Definition of Language

Definition of Language
Since linguistics is the study of language, it is imperative for linguist to know what language is. Language is a very complex human phenomenon; all attempts to define it have proved inadequate. In a nut-shell, language is an ‘organised noise’ used in actual social situations. That is why it has also been defined as ‘contextualised systematic sound‘.

In order to understand a term like life, one has to talk of the properties or characteristics of living beings (e.g. motion, reproduction, respiration, growth, power of self-healing, excretion, nutrition, mortality, etc. etc.). Similarly, the term language can be understood better in terms of its properties or characteristics. Some linguists, however, have been trying to define language in their own ways even though all these definitions have been far from satisfactory. Here are some of these definitions:

According to Robins: “Language is a symbol system based on pure or arbitrary conventions... infinitely extendable and modifiable according to the changing needs and conditions of the speakers.”

According to this definition, language is a symbol system. Every language selects some symbols for its selected sounds. The English sound /k/ for example has the symbol k for it. These symbols form the alphabet of the language and join in different combinations to form meaningful words.

The system talked of here is purely arbitrary (random) in the sense that there is no one to one correspondence between the structure of a word and the thing it stands for. The combination p.e.n., for example stands, in English, for an instrument used for writing. Why could it not be e.p.n. or n.e.p.? Well, it could also be e.p.n. or n.e.p. and there is nothing sacrosanct (sacred) about the combination p.e.n. except that it has now become a convention—a convention that cannot be easily changed.

As stated here, language conventions are not easily changed, yet it is not impossible to do so. Language is infinitely modifiable and extendable. Words go on changing meanings and new words continue to be added to language with the changing needs of the community using it.

According to Sapir: “Language is a purely human and non-instinctive method of communicating ideas, emotions and desires by means of a system of voluntarily produced symbols.”

There are two terms in this definition that call for discussion: human and non-instinctive. Language, as Sapir rightly said, is human. Only humans possess language and all normal humans uniformly possess it. Animals do have a communication system but it is not a developed system. That is why language is said to be species-specific and species-uniform.

Also, language does not pass from a parent to a child. In this sense it is non-instinctive. A child has to learn language and he/she learns the language of the society he/she is placed in.
According to Hall: “Language is the institution whereby humans communicate and interact with each other by means of habitually used oral-auditory arbitrary symbols.”

This definition rightly gives more prominence to the fact that language is primarily speech produced by oral-auditory symbols. A speaker produces some string of oral sounds that get conveyed through the air to the speaker who, through his hearing organs, receives the sound waves and conveys these to the brain that interprets these symbols to arrive at a meaning.

According to Noam Chomsky: “A language is a set (finite or infinite) of sentences, each finite in length and constructed out of a finite set of elements.”

Chomsky meant to convey that each sentence has a structure. Human brain is competent enough to construct different sentences from out of the limited set of sounds/symbols belonging to a particular language. Human brain is so productive that a child can at any time produce a sentence that has never been said or heard earlier.

According to Wardaugh: “A language is a system of arbitrary vocal symbols used for human communication.”
According to Bloch and Trager: “A language is a system of arbitrary vocal symbols by means of which a social group cooperates.”

Both these definitions prominently point out that language is a system. Sounds join to form words according to a system. The letters k, n, i, t join to form a meaningful ‘word knit, whereas combinations like n-k-i-t, t.k.n.i. or i.n.k.t. do not form any meaningful or sensible combinations. Although initially the formation of words, as said earlier, is only arbitrary, convention makes them parts of a system. Words too join to form sentences according to some system. A sentence like: Cricket is a game of glorious uncertainties is acceptable but one cannot accept a string of words like: a game is of cricket uncertainties glorious. It is in this sense that language is said to be a system of systems.

According to Derbyshire: “Language is undoubtedly a kind of means of communication among human beings. It consists primarily of vocal sounds. It is articulatory, systematic, symbolic and arbitrary.”

Derbyshire, while accepting that language is the property of human beings and that it is primarily speech, brings out the point that it is an important means of communication amongst humans. Before the start of civilization, man might have used the language of signs but it must have had a very limited scope. Language is a fully developed means of communication with the civilized man who can convey and receive millions of messages across the universe. An entire civilization depends on language only. Think of a world without language—man would only continue to be a denizen of the forest and the caves. Language has changed the entire gamut of human relations and made it possible for human beings to grow into a human community on this planet.

Emma by Jane Austen

Emma by Jane Austen

Emma, by Jane Austen, is a novel about youthful hubris and the perils of misconstrued romance. The novel was first published in December 1815. As in her other novels, Austen explores the concerns and difficulties of genteel women living in Georgian–Regency England; she also creates a lively comedy of manners among her characters.

Summary:

Although convinced that she herself will never marry, Emma Woodhouse, a precocious twenty-year-old resident of the village of Highbury, imagines herself to be naturally gifted in conjuring love matches. After self-declared success at matchmaking between her governess and Mr. Weston, a village widower, Emma takes it upon herself to find an eligible match for her new friend, Harriet Smith. Though Harriet’s parentage is unknown, Emma is convinced that Harriet deserves to be a gentleman’s wife and sets her friend’s sights on Mr. Elton, the village vicar. Meanwhile, Emma persuades Harriet to reject the proposal of Robert Martin, a well-to-do farmer for whom Harriet clearly has feelings.
Harriet becomes infatuated with Mr. Elton under Emma’s encouragement, but Emma’s plans go awry when Elton makes it clear that his affection is for Emma, not Harriet. Emma realizes that her obsession with making a match for Harriet has blinded her to the true nature of the situation. Mr. Knightley, Emma’s brother-in-law and treasured friend, watches Emma’s matchmaking efforts with a critical eye. He believes that Mr. Martin is a worthy young man whom Harriet would be lucky to marry. He and Emma quarrel over Emma’s meddling, and, as usual, Mr. Knightley proves to be the wiser of the pair. Elton, spurned by Emma and offended by her insinuation that Harriet is his equal, leaves for the town of Bath and marries a girl there almost immediately.
Emma is left to comfort Harriet and to wonder about the character of a new visitor expected in Highbury—Mr. Weston’s son, Frank Churchill. Frank is set to visit his father in Highbury after having been raised by his aunt and uncle in London, who have taken him as their heir. Emma knows nothing about Frank, who has long been deterred from visiting his father by his aunt’s illnesses and complaints. Mr. Knightley is immediately suspicious of the young man, especially after Frank rushes back to London merely to have his hair cut. Emma, however, finds Frank delightful and notices that his charms are directed mainly toward her. Though she plans to discourage these charms, she finds herself flattered and engaged in a flirtation with the young man. Emma greets Jane Fairfax, another addition to the Highbury set, with less enthusiasm. Jane is beautiful and accomplished, but Emma dislikes her because of her reserve and, the narrator insinuates, because she is jealous of Jane.
Suspicion, intrigue, and misunderstandings ensue. Mr. Knightley defends Jane, saying that she deserves compassion because, unlike Emma, she has no independent fortune and must soon leave home to work as a governess. Mrs. Weston suspects that the warmth of Mr. Knightley’s defense comes from romantic feelings, an implication Emma resists. Everyone assumes that Frank and Emma are forming an attachment, though Emma soon dismisses Frank as a potential suitor and imagines him as a match for Harriet. At a village ball, Knightley earns Emma’s approval by offering to dance with Harriet, who has just been humiliated by Mr. Elton and his new wife. The next day, Frank saves Harriet from Gypsy beggars. When Harriet tells Emma that she has fallen in love with a man above her social station, Emma believes that she means Frank. Knightley begins to suspect that Frank and Jane have a secret understanding, and he attempts to warn Emma. Emma laughs at Knightley’s suggestion and loses Knightley’s approval when she flirts with Frank and insults Miss Bates, a kindhearted spinster and Jane’s aunt, at a picnic. When Knightley reprimands Emma, she weeps.
News comes that Frank’s aunt has died, and this event paves the way for an unexpected revelation that slowly solves the mysteries. Frank and Jane have been secretly engaged; his attentions to Emma have been a screen to hide his true preference. With his aunt’s death and his uncle’s approval, Frank can now marry Jane, the woman he loves. Emma worries that Harriet will be crushed, but she soon discovers that it is Knightley, not Frank, who is the object of Harriet’s affection. Harriet believes that Knightley shares her feelings. Emma finds herself upset by Harriet’s revelation, and her distress forces her to realize that she is in love with Knightley. Emma expects Knightley to tell her he loves Harriet, but, to her delight, Knightley declares his love for Emma. Harriet is soon comforted by a second proposal from Robert Martin, which she accepts. The novel ends with the marriage of Harriet and Mr. Martin and that of Emma and Mr. Knightley, resolving the question of who loves whom after all.

Short questions linguistics

👉What is English phonology?

English phonology is the study of the phonology (i.e. the sound system) of the English language. Like all languages, spoken English has wide variation in its pronunciation both diachronically and synchronically from dialect to dialect.

👉What is the phonological rule?
A phonological rule is a formal way of expressing a systematic phonological or morphophonological process or diachronic sound change in language.

👉How many different sounds are in the alphabet?
There are 24 different individual consonant speech sounds in the English language and another 20 vowel speech sounds (remember, there are 26 letters of the alphabet…21 consonants and 5 vowels). We call these sounds phonemes. Each phoneme, or speech sound, has a symbolic representation.

👉How many diphthongs are there in the English language?
There are (of course) conflicting opinions about exactly how many English diphthong sounds there are ranging from 8 to 10. According to Daniel Jones there are 10 English diphthong sounds, according to J. D. O'Connor there are 9 and according to A. C. Gimson there are 8 English diphthong sounds.

👉What are the rules of pragmatics?
Pragmatics. ... In a sense, pragmatics is seen as an understanding between people to obey certain rules of interaction. In everyday language, the meanings of words and phrases are constantly implied and not explicitly stated. In certain situations, words can have a certain meaning.

👉What are the phonological features?
In linguistics, a distinctive feature is the most basic unit of phonological structure that may be analyzed in phonological theory. Distinctive features are grouped into categories according to the natural classes of segments they describe: major class features, laryngeal features, manner features, and place features.

👉What is a diphthong example?
A diphthong is a sound made by combining two vowels, specifically when it starts as one vowel sound and goes to another, like the oy sound in oil. Diphthong comes from the Greek word diphthongos which means "having two sounds."

