Tuesday, 5 April 2016
PAPER 8- “Post-Modernist theory applying to a short-story – ‘The Guest’ by Albert Camus”
PAPER 8- CULTURAL STUDIES.
“Post-Modernist theory applying to a
short-story –
‘The Guest’ by Albert Camus”
Post-Modernism
Postmodernism, especially in terms of its
use for Cultural Studies, rejects the opposition between ‘high’ or elite
culture and ‘low’ or mass culture. It questions the criteria by which certain
forms/terms/assumptions are projected as ‘good taste’, ‘classics’, permanent
(‘for all time to come) and universal. Postmodernism is closely aligned with
cultural studies in its rejection of ‘high/low’ distinctions between cultures,
and its focus on the moods by which certain cultural artefacts come to occupy
higher status.
It interrogates any notion, philosophy or
ideal of a general, universal and overarching nature (such as Marxist idea). It
celebrates plurality, heterogeneity, and the small, local, innovative,
marginalised and unfinished narratives that respect differences and
specificities of cultures, individuals and religions. Meaning is seen as
differential, contingent and purely arbitrary. The process of repress nation
seeks not to offer any insights into reality or truth.
In literature it collapses the distinction
between genres and conventions. The thriller format becomes part of the serious
novel. Comic element and absurdity mark the author’s attitude to tragic events
like death, suffering, the Holocaust (Joseph Heller’s Catch 22, the fiction of
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr). Myths, fairy tales,
legends and contemporary realities merge (Donald Barthelm, Salman Rushdie &
Gabriel Garcia Marques). Historical figures jostle with contemporary people
(for instance, the use of Goethe and Hemingway as characters by Milan Kundera).
It becomes impossible to distinguish between reality and illusion, for both the
characters and the reader. The distinction between ‘real’ history and ‘mere’
fiction is called into question (Graham Swift’s Water land). The narrator
continually undermines his own apparently ‘reliable’ narrative & we are
left wondering: can we trust this story at all?
Postmodernism suggests that power relations
structure all social truths, approaches and even conceptions of reality.
Jean-Francois Lyotard and the Postmodern
Condition:
Jean-Francois Lyotard characterises the
postmodernism as disbelief in and resistance to metanarrative (narrative that
seek to explain and address universal conditions while assuming that these
explanations suit all contexts and locations).
1 The disbelief towards metanarratives is
the disillusionment with totalizing explanations of reality. This includes the
narrative of science, philosophy and religion. For instance, the Marxist ideal
of an emancipatory agenda and aim for communism or the Christian narratives of
redemption are totalizing narratives because they ignore levels in favour of an
overaching universal programme or explanation.
2 These knowledge and explanations are
therefore tyrannical and oppressive because they ignore differences in order to
impose a false unity on knowledge and reality. These knowledge also conceal beneath
an apparent objectivity; their tactics of ‘terror’. Lyotard suggests that
scientists and scientific discourses
are not employed to disseminate Truth but to argument power. That is,
scientific discourse seek to legitimize certain kinds of knowledges and
actually suppress oppositional knowledges in order to retain their
stranglehold.
Postmodernism
acknowledges that all knowledge is fragmentary, partial and incomplete. One can
only utilize local knowledge to know a part of the truth. Thus the individual’s
experience, knowledge and voice is to be retrieved as a resistance and
delegitimation towards grand narratives that simply pass off one version of
knowledge and reality as universal.
Jean
Baudrillard and the hyperreal
Baudrillard’s
central argument is that in the age of perfect reproduction (the photography,
the digital copy) and endless repetition of images, the distinction between the
real and the illusory, between original and ‘copy’, between superficiality and
depth has broken down. What we now have is a culture of ‘hyperreal’.
Baudrillard
suggests that a sign merely refers to other signs. The entire system is constituted
by such signs that are ultimately empty because they only refer to other
similar signs rather than ‘Truth’. ‘Truth’ is truth a simulacrum of the real
image/model becomes more real than real. It is the generation of copies and
models of the real without origin or reality, or what is called the
‘hyperreal’.
Virtual
reality, global communications, the infinite reproductions of data banks and
holograms are examples of the redundancy of the distinction between real and
imagined, between ‘Truth’ and copy.
In
a consumer society objects are not simply consumed. They signify a status
rather than satisfy a need. In a consumer society objects become signs and what
we consume images, and the exchange value is transformed into sign-value.
For Baudrillard, then, the postmodern is characterised
by the hyperreal, by the collapse of distinction between the private and the
public (home, office, and now homeoffice). This is the ‘implosion of meaning in
the media: where signs without referents enchant us.
About ‘The
Guest’ by albert Camus
The Guest
follows the story of Daru, who is a schoolteacher in a remote plateau region.
The area has gone through a draught, but recently a blizzard has passed
through, leaving everything covered in snow. This has kept away Daru's pupils.
The
narrative opens as Daru watches two men approach his schoolhouse. He watches
them climb the hill. One of the men, a gendarme named Balducci, is very
familiar to Daru. He leads an Arab prisoner who has been accused of murdering
his cousin in a family squabble. Balducci has been ordered to bring the Arab to
Daru, and then return immediately to his post. Likewise, Daru has orders to
turn in the prisoner to police headquarters at a town approximately twenty kilometres
away. Daru refuses this task, considering it dishonourable. Balducci agrees
with the schoolmaster, but insists that in war men must be prepared to do many
different jobs. The gendarme is insulted by Daru's stubborn refusal, and leaves
in anger.
