English Literature

 An Essay on Imitation, Poetics by Aristotle Aristotle (384-322 BC) was a Greek philosopher and polymath during the classical period in ancient Greece. He was a great genius who is supposed to have written about 400 books. He was the student Plato and teacher of Alexander. He was the founder of Lyceum,  the peripetetic school of philosophy. He made significant contribution in the form of  treatise. Some of his greatest treatise are: Politics, Metaphysics, On the Soul, The Alexander, Rhetoric, Dialogues, On Monarchy,  Education Ethics, Natural History, Physics and Poetics . Most of his works are not traceable. Even one of his greatest works 'Poetics' is not available in original form; only a translation of "Poetics" is available. The "Poetics" is a fragmentary and incomplete work of Literary criticism. It deals with the tragedy, comedy and epic. In spite of its fragmentary nature 'Poetics' has come down to us as an authoritative treatise of the art

Objective correlative Objective correlative, literary theory first set forth by T.S. Eliot in the essay “ Hamlet and His Problems ” and published in The Sacred Wood (1920). According to the theory, The only way of expressing emotion in the form of art is by finding an “objectivecorrelative”;  in other words, a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events which shall be the formula of that particular emotion; such that when the external facts,which must terminate in sensory experience, are given, the emotion is immediately evoked. The term was originally used in the 19th century by the painter Washington Allston in his lectures on art to suggest the relation between the mind and the external world. This notion was enlarged upon by George Santayana in Interpretations of Poetry and Religion (1900). Santayana suggested that correlative objects could not only express a poet’s feeling but also evoke it. Critics have argued that Eliot’s idea was influenced, as was much of Eliot’s work, by t

Sublime: A characteristic of nature and art that embodies grandeur and nobility  and evokes in its audience a sense of awe. In literature, the term derives from  the treatise On the Sublime (first century A.D.), traditionally attributed (almost  certainly erroneously) to Longinus, a Greek rhetorician and philosopher. For  “Longinus,” the sublime is the emotional response to a spoken or written utterance of great power, which at first overwhelms and later creates in the reader/ listener a feeling of transcendence . Interest in sublimity in art and literature re-emerged in late 18th-century  England with the publication of Edmund Burke’s Philosophical Enquiry into the Origins of  Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1757). Burke’s distinction between the awesome  power of the sublime and the more constrained and decorous appeal of the beauti- ful played an infl uential role in the development of English ROMANTICISM. Many  Romantic poets strove to achieve the effects of sublimity by co

Among the most controversial books ever published,  The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn  first appeared in the United States in January 1885. Of all Mark Twain’s books,  Huckleberry Finn  had the largest success upon its initial release from a sales standpoint. It is frequently looked upon as a work of art and as a cultural artifact, not as simply a novel. It was also rejected as being base and racist, being banned from some libraries in 1885, and continuing to appear on lists of commonly banned books to this day. It was one of the earliest works of American literature to be written in the  vernacular  and was an early example of a text relaying heavily on regionalism. Huckleberry Finn, first introduced to readers as a character in Twain’s  The Adventures of Tom   Sawyer , is the first person narrator. The book contains vivid descriptions of life along the Mississippi River, as society existed several decades before the book’s publication. The adventures begin in St. Petersb

American author Harriet Beecher Stowe’s anti-slavery novel  Uncle Tom’s Cabin; or, Life Among the Lowly  was published in 1852 after having originally appeared as forty weekly installments in the abolitionist periodical  The National Era  beginning in June of 1851. It was not intended to become a full-length novel, but its huge popularity led a publisher to contact Stowe and convince her to expand it. Though already an active abolitionist, the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 was the impetus for Stowe to write the novel, which became a symbol of the power of literature in social reform.  Uncle Tom’s Cabin  was the best-selling novel of the nineteenth century and was only outsold by the Bible. The novel became a cultural phenomenon, spawning “Uncle Tom Plays” and giving birth to character tropes “Uncle Tom,” “Topsy,” “Simon Legree,” and others. The novel was banned in many of the Southern states and later in the Confederacy. Its popularity helped spread and strengthen the abolitio

Moby Dick , published by Herman Melville in 1851, is about a captain named Ahab who becomes obsessed with defeating a whale, a whale that has already gotten the best of him.  The story is told by a sailor named Ishmael, and Ismael explains that he goes to sea whenever he feels down. One day, in the port of New Bedford, Ishmael stays at the Spouter Inn.  At the inn, Ishmael encounters a man named Queequeg.  At first, Ishmael is frightened by Queequeg and his tattooed appearance, but soon they become friends. Ishmael then attends a service at the Whaleman’s Chapel where Father Mapple gives a sermon about Jonah and the whale. The next day, Queequeg and Ishmael travel together to Nantucket where they can get on board a whaler.  During the ferry ride to the island, a man makes fun of Queequeg.  Later, this same man falls overboard, and Queequeg is the one who saves his life.We learn more about Queequeg and his religious beliefs when he practices Ramadan and its rituals. As Quee

Billy Budd Posthumously published in London in 1924,  Billy Budd, Sailor  was the final novel written by American writer Herman Melville. Melville began working on the story in 1888, but the work remained unfinished until the time of his death in 1891. The novel was discovered in 1919 by Columbia Professor and Melville biographer Raymond M. Weaver, who edited the novel for publication. Considered a masterpiece by British critics, the novel became an instant classic when it was published in America. Set during the Napoleonic Wars at the end of the eighteenth century, the story follows Billy Budd, a handsome British seaman with a verbal stutter who is falsely accused of staging a mutiny aboard the HMS  Bellipotent . The novel was adapted as a stage play in 1951, the Broadway production of which went on to win the Donaldson Awards and Outer Critics Circle Awards for best play. In 1962, the play was adapted as a feature film produced, co-written, directed, and starring Peter Us