English Literature: 2020

Wednesday 30 December 2020

Summary of John Keats Poem "Ode to a Nightingale"

 "Ode to a Nightingale" Themes

In the early months of 1819, Keats was living with his friend Brown at Wentworth place Hampstead. In April a nightingale built her nest in the garden. Keats felt a tranquil and continual joy in its plum tree, he composed a poem containing his poetic feeling about the song of the nightingale. This ode was first published in July, 1819.

 

Summary of John Keats Poem Ode to a Nightingale

The main theme of the poem dismisses the optimistic quest for joy found inside Keats' prior verse and, all things being equal, investigates the subjects of nature, fleetingness and mortality, the last being especially applicable to Keats. The nightingale described experiences a sort of death however doesn't really die.  

 

Sunday 27 December 2020

Summary of the Poem ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’

  ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’ Summary:

To every romantic poet nature and the aspects of nature are a great source of inspiration. John Keats was not an exception. Once he visited the British museum and there he came across the Grecian Urn which had been preserved for a long period of time. The paintings depicted on the external surface of the Grecian Urn inflamed the poet's poetic spirit. His creative faculty became agitated and consequently he composed the poem 'Ode on a Grecian Urn'.

 

Ode on a Grecian Urn Summary
 

Discuss Keats as a Romantic Poet

Keats as a Romantic Poet:

 

John Keats is in many ways the most romantic of all romantic poets. Romantic poetry aims at the complete expression of the individual as compared to classical poetry, which aims at the expression of social experience. Other romantic poets have some political or social comment in their poetry. But the poetry of Keats is not a vehicle of any prophecy or any message. It is poetry for its own sake. It has no moral, no political or social significance. It is therefore the purest poetry.

 

Keats as a Romantic Poet

 

Saturday 26 December 2020

Show how Keats Contrasts the World of the Nightingale with the World of Man in 'Ode to a Nightingale'

  Keats Contrasts the World of the Nightingale with the World of Man in 'Ode to a Nightingale':

 

Ode to a Nightingale is a great product of the fertile imagination of John Keats. It is mainly a poem of contrast, contrast between the world of man and that of the nightingale, between the world of reality and that of unreality, between impermanence and permanence. The poet represents the reality, impermanence and the nightingale represents the ideal, and impermanence.

 

Keats is a Poet of both Sensuousness and Thoughts. Discuss

Keats' as a Poet of Sensuousness and Thoughts in his Odes:

 

Sensuousness is that quality in poetry which is derived from and affects the sense of sight, hearing, touch, smell and taste. Sensuous poetry would have an appeal to our eyes by presenting beautiful word- pictures, to our ear by its metrical music, to our nose by arousing our sense of smell, and so on.

Keats is a Poet of both Sensuousness and Thoughts

How does the Theme of Ideal, Real and Transience, Permanence Reveal in Keats’s 'Ode on a Grecian Urn'

Theme of Ideal and Real and Transience and Permanence Reveal in Keats’s Ode on a Grecian Urn:

 

The odes of Keats primarily deal with some of the conflicts that account for the complexity depth of meaning. The fundamental conflict was on the choice between the real world and the ideal world which he created by his imagination. The other points of conflicts are art and life, pleasure and pain, happiness and melancholy and the transient and the permanent.

 

Monday 21 December 2020

Discuss John Keats as an Escapist with Illustrations from Ode to a Nightingale

 John Keats as an Escapist:

 

In most of John Keat's Odes there is a tension between the ideal world which is created by the poet's imagination and the world of reality in which the poet actually lives. The real world is full of sorrow, suffering, frustration and pain. Moreover it is a world of change where everything is transitory and short lived-beauty, love and youth everything suffers from destruction and decay. But the poet can create with the help of his imagination a new ideal world where everything is beautiful and permanent. Being torn up with sorrow and suffering, Keats wants to have rest in the world of imagination, beauty and perfection. (For this — he is often termed as an escapist. An escapist is that kind of person who tries to avoid the hard realities of life and wants to live in an imaginary world) but his realization of the fact that life is as it is helps him to come back to the reality.

 

John Keats as an Escapist with Illustrations from Ode to a Nightingale

Saturday 19 December 2020

Summary of John Keats Poem 'Ode to Autumn'

Summary of Ode to Autumn:

Ode to Autumn is one of the major Odes of Keats. It shows all the qualities of Keats as a poetic artist--- his pictorial power, his economy of expression, his classical restraint, his sense of proportion, and his grave and solemn music.

 

Critical Appreciation of Ode to Autumn

Friday 18 December 2020

Write a Critical Appreciation of Ode to a Nightingale

 Critical Appreciation of Ode to a Nightingale:

Ode to a Nightingale is one of the greatest lyrics in English literature. It faithfully represents the entire poetic self of Keats. So it is called a representative poem of the poet.

 

Critical Appreciation of Ode to a Nightingale

Wednesday 16 December 2020

Discuss Coleridge as a Poet of Nature

Coleridge as a Poet of Nature

Love for Nature is one of the most and conspicuous characteristics of the romantic poets. Like the other romantic poets, Coleridge is a keen lover of Nature and gives us many beautiful Nature pictures. When we go through his description of nature, we feel we are in the lap of nature. His The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Kubla Khan and Dejection an Ode' are packed with the apparent and colourful description of Nature.

 

Coleridge as a Poet of Nature

Friday 11 December 2020

Critical Appreciation of Poem Kubla Khan by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Critical Appreciation of Kubla Khan


Kubla Khan has been described by the poet himself A vision in a Dream, a Fragment. The poet dreamt of Kubla Khan and his palace during his sleep. On awakening he appeared to have distinct recollection of the whole vision and taking his ink and paper, instantly and eagerly wrote down the lines that are here preserved. At this moment he was unfortunately called out by a person on business and detained by him over an hour and on his return to his room, found to his great surprise and disappointment that though he still remembered some vague and dim recollection of the vision, with the exception of some eight or ten scattered lines and images, all the rest had dwindled into oblivion.

 

Critical Appreciation of Poem Kubla Khan by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Thursday 10 December 2020

Discuss Kubla Khan as a Romantic Poem

Kubla Khan as a Romantic Poem


Samuel Taylor Coleridge is one of the greatest romantic poets and his Kubla Khan is one of those three poems which have kept his name in the front of the greatest English poets. The poem is the shortest but in some ways the most remarkable of the three. Kubla Khan is a romantic poem. It is a concentration of romantic features. The romantic qualities of the poem are as follow:

 

Kubla Khan as a Romantic Poem

Tuesday 24 November 2020

What are the Romantic Elements in 'The Rime of the Ancient Mariner'

Romantic Elements in 'The Rime of the Ancient Mariner'

 

Though we are asked to find out Romantic elements of the poem entitled 'The Rime of the Ancient Mariner', I think it is better to have a light idea about romanticism. "Romanticism is derived from the word 'romance'. It means to give full play imagination. It refers to the Romantic Movement in late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. This movement is indicated by C. H. Herford as the liberty of imagination without the flight of imaginative sensibility we may have anything else except romanticism.

 

Romantic-Elements-in-The-Rime-of-the-Ancient-Mariner

Tuesday 17 November 2020

Supernatural Elements in the Poem "Kubla Khan"

"Kubla Khan" as a Supernatural Poem

 

In English Literature Coleridge is one of the extraordinary writers of Romantic Movement. His contemplations are philosophical. In any case, his style is straightforward and clear. His unique field is Supernaturalism. He expounds on extraordinary components and occasions and depicts what is inconspicuous and past nature. However, he portrays them so that they seem regular and life like. In the field of world English Literature supernaturalism makes Samuel Taylor Coleridge unique.

 

Coleridge's Kubla Khan is the best example of unadulterated verse, an outcome of sheer fancy. It is a fantasy rhyme, a rhyme of unadulterated enchantment. The Poem embodies Coleridge's dominance over powerful poetry.

 

Khubla-khan-is-a-supernatural-poem

Sunday 8 November 2020

Critical Appreciation of Coleridge's "Dejection: An Ode".

Coleridge's Poem "Dejection: An Ode", Critical Appreciation:

 

In 1802 Samuel Taylor Coleridge written the poem "Dejection: An Ode". Original form of the poem "Dejection: An Ode" was written to Sara Hutchinson, a lady who was not his wife and converses his feelings of love for her.

   

Dejection: An Ode is the swan song of S.T. Coleridge. It is a very sad poem. In the poem the poet mourns his spiritual and moral losses. It records a fundamental change in his life and it is a lament on the decline of his creative imagination.

 

"Dejection: An Ode", Critical Appreciation:

 

As we go through the poem, we see that the poet sees in a tranquil night the old Moon in the lap of the new Moon. The poet sees that the moon is overspread with phantom light. It suggests the death of his poetic imagination which is the central theme of the poem.

 

 

Critical-Appreciation-of-Coleridge's-Dejection-An-Ode

Sunday 1 November 2020

Discuss "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" as a Lyrical Ballad.

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner as a Lyrical Ballad:

 

The form of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner is that of a ballad. A ballad is a narrative song poem, usually relating a single, dramatic incident, in a form suitable for singing. There are two types of ballads: folk ballads (whose authors are unknown) and literary ballads written by modern poets, in imitation of the folk ballads. Folk ballads are characterized by simplicity of language, terseness of expression, directness of narration, abrupt transitions, the use of archaic words and repetition of phrases and lines to achieve a cumulative effect. The Rime of the Ancient Mariner is one of the best literary ballads of English language.

 

The Poem, “Rime of the Ancient Mariner” as a Narrative Poem in the Ballad Tradition:

 

In The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Coleridge here combines many of the features of the old form with the modern. Some of these may be noted here.

 

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner as a Lyrical Ballad in its tradition

Saturday 10 October 2020

Consider “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” is a Poem of Crime and Punishment?

“The Rime of theAncient Mariner” is the greatest achievement of S.T Coleridge. The whole story of the poem is based on the theme of crime committed by a mariner and the punishment which he had to undergo after the act of crime. In fact, the poem is an allegory of guilt and regeneration.

 

"Rime of the Ancient Mariner" is a Poem of Crime and Punishment:


As we go through the poem we find that the Ancient Mariner wantonly killed the Albatross, which was a bird of good omen, and which signifies the violation of the sanctified relations of the host ad guest. It is a symbolic representation of the essential frivolity of many crimes against humanity and the ordered system of the world.

 

Rime of the Ancient Mariner is a Poem of Crime and Punishment


The Mariner’s two hundred shipmates partake his guilt because they approve of his misdeed by saying that the Mariner was right to kill the Albatross which brought fog and mist. Thus the whole crew including the Mariner was guilty to be punished.  So the ship is suddenly becalmed. The sun shone directly overhead. Their supply of drinking water was finished. There was water everywhere around them but they had no a drop to drink.

 

Tuesday 22 September 2020

Comment on Coleridge’s Treatment of Supernatural in "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner".

Coleridge’s Treatment of Supernatural in The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

 

S.T Coleridge is the greatest English poet of supernaturalism and his The Rime of the Ancient Mariner is one of the best poems of supernatural ever written in English literature. As we go through the poem, there is a “willing suspension of disbelief” on our part.

Sunday 16 August 2020

Summary and Critical Appreciation of William Wordsworth Poem “Tintern Abbey”

Summary and Critical Appreciation of  “Tintern Abbey”


Maybe “Tintern Abbey” is the most well-known poem by one of the most famous British Romantic poets. The poem has its foundations in Wordsworth's own past. Wordsworth professed to have formed the poem altogether in his mind, starting it after leaving Tintern and but rather writing down a line until he arrived at Bristol, by which time it had recently arrived at mental culmination. “This is the first Poem,” as Helen Derbyshire says, “in which Wordsworth’s genius finds full expression: the blank verse, low toned and familiar yet impassioned, moves with a sureness and inevitable ease from phase to phase to this mood.” In fact this poem sums up all the main articles of Wordsworth’s faith in Nature. To Wordsworth Nature is never dead. He discovers a dominating spirit and the contemplation of it, a holy communion with it is a source of joy, delight, consolation and thought. His philosophical thought finds an expression through the grand style. It has been enriched with autobiographical touch. It also exhibits the poet’s gradual development of thought through different stages. His mystic view of nature has been focused through these stages.

Sunday 19 July 2020

Why Blake Called the Precursor of Romantic Poetry

Blake, The Precursor of Romantic Poetry


William Blake is regarded as the precursor of romantic poetry. He belongs to the age of transition from late 18th century to early 19th century poetry. Some of his poems are like the poems of 18th century poets because they give us a picture of life and society. His group of poems give us the impression of English romantic poetry because they are imaginative, sensuous and simple like the romantic poets. He writes about the beauty of nature, hills, sea, birds, tress, forest etc. which became the subject matter of romantic poets. Before the arrival of the romantic poets he wrote romantic poetry. Therefore he can be called the precursor of romantic poetry. It seems that romantic poets followed the style of Blake and gave a full expression to Blake’s romanticism.

Monday 18 May 2020

Shakespeare’s Use of Disguise in The Twelfth Night

Use of Disguise in "The Twelfth Night":


Shakespeare was master-craftsman who has displayed great skill in the technique of the use of disguise. We find his mastery over this technique in The Merchant of Venice, As you Like It and The Twelfth Night. In The Twelfth Night Viola is the only character who assumes a disguise and her disguise affects all the other characters in the play profoundly. Her disguise is the real moving force of the main plot of this play.

Wednesday 29 April 2020

Critically Comment on Twelfth Night as a Romantic Comedy.

"Twelfth Night" as a Romantic Comedy:

A Shakespearean comedy is a romantic comedy- a combination of romance and comedy. Shakespeare’s comedies have certain features in common. His comedy aims at sheer joy and pleasure. He wrote tragedies because it was his taste but he wrote comedies to relieve his mind from heaviness. Hence, the romantic atmosphere of his comedies.