Biographia Literaria

                Biographia Literaria

'Biographia Literaria' is a philosophical and auto-biographical work by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. It is unsystematic and somehow unfinished; yet its greatness can not be denied. Coleridge deals here with his youthful admiration for the sonnets of William Boweles, his early friendship with Wordsworth and his concept of poetic imagination.

In the 13th chapter of 'Biographia Literaria', Coleridge says about fancy- "Fancy has no other counters to play with, but fixities and definites. The fancy is indeed no other than a mode of memory emancipated from the order of time and space." To Coleridge fancy is a mechanical process which receives the elementary images- the fixites and definites which come to it readymade from the sense. And without altering the parts it resembles them in mind.

According to Coleridge, imagination has two forms- primary and secondary. Primary imagination is merely the power of receiving impression of the external world through the senses. It imposes some wort of order on those impressions, reduces them to shape and size, so that mind is able to form clear image of the outside world. The primary imagination is universal, possessed by all.

The seconday imagination, on the other hand, is the peculiar and distinctive attribute of an artist. It is the secondary imagination which makes artistic creation possible. This type of imagination is more active and conscious in this working. It works upon what is perceived by primary imagination. It is an active agent which 'dissolves, diffuses, dissipates in order to create'. It is the power which harmonizes and reconciles and hence Coleridge calls it a 'magical systhesis power'.

French Revolution

         French Revolution

There is no doubt that the French revolution, especially the ideas that inspired revolution, had a profound influence on English romanticism in general and on the romantic poets in particular. For the sake of understanding the depth and pervasiveness of this influence, we may distinguish three phase of French revolution, each of which affected English romanticism. First, there is the doctrine phase- the age of Rosseau. Second, there is the political phase- the age of Robespierre and Danton, and thirdly, there is military phase- the age of Napoleon.

The social theories of Rosseau influenced Blake, Wordsworth and Coleridge. His call for 'return to nature' influenced the above poets, but it profoundly affected doctrinaires like William Godwin, and through Godwin, Shelly. For Wordsworth it meant love of external nature and of simple way of living. For Blake it meant a rejection of the Newtonian universe and its mechanical laws. Rosseau believed that man is by nature perfect and there is no compulsion with anything, but love.b

The political phase of French revolution affected the Romantic poets. William Blake wore the red cap on the day of the revolution. Wordsworth, Southey, and Coleridge were also stirred to their depths in the first flush of the revolution (1789). Wordsworth records this feelings vividly:
  "Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive
   But to be young was very heaven"
   Soon, however, these poets were horrified by the horror of blood flowing from the guillotine. Yet it must be remembered that the best work of both Wordsworth and Coleridge had been done in the days of their revolutionary enthusiasm.

The Napoleon phase of the rovolution had its greatest impact on Byron. His intensely egoistic nature found in Napoleons presonality, qualities to admire. Indeed he was intoxicated by Napoleon, untill he realized the moral emptiness of a restless, self-centred nature.

Western Marxism

                              Western Marxism

Western Marxism having its root in Marxism, follows a critical path through a number of writers- Lukacks, Althusser, Gramsci, Adorno, Bengamin and others.

       There are three characteristics,

a)   Its prominent culture- Thematic

b)   Its staunchly humanist view like knowledge

c)    The broad eclecticism of its conceptual equipment

Lukacks, a prolific writer, wrote Sole and Form, A Theory of Novel and his most controversial work, History and class Consciousness. The last book was a vigorous criticism of the ‘leninist party’. Later scolded by Lelin, lukacks was excommunicated.

Adorno was an intellectual leftist of the Weimar republic. The name of his book is Aesthetic Theory. He believes that all art is critical and art criticizes society. He valued modernism as the historical emancipation from her- money as an ideal. It is called dissonance.

The other western Marxism can be identified by the following key features-

a)   The neutralization of tradition,

b)   The generalization of norms and values,

c)    The broadening of the base for the exchange of opinion,

d)   The emphasis of socialization on the development of the individual.

