NET
SYLLABUS: NET (UGC)
The current official University Grants Commission (UGC) NET syllabus for English (Subject Code: 30), structured across its standard 10 units, is detailed below:
Unit – I: Drama
a. Evolution of dramatic forms across periods (Greek to contemporary)
b. Tragedy vs. comedy: classical definitions and modern subversions
c. Political and social dimensions of theatre
d. Modernist experimentation with form (symbolism, expressionism, absurdism)
e. Postcolonial drama and cultural identity
Unit – II: Poetry
a. Major poetic movements and their philosophical foundations
b. Evolution of poetic form (closed forms to free verse)
c. Relationship between form and meaning
d. Regional and cultural variations in English poetry
e. Modernist revolution in poetic language
Unit – III: Fiction, Short Story
a. Rise and development of the novel as a bourgeois form
b. Realism vs. romance: philosophical and formal differences
c. Modernist experiments with narrative (stream of consciousness, fragmentation)
d. Postmodern challenges to narrative authority
e. Postcolonial counter-narratives
Unit – IV: Non-Fictional Prose
a. Development of the essay as a flexible form
b. Relationship between style and argument
c. Life writing as self-construction
d. Prose as a vehicle for cultural and political thought
(Note: The first four units also incorporate comprehension passages to evaluate critical reading, thinking, and writing skills, encompassing all literatures written in English.)
Unit – V: Language: Basic Concepts, Theories and Pedagogy, English in Use
a. Structural analysis of language at different levels; descriptive vs. prescriptive grammar
b. Language as a social phenomenon (sociolinguistics); language acquisition and learning theories
c. Competence vs. performance, langue vs. parole
d. Phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics
Unit – VI: English in India: History, Evolution and Futures
a. Colonial introduction and educational policies (Macaulay’s Minute, Charter Act, Wood’s Despatch)
b. Post-independence status, official language controversies, and the three-language formula
c. Features of Indian English as a variety, lexical borrowings, and phonological characteristics
d. Challenges of English Language Teaching (ELT) in a multilingual and multicultural context
Unit – VII: Cultural Studies
a. Rise of Cultural Studies (the Birmingham School)
b. Popular culture, ideology, hegemony, and power structures
c. Cultural identity, representation, commodity culture, and globalization
d. Media, consumerism, and subcultures
Unit – VIII: Literary Criticism
a. Evolution of critical thought from classical to modern (Plato and Aristotle to New Criticism)
b. Key critical concepts: mimesis, katharsis, hamartia, fancy vs. imagination, objective correlative, touchstone method, practical criticism
c. Major critical traditions: Classical, Renaissance, Neoclassical, Romantic, Victorian, and Twentieth-century criticism
Unit – IX: Literary Theory Post World War II
a. Shift from humanist criticism to contemporary theory
b. Structuralism and Post-structuralism / Deconstruction (Saussure, Barthes, Derrida, Foucault)
c. Feminist Theory (Woolf, de Beauvoir, Showalter, Cixous, Butler)
d. Postcolonial Theory (Said, Spivak, Bhabha, Fanon)
e. Marxism, Psychoanalytic criticism, Reader-response theory, Ecocriticism, and New Historicism
Unit – X: Research Methods and Materials in English
a. Methods of research in literature and language studies
b. Formulation of research problems, hypotheses, and research design
c. Tools of research: primary and secondary sources, archives, digital humanities
d. Mechanics of scholarly writing: citations, bibliography, MLA and APA style sheets
