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Helpful Friday, September 26, 2014 09:50 AM

Ma english final ku
 
[SIZE="4"]Q1:Write a note on Hamartia?

[COLOR="DarkRed"][B][U]Definition of Hamartia[/U][/B][/COLOR]

Hamartia is a personal error in a protagonist’s personality that brings about his tragic downfall in a tragedy. This defect in a hero’s personality is also known as a “tragic flaw.

Aristotle used the word in his “Poetics” where it is taken as a mistake or error in judgment. The term envelops wrongdoings which may be accidental or deliberate. One of the classic examples of hamartia is where a hero wants to achieve something but, while doing so, he commits an intentional or accidental error and he ends up achieving exactly the opposite with disastrous results. Such a downfall is often marked by a reversal of fortune.
Hamartia and Hubris

A typical example of hamartia in tragedies is “hubris” which is excessive pride and ego in a hero’s character which ultimately brings his tragic downfall in a tragedy. In Greek tragedies, the “hubristic” actions of a hero, in a powerful position, causes his shame and humiliation.

[B][U][COLOR="RoyalBlue"][SIZE="4"]Examples of Hamartia in Literature[/SIZE][/COLOR][/U][/B]

[B][U][COLOR="RoyalBlue"][SIZE="4"]Example no.1
[/SIZE][/COLOR][/U][/B]
Hamlet’s tragic flaw in Shakespeare’s play “Hamlet” determines his tragic downfall. Hamlet’s hamartia is his indecisiveness. He cannot make up his mind about the dilemmas he confronts. He reveals his state of mind in the following lines from Act 3 Scene 1 of the play:

“To be, or not to be–that is the question:
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles
And by opposing end them. To die, to sleep…”
He wants to kill his father’s murderer “Claudius” but ruined his life by delaying acting as he looks for proof to justify his action. In the process he spoils his relation with his mother and sends “Ophelia” into such a state of depression that she commits suicide. This indecision got almost everyone killed at the end of the play. He killed “Claudius” by assuming fake madness because of his indecisiveness in action so that he will not be asked for any justification.
[B][U][COLOR="RoyalBlue"][SIZE="4"]
Example no.2[/SIZE][/COLOR][/U][/B]
Among the hamartia examples in literature, one of the best can be found in Marlowe’s “Doctor Faustus”. The tragic flaw of Faustus was his ambitious nature. Despite being a respected scholar, he sold his soul to “Lucifer” by signing a contract with his blood for achieving ultimate power and limitless pleasure in this world. He learns the art of black magic and defies Christianity. We see a tragic conflict where Faustus thinks about repenting but it is all too late. Finally, the devils takes his soul away to Hell and he is suffers eternal damnation because of his over-ambition.
[B][U][COLOR="RoyalBlue"][SIZE="4"]
Example no.3[/SIZE][/COLOR][/U][/B]

“Victor” in Mary Shelley’s novel “Frankenstein” is another character whose down fall is caused by a tragic error. His “hubris” or extreme pride and arrogance decide his fate in the narrative. He strives to become an unparalleled scientist and creates a “monster” which ultimately becomes the cause of his disaster.

[B][U][COLOR="RoyalBlue"][SIZE="4"]Function of Hamartia[/SIZE][/COLOR][/U][/B]

Hamartia imparts the sense of pity and fear in the audience of the readers. The audience or the readers identify with the tragic hero as, like them, his character is a mixture of good and bad qualities. They feel pity for the reversal of fortune that he undergoes. This arouses a feeling of pity in them. Similarly, by witnessing a tragic hero suffer due to his own flaw, the audience or the readers may fear the same fate may befall them if they indulge in similar kinds of action.

Therefore, hamartia may be employed for a moral purpose to encourage people to improve their characters by removing the flaws that can cause a tragedy in their lives.
[/SIZE]

Helpful Friday, September 26, 2014 11:15 AM

Q2: Write constituents or elements of tragedy?



