00236--Do you agree with Alice Meynell’s views on William Blake’s The Tiger[The Tyger]. [English Literature free notes]

            
William Blake's The Tiger is often hailed as one of the finest mystic poems ever written in English language.  The poet uses the symbol of the tiger to probe into the mystery of creation.  Question after question arises from his truth-seeking mind but no answer he gets.  The mystery 'the sublime beauty of creation is nevertheless felt along the heart but it leaves the poet in utter awe and bafflement. Audio Books

            Shoving aside the symbolism and the mystic overtones the poem can be considered as a piece written for nursery children. Such a poem should necessarily be picturesque.  It should also have come moral to convey to child's mind.

            Viewed thus, The Tiger becomes a picture poem, it gives the child the striking picture of a ferocious tiger.

            The terrible beast is lurking in the bush in darkness.  The fierce glittering eyes capture the fancy of the child and it is filled with wonder.

            Curiosity makes the child ask question after question in its unconscious effort to know the truth.  His intuition helps him to realise the truth.  Just like the meek little lamb, this ferocious creature also is the work of the creator.  It is also part of the dualistic nature.  It is beautiful because all nature's creations are beautiful.  The child comes to know or rather feel all these things. Audio Books

            A small child is not likely to ask the type of questions posed in the poem.  Nevertheless questions of a different type do arise in its mind.  For these questions he wouldn't get the answers.

            The Tiger is not as good a Sunday school poem as The Little Lamb.  This is certainly because the former is a song of experience and the latter a song of innocence.  Innocence any child has in abundance, experience is something which all children lack.

            The Tiger could well be a Sunday school poem for children though not entirely.

00235--“To His Coy Mistress” a poem about love and time[Andrew Marwell]. [English Literature free notes]

            Andrew Marvell's To His Coy Mistress is a poem on erotic love written in the true tradition of Carpe Diem.

            Carpe Diem is a Latin phrase meaning enjoy the present day.  The poet dwells upon the inexorable passage of Time, the transitoriness of youth and beauty and finally makes a strong plea to his beloved to join him and enjoy life before it is too late.  The expression Carpe Diem came to exemplify this idea, the spirit of eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die. Audio Books

            If the lover had all the time in the world, he says he would have loved his lady leisurely.  They would sit down and decide which way they should walk and pass the day.  They would talk to love the whole day.  She would wander on the banks of the river Ganges and find rubies.  He would sit by the shores of Humber and sing plaintive songs expressing his yearning for her.  He would love her till the end of the world.  She would turn down his live till the Jews are converted to Christianity.  His love would grow exuberantly like a plant and become caster than empires.  The love would use a hundred years praising the beauty of the beloved's eyes and forehead, two hundred years to adore each breast and thirty thousand years to the rest.  It will take ages to praise each part.  She deserves all such praise.  The lover wouldn't love her in any other way.

            The poet adopts the classical pattern of logically sound arguments to portray erotic love.   The poem is in the true Carpe Diem mode.  The lover says that Time passes quickly.  Physical beauty fades quickly and dies.  They have to seize the moment and make the best use of it.  Now she is beautiful and youth.  He is full of love.  The lover invites the mistress to respond to the call of live.  If she does not come to his embrace now, perhaps it will be too late because Time and Death pursue them relentlessly and there is no escape.  With these infallible arguments the lover convinces his beloved of the urgency of physical love.Audio Books

            The lover seeks the help of logic to convince his beloved of the urgency of their physical love.  The stress is on sexual love the yearning of the body.  The lover uses infallible logic and almost frightens the lady by drawing the terrible picture of Time devouring them body like a voracious bid of prey and her lovely body rotting inside the dark marble vault and works feasting on it.  They have to seize the moment and get whatever they could before it is too late.  The emphasis is on logic and reason to facilitate the realization of physical love.

00234--“Let Me Not To The Marriage” by William Shakespeare [Sonnet] [English Literature free notes]

 Shakespeare’s sonnets are marvels of poetic art.  There are 154 sonnets of which 

125 are addressed to a young man, the remaining to a dark lady; probably the poet's mistress.  
The sonnets in general explore the complex relationship between a dark lady, a handsome
 young nobleman and a rival poet. They also deal with the action of Time on living and
 non living things.  Shakespeare's poetic genius is revealed through these sonnets.

            Sonnet 116 is a meditative attempt to define perfect live.  The poet glorified the quality 
of true love.  Shakespeare uses a modified form of the Italian sonnet pattern.  
Here the sonnet is divided into three quatrains with a concluding couplet.

            In the first quatrain of the sonnet Shakespeare defines love negatively.  
He states what love is not.  Love is not true if it succumbs to temptations or other 
changes in circumstances.  Love is not true if it agrees with the one who wants 
to dissolve the lover's union.

            Next Shakespeare tells us what love is.  True love is always stable and constant.  
To stress this point the poet uses two metaphors.  Love is an ever fixed mark, a beacon, 
a light house which looks on tempests but is unshaken.  True love is again compared to 
the polestar.  It is fixed and it guides the wandering ships.

            In this sonnet also the poet shows his concern about the action of Time 
on human beings.  Rosy lips and cheeks fade with the passage of Time.  Physical beauty 
is obviously transient.  Time destroys it.  But true love resists the passage of Time.  
True love is permanent and lasts till the end of the world.

            The sonnet has a concluding couplet in which the poet reaffirms the belief 

 that his love is stable and permanent.  He declares that if his belief is proved wrong,
 he never wrote poetry or no man ever loved.

            The sonnet has a rhyme scheme ab, ab, cd, cd, ef ef and gg.

