Waiting for Godot

Thinking Activity

Hello Readers! 

    As a part of our academic study, we have had a movie screening of "Waiting for Godot" By Samuel Beckett, after discussion of sir on this movie screening, we have a task to give a review or answer the question given by sir, so let's discuss. 

The movie is directed by Michael Lindsay-Hogg. In this 2001 movie, Barry McGovern and Johnny Murphy played Vladimir and Estragon, where as Lucky and Pozzo were performed by Alan Standford and Stephen Brennan, respectively.

Q. What connection do you see in the setting("A country road. A tree. Evening.) of the play and these paintings.

Ans:

   The setting of the play is inspired by two paintings by Caspar David Friedrich. The title of this painting is 'longing', here longing means deep desire for something. Waiting is connected with longing. In the painting two person see towards sunrise and sunset, it stand for bright hope and despair and in the play we find similar things.and also represent the time is passing on. 

Q.The tree is the only important 'thing' in the setting. What is the importance of tree in both acts? Why does Beckett grow a few leaves in Act 2 on the barren tree- The tree has four or five leaves?

In second act we find that there is 2,3, leaves come it's reflect that nature has no connection with humanity or there is no connection between nature and human being just because nature has grown on itself nature never wait for anything and when time come nature will change that is the reflection of second act.

Q-In both acts, evening falls into night and moon rises. How would you like to interpret this 'Coming for night and moon' when actually they are Waiting For Godot?

In both the act we find that when night comes its reflection of there life how are absurd  they are waiting for something is not come so finally the night is reflection of there lost or something that they want to achieve but then not achieve or then not get success,

And when the moon rise it's  reflect that there is one hope that The Dark night will be end with this beautiful moon and there life darkness is also and just like night will end and morning comes so the moon is reflection of hope in Dark night.

Q-The director feels the setting with some debris. Can you read any meaning in the contours of debris in the setting of the play?

Ans. The director used debris in the setting. So, it can be the influence of the World war-2 in the material world. Therefore, we can say that the meaninglessness of material world that keep on destroying, nothing is permanent in the life.

Q-The play begins with the dialogue “Nothing to be done”. How does the theme of ‘nothingness’ recurs in the play?

Just becauseboth the character do lots of activity to " kill time " but there is nothing happen in the life it represent that a failure person that never achieve something or that person's life is nothing or absurdity we find just because there is no hope for good thing happened that's why and after doing all the things still there nothing to be done y just because they are waiting for someone or like they want to achieve something in the life and they are in the way but still that don't find it that's why the life is " nothing to be done."

Q-  Do you agree: “The play (Waiting for Godot), we agreed, was a positive play, not negative, not pessimistic. As I saw it, with my blood and skin and eyes, the philosophy is: 'No matter what— atom bombs, hydrogen bombs, anything—life goes on. You can kill yourself, but you can't kill life." (E.G. Marshal who played Vladimir in original Broadway production 1950s)?

Yes just because its representation of absurdity and philosophy an existentialism, that's why display is not negative or Pessimistic just because it's a reflection of hope that at the end of the life there is good thing happened up till and of the last breath we have to wait for something which give us success peace honour or some kind of social important anything which we are waiting for.

Q-Vladimir and Estragon talks about ‘hanging’ themselves and commit suicide, but they do not do so. How do you read this idea of suicide in Existentialism?

Suicide in existentialism we find that it's a symbolically represent the death by philosophy  suicide means philosophical suicide at that moment person stop to thinking that is the suicide which we call philosophical suicide

The Birthday party

 Thinking Activity

Hello readers! 

    Welcome to my blog, we have had movie screening on " The Birthday party ", so based on this we have a task to give an answer of the question of the worksheet, so let's see one by one. 

The Film Screening 

Film Screening: ‘The Birthday Party’ - a British drama film (1968)- directed by 

William Friedkin (The Birthday Party) -  based on an unpublished screenplay by 2005 Nobel Laureate Harold Pinter, which he adapted from his own play The Birthday Party (Pinter, The Birthday Party).  

#Harold Pinter

Harold Pinter  was born in 10 October 1930  and he was died in  24 December 2008.He was a British playwright, screenwriter, director and actor. He got Nobel Prize  winner, Pinter was one of the most influential modern British dramatists with a writing career that spanned more than 50 years.

          He was a sprinter and a keen cricket player, acting in school plays and writing poetry.He also directed or acted in radio, stage, television, and film productions of his own and others' works.Pinter's career as a playwright began with a production of The Room in 1957. His second play, The Birthday Party.

Is movie successful in giving us the effect of menace? Where you able to feel it while reading the text?

the movie giving a successful effect of menace. While we are reading the play at some level it creates that kind of effect but not that much like film does because the audio and visual effects are more effective that reading text. In the movie, we find the effect of menace clearly in the interrogation scene where the number of the question asked and through the loud sound effect and Stanley was sweating in fear and frustration and when Stanley hears about the two strangers he runs in a fear.

What do you read in 'newspaper' in the movie? Petey is reading newspaper to Meg, it torn into pieces by McCain, pieces are hidden by Petey in last scene.

Newspaper has a symbolically significant in the movie. Newspaper can be used for hiding self from unnecessary things or situation. In the scene in which Petey reading newspaper and mag is working and asking current news. It shows power position in relationship. Petey in superior position and Mag in inferior position. Newspaper also reflects reality. Petey hide the pieces of newspaper because he not wanted to show Mag reality. Stanley tried to going against Goldberg and McCain may be fight for truth but this pieces of newspapers shows truth is broken and can not stand up against them.

