Comparativestudy of the novel Middlemarch and Sense and Sensibility

SUBJECT: Paper No.6 the Victorian Literature
Rollno.32

Study: M.A. Sem.2

Guided by: Heenaba Zala

 Department of English Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University.

Topic: Comparative Study of the Novel Sense and Sensibility AND Middlemarch

Introduction:

 

              ‘Middlemarch’ written by George Eliot and ‘Sense and sensibility’ written by Jane Austene . In the Middlemarch George Eliot express his views on  Marriage life. He describe the Marriage life with the use of Some Characters, Like: DOROTHEA BROOKE, Mr.CASAUBONE, ROSAMOND VINCY,TERTIUS LYDGATE, MARY and FRED. In the Sense and Sensibility Jane austene presents the marriage issues and some reality of life. In the sense and sensibility main characters are Elinor, Marriane, Margaretta, John Willoughby, colonel Brandon, Edward Ferras, Mr.Dashwood, Mrs.Dashwood, Lady Middleton, John Dashwood, Hary, Robert, Mrs.palmer,Ms.Gray and Lucy.

                   In the Novel Middlemarch George Eliot uses too many characters, Mary Garth, Mr.Arthur Brooke, Celia Brooke, Sir James Chettam, Will Ladislaw, Mr.Humphery Cadwallader, Mrs.Eleanor Cadwallader, Mr.Caleb Garth, Mr.Camden Farebrother, Nicholas Bulstrode, Mr.Peter Featherstone, Mrs Jane Waule, Mr.Hawley, Mr.Mawmsey, Dr.Sprague, John Raffles, Rigg Featherstone, Mr.Tyke.

                   In the Middlemarch Dorohea Brooke is a young woman who is live with her uncle and sister in the small town of Middlemarch in England. She is beautiful, intelligent and gorgeous.  But she is also so idealistic, It’s almost laughable. Her main ambition in life is to take on a noble project so she marries a dried up old scholar named casaubone. So that time she thinking that helping him in his research will be the project she’s after, Not so much. Dorothea quickly discovers that he cares more for his own scholarly pursuits than he does for her, so she can’t do much about it. So we can says that she is more dependent on her husband.

                   Tertius Lydgate is a young and idealistic doctor. He moves to Middlemarch to set up a practice with his new fangled ideas about medicine and science. But he encounters a lot of obstacles. First of all, most of the residents of Middlemarch have lived in the town for their whole lives and they don’t trust newcomers. Second, they don’t trust new ideas. And Lydgate is all about scientific progress. Lydgate falls in love with Rosamond Vincy she is the sister of one of his patients. Lydgate marries with Rosamond Vincy.  But he is not happy in his marriage life. Lydgate discovers that Rosamond is a superficial and selfish. Rosamond learns that Lydgate will always be married with his work  as a doctor. And then they run out of money because neither of them knows how to stick a budget.

                   These two unhappy couples The Lydgate and The Casaubone are connected by Mr.Casaubone’s young cousin, Will is a handsome, young artist withseriously, he sparkles. Lydgate finds Will to be sympathetic to his ideas about science and medicine and science Will is an outsider in Middlemarch. Too,they quickly become friends. Everyone seems to like Will. Especially Dorothea, who finds that he understands her in a way her husband doesn’t. But don’t worry Dorothea’s halfway to sainthood, and she’s not about to cheat on her husband. The thing about marrying a much older man, though, is that they pass away and leave you free to remarry.

                   Mr.Casaubone was always jealous of the friendly bond between his cousin, Will and his wife. So Mr.Casaubone leaves a codicil in his Will saying that Dorothea Will lose all the money she’s supposed to inherit from him if she remarries Will Ladislaw. Dorothea hadn’t even though about marrying Will until she reads the Codicol. She thought that they were just friends.

                   After some serious thinking and some misunderstandings, Dorothea and Will decide to get married. They live happily ever after despite the fact that they forferit the large inheritance from dead Mr.Casaubone. Rosamond and Lydgate live unhappily ever after Lydgate dies at a tragically early age leaving Rosamond free to marry someone who is more willing to cater to her whims.

                   As the same time, readers have become acquainted with Rosamond’s university educated, restless and irresponsible brother Fred who is reluctantly destined for the church. He is in love with his childhood sweetheart, Mary Garth is a sensible and Forthright young woman. Who will not accept him until he abandons the church and settles ina more suitable career. Mary’s honesty Contributes to Fred’s losing a considerable fortune, which was bequeathed to him by the aged and irascible Mr.Featherstone, and then rescinded by a later Will which  Featherstone, on his deathbed, begs Mary to destroy. Mary refuses to engage in such an illegal act and begs Featherstone to wait until the morning. Fred in trouble over some injudicious horse-dealing is so forced to take out a loan that is co-signed by Mary’s father, Caleb Garth, to meet his Commitments. When Fred is unable to pay the loan that time Caleb Garth’s finance become compromised since he must pay back the loan himself as co-singer. This humiliation shocks Fred into reassessing his life and he resolves ti train as a land agent  under the forgiving Caleb.  

