Thinking Activity on Tale of Tab

Thinking Activity on Tale of a Tab:

How far do you think Digression is necessary in the text “A Tale of a Tab? "

Jonathan Swift (30 November 1667 – 19 October 1745) was an Anglo-Irish satirist, essayist, political pamphleteer (first for the Whigs, then for the Tories), poet and cleric who Became Dean of St Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin.

Swift is remembered for works such as Gulliver’s Travels, A Modest Proposal, A Journal to Stella, Drapier’s Letters, The Battle of the Books, An Argument Against Abolishing Christianity and A Tale of a Tub. He is regarded by the Encyclopaedia Britannica as the foremost prose satirist in the English language, and is less well known for his poetry. He originally published all of his works under pseudonyms – such as Lemuel Gulliver, Isaac Bickers Taff, MB Drapier – or anonymously. He is also known for being a master of two styles of satire, the Horatio and Juvenalian styles.

Summary

A Symbolic Gift

The main plot of A Tale of a Tub concerns three sons who inherit coats from their father with a command never to alter them. In youth, the brothers are committed to obeying their father's dying wish, but fashions change and they begin to feel left behind by polite society. They begin scrutinizing their father's will to see if there can be any justification for altering the coats after all. By twisting his words, they manage to rationalize the addition of decorative knots, then of gold lace, and eventually of numerous other decorations. Each time, they depart further and further from the obvious intent of their father's will, until eventually they are not even pretending to consult it.

Two Schisms

Eventually, the brothers move into a fine house together. The oldest, named Peter, becomes a tyrant who attempts to impose various absurd restrictions on the other two. He styles himself as an emperor and undertakes such extravagant projects as buying a continent and selling patent medicines. Tired of his bizarre and belligerent behavior, the two younger brothers obtain a copy of their father's will and are about to leave Peter but are instead kicked out of the house.

Martin, the middle brother, and Jack, the youngest, find lodging together and proceed to look over their father's will again. They are horrified to find how far they have strayed from their father's command regarding their coats. Both try to remove the various unlawful decorations from their coats—Martin patiently and methodically, Jack by ripping and tearing. Where the embroidery is so "close" that undoing it might damage the underlying material, Martin reluctantly leaves it in place. Jack, who is more motivated by his hatred of Peter than by respect for his late father, strips out every piece of fringe and embroidery, leaving the original coat in rags. A series of disagreements leads to a wider breach between the two brothers, and Jack goes off to seek his own lodgings.

Jack's Madness

Soon, rumours begin to spread that Jack has gone mad. He has founded a cult known as the Aeolists, or wind worshippers, whose rituals involve filling themselves with air and then grotesquely disgorging it by belching. He has become not only reliant upon, but obsessed with his copy of his father's will, which he uses as an umbrella, a nightcap, a bandage, and so forth. A braggart and a hypocrite, Jack picks fights and then claims that he has been persecuted for defending the Christian faith. Despite all this, and much to his own annoyance, Jack continues to resemble Peter so much that the two are often mistaken for one another. In the middle of a long catalog of Jack's odd behaviours, the story ends abruptly with "Desunt Nonnulla" ("Some things are missing").

The Digressions

Interspersed among the narrative chapters are several long "Digressions" in which Swift takes satirical aim at a variety of contemporary issues. Chapter 3, for example, is "A Digression Concerning Critics" in which Swift chides the younger generation of literary critics for forgetting their origins and presuming beyond their station. "A Digression in the Modern Kind" (Chapter 5) and "A Digression in Praise of Digressions" (Chapter 7) follow. Perhaps the most famous is "A Digression Concerning ... Madness" (Chapter 9), in which Swift mockingly proposes rescuing madmen from prisons and asylums and giving them positions in government. Together, the "Digression" chapters constitute approximately one-third of the book's entire running text.

From its opening (once past the prolegomena, which comprises the first three sections), the book is constructed like a layer cake, with Digression and Tale alternating. However, the digressions overwhelm the narrative, both in terms of the forcefulness and imaginativeness of writing and in terms of volume. Furthermore, after Chapter X (the commonly anthologized "Digression on Madness"), the labels for the sections are incorrect. Sections then called "Tale" are Digressions, and those called "Digression" are also Digressions.

A Tale of a Tub is an enormous parody with a number of smaller parodies within it. Many critics have followed Swift's biographer Irvin Ehrenpreis in arguing that there is no single, consistent narrator in the work. One difficulty with this position, however, is that if there is no single character posing as the author, then it is at least clear that nearly all of the "personae" employed by Swift for the parodies are so much alike that they function as a single identity. In general, whether we view the book as comprised of dozens of impersonations or a single one, Swift writes the Tale through the pose of a Modern or New Man. See the abridged discussion of the "Ancients and Moderns," below, for more on the nature of the "modern man" in Swift's day.

