Friday, June 22, 2018

Important Shakespearean quotes

Famous Shakespearean quotes

1. ‘To be, or not to be: that is the question’
(Hamlet Act 3, Scene 1)

2. ‘All the world ‘s a stage, and all the men and women merely players. They have their exits and their entrances; And one man in his time plays many parts.’
(As You Like it Act 2, Scene 7)

3. ‘Romeo, Romeo! wherefore art thou Romeo?’
(Romeo and Juliet Act 2, Scene 2)

4. ‘Now is the winter of our discontent’
(Richard III Act 1, Scene 1)

5. ‘Is this a dagger which I see before me, the handle toward my hand?’
(Macbeth Act 2, Scene 1)

6. ‘Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them.’
(Twelfth Night Act 2, Scene 5)

7. ‘Cowards die many times before their deaths; the valiant never taste of death but once.’
(Julius Caesar Act 2, Scene 2)

8. ‘Full fathom five thy father lies, of his bones are coral made. Those are pearls that were his eyes. Nothing of him that doth fade, but doth suffer a sea-change into something rich and strange.’
(The Tempest Act 1, Scene 2)

9. ‘A man can die but once.’
(Henry IV, Part 2 Act 3, Part 2)

10. ‘How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless child!’
(King Lear Act 1, Scene 4)

11. ‘Frailty, thy name is woman.’
(Hamlet Act 1, Scene 2)

12. ‘If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?’
(The Merchant of Venice Act 3, Scene 1)

13. ‘I am one who loved not wisely but too well.’
(Othello Act 5, Scene 2)

14. ‘The lady doth protest too much, methinks’
(Hamlet Act 3, Scene 2)

15. ‘We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep.’
(The Tempest Act 4, Scene 1)

16. ‘Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player, that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more; it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.’
(Macbeth Act 5, Scene 5)

17. ‘Beware the Ides of March.’
(Julius Caesar Act 1, Scene 2)

18. ‘Get thee to a nunnery.’
(Hamlet Act 3, Scene 1)

19. ‘If music be the food of love play on.’
(Twelfth Night Act 1, Scene 1)

20. ‘What’s in a name? A rose by any name would smell as sweet.’

(Romeo and Juliet Act 2, Scene 2)

21. ‘The better part of valor is discretion’
(Henry IV, Part 1 Act 5, Scene 4)

22. ‘To thine own self be true.’
(Hamlet Act 1, Scene 3)

23. ‘All that glisters is not gold.’
(The Merchant of Venice Act 2, Scene 7)

24. ‘Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears: I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.’
(Julius Caesar Act 3, Scene 2)

25. ‘Nothing will come of nothing.’
(King Lear Act 1, Scene 1)

26. ‘The course of true love never did run smooth.’
(A Midsummer Night’s Dream Act 1, Scene 1)

27. ‘Lord, what fools these mortals be!’
(A Midsummer Night’s Dream Act 1, Scene 1)

28. ‘Cry “havoc!” and let slip the dogs of war’
(Julius Caesar Act 3, Scene 1)

29. ‘There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.’
(Hamlet Act 2, Scene 2)

30. ‘A horse! a horse! my kingdom for a horse!’
(Richard III Act 5, Scene 4)

31. ‘There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.’
(Hamlet Act 1, Scene 5)

32. ‘Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind; and therefore is winged Cupid painted blind.’
(A Midsummer Night’s Dream Act 1, Scene 1)

33. ‘The fault, dear Brutus, lies not within the stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings.’
(Julius Caesar Act 1, Scene 2)

34. ‘Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?’
(Sonnet 18)

35. ‘Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments.’
(Sonnet 116)

36. ‘The evil that men do lives after them; The good is oft interrèd with their bones.’
(Julius Caesar Act 3, Scene 2)

37. ‘But, for my own part, it was Greek to me.’
(Julius Caesar Act 1, Scene 2)

38. ‘Neither a borrower nor a lender be; for loan oft loses both itself and friend, and borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.’
(Hamlet Act 1, Scene 3)

