TS SET Paper 2 Mock Test - 10 (English) - TS TET MCQ

The correct answer is 'Your'.

 Key Points

• In English, "thy" is an archaic or old-fashioned form of the possessive adjective "your".
• It's used to address someone directly, indicating possession or association.
• In the context of the poem 'Koel', the poet uses "thy" to address the cuckoo bird, adding a sense of intimacy and immediacy to the narrative.
• The usage of "thy" gives the poem a lyrical, poetic quality, enhancing the depth and resonance of its message.

Therefore, the correct answer is Option 3.

The correct answer is 'Untouchable'.

Key Points

• Groundbreaking Subject Matter: "Untouchable," published in 1935, focuses on the life of Bakha, a young sweeper who belongs to the untouchable caste, presenting a harrowing account of a day in his life and the constant humiliations he endures.
• Human Dignity and Social Reform: Anand's narrative brings to the forefront the inhuman practice of untouchability, advocating for dignity, equality, and social reform.
• Literary Realism and Innovation: The novel is celebrated for its realism, detailed portrayal of the protagonist’s thoughts and feelings, and for employing a stream of consciousness style that was innovative for its time in Indian English literature.
• International Recognition: "Untouchable" received critical acclaim not just in India, but internationally, drawing attention to caste discrimination and contributing to its discourse globally.
• Influence and Legacy: Mulk Raj Anand's work had a profound impact on Indian literature, influencing many generations of writers and social reformers in their fight against caste discrimination.

Therefore, the correct answer is 'Option 2'.

Additional Information

• Option 1: Coolie is another important novel by Anand which highlights the life of a young boy and his struggle against the social and economic exploitation of his time.
• Option 3: The Village is yet another influential work by Anand, showcasing the life in a Punjabi village and the social changes occurring in India.
• Option 4: The Big Heart is centered around the life of an artisan community, focusing on their struggles and the impact of industrialization.

The correct answer is 'Antonio Gramsci'.

Key Points

• Antonio Gramsci, an Italian Marxist philosopher and political theorist, introduced the concept of "cultural hegemony," which has become foundational in Cultural Studies.
• Cultural hegemony refers to the dominance of a culturally diverse society by the ruling class, who manipulate the culture of that society—the beliefs, explanations, perceptions, and values—so that their imposed, ruling-class worldview becomes the accepted cultural norm.
• Gramsci theorized that the state and ruling capitalist class use cultural institutions to maintain power in a capitalist society. This power is not only maintained through violence and political and economic coercion but also through the active consent of the governed.
• His work emphasized that the proletariat's engagement in intellectual and cultural struggle is vital for overcoming the ruling class's cultural hegemony and achieving political power.
• Gramsci's prison notebooks, where he formulated his theories, have had a profound impact on cultural studies, sociology, political science, and education.

Therefore, the correct answer is 'Option 1'.

Additional Information

• Stuart Hall, Michel Foucault, and Raymond Williams are influential figures in Cultural Studies but did not introduce the concept of "cultural hegemony".
• Stuart Hall is known for his work on race, ethnicity, and identity, Foucault for his theories on power, knowledge, and discourse, and Williams for his contributions to the analysis of culture and society.

The Fairie Queene is a religious allegory by Edmund Spenser, written as an epic poem, although left unfinished. It was constituted in six parts and each book represents a specific virtue. The Book 1 narrates the story of Redcrosse Knight, who represents virtue of Holiness.

The story come to an end in canto 12, when The Knight defeats the Dragon and relieved the kingdom from his terror. The Red crosse Knight got engaged to Una with blessings of her Parents and leave to fulfill his duty.

Spenser use a metaphor of “a ship filled with jolly mariners” in the end to describe the relationship between the tale and its readers. In words of Spenser:

Now strike your sailes ye iolly Mariners,

For we be come vnto a quiet rode,

Where we must land some of our passengers,

And light this wearie vessell of her lode

The correct answer is 'Romanticism'.

Key Points

• Romanticism was a literary and artistic movement that spanned the late 18th to the mid-19th century, placing a strong emphasis on emotional depth, the beauty and mystery of nature, and the significance of individual experience and expression.
• Emotional intensity is a hallmark of Romantic literature and art, with creatives striving to evoke strong feelings and conjure vivid imagery to connect deeply with audiences on an emotional level.
• Nature, in Romanticism, is not just a backdrop for stories but a central character. It is revered and depicted as a source of solace, inspiration, and wisdom, often contrasted with the industrialized, urban world.
• The focus on Individualism and personal subjectivity during the Romantic period marked a departure from the Enlightenment's emphasis on reason and collective societal progress. Romantics valued personal freedom, the exploration of the self, and the expression of one's innermost thoughts and desires.
• The movement was also characterized by a fascination with the unconventional, the supernatural, and the sublime—elements that were often woven into the exploration of nature and the self.

