UNIT 6

ENGLISH IN INDIA
 ENGLISH IN INDIA

Indian English Literature-

Indian English Literature pertains to that body of work by writers from India, who
pen strictly in the English language and whose native or co-native language could
be one of the numerous regional and indigenous languages of India. English
literature in India is also intimately linked with the works of associates of the
Indian diaspora, especially with people like Salman Rushdie who was born in
Indian but presently resides elsewhere.

Development of Indian English Literature

Indian English literature precisely conforming to its gradual evolution had all
begun in the summers of 1608 when Emperor Jahangir, in the court of the
Mughals, had welcomed Captain William Hawkins, Commander of British Naval
Expedition Hector, in a gallant manner. Though India was under the British rule,
still, English was adopted by the Indians as a language of understanding and
awareness, education and literary expression with an important means of
communication amongst various people of dissimilar religions.

Indian English literature, quite understandably, spurs attention from every quarter
of the country, making the genre admired in its own right. Creative writing in
English is looked at as an integral part of the literary traditions in the Indian
perspective of fine arts. In early times of British rule, the novelistic writing, indeed
the Indian English dramas and Indian English poetry, had tremendously arrested
attention of the native masses. Every possible regional author was dedicated in
their intelligence to deliver in the `British mother tongue`, highly erudite and
learned as they were even in such periods. The man that comes to surface more
than once in all the genres of Indian English literature is Rabindranath Tagore, who
possibly was an unending ocean of knowledge and intellect, still researched as an
institution in him.

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The truthfulness and honesty of the writers writing in English is often made a
theme of suspect in their own country and in other English-speaking countries
they are indeed addressed as `marginal` to the mainstream of English literature.
Indian English literature writers are sometimes incriminated of forsaking the
national or regional language and penning in a western, "alien" language; their
dedication to the nation is considered in much suspicion, a rather unfortunate
sensibility for such intelligent and cultured wonders.

Indian literature in English dates back to the 1830s, to Kashiprasad Ghosh, who is
considered the first Indian poet writing in English. Sochee Chunder Dutt was the
first writer of fiction, thus bringing in the tremendous attraction and brilliancy of
admiration of Indian English novels. In the beginning, however, political writing in
the novel or essay format was dominant, as can be seen in Raja Ram Mohan Roy
and his extraordinary output. He had written and dedicated pages about social
reform and religion in India, solely in the medium of English.

Style of Indian English Literature

`Stylistic influence` from the local languages appears to be an exceptional feature of
much of the Indian literature in English - the local language construction and
system is very much reflected in the illustrations, as is mirrored in the literal
translation of local idioms. Yet one more breathtaking and praiseworthy feature of
these English Indian writers is that they have not only `nativised` the `British
mother tongue` in terms of stylistic features, but, they have also acculturated
English in terms of the `Indianised context`. A broad view that the mother tongue is
the primary means of literary creativity is still generally held across cultural
diversity. Creativeness in another tongue is often measured as a deviation from this
strict norm. The native language is considered `pure`, it is addressed as a standard
model of comparison. This however have caused difficulties for non-native writers
of Indian English literature and it is more than infrequently that they have to guard
themselves writing again, in English.

Writers of Indian English literature

Besides the legendary and hugely venerated Indian English literary personalities
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like Rabindranath Tagore (Sadhana) or R K Narayan ( Malgudi days), later
novelists like Kamala Markandaya (Nectar in a Sieve, Some Inner Fury, A Silence of
Desire, Two Virgins), Manohar Malgaonkar (Distant Drum, Combat of Shadows,
The Princes, A Bend in the Ganges and The Devil`s Wind), Anita Desai (Clear Light
of Day, The Accompanist, Fire on the Mountain, Games at Twilight) and Nayantara
Sehgal, have ceaselessly captured the spirit of an independent India struggling to
break away from the British and traditional Indian cultures and establish a distinct
identity.

Dur ing the 1980`s and 90`s, India had emerged as a major literary nation. Salman
Rushdie`s `Midnight`s Children` had become a rage around the world, even
winning the Booker Prize. The worldwide success of Rushdie`s ` Midnight`s
Children ` made him the first writer of the Indian Diaspora to enter the sphere of
elite international writers and leave an indelible mark on the global literary scene.
Other Indian English literature Novelists of repute of the contemporary times
include - V.S. Naipaul, Shobha De (Selective Memory), G.V. Desani, M
Ananthanarayanan, Bhadani Bhattacharya, Arun Joshi, Khushwant Singh, O.V.
Vijayan, Allan Sealy (The Trotternama), Sashi Tharoor (Show Business, The Great
Indian Novel), Amitav Ghosh (Circle of Reason, Shadow Lines) and others.

The writer in the genre of Indian English literature, who took the world with a
storm, was Arundhati Roy, whose `The God of Small Things` won the 1997 Booker
Prize and became an international best-seller overnight. Rohinton Mistry, Firdaus
Kanga, Kiran Desai (Strange Happenings in the Guava Orchard), Sudhir Kakar (The
Ascetic of Desire), Ardeshir Vakil (Beach Boy) and Jhumpa Lahiri (Interpreter of
Maladies) are some other renowned writers of Indian origin. Former Prime Minister
P.V. Narasimha Rao`s The Insider; Satish Gujral`s A Brush with Life; R.K. Laxman`s
The Tunnel of Time, Prof. Bipin Chandra`s India After Independence, Sunil
Khilnani`s The Idea of India, J.N. Dixit`s Fifty Years of India`s Foreign Policy,
Yogesh Chadha`s Rediscovering Gandhi and Pavan [Link]`s The Great Indian
Middle Class, are also outstanding works of the recent times.

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The mid-20th century Indian literature in English had witnessed the emergence of
poets such as Nissim Ezekiel (The Unfurnished Man), P Lal, A K Ramanujan (The
Striders, Relations, Second Sight, Selected Poems), Dom Moraes (A Beginning),
Keki .N . Daruwalla, Geive Patel were profoundly influenced by literary
movements taking place in the West, like Symbolism, Surrealism, Existentialism,
Absurdism and Confessional Poetry. These authors heavily had made use of Indian
phrases alongside English words and had tried to reproduce a blend of the Indian
and the Western cultures.

Indian English literature is an honest enterprise to demonstrate the ever rare gems
of Indian writing in English. From being a singular and exceptional, rather gradual
native flare-up of geniuses, Indian English has turned out to be a new form of
Indian culture and voice in which India converses regularly. While Indian authors -
poets, novelists, essayists, dramatists - have been making momentous and
considerable contributions to world literature since the pre-Independence era, the
past few years have witnessed a gigantic prospering and thriving of Indian English
writing in the global market. Not only are the works of Indian authors writing in
English surging on the best-seller list, they are also incurring and earning an
immense amount of critical acclamation. Commencing from Mulk Raj Anand, R.
K. Narayan, Anita Desai, Sarojini Naidu, Toru Dutt to Salman Rushdie, Vikram
Seth, Allan Sealy, Amitav Ghosh, Jhumpa Lahiri, Chitra Banerjee, Arundhati Roy,
Vikram Chandra - the panache of fine Indian writers is long and much augmented.

India is the third largest English book-producing country after the United States
and the United Kingdom, and the largest number of books are published in
English. Creative writing in English is considered an integral part of the literary
traditions in South Asia. Indeed, according to the words of an Indian critic Iyengar
three decades ago, quoted by Kachru, there seems to be an acceptance of Indian
English literature as "one of the voices in which India speaks...it is a new voice, no
doubt, but it is as much Indian as the others" (Kachru 1994:528-529). Sanyal claims,
too, that Indian writing represents a new form of Indian culture. It has become
assimilated and is today a dynamic element of the culture (Sanyal 1987: 7).

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It can be said to be a challenge for the Indian novelist to write about his experiences
in a language which has developed in a very different cultural setting; in a "foreign"
language; how to create sense of reality and intensity of Indian life in the medium
of English language (Sanyal 1987: 7). The integrity of the writers writing in English
is often suspect in their own country, and in other English-speaking countries they
are treated as marginal to the mainstream of English literature (Kachru 1986b:19).
Indian English writers are sometimes accused of abandoning the national or
regional language and writing in a western, "foreign", language; their commitment
to the nation is considered suspect. Indian writing in English dates back to the
1830s, to Kashiprasad Ghosh, who is considered the first Indian poet writing in
English. Sochee Chunder Dutt was the first writer of fiction. In the beginning,
however, political writing was dominant (Kachru 1994: 530-531) (e.g. Rammohan
Roy wrote about social reform and religion in the medium of English (Sanyal
1987:19).

Stylistic influence from the local languages seems to be a particular feature of much
Indian literature in English; the local language structure is reflected as e.g. the
literal translation of local idioms (Platt et. al: 1984: 181). According to Kachru,
however, South Asian novelists have not only nativized the language in terms of
stylistic features; they have also acculturated English in terms of the South Asian
context (Kachru 1994: 530).

A view of the mother tongue being the primary medium of literary creativity is still
generally held across cultures. Creativity in another tongue is often considered as a
deviation from the norm. The native language is considered pure, it is treated as a
norm. This causes difficulties for non-native writers of English: it is not rarely that
they have to defend themselves writing in English (Kachru 1997:66-87). CUP.

The thematic range of literatures has been extended in India: in fact, Kachru points
out that English has functioned "as the main agent for releasing the South Asian
languages from the rigorous constraints of the classical literary traditions". English
has created new experimentation in the field of Indian writing (Kachru 1994: 535-

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536). Kachru points out that the linguistic centre of English has shifted. This means
that English no longer only represents the Judeo-Christian traditions and Western
concepts of literary creativity. The ranges of English have expanded, as the varieties
within a variety have been formed (Kachru 1986a: 130-131).

An Overview of Trends in Indian English Literature in the 21st Century -Dr

S P Dhanavel
The 21st century has proved to the world that English literature is no longer the sole
province of the imperial England. Although English literature started and
flourished in England, it has gone on to sow the seeds of creativity in English in
other parts of the world. Interestingly, the English people themselves paved the
way for the unexpected developments that we witness today. When the English
colonizers went to America, they began to write their own literature of the
Americas. Similarly, those English men and women who went to Australia began
the process of a new literature called Australian literature.

And so is the case with Canada, India, and Africa. With colonization in some parts
of the world, especially, Africa and Asia, there emerged a new literature which
later came to be known as the Commonwealth literature, New Literature in
English, postcolonial literature and so on. Not to be left out, even those countries
which were not colonized by the English like Bhutan, China, Iran, Japan, Thailand,
and Nepal started their own literature in English. Gradually all these literatures in
English have come to announce that here is a different kind of literature but in
English. The pinnacle of such a literature is Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children
winning the status of the double Booker Prize novel. These trends were expected
and started growing in a similar fashion.

A few distinct trends are dominant in the late twentieth century and the early 21 st
century. A major trend is the original creative writing in English in the Indian
subcontinent, among others. After the trio of Raja Rao, R K Narayan and Mulk Raj
Anand in the middle of the twentieth century, we have a multitude of writers both
men and women from different walks of life on various themes. While economic

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and social development was a priority for political leaders like Mahatma Gandhi
and Jawaharlal Nehru, the psychological and sociological consequences of
development became a major preoccupation for writers like R K Narayan and
Kamala Markandaya as in The Painter of Signs and A Handful of Rice, respectively.
They dealt with a less complicated and largely rural life in a leisurely fashion. Their
overtly political and social themes required a slow space for introspection at every
stage.

If the pre-independent authors dealt with nationalism and patriotism, the post
independent writers faced the challenge of handling the new-found political
freedom. Notable among them in the post-Independent India are Salman Rushdie
Arundhathi Roy, Amitav Ghosh, Shashi Tharoor, Shashi Deshpande, Manju Kapur,
Aravind Adiga and Chetan Baghat. But the post-modern writers like Rushdie and
Ghosh had to delve deep into the impact of freedom on the Indians. A novel like
The Hungry Tide by Ghosh clearly shows how the hard won freedom has not
liberated the tribal people from the local oppressors. For another example, Manju
Kapoor’s A Married Woman articulates a different of freedom within the family. In
fact, another kind of environmental and social freedom struggle continues in our
country even today as represented by a number of writers, including Arundhathi
Roy and Chetan Baghat. Roy and Bhagat have attracted a large following among
the Indian youth. They have a clarion call for value clarification, which is the need
of the hour.

Another trend is the translation of regional literatures into English. For example,
almost the entire works of Premchand or Rabibndranath Tagore or Subramania
Bharathi or Vijay Tendulkar or Vasudevan Nair are available in English not only
for the English people but also for the people of the world who have some
knowledge of English as a second or foreign language. Takazhi Sivasankarapillai’s
Chemmeen, Kesava Reddy’s He Conquered the Jungle, Sundara Ramasamy’s Tale
of a Tamarind Tree, U R Anantha Murthy’s Samsara and so on are great
contributions to literature in English translation. Of these translated texts, we have
a unique trend of women writers emerging on the national scene. A case in point is

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Mahasweta Devi of West Bengal. She is an activist-writer who has championed the
cause of the marginalized tribal people in West Bengal in such works as
“Draupati”. An interesting aspect of this creative translation is the work of Girish
Karnad, for he wrote most of his plays in English but translated them into English
himself. His plays from Tughlaq to Wedding Album point to the historical and
social problems facing our country.

Yet another trend is the emergence of writers from the Dalit and other
marginalized sections of the society. A remarkable work of international standing is
Bama’s Karukku. Yet another work in this category is Ompuri Valmiki’s Joothan.
These writings erase the distinction between fact and fiction. Some autobiographies
of these writers are presented so vividly that they claim the status of great fiction.
Further, the shocking plays of Mahesh Dattani and Manjula Padmanabhan belong
to a different strand of margin, away from the mainstream literature.

A dominant trend is the motivational and autobiographical work of prominent

personalities like Dr Abdul Kalam. Wings of Fire and Turning Points are both
scientific and political in their overtones, but do not lose sight out on guiding the
Indian youth for a better India. Associated with this trend is the biographical writing
of well-known political, industrial, social, sports, spiritual and media leaders. Every
president and prime minister of our country has at least one biography on him or
her. Industrialists like J R D Tata, Dhirubhai Ambani and Aditya Birla also have
found a place among biographers. Actors like Rajinikanth too have popular
biographies on them.

Although diasporic writers like Bahrathi Mukherjee, Chitra Divakaruni Banerjee,

Jhumpa Lahiri, and Kiran Desai have different windows on the world of their lives
in India and abroad, they too share the common concerns of Indian writers in
terms of cultural bondings and bindings that help and also hinder us from evolving
into a higher level of life, especially a higher standard of peaceful life for all
Indians all over the world. Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Interpreters of Maladies has
smacks of disease. Kiran Desai’s The Inheritance of Loss is a poignant story of an

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Indian unable to live here or there or anywhere, for the social and political forces
are against him.

A discordant note that we observe is the lack of support for poetry and poets.
Initially it was poetry that was the chief medium of writing for the educated
Indians. But today poetry does not sell like short story collections or novels.
Somehow, drama continues to manage the show on the stage and in printed texts
too. Whether this state of affairs is due to the capitalistic and consumerist society
that we live in now or due to erosion of poetic sensibilities, time alone will reveal.

In addition to the Indian English literature from our own country, we have a large
body of writing from our neighboring South Asian Association for Regional
Cooperation (SAARC) nations and also African nations, among others. The recent
blockbuster I am Malala by Malala Yousafzai from Afghanistan points to the future
of promising great young writers. The future of “English literature,” as we have
expanded, is very bright with more creative outputs are to come out from a large
population from the downtrodden sections of the society. Especially China has a lot
of scope to produce a vibrant literature in English in the years to come as the
Chinese are learning English in a big way now.

Major Indian English Writers

1. Toru Dutt(1865-1877)- born in a Hindu family in Ram Bagan Calcutta. Her
father name is Giving chunder Dutt who was a linguist and cultured man. Her
famous writings are: 1 . The Lotus 2 . Our casuarina tree 3. The pilgrim of the
Night.

2. Ravindra Nath Tagore: His famous writings are: 1 The Gardner 2 Fruit
Gathering 3 Stray Birds 4 The Home And the World.

3. Mulk Raj Anand- Mulk Raj Anand India’s most controversial novelist was born
in 1905 in Peshawar now in Pakistan but then in the North West frontier province
of India. His famous writings are: 1 the old woman and the cow 2 the colour of

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Darkness and other stories 3. the morning face?

4. R.K. Narayan:- R. K Narayan was born on October 10 19068 South Indian village
in Rasipuram and Madras. His father’s name was Krishnaswamy Iyer. ‘ R ‘ the first
letter in his name is Trends for Rasipuram and K for his father Krishnaswamy His
works: his Novel Swami and Friends 1935, The English Teacher 1945, the bachelor
of arts 1947 and the dark room 1938 was published in a click sessions. These novels
enjoyed a great popularity and brought him money and fame. Other works are the
guide 1958 next Sunday a collection of sketches and essays 1960 my dateless diary
1960 a horse and two goats 1970 version of Ramayana based on Kamban, Tamil
poet was published in 1973. R.K . Narayan was awarded Padma Bhushan in 1964.

5. Nissim Ezekil- nissim ezekiel was born in Bombay in 1924 he belongs to Israel
family with migrated to India generation ago and settled down in [Link] is
currently the professor of University of Mumbai. This poetry is both the instrument
and the outcome of his attempt as a man to come with himself. His works: A time
to change 1952 . The third1959, the unfinished man 1963, three plays 1969 the
railway clerk.

6. Keki N. Daruwala: his works: crossing of the river 1976, landscapes 1987,he
was honoured with the Sahitya Academy Award in 1984.

7. Anita Desai- Anita Desai is a novelist and short story writer. She has written
children’s book [Link] was born in India in 1937 . we are proud of her on her
achievements in the field of literature hermes writings include: cry the peacock
1963, Voices In The City 1965, In custody 1984, fasting feasting 2000.

8. Sarojini Naidu- Sarojini Naidu is known as Nightingale of India. she is

counted among the sweetest Indo English singers both at home and abroad .she
was gifted singer and poetess. she was born and Hyderabad on 30th of January
1879. She was elected the president of Indian National Congress. Who was
appointed the Governor of Uttar Pradesh .she was the first woman governor of

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independent India. The first Volume came under ‘The title of the Golden threshold
after she produced two more volumes The Broken wing and The Bird of time. She
died in 1949.

9. Aravind Adiga (Indian Writer )- “The White Tiger” is the first novel of Arvind
Adiga which made him popular in India and abroad. Aravind Adiga won Booker
Prize for literature in 2008 for “The White Tiger” which made the readers by its
realistic presentation of the world of corruption spread in all fields of Indian life.
Many of the situations in the novel have parallels with the contemporary Indian
events.
Adiga’s other novels are also worth reading and he is such an author who has
something to say to the world about its realities.

[Link] Bhattacharya ( Indian Writer )- Babani Bhattacharya is a well known

Indian English writer who has a permanent place in the history of Indo – Anglian
literature.
Battacharya’s mastery lies in fusing myth and reality, as well as in blending
history and present day tragedies of human beings. His novels have been
translated into many languages.
So Many Hungers” a novel dealing with the man made famine of Bengal,
is considered as his masterpiece by critics.

[Link] Bhagat ( Indian Writer ) Chetan Bhagat was born 22nd April 1974 is an
author of Indian Origin popular and an eminent speaker. Chetan Bhagat is the
author of four bestseller novels Five Point Someone 2004, one night @ the Call
Centre 2005, The 3 Mistakes of My Life 2008 and Two States 2009. Half girlfriend by
Chetan Bhagat latest novel
Chetan Bhagat is a famous author with a lot of record breaking best selling books.
It is said that all of his novels are best sellers which no other Indian writer can claim
till now. The most interesting fact about his writings is that they tell us more truth
than fiction.
Revolution 2020 is the most acclaimed novel as it depicts the worse condition of

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Indian society which suffering from nepotism (भाई भतीजावाद ) and corruption.

[Link] Monday post: Arundhati Roy: I was born on November 24 1961 in Shillong
Meghalaya. A.R is an internationally best selling celebrity author of famous Novel
the God of Small Things won the Booker prize for her work in social and advocacy
of nonviolence.

[Link] Seth: Vikram Seth is a famous Indian poet ,novelist, travel writer
,children’s writer ,biography. Vikram Seth was born on June 20 1952 at Kolkata
.His father Prem was employee of the Bata India Limited shoe company. Vikram
Seth is an Indian writer of the centuries longest English novel A Suitable Boy .he
won the 1994 Commonwealth writer price and also Britain’s 1994 WH Smith prize
the golden age won him sahitya Academy Award is his best novel.

[Link] Desai: she was born in Chandigarh in 1971. resize first book
Hullabaloo, second book The Inheritance of Loss.

[Link] Pritam: Amrita Pritam August 31 1992 -October 31 2005 was an

Indian writer and poet considered the first prominent women Punjabi. Novelist
and and essayist and the leading 20 century poet of the Punjabi language is ,
novelist, on both the sides of India Pakistan [Link] works: Aaj Aakhan
Waris Shan nu.

[Link] BOND (Indian Writer)- Ruskin Bond is Well known for his role in
promoting children’s literature in India. He basically belongs to Britain. He was
born in Kasauli and grew up in Shimla and Dehradun. His life in the different hill
stations of Himalayas has greatly influenced his stories and writing style.

With a litarary career of over 50 years, he has experimented with many different
genres of literature.

For example children’s fiction, short stories, novels, non-fiction, etc.

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He was awarded the Padma Shri in 1999 and Padma Bhushan in 2014. His greatest
works include-
• The Room on the Roof,
• A Flight of Pigeons,
• Delhi is Not Far,
• The Night Train at Deoli
• The Blue Umbrella.

17. Nirad C. Chaudhari (Indian Writer) – His world Famous Book “The
Autobiography of an Unknown Indian”
This book made N C Chaudhari one of India’s greatest writers. It was Published in
1951. The book describes the life of the writer from the time he was born in 1897 in
Bangladesh to his youth in Calcutta. The book is considered as Nirad’s masterpiece

It has beautifully captured every minute detail of his surroundings and of Modern
India. It has received worldwide acclaim. The British Prime Minister Winston
Churchill himself considered it one of the best books he had ever read.

In 1998, it was included as one of the few Indian contributions in The New Oxford
Book of English Prose.

18 .Jai Ratan- Godan is a Hindi novel written by the great story writer and
novelist Munshi Premchand. It was translated into English by the name of “The
Gift of a Cow”. It was translated into English in 1957 by Jai Ratan.

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 UNIT 7
AMERICAN LITERATURE
 AMERICAN LITERATURE

Major Writers and their Works

Philip Freneau (1752-1832)—American Liberty, American Independence, The British
Prison shop.

Timothy Dwight (1752-1887)—Poems. Joel Barlow (1754-1812)—Poems.

Royall Tyler—Poems, Plays.

William Dunlop—The Father (1789), Andre (1798), The Italian Father.

Cullen Bryant (1794-1878)—Poems.

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1922)—Nature (1836), The American Scholar (1837),

The Divinity Scholar Address (1838), Essays (1841) and (1844), Poems
(1847) Representative Men (1850), English Traits (1856), The Conduct of Life
(1860), May Day and other Poems (1868)— Concord Fight, Each and All, Compen-
sation, The Snow Storm, Threnody, Ode to Beauty, Ode to W.
H. Channing Urile, Hamatreya, Days, Brahma, Terminus, Maia etc., Society and Soli-
tude (1870), The Natural History of the Intellect (1893).

Nathaniel Hawthorne —Twice Told Tales (1837), Mosses from an Old Manse (1846),
The Snow Image (1852), Sketches and Studies (1883), The Scarlet Letter (1850).

Edgar Allen Poe (1809-1849)—Poems.

Harret Beecher Stowe (1811-1896) — Uncle Tom's Gabin (1851).

Walt Whitman (1819-1892) —Leaves of Grass (1855), Children of Adam Calamus

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Poems (1860), Cradle Endlessly Rocking (1860), 0 Captain My Captain ! (1865),
When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd.

Emily Dickensons (1830-86) —Poems.

Mark Twain (1835-1910) —The Celebrated Humping Frog of Calaveras Country

(1867), Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876), Adventures of Huckle berry Finn (1884),
The Innocents Abroad (1869).

Henry James (1843-1916) —Roderick Hudson, The American and Daisy Miller,
The European, Confidence and Washington Square, The Princess Casmassima, The
Tragic Muse, The Real Thing, The Pupil, The Middle Years, The Ambassadors (1902-
3), The Wings of the Dove, The Golden Bowl (1904), The Portrait of a Lady (1881),
The Turn of the Screw.

O'Henry (1862-1910) —Cabbages and Kings, The Four Million.

Robert Frost (1874-1963)—A Boy's will (1913), North of Boston (1914), Mountain In-
terval (1916), New Hampshire (1923), West Running Brook (1928), A Further Range
(1936), A Witness Tree (1942), A Masque of Reason (1945), A Masque of Mercy
(1947), Steeple-Bush (1947).

Eugene 0' Neill (1881-1953) -Thirst and Other Plays (1914), The Moon of the Car-
ibbees and other Plays (1916), Beyond the Horizon (1918), Chris Chistopherson
(1919), Emperor Jones (1920), The Hairy Ape (1921), Strange Interlude (1926),
Mourning Becomes Electra (1930), The Iceman Cometh (1946), A Long Day's Journey
into Night (1953), Anna Christie (1920), All God's Chillum Got Wings (1923), Desire
Under the Elms (1924), The Great God Brown (1925), Marco Millions (1925), Laza-
rus Laughed (1926), Dynamo (1928), Ae, Wilderness ! (1933), Days without End
(1934), A Moon for the Misbegotten (1943).

Ernest Hemingway (1898-1961) -Man without Women, The Sun also Rises (1926), A

450
Farewell to Arms (1929), Death in the Afternoon (1932), Green Hills of Africa (1935),
To Have and Have Not (1937), For whom the Bell Tolls (1949), Across the River and
into the Trees (1950), The Old Man and the Sea.

Arthur Miller (1915) -The Man Who Had All the Luck (1944), All My Sons (1947),
Death of a Salesman (1949), The Crucible (1953), A View from the Bridge (1955), A
Memory of Two Mondays (1955), After the Fa11_(1964), Incident at Vichy (1964),
The Pricce (1968), Creation of the World and other Business (1973).

Tennessee Williams —The Glass Menagerie, A Street Car Named Desire, Cat on a
Hot Tin Roof, Sweet Bir of Youth, The Milk Train Does Not Stop Here Any More.

Edward Albee— The Zoo Story (1958), The Death of a Bessle Smith, The American
Drama, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf.

Billow—The Dangling Man, The Victim, Seizes the Day, Henderson the Rain King,
Herzog.

Richard Wright —The man who lived underground, Native Son.

Ralph Ellisan —Invisible Man. Bernard Malamud —The Assistant. Joseph Heller —
Catch 22.

Kwet Vonnegut —Slaughter House Fire.

Stinbeek —Grapes of Wrath.

Norman Mailer—The Naked and the Dead (1948).

James Baldwin—Go Tell It On The Mountain (1953).

William Faulkner—The Sound And the Fury. Washington Erving — Rip Van Winkle.
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American Literature
The literature of the United States of America is written in the English language,
which bears the stamp of the American nationality, ethos and sensibility. The lan-
guage too has been transformed in order to give expression to typical American sen-
timents and environment. Hence, it is American literature written in American Eng-
lish.

The first man from Western Europe, who wrote home about his adventures was Co-
lumbus whose famous Letter (1493) "sets the form and the point in view of the earli-
est American literature."

Much of the writing of early settlers and explorers like William Bradford's of
Plimoth Plantation (1630, first published in 1856) has only historical significance.
There was hardly any literature during the colonial period in American history,
which extends from 1607 to 1756. Great literature is often the result of a sense of one-
ness, of a spirit of nationality which the heterogeneous settlers of America were yet
to feel. It was by the end of colonial period that the colonies of the Atlantic seaboard
were united together by "the great religious, political, and intellectual revolution that
moved from the renaissance and the reformation into the enlightenment and the
Age of Reason." It was the beginning of American nationalism, which created an at-
mosphere conducive to the production of authentic literature.

Most of the early writing in America was about religion and politics. During the
seventeenth century the sermons and theological discourses of the Puritans were
predominant. The eighteenth century was dominated by political tracts and essays
that record the struggle of American settlers towards revolution, independence and
a democratic form of government. There is little literary art in these writings, 'but
it does reveal the ideological devlopment of the country in its formative period.
Moreover, the forces at work during these years played an important part in the
shaping of the American character and in the literary expression of the later poets,
novelists and essayists."

452
The political writings which deserve mention are Thomas Paine's pamphlet called
Common Sense (1776), the first published utterance for complete political independ-
ence and Thomas Jefferson's The Declaration of Independence (July 4, 1776). It still
remains a classic in American prose. In 1778, the federal constitution was ratisfied.
Professor Spiller remarks about the writings of 17th and 18th centuries : "From the
religious and political debates on how life should be lived and how a society should
be constructed were fashioned a nation and a Ikay of life."

The literary efforts from the colonial period to the late eighteenth century were neg-
ligible. The Bay Psalm Book, one of the earliest works in the ballad metre, was com-
posed by Thomas Weld, John Eliot and Richard Mather. Ann Bradstreet (1612-
1672) was the first Puritan woman poet. Michael Wigglesworth (16311705) is re-
membered for his poem The Day of Doom. Thomas Godfrey (1736-1773) is remem-
bered for his play The Prince of Parthia (1759) and two volumes of poetry. The Court
of Fancy and Juvenile Poems. Edward Taylor (1645-1722) was an important poet of
the colonial period. His poems, which are metaphysical in nature were published in
1937. Holy Robes For Glory, The Glory and Grace in the Church Set Out, and The
Experience are his memorables poems. The classicist epics of Timothy Dwight,
Joel Barlow and other "Hartford Wits" have little poetic significance. Philip Freneau
was a gifted lyricist.

W.H. Brown's The Power of Sympathy (1789) is the first American novel. Other nov-
els, written during this period imitated British sentimental fiction of the eight-
eenth century. H.H. Brackenridge's Modern Chivalry (1790) is a lively work
dealing satirically with American political and social conditions.

Nineteenth Century AmericanLiterature

Early American writers imitated European models and did not exhibit any national
quality. Gradually they cultivated genuinely American character. Eighteenth centu-
ry classicism influenced the early American writers. During the nineteenth century
main European influence on American literature was Romanticism. Romanticism
in early American literature is individualistic and optimistic. Emerson, Thorean

453
and Whitman were influenced by the Romantic doctrines of individualism. Some
writers like Poe, Hawthorne and Melville had little faith in the possibilities of social
reform or in man's capacity to dispense with external authority. Henry B. Parkes
writes : They were concerned, in particular, with the problem of isolation, which
may be regarded as individualism of American society in bright or dark colours."
However, all these writers were primarily engaged "in exploring the implications of
American doctrine of individualism in the light of the romantic conceptions of
human personality.

During the nineteenth century all important genres of literature non-fiction, fiction,
poetry and drama emerged. Fiction and poetry marked a remarkable development.

Fiction
Charles Brockden Brown (1771-1810) was the first American writer "to make a pro-
fession of literature and the first to approach the status of a major novelist." His
main works are - Wieland (1798), Ormond (1799), Arthur Morvyn (1799-
1800), Edgar Huntly (1799) and Clara Howard (1801). He was influenced by the Goth-
ic novel of England and "the more exotic aspects of European
romanticism." His novels are full of horror, caused by the addiction of his characters to
weird crimes or sufferings from various forms of neurosis and insanity. He is "the
first professional American novelist" who has "shown such a penchant for the darker
aspects of human psyche." This trend was developed by Poe and has remained the
dominant characteristic of American fiction down to the present.

Washington Irving (1783-1859) is, in the words of Marcus Cunliff, "the first man of
letters from the United States to win an international reputation." He was a versatile
writer. His Life of Columbus, Life of Goldsmith, Life of Washington and Chronicle
of the Conquest of Granada show his mastery of the unique of biographical and his-
torical writing. Salmagundi is a collection of essays. He is best remembered for his
short stories which appeared in The Sketchbook of Geoffrey Gayon Gent, Brace-
bridge Hall and Tales of Traveller.
James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851) wrote his first novel Precavtion to please his

454
wife. Between 1820 and 1826 he wrote many romantic novels - The Spy (1821), The
Pioneers (1823), The Pilot (1824), Lionel Lincoln (1825), The Last of the Mohicans
(1826), The Pathfinder, The Deerslayer and the Littlepage triology, consisting of Sa-
tanstoe, The Chainbearer, The Redskins. The triology deals with his social philoso-
phy. He is a talented story teller. Natty Bumppo, the famous Leatherstocking, is a
narrator in his five novels, known as Leatherstocking Tales. Cooper also wrote on
history and criticism in A Letter To His Countrymen (1834), Gleanings in Europe
(1837-38), Homeward Bound (1838), The American Democrat and the History of
the Navy of the United States.

Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849), a man of versatile genius and achievements, was a crit-
ic, short story writer and poet. He was the first aesthetic critic in American litera-
ture, propounded the definition of short story which had hitherto no definite and
exact technique, and for the first time defined poetry as a short composition which
excites the soul. The Poetic Principle, The Philosophy of Composition and The Re-
view of Hawthorne's Twice Told Tales express Poe's views on poetry and short
story.

Poe was a great poet in nineteenth century.

W.B. Yeats declared that Poe was "always and for all lands a great lyric poet". His
Poems appeared in 1831. Some of his poems are To Helen, Israfel, The City in the
Seas and The Raven. Eureka is a prose- poem. His poems are the expression of "su-
pernal beauty." They are true to his definition of poetry as "the rhythmical creation
of beauty.

Poe was the creator of the short story in literature. With the publication of his Tales
of the Grotesque and Arabesque (1840), he stormed into popularity. His famous tales
are Berenice, Morella, Ligeia, The Black Cat, The Oval Portrait, The Fall of the House
of Usher, The Pit and The Pendulum, Ms Found in a Bottle, William Wilson, The
Man in the Crowd, The Tell-Tale Heart, The Mosque of the Red Death, The Balloon
Hoax, King Pest, Hop-Frog, The Cask of Amontillado and many more. Poe's tales of
the Arabesque and Grotesque are noticeable for the wide diversity of subject,

455
thought and especially tone and manner of handling. He was a great and gifted
technician and craftsman who moulded each tale artistically in order to develop a
different effect and he succeeded.

Poe's Tales of Mystery and Ratiocination anticipated the rise of detective fiction and
science-fiction. Poe in his three tales of mystery and ratiocination - The Murders in
the Pue Morgue (first published in Graham's Magazine in April (1841), The Purloined
Letter and The Mystery of Marie Roget - created the theory and practice of detective
fiction. The Gold Bug (1813) also has an abiding detective interest. Some of his fa-
mous tales of mystery and ratiocination - The Unparalleled Adventure of One Hans
Pfaall, The Balloon Hoax, The Facts in Case of M. Valdemar, Mesmeric Revelation
and Von Kempler and His Discovery- anticipated science fiction. In fact Poe invent-
ed "the science of fiction tale".

Poe's influence on literature has been enormous. Writers widely divergent both in
nature and in technique-Oscar Widle, R.L. Stevenson, Ambrose Bierce, H.P. Love-
craft, Hemingway, Faulkner, H.G. Wells, Jules Verne, Asimov, A.G. Doyle, G.K.
Chesterton, Agatha Christe and Nabokar have come under Poe's dominant and inef-
faceable influence.

Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864),had an admirable talent for symbolism and a seri-

ous interest in historical fidelity, psychological truth and social order. His first work
Fanshawe (1828) is a romance, imitative of Sir Walter Scott. His first four stories -
The Gentle Boy, Major Molineux, Roger Malovin's Burial and The Wives of the Dead
appeared in Annwal Miscellaney in 1832. He wrote over hundred stories. most of
which were first published anonymously in magazines and subsequently collected
in The Twice Told Tales (1837, enlarged edition 1842), Mosses From and Old House
and The Snow Image and Other Tales (1852). Some of his outstanding stories are
Young Goodman Brown, The Minister's Black Veil, The Birthmark, Ethan Brand and
The Artist of the Beautiful.

Hawthorne's famous novels are The Scarlet Letter (1850), his masterpiece, which is

456
set in seventeenth century Salem at the height of Puritan theocracy and which is
considered the first psychological novel in American literature; The House of the
Seven Gables (1851), set in nineteenth century Salem, suggests through characters of
Maule and Col. Pyncheon that "wrong doing, of one generation lives into the succes-
sive ones;" The Blithedale Romance (1852), based on humanism and transcendental-
ism; and The Marble Faun (1860) or The Transformation (in the English edition),
which is set in nineteenth century Italy, dramatizes in new perspective the effects
of sin, guilt and suffering.

Hawthorne's books for children and other works include Grandfather's Chair (1841),
The Wonder Book For Girls and Boys (1851), Tanglewood Tales (1853) and The Life
of Franklin Pierce (1852). Septimus Felton and Dr. Grimshawe's Secret, written in
1861 and 1863, were posthumously published.

Commenting on Hawthorne's achievement T.S. Eliot remarks. "Hawthorne's observa-

tion of moral life in The Scarlett Letter, in The House of Seven Gables, and even in
some of the tales and sketches, has solidity, has permanence, the permanence of art. The
work of Hawthorne is truly a criticism-true because a fidelity of the artist and not a
mere conviction of the man-of the Puritan morality, of the transcendental morality, and
of the world which Hawthorne new."

Herman Melville's (1819-1891) reputation, originally established through South Seas

romances, now rests mainly an Moby Dick, Billy Budd and several of his stories.
Typee (1846) is a semi- autobiographical tale of adventure and romance on an island
of South Seas. It extols the virtues of the pure, primitive life and constrasts it with
Western society. Omoo (1847) tells the adventures of the same author-hero after his es-
cape from the Taipi valley and his sojourn in Tahiti. Mardi (1949), a sequel to Typee and
Omoo eventually focusses on a search through Pacific waters, which symbolises a
quest for meaning. Redburn (1849) is a semi-autobiographical novel. Moby Dick
(1851), Melville's masterpiece, is an exciting adventure story which presents an ac-
count of the New England whaling industry. It is "a psychological study of revenge
and monomania - a dramatization of madness By the alchemy of his art, Melville

457
transformed this melange into a tragedy." The tragedy emerges from a man's con-
frontation with the forces of a hostile or indifferent universe. Melville's protagonist,
Capt. Ahab has been formed "for the noblest tragedies. His antagonist is Moby Dick,
the while whale, "monomaniac incarnation of all those malicious agencies which
some deep men feel eating in them, till they are left living on with half a heart or half
a lung". Ishamel, the narrator plays the role of the survivor on the ship Pequod. He
is something of a Greek Chorus. Moby Dick "is one of the world's greatest novels,
whose greatness increases with each new reading."

Melville's other works are Pierre or The Ambiguities (1852), Israel Potter
(1855), subtitled His Forty Years of Exile; and The Confidence Man (1857). Melville's
poems were collected in Battle Pieces and Aspects of the War (1876), Clarel : A Poem
and Pilgrimage in Holy Land (1876), a long narrative poem; John Man Some Sea
Pieces (1888) and Timoleon (1891). Billy Buddy, Foretopman (1891) is Melville's last
novel.

Mark Tiwain (1835-1910), the first major American author from the Atlantic Sea-
board states, is in the words of H.L. Mencken "the true father of our national liter-
ature." He was a satirist of human wickedness and folly in all their manifestations.
His real name was Samuel Langhorne Clemens. His works include The Celebrated
Frog of Calavaras County and other Sketches (1867), The Innocents Abroad or The
New Pilgrim's Progress (1869), a travel book; Roughing It (1872), a travel book, The
Gilded Age (1874), a romantic novel with political satire, The Adventures of Tom
Sawyer (1876), A Tramp Abroad (1879), a travel book, The Prince and the Pauper
(1880), Life on the Mississippi (1883), autobiographical accounts of life on the River,
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's
Court (1889), The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson (1894), Personal Recollections of
Joan of Arc (1896), Following the Equator (1897), The Man That Corrupted Hadley-
burg and Other Stories and Essays (1900), What is Man? a philosophic dialogue on
human predicament, and The Mysterious Stranger (1916), a bitter fable, marked as
children's story.
Hemingway in The Green Hills of America (1935) observed "All modern American

458
literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn." Faulkner
said of Twain "All of us are his hairs." T.S. Eliot summing up his debt of modern
writers observed that Mark Twain "discovered a new way of writing" - "a. language
based on American colloquial speech." Indeed, he is the first of American writers to
draw from the American soil, the material for an original and lasting work.

Stephen Crane (1871-1900) minutely observed the life of the outcasts and the de-
prived sections of society. Thus, he gathered raw material for his writings. He
hoped to reproduce the familiar scenes with the passionate intensity of a Tolstoy.
Crane's first novel Maggie, A Girl in the Streets (1893), published under the pseudo-
nym of Johnston Smith, has been called the first naturalistic American novel. It is
about the slums of New York. The Third Violet (1897) is a semi autobiograph-
ical novel. The Red Badge of Courage (1895) is Crane's masterpiece. Henry Flem-
ming, the hero of this novel, overcomes his fear and fights his way to self-
redemption. His other works are George's mother (1896), The Monster (1899) and
Whillomville Stories (1900). His short stories, especially The Open Boat, The Bride
Comes to Yellow Sky, His Majestic Lie, The Second Generation, An Experiment in
Misery and many others - "gave to the naturalistic short story its characteristic
form, later to be exploited by Hemingway, Steinbeck, and a host of others."

Bret Harte (1836-1902) who wrote Condensed Novels and Other Papers (1867), was
a short story writer. His famous story The Luck of the Roaring Camp made him im-
mensely popular. His other memorable stories are The Outcasts of Pokar Flat and
Tennense Partner. In his stories Bret Harte writes about the rough, strange world of
the frontier, where he found heroism and nobility in unexpected places.

Harriet Brecher Stowe (1811 -1896) is an outstanding woman novelist. Her

works include The Minister's Wooing (1859), Uncle Tom's Cabin a novel on New
England life and character, The Pearl of Our's Island (1862), Oldtown Folks (1869),
The Oldtown Fireside Stories (1872) and Poganuc people.
William Sydney Porter, known as 0' Henry (18621910) in literature, was undoubted-
ly the most widely read short story writer of his time. The first collection of his sto-

459
ries Cabbages and Kings and other stories depict New York life. Some of his famous
stories are The Gift of Magi, The Last Leaf, The Third Ingredient and The Furnished
Room. His stories are remarkable for the abundance of humour, irony, satire and
natural style, which is characterised by colloquialism and slang. His stories give an
illuminating understanding of human life. 0' Henry enriched American story by vir-
tue of both quality and quantity.

Ambrose Bierce, published some books under the pseudonym of Dod Grile. His
works have been collected in twelve volumes. His works include Black Beetles in
Amber (1892), The Monk and The Hangman's Daughter (1892), In the Midst of Life,
originally published as Tales of Soldiers and Civilians (1891), Can Such
Things Be and The Mocking Bird. He was influenced by Poe, but his horrors are
more realistically motivated. Dreams, flashbacks and hallucinations are common in
his works.

William Dean Howells (1837-1920) represents a change that happens in literary

judgement with the passage of time. Hamilton, the place where he lived for a pretty
long time is the background of his two novels A Boy's Town (1890) and New Leaf
Mills (1930). His experience as the American consul in Venice provided him with
the material for his famous travel book the Venetian Life (1866). As a literary jour-
nalist he edited The Atlantic Monthly and the Harper's Magazine. Writers like Ste-
phen Crane, Frank Morris and Hamlin Garland have acknowledged their indebted-
ness to him. His other famous works are A Foregone Conclusion (1875), A Modern
Instance (1882), The Rise of Silas Lapham and Indian Summer (1890). Among his
nonfiction works Criticism and Fiction (1891), My Literary Passion (1895), Heroines
of Fiction (1910) and My Mark Twain (1910). He also wrote over thirty oneact-plays.
His contribution lies in the direction of shifting American literature from roman-
ticism to realism. His novels throw light on many aspects of American life - jour-
nalism, medicine, business, religion and socialism.

Henry James (1843-1916) Was born and brought up in New York city amidst the at-
mosphere of affluence and intellectual activity. He was a voluminous writer whose

460
works include novels,,short story and criticism. His most important works are The
American (1877), The Portrait of A Lady (1881), The Ambassadors (1903), The Gold-
en Bowl (1904). His other novels are - Roderick Hudson (1815), Watch and Ward
(1878), The Europeans (1878), Confidence (1879), Washington Square (1880), The
Bestonians (1886), The Princess Casamassima (1886), The Tragic Muse (1889), The
Other House (1896), The Spoils of Poynton (1897), The Maissie Knew (1897), The
Awkward Age (1889), The Sacred Fount (1901), The Wings of the Dove (1902) and
The Outcry (1911). His short fiction has been collected under various titles - A Pas-
sionate Pilgrim (1875), The Madona of the Future (1879), The Author of Beltraffio
(1885), The Aspern Papers (1888), The Lessons of the Master (1892), Termination
(1895), Embarrassments (1896), The Soft Side (1900), The Better Sort (1903) and The
Finer Grain (1904).

