Narrative, Poetic and Rhetorical Techniques - Literary Forms, Genres, and Modes of Expression - English Previous Year Questions

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2022 · English · Literary Forms, Genres, and Modes of Expression · Narrative, Poetic and Rhetorical Techniques

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

‘Anagnorisis’, as used by Aristotle in his theory of Tragedy, stands for ________.

A

the hero’s recognition of his tragic flaw

B

the hero’s ignorance about his tragic flaw

C

the hero’s recognition of his adversary

D

the hero’s rejection of his tragic end

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2022 · English · Literary Forms, Genres, and Modes of Expression · Narrative, Poetic and Rhetorical Techniques

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

Why does the thin grey strand
Floating up from the forgotten
Cigarette between my fingers,
Why does it trouble me?

Ah, you will understand;
When I carried my mother downstairs,
A few times only, at the beginning
Of her soft-foot malady,

I should find, for a reprimand
To my gaiety, a few long grey hairs
On the breast of my coat; and one by one
I watched them float up the dark chimney.

Which of the following can be considered as correct about the above poem?

A

It is written in the process of grieving for the poet’s mother.

B

It is an autobiographical poem.

C

It is a symbolic poem.

D

It is a poem of youthful celebration.

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2022 · English · Literary Forms, Genres, and Modes of Expression · Narrative, Poetic and Rhetorical Techniques

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

Which of the given examples of rhetorical/figurative devices is/are correctly paired?

A

‘What is man, that thou art mindful of him?’ : Paradox

B

‘Truth makes the greatest libel.’ : Personification

C

‘Reading furnishes the mind only with material of knowledge; it is thinking makes what we read ours.’ : Antithesis

D

‘It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.’ : Irony

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4

2022 · English · Literary Forms, Genres, and Modes of Expression · Narrative, Poetic and Rhetorical Techniques

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

Read the following lines and mark your correct observation(s):
Take my shirt off
and go in there to do the puja
No thanks.
Not me.
But you go right ahead
if that’s what you want to do.
Give me the match box
before you go,
will you?
I will be out in the courtyard
where no one will mind it
if I smoke.

A

The poem is written in the form of an ode.

B

The poem is skeptic in nature.

C

The poet uses surreal and astonishing images.

D

The poem expresses a rebellious attitude.

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5

2023 · English · Literary Forms, Genres, and Modes of Expression · Narrative, Poetic and Rhetorical Techniques

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

Identify the title of the poem in which the following lines appear:
“He was found by the Bureau of Statistics to be
One against whom there was no official complaint,
And all the reports on his conduct agree
That, in the modern sense of an old-fashioned word, he was a saint
For in everything he did he served the greater community.”

A

“In Memory of W. B. Yeats”

B

“The Unknown Citizen”

C

“In Praise of Limestone”

D

“On this Island”

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6

2023 · English · Literary Forms, Genres, and Modes of Expression · Narrative, Poetic and Rhetorical Techniques

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

Identify the point of view used in the following passage:
“You are not the kind of guy who would be at a place like this at this time of the morning. But here you are, and you cannot say that the terrain is entirely unfamiliar, though the details are fuzzy.”

A

Third-person point of view

B

The limited point of view

C

Second-person point of view

D

First-person point of view

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7

2023 · English · Literary Forms, Genres, and Modes of Expression · Narrative, Poetic and Rhetorical Techniques

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

Which linguistic process can be seen in the formation of the following words?
i. smog, ii. brunch, iii. motel iv. telecast

A

Borrowing

B

Compounding

C

Blending

D

Backformation

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8

2023 · English · Literary Forms, Genres, and Modes of Expression · Narrative, Poetic and Rhetorical Techniques

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

Which literary device does the following line employ? “A timorous foe, and a suspicious friend.”

A

Antithesis

B

Antistrophe

C

Oxymoron

D

Apostrophe

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9

2023 · English · Literary Forms, Genres, and Modes of Expression · Narrative, Poetic and Rhetorical Techniques

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

Read the following poem and identify the appropriate options:

And search

for certain thin –

stemmed, bubble-eyed water bugs.

See them perch

on dry capillary legs

weightless

on the ripple skin

of a stream.

No, not only prophets

walk on water. This bug sits

on a landslide of lights

and drowns eye –

deep

into its tiny strip

of sky.

A

It uses free verse form.

B

It employs imagery.

C

It uses the iambic pentameter.

D

It juxtaposes the non-human with the human.

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2023 · English · Literary Forms, Genres, and Modes of Expression · Narrative, Poetic and Rhetorical Techniques

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

Which of the following employ ‘Interior Monologue’?

A

Alfred Lord Tennyson’s “In Memoriam”

B

The final chapter of James Joyce’s Ulysses

C

T. S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”

D

Robert Browning’s “My Last Duchess”

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11

2024 · English · Literary Forms, Genres, and Modes of Expression · Narrative, Poetic and Rhetorical Techniques

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

“The horror! The horror!” - these are the last words of ______ .

A

Lady Macbeth in Macbeth

B

Captain Ahab in Moby Dick

C

Jonathan Harker in Dracula

D

Kurtz in Heart of Darkness

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2024 · English · Literary Forms, Genres, and Modes of Expression · Narrative, Poetic and Rhetorical Techniques

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

The literary term 'apostrophe' denotes:

A

A comparison of an abstract idea with its opposite.