Pre-Romantic Poetry

     ·       Pre-Romantic Poetry:

The pre-romantic poets consists of Thomas Garry. James Thomson,William Collins,William Cowper and even William Blake was a drastic departure from the Neo-Classical order and reaction against the school of Dr. Sammuel Johnson. Some of the chief feature of the pre-romantic poetry can be listed down in the fallowing manner:

a.     A sharp reation against the neo-classical form and contains of literature,

b.     Return to nature,

c.      Return to feelings and emotion,

d.     Cult of romance,

e.      Interest in middle ages and,

f.       Romantic melancholy and convictional diction.

The pre-romantic poetry reacted against the popian couplet and made an experiment in blank verse and Spenserian stanzas. James Thomson in his ‘Season’, William Cowper in his ‘The Task’, William Blake in his ‘Elegy’ picturized the various mood and sights of nature. The pre-romantic poets also retuened to feelings, strong emotion, and aspiration.

Wordsworth's definition of poetry

                    Wordsworth's definition of poetry

Wordsworth is rightly considered as greatest poet of Romantic Age, not merely due to his large number and variety of poetry but also because he is the founder-father of substantial amount of poetic theory which is the base of romantic credo. Wordsworth defines all good poetry as ‘the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings’. Wordsworth goes on to say that poetry takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility. While tracing and explaining the course of poetry from its moment of origin, Wordsworth explains:

                              “The emotion is contemplated till,

                                by a species of reaction, the

                                tranquility gradually disappears, and

                                an emotion, kindred to that which was

                                the subject of contemplation,

                                is gradually produced, and does itself

                                actually exist in the mind.”

            In this mood successful composition generally begins, and in a mood similar to this, it is carried on.

            According to Wordsworth the process of creating poetry emerges through four stages:

a)     Recollection,

b)    Contemplation,

c)     Recordescence,

d)    Composition.

      Wordsworth believes that our continued influx of feelings are modified and directed by our thoughts which are indeed the representation of our past thought. In his view, sensibility is not enough to ensure a good poetry, it must be directed by calm mind.

     

       Wordsworth further observes that in the process of composing poetry mind should be in a state of enjoyment. He observes that his memory is habitually consulted, it will not only supply a poet with his most valuable materials but will also do for him best part of his work. The best illustration for Wordsworth’s poetic theory is clearly traceable in his simple poem ‘The Daffodils’.

Hegemony

Between 1929 and 1935, the Italian communist Antonio Gramsci wrote approximately thirty documents on political, social and cultural subjects. His most widely echoed concept is that of 'hegemony'. According to Gramsci, a social class achieves a predominant influence and power, not by direct and overt means but by succeeding in making its ideological views so pervasive that the subordinate classes unwittingly accept and participate in their own oppression. Hegemony is akin to ideology but is more than that. Hegemony works most effectively when the dominated accept their domination. Hegemony refers to the process- including ideology- through which the dominant classes maintain power through the consent of the people. The concept of hegemony implies an openness to negotiation and exchange as well as conflict between classes and so refashions Marxist categories to fit in a modern post industrial society. Gramsci also emphasize the role of intellectuals and opinion- makers in helping people understand how they can effect their transformation. These thoughts influenced Terry Eagleton, Fredric Jameson who argue for the power of literary culture to intervene in and transform existing economic and political arrangements and activities.

De-construction

Jacques Derrida developed de-construction, a perspective that focuses on the lack of a truth out there or at the centre to provide meaning. He showed how all western philosophical systems are dependent on a center God, the self, the unconscious but structuralism had show that the center is a fiction merely another signified that has no being beyond language. Furthur more, Derrida focuses on the binary pairs that make meaning, arguing that rather than being polar opposites each was dependent on the other for meaning and existence. He also showed how in all binaries, one of the terms was always subordinated to the other man/woman good/evil. To describe how meaning is produced, Derrida developed the term difference, meaning to differ and to defer. He focuses in particular on the binary speech/writing in which speech has been seen to provide a guarantee of subjectivity and presence in the history of philosophy and linguistics.

