Government College University, Faisalabad
Department of English
Model Paper: MA ENGLISH Part II
Subject: English Time Allowed: 3 hrs
Paper VII : Essay Max Marks: 100
a. write an Essay on ONE of the following topics;
1) New England Irish Catholicism in O’Neill’s Plays
2) Trends in 20th Century Literature
3) Classicism and Romanticism
4) Nature in 18th Century Poetry
5) Shakespeare as an Artist
6) Psychological Realism in Dickens
7) Heroic Couplet
8) Criticism and Creation
9) Bacon as an Essayist
Wednesday, 18 April 2012
Model Paper Of Literature in English around the World M.A English Part 2 GCUF
Government College University, Faisalabad
Department of English
Model Paper: MA ENGLISH Part II
Subject: English Time Allowed: 3 hrs
Paper :VI Max Marks: 100
Literature in English around the World
Attempt FOUR questions in all. You have to attempt at least One question from
each section. All questions carry equal marks.
Section – 1 Drama
1) Critics claim that ‘Laughter and tears are two poles of Lorca’s Theatre’.
Discuss with close reference to the ‘House of Bernarda Alba.
2) How far can Brian Friel’s play Translations be described as a play about
political power?
Section -2 Novel
3) Compare and contrast the characters of Fetyukov and Shukov in the novel
‘One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich.
4) How does Ngugi examine the historical impact of colonialism on Kenya in his
novel ‘The River Between’?
Section -3 Poetry
5) Critically examine one of the following poems:
i) The Street of Nightingales
ii) Mango Seedling
6) Discuss the major thematic concerns in Moniza Alvi’s ‘The Country at my
Shoulder’.
7) Discuss critically Alamgir Hashmi’s use of myth in ‘Encounter with the
Sirens’.
Department of English
Model Paper: MA ENGLISH Part II
Subject: English Time Allowed: 3 hrs
Paper :VI Max Marks: 100
Literature in English around the World
Attempt FOUR questions in all. You have to attempt at least One question from
each section. All questions carry equal marks.
Section – 1 Drama
1) Critics claim that ‘Laughter and tears are two poles of Lorca’s Theatre’.
Discuss with close reference to the ‘House of Bernarda Alba.
2) How far can Brian Friel’s play Translations be described as a play about
political power?
Section -2 Novel
3) Compare and contrast the characters of Fetyukov and Shukov in the novel
‘One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich.
4) How does Ngugi examine the historical impact of colonialism on Kenya in his
novel ‘The River Between’?
Section -3 Poetry
5) Critically examine one of the following poems:
i) The Street of Nightingales
ii) Mango Seedling
6) Discuss the major thematic concerns in Moniza Alvi’s ‘The Country at my
Shoulder’.
7) Discuss critically Alamgir Hashmi’s use of myth in ‘Encounter with the
Sirens’.
Model Paper Of Short Stories M.A English Part 2 GCUF
Government College University, Faisalabad
Department of English
Model Paper: MA ENGLISH Part II
Short Stories
Subject: English Time Allowed: 3 hrs
Paper V Max Marks: 100
Attempt any 4 questions. All questions carry equal marks.
1. Most modern short stories dramatize the fragmentation and conflict of our
lives. Elaborate with reference to two short stories included in your syllabus.
2. Anton Chekov analyses human motivation in behaviour in his short stories.
Discuss with close reference to the story ‘The Man who lives in a Shell.
3. Write a detailed critical comment on the story ‘Everything that rises must
converge’ by Flannry O’Connor.
4. Elaborate on how Edger Allen Poe employs all the features of short story in
‘The Man of the Crowd.
5. Justify the title of the story ‘The Dead’ by James Joyce.
6. Critically examine the thematic concern in Any Tan’s short story ‘ The Voice
from the Wall’.
7. Discuss how the story ‘ My Son the Fanatic’ by Hanif Kureishi focuses on the
dilemma of living in a cross cultural society.
Department of English
Model Paper: MA ENGLISH Part II
Short Stories
Subject: English Time Allowed: 3 hrs
Paper V Max Marks: 100
Attempt any 4 questions. All questions carry equal marks.
1. Most modern short stories dramatize the fragmentation and conflict of our
lives. Elaborate with reference to two short stories included in your syllabus.
2. Anton Chekov analyses human motivation in behaviour in his short stories.
Discuss with close reference to the story ‘The Man who lives in a Shell.
3. Write a detailed critical comment on the story ‘Everything that rises must
converge’ by Flannry O’Connor.
4. Elaborate on how Edger Allen Poe employs all the features of short story in
‘The Man of the Crowd.
5. Justify the title of the story ‘The Dead’ by James Joyce.
6. Critically examine the thematic concern in Any Tan’s short story ‘ The Voice
from the Wall’.
7. Discuss how the story ‘ My Son the Fanatic’ by Hanif Kureishi focuses on the
dilemma of living in a cross cultural society.
Model Paper Of Novel M.A English Part 2 GCUF
Government College University, Faisalabad
Department of English
Model Paper: MA ENGLISH Part II
Model Paper
Subject: English Time Allowed: 3 Hrs
Paper III Max Marks: 100
Novel-II
Note: Attempt any 4 questions. All questions carry equal marks.
1. Write a critical note on the role and character of Marlow in Heart of Darkness.
2. Discuss the use of epiphany in the development of Stephen Dedalus in The
Portrait of the Artist as a young man.
3. “In ‘To the LightHouse’, Virginia Woolf found a subject that enabled her to do
justice to her technique”.Discuss.
4. Discuss ‘Things Fall Apart’ as a post-colonial novel.
5. “ Ahmad Ali’s characters are caught in a restless, changing world that has lost its
Values”.Discuss.
6. In Heart of Darkness, Conrad portrays the evils of 19th century colonialism in
Africa with extraordinary vividness. Discuss.
7. What are the salient features of modern novel?
Department of English
Model Paper: MA ENGLISH Part II
Model Paper
Subject: English Time Allowed: 3 Hrs
Paper III Max Marks: 100
Novel-II
Note: Attempt any 4 questions. All questions carry equal marks.
1. Write a critical note on the role and character of Marlow in Heart of Darkness.
2. Discuss the use of epiphany in the development of Stephen Dedalus in The
Portrait of the Artist as a young man.
3. “In ‘To the LightHouse’, Virginia Woolf found a subject that enabled her to do
justice to her technique”.Discuss.
4. Discuss ‘Things Fall Apart’ as a post-colonial novel.
5. “ Ahmad Ali’s characters are caught in a restless, changing world that has lost its
Values”.Discuss.
6. In Heart of Darkness, Conrad portrays the evils of 19th century colonialism in
Africa with extraordinary vividness. Discuss.
7. What are the salient features of modern novel?
Model Paper Of Literary Criticism M.A English Part 2 GCUF
Government College University, Faisalabad
Department of English
Model Paper: MA ENGLISH Part II
Subject: English Time Allowed: 3 Hrs
Paper IV Max Marks: 100
Literary Criticism
Note: Attempt any 4 questions. All questions carry equal marks.
1. Aristotle’s theory of Tragedy is governed by a preoccupation with
Audience response. Discuss.
