English Literature

1. According to Swami Vivekananda, teacher's success depends on: (A) His renunciation of personal gain and service to others (B) His professional training and creativity (C) His concentration on his work and duties with a spirit of obedience to God (D) His mastery on the subject and capacity in controlling the students Answer: (A) 2. Which of the following teacher, will be liked most?

LINK: https://courses.nus.edu.sg/course/elljwp/deconstruction.htm Derrida and Deconstruction �With the word with, then, begins this text Whose first line tells the truth.� (Francis Ponge) �The Text� In its most conventional and historical sense the word �text� means: The actual words of a book, or poem, etc., either in their original

Source: http://www.historyhome.co.uk/peel/refact/preserve.htm Lord Macaulay's "Speech" (March 2, 1831, The House of Commons) It is a circumstance, Sir, of happy augury for the measure before the House, that almost all those who have opposed it have declared themselves altogether hostile to the principle of Reform. Two Members, I think, have professed, that though they disapprove of the

McCarthyism : In the 1940s and 1950s Americans feared the encroachment of Communism. The Soviet Union was growing in power and the threat of a nuclear holocaust was on the forefront of American minds. Eastern Europe had become a conglomerate of Communist satellite nations. Throw in China and Americans began to feel they were surrounded by a Communist threat. Paranoia ensued. The Crucible : Salem established itself as a religious community in the midst of evil. Salemites considered the forest the domain of the devil. Salem was surrounded by forest. Paranoia ensued. McCarthyism : Joseph McCarthy, U.S. Senator, made unsubstantiated claims that more than 200 "card carrying" members of the Communist party had infiltrated the United States government. He had no proof. The Crucible : Delusional girls make unsubstantiated claims about the existence of witches in Salem. They have no proof. McCarthyism : McCarthy's unsubstantiated claims ruined lives and led to increased hostility....

Each stage production of The Crucible differs from every other in two areas. First, directors stage the play according to their own styles, using various props and costumes while suggesting numerous interpretations of characters. Secondly, individual actors read the lines differently, using diverse voice inflections, gestures, and body language to give each interpretation its own style. Miller also provides yet another opportunity for variety, not just for the director and actors, but also for the audience and reader. Lengthy exposition pieces that are not glossed as stage directions periodically appear in the written play. For example, at the beginning of Act I, Miller provides stage directions for the set, props, and position of Parris and Betty on stage. However, Miller also includes an extensive psychological profile of Parris prior to beginning the action of the play. Before Parris speaks, a narrator says that "in history he cut a villainous path, and there is very little goo...

Arthur Miller had a reputation for being pedantic. He maintained, and his estate continues to maintain artistic control over his plays. Miller never ever let anyone else have more creative input than himself. He was a visually descriptive playwright both in his stage directions and settings. Miller�s plays, including The Crucible include pages of detailed information addressing the concerns of both the actors and the audience. In preparation for writing The Crucible, he studied pages and pages of court transcripts of the Salem witch hunts in order to develop ideas and to create an authentic dialect. He took small ideas from the testimonies given in the courts and fleshed them out into stories. In fact, the basis for John Proctor�s and Abigail Williams� affair was based on the tension he discovered that the two of them shared throughout the actual court proceedings. 'This play is not history in the sense in which the word is used by the academic historian. Dramatic purposes have som...

The major characters in Hemingway�s novels and short stories are divided into two groups. There are certain round characters who find themselves at cross-ends with the world around them and they are tying to come to some convincing terms with their environment but do not know the way out. They learn with the passage of time and evolve a new set of values, which make their survival possible. There are certain other characters that do not need any education because when they appear before us they are perfect in themselves. These characters appear with different names in different novels. But they share so many characteristics in common that critics identify them collectively as the Code Hero or in Earl Rovit�s terms �the Tutor�. Hemingway�s code hero is usually an older man, tremendously courageous and blindly confident who has realized his potentialities and know his area of operations. He is perfectly skilled and experienced in his art and executes his jobs full-boldly. He is usually a...

Barnes, Nick Adam, Frederic Henry, Robert Jordan etc. are all Hemingway�s typical heroes who remain continuously under great stress because they are living in absolutely unsatisfactory conditions. Hemingway�s hero is always in some war or war like conditions but the notable point is that he enters war without any social, political or ideological obligation. That is why he is basically a disinterested spectator of war instead of a vehement participant. Romantic ideals and abstractions like sacred, glory, bravery etc. do not fascinate him and we cannot help wondering why he offers himself to serve in war. Hemingway�s hero leads a private life as an isolated individual because during war he very closely observes the nothingness of life, cruelty of man against man, temporality, emptiness and meaninglessness in human relationship and extremely realizes that looking for permanence in human relations is to meet utter disappointment. However, we should not assume that he is a misanthrope but h...

