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  • A short note on the poem The Ruined Burg or The Ruin, Anglo Saxon poem

    A short note on the poem The Ruined Burg or The Ruin, Anglo Saxon poem

    The Ruin or The Ruined Burg is usually claimed to be one of the most memorable productions of Anglo-Saxon poetic inspiration. It stands out as a most representative piece of Anglo-Saxon elegies, with a clear and pointed elegiac note. Of course, as an elegy, the poem’s character differs from what is seen in other elegies. It mourns not the misfortune of a person, but of a place, not for the death of a person loved, but for the ruin of a place with a nostalgic ardour.

    The poem’s subject matter is the lamentation of the unknown Anglo-Saxon poet for the vanished glory of a great city, the ruins of which stand before him. The city referred to is probably the Roman-built city of Bath, which is the place of action for Sheridan’s famous comedy ‘The Rivals‘. Bath was once the centre of fashion and attraction, and enjoyed an immense glory and popularity in the days of the mighty Romans. But the Anglo-Saxon aggression, conquest and settlement brought about the utter ruins of the city and left behind simply a bitter memory of a grand past. The Anglo-Saxon poet of ‘The Ruin‘ laments impulsively over the end of that glorious city of the past. First, he describes the ancient gorgeous buildings, now deserted and turned roofless and tottering. Next, he goes to muse on their great past, when they were richly adorned and crowded with noble princes and proud warriors. Finally, he makes out the sad contrast from the awful decline of the ruined city. He deeply mourns the loss of its pomp and splendour, crowd and noise, attraction and business. All these are gone forever. Nothing is left but the sad mutability of grandeur and magnificence, glory and colour, so ruthlessly changed by the ravages of time.

    The clasp of earth and the clutch of the grave
    Grip the proud builders, long perished and gone.

    The Ruin or The Ruined Burg must be ranked with the finest pieces of Anglo-Saxon poetry. Its importance and influence can in no way be minimised or slighted. Its significance is noted in several ways. In the first place, it is an impressive elegy, and echoes the modern elegiac note that muses on the way of the world and its tragedy. In this respect, it may rightly be taken as the most primitive predecessor of Gray’s Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, Shelley’s Adonais and Arnold’s The Scholar Gipsy.

    In second place, The Ruin stands out as a personal poem. Its intensely personal tone and warmth of appeal may well be regarded as the earliest pattern of subjective lyric. Indeed, in the intensity of the poet’s emotion, imagination and sincerity, this is a rare piece in Anglo-Saxon poetry.

    In the third place, thoroughly rich in descriptive details, it compares the past glory and the present degeneration of a renowned city. Again, the poem may well be taken as the earliest ancestor of Lord Byron’s Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, which also institutes a penetrating comparison between Venice’s great past and her present state of decay and degeneration.

    Also read: Summary and Analysis of the poem The Dream of the Rood

  • A short note on Layamon’s famous poem Brut

    A short note on Layamon’s famous poem Brut

    Layamon was an English poet of the late 12th century. His poem Brut is one of the chief sources of the matter of Britain in the metrical romances of the Middle Ages. He adapted this poem from the Latin work of Geoffrey of Monmouth. Geoffrey’s work is on the history of England, originally written in Latin. It contains a rich account of the old history and legends of the remote times of Britain. Geoffrey’s work was translated into French, and, of course, into rhyme, by a Norman, Wace. That work is popularly known as Wace’s Brut.

    Layamon’s work is based on Wace’s Brut. It is a long poem, written in irregular alliterative verses, with materials, mainly taken from Geoffrey, with additions and alterations here and there. Layamon’s significance is immense in the English literature of the Middle English period. He is instrumental in reviving the interest in native materials for English literature. Although he translated the French rhyming version of Geoffrey into English, he added several things that had not been in the Latin original or the French translation. Those were obtained by the author himself independently, somehow or other, from the Welsh folklore and legends.

    Layamon’s work, as already noted, has an essential bearing on the growth of Middle English literature. His addition is particularly of great worth. He introduced some matters relating to King Arthur, and here, the story of Arthur’s passing is especially worth mentioning. Layamon has offered immense materials for the growth of Arthurian literature in subsequent times. Both Thomas Malory and Alfred Lord Tennyson, celebrated names in Arthurian literature, are found to have derived materials from him.

