ASSIGNMENTS FOR MA ENGLISH FINAL: VALID FOR 2016 JUNE EXAM

& 2017 FEB EXAM

Every student should prepare the assignments and send them to The Superintendent, Exams -III, School
of Distance Education, Andhra University, Visakhapatnam before 28th May 2016
PAPER -1: LITERARY CRITICISM
Max Marks: 20

UNIT-I:
1.

Read the following poem and answer all the questions:

As summer draws its final breath to prepare its curtain call
The monarchs begin their epic trek to usher in the fall
The northern wind breathes out its chill as songs begin to hush
And paints the trees upon the hill with its artists brush
From green to red, orange and brown the trees discard their masks
And lay them gently upon the ground for us to begin our tasks
Autumn makes was fro winters reign we bid farewell old friend
Till summers warmth begins to wane and fall returns again

a) What songs hush in the fall?

b) What is being painted by the northern wind?
c) What tasks (jobs) do we have to do in the fall
d) What does wane mean in this poem?
e) How do you think the author of theis poem feels about autuman?
UNIT - II
Write a detailed essay in not less than six pages :
Discuss Aristotles concept of chatharsis
UNIT - III
Write a detailed essay in not less than six pages :
Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion but an escape from emotion. Discuss with reference to Eliots
Tradition and Individual Talent
UNIT - IV
Write a detailed essay in not less than six pages :
Critically comment on the views of Wimsatt and Beardsley in The Intentional Fallacy.
UNIT - V
Prepare short answers in not less than two pages for all the topics given below:
(a) Examine the views of H.G. Widdowson in Sylistics
b) Discuss the important features of Structuralism
c) How does Derrida substantiate his argument in Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of the Human
Sciences
d) Analyse Fishs definition of Text.
e) Examine the importance of the Feminist approach to literature.
f) How does Coleridge turn an aesthetic enquiry into a philosophical argument in Biographia Literatia.
g) Critically comment on Arnolds Touch Stone Method

h) What is the Seventh Type of Ambiguity according to Empson? Discuss

Every student should prepare the assignments and send them to The Superintendent, Exams -III, School
of Distance Education, Andhra University, Visakhapatnam before 28th May 2015
Paper-II: AMERICAN LITERATURE
Max Marks: 20

UNIT - I
Annotate with reference to the context all the following:
a)

Demon or bird (said the boys soul)

Is it indeed your note you sing? Or really to me?

b)

Delaying not, burying not

Whispered me through the night and very plainly before daybreak

c)

Two that dont love, cant live together without them

But two that do cant live together with them.

d)

Earths the right place for love

I Dont know where its likely to go better
Id like to go by climbing a birch tree.

e)

Books are the best of things, well used; abused, among the worst... They are nothing but to inspire.

f)

The sacredness which attaches to the act of creation, the act of thought, is transferred to the record.

g)

But hes human being, and terrible thing is happening to him. So attention must be paid Hes not to be
allowed to fall into his grave like an old dog.
UNIT - II

Write a detailed essay in not less than six pages :

Criticall examine Whitmans use of symbols in the poems studied by you
UNIT - III
Write a detailed essay in not less than six pages :
How does Emerson distinguish between a scholar and a bookworm?
UNIT - IV
Write a detailed essay in not less than six pages :
Illustrate Arthur Millers use of realistic and expressionistic techniques in Death of a Salesman
UNIT - V
Prepare short answers in not less than two pages for all the topics given below:
a) Discuss the use of innovative techniques in post-war American novel.
b) Trace the development of American Drama in the Twentieth Centuary.
c) Comment critically on Emily Dickinsons diction, syntax and punctuation with reference to the poems
studied by you.
d) Write a note on the symbolism in Raven by Poe.
e) Comment on Thoreaus experiment of living away from civilization and its success.
f) Contrast the attitudes of the principal characters to the white whale in Moby Dick
g) Explain the significance of the title of play The Hairy Ape
h) The Absurd Drama
Every student should prepare the assignments and send them to The Superintendent, Exams -III, School
of Distance Education, Andhra University, Visakhapatnam before 28th May 2015

Paper III: INDIAN ENGLISH LITERATURE

Max Marks: 20

UNIT - I
Annotate with reference to the context all the following:
a)

And in its centre a cleared spot - there bloom

Gigantic flowers on creepers that embrace.

b)

Past the orange skies of the mystic mind

flew my thought self - lost in the vasts of God

c)

We lost a friend whose stylish prose

Was quite the best of all our batch
A shadow falls on us and grows.

d)

Really what keeps us apart

At the end of years is unshared
Childhood you cannot, for instance
meet my father

e)

I speak three languages, write in Two

dream in one. Dont write in English, they said.

f)

But, really, I cannot stand the absurd things

people say about our King simply because he
is not seen in public

g)

Self was left, lone, limitless, nude, immune.

h)

...Out of
The wrong is born the right and out of night
The sun-drenched golden day.
UNIT - II

