Eeg-06 674f

Understanding poetry Elective Course in English –VI (EEG-06) Max. Marks: 100 Course code: EEG-06/Ast/2014-15 Max. Marks: 100 Answer questions One and Two and any three of the reminding questions. 1. Scan the following ages and comment on their prosodic features:

20×5=100 5×4=20

a. Confusion shame remorse despair, At once his bosom swelled The damps of death bedewed his brow, He shook, he groaned, he fell b. May thou month of rosy beauty, Month when pleasure is a duty, Month of bees and month of flowers, Month of blossom laden bowers. c. How fleet is the glance of the mind Compared with the speed of its flight: The tempest itself lags behind And the swift winged arrows of light d. Merrily, merrily, shall I live now Under the blossom that hangs on the bough. (Hint: You may consult unit 2 in MEG 01.) 2. Explain the following ages with reference to their context supplying brief critical comments where necessary: 10+10=20 a. Since Brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea, But sad mortality o’ersways their power, How this rage shall beauty hold a plea Whose action is no stronger than a flower? b. When I heard the Earth-Song I was no longer brave My avarice cooled 1 | Page

Loke lost in the chill of the grave. 3. What elements of the epic have been parodied in Canto III of the Rape of the Lock? 4. Attempt a critique of Lord Byron as a poet. 5. Critically appreciate either ‘Ulysses’ or ‘Dover Beach”. 6. For Eliot, time is a continuous flux. How does he connect the past with the present in the ‘Journey of the Magi’? 7. How does A.K. Ramanujan in ‘A River” comment on Indian city culture vis-à-vis Indian rural life?

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Answers Answer questions One and Two and any three of the reminding questions.

1. Scan the following ages and comment on their prosodic features:

5×4=20

a. Confusion shame remorse despair, At once his bosom swelled The damps of death bedewed his brow, He shook, he groaned, he fell Ans.: There can be no doubt that the powerful mind of Dryden justly appreciated the strength of our old literature, although he so far bows before the spirit of his age as to deface it for the reception of that age. Even when he revised and spoiled Chaucer's works, he felt the power of them. But he resigned his own judgment to that of his contemporaries. This Samson in his captivity consented to make merry and carouse with his captors — to translate the songs he loved into the Philistine dialect. He had a fine appreciation of the old ballads. "I have heard," says a Spectator, "that the late Lord Dorset, who had the greatest wit tempered with the greatest candour, and was one of the finest critics as well as the best poets of his age, had a numerous collection of old English ballads, and took a particular pleasure in the reading of them. I can affirm the same of Mr. Dryden, and know several of the most refined writers of our present age who are of the same humour." He is, I think, the first collector of poems who conceded to popular ballads their due place, — who itted them into the society of other poems — poems by the most Eminent Hands, — who perceived their excellence, and welcomed them accordingly. To other collectors of that date it was as disgraceful to a poem as to a man to have no father, or to be suspected of a common origin. Dryden rose above this prejudice. He showed one or two ballads the same hospitality as he extended to the poetasters of Oxford and Cambridge, whose name was Legion at this time. b. May thou month of rosy beauty, Month when pleasure is a duty, Month of bees and month of flowers, Month of blossom laden bowers. Ans.: Following fast upon May Day comes another festival, like it redolent of flowers, when all who can leave behind the " Maddening crowd's ignoble strife," hie to the woods and fields to welcome Whitsuntide. It is the season when, according to the quaint old tale of Reynard the Fox, "the woods are gay and glad-some, and every tree is clothed with the green and white livery of glorious leaves and sweet-smelling blossoms; and when the earth is covered with the fairest mantle of flowers, and the joyous birds pour out with delight their harmonious song." of King Charles II. oak leaves and gilded oak apples are worn. Oak branches are suspended over doors and windows. Nowhere is this custom held in more esteem than in the fine old town of Chester, where houses and public buildings are most fitly adorned on every agth of May. c. How fleet is the glance of the mind Compared with the speed of its flight: The tempest itself lags behind 3 | Page