    Of course, Layamon’s work is not of a very high order from an artistic standpoint. His verse is not of rich quality, as he had no immediate literary model for his great enterprise to relate history in verses. The pattern before him was, perhaps, the old English alliterative verses and the rhyming French couplets, and he could not handle either of them with much poetical efficiency. As a result, his versification often appears disagreeable and discordant, heavy and prosaic, but his matter compensates for his poetical deficiency, and his treatment of past British history reveals both his scholarship and his creative imagination. The interest that he has created in his treatment of different stories from the remote history makes up for much of his uncomfortable verses and ranks him among the important forerunners of Middle English literature.

    Also read: Summary and Analysis of the poem The Dream of the Rood

  • A short note on Thomas Carlyle’s work “Sartor Resartus”

    A short note on Thomas Carlyle’s work “Sartor Resartus”

    Sartor Resartus is Thomas Carlyle’s original work, written in 1833 and 1834. The work is deeply personal and could be viewed as an allegorical autobiography, despite its Germanic method and inspiration. The work was written with the German Romantic School of thought in mind. It is still very much Germanic in both its content and approach. The Germanic expression “sartor resartus” means “the tailor re-patched.” There are two parts to the work. The Germanic title refers to a discussion of clothing philosophy in the first section. The second section is about a fictional German professor named Teufelsdrockh, whose philosophical speculations the first section is based on.

    The work is based on one’s own life, as previously stated. The hero is Teufelsdrockh, a fictional German professor who has composed a philosophical treatise on clothes, their history, and their influence. Carlyle wrote the German professor’s speech, and the book is a record of his own spiritual journeys and moral visions. Naturally, the allegorical aspect of Jonathan Swift’s A Tale of a Tub may have been a source of inspiration for Carlyle. However, the author uses cloth, a common material, to express the highly speculative Germanic transcendentalism doctrine, which is considered original. The clothes, which are used as veils and disguises, are cleverly allegorised to show the deeper truth about how people think and act. The act of covering what is real, true within, which is man’s heart, is referred to as “cloak.”

    Sartor Resartus is a serious treatise that marks Carlyle’s depth of thought, range of vision, and force of passion. The interplay of rich imagination and intense irony adds to its vigorous, poetic prose style. Indeed, in its rare blend of imagination and irony, sincerity and impulsiveness, spiritualism and symbolism, Sartor Resartus remains a unique prose work in English literature.

    Also read: Discuss “Sons and Lovers” as a Bildungsroman or Kunslerroman novel

  • Discuss the role of the wedding guest in The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by S.T.Coleridge

    Discuss the role of the wedding guest in The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by S.T.Coleridge

    The Wedding-guest plays a vital role in the poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and makes the poem much more dramatic. Structurally, he reinforces the dramatic element. Thematically, he helps interpret two different kinds of reality- the reality of everyday common existence and the uncanny world.

    The poem opens with an Ancient Mariner, with a long grey beard and glittering eyes, who stops one of the three guests on their way to a wedding feast and wants him to hear his story. The Wedding-Guest stands hypnotised and “cannot choose but hear.” The Mariner goes on with his tale. This wedding guest is reluctant to listen to the mariner’s extraordinary tale. He refuses to treat the story very seriously- at first. However, throughout this story, the guest pays more and more attention to the story. In The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, the wedding guest goes from an oblivious partier to a wise, solemn listener, believing the mariner’s tale, and at the end of the story learns a valuable lesson.

    The wedding guest proves he listens to the story when he is worried the mariner is a ghost or spirit. As the mariner’s story gets to a more supernatural point, involving the incarnations of death and life-in-death, the guest becomes worried that the mariner is inhuman.

    “I fear thee and thy glittering eye,

    And thy skinny hand, so brown.”

     

    The mariner responds, “Fear not, fear not, thou Wedding-Guest!/This body dropt not down.”. The wedding guest, however angry he was earlier, now proves he was paying attention by worrying that the mariner was actually a dead body reanimated, or a spirit, or some other supernatural being. This passage shows two things. First, it shows how the guest was listening and not just ignoring the tale. Second, it shows how the guest believes the mariner. After reassuring the wedding guest, the mariner moves on with his tale.