Swift's explanation for the title of the book is that the Ship of State was threatened by a whale (specifically, the Leviathan of Thomas Hobbes) and the new political societies (the Rota Club is mentioned), and his book is intended to be a tub that the sailors of state (the nobles and ministers of state) might toss over the side to divert the attention of the beast (those who questioned the government and its right to rule). Hobbes was highly controversial in the Restoration, but Swift's invocation of Hobbes might well be ironic. The narrative of the brothers is a faulty allegory, and Swift's narrator is either a madman or a fool. The book is not one that could occupy the Leviathan, or preserve the Ship of State, so Swift may be intensifying the dangers of Hobbes's critique rather than allaying them to provoke a more rational response.

The digressions individually frustrate readers who expect a clear purpose. Each digression has its own topic, and each is an essay on its particular sidelight. In his biography of Swift, Ehrenpreis argued that each digression is an impersonation of a different contemporary author. This is the "persona theory," which holds that the Tale is not one parody, but rather a series of parodies, arising out of chamber performance in the Temple household. Prior to Ehrenpreis, some critics had argued that the narrator of the Tale is a character, just as the narrator of a novel would be. Given the evidence of A. C. Elias about the acrimony of Swift's departure from the Temple household, evidence from Swift's Journal to Stella about how uninvolved in the Temple household Swift had been, and the number of repeated observations about himself by the Tale's author, it seems reasonable to propose that the digressions reflect a single type of man, if not a particular character.

In any case, the digressions are each readerly tests; each tests whether or not the reader is intelligent and skeptical enough to detect nonsense. Some, such as the discussion of ears or of wisdom being like a nut, a cream sherry, a cackling hen, etc., are outlandish and require a militantly aware and thoughtful reader. Each is a trick, and together they train the reader to sniff out bunk and to reject the unacceptable.

Digressions is necessary in this text. 

Thinking Activity : Victorian Poet

Victorian Poet: Alfred Lord Tennyson

Alfred Lord Tennyson

Born:06 August 1809

Died: 06 October 1892

Hope smiles from the threshold of the

year to come, whispering, 'it will be happier'. 

                                  -Alfred Lord Tennyson

Alfred Tennyson was born in the depths of Lincolnshire, the 4th son of the 12 children of the rector of Somersby, George Clayton Tennyson, a cultivated but embittered clergyman who took out his disappointment on his wife Elizabeth and his brood of children—on at least one occasion threatening to kill Alfred’s elder brother Frederick. The rector had been pushed into the church by his own father, also named George, a rich and ambitious country solicitor intent on founding a great family dynasty that would rise above their modest origins into a place among the English aristocracy. Old Mr. Tennyson, aware that his eldest son, the rector, was unpromising material for the family struggle upward, made his second son, his favorite child, his chief heir. Tennyson’s father, who had a strong streak of mental instability, reacted to his virtual disinheritance by taking to drink and drugs, making the home atmosphere so sour that the family spoke of the “black blood” of the Tennysons.

Part of the family heritage was a strain of epilepsy, a disease then thought to be brought on by sexual excess and therefore shameful. One of Tennyson’s brothers was confined to an insane asylum most of his life, another had recurrent bouts of addiction to drugs, a third had to be put into a mental home because of his alcoholism, another was intermittently confined and died relatively young. Of the rest of the 11 children who reached maturity, all had at least one severe mental breakdown. During the first half of his life Alfred thought that he had inherited epilepsy from his father and that it was responsible for the trances into which he occasionally fell until he was well over 40 years old.

It was in part to escape from the unhappy environment of Somersby rectory that Alfred began writing poetry long before he was sent to school, as did most of his talented brothers and sisters. All his life he used writing as a way of taking his mind from his troubles. One aspect of his method of composition was set, too, while he was still a boy: he would make up phrases or discrete lines as he walked, and store them in his memory until he had a proper setting for them. As this practice suggests, his primary consideration was more often rhythm and language than discursive meaning.

When he was not quite 18 his first volume of poetry, Poems by Two Brothers (1827), was published. Alfred Tennyson wrote the major part of the volume, although it also contained poems by his two elder brothers, Frederick and Charles. It is a remarkable book for so young a poet, displaying great virtuosity of versification and the prodigality of imagery that was to mark his later works; but it is also derivative in its ideas, many of which came from his reading in his father’s library. Few copies were sold, and there were only two brief reviews, but its publication confirmed Tennyson’s determination to devote his life to poetry.

Most of Tennyson’s early education was under the direction of his father, although he spent nearly four unhappy years at a nearby grammar school. His departure in 1827 to join his elder brothers at Trinity College, Cambridge, was due more to a desire to escape from Somersby than to a desire to undertake serious academic work. At Trinity he was living for the first time among young men of his own age who knew little of the problems that had beset him for so long; he was delighted to make new friends; he was extraordinarily handsome, intelligent, humorous, and gifted at impersonation; and soon he was at the center of an admiring group of young men interested in poetry and conversation. It was probably the happiest period of his life.

