PMS English Literature Complete Exam Preparation Material

SYLLABUS FOR THE SUBJECT OF ENGLISH LITERATURE
PAPER- I

DRAMA AND POETRY

Description: The readings in this paper focus on selected creative works (Drama and Poetry) written or translated into English language. These readings are wide in scope, offering debate over the contemporary cross-genre and cross-disciplinary interpretations. In general, the candidates are expected to:

  1. Display some background historical knowledge and prove their interest in literary writing.
  2. Talk about some basic elements/features of drama and poetry through a comprehensive and understandable expression and relate it to the composition of literary sensibility.
  3. Comprehend and comment critically and analytically about the suggested readings.
  4. Draw on comparisons and contrasts between the classical and the popular, the real and the fantastic, the different and the common, or even between elusive versus illusive and “good” versus “not good”.
  5. Form and express and independent viewpoint about these readings.
SELECTED READINGS (Primary Texts)
Drama
  1. Sophocles: Oedipus Rex
  2. William Shakespeare: The Tempest and Romeo and Juliet
  3. G.B. Shaw. Pygmalion
  4. John Osborne: Look Back in Anger
  5. Eugene O’ Neil: The Hairy Ape
  6. Arthur Miller: Death of a Salesman
  7. Marsha Norman: O’ Night Mother
Poetry
  1. William Shakespeare: Like as the waves make towards the pebble, Sonnet 30
  2. John Donne: Death be Not Proud
  3. John Keats: Ode to Nightingale
  4. William Wordsworth: Ode to Immortality
  5. Samuel Coleridge: Kubla Khan
  6. Walt Whiteman: One’s Self I Sing
  7. W.B. Yeats: The Second Coming
  8. T.S. Eliot: The Wasteland
  9. Maya Angelou: Women Work
  10. Robert Frost: Mending Wall, The Road not Taken
  11. Sameus Heaney: Digging
  12. Sylvia Plath: Morning Song
  13. Taufeeq Rafat: The Stone Chat
  14. Daud Kamal: The Water Carrier
  15. Alamgir Hashmi: Autumnal, Pakistan Movement

PAPER- II

Fiction and Non-Fiction

Description: The readings in this paper focus on selected creative works (Fiction [Novel and Short Story] and Non-fiction[Prose(Essays) and Literary Criticism) written or translated into English Language. These readings offer debate over the contemporary cross-genre and cross-disciplinary interpretations. In general, the candidates are expected to:

  1. Display some background historical knowledge and prove and interest in wide readings.
  2. Talk about some basic elements/features of fictions and non-fictions through comprehensive comments.
  3. Express creative and critical ideas about these readings
  4. Draw on comparisons and contrasts between the classical and the popular, the real and the fantastic, and the different and the common.
  5. Form an independent viewpoint about these readings.
SELECTED READINGS (Primary Texts)
Fiction: Novel/ Short Story
  1. Daniel Defoe: Robinson Crusoe
  2. Jonathan Swift: Gulliver’s Travels
  3. Jane Austen: Pride and Prejudice
  4. Charles Dickens: A Tale of Two Cities
  5. Virginia Woolf: To the Lighthouse
  6. Rudyard Kipling: Kim
  7. Earnest Hemingway: A Farewell to Arms
  8. Chinua Ache be: Things Fall Apart
  9. Harper Lee: To Kill a Mocking Bird
  10. Bapsi Sidhwa: Ice Candy Man
  11. Paulo Coelho: The Pilgrimage
  12. Oscar Wilde: Rose and the Nightingale (Short Story)
  13. Naguib Mahfouz: The Mummy Awakens (Short Story)
  14. Guy de Maupassant: The String (Short Story)
  15. Kate Chopin: The Story of an Hour (Short Story)
Non-Fiction: Prose (Essays) / Literary Criticism
  1. Aristotle: The Poetics
  2. Francis Bacon: On Studies
  3. Charles Lamb: Chimney Sweeper
  4. Ngugi Wa Thiong’ O: On Abolition of English Department
  5. Dale Spender: Man Made Language
  6. Frantz Fanon: “ On National Culture” from The Wretched of the Earth
  7. Edward Said; “Introduction” to Culture and Imperialism
SOME SUGGESTED SECONDARY READINGS
  1. Boris Ford, The New Pelican Guide to English Literature. Vol. 1-9. London: Penguin
  2. William Henry Hudson, An Introduction to the Study of Literature, London, 1963.
  3. Rene Wellek and Austin Warren, Theory of Literature. London: Penguin, 1982
  4. Kitto, H.D. F. Greek Tragedy, London and NY: Routledge,2002.
  5. Bradley, A.C. Shakespearean Tragedy(22nd Ed.) London:1929
  6. Gassner, John. Form and Idea in Modern Theatre. NY:1954
  7. M.H. Abrams, ed., English Romantic Poets: Modern Essays in Criticism,1960
  8. Allen, Walter, The English Novel. London: Penguin
  9. Brogan, H. Pelican History of the USA, 1986
  10. Loomba, Ania. Colonialism /Postcoloialism. London: Routledge,1998
  11. Booker, Keith M.A. Practical Introduction to Literary Theory and Criticism. NY:
  12. Longman, 1996
  13. D. Pirie, How to Write Critical Essays. Methuen, 1985.