NETAJI SUBHAS OPEN UNIVERSITY

1, Woodburn Park, Kolkata ‐ 700 020 
PHONE: 2283‐5157, TELEFAX: 033‐2283‐5082 
Website:‐www.wbnsou.ac.in 

SYLLABUS OF POST GRADUATE DEGREE IN ENGLISH

Part – I
Paper – 1 : Poetry
Paper – 2 : Aspects of Language
Paper – 3 : British Drama
Paper – 4 : British Novel

Part – II

Paper – 5 : Literary Theory and Criticism

Paper – 6 : American Literature
Paper – 7 : Indian English Literature
Paper – 8 : Ancient & Modern European Classics in Translation

Paper – I: Poetry

Module – I

Unit 1 : Chaucer: Prologue to Canterbury Tales

Unit 2 : Spenser: Amoretti (1 Sonnet), Prothalamion, The Faerie Queen
Unit 3 : Shakespeare: 4 Sonnets from W.H. (Sonnets –I, 50, 116, and 126)
2 Sonnets from Dark Lady (Sonnets – 130, 138)

Module – II

Unit 1 : Donne: Canonization, Ecstasy

Unit 2 : Marvell: The Garden
Unit 3 : Herbert: The Pulley
Unit 4 : Milton: Paradise Lost, Book – 1
Unit 5 : Dryden: Absalom and Achitophel : Book – 1
Unit 6 : Pope: Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot

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Module – III

Unit 1 : Blake: London

Unit 2 : Wordsworth: Resolution and Independence
Unit 3 : Coleridge: Kubla Khan
Unit 4 : Shelley: Alastor
Unit 5 : Keats: Odes (all 6)
Unit 6 : Tennyson: Extracts from In Memoriam (Great English Poems. Ed. V. Young)
Unit 7 : Browning: Andreadel Sarto and Child Roland
Unit 8 : Arnold: The Scholar Gypsy
Unit 9 : Elizabeth Browning: How do I love thee
Unit 10 : Emily Brontë : No coward soul is mine

Module – IV

Unit 1 : Hopkins: The Windhover

Unit 2 : Yeats: Sailing to Byzantium
Unit 3 : Eliot: The Waste Land
Unit 4 : Auden: The Unknown Citizen
Unit 5 : Dylan Thomas: This Bread I break, Fern Hill
Unit 6 : Philip Larkin: Whitsun Weddings
Unit 7 : Ted Hughes: Hawk Roosting

Selected Readings:
1. English Poetry of the Sixteenth Century- Gary Waller(ed)
2. Post-Colonial Shakesperes- Ania Loomba and Martin Okrin(ed)
3. The Monarch of Wit- J.B. Leishman
4. The Judgement of Marvell- Christine Rees
5. Self-consuming Artifacts- Stanley Fish
6. John Dryden-David Hopkins
7. The Eighteenth Century Background-Basil Wiley
8. Augustan Satire- Ian Jack
9. The Major Satires of Alexander Pope- R.W.Rogers
10. A Reading of Paradise Lost- Helen Gardner
11. The Art of Wordsworth- L Abercombie
12. New Perspectives on Coleridge and Wordsworth- G.L Hartman
13. Shelley: A Critical Reading- Earl Wasserman
14. The Odes of John Keats- Helen Vendler
15. John Keats: His Mind and Art- Bhabatosh Chatterjee
16. A Commentary on Tennyson’s In Memoriam-A.C Bradley
17. Victorian Women Poets-M Reynolds and Angela Leighton(ed)
18. "Hughes and Eliot: Possession," by Ronald Schuchard
19. "The Ecology of Ted Hughes: Wolfwatching -- the Final Poetic Statement," by
Terry Gifford; and

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Paper – II: Aspect of Language

Module – I: What is language?

History of language.

Module – II: Phonetics and phonology,

English consonants & vowels

Module – III: English Morphology.

English syntax.

