OBJECTIVE QUESTIONS

Questions Set 1
1. In which novel did Thomas Hardy introduce Wessex?
2. “The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination” is the sub-
title of the book _________.
3. The first mention of Shakespeare’s works is found in ________.
4. Sonnets from the Portuguese was written by ______.
5. __________ is a sonnet of 10 ½ lines.
6. What is the name of the inn from where Chaucer’s pilgrims start their journey to
Canterbury?
7. In which year was Tottel’s Miscellany published?
8. Mention the name of Wife of Bath in Canterbury Tales.
9. The last tale in Canterbury Tales is_______.
10. Who introduced the blank verse into English?
11. The concluding line of Spenserian stanza is called_______.
12. A unit of two rhyming iambic pentameter line is ________.
13. Who wrote ‘Deserted Village?’
14. The first sonnet in English was an adaptation of a sonnet by ______.
15. A unit of three lines is called _______.
16. The most famous writer of ‘masques’ in English is ________.
17. What is the name of the place where Satan held a solemn council with other fallen
angels?
18. Belinda is a character in the poem _____.
19. “We can die by it, if not live by love.” Identify the poem.
20. The meaning of the phrase ‘carpe diem’ is _________.
21. The author of Holy Sonnets is _______.
22. What is the meaning of ‘Agonistes’ in the title ‘Samson Agonistes?’
23. Who is the historical parallel of Zimri in Dryden’s ‘Absalom and Achitophel?’
24. Mention the subtitle of Wordsworth’s The Prelude.
25. In which year was Lyrical Ballads published?

Answers Set 1
1. Under the Greenwood Tree 13. Oliver Goldsmith
(published anonymously in 1872; 14. Petrarch
Hardy himself said he introduced 15. Tercet
the county in Far From the 16. Ben Jonson
Madding Crowd, 1874) 17. Pandemonium
2. The Madwoman in the Attic 18. The Rape of the Lock
3. Francis Meres’ Palladis Tamia 19. Canonization by Donne
4. Elizabeth Barrett Browning 20. Seize the opportunity and snatch
5. Hopkins’s ‘Pied Beauty’ the day
6. Tabard Inn 21. John Donne
7. 1557 by Richard Tottel 22. Wrestler; or Champion
8. Alison 23. George Villers, second duke of
9. The Parson’s tale Buckingham
10. Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey 24. Growth of a Poet’s Mind.
11. Iambic hexameter or Alexandrine. 25. 1798
12. Heroic couplet

Vallaths TES 2
Questions Set 2
1. Who is the author of Lives of Poets?
2. “O Lady! We receive but what we give.” Identify the poem.
3. ‘Kubla Khan’ was described by Coleridge as __________.
4. The ‘king’ in the title “Idylls of the King” is _________.
5. The three Upanishadic terms used by Eliot in The Waste Land are _________.
6. According to Bacon wife and children are ________ to fortune.
7. The author of Eminent Victorians is ________.
8. Total freedom of expression is the theme of Milton’s work, _____.
9. The third voyage of Gulliver is to _____.
10. The battle of the books is between ___________.
11. The autobiography of Coleridge is called _______.
12. Which book of Ruskin is said to have influenced Mahatma Gandhi?
13. According to Arnold the 19th century British society consisted of philistines, barbarians
and ______.
14. Sir Roger de Coverley is a member of ________club.
15. The author of The Citizen of the World is _______.
16. “The Minutes of Education” was a bill introduced in the British Parliament by ______.
17. The pen name of Charles Lamb was _____.
18. The great British statesman who got the Nobel Prize for Literature was ______.
19. According to I.A. Richards, the two uses of language are _________.
20. Mrs. Malaprop is a character in the play ______.
21. Richard Steele wrote _____ comedies.
22. Who is the author of The Playboy of the Western World?
23. Comic operas in the 19th century were written by Gilbert and ______.
24. Lilith is a character from __________.
25. Murder in the Cathedral deals with the martyrdom of _________.

Answers Set 2
1. Dr. Samuel Johnson 14. The Spectator
2. Ode to Dejection by Coleridge 15. Goldsmith
3. A vision in a dream: A fragment 16. Macaulay (1835)
4. King Arthur 17. Elia
5. Datta, Dayadhvam, Damyata 18. Winston Churchill
6. hostages 19. Scientific and emotive
7. Lytton Stratchey 20. The Rivals
8. Areopagitica (1644) 21. Sentimental
9. Laputa 22. J.M. Synge
10. Ancients and moderns 23. Sir Arthur Sullivan
11. Biographia Literaria (1817) 24. Back to Methuselah by Shaw
12. Unto this Last 25. Arch Bishop Thomas Beckett
13. Populace

Vallaths TES 3
Questions Set 3
1. The play by Galsworthy that dramatizes “Labour- Capital” problem is _______.
2. The author of The Lady’s Not for Burning is _______.
3. A professor of phonetics is a character in the play ______.
4. What is the profession of Helena in Look Back in Anger?
5. The Birthday Party is often described as a comedy of _____.
6. Shaw’s play based on the Don Juan legend is ___________.
7. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead is a modern variation of Shakespeare’s play
_______.
8. Which is the “phoenix” in the play Phoenix too Frequent?
9. The first comedy in English was ___________.
10. The first tragedy in English was ________.
11. The Merchant of Venice by Shakespeare is modelled upon Marlowe’s play _______.
12. Hieronimo is a character in the play _________.
13. The play within the play in Hamlet is called ________.
14. Bully Bottom is a character in _________.
15. The only play by Shakespeare to have chorus is _______.
16. Mephistopheles is a character in ________ by Marlowe.
17. The passage “The Seven Ages of Man” is in Shakespeare’s play ________.
18. Shakespeare’s Roman play on democracy is ________.
19. The alternative title of Twelfth Night is __________.
20. Medieval plays in English based on the Bible were called ________.
21. Plays in which characters are personifications of abstract qualities are called _______.
22. The missing son of Maurya in J.M. Synge’s Riders to the Sea is _______.
23. Actresses were introduced on the English stage for the first time during the _______
period.
24. Who is the famous writer of Comedy of Humours?
25. Aurangzebe is a tragedy written by _______.

Answers Set 3
1. Strife 14. A Midsummer Night’s Dream
2. Christopher Fry 15. Pericles
3. Pygmalion 16. Doctor Faustus
4. Actress 17. As You Like It
5. Menace 18. Julius Caesar
6. Man and Superman 19. What You Will
7. Hamlet 20. Miracle plays
8. Love 21. Morality plays
9. Ralph Roister Doister (1565) 22. Michael
10. Gorboduc 23. Elizabethan
11. The Jew of Malta 24. Ben Jonson
12. The Spanish Tragedy 25. Dryden
13. The Mouse trap or The Murder of
Gonzago

Vallaths TES 4
Questions Set 4
1. The 18th century actor famous for his roles of Shakespearean characters was _____.
2. The term ‘absurd’ means ________.
3. Who are the characters waiting for Godot?
4. Who is the Romanian playwright classed as an absurd playwright?
5. A novel in the form of letters is called an _______ novel.
6. Who is the author of Aspects of the Novel?
7. In Hebrew mythology who is called Lord of the Flies?
8. What does Bildungsroman mean?
9. Tom Jones is called a ________.
10. Christian is the protagonist in the novel _________.
11. Dorothy Richardson introduced the ___________ novel in English.
12. Who is the narrator of Heart of Darkness?
13. The only novel written by Goldsmith is ___________.
14. In Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice ______ stands for pride.
15. The novel that begins with the description of “Egdon Heath” is ___________.
16. Mention the region which Hardy portrays in all his novels.
17. Galsworthy’s trilogy of novels is called _________.
18. In whose novels does the motif of blood consciousness appear?
19. Heathcliff is a character in the novel _________.
20. Who wrote Tristram Shandy?
21. Which character in a novel by Dickens says: “Sir, I want more.”
22. In the political allegory of Gulliver’s first voyage, which are the two countries
satirised?
23. Somerset Maugham’s novel on the life of a famous painter is called _______.
24. Savage is a character in Huxley’s novel _________.
25. D.H. Lawrence’s father was a _________ by profession.

Answers Set 4
1. David Garrick 13. The Vicar of Wakefield
2. Sense of senselessness, foolish. 14. Darcy
3. Vladimir and Estragon 15. The Return of the Native
4. Eugene Ionesco 16. Wessex
5. Epistolary 17. End of the Chapter(1925)
6. E.M. Forster 18. D.H. Lawrence
7. Beelzebub 19. Wuthering Heights
8. A novel dealing with one individual’s 20. Lawrence Sterne
early life and developments. 21. Oliver Twist
9. Picaresque novel 22. England and Ireland
10. The Pilgrim’s Progress 23. The Moon and Six Pence
11. Stream of Consciousness 24. Brave New World
12. Marlow 25. Coal miner

Vallaths TES 5
Questions Set 5
1. The first writer of scientific novel is ________.
2. Complete the statement: “All are equal, _________________.”
3. Paul Scott is famous for his set of four novels called __________.
4. Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy influenced Shakespeare in writing _______.
5. The author of Piers, the Plowman was _______.
6. Paradise Lost is written in ________.
7. Virginia Woolf was the member of the ____________.
8. Buskins are worn by actors in a _______.
9. The break or pause between words within a metrical foot is called ______.
10. The purgation of emotions in the play according to Aristotle is _______.
11. The companion poem of ‘L’Allegro’ is _____.
12. _________ deals with the way phonemes are combined to form syllables.
13. _______ is the study of how speech sounds function and are organised in a particular
language.
14. The author of The Confessions of an English Opium Eater is _______.
15. ‘The Mistress’ is a long poem by ________.
16. Utopia was first written in the ______ language.
17. ______ is the substitution of a less distasteful word or phrase for a more truthful but
more offensive one.
18. Gray, Collins and Cowper are called the __________ poets.
19. The father of American Structuralism is __________.
20. A rhythm counted not by syllables and regular feet, but by stresses is called ____.
21. Lady Bellaston is a character in ________.
22. The two Pindaric odes of Gray are _______ and ________.
23. Cowley, Crashaw and Marvell are described as _________ poets.
24. The phrase ‘Amor Vincit Omnia’ is engraved on the brooch of _______.
25. The fallacy of using meaning in the definition of grammatical categories is ______
fallacy.

Answers Set 5
1. H.G. Wells 14. Thomas de Quincey
2. But some are more equal than others 15. George Herbert
(Animal Farm). 16. Latin
3. Raj Quartet 17. Euphemism
4. Hamlet 18. Transitional (Precursors of
5. William Langland Romanticism)
6. Blank verse 19. Bloomfield
7. Bloomsbury Group 20. Sprung rhythm
8. Tragedy 21. Tom Jones
9. Caesura 22. The Bard and The Progress of Poesy
10. Catharsis 23. Metaphysical
11. Il Penseroso 24. Prioress
12. Phonotactics 25. Semantic
13. Phonology

Vallaths TES 6
Questions Set 6
1. _________ was the patron of Swift.
2. __________ wrote ‘The Cotter’s Saturday Night.’
3. The Roman playwright who inspired the Elizabethan Revenge tragedy was _____.
4. The sonnet was first introduced into English by _____.
5. The author of Heroes and Hero Worship is _________.
6. The model of grammar that Chomsky outlined is called ________.
7. ______ suggested Pope the idea of writing The Rape of the Lock.
8. The name of Sophia’s father in Tom Jones is ________.
9. Dorothy Richardson was one of the earliest exponents of the _________ technique.
10. The original of Miriam in Sons and Lovers is ________.
11. Lives of Poets is a work by ________.
12. Spenser celebrates his own marriage in ______.
13. The children of Alice called _______ father.
14. ________ is described as the “wisest, brightest and meanest of mankind.”
15. Items that indicate grammatical categories in a Phrase Structure Grammar are called
_____.
16. Swansea is a place associated with the poet ________.
17. Pamela is written in the ________ form.
18. The date of publication of Lyrical Ballads is _____.
19. The original of Belinda in The Rape of the Lock was ______.
20. The land of little people in Gulliver’s Travels is _________.
21. Stephen Dedalus in Joyce’s Ulysses represents the mythical character _________.
22. The Restoration took place in the year ______.
23. Apologie for Poetrie was a reply to Stephen Gosson’s _______.
24. The total number of Shakespeare’s sonnets is ____.
25. The Jew of Malta was written by ______.

Answers Set 6
1. Sir William Temple 14. Francis Bacon
2. Robert Burns 15. Nodes
3. Seneca 16. Dylan Thomas
4. Wyatt 17. Epistolary
5. Thomas Carlyle 18. 1798
6. TG Grammar 19. Miss. Arabella Fermor
7. John Caryll 20. Lilliput
8. Squire Weston 21. Telemachus
9. Stream of consciousness 22. 1660
10. Jessy Chambers 23. The School of Abuse
11. Dr. Johnson 24. 154
12. Epithalamion 25. Christopher Marlowe
13. Bertram

Vallaths TES 7
Questions Set 7
1. Goldsmith’s She Stoops to Conquer is a reaction against ________ comedy.
2. _______ is a tragicomedy by Shakespeare set in Vienna.
3. The refrain of Spenser’s Prothalamion is ___________.
4. Herrick, Lovelace and Suckling are known as _____ poets.
5. The subtitle of Tess of the d’Urbervilles is _________.
6. Philip Larkin was a _______ by profession.
7. Dylan Thomas is called _________ poet.
8. Phrase Structure rules in a PS grammar generate the ______ directly.
9. The husband of Lil in The Waste Land is ______.
10. The second folio edition of Shakespeare’s plays was published in _____.
11. Burns used the ______ dialect in his poems.
12. The name of the school master in Hard Times is _______.
13. The name of Hamlet’s mother is _______.
14. The date of publication of The Waste Land is ______.
15. Ulysses was published in ____.
16. The biblical name of The Lord of the Flies is ________.
17. In Memoriam is an elegy on the death of ________.
18. Bel-Imperia is the sister of ______.
19. The term ‘dissociation of sensibility’ is associated with the critic ______.
20. The heroine of Pride and Prejudice.
21. The author of “I remember, I remember”.
22. The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (PRB) was formed in the year ____.
23. Sue Bridehead is a character in ______.
24. Who said of Dryden, “he found it brick but left it marble”?
25. Samuel Butler’s Hudibras satirises _________.

Answers Set 7
1. Sentimental 14. 1922
2. Measure for Measure 15. 1922 (in serial form in 1918)
3. Sweete Thames run softly, till I end 16. Beelzebub
my song 17. Arthur Hallam
4. Cavalier 18. Lorenzo
5. A Pure Woman Faithfully Presented 19. T.S. Eliot
6. Librarian 20. Elizabeth Bennett
7. New Apocalyptic 21. Thomas Hood’s poem “rewritten” by
8. Surface structure Larkin.
9. Albert 22. 1848
10. 1632 23. Jude the Obscure
11. Scottish 24. Dr. Johnson
12. Choakumchild 25. Puritanism as well as scholastic
13. Gertrude language.

Vallaths TES 8
Questions Set 8
1. To which age did Anthony Trollope belong?
2. Charles II ascended the throne in the year _____.
3. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie is written by ________.
4. The Portrait of a Lady was written by ________.
5. __________ was a pastoral written by Alexander Pope.
6. Headlong Hall, Nightmare Abbey and Melincourt were written by _______.
7. The year of the French Revolution.
8. Who said, “Shakespeare has no heroes, only heroines”?
9. The first book printed in English.
10. The year in which the Spanish Armada was defeated.
11. Who wrote The Compleat Angler?
12. Dryden’s work celebrating the Restoration of monarchy.
13. Millament is a character in _________.
14. Which classical writer did Pope model his satires on?
15. Who termed the 18th century “Augustan Age”?
16. Who wrote the book Shakespearean Tragedy?
17. In which year was Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four written?
18. Where do we find this line: “We are such stuff as dreams are made on”?
19. Who said, “I have a smack of Hamlet myself, if I may say so”?
20. The most famous writer of James Bond novels was ___________.
21. The word ‘Prothalamion’ was coined by ___________.
22. _________ was Charlotte Bronte’s first completed novel.
23. Chris Wallace Crabbe is a poet from __________.
24. The Colour Purple by Alice Walker is an ____________ novel.
25. ________ is Vikram Seth’s verse novel.

Answers Set 8
1. Victorian 14. Horace
2. 1660 15. Johnson
3. Muriel Spark 16. A.C. Bradley
4. Henry James 17. 1949
5. Windsor Forest. 18. The Tempest
6. Thomas Love Peacock 19. Coleridge
7. 1789. 20. Ian Fleming
8. John Ruskin 21. Spenser
9. The History (Book) of Troy 22. The Professor
10. 1588. 23. Australia
11. Izaak Walton 24. epistolary
12. Astrea Redux. 25. The Golden Gate
13. The Way of the World.

Vallaths TES 9
Questions Set 9
1. Which novel has the following opening line? “The “Nellie”, a cruising yawl, swung to
her anchor without a flutter of sails, and was at rest.”?
2. The 15th-16th century writers Robert Henryson, Gawain Douglas and William Dunbar are
called _________.
3. “The Seasons” by James Thomson is a poem in ___________.
4. “Goblin Market” is a mid-nineteenth century proto-feminist poem by _____________.
5. D.G. Rossetti’s The Blessed Damozel was first published in the Pre-Raphaelite
periodical ______.
6. Who famously employed the conceit that Shakespeare had a talented sister Judith who
was driven to suicide by artistic frustration?
7. Romola, the historical novel set in the 15th century during the Italian Renaissance was
written by the Victorian novelist, ___________.
8. Who explores the relevance of leadership in the contemporary world through the
medieval hero Abbot Samson?
9. The Famished Road is a Booker Prize winning novel by the Nigerian novelist ________.
10. The novel Native Son, which tells the story of the crimes of the 20-year-old African-
American protagonist Bigger Thomas, was written by ___________.
11. Praeterita is the unfinished autobiography of ___________.
12. “The Leatherstocking Tales,” a series of novels featuring Natty Bumppo, was written
by ___________.
13. The Biographia Literaria was published in the year ___________.
14. ___________ was Spenser’s classical model for The Faerie Queene.
15. ________ wrote the screenplays of the Merchant Ivory films of Forster’s A Room with a
View and Howard’s End.
16. The Diverting History of John Gilpin is a comic ballad by ____________.
17. Imagism was influenced by the aesthetic theories of __________.
18. Samuel Butler’s Hudibras derives its name from ______________.
19. The History of Henry Esmond is a novel by __________.
20. Hazlitt makes a spiteful attack on _________ in his Table Talk.
21. Under the Volcano (1947) is a semi-autobiographical novel by _____________.
22. The symbol “Sick Rose” was famously used by ________.
23. Surfacing is a novel by the Canadian writer _________.
24. The Morphology of the Folktale was written by the Russian Formalist ________.
25. _________ is the author of the 16th century work Palace of Pleasure.

Answers Set 9
1. Conrad’s Heart of Darkness 14. Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso
2. Scottish Chaucerians 15. Ruth Prawer Jhabvala
3. blank verse 16. William Cowper
4. Christina Rossetti 17. T. E. Hulme
5. The Germ 18. The Faerie Queene
6. Virginia Woolf 19. Thackeray
7. George Eliot 20. Shelley
8. Carlyle in Past and Present 21. Malcolm Lowry
9. Ben Okri 22. William Blake
10. Richard Wright 23. Margaret Atwood
11. John Ruskin 24. Vladimir Propp
12. James Fenimore Cooper 25. William Painter
13. 1817

Vallaths TES 10
Questions Set 10
1. Thomas Overbury is a 17th century writer well-known for his ____________.
2. The 17th century literary genre “Characters” derives from the classical writer
__________.
3. Pope satirizes Addison as Atticus in the work ____________.
4. Peregrine Pickle and Humphrey Clinker are works by ___________.
5. The Book of Snobs was written by the Victorian prose writer, __________.
6. The character Og represents _____________ in the second part of Absalom and
Achitophel.
7. Sidney’s Arcadia was written for ___________.
8. The play Promos and Cassandra was written by _________.
9. Who wrote, “Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass,//Stains the white radiance of
eternity”?
10. A Palmer, Pedlar, Pardoner and ‘Pothecary are characters in __________.
11. Zenocrate is a character in the 16th century play __________.
12. Touchstone, the clown, is a character in _____________.
13. ___________ was the first play written by Ben Jonson.
14. The picaresque novel Roderick Random was written by _______.
15. Holden Caulfield is the 16-year-old protagonist of the American novel ________.
16. Who said, “Poetry is thoughts that breathe and words that burn”?
17. Who said, “Is man one of God’s blunders or God one of man’s”?
18. _________ is the sub-title of The Apple Cart.
19. The novel Magic Seeds, a sequel of Half a Life, is by the Nobel Laureate ________.
20. The “kitchen sink” image popularized by Wesker derives from the expressionistic
paintings of __________.
21. Heat and Dust, a novel that views India through the lives of two English women living
fifty years apart, is by _________.
22. “Four legs good, two legs bad” is a quotation from __________.
23. Martin Esslin’s major work The Theatre of the Absurd was published in the year
________.
24. Under Milk Wood, a verse play that dramatizes the dreams of a Welsh village, was
written by __________.
25. Charles Dodgson wrote under the pen name ____________.

Answers Set 10
1. “Characters” 14. Tobias Smollett
2. Theophrastus 15. J.D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye
3. An Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot 16. Thomas Gray
4. Tobias Smollett 17. Nietzsche
5. Thackeray 18. A Political Extravaganza
6. Shadwell 19. V. S. Naipaul
7. The Countess of Pembroke 20. John Barthy
8. George Whetstone 21. Ruth Prawer Jhabvala
9. Shelley in Adonais 22. Orwell’s Animal Farm
10. John Heywood’s Four Ps 23. 1961
11. Tamburlaine the Great 24. Dylan Thomas
12. Shakespeare’s As You Like It 25. Lewis Caroll
13. Everyman in His Humour

Vallaths TES 11
Questions Set 11
1. “Except for the Marabar Caves—and they are twenty miles off—the city of Chandrapore
presents nothing extraordinary.” This line is the beginning of the novel ___________.
2. Who was called “the wasp of Twickenham”?
3. The Golden Notebook (1962), an example of inner space fiction, is by ___________.
4. “The Everlasting Yea,” symbolizing the spirit of faith in God, is associated with ______.
5. In which poem do these lines occur?
Man for the field and woman for the hearth, / Man for the sword and for the needle
she, / Man to command and woman to obey, / All else confusion.
6. Who said, “For art’s sake alone I would not face the toil of writing a single sentence”?
7. Chicken Soup with Barley, Roots and I’m talking About Jerusalem are plays by
________.
8. Where does the action of Twelfth Night take place?
9. Whom are the following lines about: “Lay her in the earth;//And from her fair and
unpolluted flesh//May violets spring.”?
10. In which book did Thomas Love Peacock attack poetry and poets?
11. Who has been called “the first romantic critic”?
12. _________ is the author of Writing Degree Zero.
13. The Whiskey Priest appears in the novel ___________.
14. Who is known as “Alpha of the Plough”?
15. Life and Times of Michael K. is a novel by ____________.
16. What does the Hind in Dryden’s The Hind and the Panther stand for?
17. Which is the play in which blank verse was used for the first time?
18. “Microcosmography” was written by _________.
19. “Mermion” and “The Lady of the Lake” are poems by _____________.
20. With whom are the words ‘Poesis,’ ‘Poema’ and ‘Poeta’ associated?
21. The Black Death or Black Plague reached England in _________.
22. James Dixon is the central figure in the 1954 comic novel ____________.
23. In which language did Ibsen originally write?
24. Who wrote the first Gothic novel?
25. The central character in Ben Jonson’s play __________ disguises as a woman.

Answers Set 11
1. A Passage to India 14. A. G. Gardiner
2. Alexander Pope 15. J. M. Coetzee
3. Doris Lessing 16. Roman Catholic Church
4. Carlyle 17. Gorboduc
5. The Princess 18. John Earle
6. Bernard Shaw 19. Walter Scott
7. Arnold Wesker 20. Horace (sections of Ars Poetica)
8. Illyria 21. 1348
9. Ophelia 22. Lucky Jim
10. Four Ages of Poetry 23. Norwegian
11. Longinus 24. Horace Walpole (The Castle of Otranto)
12. Roland Barthes 25. Epicene: The Silent Woman
13. Greene’s The Power and the Glory

Vallaths TES 12
Questions Set 12
1. The agricultural revolution took place in the _________ century.
2. Marwood and Millament are characters in the Restoration comedy, __________.
3. Dryden wrote _____________ in praise of the Restoration of monarchy.
4. Who wrote The Seventeenth Century Background?
5. Which 20th century novelist made extensive use of Epiphany?
6. “A Grammarian’s Funeral” is a poem by ____________.
7. Ismail Kadare, the writer, belongs to _____________ (country).
8. The winner of the 2007 Man Booker Prize.
9. Who said, nations are “imagined communities”?
10. Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species was published in the year ______.
11. The Picture of Dorian Gray is a _________ by Oscar Wilde.
12. Carlyle refers to Cromwell and Napoleon as ________.
13. Who wrote the line “In my end is my beginning”?
14. The epic novel The Name of the Rose is written by ____________.
15. Walter de la Mare belonged to the ________ School of Poets.
16. Darkness at Noon, written by the Hungarian-British novelist _________, exposed the
horrors of Stalinist regime through the story of the protagonist Rubashov.
17. My Days is the memoir of_________.
18. Lockhart was the biographer of _____.
19. My Name is Red and Snow are works by the Turkish writer _________.
20. Who wrote The Sacred Wood, a book of essays on poetry and criticism?
21. Women Beware Women was written by ______________.
22. ____________ is Shakespeare’s cruellest king.
23. The Paston Letters belonged to the __________ century.
24. Who described Chaucer as “the well of English undefiled”?
25. Shelley’s The Mask of Anarchy was a reaction to the historical incident, ___________.

Answers Set 12
1. 18th 14. Umberto Eco
2. The Way of the World 15. Georgian
3. Astrea Redux 16. Arthur Koestler
4. Basil Willey 17. R.K. Narayan
5. James Joyce 18. Walter Scott and Burns
6. Robert Browning 19. Orhan Pamuk
7. Albania 20. T. S. Eliot
8. Anne Enright, for The Gathering 21. Thomas Middleton
9. Benedict Anderson 22. Richard III
10. 1859 23. 15th
11. novel 24. Spenser
12. heroes 25. Peterloo Massacre
13. T.S. Eliot in “East Coker” (Four
Quartets)

Vallaths TES 13
Questions Set 13
1. All About H. Hatterr, a 1948 novel chronicling the adventures of an Anglo-Malay man in
search of wisdom and enlightenment, was written by ____________.
2. Which novel begins with this line: “It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks
were striking thirteen”?
3. Ngugi wa Thiongo is a ____________ (nationality) writer.
4. The Marlovian hero’s tragic flaw is ____________.
5. ____________ by Nissim Ezekiel is based on the theme “Give us this day our daily
American.”
6. Tree of Man is a novel by ________________.
7. Who said, “Spenser writ no language”?
8. Bhowani Junction, the 1952 novel portraying the Anglo-Indian community and set
amidst the turbulence of the British withdrawal from India, was written by _________.
9. Who said poetry is the mother of lies?
10. ______________ by Chaman Nahal won the Sahitya Akademi Award.
11. Who said, “Man must begin where nature ends”?
12. The autobiographical work, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, is written by _________.
13. The postcolonial parallel novel, Wide Sargasso Sea is set in ____________.
14. Gorboduc was published in the year___________.
15. The Adding Machine, the first American Expressionist play, was written by __________.
16. ___________ edited the poems of Emily Dickinson.
17. Affective fallacy and intentional fallacy are concepts introduced by _____________.
18. ________ wrote Cakes and Ale, a roman à clef, examining writers like Thomas Hardy
and Hugh Walpole, drawing its title from Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night.
19. The Well of the Saints and In the Shadow of the Glen are plays by ____________.
20. A fatwa was proclaimed against Rushdie in the year _________.
21. Irving Babbitt is a key figure of _______________.
22. Merope, a Tragedy is by ______________.
23. Abraham Lincoln and Oliver Cromwell are plays by _______________.
24. The early poems of _____________ are called Gondol poems.
25. Almayer’s Folly, a novel depicting colonial themes, was written by __________.

