The play of fear and laughter has been inscribed in Gothic texts since their inception, an ambivalence that disturbs critical categories that evaluate their seriousness or triviality. The uncertainty perpetuates Gothic anxieties at the level of narrative and generic form,… Read More ›
The high-culture tradition is essentially a conservative one. It encompasses a defence of a narrowly defined high or elite ‘culture’, in the classic sense of Arnold’s ‘the best that has been thought and said’ (Arnold, Culture and Anarchy, 1869). This… Read More ›
The play between mythological and modern significance, between mystical and scientific visions of horror and unity, sexuality and sacred violence, is focused in the figure of the vampire. In Mary Braddon’s ‘Good Lady Ducayne’ (1896) the vampire theme signals the… Read More ›
The critical race theory (CRT) movement is a collection of activists and scholars engaged in studying and transforming the relationship among race, racism, and power. The movement considers many of the same issues that conventional civil rights and ethnic studies… Read More ›
Popular culture has become segmented into a myriad of forms, genres, audiences, tones, styles and purposes, so much so that it cannot meaningfully be talked about as a monolith. While some so-called ‘popular culture’ is produced en masse (and has… Read More ›
The term queer has often puzzled outsiders.Why call yourself that? This too has its story. For a long time queerwas, of course, a derogatory term for male homosexuals. That began to change when it began to be widely used in… Read More ›
Foucault’s archaeological and genealogical studies both indicate that, rooted in institutional practices, discourse evolves distinct configurations which oppose ruling class aims but still regulate the body, institutions, and even society. This contingent, historical view of discourse repudiates the Althusserian opposition… Read More ›
We need the excuse of a fiction to stage what we really are. (Slavoj Zizek, in The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema [dir. Sophie Fiennes, 2005]) Would you allow this guy to take your daughter to a movie? Of course not…. Read More ›
Fredric Jameson is among the most prominent theorists of postmodernism and one of the foremost Marxist critics of his generation. In Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (1991), film occupies a central place in his account of the… Read More ›
Unlike a number of his contemporaries, Jean Baudrillard (1929-2007) does not provide a single, systematic theory of cinema. Instead, his comments are scattered across a range of works, taking the variant forms of brief asides, longer analyses and remarks made… Read More ›
I What is life, and what makes human life unique? With the rise of the life sciences and Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection in the nineteenth century, new answers to these questions were proposed that were deeply at… Read More ›
Feminist Science Studies emerged in the mid-1980s as a response to the masculinist paradigms of participation and epistemology in the natural sciences. A survey of initial efforts in the area reveals a schism between the women-in-science movement and feminist critiques… Read More ›
Despite a landmark essay by the novelist Robert Coover, the emergence of literary writing in new media does not signal an “end of books.” Conceivably, there could be an end to literary studies as an autonomous discipline and a cessation… Read More ›
University of Lucknow M.A. (English) Indian Literature in English Paper X(B) Poetry Notes To Download in PDF Click Lucknow Poetry PDF To Download in DOCClick Lucknow Poetry DOC The Harp of India This is one of the most iconic poems of… Read More ›
Until recently, the body has been either ignored or made marginal in philosophical, political and cultural theory. Thus, in philosophy, human agency and the identity of the person were traditionally seen to lie in the mind. The mind (or soul)… Read More ›
The word ‘tragedy’ in common usage today means little more than a sad or unnecessarily unpleasant event: a motorway crash in which several people died is described as a ‘tragedy’ in the newspapers; a promising career cut short by cheating… Read More ›
Performance Studies is a new academic discipline, developed largely out of university departments of drama or of theatre studies, and driven mostly in USA, especially by Richard Schechner (b. 1934). Schechner was something of a polymath: theatre director with his… Read More ›
When white light hits glass one of two things can happen. Either you have an image, which is faithful if somewhat unexciting, or you have a glorious spectrum which though beautiful is rather a distortion. Light from the past passes… Read More ›
Shakespeare need not be abandoned by the postmodern world.Indeed; the postmodern world does and continues to embrace his works wholeheartedly. Hugh Grady rightly observes “we are now witnessing the emergence of a postmodernist Shakespeare through the development of critical paradigms… Read More ›
Murder in the Cathedral is a historical fiction play with strong Christian themes by the American-born British writer T.S. Eliot. It was first performed in Canterbury Cathedral on June 15, 1935 as part of the annual Canterbury Festival. The play is inspired by the… Read More ›
