Meg

MEG – 01: BRITISH POETRY ASSIGNMENT 2018 - 2019 (Based
on Blocks (1 - 10) Max. Marks: 100

Umesh Solved Assignment: 9507516410/8789841106
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1. Explain any two of the excerpts of poems given below with

reference to their context: 10 X 2 = 20
(i) Oh there is blessing in this gentle breeze,

A visitant that while it fans my cheek
Doth seem half conscious of the joy it brings
From the green fields, and from yon azure sky.
Answer:
These lines have been taken from poem The Prelude by William
Wordsworth. It is a very long autobiographical poem. In these lines the
poet is depicting his ecstatic state of mind that he feels when the gentle
breeze touches his cheeks. He feels the breeze was conscious of the joy
it brought to him while blowing over the green fields and below the
pure, blue sky. Wordsworth loved nature; he felt transported to some
inexplicable divine dimension in the presence of pristine nature around
his village. While wandering in the beautiful sylvan valleys and dells,
he often communed with nature.
The prelude is a long poem and its huge body has an epic form, lofty
style and tone of moral seriousness. It is an autobiographical poem but
only those episodes in poet’s life have been narrated which have
something to do with his contact with nature and which cast a deep
Umesh Solved Assignment:-9507516410/8789841106 Page 1

influence on him in as much as they shaped his mind and fostered its
growth.
Wordsworth's poetry became so popular to a large extent because of the
way that it represented a completely new way of looking at poetry, and
in this sense was quite revolutionary. The publication of Lyrical
Ballads, which Wordsworth co-authored with Coleridge, represented
something of a watershed in the history of literature in the 18th century.
The new movement of literature was called Romanticism, and was
characterized by a focus on the importance of feelings...
Wordsworth experiences relief in coming back to nature. He

immediately identifies spiritual freedom with the absence of the
encumbrances of civilization. Feelings of irresponsible freedom and
lack of purpose quickly give way to a prevision of an impending period
of optimism and creativity. In the delicious quiet, Wordsworth suddenly
sees in his mind's eye the cottage of the landlady with whom he stayed
as a schoolboy. He recalls that even then he had intimations of his future
greatness.
His wish to create some profound work of art calls for a re-disciplining
of his mind, which has recently been dulled by the artificiality of
society. He mentions in passing the typical moodiness of the poet in
likening him to a lover. In assessing his faculties, Wordsworth finds he
has the three necessary ingredients for creativity: a vital soul;
knowledge of the underlying principles of things; and a host of
painstaking observations of natural phenomena. He rejects historical and
martial themes, as well as mere anecdotes from his personal history. He
is searching instead for "some philosophic song that cherishes our daily
life." He is next assailed by doubts about the maturity of his views. If
such views change radically after he has recorded them, his analysis of
them will be worthless. In his indecision, he feels that if he reviews the
ideas he formed in childhood and traces their history up until early
manhood, he will find whether they have had any lasting truth and
permanence.

iii. All humane things are subject to decay, And, when Fate
summons, Monarchs must obey:
Answer:
These lines are taken from John Dryden’s verse mock-heroic satire,
Mac Flecknoe. "Mac Flecknoe" is the outcome of a series of
disagreements between Thomas Shadwell and Dryden. The poem
illustrates Shadwell as the heir to a kingdom of poetic dullness,
represented by his association with Richard Flecknoe, an earlier poet
already satirized by Andrew Marvell and disliked by Dryden, although
the poet does not use belittling techniques to satirize him.
Dryden begins with a lofty commentary on mortality, God, and kings,
his introduction to what we can only assume will be a grandiose epic of
Homeric proportions.............
The line presents the invincibility of Time, presenting time as the most
powerful. The line says that every thing related to humans' physical
presence is transient, temporary and is bound to get destroyed.
Therefore ,Time is the ultimate master and even Kings, emperors and
monarchs,who dominate over others have to follow the command of
time. In the present context, time is used synonymously as death.
In John Dryden's satirical poem Mac Flecknoe, the following lines can
be found: All human things are subject to decay, And, when Fate
summons, monarchs must obey. ... Outside of the human aspect of
death, Dryden is also referring to not only humans, but all "human
things.
Dryden begins with a lofty commentary on mortality, God, and kings,
his introduction to what we can only assume will be a grandiose epic of
Homeric proportions.

As we will soon discover, the entirety of the poem is written in rhymed
heroic couplets, typical of the epic style. (Check out "Form and Meter"
for more on how this poem is put together.)
From this initial couplet, Dryden creates the atmosphere of an epic, a

grandiose story of gods and kings, in line with the tradition of poetic big
names like Homer or Milton.
2. What are the main features of metaphysical poetry? Give

examples from the poets and the poems in the course.
Answer:
The word 'meta' means 'after,' so the literal translation of
'metaphysical' is 'after the physical.' Basically, metaphysics deals
with questions that can't be explained by science. It questions the
nature of reality in a philosophical way.
Here are some common metaphysical questions:
 Does God exist?
 Is there a difference between the way things appear to us and the
way they really are? Essentially, what is the difference between
reality and perception?
 Is everything that happens already predetermined? If so, then is
free choice non-existent?
 Is consciousness limited to the brain?
Metaphysics can cover a broad range of topics from religious to
consciousness; however, all the questions about metaphysics
ponder the nature of reality. And of course, there is no one correct
answer to any of these questions. Metaphysics is about exploration
and philosophy, not about science and math.
Salient features of metaphysical poetry:
1. The group of metaphysical poets that we mentioned earlier is
obviously not the only poets or philosophers or writers that deal
with metaphysical questions. There are other more specific
characteristics that prompted Johnson to place the 17th-century
poets together.
2. Perhaps the most common characteristic is that metaphysical
poetry contained large doses of wit. In fact, although the poets
were examining serious questions about the existence of God or
whether a human could possibly perceive the world, the poets
were sure to ponder those questions with humor.
3. Metaphysical poetry also sought to shock the reader and wake
him or her up from his or her normal existence in order to
question the unquestionable. The poetry often mixed ordinary
speech with paradoxes and puns. The results were strange,
comparing unlikely things, such as lovers to a compass or the
soul to a drop of dew. These weird comparisons were
called conceits.
4. Metaphysical poetry also explored a few common themes. They
all had a religious sentiment. In addition, many of the poems
explored the theme of carpe diem (seize the day) and
investigated the humanity of life.
5. One great way to analyze metaphysical poetry is to consider how
the poems are about both thought and feeling. Think about it.
How could you possibly write a poem about the existence of

God if you didn't have some emotional reaction to such an
enormous, life-altering question?
6. Themes: Metaphysical poetry is spiritual & has often religious
themes. Moreover, it focuses on love, as the union of soul.
7. Literary Devices: Metaphysical poetry uses metaphors, puns,
paradoxes & meter to create drama & tension. In addition,
Metaphysical poetry uses scientific, medical & legal words &
phrases to create arguments about the philosophical aspect of
life.
8. Poets: Metaphysical poets were men of high intellect. They
were all graduated from Oxford University, Cambridge
University or they studied at one of the Inns of Court in the city
of London. With the help of their vast knowledge, they
presented new ideas & stories to their readers.
9. Unclarity: Metaphysical poetry is considered highly ambiguous
& obscure due to high intellect & knowledge of metaphysical
poets. The poetry is greatly challenging to understand at the first
reading. It needs full concentration & full attention to getting to
the roots of the matter.
10. Short Poems: Metaphysical poetry is considered to be brief
& concise. Every line conveys a lot of meanings in a few words.
Every word is adjusted in every line like a brick in a wall &
conveys the message of the author. Hence there is no wastage of
words.
11. Sayings in the Poetry: Metaphysical poetry is a vast
collection of maxims & sayings. Thus epigrammatic quality is
part & parcel of the metaphysical poetry. John Donne is a
pioneer in this regard.
12. Metaphysical Conceits: A significant feature of the
metaphysical poetry is the use of metaphysical conceits. It is the
unique quality of metaphysical poetry. A conceit is a comparison
of two dissimilar things, which may have very little in common.
E.g. Abraham Cowley in his poem “The Mistress” compares his
love for ladies to his habit of travelling in various countries of
the world.
13. Originality: Originality is the hallmark of metaphysical
poets. All the metaphysical poets were unique & original in their
ideas & thoughts. They didn’t follow the path of their
contemporary poets. They stood against their contemporaries &
followed their own way of writing poetry.
14. Wit: Metaphysical wit is also a noteworthy feature of
metaphysical poetry. Metaphysical wit is the expression of one’s
idea & thoughts, using aptly & technically, the words & various
figures of speech in such a manner as to provide pleasure to the
readers. John Donne is called the “Monarch of Wit” in the
history of metaphysical poetry.
15. Platonic Love: Platonic love is another feature of
metaphysical poetry. Platonic love means, spiritual love, which
is free from elements of physical love.
All of those types of poetry have specific qualities that allow us

to group them together. Metaphysical poetry is a little bit
different. The poems classified in this group do share common
characteristics: they are all highly intellectualized, use rather
strange imagery, use frequent paradox and contain extremely
complicated thought.
However, metaphysical poetry is not regarded as a genre of
poetry. In fact, the main poets of this group didn't read each
other's work and didn't know that they were even part of a
classification.
Literary critic and poet Samuel Johnson first coined the term
'metaphysical poetry' in his book Lives of the Most Eminent
English Poets (1179-1781). In the book, Johnson wrote about a
group of 17th-century British poets that included John Donne,
George Herbert, Richard Crashaw, Andrew Marvell and Henry
Vaughan. He noted how the poets shared many common
characteristics, especially ones of wit and elaborate style.

