ugc net Paper 2- December 2004: part 1

1. In Langlands‘ Piers the Plowman, Piers appears finally as :

(A) Charity (B) The Holy Trinity (C) Jesus (D) The Good Samaritan

Answer: C

“Piers Plowman,” a Middle English poem by William Langland, is a quest that occurs within dream visions that satirize secular and religious figures corrupted by greed. The poem is divided into sections called passus, Latin for step (passus is singular and passi is plural) and means a stage, or the stages, of a journey. It  contains the first known reference to a literary tradition of Robin Hood tales.

 2. It is decided that each Canterbury pilgrim would tell in all :

(A) One story (B) Two stories (C) Three stories (D) Four stories

Answer: D

The Canterbury Tales begins with the introduction of each of the pilgrims making their journey to Canterbury to the shrine of Thomas a Becket. These pilgrims include a Knight, his son the Squire, the Knight's Yeoman, a Prioress, a Second Nun, a Monk, a Friar, a Merchant, a Clerk, a Man of Law, a Franklin, a Weaver, a Dyer, a Carpenter, a Tapestry-Maker, a Haberdasher, a Cook, a Shipman, a Physician, a Parson, a Miller, a Manciple, a Reeve, a Summoner, a Pardoner, the Wife of Bath, and Chaucer himself. Congregating at the Tabard Inn, the pilgrims decide to tell stories to pass their time on the way to Canterbury. The Host of the Tabard Inn sets the rules for the tales. Each of the pilgrims will tell two stories on the way to Canterbury, and two stories on the return trip. The Host will decide whose tale is best for meaningfulness and for fun. They decide to draw lots to see who will tell the first tale, and the Knight receives the honor.

 3. Venus and Adonis is a long narrative poem by :

 (A) Shakespeare (B) Marlowe (C) Drayton (D) Sydney

Answer: A

During his lifetime Shakespeare’s fame as a poet equalled and perhaps outstripped his fame as a playwright. His most popular poem was Venus and Adonis. It was reprinted nine times in his lifetime, and there are more surviving contemporary references to Venus and Adonis than to any of Shakespeare’s plays. The poem was most likely written in 1592, when London’s theaters were closed due to an outbreak of plague, and it was first published in 1593. Venus and Adonis was published with a dedication to the Earl of Southampton in which Shakespeare promised to follow up this light-hearted and erotic poem with a “graver labor.” This almost certainly refers to The Rape of Lucrece, which was published a year later, in 1594, and which was also dedicated to the Earl of Southampton. The Rape of Lucrece was almost as popular as the earlier poem, going through at least six editions in Shakespeare’s lifetime. The poem is a “graver labor” than Venus and Adonis because it is neither humorous nor erotic, and it tackles troubling moral and political themes. However, like Venus and Adonis, Lucrece is also interested in the uncontrollable power of desire. Both poems were written in iambic pentameter.

Venus and Adonis retells an ancient Mediterranean myth about a beautiful boy, Adonis, who has no interest in love or sex and spends all his time hunting instead. Venus, the goddess of sexual love, falls in love with Adonis at first sight, and spends most of the poem trying to seduce him, or at least to prevent him from leaving. At the end of the poem, Adonis is killed by a boar while hunting, and Venus transforms his body into a flower to remember him. Venus and Adonis is primarily an erotic poem that focuses on the uncontrollable power of sexual desire. Venus plays the role of aggressive seducer, which in Elizabethan England was reserved for male lovers. Adonis only speaks a fraction of the poem’s lines, and when he does speak, he tries to convince Venus he’s too young to love her, and is only interested in hunting: “‘I know not love,’ quoth he, ‘nor will not know it, / Unless it be a boar, and then I chase it.’” Venus seems to not care about Adonis’s indifference, and because she is a goddess, she has the physical capacity to restrain him easily. The effect is comic, but Venus’s aggressive sexuality challenges conventional Elizabethan ideas about gender.

The Rape of Lucrece retells a story from Roman history that was well-known in Shakespeare’s England. Many authors had composed versions of this story before Shakespeare, including the Roman writers Ovid and Livy, and the medieval English poets Geoffrey Chaucer and John Gower. Shakespeare was probably familiar with all these versions. In the poem, Lucrece is the wife of the Roman nobleman Collatine. After Collatine boasts about his wife’s beauty and faithfulness in front of another Roman noble, the king’s son, Tarquin, travels to Lucrece’s house and rapes her. Afterward Lucrece sends her family a message telling them what happened, but not naming her attacker. Collatine returns home, where Lucrece tells him who raped her, then commits suicide.

 4. The total number of poems in Shakespeare‘s Sonnets is :

(A) 123 (B) 142 (C) 104 (D) 154

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Answer: D

 5. Which of the following plays has a Machiavellean hero ?

(A) Tamburlaine Part I (B) Dr. Faustus (C) Jew of Malta (D) Edward II

Answer: C

A Machiavellian hero is willing to do whatever it takes to achieve his goal, no matter the cost. He seems to lack a moral code or a true moral compass.

