AD's English Literature

Short notes on History of English Literature: Gulliver’s Travels   A Set of 26 Objective Questions & Answers It is Jonathan Swift’s most comprehensive and brilliantly worked out satire on man and his civilization. Lemuel Gulliver, the ship’s doctor on the ‘Antelope’, is ship-wrecked. He manages to make for the shore and he finds himself in the land of Lilliputs- humans only six inches tall.  He exposes the infinite littleness and absurd pretensions of man. Book has four parts: In Part I: A journey to Lilliput, a land where the people are twelve times smaller than in England. In Part II: A journey to Brobdingnag, a land where every living being is twelve times larger than in England. In Part III:   Gulliver visits the islands of Laputa, Balnibarbi, Luggnagg, Glubbdubdribb, and Japan. Image courtesy In Part IV: Gulliver...

Short notes on History of English Literature: Wuthering Heights A Set of 26 Objective Questions & Answers Wuthering Heights is the single novel and masterpiece of Emily Bronte published in 1847.  It is a chronicle of two generations of Earnshaws in their farmland home.  The chief character of this novel is Heathcliff, a wait picked off the Liverpool Street and brought home by the senior Mr. Earnshaw. Emily Brontë is careful to emphasize the contrasts between Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange. The strange elemental passion that binds Heathcliff and young Catherine is upset when Catherine is given in marriage to Edgar Linton. This provides the basis for Heathcliff’s vengeful action, for Heathcliff returns to ruin the two families. Bronte in her novel Wuthering Heights created somehow of her imagination a stark, passionate world, reminiscent at times of the ...

Short notes on History of English Literature: Dr. Faustus A Set of 26 Objective Questions & Answers a.         Christopher Marlowe’s masterpiece is The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus. b.        The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus is a famous of Christopher Marlowe that is usually regarded as his greatest. c.        Earlier playwrights had concentrated on comedy; Marlowe worked on tragedy and advanced it considerably as a dramatic medium. d.       In the 1580s a group of educated men, sometimes called the University Wits, prepared the way for Shakespeare. e.        The best-known members of this group were playwright and poet Christopher Marlowe and dramatist Thomas Kyd. f.         Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593) , English playwright an...

Q. What is known as Stream of Consciousness technique? Ans: The significant feature of contemporary fiction is the movement towards greater inwardness. Stream of Consciousness , literary technique, first used in the late 19th century, employed to evince subjective as well as objective reality. It reveals the character's feelings, thoughts, and actions, often following an associative rather than a logical sequence, without commentary by the author. It has a progression in the direction of inwardness of the characters from the earliest impression. Q. Who first coined the phrase “The stream of consciousness” ? Ans: The stream of consciousness is a phrase coined by William James in his Principles of Psychology to describe a particular narrative method. Q. Who first had begun the tradition of writing “The stream of consciousness” novel? Ans: Many a novelists use an in-depth analysis to describe the unspoken thoughts or conventional dialogue. But, technically t...

Loveliest of Trees Alfred Edward Housman Loveliest of trees, the cherry now Is hung with bloom along the bough, And stands about the woodland ride Wearing white for Eastertide. Now, of my threescore years and ten, Twenty will not come again, And take from seventy springs a score, It only leaves me fifty more. And since to look at things in bloom Fifty springs are little room, About the woodlands I will go To see the cherry hung with snow. Alfred Edward Housman is best known nature poet remarkable for his simple diction, lyric beauty, and gentle, ironic pessimism. Set in the English countryside, the poem Loveliest of Trees expresses rejoice and frolic of young poet. The theme of fleeting youth, as in the famous poem “When I Was One and Twenty” is also incorporated here. The eternity of nature beauty is here contrasted with the earthly passage of youth and broadly, life. In technique the poem combines elements of the classical ode and the English ballad.

