Analyse the theme of hereditary guilt in the play Agamemnon

The Agamemnon, Choephori, and Eumenides were the last tragedies composed by Aeschylus, and were produced in 458 [B.C.], two years before his death, along with the satiric drama Proteus. The tetra-logy as a whole was called the Oresteia, a name which, whether due to Aeschylus or not, appears to have been in use at any rate as early as the time of Aristophanes. The contents of the Proteus are unknown, and its connection with the preceding tragedies obscure; but it probably dealt with the fortunes of Menelaus, the brother of Agamemnon, and related the story of his detention on the coast of Egypt, and his rescue by the help of Proteus, the sea-god.

The subject of the trilogy is one of those dark stories of hereditary guilt, of which the Septem (Seven Against Thebes) [supplies another] example. Atreus had sown the first seeds of woe by his murder of the children of Thyestes; and Agamemnon, later on, had sacrificed the life of his daughter, Iphigenia to his own ambition. The results are unfolded in the Oresteia. Clytemnestra, assisted by her paramour Aegisthus, murders Agamemnon, partly to conceal her adultery, partly in revenge for the loss of her daughter. The murderers are slain in turn by Orestes, who thus incurs the guilt of matricide. For this offense he is exposed to the vengeance of the Furies, who typify the workings of remorse, and by whom he is hunted from place to place, until at length he reaches Athens, where he finds release from his sufferings.

the depth of moral significance which it acquires in the hands of Aeschylus was essentially his own creation. Under his treatment it becomes one of the most solemn and impressive pictures of guilt and retribution which was ever painted by any poet. One thought inspires the whole trilogy from first to last — the thought of the crimes which have been committed in the past and of the blood which has been shed and which still cries out unceasingly for vengeance. This recollection seems to haunt the very souls of the actors in the successive tragedies. It hangs like a dark cloud over the minds of the Theban elders, damps their joy at the news of the victory, and fills them with gloomy forebodings. It forms the constant burden of those odes in the Choephori, where the chorus justifies the approaching act of retribution. It is never absent from the lips of the Furies, as they pursue Orestes with righteous chastisement.

The introduction of Cassandra, which gives occasion to the finest scene in the play, answers a double object. As an example of the insolence of Agamemnon, in bringing home his captive mistress before the very eyes of his wife, it lessens out sympathy with his misfortune, and fixes our attention on his guilt, in accordance with the moral purpose of the trilogy. At the same time the inspired utterances of the prophetess serve to recall to the minds of the audience those dark crimes of Atreus which were the primal source of the present evil. Another noticeable feature in the Agamemnon is the humorous scene which follows the murder. The sententious ineptitude of the old men, in the presence of the crisis, is one of those passages of semi-comedy with which Aeschylus occasionally relieves the tension of the feelings; and it may be compared with the speeches of the porter which precede the discovery of the murder in Macbeth, or with the bantering dialogue of the gentlemen after the death-scene in the Maid’s Tragedy.

Throughout this play the interest is transferred from persons to principles. The human element becomes of less importance, and Orestes and his fortunes sink into the background. Their place is taken by the great gods of Olympus and of Tartarus, who represent opposing ordinances. Law and Justice, typified by the Furies, demand the punishment of the matricide; while Equity, personified by Apollo and Zeus, pleads for the release of the avenger of crime. It is between these mighty combatants that the battle is waged. Guilt is set against guilt, duty against duty, and no decision seems possible. At length Mercy, under the person of Athene, decides in favor of Orestes.

Describe the importance of Chorus as depicted in Sophocles’ plays. importance of Chorus King Oedipus

Chorus, in drama and music, those who perform vocally in a group as opposed to those who perform singly. The chorus in Classical Greek drama was a group of actors who described and commented upon the main action of a play with song, dance, and recitation. Greek tragedy had its beginnings in choral performances, in which a group of 50 men danced and sang parathyroids—lyric hymns in praise of the god Dionysus. In the middle of the 6th century bc, the poet Thespis reputedly became the first true actor when he engaged in dialogue with the chorus leader. Choral performances continued to dominate the early plays until the time of Aeschylus (5th century bc), who added a second actor and reduced the chorus from 50 to 12 performers. Sophocles, who added a third actor, increased the chorus to 15 but reduced it to a mainly commercial role in most of his plays (for an example of this role as shown in the play Oedipus the King).

The distinction between the passivity of the chorus and the activity of the actors is central to the artistry of the Greek tragedies. While the tragic protagonists act out their defiance of the limits subscribed by the gods for man, the chorus expresses the fears, hopes, and judgment of the polity, the average citizens. Their judgment is the verdict of history.

The Chorus is roughly like the peanut-gallery (it’s even occasionally told to shut up). Sophocles uses this group of The bans to comment on the play’s action and to foreshadow future events. He also uses it to comment on the larger impact of the characters’ actions and to expound upon the play’s central themes. In Oedipus the King we get choral odes on everything from tyranny to the dangers of blasphemy.

Sophocles also uses the Chorus at the beginning of the play to help tell the audience the given circumstances of the play. We hear all about the terrible havoc that the plague is wreaking on Thebes. By describing the devastation in such gruesome detail, Sophocles raises the stakes for his protagonist, Oedipus. The people of Thebes are in serious trouble; Oedipus has to figure out who killed Laius fast, or he won’t have any subjects left to rule.

importance of Chorus King Oedipus

Unlike his contemporary Euripides, Sophocles was known to integrate his choruses into the action of the play. In Oedipus the King we see the Chorus constantly advising Oedipus to keep his cool. Most of the time in ancient tragedies choruses do a lot of lamenting of terrible events, but do little to stop them. Amazingly, though, the Chorus in Oedipus the King manages to convince Oedipus not to banish or execute Creon. Just imagine how much worse Oedipus would have felt if he’d killed his uncle/brother-in-law on top of his other atrocities.

The Chorus in Oedipus the King goes through a distinct character arc. They begin by being supportive of Oedipus, believing, based on his past successes, that he’s the right man to fix their woes. As Oedipus’s behavior becomes more erratic, they become uncertain and question his motives. The fact Oedipus doesn’t start lopping off heads at this point is pretty good evidence that he’s not a tyrant. In the end, the Chorus is on Oedipus’s side again and laments his horrific fate.

In musicals, the chorus, a group of players whose song and dance routines usually reflect and enhance the development of the plot, became increasingly more prominent during the 20th century. During the late Victorian era, musical comedy was characterized by thin plot, characters, and setting, the main attraction being the song and dance routines, comedy, and a line of scantily clad chorus girls. Their performances provided an extravagant bonus at the beginnings and ends of songs or special dance numbers, and they were considered the flashy sex symbols of the day. As musicals developed, however, more attention was given to integrating their various elements. In the mid-1920s, song and dance numbers began to stem more naturally from the plot, and the chorus danced more than it sang. The dancing itself soon developed from the lines of synchronized leg kicking of the early 1900s into highly sophisticated ballet and modern dance.

Like most all ancient Greek tragedians, Sophocles divides his choral odes into strophe and anti strophe. Both sections had the same number of lines and metrical pattern. In Greek, strophe means “turn,” and anti strophe means “turn back.” This makes sense when you consider the fact that, during the strophe choruses danced from right to left and during the anti strophe they did the opposite. Sophocles may have split them into two groups, so that it was as if one part of the Chorus was conversing with the other. Perhaps the qualities created by strophe and anti strophe, represent the endless, resolvable debates for which Greek tragedy is famous.

Review of Silas Marner by George Eliot

Embittered by a false accusation, disappointed in friendship and love, the weaver Silas Marner retreats into a long twilight life alone with his loom . . . and his gold. Silas hoards a treasure that kills his spirit until fate steals it from him and replaces it with a golden-haired founding child. Where she came from, who her parents were, and who really stole the gold are the secrets that permeate this moving tale of guilt and innocence. A moral allegory of the redemptive power of love, it is also a finely drawn picture of early nineteenth-century England in the days when spinning wheels hummed busily in the farmhouses, and of a simple way of life that was soon to disappear.

The purpose of required reading assignments is to introduce students to works of writing that they would not otherwise be likely to explore. Silas Marner: The Weaver of Raveloe(1861), written by Mary Anne Evans under the nom de plume of George Eliot, is one such work. The novel’s age and reputation for dullness may inhibit many potential readers from absorbing the book’s unique setting, literary creativity, and hopeful message, thence making Silas Marner a good choice for mandatory reading.

Eliot’s work is probably best known for its demonstration of the difference between perceived and genuine happiness. The protagonist, Silas Marner, grew up in Lantern Yard, where he was an active and respected member of a religious community. However, after being framed for a theft and refusing to admit his culpability, Marner is forced to leave Lantern Yard. He heads for the rural village of Raveled, where he becomes a solitary weaver, aloof from his neighbors and his past. With nothing else to fill his emotional hollowness, Marner begins to obsessively crave the gold that he earns from his work, and he counts it every night after dark.

When the gold is stolen, Marner’s perceived emotional fulfillment collapses, and his actual internal barrenness is once again exposed. Marner might have remained in this state for the rest of his life was it not for a child that appeared on his hearth. By adopting the young girl, Marner connected to his neighbors, regained his sense of religious faith and purpose, and restored the genuine happiness that he had not felt since his days at Lantern Yard. Thus, Eliot’s novel leaves readers with a spirit of hope, by exhorting them to seek out those aspects of life that truly matter and by reminding them that it is never too late to change and grow.