👉What is an example of a semantics?
Semantics is the study of meaning in language. It can be applied to entire texts or to single words. For example, "destination" and "last stop" technically mean the same thing, but students of semantics analyze their subtle shades of meaning.

👉What is a nasal sound?
In phonetics, a nasal, also called a nasal occlusive, nasal stop in contrast with a nasal fricative, or nasal continuant, is an occlusive consonant produced with a lowered velum, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. Examples of nasals in English are [n] and [m], in words such as nose and mouth.

👉What is a Monophthong example?
The word monophthong shows that a vowel is spoken with exactly one tone and one mouth position. For example, when you say "teeth", then while you are creating the sound of the "ee", nothing changes for that sound. A monophthong can be a lexeme of a language and as such it can as well be a syllable.

👉What does it's just semantics mean?
"Semantics" has to do with considering the meanings of words. When someone says "that's just semantics," it's used idiomatically—a phrase repeated whole, parroted. It's a put-down. It means "You're about to talk about words, but words don't matter."

👉What is a consonant sound?
A consonant is a speech sound that is not a vowel. It also refers to letters of the alphabet that represent those sounds: Z, B, T, G, and H are all consonants. Consonants are all the non-vowel sounds, or their corresponding letters: A, E, I, O, U and sometimes Y are not consonants. In hat, H and T are consonants.

👉What is the difference between vowel and consonant sounds?
Vowels are voiced sounds made with the mouth open. Consonants are sounds blocked by the tongue, teeth or lips. They can be voiced or unvoiced. There is one consonant made with the mouth open, and no blockage, but it is unvoiced: the H.

👉What is the vowel sound?
Five of the 26 alphabet letters are vowels: A, E, I, O, and U. The letter Y is sometimes considered a sixth vowel because it can sound like other vowels. Unlike consonants, each of the vowel letters has more than one type of sound or can even be silent with no sound at all.

Phonetics_and_Phonology 🖋️ Transcription in English

#Phonetics_and_Phonology
             🖋️ Transcription in English 🖋️
Transcription is the use of the Phonetic symbols to represent the sounds of words.

We have two types of transcription:
1- Phonemic transcription: every speech sound is identified as one of the phonemes and written with the appropriate symbol. Phonemes are enclosed in slashes / /, e.g. "pen" /pen/

2- Phonetic transcription (allophonic): it is more accurate in phonetic detail and contains much more information than phonemic transcription. We use allophones and enclose them in square brackets, e.g. "pen" [ph n]

"pen" /pen/ — Phonemic transcription
"pen" [ph n] — Phonetic transcription

        🖋️ Aspiration in English: […..h] 🖋️
Aspiration is a moment of release until the vocal folds start to vibrate for the following vowel and it can be characterized as a puff of air that appears after the voiceless plosives.

[b, d, g] are all voiced plosives, while [p, t, k] are all voiceless plosives.

Aspiration is symbolized as (h) after the voiceless plosive sound, e.g.  
Pan = /pæn/    — Phonemic transcription
        = [phæn]   — Phonetic transcription

The rule for the aspiration:
Whenever [p, t, k] occur in the beginning of the syllable or in the stressed syllable, they will be aspirated.

Let us study the following situations:
-In /pan, tan, can/ we have a voiceless consonant followed directly with a vowel.
- We all know that all vowels are oral and voiced. Therefore, when we produce [p, t, k] there is a movement from voiceless consonant to a voiced vowel.
-When we move from /p/ to /a/ there is a little stream or a puff of air goes directly after producing /p/ sound. This sound is /h/ sound and we call this situation as "aspiration".

NOTE!
- If voiceless plosives are preceded by /s/, so there is no aspiration.
S +voiceless plosives + a vowel = No aspiration, e.g. "spell" /spel/, [spel]

Importance of Language in Society

Importance of Language in Society
🌟🌲🌷🌹🌻👇

Since the time of Adam, the evolution of language starts. As soon as the new born comes into the world, the neediest thing for him is the language to communicate. He feels the need to connect himself with the kind of people of his own. Language is the most effective source of communication in our life. In the evolution of human culture and civilization it has played a good role. During conversation we communicate and go into the process of it. And when we get it in written form, its scope enhances. Printing and publishing have also increased the scope of language to greater extent and through their process, thoughts are preserved for coming generations.

Importance of Language in Society
Below are some points indicate the importance of language in society.

Utility through knowledge and experience: In this world, human beings get benefits by knowledge and experience of one another.
Knowledge and awareness: Books, digests and newspapers of the same language enhance the knowledge of the people of the society. Each one can get advantage of this knowledge in accordance with his needs.
Colorfulness: It is because of the language that the world is colorful, difference of opinion exits through it, individuality is also expressed through it.
Harmony and Disharmony: Assimilation and dissimilation is obvious through language and it also points out different thoughts of various people.
Connection with internal and external worlds: It is through the language that the internal and external worlds are connected.
Development of Society: Through language people make progress in the society and human development can be divided into categories.
Fixation of the individuality of personality: The mind, thought and individuality of a man can be fixed through the language.
Co-operation: We get co-operation of other people by using the language which expresses our feelings, thoughts and passions. Through conversation we get mental and emotional satisfaction.
Evolution of Thought: The language affects our mode of thoughts, and idea of universe; it plays a part in our evolution of thought.
Culture: Language indicates the culture.
Relation between Past, Present and Future: Language not only establishes relation of present with past; we control future with its help.

Structuralism_Complete_Notes

#Structuralism_Complete_Notes
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In sociology, anthropology and linguistics, structuralism is
the methodology that elements of human culture must be understood by way of their relationship to a larger, overarching system or structure. It works to uncover the structures that underlie all the things that humans do, think, perceive, and feel. Alternatively, as summarized by philosopher Simon Blackburn, structuralism is "the belief that phenomena of human life are not intelligible except through their interrelations. These relations constitute a structure, and behind local variations in the surface phenomena there are constant laws of abstract culture".

Structuralism in Europe developed in the early 1900s, in the structural linguistics of Ferdinand de Saussure and the subsequent Prague,Moscow and Copenhagen schools of linguistics. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, when structural linguistics was facing serious challenges from the likes of Noam Chomsky and thus fading in importance, an array of scholars in the humanities borrowed Saussure's concepts for use in their respective fields of study. French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss was arguably the first such scholar, sparking a widespread interest in structuralism.

The structuralist mode of reasoning has been applied in a diverse range of fields, including anthropology, sociology, psychology, literary criticism, economics and architecture. The most prominent thinkers associated with structuralism include Claude Lévi-Strauss, linguist Roman Jakobson, and psychoanalystJacques Lacan. As an intellectual movement, structuralism was initially presumed to be the heir apparent to existentialism.[3] However, by the late 1960s, many of structuralism's basic tenets came under attack from a new wave of predominantly French intellectuals such as the philosopher and historian Michel Foucault, the philosopher and social commentator Jacques Derrida, the Marxist philosopherLouis Althusser, and the literary critic Roland Barthes.Though elements of their work necessarily relate to structuralism and are informed by it, these theorists have generally been referred to as post-structuralists. In the 1970s, structuralism was criticized for its rigidity and ahistoricism. Despite this, many of structuralism's proponents, such as Lacan, continue to assert an influence on continental philosophy and many of the fundamental assumptions of some of structuralism's post-structuralist critics are a continuation of structuralism.

#Overview

The term "structuralism" is a related term that describes a particular philosophical/literary movement or moment. The term appeared in the works of FrenchanthropologistClaude Lévi-Strauss and gave rise in France to the "structuralist movement," which influenced the thinking of other writers such as Louis Althusser, the psychoanalystJacques Lacan, as well as the structural Marxism of Nicos Poulantzas, most of whom disavowed themselves as being a part of this movement.

The origins of structuralism connect with the work of Ferdinand de Saussure on linguistics, along with the linguistics of the Prague and Moscow schools. In brief, de Saussure's structural linguistics propounded three related concepts.

De Saussure argued for a distinction between langue (an idealized abstraction of language) and parole (language as actually used in daily life). He argued that the "sign" was composed of both a signified, an abstract concept or idea, and a "signifier", the perceived sound/visual image.
Because different languages have different words to describe the same objects or concepts, there is no intrinsic reason why a specific sign is used to express a given signifier. It is thus "arbitrary".

Signs thus gain their meaning from their relationships and contrasts with other signs. As he wrote, "in language, there are only differences 'without positive terms.'"
Proponents of structuralism would argue that a specific domain of culture may be understood by means of a structure—modelled on language—that is distinct both from the organizations of reality and those of ideas or the imagination—the "third order".[6] In Lacan's psychoanalytic theory, for example, the structural order of "the Symbolic" is distinguished both from "the Real" and "the Imaginary"; similarly, in Althusser's Marxist theory, the structural order of the capitalist mode of production is distinct both from the actual, real agents involved in its relations and from the ideological forms in which those relations are understood.

Blending Freud and de Saussure, the French (post)structuralist Jacques Lacan applied structuralism to psychoanalysis and, in a different way, Jean Piaget applied structuralism to the study of psychology. But Jean Piaget, who would better define himself as constructivist, considers structuralism as "a method and not a doctrine" because for him "there exists no structure without a construction, abstract or genetic".

Although the French theorist Louis Althusser is often associated with a brand of structural social analysis which helped give rise to "structural Marxism", such association was contested by Althusser himself in the Italian foreword to the second edition of Reading Capital. In this foreword Althusser states the following:

Despite the precautions we took to distinguish ourselves from the 'structuralist' ideology ..., despite the decisive intervention of categories foreign to 'structuralism' ..., the terminology we employed was too close in many respects to the 'structuralist' terminology not to give rise to an ambiguity. With a very few exceptions ... our interpretation of Marx has generally been recognized and judged, in homage to the current fashion, as 'structuralist'... We believe that despite the terminological ambiguity, the profound tendency of our texts was not attached to the 'structuralist' ideology.

In a later development, feminist theoristAlison Assiter enumerated four ideas that she says are common to the various forms of structuralism. First, that a structure determines the position of each element of a whole. Second, that every system has a structure. Third, structural laws deal with co-existence rather than change. Fourth, structures are the "real things" that lie beneath the surface or the appearance of meaning.