                   These three interwoven narratives with side plots such as the disastrous though comedic attempt by Mr.Brooke to enter parliament as a sponsor of Reform are the basis of the novel until well into its final third. Then a new thread emerges with the appearance of John Raffles who knows about Bulstrode’s shady  past and is determined to exploit this knowledge via blackmail. In his youth the now fire and brimstone church going Bulstrode engaged in some questionable financial dealings. he also owes the foundation of his fortune to a marriage to a much older wealthy widow. Bulstrode terror of public exposure as a hypocrite leads him to hasten the death of the mortally sick Raffles by giving him access to forbidden alchohol and excessive amounts of opium. But he is too late Raffles had already  spread the word. Bulstrode’s disgrace engulfs the luckless Lydgate as knowledge of the financier’s loan to the doctor become public and he is assumed to be complicit with Bulstrode. Only Dorothea and Farebrother maintain faith in Lydgate but Lydgate and Rosamond are encouraged by the general Opprobrium to leave Middlemarch. The disgraced and reviled Bulstrode’s only consolation is that his wife stands by him as he too, faces exile.

                   The Final thread in the complex weave concerns Ladislaw. The Peculiar nature of Casaubone’s will has meant that suspicion has fallen upon Dorothea and Ladislaw as possible lovers, creating an awkwardness between the two. But Casaubon’s paranoia demonstrates some perception because Ladislaw is secretly in love with Dorothea. But he keeps that fact to himself, having no desire to involve her in scandal or to cause her disinheritance. He has remained in Middlemarch working as a newspaper editor for Mr.Brooke he has a focus  for Rosamond’s treacherous attentions. After Brooke’s election campaign collapses, there is nothing to keep Ladislaw in Middlemarch so he visits Dorothea to make his farewell. But Dorothea released from life with Csaubone but still the prisoner of his Will,  has come to fall in love with Ladislaw. She had previously seen him as her husband’s unfortunate relative, but the peculiar nature of Casaubon’s will fortune. She shocks her family again by announcing she will marry ladislaw. At the same time Fred who has proven an apt pupil of Caleb’s profession, finally wins the approval and hand of Mary.

                   Beyond the principal stories we are given constant glimpses into other scenes. We observe Featherstone’s avaricious relatives gathering for the spoils visit Farebrother’s strange menage and become aware of enormous socia and economic  divides. But these are backdrops for the main stories which true to life are left largely suspended leaving a short finale to summarise the fortunes of our protagonist over the next 30 years or so. The book ends as it began with Dorothea:

“Her Full nature… spent itself in channels which had no great name on the Earth. But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts.”

In the Sense and Sensibility Dashwood family interduced by Jane Austene Mr. and Mrs.Dashwood and their three Daughters Elinor, Marianne and Margaret. John and his wife Fanny have a great deal of money, yet refuse to help his half sisters and their mother. Elinor is youngest sister of Marianne and Margaret.Elinor and Edward Ferras are developing their friendship. He is Fanny’s Brother he was shy and very kind person Elinor likes Edward but is not convinced her feelings are mutual Fanny is especially displeased by their apparent regard, as Edward’s mother wants him to marry well. 

Marianne falls and twists her ankle while walking; she is lucky enough to be found and carried home by a dashing man named Willoughby. Marianne and Willoughby have a similar romantic temperament, and Marianne is much pleased to find that Willoughby has a passion for art, poetry, and music. Willoughby and Marianne's attachment develops steadily, though Elinor believes that they should be more restrained in showing their regard publicly. Colonel Brandon a gentkeman and a bachelor . The Colonel is soon taken with Marianne, but Marianne objects to Mrs.Jennigs attempts to get them together and to the “advanced” age and serious demeanor of the colonel. 

One pleasant day, the Middletons, the Dashwoods, and Willoughby are supposed to go on a picnic with the Colonel, but their plans are ditched when Colonel Brandon is forced to leave because of distressing news. Willoughby becomes an even more attentive guest at the cottage, spending a great deal more time there than Allenham with his aunt. Willoughby openly confesses his affections for Marianne and for all of them, and hopes they will always think of him as fondly as he does of them; this leaves Mrs. Dashwood and Elinor convinced that if Marianne and Willoughby are not engaged, they soon will be.

One morning, Mrs. Dashwood, Elinor, and Margaret leave the couple, hoping for a proposal; when they return, they find Marianne crying, and Willoughby saying that he must immediately go to London. Mrs. Dashwood and Elinor are completely unsettled by this hasty departure, and Elinor fears that they might have had a falling-out. Marianne is torn up by Willoughby's departure, and Elinor begins to question whether Willoughby's intentions were honorable. But, whether Willoughby and Marianne are engaged remains a mystery, as Marianne will not speak of it. Edward comes to visit them at Barton, and is welcomed very warmly as their guest. It is soon apparent that Edward is unhappy, and doesn't show as much affection for Elinor; when they spot a ring he is wearing, with a lock of hair suspiciously similar to Elinor's, even Elinor is baffled. Edward finally forces himself to leave, still seeming distressed.Marianne anxiously awaits Willoughby's arrival, while Elinor finds her greatest enjoyment in Colonel Brandon's daily visits. Elinor is much disturbed when Colonel Brandon tells her that the engagement between Marianne and Willoughby is widely known throughout town. At a party, Elinor and Marianne see Willoughby; Marianne approaches him, although he avoids Marianne, and his behavior is insulting.

