LOYOLA COLLEGE (AUTONOMOUS), CHENNAI – 600 034

M.A. DEGREE EXAMINATION – ENGLISH LITERATURE

LO 29

SECOND SEMESTER – APRIL 2006

                                                           EL 2805 – LITERARY THEORY

 

 

Date & Time : 24-04-2006/9.00-12.00         Dept. No.                                                       Max. : 100 Marks

 

 

PART – A

 

1. Write short notes on FIVE of the following Key Terms/Concepts choosing not less than two from each section: (5×8=40 marks)

 

Section – 1

 

1. Defamiliarization in Art
2. Paradox in Poetry
3. Writing is without Origin
4. The Metaphysics of Presence

 

Section – 2

 

5. A day-dream or fantasy representing a wish-fulfillment.
6. Reader-Oriented criticism.
7. Different Types of Readers
8. Tragic and Comic visions in Frye.

 

PART – B

 

1. Answer the following questions in about 300 words each: (2 x 20 = 40 marks)

 

9. a) Structuralism opens the study of Literature to new light according to

Genette.  Substantiate this argument with a detailed examination of the

essay “ Structuralism and Literary Criticism”.

 

(Or)

 

1. b) Discuss the merits and demerits of New Histroricist Literary Criticism.

 

10. a) Compare and contrast New Criticism and Myth criticism.

 

(Or)

 

1. b) Wolfgang Iser’s essay :  The Reading process analyses the various types

of readers and the reading process – Discuss.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

PART – C

 

• Attempt a practical criticism of the following poem employing the critical theories and tools at your disposal: (20 marks)

 

To a Visitor to Singapore

 

You come to my country loaded with your Riches

We offer you a convenient stop

Allow you to tempt us, lure our pretty girls

Corrupt our innocence

Because we need your money to survive.

 

Back home you describe our clean and efficient city

But our politics you despise

Say our way of life is stifling, oppressive

Yet again and again you return

Thriving on our survival’s need

 

I often wonder what comfort you derive

From this amazing compromise.

 

Kirpal Singh

 

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LO 45

LOYOLA COLLEGE (AUTONOMOUS), CHENNAI – 600 034

M.A. DEGREE EXAMINATION – ENGLISH LITERATURE

SECOND SEMESTER – APRIL 2007

EL 2805 – LITERARY THEORY

 

 

 

Date & Time : 21-04-07/1:00-4:00      Dept. No.                                                                        Max. 100 Marks

 

 

PART – A

Attempt a brief explication of FIVE of the following terms choosing not less than two from each Section:

( 5 x 8 = 40 )

SECTION – 1

1. Russian Formalist distinction between ‘poetic’ and ‘practical’ language.
2. Paradox as the language of poetry.
3. The Rupture of Structure.
4. Text and Co-texts in New Historicism.

 

SECTION – 2

1. Bring out the features of New Criticism.
2. Write a paragraph on Marxist Criticism based on the features of classical Marxist Philosophy.
3. Bring out the relationship between Myth and Archetype.
4. Write briefly on the features Psycho-analytic criticism.

 

PART – B

 

Answer the following questions in about 300 words each:                       (2 x 20 = 40 )

 

1. a)  Discuss Viktor Shlovsky and the Russian Formalists as proponents of a formalist approach to      literature.

(Or)

 

1. b) How does Brooks demonstrate the methodology of “Close Reading” in his essay on Paradox and

the  language of poetry?

 

10.a)  The Reading Process by Wolfgang Iser analyses the various types of readers – Discuss.

 

(Or)

 

1. Summarise Freud’s concept of Psycho-analysis in Creative Writers and Day-Dreaming.

 

 

 

 

…..2/-

 

 

 

 

PART – C

 

Analyse the following poem from any literary theoretical framework  of your choice:        (20 Marks)

 

EXILE

 

My air is striped

My shade is barred

(As it was before

only here the bars

Do not bend with the wind).

 

My breath is short

My Claws are blunt

(with long pacing on stone ground)

All day I smell

Zebra…. gazelle

But I am full of easy meat.

