Thinking Activity : The Importance of Being Earnest

                                                  Thinking activity 

                     The Importance of Being Earnest 

                              

                               

        

                 This Blog is in response to the thinking activity. I am going to write a blog on Evaluate “The Importance of being Earnest” as a comedy of manners embodying the hypocrisy of Victorian Society. This task was assigned by Dilip Barad sir. 

       * “The Importance of being Earnest” as a comedy of manners : 

•  About the Author : 

                                                              

                Oscar Wilde was an Anglo-Irish playwright, novelist, poet, and critic. He is regarded as one of the greatest playwrights of the Victorian Era. In his lifetime he wrote nine plays, one novel, and numerous poems, short stories, and essays.

              Oscar Wilde was a proponent of the Aesthetic movement, which emphasized aesthetic values more than moral or social themes. This doctrine is most clearly summarized in the phrase 'art for art's sake'. Besides literary accomplishments, he is also famous, or perhaps infamous, for his wit, flamboyance, and affairs with men. 

               Oscar Wilde was born in Dublin on 16 October 1854 to Sir William Wilde and his wife Jane. Oscar's mother, Lady Jane Francesca Wilde. She was a successful poet and journalist. She wrote patriotic Irish verse under the pseudonym "Speranza". Oscar's father, Sir William Wilde. He was a leading ear and eye surgeon, a renowned philanthropist and gifted writer. He  wrote books on archaeology and folklore. Oscar had an elder brother, Willie, and a younger sister, Isola Francesca, who died at the early age of 10.

*About the Play :              

                                                               

                 The Importance of Being Earnest, A Trivial Comedy for Serious People is a play by Oscar Wilde. First performed on 14 February 1895 at the St James's Theatre in London. 

                                         

                  It is a farcical comedy in which the protagonists maintain fictitious personae to escape burdensome social obligations. The title also makes a reference to one of the romantic obstacles: the significance of being named Earnest. Like a romantic comedy, both the pairs of lovers overcome their obstacles to reach their happy ending. 

* Characters : 

•   Jack (Earnest) : a Young Gentleman from the Country.

•   Algernon :  Nephew of Lady Bracknell.

•  Lady Bracknell : An Upper Class Society lady, Gwendolen 's mother.

• Lane - Algernon's butler.  

• Gwendolen Fairfax -  A young Girl, also known as Miss Fairfax

• Prism - Cecily's  governess

• Cecily Cardew - a Young Girl, the ward of Jack Worthing

*As a comedy of Manners : 

                  "A Comedy of manners is a descriptive term applied to a play whose Comedy Comes from Social habits of a Specified Society.”  A comedy of manners is concerned with social usage and the question of whether or not characters meet certain social standards.

               The Importance of Being Earnest is an enlightening example of comedy of manners.  It makes fun of the behavior of Victorian aristocracy.  It attaches great value to hypocrisy, frivolity, superficiality, artificiality and money mindedness. 

                The Victorian upper class society judged things by appearance and the present play makes us laugh at those values by turning them upside-down through a language which is satirical, funny and witty. 

           

           The play centers on the questions of identity, love, marriage and money. Oscar Wilde's basic purpose in writing the play was to expose and prove as a sham the norms and values of the Victorian aristocracy. Society stressed respectability, seriousness and decency, but it was very different from what it appeared to be. What needed to qualify for marriage was wealth and a good family background. 

                  Lady Bracknell rejected Jack as the candidate for Gwendolen, after she knew that he was a foundling.  She gave last priority to his abilities and education and gave importance to family background.  When she came to know that there is a handsome amount of money in Cecily's account . She is ready to get married to Algernon. 

                     The two female characters Cecily and Gwendolen love their respective boys just for the beauty of their name 'Earnest'. They find everything in the name and love for the name. The boys prefer the name Earnest but they lack seriousness. 

                   It is a satire on the society that gives priority to appearances and surfaces. It is the hypocrisy of the concerned people. The dialogue used in the play is funny and witty. The clever exchanges between the characters are beautiful on the surface and hollow inside. The artificiality and paradox embedded in the dialogue well matches the sham and hypocritical values and pretensions of the people targeted by satire.

Thank You. 

Thinking Activity : Jude the Obscure

 Thinking Activity 

                             

                             ‘Jude The Obscure’ 

       

      The themes of the novel ‘Jude the Obscure’ 

          This blog spot  is in response to the thinking activity task which was given by Dr. Dilip Barad sir. In this particular blog I am going to discuss the thematic study of ‘Jude the Obscure’. 

•  About the Author: 

                                  

                 Thomas Hardy was born on June 2, 1840, Higher Bockhampton, Dorset, England and died  on January 11, 1928, Dorchester, Dorset. He was an  English novelist and poet who set much of his work in Wessex.  His name for the counties of southwestern England. 

