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BEGC 133
BRITISH LITERATURE
Programme: BAG/2021/2022
Course Code: BEGC 133
Max. Marks: 100
BEGC 133
Free Solved Assignment
Answer all
questions in this assignment.
SECTION A
Explain the
following passages with reference to the context.
Q1. “I have
no spur To prick the sides of my intent, but only Vaulting ambition, which
o’erleaps itself And falls on th’ other.”
In this line, Macbeth is describing his lack of motivation,
and the fact that the only thing driving him at present is ambition. He
recognizes at this point in the play that ambition can make people rush and
make mistakes, so he is almost pre-empting the disasters to come. A
little-known psychiatrist, Elvin Semrad, once said: ‘You can achieve whatever
you want, as long as you are willing to pay the price.’
Macbeth: Better be with the dead, whom we, to gain our
peace, have sent to peace, than on the torture of the mind to lie in restless
ecstasy. (Act 3, Scene 2)
For a play bookended by battles and with an omnipresent
climate of war, it is to be expected that such conflict will wear down some of
the characters in this play. Investigate PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder),
a form of anxiety disorder that is often exhibited in soldiers returning from
war.
Macbeth: From this moment the very firstlings of my heart
shall be the firstlings of my hand. And even now, to crown my thoughts with
acts, be it thought and done: the castle of Macduff I will surprise, seize upon
Fife, give to th’ edge o’ th’ sword his wife, his babes, and all unfortunate
souls that trace him in his line. (Act 4, Scene 2) Macbeth commits some
unspeakable acts in the play, including the murder of Duncan, and condemning
Lady Macduff and her children to death. Simon Phillips (Director) believes that
‘the play is predicated on an acceptance that people are violent.’
‘Violence doesn’t make them good or bad per se. In fact, one
could argue that what makes the play a tragedy is that it’s about a great
soldier, who makes a terrible leader. I think what the play examines is what
makes people commit a crime against humanity and the ramifications of that
crime.’ – Simon Phillips Sadly, there are many real-world examples of leaders
committing atrocities on their own people. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has
been denounced for the chemical bombing on his own people that killed dozens,
including children.
Q2. “Out,
damned spot: out I say! One, Two: Why then ’tis Time to do’t. Hell is murky.
Fie, My Lord, fie: a Soldier, and affear’d? What need we fear? Who knows it,
When none can call our Power to accompt”?
Out, damned spot; out, I say. One, two,—why, then ’tis time
to do’t. Hell is murky. Fie, my lord, fie, a soldier and afeard? What need we
fear who knows it when none can call our power to account? Yet who would have
thought the old man to have had so much blood in him?
These words are spoken by Lady Macbeth in Act 5, scene 1,
lines 30–34, as she sleepwalks through Macbeth’s castle on the eve of his
battle against Macduff and Malcolm. Earlier in the play, she possessed a
stronger resolve and sense of purpose than her husband and was the driving
force behind their plot to kill Duncan. When Macbeth believed his hand was
irreversibly bloodstained earlier in the play, Lady Macbeth had told him, “A
little water clears us of this deed” (2.2.65). Now, however, she too sees blood.
She is completely undone by guilt and descends into madness. It may be a
reflection of her mental and emotional state that she is not speaking in verse;
this is one of the few moments in the play when a major character—save for the
witches, who speak in fourfoot couplets—strays from iambic pentameter. Her
inability to sleep was foreshadowed in the voice that her husband thought he
heard while killing the king—a voice crying out that Macbeth was murdering
sleep.
And her delusion that there is a bloodstain on her hand
furthers the play’s use of blood as a symbol of guilt. “What need we fear who
knows it when none can call our power to account?” she asks, asserting that as
long as she and her husband retain power, the murders they committed cannot
harm them. But her guiltracked state and her mounting madness show how hollow
her words are. So, too, does the army outside her castle. “Hell is murky,” she
says, implying that she already knows that darkness intimately. The pair, in
their destructive power, have created their own hell, where they are tormented
by guilt and insanity
Q3. “How
strange it is to be talked to in such a way! You know, I’ve always gone on like
that. I mean the noble attitude and the thrilling voice. I did it when I was a
tiny child to my nurse. She believed in it. I do it before my parents. They
believe in it.”