            Thus the poem is a perfect illustration of Shakespeare's poetic art of  
blending matter and manner.

00233--The Qualities of the Dramatic Monologue as seen in “My Last Duchess”. [Robert Browning] [English Literature free notes]

The Dramatic Monologue is a compromise between the drama, the soliloquy and the lyric.  Browning’s “My Last Duchess” is an excellent example of this form.  The poet has kept himself in the background, and the speaker is an Italian noble man, the Duke of Ferrara.  The poem is therefore, dramatic.  The Duke is about to marry and we are conscious, all the time, of the presence of the listener, who is an emissary come down on behalf of a count with a daughter whom the Duke intents to marry.  But the envoy never speaks, and, therefore, the poem is monologue.  The speaker in a dramatic monologue speaks at a critical moment in his life, and reveals his soul through his speech.  Thus in Browning’s poem the Duke’s artistic taste, his arrogance, his brutality and his cold aloof nature are all brought out through his speech.  Above all Browning mixes in actions with the monologue, thus imparting variety, life and roundness to the situation.  The actions are implicit in the Duke’s words as when he suggests to the visitor that they should go downstairs.  As C.H. Hereford remarks Browning’s dramatic monologues are dramatic in two senses of the word, the speakers reveal thoughts and feelings which are not the poet’s but they are plucked, as it were, from the living organism of the drama.

00232--Evolution of thought in the poem 'Ode to the West Wind' [P.B.Shelley] [English Literature free notes]

          Shelley's 'Ode to the West Wind' is a perfect lyric which combines in itself lofty thoughts and strong passion.  In this poem, 'Shelley's ardent desire for the regeneration of mankind and the establishment of a new world order is vehemently expressed.  The West Wind which is a destroyer and preserver sweeps away the old and useless ideas and fosters fresh and modern ones.  The West Wind for the poet is not merely a natural phenomenon.   It is for him a tempestuous spirit destroying what has to die and preserving the seeds of a new life.  The West Wind symbolizes the free spirit of man – "tameless, and swift, and proud".  It also symbolizes poetic inspiration and becomes 'the trumpet of a prophecy' ushering in a grand and glorious regeneration of mankind.  The West Wind is the very symbol of the Law of Life itself, containing within it the power to destroy and the power to preserve.  The poem harmonises and fuses these images to a remarkable degree.  Shelley has also been successful in charging his ode with speed, force and energy like the tempestuous wind itself.

            The first three stanzas are in the form of a prayer and describe the activities of the West Wind on land, in the sky and in the ocean.  The West Wind, which is 'the breath of autumn's being, scatters the dead and sickly leaves ('pestilence-stricken multitudes') like a magician driving away ghosts.  The West Wind is not only Destroyer but is also a Preserver.  The Wind also carries and scatters the seeds and buries them under the soil, where they lie dormant all through winter.  When the warm spring breeze blows, the seeds will sprout, filling the whole earth with a new life.

 The powerful West Wind shakes and pushes the thin clouds, which are like leaves of 'the tangled boughs of Heaven and Ocean'.  The fast moving dark clouds herald the approach of a rain-storm.  The sky looks fierce like a mad and intoxicated Maenad and the clouds appear to be her streaming hair.  The West Wind gathers black clouds and are transformed into the dark solid dome of a tomb from which fire and hail will burst.  The lines carry the suggestion of birth and growth along with death.  The leaf image is maintained throughout.

            The West Wind wakes up the beautiful, blue and clam Mediterranean who is pictured as sleeping, lying by the side a pumice isle in Baiae's bay and dreaming of moss-grown palaces, ruined towers and gardens.  The smooth waves of the Atlantic cleave themselves into deep furrows.  The plants sense the approach of the West Wind and become pale and shed their leaves.

            A strong personal note is struck in the fourth stanza of the poem.  He is in dire need of the West Wind as he no more retains his carefree innocence and tamelessness of his boyhood.  He has fallen 'on the thorns of life' and he bleeds.  He is fettered by the claims and responsibilities and is full of the cares of life.  "A heavy weight of hours has chained and bowed.  One too like thee: tameless, and swift, and proud" he laments.  The poet is in a mood of impotent dejection and appeals to the wind to lift him 'as a wave, a leaf, a cloud to escape from this burden of life.  Fortunately, the poem does not end here.  The poet in the next stanza recovers his balance and goes beyond his personal sorrows.  He wants to identify himself with the fierce spirit of the Wind.  He calls upon the Wind to 'drive my dead thoughts over the universe, like withered leaves to quicken a new birth!'  He appeals to the Wind to scatter his poems, which are like sparks from a smouldering fire, to kindle a new fire in the hearts and minds of men.  He also appeals to the West Wind to inspire him so that his poems, which have been born out of sorrow and hope, will prove to be the bringer of joy of humanity – the new spring time for mankind.  The poem closes on a note of ardent hope.  He wants the West Wind to blow through his lips the prophecy that a brave new world – a world of love, beauty and goodness – will soon emerge in place of the existing world of misery and suffering.  "If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?" the poem ends with this optimistic question.

