AD's English Literature

Regarding George Bernard Shaw   ’s place among the writers of English comedies, A. Nicoll has written as follows, in his famous book, A History of late Nineteenth Century Drama : “Looking at English drama as a whole, it seems that we may trace four main forms within the comic atmosphere. The first is William Shakespeare   ’s comedy of romance, distinguished by its all-pervading humour – a humour which permits the dramatist to mingle together the most strangely varied elements, which allows him to put his fairies alongside his human lovers, to make his clown strut with his kings.

“   Shaw   is a bachelor, an Irishman, a vegetarian, a fluent liar, a social democrat, a lecturer and debater, a lover of music, a fierce opponent of the present status of women and an insister on the seriousness of art.” .... Archibald Henderson   This is what George Bernard Shaw wrote to describe himself to a journalist (Archibald Henderson) quite early in life. If it was true of Shaw when he wrote this, it was true of him till the end of his long life except in one respect that he died not as a bachelor but as a married man. As a matter of fact Shaw was essentially the same man all through his almost a century old long life. “Old at sixty or young at eighty, adventurous or responsible, Bernard Shaw has not changed. He is always the same in everything that matters. All his developments are reflections of his one first vision; all his plays form a cycle of mystical faith in which he proclaims that each one of us is a Man of Destiny, a servant of the Life Force, a tem...

Thomas Hardy’s     A Woman's Fancy  narrates the progress of a curiously pathetic intimacy between a women and a dead man, initiated by critically mistaken assumptions that both were once man and wife. As is general with narrative verse, it is the broad outlines of the story which give the poem its emotional charge, and encourage the reader’s involvement in two complementary ways. Thomas Hardy’s   A Woman's Fancy is made accessible through the use of traditional verse patterns and direct vocabulary. A strong rhythmic pattern dominates throughout the regular rhyming of lines two and four, while the repetition of irregular line lengths in each stanza culminates in a dramatic emphasis on the short six-syllable fourth. It is as though we are reading a ballad, where the forms of poetry --- or verse ---- stamp themselves on material often drawn from the lives and language of ordinary people in order to furnish it with broad importance, broad significance. The inversions...

  I am the poet of the Body;  from Song of Myself , no. 21   by Walt Whitman (1819-1892) I am the poet of the Body; And I am the poet of the Soul. The pleasures of heaven are with me, and the pains of hell are with me; The first I graft and increase upon myself --   the latter I translate into a new tongue. I am the poet of the woman the same as the man; And I say it is as great to be a woman as to be a man, And I say there is nothing greater than the mother of men. I chant the chant of dilation or pride; We have had ducking and deprecating about enough; I show that size is only development. Have you outstript the rest? Are you the President? It is a trifle -- they will more than arrive there, every one,   and still pass on. I am he that walks with the tender and growing night; I call to the earth and sea, half-held by the night. Press close, bare-bosom'd night! Press close, magnetic, nourishing night! Night of south winds! n...

To describe the conventions generally agreed for the form and presentation of critical writing – what is understood by the term ‘Scholarly method’ – can be an extensive business. But you will appreciate that, in principle, some regularly in the way we communicate is very advisable. It helps us to write efficiently, economically and clearly, besides making the text of our criticism more agreeable to the reader’s eye. This last point is particular importance when, denied the neat and impressive packaging of typescript or the benefits of word-processor, our arguments rely on handwriting to make their effect. The conventions of scholarly writing are important because they help to ensure that our work is clear, concise, and accurate. They also help to establish a common ground for communication between scholars, making it easier for us to understand and build on each other's work. Some of the most important conventions of scholarly writing include: Using clear and concise language Avoid...

Short notes on History of English Literature A Set of 26 Objective Questions & Answers 1.      Carlyle became lifelong friend of Emerson. Emerson became famous throughout the country as “The Safe of Concord”. Emerson called his Journals as his “Savings Bank”. Emerson was greatly influenced by Indian especially Hindi thought. What appeared most to Emerson was the concept of the fundamental Atman – Brahman unity. 2.       “The American Scholar” is an address delivered at Harvard College in 1937. It has been called the nation’s intellectual Declaration of independence. It was reprinted in London in 1844 under the title “Man Thinking: An Oration”. 3.      Leaves of grass gives equal status to woman with man. It is usually spoken of as Whiteman’s poetic autobiography. Vivekananda called Whitman “The Sanyasin of America”. Emerson had seen the Leaves of Grass as a combination of Bhagwad Gita and The New York Herald....

George Bernard Shaw  (1856-1950) and William Shakespeare  (1564-1616) are the two greatest dramatists of England. They lived in different ages and worked under different conditions of time and circumstances. Their mental attitudes and dramatic methods too were different. So, there can be no comparison between them just as there can be no comparison between a modern battleship and an Elizabethan man-of-war. But in spite of all their differences they resemble each other in one important respect that both of them have made valuable contributions to the development of the English drama by using the heterogeneous dramatic materials of their respective ages and welding them into a harmonious whole by the wizardry of their dramatic genius. Both Shaw and Shakespeare were masters of their craft, and their works have had a lasting impact on the world. However, they also represent different eras and different ways of thinking. Shakespeare was a product of the Elizabethan era, a time o...

William Shakespeare 's  Sonnet  30  is at the center of a sequence of sonnets dealing with the narrator’s growing attachment to the fair lord and the narrator’s paralyzing inability to function without him. The sonnet begins with the image of the poet drifting off into the “remembrance of things past” – painful memories, we soon learn, that the poet has already lamented but now must lament a new. The fair lord enters the scene only in the sonnet’s closing couplet, where he is presented as a panacea for the poet’s emotional distress: " When to the sessions of sweet silent thought  I summon up remembrance of things past,  I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,  And with old woes new wail my dear time's waste.  Then can I drown an eye, unus'd to flow,  For precious friends hid in death's dateless night,  And weep afresh love's long since cancell'd woe,.  And moan the expense of many a vanish'd sight,  Then can I grieve at grievances...