LOYOLA COLLEGE (AUTONOMOUS), CHENNAI – 600 034
M.A. DEGREE EXAMINATION – ENGLISH LITERATURE
SUPPLEMENTARY EXAMINATION – JUNE 2007
EL 4811/4807/4800 – SHAKESPEARE (Contemporary Readings)
Date & Time : 27.06.2007/9.00-12.00 Dept. No.
Max. 100 Marks
PART – A
Answer the following questions in not more than 100 words each
(2 x 10 = 20 marks)
1. “Fair is foul, and foul is fair”
Is there a riddle in the above statement?
2. “Come you spirits
That tend on mortal thoughts! Unsex me,”
Who is the speaker and what is the invocation?
3. “Methought I heard a voice cry ‘sleep no more!
Macbeth does murder sleep?”
Comment on the ‘voice’ and the message.
4. “Our instruments to melancholy bells our wedding cheer to a sad burial feast”.
Account for this sudden turn of events from great joy to tragedy.
5. “God join’d my heart and Romeo’s,
thou our hands”.
Explain the figural meaning in ‘heart’ and ‘hands’.
6. “ keep up your bright swords, for the dew will rust them”
Comment on the temperament of the speaker.
7. “She loved me for the dangers I had pass’d,
And I loved her that she did pity them.
This only is the witch craft I have used:
Who is the speaker? What does he imply?
8. It is the cause, it is the cause, my soul,
Let me not name it to you, you chaste stars!
Explain the underlined words.
9. “I thus neglecting worldly ends, all dedicated
To closeness and the fettering of my mind.
Who is the speaker and what does he refer to?
10. “It you,ll sit down I’ll hear your logs the while;
Who is ‘I’ and ‘you’
2
PART – B
Answer any FIVE of the following in about 200 words each
(8 x 5 = 40 marks)
11. Discuss the love of Romeo and Juliet for each other as true love and not infatuation.
12. Is Petruchio in The Taming of the Shrew a ‘shrew – tamer’?
13. Examine Lear as a tragic hero from the Aristotelian view of tragedy?
14. Do you agree with the critics on Lady Macbeth as one of Shakespeare’s most famous and frightening
female characters”?
15. What are the elements that constitute a Shakespearean Tragedy?
16. How is the theme Nature Vs Nurture treated in The Tempest?
17. What are your impressions of Desdemona’s virtuous disposition?
18. Illustrate the significant role played by Chance and Fate in Othello.
PART – C
Answer the following questions in not more than 300 words each
(20 x 2 = 40 marks)
19. a) Critically examine Macbeth from a New Historicist framework in the contexts of
the institutional power of monarchy and class conditions.
(OR)
b) Attempt an interpretation of Romeo and Juliet from a cultural materialist
perspective of two young people unsuccessfully attempting to emancipate
themselves from parental oppression sanctioned by the social structure.
20. a) Othello enables the fantasy of victimized White womanhood
mperiled by Black
masculinity – Discuss.
(OR)
b) Discuss whether The Tempest is an allegory of Caliban’s liberation or of
Prosperol’s colonial paternalism.
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