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Showing posts from May, 2008

The Study of English Novel

Rise of the English Novel King Alfred who ruled West-Saxon ( Wessex ) from 871 up to 901 was the founder of the English prose or the person who laid the cornerstone of the English prose. At the end of 8 th century, King Alfred tried to save the English culture in Northumbria due to the attack of Scandinavians. He asked his scholars to translate the important works. Some of the important works translated in his age are: 1. Pastoral Care by Pope Gregorius 2. Ecclesiastical History of the English People by Bede (The original was in Latin) 3. Universal History and Geography by Orosius 4. Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius He also instructed his scholars to write and collect the important events and notes in his kingdom, and later known as Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. The next important person to note is that John Wyclif (± 1324-1384). He was a scholar as well as a priest. He was well-known as the translator of Bible. Hi...

What is Novel?

What’s Novel ? Novel may be roughly defined as a long story in prose, meant primarily for entertainment, and presenting a realistic picture of life . Baker defines the novel as a literary form whose “medium is prose, not verse; as to content, it is a portrayal of life, in the shape of a story, wholly or in the main fictitious” . W.E. Williams defines it as “a long narrative in prose detailing the actions of fictitious people” . The term is now applied to a large number of writings that have in common only the attribute of being works of fiction written in prose . Difference between a Novel and a Short Story Its extended narrative, distinguishes it from the short story and from the work of middle length called the “novelette”. It also permits: a. Greater variety of characters. b. Greater complication of plot or plots. c. Greater development of milieu (setting). d. Greater analysis of the motives of characters...

Kinds of Novel

Kinds of Novel: 1. The Picaresque Novel It is the tale of the adventures or misadventures of a picaro (the Spanish word) or rogue who wanders from one country to another, from one setting to another, from the town to the country, from one inn to another, and in this way the novelist gets an opportunity of introducing a variety of characters and incidents, of painting society as whole realistically. The Novelists of the Picaresque Novel are : 1. Mark Twain: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1816) 2. Thomas Nash (the first writer of this type of novel): The Unfortunate Traveler or The Life of Jack Wilton (1594) 3. Richard Head: The English Rogue (1665) 4. Daniel Defoe (1659-1731): Moll Flanders (1722) , Robinson Crusoe (1733) 5. Henry Fielding: Tom Jones, Joseph Andrews 6. Charles Dickens: Great Expectations, Pickwick Papers, David Copperfield, Oliver Twist 2. The Panoramic Novel Henry Fielding, the...

Oedipal Love in D.H. Lawrence's "The Rainbow"

In The Rainbow , D. H. Lawrence discusses Oedipal love in three relationships. In the first generation, Tom Brangwen has a mother-fixation which results in his sexual insufficiency. He is so much haunted by the mother image that he is not able to push his relationships with his girls to their desired development. Next we find it in the Tom-Anna relationship. During Lydia ’s pregnancy and later during her preoccupation with the newborn child, Tom diverts his love towards his step daughter Anna. The relationship is charged with great intensity, but only momentarily. After Tom’s satisfactory adjustment with his wife, the undesirable intensity of this relationship automatically fades away. It is in the case of Will-Ursula relationship that we find a detailed discussion of the Oedipus complex. Frustrated in his marriage, Will looks to the child Ursula for his emotional fulfillment. Since it is a very strained and perverse kind of love, it sustains him all right, but it has a ‘deadening’ ...