RAINA. Hm! He told it all to my father and Sergius the day
you exchanged the prisoners. (She turns away and strolls carelessly across to
the other side of the room.)
BLUNTSCHLI (deeply concerned and half incredulous). No! you
don't mean that, do you?
RAINA (turning, with sudden earnestness). I do indeed. But
they don't know that it was in this house that you hid. If Sergius knew, he
would challenge you and kill you in a duel.
BLUNTSCHLI. Bless me! then don't tell him.
RAINA (full of reproach for his levity). Can you realize
what it is to me to deceive him? I want to be quite perfect with Sergius — no
meanness, no smallness, no deceit. My relation to him is the one really
beautiful and noble part of my life. I hope you can understand that.
BLUNTSCHLI (sceptically). You mean that you wouldn't like
him to find out that the story about the ice pudding was a — a — a — You know.
RAINA (wincing). Ah, don't talk of it in that flippant way.
I lied: I know it. But I did it to save your life. He would have killed you.
That was the second time I ever uttered a falsehood. (Bluntschli rises quickly
and looks doubtfully and somewhat severely at her.) Do you remember the first
time?
BLUNTSCHLI. I! No. Was I present?
RAINA. Yes; and I told the officer who was searching for you
that you were not present
BLUNTSCHLI. True. I should have remembered it.
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RAINA (greatly encouraged). Ah, it is natural that you
should forget it first. It cost you nothing: it cost me a lie! — a lie!! (She
sits down on the ottoman, looking straight before her with her hands clasped on
her knee. Bluntschli, quite touched, goes to the ottoman with a particularly reassuring
and considerate air, and sits down beside her.)
BLUNTSCHLI. My dear young lady, don't let this worry you.
Remember: I'm a soldier. Now what are the two things that happen to a soldier
so often that he comes to think nothing of them? One is hearing people tell
lies (Raina recoils): the other is getting his life saved in all sorts of ways
by all sorts of people.
RAINA (rising in indignant protest). And so he becomes a
creature incapable of faith and of gratitude.
BLUNTSCHLI (making a wry face). Do you like gratitude? I
don't. If pity is akin to love, gratitude is akin to the other thing.
RAINA. Gratitude! (Turning on him.) If you are incapable of
gratitude you are incapable of any noble sentiment. Even animals are grateful.
Oh, I see now exactly what you think of me! You were not surprised to hear me
lie. To you it was something I probably did every day — every hour. That is how
men think of women. (She walks up the room melodramatically.)
BLUNTSCHLI (dubiously). There's reason in everything. You
said you'd told only two lies in your whole life. Dear young lady: isn't that
rather a short allowance? I'm quite a straightforward man myself; but it
wouldn't last me a whole morning.
RAINA (staring haughtily at him). Do you know, sir, that you
are insulting me?
BLUNTSCHLI. I can't help it. When you get into that noble
attitude and speak in that thrilling voice, I admire you; but I find it
impossible to believe a single word you say.
RAINA (superbly). Captain Bluntschli!
BLUNTSCHLI (unmoved). Yes?
RAINA (coming a little towards him, as if she could not
believe her senses). Do you mean what you said just now? Do you know what you
said just now?
BLUNTSCHLI. I do.
Q4. “Thou
hast betray’d thy nature and thy name, Not rendering true answer, as beseem’d
Thy fealty, nor like a noble knight: For surer sign had follow’d, either hand,
Or voice, or else a motion of the mere.”
So all day long the noise of battle roll'd Among the mountains
by the winter sea; Until King Arthur's table, man by man, Had fallen in
Lyonnesse about their Lord,
King Arthur: then, because his wound was deep, The bold Sir
Bedivere uplifted him, Sir Bedivere, the last of all his knights, And bore him
to a chapel nigh the field, A broken chancel with a broken cross, That stood on
a dark strait of barren land. On one side lay the ocean, and on one Lay a great
water, and the moon was full.
