Kerala PSC HSA English 2004 Question paper- Solved

Kerala PSC HSA English 2004 Question paper

PART I

Section - A

Q.1-30 Answer all the questions. Each question carries one mark.

     1. The first revenge tragedy in English is ____

Thomas Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy

    2.____is called the Father of English Essay.

          Father of English Essay Francis Bacon (1561 – 1626)

3. Gray, Collins and Cowper are called ____ poets.
   Graveyard Poets (or Pre-Romantic Poets)

4. The only literary epic in English literature is ____
   Paradise Lost by Milton.

5. The writer of 'Holy Sonnets' is ____
   John Donne

6. Where do we read: 'The paths of glory lead but to the grave ?
   The Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard by Thomas Gray

7. Who first used the word 'Metaphysics' in association with Donne's poetry ?
   Dryden

8. Shakespeare wrote ____ sonnets.
   154

    9.  ____ reproduced 'King Lear' with a comic ending.

          Nahum Tate

   10. ____is the longest of Shakespeare's plays.

         Hamlet

11. 'Lyrical Ballads' was published in the year ____
    1798

12. The autobiographical poem written by Wordsworth is ____
    The Prelude

   13. ____defined poetry as 'the best words in the best order'.

           S.T. Coleridge

14. Who said of Shelley: 'He is beautiful and ineffectual an angel beating in the void his luminous wings in vain?
    Mathew Arnold

15. Tennyson's 'The Lotus Eaters' and '____' are companion poems.
    Ulysses

  16.____ is often described as chronologically Victorian and qualitatively a modern poet.

           Gerard Manly Hopkins
          Some critics consider Mathew Arnold as modern

17. The subtitle of 'Andrea Del Sarto' is ____
    The Faultless Painter

18. Lamb's sister appears with the name ____in his essays.
    Brigitta

  19.____ is a poetic form perfected by Browning.

          Dramatic Monologue

20. "As flies to wanton boys are we to gods. They kill us for their sport." Whose words are these ?
    Gloucester: (I' th' last night's storm I such a fellow saw, Which made me think a man a worm. My son Came then into my mind, and yet my mind Was then scarce friends with him. I have heard more since. As flies to wanton boys are we to th' gods, They kill us for their sport. King Lear Act 4, scene 1, 32–37)

21. Who used the Heroic Couplet in English first ?
    Geoffrey Chaucer

22. Wordsworth, Coleridge and Southey are known as the ____poets.
    Lake Poets

23. Sprung Rhythm is associated with the poet ____
    Gerard Manley Hopkins

  24.____is the main source of Shakespeare's English History plays.

Raphael Holinshed's Anglo-Saxon Chronicles

(The source for most of the English history plays, as well as for Macbeth and King Lear, is the well known Raphael Holinshed's Chronicle of English history. The source for the Roman history plays is Plutarch's Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans Compared Together, in the translation made by Sir Thomas North in 1579. Shakespeare's history plays focus on only a small part of the characters' lives, and also frequently omit significant events for dramatic purposes.)

25. Dryden's 'All for Love' is base on Shakespeare's ____
    Antony and Cleopatra

26. ____is an unfinished poem by Marlowe.
    Hero and Leander

27. 'The Merchant of Venice' by Shakespeare is modelled upon Marlowe's ____
    The Jew of Malta

28. Whom does Wordsworth addressed towards the end of the poem 'Tintern Abbey'?
    His sister Dorothy Wordsworth

29. Mephistophiles is a character in ____by Marlowe.
    Doctor Faustus

  30.____ is called the Father of English Novel.

          Henry Fielding

(It was Sir Walter Scott who called Henry Fielding the father of English Novel. Because before Henry Fielding English novel could not come in its perfect form. Although Richardson had written Pamella, yet it was in epitolary form. The perfect narrative form of the novel came from the pen of Henry Fielding. Tom Jones is an example of Fielding's narrative skill as a novelist.)

SECTION – B
Answer all the questions Each question carries 5 marks. Maximum length of each essay should be two pages.

1. Discuss the essential features of Lamb's prose style.

You may make use of the following notes and adapt.

{The position of Lamb among these romantic essayists is the most eminent. In fact, he has often been called the prince of all the essayists England has so far produced. Hugh Walker calls him the essayist par excellence who should be taken as a model. It is from the essays of Lamb that we often derive our very definition of the essay, and it is with reference to his essays as a criterion of excellence that we evaluate the achievement and merit of a given essayist. Familiarity with Lamb as a man enhances for a reader the charm of his essays. And he is certainly the most charming of all English essay. We may not find in him the massive genius of Bacon, or the ethereal flights (O altitude) of Thomas Browne, or the brilliant lucidity of Addison, or the ponderous energy of Dr. Johnson, but none excels him in the ability to charm the reader or to catch him in the plexus of his own personality.