[B][COLOR="Blue"]Aristotle’s Ideas About Tragedy[/COLOR][/B]

Aristotle was one of the greatest philosophers of Ancient Greece. A philosopher looks for ideal forms, and tries to
explain the nature of reality. The search for ideal forms led Aristotle to explore many subjects. His analysis of the
ideal form of tragic plays became a guideline for later playwrights in Western civilization. For centuries, European
playwrights like William Shakespeare tried to write plays that would match the ideals of Aristotle’s model.
Drama was not invented by Aristotle. In fact, he used examples from the works of famous Greek playwrights such as Sophocles to illustrate his main ideas. The Greeks believed that tragedy was the highest form of drama, and Aristotle’s ideas about tragedy we re based on this belief.

[B][COLOR="Blue"]Aristotle’s Definition of Tragedy.[/COLOR][/B]

“A tragedy is the imitation of an action that is serious an d also, a s having
magnitude, complete in itself; in appropriate and pleasurable language;...
in a dramatic rather than narrative form; with incidents arousing pity and fear,
wherewith to accomplish a catharsis of these emotions.”

1. “the imitation of an action that is serious and also, as having magnitude, complete in itself;”

This means that a good tragedy deals with one issue that is very “serious.” You can’t have a tragedy about something
trivial like breaking a fingernail. “Magnitude” here means great importance. The issue has to be serious and very,
very important. That’s why a lot of tragedies deal with someone’s death. “Complete in itself” means that the play
must stick to the one issue; otherwise, the audience will get lost in the plot.

2. “in appropriate and pleasurable language:”
Ancient Greek tragedy had a chorus whose role was to comment on the action of the play. The chorus sometimes
sang their part. Aristotle said that the language should be easy to listen to. It should have rhythm and also good
harmony for the lines that were sung.

3. “in a dramatic rather than narrative form;”
To narrate a story is simply to tell the story, like telling a friend what happened over the weekend. In a play, the storymust be dramatized or acted out.

4. “with incidents arousing pity and fear,”
In a tragedy, the events or episodes in the play should lead the audience to feel very sorry for the main character--the
tragic hero. The audience should also feel afraid for the hero as he moves toward a destructive end.

5. “wherewith to accomplish a catharsis of these emotions.”
As the play moves along, the events should build up the emotions of pity and fear. A catharsis is a purging, or
cleansing of the emotions--a release o f tension. In a tragedy, this is often a moment o f revelation when the tragic
hero “falls flat on his face,” and the audience can finally “explode.”

[B][U][COLOR="Blue"]Aristotle’s Elements of Tragedy[/COLOR][/U][/B]

Aristotle said that tragedy has six main elements:
1. Plot; 2. Character; 3. Thought;
4. Diction; 5. Melody; 6. Spectacle.

These will be described from least important to most important.
The last four elements (Thought, Diction, Melody, and Spectacle) are the least important, but Aristotle felt they must
be done well for the play to succeed.
[B][COLOR="Blue"][I]
Thought[/I][/COLOR][/B] is the power of saying whatever can be said and should be said at each moment of the plot. Do the lines
spoken by the actors make sense? Are they saying what should be said at each particular moment in the play?

[B][I][COLOR="Blue"]Diction[/COLOR][/I][/B] is the actual composition of the lines that are recited. Thought deals with what is said, and diction deals with how it is said. There are many ways to say something. A good playwright composes lines that say something
extremely well. In a good play, some lines are so well constructed that the audience can leave the play quoting the
lines exactly.

[B][I][COLOR="Blue"]Melody and Spectacle[/COLOR][/I][/B] are accessories. The Greeks sometime s used musical accomp animent. Aristotle said the music
(melody) has to blend in with the p lay appropriately. Spectac le refers to the staging of the play . Again, as with melody, the spectacle should be appropriate to the theme of the play.

[B][U][COLOR="Blue"]Character[/COLOR][/U][/B]
Character is the second most important element of tragedy. Each character has an essential quality or nature that is
revealed in the plot. The moral purpose o f each character must be clear to the audience. Th e characters should have four main qualities.
A. No matter who they are (hero or slave), the characters must be good in some way.
B. The characters should act appropriately for their gender and station in life.
C. The characters have to have believable personalities.
D. Each character must act consistently throughout the play. In other words, nothing should be done or said
that could be seen as “acting out of character.”

