4
58. Why did Plato banish the poet from his ideal state?
1. Poetry makes an artificial distinction between form and content.
2. Poetry deals with form, to the neglect of content.
3. In representing the sensual aspects of reality, the poet fails to discern the transcendent reality behind mere appearance.
4. The poet can never produce a complete accurate replica of the reality it seeks to represent, and the purpose of art is not to describe reality but to change it.
Answer: - 3
59. Match the poem with the opening lines:
a. “Ode to Psyche” i. My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains my sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,”
b. “Ode on a Grecian Urn” ii. “No, no, go not to Lethe, neither twist. … Wolf’s-bane, tight rooted, for its poisonous wine”
c. “Ode to a Nightingale” iii. “Thou still unravished bride of quietness, Thou foster-child of silence and slow time,”
d. “Ode on Melancholy” iv. O Goddess! Hear these tuneless numbers, wrung. By sweet enforcement and remembrance dear
1. a-iv, b-iii, c-i, d-ii
2. a-iii, b-iv, c-ii, d-i
3. a-iv, b-iii, c-i, d-ii
4. a-i, b-iii, c-ii, d-iv
Answer: - 3
60. S.T Coleridge’s “Dejection: An Ode” opens with an epigraph which is a reference to a ballad.
Identify the ballad.
1. Ballad of the Goodly Fere
2. La Belle Dame Sans Merci
3. Ballad of Sir Patrick Spence
4. Ballad of the Gibbet
Answer: - 3
61. Which of the following is not indebted to the Gothic genre?
1. Ann Radcliff’s The Italian
2. Tobias Smollett’s Roderick Random
3. Matthew Lewis’s The Monk
4. William Beckford’s Vathek
Answer: - 2
62. Mango Souffle, India’s first major gay themed film is an adaptation of Mahesh Dattani’s play
1. On a Muggy Night in Mumbai
2. Do the Needful
3. Bravely Fought the Queen
4. Dance Like a Man
Answer: - 1
63. In imitation of which classical poet did Samuel Johnson write his London and The Vanity of Human Wishes?
1. Horace
2. Juvenal
3. Homer
4. Tasso
Answer: - 2
64. Thomas Nashe’s The Unfortunate Traveler is narrated by
1. Ben Lyte, a coarse Papist
2. Jack Wilton, an English page
3. Peter Marston, a sworn Calvinist
4. Philip Foxe, an English highwayman
Answer: - 2
65. “Reality is that nothing happens. How many of the events of history have occurred, ask yourselves, for this and for that reason, but for no other reason, fundamentally, than the desire to make things happen? I present to you History, the fabrication, the diversion, the reality-obscuring dram1.” Which postmodern novel thus subverts the truth claims of traditional historiography?
1. 1.S. Byatt’s Possession
2. John Fowles’ The French Lieutenant’s Woman
3. Graham Swift’s Waterland
4. Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient
Answer: - 3
66. Read the following passage and answer the questions:
I have carried the manuscript of these translations about with me for days, reading it M railway trains, or on the top of omnibuses and i restaurants, and I have often had to close it lest some stranger would see how much it moved me. These lyrics—which are the original, my ——(Indian friends) tell me, full of subtlety of rhythm, of untranslatable delicacies of colour, of metrical invention — display in their thought a world I have dreamed of all my life long. The work of a supreme culture, they yet appear as much a growth of the common soil as the grass and the rush.. A tradition, where poetry and religion are the same thing, has passed through the centuries, gathering from learned and unlearned metaphor and emotion, and carried back again to the multitude the thought of the scholar and the noble. If the civilization of Bengal remains unbroken, if that common mind which – as one divines-runs through all, is not, as with us, broken into a dozen minds that know nothing of each other, something even of what is most subtle in these verses will have come, in a few generations, to the beggar on the roads.