2. ‘Our tragedies and comedies not without cause cried out against observing
Rules neither of honest civility nor of skillful poetry’, says Sidney’s statement.
3. T.S.Eliot says you can not value the poet alone, you must set him, for contrast
And comparison, among the dead”. In the light of this statement explain
Eliot’s perspective in the essay, Tradition and Individual Talent.
4. Discuss Classical Tragedy with reference to Hegel and Nietszche. [Williams]
5. ‘There is no Criticism without Ideology. ‘ How does Belsey argue this thesis in
Critical Practice.
6. Raymond Davis in ‘Tragedy and Tradition’ and Belsey in Critical Practice urge
Us to revaluate existing approaches to criticism. Discuss.
7. Critically evaluate any one of the following:
a) I am not one who much or oft delight
To season my fireside with personal talk,
Of friends who live within an easy walk,
Or neighbours, daily, weekly in my sight:
And for my chance acquaintance ladies bright,
Sons, mothers, maidens withering on the stalk,
These all wear out of me, like Forms , with chalk
Painted on rich men’s floors, for one feast night.
47
(From Wordsworth’s Personal Talk)
b) I say him leap and thwack you with,
Inherited expertise. I
Saw you still the pole and work your
Some to the ground. A dying art
Bridged two generations. You thought.
Now we come for formalities.
But you talk of poetry and how
Meaningful some verses become
When the young die and old men live
( Athar Tahir: Subtraction 11)
Department of English
Model Paper: MA ENGLISH Part II
Subject: English Time Allowed: 3 Hrs
Paper IV Max Marks: 100
Literary Criticism
Note: Attempt any 4 questions. All questions carry equal marks.
1. Aristotle’s theory of Tragedy is governed by a preoccupation with
Audience response. Discuss.
2. ‘Our tragedies and comedies not without cause cried out against observing
Rules neither of honest civility nor of skillful poetry’, says Sidney’s statement.
3. T.S.Eliot says you can not value the poet alone, you must set him, for contrast
And comparison, among the dead”. In the light of this statement explain
Eliot’s perspective in the essay, Tradition and Individual Talent.
4. Discuss Classical Tragedy with reference to Hegel and Nietszche. [Williams]
5. ‘There is no Criticism without Ideology. ‘ How does Belsey argue this thesis in
Critical Practice.
6. Raymond Davis in ‘Tragedy and Tradition’ and Belsey in Critical Practice urge
Us to revaluate existing approaches to criticism. Discuss.
7. Critically evaluate any one of the following:
a) I am not one who much or oft delight
To season my fireside with personal talk,
Of friends who live within an easy walk,
Or neighbours, daily, weekly in my sight:
And for my chance acquaintance ladies bright,
Sons, mothers, maidens withering on the stalk,
These all wear out of me, like Forms , with chalk
Painted on rich men’s floors, for one feast night.
47
(From Wordsworth’s Personal Talk)
b) I say him leap and thwack you with,
Inherited expertise. I
Saw you still the pole and work your
Some to the ground. A dying art
Bridged two generations. You thought.
Now we come for formalities.
But you talk of poetry and how
Meaningful some verses become
When the young die and old men live
( Athar Tahir: Subtraction 11)
Model Paper Of Drama M.A English Part 1 GCUF
Government College University, Faisalabad
Department of English
Model Paper: MA ENGLISH Part II
Subject: English Time Allowed: 3 Hrs
Paper II Max Marks: 100
Drama-II
Note: Attempt 4 questions. All questions carry equal marks. Question No.1 is
compulsory.
1. Explain with reference to the context any 3 of the following passages.(25)
1. He was there this afternoon. He went to demand something he said they had
stolen from him. He talked widely about some child that had disappeared.
2. I tell you every day. Every day I say the same thing over and over again. You
And the land under building leases for summer cottages, and you must do it
now, as quick as possible, or the auction will be on top of you!
3. In my spare time, of which I have plenty, I have gone over my case
And considered how it is going to be judged by that world of science of
Which I no longer count myself a member.
4. But we were there together, I could swear to it! Picking grapes for a man
Called….(he snaps his fingers)…can’t think of the name of the man, at a
place, do you not remember?
5. Such a night. Thanks heavens I didn’t know you were out in it. I would
Have had no sleep.
2. Is Waiting for Godot a meaningful play? (25)
3. How far do you think Edward Bond is successful in applying his theories about
Drama in ‘The Sea’? (25)
4. Discuss some of the dramatic devices Ibsen has used to depict Hedda Gabler’s
Predicament. (25)
5. ‘Lopakhin is no need a merchant in the vulgar sense of the word… There is
No need for him to be the typical merchant. He is a tender- hearted man.Do
You think that this statement fully explains Lopakin’s chacacter in The
Cherry Orchard? (25)
6. Do you think that Galileo Galilai presents a conflict between the whole
Spirit of free inquiry and the official ideology? Elaborate your answer with
Reference to the play. (25)
7. Discuss the main features of drama after World War II. (25)
Department of English
Model Paper: MA ENGLISH Part II
Subject: English Time Allowed: 3 Hrs
Paper II Max Marks: 100
Drama-II
Note: Attempt 4 questions. All questions carry equal marks. Question No.1 is
compulsory.
1. Explain with reference to the context any 3 of the following passages.(25)
1. He was there this afternoon. He went to demand something he said they had
stolen from him. He talked widely about some child that had disappeared.
2. I tell you every day. Every day I say the same thing over and over again. You
And the land under building leases for summer cottages, and you must do it
now, as quick as possible, or the auction will be on top of you!
3. In my spare time, of which I have plenty, I have gone over my case
And considered how it is going to be judged by that world of science of
Which I no longer count myself a member.
4. But we were there together, I could swear to it! Picking grapes for a man
Called….(he snaps his fingers)…can’t think of the name of the man, at a
place, do you not remember?
5. Such a night. Thanks heavens I didn’t know you were out in it. I would
Have had no sleep.
2. Is Waiting for Godot a meaningful play? (25)
3. How far do you think Edward Bond is successful in applying his theories about
Drama in ‘The Sea’? (25)
4. Discuss some of the dramatic devices Ibsen has used to depict Hedda Gabler’s
Predicament. (25)
5. ‘Lopakhin is no need a merchant in the vulgar sense of the word… There is
No need for him to be the typical merchant. He is a tender- hearted man.Do
You think that this statement fully explains Lopakin’s chacacter in The
Cherry Orchard? (25)
6. Do you think that Galileo Galilai presents a conflict between the whole
Spirit of free inquiry and the official ideology? Elaborate your answer with
Reference to the play. (25)
7. Discuss the main features of drama after World War II. (25)
Model Paper Of Classical Poetry M.A English Part 2 GCUF
Government College University, Faisalabad
Department of English
Model Paper: MA ENGLISH Part II
Subject: English Time Allowed: 3 Hrs
Paper 1 : Poetry-II
Max Marks: 100
Note: Attempt any 4 questions. All questions carry equal marks. Question No.1 is
compulsory.