Answers Set 13
1. G.V. Desani 15. Elmer Rice
2. Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty Four 16. Thomas Wentworth Higginson and Mabel
3. Kenyan Loomis Todd in 1890 (T.H. Johnson
4. Hubris edited the first complete collection
5. Sleepwalkers published in 1955)
6. Patrick White 17. Wimsatt and Beardsley
7. Ben Jonson 18. Somerset Maugham
8. John Masters 19. J.M. Synge
9. Plato 20. 1989
10. Azadi 21. American New Humanism
11. Arnold 22. Matthew Arnold
12. Maya Angelou 23. John Drinkwater
13. Jamaica 24. Emily Bronte
14. 1565 25. Joseph Conrad

Vallaths TES 14
Questions Set 14
1. The Booker Prize was first awarded in the year _____________.
2. The Great Exhibition of London took place in the year _____________.
3. Isabel Archer is the protagonist of ______________.
4. _________ criticism is associated with Northrop Frye.
5. The Spanish Civil War broke out in the year __________.
6. The first Republican President of America was _____________.
7. Sue Bridehead is a character in __________.
8. The theme of Milton’s Comus is _________.
9. “No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do.
To swell a progress, start a scene or two…”. These are lines from __________.
10. Dr. Johnson’s “The Vanity of Human Wishes” is a satire based on ____________.
11. Where do these lines occur: “And there I shut her wild eyes / With kisses four”?
12. _____________ is the author of Holy Living and Holy Dying.
13. _______ is the famous 16th century translator of Ovid’s Metamorphosis.
14. A comically brisk style is effected in Samuel Butler's satirical poem Hudibras by the use
of __________________ (metrical form).
15. _________ is a term used by Mikhail Bakhtin to describe the ‘joyful relativity’ and
‘vitality’ of the novel.
16. The concept of ‘interpretive communities’ was put forward by Stanley Fish in the book
_____.
17. Where do you find the statement, ‘Milton was the Devil’s party without knowing it’?
18. The Italian is an example for the _____________ novel.
19. Gravity’s Rainbow is an epic postmodern novel by the American writer, _______________.
20. Amitav Ghosh’s In An Antique land is based on an anthropological project in _____.
21. “The Mirror and the Lamp” is a critical essay by _______________.
22. Who is the author of What Happens in Hamlet?
23. Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things was published in the year _____.
24. The little black girl, Pecola Breedlove, is a character in ________.
25. The satirical novel, Catch-22, set against World War II was written by ______.

Answers Set 14
1. 1969 14. octosyllabic couplets
2. 1851 15. Carnival
3. The Portrait of a Lady 16. Is There a Text in This Class?
4. archetypal 17. Blake’s “The Marriage of Heaven and
5. 1936 Hell”
6. Abraham Lincoln 18. Gothic
7. Jude the Obscure 19. Thomas Pynchon
8. public morality 20. Egypt
9. “Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” 21. M.H. Abrams
10. the 10th satire of Juvenal 22. Dover Wilson
11. La Belle Dame Sans Merci 23. 1997
12. Jeremy Taylor 24. Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye
13. Arthur Golding 25. Joseph Heller

Vallaths TES 15
Questions Set 15
1. ______ was a 16th century Italian philosopher who believed in man’s power to
determine his own destiny.
2. _______ was the foremost theatre company in early 17th century England, where
Shakespeare served as both actor and playwright.
3. “In a Station of the Metro” is a representative poem of the poet, _________.
4. Aadam Aziz, Wee Willie Winkie and Brass Monkey are characters in _________.
5. _________ in The Pilgrim’s Progress who arrives at the gate to the Celestial City only
to be bound hand and foot and put in a doorway that leads to hell.
6. ________ was the initial title of D.H. Lawrence’s Sons and Lovers.
7. Graham Greene’s The Power and the Glory is set in ___________.
8. ________ edited and published his novels serially in Bentley’s Miscellany.
9. Michael Henchard and Donald Farfrae are characters in __________.
10. ___________ is a poem by Keats about a knight-at-arms seduced by a fairy.
11. _______ is a post-war British writer who employs violence in his plays to depict the
savagery of contemporary society.
12. _______ is a mid-twentieth century Indian novel that tells the story of Raju’s
transformation from excessive worldliness to sainthood.
13. In Hamlet, Fortinbras is the heir to the throne of ___________.
14. Who was called the “myth of Amherst”?
15. The Latin phrase “memento mori” means ________.
16. Chinua Achebe attacked __________ for his “racist” depiction of Africans as savages.
17. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde was written by ________.
18. Petals of Blood is a novel written by __________.
19. Which poet set out to perform “Things unattempted yet in Prose or Rhyme”?
20. Crabtree, Backbite and Sneerwell are characters in __________.
21. ___________ is the author of the essay “Commonwealth Literature Does Not Exist”.
22. The Symbolist movement in literature originated in _________.
23. _________ is a medieval allegorical poem in which love is represented as a queen-rose
in a garden, surrounded by her court and ministers.
24. Who called his own masterpieces “Novels of Character and Environment”?
25. Who said, "On or about December 1910 human nature changed"?

Answers Set 16
1. Machiavelli 14. Emily Dickinson
2. Lord Chamberlain’s Men 15. Remember that you must die.
3. Ezra Pound 16. Joseph Conrad
4. Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children 17. R. L. Stevenson
5. Ignorance 18. Ngugi wa Thiongo
6. Paul Morel 19. Milton
7. Mexico 20. Sheridan’s School for Scandal
8. Charles Dickens 21. Salman Rushdie
9. The Mayor of Casterbridge 22. France
10. La Belle Dame Sans Merci 23. Roman de la Rose
11. Edward Bond 24. Thomas Hardy
12. R. K. Narayan’s The Guide 25. Virginia Woolf in "Mr. Bennet and Mrs.
13. Norway Brown"

Vallaths TES 16
Questions Set 17
1. Who wrote the 16th century work, The Book of the Courtier?
2. What do you mean by the French term belles-lettres?
3. Who wrote the 1994 work The Location of Culture?
4. Which is the historical event that spanned 1775-1783 which exemplified the ideals of
Enlightenment thinkers?
5. In which city was Rudyard Kipling born?
6. Which country does Katherine Mansfield belong to?
7. In which year is Joyce's Ulysses set?
8. Which is the epic poem of Ezra Pound attempting to tell the tale of civilized humanity
("tribe") from ancient times to today?
9. What is Kipling's "The White Man's Burden"?
10. Who is the author of the novel Sophie’s Choice?
11. Tennyson's "The Charge of the Light Brigade" was based on which war?
12. Which Beat poet wrote "Howl"?
13. Who is the Sri Lankan diasporan who wrote The Collected Works of Billy the Kid,
Running in the Family, In the Skin of a Lion, and more recently, Anil's Ghost?
14. Idylls of the King, Tennyson's work, consists of how many poems in blank verse?
15. Derived from Italian and meaning "little song," this poem is called what?
16. The 18th century American poets—The Connecticut Wits— attended which college?
17. Robert Blair's “The Grave” and Edward Young's “Night Thoughts” are examples of
which group of poetry?
18. The 16th century work The Mirror for Magistrates was edited by which writer?
19. In which year did Columbus discover America?
20. "The Red Wheelbarrow" is a poem by whom?
21. In Other Worlds is a work by whom?
22. Who is the author of the following lines: “Goe, and catche a falling starre, / Get with
child a mandrake roote. . .”?
23. Which novel begins: “I was born in the city of Bombay once upon a time”?
24. Who wrote the novels, Cracking India and Water, both associated with Deepa Mehta’s
films?
25. Which 19th century mystic poet translated the “Ten Principal Upanishads”?

Answers Set 17
1. Castiglione 14. 12
2. literature 15. sonnet
3. Homi Bhabha 16. Yale
4. American Revolution 17. Graveyard
5. Bombay 18. William Baldwin
6. New Zealand 19. 1492
7. 1904 20. William Carlos Williams
8. The Cantos 21. Gayatri Chakraborty Spivak
9. a poem 22. John Donne
10. William Styron 23. Midnight’s Children, by Rushdie.
11. Crimean War 24. Bapsi Sidhwa
12. Allan Ginsberg 25. W.B. Yeats
13. Michael Ondaatje

Vallaths TES 17
Questions Set 18
1. A stanza which is of nine lines with the last line having twelve syllables is a _______.
2. The character MacFlecknoe is modelled on _______.
3. Horace Walpole’s Gothic romance is _________.
4. Johnson’s Preface to Shakespeare was publishe4d in ______.
5. Preface to the Fables is an example of ________ criticism.
6. She Stoops to Conquer is a play written by _______.
7. The Preface to the Lyrical Ballads was published in ______.
8. Ivanhoe is a novel written by ________
9. Who called the poet an unacknowledged legislator of the world?
10. “Andrea del Sarto” is a dramatic monologue by ________.
11. Origin of Species was published in _______.
12. Who had concluded his sport with Tess in Hardy’s novel?
13. Faith, Hope and Giant Despair are characters in _________.
14. The 1890s is called the Age of ________.
15. “A terrible Beauty is born” is a phrase from Yeats’ poem _______.
16. Who said that the poetry is in the pity?
17. The _______ technique of narration is used in Mrs. Dalloway.
18. Who is Aziz supposed to have assaulted in the caves in A Passage to India?
19. Bernard Shaw’s plays are called the drama of ______.
20. Murder in the Cathedral was first performed in 1935 in ________ Cathedral.
21. The Playboy of the Western World is written by ________.
22. According to A. C. Bradley, “Character is ________.”
23. Enobarbus is a character in _________.
24. Plot is the _____ of Tragedy, according to Aristotle.
25. Sir Roger de Coverley is the member of _______Club.

Answers Set 18
1. Spenserian stanza 14. Decadence
2. Thomas Shadwell 15. Easter 1916
3. Castle of Otranto 16. Wilfred Owen
4. 1765 17. Stream of Consciousness
5. Comparative 18. Adela Quested
6. Oliver Goldsmith 19. Ideas
7. 1798 20. Canterbury
8. Sir Walter Scott 21. J. M. Synge
9. Shelley 22. Destiny
10. Robert Browning 23. Antony and Cleopatra
11. 1859 24. Spirit (Soul)
12. President of the Immortal 25. Spectator
13. Pilgrim’s Progress

Vallaths TES 18
Questions Set 19
1. The British statesman who got the Nobel Prize for literature was ______.
2. Which novel by Shashi Tharoor allegorizes the story of the Mahabharata?
3. Murder in the Cathedral deals with the martyrdom of __________.
4. Which Australian author wrote the novels, The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith and
Schindler’s Ark?
5. Which novel by Upamanyu Chatterjee chronicles one year in the life of a trainee civil
servant, Agastya Sen?
6. The Solitude of Emperors is a 2007 novel written by _____.
7. Which is the “Phoenix” in Christopher Fry’s play A Phoenix too Frequent?
8. The Merchant of Venice by Shakespeare is modelled upon Marlowe’s play ________.
9. Shakespeare’s Roman play on “democracy” is ________.
10. Who are the characters waiting for “Godot’?
11. In Hebrew mythology who is called “Lord of the Flies”?
12. In Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice ________ stands for pride.
13. Which character in a novel by Dickens says: “Sir, I want more”?
14. Somerset Maugham’s novel on the life of a famous painter is _______.
15. Richard II was written in direct imitation of Marlowe’s _______.
16. The ______ of The Taming of the Shrew deals with the practical joke played on sly.
17. Which character in Twelfth Night is a ridiculous representation of Puritanism?
18. The term ______ is used to signify an error in judgement whether through ignorance or
moral fault.
19. Dickens’ Hard Times exposes the philosophy of _______.
20. The phrase ‘a terrible beauty’ is an example of the figure of speech _______.
21. What is Hopkins’ name for the individually distinctive inner structure of a thing?
22. What is the subtitle of the poem ‘The Windhover’?
23. The Victorian treatise ____ consists of four essays on economics and its title is taken
from the Bible.
24. The Immortality Ode is indebted to Vaughan’s poem _______.
25. The verse form used in ‘MacFlecknoe’ and ‘The Rape of the Lock’ is _______.

Answers Set 19
1. Winston Churchill 14. Moon and the Six Pence
2. The Great Indian Novel 15. Edward II
3. Arch Bishop Thomas Beckett 16. Induction
4. Thomas Keneally 17. Malvolio
5. English, August 18. Hamartia
6. David Davidar 19. Jeremy Bentham’s utilitarianism
7. Love 20. Oxymoron
8. The Jew of Malta 21. Inscape
9. Julius Caesar 22. To Christ Our Lord
10. Vladimir and Estragon 23. Unto this Last
11. Beelzebub 24. The Retreat
12. Darcy 25. Heroic Couplet
13. Oliver Twist

Vallaths TES 19
Questions Set 20
1. _______ by Sidney is a powerful defence of the art of poetry written in reply to
Stephen Gosson.
2. Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy influenced Shakespeare in writing _____.
3. The author of ‘Heroes and Hero Worship’ is ______.
4. Goldsmith’s She Stoops to Conquer is a reaction against ________.
5. Glanville’s ‘The Vanity of Dogmatizing’ is the source of Arnold’s poem ______.
6. Oscar Wilde is the disciple of ______, the father of aestheticism.
7. In Antony and Cleopatra Shakespeare gives an unhistorical prominence to _____
constituting him the chorus of the play.
8. T. S. Eliot refers to the ______ Upanishad in The Wasteland.
9. A rhythm counted not by syllables and regular feet but by stresses is called _______.
10. The levelling of inflections took place during the ________ period.
11. Who among the University wits was killed in a tavern brawl at the age of 29?
12. Philoclea and Pamela in The Arcadia are the daughters of _______.
13. Name the theatres in which Shakespeare had shares.
14. Grace Abounding is the spiritual autobiography of ________.
15. Lives of Poets by Dr. Johnson begins with ________.
16. The number of stages undertaken by Christian in his journey in Pilgrim’s Progress is __.
17. The character Atticus is a caricature of ________.
18. Name the author of The Female Quixote or The Adventures of Arabella.
19. Mr. Snap is a character in the novel ______.
20. ______ is the bird killed by the Mariner in ‘The Ancient Mariner.’
21. _______ is the first novel by Walter Scott.
22. The character Sir Leicester Dedlock appears in Dickens’ novel ______.
23. What is the subtitle of Oliver Twist?
24. In which of Thackeray’s novels is the protagonist an Indian Army Officer?
25. World within the World is the autobiography of ________.

Answers Set 20
1. An Apologie for Poetrie 14. John Bunyan
2. Hamlet 15. Abraham Cowley
3. Carlyle 16. Ten
4. Sentimental 17. Addison
5. The Scholar Gipsy 18. Charlotte Lennox
6. Walter Pater 19. Jonathan Wild
7. Enobarbus 20. Albatross
8. Bruhadaranyaka 21. Waverley
9. Sprung rhythm 22. Bleak House
10. Middle English 23. The Parish Boy’s Progress
11. Marlowe 24. The Newcomers
12. Basilius 25. Stephen Spender
13. The Blackfriars, The Globe

Vallaths TES 20
Questions Set 21
1. How many cantos are there in Don Juan?
2. ‘Sweeny among the Nightingales’ is a poem by _______.
3. In 1992, a middle aged Jimmy Porter returned to the stage in Osborne’s _______.
4. Bob Smith is the central character of Eugene O’Neill’s drama ______.
5. Charles Smithson and Sarah Woodruff are the central characters in the novel _______
by John Fowles.
6. Name the author of ‘I Felt a Funeral in My Brain.’
7. What is the full title of Aurobindo’s ‘Savitri.’
8. Who said, “Form is everything, it is the secret of life”?
9. A sudden radiance or revelation while observing a common place object is ______.
10. The error of interpreting or evaluating a work by reference to the plan or design of the
author is termed as ________.
11. Who was the editor of ‘Daily News’?
12. __________ is an unfinished work by Virginia Woolf.
13. _______ is an incomplete work of Milton.
14. The Siege of Krishnapur was written by _______.
15. Bernard Shaw boldly confronts two contemporary women’s issues in ______.
16. The term ‘problem play’ was coined by _______.
17. The concept of synaesthesis was propounded by ________.
18. The figure of speech in which the absent are addressed as though they are present is
called _________.
19. Rich Like Us is a Sahitya Akademy award winning novel by ________.
20. Name the event followed by Piers the Plowman.
21. Speak Memory is the autobiography of _______.
22. Who raised a cry of protest against child labour in ‘Cry of the Children’?
23. Mercy speech occurs in Shakespeare’s ________.
24. “Text are in the world and hence worldly” are words by ________.
25. What is the theme of The Cocktail Party?

Answers Set 21
1. 16 14. J. G. Ferell
2. T. S. Eliot 15. Mrs. Warren’s Profession
3. Footfalls 16. F. S. Boas
4. The Hairy Ape 17. I.A. Richards
5. The French Lieutenant’s Women 18. Apostrophe
6. Emily Dickinson 19. Nayantara Sahgal
7. Savitri: A Legend and a Symbol 20. The Peasant Revolt of 1381
8. Oscar Wilde 21. Vladimir Nabokov
9. Epiphany 22. E. B. Browning
10. Intentional fallacy 23. The Merchant of Venice
11. Robert Browning 24. Michel Foucault
12. Between the Acts 25. Spiritual reconciliation
13. History of Britain

Vallaths TES 21
Questions Set 22
1. The term apron stage refers to ________.
2. Who is the exponent of the Epic Theatre?
3. The term ‘absurd’ is taken from Camus’ work ______.
4. The Authorized Version of Bible appeared during the reign of _______.
5. ‘My Fair Lady’ is a musical drama based on Shaw’s play ______.
6. Bosola is a character in the play ______.
7. “To me the meanest flower can give the thoughts that lie too deep for tears” appears
in the poem ______.
8. The heavenly muse in Book VII of Paradise Lost is _______.
9. The poem ‘The Dance of the Eunuchs’ is written by ______.
10. The Old Man and the Sea recounts the 84 days of adventure of ________.
11. What was the original title of Gauri, a novel by Mulk Raj Anand?
12. ‘Interpretative community’ is postulated by _______.
13. Who says about Sidney, “He sends up the joyous firework of the Italian Renaissance.
His colours are enthusiastic, Neo-Platonic and ideal”?
14. The Philosophy of Composition is written by ______.
15. The phrase “the union of heart and head” strikes the keynote of the theory of criticism
of ______.
16. Rewrite rules is related to _________.
17. Valentine and Proteus are the gentlemen in __________.
18. Who was the first translator of Virgil’s work into English?
19. Which work by Foucault is based on the text he submitted for his doctorate in 1960?
20. The Order of Things, the book that established Foucault’s reputation in France was
published in ______.
21. The scheme of panopticon for prison architecture was devised by _______.
22. Who is the Byronic hero in Wuthering Heights?
23. ________ is the spiritual autobiography of Carlyle.
24. Which novel of Samuel Butler satirizes family life?
25. Who said, “Close thy Byron, Open thy Goethe”?

Answers Set 22
1. Elizabethan Theatre 14. Edgar Allan Poe
2. Brecht 15. Coleridge
3. The Myth of Sisyphus 16. Phrase Structure Grammar
4. James I 17. The Two Gentlemen of Verona
5. Pygmalion 18. Gawain Douglas
6. The Duchess of Malfi 19. Madness and Civilization : A History of
7. The Immortality Ode Madness in the Age of Reason
8. Venus 20. 1966
9. Kamala Das 21. Jeremy Bentham
10. Santiago 22. Heathcliff
11. The Cow of Barricades 23. Sartor Resartus
12. Stanley Fish 24. The Way of All Flesh
13. Wimsatt 25. Carlyle

Vallaths TES 22
Questions Set 23
1. Which poem is published by Tennyson in collaboration with his brother Charles?
2. Who said that Tennyson had “the finest ear, perhaps of any English poet”?
3. Tennyson’s _________ is dedicated to Prince Albert, Queen Victoria’s husband.
4. ‘The Angel in the House’ is a poem by _______.
5. ________ is the spiritual autobiography of Cardinal Newman.
6. Who wrote Remembrance of Things Past?
7. ______ is the autobiographical work of Oscar Wilde.
8. Which play of Bernard Shaw was banned from the public theatre?
9. Waiting for Godot was originally written in _______.
10. Who wrote under the pseudonym George Orwell?
11. The Devil’s Dictionary is written by _______.
12. Which magazine could be called the first magazine in the modern sense?
13. Reliques of Ancient English Poetry is written by _______.
14. Which is the modern adaptation of John Gay’s Beggar’s Opera?
15. The phrase pathetic fallacy was invented by _______.
16. A term applied to language which strikes the ear as smooth, pleasant and musical is
_____.
17. Who is the mad woman in Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre?
18. Which are the three sections of To the Lighthouse?
19. What is the name of the painter in To the Lighthouse?
20. Who is the editor of Jane Austen’s novels and letters?
21. Who is the founder of Martian school of Poetry?
22. Maggie Tulliver is the heroine of _________.
23. What is Floss in George Eliot’s novel The Mill on the Floss?
24. Achebe’s Things Fall Apart is set in _____________.
25. Name George Orwell’s allegory on the failure of Russian socialism under Stalin.

Answers Set 23
1. Poems by Two Brothers 14. The Three Penny Opera by Brecht
2. W. H. Auden 15. John Ruskin
3. Idylls of the King 16. Euphony
4. Coventry Patmore 17. Bertha Rochester
5. Apologia Pro Vita Sua 18. The Window, Time Passes, The
6. Marcel Proust Lighthouse
7. De Profundis 19. Lily Briscoe
8. Mrs. Warren’s Profession 20. Dr. Chapman
9. French 21. Craig Raine
10. Eric Blair 22. The Mill on the Floss
11. Ambrose Bierce 23. A river
12. Gentleman’s Magazine 24. The Nigerian village of Umuofia
13. Thomas Percy 25. Animal Farm

Vallaths TES 23
Questions Set 24
1. Who is the villain in Kenilworth?
2. ______ is the contemporary rewriting of Robinson Crusoe?
3. Who is Crusoe’s servant in the Island?
4. ______ is the philosopher and psychoanalyst, revolutionary writer who has justly been
called the voice of the Third World?
5. Which book of Fanon is called sociodiagnostic?
6. What is the English tile of the work Psychologie de la colonisation?
7. Where does Fanon say that “Decolonization is always a violent phenomenon”?
8. ______ is Freud’s term for the conscious, rational aspect of the self.
9. _______ is the philosophical study of being, of ‘reality.’
10. ________ is the science of interpretation.
11. In which year was Roland Barthes’ S/Z published?
12. What is the term used by Jacques Derrida to refer to the numerous possible meanings
that differ from the one?
13. Saussure’s Course in General Linguistics was first written in French in ______.
14. Who initiated Levi-Strauss into Saussure’s structuralist theories?
15. Who applied Saussure’s model of language to anthropology.
16. Levi-Strauss broke myths into the smallest meaningful units called _______.
17. Name the essay written by Levi-Strauss in which he attempts to analyse various
manifestations of incest taboo.
18. With which myth did Levi-Strauss illustrate that incest prohibition universally
structures myths?
19. Which is the story that Barthes analysed in S/Z?
20. Who presented the paper ‘The Critic as Host’ in 1976?
21. In which paper presented by M. H. Abrams in the Modern Language Association did he
argue that if language is inherently unstable, and so cannot contain meaning, neither
can it be used to assert that language is unstable.
22. When was Elaine Showalter’s A Literature of their Own published?
23. When was Simone de Beauvoir’s book The Second Sex published?
24. In which University was “Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of the Human
Sciences” presented?
25. _______ is the branch of anthropology that deals with races and their relations.

Answers Set 24
1. Richard Varney 14. Roman Jakobson
2. Foe (J. M. Coetzee) 15. Claude Levi-Strauss
3. Friday 16. Mythemes
4. Frantz Fanon 17. Incest and Myth
5. Black Skin White Masks 18. Iroquois myth
6. Prospero and Caliban 19. Balzac’s ‘Sarrasine’
7. The Wretched of the Earth 20. J. Hillis Miller
8. Ego 21. The Deconstructive Angel
9. Ontology 22. 1977
10. Hermeneutics 23. 1949
11. 1970 24. Johns Hopkins University, 1966
12. Trace 25. Ethnology
13. 1916

Vallaths TES 24
Questions Set 25
1. Name the first major work of Michel Foucault published in 1961.
2. Arnold’s _______ deals with the subject of education.
3. The Oxford Movement was basically a _______ movement.
4. Matthew Arnold’s ‘Sohrab and Rustum’ is a story taken from ________.
5. Who is the author of A Woman Killed with Kindness?
6. What is the name of the utopia written by Samuel Butler?
7. Who spoke of the Elizabethans as the “giant race before blood”?
8. Who is the patron of Donne?
9. What is the meaning of ‘Areopagitica’?
10. _______ is Tobias Smollet’s epistolary novel.
11. Who declared that the Preface to Lyrical Ballads was “half a child of my own brain”?
12. What is the subtitle of Lucy Gray?
13. Antoinette Cosway in Wide Sargasso Sea is modelled after ___________.
14. Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea is set in ___________.
15. ________ is the narrator of Kanthapura.
16. Moraes Zagoiby is the protagonist of _______________.
17. Who of the following was not a modernist: Roland Barthes, Michel Foucault, Noam
Chomsky, Dorothy Richardson
18. Strangers and Brothers, the narrative of a man’s journey from the lower classes to
London’s corridors of power, was written by ____________.
19. Spenser’s The Shepheardes Calendar was dedicated to _____________.
20. ____________ is the metrical form of Paradise Lost.
21. The theory of phenomenology was propounded by _______.
22. ______________ is the author of Hecatommithi.
23. The “muscular” novel Tom Brown’s Schooldays was written by ____________.
24. “Love’s Labour’s Won” was considered to be the original title of the play _________.
25. John Locke introduces the idea of “tabula rasa” in _______________.

