UGC NET English Paper 2 – December 2023 – Question Paper with Answer Key

Indicate the correct chronological order of the following literary works:

1. A. Beowulf
2. B. Divina Commedia
3. C. Summa Theologica
4. D. Le Morte d'Arthur
5. E. The Canterbury Tales

Which of the following characteristics of She Stoops to Conquer is NOT correct?

Which of the following was the immediate predecessor of drama proper?

Prose romances preceded the emergence of the novel. Which texts fall under the category of prose romance?

Name the poet who composed the following poems:

1. A. 'The Divine Image'
2. B. 'Holy Thursday'
3. C. 'The Little Boy Lost'
4. D. 'The Little Boy Found'

According to Greek mythology, who is Psyche in Keats's 'Ode to Psyche'?

Identify the poet of the following poems: 'The Skylark', 'The Badger', 'The Gypsy Camp', 'First Love'.

Which of the following poems was not composed by P. B. Shelley?

Match List I with List II:

Which of the following statements are true about Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights?

1. A. It was published in 1847.
2. B. It was published under the pseudonym Ellis Bell.
3. C. Lockwood and Catherine Linton are the main narrators.
4. D. It avoids authorial intrusion, using an unusual structure and narrative technique.
5. E. It was Emily Brontë's third novel.

Which of the following is not a character in Jane Austen's Persuasion?

Which of Thomas Hardy's novels was first serialised in abridged form as Hearts Insurgent?

Which two cities are referred to in Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities?

What is the correct order of publication of the following novels of Charles Dickens?

1. A. Great Expectations
2. B. Hard Times
3. C. Oliver Twist
4. D. David Copperfield
5. E. A Tale of Two Cities

Match List I with List II:

What is NOT true about D. H. Lawrence's Sons and Lovers?

1. A. It is a semi-autobiographical novel.
2. B. It is a psychological study of relationships in an English working-class family.
3. C. Its film adaptation was directed by Jack Cardiff.
4. D. It traces three generations of the Brangwen family.
5. E. Paul Morel's love for his beloved overshadows his bond with his mother.

Which of the following is true about Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot?

1. A. It illustrates the vanity of humankind.
2. B. It has uncompromising views on humanitarian communism.
3. C. It projects self-deception, striving to disguise failure.
4. D. It is a static representation without structure or development.
5. E. Its incoherent dialogue suggests the despair of a society.

Who described drama in these words: 'A true play is three-dimensional; it is literature that walks and talks before our eyes'?

Which of the following qualities of heroic treatment was NOT needed in the plays of the University Wits?

Who declared in 1920 that 'there is no longer any intellectual life in England'?

In Absurd Theatre, the characters often use disjointed, repetitive and clichéd speech to:

1. A. show that meaninglessness can itself suggest a meaning
2. B. suggest the working of the subconscious
3. C. produce comic action and relief
4. D. illustrate the illogical, purposeless human condition
5. E. defy the 'modern' notion of dignity and wisdom

Which one of these is not a literary journal/magazine?

Which among the following are titles of periodicals?

1. A. Dickens's Household Words
2. B. S. T. Coleridge's The Friend
3. C. Richard Steele's The Guardian
4. D. Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis
5. E. Leigh Hunt's The Indicator

Which of the following statements is NOT true about NEP 2020?

Match List I with List II:

Kamala Das's 'An Introduction' is:

The Calcutta Chromosome (1995), a novel exploring past and future, was written by:

What is the correct chronological order of publication of the following texts?

1. A. R. K. Narayan, The Financial Expert
2. B. Manohar Malgonkar, A Bend in the Ganges
3. C. Raja Rao, Kanthapura
4. D. Shashi Tharoor, The Great Indian Novel
5. E. Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things

Which among the following is not written by a sportsperson?

Which among the following writers are known for partition narratives?