Woody Allen is one of the most prolific artists of the twentieth century. He is a highly praised director and scriptwriter, a successful actor, a dedicated clarinettist, an appreciated playwright, and an awarded short fiction writer. His entire work testifies… Read More ›
In a world when issues relating to human rights have been under critical focus, literary depictions of the experiences of marginalized groups have acquired great significance. The modern spurt in Dalit literature in India is an attempt to bring to… Read More ›
The most reassuring thing about the past is that it happened. (From “Exile”, 75) Past has ingenious and insidious ways of reaching present and future through its invisible yet powerful tentacles. It resists fading away without leaving traces. It is… Read More ›
This is the most abridged notes on History of English Literature. To download the content in pdf click the following link History of English Literature CHAPTER 1 OLD ENGLISH LITERATURE The Old English language or Anglo-Saxon is the earliest form… Read More ›
English is descended from an ancient parent language now called Proto-Indo-European, spoken about 5,000 years ago. There are no written records of this ancient language, but we know that it existed because of the many related languages descended from it…. Read More ›
In his book, Television Culture, John Fiske said he faces the problem defining both television as well as culture. He defines television as a bearer/provoker of meaning and pleasure and culture as the generation and circulation of the variety of… Read More ›
The Trickster impulse, which is a symbol of transgression in world literature, is variously defined by anthropologists, sociologists, psychotherapists, cultural theorists, writers and film critics. Enemy of boundaries, trickster figure resists the narrow framing of definition. Creativity- the ability to… Read More ›
Gita Mehta’s A River Sutra is a study of the conundrum of life through expedition stories entwined with a worldly humanistic approach. It offers authentic interpretations of Indian cultural values, music, art forms, heritage and a liberal dose of Indian… Read More ›
The collection of human communities united by a desire to work for common political destiny is termed as a nation. Ernest Renan believes that nation is a ‘spiritual principle’ which perpetually affirms a common life (19). The word nation alludes… Read More ›
The emergence of first representatives of sexually liberated, free thinking woman in American literature who comes to be known as ‘New Woman’ took place in the 19th century literature. Hester Prynne in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, Mrs. Larue in… Read More ›
Feminist Prospective is an attempt to explore and analyze the agonizing condition of woman living in their traditional oppressive milieu of male-dominated society. The main objective of this analysis is to trace the journey of a sensitive soul from conventionalism… Read More ›
Indian English literature has gone through various phases in thematic concerns in the last hundred years. Before partition, Indian English novelists such as Mulk Raj Anand, Raja Rao, R. K. Narayan, laid more emphasis on patriotism and nationalism as a… Read More ›
Herman Melville’s (August 1, 1819 – September 28, 1891) career as a novelist breaks down, somewhat too neatly, into a three-part voyage of frustration and disappointment. The first part of his career is characterized by the heady successes of Typee… Read More ›
ways with words PDF ways with words DOC University of Calicut I B.A./B.Sc./B.Com English Commmon Ways with Words Prepared by www.literariness.org
The church bell rang Everyone entered in The ajan heard from mosque Everyone entered in The bell of temple rang Some entered in And some stood out.’ -Sharan Kumar Limbale, Marathi Dalit Writer.[1] The construction of the nationalist historiography of… Read More ›
For much of her career, Zora Neale Hurston (1891 –1960) was dedicated to the presentation of black folk culture. She introduced readers to hoodoo, folktales, lying contests, spirituals, the blues, sermons, children’s games, riddles, playing the dozens, and, in general,… Read More ›
In The Writer on Her Work, Anne Tyler discusses the importance of her having lived as a child in “an experimental Quaker community in the wilderness.” For her, this early experience of isolation and her later effort “to fit into… Read More ›
In his novels, Kurt Vonnegut (1922 – 2007) coaxes the reader toward greater sympathy for humanity and deeper understanding of the human condition. His genre is satire—sometimes biting, sometimes tender, always funny. His arena is as expansive as the whole universe… Read More ›
In an age and country that have little room for the traditional man of letters, Gore Vidal has established that role for himself by the force of his writing and intelligence and by his public prominence. He is a classicist… Read More ›
A writer with John Updike’s (March 18, 1932 – January 27, 2009) versatility and range, whose fiction reveals a virtual symphonic richness and complexity, offers readers a variety of keys or themes with which to explore his work. The growing… Read More ›
