Write a critical note on Chancer's art of portraiture in The General Prologue.

The Genral prologue is one of a kind because of its variety of characters. Chaucer has varied the
heads and forms of his personages into all nature’s variety. He has taken into his compass the
various manners and humours of the whole English nation of his time. The thirty or so pilgrims are in
fact a fair sample of society in general with the exception of the nobility that wouldn’t join package
tour and the poorest labourers who could not afford to go. It is a picture gallery depicting the
contemporary society of England (14th Century)in all its variety and colour.

The military or fighting class is represented by the Knight, his son and their Yeoman; a Doctor, a
Lawyer, a Clerk or Student of Oxford and the poet himself represent the liberal professions. Those
connected with the land are a Franklin, a Reeve and a Ploughman; the trade is represented by a
Merchant, a Shipman, a Haberdasher, and the Host of the Tabard. The crafts are represented by the
Wife of Bath, a Carpenter, a Weaver, a Dyer and a Tapicer or Tapestry-maker. A manciple and a Cook
complete the secular group. The Religious Order, the most numerous of all, includes the poor
Parson, a Monk, a Friar, a Prioress with her chaplain nun and three priests, a Summoner and a
Pardoner.

There is such a variety of characters that even the famous John Dryden thinks of it as “Here is God’s
plenty” and Blake commented that Chaucer’s pilgrims are the characters which compose all ages and
nations.

Another astonishing factor about these varied characters is that Chaucer takes personal interest in
carefully curating each of them. He piles up the details in a casual, haphazard, table-talk fashion and
yet with such touches of ironic humour as to make the resultant portrait not only strongly individual
but highly amusing. He first sketches the outline of a character by broadly describing the
characteristic or typical features of his profession.

Then he fills their character up with minute details, physical or moral, that make it palpitate with life.
And all this is done with the careless air of a master artist just like a professional painter. Everything
from differences in their clothes, manner of speech to habits and tendencies
representing the common traits and the average characteristics of each
profession are paid attention to. This makes each character appear perfectly lifelike.
Some of them are so modern that they seem to be living today.

Even his carelessness is studied and deliberate and is designed to give the impression of naturalness
and spontaneity. This naivete indeed is the most charming quality of Chaucer’s. Here is an example
To support this argument: In the midst of a most finely wrought description of the Prioress so
simple, shy, prim Chaucer innocently and casually observes how elaborately careful she was in her
table manners. We have thus an amusing picture of a nun aping a society girl.

Chaucer is gifted with a supreme power of observation. He paints his characters from direct
observation as a painter paints certain natural scenes from direct observation. He has drawn many
characters from real life and from his own acquaintances. Such characters are the wife of Bath and
the clerk of Oxford.
Conclusion : The Prologue is a masterpiece of characterization. Nothing like it existed in medieval
literature, nor has it been equaled, much less surpassed, to this day. Each pilgrim is at once an
individual and a type of the class or calling to which he belongs. The technique which Chaucer has
employed to achieve this is simply admirable. It feels as if In the Prologue to the Canterbury Tales
Chaucer's England comes to life.

Q. 2. Herbert as a religious poet.

George Herbert was raised an Anglican. Him along with his famous
contemporary, John Donne followed the Anglican tradition; in fact, both were
ordained preachers in the church. Among the denominations of
Christianity, the Anglican faith reigned supreme in that era, and
there appears to be an influence of Herbert’s Anglican faith moulding
and shaping his poetry.
The man himself described his poetry as "a picture of the many spiritual conflicts that have
passed between God and my soul, before I could subject mine to the will of Jesus, my
Master, in whose service I have now found perfect freedom."

After diverging away from a political path to peruse priesthood, his

loyalty to his faith got emboldened furthermore. He yearns to be a
fiery martyr, burning with love of God, not women. Actually, he
was not alone in wanting so was not alone in wanting to redirect
poetry from Venus to God: Sir Philip Sidney, Robert Southwell, and
Donne, among others, urged the same thing, and even King James
helped encourage this kind of revolution by writing and publishing
his own religious poems.
Herbert believed poetry was in some ways a type of preaching: "A verse may find him who a
sermon flies." For the same reason, he was also fond of proverbs, and many of those he
used in his sermons survive today: "Whose house is of glass must not throw stones at
another." "The eye is bigger than the belly." "His bark is worse than his bite." "Half the
world knows not how the other half lives."