Therefore, the correct answer is 'Option 3'.

Additional Information:

• Imagism (Option 1) is a movement that came later, focusing on clarity, precision, and economy of language. It is characterized by vivid imagery and clear, sharp language.
• Symbolism (Option 2) was prevalent at the end of the 19th century and emphasized the use of symbols to represent ideas and emotions, often in a mysterious or abstract manner.
• Aestheticism (Option 4) arose in the late 19th century with the motto "Art for art's sake," focusing on the pursuit of beauty and the creation of art free from moral, political, or utilitarian considerations.

Michael Roberts’ (1902-48) Faber Book of Modern Verse was first published in 1936 and is considered as the most important and influential anthologies of the twentieth century. It canonized modern poetry and poets for quite some further decades. The book saw the publication of three more editions by Anne Ridler, Donald Hall and Peter Porter.

The collection included Roberts’ awareness of the poetry scene, and his sense of the modern movement within it. He opted for poets who would "influence the future development of poetry and language". However, he excluded the Georgian poets like Edmund Blunden and Walter de la Mare because as they "seem to me to have written good poems without having been compelled to make any notable development of poetic technique".

The collection begins with the poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins. Some of the other poets who find a place in the 1936 edition are W. B. Yeats, T. E. Hulme, Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot and Harold Monro.

A Cursor Mundi is a Middle-English poem of nearly 30,000 lines containing a sort of summary of universal history. From the large number of manuscripts in which it is preserved,it must have been exceptionally popular. It was originally written, as certain peculiarities of construction and vocabulary clearly show, somewhere in the north of England, but of the author nothing can be learnt except the fact, which he himself tells us, that he was a cleric.

II and IV

The correct answer is 'The concept of an ideal, imaginary island society'.

Key Points

• Origin of the term "Utopia": More coined the term "Utopia" from Greek origins, meaning "no place" or "nowhere," to describe an imaginary island with a perfect socio-political and legal system.
• Critique of Contemporary Society: Through his description of Utopia, More indirectly critiques the social, political, and economic issues of 16th-century Europe, offering a conceptual alternative that challenges the status quo.
• Social and Political Organization: The society on the island of Utopia is characterized by communal ownership of property, a welfare state, religious tolerance, and a system that prioritizes the welfare of the community above individual wealth or power.
• Influence on Later Utopian and Dystopian Literature: "Utopia" laid the groundwork for subsequent utopian and dystopian literature, inspiring centuries of writers to explore ideal societies and the implications of attempting to realize such societies.
• Philosophical Reflections: More's work blurs the lines between reality and fiction, encouraging readers to reflect on the nature of happiness, justice, and the possibility of an ideal society in a flawed world.

Therefore, the correct answer is 'Option 3'.

Additional Information

• Option 1: While "Utopia" offers a critique of many aspects of European society, it is not specifically focused on colonization.
• Option 2: Although it depicts a society with socialist features, the term "socialist" was not used by More and is anachronistic in this context.
• Option 4: There is no exploration of deep-sea civilizations in "Utopia"; the focus is on the fictional island society.

Writers’ Workshop is a literary publisher founded by the poet-professor P. Lal in Kolkata in 1958. Over the next few decades, it provided a publishing outlet for Indians, writing in English and published works of many new authors of post-independence urban literature. It gave encouragement to new authors and many of them later became famous in their field.

A. K. Mehrotra is a well-known poet, anthologist, literary critic and translator of India. His poetry contained in collections such as Middle Earth, Nine enclosures and The transfiguring places and noted for their innovative exploration of modern concerns and manners of depiction.

Vinay Dharwadkar is the author of a book of poems, Sunday at the Lodi Gardens, and an editor of The Oxford Anthology of Modern Indian Poetry also a Co-editor of The Collected Poems of A. K. Ramanujan

A. K. Ramanujan is an Indian poet and scholar of Indian literature who wrote in both English and Kannada. He was also a translator of Kannada works and playwright of English Language.

With the English Civil War having broken out in earnest in June 1642, the Long Parliament was now led primarily by Puritans, who viewed the theatre as centres of vice. On 2nd September, an ordinance was passed that ordered theatres to close for the duration of the war.

The correct answer is 'D.H. Lawrence'.