Then spake King Arthur to Sir Bedivere: "The sequel of
to-day unsolders all The goodliest fellowship of famous knights Whereof this
world holds record. Such a sleep They sleep—the men I loved. I think that we
Shall never more, at any future time, Delight our souls with talk of knightly
deeds, Walking about the gardens and the halls Of Camelot, as in the days that
were. I perish by this people which I made,— Tho' Merlin sware that I should
come again To rule once more—but let what will be, be, I am so deeply smitten
thro' the helm That without help I cannot last till morn. Thou therefore take
my brand Excalibur, Which was my pride: for thou remember Est how In those old
days, one summer noon, an arm Rose up from out the bosom of the lake, Clothed
in white samite, mystic, wonderful, Holding the sword—and how I row'd across
And took it, and have worn it, like a king: And, wheresoever I am sung or told
In aftertime, this also shall be known: But now delay not: take Excalibur, And
fling him far into the middle mere: Watch what thou seëst, and lightly bring me
word."
To him replied the bold Sir Bedivere: "It is not meet,
Sir King, to leave thee thus, Aidless, alone, and smitten thro' the helm. A
little thing may harm a wounded man.
Yet I thy hest will all perform at full, Watch what I see,
and lightly bring thee word."
So saying, from the ruin'd shrine he stept And in the moon
athwart the place of tombs, Where lay the mighty bones of ancient men, Old
knights, and over them the sea-wind sang Shrill, chill, with flakes of foam.
He, stepping down By zigzag paths, and juts of pointed rock, Came on the
shining levels of the lake.
There drew he forth the brand Excalibur, And o'er him,
drawing it, the winter moon, Brightening the skirts of a long cloud, ran forth
And sparkled keen with frost against the hilt: For all the haft twinkled with
diamond sparks, Myriads of topaz-lights, and jacinth work Of subtlest
jewellery. He gazed so long That both his eyes were dazzled, as he stood, This
way and that dividing the swift mind, In act to throw: but at the last it
seem'd Better to leave Excalibur conceal'd There in the many-knotted
water-flags, That whistled stiff and dry about the marge. So strode he back
slow to the wounded King.
Then spake King Arthur to Sir Bedivere: "Hast thou
perform'd my mission which I gave? What is it thou hast seen, or what hast
heard?"
And answer made the bold Sir Bedivere: "I heard the
ripple washing in the reeds, And the wild water lapping on the crag."
To whom replied King Arthur, faint and pale: "Thou hast
betray'd thy nature and thy name, Not rendering true answer, as beseem'd Thy
fealty, nor like a noble knight: For surer sign had follow'd, either hand, Or
voice, or else a motion of the mere.
This is a shameful thing for men to lie. Yet now, I charge
thee, quickly go again As thou art lief and dear, and do the thing I bade thee,
watch, and lightly bring me word."
Then went Sir Bedivere the second time Across the ridge, and
paced beside the mere, Counting the dewy pebbles, fixed in thought; But when he
saw the wonder of the hilt, How curiously and strangely chased, he smote His
palms together, and he cried aloud,
"And if indeed I cast the brand away, Surely a precious
thing, one worthy note, Should thus be lost forever from the earth, Which might
have pleased the eyes of many men. What good should follow this, if this were
done? What harm, undone? deep harm to disobey, Seeing obedience is the bond of
rule. Were it well to obey then, if a king demand An act unprofitable, against
himself? The King is sick, and knows not what he does. What record, or what
relic of my lord Should be to aftertime, but empty breath And rumours of a
doubt? but were this kept, Stored in some treasure-house of mighty kings, Some
one might show it at a joust of arms, Saying, 'King Arthur's sword, Excalibur,
Wrought by the lonely maiden of the Lake; Nine years she wrought it, sitting in
the deeps Upon the hidden bases of the hills.' So might some old man speak in
the aftertime To all the people, winning reverence. But now much honour and
much fame were lost."
So spake he, clouded with his own conceit, And hid Excalibur
the second time, And so strode back slow to the wounded King.
Then spoke King Arthur, breathing heavily:
"What is it thou hast seen, or what hast heard?"
And answer made the bold Sir Bedivere: "I heard the
water lapping on the crag, And the long ripple washing in the reeds."
To whom replied King Arthur, much in wrath: "Ah,
miserable and unkind, untrue, Unknightly, traitor-hearted! Woe is me! Authority
forgets a dying king, Laid widow'd of the power in his eye That bow'd the will.
I see thee what thou art, For thou, the latest-left of all my knights, In whom
should meet the offices of all, Thou wouldst betray me for the precious hilt;
Either from lust of gold, or like a girl Valuing the giddy pleasure of the
eyes. Yet, for a man may fail in duty twice, And the third time may prosper,
get thee hence: But, if thou spare to fling Excalibur, I will arise and slay
thee with my hands."
