English Major, Semester 5
University of Kalyani B.A. English NEP 2020 syllabus. Each Major paper below is six credits and lists 60 end-semester marks.
MAJ501 · Old and Middle English Language and Literature
- Unit I, early English language: Indo-European languages, Scandinavian and Celtic influence, Grimm’s Law, the Norman Conquest and the Great Vowel Shift.
- Unit II, early English literature: the historical and cultural setting of Old and Middle English, poetry and prose, romance and drama.
- Unit III, selected texts: a speech by Hrothgar in Beowulf, Bede’s account of Cædmon, Piers Plowman, the Wife of Bath section in Chaucer’s General Prologue, and a passage from The Book of Margery Kempe.
MAJ502 · English Poetry: Sixteenth to Eighteenth Century
- Unit I, sixteenth-century poems by Thomas Wyatt, Henry Howard, Edmund Spenser and Mary Sidney Herbert.
- Unit II, seventeenth-century poems by William Shakespeare, John Donne, George Herbert, Henry Vaughan, Andrew Marvell, John Milton and Anne Bradstreet.
- Unit III, eighteenth-century poems by John Dryden, Alexander Pope, Robert Burns, Thomas Gray and James Thomson.
These are topic and text summaries. Consult your registered combination for any Minor or other paper.
Study suggestions
Original prompts for the listed Major papers; they do not predict an exam.
- Compare: Choose two texts from different units of one paper. How does their genre or period shape their treatment of a shared idea?
Answer guide
Name both prescribed texts and the shared idea; ground each point in a specific passage. Explain a difference instead of making a list of themes.
- Close reading: Select a short passage from a prescribed text and explain how two choices of language or form shape its meaning.
Answer guide
Quote a small passage, identify two concrete features such as imagery, dialogue, metre or narrative voice, then connect each to an interpretation that the passage supports.
- Context: Place one prescribed work in the literary or language history named in its unit.
Answer guide
State the relevant period and a precise historical or literary context. Show how it helps illuminate the work without treating background as a substitute for reading the text.