POETS LAUREATE

POETS LAUREATE

Ben Jonson	1619 - 1637
Sir William Davenant	1638 - 1668
John Dryden	1668 – 1688
Thomas Shadwell	1688 – 1692
Nahum Tate	1692 – 1715
Nicholas Rowe	1715 – 1718
Laurence Eusden	1718 – 1730
Colly Cibber	1730 - 1757
William Whitehead	1757 – 1785
Thomas Warton	1785 – 1790
Henry James Pye	1790 – 1813
Robert Southey	1813 – 1843
William Wordsworth	1843 – 1850
Alfred Tennyson	1850 – 1892
Alfred Austin	1896 – 1913
Robert Bridges	1913 – 1930
John Masefield	1930 – 1967
Cecil Day - Lewis	1968 – 1972
Sir John Betjeman	1972 – 1984
Ted Hughes	(1984-        )

LITERARY TERMS

                  

1.  ALLITERATION : The repetition of identical  consonant sounds , usually at the beginnings of words. Notice the repeated f sounds in these lines from Beowulf:

                The infamous killer fought

For his freedom , wanting no flesh but retreat.

2.  ALLUSION  : A short reference to a person , a place , an event , or another work of literature. The reference , which the reader is expected to know , serves as a shorthand reference to a larger picture or idea , thereby adding to the meaning of a work. For example , Shakespeare’s allusion to Mars , the Roman war god , in Sonnet 55 adds strength to the speaker’s claims of his friend’s immortality.

3.  ANALOGY ; A comparison made between two things to show the similarities between them. An analogy explains something unfamiliar by comparing it to something familiar. For example, to explain the difference between Elizabethan poets and poets of his generation , Kears in his letter to John Hamilton Reynolds explains the difference between emperors of great lands and petty officials. According to Keats , the Elizabethans , like the Emperors , have much greater vision and scope.

4. ANAPEST : A poetic foot consisting of two unstressed syllables followed by a stressed syllable.

5. ANTAGONIST : A person or force that opposes the protagonist in a story or drama. In “The Guest” by Camus , Balducci , the Arab , and the customs of society are the antagonists that oppose Daru’s search for peace.

6.  APHORISM : A short , pointed statement expressing a wise or clever observation about life. For example:

 Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.

                                                -Alexander Pope 

   7. APOSTROPHE : A figure of speech in which a poet directly addresses an inanimate object , idea , or absent person. For example , the speaker addresses the wind in Shelley’s “Dirge” :

 Rough wind , that moanest loud

  Grief too sad for song . . .

8.Aside : In a play a character’s comment that is heard by the audience but not by the other characters. An aside reveals what the character is thinking and feeling. The dramatist indicates an aside in the script with stage directions. For example , after King Duncan has proclaimed his son Malcolm as heir to the thorne , Macbeth reveals in an aside his reaction to the news:

       MACBETH [Aside] The Prince of Cumberland!

                                   That is a step

       On which I must fall down , or else o’erleap

       For in my way it lies. . .

9. ASSONANCE : The repetition of similar vowel sounds in a line of poetry. For example, the I sound is repeated in this line from The Rime of the Ancient Mariner :

‘Twas night , calm night , the moon was high. . .

10. ATMOSPHERE : The prevailing mood of a work of literature. An author creates atmosphere through his or her choice of setting and tone. For example , Conrad’s jungle setting and serious tone

work together to create a tense and suspenseful atmosphere in “The Lagoon.”

                    

                                  

SHAKESPEAREAN THEATER

It is likely by 1600 Shakespeare had completed his thirty-seven plays-The Taming of the Shrew , Romeo and Juliet , A Midsummer Night’s Dream , The Merchant of Venice , and Julius Caesar .From 1600 to 1607 he wrote all masterpieces-Twelfth Night , Hamlet , Othello , King Lear , Macbeth , Antony and Cleopatra.

Shakespeare’s plays are divided into three groups- comedies , histories , and tragedies.The comedies are romantic fantasies , designed to delight and amuse their audiences. The histories illustrate the moral lessons to be learned from the crimes of ambitious and treacherous leaders of state.The tragedies deal with death , mortality , and destruction and show how the breaking of a moral law inevitably leads to disaster.

