ENGLISH LITERATURE CSS Syllabus

PAPER: ENGLISH LITERATURE (100 MARKS)

The paper is divided into six components along with the marks allocation for each component.

I. Essays: (10 Marks)

 Bertrand Russell (The Conquest of Happiness)
 George Orwell (Politics and the English Language; The Prevention of Literature)
 Ralph Waldo Emerson (The Transcendentalist; Self-Reliance)

II. Short Stories: (10 Marks)

 Somerset Maugham (The Lotus-Eater)
 G.K.Chesterton (A Somewhat Improbable Story)
 O’Henry (The Gift of the Magi)

III. Poetry: (20 marks)

 William Wordsworth (Resolution and Independence; Lines Composed Few Miles Above, Tintern Abbey)
 John Keats (Ode to a Nightingale; Ode to Autumn)
 Lord Alfred Tennyson (Ulysses; The Lady of Shalott)
 Yeats (A Dialogue of Self and Soul; The Second Coming)
 Eliot (The Wasteland; Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock)
 Philip Larkin (Maturity; Continuing to Live; The Trees)
 Wallace Stevens (A Postcard from the Volcano; Continual Conversation with a Silent Man; Dry Loaf) OR Walt Whitman (As I Ponder’d in Silence; Are You the New Person Drawn Toward Me?; This Moment Yearning and Thoughtful)

IV. Drama: (20 marks)

 Shakespeare (Hamlet; King Lear; Twelfth Night)
 William Congreve (The Way of the World)
 Shaw (Pygmalion; Heartbreak House )
 Harold Pinter (The Caretaker)
 Samuel Beckett (Waiting for Godot)
 Eugene O’Neill (Long Day’s Journey into Night)

V. Novels: (20 marks)

 Thomas Hardy (Far from the Madding Crowd)
 D.H. Lawrence (Sons and Lovers)
 George Orwell (Nineteen Eighty-four)
 James Joyce (A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man)
 Iris Murdoch (Under the Net)
 Nathaniel Hawthorne (The Scarlet Letter) or William Faulkner (The Sound and the Fury)

VI. Literacy Theory & Criticism (20 Marks)

 Structuralism
 Marxism
 Deconstructionism
 Psychoanalytic criticism
 Feminist criticism
 Postcolonial Criticism

Note: The texts are mentioned in brackets in front of each author’s name. However, for the component on “Literary Theory and Criticism” and for understanding poetry and drama,
particularly 20th century poetry and Drama, following readings are suggested:

ENGLISH LITERATURE CSS Syllabus

Download English Literature Past Papers
Download English Literature Books
Download Full CSS Syllabus