#In_linguistics

See also: #Structural_linguistics
In Course in General Linguistics the analysis focuses not on the use of language (called "parole", or speech), but rather on the underlying system of language (called "langue"). This approach examines how the elements of language relate to each other in the present, synchronically rather than diachronically. Saussure argued that linguistic signs were composed of two parts:

a "signifier" (the "sound pattern" of a word, either in mental projection—as when one silently recites lines from signage, a poem to one's self—or in actual, any kind of text, physical realization as part of a speech act)a "signified" (the concept or meaning of the word).

This was quite different from previous approaches that focused on the relationship between words and the things in the world that they designate. Other key notions in structural linguistics include paradigm, syntagm, and value (though these notions were not fully developed in Saussure's thought). A structural "idealism" is a class of linguistic units (lexemes, morphemes or even constructions) that are possible in a certain position in a given linguistic environment (such as a given sentence), which is called the "syntagm". The different functional role of each of these members of the paradigm is called "value" (valeur in French).

Saussure's Course influenced many linguists between World War I and World War II. In the United States, for instance, Leonard Bloomfield developed his own version of structural linguistics, as did Louis Hjelmslev in Denmark and Alf Sommerfelt in Norway. In France Antoine Meillet and Émile Benveniste continued Saussure's project, and members of the Prague school of linguistics such as Roman Jakobson and Nikolai Trubetzkoy conducted research that would be greatly influential. However, by the 1950s Saussure's linguistic concepts were under heavy criticism and were soon largely abandoned by practicing linguists:

Saussure's views are not held, so far as I know, by modern linguists, only by literary critics and the occasional philosopher. [Strict adherence to Saussure] has elicited wrong film and literary theory on a grand scale. One can find dozens of books of literary theory bogged down in signifiers and signifieds, but only a handful that refer to Chomsky

The clearest and most important example of Prague school structuralism lies in phonemics. Rather than simply compiling a list of which sounds occur in a language, the Prague school sought to examine how they were related. They determined that the inventory of sounds in a language could be analysed in terms of a series of contrasts. Thus in English the sounds /p/ and /b/ represent distinct phonemes because there are cases (minimal pairs) where the contrast between the two is the only difference between two distinct words (e.g. 'pat' and 'bat'). Analyzing sounds in terms of contrastive features also opens up comparative scope—it makes clear, for instance, that the difficulty Japanese speakers have differentiating /r/ and /l/ in English is because these sounds are not contrastive in Japanese. Phonology would become the paradigmatic basis for structuralism in a number of different fields.

#In_anthropology

Main article: Structural anthropology
According to structural theory in anthropology and social anthropology, meaning is produced and reproduced within a culture through various practices, phenomena and activities that serve as systems of signification. A structuralist approach may study activities as diverse as food-preparation and serving rituals, religious rites, games, literary and non-literary texts, and other forms of entertainment to discover the deep structures by which meaning is produced and reproduced within the culture. For example, Lévi-Strauss analysed in the 1950s cultural phenomena including mythology, kinship (the alliance theory and the incest taboo), and food preparation. In addition to these studies, he produced more linguistically focused writings in which he applied Saussure's distinction between langue and parole in his search for the fundamental structures of the human mind, arguing that the structures that form the "deep grammar" of society originate in the mind and operate in people unconsciously. Lévi-Strauss took inspiration from mathematics.

Another concept used in structural anthropology came from the Prague school of linguistics, where Roman Jakobson and others analysed sounds based on the presence or absence of certain features (such as voiceless vs. voiced). Lévi-Strauss included this in his conceptualization of the universal structures of the mind, which he held to operate based on pairs of binary oppositions such as hot-cold, male-female, culture-nature, cooked-raw, or marriageable vs. tabooed women.

A third influence came from Marcel Mauss (1872–1950), who had written on gift-exchange systems. Based on Mauss, for instance, Lévi-Strauss argued that kinship systems are based on the exchange of women between groups (a position known as 'alliance theory') as opposed to the 'descent'-based theory described by Edward Evans-Pritchard and Meyer Fortes. While replacing Marcel Mauss at his Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes chair, Lévi-Strauss' writing became widely popular in the 1960s and 1970s and gave rise to the term "structuralism" itself.

In Britain, authors such as Rodney Needham and Edmund Leach were highly influenced by structuralism. Authors such as Maurice Godelier and Emmanuel Terray combined Marxism with structural anthropology in France. In the United States, authors such as Marshall Sahlins and James Boon built on structuralism to provide their own analysis of human society. Structural anthropology fell out of favour in the early 1980s for a number of reasons. D'Andrade suggests that this was because it made unverifiable assumptions about the universal structures of the human mind. Authors such as Eric Wolf argued that political economy and colonialism should be at the forefront of anthropology. More generally, criticisms of structuralism by Pierre Bourdieu led to a concern with how cultural and social structures were changed by human agency and practice, a trend which Sherry Ortner has referred to as 'practice theory'.

Some anthropological theorists, however, while finding considerable fault with Lévi-Strauss's version of structuralism, did not turn away from a fundamental structural basis for human culture. The Biogenetic Structuralism group for instance argued that some kind of structural foundation for culture must exist because all humans inherit the same system of brain structures. They proposed a kind of neuroanthropology which would lay the foundations for a more complete scientific account of cultural similarity and variation by requiring an integration of cultural anthropology and neuroscience—a program that theorists such as Victor Turner also embraced.

#In_literary_theory_and_criticism

#Main_article: Semiotic literary criticism
In literary theory, structuralist criticism relates literary texts to a larger structure, which may be a particular genre, a range of intertextual connections, a model of a universal narrative structure, or a system of recurrent patterns or motifs.[13] Structuralism argues that there must be a structure in every text, which explains why it is easier for experienced readers than for non-experienced readers to interpret a text. Hence, everything that is written seems to be governed by specific rules, or a "grammar of literature", that one learns in educational institutions and that are to be unmasked.

A potential problem of structuralist interpretation is that it can be highly reductive, as scholar Catherine Belsey puts it: "the structuralist danger of collapsing all difference.An example of such a reading might be if a student concludes the authors of West Side Story did not write anything "really" new, because their work has the same structure as Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. In both texts a girl and a boy fall in love (a "formula" with a symbolic operator between them would be "Boy + Girl") despite the fact that they belong to two groups that hate each other ("Boy's Group - Girl's Group" or "Opposing forces") and conflict is resolved by their death. Structuralist readings focus on how the structures of the single text resolve inherent narrative tensions. If a structuralist reading focuses on multiple texts, there must be some way in which those texts unify themselves into a coherent system. The versatility of structuralism is such that a literary critic could make the same claim about a story of two friendly families ("Boy's Family + Girl's Family") that arrange a marriage between their children despite the fact that the children hate each other ("Boy - Girl") and then the children commit suicide to escape the arranged marriage; the justification is that the second story's structure is an 'inversion' of the first story's structure: the relationship between the values of love and the two pairs of parties involved have been reversed.

Structuralistic literary criticism argues that the "literary banter of a text" can lie only in new structure, rather than in the specifics of character development and voice in which that structure is expressed. Literary structuralism often follows the lead of Vladimir Propp, Algirdas Julien Greimas, and Claude Lévi-Strauss in seeking out basic deep elements in stories, myths, and more recently, anecdotes, which are combined in various ways to produce the many versions of the ur-story or ur-myth.

There is considerable similarity between structural literary theory and Northrop Frye's archetypal criticism, which is also indebted to the anthropological study of myths. Some critics have also tried to apply the theory to individual works, but the effort to find unique structures in individual literary works runs counter to the structuralist program and has an affinity with New Criticism.

#History_and_background

Throughout the 1940s and 1950s, existentialism, such as that propounded by Jean-Paul Sartre, was the dominant European intellectual movement. Structuralism rose to prominence in France in the wake of existentialism, particularly in the 1960s. The initial popularity of structuralism in France led to its spread across the globe.

Structuralism rejected the concept of human freedom and choice and focused instead on the way that human experience and thus, behaviour, is determined by various structures. The most important initial work on this score was Claude Lévi-Strauss's 1949 volume The Elementary Structures of Kinship. Lévi-Strauss had known Jakobson during their time together at the New School in New York during WWII and was influenced by both Jakobson's structuralism as well as the American anthropological tradition. In Elementary Structures he examined kinship systems from a structural point of view and demonstrated how apparently different social organizations were in fact different permutations of a few basic kinship structures. In the late 1950s he published Structural Anthropology, a collection of essays outlining his program for structuralism.

By the early 1960s structuralism as a movement was coming into its own and some believed that it offered a single unified approach to human life that would embrace all disciplines. Roland Barthes and Jacques Derrida focused on how structuralism could be applied to literature.[citation needed][dubious]

The so-called "Gang of Four" of structuralism was Lévi-Strauss, Lacan, Barthes, and Foucault.

#Interpretations_and_general_criticisms

Structuralism is less popular today than other approaches, such as post-structuralism and deconstruction. Structuralism has often been criticized for being ahistorical and for favouring deterministic structural forces over the ability of people to act. As the political turbulence of the 1960s and 1970s (and particularly the student uprisings of May 1968) began affecting academia, issues of power and political struggle moved to the center of people's attention.

In the 1980s, deconstruction—and its emphasis on the fundamental ambiguity of language rather than its crystalline logical structure—became popular. By the end of the century structuralism was seen as an historically important school of thought, but the movements that it spawned, rather than structuralism itself, commanded attention.

Several social thinkers and academics have strongly criticized structuralism or even dismissed it in toto. The French hermeneutic philosopher Paul Ricœur (1969) criticized Lévi-Strauss for constantly overstepping the limits of validity of the structuralist approach, ending up in what Ricœur described as "a Kantianism without a transcendental subject". Anthropologist Adam Kuper (1973) argued that "'Structuralism' came to have something of the momentum of a millennial movement and some of its adherents felt that they formed a secret society of the seeing in a world of the blind. Conversion was not just a matter of accepting a new paradigm. It was, almost, a question of salvation."Philip Noel Pettit (1975) called for an abandoning of "the positivist dream which Lévi-Strauss dreamed for semiology" arguing that semiology is not to be placed among the natural sciencesCornelius Castoriadis (1975) criticized structuralism as failing to explain symbolic mediation in the social world he viewed structuralism as a variation on the "logicist" theme, and he argued that, contrary to what structuralists advocate, language—and symbolic systems in general—cannot be reduced to logical organizations on the basis of the binary logic of oppositions.Critical theoristJürgen Habermas (1985) accused structuralists, such as Foucault, of being positivists; he remarked that while Foucault is not an ordinary positivist, he nevertheless paradoxically uses the tools of science to criticize science (see Performative contradiction and Foucault–Habermas debate). Sociologist Anthony Giddens (1993) is another notable critic; while Giddens draws on a range of structuralist themes in his theorizing, he dismisses the structuralist view that the reproduction of social systems is merely "a mechanical outcome".