Key Points

• D.H. Lawrence's novel "Lady Chatterley's Lover" was famously the subject of an obscenity trial in the UK in 1960 due to its explicit descriptions of sex.
•  While Lawrence himself was not alive to be charged, his work was at the center of the legal case.
• While Oscar Wilde was indeed tried and convicted, his charges were related to indecency for his homosexuality, not specifically the content of his works.
• Thomas Hardy and Ernest Hemingway faced controversy and censorship for the content of some of their works, but neither was formally charged with obscenity.

Therefore, the correct answer is Option 3.

The correct answer is 'Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man" by Marshall McLuhan'.

Key Points

• "Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man" by Marshall McLuhan, first published in 1964, is seminal in Cultural Studies for its exploration of the effects of media on individuals and society.
• McLuhan introduced the concept of the medium being the message, suggesting that the medium through which content is conveyed affects society more profoundly than the content itself.
• He famously classified media as either "hot" or "cool" based on the level of participation required from the audience, influencing how media studies approached audience engagement.
• McLuhan's work predicted the global village concept, foreseeing the world connected through an electronic nervous system, prefiguring the internet and its implications on global communication.
• McLuhan's ideas were ahead of their time, providing the foundational language and framework for discussing how media technology shapes perception, society, and culture.

Therefore, the correct answer is 'Option 1'.

Additional Information

• "Culture and Society" by Raymond Williams and "Mythologies" by Roland Barthes are also significant in Cultural Studies but focus more on cultural forms and semiotics, respectively, than on the media's societal impacts as McLuhan's work does.
• "The Society of the Spectacle" by Guy Debord deals with the concept of the spectacle in society but does not specifically address the media's role in shaping public consciousness as McLuhan's work does.

The correct answer is 'Both Assertion and Reason are true, and Reason is the correct explanation of Assertion'.

Key Points

• Freytag's Pyramid is indeed a structure often applied to analyze the plot sequence of stories and plays.
• The five critical components - exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, and denouement - rightly encapsulate the narrative arc that many classical and modern works follow.
• This model helps dissect and understand the progression and the narrative mechanics at play within a story.
• It allows both writers and critics to visualize a narrative's construction, ensuring a cohesive and compelling development from beginning to end.
• Exposition introduces settings and characters; rising action builds tension; climax is the turning point; falling action leads towards resolution, and denouement ties up loose ends, offering closure.

The Duchess of Malfi (originally published as The Tragedy of the Dutchesse of Malfy) is a Jacobean revenge tragedy play written by the English dramatist John Webster.

Published in 1623, the play is loosely based on events that occurred between 1508 and 1513 surrounding Giovanna d'Aragona, Duchess of Amalfi. As in the play, she secretly married Antonio Beccadelli di Bologna after the death of her first husband Alfonso I Piccolomini, Duke of Amalfi.

The play begins as a love story, when the Duchess marries beneath her class and ends as a nightmarish tragedy as her two brothers undertake their revenge, destroying themselves in the process. The Jacobean drama continued the trend of stage violence and horror set by Elizabethan tragedy, under the influence of Seneca. The complexity of some of the play's characters, particularly Bosola and the Duchess, and Webster's poetic language have led many critics to consider The Duchess of Malfi among the greatest tragedies of English Renaissance drama.

Ferdinand – The Duke of Calabria and twin brother of the Duchess. Unlike his rational brother the Cardinal, Ferdinand has rages and violent outbursts disproportionate to the perceived offense. As a result of his regret for hiring Bosola to kill the Duchess, he gradually loses his sanity—he believes he is a wolf and digs up graves.

The correct answer is 'Ranulf Higden'

Key Points

• Ranulf Higden, a 14th-century chronicler and monk, is the author of the 'Polychronicon', an important work of prose during the Age of Chaucer.
• The 'Polychronicon' is a universal history, from the creation of the world until the 1350s, written in Latin.
• It was later translated into Middle English by John of Trevisa, making it accessible to a broader audience.
• While Chaucer, Langland, and Gower are all significant writers of the period, they are more renowned for their poetry.

Therefore, the correct answer is Option 4

The correct answer is 'A spy'.

Key Points

• Aphra Behn, before her writing career took off, had served King Charles II as a spy in Antwerp during the Anglo-Dutch War.
• While her spy mission was not particularly successful (and led to a stint in debtors' prison), this part of her life has added an aura of intrigue and adventure to her reputation.
• There's no historical evidence to suggest that Behn was a diplomat, an actress, or a painter.

Therefore, the correct answer is Option 2.

The correct answer is 'The regulation of social bodies and populations'.

