Best Notes for English Honours under Calcutta University for 2023 Examination

Monday 5 June 2017

English poetry between the two World War Notes - C.U. English Honours

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English Poetry between the two World War 

Introduction:
The years between the two world wars (1919-1939) witnessed prolific poetic activity. It was a period when tradition and innovation went side by side. In the direction of innovation we can find such groups as the Imagists, Symbolists, and Surrealists working, whereas we also find some traditionalists fighting a last-ditch battle against the forces of change.

However, most of the poets of the age combined tradition and innovation; and even the most daring inovators did not, or could not, cut at the root of the essential continuity of English poetry. In general the changes which came upon poetry may be aptly summed up in the words of Samuel C. Chew: "Poetry became obscure, experimental, irregular, antagonistic to didacticism, indifferent to any social value, the private language of small coteries, with much dependence upon verbal subtleties and patterns of association so complex, unstable, and fleeting as sometimes to become presently incomprehensible to the writers themselves." Poetry did become considerably unpopular. Chew remarks: "It is a question whether poetry became esoteric because the public had abandoned it or whether the public abandoned it because it had become esoteric."

But in spite of all this experimentation, many old and some new poets of the period were broadly traditional in thqir craft.-When the First World. War ended in 19:18, Hardy, Bridges, and Yeats were yet active. According to Grierson and~Srmth", the most important poetic works of the first decade of the period under review are Hardy's Late Lyrics, Yeafs Tower, Bridges' Testament of Beauty, and Laurence  Binyon's "greatest poems" The Sirens and The Idols. Strangely enough, these critics do not mention Eliot's The Waste Land which appeared fn 1922 and which was as potent an influence on the current of English poetry as had been, say, Wordsworth's Lyrical Ballads.

Anyway, let us first consider these works before proceeding further.

Hardy, Bridges, Binyon, and Yeats:

A year or two of elation followed the termination of hostilities in 1918, before the period of depression arrived. But Hardy remained as depressed as ever-come war, come peace. All his poems are full of the spirit of atheistic pessimism, though there are passages lit by his childlike interest in the elemental simplicities of nature.
Robert Bridges (1844-1930) was the Poet Laureate. His Testament of Beauty came in 1929 when he was eighty-five. But even at this ripe age he displays a wonderful alacrity of perception which enlivens his mature philosophical speculation. "It," says Legouis, "is a philosophical poem of remarkable vitality and energy, and is interspersed with beautiful passages of natural description and human wisdom." Bridges employs a hitherto untried poetic measure which he calls "loose Alexandrines."

Laurence Binyon (1869-1943) who succeeded T. S. Eliot in the Norton Professorship of Poetry at Harvard (1933-34), published his two above-mentioned poems as also Collected Poems in the first decade of the interregnum under review. Binyon called each of these two poems "an age," though they are altogether alien to any English age. What are they, then? "They," observe Grierson and Smith, "are symphonies in verse, each developing a theme in successive movements in different measures." The Sirens was suggested by the first transatlantic flight. The theme is man's power over nature, which goes on increasing day by day. Man is really great,
And where light is, he enters unafraid.

The Idols is directed against the terrors and superstitions which are man's own creation and which hold him captive. Binyon makes a plea for the demolition of these false gods.

Yeats started his writing career as a poet in the nineteenth century. The period between the two wars brings us to consider his later poetry as we find it in his Tower. His later poetry is very different from his early poetry. Grierson and Smith point out the difference in these words: "The difference between Yeats's early and later poetry reminds one of the early and later poetry of Donne, but he has changed in the opposite direction, from the ideal to the real, the.spiritual to the sensuous. Some of his later poems are almost definitely bawdy." In 'the later part of his career Yeats came under the modernistic, Imagist influence of Ezra Pound. Consequently, his later poems are full of concrete but delicate images and particulars redolent of ancient myths. But the appearance of, what Samuel C. Chew calls, "a most unexpected sensuality" in his poetry is quite baffling indeed. Another feature of his later poetry is its recurring expression of passionate regret at the passing of youth. This regret conditions much of the symbolism employed by him. Chew observes: "The gyre, the spiral, and the winding stair are constantly recurring symbols of the cyclic philosophy which he had evolved from reading and from life."
English honours notes


The Georgians:
Before we consider some important modernistic movements which came between the wars, let us dispose of some important "Georgians" who were writing before the First World War and who continued writing between the Wars too. The most important of these poets are Walter de la Mare, Masefield, and Gibson.