    The ancient mariner and the Wedding-guest are complementary to each other. Towards the end of the poem, the Mariner says:

    “I pass like night, from land to land :
    I have strange power of speech :
    That moment that his face I see,
    I know the man that must hear me :
    To him my tale I teach.”

    Hence, the Wedding-guest is the mariner’s listener. Some critics have suggested that there is something of the Mariner in the composition of the Wedding-guest.

    Towards the end of Part I, there is a slight change in the attitude of the Wedding-guest. He perceives the acute pain on the face of the mariner after he has killed the Albatross. He exclaims :

    “God save thee, ancient Mariner :
    From the fiends, that plague thee thus :
    Why look’st thou so ?”

    At this moment, the Mariner no longer remains an insolent, eccentric sea-farer, undesirably imposing himself on a stranger. Except for the above interruption, the Wedding-Guest does not interrupt the narrative of the Mariner. He suffers from the Mariner and learns what the Mariner has learned at such a terrible cost. The Ancient Mariner, before parting, tells the Wedding-Guest that “he prayeth well, who loveth well all things both great and small.”

     

     

    After line 596, roles are reversed between the Mariner and the Wedding-Guest. Earlier, the Mariner had been experiencing alienation while the Wedding-Guest was going to attend a social gathering. But now the Mariner can enjoy the company. He died with the death of the Albatross, but the gush of love he showed for the water snakes led to his resurrection into a much larger brotherhood. The Mariner attains a complete reconciliation with God. But the Wedding-Guest, who was earlier fond of gay company, now withdraws into the loneliness of his inner self to ponder over the mystery of human existence and its real significance. He responds neither to the wedding bells nor to the little vesper bell.

    Some critics believe that the Wedding-Guest is an ideal reader, responsive, apprehensive, and completely involved in what he hears. He has a refined and sharpened sensibility. He keenly feels and expresses what an ordinary reader might overlook. The reader can very well identify with the Wedding-Guest. The Wedding-Guest’s suspension of disbelief and the trust with which he accepts the tale helps the reader suspend his disbelief. Besides, he helps to relieve the monotony of what otherwise would have been a monologue.

    Also read: Discuss “Sons and Lovers” as a Bildungsroman or Kunslerroman novel

  • What is the sources of the Poem “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”

    What is the sources of the Poem “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”

    The Sources of the Poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

    (1) The central idea of the poem was suggested by Wordsworth. The idea is a very old one, being found in Homer’s Odyssey where Ulysses, the brave sailor, and hero of the Trojan War, is visited with supernatural punishments and long wanderings over the seas by Neptune, the sea-god for having killed a one-eyed giant.

    (2) The idea that the spirit of a locality takes vengeance for an act of cruelty done on an animal finds expression in Wordsworth’s Hartleap Well.

    (3) According to Coleridge, the poem was founded on a dream of his friend, Mr. John Cruikshank. It was a strange dream in which he “fancied, he saw a skeleton ship, with figures in it”.

    (4) Wordsworth suggested that some crimes should be committed, which should bring upon the Mariner the persecution of the ruling spirits of the place. He also suggested the navigation of the ship by dead men.

  • Discuss “Sons and Lovers” as a Bildungsroman or Kunslerroman novel

    Discuss “Sons and Lovers” as a Bildungsroman or Kunslerroman novel

    “Sons and Lovers” is “A Portrait of the Artist as a Youngman” by D.H.Lawrence. In it, he transmutes autobiography into objective fiction and organizes his accounts of a potential artist from infancy to maturity by racing the growth of his dual self-both artistic and human. Middleton Murray has emphasised that, owing to what is called mother fixation, Lawrence himself was never able to make a happy emotional adjustment with other women. He was a tortured soul throughout the full 45 years of his life, and what he suffered, and what he thought and observed under the stimulus of suffering, can very well be guessed from a study of “Sons and Lovers”.

    The same psychology is evident in Paul Morel, the hero of the novel. He is an artist, and speaking psychologically, we may say that in art he finds compensation for his psychological traumas. Too sensitive and nervous to find joy in the external world, he finds self-fulfilment in the world of art and nature. Right from the dawn of life, Paul is prone to depression. Disharmony in his parents’ marital life produces in him a neurotic strain and makes him hypersensitive. “His neurotic refusal of life is the direct result of his parents’ failure.” To see them fighting bitterly, Paul is overpowered by the “horror of the sudden silence, silence everywhere.” His tortured soul is soothed only when he hears them coming up, together.

