Working on an assignment or a project requires a lot of work, working in a group helps in quicker results. Working in a group makes it easier to focus, having more people in the team means one can divide the workload according to one’s strength. The variety in skills and different thought processes will benefit everyone in the group. Combined knowledge with help in the analysis of the situation and chalk out a solution faster. It will also help an individual to learn something new in the process. Group work increases communication and promotes understanding between team members. Communication is the key to the better functionality of a team. Every individual is unique and working in a group will help provide a different perspective to the work at hand. Finishing off difficult tasks becomes easier and it also helps in the increase of creativity too.

Introverts find it difficult to function in a group though they are skilled and has what it takes to finish off the job at hand Individual projects are best for them. When a task requires a high level of concentration, individual work is the best. Working in the group would be a hindrance because of the constant interruption by other group members. While working individually one can work at their own pace without having to depend on someone else for the job. Planning becomes a lot easier. It increases the efficiency and quality of the work. Working individually means getting all the credit for the hard one has put behind the job.

Both group work and individual works have their pro and cons. Sometimes it also depends on the work at hand too. All projects do not require a group to finish the job and some can’t be done individually. Group projects help in building understanding between the team while individual projects help in developing skills and efficiency. Group work at times can be chaotic with lots of people hovering and putting forth their opinions while when one works alone, they can concentrate better and work faster. Both are good and bad in their own way.

The origin of New criticism is rather complex and apparently contradictory – especially in its theoretical and critical positions and practices. It is in sharp reaction to sociological or Marxian criticism which regarded literature as a product of society. It stressed on textual criticism. It is just like establishing a new professional criticism. The influence of Mathew Arnold’s concept of ‘poetry and culture’ is clearly perceptible in them. The New Criticism were also influenced by modernist poets/ critics like T.S Eliot and T.E Hulme, whose poetry and criticism emphasized the importance of the internal dynamics of poetic form.

At the foundations of the New Criticism was the idea of the critic as a kind of technician, whose specialized knowledge and skills enabled a form of close reading of literary texts that found meaning and value in form. The New Criticism flourished from the 1920s through the 1950s and was primarily concerned with poetry and poetic form. Though one can trace the origin of it back to a lecture – ‘The New Criticism’ delivered by Elias Spingarn in 1920, the term ‘New Criticism’ is used to refer to the theory and practice that was prominent in the American Literary Criticism until late 1960.

The term is coined after the John Crowe Ransom’s the most influential work “The New Criticism” in 1941. It is less a coherent literary theory than the critical and theoretical approaches all of which are grounded on the idea that the literary work is autonomous; and its unity and meaning are constituted primarily by formal and rhetorical features that take precedence over social, political and biographical contexts. Unlike historical criticism or biological criticism, New Criticism completely concerns with the text itself- with its language and organization with ontological discussion, It warms the reader against the critical practices which diverts attention from the text itself.

The distinctive practice of new critics is ‘close reading’- a detailed and subtle analysis of complex interrelations and ambiguities of the inherent elements of the literary work. It studies how the parts of the text relate with each other, how it contains and revolves ‘irony’, ‘paradox’, ‘tension’, and ‘ambiguities’. Their emphasis is on the organic unity of overall structure and verbal meaning. The conceive literary work as being a literary construct. They think about figures of speech, symbols, imagery, meaning with text. For them, the essential components of literary work are symbols, images, words rather than plot, character, theme and thought.

They tried to displace content of literary analysis and treat the work’s form and its content. Form was treated as self contained and autonomous entity deserving all critical attention. For them, the literary art is a complete entity in itself and the function of the critic is to analyze, interpret and evaluate the work of art, And his function should be unbiased with focus only on the text itself. The study of words, their arrangements, the way in which they act and react on each other is all important. Words, besides their literal meaning and significance, also have emotional, associative, symbolic significance; and only close reading and analysis can bring out their total meaning.

Unlike, the Reader Response Theory, their merit of the work is to be found in its language and structure. They view literary work as a self-sufficient, autonomous object whose failure and success, charms or lack of it are to be found in the work itself. The text is more important than reader and writer. New Criticism emphasizes on the complex interplay within a text.

Sylvia Plath deals with multi-dimensional themes in her poetry but she has worked mainly with the theme of death and suicides. In all of Plath’s poetry the theme of death is very prominent. Plath’s work is heavily autobiographical which depicts her life and influenced her poetic sensibility. Three biographical facts should be taken into consideration in order to understand Plath’s poetry: premature death of her father, the separation from her husband Ted, Hughes and her suicide attempts- first unsuccessful at twenty-one and the final one on her thirtieth year.

Confessional poets like Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton and John Berryman in their poetry glorified the personal and private, expressing their innermost secrets aloud for all to hear. They all died of self-inflicted deaths. When these confessional poets speaks of their breakdown and failures, they drew themselves deep into sorrow and despair, often resulting in thoughts of self-destruction, which formed the major theme of their poem. Plath in her poem ‘Lady Lazarus’ speaks of her previous suicide attempts and in ‘Daddy’ the memory of her father had to be shaken off to breathe freely.

