The Neo-Classical Age

M.K.Bhavnagar University.

Name : Baldaniya Vanita V.

Roll No:30`Neo-Classical Literature

Topic: Background of the History age

           (Neo-Classical age)

Guidance: Heenamam Zala

BACKGROUND OF HISTORY AGE

    Neo-classical Age    

The thick shows the period of active literary work:

Ø Pope: 1688-1744(The Rape of the Lock)

Ø Priot:1664-1721

Ø Young:1683-1765 (The Complalnt, or Night Thoughts) 

Ø Swift:1667-1745(Gulliver’s Travels)

Ø Addison:1672-1719(The Spectator)

Ø Steele:1672-1729

Ø Defoe:1659-1731(Robinson Crusoe)

      The Historical Background (1700-1750)

 In the beginning of the eighteenth century the old quarrcts tack on new feature.

The Rise of  the Political Parties:

In the reign of  Charles 2 the terms ‘Whig’ and ‘Tory’ first  become current; by the year  1700 they were in everybody’s mouth. About that time domestic politicians become sharply cleft into two groups that were  destined to become established as the basis of our political system.

  Domestic affairs, While they never approached the stage of bloodshed, took on a new acrimony that was to affect literature deeply. Actual points of political faith upon which the parties were divided are not of great importance to us here; but, generally speaking, we may say that the whig  party stood for the pre-eminence of personal freedom as opposed to the Tory view of royal divine right.

  Hence the Whose Supported  the Hanoverian Succession,  Whereas the Tories were  Jacobites. The Tories, whose numbers were recruited chiefly  from the landed classes, objected to the foreign war upon the score that they had to pay taxes to prolong  it; and the whigs, representing the trading classes generally, were alleged to be anxious to continue the war, as it brought them increased prosperity. In the matter of religion the whigs were Low Churchmen and the Tories high churchmen.

   This war of the Spanish succession was brilliantly successful under the leadership of Marlborough, who besides being a great general, was  a prominent Tory politician. The Tories, as the war seemed to be indefinitely prolonged, super planted the whigs, with whom they had been co-operating in the unfortunate Treaty of Utrecht, contemporary literature is much concerned both with the war and the peace.

 The Succession:

  When Anne ascended the throne the succession seemed to be safe enough, for she had a numerous family Nevertheless, her  children all died before her, and in 1701 it become necessary to pass the Act of settlement, a whig  measure by which the succession was settled upon the House of Hanover on the  death of Anne, in the year 1714,the succession took effect, in spite of the efforts of the Toris, who  were anxious to restore the stuarts the events of this year 1714 deeply  influenced the lives of Addison, Steele, Swift and many other writers of lesser degree.

 The Spirit of the Age:

    After the succession of the House of Hanover the first half   of the  eighteenth century  was a period of stabilization and steadily growing wealth and prosperity. The evils of  the approaching Industrial Revolution had not yet been realized and the country, still free from any suggestion of acrimonious class consciousness, underwent a period of comfortable aristocratic rule, in which local  government rested on the squires, typified by sir Roger de coverley . It  was age of tolerance, moderation, and common sense, which, in cultured circles at least, sought to refine manners and introduce into life the rule of sweet reasonableness.

     The balance of political power, in spite of the fifty years  superiority  of the whig oligarchy, was so even as to predude fanatical party ,paliticies, while the

 Established church pursued a placid middle way and all religion was free from strife over dogma and the fanaticism which it called enthusiasm  until Wesley and whitefield began the Evangelical Revival, This middle way of control and reason, and the distrust of ‘enthusiasm’ are faithfully reflected in the literature of the period.

 “The Predominance of Prose”

    The age of pope intensified the movement that, as we have seen , began after the Restoration. The drift away from the poetry of passion was more pronounced than ever, the ideals of ‘wit’ and ‘common sense’ were more zealously pursued, and the  lyrical  note was almost unheard. In its place we find in poetry the overmastering desire for neatness and perspicacity, for edge and point in style, and for correctness in technique. These aims received expression in the devotion to the heroic couplet, the aptest medium for the purpose. In this type of poetry the supreme master is Pope: apart from him the age produced no great poet on the other hand, the other great names of the period – Swift, Addison ,Steele, Defoe are  those of prose writers primarily, and prose writers   primarily, and prose  writers of a very high quality.

  Some other outstanding condition of the age remain to  be considered. Most of them, it will be noticed , help to give prose its dominating position.

1)               Political Writing:

   We have already noticed the rise of the two political parties, accompanied by increased acerbity of political passion. This development gave a fresh importance  to man of literary ability, for both parties competed for the authors with place and pensions, and admitted  them more or less deeply into their counsels. In previous ages authors had to depend on their patrons, often capricious beings or upon the length or their subscription lists; they now acquired an independence and an importance that turned the heads of some of them. Hardly is writer of the time is free from the political bias.