Marxism

Marxism is the political practice and social theory based on the works of Karl Marx, a 19^th century philosopher, economist, journalist and revolutionary, along with Friedrich Engels. Marx drew on Hegel’s philosophy, the political economy of Adam Smith, Ricardian economics and 19^th century French socialism to develop a critique of society which he claimed was both scientific and revolutionary. This critique achieved his most systematic expression in his master piece, Capital: A Critique of Political Economy (Das Kapital). Georg Lukacs attempted a philosophical justification  of Bolshevism in his 1923 History and Class Consciousness and became the leading Marxist theoretician of literature, writing from the Soviet Union and his native Hungary. In Lukacs’s view realism meant more than rendering the surface appearance: it meant providing a more complete, true, vivid and dynamic view of the world around. Novels were reflections of life and therefore not real, but they nonetheless involved the mental framing that eluded photographic representation. Lukacs also adopted the Hegelian dialectic in stressing the contradictions of class struggle. Capitalism had destroyed the feudal order, replacing it by more efficient production. Social realism was also Bertolt Brecht’s detestation, and his famous technique of  “baring the device” derives from the Russian Formalist concept of defamiliarization. Brecht as a Marxist rejected a formal construction of place and was constantly attempting to unmask the disguises of an ever-devious capitalist system.

Feminism

Feminism refers to movements aimed at establishing and defending equal political, economic, and social rights and equal opportunities for women. Its concepts overlaps with those of women’s rights. Feminism – That is, persons practicing feminism – can be persons of either sex. Feminist theory emerged from these feminist movements and includes general theories and theories about the origins of inequality and in some cases about the social construction of sex and gender, in a variety of disciplines. First – wave feminism sought equality in property rights, changes in the marriage relationship, and eventually in women’s suffrage or women’s right to vote. Second – wave feminism also sometimes called women’s liberation, began in 1960s and focused on discrimination and on cultural, social and political issues and books about it included The Feminine Mystique and The Second Sex. It was often accused of orienting to upper middle-class white women and sometimes, of biological essentialism. Third – wave feminism began in the 1980s or early 1990s and addresses feminism across class and race lines.

Langue and Parole

Langue and parole are more than just language and speech. Although this is a useful wuick way of remembering them. Language that proceeds and makes speech possiblem A sign is a basic unit of langue. Learning the language, we master the system of grammer, spelling , syntax and punctuation. These are all elements of langue. Langue is a system in that it has a large number of elements whereby meaning is created in the arrangement of its elements and the consequent relationship between this arranged elements.

Parole is the concrete use of language, the actual utterances. It is an external manifestation of language. It is the usage of the system. By defining langue and parole - Ferdinard, Saussure differentiating "---between the language and how it is used and thereby enabling these two very different thing to be studies as separate entities. "

The Empire Writes Back

The Empire Writes Back by Bill Ashcraft, Gareth Griffiths and Helen Tiffin was the first major theoritical account of a wide range of post-colonial texts and their relation to the larger issues of post-colonial culture and remains one of the most significant works published in this field. The authors, three leading figures in post colonial studies open up debates about the interrelationship of post-colonial culture, investigate the powerful forces acting on language in the post-colonial texts and show how this texts constitute a redical critique of euro-centric notions of literature and language. This book is brilliant not only for incissive analysies but also for its acceptibility to the readers new in the field. Now with an additional chapter and an updated bibliography, The Empire Writes Back is essential for contemporary post-colonial studies.

Diaspora

The word 'Diaspora' comes from ancient Greek and it means 'scattering of seeds'. Over the centuries, the meaning has altered. In the 'Old Testament', the word came to be used for Jews who were exiled from Judea in five eighty six (586) Bcc and again from Zerusalem in 136 ce. Many ethnic groups have forced or induced to leave their native land for a variety of socio-economic and political reasons. Diaspora literature refers to the literature of such displaced communities and involves an idea of a homeland, the place from where the displacement has occured. Well-known Diaspora theorists are Robin Cohen, Stuart Hall, Aizaj Ahamed and the like. Writers in this field include Sulman Rushdie, Jhumpa Lahiri, Khaled Hossaini, Kiran Desai, Meena Alexander and Chitra Bannerjee Dibakaruni.

Third-wave Feminism

The third-wave feminism began in the early 1990 and is continuing even today. Since there was the spelling of failure left throughout the third-wave rose as a response to this feeling. It is also believed that this wave was a reaction to the backlash against initiative a movement that were unexpectedly created in the second wave.

