Psychological Principles Applied to the Teaching of English Strategies For Beginners: Questions at the Heart of Pragmatic and Strategic Policies


What Principles are to be applied in the Teaching of English is much debated and ever since educational Psychology are introduced Linguistics argue in the mechanism of them. These questions are at the heart of a pragmatic and strategic policies in the general field of Teaching of English in the early 21st century , and they urgently demand answers if these theories are not to be seen by teachers as yet another example of arid scholasticism . Teachers need to be able to make informed and engaged choices about the theories they encounter, to take a critical stance towards them, and to deploy the resulting insights in their own critical practice. Perhaps, since ‘teaching literature is always already teaching theory’, and since students ‘are always already inside theory’, ‘Theory can be taught best as theorising. Without in any sense denying the importance of ingesting the theoretical work itself or appearing to promote once more a simplistic empiricism, Psychological principles are being followed in teaching all the subjects in the curriculum.

Want A Thriving Reading Experience? Focus On William Wordsworth’s ‘Daffodils’!: Nature as Possessing Life and Consciousness




Daffodils is one of the most beautiful lyrics of William Wordsworth. Wordsworth,  the Nature priest, looked upon Nature as possessing life and consciousness. He believed that nature could feel joy like human beings. So in Daffodils he describes how the daffodils danced with joy—
 “Ten thousand saw I at a glance
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.”

Self-knowledge in Jane Austen’s 'Pride and Prejudice': Speaking of the Heroine, Elizabeth Bennet



"I had not seen Pride and Prejudice till I read that sentence of yours, and then I got the book. And what did I find? An accurate daguerreotyped portrait of a commonplace face; a carefully fenced, highly cultivated garden, with neat borders and delicate flowers; but no glance of a bright, vivid physiognomy, no open country, no fresh air, no blue hill, no bonny beck. I should hardly like to live with her ladies and gentlemen, in their elegant but confined houses."
Charlotte Brontë (1816 - 1855)




The attainment of self-knowledge on the part of the central figures is always Jane Austen’s theme, and self-knowledge results in goodness. Thus, the heroine of Pride and Prejudice, Elizabeth gradually discovers the truth and sheds her prejudices en route a love journey both humorous and deeply serious moods. She has been proud of her discernment but she finds that she has been wrong in judging both Darcy and Wickham. By the end, she realizes her folly and her prejudice. Life for her is thus a continuous process of increasing self-knowledge.

What Makes Shakespeare’s Use of Blank Verse in His Plays More Interesting In English Dramatic Poetry?




“The Measure is English Heroic Verse
without Rhyme, as that of Homer in
Greek, and of Virgil in Latin; Rhyme
being no necessary Adjunct to true
Ornament of Poem or good Verse, in
larger Works especially...”
--  English poet John Milton in the preface to his epic Paradise Lost

What is a Blank Verse?:  Blank verse is unrhymed poetry, typically in iambic pentameter, and, as such, the dominant verse form of English dramatic and narrative poetry since the mid-16th century. Blank verse was adapted by Italian Renaissance writers from classical sources; it became the standard form of such dramatists as Ludovico Ariosto, Torquato Tasso, and Battista Guarini. From Italy, blank verse was brought into English literature by the poet Henry Howard, earl of Surrey, who first used it in his translation of books II and IV of the Aeneid, by the Roman poet Virgil and dramatic application first in Gorboduc. The so-called University Wits developed it further till their master; Marlowe made magic music with it and wrote his marvelous mighty line. Shakespeare in this respect was a true student of Marlowe, the master in blank verse and his early works permeate with the overt and covert influences of the Marlovian rhetoric. However, Shakespeare’s genius found its own in blank verse too and made this a potent instrument for the flowering of the greatest drama in English literature. He transformed blank verse into a supple instrument, uniquely capable of conveying speech rhythms and emotional overtones. 


William Blake’s Holy Thursday (Twas on a Holy Thursday their innocent faces clean): Atmosphere of Innocence, Purity and Sacredness



In William Blake’s Holy Thursday an atmosphere of innocence, purity and sacredness pervades it. The children of the charity schools are innocent in nature. Their clean faces sustain the idea. Further, the radiance that comes out of them intensifies it once, again. The church, comparison of children to flowers and lambs, rising of hands towards heaven and singing of hymns, snow-white wands, and wise guardians also contributes to the maintenance of this atmosphere:

“Twas on a Holy Thursday their innocent faces clean 
The children walking two and; two in red and; blue and green 
Grey-headed beadles walkd before with wands as white as snow,
Till into the high dome of Pauls they like Thames waters flow”


Thomas Hardy’s Novels at Faults? Five Ways You Can Be Certain


"There, in the heart of the nimbus, twittered the heart of Hardy
There on the edge of the nimbus, slowly revolved the corpses
Radiating around the twittering heart of Hardy."

John Betjeman (1906 - 1984)..British poet and broadcaster. Referring to Thomas Hardy ..John Betjeman's Collected Poems"The Heart of Thomas Hardy"

Introduction: Critics have attacked Hardy for his novel's plotting and style arguing that all of his novels could not possibly be considered pure. In fact, Thomas Hardy’s view of life was cosmic. This means that tragic novels exist on two planes, the plane of design and the plane of plot. As a plotter Hardy, largely self-educated, was often defective. Sometimes he stumbles because the course of the Ilion suddenly becomes implausible, as when Tess kills Alec with the hand-knife, an implausibility underlined by the failure in tact which allows him describing the blood seeping through the floor to the ceiling below in the likeness of “a gigantic ace of hearts.” His incursions into melodrama are familiar signs of a failure in fact; the final arrest of Tess at Stonehenge is an ambience. It just fails to come off; the grandiose conception is somehow allured. 

Model Poetry Questions for English Graduate: Mixed Up Categories



Poetry Questions

Difficulty Level:  Graduation     Time: 2hr
Each Question: Word Limit: as per

1. Give short answer to any eight of the following questions. 2x8=16
a. What is the full title of Wordsworth’s Tintern Abbey?
b. Who is Maenad? What natural sight resembles a Maenad in Ode to the West Wind?
c. What is ‘embalmed darkness’ in Ode to a Nightingale?
d. What story does Geraldine tell Christabel regarding her abduction?
e. Why does Tom Dacre cry? What consolation does the speaker give him?
f. What does the sculpture of Neptune taming a seahorse suggest in My Last Duchess?
g. What boon does Tithonus ask for? How does ‘strong Hours’ work upon him?
h. What allusion does ‘ignorant armies clash by night’ make in Dover Beach?

A TO Z Literary Principles from History of English Literature: Note 94


A Set of 26 Objective Questions & Answers

UGC NET ENGLISH QUESTION BANK

a.      Lake poets: William Wordsworth, S.T. Coleridge, Robert Southey are called the Lake poets because they lived in the Lake District.



b.     Two prose works of Coleridge: The Watchman (a periodical), Biographia Literaria.
c.      Two sonnets by John Keats:  a) On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer, b) Bright Star, c) Would I Were Stedfast as Thou Art.
d.     The expression of a certain idea by saying or showing just the opposite: irony
e.      The use of indirect or polite language to express a concept generally considered unpleasant: satire

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Objective Questions from English Literature

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