[B][U][COLOR="Blue"]Plot[/COLOR][/U][/B]
Aristotle felt that the action of the play (its plot) was the most important of the six elements.
He said, “All human happiness or misery takes the form of action... .Character gives us qualities, but it is in our
actions--what we do--that we are happy or miserable.”
1. There must be Unity of Plot. This has a lready bee n described in the definitio n which talks about “one complete
action.” Any events or episodes must be necessary to the main issue and must also be probable or believable.2. A good plot has Peripety or Discovery--sometimes both.
Peripety is the change from one state of things at the beginning of the play to the exact opposite
state by the end of the play. This could be something like the change from being rich to being poor, or from
being powerful to being powerless, or from being a ruler to being a beggar. The change that takes place in a
tragedy should take the main character (and possibly other characters) from a state of happiness to a state of
misery.
Discovery is a change from ignorance to knowled ge. This often happens to the tragic hero who starts out
“clueless” and slowly learns how he himself created the mess he ends up in at the end of the play.
3. Change by itself is not enough. The character involved in the change must have specific characteristics to arouse
the tragic emotions of pity and fear. Therefore, Aristotle said that there are three forms of plot that should be
avoided.
A. A totally good man must not pa ss from happiness to misery.
This will make the audience angry that bad things happened to him. They won’t pity him so much as be
angry for him.
B. A bad man mu st not pass from misery to hap piness.
This won’t appeal to the audience at all because they won’t want to see evil rewarded.
C. A bad man can not pass from happiness to misery.
The audience won’t feel sorry for him because they will believe he got what he deserved.
The true tragic hero cannot be too good or too bad, but he must end up in misery.
Aristotle concluded that the be st tragedy centers on a basically good man who changes from happiness to misery
because of some great error. For example, he might have a good quality, like pride, that gets out of hand.
4. The plot of a tragedy also involves some horrible or evil deed. Th e tragic hero either does it consciously, does it out
of ignorance, or mediates it (makes it easy for the deed to happen). For the audience to be horrified by the evil deed,
the evil has to be done to someone important to the tragic hero. If the hero kills his enemy, the deed won’t seem so
bad. On the other hand, if the hero kills someone he doesn't care about, the audience won’t care much either.

Helpful Tuesday, September 30, 2014 08:47 PM

Q4: Explain Law of Probability and necessity?
[B][U][COLOR="Magenta"]
LAW OF PROBABILITY AND NECESSITY:[/COLOR][/U][/B]

The law of probability in terms of tragedy simply means the probability that a given character will react to a given situation is high because of human nature. Aristotle argued that the 'Universality' of human nature dictates the probability of a character's reaction in a specific circumstance,

"A character must act in accordance with human nature - either through probability, i.e. what 'most of us' would do, or through necessity, i.e. what we are 'forced' to do. An action cannot seem arbitrary - otherwise not only will it violate the determinate structure and break unity, but it will also irritate an audience that sees no basis for the action in human behavior. "

So, for example, when Horatio sees Hamlet (and just about everyone else) dead at the end of the play, his immediate reaction is to kill himself. Suicide is a probable and plausible idea for Horatio to think about given the circumstance.

The poet, as has been already remarked, imposes order on the confused tangle of life. The poet eliminates the irrelevant matter, the nonessential, or the merely incidental. The law of probability and necessity refers to the internal structure of the poem. It brings about the close cohesion of the parts. There has got to be a ‘necessity’ about the events following one another. There has to be a ‘necessary’ relationship between the events, and between the characters and events. There is a probably causal relationship between the incidents.
One might argue that this kind of order and design is far removed from real life, in which things often happen without apparent cause. Things often happen in a haphazard manner, with no proper causal relationship in life. Why, then, should we say that poetry’s truth depends upon the law of probability and necessity, or order and the establishment of proper relationship between cause and effect ? The very fact that the poet selects his material and imposes order on it, and produces an effect of ‘inevitability’ about the sequence of events, embodies the essence of poetic truth. It is through this process of ordering the material into a cohesive whole that a poet achieves the idealization of appearances. The poet takes the haphazard material of the life as we see it. He imagines a cohesive while composed out of this material. He creates this cohesive whole out of the chaotic material. Thus the truth embodied in poetry is of a higher order than that of history.
[B][U]
Imaginative Truth[/U][/B]

