CBSE-NET

June 2010

1. The epithet “a comic epic in prose” is best applied to

(A) Richardson’s Pamela

(B) Sterne’s A Sentimental Journey

(C) Fielding’s Tom Jones

(D) Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe

("Comic prose epics" is a type of epic derived from the serious epic that satirizes contemporary ideas or conditions in a form and style burlesquing the serious epic. It is also noted  as mock epics Exm: The Rape of the Lock (1712) by the English poet Alexander Pope. Several novels also fall into this category. Fielding himself refers to his two novels, Joseph Andrews and Tom Jones, as "comic prose epics". In the preface Joseph Andrews, Fielding described his own fictional form as "a comic romance" or a "comic epic poem in prose," and in Tom Jonesas a "heroical, historical prosaic poem" ; a form of "prosai-comi-epic writing" . In defining the novel as an epic genre, Fielding emphasized its function in presenting a broad picture of an era, but one, unlike verse epic, in which primarily the weaknesses of humanity are put on display. So the critics do vary on the genre of these novels. Nonetheless from the given options as Joseph Andrews is not there,Tom Jones is right option. )

2. Muriel Spark has written a dystopian novel called

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Important Questions

Q: Why is the year 1066 important?

Ans: 1066 is the date of Norman Conquest of England and the beginning of Anglo – Norman literature in England. The Norman conquest of England in 1066 greatly influenced the evolution of the language. For about 300 years after this, the Normans used Anglo-Norman, which was close to Old French, as the language of the court, law and administration. By the latter part of the fourteenth century, when English had replaced French as the language of law and government, Anglo-Norman borrowings had contributed roughly 10,000 words to English, of which 75% remain in use.

Q: To which country did King Alfred belong? Name one of his prose works?

Ans: Alfred belonged to the ninth century he was the king of Wessex(871). Alfred is actually noted for his translation works. He translated or got translated Pastoral Care of Pope Gregory.

Q: What is the period of the middle ages? What are the sources of information about the middle ages?

Ans: Roughly speaking, the middle age refers to the period of 1066 to 1485 (Norman Conquest of England to the end of the wars of Roses). The middle age is briefly reflected in Doomsdays Book, pipe Rolls, Court Rolls, chancery records and account books.

Q: How is In Memoriam related to Adonais?

Ans. These are two famous elegies written by Tennyson and P. B. Shelley respectively. In In Memoriam Tennyson laments the death of his college friend Arther Hemry Hallam who died in shipwreck, while Adonais is Shelley’s elegy on the premature death of Keats. Here Shelley criticizes those critics whom he finds responsible for Keats premature death.

Q: What is meant by Kennings? Give two examples.

Ans: Kennings mean picturesque compounds used by the Old English poets. They have metaphorical quality. For exp. ‘Seowood’ is used for ship, ‘peace weaver’ for women.

Q: Why are the years 1649 and 1688 important?

Ans. The year 1649 is important for the beheading of Charles I by the puritans and 1688 is important for the Glorious Revolution in England. In that connection to the incident, James II was dethroned and the revolution was succeeded without bloodshed. James fled from the capital and William and Mary took the throne.

Q: Who originated the genre Heroic Tragedy and when?

Ans. In this type of tragedy, which became prominent after the Restoration, a great heroic figure is chosen as a central personage and subsequent heroic incidents are introduced.

Although it owes its origin to the dramatic romances popularized by Beaumont and Fletcher and written by Shakespeare, Dryden is the most versatile between 1664-77.

Q: Give two example of Dryden's political writing.

Ans. Dryden's Astraea Redux (1660) celebrates Charles II's return to the English throne. Annus Mirabilis (1667) gives a spirited account of the great fire in London.

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Important

1.                   In the 1950s French writer Alain Robbe-Grillet experimented with a new type of novel,nouveau roman, meaning it anti novel or new novel, in which the author is transparent and does not intrude on the narrative.

2.                   American writer Harlan Ellison’s A Boy and His Dog (1975) is a cycle of narrative, science fiction and black comedy of survival in the wake of a nuclear war.

3.                   Ousmane Sembène's Xala (1973) is the drawn of Senegal's independence from France. El Hadji Kader Beye is the hero of the novel.

4.                   “Molly Bloom” soliloquy in Joyce’s novel Ulysses (1922).

5.                   Keats suggested Shelley to “Curb your magnanimity and be more of a poet’

6.                   The following writers come from Ireland: GB Shah, W B Yeats, James Joyce, Seamus Heaney, Oscar Wilde. (IMP) 

7.                   Hobbes, the English Philosopher (1588 – 1679) believed that “Man was merely a Body, or better a Machine in motion. Thus, what is the Heart but a Spring, and the Nerves but many Strings and the Joints but so may Wheels”.

8.                  ‘The Waste Land’ (1921) is both a public or private poem by T. S. Eliot, born in America and resided in England.

9.                   Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593), born in the same year that Shakespeare born.