In addition to an inspiring message, Silas Marner offers readers fascinating insights into the society of England in the early 1800s. The novel portrays the superstitions and beliefs of the rustic lower class, such as widespread distrust of foreigners, apprehension over the influence of the devil, and unshakable faith in the rightness of God. Also evident is the marked contrast between the rich and the poor, which manifests itself in disparate levels of education, forms of dress, and modes of speech. Even transportation is a sign of class, as the wealthy Dunstan Cass was embarrassedly aware when his horse was killed and he was temporarily forced to walk on foot.

The feature of nineteenth-century England that the book demonstrates most strikingly, however, is its grandiloquence, at least among the aristocracy. Eliot’s sentences routinely exceed one hundred words, and her patterns of expression often seem intentionally prolix. For example, instead of simply explaining that Dunstan lied just for fun even when he was not likely to be believed, Eliot wrote that his “delight in lying, grandly independent of utility, was not to be diminished by the likelihood that his hearer would not believe him…” Similarly, Eliot gave the age of the Raveled parish clerk not as “86” but as “fourscore and six.” This writing style, while verbose, permits enjoyable creativity in expression that is largely absent from the concise prose of the present day. And Eliot’s creativity is also evinced by the wealth of figurative language that she invents. For example, Marner’s surprising entrance into the local bar is illustrated by the statement that the men’s “long pipes gave a simultaneous movement, like the antenna of startled insects.” Eliot likewise employed an effective simile in explaining the personality of Squire Cass: “he made resolutions in violent anger, and he was not to be moved from them after his anger had subsided—as fiery volcanic matters cool and harden into rock.”

Some students may not enjoy Eliot’s creative and challenging use of language, but her style is one with which everyone should at least be somewhat familiar. In addition, Silas Marner offers rich historical insight into life two hundred years ago, as well as the lesson that it is never too late to reform oneself. Therefore, Silas Marner should be a mandatory book, so that students who would not otherwise consider reading it will have exposure to those aspects that make it unique and worthwhile.

significance of the soliloquies by Hamlet in the play Hamlet or Dramatic significance of the soliloquies by Hamlet in the play Hamlet

Soliloquy is a dramatic technique of speaking alone on the stage. It is a dramatic convention of exposing to the audience – the intentions, thoughts and feelings of a character who speaks to himself while no one remains on the stage. Here in the tragic play “Hamlet” the soliloquies spoken by the protagonist are directed to the audience, rather than seeming like conversations with himself. Some of the famous Hamlet’s soliloquies have been elucidated below.

Hamlet’s first soliloquy reveals him to be thoroughly disgusted with Gertrude, Claudius and at the world in general. He considers the world to be an unweeded garden with no significance of life and in a grievous tone says:

“O God! God!
How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable,
Seem to me all the uses of this world!”

He is saddened at the death of his father, whom he admired as a king and husband to his mother. His grief over his father’s death is compounded by his mother’s hasty marriage to Claudius. Hamlet believes that even a beast that has no power of reasoning, would mourn longer but she had not. The worst part is that he cannot tell them how he feels. This soliloquy kindles an interest in the readers and provides a glimpse on Hamlet’s thoughts while informing the audience of the history of his family’s tribulations.

In the second soliloquy, Hamlet calls on the audience ‘the distracted globe’ to hear his vow to take revenge on his uncle. Now he promises to erase all the foolish lessons in order to remember the commandment of the ghost. The ghost that resembles his father has told him that King Claudius has murdered his father and his soul cannot rest until the revenge is taken. The audience here learns Hamlet’s promise to make Clausius pay for this unnatural crime. Already the audience is excited at Hamlet’s promise because it is giving them something to look forward.

In his third soliloquy, Hamlet admits to the audience that he is a coward. So for his inaction like a day dreamer, he is chiding himself in this way:

“O, vengeance!
Why, what an ass am I!

Then he is telling the audience about his new idea of justifying the credibility of the news provided by the ghost. This results in delay to reach his goal. Although heaven and hell urge him to take revenge, he must examine the truth through the play with the poison pouring scene. If his uncle reacts to the scene, he will be confirmed of his uncle’s involvement in the murder. Now the audiences have even more of a buildup of what is to come.

In the fourth soliloquy, the Prince of Denmark is in a dilemma whether to commit suicide or to accept the pangs of the world stoically or to fight back against them.

“To be or no to be – that is the question;”

Then he is frightened of the consequences of the life after death and its punishment. He puts a logic that if there were no punishment of God for suicide, nobody would tolerate injustice, the insults of the world, the arrogance of the undeserving superiors, the sufferings of the unrequited love, the delay of law, adversities and the cruelty of a tyrant. It is such fear that robs of courage to commit suicide and transforms us into a coward. Here the audience observes that Hamlet is incapable of taking revenge, as he is always contemplative.

In conclusion, it is clear from the above discussion that the audience is always being included in Hamlet’s thinking process through the use of the soliloquies. Such involvement of the audience helps the real meaning of the play shine through. Some critics view that without the soliloquies, the play “Hamlet’ would degenerate into a cheap melodrama.

Marvell as a love poet

Marvell’s love-poems constitute an important division of lyric poetry, the other two important divisions being poems dealing with the theme of religion and those dealing with the theme nature. His love-poems include The Fair Singer, The Definition of e, To His Coy Mistress, Young Love, The Unfortunate Lover, The Picture of Little T.C., The Mower to the Glo-worms, and Damon the Mower. Then there are poems in which the theme of love occurs a subsidiary subject, poems like Upon Appleton House and The oh Complaining. Marvell’s treatment of love in his poems attracts the readers. Now let us discuss how Marvell treats love in his poems.

At first in certain respects, Marvell is Petrarchan in his love-poems. The Petrarchan mode gave glowing and eloquent praises on beloved’s beauty. The Petrarchan lover often sighed for the indifference of his beloved. Now, this Petrarchan mode is found in at least three of the love-poems, namely The Fair Singer, To His Coy Mistress, and Unfortunate Lover. In the first of these poems, the lover praises the beauty of his mistress’s eyes and voice in an extravagant way like a typical Petrarchan lover. In To His Coy Mistress the lover speaks of the mistress’s limbs in hyperbolic terms, asserting that hundreds and thousands of years to be able to adequately. In The Unfortunate Lover, the lover has let winds and the waves sigh and shed tears.

It has been said that Marvell’s love poems lack passions. But the charge of a want of passion is not applicable for the above three poems. In these three poems the passion of the lover is as in any Elizabethan love-poem. The statement that Marvell‘s verse is cold is certainly not true of these three poems. In the Fair Singer, the lover says that both beauties of his mistress of her eyes and the, beauty other voice have joined the fatal harmony to bring about his death, and that with her voice she captivates his mind. He then goes on to speak of the “curled trammels of her hair” in which his I heart got entangled, and the subtle art with which she can-weave fetters him of the very air he breathes. If a lover can thus speak about his feelings, we cannot say that he is a cold kind of lover. In poem To His Coy Mistress, the passion is equally ardent. While lover adopts a witty and somewhat sarcastic manner of speaking first two stanzas, he becomes truly ardent and, fervid in his passion in last stanza. In this final stanza he reaches the zenith of his passion when he suggests that he and she should roll their strength and all their sweetness up into one ball and should their pleasures with rough strife through the iron gates of life. In The Unfortunate Lover also the passion is intense, almost red-hot. Inver is here hit by “all the winged artillery of Cupid” and, like Idi finds himself between the “flames and the waves”.

Another feature of Marvell’s love poems is that they are often based on arguments. Marvell’s most famous argumentative love poem is To His Coy Mistress. There is another poem namely “Young Love” in which the argumentative quality paramount and the passion of love is therefore superseded by the logic which dominates the poem. This poem has an absolutely unconventional theme. Its title is Young Love, and here a grown up man has conceived a passion for a little girl (of about thirteen fourteen). The lover proceeds to persuade the young, immature to love him in return, and he gives all kinds of argument convince her. He would like her to make up her mind quickly not to wait till she attains the age of fifteen. There is a possibility that fate might afterwards thwart them in their desire to love each other; now is therefore the time and the opportunities for them crown each other with their loves. The whole poem is one extended argument, and the originality of the poem lies in the manner the argument is developed. The response of the girl is not a part of the poem, but we can imagine that she could not have resisted such a persuasive and importunate lover.

Disappointment in love is briefly introduced in the poem Nymph Complaining, the main subject of which is the death of pet fawn. However, the theme of love there cannot be ignored. The wrong which the Nymph suffered at the hands of her false lover Sylvio was as grave as the one she has now suffered at the hands of the wanton troopers who have killed her pet fawn. The Nymph is certainly not a cold-hearted girl. She loved Sylvio intensely, and her suffering when he deserted her was intense also. Equally strong must have been the love of the first Fairfax for Miss Thwait whom he was able ultimately to win as his bride in spite of the opposition of the nuns and her own excessive modesty, as related in the poem, on Appleton House. In these two poems, however, the passion of love is not much dwelt upon; it is merely indicated, and we have ourselves to imagine its love in the Pastoral Poems.