Marianne angrily writes Willoughby, and receives a reply in which he denies having loved Marianne, and says he hopes he didn't lead her on. Marianne is deeply grieved at being deceived and dumped so coldly; Elinor feels only anger at Willoughby's unpardonable behavior. Marianne then reveals that she and Willoughby were never engaged, and Elinor observes that Marianne should have been more prudent in her affections. Apparently, Willoughby is to marry the wealthy Lady Grey due to his constant need for money.

Colonel Brandon calls after hearing the news, and offers up his knowledge of Willoughby's character to Elinor. Colonel Brandon was once in love with a ward to his family, Eliza, who became a fallen woman and had an illegitimate daughter. Colonel Brandon placed the daughter, Miss Williams, in care after her mother's death. The Colonel learned on the day of the Delaford picnic that she had become pregnant, and was abandoned by Willoughby. Elinor is shocked, though the Colonel sincerely hopes that this will help Marianne feel better about losing Willoughby, since he was not of solid character.

Edward is surprised at the generous offer, since he hardly knows the Colonel. Edward decides to accept the position; they say goodbye, as Elinor is to leave town soon. Much to Elinor's surprise, Robert Ferras and  Edward's selfish, vain, and rather dim brother, is now to marry Miss Morton; he has also received Edward's inheritance and money, and doesn't care about Edward's grim situation. Elinor is horrified at seeing him; he has come to inquire after Marianne's health and to explain his past actions. Willoughby says he led Marianne on at first out of vanity; he finally began to love her as well, and would have proposed to her, if not for the money.

By saying that he also has no regard for his wife, and still loves Marianne, he attempts to gain Elinor's compassion; Elinor's opinion of him is somewhat improved in being assured of his regard for Marianne. Elinor cannot think him a total blackguard since he has been punished for his mistakes, and tells him so; Willoughby leaves with this assurance, lamenting that Marianne is lost to him forever.

Mrs. Dashwood finally arrives, and Elinor assures her that Marianne is out of danger; both Mrs. Dashwood and the Colonel are relieved. Mrs. Dashwood tells Elinor that the Colonel had confessed his love for Marianne during the journey from Barton; Mrs. Dashwood wishes the Colonel and Marianne to be married. Elinor wishes the Colonel well in securing Marianne's affections, but is more pessimistic regarding Marianne's ability to accept the Colonel after disliking him for so long.

Marianne makes a quick recovery, thanking Colonel Brandon for his help and acting friendly toward him. Marianne finally seems calm and happy as they leave for Barton, which Elinor believes to signal Marianne's recovery from Willoughby. She is also far more mature, keeping herself busy and refusing to let herself languish in her grief.

When Marianne decides to talk about Willoughby, Elinor takes the opportunity to tell her what Willoughby had said at Cleveland, and Marianne takes this very well. Marianne also laments her selfishness toward Elinor, and her lack of civility toward most of their acquaintance. Marianne finally says that she could not have been happy with Willoughby, after hearing of his cruelty toward Miss Williams, and no longer regrets him.

The family is stunned when one of their servants returns with news that Edward is married to Lucy, as he just saw them in the village. Elinor knows now that Edward is lost to her forever. Mrs. Dashwood sees how upset Elinor is, and realizes that Elinor felt more for Edward than she ever revealed. One afternoon, Elinor is convinced that the Colonel has arrived at the cottage, but is surprised to find that it is Edward instead. Their meeting is awkward at best; he soon informs them that it is his brother who has been married to Lucy, and not him. Elinor immediately runs from the room, crying out of joy; Edward then senses Elinor's regard for him, and proposes to her that afternoon. Elinor accepts and he gains Mrs. Dashwood's consent to the match.

Edward admits that any regard he had for Lucy was formed out of idleness and lack of knowledge; he came to regret the engagement soon after it was formed. After leaving London, Edward received a letter from Lucy saying that she had married his brother Robert, and has not seen her since; thus, he was honorably relieved of the engagement. After receiving the letter, he set out for Barton immediately to see Elinor. Edward will still accept the position at Delaford, although he and Elinor again will not have enough money to live on comfortably. The Colonel visits Barton, and he and Edward become good friends.

Edward then becomes reconciled with his family, although he does not regain his inheritance from Robert. His mother even gives her consent for his marriage to Elinor, however much she is displeased by it; she gives them ten thousand pounds, the interest of which will allow them to live comfortably. Edward and Elinor are married at Barton that fall.

Conclusion:

                   So In the Sense and Sensibility and In the Middlemarch Jane Austene and George Eliot Both the writer presents the issues of Marriage life. In the Sense and Sensibility Marianne and Elinor Faces the problems and in the Middlemarch Dorothea, Mary, Rosamond and many other characters face the problem. Elinor and Marianne are represents the Sense and Sensibility.  Elinor takes her decisions with practicality and Marianne is too sensitive she likes to live in her utopia world.

What is cultural Study?

 Topic:What is Cultural Study?

 SUBJECT: Paper no.8. The Cultural Studies:

  ROLL NUMBER: 32

Study: M.A SEM: 2

GUIDED By: D.P.Barad

 Department of English, Maharaja krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University.

Topic: What is Cultural Study??

Introduction:

     

     A college class on the American novel is reading Alice Walker’s The Colour Purple. The Professor edentities Africen American literary and cultyral sources and describes the book’s mltilayerd narrative structure, moving on to a brief review of its feminist crituque of American gender and racial attitudes. Students and professor discuss these various approaches, analyzing key passages in the novel.