39. ‘We know what we are, but know not what we may be.’
(Hamlet Act 4, Scene 5)

40. ‘Off with his head!’
(Richard III Act 3, Scene 4)

41. ‘Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown.’
(Henry IV, Part 2 Act 3, Scene 1)

42. ‘Misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows.’
(The Tempest Act 2, Scene 2)

43. ‘This is very midsummer madness.’
(Twelfth Night Act 3, Scene 4)

44. ‘Some Cupid kills with arrows, some with traps.’
(Much Ado about Nothing Act 3, Scene 1)

45. ‘I cannot tell what the dickens his name is.’
(The Merry Wives of Windsor Act 3, Scene 2)

46. ‘We have seen better days.’
(Timon of Athens Act 4, Scene 2)

47. ‘I am a man more sinned against than sinning.’
(King Lear Act 3, Scene 2)

48. ‘Brevity is the soul of wit.’
(Hamlet Act 2, Scene 2)

49. ‘This royal throne of kings, this sceptred isle… This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England.’
(Richard II Act 2, Scene 1)

50. ‘What light through yonder
Window breaks
( Romeo Juliet Act 2 , scene 2)Famous Shakespeare's quotes


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Saturday, June 16, 2018

Important mcq on ENGLISH LITERATURE for NET

Some important Literature short mcqs--

1. D.H.Lawrence called one of his novels Kangaroo as “Thought Adventure".

2. The phrase ‘religion of the blood' is associated with D.H.Lawrence.

3. A character in Virginia Woolf’s novel Orlando changes his sex.

4. Charles II is characterised in this novel.

5. A woman's search for a fittinOkOkg mate is the central theme of Bernard Shaw'sMan and Superman.

6. ‘Chocolate cream hero' appears in Shaw’s Arms and the Man.

7.The phrase 'Don Juan in Hell' occurs in Shaw’s Man and Superman.

8.Prostitution is the central theme of Shaw's Mrs. Warren's Profession.

8.Labour and Capital conflict is the centraltheme of Galsworthy’s Strife.

9."The law is what it is -a majestic edifice sheltering all of us, each stone of which rests on another."

10. These lines occur in Galsworthy’s Justice.Bernard Shaw was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1925.


Series of important Literature short mcqs for Net

11.Joseph Conrad's novels are generally setin the background of the sea.

12.Rudyardrd Kipling wrote the poem   “ If”.

13.The term 'Stream of consciousness' was first used by William James.

14.The terms 'Inscape' and 'Instress' are associated with Hopkins.

15.Sprung Rhythm' was originated by Hopkins.

16. T .S. Eliot called 'Hamlet' an artistic failure.The World Within World is an autobiography of Stephen Spender.

17. G. B. Shaw said, "For art's sake alone I would not face the toil of writing a single sentence”.

18.Aldous Huxley borrowed the title ‘Brave New World’ from Shakespeare’s The Tempest.

19.William Morris is the author of The Earthly Paradise.

20. T. S Eliot was believed to be "a classicist in literature, royalist in politics and anglo-catholic in religion”.

21.Virginia Woolf was the founder of the Bloomsbury Group, a literary club of England.

22.George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty – Four and Aldous Huxley's Brave New World are prophetic novels.

23.Plato said, ‘Art is twice removed from reality'.

24.Plato proposed in his Republic that poets should be banished from the ideal Republic.

25.Five principal sources of Sublimity are there according to Longinus.

26.In Dryden's Essay of Dramatic Poesy there are four speakers representing four different ideologies.

27.Neander expresses Dryden's own views.

28.Dr. Johnson called Dryden 'the father of English criticism'.

29.Shelley said, "poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world”.

30.Dr . Johnson preferred Shakespeare's comedies to his Tragedies.

31.Coleridge said, "I write in metre because I am about to use a language different from that of prose.

32."Heroic Couplet is a two-line stanza having two rhyming lines in Iambic Pentameter.

Alexandrine is a line of six iambic feet occasionally used in a Heroic couplet.

Terza Rima is a run-on three-line stanza with a fixed rhyme-scheme.