                    Hardy was the eldest of the four children of Thomas Hardy, a stonemason and jobbing builder, and his wife, Jemima. Though he was often ill as a child, his early experience of rural life, with its seasonal rhythms and oral culture, was fundamental to much of his later writing. 

                 

           Hardy’s youth was influenced by the musicality of his father, a stonemason and fiddler, and his mother, Jemima Hand Hardy, often described as the real guiding star of Hardy’s early life. Hardy is considered as one of the greatest novelists in the History of English literature. He has created a large range of works. 

          His Outstanding Works : 

•     Tess of the D’Urbervilles (1891)

•     The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886) 

•      The Poor Man and the Lady

•      The Return of the Native” 

•      Jude the Obscure (1895)

•  About the Novel 

                                       

               Jude the Obscure is a novel by Thomas Hardy, which began as a magazine serial in December 1894. He was first published in book form in 1895. It is Hardy's last completed novel. 

                    The protagonist, Jude Fawley. He was a working-class young man. He is a stonemason who dreams of becoming a scholar. The other main character is his cousin, Sue Bridehead, who is also his central love interest. The novel is concerned in particular with issues of class, education, religion, morality and marriage.

 Major Characters :

  

•  Jude Fawley : A young man of obscure , who was raised by her aunt , he was an orphan and poor. 

• Sue(Susanna) Bridehead :  Jude's cousin, an intelligent, unconventional young woman whom Jude loves and lives with but who is twice married to Phillotson.

• Drusilla Fawley : Jude's great-aunt, who raises Jude.

• Little Father Time :  Little Jude , son of Jude and Arabella.

•  Arabella Donn :  An attractive young woman , Jude marries twice , wife of Jude Fawley.

•  Richard Phillotson : Jude's former teacher.

• Mr. Donn : Arabella's father, a pig farmer and later owner of a pork shop.

• Cartlett : Arabella's "Australian husband."

 

     

             The novel tells the story of a poor orphan, Jude Fawley, who dreams of going to university and becoming a clergyman. Jude is trapped into marriage by Arabella, a barmaid, who then leaves him. He starts work as a stonemason and falls in love with his unconventional cousin, Sue Bridehead.

                   Sue eventually returns Jude’s feelings but, horrified to learn that he is married, she marries Phillotson, Jude’s old schoolmaster. By now, Jude has given up all his ambitions. Sue eventually leaves Phillotson and lives with Jude, unmarried; they take in Jude’s son by Arabella and have children of their own. But people gossip and it is hard to find work.

            Jude becomes ill and works as a cake maker. Then his unhappy eldest son hangs himself and his two half-brothers. Feeling that God is punishing her for her sins, Sue returns to Phillotson, despite loving Jude. Arabella once again traps Jude into returning to her, and he dies a broken man. 

•    Theme of the novel 

                             

                                   

• Marriage

      

      It could be argued that the rejection of marriage is the central didactic point of this novel. Hardy repeatedly emphasizes that marriage involves making a commitment that many people are emotionally unequipped to fulfil - this sentiment comes from the narrator, but it is also expressed by Sue, Jude, Phillotson, and Widow Edlin at various points in the novel. 

       Whether the institution of marriage can be saved is open to interpretation. Jude and Sue are clearly a good match for each other, so Jude wants to get married. Sue, however, feels that marriage will poison the relationship. The narrator does not seem to favour either side; it is left up to readers to decide how the problems with marriage might be solved.

•   Social class

        Thomas Hardy also criticizes the rigidity of social class more generally. Jude is limited in his career options because as a working-class man, he cannot hope to be promoted beyond a certain level, even in fields like the clergy that are supposed to be open to all.

•   Women's rights

               Sue Bridehead lives with men without marrying them;she has a rich intellectual life; she works alongside Jude. Hardy criticizes the social conventions that prevent her from fulfilling her potential as an intellectual and as a worker. Hardy perpetuates a common Victorian stereotype about women being especially emotional. Also, we are expected to accept Sue having lived with the Christminster undergraduate because they were not having sex; despite his professed liberalism.

Thank you. 

 

Thinking Activity : History Of Puritan and Restoration Age

 Thinking Activity

                     History of Puritan and Restoration Age

• John Donne - (Metaphysical Poet)- Puritan Age

                               

            Introduction : 

                            

              

              By the end of the 16th century and beginning of the 17th century the great Elizabethan poetry had lost its charm. Everything was conventional and artificial. In the beginning of the 17th century, there was a revolt against the outdated Elizabethan poetry. The leader of this revolt was John Donne. John Donne was born on 22 January 1572 and died on 31 March 1631. He was an English poet, scholar, soldier and secretary. He was born into a recusant family. He was the leader and founder of the metaphysical school of poetry. Donne disciples like George Herbert, Richard Crashaw, Henry Maugham, Andrew Marvell joined him. 