          A student raises her hand and recalls that the Steven Spielberg film version drew angry responses from many African American Viewers. The Discussion takes off: Did Alice Walker “betray” African Americans with her harsh depiction of black men? Did Spielberg enhance this feature of the book or play it down? Another hand goes up: “But she was promoting Lesbianism.” “Spielberg really played that down” the professor replies.

          A contentious voice in the back of the room: “Well, I just want to know what a serious film was doing with Oprah win frey in it. This is quickly answered by another student,” Dude, she does have a book club on her show!” Class members respond to these points, examining interrelationships among race, gender, popular culture, the media and literature. They question cultural conventions- both historical and contemporary that operate within novels, on The Oprah Winfrey show, in  Hollywood films. They conclude the class by trying to identify the most important conventions Walker Portrayts in constructing her characters and communities in The color purple.

          Because the Word “Culture” itself is so difficult to pin down “ “Cultural Studies” is hard to define. As was also the case in chapter 8 with Elainer Showalter’s “Cultural” model of feminine difference, “cultural studies”  is not so much a discrete approach  at all, but rather a set of practices. As  Patrick Brantlinger has pointed out, cultural studies  is not “ a tightly coherent, unified movement with a fixed agenda,” but a “ loosely coherent group of tendencies, issues, and questions.”

          Arrising from the social turmoil of the 1960s , cultural studies is composed of elements of marxism, post structuralism, Feminism, gender studies, authropology, sociology, race and ethnic studies, and postcolonial studies: those fields that concerntrate on social and cultural forces that either create community or cause division and alienation. For example, Drawing from Roland Barthes on the nature of literary language and Claude Levi- Strauss on anthropology, cultural studies was influenced by structuralism and poststructuralism. Jaques Derrida’s “Deconstruction” of the World or text distincton , like all his deconstructions of hierarchical oppositions, has urged- or enabled- cultural critics “ To erase the boundaries between  high and low culture, classic and popular literary texts, and literature and other cultural discourse that, following Derrida, may be seen as manifestations of the same textuality.”

                   The discipline of psychology has also entered the field of cultural studies. For example, Jaques Lacan’s psychoanalytic theory of the unconscious structured as a language promoted emphasis upon language and power as symbolic systems. From Michel Foucault came the notion that power is a whole complex of forces; it is that which produces what happens. A tyrannical aristocrat does not just independently wied power but is empowered by “discourses” accepted ways of thiking, writing and speaking and practicies that embody, exercise and amount to power. From punishment to sexual mores, Foucault’s “genearogy”. Of topics includes many things excluded by traditional historians, from architectual blue prints for prisons to memories of “ Devians” Psychoanalytic, Structuralist and post structuralist approaches are treated else where in this topic, in the present topic we review cultural studies connections with Marxism, the new historicism, multiculturalism, post modernism, popular culture and post colonial studies before moving on to our group of six literary works.

                   Cultural differences we can see in Bollywood movies also Like, Ek Tha Tiger, Gunday, Highway, Force, Madras café and meny other movies. In the movie Gunday there are two type of culture and and two types of person one who is suddenly angry on every one and one who calmly take the decisions. This is depend on nature and also depend on nature.

Five types of Cultural Studies:

1.    British cultural materialism.

2.    New Historicism.

3.    American multiculturalism.

4.    Postmodernism and popular culture.

5.    post colonial studies.

 British Cultural Materialism:

                        Cultural Studies is referred to as “ cultural materialism” in Britain and it has a long tradition. In the later ninteenth century Mathew Arnold sought to redefine the “givens” of British culture. Edward Burnett Tylorr’s pioneering anthropological study primilive Culture argued that “ Culture or civilization, taken in its widest ethnographic sense, is a complex whole which includes  knowledge, brief art, morals law, custom and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society”

            Cultural materialism began in earnest in the 1950s with the work of F.R.leavis sought to use the educational system to distribute literary knowledge and appreciation more widely; Leavisites promoted the “great tradition” of Shakespeare and Milton to improve the moral sensibilities of a wider range of readers than just the elite.

          Cultural Materialists also turned to the more humanistic and even spiritual insights of the great student of Rabelais and Dostoevsky, Russian Formalist Bakhtin, especially his amplification of the valogic form of meaning within narrative and class struggle, at once conflictual, individual and social. Feminism was also important for cultural materialists in recognizing how seemingly “disinterested” thought is shaped by power structures such as patriarchy.

NEW HISTORICISM:

           New historicism versus old historicism: the latter, says porter, saw history as “ World views magisterially unfolding as a series of tableaux in a film called progress” as though all Elizabethans, for example, held views in common, The new historicism rejects this interplay of forms of power.

Laputa-“ The whore” what did Jonathan swift mean when he gave that name to the flying island in the third voyage of Guliver’s Travels? It is a question that has tantalized readers since the eightenth century. The science fiction aspects of that island still amuses us why “the whore”? There may be an answer, and as we will show later, new historicism is the right approach to answer this question.

