English Major, Semester 3
University of Kalyani B.A. English NEP 2020 syllabus, effective July 2023. This Major paper has six credits and 60 end-semester marks.
MAJ301 · English Essay and Short Story
- Unit I, fiction: selected short prose by Kylaash Chunder Dutta, Edgar Allan Poe, Arthur Conan Doyle, Katherine Mansfield, Evelyn Waugh and D. H. Lawrence. Texts include "The Tell-Tale Heart," "A Scandal in Bohemia" and "Bliss."
- Unit II, non-fiction: selected essays and speeches by Francis Bacon, Samuel Pepys, Joseph Addison, Samuel Johnson, John Henry Newman, Rammohun Roy, William Hazlitt, Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King Jr. and E. M. Forster.
- Unit III, history of English prose: the syllabus names readings on Bacon; Pepys and Evelyn; Dennis, Addison and Steele; Johnson; Romantic essayists; Conan Doyle, Stoker and Stevenson; and twentieth-century political prose.
The syllabus also lists MIN301 Essay and Prose Fiction and SEC301 English Language Teaching. Your registered combination determines which papers apply.
Study suggestions
Original prompts for MAJ301. They do not predict the exam.
- Short story: Compare a narrator's reliability in "The Tell-Tale Heart" with the handling of evidence in "A Scandal in Bohemia."
Answer guide
Identify what each narrator knows and withholds, support the comparison with specific scenes, and avoid assuming an unreliable voice makes every described event false.
- Essay: Compare how one prescribed essay and one prescribed speech address their audiences.
Answer guide
Name the texts, audiences and purposes, then trace tone, examples and argument. Cite a precise passage from each.
- Literary history: Place Addison and Johnson in a brief account of the development of English prose.
Answer guide
Locate both in their periods, identify the prose forms they used, and explain a difference in style or purpose with textual support.