His Self-revelation:

What strikes one particularly about Lamb as an essayist is his persistent readiness to reveal his everything to the reader. The evolution of the essay from Bacon to Lamb lies primarily in its shift from

(i) objectivity to subjectivity, and

(ii) from formality to familiarity.

Of all the essayists it is perhaps Lamb who is the most autobiographic. His own life is for him "such stuff as essays are made on." He could easily say what Montaigne had said before him-"I myself am the subject of my book." The change from objectivity to subjectivity in the English essay was, by and large, initiated by Abraham Cowley who wrote such essays as the one entitled. "Of Myself." Lamb with other romantic essayists completed this change. "Night Fears" shows us Lamb as a timid, superstitious boy. "Christ's Hospital" reveals his unpalatable experiences as a schoolboy.

The Note of Familiarity:

Lamb's contribution to the English essay also lies in his changing the general tone from formality to familiarity. This change was to be accepted by all the essayists to follow. "Never", says Compton-Rickett, "was any man more intimate in print than he. He has made of chatter a fine art." Lamb disarms the reader at once with his buttonholding familiarity. He plays with him in a puckish manner, no doubt, but he is always ready to take him into confidence and to exchange heart-beats with him.

No Didacticism:

He is a friend, and not a teacher. Lamb shed once and for all the didactic approach which characterises the work of most essayists before him. Bacon called his essays "counsels civil and moral." His didacticism is too palpable to need a comment.

The Rambling Nature of His Essays and His Lightness of Touch:

The rambling nature of his essays and his lightness of touch are some other distinguishing features of Lamb as an essayist. He never bothers about keeping to the point. Too often do we find him flying off at a tangent and ending at a point which we could never have foreseen. Every road with him seems to lead to the world's end. We often reproach Bacon for the "dispersed" nature of his "meditations", but Lamb beats everybody in his monstrous discursiveness. To consider some examples, first take up his essay "The Old and the New School-master." In this essay which apparently is written for comparing the old and new schoolmaster, the first two pages or thereabouts contain a very humorous and exaggerated description of the author's own ignorance. Lamb himself described his essays as "a sort of unlicked incondite things." However, what these essays lose in artistic design they gain in the touch of spontaneity. This is what lends them what is called "the lyrical quality."

Lamb's Humour, Pathos, and Humanity:

Lamb's humour, humanity, and the sense of pathos are all his own; and it is mainly these qualities which differentiate his essays from those of his contemporaries. His essays are rich alike in wit, humour, and fun. Hallward and Hill observe in the Introduction to their edition of the Essavs of Elia : "The terms Wit. Humour and Fun are often confused but they are really different in meaning. The first is based on intellect, the second on insight and sympathy, the third on vigour and freshness of mind and body. Lamb's writings show all the three qualities, but what most distinguishes him is Humour, for his sympathy is ever strong and active." Humour in Lamb's essays constitutes very like an atmosphere "with linked sweetness long drawn out."

Style:

A word, lastly, about Lamb's peculiar style which is all his own and yet not his, as he is a tremendous borrower. He was extremely influenced by some "old-world" writers like Fuller and Sir Thomas Browne. It is natural, then, that his style is archaic. His sentences are long and rambling, after the seventeenth-century fashion. He uses words many of which are obsolescent, if not obsolete. His inspiration from old writers gives his style a romantic colouring which is certainly intensified by his vigorous imagination. Very like Wordsworth he throws a fanciful veil on the common objects of life and converts them into interesting and "romantic" shapes. His peculiar style is thus an asset in the process of "romanticising" everyday affairs and objects which otherwise would strike one with a strong feeling of ennui. He is certainly a romantic essayist. What is more, he is a poet.}

2. Attempt a critical analysis of Keat's 'Ode to a Nightingale'.

Critical Analysis of "Ode to a Nightingale" by John Keats

John Keats poems “Ode to a Nightingale” and “Ode on a Grecian Urn” exist for the purpose of describing a moment in life, such as a brief song of a nightingale and scene depicted on an urn; within each moment there exists a multitude of emotions, and changing from one to another indefinably. Keats’ “Ode on a Grecian Urn” deals with the perplexing and indefinable relationship between life and art. Paradoxically, it is the life of the urn that would normally associate with stillness, melancholy and bereavement that is shown to be representative of life. In “Ode to a Nightingale” a visionary happiness is communing with the nightingale as its song is contrasted with the dead weight of human grief and sicknesses, and the transience of youth and beauty. The odes are similar in many ways as in both Keats depicts the symbols of immortality and escapism, and grief to joy. However, the symbol of nightingale is a reality dealing with the nature and the urn is a fantasy, a piece of art. Both require different senses for admiring. By comparing the elements of poems, it is evident that all aspects relate directly to the human spirit and emotions.