It becomes evident that the language in Herbert’s work is religious

when in almost every poem one is faced with words such as Lord,
God, the Ark, Moses, Christ, Church and so forth, or at times
reminded of the bible with all the allusions his poems offer. The
verses of his poem ‘THE TEMPLE’ are coated with poetic praises and
surrounded by biblical allusions, morals and confessions.

It becomes nearly impossible to ignore the message Herbert is

sending and what he finds most dear to himself: his faith.
What Herbert’s poetry has done is continue to build upon an already
existing centre, and that centre is Christianity, Anglicanism in
particular. What his religion states as true and considers as facts are
also what Herbert agrees upon. As an example, the theory behind
creation in Christianity declares that only one Christian God is the
divine creator of all beings: “Gods breath in man returning to his
birth”. It also states that: “God created man in his own image” (Gen.
1:27); and such a principle is also present in Herbert’s work.
. In every corner come his revelations, from the title of his book to
the title of the poems. In his tone and language of use, Herbert sets
the scene, signalling every reader of the religious praise and
contemplation that are to follow.
Apart from using only catholic words, Herbert can be seen projecting
his message or meaning through signs. For example, in his famous
piece of poetry, “Easter Wings” the poet has very visibly has formed
his poetry into wings most likely that of an angle; and the lines that
increase and decrease imitate flight and also the “spiritual
experience of falling and rising”
Lord, who createdst man in wealth and store,
Though foolishly he lost the same,
Decaying more and more,
Till he became
Most poor
With thee
O let me rise
As larks, harmoniously,
And sing this day thy victories:
Then shall the fall further the flight in me.
My tender age in sorrow did begin:
And still with sicknesses and shame.
Thou didst so punish sin,
That I became
Most thin.
With thee
Let me combine,
And feel thy victory,
For,if I imp my wing on thine,
Affliction shall advance the flight in me.

However, Herbert’s work cannot be tied just to the genre of religious

/ metaphysical works because as an Anglican priest, Herbert chooses
to espouse his denomination into his work. In other words, his
discourse adopts the dominant discourse of Anglicanism and with
such a discourse and poetic promotion positioned within the
Jacobean era, a period entangled in sensitive religious tension, The
Temple is just as political as it is religious, favouring Anglicanism over
the other denominations of Christianity.
Infact, while the discourse of his work is religious in nature but due+
to religions delicate role in the Jacobean era, his work could also be
considered as a piece of literature that could be either favoured by
the court and the church or just the opposite.

4. Comment on the opposition of art and life and youth and

old age in 'Sailing to Byzantium'.
Byzantium, now called Constantinople or Istambul, was the capital of Eastern wing of the
Holy Roman Empire. It was noted for is art, specially mosaic work, and gold Enam welling.
A. Norman Jeffares (1984) says, “Byzantium is a holy city, as the capital of eastern
Christianity, and as the place where God exists because of the life after death Yeats
imagines existing there,” Once in Byzantium, the speaker wishes to be immortalised by
absorbing his soul into the permanent ‘golden mosaic of the wall’ It is a symbol, “of the
world of intellect and the spirit.”

and by using the present participle ‘sailing’ in the title, Yeats lays more emphasis on the
active nature of the participle, focussing more on the journey than the final destination.
In the poet's opinion Byzantine art and architecture represented a blend of "religious, aesthetic and
practical life." The idea, artistic beauty is eternal reflects Keats' words "Beauty is truth, truth beauty"

In the line ‘That is no country for old men.’ ‘Old men’ points out mortality,
exhaustion, and death. The bleak description of ageing is continued in the second stanza
when the speaker describes the pathetic physicality of ‘an aged man’(l.9), using this generic
term to show that with old age comes a loss of identity. Ironically, the poem is written in
‘ottava rima,’ an epic poetry form that traces the success of heroes to illuminate the
devastating effects of mortality on ‘the aged man.’
He is described as ‘a tattered coat upon a stick’ (l.10), analogous to a scarecrow, showing
how he is identified with his declining physical state rather than the wisdom of old age.
However, the speaker can regain an identity by being able to ‘come to the holy city of
Byzantium’
To him spiritual life is true life and the world of art contrasts the mundane world. The spirit is
immortal and art too is regarded by Yeats as timeless and eternal.