Then quickly rose Sir Bedivere, and ran, And, leaping down
the ridges lightly, plunged Among the bulrush-beds, and clutch'd the sword, And
strongly wheel'd and threw it. The great brand Made lightnings in the splendour
of the moon, And flashing round and round, and whirl'd in an arch, Shot like a
streamer of the northern morn, Seen where the moving isles of winter shock By
night, with noises of the northern sea. So flash'd and fell the brand
Excalibur: But ere he dipt the surface, rose an arm Clothed in white samite,
mystic, wonderful, And caught him by the hilt, and brandish'd him Three times,
and drew him under in the mere. And lightly went the other to the King.
Section B
II. Write
short notes on the following: 5x4=20
a. Thomas
Hardy and the fictional region of Wessex.
Thomas Hardy's Wessex refers to the fictional literary
landscape created by the English author Thomas Hardy as the setting for his
major novels located in the south and southwest of England Hardy named the area
"Wessex" after the medieval AngloSaxon kingdom that existed in this
part of that country prior to the unification of England by Athelstan. Although
the places that appear in his novels actually exist, in many cases he gave the
place a fictional name For example, Hardy's home town of Dorchester is called
Casterbridge in his books, notably in The Mayor of Casterbridge In an 1895
preface to the 1874 novel Far From the Madding Crowd he described Wessex as
"a merely realistic dream country". The actual definition of
"Hardy's Wessex" varied widely throughout Hardy's career, and was not
definitively settled until after he retired from writing novels. When he
created the concept of a fictional Wessex, it consisted merely of the small
area of Dorset in which Hardy grew up; by the time he wrote Jude the Obscure,
the boundaries had extended to include all of Dorset, Wiltshire, Somerset,
Devon, Hampshire, much of Berkshire, and some of Oxfordshire, with its most
north-easterly point being Oxford (renamed "Christminster" in the
novel). Cornwall was also referred to but named "Off Wessex".
Similarly, the nature and significance of ideas of "Wessex" were
developed over a long series of novels through a lengthy period of time. The
idea of Wessex plays an important artistic role in Hardy's works (particularly
his later novels), assisting the presentation of themes of progress,
primitivism, sexuality, religion, nature and naturalism] However, this is
complicated by the economic role Wessex played in Hardy's career. Considering
himself primarily to be a poet, Hardy wrote novels mostly to earn money. Books
that could be marketed under the Hardy brand of "Wessex novels" were
particularly lucrative, which gave rise to a tendency to sentimentalised,
picturesque, populist descriptions of Wessex (which, as a glance through most
tourist giftshops in the south-west reveals, remain popular with consumers
today). Hardy's resurrection of the name "Wessex" is largely
responsible for the popular modern use of the term to describe the south-west
region of England (with the exception of Cornwall and arguably Devon). Today, a
panoply of organisations take their name from Hardy to describe their
relationship to the area. Hardy's conception of Wessex as a separate, cohesive
geographical and political identity has proved powerful despite the fact it was
originally created purely as an artistic conceit, and has spawned a lucrative
tourist trade, and even a devolutionist Wessex Regionalist Party
b.
Tennyson’s “Idylls of the King” and the Arthurian Legend.
Idylls of the King, poetic treatment of the Arthurian legend
by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, comprising 12 poems published in various fragments
and combinations between 1842 and 1888. Four books—“Enid,” “Vivien,” “Elaine,”
and “Guinevere”—were published as Idylls of the King in 1859. Based largely on
Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte Darthur, the work spans the full scope of Arthur’s
career, from his first encounter with Guinevere, who would become his queen, to
his final battle with Mordred. It offers a somber vision of an idealistic
community in decay. Tennyson attributes the decline of the Round Table in part
to Guinevere’s betrayal of Arthur with the knight Lancelot. The poems encompass
numerous minor characters and romantic exploits, notably the quest for the Holy
Grail. Elaine, also spelled Elayne, character of Arthurian legend, first portrayed
in Le Morte Darthur (1485) by Sir Thomas Malory.