    After bring a Whig Swift become a virulent Tory: Addison was a tepid Whig Steele was Whig and Tory in turn, it  was indeed the Golden Age of political pamphleteering  and the writers made the most of  it.

2)               The Clubs and Coffee House:

   Politicians are necessarily gregarious, and the increased activity in politics led to a great addition to the number of political clubs and coffee houses which become the foci of fashionable and public life. In the first number of ‘The Tatler Steele’ announces as a matter of course through activities of his new journal will be based upon the clubs, accounts of Gallantry, pleasure, and Entertainment shall be under that of with coffee House, Learning under the title of Grecian, Foreign and Domestic news you will  have from saint James coffee house.

     These coffee house became the ‘clearing house’ for literary basicness, and from them branched purely literary association such at the famous scriblerus and kit cat clubs, those haunts of the fashionable writers which figure so  prominently in the writing of the period.   

3)               Periodical Writing:

   The development  of the periodical will be noticed elsewhere. It is sufficient here to point out that the struggle for  political mastery led both factions to issues a swarm of Examiners, Guardians, Freeholders, and Similar publication. These journals were run by a band of vigorous and facile prose writers, who in their differing degrees of excellence represent almost a new type in our literature.

4)               The New Publishing House:

  The interest in politics and probably the decline in the drama caused a great increase in the size of the reading public. In its turn this aroused the activates of a number of men who become the forerunners of the modern publishing houses. Such were  Edmund Crull, Jacob Tonson and John Dunton.

   These men employed number of needy  writers, who produced the translations, adaptations, and other popular works of the time. It is unwise to judge a publisher by what authors say of him, but the universal condemnation leveled against curll and his kind compels the belief that they were a breed of scoundrels who preyed upon authors and puplic, and upon one another. The miserable race of  hack  writers venomously attacked by pope in The Dunciad who existed on the scanty bounty of such men lived largely  in a though farwe near mortifield called grub street,the name of which has become synonymous with literary drudgery.

5)               The New Morality:

  The immorality of the Restoration, which had been almost entirely a court phenomenon and was largely the reaction against extreme Puritanism, soon spent itself. The natural process of time was hastened by opinion in high quarters William 3 was a severe moralist, and Anne, his successor, was of the same character. Thus we soon see a new tone in the writing of the time and a new attitude to life and morals. Addison, in an early number of the spectator, puts the new fashion in his own admirable way:

     “I shall Endeavour to enliven morality

      With wit, and to temper wit with morality”.

Another development of the same spirit is seem in the revised opinion of woman, who are treated with new respect and dignity. Much coarseness is still to be felt, especially in satirical writing, in which swift, for  instance, can be quite vile, but the general upward tendency is undoubtedly there.

                   Prose- Writers

1)   Jonathan swift

2)   Joseph Addison

3)   Sir Richard Steele

4)   Daniel Defoe

Other Prose Writers

1)   John Arbuthnot

2)   Lord Bolingbroke

3)   George Berkeley

4)   Lady Mary Worley Montagu

5)   Earl of Shaftesbury

            Famous Poets:

1)   Alexander pope

`        Other poets:

1)   Matthew Prior

2)    John Gay

3)    Edward Young

4)    Sir Samuel Garth

5)   Lady Winchilsea

6)   Ambrose Philips

7)    Allan Ramsay

       Development of Literary Forms:

  The period under review marks a hardening of the process scernible in the last chapter. The secession from romanticism is complete; the ideals of classicism reign supreme. Yet even at the west ebb of the romantic spirit, a  return to nature is feebly beginning.

                   In the most chapter we shall notice this new movement, for the next period we shall see it becoming full and strong.

1)   Poetry:

    In no department of literature is the triumph of classicism seen more fully than in poetry.

a)   The lyric almost disappears. What remains is of a light and artificial nature. The best lyrics are found in some of prior’s shorter pieces, in Gay’s ‘the Beggar’s Opera’ and in Ramsay’s ‘The Gentle Shepherd”

b)  The ode still feebly survives in the Pindaric form, Pope wrote a few with poor success, one of them being on St. Cecilia’s Day in imitation of Dryden’s ode Lady Winehilsea was another mediocre expoint of the same form.

c)     The satiric type is common, and of high quality. The best example is Pope’s Dunciad, a personal satire, of political satire in poetry we have nothing to compare with Dryden’s satire tends to be lighter, brighter, and more lyrical. It is spreading  to other forms of verse  besides the heroic couplet, and we can observe it in the octosyllabic couplet in the poems of Swift, prior, and Gay. A slight development is the epistolary from of the satire, of which Pope become found in his latter years. Such is his Epistles of Horace imitated.   