Answers Set 25
1. Madness and Unreal 22. Cynthio
2. Culture and Anarchy 23. Thomas Hughes
3. Religious 24. All’s Well That Ends Well
4. Shah Namah 25. An Essay Concerning Human
5. Thomas Heywood Understanding
6. Erewhon
7. Dryden
8. Sir Robert Drury
9. Things to be said before Areopagus
10. Humphry Clinker
11. Coleridge
12. Solitude
13. Bertha Rochester in Jane Eyre
14. Cuba
15. Achakka
16. Salman Rushdie’s The Moor’s Last Sigh
17. Michel Foucault
18. C. P. Snow
19. Philip Sidney
20. blank verse
21. Edmund Husserl

Vallaths TES 25
SAMPLE ANSWERS
 LITERARY HISTORY

1. Write a short note on ballads.

Romantic, close to nature, simple and primitive in feeling, ballads, narrative species of
songs, originally communicated orally, deal with love, adventure, fighting and other
deeds of valour. Gradually the term came to be applied to any narrative poem in the
ballad metre, i.e. in a quatrain with alternate rhymes, the first and the third being eight
syllabled and the second and the fourth six syllabled. The first important collection of
Old English ballad is Bishop Percy’s Reliques of Ancient English Poetry. Authentic ballads
are of unknown authorship. Coleridge’s The Rime of Ancient Mariner is an example of
literary ballad. We can also trace an element of supernaturalism in ballads.
2. Write a note on bildungsroman novel.
Bildungsroman and Erziehungsroman are German terms signifying novel of formation or
novel of education that projects the development of the protagonist’s mind and
character, in the passage from childhood through varied experiences, and often through
a spiritual crisis into maturity. The mode was begun by K. P. Moritz’s Anton Reiser and
Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship. It includes Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre,
Dickens’s The Great Expectations, Mann’s The Magic Mountain, etc. An important
subtype of bildungsroman, the kunstleroman represents the growth of an artist from
childhood into the stage of maturity that signalises the recognition of the protagonist’s
artistic destiny and mastery of an artistic craft. Instances of this type include some
major 20th century novels like Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past, Joyce’s The
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Mann’s Dr. Faustus and Andre Gide’s The
Counterfeiters.
3. Define Confessional poetry.
Confessional poetry designates a type of narrative and lyrical verse given impetus by
Robert Lowell’s Life Studies which deals with the facts and intimate mental and physical
experiences of the poet’s own life. Confessional poetry, written against the demand for
impersonality by T. S. Eliot and New Critics differs in its secular subject matter from
religious confessions like Augustine’s Confessions. It sometimes gives shocking details
with which the poet reveals private or clinical matters about himself or herself including
sexual experiences, mental anguish and illness, experiments with drugs and suicidal
impulses. The poems of Allen Ginsberg, Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, and John Berryman
are illustrations of this mode.
4. Explain the term Dramatic Monologue.
Dramatic monologue, a type of lyric poem, perfected by the great Victorian poet Robert
Browning in poems like ‘My Last Duchess’ and ‘Andrea del Sarto’ has the following
features. (1) A single person other than the poet utters a speech that makes up the
whole of the poem, in a specific situation at a critical moment. (2) This person addresses
and interacts with one or more other people, but we know of the auditor’s presence, and
what they say and do, only from clues in the discourse of the single speaker. (3) Through
the monologue the speaker reveals to the reader his temperament and character. In the
20th century the form has been used by Hilda Doolittle, Amy Lowell, Robert Frost, E. A.
Robinson, Ezra Pound, Robert Lowell and the best known modern instance is T. S. Eliot’s
‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.’
5. Write a brief note on Dream Vision/ Dream Allegory.
Dream vision/allegory is a narrative mode widely employed by the medieval poets in
which the narrator who falls asleep in a spring landscape is led by a guide, human or
animal and dreams the events that are at least in part an allegory. The device made
more acceptable the fantastic world of personifications and symbolic objects
characteristic of medieval allegory. Dante’s The Divine Comedy and the French poem
‘Roman de la Rose’ are fine examples in this genre. In England the tradition can be
traced from Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake, Keats’ The Fall of Hyperion and Bunyan’s The

Vallaths TES 27
 Pilgrim’s Progress back to Chaucer’s The House of Fame and Langland’s Piers the
Plowman.
6. Discuss briefly the Epic simile.
Epic/Homeric/Miltonic similes are formal, sustained similes in which, to enhance the
ceremonial quality and wide ranging reference of the narrative style, the secondary
subject or vehicle is elaborated far beyond its specific points of close parallel to the
primary subject or tenor to which it is compared. This was used in Iliad, Odyssey,
Aeneid, etc. It is an integral part of Milton’s grand style evoking his Renaissance and
classical spirit. In a famous epic simile in Paradise Lost, Milton describes his primary
subject, the fallen angels thronging toward Pandemonium, by an elaborate comparison
to the swarming of bees.
7. Write a short note on Free verse.
Free verse or verse libre departs from traditional metres in that its rhythmic pattern is
not organized into regular metrical forms. Poets as early as Blake and Arnold had
experimented on regular metres. Whitman in Leaves of Grass (1855) inaugurated free
verse with varying line lengths and metres. French symbolists of the late 19th century and
20th century Anglo-American poets, especially modernists were the major practitioners of
the form. e. e. cummings explored variable spacing and word length to control pace,
pause and emphasis.
8. Examine the use of the heroic couplet in the 18th century.
Introduced by Chaucer in The Legend of Good Women, the heroic couplet, rhyming
couplets of iambic pentameter, was the predominant measure of the 18th century.
Originally used to depict the heroic feats of warriors, the heroic couplet was put to
effective satirical use by Dryden and Johnson. In its capacity of rhetorical balance,
antithesis and precision, Pope perfected the metre in closed couplets in The Rape of the
Lock, Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot, etc.
9. Discuss the treatment of local colour in fiction.
Local colour is a detailed and realistic representation in prose fiction of the setting,
dialect, customs, dress and ways of thinking and feeling distinctive of a particular region,
such as Thomas Hardy’s Wessex and Kipling’s India. After the Civil War, a number of
American writers exploited the literary possibilities of local colour—for example the
Mississippi region by Mark Twain and the South by George Washington Cable. Local colour
fiction such as O. Henry’s stories set in New York City touch mainly upon the sentimental
peculiarities of a region instead of more deep seated, complex and general human issues.
10. What is the Picaresque novel?
Realistic in manner, satiric in style and episodic in structure, picaresque fiction narrates
a typical story of a low born rogue who lives by his wit and shows little alteration of his
character throughout his adventures. Nashe’s The Unfortunate Traveller (1594)
inaugurated picaresque narration, predecessor of modern novel in England which was so
popular in Spain. Mann’s Felix Krull and Saul Bellow’s The Adventures of Augie March are
later works in this genre.
11. Write a note on the problem play.
Problem play, popularised by the Norwegian playwright Ibsen, deals with the
contemporary social and moral issues. A typical problem play is George Bernard Shaw’s
Mrs. Warren’s Profession (1898) in which the situations faced by the protagonist is put
forward by the author as a representative instance of a contemporary social problem and
poses a solution to it which is at odds with the prevailing opinion. In a specialised
application, the term is applied to a group of Shakespeare’s plays—Troilus and Cressida,
All’s Well That Ends Well, and Measure for Measure—which are also known as dark
comedies and problematize social institutions like marriage, justice and war.
12. Write a brief note on science fiction.
Science fiction encompasses novels and short stories that represent and imagines reality
that is radically different in nature and function from the world of our ordinary

Vallaths TES 28
 experience. The setting is another planet, or this earth projected into the future, or an
imagined parallel universe. An explicit attempt is made to render plausible the fictional
world by referring to known or imagined scientific principles to projected advance in
technology or to a drastic change in the organisation of society. Mary Shelley’s
Frankenstein is often considered as the precursor of science fiction, but the basing of the
fictional worlds on coherently developed scientific principles did not occur until in the
late 19th century that can be seen in the works of Jules Verne’s Journey to the Center of
Earth and H. G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds. A recent development is cyberpunk, a
postmodern form of science fiction in which the events take place partially or entirely
within the virtual reality formed by computers or computer networks in which the
characters may be either human or artificial intelligences. A well-known instance is
William Gibson’s Neuromances.
13. Explain the term Stream of Consciousness.
Stream of consciousness, a phrase used by William James in his Principles of Psychology
to describe the unbroken flow of perceptions, thoughts and feelings in the waking mind
has been adopted to describe a narrative method in modern fiction. An earlier attempt
was made by the French writer Edouard Dujardin and later English writers like Samuel
Richardson and Henry James. In the 1920s the term is applied specifically to a mode of
narration that undertakes to reproduce, without the narrator’s intervention the full
spectrum and conscious flow of character’s mental process in which sense perceptions
mingle with conscious and half-conscious thoughts, memories, expectations and random
associations. Major works include Pilgrimage by Dorothy Richardson, Mrs. Dalloway and
To the Light House by Virginia Woolf and The Sound and the Fury by Faulkner.
14. Discuss the Tragedy of blood.
The tragedy of blood, an intensified form of revenge tragedy popular in the late
Elizabethan and Jacobean periods, was modelled on Senecan plays with the variation
that the violence was not reported but took place on the stage. Webster’s The Duchess
of Malfi, Shakespeare’s Hamlet, etc. display the features such as the hero’s quest for
vengeance prompted by the ghost of a murdered kinsman, scenes of real and feigned
insanity, a play within a play, graveyard scenes, severed limbs, and scenes of carnage
and mutilation which are typical of a revenge tragedy.
15. Consider the novel of sentiment as a product of the 18th century.
The novel of sensibility or sentiment of the 18th century, indicative of the moderation
and high sentimentality of a post-Restoration, Hanoverian culture, emphasized the
tearful distresses of the virtuous, either at their own sorrows or at those of their friends,
benevolence and sensitivity to beauty or sublimity in natural phenomena. Richardson’s
Pamela or Virtue Rewarded, Sterne’s Tristram Shandy and A Sentimental Journey
present the inimitable compound of sensibility, self-irony and innuendo. Goethe’s The
Sorrows of Young Werther and Henry Mackenzie’s The Man of Feeling are extreme
instances.
16. Alienation Effect
Adapting the Russian formalist concept of defamiliarization, Brecht introduced the
alienation /estrangement /distancing effect which makes the familiar aspects of social
reality seem strange, so as to prevent the emotional identification or involvement of the
audience with the characters and their action in the play. Using silences, slapstick
comedy and stichomythia, Beckett in Waiting for Godot (1954) evokes a critical distance
and attitude in the spectators that make them react against the state of society and
behaviour represented on the stage.
17. Write a short note on the Aesthetic Movement.
Touched with melancholy and pessimism and stirred by exotic art forms, fresh precepts
and remote cultures, the aesthetic movement which was popular in the writings of
Baudelaire and Mallarme achieved its prominence in the late 19th century England largely
through the writings of Walter Pater. Antibourgeois, escapist, dandiacal, flamboyant,
placing form before content and ever seeking aesthetic originality, the movement

Vallaths TES 29
 progressively stressed pure sensation and placed art above nature, as is evident in
Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Grey (1891). Talents as varied as Lionel Johnson, Yeats and
Eliot are attached to the various phases of this movement.
18. What is a Purple Patch?
Purple patch, a translation of a Latin phrase in Horace’s Ars Poetica, signifies a marked
heightening of style in rhythm, diction, repetitions and figurative language that makes a
passage stand out from its context. John of Gaunt’s encomiastic description of England in
Richard II is an example. Usually now, it is used as a derogatory reference to a self-
consciously stylized passage in a writer. Other examples are Walter Pater’s prose
description of Monalisa in “The Renaissance,” Byron’s depiction of the Duchess of
Richmond’s ball in Childe Harolde’s Pilgrimage, etc.
19. Can Chaucer be legitimately called the father of English poetry?
The first poet of national importance, Chaucer illustrated Renaissance spirit in his
minute description of all social classes of the 14th century England. His stylistic
innovations—heroic couplet, rhyme royal, realism, narrative unity—departed from the
medievalism of Langland and Gower and inaugurated modern English literature. His
powerful characterization, music and subtle humour made him the pioneer of modern
poetry and fiction.
20. Write an illustrative note on characterization in The Canterbury Tales.
Elaborate and intensely realistic characterization makes The Canterbury Tales ‘modern’.
The 31 characters (29 pilgrims, Chaucer & Host) from all social classes—the parfit gentle
Knight to the humble Cook—make the Prologue a “portrait gallery of 14th century
England,” in Dryden’s words, “God’s plenty.” Social classes are separately delineated
and characterization is physiognomic, especially with the lower classes. The Wife’s “gat-
tooth” thus shows her lasciviousness, ruddy plumpness indicates greed. Chaucer’s
subtle, gentle satire and humour escape no “estate” (medieval term for social classes—
Church, Nobility, Peasantry)—the Squire is a caricature of chivalry, and the ecclesiasts
like the Pardoner and even the Prioress seem to corrupt their divine purpose. Finally,
Chaucer emerges a champion of humanitarianism: each character is portrayed complete
with virtues and vices, highly individuated in character, language and social role.
21. Elaborate on Chaucer’s use of physiognomy in characterization.
With his minute and realistic descriptions of the thirty-one pilgrim characters, Chaucer’s
General Prologue to The Canterbury Tales has been rightly termed as a ‘portrait gallery.’
Physiognomy, the science that judged a person’s temperament based on his appearance,
had a large role to play in Chaucer’s descriptions of his pilgrims. The Wife of Bath is
described as ‘gat-toothed’—a sign of gluttony and lasciviousness. The Miller’s coarseness
and vulgarity are highlighted by the wart on his nose and ruddy features. The Squire is
‘fresh as the month of May’ and has curly hair—pointers to his youthfulness. The
Pardoner’s glaring eyes and limp hair illustrate his fraudulence. The Franklin’s mirthful
and carefree nature is brought out by his daisy-white beard and sanguine complexion.
Thus, the use of physiognomy aided Chaucer in creating consistent and individualised
characters.
22. Comment on Chaucer’s portrayal of women in The Canterbury Tales.
The portrayal of women by Geoffrey Chaucer is vivid and humorous. In Canterbury Tales
he depicts the three “estates” of women—virgin, wife and widow. Description of the
prioress as a ‘delicate darling’ is subtly ironic. She is beautiful, lady-like and romantic
with a nasal tone. Her table manners are exquisite. Neatly attired, she wears a brooch of
gold with an engraving ‘A’ and the words ‘amor vincit omnia’ (love conquers all). This
prioress, named Eglantyne, is so tender-hearted that the mere sight of a dead mouse can
raise a storm of sorrow in her. She is too colourful to be prioress by normal standards. On
the other hand, Chaucer presents Wife of Bath, a very lively and sensual woman who has
married five times at church. She is bold and liberated, the proto-type of a feminist.
Chaucer illustrates his Renaissance spirit in his portrayal of women characters.

Vallaths TES 30
23. Examine the portrayal of ecclesiastic characters in The Canterbury Tales.
Like his contemporaries Wycliffe and Langland, Chaucer, with Reformative zeal,
criticized the corrupt 14th century clergy. He satirised the Prioress as worldly and
amorous; the Pardoner, Summoner and Friar as treacherous, greedy and shallow. The
Parson, however, is true to his profession and the Clerk of Oxford is studious and austere
to an excess. The very convention of pilgrimage as a social gathering critiques religious
hypocrisy.
24. Comment on the use of satire in The Canterbury Tales.
It is through subtle satire and genial humour that Chaucer achieves the powerfully
realistic characterization in The Canterbury Tales. His sickle of satire escapes no
“estate” amounting to social commentary. The Prioress’s brooch, amorous nature and
etiquette thus are not too proper, for her role. The hunting Monk, the begging Friar and
the Pardoner seem to corrupt their divine purpose. Apart from realism Chaucer’s use of
satire through the questioning of established norms accounts for the Renaissance spirit in
his works.
25. What were the impacts of the introduction of printing on English literature?
Caxton’s setting up of a printing press at Westminster in 1476 was a key event that
ushered in the Renaissance in England. With this dawned a new phase in English culture
that redefined the scope of literacy, education and literature. Printing gave primacy to
the author, and originality and self-expression became important virtues. A reading
public, inquisitive and eager to learn, formed, which continually evolved from the
contact with continental cultures, through the numerous translations and adaptations of
the classics. For want of printable material, there were many writers experimenting
with genres, themes and literary techniques. Humanism also developed in the hands of
Colet, Ascham, Elyot and others.
26. Can Spenser be legitimately called ‘the poets’ poet’?
Charles Lamb’s epithet ‘the poets’ poet’ is rightfully Spenser’s in the Renaissance sense
of the term. Spenser, who marked the transition from medieval to modern and brought
the best of classical literature into English poetry, often outdid his masters—Theocritus
and Virgil in pastoral poetry (The Shepheardes Calendar) and Petrarch in sonneteering
(Amoretti) and The Faerie Queene is the epitome of courtly grandeur and classical
sentiment. Spenser’s innovations in form such as the Spenserian stanza and Spenserian
sonnet have had long-standing effect on English poetry. Numerous poets including Keats
have regarded Spenser their master, though his critical importance has waned in the 20th
century and after.
27. Write a note on the form and style of The Faerie Queene.
Originally conceived in twelve sections, The Faerie Queene exists in six books (first three
published in 1590, entirely in 1596) and a fragment, Mutabilitie Cantos. As detailed in
Spenser’s introductory letter to Walter Raleigh, each book of this allegory deals with the
adventures of a knight (embodying a Christian value) of the court of Gloriana, who is
Glory in the abstract, Elizabeth I in particular. The books describe the adventures of
Redcrosse Knight, Guyon, legend of Chastity, Triamond and Campbell (friendship),
Artegall (Justice) and Calidore (Courtesy). The Spenserian stanza, ottava rima closed off
by an Alexandrine (rhyming abab bcbc c), is an appropriate vehicle for the chivalrous
medievalism, melody, mystery and passion that enrich the work. The Faerie Queene
imbibed the Reformation spirit in its critique of Catholicism and pro-Tudor spirit.
28. Write a note on Spenser’s use of allegory.
Edmund Spenser’s poems may be grouped into three categories namely, pastorals,
allegories and poems of love. The Shepherd’s Calendar, The Faerie Queene, and
Amoretti fall under these three classes respectively. In Faerie Queene Spenser
personifies twelve cardinal Aristotelian virtues such as Holiness, Temperance, Chastity,
Friendship, Justice, Courtesy, etc. and gives them names of noble men. On the whole the
narrative dramatizes the eternal conflict between good and evil. The legendary Arthur

Vallaths TES 31
 stands for all virtues (especially, Magnificence) and the Faerie Queene is none other than
Queen Elizabeth. Professedly, Spenser wrote The Faerie Queene in service of morality,
portraying the political and religious affairs of England. The poem is full of romance,
morality and magic with its pictures of men, monsters and geography with a dreamy
vagueness. However, such poetry in modern English was new with its pictorial sweetness
that earned for Spenser the title “Poet’s Poet.”
29. Write a note on Spenser’s medievalism.
The 16th century, when Spenser lived, was a bridge between medieval (Middle Ages) and
modern (Renaissance). Medievalism was a common feature of 16th c. writers--Sidney,
Wyatt, Shakespeare, etc. But these writers were also on the threshold of Renaissance,
introducing new forms of literature into the English context, often questioning, revising
and inventing. Spenser had medieval writers as his models / sources, whom he often
outdid. (Ariosto—Faerie Queene; Petrarch—Amoretti; Virgil and Theocritus—The
Shepheardes Calendar). The Faerie Queene had elements of allegory and (Arthurian)
romance, both of which are medieval genres. The employment of the device of memory
is also a medieval practice. The tradition of chivalry in Faerie Queene was a medieval
(feudal) convention which had nearly disappeared in Elizabethan England.
30. Comment on the use of poetry in Elizabethan drama.
In the history of theatre, poetic drama had preceded the fairly recent phenomenon of
drama in prose. In Elizabethan drama, Marlowe replaced doggerel with blank verse, in his
‘mighty line.’ The blank verse, closest to the rhythms of English speech, and introduced
by Surrey into English literature consisted of unrhymed iambic pentameter, hence
termed ‘blank’. Shakespeare wrote his plays in this metre which soon became the
medium for both tragedies and comedies. The newly discovered relation between poetry
and music introduced lyric poetry in Elizabethan theatre. Gradually, verse began to be
reserved for tragedies, and comedies confined themselves to prose. In the later
Restoration period, the heroic couplet replaced blank verse.
31. Attempt a study of Elizabethan prose.
During the Elizabethan Age poetry and drama made gigantic leaps in number as well as in
excellence through some all-time greats like Shakespeare, Jonson and Marlowe, not to
spare Spenser. The genre of prose generally lacked in lustre but for some remarkable
pieces through Francis Bacon, Lyly and Sidney. Bacon’s essays inspired by Montaigne
were in powerful and assertive style. His epigrammatic style and topics including
morality, philosophy and practical wisdom are quite remarkable. John Lyly’s The
Anatomy of Wit is an Elizabethan “novel” replete with artificial elegance, wit, a highly
crafted style (Euphuism) and conversations on love, education and fashion. Philip
Sidney’s Apologie for Poetrie and pastoral romance Arcadia were the other prominent
prose works of the Age. Another fine example of prose appeared in King James’
Authorized Version of the Bible (1611) which became influential on Wycliffe, Tyndale,
etc.
32. Comment on Marlowe’s use of blank verse.
Blank verse in drama reached its pinnacle in Elizabethan theatre. Christopher Marlowe
departed from the ‘jigging veins’ of the doggerel verse of earlier dramatists and replaced
it with the energy, splendour and versatility of his ‘mighty line,’ as Dr. Johnson
commented. Blank verse comprising unrhymed pentameter, best simulates the patterns
of English speech. Marlowe’s heroes, all men of vaulting ambition, speak in elevated
blank verse and challenge the norms and limitations of their contemporary societies. His
four one-man plays—Tamburlaine, Edward II, The Jew of Malta and Dr. Faustus—
inaugurated the powerful use of the metrical form in English drama.
33. Write a brief note on the characteristics of Marlovian tragedy.
Marlowe’s concept of tragedy is classical, modified by the spirit of Renaissance.
Although his tragedies abound in grand heroic central figures who tower to great heights,
insult Divine Providence, fall with a crash and possess high potential for cruelty, they are
not always demi-gods or men born to high places. The conquering Tamburlaine is of quite

Vallaths TES 32
 humble origin and Barabas, the Jew of Malta and Faustus rise to no worldly heights.
Marlovian heroes are the autobiographical re-creations of the author himself.
34. Write a note on the theme of Doctor Faustus.
Doctor Faustus is the dramatization of the medieval legend of a man who sold his soul to
the Devil and who became identified with a Dr. Faustus, necromancer of the 16th
century. Faustus is an embodiment of a spiritual quest for infinite power, an ambition to
rule over the universe, a dangerous temptation of the Renaissance period. As the hour
for surrender of his soul draws near Faustus is depicted as reeling in intense mental
anguish. Faustus is a typical Marlovian hero, characterised by vaulting ambition (Hubris),
the thirst for power / beauty / knowledge, a representation of Marlowe himself.
35. Write a note on the themes and styles of the University Wits.
University Wits is the name given by Saintsbury to a group of Elizabethan playwrights and
pamphleteers including Lyly, Peele, Kyd, Lodge, Greene, Nashe and Marlowe. Educated
at Oxford and Cambridge, these young writers were well-bred in the traditions of
classical drama. They wrote mostly tragedies on courtly themes, with heroic treatment
and allusive, scholarly language. Lyly founded the elaborate style Euphuism, while Kyd’s
The Spanish Tragedy introduced the Senecan “tragedy of blood”. Greene developed the
romantic comedy. His Pandosto served as source for The Winter’s Tale. Nashe
inaugurated picaresque fiction, while Marlowe, the greatest of all University Wits,
perfected blank verse.
36. Give an analysis of Shakespeare’s problem plays.
Three of Shakespeare’s comedies—All’s Well that Ends Well, Measure for Measure and
Troilus and Cressida are called problem plays. The phrase ‘problem play,’ usually applied
to the plays of Ibsen and Shaw, was first applied to these plays—as well as to Hamlet—by
Frederick Boas. These plays deal with the basic elements of life, sex and death, love and
marriage, and the psychological and social complications they give rise to. They are
potent satires characterized by disturbingly ambiguous points of view and cynical
attitudes towards sexual and social relations. No clear-cut resolutions are offered.
37. Examine Shakespeare’s use of tragi-comedy.
In tragic-comedy, a serious action which threatens a tragic disaster to the protagonist,
yet, by an abrupt reversal of circumstance, turns out happily. Shakespeare’s Merchant of
Venice, the problems plays—Troilus and Cressida, Measure for Measure and All’s Well
that Ends Well, and the final Romances are tragi-comedies. Shakespeare’s use of tragic-
comedy shows his Romantic Renaissance spirit, which was attacked by classical critics,
but justified by Dryden and Johnson.
38. Elaborate on Shakespeare’s approach to tragedy with relevance to one of his plays.
Shakespearean tragedy marked a new direction in the genre in its repudiation of the
classical Aristotelian unities, the intermixing of tragedy and comedy and the
juxtaposition of the high and the low in society. Shakespeare conformed to the
Aristotelian concept of the tragic hero—a man of noble birth, on whom the destiny of a
nation rests, flawed by hamartia, whose towering presence overshadows especially
women. Hamlet is such a hero (balanced by his foil—the ‘smiling villain’ Claudius) whose
internal strife is typically enacted in the external aggression of war. Shakespearean
tragedy was put to much scrutiny by 19th and early 20th century critics like Bradley,
Tillyard, etc.
39. Write an illustrative note on Shakespeare’s romances.
Shakespeare’s last plays, Cymbeline, The Winter’s Tale, Pericles and The Tempest rely
heavily on spectacular, scenic effects including shipwrecks and seafaring, and fanciful
plots; hence the name, romance. The locales are exotic, even imaginary. Elements of the
supernatural and the pastoral are exploited, such as the wizardry of The Tempest and
the Delphic Oracle in The Winter’s Tale. Artificiality replaces the fidelity of
characterization of Shakespeare’s earlier plays. Iachimo is a weakened Iago; Leontes a
weakened Othello. These tragicomedies are best interpreted by the theme of

Vallaths TES 33
 reconciliation, reunion and forgiveness. Lytton Stratchey commented that it is a spirit of
boredom that characterises these plays.
40. Write a brief note on the sonnets of Shakespeare.
The lyricism, music and dramatic passion of the Elizabethans found legitimate expression
in the 154 sonnets of Shakespeare, first published by Thomas Thorpe. Introduced by
Wyatt in its Petrarchan variant, the sonnet was perfected in Shakespeare’s hands. The
first 126 of his sonnets are addressed to a “young man”, “W.H.” (Henry Wriothesley or
William Herbert?) and the last 26 (except the last two) record the poet’s passion for a
“dark lady” (probably Mary Fitton or Amelia Lancer). The sonnets are autobiographical,
and hinge on the themes of poetic fancy, love and friendship. The 14-lined
Shakespearean sonnet is divided into 3 quatrains and a couplet, in the rhyme scheme
abab cdcd efef gg.
41. Comment on the figure of the clown in Shakespeare’s plays.
Shakespeare’s clowns who have a significant role in imparting a comic effect are partly
drawn from life and partly from literature. The clown can be considered as the
development of the Vice of the morality plays and at the same time the theatrical
version of the professional court jester. Figuring in comedy and tragedy, Shakespeare’s
fool provokes laughter by his wit as Touchstone does in As You Like It and sings sad or
sprightly songs as Feste in Twelfth Night. Fool wears motley costume and sometimes
shows more learning and good sense than some of the leading characters, but has no
integral relation to the main plot. The fool however is a metaphor for humanity and
represents the thin line between wisdom and folly, sanity and madness, especially when
the distinction between the hero and the fool blurs, as in King Lear.
42. Elaborate on Shakespeare’s treatment of history.
Shakespeare explored the psychological and ethical foundations of politics in plays like
Henry IV, Henry V, Richard II, etc. These plays mix true events with popular tastes, and
common life with courtly life, catering to the Elizabethan Renaissance thirst for fact as
well as fiction. These plays eulogized the Tudor reign, commented on socio-cultural
values, emphasized the importance of social order and pursued the definition of the
perfect king (Henry V as ideal; Richard III as most villainous). Shakespeare was concerned
more with dramatic values than with historical accuracy.
43. Examine Bacon’s contribution to English prose.
Baconian prose, brief and clear with the sparkle of wit and wisdom, was distinctly
different from the contemporary Elizabethan poetic prose. Bacon’s style was neither
ornate nor obscure, and was marked by its precision, aphorism and inclination towards
everyday philosophy. Taking cue from the French writer Montaigne, Bacon introduced
the genre of the formal essay in English. Bacon’s career has been divided into two
periods—in the earlier phase, his style was epigrammatic, terse and rather dull, but
later, his works are more vibrant and there is an increased use of figures of speech.
Though an ardent supporter of Latin Bacon pioneered new directions in English prose and
was perhaps a writer of as great a genius as Shakespeare, as confirmed by the Baconian
theory of Shakespearean plays. Bacon’s utopian romance, The New Atlantis is considered
a forerunner of the novel.
44. Can Paradise Lost be rightfully called an epic?
Written during the Restoration in twelve books, Milton’s Paradise Lost is an epic in every
sense of the term. With the biblical theme of the creation, fall and redemption of man;
its scope set in heaven, hell, earth and the vast space between; and the machinery or
supernatural agents including Jehovah, Christ and the angels, this heroic poem is truly
colossal and ‘cosmic.’ The action includes the revolt of the angels against God, the
journey of Satan through chaos in search of the newly created world and his audacious
attempts to outwit God by corrupting mankind. The narrative commences with an
invocation to the muse and a proposition, stating the narrator’s purpose and begins in
medias res, with the fallen angels in hell, plotting against God. Milton’s Grand Style—his

