AD's English Literature

S haw has been pre-occupied mainly with the exposition of his philosophy through the media of plays and this is a crystal truth as far as Man and Superman is concerned. Characterization or depiction of characters in their full human round has never been his forte. But nonetheless the feminine characters created by Shaw are undeniably marvelous. Raina in Arms and the Man , St Joan in Saint Joan and Ann Whitefield in Man and Superman are some of the unique creations bearing the impress of Shaw’s mature and superb literary merit.

B esides the great differences in the character of the words and in the ways of expressing their relations and changes of meaning, there is also a marked difference between the spelling and pronunciation of Old and of Modern English. For a long time, indeed, everyone in England tried to write his words as he pronounced them, sometimes, indeed, with different spellings of the same word in the same sentence. And, judging from the varieties of spelling there must have been great variety in the pronunciation. Since the close of the fifteenth century, however, although many changes have taken place, the growth of national culture and the intermingling of people from various parts of the British Empire, have tended to make the pronunciation uniform; so that now, educated speakers of English, all over the world, differ only slightly in their modes of pronunciation. Our spelling, also, chiefly owing to the use of dictionaries and the influence of our printed literature, has become almost rigid...

B esides the differences at different periods, there are considerable differences in the language of English speakers even at the present day. Thus, every region has some peculiarities in the way in which its speakers use their English. There are, for example, the peculiarities of the English of Ireland and of Scotland, noticed by us in the Irish and the Scotch immigrants. And, in general, an Englishman can tell an American and an American an Englishman by the way he talks. When these peculiarities amount to so much that they begin to interfere with our understanding the persons who have them, we say that such persons speak a dialect of English, rather than English itself, which in contradistinction is known as Standard English. Good English and Bad  English:  There is also the difference between what we call good English and bad (or vulgar) English. By good English we mean those words and those meanings national of them and those ways of putting them together that are used ...

Prosperity doth best discover vice; but adversity doth best discover virtue. Francis Bacon  (1561 - 1626) English philosopher, statesman, and lawyer. Essays,  "Of Adversity" F rancis Bacon was a great Elizabethan of wonderful versatility. He was a true child of the Renaissance. He was a great scholar ‘familiar’ with the scriptures of classical languages, histories and mythologies. He was a shrewd observer of life all around him.

The Scene before the University Wits  The English drama as it developed from the Miracle plays has an interesting history of  Dramatic Transition. It began with school-masters, like Udall, who translated and adapted Latin plays for their boys to act, and who were naturally governed by classic ideals. It was continued by the choir-masters of St. Paul and the Royal and the Queen’s Chapel, whose companies of choir-boy actors were famous in London and rivaled the players of the regular theatres. These choir-masters were first stage-managers of the English drama . They began with masques and interludes and the dramatic presentation of classic myths from the Italians. But some of them, like Richard Edwards (choir master of the Queen’s Chapel in 1561), soon added forces from English country life and dramatized some of Chaucer’s stories. Finally, the regular playwrights, Kyd, Nash, Lyly, Peele, Greene, and Marlowe , brought the English drama to the point where Shakespeare began to...

T he canvas of Yeats’ Muse is admittedly vast, combining within itself two apparently irreconcilable pigments. With a beginning which is reminiscent of Keats and the Pre-Raphaelites, Yeats moved forward with mighty strides towards the mature phase of the production of illuminating poetic collections which constitute sortie at the rare marvels in English literature. In between this early and the mature stage here is another period—that of transition which is equally reductive of scintillating poetry full of coruscating symbols. Te bulk of his early poetry is languid, marked by tinge of romanticism and a pronounced note of escapism. It belongs to the dream-world which is essentially irresponsible and which implies an abnegation of the values of this mundane or terrestrial world. Yeats’s early poems are in the Victorian tradition which itself was a development from the Romantic Revival. Tennyson would not have some into being without Keats, Rossetti would not have come into being without...

 I ntroduction: F ielding’s Joseph Andrews begun as a parody of Pamela . In November 1740, Samuel Richardson published his novel, Pamela . Fielding started a parody of this novel. But just as Pamela had grown under its author’s hands into something much larger than the original conception, so the parody grew beyond Fielding’s first intention till it became his first published novel, The History of the Adventures of Joseph Andrews, and of His Friend Mr. Abraham Adams. As Pamela was tempted by her master, Squire Booby, so her brother, Joseph Andrews, is tempted by his mistress Lady Booby, another member, of the family.

Introduction:  John Galsworthy,  the 1932 Nobel  Laureate, is best known problem playwright and novelist in the 20 th century. His is the  collection s which treats of a particular social or moral problem s  so as to make people think intelligently about it. It is usually somewhat tragic in tone in that it naturally deals with painful human dilemmas. It is a kind of writings that, by implication, asks a definite question and either supplies an answer or leave it to us to find. One of his best known plays The Silver Box deals with the inequality of Justice,  S trife with the struggle between capital and labour, Justice with the cruelty of solitary confinement, The Skin Gam e with the different values of the old aristocracy and the newly rich businessman, Loyalties with class loyalties and prejudices and Escape with the inadequacy of the administration of justice and attitude of different types of people toward an escaped prisoner.   H is dramas fr...