Thus, we see that as a love poet Marvell is sometimes Petrarchan, sometimes passionate and sometimes he is very argumentative. But the role of intellectual arguments of his poems also cannot be ignored. The intellectual arguments often become dominant and love is pushed into background.

Wordsworth as a Romantic Poet

William Wordsworth was the representative tine poet of the Romantic Revival which was a literary movement in art and literature in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. He was the pioneer in bringing about transition from Neo-classicism to Romanticism in English poetry. To him strong feeling, imagination and love of nature were more important than reason, order and intellectual ideas.

Wordsworth’s poetry is subjective. It is the spontaneous expression of his own feelings, ideas, and emotion. For examples, ‘Tintern Abbey’, ‘The Daffodils’ tell of his personal experiences and feelings that he had in different stages of his life.

Like other romantics Wordsworth believes that the power of poetry is strongest when the creative impulse is spontaneous. In this creative process imagination plays a very important role. Wordsworth’s imaginative faculty is so powerful that through imagination he can have a glimpse of the Eternity; Wordsworth gives ‘importance to subject matter rather than style. He always chooses simple and ordinary things as the subject matter of his poetry. He adds charm of novelty to the common things of life and Nature by the coloring of his imagination and thus makes them appear super-natural. He threw away the gaudiness and inane phraseology of the 18th century poetry and made the language of his poems more real and more natural than it was in the Neo-classic Age.

Wordsworth’s approach to Nature is mystical. He believes that the Spirit of God pervades the entire Universe, both animate and inanimate. He adds dignity to the worship of Nature and gives a color of romance and glory to the simple lives of countrymen living in the midst of Nature’s beautiful surroundings. He believes that there is a strong bond between Man and Nature, because in both of them dwells the Spirit of the Eternal Being.

How does Aeschylus build intense dramatic suspense around Agamemnon’s home coming in the play Agamemnon?

Agamemnon is treated as the masterpiece of Aeschylus. In it the action takes place before the palace of Agamemnon in Argos at the time of his victorious return from the Trojan War. Besides, the grand theme of the play based on sin, murder, punishment and a fatalistic conception of human life’, the intense dramatic suspense around Agamemnon’s homecoming occupies an important theme of the play. In order to create this dramatic suspense, Aeschylus imposes his creative and dramatic genius and we see how he was interested to represent this dramatic suspense. Although this dramatic suspense operates no serious purpose for the main action of the play it enhances our dramatic interest to a great extent. The suspense is created before Agamemnon’s arrival by the speeches of Watchman, Elders of Argos, Herald and so on. There is hope and also forbidding in the speeches.

The dramatic suspense is firstly created by the Watchman who waits in the dead of night and suddenly sends out a cry of joy as the signal blazes forth announcing the imminent return of Agamemnon. The Watchman strikes the first note of approaching calamity by guarded hints and allusion to Clytemnestra’s adulterous relation with Aegisthus, Agamemnon’s mortal enemy.

Dramatic suspense lies among the mixed feeling in the expression of Chorus. The Chorus’ emphasis is stronger on foreboding. It is not only Clytemnestra who arouses their fear – they trust Agamemnon to find a way to deal with her when he returns, but they know that the King himself is burdened with guilt. They recount in detail how Agamemnon, inheriting the family curses from Atreus; found himself faced with a fearful dilemma, and made the wrong choice to sacrifice his daughter. However, Aeschylus and Sophocles contain excellent dramatic motivation. Oracles, divinities and sooth Sayers as well as the chorus and main actors were frequently used in the foreshadowing. Foreshadowing (giving intimation or hints of action yet to come,) which helped to achieve both suspense and dramatic irony was employed.

The Watchman of this play feels sway in his condition for the suspense of situation. The Watchman describes that sleep’s enemy ‘fear’ stands beside him to forbid his eyes one instance closing. As the beacon shines out, before the Watchman the suspenseful circumstance further deepens:

“0 welcome beacon, kindling night to glorious day,
Welcome! You’ll set them dancing in every street in Argos
When they hear your message. Ho there! Hullo! Call
Clytemnestra!”

 The Watchman descends and another dramatic suspense starts by a cry of triumph from Clytemnestra and is echoed by other women. The hurried coming of a messenger followed by the attendants, going in various directions, and carrying jars and bowls with oil and incense for sacrifice increase the suspenseful situation. There is suspense in the circumlocutory speeches of the chorus and their conversations and interrogation with Clytemnestra. Clytemnestra creates confusion and suspicion by her speeches when she herself says that the victors would avoid being vanquished in their turn. Clytemnestra says that only, let no lust of unlawful plunder tempt the soldiers’ hearts with wealth, to their own harm.

Clytemnestra finishes her words by saying that these are a woman’s words while the chorus says that your words are like a man’s. After the finishing of chorus’ speech suspense arises when the sound of women voices excitedly begins the shout and cheer. One or two Elders go out, and return immediately to report the following remarks as made severally by various members of the chorus;

“Since the beacon’s nears was heard
Rumour flies through every street.
Ought we to believe a word?
Is it some inspired deceit?”

All doubts that remain about the truth of the beacon message are now dispelled by the arrival of the herald from the Trojan expeditionary force. This herald concludes the precious suspense but loads immense suspense in his speeches. The herald announces that Agamemnon, homeward bound has been separated from the rest of his fleet He salutes, in touching words, his country and her gods, and the palace of Agamemnon, which now shines its best to welcome its monarch, who comes like dawn out of darkness. The herald’s speech brings dramatic suspense to the audience because they know the mischievous revengeful attitude of Clytemnestra. As the time of Agamemnon’s reaching shortens, our suspense begins to enhance in every moment. When Agamemnon reaches Argos all the suspense are dissolved and he is heinously butchered by his wife.

Agamemnon’s arrival in the palace in confirmed by the Chorus’ welcome to him as it says:

“…you have come victorious home;
Now form our open hearts we wish you well.”

The opening scene of Aeschylus’s “Agamemnon” prepares the audience psychologically for the events to come later. It introduces Clytemnestra, the most dominant character of the play, as a female having male traits. The watchman, through his representation of the Argive people, informs us of the unrest inside and outside the Argos palace at the prolonged absence of Agamemnon. Considering everything, it may be said that the opening scene is not a necessary, rather a preparatory part of the play. Thus, Aeschylus in his tragedy “Agamemnon” creates dramatic suspense around Agamemnon’s homecoming and it enhances the dramatic brilliance of the tragedy to a great extent.

Character of Clytemnestra in the play "Agamemnon"

Agamemnon is the first play in a trilogy of tragedies by Aeschylus entitled the Oresteia. Even though Agamemnon gets a shout-out in the play’s title, Clytemnestra may well be its most interesting character. By interesting, we don’t mean likable – after all, technically speaking, she is a liar, a two-timer, and a murderer. But maybe that’s just part of her charm. We’d better explain. The first thing we learn about Clytemnestra is from the Watchman in the opening scene of the play. He isn’t her biggest fan, though he doesn’t give us any explanation why. Instead, he makes a vague remark about how the household “is not managed for the best as it was before” . But what does that mean, exactly? Did Clytemnestra stiff him on his overtime pay or something?

We might get a hint of what the Watchman means later on in the play, when the Chorus tells the Herald that Clytemnestra’s public statements about how much she loves her husband aren’t exactly honest. Does the Chorus say this because it knows about her affair with Aegisthus? We aren’t told. If this was common knowledge in Argos, it is possible that this is what the Watchman is referring to – though, it isn’t clear how Clytemnestra’s extra-marital love life would necessarily make her a bad manager of the household.

So, yes, Clytemnestra is having an affair while Agamemnon is off fighting at Troy. Ten years might seem like a long time to wait for one’s husband; of course, Penelope, the heroine of Homer’s Odyssey waited twenty years for her husband to come back. Everyone thinks she’s exceptional, though. But what about the fact that Agamemnon had his daughter Iphigenia sacrificed on the way to Troy, just to get the goddess Artemis to send the fleet some favorable winds? We can see how that might have made Clytemnestra think a little less of her husband, and maybe this is why she turned elsewhere for romance.

When he shows up at the end of the play, however, Aegisthus seems like a bit of a dweeb. Does this just mean Clytemnestra has bad taste in men? Or do you think Clytemnestra deliberately sought out Aegisthus knowing he held a grudge against Agamemnon because of the crime of Agamemnon’s father Atreus? If so, that would mean she had been planning revenge against Agamemnon for a long time and was just looking for an accomplice. Unfortunately, the play doesn’t give us any firm information about these matters.

What the play does show us is that Clytemnestra is one accomplished conspirator and murderer. First of all, there is the deception she carries off, by playing the role of loving wife in front of the Herald, the Chorus, and Agamemnon when he shows up. Even though the Chorus tells the Herald not to believe every word she says, it’s pretty clear they don’t suspect Clytemnestra of being a murderer. The proof of this comes in the Chorus members’ reaction to Cassandra’s prophecies, when they go way off track by assuming she is referring to a man who will kill Agamemnon. Frankly, though, who can blame them? We don’t think anybody could have predicted the truly psychotic scene when Clytemnestra reveals herself standing over the bodies of Agamemnon and Cassandra, and ecstatically describes how Agamemnon’s blood landed on her like rain on a farmer’s field. Yikes.

