Gauhati University Question Papers for English 5th Semester

Question Paper from 2010 available

More than 50 question papers every semester

SEMESTER V

PAPER 9

Modern Drama I

Marks 75 (60+15) [15 Marks Internal Assessment]. Credits: 6

This paper will introduce students to 20th century English and European drama. It is to be noted that by the turn of the century, the European avant-garde had completely altered the theatre – which at this juncture, seems to become a pan-European phenomenon, with stylistic/technical innovations and thematic experimentation. In the early phase of this period, realism is the dominant technique, and is then followed by radical turns away from it.

Students are expected to acquaint themselves with the European historical and cultural situation in this

period to read the prescribed theoretical texts in Section I and the plays in Section II.

Students will have to answer 2 questions of 12 marks each (2x12=24) from Section I; 3 short questions of 7 marks each (3x7=21) and 2 essay-type questions of 15 marks each (2x15=30) from section II.

Section I: Essays

(2x12)

Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956): “On Experimental Theatre”

Antonin Artaud (1896-1948): “Oriental and Occidental Theatre”.

Section II: Plays

(3x7 + 2x15)

George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950): Arms and the Man*

Anton Chekhov (1860-1904):

Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956): The Cherry Orchard*

Galileo

Modern Drama II

Marks 75 (60+15) [15 Marks Internal Assessment]. Credits: 6

The epoch of modern drama marks the proliferation of avant-garde theory within the theatre making it self-conscious, and experimental. The impact of contemporary philosophy, ideas and art movements like existentialism, expressionism, impressionism, Marxism and the Absurd reverberates in modern drama. These innovations, both in form and content co-exist alongside the revival of earlier forms like the poetic drama. Students are expected to approach the texts in this paper in the light of the ideas, issues and texts in Paper 9.

Students will have to answer 2 questions of 12 marks each (2x12=24) from Section I. Questions could be exclusively on these theoretical/introductory pieces or be linked to the plays prescribed in both Papers 9 and 10. There will be 2 short questions of 6 marks each (6x2=12) and 2 essay-type questions of 12 marks each (12x2=24) from Section II

Section I: Essays

(2x12)

Arthur Miller (1915-2005): “Introduction” to the Collected Plays

Martin Esslin (1918-2002): “Introduction” to The Theatre of the Absurd

Section II: Plays

(3x7 + 2x15)

T.S.Eliot (1888-1965): Murder in the Cathedral

Samuel Beckett (1906-1989):

Arthur Miller (1915-2005): Waiting for Godot*

Death of A Salesman*

The Essay in English: Addison to Dickens

Marks 75 (60+15) [15 Marks Internal Assessment]. Credits: 6

This paper introduces students to the literary form of the essay through a selection of representative texts from the 18th and 19th centuries. Students will have to acquaint themselves with the development of the form from the time of Francis Bacon (1561-1626), and examine the emergence of the periodical essay in the 18th century in the hands of Addison and Steele particularly because of favourable conditions like the increase in literacy rates and the appearance of a large number of periodicals which provided a forum for the articulation of views on a variety of topics. The essays are to be studied in relation to the wider political, social, and cultural context while noting the variety of themes that have been treated in the genre as also the diversity of styles of writing from the personal, intimate note of Lamb which is in keeping with the subjective thrust of Romantic literature to the detached, argumentative strain of later times.

Students will have to answer 4 essay-type questions of 12 marks each (4x12=48) on the form as well as on the distinctive traits of an individual essayist, his outlook on life, attitude to society etc. as evidenced from the prescribed essays. Students will also have to explain two passages (2x6=12) with reference to their contexts from the essays marked with asterisks.

Texts:

(4x12 + 2x6)

Joseph Addison (1672-1719): The Aims of the Spectator*

Richard Steele (1672-1729): The Spectator Club

Charles Lamb (1775-1834): The Chimney Sweeper

William Hazlitt (1778-1830): On Going A Journey*

Charles Dickens (1812-1870): Washington: The Legislature and the

President’s House(Chapter 8 of American Notes)

The Essay in English: The Twentieth Century

Marks 75 (60+15) [15 Marks Internal Assessment]. Credits: 6

This paper will introduce students to developments in the genre of the essay in the 20th century. Students will note how the genre has adapted in order to address a variety of contemporary issues and become the vehicle for representing personal experiences, moved into literary, social, and cultural criticism and engaged in polemic and persuasion. The essays are to be read against their intellectual and socio-cultural background, noting the shift away from the elevated, literary, and classical style of earlier times to a general tendency towards factual and referential writing and a style more direct, immediate, and colloquial.

Students will have to answer 4 questions of 12 marks each and explain two passages with reference to

their contexts; each explanation will carry 6 marks.