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 formal diction and syntax, replete with allusions and epic similes—is commensurate with
the grandeur of the epic tradition.
45. Write a note on the sonnets of Milton.
Milton’s sonnets, Italian/Petrarchan in form, departed from the Elizabethan tradition of
love. His sonnets like ‘On His Blindness’ and ‘The Massacre at Piedmont’ deal with
fulfilment of duty, patriotism, political struggle, music and harmony and God and faith.
The sonnets show Renaissance spirit as well as Hellenic and Hebraistic influences.
46. Describe briefly the prose style of Bunyan.
Grace Abounding, The Pilgrim’s Progress, The Holy War, etc. are the important works of
John Bunyan, one of the greatest prose writers of the 17th century. There is a strong
autobiographical element in his writings. Bunyan, in his “novels,” makes use of
convincing plots, realistic characterisation and natural dialogue. He uses simple,
beautiful and plain language. The picaresque narrative that emerged in 16th century
Spain was adopted in The Pilgrim’s Progress. His use of satire, domestic humour and
caricature was later adopted by novelists like Defoe and Dickens. Elements of allegory,
sermon and dream-structure can be seen in his novels.
47. Write a note on the treatment of religion in the 17th century literature.
Seventeenth century, sandwiched between Reformation and Restoration, was torn by
intense religious scepticism and political unrest. Dominated by the towering presence of
Milton and Taylor, the literature of this period reflected the religious fervour in the
“epic” works like Paradise Lost and Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress. While the works of
Burton and Browne express allusive, eclectic, religious sensibility, the religious poetry of
Crashaw, Vaughan, Trahern employed metaphysical techniques like conceits, syllogism,
etc.
48. What was the contribution of 17th century philosophers to English prose?
The seventeenth century philosophers were the products of Enlightenment thought,
which espoused methodical observation and reasoning. In ‘An Essay Concerning Human
Understanding,’ John Locke expounded the belief that all knowledge was derived from
sense experiences. The ‘Essays, Civil and Moral’ by Francis Bacon are a string of
aphorisms, which sparkle with wit and wisdom. The political philosophies of Thomas
Hobbes and Rousseau were asserted in ‘Leviathan’ and ‘The Social Contract’
respectively. The ‘Encyclopedia,’ a colossal embodiment of the rational mode of
thought, is the combined effort of Diderot, Montesquieu, Rousseau and Voltaire and
others. The fiction of the period was almost entirely satirical. Voltaire’s novel Candida
satirized mindless philosophical debates. The didactic novel Emile by Rousseau presents
his innovative ideas on education. Thus, works of the philosophers almost always
pertained to the central themes of the Enlightenment—the superiority of human
intellect.
49. Write a note on the Cavalier Poets.
Cavalier poets, the supporters of King Charles I (1625-49), were writers of witty and
polish lyrics of courtship and gallantry. The group included Suckling, Lovelace, Carew and
Robert Herrick. Robert Herrick, though a country parson, is included among these writers
because he was the Son of Ben, admirer and follower of Ben Jonson in love lyrics and
gallant compliment. Throughout Sir John Suckling’s poetry runs a vein of cynicism. Many
of Richard Lovelace’s poetry breathes finer sentiments of chivalrous love that is absent
in Cavalier poetry. John Donne revolted against the easy, stock style of the Cavaliers.
50. Discuss the features of the heroic play.
Inspired by the late 17th century’s propensity for exalted and exaggerated action, Dryden
experimented with the heroic play in works like Tyrannik Love, The Indian Emperor, etc.
In the essay prefixed to The Conquest of Granada Dryden elaborated on the function of
the heroic play as the arousal of admiration, themes as love and valour and action as
exalted and even improbable, centring on a male protagonist torn between love and

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 duty. The heroic play, to be judged along Aristotelian rule of tragedy, reflected the
majesty and grandeur of the heroic poem.
51. Write a note on satire in the 18th century.
The Age of Prose and Reason, as Arnold described the 18th century, was remarkable for
its use of satire as a popular mode of expression. Satire was then a tool for social
criticism as well as political raillery. The two main streams of satire—Horatian and
Juvenalian—are discernible at this time; the former being a witty expression of wry
amusement at human follies, as in Pope’s Moral Essays, and the latter a dignified
statement of contempt and moral indignation at human aberrations, as in Johnson’s
‘London’ and ‘The Vanity of Human Wishes.’ Dryden’s ‘Absalom and Achitophel’ and
‘MacFlecknoe’ and Pope’s ‘Dunciad’ are personal / political, whereas Swift’s Gulliver’s
Travels is a general satire on human nature.
52. Discuss Johnson’s use of the satiric mode.
The satire emerged as a distinguished form of expression in 18th century England often
loosely described as the Age of Reason or Augustan Age. While many poems by Alexander
Pope have come to exemplify the Horatian satire, Dr. Samuel Johnson’s two satires
London and The Vanity of Human Wishes are reworkings of the Juvenalian mode. The
former castigates the decadence of contemporary Britain and the latter is a meditation
on the pitiful spectacle of human unfulfilment. In his satires, Dr. Johnson is a moralist
who undertakes to evoke from readers contempt, moral indignation and sadness at the
aberrations of humanity. Characteristic of the Juvenalian satire, he uses a dignified
rhetoric to enforce his theme.
53. Comment on the prose style of Addison and Steele.
With the rise of constitutional and party government the very early 18th century saw the
phenomenal growth of pamphlets and periodical literature. Joseph Addison and Sir
Richard Steele are credited with pioneering and perfecting the art of the essay in their
periodicals, ‘The Tatler’ and later ‘The Spectator.’ In a familiar and approachable style,
they tackled a range of topics of social interest—fashion, politics, aesthetics and
commerce. They wrote clever sketches of men and manners, used the weapons of
delicate irony and satire to educate their readers. Their essays were topics of debates at
the coffee houses, the centres of social life in Queen Anne’s reign. As politicians
replaced nobles as patrons of letters, Addison and Steele were also willing servants of
the Whigs and Tories to write satires and political arguments.
54. What are the main features of the language of Augustan poetry?
In English literary history, a large part of the 18th century has been termed as the
Augustan Age, a name echoing the brilliant literary period under the Roman emperor
Augustus. Soon after the Restoration, English poetic conventions were governed by the
classical writers—Juvenal for satire, Virgil for epics and pastorals, and Horace for general
literary taste. The leading writers shrank from emotionalism and replaced it with the
spirit of reason. Poetic language was classical, infused with a satirical tone and artificial
diction. Poetry was mainly urban in theme and content. The heroic couplet rose as the
best medium to fulfill the potential of the major poetic forms—the satire and the epic.
Some of the best satires were written by Dryden—‘Absalom and Achitophel,’
‘MacFlecknoe,’ ‘The Hind and the Panther.’ Pope’s The Rape of the Lock is unequalled in
the genre of mock-epic.
55. Why is Restoration Comedy called the high point of the Comedy of Manners?
Though the Comedy of Manners originated in the ‘New Comedy’ of the Greek Menander,
and the English comedy of manners was early exemplified by Shakespeare, it was given a
high polish in Restoration Comedy (1660-1700). The form owes to the brilliant dramas of
the French writer Molière, and deals with the relations and intrigues of members of
sophisticated relations and intrigues of members of sophisticated upper class society,
and relies for comic effect in large part on the wit and sparkle of the dialogue, often in
the form of repartee. Excellent examples are Congreve’s The Way of the World and

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 Wycherley’s The Country Wife. A middle class reaction against the Restoration Comedy
resulted in the ‘sentimental comedy’ of the eighteenth century.
56. Expand on the romantic features of the Gothic novel.
The Gothic romance of the late 18th century, launched by Horace Walpole’s The Castle of
Otranto, constituted a part of the Romantic Revival in its air of magic and mystery and
medieval splendour. The novels were structured around castles and dungeons, darkness
and horror, romantic heroines and sinister villains. In works such as Ann Radcliffe’s The
Mysteries of Udolpho, William Beckford’s Vathek and Gregory Lewis’s The Monk,
Romanticism found expression as the nostalgic longing for the exotic and faraway,
reflecting the realms of imagination and fancy. Jane Austen parodied the genre in
Northanger Abbey.
57. Comment on the treatment of history in Scott’s novels.
Sir Walter Scott, inspired by the tales of Irish life depicted by Maria Edgeworth,
attempted to do something similar for Scotland in his Waverley series. The historical
novels such as Old English Baron by Clara Reeve and The Scottish Chiefs by Miss Porter
existed prior to Scott’s Waverley novels which consisted of more than two dozen works
dealing with Scottish history but it was Scott who perfected the genre by giving a
vitalising energy and insight to the bygone age through picturesque details. Though he
did not bring a pedantic knowledge to the historical novel he succeeded in adding genial
dexterity to it and thereby making it an entirely new species. Instances are Ivanhoe and
Kenilworth.
58. Comment on domestic realism in Austen’s novels.
Austen’s work is a fruitful entry point into the late 18th and early 19th century field of
conservative female authored fiction. The sentimentalism of Richardson, sensationalism
of Mrs. Radcliffe and mock pathos of Sterne take a back seat when compared to Austen’s
domestic realism. There is no didacticism, philosophy or propaganda in her fiction. What
we have is a perfect picture of provincial life in the late 18th century replete with social
gatherings, speculations about marriage, hopes and fears of genteel people with
moderate means as in Emma, Pride and Prejudice, etc. She dealt with narrow modes of
existence and never treaded beyond the area of familiarity since she lacked the
imaginative faculty to give life and blood to a character she was not accustomed with.
59. Discuss medievalism in Romantic poetry.
Medievalism was a decisive feature of the Romantic poets, which served their taste for
the picturesque and the sublime. They were fascinated by the mystery, adventure and
romance of medieval legends, with their wandering knights, beautiful damsels, wizards
and magic castles. It was most pronounced in John Keats and Walter Scott as seen in ‘La
Belle Dame Sans Merci,’ ‘The Eve of St. Agnes,’ and ‘Isabella’ by the one and ‘The Lay of
the Last Minstrel,’ ‘Marmion’ and ‘The Lady of the Lake’ by the other. The dramatic
quality and supernaturalism of the ballad form was revived in Keats’s ‘La Belle Dame’
and Coleridge’s ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.’ The latter’s ‘Kubla Khan’ and
‘Christabel’ evoked the exotic east and supernatural themes. Towards the end of the age
of Romanticism, the Victorian poet, Tennyson attempted to reproduce the medieval
atmosphere in his ‘Idylls of the King,’ ‘Morte d Arthur,’ ‘Locksley Hall’ and ‘The Lady of
Shalott.’ Thus, the 19th century was truly a period of Medieval Renaissance.
60. Examine the treatment of childhood in Wordsworth’s poetry.
Wordsworth’s preoccupation with childhood as a permanent memory is inextricably
linked to his philosophy of life and to the romantic sense of loss and nostalgia. To
Wordsworth childhood was a constant source of inspiration and so a recurring theme in
many of his poems like ‘Tintern Abbey,’ ‘Rainbow’ and ‘Prelude.’ In his conception of
the child as close to nature, god, eternal reality and the father of man, the influence of
Rousseau’s concept of Noble Savage is evident.

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61. How far is Shelley’s poetry infused with a revolutionary spirit?
Shelley was deeply interested in politics. His revolutionary ardour, coupled with a zeal
for the liberation of mankind and a passion for poetry caused him to believe in the
revolutionary potential of poetry and claimed that poets are “the unacknowledged
legislators of the world.” This fervour burns throughout the early ‘Queen Mab’ (1813),
‘The Revolt of Islam,’ and the lyrical drama ‘Prometheus Unbound’ (1820) as well as in
the odes like ‘Ode to the West Wind.’ His poetry adheres to the Romantic and Roussean
belief in an underlying spirit in the individual, one truer to human nature itself than the
behaviour evinced and approved by society.
62. Give a brief note on sensuousness in Keats.
Imitating the mannerisms of Elizabethans, Keats’ love of nature is frankly sensuous and
he believed in pantheism, the theory that all nature is the expression of one universal
spirit. As Compton-Rickett puts it, “where Wordsworth spiritualises and Shelley
intellectualises nature, Keats is content to express nature through the senses.” He is
excited by the sight and sound, the fragrance and the delicacies of nature. His love of
nature is intense, as constantly seen in his imagery, especially in the odes. His ‘Grecian
Urn,’ illustrates the poet’s enjoyment of beauty in art, nature and the ancient world of
Hellas. ‘The Fall of Hyperion’ shows his mature exposition of his sovereign power of
beauty. He believed that poetry exists for its own sake.
63. Comment on Keats’ odes.
Keats’ odes form the purest expressions of his sensuous, liberal spirit. He wrote Pindaric
odes and perfected the form. Written mostly in 1819, these odes taken together show
the transformative ability of his creative genius and maturation of philosophy. His earlier
odes like ‘Ode to a Nightingale’ show a desire to escape while his later odes like ‘Ode to
Autumn’ show a calm mellowness and calmness of life. They also comprise Hellenistic
and Hebraistic elements that are characteristics of Keats’ poetry at large. The most
famous example is ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn.’
64. Write a note on the motif of nature in Romantic poetry.
Romanticism, under Rousseuean inspiration, began in England as a revolt against the
urban poetry of the neo-classical period. While transitional poets like Gray, Blake and
Thomson observed nature sympathetically and subjectively, in Wordsworth’s art nature
took on pantheistic proportions. Coleridge explored the mysterious and irrational in
nature while to Shelley and Keats it symbolised the spirits of social transformation and
truth or beauty respectively. Generally the romantic emphasis on nature poetry
constituted a rejection of rational and prosaic values and an involvement with emotion,
imagination, the free individual spirit and a primeval childlike existence.
65. Illustrate Dickens’s use of social realism in his novels.
As a term invented by Marxist critics, socialist or social realism in novels adhered to the
virtues of the proletariat and their struggles against the capitalists. Urged by his own
poverty-stricken childhood and the democratic spirit of the Reform Bill of 1832, the
Victorian novelist Charles Dickens showed immense respect to the poor, but none
towards the British institutions which stood in the way of justice. Oliver Twist portrayed
the pathetic conditions of the inmates of the London workhouses. The French Revolution
and the worker’s struggles formed the background for A Tale of Two Cities. In Hard
Times, Dickens drew a hideous picture of mechanisation and industrial progress. His
portrayals in Nicholas Nickleby helped to bring the boarding schools of London to a close.
However, the objective of Dickens was to portray late 19th century London realistically,
not so much to advocate a particular social theory or initiate a revolution.
66. Write a short note on the element of humour and pathos in Dickens.
Dickens’ long literary career, commencing with Pickwick Papers in 1876 and culminating
in The Mystery of Edwin Drood is a gradual unfolding of his broad creative humour
undercut with exquisite touches of pathos. Dickensian humour is the direct result of his
sense of the incongruous and absurd in life, as seen in characters like Choackumchild,

Vallaths TES 38
 Gradgrind, Miss Havisham, etc. His lighthearted gentleness never takes a malicious turn.
His pathos is the offshoot of his sense of the oppressive social reality which he illustrates
in Nicholas Nickleby (boarding schools), Oliver Twist (workhouses) and Hard Times (new
manufacturing system). But his satiric portraits sometimes verge on the melodramatic.
67. Discuss the poetry of the Pre-Raphaelites.
The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was founded in 1848 by a group of painters but the
ideals were taken over by a literary movement which included D. G. Rossetti (‘The
Blessed Damozel’), Christina Rossetti (‘The Goblin Market’), William Morris (‘The Earthly
Paradise), and Swinburne. They used medieval settings as a context that made possible
an uninhibited treatment of sex and violence. Medievalism, pictorial realism with
symbolic overtones, union of the flesh and the spirit, musicality, artificiality,
superficiality, sensuousness and religiousness are the features of the Movement.
68. Write a brief note on Georgian Poets.
Georgian is a term applied both to the reigns of four successive Georges of the 18th and
19th centuries and to the reign of George V (1910-36). Georgian poets designates a group
of writers in the latter era anthologised in four volumes of Georgian Poetry published
between 1912 and 1922 edited by Edward Marsh. Marsh favoured writers whom we tend
to regard as minor poets like Rupert Brooke, Ralph Hodgson, W.H. Davies, Walter de la
Mare and John Masefield. It connotes verse which is rustic in subject matter, deft and
delicate rather than bold and passionate and traditional rather than empty in technique
and form.
69. Write a short note on the Trench poets.
The Trench poets, after World War I, immortalized themselves by powerfully articulating
the traumatizing effects of the war. World War I changed the concept of war as being
“brief and heroic, it became something dull, cruel repressing and that dragged on for
long years which can be traced in the works of Brooke, Blunden, Sassoon, etc. War
became something that caused the death of not merely soldiers but also innocent
civilians on a large scale which tore apart the social fabric and bled the national
economy which reflected in the works of these poets. In the decades that followed the
WW II the popularity of the trench poets declined as the readers were more familiar with
the more complex and more sedate problems of peace than those of war.
70. What are the modernist elements in The Wasteland?
Modernism designates a broad literary cultural mood that spanned all of the arts and
even spilled into politics and philosophy. Like Romanticism it was highly varied in its
manifestation between the arts and even within each art. The Wasteland (1922) placed
T. S. Eliot at the centre of the modernist mood. Essentially plotless, it attempts to
capture historical development to the present day by the use of mystic allusion. London,
the unreal city in fog is the fallen world as a whole. Characters like Tiresias, the Smyrna
merchant and an East London housewife wander through the poem. The poem moves
from Elizabethan age to the ancient world to the present and ends with a small failing
voice speaking Sanskrit. It expresses fundamental despair at the sense that with the loss
of all certainties, the world was nothing but fragments that are shored against ruin.
However there is a desperate attempt to reclaim the lost unity through art.
71. Comment on the ‘mythical method’ of modernist poets.
The incorporation of mythology is a distinctive feature of all major poets from 1920s to
the middle of the present century. They fused biblical history, heredity, myths and
prophecy with their own visions, and intuitions. These modernist poets believed that
such an integrative mythology, or ‘mythical method,’ as Eliot commented on Joyce’s
Ulysses, whether inherited or invented was essential to all literature of this era.
A myth is a story of ancient origin particular to a cultural group which serves to explain
the reason behind the forces of nature or to provide a rationale for social customs.
The unifying mythology of modernist literature is indicative of their discontentedness
and disillusionment with the age of science and mechanisations, a symbol of the

Vallaths TES 39
 unintelligibility of the present. T. S. Eliot’s The Wasteland is considered a heap of broken
images from the past to the recent present. Ezra Pound’s long poem, ‘The Cantos’
includes characters from Homer’s Odyssey and Dante’s The Divine Comedy. It is
considered as ‘a poem including history.’ W. B. Yeats undertook to construct his own
systematic mythology, which he expounded in ‘A Vision’ and embodied in a number of
lyric poems such as ‘The Second Coming’ and ‘Byzantium.’
72. Write a note on avant-garde movements in literature.
Avant-garde movements namely Dadaism, Surrealism, Futurism, Impressionism,
Expressionism and Imagism were modernist experimentations which deliberately
undertook to create an ever new artistic forms and styles and to introduce neglected
sometimes forbidden and bizarre subject matter. Modernist authors like Virginia Woolf,
T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, Wallace Stevens, Marcel Proust, Gertrude Stein, William Carlos
Williams, etc. shocked the sensibilities of the conventional reader by delineating
fragmented realism and embraced the harshly mechanical geometric rationality of
technology.
73. Write a note on Imagism.
Imagism, a modernist avant-garde poetic movement that flourished in England and
America under the influence of the poetic theory of T. E. Hulme from 1912 to 1917,
includes major writers like Ezra Pound, Amy Lowell, D. H. Lawrence, HD, Richard
Aldington and William Carlos Williams. A typical imagist poem written in free verse
renders as tersely and as precisely as possible without any comment or generalization,
the writer’s impression of an object or scene through metaphor or juxtaposing its
interrelations. The movement as such did not last long as a concerted movement but
influenced modernist writers like W. B. Yeats and T. S. Eliot.
74. What are the features of the poets of the 1930s?
The 1930s saw the emergence of a new school of poetry—result of another Oxford
movement for it originated at Oxford. The leaders of this new poetry—W. H. Auden,
Stephen Spender, Louis Macneice and C. Day Lewis (all leftist) and some of them even
fellow travellers of the Communist party. Extremely alive to the problem of the thirties,
they wrote on contemporary themes: the Spanish Civil War, the persecution of Jews, the
rise of Nazism in Europe and these poets voiced the concern and anxiety of the ordinary
man. Yet by the beginning of WW II all these poets became disillusioned and each went
his own way. Imagery was drawn from machinery, slums and social conditions that
prevailed; their poetry is political, argumentative and socially committed. The group of
poets was also known as the ‘Auden group’ or ‘pink poets.’
75. What are the features of the New Apocalypse Movement?
A reaction against the rationalism of Auden’s generation, the New Apocalypse, a literary
movement that flourished in Europe before and after World War II, reinterpreted Freud
and Marx in the light of D. H. Lawrence’s Apocalypse (1931). Surrealism, psychoanalysis
and expressionism feature in the poems of G. S. Fraser, Nicholas Moore, Vernon Watkins
and Dylan Thomas which deploy religious, archetypal and biological imagery in rhetorical
patterns. The poems are romantic in their idiosyncratic individualism, their delight in
emotion and their idealization of natural energies.
76. In what ways were the Movement poets anti-romantic?
Among the various poetry groups which dominated the 1950s and 60s, the Movement
poets were identified for their anti-romantic and anti-modernist moods. Led by Robert
Conquest in his anthology New Lines, poets such as Philip Larkin, Ted Hughes, Elizabeth
Jennings, Geoffrey Hill, Thom Gunn, Donald Davie and D. J. Enright partook of the
virtues of the Movement group. Typical verse in this mode represented an anti-romantic
leaning with wry sobriety, urbaneness and formal discipline. Philip Larkin’s poems, ‘The
North Ship,’ ‘The Less Deceived’ and ‘the Whitsun Weddings’ strike a lugubrious and
pessimistic note following the World War II. Ted Hughes returns to the theme of violence
and death in his animal poems such as ‘The Hawk in the Rain,’ recalling the untamed
energies of nature. Seamus Heaney and Geoffrey Hill emerged as authoritative voices,

Vallaths TES 40
 building on the merits of Hughes and Larkin. Movement poetry was characterised by irony
and understatement and paraded the poet as an ordinary man belonging to the educated
middle class.
77. Write a note on Kitchen sink drama.
Kitchen sink drama, a term applied in the late 1950s to the plays of writers such as
Wesker, Delaney and Osborne, was written as a reaction against drawing room comedies
and middle class dramas and undermined the popularity of verse drama. Wesker’s
trilogy—Chicken Soup with Barley, Roots, and I’m Talking about Jerusalem—portray
working class or low middle class life with an emphasis on domestic realism.

LITERARY CRITICISM

78. How did Aristotle’s theory of mimesis differ from that of Plato?
Plato was the first to use the word ‘imitation’ in connection with poetry. Aristotle took
the word from his master but breathed new life and soul into it. Plato considered
imitation merely as mimicry or a servile copy of nature but Aristotle interpreted it as a
creative process. The poet while imitating reality transforms it into something new and
much higher. He brought the emotions within the range of imitation. Plato’s charge was
that poetry is an imitation of an imitation thus twice removed from truth and that the
poet beguiles us with lies. Plato condemned poetry on the ground that in the very nature
of things poets can have no idea of truth. Poetry is therefore “the mother of lies.”
Aristotle on the contrary, tells us that art imitates not the mere shadows of things, but
the ‘ideal reality’ embodied in every object of the world. Unlike Plato, Aristotle
established that mimesis (poetry) is neither useless nor dangerous.
79. What according to Longinus are the sources of the Sublime?
By the word ‘sublime’ Longinus means “elevation” or “loftiness”—a certain distinction
and excellence in composition.” He finds five principal sources of the sublime, the first
two of which are largely the gifts of nature, and the remaining three the gifts of art: (i)
grandeur of thought, (ii) capacity for strong emotion, that is vehement, inspired and
genuine emotion, (iii) appropriate use of figures, the chief being asyndation, hyperbaton
and periphrasis, (iv) nobility of diction, (v) dignity of composition or a happy synthesis of
all the preceding elements. The fountainhead of Miltonic poetics, true sublime pleases
all and “pleases always” due to its universal validity in a language which instinctively
uplifts our souls.
80. Write an illustrative note on Ben Jonson’s theory of comedy.
Propounded by classical, Elizabethan playwright Ben Jonson in the Induction to Everyman
in His Humour, Comedy of Humours is based on the medieval physiological theory of four
bodily humours—phlegm, blood, choler, melancholy. Disproportion or imbalance in any of
these four will create a typical distortion or eccentricity (phlegmatic, sanguine, choleric,
melancholic) in the character as in Volpone, Mosca, Corbaccio, Corvino, etc. Jonson’s
theory of humours is a criticism of romantic drama which allows the most ridiculous
probabilities of plot and scene. Though his theory has often been dismissed as pedantic,
the influence of his type-characters can be seen in the later Restoration playwrights,
Wycherley and Congreve.
81. Examine Sidney’s Apologie for Poetrie as an epitome of the Renaissance poetics.
Published in 1595 four decades after Tottel’s Miscellany Sidney’s Apologie for Poetrie
replied to the then prevalent puritan attacks (especially Gosson’s The School of Abuse)
and betrays the twin renaissance influences of Classicism and Romanticism. Glorifying
poetry as the most superior art Sidney highlights the element of creativity in true poetry
and its dual function—to teach and to delight. Written in an ornate renaissance style

Vallaths TES 41
 Apologie comments on particular features of Elizabethan literature such as the use of
metre and rhyme, tragicomedy and other artistic innovations, and endorses the
Eurocentric view. It draws from classical and continental philosophers such as Plato,
Aristotle, Minturno, Scaliger and Castelvetro.
82. Why does Sidney consider poetry the most superior art form?
In “Apologie for Poetrie” Sidney defended poetry against the attack of Puritans like
Stephen Gosson. Sidney begins his defence by emphasizing the antiquity and universality
of poetry. Poetry in all nations has preceded other branches of learning. The poet is a
creator and prophet. Poetry is superior both to history and philosophy. Philosophy
presents merely abstract precepts which cannot be understood by the young. History
deals with concrete facts of examples of virtue but from these facts, the readers must
themselves derive universal truths. But poetry combines both these advantages. It
presents universal truths like philosophy but it does it through concrete examples like
history. It teaches us virtue in a way intelligible even to the ordinary man. Poetry does
not merely show the way but also gives it so sweet a prospect as will entice any man to
follow it. Poetry promotes virtuous action. So Sidney considers poetry the most superior
art form.
83. Examine Dryden as a liberal neoclassicist.
Dryden is a neoclassical critic, and as such he deals in his criticism with issues of form
and morality in drama. However, he is not a rulebound critic, tied down to the classical
unities or to notions of what constitutes a “proper” character for the stage. He relies
heavily on Cornielle—and through him on Horace—which places him in a pragmatic
tradition. Dryden refused to pay servile homage even to Aristotle. He justified the
violation of the unities and tragicomedy. He admired Ben Jonson and other classicists
while he praised Chaucer and said he loved Shakespeare.
84. Discuss Dr. Johnson’s defence of Shakespeare’s violation of the unities.
Though stringent in his classical criticism, Dr. Johnson justified Shakespeare’s violation
of the unities. Shakespeare’s histories being neither comedies nor tragedies are not
subject to the classical rules of criticism. The only unity they need is consistency and
naturalness in characterization. In spite of his faults Shakespeare has maintained the
unity of action. His plots have a beginning, middle and an end, and one event is logically
connected to another. Johnson feels that the unities of time and place give more trouble
to the author than pleasure to the audience. The unities are not essential to drama.
Their violation often results in variety and instruction. Johnson also claimed that
Shakespeare is justified on grounds of nearness to life and nature.
85. Discuss Wordsworth’s theory of poetry.
The Preface to the Lyrical Ballads (1798), written by Wordsworth records his views on
poetry, poetic diction and theme, besides explicating the aims and objectives of the
Romantic Movement. It contains the famous maxim that all good poetry is ‘the
spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings,’ which takes its origins from ‘emotions
recollected in tranquility.’ Wordsworth declares that the principal objective of the
Romantic poem was ‘to choose incidents and situations from common life, to describe
them in a selection of language used by man and to throw over them a certain colouring
of the imagination so that ordinary things are presented in an unusual aspect.’ He also
claimed that rustic life was generally chosen for that condition which proved to be better
soil for the flowering of the essential passions of the heart. “Poetry does not shed tears
that angels weep, but natural and human tears.”
The process of poetic creation takes place in a person who is endowed with a lively
sensibility and comprehensive knowledge of human nature. The real function of poetry is
to give pleasure, but poetry devoid of morality is worthless. Wordsworth does not
differentiate between the language of prose and metrical composition. Critics like T. S.
Eliot and Coleridge have blamed Wordsworth for being self-contradiction and
exaggeration.

