AD's English Literature

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Showing posts from March, 2014

English Playwright and Poet, Christopher Marlowe’s Contribution to English Drama

Christopher Marlowe made momentous and revolutionary contributions to English drama. The first great English dramatist and the most important Elizabethan dramatist before William Shakespeare, Marlowe worked on tragedy and advanced it considerably as a dramatic medium: Read More Drama

[A]He created genuine blank verse and firmly established it as the most appropriate medium of poetic drama. [B]He founded English romantic tragedy. [C]He wrote the first great English history play.

The stanza which Spenser invented for his epic, with its carefully chiming rhyme – scheme and concluding alexandrine, is capable of a great variety of effects, and the popular notion that it less suited for narrative verse than for static pictorial description is not borne out by the way it actually operates in the poem. Simply the Spenserian Stanzais composed of nine lines, the first eight in iambic pentameter and the last an alexandrine, in iambic hexameter. The usual rhyme scheme is ababbcbcc: Read More Elizabethan Literature

“At length/ they spide,/ where to/wards them /with speed
A Squire/ came ga/llopping, /as he /would flie;
Bearing/ a li/ttle Dwarfe/ before /his steed,
That all/ the way/ full loud/ for aide/ did crie,
That seem’d/ his shrikes /would rend/ the bra/sen skie:
Whom af/ter did /a migh/tie man/ pursew,
Ryding/ upon/ a Dro/medare /on hie,
Of sta/ture huge, /and ho/rrible /of hew,
That would/ have maz’d/ a man /his dread/full face /to vew.”- Faerie Queen

Difficulty Level: Graduation Time: 2hr Each Question:2 marks Word Limit: 30 1. How can you identify Lucy in Wordsworth’s poem?

Ans- The identity of Lucy is vague in Wordsworthian Lucy poems. In the poet's solemnity, decency and decorum of perception with which the romantic poet imbibes through a specific learning Lucy is more them a physical existence. She is supremacy of love, aesthetic, solemnity and natural sportiveness. Read More Model Question
2. What is called ‘raisonneur’? Who is the raisonneur in Arms and the Man?
Ans- In order to state his views explicitly, the problem playwright sometimes introduces to raisonneur, who moves through the plots a philosophic spectator, and acts as the author’s spokesman or accredited representative. The raisonneur generally has an air of superior wisdom and his utterances have special weight or authority. Bluntschly in Arm and The Man acts as raisonneur who being the spokesman of the author criticizes the romantic ideals of war and love.…

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How to Read Andrew Marvell? Representative Poet of the Late 17 th Century

Of the puritan poets and satirist, who were not many, one of the most endearing was Andrew Marvell (1621 – 78) and the other the greatest of the poets of the century was John Milton. Marvell was tutor to the daughter of Lord Fairfax, the great parliamentary general. Marvell was, strangely, unlike ‘the conventional harsh and gloomy puritan, the enemy of all wordly and artistic amusement’.
Andrew Marvell’s portrait, done by Hanneman, represents him as a thirty seven year old, brilliant – eyed laughing person with a mocking mouth and a calm brow. His verses written in his thirtieth year glow with human love and feeling for nature. Even in poems of maturity we find the same gaiety – a jovial and mirth – loving spirit. There is not much of space for religion in Marvell’s poetry. Marvell's works often weigh conflicting values, such as introspection versus action, or nature versus society.

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Shakespeare’s Soliloquy in Close Contact with Audience - Easier to Deliver Long Asides with Effect

A soliloquy is an actor’s address to the audience, a long aside. It is a monologue in which a character reveals inner thoughts, motivations, and feelings. Shakespeare used the technique often, and his soliloquies are poetic and rich in imagery. It was a convention current in Shakespeare’s day, which shake spear also adopted in his plays. Modern taste is against the use of soliloquies and in fact it is now considered an unpardonable defect in a drama. Not so was the case in Elizabethan times whose apron platform helped the actor to come in close contact with his audience and thus made it easier to deliver his long asides with effect.

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The Tradition of Tragicomedy throughout English Literature

Stated simply, tragicomedy is a blend of the elements of tragedy and comedy. To quote the seventeenth century playwright john Fletcher from the preface to his play The Faithful Shepherdess ; Read More Criticism a tragicomedy is not so called in respect of mirth and killing, but in respect it wants deaths, which is enough to make it no tragedy, yet brings some near it, which is enough to make it no comedy.

In the 18th century Dr. Samuel Johnson defined tragicomedy as “drama compounded of merry and serious events”. Read More CriticismContrary to classical injunction against mixing the tragic and the comic in one composition as is insisted by Socrates at the end of Plato’s symposium; Dr. Johnson praises Shakespeare’s mixture of the two, when he says, “Shakespeare has united the powered of exciting laughter and sorrow not only in one mind, but in one composition.”

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Effective Opening Scenes of Eugene O'Neill's Plays

One significant feature of O’ Neill’s dramatic art is seen in the effective opening scenes of his plays. In almost all his plays the problem of the beginning has been managed with the remarkable skill conversant as he was with the stage intimately, on problem in dramatic technique escaped the attention.Read More about American literature

Eugene O'Neill leads the serious dramatists in America today. For two successive years his plays, Beyond the Horizon, and Anna Christie, were awarded the Pulitzer prize. His plays are being produced in England, France and Germany, and have been greeted with tremendous enthusiasm.Read More about American literatureEmperor Jones was a pioneer experiment in audience hypnosis. The Hairy Ape proved that tragedies may be popular successes.

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