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Driving school students to literature

July 20th 2010 Posted at Shakespearian dramas, Short Story, fiction, literature
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Anybody would agree with me that the passion for reading literature has declined drastically in this internet age. People are running every time for one purpose or another. They do not have time to sit and read. Even the children are reluctant about exploring literature out of their syllabus. You can guess how worse the situation is when you find your child scoring poor in literature whereby he or she may be scoring great in other subjects.

Truly speaking, we cannot blame our children for this degradation as we, ourselves many times fail to understand that it might be degradation at all! But to state the fact, literature is an integral part of culture. You can come across a nation well when you go through any of its literary piece that reflects the society, the people, the rulers and many things together. Additionally, studying literature creates a fine senility in human mind. It can be your best friend at times when you feel alone. But unfortunately, these days we have forgotten these established facts and drive our kids to the computer games and so on which is least constructive in nature.

Let us take a glance some quick suggestions how you can promote literature within the school-going children.

First, start with general encouragement. Explain the students why literature is important for every culture and in addition how reading literature can benefit a man. However, simple lectures can easily be futile in this direction. You should know the techniques too for making your speech lively and acceptable. Make the classroom as interactive as you can. Ask the students to participate when you say. Accept their suggestions and feed them with all that curiosity important for literature.

As we are talking about children who are smarter than we are sometimes, we need to do some active things to attract them towards literature. Many schools practice a common venture for preaching literature among young kids. This is about arranging stage shows and plays based on literary classics. You can twist the flavor and can organize the same in your classroom too. Your students would feel much enthusiastic in this for sue.

If you are a parent, then you do have some other options too. After all, a child’s first school is his home. In this way, you are the first teacher of your child. Be selective when buying books to your child. For the pre-school ones, you can consider about the picture tales. Encourage your teens too for reading literature and present them books on any occasion. However, it is not only important to encouraging them but you have to be passionate about literature too. Irrespective of the fact, whether you are a teacher or a parent, make sure that you cannot impose this particular thing on a child, but you have to make him understand slowly and with due love.

Reviewing literature

July 19th 2010 Posted at Shakespearian dramas, Short Story, fiction, literature
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Reviewing a literature piece is not an easy task. An author creates his own garden where a reviewer is the proper scrutinizer whether the garden beautiful or not. In fact, it is not about being beautiful but most of the times it is unfolding about many unseen parts that remain unseen by a common reader. Definitely, a reviewer has to be an expert and he should have vast knowledge of many literary skills altogether. A man who declares a novel or a feature being bad outrightly can never be an expert reviewer. Rather, a reviewer is more likely an eye-opener who interprets the significance of the literary piece to the readers in general. After reading this, you must have understood that not just anybody can be a quality reviewer of literature. The job of a literature reviewer is quite difficult when compared to a film critic or a business reviewer. Here the subject is the constraint and the variation as well.

Broadly speaking, an expert reviewer has two qualities that keep him two steps ahead of others. Primarily, the quality of informative mind. To explain this feature, a reviewer tends to have a mind of scanner that can dissect small emotions, statements and incidence according to their illustrations. Secondly, a good reviewer always has the quality of critical appraisal. He should be unbiased, analytical and specific. A good reviewer does not comment baselessly. He uses the comparative methods often and gives reasons for his comments. These are also the ways that you indentify a true literature reviewer.

Now coming to the qualities of a good reviewed piece, it should have some essential qualities that are able to guide a novice to apprehend the same rightfully. First, a review should be organized and to the point. It should not deal with more than one angle of discussion simultaneously. If so, it would become overlapping and confusing to the common readers. For example when you are dissecting the characters of the piece, pick up them individually according to their importance in the work piece.

