Satire😀😡

Major weapons of the Satirist

      

                     In english literature, there are satirists like Dryden, Pope, Swift, Huxley and Orwell. All can be called primary satirists. Satire can be described as the literary art of derogating (insult) a subject by making a ridiculous and evoking towards it attitudes of amusement and indignation.Comedy evokes laughter mainly as an end in  itself, while satire derided, that it is uses laughter as a weapon against the corruption that exists in the society and outside of society. There should be a person or a group, a class, and institution, a nation or even against mankind.

1. Invective:-

                     The simplest weapon of satire is Invective, defined in dictionary as, "a violent attack in word". 

                    Invective is sometimes exchanged between angry motorists after a small accident, or between excited supportors at football match, Used by satirist is must of course be controlled by good taste and the law of libel. The latter can sometimes cause serious difficulties to a writer who attacks people who are alive and recognisable. The best example of this kind of satire are,

Aldous Huxley's "Point Counter Point" (1920)

Hilaiee Belloc's "Lines to a Don"

                   Nobody would pretend that this is satire at its most serious; it is too personal and too trival; the sort of thing that a clever schoolboy might write. But it has the spirit and energy which makes fine invective.

2. Irony:-

                 In comparison of invective, irony is less direct weapon of satirist, but not less effective. It is not easy to define irony exactly, but we can begin from the dictionary:

    "The expression of one's meaning by language of opposite or different tendency, especially the adoption of another's view or tone".

In ordinary conversation, irony often expressed by a tone of voice, like...

        "She is fine example of a faithful wife"

              In such a way as to mean what people say, exactly the opposite of what they seems yo mean.

      Jonathan Swift was one of the great masters of Irony.

3. Ability to amuse and entertain the reader:-

                  The most important of all satirist's weapon is his ability to amuse and entertain the reader. Without this, satire becomes merely tedious and bad tempered. Many of 20th century have been worried about possible misuses of science and technology by government. Historians, sociologists, journalists have written millions of words about it, but by far the most effective wornings have come from imaginative writers like H. G. Well, Aldous Huxley and George Orwell. The book like Brave New World, Nineteen- Eighty-Four have been read by millions of people for pure enjoyment. 

          The best example of all is Gulliver's Travels, which one can easily read as a story without realising author's satirical intention at all. 

Conclusion:-

                     So, without Invective or Irony, one cannot make or write good satire. However, amusement and enjoyment are essential part of satire. All this weapons make the reader to read satire without any kind of disturbance and make him know about the Idea of Satire, which is laid behind the words.

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The Character of Happy Life

      Long answer of the poem" The character of happy life" by Henry Wotton

Introduction of poet:- 

            Henry Wotton was born on 30 March, 1568 in England and died on December,1639 in Eton,U.K. He was an English poet,Author,Diplomat and Politician.

Non-Dramatic Poets of the Elizabethan Age

Chief poet:-

Edmund Spenser:-

Born- 1552 London, England

Died:- 13 January 1559 London, England

Resting place:- Westminster Abbey

                    Edmund Spenser was the greatest figure of Elizabethan age. His life and work seem to center about three great influences, summed up in three names:-

1. Cambridge:- Where he grew acquainted with classics and the Italian poets;

2. London:- Where he experienced the glamour and the disappointment of court life;

3. Irland:- which steeped him in the beauty of old Celtic poetry and first gave him leisure to write his masterpiece.

                    Chaucer was his beloved master. He wanted to rival the " Canterbury Tale's". He wanted to make English literature more powerful.

                      The first period of his life was in and around Cambridge. After leaving Cambridge he went to the North of England for unknown work or quest, here he started to write " Shepherd's Calander". After that he came to London, here he finished Shepherd's Calander and came to unader the influence of Queen and his favourites. The third period of his life began, through Leicester's influence, he became secretary to Lord Grey, the Queen's deputy in Irland. Here according to terms he must reside as an English settler, that he see here unhappy Island. After that he wrote his view on "The state of Irland" his only prose work.

                 In Kilcolman, he finished the first three books of Fairy Queen.

Work of Spenser:- 

                   The Fairy Queen is the great work of him, upon which the poet's game chiefly rests. The original plan of the poem included 24 books, each of them recount the adventure and triumph of a knight who represented a moral virtue.

Purpose of its first twelve books was its first twelve book:-

                           To pourtraict in Arthur, before he was king, the image of brave knight, perfected in the twelve private Moral Virtues as Aristotle hath devised which is the purpose of this twelve books.