The first four parts of The Wasteland are made up of sets of what may be called images. Eliot speaks through many voices and characters in the course of the poem; all of them see what is around them as a wasteland. The reader gets a variety of insights into the state of consciousness which the poem is portraying. Part I deals with memories, II and III deals and focuses on points outside it. Part IV to some extent is a proper part of ‘The Wasteland’ presents an ambiguous image of death, Part V brings the poem to a kind of climax ‘The Wasteland’ to a single sentence it might be – the wasteland consciousness life is a dream- like nasty, arid lacking in all order and long.

Most of the images in Eliot are drawn from myth, religion and nature and are centered around the basic theme of death and rebirth. Thus, spring stands for rebirth and winter for death, drought for spiritual dryness and rain for spiritual fertility, growth and rejuvenation, the rock under the sun may typify spiritual and disintegration, while water and fish may stand for growth. Here in the ‘wasteland’ the drowned Phoenician sailor stands for the fertility God thrown into the waters as a ritual.

Broadly speaking there are two groups of images in T.S Eliot’s poetry- simple images such as similes, metaphors, symbols, and pictures. There are numerous examples for simple images in Wasteland. These might be called as pictures. There are- pictures of the hyacinth girl, Marie of Germany. There is Madame Sosostris, the clairvoyant, the crowd crossing London bridge on winter morning (a picture of desolation) and a bar in the pub. There is the Thames and Mr. Eugaries; the typist and her sordid clerk and finally in the last section the mistier pictures of crowds in anger and revolution and the mysterious third person who can only be seen as you walk long.

The songs of the birds are also significant. The poem describes them phonetically. The Jug Jug of the Nightingale, Drip drop Drip drop song of the hermit thrust and the coco rico coco rico of the cock have special symbolic meaning. All of these are arresting images.

The title of the poem itself brings an image before our eyes, of a desert, of a land once fertile becoming barren. This image keeps recurring throughout the poem. In the very second line “Lilacs out of the dead land” we have the reference to the dead land. The image is further extended to dead trees under the burning seen and dry stones over which no water tickles. Towards the end the betrayal and trail of Jesus are referred to the track up the barren mountain is described. Near the chapel perilous there are empty cisterns and exhausted wells. The song of the dry bones are these dryness and barrenness and the lack of water stand for spiritual state of modern world.

Reference to death and decay in the poem occur frequently example: The Burial Corpse, the drowned phlebas. At the chapel perilous, a cock crows from the roof as lightening flashes thunder rolls and damp winds. These are hints that death may be a beginning to new life and that drought is not final .

Thus, in ‘The Wasteland’ the poet primarily relies on images lined together around a fundamental theme Eliot is not a mere symbolist or imagist, because his poems are more than a mere string of disconnected images. He elicits emotion without directly expressing it, by evoking some situation which by itself arouses emotion.

Renaissance is a religious movement and as such it relates not only to literary revival but it has grassroot connections with political and social movements also. Literature flourished during the period of Tudor Monarch. After the death of Henry VII, King Henry came to power who was a great lover of art, music and literature and love lyrics were composed. As such, Renaissance left a great influence on the social political and religious front. The unrest in England prevailed at large, the authority of king was questioned by Parliament. The existing system with regard to each and every spheres of life was being questioned. Even women intervened in the existing social and cultural status.

John Milton studied deeply the political and social order of his contemporary and wrote a lot about the pathetic state of affairs. He had drawn public opinion on all major or public issues. Milton’s epic ‘Paradise Lost’ is a common theme on Renaissance and reformative course on individual and state. The poetry during the Renaissance expanded into three main channels: the sonnet, heading the lyric and the satire. The literary forms of Milton’s period highlight religious issues and humanist thoughts.

Milton’s poems ‘L’ Allegro’ and ‘II Penseroso’ reveals the fact that the Milton has favoured ‘short lyric’. He also followed classical forms and themes. Thus, short lyric was the major elements in the poetry of Milton’s contemporary. Milton has justified his sense of religion when he writes in ‘Paradise Lost’ that his epic was the ways of God to man. This epic of Milton also has detailed narration of conflicts on the behaviour of the king and the rest of Parliamentarians Milton has also highlighted the issue of women and their individual status by means of his epic and other poetic form.

The use of epic form of poetry in English started with some failed attempts by poets like Patrick Hannay, D’Avenant and W. Chamberlyne. One of the main and important factors that led to the success of Milton’s epic poetry was he used the epic to represent the essence of the age, the contemporary struggle between religion and the state rather than simple reconstruction of the classical matrix.

Another issue which has raised for the Puritan Patriarchy. It not only promoted the issue of individualism but also questioned the women’s individuality and autonomy. Thus, engaging itself in the old age biblical argument of free will and predetermination. These issues are apparent in the conversation between Adam and Eve.