Q- Discuss the context and significance of the women characters in Toni Morrison's novel Jazz?

Jazz
MA English 3rd Term
University of Sargodha

Q- Discuss the context and significance of the women characters in Toni Morrison's novel Jazz?

Toni Morrison being herself a woman portrayed her female characters in full length. Nowhere in her description, we feel suspicious of her personality. Whatever she gives us as an information about the background and psychological growth of female characters is in no sense their advocacy.

In whatever tone she has described the female characters we have no argument to call it a propaganda against menfolk.

In the description of the characters, she has not only kept in her mind the influence of society or City on them but also their own innate deprivations to cope up with men. The characters in her novel speak about themselves in their dialogues. They come with all their inner and outer qualities. Whatever they speak they speak about themselves. The description of character through dialogues in this way becomes independent of the omniscient interference of the writer. This is how we can say Toni Morrison can escape the charge of partiality towards female characters.

The chief female character in the novel, however, is that of Violet Trace. She has given us not only the picture of her physique but also the mind developed in the consciousness of racial complex. In the text of the novel, Toni Morrison has avoided giving any mental picture. Whatever she has given to convey the mind of the characters is through dialogues or their behavior with the other people. She has given the out appearance of Violet in these words:

She is awfully skinny, Violet; fifty but still good looking when she broke up the funeral. You'd think that being thrown out the Church would be the end of it- the shame and all- but it wasn't. Violet is mean enough and good looking enough to think that even without hips or youth she could punish Joe by getting herself a boyfriend and letting him visit in her own house.

Violet wore the same dress each time and Alice was irritated by the thread running loose from her sleeve, as well as the coat lining ripped in at least three places she could see.

To support her opinion about the psychology or mind of Violet Trace she has given two very powerful points or touches in her description of the novel. The first is Violet talking to her parrot and parrot's saying her 'I love you' and second in her decision to beget no children. They leave so powerful an impression of Violet Trace on our minds that we feel no further anxiety to know anything about her. The people living around her had started calling Violet not Violet but Violet.

Though Violet's character is portrayed as a central character or heroine of the novel. The other character equal to her stature both is presentation and significance is that of Dora's Manfred.

Toni Morrison, in fact, has tried to provide us with a full picture of Black life in America. She has given us the picture of nearly all types of people from layman to reasonable middle class. Whatever they do and feel is partly natural and human and partly a mimicry of White people. Her characters range from childhood to adult and old age. In the same way, they belong to nearly all types of minds. They are passionate; they are emotional; they are ferocious and they are cheaters. They are kind as well as the patient.

The character of Dorcas Manfred in this way remains struck to our mind and we do not dare forget it. Her desires to live life fully and her passion for enjoyment leave no doubt in the mind of readers about the forthcoming fate she meets in the progress of narration. Writing about the physical description of Dorcas, Toni Morrison has matchlessly given details we do not feel thirsty of any afterward.

"Dorcas should have been prettier than she was. She just missed. She had all the ingredients of pretty too. Long hair, wavy, half good, half bad. Light skinned. Never used skin bleach. Nice shape. But it missed somehow. If you looked at each thing you would admire that thing- the hair, the color, the shape. All together it didn't fit. Guys looked at her, whistle and called out fresh stuff when we walked down the street."

The description of her mental condition is so perfectly given that we feel bound to accept her as a tragic character. There is no other Black character in the novel we feel so much pity for as we feel for Dorcas. Whatever she receives from Joe Trace she gives to her boyfriend Acton.

What a pity! What a tragedy in the life of Blacks in America. This single point as enough to make Dorcas character an evergreen character in the history of character description. Dorcas meets a tragic death but leaves in our minds an indelible impression for coming years.

Toni Morrison s style of depicting a character is very unique. She gives us the sides or angles of a female character that is not only different from the sides or angles of other characters but also matchless and queer in their own importance. The character of Malvorne, for example, leaves no room for further description. Toni Morrison not only gives her mental picture through her habits but also through her response to Joe Trace's offer.

The character of Alice Manfred is also in the same vein portrayed to its perfection. His reaction on the death of her niece. Dorcas is particular to the psychology of Blacks living under great suppression of Whites. Further, she treats Violet in a very femininity logical way.

Minor characters like Rose Dear and True Belle are not given as ample space in a novel as they leave an equally indelible impression on our minds.True Belle comes to rescue the family when they are penniless and she is one who raises Joe's father Golden Grey. Similarly Rose Dear bears the pressures of trying to provide for her children. She gets so much depressed that she commits suicide by throwing herself down a well.

So we can say that the context of the female character in the novel is that of suppressed Black society. Nearly all the female Black characters are morally strong. They are the representatives of virtue and good in the human soul. Neither the novel nor the society is complete without the Black female characters.

Jazz Themes

Jazz
Themes
MA English 3rd Term
University of Sargodha
Pakistan 🇵🇰🇵🇰🇵🇰

Youth vs. Age
One of the novel's central relationships is the sustained romantic affair between Joe Trace, a fifty year old man, and Dorcas, who is in her late teens. Throughout the novel, the murdered girl becomes a symbol of youth. Her aunt, Alice Manfred, identifies Dorcas' youth with a budding sexuality that has brought calamity. The motif of the garden of Eden presents the image of Dorcas as a young Eve who is enticed and enticing. Violet Trace's reaction to Dorcas is similar. Her jealousy stems from her husbands affair and she can't help but notice the contrast between her aging, sagging body and Dorcas' youthful, fuller figure. Violet tries to drink malts and eat multiple meals to regain the pounds of her youth and her "competition" with the dead girl is ironic because Violet does not want to compete with the young, dead child; rather, she wishes that Dorcas could be the young daughter that she never had. Dorcas' friend Felice comes to serve this role for Violet and she also provides consolation for Joe, demonstrating a healthier way in which "youth" can sustain "age" without bloodshed.

Music
The novel borrows its title from Jazz music and the idea of music is discussed throughout the novel. Alice Manfred and the Miller sisters interpret jazz music as the anthem of hell. The passion and pleasure that Dorcas and Violet find in the music is contrasted with the musical treatment of Joe's crime. When he stalks and shoots Dorcas, it is at a party where loud music is being played to incite passion, "boil" the blood and "encourage" misbehavior. For the entire novel, music is the weapon that the City wields to control its citizens. The seasons and weather are determined by the presence of clarinet players in the street. Music also bears a sadness that can be juxtaposed to Violet's ribaldry and Joe's flared passion. Wild's disappearance takes place as her body is replaced with a trace of music and this sound haunts Joe's memory for the rest of his life. Similarly, the "blues man" who walks the streets becomes the "black-and-blues man" and finally, the "black-therefore-I'm-blues man," providing a critique of racism. The "blues" songs that the characters evoke are largely the consequence of suffering brought about by America's racist traditions.

Memory
Memory is mostly developed through the presence of several orphans in the novel and while Dorcas is the only young orphan in the story, most of the development of this theme actually comes through Joe Trace. Golden Gray and Violet have each lost a parent, while Joe and Dorcas have lost both parents in fires and riots. In Joe's case, he never knew his parents and his "orphanhood" is defined by his "trace" of a memory. Joe is an orphan who never knew his true parents and continues to struggle with his memory after he leaves Virginia and comes to Harlem; similarly, Dorcas' memory as a child in East St. Louis IL, is built around a solitary photograph and is fading fast in Harlem.. In the same way that Joe and Golden Gray and Dorcas have lost their parents, Morrison makes the argument that the African-American community as a whole experienced a sort of "orphanhood" during this turbulent period. After slavery separated families, the "Great Migration" displaced millions of bodies further separating them from their collective and cultural memories. Memory is definitely the most important team in the novel. All of the major characters, Violet, Joe, Dorcas -- even Alice Manfred, all of them suffer the consequences of living a life that is dissociated from the memories of the past.

Race:
Jazz begins with a recap of Dorcas's murder and Violet's attack on her corpse. The couple that kills and then defaces the young girl seem immediately to be evil and immoral characters but surprisingly Morrison goes on to flesh them out and to explain, in part, that their violent acts stem from suppressed anguish and disrupted childhoods. Morrison traces the violence of the City characters back to Virginia, where generations of enslavement and poverty tore families apart. Subtly, Morrison suggests that the black on black violence of the City carries over from the physical and psychic violence committed against the race as a whole. She interweaves allusions to racial violence into her story with a neutral tone that lets the historical facts speak for themselves. Further, her descriptions of scenes are often filled with violence, as she discusses buildings which are cut but a razorlike line of sunlight. Even her narrative is violently constructed with stories wrenched apart, fragmented, and retold in a way that mirrors the splintered identities of the novel's principal characters.

Motherhood

Mothers are almost always absent from the lives of Morrison's characters, having abandoned their children, died, or simply disappeared. The absence of mothers also reflects the absence of a "motherland," as the African-American community searches for a way to make America its home, despite the horrors of dislocation and slavery. The mother also signifies a common cultural and racial heritage that that eludes the characters as they struggle to define themselves. The word "mama" rests on the tip of the characters' tongue and is an unconscious lament for a lost home or feeling of security. During one of Violet's visits, Alice Manfred blurts out "Oh, Mama," and then covers her mouth, shocked at her own vulnerability. Dorcas also refers to her mother out of nowhere as she lies on her death bed, thinking, "I know his name but Mama won't tell." Morrison's narrator, ever-present in the lives and histories of her characters, doubles as a kind of mother for the text, tending to the community of black Harlem.

Race
With its shape-shifting, omnipresent narrator, Jazz immerses its reader in the psyche and history of its African-American characters. The book attempts to mirror, from an anthropological and fictional standpoint, the concerns of this community and the roots of their collective search for identity. The narrator does not travel far from the self-contained universe of black Harlem and does not focus on the lives of any white characters, save for Vera Louise Gray. The legacy of slavery reverberates throughout the story and the influx of blacks to the City reflects a distancing from this past.