Rhyme Royal stanza is a seven-line stanza in iambic pentameter.

Ottawa Rima is an eight-line stanza in iambic pentameter with a fixed rhyme-scheme.

Spenserian stanza is a nine-line stanza consisting of two quatrains in iambic pentameter, rounded off with an Alexandrine.

Blank verse has a metre but no rhyme.

Simile is a comparison between two things which have at least one point common.

Hyperbole is an exaggerated statement for the sake of emphasis.

33.The poem by Chaucer known to be the first attempt in English to use the Heroic Couplet is The Legend of Good Women.

34.Chaucer introduced the Heroic couplet inEnglish verse and invented Rhyme Royal.

35.The invention of the genre, the Eclogues (pastoral poetry) is attributed to Alexander Barclay.

36.Mort D' Arthur is the first book in English in poetic prose.

37.First to use blank verse in English drama Thomas Sackville.

38.The first English play house called The Theatre was founded in London, 1576.

39.Thomas Wyatt introduced the sonnet form to England.

40.Thomas Nash was the creator of the picaresque novel. ( The Unfortunate Traveler).

41.Francisis Bacon is the first great stylist in English prose.

42.Marlowe wrote only tragedies.

43.Sir Walter Raleigh wrote the introductory Sonnet.

44.  Astrophel and Stella contained 108 love sonnets and 11 songs.

45.Sidney's APOLOGY FOR POETRY came out as reply to STEPHEN GOSSON's "THE SCHOOL OF ABUSE".

Series of Important Literature short mcqs for Net.

Thanks for visiting . Keep sharing keep learning.

A short note on Tragedy- Everything about the term Tragedy

A short note on Tragedy- Everything about the term Tragedy

Definition of Tragedy
A tragedy is the imitation of an action that is serious and also, as having magnitude, complete in itself; in appropriate and pleasurable language.
Elements of Tragedy
Aristotle lays out six elements of tragedy: plot, character, diction, thought, spectacle, and song.
1) Plot – “the soul of a tragedy”.
The Plot is the most important part of a tragedy. The plot means ‘the arrangement of the incidents’. The plot moves from hamartia through anagnorisis and peripetiea to catastrophe.
2) Character – “that which reveals moral purpose”.
Characters are men and women who act. The hero and the heroine are two important figures among the characters.
3) Thought – “the faculty of saying what is possible and pertinent in given circumstances”.
The thought is expressed through their speeches and dialogues. It is a way of saying what is appropriate to a given circumstance or situation.
4) Diction – “the expression of meaning in words”.
Diction is the medium of language or expression through which the characters reveal their thoughts and feelings. The diction should be ‘embellished with each kind of artistic element’.
5) Song – which “holds the chief place among the embellishments”.
The song is one of these embellishments. In other words, it refers to what is generally known as choric commentary in tragedy.
6) Spectacle – which “depends more on the art of the stage machinist than on that of the poet”
The Spectacle is theatrical effect presented on the stage. It heightens the emotional significance of an event in the drama.

Tragic Hero
Aristotle defines a tragic hero as “a person who must evoke a sense of pity and fear in the audience. He is considered a man of misfortune that comes to him through error of judgment.” A tragic hero’s downfall evokes feelings of pity and fear among the audience.

Characteristics of a Tragic Hero
Here we have basic characteristics of a tragic hero, as explained by Aristotle:

Hamartia – a tragic flaw that causes the downfall of a hero.

Hubris – excessive pride and disrespect for the natural order of things.

Peripeteia – The reversal of fate that the hero experiences.

Anagnorisis – a moment in time when hero makes an important discovery in the story.

Nemesis – a punishment that the protagonist cannot avoid, usually occurring as a result of his hubris.

Catharsis – feelings of pity and fear felt by the audience, for the inevitable downfall of the protagonist.
Both fate and character can contribute to the fall of the tragic hero, though some tragedies focus on one more than the other. Many examples of both tragedy of fate and tragedy of character are available from the ancient Greek era through to modern times.