1. Explain with reference to the context any 3 of the following.
a) I love hushed air. I trust contrariness
Years and years go past and I do not move
For I see that when one man casts, the other gather
And then vice versa, without changing sides.
b) Through the window I see no star:
Something more near
Through deeper within darkness
Is entering the loneliness:
c) I’ll take it. So it happens that I lie
Where Mr. Bleaney lay, and stub my fangs
On the same saucer-souvenir,…..
d) Who are these coming to the sacrifice?
To what green alter, O mysterious priest,
Lead’st thou that heifer lowing at the skies,
And all her silken flanks with garlands drest?
e) …… England could add
Only the sooty twilight of South Yorkshire
Hung with the drumming drift of Lancasters
Till the world had seemed capsizing slowly.
f) Sowers of seed, erectors of headstones…….
O charioteers, above your dormant guns,
It sands here still, stands vibrant as you pass,
43
The invisible, untoppled omphalos.
2. Compare and contrast any two ‘Odes of Keats’ that you have read.
3. What does the speaker in ‘Mr. Bleaney’ share with the former tenant of the
room? [Larkin]
4. Hence, viper thoughts, that coil around my mind,
Reality’ s dark dream!’
How far do these lines illustrate
Dejection: An Ode’ by Coleridge?
5. ‘That Morning’ and ‘Thought Fox’ exemplify the importance of energy and
single minded concentration in Hughes. Explain.
6. Heaney’s metaphors are sensuously alive.Discuss with reference to ‘Personal
Helicon’ and ‘Tollund Man.’.
7. London is a ‘Sick Rose’. How far does Blake’s poetry bear out truth of this
statement?
Department of English
Model Paper: MA ENGLISH Part II
Subject: English Time Allowed: 3 Hrs
Paper 1 : Poetry-II
Max Marks: 100
Note: Attempt any 4 questions. All questions carry equal marks. Question No.1 is
compulsory.
1. Explain with reference to the context any 3 of the following.
a) I love hushed air. I trust contrariness
Years and years go past and I do not move
For I see that when one man casts, the other gather
And then vice versa, without changing sides.
b) Through the window I see no star:
Something more near
Through deeper within darkness
Is entering the loneliness:
c) I’ll take it. So it happens that I lie
Where Mr. Bleaney lay, and stub my fangs
On the same saucer-souvenir,…..
d) Who are these coming to the sacrifice?
To what green alter, O mysterious priest,
Lead’st thou that heifer lowing at the skies,
And all her silken flanks with garlands drest?
e) …… England could add
Only the sooty twilight of South Yorkshire
Hung with the drumming drift of Lancasters
Till the world had seemed capsizing slowly.
f) Sowers of seed, erectors of headstones…….
O charioteers, above your dormant guns,
It sands here still, stands vibrant as you pass,
43
The invisible, untoppled omphalos.
2. Compare and contrast any two ‘Odes of Keats’ that you have read.
3. What does the speaker in ‘Mr. Bleaney’ share with the former tenant of the
room? [Larkin]
4. Hence, viper thoughts, that coil around my mind,
Reality’ s dark dream!’
How far do these lines illustrate
Dejection: An Ode’ by Coleridge?
5. ‘That Morning’ and ‘Thought Fox’ exemplify the importance of energy and
single minded concentration in Hughes. Explain.
6. Heaney’s metaphors are sensuously alive.Discuss with reference to ‘Personal
Helicon’ and ‘Tollund Man.’.
7. London is a ‘Sick Rose’. How far does Blake’s poetry bear out truth of this
statement?
Model Paper Of American Literature M.A English Part 1 GCUF
Government College University, Faisalabad
Department of English
Model Paper: MA ENGLISH Part I
Paper – V American Literature
Time Allowed: 3 hours Marks: 100
Note: Attempt any four questions. All questions carry equal marks.
Q. 1 The novel “Jazz” by Toni Morrison reflects the complexities of urban life. Illustrate
the statement.
Q. 2 Write a comprehensive note on the theme of Feminism as treated by Sylvia Plath
and Andrienne Rich in their poems.
Q. 3 Critically evaluate any One of the following poems:
i) After the Last Bulletin by Richard Wilbur
ii) Melodic Train by John Ashbury
Q. 4 In Mourning Becomes Electra, Pat is synonymous with fate. Elaborate this
statement.
Q. 5 Discuss the novel For Whom the Bell Tolls as a critical analysis of the behaviour of
human beings under turbulent conditions of war.
Q. 6 Do you regard Abigail Williams as a victim or vamp? Base your arguments on
textual evidence.
Q. 7 Discuss the major themes in the poetry of Sylvia Plath.
Department of English
Model Paper: MA ENGLISH Part I
Paper – V American Literature
Time Allowed: 3 hours Marks: 100
Note: Attempt any four questions. All questions carry equal marks.
Q. 1 The novel “Jazz” by Toni Morrison reflects the complexities of urban life. Illustrate
the statement.
Q. 2 Write a comprehensive note on the theme of Feminism as treated by Sylvia Plath
and Andrienne Rich in their poems.
Q. 3 Critically evaluate any One of the following poems:
i) After the Last Bulletin by Richard Wilbur
ii) Melodic Train by John Ashbury
Q. 4 In Mourning Becomes Electra, Pat is synonymous with fate. Elaborate this
statement.
Q. 5 Discuss the novel For Whom the Bell Tolls as a critical analysis of the behaviour of
human beings under turbulent conditions of war.
Q. 6 Do you regard Abigail Williams as a victim or vamp? Base your arguments on
textual evidence.
Q. 7 Discuss the major themes in the poetry of Sylvia Plath.
Model Paper Of Prose M.A English Part 1 GCUF
Government College University, Faisalabad
Department of English
Model Paper: MA ENGLISH Part I
Paper – IV Prose
Time Allowed: 3 hours Marks: 100
Note: Attempt any four questions. All questions carry equal marks.
Q. 1 Evaluate Bacon’s contribution towards English prose.
Q. 2 Satire grows more and more bitter as Swift progresses from book to book in his
Gulliver’s Travels. Discuss.
Q. 3 Can ideas good or bad be so effective as Bertrand Russell has claimed in his
Unpopular Essays. Discuss.
Q. 4 How far has Edward Said succeeded in stripping the mask from the ugly mask of
imperialism in his Culture and Imperialism. Discuss.
Q. 5 Poetry is as much relevant as ever even in this highly industrialized era of ours.
Discuss with reference to Heaney.
Q. 6 Trace the development of English prose from Bacon to Heaney.
Q. 7 Swift devised a prose style that suited his purpose very well. Elaborate with
reference to his Gulliver’s Travels.
Department of English
Model Paper: MA ENGLISH Part I
Paper – IV Prose
Time Allowed: 3 hours Marks: 100
Note: Attempt any four questions. All questions carry equal marks.
Q. 1 Evaluate Bacon’s contribution towards English prose.
Q. 2 Satire grows more and more bitter as Swift progresses from book to book in his
Gulliver’s Travels. Discuss.
Q. 3 Can ideas good or bad be so effective as Bertrand Russell has claimed in his
Unpopular Essays. Discuss.
Q. 4 How far has Edward Said succeeded in stripping the mask from the ugly mask of
imperialism in his Culture and Imperialism. Discuss.
