Arghya Jana Literature Guide

The story of Leda and the Swan is a Greek myth which is told with several variations. Zeus fell in love with the mortal Leda, wife of Tyndareus, the king of Sparta, and seduced her in the form of a swan on the same night that she also lay with her husband. As a consequence, according to one version of the myth, Leda bore the twins Castor and Pollux (Polydeuces), who were hatched from two eggs, the fomer being the son of Tyndareus and mortal, and the other being the son of Zeus and therefore immortal. They are known as the Gemini (‘Twins’). Through their love for each other, they both eventually became the immortal-mortals. According to another version of the myth, one of the eggs contained not just Castor but also his twin sister Clytemnestra, whilst the other egg bore the immortal Helen (of Troy) as well as her twin brother Pollux. This myth is not only a counterpart to that of Europa and the Bull , but is paralled in Hinduism by the myth concerning Brahma...

Sir Francis Bacon’s fame in England and even abroad rests very largely on his Essays. According to W.J. Long, Bacon’s famous essays are the one work, which interests all students of English literature. In these Essays, Bacon presents himself as a novelist, a statement and a man of the word. They are specimens of that wisdom which arise our of a universal insight into the affairs of the world. They are the fruits of the observation of life. In fact, the Essays are the fullest and finest expression of the practical wisdom he had acquired from study experience and meditation. It was the greatness of Bacon as a stylist that he sets up a model of writing prose particularly in Essays, which avoided the prevailing defects of the English prose. His prose style was suitable for all kinds of subjects ranging from heaven to earth. Bacon’s style was completely different from the prolix method that was used by his contemporaries like Hookers, Ascham, Lily and Ralgh. Till the closing years...

Type of Work . ....... The Great Gatsby is a novel of tragedy. In ancient Greek literature—the plays of Sophocles (497-405 B.C.), for example—a tragedy involved the downfall of a noble character with a tragic flaw (called hamartia ). The Great Gatsby records the downfall of two characters with at least some noble characteristics: Gatsby and American society. Their tragic flaws are naive idealism and corrupt behavior. The Great Gatsby was Fitzgerald's third novel. Previously, he had published This Side of Paradise (1920) and The Beautiful and the Damned (1922).  Year of Publication ....... The Great Gatsby was published in New York in April 1925 by Charles Scribner's Sons. Setting . Place .......The story takes place in the wealthy Long Island communities of West Egg and East Egg (both fictional), about twenty miles east of Manhattan. Author Fitzgerald once lived on Long Island in the village of Great Neck, Nassau County, on the north shore of t...