Entrance Examination for Admission to the M.Phil Courses, 2019
English Language and Literature
Time: 3 Hours Max. Marks: 100
Part — B
II. Fill in the blanks or choose the correct answer from the choices given
1. The linguist who rejected the behaviorist approach of BF Skinner through his critical review …………………
Answer: Noam Chomsky
At the core of Chomsky‘s approach to linguistics is the thesis that certain aspects of language use and acquisition must be innate to the human mind, and not the product of individual learning. Chomsky reacted against the empiricist approaches that were dominant in linguistics in the 1950s. Behaviourists argued that stimulus—response models could explain how language was acquired. Chomsky (1964) replies by observing that such accounts of language learning cannot take account of the potentially infinite number of utterances that the language user will create and encounter (so that competent language users must be able to understand sentences that they have never before encountered). Further, empirical accounts of language acquisition do not adequately account for the uniformity of individuals’ knowledge and use of language.
Read More https://literariness.org/2017/05/14/noam-chomskys-approach-to-linguistics/
2. The teaching method Suggeslopedia is a portmanteau of the words ………………… and …………………
Answer: “suggestion” and “pedagogy”
Suggestopedia is a language teaching method originated in the 1970s by Bulgarian psychologist Georgi Lozanov. The name combines the terms “suggestion” and “pedagogy”, the main idea being that accelerated learning can take place when accompanied by de-suggestion of psychological barriers and positive suggestion.
3. The feminist critic who says that it is impossible to reconstruct Ophelia’s biography from the text.
Answer: Lee R. Edwards
Shakespeare gives us very little information from which to imagine a past for Ophelia. She appears in only five of the play’s 20 scenes, and her tragedy is subordinated to that of Hamlet. It is impossible to reconstruct Ophelia’s biography from the text. According to Lee Edwards, ‘we can imagine Hamlet’s story without Ophelia, but Ophelia literally has no story without Hamlet.’
Lee Edwards, ‘The Labors of Psyche’, Critical Inquiry, 6 (1979), 36.
4. ………………… viewed culture a “productive process”
Answer: Raymond Williams
Williams viewed culture as a “productive process,” that is, part of the means of production, and cultural materialism often identifies what he called “residual,” “emergent” and “oppositional” cultural elements.
Read More https://literariness.org/2017/06/14/key-theories-of-raymond-williams/
https://literariness.org/2016/04/13/raymond-williams-as-a-marxist-literary-theorist/
5. ………………… and ………………… are two endogamous jatis in Kerala.
Answer: Potuvāḷ and the Vāriyar
Source: The Making and Proliferation of Jati: A Historical Inquiry by Rajan Gurukkal
PDF of the Article
6. ………………… is an American Anthropologist who has done extensive research on Mudiyettu, the ritualistic performance.
Answer: Marlene Pitkow
Cultural Anthropologist Gilles Tarabout also has done extensive research on the ritualistic performance in Kerala. But he is French.
7. ………………… feminist text that begins with the chapter, “The Problem that has no Name”.
Answer: The Feminine Mystique
Betty Friedan’s 1963 classic is credited with sparking the beginning of second-wave feminism in the United States. The Feminine Mystique begins with an introduction describing what Friedan called “the problem that has no name”—the widespread unhappiness of women in the 1950s and early 1960s. It discusses the lives of several housewives from around the United States who were unhappy despite living in material comfort and being married with children.
8. ………………… is the complete title of the book Vindication of the Rights of Women.
Answer: A Vindication of the Rights of Woman: with Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects
Influenced by European Enlightenment, Mary Wollstonecraft’s seminal work, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792) questioned the socialising process in the subordination of women. Being one of the pioneers who radically deviated from the concept of femininity as natural/biological to the view of femininity as social, Wollstonecraft observed that the social norms, values, law and cultural practices demanded, imposed and recommended particular forms of behaviour from women; and not conforming to these norms resulted in their being treated as witches or monsters.
Read More https://literariness.org/tag/mary-wollstonecraft/
https://literariness.org/2016/05/04/mary-wollstonecrafts-contribution-to-feminism/
9. “Man is a brute. If you’re cruel to him, he respects and fears you. If you’re kind to him, he plucks your eyes out.” This line appears in the novel …………………
Answer: Zorba the Greek
What is surprising is that Kazantzakis’s most famous novel, Zorba the Greek, represents an apparent reversal of the author’s position that people must abandon pleasures of the flesh to achieve spiritual self-fulfillment. In this novel, the reader is forced to recognize the attractiveness of the hero Alexis Zorba, whose whole life is devoted to sensual gratification. Zorba is anti-intellectual and antireligious, having thrown off the shackles of paralyzing intellectualism that have bound the narrator, the Boss, within himself and caused him to be ineffectual in dealing with others except as “intelligences.” The Boss is the consummate ascetic, a follower of Buddha who renounces the pleasures of the flesh because he believes that closeness to others only leads to pain. Zorba, on the other hand, is the epitome of Bergsonian élan vital. The Boss withdraws from commitment; Zorba seeks it.