A literature is not a science fiction. You cannot thus conclude by saying it irrational or illogical. We cannot define human behaviors all the time. They are varied and very much unpredictable at times. And so are the flows of incidents in our life. Any good review respect that a literature is a revelation of life. Thus, it should be a mirror of the same. A good review should appreciate and analyze both the joyous notes and the controversies equally. There is no specific formula of a true literature piece. Therefore, you cannot close with any clear-cut detection. Rather, many good reviews are just like open questions. People are bound to give a thought on the details of the piece. A good review has never a drastic conclusion but always leaves a scope for further analysis.

The romantic spirit in “Coleridgean Khan”

July 18th 2010 Posted at Shakespearian dramas, Short Story, fiction, literature
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Anyone who has studied romanticism cannot deny the immense contributions of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Besides being an eminent literary critic, he has a magnificent romantic poet. Many a verses that he has penned down has touched the core of our heart. In addition to being great works of literature, they are immensely vital as they reveal intricate details of the mind shop of Coleridge. His verses reveal his creativity, his aesthetics, his imagination and his supreme mastery over mystery. He suitable used the word romanticism, which suggests the conjugation of natural to unnatural, truth to obscurity and most importantly art to life. Coleridge very smoothly made possible the marriage of supernatural to the commonest reality. Thus even in the face of the ferocious French Revolution, he dared to put down in rhythm a Kubla Khan or even a Frost at Midnight. Indeed literature reached its zenith in the times of these romantics like Wordsworth and Coleridge.

Almost all the verses of Coleridge have romanticism in it, be it in a tinge or a beaker full. Literary ballad is indeed one of the finest pieces of literature. But when we talk about mystery and magic which is an important part of the whole notion of romanticism, no one can ignore the two great compositions by this great poet, namely Rime of Ancient Mariner and Christabel. But if we are to understand the supreme power of ingenuity and the unnatural vision that has been a common thing for the great littérateur, no other poem by the poet is great enough but Kubla Khan. It redefines romanticism. He has presented all his desires and fantasies in a contextual fashion, by garbing it in the blanket of wildness and beauty. Thus there is description of a “stately pleasure dome” that has” twice five miles of fertile ground”, tall trees, flowery gardens and a “romantic chasm”, from where flowed a river that melted down into a “sunless sea”. The very imagery of these is immensely dreamy. The description of a woman wailing for her demon lover, earth breathing in thick pants as if delivering a baby, Kublai hearing the prophecy of his ancestors, the sunny pleasure dome with caves of ice and lastly the flashing eyes and floating hair all creates a eerie sensation in us. They transport us to a never-never land.

So much so more is the wildness added to the poem, that even the source of the poem has become a great topic for controversy and debate. Coleridge has revealed in his foreword to the poem that the poem is actually a “vision in a dream”. The records says that Coleridge slept off due to overdose of opium and recreated in his dream a wonderful palace of the emperor Kublai Khan, about whom Purchas’s Pilgrimage talks about. He has been reading about the description of the garden before his sleep. The same description mingled with his imagination and the flowery lines of the verse started flowing in a wild vision. Coleridge immediately sat up and started penning it down. But before he could complete it a “visitor from Porlock” distracted his thoughts and the whole train of memory was lost when he returned to his pen after talking to the visitor. The truth behind this literature has been questioned many a times. But however may be the hullabaloo, the poem is a magnificent paradigm of a romantic literature and none can deny the fact.

The position of woman through literary context

July 17th 2010 Posted at Shakespearian dramas, Short Story, fiction, literature
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Woman has always played an active role in the literature of the world. The position of woman in literature has always been a subject of intense curiosity as well controversy. While many have tried to degrade the literary efforts by female, there are several other males, who have given the due respect that a literary work deserves. The position of woman in the global front is indeed a fiery issue. From the ancient days, it has been noticed that woman have been looked down upon by most of the individuals. “Wo-man”- this is how the term has been broken to show how the entire entity of a female is from a male. The common belief used to be that woman should stay dependent on a man. The literature of various ages has brought about the fact that indeed women all around the world desperately require some sort of emancipation. And the most unfortunate fact is that, the exploitation of woman is not restricted to the third world countries, the evil has spread its tentacles to almost every corner of the earth. The ancient epics of various countries prominently bring out the mistreatment of women. Our hearts still harden when we think of the condition of Penelope in Homer’s Odyssey.