, ‘O sages standing in God’s holy fire…Consume my heart away’ (ll.17-21), to connect the
catalyst for change with supernatural forces. He wishes that his heart be consumed away,
only to find that his heart is ‘fastened to a dying animal’ (l.22), the verb ‘fastened’
emphasising how the speaker is forced to be a being of nature even though he believes that
he is a being of art.
Although the speaker fantasises about immortalisation through art, his awareness of art’s
impermanence and the ‘artifice of eternity’ cannot be refuted. This indicates that although
art offers him consolidation, the speaker is aware of the incapability of immortalisation
through art.
In conclusion, immortality through the permanence of art is not an achievable concept. The
speaker discovers that immortality is an ‘artifice’, and ultimately, ageing and mortality are
inevitable. The speaker ends with an ambiguous tone philosophising over ‘what is pass, or
passing, or to come’(l.32), highlighting his recognition of the circle of life and the future.
Thus, the reader is left equally troubled, questioning whether the 3 speaker has recognised
that immortality is unachievable and yet, is hopeful about moralisation, or whether the
speaker is suffering from angst due to the inescapability of human life.

Q. 5. Comment on the themes of death and suicide in the

poetry of Sylvia Plath.

Poems : Daddy, the collosus, lady lazrun, prdah, ariel,

To understand the themes of suicide and death in Plath’s
poetry we need to be well aware of the fact the in her real
life too she suffered from psychological problems of depression and eventually
in her third suicide attempt she successfully took her life.
Death came to be a recurrent theme in the poetry of Sylvia Plath, and this theme has been
represented in different ways in her poems. She did engage the reader either in a personal or
an impersonal way to view death either as a liberating force or troubling depressing
experience.
Her negative attitude towards death is caused by the early death of her father that left her
dejected. It can be said that Death came to be an unavoidable inheritance. Traces of this can
be found in ‘Daddy’. The breakdown of her family placed Plath
under tremendous stress. After her husband, Ted Hughes,
left her to be with his lover, Assia Wevill, Plath was left on
her own to care for two small children. Because Hughes’s
departure fueled Plath’s depression, she began taking
medications to help her cope and function on a daily basis,
which her mother, Aurelia Schober Plath, blames for
encouraging rather than suppressing her suicidal thoughts,
especially since such medications contain side-effects that
increase suicidal thoughts (Yankowitz). Since Plath’s first
suicide attempt (via an overdose of sleeping pills) was
thwarted, it’s reasonable to assume that Plath might have
more readily entertained suicidal thoughts because she
thought someone would save her again

Her depiction of death is reflected by the use of such techniques as imagery, language,
structure, and tone.

Dated October 23-29, 1962, “Lady Lazarus” establishes a distinct obsession with “Recurring
suicidal thoughts or fantasies” by using a religious figure to represent rebirth as an extended
metaphor and also demonstrates a flippant treatment of her own suicidal tendencies
Her thirtieth birthday marks her third time to attempt death, and the speaker recounts her
previous two endeavours with relish:
The first time it happened I was ten.
It was an accident.

The second time I meant

to last it out and not come back at all. /
I rocked shut
As a seashell.
They had to call and call
And pick the worms off me like sticky pearls

Plath speaks of dying as an art form, with the survivor of suicide described as an exhibition
later in the poem.

It won’t be too extreme to say that death and suicide were not only the dominant themes
of Plath’s writings but of her life too and therefore so much of pain is visible her works.

Q. Weep no more, woeful shepherds, weep no more, For

Lycidas your sorrow is not dead, Sunk though he be beneath
the watery floor. So sinks the day-star in the ocean bed, And
yet anon repairs his drooping head, And tricks his beams and
with new spangled ore, Flames in the forehead of the
morning sky: So Lycidas sunk low, but mounted high,
Through the dear might of him that walk'd the waves.
b. Where was heard the mingled measure From the fountain
and the caves. It was a miracle of rare device, A sunny
pleasure-dome with caves of ice! - KUBLA KHAN

Meaning - The shadow of Kubla Khan’s dome shaped palace

seemed to float midway on the waves. The mingled (mixed )
voices of both fountain as well as the caves could be heard
from the palace of Kubla Khan. It seemed to be a miracle or a
rare thing that on one side, the rays of the sun were falling
on the dome shaped palace of Kubla Khan whereas on the
other side, there are caves of ice near that palace. This is a
difficult yet a unique picture to imagine and therefore ,
Coleridge has called it a rare device.

As Ted Hughes said of ‘Kubla Khan’ and the ‘Rime of the Ancient
Mariner’: “Poems of this kind can obviously never be explained. They
are total symbols of psychic life. But they can be interpreted – a total
symbol is above all a vessel for interpretations: the reader fills it and
drinks”.

the poem was composed by him one night after he

experienced an opium – influenced dream after reading a
work describing Xanadu , the summer palace of the Mongol
ruler and the Emperor of China , that is , Kubla Khan