Most of Shakespeare’s plays were first performed at the Globe , a theatre located across the Thames River from London in the suburb of Southwark.The Globe was an octagonal building , with a thatched roof covering only the perimeter of the area.Under the roof were three levels of galleries that surrounded a yard about sixty-five feet in diameter.The galleries looked down on the stage , a rectangular platform of twenty-seven by forty-three feet that occupied about a third of the yard at one end.The main stage had a large trap door through which actors who played the parts of ghosts and spirits could rise and disappear. At the back of the main stage was a small curtained inner stage used for indoor scenes.Above the inner stage were two galleries.The first level could be used as a balcony , bedroom , or castle wall. Musicians performed from the second level , and sound effects , such as thunder or the ringing of a bell , came from a hut on top of the stage roof.

Costumes in the Shakespearean theatre were always colourful and elaborate versions of Elizabethan “modern dress,” whether they were for Macbeth , set in the eleventh century , or for Julius Caesar , in 44 B.C.No women appeared on the stage ; women’s and children’s roles were played by boys . Scenery was almost non-existent

METAPHYSICAL POETRY

The word ‘metaphysics’ indicates the branch of philosophy dealing with the nature of existence , truth and knowledge.The term Metaphysical shows an approach based on abstract reasoning.’Metaphysical Poets’ is a term that signifies a group of certain 17^th century poets usually Donne , Herbert , Marvell , Vaughan and Traherne.This group cannot be called in any sense a school or movement proper.The poets share common characteristics of ‘wit , inventiveness and a love of elaborate stylistic manoeuvres.’

According to Grierson ,metaphysical poetry , in the full sense of the term , is a poetry which like Dante’s Divine Comedy and Goethe’s Faust “ has been inspired by a philosophical conception of the universe and of the role assigned to the human spirit in the great drama of existence.”

I t arises when the physical world loses its stability , and the people lose faith in the orthodox patterns of thought and belief.At such times sensitive poets turn their attention inwards, and through self analysis aim at better understanding of themselves , their situation in the world , and their relation to a philosophic or idealised “ other world .“

The most important characteristics of the metaphysicals is their possession of , or striving after , what T.S. Eliot calls “ undissociated sensibility “ which Milton was to “split” later.The metaphysicals are “ constantly amalgamating disparate experiences “ and forming new wholes out of materials so diverse as ‘reading Spinoz ‘ falling in love and smelling the dinner cooking.”

Donne has the knack of presenting together different objects which have between them a quite remote though undeniable similarity.He connects the abstract with the commonplace and sometimes during moments of the most serious meditation breaks into a note of sardonic humour.

In style and versification Donne and his followers reacted against the cloying sweetness and harmony of the school of Spenser.The metaphysicals deliberately avoided conventional poetic expressions as they had lost their meaning through overuse.The metaphysicals employed very “prosaic” words as if they were scientists or shopkeepers. The result is that their work we often stumble against ragged and unpoetic words we seldom expect in serious poetry.

The metaphysical poets given to the English language its best religious poetry. The moods of incisive introspection and mysticism could best be expressed not through commonplace , conventional poetic images and language but unconventional and bold imagery which would jolt the mind and spirit of the reader into an intimate rapport with the mood of the poet. Herbert , Donne , Vaughan , Crashaw , and Traherne are the most important among the religious English poets of all ages.

In the field of love poetry , too, the contribution of the metaphysicals is considerable and quite important from the historical point of view. Donne started a vein of highly realistic , frankly sensual , and sometimes downright cynical , amatory verse.

The intellectualism of the metaphysical poetry and the compositeness of its imagery , and even the crabbed nature of its style , secured for it a continuous stream of readers from generation to generation.

SATISFACTION

                                                                 SATISFACTION

Very true is this tale.It tells,

How want of more and more, swept me away,

Visions of miserable people say-

                     Mother ! Mother ! A child’s noise,

                     Fellow creatures devoid of joys,

To meet their needs they have to roam,

And sleep without home.

                   I used to fight with my Mom and say so,

                  Ask her for artificialities of life to show.

But one such vision filled me with fear,

And lessoned me that my life is with Spheres.

       Atleast I have hands to work , eyes to see and home to sit.

      What others have and we don’t have, after that we run.

    This is not the right way our life to have begun.

Satisfaction is the only key for our life to go,

To showy and flimsy things we mst say No! No!