The correct answer is Hans Robert Jauss.

Explanation: Hans Robert Jauss is a central figure in Reception Theory, and he particularly emphasized the social and historical dimensions of how texts are received by readers over time. His concept of Rezeptionsgeschichte (history of reception) explores how a literary work’s meaning evolves based on the changing expectations, values, and cultural contexts of its readers. Jauss argued that literature should be studied not just as a product of its time, but also through the lens of how it is interpreted across different historical moments.

About Other Options:

• Wolfgang Iser focused more on the individual reader’s interaction with the text, introducing the concept of the “implied reader,” but he did not emphasize historical or social contexts as strongly as Jauss.
• Stanley Fish is known for his theory of “interpretive communities,” which does touch on social aspects, but his emphasis is more on how meaning is constructed by groups of readers rather than historical evolution.
• Pierre Bourdieu dealt with cultural production and power structures in society, but his work is more aligned with sociology and cultural theory than with literary reception per se.

The correct answer is poetic misprision.

Explanation: In The Anxiety of Influence, Harold Bloom introduces the concept of clinamen as the first of his six “revisionary ratios.” Clinamen refers to a poetic misreading or swerve—a deliberate and creative deviation by a younger poet from the work of a predecessor. This “misprision” is not a mistake but a strategic reinterpretation, allowing the new poet to assert originality while still being influenced by the earlier figure. It’s Bloom’s way of describing how strong poets wrestle with their literary forebears to make space for their own voice.

About Other Options:

• Poetic hyperbole — This refers to exaggerated expression, not Bloom’s concept of clinamen.
• Poetic sublime — While Bloom discusses the sublime in other contexts, it is not the definition of clinamen.
• Poetic supplement — This term doesn’t appear in Bloom’s taxonomy and doesn’t capture the idea of creative misreading.

The correct answer is Ronald Robertson.

Explanation: The term glocalization—a blend of “globalization” and “localization”—was popularized by sociologist Ronald Robertson. He used it to describe the simultaneous presence of both universalizing and particularizing tendencies in global processes. Robertson emphasized that globalization doesn’t simply erase local cultures but often interacts with them, producing hybrid outcomes that reflect both global and local influences.

About Other Options:

• Francis Fukuyama is best known for his work on political theory and the “end of history” thesis, not for contributions to globalization discourse.
• John Urry focused on mobility, tourism, and the sociology of globalization, but he did not coin or popularize glocalization.
• John Tomlinson has written extensively on cultural globalization, but the specific term glocalization is more closely associated with Robertson.

The correct answer is (b) Diacritics.

Explanation: Diacritics is a quarterly peer-reviewed academic journal established in 1971 at Cornell University and published by Johns Hopkins University Press. It is known for publishing original work in and around critical theory, broadly conceived. The journal provides a platform for exploring contradictions and contemporary criticism without aligning with any single school of thought.

About Other Options:

• Salmagundi is a U.S. quarterly periodical that features cultural criticism, fiction, and poetry, but it does not focus exclusively on critical theory.
• Callaloo is a premier journal dedicated to literature, art, and culture of the African Diaspora, emphasising creative and cultural expression rather than critical theory alone.
• Grand Street was a literary magazine that published fiction, essays, and art, but it is no longer in publication and was not centred on critical theory.

The correct answer is Oscar Wilde, The Decay of Lying.

Explanation: In The Decay of Lying, Oscar Wilde critiques the dominance of realism in literature and art. Through a witty dialogue between two characters, Cyril and Vivian, Wilde argues that realism stifles imagination and creativity, famously declaring that “As a method, realism is a complete failure.” He champions artifice, imagination, and aestheticism over the mere replication of life, positioning lying (in the artistic sense) as a higher form of truth.

About Other Options:

• Virginia Woolf, The Mark on the Wall explores perception and consciousness but does not directly critique realism as a method.
• D. H. Lawrence, Why the Novel Matters defends the novel’s role in expressing human experience but doesn’t dismiss realism outright.
• Mary McCarthy, My Confession is a political and personal reflection, not a theoretical critique of literary realism.