UNIVERSITY OF CALICUT I SEMESTER B.A. ENGLISH CORE READING POETRY Reading Poetry PDF Reading Poetry DOC
Often, what Robert Penn Warren (1905 – 1989) said about other writers provides an important insight into his own works. This is especially true of Warren’s perceptive essay “The Great Mirage: Conrad and Nostromo” in Selected Essays, in which he… Read More ›
The story of Alice Walker’s childhood scar provides the most basic metaphor of her novels: the idea that radical change is possible even under the worst conditions. Although she was never able to regain the sight in one eye, Walker’s… Read More ›
It is instructive to note that the most pervasive structural characteristic of Mark Twain’s (November 30, 1835 – April 21, 1910) work, of his nonfiction as well as his fiction, is dualistic. That observation is not worth much without detailed… Read More ›
Islamic feminism has been a widely discussed phenomenon since the emergence of the term in 1990s, oftentimes subject to a heated debate. On one hand, this debate is due to the ways in which it is embedded in the wider… Read More ›
The quest would seem to be the one indispensable element in the fiction of Thomas Pynchon, for each of his novels proves to be a modern-dress version of the search for some grail to revive the wasteland. Pynchon’s characters seek… Read More ›
J. D. Salinger’s (January 1, 1919 – January 27, 2010) characters are always extremely sensitive young people who are trapped between two dimensions of the world: love and “squalor.” The central problem in most of his fiction is not finding a… Read More ›
In 1937, Vladeslav Khodasevich, an émigré poet and champion of “V. Sirin’s” work, wrote, “Sirin [Nabokov] proves for the most part to be an artist of form, of the writer’s device, and not only in that . . . sense… Read More ›
In all of her fiction, Toni Morrison (February 18, 1931-) explores the conflict between society and the individual. She shows how the individual who defies social pressures can forge a self by drawing on the resources of the natural world,… Read More ›
Harper Lee’s (April 28, 1926 – February 19, 2016) only novel, To Kill a Mockingbird (1960), has gained stature over the years, becoming thought of as more than merely a skillful depiction of small-town southern life during the 1930’s with a… Read More ›
Throughout his career as a fiction writer, William Dean Howells worked against the sentimentality and idealization that pervaded popular American literature in the nineteenth century. He pleaded for characters, situations, behavior, values, settings, and even speech patterns that were true… Read More ›
Beginning in 1970, Rolando Hinojosa (born 1929) published fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, primarily in small Mexican American presses and journals. His major work comprises a series of short novels that he titled The Klail City Death Trip series, after publishing… Read More ›
Oscar Hijuelos (August 24, 1951 – October 12, 2013) represents a new generation of Cuban American writers. His Latino roots enrich his chronicles of the immigrant experience. Latino writers often face quandaries when choosing the language for their literary expression… Read More ›
Critics have generally agreed that John Hersey’s greatest strengths as a novelist derive from two sources: the observational skills he developed as a journalist and his belief in the importance of individual human beings in difficult situations. Reviewers throughout his… Read More ›
At first glance, Joseph Heller’s (May 1, 1923 – December 12, 1999) novels seem quite dissimilar. Heller’s manipulation of time and point of view in Catch-22 is dizzying; it is a hilariously macabre, almost surreal novel. Something Happened, on the… Read More ›
Central to Nathaniel Hawthorne’s romances is his idea of a “neutral territory,” described in the Custom House sketch that precedes The Scarlet Letter as a place “somewhere between the real world and fairy-land, where the Actual and the Imaginary may… Read More ›
Among Frederick Grove’s (February 14, 1879 – September 9, 1948) primary themes, the foremost is the issue of free will. Through his characters, Grove asks how much freedom anyone has in the face of often accidental but usually overwhelming pressures… Read More ›
Grisham writes legal thrillers, a type of novel that has virtually become a genre of its own in recent years. Grisham credits writer Scott F. Turow’s Presumed Innocent (1987) for beginning the trend, but his own novels have served to… Read More ›
Turning away from a romanticized view of her own Virginia, Ellen Glasgow (April 22, 1873 – November 21, 1945) became a part of the revolt against the elegiac tradition of southern letters. Although she rejected romance, she did not turn… Read More ›
Unlike most of their predecessors in the genre, Dashiell Hammett’s detectives live and work, as did Hammett himself, in a world populated with actual criminals who violate the law for tangible personal gain. Significantly, Hammett did all of his creative… Read More ›
John Gardner (1933 –1982) is a difficult writer to classify. He was alternately a realist and a fabulist, a novelist of ideas and a writer who maintained that characters and human situations are always more important than philosophy. He was,… Read More ›
