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PLEASE MATCH YOUR ASSIGNMENT QUESTIONS ACCORDING TO YOUR SESSION
IGNOU BEGC-133 (July 2025 – January 2026) Assignment Questions
Section A
I. Explain the following passages with reference to the context.
1.“And Pity, like a naked new-born babe,
Striding the blast, or heaven’s Cherubins, hors’d
Upon the sightless couriers of the air,
Shall blow the horrid deed in every eye,
That tears shall drown the wind – I have no spur
To prick the sides of my intent, but only
Vaulting ambition, which o’erleaps itself
And falls on th’ other.”
2.“Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow; a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.”
3.“Soldiering, my dear madam, is the coward’s art of attacking
mercilessly when you are strong, and keeping out of harm’s way when
you are weak. That is the whole secret of successful fighting. Get your
enemy at a disadvantage; and never, on any account, fight him on equal
terms.”
4. “… More things are wrought by prayer
Than this world dreams of. Wherefore, let thy voice
Rise like a fountain for me night and day.
For what are men better than sheep or goats
That nourish a blind life within the brain,
If, knowing God, they lift not hands of prayer
Both for themselves and those who call them friend?”
Section B
II. Write short notes on the following:
1.The role of the witches in Macbeth.
2. The significance of ‘fate’ or ‘chance’ in Hardy’s novels.
3. Bernard Shaw and the ‘discussion play’.
4. Tennyson’s Idylls of the King and the Arthurian legend.
III. Write short essays on the following:
a. Bernard Shaw’s play Arms and the Man is considered to be an ‘anti-romantic comedy’. Do you agree with this assessment?
b. What are the medieval values highlighted in Tennyson’s poem “Morte d’Arthur”? How does the poet relate them to the Victorian age?
Section C
IV. Explain how Hardy creates a picture of the people and landscape of rural England of the Victorian age, in Far from the Madding Crowd.
IGNOU BEGC-133 (July 2024 – January 2025) Assignment Questions
SECTION A
I Explain the following passages with reference to the context.
1. “Stay, you imperfect speakers, tell me more.
By Sinel’s death I know I am Thane of Glamis;
But how of Cawdor? The Thane of Cawdor lives,
A prosperous gentleman; and to be king stands not within the
prospect of belief,
No more than to be Cawdor. Say from whence
You owe this strange intelligence? Or why
Upon this blasted heath you stop our way
With such prophetic greeting.”
2. “Is this a dagger which I see before me,
The handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee: –
I have thee not, and yet I see thee still.
Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible
To feeling as to sight? Or art thou but
A dagger of the mind? A false creation,
Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain?”
3. “He did it like an operatic tenor—a regular handsome fellow, with
flashing eyes and lovely moustache, shouting a war-cry and
charging like Don Quixote at the windmills. We nearly burst with
laughter at him; but when the sergeant ran up as white as a sheet,
and told us they’d sent us the wrong cartridges, and that we
couldn’t fire a shot for the next ten minutes, we laughed at the other
side of mouths.”
4. “”Thou hast betray’d thy nature and thy name,
Not rendering true answer, as beseem’d
Thy fealty, nor like a noble knight:
For surer sign had follow’d, either hand,
Or voice, or else a motion of the mere.
This is a shameful thing for men to lie.”
Section B
II. Write short notes on the following:
a. The three phases of Thomas Hardy’s writing.
b. The ‘Porter Scene’ in Macbeth.
c. Tennyson as a representative poet of Victorian England.
d. The influence of Ibsen on Bernard Shaw.
III. Write short essays on the following:
a. Justify the title of Bernard Shaw’s play Arms and the Man.
b. Discuss the major themes of Tennyson’s poem “Morte
d’Arthur”.
Section C
IV Discuss Hardy’s approach to the natural world, as expressed in Far Fom the Madding Crowd.