We see some more of Clytemnestra’s psychotic side in the debate with the Chorus that follows, but at the very end of the play she has calmed down and taken on a different role. First, she prevents Aegisthus from fighting the Chorus; then, she leads him inside and tells him that they will be joint rulers in Argos. Joint rulers? Who is she kidding? With her air of confident authority, it’s hard to doubt that Clytemnestra will be wearing the crown in their relationship.

“The Rape of the Lock” is a satire on contemporary society of 18th century

The word ‘satire’ is derived from the Latin word ‘satira’ which is a literary attack on the follies and vices of an individual or a society with a view to correcting them through laughter and ridicule written either in prose or verse. However, as Shakespeare is the poet of man, Alexander Pope is a poet of society. “The Rape of the Lock” is a social document because it mirrors contemporary society and contains a social satire, too. Pope paints about England in 18th century. The whole panorama of “The Rape of the Lock”revolves around the false standard of 18th century. Pope satirizes the young girls and boys, aristocratic women and men, their free time activities, nature of husbands and wives, the professional judges and politicians of the day.

Pope clearly depicts the absurdities and the frivolities of the fashionable circle of the 18th century England. The world of Belinda – the world of fashion is a trivial world. The whole life of Belinda is confined to sleeping, make-up, enjoyment and alluring the lords. There are no transcendental elements in her life. This life is marked by ill-nature, affectation, mischievousness, coquetry, yielding and submissive nature, fierce and unruly nature, infidelity, cheapness, meanness, trivialities and frivolities. Belinda represents all the fashion struck women, busy in such stupidities.

The gallants of the time have not been spared by Pope. Baron not only represents Peter but also typifies the aristocratic gallants of the age. Pope satirizes man’s nature that is always weak at beauty. Men sacrifice everything at the altar of beauty and even the most intelligent man behaves foolishly when he falls a victim to beauty.

“With tender Billet-doux he lights the Pyre,
And breathes three am’rous Sighs to raise the Fire,
Then prostrate falls, and begs with ardent Eyes
Soon to obtain, and long possess the Prize:”

 In order to make his satire sharper and all the more effective, Pope introduces the aerial machinery, which facilitates the satire. Through this weapon, the poet throws in contrast the weaknesses of the fashionable women of that age. He satirizes women who are interested in fashionable life and its pursuits and who go on exercising their evil influence even after their death. For the sake of worldly grandeur, they can bid farewell even to their chastity and honor. He satirizes women of fiery, coquettish mischievous and yielding nature and gives them different names. It also provides the poet with an opportunity to satirize the class consciousness of women.

All the women and beaus gather at the place where they exchange talks on trivial things such as visits, balls, films, motions, looks, eyes, ‘at every word’ and ‘a reputation dies’.

“A beau and witling perished in the throng,
One died in metaphor, and one in song.”

 Man’s favorite activity is to take suffered women to play with fan. There is singing, dancing, laughing, ogling and nothing else. Women are busy alluring the dukes and lords. The poet reflects the hollowness of men in the character of Sir Plume who is coward, foolish and senseless, lacking courage. Women are on the whole irresolute and they have made toyshops of their hearts. They have even illicit relations with the beaus. Women are meant only for the entertainment of men, who play toy with them.

Pope also satirizes of the husbands and wives of the day. Husbands always suspect their wives. They think that their wives have been merry-making with their lovers. On the other hand, wives are also not virtuous at all. They love their lap-dogs more than their husbands. And the death of husbands is not more shocking than the death of a lap dog or the breakage of a china vessel.

“Not louder shrieks to pitying Heave are cast,
When husbands, or when lapdogs breathe their last;”

 So through the medium of satire, Pope paints a picture of 18th century English society. His satire is didactic and impersonal. It is not inflicted against any person or individual, rather against the society and that, too, owing to some moral faults. He is dissatisfied with the society around which he wants to reform. The society he pictured is the aristocratic group of 18th century fashionable English society. But there are several allied subjects, too, on which he inflicts his satire. For example, he satirized the judges who make hasty decisions.

“The hungry judges soon the sentence sign,
And wretches hang that jurymen may dine”

 He also satirized those friends whose friendship is but lust, those politicians who do not have a deeper insight and cannot see beyond the shows and take steps just for their own interests and ends.

To sum up, the poem is a reflection of this artificial and hollow life, painted with a humorous and delicate satire. Pope’s satire is intellectual and full of wit and epigram.  And it is quite true that no other poet or writer could depict the contemporary society so vastly and perfectly as Pope did and hence, he is regarded as the true representative poem of the 18th century English society.

Symbols in Robert Frost’s poems or Symbolism in Robert Frost

Undoubtedly, Symbolism takes a greater part in a literary work. It implies an indirect suggestion of ideas. A poet may not convey his through direct statement or he can do it indirectly. Thus symbolism means a veiled mode of communication. A poem may have a surface meaning but it may also have a deeper meaning which is understood by the reader only by interpreting the deeper significance of the words and phrases used. It is obvious that a symbolic poem should be richer and more profound by the virtue of its use of symbols. However, Robert Frost’s poems are found to be largely symbolic if they are perused closely and carefully.

“After Apple Picking” is an excellent symbolic poem of Robert Frost. It is seen here in the poem that the speaker is picking apples in autumn from his orchard and he is fatigued from picking up a good number of apples. The act of harvesting apples symbolizes task in our life generally. Afterwards, the speaker of the poem says that:

“Essence of winter sleep is on the night,
The scent of apples: I am drowsing off.”

The speaker senses that the winter is approaching after the autumn is over. Here ‘winter’ is the symbol of death and decay whereas ‘sleep’ is symbolic of death too. However, the entire poem exists on the two levels: the literal harvest finishes and the literal sleep to come, the harvest of life, now nearly finished with the sleep of death to come. The speaker has worked hard in the harvest and now he is tired and quite ready for death. He knows that his life is nearly over. So he is drowsing off.

The first poem in North of Boston, “Mending Wall” has remained one of the most typical dramatic monologues with its setting in New England. In the poem, the speaker disagrees with his neighbor at his excessive willingness to repair a wall towards the end of every winter although the natural forces want it down. Despite it, the neighbor holds firm to his father’s saying:

“Good fences make good neighbors.”

So, the speaker tells him that he should always ask himself what he is willing in or out before building a wall and who may be offended by it. Soon after that the speaker says:



“Something there is that doesn’t love a wall.
That wants it down.”

The speaker emphasizes that unless it serves any practical purpose there is no need for a wall. Here the wall has a symbolic implication. It stands for something other than itself: the barrier between human contact and understanding. In other words, it indicates that one should have the desire not to be alone, walled in, but to be one with the rest of the world.

Robert Frost

“Fire and Ice” is another symbolic poem by Robert Frost. The speaker of the poem is dwelling on the two theories for the end of the world. Some contend that the world will perish in fire, some ice. But the speaker favors fire and upon second thought; he adds that ice is powerful enough to destroy the world. Here the fire symbolizes desire or passion while ice is symbolic of cold hatred. They both are capable of destroying the world. The underlying symbolic meaning is that the intensity of man’s passions, which makes him human, creates the inhuman forces of disaster. The speaker says:

“Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.”

Frost has been deservedly praised for his good sense to speak naturally and paint the thing as he sees it by Ezra Pound. To Cleanth Brooks, Frost’s themes are in some cases stated too explicitly to come within the symbolic mood. But, on the other hand, there are several poems, indeed the majority, which lend themselves to symbolic interpretation; which go beyond ‘the thing as he sees it’ to reveal facets of meaning and richness of texture. The superficial simplicity of Frost’s poem is deceptive, and the wealth of significance can be arrived at only through a symbolic interpretation.

John Donne as a metaphysical poet

Metaphysical poetry refers to a type of very intellectual poetry that was common in the 17th century. This type of poetry was known for bold and ingenious conceits, subtle thought and frequent use of paradox as well as the directness of language. Metaphysical poetry, in an etymological sense, is poetry on subjects which exist beyond the physical world.

In other words, it is a type of poetry dealing with abstract or philosophical subjects such as love, religion, God, beauty, faith and so on. But in reality the poetry which comprises the ideas or aspects that – physical love leading to spiritual union or religious, argumentative presentation of emotion, terseness of expression, use of conceit and wit in profusion, skillful use of colloquial language instead of Elizabethan lucid diction with the abrupt opening can be considered to be metaphysical. Originally the term ‘Metaphysical Poetry’ was coined by John Dryden and later popularized by Samuel Johnson and the features of the school which unite the various authors are quite numerous. As well as making widespread use of conceit, paradox and punning, the metaphysical poets drew their imagery from all sources of knowledge particularly from science, theology, geography and philosophy. However, John Donne is the founder of the school of metaphysical poetry and the other practitioners of the type of poetry are Crashaw, Cowley, Denham, Davenant, Herbert, Marvell, Vaughan and Waller.

The most striking quality of Donne’s poetry is the use of metaphysical conceit which is a figure of speech in which two farfetched objects or images of very different nature are compared. It surprises its readers by its ingenious discovery and delights them by its intellectual quality. Such conceits are available in his poetry. Such a famous conceit occurs in the poem titled “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning”. The conceit reads as:

“If they be two, they are two so
A stiff twin compasses are two;
They soul, the fixed foot, makes no show
To move, but doth, if th’ other do.”