I ntroduction:  The romantic wave that swept Europe early in the 19th century also affected children's literature if it were indeed intended for doing so. Primarily these were for the newly educated common mass and the young ones of the upper classes apart for the general intelligentsia. Thus, William Shakespeare is relocated once again in Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb’s Tales from Shakespeare (1807) in simple words without losing the root interest in it. It is very common that a common citizen  much  suffer reading Shakespeare and that they always read simple summaries before reading the original plays, so it was very thoughtful of Lambs to bring a book that contains the most famous plays of Shakespeare retold in a very clear and easy-to-follow style. Such a revival of interest in the works of English playwright William Shakespeare resulted in one of the most popular children's books, Tales from Shakespeare, a prose adaptation for children, consisting of versions of the Sh...

 Introduction: John Galsworthy's  Falder in Justice is not a hero in the Aristotalian or Shakespearen sense. The dramatic action of Justice by Galsworthy revolves around Falder. He is in the middle of our attention of sympathy and pity. He is the tragic hero and the victims of social injustice which we all resent. He is the character of a man who is in the machinery of social injustice.

"MAN [ going towards steps ]. Well, good-night, comrade, and thank you. You did me a good turn  to-night, and I'm obliged to you. Maybe I'll be able to do as much for you when the small rise up  and the big fall down . . . when we all change places at the rising [ waves his hand and  disappears ] of the Moon."- The Rising of the Moon   T he Rising of the Moon by Lady Gregory is a play concerning patriotism and struggle for freedom in the background of Ireland political history involving two characters- one the disguised ballad singer and the other the sergeant in search of a run away prisoner.  The Rising of the Moon carries a title well  chosen  from a popular ballad for the  Irish  Revolutionary who would  relay  round at the precise moment for same undertaking.  Fenian  poet John  Keegan   Casey  composed his well known ballad with the following lines: “Who would follow in their footsteps at the Rising ...

B iographical and autobiographical prose is more or less true-to-life stories and often bears great literary merits. They pervade the world of history, philosophy, psychology, ideology, propaganda, untold mysteries, confessions, criticism, travelogues etc. These works are conventionally classified into factual writing and fictional writing, or simply, true and semi true. The present essay deals with biography and autobiography and its truthfulness and literary merits. As a descriptive term, biography and autobiography is completely meaningless, since all story is beyond eyewitnesses when it first appears. Further, if one takes it as applying to all modern perceptions, one soon discovers that they differ so much among themselves that any simple definition of the school will exclude a number of important lies. One perception will emphasize close reading, another symbol, another morality, another psychology, sociology, and till another mythical as of criticism. Now coming to the terminol...

A Set of 26 Objective Questions & Answers UGC NET ENGLISH / COMPETITIVE EXAM QUESTION BANK 1. An oxymoron is: (A) A figure of speech made up of two seemingly opposite words. (B) A type of metaphor. (C) A form of alliteration. (D) A type of simile. Answer: (A) 2. John Dryden's poem that celebrates Charles II’s return to the throne is: (A) Annus Mirabilis (B) Astraea Redux (C) Macflecknoe (D) The Hind and the Panther Answer: (B) 3. The author of "Absalom and Achitophel" is: (A) Samuel Johnson (B) John Milton (C) John Dryden (D) Alexander Pope Answer: (C) 4. An allusion is: (A) A direct quote from another work. (B) A passing reference to something outside of a literary work. (C) A figure of speech that exaggerates. (D) A type of satire. Answer: (B) 5. The term "Restoration" in English history refers to: (A) The end of the monarchy. (B) The restoration of monarchy under Charles II. (C) The establishment of the Commonwealth. (D) The rise of Puritanism. Answer: (B...

I n John Galsworthy’s play Justice the exercise of social injustice in the name of legal justice has been criticized. And in the dramatic action of the Dumb Scene (Act III Sc. III)   of his play, Galsworthy has portrayed the deep agency of a sensitive prisoner kept in a solitary confinement. With a cudgel in hand here Galsworthy is merciless in his criticism of prison administration that treats prisoners not as humans but as dumb inhabitants of dungeon. Here is the description of the small cell that brings out the indifference of the prison authority to the emotional needs of a prisoner. The scene shows Falder, the convict, hasten to catch a sound from the world outside. But nothing except the sound of a lid of tin falling from his hand or that of an occasional banging travelling from cell to cell is heard. He has no companion but his image reflected on the tin lid. The only activity in which he may engage himself is the stitching of a shirt in which he sometimes seen to fanc...

Introduction:  In the group of Shakespearean    Roman plays ,  Julius Caesar  remains an epic making work and like  Coriolanus , their other theatrical play,  Julius Caesar  also has a strong opening scene of a crowd in commotion. In fact, the presence of Roman Crowd in their various characteristics can be felt throughout the play of  Julius Caesar.  However, it is in the opening scene and in the forum scene that they are actively instrumental in mounding the course of the play. Let us now have a close look of their characteristics under the following heads.

S ome of the important literary qualities of  R. K. Narayan 's  Emden  are the use of humanized time reference, character complexity and development, interwoven stories, a flashback technique to vividly portray past events, and a setting that demonstrates themes, personalities, and conflicts. Emden, the title character in R. K. Narayan 's Emden , is more than 100 years old and now he can’t even remember his age. Emden, the oldest man in Malgudi , who hated birthdays. He abominated birthdays because  according  to him it may reduce the days of  birthdays' count . He has nearly lost his hearing abilities and can’t retain names. According to Narayan “Even such a situation was acceptable, as it seemed to be.........by nature to keep the mind  uncluttered  in old age”.  Narayan in his portrayal of the oldest man gives a glimpse of his history through half remembered memories by the old man who loves his routinely two-hour walk. We also get...