Camera is positioned over the head of McCain when he is playing Blind Man's Buff and is positioned at the top with a view of room like a cage (trap) when Stanley is playing it. What interpretations can you give to these positioning of camera?

  The camera positioned over the head of MacCann when he is playing, blind man's buff, it presents the reality, that we have not privacy and not free from the government, it suggests that they keep watching on us. 

Pinter restored theater to its basic elements: an enclosed space and unpredictable dialogue, where people are at the mercy of one another and pretense crumbles." (Pinter, Art, Truth & Politics: Excerpts from the 2005 Nobel Lecture). Does this happen in the movie?

We can said that, some extent it happens in the movie. Everyone has love and care for each other for instance Meg, lulu and Petey show care for Stanley but at the end when Stanley is in problem no one can helps or even care. So, we can connect this with America and and other countries for example, when many Muslim countries have care and love for other Muslim countries but when America opposes any country like Iran and Iraq then Saudi Arabia can not do anything like Petey, Meg can not do for Stanley because power make them underdog.

Thank you.... 

Key themes of Existentialism

 Assignment

Name : Virani Dhara 

Course: M. A. English

Semester: 3

Batch: 2019-2021

Roll No: 4

Submitted to: Smt S. B. Gardi Department of English. 

Paper no : 

Subject: The Modernist Literature

Topic: key themes of Existentialism

# Introduction

•  Existentialism is a catch-all term for those philosophers who consider the nature of the human condition as a key philosophical problem and who share the view that this problem is best addressed through ontology. This very broad definition will be clarified by discussing seven key themes that existentialist thinkers address. I.e.

• Philosophy as a way of life

• Anxiety and Authenticity

• Freedom

• Situatedness

• Existence

• Irrationality or absurdity

• The Crowd

Existentialism is a philosophy that emphasizes individual existence, freedom and choice. It is the view that humans define their own meaning in life, and try to make rational decisions despite existing in an irrational universe. It focuses on the question of human existence, and the feeling that there is no purpose or explanation at the core of existence. It holds that, as there is no God or any other transcendent force, the only way to counter this nothingness (and hence to find meaning in life) is by embracing existence.

Thus, Existentialism believes that individuals are entirely free and must take personal responsibility for themselves (although with this responsibility comes angst, a profound anguish or dread). It therefore emphasizes action, freedom and decision as fundamental, and holds that the only way to rise above the essentially absurd condition of humanity (which is characterized by suffering and inevitable death) is by exercising our personal freedom and choice 

Existentialism is a catch-all term for those philosophers who consider the nature of the human condition as a key philosophical problem and who share the view that this problem is best addressed through ontology. This very broad definition will be clarified by discussing seven key themes that existentialist thinkers address. Those philosophers considered existentialists are mostly from the continent of Europe, and date from the 19th and 20th centuries.

Outside philosophy, the existentialist movement is probably the most well-known philosophical movement, and at least two of its members are among the most famous philosophical personalities and widely read philosophical authors. It has certainly had considerable influence outside philosophy, for example on psychological theory and on the arts. Within philosophy, though, it is safe to say that this loose movement considered as a whole has not had a great impact, although individuals or ideas counted within it remain important. Moreover, most of the philosophers conventionally grouped under this heading either never used, or actively disavowed, the term ‘existentialist’.

• Key themes of Existentialism     Although a highly diverse tradition of thought, seven themes can be identified that provide some sense of overall unity. Here, these themes will be briefly introduced; they can then provide us with an intellectual framework within which to discuss exemplary figures within the history of existentialism.

# Philosophy as a way of life

Philosophy should not be thought of primarily either as an attempt to investigate and understand the self or the world, or as a special occupation that concerns only a few. Rather, philosophy must be thought of as fully integrated within life. To be sure, there may need to be professional philosophers, who develop an elaborate set of methods and concepts (Sartre makes this point frequently) but life can be lived philosophically without a technical knowledge of philosophy.  Existentialist thinkers tended to identify two historical antecedents for this notion. First, the ancient Greeks, and particularly the figure of Socrates but also the Stoics and Epicureans. Socrates was not only non-professional, but in his pursuit of the good life he tended to eschew the formation of a ‘system’ or ‘theory’, and his teachings took place often in public spaces. In this, the existentialists were hardly unusual. In the 19th and 20th centuries, the rapid expansion of industrialisation and advance in technology were often seen in terms of an alienation of the human from nature or from a properly natural way of living. 

    The second influence on thinking of philosophy as a way of life was German Idealism after Kant. Partly as a response to the 18th century Enlightenment, and under the influence of the Neoplatonists, Schelling and Hegel both thought of philosophy as an activity that is an integral part of the history of human beings, rather than outside of life and the world, looking on. Later in the 19th century, Marx famously criticised previous philosophy by saying that the point of philosophy is not to know things – even to know things about activity – but to change them.  The concept of philosophy as a way of life manifests itself in existentialist thought in a number of ways. Let us give several examples, to which we will return in the sections that follow. First, the existentialists often undertook a critique of modern life in terms of the specialisation of both manual and intellectual labour. Specialisation included philosophy. One consequence of this is that many existentialist thinkers experimented with different styles or genres of writing in order to escape the effects of this specialisation.

  the truths of existence are immediately lived, felt and acted. Likewise, for Nietzsche and Heidegger, it is essential to recognise that the philosopher investigating human existence is, him or herself, an existing human. 