Q. 5 Poetry is as much relevant as ever even in this highly industrialized era of ours.
Discuss with reference to Heaney.
Q. 6 Trace the development of English prose from Bacon to Heaney.
Q. 7 Swift devised a prose style that suited his purpose very well. Elaborate with
reference to his Gulliver’s Travels.
Model Paper Of Novel M.A English Part 1 GCUF
Government College University, Faisalabad
Department of English
Model Paper: MA ENGLISH Part I
Paper – III Novel
Time Allowed: 3 hours Marks: 100
Note: Attempt any four questions. All questions carry equal marks.
Q. 1 Jane Austen was fully alive to her artistic limitations. Discuss.
Q. 2 A Tale of Two Cities by Dickens is marked for melodrama. Substantiate.
Q. 3 Mr. Slope is a cunning and ruthless opportunist. Discuss.
Q. 4 Clym’s blindness is a symbol of his social maladjustment. Elaborate.
Q. 5 Being superior to Hetty both in years and experience, Arthur’s responsibility is
much greater for the tragedy of poor Hetty. Discuss.
Q. 6 Hetty lives simply by the coercive morality of the community and when this is
broken she is destroyed. Discuss.
Q. 7 Discuss Jane Austen’s art of characterization in considerable length.
Department of English
Model Paper: MA ENGLISH Part I
Paper – III Novel
Time Allowed: 3 hours Marks: 100
Note: Attempt any four questions. All questions carry equal marks.
Q. 1 Jane Austen was fully alive to her artistic limitations. Discuss.
Q. 2 A Tale of Two Cities by Dickens is marked for melodrama. Substantiate.
Q. 3 Mr. Slope is a cunning and ruthless opportunist. Discuss.
Q. 4 Clym’s blindness is a symbol of his social maladjustment. Elaborate.
Q. 5 Being superior to Hetty both in years and experience, Arthur’s responsibility is
much greater for the tragedy of poor Hetty. Discuss.
Q. 6 Hetty lives simply by the coercive morality of the community and when this is
broken she is destroyed. Discuss.
Q. 7 Discuss Jane Austen’s art of characterization in considerable length.
Model Paper Of Drama M.A English Part 1 GCUF
Government College University, Faisalabad
Department of English
Model Paper: MA ENGLISH Part I
Paper – II Drama
Time Allowed: 3 hours Marks: 100
Note: Attempt any four questions including Question No. 1 which is Compulsory.
All questions carry equal marks.
Q. 1 Explain with reference to the context three of the following passages:
i) Aye Faustus
Now has thou but one bare hour to live
And then thou must be damned
Perpetually
ii) Do not counsel me any more. This punishment that i
Have laid upon myself is just
If I had eyes
I do not know how I would the sight of my father
When I come to the house of death or my mother, for I
Have sinned against them both.
iii) I had rather be a toad
And live upon the vapour of dungeon
Than keep a corner in the thing I love
For others uses.
iv) He says he loves my daughter
I think so too; for never gazed the moon
Upon the water as he’ll stand and read
As it were my daughter’s eyes and to be plain
I think there is not half a kiss to choose
Who loves another best.
38
v) I am not punctual myself
I know but I do like punctuality in other and
Waiting even to be married is quite out of the
Questions.
Q. 2 Do you think that hubris plays a significant part in the fall of Oedipus?
Q. 3 Does the speech by the chorus in the Epilogue do justice to the character of Faustus?
Q. 4 How does Othello’s imagination contribute to his breakdown?
Q. 5 Discuss the significance of language in Oscar Wilde’ s play ‘The Importance of
Being Earnest’.
Q. 6 Discuss the play ‘The Winter’s Tale’ as a dramatic romance.
Q. 7 Iago is more a catalyst who precipitates destruction than devil who causes it.
Department of English
Model Paper: MA ENGLISH Part I
Paper – II Drama
Time Allowed: 3 hours Marks: 100
Note: Attempt any four questions including Question No. 1 which is Compulsory.
All questions carry equal marks.
Q. 1 Explain with reference to the context three of the following passages:
i) Aye Faustus
Now has thou but one bare hour to live
And then thou must be damned
Perpetually
ii) Do not counsel me any more. This punishment that i
Have laid upon myself is just
If I had eyes
I do not know how I would the sight of my father
When I come to the house of death or my mother, for I
Have sinned against them both.
iii) I had rather be a toad
And live upon the vapour of dungeon
Than keep a corner in the thing I love
For others uses.
iv) He says he loves my daughter
I think so too; for never gazed the moon
Upon the water as he’ll stand and read
As it were my daughter’s eyes and to be plain
I think there is not half a kiss to choose
Who loves another best.
38
v) I am not punctual myself
I know but I do like punctuality in other and
Waiting even to be married is quite out of the
Questions.
Q. 2 Do you think that hubris plays a significant part in the fall of Oedipus?
Q. 3 Does the speech by the chorus in the Epilogue do justice to the character of Faustus?
Q. 4 How does Othello’s imagination contribute to his breakdown?
Q. 5 Discuss the significance of language in Oscar Wilde’ s play ‘The Importance of
Being Earnest’.
Q. 6 Discuss the play ‘The Winter’s Tale’ as a dramatic romance.
Q. 7 Iago is more a catalyst who precipitates destruction than devil who causes it.
Model Paper Of Classical Poetry M.A English Part 1 GCUF
Model Paper: MA ENGLISH Part I
Paper – I Classical Poetry
Time Allowed: 3 hours Marks: 100
Note: Attempt any four questions including Question No. 1 which is Compulsory.
All questions carry equal marks.
Q. 1 Explain with reference to the context any Four of the following passages:
i) In al the parisshe wif ne was ther noon
That to the offrynge bifore hire sholde goon;
And if ther dide, certeyn so wrooth was she,
That she was out of alle charitee.
ii) If they be two, they are two so
As stiffe twin compasses are two
Thy soule the first foot, makes no show
To move, but doth, if the other doe.
iii) O thoughtless mortals! Ever blind to fate,
Too soon dejected, and too soon elate,
Sudden, these honours shall be snatched away
And cursed for ever this victorious day
iv) Space may produce new worlds; where of so rife there
Went a fame in Heaven that ere long
Intended to create, and therein plant
A generation whom his choice regard
Should favour equal to the sons of Heaven.
v) Earth felt wound, and Nature from her seat.
Sighing through all her works gave signs of woe, that all was lost.
vi) Thou art slave to Fate, Chance
Kings and desperate men,
36
And dost with poison, warre, and sickness dwell,
And poppie, or charms can make us sleep as well,
And better than thy stroke;
vii) If it be yea, I shall be fain
If it be nay, friends, as before,
You shall another men obtain
And I mine own, and yours no more.
viii) The stately seats, the ladies bright hue
The dances short, long tales of great delight;
With words and looks that tigers could sue,
Where each of us did plead the other’s right,
Q. 2 What is major contribution of Thomas Wyatt to English Poetry of the Renaissance?
Discuss with reference to the poems you have read.
Q . 3 Write a critical appreciation of any two of the following poems:
i) Love that doth reign…
ii) My friend, the things…
iii) Wyatt resteth here…
Q . 4 Discuss and illustrate the artistic method adopted by Chaucer in the portrayal of his
pilgrims in the Prologue.
