Literary Forms

B.A.
ENGLISH AND COMMUNICATION

FIRST YEAR
COURSE – I: LITERARY FORMS
SYLLABUS
1) The Nature and Elements of Literature

2) The Study of the Style as an Index of Personality
3) The Historical Study of Literature
4) The Nature and Elements of Poetry
5) The Classification of Poetry
6) (a). Subjective poetry
i. Meditative and Philosophical Poetry
ii. The Ode
iii. The Elegy
iv. The Sonnet
v. The Lyric and other kinds.
6) (b) Objective Poetry
i. The Bailed
ii. The Epic
iii. The Metrical Romance
iv. Dramatic Poetry
7) The Study of Poetry and the Appreciation of Poetry
8) The Elements of Fiction
9) Plot in the Novel
10) Relation of Plot and Character
11) The Drama and the Novel
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12) Characterization in the Drama
13) The Natural Divisions of a Dramatic Plot
14) Different Types of Drama
15) The Nature and Function of Criticism
16) The Study of Essay
17) The Study of the Short Story
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CONTENTS
Unit Title Page

No. No.
I An Introduction to Literature & Literary Forms 1
II Poetry 12
III Fiction and Drama 23
IV Essay, Short Story and Criticism 41
V Some Select Literary Forms 58
Model Question Paper 69
Terminal Assignments 70
Suggested Reading 70
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GENERAL INTRODUCTION TO LITERARY FORMS
The knowledge of the different forms of literature is essential to anyone willing

to undertake a fruitful journey into the world of literature. It is true that even a
layman can recognize a poem from other forms without much ado. But mere
recognition will yield nothing more than that. For a fruitful journey into the golden
realms, the student especially of literature, need to know something about the
forms.
It is with this intention of equipping our students with that knowledge that
this course on literary forms is designed. This course in divided into five units. The
first unit attempts to clarify certain basic points, on the nature of literature for the
benefit of students.
The second unit is devoted for the oldest form of literature – poetry. Besides
the regular classification of poetry, this unit offers sufficient insight into the nature
and the appreciation of poets.
Due attention was given to the study of Fiction & Drama in third unit and to
Prose, Short Story and Literary Criticism in the fourth unit. The last unit is added
to provide a detailed account of some select forms of poetry for the benefit of
students.
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1
UNIT – I
AN INTRODUCTION TO LITERATURE & LITERARY FORMS

STRUCTURE
1.0 Objectives
1.1 The Nature and Elements of Literature
1.2 The Study of Style as an Index of Personality
1.3 The Historical Study of Literature
1.4 Revision Points
1.5 Assignments
1.6 Key words
1.7 Terminal Exercises
1.8 Suggested Reading
1.0 OBJECTIVES
The main aim of this unit is to familiarize students with the nature and the
various elements of literature. To stimulate their innate taste for the study of
literature is also its main concern.
1.1 THE NATURE AND ELEMENTS OF LITERATURE
Literature is a progressive mark of Man’s civilization. It is an art that employs
the medium of language but it is not just to communicate meaning in order to
advance knowledge. It most appropriately preserves the treasures of the mind and
soul. Yet the word literature commonly carries with it a clear suggestion of
delimitation. How is the boundary drawn between a book on cookery and Paradise
Lost or some other masterpiece?. The border between the two is an area of
uncertainty. Charles Lamb, the Romantic prose writer went to the extent of
excluding the works of Hume and Gibbon together with almanacs and directories.
On the other hand, Hallam included jurisprudence, theology and even medicine
under the general head of literature.
Literature is a work that is mainly based on two considerations. First of all
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literature is comprised of those books by reason of their subject matter and mode of
treatment are of general human interest, and in the second place, the element of
form and the pleasure which that from gives are regarded as something essential .
Hence a piece of literature differs form a treatise on astronomy, philosophy etc.
These works appeal to particular sections of people in the society whereas
literature makes an universal appeal. Also, while the ideal of the books on different
subjects is to impart knowledge, the aim of literature is higher than this. It not only
imparts.
Literature is of great value as an art. That is why, we do care for literature. It
has deep and lasting human significance. Impressions come to us from the outside
world through the windows of our senses. Man thinks, broods, from images and
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forges the filiations between the outside world and inner world. His sensory
experience is heightened and he finds room for endless enrichment of experience
and extension of knowledge. Thus a great book of literature grows out of life. In
reading a book of this kind we are brought into fresh and close reactions with life.
Literature is a permanent record of what the author has seen and experienced in
life, what he has thought and felt about those experiences. It is this element that
gives it the most immediate and lasting interest for all of us. In short, literature is
an expression of life through the medium of language. It has no exclusion in respect
of the convey of origin, the time of composition or the language medium. It is a
global heritage, and every year adds to its opulence. The distinguishing character of
literature in its concerns with man’s inner life has passions of moral truth, a feeling
for universe, a grasp of solutions and an instinct for beautiful form.
Classification of literature is neither conventional nor arbitrary. The formal
divisions of literature could be translated into terms of life in order to understand
significantly the meaning they convey to us.
Literature lives virtue the file which it embodies and hence differs from the
other kinds of works including a book on literary techniques. Literature is in life
and to find out the sources of literature, we have to consider the impulses that go
into the making of various from of literary expression. The are (i) our desire for self
– expression (ii) our interest in people and their doings (iii) our interest in the world
of reality in which we live of from, above all, man has a strong impulse to confide
others what he thinks and hence literature directly expresses the thoughts and
feelings of the writer.
Man is social animal so he can never keep to him self his experiences, ideas,
observations, emotions and fancies. He is always under a stress to impart them to
other. The different forms of literature are only channel opened to him for the
discharge of this mixture of sociability. This impulse turns out as a imbued
expression with artistic creation. Also, these impulses explain not only the
evolution of the forms of literature but our interest in these forms. We have a
natural imbued to listen with great interest what others have to say. We also
experience a delight in the artistic expression of the creative writer. Since the last of
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the impulses is common to all, take into account the first three, which continually
merge into life. Since they merge into literature, the different forms are found to
overlap. We distiriguish them on the basis of those impulses that predominate in
the essay or the novel or the drama. This distinction forms the basis of our
classification.
It is not enough if we consider these impulses that produce literature. It is
equally important to consider the subjects they deal with. Since these subjects are
varied in nature, they do not fall into any systematic classification. Yet they are
arranged under five large groups as follows; (i) the personal experience of the
individual as individual, namely the outer and inner factors that contribute to the
sum total of one’s private life (ii) the experiences of man as man, viz, the common
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question of life and death, sin and destiny, god and man’s relation with him, the
hopes and aspirations of the human race, now and hereafter (iii)the relationship of
the individual with his fellow or the social world, its activities and problems (iv) the
external world, of nature and man’s relationship with it and (v) man’s own efforts to
create and express under various forms of literature and art. Based on this
classification, we can distinguish the art. Production also as follows; the literature
of purely personal experiences of the common life of man, of the social world all its
different aspects, literature that treat nature and lastly the literature which treats
of literature and art.
These two ways of analysis in turn give a fairly comprehensive scheme of
classification. First of all, we have the literature of self – expression which includes
different kinds of lyric poetry, the poetry, the poetry of meditation and argument
and the elegy; the essay and treatise attempted from the personal point of view and
the literature of artistic literary criticism. Secondly we have the kind of literature in
which the write goes out of himself into the world of external human life and
activity; it includes history and biography, the ballad and the epic, the romance in
verse and prose, the story in verse and prose, the novel and the drama. Thirdly we
have the description though not a very large or important division and mostly
subordinated to the interests of self expression or narrative, comprising of some
minor forms of literary art.
The various forms of literary expression fall into their places as natural results
of common human impulses working under the conditions of art. It follows the
great principle that a piece of literature appeals to us only when it recalls into
activity the same powers of sympathy and imagination which went into its making
and this explains the interests these forms have for us.
In all these literary compositions, the presence of certain elements is noted
and these elements which are necessary for the creation of these compositions are
furnished by life itself. These elements constitute the raw material of any pice of
literature-poem, essay, drama and novel. Apart from these elements from outside,
there are certain elements contributed by the author himself in fashioning such
raw material into the concerned form of literary art.
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These essential elements may be grouped under four divisions. First is the
intellectual element, the thought which the writer brings to bear upon aids subject
and which the subject arouses in the author and which in turn the author tries to
stimulate in us. Third is the Element of Imagination, the faculty of strong and
intense vision by which he quickens a similar power of vision in ourselves. These
three elements combine to furnish the material for literature. The given substance
has to be properly moulded and fashioned in accordance with the principles of
order, symmetry, beauty and effectiveness. It requires a rhythm, a grammatical
structure, logical sequence, pattern of association and images. It constitutes the
fourth element, namely the Technical Elements or the element of composition of
style.
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1.2 THE STUDY OF THE STYLE AS AN INDEX OF PERSONALITY
Literature is basically an expression of life and if it is so, the secret of its
interest lies in its essentially personal character. Mathew Arnold defines literature
as a criticism of life. But it may mean an interpretation of life as it shapes itself in
the mind f the writer. It is like a mirror held by the writer which necessarily reflects
his own personality also.
A masterpiece is the outcome of the writer’s brain and heart, who is an
individual. It is said that personal experience is the basic of all real literature. So a
great book owes its greatness to the greatness of the writer’s personality and his
genius is nothing but his originality of outlook upon the world, of insight and the
keenness of his vision. Milton defines a good book as “the precious life blood of a
master-spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life”.
In our study of literature, we go through a great book and then try to penetrate
deeply into its personal life. We carefully listen to the author’s voice and enter
sympathetically into his thought and feeling. We observe how this world of
experience impressed him and how it is interpreted through his personality.
Ultimately we see the man as he reveals himself through what had has written.
As students of literature, we must make a smooth and natural course from the
books to the authors. Then only we could realize the man’s genius in its wholeness
and variety. So we have to consider all his works in a totality in order to
understand the author’s perspective behind his writings. Such a study will help us
to observe the growth of his mind, changes of his temper and thought, the influence
of his experience upon him. All his works are to be taken as a corpus or an organic
whole.
Another method to study another is to approach him chronologically, that is to
study the writer’s works in the order of their production. They emerge as a record of
his inner life and craftsmanship; and we follow them in the various phases of his
experience, the stages of his growth in mind and spirit and the changes undergone
by his art in such a study, we continually compare and contrast ourselves with the
author. Then we step up to sharpen our impression of his personality by comparing
and contrasting him with others especially with his contemporaries and with those
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who are in the same field dealing the same subjects. For example a student of
Shakespear turns to his contemporaries like Marlow, Johnson, Beaumont and
Fletcher and Webster and points out the features where Shakespeare resembles
them and where he differs form them. Thus he gains in his realization of the
essential qualities of Shakespeare’s genius and art. The same is true with our study
of any literary personality in his realization of the essential qualities of
Shakespeare’s genius and art. The same is true with our study of any literary
personality. In his realization of the essential qualities of Shakespeare’s genius and
art. The same is true with our study of any literary personality.
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A judicious use of the author’s biography shall help us in the study of personal
life in literature. Once we become interest in the literature of the author, we are
tempted to learn more about the author himself. We become interested in knowing
his ambitions struggles, successes and failures. Then we start to relate the works of
the author with his personal experiences. Also such biographies have their own
literary value and help us in enjoying the works of the authors. It is advisable to
read along with the works of an author to read his biography for enlightenment and
appreciation.
While the study of Dante will be incomplete without knowledge of his
biography, Johnson is skeptical about the relations between biography and
production. Hence there can be no hard and fast rule for the use of biography in
the study of literature.
It is necessary for the students of literature, Hudson insists, to cultivate a
spirit of sympathy with the writer. Literature contains the revelation of different
personalities, and we also have our own likes and dislikes to be reckoned with. We
like some writers and with some others of feelings will be of positive repugnance.
Our spirit of sympathy with the man behind the masterpiece increases our
flexibility of mind, breath of outlook catholicity of taste and judgment. Sometimes
we need patience to understand a writer whom we hates. We ought to overcome our
prejudices. Thus sympathy become a preliminary condition to realize the best in
literature and only through sympathy we can get into touch with another living
soul.
Style or expression becomes of primary importance while we deal with
literature on the personal side. Literature consists of the esoteric element which is
meant for the specialist to deal with. Without going into the depth of these
elements, it is necessary for a student of literature to be familiar with the style of
every writer. Of course this style creates a broad interest in the reader who wishes
to see into the soul of author.
Sometimes when a specific passage is given to us without the indication of its
authorship, we try to guess the author through the writing. Most often it is not the
thought content that makes us to guess the authorship, but we feel that it is the
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language of so and so. The individuality of the writer is expressed through the voice
of words, change of phrases, structure of sentences, their rhythm and cadence.
These aspects of his language distinguish him form other writers and the author
has taken great pain to express himself through this kind of style which becomes
his own.
But, the term style is used in broad sense. It is fundamentally a personal
quality. Pope has failed to recognize the organic character of style, since he calls it
“the dress of thought”. Carlyle rightly calls it as the skin of the writer. Yet there are
writers who consciously developed their own style through indication and the
strongest and most original men are frequently influences a lot by others. Their
style carries traces of such influences. Sincerity, according to Hudson, is the
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foundation principle of all true style. One who has a thought of his own to express
will find an original way to express it, since an original thought will definitely find a
personal way to express itself. It would not allow the writer to shape it in the style
of some other writers. Imitation, on the other hand, will always reveal its sources
form where the writer has derived his inspiration. Even in imitating the works of
others, the author will show his originally at some point or others, because
whatever original at some point in the author, his inherent strength or his
weakness, will ultimately show through the imitation. Putatenham, in his work The
Arte of English. Poesie states. “For man is but his mind, and as his mind is
tempered and qualified, so are his speeches and language at large; and his inward
conceits be the metal of his mind, and his manner of utterance the very warp and
woof of his conceits”. Truth is so profound that “every spirit builds its worn house”.
Newman in his book the idea of a University says that literature is the
personal use or exercise of language. It is proved by the fact that every writer uses
it in a different way. Since a writer is a man of genius, he subjects language to his
own purpose and moulds it according to his own peculiarities. Many ideas and
thoughts throng his mind and pass through him with the original impact of his
intellect a corresponding language, which ultimately becomes the faithful
expression of his personality. It acts on his inner world of thought as its very
shadow and so the style of that gifted mind can belong only to himself and none
else. As his thought and feeling are personal, language also becomes personal.
We can notice with interest an observation made by Newan. The difference
between an ordinary man and a man of genius is that the later could mould the
language according to his own peculiarities, to serve his purposes. Unlike the
common man who uses it as he finds the language. This point clearly shows that
the language under goes a fresh impress in the hands of the writer and in turn
reflects his personality. Dr.Rutherford states that a writer uses the language
originally in proportion to his own originally of thought and purpose. It is true that
even though we know a language, it is sometimes difficult to enjoy perfectly some
great works in the language. This is so because the great writers put the common
language to an uncommon use which again reveals the relationship between their
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personality and style.
A reader must recognize this individual quality in style and see what consists
of this individual quality. It helps us to see the connection between the character of
a writer’s genius and thought and the form of its expression. It also helps us to note
the intellectual, spiritual and artistic growth of the writer. All the factors, external
and internal have played a role in the development of the individual’s style and
these factors have no doubt contributed to the form and colour his style. All the
passes of his experience have registered themselves in it. It becomes an interesting
study to search for ourselves the changes undergone by the writer in his style, in
accordance to the changes that have come over his matter and thought. A
chronological study of Shakespeare’s style, during the twenty years of his dramatic
activity, is a notable illustration Language to Shakespeare had been a dress upon
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the thought in his early plays; in the middle plays there seems to be a perfect
balance and equality between the thought and its expression and in the latest plays
this balance is disturbed by the preponderance or excess of ideas over the means of
giving them utterance. Hence it is evident that matter and expression or are longer
apart and style becomes a real index of the writer’s personality and it is a way in
which the writer expresses himself. Style is an organic part of the writer’s
personality and in turn becomes a part of his writings.
1.3 THE HISTORICAL STUDY OF LITERATURE
We, the students of literature, make a smooth transition form books to their
authors. So also we can make a smooth transition from the individual writers to the
ages in which they lived and the geographical areas to which they belonged. A
historical study of literature involves in the history of the nation in which the
author lived.
A greater writer is not an isolated face: he has his affiliations with the past as
well as the present. Through these affiliations, he leads us to his predecessors and
to his contemporaries. Ultimately, he makes us realize the presence of a national
literature as a developing organism having a continuous life of its own and at the
same time, evolving itself through its varying phases.
In our historical study of literature, we have to consider two factors the
continuous life and the varying phases of that continuous life. A national literature
ordinarily means, a chronological account of writers in that language and the books
written by them, description of literary schools and traditions, critical analysis of
their merits and defects and fluctuation in fashions and tastes. Hence a national
literature is not a more miscellaneous collection of books written in that language
within a specified geographical location. It is a progressive revelation through the
ages of the nations mind and character.
An individual writer usually varies from the national type and this variation is
always an interesting aspect about that writer No doubt his genius will partake of
the national characteristics and the spirit of the age. This spirit is a well defined
quality pervading the writings of all the authors of on age. For example, by the
Greek and Hebrew spirit, we mean the recognized substructure of racial character
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common to all Greeks and Hebrews. In this sense alone, we talk of the Hebrew or
Hellenic views of life and compare and contrast these characteristics.
In is through the literature of a particular language that we come to know the
people, their strength and limitations and their contribution to the permanent
intellectual and spiritual possessions of the world. We travel like Ulysses to see
other nations at home. The study on literature in other languages is also a kind of
travel; it enables us to move freely among the mind of others race; it also gives us
the power to travel in time. Familiarity with other mind and other epochs is
possible only through our study of the literatures.
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A nation’s literature unfolds that nation’s genius and character through one
form of expression. In fact, the literature of a nation becomes a supplement to its
history and a commentary upon it. While the history of nation deals with the
external aspects of the people’s civilization, that is, their outward manner of their
existence, there literature helps us to understand their mental and moral
characteristics and their achievement in the world of inner activity. We are also able
to follow the ebb and flow of the forces that fed their emotional energies and shaped
their intellectual and spiritual life.
The literature of an age is an expression of its characteristics spirit and ideals.
In spite of the difference between the writers, we are struck by certain common
qualities. Shelly calls it “a general resemblance under which their species
distinction s are arrange”. Even though Shakespeare remains different form his
contemporary dramatists, all these Elizabethan playwrights shared some common
elementary characteristics that distinguish them as a group different from
playwrights of other ages. Shakespeare is also a product and exponent of a
particular phase of civilization and culture.
In the same manner, if wed analyse Pope and Tennyson we can point out the
glaring distinction between them as writers of different epochs. Their writings bear
the unmistakable impress of the impersonal forces which create a time spirit of the
ages of Anne and Victoria. For example “The Essay on Man” expresses the mood
and speculation of an epoch of facile and superficial optimism while “In Memoriam”
brings out the heart searching doubt and spiritual struggle of the Victorian era.
Also the deeper feeling of Tennyson for nature is one of the most marked
characteristics of the nineteenth century poetry, a product of the changing Time
spirit working uniformly in the mind of the writers and tending to bring them into a
substantial harmony with one another.
As there is a common racial character in the literary productions, there is also
a common time character in the literary productions of the people at any given
period. A nation's life has its moods of exultation and depression, epochs of strong
faith and atheism, dilution, unbelief and disregard for the sanctities of existence.
Only the manner of expression varies from writer to writer, but the dominant spirit
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of the period will directly or indirectly reveal itself in his works. Renan’s worlds,
“One belonged to one’s century and race even when one reacts against one’s
century and race are absolutely true.
More than the chronological divisions, we have in mind the differential
characteristics, namely, the distinctive qualities of theme, treatment, manner, spirit
and tone which mark the literature of a period, despite the individual differences.
The writers of an age stand apart as a group in contrast to the groups of other ages.
The study of literature of an epoch, hence, is done as a body of work expressing
common spirit under many diverse individual forms. It is done by looking at the
literature of the particular generation. We have to investigate the origin, growth and
decry of literary fashions and tastes, the formation of schools of ides the rise and
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fall of critics standards and the ideals of influence on a particular individual in