Module – IV: Language in Use

Spread of English
Stylistics and Rhetoric

Selected Readings:
1. The Story of Language-C.L Barber (ELBS).1964
2. The Foundations of Language-Andrew Wilkinson (OUP), 1971
3. The Tree of Language-Helen and Charlton Laird, 1960
4. Exploring Language-Peter Doughty, John Pearce and Geoffrey Thornton, 1972.
5. Reflection on Language- Noam Chomsky, 1975
6. Study of Language-J.B.Carroll (OUP), 1953
7. Language-Edward Sapir, 1921.
8. Language, its Nature, Development and Origin-Otto Jesperson, 1922
9. Language and its Structure-Some fundamental Linguistic Concepts-Ronald W.
Langacker, 1967
10. An Outline of English Phonetics (W.Heffer & Sons, Cambridge, U.K) - Daniel
Jones
11. English in India: Its Present and Future (Asia Publishing House, Bombay) - V.K.
Gokak:
12. The Other Tongue, English across Cultures-Braj B. Kachru
13. English in Use-R.Quirk and Gabriele Stein
14. Fundamentals of Good Writing: A Handbook of Modern Rhetoric-C.Brooks and
R.P. Warren

Paper – III: British Drama

Module – I: Marlowe: Edward – II

Ben Jonson: Volpone

Module – II: Shakespeare: Hamlet, The Tempest

Module – III: R. B. Sheridan: The Rivals

O. Wilde: The Importance of Being Earnest
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G. B. Shaw: Man and Superman

Module – IV: T. S. Eliot: Murder in the Cathedral

J. Osborne: Look Back in Anger
S. Beckett: Waiting for Godot

Selected Readings:
1. Volpone-Philip Brockbank
2. Ben Jonson: Modern Critical Views- Harold Bloom
3. Jonson: Four Comedies- Helen Ostovich
4. Shakespearian Tragedy- A.C. Bradley
5. What Happens in Hamlet-Dover Wilson
6. Twentieth Century Interpretation of Hamlet- David Berlington
7. The Shakespearean Tempest- G.Wilson Knight
8. The Tempest: A Casebook- Ed by D. J Palmer
9. Twentieth Century Interpretation of The Tempest- Hallet Smith

Paper – IV: British Novel

Module – I: H. Fielding – Tom Jones

Jane Austen – Emma

Module – II: Emily Brontë – Wuthering Heights

Charles Dickens – Great Expectations

Module – III: George Eliot – Middlemarch

Joseph Conrad – Heart of Darkness

Module – IV: James Joyce – A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

Selected Readings:
1. Jane Austen: Irony as Defense and Discovery-Marvin Mudrick
2. Jane Austen-Tony Tanner
3. The Dickens World-A.H.House
4. Dickens: The Critical Heritage-P.Collins
5. Middlemarch: Critical Approaches to the Novel-Barbara Hardy
6. Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, Modern Critical Interpretations-Harold
Bloom
7. Culture and Imperialism-Edward Said
8. James Joyce: A Critical Introduction-Harry Levin
9. “Myths of Power in Wuthering Heights” in Myths of Power: A Marxist Study of
the Brontes- Terry Eagleton

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Part – II

Paper – V: Literary Theory and Criticism

Module – I

Unit 1 : Aristotle – Poetics, Ed. I. Bywater

Unit 2 : Dryden – An Essay of Dramatic Poesy
Unit 3 : Johnson – The Life of Milton

Module – II

Unit 1 : W. Wordsworth – Preface to Lyrical Ballads (1800)

Unit 2 : S. T. Coleridge – Biographia Literaria – Chapters – XIII, XIV, XVIII
Unit 3 : Matthew Arnold – The Study of Poetry

Module – III

Unit 1 : T. S. Eliot – Tradition and the Individual Talent

Unit 2 : I. A. Richards – Principles of Literary Criticism, Chs. 22 & 24
Unit 3 : Cleanth Brooks – The Well – Wrought Urn (Chapters on Immortality Ode &
Grecian Urn)