Key Points

• Definition of Biopower: Michel Foucault introduced the concept of biopower to describe the techniques and strategies by which human life processes are managed under regimes of authority over knowledge, power, and subjectivity.
• Control over Populations: Biopower focuses on the management of populations, including birth rates, mortality, health policies, and the regulation of diseases, emphasizing how power over life extends beyond the disciplinary control of individual bodies to entire populations.
• Normalization of Society: Through biopower, Foucault illustrates how regulatory mechanisms are used to normalize society, employing statistical means to segregate, categorize, and control populations.
• Link to Governmentality: Biopower is closely linked to Foucault's concept of governmentality, which explores the art of governing beyond merely political doctrine, involving a broad array of institutions, practices, and knowledge that aim at shaping, guiding, and managing the behavior of populations.
• Influence on Contemporary Issues: The concept of biopower is highly pertinent in contemporary discussions on public health, bioethics, and the regulation of bodies, providing a critical lens through which to view the intersection of power, knowledge, and life itself.

Therefore, the correct answer is 'Option 2'.

Additional Information

• Option 1: While Judith Butler's work on gender performativity does involve the creation and control of gender identities, Foucault's concept of biopower is more broadly concerned with populations rather than gender specifically.
• Option 3: Foucault indeed explored the development of modern penal systems, particularly in "Discipline and Punish," but this is more directly related to his theories on discipline rather than biopower.
• Option 4: Although Foucault critiqued various societal structures, his concept of biopower is not specifically focused on the critique of capitalist economic systems.

The correct answer is 'Both Assertion and Reason are true, and Reason is the correct explanation of Assertion'.

Key Points

• The Jazz Age, a term coined by F. Scott Fitzgerald, refers to the 1920s in the United States, a period known for its vibrant culture and musical innovation, particularly in jazz.
• Jazz music emerged as a distinctive genre during this era, reflecting African American cultural influences and a break from traditional musical forms.
• The invention and subsequent widespread adoption of the radio during the 1920s played a pivotal role in bringing jazz music from its roots in New Orleans and other locales to a national audience.
• Radios became a household staple, and stations frequently broadcasted live jazz performances, making jazz music an integral part of American culture and solidifying its popularity across the country.
• This period saw legendary jazz musicians such as Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, and Bessie Smith rise to prominence, with the radio serving as a crucial platform for their exposure.
• The synergy between the jazz movement and radio technology facilitated a mutual growth; jazz benefitted from increased exposure, while the allure of jazz programming helped fuel the radio's popularity.

The assertion that, The act of reading a text is both determinate and indeterminate is true as the act of reading a text include not only the words or sentences written on but it include the guess or the different perspectives of the reader of different types.

As reading shouldn’t be seen as a linear process which unfolds clearly over time the unity of the narrative at the pages.

Instead, a more recursive process occurs whereby new knowledge both within the reader and the text modifies old and through which a more general apprehension of the meaning of the text is developed.

So, the reason is also true and true explanation of the assertion.

The correct answer is 'Out of Place'.

Key Points

Edward Said was a Palestinian American academic, political activist, and literary critic.

• He examined literature in light of social and cultural politics and was an outspoken proponent of the political rights of the Palestinian people and the creation of an independent Palestinian state.
• His autobiography, Out of Place (1999), reflects the ambivalence he felt over living in both the Western and Eastern traditions. 
• It is a compassionate and lyrical memoir.
• This memoir explores his feelings of displacement in both his cultural setting and his family, revealing the roots of his intellectual, political, and personal unfolding.

Thus, we can say that the title of Edward Said's autobiography is Out of Place.

Additional Information

• Culture and Imperialism (1993), by Edward Said, is a collection of thematically related essays that trace the connection between imperialism and culture throughout the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries.
• Representations of the Intellectual is based on his 1993 Reith Lectures. In this essay, he explores what it means to be an intellectual today.
  • He argues that the intellectual's role is to represent a message or view not only to, but for, a public, and to do so as an outsider - someone who cannot be co-opted by a government or corporation.
• Orientalism is his best-known work and one of the most influential scholarly books of the 20th century.

The correct answer is 'Food for the rich'.

Key Points

• Swift's "A Modest Proposal" is a satirical essay in which he suggests that the impoverished Irish could alleviate their economic problems by selling their children as food for the rich.
•  This shocking suggestion is Swift's hyperbolic critique of indifferent policies towards the poor.
• Although the other options could theoretically be part of a satirical proposal, in this specific essay, Swift does not suggest using children as laborers, soldiers, or servants.

Therefore, the correct answer is Option 3.