                        It tells story of conflict, purely allegorical, struggle between good and evil. Spenser completed only six books celebrating Holiness, temperance, chastity, friendship, justice and courtship. We have also fragment of the seventh, but the rest of this book was not written and rest we lost in fire at castle due to rebel.

Poetical form:- 

                         For the Fairy Queen, Spenser invented new verse form which has been called "SPENSERIAN STANZA", improved form of Aristo's Ottava rima and a close resemblance with Chaucer's musical verse form in the MONK'S TALE. SPENSERIAN STANZA has 9 line 8 or 5 feet each and the last of 6 feet.

RHYMING SCHEME:- ABABBCBCC

SHEPHERD'S CALENDAR is another work of Spenser which presents rural life and love in field.

Other poetry:-

1. Amoretti :- collection of 89 sonnets

2. Epithalamion :- his work of his marriage in hymn language

3. Astrophel - he wrote Astrophel an elegy on the death of his friend Sidney.

4. Mother Hubbard's Tale

CHARACTERISTICS OF SPENSER'S POETRY:-

1. Perfect Melody

2. Tare sense of beauty

3. Splendid imagination

4. A lofty moral purity and seriousness

5. A delicate idealism 

*COMPARISON BETWEEN CHAUCER AND SPENSER:-

               Chaucer presents man if is with humor and romance and observe human nature. While Spenser thinks about human should be.... Idea of reformation.

Minor poets:- 

     Nearly 2 hundred poets are recorded in the short period from 1558 to 1625. Many of them were prolific writers.

1. THOMAS SACKVILLE( 1536-1603):

        Thomas Sackville was predecessor of the Elizabethan age, classed with Wyatt and Surrey. He wrote first English tragedy Ferrex and Poffex called GORBODUC, which will be considered rise of the drama.

Work:- Earl of dorset, Lord of high treasure of England.

His great poem called "The Mirror of Magistrate".

"Lydgate's Fall of Princess"- this poem would be mirror in which ruler might see themselves.

"Induction"

" Complaint of the Duck of Buckingham"- these are written in Royal time. It had strong poetic feelings and expression.

               Unfortunately, Sackville turned from poetry to politics and the poem was carried on by two inferior poets William Baldwin and George Ferrers.

2. PHILIP SIDNEY (1554-1586):

                   Philip Sidney was the ideal gentleman. His biography is more interesting rather than his books. His life expresses better than his literary work. He followed two ideal of the age personal honor and national greatness. His three major works published after his death.

1. The Arcadia - the story about pastrol romance 

2. The Apologies for poetrie :- this work also called Defence of Poesie. This is the answer to pamphlet by Stephen Gosson called The School.

3. The Apologies - it is the critical essay

 Astrophel and Stella is the collection of songs and sonnets, addressed to Lady Penelope Devereux

3. GEORGE CHAPMAN (1559-1634):

                  George Chapman spent his long quite life among dramatists and wrote chiefly for the stage. His most famous work is the metrical translation if Illad (1611) , Odyssey (1624) and Homer. He is also known as the finished of Marlow's " Hero and Leander".

4. MICHAEL DRAYTON ( 1563-1631):

                    Drayton was the Layamon of the Elizabethan age, and vastly scholarly than his predecessor. His chief work is " Polyolbion" an enormous poems, thousand couplets, describing the town, mountain and rivers of Britain.

Two another long works are the "Baron's wars" and "Heroic Epistle of England". And the ballad called Battle of Agnicourt.

The Meaning of Literature

 

A shell and a book:-                                         

                   

               A child and a man were one day walking on the seashore when the child found a little shell and held it to his ear. Suddenly he heard sound, strange, low, melodious sound as if the shell were remembering and repeating the murmurs of its Ocean. The child's face filled with wonder as he listened. Here in the shell, apparently, was a voice from another world and he listened with delight of its mystery and music. Then came the man, explaining that the child heard nothing strange; it was not a new world, but only the unnoticed harmony of the old that had aroused the child's wonder.

           Some such experience as this awaits us when we begin the study of literature. The study of literature has always two aspects:-

1. Simple enjoyment and appreciation

2. Analysis and exact description

              Behind every book is a man; behind the man is the race; and behind the race are the natural and social environment whose influence is unconsciously reflected in human life. In a word we have now reached a point where we wish to understand as well as to enjoy literature; and the first step, since exact definition is impossible, is to determine some of its essential qualities:

Qualities of literature:-

1. Artistic quality:-

            "All art is the expression of life

                       in form of truth and beauty."