Q . 5 Milton conceived and executed the scheme of Paradise Lost in accordance with
principles of classical epics. Discuss.
Q . 6 Do you agree that in The Rape of the Lock the mock-heroic element is not the
dominant interest but the brilliant picture of fashionable life? Discuss.
Q . 7 Discuss Donne as a Metaphysical poet.
Paper – I Classical Poetry
Time Allowed: 3 hours Marks: 100
Note: Attempt any four questions including Question No. 1 which is Compulsory.
All questions carry equal marks.
Q. 1 Explain with reference to the context any Four of the following passages:
i) In al the parisshe wif ne was ther noon
That to the offrynge bifore hire sholde goon;
And if ther dide, certeyn so wrooth was she,
That she was out of alle charitee.
ii) If they be two, they are two so
As stiffe twin compasses are two
Thy soule the first foot, makes no show
To move, but doth, if the other doe.
iii) O thoughtless mortals! Ever blind to fate,
Too soon dejected, and too soon elate,
Sudden, these honours shall be snatched away
And cursed for ever this victorious day
iv) Space may produce new worlds; where of so rife there
Went a fame in Heaven that ere long
Intended to create, and therein plant
A generation whom his choice regard
Should favour equal to the sons of Heaven.
v) Earth felt wound, and Nature from her seat.
Sighing through all her works gave signs of woe, that all was lost.
vi) Thou art slave to Fate, Chance
Kings and desperate men,
36
And dost with poison, warre, and sickness dwell,
And poppie, or charms can make us sleep as well,
And better than thy stroke;
vii) If it be yea, I shall be fain
If it be nay, friends, as before,
You shall another men obtain
And I mine own, and yours no more.
viii) The stately seats, the ladies bright hue
The dances short, long tales of great delight;
With words and looks that tigers could sue,
Where each of us did plead the other’s right,
Q. 2 What is major contribution of Thomas Wyatt to English Poetry of the Renaissance?
Discuss with reference to the poems you have read.
Q . 3 Write a critical appreciation of any two of the following poems:
i) Love that doth reign…
ii) My friend, the things…
iii) Wyatt resteth here…
Q . 4 Discuss and illustrate the artistic method adopted by Chaucer in the portrayal of his
pilgrims in the Prologue.
Q . 5 Milton conceived and executed the scheme of Paradise Lost in accordance with
principles of classical epics. Discuss.
Q . 6 Do you agree that in The Rape of the Lock the mock-heroic element is not the
dominant interest but the brilliant picture of fashionable life? Discuss.
Q . 7 Discuss Donne as a Metaphysical poet.
M.A English Part-2 Syllabus Of GCUF
Government College University, Faisalabad
Department of English
M.A ENGLISH PART-I1
Note: The first four papers are compulsory; the other three are optional.
The candidates are required to opt any one of the three optional papers.
COMPULSORY PAPERS MARKS
Paper I (Poetry II) 100
Paper II (Drama II) 100
Paper III (Novel II) 100
Paper IV (Literary Criticism) 100
OPTIONAL PAPERS MARKS
Paper V (Short Stories) OR 100
Paper VI (Literature in English around the World) OR 100
Paper VII (Essays) 100
TOTAL 500
(SYLLABUS AND COURSES OF READING)
PAPER I: POETRY II (Section A)
1- Blake A Selection from Songs of Innocence & Experience
i) Auguries of innocence
ii) The Sick Rose
30
iii) London
iv) A Divine Image
v) The Tyger
vi) A Poison Tree
vii) From Milton: and Did those Feet
viii) Holy Thursday (I)
ix) Holy Thursday (II)
x) Ah, Sun Flower
2- Coleridge The Ancient Mariner
Kubla Khan.
Dejection: An Ode
3- Keats Ode to Autumn
Ode to a Nightingale
Ode on a Grecian Urn
Hyperion Book I
Section B
1- Philip Larkin Mr. Bleany
Church Going
Ambulances
1914
3-Seamus Heaney Personal Helicon.
Tolland Man
A Constable Calls
Toome Road
Casting and Gathering
4- Ted Hughes Thought Fox
Chances
31
That Morning
Full Moon & Freida.
PAPER PATTERN
First question is compulsory.
Explanation with reference to the context
Attempt 3 out of 6 stanzas.
PAPER II: DRAMA II
1- Ibsen Hedda Gabler
2- Chekov The Cherry Orchard
3- Brecht Galileo Galili
4- Beckett Waiting for Godot
5- Edward Bond The Sea
PAPER PATTERN
First question is compulsory.
Explanation with reference to the context:
Attempt 3 out of 5 stanzas.
PAPER III: NOVEL
1- Conrad Heart of Darkness
2- Joyce Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man
3- Woolf To the Lighthouse
4- Achebe Things Fall Apart
5- Ahmad Ali Twilight in Delhi
32
PAPER IV: LITERARY CRITICISM
1- Aristotle Poetics
2- Raymond Williams Modern Tragedy
3- Catherine Belsey Critical Practice
4- T.S Eliot Tradition & Individual Talent
Optional Papers
PAPER V: SHORT STORIES
1- Sara Suleri The Property of Women
2- Naguib Mahfuz The Mummy
3- E. Allen Poe The Man of Crowd
4- Doris Lessing African Short Story
5- Flannery O’ Connor Everything that Rises Must Converge
6- James Joyce The Dead
7- Nadine Gordimer Ultimate Safari
Once upon a Time
8- Kafka The Judgement
9- Achebe Civil Peace
10- Okri What the Tapster Saw
11- Hanif Qureshi My Son the Fanatic
12- D. H. Lawrence The Man who Love Islands
13- W. Trevor The Day
14- Alice Walker Strong Horse Tea
15- V. S. Prichett The Voice
16- Brian Friel The Diviner
17- H. E. Bates The Woman who Loved Imagination
18- Ali Mazuri The Fort
33
19- Amy Tan The Voice from the Wall
20- A. Chekhov The Man who lived in a Shell
21- Braithwaite Dream Hatii
22- V. S. Naipul The Night Watchman’s Occurrence Book
23- E. Hemingway A Clean Well-lighted Place
PAPER VI: LITERATURE AROUND THE WORLD
Drama
1- Lorea House of Bernada Alba
2- Brian Friel Translations
Novel
1- Nugugi The River Between
2- Solzhynetsin A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch
Poetry
1- Taufiq Rafat Thinking of Mohenjodaro
The Stone Chat
The Last Visit
2- Daud Kamal Reproduction
The Street of Nightingale
A Remote Beginning
3- Maki Qureshi Air Raid
Kite
Christmas
Letter to my Sister
4- A Hashmi Encounter with the Sirens
untumnal
34
But Where in the Sky?
