AD's English Literature

  “It took me fifteen years to discover I had no talent for writing, but I couldn’t give it up because by then I was too famous.” Robert Benchley Literary Insults Diverse Pathways Await English Graduates Exploring the Range of Career Options for Graduates in English Studies As an English graduate, you might wonder about the numerous career opportunities that await you. The skills and knowledge acquired during your studies can open doors to a wide array of professional paths across various industries. Whether you have a passion for literature, writing, communication, or critical thinking, there are numerous options to consider. Below, we explore some of the potential career paths that English graduates can pursue. Education and Teaching Many English graduates find fulfillment in sharing their passion for language and literature by becoming educators. They can pursue teaching roles in schools, colleges, language institutes, or even offer private tutoring services. Instructin...

The terror on “The Cask on Amontillado,” so of deep of Edgar Allan Poe's short stories, resides between the scarcities on evidence so accompanies Montresor’s claims according to Fortunato’s “thousand injuries” yet “insult.” The story purposes retaliation or stolen homicide as much a road in conformity with avoids the use of criminal channels because of retribution.

Mr. Micawber, one of the outstanding characters in   Charles Dickens ’   David Copperfield is a man of kindly, genial nature. Some critics say that he is a pen-portrait of Dickens’ own father. However it may be, there can be no denying the fact that he “is the type of a whole race of men who will not vanish from the earth as long as the hope which lives eternal in the human breast is only temporarily suspended by the laws of debtors and creditors.” A kindlier and merrier a more humorous and more generous character was never conceived than this. He is one of these optimistic souls who are always waiting for something to turn up, and who are able to maintain their cheerfulness and good spirits despite poverty, debt and imprisonment. Mr. Micawber is typical of those good-for-nothing fellows who are never able to make anything in life, but still manage to live, largely as result of the bounty and generosity of friends, secured for them by their genial and generous temp...

“We must beat the iron while it is hot, but we may polish it at leisure.” John Dryden  (1631 - 1700) English poet, playwright, and literary critic. Aeneis Various causes gave rise to an unprecedented spirit of satire in the Augustan age , from John Dryden (1631-1700) to Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) . It is a materialistic age in which certain fashions and modes of behaving and taste hold away.  (1) What is considered “genteel taste” is vigorously upheld, and any deviation from it is satirized. (2) “Correctness” and “good sense” are the order of the day. Emphasis is on reason and correct observation of certain rules both in literature and social life. Rationalism develops clear thinking and the temptation to pronounce judgment is strong. This accounts for the rise both social and literary satire.  (3) The restoration witnessed a revolt against Puritan austerity. There was also a reaction against religious hypocrisy. The religious and the devout were cr...

The poetry of the Pseudo-classical school was very artificial and unnatural. It was extremely limited in its themes. It was confined exclusively to the city of London and in that city to the artificial and unnatural life of the fashionable lords and ladies. It did not care for the beauties of nature or for the humanity-farmers shepherds, wood cutters etc. Who live its simple life in the lap of nature? Wordsworth reacted sharply and sought to increase the range of English poetry by taking his themes from humble and rustic life, himself living in the lap of nature, was well familiar with the life of the humble people, and he has rendered it in his poetry, realistically and accurately.

After the Restoration dramatists drama in English seems to have gone into hibernation, if it had not died altogether. There were at least two dramatists of great calibre in the closing years of the 19th century. Bernard Shaw and Oscar Wilde, but both of them steadfastly choose prose as the medium of their plays. The 20th century saw some powerful influence that exerted themselves on the drama, the influence of the great continental dramatists, and that of the Irish dramatic movement. It was, however, left to T. S. Eliot to rehabilitate poetic drama and place it on a sound footing. There were several considerations which contributed to the emergence of poetic drama in the 20th century. There were at least a dozen factors which cumulatively worked in this direction. In the first place the prejudice against theatre going began to disappear. There was also, some relaxation in the rigour of censorship. Also there was a steady rise in the standards of judgment, due to the spread of...