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86. Write a short note on Coleridge’s concepts of fancy and imagination.
The distinction between fancy and imagination is the key element in Coleridge’s theory
of poetry and in his general theory of mental processes. In the 18th century both words
were used synonymously to denote a faculty of mind, which is distinguished from reason,
judgement and memory, that which recesses images through sensory perception and
reorders them into new combinations. In the 13th chapter of Biographia Literaria (1817)
Coleridge attributes the reordering function of sensory images to the lower faculty which
he calls fancy.
Fancy deals with “fixities and definites. Fancy is indeed no other but a mode of
memory emancipated from the order of time and space.” Fancy is a mechanical process
which reassembles the fixities and definites which come readymade from senses into a
different spatial and temporal order from that which they were originally perceived.
Imagination that produces a higher order of poetry dissolves, dissipate and diffuses in
order to recreate. Imagination is able to create rather than reassemble, is an organic
faculty which operates not like a sorting machine but like a living and growing plant.
Imagination “generates and produces a form of its own.” The faculty of imagination
assimilates and synthesizes the most desperate element into an organic whole—a newly
generated unity, constituted by living interdependence of parts whose identity cannot
survive their removal from the whole.
Critics after Coleridge who distinguished these two concepts considered fancy as the
faculty that produces lesser, lighter and humorous kind of poetry and imagination as the
faculty that produces a higher, more serious and more passionate poetry.
87. Write a note on Negative Capability.
The term introduced by Keats in 1817, negative capability denotes the fascinating felicity
of Shakespeare to be in uncertainties, mysteries and doubts without an irritable reaching
after fact and reason. Keats contrasted this with Coleridge’s incapacity to be content
with half-knowledge. This quality characterises an impersonal objective author, who
maintains an aesthetic distance, an idea later explored by T. S. Eliot.
88. What is Objective Correlative?
Objective correlative, a term casually introduced by Eliot in “Hamlet and His Problems”
(1919), is a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events which is the formula and the
only way of expressing that particular emotion, and which will evoke in the reader the
same emotion the author intended. Contemporary critics have critiqued the term for
dealing merely with what represents an emotion rather than how it is represented. Eliot
owes the concept to the New Critical repudiation of indirect poetic expression.
89. What are T. S. Eliot’s views on tradition?
Eliot’s “Tradition and the Individual Talent” (1919) is an unofficial manifesto of Eliot’s
critical creed. Eliot is of the opinion that the writer must have faith in some system of
writing and that a work of art must conform to the past tradition. Tradition is the gift of
the historic sense. A writer with this sense of tradition is fully conscious of his own
generation, of his place in the present, and also his relationship with the writers of the
past. Tradition represents the accumulated custom—“the means by which the vitality of
the past enriches the life of the present”—so its knowledge is essential for noble
achievements. According to Eliot, a work of art must conform to tradition in such a way
that it alters the tradition as much as it is directed by it.
90. What is Eliot’s theory of impersonality in art?
It was Eliot’s rejection of Romanticism that led him to formulate the Theory of
Impersonality. In his essay “Tradition and the Individual Talent” (1919) he posited that
the poet has no personality to express, but is a particular medium, a catalyst, in which
impressions and experiences combine in peculiar and unexpected ways. Eliot
differentiates between the author, the person behind the work and writer, the person in
the work. The more perfect the artist the greater will be the separation between the
man who suffers and the mind which creates. Rejecting Romantic subjectivism Eliot said

Vallaths TES 43
 that poetry is not inspiration but organisation. According to him poetry is neither an
expression of personality nor of emotion but an escape from both. It is not romantic
spontaneity but the poet’s unifying sensibility that matters. Objectivity and
impersonality can be attained by finding an objective correlative. Eliot was influenced by
Shelley’s Defence of Poetry which states that the creative mind is like a fading coal
which transitorily brightens up. Freudian implication is also present in the distinction
between the conscious and unconscious minds. Eliot’s theory anticipated Barthes’ Death
of the Author.
91. Explain Dissociation of Sensibility.
T. S. Eliot in “The Metaphysical Poets” (1921) claimed that Donne and the other
Metaphysical poets possessed a sensibility which could devour any kind of experience.
They manifested “a direct sensuous apprehension of thought” and felt “their thought as
immediately as the odour of a rose.” In the 17th century a dissociation of sensibility set
in, from which English poetry never recovered. This dissociation from emotion and
sensuous perception was aggravated by the influence of Milton and Dryden. According to
Eliot, these and later poets in English either thought or felt but did not think or feel as
an act of unified sensibility.
92. Discuss the concept of Ambiguity.
Ambiguity, plurisignation, polysemy, a non-pejorative term for the capacity of language
to sustain multiple meanings, as William Empson puts it, arises from any verbal nuance,
however light, which gives room for alternate reactions to the same piece of language. In
literary parlance, ambiguity is not a mistake in denotation to be avoided but a resource
of connotation to be exploited. In Seven Types of Ambiguity (1930), Empson argues that
the richness, the complexity and concentration of literary language derives from the
seven types of amibiguity. The notion that ambiguity is the root condition of all literary
discourse, a notion that arises from I. A. Richards’ distinction between the scientific and
the poetic uses of the language is an integral aspect of the New Critical view that irony,
paradox and tension are definitive aspects of the work of art.
93. Write a short note on New Criticism.
New Criticism was the dominant trend in English and American literary criticism of the
early 20th century from 1920 to early 1960s. Its adherents were emphatic in their
advocacy of close reading and attention to texts themselves and their rejection of
criticism based on extra textual sources, especially biography. At their best, the New
Critics’ readings were brilliant, articulately argued and broad in scope but sometimes
they were idiosyncratic and moralistic. In literary criticism, close reading places great
emphasis on the particular over the general. Among the best known figures associated
are T.S. Eliot, F.R. Leavis, I.A. Richards, W.K. Wimsatt, Monroe Beardsley, William
Empson, Robert Penn Warren, John Crowe Ransom and Cleanth Brooks. Wimsatt and
Beardsley’s essay ‘The Intentional Fallacy’ argued strongly against any discussion of an
author’s “intention” or “intended meaning.” Several of the New Critics were enamoured
above all else of ambiguity and multiple simultaneous meanings.
94. Explain the concept of ‘close reading.’
‘Close reading’ is the distinctive critical practice of New Criticism, an Anglo-American
Formalist trend which lasted from the 1920s to the 1960s. It involves the detailed
analysis of meanings and interactions or words, figures of speech, images and symbols in
a text.
New Critics eschew any references to the biography and temperament of the author of
a given work, and social and historical conditions at the time of its production. They
warn against the affective fallacy—the error of evaluating a poem or work by its
emotional effects on the readers. ‘Close reading’ also does not allow for the intentional
fallacy—the folly of resorting to external evidence—for the intentions—designs and
purpose of its author.
The principle of New Criticism is basically verbal, and the linguistic elements are
prioritised over the characters, central ideas and plot. The distinction between literary

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 genres does not play an essential role there. The linguistic elements comprise of words,
images and symbols, which are organised around a central theme. The form of the work
is said to be a ‘structure of meanings,’ in which an ‘organic unity’ is achieved by a play
and counterplay of ‘thematic imagery’ and ‘symbolic action.’ In a successful work of
literature, the linguistic elements manifest a ‘tension,’ ‘irony’ and ‘paradox’ to achieve
a ‘reconciliation of diverse impulses’ and ‘an equilibrium of opposed forces.’
The method of ‘close reading’ derives from I. A. Richards’ Practical Criticism and
William Empson’s ‘The Seven Types of Ambiguity.’ Other notable critics in the mode of
New Criticism are John Crowe Ransom, Cleanth Brooks and W. K. Wimsatt.

LITERARY THEORY

95. What are the basic tenets of Russian Formalism?

Russian Formalism, developed during the second half of the 20th century, emphasized the
autonomous nature of poetic language and its specificity as an object of study for
literary criticism. Formalism views literature primarily as a specialized mode of language
and proposes a fundamental opposition between the literary use of language and its
ordinary practical use. The function of literary language is to offer the reader a special
mode of experience by drawing attention to its formal features. Literariness emerges
when these formal features or devices are foregrounded to give an effect of
estrangement or defamiliarization. Boris Eichenbaum, Viktor Shklovsky and Roman
Jakobson were the main exponents of this movement, the main drawback of which was
the complete exclusion of social values and subject matter from critical reading.
96. Write a short note on Semiotics.
Semiotics or semiology are alternative names for the systematic study of signs in diverse
kinds of signifying systems, not limited to language systems and verbal signs. A great
variety of human actions and productions—our bodily postures and gestures, our social
rituals, clothes, meals, the buildings we inhabit—are all signs, which convey ‘shared’
meanings to members of a particular culture.
Linguistics is the study of verbal signs exclusively, but the terms and concepts of which
have been extended to the whole of semiotics. A great number of such concepts have
been contributed by Ferdinand de Saussure in his Course in General Linguistics and are as
follows:
1. A sign consists of a signifier and a signified.
2. The identity of all elements of a system are not determined by positive qualities,
but by differences.
3. The aim of any semiotic approach is to regard the parole (an instance of
signification) as merely a path to uncovering the langue (general signifying
system).
Semioticians are also structuralists, where they replace the term ‘sign’ with ‘text.’ In
‘Structural Anthropology,’ Claude-Levi Strauss extended Saussurean linguistic principles
to the study of myths and culture. Jacques Lacan applied semiotics to psychoanalysis and
Roland Barthes advocated it in literary texts. C. S. Pierce, Michel Foucault and Umberto
Eco are other renowned structuralist-semioticians.
97. How would you account for the theory that the author is dead?
From the traditional perspective of humanism, the author is a creative individual,
symbolically male, who is the producer of a written text. This “Established” notion of
Author-God, revered throughout the history of literate civilization, has been revised and
undermined especially by the poststructuralist Roland Barthes in his 1968 essay “Death of
the Author.”

Vallaths TES 45
 According to Barthes, the Author is not a unique, authoritative individual who is the
unchanging source of valid meaning. He is but an ideological construct who mediates
between the innumerable “traces” of meaning that constitute a text. The individual
Author is replaced by the writer, an agent or medium created in language rather than
before or after it, a concept reminiscent of Eliot’s theory of impersonality in “Tradition
and the Individual Talent.” The text, irreducibly plural, a “weave of voices or codes,”
cannot be tied to a single Author who will fix the meaning. In Barthes’ view the Death of
the Author is a pre-requisite for the Birth of the Reader. A text is produced by its
Readings, where “Reading” is not the act of looking for hidden meanings, but the
production of new meanings from the “play” of the various codes of the text.
Michel Foucault has posited a related theory of author-function in “What is an Author”
where he debunks the authentic and personal presence of the author in a text. Barthes’
theory is also concomitant with Derridean deconstruction, where language is
acknowledged as a neutral medium for the expression of ideas, with the subject having
lost control over the production of meaning.
98. What are the basic precepts of deconstruction?
According to Jacques Derrida, as enunciated in his “Structure, Sign and Play in the
Discourse of Human Sciences” (1967), the whole of western philosophy is logocentric.
Structuralism presupposes hierarchies in binary oppositions, one of the dyad claiming to
be superior to the other. According to Derrida structuralism envisages a pre-existing
signified, beyond all differences in meanings of signifiers. This transcendental signified is
fictitious, it is a construct like several other concepts including god, truth, knowledge,
identity, meaning, etc. This is the case with various arts as well as literary texts which
are replete with many hierarchical presumptions to suit the particular ideology of the
author. According to poststructuralists, there is no “author” (he is dead—Barthes) and no
literary work. There is only the text or a tissue of textualities. Reading is replaced by the
act of writing (ecriture). The author’s mind is an imputed (or intermediary) space where
the action of writing precipitates the elements and codes of the pre-existing linguistic
and literary system, into a particular text. According to deconstructionists, these
elements are subject to subversion due to internal play of opposing forces. The reader
can read out of a text, several meanings each diverse and opposing from one another.
Meanings are under constant flux. According to Derrida the idea of the transcendental
signified is in an endless regress or aporia. He coins the term differance (difference
+deferment) which indicates not only that meaning differs, but it defers (gets postponed)
too. Meaning is disseminated among innumerable alternatives, negating any specific
meaning. Each text thus disseminates itself and in a critical reading deconstruction
simply happens. Deconstruction disagrees with the superiority of any privileged item in a
hierarchy. It subverts or undermines them constantly denying upper hand to any one
ideology. Of Grammatology, Writing and Difference and Speech and Phenomena are the
three other books where Derrida attempted to explicate these epoch making
observations.
99. Explain the concept of differance.
In his subversive commentary on Saussurean structuralism, Derrida coined the
portmanteau term différance, a homophone of “difference,” in which he uses the
spelling “-ance” instead of “-ence” to indicate a fusion of two senses of the French verb
“différer”: to be different, and to defer. This double sense points to the phenomenon
that, on the one hand, a text the proffered “effect” of having a significance that is the
product of its difference, but that on the other hand, since this significance can never
come to rest in an actual “presence” (which Derrida calls a “transcendental signified”),
its determinate specification is deferred from one linguistic interpretation to another in
a movement or “play.” A text cannot read itself; therein lies the provisionality of
différance. Derrida explained the eternal differing and deferring of meaning by the
example of the word “house” the meaning of which is determined by how it differs from
“shed”, “mansion”, “hotel”, “building”, “hovel”, “hours”, “hows”, “horse”, etc. than
how the word “house” may be tied to a certain picture of a traditional house. The idea

Vallaths TES 46
 of différance also brings with it the idea of ‘trace.’ That is, through the act of
différance, a sign leaves behind a ‘trace,’ which is whatever is left over after everything
‘present’ has been accounted for. Because all signifiers viewed as ‘present’ in western
thought will necessarily contain traces of other (absent) signifiers, the signifier can be
neither wholly present nor wholly absent.
100. Write a note on Jakobson’s discussion of the metaphoric and metonymic poles.
Jakobson’s structuralist discussion of metaphor and metonymy—the two fundamental
modes of signification begins by examining one of the basic principles of Saussurean
linguistics that language, like all systems of signs has a two-fold character, involving two
distinct operations—selection and combination. To produce a sentence we select words
from the appropriate set of paradigm of the English language and combine them
according to the rules of that language. Metaphor according to Jakobson is associated
with selection and similarity and therefore is the soul of romanticism, symbolism and
poetry; and metonymy is a matter of contiguity (closeness), combination and association
and is therefore predominant in realism and prose. Against the dominant critical view
that realism is absolutely free from any kind of embellishment Jakobson holds that a
realist or a poet following the path of metonymy figuratively digresses from the plot to
atmosphere and from the characters to the setting in space and time. Metaphors and
metonyms are verbal as well as visual and Jakobson’s semiotic theory is of great
relevance in literary as well as visual cultural studies. Jakobson’s discussion comes to an
end with a highly technical examination of aphasia, i.e. language disorder. According to
Jakobson aphasics tend to be more affected in one or the other of the selection and the
combination functions.
101. How does Poststructuralism critique ‘logocentrism’?
Poststructuralism or deconstruction, a critical perspective of the 1970s which displaced
structuralism, undertook to ‘decenter’ or ‘subvert’ the traditional claims for existence of
all foundations, such as knowledge, meaning, truth and the ‘subject.’ The French
thinker, Jacques Derrida who has become synonymous with post-structuralism, identifies
in all of Western philosophic tradition a logocentrism (or by extension phallogocentrism)
or to borrow a phrase from Martin Heidegger, a ‘metaphysics of presence.’ This
logocentrism holds that speech-thought (the logos) is a privileged, ideal and self-
preserving identity through which all discourses and meanings are derived.
One typical procedure of post-structuralism is its critique of all binary oppositions in
Western thought, in which one term is privileged or ‘centred’ over the other. For
example in the various dualities such as presence/absence, male/female,
speech/writing, identity/difference, truth/error, meaning/meaninglessness,
mastery/submission; the former denotes the privileged, central term associated with the
‘phallus’ or ‘logos.’ Post-structuralism attempts to invert these opposites and privilege
the subordinated term.
Alternatively, Derrida proposes that linguistic meaning is not ‘centred’ or ‘present,’
because the differential play (jeu) of language produces mere ‘effects’ or ‘traces’ of
meaning, which also contain many ‘absent’ signifiers. The portmanteau term ‘differance’
derived from the two senses of the French term ‘differer’—‘to differ’ and ‘to defer,’
undertakes to combat logocentrism. Rather than privileging commonness and similarity
of elements, post-structuralism emphasizes ‘differance’ and opposition.
Thus, post-structuralism proposes ‘anti-foundationalism’ to compete with and decenter
the logocentrism of Western philosophy and reverse historical power imbalances.
102. What is Feminism’s relation to Poststructuralism?
Feminism and Poststructuralism are engaged in a reciprocal relation, each nourishing and
strengthening the other. Feminism’s fundamental opposition to the traditional
logocentric concepts of binary opposites gave way to a serious debate. The
poststructuralist tendency to doubt the certainty of moral positions and distrust
rationality prompted feminists like Kristeva, Cixous and Irigaray to talk about fluid
narratives and hybrid identities. These coupled with concepts of play and differance and

Vallaths TES 47
 other poststructuralist ideas of truth/meaning as textual formed the founding principle
of the multiple feminism—lesbian, liberal, radical and so on. A variety of poststructural
philosophers have associated with feminism in various ways. Derridean deconstruction
has been a powerful tool to debunk the fixity of meanings enshrined in traditional
patriarchal texts. Nietzsche’s revaluation of values has given incentives to critically
inspect the past from a gynocritical perspective. Lacanian psycho-analysis has provided
insights into the formation of subjectivity as well as the possibility of a pre-linguistic
semiotic and fluid form of language against the symbolic order. The Foucauldian concept
of Power/Knowledge has empowered feminists to unravel the complex operations of
‘his’tory. Althusserian Marxism has provided a new awareness about man as a political
and economic being. Since the 1990s, taking into consideration new postmodern realities
feminism has turned towards deliberations entering on globalised capitalism and
cybernetics.
103. Examine Postmodernism’s use of parody and pastiche.
Postmodern art, which questions the validity of originality and authenticity, and bases
itself upon the theory of “disappearance of the real,” makes a wide-ranging use of the
techniques of parody and pastiche. Also a modernist device, parody is subversive and
analytic mimicry of an original, and in its critical ambivalence, embodies an ironic
sympathy towards the subject, as well as its creative expansion into something new.
Classic examples would be Cervantes’ Don Quixote, which parodies contemporary
romance, and Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey, a subversion of the Gothic novel.
The term parody, in its relation to pastiche, gained critical relevance because of
Fredric Jameson’s observation that in postmodern cultures parody has given way to
pastiche. Pastiche, according to him, is “blank parody,” superficial, empty mimicry
without a purpose. Pastiche, well-illustrated in James Joyce’s Ulysses, as well as the
serious, loving and reverential (though sometimes disrespectful) allusions to an original
work. While in Jameson’s view, such intertextual connections are symptomatic of the
anti-essentialist, anti-foundational principles of postmodernism, Linda Hutcheon, in her
analysis of texts like Fowles’s The French Lieutenant’s Woman, established both parody
and pastiche as ubiquitous in postmodern culture. Such deliberations of course fall back
on postmodernism’s excessive preoccupation with a hyperreal, technological and
globalized world, where identities are hybrid and genres intermingled in a complex
matrix of textualities.
104. Comment on Postmodernism’s perception of reality.
Postmodernism is best described by a denial of universal truth and objective reality as
projected by the Enlightenment ideals. It is marked by an incredulity towards
metanarratives which aim to describe reality ‘as it is.’ Rather, it claims that our sense of
reality and identity is constructed and transformed in time, in relation to our place,
social position and other factors.
Postmodernism goes one step further in saying that contemporary world is a
‘simulacrum,’ where reality has been replaced by false images, depths by surfaces. In
the book Simulations, Jean Baudrillard claims that social reality has been supplanted by
an endless procession of simulacra—virtual or fake realities simulated by the media. It is
not a mere duplication, but a substitution of the original by a false image.
Postmodernism marks a culture composed of disparate, fragmentary experiences and
images that constantly bombard the individual in music, video, television, advertising
and other forms of electronic media. Speed and ease of reproduction of these images
mean that they exist only as images, devoid of depth, coherence or originality. Thus
cultural productions such as the mass media, constantly generate re-appropriations and
recontextualisations of familiar cultural symbols and images. With the emergence of
computer technology anything not digitizable may cease to be knowledge. Virtual reality
games add another dimension of artificiality to postmodern life.
Thus, our experiences are fundamentally shifting away from reality to ‘hyperreality.’ In
a postmodern world, there are no originals, only copies, no territories, only maps. The
lines of difference between reality and artifice have blurred.

Vallaths TES 48
105. What is meant by the statement that subjectivity is decentred and fragmented?
The decentering of subjectivity is a recent anti-humanistic idea, which has sprung up
among structuralist and post-structuralist critics. While humanism focused on the human
being as an object of study, recent critics undertake to ‘decenter’ or eliminate the
‘subject’ or individual as a major ‘agency’ in effecting scientific and literary
achievements.
In literary criticism, structuralists evacuated the humanistic ‘author’ to a mere ‘space’
or location in which langue precipitates into a particular parole. ‘Man is a simple fold in
our language,’ says Michel Foucault, he will ‘disappear as soon as that knowledge has
found a new form.’ Deconstruction critics reduce the humanistic subject to one of the
‘effects’ engendered by the differential play of language. There is no longer a controlling
agency in language, and it is left to an unregulatable play of purely relational elements.
As Roland Barthes expressed dramatically, ‘As institution, the author is dead.’ A number
of psychoanalysts, Marxists and New Historicists, manifest this similar tendency to delete
the ‘agency’ of author. Instead, the human being is a product of diverse psychosocial
conditions and subjected to the uncontrollable workings of unconscious compulsions.
Alternatively, the subject is held to be a ‘construction’ or ‘site’ traversed by current
forms of ideology. In New Historicism, ‘readers’ too are stripped of all traditional
attributes of purposiveness and initiative. It is replaced by an impersonal process called
‘reading.’
Thus, in contemporary academic discourses individual is a decentred and fragmented
phenomenon, with no central identity or stable self. It is reduced to positions within a
shifting cultural, ideological signifying field.
106. What are the basic principles of Reader Response theory?
Reader response theories arose in a large measure as a counter reaction to the formalism
of the New Critics, in about the mid half of the twentieth century. They turn their
attention away from the concept of viewing a literary work as an achieved structure of
meanings to the ongoing mental process and reactions of the reader. Interpretation
becomes the key to meaning, but without the ultimate authority of the text or the
author. Thus, reader-response theorists contend that texts are ‘productions’ or
‘creations’ of the reader.
Wolfgang Iser, a reader-response critic who developed the phenomenological analysis
of Roman Ingarden, professes that literary texts consist of a number of gaps or
‘indeterminate’ elements, which must be filled in by the reader. He posits an ‘implied
reader’ who will respond to the ‘response-inviting structures’ in a text.
Psychoanalytic critics like Norman Holland have been concerned with the unconscious
of readers. Holland states that an individual reader’s subjective responses to a text is a
‘transactive’ encounter between the fantasies projected by the author and the defenses
and wish fulfilling fantasies of the reader’s own identity.
Hans Robert Jauss applies reader response theories historically to formulate the
reception-aesthetic theory. He sees the critical interpretations of a text as a continuing
‘dialectic’ or ‘dialogue’ between the text and the horizons of expectations of successive
generations of readers.
For Stanley Fish, who has pronounced the technique called affective stylistics,
interpretation is a communal affair. All meanings of a text are relative to the scheme of
a particular interpretative community.
Harold Bloom, the Yale critic, applied Freudian psychoanalysis to reading and put forth
his famous theory of “Anxiety of Influence” where he defines the ambivalent relation of
a young poet with his precursor. Bloom is the also the propounder of Antithetical
criticism, by which he defines every reading as a process of misreading.
Thus, reader response criticism is by no means a monolithic position, but encompasses
the views of numerous critics from various camps.

