VMOU
B.A. English -2020-21
EG -03
Poetry and Drama-II
Max
Marks: 30
Note: The Question paper is divided
into three sections A, B, and C. Write Answer as per the given instruction.
Section-B
(Short Answer Questions)
Note: Answer any 4 questions. Each answer
should not exceed 100 words. Each question carries 3 marks.
4x3=12
2. What kind of character does the Duke
emerge out as in “My Last Duchess”?
- Browning reveals the Duke’s character
saying, that the Duke is cruel, jealous, proud, and arrogant. He suggests, that
he has killed his wife because she was not grateful enough to him for marrying
her. He says that she loved cherry blossoms and the setting sun as much the
“gift of [the Duke’s] nine-hundred-years-old name.” She also did not fawn over
him as he thinks she should have. The Duke used these two reasons to justify
his actions. He insinuates, that he ordered to have her killed and reveals,
that he is not only cruel but without feeling.
3. Is “La Belle Dame Sans Merci” a poem
about writer’s block? If so, how?
- John Keats wrote the poem, to mirror
the effect, of becoming a poet, on a person, as compared with a man’s
infatuation with a beautiful fairy girl. In the poem, an unknown speaker asks a
young knight, why he looks, as if he is dying, he explains, that he encountered
a young woman and becomes completely bewitched by the beauty of the woman. His
encounter with the woman is like, when a man reads poetry for the first time
and is swept away by its beauty. The moment he decides to make poetry, his
life, his life becomes difficult because, like the love he feels for the woman,
poetry can never be perfect because it is a constant work.
4. What are the qualities the poet
idealizes in skylark in “Ode to a Skylark”?
- The speaker says, that skylark is a “blithe Spirit” for its
song comes from Heaven. The speaker asks the skylark to tell him its “sweet
thoughts,” for he has never heard anyone or anything call up “a flood of
rapture so divine.” Calling the bird, a “scorner of the ground,” he says that
its music is better than all music and all poetry. He asks the bird to teach
him “half the gladness / That thy brain must know,” for then he would overflow
with “harmonious madness,” and his song would be so beautiful that the world
would listen to him, even as he is now listening to the skylark.
5. How did Oliver
Goldsmith revive the Elizabethan /Shakespearean comedy in She Stoops to
Conquer?
- Oliver Goldsmith reacted sharply to
the Sentimental comedy which was under the spell of French playwriters of the
period. He revived the spirit of Shakespearean comedy. He brought the genre of
comedy on the right track. His play, She Stoops to Conquer had all the elements,
which constituted the perfect farce and sentimental comedy. In this play there
is an undercurrent of humour and satire. It marks a sort of relief from the turgidity
of the heroic drama to lighter stuff. The gaiety, cynicism and the strain of
immorality of the Restoration period are fully reflected in this witty play. It
satirizes the social behaviour of a certain class of English society. It is a
sentimental comedy which reacts against Restoration wit. The play, She Stoops
to Conquer incorporates a genuine spirit of comedy.
6. Comment on the witty, humorous and
aphoristic style of writing in ‘The Importance of Being Earnest’.
Oscar Wilde is a funny and witty writer. His humor in The Importance of Being Earnest relies on creating absurd situations and characters whose lack of insight causes them to respond to these situations in inappropriate ways. For example, Lady Bracknell’s preoccupation with her own parties and complete lack of sympathy for invalids make her react to the news of Bunbury’s illness in a ridiculously cold manner. The entire play runs in situations that are either too serious or too flippant. This exaggeration gives Earnest its distinctive brand of humor. Wilde’s patented epigrams—succinct and witty sayings are often general reflections on life.
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