UGC NTA NET/JRF Exam, June-2020 ENGLISH (Shift-I)

Leviathan or The Matter, Forme and Power of a Commonwealth Ecclesiastical and Civil is a book written by Thomas Hobbs and published in 1651. In this books chapter (IV) 'Of Speech' Thomas Hobbs has given the reference - "And therefore in geometry, (which is the only science that it hath pleased God hitherto to bestow of man kind), men begin at settling the significations of their words........."

"My First Acquaintance with Poets" is an essay written by William Hazlitt in The Liberal in 1823. As a painter paints a picture portraying all the nuances on his canvas, Hazlitt depicts all the minute details of the Romantic age and gives a beautiful depiction of two representative bards of the age. Hazlitt gives a comprehensive sketch of a period in the life of William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

"The Decay of Lying – An Observation" is an essay by Oscar Wilde included in his collection of essays titled Intentions Annotated, published in 1891. This is a significantly revised version of the article that first appeared in the January 1889 issue of the Nineteenth Century. Some of the important quotes are-
→"Life imitates Arts for more than art imitates life".
→ "Paradox though it may seem - and paradoxes are always dangerous things - it is none the less true that life imitates arts for more than art imitates life".

"Pale Fire" is a 1962 novel by Vladimir Nabokov. It consists of a long poem and a commentary on it by an insane pedant. The 999 line poem in heroic couplets upon which the novel is centred is the masterwork of an academic, John Shade. The Nabokov authority Brian Boyd has called it "Nabokov's most perfect novel", and the critic Harold Bloom called it "The surest demonstration of its own genius".

"Snow White" is a post modernist novel by author Donald Barthelme published in 1967 by Athenaeum Books. The book inverts the fairy tale of the same name by highlighting the form by discussing the different expectations and compromises the characters makes to survive in their world. This is done through Barthelme's fragmentary rhetoric and discourse, by shifting perspectives from the seven "dwarves" or Snow White herself, as well as the wicked step-mother "Jane".

"The Brothers Karamazov" is the final novel by Russian author Fyodor Dostoevsky. Fyodor Dostoevsky's final novel, The Brothers Karamazov, has rightly earned its place among the greatest books of all time. In the novel when Zasima returns to his cell, Fyodor is relishing his attack on Miusov, who flatters himself as an intellectual in the enlightened, European style. The conversation turns to Ivan's recent editorial on the ecclesiastical courts, the one that caused such a scandal before he left Moscow to return to his father's home.

"The Adventure of the Musgrove Ritual" is a short story by Arthur Conan Doyle, featuring his fictional detective Sherlock Holmes. The story was originally published in 'The Strand Magazine" in the United Kingdom in May 1893, and in Harper's weekly in the United States on 13th May 1893. It was collected in The Memoirist of Sherlock Holmes. The Adventure of the Musgrove Ritual shares elements with two Edgar Allan Poe Tales : "The Gold Bug" and "The Cask of Amontillado".

Bleak House is a novel by Charles Dickens, first published as a 20-episode serial between March 1852 and September 1853. The novel has many characters and several sub-plots and is told partly by the novels heroine, Esther Summerson and the partly by omniscient narrator Harold Skimpole who is a friend of Jarndyce "in the habit of sponging his friends" (Nuttall). He is irresponsible, selfish, amoral and without remorse.

"A Fragment of a Novel" is an unfinished 1819 vampire horror story written by Lord Byron. The story also known as "A Fragment" and "The Burial : A Fragment", was one of the first in English to feature a vampire theme. The main character was Augustus Darvell. John William Polidori based his novella 'The Vampyre" (1819) originally attributed in print to Lord Byron himself. The story was the result of the meeting that Byron had in the summer of 1816 with Percy Bysshe Shelley where a "ghost writing" contest was proposed. This contest was also what led to the certain of Frankenstein according to Shelley's 1818 Preface to the novel.

Chaman Nahal commonly known as C. Nahal, also known as Chaman Nahal Azadi, was an Indian born writer of English Literature. He was widely considered as one of the best exponents of Indian writing in English and is known for his work, Azadi, which is set on India's Independence and her partition. He is also known for his depiction of Gandhi as a complex character with human failings.