Short Ideas About Works in English Literature

ARCADIA

Arcadia by Philip Sidney, written to amuse his sister, the Countess of Pembroke, is a prose romance interspersed with, verse, in which he gives a full play of his fantastic invention. It is a pastoral romance: its action being held in the ideal Arcadia, where King Basilius retired and where he brings up his daughters as shepherdesses.

Arcadia is the background to the story of love and chivalry. Musidorus and Pyrocles make their court to the most virtuous Pamela and to radiant Philoctia. They are disguised as a peasant and a woman. The King is smiten with love for Pyrocles whose woman's disguise deceives him and the queen who discovers the fraud is also smitten with love for Pyrocles. This is the principal plot, but it is crossed by many episodes. Arcadia marks a well-defined stage in the history of novel. The style of the Arcadia is highly conceited" full of elaborate analogies, balanced parenthetical asides, and pathetic fallacies. It has its moments of idyllic

simplicity and stylized pastoral charm.

EVERYMAN IN HIS HUMOUR

Ben Jonson's first comedy, Everyman in His Humour, is a key to all his dramas. Helwanted to present a satiric picture of his own age, to write with cool irony of contemporary human foibles as he considéred them and as Terence had done. Kitely, a merchant, is the husband of a pretty, young wife. His "Humour" is jealovsy. His young brothers take shelter in his house with a crowd of rioters but harmless gallants, and these he suspects as having designs on his wife. One of them is Edward Knowell, whose father's humour' is excessive solicitude for his son's morals. Dame Kitely, though not suspicious, by nature becomes highly excited when herauspicions are aroused. Bobadil, one of Jonson's greatest creations, is a boasting cowardly soldier. Out of these elements, bythe aid of devices and disguises of the mischievous Brainworm, Knowell's servant, a complicatiopis Created in which Kitely and his wife are brought face to face at a house to which each thinks the other hasgone for improper purpose. Bobadil is exposed and beaten; young Knowell is married to Kitely's sister, and postasters and gulls are held up to ridicule.The title exposes Jonson's aim at characterization. His comedy is not merely farcical, it is written with a purpose. in the prologue he says that he sports with human folfies, not with erimes. Bobadil. Kitely Brainworm-all

have their prototypes in the dramatic works of Tereñce.

UTOPIA

Utopia, by Thomas More, is a powerful and originál study of social conditions, unlike anything which had ever appeared in any literature except some points of resemblance in Plato's Republic.

The book is divided into two parts. Mote and his friend Peter Giles leave church service in Antwerp and encounter Raphael Hythloday, a Portugese seaman who accompanied Amerigo Vespucci on his third voyage to the New world. The mariner found in Utopi?affar different world from European corruption, crime, waste and war. In the second part, Hythloday tells of the ideal state where the government is truly representative. The

economy is communistic. A six hou day is all the work required of a man. Happiness is the highest good. The Utopians detest war and bear arms only in self-defence. Most interesting is the complete religious toleration.Utopia is a rationalworld governed by truly humanistic principles. More suggests the new approach of the

humanists to create the ight world for men. The book is remarkable for confident idealism, witty phrasing and fertile imagination.

ULYSSES

It is a revolutionary novel published in 1922. It is a vast, varied, tragi-comic picture of one day in the life of

Dublin drayn by James Joyce. It is the most controversial novel of our times. If it has a slight similarity with Sternes Tristram. Shandy, the difference is obvious. Joyce took up an almost impossible task of 'giving a shape and

significance tosthe immense panorama of futility and anarchy which is contemporary history. It is apparently the story of life for some twenty hours, of an lrish Jew, Leopold Bloom, in the city of Dublin. The story begins in the early moning of June, 16" 1904, when Bloom gets up and ends in the early hours of the next day. At first sight, Ulysses may seem to be formless. But Joyce planned it carefully with parallels in Homer's Odyssey. The construction is complex and kept out of sight. Ulysses is perhaps one English novel about which it is impossible to generalize.