10.               Nigerian writer Wole Soyinka became the first African and first black writer to win the Nobel Prize for literature in 1986

11.                Sigmund Freud is associated with enormously influential perspective or practice psychoanalysis.

12.                Lawrence very closely describes the working life of the labourers in “Sons and Lovers” (1913). (IMP)

13.                Wuthering Heights (1847) is the single novel and masterpiece of Emily Bronte.

14.                The Nigerian author Ben Okri won the Booker Prize for his novel Famished Road (1991). Notably, the book is narrated by a “spirit-child.” who dreams a better world of ‘inspired hope’. (IMP)

15.                ‘The one remains, the many change and pass; Heaven’s light for ever shines, earth’s shadow fly’ lines from Adonaïs (1821) by Shelley, written on the death of Keats. is in 495 lines in 55 Spenserian stanzas, was composed in the spring of 1821 immediately after April 11, when Shelley heard of Keats' death

16.                Mathew Arnold describes Shelley “a beautiful and ineffectual angel beating in the void his luminous wings in vain”.         

17.                The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus (1588) is play of Christopher Marlowe.

18.               Legouis says “Wordsworth saw Nature and Man with new eyes”.

19.                 ‘Pygmalion’ was Satire on the rigid class system in England. It is described as ‘A Romantic in Five Acts’ by Shaw whereas it is anti-romantic in Spirit

20.               Senegalese Léopold Sédar Senghor edited Anthologie de la nouvelle poésie nègre et malgache de langue française whose English rendering is Anthology of the New Black and Malagasy Poetry in the French Language.

21.                Historia von Dr. Johann Fausten (1587), published in Frankfurt.

22.               “Byron’s Don Juan (unfinished) is a success because it is a satirical panorama of the ruling classes of his time” (W. H. Auden).

23.               The 1805 text of ‘The Prelude’ is found, edited and printed by Ernest De Selin Court in 13 books (1850 version in 14 books)

24.               In Old English, few books were written; most of those were written in Latin, for religious purposes. Most of those that got written have disappeared. Four books of Old English poetry exist today. All seem to have been written about the year 1000. First (the so-called Junius Manuscript) contains stories from the Old Testament turned into Old English poetry: Genesis, Exodus, and Daniel. Second (The Vercelli Book, which turned up, rather mysteriously, in a small town in northern Italy) contains Christian poems based on themes from the New Testament or lives of saints; the best known of these is the “Dream of  the Rood,” spoken by the cross on which Jesus was crucified. Third (The Exeter Book) is a kind of anthology of different short poems; it contains “The Wanderer,” “The Seafarer,” and “The Wife’s Lament.” The fourth (known as the Cotton Manuscript, or, more formally, MS Cotton Vitellius A. xv), contains Beowulf. This manuscript was badly burned in 1731; today it is carefully preserved in the British Museum, in London, but its edges keep flaking off, making it harder and harder to read.

25.               E. M.  Forster’s Howards End tells the story of two families:  the Schlegels and the Wilcoxes.

26.               The religious poems in the old English written under the influence of Cynewulf, known as Cynewulf Cycle. The best-known “The Dream of the Rood,” (comes under The Vercelli Book—a collection of Christian poems based on themes from the New Testament or lives of saints) spoken by the the Ruthwell Cross of Northumbria on which Jesus was crucified. 

27.               “In Hamlet we see a great, an almost enormous intellectual activity and a proportionate aversion to real action consequent upon it.”  Says Coleridge.

28.               The Christ , Elene , Juliana and Fates of the Apostles poems are a religious reflection of Anglo-Saxon ideals, they are best picture of Christianity as it appeared in England during the eighth and ninth centuries.

29.               The oldest surviving English poem in the form of a dream or vision The Rood falls into three parts: the opening words of the dreamer, the words spoken by the Rood, and the words of the dreamer, after the dream is over.

30.               Wuthering Heights was adapted to the screen in a 1939 production directed by William Wyler and starring Merle Oberon, Laurence Olivier, and David Niven.

31.                Dorothea Brooke is the heroine of George Eliot’s (pen name Mary Ann Evans) novelMiddlemarch.

32.               Browning had a “robust optimism” unlike the other Victorian poets who were worriers and doubters.

33.               American writer, Hawthorne wrote The Great Stone Face.

34.               Anne of Green Gables (1908) and its sequels are written by L. M. Montgomery.

35.               It is said of Jane Austen that she involves the ‘Critical Intelligence’ of her readers. The prevailing interest is not only in ‘aesthetic delight’ but also in a sense of moral conviction.

36.               Swifts’ Gulliver’s Travel (1726) is a ‘mock utopia’. Gulliver legends: The Borrowers by Mary Norton; H. G. Wells’s Food of the Gods; Honey, I Shrunk the Kids and its sequelHoney, I Blew Up the Baby; “Hundred Worlds”

37.               “If nature leads to God, she also leads to Man.” Wordsworth’s vision of Nature

38.               Main character of Joseph Conrad's famous novella Heart of Darkness (1902) is Kurtz. (IMP)

39.               Yann Martel, a Canadian  wrote Life of PI (2001) a fantasy adventurous novel with protagonist Piscine Molitor Patel who is nicknamed as Pi.

40.               'Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows' is J. K. Rowling's last book of the Harry Potter Series which was published in 2007.

41.                Keri Hulme’s novel, The Bone People (1983) focuses on the relationship of a woman, a boy, and the boy’s adoptive father.

42.               American humorist SAMUEL LANGHORNE CLEMENS carries the penname of "MARK TWAIN”. A few popular sketches of him are The Jumping Frog (1867), Sketches New and Old(1873), Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876), Life on the Mississippi (1883),Huckleberry Finn (1885), The American Claimant (1892), Tom Sawyer Abroad(1894)