Vallaths TES 49
107. Describe the major concerns of Cultural Studies.
Cultural studies is a cross disciplinary enterprise for analysing the conditions that affect
the production, reception and cultural significances of all types of institutions. It deals
with literature as one of the many forms of signifying practices and examines how socio-
economic and political forces influence cultural phenomena and endow them with
“truth.” Cultural studies combine sociology, literary theory, media studies and other
disciplines and enquire into the commercialisation of culture/culture industry. The
British school of cultural studies drew upon the Frankfurt school theoreticians Adorno
and Horkheimer. In the content of cultural studies the text includes not only written
language but also films, soap operas, fashion and other cultural processes; and the line
of demarcation between the traditional high art and popular low art vanishes. Cultural
studies also inform disciplines like women’s studies, subaltern studies, etc.
108. Explain the concept of Intertextuality.
A term popularized by Julia Kristeva in her analysis of Bakhtin’s Dialogism and Carnival,
Intertextuality is a concept that informs Structuralist/Poststructuralist deliberations in
its contention that individual texts are inescapably related to other texts in a matrix of
irreducibly plural and provisional meanings. In other words, the concept defuses the
traditional humanist notion of the text as a self-contained, autonomous entity in the
view that it is but a “weave” of codes produced from other texts. Intertextuality
vindicates the Derridean view that there is nothing outside the text—which means that
all meanings reside in the interpretations and re-interpretations of texts and that no text
exists outside its interpretation. The intertextual connections are thus fundamental to
literary production, involving particular ways of seeing based on power relations, forms
of resistance and so on, which have their import in various theoretical disciplines
including Marxism, Feminism and Postcolonialism.
109. Define Bakhtin’s Theory of Carnivalisation.
It was in Rabelais and His World that Bakhtin proposed his theory of the “carnivalesque”
to describe the “joyful relativity” and “vitality” in a polyphonic novel. This literary
mode, drawing from the medieval carnival, an event of permitted licence, mocks and
subverts authority and flouts social norms by ribaldry, by introducing in the novel a
mingling of voices from diverse social strata. Bakhtin traces the occurrence of the
carnivalesque in ancient medieval and Renaissance writers, and in the novels of
Dostoevsky. The carnival, a post-structuralist subversion of social hierarchies, constitutes
a world-turned-upside-down, where ideas and truths are endlessly tested, contested and
thus de-privileged. The dialogic, polyphonic text thus endorses the “death of the author”
theory and debunks the unity of the text.
110. Write an essay on the textuality of history.
A ‘reciprocal concern with the historicity of texts and textuality of history’ is a phrase by
Louis Montrose which best describes the interests of new historicism, a mode of literary
study which became popular in the 1980s. Rather than a mere return to the practice of
attending to the historical context, new historicists conceive of a literary text as
‘situated’ or ‘embedded’ within the overall historical context. And, history is no longer
considered as a set of objective facts, best suited to form the ‘background’ of a text, but
rather a text in itself—which is open to interpretation and investigation.
The concepts and procedures of new historicism were inaugurated in the 1970s and
early 1980s, by scholars of the English Renaissance and Romanticism, in opposition to the
formalism of the New Critics. Stephen Greenblatt, a Renaissance scholar, introduced the
currency of the label ‘new historicism.’ Scholars like him analysed texts as discursive
‘sites’ which enacted the interests of the Tudor monarchy. They emphasized the role of
social and economic conditions in shaping a text such as literary patronage, censorship
and control of access to printing. They were careful to detect within them, the voices of
the oppressed, marginalized and the dispossessed.
Almost simultaneously, the students of the English Romantic period, developed parallel
conceptions that literary texts do not reflect an external reality, but they are

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‘representations’—or verbal products which are ‘ideological products’ and ‘cultural
constructs’ of conditions specific to their era. Historicists of Romantic literature,
stressed the political reading of a text, which aims to uncover these ideological disguises
and suppression in order to reveal the text’s true subject matter. The interpretative
procedures of their critical modes of thinking developed into that of new historicism and
it displaced deconstruction as the reigning mode of avant-garde critical procedures.
Stephen Greenblatt identifies the influence of various post-structuralist thinkers such
as Michel Foucault and Marxist theorists in his work. From Foucault, he assimilated the
new that the course of history between the past and the present is not coherent, but
riven by ‘fault lines.’ These ruptures were integrated into succeeding cultures by
‘epistemes’ or totalizing functions of power and knowledge. New historicists gathered
from various Marxist thinkers such as Louis Althusser, Frederic Jameson and Terry
Eagleton, the concept that ideology manifests itself in different ways in the discourse of
each of the institutions of an era including its literature.
Stephen Greenblatt, as a scholar of Renaissance literature introduced the ‘subversion
containment dialectic’ which has become a central practice of new historicism. In
reading Shakespeare’s The Tempest, he identifies a mode of power-discourse and
counter discourse in the dialogues between Prospero and Caliban, the imperialist
appropriator and expropriated native of his island respectively. He finds parallel patterns
of calculation, deceit and hypocrisy in the ‘Henry’ plays which simultaneously, do not
scruple to hide Elizabethan subcultures as represented by Falstaff. Greenblatt’s thesis is
that in order to sustain its power, any political order actively fosters ‘subversive’
elements, yet in such a way as to effectively ‘contain’ such challenges to the existing
order.
According to new historicists, history is nor a homogenous pattern of facts, which the
literature of the era will simply ‘reflect.’ It cannot be adverted to merely as the
‘material’ conditions which determine the particularities of a literary text in a unilateral
way. They reject the periodization of history which identifies similarities in life style,
cultural patterns and thought modes during a given period in time. Rather, they favour
the ordering of history only through the interplay of forms of power or epistemes. History
cannot be seen as the working out of ‘universal’ ideas, because we cannot know the
governing idea of the past and present. Furthermore, history is itself a form of social
oppression. Therefore, a literary text is in a state of constant interaction and
interchange with the ensemble of institutions, beliefs and cultural power-relations which
we call ‘history.’
The conceptual boundaries by which we discriminate between literary and non-literary
texts are dismissed by new historicists. These boundaries are instead regarded as entirely
permeable. To denote the two-way oscillatory relationship among literary texts and
other components of culture, they borrow terminology from the market place—
‘negotiation,’ ‘commerce,’ ‘exchange,’ ‘transaction’ and ‘circulation.’ The moment of
exchange is most interesting to new historicists. Stephen Greenblatt adds that
‘contemporary theory must situate itself . . . in the hidden places of negotiation and
exchange.’ He believes that the production and circulation of a work of art involves a
number of ‘negotiations’ which involve a ‘mutually profitable exchange.’ A social
symbolic capital is embedded into this production of literary texts and includes a ‘return
normally measured in pleasure and interest,’ based on ‘society’s dominant currencies,
money and prestige.’ New historicists seek cross-cultural phenomena such as metaphors,
ceremony and popular culture that transcend generic, historical and cultural lines. Thus
they concern themselves with extra literary matters—letters, diaries, films, paintings,
medical treatises, seeking out ‘texts’ in cross-cultural phenomena.
Concepts from deconstruction and dialogic criticism merge with that of new
historicism. Accordingly, literary texts incorporate a number of conflicting voices that
represent diverse social classes. It consists of a diversity of dissonant voices, which
express not only orthodox, but also the subordinated and subversive forces of the era, in
which the text was produced. Furthermore, the text comprises of unresolved conflicts of

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power, class, gender and diverse social groups that make up the real tensions that
underlie the surface meanings. These tensions are hidden behind the so-called artistic
resolution of a literary plot which yields pleasure to the reader.
New historicists view the ‘agency’ and autonomy of the author as an ideological illusion
generated by a capitalist culture. Like the authors who produce the literary texts, their
readers too, are ‘subjects’ who are constructed and positioned by the play of power and
ideology within the discourse of a particular era. Stephen Greenblatt remarks in
‘Renaissance Self Fashioning’ that the ‘human subject itself began to seem remarkably
unfree, the ideological product of the relations of power in a particular society.’ Insofar,
as the readers are concerned, all claims for the possibility of a disinterested evaluation
of a literary text are among the illusions of humanistic idealism. A reader will tend to
naturality or appropriate a text depending on the conformity of ideologies of the reader
with that of prescribed in the text. To mitigate the risk of unquestionably appropriating
a text from the past, the readers should hope to ‘distance’ or ‘estrange’ it to detect its
differences from the present ideological assumption.
Thus, as opposed to the distanced observation of history in ‘old’ historicism, new
historicism seeks to immerse itself in a culture to understand its ‘deep’ ways. ‘The text
is historical and history is textual’—these words by Frederic Jameson, propose the mutual
indispensability of textuality and history as components of late 20th century criticism.

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 ADDITIONAL TOPICS
(Prepared on the basis of questions asked in various UGC-NET exams)

The Lost Generation

Coined by Gertrude Stein, the term Lost Generation was popularized by Hemingway in his
epigraph to The Sun Also Rises. Cynical and disdainful of the Victorian notions of morality and
propriety of their elders and ambivalent about Victorian gender ideals, the post world war I
American writers eloped to the cosmopolitan culture of Paris. The bohemian, anti-
materialistic Generation of 1914, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, John Dos Passos,
Sherwood Anderson, Kay Boyle, Hart Crane, Ford Maddox Ford and Zelda Fitzgerald details the
pangs of the war till the Great Depression. "Farewell to Arms" depicted the uselessness for
words such as honor and glory, because they were not the first things in a soldier's mind as he
walked onto the battlefield. Hemingway's works were raw, and drilled with the notion that one
could be inside the characters mind, the concrete, and not around in the abstract view of his
works.

Black Feminism
The domination of the black male in the Civil Rights movement and the white woman in the
Feminist propaganda necessitated the emergence of Black Feminism detailing the inextricable
connection of sexism and racism. Alice Walker’s Womanism, Angela Davis’s “Women, Race
and Class” and Kimberle Crenshaw’s Identity Politics discusses the marginalized, intersectional
plight of the Black Women. The Combahee River Collective by Barbara Smith, hierarchies a
society with the white man at the centre and declare that the major systems of oppression are
interlocking and began creating theory and developing a new movement which spoke to the
combination of problems, sexism, racism, classism, etc., that they had been battling.

Victorian Compromise
The Victorian period (1837-1901) was marked by the industrial revolution and a resultant deep
chasm in the society splitting the rich and the poor, the individual and the society. The
particular situation, which saw prosperity and progress on the one hand, and poverty, ugliness
and injustice on the other, which opposed ethical conformism to corruption, moralism and
philanthropy to money and capitalistic greediness, and which separated private life from
public behavior, is usually referred to as the "Victorian Compromise". While Tennyson and
Browning represented pillars in Victorian poetry, Dickens and Eliot contributed to the
development of the English novel.

SYMBOLISM IN VANITY FAIR

Thackeray takes symbols from everyday life, from the classics, and from the Bible. He
shows Rebecca ensnaring Joseph in a tangle of green silk, at their first acquaintance. As Becky
climbs the social stairway, she is likened to a spider. At the close of the book, she has literally
entangled and destroyed Joseph just as a spider would its victim. She sucked his money, his
vitality, his personality from him. She did not reduce Rawdon to such a shell, but she played
Delilah to his Samson.
At the charade party Rebecca plays Clytemnestra, symbolic of her destruction first of
Rawdon, second of Joseph. (Clytemnestra killed her husband, Agamemnon, when her lover’s
courage failed.) Rebecca is also called Circe, the siren who lured men to their death. Sir Pitt
refers to the Bute Crawleys as Beauty and the Beast, a symbolic hint that Bute has married a
battle-axe, which he has.
The Osborne household keeps time by a clock representing the sacrifice of Iphigenia.
Iphigenia, daughter of Clytemnestra and Agamemnon, was sacrificed by her father for success
in war, another route to power and position. Old Osborne tries to sacrifice George to a
marriage for money; he destroys Miss Jane’s one romance for his own selfish convenience. The
Iphigenia clock, then, symbolizes the complete subordination of the Osbornes to money and
social success.

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 Amelia’s giving up Georgy is compared to Hannah’s giving up Samuel. The Bible story has
religious significance; Hannah gives up her son to the Lord. In Vanity Fair, Amelia, though she
is not of Vanity Fair, surrenders her son to advantages that money and position can provide.
The symbol here may be ironic.

GRAVEDIGGERS’ SCENE IN HAMLET (ACT V, SC. 1)

The gravediggers are designated as “clowns” in the stage directions and prompts, and it is
important to note that in Shakespeare’s time the word clown referred to a rustic or peasant,
and did not mean that the person in question was funny or wore a costume.
The gravediggers represent a humorous type commonly found in Shakespeare’s plays: the
clever commoner who gets the better of his social superior through wit. At the Globe Theater,
this type of character may have particularly appealed to the “groundlings,” the members of
the audience who could not afford seats and thus stood on the ground. Though they are usually
figures of merriment, in this scene the gravediggers assume a rather macabre tone, since their
jests and jibes are all made in a cemetery, among bones of the dead. Their conversation about
Ophelia, however, furthers an important theme in the play: the question of the moral
legitimacy of suicide under theological law. By giving this serious subject a darkly comic
interpretation, Shakespeare essentially makes a grotesque parody of Hamlet’s earlier “To be,
or not to be” soliloquy (III.i), indicating the collapse of every lasting value in the play into
uncertainty and absurdity.
Hamlet’s confrontation with death, manifested primarily in his discovery of Yorick’s skull,
is, like Ophelia’s drowning, an enduring image from the play. However, his solemn theorizing
explodes in grief and rage when he sees Ophelia’s funeral procession, and his assault on
Laertes offers a glimpse of what his true feelings for Ophelia might once have been. Laertes’
passionate embrace of the dead Ophelia again advances the subtle motif of incest that hangs
over their brother-sister relationship. Interestingly, Hamlet never expresses a sense of guilt
over Ophelia’s death, which he indirectly caused through his murder of Polonius. In fact, the
only time he even comes close to taking responsibility for Polonius’s death at all comes in the
next and last scene, when he apologizes to Laertes before the duel, blaming his “madness” for
Polonius’s death. This seems wholly inadequate, given that Hamlet has previously claimed
repeatedly only to be feigning madness. But by the same token, to expect moral completeness
from a character as troubled as Hamlet might be unrealistic. After all, Hamlet’s defining
characteristics are his pain, his fear, and his self-conflict. Were he to take full responsibility
for the consequences of Polonius’s death, he would probably not be able to withstand the
psychological torment of the resulting guilt.
A notable minor motif that is developed in this scene is Hamlet’s obsession with the
physicality of death. Though many of his thoughts about death concern the spiritual
consequences of dying—for instance, torment in the afterlife—he is nearly as fascinated by the
physical decomposition of the body. This is nowhere more evident than in his preoccupation
with Yorick’s skull, when he envisions physical features such as lips and skin that have
decomposed from the bone. Recall that Hamlet previously commented to Claudius that
Polonius’s body was at supper, because it was being eaten by worms (IV.iii). He is also
fascinated by the equalizing effect of death and decomposition: great men and beggars both
end as dust. In this scene, he imagines dust from the decomposed corpse of Julius Caesar being
used to patch a wall; earlier, in Act IV, he noted, “A man may fish with the worm that have
eat of a king, and eat of the fish that hath fed of that worm,” a metaphor by which he
illustrates “how a king may go a progress through the guts of a beggar” (IV.iii.26–31).

INDUCTION SCENE IN TAMING OF THE SHREW

The Induction is an unusual feature of this play. None of Shakespeare’s other plays begins
with a framing story, in which a full five-act play is performed within another play. The story
and the characters involved in the Induction have nothing directly to do with the main play,
and after its introduction this story is only reintroduced briefly and never fully developed.
Another play from the mid-1590s, however, entitled The Taming of a Shrew and probably
based on Shakespeare’s work, features Sly’s commentary throughout the main story. At the
end of the main story, Sly declares his intention to tame his own wife as Petruccio has tamed
Katherine.

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 Critics disagree about why Shakespeare begins The Taming of the Shrew with the
Induction. The play proper could obviously stand on its own, but the story of the lord’s
practical joke on Christopher Sly does reinforce one of the central themes of the main play.
Sly’s story dramatizes the idea that a person’s environment and the way he or she is treated
by others determines his or her behavior—an idea that Katherine’s story in the main play also
illustrates. The lord thrusts Sly into a playacting world and portrays his new role as coming into
being through no will of his own. The lord’s huntsman emphasizes this when asked if Sly would
fall for the deception and forget himself. “Believe me, lord, I think he cannot choose,” he
responds (Induction.I.38). The huntsman’s words could apply equally well to Katherine.
Controlled by two wealthy and powerful men—her father, Baptista, and her suitor, Petruccio—
Katherine is forced to play the part of a wife, a social role that she initially rejects. The
implication that Katherine, like Sly, “cannot choose” suggests that she is as much a plaything
of Petruccio as Sly is of the lord.
The Induction also introduces the topic of marriage into the play. Sly resists all the
servants’ attempts to convince him that he is a lord until they tell him that he has a wife, at
which point he immediately reverses himself: “Am I a lord? And have I such a lady?”
(Induction.II.66). Shakespeare emphasizes Sly’s about-face by switching Sly’s speech pattern to
blank verse (unrhymed lines of iambic pentameter, spoken primarily by Shakespeare’s noble
characters). Before, Sly had spoken only in prose. The humor of the situation is obvious:
though Sly is at first preoccupied with making sense of his outrageous change of
circumstances, as soon as he discovers that he might be able to be physically gratified, he
immediately stops caring whether his situation is real or fantastical, commanding his wife to
“undress you and come now to bed” (Induction.II.113). Shakespeare here playfully introduces a
number of ideas that receive further attention later in the play, such as the idea that marriage
is something that people use for their own benefit rather than a reflection of some deeper
truth about the married couple. Moreover, the roles of class, gender, and marital status, which
in ordinary life seem to be set in stone, here become matters of appearance and perception,
subject to manipulation by the characters or the playwright. Indeed, the Induction primes
Shakespeare’s audience to think critically about what he will present next.

BLAKE’S SONGS OF INNOCENCE AND EXPERIENCE

Blake’s Songs of Innocence and Experience (1794) juxtapose the innocent, pastoral world
of childhood against an adult world of corruption and repression; while such poems as “The
Lamb” represent a meek virtue, poems like “The Tyger” exhibit opposing, darker forces. Thus
the collection as a whole explores the value and limitations of two different perspectives on
the world. Many of the poems fall into pairs, so that the same situation or problem is seen
through the lens of innocence first and then experience. Blake does not identify himself wholly
with either view; most of the poems are dramatic--that is, in the voice of a speaker other than
the poet himself. Blake stands outside innocence and experience, in a distanced position from
which he hopes to be able to recognize and correct the fallacies of both. In particular, he pits
himself against despotic authority, restrictive morality, sexual repression, and institutionalized
religion; his great insight is into the way these separate modes of control work together to
squelch what is most holy in human beings.
The Songs of Innocence dramatize the naive hopes and fears that inform the lives of
children and trace their transformation as the child grows into adulthood. Some of the poems
are written from the perspective of children, while others are about children as seen from an
adult perspective. Many of the poems draw attention to the positive aspects of natural human
understanding prior to the corruption and distortion of experience. Others take a more critical
stance toward innocent purity: for example, while Blake draws touching portraits of the
emotional power of rudimentary Christian values, he also exposes--over the heads, as it were,
of the innocent--Christianity’s capacity for promoting injustice and cruelty.
The Songs of Experience work via parallels and contrasts to lament the ways in which the
harsh experiences of adult life destroy what is good in innocence, while also articulating the
weaknesses of the innocent perspective (“The Tyger,” for example, attempts to account for
real, negative forces in the universe, which innocence fails to confront). These latter poems
treat sexual morality in terms of the repressive effects of jealousy, shame, and secrecy, all of
which corrupt the ingenuousness of innocent love. With regard to religion, they are less

Vallaths TES 55
concerned with the character of individual faith than with the institution of the Church, its
role in politics, and its effects on society and the individual mind. Experience thus adds a layer
to innocence that darkens its hopeful vision while compensating for some of its blindness.
The style of the Songs of Innocence and Experience is simple and direct, but the language
and the rhythms are painstakingly crafted, and the ideas they explore are often deceptively
complex. Many of the poems are narrative in style; others, like “The Sick Rose” and “The
Divine Image,” make their arguments through symbolism or by means of abstract concepts.
Some of Blake’s favorite rhetorical techniques are personification and the reworking of Biblical
symbolism and language. Blake frequently employs the familiar meters of ballads, nursery
rhymes, and hymns, applying them to his own, often unorthodox conceptions. This
combination of the traditional with the unfamiliar is consonant with Blake’s perpetual interest
in reconsidering and reframing the assumptions of human thought and social behavior.

PORTER SCENE IN MACBETH

Macbeth’s famous soliloquy at the beginning of this act introduces an important theme:
visions and hallucinations caused by guilt. The “dagger of the mind” that Macbeth sees is not
“ghostly” or supernatural so much as a manifestation of the inner struggle Macbeth feels as he
contemplates murdering Duncan. It “[marshals him] the way [he] was going,” leading him
toward the bloody deed he will do (II.i 50-54). The same can be said for the ghostly voice
Macbeth thinks he hears as he kills Duncan as well as the ghostly vision of Banquo at the feast
in Act 3. In fact, almost all the supernatural elements in this play could be (and often are)
read as psychological rather than ghostly occurrences. If this is the case, then, one must
question the role of the witches. Are they, too, products of Macbeth’s fevered mind rather
than real presences? The fact that they do no more that give voice to the ambitions Macbeth
already harbors would seem to confirm this idea, but then there is the fact that Banquo also
sees these witches and hears their prophesy in act one. Their role continues to be ambiguous
throughout the course of the play.
The “dagger of the mind” is only one of many psychological manifestations in the play.
While waiting for the opportunity to kill Duncan, Macbeth finds that he is unable to pray. A
psychological literary analyst would read this as a physical inability to speak caused by
Macbeth’s paralyzing doubt about the correctness of the murder. The inner world of the
psyche invades the physical world. The same can be said for the voice that Macbeth hears
saying “Macbeth shall sleep no more” (II.ii 56). Freud analyzed his patients’ dreams and
interpreted them in order to provide an insight into the waking world. Macbeth cannot sleep;
he is kept from the rest he needs by the guilt he feels over Duncan’s murder. If he has
consigned Duncan to eternal rest, he lives in eternal anxiety and torment over his bloody
deeds.
Macbeth’s troubled sleep is a metaphor for his troubled existence as well as the troubled
state of the country. In Shakespeare’s plays, the king was a symbol of the country he ruled (in
his history plays, characters are often referred to by the names of their lands rather than their
surnames). Therefore, if the king is troubled as Macbeth obviously is there are disturbances in
the country. This kind of relationship between Macbeth himself and the country at large is
seen in the conversation between Ross and an old man in scene four. The old man reports that
“by the clock Œtis day, / And yet dark night strangles the traveling lamp” (II.iv 8-9). This
image of the darkness strangling the light of day is a meteorological manifestation of the
murder of Duncan; the light of nature is suffocated just as Duncan’s life was extinguished.
Victorian writer John Ruskin called this kind of mirroring of a character’s psychological state in
the weather and atmosphere the “pathetic fallacy.” And the pathetic fallacy abounds in this
play. The old man describes Duncan’s two noble horses eating each other and an owl eating a
falcon; these occurrences echo the slaughter of one noble man by another. The unnatural
murder of Duncan plunges the country into physical as well as mental turmoil.
The image of an owl hunting a falcon is part of a greater framework of symbolism centered
around birds in this play. For example, when Duncan approaches Inverness in act one, he
comments on the martlets he sees nesting on the castle walls. He takes this as a good sign
martlets are lucky birds. Lady Macbeth mentions earlier in this scene that there are ravens
croaking on the battlements, and takes this as a harbinger of Duncan’s death (I.v 45-46).
Duncan, the trusting optimist, sees lucky birds, whereas Lady Macbeth sees fateful ones.

Vallaths TES 56
Perhaps both are right in any event, “fair” certainly becomes “foul” for Duncan as the luck of
the martlets he sees becomes the death foreseen by Lady Macbeth in the ravens. In act two,
characters discuss or see birds in almost every scene. While Lady Macbeth is waiting for
Macbeth to finish killing Duncan, for example, she hears an owl hooting and calls the owl a
“fatal bellman,” a bird whose call is like a bell tolling for Duncan’s death (II.ii 5). The owl
could also be “fatal” in terms of acting as an instrument of Fate, just as Macbeth is in some
ways an instrument of Fate through the intervention of the Weird Sisters (keeping in mind that
“wyrd” means “fate”).
If both Macbeth and the owl are instruments of fate, it is safe to say that the owl is a
metaphor for Macbeth himself. Just like an owl, which sleeps during the day and hunts at
night, Macbeth “hunts” Duncan in the middle of the night, and then finds that he suffers from
insomnia. The old man describes an owl hunting and killing a falcon; falcons “royal” birds in
that the nobility uses them to hunt with, so in this situation the falcon represents Duncan and
the owl represents Macbeth. Is the owl Macbeth’s familiar? The Weird Sisters each seem to
have an animal familiar a cat, a hedgehog, and another animal named “Harpier” so perhaps
Macbeth himself has acquired a familiar through his association with these witches.
Throughout the play, dreams, fantasy, and imagination enter the “real world.” The
witches’ words become truth. The “dagger of the mind” points the way to a murder done with
a real dagger. And in the Porter scene (II.iii), a porter imagining that he guards the gate to
Hell turns out to guard the gate to a real hell in which the king is actually murdered in his
sleep. When he lets the thanes in, he mentions that he and his friends were out “carousing till
the second cock” (II.iii 24). This statement calls to mind the cock that crowed in the Bible
after Peter denied knowing Christ effectively turning on and from him by denying his
association. In this story, Macbeth traitorously turns on Duncan and kills him, accompanied by
the crowing of the cock. A metaphor becomes reality.

THE WITCHES IN MACBETH

The witches in Macbeth serve to advance the story, reveal human weakness, heighten the
tension and give the audience a hint of things to come, but they do not control Macbeth or
anyone else in the play. The only power they have over Macbeth is their ability to reinforce an
idea that was already in his head. Their role is made clear when Hecate speaks to them, ‘And
which is worse, all you have done Hath been but for a wayward son.’ ( act 3 scene 5 ) She
suggests that they do not have the power to make him do the evil and mischief that they want.
Nor do they need that power. Macbeth is fully capable of doing all the mischief and evil on his
own. How do individuals control others? How would the witches control Macbeth? This can
usually be done by physical and/or emotional force. Fear and threats, rewards and praise work
to control others. These tools work to different degrees on different people. So much of what
is called control depends on the person that is being controlled. The promise of a throne may
send some people to their knees while others will take to their heels. When the witches hold
out their promises to Macbeth the only surety they have is a knowledge of his ambition and his
need for power. In the end this was all they needed to be sure of. They may try to manipulate,
but they do not need to control. The character flaws that Macbeth has will be enough to fill
their needs. It is interesting to note that the witches do not ask for anything in return for their
prophecies. Macbeth does not have to promise his soul in exchange for any information. His
soul was already in trouble before he met the witches. He was their logical choice. At the start
of the play, Macbeth and Banquo are returning from the battlefield when they meet the
witches. At this time they predict that Macbeth will become Thane of Cawdor and king of
Scotland. It is an interesting thought and the start of an idea. He has fought bravely for king
and country, but when the first prophecy comes true, and he is made Thane of Cawdor , he
says to himself, ‘The first step toward the ultimate goal, the throne. ( act 1 scene 3) If he calls
the ultimate goal, a throne, then he has been entertaining this idea before. In his life he has
prioritized his ambitions, and the title of king is what he considers the highest step. As a brave
an honorable leader of the king’s army, shouldn’t his highest goal be to serve? As an honorable
man with strong morals shouldn’t his ultimate goal be a decent life and a heavenly reward?
Ambition drives Macbeth. He only needs the suggestions of things that might be his to push him
on. There is no sense of moral right to keep him from murder. He hesitates only because he
fears the earthly consequences not because it would be sinful. ‘---- If the assassination could

Vallaths TES 57
trummel up the consequences.’ ‘---- But in these cases we still have judgment here.’ ( act
1scene 7) He does not realize that his struggle is not against evil but for good. The witches do
not command Macbeth to kill Duncan or anyone else. The 3 murder of his king is his decision.
This is the only way that he can see to reach his ‘Ultimate Goal’. One murder leads to another.
Macbeth has spun a web that has trapped him in a paranoid mess. Soon he believes that
everyone is out to get him. Traitors are behind every stone in his castle. He has no trusted
friends left, and even his wife has fallen into a pit of madness. The only way to deal with this
is to kill and kill again. He must know what the future holds for him, and again he turns to the
witches. Maybe they can reassure him. At this stage of the play, Macbeth is in desperate need
of some measure of security. The witches are only too happy to oblige. They’ll give him just
what he wants-- almost. Hecate has forecasted Macbeth’s weakness when she tells the three
witches: ‘And you all know security Is mortals’ chiefest enemy.’ ( act 3 scene 5 ) Now they tell
him to beware Macduff, that no man born of woman will harm him, and that he will not be
beaten until Birnum Woods marches on his castle. Macbeth is reassured. How can a man not be
born of woman, and woods do not walk. He has heard just what he wanted to hear. The last
two warnings are what he thinks about and he all but dismisses the first: ‘Macbeth, Macbeth,
Macbeth! Beware Macduff. Beware the Thane of Fife!’ ( act 4 scene 1 ) Had he listened
carefully to the first warning, he undoubtably would have found a way to kill Macduff. But,
again the witches have given Macbeth what 4 he thought he needed. Time and again, the
witches appear in the play. They warn, predict and tempt, but they do not control Macbeth.
There is no spell cast over him, no deals are struck or bargains made. He is the master of his
own fate. He controls his own life. The decisions are his as well as the sins of his deeds. He is
the master of his own fate no matter how gruesome that turned out to be. The witches laid
out before Macbeth many of the temptations that await mankind. How these temptations are
delt with depends on man’s character and moral strength. While the witches tempted, and
Lady Macbeth connived, it was ultimately up to Macbeth to say, ‘No’ and put away the knife.

SOCIAL CLASS IN TESS OF THE D’URBERVILLES

Tess of the d’Urbervilles presents complex pictures of both the importance of social class in
nineteenth-century England and the difficulty of defining class in any simple way. Certainly the
Durbeyfields are a powerful emblem of the way in which class is no longer evaluated in
Victorian times as it would have been in the Middle Ages—that is, by blood alone, with no
attention paid to fortune or worldly success. Indubitably the Durbeyfields have purity of blood,
yet for the parson and nearly everyone else in the novel, this fact amounts to nothing more
than a piece of genealogical trivia. In the Victorian context, cash matters more than lineage,
which explains how Simon Stokes, Alec’s father, was smoothly able to use his large fortune to
purchase a lustrous family name and transform his clan into the Stoke-d’Urbervilles. The
d’Urbervilles pass for what the Durbeyfields truly are—authentic nobility—simply because
definitions of class have changed. The issue of class confusion even affects the Clare clan,
whose most promising son, Angel, is intent on becoming a farmer and marrying a milkmaid,
thus bypassing the traditional privileges of a Cambridge education and a parsonage. His
willingness to work side by side with the farm laborers helps endear him to Tess, and their
acquaintance would not have been possible if he were a more traditional and elitist aristocrat.
Thus, the three main characters in the Angel-Tess-Alec triangle are all strongly marked by
confusion regarding their respective social classes, an issue that is one of the main concerns of
the novel.