TOM JONES

Henry Fielding's masterpiece The History of' Tom Jones (1749) is regarded by many as the greatest novel of the 18h century. Here Fielding takes an enormous canvas and crowds it with figures. The hero of the novel is a foundling who is brought up in the West of England by a squire named Allworthy, with whom he quarrels and travels to London in search of a fortune. Tom was in love with Sophia Western, daughter of a neighbouring squire,

But the romance ends with a reversal of the fortune of the hero. The second part of the story records the swift succession of adventures on the road. The third and last part is set in London, where Tom establishes himself Sophia runs away from home to avoid being foreed into marriage with Blifil, Tom's childhood companion, who is good in exterior but actually evil inside. Her father persuades her to London and Mr. Allworthy also arrives in search of Tom ones. A number of amorous incidents add to the complexity of the plot. The villainy of Blifil is exposed, Tom Jones is restored to favour, gains his beloved and the inheritance of his uncle.

SAMSON AGONISTES

Milton's Samson Agonistes (1671) is a famous tragedy in the Greek mould, presenting Samson's finahact of

retribution after his imprisonment by the Philistines. He is visited by a series of people while a chorus keeps upan

intermittent commentary, recalling the past, musing in prayer, and exhortation on the ways of God to man consoling

Samson and blessing his resolve. The first visitor, Samson's old father Manoa, brings the tempting hope ofrelease. But Samson knows that death alone can close his miseries. The second visitor, his wife Dalifah who betrayed him tragically tempts him with the idea of sensual pleasures among domestic happiness. Samsón resists all, temptations with ferocity. The third visitor, Horapha, the philistine, mocks him. But Samson has sustained the battery of confrontation and is now spiritually ready to fulfill his destiny. Finally destroys his rebelling enemies along with himself. Milton's free-verse in S.A. is powerful and flexible.

AREOPAGITICA

Areopagitica which is a speech for the liberty of unlicensed printàng, was published by Milton in 1644. The

title is derived from the Areopagus, the hills in Athens where a Council met

This discourse was inspired partly by Parliament's attempts to suppress Milton's pamphlet on divorce.Milton attacks the recent order of Parliament 'that no book.. shallbe hence forth printed approved and licensed.He shows that even Moses, Daniel and St.Paul all enjoin freedomin the pursuit of learning. Secondly civersity ot

opinion and constant testing are necessary to the growth of vitue and knowledge. And thirdly, the attempt to keep out evil by licensing is like the attempt to keep off by closiníg the gates of the public garden to the public. Milton

quotes the case of theimprisoned Galileo which was a'discouragement to learning. Milton concludes by saying that truth is stronger than falsehood and that 'a gross conforming stupidity, is to be feared more than new opinion. 

Look Back in Anger

John Osborne changed the face of British theatre in the 1950s. Osborne served as actor-manager for a string of repertory companies and soon decided to tryhis hand at playwriting. In 1956, Osborne submitted one of his plays

"Look Back in Anger"and it is consideredeib many critics to be the turning point in postwar British theatre.

Osborne's protagonist, Jimmy Porter, capured the angry and rebellious nature of the postwar generation, adispossessed lot who were clearly unhappy with things as they were in the decades following World War II. Jimmy Porter came to represent an entire generation of "angry young men'". Osborne left behind a large body of work for the stage as well as several autobtoeraphical works. Several of his plays were also adapted for him including "Look Back in Anger" and "The Entertainer

"Look Back in Anger(1956)" is a John Osborne play and 958 movie about a love triangle involving an intelligent but disaffected oung man (Jimmy Porter), his upper-middle-class, impassive wife (Alison), and her snooty best friend (tHelena Charles). Cliff, an amiable Welsh lodger, attempts to keep the peace. Although Jimmy appears to be a neufotic character, his abusive and volcanic nature stems from societal injustices and religious hypocrisy and his agopy is intensified by the fact that he cannot reform society. Although he initially discards Alison, when she returns after her miscarriage as a transtormed human being, Jimmy accepts her warmly. He too

has learnt his lesson. The two decide that a loving relationship is the only way to keep at bay societal suffering. The

play was a sugééss on the London stage, and spawned the term "angry young men" to describe Osborne and other

writers of his generation who employed harshness and realism. In contrast to what was seen as more escapist fare

previously.