Code
Questions
Answers
1.
Write short note on
Curtal Sonnets and
Miltonic Sonnets.
Curtal Sonnets: There was a new kind of sonnet invented by Gerard Manley
Hopkins in the Victorian Age. In the Preface to his Poems (1918), he presented a
sort of curtailed sonnet, and called these ‘curtal sonnets.’ The curtal sonnets consist
of only ten lines, instead of the usual fourteen. Hopkins divided these ten lines into
two stanzas: the first consisting of 6 lines and the second consisting of 4. In
addition, there is a short tail piece which is not longer than half the length of a
normal sonnet line. I will give you an example to show his short tail piece:
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change
Praise Him
Thus, the curtal sonnet is a variation that arises decreasing the number of lines of a
sonnet.
Miltonic sonnet: The most notable feature of the Miltonic sonnets is the variations in
theme. Milton never wrote on the popular theme of love, as all his predecessors did.
Milton was an exception. Milton wrote sonnets to celebrate an occasion, to
commemorate an event, to glorify a person or simply to put across his religious
ideas. Therefore, Milton’s sonnets are called occasional sonnets. For instance, How
Soon Hath Time was written on the poet’s 24th birthday.
2.
Present the difference
between a traditional
and a literary epic.
As the literary epics were written in imitation of traditional epics there are many
similarities between the two. Therefore, let us limit ourselves to some of the
differences between traditional and literary epics.
1. Traditional epics are a product of the oral tradition. It means that it was recited
or sung orally before it was written. But the literary epics were written by great
writers in imitation of the traditional epics.
2. Traditional epics are episodic. One episode does not necessarily follow the
other. Therefore, traditional epics seem disjointed or fragmentary but the
literary epics are structurally better organized.
3. The heroes of traditional epics represented individual fame whereas heroism in
the literary epics was not a one-man show.
4. The heroes of traditional epics indulged in derring-do, which defies our notions
of credibility. But there is considerable reduction of the fanciful or incredulous
in the literary epics. The duel between Aeneas and Turnus in Aeneid sounds
more convincing than the encounter between Odysseus and Cyclops in
Odyssey.
3.
Write short notes on
Ben Johnson.
The greatest of the Elizabethan dramatists outside Shakespeare was Ben Jonson.
As Marlowe had been Shakespeare’s greatest rival in his earlier career, so was Ben
Jonson in his later. Starting as a brick-layer he passed on to soldiering, then to
acting on the stage and finally to play writing. He killed a fellow actor and was
branded for life on his left thumb. He was involved in bitter quarrels with other
dramatist, notably Dekker and Marston. For his role in the comedy Eastward Ho,
which offended King James he suffered imprisonment along with Chapman and
Marston and came very nearly to having his ears and nose chopped off. In his later
life he developed into a sort of literary dictator and had his own admirers called the
‘Sons of Ben’ or the ‘Tribe of Ben.’ He died in poverty and was buried in the
Westminster Abbey. The short and simple epitaph on his tomb reads: O Rare Ben
Jonson!
Ben Jonson struck out a new line in drama. He had critical theories of his own which
he strictly followed. He strictly conformed to the rules of classical drama. He
observed the ‘unities’ while Shakespeare flouted them. He kept tragedy and
comedy rigidly apart instead of mixing them as Shakespeare did. He is scrupulously
accurate in his historical facts and is never guilty of anachronisms. His two
tragedies, Sejanus and Catiline were the results of elaborate reading and research.
But they are pedantic and dull. It was in comedy that Ben Jonson was more
successful. The best known comedies are Everyman in his Humour, Epicoene of
The Silent Woman, The Alchemist, and Bartholomew Fair. The comedy which Ben
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4.
Write short notes on
Wit and Paradox.
5.
Name the three types
of Odes. Write short
notes on each type of
odes.
6.
Write short notes on
Naturalism.
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Jonson created is known as the comedy of humor. You have read about comedy of
humor in the previous unit. The most popular comedy of Ben Jonson is Everyman in
his Humour. But in this unit, I will briefly discuss the most delightful of Ben Jonson’s
comedies of humour – Epicoene or The Silent Woman.