initiating fresh tendencies and giving a new direction to literatures and so on. Such
an investigation will account for the general coldness an aridity of the literature of
Pope’s time and for the strong and often stormy passion that swept into the poetry
of the romantic age. The historian for literature may say that he has nothing to do
with all these problems; but business is to present the works as he finds them
within the field of literary activity. But the fact is that the domain of literature
cannot be isolated and in order to understand the literature and observe the life
which went into its creation.
Behind the literature of any period lie the combined forces-personal and
impersonal which made the life of that period. Literature is one of the many
channels in which the energy of a discharges itself; the same energy overflows in
other forms of expression. Its political movements, religious thought, philosophical
speculation and art. The study of English literature takes into account the history
of English politics, society, manners and customs, culture and learning,
philosophy, and religion. These characteristics which make up the sum total of the
life of an epoch are not merely juxtaposed, but they are interrelated and
interdependent. Our aim is to correlate the literature of any age with all the other
important aspects of national activity of that period.
In analyzing these aspects, we must take into account the preceding is that
paved the way for the present period. The spirit and ideals of any nation are never
fixed, but they are always in a fluid form of transformation; the different and
conflicting tendencies are always to be found at work together. Hence we have to
follow the movements of literature in the connection with contemporaneous
movements and crosscurrents in other regions of life and thought. For example, the
Victorian England offers forces like the growth of democracy, humanitarianism, zeal
for reform, the progress of science, industrial revaluation and the struggle between
materials and idealism. Hence Victorian literature offers itself the varied product of
many different minds exhibiting fresh depths of interests and meaning of an
intense, complex and turbulent period of our history.
Hudson follows Taine’s formula, to some extent, in his attempt to interpret
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literature. Taine’s formula is scientific since the interpretation is based on the race,
the milieu and the movement. By race, he means the hereditary temperament and
disposition of the people by milieu, their totality of their surroundings, their
climate, physical environment, political institutions, social conditions and the like
and by movement, the spirit of the period or the particular stage of national
development reached at any given time. But Taine’s formula fails, since he
conceives literature as a document in the history of a nation’s psychology,
subordinating the study of literature to the study of society. His approach to the
problem of their relationship forms a point of view and with a purpose is quite
different form our own.
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To relate literature to the whole world of varied activity is not to destroy its
living interest, but to make it deeper and wider. No period of literary history is
wanting in life. Literature becomes a comprehensive record of the life of the
individual writer in his intricate relationship with the lives of men around him.
Much of the literature of the past appears dull and becomes vapid to us since
the thoughts, feelings, ideals and other aspects of a nation’s life change form time
to time. Only very great works in literature have escaped this tendency. In this
context, it becomes necessary to look at literature as a sociological study. Then
even the dullest book could bring back to life of the past age. The rich life blood of
humanity beings to flow through its long, dead pages. The form becomes interesting
and it starts to live again by virtue of the life that was once in it.
The comparative method of the study of literature becomes of great service in
the historical study of any literature. One, who passes from the literature of one
nation or epoch to another, is struck by the complete change in intellectual and
moral atmosphere especially to not carefully and to formulate the fundamental
differences obscured by our paramount interest in individual authors. We could
note how the large, permanent themes love hatred, jealousy, ambition, common
joys and sorrow, etc., are viewed by the different societies during different epochs
and how the writers have transformed them into works of art with marked changes
in temper, tone, emphasis and perspective. As an illustration, we can note the
changes in the plays from Shakespeare to the Restoration period.
Instead of confining our study to a single favorite author, we must consider the
origin or sources of his inspiration and measure the range and significance of this
inspiration or influence. The genius, sometimes, is turned away from the natural
course of development through the influence of his age or genius in other countries.
English was influenced by France during the later 17th and early 18th centuries
and she was influenced by Germany during the second half of the 18th century. In
the latter case, the influence had been reciprocal. Even the English Renaissance
has its traces of the middle ages.
1.4 REVISION POINTS
 Literature presents the treasures of the mind and the soul
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 Unlike other books, literary works are of general human interest
 It grows out of life
 To teach and to delight are the dual functions of literature.
 Classification of literature is neither conventional nor arbitrary.
 Classification may fall under two schemes subjective and objective
 The four essential elements are: 1) Intellectual 2) Emotional 3) Imaginative
and , 4) Technical Elements
 Style is fundamentally a personal quality
 A work of art will certainly reflect the personality of the author
 A work is the product of the author. In the same way, the author too is the
product of the society.
 So the study of the age and the geographical area is of paramount
importance.
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1.5 ASSIGNMENTS
1) Distinguish a work of literature from the written records of history
2) Write down your view on the importance of style in the appreciation of literature
3) Try to prove the point that a writer is not an isolated fact. .
1.6 KEY WORDS
1) Lyric
2) Elegy
3) Ballad
4) Epic
5) Style
6) Atheism
1.7 TERMINAL EXERCISES
1) Consider style as an index of an author is personality
1.8 SUGGESTED READING
1) W.H. Hudson: An Introduction to the study of Literature, Chapter-I,
2) K.R.Srinivasa Iyengar and Prema Nandakumar: Introduction to the study of
English Literature, Chapter –I.
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UNIT - II
POETRY
STRUCTURE
2.0 Objectives
2.1 Nature and Elements of Poetry
2.2 Classification of Poetry
2.2.1 Subjective Poetry
2.2.2 Objective Poetry
2.3 The Study and the Appreciation of Poetry
2.3.1 Metre
2.3.2 Rime
2.3.3 Stanza
2.3.4 Poetic Diction
2.4 Revision Points
2.5 Assignments
2.6 Key words
2.0 OBJECTIVES
To introduce a formal study of poetry to students is the main aim. To stimulate
their interest in poetry and to achieve this aim at the end of this unit are yet other
targets.
2.1 NATURE AND ELEMENTS OF POETRY
Various critics and poets have given definition for poetry. In Johnson’s view,
poetry is metrical composition. In Coleridge’s view, poetry is the antithesis of
science, having for its immediate object pleasure, not truth. According to Mathew
Arnold, it is simply the most delightful and of utterance that human worlds can
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Literature is an interpretation of life as life shapes itself in the mind of the
interpreter. The world poetical is used in current conversation to describe a person,
a look a picture, an idea thrown out in talk. By poetical interpretation of life,
therefore, we mean a treatment of its facts, experiences, problems in which
emotional and imaginative elements predominate.
It is one of the chief characteristics of poetry, that whatever it touches in life, it
relates to our feelings, passions, while at the same time, by the exercise of
imaginative power it both transfigures existing realities and given to airy nothing, a
local habitation and a name.
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The full significance of poetry as an interpretation of life through imagination

and feeling will be made apparent when we come, presently, to deal with the
relations of poetry and science, and with the properties of poetic truth.
When we speak of imagination and feeling as predominating in poetry, we
mean to distinguish these as general and constant characteristic of the poetic
treatment of life. But we do not mean to say that their presence, even in the highest
degree, is itself sufficient to constitute because they may exist in what we should
agree to call poetic prose’s which is not least to be denominated prose because it
possesses these poetic attributes.
Poetry is a particular kind of art. It arises only when the poetic qualities of
imagination and feeling are embodied in a certain from of expression. That form is
regularly rhythmical language, or meter. Without this we may have the spirit of
poetry without its externals. With this we may have the externals of poetry without
its spirit.
The reason why verse is necessary to the form of poetry is that the perfection
of the poetical spirit demands it that circle of its enthusiasm, beauty, and power, is
incomplete without it. The difference in question is not necessarily between a
‘poetical’ and a ‘prosaical’ subject, but between the forms in which, perhaps, the
same subject may be handled. So, poetry as regards its substance and spirit, is the
an thesis of science, or matter of fact, as words worth and Coleridge insisted, it is
none the less to be distinguished from prose, as regards its form, by the
systematically rhythmical character of its language.
Carlyle thought of the poet as always the seer, and many of his own pages
might be adduced as splendid examples of poetry in verse. Matthew Arnold, despite
his pre-occupation with the idea of poetry as a ‘criticism of life’ lays stress upon ‘the
essential difference between imaginative production in verse, and imaginative
production in prose.’
Without discussing the abstract problem whether regularity of rhythm is
essential to a complete definition of poetry, and without considering whether we
may not have to recognize, here and there, exceptions to our rule. We may it down
as a principle that meter always has been and still is the most general and constant
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feature poetry on the side of form. This is which we have to accept as the
fundamental qualities of poetry conceived are a distinct kind of literary art.
Of the significance of rhythm in poetry much might be said, but the subject is
too large and too intricately entangled with question of psychology to be dealt with
in detail. Even if the relation between rhythmical form and poetical substance and
feeling were only an accident one, he ordered measure of verse would still hold its
ground as an important accessory of poetry, because it adds greatly to the aesthetic
pleasure which is a chief friction of poetry to afford.
A part of the perfection of poetry in a much more important sense than is
implied if we rest in the assumption that it is nothing but a mere accessory. It is
rather the form which the poetic spirit seeks spontaneously to fashion for itself, and
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as such, it perfects poetry by providing it with its most natural and adequate means
of expression.
It was noted by Hegal that the use of verse in a given piece of literature serves
in itself to life into a world quite different from that of prose or everyday life. The
German philosopher was thinking only of the influence of verse upon the reader,
but that his remark has wider bearings is strikingly shown by the testimony
furnished by a great poet to the effect produced upon the poet himself by the
substitution of the medium of verse to that of prose. Schiller writes to Goethe,
“Since I have begun to transform my prosaic language into a poetic rhythmical one,
I find myself under a totally different jurisdiction.” He helps us to realize the
intimacy of the connection between them by emphasizing the influence of poetic
form in stimulating the poetic spirit.
While verse is, of course, often used as a vehicle of purely prosaic thought, it
ought not to be so used. The offices of prose and verse are distinct, and their
distinction is not fortuitous nor arbitrary, but vital. Thus it is that in all true poetry
that union of substance and form, of which Schaller speaks, is so organic and
complete that it impresses with a conviction of its absolute inevitability
Meter, like music, makes in itself a profound appeal to the feeling. It is a
powerful aid in emotionalisation of thought. It is no more an accessory or
conventional ornament of poetry but a vital product of the poetic spirit.
2.2 THE CLASSIFICATION OF POETRY
In a broad estimate, poetry may be divided into two classes. There is a poetry,
in which the poet goes down into himself and finds his inspiration and his subjects
in his own experiences, thoughts, and feelings. It is called personal or subjective
poetry, or the poetry of self-delineation and self-expression. There is another poetry,
in which the poet goes out of himself, mingles with the action and passion of the
world without and deals with what he discovers there with little reference to his
own individuality and it is called impersonal or objective poetry or the poetry of
representation and creation.
2.2.1 Subjective Poetry
In subjective poetry, which is the poetry of introspection, the poet looks down
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into his heart to write and even draws the outer world down into himself and steeps
it in its own emotions. This poetry is almost unlimited in range and variety, for it
may touch nearly all aspects of experience from those which are most narrowly
individual to those which involve the broadest interests of our common humanity.
The important divisions of subjective poetry are (i) meditative and philosophical
poetry, (ii) the ode and (iii) the Elegy, the sonnet and the lyric.
Meditative and philosophical poetry
The element of thought becomes important in meditative and Philosophical
poetry. The substantial value of thought itself has to be estimated, together with the
poet’s essay on man, it a poetic rending. If we pass adverse judgement on poet’s
essay on man, it is not only because, while it contains many passages of brilliant
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rhetoric but also its philosophy, as philosophy is confused, inconsistent and

radically unsound. It should be observed that there is a good deal of poetry which is
didactic in intention but narrative in form-poetry in which the truths to be
conveyed are wrought into story, parable, or allegory.
The Ode
New English dictionary defines ‘ode’ as “A rimed (rarely unrimed) lyric, in the
form of an address, generally dignified or exalted in subject, feeling and style.” “t
may also be defined as “any strain of enthusiastic or exalted lyric verse, directed to
a fixed purpose, and dealing progressively with a dignified theme”. From these two,
it is understood that ode is not specifically differentiated by any one constant
feature; it is infact, an elastic and most ambiguous one. And there has always been
in consequence an extreme diversity of view among the critics as to what poems
shall not be included under it. It has often something of the quality of a poetical
oration.
It structure, may be regular, like Spenser’s epithalamion, Collin’s ode to
evening, shelly west wind and keats ode to a nightingale and on a Grecian urns or
irregular like Dryden’s Alexander’s feast, and wordworth’s ode on the intimations of
immortality. In some cases, a classic form is taken as a model: and we have
imitations, more or less close, of the “Horation” ode as in Johnson’s ode to himself
and Marvell’s upon cromwell’s return from Ireland. Choric odes of pindar have
systematic disposition of parts like strophe, antistrophe and epode. Gray’s pindric
odes are probably the most successful examples in English of the latter type.
The Elegy the Sonnet, the Lyric and Other Kinds
The simplest form, an elegy is a brief lyric of mourning, or direct utterance of
personal bereavement and sorrow (Eg. David’s lament for Saul and Jonathan). It
has grown into a memorial or encomiastic poem, containing the poet’s tribute to
some great men and often a study of his life and character, with reminiscences and
through suggested by them (Eg. Spencer’s Astrophel and Anold’s rughly chapel)
often the philosophical and speculative element becomes predominant in it.
One particular type of elegy calls for separate mention- the pastoral type, in
which the poet expresses his sorrow under the similitude of a shephered mourning
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for a companion or through conventional bucolic. It is called pastoral elegy (Eg.
Milton’s Lycidas and Mathew Arnolds Thyrsis).
Sonnet is a poem of fourteen lines, governed by certain prescribed rules in
general structure and in the disposition of rhymes. The name lyrical poetry is a
poetry composed to be sung to the accompaniment of lyre or harp and the essence
of lyric poetry is personality. Under the general head of subjective poetry, the
descriptive poem, the epistle and the satire could also be included.
2.2.2 Objective Poetry
In objective poetry the post projects himself into the life without and seeking
there his motives and subjects, handles these with the least possible admixture of
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his own individuality. Objective poetry falls into two groups-the narrative and the
dramatic. The ballad, the epic and metrical romance comes under narrative poetry.
The Ballad
Ballad is a form which appears to have arisen spontaneously in almost all
literatures and represents one of the earliest stages in the evolution of the poetic
art. English literature is particularly rich in ballads of the true traditional kind.
Their names are commonly furnished by the more elementary aspect of life. Largely
space is given to them to tales of adventure fighting, and deeds of powess and
valour. In method and style, they are characteristics by straight forwardness and
rapidly of narration, and a certain child like naivete; often crude, they are often, too
astonishingly energetic. They seldom linger over description. Modern balled may be
defined as a literary development on the traditional form.
The Epic
An epic is a long narrative poem in verse. It could be subdivided into primitive
epic and later epic, the former of these has been called ‘epic of growth.’ An epic may
be regarded as the final product of a long series of accretions and synthesis;
scattered ballads gradually clustering together about a common character into
balled cycle and these at length being reduced approximate unity by the
intervention of conscious art.
Mock Epic is a kind of epic, in which the machinery and conventions of the
regular epic are employed in connection with trivial themes, and thus turned to the
purposes of parody or burlesque.
Metrical Romance
In the evolution of literature, this tem has undergone considerable
enlargement of meaning, various different classes of composition have to be
included under it. First, there are, those poems which fall under the strictest
definition of romance, which originally signified as story told in one of the romantic
language., and dealing, as all such stories did, with chivalry, adventure and
enchantments and love. Then there are the English narratives of the same general
type, which as the word had already come to denote a certain kind of matter, were
called romances though not written in a romance tongue.
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In all varieties of narrative poetry, the dramatic element commonly appears
more or less prominently in the shape of dialogue. Dramatic poetry may be
subdivided into several groups. The first species of dramatic poetry comprises the
Dramatic lyric. This is in spirit and method a subjective poem, but the subjective
element pertains, not to the poet himself but to some other person, into whose
moods and experiences he enters and to whose thoughts and feelings he gives
vicarious expression.
The second species comprises of the Dramatic Story including the balled, or the
short story in verse, like Tenneyson’s First Ouarret and The Revenge and Arnold’s
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Forsaken Merman and more extended narrative like Browining’s. A Forgivence and
Rosetti’s A Last Confession.
The third species comprises the Dramatic Monologue or Soliloquy. It is often
difficult to distinguish this form dramatic lyric on the one hand, and on the other
hand, form dramatic narrative. It is essentially study of character and hence
predominantly psychological and analytical. One problem involved in the study of
the dramatic monologue is too important to be passed over without a word. Though
its ideal aim is a faithful self portrayal, in practice, it is used as a medium of the
poet’s philosophy.
The foregoing are the varieties of poetry which rests upon the dramatic
principle, though it does not employ the actual structure and machinery of the
regular stage play.
2.3 THE STUDY AND THE APPRECIATION OF POETRY
The study of poetry and its appreciations takes into account the poetic, form
and other technical aspects of poetry. We have already noted that there is a vital
connection between poetic feeling and rhythmical expression.
2.3.1 Metre
By metre, we mean the ordered rhythm that results form a regulated
alternation fo syllables of different characters of valued. In Greek and Latin this
difference depended on “quality” or the length of time taken in pronunciation: the
metrical ‘food’ or group of syllables forming the basis of the line or verse was
composed of long and short syllables arranged according to a certain scheme.
The imabic foot is made up of a short syllable followed by a long one: the
dactylic of a long syllable followed by two short ones; the spondaic of two long
syllables; and so on. In English poetry, the basis of a metre is not quantity but
accent. Ordered rhythm arises form a regulated alternation of syllables which we
are stressed or heavy and unstressed or light. In an English foot, one stressed
syllable may be combined with one or two unstressed syllables and hence we have
a foot of two or three syllables. In each case the character of the food is determined
by the relative position of the accent.
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There are two measures in the case of the disyllabic foot, namely, iambic
(unaccounted syllable precedes the accented) and trochaic (unaccented syllable
follows the accented0. In the case of trisyllables, the following measures are used,
the anaspaestic in which two unaccented syllables precede the accented as in
colonnade, the dactylic in which the accented syllable precedes the two unaccented
as in ‘merciful, and the amphibrachic in which the accented syllable comes in
between the two unaccented as in ‘internal’. There are also other feet recognized by
the English metrists apart from the variations of the five chief measures given
above.
Hudson takes into account only those combinations that are applicable to
classic metre, since these combinations are employed by English writers. The
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accented and unaccented syllables of the English variety are considered as

