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Showing posts from September, 2011

William Shakespeare's "Antony and Cleopatra": Dramatic Significance of the Political Background

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The political background of  English dramatist William Shakespeare 's tragedy , Antony and Cleopatra is manifest from the very beginning of the play and its quite natural being  a historical drama. As we all know the story is based on the intertwined lives of Roman general Mark Antony and Cleopatra, queen of Egypt from 51 to 30 bc . For his account of the characters and times, Shakespeare used Sir Thomas North's 1579 translation of Greek biographer Plutarch's Parallel Lives . The very first act of the play shows the internal political situation at Rome consequent upon Antony’s dotage on Queen Cleopatra of Egypt at Alexandria. The play opens in Alexandria, Egypt, where Antony rules the Roman Empire with Octavius Caesar (later the emperor Augustus) and Marcus Aemilius Lepidus. Although Antony and Cleopatra are already lovers, Antony has returned to Rome from Egypt and married Octavius’s sister, Octavia, in order to assuage Octavius’s misgivings about his leadership

A Brief Introduction to Percy Bysshe Shelley's 'To a Skylark'

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Introduction: English poet Percy Bysshe Shelley becomes known as one of the greatest lyric poets of English literature. Among his best-known poems are 'To a Skylark' and 'To the West Wind.' Like acting or the playing of music, it is an art of interpretation, more difficult than mare saying so. Percy Bysshe Shelley, the supreme lyric in the romantic period, always longs for something ethereal, something that is far beyond the earthly, spare of sorrow. His ‘To a Skylark’ as Wordsworth puts in “the expression of the highest to which the poets genius has attained”. It is one of the most marvelous of English lyric ever written. It is the expression of a genius who sings In profuse strains of unpremeditated art. In fact, some recent scholars have attributed the modern ideas of personality to the Romantic poets, whose focus on personal, emotional, and subjective experience may have given rise to our notions of individuality. The discussion that follows makes clear the

Edward Sapira- The Leader in American Structural Linguistics

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Edward Sapir was a German-born American anthropologist-linguist and a leader in American structural linguistics. His name is borrowed in what is now called the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis. He was a highly influential figure in American linguistics, influencing several generations of linguists across several schools of the discipline. Following the methods developed by Boas; Sapir gave up his work in classical philology and started analyzing languages of Amerindian tribes. In their pioneering research on unwritten American native languages, anthropologists Franz Boas and Edward Sapir developed the techniques of descriptive linguistics and theorized on the ways in which language shapes our perceptions of the world.

James Joyce's "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young": The epigraph, Bildungsroman, The Christmas dinner, Episodes in the early life of Stephen, Daedalus myth, Charles Stewart Parnell, Stephen’s mother

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 The epigraph of A portrait of the Artist As A young Man: This Latin epigraph is taken over from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, VIII, 188 means ‘And he applies his mind to obscure arts’.  The epigraph sums up the theme of the novel. The mythic Daedalus escaped himself from the labyrinth of crete forming wax wings. Stephen Dedalus, too, is out to emancipate himself from labyrinth like Ireland with which he is disgusted. Evidently he will escape himself from there not by was wings but by ‘viewless wings’ of imagination. So the aim of the mythic Dadalus and Stephen Dedalus are alike. Significance of the name Stephen Dedalus: The name Stephen Dedalus conjoins the first Christian martyr St. Stephen, stoned to death outside Jerusalem in 34 A.D. and the great pagan artificer – artist hero, Dedalus. Like St. Stephen, the hero of the novel is or at least sees himself as, a martyr, a person whose potential spiritual dedication is thwarted by Ireland. His surname, however reminds us of the cunning

Critical Short Questions From Bates's story "The Ox"

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Q. WHAT IS THE SYMBOLIC IMPORTANCE OF BI CYCLE IN THE OX  ? ANS: The bi-cycle is the symbol of sole companionship for Mrs. Thurlow . She dreams about it and cannot walk without it. The bi-cycle is an object that externalizes the sway of emotions that lie suppressed in her. Q. what is the symbolic significance of Mrs. Thurlow's cottage? Ans: The location of Mrs. Thurlow's house and the movement of seasons   are all symbolic of a symbolic image of the human condition of gloom, despair,isolation and suffering where someone like Mrs. Thurlow symbolizes a Sisyphus-like existentialist fortitude and stoicism which makes her go on amid all the misery.