In part it was the urging of his friends, in part the insistence of his father that led the normally indolent Tennyson to retailor an old poem on the subject of Armageddon and submit it in the competition for the chancellor’s gold medal for poetry; the announced subject was Timbuctoo. Tennyson’s “Timbuctoo” is a strange poem, as the process of its creation would suggest. He uses the legendary city for a consideration of the relative validity of imagination and objective reality; Timbuctoo takes its magic from the mind of man, but it can turn to dust at the touch of the mundane. It is far from a successful poem, but it shows how deeply engaged its author was with the Romantic conception of poetry. Whatever its shortcomings, it won the chancellor’s prize in the summer of 1829.

Probably more important than its success in the competition was the fact that the submission of the poem brought Tennyson into contact with the Trinity undergraduate usually regarded as the most brilliant man of his Cambridge generation, Arthur Henry Hallam. This was the beginning of four years of warm friendship between the two men, in some ways the most intense emotional experience of Tennyson’s life.

Timbuctoo

Alfred Lord Tennyson

I Stood upon the mountain which o’erlooks    

The narrow seas, whose rapid interval    

Parts Afric from green Europe, when the sun    

Had fallen below the Atlantic, and above    

The silent heavens were blenched with faery light,            

Uncertain whether faery light or cloud,    

Flowing southward, and the chasms of deep, deep blue    

Slumbered unfathomable, and the stars    

Were flooded over with clear glory and pale.    

I gazed upon the sheeny coast beyond,            

There where the Giant of old Time infixed    

The limits of his prowess, pillars high    

Long time erased from earth; even as the Sea    

When weary of wild inroad buildeth up    

Huge mounds whereby to stay his yeasty waves.            

And much I mused on legends quaint and old,    

Which whilome won the hearts of all on earth    

Toward their brightness, even as flame draws air;    

But had their being in the heart of man,    

As air is the life of flame: and thou wert then            

A centred glory-circled memory,    

Divinest Atalantis, whom the waves    

Have buried deep, and thou of later name,    

Imperial Eldorado, roofed with gold:    

Shadows to which, despite all shocks of change,            

All onset of capricious accident,    

Men clung with yearning hope which would not die.

*        *        *        *        *

    

                    Then I raised    

My voice and cried, “Wide Afric, doth thy sun    

Lighten, thy hills enfold a city as fair            

As those which starred the night o’ the elder world?    

Or is the rumor of thy Timbuctoo    

A dream as frail as those of ancient time?”    

  A curve of whitening, flashing, ebbing light!    

A rustling of white wings! the bright descent            

Of a young Seraph! and he stood beside me    

There on the ridge, and looked into my face    

With his unutterable, shining orbs,    

So that with hasty motion I did veil    

My vision with both hands, and saw before me            

Such colored spots as dance athwart the eyes    

Of those that gaze upon the noonday sun.    

Girt with a zone of flashing gold beneath    

His breast, and compassed round about his brow    

With triple arch of everchanging bows,            

And circled with the glory of living light    

And alternation of all hues, he stood.    

  “O child of man, why muse you here alone    

Upon the mountain, on the dreams of old    

Which filled the earth with passing loveliness,            

Which flung strange music on the howling winds,    

And odors rapt from remote Paradise?    

Thy sense is clogged with dull mortality;    

Open thine eyes and see.”

*        *        *        *        *

    

  Then first within the south methought I saw            

A wilderness of spires, and crystal pile    

Of rampart upon rampart, dome on dome,    

Illimitable range of battlement    

On battlement, and the imperial height    

Of canopy o’ercanopied.

                    Behind            

In diamond light upspring the dazzling peaks    

Of pyramids, as far surpassing earth’s    

As heaven than earth is fairer. Each aloft    

Upon his narrowed eminence bore globes    

Of wheeling suns, or stars, or semblances            

Of either, showering circular abyss    

Of radiance. But the glory of the place    

Stood out a pillared front of burnished gold,    

Interminably high, if gold it were    

Or metal more ethereal, and beneath            

Two doors of blinding brilliance, where no gaze    

Might rest, stood open, and the eye could scan,    

Through length of porch and valve and boundless hall,    

Part of a throne of fiery flame, wherefrom    

The snowy skirting of a garment hung,            

And glimpse of multitude of multitudes    

That ministered around it—if I saw    

These things distinctly, for my human brain    

Staggered beneath the vision, and thick night    

Came down upon my eyelids, and I fell.            

