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WEST BENGAL STATE UNIVERSITY

CBCS SYLLABUS FOR UG ENGLISH HONS

CORE COURSES(CC) —14 COURSES, 6 CREDITS/PAPER

GENERIC ELECTIVE(GE) —4 COURSES, 6 CREDITS/PAPER

DISCIPLINE SPECIFIC ELECTIVE (DSE) —4 COURSES, 6 CREDITS /PAPER

ABILITY ENHANCEMENT COMPULSORY COURSE (AECC) —2COURSES, 2

CREDITS/PAPER

SKILL ENHANCEMENT COURSES (SEC) —2 COURSES, 2 CREDITS/PAPER

[NB: CORE COURSE: 6 CREDITS (5+1)=90 HOURS (75 LECTURE HOURS+ 15

TUTORIAL HOURS)

AECC & SEC COURSE: 2 CREDITS=30 LECTURE HOURS]

UNIVERSITY COURSE CODES & COURSE TITLES:

CORE COURSES
ENGACOR01T- INDIAN CLASSICAL LITERATURE

ENGACOR02T-- EUROPEAN CLASSICAL LITERATURE

ENGACOR03T- INDIAN WRITING IN ENGLISH

ENGACOR04T- BRITISH POETRY & DRAMA (14TH-17TH C)

ENGACOR05T- AMERICAN LITERATURE

ENGACOR06T- POPULAR LITERATURE

ENGACOR07T- BRITISH POETRY & DRAMA (17TH-18TH C)

ENGACOR08T- BRITISH LITERATURE (18TH C)

ENGACOR09T- BRITISH ROMANTIC LITERATURE

ENGACOR10T- 19TH C BRITISH LITERATURE

ENGACOR11T- WOMEN‘S WRITING

ENGACOR12T- EARLY 20TH C BRITISH LITERATURE

ENGACOR13T- MODERN EUROPEAN DRAMA

ENGACOR14T- POSTCOLONIAL LITERATURE

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GENERIC ELECTIVE COURSES [for disciplines other than English Hons]

ENGHGEC01T- THE INDIVIDUAL & SOCIETY

ENGHGEC02T- POEMS & SHORT STORIES

ENGHGEC03T- NOVELS & PLAYS

ENGHGEC04T- AN ANTHOLOGY TO BE COMPILED FOR WBSU

ABILITY ENHANCEMENT COMPULSORY COURSES

ENVSAEC01T-ENVS

ENGSAEC01M- ENGLISH/MIL

SKILL ENHANCEMENT COURSES

ENGSSEC01M- CREATIVE WRITING

ENGSSEC02M- ELT

DISCIPLINE CENTRIC ELECTIVE COURSES

SEMESTER 5: STUDENTS TO CHOOSE ANY 2

ENGADSE01T- OLD ENGLISH, PHILOLOGY, RHETORIC & PROSODY

ENGADSE02T--LITERARY TYPES & TERMS

ENGADSE03T- AUTOBIOGRAPHY

SEMESTER 6: STUDENTS TO CHOOSE ANY 2

ENGADSE04T- LITERARY CRITICISM

ENGADSE05T- PARTITION LITERATURE

ENGADSE06T- TRAVEL WRITING

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Unit 1: Caste/Class HUMAN VALUES

1. Jotirao Phule, ‗Caste Laws‘ 2. Premchand, ‗Deliverance‘ 3. Omprakash Valmiki,

‗Joothan‘ 4. Hira Bansode, ‗Bosom Friend‘

Unit 2: Gender GENDER

1.Virginia Woolf, ‗Shakespeare‘s Sister‘ 2. Rabindranath Tagore, ‗The Exercise
Book‘ 3. Marge Piercy, ‗Breaking Out‘ 4. Eunice De Souza, ‗Marriages Are Made‘
5. Ambai, ‗Yellow Fish‘

Unit 3: Race HUMAN VALUES

1. Roger Mais, ‗Blackout‘ 2. Wole Soyinka, ‗Telephone Conversation‘ 3. Langston

Hughes, ‗Harlem‘ 4. Maya Angelou, ‗Still I Rise‘

Unit 4: Violence and War HUMAN VALUES

1. Wilfred Owen, ‗Dulce et Decorum Est‘ 2. Henry Reed, ‗Naming of Parts‘ 3.
Sa‘adat Hasan Manto, ‗The Dog of Tetwal‘ 4. Amitav Ghosh, ‗Ghosts of Mrs
Gandhi‘
HUMAN VALUES
Unit 5: Living in a Globalized World

1. Roland Barthes, ‗Toys‘ 2. Imtiaz Dharkar, ‗At the Lahore Karhai‘ 3. Edward
Brathwaite, ‗Colombe

Pattern of Questions:

Internal Assessment: Unit 1- 10 marks on project/group discussion; 10 marks on

written test.

