Paper 4 Indian writing in English

Topic

India’s spirituality as exposed by Sri Aurobindo in his essay

Paper 4 Indian writing in English

Name Devendra A Joshi

Class M.A. Sem-1

Submitted To Prof. Dilip Barad (Head of English Dept. M. K. S. Bhavnagar University)

Ø    India’s spirituality as exposed by Sri Aurobindo in his essay.

Sri Aurobindo was in Calcutta on 15 August 1872.  At the age of seven he was taken to England for education and in 1890 went up to King’s College, Cambridge. Here he stood in the first class and also passed the final examination for the Indian Civil Services Returning to India in 1893, he worked for the next thirteen years in the Princely State of Baroda in the service of the Maharaja and as a professor in Baroda College. During this period he also joined a revolutionary society and took a leading role in secret preparations for an uprising against the British Government in India.

Introduction to Renaissance in India:

In an essay written in 1918 and entitled The Renaissance in India, Sri Aurobindo presents us with a masterly view of India’s culture through the age – her essential spirit and her characteristics soul, her unique genious and powers which gave her remarkably long periods of greatness and an unusually prolific creativity – that which allowed her to survive for so long when other ancient civilizations faded away.

“Spirituality is the master key of the Indian mind. The sense of infinity is native to it.” It is a defence of Indian civilization and culture, with essays on Indian spirituality, religion, art, literature, and polity.

“A spiritual aspiration was the governing force of this culture”, he wrote, “its core of thought, its ruling passion. Not only did it make spiritualty the highest aim of life, but It even tried… to turn the whole of life towards spirituality.”

“The Renaissance in India “consists of four essays that were first published in Arya

From August to November 1918. In the first and the longest essay, Sri Aurobindo discusses the appropriateness or lack thereof of the term “renaissance” for what happened in India. He refutes some common European misconceptions on the nature of Indian civilization.

He says that “spirituality is indeed the master – key of the Indian mind”; that ancient India is marked by

·     “her stupendous vitality, her inexhaustible power of life and joy of life,

·     Her almost unimaginably prolific creativeness “; and, finally,

·     That the “third power of the ancient Indian spirit was a strong intellectuality”.

He then outlines “three movements of retrogression “; first, a

·     “shrinking of that superabundant vital energy and a fading of the joy of life and the joy of creation”;

·     Secondly, ” a rapid cessation the old free intellectual activity”; and, finally,

·     The diminution of the power of Indian spirituality.

Sri Aurobindo then identifies three “impulses” that arise from the “impact of European life and culture”.

In the second essay, Sri Aurobindo goes on to outline the phases of the renaissance: the first step was the reception of the European contact, a radical reconsideration of many the prominent elements and some revolutionary denial of the very principles of the old culture.

Sri Aurobindo predicts that if the last were to happen,” the result will be no more Asiatic modification of western modernism, but some great, new and original thing of the first importance to the future of human civilization “.

We see in present day India a great effort to attain such material prosperity. But whether the spiritual idea of India remains intact is a question that is not easily answered. To all appearances, India has gone the way of the rest of the world, worshipping mammon. Our religion too is consumerism. To say that spirituality is the master key to the Indian psyche these days would seem more the exception than the rule.

The most important contribution of Sri Aurobindo to the discussion on the Indian renaissance is, as is often the case with his work, in what is yet to be realized. Sri Aurobindo says that the rise of India is necessary for future of humanity itself.

This fusion will be instrumental in spiritualizing the world and in brining about what many have called a global transformation.

But true spirituality rejects no new light, no added means or materials of our human self-development. It means simply to keep our centre,our essential way of being, our inborn nature and assimilate to it all we receive, and evolve out of it all we do and create.

“[it is] the education which starting with the past and making full use of the present builds up a great nation. Whoever wishes to cut off the nation from its past is no friend of our national growth. Whoever fails to take advantage of the present is losing us the battle of life. We must therefore save for India all that she has stored up of knowledge, character and noble thought in her immemorial past.

Sri Aurobindo had little love for British education in India, which he called a “mercenary and soulless education,” and for its debilitating influence on the “the innate possibilities” of the Indian brain. “in India,” he said,” the students generally have great capacities, but the system of education represses and destroys these capacities.” As in every field, he wanted India to carve out her own path courageously:

“The  greatest knowledge and the greatest riches man can possess are [India’s] by inheritance; she has that for which all mankind is waiting.[…] but the full soul rich with the inheritance of the past, the widening gains of the present, and the large potentiality  of the future, can come only by a system National Education.

paper-3 - Literary Theory & Criticism

Topic

What according to Wordsworth should be the theme of poetry?