Henry James elaborated his views on the art of fiction in his essays and prefaces.
He thought it unfortunate that novel had no "theory, a conviction, a consciousness
of itself behind it " He had a high conception of art. Art is not separate from life.
According to him it is "art that makes life, makes interest, makes importance." He
enunciated his views on fiction, in The Art of Fiction. Sincerity is essential for fiction.
It represents life. A novelist does not copy life. He reinterprets life. The themes of his
own novels come from life. A novelist endeavours "to catch the colour, the relief, the
expression, the surface, the substance of the human spectacle." The themes of his
own novels come from life. Form was of supreme importance to him. He put em-
phasis on order, design and unity in the technique of fiction writing. He dismissed
the distinction between the novel of character and the novel of incident and also the
distinction between the novel and the romance. According to him there are only
good novels and bad novels. His The Art of Fiction is a landmark in the criticism of
fiction.

James'. three 'early novels Roderick Hudson, The American and Daisy Miller are
portraits of Americans as artists, businessmen and innocent abroad. Christopher
Newman is a young businessman who faces the corrupt but intriguing aristocracy of
France. The Portrait of A Lady depicts the Americans' experience abroad. In it he re-

461
vealed his mastery of realistic fictional technique. In his mature novels The Ambas-
sadors, The Wings of Dove and The Golden Bowl James again deals with his familiar
theme of confrontation between Americans and Europeans with the more prefound
perceptions of the comic and tragic aspects of it. James' best fiction "reveals the com-
plex psychological motivations that animate men, the social institutions that mould
them, and the moral dilemmas from which they emerge diminished or enhanced."
He is regarded as "one of the greatest writers and most civilized intelligences of
modern times."

The writers during the second half of the nineteenth century became conscious of
the local life and they described it in their novels. Novels of local colourists evince a
combination of the romantic and the realistic in their novels. Bret Harte, as we have
already discussed, was prominent among local colourists. The famous works of the
local colour movement are Edward Egglestan's (1837-1902) The End of the World,
The Mystery of Metropolisville and Hoosier School Master; Joe Chandler Harris,
(1848-1908) Brer Rabbit and other short stories, George W. Cable's (1844-1925) stories
and the works of Sarah Orne Jewett, Edward Everett Hale and Mary Freeman. The
local colour movement served as a useful transition between romanticism and real-
ism, and anticipated the more authentic regionalism of the twentieth century of
which Steinbeck is the best example.

Poetry
William Cullen Bryant expressed the unity of past and present, of America and Eu-
rope in his poetry. His first poem The Embargo or The Sketches of the Times : a Sat-
ire (1808) was published as the work of an anonymous "Youth of Thirteen". Thana-
topsis shows the influence of Wordsworth. The Yellow Violent and The Inscription for
the Entrance to a Wood are nature poems, in which nature is "the abode of gladness"
where "the birds sing and sport in wantonness of spirit." His eight poems, including
Thanatopsis were published in a slender collection, entitled Poems (1821). His fa-
mous poems are To The Fringed Gentian, Song of Marian's Men, Oh, Mother of A
Mighty Race, Robert Lincoln, The Planting of the Apple Tree and The Death of Lin-
coln. "Bryant was also a pioneer in American literary criticism; he was our earliest sys-

462
tematic study of nature poetry." Paulding and Nathaniel Parker Willis, the two poets
of this period, made little contribution to American poetry.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, an original thinker, philosopher, orator, poet and author "be-
came known throughout the nation as the sage of Concord." Henry Bamford Parkes
writes about Emerson's greatness : "But Emerson was greater than his philosophy. His
writings were filled with acute observations of contemporary men and institutions
and insights into human psychology. As a critic of the American life of his time he
was always shrewd and often profound. And he could express his ideas with a pun-
gency and a poetic vividness which made him one of the great paraphrase makers of
literature."

Emerson's works include Journals which contain his first significant writing, consti-
tute a full record of his development, and afford an intimate view of his life," Nature
which expresses the fundamental concepts of Transcendetalism, and - anticipates lat-
er works such as Oversoul, The American Scholar and The Divinity School Address
(1838) expresses his disregard for authority and his concern for the individual. Es-
says, First Series (1841) consists of some of his finest essays -Self Reliance, Oversoul
Compensation, Spiritual Laws, Love, Friendship and History.

Representative Men advances these ideas further and illustrates Emerson's concept
of greatness through a study of six men - Plato, the philosopher; Swedonberg, the
mystic; Montaigne the sceptic; Shakespeare, the poet; Napoleon, the man of the
world; and Goethe, the writer, According to Emerson the greatest man of all (except
Jesus Christ) was Plato because he was both philosopher and poet. A great man has
more divinity in him and thus conveys to mankind a sense of its own potentialities.

Emerson's prose, especially his public lectures and two volumes of essays, were in-
strumental to the propagation of his ideas. A Puritan and transcendentalist, he de-
voted himself to the task of intellectual exploration. He was an individualist who
stressed on the reform of the individual self.

463
Although he sympathised with the movements of social reform, he did not join
them. He did not have too much faith in institutional changes. Commenting on the
literary worth of Emerson's prose Henry Bamford Parkes writes : "But Emerson was
greater than his philosophy. His writings were filled with acute observations of
contemporary men and institutions and insights into human psychology. As a critic
of American life he could express his ideas with a pungency and poetic vividness
which made him one of the great phrasemakers of the world.

Emerson was a mystic poet. His poems were collected in two volumes entitled Po-
ems (1847) and May-Day and Other Pieces (1876). Some of his famous poems are
The Rhodora, Each and All, The Problem, The Snow Storm, Hamtreya and Earth
Song. Santayana in his Essays in Literary Criticism observed that Emerson's "religion
was all poetry, a poet whose only pleasure was thought His inmost impersonal spirit
ranged abroad over the fields of history and nature, gathering what ideas it might,
and singing its little snatches of inspired song." The main themes of his poetry are
nature, patriotism or nationalism, personal or domestic life and reflective or philo-
sophical.

Emerson like Thoreau and other transcendentalists was influenced by the concept
of "selfhood" and found in Hindu scripture a well elaborated doctrine of self. He
knew Laws of Manu, Vishnupurana, The Bhagvadgita and the Upanishadas. In Pla-
to or the Philosopher he writes that "the conception of fundamental unity" - the "ec-
stasy" of losing "all being in one Being" - finds its highest expression "chiefly in the
Indian scriptures, in the Vedas, The Bhagvadgita and The Vishnupurana. Emerson's
poetry echoes Vedanta in form as well as in content. His famous poem Brahama
evinces the influence of Katha Upanishad and the Gita, for example :

If the red slayer think he slays Or if the slain think he is slain, They know not the
subtle ways I keep, and pass, and turn again, Henry David Thoreau, a third genera-
tion American, was a close disciple of Emerson. He was a native resident of
Concord, Massachusetts, home of Emerson in his mature years and centre of Tran-
scendentalists. From 1841 to 1843 he stayed with Emerson. In 1845 he decided to live

464
alone, for away from the trappings of civilization. He lived in a simple hat on
the bank of Concord. He lived like an Indian yogi. Thoreau was well versed with
Greek literature, Elizabethan literature, German literature and Indian classics,
which attracted him most.

Thoreau found in Hindu scriptures a way of life with which he felt a profound af-
finity. The Upanishadas, the Gita, Manusmriti and other Hindu scriptures in-
fluenced him. He was also interested in Yoga. When Thoreau died of tuberculosis at
the age of forty five, he was unknown as a writer. He remained in obscurity for
about fifty years after his death, but in 1962, the celebration of the 100th anniver-
sary of his death was an international literary event.

Thoreau's works are-Journals (1837-1861) which contain his earliest writing and the
fullest record of his thought. The Journals contain his observations on nature, reflec-
tions on himself, appreciations and comments on books, and criticism of society and
man's place in it.

A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, is based on a trip on the Concord
and Merrimack rivers in the company of his brother John. Walden, or The Life in the
Woods (1854) is based on his life at Walden Pond from July 4, 1845 to September
1847. It consists of eighteen thoughtful essays on various topics. Civil Disobedience,
a famous essay published as a pamphlet, expresses the principle of passive re-
sistance and the moral superiority of individual conscience to governmental
law. He defied the government and refused to pay taxes. Mahatma Gandhi was
highly influenced by Thoreau's essays Civil Disobedience. It contains two famous
statements- "That government is best which governs the least" and "No taxation
without representation." Thoreau wrote essays and made speeches which advo-
cate the elimination of slavery and the tyranny of the government over the indi-
vidual. Some of his essays are notable pieces of prose. A Plea for Captain John
Brown (1859) is a powerful speech in defence of the famous abolitionist John
Brown. It contains one of the best statements of Thoreau's political attitude: "The
only government I recognise is the power which establishes justice in the land, never

465
that which establishes injustice." Life Without Principle or Getting a Living was
originally a speech delivered in 1854, which was published in a magazine ten
years later. His posthumously published works are Excursions (1863), The Maine
Woods (1864), Cape Cod (1865) and Ayankee in Canada (1866).

Thoreau's poems were published posthumously. Some of his poems bad appeared
in magazines including The Dial in the early eighteen forties. Emerson discour-
aged Thoreau from composing poems. He was a poet by temperament. He loved
poetry. He once wrote:

My life has been the poem I would have writ, But I could not both live and utter it.
He composed poems on nature as The River Swelleth More and More and The
Inward Morning. His verse like that of Emerson was faulty. He abundantly uses
conceits and mannerisms.

Thoreau was a profound thinker and a genuine analyst of society. He was one of the
"masterful stylists in American literature, notable for his descriptive ability, his
command over epigrammatic statement, his use of symbolic analogy and his sense
of language."

Walt Whitman (1819-1892) was influenced by Jacksonian democracy and loco-

foco movement. It was the democracy for the common people- "the planter, the
farmer, the mechanic, and the labourer." (The extremists among Jacksonians were
known as loco-foco.) He was the poet of America and championed the cause of
democracy and equality. He believed, as he forcefully expressed in Democratic
Vistas, that "the true gravitation hold of liberalism in the United States will be a
more universal ownership of property" and that the national welfare depended
mainly on "the safety and endurance of the aggregate of its middling property own-
ers." As editor of Brooklyn Eagle and in other journalistic positions Whitman was a
crusader of these ideas." In his early thirties he experienced some kind of emotional
transformation which caused him to see democracy not merely as political pro-
gramme but also as a spiritual faith. He cultivated a mystical view of life. All inhab-

466
itants in the world were emanations of divinity. Man must strive to attain unity with
God. The writings of Emerson and Indian scriptures immensely influenced him.

Leaves of Grass, which was subsequently revised and enlarged, ran into many edi-
tions. The first edition contained a Preface and twelve untitled poems. Its second
edition containing thirty two poems appeared in 1856. Emerson found Leaves of
Grass "the most extraordinary piece of wit and wisdom that America has yet con-
tributed." The third edition (1860) contained 124 new poems and the old one exten-
sively revised, and with new titles. Eight new poems were added to its fourth edi-
tion (1867). The fifth edition (1871, 1872) included Passage to India. The seventh
edition of Leaves of Grass (1881) contains poems in their final arrangement; the
eight edition appeared in 1888 and the ninth edition, known as the Death-Bed Edi-
tion, appeared in 1892. Poems written after 1881 were added in appendixes. Drum
Taps and Sequel to Drum Taps (1865) are two poetical pamphlets about Civil War
and President Lincoln. The poems in this volume reveal a pessimistic mood. The
famous elegy When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd contains a profound
treatment of death. Democratic Vistas (1871) are prose essays on democracy and
personalism. Specimen Days and Collect ( 1882 - 83) is a prose volume containing
his reminiscences, personal notes and records. November Boughs (1888) contains
poems of reminiscences in the November of the poet's life.

Whitman is regarded as "the culminating figure in the literary development" of the

nineteenth century. Hawthorne and Malville had negated the affirmative qualities of
Transcendentalism, espoused by Emerson and Thoreau. Whitman's poetry is the cel-
ebration "of the positive, but with a keener awareness of what was lacking in the
individualist ideal and what was needed for its consummation." The Leaves of
Grass, influenced by Indian Vedantic thought, is the affirmation of his faith in "the
sacredness of man," for example:

I celebrate myself, and sing myself, And what I assume you shall assume, For every
atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.

467
Whitman was a poet of America and democracy. Richard Chase rightly remarks
that he was a national poet- "the poet of American optimism and pragmatism, the
rhapsodist of our material and spiritual resources, the unabashed celebrant of the
self at home in an open, dynamic universe." To him democracy was a form of so-
ciety which would allow the fullest and freest development for each man's self-
would bring out each man's divinity. Individual, Whitman thought, was at the cen-
tre of a democratic civilization. Democracy is a way of life and a manifestation of
highest social and civilizational values. So, Whitman's celebration of self was a cele-
bration of his fellow man-and of the people at large:

One's self I sing, a simple separate person, You utter the word Democratic, the word
En-Masse.

Walt Whitman's poetic craftsmanship is unconventional and innovative. His mag-

num opus The Leaves of Grass was written not in conventional metric form but in a
free verse derived mainly from the Bible. He called The Leaves of Grass a "lan-
guage experiment." His Preface to Leaves of Grass is a literary manifestation like
Wordsworth's Preface to The Lyrical Ballads. The poet, according to Whitman, con-
ceals "his rhythm and uniformity in the roots of his verse, but to break forth loose-
ly as lilacs on a bush and takes shapes compact, as the shapes of melons or chestnuts
or pears." His diction too is experimental and innovative. Emerson described Whit-
man's vocabulary as a "remarkable mixture of the Bagvadgita and The New York
Herald." His vocabulary reflects his passionate intensity and ringing sincerity. He
packs his verse with vivid pictures of innumerable objects.

Whitman is an original poet. Rabindranath Tagore once observed :"Whitman is the

highest name. In poetry one must have originality and spontaneity and that breadth
of thought which tells you that the poet bas seen deeply and knows humanity.
Whitman gives me pictures- pictures."
It was in his role as a technical innovator that Whitman influenced American
poetry most. His influence is noticeable in the works of Lyndsay and Sandburg. The
New Poetry of the second decade of the twentieth century in America owed a

468
great deal to Whitman. He is the father of free verse movement.

Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) too is an original poet. Although she was influenced
by the Transcendentalism of Emerson and Thoreau; the hymns of New England
Churches, especially the hymns of Issac Watt; the metaphysical poets of Englands, in
her wit and her elliptical metaphors, her poetry has a forward looking quality be-
cause she has a close affinity with the poets of the twentieth century in her detail,
her imagism, her use of half rhymes and dissenant qualities. She did not belong to
any school of poetry. She had no master and no disciple. Her poetry reflects her life
which she lived in "extreme individuality." She never married, lived at home all her
life, much of the time within her family circle. "But her significant life was interior,"
as her poems indicate.

Dickinson's poems number about eighteen hundred, many of which she left in in-
complete form. She made little effort to publish her poems in her life time. Some
volumes of her poetry appeared in 1890. Finally Thomas H. Johnson edited a com-
plete edition of her poems in 1955. He also edited her letter under the title The
Complete Letters of Emily Dickinson.

Emily Dickinson was a skilled poetic craftsman. She was able to give concrete ex-
pression to abstract ideas. Her images are precise, pointed, highly expressive of
theme and feeling, and effective. Nature, Love, Death and Immortality are the recur-
rent themes in her poetry. Emily Dickinson packed her verse with intense meaning.
She breaks loose from all conventional forms of expression. Her violation of the
rules of grammar and syntax, and her ruthless omission of words have enabled her
to capture the spontaneity and excitement of her thoughts.

Henry Wordsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) was one of the most popular poets of
the nineteenth century. He was a singer of nationalism and he urged the younger
generation to build a national literature. His literary career began with the articles
on European literature which appeared in North American Review. Outre Mer is an
account of his travel. Hyperien is a prose romance. His poems have been collected in

469
many volumes- Voice in the Night, Ballads and other Poems, Poems, The Belfry of
Burges and other Poems, Evangline, The Seaside and the Fireside, The Song of Hia-
watha and The Courtship of Miles Standish and Other Poems.

He was a romantic at heart. His poems reflect the picturesqueness of old world. He
enjoys the honour of awakening the Americans' interest in their country's past.
Longfellow's -romanticism is disciplined by classicism. The tone of his poetry is di-
dactic. The moralising tone and that of Christian ethics are reflected in the tone his
poems-A Psalm of Life, Fight on Others Sorrow Too and Sorrow Must End. Longfel-
low's poetry expresses a set of sharply defined set of human values-homely affec-
tion, simple piety, sensitiveness to beauty and above all a refinement of thought
and manners. He was one of the truest poets and one of the most accomplished art-
ists America has produced.

Other Poets
John Greenleaf Whittier (1807-1892) was an Abolotionist, who published his anti-
slavery tract Justice and Expediency in 1833. He was influenced by Robert Burns.
His poems were published in many volumes-Ballads and other Poems (1844), Voic-
es of Freedom (1846), Songs of Labour (1850), The Chapel of Hermits (1853), The
Panorama and other Poems (1856), Poems and Lyrics (1860), The Tent on the
Beach (1867), Among the Hills and The Pensylvanian Pilgrim (1872). His famous
themes are nature, humanity, love, tolerance and justice.

Oliver Wendel Holmes (1809-1894) was a poet, novelist, biographer, essayist, scien-
tist and teacher. Many of his poems appeared in The Atlantic. He has a close affinity
with English neo- classical poets like Dryden and Pope. As a Classicist Holmes re-
veals a love of order, and clarity and commonsense. A sense of humour and sub-
dued sentimentalism appears in his family reminiscences. My Aunt, Dorothy Q
and The Last Leaf.
James Russell Lowell (1819-1891) was a talented poet and writer. He was pro-
foundly stirred by the tragedy of civil war, which roused him to write Biglow Pa-
pers (1867). He contributed a number of deeply thoughtful articles on the topics of

470
the times to the Atlantic Review and The North American Review. His poems ap-
peared in A Year's Life and other Poems (1841), Poems (1844). In 1848 he brought
out a two-volume edition of his poems, A Fable For Critics.

As a poet Lowell was influenced English Romantic poets, especially Keats. His con-
tribution to literature consists of criticism and poetry. His critical works Among My
Books and My Study Windows were influenced by Goethe and Coleridge. "In the
sheer enjoyment of literature- hearty, robust, and at any rate with regard to writers
of the past-open minded-Lowell has only such men as Lamb and Hazlitt for equals
and he has no superiors."

Prose
Prose in American literature of the nineteenth Boston is closely related with the
rise of journalism. The oston News, the first American newspaper appeared in 1704
and soon a number of periodicals came into existence. The rise of journalism
showed people's growing interest in cultural and literary affairs. The prose of
Swift and Defoe and the eighteenth essayists had its effect on American literature
century of this period. The Tatler and The Sp ectator , the famous periodicals of
Steele and Addison inspired the rise of the periodicals essays like the Tell-Tale se-
ries written by a group of Harkard students. America was under the sway of rea-
son.

The writing of voyages, promotion tracts, sermons, biographies and histories which
dominated the literary scene of the previous generation were gradually vanishing.
It was an era dominated by the intense feeling of nationalism. Biographies of na-
tional leaders were written. The political crisis that confronted America produced a
spate of polemical writings in the nature of debate between Whigs and Tories. Pam-
phlets, speeches and state papers abundantly appeared. Samuel Adams, James Olis,
John Dickinson, Hamilton and Jefferson represented the Whigs, whereas Jonathan
Bondur, Martin Howard and Samuel Seabury represented the Tories. The polemical
writings are remarkable for clarity and political reasoning. American prose style was
in the making. Thomas Paine, a propagandist writer, contributed to the devel-

471
opment of prose. Declaration of Independence, a specimen of the rhetorical style, is a
superb classic as far as clarity of expression, effectiveness of phrases and fine
balance of emotion and reason are concerned.

The diarists Woolman and Bradford were the forerunners of autobiography writ-
ing. The essay became a popular literary genre during this period. By 1722 Franklin
imitated The Spectator in Silence De Good. Soon every newspaper started publish-
ing a series of essays on various subjects. Arthur Bryant wrote in his famous essay
the Art of the Essayist that essay must look as if someone has been doing it him-
self." It mirrored the essayist's personality. Washington Irving's sketch book was a
distinctive triumph of essay. Like American essay criticism in America was a by-
product of journalism. Poe and Bryant were pioneers in this field.

Cotton Mather is an early writer of ecclesiastical prose. He copied the writers of

the Restoration and the eighteenth century in England and the rhetoricians of 1630
or 1640. His Political Fables (1692) is in lucid prose and Christian Philosopher (1721),
a tract on Christianity, is conspicuous (or flowery style loaded with quotations and
allusions. Essays to do Good (1710), which attracted Benjamin Franklin, is written in
simple and easy style.

Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography written in simple and direct style, fixed "the
mode which most realistic autobiographers have since then followed." Poor Rich-
ard's Almanac is a storehouse of fine, effective and memorable proverbs, as "the
cat in gloves catches no mouse." Franklin's little prose pieces like The Whistle, The
Ephemera etc. anticipate the beginning of the personal essay and the short story.
Rules by which A Great Empire May Be Reduced and Edict of the King of Russia
contain bitter, sarcastic and pungent criticism of British Empire, which reminds us of
Swiftian irony and sarcasm. Franklin was a celebrated writer of his time. He claimed
"prose writing was a principal means of my advancement."
John Woolman's (1720 -1770) A Word of Remembrance and Cautaion to the
Rich and Wilson's (1766-1813) American Anthology deserve mention. Michael-
Guillaume Jean de Greece Ouer (1735-1813), the Frenchman and the naturalized citi-

472
zen of America, wrote Letters from an American Farmer (1782), which reflect the
tendencies of the ages. These letters contain the germs of three literary forms-the es-
say, the short story and the dramatic dialogue.

Thomas Paine (1737-1809) wrote The Age of Reason (two volume-1794 and 1795 re-
spectively) and a number of pamphlets—Commonseas. The American Crisis and
many others. He expressed in simple, clear and straightforward style views which
effected vast changes in political, social and religious constitution of Western civili-
zation. His prose is persuasive and passionate.

Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), who became the third President of America, left his
mark on both politics and literature. His Declaration of Independence is a classic in
prose. His Notes on the State of Virginia (1784) is a series of informal essays on
disputed questions in philosophy, science, politics and morals.

Alexander Hamilton (1757-1804) is remembered for The Federalist, which Jefferson

called "the best commentary on the principles of government that ever was written".
It is noticeable for its rationality and convincing, argumentative and lucid style.
John Adams in Thought on Government (1776) expounded his views on the specific
virtues found in the self- government. Madison set a high standard for political re-
porting. He contributed "a practical demonstration of superior journalism in the
unique service he performed by reporting the constitutional convention." He set a
high standard for political journalism, which is conspicuous for honesty, patience
and comprehension. Indeed, Jefferson, Madison, John Adams and Hamilton are
the first four statesmen of the republic.

William Hickling Prescott, a Versatile writer, contributed well written critiques

of English literature to The North American Review. His four major works are A
History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella (1837), A History of the Conquest of
Mexico (1843), A History of the Conquest of Peru (1847), and A History of the Reign
of Philip the Second (1855-88) incomplete at his death. His historical writings are no-
ticeable for unity of theme, dramatic arrangement of striking facts, and elaborate at-

473
tention to the characterisation of leading personalities. Prescot's style was influ-
enced by eighteenth century English writers and hence is conspicuous for clarity
and lucidity, use of balance, antithesis and metaphor, and alytention from "low dic-
tion." "He belligerently insisted on writing English, not American.

Drama
The growth of American theatre was hindered by legal statute, contempt of the
priests, yellow fever, copyright bogy and the exigencies of war. The theatre was dis-
missed, as "the House of the Devil." No attempts could completely suppress the
spirit of dramatic entertainment. It was renewed during the Revolutionary War and
at the end of the eighteenth century the America theatre was firmly established.
About 1750 plays were produced in the theatres in the South and the Middle Colo-
nies. But they were not American plays. They were mostly royalty free. English
plays as Richard II, Dryden's Amphitryon, Farquhar's Beaux's Strategem and Addi-
son's Cato.

American theatre was strenghthened after the Revolution. The first American play
was produced at the New Theatre, Philadelphia, America, on April 24, 1767 Thomas
Godfrey's The Prince of Parthia (published in 1765). It was a good play which was
influenced by Shakespeare, and Beaumont and Fletcher. Its theme was oriental. Mrs.
Mercy Warren's The Adulator (1773) and Blockade, played in Boston in 1776-1777,
are not of high quality and deserve passing reference.

Roy Tyler's The Contrast, the first American comedy, was staged at the John Street
theatre in New York on April 16, 1787. It is an "excellent acting play", based on the
theme of "urban sophistication versus rural naivete." It is the first American play
which is "the celebration of American character" and abounds in local references."

James Nelson Barker's Tears and Smiles, a sentimental comedy, was a moderate suc-
cess. His next play The Embargo, acted in 1808, is in the nature of political discus-
sion. His Indian Princess (1808) is the first Indian play, written by an American. It is
a "melodrama", with music and masque. His masterpiece Superstition, acted in

474
1824, is "a carefully wrought drama based on an aspect of the Regicide Judges' sto-
ry, a very creditable early treatment of a theme later used by Cooper, Hawthorne,
Poulding Longfellow and others." Barker was "a proponent of an American Theatre."

William Dunlop, a man of versatile genius and achievements, exerted "an influence
which helped to elevate and stabilize the theatre in a chaotic period." Although h e
lacked in imaginative power of the first order, he rendered memorable service to
American drama by providing "standards of taste and technique." His first play The
Father or American Shandyism, acted in 1789, was not a distinguished work. The
Italian Father, acted 1799; Andre (1798), a tragedy, and The Glory of Columbia, a
commercial success, are memorable for dramatic craftsmanship. Dunlop's History
of American Theatre (1832) is a monumental work. He contributed much to the wel-
fare of American theatre and drama.

American Literature in theTwentieth Century

World events and upheavals, such as the two world wars, the spread of com-
munism, the Fall of Fascism, and nationalized and local events such as rapid in-
dustrialisation and urbanization, the great Dust Bowla Disaster to mid-west agricul-
ture, the prohibition experiment of the twentieth and the Great Depression of the
thirtieth left their mark on the social, cultural and literary life of America. The in-
ventions of science as the advent of the radio, the automobile, the moving picture
theatres, the television and the electrification of rural America ushered into an era
of scientific and technological advancement and further research, which changed
national thinking, social life, and cultural and literary values. Further the writers,
thinkers and the reading public were influenced by interest in psychology, espe-
cially the works of Freud and Jung, "the sociological studies of environmental in-
fluences upon the development of personality, and the concept of causality devel-
oped in the physical sciences.
Naturalism was fostered by Stephen Gane, Frank Norris, Jack London and Theo-
dore Dresier in the previous century. It dominated the American literary scene for
about thirty years of the twentieth century. "As a literary method it attempted sci-
entific objectivity in the treatment of the natural man, and emphasized the over-

475
powering aspects of his environment or his passions and instincts." French litera-
ture, especially the works of Zola influenced naturalism in American literature. The
naturalistic writers were inclined toward deterniinism in viewing man. Hence, they
questioned the conception of free will. For half a century or more naturalism was a
focal point in American literature.

Humanism was also a marked characteristic of American literature of this period.

Many humanitarian social programmes for improving the lot of man, especially
the miserable condition of labour, were initiated. Many organisations as American
Federation of Labour (1886) and the Revolutionary Industrial Workers of the World
(1905) were formed to espouse the interests of the working classes. Thus the human-
itarian and social concerns influenced the thinking mind. Literature, dealing with
these concerns and voicing passionate protest against human exploitation, came into
existence.

Harward University immensely influenced American literature of this period.

William James, George Santayana, Josiah Royce, George Herbert Palmer, the great
philosophers in the department of philosophy, were. not all writers of literature but
they also evinced keen interest in standards of literary criticism. Writers from the
departments of literature provided prospective writers both inspiration and in-
struction. Harward University also took a lead in oriental studies. Irving Babbitt and
Paul Elmore More, pursued the study of Sanskrit and Oriental literatures at Har-
ward University. They also developed the critical and philosophical views and be-
came the pioneers of New Humanism.

Fiction
The first decade of the twentieth century was dominated by poetry and drama. The
novel showed signs and emergence during the twentieth of the last century. The
rise of the novel coincides with by the flowering of realism in the nineteenth
century. Socialistic impulses began to appear in the novels of this period. The mild
realism of Howells gave place to the sterner naturalism of Stephen Gane Frank Mor-
ris, Jack r and Then ore Dresier. Dresier. a naturalist after the manner of Zola,

476
"was an objective realist who gathered his facts impersonally." His famous novels
are Sister Carrie (1900), Jennie Gerharett (1911), The Financier (1912), The Titan
(1914), The Genius (1915) and An American Tragedy (1925). Commenting on his con-
tribution to American fiction the Literary History of the United States remarks. "In
Dresier the subject matter is always more important than the expression. Because he
reveals the nerves of American society he has exerted a more profound, a more last-
ing influence than any other novelist on twentieth century realistic fiction in Ameri-
ca." Edith Wharton, who was influenced by Henry James, wrote many realistic nov-
els.

Her famous works are The Valley of Decision (1902), The House of Mirth (1905),
Ethan Frome (1911), which is often called her masterpiece of New England tragic real-
ism; and The Age of Innocence (1920) which presents a realistic picture of decadent
New York society. Ellen Glasgow, another woman novelist, is "essentially a novelist
of social history." She, in fact, wrote a social history of Verginia in her readable nov-
els-The Battle Ground (1902), Barren Ground (1925), The Romantic Comedians
(1926) and Vein of Iron (1935).

Willa Cather was the most consistent woman novelist working through the war
decades. She was influenced by Flaubert. She discarded the plot and gave importance
to subject-matter. Her famous novels are Mc Clure's (1912), 0 Pioneers (1913), The
Song of the Lark (1915), My Antonia (1918); Youth and Bright Medusac (1920), a col-
lection of short stories; A Lost Lady (1923), Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927)
her masterpiece; and Shadows as the Rock (1931).

Dorothy Confield Fisher is also a realistic novelist of this period. She is remembered
for The Bent Twig (1915) and The Deepening Stream (1930). James Branch Cabell, "a
link between past and future in American literature," was a romanticist who was
endowed with a gift for satire. He exposed American complacency and hypocrisy
in his novels-Figures of Earth (1921), Something about Eve (1927) and his master-
piece Jurgen (1919). His symbols are mainly sexual and moralistic.

477
Sherwood Anderson (1876-1941), a great name. associated with Chicago Renais-
sance, expressed the inner turmoil in man with great sensitivity and expressed great
sympathy for the individual caught in a machine age. His famous novels are Windy
Mc Pherson's Son (1916), Marching Men (1917) and Many Marriages (1923). He dealt
with familiar people in a familiar way but his prose is stylized. Short story became a
powerful medium of literary expression in his hands. His collections of short stories
are Wincsburg, chio (1919), The Triumph of Egg (1921) and Houses of Men (1923).

Sinclair Lewis (1885-1951) imparted a new significance to American novel. He was

probably the dominant figure in America in the twenties of the last century. He be-
longed to a period of national self-scrutiny. As a novelist his aim was to cure social
evils through ridicule and satire. His main works are Main Street (1920), Babbit
(1922), 'Arrowsmith, the first novel of science; Elmer Gantry, and Dodsworth (1929).
His novels present a vivid panorama of American life and civilization of his time. He
could be very well called the conscience of his country. Sinclair Lewis was the first
American writer to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature. His Kingsblood Royal
(1947) deals with the Negro theme, the most sensational theme in America.

William Faulkner (1897-1972) is one of the most outstanding novelists of the twenti-
eth century. Born in Mississippi, he was rooted deep in the tradition and mores of
plantation south. This region, which Faulkner called Yoknapatawapha country,
serves as the scene of his novels. It is both an actual and mythical region. He became
a friend of Sherwood Anderson who influenced his literary development. Comment-
ing on Faulkner's fictional art Egbert S. Oliver remarks: "Faulkner wrote about his
own land, his own people, his own culture with insight and intensity, probing the
evil in man's nature and the tragedy that results from that evil. He like Hawthorne
illuminates the depth of human soul, probing the dark places, working intensively
into the nature of man. He brings to his fictional insight a fine perception of the cor-
rosive quality of an unrecognised sense of guilt and shame." In his novels and short
stories he has laid bare the "human heart in conflict with itself." His famous works
are Sartoris (1929), The Sound and the Fury (1929), As Lay Dying (1930), Sanctuary
(1931), Light In August (1932), Absalom! Absalom (1936) and The Unvanquished. A

478
Fable (1954) is based on the background of war. Faulkner's style is rhetorical, orna-
mental and labyrinthine. In 1950 Faulkner won the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Ernest Hemingway (1898-1961), "the bronze god of the whole contemporary literary
experience in America, changed the course of story-telling and gave a new cadence
to the language than has the work of any of his contemporaries." He was the son of a
doctor, at Oak Park, Illionois. He joined journalism in the beginning, and then en-
tered the military service during World War I. He was severely wounded on the Ital-
ian front and decorated for valour. He again joined journalism and reported on the
Greco-Turkish war in 1920. He also worked as correspondent in Paris where he be-
came an active member of the artistic circle around Gertrude Skein and many Amer-
ican Writers-Scott Fitzgerald and Shrewood Anderson.

Two volumes of his short stories, In Our Times (1924) and Men Without Women
(1927) and his first novel The Sun Also Rises (1926) established Hemingway as an
outstanding writer. War and violence are predominant in his two war novels, A
Farewell To Arms (1929) and For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940). The Ary is based on
his personal experiences of war on the Italian front. It is the story of Lt. Frederick
Henry's withdrawal from the war into love with Catherine Barkley, an English
nurse who dies as child birth. For Whom the Bell Tolls is a Spanish Civil War story
in which Robert Jordon, the hero, dies for a lost cause. All his tragic heroes are loos-
ers. The Sun Also Rises (1926) is a novel about the "Lost Generation". The Old Man
and the Sea (1952) narrates the sea- adventures of Cuban fisherman, Santiago. He is
a typical Hemingway hero who does not accept defeat: "A man can be destroyed but
not defeated." Death in Afternoon (1932) and Green Hills of Africa (1935) are con-
cerned with bull fighting and big game hunting. His other novels are To Have and
Havenot (1937), Across the River and Into The Trees (1950) and Islands in the
Stream. A Moveable Feast was posthumously published in 1964. It is an account of
his early Paris days.

Hemingway was a gifted craftsman. His style reflects his personality. A critic
comments. "Here the style is distinctly the man; hard, clean, close-clipped, persis-

479
tently masculine: his very adjectives are appropriately, even aggressively, athelet-
ic and accurate." His words are carefully chosen. "They live and shine, each in its
place. Every sentence that he wrote is so finished and
perfect that one cannot think of its being improved. His symbols are concrete, not
abstract.

Hemingway alongwith William Faulkner, Scott Fitzgerald, John Doss Passos and
Sinclair Lewis belongs to the "lost generation", a term which was coined by Gertrude
Stein. Hemingway is the most complete representative of "the lost generation" be-
cause he has articulated in his novels the precise feelings, longings and frustrations
of the lost generation. Hemingway was awarded Nobel Prize for Literature in 1954.

F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940) was a stern moralist with a tragic vision. He once re-
marked: "All the stories that came into my head had a touch of disaster in them." His
first novel The Side of Paradise (1920) is a novel about "the Jazz age cynicism." The
Beautiful and the Damned deals with disaster that fills life. His masterpiece The
Great Gatsby (1925) recaptures the wave of disillusion which swept over the twen-
ties. His short stories, The Tales of The Jazz Age (1922) achieved both popularity an
d excellence . "

John Doss Passos, "the embodiment of the rational artist," was the conscious, moral,
and progre'ssive critic of American manners and habits. His famous first novel Man-
hattan Transfer (1925) is about crosstown New York life. In it we notice "the early
forms of those technical devices that would distinguish the later triology-the use of
popular songs, of newspaper headlines, of the speech of the people as against the
speech of scholars, and of the actual figures from Woodrow Wilson to King C. Gil-
lette-all these sociological indices which are fused into the panoramic view of our
city culture, and in U.S.A. itself our national culture." It was followed by the triology
called U.S.A. which consists of The 42nd Parallel 1930, 1919 (1932) and The Big
Money (1936). The triology gives a picture of American life from 1900 to 1930.

Thornton Wilder's The Bridge of Sanluis Rey (1927), Heaven's My Destination

480
(1935), Our Town (1938) and The Skin of Our Teeth (1942), and Thomas Wolfe's
Look Homward Angel (1929), Of Time and River (1935), The Web and the Rock
(1939) and You can't Go Home Again (1940) are memorable works of this period.
John Steinbeck wrote Tortilla Flat (1935), In Dubious Battle (1936), Of Nice and Men
(1937), The Grapes of Wrath (1939), The Pearle (1947), East of Eden (1952) and
Travels with Charley (1962) The Grapes of Wrath is his masterpiece which is a real-
istic study of the dispossessed, the people of the road. Steinback was awarded No-
bel Prize for Literature in 1962. Pearl S. Buck scormed into popularity with the pub-
lication of her first novel The Good Earth in 1931. It is in epistlory form. Her other
novels are The Patriot and Gone with the Wind. She enjoyed international fame and
popularity. She is considered a link between "the Yankee and the Chinese. Due to
her deep interest in China and Chinese life she has been immensely popular in Chi-
na. She was a popular writer in Denmark from 1932-39. She was awarded the Nobel
Prize for Literature.

John Updike contributed poems, essays and stories, both humorous and serious to
The New Yorker. He is considered to be "the most gifted writer of his generation."
He wrote The Poorhouse Fair (1959), Rabbit, Run (1960), The Cenatur (1963) and
Rabbit Redux (1971). "Updike", according to Josephine Hendin," is the first fine
writer since D.H. Lawrence to define maleness as sexual and economic responsibil-
ity for women, and to connect the decline of society with the decline of masculinity."
His novels use "marriage as the index of social cohesiveness, of economic, political
and sexual change."

Saul Bellow, a major novelist, commingled realism and imagination in his novels.
"His central concerns were money and love : freedom as the interplay between what
is given and what is made in the life of man, and love as the interplay between
man's identity and its interplay in others." Some of his famous works are the Dan-
gling Man (1944), The Victim, (1947), The Adventures of Avgie March (1953), Hen-
derson the Rain King (1958), Seize the Day (1956), Herzog and Mr. Sammler's'
Planet. Bellow's style is unrhetorical, remarkable for its immediacy and colour.

481
J.D. Salingier's The Catcher in the Eye and other works are ironical and full of pa-
thos, which comes from his belief in innocence and doom. His short stories like A
Perfect Day for Banana Fish suggest "innocence and breakability,"

Erskine Caldwell based his novels on the poverty and illiteracy of the Southern poor
white. His famous novels Tobacco Road (1932) and God's Little Acre (1933) em-
ployed the device of using folk humour and the ludicrous in character and incident
to expose the social failures faced in the southern hills. He did remarkable work in
the short story. His short stories were collected in many volumes American Earth
(1931), We Are the Living (1933), and Kneel to the Rising Sun (1935).

John Steinbeck in his famous novels-Tortilla Flat (1935) and In Dubious Battle (1936)
writes about the common man with sympathy and compassion. Humour and anger
are found in his novels. Of Nice and Men (1937) is symbolic but it has realistic de-
tails and objective picture of genuine conditions, His The Grapes of Wrath (1939),
the Pultizer Prize novel and a national sensation, deals with "the plight of helpless
individual (or family) caught up in a great social movement grinding the individual-
ity and spirit to impotency."

The post World War II writers are concerned with the search of the alienated indi-
vidual for an identity, for a meaning. Jack Keronac's novel On the Road (1957) is a
representative work of the Beat Generation. Keronac claimed that the "origin of
the word 'Beat' as a designation for the movement and he said that the word de-
rives from beatitudes, the sayings of the Sermon on the Mount in the fifth chapter of
the Gospel of Matthew; but the word has carried in the popular mind an entirely dif-
ferent suggestion. The work of Keronac, Ginsberg, and their associates has protested
against what they describe as the emptiness of conventional society by the substitu-
tion of the unsubstantial, until the unconventional has become for them the required
form "

Norman Mailer, a rebel writer, wanted to take a political stance in his novels-The
Naked and the Dead (1948), The Deer Park (1955) and An American Dream (1965).

482
He, in the words of Josephine Hendin, "has explored power as political fact, as sexu-
al energy, as narcissistic joy." Her novels are products of ambition and frustration.
Mailer's The Naked and the Dead is a famous war novel which presents a terrifying
view of what war does to man. Truman Capote's vision is pessimistic. He sees eve-
ryone caught between one kind of death or another in Cold Blood. Other Voices,
Other Room (1948), The Grass Harp and Breakfast at Tiffany's. His collection of
short stories A Tree of Night (1949) included both humour horror. James Purdy's
Malcolm (1959) and The Nephew (1960) are allegories of both innocence and experi-
ence centered respectively on youth and age. His two collections of short stories
The Colour of Darkness (1957) and Children is All are memorable. Bernard Mal-
mud revealed "a tough, sardonic, and compassionate vision" in The Natural
(1952), The Assistant (1957), A New Life (1961) and in his short stories collected in
the volume The Magic Barrel (1958).

Katerine Anne Porter published short stories and novelettes-Pale Horse, 'Pale Rider
(1939), and her first novel Ship of Fools appeared in 1962. In The Heart is a Lonely
Hunter (1940), The Member of the Wedding (1946), The Ballad of the Sad Cafe (1951)
and Clock Without Hands (1964) are brief, beautifully written short novels which
express sympathy for misfits in society. This was also dealt in Harper Lee's To Kill A
Mocking Bird. James Agee's A Death in the Family presents a southern family in the
presence of death.

Robert Penn Warren, a poet and critic, was also a celebrated novelist. His famous
novels are All the King's Men (1946), World Enough and Time (1950), Band of Angels
(1955), and The Cave (1959). Egbert S. Oliver writes: "Warren in his serious quest for
the nature of the self-represents the more thoughtful currents of the novel in recent
American literature. Warren recognises that the self is in society, that society is
based on moral value, that search for understanding is part of man's nature, and an
integral part of the self."

Kurt Vonnegut in his novels Breakfast of Champions, Cat's Cradle and Slaughter
House- Five "speaks out in his anarchic, disintegrative fiction for our incapacities and

483
against the code of performance, achievement and endurance." Robert Heinlein's
novel Stranger in A Strange Land (1961) is about everyman's estrangement from
pleasure. He finds pleasure in sex which is the means of gaining power over your
own capacities for pleasure. Arthur Clarke in Childhood's End is concerned with the
effacement of 'I', which is the cause of discontent.

William Burroughs in his novels Wild Boys, Naked Lunch, Soft Machine and Ticket
That Exploded angrily writes against social, political and sexual repression. Herbert
Selby emerges as a surrealist of the streets in The Room and Last Exit to Brooklyn.

Hunter Thompson in his famous novel Fear and Loothing in Las Vegas was dis-
mayed at the failure of the youth movement, which needed "more kindness." He ex-
posed the craziness of American life in the 1960s. John Hawkes' novel The Canni-
bal is set in the background of American life but reaches back to World War I and
"forward to predictions of a third one to create a sense of cyclicity and inexorability
of genocide and murder."

John Barth's The End of the Road, The Floating Opera and Lost in the Funhouse are
full of wit, humour and satire. His Scot Weed Factor and Giles Goat Boy are histori-
cal epics in prose. Flannery 0' Connor is a superb writer who espouses- the cause of
the child, the woman and the sick. Silence in her stories is more eloquent than
speech. Josephine Hendin Writes about her achievement : "Flanners 0' Connor be-
came more and more the pure poet of the misfit, the damaged daughter, the psychic
cripple — of all those who are martyred by silent fury and redeemed through vio-
lence." Joyce Carol Oates in her novel Them brings to light the conflict between
mothers and daughters, which may be termed generation gap.

She is the exponent of the tradition of socialism in the 1970s. The poor in America
have a divided soul. Her other novels are A Garden of Earthly Delights, Expen-
sive People, Do with Me What You Will, Wonderful and Childwold. Dorris Lessing
is a feminist who realistically writes about "the problems of being alive in terms of
the problems of being a woman." A Woman always finds herself in traps, set around

484
her by mother lovers, and finally herself. Her famous novels are Children of Vio-
lence, The Golden Notebook and Briefing A Descent into Hell.

Cynthia Buchanan in her novel, Maiden, "takes of America as a woman caught be-
tween the old romantic ideals and the new faith in sex." Lois Gould in Such Good
Friends takes up female sexual anger as a subject. Her other novel Run River also
deals with this theme.

