PUMDET 2023 Question Paper English

Subject : ENGLISH

(Booklet Number)

Duration : 90 Minutes No. of Questions : 50 Full Marks : 100

INSTRUCTIONS
1. All questions are of objective type having four answer options for each. Only one option is
correct. Correct answer will carry full marks 2. In case of incorrect answer or any
combination of more than one answer, ½ mark will be deducted.
2. Questions must be answered on OMR sheet by darkening the appropriate bubble marked
A, B, C or D.
3. Use only Black/Blue ink ball point pen to mark the answer by complete filling up of the
respective bubbles.
4. Mark the answers only in the space provided. Do not make any stray mark on the OMR.
5. Write question booklet number and your roll number carefully in the specified locations of
the OMR Sheet. Also fill appropriate bubbles.
6. Write your name (in block letter), name of the examination centre and put your signature (as
is appeared in Admit Card) in appropriate boxes in the OMR Sheet.
7. The OMR Sheet is liable to become invalid if there is any mistake in filling the correct
bubbles for question booklet number/roll number or if there is any discrepancy in the
name/signature of the candidate, name of the examination centre. The OMR Sheet may also
become invalid due to folding or putting stray marks on it or any damage to it. The
consequence of such invalidation due to incorrect marking or careless handling by the
candidate will be sole responsibility of candidate.
8. Candidates are not allowed to carry any written or printed material, calculator, pen, docu-
pen, log table, wristwatch, any communication device like mobile phones, bluetooth devices
etc. inside the examination hall. Any candidate found with such prohibited items will be
reported against and his/her candidature will be summarily cancelled.
9. Rough work must be done on the question booklet itself. Additional blank pages are given in
the question booklet for rough work.
10. Hand over the OMR Sheet to the invigilator before leaving the Examination Hall.
11. Candidates are allowed to take the Question Booklet after examination is over.

Signature of the Candidate : ______________________________
(as in Admit Card)

Signature of the Invigilator : ______________________________

English 

SPACE FOR ROUGH WORK

English 2 

ENGLISH
1. Which of these authors is not appropriate for an essay entitled ‘Drama in the Victorian
Period’ ?
(A) Alfred Lord Tennyson (B) George Bernard Shaw
(C) Oscar Wilde (D) Noel Coward

2. Given below are two lists. List A gives some events and List B gives their dates in
jumbled order. Read the options below and match the events correctly with their
corresponding dates.
List A List B
(i) Establishment of the Globe Theatre 1. 1665
(ii) The Gunpowder Plot 2. 1599
(iii) The Great Fire of London 3. 1605
(iv) The Great Plague of London 4. 1666
(i) (ii) (iii) (iv)
(A) 3 4 1 2
(B) 2 3 4 1
(C) 4 1 3 2
(D) 1 2 3 4

3. To which period of English literature do these women poets, who were acclaimed in their
own time, belong – Joanna Baillie, Felicia Hemans, Anna Laetitia Barbauld, Charlotte
Smith
(A) The Elizabethan period (B) The Neo-Classical period
(C) The Romantic period (D) The Victorian period

4. Which of these is not an appropriate theoretical approach for a research proposal on Jane
Austen ?
(A) Postcolonial Studies (B) Feminist Studies
(C) Ethnicity Studies (D) Reader Response Studies

English 3 

5. Who coined the term ‘post-colonial’ ?
(A) Bill Ashcroft (B) John Drakakis
(C) Nicholas Roe (D) Paul Sharrad

6. Which of these works is not appropriate for an essay on the ‘Condition of England’
novel ?
(A) Martin Chuzzlewit (B) Mary Barton
(C) Hard Times (D) Sybil

7. Indian English Literature, also known as Indian Writing in English (IWE), first came to
the forefront under the rubric, ‘Indo-Anglian Literature’. Who was the originator of this
phrase ?
(A) R.K. Narayan (B) R. Parthasarathy
(C) P. Lal (D) Nissim Ezekiel

8. English has taken loan words from many languages. List A gives the loan word and List
B the language of origin in jumbled order. Read the options below and match the loan
word with its source language.
List A List B
(i) dollar 1. Chinese
(ii) lemon 2. Hindi
(iii) ketchup 3. Arabic
(iv) cot 4. German
(i) (ii) (iii) (iv)
(A) 2 4 1 3
(B) 1 2 3 4
(C) 3 2 4 1
(D) 4 3 1 2

9. Wordsworth is now analysed from various contemporary theoretical perspectives. Who
published an acclaimed ecocritical reading of Wordsworth titled Radical Wordsworth:
The Poet Who Changed the World (2020) ?
(A) Jonathan Bate (B) Louis Montrose
(C) Douglas Mao (D) Walter Allen