The men and women we meet in poetry are not ‘real’ in the usual sense of term. They are always slightly different, either better or lower than average. Their thoughts and words are not thoughts and words of ordinary men and women. The probable laws of their behaviour cannot be measured against the standards of average humanity. The rules of ordinary experience do not govern the higher creations of- poetry. Poetry imitates the ‘essence’ and not the appearances. It reveals the ideal possibilities inherent in human life. All that the truth of poetry demands is that the actions of the character in the poem be logical. The events presented by the poet should have a relationship not only with one another, but also with the character placed in the midst of these events. Aristotle agrees that poetry presents not facts, but fiction. But this does not make poetry ‘unreal’ or ‘untrue’. The truth of poetry is a “higher reality*, because poetry rises above facts. In this it becomes ‘ideal’; it presents something as it might have been, or ought to be, according to the idea of the poet. It is the imaginative power which makes poetic truth different from historical truth. And it is this that makes poetry ‘universal’ and permanent in its truth.

[B]"Magenta"]Likely Impossibility is Preferable to Unlikely Possibility[U][COLOR="Magenta"][/COLOR][/U][/B]

Aristotle makes a valid statement in connection with poetic truth. He remarks that in pftetry the ‘likely impossibility is preferable to the ‘unlikely possibility’. The poet, Aristotle is quite willing to admit, tells lies; the poet is not concerned with actualities. But what matters, tells lies; the poet is not concerned with actualities. But what matters, is the way of telling these lies. It is of the utmost importance that these ‘lies’ be convincing, credible, probable. The most impossible occurrence, incident, or character becomes credible through the poet’s vivid handling. Indeed, we find that we are quite willing to believe the ‘fantastic’ in actual life even if it seems quite unlikely. But the same thing would appear incredible in art, if it is not presented in a ‘realistic’ manner. Poetic illusion has to be created with a master-touch, otherwise the required ‘suspension of disbelief will not be produced. It is’the poet’s artistic capabilities which can create this poetic illusion, by ordering the events in a causal sequence. It would then appear as if the events could have happened under a particular set of circumstances. Through the poet’s art, “the impossible not only becomes possible, but natural and even inevitable.”
Kinds of Improbabilities and Irrationalities
The probable is that which appears rational, and hence gains our credibility. Anything improbable is irrational. The impossible is that which is not possible physically. But the impossible can be made to look ‘probable’ if it is given a logical inevitability through art. The improbable does not really have a place in art. But there are some types of improbabilities which can be overcome in their presentation.
Material improbability, with regards to material facts, can be overcome. It can be made to look logically inevitable by artistic skill. Improbabilities are admitted in poetry as they are conducive to the heightening of the poetic effects of wonder and admiration. Homer, says Aristotle, could handle ‘lies’ very well.
The ‘irrational’ is much more difficult to handle if it is the introduction of the marvellous. But the supernatural elements are easily believed, if it is in accordance with the general beliefs and received opinion. The supernatural elements are easily admittable in epic poetry, but less so in tragedy which is presented on stage. On stage, irrationalities appear less credible.
In dramatic poetry, the events presented must be the logical and natural outcome of the preceding events. Each event has to lead naturally to the next. There is a complex interelationship between character and event in drama. Cause and effect have to be logically presented. Hence, the place for the irrational, the supernatural, and the marvellous is highly restricted in drama. Nor is there much place for ‘chance’ or ‘accident’. Chance events do not have rationality while drama requires its events to be governed by the law of probability and necessity. Chance is allowed only if the poet’s great skill can overcome its apparent irrationality.

[B][U][COLOR="Magenta"]Moral Improbability[/COLOR][/U][/B]

The one kind of improbability which cannot be overcome through the skill of any poet is ‘moral improbability’. This is the improbability arising out of the violation of the basic laws of human behaviour. These violate the very principles of human nature, and do not have a place in poetry at all. They cannot be glossed1 over by any skilful technique, for they are absolutely untrue, conceptually2 or really. Artistic truth depends on the basic truths of human nature—the eternal emotions, thoughts, feeling, and actions of human beings. If it violates these very objects of imitation, it cannot have any credibility. Logical and moral necessity are at all times to be adhered to.