Thomas Pynchon is an outstanding novelist of modern in American fiction. He is a

very private man. He did not come to accept the National Book Award, he won for
Gravity's Rainbow and quietly accepted the 0' Henry prize for short fiction, the Wil-
liam Faulkner Foundation First Novel Award for V; and the Rosenthal Foundation
Award for Fiction. He did not accept the Howell's Medal for the most distinguished
fiction produced in the preceding five years in 1975, instituted by the American
Academy of Arts and Letters. His famous novel V (1963) deals with "people who
know that love could not diminish suffering because it was love that produced half
the anguish there was. He knew that what the world needed was not another Christ,
but an end to the daily passion play." His other novels are Sonnets Orpheus and
Gravity's Rainbow. He celebrates the Devil whose mission is "so promote death." Jo-
sephine Hendin writes: Pynchon has but together the emotional, cultural and historical
preoccupations of his generation with a brilliance and depth "

P.G. Woodhouse (1881-1975), who became a professional writer in 1903, is remem-

bered for Enter Psmith (1909), Leaves It To Psmith (1923), Ulkridges (1924), Carry on
Jeeves (1925), Right Ho Jeeves (1934), The Code of The Woosters (1938) Ring for
Zeenes (1953) and The Return of Jeeves (1954). He was untouched by the pressures
of the twentieth century. He was a humourist and craftsman par excellence. His fa-
mous character Jeeves has become a household name.

Issac Asimov, the most outstanding science fiction writer of the twentieth century,
brought the detective and science fiction genres together and evolved the scientific
detective who combines, vast scientific knowledge with sharp ratio on cinative abil-

485
ity of Poe's Dupin. He created two imperishable scientist-detectives-Bailey who re-
solves complicated murder mysteries in The Caves of Steel (1976) and The Naked
Sun (1956), and Dr. Wendell with his collection of detective- scientific stories, enti-
tled Asimor's Mysteries (1976). His other works are Foundation, Foundation and
Empire, Earth is Room Enough, The Stars Like Dust, The End of Eternity,
Nightfall I & II, I, Robot, The Rest of the Robbots, Nebula Award Stories and Tales of
the Black Widowers.

Peter Benchley is a great contemporary novelist who in his famous novel Jaws
(1974) turned sharp attack into a national obsession. He was fascinated by the sea
which is a significant presence in his The Deep (1976), The Island (1979) and Beast
(1991).

Stephen King, the horror fiction writer, has based his latest book Cell on intrusion
on privacy due to mobile phones, which are a great danger to modern civilization.
It was published in 2005. His other works are Carrie, The Shining To Pet Cemetry,
The Green Mile, Riding the Bullet and The Plant. Many of his novels have become
horror films.

Poetry
In the beginning of the twentieth century poetry was very prominent in American
literature. The publication of Harriet Monroe's Poetry A Magazine of Verse in
1912 was an epoch making event. It charted the path for future American poetry.
Its publication aimed at "giving to poetry her own place, her own voice." At
claimed the existence of a public interested in poetry and augured that " poet-
ry will grow in power, in beauty, in significance." This magazine introduced
many new poets of genius like Robert Frost, Carl Sandburg and Vachel Lindsay.
These poets had wide audience appeal. T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound exercised im-
mense influence upto the fifties of the last century. The Poetry also published Eli-
ot's The Waste Land in 1922, for which he was conferred upon the Dial Award in
1922. This award was also given in following years to Morainne Moore, E. E.
Cumaings, William Carols William and Ezra Pound; T.S. Eliot, who became the

486
naturalized citizen of England, was a favourite of the new poets in America, who
imbibed his influence. He was a poet of international status.

Edwin Markham (1852-1940) is remembered for one poem The Man With the
Hoe, published in San Francisco Examiner (Jan. 15, 1899). It shows the influence
of The Old Testament, Genesis and Millet, a painter. His Lincoln, the man of the
people is also a famous poem. His Collected Poems was published in 1940. Marine
Moore, a minor poet, whose Observations appeared in 1924 was' called "an objec-
tivist." "In Objectivism, though an object may be chosen for treatment be-
cause of its symbolic or subjective references, once it has been chosen it is stud-
ied in its own right." Eliot and Wallace Stevens praised her versification. "She
composes not by feet but by syllables: the result is not free verse but a formal
sometimes light, sometimes rigid pattern." According to Moore over accent and
over emphasis must be avoided and "mathematics as we have it in music, can be
of inestimable help to a poet." Her poems are dry, devoid of emotional intensity,
although in Poetry she called herself "a literalist of imagination." Some of her fa-
mous poems are When I Bury Pictures , C r i t ics and Connisseurs and Pick-
ing and Choosing.

Edwin Arlington Robinson (1869-1935) was influenced by the Puritan tradition and
the trans- cendental romanticism. His poems appeared in two volumes-The Torrent
and the Night Before (1896) and The Children of Night (1897). His poems are also
available in Collected Poems of Edwin Arlington Robinson (1937). Although "an al-
most blank despair, a brooding melancholy" envelope his poetry, there is a gleam of
light, a ray of hope for man to attain. His setting and background are new England
but his themes are universal in character. Some of his famous poems are Flam-
monde, Ben Jonson Entertains A Man From Stratford, Eros Turannos Bewick Finzer,
The Man Against the Sky, The glory of the Nightingale etc. His poetry explores the
human soul in moments of crisis and agony. As for technique, Robinson preferred
the conventional form, avoiding blank verse.

Robert Frost, according to the English poet Robert Graves, "was the first American

487
who could be honestly reckoned a master-poet by world standards Frost has won
the title fairly, not by turning his back on ancient European tradition, nor by imitat-
ing its successes, but by developing it in a way that at last matches the American
climate and the American language." His work in various capacities as bobbin boy in
a mill, worker, in a shoe factory, reporter as a newspaper, farmer and country
school teacher, made an impact on his poetry. His poems were published in A Boy's
Will (1913), North of Boston (1914), Mountain Interval (1916), New Hampshire
(1923), A Further Range, A Witness Tree (1942), Steeple Bush, A Masque of Mercy
(1947) and Collected Poems (1949).

His critical opinions and views on poetry appear in The Figure A Poem Makes
which is his preface written to the enlarged edition of the Collected Poems. To him
poetry "begins in delight and ends in wisdom." Frost's poetry has the flavour of New
England life and an insight into New England character. Beneath the simple and
clear surface of his poetry lies a sharp penetration into life's complexities. Egbert S.
Oliver writes: "He uses the "facts" of life, but it becomes apparent that the fact be-
comes metaphor and symbol-that Frost is penetrating into value and experience."
His famous poem Stopping by Woods on A Snowy Evening, tells of a man's tempta-
tion to answer the strange call of the wovels by getting into it and of his resisting the
temptation by thinking of the promise he has to keep :

The woods are lovely dark and deep But I have promises to keep, And miles to go
before I sleep, And miles to go before I sleep.

It is a highly moving lyric remarkable for superb craftsmanship and depth of mean-
ing. It is an interesting allegory of life and death.

Frost was a regional poet whose region was New England, more particularly New
Hampshire. He was a poet of nature. He was not a nature mystic. Frost's poetry is
simple, lucid and clear. Cecil Day Lewis observes that the simplicity of his verse "is
the simplicity-not of nature-but of a serious and profoundly critical spirit." His place
is assured in American poetry.

488
Carl Sandburg (1878-1967) began his poetic career by contributing poems to the
magazine Poetry. His first poem, entitled Chicago was first published in it in 1914.
The Chicago poem expresses a different mood. Sandburg claimed: "poems are re-
sult of moods. I don't approach a subject in the same mood everyday. He sings about
the vastness of the American landscape, of the joy of work and of the brotherhood
of man. His poems are unconventional in theme and tone. Chicago is a symbol of
newness and hopefulness. He discards the past and its fetters. He sings of life, Chica-
go stands for the present and the future, which he celebrates in his poetry, for exam-
ple:

I speak of new cities and new peoples, I tell you the past is a bucket of ashes I tell
you yesterday is a wind gone down, a sun dropped in the west I tell you there is noth-
ing in the world only an ocean of tomorrow a sky of tomorrows

He was alive to the problems of the people and had firm faith in democracy like
Whitman. He was against social conventions and religious hypocrisy. He was a sub-
tle and unconventional poetic craftsman. He coined his own idiom and expressions
to articulate his feelings, but it comes to him from the streets and not from dictionar-
ies. There is subtle and hidden music in his poetry.

Chicago was the seat of new poetic impulse Vachel Lindsay was another important
poet of the Chicago group, which consisted of, Carl Sandburg, and Edgar Lee Mas-
ters. These three poets were the makers of a new tradition in American poetry. Lind-
say's early Moon- Poems, The Comet of Prophecy, The Spider and the Ghost of the
Fly and many other poems are about dreams and phantasms, lacking in depth and
congruity. He stormed into popularity with the publication of General William
Booth Enters into Heaven and Other Poems (1913). Edgar Lee Masters, a lawyer by
profession and a poet by avocation, became popular with the publication of Spoon
River Anthology (1915). His poems were also published in the Mirror. There are no
phantoms, no visions in his poetry. He deals with real situations and real characters.
He was an unconventional poet who, according to the Literary History of the United
Slates, "was most in sympathy with his libertarians in love, his freethinkers and

489
the idealists whom the money perverted villains have defeated.

Amy Lowell (1874-1925), a minor poet, was an imagist. She contributed much to the
advancement of the Imagist Movement. Selected Poems of Amy Lowell (1928) and
The Complete Poetical Works of Amy Lowell (1955) appeared posthumously. Her
poems such as Lilacs were often the subject of criticism or parody; but Patters was
highly admired for its poetic worth.

Ezra Pound was one of the most controversial and most influential poets of America.
Eliot wrote: "Pound did not create the poets but he created a situation in which for
the first time there was a modern movement in poetry." He began writing poetry in
his college days at the University of Pennsylvania and at Hamilton College. William
Carols Williams Marianne More and Hilda Doobttle (known as H.D.) were his po-
et-friends. His first volume of poems appeared in Venice in 1908, Personae was pub-
lished in London in 1909, and Exultations immediately after. H i s masterpiece Hugh
Selwyn Mauberley, published in London in 1920, was a turning point in his poetical
career. He was given Bollingen Award for the Pisan Cantos in 1949.

Pound's life was full of ups and downs. He was dismissed from his position teach-
ing Romance language and literature from Wabash Colleges, Indiana. He left Amer-
ica in 1908 as he felt disgusted with the intellectual climate of America. He travelled
France, Italy, Spain and many other countries. In 1939 Hamilton College, where
Pound received his B. A. Degree, awarded him the Doctor of Letters Degree. The Ci-
tation said: "Your feet have trodden paths into provincial and Italian poetry, into
Anglo-Saxon and Chinese. From all these excursions you have back treasure your
name is permanently linked with the development of English poetry in the twentieth
century. Your reputation is international, you have guided many poets into new
paths, you have pointed new directions you have ever been a generous champion of
young writers." In 1945 Pound was detained on the charge of treason in America but
the charges were later withdrawn. Then he was confined in a hospital for the insane.
He was released from custody in 1958 on the condition of leaving U .S .A.

490
Pound took keen interest in the publication of the works of Eliot, D.H. Lawrence,
James Joyce, W.

A. Yeats and Tagore in America. He took keen interest in Japanese and Chinese poet-
ry. He hag been called the inventor of Chinese poetry in modem age. In his role as "a
culture poet" he did much "to conserve the best of the past and to renew lost principle
of order." Harriet Monroe, the founder of the magazine Poetry, had read Pound's po-
etry with admiration She made him the London correspondent of Poetry. In
London he promoted the Imagism, a poetic movement, initiated by T.E. Hulme.

Pound's masterpiece Hugh Selwyn Mauberley, "a positive document of sensibility" in

the words of Eliot, reflects the "miscellaneousness of modem culture, the absence of
direction the incongruity of the modem world to the artist; and his dubious status
there. It offers.... a representative experience of the phase of English poetry in which
it became plain that the romantic tradition was exhausted it has the impersonality
of great poetry : its technical perfection means a complete detachment and control."
The Pisan Cantos, broken but ambitious monologues, "were designed to cover loose-
ly the wreckage of human civilization in the ancient, the medieval, and the modem pe-
riods."

As a poetic craftsman, Pound had a keen ear of music, which, according to him, is
essential to poetry. He also had a keen sense for language. His language is visual
and concrete. He chose fresh epithets and fresh metaphors to express his poetic sen-
sations. Images in his poetry are not mere decoration but the very essence of an intu-
itive language.

Pound was the force behind the revival of modern poetry. Frost said that Pound
"had an extraordinary capacity for making poets out of little or nothing." Amy Lowell
wrote: "he could make you write." It was the result of his forceful influence that a
host of young voices were heard in America, notable among whom were Amy Low-
ell, Robinson Jeffers, Edgar Lee Masters, Edna Millay, Sara Teasdale and Vachel
Lindsay.

491
Hart Crane (1899-1832) had a very chaotic and unhappy life. He was well-versed
with the works of Donne, Elizabethan writers, Whitman, Melville, T.S. Eliot and
current New York writers. In the beginning of his poetic career he composed short
lyrics. His first poems were collected in White Building (1926). In these poems he
emerges as a budding poet who uses language plastically, with a sharp sense of col-
our, weight and sound. Some of his fine poems in this volume are Wine Menagerie,
Praise For An Urn and Vetalies. His famous poem The Marriage of Faustus and Hel-
en (1922-23) recasts the myth of "past and present."

At the age of nineteen he began writing The Bridge which was published in 1930. It
is Crane's "longest and most ambitious poem—and one of the most durable of the
modern American attempts at a poem which might be called epic. It is a symbolical
poem which owes much to Whitman. It is an attempt "to encompass the myth of
America, using the symbol as Brookyln Bridge as symbol." "The Bridge" for Crane is
the symbol of "logos" in man's quest for the absolute. Crane's poetic imagination was
assimilative and integrative in the sense that the machine and complexities of modern
life must be assimilated with poetry. Egbert S. Oliver remarks : "Crane conceived his
The Bridge as bringing a positive assimilation into modern literature in contrast to El-
iot's The Wasteland."

E. E. Cummings (1894-1962) was an individualist in modern American poetry. He

insisted: "It's no use trying to pretend that most people and ourselves are alike." He
"worked out methods of artistic expression to capture the individual emotion, to ar-
rest for a moment individual attention." Although he achieved distinction as an
painter, he wrote and published poems for over forty five years. He was a renowned
poet too. Cumming's poems appeared in many collections- Tulips and Chimneys
(1923), 95 Poems (1958), 100 Selected Poems (1959) and 50 Poems (1960). His other
books are The Enormous Room (1922), Eimi (1933) and Six Nonlectures (1953). He
"is a lyricist of romantic love, who is also a romantic anarchist in the New England
tradition, and believes that a poem is an inspired moment breaking through the bar
of syntax. In Tulips and Chimneys be made abundant use of "the typographical dis-
tortion, and unpredictability in punctuation, capitalization, word spacing, and word

492
arrangement which became a kind of trademark for his work." Although he is
sometimes troublesome and obscure, be poetic expression often is noticeable for lyr-
ical beauty, intensity, spontaneity and beauty.

Robinson Jeffers (1887-1962) published over a dozen volumes of his poems—

Selected Poems of Robinson Jeffers (1938); Be Angry at the Sea (1941), Medea (1946),
The Double Axe and Other Poems (1948) and Hungerfield and other Poems (1954).
His first volume of poems Flagons and Apples (1912) is conventionally romantic. He
was not influenced by any poet or any poetic movement. In his long poems Jeffers
deals with unrelieved violence in all its manifestations-incest, rape, murder, which
were the dark consequences of the First World War. He was influenced by Speng-
ler's Decline of the West. He foresees the fall of Western civilization and some-
times welcomes that fall. There is an undercurrent of pessimism in Jeffers' poetry. In
his shorter lyrics he shows mastery over a powerful, easy flowing rhythm.

Archibald Mac Leish was also an experimentalist. He held many public offices
with distinction and integrity. He produced several radio plays in verse. His fa-
mous poetic drama J.B. is based on The Book of Job but with action transferred into
a modern situation. It won Mac Leish his third-Pultizer Prize. His poems were col-
lected in Collected Poems-1917-1952 (1953) and Songs of Eve (1955). American
Letter (1928) and Conquistador, an epic of Spanish Assault are his famous poems.
He won Pultizer Prize for the latter.

William Carlos Williams (1883-1963), a physician by profession and poet by avoca-

tion, by influenced by Imagism and the Imagist movement. His poems are available
in Complete Collected Poems 1906-38, (1938), Collected Early Poems of William
Carols Williams (1950), Collected Later Poetry of William Caols Williams (1950) and
Paterson (1946-58). His Autobiography appeared in 1951. Williams is a five book
poem on New Zersey City, Paterson (1946-58), which is "a kind of epic of a city,
working in the history of the city, its mythology and its character-and characters." He
belongs to main stream of American poetry. Like Whitman he is a singer of the glory
of man. He is a thought provoking and influential poet.

493
Wallace Stevens (1879-1955) contributed poems to Poetry. He published a slender
volume of his poems, entitled Harmonium in 1923, which suggests the symbolic
character of his poetry. His other publications are Ideas of Order (1935), The Man
with the Blue Guitar (1937) and Collected Poems (1955). His most persistent subject
is the opposition between bare reality and what the imagination can make of it", says
The Literary History of the United States. This opposition is presented through high-
ly expressive symbols. His use of symbols and imagery is deliberate and controlled.
He uses satire and irony to express the decadence of modern civilization. Egbert S.
Oliver remarks : "But his more essential affinity is with modern abstract painting
and its method, such as Picasso represents. He used bright tints, lavish sounds, done
with precise elegance. He relished the bare image but he rarely left his poem bare:
he preferred "the essential gaudiness of poetry" and he knew how to achieve it."

Some memorable poetical works of modern period are Edna St. Millay's Second
April (1923) and Fatal Interview (1931); Stephen Vincet Benet's John Brown's Body
(1928); Conrad Aiken's Preludes and Brownstone Eclogues; Marianne Moore's Ob-
servations (1924); John Crowe Ransom's Selected Poems and Poems and Essays—
(1955) ; Robert Lowell's Lord Weary's Castle (1946), Life Studies, For The Union Dead
(1964), Near The Ocean (1967) and Armies of the Night (1968). Lowell is credited
with establishing what is called "confessional poetry", "poetry having a highly auto-
biographical subject-matter, a fairly robust free form and technique and written with
an almost painful honesty." His Lord Weary's Castle won the Pultizer Prize. Mailer
mentions Lowell in his Pultizer Prize winner, Armies of the Night (1968), hail-
ing as "America's greatest living poet." He was awarded a posthumous Pultizer for
his final collection, Day by Day. Epilogue, his last poems, is a premonition of his
death in 1977.

494
 MCQS
1 Who is regarded as the grand father of American Poetry ?
a- Thomas Paine
b- Freneau
c- William Dunlop
d- Royall Tyler

2 The writers of the Revolution period is/are

a- Thomas Paine
b- Freneau
c- William Dunlop
d- Both (a) and (b)

3 First American play was produced in-a- 1767 4. America got its freedom in
a- 1767
b- 1776
c- 1771
d- 1775

5 After Revolution which writer/s emerged

a- Royall Tyler
b- William Dunlop
c- Both (a) and (b)
d - None of these

6 Dunlop wrote-
a- 'The Father'
b- 'Andre'
c- 'The Italian Father'
d- All the three

495
7 Philip Freneau was a/an-
a- Novelist
b- Dramatist
c- Poet
d- Essayist

8 He wrote-
a- 'American Liberty'
b- 'American Independence'
c- 'The British Prison Shop'
d- All the above

9 Benjamin Franklin wrote

a- Poetry
b- Novel
c- Drama
d- Essay and Short Story

10 Prof. Hume said-"You are the first philosopher, and indeed the first great man
of letters" you refers to-
a- Freneau
b- Dunlop
c- Benjamin Franklin
d- Royall Tyler

11 Years 1815 to 1820 are known for

a- Growth of romanticism
b- Renaissance
c- Transcendentalism
d- Religious movement

12 Who is known as 'the father of American poetry' ?

496
a- Freneau
b- Royall Tyler
c- Cullen Bryant
d- Emerson

13 Who has been regarded as "American Wordsworth and representative of New

England Puritanism" and "cold child of the 18th century" ?
a- Emerson
b- Whitman
c- Cullen Bryant
d- E. A. Poe

14 Who wrote about Cullen Bryant-"He is original because he is sincerely a true

painter of the face of the country and of the sentiments of his own people" ?
a- Freneau b- Emerson
c- Whitman
d- Allen Poe

15 Who considered Allen Poe, "the greatest American genius and a great poet of
the 20th century" ?
a- Tennyson
b- Arnold
c- W. B. Yeats
d- Ruskin

16 Who declared Allen Poe, "always and for all lands a great lyric poet" ?
a- Tennyson
b- Arnold
c- W. B. Yeats
d- Elliot

17 American Renaissance is related to the period-

497
a- 1815 − 1820
b- 1829 − 1860
c- 1861 − 1865
d- None of these

18 Which period considered as 'The Golden Day' in American literature ?

a- Romantic period
b- Renaissance age
c- Transcendalism
d- None of these

19 Who was the foremost among transcendentalists ?

a- Freneau
b- Whitman
c- Emerson
d- Allen Poe

20 Emerson got fame through his

a- Novels
b- Dramas
c- Poems
d- Lectures and Essays

21 In 'Nature' Emerson shows his kinship with-

a- Wordsworth
b- Shelley
c- Tennyson
d- Blake

22 Civil war took place in-

a- 1815 − 1820
b- 1861 − 1865

498
c- 1829 − 1860
d- None of these

23 Who is called 'the founder of the psychological novel' in America ?

a- Emerson
b- Hawthorne
c- Whitman
d- Allen Poe

24 Who is called the representative poet of America?

a- Emerson
b- Whitman
c- Allen Poe
d- Hawthorne

25 'Leaves of Grass' was published in-

a- 1850
b- 1855
c- 1852
d- 1854

26 Who is influenced by Hinduism ?

a- Whitman
b- Emerson
c- Allen Poe
d- Hawthorne

27 Who is called 'the poet of democracy' ?

a- Emerson
b- Hawthorne
c- Whitman
d- Allen Poe

499
28 'Uncle Tom's Gabin' by H. B. Stowe is about
a- Relaionship
b- Slavery
c- Church
d- Childhood

29 Shelby, Haley, Clare are the character in

a- Hairy Ape
b- Desire Under the Elms
c- Uncle Tom's Gabin
d- Scarler Letter

30 Whose actual name is Samuel L. Clemens ?

a- Mark Twain
b- Hawthorne.
c- O' Neill
d- Emerson

31 Who has been called 'The wild humorist of plains' by San Francisco ?
a- O' Neill
b- Henry James
c- Mark Twain
d- Emily Dickenson

32 Huck is a character who belongs to the novel-

a- Desire Under the Elms
b- Hairy Ape
c- Uncle Tom's Gabin
d- Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

33 What is true about Emily Dickenson ?

a- She writers of every day life

500
b- She explores the human soul and is a mystic poet
c- Her recurring themes are life, death, soul & love
d- All are true

34 Who established novel as an art form ?

a- Henry James
b- Hawthorne
c- O' Neill
d- Henry Miller

35 Who has been called "the historian of the consciences" by Conrad and is 'father
of psychological novel' ?
a- O' Neill
b- Henry James
c- Hawthorne
d- Henry Miller

36 Whose actual name is William Sydney Porter ?

a- O' Neill
b- O' Henry
c- Henry James
d- Hawthorne

37 O' Henry is a/an-

a- Novelist
b- Dramatist
c- Short story teller
d- Essayist

38 In his stories, there is an abundant use of

a- Humour
b- Satire

501
c- Irony
d- All the three

39 Who wrote about Frost's poetry-"His best poetry exhibits the structure of sym-
bolists, metaphysical poetry, much more clearly than does of many a modern poet"?
a- Lieanth Brooks
b- Lionel Trilling
c- Lynen
d- None of these

40 According to Lynen, who is a modern poet because of his concern with symbol-
ism?
a- Whitman
b- Frost
c- Poe
d- Emily Dickenson

41 Who is the fictional laureate of the "Lost generation"?

a- O' Neill
b- Arthur Miller
c- Ernest Hemingway
d- Henry James

42 Other novelist of the 'Lost generation' is/are

a- Faulkner
b- Scott Fitzerland
c- J. D. Passos and Sinclair Lewis
d- All the above

43 Which novel of Hemingway gives the message-"Man is not made for defeat, a
man can be destroyed, but not defeated" ?
a- Man Without Women

502
b- The Sun also Rises
c- To Have and Have Not
d- The Old Man and the Sea

44 Santiago is a famous character in Hemingway's novel

a- A Farewell to Arms
b- Death in the Afternoon
c- Green Hills of Africa
d- The Old Man and the Sea

45. Hemingway deals with

a- Violence and Death
b- Alcoholism
c- Sex
d- All the above

46 Regional Novels were written by-

a- Fitzgerald, Steinbeck, Faulkner, Wolfe
b- J. T. Farell, Cadwell
c- Sherwood Anderson, Alfred Kazin
d - None of the above

47 Who have contributed to the naturalistic fiction ?

a- Fitzgerald, Steinbeck, Faulkner
b- J. T. Farell, Cadwell
c- Sherwood Anderson, Kazin
d- None of the above

48 The themes of isolation and mood of Satire and criticism has been adopted by a-
Fitzgerald, Steinback, Faulkner
b- J. T. Farell, Cadwell
c- Sherwood Anderson, Kazin

503
d- None of the above

49 Who became the symbol of American Renaissance?

a- Hemingway
b- O' Neill
c- Miller
d- None of these

50 Who has been described by some critics as 'Prose Shakespeare'?

a- Hemingway
b- Miller
c- O' Neill
d- Emily Dickenson

51 What is true about O′ Neill?

a- He introduced realism in American drama
b- He experimented with expressionism and symbolism
c- He also used chorus, the triology and the asides etc.
d- All are true

52 'What Price Glory' is written by-

a- O' Neil
b- Maxwell Anderson
c- Miller
d- Tennessee Williams

53 'What Price Glory' is a

a- Nobel
b- Sentimental Story
c- Social drama
d- Short essay
54 'Who is Afraid of Virginia Woolf' is written by-

504
a- Tennessee Williams
b- Arthur Miller
c- Edward Albee
d- None of these

55 'The Zoo Story', 'The Death of a Bessie Smith', 'The American Drama' are written
by
a- Edward Albee
b- Arthur Miller
c- Tennessee Williams
d- O' Neill

56 The Playwrights of the fifties have been concerned with. themes.

a- Social
b- Domestic
c- Psychological
d- All of these

57 'The Glass Menagerie', 'A Street Car Named Desire', 'Cat on a Hot Tin Roof' are
written by
a- Edward Albee
b- Arthur Miller
c- Tennessee Williams
d- None of these

58 Tennessee Williams is more concerned with problems.

a- Social
b- Moral
c- Religious
d- Psychological

59 Yank is a famous character in a O' Neill's-

505
a- 'The Desire Under the Elms
b- 'The Hairy Ape'
c- 'Beyond the Horizon'
d- 'Days without End'

60 'The Hairy Ape' is about-

a- Struggle with his own fate
b- Conflict between capitalism and working class
c- The Problem of alienation, where death seems to be the only solution
d- All are true

61 The word expressionism is chiefly associated with-

a- O' Neill
b- Arthur Miller
c- Tennessee Williams
d- Edward Albee

62 What is Oedipus Complex ?

a- Mother's excessive love for her son
b- Father's excessive love for his daughter
c- Sister's excessive love for her brother
d- Brother's excessive love for his sister

63 What is Electra complex ?

a- Mother's excessive love for her son
b- Father's excessive love for his daughter
c- Sister's excessive love for her brother
d- Brother's excessive love for his sister

64 The story, in which a fanner Cabot brings home a third wife, she seduces Eben,
the son. with the second marriage and has a child by him, murders the child and at
the end, both go to the gallous, belongs to the novel -

506
a- Hairy Ape
b- Desire Under the Elms
c- Death of a Salesman
d- Waiting for Godot

65 What is true about 'Death of a Salesman' ?

a- It blends realism and expressionism and symbolism
b- It has been filmed and televised
c- In it the play wright has followed the flash back technique
d- All are true

66 Which tragedy had 742 performances in Broadway Theatre in New York and re-
ceived the Drama Critics and the Pulitzer prizes?
a- Death of a Salesman
b- Farewell to Arms
c- Desire Under the Elms
d- Hairy Ape

67 The novel in which the son commits suicide by dashing his car against a tree so
that his family may get money from the Life Insurance Company, is
a- Desire Under the Elms
b- Hairy Ape
c- Death of a Salesman
d- Farewell to Arms

68 Which among following belongs to the absurd group of dramatists ?

a- Samuel Beckett
b- Albee and Pinter
c- lonesco, Adamov, Genet
d- All the above
69 Emerson was the editor of the paper
a- Daily News

507
b- The Dail
c- Daily Courrant
d- Weekly Paper

70 Which work of Emerson has been called "The most seminal of all American
books," and "The gospel of the new faith" by H. S. Canby ?
a- 'Nature'
b- 'The American Scholar'
c- 'The Divinity School Address'
d- Essays

71 Which work of Emerson has been declared as "an event without any former
parallel in our literary annual" by Lowell and "intellectual declaration of Independ-
ence" by Holmes?
a- 'Nature'
b- 'The American Scholar'
c- 'Representative Men'
d- 'English Traits'

72 Which work of Emerson was published after his death?

a- 'Society and Solitude'
b- 'The Conduct of Life'
c- 'English Traits'
d- 'The Natural History of the Intellect'

73 Which work of Emerson was completed by his friend James Elliot Cabot ?
a- 'Letters and Social Aims'
b- 'Society and Solitude'
c- 'The Natural History of the Intellect'
d- 'Poems'
74 Marget Fuller, H. D. Thoreau, N. Hawthorne, A. Bronson Alcott, Jones Very are
all-

508
a- Realists
b- Humanists
c- Transcendentalists
d- Intellectualists

75 Who has been called the prophet of American Democracy ?

a- Emerson
b- Walt Whitman
c- Emily Dickenson
d- Frost

76 In whose opinion "Leaves of Grass" was "the most extraordinary piece of wit
and wisdom that Americans yet contributed" ?
a- Emerson
b- Emily Dickenson
c- Allen Poe
d- Robert Frost

77 Walt Whitman's 'Children of Adam', in which he glorified the sensuality with

great frankness is a collection of. poems
a- fourteen
b- sixteen
c- twenty
d- twenty four

78 Whitman's Calamus Poems' which are considered homosexual poems is a col-

lection of ...............poems.
a- twenty five
b- thirty five
c- forty five
d- forty two

509
79 Who has been the editor of 'The Brooklyn Eagle' and 'The Brooklyn Times' -
a- Emerson
b- Whitman
c- Robert Frost
d- Emily Dickenson

80 The pamphlet 'The Good Gray Poet' about Whitman has been written by -
a- William Douglas
b- Thoreau
c- Hawthorne
d- Long Fellow

81 In his elegy - '0 Captain ! My Captain' Whitman has mourned the death of
a- Arthur Hallam
b- Edward King
c- Arthur Hugh Clough
d- Abraham Lincoln

82 Which one is an elegy by Whitman ?

a- 'Cradle Endlessly Rocking'
b- 'O Captain ! My Captain'
c- 'When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd'
d- All are elegies

83 Who said about Whitman-"He is disgusting. He is an exceedingly nauseating

pill" ?
a- T. S. Eliot
b- Ezra Pound
c- Emerson
d- None of these
84 Walt Whitman is a poet of
a- Body, mind, soul, death and immortality

510
b- Mysticism in certain writings
c- Self revealing accounts
d- All the three

85 Who was awarded Pulitzer Award for poetry four times?

a- Whitman
b- Emerson
c- Robert Frost
d- Emily Dickenson

86 Whose poems except three or four were published after his/her death ?
a- Whitman
b- Emerson
c- Frost
d- E. Dickenson

87 Which play by E. O. Neill is autobiographical ?

a- 'Desire Under the Elms'
b- 'Hairy Ape'
c- 'Farewell to Arms'
d- 'Long Day's Journey into Night'

88. Arthur Miller wrote a screenplay, especially for his wife Marilyn Monroe which
is it?
a- 'The Misfits'
b- 'A View from the Bridge'
c- 'After the Fall'
d- 'All My Sons'

89 Which among following is not composed by Frost?

a- 'Birches'
b- 'The Road Not Taken'

511
c- 'Autumn Landscape'
d- 'The Death of a Hired Man'

90 'The Garden of Eden', 'The Dangerous Summer', 'The Fifth Column' are written
by
a- Ernest Hemingway
b- William Faulkner
c- Thomas Wolfe
d- None of the above

91 Dadaism, which stressed absurdity and the role of the unpredictable in creation,
originated with-
a- Max Ernst
b- Tristan Tsara
c- Max Beer Bohm
d- None of these

92 'My Lifc and Hard Times' is written by

a- Mark Twain
b- E. Hemingway
c- James Thurber
d- Walt Whitman

93 'Walden' is written by
a- H. D. Thoreau
b- Whitman
c- Emerson
d- Frost

94 In which work the character of Willy Loman appears ?

a- The Glass Menagerie
b- Death of a Salesman

512
c- Farewell to Arms
d- Desire Under the Elms

95 Whose lines are these - "Success is counted sweetest by those who never suc-
ceed" ?
a- O' Neill
b- Emily Dickenson
c- Emerson
d- Whitman

96 Who wrote the line-"Our high respect for a well read man is praise enough of
literature" ?
a- Bacon
b- Shakespeare
c- Emerson
d- Whitman

97 The characters of Henry Jame's novels are

a- Illiterates
b- Intellectuals
c- Labourers
d- Aristocrats

98 Pulitzer Prize is awarded for

a- Literature
b- Theatre plays
c- Jouranlism
d- Magzine editors

99 The contrast between European and American cultures is one of the main
themes in the works of
a- Henry James

513
b- O' Neill
c- Ernest Hemingway
d- Frost

100 The characters-Gogo and Didi, are created by -

a- Pinter
b- Samuel Beckett
c- O' Neill
d- Hawthorne

101 In the Duchess of Malfi, who spoke the following words "O horror, that not the
fear of him which binds the devils can prescribe man obedicence"-
a- Ferdinand
b- Cardinal
c- Bosola
d- Antonio

102 In 'Sons and Lovers', Paul Moral is the son of

a- John Morel
b- Joseph Morel
c- Walter Morel
d- James Morel

103 Which of the following is not one of the five movements in 'The Wasteland' -
a- The Burial of the Dead
b- The Game of Chess
c- The Fire Sermon
d- The Joy of Riding

104 When was St. Thomas canonized : in

a- 1170
b- 1171

514
c- 1173
d- 1175

105 Who appointed St. Thomas Becket a Chancellor-

a- Henry III
b- Henry I
c- Henry II
d- None of these

106 T.S. Eliot died in-

a- 1960
b- 1962
c- 1961
d- 1965

107 When was Erewhon first published

a- 1871
b- 1872
c- 1873
d- 1874

108 What is the Greek meaning of 'Utopia'

a- An ideal place
b- A healthy place
c- A lovely place
d- Not a place (=ou=not; topos=a place)

109 What are the last words of Vanity Fair

a- Shantih! Shantih! Shantih
b- Vanitas Vanitatum!
c- Amen!
d- Let it be

515
110 'Virtue Rewarded' is the other name for
a- Pamela
b- Joseph Andrews
c- Clarissa
d- Tom Jones

111. Who is the writer of the essay "Simulation and Dissimulation"?

a- Montaigne
b- Lamb
c- De Quincey
d- Bacon

112 Name the figure of speech for which Lyly is chiefly remembered gland-
a- Malapropism
b- Euphuism
c- Melodrarnaticism
d- None of these

113 Utopia was Written by -

a- Walter Raleigh
b- Sir Thomas Moore
c- Daniel Defoe
d- None of these

114 The other name for Euphues is -

a- The Anatomy of Melancholy
b- The Anatomy of Joy
c- The Anatomy of Wit
d- None of these

115 Ferrex and Porrex is the other name for

516
a- The Spanish Tragedy
b- Dr. Faustus
c- Goboduc
d- None of these

116 In the 'Spanish Tragedy', there is the ghost of

a- Andrea
b- Horatio
c- Balthazar
d- Lorenzo

117 Which one among the following belongs to the group known as University Wits
a- Shakespeare
b- Congreve
c- Dryden
d- Marlowe

118 Astrophel and Stella is a

a- play
b- novel
c- sonnet sequence
d- short story

119. In the Duchess of Malfi, Ferdinand was the Duke-

a- Milan
b- Calabria
c- Rome
d- None of these

120 The Alchemist was published in

a- 1610
b- 1611

517
c- 1612
d- 1609

121 Which of the following should be regarded as the presiding deity of the Victori-
an period
a- Mrs. Grundy
b- Mammon
c- Cupid
d- Venus

122 Who is the heroine of 'Vanity Fair'

a- Sophia
b- Estella
c- Dora
d- Becky Sharp

123 The period of Edward VII's rule in England lasted from 1901 to -
a- 1912
b- 1910
c- 1909
d- 1913

124 When was Old Age Pensions Act passed in England -

a- 1909
b- 1907
c- 1906
d- 1908

125 In which decade in the nineteenth century did the Chartist Movement take a
concrete shape in England?
a- Thirties
b- Twenties

518
c- Fifties
d- Sixties

126 Which one among the following was not the reason for the failure of the Chart-
ist Movement ?
a- Peel's reforms and the growth of prosperity
b- Lack of a powerful leader among the working cavalier poet classes
c- Fake signatures of people presented to Parliament
d- Natural calamities

127 Which age is generally called the Age of Prose and Reason ?
a- Eighteenth century
b- Seventeenth century
c- Nineteenth century
d- Sixteenth century

128 Who can be said to be the greatest writer of Comedy of Humours ?

a- Dryden
b- Ben Jonson
c- Congreve
d- Etherege

129 Which one among the following is not a play by Ben Johnson?
a- Volpone of
b- Alchemist
c- Every man out of His Honour
d- The Way of the World

133. Which one among the following was not a prosperity

a- Herrick
b- Thomas Carew
c- John Suckling

519
d- Robert Bridges

129 Which age in English literature is known as the Augustan Age –

a- That of Dryden
b- That of Dr. Johnson
c- That of Shakespeare
d- That of Pope
130 Who wrote to Pope in 1706 :
a- Addison
b- Steele
c- Walsh
d- Dryden
130 The Age of Queen Anne in England was an era

a- political stability
b- political upheavals
c- great social unrest
d- great natural calamities

130 Who is the writer of the book "Prince" -

a- Ovid
b- Boccaccio
c- Machiavelli
d- Montaigne

131 Tamberlaine is basically an expression of the spirit of ............ in full measure-

a- Renaissance
b- Romanticism

520
c- Imperialism
d- Materialism

132 In which poem do the following lines appear: "Stone walls do not a prison
make, Nor iron bars a cage."-
a- "To Lucasta"
b- 'To Althea, from Prison'
c- Ballad Upon a Wedding
d- None of these

133. Which one among the following was not a cavalier poet —
a- Herrick
b- Thomas Carew
c- John Suckling
d- Robert Bridges

134 Which age in English literature is known as the Augustan Age —

a- That of Dryden
b- That of Dr. Johnson
c- That of Shakespeare
d- That of Pope

135 Who wrote to Pope in 1706: "The best of the modem poets in all languages are
those that have nearest copied the ancients."—
a- Addison
b- Steele
c- Walsh
d- Dryden

136 The Age of Queen Anne in England was an era of

a- political stability
b- political upheavals

521
c- great social unrest
d- great natural calamities

137 When was Swift born'?

a- 1660
b- 1661
c- 1680
d- 1667

138 Which is Swift's most powerful general satire

a- Gulliver's Travels
b- The Tale of a Tub
c- The Battle of Books
d- Nothing can be said in this connection

139 Who characterized D.G. Rossetti's poetry as belonging to "the fleshly school of
poetry"
a- Eliot
b- M. Arnold
c- Robert Buchanan
d- Yeats

140. In which poem does the following line occur: "The wild wine slips with the
weight of its leaves."
a- Te Blessed Damozel
b- Atalanta in Calydon
c- The Hounds of Spring
d- None of these
141 Who among the following novelists pioneered the regional novel in Indian Eng-
lish novel?
a- Raja Rao
b- R. K. Narayan

522
c- K. S. Venkatramani
d- Mulkraj Anand

142 R. K. Narayan created the region; known as

a- Wessex
b- Waverley
c- Malgudi
d- Lake District

143 Which of the following arrangements of Raja Rao's novels is in correct chrono-
logical sequence?
a- Kanthapura - The Cow of the Barricades The Serpent and the Rope - The Cat and
Shakespeare - Comrade Krillov - The Policeman and The Rose
b- The Cat and Shakespeare - The Serpent and The Rope - Kanthapura - Comrade
Kirllov - The Policeman and the Rose - The Cow of the Barricades
c- The Cow of the Barricades - The Cat and Shakespeare - Comrade Krillov Kantha-
pura - The Serpent and The Rope The Policeman and the Rose
d- None of these

144 Ramaswamy is a character in

a- Anand's Across the Blackwaters
b- R. K. Narayan's The Guide
c- Raja Rao's Serpent and the Rope
d- None of the these

145 Kamala Markandaya is the pseudonym of

a- Kamala Purnaiya Taylor
b- Kamala Das
c- Madhavi Kutty
d- None of these

146. Nathan and Rukmani are character in Kamala Markandya's

523
a- A Silence of Desire
b- Nectar in A Sieve
c- A Handful of Rice
d- The Coffer Dams

147 Who is the author of Bye-Bye Blackbird?

a- Kamala Das
b- Kamala Markandaya
c- Ruth P. Jhabvala
d- Anita Desai

148 Bianca (1878) was written by

a- Toru Dutt
b- Aru Dutt
c- R. C. Dutt
d- S. C. Dutt

149 Mathavi Kutti is the maiden name of

a- Kamala Markandaya
b- Anita Desai
c- Kamala Das
d- Bharti Mukherjee

150 Salman Rushdie won the "Booker of the Bookers" Award in 1993 for
a- Shame
b- Grinus
c- Midnight Children
d- The Satanic Verses
Answer
1. (B) 2. (D) 3. (A) 4. (B) 5. (C) 6. (D) 7. (C) 8. (D) 9. (D) 10. (C) 11. (A) 12. (C) 13. (C)
14. (B) 15. (A) 16. (C) 17. (B) 18. (B) 19. (C) 20. (D) 21. (A) 22. (B) 23. (B) 24. (B) 25. (B)
26. (A) 27. (C) 28. (B) 29. (C) 30. (A) 31. (C) 32. (D) 33. (D) 34. (A) 35. (B) 36. (B) 37. (C)

524
38. (D) 39. (A) 40. (B) 41. (C) 42. (D) 43. (D) 44. (D) 45. (D) 46. (A) 47. (B) 48. (C) 49. (B)
50. (C) 51. (D) 52. (B) 53. (C) 54. (A) 55. (A) 56. (D) 57. (C) 58. (D) 59. (B) 60. (D) 61. (A)
62. (B) 63. (A) 64. (B) 65. (D) 66. (A) 67. (C) 68. (D) 69. (B) 70. (A) 71. (B) 72. (D) 73. (A)
74. (C) 75. (B) 76. (A) 77. (B) 78. (C) 79. (B) 80. (A) 81. (D) 82. (D) 83. (B) 84. (D) 85. (C)
86. (D) 87. (D) 88. (A) 89. (C) 90. (A) 91. (B) 92. (C) 93. (A) 94. (B) 95. (B) 96. (C) 97. (B)
98. (B) 99. (A) 100. (B) 101. (A) 102. (C) 103. (D) 104. (C) 105. (C) 106. (D) 107. (B) 108.
(D) 109. (B) 110. (A) 111. (D) 112. (B) 113. (A) 114. (C) 115. (C) 116. (A) 17. (D) 118. (C)
119. (B) 120. (C) 121. (A) 122. (D) 123. (B) 124. (D) 125. (A) 126. (D) 127. (A) 128. (B)
129. (D) 130. (C) 131. (A) 132. (B) 133. (D) 134. (D) 135. (C) 136. (A) 137. (D) 138. (A)
139. (C) 140. (C) 141. (B) 142. (C) 143. (A) 144. (C) 145. (A) 146. (B) 147. (D) 148. (A)
149. (C) 150. (C)

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 UNIT 8
LITERACY CRITICISM
 LITERACY CRITICISM
Literary criticism, the reasoned consideration of literary works and issues. It applies, as a
term, to any argumentation about literature, whether or not specific works are analyzed.
Plato’s cautions against the risky consequences of poetic inspiration in general in his
Republic are thus often taken as the earliest important example of
literary criticism.

More strictly construed, the term covers only what has been called “practical criticism,” the
interpretation of meaning and the judgment of quality. Criticism in this narrow sense can be
distinguished not only from aesthetics (the philosophy of artistic value) but also from other
matters that may concern the student of literature: biographical questions, bibliography,
historical knowledge, sources and influences, and problems of method. Thus, especially in
academic studies, “criticism” is often considered to be separate from “scholarship.” In
practice, however, this distinction often proves artificial, and even the most single-minded
concentration on a text may be informed by outside knowledge, while many notable works
of criticism combine discussion of texts with broad arguments about the nature of literature
and the principles of assessing it.

Criticism will here be taken to cover all phases of literary understanding, though the
emphasis will be on the evaluation of literary works and of their authors’ places in literary
history. For another particular aspect of literary criticism, see textual criticism.

