Short Essay of Dramatic Poesy

Discuss in the essay: The essay is written moral less in the form of a dialogue or debate. It takes place among four speakers who have been given borrowed names but who have been identified with certain actual person of literary eminence of Dryden’s time. The speakers are critics (Sir Robert Howard) Eugenics (Charles Sackville), and Meander (Dryden himself). The four men agree that they should confine their discussions to drama and should not take into account other branches should not take into account other branches of literature.

  

Touch-Stone Method

The Touch-Stone Method: Arnold suggests that we should have always in our minds, lines and expressions of the great masters of poetry, and that we should apply those lines and expressions as a touch-stone method to other poetry. Of course we are not to require these other poetry to resemble (similar) those lines and expressions. Even these other poetry may be dissimilar.

Poetic Diction

Poetic Diction: Diction means word choice and poetic diction means language and usage peculiar to poetry. A collection of some special words which have been used in the poetry is called poetic diction. Diction is used between poetic and other language. Spenser’s use of archaisms in Farie Queene is very popular.

Process of Poetic Creation

Discuss about Definition of Poetry and Process of Poetic Creation.

Definition of Poetry: William Wordsworth has given the definition of poetry, “Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility (soundless atmosphere)”. Without any trying it comes from powerful feelings.

Process of Poetic Creation: The process of poetic creation occurs through four stages:

Romantic Concept of the Poet and His Function

Discussion about Romantic Concept of the Poet and His Function

a. Ordinary Individual: A poet differs from an ordinary individual not in nature but in degree.

b. Speaking to Men: A poet is essentially a man, speaking to men not speaking to other poets.

c. Living Sensibility: He has more living sensibility than others.

Function of a Poet

Short Note about The Function of a Poet

Generally a poet is he who is able to use the best words in the best orders. Wordsworth emphasizes that self-gratification is not the aim of a poet. His fiction is not the aim of a poet. His purpose is to communicate to others about his own thoughts, feelings and his own pleasure. For this reason Wordsworth calls upon the poet to come down from the ivory tower (tower of knowledge) saying, “Poets do not write for poets alone but for men.”

Romantic Movement of English Literature

Romantic Movement of English Literature

The Romantic Movement or period flourished in England during the 18^th and 19^th Centuries. It was the most prominently personified by seven renowned poets- Samuel Taylor, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William Wordsworth, Percy Bysshe Shelley, William Blake, John Keats and Lord Byron.

Invocation

Invocation: Invocation is the noun form of invocate that means to seek inspiration, courage, encourage and guidance from the goddess when somebody is going to start any hard work; especially in the beginning of an Epic. As an epic is a hard and long narrative poem, on a great and serious subject, so before writing the epic Paradise Lost the author John Milton seeks inspiration from the holy spirits. So, it can be said that invocation means asking God or goddess for inspiration at the beginning of any difficult activities especially in an epic. John Milton begins Paradise Lost with the invocation, Sing, “Heavenly Muse.”

Seven Sleepers:

Seven noble sleepers of Ephesus hid themselves in a cave in order to escape from the persecution (punishment) of Christians. The entrance (doorway) of the cave was blocked up. The seven men slept there for nearby two hundred years and then they came out, still youths in the region of the younger Theodosius. The two lovers in “The Good Morrow” composed by John Donne slept for a long, long time and it was only when they woke up that they started making love to each other. 

Fable

Fable: Generally, a fable is a short and fairly simple story which is designed to teach a moral lesson. Most of the characters of the fable are often animals and they play an important role like the human beings. The fables of the Greek slave Aesop are the most familiar.

Araby

James Joyce 


Short Summary of Araby 

Summary: Araby is a great creation of James Joyce which is full of dark and light sides. It is also the awakening of a boy to how different the world is compared to how he would like to see it. It is also the realization of the boy about the difference between the ideal world of his imagination and the base reality of life. In the beginning of this fiction we find that the nameless narrator of the story talks about life on North Richmond Street. The former resident of their apartment was a priest who died and at the time of his departure he kept some books, so the young boy narrator and, who is also the protagonist of this story, sometimes looks at them.  He stays with his aunt and uncle. He looked superficially pure and innocent who loves to play with his rustic friends every leisure periods.

