House of Notes

"Who is this Pope that I hear so much about?" said George II; "I cannot discover what is his merit. Why will not my subjects write in prose? I hear a great deal, too, of Shakespeare, but I cannot read him, he is such a bombast fellow." Alexander Pope, an only child, was born in London, on May 21,1688, the year of the Glorious revolution . His father, a linen-draper, was forty-two, his mother forty-six. Both were Roman Catholics , and his father, Alexander Sr., retired from business after his son's birth, perhaps because a new act of Parliament prohibited Catholics from living within ten miles of London. Between 1696 and 1700 Pope was tutored at home by a priest, and then enrolled in two Catholic schools, but he was largely self-educated. His religion would have made it impossible, at the time, to pursue a career in law or medicine or the Clergy even had he wished to: as a Catholic he was not, for example, permitted to attend a un...

Grand Style of "Paradise Lost" Book-I Introduction "The name of Milton", says Raleigh, "is become the mark, not of a biography nor of a theme, but of a style - the most distinguished in our poetry." In all that he has written he has impressed his indomitable personality and irrepressible originality. John Milton is not only in every line of Paradise Lost but in every line of poetry that he has written. As Macaulay has said: "There is not a square inch of his poetry from first to last of which one could not confidently say." "This is Milton and no one else." His accent and speech alike in Ode to Nativity and in Paradise Lost are his own and in marked contrast to any other English poet. Essentials of Miltonic Style Since style is the expression of personality, we have to find the peculiar quality of Milton's style in his personality and character. In the first place, Milton's mind was "nourished upon...

John Milton’s Grand Style in “Paradise Lost” in Share “The name of Milton”, says Raleigh, “is turned into the imprint, not of a life story nor of a subject, however of a style – the most recognized in our verse.” In all that he has thought of he has inspired his unyielding identity and irrepressible innovation. John Milton is in every line of Paradise Lost as well as in every line of verse that he has composed. In his Oxford lecture  ‘On Translating Homer: Last Words’, Mathew Arnold utilized this now celebrated expression. ‘Such a style, he kept up, emerges when a respectable nature, poetically skilled, treats with effortlessness or with seriousness a genuine subject’. Arnold alludes to Homer, Pindar, Virgil, Dante , and Milton as types of grand style. It was an elevated or hoisted style suitable for epic, a style Arnold himself endeavored in, for example in ‘Sohrab and Rustum’. Now we talk about the devices...

Detailed Analysis Of Major Characters In Prologue THE CANTERBURY TALES Geoffrey Chaucer Analysis Of Major Characters The Knight The Knight rides at the front of the procession described in the General Prologue, and his story is the first in the sequence. The Host clearly admires the Knight, as does the narrator. The narrator seems to remember four main qualities of the Knight. The first is the Knight’s love of ideals—“chivalrie” (prowess), “trouthe” (fidelity), “honour” (reputation), “fredom” (generosity), and “curteisie” (refinement) (General Prologue, 45–46). The second is the Knight’s impressive military career. The Knight has fought in the Crusades, wars in which Europeans traveled by sea to non-Christian lands and attempted to convert whole cultures by the force of their swords. By Chaucer’s time, the spirit for conducting these wars was dying out, and they were no longer undertaken as frequently. The Knight has battled the Muslims in Egypt, Spain, and Turkey, and the...

Prologue To The Canterbury Tales As Picture Gallery Of 14th Century The Prologue as the Picture Gallery Of 14 th Century Coghill in his book on Chaucer says; “He has painted the real picture of England of the 14 th century “. Another critic Campton Rickett says; “Like Shakespeare, Chaucer makes it his business to paint life as he sees it and paves others to say the morals. Another famous critic Legouis says; “Chaucer’s pilgrims belongs to his own age. They are as they were in reality. They are true to life and form the very background of that history which is the history of 14 th century. From the opinions of famous critics it becomes clear that the prologue is an important social document, a great social chronicle in which Chaucer presents with great fidelity the body and the soul of the society of his own times. It is the full-blooded and full-flooded view of the variegated panorama of the 14 th century. In other words he holds a mirror to his age. It has been rightly sai...

The Prologue as a Picture of Fourteenth Century England Apart from its great poetical and literary merits, The Prologue to The Canterbury Tales forms a wonderful commentary upon English life in the Middle Ages . Dryden has beautifully remarked that Chaucer must have been a man of a most wonderful comprehensive nature because he has taken into the compass of his Canterbury Tales the very manners and humours of the whole English nation in his age. Not a single character has escaped him. Leguois says, "Chaucer...is truly the social chronicler of England at the end of fourteenth century. What he has given is a direct transcription of daily life, taken in the very act, and in its most familiar aspects." The same critic adds : "Chaucer's work is the most precious document for whoever wishes to evoke a picture of life as it then was." The fact is that Chaucer had intimate knowledge of the crosscurrents of English society of his time. His keen observa...

                                      Discuss Chaucer as a Humourist?                                               Chaucer Humour. Chaucer, the born humourist, is called a first great multi-sided humourist of Europe. His humour does not only compel us to laugh but actually he is a monarch of many-sided humour. According to One Critic,                               “Chaucer is a great renaissance gentleman mocking the middle ages” Chaucer’s humour...