Functions
The functions of literary criticism vary widely, ranging from the reviewing of books as they
are published to systematic theoretical discussion. Though reviews may sometimes
determine whether a given book will be widely sold, many works succeed commercially
despite negative reviews, and many classic works, including Herman Melville’s Moby Dick
(1851), have acquired appreciative publics long after being unfavourably reviewed and at
first n,eglected. One of criticism’s principal functions is to express the shifts in sensibility
that make such revaluations possible. The minimal condition for such a new appraisal is, of
course, that the original text susurvivesThe literary critic is sometimes cast in the role of
scholarly detective, unearthing, authenticating, and editing unknown
manuscripts. Thus, even rarefied scholarly skills may be put to criticism’s most elementary

527
use, the bringing of literary works to the public’s attention.

The variety of criticism’s functions is reflected in the range of publications in which it

appears. Criticism in the daily press rarely displays sustained acts of analysis and may
sometimes do little more than summarize a publisher’s claims for a book’s interest.
Weekly and biweekly magazines serve to introduce new books but are often more
discriminating in their judgments, and some of these magazines, such
as The (London) Times Literary Supplement and The New York Review of Books, are far from
indulgent toward popular works. Sustained criticism can also be found in
monthlies and quarterlies with a broad circulation, in “little magazines” for specialized
audiences, and in scholarly journals and books.

Because critics often try to be lawgivers, declaring which works deserve respect and
presuming to say what they are “really” about, criticism is a perennial target of resentment.
Misguided or malicious critics can discourage an author who has been feeling his way
toward a new mode that offends received taste. Pedantic critics can obstruct a serious
engagement with literature by deflecting attention toward inessential matters. As the
French philosopher-critic Jean-Paul Sartre observed, the critic may announce that French
thought is a perpetual colloquy between Pascal and Montaigne not in order to make those
thinkers more alive but to make thinkers of his own time more dead. Criticism can
antagonize authors even when it performs its function well.
Authors who regard literature as needing no advocates or investigators are less than
grateful when told that their works possess unintended meaning or are imitative or
incomplete.

What such authors may tend to forget is that their works, once published, belong to them
only in a legal sense. The true owner of their works is the public, which will appropriate
them for its own concerns regardless of the critic. The critic’s responsibility is not to the
author’s self-esteem but to the public and to his own standards of judgment, which are
usually more exacting than the public’s. Justification for his role rests on
the premise that literary works are not in fact self-explanatory. A critic is socially useful to
the extent that society wants, and receives, a fuller understanding of literature than it could
have achieved without him. In filling this appetite, the critic whets it further, helping to
create a public that cares about artistic quality. Without sensing the presence of such a
public, an author may either prostitute his talent or squander it in sterile acts of defiance. In

528
this sense, the critic is not a parasite but, potentially, someone who is responsible in part for
the existence of good writing in his own time and afterwards.

Although some critics believe that literature should be discussed in isolation from other
matters, criticism usually seems to be openly or covertly involved with social and political
debate. Since literature itself is often partisan, is always rooted to some degree in local
circumstances, and has a way of calling forth affirmations of ultimate values, it is not
surprising that the finest critics have never paid much attention to the alleged boundaries
between criticism and other types of discourse. Especially in modern Europe, literary
criticism has occupied a central place in debates about cultural and political issues. Sartre’s
own What Is Literature? (1947) is typical in its wide-ranging attempt to prescribe the literary
intellectual’s ideal relation to the development of his society and to literature as a
manifestation of human freedom. Similarly, some prominent American critics, including
Alfred Kazin, Lionel Trilling, Kenneth Burke, Philip Rahv, and Irving How ever, began as
political radicals in the 1930s and sharpened their concern for literature on the dilemmas
and disillusionments of that era. Trilling’s influential The Liberal Imagination (1950) is
simultaneously a collection of literary essays and an attempt to reconcile the claims of
politics and art.

Such a reconciliation is bound to be tentative and problematic if the critic believes, as

Trilling does, that literature possesses an independent value and a deeper faithfulness to
reality than is contained in any political formula. In Marxist states, however, literature has
usually been considered a means to social ends and, therefore, criticism has been cast in
forthrightly partisan terms. Dialectical materialism does not necessarily turn the

critic into a mere guardian of party doctrine, but it does forbid him to treat literature as a
cause in itself, apart from the working class’s needs as interpreted by the party. Where this
utilitarian view prevails, the function of criticism is taken to be continuous with that of the
state itself, namely, the furtherance of the social revolution. The critic’s main obligation is
not to his texts but rather to the masses of people
whose consciousness must be advanced in the designated direction. In periods of severe
orthodoxy, the practice of literary criticism has not always been distinguishable from that of
censorship.

Literary criticism is the comparison, analysis, interpretation, and/or evaluation of works of

529
literature. Literary criticism is essentially an opinion, supported by evidence, relating to
theme, style, setting or historical or political context. It usually includes discussion of the
work’s content and integrates your ideas with other insights gained from research. Literary
criticism may have a positive or a negative bias and may be a study of an individual piece of
literature or an author’s body of work.

Although criticism may include some of the following elements in order to support an idea,
literary criticism is NOT a plot summary, a biography of the author, or simply finding fault
with the literature.

Researching, reading, and writing works of literary criticism will help you to make better
sense of the work, form judgments about literature, study ideas from different points of
view, and determine on an individual level whether a literary work is worth reading.

Examples of some types of literary criticism are:

• Biographical
• Comparative
• Ethical
• Expressive
• Feminist
• Historical
• Mimetic
• Pragmatic
• Psychological
• Social
• Textual
• Theoretical

Literary Criticism Databases

Literary criticism in essays shortened from their original published versions can be found in
the first two databases. Full text databases follow.

Literary Index (Gale Literary Sets)

Gale's Literary Index is a master index to the major literature products published by Gale,
including Contemporary Authors, Contemporary Literary Criticism, and Poetry Criticism.
Coverage: Gale products published through June 2006. Citations Only.

530
Gale Literary Criticism
Authoritative source of literary criticism, summarizing authors' lives and works. Includes
excerpts from scholarly articles. IMPORTANT NOTE: Because this source is an encyclopedic
work, it should NEVER be directly cited. Always look up the original source of the excerpted
and reprinted articles. Coverage: Varied. Mostly Full-Text.

Essay and General Literature Index

Index to chapters and essays contained in books of collected works. Focuses on humanities
and social sciences, including works published in the United States, Great Britain and
Canada. Covers archaeology, folklore, architecture, history, art, linguistics, literature, music,
classical studies, poetry, drama, political science, economics, religion women's studies, and
film. Coverage: 1900 to present. Citations Only.

Humanities Source
Full text of hundreds of journals, books and other published sources from around the world
in all aspects of the humanities including Archaeology, Area Studies, Art, Classical Studies,
Communications, Dance, Film, Gender Studies, History, Journalism, Linguistics, Literature,
Music, Performing Arts, Philosophy, and Religion. FOR CITATION SEARCHING: Click the
"More" button at the top of the search screen, then click "Cited References." Coverage
Range: Mid-1970s - present.

Humanities and Social Sciences Retrospective

A citation-only database that includes articles from English-language periodicals on such
subjects as Anthropology, Archaeology, Area Studies, Art, Classical Studies, Community
Health & Medical Care, Criminal Justice, Dance, Economics, Environmental Studies, Ethics,
Family Studies, Film, Gender Studies, Geography, History, International Relations,
Journalism, Law, Linguistics, Literature, Music, Performing Arts, Philosophy, Political Science,
Psychiatry, Psychology, Religion, and Sociology. Articles in this database were published
between 1907 and 1984. Use the library's "Get It!" button to obtain materials with no direct
full-text link. Coverage: 1907 to 1984. Citations Only.

MLA International Bibliography (Modern Language Association) with Full Text

The definitive index for the study of language, literature, composition, folklore, and film
with full text for more than 1,000 journals. International in scope, the bibliography covers
scholarly publications from the early 20th century to the present, including journal articles,
books, and more. Coverage: 1963-present. Some full text.

531
Times Literary Supplement Historical Archive
Full-text version of one of the literary journal, which scrutinized, dissected, applauded, and
occasionally disparaged, the work of the twentieth century's leading writers and thinkers.
Covers articles published between 1902 and 1990. IMPORTANT NOTE: This database allows
only one user at a time. Please be sure to log off when you are finished. Coverage: 1902 to
2007. Mostly Full-Text.

Magill's Literary Annuals

Each volulme offers reviews of the major literature published during the previous calendar
year. Reviewed titles include examples of literature, both fiction and nonfiction, published
in English, from writers in the United States and around the world. 1977 - Present.

Why Literary Criticism Is Important

Every one of us has taken at least one English class in our lives. Maybe we have been asked
to analyze the works of Shakespeare, Faulkner or Poe. But whether or not we are reading a
tragedy or a comedy, one of the most important things we learn from our English classes is
how to read and discuss literature.

Books and poems help us to expand our imaginations, while stories allow us to experience
worlds other than our own. By learning how to deconstruct literature through class
discussions or in our reading, we get to experience how other people live. Literary criticism
helps us to go inside of the text and understand the written work from many different
viewpoints. Often times, these perspectives will not be readily apparent to us unless we
delve into the work and learn how to look past the surface.

There are many different ways to evaluate literature. Some critics care about when and
where an author was born, while other critics feel that information is irrelevant. Below are a
few different approaches to literary criticism.

Literary Theory
“Literary theory” is the body of ideas and methods we use in the practical reading of
literature. By literary theory we refer not to the meaning of a work of literature but to the
theories that reveal what literature can mean. Literary theory is a description of the
underlying principles, one might say the tools, by which we attempt to understand
literature. All literary interpretation draws on a basis in theory but can serve as a
justification for very different kinds of critical activity. It is literary theory that formulates the
532
relationship between author and work; literary theory develops the significance of race,
class, and gender for literary study, both from the standpoint of the biography of the author
and an analysis of their thematic presence within texts. Literary theory offers varying
approaches for understanding the role of historical context in interpretation as well as the
relevance of linguistic and unconscious elements of the text. Literary theorists trace the
history and evolution of the different genres—narrative, dramatic, lyric— in addition to the
more recent emergence of the novel and the short story, while also investigating the
importance of formal elements of literary structure. Lastly, literary theory in recent years
has sought to

explain the degree to which the text is more the product of a culture than an individual
author and in turn how those texts help to create the culture.

1. What Is Literary Theory?

“Literary theory,” sometimes designated “critical theory,” or “theory,” and now undergoing
a transformation into “cultural theory” within the discipline of literary studies, can be
understood as the set of concepts and intellectual assumptions on which rests the work of
explaining or interpreting literary texts. Literary theory refers to any principles derived from
internal analysis of literary texts or from knowledge external to the text that can be applied
in multiple interpretive situations. All critical practice regarding literature depends on an
underlying structure of ideas in at least two ways: theory provides a rationale for what
constitutes the subject matter of criticism—”the literary”—and the specific aims of critical
practice—the act of interpretation itself. For example, to speak of the “unity” of Oedipus
the King explicitly invokes Aristotle’s theoretical statements on poetics. To argue, as does
Chinua Achebe, that Joseph Conrad’s The Heart of Darkness fails to grant full humanity to
the Africans it depicts is a perspective informed by a postcolonial literary theory that
presupposes a history of exploitation and racism. Critics that explain the climactic drowning
of Edna Pontellier in The Awakening as a suicide generally call upon a supporting
architecture of feminist and gender theory. The structure of ideas that enables criticism of a
literary work may or may not be acknowledged by the critic, and the status of literary theory
within the academic discipline of literary studies continues to evolve.
Literary theory and the formal practice of literary interpretation runs a parallel but less well
known course with the history of philosophy and is evident in the historical record at least
as far back as Plato. The Cratylus contains a Plato’s meditation on the relationship of words
and the things to which they refer. Plato’s skepticism about signification, i.e., that words
bear no etymological relationship to their meanings but are arbitrarily “imposed,” becomes
533
a central concern in the twentieth century to both “Structuralism” and “Poststructuralism.”
However, a persistent belief in “reference,” the notion that words and images refer to an
objective reality, has provided epistemological (that is, having to do with theories of
knowledge) support for theories of literary representation throughout most of Western
history. Until the nineteenth century, Art, in Shakespeare’s phrase, held “a mirror up to
nature” and faithfully recorded an objectively real world independent of the observer.
Modern literary theory gradually emerges in Europe during the nineteenth century. In one
of the earliest developments of literary theory, German “higher criticism” subjected biblical
texts to a radical historicizing that broke with traditional scriptural interpretation. “Higher,”
or “source criticism,” analyzed biblical tales in light of comparable narratives from other
cultures, an approach that anticipated some of the method and spirit of twentieth century
theory, particularly “Structuralism” and “New Historicism.” In France, the eminent literary
critic Charles Augustin Saint Beuve maintained that a work of literature could be explained
entirely in terms of biography, while novelist Marcel Proust devoted his life to refuting Saint
Beuve in a massive narrative in which he contended that the details of the life of the artist
are utterly transformed in the work of art. (This dispute was taken up anew by the French
theorist Roland Barthes in his famous declaration of the “Death of the Author.” See
“Structuralism” and “Poststructuralism.”) Perhaps the greatest nineteenth century influence
on literary theory came from the deep epistemological suspicion of Friedrich Nietzsche: that
facts are not facts until they have been interpreted. Nietzsche’s critique of knowledge has
had a profound impact on literary studies and helped usher in an era of intense literary
theorizing that has yet to pass.
Attention to the etymology of the term “theory,” from the Greek “theoria,” alerts us to the
partial nature of theoretical approaches to literature. “Theoria” indicates a view or
perspective of the Greek stage. This is precisely what literary theory offers, though specific
theories often claim to present a complete system for understanding literature. The current
state of theory is such that there are many overlapping areas of influence, and older schools
of theory, though no longer enjoying their previous eminence, continue to exert an
influence on the whole. The once widely-held conviction (an implicit theory) that literature
is a repository of all that is meaningful and ennobling in the human experience, a view
championed by the Leavis School in Britain, may no longer be acknowledged by name but
remains an essential justification for the current structure of American universities and
liberal arts curricula. The moment of “Deconstruction” may have passed, but its emphasis
on the indeterminacy of signs (that we are unable to establish exclusively what a word
means when used in a given situation) and thus of texts, remains

534
significant. Many critics may not embrace the label “feminist,” but the premise that gender
is a social construct, one of theoretical feminisms distinguishing insights, is now axiomatic in
a number of theoretical perspectives.

While literary theory has always implied or directly expressed a conception of the world
outside the text, in the twentieth century three movements—”Marxist theory” of the
Frankfurt School, “Feminism,” and “Postmodernism”—have opened the field of literary
studies into a broader area of inquiry. Marxist approaches to literature require an
understanding of the primary economic and social bases of culture since Marxist aesthetic
theory sees the work of art as a product, directly or indirectly, of the base structure of
society. Feminist thought and practice analyzes the production of literature and literary
representation within the framework that includes all social and cultural formations as they
pertain to the role of women in history. Postmodern thought consists of both aesthetic and
epistemological strands. Postmodernism in art has included a move toward non-referential,
non-linear, abstract forms; a heightened degree of self- referentiality; and the collapse of
categories and conventions that had traditionally governed art. Postmodern thought has led
to the serious questioning of the so-called metanarratives of history, science, philosophy,
and economic and sexual reproduction. Under postmodernity, all knowledge comes to be
seen as “constructed” within historical self-contained systems of understanding. Marxist,
feminist, and postmodern thought have brought about the incorporation of all human
discourses (that is, interlocking fields of language and knowledge) as a subject matter for
analysis by the literary theorist. Using the various poststructuralist and postmodern theories
that often draw on disciplines other than the literary— linguistic, anthropological,
psychoanalytic, and philosophical—for their primary insights, literary theory has become an
interdisciplinary body of cultural theory. Taking as its premise that human societies and
knowledge consist of texts in one form or another, cultural theory (for better or worse) is
now applied to the varieties of texts, ambitiously undertaking to become the preeminent
model of inquiry into the human condition.

Literary theory is a site of theories: some theories, like “Queer Theory,” are “in;” other
literary theories, like “Deconstruction,” are “out” but continue to exert an influence on the
field. “Traditional literary criticism,” “New Criticism,” and “Structuralism” are alike in that
they held to the view that the study of literature has an objective body of knowledge under
its scrutiny. The other schools of literary theory, to varying degrees, embrace a postmodern
view of language and reality that calls into serious question the objective referent of literary
studies. The following categories are certainly not exhaustive, nor are they mutually
535
exclusive, but they represent the major trends in literary theory of this century.

2. Traditional Literary Criticism

Academic literary criticism prior to the rise of “New Criticism” in the United States tended to
practice traditional literary history: tracking influence, establishing the canon of major
writers in the literary periods, and clarifying historical context and allusions within the text.
Literary biography was and still is an important interpretive method in and out of the
academy; versions of moral criticism, not unlike the Leavis School in Britain, and aesthetic
(e.g. genre studies) criticism were also generally influential literary practices. Perhaps the
key unifying feature of traditional literary criticism was the consensus within the academy
as to the both the literary canon (that is, the books all educated persons should read) and
the aims and purposes of literature. What literature was, and why we read literature, and
what we read, were questions that subsequent movements in literary theory were to raise.

3. Formalism and New Criticism

“Formalism” is, as the name implies, an interpretive approach that emphasizes literary form
and the study of literary devices within the text. The work of the Formalists had a general
impact on later developments in “Structuralism” and other theories of narrative.
“Formalism,” like “Structuralism,” sought to place the study of literature on a scientific basis
through objective analysis of the motifs, devices, techniques, and other “functions” that
comprise the literary work. The Formalists placed great importance on the literariness of
texts, those qualities that distinguished the literary from other kinds of writing. Neither
author nor context was essential for the Formalists; it was the narrative that spoke, the
“hero-function,” for example, that had meaning. The form was content. A plot device or
narrative strategy was examined

for how it functioned and compared to how it had functioned in other literary works. Of the
Russian Formalist critics, Roman Jakobson and Viktor Shklovsky are probably the most well-
known.
The Formalist adage that the purpose of literature was “to make the stones stonier” nicely
expresses their notion of literariness. “Formalism” is perhaps best known is Shklovsky’s
concept of “defamiliarization.” The routine of ordinary experience, Shklovsky contended,
rendered invisible the uniqueness and particularity of the objects of existence. Literary
language, partly by calling attention to itself as language, estranged the reader from the
familiar and made fresh the experience of daily life.

536
The “New Criticism,” so designated as to indicate a break with traditional methods, was a
product of the American university in the 1930s and 40s. “New Criticism” stressed close
reading of the text itself, much like the French pedagogical precept “explication du texte.”
As a strategy of reading, “New Criticism” viewed the work of literature as an aesthetic
object independent of historical context and as a unified whole that reflected the unified
sensibility of the artist. T.S. Eliot, though not explicitly associated with the movement,
expressed a similar critical-aesthetic philosophy in his essays on John Donne and the
metaphysical poets, writers who Eliot believed experienced a complete integration of
thought and feeling. New Critics like Cleanth Brooks, John Crowe Ransom, Robert Penn
Warren and W.K. Wimsatt placed a similar focus on the metaphysical poets and poetry in
general, a genre well suited to New Critical practice. “New Criticism” aimed at bringing a
greater intellectual rigor to literary studies, confining itself to careful scrutiny of the text
alone and the formal structures of paradox, ambiguity, irony, and metaphor, among others.
“New Criticism” was fired by the conviction that their readings of poetry would yield a
humanizing influence on readers and thus counter the alienating tendencies of modern,
industrial life. “New Criticism” in this regard bears an affinity to the Southern Agrarian
movement whose manifesto, I’ll Take My Stand, contained essays by two New Critics,
Ransom and Warren. Perhaps the enduring legacy of “New Criticism” can be found in the
college classroom, in which the verbal texture of the poem on the page remains a primary
object of literary study.

4. Marxism and Critical Theory

Marxist literary theories tend to focus on the representation of class conflict as well as the
reinforcement of class distinctions through the medium of literature. Marxist theorists use
traditional techniques of literary analysis but subordinate aesthetic concerns to the final
social and political meanings of literature. Marxist theorist often champion authors
sympathetic to the working classes and authors whose work challenges economic equalities
found in capitalist societies. In keeping with the totalizing spirit of Marxism, literary theories
arising from the Marxist paradigm have not only sought new ways of understanding the
relationship between economic production and literature, but all cultural production as
well. Marxist analyses of society and history have had a profound effect on literary theory
and practical criticism, most notably in the development of “New Historicism” and “Cultural
Materialism.”

The Hungarian theorist Georg Lukacs contributed to an understanding of the relationship

between historical materialism and literary form, in particular with realism and the

537
historical novel. Walter Benjamin broke new ground in his work in his study of aesthetics
and the reproduction of the work of art. The Frankfurt School of philosophers, including
most notably Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, and Herbert Marcuse—after their
emigration to the United States—played a key role in introducing Marxist assessments of
culture into the mainstream of American academic life. These thinkers became associated
with what is known as “Critical theory,” one of the constituent components of which was a
critique of the instrumental use of reason in advanced capitalist culture. “Critical theory”
held to a distinction between the high cultural heritage of Europe and the mass culture
produced by capitalist societies as an instrument of domination. “Critical theory” sees in the
structure of mass cultural forms—jazz, Hollywood film, advertising—a replication of the
structure of the factory and the workplace. Creativity and cultural production in advanced
capitalist societies were always already co-opted by the entertainment needs of an
economic system that requires sensory stimulation and recognizable cliché and suppressed
the tendency for sustained deliberation.

The major Marxist influences on literary theory since the Frankfurt School have been
Raymond Williams and Terry Eagleton in Great Britain and Frank Lentricchia and Fredric
Jameson in the United States. Williams is associated with the New Left political movement
in Great Britain and the development of “Cultural Materialism” and the Cultural Studies
Movement, originating in the 1960s at Birmingham University’s Center for Contemporary
Cultural Studies. Eagleton is known both as a Marxist theorist and as a popularizer of theory
by means of his widely read overview, Literary Theory. Lentricchia likewise became
influential through his account of trends in theory, After the New Criticism. Jameson is a
more diverse theorist, known both for his impact on Marxist theories of culture and for his
position as one of the leading figures in theoretical postmodernism. Jameson’s work on
consumer culture, architecture, film, literature and other areas, typifies the collapse of
disciplinary boundaries taking place in the realm of Marxist and postmodern cultural theory.
Jameson’s work investigates the way the structural features of late capitalism—particularly
the transformation of all culture into commodity form—are now deeply embedded in all of
our ways of communicating.

5. Structuralism and Poststructuralism

Like the “New Criticism,” “Structuralism” sought to bring to literary studies a set of objective
criteria for analysis and a new intellectual rigor. “Structuralism” can be viewed as an
extension of “Formalism” in that that both “Structuralism” and “Formalism” devoted their
attention to matters of literary form (i.e. structure) rather than social or historical content;

538
and that both bodies of thought were intended to put the study of literature on a scientific,
objective basis. “Structuralism” relied initially on the ideas of the Swiss linguist, Ferdinand
de Saussure. Like Plato, Saussure regarded the signifier (words, marks, symbols) as arbitrary
and unrelated to the concept, the signified, to which it referred. Within the way a particular
society uses language and signs, meaning was constituted by a system of “differences”
between units of the language. Particular meanings were of less interest than the
underlying structures of signification that made meaning itself possible, often expressed as
an emphasis on “langue” rather than “parole.” “Structuralism” was to be a metalanguage, a
language about languages, used to decode actual languages, or systems of signification. The
work of the “Formalist” Roman Jakobson contributed to “Structuralist” thought, and the
more prominent Structuralists included Claude Levi-Strauss in anthropology, Tzvetan
Todorov, A.J. Greimas, Gerard Genette, and Barthes.

The philosopher Roland Barthes proved to be a key figure on the divide between
“Structuralism” and “Poststructuralism.” “Poststructuralism” is less unified as a theoretical
movement than its precursor; indeed, the work of its advocates known by the term
“Deconstruction” calls into question the possibility of the coherence of discourse, or the
capacity for language to communicate. “Deconstruction,” Semiotic theory (a study of signs
with close connections to “Structuralism,” “Reader response theory” in America (“Reception
theory” in Europe), and “Gender theory” informed by the psychoanalysts Jacques Lacan and
Julia Kristeva are areas of inquiry that can be located under the banner of
“Poststructuralism.” If signifier and signified are both cultural concepts, as they are in
“Poststructuralism,” reference to an empirically certifiable reality is no longer guaranteed by
language. “Deconstruction” argues that this loss of reference causes an endless deferral of
meaning, a system of differences between units of language that has no resting place or
final signifier that would enable the other signifiers to hold their meaning. The most
important theorist of “Deconstruction,” Jacques Derrida, has asserted, “There is no getting
outside text,” indicating a kind of free play of signification in which no fixed, stable meaning
is possible. “Poststructuralism” in America was originally identified with a group of Yale
academics, the Yale School of “Deconstruction:” J. Hillis Miller, Geoffrey Hartmann, and Paul
de Man. Other tendencies in the moment after “Deconstruction” that share some of the
intellectual tendencies of “Poststructuralism” would included the “Reader response”
theories of Stanley Fish, Jane Tompkins, and Wolfgang Iser.
Lacanian psychoanalysis, an updating of the work of Sigmund Freud, extends
“Postructuralism” to the human subject with further consequences for literary theory.
According to Lacan, the fixed, stable self is a Romantic fiction; like the text in
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“Deconstruction,” the self is a decentered mass of traces left by our encounter with signs,
visual symbols, language, etc. For Lacan, the self is constituted by language, a language that
is never one’s own, always another’s, always already in use. Barthes applies these currents
of thought in his famous declaration of the “death” of the Author: “writing is the
destruction of every voice, of every point of origin” while also applying a similar
“Poststructuralist” view to the Reader: “the reader is without history, biography,
psychology; he is simply that someone who holds together in a single field all the traces by
which the written text is constituted.”
Michel Foucault is another philosopher, like Barthes, whose ideas inform much of
poststructuralist literary theory. Foucault played a critical role in the development of the
postmodern perspective that knowledge is constructed in concrete historical situations in
the form of discourse; knowledge is not communicated by discourse but is discourse itself,
and can only be encountered textually. Following Nietzsche, Foucault performs what he
calls “genealogies,” attempts at deconstructing the unacknowledged operation of power
and knowledge to reveal the ideologies that make domination of one group by another
seem “natural.” Foucaldian investigations of discourse and power were to provide much of
the intellectual impetus for a new way of looking at history and doing textual studies that
came to be known as the “New Historicism.”

6. New Historicism and Cultural Materialism

“New Historicism,” a term coined by Stephen Greenblatt, designates a body of theoretical
and interpretive practices that began largely with the study of early modern literature in the
United States. “New Historicism” in America had been somewhat anticipated by the
theorists of “Cultural Materialism” in Britain, which, in the words of their leading advocate,
Raymond Williams describes “the analysis of all forms of signification, including quite
centrally writing, within the actual means and conditions of their production.” Both “New
Historicism” and “Cultural Materialism” seek to understand literary texts historically and
reject the formalizing influence of previous literary studies, including “New Criticism,”
“Structuralism” and “Deconstruction,” all of which in varying ways privilege the literary text
and place only secondary emphasis on historical and social context. According to “New
Historicism,” the circulation of literary and non-literary texts produces relations of social
power within a culture. New Historicist thought differs from traditional historicism in
literary studies in several crucial ways. Rejecting traditional historicism’s premise of neutral
inquiry, “New Historicism” accepts the necessity of making historical value judgments.
According to “New Historicism,” we can only know the textual history of the past because it
is “embedded,” a key term, in the textuality of the present and its concerns. Text and

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context are less clearly distinct in New Historicist practice. Traditional separations of literary
and non-literary texts, “great” literature and popular literature, are also fundamentally
challenged. For the “New Historicist,” all acts of expression are embedded in the material
conditions of a culture. Texts are examined with an eye for how they reveal the economic
and social realities, especially as they produce ideology and represent power or subversion.
Like much of the emergent European social history of the 1980s, “New Historicism” takes
particular interest in representations of marginal/marginalized groups and non-normative
behaviors—witchcraft, cross-dressing, peasant revolts, and exorcisms—as exemplary of the
need for power to represent subversive alternatives, the Other, to legitimize itself.

Louis Montrose, another major innovator and exponent of “New Historicism,” describes a
fundamental axiom of the movement as an intellectual belief in “the textuality of history
and the historicity of texts.” “New Historicism” draws on the work of Levi-Strauss, in
particular his notion of culture as a “self- regulating system.” The Foucaldian premise that
power is ubiquitous and cannot be equated with state or economic power and Gramsci’s
conception of “hegemony,” i.e., that domination is often achieved through culturally-
orchestrated consent rather than force, are critical underpinnings to the “New Historicist”
perspective. The translation of the work of Mikhail Bakhtin on carnival coincided with the
rise of the “New Historicism” and “Cultural Materialism” and left a legacy in work of other
theorists of influence like Peter Stallybrass and Jonathan Dollimore. In its period of
ascendancy during the 1980s, “New Historicism” drew criticism from the political left for its
depiction of counter-cultural expression as always co-opted by the dominant discourses.
Equally, “New Historicism’s” lack of emphasis on “literariness” and formal literary concerns
brought disdain from traditional literary scholars. However, “New Historicism” continues to
exercise a major influence in the humanities and in the extended conception of literary
studies.

7. Ethnic Studies and Postcolonial Criticism

“Ethnic Studies,” sometimes referred to as “Minority Studies,” has an obvious historical
relationship with “Postcolonial Criticism” in that Euro-American imperialism and
colonization in the last four centuries, whether external (empire) or internal (slavery) has
been directed at recognizable ethnic groups: African and African-American, Chinese, the
subaltern peoples of India, Irish, Latino, Native American, and Philipino, among others.
“Ethnic Studies” concerns itself generally with art and literature produced by identifiable
ethnic groups either marginalized or in a subordinate position to a dominant culture.

541
“Postcolonial Criticism” investigates the relationships between colonizers and colonized in
the period post-colonization. Though the two fields are increasingly finding points of
intersection—the work of bell hooks, for example—and are both activist intellectual
enterprises, “Ethnic Studies and “Postcolonial Criticism” have significant differences in their
history and ideas.

“Ethnic Studies” has considerably impacted literary studies in the United States and Britain.
In W.E.B. Dubois, we find an early attempt to theorize the position of African-Americans
within a dominant white culture through his concept of “double consciousness,” a dual
identity including both “American” and “Negro.” Dubois and theorists after him seek an
understanding of how that double experience both creates identity and reveals itself in
culture. Afro-Caribbean and African writers—Aime Cesaire, Frantz Fanon, Chinua Achebe—
have made significant early contributions to the theory and practice of ethnic criticism that
explores the traditions, sometimes suppressed or underground, of ethnic literary activity
while providing a critique of representations of ethnic identity as found within the majority
culture. Ethnic and minority literary theory emphasizes the relationship of cultural identity
to individual identity in historical circumstances of overt racial oppression. More recently,
scholars and writers such as Henry Louis Gates, Toni Morrison, and Kwame Anthony Appiah
have brought attention to the problems inherent in applying theoretical models derived
from Euro-centric paradigms (that is, structures of thought) to minority works of literature
while at the same time exploring new interpretive strategies for understanding the
vernacular (common speech) traditions of racial groups that have been historically
marginalized by dominant cultures.

Though not the first writer to explore the historical condition of postcolonialism, the
Palestinian literary theorist Edward Said’s book Orientalism is generally regarded as having
inaugurated the field of explicitly “Postcolonial Criticism” in the West. Said argues that the
concept of “the Orient” was produced by the “imaginative geography” of Western
scholarship and has been instrumental in the colonization and domination of non-Western
societies. “Postcolonial” theory reverses the historical center/margin direction of cultural
inquiry: critiques of the metropolis and capital now emanate from the former colonies.
Moreover, theorists like Homi K. Bhabha have questioned the binary thought that produces
the dichotomies—center/margin, white/black, and colonizer/colonized—by which colonial
practices are justified. The work of Gayatri C. Spivak has focused attention on the question
of who speaks for the colonial “Other” and the relation of the ownership of discourse and

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representation to the development of the postcolonial subjectivity. Like feminist and ethnic
theory, “Postcolonial Criticism” pursues not merely the inclusion of the marginalized
literature of colonial peoples into the dominant canon and discourse. “Postcolonial
Criticism” offers a fundamental critique of the ideology of colonial domination and at the
same time seeks to undo the “imaginative geography” of Orientalist thought that produced
conceptual as well as economic divides between West and East, civilized and uncivilized,
First and Third Worlds. In this respect, “Postcolonial Criticism” is activist and adversarial in
its basic aims. Postcolonial theory has brought fresh perspectives to the role of colonial
peoples—their wealth, labor, and culture—in the development of modern European nation
states. While “Postcolonial Criticism” emerged in the historical moment following the
collapse of the modern colonial empires, the increasing globalization of culture, including
the neo-colonialism of multinational capitalism, suggests a continued relevance for this field
of inquiry.

8. Gender Studies and Queer Theory

Gender theory came to the forefront of the theoretical scene first as feminist theory but has
subsequently come to include the investigation of all gender and sexual categories and
identities. Feminist gender theory followed slightly behind the reemergence of political
feminism in the United States and Western Europe during the 1960s. Political feminism of
the so-called “second wave” emphasised practical concerns with women's rights in
contemporary societies, women’s identity, and the representation of women in media and
culture. These causes converged with early literary feminist practice, characterized by Elaine
Showalter as “gynocriticism,” which emphasized the study and canonical inclusion of works
by female authors as well as the depiction of women in male-authored canonical texts.
Feminist gender theory is postmodern in that it challenges the paradigms and intellectual
premises of western thought but also takes an activist stance by proposing frequent
interventions and alternative epistemological positions meant to change the social order. In
the context of postmodernism, gender theorists, led by the work of Judith Butler, initially
viewed the category of “gender” as a human construct enacted by a vast repetition of social
performance. The biological distinction between man and woman eventually came under
the same scrutiny by theorists who reached a similar conclusion: the sexual categories are
products of culture and as such help create social reality rather than simply reflect it.
Gender theory achieved a wide readership and acquired much its initial theoretical rigor
through the work of a group of French feminist theorists that included Simone de Beauvoir,
Luce Irigaray, Helene Cixous, and Julia Kristeva, who while Bulgarian rather than French,
made her mark writing in French. French feminist thought is based on the assumption that

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the Western philosophical tradition represses the experience of women in the structure of
its ideas. As an important consequence of this systematic intellectual repression and
exclusion, women’s lives and bodies in historical societies are subject to repression as well.
In the creative/critical work of Cixous, we find the history of Western thought depicted as
binary oppositions: “speech/writing; Nature/Art, Nature/History, Nature/Mind,
Passion/Action.” For Cixous, and for Irigaray as well, these binaries are less a function of any
objective reality they describe than the male-dominated discourse of the Western tradition
that produced them. Their work beyond the descriptive stage becomes an intervention in
the history of theoretical discourse, an attempt to alter the existing categories and systems
of thought that found Western rationality. French feminism, and perhaps all feminism after
Beauvoir, has been in conversation with the psychoanalytic revision of Freud in the work of
Jacques Lacan. Kristeva’s work draws heavily on Lacan. Two concepts from Kristeva—the
“semiotic” and “abjection”—have had a significant influence on literary theory. Kristeva’s
“semiotic” refers to the gaps, silences, spaces, and bodily presence within the
language/symbol system of a culture in which there might be a space for a women’s
language, different in kind as it would be from male-dominated discourse.

Masculine gender theory as a separate enterprise has focused largely on social, literary, and
historical accounts of the construction of male gender identities. Such work generally lacks
feminisms’ activist stance and tends to serve primarily as an indictment rather than a
validation of male gender practices and masculinity. The so-called “Men’s Movement,”
inspired by the work of Robert Bly among others, was more practical than theoretical and
has had only limited impact on gender discourse. The impetus for the “Men’s Movement”
came largely as a response to the critique of masculinity and male domination that runs
throughout feminism and the upheaval of the 1960s, a period of crisis in American social
ideology that has required a reconsideration of gender roles. Having long served as the de
facto “subject” of Western thought, male identity and masculine gender theory awaits
serious investigation as a particular, and no longer universally representative, field of
inquiry.
Much of what theoretical energy of masculine gender theory currently possesses comes
from its ambiguous relationship with the field of “Queer theory.” “Queer theory” is not
synonymous with gender theory, nor even with the overlapping fields of gay and lesbian
studies, but does share many of their concerns with normative definitions of man, woman,
and sexuality. “Queer theory” questions the fixed categories of sexual identity and the
cognitive paradigms generated by normative (that is, what is considered “normal”) sexual
ideology. To “queer” becomes an act by which stable boundaries of sexual identity are
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transgressed, reversed, mimicked, or otherwise critiqued. “Queering” can be enacted on
behalf of all non-normative sexualities and identities as well, all that is considered by the
dominant paradigms of culture to be alien, strange, unfamiliar, transgressive, odd—in short,
queer. Michel Foucault’s work on sexuality anticipates and informs the Queer theoretical
movement in a role similar to the way his writing on power and discourse prepared the
ground for “New Historicism.” Judith Butler contends that heterosexual identity long held to
be a normative ground of sexuality is actually produced by the suppression of homoerotic
possibility. Eve Sedgwick is another pioneering theorist of “Queer theory,” and like Butler,
Sedgwick maintains that the dominance of heterosexual culture conceals the extensive
presence of homosocial relations. For Sedgwick, the standard histories of western societies
are presented in exclusively in terms of heterosexual identity: “Inheritance, Marriage,
Dynasty, Family, Domesticity, Population,” and thus conceiving of homosexual identity
within this framework is already problematic.

9. Cultural Studies

Much of the intellectual legacy of “New Historicism” and “Cultural Materialism” can now be
felt in the “Cultural Studies” movement in departments of literature, a movement not
identifiable in terms of a single theoretical school, but one that embraces a wide array of
perspectives—media studies, social criticism, anthropology, and literary theory—as they
apply to the general study of culture. “Cultural Studies” arose quite self-consciously in the
80s to provide a means of analysis of the rapidly expanding global culture industry that
includes entertainment, advertising, publishing, television, film, computers and the Internet.
“Cultural Studies” brings scrutiny not only to these varied categories of culture, and not only
to the decreasing margins of difference between these realms of expression, but just as
importantly to the politics and ideology that make contemporary culture possible. “Cultural
Studies” became notorious in the 90s for its emphasis on pop music icons and music video
in place of canonical literature, and extends the ideas of the Frankfurt School on the
transition from a truly popular culture to mass culture in late capitalist societies,
emphasizing the significance of the patterns of consumption of cultural artifacts. “Cultural
Studies” has been interdisciplinary, even antidisciplinary, from its inception; indeed,
“Cultural Studies” can be understood as a set of sometimes conflicting methods and
approaches applied to a questioning of current cultural categories. Stuart Hall, Meaghan
Morris, Tony Bennett and Simon During are some of the important advocates of a “Cultural
Studies” that seeks to displace the traditional model of literary studies.

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 UNIT 9
OTHER NON-BRITISH LITERATURE
 OTHER NON-BRITISH LITERATURE

Other Non-British Literature Part – (A)

Major Greek Literary Authors and their Works

Aesop—Fables (525-456 B. C.)

Aeschylus—The Persians, The Seven Against Thebes, Prometheus Bound, The Suppliants.
The Agamemnon, The Choephori, The Eumenides Aristophanes (448-380 B .C.) The
Acharnians, The Knights, The Clouds, The Peace, The Wasps, The Birds, The Frogs, The
Lysistrata and Ecclesiazusae.

Aristotle (384-322 B.C.) —Rhetoric Ethics, Poetics, Politics.

Euripides (480-406 B.C.) —Alcestis , Medea, Hippolytus, Hecuba, Andromache, Ion,

Suppliants, The Trojan Women, Electra, Orestes Bacchae.

Homer (1050-850 B. C.) —Illiad, Odyssey.

Moschus (250 B. C.) —Lament for Bion.

Pindar (522-442 B. C.) —Choral odes, Epinicia.

Plato (428-347 B. C.) —Phaedo, Republic, Symposium Laws, Gorgias.

Plutarch—Parallel Lives.

Sappho (610 B. C.) —Poems.

Sophocles (459-406 B.C.) — Oedipus the King, Oedipus at Colonus, Antigone, Electra,
Bruchiniae, Ajax, Philoctetes.

Theocritus (3rd Cen. B.C.) —Idylls .

Xenophon (430-355 B. C.) —The Anabasis, Cyropaedia, Memorabilia.

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Part (B)
Major Latin (Roman) Writers and their Works
Catullus (87-54 B. C.) —Poet and Epigrammatist Cicero, Marcus Tullius (106-53 B .C.) De
Oratore, De Legibus, De Republica, De officiis, De Senectute, De Amicitia, De Natura
Deorum.

Horace (65-8 B. C.) —Satires, Odes, Epodes, Epistles, Ars Poetica.

Juvenal (C. A.D. 60-130) — Satirical poet.

Ovid (43 B.C.—A.D. 182)—Metamorphoses Ars Amaloria, Remedia, Amoris, Amores Plautus
(254-184 B.C.) Amphitruo, Asinario, Bacchides, Captivi Casina, Menacchmi, Mercator,
Ruden, Miles, Epidicus, Curculio Seneca (4 B.C.—A.D. 95) Medea Agamemnon, Thyeistes,
Oedipus.

Terence (190-159 B.C.)—Andria, Hecyra, Heautont morau menos, Eunuchus, Phormio,

Adelphi Virgil (70-19 B.C.)—Aeneid, The Georgics, Eclogues.

Part — (C)
Major French Writers and their Works
Anatole Franch (1844-1924)—The Crime of Sylosetre Bonnard, Thais, L'Histoire
contemporaire, Penguin Island.

Andre Gide (1869-1951) —The Notebooks of Andre Malter, The Voyage of Urien,
Marshlands, Fruits of the Earth, Philoctetus, Prometheus Ill-Bound, The Immortalist, The
Return of the Prodigal son.

Andre Maurois — The silences of Colonel Bramble, The Discourses of Doctor O'Grady.

Victor Hugo (1802-85)—Cromwell, Hernani, Natre, Dame de Paris, Marion de Corme, Ruy
Blas.

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Moliere (1622-73)—L'Ecoledes Maris, L Ecole des Femmes, Trtuffe, Le Marriage Force, Le
Misanthrope.

Montaigne (1533-92)—Essais.

Jean Racine (1639-99)—Andromague, Phedre.

Rousseau (1712-78)— The Social Contract, La Nouelle Heloise, Confessions.

Jean Paul Satire —Nausia, The Age of Reason, The Respectable Prostitute, Men Without
Shadows.

Voltaire (1694-1778)— Candida, Letters Concerning the English Nation.

Emile Zola (1840-1902)— Therese Raquin, Germinal, The Debacle, Nana.

Commonwealth Literature
Commonwealth Literature implies the literature written in English in former British colonies,
which attained freedom from British thraldom in course of time. America was the first
colonial nation which freed itself from the tyranny of British rule. With the British North
America Act, 1867, the dominion of Canada came
into existence. Australia became an independent nation in 1901. New Zealand, annexed in
1840 as a separate colony, became an independent nation in 1907. India became free in
1947 with Pakistan as a separate nation. In course of time South Africa, Trinidad, West
African countries, East African countries and many more countries became independent
sovereign republics.

During the British rule English was not only the main official language but also the principal
source of communication. After independence these countries developed English as a
means of communicating their respective national, cultural and literary ethos and
sensibility. So, they nativized English by infusing native idiom, symbols, myths, expressions
and other indigenous nuances. English was transformed and tailored to suit Stephen Gill,
who migrated to Canada from Pakistan, is a diaspora poet; who writes about alienation in
the adopted country and search for his identity in his poems, collected in The Flowers of
Thirst (1990), The Dove of Peace (1993), From Both Sides of the Ocean (1995) and Songs For
Harmony (1993). His language is simple and clear, images and symbols are highly suggestive
and. picturesque.

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Margaret Avison came to light with the publication of the Winter Sun. She is a synthesizer of
diverse contradictory ideas in her poetry, which is obscure. Some of her famous poems are
May 18, 1965, Butterfly Bones, Apex Animal and The Swimmer's Moment.

A. J. Smith artistically uses the parable of an angry king and the problems he has to face as
its consequence in Like An Old Proud King in A Parable. Smith evinces keen consciousness
about air pollution which has a deadly effect on man. So he prescribes to breathe in a
"Palace of inviolable air."

Irving Layton in For My Neighbours in Hell is concerned with man's well-being in the world.

Margaret Atwood, the celebrated Canadian novelist and poet, has forcefully voiced the
existential experience, which is suffused with typical Canadian sensibility in The Journal of
Susanna Moodie. The emigrants in Canada had to experience the crisis of rootlessness and
search for identity but they had deep down their hearts the indelible memories of and
affinities with the culture of their native country and an intense desire to cultivate that
cultural ethos in their adopted country. Atwood reconciles this cultural dichotomy in her
poetry.
They carry their carpet bags and trunks
With clothes, dishes, the family pictures,
They think they win make an order
Like the old one, sow miniature orchards,
Carve children and flocks out of woods.