De la Mare was a poet of childhood and the supernatural, before the first World War. However, after the War, at least for once, he became a realist of the grimmest kind. Inhis"77ze VeiF (1921) he focused his attention, to quote Grierson and Smith, "on the dreadful figures of the criminal in the dock, the drug addict,the suicide. However, his "indulgence" in realism did not continue long, for in The Fleeting (1926) he returned to the hocus-pocus of supernatural and dream poetry for which he always had a strong predilection. In some poems his religious feelings also find a good expression. He was a congenital, incorrigible dreamer and the last of his Collected Poems is, in fact, an argument for a life of dreams:
And conscience less my mind indicts
For idle days than dreamless nights.
But not to speak of nights, even his days were seldom without dreams.

About Masefield's poetry between the Wars, Grierson and Smith maintain: "Mr. Masefield celebrated the return of peace to England with a long poem on fox-hunting, the typical sport of the England he loves. Reynard the Fox is modelled on Chaucer's Prologue; the meet gives Mr. Masefield the same opportunity to bring English people of different ranks together as the Canterbury pilgrimage gave Chaucer. Mr. Masefield has not Chaucer's witty touch, nor his.universality: his characters are more Trollopian than Chaucerian, recognisable contemporary English types, not the lineaments of universal human life. But as contemporary types they are very well done and as a whole Reynard the Fox is the best sustained and evenest in execution of all Mr. Masefield's long poems. In Right Royal he applied similar methods, not quite so successfully, to the other typical English sport of horse-racing. The verse he has written since then has not added much to his fame as a poet." One drawback of Reynard the Fox may be pointed out here: it is that the weight of the Prologue is not well borne out by the story which follows, unlike what we have in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales.

Wilfred Wilson Gibson, one of the leaders of the Georgian School of poets who opposed post-Tennysonian prettiness, continued writing poems and plays beyond the First World War. His poems on the War are instinct with bitterness, stark realism, and a controlled but devastating irony. He was, from first to last, a poet of the "people"-peasants and workers who were victims of social and economic inequalities. In his unflinching realism and unadorned style he often reminds one of Crabbe; but whereas Crabbe was diffuse and detailed, Gibson often secures his effects through telling condensation. Gibson did not mind using in his poetry some elements of the dialect of Northumberland to which he belonged. To the technique of poetry his contribution is minimal.
Let us now cast a hurried glance on the rest of the poets who were not appreciably influenced by the modernistic movements. Ronald Macfie in his long ode War expressed the point of view of the pacifist when he described the impact of the War on civilian life. The poem ends on a strong note of optimism where Macfie envisions an age of love:
The love that sighs in every wind
And breathes in every flower.
John Freeman, by profession a businessman, wrote good poems on the themes of nature and childhood. Edmund Blunden, an editor of Clare, shows the same painstaking fidelity to his paintings of nature as Clare does. He, quip Grierson and Smith, is "so solid that some readers find him stodgy.”

The Imagists:

The Imagist Movement in English poetry was a product of the War years, but it did considerably influence the poetry between the two Wars. Hulme, Ezra Pound, Hilda Doolittle, Aldington, and F. S. Flint were the protagonists of this movement. The Imagists in Some Imagist Poets (1915) enunciated some clear principles which John M. Manly and Edith Rickert sum up as follows in Contemporary British Literature:-
1.         to use the language of common speech butto employ the exact word;
2.         to create new rhythms for-the expression of new moods;
3.         to allow absolute freedom in the choice of subject;      
4.         to present an image, not vague generalities;
5.                    to produce poetry that is hard and clear;
6.                    to aim at concentration, since concentration is the
very essence and poetry."
Apart from the poets mentioned above D. H. Lawrence also came under the influence of the Imagist Movement, though this influence was not to continue for long. As the critics just quoted above observe: "though Lawrence never succumbed to technical conservatism, he was too mystical, too passionately and destructively critical a nature to content himself with the limitations of an essentially sensational medium, and his later work, rough and fragmentary as much of it is, is a more direct expression of his prophetic denunciations and visions than his purely imagist work."

