৫১তম বিসিএস ফাইনাল মডেল টেস্ট ও রিভিশন

Oscar Wilde’s one-act play Salomé (published 1893; first performed 1896) was translated by Hedwig Lachmann.
Oscar Wilde was an Irish poet, novelist and dramatist.
His famous books are The Importance of Being Earnest, A woman of No Importance, An Ideal Husband, The Picture of Dorian Gray, Lady Windermere's Fan etc.
Source: An ABC of English Literature, Dr M Mofizar Rahman and Britannica.com

Allegory: (রূপক বর্ণনা; প্রতীকাশ্রয়ী কাহিনী)
A literary form in which one story is told in the guise of another story.
Ex: Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress
Source: An ABC of English Literature, Dr M Mofizar Rahman.

Alliteration (noun):
Meaning: The occurrence of the same letter or sound at the beginning of adjacent or closely connected words.
Bengali meaning: অনুপ্রাস।
প্রশ্নে শুধু অপশন ক) - তে অনুপ্রাস রয়েছে।

“Cruelty has a Human Heart
And Jealousy a Human Face
Terror the Human Form Divine
And Secrecy, the Human Dress
The Human Dress, is forged Iron
The Human Form, a fiery Forge.
The Human Face, a Furnace seal'd
The Human Heart, its hungry Gorge.”

A Divine Image
By William Blake.

George Orwell এর আসল নাম হলো Eric Arthur Blair. তিনি ব্রিটিশ ভারতে জন্মগ্রহণ করেন।
Animal Farm এবং Nineteen Eighty-Four (1984) জর্জ অরওয়েলের দুটি বিখ্যাত উপন্যাস।

Works:
Novel:
- Animal Farm (1945 – a fairy story)
- Nineteen Eighty-Four
- Burmese Days
- Coming up for Air.
Other works:
- Shooting an Elephant
- Down and Out in Paris and London
- The Road to Wigan Pier

Source: Encyclopedia Britannica.

Iambic tetrameter is, next to iambic pentameter, the most common metre in English poetry;
It is used in the English and Scottish traditional ballads, which are usually composed of four-line stanzas of alternating iambic tetrameter and trimeter.
Source: Britannica.com

Fabian Society, a socialist society founded in 1884 in London, having as its goal the establishment of a democratic socialist state in Great Britain.
The Fabians put their faith in evolutionary socialism rather than in revolution.
It's founding is attributed to Thomas Davidson, a Scottish philosopher, and its early members included George Bernard Shaw, Sidney Webb, Annie Besant, Edward Pease, and Graham Wallas.
Shaw and Webb, later joined by Webb’s wife, Beatrice, were the outstanding leaders of the society for many years.
In 1889 the society published its best-known tract, Fabian Essays in Socialism, edited by Shaw.

Source: Britannica.com

Francis Bacon is called a natural philosopher. He is also called the Father of English Essay and Father of Modern Prose.
His famous works are Novum Organum, Essays, Divine and Humane, Advancement of Learning, The Wisdom of Ancients and The New Atlantis etc.
Source: An ABC of English Literature, Dr. M Mofizar Rahman and Britannica.com

William Butler Yeats (1865 – 1939):
- Irish dramatist, poet, and critic.
- He is famous for his use of “Symbolism and Mysticism”.
- He wrote the preamble of Tagore's “Gitanjali” in 1912, which later got Nobel prize in 1913.
- W.B Yeats got the Nobel prize in 1923.

Major Works:
Famous Books of Poems:
- The Wild Swans at Coole,
- The Tower,
- The Cat and the Moon.
Poems:
- The Winding Stair and Other poems,
- The Resurrection,
- The Second Coming,
- Byzantium,
- The Lake Isle of Innisfree,
- Among School Children,
- The Lord of Harts,
- A Prayer for My Daughter,
- When You Are Old.
Drama:
- The Countess Cathleen,
- Cathleen in Houlihan.
‘The Countess Cathleen’ verse drama by William Butler Yeats, published in 1892 and performed in 1899.

Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica.