Fate vs. Character
The fate often plays a role in the downfall -- especially in the Greek tragedies. The tragic hero usually tries to outwit fate, with his character flaw being his pride in thinking that outwitting fate is possible. Therefore, tragedies of fate are usually focused on a moral message about not trying to outrun destiny. Sometimes tragedy involves choices (free will) and results in a paradox --- Is it Fate or Free Will which is primarily responsible for the suffering in the hero's life. Though fated the hero makes choices which bring about his destruction. Tragedy of character minimize the role of fate and focus instead on human choice and moral accountability.

Tragedy of Fate
Many examples of tragedy of fate can be found in classic literature. "Oedipus the King" is one of the most often cited examples. In this play by Sophocles, an oracle tells Oedipus that he will murder his father and marry his mother. He tries to outwit fate by leaving his home and the people he believes to be his parents; he doesn't know he was adopted. During his travels, Oedipus kills a man who turns out to be his biological father, then marries the woman who turns out to be his biological mother. His mother hangs herself when she learns the truth, and Oedipus blinds himself. In "Romeo and Juliet" by William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet are said to be brought together by fate, yet their feuding families keep them apart. The price of this human pettiness is the death of the young lovers.

Tragedy of Character-
Because character is so often linked to fate in narrative, scholars often debate whether a story is a true tragedy of character. "Macbeth" by William Shakespeare can be considered a tragedy of character, because Macbeth becomes blinded by his ambition and allows his wife to persuade him to commit an evil act, leading to his own eventual downfall. The witches told Macbeth he would be king but his descendents would not be, so the story includes an element of the hero trying to work against fate. In "Death of a Salesman" by Arthur Miller, Willy Loman is a proud man who cannot bear the reality of his own failure, and his flaw costs him his family and his life. Though Loman is not a noble man or king like most tragic heroes, the play has many elements of tragedy of character.

Types of tragedy
Attic tragedy: The exact origins of tragedy (tragōida) are debated amongst scholars. Some have linked the rise of the genre, which began in Athens, to the earlier art form, the lyrical performance of epic poetry. The most famous playwrights of the genre were Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides and many of their works were still performed centuries after their initial premiere. Aeschylus who is he father of tragedy, a greek writer who wrote the first trilogy play the Orestia. The Agamemnon of Aeschylus, one of the most splendid products of the Greek drama, was brought out shortly before the poet's death. The Oedipus Coloneus of Sophocles and the Bacchae of Euripides were both written very late in life.

Senecan Tragedy: A precursor of tragic drama were the tragedies by the Roman poet Seneca (4 BC – 65 AD). His tragedies were recited rather than staged but they became a model for English playwrights entailing the five-act structure, a complex plot and an elevated style of dialogue. The first English tragedy, Gorboduc (1561), by Thomas Sackville and Thomas Norton, is a chain of slaughter and revenge written in direct imitation of Seneca.
Revenge Tragedy / Tragedy of Blood: This type of tragedy represented a popular genre in the Elizabethan Age and made extensive use of certain elements of the Senecan tragedy such asmurder, revenge, mutilations and ghosts. Typical examples of this sub-genre are Christopher Marlowe’s The Jew of Malta, Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus and Thomas Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy.

Domestic / Bourgeois Tragedy:
In line with a changing social system where the middle class gained increasing importance and power, tragedies from the 18th century onward shifted their focus to protagonists from the middle or lower classes and were written in prose. The protagonist typically suffers a domestic disaster which is intended to arouse empathy rather than pity and fear in the audience. An example is George Lillo’s The London Merchant: or, The History of George Barnwell (1731). Modern tragedies such as Arthur Miller’s The Death of a Salesman (1949) foll and T.S. Eliot’s The Murder in the Cathedral (1935).

Tragicomedy:
The boundaries of genres are often blurred in drama and occasionally they lead to the emergence of new sub-genres, e.g., the tragicomedy. Tragicomedies, as the name suggests, intermingle conventions concerning plot, character and subject matter derived from both tragedy and comedy. Thus, characters of both high and low social rank can be mixed as in Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice (1600), or a serious conflict, which is likely to end in disaster, suddenly reaches a happy ending because of some unforeseen circumstances as in John Fletcher’s The Faithful Shepherdess (c.1609).