To the lighthouse short questions

To The Light House
Short Questions
MA English Annual system
University of Sargodha
Pakistan 🇵🇰🇵🇰🇵🇰

1. Where does the novel take place?

2. Why is six-year-old James disappointed?

3. How do Mr. and Mrs. Ramsay differ in their treatment of James?

4. Why do the children mock Charles Tansley?

5. Why does Mrs. Ramsay suggest that Tansley accompany her to town?

6. What explanation does Mrs. Ramsay give for Mr. Carmichael’s lack of success?

7. What makes Mrs. Ramsay so attractive and magnetic to Tansley?

8. What entertainment does Mrs. Ramsay suggest to Mr. Tansley?

9. How does Woolf contrast Mrs. Ramsay’s outlook with that of her husband?

10. How is Woolf’s writing style different from more conventional writers?

11. Why does Mrs. Ramsay feel an “impulse of terror”?

12. Why does Mrs. Ramsay feel Lily will probably never marry?

13. What does Lily think of Mr. Ramsay?

14. Who is Mrs. Ramsay knitting for?

15. How does Mrs. Ramsay feel about the sea-side house?

16. Why does she speak sharply to her son?

17. How does Mr. Bankes feel about Mrs. Ramsay?

18. How does James feel about his parents?

19. Why does Mr. Ramsay say “Damn you” to Mrs. Ramsay?

20. What are Mr. Ramsay’s thoughts as he paces through the garden?

21. How does Mr. Carmichael feel about Mrs. Ramsay?

22. Why is Mrs. Ramsay hurt by Mr. Carmichael’s reaction to her?

23. What are Mr. Ramsay’s thoughts at the end of this section?

Answers
1. The novel takes place at a beach house in the Hebrides (off the coast of Scotland).

2. James is disappointed because he wanted to sail to the
Lighthouse the next day, but his father ruins his expectations, saying the weather won’t permit it.

3. Mrs. Ramsay treats James with encouragement, recognizing his sensitivity. Mr. Ramsay ignores James’ feelings, believing that facts are inviolate.

4. The children mock Tansley because he is serious and sarcastic. He can’t play cricket and looks and walks funny.

5. Mrs. Ramsay invites Tansley to accompany her because she is aware of his discomfort and wants to include him.

6. Mrs. Ramsay tells Tansley that Mr. Carmichael is not a success, because he had an “unfortunate marriage.”

7. Mrs. Ramsay is attractive and magnetic to Tansley because he feels flattered by her attention and infers through her conversation that she admires the masculine intellect. He is overcome with her beauty and feels important just walking beside her.

8. The entertainment that Mrs. Ramsay proposes is to go to the circus.

9. Woolf contrasts Mrs Ramsay’s outlook with her husband’s in the sense that she is more aware of people’s feelings, more personally involved in encouraging and assisting others, and more attuned to the landscape. Mr. Ramsay focuses on abstract intellectual questions; he is preoccupied with his ability to contribute to the academic world.

10. Woolf’s writing style is “stream of consciousness,” rather than logically sequential in terms of plot or character development. She reveals her characters through recording the disconnectedness of their thoughts.

11. Mrs. Ramsay suddenly notices the absence of household sounds. The sounds of her husband and Mr. Tansley and the children’s playing have stopped and the sound of the waves startle her. She is reminded of the ephemeral nature of life. The day is slipping by, as is life.

12. Lily’s “little Chinese eyes and her puckered-up face” seemed, at this moment, unattractive. She doesn’t take Lily or her painting very seriously.

13. Lily recognizes that Mr. Ramsay is ridiculous in all his strange posturing and shouting, but she also admires his intellectual honesty.

14. Mrs. Ramsay is knitting a stocking for the Lighthouse keeper’s son who has a tuberculous hip.

15. Mrs. Ramsay feels the house is shabby. She is frustrated by trying to keep the sea-dampness out of the house, by trying to get the family to cooperate to maintain the house.

16. She speaks sharply to James because she has been thinking about the death of Marie’s father. She feels hopeless in the face of death.

17. Mr. Bankes is awed by Mrs. Ramsay’s beauty. He compares her to a Greek goddess.

18. James feels rage towards his father and adoration of his mother.

19. Mr. Ramsay is frustrated by Mrs. Ramsay’s unwillingness to accept the fact the weather will not permit a trip to the Lighthouse. He feels that she, and all women, tell lies.

20. Mr. Ramsay thinks about his intellectual ability and dramatizes passages from poetry.

21. Mr. Carmichael is indifferent to Mrs. Ramsay’s ministrations. He is uncomfortable with her.

22. Mrs. Ramsay feels that people are attracted to her and she can’t understand why Mr. Carmichael seems to reject her. It makes her wonder if he sees something that others overlook.

23. Mr. Ramsay looks at the sea and recognizes that, after all, human knowledge is very limited. It is his special gift to be able to see this so clearly.

Chapters 9-11

1. What is Lily Briscoe’s criticism of Mrs. Ramsay?

2. What is William Bankes’ criticism of Mr. Ramsay?

3. How does Mr. Bankes view Lily’s work?

4. Why does Mrs. Ramsay feel misunderstood?

5. How does Mrs. Ramsay view life?

6. What does Mrs. Ramsay believe about James’ disappointment with the postponed trip?

7. Why does Mrs. Ramsay like to be alone?

8. What does the Lighthouse represent to Mrs. Ramsay?

9. How does Mr. Ramsay feel about his wife’s preoccupations?

10. Why does Mrs. Ramsay join her husband for a walk?

Answers
1. Lily feels Mrs. Ramsay is willful, capable of ridicule, and too preoccupied with arranging other people’s lives (i.e., marrying them off).

2. William Bankes feels Mr. Ramsay is a hypocrite.

3. Bankes is interested in learning about Lily’s painting. He listens to her ideas thoughtfully.

4. Mrs. Ramsay feels misunderstood by those people who accuse her of being domineering. She feels that she’s only tyrannical about her social causes, for example, her hospital work.

5. Mrs. Ramsay feels life is terrible and hostile. She feels that there is no reason, or order, or justice—only suffering, death, and poverty.

6. Mrs. Ramsay believes that James will remember this day for the rest of his life.

7. Mrs. Ramsay likes to be alone because she feels released from the strain of being and doing. She experiences a sense of infinite possibilities.

8. Mrs. Ramsay endows the Lighthouse with a variety of symbolic attributes. The third stroke of the Lighthouse is “her stroke.” In one instance it focuses her random thoughts into a phrase, “Children don’t forget, children don’t forget.” At another moment, the light reminds her of the happiness she has known.

9. Mr. Ramsay notices his wife’s preoccupations and is disturbed by her sadness.

10. Mrs. Ramsay senses her husband’s protectiveness as he has glanced at her, marveling at her beauty. She takes her shawl and joins him.

Chapters 12 and 13

1. What do Mr. and Mrs. Ramsay talk about during their evening stroll?

2. What worry preoccupies Mrs. Ramsay?

3. How do Mr. and Mrs. Ramsay feel about Prue? about Andrew? about Jasper?

4. What does Mr. Ramsay regret?

5. How does Mr. Ramsay feel about his family?

6. What are Mrs. Ramsay’s feelings about her husband at this point?

7. What does Mrs. Ramsay hope about Lily and Bankes?

8. What scene captures Lily’s attention?

9. What is this scene symbolical of for her?

10. What does Lily realize about Mrs. Ramsay’s thoughts about her and William Bankes?

Answers
1. Mr. and Mrs. Ramsay talk about the garden, the children, and their houseguests.

2. Mrs. Ramsay is preoccupied with the 50 pound bill for the greenhouse. She is also concerned about all aspects of the upkeep of the garden.

3. Mrs. Ramsay worries about Jasper shooting birds. Mr. Ramsay believes it is just a stage. Mrs. Ramsay believes Prue is a great beauty; Mr. Ramsay hasn’t noticed it. Mr. Ramsay worries about Andrew’s efforts to obtain a scholarship; Mrs. Ramsay doesn’t value this one way or the other.

4. Mr. Ramsay laments the loss of his solitude, his ability to think his own thoughts without interruption.

5. Mr. Ramsay feels a deep devotion to his family and chastises himself for sometimes wishing they weren’t there (so he could work, uninterrupted).

6. She admires his youthfulness. She marvels at his unusual mind, yet knows that he’s totally unaware of the world around him. She’s concerned about his talking to himself.

7. Mrs. Ramsay has a sudden insight that Lily and Bankes will marry.

8. Lily is struck by the scene of Mr. and Mrs. Ramsay watching their children playing catch.

9. Lily sees this scene as somehow representing what marriage is about: a man and a woman watching their children.

10. Lily suddenly realizes that Mrs. Ramsay will be thinking that she and Bankes should marry.

Answers
1. Lily feels Mrs. Ramsay is willful, capable of ridicule, and too preoccupied with arranging other people’s lives (i.e., marrying them off).

2. William Bankes feels Mr. Ramsay is a hypocrite.

3. Bankes is interested in learning about Lily’s painting. He listens to her ideas thoughtfully.

4. Mrs. Ramsay feels misunderstood by those people who accuse her of being domineering. She feels that she’s only tyrannical about her social causes, for example, her hospital work.

5. Mrs. Ramsay feels life is terrible and hostile. She feels that there is no reason, or order, or justice—only suffering, death, and poverty.

6. Mrs. Ramsay believes that James will remember this day for the rest of his life.

7. Mrs. Ramsay likes to be alone because she feels released from the strain of being and doing. She experiences a sense of infinite possibilities.

8. Mrs. Ramsay endows the Lighthouse with a variety of symbolic attributes. The third stroke of the Lighthouse is “her stroke.” In one instance it focuses her random thoughts into a phrase, “Children don’t forget, children don’t forget.” At another moment, the light reminds her of the happiness she has known.

9. Mr. Ramsay notices his wife’s preoccupations and is disturbed by her sadness.

10. Mrs. Ramsay senses her husband’s protectiveness as he has glanced at her, marveling at her beauty. She takes her shawl and joins him.

