BEGC-113 EM 2025-26 SOLVED ASSIGNMENT

Description

BEGC 113:- Modern European Drama

Assignment July 2025 and January 2026 Sessions

Programme: BAEGH

Assignment Code: BEGC 113/ TMA/1/2025-2026

Max. Marks: 100 Instructions: This assignment has two sections—A and B.

• Section A is compulsory

. ● Attempt any three questions from Section B.

• Attempt five questions in total.
• All questions carry equal marks

. ● Word limit for each answer: 500–600 words (unless specified otherwise). SECTION A (Compulsory)

Q1. Write short critical notes on any two of the following topics (250–300 words each): (10 x 2 = 20 marks)

i) The transformation of the individual and society in Eugène Ionesco’s Rhinoceros

ii) Absurdism and Existentialism: A comparative note using Waiting for Godot

iii) Role of memory and guilt in Ibsen’s Ghosts

iv) Epic Theatre and Alienation Effect in The Good Woman of Szechuan

Q2. Critically analyze the significance of any two of the following quotations. Discuss their dramatic context, thematic relevance, and stylistic features: (10 x 2 = 20 marks)

a) DAISY: I never knew you were such a realist—I thought you were more poetic. Where’s your imagination? There are many sides to reality. Choose the one that’s best for you. Escape into the world of imagination.

b) MRS. ALVING: It’s not only what we have inherited from our father and mother that walks in us. It’s all sorts of dead ideas, and lifeless old beliefs, and so forth. They have no vitality, but they cling to us all the same, and we can’t get rid of them.

c) SHEN TE: To be good to you, my son, I shall be a tigress to all others. d) VLADIMIR: I don’t understand. ESTRAGON: Use your intelligence, can’t you? Vladimir uses his intelligence. VLADIMIR: (finally) I remain in the dark.

SECTION B (Attempt any three questions) (Each question carries 20 marks)

Q3. Discuss Ibsen’s Ghosts as a social critique of 19th-century moral and institutional structures. Examine how the play questions social hypocrisy, religious dogma, and the oppressive legacies of patriarchy through its characters and dramatic structure. \

Q4. Examine the characterization in The Good Woman of Szechuan. How does Brecht use Shen Te / Shui Ta as a theatrical and ideological device to critique capitalism and the moral contradictions of “being good” in an exploitative world?

Q5. Trace the transition from Romanticism to Realism and Naturalism in modern European drama. How did political revolutions (like the French Revolution) and the rise of the middle class influence the shift from idealism to gritty depictions of social reality?

Q6. Discuss Waiting for Godot as a canonical example of the Theatre of the Absurd. Analyze its themes of futility, circular time, identity, language breakdown, and the human condition through characters and plot.

Q7. Compare the use of absurdity in the works of Beckett and Ionesco. How do these dramatists explore human existence, conformity, isolation, and the fragility of meaning in the modern world? Provide references from Waiting for Godot and Rhinoceros.