"Every great and original writer, in proportion as he is great and original, must himself create the taste by which he is to be relished." William Wordsworth  (1770 - 1850) British poet. Lyrical Ballads (2nd ed.) Wordsworth was the chief spokesman of the Romantic Movement. His Preface to Lyrical Ballads says M.H. Abraham has been one of the most discussed and influential of all critical essays. “In the preface Wordsworth tried to overflow the basic theory, as well as the practice of non-classical poetry and also sought to defend and justify the new kind of poetry that he himself and Coleridge were writing.”

The literature of the fifteenth century is comparatively barren in production, and there are no any poets or prose-writer in consequence. There is a steep decline in poetry even in the hands of the English and Scottish Chaucereans. By that time that freshness of Chaucer, in the fields of characterization; narration and versification was come to an end. Chaucer’s great name and fame disciples like Lydgate, Langland, Dunbar, Skelton, Occleve, Barclay, Hawes etc. were also unable to keep the freshness of poetry   of their master. There is a marked decadence in style. In Chaucer’s great disciples the spirit of poetic imagination and phrasings always lacked. Their metres were merely decrial: Compared with master, their works seemed sheer childish. In the sphere of prose there is a little progress, though the prose of the fifteenth century is better man the prose of the preceding age. Several factors are responsible for the barrenness of literary production in this age.

Measure for Measure is one of the dark comedies or problem plays of Shakespeare . In this group of plays, we find Shakespeare confronted with some practical problems of life— generally with the problem of evil in daily life—and we find him also trying for a comic solution but not often getting it. As a result, the comedy gets rather dark and an atmosphere of cynicism seems to emerge. In the present play, the thesis seems to build up around the problem of combining authority with mercy and justice for the purpose of eradicating the evils of a corrupt society.

“There are many who understand Greek and Latin, and yet are ignorant of their Mother Tongue.” John Dryden  (1631 - 1700) English poet, playwright, and literary critic. Sylvae (translation of Horace's Odes) T he system of learning English or any other foreign language after learning the mother tongue is justified or not is much debated.  The controversial subject needs to be cleared on the sequence of learning mother tongue and foreign language in more psychological analysis.  Although many century linguists strove to make their own mother dialects the basis for a standard language, attempts were also made to work out a general   tongue. Literature, however, languished in dominant language until the late   century, when signs of a marginalized language literary revival developed—in reaction to the dominant language, which had become rivaling, control over other languages.

R abindranath Tagore once declared that his own country would best remember him for his songs, and indeed he is seen by an over whelming majority of his countryman not merely as a poet  but doubled with a singer. The essentially musical charter of the lyrics in Gitanjali was clearly indicated by the title which Tagore gave to the English version Songs Offerings. The pieces included in it were prose renderings of a selection of poems from the Bengali Gitanjali, Naividya , kheya, Gitimalya –all titles which reveal the song –like character of the poems. The accent in all these anthologies is as much on the music as on the poetry. As K.R.S Iyengar says; “the stillness is suddenly disturbed by a dance of rhythm; the ear is charmed and enraptured, there is a quick passage through the doors of sensibility and the chords reach the soul’s sanctuary at last.” This is evident even is the translation, though many feel that Tagore defies translation into English even when the attempt is ma...

  T he peasants in the novels of Hardy may be regarded as the chorus. We meet these rustic characters in " The Return of the Native  "(Fairway, Christian, Grandfer Cantle, and the rest), " Far from the Madding Crowd" (Joseph Poorgrass, Henry Fray, Billy Smalibury, Jan Coggan), and so on. They cannot be compared with the central figures in the drama, because they are placed in the story to provide a chorus. They always appear in a group, seldom separately. They are not full-length portraits.  Moreover, they are drawn in a different convention. Here Hardy is in the straight tradition from Shakespeare. These rustic characters are the direct descendants of Bottom and Dogberry and the rustics who gather in response to Falstaff’s call to arms at the house of Justice Shallow, and are made up of a few strongly marked, deliberately caricatured personal idiosyncrasies. Rich fragments of rusticity, they are as entertaining as any of the classic comic characters of Fielding or ...