https://literariness.org/2019/04/12/analysis-of-nikos-kazantzakiss-novels/
10. J. D Scott, who coined The Movement was the literary editor of …………………
Answer: The Spectator
The Movement was a term coined in 1954 by J.D. Scott, literary editor of The Spectator, to describe a group of writers including Philip Larkin, Kingsley Amis, Donald Davie, D.J. Enright, John Wain, Elizabeth Jennings, Thom Gunn, and Robert Conquest. The Movement was essentially English in character, as poets from other parts of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland were not actively involved.
11. Clifford Geertz developed the concept of ………………… in his book The Interpretation of Cultures
Answer: Thick Description
Clifford Geertz’s (1926- 2006) work defined the field of interpretive social science, and he is regarded as one of the most influential and widely cited American cultural anthropologists of the second half of the twentieth century. He has championed interpretative approaches to the study of cultures. His central, and surprisingly bold, claim is that anthropology concerns the description of the activities and events of small social groups. Yet description cannot be of mere physical behaviour. That, following the philosopher Gilbert Ryle, he terms ‘thin description’. Anthropology requires ‘thick description’, which is to say, the anthropologist strives to express his or her understanding of cultural activity as something meaningful (Geertz 1973, p. 6). He illustrates this distinction with the difference between a wink and a twitch. Physically the two may be identical (so that they would be indistinguishable in a photograph). Yet the wink is a meaningful and public act of communication. It is a ‘construable sign’ (which does entail that it can be misconstrued, and indeed, twitches can embarrassingly be mistaken for winks and vice versa). Geertz therefore defines ‘culture’ as ‘a context…within which [social events, behaviours, institutions, or processes] can be intelligibly… described’ (1973,p. 14); which is to say that a culture allows flecks of physical behaviour, such as the movements of an eyelid, to be turned into significant acts of communication.
Read More https://literariness.org/2017/06/15/cultural-anthropology-of-clifford-geertz/
12. In 1985 ………………… coined the term postfeminism.
Answer: Toril Moi
Toril Moi originally coined the term in 1985 in Sexual/Textual Politics to advocate a feminism that would deconstruct the binary between equality based on “liberal” feminism and difference-based or “radical” feminism.
Read More https://literariness.org/2017/10/25/post-feminism-an-essay/
13 ………………… is the undelivered speech written by Dr. B R Ambedkar on caste system in India.
Answer: Annihilation of Caste
Annihilation of Caste is an undelivered speech written in 1936 by B. R. Ambedkar who fought against the country’s practice of untouchability.
14 The evolving genre Geografictione is introduced by …………………
Answer: Aritha van Herk
Van Herk has published a number of works blending fiction and criticism, often set in the Canadian west and the far north. In 1990, she initiated a new genre she called geografictione, with Places Far From Ellesmere. As a travel narrative that analyzes the concepts of both travel and narrative, Places Far From Ellesmere questions the journeys that take place within fiction itself, including Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina.
15. The 1985 period drama film directed by Steven Spielberg is …………………
Answer: The Color Purple
1985 American period drama film directed by Steven Spielberg, based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same name by Alice Walker.
Read More https://literariness.org/2018/06/27/analysis-of-alice-walkers-novels/
16. According to Walter Benjamin ………………… and ………………… in translation have traditionally been regarded as conflicting tendencies.
Answer: Fidelity and freedom
“Fidelity and freedom in translation have traditionally been regarded as conflicting tendencies. This deeper interpretation of the one apparently does not serve to reconcile the two; in fact, it seems to deny the other all justification. For what is meant by freedom but that the rendering of the sense is no longer to be regarded as all-important? Only if the sense of a linguistic creation may be equated with the information it conveys does some ultimate, decisive element remain beyond all communication – quite close and yet infinitely remote, concealed or distinguishable, fragmented or powerful.”
Read More
http://www.ricorso.net/rx/library/criticism/guest/Benjamin_W/Benjamin_W1.htm
https://literariness.org/2017/02/19/key-theories-of-walter-benjamin/
17. This Fissured Land: An Ecological History of India is written by ………………… and …………………
Answer: Madhav Gadgil and Ramachandra Guha
This Fissured Land: An Ecological History of India first published in 1992, examines ‘prudent’ (sustainable) and ‘profligate’ (unsustainable) use of natural resources, and their effects. It describes the ecological history of India, from the first humans, through the ages of hunter-gatherers, farmers, empires and the British Raj.