English 4 

10. In which wave of Feminist Theory would one place Gayatri Chakravorti Spivak ?
(A) First wave (B) Second wave
(C) Third wave (D) Fourth wave

11. Pick out the option that is not roughly contemporaneous with the others.
(A) John Dryden, All for Love (B) Sir Richard Steele, The Tatler
(C) John Milton, Paradise lost (D) Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan

12. Why did popular culture become a major subject of research after the advent of
postmodernism ?
(A) Because postmodernism is a radical theoretical approach.
(B) Because postmodernism is not interested in serious literature.
(C) Because postmodernism gives equal importance to both ‘high’ art and ‘low’ art and
culture.
(D) Because postmodernism is multinational and multicultural.

13. Which of these types of novels can be called ‘speculative fiction’ ?
(A) Detective fiction (B) Neo-Victorian fiction
(C) Science fiction (D) Graphic novels

14. The first major focus of the New Historicist critics was
(A) Chaucer and the Scottish Chaucerians
(B) The literature of the English Renaissance
(C) Neo-classical literature
(D) Victorian literature

15. Who wrote Life of Pi ?
(A) Yann Martel (B) Umberto Eco
(C) Paulo Coelho (D) Isabella Allende

16. In which of these essays did Virginia Woolf speak about the distinctive narrative
techniques of modernist fiction – (a) ‘Modern Fiction’ (b) ‘Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown’
(c) ‘Letter to a Young Poet’ ?
(A) Only in (a) (B) In (a) and (b)
(C) In (a) and (c) (D) In (a), (b) and (c)

English 5 

17. Which of these Greek tragedians dramatized the story of Orestes ?
(A) Aeschylus (B) Aeschylus and Sophocles
(C) Aeschylus and Euripides (D) Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides

18. Who wrote a modern version of Macbeth entitled Macbett ?
(A) Samuel Beckett (B) Eugene Ionesco
(C) Alfred Jarry (D) Dario Fo

19. Pick out the author who does not belong to the group.
(A) Linton K. Johnson (B) Philip Larkin
(C) Robert Conquest (D) Thom Gunn

20. Which author and work did Salman Rushdie acknowledge as his precursor in the
‘chutnification’ of the English language ?
(A) Laurence Sterne, Tristram Shandy
(B) Asif Currimbhoy, Goa
(C) G. V. Desani, All about H. Hatterr
(D) Bhabani Bhattacharya, He who Rides a Tiger

21. In 2016 the Oxford English Dictionary declared ‘post-truth’ to be ‘the word of the year’.
What does it mean ?
(A) Reliance on subjective opinions rather than on objective facts
(B) Arguments based on scientific data
(C) Opinions based on astrology
(D) Metaphysics

22. How would you define ‘hyperbaton’ ?
(A) It is a transferred epithet.
(B) It is an inversion of the normal order of words.
(C) It is the association of a single verb with two disparate nouns.
(D) It is an antithetical statement.

English 6 

23. Which poet famously described the Industrial Revolution as a conglomeration of “dark
satanic mills” ?
(A) William Blake (B) Percy Bysshe Shelley
(C) Alfred Lord Tennyson (D) Matthew Arnold

24. Which poet did Wordsworth specifically criticize in the Preface to the Lyrical Ballads for
using poetic diction ?
(A) John Dryden (B) Alexander Pope
(C) Samuel Johnson (D) Thomas Gray

25. Which two theatres were the first to open in London after the end of the Commonwealth
period ?
(A) The Rose and The Swan (B) Drury Lane and the Swan
(C) Drury Lane and Lincoln’s Inn Fields (D) Lincoln’s Inn Fields and The Rose

26. Who among the following is not a Medieval romance poet ?
(A) A troubadour (B) A jongleur
(C) A scop (D) A trouvere

27. Which of the following is correct about Ferdinand de Saussure’s analysis of language ?
(A) La langue is the system of a language.
(B) Parole focuses on language as a system at a particular time.
(C) La langue is the particular instance of speech and writing.
(D) Parole is the study of language over a period of time.

28. In 1066, William the conqueror defeated the English King ____________.
(A) Alfred (B) Harold Godwinson
(C) Nithhad (D) Henry I

29. Which of the following playwrights does Aristotle consider to be an ideal tragedian ?
(A) Aeschylus (B) Plautus
(C) Euripides (D) Sophocles

English 7 

30. Which of the following texts is attributed to Jacques Lacan ?
(A) Beyond the Pleasure Principle (B) Civilization and its Discontents
(C) Ecrits (D) S/Z

31. The reversal of a situation in a tragedy is known as
(A) Anagnorisis (B) Hamartia
(C) Catharsis (D) Peripeteia

32. Which of the following is not true about language ?
(A) It is dual in character. (B) It is a social phenomenon.
(C) It does not have a deep structure. (D) It is arbitrary in nature.

