MEG 05 Solved Guess Paper for the 2026 Term End Examination is a 15-page preparation file built for IGNOU learners taking MEG-05 Literary Criticism and Theory under the Master of Arts (English) programme. It carries 13 exam-style questions with complete model answers, all written from the IGNOU blocks rather than outside commentary. Five of those questions and their answers are printed openly here so you can judge the writing first.
The file was not assembled by guessing. Question papers from the last five years were read line by line, the December 2025 paper was mapped question by question, and the topics that keep returning were separated from the ones that appeared once and vanished. What survived that filter became the 13 questions inside.
MEG 05 Literary Criticism and Theory at a glance
| Course code | MEG-05 |
| Course title | Literary Criticism and Theory |
| Programme | Master of Arts (English) – MEG |
| Blocks in the syllabus | 8 |
| Units across those blocks | 46 |
| Term End paper duration | 3 hours |
| Maximum marks | 100 |
| Marks per question | 20 |
| Questions in this guess paper | 13 |
| Questions shown openly here | 5 |
| Questions available on request | 8 |
| Sessions mapped in the frequency table | 6 (June 2023 to December 2025) |
| Target sessions | June 2026 and December 2026 |
| Pages | 15 |
What this MEG 05 page covers
- What is inside the MEG 05 guess paper file for 2026
- Five sample questions with full answers you can read now
- How the MEG 05 answers were built from previous year papers
- Block wise and unit wise index of MEG 05 Literary Criticism and Theory
- Topic frequency across the last six MEG 05 question papers
- MEG 05 exam pattern marks split and word limits
- Who should use this MEG 05 guess paper
- Inside pages of the MEG 05 file shown as images
- What you receive and how to request the complete file
- A fourteen day revision plan for MEG 05
- How to write MEG 05 answers that examiners reward
- Frequently asked questions about MEG 05
What is inside the MEG 05 guess paper file for 2026
The MEG 05 file contains 13 questions with complete model answers, drawn from eight blocks of the syllabus, each answer sized to the 20-mark word target of roughly 450 words.
Every question carries four labels above the answer, and those labels are the part students tell us they use most. There is a priority band of HIGH or MEDIUM, the block the question belongs to, the sessions in which the topic last appeared, and the marks and word target. That header alone tells you whether a topic is worth two hours of revision or twenty minutes.
The answers themselves follow one shape throughout. Each opens with a short quoted definition taken from the IGNOU block, moves into five numbered points, and closes with a one-line evaluative conclusion. That closing line matters more than students expect, because it is the sentence that separates a recall answer from an answer that reads as understanding.
The thirteenth question is the short-notes question, and it is handled differently. Rather than one note, four model notes are supplied on Mimesis, Catharsis, Rasa and Dhvani, each around 200 to 250 words, because the paper asks you to attempt any two and these four cover the pairing that recurs most often. Learners who want the same treatment for other courses can browse the full IGNOU Solved Guess Paper collection.
Five sample questions with answers from the MEG 05 Solved Guess Paper
Five of the 13 questions are reproduced below exactly as they appear in the file, with their complete model answers, so the writing quality can be checked before anything is requested.
The five have been picked from five different blocks on purpose. Classical Criticism, Romantic Criticism, New Criticism, Feminist Theories and Deconstruction are all represented, which lets you see how the answer structure holds up across a philosophical question, a language question and a theory question. The eight that remain sit inside the file.
Sample 1 · Plato on Imitation and the Role of the Artist (20 marks · Classical Criticism · HIGH)
Last appeared: Dec 2025, June 2025, Dec 2024
Question: Bring out Plato’s criticism of the role of the poet and the artist in his concept of the Ideal State.
Meaning of Plato’s View of Art
“Art products of all kinds — poetry, theatre or painting — are inferior copies of the ultimate reality; representation through art is inferior to the ultimate truth.”
Plato’s Main Criticisms
- Theory of the Forms — the Form alone is real and unchanging; the material world is itself a copy of the Form, so art, being a copy of that copy, stands at a further remove from truth.
- The lower status of art — poets and painters often produce only a semblance (phantasma), a false representation; in his scheme the imitative artist is given a low place among the seekers of knowledge.
- Art as untruthful — the artist pretends to know things he does not; Homer wrote of warring heroes though he was no general and won no wars, yet claims wisdom on everything.