ENDING OF TESS OF THE D’URBERVILLES

Phase the Seventh brings the novel to a tragic close through a shift in perspective. It begins
in an aura of mystery, as Hardy chooses not to narrate the climax of Tess’s struggle—her return
to the bed of Alec d’Urberville. The first part of this section is told instead from Angel’s
perspective. When he arrives at The Herons, we have a gradual, sickening sense of what to
expect, but Angel has no idea. He is too late because the race is over, and Tess’s loyalty to her
family has overmastered her integrity. Torn apart, Tess now kills her lover in a murderous rage
out of love for her husband. From that moment, the novel simply becomes a mechanical
process leading to the inevitable conclusion—Tess’s death.

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 As Angel returns with renewed loyalty and love for Tess, it becomes apparent that Alec has
considerably broken down Tess’s loyalty to Angel. Tess recovers this love and loyalty when she
sees Angel again, and she feels guilty about how far she has drifted. Her pride in poverty when
Angel is away stands in direct contrast with her fancy clothing and luxurious lodging, which
physically measures how far into temptation she has gone with Alec. Her shame and grief
cause her violent side to explode, and she kills Alec. Whether intentionally or not, Tess has
fulfilled Angel’s proclamation that they cannot be together as long as Alec is alive. The murder
may appear justified to us at this point, after everything through which Alec has put Tess. But,
though we may sympathize with Tess’s actions, we know that Tess must now flee and live the
life of a hunted criminal.
The short section narrated from the perspective of Mrs. Brooks is almost an exact double of
the technique Hardy uses with Angel at the beginning of Phase the Seventh. Just as he
excludes Tess’s return to Alec, he excludes her murder of Alec. Just as an unsuspecting third
party shows us that she has gone back to him, another unsuspecting third party shows us that
she has killed him. Tess’s mind has been at the center of the novel from its beginning, and
practically everything that has happened has been shown solely in its relation to her. By
shifting attention away from her so suddenly, Hardy creates the sense that Tess is already
lost—though she is still alive, she has partially vanished into the gloom of her fate. At the end,
despite the atmosphere of Gothic mystery and supernatural portent that infuses much of the
novel, Hardy still manages to surprise us by setting the conclusion at Stonehenge, one of the
most famous and mysterious monuments in the world.

THE CHARACTER OF SATAN IN PARADISE LOST

Some readers consider Satan to be the hero, or protagonist, of the story, because he
struggles to overcome his own doubts and weaknesses and accomplishes his goal of corrupting
humankind. This goal, however, is evil, and Adam and Eve are the moral heroes at the end of
the story, as they help to begin humankind’s slow process of redemption and salvation. Satan
is far from being the story’s object of admiration, as most heroes are. Nor does it make sense
for readers to celebrate or emulate him, as they might with a true hero. Yet there are many
compelling qualities to his character that make him intriguing to readers.
One source of Satan’s fascination for us is that he is an extremely complex and subtle
character. It would be difficult, perhaps impossible, for Milton to make perfect, infallible
characters such as God the Father, God the Son, and the angels as interesting to read about as
the flawed characters, such as Satan, Adam, and Eve. Satan, moreover, strikes a grand and
majestic figure, apparently unafraid of being damned eternally, and uncowed by such
terrifying figures as Chaos or Death. Many readers have argued that Milton deliberately makes
Satan seem heroic and appealing early in the poem to draw us into sympathizing with him
against our will, so that we may see how seductive evil is and learn to be more vigilant in
resisting its appeal.
Milton devotes much of the poem’s early books to developing Satan’s character. Satan’s
greatest fault is his pride. He casts himself as an innocent victim, overlooked for an important
promotion. But his ability to think so selfishly in Heaven, where all angels are equal and loved
and happy, is surprising. His confidence in thinking that he could ever overthrow God displays
tremendous vanity and pride. When Satan shares his pain and alienation as he reaches Earth in
Book IV, we may feel somewhat sympathetic to him or even identify with him. But Satan
continues to devote himself to evil. Every speech he gives is fraudulent and every story he tells
is a lie. He works diligently to trick his fellow devils in Hell by having Beelzebub present
Satan’s own plan of action.
Satan’s character—or our perception of his character—changes significantly from Book I to
his final appearance in Book X. In Book I he is a strong, imposing figure with great abilities as a
leader and public statesmen, whereas by the poem’s end he slinks back to Hell in serpent
form. Satan’s gradual degradation is dramatized by the sequence of different shapes he
assumes. He begins the poem as a just-fallen angel of enormous stature, looks like a comet or
meteor as he leaves Hell, then disguises himself as a more humble cherub, then as a
cormorant, a toad, and finally a snake. His ability to reason and argue also deteriorates. In
Book I, he persuades the devils to agree to his plan. In Book IV, however, he reasons to himself
that the Hell he feels inside of him is reason to do more evil. When he returns to Earth again,

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he believes that Earth is more beautiful than Heaven, and that he may be able to live on Earth
after all. Satan, removed from Heaven long enough to forget its unparalleled grandeur, is
completely demented, coming to believe in his own lies. He is a picture of incessant
intellectual activity without the ability to think morally. Once a powerful angel, he has
become blinded to God’s grace, forever unable to reconcile his past with his eternal
punishment.

THE CHARACTER OF EVE IN PARADISE LOST

Created to be Adam’s mate, Eve is inferior to Adam, but only slightly. She surpasses Adam
only in her beauty. She falls in love with her own image when she sees her reflection in a body
of water. Ironically, her greatest asset produces her most serious weakness, vanity. After
Satan compliments her on her beauty and godliness, he easily persuades her to eat from the
Tree of Knowledge.
Aside from her beauty, Eve’s intelligence and spiritual purity is constantly tested. She is
not unintelligent, but she is not ambitious to learn, content to be guided by Adam as God
intended. As a result, she does not become more intelligent or learned as the story progresses,
though she does attain the beginning of wisdom by the end of the poem. Her lack of learning is
partly due to her absence for most of Raphael’s discussions with Adam in Books V, VI, and VII,
and she also does not see the visions Michael shows Adam in Books XI and XII. Her absence from
these important exchanges shows that she feels it is not her place to seek knowledge
independently; she wants to hear Raphael’s stories through Adam later. The one instance in
which she deviates from her passive role, telling Adam to trust her on her own and then seizing
the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, is disastrous.
Eve’s strengths are her capacity for love, emotion, and forebearance. She persuades Adam
to stay with her after the fall, and Adam in turn dissuades her from committing suicide, as
they begin to work together as a powerful unit. Eve complements Adam’s strengths and
corrects his weaknesses. Thus, Milton does not denigrate all women through his depiction of
Eve. Rather he explores the role of women in his society and the positive and important role
he felt they could offer in the divine union of marriage.

WAITING FOR GODOT: AN ANALYSIS

ACT I
Introduction and Pozzo and Lucky’s Entrance
The beginning of the play establishes Vladimir and Estragon’s relationship. Vladimir clearly
realizes that Estragon is dependent on him when he tells Estragon that he would be “nothing
more than a little heap of bones” without him. Vladimir also insists that Estragon would not go
far if they parted. This dependency extends even to minute, everyday things, as Estragon
cannot even take off his boot without help from Vladimir.
The beginning of the play makes Vladimir and Estragon seem interchangeable. For
example, one of the characters often repeats a line that the other has previously said. This
happens in the very beginning when the two characters switch lines in the dialogue, with each
asking the other, “It hurts?” and responding, “Hurts! He wants to know if it hurts!” In addition
to demonstrating the way that the two characters can be seen as interchangeable, this textual
repetition will be found throughout the play as an indicator of the repetitiveness of life in
general for Vladimir and Estragon.
Vladimir’s discussion of the story of the two thieves brings up the question of textual
uncertainty. He points out that the four gospels present entirely different versions of this
story, and wonders why one of these versions is accepted as definitive. This question about the
reliability of texts might cause the reader (or audience) of this play to question the reliability
of this particular text. Also, the repetition of the story by the four gospels might allude to the
repetitiveness of the action of the play.
The repetitiveness of the play is best illustrated by Estragon’s repeated requests to leave,
which are followed each time by Vladimir telling him that they cannot leave because they are
waiting for Godot. The exact repetition of the lines each time this dialogue appears, including

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the stage directions, reinforces the idea that the same actions occur over and over again and
suggests that these actions happen more times than the play presents.
In this beginning section we get the only clue of the nature of Vladimir and Estragon’s
relationship with Godot. They mention that they asked Godot for “a kind of prayer...a vague
supplication,” which he is currently considering. This creates a parallel between Godot and
God, also suggested by their similar names, and it seems that Vladimir and Estragon do
consider Godot a kind of religious figure when they mention coming in on their hands and
knees.

Pozzo and Lucky Scene

Pozzo’s statement about his pipe, that the second pipe is never as “sweet” as the first, can
apply to experience in general—it suggests that feelings and events dull with repetition.
Repetition of events in the play is emphasized by further textual repetition. When Vladimir
and Estragon alternate short lines back and forth, Estragon often repeats himself at the end of
a string of lines. This occurs for the first time in this exchange: “Estragon: The circus.
Vladimir: The music-hall. Estragon: The circus.” This same trope will recur several times in a
row at the beginning of the second act, always with Estragon repeating himself.
We see here that Vladimir supports Estragon after Estragon is kicked by Lucky: when he
cries that he cannot walk, Vladimir offers to carry him, if necessary. This illustrates Vladimir’s
attempt to protect and take care of Estragon.
Vladimir is often very quick to change his mind. When he learns of Lucky’s long term of
service to Pozzo, he becomes angry with Pozzo for mistreating his servant. However, when
Pozzo gets upset and says that he cannot bear it any longer, Vladimir quickly transfers his
anger to Lucky, whom he reproaches for mistreating his master after so many years. This
illustrates how Vladimir’s opinion can be easily swayed by a change in circumstances.
In this section we see the first suggestions that Vladimir and Estragon might represent all
of humanity. When Pozzo first enters, he notes that Vladimir and Estragon are of the same
species as he is, “made in God’s image.” Later, when Pozzo asks Estragon what his name is, he
replies “Adam.” This comparison of Estragon to Adam, the first man, suggests that he may
represent all of mankind; and this link between Estragon and Adam also relates to the idea of
Godot as God.
Pozzo’s inquiry about how Vladimir and Estragon found him suggests that Pozzo is giving a
performance. This notion is reinforced when he has Lucky perform for them. It seems that
Pozzo and Lucky appear primarily to entertain Vladimir and Estragon—after Pozzo and Luck
leave, the other two men comment that their presence helped the time pass more rapidly.
Pozzo’s failure to depart anticipates the way that Vladimir and Estragon remain waiting at
the end of each of the acts, after saying they will depart. However, even after saying, “I don’t
seem to be able to depart,” Pozzo does actually manage to leave. Pozzo moves on while
Vladimir and Estragon remain fixed even as the curtain falls at the end of each act.

Pozzo and Lucky’s Exit to Conclusion

This section begins with the most commonly repeated dialogue in the play, in which Estragon
wants to go and Vladimir tells him that they are waiting for Godot. This section provides
evidence for a religious reading of the play as Estragon compares himself to Christ when he
decides to go barefoot. When Vladimir tells him not to compare himself to Christ, Estragon
responds that “all my life I’ve compared myself to him.”
Vladimir’s statement that he pretended not to recognize Pozzo and Lucky suggests that he has
met them before. This indicates that the actions presented in the first act of the play may
have happened before, calling attention to events that occur outside the frame of the play.
The same thing occurs when Vladimir asks the boy if he came yesterday, revealing that they
were waiting yesterday with the same result. This suggests that the same events have been
going on for some time; the two acts of the play are merely two instances in a long pattern of
ceaselessly repeating events.
The end of Act I establishes Vladimir and Estragon’s hopelessness. Even when they both agree
to go, and Vladimir says “Yes, let’s go,” the two men do not move. Even their resolution to go
is not strong enough to produce action. This inability to act renders Vladimir and Estragon

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unable to determine their own fates. Instead of acting, they can only wait for someone or
something to act upon them.

ACT II
Introduction and Pozzo and Lucky’s Entrance
Vladimir’s song about the dog who stole a crust of bread repeats itself perpetually. The
two verses follow each other in succession so that it can be sung forever, although here
Vladimir only sings each verse twice. This song is a representation of the repetitive nature of
the play as a whole and of Vladimir and Estragon’s circular lives. Like the verses of the song,
the events of their lives follow one after another, again and again, with no apparent beginning
or end.
The hat switching incident is another illustration of the endless, often mindless, repetition
that seems to characterize the play. Like Vladimir’s song at the beginning of Act II, the hat
switching could go on perpetually and only stops when Vladimir decides arbitrarily to put an
end to it.
Vladimir and Estragon’s discussion about the noise made by “all the dead voices” brings
back the theme of Estragon repeating himself to end a string of conversation. Three times in a
row, Estragon repeats his phrase, with silence following each repetition. Estragon’s repetition
of the phrases “like leaves” and “they rustle” emphasizes these phrases, especially since
Estragon comes back to “like leaves” in the third part of their discussion.
In this section we see again Vladimir’s desire to protect Estragon. He believes that the
primary reason Estragon returns to him every day, despite his declarations that he is happier
alone, is that he needs Vladimir to help him defend himself. Whether or not Vladimir actually
does protect Estragon, Vladimir clearly feels that this duty and responsibility defines their
relationship.
Estragon’s statement that he will go and get a carrot, followed by the stage directions “he
does not move,” recalls their immobility in Act I’s conclusion, and is another illustration of the
way that the characters do not act on their words or intentions. Vladimir recognizes this
problem after he decides that they should try on the boots; he says impatiently, “let us
persevere in what we have resolved, before we forget.” Vladimir’s clear awareness of his own
problem makes his inability to solve it—to act and to move—yseem even more frustrating and
unfathomable.

Pozzo and Lucky Scene

Here again Vladimir seems to recognize the problem of inaction when he decides that they
should help Pozzo. He becomes suddenly vehement and shouts, “Let us not waste our time in
idle discourse! Let us do something, while we have the chance!” This call to action seems like
an urgent rally against the trend of inaction he and Estragon have been following throughout
the play; however, Vladimir still takes plenty of time to begin to help Pozzo to his feet. This
suggests that, even with good intentions and resolution, the habit of inaction cannot be broken
immediately.
In this speech Vladimir also declares that at this point, “all mankind is us, whether we like
it or not.” This continues the theme of Vladimir and Estragon’s representation of mankind as a
whole and shows that Vladimir is himself aware of this comparison. Estragon also illustrates
the parallel between the two men and the rest of humanity when he tells Vladimir that
“billions” of people can also claim that they have kept their appointment. In this case Vladimir
attempts to distinguish them from the rest of mankind, but Estragon insists that they are
actually the same.
Another biblical allusion is presented here through the comparison of Pozzo and Lucky to
Cain and Abel. However, when Pozzo responds to the names Cain and Abel, Estragon decides
that “he’s all humanity.” This suggestion indicates once more that the characters in the play
represent the human race as a whole.
Vladimir’s need of Estragon’s help in order to get up is somewhat of a role reversal. For a
brief exchange, Estragon holds the power in the relationship as Vladimir calls to him for help.
However, when Estragon does finally stretch out his hand to help Vladimir up, he only falls
himself. This seems to indicate that Estragon does not belong in this position of power and
responsibility and cannot act to fulfill it.

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 Pozzo and Lucky’s Exit to Conclusion
By this point in the play, the dialogue about waiting for Godot has been repeated so many
times that even Estragon knows it. Every time he asked Vladimir to go previously, they went
through the entire dialogue about why they could not go. However, this time, Estragon goes
through a miniature version of this dialogue by himself: “Let’s go. We can’t. Ah!” It seems that
the numerous repetitions of this dialogue have finally impressed its hopeless resolution upon
Estragon’s mind.
Similarly, by the time the boy arrives in Act II, Vladimir already knows what he will say,
and the boy does not have to tell him anything. This suggests that this dialogue has occurred
many times before and furthers the indication that the play is just a representative sample of
the larger circle that defines Vladimir and Estragon’s lives.
The play’s conclusion echoes the end of Act I. Even the stage directions reflect this
similarity: after boy’s exit and the moonrise, the stage directions read, “as in Act I, Vladimir
stands motionless and bowed.” While a live audience would not read these directions, they
serve to emphasize the parallel between the two acts for readers and for actors performing
the play.
The repetition of the final two lines from the previous act at the play’s conclusion shows
the continued importance of repetition and parallelism in Waiting for Godot. However, the
characters have switched lines from the previous act, suggesting that ultimately, despite their
differences, Vladimir and Estragon are really interchangeable after all.

PARADISE LOST
This epic has generally been considered one of the greatest works in the English language.
However, since it is based upon scripture, its significance in the literary canon has first been
reinterpreted and later dwindled with religion. In The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, William
Blake commented: “The reason Milton wrote in fetters when he wrote of Angels & God, and at
liberty when of Devils & Hell, is because he was a true Poet and of the Devil's party without
knowing it.”
Blake's became the most common reinterpretation of the work in secular universities in
the early half of the twentieth century, but among some groups such as evangelical Christians,
there is no such reinterpretation. Rather, such groups would uphold the theology of Paradise
Lost insofar as it conforms to the passages of Scripture on which it is based.
Evangelical Christians aside, the latter half of the twentieth century saw the critical
understanding of Milton's epic shift to a more political and philosophical focus. Rather than the
Romantic conception of the Devil as the hero of the piece, it is generally accepted that Satan
is presented in terms that begin classically heroic, then diminish him until he is finally reduced
to a dust-eating serpent unable even to control his own body. The political angle enters into
consideration in the underlying friction between Satan's conservative, hierarchal views of the
universe and the contrasting "new way" of God and the Son of God as illustrated in Book III. In
contemporary critical theory in other words, the main thrust of the work becomes not the
perfidy or heroism of Satan, but rather the tension between classical conservative "old
testament" hierarchs (evidenced in Satan's worldview, and even in that of the archangels
Raphael and Gabriel), and "new testament" revolutionaries (embodied in the Son of God,
Adam, and Eve) who represent a new system of universal organization based not in tradition,
precedence, and unthinking habit, but in sincere and conscious acceptance of faith on the one
hand, and on station chosen by ability and responsibility. Naturally, this critical mode makes
much use of Milton's other works and his biography, grounding itself in his personal history as
an English revolutionary and social critic.

THE CHARACTER OF HAMLET

Hamlet is possibly the most discussed and contentious character in the whole of world
drama and indeed in the whole of Western literature. While conceding he is one of
Shakespeare's greatest creations, critics are at loggerheads over the inner motivations and
psyche of this character. His relationships with the various characters of the story, including
his father, his uncle Claudius, his mother Gertrude and his beloved Ophelia, have all been

Vallaths TES 63
subjected to multiple speculations, including modern psychological theories. Critics as varied
as Goethe, Coleridge, Hegel, Nietzsche, Turgenev, Freud, T. S. Eliot, and Asimov have written
essays on him, all with their own special insights. Besides being Shakespeare's most demanding
role (with over 1,400 lines), Hamlet is also the most introspective. Actors have traditionally
struggled with this role, and it can be safely said that any one performance can only capture
some facets of the creation.
The plot summary above presents the simplest view of Hamlet, as a person seeking truth in
order to be certain that he is justified in carrying out the revenge called for by a ghost that
claims to be the spirit of his father. The most standard view is that Hamlet is highly indecisive.
The 1948 movie with Laurence Olivier in the title role, considered by many a standard, is
introduced by a voiceover: "This is a story of a man who could not make up his mind."
Others see Hamlet as a person charged to carry out a duty that he both knows and feels he
must do, yet doesn't want to. In this view all of his efforts to satisfy himself of King Claudius'
guilt or his failure to act when he can are evidence of this unwillingness, and Hamlet berates
himself for his inability to carry out his task. After observing a play-actor performing a scene,
he notes that the actor was moved to tears in the passion of the story and compares this
passion for a fictional character, Hecuba, in light of his own situation. Hamlet's verbose and
painful analyses of his situation and actions encourage many others to see his struggle as
something far more existential in nature, having less to do with the revenge drama than with
the human condition.
Another view of Hamlet, advanced by Isaac Asimov in his Guide to Shakespeare, holds that
his actions are attributable not to indecision, but to multiple motivations: his desire to avenge
the wrong done to his father, coupled with his own ambition to succeed to the throne. The
tragic error committed by Hamlet, in Asimov's view, is his overreaching wish to see Claudius
damned, and not merely dead, which prevents him from killing Claudius at the opportune
moment.
There is also significant debate as to whether the character of Hamlet is visited by the
ghost of his murdered father or he is simply schizophrenic. Much of Hamlet's behaviour
warrants suspicion about his sanity. His confusion and emotional stress following his father's
bizzare death would certainly lead to a mental breakdown.

THE PILGRIM’S PROGRESS

The allegory of this book has antecedents in a large number of Christian devotional works
that speak of the soul's path to Heaven, from the Lyke-Wake Dirge forwards. Bunyan's allegory
stands out above his predecessors because of his simple and effective, if somewhat naïve,
prose style, steeped in Biblical texts and cadences. Its explicitly Protestant theology also
made it much more popular than its predecessors. Finally, Bunyan's gifts and plain style
breathe life into the abstractions of the anthropomorphized temptations and abstractions
Christian encounters and converses with on his course to Heaven. Samuel Johnson said that
"this is the great merit of the book, that the most cultivated man cannot find anything to
praise more highly, and the child knows nothing more amusing." Three years after its
publication, it was reprinted in colonial America, and was widely read in the Puritan colonies.

PARODY AND PASTICHE: Though parody has ancient roots, it has taken on a particularly
central role in the comic forms of the irony-soaked postmodern present because it foregrounds
quotation and self-referentiality. Marxist literary critic Fredric Jameson has argued that
postmodernity has replaced conventional parody with a process that should rightly be defined
as pastiche. While parody implies a norm against which the imitation must be read, pastiche is
a form of imitation that is detached from an authoritative precedent, and thus lacks a satiric
impulse. By treating the original as a style only, devoid of history and context, pastiche is a
uniquely postmodern play of pure discourse. In a postmodern context, pastiche reduces the
past to a set of empty icons, increasingly lacking a real sense of history.

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CONTRAPUNTAL READING OR ANALYSIS
By looking at a novel contrapuntally, we take into account intertwined histories and
perspectives. Specifically, contrapuntal analysis, developed by Edward W. Said, is used in
interpreting colonial texts, considering the perspectives of both the colonizer and the
colonized. This approach is not only helpful but also necessary in making important
connections in a novel. If one does not read with the right background, one may miss the
weight behind the presence of Antigua in Mansfield Park, Australia in Great Expectations, or
India in Vanity Fair. Interpreting contrapuntally is interpreting different perspectives
simultaneously and seeing how the text interacts with itself as well as with historical or
biographical contexts. It is reading with "awareness both of the metropolitan history that is
narrated and of those other histories against which (and together with which) the dominating
discourse acts" (Said 51). Since what isn't said may be as important as what is said, it is
important to read with an understanding of small plot lines, or even phrases. Contrapuntal
reading means reading a text "with an understanding of what is involved when an author
shows, for instance, that a colonial sugar plantation is seen as important to the process of
maintaining a particular style of life in England" (Said 66). Contrapuntal reading takes in both
accounts of an issue; it addresses both the perspective of imperialism and the resistance to it.
As the Empire thought it its duty to civilize the barbarians of conquered and colonized
territory, the British immediately "othered" these people as inferior and in need of British
assistance to show them the way. Because certain people were different, they required ruling,
supervision, order. As politicians successfully stereotyped and "othered" the colonized, the
British at home had no other knowledge or agency to know otherwise. They "othered" the
people of these places as well. And so did the geniuses of the time--including Jane Austen,
Charles Dickens, Joseph Conrad, William Thackeray, and Rudyard Kipling. Born in ignorance,
the civilizing mission bred and spread ignorance throughout the motherland. The ignorance as
well as the traces of imperialism found in the texts of this time provide an accurate gage with
which to judge society. Contrapuntal reading necessitates a vision in which imperialism and
literature are viewed simultaneously.

THE GREAT TRADITION

It is immediately clear as one reads the opening chapter of ‘The Great Tradition (first
published in 1948) that F.R. Leavis does not think there can be great (literary) art without
serious moral purpose. So Flaubert and Turgenev, for example, are not the equal of George
Eliot as writers because they lack her moral seriousness, and there was less that Henry James
could, in consequence, learn from them than from her. Likewise, Dickens does not enter the
Great Tradition of the novel in English - defined by the line from Jane Austen through George
Eliot, Henry James and Joseph Conrad to D.H. Lawrence - because his genius was merely that
of ‘a great entertainer’ . Except in Hard Times, says Leavis, he assumes for the most part ‘no
profounder responsibility as a creative artist than this description suggests’.

SYMBOLISM
Developed in the late 19th century, symbolism is an art movement characterized by the
representation of the inner life of people through spiritual or mystical symbols and ideas. It
began as a rejection of the purely visual realism of the Impressionists, and the rationality of
the Industrial Age, in order to depict the symbols of ideas. Traditionally modeled pictorial
depictions are replaced or contrasted by flat mosaic-like surfaces decoratively embellished
with figures and design elements.

DECADENCE
Decadence is often defined as a decline in or loss of excellence, obstructing the pursuit of
ideals. It is typified by the elevation of cleverness, education, and intellectual pretension over
experience and tradition, and is often considered materialistic. In literature, the Decadent
movement—late nineteenth century fin de siècle writers who were associated with Symbolism
or the Aesthetic movement—was first given its name by hostile critics, and then the name was
triumphantly adopted by some writers themselves. These "decadents" who relished artifice

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over the earlier Romantics' naive view of nature. Some of these writers were influenced by the
tradition of the Gothic novel and by the poetry and fiction of Edgar Allan Poe.

INSCAPE & INSTRESS

Gerard Manley Hopkins used two terms, "inscape" and "instress," which can cause some
confusion. By "inscape" he means the unified complex of characteristics that give each thing its
uniqueness and that differentiate it from other things, and by "instress" he means either the
force of being which holds the inscape together or the impulse from the inscape which carries
it whole into the mind of the beholder:
There is one notable dead tree . . . the inscape markedly holding its most simple and
beautiful oneness up from the ground through a graceful swerve below (I think) the spring of
the branches up to the tops of the timber. I saw the inscape freshly, as if my mind were still
growing, though with a companion the eye and the ear are for the most part shut and instress
cannot come.
The concept of inscape shares much with Wordsworth's "spots of time," Emerson's
"moments," and Joyce's "epiphanies," showing it to be a characteristically Romantic and post-
Romantic idea. But Hopkins' inscape is also fundamentally religious: a glimpse of the inscape of
a thing shows us why God created it. "Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:/ . .
myself it speaks and spells,/ Crying Whát I dó is me: for that I came. "
Hopkins occupies an important place in the poetic line that reaches from the major
Romantic poets, especially Wordsworth and Keats, through Tennyson and the Pre-Raphaelites
to Hopkins, Pater, Yeats and the symbolists, and finally to Ezra Pound and the Imagists. His
insistence that inscape was the essence of poetry ("Poetry is in fact speech employed to carry
the inscape of speech for the inscape's sake") and that consequently, what he called
"Parnassian" poetry (i.e., competent verse written without inspiration) was to be avoided has
much in common with the aestheticism of Walter Pater (one of his tutors at Oxford) and the
Art for Art's Sake movement, and sounds very much like the theoretical pronouncements of the
Imagists of the early twentieth century.

