A feeling of mystery, excitement and remoteness away from everyday life is one of the descriptions for the word Romantic. The Romantic imagination is the vision of the poet to see the world from an entirely different perspective: The faculty which has been blunted by the coldness of reason is sought to be recaptured by…
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…
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…
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…
Emotively is what you could be passionate about; what lights up your sensual feelings or your imaginative vein. Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte is one novel I can think about very keenly. The power of emotion in this fascinating love story is dark and deep. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte is a classic emotion novel….
My thoughts about Crime and Punishment and Brothers Karamazov resurface as I read Dostoyevsky’s Notes from the Underground. Human nature revels in his novels; revels in the candid display of monstrosity and hideousness, subterfuge and all embracing love. As a critic has remarked Dostoyevsky’s characters possess a dialogic imagination. They are very near to the…
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn according to Ernest Hemingway “All modern American Literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn.” The novel is a rich source to understand the American way of life in the early days of modernisation. For lovers of Nature and rivers especially, there is no better novel as…
One of the best books I have read in a long time is Orhan Pamuk’s My name is Red; a fantastic read. How do we describe a book where art and reality seem to seamlessly merge into one another? As I read the novel I was under a spell. I was carried away by the…