Before it became fashionable, Ernest J. Gaines (January 15, 1933-) was one southern black writer who wrote about his native area. Although he has lived much of his life in California, he has never been able to write adequately about… Read More ›
Critics have placed William Gaddis (December 29, 1922 – December 16, 1998) in the tradition of experimental fiction, linking him closely to James Joyce and comparing him to contemporaries such as Thomas Pynchon. Gaddis himself also indicated the influence of… Read More ›
“The test of a first-rate intelligence,” Fitzgerald remarked during the late 1930’s, “is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.” At his best—in The Great Gatsby,… Read More ›
Ferber was a feminist, a conservationist, a crusader for minorities and immigrants, and a staunch believer in the work ethic and American culture. Strong women characters rising above the limitations of birth and gender dominate her novels; most men in… Read More ›
When William Faulkner (1897-1962) accepted the Nobel Prize in December, 1950, he made a speech that has become a justly famous statement of his perception of the modern world and of his particular place in it. In the address, Faulkner speaks… Read More ›
An understanding of James T. Farrell (February 27, 1904 – August 22, 1979) and his work on the basis of one novel, or even as many as three individual novels, is impossible. Farrell’s vision was panoramic, however limited his subject… Read More ›
In a 1985 essay titled “Where I Ought to Be: A Writer’s Sense of Place,” Louise Erdrich (7 June 1954-) states that the essence of her writing emerges from her attachment to her North Dakota locale. The ways in which… Read More ›
A masterwork of American pluralism, Ellison’s Invisible Man insists on the integrity of individual vocabulary and racial heritage while encouraging a radically democratic acceptance of diverse experiences. Ellison asserts this vision through the voice of an unnamed first-person narrator… Read More ›
Literary historians have shown, by identifying sources and characters, that Theodore Dreiser (1871 – 1945), even in his fiction, was a capable investigative reporter. His reliance on research for setting, character, and plot lines is evident in The Financier and… Read More ›
Readers of Dos Passos’s unusual novels have attempted to define the writer as a chronicler, a historian, or a critic of twentieth century America. To these titles, Dos Passos added another dimension by calling himself “an architect of history.” Indeed,… Read More ›
In his Journal of Irish Literature interview published in 1979, J. P. Donleavy (23 April 1926 – 11 September 2017) said: “I suppose one has been influenced by people like Joyce. But also possibly—and this is not too apparent in… Read More ›
E. L. Doctorow’s (January 6, 1931 – July 21, 2015) work is concerned with those stories, myths, public figures, and literary and historical forms that have shaped public and political consciousness. Even when his subject is not overtly political—as in… Read More ›
Almost all of Joan Didion’s (1934-) works are concerned with similar themes, and there is an interesting complementary relationship between her essays and her novels. Her essays generally seem intended to force the reader to strip away illusions about contemporary… Read More ›
Philip K. Dick’s novels are, without exception, distinctive in style and theme. Their style may be characterized relatively easily: Dick writes clearly and plainly and is a master of realistic dialogue. He is, however, also a master of the… Read More ›
What little there is of traditional narrative structure in a Don DeLillo (1936- ) novel appears to serve principally as a vehicle for introspective meanderings, a thin framework for the knotting together of the author’s preoccupations about life and the… Read More ›
The great twentieth century poet T. S. Eliot remarked that a poet’s criticism of other writers often reveals as much or more about that poet’s own work as about that of the writers being discussed. This observation certainly holds true… Read More ›
At the core of Robertson Davies’ (1913-1995) novels is a sense of humor that reduces pompous institutional values to a refreshing individuality. Interplays of the formal with the specific—officious academia versus lovable satyr-professor, self-important charitable foundation versus reclusive forger-artist, elaborately… Read More ›
As one of the Impressionist writers—Conrad called him “The Impressionist”— Stephen Crane (1871-1900) was among the first to express in writing a new way of looking at the world. A pivotal movement in the history of ideas, Impressionism grew out… Read More ›
In Robert Coover’s work, humanity is presented not as the center of the universe, the purpose of creation, but, instead, as the center of the fictions it itself creates to explain its existence. Only when people learn the crucial difference… Read More ›
James Fenimore Cooper (1789 –1851) was a historian of America. His novels span American history, dramatizing central events from Columbus’s discovery (Mercedes of Castile) through the French and Indian Wars and the early settlement (the Leatherstocking Tales) to the Revolution… Read More ›