- Moral danger — poetry feeds the emotions and appetites that ought to be restrained; it makes our feelings control us when reason should control them, thus weakening the rational soul.
- Threat to social well-being — in the well-governed state the guardians must keep the appetites in check; the artist, as a promulgator of ignorance, can have only a small and highly restricted place.
Conclusion: For Plato, art is philosophically inferior (twice removed from truth) and morally suspect; therefore the poet and dramatist are allotted only a limited, supervised role in the Ideal State.
Sample 2 · Wordsworth on Poetry and Poetic Language (20 marks · Romantic Criticism · HIGH)
Last appeared: Dec 2025, June 2025, Dec 2024
Question: “There neither is nor can be any essential difference between the language of prose and metrical composition.” Comment in the light of Wordsworth’s theory of poetry.
Meaning of Wordsworth’s Definition
“All good poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings.”
Central Ideas
- Spontaneous overflow, shaped by thought — feeling is primary, yet our influxes of feeling are modified and directed by thoughts, which are the representatives of all our past feelings.
- The real language of men — Wordsworth strips poetry of cliched, shop-worn “poeticisms” and the degenerate classical wit, returning to the genuine speech of ordinary people.
- No essential difference between prose and verse — the language of good prose and that of good poetry are essentially one; metre is an addition, not a separate diction.
- The poet’s characteristics — he identifies three: more than usual sensibility, a more comprehensive soul, and the power to feel and imagine vicariously what others feel.
- Poetry and science — far from being the enemy of poetry, science will make poetry needed even more; the poet will stand beside the man of science, carrying sensation into objects of science itself.
Conclusion: Wordsworth democratises poetic diction and roots poetry in sincere feeling expressed in the living language of common life, denying any essential gulf between prose and verse.
Sample 3 · T. S. Eliot on Tradition and the Individual Talent (20 marks · New Criticism · HIGH)
Last appeared: Dec 2025, June 2024
Question: “‘Tradition and the Individual Talent’ is indispensable for distinguishing literature from ordinary writing.” Discuss T. S. Eliot as a critic.
Meaning of Eliot’s Criticism
“The historical sense is a feeling that the whole of the literature of Europe from Homer, and within it the whole of the literature of one’s own country, has a simultaneous existence and composes a simultaneous order.”
Key Ideas
- Tradition and the historical sense — no poet has complete meaning alone; the past is altered by the present as much as the present is directed by the past.
- Impersonality of poetry — the progress of the artist is a continual self-sacrifice, a continual extinction of personality; the emotion of art is impersonal.
- The poet as catalyst — the poet’s mind is a medium, like a catalyst, in which experiences combine into new wholes while the artist himself remains separate from the man who suffers.
- Dissociation of sensibility — in “The Metaphysical Poets” he argues that a split between thought and feeling set in after the seventeenth century, from which poetry never fully recovered.
- The objective correlative — first used in his essay on Hamlet, this is the set of objects, situation or events that becomes the formula for evoking a particular emotion.
Conclusion: Eliot shifts critical attention from the personality of the poet to the poem and to tradition, founding an impersonal, historically conscious criticism.
Sample 4 · Elaine Showalter on Gynocriticism and the Wilderness (20 marks · Feminist Theories · HIGH)
Last appeared: Dec 2025, Dec 2024, June 2024
Question: What do you understand by Gynocriticism? Critically analyse Elaine Showalter’s essay ‘Feminist Criticism in the Wilderness’.
Meaning of Gynocriticism
“Gynocritics is more self-contained and experimental, with connections to other modes of women-centred study, whereas the feminist critique is essentially political and polemical.”
Key Ideas
- Two kinds of feminist criticism — the feminist critique treats woman as reader; gynocritics treats woman as writer, studying the literature produced by women.
- The feminist critique — it is political and polemical, with theoretical affiliations to Marxist sociology and aesthetics.
- Gynocriticism — self-contained and experimental, it investigates the history, themes and styles of women’s own writing rather than reinterpreting male texts.
- The “wilderness” — women form a muted culture and men a dominant one; women’s writing is “double-voiced”, occupying the crescent-shaped wild zone peculiar to the silenced culture of women.