d)  Narrative poetry: This is of considerable bulk, and contains some of the best productions of the period. Pope’s translation of Homer is a good example, and of the poorer sort are Blackmore’s imitations are bloodless things, but they are abundant epics. We have also to notice a slight revival of the ballad, which was imitated by Gay and prior. Their imitations are bloodless things, but they are  worth noticing because they show that the interest is there.

e)    The pastoral: The artificial type of the pastoral was highly popular, for several reasons. In gave an air of rusticity to the most formal of composition, it was thought to be element, it was easily written; and it had the approval of the ancients, who made free of the type. Pope and  Philips have been mentioned as example the pastoral poet.

·       Drama

Here there is almost a blank. The brilliant and explanation flower of restoration comedy has withered, and nothing of a merit takes its place. In this period nothing is more remarkable than the poverty of its oramatic literature of this no real explanation can be given. The age was simply not a dramatic one;  for the plays that the age produce, with the exceptions of a few notable  examples of comedy, are hardly worth nothing.

                    Tragedy comedy off worst of all. The sole tragedy hitherto mentioned in this chapter is Johnson’s Irene, which only the reputation of its author has preserved from complete oblivion. A tragedy which had a great vogue was Douglas, by John Home. It is now almost forgotten Joanna Baillie produced some historical blank-verse tragedies, such as count Basic and De Monfort. Her plays make fairly interesting reading and some of their admirers, including Scott said that she was Shakespeare revived .

·       Prose:

The prose product of the period is bulky, varied, and of great importance. The importance of it is clear enough when we recollect that it includes, among many other things, possibly the best novel in the language, the best history, and the best biography.

 The Rise of the Novel. There are two main classes of fictional prose narratives, namely, the tale or romance and the novel. The distinction  between the two need, not be drawn too fine, for there is a large amount of prose narrative that can fall into either group, but broadly speaking, we may say that the tale or romance depends for its chief interest on incident and adventure, whereas the novel depends more on the display of character and motive.

                   In Addison the story of the novel tends to  be more complicated than that of the tale, and it often leads to what were called by the older writers “Revolution and Discoveries”-that is, unexpected developments in the narrative, finishing with an explanation that is  called the denouement. The tale, moreover, can be separated from the romance the plot of the tale is    commonly matter- of -fact, while that of the romance is often wonderful and fantastic.

                   There is little doubt that the modern novel has its roots in the medieval romances, such as sir Gawain and the Green Knight and those dealing with the legends of king Arthur. Another sources of the novel was the collection of ballads telling of the adventures of popular heroes of the type of Robin Hood. These romances were written in verse; they were supplied with stock character, like the wandering knight, the distress damsel, and the wicked wizard; they had stock incidents, connected with wicked; stock incidents, connected with enchanted castles, fiery dragons and perious ambushes; and their story rambled on almost interminably, they were necessary to satisfy he human craving for fiction, and they were often fiction of a picturesque and lively kind.

                   The age of Elizabeth, saw the rise of the prose romance. We have examples in the Euphues of Lyly an Arcadia of Sidney. As fiction these tales are weighed down with their fantastic prose, styles, and with their common desire to expound a moral lesson. Their  characters are rudimentary, and there is little attempt at an integrated plot. Yt they represent an advance, for they are fiction.

                    The are interesting from another viewpoint. They  show us that curious diffidence that was to be a drag on the production of the novel even as late as the time of Scott. Authors were shy of being novelists for two main reason; first, there was thought to be some- thing almost immoral in the writing of fiction, as it was but the glorification o a pack of lies and, secondly the liking for fiction was considered to be the craving of diseased or immature intellects, and so the production of it was unworthy of reasonable men. Thus if a men felt impelled to write fiction he had  to conceal the narrative with some moral or allegorical dressing.

                   “The Development of Literary Style”

1)   Poetry:

                      In poetical style the transitional features are well marked. The earlier authors reveal man artificial mannerisms for example, extreme regularity of meter and the frequent employment of the more formal figure of speech, such as personification and apostrophe. The Pindaric odes of Gray and Collins are examples of the transitional style:

     “Ye distant spires! Ye antique towers!

       That crowns the wat’ry glade’

      Where grateful science still adores

        Her Henry’s holy shade;

      And ye that from the stately brow

     Or grove, of lawn of mead survey,

     Whose turf, whose shade, whose flowers among

     Wanders the hoary Thomas along

    His silver winding way.

