B.A. (Hons.

) English III Year Mid-Term Examination

Paper VI: English Literature 3

Time: 3 hours Max. Marks: 75

Attempt all FOUR questions. The first question has three parts and the second two. Each
of the parts in the first question and in the second must be answered.

Q. 1. Attempt all three parts:

(a) Critically comment on any one of the following two options:
Then shall thy Friend, nor thou refuse his Aid,
Still Foe to Vice, forsake his Cambrian Shade;
In Virtue’s Cause once more exert his Rage,
Thy Satire point, and animate thy Page.

OR
On some fond breast the parting soul relies,
Some pious drops the closing eye requires;
Even from the tomb the voice of Nature cries,
Even in our ashes live their wonted fires.
(11)

(b) How the Chimney-sweeper's cry

Every black’ning Church appalls,
And the hapless Soldier's sigh
Runs in blood down Palace walls.
(i) Identify the lines in their context. (3)
(ii) Identify and comment on the figures of speech in these lines. (4)
(iii) Critically comment on the figures in these lines. What or who are they
representative of and why? (4)

OR
…. Not for this
Faint I, nor mourn nor murmur; other gifts
Have followed; for such loss, I would believe,
Abundant recompense. For I have learned
To look on nature, not as in the hour
Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes
The still, sad music of humanity,
Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power
To chasten and subdue….
(i) Identify the lines in their context. (3)
(ii) Critically comment on the poet’s sense of loss? What are ‘gifts’ he has been
recompensed with? (4)
(iii) What is the poet referring to in the last three lines? Comment critically. (4)
(11)
(c) Critically comment on any one of the following two options:
Oh, for a beaker full of the warmth south,
Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,
With beaded bubbles winking at the brim
And purple-stained mouth,
That I might drink, and leave the world unseen,
And with thee fade away into the forest dim.

(i) Explain the context of these lines. (3)

(ii) Explain the significance of the reference to Hippocrene. (4)
(iii) Critically comment on these lines. (4)

OR
That I might drink, and leave the world unseen,
And with thee fade away into the forest dim:

Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget

What thou among the leaves hast never known,
The weariness, the fever, and the fret
Here, where men sit and hear each other groan;
Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last grey hairs,

Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies….

(i) Identify the lines in their context. (3)
(ii) What does the poet want to drink and why? What serves the same purpose
later in the poem? (4)
(iii) Critically comment on the last four lines quoted here. (4)
(11)

Q. 2. Attempt both parts:

(a) Discuss Enlightenment, especially the influence of Cartesianism in shaping it. How is
it revisionary, anti-traditional and utopian?

OR
Write a note on Enlightenment and Descartes. How does it influence discussions of
sanity, fantasy and madness?
(6)

(b) Write a short note on the Lyric voice in Romantic poetry.

OR
Briefly outline some important changes in the understanding of the concept ‘Nature’ in
eighteenth century literature.
(6)
Q. 3. Critically examine the deployment and use of perspective in Gulliver’s Travels with
specific reference to Books I and II.

OR
How do you understand the greater attention to corporeality in Book II of Gulliver’s
Travels, as compared to Book I?
(15)

Q. 4. Comment on the Keatsian politics of love in ‘La Belle Dame Sans Merci’.

OR
Critically comment on the child figures in the poetry of William Blake with specific
reference to the poems in your course.

(15)