1. A. Krishna Sobti
2. B. Shashi Deshpande
3. C. Saros Cowasjee
4. D. Bharati Mukherjee
5. E. Rahi Masoom Raza

Match List I with List II:

Who is the earliest available Indian dramatist?

Arrange the following texts chronologically:

1. A. Bharata, Natyashastra
2. B. Kshemendra, Auchityavicharacharcha
3. C. Bhamaha, Kavyalankara
4. D. Kuntaka, Vakroktijivitam
5. E. Anandavardhana, Dhvanyaloka

How many major forms of drama (rupakas) are described by Bharata in the Natyashastra?

Sharankumar Limbale argues that Dalit literature is unique because:

1. A. it brings out Dalit reality that is liminal in time and space
2. B. it has unique historical and ideological concerns
3. C. it offers literary and cultural representations of the marginalised and dispossessed
4. D. it brings out narratives and discourses of pity
5. E. it uses offensive language towards revered figures

Choose the correct option(s) in the New Historicist reading of Dalit writing:

1. A. Dalit writing does not essentialise Indian society, culture and identity.
2. B. Dalit writing has inflected the immanent metanarratives.
3. C. There is no single location of Dalit writing.
4. D. Dalit writing is only a political category.
5. E. Dalit writing is not grounded in history.

Identify the correct option(s) in Homi K. Bhabha's theorisation of the nation.

1. A. The nation arises from similarities among people.
2. B. Nationalist representation is marked by ambivalence.
3. C. Nationalist representation engages two contradictory modes of representation.
4. D. Nationalist discourse is split by a disruptive double narrative movement.
5. E. The nation is a stable and fixed category.

Arrange the following in chronological order of publication:

1. A. Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, The Mistress of Spices
2. B. Anand Giridharadas, India Calling
3. C. V. S. Naipaul, India: A Wounded Civilization
4. D. Bharati Mukherjee, Desirable Daughters
5. E. Salman Rushdie, Midnight's Children

Arrange the following in chronological order of publication:

1. A. Michel Foucault, The Order of Things
2. B. M. K. Gandhi, Hind Swaraj
3. C. Stephen Greenblatt, The Swerve
4. D. Donna Haraway, When Species Meet
5. E. Tony Bennett, Formalism and Marxism

Which work of Francis Bacon explains the new logic, the inductive method of reasoning?

Statement I: A Room of One's Own is a feminist essay by Virginia Woolf about women's education, exclusion and writing. Statement II: In Other Worlds is a collection of essays by Edward W. Said on psychoanalysis and social theory.

'Did not Shakespeare hate and despise Iago and Edmund?' Identify the book in which this question appears.

'All writers since Chaucer have come from the middle class… have had a good, at least an expensive, education…' Where does Virginia Woolf argue this?

Edgar Allan Poe defined 'the prose tale' as:

Which among the following are NOT mentioned as aspects of the novel by E. M. Forster?

1. A. Story
2. B. Imagination
3. C. Plot
4. D. Harmony
5. E. Prophecy

Roland Barthes in 'Introduction to the Structural Analysis of Narratives' (1966) proposed which levels of narrative?

1. A. Functions
2. B. Actions
3. C. Grammar
4. D. Narration
5. E. Coherence

Match List I with List II:

Which of the following assumptions are true in the context of New Criticism?

1. A. It popularised close reading of the text.
2. B. Allen Tate, Robert Penn Warren, R. P. Blackmur and Kenneth Burke were among its leading critics.
3. C. It was used chiefly for novels and plays.
4. D. It tends to set aside historical, social and political contexts.
5. E. John Crowe Ransom's The New Criticism wholly endorses I. A. Richards, William Empson and T. S. Eliot.