In Malory’s sprawling work, Elaine (or Elayne) is the name
of five women with overlapping identities. The best known and most cited of
these is Elaine Le Blank, known as the Fair Maid of Astolat, who falls in love
with Lancelot, provokes Guinevere’s jealousy, and eventually dies of love for
the knight. Elayne the Fair, or Sans Pere (“the Peerless”), daughter of King
Pelles, takes on the likeness of Guinevere for a night and, by Lancelot,
becomes the mother of Galahad, the pure and noble knight who later finds the
Holy Grail. A third Elayne is the sister of Morgawse and Morgan le Fay in the
opening pages of the epic. Lancelot’s mother, the wife of King Ban, is also
named Elaine. Yet another Elayne appears as a minor character, the daughter of
King Pellinore.
c. The
‘Banquet Scene’ in Macbeth.
In this scene, Macbeth and Lady Macbeth host a banquet for
the Scottish thanes. A murderer tells Macbeth that he has been successful in
killing Banquo, but that Fleance escaped. During the banquet, Macbeth seesthe
ghost of Banquo sitting at his place at the table. He is horrified. Lady
Macbeth reassures the guests that it is a momentary fit and tells Macbeth to
stop. The ghost disappears and Macbeth is calm. However, moments later, the
ghost appears again. Macbeth is so distressed that Lady Macbeth tells the
thanes to leave. Macbeth decides to visit the witches the next day.
You can take a look at the scene here. Using the following
steps, remember to look at it line by line and if you’re looking at the scene
for the first time, don’t worry if you don’t understand everything at once. The
Banquet scene in "Macbeth" is one of the most moving scenes; and as
far as the tragedy of Macbeth is concerned, it is tremendous in its dramatic
impact and intensity. This scene is simultaneously the high point of Macbeth’s
reign and the beginning of his downfall. It records Macbeth's guilty conscience
taking the most horrible form in the shape of Banquo's ghost. Macbeth’s bizarre
behavior puzzles and disturbs his subjects, confirming their impression that he
is mentally troubled. It also shows Macbeth's gradual overcoming of the qualms
of conscience.
The scene (scene IV, Act III) opens at the royal hall of
Scotland with the banquet ready celebrating Macbeth’s coronation. The couple is
now at the height of double-dealing. Macbeth's words and phrases to the thanes,
such as "You know your own degrees" and "Both sides are even:
here I'll sit i' the midst" suggest a renewal of order and symmetry in
Scotland, yet the audience knows that this is not the case. Both sides are not
even, because Banquo is missing. Degree, or rank order, has been effectively
perverted by Macbeth by his killing of the king and his usurpation of the
throne. As in Act I, Scene 6, Lady Macbeth's words of introduction disguise her
true feelings. Once again, the Macbeths act with suspicious confidence.
d. The
‘Victorian Conflict’ as expressed in the poems of Tennyson.
It is an era in which the conflict between science and
faith, rationality and mysticism, and the technical progress and religious
orthodoxy is found kun and clear. The poems of Tennyson, and Browning specially
reflect the conflicts in many of its phases and facets. Alfred, Lord Tennyson
(1809-1892) is, in fact, the representative poet of Victorian Age. He entered
fully into the moods of his age. He molded and then satisfied the tastes of his
contemporaries. He is triumphant to show us the restless spirit of his nation.
His poetry demonstrates national spirit more than personal spirit and also,
like mirror, reflects the social, political moral, and religious trends of the
time. Tennyson’s poetry reflects the general feelings of his age on the great
things of the world- religion, morals and social life. “Ulysses”, for instance,
represents the spirit of inquiry, intellectual ferment, quest for knowledge,
and urgency of going ahead, carrying on, and the life full of earnestness. With
the publication of In Memoriam Tennyson’s status as the poet of the Victorian
age was assured. Tennyson’s In Memoriam is his magnum opus that represents the
conflicts of doubt and faith. In some sections of In Memoriam Tennyson sought
to reconcile traditional faith with the new ideas of evolutionary science but
in others faith and reason are opposed. Like Wordsworth and Shelly, Tennyson,
too may be called a poet of nature. But there is a difference. He did not
spiritualize nature; neither did he conceive it as alive. Living in an age of
conflict between science and religion, he believed in the operation of a
spirit, in nature culminating in Victorian poetry, like other branches of
Victorian literature is found to have been dominated by social thoughts of the
age. The age of Victorian poetry is an age of ideological conflict. The
tensions of the conflicting demands are seen both in the form and content of
poetry. The Victorian are is an era of the ideological conflict.