Friday, June 15, 2018

UGC NET IN ENGLISH PAPER II ,DEC 2005

UGC NET IN ENGLISH

PAPER II DEC 2005

1 . Chaucer's The Knight's Tale is a high romance told in :

Heroic couplets


2 . Marlowe's first original work was :

Tamburlaine the Great 


3 . Marvell pays his homage to the Protector and a tribute to the royal dignity of Charles I in :

"Horatian Ode upon Cromwell's Return from Ireland "


4 . The Life and Death of Mr. Badman was written by :

John Bunyan


5 . Dr Johnson's A Dictionary of the English Language was published in :

1755


6 . The main idea of The Dunciad was taken from :

Mac Flecknoe


7 . The character of the leech gatherer appears in :

Resolution and Independence


8 . Table-Talk is a collection of essays by :

Hazlitt


9 . Carlyle's Sartor Resartus was written under the influence of :

German Romance


10 . The image of the Neptune taming the sea-horse appears in :

"My Last Duchess "


11 . T.S. Eliot's The Wasteland is dedicated to Il miglior fabro ("the better Craftsman") which refers to :

Ezra Pound


12 . The locale of Riders to the Sea is :

Aran Island


13 . The "Bog" poems are associated with :

Seamus Heaney


14 . Edward Bond's Bingo deals with the life of :

Shakespeare


15 . Arthur Miller's The Death of a Salesman is mainly about :

American Dream


16 . The patient in Michael Ondaatje's The English Patient is :

Almasy


17 . Mimetic Criticism views literary work as :

Imitation


18 . The concept of "arche writing " is developed by :

Derrida


19 . A figure of speech in which two terms opposite in meaning are placed side by side in one phrase is known as :

Oxymoron


20 . A stanza of eight iambic pentameters on the pattern of ab, ab , ab , cc , is known as :

Ottava rima


Correct Chronological sequence :

21 . Love's Labour Lost , Twelfth Night , Othello , The Tempest


22 . Utopia , Ralph Roister Doister , Shepherd's Calendar , Astrophel and Stella


23 .  Sonnet , Periodical essay , Gothic Novel , Absurd play


24 . T.S. Eliot , Stephen Spender , Philip Larkin , Ted Hughes


25 . Sublime , Negative Capability , Dissociation of Sensibility , Heteroglossia


26 . Lycidas , Adonais , Thyrsis , In Memory of W.B. Yeats


27 . Two Uses of Language , The Death of the Author , Structure , Sign and Play , Signs Taken for Wonders


28 . The Burial of the Dead , A Game of Chess , The Fire Sermon , Death By Water


29 . Kanthapura , Midnight's Children , Nectar in a Sieve , Calcutta Chromosome


30 . Craft of Fiction , Aspects of the Novel . English Novel: Form and Function , The Sense of An Ending


Match the following:

31 . Sohrab and Rustum - Matthew Arnold


32 . Pamela - Epistolary novel


33 . Faulkner - Yoknapatawpha


34 . Naturalism - Zola


35 . Margaret Atwood - The Blind Assassin


36 . Congreve - The Old Bachelor


37 . Judith Wright - Australia


38 . Diary writing - Samuel Pepys


39 . Girish Karnad - Kannada


40 . Eliza Doolittle - Pygmalion


Answer of passage :

41 . Fear


42 . an inference


43 . is too careful with his money


44 . the poet moved as aimlessly as the cloud


45 . reflect meaning and mood


46 . Nationality , Language , Tradition and Historical situation


47 . The intellectual may be inappropriately Co-opted by the agencies of the Government


48 . Academy , Church , Professional guild and Worldly power


49 . Liberating oneself from the pressures of institutions and worldly powers


50 . To search for relative independence and be characterized as exile and marginal, as amateur and author.

