derrida

Deconstruction theory nearly on postmodernism. And deconstructed means that text or literary theory are combine works together in literature. Here mentation that the main base of knowledge and learning are connected in literature. So Derrida’s defined that what is deconstruction ? Here deconstruction all work not only activity of deconstruction but idea about foundation of theoretical represented to particle thinks.  
                  some strands of feminist  thinking engaged in a deconstruction of the opposition between “man” and “woman” and critiqued essential notions of gender and sexual identity.
            Postmodernism a complex paradigm of thought, art, philosophy, method. It emerged, initially, as a reaction to high modernism. Example like: movie in 36 chine town,.

The concept of supplementarity follows from decentring the centre. A literary text is a work of language and language as such according to Derrida, is like time, ever in a state of flux. Just as time has no origin, so also the origin of language is inconceivable. It is always gaining in new elements and loosing the older ones. The process of supplementarity has no end, because positive & concrete definition is impossible for any term.
It is an illusion for us that we can understand. One word leads to another word. There is no positive answer but negative. Always meanings of words are postpone. 

Northrop Frye

(1)Archetypal criticism means recurrent narratives designs, patterns of action, character-types, themes, and images which are identifiable in a wide variety of works of literature.Archetypal critics gave them new forms with new references.

2)Frye's attempt to prove physics to nature & criticism to literature by giving an analogy:-
Basically here Frye tried to compare both as according to any physics students they mainly studies or rather learning physics instead of nature. So it can be say that physics has structured meaning or ideas to study of nature. While on the other sode of comparison, we can say that criticism has the same philosophy or rather strategy as it has the particular way of study literature. One can learn criticism of literature but can't learn literature.

3)Criticism as an organized body of knowledge with the idea of literary relationship with history & philosophy:-
Any text has the image of history & philosophy. As one must uses both in his expression by one or another  ultimately we all know that history always referred the connection of past & philosophy has the idea of moral values. So by connecting both one can presents something.so here we can say that like physical structure it has the organized body of knowledge.

(4) This Inductive method towards the archetype is a process of baking up. As we back up from a painting if we want to see composition instead of brushwork. Shakespeare’s Hamlet’s grave – digging scene in which applied inductive method. First of all Hamlet looking at the Yorick scull and then step back Hamlet’s fighting with Laertes because of Ophelia’s death, because Hamlet truly love Ophelia.

(5) Deductive method, it is from general to particular. Some arts move in time, like music; others are presented in space, like painting.  In music we see the rhythm and in painting we see the pattern. But when time passes in music we see the pattern and in painting we see the rhythm. Same thing happen in the literature. For Example – Leibstod. Love and death is common thing in all literature.
 
(6)  ‘‘Autumn Fire.’’

                    In the other gardens
                    And all up the vale,
                   From the autumn bonfires
                   See the smoke trail!

                         Pleasant summer over
                         And all the summer flowers,
                         The red fire blazes,
                       The grey smoke towers.

                Sing a song of seasons!
                Something bright in all!
                Flowers in the summer,
               Fires in the fall!

Analysis of the poem:

                                          ‘‘Autumn Fire’’ in which we applied archetypal criticism as autumn is reflected rather it has symbol of tragedy and at some extended connected with tragedy.

  In the second stanza poet describe summer season. Summer, it has a symbol of the romance. In this poem poet used the words like pleasant and flower. These words related with romantic matter.

  In this poem poet describe two seasons with their symbol but at the end poet describe that all seasons have their own importance. All seasons are necessary in the world. 

i.a Richards figurative language 

When God at first made man,

Having a glass of blessings standing by,

“Let us,” said he, “pour on him all we can.

Let the world’s riches, which dispersed lie,

Contract into a span.”

So strength first made a way;

Then beauty flowed, then wisdom, honour, pleasure.

When almost all was out, God made a stay,

Perceiving that, alone of all his treasure,

Rest in the bottom lay.

“For if I should,” said he,

“Bestow this jewel also on my creature,

He would adore my gifts instead of me,

And rest in Nature, not the God of Nature;

So both should losers be.

“Yet let him keep the rest,

But keep them with repining restlessness;

Let him be rich and weary, that at least,

If goodness lead him not, yet weariness

May toss him to my breast.”

-          GEORGE HERBERT

# Paraphrase:

            Here we can find some of the metaphysical word. Herbert’s also can use paraphrase in this poem. Only Hope, the one good thing the box had contained, remained to comfort humanity in its misfortunes. In this poem, the fusion of the classical and the Christian add richness. The poem metaphysical conceit, which is a pulley that draws man slowly toward God.

            Pulleys and hoists are mechanical devices aimed at assisting us with moving heavy loads through a system of ropes and wheels to gain advantage. Here, we should not be surprised at the use of a pulley as a central conceit since the domain of physics and imagery Herbert can use in his poem.

# Summary / Appreciation:

            In the poem, the central idea posited by Herbert is that when God made man, he poured all his blessings on him, including strength, beauty, wisdom, honour and pleasure. We are told that God “made a stay,” that is, He kept “Rest in the bottom.” God is aware that if He were to bestow this “jewel” on Man as well then Man would adore God’s gifts instead of God himself. God has withheld the gift of rest from man knowing fully well that His other treasures would one day result in a spiritual restlessness in man who, having tired of His material gifts would necessarily turn to God in his exhaustion. God, being prescient, knows that there is the possibility that even the wicked might not turn to Him, but He knows that eventually mortal man is prone to lethargy; his lassitude, then, would be the leverage He needed to toss man to His breast.

