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

Who composed the poem 'The Phoenix and the Turtle'?

Name the poet who composed the following poems:

1. A. 'A Hymn to God the Father'
2. B. 'Elegy on Mistress Bulstrode'
3. C. 'Hymn to God my God, in my Sickness'
4. D. 'A Valediction: of Weeping'

'My love is of a birth as rare / As 'tis for object strange and high; / It was begotten by despair / Upon impossibility.' Name the poem.

Who composed 'A Red, Red Rose'?

In which year was Byron's 'She Walks in Beauty' composed?

Who is the author of the pandemic fiction The Last Man?

Choose the correct order of publication of Thomas Carlyle's works:

1. A. The French Revolution: A History
2. B. 'Signs of the Times'
3. C. Chartism
4. D. 'Occasional Discourse on the Negro Question'
5. E. On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History

Arrange the following texts chronologically on the basis of date of publication:

1. A. Mary Shelley, Frankenstein
2. B. Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own
3. C. Mary Wollstonecraft, Maria, or The Wrongs of Woman
4. D. Germaine Greer, The Female Eunuch
5. E. Rebecca West, The Return of the Soldier

Which of the following is NOT among the 'positive evils' of Walter Scott as a novelist?

Match List I with List II:

Which of the following statements about Rudyard Kipling are true?

1. A. He was born on 30 December 1865 in Bombay.
2. B. He received the Nobel Prize in 1907.
3. C. The Jungle Books comprise four collections.
4. D. The stories are originally set in the Shivalik hills.
5. E. The Jungle Book was published in 1894.

Match List I with List II:

Match List I with List II:

Arrange the following texts in chronological order:

1. A. George Eliot, Middlemarch
2. B. Ford Madox Ford, The Good Soldier
3. C. Virginia Woolf, Night and Day
4. D. E. M. Forster, A Passage to India
5. E. Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

Arrange the following works of D. H. Lawrence in order of publication:

1. A. The Rainbow
2. B. Kangaroo
3. C. Women in Love
4. D. Sons and Lovers
5. E. The Widowing of Mrs. Holroyd

Which of the following texts is NOT based on disability?

Which of the following statements are NOT true?

1. A. Tomb of Sand by Geetanjali Shree, translated by Daisy Rockwell, won the 2023 International Booker Prize.
2. B. The Booker Prize is awarded for the best sustained work of fiction written in English.
3. C. The International Booker Prize was instituted in 2002.
4. D. The Booker Prize is for fiction in English published in the UK and Ireland.
5. E. The International Booker is awarded for the finest single work of fiction translated into English.

Choose the two statements that aptly describe Renaissance humanism:

1. A. It prepared man for eternal life.
2. B. It was anthropocentric.
3. C. It was more theological.
4. D. It rejected the distinction between the noumenal and the phenomenal.
5. E. It revived interest in classical literature and thought.

Which of the following statements are true of liberal humanism?

1. A. Language is not constitutive of reality.
2. B. There is no fixed or absolute truth.
3. C. The mind is empty and inquiry into art is objective.
4. D. Language shapes reality.
5. E. Truth is not provisional.

Which of the following about NEP 2020 is NOT true?

Which of the following pairs of tribal narratives and writers is NOT correct?

Which of the following texts are NOT by an Indian diaspora novelist?

1. A. Darkness
2. B. Moth Smoke
3. C. Whereabouts
4. D. The Reluctant Fundamentalist
5. E. Clear Light of Day

Which of the following assumptions about diasporic identities are NOT true?

1. A. Migrancy shapes ways of being and seeing beyond the actual journey.
2. B. Migrancy may expose migrants and their children to displacement and fragmentation.
3. C. Dominant narratives of belonging readily accommodate those living 'in-between'.
4. D. Living in-between is a pleasurable experience.
5. E. 'Home' becomes a problematic concept.

Match List I with List II:

Match List I with List II:

Arrange V. S. Naipaul's works chronologically:

1. A. A House for Mr Biswas
2. B. The Mimic Men
3. C. The Mystic Masseur
4. D. Half a Life
5. E. Magic Seeds

Arrange the following Indian poeticians chronologically:

1. A. Bhoja
2. B. Lollata
3. C. Udbhata
4. D. Dandin
5. E. Bhamaha

Match List I with List II:

Match List I with List II:

Which of the following texts is NOT based on transgender issues?

Match List I with List II:

Who wrote The Arte of Rhetorique?

Who denounced literary works as the works of the devil?

Which of the following statements about Sidney's The Defence of Poesy are NOT true?

1. A. It was published posthumously in 1595.
2. B. It is also titled An Apology for Poetry.
3. C. Sidney criticises Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde and Spenser's The Shepheardes Calender.
4. D. It is among the first major works of literary criticism in English.
5. E. It defends Plato's banishment of poets from the Republic.

Who complained that poetry had fallen from the highest estimation of learning to be 'the laughing-stock of children'?

'A little learning is a dang'rous thing; / Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring.' Who wrote these lines?