  With ministering hand he raised me up:    

Then with a mournful and ineffable smile,    

Which but to look on for a moment filled    

My eyes with irresistible sweet tears,    

In accents of majestic melody,            

Like a swollen river’s gushings in still night    

Mingled with floating music, thus he spake:    

  “There is no mightier spirit than I to sway    

The heart of man; and teach him to attain    

By shadowing forth the Unattainable;            

And step by step to scale that mighty stair    

Whose landing-place is wrapt about with clouds    

Of glory of heaven.

*        *        *        *        *

    

                    “I am the spirit,    

The permeating life which courseth through            

All the intricate and labyrinthine veins    

Of the great vine of Fable, which, outspread    

With growth of shadowing leaf and clusters rare,    

Reacheth to every corner under heaven,    

Deep-rooted in the living soil of truth;            

So that men’s hopes and fears take refuge in    

The fragrance of its complicated glooms,    

And cool impeachéd twilights. Child of man,    

Seest thou yon river, whose translucent wave,    

Forth issuing from the darkness, windeth through            

The argent streets o’ the city, imaging    

The soft inversion of her tremulous domes,    

Her gardens frequent with the stately palm,    

Her pagods hung with music of sweet bells,    

Her obelisks of rangéd chrysolite,            

Minarets and towers? Lo! how he passeth by,    

And gulfs himself in sands, as not enduring    

To carry through the world those waves, which bore    

The reflex of my city in their depth.    

O city! O latest throne! where I was raised            

To be a mystery of loveliness    

Unto all eyes, the time is wellnigh come    

When I must render up this glorious home    

To keen Discovery; soon yon brilliant towers    

Shall darken with the waving of her wand;            

Darken and shrink and shiver into huts,    

Black specks amid a waste of dreary sand,    

Low-built, mud-walled, barbarian settlements.    

How changed from this fair city!”

                        Thus far the Spirit:    

Then parted heavenward on the wing: and I           

Was left alone on Calpe, and the moon    

Had fallen from the night, and all was dark!

In 1829, nineteen-year-old Alfred Tennyson (he went by "Fred") won the Chancellor's Medal for poetry at Cambridge. The assignment was to write a poem on the subjet of "Timbuctoo."

The subject was not really surprising. This was the beginning of European colonization of the interior of Africa. There were legends of a great civilization in what is now Mali. Timbuctoo had been visited by a modern European for the first time in 1826, by the Scottish explorer, A.G. Laing, who was murdered soon after.

Tennyson's father urged him to enter, writing "You're doing nothing at the university; you might at least get the English poem prize."

Tennyson reworked a poem which he had written at age 15 ("Armageddon") to meet the subject requirement. "Armageddon" includes a vision of the distant human future, in outer space, followed by a vision of a lifeless earth and a final impending battle of the good and evil spiritual powers.

Entries were expected to be in heroic couplets, but Tennyson's entry was in Miltonic blank verse. Nevertheless, he won.

Tennyson didn't think his poem was any good, and called it "a wild and unmethodized performance". He was too embarrassed to read it himself at commencement, so the previous year's winner did it for him. For the rest of his life, he forbade publication of "Timbuctoo."

Tennyson did not sing the praises of England's world conquest. But he did not express any objections it, either. And Tennyson's later poetry showcases the "modern" expectation that the human race, guided by reason and science, would come together and build a better world for everyone. If you are a postmodernist, you won't like Tennyson.

Instead, "Timbuctoo" is about how fantasy helps the human race make progress. Whether or not we share Tennyson's optimism about the ultimate triumph of human wisdom, goodness, and science, we have all built castles in the air. Tennyson would write much better verse as an adult. But the theme of "Timbuctoo" is still remarkable.

Thinking Activity Romentic Poet

Romantic poet : 

William Wordsworth

Born:17 April 1770

Died:23 April 1850

William Wordsworth was an English Romantic poet who, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped to launch the Romantic Age in English literature with their joint publication Lyrical Ballads (1798).

Bright Flower! whose home is everywhere,

Bold in maternal Nature's care,

And all the long year through the heir

Of joy or sorrow;

Methinks that there abides in thee

Some concord with humanity,

Given to no other flower I see

The forest thorough!

Is it that Man is soon deprest?

A thoughtless Thing! who, once unblest,

Does little on his memory rest,

Or on his reason,

And Thou would'st teach him how to find

A shelter under every wind,

A hope for times that are unkind

And every season?

Thou wander'st the wide world about,

Uncheck'd by pride or scrupulous doubt,

With friend to greet thee, or without,

Yet pleased and willing;

Meek, yielding to the occasion's call,

And all things suffering from all,

Thy function apostolical

In peace fulfilling.

In the poem  “To the Daisy (‘With Little Here’) Wordsworth is discussing the greater significance the daisy is to man kind then the material world could ever be. Throughout the poem he is referring to objects and events that people get caught up in in the new and exciting commercial world of the 1800’s.  When referring to these things he is making the clear distinction that the peace of mind and soul the daisy in itself brings has a greater impact on man then the commercial world ever could.