    Paul suffers from utmost diffidence, shudders to face the outer world, and eventually leans on his mother more for the warmth of life. He thus proves to be an introverted and self-conscious personality. To him, the touch of any external reality, school, rustic and vulgar manners of the miners, his interview at the Jordan’s, library, etc., is an agonising experience. Lawrence comments on his plight at the Jordan’s-“Charles I mounted his scaffold with a lighter heart than did Paul Morel as he followed his mother up the dirty steps to the dirty door”.

    Paul is a young man of an artistic nature. But this remains suppressed owing to the inability to establish a sane human relationship. He cannot help his mother’s soul-sucking love. The ability to look deep into his own consciousness cannot compensate for his inability to grow as an independent individual. Paul’s love for Miriam is a desperate attempt to free himself from the excessive attachment to his mother. He has to reconcile himself to her excessive spirituality, but he demands fleshly love of her. The disparity weighs heavily on his psyche. He loves his mother deeply but sometimes hates her for her antagonism toward Miriam. The demands of Clara, the sex symbol for Paul, are too much to be met by him, to inspire the imaginative artist in him, and to lead him to the “inner reality”. Miriam’s presence, however, exercises a very stimulating effect on his mind. It impels his imagination and stirs him into creative activity. In her contact, Paul gains insight and life warmth. Miriam urged this warmth into intensity like a white light. In breaking with Miriam, Paul severs himself from his inspiration and it virtually marks the death of the artist in him.

    Paul’s artistic disposition finds an outlet in his drawings and paintings. Paul has an artistic bent of mind as evident in his love for nature and flowers. The painting of his ‘landscape’ gets the 1st prize at the Nottingham Castle Exhibition and is bought for 20 guineas. He is gifted with a rare insight and his paintings are a manifestation of his lifelong quest for ‘inner reality’.

    The pursuit of art and intellect, such as French, algebra, or poetry, brings him inner satisfaction, and so does the world of nature. He would breathe a flower as if they loved each other. He has a rare insight and penetration and can see into the heart of things. He can paint the soul and not merely the externals. He is so engrossed in his work while working at a sketch that he becomes oblivious to his surroundings. To Miriam, he talks endlessly of his sketches, about his “love of horizontals”. He is grateful to the girls working at the factory who present him with the paint tubes. Paul appreciates that they have recognised his keen interest in painting. Later, after the death of his mother, when his zest for life has virtually cooled down, Paul returns to cheap novels and becomes indifferent to his painting. Thus, these intellectual activities are an internal part of his existence.

  • Character of William Morel in D.H.Lawrence’s novel “Sons and Lovers”

    Character of William Morel in D.H.Lawrence’s novel “Sons and Lovers”

    William Morel is the eldest son of Gertrude and Walter Morel in D.H. Lawrence’s novel “Sons and Lovers”. He was just seven when he was first introduced to us. He is ‘a very active lad, fair-haired, freckled, with a touch of the Dane or Norwegian about him’. Though very young, he has a definite air of distinction around him. When he goes to school, he is at the top of the class and is said to be the smartest boy. At thirteen, he finds a job in the co-operative office. He also goes to night school; by the time he is sixteen, he is the best shorthand clerk and bookkeeper in the office. He is an active boy and has won several medals and prizes. He learns dancing and makes friends with several girls, who often come to his house enquiring after the young Mr Morel. He is a gifted boy, and the driving ambition of his mother sets him on the path of steady progress. At nineteen, he gets a job in Nottingham at thirty shillings a week, and after a year, he secures a position in London at a hundred and twenty a year. This achievement is outstanding for one who begins merely as a miner’s son.