Objective correlative, a literary theory first set forth by T.S. Eliot in the essay “Hamlet and His Problems” and published in The Sacred Wood (1920).
T.S. Eliot used this phrase to describe “a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events which shall be the formula of that particular emotion” that the poet feels and hopes to evoke in the reader.
Source: Britannica.com

ইংরেজি সাহিত্যে Modern Period শুরু হয় ১৯০১ সালে রাণি ভিক্টোরিয়ার মৃত্যুর পর পরই এবং তা শেষ হয় ১৯৩৯ সালে যখন দ্বিতীয় বিশ্বযুদ্ধ শুরু হয়।
তখন থেকেই Postmodern period শুরুর সময় ধরা হলে যুদ্ধচলাকালীন তেমন উল্লেখযোগ্য সাহিত্যকর্ম রচিত হয় নি।
তাই মূলত ২য় বিশ্বযুদ্ধের পর থেকেই Post-modern period-এর সূচনা হয়।
Source: A Glossary of Literary Terms by M. H. Abrams.

Arms and the Man, a romantic comedy in three acts by George Bernard Shaw, produced in 1894 and published in 1898.
The play is set in the Petkoff household in Bulgaria and satirizes romantic ideas concerning war and heroism.
Source: Britannica.com

Bertrand Russell (1872 – 1970): A philosopher.
Works:
- Mysticism and Logic,
- The Analysis of Mind,
- History of Western philosophy,
- Authority and Individual.
Source: An ABC of English Literature - Dr M Mofizar Rahman

Poetics হল Aristotle-এর লেখা একটি বই।
তার রচিত আরো কয়েকটি বইঃ
- Metaphysics
- Politics
- On the Soul
- Physics

- 'Man is by nature a political animal' (the Politics) said, Aristotle.
- Socrates said that 'An unexamined life is not worth living'.
- 'Necessity is the mother of invention' said Plato.
- 'If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him' stated by Voltaire.

The Countess Cathleen, verse drama by William Butler Yeats, published in 1892 and performed in 1899.
Like many of Yeats’s plays, The Countess Cathleen was inspired by Irish folklore.
In a time of famine, demons sent by Satan come to Ireland to buy the souls of the starving people. The saintly Cathleen disposes of her vast estates and wealth in order to feed the peasants, yet the demons thwart her at every turn; at last, she sacrifices her own soul to save those of the poor.
Source: Britannica.com

Pun, also called paronomasia, humorous use of a word in such a way as to suggest different meanings or applications, or a play on words, as in the use of the word rings in the following nursery rhyme:

Ride a cock-horse to Banbury Cross,
To see a fine lady upon a white horse;
Rings on her fingers and bells on her toes,
She shall have music wherever she goes.

অর্থ্যাৎ, Pun হল একই ধরণের উচ্চারণের একটি শব্দের ভিন্ন ধরণের অর্থ নিয়ে খেলা।

Source: Britannica.com

A Tale of Two Cities, a novel by Charles Dickens, published both serially and in book form in 1859.
The story is set in the late 18th century against the background of the French Revolution.
Although Dickens borrowed from Thomas Carlyle’s history, The French Revolution, for his sprawling tale of London and revolutionary Paris, the novel offers more drama than accuracy.
The scenes of large-scale mob violence are especially vivid, if superficial in historical understanding.
Source: Britannica.com

For Whom the Bell Tolls, a novel by Ernest Hemingway, published in 1940.
The title is from a sermon by John Donne containing the famous words "No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the Continent, a part of the main…. Any man’s death diminishes me, for I am involved in mankind. Any therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee."

SUMMARY:
The novel is set near Segovia, Spain, in 1937 and tells the story of American teacher Robert Jordan, who has joined the anti-fascist Loyalist army.
Jordan has been sent to make contact with a guerrilla band and blow up a bridge to advance a Loyalist offensive. The action takes place during Jordan’s 72 hours at the guerrilla camp. During this period he falls in love with María, who has been raped by fascist soldiers and befriends the shrewd but cowardly guerrilla leader Pablo and his courageous wife, Pilar.
Jordan manages to destroy the bridge; Pablo, Pilar, María, and two other guerrillas escape, but Jordan is injured. Proclaiming his love to María once more, he awaits the fascist troops and certain death.
Set in 1937 during the Spanish Civil War, For Whom the Bell Tolls follows the struggles of an American college instructor who has left his job to fight for the Republicans.
Robert Jordan has been dispatched from Madrid to lead a band of guerrillas that operates in a perpetual state of a leadership crisis.

Source: Britannica.com

'Doris Lessing' is a British novelist, short story writer.
She won Nobel prize in literature in 2007.
Famous literary work:
- The Golden Notebook
- The Grass Is Singing
- The Good Terrorist
- Briefing for a Descent into Hell etc.

Jonathan Swift wrote Gulliver’s Travel (fiction). Gulliver’s Travels combines adventure with savage satire, mocking English customs and the politics of the day.
Its important characters are:
- Gulliver,
- Blefuscudian,
- Yahoos,
- Houyhnhnms,
- Lilliputians,
- Laputans.
Houyhnhnms in Gulliver’s Travel are horses.
Source: Britannica.com

Lake poet, any of the English poets William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and Robert Southey, who lived in the English Lake District of Cumberland and Westmorland (now Cumbria) at the beginning of the 19th century.
- They were first described derogatorily as the “Lake School” by Francis (afterwards Lord) Jeffrey in The Edinburgh Review in August 1817, and the description “Lakers” was also used in a similar spirit by the poet Lord Byron.
- These names confusingly group Wordsworth and Coleridge together with Southey, who did not subscribe in his views or work to their theories of poetry.
Source: Britannica.com

Twelfth Night, in full Twelfth Night; or, What You Will, comedy in five acts by William Shakespeare, written about 1600–02 and printed in the First Folio of 1623 from a transcript of an authorial draft or possibly a playbook.
Important Characters form Twelfth Night:
- Sebastian
- Viola
- Olivia
- Malvolio
Source: Britannica.com

"Ode to Adversity" is a poem written by Thomas Gray.
This poem is somewhat of prayer to Jove and adversity. Gray tells us all the things that Virtue, the child of Jove, had done to overcome what happened to her.

Thomas Gray is famous for Graveyard Poet.
His famous Elegy is 'Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard'.
His other notable works are:
- Alexander’s Feast,
- Ode to adversity,
- The Bard.
Source: An ABC of English Literature, Dr. M Mofizar Rahman and Britannica.com

Thomas Hardy was an English novelist and poet.
His famous books are:
- The Return of the Native,
- The Mayor of Casterbridge,
- Tess of the d'Urbervilles,
- Far From the Madding Crowd,
- The Poor Man and The Lady,
- The Trumpet Major,
- Jude the Obscure,
- A Pair of Blue Eyes,
- Under the Greenwood Tree.

Source: An ABC of English Literature, Dr M Mofizar Rahman and Encyclopedia of Britannica.

Ode to a Nightingale, poem in eight stanzas by John Keats, published in Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St. Agnes, and Other Poems (1820).
It is a meditation upon art and life inspired by the song of a nightingale that has made a nest in the poet’s garden.
Source: Britannica.com

Poet laureate:
Poet laureate, title first granted in England in the 17th century for poetic excellence.
Its holder is a salaried member of the British royal household, but the post has come to be free of specific poetic duties. In the United States, a similar position was created in 1936.
Notable Poet laureates:
- Ben Jonson
- Sir William Davenant
- Robert Southey
- William Wordsworth
- Alfred Tennyson

Source: Britannica.com

Kubla Khan, a Vision in a Dream, poetic fragment by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, published in 1816.
- According to Coleridge, he composed the 54-line work while under the influence of laudanum, a form of opium.
- Coleridge believed that several hundred lines of the poem had come to him in a dream, but he was able to remember only this fragment after waking.
Source: Britannica.com

The Unfortunate Traveller; or, The Life of Jacke Wilton is a novel written by Thomas Nashe.
The novel is a brutal and realistic tale of adventure narrated with speed and economy. The book describes the travels through Germany and Italy of its rogue hero, Jacke Wilton, who lives by his wits and witnesses all sorts of historic events before he is converted to a better way of life.
Source: Britannica.com

Haiku, an unrhymed poetic form consisting of 17 syllables arranged in three lines of 5, 7, and 5 syllables respectively.
The haiku first emerged in Japanese literature during the 17th century, as a terse reaction to elaborate poetic traditions, though it did not become known by the name haiku until the 19th century.
Source: Britannica.com

Persuasion, a novel by Jane Austen, published posthumously in 1817.
Her other works:
- “Emma”
-  Mansfield Park
- “Pride and Prejudice”
- “Sense and Sensibility”
- “Northanger Abbey”
- “Persuasion”
- “Mansfield Park”
- “Lady Susan”

Source: Britannica.com