Spenser’s poetry owes and at the same time differs from his contemporary tradition of Petrarchan sonnets. Spenser wrote two comparatively longer poems which infact are two major nuptial songs- The Epithalamion and The Prothalamion. Both the poems deals with the theme of celebration of marriage but in a different style and intent.

The title ‘Epithalamion’ is Spenser’s Graeco- Latin form from Latin ‘epithalamium’, itself derived from Greek ‘epithalamos’ which refers to those songs which are sung before the bridal chamber. Unlike Epithalamion, ‘Prothalamion’ is a term invented by Spenser himself for serving the purpose of differentiating it from the earlier written bridal song. Though the name apparently differentiates the two but the meaning remains the same. Prothalamion, unlike Epithalamion lacks the eroticism and is little more than thinly disguised complaint poem

Epithalamion and Prothalamion has very few similarities between them. Some of the devices which are common in both the poems are the use of pastoral setting, use of River Thames; both uses couplet at the end of the first stanza which reworked into refrain at the end of its subsequent stanza. In both the poem pagan Gods are evoked to bless the married couple.

Epithalamion celebrates Spenser’s own marriage to Elizabeth Boyle while Prothalamion is a nuptial song celebrating the respective marriages of Elizabeth and Katherine Somerset (daughters of the Earl of Worcester) to Henry Gilford and William Peter. Epithalamion celebrates the groom’s and bride’s preparations on the day of their marriage. In Prothalamion Spenser wishes Katherine and Elizabeth pleasure in their marriage act and “fruitful issue” from the consummation of their marriage.

In both the nuptial songs Spenser highlights the importance of nymphs in wedding preparations. In Epithalamion the nymphs cover the bride’s path to the bridal bower with flowers. They protect the sanity of the woods and the lakes so that the bride can have a perfect wedding. In Prothalamion the nymphs gather a profusion of flowers in order to braid Katherine and Elizabeth’s bridal crown. Epithalamion highlights the personal nature of a marital union, while Prothalamion highlights chooses to address the social significance of a marriage union among the nobility.

One of the most popular of the Victorian novelists was Charles Dickens. It was his stint as a reporter in The True Sun that gave him an idea about his genius. His first book Sketches by Boz was a collection of stories and descriptive pieces written for various papers. However, unlike his predecessors, Charles Dickens tended to focus on the hitherto neglected lower middle class. His fame as a novelist was cemented by the Pickwick Papers, a kind of genial picaresque novel. After this came a series of novel, whose theme often dealt the contemporary evils of society. In Oliver Twist(1838), his focus was on the evils of child-labour while Nicholas Nickleby(1839) attacked the brutality of charity schools. After The Old Curiosity Shop(1840), comes the series of holiday stories, the best of which is obviously the Christmas Carol. Thereafter, it is the time for his mature masterpieces like Dombey and Sons(1846) and David Copperfield(1849-50). Forster’s biography of Dickens entitled Life of Dickens shows how the experience of his early life had been employed imaginatively in David Copperfield. The pen which wrote the novel was often dipped in his own blood.

Although Dickens does not propound any serious social or political theory, he does not launch a scathing attack on what he considered to be the evils of time. The long drawn legal system is attached in Bleak House, the sufferings of the poor debtors is poignantly presented in Little Dorit, while Hard Times exposes the lifelessness of the mechanized society. It has been said that “his success as a novelists rests on his success as a social reformer who could moralise with a smile on his lips”.

Dickens’s representation of the spirit of Reign of Terror is excellently produced in The Tale of Two Cities (1858), that is often regarded as excellent supplement to the history of the period. As it is often the case with Dickens, He draws heavily upon his personal experiences in creating Great Expectations. Dickens enjoyed great popularity during his lifetime but his tendency to slip into bathos and his preference for caricature rather than characterization, has led to a sharp decline in his reputation as a novelist since then.

The Victorian Period, almost coincident in extent with the reign of the queen whose name it bears (Queen Victoria 1837-1901), stands nearly beside The Elizabethan Period in the significance and interest of its work. The first great figure in prose, in the period, and one of the most clearly-defined and striking personalities in English Literature, is Thomas Babington Macaulay, who represents in the fullest degree the Victorian vigor and delight in material progress, but is quite untouched by the Victorian spiritual striving. The intense spiritual striving which was so foreign to Macaulay’s practical nature first appears among the Victorians in the Scotsman Thomas Carlyle, a social and religious prophet, lay-preacher, and prose-poet, one of the most eccentric but one of the most stimulating of all English writers. In 1825 his first important work, a Life of Schiller, was published. The first of Carlyle’s chief works, Sartor Resartus came next. The title is allegorical, and Teufeldrockh, the hero, is really Carlyle. The clothes metaphor (borrowed from Swift) sets forth the central mystical or spiritual principle toward which German philosophy had helped Carlyle, the idea, namely, that all material things, including all the customs and forms of society, such as government and formalized religion, are merely the comparatively insignificant garments of the spiritual reality and the spiritual life on which men should center their attention. In 1834 Carlyle moved to London, where he first published The French Revolution. Here as in most of his later works, Carlyle throws emphasis on the power great personalities. During the next years he took advantage of his success by giving courses of lectures on Literature and history, though he disliked the task and felt himself unqualified as a speaker. Of these courses the most important was that on “Heroes and Hero-worship”, in which he clearly stated the doctrine that the strength of humanity is in its strong men, the natural leaders, equipped to rule by power of intellect of spirit and of executive force.