- A self-critical caution — Showalter warns that a gynocriticism which sees only an adversarial relation to men’s writing risks becoming a poetics of suffering and victimisation.
Conclusion: Showalter’s model moves criticism from interpreting male texts toward building a framework for women’s own writing and culture, filling a long-standing gap in literary theory.
Sample 5 · Derrida and the Concept of Deconstruction (20 marks · Deconstruction · HIGH)
Last appeared: Dec 2025, June 2025, Dec 2024
Question: Evaluate Derrida’s concept of Deconstruction and his resistance to defining it.
Meaning of Deconstruction
“All sentences of the type ‘Deconstruction is X’ or ‘Deconstruction is not X’ a priori miss the point.”
Key Ideas
- From structuralism to post-structuralism — deconstruction questions the structuralist faith in a stable centre that fixes the meaning of a structure.
- Binary oppositions — Western thought rests on hierarchical binaries; the “centre” is the controlling intent that constructs the hierarchy and keeps it in place.
- Différance — Derrida’s coinage from the French “différer” (to differ and to defer); meaning is endlessly differing and perpetually deferred.
- Metaphysics of presence and logocentrism — the illusion that meaning is fully present behind a word arises from suppressing différance; logocentrism privileges presence and the spoken word.
- Self-dismantling — deconstruction is not merely the reversal of hierarchies; by its own nature it involves its own dismantling as well.
Conclusion: Deconstruction unsettles fixed meaning and the metaphysics of presence, showing that texts perpetually undo the very hierarchies on which they appear to rest.
Eight questions are still inside the file: Aristotle on mimesis, Coleridge on fancy and imagination, I. A. Richards on the principles of criticism, the Marxist account of ideology and purpose, the sex and gender distinction in feminist theory, Virginia Woolf on A Room of One’s Own, Freud and psychoanalysis, and the four short notes.
Message us on WhatsApp at 9899436384 for the remaining 8 questions with answers
How the MEG 05 answers were built from previous year question papers
Every question in the file was selected after reading five years of MEG-05 Term End papers and mapping the December 2025 paper question by question against the eight blocks.
The working method was ordinary and slow. Each paper was broken into its individual questions, each question was tagged to a block and a unit, and the tags were counted. Topics that came back three or more times moved into the HIGH band. Topics with two appearances became MEDIUM. Single appearances were logged and then set aside as backup reading.
The December 2025 paper was treated separately because recency changes priorities. A topic that has just been asked sometimes rests for a session, while a HIGH-frequency topic left out of the most recent paper often returns immediately. Both patterns were factored in, which is why a few MEDIUM topics still earned a full answer in the file. Anyone who wants to repeat this exercise independently can work from our IGNOU Previous Year Question Paper archive.
Answers were then written from the IGNOU blocks alone. No outside theorist, no modern example and no borrowed critical vocabulary was imported, because examiners mark against the course material and an answer full of unfamiliar names reads as padding rather than depth.
Block wise and unit wise index of MEG 05 Literary Criticism and Theory
MEG-05 is organised into 8 blocks containing 46 units in total, and the Term End paper draws almost all of its 20-mark questions from Blocks 2 to 8.
Block 1 is the exception. It is survey material, and its Indian Aesthetics unit is the source of the rasa, dhvani, sphota and aucitya short notes rather than of full questions. The table below sets out the official structure recorded on eGyanKosh, the IGNOU digital repository, alongside what each block actually gets asked about.