And the swift winged arrows of light Ans.: Loneliness is not the same thing as being alone; it is a state of mind. Loneliness is not the same thing as solitude. Sometimes, a person seeks solitude, to be with his/her thoughts. To seek solitude is not undesirable. Sometimes, a person feels lonely amidst a crowd. It is said that in a hierarchical organisation, it is always lonely at the top. Time seats heavy on the lonely person Peanuts are sometimes called 'Time ' and are sold as such. A lonely person, having nothing else to do, pops up these into her/his mouth to 'kill' time. Time is so precious. Should we kill it? I read this somewhere: Do not suffer loneliness; whenever you feel lonely, convert the feeling into solitude and enjoy it! d. Merrily, merrily, shall I live now Under the blossom that hangs on the bough. (Hint: You may consult unit 2 in MEG 01.) 2. Explain the following ages with reference to their context supplying brief critical comments where necessary: 10+10=20 a. Since Brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea, But sad mortality o’ersways their power, How this rage shall beauty hold a plea Whose action is no stronger than a flower? Ans.: Since neither brass nor stone nor earth nor the limitless ocean is strong enough to resist the sad force of mortality, how can beauty possibly resist death’s rage when beauty is no stronger than a flower? How could your beauty, which is as fragile as the sweet breath of summer, hold out against the destructive assaults of time when neither invulnerable rocks nor gates of steel are strong enough to resist its decaying power? What a frightening thing to think about! Alas, where can I put your beauty, time’s most precious creation, to hide it from time itself? Whose hand is strong enough to slow time down? Who will forbid its destruction of your beauty? Oh, no one, unless this miracle proves effective: that in the black ink of my poetry, the one I love may still shine bright. b. When I heard the Earth-Song I was no longer brave My avarice cooled Loke lost in the chill of the grave. Ans.: Suddenly he stopped; unfortunately, he couldn’t the remainder. So I took over, and recited the rest of the sonnet . Powell looked at me with a mixture of iration and awe and exclaimed that he had not come across someone who could quote Shakespeare offhand with such felicity even in the hallowed universities of Cambridge and Oxford. He added that his achievements paled into insignificance before Shakespeare’s poetry that, in his view, represented the pinnacle of human intellectual achievement. While I regard myself as fortunate for having received such high praise especially from some one of the stature of Powell, what is meaningful was Powell’s utter humility while talking about 4 | Page

Shakespeare. I am indeed aware of the stature of other great men in various fields of intellectual endeavour. I am not downplaying their accomplishments. But when we refer to Shakespeare alone, I feel that all comparisons must cease. Who could have said it better than Shakespeare’s own compatriot Ben Jonson who wrote: Soul of the Age/The applause! delight! the wonder of our stage!/My Shakespeare rise ; I will not lodge thee by/Chaucer or Spenser, or bid Beaumont lie/A little further to make thee a room/Thou art a monument without a tomb. And again: Leave thee alone for the comparison/Of all that insolent Greece or haughty Rome/Sent forth or since did from the ashes come./Triumph my Britain, thou hast one to show./To whom all scenes of Europe homage owe./He was not for an age, but for all time! 3. What elements of the epic have been parodied in Canto III of the Rape of the Lock? Ans.: The opening of the poem establishes its mock-heroic style. Pope introduces the conventional epic subjects of love and war and includes an invocation to the muse and a dedication to the man (the historical John Caryll) who commissioned the poem. Yet the tone already indicates that the high seriousness of these traditional topics has suffered a diminishment. The second line confirms in explicit what the first line already suggests: the “am’rous causes” the poem describes are not comparable to the grand love of Greek heroes but rather represent a trivialized version of that emotion. The “contests” Pope alludes to will prove to be “mighty” only in an ironic sense. They are card-games and flirtatious tussles, not the great battles of epic tradition. Belinda is not, like Helen of Troy, “the face that launched a thousand ships” (see the SparkNote on The Iliad), but rather a face that—although also beautiful—prompts a lot of foppish nonsense. The first two verse-paragraphs emphasize the comic inappropriateness of the epic style (and corresponding mind-set) to the subject at hand. Pope achieves this discrepancy at the level of the line and half-line; the reader is meant to dwell on the incompatibility between the two sides of his parallel formulations. Thus, in this world, it is “little men” who in “tasks so bold... engage”; and “soft bosoms” are the dwelling-place for “mighty rage.” In this startling juxtaposition of the petty and the grand, the former is real while the latter is ironic. In mock-epic, the high heroic style works not to dignify the subject but rather to expose and ridicule it. Therefore, the basic irony of the style s the substance of the poem’s satire, which attacks the misguided values of a society that takes small matters for serious ones while failing to attend to issues of genuine importance. With Belinda’s dream, Pope introduces the “machinery” of the poem—the supernatural powers that influence the action from behind the scenes. Here, the sprites that watch over Belinda are meant to mimic the gods of the Greek and Roman traditions, who are sometimes benevolent and sometimes malicious, but always intimately involved in earthly events. The scheme also makes use of other ancient hierarchies and systems of order. Ariel explains that women’s spirits, when they die, return “to their first Elements.” Each female personality type (these types correspond to the four humours) is converted into a particular kind of sprite. These gnomes, sylphs, salamanders, and nymphs, in turn, are associated with the four elements of earth, air, fire, and water. The airy sylphs are those who in their lifetimes were “light Coquettes”; they have a particular concern for Belinda because she is of this type, and this will be the aspect of feminine nature with which the poem is most concerned. Indeed, Pope already begins to sketch this character of the “coquette” in this initial canto. He draws the portrait indirectly, through characteristics of the Sylphs rather than of Belinda herself. 5 | Page

