The Himachal Pradesh Public Service Commission (HPPSC) has released the revised syllabus for the Descriptive Subject Aptitude Test (SAT) for recruitment to the post of Assistant Professor (College Cadre) in English under the Department of Higher Education. Candidates preparing for this recruitment must go through the syllabus and exam pattern together, since the SAT paper is descriptive in nature and covers a wide range of literature and language units. This article covers the official HPPSC Assistant Professor English syllabus 2026, the SAT exam pattern, unit-wise topics, and the syllabus PDF link, based strictly on the official notification.
HPPSC Assistant Professor English Syllabus 2026 - Overview
| Particulars | Details |
|---|---|
| Conducting Body | Himachal Pradesh Public Service Commission (HPPSC) |
| Post | Assistant Professor (College Cadre) - English, Department of Higher Education |
| Notification No. | 3-26/2026-PSC(R-I), Dated 24.07.2026 |
| Exam Name | Subject Aptitude Test (SAT) - Descriptive |
| Total Marks (SAT Paper) | 120 Marks |
| Duration | 3 Hours |
| Paper Type | Descriptive (Part-I and Part-II) |
| Official Website | hppsc.hp.gov.in |
HPPSC Assistant Professor Syllabus 2026 - Download Link
The HPPSC Assistant Professor English Syllabus 2026 has been revised for the Descriptive Subject Aptitude Test (SAT) under the Department of Higher Education. Candidates can download the latest HPPSC Assistant Professor English Syllabus PDF to check the detailed exam pattern, unit-wise topics, prescribed texts, and preparation strategy for the 120-mark descriptive examination.
Download HPPSC Assistant Professor Syllabus 2026
HPPSC Assistant Professor Exam Pattern 2026
SAT Exam Pattern (English)
| Part | Marks | Coverage |
|---|---|---|
| Part-I | 60 Marks | Units I to VI (History of English Literature, Poetry, Drama, Fiction) |
| Part-II | 60 Marks | Units VII to XII (Language, Criticism, Modern Poetry, Drama, World Fiction, Literary Theory, Indian Writing in English) |
| Total | 120 Marks | 3 Hours Duration |
HPPSC Assistant Professor English Syllabus 2026
The SAT syllabus is divided into two parts covering twelve units in total. Each unit lists specific texts, authors, and topics that candidates must prepare from.
Part-I (60 Marks)
(A) Unit I - History of English Literature
- History of English Literature from Chaucer to 1800
- History of English Literature: Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries
(B) Unit II - Poetry from Chaucer to Pope
- Chaucer: The Prologue, The Nun's Priest's Tale
- Donne: The Sun-Rising, The Extasie, The Canonization, The Anniversary, The Flea, A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning
- Milton: Paradise Lost Book I, Lycidas, L'Allegro
- Pope: The Rape of the Lock, An Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot
(C) Unit III - Shakespeare and his Contemporaries
- Marlowe: The Doctor Faustus
- Shakespeare: The Tempest, The Twelfth Night
- Ben Jonson: The Volpone
(D) Unit IV - Nineteenth Century Fiction
- Emily Bronte: Wuthering Heights
- Charles Dickens: Hard Times
- George Eliot: The Mill on the Floss
- Thomas Hardy: Tess of the D'Urbervilles
(E) Unit V - Romantic and Victorian Poetry
- Blake: Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience
- Wordsworth: Tintern Abbey, Ode: Intimations of Immortality
- Coleridge: The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Kubla Khan
- Keats: Ode on a Grecian Urn, Ode to a Nightingale, Ode on Melancholy, To Autumn
- Tennyson: The Lady of Shalott, Ulysses, The Lotos-Eaters
- Browning: Evelyn Hope, The Last Ride Together, My Last Duchess, Rabbi Ben Ezra
(F) Unit VI - Modern Fiction
- Virginia Woolf: Mrs. Dalloway
- James Joyce: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
- D.H. Lawrence: Sons and Lovers
- Joseph Conrad: Heart of Darkness
- E.M. Forster: A Passage to India
Part-II (60 Marks)
(A) Unit VII - Growth and Structure of English Language, and Literary Criticism
- Language: Basic concepts, theories and pedagogy
- History of Language - A.C. Baugh: A History of English Language (Chapters 3 to 9)