Chapters 14-16

1. Why didn’t Nancy want to go on the walk?

2. What is Andrew interested in on the walk?

3. What is Paul’s purpose in this excursion?

4. What personality characteristics does Minta exhibit?

5. What does Minta lose on the beach?

6. What does Paul promise to do?

7. Rose and Jasper help Mrs. Ramsay to choose what?

8. Why does Mrs. Ramsay allow Rose to select her jewels?

9. What creatures does Mrs. Ramsay talk to?

10. In what way does Mrs. Ramsay walk down the stairs?

Answers
1. Nancy finds Minta too demanding. Nancy prefers to be alone.

2. He is interested in collecting marine specimens.

3. Paul wants to ask Minta to marry him.

4. Minta is emotional, somewhat rash, and a bit pushy.

5. Minta loses her grandmother’s brooch.

6. Paul promises to return at daybreak to find the brooch.

7. They help her choose a necklace.

8. Mrs. Ramsay knows this ritual is important to her. She is in a stage of “mother worship.”

9. Mrs. Ramsay talks to the rooks who settle on the trees outside the window.

10. Mrs. Ramsay walks down the stairs like a queen who silently accepts her subjects’ adoration.

Chapter 17

1. What does Mrs. Ramsay feel at the beginning of the dinner?

2. What does Lily observe about Mrs. Ramsay?

3. What are the thoughts of Tansley? of Bankes?

4. What are Lily’s thoughts about the relationships of men and women?

5. What is discussed at dinner?

6. What are Mrs. Ramsay’s thoughts about her husband’s silence?

7. What happens when the candles are lit?

8. What has happened to Paul and Minta during the afternoon?

9. What are Lily’s thoughts?

10. What is Mrs. Ramsay’s feeling about the evening?

Answers
1. Mrs. Ramsay feels exhausted and discouraged. She wonders what she’s done with her life and doesn’t feel any emotion for her husband.

2. Lily observes that Mrs. Ramsay looks tired. She senses that she pities Mr. Bankes.

3. Tansley can’t stand the superficiality of the conversation; he thinks that women make civilization impossible. Bankes is bored and uncomfortable with all the talking.

4. Lily feels that relationships between men and women are basically insincere.

5. Talk at the dinner table is of politics and the declining fishing industry.

6. Mrs. Ramsay wishes her husband would talk, because she feels his words are sincere and pointed.

7. When the candles are lit, the faces around the table seem closer together. The dark night is shut out and the group becomes conscious of their relationship together.

8. Paul and Minta have become engaged.

9. Lily is disturbed by Mrs. Ramsay’s power over the group. In contrast to her exuberance, Lily feels a poverty of spirit. Her emotions become feverish as she recognizes the conflict between her own wants and what the Ramsays seem to require.

10. Mrs. Ramsay feels optimistic and joyful, watching her guests eat. She feels that this moment of peace allows that which endures.

Chapters 18 and 19

1. What is on Mrs. Ramsay’s mind as she ascends the stairs?

2. Why are the children still awake at 11 p.m.?

3. How does Mrs. Ramsay comfort Cam? James?

4. How does Mrs. Ramsay feel about her guests going to the beach at night?

5. What is Mr. Ramsay doing in the drawing room?

6. What occupies Mrs. Ramsay’s mind, as she sits near her husband?

7. What is Mr. Ramsay’s conclusion about Sir Walter Scott’s novel?

8. What does Mrs. Ramsay read?

9. What impact does Mrs. Ramsay’s reading have on her?

10. What enables Mr. and Mrs. Ramsay to feel re-united at the end of this section?

Answers
1. Mrs. Ramsay is trying to identify something meaningful out of the events of the day.

2. James and Cam are still awake because they are fighting about the boar’s head skull on the wall. Cam is afraid of the shadows it makes on the wall; James refuses to have it removed.

3. Mrs. Ramsay places her shawl on the skull so that James’ need is met: it is not removed. She makes up a fanciful story, filled with birds and trees and fairies, so that Cam sees the shape, not as menacing, but as beautiful.

4. Mrs. Ramsay is almost girlish in her enthusiasm. She becomes very animated as she encourages them to embark on this marvelous adventure.

5. Mr. Ramsay is deeply engrossed in reading one of Sir Walter Scott’s novels.

6. Mrs. Ramsay feels distracted, trying to figure out what it is she wants.

7. Mr. Ramsay concludes that no matter what the current fashion is, Scott’s simplicity and passion and ability to move are unparalleled.

8. Mrs. Ramsay picks up a poetry book to read.

9. After reading randomly a number of verses, a sonnet strikes her as conveying the essence of life. She feels satisfied and rested.

10. The fact that each has untangled some of his/her own thoughts and are able to appreciate their life, enables them to turn, once again, to each other.

The prelude William wordsworth critical appreciation

The Prelude
William Wordsworth
🌻🌹☺️👉🌲🍁👇
Critical Appreciation

Introduction:

"The Prelude is the greatest long poem in our language after Paradise Lost," says one critic. Its comparison with the great seventeenth-century epic is in some respects a happy one since Milton was (after Coleridge) Wordsworth's greatest idol.

The Prelude may be classed somewhat loosely as an epic; it does not satisfy all the traditional qualifications of that genre. The epic is customarily defined as a long narrative poem which recounts heroic actions, commonly legendary or historical, and usually of one principal hero (from whence it derives its unity). The Prelude takes its unity from the fact that the central "hero" is its author.

Form:

The poem is written in blank verse, unrhymed lines of iambic pentameter with certain permissible substitutions of trochees and anapests to relieve the monotony of the iambic foot and with total disregard for the stanza form. In the middle of the eighteenth century, there was an eclipse of interest in the rhymed heroic couplet. A revival of interest in Milton led to the establishment of Miltonic blank verse as the standard medium for lengthy philosophical or didactic poetical works. The resulting form came to be called the "literary" epic as opposed to heroic and folk epics. To this type, Wordsworth, with his unconventional ideas of diction, brought a natural and conversational tone.

Critical Appreciation

The general procedure in The Prelude is to record an experience from the poet's past and then to examine its philosophical and psychological significance and relate it to nature and society at large. Unfortunately, this results in a certain definite unevenness in the development of the narrative. At times, particularly in the latter half of the work, the narrative dries up altogether, and the reader must pick his way through a welter of disconnected disquisitions. Frequently verbose, diffuse, and bathetic, the verse is carried by those rare moments when it flashes fire or reaches a resounding note of rich poetic song. The unwavering strength and unity of purpose which underlie it also help it to soar. Only a mere fraction of the whole poem may be said to be great, but it is this fraction that has continued to secure it a place high in English literature.

Another drawback of the verse is its blatant repetition. Wordsworth will describe an intellectual experience again and again with only minor variations. Much of this repetition may be due to the poet's episodic efforts to show his shifting point of view in connection with certain basic ideas.

Most of the imagery, as well as the diction, reflects the natural environment, especially the English countryside, and manages to capture much of the wildness and beauty of that terrain. The influence of the English character may be traced in many of the ideas behind the poem. Just as Wordsworth never got far or was long from his native regions physically, so they continued to color his emotional reactions throughout his life. It is doubtful that he would have created an inimitable philosophy of nature had he been reared in London's slums. In his lifetime, his mental outlook swung from youthful radicalism to ultraconservatism. Politically, the fierce independence of character the poet admired in the yeoman of the North Country came to be symbolized by the French patriot; later he felt that conservative British institutions were the bulwark of true freedom. Artistically and religiously, he found youthful inspiration in the hills and vales of the Lake District; he responded to them with his simple ballads and a joyous mysticism. In maturity, it was the high Anglican Church tradition to which he turned, for a personal faith and as a source for many of his later poetical ideas. Of course, we do not witness the entire spectrum in The Prelude. That poem is basically democratic in spirit. Only at the very end do we feel the impending onset of conservatism.

The work seems deceptively free of learned allusions, but the reader is sure to find many obscure classical references. In addition, there are quite a few local place names which are difficult to trace. The poem employs symbols in a somewhat unsophisticated way so that language and feeling tend to be indistinguishable. When Wordsworth puts aside his tendency to pamphleteer, mood and form tend to merge in highest harmony; the words perfectly evoke feeling. In the best instances, there is such mastery of the medium that the true goal of poetry is achieved: There is so perfect a communication of experience that the language as a vehicle is forgotten. From this harmony, a great poetic power emerges; with the very simplest of words and images, Wordsworth creates the impression of terrible intensity.

For many readers, the aesthetic problem may be solved by adopting the fragmentary approach of picking favorite passages singular for their strength or beauty. But the reputation of The Prelude does not stand or fall as measured against the canon of uninterrupted beauty alone. Fortunately, it is the thematic framework behind the poem that holds the greatest lasting reward for the reader. The outstanding virtue of The Prelude is its imaginative interpretation of nature. For Wordsworth, nature forms a cosmic order of which the material world is one manifestation and the moral world is another. Usually, in such a view, either mind or matter must have the upper hand. From the fanciful, mechanistic interpretation of nature in his youth, he moved in maturity to a vitalist view in which mind transcended the physical world and in which a universal spirit provided the ultimate motivation for all things, as exemplified in universal, natural law. This is as close as he comes to building a philosophical system. And it is just this long and painful transition that is related in The Prelude. What Wordsworth offers is not a great philosophical system. He presents an emancipatory attitude toward life and toward art. He forever examines experience. Nothing in the world is so trivial or commonplace that it cannot be a stimulus for the mind. No thought, no matter how pedestrian or contemptuous it may at first seem, is to be excluded from the realm of poetry.