– W.B. Yeats, from Introduction to Rabindranath Tagore’s Gitanjali
67. In this passage, Yeats praises Indian culture primarily because it
1. Is accessible to Westerners though it is rooted in a different religious tradition.
2. Has been flexible enough to survive a transition into the modern world.
3. Embodies values and gives rise to art that can be shared by people of all classes.
4. Reflects a marvelous eclecticism in drawing from many disparate cultures.
Answer: - 3
67. Match the Character with the Play:
a. Dorimant i. The Plain Dealer
b. Lady Fidget ii. The Man of Mode
c. Malevole iii. The Country Wife
d. Vernish iv. The Malcontent
Code:
1. a-iv, b-iii, c-i, d-ii
2. a-ii, b-iii, c-iv, d-i
3. a-ii, b-iv, c-iii, d-i
4. a-iv, b-i, c-iii, d-ii
Answer: - 2
68. Braj Kachru has observed a tendency among Indian-English speakers and writers to use hybridized lexical items. One example of this is
1. Lathi-charge
2. Ping-pong
3. Chaywallah
4. Jugarh
Answer: - 1
69. Match the author with title:
a. Alan Paton i. Open City
b. Ngugi wa Thiong’o ii. Cry, the Beloved Country
c. Teju Cole iii. A Grain of Wheat
d. Wok Soyinka iv. The Interpreters
Code:
1. a-iii, b-ii, c-iv, d-i
2. a-i, b-iii, c-iv, d-ii
3. a-iii, b-i, c-iv, d-ii
4. a-ii, b-iii, c-i, d-iv
Answer: - 4
70. In his Practical Criticism I.1. Richards suggests that there are several kinds of meanings and that the “total meaning” is a blend of contributory meanings which are of different types. He identified four kinds of meaning, or the total meaning of a word depends upon four factors.
Choose the right combination as proposed by Richards.
1. Sense, Feeling, Tone and Intention
2. Sense, Feeling, Tone and Matter
3. Sound, Sense, Tone and Matter
4. Image, Feeling, Tone and Intention
Answer: - 1
71. The ‘grammar bullies” – you read them in places like the NewYork Times – and they tell you what is correct.
You must never use “hopefully, “Hopefully, we will be going there on Thursday. That is incorrect and wrong and you are basically an ignorant pig if you say it.
This is judgementalism. The game that is being played there is a game of social class. It has nothing do with the morality of writing and speaking and thinking clearly, of which George Orwell, for instance, talked so well.
To which famous essay of Orwell does the author refer here?
1. Inside the Whale
2. Reflections on Gandhi
3. Politics and the English Language
4. Why I Write
Answer: - 3
72. Allen Tate once made the useful distinction between structure and texture. The distinction referred to
1. The main line of narrative, argument, et3., and the rhetorical, stylistic, metaphorical and other devices respectively.
2. The rhetorical, stylistic, metaphorical and other devices and the main line of narrative, argument, etc., respectively.
3. Objects and materials on which a narrative casts light, and the devices employed to enlighten them respectively.
4. The devices employed to enlighten objects and materials in a narrative, and the objects and materials themselves, respectively.
Answer: - 1
73. 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”?
1. Resignation
2. Despair
3. Hope
4. Protest
Answer:- 3
74. In an ode, William Collin lamented the passing of a contemporary poet. The ode began with the line: “In yonder grave a Druid lies.” Name the poet whose passing Collins laments.
1. William Cowper
2. Alexander Pope
3. James Thomson
4. Thomas Gray
Answer: - 3
75. Read the Passage give below:
Ah, what trifle is a heart,
If once into Love’s hands it come!
All other griefs allow a part
To other griefs, and ask themselves but some,
They come to us, but us Love draws,
He swallows us, and never chaws:
By him, as by chain-shot, whole ranks do die,
He is the tyrant pike, our hearts the fry.John Donne, 1633
Which sentence best paraphrases line of the passage above
1. Love trends to grab us and never let go.
2. Distress comes in many forms, but none lasts as long as heartache.
3. Emotions can damage us, but none as severely as love.
4. Unbidden pain afflicts us, but we are lured by love.
Answer: - 4
76. ______read Adam Bede with such pleasure that she not only keenly recommended it to her relative but also commissioned two paintings of scene from the novel.
