Literary Criticism — DU B. A. (Hons) English Previous Year Question Papers

Course) English - DSC 3. Candidates have to answer ALL the questions in Part A and ANY THREE questions in Part B. 4. Questions in Part A carry 10 marks each and questions in Part B carry 20 marks each. (a) Explain how Edmund Burke distinguishes the sublime from the beautiful in his essay "A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful". (b) According to David Hume, beauty is not an objective quality but a product of individual perception. Discuss with reference to his essay "Of the Standard of Taste". 2. (a) "The mind of the poet is the shred of platinum." Elaborate on T.S. Eliot's statement in his essay "Tradition and the Individual Talent" (b) Write a brief note on Virginia Woolf's characterisation of contemporary novelists as "materialists" in her essay "Modern Fiction". 3. (a) I. A. Richards argues that the Kantian account of "the judgement of taste" leads to the annexation of aesthetics to "Idealism". Write a brief note on Richards' critique of Kant's aesthetic theory in the light of this statement. (b) "Paradox is the language appropriate and inevitable to poetry." Explain how Brooks elucidates this in his analysis of poetry. (a) Edmund Burke claims, "when danger or pain press too nearly, they are incapable of giving any delight, and are simply terrible; but at certain distances, and with certain modifications, they may be, and they are delightful." How does this statement reflect his understanding of the sublime in "A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful"? (b) What conditions does Hume identify as necessary for true taste in "Of the Standard of Taste," and how do defects like prejudice or lack of practice hinder sound judgment in matters of beauty? 5. (a) How does T. S. Eliot's idea of historical consciousness in "Tradition and the Individual (b) How does Virginia Woolf's focus on consciousness in modern fiction reflect a new, fluid notion of reality, and how does it depart from the conventions of earlier realist novels? 6. (a) Explain what I. A. Richards means by "the phantom aesthetic state". Discuss the implications of describing the aesthetic state as a "phantom" for literary criticism. (b) "The 'prose-sense' of the poem is not a rack on which stuff of the poem is hung that it does not represent the 'inner' structure or the 'essential' structure or the 'real' structure of the poem." Why does Cleanth Brooks term paraphrase as a 7. (a) Discuss the role of the connotative function of language in meaning-making with reference to any two critics in your course. How do they challenge purely referential or denotative approaches to meaning? (b) Eighteenth-century aesthetics emphasized the workings of the human mind in the perception of beauty and artistic value. Discuss with reference to at least two thinkers you have read.