T. S. Eliot and the Innovators:

T. S. Eliot, the greatest of the modern poets, started his career as a poet during the course of the War with his Prufrock and Other Observations (1917) but his greater and more characteristic works come later-r/ie Waste Land (1922), The Hollow Men (1925), Ash Wednesday (1930), and the rest. Eliot was the founder of the modernistic school of poetry which even today is quite flourishing. He himself as a poet came under the influence of numerous schools and writers. The Imagist Movement, the views of Hulme, the Symbolist Movement of France, the work of Gerard Manley Hopkins which was first published in 1918 many years after his death, Freud's ideas, and the poetry of Donne may be mentioned among them: Donne's "unified sensibility" was with Eliot something worthy of the most assiduous imitation. In his attempts Eliot produces even more jolts than his master. His poetry is very heavy readings as it is thick with recondite allusions and quick transitions from mood to mood which simply baffle even a; sound and painstaking Hreader. Ambivalence and paradox are the rule rather than the exception.


Most critics of today consider The Waste Land to be the greatest poem of the twentieth century. It is an image of the modern restlessness, anxiety, and despair. Though at the end the thunder promises the arrival of the life-giving rain, no rain falls. The framework'of the poem is provided by the legend of the Holy Grail. Fertility will not come to the earth till the Holy Vessel has been found. The treatment of this simple theme is the most abstruse, so much so that Eliot had to take upon himself the work of annotating his own poem.

The Hollow Men sketches the spiritual emptiness and purposelessness of modern men.
We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw, alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together,
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rat's feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar        
In Ash Wednesday, however, we meet with a note of spiritual assurance which is essentially inimical to despair.

Miss Edith Sitwell and her brothers, Osbert and Sachverell Sitwell, made some robust experiments. Edith used bold and artistic imagery, and her peculiarity was her constant utilisation of the effects of synaesthesia-that is, interchanging senses. Osbert struck an astringently satirical note and enjoyed taking pot-shots at dowdiness and tawdiness. Sacheverell was very learned but was quite satisfied indulging in the baroque.

Some poets like Herbert Reade and Robert Graves came under the influence of the psychoanalytic studies of Freud, Jung, and Adler. Graves, for some time, saw nothing but sexual symbols in everything. Reade wrote "surrealistic" poetry which is expressive of the unconscious and has to be read most carefully to get at something. These experiments, as is known, paved the way for the stream-of-consciousness novel.

The Irish Poets:

Between the Wars there was a tremendous resurgence of literary activity in Ireland. The chief moving 'force was Yeats himself. The oaier notable Irish poets of the period were G. W. Russell ("AE") and J. M. Synge. Russell, according to Grierson and Smith, "was a much less versatile and melodious poet than Yeats, but a purer mystic, never; astray by that will-o'-the-wisp, that hpcus-ppcus of evocation and incantation which had such an attraction for Yeats. "Synge was chiefly  matist whose very few poems have the same qualities as his plays.


The Young Poets of Eliot Tradition:
The most important poets of the second decade of the period between the Wars are Cecil Day Lewis, W. H. Auden, and Stephen Spender. All of them are followers of Eliot, and they have tried to establish a neo-metaphysical tradition. But there is a difference-their interest in social reform and their communistic leaning. Auden is learned but his technique is unpredictable. "He," observe Moody and Lovett, "ranges freely from the most cryptic and condensed utterance to a patody of music hall rhythms, folk-ballads, and nursery rhymes." He is indeed a clever poet. Cecil Day Lewis is the most manifest of revolutionaries. Spender is a poet less of revolution than of compassion. His communism is conditioned by his strong liberal convictions. His heart bleeds when he finds the jobless poor loitering in the streets and turning.
Their empty pockets out,
he cynical gesture of the poor.