18. The novel ………………… was named after the flag of the West African state of Biafra.
Answer: Half of a Yellow Sun
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, who tells the story of the failed struggle for Biafran independence from Nigeria in Half of a Yellow Sun (2006). Called “the twenty-first century daughter of Chinua Achebe,” Adichie presents a picture of a Nigeria that has accepted the colonists’ notions of class and bureaucracy while retaining ancient tribal practices and prejudices. By focusing on a few main characters— the sisters Olanna and Kainene, their lovers Odenigbo and Richard, and a houseboy—she provides both brutal detail of violence, hatred, and greed and a compassionate and ennobling view of struggle. Half of a Yellow Sun, like much of the literature from this period, is a realistic novel based on recent history, not on oral culture, but it depicts urban, Westernized characters with lingering ties to rural, traditional ways. The voice of this novel is clearly a woman’s voice—unusual for a novel about war—a trend that flourished throughout African literature in the post-independence period.
Read More https://literariness.org/2019/03/10/african-novels-and-novelists/
19. ………………… is the model of communication in the Television discourse developed by Stuart Hall.
Answer: Encoding/decoding
Stuart Hall’s Encoding / Decoding Theory suggests that audience derive their own meaning from media texts. These meanings can be dominant, negotiated or oppositional.
The Encoding / Decoding Theory is a theory of communication which suggests audiences actively read media texts and don’t just accept them passively. They interpret the media text according to their own cultural background and experiences. Hall suggested that media texts are read in three main ways. A dominant or preferred reading of the text is the way that its creators want an audience to understand and respond to it. An oppositional reading of the text is when an audience completely rejects the message. A negotiated reading is when the audience interprets the text in their own unique way, which might not be the way its producer intended.
20. Name the Bloomfield text where he presented American structural linguistics.
Answer: Language (1933)
Structural linguistics in Europe was partly concerned with meaning and interpretation but in N. America Franz Boas and Leonard Bloomfield took a more descriptive/ positivist stance. They also reversed Saussure’s emphasis on the creative aspect of everyday language. American linguistics began as an offshoot of anthropology and was motivated by the urgency of studying and preserving the American Indian languages which were fast dying out.
21. ………………… is the essay that has explained the concept of to-be-looked-at-ness.
Answer: Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema
Mulvey’s essay Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema (1975) has had a major impact on the course of film scholarship. Mulvey’s interests are broad, ranging from contemporary art to the introduction of sound in cinema, from Douglas Sirk to Abbas Kiarostami.
Read More https://literariness.org/2017/04/13/laura-mulvey-male-gaze-and-the-feminist-film-theory/
22. The symbol ^ signifies …………………
Answer: Editing
The symbol ^ (caret) is used when editing a text, to show where something should be inserted.
23. In a page when it is marked as, no ¶, it means …………………
Answer: No individual paragraphs (?)
24. The death of Bhuvaneswari Bhaduri is mentioned in the essay …………………
Answer: Can the Subaltern Speak
Read More https://literariness.org/2017/04/07/key-theories-of-gayatri-spivak/
25. The term Negritude was first used in its present sense by …………………
Answer: Aimé Césaire
Négritude is a framework of critique and literary theory, developed mainly by francophone intellectuals, writers, and politicians of the African diaspora during the 1930s, aimed at raising and cultivating “Black consciousness” across Africa and its diaspora. The term was first used in its present sense by Aimé Césaire, in the third issue of L’Étudiant noir, a magazine that he had started in Paris with fellow students Léopold Senghor and Léon Damas, as well as Gilbert Gratiant, Leonard Sainville, Louis T. Achille, Aristide Maugée, and Paulette Nardal.
26. Identify the symbolic anthropologist.
(a) Stephen Greenblatt
(b) Jurgen Habermas
(c) Clifford Geertz
(d) Dipesh Chakrabarty.
Answer: (c) Clifford Geertz
Symbolic anthropology or, more broadly, symbolic and interpretive anthropology, is the study of cultural symbols and how those symbols can be used to gain a better understanding of a particular society.