The immigrants endeavour hard to "make an order like the old one" , they plant the cultural
ethos of their ancestral land on the Canadian soil. She concentrates on the duality of
existential experience in Canada, which is a mix of land and mind wilderness and civilization,
alienation and identity. Her Journals of Susanna Moodie expresses such existential
experience :
The moving water will not show me
my reflection,
The rocks ignore, I am a word,
in a foreign language.

Atwood's poetry is mythopoeic, which shows a keen awareness of the myths of her native
land. In order to exist in her adopted country she changes her sensibility, learns to endure
sufferings and finds a new meaning in diaspora life:

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 I negotiated the drizzle,

Of strange meaning, set it

down to just the latitude,

Something to be endured
but not surprised by.
Other poets who deserve mention are Eli Mandel, Al Purdy, Douglas Lochhead and Dennis
Lee. Mandel was a prolific poet who published many collections of his poetry—Fuscli
Poems, Black and Secret Man, An Idiot Boy, Story Plain, Out of Place and Life Sentence.

Novel
Canadian novels flourished as a powerful medium of expression during the middle of the
twentieth century. The depression and the holocaust of the Second World War contributed
to the emergence and development of novels. Regionalism greatly influenced Canadian
literature, especially novel. Canada is divided into many regions-the Maritimes, Ontario,
Alberta, Quebec, Saskatchewan, British Columbia etc. Each region has its own peculiarities
which permeate the novels of writers living there. In English literature Scott's Waverly,
Wordsworth's Lake District and Hardy's Wessex have been immortalised with all their local
peculiarities. But the regional or local element is suffused with the universal. The eminent
Canadian novelists-Robert Kroetsch, Rudy Wiebe, Hugh Maclennan and Lawrence—are
regional.

Canada is a land of immigrants from England, France, India, China, Japan, Arab countries,
Africa etc. Hence, it is a land of multiracial and multicultural fusion, in which the immigrants
assimilate their varied social and cultural values in order to form a national culture, but their
individual consciousness has hidden sparks of their native culture and social values. Thus,
Canadian literature has a diasporicharacterser.

The mid-twentieth-century novels deal with social reality. Mac Lennan's famous novel
Barometer Rising is a realistic novel which graphically describes the destruction of Halifax, a
great Canadian city during World War I. It presents a conflict between pre-war and the War
Canada. Neil Marcrae, Penelope Wain and Angus Murray represent the war-time wartime
the symbol of old colonial order. Colonel Wain, on the other hand, represents the new
generation, the youth of Canada. Sinclain Ross's first novel As For Me and My House is
memorable Collin Mc Dougall's Execution is a realistic novel.

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Mordecai Richler, a Jewish-Canadian writer, comes out of religion and ghetto life like
Bernard Mahmud, the Jewish-American novelist. He is an artist seeking resolution in a world
full of contradictions. He drew inspiration from Sartre, Hemingway, Malrux. He stood for the
renewal and revitalization of institutions, humanism and restoration of core values. In his
novel the Jew comes out of the narrow precincts of religion and ghettoisation. His famous
novel the Son of A Smaller Hero illustrates in clear and straight-forward style the process of
disintegration and change. In it process of the disintegration of the authoritarian and
orthodox Jewish family is described. This disintegration results in the renewal of the
institutions of family. Noah, the grandson of Melech Adler, and Miriam, the new woman,
are the harbingers of positive and restorative changes in family life. In A Choice of Enemies
Richler deals with the problems of relationship between the Gentile and the Jew. His other
novels, are The Acrobats, Cocksure, Joshua Then and Now and St. Urbain's Horseman. His
main theme is modernity versus tradition.

Regionalism is an outstanding characteristic of modern Canadian novel. The different

regions of Canada—Maritimes, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Quebec, Ontario, British Columbia
and many others form the background of some major novels. The action of Robert
Kroetsch's famous novels What the Crow Said (1976), The Stardust Man (1970) and
Badlands (1975) takes place in rural Alberta Wildfire Lake and Alberta Gee River Valley
respectively. The local colourists or regional novelists in Canadian literature are
concerned with the natures, their culture and a particular region which serves as the
background of novels. The modern Canadian regional novels are located in urban localities
and big cities such as London, New York, Paris and Dublin and have a cosmopolitan and
universal appeal. Regionalism is a medium for the expression of identity. Kroetsch, Wiebe
and Lawrence have expressed identity through regionalism. Alberta province where
Kroetsch was born and brought up is the background in his novels. In Badlands Kroetsch
describes Prairie people on the margins of civilization. The background in this novel is
"ghost- pine valley" and in What the Crow Said it is the Municipality of Big Knife which "lay
ambiguously on the border between the provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan: no one
due to a surveyor's error had even been to locate conelusively where the boundaries were
supposed to be.”

Margaret Lawrence, the pioneer of the feminist movement in Canadian literature,

influenced Atwood, Jane Rule, Margaret Gibson and many others. Her heroines are the
harbingers of change. They reject institutionalised religion and patriarchal God. Who is

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God and where is He? God is present in love and creativity. Her four Manawaka novels –
The Stone Angel (1970), Jest of God – “are sagas of spiritual quest for freedom.” Her
heroines rediscover themselves through humility, compassion and creativity, and ultimately
they achieve highest, humanity by discovering, and ultimately they achieve highest,
humanity by discovering the divinity within. Laurence is also a local colourist. The regional
element is strong in her novels.

Gail Scott, a Canadian feminist, in her famous novel Heroine (1987) depicts the struggle and
sufferings of the protagonist Gail, an English Canadian like herself. Sharon Butala’s famous
novel The Perfection of the Morning depicts man’s relation to universal nature. She also
presents scenes of the country life in In Country of the Heart. She is a landscapist. Alice
Munro in her novels What Do You Think You Are and Lives of Girls and Women expresses
her concerns for women.

Margaret Atwood is an ardent advocate of feminist consciousness which rises as a powerful

undercurrent and unifying force in her novels- Surface (1972), Lady Oracle (1979), The
Edible Woman (1969), Bodily Harm (1981) and Cat's Eye (1989). Her main theme is
alienation and exploitation of women. In the Lady Oracle the protagonist, Joan Foster, raises
voice of protest against the imposition of sexual and gender roles upon women. It is a
vehement protest against the female images as a consumer item. In The Edible Woman the
protagonist Marian, who works in Seymor Survey—a market organisation, faces woman
eaters like Peter and Duncan, and refuses to be an edible woman. She feels identity crisis
due to gender discrimination. She marries Peter and willingly surrenders to Peter's
imperialistic designs. Thus, in "Atwood's exposition of gender politics, woman is as much
implicated in the processes that perpetuate male hegemony as is man. The Hand- maid's
Tale exposes female brutalization and graphically describes the subservient role of wives,
workers and whores. In Surfacing and Cat's Eye Atwood turns to another aspect of
womanhood— "the life of buried, smothered women to examine the other side of the
coin." These novels depict the brave and bold steps of the women who have fought their
way to freedom as artists. In her novels Atwood emerges as a staunch advocate of women's
right and exposes the folly of" gender politics, gender discrimination, injustice and
exploitation."

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Drama
Robertson Davies, a celebrated Canadian playwright, deals with the theme of Canadian
cultural poverty in his early plays. In one of his finest plays At My Heart's Core (1950) he not
only brings to light the Canadian cultural deprivation but also highlights the exploitation of
and discrimination against women. It has subtle, ironic feminist understone.
The plays of Michael Cook and David French depict environmental changes and social values
in a society passing through social, cultural and moral flux. Cook's famous plays are The
Head and Guts and Soundbone Dance. Jacob's Wake dramatizes the tragic circumstance in
Blackburn family. David French's Leaving Home and Of the Fields forcefully describe the
cultural shock which the immigrants feel while moving from one place to another in Canada.
Both these plays describe the disintegration of Mercer family. French's famous oneact-play
Salt Water Moon (1984) is a powerful play with two characters. George Ryga's famous play
The Ecstasy of Rita Joe is one of the finest tragedies in Canadian literature. It powerfully
depicts the cultural shock, caused by colour discrimination, which Indian experience in
Canada. Rita Joe and Jaimie Paul passionately protest against social discrimination and
injustice. They stand for the entire Indian diaspora. Intimately Rita, which is protest and
rebellion embodied, is raped and killed in the white dominated Canada, but Ryga glorifies
her sacrifice as the ecstasy of a martyr and elevates her to great tragic height.

Australian Literature
Australia is a land of immigrants who consisted of convicts, gold diggers and free settlers.
Gold fascinated people from all countries to Australia. They settled there. Convicts worked
hard to change the Australian landscape and in course of time became its founding fathers.
Darwin, who visited Australia was understruck by the exemplary work of convicts for its
transformation into "a splendid country" and "a grand centre of civilization."

Poetry
Australian landscape, topography and ecology have influenced literature, especially poetry.
In the beginning poets like W.L. Bowles and Thomas Campbell who had not visited Australia,
wrote poetry about it. They saw it through the British imagination as a land of promise and
plenty. They created highly romantic visions of the Australian landscape with the abundance
of romantic forests, blooming plains and hidden mineral treasures. The immigrants who first
of all came here were shocked by the recognition of reality. The Australian landscape was
neither beautiful nor promising. It was sad and melancholic, primeval and aboriginal, weird

554
and grotesque. To the early settlers, "it was a reversal and perversion of nature." Landscape
influenced Australian poetry. Henry Kendall, a nineteenth-century poet bewails:

Where are ....

The banks of April and the groves of bird

The glades of silence and the pools unstirred.
Landscape-disenchanted poets like Harpur and Field

With the passage of time the Australian poets began to find beauty and charm in the
landscape. What seemed to be ugly and repulsive in the beginning began to arouse the
poetic imagination. Henry Parkes, who emigrated to America in 1839 and Harpur were the
first to describe the aesthetic and mystical charm of the Australian landscape. The new
poetic approach to landscape occasioned a change in the connotations of words, symbols
and images. Jagdish Rai observes : "The Australian poet became freer and bolder in the
exercise of imagination. He began to amplify and modify his poetic material. Australian
landscape has not only gone a good way in determining the idiom and image of Australian
poetry, it had also affected the choice of themes and the nature of emotion in it."

Australia became Federation in 1901. Political and moral issues began to attract poets and
writers. The poets of twenties and thirties ignored the landscape and tried to universalise
and liberalise their poetic tradition. But the poets could not do without landscape for long.
It was rehabilitated along with the myths and the lore of the aborigines.

Kenneth Slessor's poetry is sensuous and picturesque, imaginative and remarkable for its
linguistic vitality. R. D . Fitzgerald is an intellectual poet with a philosophical outlook. He
sings of the glory and vitality of life. A.D. Hope is a versatile poet who was influenced by
Nietzsche, mythology, classics and nature. His poetry deals with contradictions in life—love
and lust, beauty and ugliness, hope and despair. Sex is an important theme in his poetry. He
is a celebrator of sexual raptures in The Lingam and Yoni and Phallus.

James Mc Auley is an academic and intellectual poet with a bent for classicism and
symbolism. Peter Porter also belongs to the intellectual tradition which finds expression in
his famous poem Lying Art. Bruce Darve is an urban poet with social concerns. Randolph
Stow in his two volumes of poetry deals with the feeling of isolation in modern society.
Geoffrey Lehman is an exponent of simplicity in poetry. Other poets of the mid twentieth
century are David Campbell and Francis Webb.
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Less Murray is a poet of his community to which he was very intimately related. His poetry
is full of the reminiscences of the colonial experiences and its historic nature. He seems to
be conventional. He is a typical Australian poet who knows the knack of infusing universal
emotions in general Australian themes. He turns to Australian landscape with spontaneity in
his poetry, especially in his two famous poems Blood and An Absolutely Ordinary Rainbow.
In the latter poem be imparts both grandeur and dignity to the city road squatter who
weeps and causes traffic jam. After unburdening his sorrowful heart he walks away :

Moping his face with the dignity of one Man who has wept, and now has finished.
Judith Wright, a major white Australian woman poet, is mainly interested in the cause of
aboriginals. The themes of her poetry are closely related with the Australian scene. In her
famous poems Woman to Man, The Unborn, Train Journey and The Old Prison wright
forcefully exposes the social evils of her age. Endowed with typical Australian imagination,
she vividly describes the Australian landscape, conspicuous for its contradictions, but she
"seeks beauty in ugliness and splendour in terror."

Some distinguished women poets are Rosemary Dobson, Gwen Harwood, Joanne Bums,
Swan Hampbon, Chris Mansel and Amanda Stuart.

Novel
Novel began late in Australian literature Vanu Palmer and Katherine Prichard are the
pioneers of novel around the twenties of the twentieth century. Patrick White, the famous
post- war novelist, published Happy Valley, The Living and the Dead, Riders in the Chariot,
The Vivisectors, and The Solid Mandala; A Fringe of Leaves and The Eye of the Storm. His
technique was influenced by D. H. Lawrence, James Joyce and Virginia Woolf. His style is
both naturalistic and symbolic. Martin Boyd's famous works are Love Gods, Desert Idol, The
Lemon Farm, The Painted Princess, The Picnic, Nuns in Jeopardy, and Lucinda Brayford
describe his close affinity with the Australian heritage. Randolph Stow in his novels
interweaves landscape with the emotional and spiritual conditions of human characters.
The predicament of individuals in isolation is a recurrent theme in his novels—The Haunted
Land, The Bystander, The Girl Green or the 'Elder Flower. The Visitant, Tourmaline and The
Merry Round in the Sea.

Christiania Stead, who is remembered for The Man Who Loved Children, For Love Alone,

556
and Seven Poor Men of Sydney embodies the Australian spirit in her novels. She deftly
explores the inner recesses of her character's minds.

Xavier Herbert's Capricornia and Poor Fellow My Country deal with Australian landscape
and the sufferings of aborigines. Thomas
Kneally's Bring Lark and Heroes is a famous novel which includes fables, parables, symbols
and suspense in order to create the desired effect.

Chris Koch, a well known Australian novelist, wrote Boys in the Island, Across the Sea Wall,
The Year of Living Dangerously and The Double Man. Across the Sea Wall is the outcome of
his rust visit to India in the fifties. The Year of Living Dangerously is based on Indonesian and
Indian myths. He was highly influenced by the American novelist Thomas Wolfe.

Other worth mentioning Australian novelists are Martin Boyd, Hal Porter, Christina Stead,
George Johnson, Thomas Kenneely, Peter Carey and Randolph Stow.

David Robert's best selling novel Shantaram is the story of a runaway Australian convict on
the mean streets of Mumbai metropolis. It is a powerful novel of crime and punishment, of
love and friendship. Shantaram is an extraordinarily complex novel which echoes "the
central theme of the twentieth century-that of exile, and of mars migration, especially to
the cities. Mumbai, an island city, is a symbol of that exile, and the leitmotif if that recurs in
images throughout." Roberts has been influenced by Melville, Lawrence Durrell, Flaubert,
Dante and Shakespeare. Shantaram "is a novel that is in the tradition of Cervantes' Don
Quixote la Mancha and also of Dante's Inferno, in its theme of exile and descent into hell,
……. and his little guide Prabhakar is akin to Virgil as a guide to Dante's hero and Sancho
Panza to Don Quixote.

Elfriede Jelinek (born 1946) is a gifted poet, novelist and musician of Australia. She began
writing poetry at an early age. She made her literary debut with the collection Lisas Schatten
(1967). She came in contact with student movement and her writing took a socially critical
direction. She remained an active member of Australia's Communist party from 1974 to
1991. Her famous novels are Die Lebhaberinnen or Women as Lovers (1975); Die Ausges
Perrten or Wonderful, Wonderful Times (1994); Die Klavierspleder in (1980), The Piano
Teacher (1988) and Children of the Dead (1995). Main themes in her novels are female
sexuality, its abuse on violence against women. She writes frankly about maltreatment and
aggression, and oppression. Jelinek, a highly controversial figure in her household, has
received many prizes, including the George Buchner Prize in 1988 and Franza Kofka Award.
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Drama
It is not a popular dramatic form in Australia. Blundell, Alexander Bozo, Jack Hibbard, Ray
Lawler David Williamson and Chris Koch are famous dramatists.

African Literature
African literature is a comprehensive expression of African culture, oral literary tradition,
psyche and contradictions in African society caused by the colonial rule. It reflects the
aspirations, dreams, psyche, conflicts and changes of the African people living in the African
continent consisting of West Africa (Gambia, Ghana and Nigeria), South Africa and East
Africa (Kenya, Malawi, Tanzania and Uganda). The colonisation of Africa and the consequent
British influences shaped African society which was primitive and traditional. The
supremacy of the colonial rule was not only resented but faught with courage and
determination, which ultimately ushered in an era of independence in African countries.
The dominant foreign influence could not diminish the native sensibility which found
expression in conflict against the foreign rule. The colonial powers exploited the African
people, tried to wipe out their cultural tradition, in short, shook the very foundation of
African society.

However, the introduction of European educational system benefited the African people.
It opened new dimensions for development and provided prospects of contact with other
countries. An era of enlightenment and intellectual and rational approach began. A
synthesis was formed between the old and the new, the old traditional values of African
society and the Western openness and enlightenment. English was moulded to
communicate to the native Africans and also the readers all over the world the African
sensibility and ethos. English in Africa has assimilated African myths, symbols, folk
traditions, landscape, sounds, rhythms and effects. Thus the nativised or Africanised English
is used for expressing African sensibility and ethos, which is called Negritude, in African
literature. African literature is an expression of the cultural heritage, traditional values,
social conflicts and crisis, and powerful Western influences on the people of Africa. The
African writers have presented the essence of the myths and legends of their country.

African literature has added a new dimension not only to Commonwealth literature but to
the literature of the world. Modern African literature also articulates the crisis and
contradictions, poverty and corruption, hunger and deprivation in African society. African
writers are liberal and moderate, assimilative and enlightened. They know what to take and
558
assimilate from other countries. Writers like Wole Soyinka, Chinua Achebe, James Ngugi,
Christopher 0 Kigbo and many others have presented a universal view of humanity in their
writings. They have also written about transformation in African society. African literature is
rich in poetry and novel.

Poetry
African poetry bears the indelible mark of the rich and variegated oral tradition. It is very
old. It is conspicuous for its musical quality. African folk culture and traditions have been
authentically expressed through poetry. The myths and legends of Africa, especially of the
Yoruba people, occupy a prominent place in African poetry. Commenting as the importance
of folk songs and folk culture in African literature N. Pratima remarks: "The African folk-
songs contain the world-view and the joys and sorrows of the African people. All folk-songs
can be sung by a group of people to a definite rhythm learnt from the elders. In fact the folk
songs and folk literature introduce the individual to the depths of ancient traditions."

The contribution of famous African poets is given below :

Christopher 0 Kigbo, a renowned African poet, followed European mode of writing, which
clearly shows the influence of T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, Yeats and Hopkins. His famous poems
are Labyrinths, Heavens Gate and The Limits and Other Poems. His early poems have a
ritualist pattern which characterises traditional African poetry. His later poetry is suffused
with Ibo folklore and Christian values. Thus, in them he creates a religious mythological
world. His poetry is distinguished by a correlation between myth and ritual. He himself
observes about Heavensgate in the Introduction to Labyrinth: it was "originally conceived
as an Easter sequence. It later grew into a ceremony of innocence. Something like a mass
the celebrant, a personage like orphans, is about to begin a journey." It traces the spiritual
journey through different states of Consciousness. The poet undergoes purifications and
ultimately attains "a state of grace" with "peace, prayer and humility of mind."

Time for worship

Softly sings the bells of exile
Softly sings the angelus
unto my ears,
Softly sings my guardian angel.

Diop and Leon Damas poignantly express in their poetry the feeling of intense hurt, pain,

559
humiliation and angst caused by the invasion of 'European culture over African. The
following lines of Damas' famous poem Black Dolls in Black Orphans reveals, his sense of
loss and nostalgia; loss of identity and the discovery of self : To feel myself myself

A new self from one I was yesterday

Yesterday without complications
Yesterday when the hour of uprooting came
Will they ever know the rancour of my heart ?
In the eye of mistrust too late opened
They have stolen the space that was mine

Customs, days, life, song, rhythm, effort, pathways Water, home, smoking grey earth,
wisdom, words, palaver

Ancestors, cadence, bands, standards, lands, trampling the soil.

Wole Soyinka, who was awarded Nobel Prize for Literature in 1986, is a poet, novelist and
dramatist. He is the major writer of Nigeria, who stands unrivalled in African literature. He is
indebted to African and European traditions in his minute analysis of man's relationship
with his fellows, the past and life and death. His writings have a message for the betterment
of society. He is a writer with a strong sense of social commitment Soyinka's collection of
poems Shuttle in the Crypt (1972), Mandel's Earth (1989) and Idanre express the
rootlessness and loss of identity of the modern man. The latter poem Idanre deals with the
inseparableness of life and death. It, according to Bruce King, expresses the Yoruba cosmic
vision and relates the genesis of the world. His English is chaste, symbolical and mythical;
for example :

All hail Saint Atunda, First revolutionary

Grand iconoclast at genesis-and the rest in logic
Zeus, Osiris, Jaweh, Christ in trifoliate
Pact with creation, and the wisdom of Orunmila,
Ifa Dwin eyes, multiform.

Diop, a famous poet, articulated the Africans' sense of intense hurt and pain caused by
white rule and culture. So does Leon Damas in his collection Black Orpheus.

560
Novel
African novel is realistic and reflects the bruised psyche of Africans who were subjected to
brutish slavery and colonisation. The wounded African sensibility caused by the frustrations
and exploitation during the white colonial rule has been authentically expressed in African
fiction. Nigeria is the centre of African writing. The Ibos and Yorubas of Nigeria are
intellectually gifted, enlightened and educated. English as the common language and the
medium of expression and education evolved a feeling of unity among 250 ethnic groups in
Nigeria. They moulded English as an instrument for the expression of African nationality,
sensibility, ethos and aspirations. Chinua Achebe vehemently asserted that it was his
mission to help my society regain belief in itself and put away the complexes of the years of
denigration and self- abasement." During the twentieth century African literature attained
maturity and the writers revealed, in the words of Dr. K.R.S. Iyengar, "a mastery of form and
sheer linguistic originality and competence." They brought to their work "a freshness and
versatility, and above all, an integrity that compels attention."

The first Nigerian novel, which became immensely popular was Amos Tutuola's The Palm
Wine Drinkard (1952). It was followed by Feather Woman of the Jungle. Chinua Achebe is
one of the greatest African novelists in contemporary literature. Acbebe vividly describes
the past in Things Fall Apart and The Arrow of God, analyses the present in No Longer At
Ease and forecasts the future in A Man of the People. Things Fall Apart and The Arrow of
God are classical studies of traditional Ibo society during the colonial rule. Ezeulu has been
dragged and unlawfully detained, Obika and his friends are whipped when they want to
know why they are not paid for their labour by the whites, named Winterwottom and
Clarke. The whites molest and rape negro women, although they hate the black. Wright
always thinks about negro maidens : "The thoughts he bad since first seeing fully grown girls
going about naked were forced to sleep." The whites spiritually and morally humilitated and
belittled the negroes. Colonisation amounted to "territorial, moral and spiritual plunder of
Africa."

Plomer's Turbott Wolfe is also a saga of the exploitation and psychic, moral and spiritual
disintegration of Africans during the colonial rule. Achebe's The Arrow of Gold shows the
colonial Nigeria seen from the eye of African; Plomer's Turbott Wolfe is a vivid presentation
of the same cruelty and exploitation as witnessed by and narrated by a whiteman himself.
Wolfe, a sensitive white has feelings of empathy with the negroes and finds nobility and
innocence in them.

561
James Ngugi, the Kenyan novelist, short story writer and playwright, Writes about the
colonisation of Kenya and Mau-Mau traditions. His famous works are Weep Not, Child, River
Between and A Grain of Wheat. River Between expresses the feelings of intense pain and
hurt experienced by the Negroes, their implacable anger and rebellion against the
Whiteman's Burden which to them was "a blood-stained monument of tutelage." "Ngugi is
concerned," writes Palmer, "not merely with the wickedness of the oppressors, but with the
weaknesses of the indigenous people themselves." In A Grain of Wheat he evolves a new
technique which does not require a hero in a novel. No character is more important than
the other. There is no hero, no redeemer or no villain in it. It is the masses who are
important. Mungo, Gikonyo, Karanja, Mumhi and the white man Thompson are five centres
of interest in novel. Ngugi's three novels "describe the painful birth of political
consciousness in their respective heroes."

The African women, who were active participants in the social life in the tribal past, were
empowered in the twentieth century and actively took part in various spheres of social and
national life. They became good writers. Flora Nwapa, who served in many capacities in the
Education Department in Nigeria, was a famous novelist. Her famous novel Efuru is a
realistic portrayal of everyday Africa. It is the simple, well told story of Efuru, the daughter
of Nwashiki Ogene, who marries a poor farmer Adiza against the wishes of her father and
tribal kinsmen. Nwapa creates the ideal of African womanhood in the character of Efuru
who heroically faces the cruelly of her two selfish husbands Adizua and Eneberi, the sorrows
inflicted upon her by the unthinking society; and she ultimately emerges as a “hard
working, patient, loving, helpful, uncomplaining, beautiful”, and venerable. She vindicates
the eternal virtues of womanhood. Nwapa’s language is simple, lucid, vigorous ad
unaffected.

Sombene Onsmane’s God’s Bits of Wood express the defiance of black women against the
white oppressors. Okara, Yetunde Esan, Ekawensi, Nzekwu, Rubadri, Mphahlete, Okot P.
Bitck, Dennis Brutus, Fugard, Kofi A Wooner,
J.P. Clark, Elechi Amadi, Amos Tutuola, Gordimer, Gabriel Okara and Cyprian Ekwensi are
famous African novelists.

562
Drama
In African drama Wole Soyinka’s The Swamp Dwellers and The Strong Breed are famous.

New Zealand Literature

R.A.K. Mason, Ursula Bethel, Robin Hyde, Charles Brasch and Allen Curnow were famous
poets who wrote under the influence of romanticism. Mason is considered as the first
original and gifted poet.

Bethel's poetry is meditative and religious, unambiguous and unpretentious. Detail and
Truncel are her famous poems. Fairburn's collections of poems are He shall Not Rise,
Dominion and Three Poems.

Smithyan, Ruth Dallas and Baic Dowling avoided romanticism and are modernist. Other
modern poets are Bexter, whose poetry is remarkable for variety and exuberance; Derill
Glover, Smithyan, Charles Spears, Ruth Dallas, a renowned woman-poet; Alaistair Campbell,
Kevin Ireland. Albert Wendt and Bill Manhire. James Baxten led the Wellengson group of
poets.

Charles Brasch, whose collection of poems The Land and the People and Other Poems is
conscpicuous for elegiac note, is a renowned poet. Allen Curnow's Landfall in Unknown Seas
and A Small Room with Large Windows express his concern for his country and a conflict
between imagination and reason. Alstair Campbell's early poetry is romantic and
imaginative but in later poetry he emerges as an exponent of modern poetry. Poetry began
late in New Zealand but now is mature and has established its literary identity.

Novel writing flourished in New Zealand. Henry Butler Stoney was a pioneer in novel. His
Toranaki (1861) was the first novel in New Zealand. The novels of the pioneers like Dugald
Ferguson, Alexander Bathgate, Lady Campbell Hume Nisbet, Rolfe Bolderwood, Siegurd
Wisniowsky, Vincent Pyke and George Chamier are remarkable for realism, conventionality
and didactic note. The colonial period is vividly and realistically depicted in Ferguson's
Vicissitudes of Bush Life in Australia and New Zealand and Mates. Some famous novels of
the early period contain picturesque and realistic descriptions of Maori life. Maori were the
members of the race of people who were the earliest inhabitants of New Zealand. The
novels on Maori life are Home Nisbet's The Rebel Chief : A Romance of New Zealand, and
John White's The Maori At Home.

563
Ellen Ellis and Vogel pioneered the feminist fiction in New Zealand. Grossman's famous
novel Angela : A Messenger combines moral note with melodrama. Satchell glorifies Pakcha
culture which, be thinks, is superior to Maori culture. Satchell in his famous novels The Elixir
of Life and The Greenhouse Door tires to balance realism and romance. Jean Devanny's
famous works Poor Swine, The Butcher's Shop and Lenor Divine are a curious mix of
communism and feminism. Didacticism continued to influence novelists of the late
nineteenth century and the first three decades of the twentieth century.

The realistic fiction of the forties of the last century for the first time reflects the true
national character of New Zealand and deals with themes and modes with provincial
flavour. These novels contain the criticism of rising materialism and other evils. Some
famous novels of this period are Sargeson's Man Alone, Robin Hyde's Wednesday's
Children, Florence Preston's The Gallows Tree, Robin Muir's Word for Wont and Noel
Hilliard's Maori Girl, Maori Woman and The Glory and the Drama. Sylvia Ashton in her
novels Spinster, Incense to Idols and Bell Call expresses feminine viewpoint.

New Zealand society in the sixties was influenced by urbanization, materialism, feminist
revolution and racial and cultural consciousness. The novelists endeavoured to cultivate
their own mode of expression. Famous novels of this period are Maurice Gee's The Big
Season, published in 1962, Shadbolt's Among the Cinders, John Summers' Earthen Ware,
Michael's Henderson's The Log of A Superfluous Son, and Janet Frame's The Rain Birds.
Novels on Maori culture were also written during this period. Duckworth in Married Alone
imparts a psychological angle to novel writing. Mike Johnson's Lear, Sandi Hall's The God
Mothers, and Way June's The Department are some famous novels of this period.

Modern New Zealand fiction is concerned mainly with humanitarianism and multi-
culturalism prevailing in society.

564
Multiple Choice Type Questions
1 In which year was Magna Carta signed
a- 1205
b- 1212
c- 1215
d- 1220

2 To which King of England did Pope give the title 'Defender of the Faith' -
a- Henry VII
b- Henry VIII
c- James I
d- Charles I

3 When did Mandeville's 'Travels' appear

a- 1500
b- 1501
c- 1496
d- 1490

4 Who is the writer of "Metamorphoses"

a- Ovid
b- Dante
c- Petrarch
d- Virgil

5 When is Wyclif believed to have dicd ?

a- 1380
b- 1382
c- 1383
d- 1384

565
6 East India Company was set up in a- 1604
b- 1603
c- 1600
d- 1605

7 M. Trevelyan was primarily a-

a- historian
b- dramatist
c- poet
d- novelist

8 In which book does the following line appear: "A god is not so glorious as a king."
Marlowe
a- Dr. Faustus
b- The Jew of Malta
c- Tamburlaine
d- Edward II

9 The book "Euphues" was written by

a- Greene
b- Jonson
c- Dryden
d- John Lyly

10 Bacon's essays are the finest example of

a- wit and humour
b- practical wisdom
c- pathos
d- irony

11 Who won the Commonwealth Booker Prize for 1989 ?

a- James Frame for The Carpathians
b- Maurice Gee's The Big Season
c- Maurice Shadbolt's Among the Cinders

566
d- None of these

12 Who said that Janet Frame was "the most considerable New Zealand novelist" ?
a- James Baxter
b- Patrick White
c- Ken Hulme
d- Randolph Stow

13 Angela : A Messenger, a feminist novel, was written by -

a- Grossman
b- Satchell
c- Jean Devanny
d- Florence Presbon

14 Identify the novelist who wrote a tetralogy on Maori's life consisting of Maori Girl,
Maori Woman and The Glory and the Dream
a- Florence Preston
b- Noel Hilliard
c- John Mulgau
d- Robid Hyde

15 Jane Wordsworth's novels Four Women and Reunion deal with-

a- Diaspora problems in New Zealand
b- Modernism and globalization
c- Maoris and their inner development
d- None of these

16. Which of the following novels deals with a barbaric world fighting against Aids like
epidemic?
a- Duckworth's Married Alive
b- Janet Frame's Intensive Care
c- Mike Johnson's Lear
d- Sandi Hall's The Godmother

567
17 Who won the Pultizer Prize for best fiction in 1979 ?
a- John Cheever
b- Sandi Hall
c- Oliver Senior
d- Keri Hulme

18 Song of Radha, the Milkmaid is written by

a- Toni Dutt
b- Sarojini Naidu
c- R.C. Dutt
d- Aru Dutt

19 Manmohan Ghose was the elder brother of

a- K.P. Ghose
b- R.G. Dutt
c- Sri Aurobindo
d- S.C. Dutt

20 Identify the correct group consisting of the saint poets-

a- Nobokissen Ghose - B.M. Malabari - R.C. Dutt - Toru Dutt
b- Manmohan Ghose - Sarojini Naidu Ram Sharma - Henry Derozio
c- Swami Vivekanand - Swami Ramtirtha Sri Aurobindo - Paramhans Yogananda
d- None of these

21 "I regard myself as an Indian poet writing in English." Who said these words about his
own poetry?
a- Nissim Ezekiel
b- Dom Morals
c- K.N. Daruwalla
d- Kamala Das

22 K.N. Daruwalla observes: "He brings to his poetry an authenticity of experience but
the experienced is seized through a perspective of the past, a configuration of familial
relationship and his ironic perception." Who is he?

568
a- Nissim Ezekiel
b- Jayant Mahapatra
c- R. Parthasarthy
d- A. K. Ramanujan

23 K.N. Daruwalla was awarded the Sahitya Academy-Award for. n 1984-

a- Apparition in April
b- Crossing of Rivers
c- The Keeper of the Dead
d- Landscapes

24 A Professor of Physics turned a poet at the age of forty in 1968. Who is the poet
a- Shiva K. Kumar
b- Jayant Mahapatra
c- O.P. Bhatnagar
d- Nissim Ezekiel

25 What is the correct group of Kamala Das' poems in chronological order ?

a- Summer in Calcutta - The Descendents The Old Playhouse and Other Poems Collected
Poems
b- Collected Poems - Summer in Calcutta The Old Playhouse and Other Poems The
Descendents
c- The Old Playhouse and Other Poems Summer in Calcutta - The Descendents Collected
Poem
d- None of these

26 Which of Mahatma Gandhi's works "is one of the imperishable classics of our time" ?
a- Hind Swaraj
b- Young India
c- The Story of My Experiments with Truth
d- None of these

27 Who is the author of the Glimpses of World History and the Discovery of India ?
a- M.K. Gandhi

569
b- Rajgopalachari
c- J.L. Nehru
d- B .G. Tilak

28. Which of the following works is not written by Dr. S. Radhakrishnan ?

a- An Idealist View of Life
b- Kalki
c- The Hindu View of Life
d- The Future Poetry

29 Who wrote My Days and My Dateless Diary ?

a- Dom Morals
b- R.K. Narayan
c- K.M. Pannikar
d- Frank Morals

30 Which of the following arrangements of Nirad C. Chaudhuri's works is in the correct

chronological order ?
a- The Autobiography of An Unknown Indian A Passage to England - The Continent of
Circle -Scholar Extraordinary - Thy Hand, Great Anarch
b- Scholar Extraordinary - Thy Hand, Great Anarclr- The Continent of Circle - A Passage to
England - The Autobiography of An Unknown Indian
c- Thy Hand, Great Anarch - The Autobiography of An Unknown Indian The Continent of
Circe - A Passage to England - Scholar Extraordinary
d - None of these

31 Wings of Fire, An Autobiography, which appeared in 1999; is the autobiography of an

outstanding scientist and also "an authentic volume on Indian space odyssey." Who is
the author of this book ?
a- Ved Mehta
b- Vikram Seth
c- Siser Kumar Ghose
d- A.P.J. Abdul Kalam

570
32 In which year Khushwant Singh's Truth, Love, and A Little Malice appeared ?
a- 1998
b- 1999
c- 2000
d- 2002

33. Who among the following novelists translated from Bangla into English The Lake of
Palms (1902) and The Slave Girl of Agra (1909)?
a- R. N. Tagore
b- Bankim Chandra Chatterjee
c- S.B. Banerjee
d- R.C. Dutta

34 Murugan, the Tiller was written by -

a- K.S. Venkatramani
b- Raja Rao
c- B. Rajam lyer
d- A. Madhavia

35 K.S. Venkatramani's novel Kandan, The Patriot, which is akin to Pearl S. Buck's The
Good Earth, is set against the background of-
a- Quit India Movement
b- Salt Satyagrah
c- Civil Disobedience Movement
d- None of these

36 Which is the dubut novel, written in 1935, of Mulkraj Anand?

a- Coolie
b- Two Leaves and A Bud
c- The Road
d- The Untouchable

37 Anand's the village triology consists of

a- The Village Across - The Black Water - The Sword and the Sickle

571
b- Seven Summers - The Confession of A Lover -The Bubble
c- The Road - The Big Heart - Morning Face

38 Bakha is the Central character in Anand's

a- Coolie
b- Untouchable
c- The Bubble
d- The Road

39 Who was the winner of the first Sahitya Academy Award?

a- R.K. Narayan
b- Raja Rao
c- K.S. Venkatramani
d- Mulkraj Anand

40. Mulkraj Anand was awarded the Sahitya Academy Award for-
a- The Bubble
b- Morning Face
c- The Big Heart
d- The Private Life of An Indian Prince

41 Name the poet who composed the Ancient Legends and Ballads of Hindustan -
a- Sarojini Naidu
b- Toni Dutt
c- Sri Aurobindo
d- R.C. Dutt

42 A critic said that Toru Dutt was "a Classic writer" who "placed her country and was
the first to do so on the international map of letters." Who was the critic?
a- K.R.S. lyengar
b- M.K. Naik
c- Sri Aurobindo
d- Padmini Sen Gupta

572
43 Who among the following poets was influenced by Kabir and rendered some of his
verses into English ?
a- Sri Aurobindo
b- Sarojini Naidu
c- R.N. Tagore
d- Toni Dutt

44 Identify the correct group of poets who were influenced by Tagore's mysticism and
poetry
a- Harte Crane - Ezra Pound
b- Robert Frost - Wallace Stevens
c- Allen Ginsberg - Sylvia Plath
d- W.H. Auden - Christopher Isherwood

45 In November 1913 Tagore was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature for the English
translation of-
a- The Gitanjali
b- Fruit Gathering
c- Lover's Gift
d- The Crescent Moon

46 Two renowned English critics were Sarojini Naidu's poetical mentors. Who were they?
a- T.S. Eliot - I.A. Richards
b- G.K. Chesterton - William Watson
c- Edmund Gosse - Arthur Symons
d- Neither

47 Which of the following arrangements of Sarojini Naidu's poetry is correct in

chronological order ?
a- The Golden Threshold - The Bird of Time The Broken Wing - The Feather of Dawn
b- The Broken Wing - The Bird of Time - The Feather of Dawn - The Golden Threshold
c- The Bird of Time - The Golden Threshold -The Broken Wing - The Feather of Dawn
d- None of these

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48 Savitri, an epic in blank verse, was written by
a- R.N. Tagore
b- Sri Aurobindo
c- Toru Dutt
d- Sarojini Naidu

49 Who among the following poets was born of an Indian mother and a Portugese father
and was also the first celebrated poet in Indian English Poetry?
a- Michael Madhusudan Dutt
b- B. M. Malasbari
c- Nissim Ezekel
d- Henry Derozio

50 Nissim Ezekiel "was the first Indian poet to express a modern Indian sensibility in
modern idiom." Who said these waords?
a- K. N. Daruwalla
b- A. K. Ramanujan
c- Jayant Mahapatra
d- Dilip Chitra

Answer
1 (C) 2. (B) 3. (C) 4. (A) 5. (D) 6. (C) 7. (A) 8. (C) 9. (D) 10. (B) 11. (A) 12. (B) 13. (A) 14. (B)
15. (C) 16. (C) 17. (A) 18. (B) 19. (C) 20. (C) 21. (A) 22. (D) 23. (C) 24. (B) 25. (A) 26. (C) 27.
(C) 28. (D) 29. (B) 30. (A) 31. (D) 32. (D) 33. (D) 34. (A) 35. (C) 36. (D) 37. (A) 38. (B) 39. (A)
40. (B) 41. (B) 42. (D) 43. (C) 44. (A) 45. (A) 46. (C) 47. (A) 48. (B) 49. (D) 50. (A)

574
 UNIT 10
LITERARY THEORY AND CRITICISM
 LITERARY THEORY AND CRITICISM

Literary Theory and Criticism

Greek and Roman Cirics and theirworks

Plato (427 B.C.-348 B.C.)—Republic,Symposium, Laws, Gorgias, Phaedrus.

Aristotle (384 B.C.-322 B.C.)—Poetics Rhetoric.

Longinus — On the sublime.

Horace (65 B.C.- 8 B.C.) — Ars Poetica, Epistles—I, H, III Satires—I and II, Odes—I, II, III, IV

Major English Critics and theirWorks

Stephen Gosson (1555-1624)—The Schoole of Abuse (1579).

Sir Philip Sidney (1554-1586)— Apologie for Poetrie (1580-81)

Ben Jonson (1573-1637)—Prefaces to all his plays, The Poetaster, Conversations with
Drummond, Timber or Discoveries Made upon Men and Matter (1641).

John Dryden (1631-1700)—Prefaces or Epilogues to many of his plays and poems. Like
preface to the fables, to The Indian Emperor, to 'Troilus and Cressida, to The State of
Innocence etc. The Essay of Dramatick Poesie (1668).

Joseph Addison (1672-1719)—Papers Published in the Spectator on True and False wit (5
papers), On Paradise Lost (18 Papers), On the Pleasures of Imagination (11 Papers), On
Tragedy (5 Papers).

Alexander Pope (1688-1744)—An Essay on Criticism, Preface to the Works of

Shakespeare, Preface to the Translation of the Illiad.

Dr. Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) —Papers published in the 'Rambler' and the `Rasselas'
Preface to the Plays of Shakespeare 'Lives of the Poets'.

576
William Wordsworth (1770-1850) — Advertisement of the Lyrical Ballads (1798), Preface
to the second edition of the Lyrical Ballads (1800). Appendix to the above Edition (1802),
Essay Supplementary to the Edition of 1815.

S. T. Coleridge (1772-1834) —Biographia Literarea, Lectures on Shakespeare, The Table

Talk, Miscellaneous criticle articles in different Journals.

P. B. Shelley (1792-1822)—A Defence of Poetry.

Mathew Arnold (1822-1888) —Essays in Criticism, On Translating Homer, The Study of

Celtic literature, Preface to the poems of 1853.

Walter Horatio Pater (1839-1894)— Appreciations, Studies in the History of the

Renaissance, Plato and Platonism, Essays in the Guardian.

Henry James (1843-1916)—The Art of the Novel (1934), The Art of Fiction, The House of
Fiction.

T. S. Eliot (1888-1965) — The Sacred Wood, Homage to John Dryden, Selected Essays, The
Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism, Elizabethan Essays, Essays Ancient and Modern,
Poetry and Drama, The Three Voices of Poetry, Essays Tradition and Individual Talent
Frontiers of Criticism, The Function of Criticism, Religion and Literature.

I. A. Richards — The Foundation of Aesthetics (with C. K. Ogdan and James Wood), The
Meaning of Meaning (with Ogdan), The Principles of Literary Criticism, Practical Criticism,
A study of Literary Judgement.

F. R. Leavis (1895)—Scrutiny (Quarterly Journal) Towards Standards of Criticism,

Revaluation, New Bearing in English Poetry, The Great Tradition, The Common pursuit,
Culture and Environment, Education and the university.

William Empson (1906)—Seven Types of Ambiguity (1930), Some Versions of Pastorat

(1935), The Structure of Complex Words (1951).

The word "criticism" is derived from the Greek word Kritikos and Latin word Criticus. Dryden
first of all used the word "criticism" in print in the now familiar sense of "any formal
577
discussion of literature". In the Preface to The State of Innocence he writes : "Criticism, as it
was first instituted by Aristotle, was meant "a standard of judging well." Criticism cannot
exist without creation. Creation comes first, criticism next. The function of criticism is to
interpret, and to judge liteary works in an unbiased and dispassionate manner so that the
creative writers produce excellent works and the readers enjoy literature in an enlightened
manner. Abercrombie writes : "Criticism enables the man who has energy to create
literature, to make the most intelligent, and therefore the most efficient use of his energy,
and just so criticism enables the man who has the capacity to enjoy literature in the most
intelligent, and therefore, the most discriminating and most illuminating kind of
experience."

Plato (427 B.C. - 347 B.C.)

Plato, the renowned Greek philosopher, expressed his considered views on literature in the
Republic and the Ion. Being the pupil of Socrates, he looked at life, society, art and
literature from the lofty moral point of view. In the Republic Plato is concerned to
construction an ideal state and the
ideal min. According to him art and poetry should be subervient to morality or civic virtue
and the individual's concern should be the pursuit and realization of truth. He looks at art
and poetry from the moral and social point of view. Art and poetry, according to Plato,
contribute neither to the making of an ideal state nor to that of an ideal citizen. So he
condemns art or poetry on the following grounds :

(i) Poetic Inspiration. Plato points out in the Ion that the poet writes because he is inspired
and does not use language as normal human beings do. So, poetry, composed in a fit of
inspiration, cannot promote moral welfare either of the individual or of the society. In
Republic Plato observes that the poet is inferior to the philosopher because he appeals : to the
passions and emotions of the people and not to their intellect. It cannot make the
individual a better citizen and the state a better organization. Emotions cannot be such safe
guides as reason. Plato illustrates this from the tragic poetry of his age, in which weeping
and wailing were indulged to the full to move the hearts of the spectators. So, poets and
poetry will have no place in the ideal Republic.

