Summary of literary texts and key concepts of literature

  In Samuel Richardson’s novels, a moral intention has been glaringly evident, where his imaginary characters frequently escaped strict schemata. His novels speak volumes of complacent and calculating middle class morality. In his notable work, Pamela or Virtue Rewarded, the protagonist reaps the dividends of her virtuous nature by marrying an affluent nobleman.   In Christianity, virtue is fundamental to Christian ethics. There are seven types of virtues, consisting of the four “natural” virtues, those inculcated in the old pagan world that spring from the common endowment of humanity, and the three “theological” virtues,   specifically prescribed in the Christianity   emblem of special gifts from God. Virtue is defined as “conformity of life and conduct with the principles of morality.” The virtues are the positive attitudes and habits adopted in obedience to moral principles. They are conventionally seven in number, each as a counterpart to the seven deadly sins. In Pamela,

About the poet: Henry Louis Vivian Derozio  (18 April 1809 – 26 December 1831) was an Indian  teacher  and assistant headmaster of Hindu College, situated in Kolkata,  a radical thinker who played crucial role in the Renaissance of Bengal and one of the first Indian educators to introduce Western learning and science among the young men of  Bengal . He was witnessing the tyranny of slavery, prevailing in the colonial India, part of which he adroitly reflected in the poem. About the poem: In this poem, the poet-persona expresses his notion of the true value of freedom to a slave. Only when human beings are free from the shackles of slavery, they can perceive the aesthetic aspects of life and human existence. To a slave, freedom is the feeling of being treated with the dignity that a man truly deserves. The poet persona imagines how the slave will feel, when he will be informed that he is no longer a slave. Receiving the news of his newly acquired freedom, his heart beats proudl

About the poet: William Shakespeare   (1564 -1616)   was an English poet, playwright and actor,considered the greatest writer in the English language and the world's greatest dramatist.   He is often called the national poet of England  , mostly known as the "Bard of Avon".   His oeuvre, including   collaborative projects , consist of nearly   39 plays ,154 sonnets   , two long   narrative poems , and a few other verses, some of dubious authorship. His plays have been translated into almost every major language. . About the Poem: " The quality of mercy " is a quote by     Portia   in  Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice ,  occurs during Act 4, Scene 1, set in a Venetian Court of Justice. It is the famous speech where Portia begs   Shylock   for having mercy on the Merchant. The speech is regarded as one of the greatest speeches in Shakespeare’s entire   literary works. Summary: Th e speaker (Portia) justifies the fact that the quality of mercy i

  In India, the Bhakti and Sufi Movement started to spread during the medieval age. Needless to say,  they involved and utilized a diverse range of expression. Both movements dissociate themselves from the shackles of organized religious, rigid traditions and strike a note of protest against the hypocrisy and orthodoxy of Brahman pundits and Moulvis in their poetry and songs. “Unity of being” and unconditional love between God and the worshiper were the key concepts in the movements. The fundamental equality of all human beings irrespective of the racial or gender discrimination made these movements truly revolutionary for their times. The movement was against the Brahmanic authority, against temples and priests and scholars and fossilized customs. Mahadeviyakka, the poetess and saint, who was born in Sivamogga in the twelfth century expressed her strong desire to release herself from all earthly bonds and exerted to reveal the ambiguity of her complicated relationship with the w

The short story How Much Land Does a Man Need? begins with the conversation of two sisters on the advantages of the life of town. The elder sister who is married to an affluent tradesman and enjoys the luxuries and diversions of the city life came to pay a visit to her sister who is married to a peasant in the village. When they are having tea, the elder sister starts to brag about her comfortable life. She brags about the expensive attires she and her children wear, the delicacies they have in their meal and how thrilled she is to have diversions like theatres and promenades. Being piqued, the younger sister defends the blissful life of a peasant. She affirms that she would never exchange the way of her life with her for anything .Disparaging the life of a tradesman, she argued that they may live a life full of hardship, but they are free from anxiety. Her sister may live an opulent life now, but gain and loss are the two sides of the same coin. Therefore, if they lose all their w