            Applied to man in this poem, we can say that the withholding of Rest by God is the leverage that draws mankind towards God when other means would make that task difficult. However, we can find that in the first line of the last stanza, Herbert puns on the word “rest” suggesting that perhaps God will, after all, let man “keep the rest,” but such a reading would the force behind the poem’s conceit. The importance of rest and, by association, sleep- is an idea that was certainly uppermost in the minds of writers.

            Herbert’s The pulley, then, dose not presents a new concept. We can say that the metaphysical poem is that a religious notion is conveyed through a secular, scientific image that requires the reader’s understanding of, some basic low of physics. Thus, “with repining restlessness,” man may wearily seek out God: the apparent absence or lack of one good result in the formation of greater goodness. Misery, therefore, possesses a pulley that helps man’s connection with God by drawing the two together.

structuralism

 Structuralism and Literary criticism this essay given by Gerard Genet. it is deals with every work has same infrastructure of the any text follow the order link it is first present climax then it is go in flashback and it is reached at resolution. Narrative technique changed with time but structure remain same.For Example: Dangerous isque. gajni, zid and Garv.   Another  example : if we take west side story did not write anything "Really new, because their work has the time structure as Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. That we find out in our Bollywood movie like Ram-Leela.    

,According to critic Pramod k. Nayar “ Structuralism is a form of criticism which sought to understand a work of art in the context of structure which have genre culture and language”. In short he says that , “ Structuralism is an attempt to see everything in term of Saussure linguistic”. Signifies and Signified - According to Saussure the sign is constituted by the “signified” and “signified”.  Signifies is the ‘word’ or the alphabets which are arranged in a particular order while the signified is the ‘concept’ that the signifies stands for.other.

We also find binary opposition everywhere. Good-evil

There are three Fundamental Assumptions Saussure linguistics have three fundamental assumptions. 1) Arbitrariness 2) Relational 3) Systematic - Saussure believe that the meaning we attribute to word are entirely . The meaning is presented though “usage” and “convention” only. male-female, god- Satan, white-black.
For example, Serials like Crime Petrol and C.I.D  helps to understand t

Langue and Parole - According to Saussure there is distinction within language . It is necessary to understand Langue and Parole as a part of structuralism and structuralist criticism . To understand Parole one should be aware of the system or Langue . This relationship between parole and langue was at the root of study in Saussurean linguistics.
Structuralism is primarily concerned with the study of structures.  Here we study how things get their meaning.  It is also a philosophical approach.  The whole world has a set up.  Similarly the solar system has a structure with the sun at the centre.  Even an atom has its own structure which resembles our solar system.  Coming to the political set up, a democratic structure is the basis of our govt. [Indian govt.].  Communism has its own setup or structure.  Coming to an individual’s life a person has different names according to the nature of the structure.  Another point Saussure discovered is that the meaning of a sign is arbitrary.  The same flower, say rose, has different names in different languages, but its qualities remain the same.  Saussure points out that a word assumes different meanings according to the particular structure in which it is a part.  When Yeats sings “Whenever green is found,” it means the Irish flag which is green in colour.  So the word ‘’green” represents patriotism.  In the phrase ‘green revolution’ the word green stands for agriculture.
A boy in a class room is a student.  At home he is a son.  In the cricket ground he is a player, and when he gets a job, he gets another name.

Most of hindi movies  or literature are same. For example  boy+ girl love each other but family is against it or vice versa family ready to marriage but children do not like each he Narratology where we find Order , mood, Duration , Narrative techniques etc. First the murder is attempted then the officers come to know about it and then the culprit is caught.

Paper no 8
 

   
New historicism
Name -splanki mayuri manubhai
Rollno-22
Course- cultural studies
Tppic- New historicism
Enrollment no-
Email id -mayuribensolanki24@gmail.com
Submitted to-Department of English

New historicism is based on parallel readings of literary and non-literary texts of the same historical period. It emerged as a mode of literary criticism in North America in the late 1970s and 1980s with an early focus on Renaissance studies. It is less a theory and more a way of reading or textual practice according to the movement’s leading thinker, Stephen Greenblatt.  Greenblatt famously outlined a new historicist mission to ‘speak with the dead’ in his work Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare (1980). He and other critics like Louis Montrose, Jonathan Dollimore, Catherine Gallagher, and D. M. Miller looked for patterns of power and subversion evident within literature and interrelated historical texts. New historicists reacted against earlier theorists who isolated works of literature from their historical context for a pure concentration on the ‘words on the page’. New historicists argue that works of literature do not independently transcend their time, as the New Criticism claimed, but are instead always socially and politically implicated within their historical context. The movement therefore promoted a ‘return to history’ and shared a Marxist concern for the historical and ideological conditions that produce literature in relation to cultural mechanisms of social organization. New historicists suggest that all texts, including literature, are complicit in mediating historical, political, social and cultural anxieties whether these anxieties are explicitly discussed or not.

New historicists suggest that as history is always interpreted and written – in other words always textual and a form of narrative – it is not therefore a transparent process, but a practice bound up with the historian’s interpretative subjectivity. The historian’s own social and cultural context results in potential biases that new historicists argue will be reflected in writings that record history. Moreover, new historicists promote the idea that history is not closed or final, as traditional historians would claim, but is found in acts of interpretation that can negotiate new readings of the textual traces of the past.

