Sunday 25 November 2012

THE STOIC PENALTY



 The essay is cast in the form of a conversation between the narrator and Maxi warder. The Essayist attempts to create a comic world in which terry Bursy, vizzy and parry are types of people whose characteristics qualities are discussed here. They are satirical types noted for their idleness, swindling and muscle – power. Through his satirical vision, the author depicts the new liberal system which has led to indiscipline.
Maxi warder stands for a common man, the voter. When the narrator had met maxi warder the latter expressed his concern for the “political sickness”. Their conversation reveals the various commotions in the administration of the establishment. Maxi warder suggests that the new liberal system has led to indiscipline. It has promoted the interest of idlers, swindlers and musclemen. The current system makes them go back to the old system of the past in enforcing discipline.
On the other hand, the explosion of population and the extension of slums in the Indian cities constitute a growing menace. It is a great threat to the future of India. Such dangerous problems should be solved at once. If the gulf countries can do away with the water and electricity problems, India with its rich natural resources can easily tide over the difficulty.
Rulers must do post haste what best they can do to solve the problem from their ends at the earliest, because procrastination is the thief of time. Government officials should render their service for the welfare of the nation. We should not let our educated students to depend on the government. By providing job oriented courses to them we can put an end to this menace.
Instead of worrying over the European economy, our economists and administrators should concentrate on the economy of our own country. Abraham Lincoln said, you can fool all the people some people all the time, but you cannot fool all people all of the time. The rulers should therefore, work for the betterment of the common people and try to raise the standard of their living.        

DR. JOHNSON PREFACE TO SHAKEPEARE



Dr. Johnson is the ‘literary dictator’ of the 18th century. He is a judicial critic. In ‘a preface to Shakespeare’, he brings out the merits and demerits of Shakespeare’s works.
We should judge a work as whole and not by its different parts.
A work of art must give permanent delight. It should help us to enjoy life or endure it.
First, dr. Johnson establishes the supremacy of Shakespeare. The test of all great literature is “the length of duration and continuance of esteem”.
POET OF NATURE:
                       Shakespeare has long outlived his century. His works are read for pleasure. His works have received new honors at every point, he has gained. The continuous esteem of the world.
                       Nothing can please many and please long but just representation of general nature. Shakespeare holds a faithful mirror of manners and of life. As a poet of nature, he is above all writers.
                       His characters are real products of common humanity. They act and speak by general principles. In other writers, a character is an individual. But in Shakespeare, it is a species. On observation, we find his characters in this world.
                      Much moral instructions is there in Shakespeare, it is full of practical remarks and wisdom. His real power is the progress of his story. His dialogue is full of ease and simplicity.
                      It is a selection from common conversation and events. His works give a system of civil and economic wisdom. Thus Shakespeare portrayed real life.
                      Dr. Johnson compares Shakespeare with other writers. They have used rhetorical grammar. One cannot meet real life in their works. Their characters are also unusual. They speak a different language. Their subject too is different from daily life.
SHAKESPEARE’S CHARACTERIZATION:
                Shakespeare has no heroes. He has only men, who act and speak like the common man. Even when the agency is supernatural, the dialogue is life like. Shakespeare approximates the strange and makes the wonderful familiar.
               He shows human life in real difficulty and in trails. His drama is the mirror of life. He gives human feelings in human language.
               Dennis and Rhymer think Shakespeare’s Romans are not fully Romans Voltaire says that his kings are not fully royal. But, Shakespeare always make nature greater than accident. His story needs Romans and kings but he thinks, only on man. He is above the usual difference of country and condition. As a painter, he is satisfied with the figure and neglects the drapery.
UNITIES OF TIME, PLACE, AND ACTION:
                       Aristotle speaks of ‘the unity of time’. It means that an action should not exceed a single revolution. The action must be single. It must be with a beginning, middle and an end. Shakespeare has no regard to the unity of time and place. But, his plays were popular. There were delight and instruction in his plays. Rhymer condemned Shakespeare for not following the unities of time and place. But, rower praised him. Dr.johnson too defends Shakespeare. Johnson says that the audiences are always aware that the stage is only a stage and the players’ only players. The spectator can imagine it as Athens or Rome or Alexandrians. We can imaginatively divide the interval of time.
                     Shakespeare follows the unity of actions. There is a beginning, a middle and an end in his plays. They are related to one another according to the law of probability or necessity. The other unities are not necessary here. Finally, Johnson concludes that the unities of t and p are not essential to a good play. The unities can be added to the pleasure of the play                
         