Plato indicts poetry for its lack of concern for morality and truth. He founded his opinion on
the rational analysis of contemporary Greek literature - the epics of Homer, the narrative
verse of Hesoid, the Odes of Pindar, and the tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles. and

578
Euripides. He was pained to see virtue often coming to grief in contemporary literature. He
writes in the Republic : "They (poets give us to understand that many evil livers are happy
and many righteous men are unhappy, and that wrong doing, if it he undetected; is
profitable, while honest dealing is beneficial to one's neighbour, but damaging to one's
self." Such literature corrupts both the citizen and the state.

According to Plato, pleasure alone cannot be the function of poetry. Poetry must
contribute to the knowledge of virtue, promotion of Truth and morality in society. A poet
must be a good teacher. Plato accepts poetry which manifests higher truth, ideal forms of
justice, goodness, beauty and virtue. He writes in "Republic : "...We are ready to
acknowledge that Homer is the greatest of poets and first of tragedy writers, but we must
remain firm in our conviction that hymns to the goods and praises of famous men are the
only poetry which ought to be admitted in our state."

(ii) Theory of Imitation. According to Plato, poetry is based on imitation or mimesis. He

derived the theory of imitation from painting and he imposed it as poetry. For example, the
carpenter makes a bed, which is nothing else but an imitation of an ideal bed in the
carpenter's mind. Now the painter who paints the bed gives an imitation of an imitation.
Thus the work of the painter is an imitation of an imitation and is twice removed from
reality. In the same manner, the poet using a different medium of expression, i.e., the
medium of language, appeals to the ear, whereas the painter appeals to the eye. He too
creates imitation of an imitation, that is of appearances which he perceives with his
senses. Plato said : 'And the tragic poet is an imitator, and therefore like all other imitators
he is twice removed from reality." Painting like poetry creates an effect, not of reality, but
the semblance of reality. Poets and artists cannot follow the truth and cannot teach morality.
They corrupt the society, therefore, they stand thoroughly condemned. As a moralist he
condemns poetry because it is immoral. As a philosopher he disapproves it because it is
based on falsehood. Poetry and other productions of art, according to Plato, helped neither
to mould the character of the individual nor to promote the well being of the state.

(iii) Plato's Contribution. Plato did pioneering work in the field of criticism. His contribution
may be summarised as follows:

1. He was the first to point out the relation between poetry and life. He enunciated that poetry
should aim at moulding human character in an ideal manner and at promoting the ideal
truth in the ideal state. Pleasure alone should not be the aim of poetry.
579
2. He first of all propounded the theory of imitation.

3. He classified art into two kinds : the fine arts like literature, painting, sculpture and music;
and the useful arts, like medicine, agriculture and cooking.

4. Plato for the first time classified poetry into three categories - (i) dithyrambic, or purely
lyrical, (ii) the purely mimetic or imitative, such as drama, in which life is imitated in action or
speech, and (iii) the mixed type, such as the epic, in which the poet partly indulges in lyric
flights and partly introduces action and speech. He also classified drama into tragedy and
comedy. He accepts pity and fear as emotions proper to tragedy.

5. Plato was the first to emphasise the doctrine of artistic unity in poetry or a work of art.
Plato is a pioneer in literary theory and "with him begins that larger and more philosophical
criticism which aimed at viewing literature in relation to life..." Atkins remarks : "With him
literary theory really beings." He is the creator of philosophical criticism.

Aristotle (384 B.C.-322 B.C.)

Aristotle, an illustrious disciple of Plato, propounded an essentially aesthetic theory of
criticism. His two famous works the Poetics and the Rhetoric contain his critical theories.
The Poetics is an exposition of the theory and practice of poetry; the Rhetoric is a
philosophical treatise of profound interest and freshness.

The Poetics is a philosophical exposition of a systematic outline of a theory of poetry and

drama. It offers a method of interpreting and examining the literary work without ignoring
the grammatical and rhetorical aspects. It brings to light Aristotle's fundamental differences
with his master, Plato. It is not only the first thoroughly philosophical discussion of poetry
but the foundation of subsequent criticism.

(i) Aristotle's Defence of Poetry and Theory of Imitation— According to Aristotle, the
poetic art is imitative. He agrees with Plato the poet is an imitator like painter or any other
artist, who imitates one of three objects - "things as they were or are, things as they are said
or thought to be, or thing as they ought to be." To him poetry is imitation like music or
dancing, not like painting. It is not mimicry. Though dancing may represent passion and
action, its formal rhythm and familiar graces certainly do not copy natural gesture and

580
movement Aristotle asks in what does the imitation exist? What does it imitate? How does
it imitate? It means that he classifies imitation according to its medium, its object, and its
manner.

The medium of poetic imitation is language. The word poetry may be used for the pure art
of literature. Aristotle observes that people connect the idea of poetry with a particular
kind of rhythm in language but the nature of poetry is not given by metrical rhythm.
Compositions which are meant to instruct or reform may be written in metre but they are
not poetry because they do not imitate anything. On the other hand, composition written
without metre may be successful imitations. The contrast, than, is not between poetry and
prose but between literature which imitates and that which does not; and either of these
two classes may be written in metrical language. Thus, Aristotle is the first critic to point out
that the essential nature of poetry may often be found in prose and verse is no guarantee of
poetry.

What is the object of poetic imitation? The object of poetic imitation is men in action. By
men in action Artistotle does not mean men doing things; he means things happening
in terms of human nature, events embodied in human lives. The objects of poetic
imitation, then, may be classified according to the nature of the human element in them.
We may judge human nature by its goodness or badness. Poetry, thus, represents men
as better than in real life, as worse, or as they are. The purpose of this classification is to
derive from one common impulse the two main types of non-lyrical poetry- tragic and
comic.

According to Aristotle, poetic imitation does not mean mimicry. How can poetry imitate
men as better or as worse than in real life? It can be done not by copying nature but by
imitating imagination. We do not want a transcription from nature because we have the
original before us. What we want is an imaginative reconstruction of the possibilities of
nature. The poet first derives an inspiration from the world by the power of his
imagination; the art of poetry then imitates this imaginative inspiration in language.
Poetic imitation, thus, is not unreal or to quote Plato's words "twice removed from reality."
It reveals truths of a permanent or universal kind. To prove his viewpoint Aristotle
compares history and poetry: "It is not the function of the poet to relate what has
happened, but what may happen. Poetry, therefore, is more philosophical and a higher
thing than history : for poetry tends to express the universal; history the particular."

581
Aristotle suggests that the function of poetry is to impart pleasure to the reader and to
his own self. “…………… each art ought to produce, not any chance Pleasure, but the
pleasure proper to it." Teaching is not ruled out, if it is incidental to the pleasure it gives.
Butcher comments " from the Aristotelian and Greek point of view art is an element in
the higher life of the community; the pleasure it affords is an enduring pleasure, an
aesthetic enjoyment which is not divorced from critic ends." Poetry appeals to human
emotions.

What Aristotle means by imitation is exactly what we mean by technique. The emotional
appeal of poetry, revealed through invitation, is not harmful but "health giving and
artistically satisfying.

Aristotle's Views on Tragedy. Poetry, an imitative art, imitates the noble actions of good
men or the mean actions of bad men. From the former originated epic and tragedy and
from the latter comedy and satire. The epic and tragedy are superior to comedy and satire.

Defining tragedy Aristotle says : "Tragedy, then, is the imitation of an action that is serious,
complete, and of a certain magnitude; in language embellished with each kind of artistic
ornament, the several kinds being found in separate parts of the play; in the form of action,
not of narrative; through pity and fear effecting the proper purgation of these emotions."
Imitation and action are two important terms in this definition. Tragedy imitates the
action of "rational human beings who think and will." It also implies character and
thought, for by these action is determined. Serious action implies a tale of suffering exciting
pity and fear. It should be complete, that is, it should have a beginning, a middle and an
end. It should be self contained. The action must be complete, that is, it should have
organic unity or a natural sequence of undisturbed events. It should also have "a certain
magnitude", that is, it should have a reasonable length and it should be neither too short
nor too long, but just in proposition. By it Aristotle means "a length which can be easily
embraced by memory", that it, should have enough length to unfold the sequence of events
consisting of the beginning, the middle and the end naturally and fully. The term
"language embellished with each kind of artistic ornament" implies "rhythm, harmony
and song" which should be employed as occasion demands. "In the form of action, not of
narrative" implies that the tale is tole by living and moving characters and is not narrated as
in the epic. Speeches and action are integral part of the tragedy. It suggests that tragedy is
intended to be acted as well as read. The last part of the above definition of tragedy is
concerned with Catharsis or the function of tragedy. An analysis of Aristotle's definition of
582
tragedy brings out six elements, which, according to Worsfold are : "There is the plot, or
contexture of incidents; the character, or that by which we distinguish the nature of
persons; the diction in which their thoughts are expressed; the sentiment which
animates them; the stage representation; and the music by which the songs of the chorus
are accompanied."

Plot. It, according to Aristotle, is "the final aim", "the soul" and "the central principle of
tragedy." Unity is the first requirement of plot. It should have unity of action, that is, it
should consist only of those actions in the life of the hero which are intimately connected
with one another and form one integral whole. Since the plot, is "an imitation of an action,
(it) must be an imitation of an action that is one and whole, and its separate incidents
must be so connected that if one is changed or removed the whole plot is altered or
disturbed,……."

Aristotle casually and only once mentions the unity of time. He says : "Tragedy
endeavours as far as possible, to confine itself to the single revolution of the sun, or but
slightly to exceed this limit; whereas the epic action has no limit to time." He makes no
mention of the unity of place.

A good tragic plot should arouse feelings of pity and fear in the spectator or the reader -
pity for the undeserved sufferings of the hero and fear for the worst that may happen to
him. The change or reversal of fortune should be from good to bad and not from bad to
good. It should end with the death of the hero because the unhappy ending is the most
tragic in its effect. These emotions may be aroused by spectular means or mere theatrical
affects and by inner structure of plot. The latter mode is superior. Aristotle writes: "For the
plot ought to be so constructed that, even without the aid of eye, he who hears the tale told
will thrill with horror and melt to pity at what takes place."

The plot consists of two parts - Complication or the rising action and denouement or falling
action.

The plot is of two types - simple and complex. There is no puzzling situation in simple plot.
There are puzzling situations in which complicate the denouement in complex plot. It has
mainly two elements-peripeteia or reversal of the situation and anagnorisis or
recognition. Peripeteia implies "a reversal of intention, a deed done in blindness defeating
its own purpose." Anagnorsis means "a change from ignorance to knowledge."
583
According to Aristotle " a perfect tragedy should be arranged not on the simple but on the
complex plan."

Tragic Hero. Tragedy represents the change in the hero's fortune from good to bad fortune,
and this change or disaster, must be managed to enlist the sympathies of the spectator in
the highest order. Aristotle writes about the tragic hero: "The change exhibited must
neither be that of good men from good fortune to bad, nor that of bad men from bad
fortune to good. Nor, again, should be changed that of an utterly worthless man suddenly
hurled from good fortune to bad; for a change so managed would command our
sympathy without causing pity or fear So the situation commands neither pity, nor
fear. An intermediate character remains. Such a character is one who without possessing
conspicuous virtue or goodness, is overtaken by misfortune, not through vice or
worthlessness, but through hamartia, when he is at the height of his reputation or
prosperity, as was the case with Oedipus and Thyestes and other notable member of heroic
families." The Greek Hamartia means the error of judgement or some weakness of
character.

Catharsis. Aristotle, like Plato, agrees about the immense emotional appeal of poetry.
Tragedy, being the highest form of poetry, arouses the emotions of pity and fear. The
spectators feel pity at the undersurved sufferings of the hero and fear for the worst that
may befall him. Plato found these emotions baneful to the healthy development of human
mind. To Plato art, being the imitation of an imitation, was twice removed from reality and,
hence, it corrupts by nourishing passions. Aristotle does not find any harmful influence of
these emotions on the growth of human mind and the development of ideal state. He
corrects Plato in this respect. His reply to this charge of Plato, remarks David Daiches, "is
simple and remarkable. Far from nourishing the passion, he asserts, it gives them harmless
or even useful purgation (Katharsis); by exciting pity and fear in us, tragedy enables us to
leave, the theatre in "calm of mind, all passion spent." Katharsis or purgation implies that
tragedy has some kind of therapeutic value. It, according to Daiches, "produces a safe outlet
for disturbing passion which it effectively siphons off. Tragedy gives new knowledge, yields
aesthetic satisfaction, and produces a better state of mind. This triumvirate of values
effectively disposes of Plato's attack." So, the emotional appeal of poetry is not harmful but
healthful and artistically satisfying.

Aristotle's Views on Comedy and Epic. Aristotle does not elaborate his views on comedy in
the Poetics. Comedy has its origin in based instincts of mankind. It is akin to satire. Satire
584
ridicules personalities, comedy ridicules general vices. According to Aristotle, characters in
comedy have “some defect or ugliness which is not painful or destructive".

Epic is older than comedy or tragedy. Its origin lies in the old hymns so the gods and songs
sung in praise of famous men. It is akin to tragedy in nature but differs from it in form. It is
also an imitation of a serious action, "whole and complete, with a beginning, a middle and
an end." Aristotle clearly observes : "Whoever knows what is good or bad tragedy, knows
also about epic poetry. Plot, character; thought and diction are common both to tragedy
and epic. Song and spectacle belong only to tragedy. Its form differs from that of tragedy. It
is in the form of narration and not in dramatic form of action and speech. It is of greater
length than tragedy. There is greater scope for the use of the improbable or the marvellous
in epic than in tragedy. Aristotle observes: "the poet should prefer probable impossibilities
to probable possibilities."

Aristotle's Observation on Style. In both the Poetics and the Rhetoric Aristotle points out
that clearness and propriety are essential qualities of good writing. It should be intelligible
and communicable. The use of current words adds to intelligibility. Writing is an art,
therefore, it should have dignity and charm, which can be attained by the use of unfamiliar
words — dialect words, archaic words, foreign words and new coinages. The words should
be metaphorically used. It can be done both in case of familiar and unfamiliar words. A
perfect poetic style uses words of all kinds in a judicious combination. Aristotle observes
that compound words are best suited to the lyric, rare or unfamiliar words to the epic and
metaphorical expressions to the drama.

In Rhetoric Aristotle comments on prose compositions and style in general. The style of
prose is distinct from that of poetry. Since prose deals with everyday and common subjects
it can use familiar or current words, which may be metaphorically used in order to impart
charm and dignity to style. As regards sentence structure multiplicity of clauses,
parenthesis, and ambiguous punctuation must be avoided. Style is of two kinds -loose
and periodic. The loose style consists of a series of sentences, held together by connective
words. In the periodic style each sentence is a complete whole, with a beginning and an
end. The loose style is formless, whereas periodic style has a clear form.

Aristotle's Significance as at Critic. Aristotle is the first great literary theorist and critic,
whose Poetics, consisting of 'discreet, unromantic' pages, still influences the modern critics
and, theorists. In it Aristotle emerges as the "first of the systematic theorists, an early
585
exponent of the historical and psychological methods; and incidentally a pioneer in the
business of some literary judgement; so that alike in the theory and practice of criticism the
work (Poetics) stands at the beginning of things, developing and extending the findings of
Plato." The importance of the Poetics is unquestionable and fundamental in the history of
criticism.

Longinus, "the First Romantic Critic"

In 1554 Robortello, the Italian critic first presented a treatise, written in Greek, with the
title On The Sublime. Its authorship was ascribed to a rhetorician named Dionysius
Longinus. Some critics point out that the work belonged to that Longinus who was the
famous minister of Queen Zenobia of Palmyra. The controversy still goes on, and who its
author actually was still remains uncertain. Therefore the traditional authorship is retained
and the work is assigned to one "Longinus." On The Sublime seems to have been written in
the latter half of the first century A.D. It is assumed that it was written to correct the fault
of an essay on the same subject by Caecilus, who belonged to the first century A.D.

On the Sublime, a critical document of great worth and significance, is the most precious
legacy of the Graeco-Roman period. It has come down to us in an imperfect form, as one-
third of the original document is missing. We have only a part of the actual work; which is
sufficient to express clearly the author's intention. It has been influenced by Plato, as
revived and interpreted by neo-Platonists, and Aristotle. Scott James remarks that
Longinus, "superimposed the imagination and insight of Plato" on "the Aristotelian
method." He was a rhetorician who was well-versed with grammar and composition,
analytical criticism, rules of art, the proper use of words, metre and figures of speech.

As a critic and theoriser Longinus has a comprehensive vision. Abercrombie calls him the
first comparative critic of literature. Scott James hails him as "the first romantic critic." He
was the first to expound the doctrines upon which romanticism rests. He is the first
romantic critic due to his insistence on passion, sublimity , ecstasy, transport, imagination
and exaltation. Prof. Atkins admires him as a great classical critic. Though Longinus was the
first critic to expound the doctrines upon which romanticism rests, he tempered them with
what is sanest in classicism. He is thus a balanced critic who evolved a synthesis between
romanticism and classicism. Plato and Aristotle.

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On the Sublime : An Analysis
Longinus addresses his friend, Terentian, tells him of his purpose, which was so correct
the fault of Caecilius' essay on the sublime, and makes some other pleminary observations.

What is sublimity? To instruct, to delight and to persuade had been the aim of poets,
writers and orators. Longinus was not satisfied with it. He concluded that the epics of
Homer, the lyrics of Sappho and Pindar, the tragedies of Aeschylus and
Sophocles and the orations of Demosthenes had all these qualities but they were
conspicuous for their sublimity. It is a certain loftiness and excellence in language. It does
not merely persuade, it carries us away almost irresistibly. It expresses itself in the general
structure of a work. Sometimes it may express itself in a single phrase, like a flash of
lightning. It is only through sublimity that the greatest poets and prose writers have
derived eminence and gained immortality. According to Longinus sublimity or loftiness in
literature implies ecstasy-transport- "lifting out of oneself." He writes: "The sublime consists
in a certain loftiness and consummateness of language, and it is by this and this only that
the greatest poets and prose writers have won pre-eminence and lasting fame." He adds:
"For a work of genius does not aim at persuasion, but ecstasy-or lifting the reader out of
himself But the sublime at the critical moment shoots forth and tears the whole thing to
pieces like a thunderbolt, and in a flash reveals the author's power." According to Longinus
the sublime effect of literature is attained by revelation or illumination, and not by
persuasion. Its appeal is not through the reason but through the imagination. Scott James
observes: "Its effect upon the mind is immediate, like a flash of lightning upon the mind."
What are the sources of the sublime? There are five principal sources of the sublime :

(i) Grandeur of thought.

(ii) Strong and inspired passion and the vigorous treatment of it.
(iii) The use of figures- (a) figures of thought, (b) figures of language or expression.
(iv) Noble diction including a proper choice and arrangement of words and handling of
metaphor and other ornaments of diction.
(v) Dignified, elevated and elaborate composition.

The first two of these sources are inborn gifts of a genius, the others can be acquired by
art. Longinus recognises that "thought and language in literature are for the most part
interfolded each in the other." Among the sources of sublimity Longinus puts first grandeur
of thought and vigorous, spirited treatment of passions. He says: "For beautiful words are

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the true and peculiar light of the mind."

Longinus distinguishes between the 'true sublime' and the 'false sublime'. Th-e false sublime
is characterised by bombastic language and puerile, tawdry, affected and frigid
expressions. The false sublime results when there is a cheap display of passion, when it is
not justified by occasion, and so is wearisome. The literature of Longinus' age was
falsely sublime. "All these ugly and parasitical growths," he says "in literature arise from a
single cause, that pursuit of novelty in the expression of ideas which may be regarded as the
fashionable craze of the day." The true sublime "consists in a certain distinction and
elevation of expression." It "pleases all and pleases always."

Longinus Place as a Critic. As a critic Longinus was disinterested and free from prejudice. He
displayed a rare breadth and catholicity of outlook. He was "a classicist in taste, a
romanticist in temper, and an idealist at heart." His conception of sublimity partakes of
these three elements. Through it he interprets a classicism anew to his age, directs the
future romanticists, and gives a meaning and purpose to art by allaying it with what is
noblest in human nature. He anticipated much that is modern in critical work. His On The
Sublime remains towering and unsurpassable among all other works of its class.

The Roman Classicists : Horaceand Quintilian

The Greek literary and critical tradition passed from Greece to Rome which in 86 B.C. was
flourishing in with literary and cultural activity. 'Known as the Augustan Age (31 B.C. - 14
A.D.), named after Bectavian Augustus, the first emperor of Rome. It was made glorious by
the achievements of great writers-Virgil, Horace, Tibullus, Propertius, Ovid, Livoy, Horace
and Quintilian.

Horace (65 B.C.-8 B.C.) formulated his critical theory in Ars Poetica, known as the Art of
Poetry. He followed the ancient classical line. He advised the would be writers to follow
Greek models rigorously and faithfully :

Be Homer's works your study and delight, Read them by day, and meditate by night.
His Ars Poetica is a compendium of rules and principles which intending poets should
follow. It deals with the art of poetry under three heads : (a) Poesis or the subject-matter;
(b) Poema or form; and (c) Poeta or the poet. He also deals with the nature, function,
subject-matter, kinds, language and relative importance of nature and art. Poetry,

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according to Horace, is a combination of fact and fiction, which both instructs and pleases
the readers. Thus, the function of poetry is "to instruct and to delight." The nature of poetry
is "to charm the mind." Horace says: "It is not enough for poems to have beauty; they must
also be pleasing and lead the listener's soul whither they will." The theme of poetry should
be "simple and uniform." A "simple theme" implies one "from familiar matter" or "from"
life and customs" so which grace can be imparted by "the power of order and connection or
skill in craftsmanship." The poetic composition must have unity of design. Horace remarks:
"He who chooses his subject wisely will find that neither words nor lucid arrangement fail
him" for "sound judgment is the basis and source of good writing."

Horace believes that poetry has settled kinds which are distinguished by appropriate metre.
His views on poetic language and diction are akin to those of Aristotle. He emphasises
the right choice of words and their effective arrangement in composition. Poetic language
must grow and develop with the growth of experience. A poet can use both familiar and
new words according to the theme. Familiar words, if skillfully used, acquire a great power.
Horace says: "Your diction will be excellent if a clever combination renders a familiar word
original" and "words newly coined will win credit if they descend from a Greek source,
slightly modified." The poet must show "taste and care in arranging words." Order and
connection are important in style.

Quintilian (35 A.D.-95 A.D.) was influenced by Greek and Roman Classicists-Homer,
Sophocles, Euripides, Pindar, Plato and Aristotle among the Greek classicists, and Virgil and
Horace among the Romans. In addition to classical influences he was also guided by his own
experience, reason and "the voice of nature." He writes on form alone and is silent on
matter. His views are contained in De Causis, Corruptae Eloquential and Institutio
Oratorio. Quintilian saw no logic in the distinction between the art of oratory and that of
writing. According to him good style is the product of both nature and art. The writing of
prose is an art. He disapproves "spontaneous utterance." Style consists of words and their
proper arrangement. Well chooses words, if properly arranged, communicate the writer's
thoughts clearly and lucidly. He is with Aristotle and Horace in believing that everyday
subjects, which prose treats of, need familiar words for their most convincing expression.
The language of prose is the language of daily life, but it is not the language of the masses.
It is a purged language - purged of its eccentricities, such as one finds in "the agreed
practice of educated men." The words should be so nicely arranged that they produce, first
of all, clarity and lucidity, and then, ornamental grace, "artistic structure" and rhythmical
ease. All ugly expressions, as the use of undignified words in a dignified context, of big
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words for small things, grand words with commonplace, poetic with prosaic, old with new,
should be carefully avoided. Persuasion is essential for a good style. Other stylistic devices
such as similes,metaphors, emphasis, inneudo, and other figures of speech should be used.
Quintian "standardized the vocabulary of formal criticism. He sharpened the instruments
with the student of composition should be equipped." He pioneered the comparative
criticism. "He compares," writes Scott James, "Greek literature with Roman, the Greek
language with Latin."

Dante (1265-1321)
As a poet Dante is remembered for his great epic Divine Comedy. His famous critical treatise
De Vulgario Eloquio, known in English as Of the Vulgar Tongue or Of Writing in the
Vernacular. Dante's main concern was language as medium of expression and
communication. During Dante's time Latin was the main language. The learned could
artistically use it. It was difficult for common men to attain excellence in it because it was a
difficult classical language. There was no standard national language. It was a common
belief in Dante's Italy as well in France and England that no writing in the vernacular ever
gained "the dignity of manuscript, nor did it reach the counters of bookshop." Dante
asserted the rights of native tongue both by precept and example. For this very reason he
wrote the Divine Comedy in the native language. It attained the sublime heights of the Iliad
and the Aeneid.

None of the numerous dialects in Dante's Italy was worthy of being called the Italian
language and worthy, too, of being the language of poetry. He enunciated the theory of
The Illustrious Vernacular, the language of culture, which could be common to men of
letters who meet together from all parts. It would be "the tongue purged from
provincialism, employing words and turns of speech which are not peculiar to anyone
province or small state, but are common to all." Both as poet and critic Dante was
concerned with the thought of shaping and defining an ideal language fit to express the
best thoughts of the greatest poets. His emphasis on the use of the vernacular does not
mean "the language of the common man." He asserts : "Avoid rustic language." According
to Dante language is more important than the subject, but the importance of the subject
cannot be ignored. He writes: "It is no use asking for a grand style until you have
recognised that it can only be employed in the service of a grand theme, as concerned by a
man of great intellectual stature." According to him best subjects are "Salus (safety),
Venus (love) and Virtus (excellence)-in other words, love of country, love of woman and

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love of God." The subjects belongs to three departments of human thoughts - moral,
philosophy and religion.

Dante attaches importance to style which consists of words and sentence structure. He
classifies words into two categories - rustic and urban. The rustic words are ignoble and,
hence, they would be excluded from the Illustrious Vernacular. He also excluded all Italian
words which are childish, effeminate, slippery and rumpled. Dante included only urban
words which are further classified as combed (pexa) and shaggy (hirsuta). The former are
words "which leave the speaker's lips, as it were with a certain sweetness—" The shaggy
words are ornamental, which "when mixed with combed words make a beautifully
harmonious conjunction." Dante considers next the arrangement of words which must be
"the most urbane" in keeping with the urban vocabulary.

The Renaissance Criticismin England

Literary criticism began in England during Renaissance. The first regular critics were
three Cambridge friends Sir John Cheke, Roger Ascham and Thomas Wilson. Their primary
object was to improve English as a means of communication for literary and other purposes
along classical lines. Chake emphasised that English "should be written clear and pure,
unmixed and unmingled with borrowings of other tongues." Ascham in his Schoolmaster
(1568) emerges as an advocate of "waiting English matter in the English tongue for
Englishmen." He also stressed on the need to keep English free from foreign terms. Wilson's
The Art of Rhetoric, influenced by Cicero and Quintilian, is, according to Warton "the
first book or system of criticism." He pleads for plain and lucid style for prose, free from
obsolete and strange words, both native and foreign. This is the first stage of the
development of English literary criticism. In the second stage a group of English intellectuals
consisting of Sir Philip Sidney, Gabriel Harvey, Spenser, Edward Dyers and few others
formed a literary circle, known as Areopagus. It was the highest authority as literary
matters. These critics were concerned with the study of prosody in the light of the classical
system of versification. Harvey's Letters and Webb's Discourse of English Poetry are the
first systematic attempt to introduce classical metres into English poetry.

(i) Sir Philip Sidney

Sidney's An Apology For Poetry (1580) was occasioned by the publication of Stephen
Gosson's treatise The School of Abuse (1579), which was a ruthless attack on poetry.
Sidney logically depends poetry and explains its importance to a confused and perplexed

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age. In his definition of poetry Sidney closely follows Aristotle. "Poetry", writes Sidney", is
an art of imitation, for so Aristotle termeth it in his word Mimesis, that is to say, a
representing, counterfeiting or figuring forth, to speak metaphorically, a speaking
picture, with this end, to teach and delight." An Apology For Poetry is a rare and valuable
critical document. It is the earliest attempt in English to deal with the poetic art, practically
and not theoretically. His ultimate test is of a practical kind, i.e., the power of poetry to
move to virtuous action. It may be called the epitome of Renaissance critical thought
because it takes into account the critical doctrines of ancient Critics like Plato, Aristotle and
Horace. But he did not blindly follow their principle. He adopted them to suit his own
purpose, and ultimately propounded his own conception of poetry. Sidney believes that
"poetry is a natural human activity which enables men to sing of beauty and truth : that it
nurtures in them what is good and noble in order to satisfy their longings for an ideal world;
that on account of its being a concrete and inspiring revelation of human ideals rather than
merely an instrument of moral teaching like philosophy, it is in a sense a criticism of life,
and that it has an element of permanent truth." He vindicated the honour of poetry and
restored it to its ancient prestige and meaning. Sidney's marvellous treatise "gives us a
complete theory of neo-classical tragedy, a hundred years before the Art Poetique of
Boileau." As a critic he is judicious, creative and original. The value of his work is
permanent.

(ii) Ben Jonson

Ben Jonson, an ardent classicist, was influenced by the ancient masters of Greece and Rome
- Aristotle, Horace, Seneca, Quintilian and many more. David Daiches calls him "one of the
first significant neoclassic critics in English." Tember or Discoveries published posthumously
in 1641, is a summation of Ben Jonson's critical principles and opinions. As a classicist he
stood for order, balance, restraint and discipline in art and literature. He condemned the
excesses of passion, imagination and expression, and pleaded for "nothing too
Much." He admired Shakespeare "on this side of idolatory" but he was not blind to his
shortcomings.

Ben Jonson expressed his views on style and diction. Words communicate sense and
meaning. He remarks: "In all speech words and sense are as the body and the soul. The
sense is as the life and soul of language, without which all words are dead." "Language
most shows the man." In order to cultivate lucidity and clarity of expression a writer must
know fully what he has to say, choose apt words to say it and arrange them properly in
composition. In order to achieve excellence a writer should read the works of the best
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writers, observe the best speaker's and carefully revise and rewrite his words and their
arrangement. He was very careful about the choice of words. In this respect, he follows
Aristotle, Horace and Quintilian. "Custom", Jonson says, "is the most certain mistress of
language." By "Custom" he means "the consent of the learned." Ancient words lend
majesty to writing but they should be intelligible, "since the chief virtue of style is
perspicuity." He adds: "The eldest of the present and the newest of the past language is the
best", for both satisfy "the test of familiarity." A good writer must cultivate a taste for
"choiceness of phrase, round and clean composition of sentence, sweet falling of the clause,
varying an illustration by tropes and figures, weight of matter, worth of subject,
soundness of argument, life of invention, and depth of judgment."

Jonson’s bent for classicism is also visible in dramatic criticism. He Pays more
attention to the theory of comedy than to that of tragedy. A comedy is reformative and,
hence, it shows “an image of the times.” It deals with “human follies, not with crimes.” His
theory of comedy, his doctrine of humours as an absorbing singularity of character,
grew out of the conception of decorum. In the field of tragedy he followed the Senecan
pattern. He lays stress on the unity of action, which must have a beginning a middle and
an end.

He had a high conception of both poet and poetry. A poet is a maker. Poetry both
instructs and delights.

As a critic Ben Jonson stood for order, uniformity, discipline and classicism in literature.
He foreshadowed neo-classicism the creed of Dryden, Pope and Dr. Samuel Johnson.

Neo-Classicism in English Literary Criticism

The neo-classical criticism spans about one hundred fifty years from the middle of the
seventeenth century to the end of the eighteenth. The reles of Aristotle, modified and
reinterpreted in Bolieau’s Arts Poetique (1674), Rapin’s Reflections and Bossu’s treatise on
epic poetr, and the works of Racine, Comeille and St. Evremond influenced neo-classical
criticism. Respect for rules is the main characteristic of this school. Pope wrote:

Those Rules, of old discovered not devised

Are nature still, but nature methodized,
And Learn hence for ancient rules a just respect

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To copy nature is to copy them.

Explaining the term Nature Methodized Scott James writes : “Avoid excess of insensate
excitement, of verses monstrous…………Restraint is the first lesson of writing. Avoid ‘sterile’
abundance’, nothing too much! Let everything be in its place, and the beginning and the
end respond to the middle. Take the classics for your model, and copy them to the
letter …………. Avoid the incredible ……… shun low conditions of life, choose heroes
preeminent in valour and in virtue ………” A vigorous intellectual quality, which implies
moddeation, balance, correctness, reason and good sense governed both creation and
criticism during this period. John Dryden, Alexander Pope, Joseph Addison and Dr.
Johnson are main critics of this period.

(i) Dr. John Dryden (1631-1700), the Father ofEnglish Criticism

John Dryden, says Scott James, “broke new ground as a student of the principles of
literature.” Dr. Johnson considered Dryden as “the father of English criticism, as the
writer who first taught us to determine upon principles the merit of composition.” He
begins a regular era in criticism. The critical utterances of Sidney and Ben Jonson are
mere jottings on just a few things that interested them. Dryden for the first time
convinced his countrymen that they could be as great critics as they had been poets.

Dryden's An Essay on Dramatic Poesy (1668) is a famous treatise on criticism. Before it he

wrote two of his prefaces - the Epistle Dedicatory to Rival Ladies, asserting the
importance of the heroic couplet for dramatic writing, and the Dedication to Annus
Mirabilis. Those that followed this famous Essay are A Defence on An Essay on Dramatic
Poetry, prefixed to The Indian Emperor, depending the use of rhymed couplet in
tragedy; The Apology For Heroic Poetry, prefixed to The State of Innocence; The Grounds
of Criticism in Tragedy, prefixed to Troilus and Cressida, elaborating. Aristotle's theory of
tragedy and an analysis of the achievements of Shakespeare and Fletcher.

A great and discerning scholar, he combines the merits of both the native tradition
and that of the classical. He was a poet and dramatist too. So there is a correspondence
between what he says as a poet and what he does as a critic. He generally wrote his
prefaces to justify himself as a poet. Dr. Johnson rightly calls him "the father of English
criticism" in The Life of Dryden, because he was the first critic in England, who was
seriously preoccupied with the exposition of literary principles. Dryden's critical
discernment of the ancients and the moderns enabled him to have a comprehensive view
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of literature, which Sidney and Ben Johnson had failed to enjoy. With Dryden begins a
regular era of criticism. Dryden, Dr. Johnson remarks "first taught us to determine upon
principles the merits of composition.'

Dryden was a progressive critic. In an era of neoclassicism he emerges as a liberal classicist

who would adjust the rules of the ancients to the genius of the age in which a poet writes.
He found no harm in tragic-comedy, which was condemned by neo-classicists. He admired
"the variety and copiousness of" the English plays with their "underplots or by-
concernments and, thus, he discarded the French ideal of the singleness of plot. As a
progressive critic he refused to pay serville homage to Aristotle. Dryden affirmed : "It is not
enough that Aristotle had said so, for Aristotle drew his model of tragedy from Sophocles
and Euripides, and, if he had seen ours, might have changed his mind." He agrees that plot
may be "foundation" of a tragedy but he does not agree with Aristotle who said that "plot is
the soul of tragedy."

Dryden was the first critic who recognised the importance of objectivity, detachment and
reasoning in criticism. He did not underestimate the native literature of England and
refused to overestimate the literature of antiquity. Literature is the expression of the genius
of a nation. He writes :
"And one reason of that success, in my opinion, is, this that Shakespeare and Fletcher have
written to the genius of the age and the nation in which they lived. For though nature is the
same in all places, and reason too, the same, yet the climate, the age, the disposition of the
people, to which a poet writes, may be so different that what pleases the Greeks would not
satisfy an English audience." Thus, Dryden first of all introduced the notion that literature is
an organic force which grows and develops with the growth and ' development of a
nation. T.S. Eliot observes: "The great work of Dryden in criticism is that at the right
moment he became conscious of the necessity of affirming the native element in
literature."

Dryden pioneered comparative, historical and descriptive criticism. As a pioneer of

comparative criticism he compared the modern literature with Greek and Latin literatures.
He also compared the worth of one writer with that of another. Thus, he highlighted the
individual characteristics of some writers. Comparing Ben Jonson with Shakespeare he
observes : "If I would compare him (Ben Jonson) with Shakespeare, I must acknowledge him
the most correct poet but Shakespeare the greater wit. Shakespeare was the Homer, or
father of our dramatic poets, Jonson was the virgil, the pattern of elaborate writing. I
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admire him but I love Shakespeare." Dryden also anticipated the historical criticism. He
first of all shows a well-developed sense of history. He recognises the vital truth that
literature is not static, but a dynamic process. He remarked that "Aristotle himself might
have revised his rules had he lived in modern era." Literature is evergrowing and changing
and the rules and literary values must also change in correspondence to the changes in the
literary and social conditions of the age. English criticism before Dryden was either
theoretical or legislative. The critics were mainly concerned with laying down rules and
to evaluate writers and their works in the light of the prescribed rules. Dryden began his
critical career as a legislative or theoretical critic. His Essay on Dramatic Poetry "is a work of
legislative criticism, though secreting within itself the first critical analysis of a literary work
in English, the Examen of Ben Jonson's The Silent Woman." The Examen is the first
example of descriptive criticism in England. Dryden's Prefaces mark, according to Watson,
"the silent transformation of English criticism." The second part of his dedicatory letter to
his first published play The Rival Ladies anticipates descriptive criticism. Dryden's
achievement, says Watson, "ultimately lies not in analysing much or in doing it well, but in
providing the inestimable example of showing that literary analysis is possible at all."

Dryden's Views on Poetry. Dryden's views on poetry are similar to those of Aristotle.
Throughout the Essay, drama is treated as a form of imaginative literature : "A just and
lively image of human nature, representing the passions and humours, and the change of
fortune to which it is subject, for the delight and instruction of mankind." He accepts the
conception of imitation but it does not mean the photographic representation of human
nature. The word "image" implies "making a beautiful resemblance of the whole." The
purpose of poetic or artistic imitation, according to Dryden, is to create something superior.
Imagination, (for which Dryden uses the word "fancy"), tempered with judgement, helps the
poet in the process of creating just and lively images of human nature. The function of
poetry is "the delight and instruction of mankind."

Dryden's Essay on Dramatic Poetry: It is the greatest critical work of Dryden. According
to Wimsatt and Brook it "is the most ambitiously constructed critical document of his
career, and the most important for general literary theory." It was ritten as a reply to some
highly uncomplementry remarks of a Frenchman, Samuel, Sorbiere in the
account of his voyage. He condemned English comedies for not following the three unities,
especially the unity of place. In his address To the Reader prefixed The Essay Dryden says
that his aim was "to vindicate the honour of our English writers, from the censure of those
who unjustly prefer the French before them." His aim was, however, much wider.
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It is. written in a dialogue form in which four persons participate. None of the persons
states the whole truth. Every speaker frankly states his viewpoint. Nothing is stated with
any finality, and in the end the readers are left to draw their own conclusions.

Critics, the first participant, expound the extreme classical view, that the Greeks and
Romans fully discovered and illustrated those perennial rules to which the modern drama
could no better than to conform. Crites, perhaps, stands for Sir Robert Howard, Dryden's
brother-in-law. Eugenius, who was, perhaps, Dryden's friend, Sackwille, contradicts critics'
classicism, and takes the side with the moderns. Leisideius, who stands for Sir Charles
Sedley justifies the importance of classical rules. He admires the French who followed
them with perfect fidelity and, hence, they are superior to both the ancients and the
moderns. Neander, who is Dryden himself, demonstrates the superiority of the English
over the French. He also justifies English tragic- comedy because it is a pleasant way of
writing not known to the ancients or moderns of other nations. Having defended the
variety of English drama, Neander turns to 'individual dramatists of the previous age-
Shakespeare, Beaumont, Fletcher and Ben Jonson.

Appreciating the highly candid, impartial and impassioned discussion in The Essay Tillyard
writes: " this perfection of tone in matters of comparative literature, that was not equalled
before or since, is Dryden's paramount critical achievement." Dryden's place in Literary
criticism:

Dryden's place as a literary critic is unassailable. He lived in an age of changing critical

values but still he kept his balance of mind and placed criticism on a high and sound footing
for the guidance of future generations. Atkins remarks: "His reputation as a critic rests
on sure and lasting foundations. In an age of transition and much confusion he set
criticism on new and fruitful lines, pointing to other methods and standards than those
commended by the French neo-classical school. And his work remains today as readable and
suggestive as ever, the legacy of one of the greatest of English critics."

(ii) Joseph Addison

Addison's best criticism is contained in the papers he contributed to The Taller and The
Spectator. His papers On True and False Wit on tragedy on Paradise Lost and on The
Pleasures of Imagination are of great classical significance.

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Enunciating his general purpose in The Spectator Addison wrote that his purpose was to
bring "philosophy out of closets and libraries, schools and colleges, to dwell in clubs and
assemblies, at tea tables and in coffee houses." This approach gave a new turn to criticism.
Critics before Addison were concerned with the writer, Addison's concern is for the reader
— "What books he should like, and how he should like them." His programme was so
refine the taste of the reader. So he endeavoured to establish among readers a taste for
understanding polite writing. In order to understand a writer thoroughly readers should be
capable of "entering into the sound and sense of an author." In order to cultivate sound
taste for reading readers should read time tested celebrated works of antiquity and the
modern works "which have the sanction of the politer part of our contemporaries." If a
reader fails to enjoy or admire such works, he lacks in the faculty of judgement. This faculty,
to some extent is the gift of nature but it can be acquired by reading the works of great
masters, conversing with men of polite learning and cultivating familiarity with the works of
outstanding critics.

Addison had a high opinion about the function of criticism. To him literary craft was more
than a matter of mere rules. Something more was required in criticism than slavish
imitation of classical rules to all kinds of writing. Critics should "enter into the very spirit and
soul of fine writing, and show us the several sources of that pleasure which rises in the mind
upon the perusal of a noble work." He even admired deviation from rules in case of the
production of a work of high literary excellence. Addison, thus, shows a broader critical
outlook than was common in his age.

Addison's criticism is of two types. It is neoclassical as in his examination of tragedy and

Milton's Paradise Lost; it is aesthetic as in his theory of imagination and in his
utterances on the art of criticism. He emphasised that judgment in literature depended
mainly on taste. His aim was to cultivate the taste of the age, not of a few but of society
at large, and he succeeded in his aim to a remarkable degree. Commenting on
Addison's contribution to criticism George Saintsbury remarks: "He represents the
classical attitude tempered, not merely by good sense in quintessence, but by a large share
of tolerance and positive good taste, by freedom from the more utterly ridiculous pseudo
Aristottelianisms "

(iii) Alexander Pope

Pope's chief critical works are Essay on Criticism (1711), Imitations of the Epistles of Horace
to Augustus (1733), Preface to the Works of Shakespeare (1725) and Preface to the
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Translation of Iliad (1715). His Essay on Criticism one the most remarkable documents in of
neoclassicism, is modelled on Horace's Ars Poetica, Vida's De Arte Poetica and Boileau's L'
Art Poetique. It lacks in originality Lady M. Wortley remarked that "it was all stolen."

Pope highlights neo-classicism in The Essay on Criticism. He begins it by lamenting the

corrupt taste of his day and aims at restoring it. Conformity to nature is essential for the
cultivation of sound judgment and taste :

First follow Nature, and your judgment frame By her just standard, which is still the same.

He defines criticism as "true taste", which is a gift of Nature, but it should be disciplined by
the rules, devised by classical writers. Pope writes :

The rules of old discovered, not devis'd, Are nature still, but nature methodiz'd. He exhorts
the poets :

Learn hence for ancient rules a just esteem, To copy nature is to copy them.

Two requirements — Study of the ancient models and knowledge of their technique — form
the very basis of Pope's critical theory. He allows "lucky licence" — a slight deviation from
rules, if it contributes to the creation of beauty in a creative work. Like Dryden he also
assigns on important place to the spirit of the age.

According to Pope, criticism is the art of judging aright. A critic's natural ability for judgment
should be properly trained. He should be well versed with the rules of the ancients and
should judge a work not in parts but as a whole. No undue importance should be attached
to the false brilliance of conceits, diction, style or versification. A critic should be learned,
disinterested, impartial and unprejudiced.

