TAGORE’S CONTRIBUTION IN INDIAN WRITING IN ENGLISH AS A POET

NAME- URVI DAVE

CLASS- M.A.

SEM- 1

PAPER NO.-4

TOPIC- TAGORE’S CONTRIBUTION IN INDIAN WRITING IN ENGLISH AS A POET

SUBMITTED TO- SMT.S.B. GARDI DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH & M. K. BHAVNAGAR UNIVERSITY

BATCH YEAR- 2014-16

EMAIL ID- dave.urvi71@gmail.com

Birth and early days- He was born on 25^th Baisakh 1268, according to the Bengali calendar, corresponding to may 7, 1861, of the English calendar. He was the last but one child of his parents. The youngest child, however, died in early infancy and in effect Rabindranath became the youngest child and also the youngest son of the family. Though not lacking his affection for her youngest child, his mother Sarada Devi was too much worn out in health by repeated childbirth to be able to bestow personal attention on him in his boyhood. Rabindranath aptly names the early part of his life as the period of the monarchy of servants (Bhrityakaraj Tantra) and draws a comparison with the slave dynasty that ruled the Delhi sultanate in the thirteenth century. When he was old enough to be able to remember things, he found that he had been handed over to the charge of the servants. They fed him, controlled his movements and were the only persons to whom he had access. Debendranath was blessed with a numerous family. As many as nine sons and six daughters were born to him. Of them one daughter and two sons died very young; the daughter happened to be the eldest; and of the two sons, one happened to be the youngest child born to him. Rabindranath was the fourteenth child of the family. During his official career, he exercised special influence on Rabindranath and was to some extent responsible for the shaping of his future life. It was under his advice that his father agreed to Rabindranath being taken to United Kingdom for higher education. Infact it was he who escorted Rabindranath both in his journey to England in 1878 and back on the expiry of his Furlough. That proved Rabindranath with an opportunity to come in close with European society and also helped him to assimilate the general principles of western music, a factor which contributed to some degree in imparting a distinctive character to his musical compositions. Debendranath’s third son, Hemendranath (1844-84), who died at the age of forty, also deserves a reference in this connection. His contribution to the building of a cultural atmosphere in the family and giving it a nationalistic bias was not inconsiderable. He had varied interests. Having interest in the medical sciences, he studied in the medical college for sometime in Calcutta. He also took keen interest in wrestling and encouraged wrestling among his younger brothers, including Rabindranath.  But his greatest passion was his desire to educate the members of his family. His patriotism made him insist that the medium of instruction should be Bengali which was their mother tongue. In those days, girls used to be married young and there was little scope for them for learning and to read and write. So his first concern was to make the daughter-in-laws of the family literate. He shouldered the task of teaching them himself. During his boyhood, his father would, most of the time, remain away from the home, spending his days on the hills of the Himalayas. In his boyhood days, the entire world appeared before his eyes with an aura of mystery. To observe the process of growth, he collected some earth and debris in a verandah in a corner of the house and planted the seed of a custard apple in it and then started watering it. The idea was that he would have the fascinating experience of seeing it grow and then flower and bear fruit. This was, of course, a wish which could not be consummated when the seed happened to be sown on a fistful of soil inside the house. The experience struck in his mind so deeply that it reappeared as the theme of a poem written in his old age. During his early boyhood, Rabindranath was placed under the charge of private tutors to learn his lessons. At times, such lessons proved so boring to him that he would look for a pretext to avoid them. The trick that he would usually play on such occasions was to feign that he was suffering from stomach ache. He would plead to his mother for exemption from taking lessons. It was not at all difficult for his mother to see through his game, but her affection for him would prove too strong for her to desist from granting his prayer. In the family, there was an elaborate provision for all round training of both the mind and the body. The training included besides reading lessons, wrestling for physical development and music for creating a taste for fine arts. Tagore gives an elaborate account of these arrangements in his book Chelebela. The first training of the day was in wrestling. For the lessons in reading and writing at the stroke of seven in the morning, the tutor would arrive. Three subjects: mathematics, reading of Bengali texts which included the classic by Ishwar Chandra Vidhyasagar sitar Vanavasa, and even elementary science. These lessons continued throughout the morning. It appears that Rabindranath’s lessons in reading would have foundered against his natural resistance to imposed tasks but for his innate love for poetry. He had a highly developed aesthetic sense which enabled him to put up with unpleasant experiences, if it could compensate by providing him aesthetic enjoyment in return. It appears that it is the discovery that written word could give him access to beauty that enabled him to go through the boredom of taking lessons for gaining mastery over the alphabet. He says “Suddenly I came to a rhymed sentence of combined words which may be translated as thus: ‘It rains, the leaves tremble’. At once I came to a world where I recovered my full meaning. My mind touched the creative realm of expression and at that moment, I was no longer a mere student with his mind ruffled by spelling lessons, enclosed by a classroom”.