M ilitary Heroism regards a soldier as a superhuman being above the ordinary weaknesses, moved entirely by noble impulses Patriotism and self sacrifice, utter disregard of life, and strive for honour and honour only—these are the traits of Military Heroism. Military Heroism is the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in literary works such as great epics or poems. Survival in the Face of Mass Destruction of War is in fact the goal in being a soldier and that there is s no such unified political or national response to the Military Heroism. Shaw thinks that this view is the view of home sweet home who have never been to the battle front. In reality, a soldier is a man like any other man. War is his profession. A true soldier is not anxious to fling away his life, but he adopts all means to save it. The hero Bluntschli climbs a waterpipe and enters a lady’s bed-room in order to save his life. He does no jump to the mouth of the cannon like Sergius who, he say, should be court...

    I ntroduction:  Teachers of English should be on intimate terms with the masterpieces they are expected to teach. They ought to have a clear idea of the action of the play, and mental pictures of the various scenes and characters. They should be familiar with the fine lines; should be able to quote what is worthwhile; and should appreciate the diction, the wealth of allusion, and the various other literary qualities that combine to produce style. These things come through careful and loving study of a masterpiece and this is also true for the teaching of William Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar . In fact, since its first production, Julius Caesar has enjoyed immense and enduring popularity. The play forms part of the repertoire of most Shakespearean stock companies. A notable production, with the actors in modern dress, was directed by Orson Welles for the Work Projects Administration (WPA) in 1937. There have been several motion picture productions of Jul...

 “From the conjunction of Vibhãvas, Anubhãvas and Vyabhicaribhãvas Rasa are produced.”-  Bharatamuni’s Natyasastra   T he principle of Rasa is the very kernel of Indian Poetics . Rasa is the essence of literature. The outlines of the nature of poetry appeared in Bharatamuni’s Natyasastra . Bharata says, “From the conjunction of Vibhãvas, Anubhãvas and Vyabhicaribhãvas Rasa are produced.” Just as persons, mentally peaceful, while eating food mixed with various kinds of condiments taste and derive pleasure and the like, so also spectators with calm minds taste the Sthyibhãvas spiced with various kinds of emotions enacted and combined with verbal, physical and Sãttvika acting and derive pleasure. Bharata’s aphoristic statement “Vibhavanubhavayabhicarisamayogidrasanishpattih” has been discussed at length by good many scholars. Of these Bhattalollata, Srisankuta, Bhattanayaka and Abhinavagupta deserve special mention. They will be discussed separately in this short critical e...

W illiam Blake was one of the greatest poets of the Romantic age and a protest against oppression which also becomes an aspect of Blake’s religious faith. His The Divine Image   glorifies the innocence of human being as in the grand design of God. The poem The Divine Image   is from Songs of Innocence and is written in the ballad metre. It expresses Blake’s faith in man as being an embodiment of all the divine qualities. This being so, the poet feels that man must love his fellow-beings just as he loves God, Love for man alone, believed Blake  could bring man closer to God and create paradise on earth.

T he poem ‘Birches’ was first published in the Atlantic Monthly in August 1915. In this poem we come across the poet’s desire to withdraw from the world as also his love of the earth as symbolized by the boy’s game of swinging birches. Frost’s central subject is humanity. His poetry lives with particular aliveness because it expresses living people. Other poets have written about people. But Robert frost’s poems are of the people; they work, and they walk about, and converse, and tell their tales with the freedom of common speech. “Birches” is among Frost best-known piece and has acquired wide popularity. What places the poem on a distinctly high level of appeal is the true and broad humanity running throughout the poem. In the background of the swinging birches, the imaginary boy’s behaviour and utterances acquire a philosophical depth and wisdom. The central thought of this poem is that the poet dreams of becoming a swinger o birches once again in his life as he was during his boyh...