          New historicism frequently borrows terminology from the marketplace: Exchange, negotiation and circulation of ideas are deswcribed. H.Aram Veeser calls “the moment of exchange” the most interesting to new historicists, since social symbolic capital may be found in literary texts:” the critic’s role is to dismantle the dichotomy of the economic and the non-economic, to show that the most purportedly disinterested and self –sacrificing practices, including art, aim to maximize personal or symbolic profit.”

          Laputa is a gigantic trope of the female body; the circular island with a round chasm at the center, though which  the astronomers of the island descend to a domelike structure of the “Flandona Gagnole”, or “astronomer’s cave.” Laputa has at its center a giant lodestone on which the movement of the lodestone and island, but also the entire society. As Bruce remarks, “It is this which engenders the name of the island; in a paradigmatic instance of misogyny, the achievement of male control over female body itself renders that body the whore; Laputa.

AMERICAN MULTICULTURALISM

        Nearly a half century later, evolving identities of racial ethnic groups have not only claimed a place in the main stream of american life, but have challenged the very  notion of  “race” more and more seen by social scientists as a construct invented by whites to assign social status and privilege, with out scientific relevance. Unlike sex For which there are X and Y chromosomes, race has no genetic markers. In fact, a 1972 Harvard University study by the geneticist Richard Lewontin found that most genetic differences were within racial groups, not between them. In the  new century, if interracial trends from the past since children of multiracial backgrounds may be the norm rather than the exception, And given the huge influx of Mexican Americans into the united States over the last fifty years, immigration patterns indicate that by the year 20580 Anglo-Americans will not longer be the majority, nor English necessity the most widely spoken language. Administrations of the 2000 census faced multiple problems with its assignment of racial categories, for many biracial or multiracial people did not identity with any of them.

          African American  writing often displays a folkloric conception of humankind; a “double consciousness,” as W.E.B. Dubois called it, arising from bicultural identity; irony, parody, tragedy and bitter comedy in negociation this ambivalence; attacks upon presumed white cultural superiority; a naturanstic focus on survival  ; and inventive reframings of language itself as in language games like “jiving”, “sounding”, “signifying”,“playing the dozens”, and rapping. These practices symbolically characterize “the group’s attempt to humanize the world”, as Ellison puts it . Ellison urged black writers to trust their own experiences and defininitions of reality. He also upheld folklore as a source of creativity; it was what “black  people “black people had before they knew there was such a thing as art”. This elevation of black folk culture  to art is important and it led to divisions among black artists: for example , zora Neale Hurston’s reliance upon folklore and dialect annoyed some of her fellow artists of the Harlem Renaissance, such as Langston Hughes, who wished to distance themselves from such “roots” and embrace the new international forms available in literary modernism.

           The history of the indigenous cultures of the New World is punctuated by conquest by Indian nations; European countries, Especially spain, Portugal, France and England; then by the United States. Over time, there emerged in former Spainish Possessions a metizo literary culture in addition to the colonial and native cultures.

          “Code Switching” is a border phenomenon studied by linguists. Speakers who code switch move back and forth between spanish and English, For instance, or resort to the “Spanish” of border towns ; linguists note why and when certain words are uttered in one language or another.

           American Indian Literatures, In predominantly oral cultures, Storytelling passes on religious beliefs, moral values, political codes and practical lessons of everyday life. For American Indians. Stories are a Source of strength in the face of centuries of silencing by “Euro Americans”

          Asian American Literature is written by people of Asian descent in the united States, Addressing the experience of living in a society that views them as alien. Asian immigrants weredenied citizenship as late as the 1950 s. Edward said has written of orientalism, or the tendency to objectify and exoticize Asians, and their work has sought to respond to such stereotyping. Asian American writers include Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Fllipino, Vietnamese, Malyasian, Polynesian and many other peoples of Asia the Indian Subcontinent, and the pacific. These cultures presents a bewildering array of languages, religions, social structures and skin colors and so the category is even more broad and artificial than Latina or American Indian.

POSTMODERNISM AND POPULAR CULTURE

         

          Postmodernism, like poststructuralism and deconstruction is a critique of the aesthetics of the preceding age, but besides mere critique, postmodernism celebrates the very act of dismembering tradition. Postmodernism questions everything rationalist, European Philosophy held to be true, arguing that it is all contingept and that most cultural cconstuctions have served the function of empowering members of a dominant social group at the expense of “others.” Beginning in the mid 1980s, post modernism emerged in art architecture, music, film, literature sociology, communications, fashion and other fields.

          Societies must have order jean Francois Lyotard argues that stability is maintained through “grand narratives” or “master narratives,” stories a culture tells itself about its practices and beliefs in order to keep  going. A grand narrative in American culture might be the story that democracy is the most enlightened or rational form of government and that democracy will lead to universal human happiness. But postmodernism, Lyotard adds , is characterized by “incredulity toward metanarratives”  that serve to mask the contradictions and instabilities inherent in any social organization. Postmodernism prefers “mini-narratives” of local events. Similarly, Jean Baudrillard Describes the “simulacra” of postmodern life which have taken the place of “real” objects.

           Popular Culture, There was a time before the 1960s when popular culture was not studied by academics- when it was, well, just popular culture. But within Americam Studies programs at first and then later in many disciplines including semiotics,  rhetoric, literary criticism, film studies, ethnic studies and psychoanalytic approaches, critics examine such cultural media as pulp fiction, comic books, television, film, advertising, popular music, and computer  cyberculture. They assess how such factors as ethnicity, race, gender, class, age, region and sexuality are shaped by and reshaped in popular culture.