Daru feeds
the Arab and spends the night sleeping in the same room as the prisoner. During
the night the Arab gets up for water, and Daru mistakenly thinks he has
escaped. The next day Daru leads the Arab to a point on the plateau, and equips
him with money and food supplies. He points him in the direction of
imprisonment, and then also points him in the direction away from police
headquarters, where he will find shelter with the native people. He leaves the
Arab with the choice, but when he looks back, he is upset to see the Arab
ultimately chooses the direction leading towards imprisonment. The story ends
with Daru looking out the window of his schoolhouse.
Daru
He watches Balducci and the Arab approach
the schoolhouse at the start of the narrative. The schoolhouse is his home,
although with the sudden snow none of his pupils attend anymore. He spends the
blizzard in his room, only leaving it to feed the chickens, get coal, or go to
the shed. The administration has given him wheat to distribute to his pupils.
During the draught he felt like a lord in his crude house because he was
surrounded by complete and utter poverty. He is from this region, which is
described as cruel, but he feels exiled anywhere else. Daru argues against
delivering the Arab to Tinguit, and is plunged into a state of moral despair at
the end of the narrative when he realizes that the Arab has chosen certain
imprisonment.
Balducci
Balducci is the man on the horse who leads
the Arab up the hill to Daru. He holds the horse back so not to hurt the Arab.
Once within earshot he shouts a greeting to Daru. He is an old gendarme and has
known Daru for a long time. He looks upon Daru as a son, but is insulted by
Daru's refusal to turn in the Arab. It is Balducci who first speaks of a
revolt, and speaks about the obligations that men face during war. He clearly
longs for a peaceful retirement, but is resigned to his duties.
The Arab
The Arab is being led by Balducci. He walks
while the gendarme rides a horse, and his hands are tied. He keeps his head
bowed, which fascinates Daru, and does not raise his head once during the
ascent. He wears a blue jellaba, sandals, and a cheche on his head. He is very
timid and fearful throughout the narrative, and even does not try to escape
despite many opportunities. At the end, he decides to walk towards
imprisonment, and in this way symbolizes the absurdity and despair of the human
condition.
This perfectly represents the most-modernism
in itself. The writer belong the pioneers of post-modernism. Camus has worked
for absurdist literature the most. His contribution is remarkable. This is very
important aspect to be studied.
PAPER 7 - “Application of Theory – structuralism on A Gujarati Suspense novel ‘Lajja Sanyal’ by Ashvini Bhatt”
PAPER
7 - LITERARY CRITICISM
“Application
of Theory – structuralism on A Gujarati Suspense novel ‘Lajja Sanyal’ by
Ashvini Bhatt”
"Structuralism
and Literary Criticism"
The
pagination in brackets refers to the text as republished in David Lodge, Modern
Criticism and Theory.
1: The
critic and the literary: Genette first introduces the good structuralist
conception of the bricoleur as opposed to the engineer; it will turn out that a
critic is a bricoleur , working with what is to hand. Genette turns the artist
into the engineer, a rather literary-critical thing to do.
Genette
then makes the point that as literary criticism uses language to speak of
language use, it is in fact a metaliterature, a literature on a literature.
Poststructuralists will challenge the distinction between the two, and Genette
here refers to Barthes distinctions to suggest that some literary criticism may
be literature.
He
then defines literariness in a way much like a formalist would: literariness is
language production in which the attention is addressed to spectacle rather
than message -- something one supposes like Jakobson's poetic function, or
meta-poetic; in fact to put it right into Jakobson's terms, the attention is on
the poetic rather than on the referential function, on medium rather than on
message. Genette will later in the essay insist that this does not degrade the
meaning-function of the language.
Genette
as well refers to that aspect of literature which is so close to the New
Critical understanding of ambiguity, the 'halt', the attention to the
constitution of meaning under a different aspect, that also characterizes the
literary; so it is that there is only a literary function , no literariness in
any essential or material sense. Genette's sense of the ambiguity of literature
is similar to Jakobson's in "Linguistics and Poetics", in which essay
he writes that "Ambiguity is an intrinsic, inalienable character of any
self-focused message, briefly a corollary feature of poetry...Not only the message
itself but the addresser and the addressee become ambiguous." (pp 49-50 in
Lodge).
2: The
role of the critic: The critic is secondary to the writer, a bricoleur to the
writer's engineer, but in a position therefore to be primary in the analysis of
culture. The critic treats as signs what the writer is creating as concept: the
attitude, the disposition is different. The critic in reading literature as
signs is reading it as a cultural production, constructed according to various
preconceptions, routines, traditions and so forth of that culture. The critic
does not ignore the meaning, but treats it as mediated by signs, not directly
encountered. (65T) Where the post-structuralist will differ is in their denial
that anything can be transparent: all concepts are themselves constructed of
signs, there is no unmediated thought, all mediated thought is social thought,
there is no attachment to anything beyond the sign.
3:
Structuralism is more than a linguistic exercise. While structuralism
historically (in Europe) is a linguistic phenomenon, and it would seem
reasonable th at structuralist criticism would then be linguistic in its
nature, this is too simple an assumption.
First
of all, literary language is language used to certain ends, having a certain
function and therefore featuring the qualities of linguistic production and the
relationships of sounds and meaning in a particular way. The ends then are
important. As he writes on page 66, structuralist method as such is constituted
at the very moment when one rediscovers the message in the code, uncovered by
an analysis of the immanent structures and not imposed from the outside by
ideological prejudices. (Poststructuralists will deny that anything can be
innocent of ideology.)