Paper 3  Literary Theory & Criticism

Name Devendra A Joshi

Class M.A. Sem-1

Submitted To Prof. Dilip Barad (Head of English Dept. M. K. S. Bhavnagar University)

1. What according to Wordsworth should be the theme of poetry?

Wordsworth’s enormous poetic legacy rests on a large number of poems written by him. But the themes that run through words worth’s poetry remained consistent throughout. Even the language and imagery he used to embody those themes remained remarkably consistent. They remained consistent to the canons words worth had set out the preface to lyrical Ballads. In the second edition of the lyrical Ballads (1802), he wrote preface to defend himself form the negative reviews. Wordsworth argued that poetry should be written in the real language of common man, rather than in the lofty and elaborate dictions that were then considered “poetic.” He belived that the first principle of poetry should be pleasure and so the chief duty of poetry is to provide pleasure through a rhythmic and beautiful expression of feeling. All human sympathy, he asserted, is based on a subtle pleasure principle that is “the naked and native dignity of man.” Wordsworth’s poetic creed initiated the romantic era by emphasizing feeling, instinct, and pleasure above formality and mannerism. More than any poet before him, words worth gave expression to inchoate human emotion.

In the “Advertisement” to the 1798 edition of Lyrical Ballads, Wordsworth and Coleridge state that the poems in the collection were intented as a deliberate experiment in style and subject matter.   Wordworth elaborated on this idea in the “Preface” to the 1800 and 1802 editions which outline his main ideas of a new theory of poetry. Wordsworth explained his poetical concept:

       “The majority of the following poems are to be considered as experiments. They were written chiefly with a view to ascertain how far the language of conversation in the middle and lower classes of society is adapted to the purpose of poetic pleasure.”

If the experiments with vernacular language

Was not enough of a departure from the norm, the focus on simple, uneducated country people as the subjects poetry was a single of shift to modern literature. One of the main themes of “Lyrical Ballads” is the return to the original state of nature, in which man led a purer and more innocent existence. Wordsworth subscribed to Rousseau’s belief that man was essentially good and was corrupted by the influence of society. This may be linked with the sentiments spreading though Europe just prior to the French Revolution.

Rejecting the classical notion that poetry should be about elevated subjects and should be composed in a formal style, Wordsworth instead championed more democratic themes-the lives of ordinary men and woman, farmers, paupers, and the rural poor. In the “Preface” Wordsworth also emphasizes his commitment to writing in the ordinary language of people, not a highly crafted poetical one. True to traditional ballad form, the poems depict realistic characters in realistic situations, and so contain a strong narrative element.

Let us briefly review Wordsworth views on the theme and subjects matter of poetry:

                   Objects (subject matter of poetry)

The principle objects, then proposed in these poems was to choose incidents and situations from common life, and to relate and describe them, throughout, as far as possible in a selection of language really used by men, , 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; and, further,, and above all, to make these situations and incidents interesting   by tracing in them, truly though not ostentatiously, the primary laws of our nature: chiefly as regards the manner in which we associate ideas in a state of excitements.

Ø     Humble and rustic life (subjects matter of poetry )

Humble and rustic life was generally chosen, because in that condition, the essential passions of the heart find a better soil in which they can attain their maturity, are less under restraint,  and speak a plainer and more emphatic language; because in that condition of life, our elementary feelings co-exist in a state of greater simplicity, and consequently, may be more accurately contemplated, and more forcibly communicated; because the manners of rural life germinate from these elementary feelings, and, from the necessary characters of rural occupations, are more easily comprehended, and are more durable; and lastly, because in that condition the passions of men are incorporated with the beautiful and permanent forms of nature.

                   Language (style of poetry)

The language, too, of these men has been adopted – purified indeed from what appear to be its real defers, from all lasting and rational causes of dislike and disgust - because such men communicate with the best objects from which the best part of language is originally derived; and because, from their rank in society and the sameness and narrow circle of their intercourse, being less under the influence of social variety, they convey their feelings and notions in simple and unelaborated expressions. Accordingly, such a language, arising out of the repeated experience and regular feelings is a more permanent, and a far more philosophical language, than that which is frequently substituted for it by poets, who think that they are conferring honour upon themselves and their art, in proportion as they separate themselves from the sympathies of men, and indulge in arbitrary and capricious habits of expression, in order to furnish food for fickle appetites, of their own creation.