33. Morphology is the grammar of
(A) Phrases (B) Words
(C) Sentences (D) Clauses

34. Who introduced the concept of ‘Tabula Rasa’ ?
(A) David Hume (B) John Locke
(C) Thomas Hobbes (D) Edward Sapir

35. Which of the following is not associated with Braj Kachru ?
(A) The three circles of English (B) The other tongue
(C) The outer circle (D) Other Asias

36. Diedrich Knickerbocker is the character of a fictional historian created by
(A) Ralph Waldo Emerson (B) James Fenimore Cooper
(C) Edgar Allan Poe (D) Washington Irving

37. When was the Tottel’s Miscellany published ?
(A) 1558 (B) 1557
(C) 1556 (D) 1598

English 8 

38. Identify the author from the clues given below :
(a) S/he represented the American South
(b) S/he began her/his career as a poet
(c) S/he suffered from mental derangement
(d) S/he “had a raven on one shoulder and a black cat on the other”
(A) Sylvia Plath (B) Nathaniel Hawthorne
(C) Edgar Allan Poe (D) Emily Dickinson

39. Which of the following events did not have a direct influence upon the Renaissance in
England ?
(A) The Glorious Revolution.
(B) The Turk’s conquest of Constantinople in 1453.
(C) The beginning of the Tudor reign in England.
(D) The introduction of the printing press by William Caxton.

40. In a Shakespearean sonnet a volta generally takes place in
(A) The sestet (B) The couplet
(C) The third quatrain (D) The second quatrain

41. Fill in the blank with the appropriate word as used by Shakespeare
My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun;
________ is far more red than her lips’ red:
(A) Ruby (B) Garnet
(C) Coral (D) Topaz

42. Henry Vaughan’s poem “The Retreat” expresses a desire to
(A) Return to the days of infancy.
(B) Return to the primordial age of creation.
(C) Return to the golden age of Pastoralism.
(D) Return to the Middle Ages.

English 9 

43. The principal motif of Dryden’s “Absalom and Achitophel” is
(A) The Magna Carta (B) The beheading of Charles I
(C) The Exclusion Crisis (D) The Spanish Armada

44. Who among the following thought imperialism as the highest stage of capitalism ?
(A) Karl Marx (B) V. I. Lenin
(C) Walter Benjamin (D) Louis Althusser

45. Which of the following is not true about postcolonialism ?
(A) It debunks the notion of western modernity.
(B) It negotiates ambivalent moments within the rationalizations of modernity.
(C) It formulates critical revisions around issues of political discriminations.
(D) It seeks to redefine the notion of cultural difference.

46. In Aphra Behn’s Oronooko, how does the titular character die ?
(A) He disembowels himself.
(B) He is whipped to death.
(C) He is hanged in the public square.
(D) He is cut to pieces slowly by the executioner.

47. In Tristram Shandy Corporal Trim’s brother Tom describes the oppression of a black
servant in a sausage shop in Lisbon that he visited. This episode is inspired by a letter
Laurence Sterne received from a black man. Sterne’s reply became an integral part of 18 th
century abolitionist literature.
Name the person who wrote the letter to Sterne.
(A) William Wilberforce (B) Ignatius Sancho
(C) William Blackstone (D) John Hawkins

English 10 

48. Fredric Jameson associated postmodern culture with __________ capitalism.
(A) market (B) monopoly
(C) multinational (D) imperial

49. “ ... Sure it waits upon
Some god O’th island. Sitting on a bank,
Weeping again the King my father’s wreck,
This music crept by me upon the waters,
Allaying both their fury and my passion
With its sweet air. Thence I have followed it,
Or it hath drawn me rather …
Which of the following statements on this passage are true ?
(a) These lines, spoken by Edgar in King Lear, are part of a long speech delivered on
the heath.
(b) These lines, spoken by Ferdinand in The Tempest, describe Ariel’s music
(c) The passage reappears in an altered and ironic version in T. S. Eliot’s ‘The Waste
Land’
(d) The passage reappears verbatim in W. H. Auden’s ‘Sea and the Mirror’.
The correct answer according to the code is
(A) (a) and (b) (B) (b) and (c)
(C) (c) and (d) (D) (a) and (c)

50. Which of the following is the correct match ?
(A) The Shock of Arrival – Meena Alexander
(B) Masks of Conquest – Homi Bhabha
(C) Culture and Imperialism – Aijaz Ahmed
(D) The Intimate Enemy – Gauri Viswanathan
_____________

English 11 

SPACE FOR ROUGH WORK

English 12 