              After completing reading lessons at home, the boy was admitted to a school. After a year’s attendance, Rabindranath appeared in the annual examination conducted at his school. He stood first in Bengali. It was at this stage that Rabindranath had his first lessons in composing poems. Jyotiprakash showed Rabindranath how in poetry the word at the end of a line had to rhyme with the last word of the previous line. With a natural aptitude for writing poems, Rabindranath immediately found himself deeply involved in this new hobby. Soon his reputation as a poet spread even to his school and one of his teachers expressed interest in his poetry. But the man whose appreciation this budding poet valued most was an elderly person named Srikrishna Sinha. He was a scion of the Zamindar family of Raipur which in later days sprung to fame when one of its members, Satyendra Prasanna Sinha, was made a baron by the British Government. He had been attracted to maharishi by the latter’s saintly character and was a frequent visitor to the house. He became the most sympathetic listener of the poems written by the budding poet. It was arranged that Rabindranath would spend about three months with his father. The stay at Santiniketan made a profound impression on his mind and played a significant part in shaping his future life. Tagore was married to Bhabatarini Devi on December 9, 1883. To suit the taste of this highly cultured family, she was given the new name Mrinalini Devi. She, being the wife of the youngest son of the family, came to be called in the conventional manner Chhoto- Bow. In letters, Tagore used to place the word bhai before Chhoto-Bow. In Bengali, someone is called bhai only when that person has become the object of deep affection. Rabindranath became the patron of a cultural organization named Kham Kheyali Sabha. During his short stays in Calcutta, it would come to life when literary sittings, musical soirees and even theatrical performances would be arranged for, while during his absence in that estate, it would revert to inactivity. The simultaneous contact with nature and the unsophisticated village folk not only stirred Tagore’s imagination but also directed his writings to a new course. It appears that the hold of poetry which he considered to be his first love slackened his consequence, to make room for newcomer- short stories. Not that he stopped writing poems altogether, but they received less attention form him that during this long period of twelve years, his pen produced only five books of poems which included Sonar Tari and Chitra. The scenic beauty of rural Bengal had its impact on his poetry too and it became a new subject for treatment in his poems. The specific charm of the poems of Sonar Tari is evidently derived from this source. The image of a boat plied by a mystical figure that haunts the last poem of this collection was evidently inspired by the long boat journeys on the Padma. It also appears that one entire book of verses called Chaitali was the gift of this land of beauty. It records the scenic beauty and petty village incidents in such meticulous details that they appear to take shape before the reader’s eyes. The conflicting moods are quite discernible in the poems of Chitra written in 1896. He gave vent to his resentment on seeing the miserable existence of rural labourers by writing the stirring poem Ebar Firao More which finds place in Chitra. During the rainy season, Mrinalini Devi was ill at Santiniketan and the disease could not be cured by local doctors. So she was removed to the family house of Jorasanko for better medical attention. After a protracted illness patiently borne, Mrinalini Devi expired on November 23, 1902. The grief that flooded his heart on this occasion however, found expression in secret in a series of poems written at a stretch within two months of his wife’s death. Soon after, they were published in the form of a book titled Smaran. The book was not directly dedicated to Mrinalini Devi but on the page earmarked for dedication it simply quoted the date of her death. This book contributed to Bengali literature on one of the best collections of poems dealing with the tragedy of a beloved, and stands comparison with other similar books in world literature. One of it poems has been translated into English by the poet himself and given a place in his English Gitanjali. The poem gives a vivid picture of the agony of his heart when he misses her in the house and seeks consolation by dipping his emptied life in the ocean of eternity.

LITERARY TALENTS- if his inborn genius was a major factor in making him an outstanding literary figure, the environment in the family was no less important factor in unfolding it. Tagore himself was very conscious of this as he confirms in his reminiscences. “I had a great advantage that an atmosphere of literary activities pervaded the house day and night in my early age. Their enthusiasm for literary and artistic pursuits was unbounded, as if they were trying by all possible ways to usher in the modern era of Bengal. Dress and costumes, poems, music, painting, staging of dramas, religious discourses, patriotic activities- in respect of all such matters their minds were dominated by a comprehensive ideal of nationalism”.

           The Hindu Mela provided Tagore the scope to give expression to his feelings about his land of birth, in poetry. It appears that on two occasions he participated in the programs of the Hindu Mela by reciting his poems on India. The first occasion was in 1875, when he was only fourteen years of age. It was considered so important an event that it was reported in the leading daily next day. The theme of the poem imagines the Sage Vyas sitting on the Himalayas recalling the history and glory of India’s past and contrasting it with the present lowly state and poses the question: “will the ashes of India’s past glory kindle again a blazing fire and light up the world?”

                     His sensitive mind was fully conscious. He was proud of his country’s past. He strongly wished that India should be reinstated to her position of glory. This desire finds expression in one of his sonnets which finds place in his book of verse Naivedya. The Tattvabodhini Patrika published one of his earliest poems, Abhilash towards the end of December 1874, when he was barely thirteen. The greatest incentive came from Kadambari Devi, the worthy wife of Jyotindranath. She came to the family when Rabindranath was only seven years old. His poetic qualities so much excited her admiration that Kadambari Devi would entertain him by serving food cooked by her. She even presented him with an Asan (a carpet piece used to sit on) embroidered by her, in which she quoted a few lines of verse from his famous book, Sarada Mangal. Taking such delight in poetry she naturally felt interested in poetic talent displayed by her young brother-in-law and encouraged him in his efforts. In 1884, she committed suicide for some unknown reason. Overwhelmed with a sense of deep gratitude, he dedicated two of his books, published shortly after this shocking event, to her memory. The first of these is Saisab Sangeet, a collection of poems composed by him when he was still in his teens. The words recorded in the dedication read in translation- “I dedicate these poems to you. It is so long ago that I used to write them in your presence and read them out to you. They carry the memory of your affection. So I am led to think that wherever you are these poems will not escape your eyes”.

