English Literature

SHUAIB ASGHAR DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH GOVT. RAZVIA ISLAMIA COLLEGE HAROONABAD, PAKISTAN Alexander Pope was born in London on May 21, 1688, disadvantaged from the start by being born into a Roman Catholic family (at a time when Catholics were severely restricted in their liberty and property by the English government). Barred from an English university education by his religion, he nevertheless received some schooling at a couple of Catholic institutions, but soon supplemented this with his own extensive reading in Greek and Latin authors. He began writing verse by doing translations of these authors, and imitations and adaptations of others such as Chaucer, Waller, and Cowley. Pope is by far the most important poetic figure of the age called after him (1700-1740). His importance lies in the fact that he exercised the greatest influence on the classical poetry of the century. His poetry was intellectual, didactic and satiric, and was almost written in heroic couplet. It is never of the hi...

SHUAIB ASGHAR DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH GOVT. RAZVIA ISLAMIA COLLEGE HAROONABAD, PAKISTAN The first version of �The Rape of the Lock� was made up of only four cantos, containing the main incidents of the game of cards, cutting of the lock and ensuing battle therewith. This humorous piece was meant to bring about a happy reconciliation between the two families of the Fermors and Petres. This version, however, was never published and it had not yet taken on the shape of a mock-epic. It was meant to be read by a selected number of people related or close with the two families. Pope saw the possibility of expanding it into a mock-heroic poem. This was done by including into the body of the poem the supernatural creatures like the sylphs and gnomes who seem to be the guiding force behind the central action of the poem. Sources Of Pope's Machinery                          ...

SHUAIB ASGHAR DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH GOVT. RAZVIA ISLAMIA COLLEGE HAROONABAD, PAKISTAN The age in which Pope flourished is called the Augustan or Classical age, as well as the age of Pope, because he becomes the chief poet and man of letters. Frivolous Ladies Of London Belinda represents the typical fashionable ladies of the time. What is her life, and how does she spend her day? There is not the slightest glimpse of seriousness or sincerity, goodness or grandeur of human life in any of her words and actions. Belinda is a beautiful lady; she has a host of admirers; she is a flirt and a coquette. Favours to none, to all she smiles extends. Oft she rejects, but never she offends. But despite all their flirtations and the disdain they showed for their lovers, these ladies of the court did secretly pine for love as Ariel, the guardian sylph, discovered about Belinda: An earthly lover lurking at her heart.           They secretly harboured ambition...

SHUAIB ASGHAR DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH GOVT. RAZVIA ISLAMIA COLLEGE HAROONABAD, PAKISTAN In the division and style, Milton's poem follows Homer's 'Iliad' and Virgil's 'Aeneid'. Taking 'Paradise Lost' as a whole, one can see that the rules of classical epic as discussed by Aristotle are followed, to a large extent, by Milton. (1) The action deals with a great subject, derived from the scriptures. It deals with the fall of man and to this all other episodes are related and subordinated. (2) The action is entire, having a beginning, middle and an end. (3) As all other epics, it has a hero, though there has been a controversy as to who it is. (4) The style of 'Paradise Lost' has all the grandeur which the epic poem demands. Milton is the mighty mounted inventor of harmonies. The meaning of the words, the syntax, and the division of sentences constantly reminds the scholarly reader of classical writers. The opening sentence, the first lines of Sata...

SHUAIB ASGHAR DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH GOVT. RAZVIA ISLAMIA COLLEGE HAROONABAD, PAKISTAN In his Oxford lecture 'On Translating Homer: Last Words', Mathew Arnold used this now famous phrase. 'Such a style , he maintained, arises when a noble nature, poetically gifted, treats with simplicity or with severity a serious subject' . Arnold refers to Homer, Pindar, Virgil, Dante, and Milton as exponents of grand style. It was a lofty or elevated style suitable for epic, a style Arnold himself attempted in, for instance in 'Sohrab and Rustum'.                     Now, we discuss the devices used in 'Paradise Lost' by Milton which have caused his style to be characterized as the Grand Style. Erudite Style, Full Of Allusion The language of 'Paradise Lost' is that of a scholar writing for scholars. A beautiful illustration of the poet's fondness for allusions is provided by his description of Satan's forces,...

SHUAIB ASGHAR DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH GOVT. RAZVIA ISLAMIA COLLEGE HAROONABAD, PAKISTAN Epic simile is an extended simile, in some cases running to fifteen or twenty lines, in which the comparisons made, are elaborated in considerable detail. It is a common feature of epic poetry, but is found in other kinds as well. In an epic poem similes are used for the purpose of illustration, but they serve also to decorate the epic theme or character. Epic similes are also given the name of Homeric similes because Homer elaborated his similes in such a way that a particular kind of dignity and beauty was created in his poetry and since then it became the tradition of epic poetry. Milton has brought in a number of such similes in the Book I of �Paradise Lost�. In the first simile he compares the huge form of Satan sprawling on the lake of fire to the fabled sea-beast called Leviathan. It was a kind of big whale of such great size that when it came to the surface, it occupied many miles and gave the...

SHUAIB ASGHAR DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH GOVT. RAZVIA ISLAMIA COLLEGE HAROONABAD, PAKISTAN A Metaphysical             Donne has been classified both by Dryden and Samuel Johnson as a Metaphysical poet. This title has been conferred on him because of his sudden flights from the material to the spiritual sphere and also because of his obscurity which is occasionally baffling. His works abounds in wit and conceits. In addition to this, he has been termed a metaphysical poet because his style is overwhelmed with obscure philosophical allusions and subtle and abstract references to science and religion. Treatment Of Love             Donne's treatment of love is entirely unconventional. He does not fall in line with the ways and modes of feeling and expression, found in the Elizabethan love poetry. Most of the Elizabethan poets followed the fashion set by Petrarch, an Italian sonneteer, in...

SHUAIB ASGHAR DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH GOVT. RAZVIA ISLAMIA COLLEGE HAROONABAD, PAKISTAN Rebel Against Woman-Worshipping When Donne began writing, the Elizabethan love poetry was based wholly on Petrarchan style. It involved the theme of woman-worship expressed in sugar-coated language. Donne's poems get rid of this theme. In his poems woman is also an ordinary human being, capable of love as well as desire and very well able to deceive and be inconstant. �The Message� mocks at women for their forced fashions and false passions. In �The song: Go and Catch a Falling Star�, Donne playfully treats the theme of woman's inability to remain faithful. In �The Apparition� he calls the woman he loves, a "murderess" --a glaring departure from the Petrarchan style. Joy Of Love Moreover, Elizabethan poetry described the pains and sorrows of love, the sorrow of absence, the pain of rejection, (except some of the finest of Shakespeare's sonnets). John Donne, however, speaks in ...

SHUAIB ASGHAR DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH GOVT. RAZVIA ISLAMIA COLLEGE HAROONABAD, PAKISTAN Dr. Johnson describes the wit of John Donne as being a kind of �discordia concors�, or a combination of dissimilar images, or a discovery of occult resemblances in things apparently unlike.           Donne's poems have plenty of wit, as defined by Dr. Johnson, in relation with the metaphysical poets. His conceits indeed are startling, but ultimately just. The poet often proves their truth. The ability to elaborate a conceit to its farthest possibility without losing the sense of its appropriateness speaks for a high intellectual caliber.   In �The Good Morrow�, the poet compares himself and his beloved to two hemispheres which form the whole earth--- what is more, they are even better than the actual earth, for they do not have the "sharp North" and the "declining West". It is a complex image conveying the exclusive world of the lovers and the warmth ...