The first stanza introduces Wordsworth’s reflection of the world as referring to it as “With little here to do or see/ Of things that in the great world be, / Sweet Daisy!” The here Wordsworth is referring to in these lines in the commercial world. These lines show that Wordsworth is one of few that is not caught up in the hustle and bustle of the day-to-day world but instead actually rejects it. Wordsworth does not find the industrial world to be nears as “worthy” as the daisy. Where Wordsworth find a place of love is in “Thou unassuming Common-place/ Of Nature, with that homely face.” Wordsworth recognizes he is more often then not by himself in this feeling that nature brings more of a sense of comfort and peace then the industrial world the majority is infatuated with.

Wordsworth reflects in stanza two that he often finds him self at peace with his mind while being exposed to nature, stating, “Oft do I sit by the at ease, / And weave a web of similes.” Wordsworth finds ease and tranquility in embracing this daisy’s beauty. He favors being in the presence of the daisy, he feels as though his mind is at a place where he can make comparisons and play on words about the real world. In the presence of the daisy his mind is free to wonder in “humor or in blame.”  Meaning that while he is submerged in the daisy beauty he can enjoy the game his mind plays, contemplate the daisy beauty in comparisons to other objects of beauty or shame in the world.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1I_BOG1R3qGvRZELC0ASVH1pxGYm0l_3d/view?usp=drivesdk

The Metaphysical Poetry

Reflective Blog on Metaphysical Poetry

                                    The term ‘Metaphysical Poetry’ was extended by a remarkable critic Dr. Samuel Johnson in a biographical work called ‘Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets with critical observations of their Works’ (a collection of 5 volumes) in a derogatory sense addressed to a group of poets emerged in the second half of seventeenth century who followed the style of writings of John Donne.

The theme of Metaphysical Poetry can be defined as,

“A distinct style of writing that tries to explain the natural world beyond the physical speculation with intellectualized feeling by comparing it with far-fetched objects.”

Chief Characteristics of Metaphysical Poetry-

•         Intellectual Scholarship

                              Donne is commonly considered as the great literary inventor of his age; a poet who invented a much more individual style of writing. The metaphysical poets forced themselves into literary limelight by the sheer energy, impudence, and originality of writings. The poets tried to concentrate on a distinct style of writing which rarely seemed to be the pure Elizabethan genre. The serious issues of life are dealt with humor and the intensity of seriousness is made light. 

                        For example, John Donne compares his ladylove with a compass, a geometrical tool in his poem ‘The Valediction: Forbidding Mourning’.

“If they be two, they are two so

As stiff twin compasses are two;

Thy soul, the fixed foot, makes no show

To move, but doth, if the other do.

And though it in the center sit,

Yet when the other far doth roam,

It leans and hearkens after it,

And grows erect, as that comes home.”

                        The “fixed foot” is his wife’s soul. Just as the fixed part of the compass, his wife would stay on the same center and he, if goes a way out (move round and round), will meet the end at last as the two feet of a compass end up being together.

                                  The poem exhibits Donne’s scholarship in a particular dramatic occasion. The poet is about to start a long journey so he farewells his lady with advice not to be sad and shed tears. Donne begins by stating that the virtuous man leaves life behind so delicately that even his friends fail to describe the difference. The love is so much woven by the matrimonial strings that those who are outside their marriage bond won’t be able to even realize their threads. Though he goes out on a long way, he will soon return to her as both the ends of a compass eventually gets back together.

 Sir Walter Scott rightly quoted on Metaphysical poets,

"They played with thoughts as the

Elizabethans had played with words."

•         Witty, Ironical and conversational tone

The metaphysical poems are marked by subtle wit, pun, and irony. They are composed in a conversational style.  Metaphors, puns, paradoxes & meter are used to create drama & tension. In Dryden’s phrase, the texts of metaphysical poets have seemed as if they

“torture one poor word ten thousand ways”.

For instance, Donne’s poem ‘The Anniversary’ begins with a serious tone but the paradox of the poem is in the central theme- the immortality of true love which transcends death itself.

           The speaker of the poem says their day is an everlasting day of love which is beyond any worries of yesterday or tomorrow. Hence the tone is full of wit, is ironical and a complete paradox. 

•         Platonic Love

                             The concept of Platonic love is philosophical doctrine. Platonic love is simply loving that steps short of sexual gratification. As per M. H. Abrams, the platonic lover is irresistibly attracted to the bodily beauty of a beloved person, but reverses it as a sign of the spiritual beauty the spiritual beauty that it shares with all other beautiful bodies, and that at the same time regards it as merely the lowest rung on the ladder that leads up from a sensual desire to the pure contemplation of Heavenly Beauty in God.