(iv) Dr. Samuel Johnson

Dr. Johnson's criticism, which was written after the age of forty, falls into four groups.
First, his critical interest is discerned in a dozen papers which appeared in the Rambler and
in his remarks on poetry in Rasselas. Secondly, there is the Dictionary, "itself a critical
endeavour, as well as a programme and aid for future criticism." Thirdly, there the edition
of Shakespeare, preceded by the Proposals for Printing the Dramatic Works of Shakespeare.
Fourthly, there is his Magnum Opus, The Lives of Poets, in which, according to John Watson,
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"he explains his learned reputation to evaluate the English poets of the past hundred years,
an inquiry into taste"

Johnson was the literary dictator of his age, "the great charm of literature". His influence
determined and shaped critical theory in his age. He exposes the defects of contemporary
criticism and distrusts taste and beauty as test of literary values. Beauty, "vague and
undefined different in different minds and diversified by time and place", cannot be the sure
test of literary judgment. His arm was "to clear the mind of cant." His approach was purely
rational. The business of criticism, according to Johnson, was to free literary judgments
from the "anarchy of ignorance, the caprice of fancy and the tyranny of prescription." It was
to evaluate a piece of literature purely on rational ground. The search for good taste can
only be considered historically and relatively because what is beautiful in one generation is
ugly to the next. A work of literature should be judged as a whole and not by different parts.

Dr. Johnson had definite views about the nature, function and technique of poetry. In The
Life of Milton he remarks that poetry is "the art of uniting pleasure with truth, by calling
imagination to the help of reason." This definition contains both the nature and function of
poetry. In imitating truth it is guided by reason and is affording pleasure by imagination. In
the Preface to Shakespeare he writes that "the end of poetry is to instruct by pleasing."
Therefore, "its effect proceeds from the display of those parts of nature which attract, the
concealment of those which repel the imagination." Poetry "pleases many and pleases long"
because in it the poet recognises the intimate presentation of his own thoughts, words and
deeds.

Johnson's remarks on the classification of poetry are remarkable. Epic poetry is the best.
He does admire pastoral elegy because of its unrealistic and unconvincing
presentation. He also finds Pindaric Ode "unsuitable for modem age." As regards
versification he preferred regularity and fitness. Johnson remarks that "the essential
constituents of metrical composition" are "the recurrence of settled numbers" and the
presence of rhyme. He disapproved blank verse because it "seems to be verse only to the
eye" and there is "neither the easiness of prose nor the melody of numbers in it."

Dr. Johnson writes about the poetic diction that "words too familiar or too remote, defeat
the purpose of a poet." Such words should be carefully avoided. It is the happy combination
of words which distinguishes poetry. Just and apt similes, which illustrates the meaning or
intent of the poet properly, must be used.
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Johnson expressed his views on dramatic artists nature, the unities, dramatic pleasure and
tragicomedy. Drama, being a species of poetry, must hold up "a faithful mirror of manners
and of life". It should present human sentiments in human language." The characters in a
play represent men in all ages. Defining drama Johnson writes in the Preface to
Shakespeare: "Drama, therefore, is just a representation of human nature both in its
workings in individuals and in humanity at large." He defends the use of three classical
unities. He defends tragic-comedy because it is nearer to "the appearance of life."

Johnson's criticism of Shakespeare, which is contained in Observations on the Tragedy of

Macbeth and The Preface, is of lasting value. The Preface, in the words of John Watson,
is "in essence a brilliant exercise in descriptive criticism- Johnson's first extended attempt
at the form-with a major essay in theoretical criticism, the reputation of the unities of time
and place inserted midway, and a long appendix on editorial method." Johnson's criticism
of Shakespeare is conspicuous for its clarity and rational approach. No other critic, writes
John Bailey, "has equalled the insight, sobriety, lucidity and finality which Johnson shows in
his field."

Dr. Johnson's Dictionary, on original work of great scholarship, has a critical purpose too. In
it he defines a critic as "a man skilled in the art of judging literature, a man able to
distinguish the faults and beauties of writing." He himself writes in the Preface : "As by the
cultivation of various sciences a language is amplified, it will be more furnished with words
deflected from their original sense."

Johnson's Lives of Poets, a collection of fifty two literary biographies is "the richest, most
beautiful, and indeed most perfect production of Johnson's pen." It is a landmark in the
history of criticism. It is the first systematic work of a biographical-cum-critical nature of
fifty two poets from Cowley to Gray during a period of hundred years. The structure of each
biography is divided into three parts - biography, character, criticism. Johnson is the first
biographical critic. However, his judgment has often been vitiated by prejudices and
deficiency in sensibility, as in case of some pronouncements on Milton and Gray.
Macaulay remarks that "they are the judgments of a mind tramelled by prejudice and
deficient insensibility but vigorous and acute." Johnson's The Lives of Poets, says T.S. Eliot,
"is the only monumental collection of critical studies of English poets in the language,
with a coherence, as well as an amplitude, which no other criticism can claim."

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Dr. Johnson, according to Eliot, is "one of the three greatest critics of poetry, the other two
being Dryden and Coleridge." He was the ardent champion established conventions and the
"high priest of classicism." His criticism belongs to the age of prose, reason and good
sense.

The Romantic Criticism

Wordsworth and Coleridge gave a definite shape and direction to the Romantic movement
both in the field of creation and criticism. During the neo-classical age of Dryden and
Johnson the external life was the main theme of both literature and criticism. But now the
centre of thought shifted from the external to the internal. Burke in his famous treatise A
Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1756) laid
emphasis on "the inner life" and "inner experience." Burke pointed out that sublime is
that which astonishes and overwhelms us with its emotional effect, which is
generally, produced by something which is beyond apprehension. He defines beauty as
"delicacy", "smoothness", "grace" and even "smallness." Kant in his treatise the Critique of
Judgement denied that the mind was dependent upon objects, or that knowledge was
confined to sense impressions. He pointed out, "In metaphysical speculations it has
always been assumed that all our knowledge must conform to objects The time now has
come to ask, whether better progress may not be made by supposing that objects must
conform to our knowledge." Burke and Kant influenced the growth and development of
Romanticism both in creation and criticism. German thinker August Wilhelm Schlegel, who
brought out a clear distinction between Classicism and Romanticism, defined classicism as
an artistic quest for a beautifully ordered world, and romanticism as a secret longing for
the chaos that underlies creation and strives for ever new births. Romanticism is "nearer to
the mystery of the universe." Schelling, who stressed the role of imagination in the art of
poetry, and Lessing in his famous essay Laocoon considered the relation of literature with
graphic arts. He lays down that a work of art is designed to produce an effect - "material
beauty arises from the harmonious effect of numerous parts." Lessing said: "Expression for
the artist is communication." These three German critics grgatly influenced both creation
and criticism during the Romantic period.

In the field of literary criticism Romanticism ushered in an era of freedom from rules.
Wordsworth, Coleridge and Keats regarded poetry as an imaginative rendering of the poet's
vision.

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(i) William Wordsworth
Wordsworth is a distinguished pioneer in the field of romantic criticism. The Preface to
Lyrical Ballads (1798) is the first manifesto of Romantic criticism. His main objective in
writing the Preface was, the creation of a new poetic taste by which his own poems were to
be judged. The contents of the historic Preface originated from the mutual discussions of
Wordsworth and Coleridge.

In the Preface Wordsworth attacks the artifice and restricted forms of the neo-classic poetry
of the previous generation. He discarded the "gaudiness and in one phraseology of many
modern writers" and their complete alienation from "the sympathies of men." He depends
his poetry from the charges of triviality and false simplicity. The principal object in his
poems was "to choose incidents and situations from common life and to relate or describe
them, throughout, as far as possible in a selection of language really used by men, and, at
the same time, to throw over them a certain colouring of imagination; whereby ordinary
things should be presented to the mind in an unusual aspect " He chose humble and
rustic life because primary human emotions and passions we found in their pure state.
They convey "their feelings in simple and unelaborated expressions." Wordsworth thus
prefers the life of humble but not ignoble men and women with their pathetic or tragic
fates, their patience and dignity of character. They are a part of the landscape around
them.

Wordsworth's main contribution to criticism lies in his enunciation of the theory of the
poetic diction. He condemned highly pedantic, artificial and terse poetic diction of the
previous generation. It was full of affectations. In The Advertisement of The Lyrical Ballads
he observed that his poems were "an experiment to ascertain how far the language of
conversation in the middle and lower clas'ses of society is adapted to the purpose of poetic
pleasure." In the Preface to the second edition of the Lyrical Ballads (1800) he explains his
idea more clearly. He says that the language of poetry "is as far as possible, a selection of
the language really used by men " By selection he means that it should be "purified from
provincialism" and from all "rational causes of disgust and dislike, it was to be selected; it
was to be the language of men in a state of vivid sensation." The process of selection is
accomplished through the agency of imagination when the poet is vividly inspired or is "in a
state of vivid sensation", imagination would create out .of "the language really used by
men", the true and real language and style of poetry.

Wordsworth finds no difference between the language of prose and that of poetry. The
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only difference between prose and poetry arises from the use of meter. He justifies the use
of meter in poetry. The use of meter makes poetry more exciting. Its use is essential when
more pathetic and painful situations have to be rendered. It imparts dreamlike quality to
the description.

Defining poetry Wordsworth observes that "all good poetry is the spontaneous overflow of
powerful feelings, it takes its origin in emotion recollected in tranquility." This process has
four stages: recollection, contemplation, recrudescence and composition. Imagination plays
a vital role in this process.

To Wordsworth poetry is the most philosophical of all writings. The true object of poetry "is
truth, not individual and local, but general and operative." It is "the image of man and
nature." It gives immediate pleasure. "Poetry", writes Wordsworh, "is the breath and finer
spirit of knowledge, it is the impassioned expression which is in the countenance of
science." Poetry consoles and comforts us like religion. It caters to man's moral refinement
and happiness. Wordsworth once wrote to Beaumont : "Every great poet is a teacher. I
wish either to be considered as a teacher or as nothing."

Wordsworth's Preface is a comprehensive critical document. It is a landmark in Romantic

criticism, which gave a new direction, consciousness and programme to English Romantic
Movement. He is the first critic who builds a theory of poetry and gives an account of the
nature of the creative process.

(ii) S.T. Coleridge

Coleridge is one of the greatest poet-critics that England has produced. His main critical
works are the Biographia Literaria (1817) and Lectures on Shakespeare and Other Poets
(1808-1819). The Biographia Literaria, a monumental work on literary aesthetics, according
to Saintsbury "is among the few which constitute the very Bible of criticism." Its originality
consists, first, in the evolution of a synthesis of philosophy and literature and, secondly, in
the skilful use of human psychology to explain the process of artistic creation.

Coleridge's main contribution to literary, criticism is his theory of imagination. He had little
sympathy for the poetry of Pope and his followers, which was "condensed and invigorated
by English understanding." He disliked the artifice of neo- classic poetry. He liked the poems
of Bowles and Cowper "who comfined natural thoughts with natural diction; the first who
recombined the heart with the head." The phrase "union of head and heart" strikes the
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keynote of Coleridge's theory of Imagination. Without it there can be no essential
poetry: The "continuous undercurrent of feeling" is the main element in poetry. He writes
in the Biographia Literaria that he found in Wordsworth's poetry the superb exhibition of
imagination. "It was the union of deep feeling with profound thought, the fine balance of
truth in observing, with the imaginative faculty in modifying the objects observed; and
above all, the original gift of spreading to tone, the atmosphere " "This excellence is
predominant in all Wordsworth's poems. This faculty is imagination. Coleridge distinguishes
between imagination and fancy. He remarks : "Milton has a highly imaginative, Cowley a
very fanciful mind." Imagination is more than emotion, feeling, passion. It is a union of
opposites because it satisfies both emotion and reason, heart and intellect. Wordsworth
exercised this power in revealing, the "beautiful and permanent forms of nature.
Imagination is a unifying creative faculty - "this beautiful and beauty making power."
Coleridge assigned a higher function to imagination, which the term Esmeplastic
Imagination better explains. The word esmeplastic means shape into one. It is by the
unifying faculty of imagination that the opposite forces - the infinite and the finite, the
subject and the object, are reconciled.

Imagination is of two types-primary and secondary. Primary imagination merely presents to

the mind its own world as external to itself, and it exists in human consciousness. The
secondary imagination represents and recreates the external world in its completeness
which is congenial to the spirit, because it belongs to it. Fancy is inferior to imagination. It is
not a creative power. It only combines different things into pleasing shapes and does not,
like imagination, fuse them into one. Fancy is "the arbitrary bringing together of things that
lie remote and forming them into a unity."

Coleridge defined a poem as "that species of composition, which is opposed to work of

science, by proposing for its immediate object pleasure, not truth, and from all other
species (having this object in common with it) it is discriminated by proposing to itself such
delight from the whole, as is compatible with a distinct gratification from each component
part." He observes that "poetry of the highest kind may exist without metre, and even
without the centra- distinguishing objects of a poem. " Poetry is the creation not of talent
but of genius.

Coleridge's views on dramatic illusion or "willing suspension of disbelief" are of great

significance. He clearly expresses his views on it in The Biographia Literaria : "In this idea
originated the plan of the Lyrical Ballads; in which it was agreed that my endeavours should
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be directed to persons and characters supernatural, or at least romantic; yet so as to
transfer from our inward nature a human interest and a semblance of truth to produce for
these shadows of imagination that willing suspension of disbelief for the moment which
constitutes poetic faith." He further elaborates his views on it in Chapter XIII of the
Biographia Literaria in his observation on the old Spanish play Don Juan. Coleridge gave an
inwardness to his conception of dramatic illusion. He brought it into intimate relation with
individual experience and gave a new psychological interest to it. He laid stress on the
essential features of the poems of the supernatural class: (i) psychological interest, (ii)
dramatic truth, and (iii) reality of the supernatural.

Coleridge, an outstanding poet-critic, is a guide, a Beacon to critical authors, whose mother-

tongue is English. Saintsbury suggests that a new practitioner of the art of criticism
must read and learn from Coleridge: "But begin with him, continue with him, come back to
him after excursions, with a certainty of suggestion, stimulation, connection, edification."
Herbert Read considers him as "head and shoulders above every other English critic." To
Scott James he is "the transcendental philosopher - critic who seeks philosophic grounds for
the romantic conviction." He again calls him "the genial and cosmopolitan critic passing
dispassionate judgement upon art."

Coleridge was an exponent of theoretical criticism. His aim was to discover the creative
power behind art and literature. His aim as a critic was - not so much analysis of a finished
product but it was to find out a theoretical certainty. He says in the Biographia Literaria
that his aim is to "establish the principles of writing rather than to furnish rules how to pass
judgement on what has been written by others." He provided criticism with a philosophical
and psychological basis. He was the first to bring about a union of philosophy, psychology
and-literary criticism. His concept of fancy and imagination is based on human psychology.
"Coleridge, with his authority due to his great reading, probably did much more than
Wordsworth to bring attention to the profundity of the philosophic problems into which the
study of poetry may take us." So observes T.S. Eliot in The Use of Poetry and The Use of
Criticism. Coleridge's descriptive criticism has its own value. He applies his theories of poetry
and drama to the works of great poets and dramatists likeShakespeare and Wordsworth.

Coleridge's criticism has substantive artistic value. Watson rightly points out that his critical
works are "relics of a mind passionately in love with free inquiry, concentrated and disciplined
in its determination to decipher the secret of poetic discourse."

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(iii) P.B. Shelley
Shelley attempted literary criticism in A Defenceof Poetry, written in 1821 and published
posthumously in 1846 and in his notes, letters and prefaces. A Defence of Poetry was
occasioned by the publication of Peacock's essay Four Ages of Poetry in which the author
pointed out that poetry had outlined its usefulness in an age of knowledge, reason and
enlightenment. He calls it the most worthless of all intellectual exercises. Shelley in A Defence
of Poetry gave a befitting reply to those who condemned poetry and propagated against it.
He emphasises the importance of imagination in poetry. He follows Coleridge as regards
the function of imagination but interprets it in Platonic way. It brings the poet in touch
with the world of ideas or forms, and therefore, with reality. Imagination and reason are
closely related. Shelley points out : "Reason is to the imagination, as the body to the spirit,
as the shadow to the substance." So he defines poetry as "the expression of imagination."
"Poetry", he writes, "is indeed something divine. It is at once the centre and
circumference of knowledge. It is that which comprehends all science It is at the same
time the root and blossom of all other systems of thought, it is that from which all spring,
and that which adorns all." To Shelley "poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the
world." Poetry records "the best and happiest moments of the happiest and best
minds." Poetry produces a sense of exaltation and transports man to the kingdom of the
Absolute. The language is measured but it need not be metrical. Poetry gives pleasure. It
has a moral aspect and can morally improve man. Shelley remarks: "Poetry strengthens the
faculty which is the organ of moral nature.

Victorian Criticism
During the Victorian age both creation and criticism were closely related with life and
society. Matthew Arnold felt that criticism must draw closer to life and make it nobler and
better. It was the duty of the critic to bring the best that was thought and written to
people's notice. Ruskin, and Carlyle endeavoured to give a religious and moral significance
to criticism in order to overcome the devaluation and disintegration of ideas and ideals.
There were two main schools, of criticism during this period-(I) Art For Life's Sake and (II)
Art For Art's Sake.

(i) Art for Life's Sake—During Victorian Age art, literature and criticism, were considered
as an expression of those ideas and ideals which ennobled, elevated, and enlightened life
and society. The function of literature and criticism is so improve the quality of life. Ruskin
and Carlyle did their best to explore morality underlying art and literature.

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John Ruskin expressed his critical ideas in Modern Painters, The Seven Lamps of
Architecture and The Stones of Venice. As an art critic be emerges as a social reformer.
Ruskin considered that art as the greatest "which conveys to the spectator, by any
means whatsoever, the greatest number of the greatest ideas," and that artist is the
greatest "who has embodied, in the sum of his works, the greatest numbers of the greatest
ideas." Defining the function of the artist Ruskin writes in the Modern Painters : "Art is
useful in the higher sense because it enables man to fulfill his real function which is to be
the witness of the glory of God, and to advance that glory by his reasonable obedience
and resultant happiness. Whatever sets the glory of God more brightly before us is pre-
eminently useful to us."

To Ruskin art was "the witness of the glory of God." Beauty is divine. It is "dependent on a
pure, right and open state of the heart" and is accessible only to the Blessed who are "pure
in heart, for they shall see God." Art is subservient to morality. He writes: "Not only
sculpture, but all other fine arts, must be for the people. They must be didactic to the
people " Scott James calls Ruskin "that arch missionary in an age of missionaries." Thomas
Carlyle (1795-1881) was an ardent exponent of art for life's sake. His main critical
works are Life of Schiller, Life of John Sterling, French Revolution, Past and Present and
Critical Essays. He believed that inspired personalities who represent inborn divinity can be
effective artists. Carlyle "united in a remarkable degree the artistic and the moral impulse",
remark Moody and Lovett," and he is in this respect typical of the Victorian era, during
which, more than ever before, art was infused with a moral purpose."

(ii) Art for Art's Sake—Walter Pater and Oscar Wilde were the greatest exponents of the cult
of Art for Art's Sake. They stand in the front rank of English aesthetes, who made the
pursuit of beauty the concern of their art. The ultimate source of the aesthetic school or Art
for Art's Sake school may be traced to the idealistic philosophy of Kant and other German
philosophers. During the nineteenth century it was revived by Gautier, the French critic,
who condemned art with a purpose-spiritual, ethical, social, economic etc. E. A. Poe, the
greed American critic, declared that art had no purpose except "an elevating excitement of
the soul." His French disciple, Baudelaire pointed out that art could create beauty even out of
evil and, so, it was independent of morality. The followers of this school sought refuge
from the ugliness and harshness of reality in the realm of art.

Walter Pater emerges as an ardent exponent of art for art's sake in his works Studies in the
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Renaissance, Greek Studies, Marius the Epicurean, Plato and Platonism. and
Appreciations. He believes that art is its own end. In his essay on Wordsworth he writes:
"To treat life in the spirit of art is to make life a thing in which means and ends are
identified." The work of great poets is "not to teach lessons, or enforce rules, or even to
stimulate us to noble ends, but to withdraw the thoughts for a while from the mere
machinery of life, to fix them with appropriate emotions, on the spectacle of those great
facts in man's existence which no machinery affects." To Pater the virtue of "all works of
art and the fairer forms of nature and life" lies in the "special, unique impression of
pleasure that they give." His attitude towards literature was clearly defined in the
History of Renaissance. What one should find in literature? "Not the fruit of experience,
but experience itself is the end." Experience consists in what is most moving : "Some form
perfect in hand or face, some tone on the hills or sea choicer than the rest; some mood of
passion or intellectual excitement irresistibly real and attractive." Such an experience
can occur to an unprejudiced mind that is open to impressions of all kinds. The mind
inclined to the best picks up the best impressions which move it ecstasy. It is the business of
art to catch such ecstatic moments and experiences in all their intensity, and that of criticism
to disengage them from other elements in the artist's work and to indicate what their
source is and under what conditions they are experienced. Art, thus, is its own reward. It
beholds the great spectacle of life for the mere "joy of beholding" and for no other purpose.
Thus, Pater is an exponent of impressionism in art and literature.

Presentment of the impression should be effective. He writes : "All beauty is in the long run
only fineness of truth, or what we call expression, the finer accommodation of speech
to that vision within." In his essay on Style Pater concentrates on style — the forceful
expression of the artist's vision. That style is the best which enables the writer to convey his
vision or impression, exactly and truthfully. According to Pater design, diction and
personality are three important elements in style.

Pater observes that a perfect work of art must unite the true qualities of romanticism and
classicism. He remarks "Art should be fresh, new, spontaneous, decorous, gaining sobriety
and richness from recognised methods and due authority, but in the truest sense a
development, neither a new departure, nor a servile imitation."
Pater is an aesthetic critic. He began the criticism of enthusiasm, appreciation, and
interpretation, showing what is admirable rather that what is supposed to be condemned.

Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) stood for aestheticism in literature. His critical concepts are
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expressed in his letters, in Intentions and in the Preface to The Picture of Dorian Gray.
Pater preached the ideal of art for art's sake." Oscar Wilde idolised "beauty for beauty's
sake." Aestheticism was the keynote of his creed and he declared that beauty was the
ideal after which everyone should strive. Elaborating his views on art he writes : "The artist
is the creator of beautiful things. To reveal art and conceal the artist is art's aim. The
critic is he who can translate into another manner or a new material his impression of
beautiful things." The quest of beauty is his main concern. He writes: "Those who find
beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. For these there is hope. They are
the elect to whom beautiful things mean only beauty." Art and morality are poles
apart." There is no wittier," says Rickett, "or more insolent upholder of Art for Art's
Sake theory than Wilde."

Matthew Arnold
Arnold, a poet-critic, rendered memorable service to criticism. Quiller-Couch pointed out
"Arnold's lectures struck a new Dote in criticism, and have influenced the literary judgment
ever since." His first attempt in criticism is Preface to the Poems (1853), in which he
analyses his own poetic performance like Dryden. His appointment as the Professor of
Poetry at Oxford University provided him the golden opportunity to develop his, critical
faculty. It was in the lectures delivered as the Professor of Poetry that he proved his
worth as critic. Some of the important lectures were published in On Translating Homer
(1861) and The Study of Celtic Literature (1867). He also contributed to literary journals,
Wrote for Ward's Selections from the English Poets, and his miscellaneous essays were
published in Essays in Criticism in two series (1865 and 1888). In his famous book Culture
And Anarchy (1869) he asserts the importance of poetry as an antidote to the cultural
anarchy of his age.

Arnold criticism may be called socio-ethical or criticism. He clearly defined the relation
of critic to society in which he lives. He gave importance to the propagation of best ideas for
the promotion of culture. The function of criticism is to prepare a congenial atmosphere
for the prevalence of best ideas. A poet must live in an atmosphere of best ideas. Arnold
remarks that "the best ideas on every matter that literature touches" must be current in the
very air a poet breathes. He shapes these ideas into beautiful works. A critic's aims is not
to discover or create new ideas. It is the business of a philosopher. His aim is to bring the
best ideas within the reach of ordinary men. The function of criticism is not merely
"judgement in literature" but "a disinterested endeavour to learn and propagate the best

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that is known and thought in the world, and thus to establish a current of fresh and true
ideas."

The function of Arnold's critic is to promote culture; his function as a literary critic is to
promote that part of culture which depends upon the knowledge of letters. A critic should
rigorously observe "calm cheerfulness and disinterested objectivity." By the word
disinterested Arnold means that the critic should be free from interests which "militate
against spiritual and moral perfection." Judgement in literature should never be influenced by
the prejudices of the "barbarian", the "aristocrat" who has "spirit and politeness" but is a
little accessible to "ideas and light", the blind impulses of the "populace" and the falsification
of ideas which marks the Philistines. Disinterestedness also implies an almost complete
detachment of mind from what are usually called the "practical
considerations." "A free and disinterested play of mind" enables the critic to "dwell upon
what is excellent in itself, and the absolute beauty and fitness of things." His duty is "to see
the object as in
itself it really is."

Defining poetry in Essays in Criticism Arnold writes that poetry is "a criticism of life
under the conditions fixed for such a criticism by the laws of poetic truth and poetic
beauty." Elaborating "criticism of life" he remarks : "The greatness of a poet lies in his
powerful and beautiful application of ideas to life, - to the question - how to live? A poetry
of revolt against moral ideas in a poetry of revolt against life, a poetry of indifference to moral
ideas is a poetry of indifference to life. In poetry, however, this criticism of life has to be
made conformably to the laws of poetic truth and poetic beauty." Arnold does not mean
composing moral or didactic poems. He says: " moral ideas are a main part of life. The
question how to live, is itself a moral idea ………… A large sense is, of course, to be given
to the term moral. Whatever bears upon the question how to live, comes under it.”

According to Arnold, poetry ennobles and enriches human life. It is a substitute of religion.
He writes: “Poetry attaches its importance to the idea; the idea is the fact. The strongest
part of religion unconscious poetry ……….. more and more mankind will turn to poetry to
interpret life for us, to. Console us, the sustain us. Without poetry our science will appear
incomplete; and most of what now passes for religion and philosophy will be replaced by
poetry.” Poetry, therefore, is essentially moral because it conforms to the highest ideals
of truth, goodness and beauty. He elaborates his ideas on poetry in his essay The Study of
Poetry.
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The function of criticism is also judgment of literature. In order to attain an impartial and
disinterested evaluation of literature, Arnold recommends the touch-stone or comparative
method. The critic must know what has been thought and said, both in ancient and modern
times, not only in his language, but in the language from which native literature is derived,
and in those which are producing literature currently. Thus, provinciality is avoided by
the use of comparative method. He shuns “the false valuations of the “historic estimate”
and the “personal estimate” and attains to a “real estimate” by learning to feel and enjoy
the best work of real classic, and evaluate the wide difference between it and lesser work.”

According to Arnold, noble subjects can make great poetry. Only those subjects which
can impart the highest joy are suitable subjects for poetry. In the Preface (1853) he
asserts that “excellent action,” unfolded by “appropriate treatment” so that it may afford
joy, is the apt subject for poetic composition. A poet should deal delightfully to affect
what is permanent in human soul.” Those actions are excellent “which most powerfully
appeal to the great primary human affections, to those elementary feelings which subsist
permanently in the race and which are independent of time.” “An excellent action” must
have “high seriousness” and the “weight of meaning.” “An excellent action”, poetically
expressed in “grand style” creates the highest enjoyment. What is grand style? According
to Arnold grand style “arises in poetry when a noble nature, poetically gifted, treats
with simplicity or severity a serious subject.”

Arnold provided classical resistance to romantic waywardness and eccentricity. He treated

criticism as a deliberate, disinterested art with laws and methods of his own. Arnold
“deals with a function of criticism which did not concern Aristotle at all.” Commenting on
his contribution to criticism Scott James remarks : “Aristotle shows us the critic in relation
to art. Arnold shows us the critic in relation to the
public. Aristotle dissects a work of art, Arnold dissects a critic. The one gives us the
principles which govern the making of a poems should be selected and made known.
Aristotle’s critic owes allegiance to the artist but Arnold’s critic has a duty to society.”

Modern Criticism
Modern literary criticism consists of a synthesis of the traditional and the experimental. The
historical criticism survives in the works of professors and scholars like David Cecil, C.M.
Boura, Ifor Evans etc. The moral concerns of Arnold are to be seen in the critical creeds of
D.H. Lawrence and Middleton Murray. The new critics have opened new vistas. T. S. Eliot

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remarks: ". the psychological and sociological are probably the two best advertised varieties
of modern criticism, but Pie number of ways in which the problems of criticism are
approached was never before so great or so confusing criticism seems to have separated
into several diverse kinds."

(i) T. S. Eliot
T. S. Eliot is the greatest and most influential critic of the modern age. He is like Dryden
because most of his criticism is written in the form of prefaces to his works with the
purpose of justifying his own poetic creations. Eliot's famous works are The Use of Poetry
and the Use of Criticism (1933), The Idea of A Christian Society (1939), Notes Towards the
Definition of Culture (1948), Selected Essays (Third edition 1951), On Poetry and Poet
(1957), To Criticise the Critic (1966) and The Sacret Wood.

As a critic Eliot speaks with authority and conviction. He had the rare gift of expressing his
thought in lucid, striking, pointed and trenchant phrases as "dissociation of sensibility",
objective correlative", "tradition and individual talent" etc. In order to understand Eliot's
criticism, it is essential to examine some of his critical concepts.

Objective Correlative—It is one of the most important critical concepts of Eliot. It

exerted a great influence on the critical temper of the twentieth century. He formulated this
doctrine in his famous essay entitled Hamlet and His Problems. Eliot believes that since the
poet cannot transfer his emotions on ideas from his own mind directly to his readers, there
must be some kind of mediation - "a set of objects, a situation, chain of events which shall
be the formula of that particular emotion, such that when the external facts, which must
terminate in sensory experience, the emotion is immediately evoked." It is through
"objective correlative" that the transactions between the author and the reader
necessarily takes place. What Eliot means by this doctrine is that a great work of art is
nothing but a set of conceptual symbols or correlatives, which endeavour to express the
emotions of the poet, and these symbols constitute the total vision of the creative artist.
In this manner "what the author has to say is objectified" and the critic's job is to examine
the shape and character of this object. Eliot illustrates the objective correlative from Hamlet
and Macbeth. The sleep walking scene in Macbeth express Lady Macbeth's mental
condition through a set of sensory facts - candle, perfumes of Arabia, smell of blood,
unclean spot and we (readers) immediately get a vivid picture of her emotional and mental
state. There is no object, character, situation or incident which adequately expresses the
inner anguish of Hamlet. Shakespeare has failed to find a suitable "objective correlative" for
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the emotion he wanted to convey. Herein his the real source of the artistic failure of
Hamlet.

Eliot uses the phrase Objective Correlative to explain how emotion can be best expressed in
poetry. It implies that greater emphasis should be laid upon the work of art itself as a
structure. Eliot observes that it is "not our feelings, but the pattern which we make of our
feelings (which) is the centre of value." He believes that in great poetry thoughts and
feelings are presented "by a statement of events in human action, of objects in the external
world."

Dissociation of Sensibily —This phrase occurs in Eliot's essay entitled The Metaphysical
Poets. He uses this phrase to describe the characteristic fault of later seventeenth century
poetry. The opposite of this phrase is "unification of sensibility", which, according to Eliot
means "a direct sensuous apprehension of thought, a recreation of thought into feelings."
Such fusion of thought and feeling is good for poetry. Bad poetry results when there is
"dissociation of sensibility", that is, the poet's inability to feel his thoughts. In good poetry,
which represents "unification of sensibility" thought is transformed into feeling to steel its
way into the reader's heart. It is this union of the two which constitutes poetic sensibility.
When the poet is unable to convert his thought into feeling, the result is "dissociation of
sensibility" - a split between thought and poetry, and the result is bad poetry. A poet may
have best ideas to communicate but they serve no purpose unless they are expressed as
feelings.

A unified sensibility, according to Eliot, is the true product d a true synthesis of the
individual with the traditional, of feelings with thought and of temporal with the eternal.
The tradition of unified sensibility was disrupted in the seventeenth century as a result of
a split in the creative personality of the artist, for which Eliot applied the term "dissociation
of sensibility."

By sensibility Eliot does not merely mean feeling or the capacity to receive some
impressions. By it he means a synthetic faculty which can amalgamate and unite thought
and feeling, which can fuse into a single whole the varied and disparate, often
opposite and contradictory experiences, the sensuous and the intellectual.

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The Elizabethans and Jacobeans had developed a unifying sensibility. Such a remarkable
fusion of thought and feeling is found in Downe's poetry as well as in much modern poetry.
After Downe and Herbert the poets lost the capacity of unifying thought and feeling. The
concept of the unification of feeling was lost and "dissociation" of feeling set in. The
poets of the eighteenth century were intellectuals, they thought but did no feel; the
romantics of the nineteenth century felt but did not think.

Tradition and Individual Talent—Eliot's essay Tradition and Individual Talent, first
published in Times Literary Supplement in 1919, may be regarded as an unofficial manifesto
of Eliot's critical creed. This essay illustrates Eliot's faith in classicism and tradition. In his
poetry he achieved an elegance and a dignity absent from the popular and pretentious
verse of the romantic poets. A true classicist must have some faith in some system of
writing and that a work of art must conform to the past tradition. He differs from the neo-
classicists who believed that the writer must follow rules of the ancients and that poetry
must be didactic. By "conformity to tradition" Eliot means "a way that alters the tradition
as much as it is directed by it." Thus, tradition and individual talent go together.

The essay Tradition and Individual Talent is divided into three parts - (i) Conception of
Tradition, (ii) Impersonal theory of poetry, and (iii) Conclusion.

Significance and Definition of Tradition— English people regard tradition as a word of

censure. They are accustomed to praise a poet's work for individual and original aspects.
Eliot observes that if they examine the matter critically, they will realise that the best and
most individual part of a poet's work is that which shows the maximum influence of the
writer's of the past: "Whereas if we approach a poet without this prejudice, we shall often
find that not only the best, but the most individual parts of his work may be those in which
the dead poets, his ancestors, assert, their immortality most vigorously." Tradition and
individual talent are inseparable.

Tradition is not imitating the ways of the ancients blindly. Tradition can only be obtained by
those who have the historical sense which involves a perception "not only of the pastness of
the past, but also of its presence. One who has the historic sense feels that the whole of
literature of Europe from Homer down to his own day, including the literature of his own
country, forms one continuous literary tradition." Tradition represents the accumulated
wisdom and experience of ages, and so its knowledge is essential for really great and noble
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achievements. "Tradition is the means by which the vitality of the past, enriches the life of
the present." In brief, the sense of tradition implies: (i) recognition of the continuity of
literature, (ii) a critical judgement as to which of the writers of the past continue to be
significant in the present; and, (iii) a knowledge of these writers through painstaking effort.

The writer has to repress his individuality while taking from tradition. "The progress of an
artist in a continual self sacrifice, a continual extinction of persona-lity." The past and the
present fuse in a work into a new compounds.

The Impersonal Theory of Poetry —In Tradition and Individual Talent Eliot stated: "The
poet has not a personality to express, but a particular medium, which is not only a medium
and not a personality, in which impressions and experiences combine in peculiar,
unexpected ways. Impressions and experiences which are important for the man may take
no place in the poetry, and those which become important in the poetry may play quite a
negligible part in the man, the personality." Eliot holds that the poet and the poem are two
separate things. He writes in the Introduction to the 1928 edition of The Sacred Wood: "We
can only say that a poem in some sense has its own life; that its parts form a body of neatly
ordered biographical data; that the feeling, or emotions, or vision, resulting from the poem
is something different from the feeling or emotion or vision of the poet."

Eliot elucidates the theory of the impersonality of poetry by examining, first, "the relation
of the poet to the past", and next, "the relation of the poem to its author." The author
must allow his poetic sensibility to be shaped and modified by the past. He must continue to
acquire the sense of tradition through his career. In the beginning his individuality may
assert itself but as his powers mature there must be greater and greater extinction of
personality. The artistic process is a process of depersonalization. An artist must surrender
himself to the creative work. Eliot remarks : "The progress of an artist is a continual self
sacrifice, a continual extinction of personality. The poet's or the artist's personality is merely
a medium, having the same significance as a catalytic agent, or a receptacle in which
chemical reactions take place." So, Eliot holds that "honest criticism and sensitive
appreciation is directed not upon the poet but upon the poetry." The poet, according
to Eliot, has no personality to express. He is merely a medium to express impressions and
experiences in peculiar and unexpected ways. Impressions and experiences which are
important for the man find no place in his poetry, and those which become important in
the poetry may have no significance for the man.

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Eliot rejects Wordsworth's theory of poetry having "its origin in emotions recollected in
tranquility." He points out that in the process of poetic composition there is neither
emotion nor recollection, nor tranquility. In poetic process, there is only concentration of a
number n.

T.S. Eliot as a Critic—T. S. Eliot is the most influential of all critics. He has corrected and
educated the taste of his readers and has thrown a fresh light on the function of poetry
and the nature of poetic process. As a critic Eliot is a classicist whose role model is Aristotle.
He found scientific temper and rational inquiry lacking in contemporary criticism. He calls
himself a classicist in literature, but he has no kinship with neoclassical critics of the
eighteenth century. He boldly deprecates the neo-classical practice of ampulating an author
"by the canons of dead critics", for "to conform merely would be for the new work and not
really to confirm at all, it would not be new, and therefore, would not be a work of art."
In art as in life, the past and the present act and react on each other, so the past should be
altered by the present as much as the present is directed by the past. Eliot does not accept
didacticism or any other use of poetry as a necessary condition of poetic art. To him
poetry is "an amusement", "a superior amusement."

He applies the method of science to the study of literature so that the critic may be able
to see it as it really is. This is his most remarkable contribution to literary criticism. A critic
must follow objective standards; instead of following merely his inner voice, he must
conform to tradition. A sense of tradition, a respect for order and authority is at the core of
Eliot's classicism. In this respect his essay Tradition and Individual Talent is the manifesto
of his critical creed.

Eliot has rendered great service to literature by reforming taste and revitalizing
literature. He has formulated a number of new critical concepts which have exercised great
influence on criticism ever since. Objective Correlative, Dissociation of Sensibility,
Unification of Sensibility are only a few of his critical concepts which have imparted both
catholicity and rationalism to literary criticism. "Eliot's theory of impersonality of
poetry" says A. G. George, "is the greatest theory on the nature of the poetic process after
Wordsworth's romantic conception of poetry." Estimating Eliot's achievement as a
critic George Watson remarks: "He has made criticism look different, but in no single
sense. He has offered a new range of rhetorical possibilities, confirmed it in
itsincreasing contempt for historical processes, and yet reshaped its nation of period by a
handful of brilliant intuitions."
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(ii) I. A. Richards
I.A. Richards, the pioneer of new criticism, is one of the major critics of the twentieth
century. His major critical works are Principles of Literary Criticism (1924), Practical Criticism
(1929) and Coleridge on Imagination (1935). He also wrote The Foundation of Aesthetics
(1922) in collaboration with C. K. Ogden and James Wood, and The Meaning of Meaning
(1923) with Ogden.

Richards is the first critic who realised the importance of psychology and the impact it
made on the reader and society. Psychology is the "indispensable instrument for this
inquiry." He defines a poem as a collection of experiences of an artist no single
experience can make a poem. It is "a class of more or less similar experiences" that forms a
poem. Richards writes, "A poem is .a class of experiences which do not differ in any
character more than a certain amount, vary for each character, from a standard
experience. We may take this as standard experience, the relevant experience of the poet
when contemplating the completed composition."

Richards is admired for the originality of ideas. He has made substantial and lasting
contribution to the growth and development of the new criticism. His famous book The
Principles of Literary Criticism has popularised him as an eminent psychologist and
aesthetician. In it he has enunciated the theory of the value of art and has formulated the
modern aesthetic school. Georgy Watson writes : "Richards's claim to have pioneered
Anglo-American new criticism of the thirties and forties is unassailable:He provided the
theoretical foundations on whiCh the technique of verbal analysis was built."

Richard turned criticism into science. He deptly applied the methods of scientific
investigation to literary judgement. He also considered an adequate knowledge of
psychology as an essential preliminary to literary criticism. He also gives paramount
importance to the are of communication and brings out a distinction between the scientific
and emotive uses of language. According to Richards poetry represents a certain
systematization of and experiences of the poet.

Richard inspired a host of followers, the most outstanding among them is William Empson.

(iii) F.R. Leavis

F.R. Leavis was "the most influential British born critic of the twentieth century." His famous
works are New Bearing in English Poetry (1932), Revaluation (1936), The Great Tradition
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(1948), and The Common Pursuit (1952). He also wrote For Continuity (1933), Education and
the University (1944), D. H. Lawrence : Novelist (1955), and he also edited a quarterly
review Scrutiny from May 1932 to October 1953.

Leavis was influenced by T.S. Eliot and I.A. Richards. Lawrence Lerner calls Leavis a "practical
critic" who employs the technique of analytic criticism. He adds: "The achievement of
Scrutiny is, in a way, peculiar to the twentieth century, it is the building up of a body of
practical criticisms, of substantiated literary judgement, that has surely no equal in extent
and quality." Leavis criticism is often based on the response of his students to the class
room. He was highly influenced by Eliot's The Sacred Wood.

Leavis' view on literature is quite comprehensive. Its purpose is to elevate "human living" or
culture. His primary concern is culture — "a may of living, ordered and patterned in
accordance with some ideal of a civilized community." In Culture and Environment be
writes that these ideals have degenerated in industrial age because in it the tasks and
habits of people are formed by films, newspapers, advertisements, popular fiction — all of
which in their self interest - exploit "the cheapest emotional responses" of the people.
The citizens should be trained to discriminate between true culture and false and to resist
the latter.

It is this function which literature at its best discharges. It is "the sharehouse of recorded
values." In the works of the best writers the quintessence of the nation's culture—the best
both of its past and present, — is communicated to the future.

Like Eliot, Leavis also believed in the importance of tradition in literature. A critic's aim is to
study the past and notice a continuous development and the union of the past and the
present. Leavis points out in the The Great Tradition that tradition is very significant is the
works of Jane Austen, George Eliot, Henry James, Joseph Conrad and D. H. Lawrence.

Leavis has evolved a critical idiom in which he expresses his views with precision and
exactness. Enactment and Realisation are two important words in his critical vocabulary.
The former implies that good poetry embodies or enacts a valuation of a reality at once
inner (spiritual) and outer (social and sensuous). It is a mode of self-expression and of self-
recognition. Reality and Sincerity are essential both in creation and criticism.

Leavis' main concern is with emotion in poetry and its association with concreteness. He,
619
like Eliot, does not believe in depersonalization in poetry. Personal emotions are
realized in concrete details of the poem and, thus, they are distanced and universalised.
Leavis believes that poetry is the expression of an integrated person. He also advocates the
presence of the ethical quality in literature.

The following stages are found in Leavis' critical practice — (a) a complete response to the
work in hand, (b) its close scrutiny or analysis, (c) and judgement of significance.
Leavis' most remarkable contribution to criticism is the relation he establishes between it
and "an interest in man, society and civilization". Literature, which does not enrich man's
cultural heritage, does not belong to "the great tradition."

Contemporary CriticismThe New Criticism

The new criticism is supposed to be a specifically American movement, but it was pioneered
by T.S. Eliot and I.A. Richards. Eliot's famous remark that "a poem's existence is somewhere
between the writer and the term new criticism came into general use after the publication of
John Crowe Ransom's book The New Criticism in 1941. It is a revolutionary critical
movement which is not concerned with the sociological or historical aspects of the age in
which the particular poetry is written. George Watson writes : "In the American new critics,
contempt for the late nineteenth century values is general : not only for historical criticism
and its accompanying pedantries, but for agnostic enlighten- ment, democratic optimism,
industrialism, and such international ideals as . Marxism. It is a frankly reactionary
movement, and the word now must always have held for it an air of pleasant paradox.
Famous critics of this school are J. C. Ransome, R. P. Blackmur, Allen Take, Cleanth Brooks,
Robert Pen Warren and William K. Wimsatt. In the Preface to the anthology Understanding
Poetry, the editors Cleanth Brooks and Robert Penn Warren condemned the use of poetry for
any purpose beyond itself, whether historical or moralistic. They asserted that "if poetry is
worth teaching at all, it is worth teaching as poetry." Rene Wallek and Austin Warren in
Theory of Literature (1949), Allen Tate in The Man of Letters in the Modern World (1955), and
Robert Penn Warren in Selected Essays (1958) are strikingly indifferent to historical
probability.

Basic Principles of the NewCriticism

(i) A poem or a work of art should be treated as an object in itself, primarily as poetry and
not as any other thing. In analysing and evaluating a work, they usually do not refer to the
author's biography, to contemporary social conditions and to its psychological or moral

620
effects on the reader. The literary critic must approach the work with an open mind, ready
to study it, "as it is in itself."

(ii) The new critics are mainly concerned with the study of words, and the structure of
poetry. The distinctive procedure of new criticism is explication, or close reading, the
detailed and subtle analysis of the complex interrelations and ambiguities of the component
elements within a work. The new critics derived their explicative procedure from I.A.
Richards' Practical Criticism (1929) and William Empson's Seven Types of Ambiguity (1930).

(iii) Poetry is communication and language is the means of communication. So, the new
critics seek to understand the full meaning of a poem through a study of poetic language. To
them words are very important, and their study is the only key to the poetic meaning of the
poem. The key concepts of this criticism deal with the meanings and interactions of
words, figures of speech and symbols. There is a great emphasis on "the organic unity" of
structure and meaning.