New historicists give equal critical weight to analysing the ways in which literature and historical texts negotiate social and political power. The literary text is not prioritized in any new historicist essay. Critics might examine the life of the author and look at traditional historical sources like newspaper reports, letters or journal accounts or cast their net more widely to look at medical or penal records, advertisements or other more obscure documentary sources. Analysing this variety of texts alongside literature enables new historicists to find evidence of widespread power structures operating in society. They then identify potential patterns of subversion that expose networks of power operating across texts. A combined critical focus on literature and historical texts permits the identification of what Greenblatt terms ‘social energies’, which he suggests are encoded across different types of text. Practitioners of new historicism established a pattern for analysis that often begins by citing a single documentary anecdote. The anecdote might initially appear far removed from the concerns of the literary text in question, but by analysing connections across the diverse texts, critics are able to actively expose similar social concerns and power relations in evidence in both. New readings of history and literature allow critics to demonstrate the ways in which pervasive power structures operate in different types of text within a particular society at a particular time.

Power and Michel Foucault’s interest in the ways in which this operates in society has been the main theoretical influence on new historicism. The examination of diverse texts can uncover the extent to which power relations organize and promote accepted social thought and behaviours through discourse – language that signifies a conventional and authoritative way of thinking acceptable to society at a particular time. New historicists argue that dominant discourses organize society in ways that make any challenge to endorsed patterns of thinking appear deviant. Greenblatt suggests that even ideas of selfhood are formed as a result of the power-based relations that are embedded in social discourse. He calls this self-fashioning and explains that subjectivity becomes less an act of autonomous self-creation and more the shaping of self to comply with an authoritative social power. In new historicist terms, subjectivity itself becomes a type of performance, with identities produced or fashioned to conform to mechanisms of social discipline that serve dominant cultural needs.

New historicism is influenced by cultural anthropology. Critics practise literary analysis with a method of ‘thick description’, a term coined by Clifford Geertz in his book The Interpretation of Cultures (1973). Geertz explains this practice with an example of two boys winking. In essence, he argues that the thinnest description of their behaviour – a factual account without any interpretation – will deem the boys’ action an involuntary twitch of the eye. On the other hand, a thick description will suggest that the wink is deliberate behaviour that could be sending a message or code understood by the two boys.  New historicists would decode the message with closer examination and contextual analysis to produce a thick description that incorporates a commentary and interpretation of the act and its power relations.

New historicism is primarily concerned with the ways in which social power relations are embedded in language. Recognizing the textuality of history, critics agree that a range of texts, including literature, may generate subversive insights. However, they maintain that any potential for real subversion will be undercut and contained by the text itself. This significant principle of new historicist thinking emphasizes that ultimately there is no space in literature for effective resistance to authoritative social power. All texts will eventually contain and undermine their potential for subversion by submitting to and reinforcing the dominant social thinking of the day. Such customary pessimism for new historicist thinking has been the target of criticism, but practitioners nevertheless maintain that texts may point towards subversion, but they will surrender to the practice they expose. A new historicist approach to literary analysis will therefore illustrate the ways in which ideological practices always short-circuit any real challenge to prevailing power relations in society.

Paper no 7

T.S.ELIOT TRADITION AND INDIVIDUAL TALENT

Name -solanki mayuri manubhai
Roll no-22
Course- literary theory and criticism
Topic -Tradition and individual Talent
Enrollment no-
Email id-mayuribensolanki24@gmail.com
Submitted to -Department of English

            In his essay “Tradition and individual talent” Eliot spreads his concept of tradition, which reflects his reaction against romantic subjectivism and emotionalism. He opines that tradition gives the reader something new, something arresting something intellectual and something vital for literary conception.


            Tradition according to Eliot is that part of living culture inherited from the past and functioning in the formation of the present. Eliot maintains that tradition is bound up with historical sense, which is a perception that the past is not something lost and invalid.


                 According to Eliot, is the part of living culture which is inherited from the past and also has an important function in forming the present. Historical sense is a perception that past is not something that is lost or invalid. Rather it has a function in the present.


                   It exits with the present. It exerts its influence in our ideas, thoughts and consciousness. This is historical sense. It is an awareness not only of the pastness of the past but the presence of the past. On this sense the past is our contemporary as the present is. Eliot’s view of tradition is not linear but spatial. Eliot does not believe that the past is followed by the presence and succession of a line. On the contrary, the past and the present life side by side in the space .Thus it is spatial. Then Eliot holds that not only the past influences the present but the present, too, influences the past. To prove this idea, he conceives of all literature as a total, indivisible order. All existing literary works belong to an order like the member of a family. Any new work of literature is like the arrival of a member or a new relative or a new acquaintance. It arrival and presence bring about a readjustment of the previous relationship of the old members. A new works takes its place in the order. Its arrival and inclusion modifies the order and relationship among all works. The order is then modified. A new work art influences all the existing-literary work, as a new relative influences the old member of a family. It is this sense that the present modifies the past as the past modifies the present. The past is modified by the present also in the sense that we can look at the past literature always through ever renewing perceptive of the present. A new work of art cannot be evaluated in isolation without reference to past literature and tradition. Evaluation is always comparative and relative. It calls for a comparison with the past that is with tradition. No poet, no artist of any art has his complete meaning alone. His significance, his appreciation is the appreciation of his relation to the dead poets and artists. You cannot value him alone. You must set him for contrast and comparison among the dead.


