18th Century Literature — DU B. A. (Prog) English Previous Year Question Papers

: Bachelor of Arts - 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. 1. (a) Explain the following lines with reference to context: For lo! the Board with Cups and Spoons is crown'd, The Berries crackle, and the Mill turns round: On shining Altars of Japan they raise The silver Lamp; the fiery Spirits blaze: From silver Spouts the grateful Liquors glide, While China's earth receives the smoking Tyde. (b) How does Alexander Pope use the mock-epic conventions to expose the triviality of aristocratic concerns of his age in The Rape of the Lock? Discuss with suitable examples. 2. (a) Explain the following lines with reference to context: The learning of this people is very defective, consisting only in morality, history, poetry, and mathematics, wherein they must be allowed to excel. But the last of these is wholly applied to what may be useful in life, to the improvement of agriculture, and all mechanical arts; so that among us, it would be little esteemed. And as to ideas, entities, abstractions, and transcendentals, I could never drive the least conception into their heads. (b) How does Jonathan Swift parody the conventions of travel literature? In what ways does this affect the reader's trust in Gulliver's narrative? 3. (a) Explain the following lines with reference to context: The only hope of our family now was that the report of Olivia's marriage might be true. (b) Analyze Dr. Primrose as a religious and moral figure. To what extent is he an embodiment of Christian virtue, and to what extent is he naive or impractical in dealing with real-world challenges? Examine the symbolic significance of Belinda's lock. How does the vulnerability? poem negotiate tensions between beauty as power and beauty as (b) Is Alexander Pope's satire corrective or merely observational? ambivalent. Evaluate whether the poem ultimately offers a moral stance or remains 5. (a) How does Jonathan Swift use shifts in scale to challenge the idea of human morality in Gullivers Travels? superiority? What do these contrasting worlds reveal about politics and (b) Analyse Gulliver's intellectual and emotional transformation from Book III to for his reaction to the Hounhms? Book IV. How does his response to Laputa prepare (or fail to prepare) him 6. (a) The Vicar of Wakefield repeatedly stages moments of deception, disguise, reader's understanding of virtue, class, and authority? and mistaken identity. How do these narrative strategies complicate the (b) Examine how characters such as Olivia and Sophia are positioned within the virtue, vulnerability, and social judgment? novel's moral framework. How does Goldsmith negotiate issues of female