The correct answer is Coleridge.

Explanation: In his 1823 essay My First Acquaintance with Poets, William Hazlitt recounts his early encounter with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, whom he admired deeply. Hazlitt famously described Coleridge as “the only person I ever knew who answered to the idea of a man of genius.” This statement reflects Hazlitt’s awe at Coleridge’s intellectual brilliance, poetic imagination, and philosophical depth, especially during their first meeting when Coleridge preached at a Unitarian chapel in Shrewsbury.

About Other Options:

• Wordsworth was also admired by Hazlitt and appears in the essay, but he did not receive the same singular praise.
• Byron and Shelley, though towering Romantic figures, are not the focus of this essay and were not described in such terms by Hazlitt.

The correct answer is Pale Fire.

Explanation: Pale Fire (1962) by Vladimir Nabokov is a highly innovative and metafictional novel structured around a 999-line poem written by the fictional poet John Shade. The novel includes a Foreword, the poem itself, an extensive Commentary, and an Index, all presented as if edited by Shade’s eccentric neighbor, Charles Kinbote. This layered structure blurs the lines between author, editor, and character, making it a landmark in postmodern literature.

About Other Options:

• Ragtime by E. L. Doctorow is a historical novel set in early 20th-century America, not structured around a poem.
• The Inner Side of the Wind by Milorad Pavić is experimental in form but does not follow the poem-commentary-index format.
• Hourglass by Danilo Kiš is a modernist novel with a fragmented narrative, but again, not built around a poem.

The correct answer is He asserted the value of poetry by focusing on imitation (mimesis) rather than rhetoric.

Explanation: In Poetics, Aristotle champions mimesis—the imitation of action—as the core of poetic art. Unlike Plato, who viewed imitation with suspicion, Aristotle saw it as a natural human activity and a source of learning and pleasure. He argued that poetry, especially tragedy, imitates not just life but universal truths through structured plots and character actions. Rhetoric, while important in persuasive speech, is not central to Aristotle’s theory of poetry.

About Other Options:

• Integrating rhetoric and imitation — This overstates rhetoric’s role in Poetics. Aristotle treats rhetoric and poetics as distinct disciplines.
• Focusing on both rhetoric and imitation — Again, this misrepresents his emphasis. His focus is squarely on imitation as the essence of poetry.
• Giving preference to rhetoric over imitation — This is the opposite of Aristotle’s actual stance. He prioritized mimesis as the defining feature of poetry.

The correct answer is Vaientin Voloshinov.

Explanation: Vaientin Voloshinov, a Russian linguist and Marxist theorist, introduced the concept of “multi-accentuality” in his work Marxism and the Philosophy of Language. He argued that signs are not neutral; instead, they carry an “inner dialectical quality” and an “evaluative accent” that reflects the social and ideological struggles of their time. According to Voloshinov, the meaning of a sign is not fixed but shaped by the class-based and historical context in which it is used. This makes language a dynamic site of ideological contestation.

About Other Options:

• Roland Barthes explored semiotics and the mythologies of signs but did not coin or focus on the idea of multi-accentuality.
• Stuart Hall contributed significantly to cultural studies and encoding/decoding theory, but not this specific concept.
• Jacques Derrida is known for deconstruction and the instability of meaning, yet the phrase “multi-accentuality” and its Marxist framing are not part of his terminology.

The correct answer is Semiotics is a study of sign systems.

Explanation: Semiotics, derived from the Greek word sēmeiotikos (meaning “observant of signs”), is the systematic study of signs and the processes by which they convey meaning. It encompasses all types of sign systems—linguistic, visual, gestural, symbolic, and more—used in human and non-human communication. Pioneers like Ferdinand de Saussure and Charles Sanders Peirce laid the foundation for this field, which explores how meaning is constructed and interpreted across cultures and contexts.

About Other Options:

• Semiotics studies the sound systems of a language— This describes phonology, a subfield of linguistics, not semiotics.
• Semiotics studies human sign system only— Semiotics includes both human and non-human sign systems, such as animal communication or symbolic behaviour in machines.
• Semiotics is a study of non-human sign systems only— This is too narrow; semiotics applies broadly to all sign systems, including human language, media, and cultural symbols.

