The syllabus consists of two papers, designed to test a first-hand and critical reading of texts prescribed from the following periods in English Literature :
Paper I : 1600-1900 and Paper II : 1900-1990. There will be two compulsory questions in each paper : a) A short-notes question related to the topics for general study, and b) A critical analysis of UNSEEN passages both in prose and verse.
Answers must be written in English. Texts for detailed study are listed below. Candidates will also be required to show adequate knowledge of the following topics
and movements : The Renaissance : Elizabethan and Jacobean Drama; Metaphysical Poetry; The Epic and the Mock-epic; Neo-classicism; Satire; The Romantic Movement; The Rise of the Novel; The Victorian Age.
Section-A
1. William Shakespeare : King Lear and The Tempest.
2. John Donne. The following poems :
3. John Milton : Paradise Lost, I, II, IV, IX
4. Alexander Pope. The Rape of the Lock.
5. William Wordsworth. The following poems:
6. Alfred Tennyson : In Memoriam.
7. Henrik Ibsen : A Doll’s House.
Section-B
Answers must be written in English. Texts for detailed study are listed below. Candidates will also be required to show adequate knowledge of the following topics
and movements : Modernism; Poets of the Thirties; The stream-of-consciousness Novel; Absurd Drama; Colonialism and Post-Colonialism; Indian Writing in English; Marxist, Psychoanalytical and Feminist approaches to literature; Post-Modernism.
Section-A
1. William Butler Yeats. The following poems:
2. T.S. Eliot. The following poems :
3. W.H. Auden. The following poems :
4. John Osborne : Look Back in Anger.
5. Samuel Beckett. Waiting for Godot.
6. Philip Larkin. The following poems :
7. A.K. Ramanujan. The following poems
Note: (All these poems are available in the anthology Ten Twentieth Century Indian Poets, edited by R. Parthasarthy, published by Oxford University Press, New Delhi).
Section-B