Among the other great Victorian writers the most obvious disciple of Carlyle in his opposition to the materialism of modern life is John Ruskin. But John Ruskin is much more than any man’s disciple; and he also contrasts strongly with Carlyle, first because a large part of his life was devoted to the study of Art- he is single great art-critic in English Literature- and also because he is one of the great preachers and of the nineteenth century humanitarianism at which Carlyle won’t sneer. His own practice in watercolour drawing led him as a mere youth to a devoted admiration for the landscape paintings of the contemporary artist J.M.W. Turner. Turner, a romantic revolutionist against the eighteenth century theory of the grand style, was then little appreciated; and when Ruskin left the university he began, with characteristic enthusiasm , an article on ‘Modern Painters’ designed to demonstrate Turner’s superiority to all possible rivals. In the intervals of this work Ruskin published others less comprehensive, two of which are of the first importance. ‘The Seven Lamps of Architecture’ argues that great art, as the supreme expression of life, is the result of seven moral and religious principles. “The Stones of Venice” is an impassioned exposition of the beauty of Venetian Gothic architecture, and here as always Ruskin expresses his vehement preference for the Gothic art of the Middle Ages as contrasted with the less original and as it seems to him less sincere style of the Renaissance.

Contemporary with Carlyle and Ruskin and fully worthy to rank with them stands still a third great preacher of social and spiritual regeneration, Mathew Arnold. His essays fall into four classes, literary, social, religious and political, though they cannot always be sharply distinguished. Some of his essays like, those on “The Function of Criticism at the Present Time”‘, “Wordsworth” and “Bryon” , are among the best in English while his “Essays on Translating Homer’ present the most famous existing interpretation of the spirit and style of the Greek epics. In his social essays, of which the most important from the volume entitled “Culture and Anarchy”, the contemporary English life presented as being in a state of moral chaos. he held that the English people had been too much occupied with the ‘Hebraic’ ideal and disregarded the Hellenic(Greek) ideal of a perfectly rounded nature. He found that one actual tendency of modern democracy was to ‘let people do as they liked’, which, given the crude violence of the populace naturally resulted in lawlessness and therefore threatened anarchy. Culture, on the other hand, includes the strict discipline of the will and the sacrifice of one’s own impulses for the good of all, which means respect for Law and devotion to the State. Existing democracy, therefore, he attacked with unsparing irony, but he did not condemn its principle.

The nineteenth century was the great age of the English novel. This was partly because this essentially middle-class form of literary art was bound to flourish increasingly as the middle classes rose in power and importance, partly because of the steady increase of the reading public with the growth of lending libraries, the development of publishing in the modern sense, and partly because the form was best suited to depict the realities of contemporary life. If the novel of Dickens tended to focus on social issues, the Bronte sisters concentrated more on private passions. Of the three Bronte sisters, only two, Charlotte(1816-55) and Emily(1818-48) deserve special attention. Anne, the third sister, lacked their imaginative vitality and her novels and poems are dull affair.

The three sisters wrote under the alias of Currer (Charlotte), Ellis(Emily) and Acton(Anne) Bell. This anonymity, which was officially never broken in their lifetime, was not only a disguise that women writers of the period assumed but also reflection of their inwardness. This inwardness assumed fantastic length in the case of Emily as evident from her novel Wuthering Heights(1847). There is nothing in English Literature to match the smouldering passion of Wuthering Heights. It is the work of a woman who had cut herself off from deliberately from normal human interaction and lived in a private world of imaginary passion.

Charlotte, sensitive, passionate, and sensuous by temperament, became involved in the external world more than Emily ever did and make some attempt to cast her fiction into a mould that at least bore some resemblance to that employed by more conventional novelists. The Professor, her first novel, though published after her death, is a muted version of passages in her own emotional history. Jane Eyre(1847)- her first published novel- shows her writing with an almost melodramatic abandon, out of her own passions, dreams and frustrations. Shirley(1849), Charlotte Bronte’s next novel does not touch the height of Jane Eyre. Villette(1853), where she returned to her own emotional life, is based on her fierce and finally suppressed passion for her Brussels teacher. M. Heger; it is a kind of symbolic rendering of this chapter in her emotional chapter.