UGC NET IN ENGLISH PAPER II DEC 2004

UGC NET IN ENGLISH

PAPER II DEC 2004

1 . In Langland's Piers the Plowman , Piers appears finally as :

The Good Samaritan


2 . It is decided that each Canterbury pilgrim would tell in all :

4 stories - 2 each on the way to and back


3 . Venus and Adonis is a long narrative poem by :

Shakespeare


4 . The total number of poems in Shakespeare'sSonnets is :

154


5 . Which of the following plays has a Machiavellian hero ? 

 Jew of Malta


6 . Which of the following is written by Samuel Butler ? 

Hudibras


7 . Which of the following poems did Milton write in Octosyllabic couplets ? 

Il Penseroso


8 . Which of the following plays is not written by Congreve ? 

The Relapse


9 . Dryden's All for Love is an adaptation of :

Antony and Cleopatra


10 .Which of the following books proposes a political theory ?

Leviathan 


11 . Which of the following books is written by a woman ?

A Vindication of the Rights of Women


12 . Which of the following books by Jonathan Swift is a religious allegory ?

A Tale of a Tub


13 . Which of the following is a 'Visionary " work by William Blake ?

Songs of Experience


14 . Pope's An Essay on Man is based on the ideas of :

Lord Bolingbroke


15 . Which of the following works by Johnson is an imitation of the tenth satire of Juvenal ?

The Vanity of Human Wishes


16 . The final version of Wordsworth's The Prelude appeared in :

1850


17 . "To suffer woes which Hope thinks infinite " is written by "

Shelley


18 . " A thing of beauty is a joy forever " occurs in :

Endymion


19 . Which of the following novels is a satire on the Gothic novel ?

Northanger Abbey


20 . Who distinguished between "the literature of Knowledge and the literature of power " ?

Thomas de Quincey


21 . Who among the following Victorian poets is most  sensitive to the conflict between the old and the new?

Tennyson


22 . Under the Greenwood Tree is written by :

Thomas Hardy


23 . The Office of Circumlocution occurs in :

Bleak House


24 . The novel Mary Barton is written by :

Elizabeth Gaskell


25 . The line " Poetry is a criticism of life" occurs in :

The Study of Poetry


26 . Martha Quest was written by :

Doris Lessing


27 . The term "Steam of Consciousness " was taken from the book :

The Principles of Psychology 


28 . G.S. Fraser's The Golden Bough focuses on :

Symbols


29 . Arthur Miller's The Death of a Salesmanrelies for its tragic seriousness on the fate of :

Willy Loman


30 . The character Leopald Bloom makes an appearance in the novel :

Ulysses


31 . Who of the following authors represents the Sri Lankan diaspora ?

Michael Ondaatje


32 . Australian aborigines receive a sympathetic treatment in :

Judith Wright


33 . Margaret Atwood's Survival  makes a case for :

Canadian Nationalism


34 . V.S. Naipaul's latest book is :

Half a Life


35 . Which of the following books by Salman Rushdie refers to the 15th century Spain as the starting point ?

The Moor's Last Sigh


36 . Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf is written by :

Edward Albee


37 . Imamu Amiri Baraka is a  :

An American writer


38 . The Miscellany was published from :

The Writer's Workshop


39 . Who of the following writers recreates the life of the Yoruba/Ibo community ?

Wole Soyinka


40 . Who of the following White female authors are sympathetic to the cause of the Blacks?

Nadine Gordimer


41 . New Criticism considers text as a :

Autotelic


42 . Mythologies was written by :

Roland Barthes


43 . The word 'Catharsis' signifies :

Purgation 


44 . The rejection of "Universalism" is a mark of :

Deconstruction


45 . Eliot's theory of " objective correlative " appeared in his essay entitled :

Hamlet And His Problems


46 . Sprung Rhythm is an example of :

Verse


47 . "More is thy due than more than all can pay " is an example of :

Inversion


48 . Unrhymed  metrical composition consisting of five iambic measures in each line is called :

Blank Verse


49 . Verse stories dealing with chivalry , Knight , errantry , enchantments and love are known as :

 The metrical romances


50 . " He is a citizen of no mean city " is an example of :

Litotes