1. Horace Nightingale
2. George Eliot
3. Margaret Cavendish
4. Queen Victoria
Answer: - 4
77. “The good thing about words, “Hanif Kureishi remarks in “Loose Tongues”, is that their final effect is incalculable. [….] You can never know what your words might turn out to mean for yourself or for someone else; or what the world they make will be like. Anything could happen. The problem with silence is that we know exactly what it will be like.” Kureishi, in sum,suggests suggests:
a. There is always some risk involved in writing/speaking.
b. It is better to avoid using words than to risk miscommunication.
c. Words being predictable, are always open to misinterpretation.
d. The unpredictable, in deed, is the strength of words.
Code:
1. a and c
2. a and d
3. b and c
4. b and d
Answer: - 2
78. Match the following concepts with their definitions:
a. Collocation i. A semantic relationship of one to many
b. Corpus ii. A grid used lexical analysis
c. Hyponymy iii. A combination of two lexical items in a grammatical pattern
d. Matrix. iv. A large body of texts
Code:
1. a-i, b-iii, c-iv, d-ii
2. a-iv, b-ii, c-iii, d-i
3. a-iii, b-i, c-ii, d-iv
4. a-iii, b-iv, c-i, d-ii
Answer: - 4
79. What is particular about the references in the following to some poets’ names in the plural?
“It is a freezing, bleak day in January, an4. I am looking for poetry. I see a few Chaucer’s, a few Shakespeare’s, and a hardcover, three dollar History of Modern Poetry published in 1987.”
1. Standard reference to more texts of one poet.
2. Unusual awkward metaphors no longer in use.
3. Synecdochic use names for their respective works.
4. Usually refer to biographies of the poets in question.
Answer: - 3
80. There are helpers and harmers among fellow pilgrims in Christian’s journey in Pilgrim’s Progress. Who among the following is not a helper?
1. Good Will
2. The Interpreter
3. Mr. Worldly Wiseman
4. The Evangelist
Answer: - 3
81. Herr God, Herr Lucifer
Beware Beware
Out of the ash
I rise with my red hair
And I eat men like air.
Lines 4 and 5 the above evoke:
1. Christ’s resurrection
2. The fairy tale of a girl in the woods
3. The myth of the phoenix
4. The legend of the Lady of the Lake
Answer: - 3
82. In Thomas Moore’s Utopia (Book 2), the reader is told that in this new world there are few mistakes in marriage because
1. Prospective husbands and wives see one another naked before agreeing to the match.
2. There is an extensive courtship period preceding the actual wedding.
3. The family gods are invoked before finalizing the nuptials.
4. There is a community get together where prospective husbands and wives announce wedding plans endorsed by elders.
Answer: - 1
83. What type of writing did Walter Pater define as “the special and opportune art of the modern world”?
1. Nonfiction Prose
2. They Lyric
3. Comic Drama
4. The Novel
Answer: - 1
84. “What is honor? A wor4. What is in that word “honor”? What is that “honor”? Air. A trim reckoning. Who hath it? He that died o’ Wednesday. Doth he feel it? No. Doth he hear it? No. ‘Tis insensible, then? Yea, to the dea4. But will it not live with the living? No. Why? Detraction will not suffer it. Therefore, I’ll none of it. Honor is a mere scutcheon. And so ends my catechism”. Which character in the following Shakespeare’s dramas made this statement about honour?