 Here in the poem the two lovers are compared to the two feet of a compass. The lover is compared to the moving foot and the beloved to the fixed foot consecutively to show the ideal relationship between them. It is made clear that in this relationship the woman’s part is passive and her place is in the home, while the man’s duty is to move in the world of affairs. She stays in the centre apparently unmoving, but certainly as the outer foot moves around describing the circle, the inner foot moves too, revolving on the point which is the centre. The two, in fact, move in harmony and neither is unaffected by the movement of the other. At first sight such a comparison seems to be impossible but after the discovery of the underlying meaning it delights the readers.

Another leading feature of Donne’s poetry is his dramatic presentation that arrests the attention of the readers very quickly. Like other famous poets, Donne has the capacity of opening a poem abruptly adding a dramatic quality to the poem. As we find such abruptness in opening the poem “The Canonization”. The line goes as:

“For God’s sake hold your tongue, and let me love,
Or chide my palsy, or my gout,”

Upon reading or hearing those opening lines, we can easily understand that the poem begins somewhat in the middle of a conversation. Now the more we advance, the more clear it becomes that why the speaker of the poem makes such a request to the unidentified listener.

Closely related to the dramatic directness and abruptness of opening is Donne’s dexterous use of colloquial speech. This dramatic quality is strengthened by its colloquial tone. In the song: “Go and Catch a Falling Star” we can trace such a quality:

“Go, and catch a falling star,
Get with child a mandrake root,”

 On perusing the two lines we will see that like many other poems Donne has employed colloquial language to make the poem more lifelike. From the lines it is clear that a conversation is going on between two people.

Through all the love poems of Donne, there runs a belief that physical passion is a good thing and he recognizes the claim of body side by side with the souls. His love poems enhance its attraction and novelty by blending physical, spiritual and mystical love. Although there is a complexity in the poem, “The Ecstasy” Donne deals twin aspects of love – physical and spiritual; love here is concretized through physical enjoyment of sex and then turns in its pure essence, spiritual. The setting of the two lovers provides the physical closeness by their love is enriched by the mutual understanding of their souls and like heavenly beings that influence the actions of men through manifestation. The soul must express themselves through the bodies. The greatness of the poem lies in reconciling the opposites – physical love and spiritual love, the physical aspects of love must precede the spiritual union. Donne’s poetry lies far reconciling dichotomy between psychical and spiritual shifting quickly from the physical to the spiritual fashion.

“The Sun Rising” is another poem illustrating the peculiar blend of passion and thought, feeling and ratiocination. The delight of satisfied love is the feeling in the poem, but it is expressed in intellectual terms and not merely in an emotional tone. How well the fusion of feeling and thought is expressed in the finality of:

“She is all States, and all Princes, I
Nothing else is.”

Passion is conveyed in images which are erudite, logical and of an intellectual nature. In the poem, we again see Donne’s ratiocinative style, reasoning step by step towards his conclusion, which in this case, is that love is self-sufficient and unaffected by outside force.

Terseness is another characteristic of all the metaphysical poets. It is true in the case of Donne in particular. And the use of such terseness results in obscurity. Such compactness is traceable in “Go and Catch a Falling Star”.

“No where
Lives a woman true, and fair.”

 In the compact idea Donne wants to show that just as it is impossible to catch a falling star in the sky, so a woman with both honesty and fairness is rare to find out as they first seem to be honest but later they are found to be different.

In addition to that, the poems “The Canonization”, “Twicknam Garden”, “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning”, “Go and Catch a Falling Star” and “The Sun Rising” in one or other way deal with the abstract idea which is most dominating feature of the metaphysical poetry and is a must for this type of poetry.

Donne was the greatest of the metaphysical poets. In some of their poems he was equaled by Vaughan and Marvell and in religious poetry by Herbert. But the body of his work is poetry of a quality which, when compared with that of any other of these poets, is unsurpassed. When his images are understood in their function of communicating a state of mind, and his ideas in their power to give expression to emotion, Donne’s poetry is appreciated for its wit, beauty and perception. In conclusion, considering all the characteristics of Donne’s poetry as discussed above, Donne can be regarded as a true metaphysical poet. Although he was considered a minor poet till the 20th century, he is regarded as one of the major English poets by T.S. Eliot and other major modern poets.

Robert Frost as a Pessimistic poet.

Robert Frost has a balanced philosophy of life. He is neither a pessimist to see darkness all around nor an optimistic fool who fails to understand the practical and realistic sense of life and nature. The austere and tragic view of life that emerges in so many of Frost’s poems is modulated by his metaphysical use of detail. As Frost portrays him, man might be alone in an ultimately indifferent universe, but he may nevertheless look to the natural world for metaphors of his own condition. Thus, in his search for meaning in the modern world, Frost focuses on those moments when the seen and the unseen, the tangible and the spiritual intersect. John T. Napier calls this Frost’s ability “to find the ordinary a matrix for the extraordinary.” In this respect, he is often compared with Emily Dickinson and Ralph Waldo Emerson, in whose poetry, too, a simple fact, object, person, or event will be transfigured and take on greater mystery or significance.

The poem “Birches” is an example: it contains the image of slender trees bent to the ground temporarily by a boy’s swinging on them or permanently by an ice-storm. But as the poem unfolds, it becomes clear that the speaker is concerned not only with child’s play and natural phenomena, but also with the point at which physical and spiritual reality merge. Though sometimes he is frightened by nature yet he enjoys it his fill.

About social life also he remains a practical thinker who bases every experience on some or the other cause. This philosophy is at the same time modern and scientific and at the same time not non-religious. Combining both intellectual history and detailed analysis of Frost’s poems, Robert Faggen shows how Frost’s reading of Darwin reflected the significance of science in American culture from Emerson and Thoreau, through James and pragmatism. He provides fresh and provocative readings of many of Frost’s shorter lyrics and longer pastoral narratives as they illustrate the impact of Darwinian thought on the concept of nature, with particular exploration of man’s relationship to other creatures, the conditions of human equality and racial conflict, the impact of gender and sexual differences, and the survival of religion.

The book shows that Frost was neither a pessimist lamenting the uncertainties of the Darwinian worldview, nor a humanist opposing its power. Faggen draws on Frost’s unpublished notebooks to reveal a complex thinker who willingly engaged with the difficult moral and epistemological implications of natural science, and showed their consonance with myths and traditions stretching back to Milton, Lucretius, and the Old Testament. Frost emerges as a thinker for whom poetry was not only artistic expression, but also a forum for the trial of ideas and their impact on humanity.

Robert Frost and the Challenge of Darwin provides a deeper understanding not only of Frost and modern poetry, but of the meaning of Darwin in the modern world, the complex interrelations of literature and science, and the history of American thought.

Draw the image of the West Wind as a destroyer and preserver as you find in the poem ‘Ode to the West Wind’.

The faculty of the visionary and revolutionary zeal was inherent in the mind of Shelley, because he entered in the world of poetry during the storm and stress of the French Revolution. From his earliest years, Shelley found himself in opposition to the convention of the class to which he belonged. So he denounced the existing order of things and assailed the barrier which checked the free development of human spirit. The pain which inflicted his heart was the cruelty of society which instead of hailing him as an intellectual apostle and liberator regarded him as a moral outcast. Ode to the West Wind written under the influence of the French Revolution expresses Shelley’s idea of Revolution.

Shelley believes that both nature and the society of men are suffering from deadly diseases like tyranny, oppression, corruption and injustice. These deadly diseases are like pestilence which can be cured by a miraculous change. This change can be brought about by power and the West Wind has this power because it is a destructive as wet as a creative agent of nature. Shelley has created the image of the West Wind by some technical means such as similes, metaphors, personification, a special verse pattern, music of words etc. The figures of speech lie scattered here and there in the poem. Of them the remarkable ones are in the comparison of the West Wind to a magician (simile), the West Wind is the dirge of the dying year (metaphor), the Mediterranean dreaming of his palaces and towers (personification). To depict the onward and zigzag motion of the wind, the poet has used a special verse pattern known as ‘Terza Rima’ (a b a, b c b, c d c, de d, e e).

In the first three stanzas of the ode, The West Wind is depicted as a force of nature with its influence on land in the air, and on and away the under water. The West Wind drives away the dead and decayed leaves just as a magician drives away a ghost by his magic spell. West Wind also scatters the seeds far and wide and covers with dust to bury them underground where they lie till the advent of the spring when they sprout into plants bearing flowers of sweet smell and attractive colors. In the air the West Wind carries loose clouds which seem to have fallen from the sky just as withered leaves fall from the branches of trees in autumn. The clouds scattered by the West Wind are the bringers of rain and lightning. The locks of the approaching storm are spread on the aery surface of the sky. The West Wind is “the dirge of the dying year”. A huge tomb will be built over the dead body of the year. The darkness of the night which is spreading over the earth will serve as the dome of that tomb. The collective strength of the clouds will be the vault or arched roof of that tomb. From the solid seeming vapors of clouds in the sky will fall rain, lightning and hailstones.

