Arghya Jana Literature Guide

Summary of the essay ‘Of Friendship’. According to Aristotle, the great Greek philosopher truth and untruth can be discussed in few words. To him, a man who finds delight in solitude, who prefers to live a lonely life outside the society is either a beast or a god. It is true that the hatred and aversion of a man towards society has somewhat of the savage beast. If one finds himself out truly in love and enjoyment everything would be heavenly to him. Epimenides, Numa, Empedocles are some those characters who find the true nature of self-realization. But very few people can actually come to know the nature of solitude. A crowd is not a company, the pictures of some people can take a place in the out gallery but it would be wrong to say that we love them. Magna is one of the biggest to cities of Greece, but there is no friendship here. Friends live here in a scattering manner and, therefore, friendship never ...

                Under the heavy impact of the Renaissance the English poetical literature came with the contact of the sonnet form which became an extremely popular in the poets of the Elizabethan period. It was Sir Thomas Wyatt who inaugurated the sonnet in English literature following the great sonnet master Petrarch. Wyatt tried his best to make the Petrarchan sonnet to be implanted with its theme as well as technique into English literature.         The Petrarchan sonnet provides the English poet not only with a form but also with the sentiments. The whole nature of the relation between the poet and his beloved had become conventionalised in terms of an idealized courtly love attitude, which Petrarch had manifested toward Laura in his love sonnets. The notion of the lover as the humble servant of the fair lady, injured by her glance, tempest-tossed in seas of despair ...