Second,
there is a homology, a structural relationship, between the way language cuts
up the world of meaning, and the way literature and literary genres do. There
is an analogy between literature and linguistics not only because they are both
involved in language but because both deal with:
the
relation between forms and meanings,
the
way reality is culturally defined by the segmentation and identification of
experience,
the
cultural perception of reality, and
the
systemic relationships of signs which underlie those cultural perceptions.
Genette
writes on p. 67 of the idea of a table of concordance, variable in its details
but constant in its function: it is the function, not the detail, that concerns
structuralist thought. One of the elements of literature that Genette deals
with later is genre, which segments experience in certain ways, and controls
the attitudes towards it. What is the place of this individual work in the
systems of representation? That is a key question.
4:
Structuralism is about meaning, not just about form. Genette is at pains to point
out that structuralism is not just about form, but about meaning, as
linguistics is about meaning. It is a study of the cultural construction or
identification of meaning according to the relations of signs that constitute
the meaning-spectrum of the culture. (67 ft) When Jakobson writes of the
centrality of tropes to imaginative writing, he places the categories of
meaning at the heart of the structural method, as tropes, including metaphor
and metonymy, are the way we say something by saying something else, figures of
signification. Ambiguity, which is a meaning-function, is at the heart of the
poetic function, as we saw in #1 above. Finally in this section, Genette looks
forward to structural analysis at the more macro level of the text, of the analysis
of narratives, for instance -- "an analysis that could distinguish in them
[that is, larger units], by a play of superimpositions [and hence knowledge
through difference], variabvle elements and constant functions, and to
rediscover in them the bi-axial system, familiar to Saussureanlinguistics, of
syntagmatic relations (real connections of functions in the continuity of a
text) and paradigmatic relations (virtual relations between similar or oposed
functions, form one text to another, in the whole of the corpus
considered)>"[68t]
5:
Structuralism is a general tendency of thought (Cassirer) Structuralism is,
however, not necessarily an intrinsic fact of nature but rather is a way of
thinking; [68] structures are"systems of latent relations, conceived rather
than perceived, which analysis constructs as it uncovers them, and which it
runs the risk of inventing while believing that it is discovering them" --
that is, structures are explanations of coherence and repetition, they appear
in what they seek to explain, they in a sense provide the terms and the vehicle
of explanation. as we can only now through knowledge frames. Structuralism is
the explanation of texts or events in their own terms (as those terms are
conceived), not in relation to external causes.
When
one turns to the internal dynamic of a text as an object, a field of meanings,
and to the coherence of it as a text, rather than as biography or sociology,
one reads structurally. Structuralist reading abandons pyschological,
sociological, and such explanations. One can see New Criticism as a structural
methodology, although it is not structuralism: in structural analysis of theme,
for instance, theme would be seen in the context of the relations of themes,
that is, of certain elements of filaments of the configuration, or network or
matrix of, of social meanings, which meanings constitute culture.
6:
Structuralism is however not merely intrinsic criticism, the criticism of the
thing itself. Genette mentions the other form of intrinsic criticism,
phenomenological criticism, in which one becomes in touch with the subjectivity
of the creative voice of the work. Ricoeur refers to this, Genette writes, as
the hermeneutic method: the intuitive convergence to two consciousnesses, the
authors and the readers. This is a little confusing, because this is not
hermeneutics properly speaking, but rather phenomenological hermeneutics. When
there is hermeneutics, Genette says, when the text is available to us in that
immediate a way, then structural reading fades; but whenever we have to look
more objectively, when we are transversing barriers of time, say, or of culture
or interest, then the structural method, the search for principles of order,
coherence and meaning, becomes dominant -- literatures [71t] distant in place
and time, children's literature, popular literature. Genette goes on to suggest
that the difference between hermeneutic and structural reading is a matter of
the critical position of the critic -- (between identity and distance, say).
Structuralism is an intrinsic reading free from subjectivity, when we become
the ethnomethodologists of our culture (71).
7:
Structuralism ties the meaning of the work to the meanings of the culture. (72)
Genette suggests that topics is an area of study that structuralism can bring
us to -- the traditional subjects and forms of the culture (from the Greek
topos, 'place'; I prefer to refer to culturally-constucted sites of meaning as
topoi, to try to retain the full meaning of the idea). Topics, or topoi, are
structural in that they underlie the way we talk and think about things in our
culture. They are in a sense psychological, Genette says [72], but collectively
so, not individually. Throughout, in writing of the cultural knowledge that
structuralism provides, Genette has been suggesting that 'high' literature is
not the only, perhaps not the primary, location for the study of cultural
meanings: the serious study of popular culture has begun.
8:
Structuralism opens the study of genre to new light. Different genres
predispose the reader to different attitudes, different expectations [cf. the
saying, attributed to Voltaire, that life is a comedy to he who thinks and a
tragedy to he who feels, which saying suggests a way in which genres might look
differently at experience]. Different genres lead to different expectations of
types of situations and actions, and of psychological, moral, and esthetic
values. Without conventional expectations we cannot have the difference, the
surprise, the reversals which mark the more brilliant exercise of creativity.
Hence creativity is in a sense structural, as it depends on our expectation,
which it them plays upon.
9:
Structuralism can be applied to the study of literature as a whole, as a
meaning system. Structurally, literature is a whole; it functions as a system
of meaning and reference no matter how many works there are, two or two
thousand. Thus any work becomes the parole, the individual articulation, of a
cultural langue, or system of signification. As literature is a system, no work
of literature is an autonomous whole; similarly, literature itself is not
autonomous but is part of the larger structures of signification of the
culture.