                  

           All art is reflection of truth and beauty which are in the world,but which remain unnoticed until brought our attention by some sensitive human soul. A hundred men may pass a hay field and see only sweaty toil and the dried grass. But in the poem by Romanian meadow, where girls are making hay and singing as they work. He looks deeper sees truth.

     

       In the same pleasing way, all artistic work must be a kind of revelation. This architecture is probably the oldest art;yet we still have many builders but few architects. Like literature, we have many writers but few artists.

   

          In the broadest send,literature simply means the written records of the race, including all its history and science, as well as it's poems and novels. In the narrow sense, literature is the artistic record of  life. Most of our writing is excluded it.

2. It's suggestiveness:-

            Suggestiveness of literature appeal to our emotions and imagination rather than to our intellect. It's not so much what it says as what it awakens in us that constitutes it's charm. When Milton makes Satan says, "Myself am Hell", he doesn't state any fact, but rather opens up in these three tremendous words a whole world of speculation and imagination.

           

            The province of all art is not to instruct but to delight and only as literature delight us, causing each reader to build in his own soul that "Lordly pleasure house" of which Tennyson dreamed in his " Palace of Art", it is worthy of its name. 

 3. Permanence of literature:-

             The third quality of literature, arising directly from the other two, is it's permanence. The world doesn't live by bread alone. Notwithstanding it's hurry and bustle and apparent absorption in material things, it doesn't willingly let any beautiful thing perish. 

         This even more true of its songs than of its painting and sculpture; though permanence is a quality we should hardly expect in the present deluge of books and magazines pouring day and night from our presses in the name of literature. But this problem of too many book is not modern; as we suppose. But the difference between modern press and the Caxton press is that of modern press can print more copy in a week then all the Alexanderian scholars could copy in a century; but it would not be permanent.

             Literature is like a river in flood, which gradually purifies itself in two ways - the mud settle down to the bottom and the scum rises to the top. When we examine the writings than by common consent constitute our literature, the clear stream purified of its dross in a two more qualities or the test is this it's universality and style.

Test of literature:-

1. Universality:-

              Universality can be called first test of literature that it appeals to the simplest human emotions. Though we speak of national race literature, it is nevertheless true that good literature knows no nationality, not any bounds save humanity. It's occupied chiefly elementary passions and emotions - love and hate, joy and sorrow, fear and death, which are essential part of human nature. Oedipus and Kind Lear are shining examples of the law that only as book or song appeals to universal human interest does it become permanent.

2. Personal Style:-              

            In a broader sense "style is the peculiar manner of expressing thoughts". In a deeper sense "style is the man that is unconscious expression of the writer's own personality. That mean no author can interpret human life without unconsciously giving to it the native hue of his own soul. It is intensely personal element that constitutes style. The deep thought and feeling of the race reflected and colored by the writer's own life experience.

Objects in studying literature:-

             The study of literature has one definite object, and that is to know man who is ever a dual creature; he has an outward and an inner nature, he is not only a doer of deeds but a dreamer of dreams, and to know him the man of any age, we must search deeper than his history. History records his deeds and acts which springs from an ideal and to understand this we must read his literature.

                         

             When we read history of the Anglo-Saxon, for instance, we learn that they were sea rivers, explorers, their habits and novels. Literature doesn't tell us what our ancestors did, but what they thought and felt, how they looked on life, love, death, fear, reverence in God or man. Literature is aspiration of human life. It's preserves ideals of the people.

           Aristotle was profoundly right when he said that, "Poetry is more philosophical"

Gothe explained literature as "The humanization of the whole world".

Importance of literature:-

   

              Like all art, literature is a mere play of imagination, pleasing enough like a new novel, but without any serious or practical importance. Literature preserves the ideals of a people like, love faith, friendship, freedom, which are part of human life most worthy of preservation. All our arts and sciences, even our invention are founded squarely upon ideals; for under every invention is still the dream of "Beowulf", that man may overcome the forces of nature and the foundation of all our sciences and discoveries is the immortal dream that man "Shall be as God, knowing good and evil".

 

           In a word, our whole civilization, freedom, progress, homes, religion, rest of solidary upon ideals for their foundation. Nothing but an ideal ever endure upon earth, which is the main object in studying literature.

Conclusion:-

             Thus, Literature is the expression of life in words of truth and beauty; it is written records of man's life and also reflection of human nature.

