UGC NET

English
SAMPLE QUESTIONS
 English (Sample Questions)

Sample Questions
(UGC NET ENGLISH)

1. Given the popularity of the Gothic novel and the novel of purpose, which of the following novelists
wrote fiction that is closer in subject matter to the novel of manners than it is to the writing of
her own era ?
(A) Fanny Burney (B) Mary Wollstonecraft
(C) Anna Letitia Barbauld (D) Jane Austen
Sol. (D) Novel of manners originated in England, Jane Austen was the quintessential producer of
the form, and its subject is the set of social conventions of a particular class in a particular
time and place.

2. Which two writers can be described as writing historical novels?

(A) Mary Shelley and Percy Bysshe Shelley
(B) William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge
(C) Sir Walter Scott and Maria Edgeworth
(D) Jane Austen and Charlotte Brontë
Sol. (C) Maria Edgeworth was a prolific Anglo-Irish writer of adults' and children's literature. She
wrote histori cal novels.
Sir Walter Scott, Scottish writer and poet and one of the greatest historical novelists.

3. Assertion (A) : Matthew Gregory Lewis, after writing “Monk”, came to be known as ‘Monk’
Lewis.
Reason (R) : “Monk” was condemned for being typically religious.
Codes :
(A) A is true and R is false
(B) R is false and A is true
(C) Both A and R true, and R is the correct explanation of A
(D) Both A and R are true, but R is not the correct explanation of A.
Sol. (A) ‘The Monk’ was attacked as it was too sensational and condemned for its illustration of
molestation and incest. Despite these opposition, the novel became so popular that Lewis
came to be known as ‘Monk’ Lewis.

4. Match the following Lists.

List I (Works) List II (Authors)
a. The Wrongs of Woman i. William Godwin
b. Anna St. Ives ii. Mary Hay
c. Caleb Williams iii. Mary Wollstonecraft
d. The memoirs of Emma Courtney iv. Holcroft

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 English (Sample Questions)

Codes :
a b c d
(A) iii iv i ii
(B) i ii iii iv
(C) iv iii ii i
(D) ii i iv iii
Sol. (A)  “The Wrongs of Woman” is Mary Wollstonecraft's unfinished novelistic sequel
to her revolutionary political treatise, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman.
(1792)
 “Anna St. Ives” by Holcroft is considered to be the first jacobean novel.
 “Things as They Are; or The Adventures of Caleb Williams” (often abbreviated
to Caleb Williams) (1794) by William Godwin is a three-volume novel written as a
call to end the abuse of power by what Godwin saw as a tyrannical government.
 “The memoirs of Emma Courtney” is an epistolary novel by Mary Hays, first
published in 1796.

5. Who succeeded James Mill as chief examiner for the east India Company ?
(A) Thomas De Quincey (B) Thomas Love Peacock
(C) Charles Lamb (D) William Hazlitt
Sol. (B) Thomas Love Peacock succeeded James Mill as chief examiner for the East India Company
in 1836 and retired on a pension in 1856.

6. How old Abraham Cowley was when he wrote “Pyramus and Thisbe” ?
(A) 30 (B) 25
(C) 10 (D) 5
Sol. (C) Abraham Cowley distinguished himself as a classical scholar. He wrote his “Pyramus
and Thisbe” when he was only 10 years old. It is an epical romance.

7. Which poem was written on the death of Edward King by Milton ?

(A) Comus (B) Lycidas
(C) Paradise Lost (D) Samson Agonistes
Sol. (B) “Lycidas” is a monody on the death of Edward King. Edward King was Milton’s college
friend. It is a pastoral elegy. It first appeared in a 1638 collection of elegies.

8. Assertion (A) : Bacon has been called the meanest of mankind.

Reason (R) : He was found guilty of misusing his official position and power.
(A) A is true, but R is false.
(B) A is false but R is true
(C) Both A and R are true, but R is not the correct explanation of A.
(D) Both A and R are true, and R is the correct explanation of A.
Sol. (D) Both A and R are true, and R is the correct explanation of A.
Bacon has been called the meanest of mankind as he misconducted his capacity as a
public servants. He was also found guilty of misusing his official position and power.

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 English (Sample Questions)

9. The Jacobean tragedies, dramatists were attracted by the stories of______

(A) Murder (B) Love
(C) Horror (D) Both (A) and (C)
Sol. (D) In the Jacobean tragedies, dramatists were attracted by the stories of murder, horror and
blood. They had a morbid taste for murder and madness. Webster and Tourneur revelled,
in bloodshed and horror in their tragedies.