        The other book is Bhanu Sinha Thakurer Padavali. It has some interesting features of its own. Under his sister-in-law’s encouragement. Tagore wrote a number of poems following the Padavalis of the Vaisanava poets. They were published in the different issues of the family journal Bharati, between 1877 and 1881. The touching dedication reads: “you had requested me to publish the collection of poems written under the pseudonym Bhanu Sinha. I did not comply with your request then. I have published it today, but you are not here to see it”.

          After that Tagore’s poetry made a rapid advance towards maturity. This seal of maturity is noticeable in Kari-o-Kamal published in 1886. It reflects the characteristic features of his poetry like a strong note of optimism and a style in which him an attributes are ascribed to different parts of nature and even to inanimate objects. In the poem Jogia, in his book Kori-o-kamal, the theme is the wonderful the theme is the wonderful experience of thrill enjoyed by the poet one fine sunny morning. While giving expression to this emotion, he used the phrase that the emotion he used the phrase that the emotion of thrill was dancing from tree to tree. Tagore’s poems, in Dwinjendralal Roy’s opinion, were sensuous and worked as an incentive to illicit love.

        Tagore develops a love for the religion founded by his father. He used to compose hymns to be sung during prayers and such contributions have been assigned an honourable place in the compilation of hymns brought out by his community. Charmed by a particular hymn, his father, on one occasion expressed his appreciation by paying Tagore handsome monetary reward. Tagore says that the search is for the discovery of “a poet’s religion and neither that of an orthodox man of piety nor that of a theologian”. The inspiration for spiritual self-realisation as also for his poetry, being the same what he discovered at the end of his life-long quest was truly a poet’s religion. The fact that a common theme provided inspiration to both his religion and poetry imports two rare qualities to the latter. First, his poetry has a dynamic quality; has a history and has developed through different phases to maturity. In Tagore’s poems a continuous growth can be traced from his earliest writings. The second quality imparted by the common theme is that his poetry becomes a written record of his religious experience. In its mature form, therefore, it gives a picture of his own idea of what religion should be.   

         Tagore’s poems on nature pulsate with the thrill he experienced on contact with her in her various moods. They raise questions about the hidden spirit beyond, and at a later stage, even betray a strong yearning for physical contact with it. By an accidental combination of circumstances, Tagore set his mind in the work of translating some of his poems into English. In the seclusion of the bungalow at Shelidah, he selectively translated many pieces from different collections of his poems. Out of them he put 103 poems in translation and gave the compilation the name, Gitanjali with the corresponding English title ‘Song Offerings’. He was inspired to name it like that by two considerations. For one thing, out of a total of 103 poems, as many as 55 had been taken out from his Bengali Gitanjali and the rest from eight other books. Of them the book that made the highest contribution to this collection was Gitimalya: as many as 16 having been taken from it. Both books had been inspired by a common theme, namely, the relationship between the poet and his personal god whom he called his Jivan Devta. So the dominant note was the expressions of love to his god and in that sense it was an offering of songs to god. The Bengali Gitanjali is a collection exclusively of poems inspired by this theme.

           The publication of the English version of Gitanjali marked an important turning point in Tagore’s life. The quality of these translations touched their hearts so deeply that they undertook to publish his manuscript themselves so that Tagore could be introduced to the people of the west. The publication created quite a sensation in the literary world and the book was selected the very next year for noble prize in literature. The University of Calcutta conferred on him the honorary degree of Doctor of Literature in recognition of his achievement. Tagore had so long remained a literary figure whose fame had not crossed the boundaries of his country, because he had expressed himself in Bengali which was only a regional language of India. The language barrier was an effective bar to keep him screened from the view of the outside world. The people of the world discovered in him one of the greatest literary figures of the world. Tagore became a world figure in his own right. In the early part of his life, Tagore had felt deeply proud of the heritage of his country. As an Indian, he had keenly felt that somebody should again make the voice of India heard beyond the geographical boundaries of his country as in the ancient days. It will be remembered that his address on Hindu Marriage was delivered in 1887, the year of the earliest poems of Manasi. Sonar Tari- his Golden Boat- lyrics written between 1891 and 1893, is the typical book of the Sadhana period. It is of importance, because it marks the clear emergence of the jibandebata- the life deity- motive, which for a time dominated Rabindranath’s work. This phase continued throughout Chitra, which was written between 1893 and the spring of 1895, and is recognized as the consummation of this first magnificent half of his life’s work; ‘the sunset of Sonar Tari’, he calls it. In 1903, appeared a second collected edition of his poetry, edited by Babu Mohitchandra Sen, a teacher at Santiniketan. Mohit babu rearranged the pieces according to matter and manner. Utsarga is really just a very varied and miscellaneous handful of lyrical poems, all well written and some of them of much beauty.

                   His reading of poetry was mostly done in youth and early manhood. He read it little in later life, being anxious to get into wider currents still, those of European literature; and our poets did not attract him. His mind had many affinities with the European mind; when explaining Bengali poetry, he was always quick to bring out at once the points that would seem important to an Englishman. His reading in English poetry, though casual, was very wide. He translated both Kalidasa’s Birth of the War-God and Shakespeare’s Macbeth. In this last ten years, he came back to English poetry. For example, he translated admirably T.S. Eliot’s the journey of the Magi.

LAST DAYS- the urge to discard the beauty of the outer form proved so strong that Tagore adopted the rhythm of prose- poems for his verses. Gandhiji paid his visit to Santiniketan on February 17, 1941. Tagore’s health had in the meantime broke down. Naturally, he was very much worried about the future of his university. It pained him to think of the insecure future which stared in the institution in the face- the institution which he had built up with so much care over a period of nearly forty years of his life. When India attained independence, its first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, who was himself a great admirer of Tagore, had an act passed to adopt Viswabharati as one of the Central Universities. During the Second World War when Subhash Chandra founded the Free India League in Berlin, it was decided at his instance to adopt Jana-Mana-Gana, the song composed by Tagore on India, as the National Anthem. It was at his instance that it was played on the Orchestra for the first time in ceremony in Hamburg in 1942. Towards the end of July 1941, he fell so seriously ill that he had to be removed to his Calcutta residence on the 25^th July for treatment. He died on 7^th august, 1941. Thus ended an eventful and glorious life which is as fascinating as his poetry. A ‘unity of inspiration’ links up the poems composed by him in different stages of his life. That is perhaps the reason why his poems retained their charm throughout the long period of his creative life extending even to his last days.

SHAKESPEARE’S LIFE

NAME- URVI DAVE

ROLL NO. - 33

CLASS- M.A. 

SEM- 1

PAPER NO. – 1

TOPIC- SHAKESPEARE’S LIFE

SUBMITTED TO- SMT.S.B. GARDI DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH & M.K. BHAVNAGAR UNIVERSITY

Email Id- dave.urvi71@gmail.com

BATCH YEAR- 2014-16

Question- Tell briefly the story of Shakespeare’s life. What are the four periods of his work? What are his romantic plays and historical plays? What is the difference between a tragedy and a comedy? For what reason is he considered the greatest of writers?

Ø From the register of the little parish church at Stratford on Avon, William Shakespeare was baptized there on 26 April 1564. As it was customary to baptize children on the third day after birth, the 23 April is generally accepted as the poet’s birthday. His father John Shakespeare was a farmer’s son from the neighbouring village of Switterfield who came to Stratford about 1551 and began to prosper as a trader in corn, meat, leather and other agricultural products. His mother, Mary Arden, was the daughter of a prosperous farmer, descended from an old Warwickshire family of mixed Anglo-Saxon and Norman blood. Of Shakespeare’s education we know little, except that for a new year’s he probably attended the endowed grammar school at Stratford, where he picked up the “Small Latin and Less Greek’’ to which his learned friend Ben Jonson refers. His real teachers, meanwhile, where the men and women and the natural influences which surrounded him. Stratford is a charming little village in beautiful Warwickshire and near at hand where the Forest of Arden, the old castles of Warwick and Kenilworth, and the Old roman camps and military roads, to appeal powerfully to the boys lively imagination. Every phase of the natural beauty of this exquisite region is reflected in Shakespeare’s poetry; just as his characters reflects the nobility and the littleness, the gossip, vices emotions, prejudices and traditions of the people about him. In late 1580’s he moved to London and entered the theatrical business, first as an actor and then as a dramatist/ shareholder. First printed allusion to Shakespeare dates from 1592 in the in the pamphlet Greene’s groatworth of wit, where he is referred to as an upstart crow in his own conceit the only Shakespeare scene in a country. Man of the theatre, poet and expert in the human patience, Shakespeare has appealed equally to those who admire the art with which he renders a story in terms of the acted drama or the insight with which he renders a story in terms of the acted dramas or the insight with which he presents state of mind and complex- conviction and new dimension to the ulterness of his characters through the poetic speech he puts in their mouths. It is remarkable combination of qualities, Shakespeare has been praised for his aesthetic cunning in his disposition of the action, for his theatrical skill, and for his ability to create living world of people while himself remaining ‘’like the god of creation, within or behind or beyond or above his  handiwork, invisible, refined art of existence, indifferent, paring his fingernails.’’                                               

                               Most Shakespeare biographers qualify his attendance at the King New School in Stratford with phrases such as “almost certainly” because all attendance records for the time have been lost, but Shakespeare’s works exhibit detailed knowledge of the grammar school. Curriculum and none of the university life that is evident in university educated playwright such as Marlowe. Advert VI, the king honored in the school’s name, had in the mid sixteenth century diverted money from the dissolution of the monasteries to endow a network of grammar schools to “propagate good lit... Throughout the kingdom”, but the school had originally been setup by the Guild of the Holycross, a church institution in the town, early in the fifteenth century. On 28 November 1582, at Temple Grafton near Stratford, the eighteen year old Shakespeare married Anne Hathway, who was 26. An alternative theory is that Shakespeare may have joined Queen Elizabeth’s men in 1587, after the sudden death of actor William knell in a fight by on a tour which later took in Stratford. Shakespeare took knell’s place and thus found his way to London and stage-land. Shakespeare’s father John, as high bailiff of Stratford was responsible for the acceptance and welfare of visiting theatrical troups. There is no evidence of Shakespeare’s membership of the queen’s man, so it remains speculation. Shakespeare died on 23 April 1616, at the age of 52. He died within a month of signing his will, a document which he begins by describing himself as being in “perfect health”.

  Four periods of his work

1.     First period (1588-93): It was the period of apprenticeship and experimentation. It is marked by youthfulness and exuberance of imagination, by extravagance of language and by the frequent use of rimed couplets with his blank verse. The period dates form his arrival in London in 1595. His plays are revision of old plays such as

·        Henry VI

·        Titus Andronicus

The first comedy is such as “Love’s labor lost, “The gentlemen of Verona”, “The comedy of errors”, “A midsummer night’s dream” and first attempt at writing a tragedy- Romeo and Juliet.

2.     Second period (1594-60): It was the period of the great comedy and chronicle plays, a period of rapid growth and development. Plays like

·        The merchant of Venice

·        Midsummer night’s dream

·        As you like it

·        Henry IV

All written in this period show more careful and artistic works, better plots and a marked increase in knowledge of human nature. Other plays are

·        Richard II

·        King John

·        Henry V

·        The Taming of the Shrew

·        The Merry Wives of Windsor

·        Much ado about nothing and

·        Twelfth night

3. Third period (1601-08): This was the period of his great tragedies and somber comedies, a period of gloom and depression, which marks the full maturity of his powers. What caused this evident sadness is unknown; but it is generally attributed to some personal experience, coupled with the political misfortunes for his friends, Essex and Southampton. These plays are

·        Hamlet

·        All’s well that ends Well

·        Measure for Measure

·        Troilus & Cressida

·        Othello

·        King Lear

·        Macbeth

·        Antony and Cleopatra

·        Coriolenus

·        Timor of Athens

4. Fourth period (1608-12): A period of serenity, of calm after storm, which marked the last years of the poet’s literary works. This was the period of later comedies or what are known as “Dramatic Romances”-

·        Cymbeline

·        The Tempest

·        Winter’s Tale.

There are other plays of this period which are only partly written by Shakespeare like-

·        Tericles

·        Henry VIII

The winter’s tale and The Tempest are the best of his later plays; but they all show a falling off from his previous work and indicate a second period of experimentation with the test of a fickle public.                                

      Usually comedy plays are very exciting to watch because they include a lot of singing and dancing, but historical plays include a lot of fighting and a lot of the characters are royal. Comedies are very popular. The comedies were most enjoyed out of the three genres of Shakespeare’s plays. The actors had to do a lot of singing and dancing in the plays. In comedies a lot of metaphors and insults were used. Comedies were usually about two lovers trying to defeat or overcome the problems in their relationships. Comedies could sometimes include characters trying to trick another character by disguising themselves. It was quite common for a female character to be disguised as a male character. History plays were the most classical type of plays. They included a Cot of fighting. In these plays, there were mostly men acting because in history plays there was lot of fighting and deep, loud voices needed and it normally includes a character being royal. In those days women never fought or ruled. Therefore, women would play the parts of wives or lovers. The actors needed to have a lot of exaggerated gestures. The two gentlemen of Verona (1594) is the first of a series of romantic comedies which includes Love’s labour lost (1594) - though with some qualifications-

·        A midsummer Night’s Dream (1596)

·        The Merchant of Venice (1596-97)

·        Much ado about nothing (1599-1600) and

·        Twelfth Night (1599-1600)

Love’s Labour Lost was published in a quarto volume in 1598. The play shows that Shakespeare was aiming not only at popular successes in the public theatre but also at something more sophisticated, appealing to the witty and the educated. In The Merchant of Venice, Shakespeare sets himself the almost impossible task of combining the fairy tale Plot of the Castles, in which Bassanio figures as the lucky adventurer who wins the girl by a sort of predestinate good fortune, with a story of male friendship in true Renaissance vein (Bassanio and Antonio) and more significantly with the story of Shylock and the pound of flesh, a theme of larger dimensions and greater dramatic possibilities than the other standards in the play. In Shakespeare’s next three “romantic-comedies”- Much ado about nothing, as you like it and Twelfth Night. This form of Elizabethan drama reaches its golden perfection. Like The Merchant of Venice, Much ado combines two plots, one of which was tragic overtones. In the wit combats between Beatrice and Benedick, Shakespeare brings to a more richly humour level and anchors more profoundly in human experience, a dramatic device which he had earlier sported in a more distinctly device with which he had earlier sported in a more distinctly formed manner. In the Claudio- Hero story, where the bridegroom is deluded by the wicked Don John into believing in his innocent bride’s criminal montoness and so denounces her at the artar, Shakespeare provides a context in which the merry world of witty attitudinizing is shaken into a deeper reality. There is not here, as in the merchant of Venice, a gap between a world of romantic magic and one of grim reality: the plots not only interlock neatly but also reinforce each other emotionally. Beatrice and Benedick, man hater and misogynist tricked by friends into believing that each loves the other, discover their real mutual love in the shadow of Hero’s tragedy and the modulation of tone here between the tragic and the romantic is achieved with remarkable art. But Shakespeare keeps the tragic overtones muted by contriving that the forces of evil are ready in the process of being discovered and exposed even before the terrible accusation against hero at the altar, and we know that it is a matter of time before justice is done and hero is vindicated. The elimination of potential tragedy by the exposure of evil- not too rapidly, but quickly enough to prevent irreparable harm being done- is achieved by the introduction of third strand into the play, the comic realistic strand represented by Dogberry and Verges, the officers of the watch who accidentally stumble across the villain and proceed, in their slow witted and comically clumsy manner, to examine them.

CONTRASTING CULTURES IN GULLIVER’S TRAVELS

NAME- URVI DAVE

CLASS- M.A.

SEM- 1

PAPER NO.- 2

TOPIC- CONTRASTING CULTURES IN GULLIVER’S TRAVELS

SUBMITTED TO- SMT. S.B. GARDI DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH & M.K. BHAVNAGAR UNIVERSITY

EMAIL ID- dave.urvi71@gmail.com

YEAR- 2014-16

Every land which Gulliver visits is a wonderful land, and Gulliver’s experiences in every land are strange or exciting, or amusing. In Lilliput, the people are diminutives or dwarfs, hardly six inches in height. The very idea that there are human beings so small is funny. But more amusing than that is the manner in which Gulliver is fed. Several ladders are applied by the Lilliputians to his sides, and about a hundred of them climb up those ladders in order to carry baskets full of meat and drink and put them close to his mouth. Similarly, it has taken nine hundred Lilliputians, three hours to raise Gulliver to the level of a huge carriage by which he is carried to the royal court. In the Metropolis, Gulliver becomes an object of curiosity, and people come from far and near to look at him. He is given the name “man-mountain”. Gulliver here lends his support to the king and the government of Lilliput against the island of Blefuscu, which has been hostile to Lilliput, and he cripples the enemy fleet, thus winning the appreciation and admiration of the Lilliputian king. One of the most amusing incidents is Gulliver’s extinguishing a fire in the Empresses’ apartment by urinating on it. The empress feels greatly annoyed with this action of Gulliver and moves from that apartment to a different location. Some of the customs of the Lilliputians are also a source of amusement. For instance, they bury their dead with the heads of the corpses directly downwards because they hold a belief that after eleven thousand moons, the dead would rise from their graves and that during this period the earth would upside down so that the dead would, on coming back to life, find themselves standing on their feet. another comic absurdity of the Lilliputians is their manner of writing which is very peculiar, being neither from the left to right, like that of the Europeans; nor form the right to the left like that of the Arabians; nor from up to down like that of the Chinese; nor from down to up like that of the Cascagians; but aslant from one corner of the paper to the other, “like the ladies in England.” Gulliver has to go through an ordeal when, on being informed that he will be shortly impreached on several charges, he finds it necessary to make good his escape from this country. The horses in this country were four inches high. Sheep was only an inch high and hens and geese looked like many coloured flies. The king was half an inch taller than any of his people and his face was strong and manly. The uniform he wore was very plain, but his headdress was made of gold and ornamented with jewels and feathers. Tightrope dancing was very popular and applicants for official posts had to prove their skills in this sport before they were accepted. Those who jumped highest on a white thread which was hung three feet above the ground were judged most successful in the examinations.

        After this voyage, we find Gulliver in a strange and wonderful land called Brobdingnag. This land is inhabited by monstrous-looking giants who are twelve times the height of Gulliver. By contrast with these huge-looking men, Gulliver himself to be as small as the Lilliputians was by contrast with him. Here too Gulliver becomes an object of curiosity for the inhabitants, though for the opposite reason. When Gulliver is first shown by his captor to his wife (who is as huge in size and proportions as her husband), she screams and runs away as a woman in England might do at the sight of a toad or a spider. In other words, Gulliver looks like an insect to the people here. The youngest son in the family of Gulliver’s captor lifts Gulliver by the legs and holds him so high in the air that Gulliver begins to tremble with fear. Then Gulliver sees a ct which is three times larger than an ox in England, and he feels greatly alarmed by its fierceness. When the lady of the house begins to suckle her child, Gulliver feels thoroughly disgusted on seeing the huge, monstrous breasts of the woman. When Gulliver wakes up from his sleep, he is attacked by a couple of rats which are of the size of a big dog. When Gulliver is afterwards bought by the queen, he becomes a favourite with her. As a consequence, the royal dwarf begins to feel jealous of Gulliver and plays much mischief with him. On one occasion, the dwarf makes Gulliver fall into a large bowl of cream. On another occasion, he thrusts Gulliver’s whole body into a bone from which the marrow has been taken out. Gulliver also feels uneasy for another reason. There are too many flies in Brobdingnag. The flies here are very large, like all other creatures, and Gulliver feels much troubled by them as they hum and buzz about his ears. He is also much tormented by the wasps which are as large as the partridges in England. Referring to the royal kitchen, Gulliver says that if he were to describe the size of the kitchen- grate and the size of the pots and kettles, nobody would believe and think that Gulliver is guilty of exaggeration. There are several mishaps during Gulliver’s stay in Brobdingnag. Once an apple, falling from a tree, hits Gulliver on his back and knocks him down flat on his face, because the apples here are also very large. On another occasion, when Gulliver is standing on a grassy plot, there is a sudden shower of hailstones which are nearly eighteen hundred times as large as those in Europe. Gulliver is badly injured by these hailstones. The royal maids of honour often play with Gulliver as if Gulliver were a toy. On one occasion, Gulliver is carried off by a monkey which is also very huge, and he is rescued with great difficulty. Eventually, Gulliver is carried off by a huge eagle which drops him into the sea from where he is picked up by a passing ship. This is Gulliver’s last adventure on his second voyage. In this country, farming is also done. The rich people were masters and were dressed well and the others who worked in the farmer’s field were called workmen. Their dinner plate was about 24 feet wide. Their table was 30 feet high. Their house was very huge, room as big as a church and bed as wide as a river and eight yards high. The king of Brobdingnag was fond of music and very often had musical parties. In this country, there were no guns or no gunpowder though there was always some conflict. In this country, no law is to be allowed to be more than twenty two words long. They make small laws because it could be easy and simple to understand. The biggest library in the kingdom had only thousand books. Their army is not made up of regular soldiers, but includes all the tradesman and farmers of the country who serve in town and without pay. 

               Laputa is a wonderful island which keeps flying at a height of about two miles from the earth over the continent of Balnibarbi. This is in itself is a miracle. The people of Laputa have strange shapes and faces. Their heads are all reclined either to the right or to the left, one of their eyes being turned inward and the other directly up to the zenith. Many of the Laputans are followed by flappers who carry in their hands blown bladders fastened to the ends of short sticks. The function of these flappers is to draw the attention of their masters to anything that might need their attention, because the minds of their masters are so occupied by intense speculations that they can neither speak nor listen to others without being roused by some external action. Another strange feature of life on Laputa is that mutton, beef, pudding and other eatables are given geometrical shapes or the shapes of musical instruments. When these people want to praise the beauty of a woman or another animal, they do so in geometrical or musical terms. The men on this island are so busy inn their cogitations that their wives feel compelled to make love to strangers instead of their husbands. When Gulliver goes to Lagado, he witnesses the many experiments which are in progress at the Academy of Projectors. There is a project for extracting sunbeams from cucumbers, a project for restoring human excrement to its original food, a new method for building houses by beginning at the roof and working downwards to the foundation and so on. There are several schemes being developed at the school of political projects also. These are all very amusing and impractical schemes. Gulliver’s visit to the island of Glubbdubdrib is also very interesting because Gulliver finds himself in a place where ghosts and spirits are in attendance upon the governor and where Gulliver is enabled to hold conversations with the spirits of such great men of the past as Alexander, Hannibal, Aristotle, homer and Brutus. Gulliver also sees a group of immortal people in this place. These immortals are feeling wretched and miserable because they long for death which does not come to them. The country of the Yahoos and the Houyhnhnms, is also a wonderland. This is a country in which human beings are no better than beasts, while the horses show themselves to be superior to human beings. The horse or the Houyhnhnm's are the noblest conceivable animals. They are wholly governed by reason; they have a language of their own which they are able even to teach to a human being like Gulliver; they have their own excellent customs and methods of government; they are guided mainly by the principles of benevolence and kindness. These strange or marvelous beings are free from all kinds of evil, so much so that there is no word in their language for lying or falsehood. They hold a periodical assembly to discuss their affairs and to take necessary action to rectify things which have gone wrong; they have their methods to control population. The Yahoos, who symbolize human beings, are on the contrary despicable creatures who arouse our disgust and abhorrence. Yahoos are a caricature of men, with all the good in human being left out. The Yahoos have a prime minister; they have court flirtations; they have acquisitive hoarders of shining stones; they become drunk and diseased; they even have a fashionable malady as the spleen. All the evils of civilization, and many of its professes glories, are caught in their elaborate behavior. 

Dryden’s views on English theatre/ drama

Name- Urvi Dave

Class- M.A.

Sem- 1

Paper no.- 3

Topic- Dryden’s views on English theatre/ drama

Submitted to- Smt. S. B. Gardi Department of English &

M.K. Bhavnagar University

Batch Year-2014-16

email id- dave.urvi71@gmail.com

Dryden was born in the village of Aldwinkle, Northampton shire in 1631. His family were prosperous people, who brought him up in the strict puritan faith, and sent him first to the famous Westminster school and then to Cambridge. He made excellent use of his opportunities and studied eagerly, becoming one of the best educated men of his age, especially in the classics. Dryden is the greatest literary figure of the restoration, and in his works we have an excellent reflection of both the good and the evil tendencies of the age in which he lived. If we can think for a moment of literature as a canal of water, we may appreciate the figure that Dryden is the “lock by which the waters of English poetry were let down from the mountains of Shakespeare and Milton to the plain of pope”; that is, he stands between the two very different ages, and serves as a transition form one to the other. Dryden’s life contains many conflicting elements of greatness and littleness that the biographer is continually taken away from the facts, which are his chief concern, to judge motives, which are manifestly outside his knowledge and business. Judged by his own opinion of himself, as expressed in his own opinion of himself, as expressed in the numerous prefaces to his works, Dryden was the soul of candor, writing with no other master than literature, and with no other object than to advance the welfare of his age and nation. Judged by his acts, he was apparently a timeserver, catering to a depraved audience in his dramas, and dedicating his work with much flattery to those who were easily cajoled and patronage. In this, however, he only followed the general custom of the time, and is above many of his contemporaries. In 1667, he became more widely known and popular by his “Annus Mirabilis”, a narrative poem describing the terrors of the great fire in London and some events of the disgraceful war with Holland; but with the theatres reopened and nightly filled, the drama offered the most attractive field to one who made his living by literature, so Dryden turned to the stage and agreed to furnish three plays yearly for the actors of the king’s theatre. For nearly twenty years, the best of his life, Dryden gave himself up to this unfortunate work. Both by nature and habit he seems to have been clean in his personal life; but the stage demanded unclean plays and Dryden followed his audience. At fifty years of age and before Jeremy Collier has driven his dramas from the stage. Dryden turned from dramatic work to throw himself into the strife of religion and politics, writing at this period his numerous prose and poetical treaties. The numerous dramatic works of Dryden are best left in that obscurity into which they have fallen. Now and then they contain a bit of excellent lyric poetry, and in All for Love, another version of Antony and Cleopatra, where he leaves his cherished heroic couplet for the blank verse of Marlowe and Shakespeare, he shows what he might have done had he not sold his talents to a depraved audience. On the whole, reading his plays is like nibbling at a rotting apple; even the good spots are affected by the decay, and one ends by throwing the whole thing into the garbage can, where most of the dramatic works of this period belong. He was one of the most highly educated men of his times. He was appointed poet Laureate in 1668. He wrote “heroic stanzas”(1658) on the death of Cromwell. Dryden played the role of an opportunist as he wrote “Astraea Redux” (1660) to welcome Charles II. The poem through which Dryden’s genius was most elaborately expressed is the immortal ode “Alexander’s feast”. The term “heroic drama” was invented by Dryden for his play, the conquest of Granada (1670).  Heroic drama is a type of play popular during the restoration era in England, distinguished by both its verse structure and its subject matter. The sub-genre of heroic drama evolved through several works of the middle to later 1660’s; john Dryden’s ‘the Indian Emperouor’ (1665) and Roger Boyle’s The Black Prince (1667) were key developments. Dryden argued that the drama was a species of epic poetry for the stage that, as the epic was to other poetry. Consequently, Dryden derived a series of rules for this type of play. First the play should be composed in heroic verse (closed couplets in iambic pentameter). Second, the play must focus on a subject that pertains to national foundations, mythological events, or important and grand matters. Third, the hero of the heroic drama must be powerful, decisive and like Achilles, dominating even when wrong. The Conquest of Granada followed all of these rules. The story was that of the national foundation of Spain (and King Charles II was known to be fond of Spanish plays), and the hero Almanzor, was a man of great and martial prowess and temperament. Dryden’s Conquest of Granada is one of the better heroic tragedies, but his highest achievement in his adaption (which he called All for Love, 1678) of Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra to the heroic dramatists were Nathaniel Lee ( The Rival Queens) and Thomas Otway, whose Venice preserved is a fine tragedy that transcends the usual limitations of the form. We also owe indirectly to heroic tragedy two very amusing parodies of the type: The Duke of Buckingham’s The Rehearsal and Henry Fielding’s The Tragedy of Tragedies, or the Life and Death of Tom Thumb the Great. Dryden worked from classical critics. There was little dramatic critical theory for him to appeal to, and the new rules brought over from France did not match English theatrical history or practice with an ancient framework for literature. He was attempting his own neo-classicism. Throughout The Essay of Dramatic Poesy, Dryden treats drama as a form of imaginative literature and hence his remarks on drama apply to poetry as well. Drama is defined as “just and lively image of human nature, representing its passions and humours and the changes of fortune to which it is subject, for the delight and instruction of mankind.” According to this definition, drama is an ‘image’ of human nature and that the image is ‘just’ as well as ‘lively’. By using the word ‘just’ Dryden seems to imply that literature imitates human actions. According to Dryden, drama is an ‘image’ of ‘human nature’ and that the image is ‘just’ as well as ‘lively’. By using the word ‘just’ Dryden seems to imply that literature imitates (and not reproduces) human actions. For Dryden, ‘poetic imitation’ is different from an exact, servile copy of reality, for the imitation is not only ‘just’; it is also ‘lively’.

Four critics:

1.     Eugenius (Charles Sackville) favours the moderns over the ancients, arguing that the moderns exceed the ancients because of having learned and profited from their example.

2.     Crites (Sir Robert Howard) argues in favour of the ancients- they established the unities dramatic rules were spelled out by Aristotle which the current and esteemed French playwrights follow; and Ben Jonson – the greatest English Playwright, according to Crites- followed the ancients example by adhering to the unities.

3.     Lisideius (Sir Charles Sedley) argues that French drama is superior to English drama, basing this opinion of the French writer’s close adherence to the classical separation of comedy and the tragedy. For Lisideius “no theatre in the world has anything so absurd as the English tragicomedy... in two hours and a half, we run through all the fits of Bedlam”.

4.     Neander (thought to represent Dryden) favours the modern- English plays, but does not disparage the ancients. He also favours English drama- and has some critical things to say of French drama: “those beauties of the French poesy are such as will raise perfection higher where it is, but are not sufficient to give it where it is not: they are indeed the beauties of a statue, but not of a man”.

              Dryden wrote this essay as a dramatist dialogue with four characters representing four critical positions. These four critical positions deal with five issues. Eugenius (whose name may mean “well born”) favors the moderns over the ancients, Crites argues in favour of the ancients. Neander critics French drama essentially for its smallness: its pursuit of only one plot without subplots; its tendency to show too little action; its “servile observations of the unities… dearth of plot, and narrowness of imagination” are all qualities which render it inferior to English drama. David Daiches examines the implication of these words in detail. In his view, the image of human nature implies that drama, or imaginative literature in general, ‘shows people acting in such a way as to reveal what they are like’. Dryden seems to be emphasizing, the ‘appearance of human actions’, quite untroubled by Plato’s notion that to do so is simply to imitate an imitation. Dryden makes no distinctions infact, between an image or appearance of human nature, the former if it is ‘just’ gives truth about human nature. After defending English tragedy, Neander (Dryden) proceeds to demonstrate the superiority of the English plots. In English plays, on the other hand, there are a number of sub-plots in addition to the main plot, and are carried forward along with the main action with great spirit. It is wrong to suppose that sub-plot hinders the main action. Further, it would have to been admitted, as even the French have acknowledged, that in English plays all the actions are closely and coherently knit together to form one organic whole. Had this unity and coherence been wanting, there would have been sufficient reason for condemning the English. But at present we must admire them for their copiousness and variety which is a source of great pleasure for the audience. Dryden sums up this discussion by saying that, “I dare boldly affirm that these two things of the English drama: first, that we have more plays of our as regular as any of theirs (French); and which besides, have more variety of plot and character. And second, that in most of the irregular plays of Shakespeare and Fletcher there is a more masculine fancy and Great Spirit in all the writing, than there is in any of the French”.