It's extremely intelligent and witty. It is deeply religious but is also
sure to be ironic and cynical. “Metaphysical Poets” is a term coined
by poet & critic Samuel Johnson, who describes a loose group
of English lyric poets of the 17th century, whose work was
characterised by ample use of conceits, guess & speculation about
topics such as love, religion etc.
These poets were not formally affiliated; most of them did not
know each other or read each other’s work. Metaphysical poetry is
extremely intelligent & witty. It is deeply religious but is also
ironical.
3. Does the Dejection: An Ode contain any elements of what

comprises Romanticism? Discuss with examples.
Answer:
The poem “Dejection: An Ode” by T.S. Coleridge contains
elements of romanticism. The poem is about the importance of
imagination in poet’s life after the state of depression. The poet
tries to compensate his despair and grief with the help of the
imagination and creative powers of the nature. The reflection of
internal beauty which enhances the outer structure of a person was
one of the characteristics of the Romanticism.
"Though I should gaze for ever

On that green light that lingers in the west:
I may not hope from outward forms to win
The passion and the life, whose fountains are within.”
According to the Romantics, the internal realities and imagination

are the ideal conceptions which gives inspiration to one. The poet
calls it “beauty-making power.”
He speaks about productive depression in which one produces the

best form of poetry. For its not always the happiness that gives rise
to best poetry. Sorrow and misery often help in the yield of good
poetry. The lines which shows the presence of romantic features in
the poem are:
“this joy within me
dallied with distress
And all misfortunes were but as the stuff
Whence Fancy made me dreams of happiness”
Romantic poetry typically testifies to the beauty and power of the

natural world. In “Dejection: An Ode,” Coleridge frequently
alludes to the power of nature. He refers to “a deadly storm,” “the
slant night-shower driving loud and fast,” and the wind “that rav’st
without.” Nature is also presented as powerful in the sense that it
has the power to transport the speaker from his earthly troubles to
some otherworldly, spiritual realm. The speaker says that the
sounds of the storm “Oft have raised (him), whilst they awed / And
sent (his) soul abroad.”
Coleridge also celebrates, in this poem, the beauty of nature. At the

end of the second stanza, the speaker describes the stars “that glide
. . . Now sparkling” and the moon “In its own cloudless starless
lake of blue.” At the end of the stanza, the speaker, describing the
stars once more, declares, “how beautiful they are!”
“Dejection: An Ode”
Coleridge blames his desolate numbness for sapping his creative
powers and leaving him without his habitual method of
understanding human nature. Despite his insistence on the
separation between the mind and the world, Coleridge nevertheless
continues to find metaphors for his own feelings in nature: His
dejection is reflected in the gloom of the night as it awaits the
storm.
“Dejection” was written in 1802 but was originally drafted in the
form of a letter to Sara Hutchinson, the woman Coleridge loved.
The much longer original version of the poem contained many of
the same elements as “The Nightingale” and “Frost at Midnight,”
including the same meditation on his children and their natural
education. This version also referred explicitly to “Sara” (replaced
in the later version by “Lady”) and “William” (a clear reference to
Wordsworth). Coleridge’s strict revision process shortened and
tightened the poem, depersonalizing it, but the earlier draft hints at
just how important the poem’s themes were to Coleridge
personally and indicates that the feelings expressed were the poet’s
true beliefs about his own place in the world.
A side note: The story of Sir Patrick Spence, to which the poet
alludes in the first stanza, is an ancient Scottish ballad about a
sailor who drowns with a boatload of Scottish noblemen, sailing on
orders from the king but against his own better judgment. It
contains lines that refer to the moon as a predictor of storms, which
Coleridge quotes as an epigraph for his ode: “Late, late yestreen I
saw the new Moon / With the old Moon in her arms; / And I fear, I
fear, my Master dear! / We shall have a deadly storm.”
Romantic poetry also celebrates the power and the

importance of the human imagination. In stanza six, the
speaker describes his “shaping spirit of Imagination,” and
in stanza seven he describes, metaphorically, the “viper
thoughts that coil around (his) mind.” In this metaphor, the
speaker’s imagination is powerful in a negative sense. It
suffocates him and threatens to poison his mind, just as a
viper might suffocate and poison the person whose neck it
coils itself around.
The speaker recalls a poem that tells the tale of Sir Patrick Spence:
In this poem, the moon takes on a certain strange appearance that
presages the coming of a storm. The speaker declares that if the
author of the poem possessed a sound understanding of weather,
then a storm will break on this night as well, for the moon looks
now as it did in the poem. The speaker wishes ardently for a storm

to erupt, for the violence of the squall might cure his numb feeling.
He says that he feels only a ‘dull pain,” “a grief without a pang”—
a constant deadening of all his feelings. Speaking to a woman
whom he addresses as “O Lady,” he admits that he has been gazing
at the western sky all evening, able to see its beauty but unable
fully to feel it. He says that staring at the green sky will never raise
his spirits, for no “outward forms” can generate feelings: Emotions
can only emerge from within.
According to the speaker, “we receive but what we give”: the soul
itself must provide the light by which we may hope to see nature’s
true beauty—a beauty not given to the common crowd of human
beings (“the poor loveless ever-anxious crowd”). Calling the Lady
“pure of heart,” the speaker says that she already knows about the
light and music of the soul, which is Joy. Joy, he says, marries us
to nature, thereby giving us “a new Earth and new Heaven, /
Undreamt of by the sensual and the proud.”
The speaker insists that there was a time when he was full of hope,
when every tribulation was simply the material with which “fancy
made me dreams of happiness.” But now his afflictions press him
to the earth; he does not mind the decline of his mirth, but he
cannot bear the corresponding degeneration of his imagination,
which is the source of his creativity and his understanding of the
human condition, that which enables him to construct “from my
own nature all the natural man.” Hoping to escape the “viper
thoughts” that coil around his mind, the speaker turns his attention
to the howling wind that has begun to blow. He thinks of the world
as an instrument played by a musician, who spins out of the wind a
“worse than wintry song.” This melody first calls to mind the rush
of an army on the field; quieting, it then evokes a young girl, lost
and alone.
It is midnight, but the speaker has “small thoughts” of sleep.
However, he hopes that his friend the Lady will be visited by
“gentle Sleep” and that she will wake with joyful thoughts and
“light heart.” Calling the Lady the “friend devoutest of my choice,”
the speaker wishes that she might “ever, ever more rejoice.”
The investigation herein was initially prompted by Coleridge’s

engagement with the philosophy of Spinoza, and my intent to
understand ways in which Spinoza was an inspiration for the
Romantic Movement. Nothing yet has actually resulted from my
interest in Spinoza and the Romantics. However, Dejection and
Coleridge’s theory of the imagination in the Biographia
Literaria can render a way of understanding Coleridge’s most
famous poem, the enchanting and enigmatic The Rime of the
Ancient Mariner. The essay here is the first of two. The second
essay will concentrate specifically on The Rime of the Ancient
Mariner
Coleridge’s presentation of his theory of imagination is

obscure, and I will try to be careful not to over-interpret, and put
words into his mouth, as it were. I will discuss the way in which the
meter of Dejection, for me, is illustrative of Coleridge’s state of
mind. I will scan through the poem, stanza by stanza, isolating and
interpreting examples of Coleridge’s theory of imagination. The
crucial fifth and sixth stanzas can offer a surprising insight into
Coleridge’s third form of imagination.

Coleridge discusses his three forms of imagination in
the Biographia Literaria, Chapter XIII. Coleridge’s approach to
defining imagination is mystical and quite challenging. I will
provide a brief alternative description of each form of imagination.
The first kind of imagination is perhaps the most difficult to grasp.