Arms and The Man G.B Shaw short questions

Arms and The Man
G.B Shaw
Short Questions
3rd Term MA English
University of Sargodha

(i) Name three other plays written by Shaw.
Ans. The famous plays of Bernard Shaw include; Arms and the Man, Candida, The Devil's Disciple, Caesar and Cleopatra, Man and Superman.
(ii) What is the source of the title 'Arms and the Man'?
Ans. The title of the play, "Arms and the Man", has been taken from Dryden's translation of the opening lines of "Aenied" by Roman poet, Virgil. The opening lines of Dryden's translation run as follows: "Arms and the Man I sing, who forced by fate, / And haughty Juno's unrelenting hate".
(iii) What is the historical background of the play 'Arms and the Man'?
Ans. Victorian rule (1837 - 1901), Victorian literature and Serbo-Bulgarian War (14 November 1885 - 28 November 1885) is the historical background of the play "Arms and the Man".
(iv) What are the major themes of 'Arms and the Man'?
Ans. Love, war, imcompetent authority, ingorance vs. knowledge, class, bravery and personal honesty are the major themes of "Arms and the Man".
(v) What is the major conflict in 'Arms and the Man'?
Ans. There are two distinct conflicts in the play. The first conflict is the view of war as romantic and idealistic and the true realities of war as illustrated by the character of Bluntschli. The second conflict would be the view of love and marriage as illustrated through the character of Louka.
(vi) In which two countries the war was going in 'Arms and the Man'?
Ans. The war was going on between Serbia and Bulgaria. The Serbo-Bulgarian War erupted on 14 November 1885 and lasted until 28 November 1885. Final peace was signed on 3 March 1886 in Bucharest.
(vii) What is pragmatism?
Ans. Pragmatism is a philosophical tradition that began in the United States around 1870. Pragmatism is a rejection of the idea that the function of thought is to describe, represent, or mirror reality. Instead, pragmatists consider thought an instrument or tool for prediction, problem solving and action.
(viii) How does Bernard Shaw view romanticism?
Ans. Shaw has a low opinion of romanticism. Romanticism in "Arms and the Man" serves as the play's theoretical villain. It is always a reflection of ignorance; once a character gains knowledge, they abandon their poetic ideas as Sergius and Raina do.
(ix) What is meant by the subtitle 'An Anti-Romantic Comedy'?
Ans.Arms and the Man, subtitle "An Anti-Romantic Comedy" means that the dramatist purpose is to satirize the romantic conception of life. Shaw has no faith in emotions and sentiments. Throughout the drama he denounces the idealism and insists on realism. He does it through humour of character and homour of situation at the same time.
(x) What is Byronism?
Ans. Byronism refers to an attitude which possesses the characteristics of English poet Byron or his poetry, especially romanticism, melancholy, and melodramatic energy. Byronism is seen in the character of Major Saranoff, who is a shining example of Raina and her mother's romanticized image of a hero. Sergius is also a Byronic hero because he has an underlying despair about life.
(xi) There are many types of war and many types of love in 'Arms and the Man'.
Ans. There are two wars; Serbo-Bulgarian War and Russain-Austrian War. There are two types of war; romanticized war and realistic war. Three love affairs; Raina-Sergius, Raina-Bluntschli, and Louka-Sergius can be grouped into two categories - romantic love and realistic love.
(xii) What characteristics make a person a good soldier?
Ans. Captain Bluntschli represents Shaw's ideal soldier. He harbors no romantic ideals; he views was as business to be efficiently dispatched. If Bluntschli demonstrates what a soldier should be, Sergius and Major Petkoff demonstrate what he should not be. Sergius is filled with poetic ideas about bravery and honour, and Major Petkoff is the picture of incompetence.
(xiii) Which character best serves as Shaw's spokesman?
Ans. Captain Bluntschli serves best as Shaw's spokesman. He is a thirty four year old realist who sees through the absurd romanticism of war. He is the representative of average humanity; he is what Shaw would like Man to be.
(xiv) Which characters have illusions about themselves and the world they live in?
Ans. Raina, Catherine and Sergius have illusions about themselves and the world they live in. Raina reads romantic novels and imagines herself a heroine. Raina's mother, Catherine, shares many of her daughter's allusions about love and warfare. Sergius believes in the romantic ideals championed by poetry and opera.
(xv) Who holds the most power in Petkoff's household?
Ans. Catherine, Raina's mother and Petkoff's wife, holds the most power in Petkoff's household. She runs her house energetically and ably, with a strong ruling will and definite ideas about upholding her position as an aristocrat.

Arms And The Man

Arms And The Man
Short Questions
3rd Term MA English
University of Sargodha

What does Shaw satirically criticize of the Victorians?
The Victorians' romantic NOTIONS about LOVE & WAR.

Who is a utilitarian hero?
Bluntschli

Who is a mechanistic idealist?
Sergius Saranoff.

When was the premiere of Arms and the Man?
1894

Main Characters
Raina, Bluntschli, Sergius, Mrs. Petkoff, Major Petkoff, Louka, Nicola

Describe the setting where the play begins?
Serbo-Bulgaria War, in a nice home/mansion type of thing,

What news does Catherine give Raina at the beginning of the play
The bulgarians just won a battle (they are bulgarian)

Who is Sergius
Raina's betrothed

What happens that night? After the serbs are fleeing?
A soldier climbs up into the window of raina's room

What nationality is the man?
Swiss

Why is Raina shocked by his attitude?
He does not pretend that war is grand, he is happy to be alive and lacks decorum

Why does Raina do when her mother, louka, and a captain search her room?
She hides the soldier behind the curtain and convinces them that no one is there

What does she feed the soldier?
Chocolates

Does Raina allow him to stay at the house?
Yes, she allows him to sleep there for the night while she gets her mother to help her

Who is Louka engaged to?
Nicola

What does Louka say about Nicola?
That he will always remain a servant because he has a servants attitude

Who returns from war in act 2?
Major Petkoff and Sergius

What story does major petkoff and sergius tell?
The story of two bulgarian women taking in a soldier and feeding him chocolates

Who does Sergius flirt with?
Louka

Who arrives unexpectedly in act 2?
Bluntschli

What has Bluntschli come to return?
The coat they let him borrow

What does Raina call him that is a slight give away
Chocolate cream soldier

Who reveals the secret of Raina being in love with Bluntschli?
Louka

What does Major Petkoff find in his coat pocket?
Raina's photo, "to my chocolate cream soldier"

What happens when Raina admits her love for Bluntschli?
Bluntschli admits his love for her, Sergius admits he is having an affair with Louka, Nicola breaks up with Louka

Bluntschli's father just died, what does that mean for him?
It means he is very, very rich and has a lot of horse.

Who is standing on the balcony at the play's opening?
Raina.

What country does the play take place in?
Bulgaria.

In the first act who enters the room to deliver news to Raina?
Catherine.

Who is Sergius?
He is Raina's fiance.

What supposedly heroic thing has Sergius done?
Lead a cavalry charge.

Who expresses dismay about the cruelty of war?
Raina.

In Act I, what does Louka tell Raina and Catherine should be done?
Fasten The Windows.

What does Bluntschli use as a weapon against Raina?
A Cloack

Where does Bluntschli hide?
Behind the Curtain

What nationality is Blunschli?
Swiss

Whose picture does Raina keep in her room at the start of the play?
Sergius’s

Catherine has what installed in the Petkoff house?
An electric bell for the servants

Why has Sergius resigned his army commission?
He’s angry he’ll never be promoted.

What is the physical evidence that Raina has feelings for Bluntschli?
A picture of herself on which Raina has written a note.

PHILIP LARKIN AS A MODERN POET

PHILIP LARKIN AS A MODERN POET

Introduction of ‘Modernism’