2)   Prose:

 In prose the outstanding feature is the emergence of middle style, of this the chief exponent is Addison, of whom Johnson says:

    “His prose is the model of the

      Middle style… pure without scrupul-

     Osity, and exact without apparent

Elaboration; always equable, and

 Always EASY, WITHOUT Glowing words

Or pointed sentences”

                             While the school of Addison represented the middle style, the plainer style is represented in the work of Swift and Defoe Defoe’s writing is even plainer and often descends to carelessness and inaccuracy. This is due almost entirely to the haste with which  he wrote we give an example of this colloquial style:

  “Well” says I “honest man, that is a great mercy, as

    Things go now with the poor, but do you live then

    And how are you kept from the dreadful calamity       that is now upon us all!”……

     

    

Aristotle's poetic

Aristotle’s Poetic

M.K BHAVNAGAR UNIVERSITY

Name: Baldaniya Vanita Velabhai

Roll: 30

 Class: M.A part-1

Topic: Poetic Aristotle

Subject: LITERARY THEORY AND CRITICISM

Paper no: 1

  Work: Assignment

Guidance:  D.P.Barad.       

Aristotle’s  Poetic

           Introduction:

          Aristotle was the disciple of Plato but he differs from Plato in many points. Aristotle, infect gives answer to Plato’s objection to poetry. He seems to be more open-minded and liberal in thinking about poetry and poets Plato speaks as if he were a strict Puritan whereas Aristotle   cleomes all the innovative ideas regarding poetry. Aristotle has written the book entitled ‘The Poetics’ in which he has commented upon the nature and function of poetry.

          He talks about all fine arts in general. He not only talks about poetry but also about painting and music. When Aristotle discuses poetry, he means all literary forms like Epic, Tragedy, Comedy etc. In ‘the poetics’ he at length discuses the tragedy Aristotle begins his discourse by admitting that all arts are imitation. In other words, Aristotle says that all arts are inevitable representational. Aristotle says that Plot is the soul of tragedy. He also says that in any literary form, Plot is the most important element of work of art. He says that plot may be a simple one or it may be complex one, If the action proceeds in a straight forward manner and if it is one continuous whole, than when such a plot could be identified as a simple plot Aristotle clarifies   that when the change in the hero’s fortune take place without peripety, or discover the plot could be a simple one on the other hand , when the plot involve peripety or discovery or both, such a plot would be a complex one peripety  means the change from one state of things within the play to its opposite of the king describe, similarity, discovery mean a change from ignorance to knowledge                                          very often often discovery it attended by peripety.

          Aristotle says that poetry is an imitation of an imitation twice removed from reality but it is not the carbon copy of the physical thing. He says that if the poet gives something less than life Plato missed to see that art conveys something more than life. According to Aristotle, a thing is seen in a work of art from the poet’s point of view and the poet conveys his vision of life in a work of art.

           Aristotle says that all the fine arts refer from one another in modes of imitation, He says that these fine arts, defer from one another in three ways. They are difference is in the objector in the manner of their imitations. The first difference refer to the means.

          Difference of Means:

                   In literature the use of language become the means.

In music the use of musical instruments like flute or lyre become the means. Similarly, in painting points, brush, chisel become the means sometimes, means are identified as mediums. Any artist expresses his ideas and feelings regarding things and persons through particular means or medium. The artist also chooses a particular fine art for his expression and the selection of a particular fine art goes with the mode of imitation.

          Difference of Objects:

                   The second difference is the selection of the objects. The objects the imitator represents are actions with agents who are necessary either good man or bad man. Aristotle says that bin a work of art the man presented are- either above or below in degree of their attributes. It means the chara in a work of art may be better than real people of they may be worse than real people. However, the artist delineates the characters as he finds them in real life. The difference in objects is also shown through the mood dominant. If they mood is tragic, the work will be the tragedy and if the dominant, mood is comic, the work will be the comedy.

                   Difference in manner of Imitation:

          The third difference is the manner of imitation. When a work of art in literature includes simple narration, the writer directly tells about the character and events to the readers. Thus, simple narration is one of the communicative things to the readers sometimes, the author uses the simple narrative becomes complex narration. There is also third manner of common cating things in which the writer represents, the whole story dramatical through characters as if, they were actually doing  the things described.

          Aristotle says that in tragedy the tragic events invoke the feelings of pity and fear in the minds of the audience or the readers and there by the audience or the readers and there by the writer causes the proper ‘purgation of our minds’ Aristotle gives the Greek word ‘Catharsis’ means ‘Purgation of minds’. Trough pity and fear Aristotle  also emphasizes that there should be an organic whole in a work of art. He says that plot must have beginning middle and end. He also talks about the three unities required in a work of art. They are unity of time, unity of time means there should not be a vast gap of time between, the two events, of the play should not take place at different place very far from one another. Majority of the events should take place only at me place. Unity of action means the action done by the character should be consistent and convincing. The character should be consistent and convincing and according to his or her personality type. There should be no even action exhibited by the character.

