UPSC Mains Exam Syllabus - English Optional

The syllabus consists of two papers, designed to test a first-hand and critical reading of texts prescribed from the following periods in English Literature :

Paper I : 1600-1900 and Paper II : 1900-1990. There will be two compulsory questions in each paper : a) A short-notes question related to the topics for general study, and b) A critical analysis of UNSEEN passages both in prose and verse.

PAPER-I

Answers must be written in English. Texts for detailed study are listed below. Candidates will also be required to show adequate knowledge of the following topics
and movements : The Renaissance : Elizabethan and Jacobean Drama; Metaphysical Poetry; The Epic and the Mock-epic; Neo-classicism; Satire; The Romantic Movement; The Rise of the Novel; The Victorian Age.

Section-A

1. William Shakespeare : King Lear and The Tempest.

2. John Donne. The following poems :

• Canonization.
• Death be not proud.
• The Good Morrow.
• On His Mistress going to bed.
• The Relic

3. John Milton : Paradise Lost, I, II, IV, IX

4. Alexander Pope. The Rape of the Lock.

5. William Wordsworth. The following poems:

• Ode on Intimations of Immortality.
• Tintern Abbey.
• Three years she grew.
• She dwelt among untrodden ways.
• Michael.
• Resolution and Independence.
• The World is too much with us.
• Milton, thou shouldst be living at this hour.
• Upon Westminster Bridge.

6. Alfred Tennyson : In Memoriam.

7. Henrik Ibsen : A Doll’s House.

Section-B

• Jonathan Swift. Gulliver’s Travels.
• Jane Austen. Pride and Prejudice.
• Henry Fielding. Tom Jones.
• Charles Dickens. Hard Times.
• George Eliot. The Mill on the Floss.
• Thomas Hardy. Tess of the d’Urbervilles.
• Mark Twain. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

IAS Mains General Studies Study Kit

PAPER-II

Answers must be written in English. Texts for detailed study are listed below. Candidates will also be required to show adequate knowledge of the following topics
and movements : Modernism; Poets of the Thirties; The stream-of-consciousness Novel; Absurd Drama; Colonialism and Post-Colonialism; Indian Writing in English; Marxist, Psychoanalytical and Feminist approaches to literature; Post-Modernism.

Section-A

1. William Butler Yeats. The following poems:

• Easter 1916
• The Second Coming
• A Prayer for my daughter.
• Sailing to Byzantium.
• The Tower.
• Among School Children.
• Leda and the Swan.
• Meru
• Lapis Lazuli
• The Second Coming
• Byzantium.

2. T.S. Eliot. The following poems :

• The Love Song of J.Alfred Prufrock
• Journey of the Magi.
• Burnt Norton.

3. W.H. Auden. The following poems :

• Partition
• Musee des Beaux Arts
• In Memory of W.B. Yeats
• Lay your sleeping head, my love
• The Unknown Citizen
• Consider
• Mundus Et Infans
• The Shield of Achilles
• September 1, 1939
• Petition.

4. John Osborne : Look Back in Anger.

5. Samuel Beckett. Waiting for Godot.

6. Philip Larkin. The following poems :

• Next
• Please
• Deceptions
• Afternoons
• Days
• Mr. Bleaney

7. A.K. Ramanujan. The following poems

• Looking for a Causim on a Swing
• A River
• Of Mothers, among other Things
• Love Poem for a Wife 1
• Small-Scale Reflections on a Great House
• Obituary

Note: (All these poems are available in the anthology Ten Twentieth Century Indian Poets, edited by R. Parthasarthy, published by Oxford University Press, New Delhi).

Section-B

• Joseph Conrad. Lord Jim
• James Joyce. Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.
• D.H. Lawrence. Sons and Lovers.
• E.M. Forster. A Passage to India.
• Virginia Woolf. Mrs Dalloway.
• Raja Rao. Kanthapura.
• V.S. Naipal. A House for Mr. Biswas.

Study Material for IAS (UPSC) General Studies Pre. Cum Mains