10:
Structuralism studies literature synchronically, but with diachronic awareness.
Structuralism studies literature historically by studying it as it were in
cross-section at different times, by seeing in what way literature divides up
the traditional topics of the cultural imagination. Change is intrinsic to
literature, as the Russian formalists thought; what the change registers is the
alterations of the relations of meaning within the culture.
Lajja
Sanyal.
-Ashvini
Bhatt.
Lajja
Sanyal is suspense thriller novel best can be studied with concept like
structuralism in mind. Lajja Sanyal is the protagonist. By profession she is an
actress. In other works also we may see that characters belong to film
industry. Other novels like ‘Angar’ and ‘Othar’ by Ashvini, there are
characters that belong to film industry.
The
novel starts at the room of court and the judgement was passed that Lajja is a
murderer. She was carried by a van and she eloped from the van. Then readers
are introduced with the incidents one by one. Actually that murder was not done
by Lajja that was revealed at last. That murder was a part of a mission
regarding Army. The frequency, order all parts are carried out in the novel.
Paper. 6,- “Comparative study of writing style of Tennyson and Browning”
Paper-6
· Victorian Literature
· “Comparative study of writing style of Tennyson and
Browning”
ALFRED, LORD
TENNYSON (1809-92)
Ø His Life
Alfred Tennyson, the son of a clergyman, was
born at his father's living at Somersby in Lincolnshire. After some schooling
at Louth, this was not agreeable to him; he proceeded to Cambridge (1828). At
the university he was a wholly conventional person", and the only mark he
made was to win the Chancellor's Medal for a poem on ‘Timbuctoo’. He left
Cambridge without taking a degree; but before doing "so he published a
small volume of mediocre verse. During the next twenty years he passed a tranquil
existence, living chiefly with his parents, and writing much poetry Pleasant jaunts--to
the Lake District, to Stratford-on-Avon. And other places - varied his peaceful
life, and all the while his fame as a poet was making headway. In 1844 he lost
most of his small means in an unlucky speculation, but in the nick of time
(1845) he received a Government pension. He was appointed Poet Laureate (1850)
in succession to Wordsworth, married, and removed (1853) to Freshwater, in the
Isle of Wight, which was his home for the next twenty years. In his later years
recognition and applause came increasingly upon him, and he was regarded as the
greatest poet of his day. In 1884 he was created a baron, sat in the House of
Lords, and for a time took himself rather seriously as a politician, falling
out with Gladstone over the Irish question. He died at Aldworth, near
Haslemere, in Surrey, and was buried in Westminster Abbey.
Ø His Poetry
When he was seventeen years old Tennyson
collaborated with his elder brother Charles in Poems by Two Brothers (1827):
The volume is a slight one, but in the light of his later work we can already
discern a little of the Tennysonian metrical aptitude and descriptive power.
His prize poem of Timbuctoo (1829) is not much better than the usual prize
poem. His Poems, Chiefly Lyrical (1830), published while he was an
undergraduate, are yet immature, but in pieces like Isabel and Madeline
the pictorial effect and the sumptuous imagery of his mature style are
already conspicuous.
The later stages of his career are marked
chiefly by much longer poems. The Princess (1847) is a serio-comic
attempt to handle the theme that was then known as 'the new woman.' For the
sake of his
story Tennyson imagines a ladies' academy with
a mutinously intellectual princess at the head of it. For a space a tragedy
seems imminent, but in the end all is well, for the Princess is married to the
blameless hero. The poem is in blank verse, but interspersed are several
singularly beautiful lyrics. The humour is heavy, but many of the descriptions
are as rich and wonderful as any Tennyson ever attempted.
In Memoriam (1850) caused a great stir when it first appeared. It is a very
long series of meditations upon the death of Arthur Henry Hallam, Tennyson's
college friend, who died at Vienna in 1833. Tennyson brooded over the subject
for years; and upon this elegiac theme he imposed numerous meditations on life
and death, showing how these subjects were affected by the new theories of the
day. For the first, and probably the only, time,
Tennyson's feelings were stirred and troubled.
The result was the most deeply emotional, and probably the greatest, poetry he
ever produced. The poem is adorned with many beautiful sketches of English
scenery; -and the metre--now called the In Memoriam metre--which
is quite rare, is deftly managed. Maud and Other Poems (1855) were
received with amazement by the public. The chief poem is called a 'monodrama';
it consists of a series of lyrics which reflect the love and hatred, the hope
and despair, of a lover who says his mistress's brother, and then flies broken
to France. The whole tone of the work is forced and fevered, auu of war and
bloodshed. It does not add to Tennyson's fame. In 1859, 1869, and 1889 Tennyson
issued a series of Idylls of the King, which had considered and
attempted a great theme that Milton abandoned--that of King Arthur and the
Round Table. Many doting admirers saw in the Idylls an allegory of the
soul of man; but in effect Tennyson drew largely upon the simple tales of
Malory, stripping them of their "bold bawdry" to please his public,
and covering them with a thick coating of his delicate and detailed
ornamentation. It is doubtful if this unnatural compound of Malory-Tennyson is
quite a happy one, but we do obtain much blank verse of noble and sustained
power.