NB. No MCQ or 1 word answer.

End Semester:

 3 long questions of 10 marks each out of 8 from unit 2 to unit 5.

 4 short notes/questions out of 6 of 5 marks each

SEMESTER 2
CORE- INDIAN WRITING IN ENGLISH: 6 CREDITS
Background study—Indian English, Indian English Literature and its readership, themes and
context of the Indian English novel, the aesthetics of Indian poetry, modernism in Indian
English literature.
Group A- Poetry
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William Shakespeare- Twelfth Night, OR Ben Jonson—Alchemist

Pattern of Questions:
Internal: 05 on attendance; 20 from Group A.
End Semester:
Group B: 2 essay type questions from poetry out of 3 of 10 marks each.
1 reference to context from poems out of 2 of 5 marks.
Group C: 2 essay type questions with internal choice from each of the two plays
containing 10 marks each.
One locate and annotate out of 2 of 5 marks.

SUGGESTED READINGS
● Pico Della Mirandola, excerpts from the Oration on the Dignity of Man, in
The Portable Renaissance Reader, ed. Jam es B ruce Ross and Mary Martin
McLaughlin (New York: Penguin Books, 1953) pp. 476–9.)
● John Calvin, ‗Predestination and Free Will‘, in The Portable Renaissance
Reader,ed. James Bruce Ross and Mary Martin McLaughlin (New York: Penguin
Books,1953) pp. 704–11
● Baldassare Castiglione, ‗Longing for Beauty‘ and ‗Invocation of Love‘, in
Book 4 of The Courtier, ‗Love and Beauty‘, tr. George Bull (Harmondsworth:
Penguin, rpt.1983) pp. 324–8, 330–5.
● Philip Sidney, An Apology for Poetry, ed. Forrest G. Robinson
(Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1970) pp. 13–18.

GE: POEMS & SHORT STORIES: 6 CREDITS

Suggested Text: Cultural Diversity: Selections from Modern Indian Literature, ed. Sukrita
Paul Kumar, Macmillan.

Syllabus Details:

Unit 1: Overview

Unit 2: Linguistic Plurality within Sufi and Bhakti

UNIT 2-5 HUMAN VALUES
TraditionUnit 3: Language Politics: Hindi and Urdu

Unit 4: Tribal Verse

Unit 5: Dalit Voices

Unit 6: Writing in English

Unit 7: Womanspeak: Examples from Kannada and Bangla GENDER

Unit 8: Literary Cultures: Gujarati and Sindi

Suggested Topics and Background Prose Readings for Class Presentations

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i. Listening, Speaking, Reading and Writing- Basics of Skill Development

4. Approaches and Methods of English Language Teaching
i. Grammar-Translation Method
ii. Direct Method
iii. Communicative Approach

5. Materials for Language Teaching

i. Materials for Teaching Four language Skills (LSRW)
ii. Using the Textbook
iii. Using authentic Materials
iv. Using Teaching Aids

Evaluation modalities
i. Attendance- 5
ii. End-semester examination- 20
N.B. The examination and evaluation will be conducted by the colleges.

SUGGESTED READINGS:
Larsen-Freeman, Daine. 1986. Techniques and Principles in Language Teaching.
Oxford:Oxford University Press.
Nagaraj, Geetha. 2010. English Language Teaching. New Delhi: Orient BlackSwan

Richards, J C and Rodgers, T S. 2001. Approaches and Methods in Language

Teaching. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

SEMESTER 5
CORE: WOMEN‘S WRITING: 6 CREDITS
Background study:
The Confessional Mode in Women's Writing

Sexual Politics
GENDER
Race, Caste and Gender

Social Reform and Women‘s Rights

Group A:Poetry
Emily Dickinson- ‗I cannot live with you‘

Sylvia Plath -‗Daddy‘,‗Lady Lazarus‘

Eunice De Souza ‗Advice to Women‘, ‗Bequest‘
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Group B. Fiction
Jean Rhys—The Wide Sargasso Sea
Charlotte Perkins Gilman- ‗The Yellow Wallpaper‘

Katherine Mansfield -‗Bliss‘

Group C: Non-fiction

1. Mary Wollstonecraft A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (New York: Norton, 1988)
chap. 1, pp. 11–19; chap. 2, pp. 19–38.
2.Ramabai Ranade ‗A Testimony of our Inexhaustible Treasures‘, in Pandita Ramabai
Through Her Own Words: Selected Works, tr. Meera Kosambi (New Delhi: OUP,
2000) pp. 295–324.
3. Rassundari Debi, excerpts from Amar Jiban in Susie Tharu & K. Lalita eds. Women’s
Writingin India. Vol 1.

