Tuesday, March 15, 2011

Assignment:-7
Name:-Italiya.kinjal.B.
Topic:-Poetics v/s The Republic in The Voice of a Poet
RollNo:-10
Batch:-II
Summited to:-Mr.Devarshi Mehta




Poetics v/s The Republic in The Voice of a Poet.
By Praveen Gadhavi.
Them:-Poetics V/S Republic,
Ø              Philosophy V/S Literature
Ø “Literature is a constant effort to impregnate the meaningless with beautified Truth”.              
                -Buchanan.
               Literature is always for all.
Hudson, “A nation’s literature has its moods of exaltation and depression: it epochs a strong faith and strenuous idealism, now of doubt, struggle and disillusion now of unbelief and flippent disregard for the sanctities of existence and while the manner of expression will vary greatly with the individuality of each writer the dominant spirit of the our age, whatever that may be will directly as indirectly reveal itself in his work.”
                   Literature is a socialphenomenon.Another major theme of the poem is Philosophy v/s Literature.
E.g.  Plato and Aurangzeb. They represent dictatorship.Aurangzeb was against Art. But Art immortalized him. It is a fact that when you bury creativity, it rebounds with extra force.No writer can escape from the influence of his or her age.
                     All those great people want to suppress creativity but it finds its own way.Each and every poet represents the spirit of his age.Beauty-How can we prohibit beauty?
Ø We can say that “Beauty is Truth, Truth beauty”.
                             In this poem wine stands for inspiration.Creativity itself is a religion.Literature is their medium to go or to look beyond the particular boundaries.“A poet circumambulates Truth.”Literature is everlasting.Poet gives the idea that you can stop anyone but you can’t stop the voice of a poet. A poet’s voice  always demands changes in our social system. It  challenges the system.
Ø  e.g. Mother. She gives birth to her child, the same way the poet gives birth to his creation.
               A daughter stands for woman and woman gives birth to new creation.Law of oscillation.Every age has its particular tendency and poets advocate this tendency.Poem gives the idea of “An individual V/S Society”’Á poet V/S Established mind set.’
Ø The poet says that hope in the black prison cell, and without hope no one can live their life.
               Poet can spread his ideology even if he is imprisoned and attempts to destroy or control the process of creation results in creation.
              


                       The End
Subject teacher:- Mr.Devarhi Mehta.




Assignment:-8
Name:-Italiya.Kinjal.B.
Topic:-Feministic Criticism
RollNo:-10
Sem:-II
Batch:-2010-11
Summited to :-Dr.Barad (sir)


Feministic Criticism:-
                           Feminist criticism is a type of literary criticism, which may study and advocate the rights of women. As Judith Fettered says, "Feminist criticism is a political act whose aim is not simply to interpret the world but to change it by changing the consciousness of those who read and their relation to what they read." Using feminist criticism to analyze fiction may involve studying the repression of women in fiction. How do men and women differ? What is different about female heroines, and why are these characters important in literary history? In addition to many of the questions raised by a study of women in literature, feminist criticism may study stereotypes, creativity, ideology, racial issues,marginality,andmore. 