One of the greatest of the women novelists of the era is George Eliot (Marian or [Mary Anne] Evans) (1819-80). In all her fiction, George Elliot was concerned with moral characters of character, but she never abstracted her characters from their environment in order to illustrate their moral dilemmas. Beginning with comparatively slight descriptions of manners, such as found in the Scenes of Clerical Life(1858), George Eliot soon proceeded to more complex kinds of fiction. Adam Bede(1859), her first full-dress novel, combines element of pastoral idealism with social responsibility. The Mill on the Floss(1860) is a more complex novel and has a burning passion about it. Silas Marner(1861), a simpler novel, much quite in tone, is little more than a fable, though a brilliantly executed one. Romola(1863) and Felix Holt (1866) are of less interest than Middlemarch(1871-72), Daniel Deronda(1876) contains some of George Eliots’ most brilliant writing. George Eliot was on of the Victorian “sages” as well as novelist, one who had burning idealism but was not cut off from the reality around her. A sage whose moral vision is most effectively communicated through realistic fiction is an unusual phenomenon- or at least was unusual when George Eliot began to write. If it has become less unusual since, that is because George Eliot by her achievement in fiction permanently enlarged the scope of the novel.

First published in January 1845 Poe’s The Raven appeared in the New York Evening Mirror. The poem is about a distraught lover who was visited by a raven, an ominous bird who ultimately drags his soul “shall be lifted nevermore!” In other words, the raven’s ‘Nevermore’ goads the speaker into madness, as he is denied of the solace, he endeavors to find through his rendezvous with the raven.

Before he met the raven, the speaker was trying to meditate on his studies. He was completely torn apart because of losing his dearest, who died a premature death. Hence, he was actually trying to “borrow from my books surcease of sorrow.” But he was interrupted by a knocking at his chamber door. The speaker was instantly filled with terror and his heart began beating fast. He consoled himself, saying that it must be ‘some visitor’ ‘tapping’ at his chamber door. And on opening the door, he found none waiting outside. Yet, he waited for a while, perhaps hoping for a comeback of his deceased ladylove in some mysterious form. Hence, he called out her name and is vexed when only the echo murmured back the word ‘Lenore!’ amidst the stillness of the night. However the knocking was again heard even ”louder than before” The speaker presumed that it was the wind striking against the window pane. He opened the window and was awed to see an enormous raven settled itself on the bust of Pallas, lying close to the chamber door and further wondered the speaker saying, “Nevermore” when asked what its name was. The next moment he thought the bird would ultimately fly away in the morning by which time the storm would surely end. Earlier his friends had also flown away thereby deserting his hopes. In the same way the bird would also leave the speaker the next morning, the thought of which made him sad. But, the bird replied to him saying, ‘Nevermore.’

The speaker was then assured of the fact that the bird knew only to speak the word nevermore. Perhaps its owner was unhappy in life and thus, taught his bird, the speaker was thrilled with the thought that after all it was his unique experience to rendezvous with a talking bird, sitting on the bust of Pallas, beside his chamber door. He thus, pulled a cushioned seat close to the Pallas bust and wondered what actually this ominous bird signified its horrible eyes seemed to peer deep into the core of his heart. Yet, he sat with his head bending on the cushion’s velvet lining. He remembers how his ladylove used to sit by his side on the lamplight on a cushioned seat. But, since she had passed away, she would nevermore press the velvet of the cushioned seat.

Meanwhile, the air inside the chamber grew thicker because of being mysteriously fragranced by some unknown power. The speaker fancies that the air inside his chamber had been perfumed by angels who had brought a burning censure with them invisibly into the chamber so as to cheer him up. And the perfume in the air was introduced by the angels to drug the speaker and let him forget his grief of losing his Lenore. But, the raven hearing him spoke, “Nevermore” as usual.

This however infuriated the speaker and he wondered whether the raven before him was a mere bird or a devil. He wanted to know from the bird, whether it had come to lure him to evil or had just accidentally rushed into his chamber so as to seek shelter against the storm outside. Even he asked the bird if it knew about any balm in Hades that could pacify his grief. But the raven only said “Nevermore” to all his questions. Yet he asked him if he could tell whether his wounded soul would meet his beloved, the saintly Lenore, in heaven. But, the answer was the same – “Nevermore”.

Failing to elicit any suitable answer from the raven, the speaker finally ordered the bird to be away from his sight. After all the bird is a liar and it seemed to the speaker that the raven had thrust its break into his heart. Hence, the speaker commanded the bird to leave his chamber and fly into the storm outside. But, the ashamed raven continued sitting on the bust and replied “Nevermore” its eyes were demonic and the lamplight which was glowing inside the chamber shed the shadow of the bird on the floor. The speaker felt that his soul which lay in that shadow would be lifted from there “Nevermore”.