B

An address to a person, or a personified idea or power.

C

A break within an iambic pentameter.

D

The possession of a character by a spirit.

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2024 · English · Literary Forms, Genres, and Modes of Expression · Narrative, Poetic and Rhetorical Techniques

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

In the line, "What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba?" "he" refers to ______ .

A

Virgil, the author of the Aeneid

B

An actor performing a scene from the Trojan War in Hamlet

C

Helen's husband Priam who left her for Hecuba

D

A fairy king who abandoned his daughter Hecuba at birth

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2024 · English · Literary Forms, Genres, and Modes of Expression · Narrative, Poetic and Rhetorical Techniques

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

A widely used narrative technique, it allows narrators to temporarily inhabit the consciousness of any of their characters. It is called ______.

A

Localized Speech

B

Free Indirect Speech

C

Mimicked Speech

D

Empathetic Speech

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15

2024 · English · Literary Forms, Genres, and Modes of Expression · Narrative, Poetic and Rhetorical Techniques

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

“[. . .] I mean negative capability, that is when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason [. . .]”
Based on this statement, which of the following options is/are correct?
Negative capability is the ability to ______.

A

be receptive to ambiguities

B

be focused on precise resolutions

C

not get irritated by people’s incompetence

D

find value in partial knowledge

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2024 · English · Literary Forms, Genres, and Modes of Expression · Narrative, Poetic and Rhetorical Techniques

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

Virginia Woolf wrote in “Professions for Women”:
“You have won rooms of your own in the house hitherto exclusively owned by men. You are able, though not without great labour and effort, to pay the rent. You are earning your five hundred pounds a year. But this freedom is only a beginning; the room is your own, but it is still bare. It has to be furnished; it has to be decorated; it has to be shared. How are you going to furnish it, how are you going to decorate it? With whom are you going to share it, and upon what terms?”
Based on this passage, which of the following inferences is/are correct?

A

Women may have attained rooms of their own but they still have a long way to go.

B

The ‘room’ women now own is a sign of minimal economic independence.

C

Woolf insists that women live only with other women in order to maintain their independence.

D

The freedom that women now enjoy was attained after centuries of struggle.

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17

2024 · English · Literary Forms, Genres, and Modes of Expression · Narrative, Poetic and Rhetorical Techniques

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

“Lear cries out ‘you are men of stones’
as Cordelia hangs from a broken wall.
I step out into Chandni Chowk, a street once
strewn with jasmine flowers
for the Empress and the royal women
who bought perfumes from Isfahan,
fabrics from Dacca, essence from Kabul,
glass bangles from Agra.
Beggars now live here in tombs
of unknown nobles and forgotten saints
while hawkers sell combs and mirrors
outside a Sikh temple. Across the street,
a theater is showing a Bombay spectacular.
I think of Zafar, poet and Emperor,
being led through this street
by British soldiers, his feet in chains,
to watch his sons hanged.
In exile he wrote:
‘Unfortunate Zafar
spent half his life in hope,
the other half waiting.’
He begs for two yards of Delhi for burial.
He was exiled to Burma, buried in Rangoon.”
Which of the following ideas is/are conveyed by this poem?

A

Delhi is a modern and progressive city despite its imperial past.

B

Even Kings may be punished when they commit crimes against their children.

C

An exile’s sense of loss, and longing for their homeland.

D

History is a constant presence all around us.

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18

2024 · English · Literary Forms, Genres, and Modes of Expression · Narrative, Poetic and Rhetorical Techniques

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

Politics
--by William Butler Yeats

‘In our time the destiny of man presents its meanings in political terms.’
--Thomas Mann

“How can I, that girl standing there,
My attention fix
On Roman or on Russian
Or on Spanish politics,
Yet here’s a travelled man that knows
What he talks about,
And there’s a politician
That has both read and thought,
And maybe what they say is true
Of war and war’s alarms,
But O that I were young again
And held her in my arms.”

Which of the following options is/are implied by this poem?

A

Politics is the most absorbing concern of human existence.

B

Desire has never distracted the speaker from politics.

C

Sensual desire can be in conflict with cerebral concerns.

D

Physical desire does not die with age.

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2024 · English · Literary Forms, Genres, and Modes of Expression · Narrative, Poetic and Rhetorical Techniques

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

“I like a look of Agony,
Because I know it’s true –
Men do not sham Convulsion,
Nor simulate, a Throe –

The eyes glaze once – and that is Death –
Impossible to feign
The Beads upon the Forehead
By homely Anguish strung.”

Which of the following options is/are implied by this poem?

A

Agony is not easily disguised.

B

The speaker likes to watch people suffer because it reminds her of her own well-being.

C

Strong people never suffer a painful death.

D

Anguish can produce physical effects.

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2025 · English · Literary Forms, Genres, and Modes of Expression · Narrative, Poetic and Rhetorical Techniques

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

Which of the following narrative(s) has/have an intrusive narrator?

A

Tom Jones

B

“The Killers”

C

War and Peace

D

“A Clean, Well-Lighted Place”

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