VICTORIAN PERIOD
A term used 1) to designate broadly the literature written during the reign of Queen Victoria
(1837-1901) or its characteristic qualities and attitudes; and 2) more narrowly, to suggest a
certain complacency or hypocrisy or squeamishness more or less justly assumed to be
traceable to or similar to prevailing Victorian attitudes. Pride in the growing power of England,
optimism born of the new science, the dominance of Puritan ideals tenaciously held by the
rising middle class, and the example of a royal court scrupulous in its adherence to high
standards of "decency" and respectability combined to produce a spirit of moral earnestness
linked with self-satisfaction which was protested against at the time and in the generations
immediately to follow as hypocritical, false, complacent, and narrow. The cautious manner in
which "mid-Victorian" writers in particular were prone to treat such matters as profanity and
sex has been especially responsible for the common use of the term Victorian or "mid-
Victorian," to indicate false modesty, empty respectability, or callous complacency. Though
justified in part, this use of Victorian rests in some degree upon exaggeration, and at best fails
to take into consideration the fact that even in the heart of the Victorian period a very large
part of the literature either did not exhibit such traits or set itself flatly in protest against
them. As a matter of fact, Victorian literature is many-sided and complex, and reflects both
romantically and realistically the great changes that were going on in life and thought. The
religious and philosophical doubts and hopes raised by the new science, the social problems
arising from the new industrial conditions, the conscious resort of literary men and women to
foreign sources of inspiration, and the rise of a new middle-class audience and new media of
publication (the magazines) are among the forces which colored literature during Victoria's
reign.

EPIC THEATRE
As popularized by Bertolt Brecht, a style of theatre in which the play presents a series of semi-
isolated episodes, intermixed with songs and other forms of direct address, all leading to a

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general moral conclusion or set of integrated moral questions. Brecht's Mother Courage is a
celebrated example.

THEATRE OF CRUELTY
Theatre of Cruelty is a concept in Antonin Artaud's book Theatre and its Double. By cruelty, he
meant not sadism or causing pain, but rather a violent, physical determination to shatter the
false reality which, he said, lies like a shroud over our perceptions. He believed that text had
been a tyrant over meaning, and advocated, instead, for a theatre made up of a unique
language halfway-between thought and gesture. Antonin Artaud described the spiritual in
physical terms, and believed that all expression is physical expression in space. The Theatre of
Cruelty was Artaud's attempt to not only revolutionize theatre, but also it was his attempt to
free l'esprit (roughly translated to mean the combination of mind and soul) from the stifling
grip of culture.

CAMPUS NOVEL
A campus novel is a novel whose main action is set in and around the campus of a university.
The genre dates back to the late 1940s and may describe the peculiarities of human nature,
reactions to pressure (exams etc), describe the reaction of a social group (the academic staff)
to new social attitudes (the new student intake). “The Groves of Academe” by Mary McCarthy,
is one of the first examples of this genre, and was written in 1952. Other examples are
Kingsley Amis’ Lucky Jim, David Lodge’s Changing Places and Malcolm Bradbury’s The History
Man.

SPACE FICTION OF DORIS LESSING

Doris Lessing is the kind of writer who has followers, not just readers. They have been
committed to her largely because of her commitment to major issues, such as politics and
feminism. Over the course of a distinguished 30-year writing career, she has led them into
several very different worlds: colonialist Africa, the tangle of emotions binding men and
women, social breakdown, mental breakdown and even nuclear disaster. Always deeply
political in purpose, she is widely considered one of the most honest, intelligent and engaged
writers of the day. Initially she was admired - revered even - for her exploration of the inner
space of thought and heightened feeling. But many readers and critics now fear that she is
tumbling from the pedestal they erected for her. Their worries began in 1979 when the
publication of ''Shikasta'' launched what Mrs. Lessing calls her ''space-fiction'' series - ''Canopus
in Argos: Archives.'' Instantly, Lessingites reeled in shock as the advocate of social concern on
this planet adopted the viewpoint of outer space. Lessing’s “space fiction” thus covers both
the personal voyage from politics to inner space as well as the more recent impersonal voyage
from inner to outer space. She asserts: ''I see inner space and outer space as reflections of
each other. I don't see them as in opposition. Just as we are investigating subatomic particles
and the outer limits of the planetary system - the large and the small simultaneously - so the
inner and the outer are connected.”

THEATRE OF MENACE
Dramatically, as well as politically, terror and menace are most essential elements of Harold
Pinter's vision of life: the horror of existence presented in truly threatening and frightening
terms. Characters talk circles around each other, and frequently underlying a seemingly
innocent speech is a savage threat; Mick chases Davies around in the dark with a vacuum
cleaner in The Caretaker and nearly frightens the old man out of his wits; in The Collection
one character makes threatening telephone calls to another and eventually begins to throw
knives at him in a sort of "game"; Stanley Webber, in The Birthday Party, is driven out of his
mind during an absurd and terrifying interrogation conducted by two seeming strangers; The
Room ends on a most violent note, with one character killed and another blinded. In Pinter’s
plays “Menace” operates in two ways: at the level of character and incident and at a
metaphysical level. There is often a menacing figure who, either actively or passively,
undermines the existence of other characters, and who sometimes is himself undermined.
Here at work is a menace aimed directly at the audience as well as at the other characters of
the play, a menace which consistently deepens, just as every answer leads to a host of new

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questions. The metaphysical menace is engendered by an alien, incomprehensible universe, by
the irrationality of life and even of rationality. This universe that Pinter sees and writes of is
essentially the same one seen by Beckett and Genêt and other absurdist writers. This
metaphysical menace will be seen in many obvious forms in the plays: the "organization," that
sends McCann and Goldberg after Stanley in The Birthday Party; the unknown being giving
orders to Gus and Ben via the dumb-waiter; the many things from the outside world that
irritate or terrify Davies in The Caretaker.

FABIAN SOCIALISM
The Fabian Society is a British socialist intellectual movement, whose purpose is to advance
the socialist cause by reformist, rather than revolutionary, means. It is best known for its
initial ground-breaking work beginning in the late 19th century and then up to World War I.
The British counterpart of the German Marxian revisionists and heavily influenced by the
English Historical school, the upper-middle-class intellectual group - the "Fabian Society" -
emerged in 1884 as a strand of latter-day utopian socialism. They became known to the public
firstly through Sidney Webb's Facts for Socialists (1884). The charismatic appeal of the Webbs -
coupled with the prowess of literary figures such as George Bernard Shaw and H.G. Wells -
ensured that they would be indeed influential among British intellectuals and government
officials.

OXFORD MOVEMENT
The Oxford Movement was a loose affiliation of High Church Anglicans, most of them members
of the University of Oxford, who sought to demonstrate that the Church of England was a
direct descendant of the Christian church established by the Apostles. It was also known as the
Tractarian Movement. Prominent Tractarians included John Henry Newman, John Keble, and
Gerard Manley Hopkins.

MAGIC REALISM
Primarily Latin American literary movement that arose in the 1960s. The term has been
attributed to the Cuban writer Alejo Carpentier, who first applied it to Latin-American fiction
in 1949. Works of magic realism mingle realistic portrayals of ordinary events and characters
with elements of fantasy and myth, creating a rich, frequently disquieting world that is at
once familiar and dreamlike. The movement’s best-known proponent is the Colombian novelist
Gabriel García Márquez, who has used the technique many times, most famously in his novel
One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967). Other magic realist writers include Guatemala’s Miguel
Ángel Asturias, Argentina’s Julio Cortázar, and Mexico’s Carlos Fuentes. Non-Latin American
writers whose fiction often employs magic realism include Italo Calvino and Salman Rushdie.
The following are some of the general features of a magic realist novel:
• Contains fantastical elements
• The fantastic elements may be intuitively “logical” but are never explained
• Characters accept rather than question the logic of the magical element
• Exhibits a richness of sensory details
• Uses symbols and imagery extensively. Often phallic imagery is used without the
reader/viewer consciously noticing it.
• Emotions and the sexuality of the human as a social construct are often developed
upon in great detail
• Distorts time so that it is cyclical or so that it appears absent. Another technique is to
collapse time in order to create a setting in which the present repeats or resembles the
past
• Inverts cause and effect, for instance a character may suffer before a tragedy occurs
• Incorporates legend or folklore
• Presents events from multiple perspectives, such as those of belief and disbelief or the
colonizers and the colonized
• Uses a mirroring of either past and present, astral and physical planes, or of characters
• Ends leaving the reader uncertain, whether to believe in the magical interpretation or
the realist interpretation of the events in the story

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ECRITURE
In deconstruction, Ecriture denotes writing as a social institution and as a group of inter-
related texts. This results in textuality--a term for the idea that no single literary work can be
studied as an autonomous object, but that each text is part of of a larger, culturally endorsed
collection of texts, conventions, codes, and meanings. Ecriture refers not just to systems of
graphic communication, but to all systems inhabited by différance. A related term, called
archi-écriture, refers to the positive side of writing, or writing as an ultimate principle, rather
than as a derivative of logos (speech). In other words, whereas the Western logos encompasses
writing, it is equally valid to view archi-écriture as encompassing the logos, and therefore
speech can be thought of as a form of writing: writing on air waves, or on the memory of the
listener or recording device, but there is no fundamental dominance at work. This, as
described above, is an element of Derrida's criticisms against phallogocentrism in general.
Archi-writing is a term used by Derrida in his attempt to re-orientate the relationship
between speech and writing. As far back as Plato, speech had been always given priority over
writing. In the West, phonetic writing was instead considered as a secondary imitation of
speech, a poor copy of the immediate living act of speech. Later, Rousseau and Saussure both
gave writing a secondary or parasitic role. In Derrida's essay Plato's Pharmacy, he sought to
question this prioritising by firstly complicating the two terms speech and writing.
One can immediately see this complication in the Greek word pharmakon, which meant
both cure and poison. Plato maintained that writing was "poisonous" to memory, it weakens
the memory since writing is a mere repetition, as compared to the living memory required for
speech. Derrida points out however, that since both rely upon repetition they cannot be
completely distinguished.
The neologism archi-writing, "archi" meaning origin, principle or telos, attempts to go
beyond the simple division of writing/speech. It refers to a kind of writing that precedes both
speech and writing. Archi-writing is, in a sense, language, in that it is already there before we
use it, it already has a pregiven, yet malleable, structure/genesis, which is a semi-fixed set-up
of different words and syntax. This fixedness is the writing to which Derrida refers, just such a
'writing' can even be seen in cultures that do not employ writing, it could be seen in notches
on a rope or barrel, fixed customs, or placements around the living areas.

CANON FORMATION
When European thinkers (starting from the 18th century) celebrated humanity or culture, they
were celebrating the ideas and values of their own national culture, or of Europe as distinct
from the Orient, Africa and even the Americas. What partly led Edward Said to the study of
Orientalism was the claim of universal validity to various fields and Eurocentric bias towards
the cultural output of other societies.
The study of comparative literature was an attempt in 19th century Europe (and later the
US) to extend interest to other literatures but the field presumed that Europe and the US
together (that is the West) were the centre of the world, both by virtue of their political
dominance and of the excellence of their literatures.
The universalising discourses of modern Europe and the US have long ignored the voices of
the colonized people and their ideas. Disciplines like comparative literature, anthropology,
English & cultural studies came to be linked with empire but the fiction of the detached
Western observer was maintained – whether artist, traveller, trader, scholar, historian,
novelist. Third World people should read and interpret English novels in isolation but
contrapuntally, that is, side by side with the history of colonization & resistance. To read Jane
Austen without also reading Fanon and Cabral, for example, is to disaffiliate modern culture
from its engagements and attachments. There has been an ongoing, intensely political debate
over the nature and status of the canon since at least the 1960s. In the USA, in particular, it
has been attacked as a compendium of books written mainly by "dead white European males",
that thus do not represent the viewpoints of many others in contemporary societies around the
world. Others, notably Allan Bloom in his 1987 book The Closing of the American Mind, have
disagreed strongly. Authors such as Yale Professor of Humanities Harold Bloom (no relation)
have also spoken strongly in favor of the canon, and in general the canon remains as a
represented idea in most institutions, though its implications continue to be debated heavily.

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 Defenders maintain that those who undermine the canon do so out of primarily political
interests, and that the measure of quality represented by the works of the canon is of an
aesthetic rather than political nature. Thus, any political objections aimed at the canon are
ultimately irrelevant. One of the main objections to a canon of literature is the question of
authority—who should have the power to determine what works are worth reading and
teaching?

BRICOLAGE
In his book The Savage Mind' (1962, English translation 1966), French anthropologist Claude
Lévi-Strauss used the word bricolage to describe the characteristic patterns of mythological
thought. Jacques Derrida extends this notion to any discourse. "If one calls bricolage the
necessity of borrowing one's concept from the text of a heritage which is more or less coherent
or ruined, it must be said that every discourse is bricoleur." Bricolage is a skill that involves
using bits of whatever is to be found and recombining them to create something new. Levi-
Strauss suggests that the model of the bricoleur is a good way of characterising the primitive
scientist (medicine-men etc.) as well as the one who makes up the mythological narratives
(the story-teller). He says “the elements which the ‘bricoleur’ collects and uses are ‘pre-
constrained’ like the constitutive units of myth, the possible combinations of which are
restricted by the fact that they are drawn from the language where they already possess a
sense which sets a limit on the freedom of manoeuvre”. Doesn’t this sound like the structure
(i.e., the language system) out of which the utterance must be drawn? Nonetheless, Levi-
Strauss still finds something to contrast the bricoleur to. “The engineer questions the
universe, while the bricoleur addresses himself to a collection of oddments left over from
human endeavours, that is, only a sub-set of the culture”. Yes, the engineer, who questions
the universe, who is, according to Levi-Strauss, “always trying to make his way out of and go
beyond the constraints imposed by a particular state of civilization,” can be contrasted to the
bricoleur, in so far as the latter “by inclination or necessity always remains within them”.
Levi-Strauss makes the opposition even clearer by saying that the engineer works by means of
concepts and the bricoleur by means of signs. You should already be able to see the trap he
has (amazingly) fallen into here. How could a structuralist have considered a concept as being
separable from a sign--or thought the sign without the concept? Derrida’s answer is the one
we all ought to be able to have given by now. He says: “If one calls bricolage the necessity of
borrowing one’s concepts from the text of a heritage that is more or less coherent or ruined, it
must be said that every discourse is bricoleur. The engineer, whom Levi-Strauss opposes to
the bricoleur, should be the one to construct the totality of his language, syntax, and lexicon.
In this sense the engineer is a myth. A subject who supposedly would be the absolute origin of
his own discourse . . . would be the creator of the verb, the verb itself. [Listen for the echo--
in the beginning was the verb] The notion of the bricoleur who supposedly breaks with all
forms of bricolage is therefore a theological idea; and since Levi-Strauss tells us elsewhere
that bricolage is mythopoetic, the odds are that the engineer is a myth produced by the
bricoleur.”
There are many implications that would have to be drawn from this statement--concerning
the discourse of ethnology (the anthropologist’s mythopoetic bricolage), the inability to get
outside the text of metaphysical oppositions, etc. but one thing must be made clear at this
stage. Derrida is not saying that we are all doomed to mythopoetic recombination. Here and
elsewhere he continues to affirm the locus previously reserved for the truth but this is now to
be thought as the necessary alterity (otherness, outsideness, absence) of the trace. One of
the terms he applies to his reading of the ethnologist’s paradox is supplement. This has to be
understood in a special way--but once this special way has been grasped it will provide access
to many other aspects of Derrida’s writing strategies.

SUBJECTIVITY
A subject is a being which has subjective experiences or a relationship with another entity (or
"object"). A subject is an observer and an object is a thing observed. The thinking of Marx,
Nietzsche and Freud provided a point of departure for questioning the notion of a unitary,
autonomous Subject, which for many thinkers in the Continental tradition is seen as the

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foundation of the liberal theory of the social contract. These thinkers opened up the way for
the deconstruction of the subject as a core-concept of metaphysics.
Nietzsche critiqued the groundworks of subjectivity, stating that the subject was a
"grammatical fiction"; "there is no doer behind the doing". Sigmund Freud's explorations of the
unconscious mind added up to a wholesale indictment of Enlightenment notions of
subjectivity. Among the most radical re-thinkers of human self-consciousness was Heidegger,
whose concept of Dasein or "Being-there" displaces traditional notions of the personal subject
altogether. Jacques Lacan, inspired by Heidegger and Saussure, built on Freud's psychoanalytic
model of the subject, in which the "split subject" is constituted by a double bind: alienated
from jouissance when he or she leaves the Real, enters into the Imaginary (during the mirror
stage), and separates from the Other when he or she comes into the realm of language and
difference in the Symbolic or the Name of the Father. Thinkers such as Althusser, Foucault or
Bourdieu theorize the subject as a social construction. According to Althusser, the "subject" is
an ideological construction (more exactly, constructed by the "Ideological State Apparatuses").
It is constituted through the process of interpellation; according to Foucault, it is the "effect"
of power and "disciplines".

EGOTISTICAL SUBLIME
The phrase by which John Keats criticized what he felt to be the excessively self-centred
quality of Wordsworth's poetry, in contrast with his own ideal of negative capability, which he
found in the more anonymous imagination of Shakespeare. The phrase is first used by Keats in
a letter to Richard Woodhouse, dated 27 Oct. 1818: “As to the poetical Character itself (I
mean that sort of which, if I am any thing, I am a Member; that sort distinguished from the
Wordsworthian or egotistical sublime; which is a thing per se and stands alone) it is not itself —
it has no self — it is every thing and nothing —It has no character— it enjoys light and shade; it
lives in gusto, be it foul or fair, high or low, rich or poor, mean or elevated — It has as much
delight in conceiving an Iago as an Imogen.” Keats defines his own poetic identity as a
“chameleon poet” in direct contrast to Wordsworth whom he characterises as monumental and
fixed, opposed to the labile.

APORIA
(Greek FOR impasse; lack of resources; puzzlement; embarrassment) denotes, in philosophy,
a philosophical puzzle or state of puzzlement, and, in rhetoric, a rhetorically useful
expression of doubt. In Aporias Derrida undertakes a close reading of Heidegger’s problematic
formulation of death as “the possibility of the absolute impossibility of Dasein” (Heidegger
294) and poses the question: how can one think this aporia? His response deserves quoting at
length: “We will have to ask ourselves how a (most proper) possibility as impossibility can still
appear as such without immediately disappearing, without the ‘as such’ already sinking
beforehand and without its essential disappearance making Dasein lose everything that
distinguished it” (71). In other words, Derrida is asking how Dasein, as that which is
distinguished by its unique access to death, can remain distinct from other orders of being
when at the moment that it would realise its ultimate distinguishing possibility it is, being
dead, no longer present to do so. Whilst Heidegger regards death as the possibility of the
appearance of the impossibility of possibility as such, Derrida regards this formulation of death
as the primary and originary example of the aporia. Derrida sees the aporia that is death lying
in the impossibility of experiencing one’s own death: it is the disappearance of the “as such”.
In posing the question: “What difference is there between the possibility of appearing as such
of the possibility of an impossibility and the impossibility of appearing as such of the same
possibility?” Derrida argues for the denial of any difference, and concludes that the distinction
between Dasein and other entities cannot be sustained and that Dasein never has a relation to
death “as such” (75). Derrida suggests that death is in fact Dasein’s least proper possibility in
that, at the moment of its realisation, that before which it would appear is no longer there.
With this introduction of a non-access to the “as such” of death Derrida turns it from being the
most proper possibility of Dasein to the most improper and inauthenticating one. In
Deconstruction aporia is the moment when a text’s logic undoes itself (based on rhetorical
term for a moment of hesitation on the part of the speaker).

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MISPRISION
A term used by Harold Bloom to describe the process by which strong writers misread or
misinterpret their literary predecessors so as to clear imaginative space for themselves.
According to Bloom, every poem is a misprision or misconstrual of a hypothetical parent poem.

ROSE IS A ROSE IS A ROSE IS A ROSE was written by Gertrude Stein as part of the 1913 poem
Sacred Emily. In that poem, the first "Rose" is the name of a woman. Stein later used variations
on the phrase in other writings, and "A rose is a rose is a rose" is probably her most famous
quote, often interpreted as "things are what they are". In Stein's view, the sentence expresses
the fact that simply using the name of a thing already invokes the imagery and emotions
associated with it. As the quote diffused through her own writing, and the culture at large, Stein
once remarked "Now listen! I’m no fool. I know that in daily life we don’t go around saying 'is a …
is a … is a …' Yes, I’m no fool; but I think that in that line the rose is red for the first time in
English poetry for a hundred years." (Four in America)
Gertrude Stein's repetitive language can be said to refer to the changing quality of language
in time and history. She herself said to an audience at Oxford University that the statement
referred to the fact that when the Romantics used the word "rose" it had a direct relationship to
an actual rose. For later periods in literature this would no longer be true. The eras following
romanticism, notably the modern era, use the word rose to refer to the actual rose, yet they
also imply, through the use of the word, the archetypical elements of the romantic era. It also
follows the rhetoric law of thricefold repetition to emphasize a point, as can be seen in speeches
dating back to the sophists.

Victorian autobiography
Like all writings about the self, Victorian autobiographies embody the question of how the
individual relates to what is outside himself; and what makes autobiography as a literary mode so
representative of its time -- in a word, so "Victorian" -- is that a concern with this problematic
relationship lies close to the heart of all literature, all culture, of the age. As E.D.H. Johnson long
ago taught students of the period, its major literary figures made heroic attempts to strike a
proper balance between the demands of society and self. In particular, Tennyson, Browning, and
Arnold strove "to define the sphere within which the modern poet may exercise his faculty, while
holding in legitimate balance the rival claims of his private, aristocratic insights and of the
tendencies existing in a society progressively vulgarized by the materialism of the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries. Thus it came about that the double awareness, which so generally
characterized the Victorian literary mind, grew almost into a perpetual state of consciousness in
these poets through their efforts to work out a new aesthetic position for the artist." Many
components contribute to this characteristic "double awareness," for the major writers of the
Victorian age attempted to maintain their hold upon a series of polarized oppositions, refusing to
choose between (and thus relinquish) either private or public, subjective or objective, feeling or
fact. Like poetry, the novel, painting, and other nonfiction in the period, autobiography sought
new forms to accommodate private experience simultaneously making it relevant to the needs of
others. Like In Memoriam, David Copperfield, The Light of the World and Modern Painters, these
histories of the self find public uses for private experience in forms which simultaneously open the
self to others and yet seek some way to protect that fragile individuality against them.
Victorian autobiography, thus, is characterized by many of the central concerns which also
inform modern literature. Critics of the past decade have increasingly begun to recognize that
Victorian literature has similarities to the work of the first third of this century, and now that
modern literature, the literature, say, of Joyce, Eliot, Yeats, and Pound, is no longer contemporary
-- now that we have seen these once so daring, so abrasively new creations begin to recede into
the past -- we are beginning to observe that no great divide separates Victorians and moderns. The
time has come, perhaps, when critics can realize that it is just as useful to see Eliot as the last
great Victorian poet as the first great modern one. Indeed, when students of modern literature
perceive, as some have just begun to do, that the imagery of the wasteland, use of personae,
rhetorical discontinuity, and personal appropriations and recreations of myth characterize
Victorian poetry, then perhaps it will be possible to evaluate the true position of tradition and the
individual talent -- neither overly praising Eliot for supposedly radical originality nor denigrating

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him for lack of it, but rather observing how well he takes his place within a major poetic
continuity. Similarly, it seems that we have arrived at a point from which we can perceive that
Pound's translations and exploration of poetic forms follow rather naturally from the work of
Rossetti; that Stevens's late poems much resemble the landscape meditations of Swinburne; that
Mailer, who seeks the heroic in a mechanical age, is the true disciple of Carlyle; and that the great
narrative experiments which inform the writings of Conrad, Woolf, Joyce, and Faulkner are found
much earlier in Victorian poetry. Indeed (to borrow the words of Mark Twain) it is astonishing how
much the Victorians have learned since the twentieth century came of age -- how much more
original, how much wiser, how much more sophisticated they have become!
Therefore, a consideration of Victorian autobiography not only offers something of
interest about works excellent in their own right but also promises to tell us something of
value about nineteenth- and twentieth-century culture as well. Victorian autobiographers were
writing the stories of their own lives at a particularly interesting moment in the history of
human consciousness: romanticism had done much to change the way man thought about and
experienced himself, but Freud had not yet appeared on the scene with his radical
redefinitions of self, society, and discourse. This historical situation thus makes the latter half
of the century simultaneously the most and least "Freudian" of ages -- the most because
nineteenth-century European middle-class society with its strongly paternal family structure
had a genetic relation to the neuroses Freud encountered and the theories he formulated as a
result; while it was the least because men could quite unselfconsciously discuss matters soon
to appear in an entirely new light.

ROMANTIC FEATURES OF “ODE TO THE WEST WIND”

In the Romantic era, it was common to associate genius with an attendant spirit or force of
nature; and the Romantics perceived the artist as a vessel through which the genius flows. In
"Ode to the West Wind," Shelley implores the West Wind, a powerful force of nature, to "lift
me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!" “Ode to the West Wind” invokes the attendant spirit from
which Genius comes to grant Creativity also. Shelley begs the West Wind to “Scatter, as from
an unextinguished hearth, / Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!”
"Ode to the West Wind" also expresses the hungering for Imagination. Shelley is trying to
forge a oneness with the West Wind: “Be thou, Spirit fierce, / My spirit! Be thou me,
impetuous one!” Romantics held Imagination as the side of the mind that allowed a person to
forge a link with someone or something.
Another of the central ideas of the Romantic literary figures was the inherent value of the
primitive and pure. "Ode to the West Wind" projects images of innocence and serenity. The
poem also expresses Shelley's belief that the quest for beauty is important. Shelley conjures
the wind to "make me thy lyre.” The lyre is a symbol of art and beauty; and a symbol for the
artist being played by inspiration.
“Ode to the West Wind” emphasized the Romantic search for individual definitions of
morality rather than blindly accepting religious dogmas. As William Blake in his "Marriage of
Heaven and Hell," emphasized the belief that traditional ideas of good and evil needed
reconsidering, so Shelley believed that in some cases, good could come from evil. Shelley
supports this idea in the way he orders the sections. The first two sections contain images of
violence, death, and the coming Winter: the "leaves dead"; the colors yellow, black, pale, and
"hectic red"; the "corpse within a grave” etc. The third section describes images of peace and
serenity: the "blue Mediterranean," "summer dreams," the "azure moss and flowers," etc. These
images and serenity are disturbed only by the coming of the West Wind. In the fourth and fifth
sections, Shelley begins to identify himself with the Wind and beseeches the Wind to work
through him for the good of humanity; he wants the wind to “Drive my dead thoughts over the
universe / Like withered leaves to quicken a new birth!” Although the Wind can be a force for
evil, he wants the Wind to work through him because good can come from evil; here, a "new
birth" of Imagination, Genius, and Creativity can come from death, darkness, and hardship.
Thus, the "Ode to the West Wind" expresses perfectly the aims and views of the Romantic
period.

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BERNARD SHAW’S CONCEPT OF NEW WOMAN
Bernard Shaw is sometimes accused of sharing the sentiments of Henry Higgins in
Pygmalion, who said: “Why can’t a woman be more like a man?” Shaw indeed has explored a
problematic and ambivalent image of the “masculinist” New Woman, particularly at a time
when the male domination of the British theatre was being shaken by insurgent women. Shaw’s
Saint Joan, the polar opposite of Shakespeare’s romantic heroine in Henry VI Part One, is the
paragon of rational wisdom and modern ideals like nationalism, a powerful rejection of the
Victorian conception of gender which denigrated woman to a lesser status because of their
sex. Like Joan, all of Shaw’s women transcend traditional feminine roles, typical of the
Feminist ideal of New Woman at the end of the 19th century. This ideal, treated with
contempt and fear by the public, and supported by Fabian Socialists, revolted against the
Victorian “Cult of Domesticity” and demanded economic and sexual freedom as in Victoria
Cross’ Anna Lombard and H.G. Wells’ Ann Veronica. Vivie Warren in Mrs. Warren’s Profession
is a woman strong in physique and character, too indulgent in the materialistic aspects of life,
but her strength is rather misguided, according to Shaw, perhaps because it did not confine to
the domestic and sexual. For a woman, in the Shavian perception, should be primarily
preoccupied in producing “supermen.” However, the title character of Candida is a woman of
strength and intelligence that has no import outside the household. Ann Whitefield, in Man
and Superman, also has tremendous control over men on account of the Life Force in her.
Shaw shared his conception of woman with contemporaries like Wilde, Galsworthy, Granville-
Barker, etc.

Vallaths TES 74