                             A work of art has two dimensions-it is at once personal and universal. It is an individual composition, but at the same time, its inclusion into tradition determines its worth and universal appeal. A writer must be aware that he belongs to a larger tradition and there is always an impact of tradition on him. Individual is an element formed by and forming the culture to which he belongs. He should surrender his personality to something larger and more significant.


                          In his conscious cultivation of historical sense, a writer reduces the magnification of personal self, which leads to depersonalization and impersonal act. When a writer is aware the historical sense, it doesn’t mean that he influenced by the past or his own self. Rather the writer should minimize the importance of his personal self, which will lead him to depersonalization and impersonal act. Tradition is a living stream. It is not a lump or dead mass. But the main current does not always flow through the most noted authoress. Eliot regrets that tradition in English world of letters is used in prerogative sense. This is one reason of the undeveloped critical sense of the English nation. They are too individualistic on intellectual habits. Eliot criticizes the English intellectuals. According to Eliot to the English intellectual tradition is something that should be avoided. They give much more importance on individualism and are critical about the historical sense or tradition.


                                 Like Arnold, Eliot views tradition as something living. For both the word “tradition” implies growth. Eliot recalls Edmund Burke what burke did for political thought, by glorifying the idea of inheritance; Eliot has done for English literary criticism. Burke, famous English politician, gave emphasis on the experience of the past in politics. In the same Eliot also gives emphasis on the past regarding English criticism.


                      Tradition does not mean uncritical imitation of the past. Nor does it mean only erudition. A writer draws on only the necessary knowledge of tradition. He must use his freedom according to his needs. He cannot be completely detached. Often the most original moments of a work of art echo the mind of earlier writers. Though it sounds paradoxical it is true. It is paradoxical but true that even the most original writings sometimes reflect the thinking of the past or earlier writers. So, there is nothing which is absolutely original.


                       A partial or complete break with the literary past is a danger. An awareness of what has gone before is necessary to know what is there to be done in the present or future. A balance between the control of tradition and the freedom of an individual is essential to art. Eliot said elsewhere that by losing tradition we lose our held on the present. Hence, a writer should be aware of the importance of tradition.


                  The essay gives voice to the fact that modernist experiments seldom simply destroyed or rejected traditional methods of   representation or traditional literary forms; rather, the modernists sought to enter into a sort of conversation with the art of the past, sometimes reverently, sometimes mockingly. No poet, no artist of any art, has his complete meaning alone. The existing monuments form an ideal order among themselves, which is modified by the introduction of the new work of art among them. The existing order is complete before the new work arrives; for order to persist after the supervening  of novelty, the whole existing order must be, if ever so slightly, altered…… the past[is] altered by the present as much as the present is directed by the past.


                                 Eliot emphasis both the way that tradition shapes the modern artist and the way that a “really new” work of art makes us see that tradition anew.


                                   Honest criticism and sensitive appreciation are directed not upon the poet but upon the poetry. If we attend to the confused cries of the newspaper critics and the SUSURRUS of popular repetition that follows, we shall hear the names of poets in great numbers; if we seek no Blue-book knowledge but the enjoyment of poetry, and ask for poem, we shall seldom find it. I have tried to point out the importance of the relation of the poem to other poems by other authors, and suggested the conception of poetry as a living whole of all the poetry that has ever been written. The other aspect of this impersonal theory of poetry is the relation of the poem to its author. And I hinted, by an analogy, that he mind of the mature poet differs from that of the immature one not precisely in any valuation of “personality,” not being necessarily more interesting, or having “more to say,” but rather by being a more finely perfected medium in which special, or very varied, feelings are at liberty to enter into new combinations.


                        The experience, you will notice, the elements which enter the presence of the transforming catalyst, are of two kinds: emotions and feelings. The effect of a work of art upon the person who enjoys it is an experience different in kind from any experience not of art. It may be formed out of one emotion, or may be a combination of several; and various feelings, inhering for the writer in particular words or phrases or images, may be added to compose the final result. Or great poetry may be made without the direct use of any emotion whatever: composed out of feelings solely if you compare several representative passages of the greatest poetry you see how great is the variety of types of combination, and also how completely any semi-ethical criterion of “sublimity” misses the mark. For it is not the “greatness,” the intensity, of the emotions, the components, but the intensity of the artistic process, the pressure, so to speak, under which the fusion takes place, that counts. The episode of Paolo and Francesca employs a definite emotion, but the intensity of the poetry is something quite different from whatever intensity in the supposed experience it may give the impression of. It is no more intense, furthermore than the murder of Agamemnon, or the agony of Othello, gives an artistic effect apparently closer to a possible original than the scenes from Dante. In the Agamemnon, the artistic emotion approximates to the emotion of an actual spectator; in Othello to the emotion of the protagonist himself. But the difference between art and the event is always absolute; the combination which is the murder of Agamemnon is probably as complex as that which is the voyage of Ulysses. In either case there has been a fusion of elements. The ode of Keats contains a number of feelings which have nothing particular to do with the nightingale, but which the nightingale, partly, perhaps, because of its attractive name, and partly because of its reputation, served to bring together.


