English Literature

• The syllabus consists of two papers, designed to test a first-hand and critical reading of texts prescribed from the following periods in English Literature : Paper 1 : 1600-1900 and Paper 2 : 1900–1990.
• There will be two compulsory questions in each paper : (a) A short-notes question related to the topics for general study, and (b) A critical analysis of UNSEEN passages both in prose and verse.
• Texts for detailed study are listed below.
• Candidates will also be required to show adequate knowledge of the following topics and movements :
• The Renaissance
• Elizabethan and Jacobean 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

• William Shakespeare : King Lear and The Tempest.
• John Donne. The following poems
  • Canonization
  • Death be not proud
  • The Good Morrow
  • On his Mistress going to bed
  • The Relic
• John Milton : Paradise Lost, I, II, IV, IX.
• Alexander Pope.
• The Rape of the Lock.
• William Wordsworth. The following poems
  • 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.
• Alfred Tennyson : In Memoriam.
• Henrik Ibsen : A Doll’s House.

Section B

• Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels.
• Jane Austen.
• Pride and Prejudice.
• Henry Fielding.
• Tom Jones.
• Charles Dickens.
• Hard Times.
• George Eliot.
• The Mill on the Floss.
• Thomas Hardy.
• Tess of the d’Urbervilles.
• Mark Twain.
• The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

• Texts for detailed study are listed below.
• Candidates will also be required to show adequate knowledge of the following topics and movements :
• Modernism
• Poets of the Thirties
• The stream-of-consciousness Novel
• Absurd Drama
• Colonialism and Post-Colonialism
• Indian Writing in English
• Marxist, Psychoanalytical and Feminist approaches to literature
• Post-Modernism.

Section A

• William Butler Yeats. The following poems
  • 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.
• T.S. Eliot. The following poems
  • The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.
  • Journey of the Magi.
  • Burnt Norton.
• 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
• John Osborne : Look Back in Anger.
• Samuel Beckett.
• Waiting for Godot.
• Philip Larkin. The following poems
  • Next
  • Please
  • Deceptions
  • Afternoons
  • Days
  • Mr. Bleaney
• A.K. Ramanujan. The following poems
  • Looking for a Cousin 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 anthology Ten Twentieth Century Indian Poets, edited by R. Parthasarthy, published by Oxford University Press, New Delhi).

Section B

• Joseph Conrad.
• Lord Jim.
• James Joyce.
• Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.
• D.H. Lawrence.
• Sons and Lovers.
• E.M. Forster.
• A Passage to India.
• Virginia Woolf.
• Mrs.
• Dalloway.
• Raja Rao.
• Kanthapura.
• V.S. Naipaul.
• A House for Mr. Biswas.