Wit and Paradox are important characteristics of metaphysical poetry. Wit means
the ability to discover brilliant, surprising and new figures of speech. It is a kind of
verbal expression, which is meant to intentionally produce shock or comic surprise.
The surprise is usually because of unforeseen connection between words or ideas,
which we would never have thought of before. For example, in The Sun Rising,
Donne addresses the sun as a saucy, unruly old fool who should not think of
disturbing lovers in the bed. In another poem, The Relic, he calls the lock of hair of
his beloved a relic. ‘Relic’ means the personal remains of a saint. But here the saint
is a worldly woman who has enjoyed earthly pleasures with her lover. She is a saint
of secular love!
Paradox is a statement apparently absurd or self-contradictory but which has a
basis of truth. The paradox is used by all poets, but it is the central device in
metaphysical poets, both in secular and religious poems.
Donne’s poem
“Canonization” is a poem full of paradoxes. In the poem he tells that sexual lovers
are saints. In one of his love poems he tells God that he will never be chaste ‘unless
you ravish me’ – that is to say unless he is raped by divine love.
There are three main variations of the ode. They are:
●
The Pindaric ode or the Regular ode: The sub-genre of odes was first written
by the Greek poet Pindar in the 5th Century B.C. Odes that imitated the model
employed by Pindar are called the Pindaric odes. Pindaric odes are also called
Regular odes. Pindaric odes have two distinct features. First, Pindaric odes
had a complex stanza pattern. Stanzas were patterned into sets of three called
the strophe, antistrophe and the epode. The first section of the poem is called
the strophe. The second section called the antistrophe is identical to the first
section in terms of the number of lines, length and rhyme scheme. The third
section called the epode differs in number of lines, length and rhyme scheme
to the first and second. Secondly, the Pindaric odes are called encomiastic. It
means that the odes were written to praise or glorify someone or something.
●
The Irregular ode: The irregular ode was introduced by Abraham Cowley in
1656. He imitated the Pindaric odes in style and subject matter. But he
disregarded the stanza pattern followed by Pindar. In other words, the irregular
odes do not have the strophe – antistrophe-epode pattern. On the contrary,
each stanza can have its own pattern, which is the number of lines, length and
rhyme scheme. Most English poets composed irregular odes. Wordsworth’s
Ode: Intimations of Immortality is a good example of a regular ode.
●
The Horatian ode: Horatian odes are odes that are modeled on the matter,
tone and form of the odes of the Roman poet Horace. Horatian odes are calm,
meditative and colloquial. But in terms of stanza pattern the Horatian odes are
homostrophic. It means that all the stanzas followed the same pattern. Keats’
Ode to Autumn is an example of a Horatian ode.
Naturalism demands for a truthful depiction of life and held that ultimate reality is
discoverable only through the five senses. Naturalism insisted that “art must
become scientific in its methods and it placed greater emphasis on the idea that all
behavior is determined by forces of heredity and environment.” This restricts the
subject matter of drama to two kinds – “that taken over from scientific findings; or
that which records with absolute fidelity events observed in real life. The dramatist
thus has only to “observe, record and experiment with a complete sense of
detachment and with the sole aim of demonstrating the truth.” The naturalists also
suggested that a play should be a “slice of life”, meaning a transfer of a possible
segment of life onto the stage. This led to greater emphasis on stage setting. The
naturalist’s penchant for detail is evident in a one-act play The Butchers in which
real carcasses of beef were hung up on the stage and the interior of a butcher shop
was produced in every detail. The proscenium or the picture frame stage led to
realism in terms of setting and stage properties. Naturalism was especially
considered appropriate for plays of social comment. Look at the typical directions of
stage setting in a naturalistic drama. The play is Athol Fugard’s The Blood Knot:
The walls are a patchwork of corrugated iron, packing-casewood, flattened
cardboard boxes, and old Hessian bags. There is one door, one window (no
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curtains), two beds, a table, and two chairs. Also in evidence is a cupboard of sorts
with an oil stove, a kettle, and a few pots. The shack is tidy and swept, but this only
enhances the poverty of its furnishings.
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