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Civil Services (Main) ತಸ કા
Examination, 2026
ENGLISH
PAPER—I
( LITERATURE )
Time Allowed : Three Hours Maximum Marks : 250
QUESTION PAPER SPECIFIC INSTRUCTIONS
Please read each of the following instructions carefully before
attempting question
There are EIGHT questions divided in two Sections.
Candidate has to attempt FIVE questions in all.
Question Nos. 1 and 5 are compulsory and out of the remaining, THREE are to be attempted
choosing at least ONE from each Section.
The number of marks carried by a question/part is indicated against it.
Answers must be written in ENGLISH.
Word limit in questions, wherever specified, should be adhered to.
Attempts of questions shall be counted in sequential order. Unless struck off, attempt of a
question shall be counted even if attempted partly. Any page or portion of the page left blank
in the Question-cum-Answer Booklet must be clearly struck off.
KVMS-U-ENG/27 1 (೫೫.೪.
1. Write short notes on the following in about 200 words each :
(a)
(b)
(0
(6)
(6)
SECTION—A
Conventions of epic poetry
King Lear as a Shakespearean tragic hero
Wordsworth’s philosophy of nature
Use of satire in a mock-epic
Emergence of realism in the Victorian novel
2. Answer all of the following :
10x5=50
(a) Discuss the title of The Tempest. How are the plot and the relationships in the
play tempestuous? 20
(b) John Donne “displays an astonishing variety of attitudes, viewpoints and
feelings on the subject of love and religion”. Discuss. 15
(c) Examine the idea of self-deception in A Doll’s House. 15
3. Answer all of the following :
(a) John Milton recasts the epic genre as well as epic heroism in Paradise Lost.
Discuss with reference to the books prescribed for your study. 20
(b) In Memoriam is intensely personal yet expresses the doubts of Tennyson’s age.
Explain. 15
(c) How does Romantic poetry rebel against the norms of neo-classical writing? 15
4. Answer ail of the following :
(a) What is meant by the ‘flowering’ of the Renaissance in literary terms? Discuss
with respect to Renaissance drama. 20
(b) The critical impulse in Restoration satires was reformatory rather than
revolutionary. Discuss with reference to The Rape of the Lock. 15
(c) How does Wordsworth deploy “the language really used by men” in his poetry?
Explain with examples from his poems. 15
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SECTION—B
5. Analyse the following poem critically and answer all the questions that follow :
1055-50
The sea is calm tonight.
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits—on the French coast the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window, sweet is the night air !
Only, from the long line of spray
Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land,
Listen ! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.
Sophocles long ago .
Heard it on the Aegean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.
The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now 1 only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.
Ah, love, let us be true
To one another ! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.
(a) Explain the symbolism of the sea.
(b) What is the poet mourning?
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(c) What does the poet invest his hopes in?
(97 Explain the phrase “ignorant armies clash by night”.
(e) How does the poet build the mood of the poem? Comment on the imagery of
the poem.
6. Answer all of the following :
(a) Jonathan Swift transports the reader to strange imaginary lands to vex and
unsettle assumptions about the human world. Discuss. 20
(b) Analyse how Dickens offers a critique of capitalism in Hard Times. 15
(c) Explore Tess of the d’Urbervilles as a critique of sexual violence, misogyny and
victim-blaming. 15
7. Answer all of the following :
(a) How do Maggie Tulliver and Elizabeth Bennet represent contrasting models of
female selfhood in the nineteenth century novel? 20
(b) Is Huckleberry Finn a realist novel or does it move beyond realism into satire
and moral allegory? 15
(c) The growth of the print industry, and of the literate population contributed to
the rise of the English novel. Elucidate. 15
8. Answer all of the following :
(a) How is Fielding’s Tom Jones “a comic epic poem in prose”? 20
(b) Critically analyse Pride and Prejudice as a timeless critique of social pressures
and as a search for the self within a mundane life. 15
(c) Explore how The Mill on the Floss depicts the complexities of familial
relationships through the characters of Maggie and Tom Tulliver. 12
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