UGC/NTA NET English Solved Paper with Explanation: Set-3

 Previous Year Solved Paper with Explanations

UGC NET Exam July 2016

Set-3

This UGC-NET English Previous Year Solved Paper with Explanations  has been prepared to assist aspirants in understanding the actual examination pattern, question difficulty level, and thematic focus of the NTA UGC-NET English examination. Solved with clear and accurate explanations, the questions reflect key areas of English Literature, literary theory, criticism, linguistics, and cultural studies as prescribed in the official syllabus. Practising previous year question papers enables candidates to identify recurring topics, refine their answer-selection strategy, and improve time management under exam-oriented conditions. This set of the solved paper therefore serves as a reliable revision and self-assessment resource for candidates preparing for UGC-NET, SET, and Assistant Professor eligibility examinations. 

1. Which novel of Doris Lessing ends with a projection forward in time after a devastating atomic war?

a) The Grass is Singing
b) The Golden Notebook
c) The Four-Gated City
d) A Proper Marriage

Ans. c) The Four-Gated City

Explanation: The Four-Gated City (1969) is the final novel of Doris Lessing’s Children of Violence series. The novel ends with a dystopian projection into a future devastated by World War III and nuclear catastrophe.

2. Name the dominant meter of the following quatrain:

The curfew tolls the knell of the parting day…

a) Iambic Hexameter
b) Trochaic Pentameter
c) Iambic Pentameter
d) Terza Rima

Ans. c) Iambic Pentameter

Explanation: A line of iambic pentameter consists of five iambs (unstressed + stressed syllables). Thomas Gray’s Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard is written in iambic pentameter.

3. Which two novels of Buchi Emecheta portray poor Nigerian women struggling to raise children in London?

  1. The Slave Girl
  2. The Joys of Motherhood
  3. Second Class Citizen
  4. In the Ditch

a) 1 and 2
b) 2 and 3
c) 3 and 4
d) 1 and 4

Ans. c) 3 and 4

Explanation: Second Class Citizen and In the Ditch depict Emecheta’s semi-autobiographical portrayal of immigrant Nigerian women facing racial, economic, and gender oppression in London.

4. In John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, who keeps Christiana’s head above water in the River of Death?

a) Hopeful
b) Helpful
c) Great-heart
d) Faithful

Ans. c) Great-heart

Explanation: Christiana appears in Part II of The Pilgrim’s Progress. She is guided across the River of Death by Great-heart. 

5. Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage is a

a) Religious allegory
b) Fairy tale
c) Long poem
d) Utopian novel

Ans. c) Long poem

Explanation: Lord Byron’s Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage is a long narrative poem in four cantos describing the travels and reflections of a disillusioned young man.

6. In Thomas More’s Utopia, which leisure activity is not favoured by Utopians?

a) Music
b) Public lectures
c) Conversation
d) Dicing and cards

Ans. d) Dicing and cards

Explanation: Utopians reject gambling and idle pastimes. Their leisure activities are intellectual and communal in nature.

7. Which statement does NOT describe Michel Foucault’s position?

a) Sexuality is literally written on the body
b) Power operates through discourse
c) Power and knowledge are connected
d) Where there is power, there is resistance

Ans. a) Sexuality is literally written on the body

Explanation: This phrase is associated more with essentialist views. Foucault emphasized discourse, power-knowledge relations, and resistance.

8. In which year did the Great Exhibition take place?

a) 1851
b) 1857
c) 1861
d) 1871

Ans. a) 1851

Explanation: The Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations was held in Hyde Park, London, in 1851.

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

9. Fidessa’s line in The Faerie Queene is an example of

a) Alliteration
b) Allegory
c) Assonance
d) Antithesis

Ans. a) Alliteration

Explanation: Repetition of the consonant sound “f” in “fickle freaks… fortune false” exemplifies alliteration.

10. Match the works with the authors

A) The Excursion
B) Christabel
C) Milton
D) Queen Mab

i) S. T. Coleridge
ii) P. B. Shelley
iii) William Wordsworth
iv) William Blake

    A    B    C    D

a) iii – i – ii – iv
b) iii – i – iv – ii
c) ii – iii – i – iv
d) ii – i – iii – iv

Ans. b)

Explanation: The Excursion—Wordsworth; Christabel—Coleridge; Milton—Blake; Queen Mab—Shelley.

11. Which phrase is NOT found in Gray’s Elegy?

a) Far from the madding crowd
b) A youth to Fortune and Fame unknown
c) Full many a flower is born to blush unseen
d) All nature is but art, unknown to thee

Ans. d)

Explanation: Option (d) belongs to Alexander Pope’s Essay on Man, not Gray’s Elegy.

12. Browning’s Rabbi Ben Ezra defends

a) Youth against old age
b) Old age against youth
c) Power against knowledge
d) Knowledge against power

Ans. b) Old age against youth

Explanation: Browning celebrates spiritual and intellectual maturity gained through age.

13. The three estates in The Canterbury Tales are

a) Nobility, Church, Commoners
b) Royalty, Nobility, Peasants
c) Royalists, Republicans, Peasants
d) Country, City, Commons

Ans. a)

Explanation: Chaucer presents medieval society divided into the Church, the Feudal aristocracy, and the Common people.

14. Toni Morrison’s novel involving infanticide to escape slavery is

a) Sula
b) Tar Baby
c) Song of Solomon
d) Beloved

Ans. d) Beloved

Explanation: Beloved is inspired by the real-life case of Margaret Garner and explores trauma, memory, and slavery.

15. Who translated Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey into English heroic couplets?

a) Thomas Gray
b) Samuel Johnson
c) Oliver Goldsmith
d) Alexander Pope

Ans. d) Alexander Pope

Explanation: Pope’s translations (1715–1726) are landmarks of Augustan poetry.

16. Shyam Selvadurai’s Funny Boy is a

a) Picaresque novel
b) Epistolary novel
c) Diary novel
d) Coming-of-age novel

Ans. d) Coming-of-age novel

Explanation: A coming-of-age novel is a type of fiction that focuses on the psychological, emotional, and moral development of a young protagonist as they move from childhood or adolescence into adulthood. Shyam Selvadurai’s Funny Boy traces the psychological and sexual awakening of a young boy in Sri Lanka.

17. When was the English ban on Joyce’s Ulysses lifted?

a) 1924
b) 1945
c) 1936
d) 1962

Ans. c) 1936

Explanation: Though banned earlier for obscenity, Ulysses became legally available in the UK by the mid-1930s.

18. Who among the following is NOT an Imagist?

a) Ezra Pound
b) W. B. Yeats
c) Amy Lowell
d) T. E. Hulme

Ans. b) W. B. Yeats

Explanation: Yeats predates Imagism and is associated with Symbolism and the Irish Literary Revival.

19. Thomas Carew’s poems are addressed to a fictional mistress named

a) Celia
b) Julia
c) Anne
d) Melanie

Ans. a) Celia

Explanation: Thomas Carew, a Cavalier poet, follows the Petrarchan tradition in addressing a beloved named Celia.

20. Match the novelists with their works

i) William Golding – A) Grimus
ii) Salman Rushdie – B) Hawksmoor
iii) Graham Swift –   C) Darkness Visible
iv) Peter Ackroyd –   D) Waterland

        i    ii    iii    iv

a)    D   A    C     B
b)    C   A    D     B
c)    B   C    A     D
d)    B   A    C     D

Ans. b)

Explanation: Darkness Visible—Golding;  Grimus—Rushdie; 

Waterland—Swift;  Hawksmoor—Ackroyd.

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

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