Coleridge writes of it as follows:
The primary IMAGINATION is the living Power and prime Agent

of all human Perception, and a repetition on the finite mind of the
eternal act of creation in the infinite I AM. (p. 516)
To put it another way, as I see it, primary imagination is

participation of the finite, limited human mind in the infinite,
eternal creative source. I will try to flesh out my understanding of
primary imagination, below, with reference to Dejection.
Coleridge describes secondary imagination as follows:
The secondary Imagination I consider as an echo of the former, co-

existing with the conscious will, yet still as identical with the
primary in the kind of its agency, and differing only in degree, and
in the mode of its operation. It dissolves, diffuses, dissipates, in
order to re-create; or where this process is rendered impossible,
yet still at all events it struggles to idealize and to unify. It is
essentially vital, even as all objects (as objects) are essentially fixed
and dead. (p. 516, original emphasis)
I suggest that secondary imagination can be understood as a joining

of the infinite, eternal creative source with the external world
through the agency of the finite, limited human mind. Secondary
imagination is present in two movements, “dissolving, dissipating,
and diffusing” in the world in sense of the world being many, and
“idealizing and unifying” these many in the sense of the world
being one. The world is lifeless without secondary imagination.
Primary imagination, life and creation, infuses the world through
the human agent, and that is secondary imagination.
Coleridge’s third kind of imagination is fancy, which he describes

as follows:
FANCY, on the contrary, has no other counters to play with, but

fixities and definites. The Fancy is indeed no other than a mode of
Memory emancipated from the order of time and space; while it is
blended with, and modified by that empirical phenomenon of the
will, which we express by the word CHOICE. But equally with the
ordinary memory the Fancy must receive all its materials ready
made from the law of association. (p. 516)
Fancy, as I understand it, is a working of the human imagination on

the objects of the external world — but without the creative and
vivifying power of primary imagination. Fixed, lifeless objects are
combined and recombined. Authentic creation, in the sense of
bringing something new into the world, is not present in fancy.
An Ode (final version) from the perspective of the theory of
imagination that Coleridge outlines in his Biographia Literaria.
4. Write an essay on Dylan Thomas’s use of images in his poetry?

Answer:
Dylan Thomas (1914 – 1953) was a renowned Welsh writer and
poet.

His poetry stood out for the fact that they had images interwoven
into them. Dylan Thomas gave a lot of importance to having
imagery in his poems. He believed that images gave reality to his
abstract thoughts and ideas.
Most of his poems had woods or the sea as a central theme. The
impact of scenery of the countryside or seaside, was brought out
fully through his images. His poetry also had powerful images
depicting pain, death and decay, sexual images etc.
Much of the acclaim that is given to Dylan Thomas is attributable

to his marvelous use of imagery that awakens the senses of the
listener/reader of his poetry and lends a unique reality to his
abstraction of thought. Clearly, there is a vitality and passion lent
to his verse with his imagery. One critic writes of Thomas, "His
rich rhetoric and imagery gave his poetry a magical touch."
Dylan Thomas is widely regarded as one of the 20th Century's

most influential lyrical poets, and amongst the finest as such of all
time. His acclaim is partly due to the force and vitality of his
verbal imagery that is uniquely brilliant and inspirational. His vivid
and often fantastic imagery was a rejection of the trends in the 20th
Century poetics. While his contemporaries gradually altered their
writing to serious topical verse, Thomas devoted himself to his
passionately felt emotions. Thomas, in many ways, was more in
alignment with the Romantics than he was with the poets of his
era. He was considered the Shelley of the 20th century as his
poems were the perfect embodiments of 'new-romanticism' with
their violent natural imagery, sexual and Christian symbolism and
emotional subject matter expressed in a singing rhythmical verse.
His rich rhetoric and imagery gave his poetry a magical touch.
Dylan Thomas attached great importance to the use of imagery,
and an understanding of his imagery is essential for an
understanding of his poetry. Thomas' vivid imagery involved word
play, fractured syntax, and personal symbolism. Thomas’ poetic
imagery shows the use of a mixture of several techniques, the most
prominent being the surrealistic, imagistic, and metaphysical.
But the bible, his study of Shakespeare and other English poets
also laid under contribution. Thomas as a resourceful "language-
changer", like Shakespeare, Dickens, Hopkins and Joyce, shaped
the English language into a richly original mélange of rhythm,
imagery and literary allusion. Here follows a brief discussion on
Dylan Thomas’ poetic imagery along with a critical inquiry into
the major woks by this poet:
Nature Imagery
Dylan Thomas is especially renowned for his celebration of natural
beauty. Some of his poems contain vivid and refreshing pictures of
nature, even though he does not have any philosophy of nature to
offer. The influence of the Romantic poets is seen in his recurrent
vision of a pristine beauty in nature. Indeed, Thomas was a nature
poet in the sense that much of his truest inspiration arose from a
natural scene which he had observed long and lovingly. This is
particularly seen in Poem in October. In this poem Thomas
illustrates nature wonderfully alive with ordinary sights and
sounds. In his thirtieth birthday when he comes out of the town, he
finds the whole nature is greeting him. Thomas sees himself on his
way to heaven or in the sight of heaven. The whole scene seems
holy to him. He feels a complete harmony with nature. The wood
seems to him to be his neighbor, the herons to be priests and the
waves of the ocean rise high as if in honour and worship of their
creator. The birds are calling and the gardens are blooming. In
short, the poem encapsulates one of the most remarkable accounts
of wonderful vivid nature pictures with a general atmosphere of
joy.
Imagery of death
Death is a frequent theme in Dylan Thomas’ poetry, especially in
the corpus of his mature work. Thomas employs different
interesting and unorthodox images to present various aspects of
death. In the poem Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night, for
example, he emphasizes resistance towards death as he repeats this
appeal in the last line in every stanza. Imagery is used by Thomas
to create the theme of his poem and what it means. Although
readers are unaware of the details behind the on coming death of
Thomas’ father, the motives of the author for writing this poem are
very obvious. In this Thomas is asking his father through pleading
words to fight against the darkness that is taking over and leading
him into the afterlife.
Initially, Thomas uses images of fury and fighting in the lines "do
not go gentle", "good night" and "dying of the light" to emphasize
the resistance towards death. With these images, Thomas conveys
death as the end and where darkness prevails. He takes his stand
within concrete, particular existence. He places birth and death at
the poles of his vision. Excessive images of anger and rage towards
death exemplify the passion Thomas feels for life.
Secondly, Thomas brings into action images of "burn" and "rave at

close of day" to show and emphasize the resistance towards death.
Contrasting images of light and darkness in the poem create
warmth of living and the coldness of death, so as to discourage
people from choosing the dreary, bitter coldness of death:
Do not go gentle into that good night,

Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
In addition, Thomas uses images of " wise men" and " grave men
[who] have not used their blinding sight" to tell his dying father
that all men either smart or ignorant need to fight against death. A
man peacefully may prepare to die only when he has made his true
contribution to society. Here Thomas shares an attitude towards
death, which is very much similar to Robert Frost’s Stopping by
Woods on a snowy Evening:
The Woods are lovely, dark and deep.

But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
Sexual Imagery
Sexual imagery is recurrent in Thomas’ poetry. He uses sexual
imagery almost everywhere. The influence of the seventeenth-
century metaphysical poets is often cited in connection with
Thomas' unconventional religious imagery. Thomas speaks with
directness and passion on the theme of sex quite similar to Donne.
Thomas’ work shows the same fusing of sexual and religious
imagery as it is seen in Donne’s poetry. In both poets there is an
intense consciousness of death. Donne preached a sermon in his
grave-clothes and Thomas’ poems show a similar fixation with the

physical fact of death:
And I am dumb to tell the lover’s tomb

How at my sheet goes the same crooked worm.
Imagery of Growth and Decay
The imagery of Destruction and creation are very much common in
Thomas’ poetry. Like Thomas Hardy, he indicates a driving force
of the universe, which both generates and destroys. Many of his
poems can be studied in this contextual consideration. In
The Force that through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower, for
instance, he indicates that an invisible cosmic force is responsible
for both creation and destruction. The process of life goes on
because of the operation of this force. Again, this force is working
in the animal, vegetable and human world. This is the force that
destroys the roots of trees and also acts as the destroyer of the
poet’s youth. The force is watering the ground and withering away
the mountain spring. In the same way, the very worm, which is
eating up the body of the dead lovers, will also eat up the poet
when he is dead:
The force that through the green fuse drives the flower
Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees
Is my destroyer.
Imagery of the Subconscious
During the 20th century Thomas was being hailed as the most
spectacular of the surrealist poets, or poets who used fantastic
imagery of the subconscious in their verse. And it cannot but be so
in the age of Freud, Jungand Bergson. Dylan has uncanny

insights into the processes of the mind, much more profound than
that of any other poet. He penetrates deeper into the human soul
than even Freud and his followers.
In his best works he captures psychological moods which have

been rarely captured, especially those of childhood and
adolescence. He himself matured early, and his early poetry is the
poetry of an adolescent. In The Hunchback in the Park Thomas
talks about a solitary hunchback who eats bread from a newspaper,
drinks water from the chained cup of the fountain, and sleeps at
night in a dog-kennel. These details about him show that he is a
homeless outcast, not a normal member of society. He is doubly an
outcast, because of his deformity and vagrancy, and therefore an
object of mockery to the truant boys playing in the park.
Religious Imagery
Dylan Thomas’ interests were psychological but they were also
religious. Indeed, God and Christ are rarely absent from his poems
since he takes imagery largely from the Bible. For example, in the
poem After the Funeral we see religious imagery when the poet
regards the woods as a kind of chapel where a religious ceremony
would be held in honour of his deceased Aunt. He visualises four
birds who will fly over her, making the sign of the cross in order to
bless her spirit. Again, in the poem A Refusal to Mourn the Death,
by Fire, of a Child in London we have religious imagery like:
“Zion of the water bead” and “the synagogue of the ear of corn”.
The words “Zion” and “synagogue” provide a sacramental quality
to enhance its religious appeal.