POSTCOLONIAL STUDIES:

          Postcolonialism refers to a historical phase undergone by third world countries after the decline of colonialism: foir example, when countries in Asia, Africa , and the Cabribbean separated from the European empires and were left to rebuild themselves. Many third world writers focus on both colonialism and the changes created in a postcolonial culture, Among the many challenges facing postcolonial writers are the Attempts both to resurrect their culture and to combat the preconceptions about their culture.

Conclusion:

        Cultural Studies is an innovative interdisciplinary field of research and teaching that investigates the ways in which “culture” creates and transforms individual experiences, everyday life, social relations and power, Research and teaching in the field explores the relations between culture understood as human expressive and symbolic activities, and cultures understood as distinctive ways of life. Combining the strengths of the social Sciences and the humanities, cultural studies draws on methods and theories from literary studies, sociology, communications studies, history, cultural anthropology, and economics. By working across the boundaries among these fields, cultural studies new questions and problems of today’s world. Rather than seeking answers that will hold for all time, cultural studies develops flexible tools that adapt to this rapidly changing world.

I.A.Richard's poems

  Topic: I.A. Richard’s poems.

 SUBJECT: Paper no.7 Literary Theory & Criticism: The 20th Western & Indian Poetics – 2:

 ROLL NUMBER: 32

Study: M.A SEM: 2

GUIDED By: D.P.Barad

 Department of English, Maharaja krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University.

Topic: I.A. Richard’s poems.

Introduction:

                                             

                                              The possibilities of misunderstanding being fourfold, we shall have to keep an eye open, too, upon those underground or overhead cross-connections by which a mistake in one function may lead to errate behaviour in another. We cannot reasonably expect diagnosis here to be simpler than it is with a troublesome wireless set, or to take an even closer parallel, than it is in a psychological clinic. Simple cases do occur, but they are rare. To take aberrations in apprehending, Sense first: those who misread ‘A COOL, GREEN HOUSE’ in poem two, the victims of ‘THE KING OF ALL OUR HEARTS TO-DAY’ in poem IX, the rain-maker and the writer who took poem v to be ‘quite an ingenious way of saying that the artist has made a cast of a beautiful woman’, are almost the simplest examples we shall find of unqualified, immediate misunderstanding of the sense. Even these, however, are not perfectly simple. Grudges felt on other grounds against the poem, misunderstandings of its feeling and tone, certainly helped to their mistakes, just as the stock emotive power of ‘King’ was the strong contributing factor, mastering for all historical probabilities and every indication through style.

                                             

                                              There is one difference however. All will agree that while delicate intellectual operations are in progress brass bands should be silent. But the band more often than not is an essential part of the poetry. It can, However, be silenced, if we wish, white we disentagle and master the sense, and afterwards its co-operation will no longer confuse us. A practical ‘moral’ emerges from this which deserves more prominence than it usually receives. It is that most poetry needs several readings – in which its can be grasped. Readers who claim to dispense with this preliminary study, who think that all good poetry should come home to them in entirety at a first reading, hardly realise how clever they must be.

                                              But  there is a subtler point and a fine distinction  to be noted. We  have allowed above that a good poet –to express feeling, to adjust tone and to further his other aims may play all manner  of  tricks with his sense. He may dissolve  its coherence altogether, if he sees fit. He does so, of course at his peril; his other aims must be really worth while, and he must win a certain renunciation from the reader; but the liberty is certainly his, and no close reader will doubt or deny it. This liberty is the careless reader’s excuse and the bad poet’s opportunity. An obscure notion is engedered in the reader that syntax is somehow less significant is poetry than in prose, and that a kind of guess-work- likely enough to be christened ‘intuition’ –is the proper mode of apprehending what a poet may have to say. The modicum of truth in the notion makes this danger very hard to deal with. In most poetry the sense is as important as anything else; it is quite as subtle, and as dependent on the syntax, as in prose ; it is the poet’s chief instrument to other aims when it is not itself his aim. His control of our thoughts is ordinarily his chief means to the control of our feelings, and in the immense majority of instances we miss nearly everything of value if we misread his sense.

                                                But to say this- and here is the distinction we have to note- is not to say that we can wrench the sense free from the poem, screw it down in a prose paraphrase, and the feelings this doctrine excites in us, as the burden of the poem. These twin dangers-careless, ‘intutive’ reading and prosaic, ‘over-literal’ reading-are the Symplegades, the ‘justling rocks’, between which too many ventures into poetry are wrecked.

                                              Samples of both disasters are frequent enough in the protocols, through Poem I, for example, gave little chance to the ‘intuitive’, the difference there betweena ‘poetic’ and a ‘prosaic’ reading being hardly marked enough to appear. Poem V, on the other hand, only allowed intuitive readings. However, the effect of a prosaic reading is clear; in intuition has all its own way, and the effect of its incursions is as striking as the triumph of the opposite tedency.