# Anxiety and Authenticity

A key idea here is that human existence is in some way ‘on its own’; anxiety (or anguish) is the recognition of this fact. Anxiety here has two important implications. First, most generally, many existentialists tended to stress the significance of emotions or feelings, in so far as they were presumed to have a less culturally or intellectually mediated relation to one’s individual and separate existence. This idea is found in Kierkegaard, as we mentioned above, and in Heidegger’s discussion of ‘mood’; it is also one reason why existentialism had an influence on psychology. Second, anxiety also stands for a form of existence that is recognition of being on its own. What is meant by ‘being on its own’ varies among philosophers. For example, it might mean the irrelevance (or even negative influence) of rational thought, moral values, or empirical evidence, when it comes to making fundamental decisions concerning one’s existence. As we shall see, Kierkegaard sees Hegel’s account of religion in terms of the history of absolute spirit as an exemplary confusion of faith and reason. Alternatively, it might be a more specifically theological claim: the existence of a transcendent deity is not relevant. 

Related to anxiety is the concept of authenticity, which is let us say the existentialist spin on the Greek notion of ‘the good life’. As we shall see, the authentic being would be able to recognise and affirm the nature of existence. 

Existentialists such as Martin Heidegger, Hanna Arendt or Gabriel Marcel viewed these social movements in terms of a narrowing of the possibilities of human thought to the instrumental or technological. This narrowing involved thinking of the world in terms of resources, and thinking of all human action as a making, or indeed as a machine-like ‘function’.

#Freedom

The next key theme is freedom. Freedom can usefully be linked to the concept of anguish, because my freedom is in part defined by the isolation of my decisions from any determination by a deity, or by previously existent values or knowledge. Many existentialists identified the 19th and 20th centuries as experiencing a crisis of values. This might be traced back to familiar reasons such as an increasingly secular society, or the rise of scientific or philosophical movements that questioned traditional accounts of value (for example Marxism or Darwinism), or the shattering experience of two world wars and the phenomenon of mass genocide. It is important to note, however, that for existentialism these historical conditions do not create the problem of anguish in the face of freedom, but merely cast it into higher relief. Likewise, freedom entails something like responsibility, for myself and for my actions. Given that my situation is one of being on its own – recognised in anxiety – then both my freedom and my responsibility are absolute. 

#Situatedness

The next common theme we shall call ‘situatedness’. Although my freedom is absolute, it always takes place in a particular context. My body and its characteristics, my circumstances in a historical world, and my past, all weigh upon freedom. This is what makes freedom meaningful. Suppose I tried to exist as free, while pretending to be in abstraction from the situation. In that case I will have no idea what possibilities are open to me and what choices need to be made, here and now. In such a case, my freedom will be naïve or illusory. This concrete notion of freedom has its philosophical genesis in Hegel, and is generally contrasted to the pure rational freedom described by Kant. Situatedness is related to a notion we discussed above under the heading of philosophy as a way of life: the necessity of viewing or understanding life and existence from the ‘inside’.  For example, many 19th century intellectuals were interested in ancient Greece, Rome, the Medieval period, or the orient, as alternative models of a less spoiled, more integrated form of life. 

#Existence

Although, of course, existentialism takes its name from the philosophical theme of ‘existence’, this does not entail that there is homogeneity in the manner existence is to be understood. One point on which there is agreement, though, is that the existence with which we should be concerned here is not just any existent thing, but human existence. There is thus an important difference between distinctively human existence and anything else, and human existence is not to be understood on the model of things, that is, as objects of knowledge. One might think that this is an old idea, rooted in Plato’s distinction between matter and soul, or Descartes’ between extended and thinking things. But these distinctions appear to be just differences between two types of things. Descartes in particular, however, is often criticised by the existentialists for subsuming both under the heading ‘substance’, and thus treating what is distinctive in human existence as indeed a thing or object, albeit one with different properties.

#Irrationality/Absurdity

Among the most famous ideas associated with existentialism is that of ‘absurdity’. Human existence might be described as ‘absurd’ in one of the following senses. First, many existentialists argued that nature as a whole has no design, no reason for existing. Although the natural world can apparently be understood by physical science or metaphysics, this might be better thought of as ‘description’ than either understanding or explanation. Thus, the achievements of the natural sciences also empty nature of value and meaning. Unlike a created cosmos, for example, we cannot expect the scientifically described cosmos to answer our questions concerning value or meaning. 

Absurdity is thus closely related to the theme of ‘being on its own’, which we discussed above under the heading of anxiety.

The Crowd

Existentialism generally also carries a social or political dimension. Insofar as he or she is authentic, the freedom of the human being will show a certain ‘resolution’ or ‘commitment’, and this will involve also the being – and particularly the authentic being – of others. For example, Nietzsche thus speaks of his (or Zarathustra’s) work in aiding the transformation of the human, and there is also in Nietzsche a striking analysis of the concept of friendship; for Heidegger, there must be an authentic mode of being-with others, although he does not develop this idea at length; the social and political aspect of authentic commitment is much more clear in Sartre, de Beauvoir and Camus.

    In positive side of the social or political dimension. However, leading up to this positive side, there is a description of the typical forms that inauthentic social or political existence takes. 

# conclusion

 Through  whole this discussion we can said that, the term Existentialism is  a deeply concerned and contained six or seven main theme to discuss the existentialism term. 

Work citations

• Warnock Mary. Existentialism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970)

• Barrett William. Irrational Man: A Study in Existential Philosophy (New York: Anchor House, 1990)

• Reynolds Jack. Understanding Existentialism (Stocksfield: Acumen, 2006)

• Earnshaw Steven. Existentialism: A Guide for the Perplexed (London: Continuum, 2006)

Gothic elements in Poe's Short Stories

 Assignment

Name : Virani Dhara 

Course: M. A. English

Semester: 3

Batch: 2019-2021

Roll No: 4

Submitted to: Smt S. B. Gardi Department of English. 