Dylan Thomas attached great importance to the use of imagery
in his poetry. As he was a poet of both of the sea and the woods,
the common scenes and sights of the countryside, the various
objects and phenomena of nature are the most important sources of
imagery in his poetry. Besides these, images of pain, disease, decay
and death, as well as sexual imagery are frequent in his poetry.
5. Would you consider Sylvia Plath’s Daddy to be an expression

against the voice of patriarchy? Comment critically.
Answer:
Sylvia Plath was a famous American poet and novelist. Her poetry
was regarded as confessional poetry and 'Daddy' is a typical
example of it. According to me the poem is an expression against
the voice of patriarchy in two ways:
a) There are many images in the poem that suggest her hatred for
her father.
- The hatred may not be directly about the man but the suffocation
she may have experienced under the father-figure during her
growing up year.
- Even though her father died when she was eight, she may have
experienced the loss for 'thirty years'as mentioned in the poem.
- Many suggest that she was experiencing Electra complex, a

Freudian concept opposite to Oedipus complex which is love for
the parent of the opposite sex, in this case for father and mother

respectively. Hence the memories of her father may have tortured
her and she says 'Daddy, I have had to kill you'.
- She was also a rebel throughout her life and may not have liked
the authority of the father.
b) The poem also is replete with images of World War II which she
had experienced when she was a child.
- Her father and mother were of German and Austrian origin. She
may have used the war images to compare her father's authority to
that of the Nazis.
- Another idea is the 'war' is 'patriarchal'. Many consider that wars

happen because of the male ego and the superiority of man. In this
poem, the superiority of he Aryan race and the ego of Hitler has led
to the World war.
- Stanza 9 has a description of Hitler as she compares him to

authority and cruelty.
The poem titled “Daddy” was written by well renowned feminist

American Poet Sylvia Plath in 1962. There are multifarious reasons
because of which this confessional poem can be categorized as a
resisting voice against the set norms of patriarchal society.
It raises a loud and clear voice against the male domination as

Sylvia herself explained it to be consisting of the words of a girl
suffering from Electra complex. The poem is thought to be
addressed to her deceased father named Otto Plath.

Her analogy of being like a foot in a shoe that is unable to breathe
speaks of the patriarchal stipulations imposed on her by the society
which bound her free will and freedom of expression. Then she
compares him to a black man who bit her tender heart into two
pieces. This again signifies the brutal nature of the man who is
impolite to female.
She establishes herself a victim and identifies different oppressive

roles of man i.e. a devil, a Nazi, a vampire and a husband. She
wanted to get rid of all.
The poem is spoken by a girl with an Electra complex. The father

died while she thought he was God. Her case is complicated by the
fact that her father was also a Nazi and her mother very possibly
part Jewish. In the daughter the two strains marry and paralyze
each other –she has to act out the awful little allegory once over
before she is free of it.
"Daddy," comprised of sixteen five-line stanzas, is a brutal and

venomous poem commonly understood to be about Plath's
deceased father, Otto Plath.
The speaker begins by saying that he "does not do anymore," and
that she feels like she has been a foot living in a black shoe for
thirty years, too timid to either breathe or sneeze. She insists that
she needed to kill him (she refers to him as "Daddy"), but that he
died before she had time. She describes him as heavy, like a "bag
full of God," resembling a statue with one big gray toe and its head
submerged in the Atlantic Ocean. She remembers how she at one
time prayed for his return from death, and gives a German
utterance of grief (which translates literally to "Oh, you").

She knows he comes from a Polish town that was overrun by
"wars, wars, wars," but one of her Polack friends has told her that
there are several towns of that name. Therefore, she cannot
uncover his hometown, where he put his "foot" and "root."
She also discusses how she could never find a way to talk to him.
Even before she could speak, she thought every German was him,
and found the German language "obscene." In fact, she felt so
distinct from him that she believed herself a Jew being removed to
a concentration camp. She started to talk like a Jew and to feel like
a Jew in several different ways. She wonders in fact, whether she
might actually be a Jew, because of her similarity to a gypsy. To
further emphasize her fear and distance, she describes him as the
Luftwaffe, with a neat mustache and a bright blue Aryan eye. She
calls him a "Panzer-man," and says he is less like God then like the
black swastika through which nothing can pass. In her mind,
"Every woman adores a Fascist," and the "boot in the face" that
comes with such a man.
When she remembers Daddy, she thinks of him standing at the
blackboard, with a cleft chin instead of a cleft foot. However, this
transposition does not make him a devil. Instead, he is like the
black man who "Bit [her] pretty red heart in two." He died when
she was ten, and she tried to join him in death when she was
twenty. When that attempt failed, she was glued back together. At
this point, she realized her course - she made a model of Daddy
and gave him both a "Meinkampf look" and "a love of the rack and
the screw." She promises him that she is "finally through;" the
telephone has been taken off the hook, and the voices can no longer
get through to her.
She considers that if she has killed one man, then she has in fact
killed two. Comparing him to a vampire, she remembers how he
drank her blood for a year, but then realizes the duration was closer
to seven years. She tells him he can lie back now. There is a stake
in his heart, and the villagers who despised him now celebrate his

death by dancing on his corpse. She concludes by announcing,
"Daddy, Daddy, you bastard, I'm through."
Analysis
"Daddy" is perhaps Sylvia Plath's best-known poem. It has elicited
a variety of distinct reactions, from feminist praise of its
unadulterated rage towards male dominance, to wariness at its
usage of Holocaust imagery. It has been reviewed and criticized by
hundreds and hundreds of scholars, and is upheld as one of the best
examples of confessional poetry.
It is certainly a difficult poem for some: its violent imagery,
invocation of Jewish suffering, and vitriolic tone can make it a
decidedly uncomfortable reading experience. Overall, the poem
relates Plath's journey of coming to terms with her father's looming
figure; he died when she was eight. She casts herself as a victim
and him as several figures, including a Nazi, vampire, devil, and
finally, as a resurrected figure her husband, whom she has also had
to kill.
Though the final lines have a triumphant tone, it is unclear whether
she means she has gotten "through" to him in terms of
communication, or whether she is "through" thinking about him.
Plath explained the poem briefly in a BBC interview:
"Daddy" can also be viewed as a poem about the individual trapped
between herself and society. Plath weaves together patriarchal
figures – a father, Nazis, a vampire, a husband – and then holds
them all accountable for history's horrors. Like "The Colossus,"
"Daddy" imagines a larger-than-life patriarchal figure, but here the
figure has a distinctly social, political aspect. Even the vampire is
discussed in terms of its tyrannical sway over a village. In this
interpretation, the speaker comes to understand that she must kill
the father figure in order to break free of the limitations that it
places upon her. In particular, these limitations can be understood
as patriarchal forces that enforce a strict gender structure. It has the
feel of an exorcism, an act of purification. And yet the journey is
not easy. She realizes what she has to do, but it requires a sort of
hysteria. In order to succeed, she must have complete control, since
she fears she will be destroyed unless she totally annihilates her
antagonist.
The question about the poem's confessional, autobiographical

content is also worth exploring. The poem does not exactly
conform to Plath's biography, and her above-cited explanation
suggests it is a carefully-constructed fiction. And yet its
ambivalence towards male figures does correspond to the time of
its composition - she wrote it soon after learning that her husband
Ted Hughes had left her for another woman. Further, the mention
of a suicide attempt links the poem to her life.
However, some critics have suggested that the poem is actually an
allegorical representation of her fears of creative paralysis, and her
attempt to slough off the "male muse." Stephen Gould Axelrod
writes that "at a basic level, 'Daddy' concerns its own violent,
transgressive birth as a text, its origin in a culture that regards it as
illegitimate –a judgment the speaker hurls back on the patriarch
himself when she labels him a bastard." The father is perceived as
an object and as a mythical figure (many of them, in fact), and
never really attains any real human dimensions. It is less a person
than a stifling force that puts its boot in her face to silence her.
From this perspective, the poem is inspired less by Hughes or Otto
than by agony over creative limitations in a male literary world.
However, even this interpretation begs something of an
autobiographical interpretation, since both Hughes and her father
were representations of that world.
Plath's usage of Holocaust imagery has inspired a plethora of
critical attention. She was not Jewish but was in fact German, yet
was obsessed with Jewish history and culture. Several of her
poems utilize Holocaust themes and imagery, but this one features
the most striking and disturbing ones. She imagines herself being
taken on a train to "Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen," and starting to