As for the influence of the West Wind on and under water, the poet has drawn the picture of the calm Mediterranean being disturbed by the wind and the Atlantic, thrown into a state of agitation by the same power. The West Wind seems to awaken from sleep the blue Mediterranean, dreaming of old palaces and towers which once stood on its shores. When the West Wind blows on the Atlantic its water becomes restless and mountain like waves role on its surface. Turbulent waves are raised on the surface of the ocean and between these waves great hollows are produced. Before the west wind blew, the surface of the Atlantic was level but now it would seem as if the Atlantic has cut a path on its surface for the West Wind to pass over it. While the West Wind begins to blow on the Atlantic, the plants growing at the bottom of the ocean tremble with fear and shed their leaves.

Thus Shelley has drawn the image of the west wind in its three phases— appearance, action and message. Its appearance and action on land, in the air, and under water are connected with its dual capacity for destruction and creation. Its function on land is noticeable in the change of seasons, autumn, winter and spring. The terrible functions of the West Wind in the air have been made vivid through three images ; (a) vapor rising from ocean to form clouds, the source of rains, lightning and hailstones, (b) the stormy wind in the image of the dancing Maenad in intoxication out of clouds. The image of the Mediterranean and that of the Atlantic under the influence of the West Wind are also terrible forces of nature.

Shelley’s approach to the phenomena of nature was distinct from others. The life of nature to Shelley was as real as the life of man. But his attitude to nature was scientific. Shelley retained or even magnified the true character of a natural phenomenon when he personified it. His West Wind, while he personified it remained a wind, or rather a terrible wind, an agent of destruction and preservation for creating again in nature.

Discuss the character of Doctor Faustus. Character analysis of Doctor Faustus

Dr. Faustus, the main character of the story, is a professor of divinity at Wittenberg, as well as a renowned physician and scholar. Not satisfied with the limitations of human knowledge and power, he begins to practice necromancy. He eventually makes a deal with Lucifer (commonly referred to as the “Faustian bargain”), whereby he exchanges his soul for twenty-four years of the devil’s service to him. In the next twenty-four years, Faustus obtains all kinds of knowledge and power through his devil-servant, Mephistophilis. They travel all over the world, playing practical jokes on peasants and even the Pope, displaying magical powers to the emperor and the nobility; Faustus wishes and whims are played out in his various adventures. At times Faustus experiences doubt and despair over having sold his soul to the devil.

He comes close to repenting at several crucial points in the story, but never follows through. Even to the end, Faustus refuses to fully repent, and he is eventually taken by the devils to hell. The character of Faustus comes from a well-known legend of a German physician who reported sold his soul to the devil in exchange for magical powers. In Marlowe’s rendition, he is portrayed as a tragic hero in that his unbridled ambitions lead him to an unfortunate end. But at a deeper level, the tragedy is twofold. First, there is a clear devolvement of his character, from a confident, ambitious scholar, to a self-satisfied, low-level practical joker.

Although he makes a name for himself as an expert magician, Faustus never accomplishes the lofty goals he initially sets for himself. Second, there are times when Faustus despairs over his decision and comes close to repenting, only to back away at the last moment. On the other hand, Faustus can be seen as a hero in that he rejects God’s authority and determines his own course of life.

This format doesn’t allow for a complete discussion of Doctor Faustus’ character traits, but I can explain the two most important and competing ones, that of arrogance and that of despair. In the beginning of the tragedy, the Chorus makes it clear that Faustus is highly gifted, intelligent and talented. He excels in his studies and quickly earns his doctoral degree in theology. Not stopping there, he continues to study–and master–other fields like medicine and law and logic. In fact, there is nothing left for him to study and he is satiated with it all. As a result, in his growing arrogance and conceit at his own powers and accomplishments, he turns to the one unmastered and most enticing field–necromancy, or magic.

FAUSTUS.
These metaphysics of magicians,
And necromantic books are heavenly;
[…]
A sound magician is a mighty god:
Here, Faustus, tire thy brains to gain a deity.

He arrogantly dreams of being the supreme magician, able to command even the wind and oceans. Thus he calls on the devil Mephistophilis. In his arrogance, he believes he can command Mephistophilis and have from him anything he wants. This is the first painful lesson his arrogance and conceit bring him to: Mephistophilis takes orders from Lucifer, and Lucifer won’t tell everything he knows. For example, after asking for knowledge of the cosmos, Lucifer offers him an entertainment by the Seven Deadly Sins and a book about how to change his shape. This adequately sketches and explains Faustus’ character trait of arrogance.

LUCIFER.
In meantime take this book; peruse it throughly,
And thou shalt turn thyself into what shape thou wilt.
[…]    Farewell, Faustus, and think on the devil.

The contrasting and competing trait of despair enters most strongly into Faustus’ characterization in Act IV when his days are dwindling, although his despair begins to effect him after his revealing encounter with Lucifer. As Faustus feels his designated years coming to an end and the time when he will serve Mephistophilis in hell for eternity fast approaching, his yearnings for repentance and redemption begin to overwhelm him. He is visited by an Old Man who tries to teach him how to repent and accept redemption, then by his friends the Scholars who are aghast at Faustus’ misfortune and importune with him to seek Christ’s mercy and seek to have his soul yet saved.

SECOND SCHOLAR.
Yet, Faustus, look up to heaven; remember God’s
mercies are infinite.
THIRD SCHOLAR.
Yet, Faustus, call on God.

It is this despair that Faustus feels–coupled with an ironic new-found awareness of ignorance–that prevents him from acting and seeking redemptive forgiveness. His despair, which competes with and overcomes his arrogance, leads him to his ultimate doom, doom stemming from the one point on which he is ignorant and doom hemmed in by crippling despair. This adequately sketches and explains Faustus’ character trait of despair.

FAUSTUS.
The stars move still, time runs, the clock will strike,
The devil will come, and Faustus must be damn’d.
O, I’ll leap up to my God!—Who pulls me down?—

Faustus is the paragon of the Renaissance Man—turning away from the religious strictures of the Medieval Age (God-centeredness) in favor of the enlightened age of reason and human achievement (man-centeredness).

Discuss Emily Dickinson’s attitude towards death.

Emily Dickinson’s poetic work contains different descriptions of death that encompass emotional responses to the body’s and/or soul’s journey into eternity, madness, or nothingness. Her poems’ greatness comes from the elaborate use of literary techniques to give shape to death, and the ambiguity of meaning that allows different interpretations of these journeys. Even though the ideas presented by Dickinson may seem contradictory at times, they all emphasize her idea that there are many types of deaths.

“I Heard a Fly Buzz – When I Died” presents a vision of death in which there is no afterlife as it focuses on the putrefaction that occurs after the death of the poet herself, a process that, according to the poem, leads to nothingness. Depending on the interpretation, the tone could be of paralytic fear, serenity or apathetic lethargy; Dickinson uses the atmosphere to reflect the decay of the body and the emptiness of death (Jensen, David). Surrounding the dead body there is total silence because people have ceased to cry and the wind has stopped blowing. Death seems to be expected, as the poet had made a testament before ceasing to be: “I willed my Keepsakes – Signed away/ What portion of me be/ Assignable” (Dickinson, 9).The fly that approaches the decaying body represents all the animals that will continue the cycle of life by eating from the body. Finally, at the end of the poem, the windows of the soul, which could be interpreted as the eyes, fail and the soul dies. There seems to be a moment between the instant of the physical death itself and the actual journey to nothingness. In the first verse of the poem, the poetic narrator has already died. However, the windows do not fail until the last line of the poem. This instant seems to be of uncertainty: the narrator has not lost consciousness of her surroundings but her awareness is decreasing. Even though death can be understood as a negative experience, I interpret that in this poem it is presented as a liberating journey and, even though there seems to be no afterlife, the poem paradoxically presents death as a natural process that contributes to the continuation of life in other forms.

The literary techniques help emphasize the idea of death. There is a constant repetition reminding us of the fly. In addition, diction also contributes to the ambiguity of the meaning. For example, critic David Jensen argues that in the lines “For the last Onset – when the King/ Be witnessed – in the Room- “, the word King can be interpreted as Christ, or also as the Lord of the Flies (Jensen, 3). Both interpretations are valid, as Jensen states. Christ, in Christian theology, will take the soul to another life, while the Lord of the Flies, an allusion to Be’elzebub, also very present in Judeo-Christian mythology, is the one expected to remove the soul from the body of the deceased. In addition, the imagery subtly reinforces the meaning. For example, based on the Oxford English Dictionary, the use of the word blue at the end of the poem can be interpreted as sad and depressed, but also as fear and panic. There is also ambiguity in other instances of the poem; the reader can well interpret that when the narrator stops hearing noises and feeling the wind it is not because they have ceased but rather because there has been deterioration in the perception. Finally, the rhyme and rhythm emphasize words at the end of the lines, such as be, fly, me and see which are key words in understanding the poem.

A contrasting vision of death appears in Dickinson’s poem “Because I Could Not Stop for Death –.” Here, death is presented as a journey towards eternity. The poem depicts a vision of an afterlife, where the individual transcends and goes to a space where time seems not to exist. This is Dickinson’s romantic view of death. The poet personifies death as someone who is civil, patient, and respectful, and who gives rides to people. After Death stops for a busy poetic narrator who had no time to think about death, they start a journey together towards eternity, passing through places that symbolize different stages of her life; a school, representing youth and education, the fields of grain, which represent maturity, and a setting sun, representing old age. Ambiguity also plays an important role in this poem: the allusion to the school could also be interpreted as if the narrator and Death were passing by the school to pick a child who had died; and when the poet says, “We passed the setting sun,” the setting sun could mean that the poetic narrator skipped old age. The last stop in the journey was a cemetery, where the corpse is left. Finally, the poet and Death transcend and go to eternity; a state in which time is imperceptible and we can deduce that there is peace.