                          ‘The Good-Morrow’ by John Donne is a poem that goes from lusty love towards spiritual love. There are forceful comparisons between his love and the astronomy, geography and medieval alchemy in this poem. The lovers have reached the immortality in their love and hence the theme of Platonic love is very uniquely depicted in the poem.

•         Unification of Sensibility

                                       One of the most characteristic features of metaphysical poetry is what T. S. Eliot defines as “unification of sensibility”. The phrase denotes the fusion of thought and emotion. Unlike other poets, the metaphysical poets felt their thought and then recreate the beauty of their thought into feelings. Donne's poem "Song" is the correct illustration of unified sensibility.

                                 ‘Song: Sweetest Love, I do not go’ is a poem about death in love. The poem is a valediction.

‘Sweetest love, I do not go,

For weariness of thee,

Nor in hope the world can show

A fitter love for me;

But since that I

Must die at last, 'tis best

To use myself in jest

Thus by feign'd deaths to die.’

                        In the first place, the poet’s passionate argument comforts his beloved that his absence will be a rehearsal of death.

‘When thou sigh'st, thou sigh'st not wind,

But sigh'st my soul away;

When thou weep'st, unkindly kind,

My life's blood doth decay.

It cannot be

That thou lov'st me, as thou say'st,

If in thine my life thou waste,

That art the best of me.’

                           In the second place, it denotes the unified sensibility of emotion and feeling.

                       

                                      In a nutshell, some of the characteristics of metaphysical poetry – use of metaphysical conceits, the poets were learned University scholars who made a conscious attempt to differ in their style of writing poetry. Platonic love, a unification of sensibility and all these features help one to understand the metaphysical poetry in a much deeper way. 

The best way for the metaphysical to differs from the previous poets and to be intellectual in the writing of their poetry was to used far-fetched images and conceits. They tried to avoid using using images from those fields which thickly associate with the theme of their poetry.

   

         In order to express either love or their faith in Christianity they brought their images from different field just like biology, agriculture, engineering, architecture, geography, geometry and even political science. This gave unique identity to their poetry. The number of example can be given about how they brought images from distant and remote fields. The first example is of John Donne who made use of a biological image-the Flea, for the express of love in his poem. The title of that poem is ' The Flea '. George Herbert made use of an image from the field of mechanical engineering for the expression of his faith in Christianity. The example is a poem with the title ' The Pully '. Pully is an image of mechanical engineering but in this poem that image is used to stat that restlessness is also a pully which gives a connection between the creator and the creation. Andrew Marvell made use of geometrical images for the expression of love. The example is ' The His Coy Mistress' in brief all the metaphysical poets made extensive use far-fetched images in their poetry.

        Highlighting one remarkable feature of the metaphysical poetry Dr. Johnson says that "their poetry stood a trial of their finger but not of the ear" that means that their is no music in the poetry of metaphysical poet's wrote, their is no rhythm to be found in the poetry of the metaphysical poetspoets. 

The flea by John Donne. 

Mark but this flea, and mark in this,   

How little that which thou deniest me is;   

It sucked me first, and now sucks thee,

And in this flea our two bloods mingled be;   

Thou know’st that this cannot be said

A sin, nor shame, nor loss of maidenhead,

    Yet this enjoys before it woo,

    And pampered swells with one blood made of two,

    And this, alas, is more than we would do.

Oh stay, three lives in one flea spare,

Where we almost, nay more than married are.   

This flea is you and I, and this

Our marriage bed, and marriage temple is;   

Though parents grudge, and you, w'are met,   

And cloistered in these living walls of jet.

    Though use make you apt to kill me,

    Let not to that, self-murder added be,

    And sacrilege, three sins in killing three.

Cruel and sudden, hast thou since

Purpled thy nail, in blood of innocence?   

Wherein could this flea guilty be,

Except in that drop which it sucked from thee?   

Yet thou triumph’st, and say'st that thou   

Find’st not thy self, nor me the weaker now;

    ’Tis true; then learn how false, fears be:

    Just so much honor, when thou yield’st to me,

    Will waste, as this flea’s death took life from thee.

Summary:

The speaker tells his beloved to look at the flea before them and to note “how little” is that thing that she denies him. For the flea, he says, has sucked first his blood, then her blood, so that now, inside the flea, they are mingled; and that mingling cannot be called “sin, or shame, or loss of maidenhead.” The flea has joined them together in a way that, “alas, is more than we would do.”

As his beloved moves to kill the flea, the speaker stays her hand, asking her to spare the three lives in the flea: his life, her life, and the flea’s own life. In the flea, he says, where their blood is mingled, they are almost married—no, more than married—and the flea is their marriage bed and marriage temple mixed into one. Though their parents grudge their romance and though she will not make love to him, they are nevertheless united and cloistered in the living walls of the flea. She is apt to kill him, he says, but he asks that she not kill herself by killing the flea that contains her blood; he says that to kill the flea would be sacrilege, “three sins in killing three.”

