English Literature

One of the most enigmatic and elusive figure in English Literature is Milton�s Satan in Paradise Lost. Milton has magnified arch-enemy of God and Man to heroic proportions. Though he is evil incarnate, he is shown to be embodiment of obdurate pride and unconquerable will. Milton�s Satan is an unsurpassable leader albeit a defeated military figure, whom his legions would follow even unto the gates of hell. He is readily comparable to the heroes of classical epics�he is a variant of Achilles, who equates honour with own status and who has ability to rally his troops by the magic of his eloquent speeches. Milton�s Satan is such an emotionally complex character that we can never completely understand him. He is, by common consent, one of the greatest artistic creations ever portrayed in literature. There has been great controversy on the ambiguity of this character. Yet it is true that his character engages reader�s attention and excites his admiration too. Though the action of poem turns ...

In the opening lines of Paradise Lost, Milton announces that he is going to tackle a lofty theme of Man�s first disobedience and fall from grace. �Of Man�s first disobedience and the fruit Of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste Brought death into the world and all our woe.� In his Invocation to Heavenly Muse, Milton states the theme and purpose of his epic. ��I may assert Eternal Providence/And justify the ways of God to men.�  Indeed, Paradise Lost was, for Milton, the fulfillment of his long cherished ambition.  Milton chose a towering theme for his epic which ranks it with the great epics like those of Homer, Virgil and Dante. In his Invocation Milton resolved that his �adventurous song� intended to soar �with no middle flight� . Accordingly, he invoked Heavenly Muse to inspire him so that he might be successful in undertaking, the like of which had yet not been attempted �in prose or rhyme� . Raleigh remarks: �The theme of Paradise Lost is vaster and more universal. It...

Mysticism is not really a coherent philosophy of life, but more a temper of mind. A mystic vision is intuitive; a mystic feels the presence of divine reality behind and within the ordinary world of sense and perception. He feels that God and the supreme soul animating all things are identical. He believes that all things in the visible world are but forms and manifestations of the one Divine life. The self-proclaimed �American Bard� Walt Whitman is undoubtedly a mystic and transcendental poet. He shocked his contemporaries by his embrace of the sensual; �Song of Myself� has been regarded as a prolonged expression of an experience that is essentially mystical. The beautiful sampling of Whitman�s poetry from �Song of Myself� offers a glimpse into the spiritual side of his most radical themes�love for country, love for others and love for self. Whitman seeks to tear down the belief the spiritual resides only in the religious and embraces the idea that nothing is more divine than humanki...

Shelley was a true-born kid of the revolution. The spirit of that revolution found its expression in Shelley�s poetry. Throughout his life he dreamt of a brand new society, a brand new world, completely free from tyranny and oppression. He was a dreamer of dreams and   the sole fervid singer of the revolution. Unlike Wordsworth or Coleridge, Shelley never abandoned the ideals of the revolution, though he was appalled by the dictatorship of Napoleon. Shelley only experienced the revolution at second hand through the books of the writers as Rousseau and William Godwin etc. When he looked back, all he could see was the flame of revolution still flickering in spite of the terror, war and disease. In his preface to �The Revolt of Islam�, he pointed out that the wanted to kindle in the bottom of his readers a virtuous enthusiasm for liberty and justice, which neither violence nor prejudice, can ever wholly extinguish among mankind. In another allegorical work �Prometheus Unbound� Shelley...

                     �I find earth not grey but rosy/ Heaven not grim but fair of hue.� Robert Browning, a cherished poet of the Victorian era, has many of his poems filled with unbridled optimism. � Browning is emphatically the poet-militant, and the prophet of struggling manhood. His words are like trumpet-calls sounded in the van of man�s struggle, wafted back by winds, and heard through the din of conflict by his meaner brethren, who are obscurely fighting for good in the throng and crush of life�, very aptly remarks  a critic.   When Browning started writing, the attitude of the milieu was scientific and materialistic. And this means, people had lost faith in religion, morality and spirituality. He was optimistic about the existence of God and the notion of a perfect heaven. His poetry is a reflection of this, deviating from the scientific temperament typical of his age. Robert Browning is an optimist, and as an optim...

A dramatic monologue is dramatic discourse usually employing the following elements: a fiction speaker, an implied audience, a symbolic setting, dramatic gestures, and emphasis on speaker�s subjectivity.  Dramatic monologues provide interesting snapshots of the speakers and their personalities. Robert Browning is often considered the master of the form of the dramatic monologue � if not the first to �inaugurate [the first] to perfect this poetic form.� In Browning�s dramatic monologues the speakers lay bare his inner thoughts and feelings �that is why they are regarded as the soul studies. Browning admits: �the soul is the stage; moods and thoughts are characters.� He emphasizes: �My stress lay on the incidents in the development of a soul: little else is worth study.� Well-known for his expertise of dram atic monologue, Browning made a special feature of it in his work. The dramatic monologue verse form allowed Browning to explore and probe the minds of specific characters. Thi...