                      Feminist criticism may also involve reevaluating women writers--following the lead of Virginia Woolf in "A Room of One's Own." 1759-1797Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Woman is one of the most important documents in the history of women's rights. Wollstonecraft's personal life was often troubled, and her early death of childbed fever cut short her evolving ideas. Her second daughter, Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin Shelley, was Percy Shelley's second wife and author of the book, Frankenstein.
                  Feminist criticism became a dominant force in Western literary studies in the late 1970s, when feminist theory more broadly conceived was applied to linguistic and literary matters. Since the early 1980s, feminist literary criticism has developed and diversified in a number of ways and is now characterized by a global perspective.
            French feminist criticism garnered much of its inspiration from Simone de Beauvoir’s seminal book, Lee Deuxiéme Sexed (1949; The Second Sex). Beauvoir argued that associating men with humanity more generally (as many cultures do) relegates women to an inferior position in society. Subsequent French feminist critics writing during the 1970s acknowledged Beauvoir’s critique but focused on language as a tool of male domination, analyzing the ways in which it represents the world from the male point of view and arguing for the development of a feminine language and writing.
Although interested in the subject of feminine language and writing, North American feminist critics of the 1970s and early 1980s began by analyzing literary texts—not by abstractly discussing language—via close textual reading and historical scholarship. One group practiced "feminist critique," examining how women characters are portrayed, exposing the patriarchal ideology implicit in the so-called classics, and demonstrating that attitudes and traditions reinforcing systematic masculine dominance are inscribed in the literary canon. Another group practiced what came to be called "gynocriticism," studying writings by women and examining the female literary tradition to find out how women writers across the ages have perceived themselves and imagined reality.
                    While it gradually became customary to refer to an Anglo-American tradition of feminist criticism, British feminist critics of the 1970s and early 1980s objected to the tendency of some North American critics to find universal or "essential" feminine attributes, arguing that differences of race, class, and culture gave rise to crucial differences among women across space and time. British feminist critics regarded their own critical practice as more political than that of North American feminists, emphasizing an engagement with historical process in order to promote social change.
                 By the early 1990s, the French, American, and British approaches had so thoroughly critiqued, influenced, and assimilated one another that nationality no longer automatically signaled a practitioner’s approach. Today’s critics seldom focus on "woman" as a relatively monolithic category; rather, they view "women" as members of different societies with different concerns. Feminists of color, Third World (preferably called postcolonial) feminists, and lesbian feminists have stressed that women are not defined solely by the fact that they are female; other attributes (such as religion, class, and sexual orientation) are also important, making the problems and goals of one group of women different from those of another.
                   Many commentators have argued that feminist criticism is by definition gender criticism because of its focus on the feminine gender. But the relationship between feminist and gender criticism is, in fact, complex; the two approaches are certainly not polar opposites but, rather, exist along a continuum of attitudes toward sex, sexuality, gender, and language.

Feminist literary criticism is literary criticism informed by feminist theory, or by the politics of feminism more broadly. Its history has been broad and varied, from classic works of nineteenth-century women authors such as George Eliot and Margaret Fuller to cutting-edge theoretical work in women's studies and gender studies by "third-wave" authors. In the most general and simple terms, feminist literary criticism before the 1970s—in the first and second waves of feminism—was concerned with the politics of women's authorship and the representation of women's condition within literature.
                   Since the development of more complex conceptions of gender and subjectivity and third-wave feminism, feminist literary criticism has taken a variety of new routes, namely in the tradition of the Frankfurt School's critical theory. It has considered gender in the terms of Freudian and Laconia psychoanalysis, as part of the deconstruction of existing relations of power, and as a concrete political investment. It has been closely associated with the birth and growth of queer studies. And the more traditionally central feminist concern with the representation and politics of women's lives has continued to play an active role in criticism. In Indian literature the issues of feminism have been dealt with differently. As in a seminar held in Sahitya Academy writer Raffia Shabnam Abidi of Mumbai pointed out we have now a novel by Paigham Afaqui which has dealt with its female character Neera as a human being in most perfect manner while treating her being a female only as a part of her personality. She emphasised that for the first time in literature MAKAAN, a novel by a male writer (surprisingly) Paigham Afaqui has produced a character that contains and embodies the dream of the self of a woman that all thinkers through out the world have been craving for.She disputed the contention that only a female writer can contribute to feminist thinking and cause. 'A writer himself/herself has to rise above the gender dividing line while writing about a human society'.Commented Paigham Afaqui who was also present in the seminar. In a seminar held in Cuttuk (Orissa), India organised by National Book Trust, Autar Singh Judge had pointed out while representing Urdu fiction that Neera, the lead character of Makaan was the finest depiction of female character in the Indian literature. It received consensus. But unfortunately, the male politics as present in Urdu circles kept this view suppressed for a long time and started highlighting the writings of Quratul Ain Haider. They contented that 'writings by female writers' and not writings depicting female characters are feminist. The opinion is still divided but 'literature is not politics' as Paigham Afaqui pointed out on a few occasions in literary discussions. It is normally believed that female characters of Quratul Ain Haider only depict traditional personality of Indian women while Makaan is symbolizing the most vocal and effective career woman of India today.
                             Lisa Tuttle has defined feminist theory as asking "new questions of old texts." She cites the goals of feminist criticism as: (1) To develop and uncover a female tradition of writing, (2) to interpret symbolism of women's writing so that it will not be lost or ignored by the male point of view, (3) to rediscover old texts, (4) to analyze women writers and their writings from a female perspective, (5) to resist sexism in literature, and (6) to increase awareness of the sexual politics of language and style.

Feminist literary critics

                    Prominent feminist literary critics include Isobel Armstrong, Jennifer DeVere Brody, Laura Brown, Eva Figes, Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar, Annette Kolodny, Anne McClintock, Anne K. Mellor, Toril Moi, Felicity Nussbaum, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick and Gayatri Spivak.