equivalent to the long and short syllables.
The feet form the basis of lines or verses which are classified as diameter,
trimester, tetrameter, pentameter, heptameter and octameter in accordance with
the number of feet they have. For example, Tennyson’s ‘In Memoriam’ is composed
of iambic tetrameter and the English blank verse is of iambic pentameter. The
closing line of the Spenserian stanzes are composed of iambic hexameter.
These theoretical systems are of course, subject to continual variation and
much of the modern English poetry is charactersied by great metrical irregularity.
One of the simplest and most frequent common phenomena is the substitution of
anther kind of foot and even no less than a person like Dr.Johnson allows such
variation in long compostion. The entire character of an iambic line may be
changed by an additional number of unaccented or light syllables which in one case
gives a ‘dactylic’ and in another an ‘anapestic’ movement. Such as intermixtures
tarted with Coleridge. Sometimes the unaccented syllable may be dropped form a
dissyllabic foot and its place is either substituted by a pause or dwelling of the voice
on the accented word as in Tennyson’s Break, break, break,/. On the cold grey
stones, O Sea” The interchange of these kinds of foot in trisyllabic verse is also
seen.
The subject of versification is bound by the theory of metrical variation, which
is fascinating as well as difficult. The five principal measures of metre have a
special fitness for particular purposes. The trisyllables are undoubtedly lighter and
more rapid in movement than disyllables. It is also possible to distinguish the
difference in aesthetic character and effect within the two groups. Critics describe
the ‘iambic’ measure as smooth, dignified and stately, while the ‘trochaic’ is
energetic and abrupt, the ‘anapaestic’ swift and forcible. Likewise while the
‘dactylic’ is airy and graceful, the ‘amphibrachic’ is swinging and free.
Every form of metre has a much wider range of power than what is suggested
by mere abstract statements. Iambic measure is the standard verse of English
poetry and it is successfully used for all kind of subjects; trisyllable metres are
often effective as vehicles for solemn meditation and feelings of tenderness and
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sorrow. In our study of a poet, we must consider the measure used by him
successfully and frequently and connect it to his characteristic temper and genius.
Metre is an essential concomitant of poetry.
2.3.2 Rime
Rime is regarded as an accessory to metrical composition. It is so common in
English verse that its importance can be hardly overstated. It adds to the beauty of
poetry as musical speech. Since it marks distinctly the close of lines and stanzas it
helps to emphasise rhythin
Rime is the correspondence in souried between syllable and syllable, that is,
identity in vowel and consonant sounds in see, me; ark, mark. Sometimes there is
difference in the consonant or consonants preceding the vowel as in ray, stray;
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similarity of accent as in ringing, singing; beautiful, dutiful. But words like singer
anging, dutiful, beautiful do not rime with one another. Rimes may be single or
masculine as in sing, ring; double or feminine as in ringing, singing, triple as in
unfortunate, importunate.
These different kinds of rime may be employed by a poet at his own discretion
in very many ways A poem may be completely in single rimes, or in double or in
triple, or different kinds may be introduced in regular alternation; or the alternation
may be occasional and arbitrary. A large proportion of double or triple rimes adds
lightness and rapidity to verse and hence we cannot expect them in markedly
serious or melanchoic pessimist. But there is no hard and fast rule for the use of
rime Mrs.Browning’s ‘Cowper’s Grave” is entirely in double rimes and the rime
scheme serves to deepen the sub-dude elegiac tone. Double and triple rimes are
ingenious and far fetched work and produce a grotesque effect and adopted for the
purpose of a burlesque.
2.3.3 Stanza
A stanza is a group of lines forming by itself a unit of organisaiton. In many
cases, the stanzas are irregular in length and structure as in Wordsworth/s “Ode
on the Intimations of Immortality” and Tennyson’s “Maud”. Generally a poem is
built up of sections that are identical in form. Regular stanzas are commonly
defined by the number of lines and the disposition of rimes that bind these lines
together. Since we have numerous stanza forms, we need not tabulate them all. The
following are some best known examples and their rime schemes are given in
brackets; the couplet (aa) as in Pope’s ”Essays on Man” and keats’ “Endymion”, the
triplet ( a a a) as in Tennyson’s “Two Voices”, the quatrain as in keats’ “La Bella
Dame Sans Marchi” but it varies form author; to author the six line stanza is its
variations; the eight line stanza ( ab ab cc) as in Byron’s “Done Juan”; the nine line
stanza (ab ab bc bc c) as in Spenser’s “The Faery Queene” and commonly known as
the Spenserian stanza. For further classification of stanzas, the relative length of
the lines is also taken into consideration. Hence not only the rime schemes but also
the peculiar arrangement of metres gives its special characteristic which varies
from poet to poet.
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Stanzas may be used with a sense of their traditional significance or
significance of literary association. The poet chooses the grab that is suitable to his
purpose. For example, Keats chooses the Italian form for his “Isabella” and the
Spenserian variety for “Eve of St.Agnes”. The problem of the aesthic qualities of
different stanzas and their applicability to particular purposes are interesting
points for investigation. So also we take an interest in the poet’s choice of metres.
Rossetti’s frequent use of intricate and curious structures, heavily weighed with
rimes, in an index of his exotic character of his genius and fastidious element in his
art. Long fellow’s experiment with many a meterical form found in the various
literatures of Europe exhibit, though his power of absorption, has lack of
originality.
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The use of different types of stanzas during different periods in the history of
literature is yet another important aspect in the study of poetry. The predominance
of the Spenserian stanza form 1725 to 1775 is an illustration of the awakening
interest in Spenser and his works. The iambic pentameter or the heroic couplet
dominated the Augustan age, since the poets of this period favored it for its
epigrammatic terseness and force for using it in their satires. The rise of the
romantic form is an indication of a general quest for greater freedom and more
variety. Blank verse is another principal form of unrimed verse used in the modern
age and this form is very popular. There are some other forms which have not
established themselves in English poetry.
2.3.4 Poetic Diction
Poetic diction is an interesting problem that deserves our attention since it
makes specific differences between prose and poetry, especially the mysterious
power of world and combinations of words through associations or sounds. since
the diction of poetry is inevitably figurative and allusive, the figures of speech and
other subtle suggestion that go into element of its texture are to be considered from
the point of view of their resources and aesthetic value. Mention has to be made
here about some details of poetic style such as the varied use of consonants and
vowels in order to produce special effects as in the case of an accomplished
master’s “apt alliteration’s artful aid.”
So far we have laid down some technical aspects for guidance in the study of
poetry. We may, for instance, take up the works of a single poet. Our business will
be to analyse the content of his writings and investigate the salient features of his
art, to examine his literary and affiliation. We try to trace the derivative elements in
his though and style and to consider his relations with the spirit and movement of
his time. We can pass on to anther poet and we can compare and contrast his
works point by point. Otherwise, we can study a great body of poetry like the
English poetry, following its ebb and flow from epoch to epoch, the rise and decline
of the different schools, traditions and methods. We can also note a significant
change in subject-matter, spirit and try to find its significance and explanation in
the large tendencies of life and though in the word outside. Sometimes we may
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devote our attention to the history of one great poetic from such as the epic or elegy
through its course of evolution and transformation in different literatures at
different times. Or else, we can select a special theme like the treatment of nature
in poetry and study how it branches out in various directions and connects itself at
many points.
In the earlier paragraph, some ways of reading poetry systematically are
mentioned. If we adopt these methods, it makes out study of poetry more
interesting and more profitable. The most important point in the study of poetry
that is worth nothing is to read poetry for sheer enjoyment. It should be read for its
own sake as a thing of beauty fraught with its infinite meaning for those who feel
and have a heart to understand it. To attain this ability, we have to cultivate our
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faculty of poetic appreciation since it becomes more importance than our

acquisition of scholarship.
Appreciation of poetry is a personal experience and it varies from one
individual to another. Rules and counsels prove little service in this regard. A lover
of poetry may transmit something of his enthusiasm to others, but in the end each
reader must be left to himself. There is one practical piece of advice. In our reading
of poetry we should remember that the poet appeals to the poet in us. So our real
enjoyment depends upon our own keenness of imaginative apprehension and
emotional response. In other words, the reader has to size the true secret and virtue
of a poem. This could be achieved only through the exercise on our part those
power that went into the making of the poem itself.
Hudson condemns people who do not possess a poetic sense. They can never
appreciate the beauty and meaning of poetry just as a person without a musical ear
cannot appreciate the beauty and meaning of music. This poetic sense can be
cultivated if it exists even in its rudimentary form since it is latent in the majority of
the people. The best way of cultivation can be achieved through the daily exercise of
a sympathetic contact with the poetry of great masters. Gradually we learn to
appreciate and enjoy a poem. In the case of appreciation of poetry, the means and
the end are one and the same.
Prof. Butcher points out that the art of printing has made dull our literary
perceptions. Words, in his opinion have a dual role they should be seen and heard.
We miss much of the charm of a poem. It is the eye alone has to do the job for the
ear also. Words are half alive on the printed page without their vocal force. “The
music of verse, when repeated only to the inward ear, comes as a faint echo”.
Butcher brings home the fact that throughout the Greek period and even during
the days of the Roman Empire the custom was to read both prose and verse not
silently but aloud and in company. Silently reading was then a curious departure
from the common practice. In Augustine’s “confessions” we read, “his eye scanned
the pages but his voice and tongue were silent”. Hence it is clear that poetry is
poetry is ‘musical speech’.
Poetry owes much of its beauty, its magic, its peculiar power of stirring the
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feeling and arousing the imagination to its verbal felicity and its varied melodies of
metre and rime and its full significance can be appreciated only when it addresses
us through the ear. Therefore we should practice to read poetry aloud.
2.4 REVISION POINTS
1) To arrive at clear-cut definition of poetry is the cherished endeavour is many
critics and poets.
2) Poetry is an arti-thesis of science
3) It is an interpretation of life through emigration
4) Poetry can broadly be classified into subjective and objective poetry
5) Meter is poetry refers to the ordered rhythm of the lines.
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6) Rime adds to the musical quality of a poetry

7) Stanza refer to the division is poetry is the form of group of lines.
8) Poetry diction is mostly figurative and allusive.
2.5 ASSIGNMENTS
1) Collect the various definitions of poetry given by critics and poets.
2) Prepare a chart shouting the various forms of poetry.
3) Prepare a list of the different stanza forms, if possible with suitable example.
2.6 KEY WORDS
Sonnet: A short cynic of fourteen lines. It is a subjective form of poetry.
Octet: An objective form of poetry, often in the form of adders.
Rhyme: Sameness of sound between world or syllables, especially the endings
of lines of verse.
1) Write an essay on the importance of poetic diction from the point of view of
their resources and aesthetic value?
2) Can poetry be purely subjective?
3) Substantiate your view?
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UNIT – III
FICTION & DRAMA