| Block | Title | Units | What the paper asks from this block |
|---|---|---|---|
| Block 1 | An Introduction | 6 – Literature Criticism and Theory; Overview of Western Critical Thought; Twentieth Century Developments; The Function of Criticism; Indian Aesthetics; Resistance to Theory / How to Read a Reader | Short notes on rasa, dhvani, sphota and aucitya come from the Indian Aesthetics unit. The survey units supply opening definitions rather than standalone questions. |
| Block 2 | Classical Criticism | 6 – Features of Classical Criticism; Plato on Imitation and Art; Aristotle’s Theory of Imitation; Aristotle’s Theory of Tragedy I; Aristotle’s Theory of Tragedy II; Criticism as Dialogue | The most heavily examined block. Plato’s objection to the poet, Aristotle’s answer to it, the six elements of tragedy, catharsis and hamartia. |
| Block 3 | Romantic Criticism | 4 – Romanticism; Wordsworth Preface to the Lyrical Ballads; Coleridge Biographia Literaria; P. B. Shelley A Defence of Poetry | Prose against metrical composition, the real language of men, fancy set against imagination, and the primary and secondary imagination. |
| Block 4 | New Criticism | 6 – I. A. Richards; T. S. Eliot; F. R. Leavis; John Crowe Ransom and Cleanth Brooks; W. K. Wimsatt; Conclusion | Richards on appetency, value and the split between scientific and emotive language. Eliot on the historical sense, impersonality and the objective correlative. |
| Block 5 | Marxist View of Literature | 6 – Marxism and Literature; Society and History; Representing and Critiquing Society Superstructures; Commitment in Literature; Autonomy in Literature; Literature and Ideology | Base and superstructure, the mode of production, class struggle, ideology inside the text, and the argument that a writer supplies purpose. |
| Block 6 | Feminist Theories | 6 – Features of Feminist Criticism; Mary Wollstonecraft; Virginia Woolf A Room of One’s Own; Simone de Beauvoir The Second Sex; Elaine Showalter Feminist Criticism in the Wilderness; Feminist Concerns in India Today | Sex against gender, patriarchy and the canon, gynocriticism and the wild zone, and Woolf’s material conditions for women who write. |
| Block 7 | Deconstruction | 6 – Roots New Criticism and Structuralism; Beginning Deconstruction; Implications; Deconstructing Poetry; Deconstructing Drama; Re-Assessing Deconstruction | Différance, logocentrism, the metaphysics of presence, binary hierarchies, and why Derrida refuses to let deconstruction be defined. |
| Block 8 | Contemporary Literary Theory | 6 – Some Basic Issues; Postmodernism The Basics; Psychoanalysis Freud and Lacan; Postcolonial Theory Said Spivak and Bhabha; Beginnings of Cultural Studies and New Historicism; Literary Criticism and Theory A Summing Up | The id, ego and superego, the libido, the Oedipus complex, and Lacan on the unconscious structured like a language. Said appears only occasionally. |
Topic frequency across the last six MEG 05 question papers
Across the six Term End papers from June 2023 to December 2025, Plato on imitation and the Marxist account of ideology appeared in all six, making them the two safest topics in MEG-05.
The table below is the working sheet that produced the guess paper. J23 means June 2023, D23 means December 2023, and so on to D25. IGNOU conducts only June and December Term End Examinations, so those are the only session labels used anywhere in this analysis.
| Topic | Sessions in which it appeared | Count | Priority for 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Plato on imitation and the role of the artist | J23, D23, J24, D24, J25, D25 | 6 | HIGH |
| Marxism on ideology, purpose and commitment | J23, D23, J24, D24, J25, D25 | 6 | HIGH |
| Aristotle on mimesis and the theory of tragedy | J23, D23, J24, D24, J25 | 5 | HIGH |
| Wordsworth on poetic language | J24, D24, J25, D25 | 4 | HIGH |
| I. A. Richards on the principles of criticism | J23, D23, D24, J25 | 4 | HIGH |
| Elaine Showalter and gynocriticism | D23, J24, D24, D25 | 4 | HIGH |
| Deconstruction and Derrida | J23, D24, J25, D25 | 4 | HIGH |
| Psychoanalysis and Freud | D23, D24, J25, D25 | 4 | HIGH |
| Coleridge on the good poet and imagination | D23, J24, D25 | 3 | HIGH |
| Feminism on sex, gender and women writers | J24, D24, J25 | 3 | HIGH |
| Rasa | D23, D24, J25 | 3 | HIGH |
| Dhvani | D23, J25 | 2 | HIGH |
| T. S. Eliot on tradition and the individual talent | J24, D25 | 2 | MEDIUM |
| Virginia Woolf and A Room of One’s Own | J24, D25 | 2 | MEDIUM |
| Simone de Beauvoir and The Second Sex | J23, J25 | 2 | MEDIUM |
| Kamala Das and ‘An Introduction’ | J24, D25 | 2 | MEDIUM |
| Catharsis and hamartia | J23, D23 | 2 | MEDIUM |
| Sphota, aucitya and sruti | J23, J24 | 2 | MEDIUM |
| Mimesis as a short note | D23 | 1 | MEDIUM |
| Natyashastra | D25 | 1 | MEDIUM |
| Primary and secondary imagination as a short note | J23 | 1 | LOW |
| The Death of the Author | J25 | 1 | LOW |
| Orientalism and Said | J24 | 1 | LOW |
| Stream of consciousness | D23 | 1 | LOW |
Read the bottom of that table as carefully as the top. The four LOW entries are the ones students waste weeks on because they look impressive, and Orientalism in particular attracts far more revision time than its single appearance in six papers can justify.
