...Compare and contrast the presentation of John Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi and Shakespeare’s Cleopatra. Your study should refer to relevant contextual material and also include appropriate readings of the plays by other critics: The Duchess of Malfi (Main Text) In Jacobean England (1603-25) the theatre enjoyed enthusiastic royal support and the period was notable for some of the greatest plays ever written. Webster was already part of the ‘second generation’ and Shakespeare was already one of the most revered dramatists of his time. Both Webster and Shakespeare produced remarkable plays in this period, which gave dramatic prominence to complex tragic women. The Duchess of Malfi (1612) and Antony and Cleopatra (1607) are two plays that explore the contradictions of social and sexual relations in a patriarchal and misogynistic period of England as seen through the presentation of there two heroines The Duchess and Cleopatra, and also through the different forms of linguistical and structural methods employed by both writers that ultimately highlight the two women’s similar yet opposing natures. Essentially both plays are Jacobean tragedies of gender politics where the Duchess and Cleopatra seek freedom of action and desire but are defined and shaped by patriarchal oppression and thereby doomed for their perceived subversive sexuality. Through language both writers present their two heroines’ as powerful women who challenge the traditional male restrictions. The Duchess...
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...WRITTEN REPORT Course: Literary Criticism Topic: Perspectives and Techniques in Literary Criticism Reporter: Ms. Zairan A. Tutin INTRODUCTION: Literary criticism is not an abstract, intellectual exercise; it is a natural human response to literature. If a friend informs you she is reading a book you have just finished, it would be odd indeed if you did not begin swapping opinions. It is inevitable that people will ponder, discuss, and analyze the works of art that interest them. The informal criticism of friends talking about literature tends to be casual, unorganized, and subjective. Since Aristotle, Plato and other prominent literary critics, philosophers, scholars, and writers have tried to create more precise and disciplined ways of discussing literature. This day, literary criticism provides some general guidelines to help us analyze, deconstruct, interpret and evaluate different literary works. Literary critics have borrowed concepts from other disciplines, like linguistics, psychology, and anthropology, to analyze imaginative literature more perceptively. Mass media critics, such as newspaper reviewers, usually spend their time evaluating works—telling us which books are worth reading, which movies not to bother seeing. We usually see literary criticism in a book review or critical essay; however, nowadays the Internet has made all forms of criticism readily available in everything from personal blogs to social media. In this discussion, we will take a look at...
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...1. W. Shakespeare « Hamlet» (Renaissance) Character List Hamlet - The Prince of Denmark, the title character, and the protagonist. About thirty years old at the start of the play, Hamlet is the son of Queen Gertrude and the late King Hamlet, and the nephew of the present king, Claudius. Hamlet is melancholy, bitter, and cynical, full of hatred for his uncle’s scheming and disgust for his mother’s sexuality. A reflective and thoughtful young man who has studied at the University of Wittenberg, Hamlet is often indecisive and hesitant, but at other times prone to rash and impulsive acts. Hamlet is extremely philosophical and contemplative. He is particularly drawn to difficult questions or questions that cannot be answered with any certainty. Faced with evidence that his uncle murdered his father, evidence that any other character in a play would believe, Hamlet becomes obsessed with proving his uncle’s guilt before trying to act. Claudius - The King of Denmark, Hamlet’s uncle, and the play’s antagonist. The villain of the play, Claudius is a calculating, ambitious politician, driven by his sexual appetites and his lust for power, but he occasionally shows signs of guilt and human feeling—his love for Gertrude, for instance, seems sincere. Gertrude - The Queen of Denmark, Hamlet’s mother, recently married to Claudius. Gertrude loves Hamlet deeply, but she is a shallow, weak woman who seeks affection and status more urgently than moral rectitude or truth. Polonius - The...
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...THE CONCEPTS OF LITERATURE IN WESTERN AND ISLAMIC TRADITION By NUR 'ABIDAH ABD SAMAD Literature can be defined as a man’s creation using fictional quality, described with language, in order to serve certain purposes. Literature entails a vast array of forms including prose, novel, drama and poetry. This discussion covers the concepts of literature in the Western and Islamic tradition. To further explore the above dichotomy, this paper identifies the unifying function of both literatures as enhancing knowledge of self. Besides, this essay also clarifies the function of literature as a didactic instrument of teaching from both different traditions. In addition, by comparing these two traditions, there is a clear explication of the elements of fantasy and reality infused in both literary traditions. Lastly, this essay concludes with the value-judgment of evaluating good or bad literature. Muhammad Qutb defines ‘Islamic literature’ as literature written by people belonging to Muslim writers as well as works by non-Muslim writers who deal with Islamic values in their views (M. Badawi, 1993, p. 50). Islamic conception of literature is significantly derived from the very first word of the Qur’anic revelation iqra’, an instruction to read, followed by the word ‘al-Qalam’ which carries the meaning that reads: “it was God who taught man with pen” (96: 4), which indicates the ultimate role of reading and knowledge to Muslim...