STRUCTURE
3.0 Objectives
3.1 Elements of Fiction
3.2 Plot in the Novel
3.3 The Relations of Plot and Character
3.4 The Drama and the Novel
3.5 Characterization in the Drama
3.6 The Natural Division of a Dramatic Plot
3.7 The Different Types of Drama
3.8 Revision Points
3.9 Assignments
3.10 Keywords
3.11 Terminal Exercise
3.0 OBJECTIVES
Guiding students towards a better appreciation of drama and also the ‘pocket
Theatre’ is the main objective of this units. In order to achieve this end, this unit
attempts to familiarize students to the various elements of fiction and drama.
3.1 THE ELEMENTS OF FICTION
The novel, as Marion Crawford phrased it, is a “pocket theatre” containing
within itself not only plot and actors, but also costume, scenery, and all other
accessories of dramatic representation. It is the looser’s of literary art.
Plot, characters, dialogue, time and place of action style, and a stated or
implied philosophy of life, are the chief elements entering into the composition of
any work or prose fiction, small or great, good or bad.
The plot is made up of raw material, which should have a universal
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applicability. A fiction should provide amusement for the leisure hour and a
welcome relief from the strain of practical affairs.
The basis of true greatness in a novel is to be sought in the greatness or
substantial value, of the raw material and the mastery of handling it. The elements
of individual power and technical skill should be supported by an ample knowledge
of life. There must be the quality of ‘authenticity’.
The novelist should confine himself to his own personal first-hand intercourse
with the world. Knowledge of life may be obtained in various ways besides his own
direct personal experience: it may, in particular, be obtained through books and
through conversation with other people. A writer of real; creative genius, with that
power pf absorbing and utilizing all kinds of material derived from all kinds of
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sources, and that sheer power of realistic imagination which habitually goes with
this, may thus attain substantial fidelity even when he is handling scenes and
incidents which have never come within the range of his own experience and
observation.
In dealing with plot-structure, we may distinguish roughly between two kinds
of novel-the novel of loose plot and the novel of organic plot. The plot of a novel may
be simple or compound. The novelist has three methods in telling the story the
direct or epic, the autobiographical and the documentary.
Whether the novelist keeps close the common experience or boldly experiments
with the fantastic and the abnormal, his men ad women shall move through his
pages like being and like living being remain in our memory after his book is laid
aside and its detail perhaps forgotten.
A novelist’s success in characterization necessarily depends in part upon his
faculty for graphic descriptions. The novelist should help us by his description to a
vivid realization of the appearance and behavior of his people. There are two
opposed characterization the direct or analytical, and the indirect or dramatic.
The need of fidelity to personal observation and experience in the plot and
manner of a novel is of course no less applicable to its characterization.
Dialogue, well managed is one of the most delightful elements of a novel and
an evidence of a writer’s technical skill. It is through dialogue that we get most
intimately into touch with people, and in which the written narrative most nearly
approaches the vividness and actually of the acted drama. Its principle function is
its direct connection with character. It ahs immense value in the exhibition of
passions, motives, feeling: of the reaction of the speakers to the events in which
they are taking part, and of their influence upon with the action; dialogue should
be natural, appropriate, and dramatic.
3.2 PLOTS IN THE NOVEL
The plot in a dramatic or narrative work is the structure of its actions as these
are ordered and rendered toward achieving emotional and artistic effects.
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There are varieties of plot forms. For example, some plots are designed to
achieve tragic effects, and others to achieve the effects of comedy, romance, or
satire.
The element of plot is the nature of the raw material out of which it is made.
Deduced from the fundamentals conception of literature as an interpretation of life
the plot must have a universal applicability, for it is the certain mark of a great
novel, as of all great literature, that wide as may be the range of its accessory
topics, it is primarily engaged with the things which make life strenuous, intense,
and morally significant. This does not mean that greatness in fiction depends, in
the least, upon the external importance of its incident and characters. Nor does it
mean that it is to the tragic phases of experience only that a great novel must be
confined, for the comedy of life is often as full or large and permanent human
25
interest as its tragedy. A novel is really great only when it lays its foundations broad
and deep on the things which most constantly and seriously appeal to us in the
struggle and fortunes of our common humanity.
One function of fiction is to provide amusement for the leisure hour and a
welcome relief from the strain of practical affairs. The basis of true greatness in a
novel is to be sought in the great or substantial value of its raw material. The
greatness of subject matter will not by itself ensure the greatness of a novel.
Mastery of handling is requisite in order that all the varied possibilities of a given
theme may be brought out to the full. This includes the two contributory elements
of individual power and technical skill, which should be supported by an ample
knowledge of life.
Whatever aspects of life the novelist may choose to write about, he should
write of them with the grasp and thoroughness of familiarity, that is confine himself
to his own personal first-hand intercourse with the world, and never allow himself
to stray beyond it. There should mostly be the principle of fidelity.
It is often said that everyman might produce at least one interesting novel if
he would only write faithfully of what he has known and felt for himself.
Knowledge of life may be obtained in various ways beside direct personal
experience. It may, in particular, be obtained through book and through
conversation with other people who have touched the world at points where we
have not touched it ourselves. A writer of real creative genius, with that power of
absorbing and utilizing all kinds of material derived from all kinds of sources, and
that sheer power of realistic imagination which habitually goes with this may thus
attain substantial fidelity even when he is handling scenes and incidents which
have never come within the range of his own experience and observation. For
example, the historical novelist is evidently compelled to rely upon indirect
information for the specific characteristics of any period he undertakes to describe.
In dealing with plot-structure we may distinguish roughly between two kinds
of novel- the novel of loose plot and the novel of organic plot. In the former case, the
story is composed of a number of detached incidents, having little necessary or
logical connection among themselves: the unity of the narrative depends not on the
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machinery of the action but upon the person of the, hero, who as the central figure
or nucleus binds the otherwise scattered elemental together, for example “Robinson
course.” On the contrary, in the latter type of novel, the separate icidents are no
longer treated episodically: they are connected as integral components of a defined
plot pattern, for example. “Tom Jones”. Even in novels of the organic kinds there is
often a great deal of purely episodically material.
The two drawbacks to which a highly organized plot is specially liable, are that
it may be so mechanically put together that its very cleverness may impress up with
an uneasy sense of laborious artifice, or it may lack plausibility in details.
As truth is stranger than fiction, a fiction should not be as strange as fact. Two
tests of any plot are thus suggested. It should seem to move naturally, and be free
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from any appearance of artifice; and the means used in working it out should be
such as we are willing to accept in the circumstances, as at last credible.
A novel, to be a work of art, needs unity and unity in a novel involves the
imposition of the logic of ‘plot’ on the material of the ‘story’. Logic is necessary, but
too much contrivance too can spoil the plot. The spinal column of the plot should
be the principle of causality, and not a pattern of accidents.
A special aspect of the principle of unity which the plot-structure requires is
that in a compound plot the parts should be wrought together in to a single whole.
It should also be noted that where several independent elements enter into a plot, it
is often the practice of the novel is to make them balance on illustrate one another.
A series of events arranged in chronological order should be the ground –plan of
every novel.
As a plot progress, it arouses expectations in the audience or reader about
the future course of events. The interplay of suspense and surprise is a prime
source of the magnetic power and vitality of a non-going plot.
The novelist has three methods in telling a story – the direct, or epic. The
autobiographical and the documentary. In the first and most usual way, the
novelist is a historian narrating from outside; in the second, he writes in the first
person, identifying himself with one of his characters and this produces an
imaginary autobiographies in the third, the action is unfolded by means of letters.
Occasionally, the methods may be blended, as in “Bleak-House”. It is evident that
each of these ways has its special advantages and disadvantages.
3.3 THE RELATIONS OF PLOT AND CHARACTER
A novel, to be a work of art, needs unity: and unity in a novel involves the
impositions of the logic of ‘plot’ on the material of the ‘story’. On the other hand, the
imposition of causality is possible only in relation to the invented characters and
situations. Plot and character are therefore interdependent critical concepts as
Henry James has said, what is character but the determination of incident? What is
incident but the illustration of character?
Plot and characterization in practice are always united. In common lack we
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distinguish roughly between two classes of novels-those in which the interest of
character is upper-most while action is used simply or mainly with reference to
this, and those in which the interest of plot is upper-most, and characters are used
simply or mainly to carry on the action.
Among the relative value of incident and character in fiction, characterization
is more important from which it follows that novels which have the principal stress
on character rank higher as a class than those which depend mainly on incident. A
certain amount of opposition always exists between the claims of plot, and those of
characters, where attention is paid primarily to plot, the characters have often to be
forced into its service, even at the cost of some sacrifice to their consistency, where
attention is paid primarily to character, the expansion of personality-often quite
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unforeseen at the outset-as the story runs its course, will frequently prove fatal to
the regularity of the plot design.
While in every novel plot and characters must be combined, there is a right
way and wrong way of treating their relationship. The wrong is to bring them
together arbitrarily and without making each depend logically upon each, the right
way is to conceive them throughout as forces vitally interacting in the movement of
the story.
In all really good fiction the main springs of the action must ultimately be
sought. Simple or complex, the plot evolves as a natural consequence of the fact
that a number of given people, of such and such dispositions and impelled by such
and such motives and passions are brought together in circumstances which give
rise to an interplay of influence or clash of interest among them. The circumstances
themselves may indeed count greatly as co-operating factors, and an impersonal
element may thus combine with the personal in the development of action. Yet even
so, the personal reaction to circumstances will always remain a central
consideration. Incident is thus rooted in character, and is to be explained in terms
of it.
Muir’s particular contribution to the critical study of the novel is the
differentiation between the ‘action novel’, the ‘character novel’ and the ‘dramatic
novel’. In the novel of action, “the characters are designed to fit the plot”, eg.
“Treasure Island’,. In the character-novel’, “the plot is improvised to suit the
characters”, eg. “Vanity fair”. In the ‘dramatic novel’, character and plot are closely
knit, with interior causation showing itself in character issuing in action and action
issuing in character.
In the evolution of plot out of character, the motives which prompt the motives
which prompt the persons of the story to act as they do must impress us as both in
keeping with their natures and adequate to the resulting incidents. If for the sake of
the plot a character is made to take a line of action in contradiction to the whole
bias of his disposition, or on motives, which seen insufficient or fantastic, then the
true relation of plot and character is ignores, and the art is faulty. The problem of
psychological truth, is as essential in the management of plot as in the handling of
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character itself.
3.4 THE DRAMA AND THE NOVEL
As the novel and the drama are compounded of the same elements, a great
deal of what would be said about the former would be found equally applicable to
the latter. Manifestly, the drama and prose fiction are compounded of the same raw
materials.
The drama is not pure literature. It is a compound art, in which the literary
element is organically bound up with the elements of stage setting and historic
interpretation. The novel is independent of these secondary arts, it is, as Marion
Crawford once phrased it, a “pocket theatre” containing within itself not only plot
and actors, but also costume scenery, and all the other accessories of a dramatic
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representation. It is also that every novel must necessarily present a certain view of
life and of some of the problems of life.
Plot character, dialogue, time and place of action, style and a stated or implied
philosophy of life are the chief elements entering into the composition of any work
of prose fiction, small or great, good or bad.
The basis of true greatness in a novel is to be sought in the greatness, of
substantial value, of its raw materials, that is the element of plot, what-ever aspects
of life, the novelist may choose to write about, he should write of them with the
grasp and thoroughness which can be secured only by familiarity with his material.
What he is not familiar with, he should leave alone.
Knowledge of life may be obtained in various ways beside direct personal
experience, it may, in particular, be obtained through books and through
conversation with other people who have touched the world at points where we
have not touched it ourselves. A writer of real creative genius, with that power of
absorbing and utilizing all kinds of materials derived from all kings of sources, and
that sheer power of realistic imagination which habitually goes with this, may thus
attain substantial fidelity even when he is handling scenes and incidents which
have never come within the range of his own experience and observation.
The plot of a novel may be simple or compound, that is, it may be composed of
one story only, or of two or more stories in combination and the law of unity
requires that in a compound plot the parts should be wrought together into a single
whole. Thus, in dealing with plot-structure we may distinguish roughly between
two kinds of novel-the novel of loose plot and the novel of organic plot.
The conditions of the novel commonly permit the use of two opposed methods
of characterization – the direct or analytical and the indirect or dramatic, Speaking
generally, however, the very form of the novel as a compound of narrative and
dialogue, practically involves a combination of the non-dramatic and the dramatic
in the handling of character.
A broad and intimate knowledge of human nature at large, a keen insight into
the working of its common motives and passions, creative power and dramatic
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sympathy, will together often suffice to give substantial reality and the
unmistakable touch of truth to characters.
We can distinguish roughly between two classes of novels-those in which the
interest of character is uppermost, while action is used simply or mainly with
reference to this and those in which the interest of plot is uppermost and
characters are used simply or mainly to carry on the action.
Dialogue well managed is one of the most delightful elements of a novel. Good
dialogue greatly brightens a narrative and its judicious and timely use is to be
regarded as evidence of a writers technical skill. Beyond having an organic
connection with action, dialogue should be natural, appropriate and dramatic.
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The setting of the novel includes the entire milieu of a story- the manners,
customs, way of life, which enter into its composition as well as its natural
background or environment. We may therefore distinguish two kinds of setting –the
social and the material.
Every novel no matter how trivial it may be, is said to rest upon a certain view
of the world, to incorporate or connote various general principles and thus to
present a tough general philosophy of life.
The novelist’s course is the same as the dramatist’s in interrupting the
philosophy of life. They both interpret life by representation. But while the
dramatist is confined to this indirect method, the novelist is able, if he chooses, to
supplement it by direct personal commentary and explanation.
Though the elements of the novel and drama are identical, the novelist and the
dramatist work under very dissimilar conditions and for this reason have to
manipulate their material in dissimilar ways.
The modern novel is written to be read; the drama is designed for
representation by actors whom the narrative and the dialogue are distributed the
novel relates and reports while the drama imitates by action and speech.
The novel is self-contained; that is to provide within its own compass
everything that the writer deemed necessary for the comprehension and enjoyment
of his work. The drama on the other hand, is not in this sense self-contained. It
implies everywhere the co-operation of elements outside itself and for the moment
these elements lacking. Thus, the drama depends much on stage setting.
The novelist enjoys almost absolute freedom as to the length of his work, and
therefore as to the amount of material that may go into its composition. At both
points the dramatist is subject to be serve restrictions. A novel designed to be read
through at a single sitting. The only requirement it has to meet, is that its interest
shall be so sustained as to prompt a return to it what the occasion offers. A play on
the other hand, is intended in Aristotle phrase for “ a single hearing” and as the
physical endurances of the spectator is limited and as, when the limit is once
reached even the most engrossing scenes will fail to arrest the flagging of attention.
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Relative brevity is a first practical law of dramatic being. A dramatist then, to begin
with is compelled to work within a much more confined space than the novelist.
Hence the significance of Aristotle’s warning to the playwright that he should not
attempt to “construct a tragedy upon an epic plan.”
In securing brevity, the dramatists greatly helped, it is greatly helped, it is true
by the secondary arts of the stage; since much that the novelist has to explain he
may leave to historic interpretation. While stage setting practically relieves him
from the necessity of verbal description. Yet the problem of the clear to accept, is
one which always taxes his constructive skill.
While the dramatist is of course, confined to a single way of telling his story-by
representation combined with narrative out into the months of his characters-the
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novelist has his choice among three methods the direct, or epic: the
autobiographical and the documentary.
Great, however, are the structural differences between drama and novel in the
management of plot. They are even greater in the exposition of character.
The one advantage which prose fiction possesses in comparison with the
drama is that the author himself may from time to time appear in the capacity of
expositor and critic; and when he avails himself of this privilege he may justly
maintain that as he is writing a novel and not by those of the drama that he is
bound.
Further comparison of these two cognate forms of art suggests another
important point. The immense scope of the novel, its freedom of movement and its
indifference to considerations of time and place, combine with the advantage just
mentioned to given it a special power of dealing with character in the making.
As in the handling of plot, so again in characterization a first condition of
dramatic art is in defiance of an over-long novel, it is sometimes urged that the
exposition of motive, the full portrayal of character, demand and justify prolixity.
But the dramatist has to deal with motive and character within the narrowly
circumscribed area of a comparatively few scences, in which at the same time he
has to be more or less concerned with the progress of his story.
More even than in the novel every word of dialogue must be tell, each feature
must be elaborated in strict relevancy to the whole, and all mere supererogatory
talk must be avoided.
Dramatic dialogue, is an essential adjunct to action, or even an integral part
of it; the story moving beneath the talk and being, stage by stage, elucidated to it.
We may regard dramatic dialogue as a means of characterization under two
heads: taking first, the utterance of a given person in his conversation in his
conversation with others, and then the remarks made about him by other persons
in the play.
A certain character in a play seems to stand a little apart from the rest and to
speak, as it were, with somewhat greater authority. Such a character is sometimes
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described as the ‘chorus’ of the drama in which he appears, because to a limited
extent he fulfils the interpretative function of the chorus in Greek tragedy. dialogue,
soliloquy and aside are the dramatist’s substitute for direct analysis and
commentary of the novel.
In a good play, as in a good novel plot really rests upon character. Every
dramatic story arises out of some conflict-some clash of opposed individuals or
passion, or interests. In the must elementary and still most popular type of story,
such conflict takes a purely personal form; the collision is between good and evil as
embodied respectively in the hero and the villain of the piece. But it may of course
assume various other shapes.
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Through every plot we may trace more or less clearly what is sometime called
‘the dramatic line.’ We heave to begin with, some initial incident or incidents in
which conflict originates: secondly, the rising action, growth or complication
compromising that part of the play in which the conflict continues to increase in
intensity while the outcome remains uncertain; thirdly, the climax, crisis or turning
point, at which one of the contending forces obtains such controlling power that
hence forth it sultimate success is assured; fourthly the falling action, Resolution or
Denouement, comprising that part of the play in which the stages in the movement
of events towards this success are marked out; and fifthly, the conclusion or
catastrophe in which the conflict is brought to a close. It must be remembered,
however, that in a Shakespearean or other five-act drama the mechanical divisions
do not actually correspond with the natural divisions.
d
c e
a
f
The plot of a play may be symbolized as a pyramidal structure.
In this diagram ‘a’ stands for the exposition; ‘b; for the initial incident; ‘c’ for
the growth of the action to its crisis; ‘d’ for the crisis or turning point; ‘e’ for the
resolution; and ‘f’ for the catastrophe.
It is usual to distinguish between the two chief kinds of ‘drama-comedy and
tragedy-by reference to the nature of the catastrophe; the one having a happy, the
other an unhappy ending. There are many plays, however in which as in the
tragicomedy of our older stage and in modern melodramas the interest of the plot is
largely tragic, though at the fates smile on most of the good characters.
The principles of parallelism and contrast are elements in the composition of a
plot. It is customary for the historian and critic to distinguish sharply between two
antithetical types of drama-the classic and the romatic. This broad division, is
however, insufficient. The classic type must be sub-divided into the ancient, or true
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classic, and neo-classic, or pseudo-classic, while a separate place must be made for
the drama of our own time.
The two great types of modern drama are the neo-classic and the romantic.
The latter is represented for us chiefly by the works of our Elizabethan and stuart
playwrights, with Shakespeare at their head. The finest examples of the former type
are furnished by the writings of the great French masters of the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries Cornille, Racine and Voltaire.
In the first place, neo-classic tragedy followed the classic model in the general
nature of its subjects and in the way in which these subjects were treated.
Romatic tragedy is indeed commonly aristocratic in character; as its very name
implies, it too is generally concerned with matters remote form the interests of
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ordinary life and with the struggles and misfortunes of more or less illustrious
people. But in its treatment of its subjects, it repudiates entirely the neo-classic
method.
The fundamental principle of unity of tone in the neo-classic drama leads, in
the second place, to an important result in the complete separation in it as in the
ancient drama, of tragedy and comedy. Whereas the free use of tragedy and comedy
in the same play is one of the most striking and familiar features in the work of
Romantic dramatists.
A third fundamental contrast between the two types of dramatic construction
is to be found in their oppressed attitudes towards the unities of times, place and
action. Neo-classicism adhered to these in tragedy, at least in theory. Romantic
drama ignored the first two, while it adopted the third.
While the neo-classic drama of narrative the romantic on the contrary, is
essentially a drama of action.
In theory, the drama is entirely objective: the novel permits the continual
intrusion of the personality of the writer. Thus the novelist may interpret life both
indirectly by his exhibition of it, and directly by his comments, upon it. The
dramatist is supposedly limited to the former indirect method. The drama on the
contrary, may be regarded as an impersonal representation of life. The drama is
indeed the most completely objective form of literary art the novel combines the
objective with the subjective.
3.5 CHARACTERIZATION IN THE DRAMA
It is carelessly assumed that characterization in a play is of minor importance.
But characterization is the really fundamental and lasting element in the greatness
of any dramatic work. Unless the story, incident and situation in a drama are
related to character, it will be un intellectual. They should indeed be another phase
of the development of character. If a mere story of a mere succession of incidents do
not embody and display character and human nature, it would give something in
raw melo drama.
In characterization, a first condition of dramatic art is brevity. The dramatist
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has to deal with motive and character within a narrowly circumscribed area of
comparatively few scenes, in which at the same time he has to be more or less
concerned with the progress of his story. Macbeth is often referred to as a
wonderful example of condensed treatment of action and the condensed treatment
of character. Shakespeare has endowed them with the reality and the mystery of
life. In the first act, a marvelously complete exhibition of the potentialities of both of
them for good and evil-Macbeth’s physical courage, his prowess on the battle field,
the confidence of others in him, the evil already fermenting in his mind, his
imaginative and superstitious temperament –are depicted. Lady Macbeth’s strength
and moral courage, her influence over her husband’s more sensitive and less
resolute nature are made clear in broad outline.
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The more important condition of characterization in the drama than that of

mere brevity is its necessary impersonality. The novelist can himself mingle freely
with characters of his story. But the dramatist is compelled to stand apart. The
artistic imperfection of the novel-its wide range, its looseness of structure, its
eminently personal quality give it an enormous superiority in the field of
characterization.
Concentration is a necessary condition of dramatic characterization. Every
word of the dialogue must be made to tell, each feature must be elaborated in strict
relevancy to the whole, and all mere supererogatory talk must be avoided. The great
creators of character in the drama sometimes seem to become absorbed in the
development of character for its own sake, with a result of over-characterization.
For instance, the character of Hamlet exhibits this tendency.
We commonly overlook the significance of plot as a means of
characterization. In a good play, plot really rests upon character. Through the very
movement of the story the larger intellectual and moral qualities of persons who
take part in it are necessarily impressed upon us. The evolution of the story
inevitable reveals their dispositions motives and passions.
Plot can show nothing more than man in action, thus disclosing such broad
characteristics only. It is necessary that it should be bold in outlines and full of
movement, that its critical situation should be well defined. For all details of
characterization and for exhibition of passions, motives, feelings in their growth;
entanglements and conflicts, we must refer to the action itself, to the dialogue
which accompanies it. This must be true where the plot concerns itself rather with
the play of the forces behind action than in the external events.
Dialogue becomes and essential complement to action, or even an integral part
of it. The principle function of the dialogue is in direct connection with
characterization. Even in the hands of the novelist, dialogue will often be used to fill
the place and to do the work of analysis and commentary. In the drama it is not
simply an aid to analysis and commentary, it is a substitute for them.
The dramatic dialogue could be recorded as a means of characterization under
two heads, the utterances of a given person in his conversation with others and the
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remarks made about him by the other persons in the play. The utterances of any
person in a play will furnish a continued running commentary upon his conduct
and character. Much that a person tells us about himself may have to be told, as it
were unconsciously and by implication. But, now and then it may be necessary that
some character should at first throw us more or less completely off our guard as to
his aim and motives, and reveal these only gradually, or as or is far more likely to
happen in some sudden turn of the action like Euphrasia in Beaumont and
Fletcher’s Philaster.
The direct self-portrayal through a person’s own speech must always
constitute the principal means of characterization by dialogue and it may be greatly
reinforced by what other people say about him either to his face or among
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themselves. In considering this direct evidence, it is obvious that we must keep

steadily in mind its essentially dramatic quality. Each utterance must therefore be
tested by reference to the character of the particular speaker his own situation and
relation to the action, his sympathy and antipathy.
The exception to the general statement that dialogue is the dramatists only
substitute for the direct analysis of the drama is the device known as ‘soliloquy’. It
also includes the minor sub-division of the same form, ‘aside’. It is the dramatist’s
means of taking us down into the hidden recess of a person’s nature and of
revealing those springs of conduct which ordinary dialogue provides with no
adequate opportunity to disclose.
When a man in soliloquy reasons with and weights all his designs, we ought
not to imagine that this man either talks to us or to himself he is only thinking and
thinking aloud such a matter as were an inexcusable folly in him. The soliloquy is
often more or less successfully disguised by being turned into a speech addressed
to some listener who is brought forward for this purpose.
3.6 THE NATURAL DIVISIONS OF A DRAMATIC PLOT
Every dramatic story arises out of some conflict-some clash of opposed
individuals, or passions, or interests. In the most elementary and still the most
popular type of story, such a conflict takes a purely personal form. The collision is
between good and evil embodied respectively in the hero and the villain of the piece.
Some kind of confect is the datum and the very back bone of a dramatic story with
the opening of this conflict, the real plot begins. With its conclusion the real plot
ends.
The complications that arise from the initial clash of opposed will continue to
increase until a point is reached at which a decisive turn is taken in favour of one
side or the other. Through every plot, the dramatic line could be traced. It beings
with some initial incident or incidents, Exposition (protasis) in which the conflict
originates. Secondary the Rising action. Growth or complication (Epitacsis)
comprising the part of the play in which the conflict continues to increase in
intensity while the outcome remains uncertain. Thirdly, the climax, crisis or
turning point (peripeteia), at which one of the contending forces obtains &
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controlling power. Fourthly, the falling action, Resolution or Denouement
(Catabasis) comprising the part of the play in which the stages in the movements of
events towards this success are marked out. Fifthly, the conclusion or catastrophe,
in which the conflict is brought to an end.
a b
f
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Though the real plot of the play begins with the beginning of a conflict, such
conflict arises out of and therefore presupposes a certain existing condition of
things and relations among the characters who are to come in to collision. The plot
of a play be symbolized in a ‘Pyramidal structure’.
In this diagram, ‘a’ stands for the exposition, ‘b’ for the initial stage, c, for the
growth of the action to its crisis, ‘d’ for the crisis or turning point: ‘e’ for the
resolation and ‘f’ for the catastrophe. This particular figure will evidently: serve only
to represent a play in which the crisis come almost exactly in the middle of the plot,
which is thus divided into two practically equal parts. Julius Caesar is the best
example for this.
In King Lear, the real crisis of the main plot is in the very first scene. And in
Othello, it does not occur till in the first scene of the fourth act. The following
diagram indicates approximately the plot movement in these two instances as
follows.
The ‘Pyramidal diagram’ helps to bring out the great divisions of a dramatic
story vividly before our minds.
The purpose of the ‘introduction’ or ‘exposition’ is to put the spectator in
possession of all such information as is necessary for the proper understanding of
the play, he is about to witness. The opening scene or the scenes of any drama
must be largely occupied with explanatory matter. The management of this
explanatory matter is one of the severest tests of a playwrights skill. Be his story
ever so simple, the difficulties will be involved in it. Among the expedients which
have been adopted to over some of this difficulty, the least dramatic is the set
speech of some particular character. The tedius narrative of Prospero in the second
scene of the Tempest is a case in point.
Good exposition will take the form of dialogue which seems in the
circumstances to be natural and appropriate, which is put into the mouths of
characters, who are made at once interesting to us in such fine dramatic openings,
as for example, those of Othello and the Alchemist, the business of the play starts
with the rise of the curtain. It is possible for the dramatist to attain ideal perfection
in this portion of his work.
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Yet the ideal should none the less be kept in view as a standard for judgement.
Exposition should be clear. It should be as brief as the nature of the material will
permit. It should be dramatic. It should if possible, be vitally connected with the
first movements of the plot. And it should be so disguised, that while, analysis will
never fall to reveal its mechanism, the impression left upon the spectator shall be
one of absolute naturalness and spontaneity.
‘Incident’ is to define the starting point. It must be interpreted broadly enough
to cover mental processes as well as external events. The initial incident leads to
the real business of the play, the first portion of which comprises the complication,
or rise of the action to its crisis. Every scene should occupy a definite place in the
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evolution of the dramatic organism, either by marking a fresh stage in the