- Structure of Language: Phonemes (Consonants, Vowels, Stress and Intonation); Morphemes (Roots and Affixes, Derivational and Inflectional Morphemes, Allomorphs)
- Aristotle: The Poetics
- Bharat Muni: Natyashastra (Chapter 6)
- Dryden: Essay of Dramatic Poesy
- Coleridge: Biographia Literaria (Chapters 13-18)
- Arnold: The Function of Criticism in the Present Time
- Eliot: Tradition and Individual Talent, The Frontiers of Criticism
(B) Unit VIII - Modern British and American Poetry
- W.B. Yeats: The Second Coming, Sailing to Byzantium, A Prayer for My Daughter, Among School Children, Leda and the Swan
- T.S. Eliot: The Waste Land
- W.H. Auden: The Unknown Citizen, In Memory of W.B. Yeats, The Shield of Achilles, September 1, 1939
- Walt Whitman: Song of Myself (1, 5, 33), Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking, A Passage to India
- Robert Frost: Birches, Design, Mending Wall, After Apple Picking, The Road not Taken, Home Burial
- William Carlos Williams: Poems in Modern Poets One (Faber and Faber) - January Morning, Tract, By the Road to the Contagious Hospital, A Unison, The Last Words of My English Grandmother, The Waken an Old Lady, The Widow's Lament in Springtime, To a Poor Old Woman, The Yachts, These
(C) Unit IX - Introduction to Drama, Modern British and American Drama
- Introduction to Drama: Elements, Forms and Features of Drama
- G.B. Shaw: Arms and the Man
- Oscar Wilde: An Ideal Husband
- T.S. Eliot: Murder in the Cathedral
- John Arden: Sergeant Musgrave's Dance
- Eugene O'Neill: Desire under the Elms
- Arthur Miller: Death of a Salesman
- Tennessee Williams: The Glass Menagerie
- Edward Albee: Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
(D) Unit X - World Fiction, Research Methods and Future of English
- Dostoevsky: Crime and Punishment
- Ernest Hemingway: The Old Man and the Sea
- Margaret Atwood: Surfacing
- Chinua Achebe: Things Fall Apart
- V.S. Naipaul: A House for Mr. Biswas
- Research Methods and Materials in English
- Future of English
(E) Unit XI - Contemporary Literary Theory
- Agyeya: Memory and Country
- Ferdinand de Saussure: The Object of Study, Nature of the Linguistic Sign
- Jacques Derrida: Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences
- Terry Eagleton: Capitalism, Modernism and Postmodernism
- Roland Barthes: The Death of the Author
- Elaine Showalter: Feminist Criticism in the Wilderness
- Hillis Miller: Culture Studies and Reading
- Homi K. Bhabha: DissemiNation: Time, Narrative and the Margins of the Modern Nation
(F) Unit XII - Indian Writing in English and Indian Writing in Translation
- Raja Rao: Kanthapura
- R.K. Narayan: The Vendor of Sweets
- Anita Desai: Clear Light of Day
- A.K. Ramanujan: The Snakes, Obituary, The Striders
- Keki N. Daruwala: Ruminations, The Fighting Eagles, The Mistress, Boat-ride Along the Ganga
- Nissim Ezekiel: Poet, Lover, Birdwatcher, Enterprise, The Visitor
- Kalidas: Abhijnanshakuntalam (translated by M.R. Kale)
- Premchand: Intent of Literature
- Bhisham Sahni: Tamas
- U.R. Ananthamurthy: Samskara
- Mahasweta Devi: Rudali (translated by Anjum Katyal)
- Shiv K. Kumar: Luna (translated by Ish Kumar)
How to Prepare for HPPSC Assistant Professor English Exam 2026
- Start with the primary texts listed in each unit rather than summaries alone, since the SAT paper is descriptive and expects detailed textual engagement.
- Prepare Part-I (literature history, poetry, drama, fiction) and Part-II (language structure, criticism, literary theory) as two separate blocks, since each carries 60 marks independently.
- Build short critical notes on each prescribed author and text under Unit XI and Unit VII, as literary theory and criticism sections often require analytical writing.
- Practice writing timed descriptive answers within the 3-hour format to manage the length expected across twelve units.
- Revise A.C. Baugh's chapters on language history and the phoneme/morpheme structure separately, since this sub-topic is distinct from the literature units.
- Keep track of the official HPPSC website for the detailed recruitment notification, exam date, and any updates to this revised syllabus.