Lit.Guruji

                         Tragedy   Tragedy deals with the darker side of life. Its aim is to inspire awe and pity. A tragic ends with death or unhappy ending. Greek tragedy deals with the fate characters of high birth or King or Princes. Eg.King Lear, Othello. The falling of a king or the ruin of a great family was more impressive for spectators.  In ancient Greece the tragic hero wore high - heeled boots called buskin to make him tall and majestic. The fall of a king or ruin of a great family is more impressive for the spectators. In later period tragedies dealt with low life Eg. Hardy's novel D'ubervilles.  The atmosphere of tragedy is sombre and serious. Tragedy according to Aristotle "purges the emotions through pity and terror". Shakespeare's tragedy begins happily and ends unhappily. Tragedy aims at giving pleasure. It purifies mind, feelings. For Greek the purpose of tragedy was to evoke C...

CHANGING THEIR SKIES Stories from Africa The Rubbish Dump STEVE CHIMOMBO A storyfrom Malawi, retold by Jennifer Bassett Rubbish is a problem in the rich world. There is too much of it, and people don't know what to do with it. In places like Africa there is less rubbish, because people have less to throw away. An airport rubbish dump is a strange place, a meeting point for rubbish that has travelled a long way. It is aiso a meeting point for Joey and Mazambezi.. . Joey sat on the ground, playing with a small toy car. The car was made out of bits and pieces - lots of old wire, pieces of cardboard, sticks, and the tops of baby-food cans for wheels. Joey was working hard, his hands busily pulling and pushing pieces of wire which were not in the right places. After a mment, he put the car down with a pleased little grunt, and began to sing: The white man is wise He made the aeroplane It's nothing else But determination. His high voice filled the air for a few minutes. T...

THE MADMAN By Chinua Achebe (First Published in the The Insider (Nwankwo-Ifejika), Enugu, 1971 He was drawn to markets and straight roads. Not any tiny neighbourhood market where a handful of garrulous women might gather at sunset to gossip and buy Ogili for the evening's soup, but a huge, engulfing bazaar beckoning people familiar and strange from far and near. And not any dusty, old footpath beginning in this village, and ending in that stream, but broad, black, mysterious highways without beginning or end. After much wandering he had discovered two such markets linked together by such a highway; and so ended his wandering. One market was Afo, the other Eke. The two days between them suited him very well: before setting out for Eke he had ample time to wind up his business properly at Afo. He passed the night there putting right again his hut after a day of defilement by two fat-bottomed market women who said it was their market-stall. At first he had put up a...

ON BEING TIDY  Text   A ny careful observer of my habits would know that I am on the eve of an adventure—a holiday, or a bankruptcy, or a fire, or a voluntary liquidation (whatever that may be), or an elopement, or a duel, or a conspiracy, or—in short, of something out of the normal, something romantic or dangerous, pleasurable or painful, interrupting the calm current of my affairs. Being the end of July, he would probably say: That fellow is on the brink of the holiday fever. He has all the symptoms of the epidemic. Observe his negligent, abstracted manner. Notice his slackness about business—how he just comes and looks in and goes out as though he were a visitor paying a call, or a person who had been left a fortune and didn't care twopence what happened. Observe his clothes, how they are burgeoning into unaccustomed gaiety, even levity. Is not his hat set on at just a shade of a sporting angle? Does not his stick twirl with a hint of irresponsible emotions?...

       Sir Roger De Coverley's Sunday Sir Roger De Coverley's Sunday is an essay from The Spectator written by Joseph Addison. This essay explores Sir Roger's participation and strict discipline maintained by him on Sundays to keep the church morally good and religious. Sir Roger is a fictional  character created by Addison. He is a good church man and has beautified his church with   several quotations from the holy Bible . He gave the church goers a hassock and a common prayer book. He employed an itinerant.  Sir Roger was the master of the church. He maintained strict discipline and good decorum in the church. He did not allow anyone to sleep during the sermon. He waked the dozing people.  Sir Roger had an eccentric nature. During the prayer  Sir Roger also joined the crowd to sing Psalms. But Roger did not sing along with the crowd.  He said ‘Amen’ three or four times. When the crowd was kneeling for prayer Sir Roger sto...