Paper no : 10

Subject: The American Literature

Topic: Gothic elements in Poe's Short stories

Edgar Allan Poe

Edgar Allan Poe (January 19,1809-October 7,1849) was an American author, poet, editor and literary critic, considered part of the American Romantic Movement best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre. Credited to be the inventor of the detective fiction genre, Poe has been regarded as one of the earliest American practitioners of the genre of short story. He has also significantly contributed to then emerging genre of science fiction now known also as Sci-fi literature. The first well-known American writer who endeavored to earn bread and butter by writing alone, Poe had to live a financially difficult life and career. He was born as Edgar Poe in Boston, Massachusetts; he was orphaned young when his mother left for heaven shortly after his father abandoned the family. Poe was taken in by John and Frances Allan, of Richmond, Virginia, but he had never been formally adopted by them. He studied at the University of Virginia for one semester but had to leave due to financial scarcity. His publishing career commenced modestly, with an anonymous collection of poems, ‘Tamerlane and Other Poems' (1827), credited only to “ a Bostonian” 

  Poe channelized his attention to writing prose and spent the next numerous years working for literary journals and periodicals. Gradually he managed to earn repute for his own style of literary criticism. His work compelled him to be a wanderer by moving among several cities, including Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York City. In Baltimore in 1835, he tied Wedlock with Virginia Clemm, his 13-year-old cousin. Later, in January 1845 Poe published his poem, ‘The Raven’ which became an immediate hit. His wife died of tuberculosis two years after it’s publication. He began planning to produce his own journal, The Penn through he died before the journal could 7, 1849, at age 40, Poe died in Baltimore; the cause of his death is unidentified and has been variously attributed to alcohol, brain congestion, cholera, drugs, heart disease, rabies, suicide, tuberculosis, and other agents. The mystery surrounding Poe's death has led to many myths and urban legends. The reality is that no one knows for sure what happened during the last few days of his life. From alcoholism to rabies, myriad possibilities have been checked for his death time and again. His life was finally an enigma. No wonder why Poe's stories pertain to mysteries of life and death. 

  Thematic concerns in his stories range from abnormalities of human behavior, untimely and enigmatic death of characters, physical and psychological abnormalities, guit-ridden conscience, incest, cryptic messages, horror caused by ghostly appearances, I explicable incidents like the collapse of a house, hallucinations, detection of crime and culprit, perversion, so on and so forth. 

• The Tell-tale Heart

It is horrific tale of an old man with a ‘vulture eye’s who is murdered; yet his heart seems to keep on beating. To the reader's utter shock, he assassinates the old man to get rid of his evil eye. It can be interpreted as the voice of his tormenting conscience which doesn’t allow him a breath of relief. Ultimately, he fails to suppress the crescendo of his nagging soul and blurts out his crime inadvertently. 

• The Black Cat

It is a story of guilty murderer who breaks down and reveals himself. It is the height of human perversion that the man who once loved animals so dearly gets infuriated by a tiny gesture of a cat and kills the poor innocent creature. Caught in the tentacles of his own devilish soul, he brings another cat and brutally murdered the cat as well as his own wife. The first person narrative gives it a touch of authenticity. Poe's signature style of gruesome acts and macabre atmosphere makes it one of his most memorable stories. 

• The Fall of the House of Usher

The story has a narrator who is invited to see his old childhood friend at his isolated abode. What follows is a series of fantastic ideas- such as Usher believing everything in the house to have ‘sentenced', coupled with the impending death of his sister. Critics have focused on the possibilities of the theme of incest In this story. 

• The Purloined Letter

It is an early forerunner of the modern detective story. It tells the tale of a woman of royalty who is blackmailed by a cabinet minister. 

• The Cask of Amontillado

It is about Fortunato who has insulted the narrator and now he is out to avenge it. He cajoles Fortunato to come to his home as a connoisseur to his home as a connoisseur to check the veracity of a rare brand of Amontillado. It is a startling story of how much one can get offended by a friend’s taunting remarks and to which extent one can go to avenge his humiliations. 

• The Gold Bug

It is a story of William Legrand who was stung by a gold-colored bug. His servant, Jupiter, doubts that Legrand is probably turning insane and seeks help of  Legrand's friend, an unnamed narrator. He consents to come to his old friend's home. Legrand pulls the other two into a thrilling enterprise after decoding a secret message that will lead to a buried treasure. With the theme of cryptography, the story is a forerunner of the genre which is now known as detective fiction. 

  Edgar Allan Poe is considered a father figure for the genre of short story as he was one of the earliest writers of short fiction. Despite being a poet, editor and literary critic, his prime contribution of short story in America. Generations after generation of writers in the world have been inspired and influenced by his theory of short story and by his stories as well. His most recurrent themes deal with questions of death, including it’s physical signs, the effects of decomposition, concerns of premature burial, the reanimation of the dead and mourning. Poe’s early detective fiction tales featuring C. Auguste Dupin laid the groundwork for future detective in literature. 

• Gothic elements in Edgar Allan Poe’s short stories:

What is gothic?

         The gothic novel was invented almost single-handedly by Horace Walpole, whose The Castle of Otranto(1764) contains essentially all the elements that constitute the genre. Walpole's novel was imitated not only in the eighteenth century and not only in the novel form, but it has influenced writing, poetry, and even film making up to the present day. It introduced the term "gothic romance" to the literary world. Due to its inherently supernatural, surreal and sublime elements, it has maintained a dark and mysterious appeal.

      Gothic literature is devoted primarily to stories of horror, the fantastic, and the “darker” supernatural forces. These forces often represent the “dark side” of human nature—irrational or destructive desires.

    Generally speaking, gothic literature delves into the macabre nature of humanity in its quest to satisfy mankind's intrinsic desire to plumb the depths of terror.

