UPHESC Assistant Professor English 2025 PYQs

Concept: The Essay (1668) is a dialogue among four speakers, each defending a position.

1. Crites – the Ancients (Greek and Roman drama).
2. Eugenius – the Moderns, against the Ancients.
3. Lisideius – French drama; Neander – English drama (Dryden's own voice).

Short trick: C-E-L-N = Classical, Era-modern, Louis's France, Native English.

Concept: Robert Frost said: "If I must be classified as a poet, I might be called a Synecdochist".

1. He preferred synecdoche – the part standing for the whole – a small scene suggesting a large truth.
2. Thus a wall, a road or a birch tree in his poems points to universal meanings.

Short trick: Frost: 'a small thing that stands for a larger thing' = synecdoche.

Concept: Baroka, the cunning old Bale of Ilujinle, is called 'the fox' (and also 'the Lion').

1. He spreads the rumour of his impotence to trap Sidi – a fox-like trick.
2. Sadiku and Lakunle refer to his wiliness: 'the old fox'.
3. Sidi is the 'Jewel'; Lakunle is the westernised schoolteacher.

Short trick: Baroka = Lion + old fox (cunning).

Concept: Sociolinguistics studies language in relation to society.

1. It covers dialects (regional, social), variation, standardisation, pidgins/lingua francas, codes and registers.
2. Psycholinguistics – language and mind; Applied linguistics – teaching/translation; Stylistics – style in texts.

Short trick: Society + language = sociolinguistics.

Concept: Lysander says it to Hermia in A Midsummer Night's Dream, Act I, Scene i.

1. Hermia is forbidden to marry Lysander by her father Egeus.
2. Lysander consoles her: "The course of true love never did run smooth."

Short trick: Lovers' troubles in the Athenian wood → Midsummer.

Concept: The phrase comes from Frances (Fanny) Burney's novel Cecilia (1782).

1. Near the end Dr Lyster says: "The whole of this unfortunate business has been the result of PRIDE and PREJUDICE."
2. Austen's draft was first titled First Impressions; she renamed it for 1813 publication.

Short trick: Cecilia (Burney) → 'PRIDE and PREJUDICE' in capitals.

Concept: Ahab commands the whaler Pequod, named after an extinct Native American tribe.

1. The Rachel is another ship searching for its lost boys; it rescues Ishmael at the end.
2. The Essex was the real whaler sunk by a whale (1820) that inspired the novel; the Endeavour was Cook's ship.

Short trick: Pequod sinks, Rachel rescues.

Concept: In English intonation the falling tone signals finality and definiteness; the rising tone signals politeness, incompleteness or doubt.

1. Falling tone: neutral statements, neutral wh-questions, commands, exclamations.
2. Polite requests ('Could you open the window?') are usually said with a rising tone.
3. So C is not a falling-tone use.

Short trick: Fall = final/firm; Rise = polite/open.

Concept: Homophones have the same pronunciation but different spelling and meaning.

1. 'too' and 'two' (and 'to') are all /tuː/ – homophony.
2. Homography = same spelling, different sound/meaning (lead/lead).
3. Polysemy = one word, related meanings; collocation = habitual word partners.

Short trick: Homo-PHONE = same sound.

Concept: Walcott's 'Ruins of a Great House' opens: "Stones only, the disjecta membra of this Great House".

1. Disjecta membra (Latin) = scattered limbs/fragments – the ruins of a colonial plantation house.
2. The poem reflects on the brutality of empire and the poet's divided inheritance.

Short trick: Scattered stones of a colonial house = disjecta membra.

Concept: Aimé Césaire (Martinique) coined 'Négritude' in Cahier d'un retour au pays natal (1939).

1. He founded the movement in Paris with Léopold Sédar Senghor and Léon Damas in the 1930s.
2. Brathwaite, Walcott and Harris are later Caribbean anglophone writers.

Short trick: Césaire coined, Senghor theorised.

Concept: Check the dates and the original language.

1. Statement I: Tagore received the Nobel Prize in 1913 (not 1916) for Song Offerings – false.
2. Statement II: Hind Swaraj was written in Gujarati (1909, on the ship Kildonan Castle) and Gandhi translated it into English (1910) – false.
3. Both are false.

Short trick: Tagore Nobel 1913; Hind Swaraj Gujarati 1909 → English 1910.

Concept: The vocal tract is the air passage above the larynx – the pharynx, oral cavity and nasal cavity.

1. Sounds are shaped (resonated/articulated) in the mouth and nose cavities.
2. Lungs and trachea lie below the larynx – they supply air but are not part of the vocal tract.

Short trick: Vocal tract = above the vocal folds: throat, mouth, nose.

Concept: Edmund Burke brought charges of impeachment against Warren Hastings, ex-Governor-General of Bengal, in the Commons in 1786.

1. Burke led the prosecution; the trial in Westminster Hall began in 1788 and ended in acquittal in 1795.
2. Burns, Burke and Johnson were never put on trial; Burke was the accuser, not the accused.

Short trick: Burke accuses, Hastings is tried (1786–1795).

Concept: Estragon's complaint "Nothing happens, nobody comes, nobody goes, it's awful!" sums up Waiting for Godot.

1. The play shows Vladimir and Estragon waiting endlessly for Godot who never arrives.
2. Its circular, static action is the essence of the Theatre of the Absurd.

Short trick: Nobody comes = Godot never comes.

Concept: McCann is a man – the Irish partner of Goldberg who come to take Stanley away.

1. Statement I is false: the female characters are Meg and Lulu.
2. Statement II is true: Irving Wardle applied 'comedy of menace' to Pinter's early plays, including The Birthday Party.

Short trick: Goldberg & McCann = two sinister men.

Concept: The Greek title is Peri Hypsous (περὶ ὕψους) – 'on height/elevation'.

1. Longinus gives five sources of sublimity: great thoughts, strong emotion, figures, noble diction, dignified composition.
2. De Sublimitate is a Latin rendering, not the Greek original; the other two are invented.

Short trick: Peri = 'on', Hypsos = 'height'.

Concept: Roland Barthes analysed clothing as a sign system ('vestimentary code') in The Fashion System (Système de la mode, 1967).

1. He distinguished the real garment, the image-garment and the written garment.
2. Saussure – langue/parole; Genette – narratology; Lévi-Strauss – myth and kinship structures.

Short trick: Barthes read everything as signs – myths, wrestling, fashion.

Concept: Her first published collection was The Golden Threshold (1905, London).

1. Then The Bird of Time (1912) and The Broken Wing (1917).
2. The Sceptred Flute (1928) is a compilation; The Feather of the Dawn (1961) was posthumous.

Short trick: Golden (1905) → Bird (1912) → Broken (1917) → Feather (1961).

Concept: Diglossia (Ferguson, 1959): two varieties of the same language – a High (formal) and a Low (informal) – used in different social domains.

1. E.g. Classical vs colloquial Arabic; Swiss German vs Standard German.
2. Bilingualism/multilingualism involve two or more different languages, not forms of one language.

Short trick: Di-glossia = two 'tongues' of ONE language.