Module – IV

Unit 1 : Structuralism
Unit 2 : Deconstruction
Unit 3 : Neo-Historicism
Unit 4 : Cultural Materialism
Unit 5 : Marxist Criticism
Unit 6 : Feminist Criticism

Books Recommended:
1. Aristotle’s Theory of Poetry and Fine Art-S.H Butcher
2. Aristotle On the Art of Poetry- Ingram Bywater
3. Classical Literary Criticism-T.S. Dorsch
4. Literary Criticism, A Short History- W.K. Wimsatt and Cleanth Brooks
5. Literary Theory: An Introduction– T. Eagleton
6. Newton – 20th Century Literary Criticism: A Reader
7. Milton and the English Revolution-Christopher Hill
8. Lives of the Poets-John Wain(Ed)
9. The Mirror and the Lamp: Romantic Theory and the Critical Tradition-
M.H.Abrams
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10. Critical Theory- Michael Fischer

11. Critical Approaches to Literature-David Daiches
12. The Second Sex- Simone de Beavoir
13. A Dictionary of Modern Critical Terms-Roger Fowler
14. Literature, Marxism and Cultural Materialism- John Higgins
1. 15.Twentieth Century Criticism- David Lodge
15. Modern Criticism and Theory-David Lodge

Paper – VI: American Literature

Module – I: Context of American Literature – Puritans & Enlightenment

Module – II:

Unit 1 : Non-Fictional Prose

(i) Emerson: a) The American Scholar, b) The Poet
(ii) Thoreau: Walden

Unit 2 : Novels
(i) Herman Melville – Moby Dick
(ii) Ernest Hemingway – The Old Man and the Sea
(iii) William Faulkner – The Sound and the Fury
(iv) Toni Morrison – Sula

Unit 3 : Short Stories

O’Henry – The Cop and the Anthem
O’Connor – Good Country People

Module – III: American Poetry

Unit 1 : Walt Whitman – a) Song of Myself, b) Passage to India

Unit 2 : Robert Frost – a) Mending Wall, b) After Apple-Picking

Unit 3 : Wallace Stevens – The Emperor of Ice-cream

Unit 4 : Emily Dickinson – a) Because I could not stop for Death, b) Flowers

Unit 5 : Ginsberg – Howl – Parts I, II, III

Module – IV : American Drama

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Unit 1 : Eugene O’Neill – Mourning Becomes Electra

Unit 2 : T. Williams – The Glass Menagerie

Unit 3 : Arthur Miller – Death of a Salesman

Selected Readings:
1. American Renaissance- F.O. Mathiessen
2. Transitions in American Literary History-H.H.Clarke
3. American Romanticism, Vol I-David Morse
4. The Literary History of the United States-Robert E. Spiller
5. A Companion to Melville Studies-John Bryant
6. Melville: A Collection of Critical Essays- Richard Chase
7. The Modern Novel-Walter Allen
8. Hemingway: The Writer as Artist-Carlos Baker
9. Twentieth Century Interpretations of The Old Man and The Sea-Katharine
Jobes
10. The Portable Faulkner-Malcolm Cowley
11. From Puritanism to Postmodernism-Richard Ruland and Malcolm Bradbury

Paper – VII: Indian English Literature and Indian Literature in Translation

Module – I: Background & Non-fictional Prose

Unit 1 : Tagore – Crisis in Civilization

Unit 2 : Nehru – Discovery of India, Chapters 3, 4, 6

Unit 3 : Subhas Chandra Bose – An Indian Pilgrim, Chapter 10

Module – II: Fiction

Unit 1 : Mulk Raj Anand – The Untouchable

Unit 2 : R. K. Narayan – The Guide

Unit 3 : Raja Rao – Kanthapura

Unit 4 : Kamala Markandeya – Nectar in a Sieve

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Unit 5 : Amitava Ghosh – Shadow Lines

Unit 6 : Anita Desai – Clear Light of Day

Module – III:

Unit 1 : H. L. V. Derozio : a) To The Pupils of The Hindu College b) The Harp of India
c) Chorus of Brahmins

Unit 2 : Sarojini Naidu : a) Village Song, b) Caprice, c) If You Call Me

Unit 3 : Toru Dutt : a) Lakshman, b) Our Casuarina Tree, c) The Lotus

Unit 4 : Nissim Ezekiel : a) Night of the Scorpion, b) Marriage,

c) Goodbye Party for Miss Pushpa T.S.