Rhythm, Meter and Scansation of the Poem

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 Like the rhythms in nature, such as the motion of the planets, the succession of seasons, and the beating of the heart, poetic rhythm usually is organized in regularly recurring patterns. Such patterns regulate the motion of the music and aid the human ear in grasping its structure. The most basic rhythmic unit is the Iambic pentameter, alternates weak unstressed and strong stressed syllables to make a ten-syllable line (weak strong/weak strong/weak strong/weak strong/weak strong).   iamb -- x / . . . . . . . . . (adjective form = iambic ) trochee- - / x . . . . . . . . (adjective form = trochaic ) anapest- - x x / . . . . . . . (adjective form = anapestic) dactyl- - / x x . . . . . . . . (adjective form = dactylic ) pyrrhic -- x x . . . . . . . . (adjective form = pyrrhic ) spondee -- / / . . . . . . . . (adjective form = spondaic ) dimeter  --two feet per line trimeter --three feet per line tetrameter   --four feet per line pentameter  --five feet per line hexa

Character and Role of Fitzwilliam Darcy in Jane Austen‘s novel "Pride and Prejudice"

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  Fitzwilliam Darcy is the hero of Jane Austen‘s novel Pride and Prejudice . The ups and downs in the romance between Darcy and Elizabeth form the principal interest of the novel. The pride of Darcy gives rise to the Prejudice of Elizabeth and the complications of the plot are due to the increasing prejudice of Elizabeth against Darcy . Most interestingly with the mingling of positive and negative traits, Darcy seems deeply human. 

Chance and Coincidence: Thomas Hardy's "Far from the Madding crowd"-A Wanton Field of Destiny

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H ardy in a fatalist and to him destiny is always hostile to mankind. Fate acts according to its own whims in the form of chances, accidents and coincidences. Hardy thinks that the expected happy reality; the unexpected happens suddenly. The fate of his characters especially the hero or the heroine depends on the working of fate. In far from the Madding crowd there are number of events which make the characters to place them in the odd situation from which they have no way to get out. Chance in its purely malevolent aspect enters our life and spoils it, brings trails and tribulations, sorrows and sufferings, pain and agony in its train. What is the use of being play thing in the hands of “the President of the Immortals”. Hardy's novel Far from the Madding crowd is also a wanton field of destiny.

Plot Structure of "Pride and Prejudice" by Jane Austen

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Jane Austen at a considerable skill in constructing her plots which were simple plans of novels the plans for telling her story the way she would like too. Read More Novel The plot of the novel Pride and Prejudice turns on the development of love between Darcy and Elizabeth and its final culmination in marriage Jane Austen has shown remarkable dramatic scene in exhibiting the different stages of growth of pride and prejudice of the hero and the heroine and their final self knowledge which cure their feelings. 

INDIANNESS IN R. K. NARATAN'S “THE MAN EATER OF MALGUDI” (1961)

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What Chaucer has done in the 14 th century England in his Prologue to the Canterbury Tales , Pope in the 18 th century in his Rope of the Lock and Tennyson in the 19 th century England in his poems, R. K. Narayan has done the same in his novels of the 20 th century India. His novels are the miniature form of India. We find everything what are typically Indian in his novel as his novels are blessed with ‘Bharat Darshan’. The idiosyncratic, likeable Indian characters in Narayan’s novels and the mythic town of Malgudi that he created as the setting of his ‘Man Eater of Malgudi’ are well known all over the world.

Katherine Mansfield’s “The Fly” : As a Modern Short Story of “Stream of Consciousness Method”

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M odern short story has grown more or less to the lyric and close to the psychological mood-poem. Katherine Mansfield’s short story “The Fly” is a case in point. It has the minimum of story in its shaping. Read More Short Stories It radically differs from the conventional short story in its mechanics of presentation. In it the treatment is not clear and logical enough. It offers a sympathetic insight into human soul in a moment of shock relying on atmosphere and suggestion. Read More Short Stories It has not plot and technique. It is akin to the “stream of consciousness method” of fiction.

The Structural Approach to the Teaching of English: the Possible Grounds for Dissatisfaction

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The structural approach to the teaching of English is technique by which students are taught to master the pattern of sentences. In the words of Menon and Patel, the structural approach is based on the belief that in the learning of a foreign language, mastery of structures is more important than the acquisition of vocabulary. This approach employs techniques of the direct method of teaching. Speech is mainly stressed but reading and writing is not neglected. The structural approach is not a method in the strict sense of the term. It is an approach, a technique, a device which can be used to put into practice any method successfully. It is a way to teach English by using only of the traditional method like grammar translation or direct method etc. According to Prof. B. D. Srivastava, “The structural approach is, in fact, the situational approach of language teaching" Objectives of the structural approach – According to Menon and Patel the following are the objectives of the

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