I.                 WOMEN WRITERS: A HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE
                 The emergence of feminist literary criticism is one of the major de-velopments in literary studies in the past thirty years or so. This article attempts to give an overall view of feminist literary criticism, its discov-ery of early women novelists and feminist readings. Since feminist literary criticism has re-discovered the forgotten texts, from the 17th centu-ry onwards, written by women whose contribution to the emergence of the novel genre is undeniable, and included them in the critical evalua-tions, it is quite important to present them both in a historical and liter-ary perspective. Thus the first part of this article is largely devoted to the literary achievements of these early women writers.
The second part of the article mainly concentrates on the most re-cent phase of feminist criticism by trying to offer a theoretical perspec-tive so that the reader is provided with a broad view of its developments. It would, however, be an incomplete discussion of feminist literary per-spectives if feminist readings were excluded from the argument. Therefore the third part of the article deals with feminist readings of texts, showing their crucial differences from the male readings. My major strategy in this part is to point to a comprehensive perspective by using the deconstructive critical approach. In fact, throughout this article the deconstructive approach plays an important role, not only in arguing how the dominant discourses are challenged and disrupted, but also in demonstrating that there can be no universal and privileged meanings and values in literary traditions. Instead, there are only multiple mean-ings. To exemplify this view, the article concludes with a deconstructive reading of a postmodern text.
FEMINIST LITERARY CRITICISM: A THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVE
                  Feminist literary criticism became a theoretical issue with the ad-vent of the new women's movement initiated in the early 1960s. In fact, feminist criticism started as part of the international women's libera-tion movement. The first major book of particular significance, in this respect, was Betty Friedan's. The Feminine Mystique (1963) which contributed to the emergence of the new women's move-ment. In her book Friedan criticised "the dominant cultural image of the successful and happy American woman as a housewife and moth-er" (Leitch 308). According to Friedan, in the 1950s women had gone back to the house abandoning their jobs to men who came back from the war to claim their positions, and a feminine mystique was created in the media making the housewife and mother the ideal models for all women. Promoting women's ideal reality within the domestic realm, this mystique had reduced the identity of women to sexual and social passivity. Betty Friedan attempted to demystify this false feminine mys-tique, which she described as "a world confined to her own body and beauty, the charming of man, the bearing of babies, and the physical care and serving of husband, children and home" (cit. Millard 155), in order to renew the women's fight for equal rights. She had started a new consciousness-raising movement, and played a central role in developing the new discipline of women's studies.
                  With the publication of Kate Millet's Sexual Politics (1969), feminist criticism became a challenge to the traditional norms of English studies in the 1970s. A re-reading of critical theories and methods of the literary tradition is possible only if those theories and methods are challenged from within their own assumptions. There is no origin of meaning and an end to the signification pro-cess. It is not possible to stop this process as Derrida has brilliantly demonstrated in his theory of deconstruction.  Today recent critical theories of literature claim that there is no one singles reality or any dominant narrative that can bind the individual writer in any way. Feminist criticism is especially notable as regards its diversity of aims and methods; there is a basic principle that unites feminist literary critics under one roof despite their plurality of methods:


What unites and repeatedly invigorates fem-inist literary criticism... is neither dogma nor method but an acute and impassioned atten-tiveness to the ways in which primarily male structures of power are inscribed (or encoded) within our literary inheritance: the conse-quences of that encoding for women - as characters, as readers, and as writers; and, with that, a shared analytic concern for the implica-tions of that encoding not only for a better un-derstanding of the past but also for an im-proved reordering of the present and future
                    Feminist literary criticism has been very successful especially in re claiming the lost literary women and in documenting the sources. Many critics like Dale Spender, Elaine Showalter, Juliet Mitchell, among others, have investigated the reason why "To be seen as a woman writer" was "to be seen in a subcategory" (Spender 166). Thus women began to re-send the imposed literary categories and judgements by openly challenging and disrupting the logocentric tradition.
                  Under the umbrella of “feminist criticism” there is a wide range of critical practices and approaches to Shakespeare's works, and each of these approaches has its own supporters and detractors. Due to the diverse array of feminist studies, many feminist critics hesitate to posit a general description of what, exactly, feminist criticism is. It has been observed, however, that feminist criticism reflects the assorted theoretical positions of the feminist movement.
                    Character studies often form the focus of feminist analyses of Shakespeare's works.Erickson concludes by reviewing a new wave of feminist criticism which provides an expanded framework for viewing “otherness” in such characters as Shylock and Othello.
                    The end





Assignment:-10(B)
Name:- Italiya. kinjal.B.
Topic:- Type of Cultural studies:-British cultural materialism and Post colonial studies.
RollNo:-10
Sem:-II
Batch:-2010-11
Summited:-Dr.Barad (sir)


Type of Cultural studies:-British cultural materialism and Post colonial studies.


Postcolonial Studies.
The critical analysis of the history, culture, literature,
And modes of discourse that are specific to the former colonies of England, Spain, France, and other European imperial powers. These studies have focused especially on the Third World countries in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean Islands and South America. Postcolonial studies sometimes encompass Also aspects of British literature in the eighteenth and nineteenth Centuries, viewed through a perspective that reveals the extent to which the Social and economic life represented in the literature was tacitly underwritten  By colonial exploitation. Some scholars, however, extend the scope of such Analyses also to the discourse and cultural productions of such countries as Australia, Canada, and New Zealand, which achieved independence much Earlier than the Third World countries.
                               An important text in establishing the theory and practice in this recently Developed field of study was Orientalism (1978) by the Palestinian-American Scholar Edward Said, which applied a revised form of Michel Foucault's historicist Critique of discourse (see under new historicism) to analyze what he Called "cultural imperialism." This mode of imperialism imposed its power not by force, but by the effective means of disseminating in subjugated Colonies a Eurocentric discourse that assumed the normality and preeminence Of everything "occidental," correlatively with its representations of the "oriental “As an exotic and inferior other. Since the 1980s, such analysis has been supplemented by other theoretical principles and procedures, including Althusser'sRedefinition of the Marxist theory of ideology and the deconstructive Theory of Derrida. The rapidly expanding field of postcolonial studies, as a result, is not a unified movement with a distinctive methodology? One can, However, identify several central and recurrent issues :( 1) the rejection of the master-narrative of Western imperialism—in which the colonial other is not only subordinated and marginalized,
                           But in effect deleted as a cultural agency—and its replacement by counter-narrative in which the colonial cultures fight their way back into a world history written by Europeans. The influential collection of Essays, the Empire Writes Back: Theory and Practice in Post-Colonial Literatures (1989), ed. Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin’s, stresses what it terms the hybridization of colonial languages and cultures, in which imperialist importations are superimposed on indigenous traditions? It also includes a number of postcolonial counter texts to the
colonial history.(2) An abiding concern with the formation, within Western discursivePractices, of the colonial and postcolonial "subject," as well as of theCategories by means of which this subject conceives itself and perceivesThe world within which it lives and acts. (See subject under poststructuralist.)The subaltern has become a standard way to designateThe colonial subject that has been constructed by European discourseAnd internalized by colonial peoples who employ this discourse;
Rank, and combines The Latin terms for "under" (sub) and "other" (alter).
                                   A recurrent Topic of debate is how, and to what extent, a subaltern subject, writing In a European language, can manage to serve as an agent of resistance against, rather than of compliance with, the very discourse that has created its subordinate identity. See, e.g., Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, "Can the Subaltern Speak?" (1988), reprinted in The PostcolonialStudies Reader, listed below.(3) A major element in the postcolonial agenda is to disestablish EurocentricNorms of literary and artistic values, and to expand the literary Canon to include colonial and postcolonial writers. In the UnitedStates and Britain, there is an increasingly successful movement to include, in the standard academic curricula, the brilliant and innovativeNovels, poems, and plays by such postcolonial writers in theEnglish language as the Africans Chinua Achebe and Whole Soyinka, The Caribbean islanders V. S. Naipaul and Derek Walcott, and the authorsFrom the Indian subcontinent G. V. Desani and SalmanRushdie.
                         See Homi Bhabha, the Location of Culture (1994); and for a Survey of the large and growing body of literature in English by postcolonial Writers throughout the world, see Martin Coyle and others, Encyclopedia of Literature and Criticism (1990), A comprehensive anthology is The Post-Colonial Studies Reader (1995), Ed.Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin, Franz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth (trans., 1966); Ranajit Guha and Gayatri Chakravorti Spivak, Terry Eagleton, Fredric Jameson and Edward W. Said, Nationalism, Colonialism, and Literature (1990); Christopher L. Miller, Theories of Africans: Francophone Literature and Anthropology In Africa (1990); Edward W. Said, Culture and Imperialism (1993).
British Cultural Materialism:-

Cultural studies are referred to as “cultural materialism” in Britain, and it has a long tradition. In the later nineteenth century Matthew Arnold sought to redefine the “givens” of British culture. Edward Burnett’s pioneering anthropological study primitive culture argued that “culture or civilization, taken in its widest ethnographic sense, is a complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society”(1).Claude Levi-Strauss’s influence moved British thinkers to assign “culture” to primitive peoples and then with the work of British scholars like Raymond Williams to attributes culture to the working class as well as the elite. As Williams memorably states: “there are no masses; there are only ways of seeing people as masses”.
                   To appreciate the importance of this revision of “culture” we must situate it within the controlling myth of social and political reality of the British Empire upon which the sun never set an ideology left over the previous century. In modern Britain two trajectories for “culture” developed. This cultural materialism furnished of leftist orientation “critical of the aestheticism, formalism, ant historicism and common among the dominant post war methods of academic literary criticism” Such was the description in the Johns Hopkins guide to literary Theory and criticism.
                   Cultural materialism began in earnest in the 1950 with the work of F.R.Leavis heavily influenced by Matthew Arnold’s analyses of bourgeois culture. Leavisites promoted the “great tradition” of Shakespeare and Milton to improve the moral sensibilities of a wider range of readers than just the elite. Inspired  by Karl Marx, British theorists were also influenced by Gorgy Lukas ,Theodor Adorn, Louis Althusser, Max Horkheimer, MikhilYachting, and Antonio Gramsci.Walter Benjamin attacked fascism by questioning the value of what he called the “aura” of culture. Benjamin helps explain the frightening cultural context for a film such as lenis Rifesta’s trimph of the will (1935) Lukach developed what he called a reflection theory.
                   Cultural materialists also turned to the more humanistic and even spiritual insights of the student of Rabelais and Dostoevsky, Russian formalist bakhtin, especially his amplification of the dialogic from of meaning within narrative and class struggle at once communal and conflictual, individual and social.    


                                          The End      

Monday, March 14, 2011

Assignment    Paper No:-9
Topic:-Literary Tendencies of the Victorian age
Student’s Name:-Italiya.Kinjal.B.
Roll No:-10
Sem:-II
Batch:-2010-2011
Sumitted to:-Ruchiramam
Dept of English
Bhavnagar  Uni.
                     The Victorian era is generally agreed to stretch through the reign of Queen Victoria (1837-1901). It was a tremendously exciting period when many artistic styles, literary schools, as well as, social, political and religious movements flourished. It was a time of prosperity, broad imperial expansion, and great political reform. It was also a time, which today we associate with "prudishness" and "repression". Without a doubt, it was an extraordinarily complex age that has sometimes been called the Second English Renaissance. It is, however, also the beginning of Modern Times.
During the Victorian Age, great economic, social, and political changes occurred in Britain. The British Empire reached its height and covered about a quarter of the Earth. Industry and trade expanded rapidly, and railways and canals crisscrossed the country.
                      Science and technology made great advances. The size of the middle class grew enormously. By the 1850's, more and more people were getting an education. In addition, the government introduced democratic reforms, such as the right to vote for an increasing number of people. Many important events took place during Victoria's reign. Britain fought in the Opium War (1839-1842) in China and acquired the island of Hong Kong. Britain also fought in the Crimean War (1853-1856) against Russia and in the Anglo-Boer War (1899-1902) in order to protect its interest.InSoutherAfrica.
 
Writer of the time
Tennyson, Browning, Dickens, Thackeray, George Eliot, Carlyle, Macaulay, Arnold, Ruskin.

GENE RAL CONDITIONS:-
                                                     Before the accession of Queen Victoria the 'industrial revolution,' the vast development of manufacturing made possible in the latter part of the eighteenth century by the introduction of coal and the steam engine, had rendered England the richest nation in the world, and the movement continued with steadily accelerating momentum throughout the period. Hand in hand with it went the increase of population from less than thirteen millions in England in 1825 to nearly three times as many at the end of the period. The introduction of the steam railway and the steamship, at the beginning of the period, in place of the lumbering stagecoach and the sailing vessel, broke up the old stagnant and stationary habits of life and increased the amount of travel at least a thousand times. The discovery of the electric telegraph in 1844 brought almost every important part of Europe, and eventually of the world, nearer to every town dweller than the nearest county had been in the eighteenth century; and the development of the modern newspaper out of the few feeble sheets of 1825 (dailies and weeklies in London, only weeklies elsewhere), carried full accounts of the doings of the whole world, in place of long-delayed fragmentary rumors, to every door within a few hours.                          
                      Political and social progress, though less astonishing, was substantial. In 1830 England, nominally a monarchy was in reality a plutocracy of about a hundred thousand men--landed nobles, gentry, and wealthy merchants--whose privileges dated back to fifteenth century conditions. The first Reform Bill, of 1832, forced on Parliament by popular pressure, extended the right of voting to men of the 'middle class,' and the subsequent bills of 1867 and 1885 made it universal for men. Laborers in factories and mines and on farms were largely in a state of virtual though not nominal slavery, living, many of them, in unspeakable moral and physical conditions. Little by little improvement came, partly by the passage of laws, partly by the growth of trades-unions. The substitution in the middle of the century of free-trade for protection through the passage of the 'Corn-Laws' afforded much relief by lowering the price of food. Socialism, taking shape as a definite movement in the middle of the century, became one to be reckoned with before its close, though the majority of the more well-to-do classes failed to understand even then the growing necessity for far-reaching economic and social changes. Humanitarian consciousness, however, gained greatly during the period. The middle and upper classes awoke to some extent to their duty to the poor, and sympathetic benevolent effort, both organized and informal, increased very largely in amount and intelligence. Popular education, too, which in 1830 had no connection with the State and was in every respect very incomplete, was developed and finally made compulsory as regards the rudiments.
                            Still more permanently significant, perhaps, was the transformation of the former conceptions of the nature and meaning of the world and life, through the discoveries of science. Geology and astronomy now gradually compelled all thinking people to realize the unthinkable duration of the cosmic processes and the comparative littleness of our earth in the vast extent of the universe. Absolutely revolutionary for almost all lines if thought was the gradual adoption by almost all thinkers of the theory of Evolution, which, partly formulated by Lamarck early in the century, received definite statement in 1859 in Charles Darwin's 'Origin of Species.' The great modification in the externals of religious belief thus brought about was confirmed also by the growth of the science of historical criticism.
                             This movement of religious change was met in its early stages by the very interesting reactionary 'Oxford' or 'Tractarianism' Movement, which asserted the supreme authority of the Church and its traditional doctrines. The most important figure in this movement, who connects it definitely with literature, was John Henry Newman (1801-90), author of the hymn 'Lead, Kindly Light,' a man of winning personality and great literary skill. For fifteen years, as vicar of the Oxford University Church, Newman was a great spiritual force in the English communion, but the series of 'Tracts for the Times' to which he largely contributed, ending in 1841 in the famous Tract 90, tell the story of his gradual progress toward Rome. Thereafter as an avowed Roman Catholic and head of a monastic establishment Newman showed himself a formidable controversialist, especially in a literary encounter with the clergyman-novelist Charles Kingsley which led to Newman's famous 'Apologia pro Vita Sue' (Apology for My Life).  The most important literature of the whole period falls under the three heads of essays, poetry, and prose fiction, which we may best consider in that order.
                         The literature of the Victorian Age is remarkable for the variety of prose; it produced two great poets, Tennyson and Browning. The literature of this age reflected its interests and problems and therefore, it came very close to the daily life.
                       The literary tendency of this age is quite ethical in spirit. And therefore all the writers, poets, essayists, and novelists of this age seemed to be moral teachers at heart. Science and discovery also influenced the age which presented truth as the sole object of human endeavor. The age is often considered as materialistic, but the literature is an attack on materialism.
  
Tennyson
Tennyson, like Chaucer, he was a national poet. Tennyson’s concept of faith and immortality is well expressed in In Memoriam
Browning
Browning, the optimism of his poetry, his creed as it expressed in Rabbi Ben Ezra is worth reading. If you read Fra Lippo Lippi or Andrea Del Sarto,
Dickens
Dickens’s experiences in life are reflected in his novels. David Copperfield is in this respect shares some autobiographical elements. Tale of Two Cities
Thackeray
you can read “Henry Esmond” to know Thackeray’s realism. He deals with satire in his writing and has got great skills of critical writer.
George Eliot
if you read Silas Marner, you will learn that George Eliot’s ethical teaching is at the centre in this novel. Her moral teaching is always convincing.
Carlyle
Carlyle is often called prophet and censor. “Heroes and Hero Worship” to know his idea of history. Sartor Resartus reflects his some of experiences of his own life.
Macaulay
Macaulay’s historical knowledge serves in writing his literary essays.
Arnold
the elements of Victorian life are reflected in Arnold’s poetry. There is coldness and sadness in his verses. Sohrab and Rustum,
Ruskin
Ruskin is often considered as “the prophet of modern society”. His first two lectures in Sesame and Lilies give his views on wealth, books, education, labor, woman’s sphere, and human society.

Sunday, March 13, 2011

· Revival of Romantic features       in Shelley and Byron.
Assignment    Paper No:-6
Topic:- Revival of Romantic Feature
Student’s Name:-Italiya.Kinjal.B.
Roll No:-10
Sem:-II
Batch:-2010-2011
Sumitted to:-  Mr. Jay sir
Dept of English
Bhavnagar  Uni.
The Romantic age: -
                              Romanticism largely began as a reaction against the prevailing Enlightenment ideals of the day. Indeed, the term “Romanticism” did not arise until the Victorian period.
                                 Romanticism in British literature developed in a different form slightly later, mostly associated with the poets William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, whose co-authored book Lyrical Ballads (1798) .The poets William Blake ,Lord Byron, Percy By she Shelley, Mary Shelley and John Keats constitute another phase of Romanticism in Britain.
                           Female writer like Mary Shelley, Anna Leticia Barb auld, Charlotte Turner Smith, Mary Robinson, Hannah More and Joanna Baillie.

 Influence of War on Romantic Writings
                           The Romantic Era is a time in history that was surrounded by war. The Seven Years' War (1756–1763), as well as the French and Indian War (1754–1763), and the American Revolution (1775–1783), which directly preceded the French Revolution (1789–1799).


Lord Byron, 1788-1824.
                      Byron (George Gordon Byron) expresses mainly the spirit of individual revolt, revolt against all existing institutions and standards. This was largely a matter of his own personal temperament, but the influence of the time also had a share in it. Byron was born in 1788. Byron suffered also from another serious handicap; He had already begun to publish verse, and when 'The Edinburgh Review' ridiculed his very juvenile 'Hours of Idleness' he added an attack on Jeffrey to a slashing criticism of contemporary poets which he had already written in rimed couplets (he always professed the highest admiration for Pope's poetry), and published the piece as 'English Bards and Scotch Reviewers.' The first literary journey was the publication in 1812 of the first two cantos of 'Childe Harold's Pilgrimage. He wrote throughout in Spenser's stanza, Byron summed up the case in his well-known comment: 'I awoke one morning and found myself famous.' In fact, 'Childe Harold' is the best of all Byron's works,                        
                 He published his brief and vigorous metrical romances, most of them Eastern in setting, 'The Glamour' (pronounced by Byron 'Joker'), 'The Bride of Abydos,' 'The Corsair,' 'Lara,' 'The Siege of Corinth,' and 'Parisian.' the narrative structure highly defective, and the characterization superficial or flatly inconsistent. In each of them stands out one dominating figure, the hero, a desperate and terrible adventurer, characterized by Byron himself as possessing 'one virtue and a thousand crimes,' merciless and vindictive to his enemies, tremblingly obeyed by his followers, manifesting human tenderness only toward his mistress .And above all inscrutably enveloped in a cloud of pretentious romantic melancholy and mystery. But in spite of all this melodramatic clap-trap the romances, like 'Childe Harold,' are filled with the tremendous Byronic passion, which, as in 'Childe Harold,' lends great power alike to their narrative and their description. All the while he was producing a great quantity of poetry. In his half dozen or more poetic dramas he entered a new field. In the most important of them, 'Manfred,' a treatment of the theme which Marlowe and Goethe had used in 'Faust,' his real power is largely thwarted by the customary Byronic mystery and swagger. 'Cain' and 'Heaven and Earth,' though wretchedly written, have also a vaguely vast imaginative impressiveness. Their defiant handling of Old Testament material and therefore of Christian theology was shocking to most respectable Englishmen and led Southey to characterize Byron as the founder of the 'Satanic School' of English poetry.
                         More significant is the longest and chief of his satires, 'Don Juan,’. Its real purpose is to serve as an utterly cynical indictment of mankind, the institutions of society, and accepted moral principles. Byron's fiery spirit was rapidly burning itself out.  He died of fever after a few months, in 1824, before he had time to accomplish anything. At the core of his nature there was certainly much genuine goodness--generosity, sympathy, and true feeling. 'The Prisoner of Chillan and the 'Ode on Venice.' On the other hand his violent contempt for social and religious hypocrisy had as much of personal bitterness as of disinterested principle; and his persistent quest of notoriety, the absence of moderation in his attacks on religious and moral standards, his lack of self-control, and his indulgence in all the vices of the worse part of the titled and wealthy class require no comment.
                 In 'Memorial Verses' Arnold says of him: He taught us little, but our soul had felt him like the thunder's roll. With shivering heart the strife we saw of passion with eternal law. His poetry has also an elemental sweep and grandeur. The majesty of Nature, especially of the mountains and the ocean, stirs him to feeling which often results in superb stanzas, like the well-known ones at the end of 'Childe Harold' beginning 'Roll on, thou deep and dark blue Ocean, roll'! Too often, however, Byron's passion and facility of expression issue in bombast and crude rhetoric.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY:- 1792-1832                                             
                      Shelley resembles Byron in his thorough-going revolt against society, but he is totally unlike Byron in several important respects. His first impulse was an unselfish love for his fellow-men, with an aggressive eagerness for martyrdom in their behalf; his nature was unusually, even abnormally, fine and sensitive; and his poetic quality was a delicate and ethereal lyricism unsurpassed in the literature of the world. In both his life and his poetry his visionary reforming zeal and his superb lyric instinct are inextricably intertwined. Shelley, born in 1792.
                 He came to believe not only that human nature is essentially good, but that if left to itself it can be implicitly trusted; that sin and misery are merely the results of the injustice springing from the institutions of society, chief of which are organized government, formal religion, law, and formal marriage .
                Shelley himself formed a union with Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, the daughter of his revolutionary teacher. Her sympathetic though extravagant admiration for his genius, now beginning to express itself in really great poetry, was of the highest value to him. As we have said, with Byron, for whose genius, in spite of its coarseness, Shelley had a warm admiration. Shelley's death came when he was only thirty, in 1822, by a sudden accident. Some of Shelley's shorter poems are purely poetic expressions of poetic emotion, but by far the greater part are documents (generally beautiful also as poetry) in his attack on existing customs and cruelties. Shelley is the poetic disciple, but a thoroughly original disciple, of Coleridge. His esthetic passion is partly sensuous, and he often abandons himself to it with romantic unrestraint.
              His 'lyrical cry,' of which Matthew Arnold has spoken, is the demand, which will not be denied, for beauty that will satisfy his whole being. Sensations, indeed, he must always have, agreeable ones if possible, or in default of them, painful ones.
                  Wordsworth is always exulting in the fullness of Nature; Shelley is always chasing its falling stars.' The contrast, here hinted at, between Shelley's view of Nature and that of Wordsworth, is extreme and entirely characteristic; the same is true, also, when we compare Shelley and Byron.                 
                 The finest of Shelley's poems, are his lyrics. 'The Skylark' and 'The Cloud' are among the most dazzling and unique of all outbursts of poetic genius. Of the 'Ode to the West Wind,' a succession of surging emotions and visions of beauty swept, as if by the wind itself, through the vast spaces of the world, Swinburne exclaims: 'It is beyond and outside and above all criticism, all praise, and all thanksgiving.' The 'Lines Written among the Eugenia Hills,' 'The Indian Serenade,' 'The Sensitive Plant' (a brief narrative), and not a few others are also of the highest quality. In 'Adonis,' an elegy on Keats and an invective against the reviewer whose brutal criticism, as Shelley wrongly supposed, had helped to kill him, splendid poetic power, at least, must be admitted. the longer poems, such as the early 'Alastair,' a vague allegory of a poet's quest for the beautiful through a gorgeous and incoherent succession of romantic wildernesses; the 'Hymn to Intellectual Beauty'; 'Julian and Maddalo,' in which Shelley and Byron (Maddalo) are portrayed; and 'Epipsychidion,' an ecstatic poem on the love which is spiritual sympathy. 'The Cenci' is more dramatic in form,
                    That the quality of Shelley's genius is unique is obvious on the slightest acquaintance with him, and it is equally certain that in spite of his premature death and all his limitations he occupies an assured place among the very great poets. On the other hand, the vagueness of his imagination and expression has recently provoked severe criticism. It has even been declared that the same mind cannot honestly enjoy both the carefully wrought classical beauty of Milton's 'Lucida' and Shelley's mistily shimmering 'Adonis.'