talk like a Jew and feel like a Jew. She refers to her father as a
"panzer-man," and notes his Aryan looks and his "Luftwaffe"
brutality. One of the leading articles on this topic, written by Al
Strangeways, concludes that Plath was using her poetry to
understand the connection between history and myth, and to stress
the voyeurism that is an implicit part of remembering. Plath had
studied the Holocaust in an academic context, and felt a connection
to it; she also felt like a victim, and wanted to combine the personal
and public in her work to cut through the stagnant double-talk of
Cold War America. She certainly uses Holocaust imagery, but does
so alongside other violent myths and history, including those of
Electra, vampirism, and voodoo. Strangeways writes that, "the
Holocaust assumed a mythic dimension because of its extremity
and the difficulty of understanding it in human terms, due to the
mechanical efficiency with which it was carried out, and the
inconceivably large number of victims." In other words, its
shocking content is not an accident, but is rather an attempt to
consider how the 20th century's great atrocity reflects and escalates
a certain human quality.
Indeed, it is hard to imagine that any of Sylvia Plath's poems could
leave the reader unmoved. "Daddy" is evidence of her profound
talent, part of which rested in her unabashed confrontation with her
personal history and the traumas of the age in which she lived.
That she could write a poem that encompasses both the personal
and historical is clear in "Daddy."

MEG – 02: BRITISH DRAMA ASSIGNMENT 2018 - 2019 (Based
on Blocks (1 - 09)
Course Code: MEG-02
Assignment Code: MEG-02/TMA/2018-19
1. Would you call the character of Dr. Faustus ‘heroic’? Give
reasons for your answer.
Answer:
The character of Dr Faustus is not heroic but he is considered a
Tragic Hero.
Why he is called a tragic hero is because he uses all his powers to

destroy himself and makes his own life miserable.
He is a very intelligent man with amazing qualities in him. He has

a talent for good music, arts and a lot of other things. He is
someone who can do everything at a time.
At the end of the day he is victorious and that is ending the quest of
destroying his own life.

Written by Christopher Marlowe, in the years following 1589 and
1592, the play of Dr. Faustus is a tragedy. It is an Elizabethan
Tragedy which is different from other tragedies.
Such tragedies have people of high power as a hero. Though he

was a man of knowledge, he was on a quest to take nature in his
hands and control it too. Little did he know that he would end up
on a catastrophic note. On one side he wished to have name, fame
and money.
Second, he wanted to trade his soul, with that of Lucifer. By doing
so he would get cosmic powers.
Third, we see him summoning, an evil character Mephistopheles,

whose dangerous selfish motives are incomprehensible. He wants
the soul, of Dr. Faustus and does not wish good for him and wants
him to be un friendly with Lucifer.
Faustus is not a villain initially, his fickle mindedness and greed,

makes him a tragic hero, a protagonist whose character flaws lead
to his downfall.
Dr. Faustus, believe it or not, can be categorized as a hero, only he

would be a Tragic Hero.
He is a hero because, as all heroes denote, they are born with

unique qualities, amazing potential, immense power and a wealth
of knowledge. However, a TRAGIC hero uses all these innate
elements to destroy himself, and make his life miserable.
In the case of Faustus, here we have a superbly intelligent scholar

with tremendous influence among the academic community. He
has a talent for arts, music, everything. He has a great job, he
lectures, teaches, travels...he is the epitome of the Renaissance
man: One who can do it all.
Yet, he completely overrules all these great qualities and opts for
aspiring to "have it all" through becoming a magician. An
illusionist that could bring about anything he ever thought
of...but..for what reason exactly? He didn't even know himself!
He wandered through life, and even made that ridiculous pact with
the devil, also not knowing exactly why, until he finally died in
fear loneliness and misery. If anyone was a winner, was the devil
himself. Faustus was also victorious: Victorious in ending his
quest of destroying his life.
Hence, here we have the typical tragic hero tale of a man too big
for himself, and too smart for any capacity of common sense.
The way Marlowe portrayed Dr. Faustus in the novel; he can be
surely categorized as an epic hero. In the very beginning, we see that he
is a man with great academic knowledge and his main attribute is to
work hard for his dreams. He even sells his soul in order to achieve
miraculous abilities and unique qualities as well. These features match
with the portrayal of any hero as depicted in epics such as The Iliad,
Odyssey, and more. We have to bow down to this theory that he is a
tragic hero and celebrates the theme of Renaissance through his actions.
This is because any tragic hero utilizes his innate attributes to annihilate
himself which causes misery in his life.

In this work about Dr. Faustus, his talents are in the subject of music,
art, and many other subjects academic gamut. But, he overrules all these
abilities, and over-ambition plus greed destroy him at last.
Hence, Dr. Faustus is the archetypal tragic hero who happens to be too
immense for himself which decreases his ability to reason and logically
think over what he can do with what he possesses.
The term hero is derived from a Greek word that means a person who
faces adversity, or demonstrates courage, in the face of danger.
However, sometimes he faces downfall as well. When a hero confronts
downfall, he is recognized as a tragic hero or protagonist. Aristotle, the
Greek philosopher, characterizes these plays or stories, in which the
main character is a tragic hero, as tragedies. Here, the hero confronts his
downfall whether due to fate, or by his own mistake, or any other social
reason.
Aristotle defines a tragic hero as “a person who must evoke a sense of
pity and fear in the audience. He is considered a man of misfortune that
comes to him through error of judgment.” A tragic hero’s downfall
evokes feelings of pity and fear among the audience.
Characteristics of a Tragic Hero
Here we have basic characteristics of a tragic hero, as explained by
Aristotle:
 Hamartia – a tragic flaw that causes the downfall of a hero.
 Hubris – excessive pride and disrespect for the natural order of
things.
 Peripeteia – The reversal of fate that the hero experiences.
 Anagnorisis – a moment in time when hero makes an important
discovery in the story.
 Nemesis – a punishment that the protagonist cannot avoid, usually
occurring as a result of his hubris.
 Catharsis – feelings of pity and fear felt by the audience, for the
inevitable downfall of the protagonist.
Examples of Tragic Hero in Literature
Example #1: Oedipus, Oedipus Rex (By Sophocles)
Aristotle has used his character Oedipus as a perfect example of a tragic

hero, as he has hubris such that he is blind to the truth. He refuses to
listen to wise men, such as Tiresias, who predicts that Oedipus has
killed his father, Laius. He is tragic because he struggles against the
forces of his fate, and pitiable due to his weakness, which arouses fear
in the audience. Thus, Oedipus is an ideal example of the tragic hero, as
he caused his own downfall, falling from his own estate and facing
undeserved punishment.
Example #2: Prince Hamlet, Hamlet (by William Shakespeare)
Hamlet is the prince of Denmark, a man of high social status and noble
by birth. He is almost driven to madness by his father’s tortured ghost,
who convinces him that Claudius is responsible for his father’s death,
and that he has committed treachery. Hamlet then makes a plan to take
revenge on his father’s killer, but he is blinded by his hamartia,
neglecting his relations with other loved ones – Ophelia and his mother
Gertrude. Hamlet’s hamartia is his constant contemplation and
brooding, which causes him to delay, which ultimately results in his
destruction. By the end, Hamlet also falls in a bloodbath, touching the
hearts of the audience by highlighting the most primal fear, death.
Example #3: Romeo, Romeo and Juliet (by William Shakespeare)
Romeo is also a very good example of a tragic hero. He is a man of high

social standing, who falls in love easily with a girl whose family holds
animosity towards his own family. Romeo’s tragic flaw is start
believing on his fate immediately. Juliet acts like a dead person, and