MEG 05 exam pattern marks split and word limits
MEG-05 runs for 3 hours and carries 100 marks, with every question worth 20 marks, and the paper follows one of two shapes.
In the first shape you are asked to attempt any five questions from the set. In the second, the short-notes question is compulsory and you choose four more from the rest. The short-notes question normally asks for any two notes of around 200 words each, so the two together carry the same 20 marks as one long answer.
Word targets are worth taking seriously. A 20-mark answer should land near 450 words, a 10-mark note near 250, and a 5-mark note near 150. Writing 800 words for a 20-mark question does not add marks, it only removes the time you needed for the fifth answer. Reading a full MEG 05 Question paper from an earlier session makes this arithmetic obvious within minutes.
One habit costs more marks than any gap in knowledge, and it is attempting only four questions properly and leaving the fifth half-written. All questions carry equal weight, so a rushed but complete fifth answer beats a polished fourth answer every time.
Who should use this MEG 05 Solved Guess Paper
This file suits second-year MA English learners sitting MEG-05 in June or December 2026, repeaters clearing a backlog, and UGC NET aspirants who use MEG-05 as their theory base.
It is built for the student who has the blocks but not the time. If you have 46 units in front of you and three weeks before the paper, the honest question is not what to read but what to skip, and that is precisely what a frequency-mapped file answers.
Many MEG learners reach this course after finishing an undergraduate degree through the BAG guess Paper route, and they arrive expecting the same kind of question bank they used at bachelor’s level. MEG-05 does not work that way, because the paper rewards argument rather than recall, and the answers here are shaped for that difference.
The same applies to learners entering MEG after the four-year multidisciplinary undergraduate programme, where our BAM guess Paper material follows a lighter, more descriptive answer pattern. Moving from that pattern to a 450-word critical answer takes practice, and the model answers in this file are the fastest way to see what the target looks like.
Repeaters get a particular benefit. If you have already sat MEG-05 once, you know which block defeated you, and the block labels on every question let you go straight to that weakness rather than rereading everything.
Inside pages of the MEG 05 file shown as images
Seven pages from the 15-page file are shown below so the layout, the answer depth and the block labelling can be inspected before you ask for it.
The images are unretouched screenshots of the actual pages. What you see in them is what arrives.
What you receive and how to request the complete MEG 05 file
The complete MEG 05 Solved Guess Paper is a 15-page PDF holding all 13 questions with full model answers, the block mapping, the six-session frequency table and the exam-pattern rules page.
Five of those questions are already open on this page. The eight that remain, together with the four short notes and the two-page rules section, sit inside the PDF. Send a message with your course code and your session, and the file is shared over WhatsApp.
A note on what this is and is not. It is a preparation aid built from question-paper analysis, not a leaked paper and not a promise of exact questions. Nobody can know in advance which five IGNOU will set. What a sound guess paper does is shorten the list you must be ready for, and this one shortens 46 units to 13 answers.
WhatsApp 9899436384 to get the complete 15-page MEG-05 file
A fourteen day revision plan for MEG 05 Literary Criticism and Theory
Fourteen days is enough for MEG-05 if you spend the first six on the four blocks that carry the most marks and never leave the short notes to the end.
Days one and two go to Classical Criticism, because Plato and Aristotle together have supplied a question in every one of the last six papers and they also feed the short notes on mimesis and catharsis. Two topics, two possible questions, one revision block.
Days three and four cover Romantic Criticism. Wordsworth and Coleridge are usually asked as separate questions, and the pair is easier to hold in memory when revised together because Coleridge builds directly on what Wordsworth started.
Days five and six take Marxism and New Criticism. Days seven and eight go to Feminist Theories, which is the block with the widest spread of possible questions, so it needs the extra day. Days nine and ten cover Deconstruction and psychoanalysis.