The full title of this poem is “Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey, on Revisiting the Banks of the Wye during a Tour July 13th, 1798”. It opens with the speaker’s declaration that five years have passed since he last visited this location, encountered its tranquil, rustic scenery, and heart the murmuring waters of the river. He recites the objects he sees again, and describes their effect upon him. The speaker then describes how his memory of these “beauteous forms” has worked upon him in his absence from them: when he was alone, or in crowded towns and cities, they provided him with “sensations sweet,/ Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart” The memory of the woods and cottages offered “tranquil restoration” to his mind, and even affected him when he was not aware of the memory, influencing his deeds of kindness and love. He further credits the memory of the scene with offering him access to that mental and spiritual state in which the burden of the world is lightened, in which he becomes a “living soul” with a view into “the life of things.”

Even in the present moment, the memory of his past experiences in these surroundings floats over his present view of them, and he feels bittersweet joy in reviving them. He thinks happily too, that his present experience will provide many happy memories for future years. The speaker acknowledges that is different now from how he was in those long-ago times. When as a boy he “bounded o’er the mountains” and through the streams. That time is now past, he says, but he does not mourn it, for though he cannot resume his old relationship with nature, he has been amply compensated by a new set of more mature gifts. He can now sense the presence of something far more subtle, powerful, and fundamental in the light of the setting suns, the ocean, the air itself, and even in the mind of man, and for that he still loves nature, for they anchor his purest thoughts and guard the heart and soul of his “moral being.”

The speaker says that even if he did not feel this way or understand these things, he would still be in good spirits on this day, for he is company of his “dear, dear sister,” who is also his “dear, dear friend,” and in whose voice and manner he observes his former self. Nature’s power over the mind that seeks her out is such that it renders that mind impervious to “evil tongues.” “rash judgements,” and “the sneers of selfish men,” instilling instead a “cheerful faith” that the world is full of blessings. The speaker then encourages the moon to shine upon his sister, and the wind to blow against her, and he says to her that in later years, when she is sad or fearful, the memory of this experience will help to heal her. And if he himself is dead, she can remember the love with which he worshipped nature. In that case, too, she will remember what the woods meant to the speaker, the way in which, after so many years of absence, they became more dear to him-both for themselves and for the fact that she is in them.

The term “Victorian” is applied to England during Queen Victoria’s reign to describe the self-righteous, repressive and authoritarian culture of the middle classes who prided themselves on the wealth and position the nation achieved through the industrial revolution and on Britain’s leading position in the world as the major industrial power, major sea and colonial power. Thomas Babington Macauley (1800-59) was a politician and historian. His History of England on the 17th century is a proud narration of the nation’s progress, which is seen in terms of its wealth and technology, whose perpetuity he confidently predicts. The price paid for this progress by the many is not the theme. He spent some years in India in an official position, where he set up a system of education designed to make Indians useful civil servants. His programmatic Minute on Education of 1835 is imbued with a blind faith in the supremacy of British culture and contempt for the Indian; it became the blueprint of colonial education.

Cracks began to appear in the intellectual temple of Victorianism. Matthew Arnold (1822-88) poet, educationalist and clergyman, spent his life contending in rather solemn and humourless writing against the philistinism of the nation. He saw middle class religiosity as narrow and hollow conventionalism and deplored the shallowness of prevailing literary taste. John Stuart Mill (1806-73) worked for the East India Company; he wrote on political economy, on logic, on positivism and in 1869 an essay against The Subjection of Women.

Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881) was a brilliantly original Scottish writer greatly influenced by German Literature and philosophy. he denounced the destructive profiteering of the rich, the dominance of money in modern society, and held up the medieval world with its fixed structures and stability as an organic and healthier form of community. He was highly skeptical about democracy, believing that history is made by heroic individuals, by great men of vision such as Cromwell, Napoleon and Frederick II, who may rule despotically but do so in the interest of the people, whereas elected politicians manipulate their ignorant voters and rule to safeguard their selfish interests, thus, condoning injustice and putting the nation at risk of serious social conflict.

John Ruskin(1819-1900), an influential art critic, believed that the arts were the most powerful remedy against the fetish on money. William Morris(1834-96) was a critic of the shoddiness of mass produced goods and the founder of a style of new simplicity and art in everyday life. He designed everything from houses to wallpaper, and his name became synonymous for elegant handcrafted products which differed pleasantly from the bombast of cluttered Victorian interiors with their heavy furniture, triple curtains and grand pianos draped with plush lest the legs should give rise to improper associations.