Cruel and sudden,” the speaker calls his lover, who has now killed the flea, “purpling” her fingernail with the “blood of innocence.” The speaker asks his lover what the flea’s sin was, other than having sucked from each of them a drop of blood. He says that his lover replies that neither of them is less noble for having killed the flea. It is true, he says, and it is this very fact that proves that her fears are false: If she were to sleep with him (“yield to me”), she would lose no more honor than she lost when she killed the flea. 

Thinking Activity : Absalom-and-Achitophel

   Thinking Activity  Absalom-and-Achitophel given by Dr. Prof Dilip Barad

I have chosen the point of the vices that are supposed to be corrected through this satire. 

Dryden is poet Laureute.when he wrote this poem the poem is the biblical reference the King David Dryden presented him to Charles the second. 

List of vices on the satire which correct 

Firstly when you read this poem you just feel that King David is a very good king and he has no bad habits. Dryden only praises King second he cannot define the real situation on his time he only admires King that is he was to correct. 

Dryden uses biblical characters. If he was a writer he can write real characters with names and satire on the King Or other people. He was making necklace and all peels are praise of King

 

Dryden doesn't entirely renounce Absalom's ambition; he only thinks that King Absaloms is capable but Dryden as a poet cannot support the Absaloms. 

 Satire is the correction of society but Dryden doesn't support Absalom's ambition. 

Absalom-and-Achitophel

Satire is a form of literature, the proclaimed purpose of which is the reform of human weaknesses or vices through laughter or disgust. Satire is different from scolding and sheer abuse, though it is prompted by indignation. Its aim is generally constructive, and need not arise from cynicism or misanthropy. The satirist applies the test of certain ethical, intellectual and social standards to men and women, and determines their degree of criminality or culpability. Satire naturally has a wide range; it can involve an attack on the vices of an age, or the defects of an individual or the follies common to the very species of mankind.

Absalom and Achitophel is a landmark political satire by John Dryden. Dryden marks his satire with a concentrated and convincing poetic style. His satiric verse is majestic, what Pope calls: “The long majestic march and energy divine”.  Critics have unanimously remarked on Dryden’s capacity to transform the trivial into the poetical; personal envy into the fury of imaginative creation. The obscure and the complicated is made clear and simple. All this transforming power is to be seen at the very beginning of Absalom and Achitophel. The state of ‘Israel’ is easy to understand and yet Dryden shows himself a master both of the Horatian and the Juvenalian styles of Satire. He is urbance witty devastating and vigorous, but very seldom petty.

Ab & AC : Basically a Political Satire:

Dryden called Absalom and Achitophel ‘a poem’ and not a satire, implying thereby that it had elements other than purely satirical. One cannot, for instance, ignore the obvious epic or heroic touches in it. All the same, the poem originated in the political situation of England at the time and one cannot fail to note that several political personalities are satirised in it. Published in  November 1681, the theme was suggested by the king to Dryden. At this time, the question of succession to King Charles had assumed great importance. The Earl of Shaftesbury had been thrown into prison to face a charge of high treason. There were two contenders for the succession. Firstly, Charles’ brother James, Duke of York, a known Roman Catholic; the second contender was Charles’ illegitimate son, the Protestant Duke of Monmouth. The Whigs supported Monmouth while the Tories supported the cause of James in order to ensure stability in the country. There was great public unrest on account of the uncertainty of succession. King Charles II saw to it that the Exclusion bill brought before Parliament, to exclude the succession of his brother James, could not be pushed through. The earl of Shaftesbury, a highly ambitious man, sought to capitalise on this unrest. He also urged Monmouth to rebel against his father. The King, though fond of his illegitimate son, did not support his succession because that would have been against law. The Earl of Shaftesbury was arrested on a charge of high treason and lost popular support.

Dryden’s Aim in Absalom and Achitophel:

The aim of Dryden was to support the King and to expose his enemies. Of course, Charles had his own weaknesses; he was extremely fond of women. But Dryden puts a charitable mantel over his sexual sins. He is mild in dealing with his real vices. The king himself did not think unfavourably of his love affairs. Sexual licence was the order of the age and as such, it did not deserve condemnation. Dryden has nothing but praise for the king’s moderation in political matters and his leniency towards rebels. Dryden’s lash falls on the King’s enemies particularly the Earl of Shaftesbury. He was reckless politician without any principles who, “ having tried in vain to seduce Charles to arbitrary government had turned round and now drives down the current”. Dryden dreads the fickleness of the mob and he is not sure to what extremes a crowd can go. However, the king’s strictness and instinct for the rule of law won for him popular support and he was able to determine the succession according to his desire. Dryden’s reference to the godlike David shows his flattery of the King and his belief in the “Theory of the Divine Right of Kings”.