Arrange the following works of criticism in order of publication:

1. A. Sidney, An Apologie for Poetrie
2. B. Wilson, The Arte of Rhetorique
3. C. Wordsworth, Preface to Lyrical Ballads
4. D. Pope, An Essay on Criticism
5. E. Eliot, 'The Metaphysical Poets'

What does Johnson's phrase 'discordia concors' (Life of Cowley) imply?

1. A. Ironic inversion of residual ideology in a text
2. B. A combination of two philosophically similar discourses
3. C. A term for diminishing metaphor
4. D. A combination of dissimilar images
5. E. A combination of contradictory ideas and concepts

Mary Wollstonecraft wrote A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. Who wrote 'the Rights of Man'?

Which of the following statements are NOT relevant to Coleridge's Biographia Literaria?

1. A. The first volume recounts his friendship with Robert Southey and William Blake.
2. B. A later edition (1847) carried notes by his daughter Sara.
3. C. It is a two-volume work.
4. D. It discusses the difference between fancy and imagination.
5. E. The first volume acknowledges Aristotle and Plato as his chief teachers.

Who defined the ideal poet as one who 'brings the whole soul of man into activity'?

Which of the following statements do NOT relate to Empson's Seven Types of Ambiguity?

1. A. Ambiguity is any verbal nuance that gives room for alternative reactions.
2. B. The first type is the simple metaphor, effective in several ways at once.
3. C. The third type gives two apparently unconnected meanings simultaneously.
4. D. The fifth type is an 'unfortunate confusion', illustrated from Shelley and Swinburne.
5. E. The seventh type marks a division in the reader's mind.

Match List I with List II:

In Derrida's usage, what does 'bricolage' mean?

Who coined the term 'speculative fiction'?

How did Paul J. Crutzen describe the 'Anthropocene'?

Who defined defamiliarisation as the renewal of perception?

Which of the following was NOT written by F. R. Leavis?

Arrange the following critical texts in chronological order:

1. A. Georg Lukács, The Historical Novel (English tr.)
2. B. John Crowe Ransom, The New Criticism
3. C. Helen Gardner, The Business of Criticism
4. D. Fredric Jameson, The Political Unconscious
5. E. Louis Althusser, essays on ideology ('Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses')

Match List I with List II:

Which two statements are true about contrapuntal reading?

1. A. It locates the anxiety of influence in the text.
2. B. It decodes the author's political unconscious.
3. C. It unveils texts complicit in justifying imperialism.
4. D. It shows how the author consciously structures meaning.
5. E. It decodes intertextual renderings of heroes and villains.

In Foucault's words, the 'Panopticon' refers to:

Which of the following statements are true about Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o's Decolonising the Mind?

1. A. Its full title is Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature.
2. B. It was first published in 1886 during a short visit to London for a conference.
3. C. Language choice is central to how a people define themselves.
4. D. The Nigerian author defends English as a tool of progress.
5. E. In the colonial school, the language of his education was no longer the language of his culture.

Assertion (A): Marxism makes no claim to universality. Reason (R): Postmodernism jettisons totalising frameworks.

Which of the following is NOT true about E. P. Thompson's The Making of the English Working Class?

1. A. It studies the development of working-class consciousness.
2. B. It treats class as a relationship, not a fixed structure.
3. C. It is a pioneering systematic study of working-class history.
4. D. It critiques Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own.
5. E. It reinforces race and ethnicity as forms of collective identity.

In which year was The Empire Writes Back published?

Which of the following statements are true about New Historicism?

1. A. It does not use 'thick description'.
2. B. Literary works are not autonomous or timeless.
3. C. History is always narrated, a matter of interpretation.
4. D. All historical analysis is objective.
5. E. History is neither progressive nor linear.

Which of the following statements are true?

1. A. The Empire Writes Back is a non-fictional work on postcolonialism.
2. B. Black Skin, White Masks is a fictional narrative about a protagonist.
3. C. A Critique of Postcolonial Reason is by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak.
4. D. Said's autobiography is titled In Place.
5. E. Postcolonialism addresses questions that remain after the colonisers have left.

Which of the following is/are NOT true about Négritude?

1. A. It was started by French-speaking African and Caribbean writers in Paris.
2. B. It critically examined Western values and reassessed African culture.
3. C. It was directed against British colonial rule.
4. D. Léopold Sédar Senghor was a leading figure.
5. E. It was influenced by 'art for art's sake'.

According to Lev Manovich, 'cultural analytics' refers to:

Which of the following assertions are NOT true about cultural studies?

1. A. Popular culture is the set of practices, beliefs and objects that embody the most widely shared meanings of a social system.
2. B. Dominant culture refers to the invisible aspects of our practices and attitudes.
3. C. Residual culture is older practice that survives in traces within present culture.
4. D. The discipline is comparatively new and opposed to rigid traditional Marxist methods.
5. E. It discourages the audibility of women in public spaces.

Who wrote Subculture: The Meaning of Style (1979)?

Who described neo-colonialism as 'the worst form of imperialism', meaning 'exploitation without redress'?

What is the goal of schizoanalysis?