Pattern of Questions:

Internal of 20 on Mary Wollstonecraft; 05 on attendance

End Semester:
Group A. One long question of 10 marks out of two;
2 reference to context out of three of 3 of 5 marks each.
Group B. One long question from Jean Rhys of 15 marks with internal choice;
Group C. One long question of 10 marks out of two.
One short question of 5 marks out of 2.

SUGGESTED READINGS:
1. Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own (New York: Harcourt, 1957) chaps. 1 and 6.
2. Simone de Beauvoir, ‗Introduction‘, in The Second Sex, tr. Constance Borde and
Shiela Malovany-Chevallier (London: Vintage, 2010) pp. 3–18.
3. Kumkum Sangari and Sudesh Vaid, eds., ‗Introduction‘, in Recasting Women:
Essays in Colonial History (New Delhi: Kali for Women, 1989) pp. 1–25.
4. Chandra Talapade Mohanty, ‗Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and
Colonial Discourses‘, in Contemporary Postcolonial Theory: A Reader, ed. Padmini
Mongia (New York: Arnold, 1996) pp. 172–97.
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Patricia Waugh—Literary Theory and Criticism]

Terms related to Fiction—bildungsroman, character (flat, static, round, dynamic, stock), point
of view, gothic novel, epistolary technique, picaresque & picaro, plot and subplot, setting,
omniscient narrator, first person narrator, stream of consciousness.

[SUGGESTED READINGS:
M.H. Abrams—A Glossary of Literary Terms
Patricia Waugh—Literary Theory and Criticism]

Pattern of Questions:
Internal of 20 on Comedy; 05 on attendance
End Semester:
One long question of 10 from Tragedy with internal choice.
One long question of 10 from Novel with internal choice.
6 short notes of 5 marks each from literary terms, taking two from each genre. The
paper setter is advised to set 4 options from each group.

DSE. AUTOBIOGRAPHY: 6 CREDITS

Group A: Self and Society, Role of memory, Autobiography as Resistance, Autobiography as
Rewriting History

Group B: Jean-Jacques Rousseau‘s Confessions, Part One, Book One, pp. 5-43, Translated
by Angela Scholar (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000).

M. K. Gandhi‘s Autobiography or the Story of My Experiments with Truth, Part I

Chapters II to IX, pp. 5-26 (Ahmedabad: Navajivan Trust, 1993).

Group C: Binodini Dasi‘s My Story and Life as an Actress, pp. 61-83 (New Delhi: Kali for
Women,1998).
A Revathi‘s The Truth about Me: A Hijra Life Story (Chapters I to IV) New Delhi, Penguin, 2010.

Pattern of Questions: GENDER

Internal Assessment of 20 marks on A Revathi’s The Truth about Me: A Hijra

Life Story; 05 on attendance.
End Semester:
Group B and C: 3 long questions of 15 marks each with internal choice from
each text.
1 short note out of 3 of 5 marks.

SUGGESTED READINGS
 James Olney, ‗A Theory of Autobiography‘ in Metaphors of Self: the meaning of
autobiography (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1972) pp. 3-50.
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 Laura Marcus, ‗The Law of Genre‘ in Auto/biographical Discourses (Manchester:

Manchester University Press, 1994) pp. 229-72.
 Linda Anderson, ‗Introduction‘ in Autobiography (London: Routledge, 2001) pp.1-
17.
 Mary G. Mason, ‗The Other Voice: Autobiographies of women Writers‘ in Life/Lines:
Theorizing Women‘s Autobiography, Edited by Bella Brodzki and Celeste Schenck
(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988) pp. 19-44.

SEMESTER 6
CORE : MODERN EUROPEAN DRAMA: 6 CREDITS

Background Reading:

Politics, Social Change and the Stage

Text and Performance
European Drama: Realism and Beyond

Tragedy and Heroism in Modern European Drama

The Theatre of the Absurd
Plays:

1. Henrik Ibsen- A Doll’s House GENDER

2. Bertolt Brecht -The Good Woman of Szechuan
3. Samuel Beckett -Waiting for Godot
4. Eugene Ionesco- Rhinoceros

Pattern of Questions:
Internal on Samuel Beckett of 20 marks; 05 on attendance
End Semester:

3 long questions each of 15 marks from the plays with internal choice from each play.
1 short note out of 3 of 5 marks.

SUGGESTED READINGS:
1. Constantin Stanislavski, An Actor Prepares, chap. 8, ‗Faith and the S ense of Truth‘,
tr. Elizabeth Reynolds Hapgood (Harm ondsworth: Penguin, 1967) sections 1, 2, 7, 8,
9, pp. 121–5, 137–46.