UNIT 4 — NON-FICTIONAL PROSE
**All Previous Year Questions from Your Uploaded Files
(Answers + Explanations + Citations)**
1. “All Rising to Great Place is by a _____ staire.” — Francis Bacon
D-30-2
(A) Murky
(B) Winding
(C) Crooked
(D) Sinister
✔ Answer: (C) Crooked
✔ Explanation
From Bacon’s essay “Of Great Place”, the line highlights the moral compromises and political manipulations needed to rise to positions of power.
2. What is Practical Criticism?
J-30-16-III _English
(1) Close analysis of texts to reveal political meaning
(2) A movement to make criticism more relevant
(3) Close analysis of poems without external information
(4) The study of ambiguity
✔ Answer: (3) Close analysis of poems without reference to external information
✔ Explanation
Introduced by I. A. Richards, practical criticism refers to text-focused analysis, ignoring biography and historical context.
3. Which of the following does NOT describe the practices of feminist literary criticism?
J-30-16-III _English
(1) Recuperates female writers ignored by canon
(2) Critiques construction of gender
(3) Argues that traditional canon is justified
(4) Rejects essentialising “male” and “female”
✔ Answer: (3)
✔ Explanation
Feminist criticism questions the patriarchal canon; it does not justify it.
4. Jeremy Collier’s 1698 pamphlet attacking the immorality of the English stage targeted which writer?
D-30-2
(A) William Congreve
(B) John Dryden
(C) John Vanbrugh
(D) William Wycherley
✔ Answer: (A) William Congreve
✔ Explanation
Congreve’s witty comedies were condemned by Collier for promoting licentiousness and indecency, sparking the debate on moral function of literature.
5. Philosophy of Symbolic Forms is a work by ________.
(Philosophical prose; appears in prose-related questions)
D-30-2
(A) Humboldt
(B) Ernst Cassirer
(C) Kant
(D) Vico
✔ Answer: (B) Ernst Cassirer
✔ Explanation
Cassirer’s three-volume philosophical prose work develops the idea that human culture is created and mediated by symbolic systems—myth, art, language, science.
6. Surrealism is associated with ________.
(Not strictly prose-only, but part of movements influencing modern prose, essays, manifestos)
D-30-2
(A) Ernst Cassirer
(B) Tristan Tzara
(C) Henrik Ibsen
(D) André Breton
✔ Answer: (D) André Breton
✔ Explanation
Breton authored the Surrealist Manifesto (1924), a major work of experimental prose theory.
7.
Identify the poet, translator, publisher and essayist who founded a press in the 1950s called Writers’ Workshop and provided a publishing outlet for Indians writing in English.
(1) P. Lal
(2) A. K. Mehrotra
(3) Vinay Dharwadkar
(4) A. K. Ramanujan
✔ Correct Answer: (1) P. Lal
Explanation
-
P. Lal (Purushottam Lal) founded Writers’ Workshop, Calcutta, in 1958, which became one of the most influential small presses in India.
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It published the early works of major Indian English writers such as
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Nissim Ezekiel
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Arun Kolatkar
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Keki Daruwalla
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Jayanta Mahapatra
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A. K. Ramanujan (early translations)
-
J-30-16-III _English
✔ Answer: P. Lal
P. Lal founded Writers’ Workshop (Calcutta), famous for producing early Indian English prose, essays, translations, and poetry.
8. Which work by Franz Kafka is also known as The Man Who Disappeared?
(Autobiographical fiction/non-fiction blend)
J-30-16-III _English
(1) The Castle
(2) “Metamorphosis”
(3) “In the Penal Colony”
(4) Amerika
✔ Answer: (4) Amerika
✔ Explanation
Kafka’s unfinished novel Amerika (also titled Der Verschollene) blends satire, social critique, and autobiographical elements.
9. Which statement best describes the shift at the Restoration (1660)?
(Relevant because Restoration essays, pamphlets, prose debates emerge from this shift)
J-30-16-III _English
(1) Catholic monarchy → parliamentary democracy
(2) Atheistic oligarchy → deistic squirearchy
(3) Puritan Commonwealth → aristocratic Anglican monarchy
(4) Parliamentary democracy → Catholic tyranny
✔ Answer: (3)
✔ Explanation
With Charles II’s return, England shifted from Puritan rule to an Anglican monarchy, enabling the revival of prose, journalism, diaries, coffee-house essays.
10. In Carlyle’s Sartor Resartus, what form is used?
(This question appears in fiction section but Sartor Resartus is largely philosophical prose.)
English_English
✔ Answer: Autobiography of a fictional philosopher edited by a pseudo-biographer
✔ Explanation
A major work of Victorian experimental prose, mixing satire, philosophy, and metafiction.
11. Who said: “All modern American literature comes from one book called Huckleberry Finn”?
This appears in fiction, but often classified under non-fiction prose criticism.
J-30-16-III _English
✔ Answer: Ernest Hemingway
✔ Explanation
Hemingway’s statement is part of American literary criticism and appears frequently in Prose/Non-fiction units.
12. In his essay “From Work to Text,” Roland Barthes makes several statements about the nature of the text.
Which of the following statements are correct?
