M. A. (Sem. I) Examination, December, 2024
ENGLISH LITERATURE PAPER – II MAEN-CC-102
SECTION -A
MARKS ARE 2*10=20 FOR EACH QUESTION
1. What is the prize for winning the story telling contest in ‘The Prologue to the Canterbury Tales‘?
In ‘The Prologue to the Canterbury Tales’, the prize for winning the storytelling contest is a free dinner (or supper) at the Tabard Inn upon their return from Canterbury.
2. “My verse your virtues rare shall eternise“. Whose verse and whose virtues are referred to in the above line ?
The line “My verse your virtues rare shall eternise” is from Edmund Spenser’s “Sonnet 75” (often referred to as “One Day I Wrote Her Name Upon the Strand”) from his sequence Amoretti
3. What is the purpose of the play – within – the play in ‘Hamlet’?
The main purpose of the play-within-a-play is to “catch the conscience of the King.” Hamlet plans to have a troupe of actors perform the suspected circumstances of his father’s death, reasoning that if Claudius did kill his father, his guilt will become evident when he watches the play.
*conscience – the part of your mind that tells you if what you are doing is right or wrong
4. Why is Hamlet upset in the beginning of the play?
answer 1: Hamlet has reasons to be angry from the beginning of the play. At first, Hamlet is angry with Gertrude, his mother, because she married Claudius, the newly-crowned king (who was Hamlet’s father’s brother) too soon after the death of his father (the late king). Hamlet still thinks his father’s death was an accident. When his friend Horatio comes to visit him, Hamlet makes a black joke about saving the funeral cakes and serving them at the wedding feast.
answer 2: Key reasons Hamlet is upset – Speed and circumstance of the marriage, Moral revulsion and incestuous overtones, Betrayal and loss of trust, Symbol of Denmark’s decay, Emotional complexity and Oedipal readings and Her apparent refusal to acknowledge wrongdoing.
5. What does Faustus demand from Mephistopheles in exchange for his soul?
ANSWER 1: In Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus, Faustus offers his soul to Lucifer in exchange for Mephistopheles serving him obediently for 24 years, granting unlimited knowledge, power, and pleasures. But these times seemed to Faustus as 24 hours.
ANSWER 2 :Doctor Faustus sells his soul for twenty-four years of knowing how to use magic. At the end of the twenty-four years, he agrees, his soul will belong to Lucifer and he will go to Hell for eternity.
6. What does Faustus do in his final moments before his death ?
In his final speech, Faustus is clearly wracked with remorse, yet he no longer seems to be able to repent. A vision of hell opens before Faustus’s horrified eyes as the clock strikes eleven. Faustus exhorts the clocks to slow and time to stop, so that he might live a little longer and have a chance to repent.
7. Give any two characteristic features of Bacon’s essays.
Bacon’s essays are capsules of impersonal wisdom. They are objective and logically constructed. Bacon’s essays bear a close imprint of his personality. According to Hudson: “His essays are loaded with ripest wisdom of experience.”
8. What does the term “Extasie” mean in Donne’s poem ‘The Extasie’?
In “The Extasie” the word keeps its literal meaning of ekstasis or exodus of the souls of the two lovers from their bodies. ‘Extasie‘ is essentially a religious experience in which the individual soul, ignoring the body, holds converse with Divinity.
9. Who is the main architect of Pandemonium ?
In John Milton’s Paradise Lost, the main architect of Pandemonium, the capital city and council chamber of Hell, is Mulciber. A fallen angel, Mulciber was known in classical mythology as Hephaestus or Vulcan, the skilled artisan of palaces in Heaven before his fall.
10. What does Satan mean when he declares that it is “Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heav’n”?
it is better to rule over – be like a king in hell than to serve somebody as a slave in heaven. So it means it is better to be in a bad place and rule over the place rather than to go to a good place and work as a servant there.
SECTION-B
EACH QUESTIONS HAS 16 MARKS.
2. “Chaucer’s group of pilgrims mirrors a picture of the society of his times.” Discuss.
3. Write a note on Soliloques in ‘Hamlet’.
4. What makes Dr. Faustus a tragic hero?
5. Critically appreciate, Donne’s poem ‘A Valediction : Forbidding Mourning’ or ‘The Extasie’.
6. What epic features do you find in Milton’s ‘Paradise Lost – Book I’. Discuss them with suitable illustrations.