Arghya Jana Literature Guide

     The sentimental comedy did not last long. The sentimental soon degenerated into sentimentality. This change gradually manifested itself in the advent of sensibility to replace wit and immorality in the comedy. In this sentimental comedy of Colley Cibber and Steele there was conventional morality and sentimentality in place of grossness of the restoration comedy. These dramatists dealt with the problems, of conduct, family and marriage in a tone that will no longer shock decorum and by virtue of tears they cause to flow, they contributed to the edification of souls. These dramatists aimed at preaching some moral lessons by restoring suffering innocent virtue to happiness and converting rogues into good characters. Thus these comedies lost the true spirit of comedy. There are no gaiety and innocent mirth created by wit and fun. Instead, these plays served the false morality of the middle class. The two great dramatists are - A. OLIVER GOLDSMITH :-...

The Dada art movement reigned from about 1916 to 1920 mainly in the countries of France, Germany and Switzerland. The Dadaism movement was based on principles of anarchy, cynicism, and rejecting the laws of social organization and beauty. The Dadaists sought to discover reality by abolishing traditional culture and accepted aesthetic forms. The group protested against World War I, and bourgeois interests that they feel inspired the war. The nihilistic point of view was also prevalent within the Dadaist movement. The name ‘Dada’ was created for the movement when a group of young artists and war resisters (including Jean Arp, Richard Hulsenbeck, Tristan Tzara, Marcel Janco, and Emmy Hennings) stuck a paper knife into a French-German dictionary and found that it pointed to the word dada, the French word for ‘hobby horse’. Cabaret Voltaire was where the ideas of Dada were spawned and later the surrealists used it as their art forum. Cabaret Voltaire fell into desrepair afte...

Romanticism began in the late 18th century and ended in the mid 19th century. The Romantic movement can be described as a reaction against Neoclassicim in which the style is full of emotion and beauty with many individualistic and exotic elements. Romantic art portrays emotions painted in a bold and dramatic manner, and there is often an emphasis on the past. Romantic artists often use melancholic themes and dramatic tragedy. Paintings by famous Romantic artists such as Gericault and Delacroix are filled with energetic brushstrokes, rich colors, and emotive subject matters. The German landscape painter Caspar David Friedrich created images of solitary loneliness whereas in Spain, Francisco Goya conveyed the horrors of war in his works. This demonstrates the variety in subject matter, but the emphasis on drama and emotion. The Pre-Raphaelite movement succeeded Romanticism, and Impressionism is firmly rooted in the Romantic tradition. Other famous Romantic artists include ...

            A deconstructive reading of Robert Frost's poem "The Road Not Taken" reveals that the road not taken doesn't make any difference at all.   High schools have been using this poem to motivate students for decades, but what teachers and students never seem to notice is that both roads are essentially equal; therefore there is no moral to the story about the road less traveled making all the difference.  Did Frost make a fundamental error in his poem or did he deliberately write the last line in a clever attempt of chicanery to winnow out the scholars from the masses, or is he commenting on the illusion of independence, freedom, and originality in American society?  I suspect the latter but that is a thesis for a different essay.              Deconstruction questions the artifice of binary oppositions because they are hierarchies that privilege one of the terms.  Once we d...

The poem by Robert Frost, the Road not Taken, is about individuality and non-conformity.   The poem outlines the choices people make in life, using an extended metaphor. Robert Frost’s poem was written about his friend who went to war, “One stanza of 'The Road Not Taken' was written while I was sitting on a sofa in the middle of England: Was found three or four years later, and I couldn't bear not to finish it. I wasn't thinking about myself there, but about a friend who had gone off to war, a person who, whichever road he went, would be sorry he didn't go the other. He was hard on himself that way" – Robert Frost, Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, 23 Aug. 1953. The poem was highlighting some of the bad choices his friend had made and showing how to make the right choices. “two roads diverged in a wood, and I -- I took the one less travelled by, And that has made all the difference.” This shows that Robert Frost advises his friend to not conform to ot...

Type of Work ....... "My Last Duchess" is a dramatic monologue, a poem with a character who presents an account centering on a particular topic. This character speaks all the words in the poem. During his discourse, the speaker intentionally or unintentionally reveals information about one or more of the following: his personality, his state of mind, his attitude toward his topic, and his response or reaction to developments relating to his topic . The main focus of a dramatic monologue is this personal information, not the topic which the speaker happens to be discussing. The word monologue is derived from a Greek word meaning to speak alone.  Publication ....... Browning first published poem under the title "I. Italy" in 1842 in Dramatic Lyrics , a collection of sixteen Browning poems. Brown changed the title of the poem to "My Last Duchess" before republishing it in 1849 in another collection, Dramatic Romances and Lyrics . Setting an...

Type of Work ....... Pride and Prejudice is a novel of romance and social satire with comic episodes, as in a comedy of manners.  Composition and Publication ....... Jane Austen wrote the first version of the novel in 1796 and 1797, calling it First Impressions , but failed to get it published. In 1809, she began revising the novel and completed it in 1812 for publication by Thomas Edgerton on January 28, 1813 in London. Settings ....... The action takes place in England between the fall of 1811 and the Christmas season of 1812 in the counties of Hertfordshire, Derbyshire, Kent, and Sussex and in the city of London. Characters Mr. Bennet: Husband and father of five daughters who owns a small estate, Longbourn, and runs his home on a modest income of his own, supplemented by money his wife brought to their marriage. He is generally a passive observer of events involving his daughters, although he takes an active part in attempting to find a daughter wh...