The only other poem of any length is Enoch
Arden (1864), which became the most popular of all, and found its way in
translation into foreign languages. The plot is cheap enough, dealing with a
seaman, supposedly drowned, who returns and, finding his wife happily married
to another man, regretfully retires without making him known. The tale, as
ever, is rich with Tennysonian adornment. In particular there is a description
of the tropical island where Enoch is wrecked that is among the highest flights
of the poet:
“The mountain wooded to the peak, the lawns
And winding glades high up like ways to
Heaven,
The slender coco's drooping crown of plumes.”
Among the shorter poems, Locksley Hall
Sixty Years After (1886) and The Death of
CEnone (1892) are sad echoes of the sumptuous imaginings of the years
preceding 1842.
His Plays
Tennyson's dramas occupied his later years. He
wrote three historical plays- Quern Mary (1875), Harold (1876). Becket
(1884). The last, owing chiefly to the exertions of Sir Henry Irving, the
actor-manager, was quite a stage success. None, however, rank high as real
dramatic efforts, though they show much care and skill. The Falcon (1879)
is a comedy based on a story from Boccaccio; The Cup (1881) is based on
a story from Plutarch, and scored a success, also through the skill of Irving. The
Foresters (1892), dealing with the familiar Robin Hood theme, was produced
in America.
His Poetical Characteristics
(a) His Choice of Subject. Tennyson's earliest instincts, as seen in the
volumes 'of1830, 1833, and 1842, led him to the lyric and legendary narrative
as his principal themes, and these he handled with a skill and artistry which
he rarely surpassed.
Already, however, in the 1842 volume, there
are signs of the ethical interest which was to be the mainspring of his later
work. As a thinker, Tennyson lacked depth and originality. He was content to
mirror the feelings and-aspirations of his time, and his didactic work lacks
the burning fire which alone can transform the didactic into truly great art.
The requirements of his office as Poet Laureate led to the production of a
number of occasional poems which have caused him to be. Described contemptuously
as the newspaper of his age Of them, all that need be said here is that it is
surprising that they are as good as they are. For the rest, with notable
exceptions such as Ulysses and In Memoriam, Tennyson's poems are
best when he reverts to the lyric or narrative themes which were his original
inspiration.
(b) His Craftsmanship. No one can deny the great care and skill shown
in Tennyson work. His method of producing poetry was slowly to evolve the lines
in his mind, commit them to paper, and to revise them till they were as near
perfection as he could make them. Consequently we have a high level of poetical
artistry. No one excels Tennyson in the deft application of sound to sense and
in the subtle and pervading employment of alliteration and vowel music. Such
passages as this abound in his work:
Myriads of rivulets hurrying thro’ the lawn,
The moan of doves in immemorial elms,
And murmuring of innumerable bees.
The Princess
This is perhaps not the highest poetry, but
shows only a kind of manual, or rather aural, dexterity; yet as Tennyson
employs it it is effective to a degree. His excellent craftsmanship is also
apparent in his handling of English metres, in which he is a tireless
experimenter. In blank verse he is not as varied and powerful as Shakespeare,
nor so majestically as Milton, but in the skill of his workmanship and in his
wealth of diction he falls but little short of these great masters.
c) Tennyson's lyrical quality is
somewhat uneven. The slightest of his pieces, like The Splendour Falls, are
musical and attractive; but on the whole his nature was too self-conscious and
perhaps his life too regular and prosperous, to provide a background for the true
lyrical intensity of emotion. Once or twice, as in the wonderful Break,
break, break and Crossing the Bar, he touches real greatness:
Break, break, break -
“And the stately ships go on
To their haven under the hill;
But O for the touch of a vanished hand,
And the sound of a voice that is still I
Break, break, break,”
ROBERT BROWNING (1812-89)
His Life
Browning was born at Camberwell, his father
being connected with the Bank of England. The future poet was educated
semi-privately, and from an early age he was free to follow his inclination
toward studying unusual subjects. As a child he was precocious, and began to
write poetry at the age of twelve. Of his predecessors Shelley in particular influenced
his mind, which was unformed and turbulent at this time with the growing power
within. After a brief course at University College
Browning for a short period travelled in
Russia (1833); then he lived in London, where he became acquainted with some of
the leaders of the literary and theatrical worlds. In 1834 he paid his first
visit to Italy, a country which was for him a fitful kind of home. In 1845 he
visited Elizabeth Barrett, the poetess, whose works had strongly attracted him.
A mutual liking ensured, and then, after a private marriage, a sort of
elopement followed, to escape the anger of the wife's stern parent. The
remainder of Browning's life was occupied with journeys between England and
France and Italy, and with much poetical activity. His wife died at Florence in
1861, leaving one son. Browning thereupon left the city for good and returned
to
England, though in 1878 he went back once more
to Italy. His works, after suffering much neglect, were now being appreciated,
and in 1882 Oxford conferred upon him the degree of D.C.L. He died in Italy,
and was buried in Westminster Abbey.
His Poems and Plays
His first work of any importance is Pauline(1833),
an introspective poem, which shows very strongly the influence of Shelley,
whom, at this period, Browning held in great reverence. Paracelsus (1835),
the story of the hero's unquenchable thirst for that breadth of knowledge which
is beyond the grasp of one man, brings to the for Browning's predominant ideas that
a life without love must be a failure, and that
God is working all things to an end beyond
human divining. The style of the poem is diffuse, but the blank verse contains
many passages of great beauty and is interspersed with one or two charming
lyrics:
Thus the Mayne glideth
Where my love abideth.