According to an author, KIRSCHEN who defines the term of 'Modernism' in these words:
"Modernism is notoriously difficult to define clearly because the term encompasses a variety of specific artistic and philosophical movements including symbolism, futurism, surrealism, expressionism, imagism, vorticism, dada, and others. To further complicate matters, many Modernists (including some of the most successful and most famous), are not affiliated with any of these groups."
However, there are some basic tenets of the Modernist period that apply, in one way or another, to all these movements and those writers and artists not associated with them:
“Modernist literature is characterized chiefly by a rejection of 19th-century traditions and of their consensus between author and reader” (Baldick 159 ).”
Specifically, Modernists deliberately tried to break away from the conventions of the Victorian era . This separation from 19th century literary and artistic principles is a major part of a broader goal. Modernists wished to distinguish themselves from virtually the entire history of art and literature. EZRA POUND captured the essence of Modernism with his famous dictum, “Make it new!” Many Modernist writers felt that every story that could possibly be told had, in one way or another, been told already. Therefore, in order to create something new, they often had to try using new forms of writing. The period thus produced many experimental and avant-garde styles. Perhaps best known for such experimentation are fiction writers JAMES JOYCE and VIRGINIA WOOLF, and poets T. S. ELIOT and EZRA POUND, just to name a few.
Conflicting Critical Views LARKIN’s Poetry
There are conflicting opinions about LARKIN as a poet. In fact, there is a wide diversity of critical opinion about his achievement as a poet. LARKIN has provoked criticism, some of it very harsh and severe. Some of the most renowned critics have found fault with his poetry; and some of the most renowned critics have defended him against that fault-finding. Among the severest critics of his poetry are ALFRED ALVAREZ and CHARLES TOMLINSON; and his defenders include DONALD DAVIE and ANDREW MOTION. LARKIN’s detractors have seen him as:
“The reluctant poet of the drab and austere surfaces of post-war Britain.”
While his defenders have pointed out the social realism of his poetry and its clear-sighted acceptance of the way things were.
The Political and Social Context of the Poems in Less Deceived
The title of this volume was adapted by LARKIN from a remark made by Ophelia in SHAKESPEARE’s play Hamlet: ‘I was the more deceived’. LARKIN wished to convey through this title his intention not to be ‘more deceived’ by the realities of life but to be ‘less deceived’ by them. In other words, he wished to covey through this title his view that poetry was a realistic interpretation of life, and that his own poetry would represent what he called his ‘sad-eyed’ realism. The feeling, that Britain had lost most of its glory and power, shows itself in the wistful melancholy and elegiac lyricism of the poems of LARKIN in the volume entitled ‘The Less Deceived’; and this feeling helps us to understand LARKIN’s ‘sad-eyed realism’.He wants to give interpretation of life through his poetry.
The Themes in LARKIN’s Poetry, and His Treatment of Them
Being a modern poet LARKIN has taken up the themes of religion, melancholy, pessimism, realism, isolation, love, nature, social chaos, alienation, boredom, death, time and sex in his poetry. This approach is quite clear from his treatment of the questions of belief knowledge and perceptions. All these things were necessary because of the conditions of Post War England and also his treatment of these themes is very unique, realistic and convincing. A critic writes:
“His themes, love, change, disenchantment, the mystery and inexplicableness of the poet’s survival, and death’s finality are unshakably major.”
This critic also finds such other themes in LARKIN’s poetry as failure, the fragility of human choices (between bachelorhood and marriage, for example), the importance of vocation in life, the horrifying reality of death, the struggles of the common people, and the universality of human misery and sadness. According to this critic:
“LARKIN is not only an analyst of the human mind but also a romantic deeply concerned with the spiritual health of human beings.”
Pessimistic Note in the LARKIN's Poetry
ANDREW MOTION says that:
"LARKIN has often been regarded as a hopeless, inflexible pessimist"
Many of the poems express the pessimistic outlook of LARKIN on religion, society and present government. One such poem is Church Going, in which LARKIN expresses his dark view about church and religion. This poem depicts the decline of religious faith and a decrease in the number of people attending church services. Entering a church, LARKIN looks around himself and describes everything that meets his eyes, the small neat organ, the fading flowers which had been placed there on Sunday last, the Bibles, and so on. He wonders what would happen to the churches when people have lost their faith completely. He speculates upon the future of these churches some of which might become museums with their display. He says:
“A few cathedrals chronically on show, / Their parchment, plate, and pyx in locked cases, / And let the rest rent-free to rain and sheep.”
Obscenity and Conversation in the Poems of LARKIN
After reading the poems of LARKIN, a reader becomes quite convinced that England is losing its old moral values and rich cultural heritage.  STEVE CLARK remarked about his poem of "High Windows" that this poem "starts out looking like a poem about sex, and becomes a poem about religion". This obvious relationship between the institution of the church and individual behaviour emphasizes the socially constructed nature of sexuality up to a certain degree.  He talks about people doing it, his lack of it, and his desperate desire for some of it. LARKIN obviously isn’t getting any sexual fulfillment from anyone and he is unafraid to show that. BRUCE MEYER, a poetry critic, said of LARKIN’s book High Windows,
“LARKIN’s poetry shows his pathetic and unattainable desires for love, passion, and human contact.”
"High Windows" expresses the poet's outspoken discontent with the sexual revolution of the sixties. After the Family Planning Act of 1965, which had introduced the free distribution of contraceptives and which LARKIN refers to in the first stanza of “High Windows”:
“When I see a couple of kids / And guess he’s fucking her… Everyone old has dreamed of all their lives- Bonds and gestures pushed to one side.”
The Stylistic Qualities and Poetic Techniques of LARKIN’s Work
A number of critics have discussed LARKIN’s poetic style and his poetic techniques. LARKIN’s technical achievements in many of his poems, including the imagery in them and their meter’, rhythm, and syntax have been commented upon in great detail. For instance, one of the critics has pointed to the syntactic inversion of the closing line of the poem At Grass, to the half-rhymes of ‘home’ and ‘come’, and to the subtle inner para-rhyme of ‘groom’ in the final stanza. The effect of this, he says, is to feel the voice hush and the imagery become subdued. The inverted syntax, he further says, is part of the subdued and delaying echo of the verse. This critic comments thus on the third stanza of the same poem, namely At Grass:
“The lines describe the scene, but the change in meter makes us hear and see it. Where the other stanzas are written in iambic pentameters, reversals of feet in the third stanza turn the first halves of these three lines into rocking choriambs, enacting the horses’ gallop”.
Actually, however, this poem is written not in iambic pentameter but in iambic tetrameter. Another critic says that the grammatical features of the poem Mr. Bleaney, particularly its use of person, tense, and syntax, should be clearly understood if we are to appreciate fully how this poem functions. This poem describes two scenes: the speaker’s conversation with the landlady, and the speaker’s private reflections on his own existence. But, in the transition, there seems to be a fusion of person and tense; the first-person of the speaker merges with the third-person past of Mr. Bleaney.
The Metaphoric and Metonymic Modes
Another critic, expresses the view that the dynamic relationship between metaphoric and metonymic principles often leads to a symbolic mode which reveals itself in the hidden structures of many of LARKIN’s poems. A typical example, says this critic, is the seemingly metonymical description of the’ horses in the poem At Grass. Here, the realistic description in each stanza is structured according to a pattern of standstill, incipient movement, developing to a climax, subsequent rest, and final standstill. When taken on its own, this motif is metaphoric; it functions as a vehicle of time’s progress in human life. Like At Grass, most of LARKIN’s symbolic poems remain realistic. This critic then goes on to analyze LARKIN’s poem entitled Here to demonstrate how the metonymic mode becomes symbolic. This critic’s recognition of LARKIN’s symbolic mode of writing derives largely from the view of many critics that LARKIN has been writing partly within a tradition of symbolist poetry going back to the work of W.B. Yeats and nineteenth-century French writers.

LARKIN’s Attitude to Modernism and Symbolism

From the very beginning, LARKIN had been expressing a certain degree of hostility to the ideas and techniques of modernism. He expressed a deep dislike for the work of three modernists, the musician PARKER, the poet EZRA POUND, and THE PAINTER PICASSO. He regarded modernist experiments in the fields of music, poetry, and painting as irresponsible exploitations of technique in opposition to human life as we know it. However, in the nineteen-eighties, some critics began to perceive a distinct symbolist mode of writing in LARKIN’s poetry and, therefore, a fairly strong inclination towards modernism (because the symbolist technique is one of the most conspicuous modernist techniques). This new critical attitude towards LARKIN’s poetry showed a recognition of the strongly affirmative and transcendent element in his poetry. What brought about this change in the attitude of the critics towards LARKIN’s poetry was the publication in 1974 of LARKIN’s last volume of poems entitled ‘High Windows’. The poems in this volume were characterized by unusual experiments with form and by a frequent obscurity and allusiveness. According to one critic:
“The total impression which this volume of poems produced was one of despair made beautiful, real despair and real beauty, with not a trace of posturing in either.”
SEAMUS HEANEY’s View of LARKIN’s Symbolist Potential
LARKIN’s symbolist potential received an impressive recognition from Seamus Heaney (who was appointed the poet-laureate of England in 1995). Heaney acknowledged LARKIN’s detailed social observation, but he also noted a simultaneous yearning for transcendence and revelation in LARKIN’s poetry. Heaney twice used the word “symbolist” to describe the linguistic structures of the poems in the volume entitled “High Windows”. He noted the unusual diction of the poem Sad Steps and praised the poem Solar as a hymn to the sun. In Solar, he said, LARKIN was very far from the hatless man who took off his cycle-clips “in awkward reverence” (in the poem Church Going). At the same time Heaney emphasized the peculiar Englishness of LARKIN’s poetry. Another critic also pointed out that the poem High Windows was characterized by some of the ideas and techniques of French symbolist poetry. The eminent critic and biographer Andrew Motion explored in detail the symbolist dimensions of LARKIN’s poetry. He too agreed that LARKIN had surely responded to the example of French symbolist poets at an early stage in his poetic career. However, Andrew Motion emphatically expressed the view that subsequently LARKIN wrote his poems under the persistent and combined influence of THOMAS HARDY and W.B. YEATS. According to this critic, LARKIN’s best and most characteristic work represents a dialectic between the empirical mode of Hardy and the symbolist mode of YEATS, or between the language of sadness and isolation repeatedly competing with the language of aspiration and transcendence. In ANDREW MOTION’s opinion:
“This dialectic is an expression of LARKIN’s divided response to the world. In other words, LARKIN’s poetry is a continual debate between hopeful romantic yearning and disillusioned pragmatism.”
This critic also expresses the view that the volume of poems entitled ‘The Whitsun Weddings’ is a book which conforms most exactly to the attitudes and styles of the Movement group of poets and, therefore, the least symbolist in technique though he finds evidence of the symbolist method in the closing lines of the title poem in this volume and also in the closing lines of the poem Water.
LARKIN as a Writer of Dramatic Monologues
As one of the other critics says, LARKIN’s poems often take the form of dramatic monologues which seem intended to reveal LARKIN’s own thoughts and feelings because he is speaking out of his own strong convictions. In other words, the speakers in these poems are LARKIN himself. Although this emphasis on his own thoughts and feelings may seem to be egoistical, it is this which gives strength to LARKIN’s poems; and, as he himself has said, it reflects the example of his literary mentor, THOMAS HARDY. Yet his own experience and his own way of commenting on that experience are markedly different from HARDY’s.
For example in Church Going LARKIN directly names himself as the speaker of the monologue in the very first two lines of the poem:
His Obsession With Death
Every critic has noted LARKIN’s obsession with death. According to one of the critics, LARKIN emphasizes the omnipresence of death, as, for example, in the poem 'Ambulances'. The poem ‘Aubade’ represents the climax of LARKIN’s preoccupation with death. The recurrence of this motif in his poems inevitably imparts a pessimistic quality to them. One critic says that LARKIN has often been classified as a hopeless and inflexible pessimist. Another critic, ERIC HOMBERGER, in 'The Art of the Real ' describes him as:
"The saddest heart in the post war supermarket".
The sight of the graves makes a man wiser therefore every grave reminds the thoughts of death. It is ‘Ambulances’, however, that provides us with the bluntest depiction of human mortality, with its vivid descriptions of illness and death.  As above poem exposes:
“The solving emptiness / That lies just under all we do.”
Some Special Features of the Poetry of LARKIN
LARKIN belongs to a group of poets who started a poetic movement in England in the fifties of the 20th century. These poets were KINGSLEY AMIS, JOHN WAIN, ELIZEBETH JENNINGS, THORN GUNN, DONALD DAVIE, and D.J. ENRIGHT. Soon afterwards an anthology called “New Lines” by ROBERT CONQUEST, containing the work of these poets, appeared; and in it a number of poems by LARKIN were also included. LARKIN wrote some the poems which have the special features of the Movement. Among these poems are are two special poems Church Going and the Whitsun. All the characteristics of the movement are reflected is in these two poems.
His Agnosticism In Church Going
Church Going deals with contemporary agnosticism. The narrator in this poem is very skeptical about churches. LARKIN's dilemma is not whether to believe in God or not, but what a man can replace with God. Though the 'Church' is the symbol of faith, peace and purity yet in the modern age people have lost faith in Church. He says:
"Who will be the last, the very / Last to seek this place for what It was."
And further he says that:
"Shall we avoid them as unlucky places? "
In the end, one can say that LARKIN belongs to a group of poets who started a poetic movement in England in the fifties of the 20th century, therefore he has set up his reputation as a great poet in modern England yet he is against the techniques of modern poetry and he strongly rejects it. He is a writer of dramatic monologues and uses symbolist element in his poetry. His poems are realistic, objective and conform to the spirit of modern age as political and social context of the poems in Less Deceived.