Write a detailed essay in not less than six pages :

Comment on the theme of devotion in Tagores Gitanjali
UNIT - III
Write a detailed essay in not less than six pages :
Write an essay on the plot and structure of Hayavadana
UNIT - IV
Write a detailed essay in not less than six pages :
Fire on the Mountain revolves round the twin themes of loneliness and alienation - Comment
UNIT - V
Answer all the following in one or two pages:
a) Trace out the evolution of Indian English
b) Comment on Toru Dutts depiction of India in her poems Sita and Our Casuarina Tree
c) Write an essay on symbolism in the poetry of Sri Aurobindo.
d) What is the significance of the title of the play The King of the Dark Chamber.
e) Critically comment on the arguments of Tagore in Man.
f) Evaluate A Tiger for Malgudi as a political allegory.
g) Comment on the portrayal of family relations in the novel That Long Silence.
Every student should prepare the assignments and send them to The Superintendent, Exams -III, School
of Distance Education, Andhra University, Visakhapatnam before 28th May 2015
Paper IV: TWENTIETH CENTURY LITERATURE: POETRY AND DRAMA
Max Marks: 20

UNIT - I
Annotate with reference to the context all the following
a)

... mad Ireland hurt you into poetry.

Now Ireland has her madness and her weather still.

b)

O may my hearts truth Still be sung

On this high hill in a years turning.

c)

And we recall the merry ways of guns

Nibbling the walls of factory and church
Like a child, pierce crust .. .

d)

Its the will of God, Im thinking, That all should rear up lengthy families for the nature of the earth.

e)

And I saw in the turning so clearly a childs

forgotten mornings when he walked with his mother.

f)

Braverys treasure is in a lonesome place.

g)

The sea cries with its meaningless voice

Treating alike its dead and its living.

h)

Thats an unkindly thing to be saying to a poor Orphaned traveller, has a prison behind him and
hanging before , and hells gate gaping below.
UNIT - II

Write a detailed essay in not less than six pages :

Auden is one of the best poets of England Elucidate.
UNIT - III
Write a detailed essay in not less than six pages :
How does Synge portray the conflict between son and father in The Playboy of the Western World.
UNIT - IV
Write a detailed essay in not less than six pages :
Comment on the terror and violence shown by Pinter in The Birthday Party.
UNIT - V
Prepare short answers in not less than two pages for all the topics given below:
a) What are the characteristics features of Modern Drama?
b) Discuss the impact of World Wars on Twentieth Century British poetry.
c) Give an account of the manner in which Dylan Thomas expresses his faith in a power that presides over our
destiny.
d) Critically appreciate Thomas Gunns poem My Sad captains.
e) Examine A Phoenix too Frequent as a poetic drama.
f) Trace the impact of Existentialism on Beckett in Happy Days
g) Play of ideas.
h) Irish Drama.
Every student should prepare the assignments and send them to The Superintendent, Exams -III, School
of Distance Education, Andhra University, Visakhapatnam before 28th May 2015
Paper V-TWENTIETH CENTURY LITERATURE (PROSE AND FICTION)

UNIT - I
Max Marks: 20
Annotate with reference to the context all the following:
a) London was like a workship. London was like a machine.
b) Our problem should be to take a form of entertainment, and subject it to the process which would leave it a
form of art

c) Yet genius of a sort must have existed among women as it must have existed among the working class.
d) Hamlet, like the Sonnets, it is full of such stuff that the writer could not drag to light, contemplate, or
manipulate into art.
e) What, we ask, is this for? As a page on Cleopatra, and on her possible orgin in the Dark Lady on Sonnets,
unfolds itself?
f) But how would all this be affected by the sex of the novelist, I wondered, looking at Jane Eyre and others.
g) To create form is not merely to invent shape, a rhyme or rhythm. It is also the realization of the whole
appropriate context of this rhyme or rhythm.
h) Literatere is strewn with the wreckage of men who have minded beyond reason the opinions of others.
UNIT - II
Write a detailed essay in not less than six pages :
How does T.S. Eliot prove that the critic and the creative artist should frequently be the same person in his
essay The perfect Critice?
UNIT - III
Write a detailed essay in not less than six pages :
Discuss Joyces narrative technique in A Portrait of the Artist as a Yound Man.
UNIT - IV
Write a detailed essay in not less than six pages :
Critically comment on the prose style of Lytton Strachey in Eminent Victorians.
UNIT - V
Prepare short answers in not less than two pages for all the topics given below:
a) Bring out the salient features of the Psychological Novel in the Twentieth Century.
b) Write an essay on the major trends in the 20th Century Fiction.
c) A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction - Discuss.
d) Examine the validity of the problem T.S. Eliot discussed with regard to Hamlet.
e) Examine the pessimism of William Golding in The Lord of the Flies
f) Do you agree with the view that Graham Greenes idea is to present the view that Gods ways are
inscrutable?
g) Comment on the central theme of the novel The Sand Castle.
h) Feminism.