                   Bookshop Memories                                               -George Orwell Bookshop Memories is written by George Orwell in the year 1936. In this essay he shares his experience working as an assistant in a second-hand bookshop.  Orwell begins the essay by breaking down the fantasy of second-hand bookstore as a "paradise where charming old gentlemen browse eternally."  He reveals the truth concealed behind a second-hand bookshop.  Orwell describes the nature of bookshop customers - first edition snobs, oriental students, vague minded women and "the kind of people who would be a nuisance anywhere but have special opportunities in a bookshop". Orwell talks about two types of "pest" who "haunt" such bookshops.  I) Decayed Person - Attempt to sell worthless b...

Satire Satire is unpolished verse. The main aim of satire is to ridicule folly or vice. It provokes laughter and keeps the reader in good humour. Swift’s Gulliver’s Travel and Pope’s Rape of the Lock are satires. According to Dryden the true end of satire is the “amendment of vices by correction”. Some of the famous satires in English poetry are Dryden’s – Mac Flecknoe Butler’s – Hudibras Pope’s – Dunciad In Mac Flecknoe, Dryden attacks Shadwell, a former friend turned enemy. Essentials of a Good Satire Satire is an attack on social evil or folly or a person or a group of persons. It is intended to mock at or ridicule not to abuse. It hates sin and not the sinner. Pope’s satires are “waspish, venomous, malignant”. Satire should be forceful and outspoken. Subjects of the satire Each ages had its vices and follies to ridicule. The satire mirrors out the contemporary follies and foibles. For eg. During 14 th century Chaucer and Langland attacked corru...

Ballad Ballad is a short story in verse. It is one of the oldest form in literature. A ballad is sung from village to village with the accompaniment of a harp or a fiddle, by strolling singers or bands of singers. The subjects dealt are adventure,  family disaster, feud, love and war, and life. The story is tragic and fierce with supernatural elements. I) The poem is written in Ballad Measure (abcb). II) The tale opens abruptly without any introduction. III) The Ballad is impersonal in treatment. The writer’s identity or personality is never revealed. IV) The same lines are repeated from stanza to stanza as a refrain. Kinds of Ballad I)  Ballad of Growth or Authentic Ballad:  It is a   Ballad of unknown authorship. This type of ballad is primitive in existence and has grown naturally. Eg: Chevy Chase, The Wife of Usher’s Well. II)   Ballad of Art or Literary Ballad: This kind of ballad as Hudson says is the " literary...

Idyll Idyll derives from the Greek word meaning "a little picture". Idyll in poetry is associated with  a) relative brevity   b) pictorial effect. The poet presents a picture in a few words. Idyll aim at visual presentation of its theme. Eg: 1 . L' Allegero  - Milton (picture of happy life) 2. Line Written in March - William Wordsworth (a spring scene in England). 3. As You Like it - Shakespeare (Pastoral scene) Idyll is an imaginative rendering of a picturesque scene or experience. It is the poetic colouring. The language is carefully choosen to give a pictorial impression. It may be direct or straight forward but creates a image in readers mind. Greek poet Theocritus idylls differed in theme. Town and country life, poet's experiences and themes were the themes. Half of his idylls are pastoral in form and deals with shepherds life in ancient Silicy. Roman poet Virgil adopted the same form in his Eclogues. English Idyll generally followed ...

Beau Tibb his Character and family Beau Tibb his Character and family is an extract from The Citizens of the World written by  Oliver Goldsmith. He is an Irish novelist, playwright and poet. These letters are written in the perspective of Lien Chi Altangi, a Chinese philosopher living in London. Goldsmith's essays are humorous. Rickett writes , "He was a poet of talent, a prose man  of genius, a prose man, moreover, of distinctive and original genius". Beau Tibbs is a character in Goldsmith's "Citizen of the World," noted for his finery, vanity, and poverty”. He is an elderly man concerned about his dress. Mr. Tibbs is a poor man but he concealed his poverty.  The writer remarks, “Heaven has made him poor”.  He has an eccentric and ridiculous nature. Beau Tibbs is perfect in the art of flattery. His looks were pale, thin and sharp. He wore a broad black ribbon round his neck and in his bosom a buckle studded with glass. He wore a newly wa...