Past Paper Literary Criticism 2017 | M.A. English Part II (PU) | Eureka Study Aids

Attempt any FOUR questions. All questions carry equal marks. 

1. What are the seven characteristics Aristotle uses to define tragedy in Poetics? 

2. Discuss the narrative style and structure of Sidney's An Apology for Poetry? 

3. Which critical schools according to Belsey have been successful in challenging the expressive realist position? 

4. For T.S. Eliot's what is the value and significance of tradition? Why is it useful? 

5. Critically analyze some of the major arguments presented in Williams' Modern Tragedy? 

6. Discuss in detail some of the benefits and drawbacks of Literary Criticism. Give support with the help of examples. 

7. Critically analyze any ONE of the following poems. 

(i) [Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean]

Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean, 

Tears from the depth of some divine despair

Rise in the heart, and gather to the eys, 

In looking on the happy Autumn-fields, 

And thinking of the days that are no more. 

Fresh as the first beam glittering on a sail, 

That brings our friends up from the underworld, 

Sad as the last which reddens over one

That sinks with all we love below the verge; 

So sad, so fresh, the days that are no more. 

Ah, sad and strange as in dark summer dawns

The earliest pipe of half-awaken'd birds

To dying ears, when unto dying eyes

The casement slowly grows a glimmering square; 

So sad, so strange, the days are no more. 

Dear as remember'd kisses after death, 

And sweet as those by hopeless fancy feign'd

On lips that are for others; deep as love, 

Deep as first love, and wild with all regret; 

O Death in Life, the days are no more. 

(Lord Alfred Tennyson) 

OR

(ii) Some Trees

These are amazing: each 

Joining a neighbor, as though speech

Were a still performance. 

Arranging by chance

To meet as far this morning

From the world as agreeing

With it, you and I

Are suddenly what the trees try

To tell us wer are: 

That their merely being there

Means something; that soon

We may touch, love, explain. 

And glad not to have invented

Such comeliness, we are surrounded: 

A silence already filled with noises, 

A canvas on which emerges

A chorus of smiles, a winter morning. 

Placed in a puzzling light, and moving, 

Our days put on such reticence

These accents seem their own defense. 

(John Ashbery)