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» NET English Paper 3 December 2013 Q.17
NET English Paper 3 December 2013 Q.17
17. I have known three generations of John Smiths. The type breeds true. John
Smith II and III went to the same school, university and learned profession as
John Smith I. Yet John Smith I wrote pseudo-Swinburne; John Smith II wrote
pseudo-Brooke; and John Smith III is now writing pseudo-Eliot. But unless John
Smith can write John Smith, however unfashionable the result, why does he
bother to write at all? Surely one Swinburne; one Brooke, and one Eliot are
enough in any age?
(Robert Graves, “The Poet and his Public”)
1. Graves is critical of blind adulation and imitation of successful poets.
2. Graves is critical of blind conformity to standards set by Swinburne, Brooke, and
Eliot.
3. Swinburne, Brooke, and Eliot represent the movements: Decadence, the Georgian,
and Modernist respectively.
4. The poets in question are Algernon Charles Swinburne, Stopford Brooke, and
Thomas Stearns Eliot.