There were many euminaries in this wave of feminism. Among them are Judith Butler, Martha Davis, Betty Dodson, Miranda July and Molly Yart. Celebrity women have played a large role in informing the public about feminism. An example of this is Sandra Oh taking advantage of the face that people lookafter her and therefore changing the mind of the young people about patriarchal dominies. These " grrls " of the third-wave have staged on stage as strong and empowered, eschewing victimization and defining feminine beauty for themselves as subjects, not as objects of sexist patriarchal.

Second-wave Feminism

The second wave feminism which spans from the early 1960 to the late 1980 came with a feeling of unfinished business left in the year. Unlike the first-wave, the second-wave focused on de factor in equalities and it was also felt that de jure and defacto in equalities were inextricably linked issues that needed to be addressed together. This wave encouraged women to understand aspects of their personal life as deeply politicised and reflective of a sexist structure of power.

There were several major moments during this wave such as the publication of The Faminine Mystique by Betty Friedan, formation of the national organization of women ( now ), and the rise of radical feminism during the 1970. There were also some key players in this wave such as Bella Abjug, Lorraine Bethel, Ann Simontom.

Post-modernism

Some critics are of the opinion that when the characters of modernism are taken to their most extreme forms, they automatically produce post-modernism. In that way, poat modernism literature is 'playful' and non-serious as well as non-constructive ; it consciously rejects the artistic order and the concept of a work of art as a organic whole.

Some critics think that post-modernism is any kind of depiction of the general human condition in the 'late capitalist' world of the post 1950 which have all embracing effect on life, culture, ideology and art which are non-realistic and non-traditional.

It takes the subjective idealism of modernism to the point of solipsism. However it rejects the tragic and pessimistic elements in modernism because it believes that if one can not prevent Rome from burning, then one might as well enjoy the fiddling that is let open to one.

Kafka, Ezra Pound and Derrida, Faucault and Lacan ( inspite of their emphasis on de-construction ) are important practitioners of post-modernism.

Comedy of menace

A comedy of menace is a play in which the laughter of the audience in some or all situations is immediately followed by a feeling of some impending disaster. The audience is made aware of some menace in the very midst of its laughter. The menace is produced throughout the play from potential or actual violence or from an underline sense of violence throughout the play. The actual cause of menace is difficult to define: it may be because, the audience feels an uncertainty and insecurity throughout the play.

Harold Pinter's The Birthday Party is a comedy of menace. The play is actually the mingling of comedy with a perception of danger that pervade the whole play. Stanley, the central protagonist always finds his life beset with danger. Meg is the owner of the boarding house away from the society where Stanley stays temporarily as a tenant. Meg arranges a birthday party in Stanley's honour though Stanley denies it being his birthday. Two gentlemen called Mr. Goldberg and Mr. Mc Cann come to stay in the same boarding house for a couple of nights. Their appearance fills Stanley's mind with unexplained fear and tension. Stanley attempts to disturb the strangers so that they will be forced to go away. The feeling of menace is reinforced when Stanley scares Meg by saying that some people would be coming that very day in a van. They would bring a wheelbarrow with them to take someone away. Eventually no one comes but Mr. Goldberg and Mr. Mc Cann take stanley with them. In fact Goldberg and Mc Cann represents parts of Stanley's own subconscious mind. Nothing is stated or hinted about Goldberg and Mc Cann  and about their attitude towards Stanley. At best they seem to be agents of some organisation which has sent them to track down Stanley.

The Birthday Party and Look Back in Anger perfectly reveal the individual and social problems and doubts that great Britain was moving through during the post-war era. Both this two famous plays indicate the spirit of times and become vehicle or instrument for dramatic action.

Post war plays

POST-WAR PLAYS

Two postwar plays are John Osborne's Look Back in Anger and The Birthday Party. Look Back in Anger is Osborne's most popular play which successfully captures the moods of despair and frustration of the postwar generation. The play is a perfect study of class conflict and the misrule in the name of governance which creates great frustration in Jimmy Porter, the vituperative anti-hero of the play. The action of the play is centred around Jimmy's relationship with the society, his relationship with his wife Alison and her friend Helena as well as his relationship with his friend Cliff. Jimmy's entire Sunday is spent in his tirades against the misrule and class division of the Tory government and the lack of true intelligence or true enthusiasm in a single human being all over Britain. Jimmy verses the absolute disillusionment of the post war generation an the all pervasive despair which is more comic than tragic. When Alison leaves Jimmy, Jimmy has no moral problem in taking her friend Helena to his bed because he does not believe in middle class morality. How ever when his dear friend Cliff too leaves him, he realizes that the vacuum of his life can only be filled up by his wife Alison with whom who tries again to resume his 'beer and squirrel game' in his his desperate attempt to find some positive significance.