development, or by adding to our knowledge of the characters.
Every dramatic story, soon or latter, reaches a stage in its development at
which the balance begins to incline decisively to one or the other side, this is called
the ‘turning point’ or the ‘crisis’ of the action. The great law of the crisis is that it
shall be natural and logical outcome of all that has gone before.
Many modern playwrights seem to postpone the crisis as long as possible
whereas the older stage was to place it somewhere about the middle of the action,
generally a little beyond exposition or complication. In Shakespeare’s Plays it is
commonly to be sought towards the close of the third and or quite early in the
fourth act. In Macbeth, it occurs in Act III Scene (I), where with the escape of
Fleance and the appearance of Banquo’s ghost, begins the tragic reversal of
Macheth’s fortune. In Othello, it occurs in Act IV scene (i), where the Moore is
finally convinced of his wife’s infidelity. In Julilus Caesar, it occurs it Act II scene
(i), the scene Caesar’s death.
The crisis of the action leads to the other portion, in which the dramatic
conflict is to be brought to its conclusion. The conduct of this denouement will
depend upon the answer to the question – whether the play is to have a happy or
unhappy ending. In comedy, it will take the form of the gradual withdrawal of the
obstacles the clearing away of the difficulties and misunderstandings by which the
wishes of the hero and the heroine have been thwarted and their good fortune
jeopardized. In tragedy, its essence will consist in the removal of those resisting
elements which have helped the power of evil in check, and in the consequent
setting free of that power to work out its own will.
The problem of the dramatist will always be, how to keep the interest alive
after the spectators have become aware that the resolution has begun, and that the
current of events has been definitely set in towards a certain catastrophe. At
expedient frequently adopted to sustain interest in the second part of the play is
worthy of particular attention. It is to delay catastrophe by the interposition of
events which interrupt the progress of the falling action and thus serve temporarily
to revive uncertainty suspense. In comedy it is done by the employment of various
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unexpected obstacles and in tragedy by suggestions that a way of escape for the
hero and the heroine may yet open up and the gate awaits them to be averted.
Tennyson once castigated that in modern plays, nothing is concluded in the
conclusion. It is necessary that a catastrophe in which all the lines of the story are
gathered together and no loose threads are left.
3.7 THE DIFFERENT TYPES OF DRAMA
It is customary for the historian and critic to distinguish sharply between two
antithetical type of drama the classic and the romantic. This broad division is,
however insufficient. The classic type must be sub-divided into the ancient, true
classic, and the neo-classic, or pseudo-classic, while a separate place must be
made for the drama of our own time.
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Greek drama originated in rustic festivals, which in early Attica were

periodically held in honour of the nature-god, Dionysius-the one from the serious,
the other from the frolicsome side of such liberations. After branching out into the
dithyrambic (satiric) processionary dance and the choral stationary dance
(associated respectively with the festival of Dionysius and the worship of Appollo),
the two forms coalesced in course of time and became Attic Tragedy in the hands of
Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides, with the stress on choral element.
Comedy in Athens passed through three stages: Old comedy, or the comedy of
political and personal satire: Middle comedy which marked the new transition from
this to the comedy of social life and manners: New comedy, in which this change
was completed of Greek tragedy, larger and more representative body of work has
come down to us, for we possess thirty two plays of the three great tragic poets –
Aeschylys, Sophocles and Euripides.
The primary importance of the Greek tragedy is the stress on choral element.
No one characteristic of the Attic drama is more curious than this. In every play
such a chorus, or body of persons, forming, as it were a multiple individuality,
moving singing and dancing together and continually interrupting the dialogue and
the progress of the action with their odes and interludes.
The Chorus belongs to Greek tragedy because it is the term form which it
springs. From the very beginning of real tragedy with Asechylus, the tendency of
artistic evolution is consistently toward the sub-ordination of the choral element to
that of the individual actors. In Sophocles, the use of chorus reaches perfection. In
Aeschylus, about one half of a play is occupied with choral odes and in Euripides
only from a quarter to a ninth part. Along with this decrease in the prominence of
the chorus goes its gradual detachment from the action. The history of chorus in
Greek tragedy is a history of gradual decay. Arnold explains, that it was to combine,
to harmonise, to deepen for the spectator the feelings excited in him by the sight of
what was passing on the stage.
While in Greek drama the ‘tragic’ and ‘comic’ are released in the contrasted yet
complementary form of Tragedy and Comedy, in Sanskrit drama the ‘elements’ were
usually though not invariably mixed in diverse proportions, rather as in
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Elizebethan drama. In Sanskrit drama, there are ordinarily on tragedies as such.
Happy conclusion was the general rule and hence the virtuous were rewarded and
the vicious punished in the end.
Following the movement of dramatic history, we pass from Greece to Rome,
which at the time of its literary awakening under Hellenic impulses began to
fashion both comedies and tragedies on the lines which the Greeks had laid down.
Comedy possessed twenty plays of Plautus and six Terence, while tragedy
possessed ten dramas of Seanca. Both the comedies and tragedies have great
historical importance.
The drama of modern Europe arose out of the rich symbolic liturgy of the
medieaval church through the gradual dramatization of important events
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commemorated in the chief services of the calendar. This liturgical drama, in

course of time, evolved into a fully developed and widely popular religious play-the
Mystery or Miracle Play, the subject matter of which was derived mainly from the
Bible, but its part also from tradition and the lives of saints. Mr. Symonds
described the religious drama in England as the Dame school of our dramatic
genius.
Another kind of didactic drama arose and flourished in the morality or
allegorical play. The real beginnings of modern and tragedy are closely connected
with that particular phase of the Renaissance which we call the classic revival.
Fired by enthusiasm for everything belonging to the newly discovered world of
pagan antiquity, men turned back to that world for inspiration and example in
drama as in all other forms of literacy art.
In comedy, the native and popular elements were too strong in England to
permit mere academic imitation, Tragedy, on the other hand, was at the outset,
purely academic.
Here, the historical importance becomes manifest. Now, in Senecan tragedy,
while in matter it tended to a free use of the violent, the horrible and the
supernatural if presented the structural principle of the classic drama in an
exaggerated form, action being entirely eliminated and one stately speeches full of
rhetoric and declamation taking the place of dramatic dialogue.
In Italy and France, while the Senecan type was modified in various
particulars, it was still taken as a foundation and neo-classism was firmly
established. It ideals backed by the enormous power of the Academy, ruling
supreme in the latter country, till the time of Dumes and Victor Hugo and England,
after a few abortive experiments and despite the efforts and influence of humanists
like Sidney, Seneca and neo-classism were abandoned were abandoned, and an
independent type of drama-the romantic came into existence.
In Spain the national genius was too strong to accept the classic yoke, and a
rich romantic drama arose in defiance of all attempts of scholars and critics to
regulate it by fine and rule. The Spanish romantic drama of the seventeenth
century-best known to us in the works of its two chief masters, Lope delvega and
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Calderon –deserves the attention of the students of its immerse fertility and
ingenuity in the matter of plot.
Romantic tragedy is commonly aristocratic in character. The tragic –hero is
often set in a world of commonplace men and things. In Romantic comedies, the
framework of the story is important. It deals with that which was once actual, but
is now remote, Classical comedy, on the other hand, deals with what is always true
and therefore with what is perennially actual.
Classic drama deals with the great legends of a remote mythical age; its chief
characters had been majestic heroes who belonged to a world of tradition all
together a part from and far above that of ordinary humanity and experience.
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The romantic tragedy combines the idealistic with the realistic. In realistic
drama, the unites of time and place are now very commonly preserved within each
act. The product of our own age of eclecticism and experiment in every department
of art, the modern drama exhibits so many varieties that no summary statement of
its characteristics would be possible, Even the prepositions of the romantic stage
have been abandoned and under the co-operating influences of the democratic
spirit and realism, the Domestic Drama the showed aim of which is to hold the
mirror up to ordinary human life has established itself as the most complete
representative of modern art.
Drama thus has assumed different forms during different periods in different
countries.
3.8 REVISION POINTS
1) Crawford calls the novel the pocket theatre.
2) Plot, characters, dialogue, time and place of action, style and the implies
philosophy of life are the element of fiction & drama.
3) Plot is the systematic arrangement of the action and situation to achieve the
desired effect.
4) The epic, the autobiographical and the documentary are the three methods is
story telling.
5) Plot and character are interdependent.
6) Drama and prose fiction are compounded of the same raw materials.
7) Drama is not pure literature. It depends on non-literary elements like action,
setting, stage, costume, for its success.
8) Novel is self-contained.
9) Characterization in drama is very fundamental.
10) Brevity and concentration are hallmarks of good characterization.
11) Conflict is at the core of dramatic plot.
12) Exposition, Complication, Climax, Denouement and the Solution or catastrophe
are the five stages in a dramatic plot.
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13) Greek drama originated in rustic festivals.
14) Modem drama has a religious origin.
15) The classic and the romantic and the two broad types of drama.
3.9 ASSIGNMENTS
1) Read a fiction of your choice and final out the various element of that fiction.
2) Draw a pyramid diagram to show the five stages of dramatic plot.
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3.10 KEY WORDS
1) Plot: - The orderly arrangement of events.
2) Chorus:- In Greek drama, a group of singers appears on stage at the beginning
of the play or during the course of the play to inform about the nature and the
course of the play to the audience. This group is called chorus.
3) Exposition:- The opening part of the play in which the conflict originates.
4) Complication: - The second stage during which the conflict gets complicated.
5) Climax: - Refers to the third stage in drama when the complication reaches a
higher point.
6) The Denouement: refers to the falling action after the climax.
7) Catastrophe: - The last stage when the conflict is brought to an end.
1) What are the essential elements of fiction?
2) Write an essay on the natural division of a dramatic plot?
3) Is drama a pure literary art?
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UNIT – IV
ESSAY, SHORT STORY & CRITICISM

STRUCTURE
4.0 Objectives
4.1 The Study of Essay
4.2 Prose & Poetry: A Comparison
4.3 The Study of Short Story
4.4 The Short Story and the Novel: A Comparison
4.5 The Nature and Function of Criticism
4.6 Revision Points
4.8 Key Words
4.0 OBJECTIVES
To introduce students to prose, short story and literary criticism is the main
purpose of this unit.
4.1 THE STUDY OF THE ESSAY
Montaigne is the pioneer essays. All his essays were first translated into
English by John Florin about 1603 and later by others. They were widely read by
educated Englishmen. His essays are ‘personal.’ They reveal the character of their
author in such a way that we come to think of him as a living as a person with
whom we are on fairly intimate terms.
According to the oxford dictionary, an essay is a short composition on any
particular subject if this definition seems a little less than complete, we can
supplement it in the words of Edmund Gosse, who described it as ‘a composition of
moderate length, usually in prose, which deals in an easy, cursory way with the
external conditions of a subject and in strictness, with that subject only as it affects
the writer. It is true that the word has occasionally been used in a different sense.
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But actually the word ‘essay’ is used for the kind of thing written by Montaigne,
bacon, Charles Lamb and those anonymous wits who used to compose the third
and fourth ‘leaders’ in “The Times”.
The essential quality of the essay lies in its ‘personal’ nature. It is probably the
most personal and idiosyncratic of all kinds of literature.
If we look at the subject in the chronological order, selecting a few of the major
essayists for comment, it is almost inevitable that we should begin with Francis.
Becon’s essays are ‘thought packed, close and rendered portable’ as macaulay
described it; indeed this plain, concise meaningful prose is what makes the ‘Essay’s
an important land mark in the history of our literature. Bacon has shown once for
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all that the essence of good writing is having something to say, and saying it briefly
as possible. So well indeed, did he say what he wished to say that his aphorisms
have become almost a part of our daily language.
In describing his essays as ‘civil and Morall’ bacon was presumably distinguish
between those dealing with public affairs – political or administrative and those
concerned with private and personal maters. The essay “Of judicature”, for
example is clearly ‘civil whereas ‘of parents and children’ is moral. There are many
essays which do not fit comfortably into either category: “of gardens” for instance;
and there are several which treat of subjects which could vaguely be called
philosophical, indeed, the range of topics is astonishing “I have taken all knowledge
to be my province” bacon wrote: and the “Essays” well illustrate the justice of his
There are some critics who hold that the first major English essayist was not
bacon, but Abraham Cowley (161867). Those who accept this view have no wish to
detract from bacon’s greatness as a writer: they recognize his “Essays and
counsels” as great literature, but they feel the Beconian essay is so unlike the essay
as it developed in the hands of later English writers that it would be better to call it
by a different name. cow ley’s essays, on the other hand, are written in the same
view as those of Charles Lamb or G.K. Chesterton, they are highly personal,
generally light and un-pompous, and written in the kind of luid, fluent prose which
we recognize as modern. We may agree, therefore, to call Cowley the first ‘modern’
essayist.
Any attempt to trace the history of the essay after Cowley would be impossible.
For our present study, it will be convenient to exclude from the category of essays
which are primarily didactic or informative in intention, anything which claims to
treat a subject in an unbiased and impersonal way and anything which as
important as Locke, Dryden and pope, and turn to the journalistic essayists of the
early eighteenth century.
The last two or three decades of the seventeenth century were marked by an
improvement in the power and status of the middle classes. Culture and politics
were no longer a preserve of the court and the aristocracy, and an entirely new kind
of institution was beginning to be intellegual centre of city life. This was the coffee-
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house, of which by about 1700, there were several in London, the best known being
buttons and will’s.
It was in the London coffee-house that most famous of all English periodicals
were born-“the tattler” and “The spectator”. In these an similar production, the
essay as we now understand the term became a widely read form of literature, and
was cultivated by writers of the caliber of Steele, addition as well as by countless
other and less distinguished men.
In 1709, Steele founded a periodical called “The Tatler” which he produced
thrice weekly over a period of some three years. He was joined in this enterprise by
his friend Joseph addition. “The Tatler” consisted of essays and articles on all sorts
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of topics, mostly written y Steele and Addison and sometimes purporting to be the
work of the imaginary Issac Bickerstaff, whose equally imaginary sister, jenny
Distaff; provided the necessary feminine interest. The articles were written as
though from well-known coffee houses-poetry came from well-known coffee-house
will’s, current events from St.James, and soon.
It was not only the ideas in “The Tatler” that came from the coffee-house: even
more important, so far as the history of English prose is concerned, it was the
coffee-house fluencies on literary style. Cowley had already shown that good prose
need not be either prose elaborate or aphoristic and the writers of “The Tatler” went
further by making their prose easy and conversational. The language of intelligent
and wide ranging conversion of the kind one heard in the coffee-house became the
language of the journalist, and in spite of various notable exceptions, it had been a
tradition of the English essay since Addison that its language should be colloquial.
In 1711. “The Tatler” was replaced by a new paper called “The Spectator”,
published daily, and still largely written by Steele and Addison, though there were
many other contributors, including pope. “The members of the club, through
portrayed as individual pope.”The members of the club, though portrayed as
individual in a lively and interesting way, represented typical upper and middle –
class old fashioned English country gentleman sir roger de cover by invented by
Steele, but developed by addition.
Sir Roger and the other members of the club became immensely popular with
the reading public, occupying the same sort of place in their minds as do television
celebrities, real or fictitious, in the minds of the modern public.
“The Spectator” essays of Steele and Addison, in which they aimed at to
enliven morality with wit and to temper with morality; were to influence the future
of the essay in England in atleast on important respect; hence forth it was in
general to be witty, light, and agreeable in tone something resembling in daily
conversation of the educated mean and women rather than the splendid
didacticism of Bacon; but the eighteenth century produced one notable expression
to this general trend in the person of the great Dr.Johnson.
Dr.Johnson was much concerned with ‘refinement’ and correctness’ of
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language, and did not share the view implicity in the essays of Addison and Steele
that this kind of literature should be informal and conversational. Thus the
“Rambler”, which Johnson brought out in 208 number between 1749 and 1752,
seemed to some of his readers to be in altogether tool lofty a strain. The essays
contained were concerned with serious literary criticism and serious moral
questions.
There is something of the sermon in many of Johnson’s essays, and it is worth
bearing in mind that any detailed history of the essay would acquire at least a
chapter on the sermon as a literary from.
Some seventy years after, the last number of “The Rambler” was published
there appeared a volume of essays which in the opinion of many people, enshrines
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this peculiar kind of English literature at its best. This was Charles Lamb’s ‘Essays
of Elia’ published in book from in 1823.
The first Elia essay appeared in a periodical called “The London Magazine” in
the August of 1820. It was called “The South Sea House’ and was written around
Lamb’s recollections of the offices of the Moribund South See company after leaving
school.
All though 1820 and 1821; the ‘Elia’ essays continued to appear in “The
London Magazine”, and Lamb found himself famous through his pseudonym.
William Hazlitt (1778-1830) inevitably appears in any study of the essay as a
sort of Tweediendum to Lamb’s Tweeledee. They were friends as well as
contemporaries. A study of his essays reveals him as a man of varied interests and
an outstanding figure among English essayists. The “Vigour of his Intellect’ is well
displayed in his essays “On the ignorance of the learned”, where he takes the view
that too much learning can act as a sort of encumbrance to the intelligence.
Like Wordsworth and Coleridge, whose poetry he so much admired, Hazlitt
was a lover of nature and the open air. This is apparent in an early essay “On the
Love of the Country” and in the delightful “On going a Journey”.
During the later nineteenth century, the essay lost something of the
spontaneity and loveliness which had market it form the time of Cowley to the time
of Hazlitt. It ceased to be a sort of Jeu de sprit for clever men in the intervals of
more serious work, and became altogether heavier and more solemn. The little
known essays of Isaac D’Israch (1766-1848) are perhaps typical of the informative
literary form and historical essays pleased serious minded readers in Victorian
time. He was a Purveyor of anecdotes rather than that essayist, however; for his
articles lack that genuinely personal touch which most people feel to be the
essential of the essay. The same can be said of much more important writer.
Thomas Babington Macaulay.
Macaulay’s “Essays” are mainly historical and critical. We read them for
information and instruction about their subjects rather than for amusement or for
any insight into the personality of their writer. Several of them were written, indeed
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for the “Encyclopaedia Britannica”. Macaulay therefore must be regarded as a great
master of the historical essay rather than a general essayist like Bacon or Hazlitt
and the same can be said of his younger contemporary J.A. Froude (1818-94),
whose “Short Studies on Great Subject” deal with a wide range of topics, but in an
informative rather than a purely personal manner. The essays of Mathew Arnold
(1822-88) cover a wide range of subjects and are of great interest both to the
student of literature and the general reader.
Like Macaulay and Froude, Arnold was an essayist, whose aim was instruction
or propaganda rather than self revelation and entertainment. He could certainly not
claim to be a follwer of Montainge’s rule. J.S.Mill (1806-73) was another essayist in
the more specialized sense of the word, his essay “On liberty” being a major
contribution to the political thought of the century. R.L. Stevensen (1950-94)
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although best known as a writer of stories, wrote a number of essays on literature