III. Write
short essays on the following: 10x2=20
a. Write a
short essay on Bernard Shaw’s political vision. To what extent did this vision
colour his dramatic work?
George Bernard Shaw, (born July 26, 1856, Dublin,
Ireland—died November 2, 1950, Ayot St. Lawrence, Hertfordshire, England),
Irish comic dramatist, literary critic, and socialist propagandist, winner of
the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1925.
George Bernard Shaw was the third and youngest child (and
only son) of George Carr Shaw and Lucinda Elizabeth Gurly Shaw. Technically, he
belonged to the Protestant “ascendancy”—the landed Irish gentry—but his
impractical father was first a sinecured civil servant and then an unsuccessful
grain merchant, and George Bernard grew up in an atmosphere of genteel poverty,
which to him was more humiliating than being merely poor. At first Shaw was tutored
by a clerical uncle, and he basically rejected the schools he then attended; by
age 16 he was working in a land agent’s office. Shaw developed a wide knowledge
of music, art, and literature as a result of his mother’s influence and his
visits to the National Gallery of Ireland. In 1872 his mother left her husband
and took her two daughters to London, following her music teacher, George John
Vandeleur Lee, who from 1866 had shared households in Dublin with the Shaws. In
1876 Shaw resolved to become a writer, and he joined his mother and elder
sister (the younger one having died) in London. Shaw in his 20s suffered
continuous frustration and poverty. He depended upon his mother’s pound a week
from her husband and her earnings as a music teacher. He spent his afternoons
in the British Museum reading room, writing novels and reading what he had
missed at school, and his evenings in search of additional self-education in
the lectures and debates that characterized contemporary middle-class London
intellectual activities. His fiction failed utterly. The semiautobiographical
and aptly titled Immaturity (1879; published 1930) repelled every publisher in
London. His next four novels were similarly refused, as were most of the
articles he submitted to the press for a decade. Shaw’s initial literary work
earned him less than 10 shillings a year. A fragment posthumously published as
An Unfinished Novel in 1958 (but written 1887–88) was his final false start in
fiction.
Despite his failure as a novelist in the 1880s, Shaw found
himself during this decade. He became a vegetarian, a socialist, a spellbinding
orator, a polemicist, and tentatively a playwright. He became the force behind
the newly founded (1884) Fabian Society, a middle-class socialist group that
aimed at the transformation of English society not through revolution but
through “permeation” (in Sidney Webb’s term) of the country’s intellectual and
political life. Shaw involved himself in every aspect of its activities, most
visibly as editor of one of the classics of British socialism, Fabian Essays in
Socialism (1889), to which he also contributed two sections.
Eventually, in 1885, the drama critic William Archer found
Shaw steady journalistic work. His early journalism ranged from book reviews in
the Pall Mall Gazette (1885–88) and art criticism in the World (1886–89) to
brilliant musical columns in the Star (as “Corno di Bassetto”—basset horn) from
1888 to 1890 and in the World (as “G.B.S.”) from 1890 to 1894. Shaw had a good
understanding of music, particularly opera, and he supplemented his knowledge
with a brilliance of digression that gives many of his notices a permanent
appeal. But Shaw truly began to make his mark when he was recruited by Frank
Harris to the Saturday Review as theatre critic (1895–98); in that position he
used all his wit and polemical powers in a campaign to displace the
artificialities and hypocrisies of the Victorian stage with a theatre of vital
ideas. He also began writing his own plays. First plays
b.
According to Terry Eagleton, the real heroines of the play Macbeth, are the
witches. Do you agree with this view? Justify your answer with your views on
the role of the witches in Macbeth.