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...What is a Myth? Before defining the term "mythology" one needs to define the meaning of the word "myth". The word itself comes from the Greek "mythos" which originally meant "speech" or "discourse" but which later came to mean "fable" or "legend". So the word "myth" is defined as a story of forgotten or vague origin, basically religious or supernatural in nature, which seeks to explain or rationalize one or more aspects of the world or a society. Furthermore, all myths are, at some stage, actually believed to be true by the peoples of the societies that used or originated the myth. The definition is thus clearly distinguished from the use of the word myth in everyday speech which basically refers to any unreal or imaginary story. A myth is also distinctly different from an allegory or parable which is a story deliberately made up to illustrate some moral point but which has never been assumed to be true by anyone. Some myths describe some actual historical event, but have been embellished and refashioned by various story tellers over time so that it is impossible to tell what really happened. In this last aspect myths have a legendary and historical nature. Definitions of Mythology The word mythology has two related meanings. Firstly it refers to a collection of myths that together form a mythological system. Thus one can speak of "Egyptian Mythology", "Indian Mythology", "Maori Mythology" or "Greek Mythology". In this sense one is describing a system of myths which were...
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...Shlok Kumar Professor Padma Baliga English Literature Upto 1900 13 September 2010 The Canterbury Tales and the Panchatantra: Two Frame Narratives contrasted The East has a wonderful tradition in teaching morals through interesting tales; India has given the world the earliest such tales in the form of the Panchatantra, the Hitopadesa and even the Puranas. The Canterbury Tales and the Panchatantra are both frame narratives- often known as ‘story within a story.’ Yet the target audience of both these works is different. And this arises from the nature of these works. Whilst The Canterbury Tales was written by Chaucer originally for a courtly, upper class audience, the Panchatantra was written to teach the high morals and sensibilities of Vedic literature to three disinterested princes in the simplest language, using animals as symbols and characters. Indeed, the Panchatantra and its derivative work, the Hitopadesa are often dismissed as stories for children. Though these fables are indeed vastly instructive, they also teach a way of thriving in the material world and a way of life itself; the Panchatantra is referred to as a niti-shastra. This paper attempts to contrast the Canterbury Tales with the Panchatantra and illustrate the manner in which the latter is a niti-shastra without being merely populated by abstruse, pithy phrases. We know that in The Canterbury Tales, a group of about 30 pilgrims gather at the Tabard Inn in Southwark, across the Thames...
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...Art and Sincerity Excerpted from What Is Art? (1896), translated by Aylmer Maude (1900). Leo Tolstoy www.denisdutton.com ... In order correctly to define art, it is necessary, first of all, to cease to consider it as a means to pleasure and to consider it as one of the conditions of human life. Viewing it in this way we cannot fail to observe that art is one of the means of intercourse between man and man. Every work of art causes the receiver to enter into a certain kind of relationship both with him who produced, or is producing, the art, and with all those who, simultaneously, previously, or subsequently, receive the same artistic impression. Speech, transmitting the thoughts and experiences of men, serves as a means of union among them, and art acts in a similar manner. The peculiarity of this latter means of intercourse, distinguishing it from intercourse by means of words, consists in this, that whereas by words a man transmits his thoughts to another, by means of art he transmits his feelings. The activity of art is based on the fact that a man, receiving through his sense of hearing or sight another man’s expression of feeling, is capable of experiencing the emotion which moved the man who expressed it. To take the simplest example; one man laughs, and another who hears becomes merry; or a man weeps, and another who hears feels sorrow. A man is excited or irritated, and another man seeing him comes to a similar state of mind. By his movements or by the sounds...