About the poet: William Butler Yeats (1865-1939), the national poet of the Republic of Ireland, was one of the finest poets of the twentieth century. He was a lyric poet, a mystic, a mythologist all at the same time. He was a poet with a distinctive form of prophetic vision and a unique political ideology. Born in Dublin, Ireland, the poet was immensely influenced by the Irish heritage, contemporary politics and nationalism. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1923.   The poem, The Wild Swans at Coole , is an ideal expression of the serene beauty of Coole Park accompanied with a drastic undercurrent nostalgia .It explores the relation between man and nature. The themes of decay and mortality have been juxtaposed with the images of tranquility, beauty and the unvarying circle of the flying swans. The swans symbolize eternal youth, love and permanence in the world of decay and dejection. Summary of the poem: The foliage of the deciduous trees is having the utmost

  Ecofeminism or ecological feminism is a form of literary criticism stemmed from Feminism that explores the relations and similarities between woman and nature. The term was coined by French feminist   Francoise d’ Eaubonne in 1974.Ecofemism approach   aims to detect a certain similitude regarding the ill-treatment and oppression done by the patriarchal society in case of both women and nature. Women are as subjugated, exploited, and exploited by the phallocentric society as the environment, more precisely, the Mother Nature.   In the story of A Flowering Tree , ‘a sisterhood between a woman and a tree’ has been established subtly by the author who presented a metaphorical tale under the translucent cover of a folklore. The entire story reiterates the fact that one should treat a delicate flowering tree and woman with utmost care. There is also an implication that suggests a similarity between a flowering tree and a childbearing woman. The metaphorical ‘flowering tree’ is adroitl

ABOUT THE AUTOR : A. K. Ramanujan (1929-1993) was a prolific and versatile writer of Indian origin. He was a scholar at Indiana University during1960. He worked as a professor of Dravidian Studies and Linguistics at the University of Chicago. His oeuvre Includes remarkable works like Samskara, The Interior Landscape, Speaking of Siva, Relations and many more. ABOUT THE STORY: A Flowering Tree"   is folklore of Kannada, translated in English by   A. K. Ramanujan   in his book   A Flowering Tree and Other Folk Tales From India, published in 1997.. The story was the result of the endeavour of  Ramanujan and his fellow folklorists who collected different versions of the story available in the region for twenty years. Despite its ancient origin, the story offers a feminist perspective, attempting to establish a sisterhood between women and nature. As a typical folklore,   A Flowering Tree   is an amalgam of two distinct components: unreasonable storyline (a girl turns into a t

Baul is a folk-sect, who especially lives in West Bengal and Bangladesh. They do not have any organized religious affiliation, though they may be Hindu Vaishnav or Muslim Fakir. Therefore, their belief is an amalgamation of Hinduism, Sufism, yoga, and tantra. Bauls don’t belong to any particular religion mainly because of the rigid, orthodox aspects associated with each religion. Many Hindus,Muslims and people of marginalized and untouchable class converted into Bauls only to escape the tortures inflicted upon them, by people in the name of religion. Therefore, one is not born Baul ,but rather becomes Baul. It is also believed that the Bauls are the successors of an Iranian Sufi sect called ‘baal’. Though there have been no substantial evidences to validate the fact. Most popular and accepted belief about the origin of the Baul tradition lies in the Vaishnava Bhakti tradition. They practice sahajiya philosophy. The term sahajiya means simple. They prefer to explain the human co

About the poet: Nissim Ezekiel (1924-2004) was a Jewish poet of Indian origin. He was a multi talented personality. Apart from being the foundational literary figure in Post Colonial Indian Poetry, he was an actor, playwright, editor and art critic. Some of his mentionable works are A Time to Change, Sixty Poems , The Unfinished Man and others . The Night of the Scorpion was included in The Exact Name published in 1965.  In an unequivocal way, the poem depicts the visions of a harsh reality of an Indian’s life. With an unobtrusive personal tone, the poet simultaneously criticises and comes to terms with the contemporary scene. On the Poem: The poem begins with the poet-persona’s recollection of the harrowing experience of witnessing his mother bellowing in pain due to a scorpion’s sting in a murky, rainy night. On that fateful night, as he recalls, his mother was stung by a scorpion which crawled in to hide itself under the sack of rice. The intermittent rain outside for ten h