Political Satire Cast in Biblical Mould:

Dryden chose the well known Biblical story of Absalom revolting against his father David, at the wicked instigation of Achitophel, in order to satirise the contemporary political situation. The choice of a Biblical allegory is not original on dryden’s part, but his general treatment of the subject is beyond comparison, as Courthope points out. But all the while Dryden takes care to see that the political satire in not lost in the confusion of a too intricate Biblical parallelism. The advantage of setting the story in pre-Christian times is obvious as it gave Dryden had at once to praise the King and satirise the King’s opponents. To discredit the opponents he had to emphasise on Monmouth’s illegitimacy; but at the same time he had to see that Charles (who was Monmouth’s father) was not adversely affected by his criticism. He could not openly condone Charles’ loose morals; at the same time, he could not openly criticise it either. With a masterly touch he sets the poem :

 “In pious times are priestcraft did begin

 Before polygamy was made a sin;

When man on maultiplied his kind,

 Ere one to one was cursedly confined….”

The ironical undertone cannot be missed; Dryden is obviously laughing up his sleeve at Charles himself, who, as a witty patron, could not have missed it, nor failed to enjoy it.

Conclusion:

Dryden is correctly regarded as the most vigorous and polished of English satirists combining refinement with fervour. Dryden is unequalled at debating in rhyme and Absalom and Achitophel displays his power of arguing in verse. It may be said that Absalom and Achitophel has no rival in the field of political satire. Apart from the contemporary interest of the poem and its historical value, it appeal to the modern reader lies in its observations on English character and on the weaknesses of man in general. His generalisations on human nature have a perennial interest. Dryden triumphed over the peculiar difficulties of his chosen theme. He had to give, not abuse or politics,but the poetry of abuse and politics. He had to criticise a son whom the father still liked; he had to make Shaftesbury denounce the King but he had to see to it that the King’s susceptibilities were not wounded. He had to praise without sounding servile and he had to criticise artistically. Dryden achieves all this cleverly and skilfully. Achitophel’s denunciation of the king assumes the shades of a eulogy in Charles’ eyes. Absalom is a misguided instrument in Achitophel’s hands. The poem is certainly a political satire, but it is a blend of dignity with incisive and effective satire

Sunday Reading Task

This blog is a part of my ‘Sunday Reading’ assignment assigned by Prof. Dr. Dilip Barad Sir, Dean of Faculty of Arts and Head of English Department, M. K. Bhavnagar University on  Post-truth.

                                            This blog reflects my understanding of the word- ‘Post-truth’ and my views on the word with appropriate illustrations.

Definition on Post-Truth by Oxford Dictionary

Post-truth is an adjective defined as ‘relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief’.

The term has moved from being relatively new to being widely understood in the course of a year – demonstrating its impact on the national and international consciousness. The concept of post-truth has been simmering for the past decade, but Oxford shows the word spiking in frequency this year in the context of the Brexit referendum in the UK and the presidential election in the US, and becoming associated overwhelmingly with a particular noun, in the phrase post-truth politics.

 

A brief history of post-truth

 

The compound word post-truth exemplifies an expansion in the meaning of the prefix post- that has become increasingly prominent in recent years. Rather than simply referring to the time after a specified situation or event – as in post-war or post-match – the prefix  in post-truth has a meaning more like ‘belonging to a time in which the specified concept has become unimportant or irrelevant’. This nuance seems to have originated in the mid-20th century, in formations such as post-national (1945) and post-racial (1971).

 

Post-truth seems to have been first used in this meaning in a 1992 essay by the late Serbian-American playwright Steve Tesich in The Nation magazine. Reflecting on the Iran-Contra scandal and the Persian Gulf War, Tesich lamented that ‘we, as a free people, have freely decided that we want to live in some post-truth world’. There is evidence of the phrase ‘post-truth’ being used before Tesich’s article, but apparently with the transparent meaning ‘after the truth was known’, and not with the new implication that truth itself has become irrelevant.

 

A book, The Post-truth Era, by Ralph Keyes appeared in 2004, and in 2005 American comedian Stephen Colbert popularized an informal word relating to the same concept: truthiness, defined by Oxford Dictionaries as ‘the quality of seeming or being felt to be true, even if not necessarily true’. Post-truth extends that notion from an isolated quality of particular assertions to a general characteristic of our age.

It will be nothing wrong if we say that post-truth is a part of our learning and an esteemed weapon of the politicians to win the hearts of mass.

relating to a situation in which people are more likely to accept an argument based on their emotions and beliefs, rather than one based on facts:

The referendum was the first major vote in the era of post-truth politics.

He dubs the current administration a " post-truth" White House.