In the second stanza, the speaker longs for the oblivion of alcohol, expressing his wish for wine, "a draught of vintage," that would taste like the country and like peasant dances, and let him "leave the world unseen" and disappear into the dim forest with the nightingale.

The correct answer is 'One Hundred Years of Solitude'.

Key Points

• Defining Magical Realism: "One Hundred Years of Solitude" is widely recognized as a quintessential example of magical realism, a literary style where magical elements are a natural part of an otherwise mundane, realistic environment.
• Epic Tale of the Buendía Family: The novel tells the multi-generational story of the Buendía family, whose patriarch, José Arcadio Buendía, founds the fictional town of Macondo. The narrative weaves between the personal and the historical, exploring themes of love, solitude, destiny, and decay.
• Literary Accomplishments: This work significantly contributed to Gabriel García Márquez winning the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1982, cementing his reputation as one of the greatest writers of the 20th century.
• Global Influence: The book has been translated into dozens of languages, capturing the imagination of readers worldwide and making a profound impact on the global literary landscape.
• Cultural and Political Commentary: Through its blend of the magical and the real, the novel comments on the turbulent history and politics of Latin America, offering a critical yet whimsical examination of human nature and society.

Therefore, the correct answer is 'Option 3'.

Additional Information

• Option 1: Love in the Time of Cholera is another acclaimed novel by Márquez, focusing on an enduring love story.
• Option 2: Chronicle of a Death Foretold is a novella blending non-linear storytelling and magical realism to explore the nature of collective guilt.
• Option 4: The Autumn of the Patriarch delves into the life of a perpetual dictator, representing a critique on tyranny.

The correct answer is 'Both Assertion and Reason are true, and Reason is the correct explanation of Assertion'.

Key Points

• Hemingway was indeed awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954.
• "The Old Man and the Sea" played a significant role in earning him this recognition due to its profound narrative technique and storytelling.
• The novel is a prime example of Hemingway's skill in creating compelling and emotive narratives with minimalistic prose.
• The Nobel Committee praised his ability to create powerful stories that resonate deeply with human emotions and struggles.
• This mastery of storytelling, as exemplified in "The Old Man and the Sea," demonstrates why the assertion and reason are directly connected.

The Two Cultures is the first part of an influential 1959 Rede Lecture by British scientist and novelist C. P. Snow. Its thesis was that "the intellectual life of the whole of western society" was split into the titular two cultures – namely the sciences and the humanities – and that this was a major hindrance to solving the world's problems.

The correct answer is "Importance of social status".

Key Points

• The speaker's mention of his clothing being new highlights a concern for appearances and the material symbols of status, which reflect broader societal values.
• The distress over the 'defilement' of these new clothes by an untouchable's touch suggests that the speaker sees social purity as interconnected with physical cleanliness and appearance.
• This concern underpins the caste system's focus on hierarchy and the markers that signify one's place within that hierarchy, including clothing.
• The emphasis on new clothing being contaminated underscores how caste discrimination infiltrates even mundane aspects of life, reflecting and reinforcing social divisions.
• This part of the episode reveals how caste status is maintained and signaled through material possessions, in this case, clothing, highlighting the superficial yet powerful bases of social stratification.

It is usually assumed that all Gothic novels are much the same, and that the form is defined by the presence of some stock devices. ... As a historical form the Gothic novel flourished between 1764 and 1820; Walpole's The Castle of Otranto and Maturin's Melmoth the Wanderer are its limits of demarcation

The Caretaker is a play in three acts by Harold Pinter. Although it was the sixth of his major works for stage and television, this psychological study of the confluence of power, allegiance, innocence, and corruption among two brothers and a tramp, became Pinter's first significant commercial success.It premiered at the Arts Theatre Club in London's West End on 27 April 1960 and transferred to the Duchess Theatre the following month, where it ran for 444 performances before departing London for Broadway 

The Mimic Men is a novel by V. S. Naipaul a Nobel Prize-winning British writer of Trinidad first published in 1967. The novel Centred on a protagonist, Ralph Singh, an East Indian-West Indian politician from Isabella.

Wide Sargasso Sea is a postcolonial novel by the British author Jean Rhys in 1966. The novel is written as a prequel and response to Charlotte Bronte’s noted novel Jane Eyre.

Indigo is a novel written by Marina Warner published in 1992. The novel is a modernized and altered retelling of William Shakespeare s, famous Romantic comedy The Tempest.

Foe is a novel by South African-born Nobel laureate J. M. Coetzee written in 1986. the famous novel is woven around the existing plot of Robinson Crusoe with the protagonist Susan Barton.