The key features of gothic texts are:

1)the appearance of the supernatural,

2)the psychology of horror and/or terror,

3)the poetics of the sublime,

4) a sense of mysteryland dread

5) the appealing hero/villain,

6) the distressed heroine, and

7) strong moral closure (usually at least)

GOTHIC ELEMENTS IN ADGER ALLAN POE'S SHORT STORIES

       Edgar Allan Poe is one of the famous Gothic poet, critic and writers. Poe’s writing is always characterized by the elements of Gothic such as brooding atmosphere, thrilling exploration of characters in various states of extremity, sinister, violence and insanity. In this thesis, I will describe the three main characteristics of Gothic. They are mystery, horror and madness of the character.

Horror

       Horror is the usual but not necessarily the main ingredient of Gothic fiction. Horror story focuses on creating a feeling of fear. It takes big part in forming the body of folk literature. They can have supernatural elements and features such as ghosts, witches or vampires or they can address more realistic psychological fears.

     Edgar Allan Poe raised the horror story to a level far above mere entertainment through their skilful intermingling of reason and madness, eerie atmosphere and everyday reality.

        His tales are short, intense, and sensational and have the power to inspire horror and terror. He depicts extremes of fear, suffering and insanity and, through the operations of evil, gives us glimpses of hell. Among his most notable horror stories are The Fall of the House of Usher (1839), The Murders in the Rue Morgue (1841), A Descent into the Maelstrom(1841), The Masque of the Red Death (1842), The Pit and the Pendulum, The Black Cat and The Tell-tale Heart(all 1843), The Case of M. Valdemar (1845) and The Cask of Amontillado (1846).    

• Madness of character:

 Madness of character is one of the Gothic elements, which is almost always appears in Gothic fiction. It is a change of the character’s attitude, which is influenced by evil thought, crime, superstitious belief, and obsession and so on. According to a website about elements of the Gothic Novel, usually the characters that get mad are male characters while the women are in distress. As an appeal to the pathos and sympathy of the reader, the female characters often face events that leave them fainting, terrified, screaming, suffering and destroyed by the madness that consumes the male character. It is also a characteristic of Gothic element.

Mystery

      The mystery story is an age-old popular genre and is related to several other forms. Elements of mystery may be present in narratives of horror or terror, pseudoscientific fantasies, crime stories, accounts of diplomatic intrigue, affair of codes and ciphers and secret societies, or any situation involving an enigma. Edgar Allan Poe’s short story The Gold Bugs a classic example of one perennially popular type of mystery.

The Weather

 The Weather is used in a number of ways and forms, some of these being:

Mist-This convention in Gothic Literature is often used to obscure objects by reducing visibility or to prelude the insertion of a terrifying person or thing;

  Storms-These frequently accompany important events. Flashes of lightning accompany revelation; thunder and downpours prefigure the appearance of a character or the beginning of a significant event e.g thunder precedes the entrance of the witches in ‘Macbeth‛;

Sunlight-represents goodness and pleasure; it also has the power to bestow these upon characters.

Setting in a castle

     The action takes place in and around an old castle, sometimes seemingly abandoned, sometimes occupied. The castle often contains secret passages, trap doors, secret rooms,trick panels with hidden levers, dark or hidden staircases, and possibly ruined sections.

An atmosphere

      Poe is also known for creating compelling atmosphere in all of his stories. As a literary element, atmosphere is the combination of a specific setting and tone. Poe often creates an eerie or spooky atmosphere through setting stories in remote places (and old houses or cabins) and adding to the already spooky place bad weather and illness. Combined, these elements are common to many of his stories and make the stories uniformly dark and mysterious. "The Fall of the House of Usher" and "the black cat" are two easy examples of atmosphere as a predominant literary element.

Work citations

• http://poestories.com/biography.php

• Cavallaro (2002). The Gothic Vision Three Centuries of Horror Terror and Fear. London: MPG Books Ltd.

• Xiao, M. H. (2005). Selected Gothic Stories by Edgar Allan Poe. Chengdu: Sichuan People Press.

Post-colonial reading of The Tempest

  Assignment

Name : Virani Dhara 

Course: M. A. English

Semester: 3

Batch: 2019-2021

Roll No: 4

Submitted to: Smt S. B. Gardi Department of English. 

Paper no : 12

Subject: The Post-colonial Literature. 

Topic: Post-colonial reading of The Tempest

#Introduction:

      Une Tempête is a 1969 play by Aime Cesaire. It is an adaptation of Shakespeare’s The Tempest from a post-colonial perspective. The play was first performed at the Festival d'Hammamet in Tunisia under the direction of Jean-Marie Serreau. It later played in Avignon and Paris. Césaire uses all of the characters from Shakespeare's version, but he specifies that Prospero is a white master, while Ariel is a mulatto and Caliban is a black slave. These characters are the focus of the play as Césaire foregrounds issues of race, power, and decolonization. 

So, first of all let’s know about what is post – colonial reading or theory before we go to read the work of Shakespeare “The Tempest” with glance of post-colonial reading. 

# Post-colonial Theory

• Post-colonial theory focus on the reading and writing of literature written in previously or current colonized countries. The literature is composed of colonizing countries that deals with colonization or colonized peoples.

• It’s also a critical observations of former colonies of the Western powers and how they relate to, and interact with, the rest of the world. 

• Greatly interested in the cultures of the 

Colonizer and the colonized, post-colonial theory seeks to critically investigate what happens when two cultures clash and one of them ideologically fashions itself as superior and assumes dominance and control over the other. 