Their priorities reveal that the central concerns of womanhood, at least for women of Belinda’s class, are social ones. Woman’s “joy in gilded Chariots” indicates an obsession with pomp and superficial splendor, while “love of Ombre,” a fashionable card game, suggests frivolity. The erotic charge of this social world in turn prompts another central concern: the protection of chastity. These are women who value above all the prospect marrying to advantage, and they have learned at an early age how to promote themselves and manipulate their suitors without compromising themselves. The Sylphs become an allegory for the mannered conventions that govern female social behavior. Principles like honor and chastity have become no more than another part of conventional interaction. Pope makes it clear that these women are not conducting themselves on the basis of abstract moral principles, but are governed by an elaborate social mechanism—of which the Sylphs cut a fitting caricature. And while Pope’s technique of employing supernatural machinery allows him to critique this situation, it also helps to keep the satire light and to exonerate individual women from too severe a judgment. If Belinda has all the typical female foibles, Pope wants us to recognize that it is partly because she has been educated and trained to act in this way. The society as a whole is as much to blame as she is. Nor are men exempt from this judgment. The competition among the young lords for the attention of beautiful ladies is depicted as a battle of vanity, as “wigs with wigs, with sword-knots sword-knots strive.” Pope’s phrases here expose an absurd attention to exhibitions of pride and ostentation. He emphasizes the inanity of discriminating so closely between things and people that are essentially the same in all important (and even most unimportant) respects. Pope’s portrayal of Belinda at her dressing table introduces mock-heroic motifs that will run through the poem. The scene of her toilette is rendered first as a religious sacrament, in which Belinda herself is the priestess and her image in the looking glass is the Goddess she serves. This parody of the religious rites before a battle gives way, then, to another kind of mock-epic scene, that of the ritualized arming of the hero. Combs, pins, and cosmetics take the place of weapons as “awful Beauty puts on all its arms.” 4. Attempt a critique of Lord Byron as a poet. Ans.: George Gordon Byron was born with a lame foot, and his sensitivity to it haunted his life and his works. Overhearing a girl he was infatuated with refer to him as "that lame boy" certainly must have deepened his disappointment at being born with this deformity. A fragile self-esteem made Byron extremely sensitive to criticism, of himself or of his poetry, and he tended to make enemies rather quickly. His poetry, along with his lifestyle, was considered controversial in his time and often deemed "perverted" or even "satanic,". The fact that he was often discontent and unhappy, combined with a constant desire for change meant that he created an unstable world for himself, though he never gave up his individual freedom to choose his own path and his own destiny. He inherited the title of Lord Byron at the age of ten, giving him a rank in society, and a bit of wealth to go along with it. But by the time he was in college, Byron began to build up large debts due to an extravagant lifestyle. It is said that, at one point, he kept a pet bear in his rooms at Trinity College in Cambridge. Also while at Cambridge, he developed a great fondness for a choirboy named John Edleston. Throughout his life, Byron fought a battle with obesity. He seemed obsessed with food, as well as being a picky eater. His letters to others, as well as his journals, indicate that he practiced starvation, often eating only one meal a day. Occasionally he would slide to the other extreme, 6 | Page