Poetic techniques are employed along the poem to create images in the reader’s mind and strengthen this interpretation of death. The description of the grave is very powerful, and it supports the idea that it is only a temporary place. By comparing it to a house it provides a coziness that does not create repulsion to a place that otherwise can have a negative connotation. The description of the coldness felt before leaving the corpse is also very powerful, and emphasizes the coldness of the body after death. Finally, the relativity of time and the description of a peaceful destination provide the reader with a feeling of expectancy to reach that place. The horses in the last stanza can represent several things according to the A Dictionary of Literary Symbols. According to Plato, for instance, horses are a simile of the soul. In addition, horses represent travel, which goes well with the meaning of the poem. In addition, in Greek mythology, the horse Pegasus flew to heaven, which could be interpreted as an allusion made in the poem. Finally, the choice of words is very elaborate, and the rhyme helps emphasize words that have an important meaning in the poem.

Another divergent interpretation of death is presented by Emily Dickinson in “I Felt a Funeral, in My Brain.” This poem depicts an internal death rather than a physical one: the descent of a human being into insanity. Once again, the reader can interpret that in the poem, Dickinson is talking about her own death. Even though this process is described as a real funeral, all the events are parallel to what seems her emotional death. Initially, her mind becomes numb, and she hears insignificant sounds until a bell starts to toll. Afterwards, a feeling of solitude and silence floods her. Finally, she feels as if she were in a boat where a plank breaks and she falls down and hits a world. This poem shows Dickinson’s belief that an individual can die many times and that the physical death is not the only type of death, nor the worst.

The constant reference to repetitive sounds that torment the poetic narrator helps emphasize the pain, anguish and the disturbing hyperesthesia that she is going through. Among these are the treading of the mourners with lead boots, and the constant beat of the drum and tolling of the bell. In addition, silence is personified and is accompanying her in her wreck and solitude; an image that stresses her feeling of disconnection with the world. Finally, the image of a shipwreck is used to compare reason to a plank of wood that breaks due to excessive strain. The image concludes when the poet falls repeatedly from space and every time she falls, she hits a world. The psychic outbreak seems to be infinite, but the reader can interpret that she understood what the definition of death through her own experience.

Emily Dickinson’s selected poems offer a varied repertoire of her apparent contradictory views of death. The clashing interpretations of death are accompanied by an elaborate use of literary techniques. Each poem reflects a different type of journey, and there is an implicit invitation to the reader to choose which definition of death goes better with his/her set of beliefs.

What was the poet’s emotion after seeing the Daffodils?

First, the author experiences much of nature starting with the sky by imagining himself a cloud. This point of view gives him the opportunity to see how vast the beautiful and happy flowers are. It seems to him that at a glance his eye can capture tens of thousands of them. Also, he considers the daffodils in comparison to the sparkling waves of the ocean. He seems to say that the daffodils are happier than the waves.

Second, the author uses word choice to express how the daffodils make him feel: pleasure, jocund, glee, and gay.

Third, he gives the daffodils action, the ability to dance. This could also be considered personification. Dancing is an act that occurs out of celebration, not depression.

Finally, the author reflects later upon this image and he can re-create the image in his head, especially when he’s in an empty mood. This image is one he wishes to remember and upon remembering it, his mood is brightened:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitud;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

The poet is wandering in a state of loneliness and absent-mindedness (as a cloud: is a simile, he compares his lonely to that of a cloud and the cloud symbolizes his integration with the natural world). Both he and the cloud are floating (floats= fluttua) on high, when he saw a field full of golden daffodils (crowd= folla – they are seen as a crowd). Both he and the cloud are aspects of the world, which is subject to the laws of nature but they can still retain their freedom in spite of this.

Other images in the poem reinforce this – the ‘lake’ ‘trees’ ‘cloud’ and ‘waves’ are all natural images and the daffodils give the clear focus of the poem which predominately makes nature the most important feature throughout.

host, of golden daffodils = moltitudine di giunchiglie dorate; The poem was inspired by the sight of a field full of golden daffodils waving in the wind. These daffodils are located in the countryside near a lake and trees and are also seen to move continually in a dance. Wordsworth expresses feelings for nature through these symbolic objects. He personifies the daffodils as dancers (dancing in the breeze = danzanti nella brezza), dancing gaily as part of the beauty of nature.

In the second lines the poet shows the daffodils as part of a universal order and he compares them to the stars (as the stars) in the Milky Way (= Via Lattea).

They stretched in never-ending line = The daffodils (they) are ( stretched = si estendono) in never-ending line (fila infinita) The sight of the daffodils amazes the poet at first because of their great number in fact they a crowd, continuous, ten thousand (saw I at a glance = viste con un’occhiata), host, never ending-line. The poet wants to underline that the flower are really many.

The daffodils were tossing (=scuotevano) their heads in a sprightly (=allegra/briosa) dance.

The daffodils are then compared with the waves on the lake, which also dance(The waves beside them danced), though not with so much glee (= gaiezza/gioia; is a peculiar word which the poet uses when talking of the joy of creative activity) as the flowers ( Out-did the sparkling waves = superavano le onde spumeggianti).

The poet is gay because the joy of nature affects the poet. The rhythm falls with a special emphasis on the “gazing” (I gazed—and gazed = guardavo/fissavo).

The experience of the poet is not limited to the immediate pleasure of intellectual delight in the scene observed. He realises the full extent of the wealth the scene has given him in a spiritual way and it stays with him always as an inspiration (What wealth the show to me had brought).

The last stanza of the poem reveals that he is lying on a couch and visualizing the daffodils, which brings him serenity and joy: For oft = spesso; when on my couch I lie = quando mi trovo sul mio divano; In vacant = ozioso/distratto or in pensive= pensoso mood = stato d’animo. In this stanza there is a tense shift from past to present. In the first three stanzas the tense is the past and in the last stanza there is the present.

They = the daffodils, once again, flash upon that inward (=interiore) eye/Which is the bliss (beatitudine ) of solitude: this kind of solitude is very different from the melancholy loneliness described at the beginning of the poem. In this condition the poet finds his heart dancing with joy, a joy which revives the pleasure participated in when he observed the dance of the daffodils in the breeze.

Analyse the character of Bosola

Daniel de Bosola, a former servant of the Cardinal, now returned from a sentence of imprisonment in the galleys for murder and was sent by Ferdinand to spy on the Duchess as her provisor of horse. He is employed by Ferdinand to spy on the Duchess in hopes of keeping her away from marriage. He is involved in the murder of the Duchess, her children, Cariola, Antonio, the Cardinal and Ferdinand, and a servant. Upon witnessing the nobility and fearlessness of the Duchess and Antonio facing their deaths, he then experiences guilt. Though he was the one who arranged her death, he then seeks to avenge it. Bosola can be considered the most complex character in the play since he goes from being a killer without regret, and then changes and is filled with regret. Being the malcontent of the play, he tends to view things cynically, and makes numerous critical comments on the nature of Renaissance society. He is frequently characterized by his melancholy.

It could be argued that The Duchess of Malfi is merely a seventeenth century melodrama which explores not the philosophical questions of life and love, but instead the spectacle of death. Indeed Delio is the only character left standing at the end of the play and at one point Webster goes so far as to kill off one of his characters through kissing a poisoned bible.

However, if there is one character that does have a philosophical input to the play it is the ever perceptive Bosola, who ironically is (in line with the ‘slasher’ genre of the play) is a hired killer.

Bosola is Webster’s mouthpiece for the dramatist’s restless, mocking, intelligence. Throughout the play Bosola reels out pragmatic observation. However petty and comical:

“There was a lady in France that, having the small-pox,
Flay’d the skin off her face to make it more level;
And whereas before she looked like a nutmeg grater,
After she resembled an abortive hedgehog.”

Although Bosola is quick to point out other people’s weaknesses, particularly the vices of the professions, when he talks to Castructio about the legal profession he is quick to mock:

“When you come to be a president
In criminal causes, if you smile upon a prisoner, hang him, but if
You frown upon him, and threaten him, let him be sure to ‘scape
The gallows.”

He is also aware of his own shortcomings with an admission of avarice follow by a justification of it. The rest of the world screws each other so will he:

“Physicians that apply horse-leeches to any rank swelling use to cut off their tails, that the blood may run through them the faster: let me have no train when I go to shed blood, less it make me have a greater when I ride to the gallows.” 

It is impossible to talk about Bosola without pointing out the fact that he is the quintessential malcontent. The root of his discontent is his betrayal before the play by the cardinal, a betrayal for which Bosola spent time in the galleys as punishment for a murder at the order of the Cardinal that he took full responsibility.

“I have done you better service
Than to be slighted thus.
Miserable age, where only the reward
Of doing well, is the doing of it!”

There is no question about the nature of Bosola’s character at the beginning of the Play. As Antonio puts it:

“Here comes Bosola,
The only court-gall; yet I observe his railing
Is not for simple love of piety:
Indeed he rails at those things which he wants;
Would be as lecherous, covetous, or proud,
Bloody, or envious, as any man,
If he had means to be so.”