00231--Examine 'Ulysses' as a dramatic monologue.[Alfred Lord Tennyson] [English Literature free notes]

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            The character of Ulysses is vividly revealed through his words addressed to his mariners exhorting them to prepare for a final, desperate voyage.  The first five lines give us an insight into Ulysses' character by telling us what he despises.  His scorn for his people and his contempt for his wife are revealed both in words and in the very tone.  He calls his country 'barren crags' and his wife 'aged' and his people 'a savage race'.  He is disgusted with the animal-like existence of his people and loaths to remain there.  He instead longs for a life of adventure and new experiences.  He reveals himself a hard, self-contained individual, scornful of his people and a stranger to softer affections.  The next twenty seven lines serve the same purpose by telling us of his enthusiasms.  He yearns for a life of adventure.  He passionately longs for newer experiences and knowledge.  He wants to 'drink life to the lees' before death intervenes.  He has seen different countries, people and governments and have absorbed in himself all he has seen.  The more the experiences, the more he thirsts for them.  He wants to devote every hour saved from death for fresh experiences.  We find him rhetorical and a little proud of himself.

            The dramatic monologue also reveals the character of Telemachus, Ulysses' son.  Ulysses speaks of his son in glowing terms.  He is prudent and without blemish.  He knows how to civilize the 'rugged people' by slow prudence.  He is efficient and more fitted than his father to perform common duties.  He has tenderness and is fond of worshiping his household gods.  But we cannot ignore the underlying irony.  Ulysses in fact praises Telemachus for the very same qualities he himself despises in the first part of the poem.

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We also get a glimpse of the nature of his comrades.  He has full of love and admiration for his old mariners.  They have shared joys sorrows with him readily.  They have fought with him valiantly.  They have given him implicit obedience.  True, they have all become old.  But they still have the heroic spirit in them.  He, therefore, exhorts them to accompany him in his last voyage to the unknown.  There is no certainty as to what is in store for them,  perhaps they may all drown in the seas.   Perhaps they may be able to meet their departed leader Achilles in Elysium.    At any rate, it is the seeking that matters.  The poem ends with the exalted lines that though they are made weak by time and fate, still they have the will and determination "to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield."

  

Ulysses also talks of the setting vividly.  He gives a beautiful picture of darkness falling on the waters of the sea.  The long day comes to a close and the moon climbs slowly.  The sea is getting dark and it makes manful sounds.  It is against this melancholy twilight that Ulysses appropriately sets out his last, desperate voyage.

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00230--Consider Tennyson's Ulysses as a hero of unending adventure. OR Bring out the character of Ulysses. OR Tennyson and his hero. [English Literature free notes]

     Tennyson's Ulysses is quite Homer's hero, who is wise, variant and compassionate and is perfectly content to spend the rest of his life with his devoted wife and son and for whom the first duty is to govern his country.  Tennyson to some extent is indebted to Dante for his portrait of Ulysses.  Dante, however, does not approve of his hero's neglect of social and family responsibilities and in fact, condemns him for his perpetual longing for new experiences at the expense of social realities.

            Tennyson's hero is neither Homer's Odysseus with his quite magnificence nor even Dante's Ulysses, who is condemned for his selfish escapism.  Tennyson through his character reflects the complex tendencies of his age and his own temperament.  In one way, the poet expresses his admiration for the active life and the courage and strong determination of his hero.  He is fascinated by the defiant strength and stoic assertion of life displayed by Ulysses.  The voyage may be symbolic of Tennyson's reusing himself from impotent melancholy.  To the poet, Ulysses represents the romantic figure of a man for whom the purpose and joy of life lie in variety and fullness of experience.  He has the unquenchable thirst for new knowledge and experience.  He has always been a man of action and has 'drunk the delight of battle with his peers'.  He is a part of all that he has experienced and still feels that 'all experience is an arch where through / Gleams that untravelled world whose margin fades for ever and for ever' when he moves.  He cannot be tied down to the narrow confines of his little island kingdom Ithaca.  The sea for him has an irresistible fascination and he urges his mariners to set out for the last, desperate voyage towards the 'utmost bound of human thought'.  Though time and fate have diminished their physical prowess, they still have the heroic spirit and strong will 'to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield'.  Thus, in one way Ulysses is expressive of a character endowed with a restless spirit – an eternal seeker of knowledge.  This is in a way reflective of the Victorian age with its scientific spirit and colonial expansion.
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            But there is the other side of the picture too.  The first five lines of the poem give us some insight into the character of Ulysses by telling us what he hates.  His scorn for his people and his contempt for his wife are revealed both in words and, more importantly, in the very tone.  He calls his country "barren crags" and his wife 'aged' and his people 'a savage race'.  The line 'That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me' consists of hard monosyllables and reveals his utter disgust with the animal-like existence of his people.  Curiously enough, he pretends to admire his son Telemachus for possessing the very qualities which he himself despises.  Though he had contempt for his country people and his wife he admires Telemachus for his 'slow prudence to make mild a rugged people'.  He boasts of striving with gods and yet talks of Telemachus paying 'meet adoration to gods.'  It appears that he does not believe in immortality (which, incidentally is the central doctrine of IN MEMORIAM) as he talks of 'the eternal silence' and that 'death closes all'.  He is not certain whether they will all be drowned in the high seas or they will be able to reach Elysium and meet Achilles.  At any rate, he appears to be proud and boastful and neglects his duty and social responsibilities.   Some critics have gone to the extent of saying that the poem is a repudiation of life and responsibilities.  For them "it is a brilliant failure in which the details are inconsistent, the reasoning specious" and it deals with life without faith, which can only lead to personal and social disintegration.  The last lines, no doubt, are exalted; but the rhetoric in "To strive, to seek, to find and not to yield' should be viewed in the light of all that preceded them.  We find them devoid of purpose or significance.

         
Tennyson's Ulysses is a bundle of contradictions.  Scornful of his people, and contemptuous of his own son and wife, skeptical of gods and immortality, Ulysses talks rhetorically of the life of infinite search and yearning for new knowledge and experience.  The poet thus depicts some of the contradictions apparent both in himself and in his age through his character.