Prominent symbolic anthropologists include Clifford Geertz, David Schneider, Victor Turner and Mary Douglas
Read More https://literariness.org/2017/06/15/cultural-anthropology-of-clifford-geertz/
27. The nonfiction book written by Amitav Ghosh on Climate change is …………………
28. Metafictional works are noted for their ………………… headed perspective
29. Billy Pilgrim in Slaughter House-Five becoming unstuck in time is an example of …………………
Answer: Nonlinear narrative/disjointed narrative/disrupted narrative
Read More https://literariness.org/2018/07/03/analysis-of-kurt-vonneguts-novels/
30. Roland Barthes divides the effects of texts into ………………… and …………………
Answer: plaisir (“pleasure”) and jouissance (“bliss”/”orgasm”)
Read More https://literariness.org/2018/03/20/key-theories-of-roland-barthes/
https://literariness.org/tag/roland-barthes/
31. L’ecriture feminine is coined in the work …………………
Answer: The Laugh of the Medusa
L’ecriture feminine refers to a uniquely feminine style of writing characterised by disruptions in the text, such as gaps, silences, puns, new images and so on. It is eccentric, incomprehensible and inconsistent, and the difficulty to understand it is attributed to centuries of suppression of the female voice, which now speaks in a borrowed language. Believed to originate from the mother in the stage of the mother-child relation before the child acquires the male-centred verbal language, this pre-linguistic and unconscious potentiality manifests itself in those literary texts which, abolishing all repressions, undermine and subvert all significations, the logic and the closure of the phallocentric language, and opens into a joyous freeplay of meanings.
Read More https://literariness.org/2016/05/14/ecriture-feminine/
32. American author who was previously known as LeRoi Jones …………………
Answer: Amiri Baraka
https://literariness.org/2019/05/12/analysis-of-amiri-barakas-plays/
33. Pulitzer Prize winning author who was suffering from bipolar disorder …………………
Both Ernest Hemingway and Anne Sexton were diagnosed with bipolar disorder.
34. ………………… suggests an inherent contradiction found in any text.
Answer: Aporia
Aporia suggests “an impasse”, a knot or an inherent contradiction found in any text, an insuperable deadlock, or “double bind” of incompatible or contradictory meanings which are “undecidable”. Derrida, for instance, cites the inherent contradictions at work in Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s use of the words “culture” and “nature” by demonstrating that Rousseau’s sense of the self’s innocence (in nature) is already corrupted by the concept of culture (and existence) and vice-versa. Derrida has also described the paradoxes that afflict notions like giving, hospitality, forgiving and mourning. .argues that the condition of their possibility is also, and at once, the condition of their impossibility.
Read More https://literariness.org/2016/03/22/aporia/
35. The writer and the work that won Sahitya Akademi Award in 2018
Gurupournami (Poetry) by S. Ramesan Nair (Malayalam)
P.S. Sahitya Akademi announced its annual Awards in 24 languages.
36. T. S Elitot’s first book of criticism is …………………
Answer: The Sacred Wood
Collection of 20 essays, first published in 1920. One of his most important prose works, “Tradition and the Individual Talent” which was originally published in two parts in The Egoist, is a part of The Sacred Wood.
37. ………………… is the Shakespeare play that inspired Aldous Huxley to title one of his novels
Answer: The Tempest
The title of Huxley’s dystopian novel, Brave New World ((1932) is inspired from The Tempest.
38. Identify the author who has written on Collective trauma
(a) Harold Bloom
(b) Robert Scholes
(c) Teresa de Lauretis
(d) Shoshana Felman.
Answer: Shoshana Felman
https://literariness.org/2016/12/06/shoshana-felman-and-psychoanalytic-criticism/
39. The subtitle of Frankenstein is …………………
Answer: The Modern Prometheus
Read More https://literariness.org/2019/05/29/analysis-of-mary-shelleys-novels/
40. The chapter “Infection in the Sentence” appears in the book …………………
Answer: The Madwoman in the Attic
Like Showalter, Gilbert and Gubar have analysed the nineteenth century for the position of the woman novelist in The Madwoman in the Attic (1979), the 2-volume No Man’s Land (1987-89) and their edition of The Norton Anthology of Literature by Women (1985). Their interest, like Showalter, is in the material conditions of the woman writer’s creativity. Hence their reading of authors like Austen, the Brontes, Mary Shelley, George Eliot and Emily Dickinson in Madwoman is mainly an analysis of the social conditions of authors’ lives, the literary canon and the archives.
Read More https://literariness.org/2016/12/14/key-ideas-of-sandra-gilbert-and-susan-gubar/
PART — A
Answer any ten of the following.
1. Explain reading skills and different types of reading.
2. Describe ICT enabled language teaching and learning
3. Critically look at the issue of “body politics” in contemporary Malayalam short story.
4. Relevance of theoretical basis for a research work.
5. What are the evolving trends of Indian English Theatre?
6. Define research design What are the main sections of research design,
7. Briefly describe the research methods for English studies
8. What is a style sheet? Give a few examples Explain essential components of research paper
9. What are the essential components of a research proposal? Draft a proposal for a topic in which you are interested in.
10. What are the purpose and methods of doing Literature Review?
11. Critically comment on Postcolonialism in fiction.
12. Discuss the theory and praxis of Diaspora criticism.
Categories: Kerala University
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