•    The important features of this poetry are as under -

• Obscurity 

• Rebel in poetry

• Blending of passion and thought

• Wit

• Display of learning

• Far-fetched images, conceit and similes

• Absurdity and hyperbole

• Rejection of women worship

• Obscurity

          

             Another important feature of metaphysical poetry is its obscurity. In metaphysical poetry we come across obscure references and the vast learning is twisted in such a manner that it becomes difficult to follow what the poet really intends to say. There is no freshness of thought and accuracy of description, nor their words are chosen carefully. Even after reading and re-reading it. It is not clear in the mind of the reader what the poet really intends to say. Metaphysical poetry is as difficult to understand as Browning. It remains a grand puzzle to the readers. 

 

  Dr Johnson encountered the metaphysical poets because of the habit, common to this school of poets, of always seeking to express something after. Something behind the simple obvious first sense of a subject.

• Rebel in poetry

               

         John Donne was a rebel in poetry. He did not follow the contemporary conventional significant characteristic of metaphysical poetry. Metaphysical poets did not follow contemporary conventional poetry. They did accept the conversational Verse forms of rhyme of rhythms and other features of the Spenserians. They did not accept Spenser as a model poet. They made many innovations in matter and form of poetry. They discarded the heavily brocaded language of Spenser. But they adopted a colloquial language and rough metre. Thus they tried to rebel against the conventional poetry of their time.

• Blending  of passion and thoughts

    

   Blending of passion and thought is another characteristic of metaphysical poetry. We find a splendid blend of passing and thought in Donne poetry. It is the distinguishing quality that is ever at the service of their passion. Their passion enters into their thought; this is the main quality of metaphysical poetry. It is a successful union of passion and thought, ingenuity and wit. The mood and the sun is called, "busy old fool, unruly sun, saucy pedantic wretch", etc. While Donne is in a passionate mood, he takes recourse to wit or conceit which, sometimes, seem to be highly fantastic and exaggerated.

• Wit

  

            Wit is one of the most significant features of the metaphysical poetry of all persuasive qualities of the metaphysical poetry. It reveals the genius of the metaphysical poets. They preserve their feelings and thoughts in the dress of wit. The metaphysical poetry was purely intellectual. Donne was the great Metaphysical poet who fought his followers to indulge in criticism in poetry.  John Donne's poem "The sun rising" is full of wit . John Donne has been regarded as the monarch of wit. 

• Display of learning

 

         Display of learning is the chief characteristic of metaphysical poetry. The metaphysical poets were men of learning and to show their learning was their chief object in writing poetry. They desired to be admired for reading rather than understanding. While reading the poems of John Donne and Cowley. We sometimes feel that they wrote poetry simply to show their knowledge in geography, science, medicine, navigation and classical mythology.

 

• Far-fetched images , similes and metaphor

  

          The metaphysical poetry is full of fur-fetched similes and metaphor. The Far-fetched similes and metaphors are commonly called "conceits". Conceit is an instrument by which a metaphysical poet reveals his wit. For example Donne's poem,  "The sun rising" is full of metaphysical conceits.

          Dr Johnson points out :

              "A metaphysical poetry has a combination of dissimilar images or discovery of occult resemblances in things apparently unlike".

               The metaphysical poets introduced far-fetched images which could not be easily understood by the reader. Donne was the great metaphysical poet who taught his followers to indulge in conceits and criticism in poetry.

   

        Thus , In the metaphysical poems we come across far-fetched images, similar and metaphor.

• Absurdity and Hyperbole

 

              The images and ideas of the metaphysical poet's bear the stamp of absurdity and hyperbole. Cowley was one of his poet's compared different women to to travel through different countries. The metaphysical poets had a craze for writing strange things. New ,so absurdities and metaphors appear very often in their writing. In the opinion of Dr. Johnson the metaphysical poet's left not only reason but fancy behind them. They tried to combine the remote with the new and the spiritual with the physical. So it is said that in metaphysical poetry there is very little that makes an appeal to the heart.

       Thus ,we can say that metaphysical poetry passes absurdity and Hyperbole.

• Rejection of woman worship

 

                     Rejection of women worship is one of the important characteristics of metaphysical poetry. Metaphysical poetry also rejects the cult of women worship. Instead of regarding women as goddess of beauty. They represented them simply as fickle and faithless creatures of flesh and blood. They entered into the enclosed garden of Elizabethan Love poetry. Like angry gardeners they pulled up the withered trees of grey color flowers and planted the seeds of fresh odd-looking flowers.

     

•    conclusion 

 

             The metaphysical poetry was religious poetry. It came into existence in sharp reaction to the Spenserians poetry. John Donne was the leader and founder of the metaphysical school of poetry. George Herbert , Richard Crashaw , Abraham Cowley , Andrew metaphysical poets tried to give something new and different.