I. The text is singular.
II. The text can be held in the hand.
III. The text is held in language.
IV. The text is a methodological field.
Choose the correct combination:
(1) I and III
(2) II and IV
(3) III and IV
(4) III and II
Correct Answer: (3) III and IV
Explanation
✔ III. “The text is held in language.” — TRUE
Barthes says a text exists not as a physical object but as a play of signifiers within language.
✔ IV. “The text is a methodological field.” — TRUE
Barthes defines the text as a methodological field, a space of production, interpretation, and plurality.
13. In The Spectator, Addison describes the purpose of his essays as—
(A) “to reform the stage”
(B) “to enliven morality with wit and to temper wit with morality”
(C) “to introduce classical tragedy into English letters”
(D) “to defend aristocratic tastes against the middle class”
✔ Correct Answer: (B)
Explanation:
Addison and Steele aimed to create a moral yet entertaining prose style. In Spectator No. 10, Addison states the goal:
“to enliven morality with wit, and to temper wit with morality.”
He wanted to refine public taste and instruct a growing middle-class readership.
14. Who among the following is the author of the essay A Modest Proposal, a masterclass in satirical prose?
(A) Oliver Goldsmith
(B) Jonathan Swift
(C) Daniel Defoe
(D) Samuel Johnson
✔ Correct Answer: (B)
Explanation:
Swift’s A Modest Proposal (1729) uses ironic exaggeration—suggesting the Irish poor sell their babies as food—to expose British colonial oppression and economic mismanagement. It is a landmark in political satire.
Goldsmith, Defoe, and Johnson wrote important prose, but none comparable to this satirical essay.
15. In Of Studies, Francis Bacon argues that reading—
(A) Makes a man melancholic and unfit for action
(B) Must be avoided unless one intends to become a scholar
(C) “Maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man”
(D) Is best suited for women and children
✔ Correct Answer: (C)
Explanation:
In Bacon’s essay “Of Studies”, reading, speaking, and writing are presented as complementary intellectual practices:
- Reading = fullness of knowledge
- Conversation = readiness of mind
- Writing = accuracy
Bacon never suggests reading makes one melancholic or that women should avoid study.
16. Which of the following statements BEST reflects Montaigne’s contribution to prose?
(A) He perfected the neoclassical heroic style
(B) He invented the personal reflective essay
(C) He initiated the realist novel form
(D) He established the prose romance
✔ Correct Answer: (B)
Explanation:
Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592) originated the personal, exploratory essay, combining anecdote, self-examination, skepticism, and philosophical reflection.
He did not write heroic prose, novels, or romances.
17. In A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, Mary Wollstonecraft argues that women are inferior mainly because—
(A) Nature has endowed them with weaker intellect
(B) They are denied education
(C) They are physically weaker
(D) Religion assigns them a secondary role
✔ Correct Answer: (B)
Explanation:
Wollstonecraft asserts that women appear inferior not by nature but by lack of education. Their intellectual potential is suppressed by social structures. She attacks the idea that weakness is inherent or divinely ordained.
18. Which of the following works is a non-fictional autobiography structured as a pilgrimage of the soul?
(A) Confessions – St. Augustine
(B) Sartor Resartus – Carlyle
(C) Ecce Homo – Nietzsche
(D) Praeterita – Ruskin
✔ Correct Answer: (A)
Explanation:
St. Augustine’s Confessions is a spiritual autobiography charting his journey from sin to divine grace.
- Carlyle’s Sartor Resartus is fictional-metaphoric.
- Nietzsche’s Ecce Homo is philosophical self-commentary.
- Ruskin’s Praeterita is an autobiographical memoir, not a spiritual pilgrimage.
19. In On Liberty, John Stuart Mill’s central principle concerns—
(A) Moral education
(B) Freedom of trade
(C) Harm principle and individual liberty
(D) The rise of socialism
✔ Correct Answer: (C)
Explanation:
Mill’s harm principle states that the only reason to restrict a person’s liberty is to prevent harm to others. This is foundational to liberal political prose.
He is not writing about socialism or trade policy.
20. Which statement best describes Orwell’s prose style?
(A) Ornate, classical, and symbolist
(B) Simple, direct, political, and anti-totalitarian
(C) Dense, metaphysical, and allegorical
(D) Ambiguous, playful, and postmodern
✔ Correct Answer: (B)
Explanation:
Orwell advocated plain English, clarity, and political purpose. His essays like “Politics and the English Language” argue against euphemism and propaganda.
He is not ornate or postmodern.
21. Who wrote the essay “Tradition and the Individual Talent,” which argues for the impersonality of the artist?
(A) Matthew Arnold
(B) I. A. Richards
(C) T. S. Eliot
(D) Walter Pater
✔ Correct Answer: (C)
Explanation:
Eliot’s essay articulates:
- Tradition as a dynamic structure of past works
- Impersonality theory: poetry is not expression of personality but escape from it
Arnold focused on culture; Richards on criticism; Pater on aestheticism.
22. In Culture and Anarchy, Matthew Arnold defines “culture” as—
(A) The celebration of technological progress
(B) The love of “the best that has been thought and said”
(C) The rejection of religion in favour of science
(D) The promotion of aristocratic privilege
✔ Correct Answer: (B)
Explanation:
Arnold famously defines culture as:
“a pursuit of our total perfection by means of getting to know…the best which has been thought and said.”
He sees culture as moral and intellectual elevation, not technology or aristocracy.