Research in literary studies - Contemporary Literary Cultures and Research Methodologies - English Previous Year Questions

1

2022 · English · Contemporary Literary Cultures and Research Methodologies · Research in literary studies

Humanities & Social Sciences-English (XH-C2) 2022

Identify the work from which the following excerpt has been taken:
“In a universe that is suddenly deprived of illusions and of light, man feels a stranger. He is an irremediable exile .... This divorce between man and his life, the actor and his setting, truly constitutes the feeling of Absurdity.”

A

Frantz Kafka’s The Trial

B

Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot

C

Albert Camus’ The Myth of Sisyphus

D

Harold Pinter’s The Homecoming

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2

2022 · English · Contemporary Literary Cultures and Research Methodologies · Research in literary studies

Humanities & Social Sciences-English (XH-C2) 2022

“Nothing feels normal to Ashima, it’s not so much the pain which she will survive. Its consequence: motherhood in a foreign land … unmonitored by those she loves … she is terrified to raise a child in a country where she knows so little, where life seems so tentative and spare.”
In the above passage of The Namesake, the writer tries to say that Ashima ______.

A

feels isolated in the new world

B

should have been surrounded by her own people

C

is facing a cultural shock

D

is able to adapt herself to an alien culture

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3

2023 · English · Contemporary Literary Cultures and Research Methodologies · Research in literary studies

Humanities & Social Sciences-English (XH-C2) 2023

Which of the following are considered to be typical postmodern narratives?

A

Italo Calvino’s If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller

B

John Barth’s Lost in the Funhouse

C

Thomas Pynchon’s V.

D

Iris Murdoch’s The Bell

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4

2024 · English · Contemporary Literary Cultures and Research Methodologies · Research in literary studies

Humanities & Social Sciences-English (XH-C2) 2024

“I started writing in Gikuyu language in 1977 after seventeen years of involvement in Afro-European literature, in my case Afro-English literature … wherever I have gone, particularly in Europe, I have been confronted with the question: why are you now writing in Gikuyu? Why do you now write in an African language?”
Identify the author of this passage.

A

Nadine Gordimer

B

Wole Soyinka

C

Ngugi wa Thiong’o

D

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

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5

2025 · English · Contemporary Literary Cultures and Research Methodologies · Research in literary studies

Humanities & Social Sciences-English (XH-C2) 2025

“I saw on that ivory face the expression of sombre pride, of ruthless power, of craven terror—of an intense and hopeless despair. . . . He cried in a whisper at some image, at some vision—he cried out twice, a cry that was no more than a breath:
‘The horror! The horror!’”
Which political and existential condition can be inferred from the above passage in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness?

A

The degeneration of the corrupted white man recognizing the moral evil of imperialism

B

The state of shock on witnessing the economic disaster and commercial catastrophe suffered by the unnamed Belgian company

C

The sense of an ending due to the imminent failure of a new nation state

D

The fear of an emerging apocalypse caused by an ecological disaster

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6

2025 · English · Contemporary Literary Cultures and Research Methodologies · Research in literary studies

Humanities & Social Sciences-English (XH-C2) 2025

“Here was I, the white man with his gun, standing in front of the unarmed native crowd—seemingly the leading actor of the piece; but in reality I was only an absurd puppet pushed to and fro by the will of those yellow faces behind. I perceived in this moment that when the white man turns tyrant it is his own freedom that he destroys. He becomes a sort of hollow, posing dummy, the conventionalized figure of a sahib.”
What condition(s) is/are illustrated in the above lines from George Orwell’s essay “Shooting an Elephant”?

A

Cynicism and existential exhaustion

B

Violence and vendetta

C

Self-reflexive shame

D

Subversive performance

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7

2025 · English · Contemporary Literary Cultures and Research Methodologies · Research in literary studies

Humanities & Social Sciences-English (XH-C2) 2025

“I resemble everyone/but myself, and sometimes see/in shop-windows/despite the well-known laws/ of optics/the portrait of a stranger/date unknown/often signed in a corner/by my father”
Which state(s) of being is/are illustrated in the above lines from A. K. Ramanujan’s “Self Portraits”?

A

Existential alienation

B

Anxiety of self, caused by the structures of kinship

C

Artistic ecstasy

D

Euphoria in the marketplace

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8

2025 · English · Contemporary Literary Cultures and Research Methodologies · Research in literary studies

Humanities & Social Sciences-English (XH-C2) 2025

Which of the following statement(s) aptly describe(s) the novel, I Shall Not Hear the Nightingale?

A

The novel projects a picture of the bestial horrors enacted on the Indo-Pakistan border region during the days of August 1947.

B

The novel begins with house-breaking and robbery followed by the murder of the money lender Lala Ram Lal.

C

The novel is located in the disturbed pre-Partition period and concentrates on the inner tensions and external movements of a well-to-do Sikh family.

D

The novel’s triumph is really the portrait of Sabhrai, Buta Singh’s wife, whose faith in the Guru and in the Adi Granth is unflinching.

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9

2026 · English · Contemporary Literary Cultures and Research Methodologies · Research in literary studies

Humanities & Social Sciences - English (XH-C2) 2026

Which of these counts as a qualitative research method in literary studies?

A

Critical Theory

B

Statistical Modelling

C

Close-textual Reading

D

Ethnographic Analysis

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