                                              Still keeping to the reader’s traffic with sense as little complicated as may perhaps be expected of unfamiliar words, the absence of the necessary intellectual contexts, defective scholarship, in short, as a source of error. Possibly through my choice of poems and perhaps through the advanced educaional standing of the protocol-writers, this obstacle to understanding did not much appear. Far more serious were certain misconceptions as to how the sense of words in poetry is to be taken. Obstacles to understanding, these much less combated by teachers and much more troublesome than any mere deciency of  information. For, after all, dictinaries and encyclopedias stand ready to fill up most gaps in our  knowledge, but an inability to seize the poetical sens`e of words is not so easily remedied.

                                                Some further instances of these misconceptions will make their nature plainer. Compare the chemistry with the ‘literalism’.   Not many metaphors will survive for readers who make such a deadly demand for scientific precision as do these. Less acute manifestations of the same attitude to language  appear frequently elsewhere, and the prevalence of this literalism, under present-day conditions of education, is greater than the cultivated reader will imagine. How are we to explain- to those who see nothing in poetical language but a tissue of ridicolous exaggerations, childish ‘fancies’ ignorant conceits and absurd symbolations-in what way its sense is to be read.

                                              The general problem of all responses made to indirect influences may here be considered. A reader’s liking for this passage might often be affected by his acquaintance with Swinburne’s descriptions and sea-metaphors. ‘Who fished the murex up?’ is a pertient question. The point constantly recurs when we are estimating the enthusiasm of  readers  whose knowledge of poetry is not wide. Have they, or have they not, undergone the original influence. It would be interesting to compare, by means of such a passage as this, a group of  readers before and after they had first spent an evening over songs of the Springtides, or Atalanta in Calydon.

                                              A study of  his ‘The practical criticism, A Study of  Literary Judgement reveals that I.A.Richards is a Staunch advocate of a close textual and verbal study and analysis os a work of all while preparing this book the author had three things in mind. “I have set three aims before me on constructing this book,” he says,” First, to introduce a new kind of documentation to those who are interested in the contemporary state of culture whether as critics, philosophers, as teachers, as psychologists, or merely as curious persons. Secondly , to provide a new technique for those who wish to discover for themselves what they think and feel about poetry, and why thwy should like or dislike it. Thirdly, to prepare the way for educational methods more efficient  than those we use now in developing discrimination and the power to understand what we hear and read.”

                                              Detective Scholarship is a third source of important thing in poetry. The reader may fall to understand the sense of  many points because he is ignorant of the sense of many a word used by the poet. The words may be new difficult, unfamiliar  to him. Or he may luck the necessary intellectual context. Words used by a poet, besides having a literal meaning, may also have acquired additional richness  and value from their having been used by other poets and writers  in different contexts, and this associative value and significance would be lost upon a reader unfamiliar with this literate context of words.

                                              Besides  this, a far more serious  cause of misunderstanding is the failure to realise that the poetic use of words is different from their use in prose. Literal sense of words can be easily understood with the help of dictionary, “BUT AN INABILITY TO SEIZE THE POETICAL SENSE OF WORDS IN NOT SO EASILY REMEDIED.” For  example :

“Solemn and gray, the immense  clouds of even

Pass on their towering unperturbed way

Through the vast whitness of the rain-swept heaven.

The moving pageants of the waming day.

Heavy with dreams, desires, prognostications.

Brooding with sullen and Titanic crests.

They surge, whose mantles’ wise imaginations.

Trail where Earth’s mute and langurous body rests.

While below the Hawthrons smile, like milk splashed down.

From Noop’s blue pitcher over mead and hill

The arrased distance is so dim with flowers.

It seems itself some coloured cloud made still.

O how the clouds this dying daylight crown.

With the tremendous triumph of fall towers.”

                                              These Complaints rest upon an assumption about language that would be fatal to poetry. All these things are happen in a poem if there is any good reason for their happening or anything vantage is gained from their happening.

·       A cloud cannot have ‘desires.’

·       A mantle cannot have ‘imaginations.’

·       ‘Imaginations’ cannot ‘trail.’

·       ‘Milk’ does not ‘smile.’

·       ‘Dim with flowers’ is rather weak, for flowers are bright things.

·       ‘Tall towers’ do not ‘triumph’ so far as I know, As how I never saw one doing it! Might be an interesting sight!.’

                                     Poet use a figurative language , and this use of poetic figures poses a number of difficult and interesting problems, merely by expounding metaphors and hyperbeles by supplying the suppress as if ‘s’, is like ‘s’ etc…. poetry cannot be turn in to Togreatry respectable prose. A proper understanding of poetry can be posible only when the demand for accuracy and precision is combined with a recognotion of the iberties which are proper for a poet, and the power and value of figurative language.

                                     This power and value of figurative  language, as well as problems and difficulties of figurative language in general, can be better appreciated by a study of a few concrete examples. In the following passage in which the poet celebrates the eightieth birthday of George Meredith consider the hyperbole of the sea-harp.

“A  health a ringing  health, into  the king.

Of all our hearts today; But what proud song.

Should follow on the thought, nor do him wrong?

Unless the sea were have teach mirthful string.

And dawn the lonely listener, glad and grave.

With colours of the sea-shell and the were

In brightening eye and cheek. There is none to sing!

Drink to him, as men upon an Alpine peak

Brim one immoral cup of crimson wine,

And into it drop one pure cold cruse of snow,

Then hold is up, too rapturously to speak.

And drink- to the mountains, line on glittering line,

Surging away in to the sun-set glow.”