“It is not in his personal emotions, the emotions provoke by
Particular events in his life that the poet is in any way
Remarkable or interesting. His particular emotions may
Simple, crude, or flat. The emotion in his poetry will be a
Very complex thing, but not with the complexity of the
Emotions of people who have very complex or unusual
Emotions in life.”


                According to this quote he told that the emotions which are described in the poetry by poets it shows the emotions of the poet which related with the particular event of his life which is remarkable or interesting for poet. It is possible that poetry is a complex thing but the complexity of emotions of poet is not Acceptable in poetry.


“The business of the poet is not to find new emotions; But to use the ordinary ones and, in working them up into poetry, to express feelings which are not in actual emotions at all. And emotions which he has never Experienced will serve his turn as well as those familiar to him. Consequently, we must believe that “emotion recollected in tranquility” is an in exact formula.”



                 According to this quote the business of the poet is not to find new emotion but to use of an ordinary emotions in new way and create a new emotions from the ordinary one.


                 T.S.Eliot’s ‘tradition and individual is one of the critical essay in which Eliot has described with concept of tradition, individual talent, emotion and poetry as well as his concept of depersonalized art. In the opening of the essay, Eliot’s defines tradition, which is the literary history. He says that each and every nation has its individual genius who creates literature. So many such individual writers produce a big bulk of writing which is tradition. In other words, tradition is the matter of past that is even related to present because it is in the process of formation. Eliot gives an example of English literature produced from the Anglo Saxon period up to the present day. It is like a wall where there are so many bricks working commonly. Eliot also says that when a writer comes to write at present. He should be aware of the tradition. To learn the tradition he should have a great labor but he should not imitate it. Learning the tradition is also called historical sense that is necessary to the present writer, because tradition as the past influences.


                    Eliot even says that the new writer writing at present becomes the part of tradition so he has to learn tradition but to imitate it. No writers and writings have value in isolation, the writer and his writing would not be evaluated with the writers of the past, he should be compared and contrasted with the tradition, it is possible to examine his individual talent. If the new writer has imitated the tradition, blindly such slavish imitation should be discouraged because it has not individual talent. Individual talent is the novelty or newness. If the present writer has brought something novelty in his writing, it is called individual talent such novelty should be encourage because it suggests the genius of the writer.


      Eliot has also given his personal idea about the depersonalization of art, which is also called impersonal poetry. He says that emotions and feelings are related to poetry but they should be expressed indirectly and objectively. In other words, Eliot says that emotions of the poet are expressed in poetry but the poet should in personified them. His concept is against the concept of words being involved in poetry. Instead, the poet should not be identified as the direct speaker in poetry but he should indirectly through the characters or other object, which is called objective correlative. So Eliot says “poetry is not the turning loose of emotions but escape from emotion. It is not the expression of personality but escape from it



             In order to support his concept of depersonalized art, Eliot use and analogy related to a gas chamber. In a gas chamber during the process of forming sulpheric asid, sulpheris dioxide and Oxygen are needed but they do not react until a plate of platinum is kept. When the platinum is kept there, it causes reaction between them so that, sulpheric acid is formed. In the acid platinum does not become present. This analogy is applied in the process of poetic creation.


                   The poet and his mind is catalyst like the platinum to change others, medium but as if the platinum is not present in the acid, the poet also should not be present in poetry. His role is very crucial because without the poet, poetry is not possible to create but, in the creation he should be totally dead or absent like the platinum absent in acid. It is his concept of impersonal art and he criticizes many English poets including Wordsworth who have not become impersonal. He appreciates metaphysical such as a John Donne is to be impersonal in poetry.


      Conclusion:-

             

                   T.S.Eliot spread his concept of Tradition which reflects his reaction against Romantic subjectivism and emotionalism.He describes the concept of historical senses very useful for better understanding of poetic sense or literary sense.              

Paper no 6


The Portrayal of Marriage in George Eliot’s 'Middlemarch'

Name -solanki mayuri manubhai
Roll no -22
Enrollment no-
Course - The victorian age
Topic-The potrayal of marriage in george eliot in middlemarch
Email id -mayuribensolanki24@gmail.com
Submitted to -Deoartment of English

Throughout history, marriage has been central to the lives of both men and women – from the Wife of Bath’s Prologue in Chaucer’s Tales to Henry James’s Portrait of a Lady, the question of matrimony has always been a pervasive theme in the trajectory of literature. It is no surprise, then, that marriage is the most ubiquitous subject of George Eliot’s Middlemarch, with five marriages taking place during the novel and other relationships being analysed. But whilst many female novelists at the time would use marriage to bring their novels to joyful conclusions – Austen’s Emma and Bronte’s Jane Eyre are clear examples – Eliot was more interested in exploring the realities of matrimonial life. In so doing, Eliot distanced herself from the tropes of conventional romance derided in her essay, Silly Novels by Lady Novelists. Eliot opposed the falsely-romantic and idealized view of life and of love, and so her novels adopt a realist approach to nuptial union. Her protagonists do not always end their trials and tribulations ‘with a complexion more blooming and locks more redundant than ever’. This essay shall discuss the marriages of Rosamond and Dorothea to show how Eliot not only rejects idealistic views of marriage and of femininity, but also how she criticises marital conventions in a patriarchal and class-obsessed society.