5- Zulfiqar Ghose Across India
February 1952
The Mystique of Root
A Memory of Asia
6- Shirley Lim Mansoon History
Modern Secrets
7- Vikram Seth Humble Administrators Garden
8- Anna Akhmatova Prologue Epilogue
9- Derek Walcott Far Cry From Africa
10- Ben Okri African Elegy
11- Achebe Refugee Mother & Child
Mange Seed
12- Nasim Ezekiel Night of the Scorpion
Goodbye Party for Miss Pushpa
13- Moniza Alvi The Country at my Shoulder
PAPER VII: ESSAYS
Attempt any one essay. 100 Marks
Chairperson,
Department of English
M.A ENGLISH PART-I1
Note: The first four papers are compulsory; the other three are optional.
The candidates are required to opt any one of the three optional papers.
COMPULSORY PAPERS MARKS
Paper I (Poetry II) 100
Paper II (Drama II) 100
Paper III (Novel II) 100
Paper IV (Literary Criticism) 100
OPTIONAL PAPERS MARKS
Paper V (Short Stories) OR 100
Paper VI (Literature in English around the World) OR 100
Paper VII (Essays) 100
TOTAL 500
(SYLLABUS AND COURSES OF READING)
PAPER I: POETRY II (Section A)
1- Blake A Selection from Songs of Innocence & Experience
i) Auguries of innocence
ii) The Sick Rose
30
iii) London
iv) A Divine Image
v) The Tyger
vi) A Poison Tree
vii) From Milton: and Did those Feet
viii) Holy Thursday (I)
ix) Holy Thursday (II)
x) Ah, Sun Flower
2- Coleridge The Ancient Mariner
Kubla Khan.
Dejection: An Ode
3- Keats Ode to Autumn
Ode to a Nightingale
Ode on a Grecian Urn
Hyperion Book I
Section B
1- Philip Larkin Mr. Bleany
Church Going
Ambulances
1914
3-Seamus Heaney Personal Helicon.
Tolland Man
A Constable Calls
Toome Road
Casting and Gathering
4- Ted Hughes Thought Fox
Chances
31
That Morning
Full Moon & Freida.
PAPER PATTERN
First question is compulsory.
Explanation with reference to the context
Attempt 3 out of 6 stanzas.
PAPER II: DRAMA II
1- Ibsen Hedda Gabler
2- Chekov The Cherry Orchard
3- Brecht Galileo Galili
4- Beckett Waiting for Godot
5- Edward Bond The Sea
PAPER PATTERN
First question is compulsory.
Explanation with reference to the context:
Attempt 3 out of 5 stanzas.
PAPER III: NOVEL
1- Conrad Heart of Darkness
2- Joyce Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man
3- Woolf To the Lighthouse
4- Achebe Things Fall Apart
5- Ahmad Ali Twilight in Delhi
32
PAPER IV: LITERARY CRITICISM
1- Aristotle Poetics
2- Raymond Williams Modern Tragedy
3- Catherine Belsey Critical Practice
4- T.S Eliot Tradition & Individual Talent
Optional Papers
PAPER V: SHORT STORIES
1- Sara Suleri The Property of Women
2- Naguib Mahfuz The Mummy
3- E. Allen Poe The Man of Crowd
4- Doris Lessing African Short Story
5- Flannery O’ Connor Everything that Rises Must Converge
6- James Joyce The Dead
7- Nadine Gordimer Ultimate Safari
Once upon a Time
8- Kafka The Judgement
9- Achebe Civil Peace
10- Okri What the Tapster Saw
11- Hanif Qureshi My Son the Fanatic
12- D. H. Lawrence The Man who Love Islands
13- W. Trevor The Day
14- Alice Walker Strong Horse Tea
15- V. S. Prichett The Voice
16- Brian Friel The Diviner
17- H. E. Bates The Woman who Loved Imagination
18- Ali Mazuri The Fort
33
19- Amy Tan The Voice from the Wall
20- A. Chekhov The Man who lived in a Shell
21- Braithwaite Dream Hatii
22- V. S. Naipul The Night Watchman’s Occurrence Book
23- E. Hemingway A Clean Well-lighted Place
PAPER VI: LITERATURE AROUND THE WORLD
Drama
1- Lorea House of Bernada Alba
2- Brian Friel Translations
Novel
1- Nugugi The River Between
2- Solzhynetsin A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch
Poetry
1- Taufiq Rafat Thinking of Mohenjodaro
The Stone Chat
The Last Visit
2- Daud Kamal Reproduction
The Street of Nightingale
A Remote Beginning
3- Maki Qureshi Air Raid
Kite
Christmas
Letter to my Sister
4- A Hashmi Encounter with the Sirens
untumnal
34
But Where in the Sky?
5- Zulfiqar Ghose Across India
February 1952
The Mystique of Root
A Memory of Asia
6- Shirley Lim Mansoon History
Modern Secrets
7- Vikram Seth Humble Administrators Garden
8- Anna Akhmatova Prologue Epilogue
9- Derek Walcott Far Cry From Africa
10- Ben Okri African Elegy
11- Achebe Refugee Mother & Child
Mange Seed
12- Nasim Ezekiel Night of the Scorpion
Goodbye Party for Miss Pushpa
13- Moniza Alvi The Country at my Shoulder
PAPER VII: ESSAYS
Attempt any one essay. 100 Marks
Chairperson,
Toni Morrison Jazz Summery in Brief
The novel opens in the black Manhattan neighborhood of Harlem, the year is 1926 and on an ice-cold winter morning, a woman named Violet Trace has thrown open her windows and emptied her birdcages of their flocks, including her favorite, lonely bird that always said "I love you." Violet is a fifty-year-old black woman, she is skinny and emotionally unstable. We learn that she has been living in Harlem for several years, but city life is difficult and the narrator hints that maybe the stresses of Harlem are finally wearing Violet down. On one afternoon, Violet began carelessly wandering the sidewalks and then, for no apparent reason, she sat down in the middle of street, surrounded by a few concerned neighbors. Violet is married and she lives with her husband, Joe Trace, but she is not wealthy as she makes little money as an unlicensed hairdresser, arriving at her clients' residences. Violet is lonely and regrets that she does not have an extensive family to fill the quiet of her apartment‹a quiet that is exacerbated by her ejection of the birds. As Violet thinks about her loneliness and her grandmother down south, she has the sudden urge to build a family. She is convinced that this will breach the gap separates her from her husband.
Amidst the chaos of individual relationships, the City emerges as omnipotent and glamorous, a force that inspires and controls the courses of the human characters. Below the gaze of the city's skyscrapers, the ghost of Dorcas is haunting the Traces and while the Salem Women's Club was going to help Violet, she has been ostracized because of her inappropriate behavior at the funeral. Wholly detached from the moral commentary and judgment of her peers, Violet embarks upon a search to know everything about Dorcas: she visits Malvonne, whose apartment was used as a "love nest" for Joe Trace and Dorcas. After this, Violet learns the dances and music that Dorcas liked, and she talks to teachers at Ps-89 and JH-139. Dorcas' dignified aunt eventually warms up to Violet and eventually offers her a photograph of the young woman. This photograph is placed in a silver frame and kept on the mantle where Violet and Joe visit nightly, still separated by their silence.