Romeo thinks her actually dead. Therefore, he kills himself. When she
wakes up and sees him dead, she also kills herself. Thus, it is not only
fate, but also his actions and choices that bring his downfall and death.
Example #4: Davy Jones, Pirates of the Caribbean (by Irene Trimble)
Davy Jones is a modern example of a typical tragic hero. He is basically

a sea captain, who falls in love with the sea goddess, Calypso. However,
Calypso breaks Jones’ heart, making him enraged, tragic, and bitter. He
grows into a mixture of a humanoid and octopus, and leads his savage
crew on raids in the entire sea on his ship, the Flying Dutchman. At
first, he was not bad, but his beloved breaks his heart that turns him into
bad man. Eventually, Will Sparrow kills him. Jones’ hamartia is that he
is a broken-hearted hero, who suffers at the hands of his beloved,
Calypso.
Function of Tragic Hero
The purpose of a tragic hero is to evoke sad emotions, such as pity and
fear, which makes the audience experience catharsis, relieving them of
their pent up emotions. The tragic flaw of the hero leads to his demise
or downfall that in turn brings tragic end. This gives wisdom to the
audience to avoid such things in their everyday lives. The sufferings and
fall of a hero, arousing feelings of pity and fear through catharsis,
purges the audiences of those emotions, to transform them into good
human beings and good citizens.
Faustus is the protagonist and tragic hero of Marlowe’s play. He is a

contradictory character, capable of tremendous eloquence and
possessing awesome ambition, yet prone to a strange, almost willful
blindness and a willingness to waste powers that he has gained at great
cost. When we first meet Faustus, he is just preparing to embark on his
career as a magician, and while we already anticipate that things will
turn out badly (the Chorus’s introduction, if nothing else, prepares us),
there is nonetheless a grandeur to Faustus as he contemplates all the
marvels that his magical powers will produce. He imagines piling up
wealth from the four corners of the globe, reshaping the map of Europe
(both politically and physically), and gaining access to every scrap of
knowledge about the universe. He is an arrogant, self-aggrandizing man,
but his ambitions are so grand that we cannot help being impressed, and
we even feel sympathetic toward him. He represents the spirit of the
Renaissance, with its rejection of the medieval, God-centered universe,
and its embrace of human possibility. Faustus, at least early on in his
acquisition of magic, is the personification of possibility.
But Faustus also possesses an obtuseness that becomes apparent during
his bargaining sessions with Mephastophilis. Having decided that a pact
with the devil is the only way to fulfill his ambitions, Faustus then
blinds himself happily to what such a pact actually means. Sometimes
he tells himself that hell is not so bad and that one needs only
“fortitude”; at other times, even while conversing with Mephastophilis,
he remarks to the disbelieving demon that he does not actually believe
hell exists. Meanwhile, despite his lack of concern about the prospect of
eternal damnation, -Faustus is also beset with doubts from the
beginning, setting a pattern for the play in which he repeatedly
approaches repentance only to pull back at the last moment. Why he
fails to repent is unclear: -sometimes it seems a matter of pride and
continuing ambition, sometimes a conviction that God will not hear his
plea. Other times, it seems that Mephastophilis simply bullies him away
from repenting.

Bullying Faustus is less difficult than it might seem, because Marlowe,
after setting his protagonist up as a grandly tragic figure of sweeping
visions and immense ambitions, spends the middle scenes revealing
Faustus’s true, petty nature. Once Faustus gains his long-desired
powers, he does not know what to do with them. Marlowe suggests that
this uncertainty stems, in part, from the fact that desire for knowledge
leads inexorably toward God, whom Faustus has renounced. But, more
generally, absolute power corrupts Faustus: once he can do everything,
he no longer wants to do anything. Instead, he traipses around Europe,
playing tricks on yokels and performing conjuring acts to impress
various heads of state. He uses his incredible gifts for what is essentially
trifling entertainment. The fields of possibility narrow gradually, as he
visits ever more minor nobles and performs ever more unimportant
magic tricks, until the Faustus of the first few scenes is entirely
swallowed up in mediocrity. Only in the final scene is Faustus rescued
from mediocrity, as the knowledge of his impending doom restores his
earlier gift of powerful rhetoric, and he regains his sweeping sense of
vision. Now, however, the vision that he sees is of hell looming up to
swallow him. Marlowe uses much of his finest poetry to describe
Faustus’s final hours, during which Faustus’s desire for repentance
finally wins out, although too late. Still, Faustus is restored to his earlier
grandeur in his closing speech, with its hurried rush from idea to idea
and its despairing, Renaissance-renouncing last line, “I’ll burn my
books!” He becomes once again a tragic hero, a great man undone
because his ambitions have butted up against the law of God.

2. Discuss the play within the play in A Midsummer Night’s
Dream.
Answer:
The play of Pyramus and Thisbe is important to A Midsummer
Night’s Dream because it provides a parallel plot of comic relief
and silliness that also underscores the themes of the play.
A Midsummer Night's Dream is a comedy written by William
Shakespeare in 1595/96. It portrays the events surrounding the
marriage of Theseus, the Duke of Athens, to Hippolyta(the former
queen of the Amazons). These include the adventures of four
young Athenian lovers and a group of six amateur actors
(the mechanicals) who are controlled and manipulated by the
fairies who inhabit the forest in which most of the play is set. The
play is one of Shakespeare's most popular works for the stage and
is widely performed across the world.
The play A Midsummer Night’s Dream by Williams Shakespeare

contains two distinctly different subplots within the lager structure
of itself, which can be considered as a remarkable characteristic of
the dramatic construction in general and of Shakespeare’s play in
particular. Although Shakespeare borrows the themes, characters
and stories from the history of the ancient Greece and Greek
mythology, the play-within-a-play structure shows his creations
and his own work. The play-within-a-play structure serves the
function of recapping many important themes of A Midsummer
Night’s Dreamand allows Shakespeare to comment on the nature
of art as well as criticize the acting of amateurs who perform and
play on the stage yet do not understand what they actually do.
The first play-within-a-play is a performance of Pyramus and
Thisbe played by the laborers. It is similar to the main play in
many aspects including commons in the story of the Athenian
lovers and some of the overall themes. Pyramus and Thisbe face
parental disapproval in the subplot just like the couple Lysander
and Hermia do in the main plot. Despite its dramatic premise, the
craftsmen play the love story of Pyramus and Thisbe in such a
comical way that parodies the melodramatic Athenian lovers and
gives the play a very joyful and comical ending. The role played by
the darkness of night creates another similarity as it causes the
romantic confusion in both plays. Pyramus, in the dark of the night,
mistakenly believes that Thisbe has been killed by the lion when he
sees her bloody mantle; he, thus, commits suicide because of this
misinterpretation. Likewise, the mix-ups and meddling of the love
fairy Puck cause the Athenian lovers face a miserable situation,
which also happens at night in the wood. Though the performance
of the craftsmen makes the Athenian lovers’ story which involves
strong emotions become comical and hilarious, the sub play serves
as symbol for the larger play itself. It is explained while the lovers
and Theseus and Hippolyta are mocking the ridiculous
performance of the laborers, the audiences watching the lovers
watch the craftsmen’s play are concurrently aware of the lovers’
own absurdity.
Moreover, the play-within-a-play of the craftsmen suggests the
strict requirements and the limit of the theatre. The workmen
establish a very unlikely dramatic troupe. All of these characters
appear comical because of their superficial characteristics and
personal traits. They bumble, mispronounce words, and play the
part of the fools. These untutored craftsmen are worried about their
new dramatic roles for Pyramus, Thisbe, a wall, a lion, and a moon
since none of them has had a previous acting experience. In spite of
their preoccupation, the leader of the troupe Quince fails to help
the actors correct their pronunciation and master important
techniques for dramatic performance. During the rehearsal time,
instead, he only tries to match the actors in hope that they will play
out. On one hand, the play-within-a-play is offered as a comic
interlude to display Shakespeare’s creativity. One the other hand,
the sub play helps the audiences understand some of the overall
themes in the main play. That is, the play does not clearly explain
how the craftsmen come together and how or by whom they are
selected to be worthy to play. These characters and the sub play
they perform exist to raise questions about the fitness for acting a
certain role in a play. The issue of whom is worthy to putting on a
play is also one of the concerns in the play A Midsummer Night’s
Dream. Another aspect of this issue comprising who is responsible
for bringing a play to the audiences or what thoughts and actions
are proper in order to bring a play to stage should be also
concerned. The conversations among the craftsmen-actors in which
they argue whether they can bring an actual wall to stage and
conclude that it is impossible to carry out demonstrate this point.
Another play which can be considered as a second play-within-a-
play is written by the Oberon, the King of all fairies. He creates a
play in which the mortals are the performers. Marriage and
reconciliation are the means for resolving all conflicts. In Oberon’s
play, Helena gets her love, Lysander and Hermia stays together,
and Titania has a lesson of obedience. As the workmen turn the
tragic drama of the Athenian lovers into a comic farce by their
awful performance, Oberon does the same when his fairy Puck
accidentally put the love potion on eyes of the wrong Athenian
man. This mistake causes the Athenian lovers experience an
intensive misery, which also creates a comical situation. Similar to