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Saturday 15 April 2017

CU Exam Dates 2017



If you are still wondering from when the C.U. English honours exams 2017 then this is the right place to get your answer.

University of Calcutta had released a exam routine for the upcoming 2017 undergraduate examinations for first, second and third year in January. Most of the students still cling to their college office windows and news papers to know the latest dates for their respective exams.
University of Calcutta has already made a website which is exclusively dedicated to providing information related to:

  • Main exams
  • General exams
  • Supplementary exams
  • Experiments
  • Distribution of Admit Cards
  • Recheck applications dates
  • And much more.

This website is named cuexam.net.
Students are simply required to head on to the ‘Notice Board’ Section in order to look for different information laid out by the university.
Over the years we worked earnestly to bring a quality set of premium notes for the English Honours. Don’t forget to check out our Wise Notes.
Check out the new list of CU exam dates very carefully and prepare for the exams.
Have a look and be prepared for the upcoming 2015 CU examinations.
The Schedule or Routine for B.A. & B.Sc. Honours Examinations 2015.

CU Exam Date 2017

CU Exam Date 2017
This pdf was released on the University of Calcutta Website.
You can check out www.cuexam.net

Here is the link which can directly give you access to the pdf: Click Here
 
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Friday 27 January 2017

List Of Important Questions From PAPER-IV of C.U. English Honours

If you are trying to get hold on the list of important question from various novels, essays and short stories in Fourth Paper of C.U. English Honours Syllabus then check out this list.

Students should understand that most of the books prescribed by the Calcutta University (C.U.) for all the three years of English Honours course had been in circulations for a really long time. After each decade some of these books are changed but not all of it. The University of Calcutta had recently revised its syllabus in 2010. And no new questions are formed at all. If there is a new question in the exam, then it is just same question which is being 'asked in a different manner'. Then why they do it?

To test your knowledge and 'question interpretation skills'.
 
Most of the C.U. English Honours books have just three to five major questions which are repeated after a gap of two years.
Take for example in Part-1 'Rape of the Lock'.
There are few major important questions like :
  • Rape of the Lock as mock-epic.
  • Character of Belinda
  • The Eighteenth Century Society
  • Game of Ombre
  • Toilette Scene
  • Use Of Supernatural Machinery
So these questions are used repeatedly after a gap of few years. Just have a look on the last year's Question Paper and prepare for those which were not included in it.

Before you check out the questions do keep in mind that Wise Notes brings Best Notes for English Honours under Calcutta University for 2018 exam.

Here are the list of all C.U. English Honours questions Paper-IV from 2010 to 2015.


Pride & Prejudice
·         Comment on the use of irony in Pride and Prejudice.         (2011)
·         Examine any two comic characters in Pride and Prejudice.   (2011)
·         Comment on Jane Austen’s treatment of the theme of the marriage in Pride and Prejudice.  (2012)
·         Elizabeth Bennet is the moving force in the novel Pride and Prejudice.       (2012)
·         In Pride and Prejudice Jane Austen uses irony as an instrument of social criticism.  (2013)
·         Examine Jane Austen’s delineation of comic characters in Pride and Prejudice.      (2013)
·         Comment on Jane Austen’s treatment of the theme of marriage in Pride and Prejudice.  (2014)
·          Pride and Prejudice has been called a ‘comedy of manners’. Do you agree with this view? Justify your answer.  (2014)         
·         In Pride and Prejudice Jane Austen uses irony as an instrument of social criticism. Discuss.  (2015)
·         Pride and Prejudice Lives and moves in the character of Elizabeth Bennet. Examine the appropriateness of the remark. (2015)                     