# Post-colonial reading of the Tempest

 Post-colonial reading of The Tempest were inspired by the decolonisation movements of the 1960s and 1970s in Africa, the Caribbean and Latin America. 

What was Shakespeare’s response to stereotypes of race and religion? Post-colonial criticism is a method of analysis that addresses questions of analysis that addresses questions of racial identity and 

Equality, and also of gender equity via two main modes of inquiry. First, it investigated how Shakespeare’s plays relate to the social codes and conventions defined non-European and non-Christian people and races they encountered. Second, it explores the more recent history of the reception of Shakespearian drama within non- western societies and setting-in Africa, India, the Caribbean, and Latin America. 

   Thus, post-colonial criticism of a play like Othello not draws our attention to Renaissance attitudes toward Moors, Africans, and Turks, among others, but it also examines how the play may have been interpreted and performed in countries involved in recent colonial and post-colonial struggles, for example in apartheid and post-apartheid South Africa. This process was, of course, a complex one. On the one hand, Shakespeare was an export to the colonies of European literature and language as a part of their policy of cultural domination. On the other hand, it also enabled the colonized groups to revise and remake Shakespeare’s works in ways which related to their own social conditions. 

# Early post-colonial responses to The Tempest

Until the advent of post-colonial criticism, Anglo-American critics frequently read The Tempest as an allegory about artistic creation. Since this was once considered to be Shakespeare’s final play, Prospero has been defined as a surrogate playwright, shaping the main action through his magic. Starting with the artificial tempest of the opening scene, Prospero directs, rewards, and punishes the main characters according to his  plan, which is to marry his daughter, Miranda, to Ferdinand, the son and their to the Duke of Naples, his former enemy. This plan is considered his revenge for his forcible exile from his own kingdom. In leading to this desired union of Naples and Milan, Prospero obstructs the advances of Caliban, the native of the island where he and Miranda are exiled. Furthermore, Prospero's magical power not only ensures the enslavement of Caliban, but also demands the servitude of a sprite named Ariel to put his magical designs into action. Overall, in this commonly accepted reading of The Tempest, Prospero emerges as an all-knowing, benevolent patriarch and artistic creator whose motives are beyond reproach. Since the play is a romance in terms of its genre, its plot was generally approached as a fanciful tale with little connection to the history of the period or its aftermath.

This long tradition of privileging Prospero's creative powers as beneficent and god-given began to be overshadowed by the growing stature of Caliban, following the de-colonisation movements of the 1960s and 1970s in Africa, the Caribbean, and Latin America. If, traditionally, Prospero's art represented the world of civility and learning in contrast to the 'natural' black magic of Caliban's mother Sycorax, anti-colonial revisions of the play challenged this rather abstract Eurocentric division between art and nature. Instead, as Africans and Caribbeans saw that widespread national liberation was imminent – that is from 1959 onwards – they began to revise and mobilise the play in defence of Caliban's right to the island on which he is born prior to Prospero's arrival. Caliban's assertion in the play, ‘This island's mine, by Sycorax my mother, / Which thou tak’st from me’ (1.2.331–32), became the rallying cry for African and Caribbean intellectuals from the 1960s to the 1970s.

For instance, Aimé Césaire, a black writer and activist from Martinique, re-wrote Shakespeare's play in 1969 in French. Une Tempête (translated into the English A Tempest in 1985) celebrates Caliban's verbal attacks on Prospero and questions the latter's claims to the island. Set in a colony – a prototype of a Caribbean or African setting – in the throes of resistance and unrest, Césaire's play focusses initially on Caliban's resistance to Prospero's control over language. Here, Césaire is clearly sensitive to the way in which the name Caliban/Cannibal appears in Shakespeare's play and in colonial history as a cultural stereotype for the natives of the New World. Accompanying Caliban's challenge to language are references to an actual guerrilla movement and an impending black independence. And Ariel, who is labelled a 'mulatto' in this play, represents the mixed races more able to accept their limited oppression. Overall, this play characterises the changes undergone by the figure of Caliban in productions of the play: in 18th- and 19th-century European productions he was represented as a primitive or 'missing link' from Darwin's theory (i.e. a being in between apes and humans in the evolutionary process). However, with the advent of national liberation of the non-European races, as in Césaire's play, Caliban was widely depicted as a defiant subject under European rule, or simply an embodiment of any oppressed group.

Such identifications with Caliban and an accompanying unease about his alien language typify numerous Latin American and Caribbean responses to the play in the wake of decolonisation in the 1960s. In Africa too, the play became a site for anti-colonial responses, such as the novel A Grain of Wheat (1967), by Kenyan Ngugi Wa Thiong'o. This work, however, does not focus on Caliban's potential resistance. Rather, it examines the nature of Prospero's colonising drives and methods.

Overall, whether one considers The Tempest as an allegory of Caliban's liberation or of Prospero's colonial paternalism, post-colonial readings of the play's reception in the developing world clearly establish that we can no longer recuperate The Tempest as a historically 'innocent' text, uncorrupted by later historical readings.

The Tempest as an allegory of European discovery and colonisation

Given these changing responses to Shakespeare's The Tempest in the former 'Third World', it is not surprising that by the 1980s, Anglo-American readings of the play began to join in such interrogations of Prospero's rule and in empathy for Caliban. In doing so, post-colonial criticism in the West was somewhat belated in acknowledging the significance of the play's historical background.