the first play-within-a-play, the second serves an important role to
signify the larger play.
In “What hempen home-spuns have we swagg’ring here?”
Amateur Actors in A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Coventry
Civic Play and Pageants, Clifford Davidson discusses the play-
within-a-play structure and its purpose. He indicates that the play-
within-a-play raises questions of imagination and stage reality
(Davidson 87). Also, the author argues that Shakespeare uses this
structure to parody the older dramatic styles of the public theaters
fashionable when they tended to use the bombastic language and
clumsily use the mythological subjects in their performance
(Davidson 88). Above that, Davidson points out a very important
issue that Shakespeare makes a comparison between the inadequate
of the acting amateurs and the highly professional work conducted
by his own company through the parody with the acting of the
craftsmen in the subplot (88). According to the author, however,
Shakespeare seems to have a negative view on the play and the
players in many provincial cities and towns, which probably can
cause severe misrepresentation about the quality of the amateur
actors or companies (96). Davidson explains that by saying that
“for the spectacles that cities like Coventry were able to mount
were surely not so rough and “amateurish” as we might imagine”
or “the quality of the production were surely much, much higher
that Shakespeare’s play-within-a-play in A Midsummer Night’
Dream would seem to suggest” (96).
The play-within-a-play is analyzed studied from a different point of
view in the article The Act of Change in A Midsummer Night’s
Dream. Alan Bellringer explores the art of acting which he claims
is “a valid part of the art of living” and its importance (213). He
asserts that “the sub plot about the Athenian workmen’s
underserved success in the amateur dramatic competition is
thematically relevant and supportive” (Bellringer 213). On the
other hand, the author sees acting and plays as a mean for normal,
simple and blundering people like the character Bottom to “escape
from their stereotyped tradesmen’s personalities through their
imaginative art of drama, the world of ‘shadows’”. Through the
play and acting, these craftsmen-actors can “briefly change their
status in life” and “find fulfillment in their new-found importance
as actors”. Regardless of “a mere matter of talented extrovertism”,
Bellringer compliments the performance of the craftsmen for their
contribution to the success of the play even though it is intended as
a ridiculous performance used to satirize the dramatic play of
Pyramus and Thisbe and turn it into a comical play (215). He
stresses the dynamism as the essential quality of this comedy and
states that the purpose of play-within-a-play is about the “use of
change” or the “amendment of life” (Bellringer 217).
The play-within-a-play structure recaps the principles themes and
ideas of A Midsummer Night’s Dream and has a significant
contribution as a representation of the main play. The similarities
in the sub play clarify the overall scheme. It also serves as a tool
for Shakespeare’s creative work and a mean for the audiences to
distinguish between the fiction and reality and realize the nature of
art in theatre.
The story of Pyramus and Thisbe offers a very subtle return to a

couple of the main elements of A Midsummer Night’s
Dream: lovers caught up in misunderstanding and sorrow
enhanced by the darkness of night. Like the main story of the outer
play, the inner play consists of a tragic premise made comical by
the actors. The craftsmen’s unintentionally goofy portrayal of the
woe of Pyramus and Thisbe makes the melodramatic romantic
entanglements of the young Athenian lovers seem even more
comical.
However, it is important to recognize as well that the inherent
structure of a play-within-a-play allows Shakespeare to show off

his talent by inserting a gem of pure comedy. The conflicts have
been resolved and a happy ending procured for all; the
performance, thus, has no impact on the plot. Rather, the
craftsmen’s hilarious bungling of the heavy tragedy allows the
audience, and the melodramatic Athenian lovers, to laugh and take
delight in the spectacle of the play.
That Shakespeare takes his characters from vastly different sources

(e.g., the bumbling, rough craftsmen and the delicate, fanciful
fairies) contributes to the imaginative scope and pervasive
absurdity of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Shakespeare combines
the contrasting elements of the play in startling and grotesque
ways, as in the royal Titania’s love for the ass-headed Bottom. He
thus creates the sense that the normal rules and operations of reality
have been suspended: if the magical Titania can fall in love with
the ludicrous Bottom, anything can happen. The play’s
extraordinarily varied frame of reference, which includes elements
of Greek mythology (Theseus and Hippolyta), aspects of the
contemporary London theatrical tradition (males playing females in
the craftsmen’s play), characters of Babylonian origin (Pyramus
and Thisbe) and from English fairy lore (Puck), and classical
literary analogues (Titania and Oberon), adds to the surreal quality
of the play by juxtaposing elements that clash stylistically.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream fits into four acts all of the material
that would normally occupy a five-act play; the main story, climax,
and even a period of falling action are capped by a happy turn of

events that would seem to mark the play’s end. It is somewhat
strange, then, that Shakespeare includes a fifth act. Since he has
already resolved the tensions of the main plot, he treats Act V as a
joyful comic epilogue. Except for a short closing scene, the act is
committed wholly to the craftsmen’s performance of Pyramus and
Thisbe. In wrapping up the conflict before the last act, Shakespeare
affords himself the opportunity to give the audience one act of
pure, uncomplicated comedy. He offers a play-within-a-play whose
comical rendition caps the cheerful mood of the Athenians
watching the play.
3. What is the importance of Hamlet’s soliloquies in the play?

Answer:
The Importance of the Soliloquies in Hamlet A soliloquy is a
dramatic speech spoken by a character who is alone on stage, or
believes themselves to be alone. This device allows a character in a
play to speak directly to the audience about their motives, feelings
and decisions. They reveal the characters innermost thoughts and
traditionally contain no lies or deception as the character is
revealing their true thoughts and emotions. Hamlet’s soliloquies
give the impression of a man discovering himself as he speaks. The
importance of the soliloquies in Hamlet are therefore crucial to the
development of his character and of course the development of the
play.
This could prove that Hamlet is frail but we must view Hamlet
under ethical light; he is held up by Christian conscience which is
why he decides against suicide as a cure for his desolation. Hamlet
believes the world has deteriorated and become dreary and foul; it is
solely occupied by ‘things rank and gross in nature’. Shakespeare’s
powerful imagery displays Hamlet under pessimistic light; Hamlet
is telling the audience that the world is corrupted and that he has lost
his faith in the world. He believes this due to his mother having
betrayed the model relationship of his parents by an in-stand and
unethical marriage; ‘With such dexterity to incestuous sheets’. The
use of caesura in the lines allows Shakespeare to breakdown
Hamlet’s language and possibly his state of mind, and also suggests
the intensity of emotion: ‘It is not, nor it cannot come to good But
break my heart, for I must hold my tongue’ Act 1-2-158/159.
A soliloquy is a dramatic speech spoken by a character who is

alone on
stage, or believes themselves to be alone. This device allows a
character in a play to speak directly to the audience about their
motives, feelings and decisions. They reveal the characters
innermost
thoughts and traditionally contain no lies or deception as the
character is revealing their true thoughts and emotions. Hamlet’s
soliloquies give the impression of a man discovering himself as he
speaks. The importance of the soliloquies in Hamlet are therefore
crucial to the development of his character and of course the
development of the play.

Hamlet’s first soliloquy in Act 1 Scene 2, reveals that Hamlet is
depressed to such an extent that he does not wish to live; these
feelings emerge following the death of his father and the indecent
swiftness of the remarriage of his mother to his uncle and, the new
King, Claudius.
‘O that this too too solid flesh would melt ,
Thaw and resolve itself into a

dew…’ Act
1-2-129/130
The word ‘too’ is repeated to enhance the emphasis on what

Hamlet is
saying; here the prince wants to vanish, he wants his body to melt
away which provides the audience with a weak initial portrayal of
Hamlet’s character. This is how dreadful Hamlet’s psychological
state
is in the beginning of the play.
Hamlet finds the vision of suicide tempting:
‘Or that the Everlasting had not fixed
his Canon ‘gainst

self-slaughter’
Act 1-2-131/132
Here Hamlet wishes God...

... middle of paper ...
...
Hamlet is a prince sworn to take revenge of his father’s murder but

it
is not until the very end of the play that he finally manages to kill
Claudius. Throughout his soliloquies he seems a confused Prince
with
an unbalanced mind and the assumption to why he kills Claudius in
the
end of the play rather than before, begins with Hamlet himself; he
himself wonders if he is a coward.
Hamlet’s soliloquies are of immense importance as they show a

large
development in his character; from a bloodthirsty revenger and a
self-critical performer, to a thoughtful academic. Hamlet’s
soliloquies are so effective that they view the mounting and
changing
thoughts of a character capable of ending the play so early when
he
first has reason to; maybe that is why Shakespeare chose to make
his
character an apparently weak-willed one.
Hamlet is Shakespeare's longest drama. It is still considered a

pioneer in English literature. Several films and plays have been
made as adaptations featuring many renowned actors.