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...Running head: THE EFFECTS OF MEDIA IN SOCIALIZATION The Effects of Media in the Socialization of Children and Young Adults The Effects of Media in the Socialization of Children and Young Adults The media today are a powerful tool in modifying the behavior of children and young adults. This behavior can be seen as negative or positive depending on the situation. Children’s development is influenced by many factors but as Lund (2003) noted the significance of the mass media cannot be overstated: “The accumulated experience of media exposure contributes to the cultivation of a child’s values, beliefs, dreams, and expectations, which shape the adult identity a child will carry and modify through his or her life.” Studies investigating Social Learning Theory, done by Baker (2007, p.26) have consistently reported that children can model roles and behaviors seen on television. Media play a significant role in the socialization process, body image, and moral judgments in children and adolescents. Cartoons on television are some of the first factors of socialization in a child’s life. Although many adults feel that cartoons are obviously fantastical, unrealistic, and therefore harmless to children, the research evidence proves otherwise. “According to developmental literature, children before the age of ten years often have difficulty differentiating between reality and fantasy”(Baker...
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...A funny new twist on a classic love story, WARM BODIES is a poignant tale about the power of human connection. After a zombie epidemic, R (a highly unusual zombie) encounters Julie (a human survivor), and rescues her from a zombie attack. Julie sees that R is different from the other zombies, and as the two form a special relationship in their struggle for survival, R becomes increasingly more human - setting off an exciting, romantic, and often comical chain of events that begins to transform the other zombies and maybe even the whole lifeless world As much as I enjoy "The Walking Dead" on AMC and movies such as "28 Days Later," one of my ongoing complaints about the explosion of the zombie genre is the general mopery and overall predictability of those ever-staggering creatures. They lurch. They snarl. They sniff the air for the scent of human flesh. They pounce and gnaw. They pound windows and doors, and express frustration when confronted with 10-foot-high cyclone fences. And then they get shot in the head and die. That's pretty much it. We almost never get inside the rotted mind of the zombie or see things from the zombie point of view. They're forever penned in as the Big Metaphor. One of the many exhilarating pleasures of "Warm Bodies" is the flipping of that script. This is a bloody fresh twist on the most popular horror genre of this century, with none-too-subtle echoes of a certain star-crossed romance that harks back to a certain bard who placed a certain...
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... (Oil, Bread, Soap, Butter, Rice, Pulse etc) * CPN measured in terms of weights. (Potatoes, Tomatoes etc.) * Nouns that are regarded as unit. (Time, Wealth, Furniture, News, Money etc) * Material & Abstract Nouns are Uncountable. ( Water, Gold, Wood, Gas, Petrol, Diesel, Honesty, Freedom, Happiness, Education, Kindness, Power, Unemployment, Health, Poverty, Unity, Independence, Knowledge, Advice, Anger, Friendship, Beauty, Permission, Beauty) * In nouns we have such suffixes as— tion, ism, sion, ment, ty, nce, hood, dom, ness, ship, ing, ce, |...
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...Министерство образования и науки Республики Казахстан Кокшетауский государственный университет им. Ш. Уалиханова An Outline of British Literature (from tradition to post modernism) Кокшетау 2011 УДК 802.0 – 5:20 ББК 81:432.1-923 № 39 Рекомендовано к печати кафедрой английского языка и МП КГУ им. Ш. Уалиханова, Ученым Советом филологического факультета КГУ им. Ш. Уалиханова, УМС КГУ им. Ш. Уалиханова. Рецензенты: Баяндина С.Ж. доктор филологических наук, профессор, декан филологического факультета КГУ им. Ш. Уалиханова Батаева Ф.А. кандидат филологических наук, доцент кафедры «Переводческое дело» Кокшетауского университета им. А. Мырзахметова Кожанова К.Т. преподаватель английского языка кафедры гуманитарного цикла ИПК и ПРО Акмолинской области An Outline of British Literature from tradition to post modernism (on specialties 050119 – “Foreign Language: Two Foreign Languages”, 050205 – “Foreign Philology” and 050207 – “Translation”): Учебное пособие / Сост. Немченко Н.Ф. – Кокшетау: Типография КГУ им. Ш. Уалиханова, 2010 – 170 с. ISBN 9965-19-350-9 Пособие представляет собой краткие очерки, характеризующие английскую литературу Великобритании, ее основные направления и тенденции. Все известные направления в литературе иллюстрированы примерами жизни и творчества авторов, вошедших в мировую литературу благодаря...