But with the development and advancement of civilization, the condition has undergone some alterations. We cannot say that the situation is better than the past. Yes, there have been some transformations. Woman writers have started getting some regards from their male counterparts, but we cannot call that an emancipation. Literature is the most important measuring rod that will show the progress in the circumstances of woman. As slowly centuries stated to roll, more and more woman came into the forefront as writers. Thus we have fiery writers like Virginia Woolf, Mary Shelley, George Eliot, the Bronte sisters, Jane Austen and many more. They have very visually portrayed the status that woman gets in a society. Be it Wuthering Heights, Pride and Prejudice, Jane Eyre or A Vindications of the Rights of Woman, all these novels shows how a woman has to suffer, compromise and almost fight to get happiness. Even modern writers like Tennessee Williams, Bharati Mukherjee, Arundhati Roy, D.H Lawrence and many more have raised the issue the “woman question”, which Shaw and Ibsen popularized. A Doll’s House is a must read for all who want to understand the situation of woman in this patriarchal society, where financial security and power play trounce all other factors. This particular literary write-up is one of the most prominent steps taken to promote emancipation of woman. Indeed such woman centric novels and plays like The Glass Menagerie explain how much vital role literature has played in the progress of a woman.

The civilization and literature

July 16th 2010 Posted at Shakespearian dramas, Short Story, fiction, literature
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Literature has always been an important part and parcel of the society. Many may question the whole context as in how literature, which many people still consider as a luxury, be related to the hard realities of society. But most of them fail to realize that literature is actually a portrait of the society, of the times that the piece belongs to. Thus when Jane Austen has written about Pride and Prejudice, the very novel spoke about the age at that time, how marriage and high culture has been the priority of the people of that time. The relation between literature and society is actually a two way relation. It is not just literature that is dependent on society for availability of materials. Even society cannot have validation or any kind of proof regarding its existence if there has been no literature to record the whole fact. From the pre historic times, it has been seen that literary works of the age has given a detailed account of the time. Many a writers have used the vehicle of literature to voice their social concerns. Many a novel or play has created so many revolutions that the society ore rather the people of the society are forced to undergo alterations.

That literature and society is interrelated is exposed more clearly by the writers writing since ancient ages. We still remember the essays of Bacon and Shaw and their huge influence on the society of the time. Many may consider Shakespearian dramas to be materials of entertainment. But careful analysis of it will open up your mind. In fact they are classic illustrations that reveal how literature and society are dependent on each other. The fall of Caesar with his immensely famous, “et tu brute, then falls Caesar” is not just dramatic, but clearly brings out the factors of hubris and hamartia, which are very relevant in the society that has been ruled by swords and armors. 18^th century novels are again a mirror of society. Even modern literature truly is a portrait of the society. In A Streetcar named Desire, Tennessee Williams has beautifully crafted how the evils of society destroy an individual. Thus the play is a dual weapon. It paints a realistic picture of the civilization as well as protests against the wrongs that society inflicts on its members.

The best part about literature is that it has acted as a mirror. The truth is revealed in full body. There are exceptions. But on the whole it has been noticed that novels, stories, dramas, verses and even articles have impartially presented the positives as well as the negatives of the society. Society has developed through this medium of expression. The more we get acquainted with different kinds of writings, the more increases our self awareness. We tend to question, we tend to judge. From ignorance, we come to illumination. Literature is a wide field. It has many aspects and it is very difficult to bind it within a certain genre. We can never say that fiction and poetry is only literature. The magazines, articles, newspapers that we read daily are also an important part of literature. Any creation with words is actually literature literally. Thus with such a wide horizon within the folds of our hands, we can actually make the transformation of our minds possible. And as people alter for good, society develops. After all society constitutes of people, it is a man made stuff.