Gothic Novel or The Novel of Terror

Gothic novel or The novel of Terror gained great popularity in the closing decades of the eighteenth century. It owes its rise to the awakening of feeling and sentiment that marked these years and the revival of interest in the life and culture of the Middle Ages.
It marks a complete departure from the traditions of the realistic and didactic novels developed and established by Richardson, Fielding and others.

The Gothic novel deals with such blood-curdling incidents as murders in cold blood, the stalking of macabre ghosts, with incidents of physical torture and mental anguish and with scenes of solitary wanderings, cut off from light and human contact, with no other purpose than to strike terror in the readers and make them sweat all over. The scenes are laid in haunted castles, and abbeys with secret passages and subterranean vaults, grated dungeons and ruined piles. An atmosphere of mystery pervades these novels. The "terror" novelists make frequent use of magic, witchcraft and other supernatural agencies to intensify the scenes of mystery, and to stimulate the emotion of terror. They betake themselves to "far-off lands" and "fairy lands forlorn" in search of mystery and romance.

The Gothic novelists are the natural successors to the graveyard poets and nearly all the paraphernalia of graveyard poetry re-appear in their novels. By stimulating fear and probing the mysterious they took an important part in freeing the emotional energies, so long restrained by commonsense and good from. By playing on the deep psychological disturbances that occur when a man is brought face to face with the supernatural the most terrifying of all experiences- they provided the new thrill the people thrusted for. This made for immense popularity of Gothic novel during the period.

The major Gothic novelists are Horace Walpole , Beckford, Mrs. Anne Radcliffe, Clara Reve, Gregory Lewis etc.

Psycho-analytical criticism

Since 1980's psycho-analytical theory has entered into literary studies. Stevi Jackson and Seu Scott have made original contribution to the development of psycho-analytical criticism. This two eminent critics are of the opinion that the concept of repression has made psycho-analytical criticism an important base to explore and analyse the issues of (a) gender, (b) sexuality, particularly female sexuality and (c) repression ( of womanhood ). Jackson and Scott have emphasized on the linguistic structure and cultural nuances of a work of art to discover the subdue psychological ideas imbibe in them.

Jacques Lacan, the important psycho-analytical theorist, spoke of his indebtedness to both Freud and Saussure in the development of his theories of psycho-analysis. Lacan believes that "the unconscious is structured like a language". It involves an extension of the linguistic paradigm into the realm of psycho analysis. Lacan's study of Edger Allan Poe's short story The Purloind Letter shows how he discovers hidden psycho-analytical issues in the work which no one before him had discovered.
Lacan is able to discover tremendous psychological potent in the works of Poe and demands that Poe should be re-studied from a psychological perspective. Peter Brook's similar book Psycho Analysis and Story Telling (1994) has established him as a new an formidable force in the field of psycho-analytical criticism. Here Brook admits that 'psycho analysis in literary study has over and over again mistaken the object of analysis'. In his essay 'Changes in the Margin: Construction, Transference and Narrative', Brook focuses on parallel between telling stories to an analyst and telling stories to a literary reader. The analyst, according to Brook, reconstructs the narrative discourse where as a literary reader enamours himself/herself by the story.

The above mentioned ideas are three important tenents of psycho-analytical criticism.