                    Like many important documents in the history of philosophy and literary theory, Aristotle’s poetic, composed around 330 BCE, was most likely preserved in the form of student lecture note. This brief text, through its various interpretation and application from the Renaissance onward, has had a profound impact on western aesthetic philosophy and artistic production.

                   The poetics is in part Aristotle’s response to his teacher, Plato, who argues in. The Republic that poetry is representation of mere appearances and is thus misleading and morally suspect. Aristotle’s approach to then phenomenon of poetry is quite different from Plato’s. Fascinated by the intellectual challenge of forming categories and organizing them as do certain public- information. Campaigns on drunk driving or drug, abuse Hans- Georg Gadamer’s  attempt to describe catharsis in his study ‘Truth and Method’ can serve both as a working definition and an introduction into the problem of establishing any determinate definition of this elusive concept:

          “What is experienced in such an excess

          Of tragic suffering is something truly

          Common, The spectator recognizes him-

          Self and his finitness in the face

          Of the power of fate what happens

          To the great ones of the earth has

          Exemplary significance. To see that

          “this is how it is’’ is a kind of self

          Knowledge for the spectator, who

          Emerges with new insight from the

          Illusion in which he, like everyone

          Else lives”

                   The practical and formal concerns that occupy Aristotle in the poetics need to be understood in relation to a larger concern with the psychological and social purpose of literature.

                   Criticism, according Aristotle, should not be simply the application of unexamined aesthetic, principles, but should pay careful attention to the overall function of a any feature of a work of art in its context within the work, and should never lose sight of the function of the work of art in its social context.

                   The guide provided here takes you through each of the twenty-six  books of the poetics and attempts to give a summary of Aristotle’s text terms, concepts, categories, and interrelationships that Aristotle introduces.

                   Aristotle begins his discussion by established a general definition of poetry a broad category including all forms of literary production and performance recognized in Aristotle’s time and by distinguishing among different genres of literary production and performance.

                   The essential feature of all forms of poetry is they are all modes of imitation or mimesis. Aristotle identified three aspects in which poetic genres can be distinguished from each other, the medium through which they present their imitation , the objects of imitation and the mode or manner of the imitation. The remainder of book is avoided to a discussion of the different media of imitation, book 2 treats the objects of imitation and book 3 discusses the mode of imitation.

                   Aristotle’s poetic is a fragmentary work, originally it was a text for which survives is mostly about tragedy. The most notable thing about Aristotle’s view of the poetical process is that he sees it as an imitation of real situations, rather than invention. But since it is a mental abstraction derived  from many single instances, it is ‘truer’ than any individual situation, because it is more ‘universal’ more general, or it participated in the ideal to a greater degree.

                   The process of Imitation 

1)   Language

2)   Meter

3)   Music

4)   Dance

     The subject mater of Tragedy

1)   Dealized

2)    Realistic

3)    Caricaturized.

Aristotle’s poetics is the earliest surviving work of

 Dramatic theory and the first extant philosophical

          treatise to focus on literary theory. In it Aristotle offers an account of what he calls “poetry”.

          They are similar in the fact that they are all imitation but different in the three ways that Aristotle describes.

1)   They differ in the music, rhythm, harmony meter and melody.

2)    The difference of goodness in the characters.

3)    The way the character are presented in which they stay in the role that they are describing as a narrative or acting as if they are doing the things that the  character are doing.

Aristotle’s work  n aesthetic  consists of the poetics and rhetoric. The poetics is specifically concerned with drama. At some point, Aristotle’s original works was divided in two each book. Written on as a separate roll of papyrus. Only the first part that which focuses on tragedy survives. The lost second part addressed comedy, scholars speculate that the Tractatus coislinianus summarizes the contents of the lost second book.

          Aristotle proceeds to his definition of tragedy:

                   “Tragedy is a representation of a serious,

                     Complete action which has magnitude, in

Embellished speech, with each of its     elements  separately in the parts and by people acting and not by narration, accomplishing by means of pity and terror the catharsis of such emotion”.

·       Aristotle’s distinguished between the genres of “poetry” of there ways:

1)   Matter:

              Language, rhythm and melody, for Aristotle, make up the matter of poetic creation. Where the epic poem makes use of language alone, the playing of the lyre involves rhythm and melody some poetical drama included a singing chorus’ and so music and language were all part of the performance.

2)   Subject:

 Also “agents” in some translation. Aristotle differentiates the work by distinguishing between the nature of the human characters that populate either from Aristotle finds that tragedy treats of serious, important and virtuous people.

