DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH UNIVERSITY OF DELHI DELHI – 110007 ...

DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH
UNIVERSITY OF DELHI
DELHI – 110007

PH D ENTRANCE TEST SAMPLE QUESTIONS

Tired with all these, for restful death I cry
As to behold desert a beggar born
And needy nothing trimm'd in jollity
And purest faith unhappily forsworn
And gilded honour shamefully misplac'd
And maiden virtue rudely strumpeted....

1. The figure of speech used in lines 3-6 is
A. Catachresis
B. Paronomasia
C. Anaphora
D. Zeugma

2. Which of the following poets wrote elegies on the passing of a contemporary poet?
A. Spenser on Sidney
B. Shelley on Keats
C. Auden on W.B. Yeats
D. All of the above

Questions 3-6are based on the lines given below.
When the rooms were warm, he'd call
And slowly I would rise and dress
fearing the chronic angers of that house
Speaking indifferently to him
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well
What did I know, what did I know
of love's lonely and austere offices?

3. The relationship of speaker and subject is
A. Father and son
B. Man and valet
C. Hotel guest and hotel employee
D. College roommates

4. The word "slowly" in line 2 accounts for and accentuates
A. The cold night
B. The speaker's apprehension
C. The subject's devotion
D. All of the above

5 Why are "love's offices" called "lonely and austere"?
A. They are done without fanfare
B. They are simple acts carried out when no one is looking
C. Both A and B
D. They relate to professional behaviour

6. The repetition of the phrase "what did I know" in line 7 expresses
A. The speaker's regret
B. The speaker's realisation of his past immaturity
C. The speaker's impatience
D. Both A and B

Questions 7-10 are based on the passage given below.
Interpretive communities are made up of those who share interpretive strategies not for readin
g (in the conventional sense) but for writing texts, for constituting their properties and assigni
ng their intentions. In other words, these strategies exist prior to the act of reading and therefo
re determine the shape of what is read rather than, as is usually assumed, the other way aroun
d. If it is an article of faith in a particular community that there are a variety of texts, its mem
bers will boast a repertoire of strategies for making them. And if a community believes in the
existence of only one text, then the single strategy its members employ will be forever writin
g it. The first community will accuse the members of the second of being reductive and they i
n turn will call their accusers superficial. The assumption in each community will be that the
other is not correctly perceiving the ‘true text,’ but the truth will be that each perceives the te
xt (or texts) its interpretive strategies demand and call into being. This, then is the explanatio
n both for the stability of interpretation among different readers (they belong to the same com
munity) and for the regularity with which a single reader will employ different interpretive str
ategies and thus make different texts (he belongs to different communities). It also explains
why there are disagreements, and why they can be debated in a principled way; not because o
f a stability in texts, but because of a stability in the makeup of interpretive communities and t
herefore in the opposing positions they make possible.

7 The above extract is taken from
AAijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures
B Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Natio
nalism
C Stanley Fish, Is there a Text in this Class?
D TorilMoi, Sexual/ Textual Politics

8 The theoretical approach examined in this passage is that of
A Reader-response theory
B Formalism
C Transnational studies
D New Historicism

9 The approach outlined in this passage assumes that
A All readers share a common text
B All readers share common assumptions
C The experience of the reader is as important as qualities inherent in the work
D Imagined communities are liable to change

10 The logical conclusion reached by this analysis is that
AWe read texts, not stereotypes
B We read stereotypes, not texts
C Literature stimulates only limited responses
D Literature is both production and consumption at once

KEY
1C 2D 3A 4D 5C 6D 7C 8A 9C 10D