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William Carlos Williams (September 17, 1883 – March 4, 1963) is one of the major figures of literary modernism whose peers included Ezra Pound and Wallace Stevens. Highly influenced by the visual arts and the imagist movement, Williams’s work was marked by a rejection of metaphysics, characterized by his famous dictum: “No ideas/ But in..
A Way Out was the only play Frost published during his lifetime. It appeared in The Seven Arts in February 1917 and was reprinted by Harbor Press in 1929. In Preface to A Way Out (1929) Frost wrote that “Everything written is as good as it is dramatic. It need not declare itself in form,..
Modernism, which emerged out of an “immense panorama of futility and anarchy“, rightly represented in Klee’s painting, The Angel of History, found its radical expression in literature through the techniques of impressionism and subjectivity as exemplified in the stream-of-consciousness method against the conventional omniscient third person narrator. Modernist literature did not employ continuous narratives, fixed..
TS Eliot‘s The Waste Land, which has come to be identified as the representative poem of the Modernist canon, indicates the pervasive sense of disillusionment about the current state of affairs in the modern society, especially post World War Europe, manifesting itself symbolically through the Holy. Grail legend and the fertility legends discussed in JG..
Symbolism is a literary device wherein a system of symbols is used as a representation or expression of something underlying that which is being used as a symbol. Hemingway had a theory that prose fiction is like an ice-berg of which only one-eight is visible above the surface of the water. Therefore, it is peculiar..
Tragedy starts with the Greeks. Greek Tragedies are religious in character. The element of fate was supreme. The characters in Greek tragedies come to ultimate ruin through defiance of the Gods or of the traditional moral order because of their hubris or excessive pride. Shakespearean tragedies are the by-product of Renaissance. Shakespearean tragedies, at least..
As You Like It is a typical Shakespearean romantic comedy. The structure deals with a love story which, though for a time frustrated, is in the end brought to a happy conclusion. There is a secondary action of strife and conflict (Orlando-Oliver, and the two Dukes) which impinges upon and obstructs the love story but..
Shakespeare’s Usage of Imagery in Macbeth. The Imagery in Macbeth appears to be more rich and varied, more highly imaginative, more unapproachable by any other writer than that of any other single play. A. C. Bradley has superbly commented “The vividness, magnitude and violence of the imagery in some of the passages are characteristics of..
The trial scene (Act IV, Scene 1) is the longest scene in Shakespeare’s play The Merchant of Venice. It is the climax of the play where good prevails and evil gets punished. Although the trial scene is mainly about the punishment and saving of Antonio but there is a fight between Portia and Shylock. We..
Portia is one of the dynamic female characters of Shakespeare. She plays a very significant role in The Merchant of Venice. She is the connecting link between the Bond-story and the Casket-story. She rounds off the complication of the Bond-story by her legal quibble. She is the most attractive figure in the Bond-story. Her intellectual..
John Webster is a highly qualified genius in the post — Shakespearean period when the Elizabethan zest for life has gone and the Elizabethan exuberance and optimism has been succeeded by a mood of apprehension, disillusionment and defeat. John Webster has been successful in depicting the vitiated and fetid society of that time. It was..
It is a well-known fact that Shakespeare is generally indifferent to the naming of his plays. Such titles as As you Like It, Twelfth Night or What You Will point to the truth of this statement. This is true also of the present play. But in this case the title in not only vague; it..