Enjoy our online database of English literature notes, academic articles. New notes/articles are published every week. Some of these notes are exclusive to members only. When you become a member on site, you get unlimited access to these articles and notes. To support us and help bring more educational content to you, please support us on Patreon.
“Joseph Andrews” can’t be called a regular picaresque novel for Fielding employs elements of this tradition in an exposition of his own theory of the Ridiculous. He was writing a “comic epic-poem in pose”. He adapts the picaresque tradition to his own theory of the novel, which shows the influence of various other literary forms..
George Eliot is known as a modern novelist in spite of living in Victorian Age. She wrote in the fashion contrary to that of her contemporaries, Dickens, Thackeray, etc. She is not completely divorced from the traditions. She draws her picture in the Victorian style, but she develops it in a new direction.
Eliot was not a psychologist. She didn’t have even the knowledge required by a psychologist; yet, she is called the first modern novelist since her approach is psychological. She is the pioneer of psychological fiction. With the transcription of the visible and real, she traces the ups and downs of the mental processes and the
George Eliot is known as a modern moralist despite living in Victorian Age. Other Victorians did have a moral touch but Eliot had the moral earnestness. She wrote to inculcate moral in the people. She reshapes the perception of the people to remould the whole structure of the society. She believes in the presence of the moral code at the heart of the universe.
Thomas Hardy was a naturalist, part of a Darwinist-influenced literary movement at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century that saw nature as indifferent to humankind. Obviously, nature plays in important role/element in Tess of the D’Urbervilles.
The range of Jane Austen’s characters in Pride and Prejudice is rather narrow. She selects her characters from among the landed gentry in the countryside. Sir Walter Scott very accurately describes this range:
Alternate question: Irony in Pride and Prejudice Irony is the very soul of Jane Austen’s novels and Pride and Prejudice is steeped in irony of theme, situation, character and narration. Irony is the contrast between appearance and reality.
Jane Austen is not a proclaimed moralist. Unlike Fielding, her aim is not to propagate the morality. She believes in art for the sake of art. She is the pioneer of the novels. Therefore, her plots are well-knit. Her main interest lies in irony and there is a hidden significance of morality as we come
Jane Austen’s Moral Vision in Pride and Prejudice Read More »
In The Prologue to the Canterbury Tales, Geoffrey Chaucer has given a very true and realistic picture of the ecclesiastical characters of his age. He satirizes the corrupt and worldly minded clergies and on the other hand he appreciates the good characters and presents a model picture of him.
Ecclesiastical Character in Chaucer’s “The Prologue” Read More »
Basically the novel presents the story of the decline of a family. The family shown in the novel has traits which can be perceived as signs of decadence resulting from regional history. Compson’s family comprises of long line of men full of decency and pride. But after civil war in America the family’s fortunes and
The Sound and the Fury: The Theme – Decline of A Family Read More »
Complex subjects like the one in “The Sound and the Fury” cannot find their full expression in simple narration. They need illustration and that can be made only through symbolism. The theme of “The Sound and the Fury”, the decadence of Compson family is largely clarified through symbolization of its central characters and their actions.
The tragedy of Willy Loman, says Arthur Miller, is: “Willy gave his life, or sold it, in order to justify the waste of it…” Willy represents Every low-man in America. Hence, it is a tragedy of every American. The play is really a challenge to the American Dream because it is the tragedy of a