His next work was the play Strafford (1837),
which was produced by the actor Macready, and which achieves real pathos toward
the close. Sordello (1840), an attempt to decide the relationship
between art and life, is Browning's most obscure work. The story of the hero, a
Mantuan troubadour, is cumbered with a mass of detailed historical allusion,
and the style, in spite of occasional passages of descriptive beauty, is too compressed.
It is convenient next to deal with the entire
group of eight volumes, which, published separately from 1841 onward, were
collected in one volume as Bells and Pomegranates in 1846. Luria and a Soul's Tragedy (1846), none of
these is without its moments of drama, and they all show considerable spirit in
their style. Pippa Passes, which was not intended for the stage, has an
idyllic charm, and it contains fine songs. His amazingly subtle analysis of character
and motive is not adequate for true drama because he cannot reveal character in
action. His method is to take a character at a moment of crisis and, by
allowing him to talk, to reveal not only his present thoughts and feelings but his past history.
Dramatic Romances and Lyrics (1845) show this faculty being directed into
the channel in which it was to achieve perfection--that of the dramatic
monologue. In the latter volume appeared The Italian in England, the
Bishop orders his Tomb at Saint
Praxed's, and Pictor Ignotus among many others.1 Dramatic Lyrics consists
mainly of lyrics, such as Cavalier Tunes, and, most striking of all,
those-love lyrics which, though impersonal, were really the fruit of his happy
marriage with Elizabeth Barrett. Of the love lyrics of this period Meeting
at Night is typical:
“The grey sea and the long black land;
And the yellow half-moon large and low;
And the startled little waves that leap
In fiery ringlets from their sleep,”
Now at the height of his powers, Browning
produced some of his best work in Men and Women (1855), which, with the
exception of the dedicatory One Word More, addressed to his wife,
consists entirely of dramatic monologues. Here are to be found the famous Fra
Lippo Lippi, An Epistle containing the strange Medical Experience of Karshish,
the Arab Physician, Andrea Del Sarto, Cleon. Most of them are written in
blank verse. The year 1864 saw the publication of his last really great
volume, Dramatis Persona, again a collection of dramatic
monologues. To illustrate their quality mention need be made of only
such works as Caliban upon Setebos, A Death in the Desert, Rabbi Ben Ezra, and
Abt Vogler. In style the poems have much of the rugged, elliptical quality
which was on occasion the poet's downfall, but here it is used with a
skill and a power which show him at the very pinnacle of his achievement.
The remaining years of Browning's long life
saw the production of numerous further volumes of verse, few of which add
greatly to his fame. To-day they are read by none but his most confirmed
admirers. Balaustion's Adventure (1871), Prince Hohenstiel- Schwangau,
Saviour of Society (1871).
In too many of them the style betrays a wilful
exaggeration of the eccentricities which he had once turned to such great
account, but always the reader is liable to stumble across
passages which, in striking lanscape of lovely
lyric, show that the true poetic gift is not completely absent.
His long life's work has a powerful close in Asolando.
(1889), which, along with much of the tired disillusion of the old man,
has, in places, the firmness and enthusiasm of his prime. The last verses he
ever wrote describe him in the character he most loved to adopt:
One who never turned his back but marched
breast forward,
Never doubted clouds would break, Never
dreamed, though right were worsted, wrong would triumph.
Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight
better, Sleep to wake.
No, at noonday in the bustle of man's work
time Greet the unseen with a cheer! Bid him forward, breast and back as either
should be, "Strive and thrive!" cry, "Speed,--fight on, fare
ever There as here!"
Features of his Work
(a) His Choice of Subject. Browning's themes divide themselves broadly into
three groups as in The Pied Piper of Hamelin. His philosophical poems,
on which his reputation rested in his own day, all bear on his central beliefs
that life must ever be a striving for
something beyond our reach, and that it is "God's task to make
the heavenly period perfect the earthen." The obvious optimism of What I
aspired to be,
And was not, comforts me. has been resented by
more modern critics as a facile shirking of life's complexities. His love poems
are, perhaps, his greatest achievement. They have a calm authenticity of tone.
Always, his first concern was with the human
soul. He was particularly interested in abnormal people, and was able to project
himself into their minds and to lay bare their feelings and motives. Yet his
characters are not often completely objective. because so many of them are
mouthpieces for his own philosophy.
He shows a fondness, too, for out-of-the-way
historical settings and for foreign scenes, which, at his best, as in The
Bishop orders his Tomb at Saint Praxed's and Karshish, are recreated
with a vivid accuracy. Along with this interest in the unusual goes an obvious
relish for the grotesque and macabre, which is seen at its most striking in Childe
Roland to the Dark Tower.
b) His Descriptive Power. In this
respect Browning differs widely from Tennyson, who slowly creates a lovely
image by careful massing of detail. Browning cares less for beauty of
description for its own sake. In most of his work it is found only in flashes, where
he paints the background of his story in a few dashing strokes, or crystallizes
his meaning in an image whose beauty staggers us. He is fond of striking
primary colours which startle by their very vividness, and as a painter of
movement he has few equals. The passages which follow show two very different
examples of his descriptive skill:
“Yon otter, sleek-wet, black, lithe as a
leech;
Yon auk, one fire-eye in a ball of foam,
That floats and feeds; a certain badger brow”
paper no.5 . Comparative study of writing style of poets – Wordsworth & Coleridge
paper no.5.Romantic age
Comparative study
of writing style of poets –
Wordsworth & Coleridge
Ø
William Wordsworth.