(iv) The new critics reacted sharply against the vulgarisation of meaning by the rhetoric of
mass communication or privatization of language as a means of communication. According
to Allen Tate poetry is not mere communication of ideas or attitudes: it is a complex
patterning of meaning to be read and appreciated as such. J.C. Ransome draws a
distinction between the texture and the structure of poetry. The texture is the quality of the
expression enriched by every kind of appropriate metaphorical device so as to embody the
full quality of the things being referred to, the structure is the paraphrasable argument. R.P.
Blackmur investigated the ways in which ideas can be absorbed by craft into poetic meaning
and the relationship between ideas; imagination and craftsmanship. Wimsatt and Brook
write in The Verbal Icon : "A poem should not mean but be. A poem can be only through its
meaning-since its medium is words-yet it is-simply is, in the sense that we have no excuse for
inquiring what part is intended or meant. Poetry is a feat of style by which a complex of
meaning is handled all at once."

Each critic of this group has devised his own method to, bring out the uniqueness of the
poem and check the vulgarization of language: Richards his "emotive and referential
meanings", Eliot his "objective correlative" , Brooks his "paradox" and Warren his "irony" .
The fullest accounts of the doctrines of the new criticism appeared as late as 1946-49 in two
articles in Serwanee Review by W.K. Wimsatt, Jr and M.C Beardsley, The Intentional Fallacy
and The Affective Fallacy, both collected in Wimsatt's The Verbal Icon (1954).
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The new critics reduced all poetry to a formula. They removed criticism into a highly
specialised technical area where it cannot be read or appreciated by the ordinary man. It
has also ignored the relation of life to literature.

Commenting on the contribution of the new critics. Richard remarks : " their contribution
upon linguistic expression has benefited the study of poetry. Readers needed to realize
that the poem is the thing." They taught a generation to read, to reflect on meaning, to pay
attention to what a work of literary art really means. They tell us what literature is, how it
works and that is a remarkable achievement.

The Chicago Critics

A reaction against the new critics began under the leadership of Ronald S. Crane in the late
thirties. This group of critics is known as Chicago School of neoAristotlerians who, according
to George Watson, employed "a more formidable scholarship and a less popular style,
insisted upon a return to questions of design and structure by whatever method and upon
whatever assumption seemed appropriate to the particular case." The Chicago view,
according to Crane himself was "pluralistic and instrumentalist" insisting that "we must
accord to critics the right of free choice as between different basic methods."

The Chicago critics are so called because they all worked at the University of Chicago and
formed a homogeneous group with little difference in their views and critical methods. The
main characteristics of this school may be summed up as pluralism and neoAristotlerianism.
The most explicit statements of their pluralism are contained in Mc Keon's The Philosophic
Bases of Art and Criticism, Geson's An Outline of Poetic Theory and Crane's The Language of
Criticism and Structure of Poetry. They took special interest in Aristotle's Poetics,
Commenting on the method of Chicago critics, Pritchard writes : "Far from proclaiming a new
critical panacea, the Chicago critics urged the application to literature of varied critical
procedures. Their purpose being to understand the work of-art, they being to bear upon it
whatever they believe will serve to elucidate it, no matter whence it may be derived. Critical
principles are simply instruments of inquiry and analysis."

Structuralism and Post-Structuralism

We have discussed that the new critics are mainly concerned with the study of words and
the structure of poetry. There is great emphasis on the organic unity of structure and
meaning. According to David Lodge "structuralism is or was a movement in what the

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continental Europeans call the human sciences which sought to explain and understand
cultural phenomena (from poems to menus, from primitive myths to modern
advertisements) as manifestations of underlying systems of significations, of which the
exemplary model is verbal language itself, especially as elucidated by the Swiss linguist,
Ferdinand De Saussure."

The literary theorists have widened the scope of literary criticism by borrowing its terms
and concepts very largely from other disciplines — linguistics, philosophy, Marxism and
psycho- analysis. So literary criticism has become a powerful source of interdisciplinary
approach and expansion of knowledge. The varied interpretation of literary texts are
derived from the minute analysis of the texture and structure, of various works in the light
of different theories. So a literary work is liable to varied interpretations, which the writer,
perhaps, never intended. David Lodge points out that in "our era criticism is not merely a
library of secondary aids to the understanding and appreciation of literary texts, but also a
rapidly increasing body of knowledge in its own right."

Structuralism is a school of literary criticism which flourished during 1960s. Ferdinand De

Saussure's book Courses in General Linguistics (1916) popularised structuralism and
introduced Structural Linguistics, which attaches importance to signs, that is, the black
marks : C—a—t rather than the object called Cat. It is an attempt to apply this linguistic
theory to objects and activities other than language itself. According to Eagleton in
structuralism the Poetics detaches or dislocates the sign from the object and, thus, the
usual relation between sign and referent is disturbed. It is the referent which invests the
sign with "a certain independence as an object of value in itself." The theory of
structuralism, which considers the text of a literary work as an integrated verbal entity and
ignores the content, the writer, the society and the reader response, distances itself from
any suggestion of value judgement. It could no longer influence the literary scenario of
twentieth century. It found only a limited number of followers and in course of time it was
rejected. It was followed by post-structuralism, which found its stavch exponent in Jacques
Derrida who enunciated the theory of Deconstruction.

Jacques Derrida.
Derrida, the renowned French philosopher, enunciated the doctrine of Deconstruction,
which marks the beginning of the era of Post-Structuralism, in his paper Structure, Sign and
Play in the Discourse of Human Sciences (1966). It brought about a revolutionary

623
change in linguistic, criticism and humanities. Derrida's other works are Writing and
Difference (1978), Of Grammatology (1976), and Dissemination (1982).

Derrida's paper Structure, Sign and Play is of great importance in the, history of literary
criticism. It marks, in the words of David Lodge, "the moment at which 'post structuralism'
as a movement begins, opposing itself to classical structuralism as well as to traditional
humanism, and empiricism: the moment; as Derrida himself put it, when "the structurality of
structure had to begin to be thought."

What is deconstruction?
The Concise Oxford Dictionary defines deconstruction as "a method of critical analysis of
philosophical and literary language which emphasises the internal workings of language and
conceptual systems, the rational quality of meaning, and the assumptions implicit in forms
of expression." Derrida's theory of deconstruction may be deemed as "the re- reading or
breaking down of a text to show the multiple meanings at work within language.
Focussing mainly on language, he contends that the traditional or metaphysical reading of a
text makes a number of false assumptions - that language is capable of expressing constant
and unchanging ideas, that the author of a text is the only source of its meaning and that
in the hierarchy of language writing is secondary to speech." It may be said that
"deconstruction is to take an idea, an institution or a set of values and to understand its
mechanism by removing that cement that constitutes it."

The deconstructive criticism disregards the content, other literary qualities and linguistic
excellence in a work. It is based as the deconstruction of the text, ignoring both the centre
and content of the text. According to Miller the deconstructive critic seeks to find the
"alogical element in a text, the thread, when fulled, will unravel the whole texture the
infallible rule of the deconstructive quest is "seek and ye shall find."

According to deconstructive theory words have no fixed meaning. Language is not a stable
object, and, therefore, does not yield the same meaning in all conditions and circumstances.
It implies that words are black dots on white paper, that is, they are signs which can be
variously interpreted.

Derrida's theory of deconstruction found wide acceptance, especially in U.S.A., in 1970s

and 1980s. It was applied to a broad range of subjects including literary theory, linguistics,
anthropology, art, music, architecture and 'political science.
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Feminist Criticism
Feminist criticism is one of the latest literary trends in modern literary criticism. The
Women's Liberation Movement of the late 1960s is the main motivating force behind this
movement. Helene Cixous' Sorties (1975), Elaine Showalter's A Literature of Their Own:
British Women Novelists from Bronte to Lessing (1977) and her lecture Towards Feminist
Poetics published in Women's Writing and Writing about Women (1979), Juliet Mitchell's
essay Women: the Longest Revolution (published in New Left Review ( 1966) and
Psychoanalysis and Feminism (1974); Luce Irigaray's Speculum of the other Woman (1985)
and This Sex which is Not One (1985), Patrocinio P. Schweickart's essay in Gender and
Reading: Essays on Readers, Texts and Context (1986), Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick's Between
Men : English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire (1985) and Gayatri Chakravorty
Spivak's essay French Feminism in International Frame (published Yale French Studies
(1987) are some important works in the direction of the evolution of feminist criticism.
David Lodge points out: The initial effort of feminist critics was to revise orthodox male
literary history, exposing sexual stereotyping in canonical texts and reinterpreting or
reviving the works of women writers."

The feminine viewpoint was ignored in literary criticism due to male supremacy. Virginia
Woolf was the forerunner of the freedom of thought and expression for women. Virginia
Woolf, Mary Daly, Adriewne Rich and Margverite Duras "satirized the sterile narcissism of
male scholarship and celebrated women's fortunate exclusion from its patriarchal
methodolatory." Feminine criticism was based on "the authority of experience" of women
writers and thinkers. Thus, it is original and innovative. It is a powerful organ for the
expression of feminine sensibility and aspirations in innovative linguistic and stylistic
patterns.

Feminist criticism is concerned with the interpretation and reinterpretation of texts of

women writers. According to Elaine Showalter feminist criticism must be "women
experience centred, independent and intellectually coherent." According to her its
methodology should be clearly charted out and developed. "I must find its own subject, its
own system, its own theory, and its own voice." It is "a sustained investigation of literature
by women." It is the study of "women as writers, and its subjects are the history, styles,
themes, genres and structures of writing by women, the psychodynamics of female
creativity, the trajectory of the individual or the collective female career, and the
evolution of laws of female literary tradition." Showalter sums up "this specialised critical

625
discourse" in one word "gynocritics".

The feminist theorists are concerned with women's writings. There have been certain
studies which centre round the critical appraisal of women writers. They are Ellen More's
Literary Women (1976), Showalter's A Literature of Their Own (1977), Nina Baym's
Women's Fiction (1978), Sandra Gillbert and Susan Gubar's The Mad Woman in the Attic,
Margaret Homan's Women Writers and Poetic Identity (1980) and a large number of papers
and articles.

Feminist criticism widely differs from male centric criticism in the sense that it is concerned
with varied aspects of feminism. Feminist criticism in each country has a different centre,
which is related with one or other aspect of womanhood. Showalter sums up, "English
feminist criticism, essentially Marxist, stresses oppression, French feminist criticism,
especially psychoanalyst, stresses expression, American feminist criticism, essentially
textual, stresses expression. All, however, have become gynocentric." Gynocritics reveal
that they are concerned with something solid, enduring and real about the relation of
women to literary culture.

Feminist criticism is also concerned with women's language. Women writers have to
cultivate linguistic and stylistic devices which spontaneously express feminine sensibility and
individuality. Women must express themselves both "body and soul" in a feminist language.
Feminist criticism is also related with women's psyche and their culture.

626
 Multiple Choice Type Questions

1. Who is the first romantic critic according to Scott James, Saintsbury and others ?
a- Plato
b- Aristotle
c- Longinus
d- Dante

2. Horace's 'Ars Poetica' is in-

a- English
b- Latin
c- Greek
d- German

3. Among interlocutors who is Dryden himself ?

a- Crites
b- Eugenius
c- Lisideius
d- Neander

4. Who is the first exponent of 'practical criticism' ?

a- Sydney
b- Coleridge
c- Dryden
d- Addison

5. Which critical work was a reply to Stephen Gossom's 'School of Abuse' ?

a- Apology for poetry
b- Defence of poetry
c- An Essay on Dramatic Poesy
d- Ars Poetica

6. Which form of poetry did Johnson consider the highest ?

a- Ballad
b- Sonnet

627
c- Epic
d- Elegy

7. About whom spingrain said "Dramatic criticism in England began with him" ?
a- Ben Jonson
b- Sidney
c- Dryden
d- Johnson

8. Who among following approved the concept of tragi-comedy ?

a- Dryden
b- Johnson
c- Ben Jonson
d- Both (a) and (b)

9. Who among following disapproved the concept of tragi-comedy?

a- Ben Jonson
b- Sidney
c- Johnson
d- Both (a) and (b)

10. To whom Johnson called "a romantic snake in the classical grass"?
a- Gray
b- Collins
c- Milton
d- Spenser

11. Who said about Coleridge-"So then, there abide these three-Aristotle, Longinus and
Coleridge" ?
a- Arnold
b- T. S. Eliot
c- Saintsbury
d- Wordsworth

12. Who introduced Touchstone method in criticism ?

a- Johnson
628
b- Sidney
c- Coleridge
d- Arnold

13. According to Eliot, objective correlative does not exist in Shakespeare's -

a- Macbeth
b- Othello
c- Hamlet
d- None of these

14. T. S. Eliot was greatly influenced by Symbolist.

a- American
b- French
c- Russian
d- German

15. Which work by Eliot marks the begining of new criticism ?

a- The Sacred Wood
b- Family Reunion
c- The Hollow Men
d- None of these

16. Aristotle emphasized the unity of in drama.

a- Time
b- Action
c- Place
d- None of these

17. Aristotle considers superior to epic.

a- Comedy
b- Tragedy
c- Satire
d- Poetry

18. 'The Poetics' contains chapters.

a- 15
629
b- 26
c- 30
d- 35

19. 'The Poetics' is in the form ofa- Essays

b- Lecture notes of a teacher
c- Letters
d- None of these

20. It ignores ............ in its discussions.

a- Tragedy
b- Epic
c- Comedy
d- Lyric poetry

21. Aristotle was a/an-

a- Idealist
b- Transcendentalist
c- Realist
d- Humanist

22. Who has been called "the first comparative critic by Abercrombie" ?
a- Dryden
b- Johnson
c- Longinus
d- Sidney

23. 'Ars Poetica' has been called-

a- Bible of classicism
b- Epitome of romanticism
c- Mixture of romanticism and classicism
d- None of these

24. What is true about 'Ars Poetica' by Horace?

a- It is a poetic letter written to his two sons and a friend Piso
b- Horace called it Epistle to the Pisos
630
c- Quintilion named it 'Ars Poetica'
d- All are true

25. Horace closely follows -

a- Aristotle
b- Plato
c- Longinus
d- Dante

26. 'Timber' is the other name of Ben Jonson's -

a- Discoveries made upon men and matter
b- The Poetaster
c- Conversations with Drummond
d- None of these

27. Which writer/s among following does Dryden as Neander discuss about ?
a- Shakespeare
b- Ben Jonson
c- Beaument and Fletcher
d- All the above

28. Which play does he put as an example of a perfect modern English play ?
a- The Silent Woman
b- King Lear
c- A king or No King
d- Volpone

29. Who called Johnson 'a national hero' ?

a- T. S. Eliot
b- Carlyle
c- Arnold
d- Dryden

30. The pioneer of the psychological criticism is

a- I. A. Richards
b- Johnson
631
c- Longinus
d- Coleridge

31. The term 'New Criticism' was first used by

a- I. A. Richards
b- F. R. Leavis
c- J. E. Spingrarn
d- T. S. Eliot

32. Its chief exponents are-

a- I. A. Richards
b- F. R. Leavis and T. S. Eliot
c- William Empson
d- All the above

33. Who said, "Poetry is more philosophical and of higher value than history" ?
a- Plato
b- Aristotle
c- Longinus
d- Sidney

34. Who criticised poetry in this way "Poetry makes nothing happen" ?
a- Plato
b- Coleridge
c- W. H. Auden
d- Arnold

35. Who is associated with the phrase "Collective Unconscious"?

a- Darwin
b- C. G. Jung
c- Sigmund Freud
d- Arnold

36. Who is the first to make use of the historical method of criticism ?
a- Dryden
b- Johnson
632
c- Ben Jonson
d- Arnold

37. Who said-"The greatness of literature cannot be judged solely by literary standards" ?
a- T. S. Eliot
b- Arnold
c- Johnson
d- Sidney

38. The word 'decorum' is associated with

a- Longinus
b- Horace
c- Pope
d- Arnold

39. Who wrote 'Arts Poetigue' ?

a- Boileau
b- Horace
c- Longinus
d- Pope

40. Who wrote 'Defence of the Essay' ? a- Pope

b- Johnson
c- Dryden
d- Ben Jonson

41. Who said-"Life is a comedy for those who think and a tragedy for those who feel" ?
a- Meredith
b- T. S. Eliot
c- Arnold
d- Hardy

42. Who is considered the pioneer of 'New Criticism' ?

a- I. A. Richards
b- F. R. Leavis
c- Peacock
633
d- Newman

43. Who is considered first in English "to attempt extended descriptive criticism" ?
a- Johnson
b- Dryden
c- Arnold
d- T. S. Eliot

44. Who termed Dryden and Pope as classics of prose?

a- T. S. Eliot
b- Johnson
c- Arnold
d- Coleridge

45. Pope has written 'An Essay on Criticism' in-

a- Prose
b- Rhythmic prose
c- Verse
d- None of these

46. The 'Four Age of Poetry' against which Shelley defends poetry is written by-
a- Sidney'
b- Longinus
c- Love Peacock
d- Plato

47. The theory of Art for Life's sake is represented by-

a- Carlyle
b- Ruskin
c- Pater
d- Both (a) and (b)

48. Who calls Hamlet an 'Artistic failure' ?

a- T. S. Eliot
b- Arnold
c- I. A. Richards
634
d- Shelley

49. Who developed the central intelligence technique?

a- I. A. Richards
b- F. R. Leavis
c- Henry James
d- Robert Graves

50. What is denouncement ?

a- The ending of a tragedy
b- The climax in a tragedy
c- The ending of a comedy
d - The climax in a comedy

51. Who considered Dryden as "the father of English criticism, as the writer who first taught
us to determine upon principles the merit of composition"?
a- Matthew Arnold
b- Joseph Addison
c- Alexander Pope
d- Dr. Samuel Johnson

52. An Essay on Dramatic Poesy (1668) is written by -

a- John Dryden
b- Dr. Johnson
c- Addison
d- Pope

53. "To judge of poets is only the faculty of poets; and not of all poets but the best." Who
expressed this opinion ?
a- Ben Jonson
b- Dr. Johnson
c- Dryden
d- Addison

54. "Shakespeare was the Homer, or father of our dramatic poets, Jonson was the Virgil, the
pattern of elaborate writing, I admire him but I love Shakespeare." Who expressed this
635
opinion?
a- S.T. Coleridge
b- Ben Jonson
c- Dr. Johnson
d- John Dryden

55. A critic observes : "The great work of Dryden in criticism is that at the right moment he
became conscious of the necessity of affirming the native element in literature." Name the
critic -
a- T.S. Eliot
b- William Hazlitt
c- Matthew Arnold
d- I.A. Richards

56. Dryden's An Essay on Dramatic Poesy marks "this perfection of tone in matters of
comparative literature, that was not equalled before or since, is Dryden's paramount critical
achievement." Who expressed this opinion?
a- E.M.W. Tillyard
b- David Daiches
c- W.J. Atkins
d- F.R. Leavis

57. Who first used the words fancy and imagination in his theory of poetry ?
a- S.T. Coleridge
b- John Dryden
c- Joseph Addison
d- William Wordsworth

58. Who among the following critics did not approve the tragi-comedy ?
a- Aristotle
b- Longinus
c- Dante
d- Sidney

59. Who wrote The Pleasures of Imagination ?

a- Dr. Johnson
636
b- Joseph Addison
c- Alexander Pope
d- S.T. Coleridge

60. A critic's purpose was to bring "philosophy out of closets and libraries, schools and
colleges to dwell in clubs and assemblies, at tea tables and in coffee houses." Who was the
critic?
a- Dr. Johnson
b- Matthew Arnold
c- Joseph Addison
d- Alexander Pope

61. Who defined poetry as "the art of uniting pleasure with truth, by calling imagination to
the help of reason" in The Life of Milton?
a- T.S. Eliot
b- Dr. Johnson
c- Leslie Stephen
d- Edmund Gosse

62. In which book Dr. Johnson defines a critic as "a man skilled in the art of judging
literature, a man able to distinguish the faults and beauties of writing" ?
a- Dictionary
b- The Lives of Poets
c- Preface to Shakespeare
d- The Rambler

63. Dr. Johnson is "one of the three greatest critics of poetry, the other two being Dryden
and Coleridge." Who expressed this opinion?
a- Matthew Arnold
b- George Saintsbury
c- T.S. Eliot
d- David Daiches

64. Who remarked about Dr. Johnson : "No one had like Johnson the faculty of teaching
inferior minds the art of thinking" ?
a- Joseph Addison
637
b- Edmund Burke
c- T.S. Eliot
d- Sir Joseph Reynolds

65. Who laid emphasis on "the inner life" and "inner experience" in The Sublime and the
Beautiful ?
a- Burke
b- Kant
c- Lessing
d- Coleridge

66. Who wrote the Critique of Judgement ?

a- Coleridge
b- Wordsworth
c- Kant
d- Arnold

67 When was the Preface to The Lyrical Ballads published?

a- 1797
b- 1798
c- 1800
d- 1802

68. In which work Wordsworth observed that his poems were "an experiment to ascertain
how for the language of conversation in the middle and lower classes of society is adapted
to the purpose of poetic pleasure"?
a- The Preface 1798
b- The Preface 1800
c- The Advertisement of Lyrical Ballads
d- Note on the Thorn

69. By "selection of language really used by men" Wordsworth means-

a- The language of the educated class
b- The language of common man
c- The language of men in a state of vivid sensation
d - The language of scholars
638
70. To whom Wordsworth wrote : "Every great poet is a teacher. I wish either to be
considered as a teacher or as nothing" ?
a- Beaumont
b- Coleridge
c- Shelley
d- Byron

71. Who said about Coleridge's Biographia Literaria (1817) that it is "among the few which
constitute the very Bible of criticism"
a- T.S. Eliot
b- George Saintsbury
c- Matthew Arnold
d- S.A. Brook

72. Who introduced the term "esmeplastic in agination" ?

a- Wordsworth
b- Coleridge
c- Shelley
d- T.S. Eliot

73. The term esmeplastic means –

a- To shape into one
b- To divide and diversify
c- To Assemble together
d- None of these

74. Who made the comment that fancy is "the arbitrary to bringing together of things that
lie remote and forming them into a unity"
a- Dryden
b- Wordsworth
c- Coleridge
d- Arnold

75. The term "willing suspension of disbelief" was first used in -

a- The Lyrical Ballads
b- An Essay on Dramatic Poesy
639
c- The Life of Milton
d- The Biographia Literaria

76. A critic observed about Coleridge that he "with his authority due to his great reading,
probably did much more than Wordsworth to bring attention to the profundity of the
philosophic problems into which the study of poetry may take us." Name the critica- Scott
James
b- T.S. Eliot
c- George Saintsbury
d- George Watson

77. Shelley's A Defence of Poetry (1846) was occasioned by the publication of

a- Coleridge's Biographia Literaria
b- William Hazlitt's English Comic Writers
c- Peacock's Four Ages of Poetry
d- John Ruskin's Modern Painters

78. Who made the following comments : "Poets are the unacknowledge legislators of the
world" and poetry records the best and happiest moments of the happiest and best minds
?"
a- John Dryden
b- T.S. Eliot
c- S.T. Coleridge
d- P:B. Shelley

ANSWER

1 (C) 2. (B) 3. (D) 4. (C) 5. (A)6. (C) 7. (B) 8. (D) 9. (D) 10. (A) 11. (C) 12. (D) 13. (C) 14. (B) 15
.(A) 16. (B) 17. (B) 18. (B) 19. (B) 20. (D)21 (C) 22. (C) 23. (A) 24. (D) 25. (A) 26.(A) 27. (D) 28.
(A) 29. (B) 30. (A) 31. (C)32 (D) 33. (B) 34. (C) 35. (B) 36. (A) 37.(A) 38. (B) 39. (A) 40. (C) 41.
(A) 42. (A)43 (B) 44. (C) 45. (C) 46. (C) 47. (D) 48.(A) 49. (C) 50. (C) 51. (D) 52. (A) 53. (A)54
(D) 55. (A) 56. (A) 57. (B) 58. (A) 59.(B) 60. (C) 61. (A) 62. (A) 63. (C) 64. (D)65 (A) 66. (C) 67.
(B) 68. (C) 69. (C) 70.(A) 71. (B) 72. (B) 73. (A) 74. (C) 75. (D)
76 (B) 77. (C) 78. (D)

640
 UNSOLVED QUESTIONS:

79. Who wrote the Modern Painters and The Seven Lamps of Architecture?
a- William Hazlitt
b- John Ruskin
c- Thomas Carlyle
d- T.S. Eliot

80. Who said, "Not only sculpture, but all other fine arts, must be for the people. They must
be didactic to the people ?
a- John Dryden
b- Matthew Arnold
c- John Ruskin
d- T.S. Eliot

81. Appreciations is written by

a- Walter Pater
b- Oscar Wilde
c- Thomas Carlyle
d- Matthew Arnold

82. "Beauty is the symbol of symbols. Beauty reveals everything because it expresses
nothing." Who made this comment ?
a- Oscar Wilde
b- Water Pater
c- E.A. Poe
d- Shelley

83. Which of the following arrangements of Matthew Arnold's critical works is in the correct
chronological sequence ?
a- Preface to the Poems - On Translating Homer -Essays in Criticism (Ist Series) Culture and
Anarchy (1869) - Essays in Criticism (II Series)
b- On Translating Homer - Culture and Anarchy -Essays in Criticism (Ist and IInd Series),
Preface to the Poems,
c- Culture and Anarchy - Preface to Poems Essays in Criticism (Ist and II Series) - On

641
Translating Homer
d- None of these

84. The function of criticism is not merely "judgement in literature" but "a disinterested
endeavour to learn and propagate the best that is known and thoughtin the world, and thus
to establish a current of fresh and new ideas." Who expressed this opinion ?
a- Ruskin
b- Carlyle
c- Arnold
d- I.A. Richards

85. In which essay Arnold defines poetry as "a criticism of life under the conditions fixed for
such a criticism by the laws of poetic truth and poetic beauty ?"
a- Wordsworth
b- Shelley
c- The Study of Poetry
d - None of these

86. "An excellent action", according to Arnold, must have-

a- High seriousness and weight of meaning
b- Agony and ecstasy
c- An excitement of human emotions
d- None of these

87. Acritic commented on Arnold's contribution to criticism : "Aristotle shows us the critic in
relation to art. Arnold shows us the critic in relation to the public.
Aristotle dissects a work of art, Arnold dissects a critic." Who made this comment ?
a- George Saintsbury
b- J.W.H. Atkins
c- David Daiches
d- Scott James

88. Which of the following arrangements of T.S. Eliot's critical works is in the correct
chronological order?
a- The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism -Selected. Essays - On Poetry and Poets To
Criticise the Critic - The Sacred Wood
642
b- The Sacred Wood - On Poetry and Poets To Criticise the Critic - Selected Essays The Use of
Poetry and the Use of Criticism
c- Selected Essays - TO Criticise the Critic The Sacred Wood - On Poetry and Poets The Use of
Poetry and the Use of Criticism
d- None of these

89. In which essay of T.S. Eliot the phrase "dissociation of sensibility" occurs ?
a- Hamlet and His Problems b- The Metaphysical Poets
c- Tradition and Individual Talent
d- None of these

90. Who, according to T.S. Eliot, had developed "Unified sensibility" ?

a- The Elizabethans and Jacobeans
b- The Neo-Classicists
c- The Romantics
d - The Victorians

91. Who among the following is the pioneer of new criticism ?

a- T.S. Eliot
b- I.A. Richards
c- F.R. Leavis
d- Allan Tate

92. The Principles of Literary Criticism is written by −

a- I.A. Richards
b- T.S. Eliot
c- R.P. Blackmur
d- F.R. Leavis

93. Which of the following arrangements of F.R. Leavis critical works is in the correct
chronological order ?
a- The Common Pursuit - Revaluation - The Great Tradition - New Bearings in English Poetry
b- New Bearings in English Poetry Revaluation -The Great Tradition - The Common Pursuit
c- Revaluation - The Common Pursuit - The Great Tradition - New Bearings in English Poetry
d- None of these

643
94. Who calls F.R. Leavis "a practical critic" ?
a- Lawrence Lerner
b- George Watson
c- William K. Wimsatt
d- Allen Tate

95. Which of the following books introduced the term new criticism ?
a- I.A. Richard's The Principles of Literary Criticism
b- F.R. Leavis' The Great Tradition
c- T.S. Eliot's The Sacred Wood
d- John Gowe Ransome's book The New Criticism

96. Identify the correct group consisting of modern critics -

a- J.C. Ransome - R.P. Blackmur - Allen Tate Robert Pen Warren - William K. Wimsatt
b- Rene Wellek - William Empson - I.A. Richards - R.S. Gane - M.C. Keon
c- F.R. Leavis - I.A. Richards - Elaine Showalter -David Lodge - Margaret Homan
d- None of these

97. Seven Types of Ambiguity (1930) is written by -

a- I.A. Richards
b- J.C. Ransome
c- William Empson
d- Austin Warren

98. "A poem should not mean but be" is found in-
a- William Empson's Seven Types of Ambiguity
b- William K. Wimsatt's The Verbal leon
c- M.C. Beardsley's The Intentional Fallacy
d- None of these

99. New criticism is applied to a- Anglo-American criticism

b- Anglo-African criticism
c- Indian-English criticism
d - None of these

644
100. Structuralism was popularised by -
a- Ferdinand De Saussure's book Courses in General Linguistics
b- I.A. Richard's Meaning of Meaning
c- Wolfgang Iser's The Reading Process : A Phenomenological Approach
d- J. Hillis Miller's The Disappearance of God.

101. Historically, post-structuralism had its origin in -

a- January 1966
b- October 1966
c- January 1970
d- March, 1971

102. A renowned critic enunciated the doctrine of Deconstruction. Who is that critic?
a- Jacques Derrida
b- Geoffrey Hartman
c- J.H. Miller
d- M.H. Abrames

103. Name the critic who enunciated the theory of Deconstruction

a- Jacques Derrida
b- Edward Sevid
c- Nina Baym
d- Stanley Fish

104. Who pioneered the Feminist criticism ? a- Patrocinio P. Schweickart

b- Gyatri C. Spivak
c- Elain Showalter
d - None of these

105. Identify the correct group of the exponents of the Reader-Response Theory or the
Recpetion Theory-
a- E.D. Hirsch - Stamley Fish - Patrocinia P. Schweickart - Janathan Culler
b- J. Hillis Miller - Michel Foucault - Terry Egleton - Stephen Greenblat
c- Rene Wellek - Roman Jakabson - Edward Said
d- None of these

645
106. Bhabani Bhattacharya was awarded the Sahitya Academy Award (1967) for his famous
novel
a- Music for Mohini
b- So Many Hungers
c- A Goddess Named Gold
d- Shadow From Ladakh

107. Which is the latest novel, published in 2005, of Salman Rushdie?

a- Shalimar the Clown
b- The Moor's Last Sigh
c- The Satanic Versei
d- fury

108. The Company of Women and Delhi are novels written by -

a- Khushwant Singh
b- Chaman Mahal c- Manohar Malgonkar
d- Vikram Seth

109. Who among the following novelists was influenced by Camu, Sartre, Kierkegard, the
Gita and Mahatma Gandhi ?
a- Bhabani Bhattacharya
b- Arun Joshi
c- Upmanyu Chatterjee
d- Amitav Ghosh

110. Vikram Seth's famous biography Two Lives was published in -

a- 2002
b- 2004
c- 2005
d- 2006

111. English August : An Indian Story (1988) is a famous novel, written by -

a- Vikram Seth
b- V.N. Arora
c- Upmanyu Chatterjee
d- Ranga Rao
646
112. Which among the following novels are written by Amitav Ghosh ?
a- The Circle of Reason - An Antique Land
b- The Brainfever Bird - Weight Loss
c- The Dark Dancer - Too Long in the West
d- Bone's Prayer - Nude Before God

113. David Davidar in his debut novel The House of Blue Mangoes created a fictional region
known as -
a- Chevathar
b- Malgudi
c- Harit Pradesh
d- Brij Bhumi

114. Name the author of the following novels - One Night at the Call Centre and five Point
Someone-
a- Picolyer
b- Chetan Bhagat
c- Anurag Mathur
d- Vikram Chandra

115. Attia Hossain's the only novel (1960) is the story of Laila's revolt against the joint family
system. Name the novel- a- A Stronger Climate
b- Sunlight on a Broken Column
c- The Zigzag Way
d- Alphabet of Lust

116. Arundhati Roy's debut novel The God of Small Things appeared in-
a- 1997
b- 1998
c- 2000
d- 2001

117. Kiran Desai's latest novel, which appeared in 2006, deals with "poverty and patterns
that repeat across generations. Which is the novel ?
a- Hullaballo in the Gonava Orchard
b- The Inheritance of Loss
647
c- Ancient Promises
d- None of these

118. The word "Volksgeist" means

a- The spirit of the age
b- (As per) tradition, custom and consensus
c- The essence of something
d- None of these

119. When did the hundred years' war which started in 1337 come to an end ?
a- 1450
b- 1451
c- 1452
d- 1453

120. The Age of chivalry was basically an age of

a- war
b- love
c- love, war and religion
d- religion

121. Cervantes practically rang the death-knell of

a- war
b- love
c- religion
d- chivalry

122. The "Black Death" in England as came in 1348 was known by this name because-
a- Black, knotty boils appeared on the bodies of the victims
b- The country was attached by black vultures feeding on dead bodies
c- The whole country became black with dead bodies
d- It was a mournful event compelling people to wear black dress.

123. When did Peasants' Revolt take place in England?

a- ln⁡ 1380
b- ln⁡ 1384
648
c- ln⁡ 1381
d- ln⁡ 1390

124. Who was the king in England at the time of Peasants' Revolt?
a- Richard II
b- Richard III
c- Henry I
d- King John

125. Which one of the following was a contemporary of Chaucer-

a- Spenser
b- Herrick
c- Robert Graves
d- John Gowcr

126. The famous work of Boccaccio is -

a- Decameron
b- Divine Comedy
c- Essays
d- A collection of sonnets

127. When did Petrarch die?

a- 1382
b- 1389
c- 1370
d- 1374

128. G.V. Desai's Hali (1950) is -

a- An autobiographical play in poetic prose
b- A political and social play in terse and precise prose
c- A romantic play on love in verse
d- None of these

129. Murder At the Prayer Meeting (1976), a play on the murder of Mahatma Gandhi, is full
of echoes from Eliot's Murder in the Cathedral. Who wrote this play ?
a- Guru Charan Das
649
b- Lakhan Deb
c- Pratap Sharma
d- Gieve Patel

130. Shiva K. Kumar wrote -

a- Touch of Brightness
b- Tiger's Claw
c- Last Wedding Anniversary
d- Jakhoo Villa

131. Who among the following dramatists introduced documentary and cinetic technique in
Indian English drama ?
a- Nissim Ezekiel
b- J.M. Billimoria
c- Asif Currimbhoy
d- G.V. Desani

132. Which of the following arrangements of Asif Currimbhoy's plays is in the correct
chronological sequence?
a- The Captive - Goa - Inquilab - The Refugee -Sonar Bangla - Om Mani Padme Hum The
Dissident MLA
b- Om Mane Padme Hum - Sonar Bangla - Goa The Captures - The Refugee - Inquilab - The
Dissident M.L.A.
c- The Dissident M.L.A. - Inquilab - Goa - Sonar Bangla - Om Mane Padme Hum - The
Captives - The Refugee
d- None of these

133. Girish Karnad's Tughlaq and Tale. Danda are-

a- Realistic plays
b- Historical plays
c- Romantic plays
d- Melodramatic plays

134. Identify the plays in which Karnad uses folk tales-

a- Tughlaq - Tale Danda
b- Hayavadana - Naga Mandala
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c- The Fire and the Rain and - Bali, the Sacrifice
d- None of these

135. Mahesh Dattani got the Sahitya Academy Award in 1998 for his famous play-
a- Final Solutions
b- Do the Needful
c- Tara
d- Clearing the Rubble

136. Name the dramatist who founded his own theatre group :
a- Girish Karnad
b- Asif Currimbhoy
c- Nissim Ezekiel
d- Mahesh Dattani

137. Who is the first Indian to write in English ?

a- Raja Ram Mohan Roy
b- Keshab Chandra Sen
c- Dadabhai Nauroji
d- Maha Govind Ranade

138. Who has written the followitig line: "Chaucer symbolises, as no other writer does, The
Middle Ages."
a- Legouis
b- Hugh Walker
c- Compton-Rickett
d- Hudson

139. What is meant by "Grub Street" ?

a- The literary scene of hacks' crowds during Pope's period
b- Unhygienic streets of London
c- Streets full of worms
d- Plague-infested streets

140. Who wrote: "Idylls of the King"?

a- Tennyson
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b- Browning
c- Spenser
d- Keats

141. Who started the Lollards' Movement?

a- John Gower
b- Langland
c- Wyclif
d- WatTylar

142. Who wrote the following lines-

"He loved gold in special,
For, gold in physic is a cordial."
a- Langland
b- Wyclif
c- John Ball
d- Chaucer

143. Sir Andrew Freeport is a member of

a- The Royal Society of Science
b- The Spectator Club
c- The Royal Academy of Art
d- The Royal Society of Physicians

144 What could be another name for Renaissancea- The New Learning
b- The Reformation
c- The Prostantism
d- Humanism

145. Who wrote: 'Hudibras' -

a- Butler
b- Addison
c- Steele
d- Goldsmith

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146. When was the poet John Gay born ?
a- 1675
b- 1681
c- 1685
d- 1687

147. "London" by Dr. Johnson is-

a- An epic
b- A verse satire
c- A prose satire
d- A critical work

148. Cowper was born in-

a- 1730
b- 1733
c- 1731
d- 1729

149. Who wrote Moll Flanders ?

a- Richardson
b- Fielding
c- Smollett
d- Defoe

150. The Gothic novel was primarily a novel of

a- Pity
b- Terror
c- Love
d- Description of nature

151. When did Areopagitica appear ?

a- ln⁡ 1641
b- ln⁡ 1642
c- ln⁡ 1643
d- ln⁡ 1644

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152. The main plank ofAreopagitica's argument was for the freedom of-
a- the press
b- worship
c- movement
d- forming a political party

153. Philip Wakem is a character ina- The Middlemarch

b- Great Expectations
c- The Mill on the Floss
d- Waiting for Godot

154. When was Walter Pater born ?

a- ln⁡ 1836
b- ln⁡ 1837
c- ln⁡ 1839
d- In 1841

155. Which one of the following writers is not dealt with in Pater's 'Appreciations'
a- Southey
b- Lamb
c- Coleridge
d- Rossetti

156. 'Unto This Last' is a work by

a- Carlyle
b- Pater
c- Oscar Wilde
d- John Ruskin

157. Thomas Gradgrind is a character that occurs in-

a- Hard Times
b- Candida
c- Wasteland
d- Jude the Obscure

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158. Which one among the following cannot strictly be called the writer of novels of
purpose
a- Dickens
b- Newman
c- Jane Austen
d- Kingsley

159. Who among the following cannot be termed one of the Four Wheels of English Novel in
the Eighteenth century ?
a- Jane Austen
b- Smollett
c- Sterne
d- Fielding

160. Who is the writer of "The Blessed Damozel" ?

a- Christina Rossetti
b- Emile Bronte
c- D.G. Rossetti
d- W.B. Yeats

161. Which is the correct chronological order ?

a- Utopia-Dr. Faustus - Areopagitica._Maud
b- Henry V - The Faery Qucene-Lyrical Ballads-The Compleat Angler
c- Christabel-Canterbury Tales-Queen MabCorsair
d- Kubla Khan-Othello- Paradise LostMichael

162. The word "compromise" is used with..age

a- Elizabethan
b- Modern
c- Victorian
d- Chaucerian

163. Which one of the following poets may to some extent be considered a continental
poet-
a- Tennyson
b- Spenser
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c- Eliot
d- Byron

164. Which one among the following favoured most the imperialistic tendencies -
a- Shelley
b- Spenser
c- Eliot
d- Kipling

165. Who among the following was not a Critic?

a- [Link]
b- Ruskin
c- Dryden
d- Tennyson

166. "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity" was the slogan of-

a- French Revolution
b- Bolshevik Revolution
c- American Civil War
d- Indian Freedom Movement

167. Francis Thompson the poet, died in

a- 1910
b- 1909
c- 1907
d- 1906

168. The most important aspect of Jane Austen's novels is -

a- Superb characterization
b- Perfect Plot construction
c- High moral sense
d- Lively dialogues

169. The circle of Jane Austen's novels is

a- The whole universe
b- The whole word
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c- The whole of England
d- A limited number of families

170. Which one among the following was not a contemporary or predecessor of
Shakespeare ?
a- Marlowe
b- Kyd
c- Fry
d- Greene

171. Who among the following was not a prose writer-

a- Ascham
b- Coleridge
c- Hooker
d- Raleigh

172. Who among the following was not a character-

a- Wordsworth
b- Joseph Hall
c- John Earle
d- Sir Thomas Overbury

173. Who among the following was not an essayist of the seventeenth century-
a- Halifax
b- Sir Thomas Browne
c- Hazlitt
d- Sir William Temple

174. About whom has it been said- "He knew small Latin and less Greek"
a- Ben Jonson
b- Shakespeare
c- Milton
d- Aristotle

175. Who said about Shakespeare-"He was not of age but of ages"
a- Jonson
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b- Johnson
c- Dryden
d- Arnold

176. Pinpoint the correct chronological sequence

a- Petrarch-Spenser-Wordsworth-Marlowe
b- Wyclif-Lyly -Shelley -Tennyson
c- Pope - Chaucer -Donne - Ycats
d- [Link]-Dryden-Sidney - Yeats

177. Who wrote: 'Modern Painters'-

a- Rossetti
b- Reynolds
c- Hazlitt
d- Ruskin

178. Who among the following critics said that "criticism as it was first instituted by
Aristotle, was meant a standard of judging well" ?
a- Dryden
b- Sir Philip Sidney
c- T.S. Eliot
d- M. Arnold

179. Who first of all propounded the theory of imitation in art and literature and said that
"the tragic poet is an imitator, and therefore, like all other imitators he is twice removed
from reality ?
a- Longinus
b- Euripides
c- Aristotle
d- Plato

180. Who among the following critics classified Imitation according to its medium, its object
and its manner ?
a- Plato
b- Longinus
c- Aristotle
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d- Dryden

181. A critic commented that "from the Aristotelian and Greek point of view art is an
element in the higher life of the community; the pleasure it affords is an enduring pleasure,
an aesthetic enjoyment which is not divorced from civic ends." Who is he ?
a- I.A. Richards
b- Middleton Murray
c- Doker Wilson
d- Butcher

182. Anagnorisis means -

a- Recognition
b- Oblivion
c- Contemplation
d- Futuristic vision

183. Peripeteia means -

a- A change from ignorance to knowledge
b- A reversal of intention, or a deed done in blindness defeating its own purpose
c- A change in the hero's fortune from good to bad
d- None of these

184. Hamartia means-

a- The error of judgement or some weakness of character
b- A moral failing
c- Guessing the mark
d- A change of fortune

185. Who is called "the first romantic critic"?

a- Horace
b- Dante
c- Sir Philip Sidney
d- Longinus

186. "The sublime consists in a certain loftinels and consummateness of language, and it is
by this and this only that the greatest poets and prose writers have won pre-eminence and
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lasting fame." Who expressed this opinion ?
a- Longinus
b- Plato
c- Coleridge
d- Pater

187. He was "a classicist in taste, a romanticist in temper and an idealist at heart." Who was
he?
a- Plato
b- Aristotle
c- Longinus
d- Sidney

188. Who wrote Ars Poetica, which is known as The Art of Poetry?
a- Aristophanes
b- Quintilian
c- Horace
d- Dante

189. According to a critic the function of poetry is "to instruct and to delight." Who is the
critic ?
a- Ben Jonson
b- Horace
c- Arnold
d- Longinus

190. Who among the following critics enunciated the theory the Illustrious Vernacular ?
a- Dante
b- Horace
c- Quintilian
d- Longinus

191. Identify the correct group consisting of the Cambridge group of critics -
a- Ben Jonson - Sir Philip Sidney - Edward Dyers
b- Sir John Cheke - Roger Ascham - Thomas Wilson
c- Longinus - Gabriel Harvey - Webb
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d- None of these

192. Which of the following group consists of the members of Areopagus, a literary circle ?
a- Sir Philip Sidney - Gabriel Harvey - Edward Dyers
b- Ben Jonson - Longinus - Dante
c- Roger Ascham - Sir John Cheke - Thomas Wilson
d- None of these

193. Who wrote An Apology For Poetry (1580) ?

a- Roger Ascham
b- Ben Jonson
c- Sir Philip Sidney
d- Edmund Spenser

194. Sir Philip Sidney's An Apology For Poetry

was occasioned by the publication of
a- Stephen Gosson's treatise The School of Abuse (1579)
b- Roger Ascham's The Schoolmaster (1568)
c- Wilson's The Art of Rhetoric
d- Webb's the Discourse of English Poetry

195. Who wrote the Timber or Discoveries?

a- Stephen Gosson
b- Roger Ascham
c- Ben Jonson
d- John Dryden

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