Unit 5 : Jayanta Mahapatra : a) Dawn at Puri, b) Indian Summer, c) Again, One Day,
d) Walking by the River

Unit 6 : Kamala Das : a) My Grandmother’s House, b) The Looking Glass,

c) The Dance of the Eunuche

Module – IV: Drama

Unit 1 : Tagore – Red Oleanders

Unit 2 : Girish Karnad – Tughlaq

Unit 3 : Vijay Tendulkar – Silence, the Court is in session

Unit 4 : Mahesh Dattani – Final Solution

Books Recommended:
1. Three Indo-Anglican Poets-. K.R. Ramachandran Nair,
2. Indian Writing in English- Srinivasa K.R. Iyenger
3. The Empire Writes Back: Theory and Practice in Post-Colonial Literatures-.
Bill Ashcroft,
4. The Twice-born Fiction- Meenakshi Mukherjee
5. The Novels of Raja Rao- Esha Dey
6. Raja Rao- M.K. Naik
7. Anita Desai, "The Indian Writer's Problems" Perspectives on Anita Desai. - Ed.
Ramesh K

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8. Beyond the Glass Ceiling: Forty Women Whose Ideas Shape the Modern World-
Sian Griffithsm
9. Subhas Bose and His Ideas-J.S.Bright
10. Nehru, A Political Bibliography-Michael Brecher
11. The Golden Treasury of Indo-Anglian Poetry-V.K.Gokak(Ed)
12. Women Writing in India-Susie Tharu and K.Lalita
13. Perspectives on Indian Writing in English – M. K. Naik

Paper – VIII: Ancient & Modern European Classics in Translation

Module – I: Background of Epic & Drama

Unit 1 : Homer – Iliad

Unit 2 : Vergillius Maro – The Aeneid

Unit 3 : Aeschylus – Agamemnon

Unit 4 : Sophocles – Oedipus Rex

Unit 5 : Euripides – Medea

Module – II: Background

Unit 1 : Seneca – Thyestes

Unit 2 : Dante – Inferno

Unit 3 : Ovid – Amores

Modules – III:

Unit 1 : Dostoevsky – Crime and Punishment

Unit 2 : Flaubert – Madame Bovary

Unit 3 : Thomas Mann – Death in Venice

Unit 4 : Kafka – The Castle

Modules – IV:

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Unit 1 : Baudelaire – The Poet’s Beatrice; The Ideal (Poems translated into English
by Francis Scarfe)

Unit 2 : Boris Pasternak – Hamlet, Winter Night

Unit 3 : Ibsen – A Doll’s House

Unit 4 : Brecht’s – Life of Galileo

Books Recommended:
1. Virgil, The Aeneid, Translated into English verse by Robert Fitzgerald. Penguin,
1985
2. From Virgil to Milton-C.M.Bowra
3. The Cambridge Companion to Virgil-Charles Martindale(ed)
4. Greek Tragedy, A Literary Study-H.D.F Kitto
5. The Literature of Ancient Greece-Gilbert Murray
6. The Will of Zeus- Stringfellow Barr
7. Charles Baudelaire:A Lyric Poet in the Era of High Capitalism-Walter Benjamin
8. Drama from Ibsen to Eliot-Raymond Williams
9. Brecht: A Choice of Evils-Martin Esslin
10. The Art of Bertolt Brecht-W.Weideli

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