1. Falstaff in King Henry IV Part 1
2. Claudius in Hamlet, the Prince of Denmark
3. Hotspur in King Henry IV Part 1
4. Hamlet in Hamlet, the Prince of Denmark
Answer: - 1
85. In his essay The Function of Criticism at the Present Time (1864) Matthew Arnold contended that
1. Creative power should be ranked higher than critical power
2. Creative and critical powers should be ranked equally
3. Creative and critical powers are not comparable in anyway
4. Critical power should be ranked higher than creative power
Answer: - 1
86. What is the delicate balancing act of Andrew Marvell’s Horatian Ode?
1. Celebrating the Restoration while regretting the frivolity of the new regime.
2. Praising feminine virtues while mocking the fixation on chastity.
3. Celebrating Cromwell’s victories while inviting sympathy for the executed King.
4. Praising Roman virtues while endorsing Christian beliefs.
Answer: - 3
87. Identify the Fireside poets of the US:
1. T.S. Eliot, Wallace Stevens, William Carlos Williams
2. Marianne Moore, Elizabeth Bishop, Anne Seaton
3. William Cullen Bryant, H.W. Longfellow, Oliver Wendell Holmes
4. Amy Lowell, Emily Dickinson, Phillis Wheatley
Answer: - 3
88. Evelina was published in 1778
1. Anonymously
2. Using the name Fanny Burney
3. Posthumously
4. Under a Pseudonym
Answer: - 1
89. During the Raj, the British viewed their rule in terms of a thankless duty to uplift the downtrodden and inculcate and Oriental minds. The mission to civilize the “silent, sullen peoples” of the East was a burden imposed upon them by destiny.
The last observation is a fairly obvious allusion to:
1. Rudyard Kipling’s The White Man’s Burden
2. J.R. Ackerley’s Hindoo Holiday: An Indian Journal
3. Flora Annie Steel’s The Garden of Fidelity
4. Maud Diver’s The Englishwoman in India
Answer: - 1.
90. In the spring of 1941, Nikos Kazantzakis embarked on one of his most ambitious projects, a play known as Yangtze. What English/Greek title is it now known as?
1. Brobdingnag
2. Zoroaster
3. Buddha
4. Zorba
Answer: - 3
91. Match the Term with the Theorist:
a. Negritude i. Alice Walker
b. Womanism ii. Jurgen Habermas
c. Interpellation iii. Aime Cesaire
d. Public Sphere iv. Louis Althusser
Code:
1. a-ii, b-i, c-iv, d-iii
2. a-iii, b-ii, c-iv, d-i
3. a-iii, b-i, c-iv, d-ii
4. a-I, b-ii, c-iv, d-iii
Answer: - 3
92. Which of the following is the most accurate statement by W.E.2. Du Bois’ famous articulation of the ‘twoness’ of black Americans?
1. “This sense of always looking at one’s self, a peculiar sensation through the eyes is double consciousness.”
2. “Through the eyes of others, this sense of always looking one’s self, we acquire the double consciousness.”
3. “This double consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, is a peculiar sensation.”
4. “It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others.”
Answer: - 4.
93. Which of the following poems is quoted as the epigraph to A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry
1. The Negro Speaks of Rivers
2. Harlem (A Dram Deferred)
3. The Big Sea
4. I, too, Sing America
Answer: - 2
94. Which of the following acts were not passed during the Victorian Era?
1. The Women’s Suffrage Act
2. The Married Women’s Property Rights Act
3. A Series of Factory Acts
4. The Custody Act
Answer: - 1.
95. It was the first narrative on the life of a black woman slave to be published in England in 1831. It has profound influence on the abolition movement in Britain. Identify the book and the author
1. Mattie Jane Jackson – The Story of Mattie J. Jackson
2. Elizabeth – Memoir of Old Elizabeth, a coloured Woman
3. Mary Prince – The History of Mary Prince
4. Harriet Jacobs – Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl
Answer: - 3
96. Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
_____in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last______of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That______and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is______no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.
Fill in the blanks.
Choose the set that carries the correct words.
1. Walks, Breath, Creeps, Shown
2. Creeps Moment, Struts, Seen
3. Moves, Syllable, Frowns, Heard
4. Creeps, Syllable, Struts, Heard
Answer: - 4
97. The Romantic period produced a fair amount of dramatic criticism. A notable example is “On the Knocking at the Gate in Macbeth”. Who is the author?
1. Edmund Kean
2. William Hazlitt
3. Wiliam Charles Macready
4. Thomas De Quincey
Answer: - 4
COMPREHENSION
The following is an extract from a famous play. Read it carefully to answer questions that follow:
Maid [in the doorway]. A lady to see you, ma’am,–a stranger.