Eagleton views the Witches as the heroines of the drama for
exposing the truth about the hierarchal social order describing it as, the
pious self-deception of a society based on routine oppression and incessant
warfare (Eagleton 1986:2). This essay will explore the implications of
Eagleton’s insights, showing that even though they are controversial and
original, they can very well be accurate. This will be done taking into
consideration the historical context of the play, the role of the Witches as
agents of fate and darkness, as well as the influence of masculinity and a
hierarchal social order in the play. William Shakespeare wrote Macbeth during
the early 1600s. During this time the Elizabethans believed in the Chain of
Being (Donaldson 2015:15). This belief determined that everything in the
Universe had an order or rank, with God fulfilling the highest of these. The
King, would then represent God on Earth (Melani 2009:1). The more “spirit” a
person had, the more power he would then also have. Together with this there
was a social hierarchal divide that existed between the aristocracy and
freemen. People both hated and feared these creatures. Traditionally scholars
consider the Witches in Macbeth to represent darkness and chaos. They are also
considered to be the connection with the supernatural world. Mondal. States
that they have the ability Importance of control elsewhere in the play How
control is shown Reasons for control within the play Control is a recurring
theme in the play "Macbeth" as it warns the audience of the repercussions
of trying to control your fate. The first key event where control features in a
significant way is the witches' prophecies. They tell Macbeth that he will
become Thane of Cawdor and King of Scotland which establishes the importance of
fate.
Section C
IV Discuss
Thomas Hardy’s philosophical views. In what way is his philosophy as expressed
in Far From the Madding Crowd different from that in later novels like The
Mayor of Caster Bridge?
Thomas Hardy lived from June 2, 1840, to January 11, 1928.
He grew up in Higherbockhampton, Dorset, the eldest son of a stonemason. He had
one brother and two sisters. Sickly from an early age, he was educated at home
until he was sixteen. He then began an apprenticeship, and then a career, as an
architect. He started writing poetry in the 1860s but did not publish his first
novel until 1871. He married Emma Lavinia Gifford in 1874. It was not until the
publication of Far from the Madding Crowd, Hardy's fourth novel, that Hardy won
widespread popularity as a writer, and he was able to give up architecture. The
book was published serially in 1874, in Corn Hill Magazine, a journal edited by
Leslie Stephens, the father of Virginia Woolf. The novel was published in short
sections, and as you read it, you can see that they intentionally leave the
reader in suspense; this was a device to motivate readers to buy the next issue
of the magazine. Early reviewers compared Hardy's writing to that of George
Eliot and recognized him as an important new voice in English fiction. Hardy
went on to write novels at an extraordinary rate for more than 20 years,
writing one every one or two years. His most famous novels written during these
years include The Return of the Native,Tess of the D'Urbervilles, and The Mayor
of Casterbridge. After the publication of Jude the Obscure caused a major
scandal in 1895, Hardy stopped writing novels and devoted the rest of his life
(more than 30 years) to poetry. His last great project was an epic poem titled
"The Dynasts," a versed chronicle of the Napoleonic Wars. After some
time in London he built himself a house in his native Dorsetshire and lived
there for the rest of his life. He was widowed in 1912 and married Florence
Dugdale in 1914. Hardy was a devoted reader of philosophy, scientific texts,
the Bible, and Greek literature, and he incorporated much of his knowledge into
his own works. One of the most profound influences on his thinking was Charles
Darwin, particularly Darwin's emphasis on chance and luck in evolution. Though
brought up to believe in God, Hardy struggled with a loss of faith suffered by
many of his contemporaries; he increasingly turned to science for answers about
man's place in the universe.Hardy’s conception of human life was shaped in part
by his extensive critical reading of the Bible, study of ancient tragedy,
contemporary philosophical and scientific works, and in part by his rural
environment. Ernest Brennecke, who wrote one of the earliest appraisals of
Hardy’s philosophy of life, argued that Hardy developed “a consistent
world-view through the notions of Chance and Time, Circumstances, Fate, Nature,
Providence, Nemesis and Will tinged with metaphysical idealism” (49). This
opinion has hardly changed throughout the years although critics interpreted
Hardy's view of life from a number of various philosophical and ethical
perspectives. Hardy had been brought up as a Christian, but by the age of 27 he
had lost his faith, mainly under the influence of Darwin's The Origin of
Species, and he never regained it. Darwin's work undermined the prevailing
concept of the divine creation of man. As he put it later, “I have been looking
for God for fifty years and think that if he had existed I should have
discovered him” (Duffin 196). Hardy's loss of faith led to the pessimism that
permeates his fiction and poetry. Hardy believed the universe (symbolised by
desolate Egdon Heath in his novels) devoid of divine meaning. In place of
Christian God he put a blind unconscious will. As Brennecke observed, “He
cannot reconcile the idea of an omnipotent and merciful Deity with the human
sufferings that he witnesses daily” (79).
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