Even though he has shot Dorcas, Joe is a well-mannered older man who does not feel guilt for his actions. Instead, his nightly vigils are his mourning for the love affair that has ended. Violet cannot sleep and she visits the picture at night because it is quiet. In contrast, Joe Trace's visits are the pure result of his melancholic and slightly exaggerated memory of Dorcas. Both of the Traces were "field workers" in Vesper County, Virginia and soon after meeting Violet under a walnut tree (in 1906), Joe proposed marriage‹and a move to Harlem. Joe's memories of this time, roughly twenty years before the present, include his intense passion for his new wife, Violet, as well as an encounter with a mysterious woman who is half-clothed and hiding in a bush. For some reason that is not revealed to the reader, Joe Trace, having grown up an orphan, has reason to believe that this mentally-incapacitated woman may be his mother. His last memory of Vesper County is the scene of his conversation with this woman, who is hiding in a hibiscus bush.
Joe recalls feeling a special bond with Dorcas because she is similarly motherless and Dorcas' history is not as extensive as his, though equally mysterious. The teenage girl hails from the black community of East St. Louis, Illinois and is described as an anonymous migrant among "a steady stream" who came to Harlem "after raving whites had foamed all over the lanes and yards of home." She remembers visiting a friend and being startled by screams coming from her street. Her house was deliberately set on fire and she remembers the realization that her mother and her doll collection were trapped inside and burnt alive.
Alice Manfred lived in Harlem for several years before she called for her niece, Dorcas, to live with her. One of earliest memories of Dorcas is a Fifth Avenue parade in July, 1917, where silent men and women marched to condemn the lynch riots that had just occurred in East St. Louis, Illinois. Alice's reason for continuing in Harlem, despite her overwhelming fear of the music and fast pace of the city, is never revealed, but Dorcas' arrival does allow Alice to make her fears and concerns vicarious. Dorcas lives in an apartment of oppression‹her clothes are unflattering; Alice instructs her niece to be "deaf and blind;" she teaches her how to avoid anything that is living and unknown. Her "elaborate specifications" are a well-intentioned effort to protect Dorcas from the "Day of Judgment," "The Beast" and "Imminent Demise." Both the aunt and the niece, privately admire the songs and dances of the street, and Dorcas eventually acts upon her desires. Alice Manfred had "overnight business in Springfield" and Dorcas seized the opportunity to accompany her friend, Felice, to a dance party, where she (Dorcas) is awkward though enthralled and ultimately rejected. Having "tasted" the music, Dorcas finds her life "unbearable" until Joe Trace enters the scene.
To give the details of Violet's family history, the story shifts to the original third-person narrator. One morning back in Violet's childhood, some time after her father had deserted the family, debt collectors repossessed their house and belongings. Violet's mother, Rose Dear, was presented with a "piece of paper" (presumably, an IOU) that her debtor husband had signed, authorizing the repossession. Stupefied, Rose Dear sat the dining table, sipping from an empty cup as the debt collectors emptied the house, took the dining table and slid Rose Dear out of her chair. Rose Dear's mother, True Belle, left her job in Baltimore and arrived to "take charge and over." Four years later, presuming that her children were in good hands, Rose Dear killed herself by jumping into a well. Two weeks after her burial, her husband arrived on the scene with "[chocolate] ingots of goldŠtwo-dollar piecesŠand snake oil."
True Belle sends her granddaughters to Palestine, Virginia where an exceptionally large cotton harvest has sparked a labor migration. One night, Violet is sleeping under a tree and she startled by a man who has fallen out of the tree under which she had been sleeping. This is Joe Trace, and his hammock has broken. After the cotton work is over, Violet sends her money home with her sisters and she finds other work in the area, so that she can stay close to Joe. After marrying Joe, Violet had plans to go to Baltimore, having heard years of her grandmother's Baltimore stories. In the end, of course, Joe and Violet decide to take the train to New York, joining a steady migration of black Southerners. Excited though challenged by the rigors of "citylife," the couple decided that they did not want children and Violet's three miscarriages "were more inconvenience than loss." By the time she was forty, however, Violet's "mother-hunger" had become "a panting, unmanageable craving," and her "citylife" began to unravel in chaos.
Joe Trace dates his birth in 1873, and he gives an extensive description of his childhood in Vienna, Virginia, beginning with his life in the home of Rhoda and Frank Williams. The Williams' raised Joe along with six of their own children. While the Williams couple cares for Joe as well as they care for their natural children, they are honest with Joe, informing him that he is not their natural child. When a younger Joe asks Rhoda about his parents she replies, "O honey, they disappeared without a trace." Joe misinterprets the comment and changes his last name after he identifies himself as "the Œtrace'" without which his parents disappeared. Joe identifies "the best man in Vesper County," a man he calls "hunters hunter" as another parental figure in his life as a young orphan.
The narrator begins the chapter intending to understand True Belle's "state of mind when she moved from Baltimore back to Vesper County," to take care of her evicted daughter, Rose Dear, who was purportedly living in an abandoned shack. True Belle was a slave when she left Vesper County for Baltimore, but she was a free woman when she returned in 1888. True Belle convinced her employer (and former master), Vera Louise Gray, that she was dying and wanted to return to Vesper County to live her final days with her family. True Belle lived with Vera Louise Gray in a large house in a sophisticated Baltimore neighborhood. The third occupant, Golden Gray, was Vera's son, named at birth for his radiant golden color. Vera had lived in Vesper County, on the plantation owned by her father, Colonel Wordsworth Gray. In a small community where "nobody could hide much," Vera Louise enjoyed a romantic affair with one of her slaves and after she revealed herself to be pregnant, her parents disowned her. The narrative continues with Golden Gray's journey to Vienna, Virginia to find his father, Henry LesTroy(or Lestory).
Towards the end of his journey by horse and carriage, Golden Gray's concerns that he has lost his way are interrupted by a rustling in the bushes and the startling sight of "a naked berry-black woman." Startled by the presence of Golden Gray's carriage, the woman turns to run away but moves too quickly and without rhythm, banging her head against a tree trunk and falling into unconsciousness. The young man tries to convince himself that the woman was "a vision," but he overcomes his feelings of nausea and approaches the side of the road. The woman is naked, bloody and dirty; she is also extremely pregnant. Wrestling with himself, Golden Gray eventually decides to bring the woman along with him, because the heroic act will be an anecdote. After his sixth hour of travel, Golden Gray arrives at an empty cabin where he decides to rest, suspecting that this is the cabin where his father lives. He sets his trunk on the dirt floor, finds water for his horse and then tends to the woman in carriage, setting her on the bed in the cabin's second bedroom. After surveying the cabin, Golden Gray struggles to set a fire and later gets drunk from the contents of a jug of liquor. A young black boy arrives at the cabin and indicates that Mr. Henry has asked him to tend the animals while he was away.
Henry Lestory (Hunters Hunter, Mr. Henry) is "instantly alarmed" by the presence of Golden Gray and his carriage. Henry views Golden Gray as "a whiteman" and equates his presence with trouble. The father and son do not immediately speak to one another as Henry interrogates the boy, Honor, who explains that the white man has brought the bleeding and pregnant black woman into the cabin. Henry leaves the room and after surveying the cabin and discovering the empty jug of consumed liquor, he curtly asks Golden Gray "Do we know one another?" The impact of the young man's reply, "No. Daddy. We don't." is mitigated by Wild's screams. Honor and Henry assist in the delivery of the child and Honor is sent to inform his mother and the other women of the village, as it is clear that Wild has no intention of nursing her child. The conversation between the father and son is tense and emotionally unrewarding. Henry explains that Vera Louise never informed him of the pregnancy and that "A son ain't what a woman say. A son is what a man do." Golden Gray's sober thoughts are mostly of anger and he considers shooting Henry. Of course, he neither vocalizes nor acts upon the idea.