When Kate Chopin (1850–1904 began to publish, local-color writing, which came into being after the Civil War and crested during the 1880’s, had already been established. Bret Harte and Mark Twain had created a special ambience for their fiction in the… Read More ›
In a literary period that witnessed the exhaustion of literature, wholesale formal experimentation, a general distrust of language, the death of the novel, and the blurring of the lines separating fiction and play, mainstream art and the avantgarde, John Cheever… Read More ›
Many people who have never read a single word of Raymond Chandler’s (1888–1959) recognize the name of his fictional hero Philip Marlowe. This recognition results in part from the wide exposure and frequent dilution Chandler’s work has received in media… Read More ›
Willa Cather (1873—1947) was a prolific American novelist noted for her portrayals of the settlers and frontier life on the American plains. She once said in an interview that the Nebraska landscape was “the happiness and the curse” of her… Read More ›
The pattern of Truman Capote’s 1(924 – 1984) career suggests a divided allegiance to two different, even opposing literary forms—objective realism and romance. Capote’s earliest fiction belongs primarily to the imagination of romance. It is intense, wondrously evocative, subjective; in place… Read More ›
Although George Washington Cable’s (1844 – 1925) reputation rests primarily on one collection of short stories and two pieces of longer fiction, his total output includes twenty-two books. For an understanding of Cable as a writer of fiction, one should… Read More ›
Octavia E. Butler presented a version of humanity as a congenitally flawed species, possibly doomed to destroy itself because it is both intelligent and hierarchical. In this sense, her work does not follow the lead of Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series… Read More ›
Short-story writer, novelist, and poet, Richard Brautigan (1935 – 1984) created a stream of works that resist simple categories—in fact, defy categorization altogether. Much of his popularity can be attributed to his peculiar style, his unconventional plots, simple language, and… Read More ›
An overwhelmingly prolific writer, Pearl S. Buck’s (1892-1973) reputation for excellence as a writer of fiction rests primarily on The Good Earth and segments of a few of her other novels of the 1930’s. The appeal of The Good Earth… Read More ›
Marion Zimmer Bradley (June 3, 1930 – September 25, 1999) was one of the most prolific authors to write science fiction, with more than sixty novels to her name and others written under pseudonyms. Though she was nominated for both… Read More ›
Although Ray Bradbury (August 22, 1920 – June 5, 2012) became arguably the best-known American science- fiction writer, the majority of his work, which ranges from gothic horror to social criticism, centers on humanistic themes. His best works are powerful… Read More ›
T. Coraghessan Boyle’s (1948- ) novels have been praised for their originality, style, and comic energy. At a time when his contemporaries seem obsessed with the mundane details of everyday life—presented in a minimalist style—Boyle approaches fiction as an iconoclastic… Read More ›
Bowles holds a unique place in American literature. As an exile, he shared with 1920’s expatriate novelist Gertrude Stein, among others, a distanced perspective on his native culture. Through his translations, he earned an international reputation as an author with… Read More ›
Arna Bontemps (1902 – 1973) was a prolific author, editor and a noted member of the Harlem Renaissance. He wrote or cowrote many children’s books, biographies, and histories. He edited or coedited more than a dozen works, including African American… Read More ›
Often described as America’s best contemporary novelist, Saul Bellow (1915 – 2005) earned enormous critical praise and a wide readership as well. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1976. His popularity is somewhat surprising, however, as his… Read More ›
Hailed by many as the spokesperson for her generation, Ann Beattie (1947 -) won numerous awards for her novels and short stories focusing on vapid, upper-middleclass characters. Although Beattie’s work has often been criticized as pointless and depressing, there is… Read More ›
Although John Barth’s (1930 – ) novels have ensured his eminence among contemporary American writers, his short fictions have been no less influential or controversial. In addition to his novels, he published a collection of shorter works, Lost in the… Read More ›
Toni Cade Bambara (1939 – 1995) is best known for her short stories, which appear frequently in anthologies. She has also received recognition as a novelist, essayist, journalist, editor, and screenwriter, as well as a social activist and community leader…. Read More ›
James Baldwin’s (1924– 1987) public role as a major African American racial spokesman of the 1950’s and 1960’s guarantees his place in American cultural history. Though not undeserved, this reputation more frequently obscures than clarifies the nature of his literary… Read More ›