UGC/NTA NET English Solved Paper with Explanation: Set-2



Previous Year Solved Paper with Explanations


UGC NET Exam July 2016

Set-2

Also useful for Assistant Professor Examination to be conducted by U.P Education Service Commission and similar other examinations. 

1.        “The mistakes of a Night” is the subtitle of

            a) The Conscious Lovers        

 b) The Good Natured man

            c) She Stoops to Conquer       

 d) The Rivals


Ans. (c)

She Stoops to Conquer is a comedy by the Irish author Oliver Goldsmith. It was first performed in London in 1773. Initially the play was titled “Mistakes of a Night” and the events within the play take place in one long night. In 1778, John O'Keeffe wrote a loose sequel, Tony Lumpkin in Town.

2.        Identify the first novel written by Patrick White:

            a) The Living and the Dead    

b) The Tree of Man

            c) Happy Valley                      

d) The Aunt’s Story

 

Ans. (c)

Happy Valley is a 1939 novel by Australian author Patrick White. It won the 1941 Australian Literature Society Gold Medal.

3.    In King Lear for what reason does Kent assume a disguise ?

      a.       To continue to serve Lear, though Lear has banished him

b.      To spy on Edmund

c.       To antagonize Goneril and Regan

d.      To revenge upon Lear for banishing him

 

Ans. (a) In King Lear, Kent disguises as a peasant, calling himself “Caius,” so that he can continue to serve Lear even after Lear banishes him. He is loyal, but he gets himself into trouble throughout the play by being extremely blunt and outspoken.

4.        What is a feminine rhyme ?

            a) A rhyme on two syllables in which the last syllable is unstressed

            b) A rhyme on two syllables.

            c) A rhyme on three syllables

            d) A poem in which every third syllable rhymes.

 

Ans. (a) Feminine rhyme, also called double rhyme, involves  two syllables (as in motion and ocean or willow and billow). In feminine ending, the final syllable is unstressed.

5.       Identify two of the following written by Christopher Fry:

1.      French Without Tears                   

2.      The Lady is Not for Burning

3.      Venus Observed                            

4.      The Deep Blue Sea

   

 The right combination according to the code is:

a.            a)  2 and 3                                               

b.            b) 1 and 3

c.            c) 2 and 4      

                d) 1 and 4     


 Ans. (a)

 Christopher Fry was an English poet and playwright. He is best known for his verse dramas, notably The Lady is Not for Burning, which made him a major force in theatre in the 1940s and 1950s. Venus Observed is a play in  blank verse.

6. In “Tradition and Individual Talent”, according to T.S Eliot, the term ‘tradition’  

   usually means

                       

a) something positive                          

b) something negative

c) something historical                       

d) something old

 

Ans. (c)

In Tradition and Individual Talent, Eliot proposes that tradition is a living culture which is inherited from the past and also has an important function in shaping the present. To Eliot tradition is bound up with historical sense of a poet or writer. Historical sense is a perception that past is not something that is lost.

7.        Which of the following is a Cavalier poet ?

                      

                     a) George Herbert                               

b) John Donne

                     c) Robert Herrick                                

d) Andrew Marvell

 

Ans. (c) The cavalier poets was a school of poets of the 17th century, that came from the classes that supported King Charles I during the English Civil War (1642–1651). These poets grouped themselves with the King  and his service, thus becoming Cavalier Poets. The best known of the cavalier poets are Robert HerrickRichard Lovelace, Thomas Carew, and Sir John Suckling.

8.      Which of the following is not Jacques Derrida’s work ?


                a) Of Spirit: Heidegger and the Question

                b) The Transcendence of the Ego

                c) Of Grammatology

                d) The Work of Mourning

 

Ans. (b) ‘The Transcendence of the Ego’ is a philosophical  essay written by Jean-Paul SartreThe essay demonstrates Sartre’s transition from traditional phenomenological thinking and most notably  his break from Edmund Husserl’s school of thought (phenomenology).


9.        In Paradise Lost which character narrates the story of the making of Eve from a rib in Adam’s side ?

                     a)  Adam                                             

b) Eve

                     c) Raphael                                          

d) God

           

Ans. (c)


10.      A.S Byatt’s  Possession attempts the imitation of  the work of two Victorian poets,       loosely based on 

                      1. Alfred Tennyson                            

2. Robert Browning

                     3 Christina Rossetti                             

4. William Morris

    The right combination according to the code is

a.       1 and 2                                         

b.      2 and 4

c.       2 and 3                                         

d.      3 and 4


Ans.  (a)  Possession: A Romance is a 1990 best-selling novel by British author A. S. Byatt that won the 1990 Booker Prize.  The novel explores the postmodern concerns.

 

 

11.     ‘The Dark Lady of the Sonnet’ is a short comedy by

                     a) Bernard Shaw                                 

b) W.B Yeats

                     c) J.M Synge                                       

d) John Osborne

                       

Ans (a) The Dark Lady of the Sonnets ( 1910) is a short comedy by G. B Shaw in which William Shakespeare, intending to meet the "Dark Lady", accidentally encounters Queen Elizabeth I and attempts to persuade her to create a national theatre.


          Read: UGC-NTA NET English Solved Paper with Explanations: Set-1


12.       John Milton’s description of gold as a “precious bane” (Paradise Lost Book II) is best described as

                     a) a dactyl                                           

b) an oxymoron

                     c) enjambment                                    

d) zeugma

 

Ans. (b) An oxymoron is a figure of speech in which two opposite ideas are joined to create an effect. The common oxymoron phrases is a combination of an adjective proceeded by a noun with contrasting meanings, such as “cruel kindness,” or “living death”. It is important to understand the difference between an oxymoron and a paradox. A paradox may consist of a sentence, or even a group of sentences. An oxymoron, on the other hand, is a combination of two contradictory or opposite words. A paradox seems contradictory to the general truth, but it does contain an implied truth. An oxymoron, however, may produce a dramatic effect, but does not make literal sense.


13.     There is a play on the name of Machiavelli in the prologue to Christopher Marlowe’s

                      a) Doctor  Faustus                               

b) The Jew of Malta

                     c) Tamburlaine the Great                    

d) Edward II

 

Ans. (b) In the Prologue to The Jew of Malta, Marlowe introduces  the themes of Machiavellian scheming and disrespect for religion that run throughout the play. The narrator Machiavelli  is a covetous strategist who bears little resemblance to the real Machiavelli, the Italian author of the Discourses and The Prince.


14.      Shakespeare famously neglects to observe Aristotle’s rules concerning the three dramatic unities, and Samuel Johnson undertakes to defend Shakespeare from these criticism in his Preface to Shakespeare. Which of the Aristotelian dramatic unities does Johnson believe Shakespeare to observe most successfully?

         

            a) Time                                               

 b) Place

           c) Action                                 

 d) Johnson does not feel that Aristotelian dramatic

    unities are important.


Ans. (c) Samuel Johnson, in the ‘preface to Shakespeare’, remarks that only the 'unity of action' is the vital principle which Aristotle had emphasized in his "Poetics" and that the other two unities of time and place "arise evidently from false assumptions." Johnson defends Shakespeare by implying that since Shakespeare has observed the vital principle of "unity of action" his failure to observe the other two unities of 'time' and 'place' can be excused.


15.       Who among the following was praised and patronized as a “Ploughman Poet”?

                      a) John Clare                                      

b) George Crabbe

                     c) Robert Burns                                  

d) Walter Scott


Ans.(c)  Robert Burns also known as the Bard of Ayrshire, and the Ploughman Poet was a Scottish poet. He is widely regarded as the national poet of Scotland.

 

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