Wordsworth
was born at Cocker mouth, a town which is actually outside The Lake District
but well within hail of it. His father, who was a lawyer, died when William was
thirteen years old. The elder Wordsworth left very little money, and that was
mainly in the form of a claim on Lord Lonsdale, who refused outright to pay his
debt, so that William had to depend on the generosity of two uncles, who paid
for his schooling at Hawks head, near Lake Windermere. (Subsequently Wordsworth
went to
Cambridge,
entering St John's College in 1787) His work at the university was quite undistinguished,
and having graduated in 1791 he left with no fixed career in view. After spending
a few months in London he crossed over to France (1791), and stayed at Orleans
and Blois for nearly a year. An enthusiasm for the Revolution was aroused in
him; he himself has chronicled the mood in one of his happiest passages:
‘Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, But
to be young was very heaven!’
He
returned to Paris in 1792, just after the September massacres, and the sights
and stories that greeted him there shook his faith in the dominant political
doctrine. Even yet, however, he thought of becoming a Gironde, or moderate
Republican, but his allowance from home was stopped, and he returned to
England. With his sister Dorothy (henceforward his lifelong companion) he
settled in a little cottage in Dorset; then, having met Coleridge, they moved
to Alfoxden, a house in Somersetshire, in order to live near him. It was there
that the two poets took the series of walks the fruit of which was to be the Lyrical
Ballads.
After a
visit to Germany in 1798-99 the Wordsworths settled in the Lake District, which
was to be their home for the future. In turn they occupied Dove Cottage, at
Town End, Grasmere (1799), Allan Bank (1808), Grasmere Parsonage (1811), and lastly the well-known residence of
Rydal Mount, which was Wordsworth's home from 1813 till his death. Shortly before
he had moved to Rydal Mount he received the sinecure of Distributor of Stamps
for Westmorland, and was put out of reach of poverty.
The
remainder of his life was a model of domesticity. He was carefully tended by
his wife and sister, who, with a zeal that was noteworthy, though it was
injudicious, treasured every scrap of his poetry that they could lay their
hands on. His great passion was for travelling. He explored most of the
accessible parts of the Continent, and visited Scotland several times. On the
last occasion (1831) he and his daughter renewed their acquaintance with Scott
at Abbotsford, and saw the great novelist when he was fast crumbling into
mental ruin. Wordsworth's poetry, which at first had been received with
derision or indifference, was now winning its way, and recognition was general.
In 1839 Oxford conferred upon him the degree of D.C.L.; in 1842 the Crown
awarded him a pension of £300 a year; and on the death of Southey in 1843 he
became Poet Laureate.
Long
before this time he had discarded his early ideals and become the upholder of
conservatism. Perhaps he is not "the lost leader" whose recantation
Browning bewails with rather theatrical woe; but he lived to deplore the
Reform
Bill and to oppose the causes to which his early genius had been dedicated.
Throughout
his life, however, he never wavered in his faith in himself and his immortality
as a poet. He lived to see his own belief in his powers triumphantly justified.
It is seldom indeed that such gigantic egoism is so amply and so justly repaid.
Ø His
Poetic Style
He
records that his earliest verses were written at school, and that they were
"a tame imitation of Pope's versification." This is
an interesting admission of the still surviving domination of the earlier
poet.(At the university he composed some poetry, which appeared as An
Evening Walk (1793). but they already show the Wordsworthian eye for
nature.(The first fruits of his genius were seen in_ the Lyrical Ballads (1798),
a joint production by Coleridge and himself which was published at Bristol. Regarding
the inception of this remarkable book both Wordsworth and Coleridge have left
accounts, which vary to some extent, though not materially. Coleridge's may be taken
as the more plausible.
Ø SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE.
Coleridge
was born in Devonshire, and was the youngest of the thirteen children of the
vicar of Ottery St Mary. As a child he was unusually precocious: "I never
thought as a child," he says, "never had the language of a
child." When he was nine years old his father died; he then obtained a
place in Christ's Hospital, where he astonished his schoolmates, one of whom
was Charles Lamb, with his queer tastes in reading and speculation. He went to
Cambridge (1791), where he was fired with the revolutionary doctrines. He
abandoned the university and enlisted in the Light Dragoons, but a few months
as a soldier ended his military career. In 1794 he returned to Cambridge, and
later in the year became acquainted at Oxford with Southey, with whom he planned
the founding of an ideal republic in America. With Southey he lived for a space
at Bristol, and there he met Southey's wife's sister, whom he eventually married.
At Bristol Coleridge lectured, wrote poetry, and issued a newspaper called the
Watchman (1796), all with the idea of converting humanity; yet in
spite of it all humanity remained unperturbed in its original sin. At this time
(1797) he met Wordsworth, and, as has already been noticed, planned their joint
production of the Lyrical Ballads, which was published at Bristol. After
a brief spell as a Unitarian minister, Coleridge, who was now dependent on a small
annuity from two rich friends, studied German philosophy on the Continent returned
to England (1799), and for a time poetical inspiration, produced the second
part of Charitable and his ode Dejection. By now he was in almost
continual ill-health, and by 1803 he had become enslaved to the opium which was
to have such disastrous effect upon him. Ill-health and an unhappy domestic
life sent him abroad to Malta and Italy (1804-06), and on his return he began a
period of restless wandering round the country, never staying very long
anywhere. It was during these restless years that his lectures were given,
starting with a very poor series at the Royal Institution in 1808. The year
1811 saw his finest series of lectures, those on Shakespeare and other poets,
which were followed by a further series in 1812 and 1813. During this period he
struggled with little success to break himself of the opium habit which was
sapping his abilities, and then, in 1816, he entered the house of a Mr Gillman,
in Highgate. This provided for him a kind of refined and sympathetic inebriates'
home. Here he gradually shook himself free from opium-taking, and he spent the
last years of his life in an atmosphere of subdued content, visited by his
friends, and conversing interminably in that manner of wandering but luminous
intelligence that marked his later years. From the house in High-gate he issued
a few books that, with all their faults, are among the best of their class. He
lived in the Lake District. There followed a serious attempt at political
journalism, which failed because of his constitutional incapacity to provide
regular contributions. In 1800 he was at Keswick, and, during what was to be
his final period of great poetical inspiration, produced the second part of Christabel!