                                     The passage has been variously commented upon as follows:

1.    The only concrete simile in the health is the liakening of the sea to a harp- surely a little extravagan.

2.    The imagery is bad . The sea may sound like an organ but it never had the scription of a harp.

3.    One woman is if the poet has correctly compared the sea convienced in the cription the harp.

4.    A far fetched  metaphor in which the sea is pictured as a harp and each  string, besides being mirthful, is made up of the lightening of spring  nights for some unknown reason Dawn listen to the music of his incredible instrument.

5.    The first definite clue to the poem’s true character is the word ‘woven’. Since strings are spun or twisted,’woven’ must have been brought in for its higher potency in releasing vague emotion. From that point onwards the poet was obviously overwhelmed with recolled phrases and piffered epithets.

6.    Common sense suggests that if the Dawn were present the lightening of spring nights would be inevitably absent.

7.    Since Dawn does not come in to being till the end of night, the strings and the listener could not exist contemporaneously.”

                                     There is no doubt that these comments rightly stress a number of inconsistencies and incoherences in the passage. They point to at least four logical flaws in the passage. But such readings are a failure to understand the beauty, value and significance of figurative language.

                                     The comments examined above show a well-balanced literalism, for they are all objections to a poem in which the poet had been guilty of many liberties and inconsistencies in his imagine but at other times, this rationality and literalism is carried to an extreme and even legitimate poetic images are subjected to rational and literal tests and condemned accordingly. Take for example, it following poem:

“ Climb cloud, and pencil all the blie

With your miraculous stockade;

The earth will have her joy of you

And limn your beauty till it fade.

Puzzle the cattle at the gras.

And paint your pleasure on their flanks;

Shoot, as the ripe cornfield you pass,

A shudder down those golden ranks

On wall and Windows slant your hand

And sidle up the golden stair;

Cherish each flower in all the land

With soft encroachments of cool air,

Lay your long fingers on the sea

And shake your shadow at the sun,

Darkly reminding him that he

Relieve you when your work  is done,

Rally your wizardries, and wake

A noonday panic cold and rude,

Till ‘neath the ferns the drowsy snake

Is conscious of his solitude.

Then as your sorcery declines

Elaborate your pomp the more,

S shall your gorgeous new designs

Crown your beneficence before.

Your silver hinges now revolve.

Your snowy citadels unfold,

And, lest their pride too soon dissolve,

Buckle them with a belt of gold,

O sprawling domes. O tottering towers,

O frail steel tissues of the sun-

What ! have ye numbered all your hours

And is your empire all fordone?”

                                              Presumably could oblige by climbing pentiling etc. The whole ‘poem’ is a choice example of ugliness of  Domantic animism. If the mind had changed would the poet have got angry? Puzzle the cattle did anyone ever see cattle puzzled by a cloud. This must have been written in study by one who might have done better by the country to learn that clouds are blown by the wind, and do not climb and puzzle cattle and school shudders, lay long fingers and perform similar human actions at command of prigs.

Conclusion:

                                              Probably expected some different feeling to be expressed. Who also quarrels with the opening metaphor seems to miss the descriptive sense of the poem for some other reason. In view of the effect of ‘ miraculous stockade’ no less than of ‘limn’,puzzle’,’paint’,’shoot’ and ‘sidle’ upon other readers, one is tempted  to suspedt some incapacity of visual memory. Or perhaps he was one of those who supposed that a cloud rather than its shadow was being described.’pencil’ ,if we take it to mean ‘ produce  the effects of penciling’ hardly mixes  the metaphor in any serious fashion. Its suggestion both of the hard, clear  outline of the cloud’s edge and of the shadowy variations in the lighting of its inner recesses, is not in the least cancelled by climb’ or by the sky-scraper hoist of  ‘miraculous to meet the many objections to the sounds in these words with the remark that they reflect the astonishment that a realization of the height of some cclouds does evoke ? ‘Miraculous stockade’ seems, at least, to have clear advantages over ‘ the tremendous triumph of tall towers’ in point of economy  and  vividness. ‘puzzlw’ has accuracy also on its side against these cavilers. Anyone who watches the restless shift of cattle as the shadow suddenly darkness their world for them will endorse the poet’s observation. But if the cows never noticed any change of light the word would still be justified through its evocative effect upon men. Similarly with ‘paint’ and ‘shoot’ ; they work as a rapid and fresh notation of not very unfamiliar effects, and there is no reason to suppose that those readers for whom they are successful are in any awy damaging or relawing their sensibility.

                                               With this we come back to the point at which we left poem IX. We can sum up this discussion of some instances of  figurative language as follows: All respectable poetry invites close reading. It encourages attention to its literal  sense up to the point, to be detected by the reader’s discretion, at which liberty can serve the aim of the poem better than fidelity to fact or strict coherence among fictions. It asks the reader to remember that its aims are varied and not always what he unreflectingly expects. He has to refrain from applying his own external standards. The chemist must not require that the poet write like a chemist, nor the moralist, nor the man of affairs, nor the logician, nor the professor,  that he write as they would.’The whole trouble of literalism is that the reader forgets that the aim of the poem comes first, and is the sole justification of its means.  We may quarrel, frequently we must, with the aim of the poem, but we have first to ascertain what it is. we cannot legitimately judge its means by external standards. Which may have no do, or, if we like, in becoming what in the end it has become.