 Hi friends, welcome to my channel, I am Arpita Karba and today in this video I am going to be talking about book list that you should be referring to if you are preparing for UPSC English Option. Guys, recently English has become a very popular optional subject in the field of UPSC examination. But when you look at the syllabus, it looks really vast and students wonder what they should refer in order to complete the syllabus and score really high marks. So they end up buying a lot of unnecessary books when there is so much free material available on the internet. So in this video I am going to acquaint you with those sources which are available free of cost on the internet and other free resources that you can use in order to streamline your preparation so that you can save your hard earned money. Now before we go on and talk directly about the resources and books that you must be buying, let us first quickly look at the syllabus and see what do we need to exactly study and then in the later part of the video I am going to jump to the book list and the list of free resources. Also please watch the video until the end because at the end I am going to talk about three simple tips that you can use to write effective answers in the UPSC examination when it comes to English Option. So please watch the video till the end. Those tips can be a game changer in your UPSC preparation journey. So let's begin by looking at the paper pattern. Now on the screen in front of you you would see that we have displayed the UPSC syllabus and clearly the syllabus is divided into two papers, paper one and paper two. Paper one deals with poetry, drama, fiction, non-fiction written from 1600 to 1900 whereas paper two deals with poetry novels and printlay written from 1900 to 1990. Now you must be wondering that paper one takes us to about 300 years, 1600 to 1900 and it contains all the works written in those 300 years whereas paper two only talks about 90 years. Why is that discrepancy? They could have divided it in a pattern where 1600 to 1800 could have been falling in paper one and 1800 to 2000 would have fall in paper two. But let me tell you they have done it with a lot of research and I'm going to talk about why they are emphasizing so much on the period between 1900 to 1990. Number one friends, during this period world war happened and not just one, two world wars happened and they changed the world completely. They changed it more in 90 years than the change that we traced down from 1600 to 1900. So if you look at the period of 1600 to 1900 the world was changing gradually. But because of the two world wars that happened during 1900 to 1990 the world changed drastically. It was changing every single minute so they are trying to trace that change and also another important thing is that we know that UPSC focuses on the development of the nation and it tries to address the issues of the nation. They want to see if the students are acquainted with the issues that the society is facing and they know how to get those issues solved so that they can make a change in the world altogether. That is the reason why they are focusing so much on 1900 to 1990 time frame because those challenges that people were facing during this 90 years period were very recent. They were very relatable. I would say more relatable and more relevant to today's society and that was very similar to something that we faced today. So I will give you an example. If you look at the text from 1600s we have Tempest and King Lear. Now these two texts are very different. They talk about the society which is very different from what we are living in right now. King Lear is about the king and the challenge is the king faced and the decisions that the king may draw. But today we don't have monarchy anymore so the text doesn't look like very relevant. Despite the problems that King Lear was facing was similar to what we even faced today that at times we get flown away by flattery and we also make wrong choices just like you know King Lear. But yet the situation was different. The political social conditions were different. But at the same time when we look at Lookback Anger which is a text written recently around 1950s it actually showcases a husband wife relationship and the kind of conflicts they are having. Now when you read the text you feel that this is very similar to how my mom dad fight or how my uncle aunt fight and that is how relevant these texts are. That is the reason why they are focusing so much on the text from 1900 to 1990 because these texts are more relevant and relatable to today's audience and it focuses on issues that even today we face. Now this was a bit about the paper division and the syllabus. Moving on to what we need to study and what kind of books we should prefer in UPS English optional let us begin. So for that I am going to first talk about the two kinds of resources that you must refer to. The first is the primary source and you can say primary material and the second one is the secondary material. Now what is the difference between these primary material is basically the original text of any work which is prescribed in the syllabus for example if you look at Tempest or Rape of the log or if you look at Poem by Alfred Tennyson in Memorial all these are primary material these are the original texts that you should be studying. On the other hand we have secondary material. Secondary material takes care of a lot of other things the difference is that primary material will just give you the basic understanding of the text it will just help you to understand the plot of the story but what will you not understand or what will you not get in the primary material is the marks. It is how much focus you put in reading and writing the secondary material that actually gives you marks in UPSC exam. You must be wondering what is secondary material secondary material is going to talk about a lot of things related to the text it is not the text that you are going to read as a part of secondary material but a lot of other things which are very very relevant to the text. For example you are going to get an understanding of the historical, political, social, cultural background of the age before you dive deep into the text that is something that you read under this secondary