And his ode Dejection By now he was in almost continual ill-health,
and by 1803 he had become enslaved to the opium which was to have such
disastrous effect upon him. Ill-health and an unhappy domestic life sent him
abroad to Malta and Italy (1804-06), and on his return he began a period of
restless wandering round the country, never staying very long anywhere. It was
during these restless years that his lectures were given, starting with a very
poor series at the Royal Institution in 1808. The year 1811 saw his finest
series of lectures, those on Shakespeare and other poets, which were followed
by a further series in 1812 and 1813. During this period he struggled with
little success to break himself of the opium habit which was sapping his
abilities, and then, in 1816, he entered the house of a Mr Gillman, in
Highgate. This provided for him a kind of refined and sympathetic inebriates'
home. Here he gradually shook himself free from opium-taking, and he spent the
last years of his life in an atmosphere of subdued content, visited by his
friends, and conversing interminably in that manner of wandering but luminous
intelligence that marked his later years. From the house in High-gate he issued
a few books that, with all their faults, are among the best of their class.
Ø His Poetry:
The real
blossoming of Coleridge's poetical genius was brief indeed, but the fruit of it
was rich and wonderful. With the exception of a very few pieces, the best of
his poems were composed within two years, 1797-98.
His first
book was Poems on Various Subjects (1796), issued at Bristol. The miscellaneous
poems that the volume contains have only a very moderate merit. Then, in
collaboration with Wordsworth, he produced the Lyrical Ballads (1798).
This remarkable volume contains nineteen poems by Wordsworth and four by
Coleridge; and of these four by far the most noteworthy is The Rime of the
Ancient Mariner.)
Wordsworth
has set on record the origin of The Ancient Mariner. He and Coleridge discussed
the poem during their walks on the Quantock Hills. The main idea of the voyage,
founded on a dream of his own, was Coleridge's; Wordsworth suggested details,
and they thought of working on it together. Very soon, however, Coleridge's imagination
was fired with the story, and his friend very sensibly left him to write it
all.
Hence we
have that marvellous series of dissolving pictures, so curiously distinct and yet
so strangely fused into one: the voyage through the polar ice; the death of the
albatross the amazing scenes during the calm and the storm; and the return
home; In style, in swift steaithiness of narrative speed, and in its weird and
compelling strength of imagination the poem is without a parallel.
In 1797
Coleridge also wrote the first part of Christabel, but, though a second
part was added in 1800, the poem remained unfinished, and lay unpublished till
1816. Christabel is the tale of a kind of witch, who, by taking the shape
of a lovely lady, wins the confidence of the heroine Christabel The tale is
barely begun when it collapses Already Coleridge's fatal indecision is
declaring itself. Incomplete as it is, and with its second part somewhat
inferior to its first, the poem is yet clear evidence of Coleridge's
superlative power as a poet. The supernatural atmosphere is here less obviously
created than in The Ancient Mariner; Coleridge relies on the most
delicate and subtle suggestion, hidden in minute but highly significant details
in the story. There are passages of wonderful beauty and of charming natural
description, though they scarcely reach the heights of The Ancient Mariner. The
metre, now known as the Christabel metre, is a loose but exceedingly
melodious form of the octosyllabic couplet full of skilful rhythmic variations.
It became exceedingly popular, and its influence is still unimpaired. We give
extract to show the metre, and also to give a slight idea of the poet's
descriptive power:
There is
not wind enough to twirl
The one
red leaf, the last of its clan,
That
dances as often as dance it can,
Hanging
so light, and hanging so high,
On the
topmost twig that looks up at the sky.
Kubla
Khan, written
in 1798, was, like Christabel, unfinished, and it also remained
unpublished until 1816. It is the echo of a dream-- the shadow of a shadow.
Coleridge avers that he dreamt the lines, awoke in a fever of inspiration,
threw the words on paper, but before the fit was over was distracted from the
composition, so that the glory of the dream never returned and Kubla Khan remained
unfinished. The poem, beginning with a description of the stately pleasure-dome
built by Kubla Khan in Xanadu, soon becomes a dreamlike series of dissolving
views) each expressed in the most perfect imagery and most magical of verbal
music) but it collapses in mid-career.
(In the
same year Coleridge composed several other poems, including the fine Frost
at Midnight and France: An Ode.) In 1802 he wrote the great ode Dejection,
in which he already bewails the suspension of his "shaping spirit of
Imagination." Save for a few fragments, such as the beautiful epitaph The
Knight's Tomb, the remainder of his poems are of poorer quality and
slight in bulk. His play Remorse was, on the recommendation of Byron,
accepted by the management of the Drury Lane Theatre and produced in 1813. It
succeeded on the stage, but as literature it is of little importance.
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