Thus, Wordsworth’s views on poetical style are the most revolutionary of all the idea in his preface. He discarded the gaudiness and inane phraseology of many modern writers. He insists that his poems are written in ‘selection of language of men in a state of vivid sensation’. His views of poetic diction can be summed up as: ’there neither is nor can be any essential difference between the language of prose and metrical composition’.

Ø     Definition  of poetry 

For all good poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings:  and though this be true, poems to which any value can be attached were never produced on any variety of subjects but by a man who, being possessed of more than usual organic sensibility, had also thought long and deeply.

Our continued influxes of feeling are modified and directed by our thoughts, which are indeed the representative of all our past feelings. By contemplating the relation of these general representatives to each other, we discover what is really important to men, so by the repetition and continuance of this act, our feelings will be connected with important subjects. If we be originally possessed of such sensibility, such habits of mind will be produced, that by obeying blindly and mechanically the impulses of these habits, we shall describe objects, and utter sentiments of such a nature, and in such connection with each other, that the understanding of the reader must necessarily be in some degree enlightened, and his affections strengthened and purified.

                   What is a poet?

·     He is a man speaking to men: a man, it is true, endowed with more lively sensibility, more enthusiasm and tenderness.

·     He has a greater knowledge of human nature, and a more comprehensive soul, than one supposed to be common among mankind.

·     He is a man pleased with his own passions and volitions, and who rejoices more than other men in the spirit of life that is in him; delighting to contemplate similar volitions and passions as manifested in the goings-on of the Universe, and habitually compelled to create them where he does not find them.

·     To these qualities he has added a disposition to be affected more than other men by absent things as if they were present. He has an ability of conjuring up in himself passions, which are indeed far from being those produced by real events (especially in those parts of the general sympathy which are pleasing and delightful). He can better remember the passions produced by real events which other men are accustomed to feel in themselves.

·     Then, from practice, he has acquired a greater readiness and power in expressing what he thinks and feels, and especially those thoughts and feelings which, by his own choice, or from the structure of his own mind, arise in him without immediate external excitement.

                   The function of poetry:

o ‘Poetry’, according to Wordsworth, ‘is the breath and finer spirit of all knowledge, the impassioned expression that is in the countenance of all science.’  Poetry seeks to ennoble and edify. It is like morning star which throws its radiance through the gloom and darkness of life. The poet is a teacher and through the medium of poetry he imparts moral lessons for the betterment of human life. Poetry is the instrument for the propagation o moral thoughts. Wordsworth’s poetry does not simply delight us, but it also teaches us deep moral lessons and brings home to us. Deep philosophical truths about life and religion. Wordsworth believes that ‘a poetry of revolt against moral ideas is a poetry of revolt against life; a poetry of indifference towards moral ideas is a poetry of indifference towards life.

Paper 1 The Renaissance literature

Topic

On various theme, motifs, and symbols in the play ‘Hamlet’.

Paper 1  The Renaissance literature

Name Devendra A Joshi

Class M.A. Sem-1

Submitted To Prof. Dilip Barad (Head of English Dept. M. K. S. Bhavnagar University)

Ø   Themes, Motifs and Symbol in Hamlet.

One of the motifs in the play Hamlet is the Oedipus complex. It is defined as a male child's unconscious desires for the exclusive love of his mother. It is shown in the play through Hamlet's reaction towards his mother. Hamlet is very resentful of Claudius not only for killing his father, but also marrying his mother so hastily. He states,

"She married o most wicked speed to post and with such dexterity to incestuous sheets, it is not nor it cannot come to good, but break my heart, for i must hold my tongue."

      May be Hamlet is holding his tongue because he wants to confess his desires to his mother, which he is unable to do.

      1. We find in the dialogues of the characters, the description of decay and decadence prevalent in the state Denmark ruled by King Claudius. Having just seen the ghost of Hamlet's father, the late king of Denmark, Marcellus says,

"Something is rotten in the state of Denmark,"

      And repeated throughout the play is vegetative decay, which symbolizes evil and the irreducible fact of death. The culmination of this might be the moment when the clown hands Hamlet the skull of his father’s court jester. An interesting contrast is all the floral and herbal imagery surrounding Ophelia.

      Shakespeare is creating a sonnet-worthy extended metaphors about the fragility of real living things.

      2) There are many lovely moments in the play where men express trust. These namely occur between Hamlet and Horatio and finally between Hamlet and alerted then in Fortinbras’ final speech.

      Hamlet pushes Ophelia away because he is tainted; he is sure his proximity would only destroy her. In all of Hamlet’s words to Ophelia, he echoes his first two soliloquies on his preoccupation with his own seemingly indifferent attitude. And yet Ophelia addresses her false lover, and also speaks of him as if he were as good as dead.

      The play Hamlet, explores all the different uses of poison, literal as well as metaphorical. Poison is something that can affect your body, not by death alone, but causing madness. Too much thinking poisons Hamlet’s mind.

      A specific gendrered reading will take certain themes, symbols, motifs, nuances innuendo that would otherwise simply form a cacophony, and organise them into a coherent reading. Ophelia's nature is manifested through the symbol of the violet flower which has a brief existence.

paper-2 - The Neo-Classical Literature

Topic    :-   Gulliver travels a satirical exposal of                                                fictional illusion.

Paper 2 :-   The Neo-Classical Literature

Name   :-    Devendra A Joshi

Class     :-    M.A. Sem-1

Submitted: - Ms. Heenaba Zala (Dept of English)                                    M. K. S. Bhavnagr University

Ø    Gulliver travels a satirical exposal of fictional illusion.

Jonathan swifts was born in Dublin in 1667 and he was died 1745. Gulliver travels published in 1726. The result was the famous prose satire battle of the book, written in the mock-heroic style to ridicule Bentleys retort.

It was begun in 1720 and finally published in 1726. It is at once a delightful, fantastic story of adventure for children, political allegory and a serious satire on human nature on contemporary politics, social institutions, religious, controversies and on the manners and moral of the age.

Part-1, A voyage to Lilliput deals with Gulliver’s experiences in the land of the little people.  It is on one level an obsorbing tale if the adventures of giant Gulliver among the Lilliputians and on another level rich in allegorical references to the politics in England.

Part-2, A voyage to brobdingnag the situation is reversed Gulliver is now marroned and dwarfed in the land of giants who are over forty feet tall: his glorious account of the English political system.

Part-3, A voyage to laputa,    balnibarbi, luggnagg, glubbdubdrib, and Japan, is a satire on the scientists and philosopher of the age. The people of laputa have extraordinary physical features heads turned at angle and the other in word.

Part-4, A voyage to the country of the houyhnhnms, narrates the experience of the Gulliver in the land of the houyhnhnms  or horses and the yahoo  Gulliver or man where the eighteenth  century had define as an animal whose most striking feature was the ability to reason. The horses with their total lack of feeling and emotion are seen as being far from ideal.

The travelogue, a popular genere of writing in the eighteenth century, chronicles the experiences and adventures of traveler.

The four parts of Gulliver’s travels are linked by the theme of travel and discovery of the parts starts off with a voyage leading to a destination. Hovever the voyage only works as a means to get to a place of adventure.

The places that swift describes and Gulliver visits lilliput, brobdingnag, laputa and the land of the houyhnhnms belong to the realm of fantasy and are figments of swifts’ imagination.

Satire is a literary genre in which human vices, weakness, foible and folies are held up to ridicule wit and humour are commonly used as instruments of satire. Satirical writings were popular in England in the eighteenth century. In Gulliver travels swifts’ uses satire as vehicle to point to the depraved state of humankind.

Satire in Gulliver’s travels also extends to human institutions to politics and the state.

Characters are central to the plot of any story, and especially longer fiction. Gulliver as a character is restless for adventure and new experiences. At the end of Gulliver travels, it is difficult to say if Gulliver is an eighteenth century allegorical figure or a rounded and complex character.

The imagery of size is used in Gulliver travels to draw attention to misplaced human pride and the face that power and self-importance depend entirely on circumstances and are not inherent in human nature.

Irony and satire are used liberally and forcefully in part-4 as lawyers are describes as proving by words multiplied for purpose that white is black and black is white ,according as they paid.