Aristotle writes that the function of tragedy is to arouse the emotions of pity and fear, and to affect the Katharsis of these emotions. Aristotle has used the term Katharsis only once, but no phrase has been handled so frequently by critics, and poets. Aristotle has not explained what exactly he meant by the word, nor do we get any help from the Poetics. For this reason, help and guidance has to be taken from his other works. Further, Katharsis has three meaning. It means �purgation�, �purification�, and �clarification�, and each critic has used the word in one or the other senses. All agree that Tragedy arouses fear and pity, but there are sharp differences as to the process, the way by which the rousing of these emotions gives pleasure. Katharsis has been taken as a medical metaphor, �purgation�, denoting a pathological effect on the soul similar to the effect of medicine on the body. This view is borne out by a passage in the Politics where Aristotle refers to religious frenzy bein...

No passage in �The Poetics� with the exception of the Catharsis phrase has attracted so much critical attention as his ideal of the tragic hero. The function of a tragedy is to arouse the emotions of pity and fear and Aristotle deduces the qualities of his hero from this function. He should be good, but not perfect, for the fall of a perfect man from happiness into misery, would be unfair and repellent and will not arouse pity. Similarly, an utterly wicked person passing from happiness to misery may satisfy our moral sense, but will lack proper tragic qualities. His fall will be well-deserved and according to �justice�. It excites neither pity nor fear. Thus entirely good and utterly wicked persons are not suitable to be tragic heroes. Similarly, according to Aristotelian law, a saint would be unsuitable as a tragic hero. He is on the side of the moral order and hence his fall shocks and repels. Besides, his martyrdom is a spiritual victory which drowns the feeling of pity. Drama, on t...

Aristotle did not invent the term �imitation�. Plato was the first to use the word in relation with poetry, but Aristotle breathed into it a new definite meaning. So poetic imitation is no longer considered mimicry, but is regarded as an act of imaginative creation by which the poet, drawing his material from the phenomenal world, makes something new out of it. In Aristotle's view, principle of imitation unites poetry with other fine arts and is the common basis of all the fine arts. It thus differentiates the fine arts from the other category of arts. While Plato equated poetry with painting, Aristotle equates it with music. It is no longer a servile depiction of the appearance of things, but it becomes a representation of the passions and emotions of men which are also imitated by music. Thus Aristotle by his theory enlarged the scope of imitation. The poet imitates not the surface of things but the reality embedded within. In the very first chapter of the Poetic, Aristotle says:...

�The Poetics� is chiefly about Tragedy which is regarded as the highest poetic form. Abercrombie says: �But the theory of Tragedy is worked out with such insight and comprehensions and it becomes the type of the theory of literature.� Aristotle reveals that imitation is the common basis of all the fine arts which differ from each other in their medium of imitation, objects of imitation and manner of imitation. Poetry differs from music in its medium of imitation. Epic poetry and dramatic poetry differs on the basis of manner of imitation. Dramatic poetry itself is divisible in Tragic or Comic on the basis of objects of imitation. Tragedy imitates men as better and comedy as worse then they are. Thus, Aristotle establishes the unique nature of Tragedy. Aristotle traces the origin and development of poetry. Earlier, poetry was of two kinds. There were �Iambs� or �Invectives�, on one hand, which developed into satiric poetry, and �hymns� on the gods or �panegyrics� on the great, on the ot...

Aristotle devotes great attention to the nature, structure and basic elements of the ideal tragic plot. Tragedy is the depiction of action consisting of incidents and events. Plot is the arrangement of these incident and events. It contains the kernel of the action. Aristotle says that plot is the first principle, the soul of tragedy. He lists six formative elements of a tragedy � Plot, character, thought, melody, diction, spectacle and gives the first place to plot. The Greek word for �poet� means a �maker�, and the poet is a �maker�, not because he makes verses but he makes plots. Aristotle differentiates between �story� and �plot�. The poet need not make his story. Stories from history, mythology, or legend are to be preferred, for they are familiar and understandable. Having chosen or invented the story, it must be put to artistic selection and order. The incidents chosen must be �serious�, and not �trivial�, as tragedy is an imitation of a serious action that arouse pity and fear....

�Gulliver�s Travels� is a great work of social satire. Swift�s age was an age of smug complacency. Corruption was rampant and the people were still satisfied. Thus, Jonathan Swift tears the veil of smug complacency off which had blinded the people to realities. In �Gulliver�s Travels�, there is a satire on politics, human physiognomy, intellect, manners and morality. In the first voyage to Lilliput, Swift satirizes on politics and political tactics practiced in England through Lilliputians, the dwarfs of six inches height. He satirizes the manner in which political offices were awarded by English King in his time. Flimnap, the Treasurer, represents Sir Robert Walpole who was the Prime Minister of England. Dancing on tight ropes symbolizes Walpole's skill in parliamentary tactics and political intrigues. The ancient temple, in which Gulliver is housed in Lilliput, refers to Westminster Hall in which Charles I was condemned to death. The three fine silk threads awarded as prizes to t...