Form and structure in Modern novel

Form and structure in modern novel

Modernism is a breaking away from any specific rules. Consequently modern novels do not emphasize too much on form or structure upon the novel, the writer allowed the internal logic of the novel as well as the flow of the narrative to find its own form and constitutes its own structure. Particularly since the arrival of the 'stream of consciousness technique', modern novel has essentially become formless. James Joyce's Ulysses, a nearly four hundred page novel follows its own internal logic to structure the flow of events of one day in the lives of Stephen Didalous, Leopold Bloom and Molly Bloom and Dublin. Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse is similarly a multi perspective flow of consciousness of different chapters namely Mrs. Ramsay and Mr. Ramsay, Lily Briscoe, the painter as well as that of William, Cam and James- the sons and daughters of Mr. And Mrs. Ramsay. Virginia Woolf seems to point out that thoughts automatically articulate themselves which can not be imposed upon a novel from the beginning. The logicality of thoughts, the undisturbed multi perspective flow of the human mind are more important than form and structure of a novel in 20th century.

Centre and Margin

'Centre' and 'margin' are two important terms in Deconstruction criticism. In the works of Jacques Derrida, the term 'centre' is used to represent 'a point of presence, a fixed origin'. This imposes a limit on the play of structure in which it is found or placed. Derrida also uses a range of other terms like 'origin', 'end', 'arche' e.t.c. as roughly equivalent to centre. The eminent critic Vincent Crapainzno argues that 'centreing' can operate both precursively and recursively. That is to say a centre can condition or determine the meaning that which preceds and also that which follows the centre.

Jacques Derrida's concept of supplementary is sometimes assocuated with margin or marginality. The logic behind such an association appears to be that if all the representation and interpretation requires a supplementary element, then we need to draw our attention to the margins of that which to be either representative or interpreted. Actually 'margin' is the binary opposition of the deconstructive term 'centre' which indicates the boundary or the periphery of language of a text or even the socio-hariarchial boundaries. Authors from the earlier part of the 20th century occupy a marginal or ambiguous position in social or national identity though they are able to see beyond the accepted or conventional attitudes and beliefs of their time. Modrnist literature is characterised by its relation to its marginal authors as well as its concern with the margin as representative of something central to modern existence.

Lady Augusta Gregory ( 1859-1932 )

Lady Augusta Gregory's work belongs to the Irish literary movement and the abbey theatre. Her forte is the writing of pure joyous comedy of a kind alien to the temperaments of the other members of the group. She is most successful in her treatment of the one-act farce-comedy, and of the many she wrote perhaps the most memorable are Spreading the News, Hyacinth Halvey and The workhouse Ward. She has a genuine flair for devising fresh comic situations, but she is most gifted in the creation of comic dialogue.

She delights in the interweaving of fantasy and real life. Her characters  are drawn from actuality, but her plots turn on improbable and impossibe theme. She is fond of exaggeration and uses exaggeration to fine effects. Like Synge she shows how much of worth lies in the primitive emotions of a comparatively uncivilised community, and in showing this worth she has given, like Synge, an inestimable gift to English literature.

VIRGINIA WOOLF

                      VIRGINIA WOOLF ( 1882-1941 )

Virginia Woolf is one of the greatest novelists of the modern period. She reacted against the novel of social manners as produced by writers like Arnold Bennett and John Galsworthy. For her the realities were inward and spiritual rather than outward and material and meant the thoughts, feelings and impressions. The exclusiveness of the inner realities is the recurrent theme of her novels.

it is in the field of technique that she makes her most important contribution to the novel. She entirely rejects the conventional technique and replaces emphasis on incident, external description and straightforward narrative by an overriding concern with character presentation by the stream of consciousness method. She uses this technique with a sureness of purpose; her keen mind and magnificent artistic sense enable her to weld the parts into a unified artistic whole. Her studies of mood and impulse are handled with an almost scientific precision.

Virginia Woolf believes that the purpose of all novels is to express character- not to preach doctrines or sing songs. She expresses her concern with character in the following way: "Let us record the atoms as they fall upon the mind in the order in which they fall, let us trace the pattern, however disconnected and incoherent in appearance, which each sight or incident scores upon the consciousness." In her novels she proves the inner workings of the mind with a penetrating insight.

Woolf represents the poetization of prose style. She realizes that the very atmosphere of the mind, the chaotic welter of sensations, feelings, impressions and motives can not be adequately reproduced with the ordinary resources of prose. She uses words charged with rhythmic and musical potentialities. The Waves is the best example of her rich figurative style.

Her best novels are Jacob's Room, Mrs. Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, The Waves.