West Bengal Civil Service
Examination-2000
(Optional Papers)
English Paper -I
Time Allowed : 3 Hours Full Marks : 100
Group - A
Answer any two questions
1. (a) Compare and contrast the themes and moods of old English epics and Old English elegies.
or
(b) What account does Chaucer afford us of the life and thought of his age ?
2. (a) 'English Renaissance drama changes in nature as we pass from Elizabeth's reign to James's.Examine this view with reference to representative dramatists other than Shakespeare.
or
(b) Give an account of Augustan verse satire. Why is it called 'Augustan' ?
3. (a). 'Victorian literature reflects both the doubts and the confidence of the age' - Discuss with reference to at least three writers.
or
(b) Examine some of the directions taken by the English novel in the first half of the twentieth century.
4. Write notes on any two of the following :
(a) The Middle English alliterative revival ;
(b) The poetry of Edmund Spenser ;
(c) The English essay, in the early eighteenth century ;
(d) The long poem in the Romantic Age ;
(e) The aesthetes of the late ninetieth century ;
(f) Yeats as a lyric poet.
Group - B
Answer any one questions.
5. Examine the social and historical implications of French loan words in English.
6. Trace the history of endings in - s in both English nouns and English verbs.
7. Write philological notes on any four of the following :
Cheap, church, dream, the ending -able, that as a relative pronoun, vixen, children, ache.
Group - C
Answer any two questions.
8. (a) Do you find 'problem plays' a usefulterm to Categorize a group of Shakespeare's plays ? Justify your answer.
or,
(b) Consider either Portia or viola as the heroine of a comedy.
9. (a) Macbeth is and unusual tragedy in that its protagonist is guilty of clearly evil or sinful deeds. How does this affect its nature as a tragedy ?
or,
(b) Examine the function of the comic and grotesque element in either Hamlet or King Lear.
10. (a) Describe with illustrations the chief features of Shakespeare's late romances.
or,
(b) Write a critical commentary on any one of the following:
(i) The Forun Scene in Julisu Caesar;
(ii) The Temptation Scenes in Othello ;
(iii) The mock weeing scones in As You Like as.
(iv) The role of Ariel in TheTempest.
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