Since the 1980s, burgeoning post-colonial criticism has brought new light to bear upon the play's sources in the narratives of 'discovery' and colonisation of the Americas. Most critics agree that Shakespeare used Elizabethan travel writing, both for his dramatisation of the opening storm and shipwreck and his depiction of the European confrontation with a 'savage', Caliban. In particular, he drew on William Strachey's account written in 1610 –probably circulating in unpublished form – of the shipwreck and redemption of Sir Thomas Gates's expedition in the Bermudas in 1609, while on his way to Jamestown in the Virginia colony established by the British. Gates was wrecked in a most dreadful tempest on an island that proved to be so habitable and rich in food that his men were reluctant to leave. Thus, one strand of post-colonial criticism follows the play's journey literally to the European 'discovery' and settlement of the Americas. In that context, critics note how the figure of Caliban easily merges into the image of the cannibal, the mythical 'savage' whom many European travellers claimed to have encountered. Fantasies of real and imagined cannibals in the Renaissance gave an important impetus to European ventures of bringing 'civilisation' to the natives. Images of otherness evoked by the play, however, also suggest an ambiguous geography, whereby the shipwrecked travellers in the play are supposedly travelling to North Africa, across the Mediterranean.

Such a post-colonial focus on The Tempest's relation to geographical exploration – with an emphasis on the colonisation of the Americas – produces a reading of the play that differs radically from traditional European validations of Prospero's dominant role. It calls for a reappraisal of Prospero's and Caliban's competing views of history and settlement of the island. According to Prospero, Caliban's mother was the ‘damned witch Sycorax' who 'For mischiefs manifold, and sorceries terrible / To enter human hearing, from Algiers, ... was banished' to this island (1.2.263–65). When Prospero recounts this story to Ariel, the sprite in his servitude, he makes sure to remind Ariel of the distinction between Sycorax's evil magic and his own supposedly benevolent arts. 

It is this rendition of history that became the battle cry for the anti-colonial movements in Africa, the Caribbean, and Latin America – a rendition that became the staple of many revisions and appropriations of Shakespeare's play in these regions. While the play was written in 17th-century England, post-colonial criticism takes the play outwards towards its complicated transactions between European and African and Caribbean cultures in the succeeding centuries. Post-colonial criticism in the West has mined this new archive of the reception history of Shakespeare's The Tempest, questioning, once again, all normative ideas of a 'common humanity', while articulating, as Shakespeare did, the voices of the seemingly marginal characters in Prospero's grand designs. 

# conclusion:

  In short, Shakespeare’s The Tempest is the work, which can be read with post-colonial perspective, how it’s works and what are the aspects of situation of post-colonial in Africa.

 Work citations:

Shakespeare, William, Virginia Mason Vaughan, and Alden T. Vaughan. The tempest. London: Arden Shakespeare, 2000. Print. 

Cesaire, Aime. A Tempest, trans. Richard Miller. Ubu Repertory Theatre publication, 1992.

Sociolinguistics

 Assignment

Name : Virani Dhara 

Course: M. A. English

Semester: 3

Batch: 2019-2021

Roll No: 4

Submitted to: Smt S. B. Gardi Department of English. 

Paper no : 12

Subject: English Language Teaching-1

Topic: Sociolinguistics

Introduction:

     Sociolinguistics examines the relationship between language use and the social world, particularly how language operates within and creates social structures. Studies in sociolinguistics explore the commonplace observation that everyone does not speak a language in the same way, that we alter our speech to accommodate our audience, and that we recognise members and non-members if our communities via speech. Sociolinguistics studies have looked at speech communities based on social categories such as age, class, ethnicity, gender, geography, profession and sexual identity. To be sure, such categories are fluid: they exist only in common text, and rather than standing independent of speech are generally produced through it. In short, these categories exist largely as a matter of social perception. 

Background

   Sustained interest in sociolinguistics emerged in the 1960s, in part as a reaction to ‘autonomous’ Chomskian linguistics. In place of the latter's idealised speaker, for whom social influences are idiosyncratic or irrelevant, the ‘hyphenated’ field of sociolinguistics sought to explore and theorise the language use of social beings. Capturing the interdisciplinary nature of the enterprise, a distinction is often made between micro-Sociolinguistics and micro-Sociolinguistics. 

Macro-sociolinguistics refers to research with a linguistic slant, often focusing on dialect and stylistic variation. Both quantitative and qualitative research methods have been employed to explore such linguistic phenomena as phonological differences between dialects or discourse variation between male and female speakers. In contrast, macro-sociolinguistics looks at the behaviours of entire speech communities, exploring issues such as why immigrant communities retain their native language in some social context but not in other, or how social identity can affect language choice. 

Research

This section explores those aspects of sociolinguistic research that have been particularly productive when viewed through the lens of L2 teaching and learning. For convenience’s sake, this work will be discussed within three subcategories: language variation, linguistic relativity and language in contact. 

# Language variation

  A significant outcome was that teachers were schooled in the origin and history of students’s native language variety and trained to recognise and address the systemic differences between this variety and the standard or prestige form. 

• Pidginisation is a process that results from contact of two or more language in a context where language needs can or must be satisfied through use of a simplified code. Examples include trading context or the interaction between colonised people and a conqueror. 

• Creolisation process, speakers develop an elaborated code that can accommodate the full range of life's function. 

• Decreolisation a gradual decreolisation process can occur as speakers incorporate features from a dominant language. 

 For L2 researchers, the notion of a continuum between a first language L1 and a ‘target language’ proved productive. A learner's simplified interlanguage – a concept developed by Corder and Selinker Selinker(1972) – could be seen to result from a pidginisation and decreolisation, as learners restructure their interlanguage and move towards an L2. One of several controversial issues is the explanation of sustained pidginisation. 

  Perhaps one of the most important finding of contemporary sociolinguistic research is the extent to which social categories interact. Examples are studies of the commonly held stereotypes that women speak more grammatically and are more polite than men. Building on this observation, Nichols underscores the contextual nature of language use when she speculates that ‘perhaps in traditional groups, or in different social situations for the same group, women will exhibit both conservative and innovative behavior. 

