Civil Service Mains Optional ENGLISH

ENGLISH



The syllabus consists of two papers, de-signed to test a first-hand and critical read-ing of texts prescribed from the following
periods in English Literature : Paper I :
1600-1900 and Paper II : 1900-1990.
There will be two compulsory questions in
each paper : a) A short-notes question re-lated to the topics for general study, and b)
A critical analysis of UNSEEN passages
both in prose and verse.
PAPER-I

Answers must be written in English.
Texts for detailed study are listed below.
Candidates will also be required to show
adequate knowledge of the following top-ics and movements :
The Renaissance : Elizabethan and Jaco-bean Drama; Metaphysical Poetry; The
Epic and the Mock-epic; Neo-classicism;
Satire; The Romantic Movement; The Rise
of the Novel; The Victorian Age.

Section-A

1. William Shakespeare :King Learand
The Tempest.

2. John Donne. The following poems :
- Canonization;
- Death be not proud;
- The Good Morrow;
- On his Mistress going to bed;

- The Relic;

3. John Milton :  Paradise Lost,I, II, IV, IX

4. Alexander Pope.  The Rape of the
Lock.

5. William Wordsworth. The following po-ems:
- Ode on Intimations of Immortality.
- Tintern Abbey.
- Three years she grew.
- She dwelt among untrodden
ways.
- Michael.
- Resolution and Independence.
- The World is too much with us.
- Milton, thou shouldst be living at
this hour.
- Upon Westminster Bridge.

6. Alfred Tennyson : In Memoriam.

7. Henrik Ibsen : A Doll’s House.

Section-B

1. Jonathan Swift. Gulliver’s Travels.

2. Jane Austen. Pride and Prejudice.

3. Henry Fielding. Tom Jones.

4. Charles Dickens. Hard Times.

5. George Eliot. The Mill on the Floss.

6. Thomas Hardy.  Tess of the
d’Urbervilles.

7. Mark Twain. The Adventures of Huck-leberry Finn.


PAPER-II
Answers must be written in English.
Texts for detailed study are listed below.
Candidates will also be required to show
adequate knowledge of the following top-ics and movements :
Modernism; Poets of the Thirties; The
stream-of-consciousness Novel; Absurd
Drama; Colonialism and Post-Colonialism;
Indian Writing in English; Marxist, Psycho-analytical and Feminist approaches to lit-erature; Post-Modernism.

Section-A
1. William Butler Yeats. The following po-ems:
- Easter 1916
- The Second Coming
- A Prayer for my daughter.
- Sailing to Byzantium.
- The Tower.
- Among School Children.
- Leda and the Swan.
- Meru
- Lapis Lazuli
- The Second Coming
- Byzantium.

2. T.S. Eliot. The following poems :
- The Love Song of J.Alfred
Prufrock
- Journey of the Magi.
- Burnt Norton.

3. W.H. Auden. The following poems :
- Partition
- Musee des Beaux Arts
- in Memory of W.B. Yeats
- Lay your sleeping head, my love
- The Unknown Citizen
- Consider
- Mundus Et Infans
- The Shield of Achilles
- September 1, 1939
- Petition.

4. John Osborne : Look Back in Anger.

5. Samuel Beckett. Waiting for Godot.

6. Philip Larkin. The following poems :
- Next
- Please
- Deceptions
- Afternoons
- Days
- Mr. Bleaney

7. A.K. Ramanujan. The following po-ems :
- Looking for a Causim on a Swing
- A River
- Of Mothers, among other Things
- Love Poem for a Wife 1

- Small-Scale Reflections on a
Great House
- Obituary
(All these poems are available in the an-thology Ten Twentieth Century Indian Po-ets, edited by R. Parthasarthy, published
by Oxford University Press, New Delhi).

Section-B

1. Joseph Conrad. Lord Jim

2. James Joyce.  Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.

3. D.H. Lawrence. Sons and Lovers.

4. E.M. Forster. A Passage to India.

5. Virginia Woolf. Mrs Dalloway.

6. Raja Rao. Kanthapura.

7. V.S. Naipal. A House for Mr. Biswas.