Indian Literature

Which of the following factors gave an impetus to the resurgence of language newspaper? (I) Indian Independence in 1947 (II) The improvement in size, circulation and content (III) Their becoming the mouthpiece of the ruling party in power

Directions: Read the following passages and answer the question that follows:

PASSAGE – II

Any survey of the Indian press cannot but reflect the different stages of growth and development that Indian democracy has gone through since independence. When freedom came, the press was proud of its role, as the bulk of the fraternity had actively participated or contributed to the awakening of the people through different phases of the struggle against foreign rule. The press, particularly those owned by the Indians, served as an auxiliary of the freedom struggle. With each phase of the national movement, it moved forward and faced the consequences for doing so.

The phenomenal expansion of the language press was mainly due to two reasons: political and technological. An overwhelming majority of the language press had grown up along with the struggle for independence, as its active organ. The political leaders, on their part, grew up into effective communicators in the freedom struggle. When many of the leaders of the freedom struggle days took over the reins of administration, it was but natural that the leaders of the newly-recognized State Governments should try their best to establish a rapport with the press, particularly the language press of the region.

This shift in the press focus to the politics of the regional or state level has also had an effect on the content of the newspapers. One of the features of our national press during the freedom struggle was the extraordinary attention to what is called foreign news as distinct from domestic news. The ownership pattern of the press has undergone striking changes in the last 60 years. At the time of Independence, most of the Indian language newspapers which participated in the freedom struggle or stood by it were poorly financed, with primitive printing arrangements.

After Independence, two developments took place: first, the Nationalist Press, though materially weak, got a boost and the new political elite became aware of the power of the press in the running of the new edifice of freedom.The second development was that most of the British - owned newspaper establishments sold off their assets and overnight these papers became Indian - owned. The change in the pattern of ownership entailed new developments in the newspaper world. Earlier, the newspaper-owners were mostly Nationalists, with a sprinkling of them taking up a moderate, liberal approach. The rest were all ardent supporters of the British Raj.

Which of the following appears to have been rejected by the comparatists completely?

Directions: Read the following passage and answer the question that follows.

Comparative Literature is a young discipline at the universities and colleges of West Germany: chairs have only been established since the Second World War. For a long time the subject was rejected by historians of literature for reasons not unworthy of consideration, and still today there are representatives of the traditional literary-philosophical departments who consider it superfluous in the sphere of universitas litteratum. But the opposition to Comparative Studies has a paradoxical aspect: most established literature departments are in their very being themselves comparative. Even the names of separate disciplines indicate that literature as a whole, which the comparatists regard as one and indivisible, was only split up from considerations of expedience—a consequence of the fundamentally justified connection between language and literature, but also a carry-over of the dangerous and outmoded nationalistic assumptions of the 19^th and 20^th centuries on to the supernational phenomenon literature.
And the name too, ‘Comparative Literature’, is not very meaningful. It is modeled on the no happier French designation: ‘Litterature comparee’. We keep it simply because we have found no better, for ‘Literary Studies’ would be too vague, and ‘Study of World Literature’ too presumptuous. Yet almost inevitably it gives the impression that the aims of Comparative Literature are limited to comparing German with French literature. Such a proceeding would not promise much success: a general comparison between several national literatures would remain far too vague to produce scientifically relevant results, and a comparison between two authors would reveal more characteristics dividing them than they have in common. Mere parallels seem even more dubious, derived from similarities of structure. As individual creations, works of art are not comparable—and the comparatist knows this as well as anybody else. His goal is no different from that of the nationally defined literary disciplines: it consists of understanding the literary work of art, from as many sides as possible. The difference lies in the conception of literature itself and in the methods.
Although by ‘literature’ we usually mean the established work of art, nevertheless the words of any author who has been able to bring his subject into an appropriate form may claim to count as a work of art—not only poetry but prose as well, not only the drama but also the novel, not only the short story but also the essay, the philosophical tract, the biography, history, specialized writing, and so forth—but only when the form is appropriate to the content. Appropriateness is as hard to grasp as most aesthetic categories: it remains dependent on the critic’s taste, and thus to a certain degree subjective. On the other hand taste is to be formed on the models of the masters, and here lies the necessity for a canon of aesthetically exemplary ‘classical’ authors, established by the consensus of connoisseurs, although at the same time always subject to revision.
The classical author sets to taste in prose and verse the limits of the possible. To know these limits we read the classics—not only Horace’s odes, however, but also the Art of Poetry, not only Dante’s Commedia but also the Vita nuova and De Vulgari Eloquentia, not only Goethe’s poems, plays and novels, but also the scientific and critical prose, the letters and conversations. We extend the realm of the literary beyond linguistic boundaries, and at the same time beyond the boundaries of the merely fictitious, the strictly ‘imaginative’; but we also raise our qualitative demands through an aesthetic criterion, so as not to risk being suffocated under the mass of what has been written. The history of literature is no telephone book for us, in which the subscribers are all listed together, no General Assembly of the United Nations in which the voices of the Great Powers count for no more than those of the smallest political provinces; it is the liber aureus of the aesthetically successful and historically effective works of literature. Only this limitation, which of course does not exclude individual penetration in depth, makes the meaningful study of Comparative Literature possible.

Which of the following statements is true according to the text?

Read the text and answer the multiple-choice question by selecting the correct response. Only one response is correct.
These days you can fit hundreds of books into one e-book reader or smartphone, and this has led publishers, writers and readers alike to ask whether this means the death of the printed book and a drastic change in how we read. Or, as some hope and believe, will the electronic book format simply complement traditional book publishing?
The fact that a book can be downloaded from almost anywhere in the world has blurred the lines between author, reader, format and distribution, and this has caused some head-scratching at some of the world's biggest publishing companies. Such companies must adapt, and quickly, to the new market; but many are nervous of the risks and often shareholders are not willing to break new ground.
For many writers, however, e-publishing provides new freedoms and opportunities. Many e-books are published by writers who do not have a readership through mainstream publishers, and this allows -hem to deal with material that mainstream publishers would consider too controversial or otherwise unmarketable.
The market is very much driven by the consumer, and publishing companies are going to have to deal with this new situation sooner or later. It is quite a complicated situation, but it doesn't have to be either/or. The book as we know it has been around for about 500 years and, once things settle down, there is no reason why the e-book and the traditional printed book should not exist happily side by side.

Which of the following statements is true according to the text?

Read the text and answer the multiple-choice question by selecting the correct response. Only one response is correct.
These days you can fit hundreds of books into one e-book reader or smartphone, and this has led publishers, writers and readers alike to ask whether this means the death of the printed book and a drastic change in how we read. Or, as some hope and believe, will the electronic book format simply complement traditional book publishing?
The fact that a book can be downloaded from almost anywhere in the world has blurred the lines between author, reader, format and distribution, and this has caused some head-scratching at some of the world's biggest publishing companies. Such companies must adapt, and quickly, to the new market; but many are nervous of the risks and often shareholders are not willing to break new ground.
For many writers, however, e-publishing provides new freedoms and opportunities. Many e-books are published by writers who do not have a readership through mainstream publishers, and this allows -hem to deal with material that mainstream publishers would consider too controversial or otherwise unmarketable.
The market is very much driven by the consumer, and publishing companies are going to have to deal with this new situation sooner or later. It is quite a complicated situation, but it doesn't have to be either/or. The book as we know it has been around for about 500 years and, once things settle down, there is no reason why the e-book and the traditional printed book should not exist happily side by side.