Freeman and McElhinny  survey the interaction of culture and gender with respect to politeness:

   In societies where politeness is normatively valued or seen as a skill, or where acquisition of politeness is not an automatic part of language learning but required additional training, men tend to be understood as more polite, and women are understood as impolite or too polite. 

 A wide variety of ways in which language and society intersect- in which we find social stratification of linguistic variables from phonology and syntax to discourse and narrative conventions -is documented in sociolinguistic research on:

• Age

• Ethnicity

• Gender

• Bergvall

• Geography

• Profession

• Sexual identity

• Social class

# Linguistic Relativity:

Research on cross-cultural miscommunication explores communicative failures occasioned by the fact that seemingly equivalent language can function quite different in different cultures. Thomas distinguishes between what she calls pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic failure. In the former, speakers fail to convey their meaning because the message's pragmatic force is misunderstood. A speaker might translate something from an L1 into a target language without the knowledge that the communicative conventions of the target language are quite different. For example, the formulaic expression ‘How are you? ‘ in English generally means little more than ‘Hello’.

    Hymes coined the term ethography of speaking to describe the task of the researcher who is ‘concerned with the situations and uses, the patterns andfunctions, of speaking’.

   Hymes termed communicative competence. Canale and Swain and Canale theorised four components of communicative competence. The last involves appropriate language use based on knowledge of sociocultural conventions and social context. Sociolinguistic knowledge involves sensitivity to issues of context and topic, as well as social parameters such as gender, age and social status. 

    The term discourse more broadly than did Canale and Swain. Scollon and Scollon's interdiscourse communicative refers to ‘the entire range of communications across boundaries of groups. 

# Language in Contact

  When speakers live in a linguistically diverse environment, several alternative to monolingualism are available to them. In a diglossic situation two languages or varieties of a language exist side by side, essentially in complementary distribution. Another contact phenomenon is code-switching, which occurs when bilingual speakers switch from one language to another in the same discourse. 

 Although common throughout the world, one example is the flexible Spanish-English code switching of Latinos in gAnglophone North America. As Myers -Scotton points out, code-switching patterns can announce speakers’ relationships to both language as well as their membership in a particular code-switching community. 

#Practice  

Language variation

 Students need to develop a critical understanding of the commonplace observation that the same language can be spoken differently by diverse speakers; moreover, the same speakers vary their language depending on which of their sociolinguistic identities is being called upon. 

When encountering an unfamiliar language/culture, students may be sending signals of which they are unaware. For example, it is widely reported anecdotally that female students studying an L2 with a male native speaker or men learning from a female instructor tend to approximate the pitch of their teachers rather than native speakers of their own gender. 

   These language students might want to be aware that their pitch will be a sociolinguistic maker, even if they decide that they decide that feel physically or psychologically more comfortable speaking slightly higher or lower than their native-speaking counterparts. 

# Linguistic Relativity

 As we have seen, language learning must go beyond grammatical competence if they are to be successful users of language. One area of sociolinguistic competence is the use of speech acts. As Cohen points out:

‘ Sorry about that!’ may serve as an adequate apology…. . … 

 Cohen notes that it may take many years to acquire native-like sociolinguistic competence and recommends classroom activities on speech acts. Adapted from Olstain and Cohen, he recommends five steps: assessment of students’ sociolinguistic awareness; presentation and discussion of dialogues focusing on sociocultural factors affecting speech acts; evaluation of situations that might require apologies or complaints. 

Languages in Contact

   Heath (1993) has been studying community-based youth groups that develop students’ linguistic virtuosity. Through dramas written, cast and directed by young people, inner-city youth retaun their L1 or dialect while gaining proficiency in ‘standard’ US English. 

   Rampton (1995) finds another kind of sociolinguistic dexterity in language crossing among urban adolescents in Britain who switch to non-hereditary forms. 

   Pratt uses the term contact zones for classrooms and other ‘social spaces where cultures meet, clash, and grapple with each other, often in contexts of highly asymmetrical relations of power, such as colonialism, slavery, or their aftermaths. 

# Current and future trends and directions

   Some of the most exciting new work explores the relationship between identity and language learning. Much of this thinking has been influenced by post-structuralust critiques of traditionally conceived social categories. For example, in b place of fixed, a priori notions of class and gender, post-structuralust argue that social categories are fluid, that they are created and recreated at the moment of speech through speech, that we call occupy multiple subject positions and that individuals can and do resist the hierarchical positions in which they find themselves. 

  Canagarajah documents strategies on the parts of teachers and students that negotiate the role of local culture, politics, identity and language in the English class. As examples, teachers or students might code -switch to the local language to build solidarity; and students textbook graffiti can adapt unfamiliar North American figures to a Tamil context. Researchers like Canagarajah help teachers understand the complex strategies of language users in the English class. 

Work Citation:

• Coulmas, The Handbook of Sociolinguistics, 1997.
• Fasold,(1984) The Sociolinguistics of Society. 
• Fasold, (1990) The Sociolinguistics of Language. 
• Wolfson (1989) Sociolinguistics and TESOL. 

The Shortest Play "Breath" By Samuel Beckett

 

Interpretation Challenge: Breath: The Shortest Play by Samuel Beckett

Breath - a Play

While discussing ‘The Theatre of the Absurd’ and Samuel Beckett’s ‘Waiting for Godot’, we viewed film version of his shortest play ‘Breath’ - a thirty-seconds play. 

Here is my remaking video of the play "Breath" By Samuel Beckett: