Table of Contents
- Question 46: Matching Critics to their Texts
- Question 47: Sidney's Apologie for Poetrie
- Question 48: Bacon's Two Kinds of Truth
- Question 49: Publication of Johnson's Dictionary
- Question 50: Author of An Essay on the Principles of Human Action
- Question 51: Works NOT Written by P.B. Shelley
- Question 52: Chronology of Structuralist & Post-Structuralist Works
- Question 53: Matching Critical Terms to Theories
- Question 54: Matching Late 20th Century Critical Texts to Authors
- Question 55: Works NOT Authored by John Stuart Mill
Question 46
Identify the correct pairs:
A. Aristotle — Rhetoric
B. Quintilian — Oratorical Institutions (Institutio Oratoria)
C. C. Brooks and R. P. Warren — Understanding Fiction
D. Allen Tate — The Verbal Icon
E. Harold Bloom — The Great Tradition
Choose the correct answer from the options given below:
Identifying classical and modern critical texts:
- (A) True: Aristotle wrote the foundational treatise on persuasion, Rhetoric.
- (B) True: Quintilian wrote the Roman pedagogical masterpiece Institutio Oratoria (Oratorical Institutions).
- (C) True: Cleanth Brooks and Robert Penn Warren co-authored Understanding Fiction (alongside their more famous Understanding Poetry).
Why D and E are wrong: The Verbal Icon was written by W.K. Wimsatt (not Allen Tate). The Great Tradition was written by F.R. Leavis (not Harold Bloom).
Question 47
Identify the correct ones among the following:
A. The Apologie for Poetrie was written by Sir Philip Sidney.
B. Sir Philip Sidney wrote the Apologie for Poetrie as a counterblast to Stephen Gosson's The School of Abuse.
C. Stephen Gosson wrote The School of Abuse in the euphuistic style.
D. Sidney's style was characterised by neoclassical restraint.
E. Sidney and Gosson wrote their critical treatise in the eighteenth century.
Choose the correct answer from the options given below:
Analyzing the context of the greatest Renaissance defense of literature:
- (A) True: Sir Philip Sidney wrote An Apologie for Poetrie (also known as The Defence of Poesy) around 1580.
- (B) True: He wrote it specifically to refute the Puritan Stephen Gosson, who had dedicated his anti-theater pamphlet, The School of Abuse (1579), to Sidney without permission.
- (C) True: Gosson's pamphlet was written in the highly ornate, artificial "euphuistic" style popularized by John Lyly.
Why D and E are wrong: Sidney's style was highly rhetorical and Renaissance-humanist, not demonstrating later "neoclassical restraint" (D is false). Both men lived and wrote in the late 16th century (the Elizabethan era), not the 18th century (E is false).
Question 48
Francis Bacon's The Advancement of Learning attempted to draw a distinction between two kinds of ‘truth’. Which are these?
In The Advancement of Learning (1605), Francis Bacon, the father of empiricism, laid the groundwork for the scientific method by strictly separating Theological Truth (divine revelation) from Scientific Truth (natural philosophy).
Bacon argued that mixing the two was dangerous. Theological truth must be accepted on faith, whereas scientific truth must be discovered through rigorous, skeptical observation and inductive reasoning of the natural world.
Question 49
Dr. Johnson's Dictionary of the English Language was published in:
Samuel Johnson's monumental A Dictionary of the English Language was published on April 15, 1755.
It took him nearly nine years to compile single-handedly. It remained the preeminent and most authoritative English dictionary for over 150 years, until the completion of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) in the late 19th/early 20th century. It is famous for its extensive use of literary quotations to illustrate word usage.
Question 50
An Essay on the Principles of Human Action was written by:
An Essay on the Principles of Human Action (1805) is the first published book by the great Romantic essayist and critic William Hazlitt.
In this dense philosophical work, Hazlitt argues against the prevailing utilitarian theory that humans are purely selfish and motivated only by self-interest. He asserts that the human imagination naturally allows us to project ourselves into the future and empathize with others, making humans inherently capable of disinterested, altruistic action.
Question 51
Which of the following works is NOT written by P. B. Shelley?
A Vision of Judgement (1821) was written by the Poet Laureate Robert Southey.
