Past Paper Literary Criticism 2011 | M.A. English Part II (PU) | Eureka Study Aids

Attempt any FOUR questions including Question No. 5 which is COMPULSORY. All questions carry equal marks. 

1. Aristotle's discussion on Tragedy is determined by his conception of human nature and social relations. Discuss.
2. What is William's thesis in Tragedy and Tradition, and how does it determine the structure of the essay?
3. Critical Practice is produced with a bias in favour of the interrogative text. Would you agree? Give reasons for your answer.
4. What risks could 'Individual Talent' run in its disregard of tradition?
5. Who is the assumed audience of Sidney's An Apology for Poetry? Justify your answer with close reference to the text.
6. Explain the radical position of 'New Criticism' in its time and say how it fails to break free from 'Expressive Realism'.
7. Critically evaluate any ONE of the following:
(i) What is Freedom? --- Ye can tell
That which Slavery is too well,
For its very name has grown
To an echo of your own.

'Tis to work, and have such pay
As just keeps life from day to day
In you limbs, as in a cell,
For the tyrants' use to dwell

So ye for them are made
Loom and plough, and sword and spade
With or without your own will bent
To their defense and nourishment.

(From: The Mask of Anarchy by Shelly) 

(ii) They're lying; lying all of them:
He never loved his shadow,
And tried to wring its neck.
Not love but murder on his mind,
He grappled with the other man
Inside the lucid stream

Only the surface broke,
Unblinking eyes
Came swimming back in view.
At last he knew
He never would
Destroy the other self
And knowing made him shrink
He shrank into a yellow --- bellied flower

(Narcissus by Mervyn Morris)