and travel particularly in ‘Virginibus Puerisque’ and ‘Familiar Studies of Men and
Books’.
In our known country the proliferation of newspapers and journals of every
sort has done much to keep the essay alive. “The Times”, for example, for many
years carried a “third leader – sometimes a fourth leader’. The first and second
leading articles in a serious newspaper traditionally deal with politics and
important current events; but in “The Times” at least, it became customary to
include a their article on some light hearted topic such as “Waste Paper Baskets” or
“Hot Water Bottle”. These little essays, widely read and enjoyed, became in
important feature of the English cultural landscape. They were written by
journalists and others, and always appeared anonymously. Although “The Times”
still prints ‘third leaders they now tend to be on regrettably solemn affairs.
Hilaire Belloc (1870-1953) and G.K. Chesterton (1876-1934) were often closely
associated with essays during their lives, and we still tend to link their names by
virtue of the facat that both were Roman Catholics and both cultivated a style
which might be called whimsical or paradoxical or affected according to the reader’s
taste. It is an old illustration of the mutability of such taste that the essays of both.
Chesterton and Belloc seems to many of us to be very muchy more ‘dated’
than Hazlitt’s or even Cowley’s . Perhaps this is so because his particular kind of
essay- insubstantial but amusing –does not often appear in print now, though often
heard in ‘Chattyu’ radio programmes. The titles under which Belloc published his
collections of essays are bo9th amusing and revealing.
Chesterton and Belloc are among the last writers to Cultivate the essay purely
for its own sake rather than as vehicle for criticism of the arts or the propagation of
ideas; others who might have been mentioned are Max Beerbohing (18972-1956),
E.V. Lucas (1868-1938), and Robert Lynd (1879-1949), Much of the most readable
and interesting essays of our century, however have been written by men or women
eminent in other spheres of literature or life Bernard Shaw, Bertand Russel,
Virginia Woolf, T.S. Eliot Aldous Huyzley, and Geogre Orwell.
The tradition that the essay should be in some sense a personal thing – an
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almost random jotting down of one’s thoughts upon any subject under the sun
seems almost to have died out, perhaps this is inevitable in an age of democracy
and mass cultural when the personal habits and personal opinions of anyone who
is not a show business ‘Celebrity’ are unlikely to be of much interest to people in
general. It may be that radio and television will lead to its revival through some
other different form.
4.2 PROSE AND POETRY: A COMPARISON
Prose may be described as plain, simple, persuasive speech. Poetry is language
charged with feeling or emotion. Words in prose seek to state, to explain, to argue.
Words in poetry seem to build and image, to re-create an experience, to
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communicate the stir of excitement to the reader. If prose could be compared to

Arithmetic, then ‘poetry would be Algebra.
While Clutton-Brock says “prose is longer than verse, and F.W. Bateson says
that “poetry says so much more in the same number of words” than everyday
speech and prose. Cleanth Brooks thinks that, whereas science (like prose) tends
“to stabilize terms to freeze them into strict denotations, ‘poetry is continually
explorative and tries to convey unique shades of meaning by means of contradiction
and qualification,” If the same idea is sought to be expressed in both prose and
poetry, poetic expression might conceivably become more succinct than prose
statement.
Between the extremes of hard, clear, intellectual prose and haunting, metrical,
emotive poetry, many variations are possible. Prose that reads like good poetry
(minus metre) is better than ‘poetry’ that reads like mere prose (plus metre). The
spans of thought or emotion and the feel of sound generally run together in poetry,
but they are like two horses yoked to a carriage, not like the wheels of a bicycle. To
hear always the basic rhythm (which is the time-measuring tala in music) is the
secret of enjoying good poetry.
The employment of a rhythmical language is one of the conditions of poetry.
Metrical excitement makes all the difference between a poetical subject and a
prosaical subject. The difference in question is not necessarily between a “poetical
subject” and a “prosaically subject” but between the forms in which the same
subject may be handles. Treated in prose, it may be made richly poeticacl but, only
when treated in meter, it is fashioned into actual poetry. As regards its substance
and spirit, poetry is the antithesis of science. As of science. As regards its form,
poetry is distinguished from prose by the systematically rhythmical character of its
language.
Metre always has been and still is the most general and constant feature of
poetry on the side of form. It is the point of distinction between prose and poetry. A
chief function of poetry is to yield aesthetic pleasure. Rhythm adds greatly to the
aesthetic pleasure. Poetry by the use of rhythm maintains an advantage over the
other harmony-the loose and unregulated rhythm – of prose.
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The prose rendering of the finest passages of Shakespeare and Milton could be
like gathering dew drops which appear like jewels and pearls on the grass but
which run into water joy on the land. The essence and the elements remain but the
sparkle and the form are gone.
4.3 THE STUDY OF THE SHORT STORY
If we are asked what is meant by a short story we need only say, rather
tautologically, it is a story which is short. The shortest of short stories may be no
more than a page or two in length; the longest, like D.H. Lawrence’s “St.Mawr’ for
example, may run over a hundred pages. Obviously there comes a point at which it
is impossible to distinguish between a long short story and a short novel. Some
modern critics have received the word novella for long short story. The “novells” in
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this sense is distinguished form the genuine short novel by its limited number of
characters its less varied setting and its simple plot.
Critics and literary historians sometimes speak of the short story as though it
were something new-a product of the nineteenth century and the first half of the
twentieth. Although this is far from being the case, there is no doubt, so far as mere
productivity is concerned, that this period was the heyday of the short story. The
rapid growth on literacy in Britain and America after about 1800 created a demand
for periodical literature of all kinds. Many novels, of course, appeared in serial form,
being printed in staple in monthly or fortnightly parts.
All magazines used short stories both good and bad, as their main ingredients,
thus offering a ready market to the writers of the day. In these circumstances, it
was not surprising that the short story flourished, becoming indeed the staple
literary diet of millions of readers.
To say that the short reached the height of its popularity about the beginning
of the present century is, of course, not to underrate its past or to underestimate its
future as a species of literature; it had its place in classical times.
Written about 130 B.C in less than two thousand words in length, was the
story of Susannah and the Elders. This little tale is a model of what the short story
should be and one could wish that some later practitioners had more frequently
imitated it in point of clarity, brevity, and wit.
Most ordinary readers, as well as most of great writers of the past, regard plot
as an essential ingredient in the art of story-telling.
Unlike the novel or the full-length play, the short story gives little scope for the
subtle portrayal of character or of anything resembling fine writing it demands
rather, the simplicity and directness which characterizes so many of the fascinating
stories in what has been called ‘the unread best-seller’ the old Testament.
Roughly contemporary with the writers responsible for setting down the semi
legendary stories of David was the Greek Herodotus of Halicarnassus (480 – 425
B.C): Like many of the Old Testament writers. Herodotus was, by modern
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standards, rather an old sort of historian. He had however an ear always open to a
good story, and his ‘Histories” contain many tales which, lifted out of their context,
can be read as excellent short stories.
Among the thousands of characters mentioned by Herodotus –many of them
historical and many legendary in the semilegendary Aesop, who is said to have lived
about the middle of the sixth century B.C Some of the fables attributed to him must
be reckoned among the best known short stories in the world, and though they
differ widely from the conception of the short story held by most modern
practitioners, it is worth while pointing out that the qualities of conciseness and wit
which have kept them alive for some two-and-a-half thousand years are just that
the qualities which one find in the best short stories of all ages. Aesop’s fables
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nevertheless differ in one important respect from the short story as we now know it;
they were written in order to inculcate various moral truths which seemed
important to their author. His purpose, indeed, seems to have been moral and
didactic: and it was a purpose about which he was not ashamed of. In this respect,
Aesop resembled the mediaeval Christian writers who developed the kind of short
story which they called “exemplum”.
‘Exempla’ were simply tales used by mediaeval preachers to illustrate their
sermons. Just as music and painting were useful to the church in conveying moral
and religious truths to people who were generally illiterate, so also imaginative
literature, read or recited aloud, served to illustrate and enliven the same truths for
men and women who might find sermons boring or incomprehensible.
Hundreds of stories of a similar kind were used by preachers and passed on by
word of mouth among their flocks, thus feeding the hunger for good stories which
seems to be an almost universal human trait: and because perhaps regrettably,
most people prefer a good story to a good sermon the ‘exempia’ often survived where
the sermons were lost.
Other kinds of mediaeval short stories, in connection with the origin of the
novel were the tales known as ‘contest’ and ‘fabliaux’. The latter were generally in
verse and the former in prose, but both were ‘down to earth’ than most of the
‘exempla’ being concerned with ordinary people living everyday lives, and frequently
marked by that kind of jolly coarseness which we find in Chaucer’s Miller’s Tale”.
By Chaucer’s time, many of the caliber of Chaucer himself, or Boccaccio or
Giovanni Sercambi of Lucca.
The practice of linking a number of short stories together seems always to
have been attractive to authors, from the time of “the thousand and one Nights” to
that of William Painter’s “place of Pleasure” (1566) and William Morris’s “The
Earthly Paradise” (1868-70)
Many of the world’s best known short stories have been written in the last one
hundred and fifty years: this means that they are too recent to be safely ‘evaluated’.
Maupassant, (1850-93), though strictly ineligible to be discussed in a book
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concerned with English literature must be regarded, with Chekov, as among the
greatest half a dozen short story writers of the world. He wrote some three hundred
tales, one of which, known to educated people all over the world, is called “The
Necklace”. It so happens that James also wrote a short story about a necklace; this
(Entitled ‘paste’) is concerned with pearls which, though thought to be worthless
imitations, were infact immensely valuable.
Poe’s worldwide popularity over the past hundred and the enormous influence
he has over later writers are sufficient to justify if not compel his inclusion in any
study of the short story.
Most of Poe’s tales appeared in various periodicals with which he was
associated, specially the “Southern Literary Messenger” of which he was an editor
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for a short time. Stories like “The murders in the Rue Morgue”, “The Mystery of
Marie Roget” and “The Gold Bug” reveal Poe as the father of the detective story, as it
developed in the later nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth. They
are written in the straight forward prose of Poe, the practical journalist and they
keep (more or less) to the rules which we now regard as traditional in the detective
tale-namely that realism should prevail, and that the author should not conceal
from the reader any of the clues which can lead to the solution of the mystery. As
founder, or at least one of the founders, of the tradition of the detective thriller. Poe
deserves a high place in the history of literature.
The grotesque the fantastic, the surrealistic, the obsessive, the pshychopathic,
the horrible-these are the aspects of life which appealed to Poe’s romantic and
perhaps diseased imagination and which he thrusts before the half-reluctant reader
in fantasies like “the Fall of the House of Usher”.
Men like Baudelaire (1821-67), the surrealists of the present century and the
makers of those “Psychological thrillers and horror Films which still exercise a
curious fascination over the minds of many of us, were influenced by Poe.
The lank form and aquiline features of Sherlock Holmes, created by Sir Arthur
Conan Doyle, may safely be described as the most widely read short stories in the
world. Even in the very different world of the nineteen sixties their popularity seems
undiminished and they continue to make admirable fodder for film and television.
In the same tradition, or one closely related, are the ghost stories of M.R.
James (1862-1936). He has an extraordinary talent for making the reader’s flesh
creep wioth his evocations of mysterious but all – too – tangible visitors, like the
apparition in “O whistle and I’ll come to you”. Ghosts and ghost stories are,
perhaps, among the regrettable casualties on the march of technological progress,
but no general view or the short story would be complete without some mention of
the detective story and the story of the supernatural. Multiplied almost to infinity
since the time of Poe, both kinds can claim his as their most prominent forebear.
Like Poe, Kipling is one of the major short story writers. He still arouses
feelings of dislike in many readers yet there are others, and they include such good
judges as T.S. Eliot, Somerset Maugham, and the American critic, Edmund Wilson,
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who regard his works as being of considerable importance.
It is the variety of subject-matter and setting which more than anything else,
shows Kipling’s mastery as a writer of short stories.
D.H.Lawrence, a contemporary of Kipling, though twenty years younger, is
without question a figure our won century whereas Kipling seems in many ways to
belong, to the nineteenth century. The exigencies of the short story forced Lawrence
to concentrate on those aspects of creative writing which he found most difficult to
accept namely precision, economy and design.
In general, the short story before Lawrence, had been an entertainment mainly
dependent upon the interest of its plot. At least something of the effect of a tale by
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Kipling, for example, can be conveyed by a summary of its plot. With Lawrence’s
tale, it is quite otherwise; the plot is always of secondary importance, and what
counts is subtlety of situation or suggestiveness of atmosphere, or vividly sensuous
evocations of nature.
It is the displacement of plot as the main element which more than anything
else, distinguishes the modern short story from the type of story generally written
before 1910. this is, of course, a dangerously broad generalization, but the reader
can test it for himself by a study of the works of such writers as James Stephens
(1882-1950), Caroadoc Evans (1883-1945), Katherine Mansfield (1888-1923), Frank
O’Connor (1903-1966), H.E. Bates (b. 1905) and other contemporary writers who in
various ways have followed or emulated Lawrence in writing stories where plot is of
less importance than mood or atmosphere.
With Lawrence, plot ceases to be the most important element, in the short
story. It never disappears altogether as it seems to have done in the ‘storied’ of
some later writers but it is generally subordinated to situation and atmosphere. As
Frank O’ connor wrote,
“Story telling is the nearest thing one can get to
the quality of a pure lyric poem. It doesn’t deal
with problems; it doesn’t have solutions to offer; it
just states the human situation”.
It is true that one would hesitate to think of Maughum as a great creative
genius like Lawrence or even Kipling yet one cannot help wondering whether this is
not merely so because he appears as a man eminently sane. Whereas geniuses (like
saints) are generally a little mad. Maugham, too has been above all an exponent of
the ‘plotted’ short at a time when most practitioners have been preoccupied with
other aspects of form. Further, Maugham has no ‘message’ for the world. He does
not set up as a prophet or even as a psychologist and in this respect one cannot
help wishing that more contemporary writers would follow his example.
Maugham’s stories range in length from ‘novelle’ like “The Letter” down to
sketches two or three pages in length like “Raw material”. Many of his earlier
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stories are based on his own experiences during that period, though he tells them
through the mouth of the imaginary Ashenden first person singular narrative was,
in fact, a form of story telling which Maugham particularly favoured. Whatever one
may think of these alleged advantages, Maugham himself was a highly successful
exponent of this particulart kind of narrative.
As well as being a highly successful practitioners of the art of the short story,
Maugham was a great admirer of Chekov and Maupassant by whom he seems to
have been much influenced.
The field of shory story is an enormous one, and it is only the individual reader
who can decide which areas of it are most worth his attention.
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4.4 THE SHORT STORY AND THE NOVEL: A COMPARISON
There is a tendency to regard the short story as a novel in miniature. A short
story cannot be called either a story that is short or ‘a short novel’. There is a clear
difference between them in the treatment of material, in focus and in angle. It is
true that both the short story and the novel deal with life. The short story cannot
afford the large canvas on which the novel exhibits life in its complexity and variety.
Usually, only one aspect of life is dealt with . it presents only a slice of life. In this
respect, a short story differs from a novel in the dimension which Aristotle calls
‘magnitude’. As O Cannon says. “The form of the novel is given by the length; in the
short story, the length is given by the form.
The method of detailed treatment used in a novel cannot be used in a short
story. A short, usually, shares the usual constituents of all action, plot character
and setting. But, they cannot be treated with the same detail as in novel. In a short
story, each has to be reduced to the minimum.
“In plot, the short story writer has to select one situation or episode and has to
introduce a very limited number of characters, whereas the novelist can deal with
numerous incidents and characters. He can’t afford the space for a leisurely
analysis and sustained development of character”. A short story is more restricted
in character and setting and is usually concerned with a single effect unlike a
novel. It does not aim at the development of character, for in it a single aspect of
personality undergoes a change and is shown as a result of character. There is
frequently concentration on a single character involved in a single episode. The
short story writer must be quick and must choose one or two characters or
incidents and hint at the rest and thus not clutter up the short story with
unnecessary details.
A short story can not deal with the evolution of character in such amplitude as
the novel can, for in a short story we meet people for a few minutes and see them in
a few relationships and circumstances only. But we have to live for sometime with
men and women and to see them in different relationships and circumstances
before we get ready to know them. This is possible only in a novel. The novelist may
depict a character in a set of circumstances and allow the character to grow in
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stature. The short story writer cannot afford this expansiveness. He has to pick and
choose a suggestive moment which may reveal a character like a flash of lightning.
In the novel different elements are woven into its texture and at times, there
may be many points interest. But no such scattering of interest can be permitted in
the short story. In a short story, there must be one and only one informing idea
which must be worked out to its logical conclusion with unerring singleness of aim
and directness of method. The interest arising from the germinal idea of the story
must not be complicated by any other consideration.
A novel often has passages which could be scored out without detriment to the
plot but there is no room for these in a short story. They will act as a drag on the
progress of the short story and lead nowhere.
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The novel has all the time and space to tell its story at length, but the short
story, has to convey its truth of life and its impressions in a different manner. The
limited space or brevity of the short story produces an effect of concentration and
economy where as the novel has a leisurely prolific way of narrative. The novel can
deal with a long span of time or even generations. It has unlimited space at its
disposal for all this. But, a short story has to be compact and therefore, it has take
into consideration the most significant area of time.
There is as much difference between the novel and the short story as there is
between the epic and the lyric. The short story is not likely to replace the novel.
4.5 THE NATURE AND FUNCTION OF CRITICISM
The world 'Criticism' is derived from the Greek verb "Kritein" which means to
judge and one who does judging is known as a "critic". The literacy critic is
therefore regarded primarily as an expert with a special faculty and training to
pronounce his judgement on a piece of literacy art. He examines the merits and
defects of a given work of art and comes out with a verdict on it. The literature of
criticism included more than the literature which records the judgement. It
includes the mass of literature written about literature whether its object is
analysis interpretation or valuation. While poetry, drama and the novel! directly
deal with life, criticism deals with these genres of literature and also about
criticism. Hence if creative literature is defined as an interpretation of life under
various forms of literary art, critical literature s defined as an interpretation of
these forms of art.
The prejudice against criticism is that it does not allow us to examine a great
author by ourselves. Our first business with a great author is with him and his
work that we want to understand. What then is the use of the intermediary? Why
should we study the criticism about Dante and Shakespeare more than we study
actual works of these great writers? In recent times, there is an enormous growth of
the parasitic literature of explanation and commentary and in addition there are
critical work about critics. Hence we have not only books about books but also of
books about books. We have histories of criticism: we have analytical studies of the
methods of criticism; we have journal articles in which such studies are
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summarized and discussed. At the end, we are tempted to have a knowledge of the
great literary works at second-hand or third-hand instead of examining them
directly. For examples, there are Scherer's' examination of paradise Lost and
Matthew Arbold's' analysis of Scherer and Matthew. Arnold and their critical
remarks, there arises the danger of Milton's work being remamed unread. At best,
the study of criticism can be no substitute for the study of literature that is
criticized. At worst, it may keep us ignorant of the original work and prevent us
from acquiring the personal knowledge of the authors and books.
This danger of criticism is understandable in an age when creative literature is
in danger of being buried under a growing mass of exposition and commentary. Yet
we have to protest against such abuse of criticism, since we can never deny the
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utility of criticism. Criticism, in fact has its place and function in the world of
literature.
The distinction between the literature that deals with life and that which deals
with literature is an artificial one. Literature is the creation of whatever that
interests us in life. But personality is one of the chief facts in life. A critic who
interprets the personality of a great writer also deals with life, as the writer
interprets life as the subject of his study. A, noble book is as interesting as a noble
deed and the processes of art are as vital as those which are involved in author's
life of any-sided activities. William Watson defends his stand as one who has taken
the great poets as his subject matter deliberarey in the following lines:
"Holding these also to be very part
Nature's greatness and accounting not
their descants least heroical of deeds.'
True criticism also draw its matter and inspiration from life, and in its own
wav, it is also creative.
It becomes important to distinguish between the abuse and use of criticism.
We can make this distinction from our own experience of criticism when it becomes
a snare and when it is help to us. Criticism indeed becomes a snare only when we
remain satisfied with what some has said about a great author instead of studying
the author ourselves and master his works. In recent times, in the rush of modern
life, shortcuts to knowledge are numerous and we are easily tempted to depend
upon critics for information about many writers about whom the world talks freely
and about whom we also wish to talk freely but with whom we have no time or
patience to get acquainted directly. Also in case of studying a book life the Odyssey
we recoil from the task on the ground that it is very long and in turn, we prefer to
the epitome of its contents as provided in Ancient Classics for English Readers that
suits our needs. Such dependence upon literature of exposition must not be totally
condemned. We must treat the problem practically and if we insist on studying the
Odyssey instead of the summary, it would remain a sealed book cases and the
same may become true of many lengthy classics. Hudson points out that it is better
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to know something about the poem from the briefest sketch of it than to know
nothing about it. Since life is short and out margin of leisure is limited, and our
curiosity and wish to understand many important writers of the world are justified,
we could turn freely to the service rendered by critics as a substitute for our own
reading of the works or perhaps as a guide for subsequent use of the books. As an
illustration, consider the case of Voltaire, one of the greatest writers of the 18th
century. He is interesting both in himself and on account of the notable place he
has acquired in the history of literature. His publications number is more than 260
and he is a versatile writer. For the ordinary English reader, the mass of his
immense and varied output may remain unexplored but for Lord Morley value of
less than 400 pages which presents a compact and luminous study of the man, his
milieu and his work. A careful perusal of this volume will given him a better idea of
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Voltaire's genius, power, limitations and accomplishment than it is possible to