                   

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Important person in English literature

 

1. Father of English novel

:- Henry Fielding

2. Father of English prose

:- William Tyndale

3. Father of English drama

:- William Shakespeare

4. Father of English Poetry

:- Geoffrey Chaucer

5. Father of English essay

:- Frances Bacon

6. Father of English History

:- Saint Bede the Venerable

7. Father of English criticism

:- John Dryden

8. Father of English tragedy

:-  Christopher Marlowe

9. Father of English romanticism

:- Jean Jacques Rousseau

10. Father of English grammar

:- Lindley Murray

11. Father of printing press in England

:- William Caxton

12. Father of English modern theatre

:- Henrik Ibsen

The chief Poets or Writer in particular age in English literature

  1. The Anglo-Saxon or old English period ( 450-1050)

First Poetry in English literature:- Beowulf

Other poems:- 

The seafarer

The fight St Finns Burgh

Waldere

Poets:-

1.Saint Bede the Venerable

2. Cademon

3. Cynewulf

4. Alfred

2. Anglo-Norman period(1066-1350)

Poets:- 

1. Geoffrey

2. Layamon

3. The age of Chaucer (1350-1400)

Poets:-

1. Goffery Chaucer

2. William Langland

3. John Wycliffe

4. John Mandeville

4. The Revival of learning (1400-1550)

Poets:-

1. Wyatt 

2. Surrey

3. Sir Thomas Malory

5. The age of Elizabeth (1550-1620)

Non- Dramatic poets:-

1. Edmund Spenser:-

2. Thomas Sackville

3. Philip Sidney

4. George Chapman

5. Michael Drayton

Dramatists:-

#Shakespeare#

1. Christopher Marlowe

2. Ben Johnson

3. Beaumont and Fletcher

4. John Webster

5. Thomas Middleton

6. Thomas Heywood

7. Thomas Dekker

8. Massinger, Ford and Shirley

Prose writers:-

1. Frances Bacon

2. Richard Hooker

3. Sidney and Raleigh

4. Cademon and Knox

5. Hakluyt and Purchase

6. Thomas North

6. The Puritan age(1620-1660)

Main writer of this age:- John Milton

Transition poets:- Daniel

Song writers:- Campion and Breton

The SPENSERIAN poets:- Withers, Giles and Fletcher

Metaphysical poets:- John Dinner and George Herbert

The cavalier poets:- Herrick, Carew, Lovelace and Suckling

Prose writers:-

1. John Bunyan

2. Thomas Browne

3. Thomas Fuller

4. Jeremy Taylor

5. Richard Baxter

6. Izzaki Walton

7. The restoration age(1660-1700)

Main writer:- John Dryden

1. Samuel Butler

2. Hobbes and Locke

3. Evelyn and Pepys

8. Eighteenth century literature (1700-1800)

Main writer:- Alexander Pope

1. Jonathan Swift

2. Joseph Addison

3. Samuel Johnson

4. Edmund Burke

5. Edward Gibbon

Poets:-

1. Thomas Gray

2. Thomas Goldsmith

3. William Cowper

4. Robbert Burns

5. William Black

Minor poets:-

1. James Thomson

2. William Collins

3. George Crabbe

4. James MacPherson

Novelists:-

1. Deniel Defoe

2. Samual Richardson

3. Henry Fielding:- father of English novel

4. Smollett and sterne

9. The age of Romanticism (1800-1850)

Poets:-

1. William Wordsworth

2. Samuel Taylor

3. Robert Southey

4. Walter Scott

5. George Gordon, Lord Byron

6. Percy Bysshe Shelley

7. John Keats

Prose writers:- 

1. Charles Lamb

2. Thomas De Quincy

3. Jane Austen

4. Walter Savage Landor

10. The Victorian age(1850-1900)

Main writer :- Alfred Tennyson

 

1. Robert Browning

2. Elizabeth Barrett

3. Rossetti

4. Morrie's

5. Swinberne

Novelists:-

Main novelist:- Charles Dickens

1. William Makepeace Thackeray

2. Mary Ann Evans, George Eliot

3. Charles Throllope

4. Bulwer Lytton

5. Kingsley

6. Mrs. Gaskell

7. Blackmore

8. Meredith

9. Hardy

10. Stevenson

Essayists:-

1. Thomas Babington Macaulay

2. Thomas Carlyle

3. John Ruskin

4. Matthew Arnold

5. John Henry Newman

                                #######

The Victorian age (1850 to 1900)

 The modern  period of progress and unrest

                    The Victorian age begins with the execution of Louis XVI and accession of Queen Victoria in 1837. This period seemed the lean. It lost the poetic fruitfulness of romantic age.