The marriage between Rosamond and Lydgate exemplifies the problems caused by ideals of romance and femininity. Lydgate wants a wife with ‘that feminine radiance, that distinctive womanhood which must be classed with flowers and music.’ This description embodies the conventional model of womanly beauty, and so we see how Lydgate has been manipulated by ideals, leading him to choose a wife for the wrong reasons. It is no wonder, though, that having adopted this interpretation of femininity, Lydgate falls for Rosamond. Owing to her education at Mrs Lemon’s school, Rosamond represents the supposedly perfect lady: she has ‘excellent taste in costume’ and a ‘nymph-like figure’ accompanied by ‘pure blondness’. Lydgate has been deceived into believing that Rosamond would be the best wife for him, simply because she fulfils a societal stereotype, rather than because her personality suits his. But Rosamond is also deceived by ideals and conventions – she is obsessed with appearances, and she arguably chooses her husband because of his aristocratic connections. In fact, she is so concerned with impressing Lydgate’s upper-class relatives that she wants him to get a ‘first-rate position elsewhere than in Middlemarch’ so that they are not shocked by her family. Again, this idea of marrying into the aristocracy is typical of ‘silly novels’, which have clearly influenced Rosamond. Hence, she estimates her interaction with Lydgate as ‘the opening incidents of a preconceived romance’.


Despite the fact that, according to the narrator, ‘Each lived in a world of which the other knew nothing,’ and even though she has only known him ‘through the brief entrances and exits of a few imaginative weeks called courtship’, Rosamond convinces herself that meeting Lydgate is ‘the great epoch of her life’. Because of the brevity of their acquaintance, and because they are misled by ideals of femininity and of love, their marriage fails. They do not actually know each other (Rosamond is ‘by nature an actress of parts’), so Lydgate is forced to admit that ‘the tender devotedness and docile adoration of the ideal wife must be renounced, and life must be taken up on a lower stage of expectation.’ Society, along with the ‘Many-volumed romances of chivalry’, has created false ideals, and both Rosamond and Lydgate suffer for it. Their marriage is rife with conflict, with neither husband nor wife accepting the judgements of the other, leading to a stale-mate. Rosamond is not the ‘docile’ or ‘devoted’ wife that Lydgate desired, and she even begins to think that ‘if she had known how Lydgate would behave, she would never have married him.’ It’s clear, then, that Lydgate and Rosamond, conditioned as they have been by society, married for the wrong reasons, and so they writhe under the failure of ideals and conventions.


Dorothea’s marriage to Casaubon is similarly driven by dishonest ideals and flawed conventions. Of course, neither Dorothea nor Casaubon resemble the heroine or hero of a Victorian romance novel. And yet, both still cling to certain ideals of femininity, concerned not so much with beauty or taste, but with the patriarchal stereotype of submissive women (which Lydgate also seems to uphold). Casaubon thinks that Dorothea ‘might really be such a helpmate to him as would enable him to dispense with a hired secretary’, showing the lack of equality in his marital expectations. Dorothea, though ambitious in what Rosemary Ashton calls her ‘idealistic attempt to find a role’, feels similarly. She finds her role in the vocation of wife and, in the words of Cara Weber, ‘internalises the ideal of wifely duty’. Hence, she often compares her ideal relationship to that between a father and daughter. She wishes for the ‘freedom of voluntary submission to a guide who would take her along the grandest path.’ This ideal of wifely duty, combined with her Theresa-like ‘passionate, ideal nature’ which ‘demanded an epic life’, leads her to marrying Casaubon, with whom she is utterly incompatible. We only have to compare the speech of the two to see how very different they are. Derek Oldfield argues that, whilst Casaubon’s speech is characterised by intricate constructions and subordinate clauses (as in his proposal letter), Dorothea’s speech is constituted of simple sentences and childish exclamations (“Oh, how happy!” she says to her uncle).


Perhaps Dorothea thinks that, in helping Casaubon with his ‘Key to all Mythologies’, she will achieve the ‘epic life’ she so desires, cultivating her intelligence towards some higher end. But there is a tension here: Dorothea’s energetic personality is surely incompatible with her religious commitment to subservience, arguably influenced by the inequality of Victorian society. She has attempted to conform to a stereotypical role she simply cannot play. This is why ‘the large vistas and wide fresh air which she had dreamed of finding in her husband’s mind’ become ‘anterooms and winding passages’ leading ‘nowhither.’ The metaphorical ‘anterooms and winding passages’ seem an apt description of her married life, trapped as she is in Casaubon’s ‘small windowed and melancholy-looking’ abode. In this sense, her confession to Celia that she is “rather short-sighted” is symbolic of her illusions about the virtues of marrying a secluded old man. It is when she is in Rome, confronted by the ‘ruins and basilicas’ that she realises her mistake. Rather than being charmed by the city’s antique beauty, she is shocked by a ‘vast wreck of ambitious ideals’ and ‘a glut of confused ideas’. Here she comprehends the foolishness of her marriage with Casaubon and her desire to be a submissive wife – her marriage is a ‘wreck of ambitious ideals’. Things worsen when she returns to Middlemarch from her lonely honeymoon only to be even more separated from her husband: they inhabit different spheres within the house, Casaubon’s domain being his library, Dorothea’s being her blue-green boudoir. This separation arguably reflects the 19thCentury distinction between masculine and feminine spheres, which Dorothea fights against in other ways (planning housing and trying to set up the hospital).