                              

DEFECTS IN SHAKESPEARE’S DRAMAS



                           Dr. Johnson points out the defects in Shakespeare’s drama without any jealous evil or praise. His first defect is that he sacrifices virtue to convenience. He is careful to please than to instruct. He makes no distribution of good or evil. It is always a writer’s duty to make the world better justice is a virtue free of time and space.
                           The second defect is Shakespeare’s plots are loosely formed. He omits chances of instructing and delighting. In the end, he “snatches the profit”.
                            The third defect is – no regard to time and place. He gives the custom and opinion of one nation to another. For example, hector quotes Aristotle: Theseus and Hippolyta story is combined with gothic myth of fairies. Thus Dr.Johnson violates Shakespeare’s anachronisms and violations of chronology.
                           Dr.johnson then attacks his poetic diction and circumlocution. His set speeches are cold and weak. Next, a quibble to Shakespeare, is like luminous vapors to the traveler. He follows it in all adventures. It has a wicked power to mislead or engulf him. A pun is like a fatal Cleopatra to him.    

ARISTOTLE



HIS LIFE AND WORKS:
·       He lived from 384 B.C. to 322 B.C.
·       He was the most distinguished deciple of Plato.
·       His father had been court physician to Amyntas, king of Macedonia.
·       He was brought up in an atmosphere of culture and refinement.
·       He came to Athens at the age of 17 and he joined Plato’s academy, whose mind was open to so many facets of knowledge. Politics, drama, poetry, physics, medicine, psychology, history, logic, ethics, astronomy, mathematics, rhetoric, natural history, biology. Etc..,.
·       Plato won humarsly remarked that his academy consisted of two parts (I). The body of his students. And (ii). The brain of Aristotle.
·       When Plato died in 347 B.C. Aristotle was not chosen as his master’s successor to the presidency of the academy.
·       In anger and fluctuation, he left Athens and he spent sometime in the court of hermeias in Asia Minor.
·       He was appointed as the tutor of Alexander.
·       Aristotle felt like a fish out of water in an atmosphere of quarrels, duels, treacheries, and assassinations that prevailed in Macedonia.
·       It was not a fit place for Aristotle’s philosophic meditations. So, he returned to Athens. He opens a school “the lyceum”. He discussed in detail three subjects. 1. God, 2. State, 3. Man.
·       He considered the nature of god in his metaphysics. The government of the state in politics and the morals of man in his ethics.
HIS WORKS:
·       He wrote above four hundred volumes in all these volumes covered practically each and every phase of human knowledge and of human activity.
·       His important works are listed below:
1.   Dialogues
2.   Organon
3.   On the soul
4.   Rhetoric
5.   Logic
6.   Endemian
7.   Ethics
8.   Physia
9.   Metaphysics
10. politics and poetics
·       Poetic is the first authentic treatise on the art of poetry and literature.
PLAN OF POETICS:
·       Poetics is a short treatise of 26th chapters and 55 pages was not composed as a book. It is merely a collection of lectures which he used to gives these students in ‘lyceum’. It may be the notes with some student or students took of his lectures, sometimes it may be the mixture of book.
·       It is believed to have had a second part which is lost.
·       He omits some of the important questions. He himself rises in the 2nd part.
·       The 1st four chapters & 25th chapter are devoted to poetry. 5th chapter in a general way deals with comedy, epic and tragedy. Tragedy is exclusively discussed in the following 14 chapter. The next 3 chapter deals with poetic diction. The last chapter is concerned with a comparison of epic, and tragedy.
OBSERVATION ON POETRY:
·       In his poetics, he developed the theories of Plato on lines of his ode.
·       He improved upon Plato’s on theory of imitation. According to him. It stood for falsehood and immorality. To Aristotle, imitation was closely related to human life. He was temperamentally different from his master Plato and his approach to literary problem was also different.