The correct answer is Marshall McLuhan.

Explanation: Marshall McLuhan, a Canadian communication theorist, coined the phrase “the medium is the message”in his influential 1964 work Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. By this, he meant that the form of a medium—whether it’s print, television, or digital—shapes how the message is perceived, often more significantly than the content itself. For McLuhan, the medium influences human experience and social structures in profound ways, regardless of what it transmits.

About Other Options:

• Raymond Williams was a cultural theorist who critiqued McLuhan’s ideas and emphasized the role of human agency in media.
• Erving Goffman focused on sociology and the presentation of self in everyday life, not media theory in this sense.
• John Fiske was a media scholar who built on McLuhan’s legacy but did not originate this concept.

The correct answer is Noam Chomsky.

Explanation: Noam Chomsky introduced the influential distinction between “competence” and “performance” in his 1965 work Aspects of the Theory of Syntax. According to Chomsky, competence refers to a speaker’s internalised knowledge of the rules of their language—essentially, what they know. Performance, on the other hand, is the actual use of language in real situations, which can be affected by memory limitations, distractions, and other factors. This distinction became foundational in the field of generative grammar and modern linguistics.

About Other Options:

• Noah Webster was a lexicographer best known for his dictionary and spelling reforms, not for theoretical linguistics.
• Steven Pinker is a cognitive psychologist and linguist who has written extensively on language and the mind, but he did not coin these terms.
• Roman Jakobson was a pioneering structuralist and semiotician, but the competence/performance distinction is not attributed to him.

The correct answer is “Apprehension of reality is a construct.”

Explanation: Post-Structuralist criticism challenges the idea of fixed meanings, stable structures, or objective truths. It argues that our understanding of reality is not direct or transparent but is instead constructed through language, culture, and power relations. Thinkers like Derrida and Foucault emphasized that meaning is always shifting and that what we perceive as “reality” is mediated by discourse and interpretation.

About Other Options:

• Definite structures underlie empirical events— This reflects Structuralist thinking, which Post-Structuralism critiques for being too rigid and universal.
• Language is representational— Post-Structuralists reject this idea. They argue that language doesn’t simply mirror reality but actively shapes and distorts it.
• Knowledge operates according to procedures that are axiomatic— This aligns more with positivist or foundationalist views of knowledge, which Post-Structuralism opposes for being overly deterministic.

The correct answer is Lord Cornwallis.

Explanation: Charles Cornwallis, who served as Governor-General of India from 1786 to 1793, is recorded by Sir Thomas Munro as having sought “to make everything as English as possible in a country which resembles England in nothing.” This quote reflects Cornwallis’s deep commitment to reshaping Indian administration, law, and society along British lines. His reforms included the introduction of the Cornwallis Code, which reorganized the civil service and judicial system, and emphasized British legal principles and bureaucratic structures.

About Other Options:

• Lord Bentick is known for his role in promoting English education and abolishing practices like Sati, but he is not associated with this specific quote.
• Lord Hastings focused more on military expansion and political consolidation than cultural Anglicization.
• Lord Wellesley was instrumental in expanding British power through diplomacy and war, but again, this quote is not attributed to him.

The correct answer is La langue is the system of a language.

Explanation: Ferdinand de Saussure, a foundational figure in structural linguistics, distinguished between la langue and parole. La langue refers to the structured system of rules and conventions shared by a speech community—it’s the social, collective aspect of language that makes communication possible. It exists independently of individual usage and is the proper object of linguistic study, according to Saussure.

About Other Options:

• Parole focuses on language as a system at a particular time — Incorrect. Parole refers to individual acts of speech or writing, not a system or a temporal snapshot.
• La langue is the particular instance of speech and writing — Incorrect. That describes parole, not la langue.
• Parole is the study of language over a period of time — Incorrect. That would relate more to diachronic linguistics. Parole is about actual, personal language use, not historical study.

