UNIT-I

General:
1. What is literary criticism? How is it different from literary theory? Give suitable
examples to elucidate.
2. What is the relevance of contemporary literary criticism in 21st century?
3. State the different kinds of literary theories available for criticism? Explain with
relevant contexts and examples.
4. What is archetypal criticism? Discuss the sources of its origin.
5. What is psychoanalysis? Elucidate psychoanalytical theory with reference to the
psychoanalysts discussed in this course.

Short Notes:
1. Blocking character in a Comedy
2. Scapegoat ritual of expulsion
3. Paternal surrogate in Comedy
4. Three types of comic characters (can also come as a long answer question)
5. Free society in a Comedy
6. Tragic Hero
7. Suppliant in a Tragedy
8. Child Play
9. Phantasy and daydreaming
10. Neurosis and psychosis

Important Lines:
1. The action of comedy is moving from one social centre to another (p. 166).
2. This should be….happy ending of a comedy (p. 167).
3. All tragedy exhibits the omnipotence of an external fate (p. 209).
4. Every new birth provokes the return of an avenging death (p. 213).
5. Anyone accustomed to think archetypally of literature will recognize in tragedy a
mimesis of sacrifice (p. 214).
6. Tragedy is a paradoxical combination of fearful sense of righteousness and a pitying
sense of wrongness (p. 214).
7. The characterization of tragedy is very like that of comedy in reverse (p. 216).
8. “Mental activity is directed toward inventing a situation in which unsatisfied wishes
will be fulfilled” (Freud) (p. 419).
9. “Artists are not mad, but they are unsatisfied” (Freud) (p. 420).
10. “The creative writers does the same as the child at play. He creates a world of
phantasy which he takes very seriously” (Freud) (p. 421).
11. “As people grow up, they cease to play, and they seem to give up the yield of pleasure
which they gained from playing” (Freud) (p. 422).
 12. “The adult, on the contrary, is ashamed of his phantasies and hides from the other
people. He cherishes his phantasies as his most inmate obsessions” (Freud) (p. 422).
13. “A strong experience in the present awakens in the creative writer a memory of an
earlier experience (usually belonging to his childhood) from which there now
proceeds a wish which finds its fulfilment in the creative work” (Freud) (p. 466-27).
14. “The day-dreamer carefully conceals his phantasies from other people because he
feels that he has reasons of being ashamed of them” (Freud) (p. 427).

Long Answer Questions:

1. Discuss Northrop Frye’s theory of archetypes.
2. Comment on Northrop Frye’s Mythos of spring: Comedy.
3. Examine Northrop Frye’s Mythos of autumn: Tragedy.
4. Elucidate the five phases in a comedy. Give suitable examples.
5. Illustrate the five phases in a tragedy. Give suitable examples.
6. Define different plot structures in a comedy and a tragedy in the light of Northrop
Frye’s theory of archetypal criticism.
7. Substantiate Sigmund Freud’s theory of psychoanalysis. Discuss the different tenets
of his theory.
8. What is the relationship between creative writers and daydreaming according to
Sigmund Freud?
9. What is the significance of child play in Freudian’s essay, “Creative Writers and Day-
Dreamers? How does Freud connect child play with the adult notion of phantasy and
daydreaming in a creative artist?
10. Do you agree with Freud’s when he connects women’s fantasies and daydreams with
eroticism and men’s with that of ambition? Give reasons for your answers.
11. How does a creative writer create a story? What is the role of Hero in a story and in
what ways the other characters trace their relation with the Hero?