Texts:

(4x12 + 2x6)

Virgina Woolf (1882-1941):

D.H.Lawrence (1885-1930): The Art of the Essay

Why the Novel Matters*

Verrier Elwin (1902-1964):

George Orwell (1903-1950): The Pilgrimage to Tawang

Notes on Nationalism*

PAPER 13

Life Writing: Biographies, Memoirs and Letters

Marks 75 (60+15) [15 Marks Internal Assessment]. Credits: 6

In traditional approaches to life writing the emphasis has fallen on the resonant drama of the lives of great people for the way these model lives yield valuable insights about universal human nature. Now we look for the element of ‘story’ in this exemplary ‘histories’ and the material conditions under which the loftiest works are written. With our new found scepticism about aspects such as transcendent achievements and truth-telling (aspects enshrined in traditional life-writing), we look at problematic issues such as self-construction and self-representation. This paper will enable the students to appreciate the element of narrativization in seemingly linear, transparent, straight forward accounts of lives of significant people set down in memoirs, biographies and letters. The student will hopefully appreciate the ‘literary’ or constructed nature of life-writing purportedly telling nothing but the truth, as also note the ‘textual’ nature of all lives- that these lives in a way are re-made for each succeeding generation of readers through the act of transmission/ telling.

Life-writing presenting ideals of exemplariness, is a genre with distinctive features that has been traditionally studied for the negotiation between great people, the drama of whose lives are regarded as records of transcendent achievements made against a host of obstacles and against the flux of time. Now the individual histories of significant (rather than great) people are also studied for the element of story in it. This paper will try to have that sense of narrativization which inform all that text, which underscore the ‘literary’ quality of all texts (and the ‘textual’ nature of all texts) by looking at various forms of life-writing such as memoirs, letters and biographies. The texts also enable one to deal with issues of representations and constructions as in the case of Trollope's Autobiography who reminds us through his rationalisations regarding his desire for profit that any text has a material basis, and it is salutary to pay attention to the material context of production and consumption.

Students will have to answer 4 questions of 12 marks each and 2 short questions carrying 6 marks.

Texts:

(4x12 + 2x6)

Samuel Johnson (1709-1784):

Anthony Trollope (1815 – 1882): Life of Pope

Autobiography, Chapter 6, “Barchester Towers and The

Three Clerks “; Chapter 12, “On Novels and The Art of

Writing Fiction”.

R. K. Narayan(1906 – 2001): My Days

Ashutosh Mukherjee's(1864 – 1924): Letter to Lord Lytton, dated March 26, 1924.

Rabindranath Tagore: (1861 – 1941): Letter to the Viceroy, dated May 30, 1919 renouncing

Knighthood; Letter to Gandhi on fast, dated May 11,

1933’ (Both from The Mahatma and the Poet. Ed. Sabyasachi Bhattacharyya)

Franz Kafka(1883 – 1924): ‘Letter to my father’ dated November 10, 1919

Emily Dickinson :(1830 - 1886) Letters to Mrs. Samuel Bowles (Winter 1858; 1859; August 1861)

PAPER 14

Women’s Writing

Marks 75 (60+15) [15 Marks Internal Assessment]. Credits: 6

This paper on writing by women introduces students to a body of literature that has emerged with growing feminist awareness of women’s lives and their representation. It invites students to examine how women’s texts pay attention to the historical and political conditions of their times, to the status and condition of women and to the ways in which they embody a politics of resistance.

It expects students to look at the way a woman writer participates in the questions of selfhood, at

women’s relations with men and with other women, and at the implications of women speaking, writing, and empowering themselves by finding their own voices and interrogating women’s work and roles in society. Particular attention should be given to women’s use of language, their preference for certain genres that are assumed to be liberating, and the ways in which they have transformed and made some genres their own.

Students will address women’s issues and interests, the condition of women in the place and time of

the writer and uses and subversions effected in the genre of the novel by women in Section I. There will be 2 essay-type questions of 12 marks each (2x12=24), and 1 question of 8 marks (1x8=8) from this section. From Section II, the students will be expected to address the use of these autobiographical forms by women and the specifically gendered experiences and perspectives that they represent. They are to answer two questions of 8 marks each (2x8=16) from this section. Section III will introduce students to contemporary Indian women poets writing in English in order to show how these poets have extended both the subject matter and idiom of poetry. Students will have to answer one question of 12 marks (1x12=12).

Section I: Fiction

(2x12 + 1x8)

Anita Desai (1937 - ):

Edith Wharton (1862 - 1937): Fasting , Feasting

Roman Fever

Katherine Mansfield (1888 - 1923):

Bessie Head (1937 - 1986): ‘The Fly’

Heaven is not Closed

Section II: Letters/Diaries

(2x8)

Frances Burney (1752-1840): Letter from Miss F. Burney to Mrs. Phillips [Authoress of

“Evelina”]

Helena Maria Williams (1762-1827): Letters written from France Vol.1, Letter 1; Vol.2 Letter 1

Alice James (1848-1892): My “Hidden Self ” October 26th [1890]; Going Downhill

May 31st [1891] (From The Diary)

Section III: Poetry

(1x12)

Mamta Kalia (1940-): Tribute to Papa

Eunice de Souza (1940- ): Catholic Mother; Autobiographical

Sujata Bhatt (1956-): The Peacock

*(The texts from Sections A & B are from The Norton Anthology of Literature by Women: The Traditions in English, Eds. Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar , New York and London: Norton 1996 and the poems in Section C are from Nine Indian Poets: An Anthology, Ed. Eunice de Souza, New Delhi: OUP, 1997)

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Gauhati University Question Papers for English 5th Semester