00229---Describe the effects of the West Wind on land, in the sky and at sea. [P.B.Shelley] [English Literature free notes]

The West Wind is thought of as a wild and uncontrollable spirit, a tempestuous force destroying what has to die and scattering the seeds of new life.  It is in a way the symbol of the Law of Life itself, manifesting itself in the change of seasons, in the cycle of birth, death and regeneration.  In the first stanza its effect on land is described.  The powerful Wind drives away the dead and sickly leaves ('the pestilence-stricken multitudes') by its unseen presence like a magician driving away ghosts.  Thus the Wind acts as a Destroyer.  The Wind at the same time scatters the seeds and buries them in the soil, where they lie dormant all through the Winter.  When the warm Spring breeze blows, the seeds will sprout, filling the whole earth with new life, colours and fragrance.  Thus it acts as a preserver and brings about a regeneration.  The dual aspects of the West Wind are maintained and reinforced throughout the poem.

            The West Wind's effect in the sky is as tumultuous as its effect on land.  In the second stanza, with the help of three images, the poet splendidly describes the terrible impact of the West Wind on the clouds.  The Wind is pictured as a great river and the clouds are like leaves.  Just as the Wind drives away the leaves on land, it shakes 'the tangled boughs of Heaven and Ocean' and scatters the thin, loose clouds.  Heaven and ocean together constitute a great tree, from whose tangled branches the clouds are shaken and pushed away.  The scattered clouds herald the approach of a rain-storm.  The second image is that of a fierce Maenad (a female devotee of the god Dionysus).  The sky looks terrible like a fierce Maenad, drunk and intoxicated, with the thin clouds spread out behind her like wild, uplifted hair.  The third image is related to death and tomb.  The sound of the wind is the 'dirge of the dying year'.  The black clouds are transformed into the dark solid dome of a tomb from which rain, lightning and hail will burst with a frightening energy.  The wind here again carries the suggestion of birth and growth along with decay and death.

            In the third stanza  poet describes the effect of the powerful Wind on the Mediterranean and the Atlantic.  The Wind wakes up the calm Mediterranean from its summer slumber. The poet imagines the Mediterranean lying by the side of the pumice isle in Baiae's bay, dreaming of old palaces, and ruined towers with gardens full of bright flowers on its shores, which are reflected on the crystal-clear waters.  The smooth waves of the Atlantic cleave themselves into deep furrows by the impact of the mighty West Wind.  The vegetation in the sea-bed becomes pale with fear, tremble and shed their leaves.   In all the first three stanzas the metaphor of leaf is maintained.   The Wind scattered the decayed and dead leaves on land; the clouds are like leaves shed by the Wind.  The undersea plants too 'despoil themselves' at the very sound of the Wind.  All these stanzas also indicate the two aspects of the West Wind, viz., as a destroyer and as a preserver.  It destroys what is sick and useless and preserves the seeds of life to bring about regeneration.  Each stanza gives an account of the powers and attributes of the Wind and the three stanzas taken together are cast in the mould of a prayer.

00228--The structure of the poem "To His Coy Mistress" [Andrew Marvell] [English Literature free notes]

   Andrew Marvell's To His Coy Mistress is a poem on erotic love it is constructed in the true Carpe Diem mode exhorting the beloved to seize the moment and make the best use of time before it is too late.           

            The poem could be divided into three sections or strophes.

            In the first section the lover explains how he and his mistress could have led an easy leisurely blissful life if they had all the time in the world to live and love.  If the lover had all the time in the world, he says he would have loved his lady leisurely.  They would sit down and decide which way they should walk and pass in the day.  They would talk of love the whole say.  She would wander on the banks of the river Ganges and find rubies.  He would sit by the shores of Humber and sing plaintive songs expressing his yearning for her.  He would love her till the end of the world.  She would turn down his love till the Jews are converted to Christianity.  His love would grow exuberantly like a plant and become vaster than emprise.  The love would use a hundred years praising the beauty of the beloved's eyes and forehead, two hundred years praising the beauty of the beloved's eyes and forehead, two hundred years to adore each breast and thirty thousand years to the test.  It will take ages to priase each part She deserves all praise.  The love wouldn't love her in any other way. 

            In the second strophe the lover deals with the transitory nature of beauty and youth.  The poet adopts the classical pattern of logically sound arguments to portray erotic love. The poem is in the true Carpe Diem mode.  The lover says that Time passes quickly.  Physical beauty fades quickly and dies.  They have to seize the moment and make the best use of it.  Now she is beautiful and youth.  He is full of love.  The lover invites the mistress to respond to the call of love.  If she does not come to his embrace now, perhaps it will be too late because Time and Death pursue them relentlessly and there is no escape.  With these infallible arguments the lover convinces his beloved of the urgency of physical love.

            The third strophe is lover's plea to his beloved to make the best use of time.  They have to act this instant, or it will be too late.  They now possess the beauty and youth and zest and vitality.  Time passes too fast.  Its birds of prey devour beauty and strength.  They should enjoy love.  The should unite together.  Time and death pursue them relentlessly and since they flee from their Jaw they should seize the moment and make the best use of time before it is too late.  The lover thus persuades his beloved to respond to his love and come to his embrace.

            The three strophes are closely related in keeping with the meta-physical tradition.
                                                                                END

00227--How does Andrew Marvel bring together the themes of live and logic in the poem To His Coy Mistress? [English Literature free notes]

 Andrew Marvell's To His Coy Mistress is a poem on erotic love.  The lover expresses his passionate feelings and makes a strong plea to his Coy Mistress to come to him and be united with him.

            If the lover had all the time in the world, he says he would have loved his lady leisurely.  They would sit down and decide which way they should walk and pass the day.  They would talk of love the whole day.  She would wander on the banks of the river Ganges and find rubies.  He would sit by the shores of Humber and sing plaintive songs expressing his yearning for her.  He would love here till the end of the world.  She would turn down his love till the Jews are convert to Christianity.  His love would grow exuberantly like a plant and become vaster than empires.  The love would use a hundred years praising the beauty of the beloved's eyes ad forehead, two hundred years to adore each breast and thirty thousand years to the rest.  It will take ages to praise each part. She deserves all such praise.  The lover wouldn't love her in any other way.

            The poet adopts the classical pattern of logically sound arguments to portray erotic love.  The poem is in the true Carpe Diem mode.  The lover says that Time passes quickly.  Physical beauty fades quickly and dies.  They have to seize the moment and make the best use of it.  Now she is beautiful and youth.  He is full of love.  The lover invites the mistress to respond to the call of love.  If she does not come to his embrace now, perhaps it will be too late because Time and Death pursue them relentlessly and there is no escape.  With these infallible arguments the lover convinces his beloved of the urgency of physical love.

            The lower seeks the help of logic to convince his beloved of the urgency of their physical love.  The stress is on sexual love the yearning of the body.  The lover uses infallible logic and almost frightens the lady by drawing the terrible picture of Time devouring their body like a voracious bird of pray and her lovely body rotting inside the dark marble vault and worms feasting on it.  They have to seize the moment and get whatever they could before it is too late.  The emphasis is on logic and reason to facilitate the realization of love.

00226--Why is 18th century called the Age of Reason? [English Literature free notes]

Eighteenth century witnessed a resolute attempt in the direction of moral regeneration.  The writers of this period, notably, Pope, Dr. Johnson, etc. followed the rules and models of the classical writers.  Hence it is also called neo-classical age.  They gave supreme importance to the intellectual aspects rather than the emotional sides of man.  The prevailing principles of the time were rationalism and utility.  Actually it was a reaction against the moral degeneration of Restoration era.  Elegance and correctness were the dominant mania of the time.  This supremacy of logic and reason made the age The Age of Reason.

00225--Consider 'Kubla khan' as a fantasy [S.T.Coleridge] OR Discuss the supernatural elements in the poem ‘Kubla Khan’ [English Literature free notes]

  'Supernatural' refers to things that cannot be explained.   Supernatural forces are forces that work upon people but we cannot explain how and why.  Ghosts in the plays of Shakespeare, gods interfering in the affairs of man, Deus ex machine, etc. can be taken as supernatural elements.  Coleridge employs the supernatural in three of his important poems, namely, 'Christabel, 'Ancient Mariner' and 'Kubla khan'.  We shall discuss here how Coleridge exploits this device to create effect to his poem.

            'Kubla khan' is a vision in a dream and all the images rising up before the poet seem to be 'things'.  Kubla khan orders a pleasure dome to be build in Xanadu on the banks of the sacred river Alph which flows, through 'Caverns measureless to man' and flows 'down to a sunless sea'.  An area of ten miles was enclosed for the purpose with walls and towers.  Inside the enclosed area were gardens with 'sinuous rills' and 'sunny spots of greenery'.  The dome is a miracle of rare device.  Everything about the river is mysterious and enigmatic.  The hidden caves of nature are set against the 'sinuous rills' and the 'sunny spots of greenery'.  The word 'bright' suggests something abnormal and unnatural.  'Walls' and 'towers' also suggest the exclusiveness and man's effort to cut himself off from nature.

            The land plunges down through cedar woods to a deep valley.  A note of fear and beauty is suggested.  The atmosphere is both holy and enchanted.  The place is both savage and charming.  Into this place is introduced a love-lorn lady seeking her demon lover under the weird light of the declining moon.  This adds to the eeriness and mystery of the scene.  It adds a dramatic force to the scene.

            The irregular bursts of water beneath the earth is described with the phrases 'turmoil seething',  'fast thick pants', 'mightily', 'forces', 'vaulted', 'flung up' etc.  The river makes a deep nose when it falls into the ocean.  Kubla Khan seems to hear the voices of his forefathers predicting that war is imminent.  A message about destruction from the immeasurable past is passed on to the present.  It is ominous indeed.

       The song of the Abyssinian girl suggests something primitive about it.  The poet with his holiness and his sacred inspiration is a prophet different from the ordinary people.  The frenzy in which the poet is in the second part of the poem also contributes to its supernatural vein.  On the whole, 'Kubla khan' is full of supernatural elements.

00224--What distinction does Coleridge make between FANCY and IMAGINATION? [English Literature free notes]

Imagination for Coleridge is the creative faculty possessed by poets.  This shaping power of imagination enables the poet to configure the work as a unified whole.  Both primary and secondary imagination—the former is involuntary where as the latter is a conscious form—have the same faculty of recreation.  Fancy on the contrary is made of memory emancipated from the order of time and space, modified by the empirical phenomenon of the will.  Coleridge makes poetic genius identical with imagination, and poetic talent with fancy.

00223--Though specifically directed against Thomas Shadwell, the significance of 'Mac Flecknoe' consists in its being a strong denunciation of bad writers and writing. Discuss.[John Dryden] [English Literature free notes]

      John Dryden's Mac Flecknoe is one of the finest satires in the English language.   It was Neo-classical period in English literature and Dryden, along with another brilliant satirist Alexander Pope, was the poet who dominated the literary scene.  Satire was the most popular form of poetry and both Dryden and Pope were great masters of this poetic genre. 

            Mac Flecknoe is the product of a literary and personal rivalry.  The poem was Drden's reply to Thomas Shadwell's poem: The Medal of John Bayes  which in turn was a criticism of Dryden's earlier poem, The Medal.  Shadwell's poem was an unfair and indecent attack.  This provoked Dryden and he brought in Mac Flecknoe that silenced his adversary.

            Dryden's satirical genius is fully revealed in the poem.  It is a satire on Thomas Shadwell who was once a friend of Dryden.   The poem is primarily Dryden's reply to Shadwell.  Thus it is personal in nature.  But Dryden deliberately makes him a model of poetasters and a symbol of bad writing.  There are many references to good poets of the time.  Jonson, Flectcher, Etherage and Dekker from many of whom Shadwell, is accused of having stolen material.  Shadwell has limited some of them.  But according to Drydon, it does no good to the prince of dullness. 

            Shadwell's plays are criticised.  He invents his own humours for his plays.  Shadwell's poetic genius is such that he cannot compose a good play or write good poetry.  It is full of venom but can't compose even a good satire.  So Dryden advises him.

                        Thy Genius calls thee not to purchase fame

                        In keen iambics, but mild Anagram

                       Leave writing plays, and choose for thy command

                        Some peaceful Province in Acrostic land

This is piece of sound advice not only to Shadwell but all bad poets.

            This is that boasted bias of thy mind

            By which one way to dullness 'tis inclined

            Which makes thy writings lean on one side still.

           

 Shadwell can write neither tragedy or comedy.  Dryden ridicules,

            Thy tragic muse gives smiles, thy comic sleep.

            Thus Dryden's poem Mac Flecknoe becomes a satire not only on Shadwell but on all bad writers and bad writings as well.

00222--The Lake School of Poetry [English Literature free notes]

The Romantic Poetry can be classified into three groups: The Lake School, The Scott Group, and The Byron Group.  Although Wordsworth was born in the Lake district he lived there only for a short period, along with S.T.Coleridge and Robert Southey he is called a lake poet.  This term Lake School was first used in the Edinburgh Review, August, 1817.

00221--Attempt an appreciation of the poem "The World is Too much With Us" bringing in Wordsworth's love of nature and his contempt for the materialism of the age. [English Literature free notes]

The World is Too much With Us is one of the finest sonnets written by William Wordsworth.  The poet is disillusioned with the gross materialism of the modern world and strongly condemns it.

            Wordsworth says the world is too much with us.  He is oppressed with the burden of the highly materialistic ways of life.  Modern man spends all his time and energy in the mad pursuit of material wealth and comfort.  We are blind to Nature and her bounty.  The beautiful sights and sounds of Nature do not give us any pleasure or comfort.  The poet calls this a 'Sordid boon'.

            'We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon'.

            The poet seems to the concerned with the heartless nature of man.  having lost touch with the world of nature he has become insensitive to everything.    This heartless existence tortures the mind of the poet.

            Wordsworth suggests a remedy for his miserable existence.  A return to nature is the way out.  The poet shows us the beautiful face of nature in the next three lines:

            The sea that bares her boson to the moon

            The wind that will be howling at all hours

            And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers.

            With these two lines Wordsworth draws two lovely pictures of Nature.  The moon it sea and the quietened winds suggest the sea bright still night.  The poet is charmed by the ethereal beauty of the sea on a still night.  Wordsworth was a lover, admirer and Worshipper of nature and nature in turn was a friend, philosopher and guide to him.  He not only got pleasure admiring the beauty of nature but also got comfort and peace of mind from the contemplation of nature.

            The two beautiful pictures we get in this poem show what nature meant to Wordsworth.  Modern man is blind to this beauty.  He is out of tune with the sounds and sights of nature.  He gets neither pleasure, not comfort and peace of mind from nature.

            Wordsworth is so much  oppressed with this incentive nature of modern  life that he breaks into prayer.

              ... Great God!  I'd rather be

            A pagan suckled in a creed outworn. 

 This preference to be a Pagan is the solution to this problem.  It is Wordsworth's own remedy to his personal problem.  But the poet suggests that it could also be a solution to the melody of materialism.  May be a Pagan is brought up in primitivism and beliefs that seem irrational, he is close to Nature.  The admires and worships nature.  he gets comfort and peace of mind from Nature.

            If you become a pagan, Wordsworth says, you may be lucky to have a glimpse into the mystery and beauty of Nature.  You may

            Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea

            Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn

            Wordsworth concludes his sonnet mentioning the majesty, beauty and mystery of a sight and sound of Nature. 

00220--Satanic School of Poetry [English Literature free notes]

Robert Southey, the poet laureate, applied this term in the preface to his Vision of Judgement brought out in 1822. This name, Satanic School of Poetry refers to poets like Lord Byron, P.B.Shelley, and their imitators.  Southey writes, "Immoral writers who have rebelled against the holiest ordinances of human society."  In 1822, Lord Byron and Leigh Hunt joined in the production of "Liberal Magazine".  The first issue of the magazine contained Lord Byron's The Vision of Judgement came as the outcome of his feud with Southey.  Byron's poetry was much criticised on moral grounds, but was greatly popular at home, and abroad.  Southey's next target was P.B.Shelley on the ground of rebellion spirit.

00219--Donne as a Metaphysical poet [English Literature free notes]

John Donne may be aptly described as the founder of Metaphysical poetry in English.  Dryden used the term ‘Metaphysical’ with reference to Donne’s lyrics and satires in his letter “Discourse of Satire” (1693).  In Dryden’s opinion, Donne affects the metaphysics, or rather, employs the terminology and abstruse arguments of the medieval scholastic philosophers.  Dryden believed that Donne was too much given to intellectual analysis. 

00218--Comment on the imagery of the poem "Ode to the West Wind" by P.B.Shelley. [English Literature free notes]

   Imagery is the employment of images of word pictures by poets and writers.  A poet uses them to signify all the objects and qualities of sense perception referred to in his poem.  Shelley is a great master in the use of images.  His imagination is such that it takes us away from the common world into an unsubstantial fairyland of colours and light and sound.  Images pour in rich profusion from his mind.  In his essay called "The Defence of Poetry" Shelley describes poetry as a glowing coal with the winds of imagination blowing over it.  His images, at any rate, glow and alter like palpitating coal.  A peculiar kind of imaginary that we find in Shelley is the use of figurative language (simile, metaphor, etc) Myth also forms part of his imagery.  "Ode to the West Wind" is an excellent example of Shelley's skill in creating myths.

            Right at the opening the poet compares the West Wind to the breath of autumn's being.  The leaves are imagined as a crowd of 'pestilence-stricken multitudes' which are scattered by the West Wind like ghosts driven away by an enchanter.  The leaf-image is maintained throughout the poem.  Assigning the West Wind the roles of Destroyer and Preserve is a striking example of his imagery.  The Wind is like a chariot which carries all the winged seeds to their wintry bed.  Here, through a metaphor, the seeds are compared to dead bodies.  

         The arrival of the spring is described as the sounding of a clarion, when the seeds sprout out into the air just as a flock of sheep move forward, driven by s shepherd.  Then comes the description of the rain clouds gathered in the evening sky.  This is a brilliant piece of imagery wrought by the ethereal imagination of Shelley.  Images merge into one another and one may find it a little difficult to logically disentangle the meaning.  The rain clouds tumbling about in the sky are first described as leaves shaken down from branches of Heaven and Ocean.  Then suddenly they are described as the uplifted hair of a frenzied Maenad.  The sharp howling of West Wind is described as the funeral song for the dying year (as autumn signifies the death of the year) and the dark, overcast sky is called the vaulted tomb in which the dying year is going to be buried.  One thing to note about Shelley's imagery is its scientific correctness.  In the next stanza Shelley describes the effect of the West Wind on the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean.  Here again powerful and evocative images are employed.

            The whole poem is a series of myths worked into an all enclosing myth by which the West Wind becomes the Spirit of Freedom encouraging human society to change, as nature does from autumn to spring, from an old order to a new one.

00217--Keats’ concept of Hellenism as revealed in the poem “Ode on a Grecian Urn”. [English Literature free notes]

Keats usually drew his inspiration from two sources; Greek Art and Medieval Romance.  His acquaintance with the Elgin marbles and familiarity with Grecian urns inspired his famous poem “Ode on a Grecian Urn”.  Greek art with its belief in absolute perfection of form fascinated him.  The word “urn” is an attractive one, and full of artistic significance, but Keats wanted to bring the very presence of Greece here, and therefore uses the word “Grecian” in the title itself.  He preferred this term to “Greek” because the latter signifies Greek language and the citizens of that great civilization.  “Arcadia” (known as the Switzerland of Greece) and “Tempe” (a synonym for a valley with cold shades and romantic scenery) are referred to by the poet as scenes pictured on the urn.  The sacrifice mentioned in the poem also is a common feature of Greek religion.  The word “Attic” in the concluding stanza again takes us to Athens, the centre of Greek civilization.

00216--Describe the seven ages of a man, as set forth in Shakespeare's All the world's a Stage. [English Literature free notes]

            In order to get the full flavour of All the World's a Stage, it is necessary to know the speaker and the occasion in which he makes this speech.  Jacques, in As You Like It, is a gloomy, mocking philosopher, who finds nothing good in men or the world.  He is witty and gentle at heart, and this makes his mockery pleasant.  In the present speech he does not draw the seven scenes of life as they actually are; he uses the art of the cartoon.  He gives us amusing caricatures, which are purely funny at first but become bitter towards the end.

            Jacques is a courtier; and therefore the middle caricatures in his description refer to a courtier's career.  He and other courtiers are followers of a duke who has been driven from his throne by his brother.  The duke goes to live with his followers in the Forest of Arden.  They are about to sit down to a meal one day when a young man of good birth hunger to do this.  The duke then tells his companions that theirs is not the only sad drama in this theatre of the world.  Jacques takes the Duke's metaphor and gives it a comical turn.

   Each of us is an actor, he says, in a drama of human life.  That drama consists of seven acts.  First there is the infant, crying and vomiting in his nurse's arms.  He grows up into a school-boy who complains and pleads against going to school and creeps like a snail on his way there, each morning, with his bag of books and his well-scrubbed face.  Time passes and he becomes a youth, and falls in love, and spends his time sighing loudly for the love of his lady, and writing grand poems about her slightest features.  From love his interest changes into war, as he grows to manhood, and he goes to battle to gain fame as a soldier.  He wears a bushy beard that almost covers his face, and he uses bad words and curses from foreign languages.  He is quarrelsome and ready to suspect that others are insulting him.  In an instant his sword is out for a fight.  He goes after fame which is uncertain and short-lived and risks his life to win it.  In course of time he gets tired of this settles down in the lazy, comfortable life of a magistrate.  He becomes fat and his middle grows out into a paunch which is well lined with the chickens he has eaten, and which he probably got as bribes.  He puts on a strict look, in court, quotes stale proverbs and gives silly examples.  From well-fed importance the middle-aged man declines into elder lines and retirement.  He stays at home, and treasures the clothes of his younger days, now useless to them.   He looks like a clown with his spectacles on his nose and a bag at his belt in which he carries what he needs.  He goes about all the time in slippers, for he does not like to go out of the house.  The world seems too large, and distances too great for his feeble legs.  The loud bold voice his manhood becomes the girlish treble of childhood.  His breath whistles while he speaks.  In the last scene of life the old man becomes a child again and loses his memory.  His senses weaken; slight, taste, hearing gradually die.  He is, in fact, a walking corpse already, and death only puts a conclusion to his dying which begins much earlier.

            There is a great deal of wisdom under the comedy of this speech.  It is strange that man should grow gradually to full ripeness and after that grow backward, as it were, until he is a child again.

00215--What is Robert Frost’s attitude to Nature in “Birches”? [English Literature free notes]

Frost’s attitude is ambivalent.  He draws his theme from Nature and the countryside and seems to be imbibed with a deep love of Nature.  The rhythms of country life hold him spell bound. But he never gives us an artificial picture of country life seen from a library.  On the other hand, he describes Nature from his own experience.  He is a typical “country man” in his descriptions of Nature.  In “Birches” he recalls the favourite leisure time activity of rural New England children.  His boyhood delight in swinging on the birches suggests to him some of the fundamental problems about life.  Though the landscape is described with scientific accuracy, the human element is not brushed off too lightly.  The poet recalls the experiences of childhood and philosophizes on it; the concluding lines of the poem move towards an understanding and wisdom arrived at through a slow contemplation of a simple game.  Nature is thus, not a means of escape from the drab realities of life, but the source of joy and wisdom to Frost, the Poet. 

00214--Autobiographical elements in T.S.Eliot's poem 'Journey of the Magi' [English Literature free notes]

  The poem 'Journey of the Magi' dramastises a spiritual quest.  Eliot successfully uses the framework of a Biblical incident, according to which the three wise men from the East led by a new star, reached Bethlehem to have glimpse of the infant Jesus.  The journey of the Magi indicates a state of transition, the change from spiritual emptiness to a kind of spiritual awakening.  The agony and the ecstasy of this transformation are communicated by one of the Magi and we are made to live through the experience.  Moreover, Eliot successfully employs images and situations which are at the same time personal, concrete, particular and also symbolic, universal, and spiritual.  Through a series of arresting pictures, Eliot brings home to us the difficult journey undertaken by the Magi through the desert, their descent into a valley of vegetation and the consequences of their conversion to the new faith.

            The Magi had to undergo severe hardships all along their long journey.  It was the 'very dead of winter' and the ways were deep and the weather was sharp.  Even the camels felt the strain of the journey as they were 'galled and sore-footed' and became unmanageable.  The camel men grumbled and some of them even ran away.  The wise men themselves regretted for having left their summer palaces on hill sides where girls in silk served sherbet.  Eliot is careful in maintaining the oriental atmosphere.  At times the night-fires burnt out, exposing them to the extreme cold.  Often they remained shelter less and this worsened their condition.  The people in both cities and towns on the route were unfriendly and the villagers exploited them.   At last they preferred to travel all night in order to keep themselves warm.  More hard to endure perhaps was their fear about the outcome of their quest.  They doubted the wisdom of undertaking such a long journey and under such extreme conditions, especially when they themselves were uncertain about the success of their mission.

            The narrator now recollects how at dawn they at length reached the temperature valley with sings of water and vegetation.  It was a welcome relief to them after their journey through the arid desert.  They also saw three trees at a distance and an old white horse galloping away in the meadow.  They came to an inn an old white horse ruffians playing the game of dice and kicking the empty wine-skins.  Even through all these images are familiar and concrete, often mixed with the personal memories of the poet, they also at the same time have religious and spiritual connotations.  The dawn, the running stream, the white horse, the water-mill are all suggestive of the emerging new faith.  The three trees and the six ruffians playing dice in an inn bring to our mind the betrayal of Christ and His crucifixion.  The Birth of Christ is juxtaposed here with his Death and this contrast reinforces the Birth-Death theme of the poem.  The old faith from which they sought an escape was also symbolically represented in the picture of the inn, with its drinking, dicing and 'kicking the empty wine-skins'.  Obviously, the old faith was worldly, given to sensuous pleasures and devoid of spiritual content.  At long last and just in time, they reached the place and saw Jesus.  They were not fully satisfied.

            The third section reveals to us what it was to have a new faith.  The Birth of a new faith, they realized to their dismay and agony, involved the death of the old faith.  The Magi suffered a spiritual crisis in breaking away from the old to embrace the new.  The new faith with its Mercy, Pity and Love meant giving up of the individual self.  Moreover, when they returned to their kingdoms they found their own people aliens as they continued to cling to their old values and beliefs.  Since they were witnesses, to the birth of Jesus, they were converted to the new faith.  But they needed 'one more death', or a second spiritual transformation, to make their conversion complete.

            The poem represents an important transitional stage in Eliot's own spiritual growth.  His 'Waste Land' represented a mood of despair.  Since then, Eliot steadily moved towards the Church of England and in 1927 joined it.  His conversion was not complete and there was disquiet and restlessness in his soul.  'Journey of the Magi', written in the year of his conversion, dramatizes this agony of his soul.  With 'Ash Wednesday' written in 1930 Eliot's spiritual transformation became complete.  The poem also exemplifies Eliot's condensed and elliptical style.