[B][U][COLOR="Magenta"]Conclusion[/COLOR][/U][/B]

Poetry then, is ‘imitation’, but not a photographic presentation of the world of appearances and all its mundane trivialities. Poetry’s truth is based on the basic elements of human nature, the everlasting, universal aspects of human life. Poetry ignores the non-essentials, removes irrelevances, and concentrates on the essentials. It presents the ‘universal’, while history deals with particular events. Poetry takes the particular and makes it into the universal. But the process of imitation is in keeping with the law of logicality, probability and necessity. Poetic truth is higher than that of history. The particular object taken by the poet is transfigured, “so that the higher truth, the idea of the universal, shines thought it”. Aristotle defends poetry against the charge that it is full of lies.

Aristotle enunciates a doctrine which holds good for all ages—*the presence of a universal element in all great .poetry, accounting for its permanent appeal, while at the same time he showed how a reconciliation might be effected between poetry and philosophy. “Plato had indeed shown that an element of intuition was common to the processes of philosopher and poet alike; but it remained for Aristotle to complete the vindication of poetry, and to recommend the claims of philosophy and poetry by showing that both were avenues to the higher truth.”

Helpful Friday, October 03, 2014 07:09 PM

[B][I][U][COLOR="Green"]PAPER 2 (POETRY)[/COLOR][/U][/I][/B]

[COLOR="Blue"][B]
Q5: WILLIAM WORDSWORTH IS THE POET OF EYE AND EAR AND AS POET OF MAN, REFER TO HIS POEMS?[/B][/COLOR]

In general, these designations of being the poet of the "eye and ear" refer to Wordsworth's tendency to describe sights and sounds of events in nature with such profundity that it is as if he's describing thought. Shelley and other subsequent critics have said this of Wordsworth. Wordsworth was (and is) known to have described common, ordinary things (especially in nature) in his poetry. If he is described as the "poet of man," it is because one of his goals was to describe such ordinary things in more sensual prose to get at the root of fundamental human experience. In describing such things, he would of course describe the sights and sounds but he would give these ordinary sense impressions extra-ordinary importance.

For example, in "The Solitary Reaper," the speaker (Wordsworth) describes a moment when he saw a Scottish girl singing by herself. The girl was unaware of being watched and was therefore singing without reservation. The speaker of the poem describes it as natural as the song of a nightingale. Her accent is too deep for him to decipher. Yet, he is so overwhelmed by this sight and these sounds that he considers any possible deeper significance they might have.

[COLOR="DarkOrchid"]Perhaps the plaintive numbers flow

For old, unhappy, far-off things,

And battles long ago:

Or is it some more humble lay,

Familiar matter of to-day?

Some natural sorrow, loss, or pain,

That has been, and may be again? (18-24)
[/COLOR]
Wordsworth has taken relatively ordinary sights and sounds and transformed them into vehicles for the imagination.

As much as Wordsworth speaks about the imagination and transcendent experience in life, he often does this by using descriptions of the senses. (Also remember that "seeing" and "knowing" are often used interchangeably by many poets and philosophers.)

In "Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey," Wordsworth makes this claim overtly. [COLOR="DarkOrchid"]

Therefore am I still

A lover of the meadows and the woods,

And mountains; and of all that we behold

From this green earth; of all the mighty world

Of eye, and ear,-both what they half create,

and what perceive; well pleased to recognise

In nature and the language of the sense,

The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse,

The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul

Of all my moral being. (102-111) [/COLOR]

He says that he is a lover of "all that we behold . . . Of eye, and ear,-both what they half create, / and what perceive." Here, he makes a connection between sense experience and the imagination (creative thought and/or perception). In other words, he notes how the world we behold (experience) is "half created" by our sense experiences and half created by our own perceptions. He tried to show this in his poetry.

Wordsworth is the "poet of man" because he describes normal, everyday experiences in nature. He tried to capture rural, rustic life rather than writing about kings and warriors in a lofty prose.


“There have been greater poets than Wordsworth but none more original”, says A. C. Bradley. Wordsworth’s chief originality is, of course, to be sought in his poetry of Nature. It must not be supposed, however, that Wordsworth was interested only in Nature and not in man at all. Man, in Wordsworth’s concep*tion, is not to be seen apart from Nature, but is the very “life of her life”. Indeed, Wordsworth’s love of Nature led him to the love of man. Scarcely a poem of his is solely concerned with nature-description. His poetry is expressive of the formative, restorative, reassuring, moral and spiritual influence of Nature on the mind and personality of Man. Nature, of course, may dominate, but “the still sad music of humanity” is never ignored.

