IN A FEW WORDS AND POINTS- THE MIXED BAG

TOPICS


  1. Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow
  2. The Bluest Eye
  3. Beloved
  4. Thomas Love Peacock
  5. William Hazlitt
  6. Philosophers, Thinkers and Reformers( Romantic Age)


1) TOMORROW AND TOMORROW AND TOMORROW


  • Famous soliloquy in Shakespeare's Macbeth.
  • Act 5, Scene 5, lines 17-28
  • Macbeth delivers this soliloquy in response to Lady Macbeth's death

 

2) THE BLUEST EYE

 

  • Written by Toni Morrison in 1970
  • The novel is set in 1941 in the backdrop of the Great Depression in Lorain, Ohio
  • Centres around the life of a young African-American girl named Pecola who is constantly called ugly due to her dark skin colour leading to the wish for blue eyes.
  • Narration- Claudia MacTeer and a third-person narrator
  • Drunk Cholly, Pecola's father rapes her.
  • Pecola's child dies prematurely leading to her insanity
  • Due to controversial topics, there had been numerous attempts to ban the book

 

3) BELOVED

 

  • Beloved is a 1987 novel by the American writer Toni Morrison.
  • Setting- American Civil War ( 1861-65)
  • Inspired by the story of an African-American slave, Margaret Garner
  • Protagonist- Sethe
  • Sethe's home- 124 Bluestone Road, Cincinnati, Ohio
  • Sethe's two-year-old presumed daughter, Beloved killed by her returns years later to haunt her home.

4) THOMAS LOVE PEACOCK( 1785-1866)

 

  • In 1820 Peacock contributed to Ollier's Literary Pocket Book and wrote The Four Ages of Poetry, the latter of which argued that poetry's relevance was being eclipsed by science, a claim which provoked Shelley's Defence of Poetry.
  • Also, An Apology for Poetry (or, The Defence of Poesy) is a literary work by Elizabethan poet Philip Sidney believed to be partially motivated by Stephen Gosson's The School of Abuse.
  • Novels- 1) Melincourt (1817)              2) Nightmare Abbey (1818)
  • Essays- 1) Memoirs of Shelley(1858-62)

5) WILLIAM HAZLITT(1778-1830)

 

  • A writer, literary critic, painter, dramatist, social commentator and philosopher.
  • He is acknowledged as one of the greatest critics and essayists in the history of English Literature.
  • Works- 1) My First Acquaintance with the Poets  2) Table Talk  3) The Round Table: A Collection of Essays on Literature, Men and Manners 4) Characters of Shakespeare's Plays 5) The Spirit of the Age, 6) The Plain Speaker
  • Jonathan Bate's novel The Cure for Love (1988) was based indirectly on Hazlitt's life.

6) PHILOSOPHERS, THINKERS AND REFORMERS

 

  • WILLIAM GODWIN
  • JOHN LOCKE
  • DAVID HARTLEY
  • GEORGE BERKLEY
  • DAVID HUME
  • JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU
  • EDMUND BURKE
  • THOMAS MALTHUS- ESSAY ON THE PRINCIPLE OF POPULATION
  • JOSEPH JOHNSON
  • ABRAHAM TUCKER
  • THOMAS HOBBES
  • JEREMY BENTHAM


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