I have no appetite

 

Only at dusk

When the monkeys mock

From stone trees

(And the scent they no longer fear)

Come down to the mudless hole to drink –

 

Only at dusk I dare to dream

Eyes half-closed, bending the bars

And plotting my return.

 

—Alan Duff

 

 

 

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LOYOLA COLLEGE (AUTONOMOUS), CHENNAI – 600 034

DM 30

M.A. DEGREE EXAMINATION – ENGLISH LITERATURE

SECOND SEMESTER – APRIL 2008

    EL 2805 – LITERARY THEORY

 

 

 

Date : 24/04/2008            Dept. No.                                        Max. : 100 Marks

Time : 1:00 – 4:00

PART – A

 

Write short notes on FIVE of the following choosing atleast TWO questions from either section:

(5 x 8 = 40 marks)

                                                                  SECTION – I

 

1. Automatism of perception and Art
2. Metaphysics of presence
3. Metaliterature
4. Equal Weighting in New Historicism.

 

SECTION – II

 

1. Bring out the features of psychoanalytic criticism.
2. Write a paragraph on the role of meaning in New criticism.
3. Write a short note on the role of Archetype and myth in literature.
4. Write briefly on the features of Phenomenonology.

 

PART – B

                                                                                                                              (2×20=40 marks)

Attempt an answer for any TWO of the following in about 300 words each:

 

1. a) Identify the typical features of a New Historicist text in Greenblatt’s Shakespeare and

the Exorcists.

(or)

1. b) How does the ‘death of the author’ result in ‘the birth of the reader’?

 

1. a) Analyse the concept of psychoanalytic criticism in Freud’s creative writers and Day-

Dreaming.

(or)

1. b) Northrop Frye’s Archetypes of Literature is an extrinsic Approach to Literature –

Discuss.

PART – C

 

1. Attempt a critical analysis of the following poem employing the critical theories you are familiar with.                                                                                                      (20 marks)

The Painter Munch

 

The painter caught the dumb mouth,

Fixed wide, in a man out walking

Down a road.  One moment past,

Pleasantly, he was musing,

With the sun shining south

Behind him.  Air and will

Were drawn together

In blue and green paste

When the painted mouth is stilled.

Afflicted by knottier

Pigment, the eye, off-guard,

Suffers and goes mad,

In rigor mortis.

Shirley Lim.

 

 

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    LOYOLA COLLEGE (AUTONOMOUS), CHENNAI – 600 034

M.A. DEGREE EXAMINATION – ENGLISH LITERATURE

NM 35

SECOND SEMESTER – April 2009

EL 2805 – LITERARY THEORY

 

 

 

Date & Time: 24/04/2009 / 1:00 – 4:00  Dept. No.                                                     Max. : 100 Marks

 

 

                                                  PART –A

Explicate FIVE of the following concepts/terms briefly choosing not less than two from each section:                                                                                   (5×8=40 marks)

Section-1

1. Translinguistics
2. Onto-theological activity
3. Recovery of the Referent
4. Ostranenie

Section-2

 

5. Write a paragraph on the role of ‘Meaning’ in New Criticism.
6. Bring out the features of New Criticism.
7. Different types of Readers.
8. What according to Freud are the two kinds of ‘wishes’?

 

                                                  PART-B

Answer the following in about 300 words each                  (2×20=40 marks)

 

9.a) Do you agree with the view that Derridean deconstruction is a negatively-oriented

philosophical programme? Substantiate your answer with textual evidence.

Or

1. b) Critique Barthes’ essay The Death of the Author as a subversion of the traditional

humanist position.

10.a) Northrop Frye’s ARCHETYPES OF LITERATURE is an extrinsic approach to

Literature. Discuss.

Or

1. b) Analyse the concept of psychoanalytic criticism with reference to CREATIVE

WRITERS AND DAY DREAMING.

 

                                                 PART-C

Using the Critical tools at your disposal explicate the following poem: (20 marks)

A LETTER

This is my letter to the World

That never wrote to Me—

The simple News that Nature told—-

With tender Majesty

 

Her Message is committed

To Hands I cannot see—

For love of Her—Sweet—countrymen—-

Judge tenderly—of Me.

EMILY DICKINSON

 

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