          Comedy, on the other hand, treats of people who are less virtuous who are unimportant, undignified tripartite division of character in superior to the audience, inferior, or at the same level.

3)   Method:

     One may imitate the agents through use of a  narrator throughout or only occasional or only through direct speech, using actors to speak the lines directly. This latter is the method of tragedy  without use of any narrator.

  “embellished speech” I mean that which

   Has rhythm and melody, that is song by

  “with its elements separately” I means

  that some are accomplished only by

means of spoken verses, and others again by means of song”.

According to Aristotle meter/verse alone is not the distinguishing feature of poetry or imaginative literature in general. Even scientific and medical treatises may be written in verse. Verse will not make them poetry.

          “Even if a theory of medicine or physical philosophy

         Be put forth in a metrical from, it is usual to describe

         The writer in this way. Homes and Empedocles

        However, have really nothing in common apart

       From their meter, so that if the one is to be called     

      a poet, the other should  be termed a physicist

    Rather than a poet.”  

Aristotle believes that here is natural pleasure in imitation, which is in born instinct in men. He does not agree with his teacher in ‘poet’s imitation is twice removed from reality and hence unreal of truth poetry therefore, is more philosophical and a higher thing than the history, which expresses the particular, while poetry tends to express the universal.

          Aristotle does not agree with Plato in function of poetry to make people weaker and emotional sentimental. For him, catharsis is ennobling and humbles human being Aristotle, that the end of poetry is to please however, teaching may be given, such pleasing is superior to the other pleasure because it teaches civic morality. Therefore, all good literature gives pleasure that is not divorces from moral lessons.

          Poetry, definition given the David Daiches:

                   “The poet can tell a story in narrative

                     From and partly through the speeches

                     Of the characters or it can all be

                    Done in third-person narrative, or the

                    Story can be presented dramatically,

                   With no use of third person narrative

                  At all”.

          Conclusion:    

                             Says, Aristotle, can again, be distinguished according to the medium of representation. The difference of medium  between a poet and a painter is clear, one uses words with their denotative, connotative, rhythmic and musical aspects, the other uses forms and colors likewise, tragedy writer may make use of one kind of meter and the comedy writer of another. So the Aristotle, poetry, and poetics information and definition and all deeply introduction above as under.

         

                                                                                                                                               

Critical analysis Fakeer of Jungheera

M.K.Bhavnagar University

Name: Baldaniya Vanita Velabhai

 Roll no: 30

Class: Semester -1

Subject: paper-4 (Indian Writing in English)

Topic: Critical Analysis –Fakeer of Jungheera.

Work: Assignment

Guidance: Heenaba Zala.

Critical analysis Fakeer of Jungheera:

             Introduction:

             The protagonist of the Fakeer poem is a robber or a mendicant, who belongs to some unidentified Muslim sect, comes from an upper caste Bengali Hindu family. Derozio’s uses Christian imagery, such a heaven and angels flitting about and juxtaposes it against the Hindu tradition of Sati, Muslim prayers and Tantric tale of Raja Vikramajit and Baital to create a quaint Romantic atmosphere. Though the tantric tale seem to he a lengthy digression within a tragic tale of a blighted Hindu-Muslim love affair it nonetheless places the tragedy in an impure tradition after having rejected all the other dominant religious  forms.

              The Fakeer poem is in two cantos of twenty eight and twenty -four  stanzas respectively written in the iarnbic, anapestic, trochaic and dactylic  meters to suit the different rhymes ranging; from the normal spoken voice and slow description to the racy  bottles and the chant of priest and woman. By introducing commercia transactions of the East India company in India.

          Derozio develops the metaphor of commerce comparing it to the relationship of people in love, he concludes that “Affection are not made for merchandize" The poem highlights the fact that utilitarian ideas of the East India Company  had a far stronger impact on Bengal than the prose- lytizing  work of Christian missionaries.

          Irnitating the English Romantics, Derozio  opens the first cunto with  the wind wandering greatly like “young spirit” but the  wind also sight occasionally reminding us of the transience  of love and fixing the tragic tone of the poem. The beginning however heralds the bountiful embrace of mother earth.

            “The sun-jit-stream in dimples breaks,

              As when a child from slumer, wakes.

             Sweet smiling on its mother there,

              Like heavenly hope o’er mortal care!”