Arrange the following works in chronological order of publication:

1. A. Raymond Williams, Culture and Society
2. B. Matthew Arnold, Culture and Anarchy
3. C. Herbert Read, To Hell with Culture
4. D. Christopher Caudwell, Studies in a Dying Culture
5. E. T. S. Eliot, Notes towards the Definition of Culture

The term 'simulacra' in postmodern discourse is about:

1. A. the lack of a vivid representation of reality
2. B. an artificially made reality presented as authentic
3. C. the rejection of the modernist view of reality
4. D. the gap between perception and reality
5. E. psychological interplay at the subconscious level

What aptly defines 'minor literature' according to Gilles Deleuze (and Guattari)?

According to Freud, civilization is to some extent the cumulative product of our psychology. Choose the correct option(s):

1. A. The purpose of human life is the pursuit of happiness.
2. B. Man is wholly good.
3. C. Abolition of private property will remove ill-will and hostility among men.
4. D. Creative art reflects the purpose of human life.
5. E. Civilisation is analogous with the human psyche.

'Being a white man, in short, was a very concrete manner of being-in-the-world, a way of taking hold of reality, language and thought.' What does 'white man' signify here?

Assertion (A): Discourses are cultural and social practices rooted in psychic and physical reality. Reason (R): Foucault defines discourse as the material manifestation of thought which shapes our subjectivity.

Identify the correct option in Julia Kristeva's definition of the 'chora':

1. A. A liminal space
2. B. A space of the marginalised
3. C. A non-expressive totality formed by the drives
4. D. Has no fixed identity
5. E. Precedes the linguistic sign

'Panopticism' refers to a mechanism of surveillance. Who coined the term?

Match List I with List II:

Identify the correct order of the publications given below:

1. A. Simon Gikandi, Maps of Englishness
2. B. Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth
3. C. Homi K. Bhabha (ed.), Nation and Narration
4. D. Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism
5. E. Robert Young, Colonial Desire

The essay 'Discourse in the Novel' argues that the novel is constituted by a multiplicity of social voices. Who wrote it?

Which of the following statements/concepts are relevant for understanding postmodernism?

1. A. Postmodernism and postcolonialism are mutually dependent in responding to colonial experience.
2. B. Lyotard argues that the postmodern condition is characterised by scepticism towards metanarratives.
3. C. Edward W. Said has been instrumental in postmodern theory and criticism.
4. D. Jean Baudrillard's Simulacra and Simulation is a seminal postmodern text.
5. E. Fredric Jameson argues that parody has been replaced by pastiche in postmodernism.

Which of the following statements are valid for postcolonial theory and literature?

1. A. Abrogation, resistance and assertion form the basis of postcolonial thought.
2. B. Postcolonial theory upholds binaries such as master/slave, white/black, coloniser/colonised.
3. C. Weep Not, Child is the first English novel by an East African writer, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o.
4. D. Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea is based on the experiences of colonised Africans.
5. E. Homi K. Bhabha, Edward W. Said and Gayatri Spivak are key postcolonial thinkers.

Which is the correct option in Antonio Gramsci's definition of the intellectual?

1. A. Every social group arising in production creates its own 'organic' intellectuals.
2. B. Intellectuals give their group homogeneity and awareness of its function.
3. C. Intellectuals do not work to consolidate their group's power.
4. D. The ecclesiastics are organically bound to the bourgeoisie.
5. E. The ecclesiastics' monopoly of the superstructure was contested.

Which of the following is NOT true about Raymond Williams's views on culture?

Which of the following is true of Edward Said's Orientalism?

1. A. It was published in 1979.
2. B. It draws on Foucault's notion of discourse.
3. C. It analyses 'imaginative geography' and representations of the Orient.
4. D. It is a foundational text of postcolonial theory.
5. E. It relies on Barthes's 'death of the author'.

Name the writer who is NOT associated with British Cultural Studies.

Arrange the following works of Richard Hoggart in chronological order:

1. A. An Imagined Life
2. B. The Uses of Literacy
3. C. Higher Education: Demand and Response
4. D. A Local Habitation
5. E. A Sort of Clowning

Which of the following assertions is/are NOT true in the context of the culture industry?