derive the opinion from his direct acquaintance of the author and his works.
Mathew Arnold calls the many minor writers as real "men of genius" having "a
genuine gift for what is true and excellent". Since they emit a life-giving stimulus, it
is salutary to come across a genius of this kind and to extract his honey. To read
many of these writers is impossible and we must be grateful to the intermediaries
who extract the honey for us and given it in an already available form. Their service
is of inestimable value and we have every right to take advantage of it.
It is only exaggeration that we must not depend upon other people for
knowledge of authors and books. Though (in principle our chief business is directly
with literature, it should not be assailed for taking into consideration the best
critical interpretation of literature. Bacon commends that distilled books are like
common distilled waters, flashy things. If one wants to test the individual power or
the life-giving stimulus of a book, it can be achieved only through immediate
contact. This can never be transmitted by an agent or expositor. Once ma reputed
American Professor told his student that the best book we could read on is Timon of
Athens, but most of the students of literature neglect his view. Hudson is of the
view that no analysis or criticism of a book can never be an adequate substitute for
our personal mastery of the text. Such an attitude provides a means of literary
culture and it is of greater value than the knowledge that we could obtain from a
commentary outside.
There is another danger inherent in our continual recourse to the literature of
criticism. We passively accept the other person's interpretation of a book or his
judgement upon it. The degree of this danger increases with the power of the critic
himself. It the critic happens to be a great person with exceptional learning, grasp
and vigour he imposes completely on us his views. Being aware of our own
shortcomings, we yield ourselves to him. He dominates our thought and his verdict
becomes final. In fact, the critic stands as an obstacle between us and the subject.
We could not establish a personal intercourse with the author and our mind could
not make a free play;
What then is the real use of criticism in our study of literature? The chief
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function of criticism is to enlighten and stimulate. If a great poet makes us part
takers of his larger sense of the meaning of literature. A true critic is one who is
well equipped for his task by knowledge of his subjects and is endowed with special
features of insight, penetration and comprehension. Such a man will see a great
deal more than we could do and there by he helps us to discover the books qualities
of power and beauty, to which we would have remained blind but for his help. Often
the critic gives us an entirely new approach. He could also translate very firmly into
words what were dimly recognized and remained. He is a pathfinder, a friendly
companion leading us into the unseen realm of the work of art. Also he teaches us
how to re-read a book with quickened intelligence and keener appreciation.
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Sometimes he challenges our own judgments and thereby provokes us, according to
Emerson. We are sure to gain by our contact with him in insight and power.
Criticism is regarded to have a twofold function in literature, namely
'interpretation' and 'Judgment'. While judgement is the end of criticism,
interpretation is considered to be the means towards that judgment or end. Of late,
the distinction between the roles has been enforced into prominence. Recently,
students of literature set the two functions in opposition and they maintain the
thesis that the chief duty of the critic is exposition.
What does the critic set out to accomplish as an interpreter? His task is large
and difficult. His purpose is to penetrate into the heart of the book before him: to
disengage its essential qualities of power and beauty: to distinguish between the
elements of transistoriness and the elucidate of permanence: to analyse and
formulate its meaning; to elucidate by direct examination the artistic and moral
principle involved consciously or unconsciously in the creation of the work of art.
Then critic makes explicit what is implicitly in the author's work: he exhibits
the interrelations between the parts and the connections between each of these
parts and the whole: through his explanation, unfolding and illumination, he will
task of judgment to us. Walter Pater considers that to feel the virtue of the poet or
creator to disengage it an set if forth as the three stages of critics task. In the
execution of this task: the critic will follow his own particular line of exposition he
may strictly confine himself to the book on hand; he may elucidate the work by
systematic reference to the other works of the author: he may throw light on the
work from outside by comparison and contrast: or he may step further and seek the
assistance of hisotiral interpretation. Whatever be the method, the critic's one aim
is to know and help to know the book as such.
Prof. Moulton's criticism of Shakespeare as a Dramatic Artist is a scientific
kind of literary criticism which pays its way for the critic as an interpreter from
different angles in his opinion, the bulk of literary criticism, whether in popular
conversation or in discussion occupies itself with the merits of authors and works.
These estimates are founded on canons of taste which are assumed to have met
with general acceptance or deduced from speculations as to fundamental
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conceptions of literary beatury. In opposition to this Prof. Moulton advocates the
principle of what he calls inductive criticism. They very name betrays the influence
of modern science and its avowed object is to bring the treatment of literature into
the circle of the inductive sciences'. This kind of criticism is not a branch of
literature but it remains necessarily a branch of science. As such, it seeks a
scientific accuracy and impartiality. Hence the inductive critic reviews the
phenomena of literature as they actually stand, inquiring into and endeavoring to
systmatise the laws and principles by which they are molulded and produce their
effects. Three important points of contrast of this inductive criticism from that of
the older judicial criticism may be indicated. First of all, judicial criticism is largely
concerned with the question of the order of merit among literary works, a question
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that lies outside science. Secondly, judicial criticism rests on the idea that the so
called laws of the state and so they are imposed by an external authority. They
become binding on the artist, since such laws are binding on the man in society but
for the inductive critic such laws do not exist. For him the laws of literature are to
be considered as the laws of nature where facts are reduced to formula. Thirdly,
judicial criticism proceeds upon the hypothesis that there are fixed standards by
which literature may be tried and adjudged. But in fact, these standards are as
summed by critics and they very from critic to critic and in different ages. Inductive
criticism, on the other hand, recognizes no fixed standards as it considers literature
as a product of evolution; its history is a history of unceasing transformation. As a
result, inductive criticism examines literature in the spirit of pure instigation. It has
nothing to do with the supposed or possible value of a piece of literary art or with
out personal feelings. The critic, as a scientist, addresses himself wholly to the
labour of creation.
The theory of inductive criticism advocates that the law of each authors work
must be sought within the work itself. It implies that the law found in an author or
a particular work can never be used as a standard of judgement or even as a guide.
Edmond Scherer, the French critic points out that the judgements of Voltaire
and Macaulay on Paradise Lost are not acceptable since one is indulged in
disparagement and the other in laudation. as a result, there is no real verdict of the
work. From these judgements, one can note the bias of the critic against the writer.
Hence a judge of literature should have the quality of detachment and impartiality.
In order to keep ourselves above our prejudices, 'Scherer advise us to adopt the
historical method, since it is more conclusive and equitable then the other schools
of criticism. This method aims at accounting for a work of art form a genius and the
circumstances under which it is developed. So we could criticize paradise Lost,
starting with Milton's genius and examining the intellectual, artistic and political
influences on the author. At this stage, Scherer Parts Company with Moulton since
the latter does not approve of the writer's
Since then many school of criticism have been established. There are several
theories concerning the purpose and methods of criticism. In spite of the
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development and variety, many learned scholars still dispute about the meaning of
Aristotle's famous dictum and literary criticism is kept crushed beneath the dead
weight of authority and tyranny of preconceived notions. Also the superstitious
veneration of the classics that began with the Renaissance lingers among the critics
today. That is, there is a general belief in the value of Greek and Latin writers as
permanent standards of excellence. As a result, criticism too often degenerated into
pedantic disquisitions on matters of little real importance, and sterile efforts to keep
production within certain prescribed bounds. Such criticism practically denied the
principle of development and the right of the new spirit in literature to find fresh
paths for itself. It ignored Worldworth's principle that every author, as far as he is
great and at the same time original has had the task of creating the taste by which
he is to be enjoyed".
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After having seen a sample of the French school of inductive criticism and the
English school of Judicial Criticism, we conclude that judgement in literature is
universal. What the inductive critic gives us, we shall always accept with gratitude;
but we shall none the less turn to the judicial critic in the hope that he may
complete the work of induction by helping us, on the basis of the results obtained,
to distinguish between what is excellent in literature and what is not.
4.6 REVISION POINTS
1) An Essay is essentially a short composition on any subject.
2) Montaigue is the pioneer of essays.
3) Personal nature is the essential quality of a good essay.
4) Francis Bacon is considered to be the father of English essay.
5) Charles Lamb is called the Prince among English Essayists.
4.7 ASSIGNMENTS
1) Read a few essays of Charles Lamb and comment on the element of pathos in it.
2) Read a short and compare it with the work of fiction and compare it with the
work of fiction you lead for the assignment of previous unit.
4.8 KEY WORDS
1) Voltaire:
2) Mathen Amold: A Victorian poet and critic
3) The Tatler and the Spectator: Names of Periodicals
4) Elia: The Penname of Charles Lambs
5) Surrealism.
1) Trace the history of English essays.
2) Write an essay on short story and its growing popularity today.
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58
UNIT – V
SOME SELECT LITERARY FORMS

STRUCTURE
5.0 Objectives
5.1 The Ode
5.2 The Elegy
5.3 The Sonnet
5.4 The Lyric
5.5 The Ballad
5.6 The Epic
5.7 Revision Points
5.8 Assignments
5.9 Key words
5.0 OBJECTIVES
To provide opportunity students to have a detailed knowledge of some of the
forms of poetry remains the main aim of this unit.
Also to encourage then to have discussion on some ‘literary forms’ is also
another motive of this concluding unit of this course.
5.1 ODE
Definition
The word ‘ode’ in Greek means song’. An ‘ode’ is a long lyric poem serious in
subject, dignified in style, elaborate in its stanzaic pattern expressing an exalted or
enthusiastic emotion. It was intended to be sung. It is often addressed to a person
or an abstraction.
Origin
The Greek poet, Pindar, was the originator of the ode. It was developed from
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the choric song of the Greek drama and was brought to its perfection by pindat in
the sixth century B.C. His odes were a short of choral songs, intended to be sung or
danced at a public occasion, such as the celebration of a victory in the Olympic
games.
Features
It is in the form of an address or invitation. It is exalted in subject-mater, and
elevated in tone and style. It is a serious and dignified composition.
It may be full of deep and sincere emotion but its expression is expected to be
much more consciously elaborate, impressive and diffuse.
It is often addressed directly to the being or object it treats of. The opening
lines, sometimes, contain an apostrophe or appeal. Shelley’s “Ode to the west wind”
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begins, ‘O Wild west wind’. Keats’s “Ode on a Grecian urn” begins “Thou still
unrevised bride of quietness’. Tennyson’s “To Virgil” begins Roman Virgil, thou that
singest, and so on.
Kinds of Odes
The Greek ode had two forms.
i). The Dorian or the Pindaric ode.
ii).The lesbian or Horatain ode.
The DORAIN ODE or the PINDARIC ODE
The Dorian ode derives its name from the district and the dialect in which it
was born. It was choric and was sung to the accompaniment of a dance. Its
structure was borrowed from the movement of the dances. Pindar, the Greak poet
used it successfully and so it came to be known by his name as the Pindaric Ode.
The stanzas were arranged in groups of three viz; the strophe, anti-strophe and the
epode. The strophe was sung while the chorus or the dancers moved in one
direction from the right to the left. The anti-strophe was sung while the dancers
moved in another direction, ie. From the left to the right. The epode was sung while
the dancers stood still. Examples are Thomas Gray’s Odes, “The progress of Poessy”
and “The Bard”.
The HORATIAN ODE
The lesbian Ode was simpler in form than the Pindaric Ode. It was popularized
in Latin by two great Roman writers Horace and Catullus. The Horatian Ode was
originally written on the matter, tone and form of the Roman Horace. In contrast to
the passion and visionary boldness of Pindaric Odes, Horatian odes are calm,
meditative and restrained. Examples are: Marvell’s “An Horatian Ode Upon
Cromwell’s Return from Ireland” and keat’s ode “To Autumn”.
Subjects
Pindar’s odes were written to praise and glorify some one-in this instance, the
winners in Olympic games. The earlier English Odes and many later ones were also
written to eulogise something: either a person (Dryden’s Anne Killignew) or the arts
of music (Dryden’s Alexander’s Feast’) or a time of day (Collin’s “Ode to Evening”) or
abstract concepts (Gray’s “Hymn to Adversity” and Wordsworth’s “Ode to Duty”).
Sometimes, it has for its theme, an important public action like a national jubilee
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(Marvell’s Upon Cromwell’s Return from Ireland”) or the death of a distinguished
personage (Tennyson’s “Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington”. Romantic
poets perfected the personal ode of description and passionate meditation. This is
stimulated by an aspect of the outer scene and attempts to solve a private or a
general problem: (Wordworth’s “Intimations Ode” and Coleridge’s Dejection: an
Ode” and Shelley’s Ode to the West Wind”.)
The ODE in English Literature
Except for a few attempts in the Pindaric or the Horatian Ode form, the
English Ode has pursued a course of its own as regards subject-matter, style
treatment and out-look not strictly bound by classical tradition. It is either regular
consisting of a series of exactly similar stanzas, like the Odes of Shelley and Keats,
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or Irregular when each stanza follows a different arrangement, as in wordworth’s