Nature, according to Wordsworth is a living entity. Unlike other poets of Nature, he believes that Nature is endowed with life and consciousness and has the capacity of thinking, feeling and willing. The entire Nature is permeated by the feelings of joy and happiness, harmony and peace and there are no strifes, no cares and worries, no jealousy and hatred to disturb the peace and harmony, reigning in the heart of Nature:
[COLOR="DarkOrchid"]
Love, now a universal birth,
From heart to heart is stealing
From earth to man, from man to earth—
It is the hour of feeling.[/COLOR]

It is tine that Wordsworth was a lover of Nature but he was also a lover of Man, though his love of man developed at a later stage in his poetic career. It was the French Revolution that made Wordsworth a poet of Man. Wordsworth lost his faith in the French Revolution as a political creed, but its effect remained intact on his mind. The Revolution humanised his soul and built him into a poet of Man. The singer of the beauties of Nature became the singer of the majesty of common humanity.
It is the humble and rustic life that is invested with glory and grandeur in his poetry. The city proletariat lay beyond his ken; it was not for him to sing the fierce confederate storm
[COLOR="DarkOrchid"]
Of sorrow barricaded evermore
Within the walls of cities
But rather
To hear humanity in woods and groves
Pipe solitary anguish[/COLOR]

because the life of such people is not screened by conventions of society. It is their simplicity that brings out the hidden beauty of their characters—calm, independence, fortitude, mutual affection and self-sacrifice. They have a noble character because they live in close and constant company of Nature.

In Tintern Abbey, Wordsworth tells us how the best part of human life is shown to be the result of natural influences. Nature’s healing power was a rapturous experience for Wordsworth and he conveys it in Tintern Abbey; the recollection of the scenes seen five years ago soothes him in tormented moments:

[COLOR="DarkOrchid"]...in lonely rooms, and ‘mid I he din of towns and cities
[/COLOR]
And he owes to them not only ‘sensations sweet’ but another gift also that is more sublime. It is:

[COLOR="DarkOrchid"]that blessed mood,
In which the burthen of the mystery.
In which the heavy and the weary weight
Of this unintelligible world,
Is lightened[/COLOR]

In these moments of illumination, he has an insight into the life of things and finds that all is wrapped in a state of joy and harmony.

Helpful Friday, October 10, 2014 10:21 AM

[COLOR="Blue"]Q6: HOW DOES WORDSWORTH AROSE "A SENSE OF THE UNITY OF INDIVIDUAL LIFE WITH UNIVERSAL LIFE?
[/COLOR]

William Wordsworth is universally regarded among the greatest poets of English literature. Charles William comments that Wordsworth, along with Shakespeare and Milton form the three great ranges of English poetry while other poets of equal height are mere peaks, thus comparing Wordsworth’s poetic skill to the breathtaking vastness of a mountain range.

At its greatest, Wordsworth’s poetry has a solemn sincerity beyond the compass of the human voice to utter. He does so by arousing a sense of unity of individual life with universal life.

[COLOR="DarkGreen"]“The shell of his verse ‘murmurs of the ocean from whence it came’; something more than us, more than Wordsworth, more than the poetry of Wordsworth, seems to open up and expand in the sound, as afterwards it withdraws and closes itself in the more expected, but still noble, verse to which it returns.” (Charles William)[/COLOR]

In 1798, along with Coleridge, Wordsworth published The Lyrical Ballads which embodied his first major achievements in poetry. The famous Preface to The Lyrical Ballads lays down Wordsworth’s objectives and principles with reference to his poetry. In his own words,
“The principle object… proposed in these 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 to make these incidents and situations interesting by tracing in them… primary laws of our nature.”

Didacticism is another of Wordsworth’s traits and he attempts to draw moral conclusions through his poetry. He was conscious of his moral purpose and made sure the reader did not miss the point. For example, in the Lucy Poem Three Years She Grew he narrates Lucy’s education by Nature and indirectly preaches the idea education of a child and the traits of a human being educated thus. In his own words, “Every great poet is a teacher: I wish either to be considered as a teacher or as nothing.”