A Midsummer Night’s Dream

·         Write a note on Shakespeare’s use of soliloquies in Macbeth.      (2011)
·         Examine the use of dramatic irony in Macbeth. (2011)
·         Analyse  A Midsummer Night’s Dream as a romantic comedy.       (2012)
·          Critically examine Shakespeare’s use of the ‘real world’ and ‘the dream world’ in A Midsummer Night’s Dream . (2012)
·         Examine the role of Puck in  A Midsummer Night’s Dream.          (2013)
·         Analyse the dramatic significance of the play-within-the-play in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. (2013)
·         Comment on how the woodland setting in  A Midsummer Night’s Dream contributes to the theme of the play.     (2014)
·          Examine the significance of the title in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.(2014)
·         Comment on the significance of the role of the Athenian artisans in a A Midsummer Night’s Dream with special reference to Nick Bottom.             (2015)
·         Examine the theme of love in its various dimensions in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.(2015)
All English Honours Questions

Essays


Of Studies
·       Comment on Bacon’s style in the essay Of Studies.                    (2013)                                                  
·       Critically analyse ‘Of Studies’ to bring out Bacon’s qualities as an essayist. (2015) 
Shooting an Elephant
  • Discuss the episode of shooting an elephant in George Orwell’s essay. (2012)                                      
  • Discuss Orwell's views about imperialism in Shooting an Elephant. (2014)
  • Comment on the Orwell’s narrative technique in Shooting an Elephant. (2015)
The Superannuated Man
  • Critically comment on the existence of the playful and serious elements in The Superannuated Man. (2012)
  • Bring out the element of humour and pathos in Lamb's The Superannuated Man. (2013)
  •  Comment on Lamb’s style as an essayist with reference to the prescribed essay. (2014)
Reference to the content
  • But time partially reconciles us to anything, I gradually became content—doggedly content as wild animals in cages.  (2012) Taken from The Superannuated Man
  • “….for natural abilities are like natural plants, that need proyning by study; and studies themselves do give forth directions too much large…”  (2012) Taken from Of Studies
  • And my whole life, every white man’s life in East, was one long struggle not to be laughed at. (2013)  Taken from Shooting an Elephant.
  • “I was in the condition of prisoner in the old Bastile, suddenly let loose after a forty years’ of confinement”. (2013) Taken from The Superannuated Man
  • “….. for Naturall Abilities are like Naturall Plants, that need Proyning by Study”. (2014) Taken from Of Studies.
  • Had I a little son, I would christen him, Nothing-To-Do, he should do nothing. (2014) Taken from The Superannuated Man
  •  I had grown to my desk, as it were; and the wood had entered into my soul. (2015) Taken from The Superannuated Man
  • I often wondered whether any of the other grasped that I has done it solely to avoid looking a fool. (2015) Shooting an Elephant
Short Stories

Araby
  • Examine the appropriateness of the title of the Joyce’s short story Araby. (2012)
  • Examine Joyce’s use of symbols in his short story Araby.  (2013)
  • Discuss the significance of the title of James Joyce’s Araby. (2014)
  • Show how Joyce’s Araby is a study of adolescence. (2015)
The Ox
  • Comment on the use of the symbols in Bate’s story The Ox. (2012)
  • Analyse the theme of pain and suffering in The Ox. (2013)
  • Analyse the use of symbols in Bate’s short story The Ox. (2014)
  • How does H.E. Bates portray the character of Mrs. Thurlow in ‘The Ox’?
The Fly
  •  Bring out the significance of the fly episode in Mansfield’s short story The Fly. (2012)
  • Bring out the importance of the character of Woodifield in The Fly. (2013)
  • Would you consider The Fly to be a complex short story with no rigid meaning? Give reasons for your answer. (2014)
  • Comment of the fly episode of the story ‘The Fly’ and show how it relates to the theme. (2015)

    The Secret Sharer
    • Discuss the role of the narrator in The Secret Sharer. (2012)
    • Comment on the theme of Conrad’s story The Secret Sharer. (2012)
    • Discuss the appropriateness of the title of The Secret Sharer. (2013)
    • Comment on the importance of the symbols in Conrad’s The Secret Sharer. (2013)
    • Examine the role of Leggat in Conrad’s The Secret Sharer. (2014)
    • Comment on Conrad’s narrative strategy in The Secret Sharer. (2014)
    • Discuss the allegorical meaning of The Secret Sharer. (2015)
    • In The Secret Share the Captain’s character changes after his encounter with Leggatt. Do you agree with this view? Justify your answer. (2015)       
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