Historical summary

           Among the multitude of social and political forces of the age, four major things stand out clearly:- 

1.  Democracy

2. Equality in the nation without ruler

3. The age of comparative peace

4. Rapid progress in all the arts and sciences and in Mechanical inventions

1. Democracy:- 

            The long struggle of the Anglo-Saxons for their personal liberty is settled, and democracy become established. The last vestige of personal Government and of the divine right of rulers disappears; the house of commons become the ruling power in England.

2. Equality in the nation:-

           It is an age of democracy, age of education, of religious tolerance, the growing brotherhood, and of profound social unrest. The whole nation become free and equal. The slaves become freed.

3. An age of comparative peace:-

           This is an age of equality. The whole nation realised that the common people bear the burdon and the sorrow and the poverty of war, and also realised that war is not answer of all thing.

4. Rapid progress in all the arts and sciences and in Mechanical inventions:-

                      Vast number of inventions took place in this age from spinning looms to steamboats, and from matches to electric light. All this material thing, as well as the growth of education, have their influence upon the life of people. All this inventions make the influence upon literature, prose as well as poetry.

 Literary characteristic

1. An age of prose:-

                 Though, the age produced many poets, this is an age of prose. The number of readers has increased a thousand fold with the spread of popular education, it is the age of newspaper, the magazine,  and the modern novel. First two being the story of the world's daily life, and the novel is our pleasant form of literary entertainment by them our modern problems and ideas can be present.

                   The novel in this age fill a place, which the drama held in the days of Elizabeth; and never before, in english language, has the novel appeared in such numbers and in such perfection.

2. Moral purpose:-

                    In this age, literature came with the didactic moral preach. Through the literature, people get some moral insight. Art is not only sake for art, but for moral preach, people learn something by every case a definite purpose to sweep away error and to reveal the underlying truth of human life.

3. An age of doubt and pessimism:-

                  This age following the new conception of man and of the universe which was formulated by science under the name of involution. It is spoken of also as a prosaic age, lacking in great ideals. Both this critisism seem to be the result of judging a large thing when we too close to it to get its proportion.

                   Tennyson's work is sometimes in a doubt, but his In Memoriam is like the rainbow after storm.  

Conclusion:-

               So the literature expresses our faith in men, which may judge the Victorian age to be, on the whole, the noblest and most inspiring in the history of the world.

Satire - Introduction as a Literary Genre

                  

    SATIRE 

Introduction:-

                 In a small way, everybody is satirist. In one or the other way all satirises our leaders, prime minister, neighbours, etc. The real satirist however differs from most of us, both in strength of his feeling and having wit and genius to express it in novel, or poems, or plays.

Satire is a violent attack of words.

Satire is a genre that sets out to improve bad behaviour through Sarcasm and Irony.

           No doubt, irony, wit, humour, comic description, are the parts of satirical works. The satirist used them a medium or as a weapon. Some of the satirist have become known for their prominent works.

            Many literary works contains element of satire, even when the writers chief purpose was non-satirical. Let's look at some writers who belong to this category.

◾Chaucer:-

                Chaucer was too gentle and humane a man to be a great satirist. In general, he loved the world and his fellow human beings and saw no reason to attack them either. The one thing he hated was the lack of morality of the church - not bitterly or savagely as Milton might have done, but simply laughing at him.

   "The Prelude & The Canterbury Tales" are the best satirical works of Chaucer. Which shows the lack of morality of the church.

◾Shakespeare:-

            Shakespeare is not usually thought of as a satirist yet, there are often satirical touches in his works and some of the plays are almost wholly satirical, "Love's Labour's Lost" is an amusing satirical work on "the sex war".

     "As You Like It" satirises various fashionable features of the 1590s.

   Most of Shakespeare's satire is like Chaucer's - amusing and good-tempered.

Charles Dickens:-

               Dickens was another great writer who, although not generally thought of as a satirist, often used his influence as a novelist to attack and criticise the social injustice of his time. Poverty, Bad education, Inefficiency in government and law, shocking inequality of wealth and so on. 

      In "Little Darrit" Dickens makes a similar, and amusing attack on the well known slowness of government officials in his description of the circumlocution office. Much of his novel is set against of the background of the "Marshalsea debtor's prison", in which Dickens' father (seen in David Copperfield as Mr. Micawber) had spent some time when Dickens was a boy.

Conclusion:-

         Thus, satire is very important form of literature. It indicates the weackdness off human being by simply laughing at him.