1. “Comparative Literature is the study of the literature beyond the confines of one particular country” – whose definition of comparative literature is this?
(A) Ulrich Weisstein
(B) H.H. Remak
(C) Rene Wellek
(D) Anna Balakian
Answer: (B)
2. The methodology of analogical study was advocated by the
(A) French school of comparative literature
(B) Russian school of comparative literature
(C) American school of comparative literature
(D) German school of comparative literature
Answer: (C)
3. When we trace the development of the sonnet in Europe since Petrarch’s days, we are referring to
(A) Regional literature
(B) World literature
(C) National literature
(D) General literature
Answer: (D)
4. The most important criterion for deciding the nationality of a writer is
(A) Linguistic
(B) Geographical
(C) Religious
(D) Political
Answer: (A)
5. When one says, “A’ has influenced ‘B’ on the basis of similarities between the works of two authors,” we study
(A) Evidences
(B) Sources
(C) Affinities
(D) Parodies
Answer: (C)
6. The cycle of American Literature is authorised by
(A) Arthur Rimbaud
(B) Robert Spiller
(C) Van Tieghem
(D) Hypolytte Taine
Answer: (B)
7. A ‘counter-design’ is popularized by
(A) Bertolt Brecht
(B) Henry Person
(C) Rene Etiemble
(D) Ferdinand Brunetiere
Answer: (A)
8. Attempt at historical reconstruction has led to a great stress on the intention of the author. Identify the author of the statement:
(A) Wellek and Warren
(B) Schlegel - Tieck
(C) Carre - Guyard
(D) Hassan - Guillen
Answer: (A)
9. In the study of literary History, Holinshed’s Chronicles would constitute
(A) An affinity
(B) A source
(C) An influence
(D) An imitation
Answer: (B)
10. Who among the following was the first writer to stress the segregation of literary genres?
(A) Horace
(B) Cicero
(C) Piso
(D) Quintilian
Answer: (B)
11. The principal topic of discussion in the third international congress of literary history held in Lyon in 1939 was
(A) Problem of literary types.
(B) Problem of literary translation.
(C) Literary relationship between the west and the east.
(D) Study of Thematology
Answer: (A)
12. Who is of the view that generic classification is a waste of time?
(A) Van Tieghem
(B) Benedetto Croce
(C) Eliseo Vivas
(D) Jeremias Gotthelf
Answer: (B)
13. Identify the author of the book Medieval Latin and the Rise of the European Love – lyric,
(A) Johannes Hosle
(B) Kurt Wais
(C) Peter Dronke
(D) Hypolytte Taine
Answer: (C)
14. The ‘Orestes’ theme has been used by
(A) Marlowe
(B) Shakespeare
(C) Webster
(D) Kyd
Answer: (B)
15. Who is the author of the statement, “life is not the greatest good, but guilt is the greatest evil.”
(A) Harry Levin
(B) Karl Jaspers
(C) Schiller
(D) Peterson
Answer: (C)
16. Thanks to whose efforts did the 1920’s witness the emergence of the History of Ideas?
(A) Woodberry
(B) Chandler
(C) Lovejoy
(D) Hamburger
Answer: (C)
17. Wellek and Warren’s Theory of Literature does not contain a chapter on
(A) Literary Genres
(B) Thematology
(C) Literary History
(D) Literature and the other Arts.
Answer: (B)
18. Paul Hazard almost omits thematolo from comparative literature, as it does not involve
(A) Study of other Arts
(B) Literary history
(C) History of Ideas
(D) Literary Influences
Answer: (D)
19. The author of the essay “The Tradition of Traditions” is
(A) T.E. Hume
(B) T.S. Eliot
(C) Rene Wellek
(D) Harry Levin
Answer: (C)
20. The critic who argued that the “word ‘romantic’ has come to mean so many things that by itself, it means nothing.”
(A) Harry Levin
(B) M.H. Abrams
(C) L.R. Furst
(D) A.O. Lovejoy
Answer: (D)
21. Who, by mistake, called the masters of Roman satire, comic playwrights?
(A) Boileau
(B) Grande della scala
(C) Isidore
(D) Alvin Kernan
Answer: (C)
22. Bion is an exponent of
(A) Comedy
(B) Lyrical Drama
(C) Tragedy
(D) Pastoral Elegy
Answer: (D)
23. The most important work of Dandin is
(A) Vakyapadiya
(B) Kavyadarsa
(C) Sringaraprakasa
(D) Kavyanusasanam
Answer: (B)
24. The most important exponent of oblique poetry in Sanskrit is
(A) Dandin
(B) Bharata
(C) Kuntaka
(D) Abhinavagupta
Answer: (C)
25. Akam and Puram are the unique features of
(A) Bhakti Poetry
(B) Sankam Literature
(C) Love Poetry
(D) Heroic Poetry
Answer: (B)
26. The idea of defamiliarization is associated with
(A) Todorov
(B) Shklovsky
(C) Kristeva
(D) Jakobson
Answer: (B)
27. ‘A grand narrative constitutes
(A) a beautiful narrative
(B) a long narrative
(C) a universal explanatory theory
(D) a global narrative
Answer: (C)