Days eleven and twelve are for the short notes, written out by hand at 200 words each until the length is instinctive. Day thirteen is a full timed attempt at a past paper. Day fourteen is for rereading your own answers rather than reading anything new.
How to write MEG 05 answers that examiners reward
Open with a definition and the critic’s name, cite the primary text, use the course material’s own terms, and close with an evaluative line rather than a summary.
Naming the text is the cheapest mark available. Writing Poetics, Biographia Literaria, A Room of One’s Own or the Dhvanyaloka in the first two lines signals that you have read rather than skimmed, and it takes four words.
Use the vocabulary the block uses. Muthos and ethos for Aristotle’s elements, appetency for Richards, the wild zone for Showalter, the rasa-sutra for Bharata. Substituting a general word for a technical one is the commonest way of losing marks on an otherwise correct answer.
Do not import theorists who are not on your syllabus. Bringing Foucault into a question about Derrida looks like extra reading but reads to an examiner as avoidance of the actual question, and it costs time you needed elsewhere.
Finally, resist biography. A paragraph on when Coleridge was born earns nothing. Examiners are marking your grasp of the theory, and every sentence that is not doing that work is a sentence that could have been an argument.
Frequently asked questions about the MEG 05 guess paper
What is the MEG 05 Solved Guess Paper for 2026?
The MEG 05 Solved Guess Paper is a 15-page PDF containing 13 exam-style questions with complete model answers for MEG-05 Literary Criticism and Theory. It targets the June 2026 and December 2026 Term End Examinations. Every answer is written from the IGNOU blocks, sized to the 450-word target for a 20-mark question, and tagged with its block and the sessions in which the topic last appeared.
How many questions does the MEG 05 guess paper contain and how many can I read here?
The file contains 13 questions in total, and five of them appear in full on this page with their complete answers. That leaves eight questions inside the file, including Aristotle on mimesis, Coleridge on imagination, I. A. Richards, the Marxist view of ideology, the sex and gender distinction, Virginia Woolf, Freud, and the four short notes on mimesis, catharsis, rasa and dhvani.
Which sessions of MEG 05 were analysed to build this guess paper?
Six Term End papers were mapped in detail, running from June 2023 through December 2025, and papers from earlier years were read for context. IGNOU holds only June and December Term End Examinations, so no other session labels apply. The December 2025 paper was weighted separately because the most recent paper changes which topics are likely to return next.
How many blocks and units does MEG 05 Literary Criticism and Theory have?
MEG-05 has 8 blocks containing 46 units in total. The blocks are An Introduction, Classical Criticism, Romantic Criticism, New Criticism, Marxist View of Literature, Feminist Theories, Deconstruction, and Contemporary Literary Theory. Block 1 is largely survey material, and the 20-mark questions in the Term End paper are drawn mainly from Blocks 2 through 8, with Block 2 examined most heavily.
What is the exam pattern and marking scheme for MEG 05?
The MEG-05 paper runs for 3 hours and carries 100 marks, with each question worth 20 marks. Two patterns recur. Either you attempt any five questions from the paper, or the short-notes question is compulsory and you choose any four from the rest. Short notes are usually any two of a given list, at around 200 words each.
Does MEG 05 have a practical file or project component?
No. MEG-05 Literary Criticism and Theory is a fully theoretical course with no practical file, no laboratory record and no project submission. Your obligations are the tutor-marked assignment and the 100-mark Term End Examination. The index provided on this page is therefore a block and unit index of the study material rather than a practical file index.
Is this MEG 05 guess paper enough on its own to pass the exam?
It is a preparation aid, not a replacement for the blocks. Used properly it narrows 46 units down to 13 well-prepared answers, which is usually enough to attempt five questions confidently. Learners who also read the corresponding block for each topic score noticeably better, because the file gives you structure and the block gives you supporting detail.
How do I get the complete MEG 05 file with all the answers?
Send a WhatsApp message to 9899436384 mentioning MEG-05 and the session you are appearing in, whether that is June 2026 or December 2026. The complete 15-page PDF is shared directly on WhatsApp, and any doubt about a specific answer can be raised on the same number afterwards. Delivery is digital, so there is no waiting for a courier and no printing charge involved.