material. For example as I am talking about look back in anger just reading the text might look like it is just a very simple story of a man who is very annoyed with his wife but when you look at the time in which the play was written in the kind of condition that England or Britain was in during that period you will feel that England went through World War II because of which its entire economy got shattered. That image got shattered and that somewhere is reflected in Jimmy's behavior throughout the play that he feels shameful that he belongs to Britain which was at one point of very very great nation and now has lost all its power. Secondary material will help you gauge that kind of understanding from the text not just the historical, political, social background but you will also have to understand a lot of other things related to the text. For example look back in anger is a prominent example of angry young man movement. Angry young man movement was a kind of movement in which a lot of playwrights were talking about characters who were very angry, who were dissatisfied with their life because of what has happened in the past. Something similar you will recall if you have watched Amitabh Bachchan's earlier movies he depicted angry young man movement in India and you will be surprised to know that this phrase angry young man movement was originally coined by the Royal Court's Theatre Press officer in order to promote John Osborne's 1956 plays look back in anger. So that is how the angry young man movement came into the world and that is the reason why look back in anger is such a prominent text that UPSC has suggested it as a part of the syllabus. So this kind of understanding you have to gather using secondary material. At the same time you have to also focus on learning the quotations, some important quotations you have to jot down and you have to ensure that you write that on the day of the exam. Like there's a very famous line from look back in anger. Why don't you have a little game? Let's pretend that we are human beings and we are actively alive. This is a line that Jimmy Porter says in the play look back in anger and it is a very symbolic line which showcases that he feels himself to be a dead man. So he wants to play a game and at least that game will make him feel alive. Not just that but you have to also incorporate a lot of intertextual references in order to make your answers stand out from rest of the students. Now what are these intertextual references? Intertextual references are when you are comparing a work to another work written by the same writer or by some other writer. So in case of look back in anger we can compare it to John Osborn's other work which is the entertainer. Even in the entertainer he has an angry young man who is just satisfied with his life. And that you can compare it with is Arnold Wesker's chicken soup with barley. That's another work that was written in the genre of angry young man movement. So by comparing and giving those references you are actually telling the examiner that you know so much more than just the text. Now this is just a glimpse of what your secondary material should cover. I have covered in detail what you have to read in secondary material in my other video where I am talking about how to write answers in UPSC examination for English optional students. So please go and check out that video it will give you a broader understanding of what all things you must include in your notes. Now we move on to the topic of the hour which is the book list. Now I am going to talk about the book list that is important for the primary material first and then I am going to talk about the book list and resources from where you can gather the secondary material. So when we talk about the primary material the first thing that you should understand is that please don't buy original text. I would not recommend you to buy original text because they are number one expensive plus they are readily available online and that too free of cause. You don't need to buy them. I would also go one point beyond saying that please don't invest time in reading original text because there are so many texts which will consume so much of your time. There are two main reasons why I would suggest you to not invest time in reading original text. Number one it is very time consuming and very very lengthy. Time is a big resource for UPSC aspirant and you should be very very aware that where are you spending your time and it is going to give you the benefit or not. And secondly you will not remember the original text after reading so many texts. So there are about 15-20 novels then plays then 30-40 poetry. You cannot tell yourself to remember each line in these works in spite of the fact how sincerely and dedicatedly you must have read it. So there is no point if you don't remember it on the day of the exam. Instead I would suggest you that rather than reading original text you should instead watch a movie which will be more interesting. Reading that you will remember because the visual data that is present in the movie is going to get stuck in your brain. It will give you the feel of the time in which the text was set. You are going to understand what kind of country it was, what kind of clothes people would wear, what kind of lifestyle people were having. So if you want to understand the time of Shakespeare there is a beautiful movie very dear to my heart Shakespeare enough. You can go and watch that. That movie will actually tell you the time in which Shakespeare was writing, how people were dressing up, what kind of architecture was prevalent at that time and it will help you to understand Shakespeare and works even more. Now instead of reading a book I would suggest you to either watch a movie or I would recommend you to read a detailed summary, chapter by chapter summary of all the works that are prescribed in your syllabus. So if you are talking about novels there are so many places from where you can go and read chapter by chapter summary which will be equivalent to the understanding that you will go after reading the original text and it will be very, very time saving. In one-tenth of the time you will be able to gain the same level of understanding as you will gain when you read the original text. Now moving ahead