Here I am providing you the BA English Honours of West Bengal State University WBSU.

WBSU BA English Honours syllabus

Part I
Paper I :Old English, Middle English, Elizabethan and Jacobean Literature, and Philology
Old English Literature:
• Old English Poetry- Background of the age, culture, structure of the epic, style, theme. A passage
from Beowulf (see appendix I). The idea is to use an extract and from there work into the context and
analyze how that shapes the writing.
• Non-epic, secular, elegiac poetry, theme, style, social picture, language, style : Deor’s Lament (see
appendix I)
• Christian poetry- Caedmon’s hymn; Cynewulf, Dream of the Rood (see appendix I)
• Old English Prose - An overview
Middle English Literature:
• The Norman conquest and transition, the romance tradition, the alliterative revival (See appendix I),
the Black Death, Langland, Gower, Lydgate; Chaucer, General background, literary career, extracts
from the Prologue (see appendix I ), Metrical Romances, Malory, Caxton. Prose, Wyclif and
Mandeville.
Elizabethan and Jacobean Literature:
• The historical, political, socio-cultural background, literary/intellectual details. The generic/social
history of poetry and poetic forms (to be tied up with the poems of the period that are being taught).
• The following poems are for detailed study:
Sidney, ‘Loving in truth’
Spenser, ‘One day I wrote her name upon the strand’
Shakespeare, Sonnets 18, 73, 130
Donne, ‘Cannonization’
Marvell, ‘To His Coy Mistress’
Vaughan, ‘Peace’
• Elizabethan/Jacobean Prose- The phenomenal growth of English prose from late medieval religious
prose, through the translations from Latin that culminated in the issue of King James’s Bible. Other
categories of prose, secular romances, narratives, travelogues to be tied up with a close reading of
Bacon's essays Of Friendship &Of Death, and short extract from Robert Burton’s Anatomy of
Melancholy (See appendix I; online versions are available; the extract to be used has been selected)

Philology:
Sec I. Growth and Structure of English Language
• Latin, Greek, Scandinavian, French influences, Native Resources, Philological notes.
[Suggested Books:
v Otto Jespersen—Growth and Structure of the English Language
v C.L.Wren- The English Language
v A.C. Baugh- A History of the English Language
v James Bradstreet Greenough, George Lyman Kittredge- Words and their Ways in English
Speech]
Sec. II. Growth and Structure of Indian English
• Borrowings into Indian English :
Ø Loanwords and loan translations
Ø Hybrids
Ø Adaptations
Ø Diffusions
[Suggested Books:
v Yule, H. & A.C. Burnell, Hobson-Jobson: A Glossary of Colloquial Anglo Indian Words and
Phrases, and of Kindred Terms, Etymological, Historical, Geographical and Discursive, Delhi,
Rupa& Co., 1990, First Published 1886.
v Sethi, J., Standard English and Indian Usage: Vocabulary and Grammar, Second Edition.
Prentice Hall ,2011]
• Students will be asked to write philological notes on the following Indian English words: peon,
guru, lathicharge, tiffin-box, military hotel, 420, communal, out of station, batchmate, match box.

For complete syllabus here is the attachment


Contact-

West Bengal State University
Berunanpukuria, P.O. Malikapur, North 24 Parganas, Kolkata, West Bengal 700126

Attached Files

WBSU BA English Honours syllabus.pdf (161.2 KB, 68 views)