            The  sun continues to shower its blessing on mother earth  sitting under a banyan tree and watching  the ‘Faithless’ honeybee sipping the nector from flower to flower can inspire  anyone, but the bucolic world of blissful fecundity is tinged with the sadness of impermance . In the second stanza Derozio established the tragic theme of sati in the poem. Morning arrives lighting up a “mournful scene” followed by a “maddening wail of misery” a scene where a ‘devoted woman’ need ‘must die’ By the ‘Sacred’ river Ganga  the granite rocks of jungheera stand steep and formidable where during  fishermen guide their Swift shallops  at  high tide to catch fish. In this inaccessible and barren crag, on huge granite boulder stands a natural hat, the abode of “a hole man” with a heart full of “purity” The man,

   “His life unruffled, like a stream

    Flows brightly in a devotion’s beam”

           There are however conflicting opinions about his character. There are some who say that he is saintly wise and holy while others talk of his middles cruelty, treachery and devilry. In stanza four the poet comments that there are cases when evil men may take to religion to hide their criminal intent:

   “Alast in fairest seeming souls

    The tide of guilt all blackly rolls.

     And then they steal religion’s ray

    Upon its surface but to play…”

         The wonderful play of light and shade bring out a deceptive human nature and the evil that lies buried in the human soul.

        In stanza five a group of people protected with soldiers slowly move over the plains beathing “drums and gong” carrying “spears of gold” In the group are upper castes Hindu men,”priests with triple thread”.  Eager woman who follow the procession silently watch these saintly men. Amidst them a woman in white, like a “child of light” stands out this woman has come for the final rites. The notion of saintliness and purity are clearly identified with both the   tragedy when it comes has a deeper moral ring.

          The chorus of woman in stanza six celebrates the deification of the Hindu widow about to become a Sati, woman scatter flowers on the sacrificial alter as the helpless victim is convinced that she will inherit the “gay” gardens blooding with amaranth, filled with soft music and eternally burning lamps. The chorus sings that the Sati will become trice happy in heaven, where she will once again be united with her departed husband, and what better encouragement for her to climb the sacrificial alter.

“On to the alter and scatter the flower,

 Sweeten the path as ye wander along;

 On to the alter! Another blest hour

   Brings to the spirit the kinnura’s song”

     The kinnura’s song could refer to the Hebrew kinnor, an ancient stringed instrument or more especially to the sitar, which can be made to produce mournful sounds. As the procession moves to the grassy bank their song acquire a mysterious, foreboding quality.

  “And loud and deep its numbers roll,

   Like song mysterious o’er the soul.”

        Without much ado, in stanza eight, the “chorus of Brahmans” begins their ritual. As a prelude to the sacrifice they shower petals and sprinkle orient spice and clang the cymbals to complete the rite before sunset. Then the “chief of Brahman” prays for the woman’s immorality and exhorts the sun to be her guardian. The group moves slowly like a passing cloud. The g poet laments at the scene and wonders how the sophists could  have believed that human beings possessed sympathy.

          Derozio pulls out humanistic notions of social love and civil society from his vast reading of the Greek’s but fails to understand the bizarre ritual of Sati. The impending tragedy brings out elegiac lines such as the following:

  “ye who in fancy’ vision view the fires

    Where the calm widow gloriously expire,

  And, charmed, behold her ere she

                    Mounts the pile,

 Her lips ilhimined by a radiant smile"

.

    The widow bought to the sacrificial fire is young and pure in her “Spotless loveliness” but she is a “purchased flower” and a victim of human caprice and guile contrary to the sophists’ human nature seems degenerate.

   “A heaven beyond the limits of her thought,

    Bliss her spirit never yet had sought,

    Ah-! Haply then might pity mourn above

    Degraded nature, not exalied love."

           Pale faced and speechless, she now watches the dead body of her husband covered with sandalwood. The use of sandalwood would obviously signity. The poet paints the heroine as a “perfect” Bengali beauty with large  black eyes, black long hair tresses, a pale lily complercion and a majestic walk.

        As she arrives at this strange “death’s festival”, she seems to be in full control of her emotion, though her eyes speak more than her tongue could. In stanza 13 the world that tries to buy love and impression the heart, but may the Heart was ‘created’ free and there fore cannot be imprinted.

    “Ye mean, ye cruel! In whose be some cold

      The thought springs idly that love may be sold…….”

           In it only stanza 14 that we come to know the name of this beautiful widow, She is called Nuleeni. Though her situation is rather hopeless, she does not reflect upon death but upon love, especially the “blissful hours” she spent in those scented “bright bowers” with her lover she never loved her dead husband as her true feelings were for someone else. Now she husband but the pain of separation from her beloved, she rises like a phoenioc burning in the fire of her “Hopes, affection, happiness,”

          In stanza 15 Derozio introduced Persian imagery of shama- parvane or the lamp and moth representing the heat of love and the tragic death of the loves.

   “On giddy wing it widely wheels,

      Th’ enlivening glow is spirit feels;

     And then it fondly fancies this

     Until into the fire it flies

     And then, too late lamenting dies!"