The painters of the Pre-Raphaelite school rejected classical art as their model; they turned to the artist living before Raphael, as he did the corresponding German school, the Nazarene, and sought to emulate the piety, craftsmanship and simplicity of the medieval painters of the Holy Family. Dante Gabriel Rosetti(1828-82), the son of an Italian professor, founded the school in London in 1848. John Evret Millais (1829-96), Edward Burne-Jones(1833-98) paid meticulous attention to historical accuracy of costume and scene; the craftsmanship is remarkable; a strange combination of sentimentality, sensuality and morbidity is typical of their work. This was to influence continental art nouveau or Jugendstil. These artists were faced with a very difficult task: to represent spirituality in a King Midas situation, where everything the English middle class touched seemed to turn into gold. Their solution was to turn their backs on that reality. The result was that movement degenerated into ornamental style, fulfilling a purely decorative function, painting life in glowing colours to gloss over the coldness and harshness of the world.

Forster began writing A Passage to India in 1913, just after his first visit in India. The novel was not revised and completed, however, until well after his second stay in India in 1921, when he served as a secretary to the Maharajah of Dewas State Senior. Published in 1924, A Passage to India examines the racial misunderstandings and cultural hypocrisies that characterized the complex interactions between Indians and the English toward the end of the British occupation of India.

When Dr Aziz is introduced to us, we don’t see him. We see the bicycle before it hits the balcony. We know that he is “all animation” without being told exactly how he is being “animated” And we hear him calling out his friend’s name before we find out his name, before we see his face, or get to know a single detail about his appearance or background.

The opening scene is just a wind-up for the rest of the novel, as it turns out. Impulsive, talkative, gregarious, spontaneously affectionate, Aziz is the Energizer Bunny of the story, rushing into conversations and situations without really thinking too hard about what he’s saying or doing. And given the fact that he’s so extroverted, it would probably be easy to assemble his profile on a dating site: widowed doctor, father of three, seeking casual relationship or companionship with attractive female. Hobbies include riding horses, waxing nostalgic about the Mughal Empire, and reading and writing Urdu poetry. Peeves include trekking to dark and mysterious caves.

But despite the fact that Aziz talks so much, or perhaps because of the fact Aziz talks so much one might find it hard to get a handle on who he really is. His behaviour can seem so contradictory. Aziz can be incredibly friendly and out going in one moment, and suddenly turn suspicious and rather nasty the next. For example, Aziz seems to like Fielding. Yet he is so ready to believe the rumor that Fielding had an affair with Adela and that Fielding actually plotted to keep Aziz from suing Adela so that Fielding and Adela could enjoy her money together. It’s also hard to reconcile the high, romantic idealism that can be hard to stomach, as when he makes plans to see prostitutes.

Our difficulties with Aziz may have something to do with the fact that we learn everything about Aziz through the filter of a narrative that is dotted with the racial stereotype of the “Oriental” Of course, the narrative of A Passage to India isn’t as racist as the Turtons or McBryde; it’s enlightened enough to satirize these characters. But even when it’s championing the Oriental/Indian, it still can sound offensive. This is usually signaled when the narrator suddenly stops talking about Aziz the individual, and leaps to all “Orientals.” Thus, we learn, for example that “suspicion in the oriental is a sort malignant just or, a mental malady, that makes him self-conscious and unfriendly suddenly.” Instead of Aziz just being a suspicious guy, the novel wants us to think that Aziz is naturally suspicious because he’s Indian.

Be that as it may, the novel represents a sincere attempt to inhabit Aziz’s mind, to show the effects of living as an Indian under British rule, and to show how the racism of a Turton or Callendar prevent them from recognizing not only Aziz’s innocence, but also the validity of Indians’ appeal for an independent nation. Perhaps at the end the novel gives us the tools to critically examine itself so that we might finally read Aziz’s last gesture to Adela not as the illogical, inconsistent Oriental, but as the expression of a generous spirit.

Andrew Marvell is an impressive robust in the metaphysical tradition not just for his copious use of characteristically metaphysical wit, conceit and imageries, his exhibition that affects one’s intellect as much as his emotion, but also for the argumentative and logical evolution of his lyrics that shows a peculiar blend of passion and thought, feeling and ratiocination. The trait is the most visible in To His Coy Mistress.

The poem, To HIs Coy Mistress, is itself an argument that presses itself towards a conclusion by seemingly logical steps. The subject and structure of To His Coy Mistress is conceived of and expressed by Marvell syllogistically. The logical structure of the poem is best understood from the manner in which the three stanzas open: “Had we but World enough, and Time,/ This coyness Lady were no crime…”

The dialect of the poem does not only reign supreme in the formal demonstration which is so explicit in the three strophes of the poem, the strophes that have a syllogistic relation to one another, but also in the apparent contrasts evoked by the imageries they include.

Marvell writes, “Had we but World enough, and Time…”. The “had” helps the poet to create a make-believe situation or condition which is actually the incipient, suppositious proposition, the first premise of his argument. The “Had” also enables him to grammatically establish his assertion that “we” do not have “World enough, and Time”, The vastness or infinitude of both time and space is again ingeniously verbalized in his witty reference to two Biblical allusions; the “Flood” mentioned in Old Testament and the “conversion of the Jews” to devout Christians just before the end of the world, i.e the Doomsday.

