Can stories spring up from somewhere? Literature is a reflection of life and living. Before it took the form of books, Literature was there among the people in their stories, songs, ballads, myths and folktales. In fact it is said that the richest and perennial source of imagination for poets and authors alike has been…
This is an assignment I wrote for my PGDES classes in EFLU. Some of the points appear to be still relevant. It is interesting to note how the various schools of literary criticism have dealt with the problem of intention. Impressionistic Criticism or Romantic criticism, a practice which appreciated the author’s fidelity to his experience,…
If one accepts the premise that life is a search for meaning and the quest to understand our existence then reading Literature is one form of fulfilling that quest. The improvement part of it has to be looked at as a process than a product. Anyway improvement does not happen by itself and depends on…
Is there something called perfection about anything? When the world around is constantly evolving and Language and Literature which are the mirror to this world are forever dynamic, perfection is a distant dream. Rather assuming such a state is itself a fallacy. A real student will rather apply to the task with sincerity and dedication.
The only artist who ranks along side William Shakespeare in the galaxy of literary greats is none other than Fyodor Dosteyevsky. It is not difficult to answer this question because it is Brothers Karamazov. Constructed around a family of four brothers, all sons of Fyodor Karamazov: Alexei, the sensualist and emotional giant, Ivan, the rationalist…
Florentino Ariza’s declaration of love to Fermina Daza in Love in the time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. She is the woman he has loved passionately for more than two score years. He would do anything to be with her. For her he has remained celibate. When her husband dies his passion is revived…
There can be no exact classification because the genres seem to merge or converge at times. Taking Shakespeare as a starting point one could say we have Tragedy; Hamlet, Macbeth, Othello, King Lear: Comedy; Merchant of Venice, A Midsummer Night’s dream, As you like it and others, Tragi-comedy, The Tempest, History; Richard the second, Roman…
When we are asked to summarise a work of literature, what might be expected is to render a synopsis of the work in question, probably adding a detail here and there which might interest the listener. But to critically summarise a work of literature may be to don the robes of a critic. Obviously there…
Career wise the strict matching of degrees with jobs that used to be the norm earlier is not what it is today. Probably the sciences and engineering degrees are required in the highly technical categories. English offers a wide spectrum of careers where there is an interface with language and communication. A student of English Literature has to align himself/herself with the amazing opportunities and possibilities that the English language is creating in diverse fields like BPO, Content writing, Communication studies, Hospitality, Tourism, Media and Journalism, Film and social media, Advertising, Freelance writing, Creative writing, Event management, Medical Transcription, Translation studies, Culture studies, Teaching and
Confessions of a Economic Hitman, The World is Flat, A brief history of Time, The Tao of Physics, Life on the Mississippi, Living to tell the tale, My experiments with truth, The last Moghul, Hampi The forgotten empire, Orientalism, Seven years in Tibet, The naked Nagas, Biography of Napoleon, Walden, Waste Land, The autobiography of…