The nightingale and urn are symbols of immortality, a symbol of continuity of nature and art respectively. In the “Ode to a Nightingale” Keats contrasts the birds’ immortality with the mortality of human beings as he states “Here where men sit and hear each other groan, where Palsy shakes a few, sad, last gray hairs, where youth grows pale, and specter-thin, and dies,”(III, 25) but the nightingale, entertaining generations after generations has become an immortal species, so much so that the sound that poet has heard was heard in ancient days by emperor and clown, by Ruth (a virtuous Moabite widow who according to Old Testament Book of Ruth, left her own country to accompany her mother-in-law Naomi, back to Naomi’s native land), where she was amidst the corn, remembering her home town; and also by fairies. The urn in the “Ode on a Grecian Urn” is a large sculpted vessel with Greek figures is an “unravished bride”(I, 1), an immortal perfect object unmarked by the passage of time. As a “Sylvan historian”(I, 3), it provides a record of a distant culture. Although, the urn exists in the real world, which is mutable or subject to changes, yet the life it’s depicting is unchanging.

Next, the poet has beautifully fused pain with imaginary relief or the unconscious joyous things of nature and art. To escape from pain of reality, he begins to move into the world of imagination. When he hears the nightingale, he yearns for fine wine from south France, not to get drunk but to achieve a state of mind, which will give him the pleasure of the company of the beautiful nightingale, “that I might drink, and leave the world unseen, And with thee fade away into the forest dim:”(II, 19-20) However, the poet realizes that he does not require wine for being with the bird, so chooses the route of flying to her through his poetry. “ Away! Away! for I will fly to thee, Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards, But on the viewless wings of Poesy…………..And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne, Cluster’d around by all her starry Fays”(IV, 36,37). In “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” the poet experiences the life depicted on the urn and ambiguously comments that the urn “dost tease us out of thought/As doth eternity”(V, 45). By teasing him “out of thought” (V stanza) urn draws him from the real world to an ideal, fantasy world. In lines “What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape? What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?,”(I, 5,6,7,8) poet is caught up in excitement, activities and from a keen observer becomes a participant in the life on the urn. He gets emotionally involved in the apparent activities going on including the religious sacrifice of the cow, “Who are these coming to the sacrifice? To what green altar, O mysterious priest, Lead’st thou heifer lowing at the skies, And all her silken flanks with garlands drest?”(IV, 31,32,33,34) Thus, in both the odes, Keats tried to free himself from the painful world by identifying with the nightingale, representing nature, or the urn, representing art.

The inner pain and grief engulfing the poet is revealed in a very subtle manner in both the odes of discussion. Even when the speaker is in the imaginative world with the nightingale, he is thinking of death in “embalmed darkness.” Gradually the feeling of being embalmed becomes a wish for death. He also realizes that death means he could no longer hear the bird song and will be non-existent. Suddenly the beautiful bird song seems to him more like “requiem”(VI, 60), a song of death. As the reality is painful, poet realizes that, “fancy”(VIII, 73), has cheated him. The bird is not a symbol anymore but an actual bird that poet had heard in the beginning. The nightingale flies away and its song seems a “plaintive anthem”(VIII, 75), very faint. Its voice is “buried deep”(VIII, 77) refers to its physical distance. As the music goes from his life, the poet wonders whether his end is close. In “Ode on a Grecian Urn” the poet realizes as the figures are frozen, they will never change. Keats emphasizes the feeling of permanence by repeating the words “never, never.”(II, 17) The repetition implies that man will never be able to kiss the maiden because his position will never change, and the space between both of them will never decrease. Poet also realizes when he is no more in this world, the urn would still be there and it will say, “Beauty is Truth and truth beauty…. (V, 49).

In the “Ode to Nightingale” and “Ode on a Grecian Urn” the symbols contrast. The nightingale is a living creature and a part of nature. In contrast the urn is stationary and a manmade object. Although both symbols signify immortality, and continuity, the symbols contrast in that the nightingale is reality, and the life on the urn is a fantasy with the portrayal of frozen images depicting dynamic life. Both symbols require different senses for admiring. The sense of hearing allows Keats to hear the nightingale’s enchanting music. By listening to the nightingale Keats other senses are mesmerized. In contrast Keats sense of sight allows him to become captivated with the urn. By observing the urn, Keats other senses are awakened.

