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Tuesday, 6 October 2026 · New Delhi

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UPSC CSE Mains · Optional Subject

English Literature

English literature from 1600 to 1990 — drama, poetry, the novel and criticism.

Download syllabus PDF

Paper I

250marks

3 hours each

Paper II

250marks

3 hours each

Optional total

500marks

Counts toward the Mains merit

Paper I syllabus

250 marks · 3 hours

(Answers must be written in English) Texts for detailed study are listed below. Candidates will also be required to show adequate knowledge of the following topics and movements : The Renaissance; Elizabethan and Jacobean Drama; Metaphysical Poetry; The Epic and the Mock-epic; Neo- classicism; Satire; The Romantic Movement; The Rise of the Novel; The Victorian Age.

Section A

  1. 1. William Shakespeare : King Lear and The Tempest.
  2. 3. John Milton : Paradise Lost, I, II, IV, IX.
  3. 4. Alexander Pope. The Rape of the Lock.
  4. 6. Alfred Tennyson : In Memoriam.
  5. 7. Henrik Ibsen : A Doll’s House.

Section A: 2. John Donne. The following poems

  1. –Canonization;
  2. –Death be not proud;
  3. –The Good Morrow;
  4. –On his Mistress going to bed;
  5. –The Relic;

Section A: 5. William Wordsworth. The following poems

  1. – Ode on Intimations of Immortality. – Tintern Abbey. – Three years she grew. – She dwelt among untrodden ways. – Michael. – Resolution and Independence. – The World is too much with us. – Milton, thou shouldst be living at this hour. – Upon Westminster Bridge.

Section B

  1. 1. Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels.
  2. 2. Jane Austen. Pride and Prejudice.
  3. 3. Henry Fielding. Tom Jones.
  4. 4. Charles Dickens. Hard Times.
  5. 5. George Eliot. The Mill on the Floss.
  6. 6. Thomas Hardy. Tess of the d’Urbervilles.
  7. 7. Mark Twain. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

Paper II syllabus

250 marks · 3 hours

(Answers must be written in English)

Texts for detailed study are listed below

  1. Candidates will also be required to show adequate knowledge of the following topics and movements :
  2. Modernism; Poets of the Thirties; The stream-of-consciousness Novel; Absurd Drama; Colonialism and Post- Colonialism; Indian Writing in English; Marxist, Psychoanalytical and Feminist approaches to literature; Post-Modernism.

Section A

  1. 4. John Osborne : Look Back in Anger.
  2. 5. Samuel Beckett. Waiting for Godot.

Section A: 1. William Butler Yeats. The following poems

  1. – Easter 1916. – The Second Coming. – A Prayer for my daughter. – Sailing to Byzantium. – The Tower. – Among School Children. – Leda and the Swan. – Meru. – Lapis Lazuli. – The Second Coming. – Byzantium.

Section A: 2. T.S. Eliot. The following poems

  1. – The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. – Journey of the Magi. – Burnt Norton.

Section A: 3. W.H. Auden. The following poems

  1. – Partition – Musee des Beaux Arts – In Memory of W.B. Yeats – Lay your sleeping head, my love – The Unknown Citizen – Consider – Mundus Et Infans – The Shield of Achilles – September 1, 1939 – Petition

Section A: 6. Philip Larkin. The following poems

  1. – Next – Please – Deceptions – Afternoons – Days – Mr. Bleaney

Section A: 7. A.K. Ramanujan. The following poems

  1. – Looking for a Cousin on a Swing – A River – Of Mothers, among other Things – Love Poem for a Wife 1 – Small-Scale Reflections on a Great House – Obituary
  2. (All these poems are available in the anthology Ten Twentieth Century Indian Poets, edited by R. Parthasarthy, published by Oxford University Press, New Delhi).

Section B

  1. 1. Joseph Conrad. Lord Jim.
  2. 2. James Joyce. Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.
  3. 3. D.H. Lawrence. Sons and Lovers.
  4. 4. E.M. Forster. A Passage to India.
  5. 5. Virginia Woolf. Mrs. Dalloway.
  6. 6. Raja Rao. Kanthapura.
  7. 7. V.S. Naipaul. A House for Mr. Biswas.

Syllabus as per the official UPSC Civil Services (Main) Examination notification. Topic-wise study notes for English Literature are being added — check back soon.

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