The first premise attains a climatic point with the poet’s use of metaphysical conceit in his lines : “My vegetable Love should grow/ Vaster than Empires, and more slow.” The “vegetable love” is a curious attribution to love. In short, the first stanza begins with a suppositious and the rest of it offers a series of hooks upon which Marvell hangs his hyperboles, conceits and wit to complement the premise.

The indispensable “But” with which the second strophe opens is just too sufficient not to repudiate or disown the make-believe condition the first strophe helps the poet build. With the abrupt introduction of the imagery of Time’s “winged chariot” the poet ushers in a turn and surprise in the incessant linear thought. The lover says the life in short and the time is fleeting, death is first approaching them. After death the lady-love will lie in the grave and the lover will not sing song to her. The worms will violate her chastity in the grave, her honour will be turned to dust and the desire of the sexual intercourse is impossible there: “The Grave’s a fine and private place,/ But none I think do there embrace.”

Therefore, it is the suggestion of the love to conclude that as the life is short and the time is fleeting, so the lady-love should give up false mantle of coyness and social honour for keeping her chastity intact and they should join sexual union without delay like “amorous birds of prey”. They will be fierce in their brutal sexual pleasure by rupture hymen. Thus, they can conquer time and death by their mutual love.

in conclusion, it is said that the general structure of Marvell’s To His Coy Mistress is syllogistic, but the poetic quality involves several non-syllogistic elements as well.

Beckett is considered to be an important figure among the French Absurdist’s. “Waiting for Godot”, is one of the masterpieces of Absurdist literature. Elements of Absurdity for making this play are very engaging and lively. Beckett combats the traditional notions of Time. It attacks the two main ingredients of the traditional views of Time, i.e. Habit and Memory. We find Estragon in the main story and Pozzo in the episode, combating the conventional notions of Time and Memory. For Pozzo, particularly, one day is just like another, the day we are born is indistinguishable from the day we shall die.

It is very clear from the word “Absurd” that it means nonsensical, opposed to reason, something silly, foolish, senseless, ridiculous and topsy-turvy. So, a drama having a cock and bull story would be called absurd play. Moreover, a play having loosely constructed plot, unrecognizable characters and metaphysical called an absurd play. Actually the ‘Absurd Theatre’ believes the humanity’s plight is purposeless in an existence, which is out of harmony with its surroundings.

This thing, i.e the awareness about the lack of purpose produces a state of metaphysical anguish which is the central theme of the Absurd Theatre. On an Absurd play logical construction, rational ideas and intellectually viable arguments are abandoned and instead of these the irrationality for experience is acted out on stage.

The above mentioned discussion allows us to call “Waiting for Godot” as an absurd play for not only its plot is loose but its characters are also just mechanical puppets with their incoherent colloquy. And above them all, its theme is unexplained. “Waiting for Godot” is an absurd play for it is devoid of characterization and motivation. Though characters are present but they are not recognizable for whatever they do and whatever they present is purposeless. So far as its dialogue technique is concerned, it is purely absurd as there is no witty repartee and pointed dialogue. What a reader or spectator hears is simply the incoherent babbling which does not have any clear and meaningful ideas. So far as the action and theme is concerned, it kisses the level of Absurd Theatre. After the study of this play we come to know that nothing special happens in the play nor we observe any significant change in setting. Though a change occurs but it is only that now the tree has sprouted out four or five leaves. “Nothing happens, nobody comes… nobody goes, it’s awful!” The beginning, middle and end of it do not rise up to the level of a good play, and though its theme is logical and rational yet it lies in umbrage.

Moreover, “Waiting for Godot” can also be regarded as an absurd play because it is different from “poetic theatre”. Neither it makes a considerable use of dream and fantasy nor does it employ conscious poetic language. The situation almost remains unchanged and an enigmatic vein runs throughout the play. The mixture of comedy and near tragedy proves baffling. In Act-I we are not sure as to what attitude we should adopt towards the different phases of its non-action. The ways, of which the two tramps pass their time, seems as if they were passing their lives in a transparent deception. Godot remains a mystery and curiosity still holds a away. Here we know that their endless waiting seems to be absurd. Though the fact is that they are conscious of this absurdity, yet it seems to imply that the rest of the world is waiting for the things, which are more absurd and also uncertain.

“Waiting for Godot” is an absurd play for there is no female character. Characters are there but they are devoid of identity. These two Estragon and Vladimir are old acquaintances, but they are nor sure of their identity. though they breathe, their life is an endless rain of blows. They wait for the ultimate extinction, but in a frustrated way. this thing produces meaninglessness, thus makes the play absurd.

Moreover, what makes the play absurd is its ending. We note that the ending of the play is not a conclusion in the usual sense. The wait continues; the human contacts remain unsolved; the problem of existence remains meaningless, futile and purposeless. The conversation between the two tramps remain a jargon, really a humbug and bunkum speech. So all this makes this play an absurd play.