The other problem in the Dorothea-Casaubon marriage is that, as with Lydgate and Rosamond, their courtship is extremely short. Dorothea meets Casaubon in chapter two, and after ‘three more conversations with him,’ she is ‘convinced that her first impressions had been just.’ Dorothea receives Casaubon’s engagement letter in chapter five, and they are married five chapters later. As Bernard Paris argues, ‘Dorothea is a victim of the conditions of civilised courtship, which do not allow the parties to gain much knowledge of each other.’ And so we see again how dangerous these conventions can be. It is because they hardly know each other that they fail to trust one another properly – hence Casaubon’s ‘disgust and suspicion’ about Ladislaw. Moreover, their lack of closeness as a couple is evident throughout (‘She was as blind to his inward troubles as he to hers’), especially when compared to the Garth relationship, who are touchingly communicative – Caleb’s habit is to ‘take no important step without consulting Susan’. And so, Eliot is not just pointing out the failings of ideals and feminine stereotypes – she also condemns the brevity of modern courtship, since it deceives expectations. After embarking on the voyage of marriage, we discover ‘that the sea is not within sight – that, in fact, you are exploring an enclosed basin.’ This is why the marriage between Mary and Fred is a ‘solid, mutual happiness’ – they have known each other from childhood, and as Fred says, “I have never been without loving Mary.”


So what, in Eliot’s view, constitutes a successful marriage? Romantic idealism and societal conventions certainly do not – we see from the Cadwalladers that marriages across social classes can still succeed, even if they are unorthodox. It’s clear from the above examples that the happiest marriages follow on from lengthy courtships and also some sort of mutuality. Mary and Fred become published authors later in life, both giving credit to the other for their help – this alone demonstrates the value of mutuality. The Garth’s are also mutually happy, both working to provide for the family (Susan is a teacher). Susan Garth feels she married the cleverest man she has ever known whilst Caleb thinks he has a woman he is not worthy of. This illustrates the importance of mutual admiration and love in a marriage, something that can only be certain after a long courtship. This love is clear in Dorothea’s marriage to Will – as she tells her sister, “you would have to feel with me, else you would never know,” showing how ineffably strong her love is. The problem with her first marriage was its lack of love, and as we discover later, ‘No life would have been possible to Dorothea which was not filled with emotion’. Moreover, she has something worthwhile to do in her second marriage: she lives ‘a life filled… with beneficent activity’ helping Will in his political work. This explains the historical placing of the novel, since we might argue that the passing of the Great Reform Bill was directly influenced by Will Ladislaw and Dorothea’s help.


And yet, as aforementioned, Eliot’s novels do not end in idealistic perfection. There is still much unhappiness and ambiguity in the Finale. Harriet Bulstrode is martyred in her extreme loyalty to her husband, and we see her at the end of the novel with greying hair and black clothing. Rosamond and Lydgate’s marriage continues turbulently until Lydgate dies at 50, having achieved none of his great ambitions. Even the happiness of Dorothea and Will seems uncertain. The narrator makes a particularly sarcastic comment about Dorothea’s loss of agency in life: ‘she had now a life filled… with a beneficent activity which she had not the doubtful pains of discovering and making out for herself.’ She may be doing great things, but she is only doing them in terms of ‘wifely help’ rather than making independent changes, as the novelist herself has done. She has sadly been ‘absorbed into the life of another’ and is ‘only known in a certain circle as a wife and mother’. But perhaps this is unfair: after all, Dorothea’s influence is clear in that, in the Finale, her epithet is used to describe Will as an ‘ardent public man’. Moreover, as Kathleen Blake argues, ‘the novel’s focus on the disabilities of a woman’s lot’, and thus Eliot is showing that, despite all of her ambitions, the best Dorothea could hope for was a productive and happy marriage to the man she loved. To suggest her marriage is a submission to patriarchy is to miss the point – she has done the best she could within societal restraints, refusing to consider Will’s ‘low-birth’ and instead marrying for love.

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romantic literature from Mayuri Solanki

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victorian literature from Mayuri Solanki

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archetypal criticism by nortrope frye from Mayuri Solanki

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media and circuit of cuture from Mayuri Solanki

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Name - Solanki Mayuri ManubhaiRoll no -22Enrollment no - Course- The Romantic LiteratureTopic - negative capability by KeatsEmail id- mayuribensolanki24@gmail.comSubmitted to - Department of English

John Keats 

 31 October 1795 – 23 February 1821 was an English Romantic poet. He was one of the main figures of the second generation of Romantic poets, along with Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley, despite his works having been in publication for only four years before his death at age 25 in the year 1821

Although his poems were not generally well received by critics during his lifetime, his reputation grew after his death, and by the end of the 19th century, he had become one of the most beloved of all English poets. He had a significant influence on a diverse range of poets and writers. Jorge Luis Borgesstated that his first encounter with Keats's work was the most significant literary experience of his life.^[2]The poetry of Keats is characteristic by sensual imagery, most notably in the series of odes. This is typical of romantic poets, as they aimed to accentuate extreme emotion through the emphasis of natural imagery. Today his poems and letters are some of the most popular and most analysed in English literature. Some of the most acclaimed works of Keats are "I Stood Tip-toe Upon a Little Hill", "Sleep and Poetry", and the famous sonnet "On First Looking into Chapman's Homer".