Which of the following statements are NOT true about the feminist movement?

1. A. Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Woman challenges the idea that women exist only to please men.
2. B. Women's suffrage dominated international feminism for more than fifty years.
3. C. The Female Eunuch was written by the African writer Sarah Millin.
4. D. Kate Millett's Sexual Politics broadens 'politics' to all power-structured relationships.
5. E. The second wave was led by Generation X.

Which of the following assumptions about post-feminism are NOT true?

1. A. Post-feminism rests on the postulates laid down by Elaine Showalter.
2. B. It is a discourse popularised by the media in the 1990s, reacting against feminism of the 1970s–80s.
3. C. It re-establishes a gender binary in which man is essentially powerful.
4. D. It foregrounds femininity and the 'career woman'.
5. E. Its discourse extends into ecofeminism and cyberfeminism.

Which of the following are basic issues in feminist literary criticism?

1. A. Women are trapped in the 'prison-house' of a male-centred language.
2. B. Gender equality is just an idea and largely unachievable.
3. C. Society is largely entrenched in patriarchal ideology.
4. D. Sex and gender cannot be treated as distinct categories.
5. E. A single universal feminism is the remedy for historical subjugation.

Which of the following attributes of society, concerning the objectification of women's bodies, are NOT accepted by feminist critics?

1. A. Beauty contests commodify women's bodies for the male gaze.
2. B. All women suffer from 'penis envy'.
3. C. Cosmetic surgery and adornment become 'feminine' modes.
4. D. The nation is imaged as a woman's body needing male protection.
5. E. Men are rational while women are irrational or emotional.

Arrange the following texts in chronological order of publication:

1. A. Elaine Showalter, A Literature of Their Own
2. B. Alice Walker, In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens
3. C. Gilbert and Gubar, The Madwoman in the Attic
4. D. Kate Millett, Sexual Politics
5. E. Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex

Which of the following are NOT slave narratives?

1. A. Richard Wright, Black Boy
2. B. Roxane Gay, An Untamed State
3. C. Elizabeth Keckley, Behind the Scenes
4. D. Caryl Phillips, The Nature of Blood
5. E. Booker T. Washington, Up from Slavery

Which of the following are key features of the Harlem Renaissance?

1. A. It advocated freedom from Victorian moral values.
2. B. It emerged in the early nineteenth century.
3. C. It began in the Harlem district of New York City.
4. D. Magazines such as The Crisis, Opportunity and The Messenger were crucial to it.
5. E. Harlem was formerly a Black district that became a white city.

Who said that Northrop Frye 'did not lock literature into an ivory tower' but stressed its role in building a civilised, humane society?

Statement I: Toni Morrison's Beloved is based on the true story of an enslaved Black woman. Statement II: Beloved is a novel about the trauma of apartheid.

What is the main thrust of Sartre's strongly worded reply to Camus's The Rebel?

Which of the following are Australian Aboriginal texts?

1. A. Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God
2. B. Claire G. Coleman, Terra Nullius
3. C. Sally Morgan, My Place
4. D. Hannah Crafts, The Bondwoman's Narrative
5. E. Doris Pilkington, Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence

Who received the Nobel Prize in Literature for 2021?

Arrange the following in chronological order of publication:

1. A. J. G. Ballard, The Atrocity Exhibition
2. B. Donna Haraway, When Species Meet
3. C. Thomas Friedman, The World Is Flat
4. D. Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man
5. E. William Gibson, Neuromancer

Assertion (A): Montaigne established the essay as a literary form in his Essais. Reason (R): Francis Bacon is generally considered the father of the English essay.

Statement I: Doris Pilkington's Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence draws on the Stolen Generations. Statement II: Nadine Gordimer's My Son's Story concerns 'coloured' protagonists under apartheid.

Which of the following defines a pidgin?

The study of language across time, as it changes historically, is called:

Which statement correctly defines homonyms?

Which statement correctly defines pragmatics?

Which of the following does NOT relate to Universal Grammar?

Which statement correctly defines inversion?

Which statement correctly defines a split infinitive?

Which of the following is NOT true about Saussure's Course in General Linguistics?

Which modern philosophical tendency stresses the role of the perceiver in determining meaning?

Which of the following phonetic definitions are wrong?

1. A. Fricative: close approximation of two articulators
2. B. Stop: closure of articulators obstructs the airflow
3. C. Raising the front of the tongue as a secondary articulation is velarisation
4. D. Trill: a loosely held articulator set vibrating
5. E. Raising the back of the tongue during another articulation is palatalisation

Assertion (A): An aphorism is a concise, memorable statement of a doctrine or principle. Reason (R): 'Aporia' came to mean any generally accepted truth, roughly synonymous with maxim.

Why should a man read books, according to the passage?

How many purposes of study has the author suggested?

What makes men wise, witty, subtle, deep and grave?

How do studies become perfect?

What are the advantages of studies?

Which is the dominant rasa in the poem?

What is the central symbol in the poem?

What is the woman doing in the poem?

What comes in contact with the woman's body?

The first two lines of the poem: