E-C-201: The Romantic Literature

Name: Nargis I. Saiyad

Paper: E-C-201: The Romantic Literature.

Topic: Themes & Motifs in ‘Frankenstein’

SEM: 2, Part: 1.

Year: 2011/12.

Submitted To,

 Dr. Dilip Barad,

Dept.of English,

Bhavnagar University.

 Themes                    

                                                Themes means the fundamental universal ideas used in a literary work. The themes are like these:

v Dangerous Knowledge-

                                                           Here, Victor wanted to learn the secret of life beyond the limits of human-being and so, the result came out the death of every nearer and dearer of Victor. Robert Walton- Victor’s friend also wanted to know something which breaks the limitation. He attempts to surpass previous human explorations by trying to reach the North Pole. Luckily, he learns the lesson from Victor’s life and finally withdraws his voyage. He comes to know how destructive the thirst for knowledge can be. It reminds one Gujarati saying,

                                           “Ati ni koi gati nai”

v Monstrosity-

                                           The monstrosity is of course very important theme of the novel. Victor creates monster by using chemical and dead body.  He does monstrosity in the whole world.

                                            Even the monster’s creator is one monster because of his monstrous deed. We can say he was the true “monster” inside.

                                                           Some critics even call this novel as monstrous novel because it was the combination of different voices, texts and tenses, also.

v Sublime Nature-

                       

                                                           The influence of Nature on mood is clearly seen throughout the novel. After the deaths of William and Justine, Victor feels guilt because he thinks that he was responsible for their death and he heads to the mountains to lift his spirits. Same like that, after a hellish winter of cold and loneliness, the monster feels lighten as spring arrives. In the end, as Victor chases monster, nature was in the form of the Arctic desert.

v Secrecy -  

                   

                                          In the novel, Victor thinks that science is a mystery to be probed. He keeps the secret of his making a new life from dead body and chemicals. Victor tells about the natural philosopher, Mr. Krempe with whom he meets at Ingolstadt,

              "An uncouth man, but deeply imbued in the secrets of his science."

                               After creating monster, He keeps this secret away from society. The truth of his life becomes immortalized in Walton's letters.

v Texts -

                    

                     'Frankenstein' is full of text like letters, notes, journals, and books fill the novel.

                          We come to know about the story through Walton's letters.

                            In Walton's letters, Victor's story comes, in victor's monster's story fits, in monster's story, the love story of Felix and Safie and references to 'Paradise Lost' comes in it. Monster understands the manner of his creation, as described in Victor's journal. At the end, he leaves notes for Victor when he goes to the northern ice.

 Motifs

                         Motifs are the recurring structures, contrast or other literary devices that can help to develop the text's major theme.

·       Passive Women -

                                             Marry's mother Wollstonecraft was the author of 'A Vindication of the Rights of woman', a feminist tract encouraging women to think and do for themselves but her daughter's novel is striking without strong female characters.

For example,

> Caroline Beaufort - She is a self - sacrificing mother who dies                                                                      taking care of her adopted daughter.

> Justine - She is executed for murder, she has not committed.

> Female monster - Victor first creates female monster then himself destroys him.

> Elizabeth - Elizabeth waits for Victor to marry and in waiting he becomes impatient. But she is also killed by the monster at the end.

                              One can argue that Shelley has intentionally put her characters so passive to exhibit the destructive behaviors of Victor and the monster.

·         Abortion -

                             This motif recurs as both Victor and the monster express their sense of the monster's evilness. When Victor first time sees monster he says,

"When I thought of him, I gnashed my keenly wished to destroy that life which I had so thoughtlessly made."

                        Monster also feels disgust for himself:

"I, the miserable and the lonely, am an abortion, to be spurned at, and kicked, and trampled on."

                        We can see the second time appearance of the motif when Victor destroys his work on a female monster.

                          Frankenstein transcends Gothicism by combining science with the supernatural, or at least the supernatural and 'Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus' can be approached as a treatise on moral development and educational theory. Shelley has used the themes and motifs like these to represent it which are very symbolic.

   

E-C-203:Literary Criticism:Western & Indian Poetics-2

Name: Nargis I. Saiyad

Paper: E-C-203: Literary Criticism

Topic: T.S.Eliot: ‘Tradition and Individual Talent’

SEM: 2, Part: 1.

Year: 2011/12.

Submitted To,

 Dr. Dilip Barad,

Dept.of English,

Bhavnagar University.

 T.S.Eliot: "Tradition and Individual Talent"

The full name of Eliot is Thomas Stearns Eliot. This essay was first published in 1919 in 'The Egoist' then it was published in 'The Sacred Wood: Essays on Poetry and Criticism' in 1920/2. David Lodge has celebrated critical essay in the English of the 20th century.

ü Sections of the essay-

                                 The essay is mainly divided into three sections. Through this he has simplified his ideas. The three parts are:

      i.        The concept of tradition,

    ii.        Theory of depersonalization,

   iii.        Complementary thing.

ü Part - I

                                   In the very opening of the essay, Eliot says that the people of England are less critical. They believe that the French people are more critical than us. They tried to find out the individual essence of the man. But as per Eliot's view, no any artist, poet, writer can write without tradition.

  

                                                ''No poet, no artist of any art has his complete meaning alone. His significance, his appreciation, is the appreciation of his relation to the dead poets and artists.''

                                                                       - Eliot (956)

                                        So, he says that any work of art is not completely meaningful in its isolation.

                                         ''Tradition is a matter of much wider significance. It can not be inherited and if you want it you must obtain it by great labour. It involves the historical sense.''

                       He says that it is not easy to know tradition so, we have to do hard work. By historical sense, he says that historical sense is the sense of the timeless as well as the sense of temporal and of both and this sense makes the poet traditional.

                            The historical sense is a sense not only of the pastness of the past but also of its presence. A mature poet is well aware of the history of the past literature of his country.

                    Eliot says that he should not be appreciated in the isolation but he should be seen in relation to the dead poet. The comparison and contrast among the dead makes the present poet tradition.

                         Here, Eliot also talks about the improvement of art. He says that any creative writer should be quite aware that art never improves. The material of art is never quite the same. There may be development, refinement and complication from time to time in a work of art but that is not the improvement. He says that tradition is the process of formation. Eliot's reformulation of the idea of literary tradition has been one of the key critical concepts of the 20th century.

ü Part - II

        The opening line of the second part is very significant. It is,

        "Honest criticism and sensitive appreciation is directed not upon the poet but upon the poetry."

                          He gives importance to poetry rather than poet. He says that the poetry has nothing connected with its creator. The progress of an artist is a continual self sacrifice, a continual extinction of the personality. So, he defies the process of depersonalization and it's relation with the tradition.

               

                 He gives the example of gas chamber. He says that the mind of the poet is catalyst. To make sulphurous acid, the combination of the gases Oxygen and Sulphur Dioxide is necessary but these two should meet each-other in the presence of a filament of platinum. This happens only if platinum is present but yes, when new acid comes out there is even no trace of platinum remains. The poet's mind is just like this platinum. It is very important in making the acid but there is not any trace of it. Here, the poem is like sulphurous acid and the mind of the poet is just like platinum.

                        He also said that the man who suffers is different from the mind that creates. It is also possible that the poet may have suffer much in his life but in his poetry, no any trace of that feelings ever seen in his poems.

                          Some poets try to find out new human emotion to express, but this search of novelty is wrong. He says that emotions are the same. The business of the poet is to use this ordinary one and express it in the poetry. He says that the bad poet is generally conscious where he ought to be unconscious and he becomes unconscious where he ought to be conscious. This type of error makes him personal.

ü Part - III

                    In this section, he says that tradition and individual talent both are the complementary things.

                        Here, he says that emotion is very significant and it is impersonal. To make any poem the surrender of our self is very important then we can create a poem.

·         Views of others - 

           

                     'Tradition and the Individual Talent ' - then and now by Gareth, Reeves, F.H.Bradly - the historical sense are the examples of the views for this essay.

                      Gareth Reeves writes that the essay was a major contributor to Modernism's rise and hegemony. It suffered spurn and neglect.

                       Maud Ellamann writes in her book 'The Poetics of Impersonality: T.S.Eliot and Ezra Pound'. She is disagreeing with the idea of impersonality and continual self-sacrifice.

                      Edward Lobb in his book 'T.S.Eliot and the Romantic Critical Tradition' says that the idea of dissociation of sensibility is the story of Eden applied to the secular history of literature and such is a literary myth was first put forward by the Romantics.

                      Eliot's views don't meet with the Romantic Poets.

                      Harold Bloom disagrees with Eliot's view of Romantic poetry in 'The Metaphysical Poet'(1921). He criticizes it because of its dissociation of sensibility.

                      Eliot's view stands awkward with feminist, minority theories. Eliot believe poet strong who knows the tradition whereas Harold Bloom goes against tradition.

      'Stronger the past, lesser the influence'

                      We can say this now, a reprint of 'The use of poetry' and 'The use of criticism', which was the series of lectures given at Harvard University in 1932 and 1933 in which he called the essay the most juvenile of his essays.

                      Amanda S. Campbell does not agree with Eliot. For Amanda,

                Poetry => words on paper

                     Joan Baptiste was also not agree with Eliot. For Eliot's essay someone has written,

  'An urn didn't have to be Grecian, if could just be an urn.'

ü Conclusion-

                            

                  In this essay, he gives novel ideas about poet, poetry, personality, emotion, tradition, historical sense etc... He puts poets at the top. His deep criticism in the essay demands a mental exercise, but there are some people, critics who are disagree with him and one man in the internet has written for his essay,

  "Streets that follow like a tedious argument of insidious intent."

                                                                                                    

E.E.205:- Cultural Studies

Name: Nargis I. Saiyad

Paper: E-E-205-B: Cultural Studies

Topic: Post-Colonial Study

SEM: 2, Part: 1.

Year: 2011/12.

Submitted To,

 Dr. Dilip Barad,

Dept.of English,

Bhavnagar University.

 Post-Colonial Studies

·         Meaning of 'Cultural studies':

                            

                        The meaning of 'cultural studies' is hard to define. Let's see Showman's definition:

                 

·         Elaine Showalter:

                                 "Cultural studies" is not so much a discrete approach at all, but rather a set of practices.

·         Types of Cultural Studies:

                          There are five types of cultural studies. They are as follows:

> British cultural Materialism,

> New Historicism,

> American Multiculturalism,

> Post modernism and popular Culture,

> Postcolonial studies

                    We will evaluate postcolonial studies.

·         Definition of Postcolonial studies:

                     

                      We can define post-colonial studies as given below:

                         "Post-colonial studies means the study of the English language within politicized context, especially those writings that developed at the colonial "front", which also explores the oppression of the non-European races by European once and which also studies diasporic texts outside the usual western genres."

·         Post-colonial studies:

                   The word 'Post-colonial' refers to the time after the colonialism. After the colonialism, the third world countries in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean were separated from colonialism but left to rebuit themselves. Many post-colonial writers focus on both colonialism and the changes that came after the colonialism.

·         Edward said:

                His book 'Orientalism' was an important touchstone to postcolonial studies. In it he describes how the Eastern people were called by the western people.

·         Frantz Fanon:

                      He was a French Caribbean Marxist, who wrote in French Algerian language to deconstruct emerging national regimes that were based on inheritances that were given from the imperial powers.

                              In his book 'Black Skin White Mask', he talks about racial prejudice. The book is the reflection of his own experience of life. He describes how the white people behaved with black people, how black people were feeling inferiority, how the life of black people was crushed by the white. His book, 'The wretched of the Earth' published in 1961, was an inspiring book for postcolonial critics.

·         Homi k. Bhabha:

     

                                   Homi Bhabha's post-colonial theory is very important in post-colonial studies. It includes the analysis of nationality, ethnicity,       politics etc... He takes the idea from de-construction that the dichotomies between center and periphery, colonized and colonizer, self and other are false binaries.

                                              

·         Salman Rushdie:

    

                                                      One best-known example of diasporic text is Salman Rushdie' essay is 'Imaginary Homelands'. The powerful conflict arising from the colonial past in Rushdie's   'Midnight's Children’ published in 1980, gives his viewpoint about the history of modern India.

·         Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak:

       

                                In the post-colonial feminism, the most important figure is Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. She examines the effect of political independence upon "subaltern" or women in the third world. She gives voice to their problems and pains. Her best-known work, "Can Subaltern Speak?" is very effective and popular one.

   

·         Other examples:

        

                    Besides the writing, given above the works of Rudyard Kipling, E.M.Foster, Jean Rhys, Jamaica Kincaid are also important. Even Shakespeare's Caliban is also re-read today in their New World contexts.

·         Pramod K. Nyre's view:

              

                         Pramod K. Nyre presented his view about postcolonial studies in his book 'Cultural Studies: Scope, Aim, Methods' in the title of 'Postcolonialism and cultural studies.'

                          

                              Globalization has an influence on local cultures. Cultural studies also need to be conscious of the racialized nature of globalized. Simon outlines a set of reasons for connecting postcolonialism with globalization of studies. (2000)

                            He means culture is affected by economic factors. Media also determine what aspects of culture are adopted. For example, fashion. Cultural study should know the colonial relationship between first world's and 'Third world.'

            Colonialism is one kind of globalization where the European imposes their cultural modes of the colonized people. MTV, McDonald's are global companies which spread in all the countries, with local effects. So, cultural studies try to know how a globalized market makes the formation of cultures.

                Nyre has given the example of the movies. How Hollywood fills circulate globally? Will the audience watching those movies from Asia or Africa create any effect to the film-maker? A culture can not be reduced to its material goods or products. For example, American food or cloths doesn't mean Americanization but it is also that they carry cultural values.

                               Globalization produces 'hybrid' products. Global goods are manufactured in South and South East Asian sweatshops where employees are paid very low wages but because agencies market it, because that are local and global both, profits goes with the 'First World' companies.

                                 For example, in India purified water bottles of some company are popular and are highly sold but those are of the foreign companies. So, water goes from our rivers, workers are from our country but the profit goes with the foreign country.

·         Conclusion:

                        

                    Thus, Postcolonial theory is one of the best theories to study culture which gives deep understanding of the relationship between the local and first world countries.

                  

                      

E.C.204:- Victorian Literature

Name: Nargis I. Saiyad

Paper: E-C-204: The Victorian Literature

Topic: Two essays of ‘Cultural and Anarchy’

SEM: 2, Part: 1.

Year: 2011/12.

Submitted To,

 Dr. Dilip Barad,

Dept.of English,

Bhavnagar University.

 'Culture and Anarchy' is a controversial philosophical work written by a moralist and also one of the best-known critics Mathew Arnold. His all these ideas can be seen through his essays of his essay book 'Culture and Anarchy'. It is divided into many chapters. The first two chapters are very important.

·         'Sweetness & Light'

                  For Arnold, culture is the study of perfection. His views about the connection of religion and 'high' culture are very famous. He says that religion is bond for 'high' culture. He does not include popular culture as a culture.

          "The kingdom of God is within you"

This is religion's thought. Culture does perfection in an internal condition. He says that we can not conceive culture in isolation. If one would try to achieve it individual, he or she will not get succeed. He/she require someone to be cultured. He felt about the function of culture. He gives the example of the views of Mr. Bright, Mr. Frederic Harrison etc.... These all call it as the frivolous and useless thing but Arnold says that it fulfills mankind. According to him, the point of view of Epictetus is best. He says,

                     'It is a sign of aphuia'

It means without natural talent, dull. Especially the word 'aphuia'. The Greek word means well-grown, graceful, clever, witty, a finely tempered nature. A perfection in which the characters of beauty and intelligence are both present and that unites these two noblest things. Jonathan Swift in his book 'Battle of the books' calls them,

   'The two noblest of things, sweetness and light'

                  For Arnold, culture is connected with the idea of sweetness and light. He tries to explain this idea with the help of Greek words 'aphuia & euphuia'. The euphyes is the man who tends towards sweetness and light: the aphyes is our Philistine. Culture hates hatred, has one great passion for sweetness and light.

     Here, he also gives the meaning of

                              "What is greatness?"

                    It is a spiritual condition. The condition to excite love, interest, admiration. He says that if the situation comes that the England was swallowed up by the sea tomorrow, how it would be remembered as?  the England of the last twenty years or the England of Elizabeth? He says that the people to whom we call Philistines, who believe most that greatness is proved by being rich by thought not by being very rich materialistically.

                             In short, he wants to say that cultured men have a best knowledge, best ideas of their time. He gives the example of a man Abelard in the Middle Ages, such were Lessing and Herder of Germany. People will remember their work than the others who will write in a German.

·         'Doing As One Likes'

              In this second chapter, he talks about the Anarchy in a society.

               As the title suggest, he talks about the danger of 'doing as one likes' means the personal liberty and freedom is dangerous. Arnold says that freedom is worshipped by the English people, they desire for it. He talks about the British constitution and liberal practitioners like Mr. Bright. Arnold had fear that this kind of freedom can send the society towards anarchy.

             Arnold also gives the example of middle class and working class people. He writes that middle class is the great representative of trade and dissent that with its maxims of everyman in business, religion, dreads a powerful administration which might somehow interfere with it. After it he talks about the working class who firmly believes that it is their right to do what they like to do.

Arnold wanted to say that their masses were quite as raw and uncultivated as the French; and so far from their having the idea of discipline. He also remembers the conscription. In the America, there was a rule to every young person to serve in the army for at least pre-decided particular age.

              He gives the example of the Hyde Park Protesters and its results. This was a place where the person was free to speak as their will. Mr. Murphy lectures at Birmingham and shows on the Catholic people of that town in that type of words that can be addressed to thieves or murderers. There came a need of basic principal of authority. The question was,

    "Who should be entrusted with this authority?"

The answers:

> Carlyle - Aristocratic class,

> Mr. Lowe - middle class,

> Reform League - working class

                    Carlyle, Mr. Lowe, Reform league believed different class. At the end, Arnold says that all these three class are honest, all have 'sweetness' which was essential for 'culture' but lack was 'light'.

                  At last, Arnold says that 'our best selves' should be given the authority because it is our truest friend and so, when anarchy comes, we may turn with sure trust.

                      In the conclusion, he quotes Bishop Wilson's thought and it is,

'Firstly, never go against the best light you have.'

'Secondly, take care that your light be not darkness'

   We do not consider more about the second one.

·         Conclusion :

  

              Through his essay, Arnold gives us moral. To make the value of Matthew Arnold and his works, Lipman has rightly said that,

"Arnold's great value to us is as a lonely spokesman for the individual's search for an inward culture."