Southey wrote it to praise the deceased King George III entering heaven. (Lord Byron subsequently wrote a vicious, brilliant parody of it titled The Vision of Judgment). The other three options are major, radical political poems by Percy Bysshe Shelley: Queen Mab (1813), The Revolt of Islam (1817), and The Mask of Anarchy (1819, written in response to the Peterloo Massacre).
Question 52
Find the chronological order of publication of the given works:
A. Structuralist Poetics
B. Course in General Linguistics
C. The Pursuit of Signs
D. The Pleasure of the Text
E. The Implied Reader
Choose the correct answer from the options given below: (Note: This exact question also appeared in Shift 1)
The chronological sequence of these linguistic and structuralist texts is:
- (B) Course in General Linguistics (1916): Ferdinand de Saussure.
- (E) The Implied Reader (1972): Wolfgang Iser.
- (D) The Pleasure of the Text (1973): Roland Barthes.
- (A) Structuralist Poetics (1975): Jonathan Culler.
- (C) The Pursuit of Signs (1981): Jonathan Culler.
Question 53
Match List I with List II:
| List I (Term) | List II (Theory/Field) |
|---|---|
| A. Aporia | I. Marxism |
| B. Scapes (e.g., ethnoscapes, mediascapes) | II. Psychoanalysis |
| C. Interpellation | III. Deconstruction |
| D. Mirror Stage | IV. Globalisation |
Choose the correct answer from the options given below:
Matching key critical vocabulary to their respective theoretical fields:
A. Aporia — (III) Deconstruction. Jacques Derrida's term for an irresolvable internal contradiction or logical impasse in a text.
B. Scapes — (IV) Globalisation. Arjun Appadurai's framework (ethnoscapes, mediascapes, technoscapes) for understanding global cultural flows.
C. Interpellation — (I) Marxism. Louis Althusser's concept of how ideology "hails" or constructs individuals as subjects.
D. Mirror Stage — (II) Psychoanalysis. Jacques Lacan's concept of the moment an infant recognizes itself in a mirror, forming the ego.
Question 54
Match List I with List II:
| List I (Book Title) | List II (Author) |
|---|---|
| A. The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act | I. Joseph Carroll |
| B. The Pleasure of the Text | II. Monique Wittig |
| C. The Straight Mind and Other Essays | III. Roland Barthes |
| D. Literary Darwinism: Evolution, Human Nature and Literature | IV. Fredric Jameson |
Choose the correct answer from the options given below:
Matching seminal works of late 20th-century critical theory:
A. The Political Unconscious (1981) — (IV) Fredric Jameson. A major Marxist text arguing that all literature is fundamentally political.
B. The Pleasure of the Text (1973) — (III) Roland Barthes.
C. The Straight Mind (1992) — (II) Monique Wittig. A foundational text of materialist feminism and queer theory.
D. Literary Darwinism (2004) — (I) Joseph Carroll. An approach applying evolutionary biology to literary analysis.
Question 55
Which of the following works have NOT been authored by John Stuart Mill?
A. The Subjection of Women
B. Thoughts on Parliamentary Reform
C. Past and Present
D. Explorations
E. On Liberty
Choose the correct answer from the options given below:
Identifying the works that do NOT belong to the Victorian philosopher and utilitarian John Stuart Mill:
- (C) Past and Present (1843) was written by the Victorian historian Thomas Carlyle.
- (D) Explorations (1953) is a famous essay collection by the New Critic L.C. Knights.
J.S. Mill did write The Subjection of Women (A), Thoughts on Parliamentary Reform (B), and his most famous political treatise, On Liberty (E).
Frequently Asked Questions
What is an "Aporia" in Deconstruction?
Popularized by Jacques Derrida, aporia literally means an "impassable path." In literary theory, it refers to a moment in a text where logic breaks down, revealing inherent contradictions that make it impossible to establish a single, fixed meaning.
What is Althusser's "Interpellation"?
The Marxist theorist Louis Althusser used "interpellation" to describe how ideological systems "hail" or call out to us, turning us into subjects. His famous example is a police officer shouting "Hey, you there!" The moment you turn around, you have accepted the ideology and your role as a subject to authority.
Why is "The Political Unconscious" by Fredric Jameson important?
Published in 1981, it famously begins with the injunction "Always historicize!" Jameson argues that the political and economic realities of a society are always buried in the "unconscious" of a text, and it is the job of the Marxist critic to dig them up, even if the novel appears to have nothing to do with politics.