On the poet: George Herbert (1953-1633) was one of the renowned exponents of the Metaphysical School of Poetry who dealt with religious and spiritual themes in his poems. He was a Welsh poet and priest of the Church of England who had been recognised as “one of the foremost British devotional lyricists”. About the poem: The Pulley is a highly religious Metaphysical poem written by George Herbert. The poem is imbued with various religious connotations and allusions. The concept of a pulley has been used in the poem as a metaphysical conceit .The word ‘pulley’ means a wheel on a shaft that is designed to support movement and change of direction. In the first stanza, the poet –persona states that when God creates Human race, he poured all his blessings on them out of his bounty. He made sure that every possible treasure should be provided to them. During his span of life, they were entitled to enjoy all luxuries and treasures of nature. Initially, they were endowed with strength. Su

About the Poet : William Wordsworth (1770-1850) was one of the exponents of romantic poetry who had a considerable role in the development of the Romantic Movement in England. His poems are marked with the pantheistic creed and romantic imagination. His oeuvre consists of reflective poems, lyrics, odes and sonnets . Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey and Ode on Intimations of Immortality are some mentionable work of Wordsworth. Source of the Poem : The Reverie of Poor Susan is a romantic poem written in 1797 at Alfoxden. Later, it was published in the collection of Lyrical Ballads in 1798. About the poem: This is a lyric poem which revolves round the emotional experience of the emigrant girl, Susan. The girl recollects the fond memories of her native land in the countryside after listening to the melodious song of a thrush while passing through the Wood Street on a misty morning. She falls into a deep trance instantly. She envisioned a picture of a serene rustic s

Love is the highest value which makes us fundamentally human. In Christianity, Love has been considered a unique virtue. Universal love is the essential concept solemnized by almost every religion in the world. Human society has been always highly prescriptive about the idea of love in conjugal relationship. Society has scripted a notion of romantic ecstasy in this regard from the dawn of history. In ancient Greece, they used three loosely synonymous words to define love, ‘Eros’ which means sexual love, ‘Philia’ which means friendship, and ‘Agape’ which means compassion. In Plato’s Symposium (210-212), particularly the speech of Socrates recounts the doctrine about Eros, that he modestly says, has been imparted to them by the wise woman Diotima. She bids us not to linger in the love evoked by the beauty in a single human body, but to mount up as by stair,” from one going on to two and from two   to

About the poet:   Sympathy is a poem written by African- American poet Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872-1906).His parents were enslaved in Kentucky before the Civil War. Dunbar was a prodigious child who started writing stories and verse at the age of six. At the age of 16, he published his first series of poems. The above mentioned poem was published in a collection titled lyrics of the Hearthside in1899.Being a Black American; it is obvious that he experienced the racial discrimination and prejudice rampant in the society. The pain of slave captivity has been expressed poignantly in the poem. Summary of the poem:  In the first stanza, the poet persona affirms that he knows what the captive bird feels being confined in a cage .It is a heart rending experience for the captive bird to see the bright sunbeams radiating through the hilly slopes and to watch the crystal clear river flowing gently. When the first bird sings and the first bud blooms emanating its mild fragrance, the caged bird

Sylvia Plath’s Mirror : Summary and Critical Appreciation    The poem is not at all enigmatic about its speaker as the very first line reveals the identity of the speaker-‘I am silver and exact’. In this poem the mirror describes its existence and its owner who grows older as the mirror watches. The first stanza describes the mirror, which seems to be like one of those people who don’t tell white lies-it’s truthful and exact but not cruel. The mirror describes itself as silver and exact. It is not judgemental about anybody but merely swallows what it perceives and reflects it back without any alteration. It considers itself a four cornered eye  of God, which sees everything for what it is .Most of the time the mirror looks across the empty room and meditates on the pink speckled wall  It has looked at the wall for so long that it describes the wall as ‘part of my heart’. The image of the wall is interrupted only by people who enter to look at themselves and the darkness that come