 Thank You. 

Bridge Cource : An Essay On Dramatic Poesy

 Bridge Course 

                             Dryden : Essay on Dramatic Poesy

          This blog spot is in  response to the bridge course  on Dryden's An Essay on Dramatic Poesy. In this Particular Blog Spot, I am Going to write About John Dryden And his An Essay on Dramatic Poesy . This task is a part of bridge course which was assigned by Dr. Dilip Barad Sir ,  Department of English, MKBU.

         * John Dryden 

                                   

                        John Dryden was an English poet, literary critic, translator, and playwright. He was first appointed England's first Poet Laureate in 1668. He is seen as dominating the literary life of Restoration England to such a point that the period came to be known in literary circles as the Age of Dryden. John Dryden was the greatest English poet of the 17th century. After William Shakespeare and Ben Jonson, he was the greatest playwright.

                       Dryden was born on  August 9, 1631. He was raised  by a Puritan gentry in Northampton shire. But as a teenager he was sent to the King’s School at Westminster to be trained as a King’s Scholar by the brilliant Royalist headmaster Richard Busby. 

* An Essay of Dramatic Poesy

                                      

                     John Dryden’s An Essay on Dramatic Poesy presents a brief discussion on Neo-classical theory of Literature. “An Essay of Dramatic Poesy” was probably written in 1666 . Essay of Dramatic Poesy is a work by John Dryden. He defends the classical drama saying that it is an imitation of life and reflects human nature clearly.

                           

                               An Essay on Dramatic Poesy is written in the form of a dialogue among four gentlemen: Eugenius, Crites, Lisideius and Neander.

                * Neander speaks for Dryden himself.

     Eugenius favours modern English dramatists by attacking the classical playwrights, who did not themselves always observe the unity of place. But Crites defends the ancients and points out that they invited the principles of dramatic art paved by Aristotle and Horace. 

          

            Crites opposes rhyme in plays and argues that though the moderns excel in sciences, the ancient age was the true age of poetry. Lisideius defends the French playwrights and attacks the English tendency to mix genres.

  

   Neander speaks in favour of the Moderns and respects the Ancients. He is however critical of the rigid rules of dramas and favours rhyme. He also finds subplots as an integral part to enrich a play. He finds single action in French dramas. 

                Dryden thus argues against the neo-classical critics. He supports the use of blank verse in drama and says that the use of rhyme in serious plays is justifiable in place of the blank verse.

             

     * Que.1 :  Do you find any difference between Aristotle's definition of Tragedy and Dryden 's definition of play? 

               

        *  Aristotle’s Definition of Tragedy : 

     Aristotle's definition of tragedy is very compact. 

 

        “Tragedy is an imitation of an action that is serious, complete and of a certain magnitude”. In the language embellished  with each kind of artistic ornament , the several kinds being found  in  separate parts of the play. The actions represented have serious, often dire consequences and the characters represented are of elevated social status.

 

 

                Tragedy form of action , not of narrative. It imitates a human life, a human nature and completes itself. Behind tragedy this implication is that you do not transgress your limits.

     According to Aristotle , Tragedy has six major elements, 

                     Mythos=plot

                     Ethos= Character

                     Dianoia= Thought

                     Lexis= Diction

                     Melos= Songs

                     Opsis= Spectacle

           *  Dryden's definition of Play

                                                                                                                                                                                 “ A Play Ought to be a just and lively image of human nature , represents its Passion and humours , and the change of Fortune to which it is Subject , for the delight and instruction of mankind. " 

            Dryden is really a great critic and supporter of imagination. In his age, he is rather different from all the poets. He said that all people differ in their character. They might be either evil or good. The bad and good parts in a human character make them do rather good or bad things, which are the basis for a tragedy or comedy. He calls imagination as a special faculty of a creative artist without rules and regulations. imagination is like a polisher that makes the material elegant. Such labour uplifts its value more and more. In other words, it is more needed to say that imagination is a shaping power.

          In the definition of drama, John Dryden gives primary importance to delight, and the secondary to instruction. The function of poetry is delight, and to instruct is the function of prose. It is he who combines the both. It is examined that the instruction comes out of the delight.

                                 

 Que. 2 : WHAT WOULD BE YOUR PREFERENCE SO FAR AS POETIC OR PROSAIC DIALOGUES ARE CONCERNED IN THE PLAY?

•   Poetic Dialogue gives us entertainment compared to Poetic Dialogues. It Contains in Poetic Manner. 

Examples of Poetic Drama ,

                            

A Midsummer Night’s Dream , 

                            

Romeo and Juliet . 

  Example of Prose Drama, 

               As You Like It

                                

              

 

                        

Thank You… .