Hamlet is the prince of Denmark. He is abroad, studying in
Germany, when his father, the king, dies. He is summoned back to
Denmark in order to attend his father's funeral.
Already drowning in grief, Hamlet becomes even more upset by
the fact that his mother has married his uncle—the brother of her
recently departed husband.
Hamlet does not think she mourned his father for a reasonable
amount of time before marrying again, and the hasty marriage also
means that his uncle, now King Claudius, sits upon the throne
rather than himself. Hamlet suspects foul play.
One night, Hamlet sees the ghost of his father, who tells him that
his death was not natural. Rather he was killed, and says his death
was a "foul and most unnatural murder."
The ghost of Hamlet's father tells Prince Hamlet that he was
murdered by his own brother, King Claudius, who now holds his
throne and is even married to his wife. He commands Hamlet to
seek revenge for his dead father's murder. Hamlet swears to fulfill
his revenge and to kill King Claudius.
But later, Hamlet faces a dilemma. Can he trust the ghost? Is the
vision of a spirit enough reason to kill his uncle, the king?
Later in Shakespeare's great literary work, Hamlet toys with many
options to escape his unhappy situation, including suicide.
The play includes many philosophical situations and heart-
wrenching scenes. This drama is worth reading for any person
interested—even a little bit—in literary work, Shakespeare, drama,
or just an amazing piece of writing.
Hamlet's Soliloquies
From time to time in the play, Hamlet delivers a soliloquy, or a
speech that the audience can hear, but the other characters cannot.

These speeches let us know what Hamlet is thinking but not
saying, and there are seven soliloquies in all.
If you are not familiar with what a soliloquy is, read "What is a
Soliloquy?" The article provides a definition of a soliloquy,
discusses the soliloquy's purpose and why they're important, and
provides examples, including a video, for better understanding.
To really understand the plot development of Hamlet, one needs to
understand the actual meaning and concept of each of Hamlet's
soliloquies. Since the text of that era is hard to understand for
today's students, I made seven different articles for each soliloquy,
so you could understand them easily. These articles each contain
the original text of the soliloquy, as well as a summary and an
explanation of that soliloquy.
In these seven soliloquies, Hamlet shares his inner feelings,
thoughts, and plans for the future. These soliloquies are the pivotal
pillars of the drama and are still considered some of Shakespeare's
most brilliant writing. You will likely recognize lines, such as the
famous "To be or not to be..." Without reading these seven
soliloquies, one cannot enjoy the true experience of this amazing
drama.
The Importance of the Soliloquies in Hamlet A soliloquy is

a dramatic speech spoken by a character who is alone on stage, or
believes themselves to be alone. This device allows a character in a
play to speak directly to the audience about their motives, feelings
and decisions.
A soliloquy is a dramatic convention in which a character, usually

alone on stage or at least not heard by other characters on stage,
speaks their thoughts aloud. The purpose of a soliloquy is to give
an audience insight into the psychology of a character, including
their reasons for doing something (or avoiding doing something).
Through a soliloquy, a playwright presents significant "internal"
information that an audience needs to understand, similar to the
way a writer might use an omniscient narrator. For example,
Shakespeare employs a number of soliloquys in Macbeth to help
the audience understand the motivations and fears of his
characters. The following soliloquy appears in Act 1, Scene 7
of Macbeth, and is spoken by Macbeth as he considers (and
reconsiders) the plan to kill King Duncan:
"If it were done when ’tis done, then ’twere well

It were done quickly: if the assassination
Could trammel up the consequence, and catch
With his surcease success; that but this blow
Might be the be-all and the end-all here,
But here, upon this bank and shoal of time,
We’ld jump the life to come. But in these cases
We still have judgment here; that we but teach
Bloody instructions, which, being taught, return
To plague the inventor: this even-handed justice
Commends the ingredients of our poison’d chalice
To our own lips. He’s here in double trust;
First, as I am his kinsman and his subject,
Strong both against the deed; then, as his host,
Who should against his murderer shut the door,
Not bear the knife myself. Besides, this Duncan
Hath borne his faculties so meek, hath been
So clear in his great office, that his virtues
Will plead like angels, trumpet-tongued, against
The deep damnation of his taking-off;
And pity, like a naked new-born babe,
Striding the blast, or heaven’s cherubim, horsed
Upon the sightless couriers of the air,
Shall blow the horrid deed in every eye,
That tears shall drown the wind. I have no spur
To prick the sides of my intent, but only
Vaulting ambition, which o’erleaps itself
And falls on the other."
Through this soliloquy, the audience gains insight into the inner
conflict that Macbeth feels over the upcoming murder. He gives a
number or reasons why he doesn't want to murder Duncan: the act
won't stand alone, but will lead to other repercussions like eternal
damnation, it would set a precedent for regicide (which could
return on Macbeth when he is king), and he should be protecting
the king rather than plotting Duncan's demise. By employing this
technique, Shakespeare lets his audience see the deeper, more
human aspects of Macbeth, thus preventing the character from
being a one dimensional "bad guy" and allowing the audience to
see him as a conflicted, tortured soul. At the end of the soliloquy,
Macbeth states that his ambition still takes precedence, thus
allowing the audience to understand his tragic flaw. The use of
this and other soliloquies ensures that Macbeth's eventual downfall
is all the more effective on the audience because they have been
given prior insight into his initial, far less selfish nature and can
understand the pitfalls associated with ambition, something seen as
positive.
A soliloquy is a literary device used by writers to give insight into

a character's inner feelings. By definition, it is a dramatic
convention in which a character, usually alone on stage or at least
not heard by other characters on stage, speaks his thoughts aloud.
Soliloquies are usually meant for the audience's ears only and
informs them about the character's motivations and state of mind.
A similar literary convention is an "Aside," in which the speaker
directs his dialog to the audience while members onstage are
unable to hear. Shakespeare's "To be or not to be" speech
in Hamlet is probably the most famous example of a dramatic
soliloquy. (The Bedford Introduction to Literature, 6th Edition)
A soliloquy is a dramatic device in which a character speaks his or

her thoughts out loud.
The purpose of such a device is to illustrate what is going on in the

character's head in a way that can not be done quite as well through
dialogue or action. This can be very important in a play because
the character's thoughts can be quite central to the development of
the play.
For example, in Hamlet's "to be or not to be" soliloquy, we are

given an insight into his psyche and we are allowed to understand
what his thoughts are about life and death.

4. Can The Alchemist be considered an allegory? Give a
reasoned answer.
Answer:-

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MEG – 01: BRITISH POETRY ASSIGNMENT 2018 - 2019 (Based

on Blocks (1 - 10) Max. Marks: 100

1. Explain any two of the excerpts of poems given below with

(i) Oh there is blessing in this gentle breeze,

Umesh Solved Assignment:-9507516410/8789841106 Page 1

Wordsworth experiences relief in coming back to nature. He

Umesh Solved Assignment:-9507516410/8789841106 Page 2

Umesh Solved Assignment:-9507516410/8789841106 Page 3

From this initial couplet, Dryden creates the atmosphere of an epic, a

2. What are the main features of metaphysical poetry? Give

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All of those types of poetry have specific qualities that allow us

Umesh Solved Assignment:-9507516410/8789841106 Page 7

3. Does the Dejection: An Ode contain any elements of what

"Though I should gaze for ever

I may not hope from outward forms to win

The passion and the life, whose fountains are within.”

According to the Romantics, the internal realities and imagination

He speaks about productive depression in which one produces the

“this joy within me

dallied with distress

And all misfortunes were but as the stuff

Whence Fancy made me dreams of happiness”

Romantic poetry typically testifies to the beauty and power of the

Coleridge also celebrates, in this poem, the beauty of nature. At the

Romantic poetry also celebrates the power and the

Umesh Solved Assignment:-9507516410/8789841106 Page 11

The investigation herein was initially prompted by Coleridge’s

Coleridge’s presentation of his theory of imagination is

Umesh Solved Assignment:-9507516410/8789841106 Page 13

The first kind of imagination is perhaps the most difficult to grasp.

The primary IMAGINATION is the living Power and prime Agent

To put it another way, as I see it, primary imagination is

Coleridge describes secondary imagination as follows:

The secondary Imagination I consider as an echo of the former, co-

I suggest that secondary imagination can be understood as a joining

Coleridge’s third kind of imagination is fancy, which he describes

FANCY, on the contrary, has no other counters to play with, but

Fancy, as I understand it, is a working of the human imagination on

4. Write an essay on Dylan Thomas’s use of images in his poetry?

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Much of the acclaim that is given to Dylan Thomas is attributable

Dylan Thomas is widely regarded as one of the 20th Century's

Secondly, Thomas brings into action images of "burn" and "rave at

Do not go gentle into that good night,

The Woods are lovely, dark and deep.

Umesh Solved Assignment:-9507516410/8789841106 Page 19

And I am dumb to tell the lover’s tomb

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In his best works he captures psychological moods which have

Umesh Solved Assignment:-9507516410/8789841106 Page 21

5. Would you consider Sylvia Plath’s Daddy to be an expression

- Many suggest that she was experiencing Electra complex, a

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- Another idea is the 'war' is 'patriarchal'. Many consider that wars

- Stanza 9 has a description of Hitler as she compares him to

The poem titled “Daddy” was written by well renowned feminist

It raises a loud and clear voice against the male domination as

Umesh Solved Assignment:-9507516410/8789841106 Page 23

She establishes herself a victim and identifies different oppressive

The poem is spoken by a girl with an Electra complex. The father

"Daddy," comprised of sixteen five-line stanzas, is a brutal and

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