    William is brought up in the strife-ridden atmosphere of the Morel household. He understands and shares what Mrs Morel suffers. He is a witness to the brutally violent treatment of his mother at the hands of his father. He is also repelled by his father’s gross animality and the coarseness of his manners. Since his mother loves him so well, his father, red hot with jealousy, often bullies him. As a result, William develops a deep hatred for his father. Growing up to be a strong young man, he openly shows hostility to his father. Once, when he finds his mother badly beaten, he threatens to strike him and teach him a lesson. But for the intervention of Mrs Morel, he would have done so. He feels annoyed with his mother for her intervention. “But why don’t you let me settle him? I  could do easily,” he says to her.

    His inordinate love for his mother balances William’s loathing for his father. He loves her dearly, for she is so ladylike, so tender and fascinating. Even though he is a small child at the fair, he buys her two egg cups with moss roses on them. He says he likes them, but the fact is that he has bought them to please her. And after she leaves the fair, he cannot enjoy himself. Much later, when he is in London, he gets a chance to go on a trip in the Mediterranean at quite a small cost. But he rejects the offer so that he can visit his home and see his mother. Love for his mother is at the uppermost level in his mind.

    Mrs Morel, disillusioned and disgusted with her husband, turns to her eldest son for love and fulfilment. She showers all her love on William and thus gradually possesses his soul. The relationship between the two soon assumes an Oedipal complexion. During William’s childhood, this love sustains him, but as he grows up and feels the necessity of establishing a sexual relationship with other girls, its damaging influence soon becomes evident. Mrs Morel is highly jealous of and openly rude to the girls who call her house to meet William. She does not approve of his dancing, either, and he has to dance despite his mother. In London, he is captivated by the beauty of Gyp and very much wants to marry her. Yet, he cannot give himself fully to his sweetheart because of his deep attachment to his mother. Mrs Morel disapproves of his choice and advises him not to go after her. He feels he has gone too far to leave her at this stage. At the same time, he realises his life is ultimately rooted in his mother, and he cannot wrench himself away from her. This causes an acute conflict in his mind. And under its unbearable burden, he gets full of despair and often talks of dying.

    During the summer of the last year of his life, the letters he wrote from London are desperate and unhappy. They acquire a definite feverish tone. When he comes home on a short visit, he is more gaunt than ever and is silent and reserved. He tries to look gay and cheerful, but this unnatural posture tells on his health. Slowly, he breaks down under its strain. A few days after his return to London, he is taken seriously ill. He falls into delirium and dies. The responsibility for cutting short such a brilliant career undoubtedly lies with Mrs Morel, unwilling to loosen her hold on his soul.

  • Discuss the term différance by Jacques Derrida and its meaning

    French philosopher Jacques Derrida coined the term ‘différance’. He explicitly rules out calling it a concept for the condition of possibility for meaning. As he explains in the invaluable collection of interviews, Positions (1972), translated as Positions (1981), Derrida conceived this neologism to make apparent how the French verb différer has both a temporal and a spatial dimension: on the one hand, it signals delay or reprieve (a deferred payment such as a pension, or a pre-recorded broadcast of a TV program may both be referred to in this way); and on the other hand, it is the movement that separates like from unlike. Derrida adds the third observation to the effect that différance is the process that gives rise to the differences it announces. As such, différance is an origin one never arrives at (its presence is permanently delayed), a difference one never fully succeeds in making, and the perpetual and necessary attempt to do both these things. The term is difficult to translate because the first of the three senses is not available in the English cognate ‘to differ’, making it hard for Anglophones to ‘hear’ its inner complexity. But if one considers that it refers to a condition of possibility rather than a particular form of causality or even effect, then its purpose can be easily understood.

    In the interview already mentioned, Derrida goes on to discuss the notion of transgression in a way that illuminates quite helpfully what he is endeavoring to articulate with this notion of différance: transgression, he says, can never be achieved once and for all, because insofar as a law is transgressed it proves itself transgressive and by that measure, the act itself ceases to be a transgression; so transgression must move ceaselessly to restore the integrity of the law it wishes to transgress. For this reason, as Jacques Lacan and other psychoanalysts have pointed out, the supposedly arch-transgressor, namely the Marquis de Sade, is also of necessity an enthusiast of the law. Derrida’s reading strategy, which he calls deconstruction, assumes that différance underpins every aspect of meaning-making.

