West Bengal Civil Service
Examination-2008
(Optional Papers)
English Paper - I
Time Allowed : 3 Hours Full Marks : 100
All questions carry marks
Group - A
Answer any three questions
1. Write an essay on the literary & historical importance of Piers Plowman.
2. Mathew Arnold called the eighteenth century an "Age of Prose". Do you think he was justified ? Explain.
3. 'The Romantic poets were not really interested in Nature ; their subject was man'. Do you agree ? Give reasons for your answer.
4. Write an essay on the rise of woman novelists in the nineteenth century.
5. Should, in your opinion, the works of Salman Rushdie and other writers of Indian origin be included in the study of English Literature ? Give reasons for your answer.
6. Write critical notes on any two of the following :
(a) the Wife of Bath's Tale
(b) The Fairie Queene
(c) Utopia
(d) Gulliver's Travels
(e) Seamus Heaney
(f) Nadine Gordimer
Group - B
7. Write an essay on the role of dictionaries in defining the contours of language.
8. Explain how the study of words of French origin in English can reveal the social history of nations.
9. Write philological notes on any eight of the following :
justice, interject, balcony, earth, right, maelstrom, bureaucracy, recipe, mammoth, alcohol, banana, bletsian, ugly, hwyl, chit.
Group - C
10. 'The final scenes of Shakespeare's comedies resolve most conflicts, but leave some questions unanswered'. Discuss with specific references to any two Shakespearean comedies.
11. 'The heroes of Shakespeare's tragedies are Renaissance men fighting the moral values of a feudal order'. Do you agree with this comment ? Argue your case with reference to any one play.
12. Write an essay on Shakespeare's use of imagery.
13. Write an essay on any one:
(a) Shakespearean scholarship in the eighteenth century.
(b) Systems of patronage of drama in the Elizabethan age.
(c) The 'outsider' figure in Shakespeare's plays.
(d) Shakespeare and feminist scholarship.
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