However it is a matter of greater debate whether Bosola’s motivation for killing changes and therefore his morality improves with the course of events. Some argue that after the death of the Duchess, for whom Bosola feels remorse, he is then driven to kill his employers through revenge on behalf of the wronged party.

“Faith, end here,
And go no farther in your cruelty;
Send her a penitential garment to put on
Next to her delicate skin, and furnish her
With beads, and prayer-books.”

However I would argue that he is still driven by his own self-interest. His conscience not plagued by the acceptance that he has killed the Duchess for evil men, but that he is not being paid for the deed.

Because of the nature of his character the audience would not expect Bosola to have passionate leanings; however he does enjoy some flirtation with Julia at the expense of the Cardinal.

“I have it, I will work upon this creature.—
Let us grow most amorously familiar:
If the great cardinal now should see me thus,
Would he not count me a villain?”

To conclude; Bosola’s defining characteristic is his intelligence. This is perfectly demonstrated when he speaks of the sycophants at court and compares them to parasites getting the best fruit from an isolated tree.

“He and his brother are like plum trees that grow crocked over standing pools… none but crows, pies and caterpillars feed on them”

Robinson Crusoe is a religious or spiritual allegory – justify OR discuss

 Apart from being an exciting account of a man’s adventures on an uninhabited island, the book, “Robinson Crusoe” has been found to possess a profound allegorical significance. For many, Crusoe’s many references to God, to Providence, to sin are extraneous to the real interest of the novel. Readers through the 19th century read “Robinson Crusoe” in the light of religion. For example, a reviewer for the Dublin University Magazine called the book a great religious poem, showing that God is found where men are absent. In deciding whether or to what extent Robinson Crusoe is a spiritual autobiography and a great religious poem, one might consider the following:

In the “Preface,” Defoe announces that his intention is to justify and honour the wisdom of Providence in all the variety of our circumstances.

Moreover, Robinson Crusoe can be viewed from theological and practical levels. If we see from the theological level, we will find that man’s extreme aspiration is the cause of sin. As we see in “Paradise Lost” by John Milton that Adam and Eve are banished from the Heaven because of their aspirations and disobedience to God, here in the same was Crusoe is thrown on an uninhabited island because of disobedience towards his father.

Crusoe receives warnings against the rashness of going to sea from his father and from the captain of the first ship he sails on. Both are figures of authority and can be seen as proxies for God. In ignoring their warnings, he is also denying God’s providential social order in the world. God’s providential social order in the world means that God arranged the world hierarchically, endowing the king with authority in the political realm and the father with authority in the family.

Crusoe’s conversation with his father about leaving home can be interpreted from a religious perspective. Crusoe repeatedly refers to leaving home without his father’s permission as his “original sin“; he not only associates God and his father but regards his sin against his father as a sin against God also remembering his first voyage.

Crusoe comments:
“…my conscience, which was not yet come to the pitch of hardness to which it has been since, reproached me with the contempt of advice and the breach of my duty to God and my Father”.

In the Puritan family structure, the father was regarded as God’s deputy; in rejecting his father’s advice, Crusoe is committing Adam and Eve’s sin of disobedience. For Crusoe, as for Adam, and Eve, disobedience grows out of restlessness and discontent with the station God assigned.

When Crusoe is cast ashore on a deserted island, he sees his situation as the fulfillment of his father’s prediction that if Crusoe disregarded his advice, Crusoe would find himself alone with no source of help. As his father said with a little sigh,

“That boy might be happy if he would stay at home; but if he goes abroad,
he will be the most miserable wretch that ever was born”.Alone on the island, Crusoe is Everyman, alienated from God because of sin.

One way of reading Robinson Crusoe is as a spiritual autobiography. The spiritual autobiography portrays the Puritan drama of the soul. Concerned about being saved, having a profound sense of God’s presence, seeing His will manifest everywhere and aware of the unceasing conflict between good and evil, Puritans constantly scrutinized their lives to determine the state of their souls and looked for signs of the nature of their relationship with God. The spiritual autobiography usually follows a common pattern: the narrator sins, ignores God’s warnings, hardens his heart to God, repents as a result of God’s grace and mercy, experiences a soul-wrenching conversion, and achieves salvation. The writer emphasizes his former sinfulness as a way of glorifying God; the deeper his sinfulness, the greater God’s grace and mercy in electing to save him. He reviews his life from the new perspective his conversion has given him and writes of the present and the future with a deep sense of God’s presence in his life and in the world. Here we also find the touch of spiritual autobiography.

Crusoe throughout uses religious language, imagery, and Biblical references. Crusoe narrates his life story long afterward, and from the beginning of his tale, Crusoe presents events not only from his point of view as a youth but also from a Christian perspective; he looks at his past through the eyes of the convert who now constantly sees the working of Providence. He tells of his first shipwreck and of his then ignoring what he now perceives as God’s warning, “… Providence, as in such cases generally it does, resolved to leave me entirely without excuse. For if I would not take this for a deliverance, the next was to be such a one as the worst and most hardened wretch among us would confess both the danger and the mercy”. And he found “the secret hints and notices of danger”.

After his dream and the beginning of his regeneration, Defoe reviews his life and his understanding and sense of God deepen. But reason alone is not sufficient to result in conversion and Crusoe turns to the Bible; studying it reveals God’s word and will to him, and he finds comfort, guidance, and instruction in it. For the first time in many years he prays, and he prays, not for rescue from the island, but for God’s help:-

“Lord be my help, for I am in great distress”.

After thinking about his life, he kneels to God for the first time in his life and prays to God to fulfill his promise “that if I called upon Him in the day of trouble, He would deliver me”. His next step toward conversion is asking for God’s grace, “Jesus, Thou Son of David, Jesus, Thou exalted Prince and Saviour, give me repentance!”. He comes to realize that spiritual deliverance from sin is more important than physical deliverance from the island. A little later, when he is about to thank God for bringing him to the island and so saving him, he stops, shocked at himself and the hypocrisy of such a statement. Then he “sincerely gave thanks to God for opening my eyes, by whatever afflicting Providences, to see the former condition of my life, and to mourn for my wickedness, and repent”. This incident indicates that Crusoe’s faith is fervent and honest.

In short we can say that Defoe’s “Robinson Crusoe” is a great religious allegory. This shows the inner conflict of Crusoe and portrays the Puritan drama of the soul. This follows the pattern of “Sin → Punishment → Realization → Redeem → Salvation”.

What autobiographical elements do you find in ‘Ode to the West Wind’? OR "Ode to the west wind’ strikes the characteristically, Shelleyan note of self-pity and exaltation”

 The faculty of the visionary and revolutionary zeal was inherent in the mind of Shelley, because he entered the world of poetry during the turmoil of the French Revolution. From his earliest years, he found himself in opposition to the convention of the class to which he belonged. So he denounced the existing order of things and assailed the barrier which checked the free development of human spirit. The pain which inflicted his heart was the hard-heartedness of society, which instead of hailing him as an intellectual apostle and liberator, hugged its chains and regarded him as a moral outcast.

‘Ode to the West Wind’ is a matchless ode in which Shelley passes from a magnificent realization of Nature’s power to self-description. His very being is blended with Nature and thus he himself and Nature together declare the coming of the Golden age of mankind.

In the first three stanzas, the West Wind is – presented as a terrible Natural power with its influence on land, in the air and on and under ocean. In these stanzas the West Wind appears as a destructive and creative agent of Nature In the fourth stanza, Shelley Involves himself with the West wind. He sees the West Wind as a He finds an affinity between himself symbol of his own personality too, and the West Wind. Once he, in his boyhood, was wild, West Wind. But now he feels bent uncontrollable and swift like the and Oppressed under misfortune, under the hard rules of society.

There is the intensity of the feeling of self-pity or helpless condition of Shelley,

“I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!”

This is rather his weakness as a human being, because he is chained to the gross matter of fact world. This essential feeling of antagonism between his own delicate spiritual being and the hostile world of matter made him miserable.

Shelley expresses his highly sensitive and supremely imaginative soul crushed under the weary weight of hours, the existing order of things. So in agony he appeals to the West Wind to lift him as a leaf, a cloud, or a wave so that he can feel the power of the wind. But this feeling of sadness is no expression of weakness. Shelley is not completely hopeless. From the state of a broken heart there is suddenly the rise of the poet’s own element of fire. He asks the West Wind to drive or scatter his dead thoughts over the universe so that they may act as a regenerating force in the society of men. Just as ashes and sparks fly in all directions from a hearth where the fire is not yet completely extinguished, so also the poet wants his words to be preached among mankind by the force of the West Wind as well as by the magic of his song. He wishes the West Wind to act as his mouthpiece for declaring the arrival of the golden Age. “0 wind/If winter comes, can spring be far behind?” Thus the poem ends with the Shelleyan optimism and exaltation over the triumph of human spirit.

To sum up, through the ‘Ode to the West Wind’, Shelley explains not only his own delicate being in the existing corrupt order of life but also sings the glory of human spirit. He stands not as a helpless man, crushed and beaten down by the hostile conventions and institutions but as a rebel who triumphs over the forces of evil. In fact, the poem gives us a glimpse into the nature, temperament and philosophy of Shelley.