FUNCTION OF POETRY:
·       Aristotle nowhere states like Plato. That, the function of poetry is to teach and teaching however is not ruled out. If, it is incidental to the pleasure. It gives such pleasure should even regarded as superior to all others. Because, it serves a dual purpose that of itself and civic morality. Aristotle partly agrees with Plato, who as we have seen, had no use for any other art than the one that satisfied the requirements of morality.
·       Aristotle also says like Plato that poetry makes an immediate appeal to the emotion taking tragedy as the highest form of poetry. It arises the emotions of pity and fear. Pity at the undeserved sufferings of the hero and fear worst that depart him.
VALUE OF CRITICISM:
·       He was the first critic to give us the theory of poetry as opposed to its practice.
·       He was the first to highlight the universal aspects of poetry, and its representation of truth. He was the first to challenge the ethical view of poetry and assert that the primary function of poetry is to give pleasure.
·       His interpretation of imitation also his own. It is not twice removed from reality. But, an imaginative reconstruction of it, seeing the universal in the particular – comedy no less than tragedy and epic. The poetic truths are of a higher order than those of historical – a fact which Plato could not perceive.
·       Aristotle was the first to relate literature with lie and the first to stress the psychological element in literature, what kind of plot, characters and style for instance, placement.
·       He was the first to emphasize a supreme importance of unity in a work of art. In short, we may say that Aristotle is indisputably. The first of the systematic psychological methods.
OBSERVATION OF TRGEDY:
·       Tragedy, according to Aristotle consists of poems of six constituent parts, plot, character, and thought. Which, are objects it imitates or represents.
·       Diction and song which are the medium which employs to imitate these objects; and spectacle which is its manner of imitating them.
·       In order of plot comes first, character next, thought third, diction fourth, song fifth and spectacle last.
PLOT:
·       The plot which is “imitation of the action” and “the arrangement of the incidents” is the central part of tragedy, plot is more important than character.
CHARACTER:
·       Aristotle prescribes four things for character portrayal. “first and most important. It must be good, the second thing to aim at its propriety. Thirdly, character must be true to life”.
SIMPLE PLOT AND COMPLEX PLOTS:
·       Plots are either simple or complex. According to the nature of actions in real life. In an action which is one and continuous and in which the change of fortune takes place without reversal of the situation (prepeteia) and without recognition (anagnorisis) is simple.
·       A plot imitating such actions is simple. In a complex action, the change is accompanied by such reversal are by recognition or by both.
·       They arise from the internal structure of the plot, so that what follows should be the necessary or probable result of the proceeding action.
HIS OBSERVATION ON STYLE:
·       Aristotle’s observations on style are contained in poetics and rhetoric. The object of writing is to communicate the writer’s meaning. So, it should be clear and intelligible.
·       Writing is an art. It should aim at dignity and charm. The employment of unusual words leads to loftiness and charm.
·       In rhetoric, Aristotle elaborates his comments on composition in prose and style in general
·       In the arrangement of words into sentences multiplicity of clauses, parenthesis ambiguous punctuations.
·       Words can be arranged into two kinds of style. 1. Loose or 2. Periodic. The loose style is formulas being, just a chain of sentences, being, just a reduced at build. A periodic style has a form that cannot be so easily tampered with.
·       The loose style therefore is less intelligible than the periodic and also less graceful. They are just runs on and other follows a measured force that imparts to it’s a charm of poetry.