       Latent in the imagery of shama- pruvna. Pravna is the tragic consequence of unapproved, unconventional love. In the next stanza, stanza 16 Derazio shifts to the image of the sun brightening the Ganga River, Which will soon set leaving the landscape in darkness, Derazio’s dexterous use of the Hindu and Islamic imagery of transience juxtaposed against the Christian image of an external soul highlight the syncretistic aspect of the poet’s imagination, to which the nineteenth century social reality might not have conformed.

          In the rather long stanza 17 the poet foresee the tragic future of the two lovers and once again weaves images of angels, immortal boundless love and flowers from India’s bowers into an epigram of Christian immorality.

   “And these good angels weave for me,

    The wreath of immorality!”

       In stanza 18 Nuleeni stands still like a statue, as a divine being only to be worshipped:

    “With upward gaze, and white clasped hands,

      She like a heaven- wrought statue, stands_.!”

         She is now taken to the funeral pyre for immolation by a Brahmin. Her secret plan to elope with her lover gains acceptance in the light of the stereotypical crafty Bramins priest referred to in the colonial on widow Immolation,

1821-1830 As “hungry Bramins” and “necessitous Bramins”. As the mounts the funeral pyre and takes “seven circuits” of the “pile”. The Hymn to the sun promises her a paradise in the hereinafter. But Nuleeni’s mind is on rescue and escape by her crafty lover, a Muslim Fakeer who does not disappoint her. He comes like a “tempest”, in the evening, kills and wounds a few and takes  her away to Jungheera’s inaccessible crags “bleak and bare”- redeeming   her as an “unoffered sacrifice”.

      Naleeni has always dreamt of him and is now satisfied in his embrace:

      “I dreamt, and now before my view,

        My dream, my golden dream is true”_.

         Derazio sees love between a Hindu and a Muslim as transcending religion though this  could be Derazio’s own atheistic vision of religious categories based on his rationalistic temper. There was a hardening of identity of Bengali Muslim in the subcontinent as Island provide

 “a sense of belonging to the Muslim community.

       In the absence of a powerful modern Muslim leadership in nineteenth century Bengal the ulema emerged   as the leaders of the Muslim community”.

       The British during the latter half of the nineteenth century created a legal and political discourse concerning Sati but kept the categories of Hindus and Muslim quite separate. Though they allowed it to happen with permission till it was completely abolished in 1829. The hardening of religious categories in colonial Bengal lays the ground for the inevitable conflict that ensure in canto second.

        The song that follows is just to provide a maudlin sentiment mixed with Muslim imagery of houris, the sound of lute and love’s passion. Stanza 4 gives us a glimpse of the tragic end, by comparing his heart as a :taper in a tomb” that will soon be extinguished stanzas 5 and 6 introduce the Legend of the Shushan in which the tragedy is contained, stanza 7 reveals the affronted father of Nuleeni who wants to avenge the insult:

     “He stood the statue, warmed with life,

       Demanding vengeance, not relief,

       Honor alive or death in strife.”

      The story at this paint become somewhat sketchy but the robber Fakeer decides to make a last stand and fight. The poet- writer thus,

   “A during conquest must my band achieve:

      And tis my promise, ere another chief

     Shall be selected for thy love’s relief,

     Once more to lead them to their prey alone,

      Then quit for ever, and be all thine own_

     Quench not the light of that life- giving eye

     Swift on the wings of love to thee I’ll fly-

     But bone short hour- and I demand no more-

     For ever thine4, when that short hour is o’er."

       Nuleeni becomes a free agent to choose her destiny; she prefers to die together with someone she loves than with her husband whom she dose not. The Sanskrit word Sati implied a “good and virtuous woman” who was truly devoted to her husband. And according to the Hindu tradition these virtues found expression in the ultimate act of self immolation woman who sacrificed themselves continued to be called Sati long after they were dead and gone. The British however restricted the usage of the term.

     “to the sacrifice alone the act as well as the agent.”

Conclusion:

The hardening of religious identities in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and the deepening  schism between various religious categories, especially Hindus and Muslims, rejected the entire syncretistic tradition that once flowed unhampered not only in Bengal but the entire British India exemplified in the cut of satya pir with also rejection of the syncretistic tradition all literature associated with it was also rejected. The secular and universal ideas that Derazio espouses in his poetry do not go well with the separatist and divisionary politics of modern India. These are some of the revisionist consequences of modernity.

  However, the “modes of social life” that emerged in the early nineteenth century in response to modernity in India now take us “beyond Modernity into the information age. If India must shine it must do so within its own traditions and Derazio occupies a central place in it.