drinking large amounts of soda-water or consuming great quantities of magnesia and Epsom salts in an effort to keep his weight down. Lord Byron was once called 'mad, bad and dangerous to know.' In this lesson, you'll learn about this poet who is one of English Romanticism's most celebrated and prolific figures. Introduction to Lord Byron Lord Byron - he is no ordinary poet. A refrain that I talk about a lot when I talk about poets and authors is that they were unappreciated in their lifetime, and nobody liked them and they struggled for acceptance. Lord Byron did not have that problem. His poetry was popular. He was popular. He had a real way with the ladies and some dudes, actually, too. He was a tabloid celebrity of his day. If there was a People magazine back then, he would have been all over it. They'd be like, 'who's he with now?' And there'd be a list of all these women and 'scandal' in big red letters across his head. He left a trail of heartache that inspired Fatal Attraction- type responses. It was nuts. We're going to look at his early years, including the story of his name, which is interesting as well. We'll talk about how he got exiled from England. Oh, yeah. He wrote poetry, too. He didn't just go around womanizing - he wrote some stuff. So, we're going to talk about all that. First off - the name, Lord Byron - he sounds like an important guy. He wasn't born an important guy. He was born George Noel Gordon in London in 1788. His father was Captain John 'Mad Jack' Byron, which is kind of an awesome name on its own. So, George should've been Byron. That would make sense. Why was he born Gordon? Who's Gordon? His mother was an heiress. Her name was Catherine Gordon. His dad, Captain Byron - Captain Mad Jack, had squandered his first wife's fortune and she died, and then he married Catherine. In order to claim her estate, so he could also squander her fortune, he took Gordon as his surname, so that's why Little Byron has Gordon as his surname. So, basically, it's kind of progressive - the man took the wife's name - if it weren't motivated out of greed. But that's how he got to be Gordon. But then he was christened George Gordon Byron; at school he was ed as George Byron Gordon. It's all very confusing. Then, when he was ten, his great uncle died, who was William Byron, the 5th Baron Byron, which is hard to say. He wasn't such a great guy. He was known as the 'Wicked Lord' and 'Devil Byron.' He's not filling in good footsteps. When he died, George became the 6th Baron Byron, which is why he got to be a lord, so that's how he ended up Lord Byron. 7. How does A.K. Ramanujan in ‘A River” comment on Indian city culture vis-à-vis Indian rural life? Ans.: The poem “A River” is written by A.K. Ramanujan. In this poem, the poet has compared and contrasted the attitudes of the old poets and those of the new poets to human suffering. He has come to the conclusion that both the groups of the poets are indifferent to human sorrow and suffering. Their poetry dose not reflects the miseries of the human beings. He has proved this point in the present poem. The river Vaikai on whose bank the historic city of Madurai stands has been mentioned in the poems of many poets, both past and present. The river is intimately associated with the life and culture of the Tamil people. The peculiar thing, which appeals to the poets, is that the river presents two different spectacles in two different season. It is completely dry in summer and flooded in full in the rainy season. In this poem, the poet refers to the river 7 | Page

Vaikai which flows through the city of Madurai. The word Madurai means a “sweet city”. It is a Tamil word. As a matter of fact, this city is the center of Tamil culture and learning. It is also a holy city full of temples including the famous Minakshee temple. The poets have written many poems on the temples and the river. In the present poem, A.K. Ramanujan deals with the river. In the poem “A River”, we get two pictures based upon two different kinds of description. In the summer, the river is almost empty. Only a very thin stream of water flows. So the sand ribs on the bed of the river are visible. The stones that lie on the bed of the river also exposed to view. The portion of the river under the bridge has also been described. We get a vivid picture of the river in the summer season. There is also the picture of the river in the rainy season. Generally, all kinds of poets have written about it in their poems. During the rainy season when the floods crone the people observe it very anxiously. They the rising of the river inch by inch from time to time. They how the stone steps of the bathing place are submerged one by one. They see how three village houses were damaged and carried off by the floods. They now how two cows named Brinda and Gopi were carried away. They also know how a pregnant woman was also drowned in the river during the flood. Both the old and new poets have mentioned these things in their poems. But the way they have described these things in their poems shows that they were not much alive to or sympathetic with human suffering. They did not mention the name of the woman who was carrying twins. Before their birth, she was drowned in the flooded river. At the time of drowning, most probably the twins must have kicked the sides of her womb. She must have got much pain out of this. But both the new poets and old poets did not refer to all these miseries of the woman in their poetic creations. This becomes ultimately clear that they are not sympathetic with suffering human beings. They are totally callous and indifferent. This kind of attitude makes their poetry weak and unappealing, dry and cheerless. The tone of the poem is based on sarcasm and irony. The structure of the poem has been in paragraphs and single lines. There are four longer verse paragraphs and a shorter one in the beginning. There are only two single isolated lines. This kind of structural arrangement contributes to the effect of irony. It also helps to grasp the main points clearly. Secondly, a word can be said about the language used in the poem. It is very simple on of which the thought sequence of the poem is presented unmistakably and clearly.

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