1. A. The Frankfurt School used the term for the workings of mass media.
2. B. The dominant class instils its values in the working class.
3. C. 'Industry' signals the mass production of cultural goods.
4. D. Authentic working-class culture is preserved and protected.
5. E. Mass culture fosters activism and critical thinking among the young.

Assertion (A): Culture is one of the two or three most complicated words in the English language. Reason (R): This is mainly because several different though related meanings have emerged at particular moments in its long history.

Who among the following is NOT associated with Cultural Materialism?

Antonio Gramsci's Prison Notebooks primarily deal with:

The term 'gynocriticism' refers to:

Who remarked, 'I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by a conscious endeavor'?

Which text is taken as a short treatise on Transcendentalism?

Assertion (A): Toni Morrison and Adrienne Rich have contributed to a distinctive style. Reason (R): Feminism, Adrienne Rich observes, is the field where 'subjectivity and politics have to come together' most naturally.

Which of the following is true about Arthur Miller's plays?

1. A. After the Fall is semi-autobiographical.
2. B. Incident at Vichy deals with Nazi persecution of Jews.
3. C. The Price anticipates an economic crash.
4. D. The Creation of the World and Other Business is not a serio-comic retelling of Genesis.
5. E. The Crucible examines the responsibilities of the artist.

Which of the following is true about Tennessee Williams's A Streetcar Named Desire?

1. A. It is set in New Orleans.
2. B. The protagonist is a Mississippi landowner.
3. C. It ends with Blanche's defeat and departure.
4. D. Tom Wingfield is the narrator.
5. E. Laura and Stella are cousins.

Choose the correct option in the light of the statement: 'The fact that I am a black working-class man shapes how I see the world more than anything I consciously learn.'

1. A. Human beings can freely choose intellectually and morally.
2. B. The unconscious determines thought and behaviour.
3. C. Man is condemned to be free.
4. D. We carry a kind of 'otherness' within ourselves.
5. E. We can no longer speak unequivocally of a writer's intention.

What among the following is NOT true about Anna Karenina?

'All happy families are alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.' This is the opening line of:

Which of the following best describe Anna Karenina's situation and worldview?

1. A. Anna is deeply committed to family and children.
2. B. Anna's choices were more an outcome of passion and instinct.
3. C. Anna accepted the exile to which she was condemned.
4. D. Anna's passionate spirit and determination to live on her own terms make her unique.
5. E. She became a victim of rampant patriarchal forces.

'I am a sick man… I am a spiteful man. I am an unattractive man. I believe my liver is diseased.' These are the opening lines of:

Match List I with List II:

Match List I with List II:

Statement I: Doris Pilkington's non-fiction Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence is based on the real experiences of three Aboriginal girls who fled the Moore River Native Settlement. Statement II: The three girls were Molly, Daisy and Mary.

Match List I with List II:

A portmanteau is:

Which among the following statements are true?

1. A. Miscegenation is a sexual relationship or marriage between people of the same race.
2. B. A creole is a language that develops from a pidgin and becomes a community's mother tongue.
3. C. Indian tribal people are popularly called Aboriginals.
4. D. A mulatto is a person of mixed white and black ancestry.
5. E. The indigenous population of Australia is called Red Indians.

Match List I with List II:

The use of broader principles of research underscored by philosophical rationales is termed:

In terms of Indian poetics (rupaka, metaphor), the poem is an example of:

What is the gender of the addressee in the poem?

What is the upameya (the object compared) in the poem?

What is the upamana (the standard of comparison) in the poem?

Which statement shows the relationship of upameya with upamana in the poem?

It is easier to find words for ideas than for forces because:

Why does the author say that 'the tension must be conveyed and must be sustained'?

What is possible in the analysis of a poem if the forces are included in the ideas?

Which of the following is NOT correct in relation to a poem?

What does the term 'logical connectives' mean?