10. Match the following Lists :

List I List II
(a) Summary of Human Knowledge i. Sylva Sylvarum
(b) New Logic of reasoning ii. De Augmentis Scientiarum
(c) natural Philosophy iii. Advancement of Learning
(d) Baconian Philosophy iv. Novum Organum
Codes :
a b c d
(A) ii iv i iii
(B) i ii iii iv
(C) iii iv ii i
(D) iv iii i ii
Sol. (A) All of these are Chaucer’s work.
 “De Augmentis Scientiarum” (1623) : This treatise, in which the English work
on “The advancement of Learning” is embodied, gives a general summary of
human knowledge.
 “Novum Organum” (1620) :- It explains the new logic or the inductive method of
reasoning, upon which Chaucer’s philosophy is founded.
 “Sylva Sylvarum” : It was left incomplete. It was designed to give a complete
view of what we call natural philosophy and natural history.
 “Advancement of Learning” is a Scientific and Philosophical Prose, which
contains the Baconian philosophy appeared in 1605.

11. To whom Kipling called “the father of the novel” ?

(A) John Bunyan (B) John Dryden
(C) Pope (D) William Collins
Sol. (B) Kipling called Bunyan “the father of the novel”. Though Bunyan was not the creator or the
Father of the English novel but he decidedly a pioneer of English Novel.

12. Assertion (A) : George Farquhar was an actor too.

Reason (R) : He died at the age of Twenty nine
(A) A is true, but R is false.
(B) A is false but R is true
(C) Both A and R are true, but R is not the correct explanation of A.
(D) Both A and R are true, and R is the correct explanation of A.
Sol. (C) A man of versatile genius, George Farquhar was in turn a clergyman, an actor, and an
soldier, and died at the age of twenty nine. He was buried in the Church of St. Martin in
the Fields, London, on 3rd May.

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 English (Sample Questions)

13. The Restoration era produced the first of a new art form: the novel. Which of these statements
is true about the first examples of this genre ?
(A) They were written by former poets such as William Wordsworth.
(B) They were long and often comical narratives.
(C) They were complicated mixtures of poetry, drama, and prose.
(D) They were read only by scholars and scientists.
Sol. (B) From the French word for "new", the novel was created to satisfy the lusty appetites of
the growing middle class. Although most novels superficially emphasized spiritual growth,
the real intent was to entertain. "Tom Jones" is one such narrative, bawdy and risque.

14. Why Dryden’s “Don Sebastian” and “Tyrannic Love” could not attain great excellence ?
(A) They were written to flatter the King
(B) They were written in heroic Couplet
(C) They were written in Rhyme scheme
(D) They were written in Spenserian Stanza
Sol. (B) Dryden’s “Don Sebastian” and “Tyrannic Love” could not attain great excellence as
they were written in heroic couplet. The Heroic couplet added to the artificiality. It lacks
elasticity and can not deftly express the feelings in a drama.

15. Among all the metaphysical poet, which one was the most widely read by reason of his clearness
of expression ?
(A) Henry Vaughan (B) George Herbert Shaw
(C) Richard Crawshaw (D) Thomas Carew
Sol. (B) George Herbert was the most widely read by reason of his clearness of expression, and
his happy knack for using intelligible conceits and concrete imagery.

16. Which among the following is a religious work ?

(A) Rape of the Lock (B) Gulliver’s Travel
(C) A Tale of Tub (D) Le Lurtin
Sol. (C) “A Tale of Tub” is a religious work by Jonathan Swift. It is a prose satire intended as
a defence of the Anglican church.

17. Why the classical writers of the eighteenth century regarded the old English witers with Contempt?
(A) They were indifferent (B) They were superior
(C) They were guided by wit (D) All
Sol. (A) The classical writers of the eighteenth century regarded the old English witers with Contempt
as they were indifferent according to them. Classical writers were guided by reason, good
sense and wit, they wanted order and balance and every kind of excess and irregularity was
abhorrent to them.

18. What was Jonathan Swift's main purpose in writing "Gulliver's Travels" ?
(A) To entertain his audience with incredible fiction.
(B) To criticize the pettiness and corruption of English political practices.
(C) To criticize the idle, upperclass citizens of London.
(D) To praise the wisdom and justice of English foreign affairs.

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 English (Sample Questions)

Sol. (B) Although extremely entertaining - and so realistic that many actually believed that Gulliver
and the exotic lands he visited existed. - Swift's main purpose was to expose the follies
and vices of English politics.

19. Among the following what was written under the pseudonym Issac Bickerstaff ?
(A) The Tatler (B) The Spectator
(C) The Germ (D) Both (A) and (B)
Sol. (A) “The Tatler”, Steele's first journal, first came out on 12 April 1709, and appeared three
times a week: on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. Steele wrote this periodical under
the pseudonym Isaac Bickerstaff and gave Bickerstaff an entire, fully developed personality.

20. Who said that the poetry of the Age of Johnson “is obviously age of transition, innovation and
varied experience ?
(A) W.J. Long (B) Rickett
(C) Hudson (D) Edward Albert
Sol. (C) The history of the later eighteenth century poetry is the history of a struggle between old
and new, and of the gradual triumph of the new. That is why Hudson remarked that the
poetry of the Age of Johnson is obviously the age of transition, innovation and varied
experience.

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