The correct answer is A and D only.

Explanation: In Hamlet’s iconic soliloquy “To be or not to be”, Shakespeare explores the existential dilemma of whether it is better “to be” (to live) or “not to be” (to die). This directly evokes the opposition between life and death(A). Additionally, Hamlet weighs the idea of enduring life’s suffering versus taking action to end it—essentially, the opposition between doing and abstaining from doing (D). This tension between passive endurance and active resistance is central to the soliloquy’s philosophical depth.

About Other Options:

• B (action and emotion): While emotion is certainly present, the soliloquy is more about thought versus action than emotion per se.
• C (affirmation and confirmation): This is not a relevant binary in the context of Hamlet’s speech. The soliloquy doesn’t deal with affirming or confirming anything—it’s about contemplating existence.

The correct answer is (d) Geometry.

Explanation: In Leviathan, Thomas Hobbes identifies geometry as the only science that God has bestowed upon mankind. He admired its clarity, precision, and deductive structure, and sought to model his political philosophy on its logical rigor. Hobbes believed that just as geometry builds truths from self-evident axioms, so too could civil and moral philosophy be constructed from basic principles of human nature and reason.

About Other Options:

• Astronomy was a respected science in Hobbes’s time, but he did not consider it foundational to his political theory.
• Architecture is a practical art, not a deductive science in Hobbes’s framework.
• Occult sciences were viewed with skepticism by Enlightenment thinkers like Hobbes and were not part of his rationalist approach.

The correct answer is The ways in which people show what they mean other than by the words they use.

Explanation: Paralanguage refers to the non-verbal elements of communication used to convey emotion, emphasis, or nuance—such as tone, pitch, volume, pauses, and intonation. It’s not about what is said, but how it is said. For example, the same sentence can express sarcasm, sincerity, or anger depending on the speaker’s vocal cues. Paralanguage helps listeners interpret the speaker’s intent beyond the literal meaning of words.

About Other Options:

• Masking meaning implies deception, which is not the core function of paralanguage.
• Unintended meanings relate more to pragmatics or miscommunication, not paralanguage specifically.
• Silence communicating wrong meanings is too narrow and doesn’t capture the broader scope of paralanguage, which includes vocal features, not just silence.

The correct answer is Lord Amherst.

Explanation: On December 11, 1823, Raja Rammohan Roy wrote a historic letter to Lord Amherst, the then Governor-General of India, urging the British administration to promote modern Western education through the English language. He opposed the establishment of a Sanskrit college in Calcutta, arguing instead for the teaching of subjects like mathematics, science, and philosophy—areas in which European knowledge had advanced significantly. This letter is considered a foundational moment in the movement toward English education in colonial India.

About Other Options:

• Lord Minto served as Governor-General earlier (1807–1813) and was not involved in this specific educational debate.
• Lord Macaulay is famous for his Minute on Indian Education (1835), which came more than a decade later and built upon ideas like those of Rammohan Roy.
• Lord Bentick was Governor-General after Amherst and implemented Macaulay’s recommendations, but he was not the recipient of Roy’s 1823 letter.

The correct answer is religious, philosophical, imaginative.

Explanation: In An Apology for Poetry (also known as The Defence of Poesy), Sir Philip Sidney identifies three broad categories of poetry:

1. Religious poetry, which includes sacred texts and biblical poetry.
2. Philosophical or moral poetry, which teaches ethical lessons and virtues.
3. Imaginative poetry, which delights and instructs through creative invention.

Sidney argues that poetry is superior to both history and philosophy because it combines the instructive power of philosophy with the vividness of storytelling, making it both pleasurable and morally uplifting.

About Other Options:

• Religious, dramatic, romantic — While these are genres of poetry, they don’t reflect Sidney’s specific classification.
• Classical, romantic, neo-classical — These are literary periods or movements, not Sidney’s categories.
• Philosophical, imaginative, narrative — “Narrative” is not one of Sidney’s three; instead, he emphasizes the moral and imaginative functions of poetry.

The correct answer is Ecclesiastical courts.