28. Who translated the ‘Rubaiyats’ of Omar Khayyam?
(A) T.S. Eliot
(B) Edward Fitzgerald
(C) Matthew Arnold
(D) Ezra Pound
Answer: (B)
29. “What is world literature?” is written by
(A) Rene Wellek
(B) David Damrosch
(C) Dorothy Figuera
(D) Gayatri Chakraborti Spivak
Answer: (B)
30. The origin of the legend of the Chalk Circle is
(A) Russia
(B) Germany
(C) China
(D) Japan
Answer: (C)
31. The Faust legend was adopted by
(A) John Webster
(B) Moliere
(C) Thomas Mann
(D) Chateaubriand
Answer: (C)
32. Hafiz became popular in Europe through the adaptations by
(A) Shelley
(B) Goethe
(C) Hugo
(D) Cervantes
Answer: (B)
33. The comment “Poetry is that which is lost in translation” was made by
(A) P.B. Shelley
(B) W.H. Auden
(C) Robert Frost
(D) T.S. Eliot
Answer: (C)
34. Medium to medium translation is not possible in the case of
(A) Poetry
(B) Drama
(C) Essays
(D) Novels
Answer: (A)
35. Who claimed that all texts are ‘translations of translation of translations’?
(A) Susan Bassnett
(B) Octavio Paz
(C) William Morris
(D) Eugene Nida
Answer: (B)
36. Before the Christian era, the Hebrew Old Testament was translated in to
(A) Arabic
(B) Persian
(C) Greek
(D) Latin
Answer: (C)
37. The term “Ut Pictura Poesis’ comes from
(A) Horace
(B) Longinus
(C) Aristotle
(D) Plato
Answer: (A)
38. Vikram Seth’s novel A Suitable Boy has a structure which follows a pattern from
(A) Sculpture
(B) Architecture
(C) Painting
(D) Music
Answer: (D)
39. Which movement / trend were common to architecture and literature?
(A) Expressionism
(B) Baroque
(C) Neo-classicism
(D) Romanticism
Answer: (B)
40. Identify the poet who was also a painter
(A) Hermann Hesse
(B) Lodovico Ariosto
(C) William Blake
(D) Heinrich Heine
Answer: (C)
41. “Impressionism” had its origins in
(A) Fiction
(B) Painting
(C) Sculpture
(D) Music
Answer: (B)
42. Identify the historian / biographer who greatly influenced Renaissance Drama.
(A) Plutarch
(B) Herodotus
(C) Tacitus
(D) Julius Caesar
Answer: (A)
43. The dominant political theorist of the 17th century who inspired many literary figures was
(A) Blaise Pascal
(B) Reni Descartes
(C) Thomas Hobbes
(D) John Milton
Answer: (C)
44. Transcendentalism inspired the works of
(A) Scott
(B) Byron
(C) Shelley
(D) Poe
Answer: (C)
45. Identify the author of The Historical Novel:
(A) Georg Lukacs
(B) Christopher Caudwell
(C) Kenneth Burke
(D) Georgi Plekhanov
Answer: (A)
Note: Read the passage below and mark the correct answer:
The problem of writing the history of a period will be first a problem of description: we need to discern the decay of one convention and the rise of a new one. Why this change of convention has come about at a particular moment is a historical problem insoluble in general terms. One type of solution proposed assumes that within the literary development a stage of exhaustion is reached requiring the rise of a new code. The Russian formalists describe this process as a process of ‘automatization’, i.e. devices of poetic craft effective in their time become so common and hackneyed that new readers become inured against them and crave something different, something, it is assumed, antithetic to what has gone before. A see-saw alternation is the scheme of development, a series of revolts ever leading to new ‘actualizations’ of diction, themes, and all other devices. But this theory does not make clear why development has to move in the particular direction it has taken: mere see-saw schemes are obviously inadequate to describe the whole complexity of the process. One explanation of these changes in direction would put the burden on outside interferences and pressures of the social milieu:
46. The problem while writing the history of a period is _________.
(A) The problem of explanation and definition.
(B) The problem of discerning new conventions.
(C) The necessity to understand the degeneration of one convention and the emergence of an alternative.
(D) The need to understand the decay of the existing conventions.
Answer: (C)
47. The historical problem related to the change of convention is
(A) That a literary movement, wheneven a point of ennui is reached, calls for innovative practices.
(B) The rise of a new code due to change of convention.
(C) That the stage of exhaustion is reached in no time.
(D) The change of convention itself is a serious problem.
Answer: (A)
48. The word, ‘automatization’ means to the Russian Formalists
(A) The young readers always demand interesting new devices.
(B) The old get easily automatized.
(C) The poetic devices soon become so lustreless and uninteresting that the readers want something new.
(D) The poetic craft slowly gets fossilized.
Answer: (C)
49. ‘sea-saw’ alternation in the passage refers to:
(A) A combination of the devices of the present and the past.
(B) Prioritizing the past over the present.
(C) A scheme of developing the poetic craft of diction and theme.
(D) A number of protests that bring in innovations in the use of poetic materials and devices.
Answer: (D)
50. The change in convention is due to
(A) External interventions from the society.
(B) Internal pressures that poets suffer from,
(C) Insoluble problems due to decay of conventions.
(D) The new readers craze for innovative devices.