Here are some examples of Machiavellian heroes:

Jack from Lord of the Flies: Though not the protagonist, he certainly puts up a fierce battle for the role and has some Machiavellian tendencies. Jack wants to be leader of this deserted group of school boys, no matter the cost. He even resorts to murder more than once.

Henry VIII (real life history): Sometimes the truth is stranger than fiction, and the rule of Henry VIII certainly seems to indicate that he had some Machiavellian personality traits. He beheaded two wives, had other marriages annulled, and beheaded some of his (former) closest friends when they failed to achieve the goals he had in mind. He was certainly considered a hero early in his rule, being described as attractive and accomplished. By the end of his life, he was a tyrant to deal with.

Shakespeare's Richard III - briefly put, he orders the murders of family members in order to obtain the crown.

Milton's Satan in Paradise Lost-as Milton portrays him, the beautiful angel Satan is willing to risk all, over and over again, in order to grasp ultimate power and revenge.

Khaled Hosseini's Amir in The Kite Runner--this is a more modern version of a Machiavellian hero, but in the first section of the novel, Amir cowardly betrays his friend and then frames him so that his father can focus solely on him. Amir does change as the novel progresses and loses his selfish tendencies, but his willingness to sacrifice anything or anyone to obtain his father's approval is shocking and results in long-term repercussions for him and others.

Napoleon from Orwell's Animal Farm or the "real" Josef Stalin--both use others (such as Snowball or Trotsky) until their use is expended and then annihilate them. 

 6. Which of the following is written by Samuel Butler ?

(A) Religio Laici (B) David Simple  (C) Hudibras (D) Journal of the Plague Year

Answer: C

Samuel Butler (17th-century poet, author of Hudibras)

Hudibras  is a satire in three parts, each containing three cantos, written by Samuel Butler (1613-80 Its narrative form is that of a mock romance, derived from Don Quixote, in which a grotesque Presbyterian knight, Sir Hudibras, and his sectarian squire Ralpho set out on horseback and encounter a bear-baiting mob who, after a comic skirmish, imprison them in the stocks. In the second part a widow, whom Hudibras hopes to marry for the sake of her jointure, agrees to release them on condition that the knight undergoes a whipping for her sake. They visit Sidrophel, a charlatan posing as an astrologer, whom Hudibras assaults

and leaves for dead. In Part III Hudibras returns to the widow and claims that he has fulfilled his promise to whip himself, but is interrupted by a gang which he mistakes for Sidrophel's supernatural agents. They cudgel him and force him to confess to his iniquities. He consults a lawyer, who advises him to write love letters to the widow in order to inveigle her in her replies. The second canto of Part III has no connection with the rest of the poem but consists of an account of political events between the death of Cromwell and the restoration of Charles II and a dialogue between two politicians, one of them modelled on Shaftesbury.

The loose narrative framework of the poem allows Butler ample opportunity to digress; in fact the digressions form the substance of the poem. Hudibras is the most learnedly

allusive poem in English but Butler treats all erudition with contempt. His most powerful satirical weapon is his style, the deliberately cumbersome octosyllabic metre and comic rhymes of which render absurd every subject to which they are applied.

 7. Which of the following poems did Milton write in Octosyllabic Couplets ?

(A) IL Penseroso (B) On His Blindness” (C) On the Late Massacre in Piedmont” (D) Lycidas

Answer: A

 8. Which of the following plays is not written by Congreve ?

 (A) The way of the World (B) The Old Bachelor (C) Love for Love (D) The Relapse

Answer: D

William Congreve (1670 –1729) was an English playwright and poet. His works include plays, opera, and other various works of literature.

·  The Old Bachelor (1693)  ·  The Double Dealer (1694)  ·  Love for Love (1695)  

 ·  The Mourning Bride (1697)  ·  The Way of the World (1700)

Two of his most popular and well-known plays are Love for Love in 1695, and The Way of the World in 1700, for which he is most famous. Congreve came at the end of the period of Restoration literature as the population appeared to rebel against the earlier strictures of the Puritan revolution. As tastes changed again, Congreve fell silent.

 9. Dryden‘s All For Love is an adaptation of :

 (A) Philaster (B) Romeo and Juliet (C) Antony and Cleopatra (D) Edward II

Answer: C

All for Love; or, the World Well Lost, is a 1677 heroic drama by John Dryden which is now his best-known and most performed play. It is a tragedy written in blank verse and is an attempt on Dryden's part to reinvigorate serious drama. It is an acknowledged imitation of Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopata, and focuses on the last hours of the lives of its hero and heroine.

 10. Which of the following books proposes a political theory ?

(A) Principia (B) Leviathan (C) Anatomy of Melancholy (D) Liberty of Prophesying

Answer: B

Leviathan or The Matter, Forme and Power of a Commonwealth Ecclesiastical and Civil, commonly referred to as Leviathan, is a book written by Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) and published in. Its name derives from the biblical Leviathan. The work concerns the structure of society and legitimate government, and is regarded as one of the earliest and most influential examples of social contract theory. Written during the English Civil War (1642–1651), it argues for a social contract and rule by an absolute sovereign. Hobbes wrote that civil war and the brute situation of a state of nature ("the war of all against all") could be avoided only by strong, undivided government.