Explanation: In The Brothers Karamazov, Ivan Karamazov presents a controversial essay that critiques the power and authority of the Church, particularly through the lens of ecclesiastical courts. His argument centers on the idea that the Church’s judicial authority over moral and spiritual matters can become oppressive and manipulative. This theme is most vividly dramatized in the chapter “The Grand Inquisitor”, where Ivan imagines a confrontation between Jesus and a powerful Church figure during the Spanish Inquisition, symbolizing the Church’s control over individual conscience.

About Other Options:

• Transubstantiation and The Eucharist are theological doctrines, but they are not the focus of Ivan’s critique.
• The evils of clergy may be touched upon indirectly, but Ivan’s primary concern is with institutional power, not individual corruption.

The correct answer is John Donne, Henry Vaughan, and Andrew Marvell.

Explanation: These three poets are widely recognized as central figures of the Metaphysical Poets, a group of 17th-century English writers known for their intellectual wit, elaborate metaphors (called conceits), and philosophical exploration of love, religion, and existence. John Donne is often considered the founder of this movement, while Vaughan and Marvell followed in his stylistic footsteps, blending emotion with intellect in their poetry.

About Other Options:

• John Dryden, George Herbert, and Alexander Pope — While George Herbert is indeed a metaphysical poet, Dryden and Pope are more aligned with the Neoclassical tradition and are not typically grouped with the metaphysicals.
• Henry Vaughan, John Dryden, and John Donne — Again, Dryden doesn’t belong in this category, even though Vaughan and Donne do.
• Samuel Johnson, T.S. Eliot, and Herbert Grierson — These are critics and scholars who wrote about metaphysical poetry, not metaphysical poets themselves. Johnson coined the term “metaphysical poets” (somewhat critically), and Eliot and Grierson helped revive interest in them in the 20th century.

The correct answer is Samuel Johnson.

Explanation: In his critical work Lives of the Poets (1783), Samuel Johnson famously criticized blank verse by quoting an unnamed critic who described it as “verse only to the eye,” adding that it “has neither the easiness of prose, nor the melody of numbers.” Johnson believed that rhyme was essential to distinguish poetry from prose and found blank verse lacking in musicality and structure, especially when compared to rhymed verse.

About Other Options:

• John Dryden did experiment with blank verse but did not express this particular criticism.
• Alexander Pope was a staunch advocate of heroic couplets and might have disapproved of blank verse, but he did not make this specific remark.
• Samuel Taylor Coleridge actually defended blank verse and used it masterfully in works like The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Christabel.

The correct answer is Snow White by Donald Barthelme.

Explanation: Donald Barthelme’s Snow White (1967) is a postmodern retelling of the classic fairy tale, known for its experimental style and metafictional techniques. One of its most striking features is a questionnaire addressed directly to the reader, including prompts like “Do you like the story so far? Yes ( ) No ( )”. This device breaks the fourth wall and invites the reader to reflect on their engagement with the narrative, making the reading experience interactive and self-aware.

About Other Options:

• Mantissa by John Fowles is metafictional but doesn’t include a reader questionnaire.
• Waterland by Graham Swift is a layered historical novel, not known for such direct reader interaction.
• If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller by Italo Calvino is famously metafictional and second-person in style, but it doesn’t feature a questionnaire like Barthelme’s novel.

The correct answer is Prof V. K. Gokak.

Explanation: Prof V. K. Gokak was appointed as the first Director of the Central Institute of English (CIE), which was established in 1958 in Hyderabad. This institute later evolved into the Central Institute of English and Foreign Languages (CIEFL) and is now known as the English and Foreign Languages University (EFLU). Gokak was a distinguished scholar in both English and Kannada literature and played a pivotal role in shaping the early academic and institutional vision of the institute.

About Other Options:

• Prof C. D. Narasimhaiah was a noted literary critic and scholar but did not serve as the first director of CIEFL.
• Prof C. J. Daswani contributed significantly to language education and linguistics but was not the founding director.
• Prof K. R. S. Iyengar was a prominent literary historian and academic, yet he also did not hold this inaugural position.