Nora. Ask her to come in.
Maid [to HELMER]. The doctor came at the same time, sir.
Helmer. Did he go straight into my room?
Maid. Yes, sir.
[HELMER goes into his room. The MAID ushers in Mrs Linde, who is in travelling dress, and shuts the door.]
Mrs Linde [in a dejected and timid voice]. How do you do, Nora?
Nora [doubtfully]. How do you do–
Mrs Linde. You don’t recognise me, I suppose.
Nor1. No, I don’t know–yes, to be sure, I seem to–[Suddenly.] Yes! Christine! Is it really you?
Mrs Linde. Yes, it is I.
Nora. Christine! To think of my not recognising you! And yet how could I–[In a gentle voice.] How you have altered, Christine!
Mrs Linde. Yes, I have indee4. In nine, ten long years–
Nora. Is it so long since we met? I suppose it is. The last eight years have been a happy time for me, I can tell you. And so now you have come into the town, and have taken this long journey in winter–that was plucky of you.
Mrs Linde. I arrived by steamer this morning.
Nora. To have some fun at Christmas-time, of course. How delightful! We will have such fun together! But take off your things. You are not cold, I hope. [Helps her.] Now we will sit down by the stove, and be cosy. No, take this armchair; I will sit here in the rocking chair. [Takes her hands.] Now you look like your old self again; it was only the first moment–You are a little paler, Christine, and perhaps a little thinner.
Mrs Linde. And much, much older, Nora.
Nora. Perhaps a little older; very, very little; certainly not much. [Stops suddenly and speaks seriously.] What a thoughtless creature I am, chattering away like this. My poor, dear Christine, do forgive me.
Mrs Linde. What do you mean, Nora?
Nora [gently]. Poor Christine, you are a widow.
Mrs Linde. Yes; it is three years ago now.
Nora. Yes, I knew; I saw it in the papers. I assure you, Christine, I meant ever so often to write to you at the time, but I always put it off and something always prevented me.
Mrs Linde. I quite understand, dear.
Nora. It was very bad of me, Christine. Poor thing, how you must have suffered. And he left you nothing?
Mrs Linde. No.
Nora. And no children?
Mrs Linde. No.
Nora. Nothing at all, then.
Mrs Linde. Not even a sense of loss to feed on
Nora [looking incredulously at her]. But, Christine, is that possible? Mrs Linde [smiles sadly and strokes her hair]. It sometimes happens, Nora.
Nora. So you are quite alone. How dreadfully sad that must be. I have three lovely children. You can’t see them just now, for they are out with their nurse. But now you must tell me all about it
98. Identify the play of which this section is an excerpt.
1. A Doll’s House by Henrik Ibsen
2. The Cherry Orchard by Anton Chekhov
3. Wit by Margaret Edson
4. The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde
Answer: - 1
99. Which of the following descriptions best applies to the above extract?
1. Friends comparing notes and counting losses in a meeting sudden and unanticipated.
2. The sense of loss inevitable with the passage of time and the imperceptible dissolution of the conventional marriage.
3. A chance meeting between old friends which leaves one puzzling over the inexplicable losses the other suffered.
4. A meeting of two friends – one married, the other unmarried after a gap of years.
Answer: - 3
100. “Not even a sense of loss to feed on” implies that
1. Mrs. Linde is given over to feeding on sorrow.
2. Mrs. Linde is completely devoid of all feeling.
3. Mrs. Linde’s severance from her tragic pair is total.
4. Mrs. Linde is sentimentally attached to an irretrievable past.
Answer: - 3
Conclusion:
Congratulations on completing the December 2018 NET English sample paper! I hope you found the questions challenging and thought-provoking. The solutions provided alongside the questions will guide you in understanding the reasoning and approaches for each answer.
Remember, success in the NET exam requires dedication, consistent practice, and a deep understanding of English literature. Take the time to review your answers, learn from any mistakes, and continue your preparation with determination and enthusiasm. With continued effort, you can excel in the field of English literature and achieve your goals. Best of luck in your journey towards the NET exam and beyond!