you must be asking that okay now that we know that we don't need to buy original text then what are the sources from where we can study the primary material. So I'm going to list you five websites from where you can get detailed chapter by chapter summaries of all the text prescribed in UPSC syllabus. These are Cliff Loads, Great Saver, Book Racks, Lit Shards and Core Zero. Some of them also offer premium subscription plan so if you want something else beyond just the text you might have to purchase their premium plan as well. But otherwise most of them provide the main information for free. So one of the sources is the free website that I just mentioned. Another one is to get the online text. You can download the original text from any website. You can either read it online or on Tyndale or you can even take a printout. So suppose there's a poem by John Dunn. You'll easily get that poem text online. You can either download it or you can get a printout of it. And the third thing is by watching animated video lectures or the work you will be able to understand the summary and you will be able to understand the plot. And for that I would request you to go on to our website at vithakarva.com and check out our online course for UPSC English, wherein we provide detailed animated video lectures on all these topics so that you know what to study and how to study. Moving on to the book list for the secondary material. So if you look at the secondary material the first important thing that you must understand is the history of English literature. In order to understand all these texts you have to have a proper understanding of the history of English literature how the literature has transformed over a period of last 1500 years. For that I would recommend you two books out of which you can purchase any one. The one is Routeless History of English Literature and the other one is Edward Elbert's History of English Literature. By reading any one of these books you can gauge a proper understanding of the history of English literature. Moving ahead, another important thing that you must cover under secondary material are the literary genre like Anri Youngman or Mock Epic. For example, if you are reading Rape of the Law you have to understand what a Mock Epic is. So all these terminology, movement, literary genre, literary terms, devices related to all the prescribed works you can find in a book called Emich Ebrans, a glossary of literary terms. You don't have to read the entire book just the particular sections which are relevant for the text prescribed. Another important thing are quotations. From where will you get the quotation? Now that I'm saying that you don't have to read the original text, so in order to get the quotation you can simply Google online. You just have to type 10 famous quotes from Look Back in Anger and you will get number of websites from where you can copy paste the quotes that are easy to learn. Then when it comes to intertextual references, this is a very tricky game, friends, because we don't know which are the other texts from which we can compare our prescribed texts. So for that you have to do a little research on the internet and see what other options are available to you. Confused, right? Let me give you an example. For example, you have a text called Test of the Derby Billy by Thomas Hardy, prescribed in your course. Now you can either compare it with Wuthering Heights, which is by Emily Bronte, or you can compare it to Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman. Because Death of a Salesman has a protagonist called Billy and Test of the Derby Billy has a protagonist called Tess and both of them go through societal shame and the journey is about how they go through societal shame and how they evolve as a person in their journey. So these kind of intertextual references you have to figure out yourself or an easier way would be if you can join our online course because we cover all these topics in detail. We provide you primary as well as the secondary material for each of these texts so that you don't have to go anywhere else in your preparation. We even provide every critical detail related to all these topics along with the PDF on how to write answers on each of these topics. With the sample answer in the PDF you can learn the right method to write these exams. Finally we move on to the end of the video where I promise I'm going to give you three simple answer writing tips. The first one being originality. Guys, please don't refer to any guidebook when you are preparing for UPSC exam because if you're studying from a guidebook you're going to write what most of the people will write in the exam hall. So always try to refer to some unique source for secondary material so that your answers are original and stand out from the rest of the public. Secondly, please write to the point answer. Now what are these to the point answers? Most English literature students have the habit of repeating the same thing again and again because they don't have a lot of content or because they have a habit of beating around the bush and not coming to the point. So please stop this habit. You don't have enough words to waste in UPSC exam. UPSC restricts you with a word limit of 250 words. So in 250 words you have to tell the examiner that you know so much. So please answer to the point. Don't beat around the bush. Don't try to use repetitive words again and again. And the third important thing is that when I tell my students to beat to the point I also mean to say that you have to adhere to the word limit. Now for a 10 mark, 20 mark answer there is a word limit of 250 words. Now sometimes people exceed that by 100 words or 120 words. Guys please understand this is going to leave a very bad impression on the examiner. He might think that you don't respect the instructions given in the paper. So please ensure that you stick to the word limit. So these were the three quick tips that I thought would help you to gain extra marks in the UPSC paper. I hope this video proves to be beneficial for you. All the best for the upcoming exam. That's it from my side for this video lecture. I'll meet you very soon in the next video lecture. Till the time we meet next. Happy learning, keep loving literature and stay tuned to arpathakarva.com.