Summary of Gulliver’s Travels

     Jonathan Swift

Book I and Book II (shortly)

Chapter 01

On this voyage, Gulliver goes to the sea as a surgeon on the merchant ship,Antelope. The ship is destroyed during a heavy windstorm, and Gulliver, the only survivor, swims to a nearby island, Lilliput. Being nearly exhausted from the ordeal, he falls asleep. Upon awakening, he finds that the island’s inhabitants, who are no larger than six inches tall, have captured him. After the inhabitants examine Gulliver and provide him with food, the Emperor of this country orders his subjects to move Gulliver to a little-used temple, the only place large enough to house him.

American Transcendentalism

Introduction: In Literature, Transcendentalism was considered as philosophical and literary movement that flourished in New England from about 1836 to 1860. It derived some of its basic idealistic concepts from romantic German philosophy, notably which of Immanuel Kant and from such English authors as Carlyle, Coleridge and Wordsworth. The beliefs that God is immanent in each person and in nature and that individual intuition is the highest source of knowledge led to an optimistic emphasis on individualism, self-reliance, and rejection of traditional authority.

Age of English Literature

Age of English Literature

Time Span, Terms, Movements, Examples
600-1200 Old English (Anglo-Saxon)			Beowulf
1200-1500 Middle English			Geoffrey Chaucer
1500-1660 The English Renaissance
1500-1558	Tudor Period	Humanist Era	Thomas More, John Skelton
1558-1603	Elizabethan Period	High Renaissance	Edmund Spenser,Sir Philip Sidney, William Shakespeare
1603-1625	Jacobean Period	Mannerist Style (1590-1640) other styles: Metaphysical Poets; Devotional Poets	Shakespeare, John Donne, George Herbert,Emilia Lanyer
1625-1649	Caroline Period		John Ford, John Milton
1649-1660	The Commonwealth & The Protectorate	Baroque Style, and later, Rococo Style	Milton, Andrew Marvell, Thomas Hobbes
1660-1700	The Restoration		John Dryden
1700-1800	The Eighteenth Century	The Enlightenment; Neoclassical Period;The Augustan Age	Alexander Pope,Jonathan Swift, Samuel Johnson
1785-1830	Romanticism	The Age of Revolution	William Wordsworth,S.T. Coleridge, Jane Austen, the Brontës
1830-1901	Victorian Period	Early, Middle and Late Victorian	Charles Dickens, George Eliot, Robert Browning, Alfred, Lord Tennyson
1901-1960	Modern Period	The Edwardian Era(1901-1910); The Georgian Era (1910-1914)	G.M. Hopkins,H.G. Wells, James Joyce, D.H. Lawrence, T.S. Eliot
1960-	Postmodern and Contemporary Period		Ted Hughes, Doris Lessing, John Fowles, Don DeLillo, A.S. Byatt

Edited by: Mahbub Murad. Dhaka, Bangladesh. Cell: +8801919879309, +8801761519111. Email: Mahbub_murad@yahoo.com 

Victorian Literature

Victorian literature is the literature produced during the reign of Queen Victoria (1837-1901).      It forms a link and transition between the writers of the romantic period and the very different literature of the 20^th century. The 19th century saw the novel become the leading form of literature in English. The works by pre-Victorian writers such as Jane Austen and Walter Scott had perfected both closely-observed social satire and adventure stories. Popular works opened a market for the novel amongst a reading public. The 19th century is often regarded as a high point in British literature as well as in other countries such as France, the United States and Russian Books, and novels in particular, became ubiquitous, and the "Victorian novelist" created legacy works with continuing appeal.