Literary Criticism and Theory – Previous Year Questions
452 questions from past UGC NET English papers, each with the correct answer. Open any question for its explanation.
Topic-wise mock tests
- 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? A. It was published posthumously in 1595. B. It is also titled An Apology for Poetry. C. Sidney criticises Chaucer's Troilus and Crisey…
- 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: A. Sidney, An Apologie for Poetrie B. Wilson, The Arte of Rhetorique C. Wordsworth, Preface to Lyrical Ballads D. Pope, An Essay on Criticism E. Eliot, '…
- What does Johnson's phrase 'discordia concors' (Life of Cowley) imply? A. Ironic inversion of residual ideology in a text B. A combination of two philosophically similar discourses C. A term for diminishing metaphor D.…
- 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? A. The first volume recounts his friendship with Robert Southey and William Blake. B. A later edition (1847) carried notes by his d…
- 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? A. Ambiguity is any verbal nuance that gives room for alternative reactions. B. The first type is the simple metaphor, effective in s…
- Match List I with List II: List I: Work List II: Author A. Lectures on the English Comic Writers I. David Hume B. Essays, Moral and Political II. William Hazlitt C. The Second Sex III. Robert Lynd D. The Pleasures of Ig…
- 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: A. Georg Lukács, The Historical Novel (English tr.) B. John Crowe Ransom, The New Criticism C. Helen Gardner, The Business of Criticism D. Fredric Jameson, Th…
- Match List I with List II: List I: Writer List II: Concept A. Hugo Gernsback I. Biopolitics B. Edmund Husserl II. Phenomenology C. John Crowe Ransom III. Science fiction D. Michel Foucault IV. New Criticism
- Which two statements are true about contrapuntal reading? A. It locates the anxiety of influence in the text. B. It decodes the author's political unconscious. C. It unveils texts complicit in justifying imperialism. D.…
- In Foucault's words, the 'Panopticon' refers to:
- Which of the following statements are true about Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o's Decolonising the Mind? A. Its full title is Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature. B. It was first published in 1886 d…
- 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? A. It studies the development of working-class consciousness. B. It treats class as a relationship, not a fixed structur…
- In which year was The Empire Writes Back published?
- Which of the following statements are true about New Historicism? A. It does not use 'thick description'. B. Literary works are not autonomous or timeless. C. History is always narrated, a matter of interpretation. D. A…
- Which of the following statements are true? A. The Empire Writes Back is a non-fictional work on postcolonialism. B. Black Skin, White Masks is a fictional narrative about a protagonist. C. A Critique of Postcolonial Re…
- Which of the following is/are NOT true about Négritude? A. It was started by French-speaking African and Caribbean writers in Paris. B. It critically examined Western values and reassessed African culture. C. It was dir…
- According to Lev Manovich, 'cultural analytics' refers to:
- Which of the following assertions are NOT true about cultural studies? A. Popular culture is the set of practices, beliefs and objects that embody the most widely shared meanings of a social system. B. Dominant culture…
- Who wrote Subculture: The Meaning of Style (1979)?