In keeping with Rousseau’s notion of the ‘noble savage,’ Wordsworth shows a preference and respect for the humble and rustic life, believing that men are better and uncorrupted when closer to their ‘natural’ state. The poem about a shepherd and his son entitled Michael is a telling example of this:

[COLOR="DarkGreen"]“His bodily frame had been from youth to age
Of an unusual strength. Among the rocks
He went, and still looked up to sun and cloud,
And listened to the wind.”[/COLOR]

Wordsworth describes himself as a “worshipper of nature.” His poetry is inextricably bound with nature as his own upbringing in the Lake District, his way of thinking, his lifestyle and outlook of life are influenced by it.

Natural objects played a significant part in Wordsworth’s emotional life, similar to the part real people play in our lives. They were a source of strength, delight and comfort as he narrates in The Daffodils:

[COLOR="DarkGreen"]“And then my heart with pleasure fills
And dances with the daffodils.”[/COLOR]

Wordsworth invites the reader to share the sensations and feelings experienced by the poet – persona, rather than just present them.

Romanticism celebrated the individual and this is evident in Wordsworth’s habit of introducing solitary figures. These figures are shrouded in an air of mystery, evoking sympathy and sometimes also fear. The Solitary Reaper, The Forsaken Indian Woman, Ruth, the shepherd at the end of Michael – all these, and more, sing their own solitary songs or preserve their solitary silences. The natural world too has its lone figures such as The Skylark or The Daisy. Looming above this is the recurrent solitude of Wordsworth himself. His poems often tell of individuals made lonely by their own actions or those of others, arousing in us a sense of our own capacity for solitude and endurance.

[COLOR="DarkGreen"] “Behold her, singing in the field,
Yon solitary Highland lass !
Reaping and singing by herself;
Stop here, or gently pass !” (The Solitary Reaper)
[/COLOR]
Although frequently autobiographical, Wordsworth masterfully presents the experiences and suffering of others. Resolution and Independence, Margaret and Michael are 3 major examples of this. Margaret, for example, echoes Wordsworth’s own relationship with Annette Vallon who he abandoned in France. The poem tells of a woman deserted by her husband, her life prematurely extinguished and her surroundings left to decay. The tale is narrated by a lonely Wanderer. The pathos is real because it is not asserted but felt:

[COLOR="DarkGreen"] “Then towards the cottage I returned; and traced
Fondly, through with an interest more mild,
That secret spirit of humanity
Which ’mid the calm oblivious tendencies
Of nature, ’mid her plants, and weeds, and flowers,
And silent overgrowings, still survived.”
[/COLOR]
Tintern Abbey forms a kind of bridge which links the purely autobiographical poems with those that concern themselves with the “still, sad music of humanity.” Through “Nature,” it merges not only inanimate nature but human nature as well.
Thus, we can conclude that Wordsworth poetry deals with a sense of the unity of the individual life with universal life.

adeel abdullah Friday, October 10, 2014 08:25 PM

significant contribution
 
dear colleague, i am also master in English literature. things you mentioned earlier are quite suffice for the students of literature. the way of elaborating things is very much lucid and vivid. nice contribution and easy tips for new students.

Helpful Wednesday, November 12, 2014 01:50 PM

salam

Helpful Wednesday, November 12, 2014 01:54 PM

Assalam alaikum, I tried to post more English notes but couldn't able due to this message:

"An error has occurred Helpful! You must have 10 posts in order to post links. Your current post count is 6."

Please guide me how to continue my post.

even odd Wednesday, November 12, 2014 03:09 PM

[QUOTE=Helpful;779953]Assalam alaikum, I tried to post more English notes but couldn't able due to this message:

"An error has occurred Helpful! You must have 10 posts in order to post links. Your current post count is 6."

Please guide me how to continue my post.[/QUOTE]

dear friend increase you post number ........ go in last there is section

like introduction movie poetry much little make their single single post and increase your post number then come back and start your thread your post are good so share it much <3

dewdrops555 Wednesday, April 25, 2018 09:53 AM

I m a student of MA final KU. Appreciate your help in this regard.
Kindly keep posting important notes i you have.


01:56 PM (GMT +5)

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