John Keats presented in his poetry many issues, such as nature, existence and the soul. All of these aspects relate directly to the human spirit. The spiritual nature of Keats poetry concerns itself with exploring human emotions and understanding nature. He wrote the “Ode to a Nightingale” and the “Ode on a Grecian Urn” at a difficult time in his life. As a result there are many similarities and few differences. Together both the similarities and differences, illustrate the human spirit, and a multitude of emotions.

3. 'The poem 'Tintern Abbey' reveals Wordsworth's change from young passion for Nature to a haunting comprehension of the lovely universe'. Justify the statement.

In “Tintern Abbey” the claims of poetry and philosophy have been harmonized. Wordsworth believes that nature is not only a source of joy but also a deep moral influence and shapes human character. Reflecting on the spiritual bond between man and nature, he says that he is

.....well pleased to recognize

In nature and the language of the sense

The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse,

The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul

Of all my moral being.

As he told his sister Dorothy, “Nature never betrays the heart that loved her” and she is the greatest teacher. The structure of “Tintern Abbey” is three fold: The first stage is the description of the scene (lines 1-22) which shows that Wordsworth’s attitude to nature is marked by a simple delight in freedom and in the midst of nature “glad animal movements” which gave him “a coarse pleasure.” The second stage is development of the poet’s view of Nature (lines 23-113), when nature appealed chiefly to his senses and the colours and shapes of nature haunted him like a passion. The third stage is in which he addresses to his sister Dorothy (lines114 –159) having heard “the still, sad music of humanity” in Nature. The poem becomes autobiographical being a poem of self-discourse. In other words, the poem is important biographically because it is the poet’s own testimony to the change in his feelings and outlook about that landscape which he revisited after five years. In this context F.W.Bateson observes: “In terms of Wordsworth’s mental evolution the importance of ‘Tintern Abbey” is that it records his discovery that ‘the mighty world of eye and ear’ is half created in the process of perception. The discovery had implications that have not always been realized.”

4. Briefly examine the chief features of the epic form.

{The epic or heroic poem is a long narrative poem on a serious subject, centred around the actions of an heroic figure on whose actions depend the fate of a nation or race. The traditional epic poems were shaped from the legends of the Greek heroic age, when the Mykenaean Greeks or Akhaeans were on the move and engaged in military conquest and expansion during the Trojan War.

The hero is a figure of great national or international importance.

The setting is large in scale, sometimes world-wide, or at least of the known world.

The actions involves heroic deeds in battle or a long and arduous journey intrepidly accomplished.

In these great actions, the immortals and other supernatural beings themselves take an interest and active part.

An epic poem is a ceremonial performance.

The poet begins by stating his theme, then invokes the Muses to help him with his undertaking.

The narration usually begins in the middle point of the action and at a crucial point; the events that happened before the narrative opening are introduced later on.

There are catalogues of some of the main characters, introduced to the reader in formal detail.

Epic poems were initially performed as oral traditions, by wandering professional bards, and this has an impact upon the narrative of the poem.}

5. What are the advantages of studies as enunciated by Bacon in his essay 'Of Studies'?

{Bacon through a syllogistic tripartite statement begins his argument to validate the usefulness and advantage of study in our life. Bacon has the power of compressing into a few words a great body of thought. Thus he puts forward the three basic purposes of studies: “Studies serve for delight, for ornament, and for ability”. He later expands his sentence to bring lucidity and clearness. Studies fill us delight and aesthetic pleasure when we remain private and solitary. While we discourse, our studies add decoration to our speech. Further, the men of study can decide best on the right lines in business and politics. Bacon deprecates too much studies and the scholar’s habit to make his judgment from his reading instead of using his independent views.

Bacon is a consummate artist of Renaissance spirit. Thus he knows the expanse of knowledge and utility of studies. He advocates a scientific enquiry of studies. Through an exquisite metaphor drawn from Botany he compares human mind to a growing plant. As the growing plants need to be pruned and watered and manured for optimum development, the new growing conscience of us are to be tutored, mounded, oriented and devised by studies. But it is experience which ultimately matures our perception and leads us to perfection:

“They perfect nature, and are perfected by experience:  for natural abilities are like natural plants that need proyning by study”.

Next Bacon considers what persons despise studies and what people praise them and what people make practical use of them. The crafty men condemn studies; simple men admire them while the wise men make ultimate use of it. But it should be remembered that the inquisitive mind and keen observation cultivate the real wisdom. Bacon advises his readers to apply studies to ‘weigh and consider’ rather than useless contradictions and grandiloquence.}