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...W.B. Yeats's "The Second Coming" W.B. Yeats' poem "The Second Coming" was written in 1919, just one year after WWI ended. The beginning of this poem reflects on how evil has taken over the minds of good Christians, and the world has turned into chaos. It is apparent that Yeats believes that a Second Coming is at hand, and he spends the last half of the poem discussing what that Second Coming could look like. Turning and turning in the widening gyre (line 1) Yeats imagines the world in a cyclical sphere known a gyre (shape of a cone). In Yeats' note on the text, he states that "the end of an age, which always receives the revelation of the character of the next age, is represented by the coming of one gyre to its place of greatest expansion and of the other to that of its greatest contraction" (2036). Yeats believes that the two thousand years of Christianity will be coming to an end, and after a violent reversal a new age will take its place. The widening part of the gyre is supposed to connote anarchy, evil, and the loss of innocence. The falcon cannot hear the falconer; (2) The falconer in this analogy is most likely God (or Jesus), and the falcon is the follower (or devotee). Humanity can no longer hear the word of God, because it is drowned out by all of chaos of the widening gyre. A wild falcon can symbolize an unconverted Gentile; someone who has sinful thoughts, and does sinful things. A tame falcon (one who listens to the word of God) is a Christian convert. In the...
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...OLD ENGLISH LITERATURE • Palaeolithic nomads from mainland Europe; • New inhabitants came from western and possibly north-western Europe (New Stone Age); • in the 2nd millennium BC new inhabitants came from the Low Countries and the middle Rhine (Stonehenge); • Between 800 and 200 BC Celtic peoples moved into Britain from mainland Europe (Iron Age) • first experience of a literate civilisation in 55 B.C. • remoter areas in Scotland retained independence • Ireland, never conquered by Rome, Celtic tradition • The language of the pre-Roman settlers - British (Welsh, Breton); Cornish; Irish and Scottish Gaelic (Celtic dialect) • The Romans up to the fifth century • Britain - a province of the Roman Empire 400 years • the first half of the 5th century the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes (N Germany, Jutland) • The initial wave of migration - 449 A. D. • the Venerable Bede (c. 673-735) • the Britain of his time comprised four nations English, British (Welsh), Picts, and Scots. • invaders resembling those of the Germans as described by Tacitus in his Germania. • a warrior race • the chieftain, the companions or comitatus. • the Celtic languages were supplanted (e.g. ass, bannock, crag). * Christianity spread from two different directions: * In the 5th century St Patrick converted Ireland, in the 7th century the north of England was converted by Irish monks; * in the south at the end of the 6th century Aethelberht of Kent allowed the monk Augustine...
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...ENGLISH LITERATURE ITS HISTORY AND ITS SIGNIFICANCE FOR THE LIFE OF THE ENGLISH-SPEAKING WORLD A TEXT-BOOK FOR SCHOOLS BY WILLIAM J. LONG, PH.D. (Heidelberg) TO MY FRIEND C H T IN GRATITUDE FOR HIS CONTINUED HELP IN THE PREPARATION OF THIS BOOK CANTERBURY PILGRIMS From Royal MS., 18 D.ii, in the British Museum PREFACE This book, which presents the whole splendid history of English literature from Anglo-Saxon times to the close of the Victorian Era, has three specific aims. The first is to create or to encourage in every student the desire to read the best books, and to know literature itself rather than what has been written about literature. The second is to interpret literature both personally and historically, that is, to show how a great book generally reflects not only the author's life and thought but also the spirit of the age and the ideals of the nation's history. The third aim is to show, by a study of each successive period, how our literature has steadily developed from its first simple songs and stories to its present complexity in prose and poetry. To carry out these aims we have introduced the following features: (1) A brief, accurate summary of historical events and social conditions in each period, and a consideration of the ideals which stirred the whole nation, as in the days of Elizabeth, before they found expression in literature. (2) A study of the various literary epochs in turn, showing what each gained from...
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...MODULE 1: INTRODUCTION This module provides an overview on the subject of art appreciation for those entirely new to the subject. This is a complex topic to deal with and it is impossible to have a truly comprehensive discussion on the topic in such a brief essay. The student is advised to consult more advanced texts to gain further understanding of how to appreciate art more fully. HUMANITIES: What is it? • The term Humanities comes from the Latin word, “humanitas” • It generally refers to art, literature, music, architecture, dance and the theatre—in which human subjectivity is emphasized and individual expressiveness is dramatized. HOW IMPORTANT IS HUMANITIES • The fields of knowledge and study falling under humanities are dedicated to the pursuit of discovering and understanding the nature of man. • The humanities deal with man as a being of purpose, of values, loves, hates, ideas and sometimes as seer or prophet with divine inspiration. • The humanities aim at educating. THE ARTS: What is it? • The word “art” usually refers to the so-called “fine arts” (e.g. pictorial, plastic, and building)– and to the so-called “minor arts” (everyday, useful, applied, and decorative arts) • The word “art” is derived from arti, which denotes craftsmanship, skill, mastery of form, inventiveness. • Art serves as a technical and creative record of human needs and achievements. The word 'art' is often used in our daily lives. However, when...
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