What is Comedy? What are the Sources of Comic Pleasure?  What is the Nature of the Comic Pleasure? What is Comedy? Etymologically the word comedy as Aristotle suggested in the Poetics might have originated either from komas meaning, ‘revel or merrymaking', or from komae meaning the “Hamlets “where the plays were staged". Aristotle jocularly hinted that the comedians strolled from Hamlet to hamlet, lack of appreciation keeping them out of the city .such facetiousness apart; the Oxford English Dictionary defines comedy as a stage play of a light and amusing character with a happy conclusion to its plot. Many definitions stress the sadistic or egoistic element in human beings, asserting that comedies were written chiefly to amuse the audience by appealing. So, in common acceptance, comedy refers to a genre of entertainment that aims to elicit laughter and amusement from an audience through various humorous elements, such as jokes, wit, irony, satire, and absurdity. It is ...

The Craft of Story Telling: A Guide by Richard Steele ("The Art of Story Telling") The Paradox of 'The Art of Storytelling': Exploring the Dual Meanings and Interpretations It is rather curious that while Richard Steele named his essay The Art of Story-Telling he makes an incidental comment that story-telling is not an art but what we call a knack. If story –telling is not exactly an art, why does Steele call his essay The Art of Story-Telling? The point is that the word ‘art’ contains two meanings. First, it denotes a product of creative imagination, and in this sense a painting of Picasso is as much a work of art as a sonnet of Shakespeare. But the second meaning of the word denotes, according to Concise Oxford Dictionary, ‘human skill as opposed to nature’. Steele sees the word ‘art’ in the title of his essay, keeping the first meaning of it in mind. But when he says, ‘story-telling is therefore not an art but what we call a knack’, he has recourse to the sec...

A Set of 26 Objective Questions & Answers The sub-title of Blake’s Songs of Innocence and Experience is ‘showing the two contrary states of the human soul.’ Tales in Canterbury Tales which are Chaucer’s own: Tale of Malibeus and The Parson’s Tale. Frankenstein was written by Mary Shelley. The three principles of the French Revolution are ‘liberty, equality, and fraternity’. Coleridge’s Biographia Literaria means ‘literary biography’. Coleridge’s play – Remorse. Shakespeare performed in The Globe . Elizabethan revenge tragedies – Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy.

A Set of 26 Objective Questions & Answers: Textual                                             What do the words ‘Astrophel’ and ‘Stella’ mean in Sidney’s sonnet? Ans:- Literally ‘Astrophel’ means ‘one enamoured of the star’ and ‘Stella’ which is a hat in term, means ‘star’. In the context, Sidney is ‘Astrophel’ and Penelope Deverex the daughter of the Earl of Essex, whom the poet loved is referred to as ‘Stella’.  To whom are the bulk of the sonnets addressed in Shakespeare’s sonnet sequence? Ans:- Out of the one hundred and fifty four sonnets Shakespeare addressed 126 sonnets to young man “Mr. W. H” two sonnets are about Cupid and the remaining twenty six are addressed to an unknown dark lady.   What will be destroyed by ...

Mischiefs of Party Spirit (1711) by Joseph Addison , The Spectator No   Spectator No. 50, 27/4/1711 "Mischiefs of Party Spirit" by  Joseph Addison: A Critique of Party Spirit and Its Harmful Effects Joseph Addison: Illuminating Society's Frailties and the Evils of Party Spirit As an essay ist  Joseph Addison’s professed doctrine was to improve the morals and mores of his contemporary society. Social criticism is by and large the core of his essay. In his Spectator essays, as also in some of his Tatler publications, Addison wrote to focus on the flames and depravities of his fellowmen and pointed out how these lacunae could be overcome. This is not to suggest that he had any professed political or ideological standpoint; nor was he motivated by any terrible reformistic zeal. He was a benign essayist at bottom and, accordingly satire or bitter criticism of human frailties was not his domain.  He, with a Chaucerian view, laughed good humorously at the foibles,...