AD's English Literature

John Donne’s The Good Morrow is a characteristic metaphysical poem which deals with the theme of love a strong and true passion of love. After this souls walking up the lover and the beloved are consumed with the passion of love and they became one. In fact, oneness in love triumph over all earthly mutability and morality and shines ever in mutual attachment a love which does not deal with the body but in the bond between the bond souls of the lovers. The concentration of thought and compression style marks it is a metaphysical poem. The metaphysical conceits are drawn from geography mythology scholastic and philosophy and an intellectual approach to the subject of love make the poem a metaphysical poem . Read more about Poetry                        The title phrase in  John Donne's poem "The Good-Morrow",  ‘Good Morrow’ means, good morning. It is a form of greeting when one first meets someone in t...

Historians may assess the British occupation of India in different ways with much good that this occupation brought and more evil that it left behind. But perhaps no one will disagree that introduction of  William Shakespeare   on Indian sub-continent was an act of unmixed good which continued to shed its rays on the Indian literary scene even when the sun had set in the Indian Empire of Shakespeare’s countrymen.

As in Greece, drama in England was in its beginning a religious thing. Its oldest continuous tradition was from the mediaeval Church. Early in the Middle Ages the clergy and their parishioners began the habit, at Christmas, Easter and other holy days, of Playing some part of the story of Christ's life suitable to the festival of the day. Read More about Drama   These plays were liturgical, and originally, no doubt, overshadowed by a choral element. But gradually the inherent human capacity for mimicry and drama took the upper hand; from ceremonies they developed into performances; they passed from the stage in the church porch to the stage in the street.   During the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, Miracle plays and Mysteries afforded one of the favourite entertainments of the common people. Miracle plays, in the strict sense of the term, were dramatic representations of miracles performed by saints; mysteries, of incidents from the New Testament and elsewhere, be...

“If by the people you understand the multitude, the hoi polloi , 'tis no matter what they think; they are sometimes in the right, sometimes in the wrong; their judgement is a mere lottery.”- John Dryden  (1631 - 1700) English poet, playwright, and literary critic. "Of Dramatick Poesy" The celebrated Preface to the Fables , one of his most important essays, is commonly regarded as one of the masterpieces of English criticism, and appeared a few months before Dryden's death in 1699. Read More about Age of Dryden This was prefixed to a volume of translations and adaptations, which bore the title Fables, Ancient and Modern , translated into Verse from Homer, Ovid, Boccaccio, and Chaucer: with Original Poems. The Preface as it stands is chiefly a criticism of Chaucer, renowned for its catholicity of taste, but it contains also comparisons of the different poets named in the title, and a defence of his own conduct from charges made against him by Blackmore, Milbourn, and...

Is George Bernard Shaw a Dramatist or Philosopher? George Bernard Shaw has a definite message to deliver. He has a philosophy to propound. “I am no ordinary playwright. I am a specialist in immoral and heretical plays. My reputation was gained by my persistent struggle to force the public to reconsider its morals. I write plays with the deliberate object of converting the nation to my opinion on sexual and social matters. I have no other incentive to write plays, as I am not dependent on it for my livelihood.”- On account of this he is generally regarded as a philosopher, a propagandist, a debater and a social reformer and not as a dramatist and a man of the theater. “Shaw is a literary satirist and iconoclast, but no playwright.” This is the view of many. But nothing is farther from the truth. Shaw “is essentially a man of the theater and his natural affinity for the stage is as strong in him as his evangelical tendency”. It is altogether wrong to think that he “is me...

"In the seventeenth century a dissociation of sensibility set in from which we have never recovered." T. S. Eliot  (1888 - 1965) U.S.-born British poet and playwright. Selected Essays ,  "The Metaphysical Poets"   Introduction It was Dr. Samuel Johnson who first christened Donne and his followers the metaphysical poets in his Life of Cowley . About the beginning of the 17 th century appeared a race of writers that may be termed the metaphysical poets. Johnson derived the term from Dryden’s disparaging remark that Donne "Affect the metaphysics”. So in current literary criticism ‘Metaphysical’ underlies the special feature of Donne’s poets –The lively play of intellect, the alliance of passion and playfulness and a reorganization of many-sidedness of human passion - complex and dramatic and unusual in syntax and imagery . The poetic practice of Donne started a powerful movement which unfenced a large body of poetry in the first halt of 17 th century ...