  • Discuss the figure of speech Epanaphora: Definition, Meaning and Examples

    Discuss the figure of speech Epanaphora: Definition, Meaning and Examples

    Definition: Epanaphora is a figure of speech that consists of the reiteration of the same word or words at the beginning of successive lines, clauses, or sentences.

    Examples:

    Here are some examples of Epanaphora

    1.  Ring out old shapes of foul disease,
    Ring out the narrowing lust of gold,
    Ring out the thousand years of war,
    Ring in the thousand years of peace. -Tennyson

    This is an example of Epanaphora. Here, the word ‘ring’ is reiterated at the beginning of all the lines of this stanza.

    2. There is a pleasure in the pathless wood,
    There is a rapture on the lovely shore
    There is society where none intrudes.

    Here, the words ‘There is’ are repeated at the beginning of all the successive lines. This is an example of Epanaphora.

    3.  Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last grey hairs.
    Where youth grows pale, and spectre thin and dies.
    Where but to think is to be full of sorrow.

    Here the word ‘where’ is reiterated at the beginning of all the lines.

    4. Teach him to be kind. Teach him to be respectful. Teach him to be considerate of others.

    This is an example of Epanaphora.

    Also read: Discuss the term Ideology: Definition, Meaning and Its Significance

  • Discuss the concept ‘Oedipus complex’ by Sigmund Freud

    Discuss the concept ‘Oedipus complex’ by Sigmund Freud

    The concept ‘Oedipus complex’ was introduced by Sigmund Freud in his book Die Traumdeutung (1900), translated as The Interpretation of Dreams (1913). Here, Freud relates that in his clinical experience, the child’s relationship to its parents is the major determinant in the psychical lives of his more neurotic patients. This idea occurred to him a few years earlier during self-analysis. As he reports in a letter to his friend Fliess, in analyzing his affection for his mother and jealousy of his father he was reminded of the Sophocles play Oedipus Rex (429 BC), which he thought could only continue to be so affecting some 2,500 years after it was written because its thematic concerns are universal. Freud elaborated this claim on the individual subject and human society.

    The story of the Oedipus myth, on which Sophocles based his play, is as follows: King Laius of Thebes learns from an oracle that his son will kill him. Thinking to avert this fate, he binds his son’s feet (hence his name, which means swollen feet) and then orders his wife, Jocasta, to kill him. Unable to do so, she orders a servant to carry out the evil deed. Still, instead, he abandons the child in the fields where he is discovered by a shepherd who passes him to a fellow shepherd from Corinth who takes the infant back to his land where he is raised in the court of King Polybus. As an adult, Oedipus also goes to an oracle and is told that he will marry his mother and kill his father. Hoping to avoid his fate, he leaves Corinth and meets his biological father on the road to Thebes, as fate would have it. The two men argue, and Oedipus duly kills his father. He continues on his way to Thebes. Thebes is under the spell of the Sphinx, who has cursed the city. He solves the Sphinx’s riddle, thereby lifting the curse, and is rewarded with the Kingship over the town and the hand of its recently widowed Queen, namely his biological mother. The prophecy is thus fulfilled, but at this point, none of the characters in the play is aware of this fact. When they finally learn the truth of what has transpired, Jocasta hangs herself, and Oedipus blinds himself and goes into exile.

    According to Freud, this myth resonates strongly with everyone because it tells the basic story of childhood development, at least from the boy’s perspective. Psychoanalysis holds that all children develop a love attachment to the parent of the opposite sex and a corresponding rivalry with the parent of the same sex; thus, the little boy loves his mother and wants to usurp his father. What the story narrates is, in effect, object choice, but it also teaches compromise, or what Freud called the reality principle. In 1910, Freud would describe this conflicted desire as the ‘Oedipus complex’, thus inscribing the myth at the center of his thinking and teaching. This phrase has since passed into widespread usage, which has not always been to the advantage of psychoanalysis because many people find it absurd or repugnant (Freud himself defended against such reactions by saying they just proved his point because the myth would not provoke such outbursts if it were not revealing an inner truth). At first, Freud thought this desire had to be literal, but he realized it could also be enacted symbolically. Freud initially confined the ‘Oedipus complex’ period to children under the age of 5, but he later modified his thinking and allowed it to continue beyond the age of 5.

    Also read: Discuss Tennyson’s Tithonus as an instance of the dramatic monologue