To the best of my knowledge ,john Keats is not required reading at the rot-man school of management nor at Harvard business  school .this may have something to do with  the fact that he is an English romantic poet and not say a modern leadership guru but still its a shame                                             One of the greatest leadership lesson i ever learned came by way of john Keats  two hundred years ago the man who penned ode on a Grecian urn and la belle dames sans mercy introduced the concept of negative capability to the world actually he introduced it to a friend by way of a letter and the world has paid attention rvr since . according to Keats  negative capability manifests . 

  " when is capable of being in uncertainties ,mysteries ,doubts without any irritable reaching after fact and reason ".
 negative capability is an ability to appreciate fully and experience wholly things that transcend logic .it is an acceptance that there are things that reason ,alone, cannot adequately explain.those who possess  negative capability have a high tolerance for ambiguity and uncertainty.they can accept contrariness and not be rendered helpless. negative capability is the power to face the chaos the swirling formlessness and not panic.
 and this is why i believe negative capability is as importance to those who aspire to lead and manage as it to those who make art. almost anyone can follow a recipe. or a how to manuals ,but the ability to solve problems for which there is no easy answer and the world is filled with wicked problems ,the ability to mitigate situation that are charged with emotion with politics conflicting views and layers of complexity these are the challenges ew need those in position of leadership to manage every day. and while you might imagine the best leaders are those with an affinity for order and control i think it's likely that the best also have a certain negative capability.
 generally i find people like a sense of order and control. we like it when things run smoothly and go according to plan we like to have a handle on things. yet the truth is that we frequently run into things that are illogical paradoxical irrational unpredictable and unreasonable .
when Keats talks about the need to exits without any irritable reaching for fact and reason he dose so not because he is dismissive of fact and reason per se but because we are frequently presented with things that are some hoe bigger and trickier than facts .
i am an educator.for more than two decades i have been a teacher coach principle and district leader. and it is in this arena where i value negative capability more and more . educators for the best know that facts are actually a very small part of the job.you see the work that happens in school is fundamentally human sure there are budgets to manage and spreadsheet to manipulate ,but at its our work involves the hearts and minds of people of children and teenagers and parents . and i can tell you unequivocally that being able to explain a complex algebra equation is one thing and having the ability to inspire confidence in the child who is convinced that he just can't do it is something else altogether.
 similarly a teacher who present the facts to a parent about a struggling student without the requisite amount of compassion and humanity is likely in for a very difficult encounter and not as a result of any lack of facts .
when i was a principle i knew that every day was going to bring a new and unexpected challenge .and many of them were not , pardon the pun textbook  problems with obvious answer .working at district level position i see more than ever that big picture stuff is seldom black and white and frequently demands more than intuition and instinct among them complexity norm.
which is why if i were designing a course syllabus for organizational leaders i would insist on john Keats .of course future managers executive should to seek to have a handle on the things they manage .they should strive to implement and maintain systems that will optimize achievements and improvement chance for success .they ought to monitor and adjust and adapt. but they must also be taught to be wary of the trap. one must not become so focused on order and control that one loses sight of the underlying truth which is .
we live and work on the brink of uncertainty all the time. and the ability to navigate ambiguous and things beyond our control ,the capacity to confront the mysteries that appear before us well let's just say a little negative capability can go a long way

Suitted to – Department of English

DRYDEN

  
1)  IN THE FIRST VIDEO FEW QUESTION ABOUT DRYDEN DEFINATION OF PLAY .THE SPEAKER DR SANJAY MUKHARJI TAKES ON WHY DR SAMUEL JOHNSON CALLED THE DRYDEN FATHER  OF ENGLISH CRITICISM AND HE ALSO SPEAKS ABOUT DRYDEN AS A NEO CLASSICAL CRITIC SEVERAL QUESTION ANSWERED BY HIM.

2) IN THE SECOND VIDEO QUESTION WAS HOW CONNECT THIS TWO PHENOMENON POET AND CRITIC WHY? CHIDANAD BHATTACHARYTAKES ABOUT IN THIS VIDEO DRYDEN AGE COME AFTER THE ELIZABETHAN AGE AND ELIZABETHAN AGE WAS FREE FLOW AND IMAGINATION AND ROMANCE .AND MICTURE OF CLASSIST BUT NOT A BLID CLASSIST 

3) IN THE THIRD VIDEO DEFINATION OF THE DRAMA BY DRYDEN EXPLAIN BY SAMUEL GAIJANSIR .HE EXPLAIN THAT THERE IS NO ARTIFICIALITY IN THE  DRAMA IT SHOULD BE  NATURAL .THERE MUST BE A PASSION AND HUMORS BUT AS PART OF A LIFE DRYDEN USE THE WORD DILIGHT AND PLEASURE PLEASURE MAY BE SEN SURE AND DILIGHT IS FOR THE DIVINE . IN THE HISTORY OS CIVILIZATION THERE MUST BE INSTRUCTION BUT IF IT'S DILIGHTFUL MANNER IT CREATES LANDMARK EVENT.

4) I WOULD LIKE TO SAY THAT PROSAIC DAILOGE ARE CONCERN IN THE PLAY BECAUSE PROSAIC MANNER WRITER GETS MORE SPACE FOR WRITING OR SHOW THAT INNOVATIVE IDEA  IN OTHER SIDE IF WRITERS WRITE IN POETIC MANNER OUDIANCE AND READERS CAN NOT UNDERSTAND EASSLY AS THEIR UNDERSTANDE PROSAIC DAILOGUE.