“Immortality Ode and several of the odes of Tennyson and Brides.
5.2 THE ELEGY
Definition
An elegy means a poem of lament at the passing away of an individual or a
way of life. The former theme is illustrated in Tennyson’s In Memoriam on the death
of Arthue Hallam and in W.H. Auden’s “In Memory of W.B. Yeats” The latter theme
is illustrated in Gray’s “Elegy written in the Country Churchyard”.
Origin
The elegy originated in ancient Greece. It covered a wide a wide range of
subjects both gay and the grave. It was known by its form and not by its subject-
mater. It was written in the elegiac measure couplet composed of a dactylic
hexameter followed by a dactylic pentameter. In modern usage, it is the theme that
matters, not the metre. The classical elegiac measure is not used in English verse.
Pastoral Elegy
An important species of the elegy is the pastoral elegy. This poetic form
originated by the Sicilian Greek poet, Theocritus, was continued by the Roman
Virgil, was developed in various European countries during the Renaissance and
remained current in English pastoral elegies are Milton’s “Lycidas” Shelley’s
“Adonais”, and Arnold’s “Thyrsis”.
Conventions of a Pastoral Elegy
1) The poet imagines himself to be a shepherd mourning the demise of another
shepherd. In “Lycidas”, Milton puts on the guise of a shepherd and Edward
Kind appears as the shepherd’s friend.
2) The poem contains a glorious description of their life against the pastoral
background. In ‘Lycidas’, Milton describes the lives of Edward King and himself
at the university as the lives on two shepherds working on the same farm and
feeling the same flock.
3) All nature joins in mourning the shepherd’s death. The poet introduces a
procession of mourners.
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4) It is customary for the poet to address some god or goddess and blame him or
her for the death of the person who is mourned. In ‘Lycidas’, ‘Milton addresses
the nymphs of the sea and reproaches them for not saving Lycidas from
drowning.
5) The sad note often changes towards the close to one of resignation or even joy
as the poet reconciles himself to the inevitable or expresses his faith in
immortality and future union. ‘Lycidas’ closes on note of optimism.
6) Though the poem is occasioned by the death of an individual it is an idle pretext
for the poet to communicate his powerful predilections and prejudices. Milton
laments the degradation of poetry and religion in “Lycidas”, an elegy on the
death of Milton’s friend, Edward King. “Tennyson philosophizes on the puzzles
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of life and destiny in’. “In Memorium, an elegy on the death of his friend,
Arthue Hallam.
Some of the pastoral conventionstend to be reflected in Walt Whitman’s great
elegy on Lincoln, “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloomed”.
Elegy in the modern context does not necessary mean a song of lamentation
over the death of an individual. To be precise, it is a reflection on death and allied
problems.
5.3 THE SONNET
Scorn not Sonnet; Critic, you have frowned,
Mindless of its just honours; with this key
Shakespeare unlocked his heart; the melody
Of this small lute gave ease to Petrarch’s Wound;
A thousand times this pipe did Tasso sound;
With it Camoens soothed an exile’s grief;
The sonnet glittererd, a gay myrtly leaf;
Amid the cypress with which dante crowned
His visionary brow: a glow – worm lamp,
It Cheered mild Spenser, called from faery – land
To struggle through dark ways; add when a damp
Fell round the path of Milton, in his hand
The thing became a trumpet; whence he blew
Soul-animating strains –alas, too few!
Definition
A sonnet is a lyric. It is a form of subjective poetry. It is a fourteen line stanza
in English Iambic Pentameter and complicated rhyme scheme. Conventionally, it is
divided into parts, the Octave or the first eight lines and the sestet or the last six
lines. Originally, it was a poem to be sung or recited to music. It is derived from the
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Italian ‘sonneto’ meaning ‘a little sound or strain’. It expresses one feeling, one idea,
one emotion. It is of extraneous growth. The personality of each writer, for example,
Petrarch, Shakespeare, Spencer, has given it a distinctive stamp.
Origin
The sonnet was born in Italy: It owes its origin to Dante. He wrote sonnets in
praise of his beloved, Peatrice. It was chosen and perfected by Petrarch. He
immortalized his lady, Laura, in his sonnets. It became an ideal medium for the
expression of love. Wyatt first employed this from in England, and it was developed
by Surrey. In the sonnets of wyatt, the fire of love burned with a glow. The sonnets
of Surrey were also grounded in love and were written Elizabeth Fitzgerald.
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Kinds of Sonnet
A sonnet is a short poem of 14 lines. It expresses one single thought or feeling.
It is of two kinds: 1. The Italian sonnet and 2. The English sonnet.
The Italian Sonnet or the Petrarchan Sonnet
Structure: In the Petrarchan sonnet, the Octave is divided into two quatrains
(four line group). The sestet is divided into two tercets (three line group). At the end
of the octave there is a pause or caesure, indicated by the punctuation or often
emphasized by a space. It is followed by a rolta or turn of thought. The turn implies
that thought is given a new application or summarized or possibly dispoted in the
sestet. Yet, this break is not invariably found in the Italian sonnet or in Milton.
Rhyme scheme: The octave has two rhymes (a&b) arranged, according to the
following scheme: abba, abba. The sestet sometimes has three rhymes and
sometimes two rhymes. They are different from those employed in the octave and
arranged in various ways as follows: cde, cde, or cdc, dcd, or cdedce.
Sonneteers: Petrarch’s sonnets were first imitated in England, both in form
and in primary subject – matter – a doting lover’s hopes and pains – by sir Thomas
What. The Petrarchan model was later used by Milton. Wordsworth and other
sonneteers in English by introducing a new pair of rhymes in the second half of the
octave.
The English sonnet or the Shakespearean Sonnet
The Earl of Surrey and other English experiment in the sixteenth century also
developed a new form called the English sonnet.
Structure and rhyme: The Shakespearean sonnet is divided into four parts. It
falls into three quatrains and a concluding couplet. The rhyme scheme abab, cdcd,
efef,gg. It has no paruse or no turn of thought at the end of the eighth line. It works
right up to the final couplet, where the highest peak of the poet’s thought is
reached.
This form was splendidly used by Shakespeare. It is now called after
Shakespeare, its practitioner and not after Surrey, its real originator.
The Spenserian Variety
Spenser evolved a new variety. The Quatrains in the Shakespearean sonnet are
all unconnected with one another. They have each their own rhymes and cannot,
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therefore, be said to be related structurally, though they are united by the subject
matter. In the Spenserian variety, each of the quatrains is linked to the other by an
admixture of the rhymes in the following manner: abab, bebe, cdcd ee. The couplet,
however, stands alone as in Shakespearean sonnets. In other words there is little
difference between the Spenserian sonnet and the Shakespearean sonnet.
There subject – matter: There is no set range of subjects for the sonnet.
Shakespeare limited his theme to love. Donne shifted from secular love to a variety
of religious themes in his Holy Sonnets. Milton expanded the range to other matters
of serious contemplation.
The Sonnet is thus considered by many to be ‘a pearly shell’, ‘a precious jewel’
“a little picture painted wall”.
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5.4 THE LYRIC
Definition
The lyric comes from the Greek word ‘Lurikos’ meaning ‘singing to the lyre’.
A lyric is a poem to be sung to the accompaniment of lyric.
Feat ures
A lyric is a short subjective poem, an outburst of the author’s inner most
thought and feeling. It is very often simple and direct in thought. It deals with a
single emotion and a single thought. It is musical. It is made musical by the
arrangement of vowels and consonants in such an artistic way as to give a music of
its own. It appeals more to the heart than to the intellect. Its appeal to the intellect
is through the heart.
Structure
A lyric is a well-unit poem. It is a highly accomplished piece from the point of
view to technique. It can be divided into three distinct parts. They correspond to the
three moods through which the poet passes when inspired by some emotion.
The first part states the poet’s emotion. It sets the poet’s imagination work. It
generally consists of the first few lines. The second part consists of the thoughts
suggested by the emotion. It forms the bulk of the poem. The third part marks the
poet’s return to the initial mood because, by this time the emotion which had
stirred his mind and heart, has found a release in fitting words and images. It
usually comprises the last stanza.
Subject – Matter
The speakers may simply express his state of mind in an ordered form (as in
Burns’s “O My Love’s Like a Red, Red Rose)”. Or he may gallantly elaborate a
compliment to his lady (as in Ben Jonson’s “Drink to Me Only with These Eyes),or
he may deploy an argument to persuade his mistress to take advantage of
opportunity and fleeting youth (as in Marvell’s “To His Coy Mistress”) or he
expresses a sustained process of observation and meditation in which he analyses
and tries to resolve an emotional problem (as in Wordsworth’s “Immortality Ode”) or
he may justify the choice of a way of life (as in Arnold’s “Dover Beach”).
Kind of the Lyric
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The balled, the ode, the sonnet and the elegy are special forms of the lyric.
5.5 THE BALLAD
Definition
‘Ballad’ etymologically means a dancing play’. The word ‘ballad’ is derived from
the French word ‘ballad’ which means ‘to dance’. Originally, it meant a song to
which one could dance.
It is a kind of narrative poem, impersonal in nature and dramatic in technique.
It is a short in verse.
Origin
Originally, it was sung from village to village to the accompaniment of a harp
or a fiddle by a strolling player or bands of singers who earned a living in this way.
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The minstrel usually sang in the chimney corner of the farmhouse or on the village
green where a group of eager listeners would assemble to be entertained. In the
days before printing was invented, it was handed down by oral tradition, each
successive generation making its won contribution to suit contemporary or local
condition. It is useless to hu8nt for the original version or chronology or authorship
ion a popular ballads.
Eg. Chavy Chase: In the literary balled, it is consciously created by the poet in
imitation of the folk balled, eg: Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner.
Subject-Matter
Its subjects are deeds rather than thoughts, for example, a memorable feud, a
thrilling adventure, a family disaster, love, war and the like. “Love and courtship,
though not usually marriage, are the mot universal and basic theme and the
sorrows of young girls betrayed by lovers provide inspirations or many of the most
moving”. (James Receives). His most popular subjects are sex and violence. Another
favorite subject in the old ballads is the supernatural.
Features of Characteristics
A ballad is usually short and fairly long. It was originally intended to be sung.
It was composed anonymously any transmitted orally. One characteristic of the folk
songs is their adaptability and variety. There is no correct version. It begins often
abruptly. It employs simple language. It is often the direct expression of love,
sorrow admiration or joy. It tells the story tersely through dialogue and described
action. It makes use of refrains.
Musicality
A ballad is meant to be sung, so, we must remember that when we read the
mere words of a ballad, we are experiencing only part of its total effect. It is only
when word and music are united, a ballad can really be taken in as a whole. It is
worth trying to obtain a performance of “The Deman Lover” on a gramophone
record in order to see how much is added by music.
Abruptness
It poems suddenly without any attempt at a systematic introduction.
Sometimes it begins with questions and answers, as in “The ship of the Fiend.
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O where have you been, my long-lost love
This long seven years and mair?
O ‘I’m come again to seek vour love
And the vows that you did swear.
Anonymity
A ballad is anonymous. Its authorship is unknown we cannot say who
originally wrote. It is impersonal in treatment with nothing to show the writer’s
identity or personality. It is as though the tale told itself. The singers of one
generation handed ballads down to the singers of the next generation and so on
over the years and the centuries.
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Incremental Repetition
It applies to the use of refrains but more to the repetition of stanzas with
increments either addition of changes in key-words to show advancement of the
story. The following stanzas are from “The Douglas Tragedy”.
O they rode on, and on they rode,
And all by the light of the moon
Until they came to the wan water,
And there they lighted down.
O they rode on, and on they road
And all by the light of the moon,
Until they came to his mother hall,
And there they lighted down.
The refrains are intended as imitations of an instrumental accompaniment
chorused by the audience to the sound of a fiddle while the soloist took breath.
Ballad Measure
It uses the ballad stanza. It is a quatrain in which the first and the third lines
are four-foot iambic ( a short syllable followed by a long). The second and the
fouthlines are three-foot iambic.
There lived / a wife / at U / she’s well a 4 feet
A weal / thy wife / was she b 3 feet
She had / three stout / add staliwart sons, c 4 feet
And sent / them o’er / the sea b 3 feet
Diction
About genuine folk-songs, there is a simplicity, directness and naturalness
often lacking in all kinds of poetry. It means use of homely similes, popular
metaphors and stock phrases: merry men, milk-white hand, yellow hair, red or
blood-red wine, gentle (knight, bonny bridge, daughter dear, pretty babe etc. the
diction is simple, homely and racy. It appeals directly to the common man or
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Thus, in theme, the ballad is universal. In language it is simple. In form, it is
oral culture retained not in books but in the minds and hearts of ordinary people.
In style, it is vigorous, vibrant, and melodious.
5.6 THE EPIC
Definition
The word “Epic” comes from the Greek word; epic which means’ a narrative
poem.
An epic is an extended or a long narrative poem on a great or serious or heroic
subject. It is related in an elevated or exalted style. It narrates the story of an event
of series of events concerning heroic faction by one or more individuals, usually
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over a long period of time. In short an epic is a poem on a grand scale, usually in
good many separate books concerned with the exploits of some great national hero,
historical or legendary.
Origin
The classic examples of the epic in European literature are the Iliad and The
Odyssey by the ancient Greek poet, Homer. They have served as models to all later
day epic poets. Each of these great works is a long tale in verse with famous heroes
for its principal characters, and it weaves together into an artistic form the many
legends of their exploits which were handed down from generation to generation by
word of mouth in song and story.
The Essentials of an Epic
i. Its action should be one, entire and great.
ii. It hero should be distinguished. The hero is of great national and cosmic
importance. In Homer’s Iliad, he is the Greek warrior, Achilles. Vigil’s
Aenead is the son of the goddess, Aphrodite. In Paradise Lost Adam
represents the entire human race.
iii. The Epic should easily arise from the main fable that is, there should be on
part detachable with out the loss of the whole.
THE CONVENTION OF AN EPIC
An Epic follows certain conventions.
i. Preposition Statement of theme.
The Epic poet begins by stating the subject matter or the theme of his Epic.
The statement of the theme is technically called the ‘proposition’. The subject
matter of Paradise Lost is the Fall of man brought about by God because.
Of man’s first disobedience, and the fruit.
Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste.
Brought Death into the world.
i. Invocation: Prayer to the Muse:
The Epic poet calls upon a muse or a guiding spirit to inspire him in his
composition of the Epic. The prayer to the muse is technically called an
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“Invocation”. In Paradise Lost Milton calls upon the Holy sprit to help him in the
writing of Paradise Lost.
ii. In Medias res: Action in the middle:
The Epic poet starts the story in the fallen angles in hell, gathering their forces
and determining revenge.
iii. Roll-call of major character:
The major characters are catalogues and described many of them having
dignified set speeches which reveal their characters. We have Milton’s description of
the procession of the fallen angles in Paradise Lost, Book I and of the debate in
pandemonium in Paradise Lost Book II.
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iv. Episodes
An Epic contains a number of thrilling, Episodes, such as the mustering of troops,
duels, wanderings, ordeals, and the like. In this respect they are all modeled upon
Homer of Virgil. Milton describes the war Heaven and the journey of Satan through
chase to discover the newly created world. Virgil talks of Achilles feats in the Trojan
war.
v. Supernatural machinery:
The action of the Epic is often controlled by supernatural agents-the classical
god and goddesses in Homer and Virgil, and Jehovah, Christ and the angles in
Paradise Lost. “While the supernatural may hover in the background and intervene
now and then, it is Man who occupies the center of the epic stage. The epic is about
Man and is addressed to men, and the epic poet’s concern is with Man’s destiny.
vi. Style:
An Epic is meant for a few and not for all. It is narrated in a style for removed
from ordinary speech. It employs certain conventional poetic devices such as
Homeric Epithets and Homeric Similes. Milton’s “grand Style” includes his
Lantinate diction and stylized syntax, his sonorous lists of names and wide-ranging
allusions and his imitation of Homer epic similes and epithets. “The Hexameter of
Homer and Virgil, he anushtup of Valmiki and Vyasa, the Terza Rima of Dante, the
symphonic blank verse of Milton, the crystalline iambic pentameter of Savitri, all
play no mean part in charging these great epics with life and movement”.
vii. Length:
The epic is divided into books, usually twelve in number. Milton’s Paradise
Lost has twelve books while that Iliad and the Odyssey have twenty-four books
each.
Byron satirizes the epic apparatus in the following stanza from Don Juan:
My poem’s epic, and is meant to be

Divided in twelve books; each book containing,
With love, and war, a heavy gale at sea,
A list of hips, and captains, and kings reigning,
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New characters; the episodes are three:
A panoramic view of hell’s in training
After the style of Virgil and of Hormer,
So that my name of Epic’s no misnomer.
(Lessons by Dr. N.KALAITHALAN)
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5.7 REVISION POINTS

1) Ode means a song. It is a serious composition and in the form of an address.
2) There are two main types of odes – Pindaric & Horatian
3) Elegy is a morning song
4) Pastoral elegy is an important type of
5) Sonnet is of Italian origin
6) Sonnet is of two kinds – petrachan and the English sonnet.
7) Lyric is a song sung with the accompanier of a lyre.
8) Lyric is essentially subjective.
9) Balled is a short tale in verse; an Epic is a long narrative.
5.8 ASSIGNMENT
1) Read Coleridge’s ‘Ancient Mariner’ and Keats’ ‘La Belle Dam sans Merci’ to know
the features of Ballads.
2) Write on the epic conventions.
5.9 KEY WORDS
1) Pindar – Greek poet
2) Lesbian – Refers to the islands called lesbos.
3) Petrarch – An Italian poet
4) Lyte – A musical Instrument
5) Burden – Retrains.
5.10 TERMINAL EXERCISE
1) Write an essay on the sonnet.
2) What do you mean by Elegy? What are the conventions of a pastoral Elegy.
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MODEL QUESTION PAPER
(PART–III)
LITERARY FORMS
Time: 3 Hours Max.Marks:100

ANSWER ANY FIVE OF THE FOLLOWING
ALL QUESTIONS CARRY EQUAL MARKS (5X20=100)
1) Comment on the aims of poetry.
2) "Style is the real index of the author's personality" – Discuss
3) Consider the distinguishing qualities of an Epic
4) Define elegy. Discuss the treatments of the theme in an elegy.
5) What are the essential features of an Ode?
6) Comment on the elements of a novel.
7) Why does marian Crawford call novel as a 'pocket theatre'
8) Consider drama as a 'criticism of life
9) Enumerate the important elements of the short story.
10) 'Criticism is literature on literature'- discuss.
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TERMINAL ASSIGNMENT
1) Write short note on the following
i. Sonnet
ii. Style
iii. Pocket Theatre
iv. Short Story
v. Personal Essay.
2) Write on the following in about 250 works each

i. The elements of novel
ii. Literary criticism
iii. Literature as a mirror of our life.
SUGGESTED READING
1) Abrams, M.H. A Glossary to Literary Terms Madras: Macmillan, 1978.
2) Beckson, Karl land ganz, Arthur. A Reader’s guide to literary Terms Dictionary
Chandigarh: Vishal Publishers, 1982.
3) Gupta A.N. and Gupta and Gupta, Satish. A Dictionary of Literary Terms
Bareilly: Prakash Book Dept. 1983.
4) Hudsan, W.H. An Introduction of the Study of Literature.
5) Mayhead, Robin. Understanding Poetry London: Pan Books, 1965.
6) Rees, Jamer. Understanding Poetry London: Pan Books, 1965.
7) Rees, An Introduction to the study of Literature.
8) Iyengar, Srinivasa, K.R. Introduction of the study of literature.

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Literary Forms

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B.A.

ENGLISH AND COMMUNICATION

1) The Nature and Elements of Literature

Unit Title Page

GENERAL INTRODUCTION TO LITERARY FORMS

The knowledge of the different forms of literature is essential to anyone willing

AN INTRODUCTION TO LITERATURE & LITERARY FORMS

fall of critics standards and the ideals of influence on a particular individual in

The full significance of poetry as an interpretation of life through imagination

rhetoric but also its philosophy, as philosophy is confused, inconsistent and

accented and unaccented syllables of the English variety are considered as

faculty of poetic appreciation since it becomes more importance than our

6) Rime adds to the musical quality of a poetry

FICTION & DRAMA

The more important condition of characterization in the drama than that of

themselves. In considering this direct evidence, it is obvious that we must keep

evolution of the dramatic organism, either by marking a fresh stage in the

Greek drama originated in rustic festivals, which in early Attica were

commemorated in the chief services of the calendar. This liturgical drama, in

ESSAY, SHORT STORY & CRITICISM

although best known as a writer of stories, wrote a number of essays on literature

communicate the stir of excitement to the reader. If prose could be compared to

Voltaire's genius, power, limitations and accomplishment than it is possible to

SOME SELECT LITERARY FORMS

or Irregular when each stanza follows a different arrangement, as in wordworth’s

My poem’s epic, and is meant to be

5.7 REVISION POINTS

MODEL QUESTION PAPER

Time: 3 Hours Max.Marks:100

ALL QUESTIONS CARRY EQUAL MARKS (5X20=100)

1) Comment on the aims of poetry.

2) "Style is the real index of the author's personality" – Discuss

3) Consider the distinguishing qualities of an Epic

4) Define elegy. Discuss the treatments of the theme in an elegy.

5) What are the essential features of an Ode?

6) Comment on the elements of a novel.

7) Why does marian Crawford call novel as a 'pocket theatre'

8) Consider drama as a 'criticism of life

9) Enumerate the important elements of the short story.

10) 'Criticism is literature on literature'- discuss.

2) Write on the following in about 250 works each

1) Abrams, M.H. A Glossary to Literary Terms Madras: Macmillan, 1978.

4) Hudsan, W.H. An Introduction of the Study of Literature.

5) Mayhead, Robin. Understanding Poetry London: Pan Books, 1965.

6) Rees, Jamer. Understanding Poetry London: Pan Books, 1965.

7) Rees, An Introduction to the study of Literature.

8) Iyengar, Srinivasa, K.R. Introduction of the study of literature.

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