The narrator then confirms Joe's exodus out of Vienna, after racist's burned the town down. Soon after the fires' onset (they burned for months), Joe returned to the cane field to search for Wild, hoping to communicate with her and confirm that she is his mother. Additionally, Joe is worried that fires may have confused Wild and she could have easily wandered herself into a doomed situation. During one of the childhood trips with Hunters Hunter, Joe joked about hunting the wild woman and interprets Hunter's stoic response: "Šthat woman is somebody's mother and somebody ought to take care," as an intimation that Wild was his mother. Joe takes three journeys to find his mother, traveling into her favorite cane fields and much of the nearby forest.
At the end of the novel, Felice has decided to visit the Traces. She too, has heard Joe Trace sobbing in the windows and she decides to make an effort to cheer him up. Perhaps Joe is crying because Violet has returned the photograph of Dorcas to her aunt, Alice Manfred. Felice makes her visit to the Traces in the middle of her errands. When she enters their apartment, she is carrying the Okeh record and butcher's parcel of meat that her mother requested she bring when returning home.
As Violet is in the kitchen, preparing a catfish dinner for the three of them, Joe speaks expresses his gratitude to Felice and tells her that her visits and kind words are helping them get their lives back together. Felice confesses to Joe that there is more information that she has not given him, a message that Dorcas asked her to relay as she was dying. The message is: "There's only one apple. Just one. Tell Joe." Felice intends to cheer Joe up, telling him that he was the last thing on Dorcas' mind. Still, Joe is more sad than pleased. After the dinner, they hear music "floated inŠthrough the open window." The Traces start dancing, "funny, like old people do" and they invite Felice to join in, though she declines. Joe sits down when the music ends and says that the apartment needs some birds. Felice adds that a Victrola (record player) would be suitable as well and that she'll being some records to play for them
Amidst the chaos of individual relationships, the City emerges as omnipotent and glamorous, a force that inspires and controls the courses of the human characters. Below the gaze of the city's skyscrapers, the ghost of Dorcas is haunting the Traces and while the Salem Women's Club was going to help Violet, she has been ostracized because of her inappropriate behavior at the funeral. Wholly detached from the moral commentary and judgment of her peers, Violet embarks upon a search to know everything about Dorcas: she visits Malvonne, whose apartment was used as a "love nest" for Joe Trace and Dorcas. After this, Violet learns the dances and music that Dorcas liked, and she talks to teachers at Ps-89 and JH-139. Dorcas' dignified aunt eventually warms up to Violet and eventually offers her a photograph of the young woman. This photograph is placed in a silver frame and kept on the mantle where Violet and Joe visit nightly, still separated by their silence.
Even though he has shot Dorcas, Joe is a well-mannered older man who does not feel guilt for his actions. Instead, his nightly vigils are his mourning for the love affair that has ended. Violet cannot sleep and she visits the picture at night because it is quiet. In contrast, Joe Trace's visits are the pure result of his melancholic and slightly exaggerated memory of Dorcas. Both of the Traces were "field workers" in Vesper County, Virginia and soon after meeting Violet under a walnut tree (in 1906), Joe proposed marriage‹and a move to Harlem. Joe's memories of this time, roughly twenty years before the present, include his intense passion for his new wife, Violet, as well as an encounter with a mysterious woman who is half-clothed and hiding in a bush. For some reason that is not revealed to the reader, Joe Trace, having grown up an orphan, has reason to believe that this mentally-incapacitated woman may be his mother. His last memory of Vesper County is the scene of his conversation with this woman, who is hiding in a hibiscus bush.
Joe recalls feeling a special bond with Dorcas because she is similarly motherless and Dorcas' history is not as extensive as his, though equally mysterious. The teenage girl hails from the black community of East St. Louis, Illinois and is described as an anonymous migrant among "a steady stream" who came to Harlem "after raving whites had foamed all over the lanes and yards of home." She remembers visiting a friend and being startled by screams coming from her street. Her house was deliberately set on fire and she remembers the realization that her mother and her doll collection were trapped inside and burnt alive.
Alice Manfred lived in Harlem for several years before she called for her niece, Dorcas, to live with her. One of earliest memories of Dorcas is a Fifth Avenue parade in July, 1917, where silent men and women marched to condemn the lynch riots that had just occurred in East St. Louis, Illinois. Alice's reason for continuing in Harlem, despite her overwhelming fear of the music and fast pace of the city, is never revealed, but Dorcas' arrival does allow Alice to make her fears and concerns vicarious. Dorcas lives in an apartment of oppression‹her clothes are unflattering; Alice instructs her niece to be "deaf and blind;" she teaches her how to avoid anything that is living and unknown. Her "elaborate specifications" are a well-intentioned effort to protect Dorcas from the "Day of Judgment," "The Beast" and "Imminent Demise." Both the aunt and the niece, privately admire the songs and dances of the street, and Dorcas eventually acts upon her desires. Alice Manfred had "overnight business in Springfield" and Dorcas seized the opportunity to accompany her friend, Felice, to a dance party, where she (Dorcas) is awkward though enthralled and ultimately rejected. Having "tasted" the music, Dorcas finds her life "unbearable" until Joe Trace enters the scene.
To give the details of Violet's family history, the story shifts to the original third-person narrator. One morning back in Violet's childhood, some time after her father had deserted the family, debt collectors repossessed their house and belongings. Violet's mother, Rose Dear, was presented with a "piece of paper" (presumably, an IOU) that her debtor husband had signed, authorizing the repossession. Stupefied, Rose Dear sat the dining table, sipping from an empty cup as the debt collectors emptied the house, took the dining table and slid Rose Dear out of her chair. Rose Dear's mother, True Belle, left her job in Baltimore and arrived to "take charge and over." Four years later, presuming that her children were in good hands, Rose Dear killed herself by jumping into a well. Two weeks after her burial, her husband arrived on the scene with "[chocolate] ingots of goldŠtwo-dollar piecesŠand snake oil."
True Belle sends her granddaughters to Palestine, Virginia where an exceptionally large cotton harvest has sparked a labor migration. One night, Violet is sleeping under a tree and she startled by a man who has fallen out of the tree under which she had been sleeping. This is Joe Trace, and his hammock has broken. After the cotton work is over, Violet sends her money home with her sisters and she finds other work in the area, so that she can stay close to Joe. After marrying Joe, Violet had plans to go to Baltimore, having heard years of her grandmother's Baltimore stories. In the end, of course, Joe and Violet decide to take the train to New York, joining a steady migration of black Southerners. Excited though challenged by the rigors of "citylife," the couple decided that they did not want children and Violet's three miscarriages "were more inconvenience than loss." By the time she was forty, however, Violet's "mother-hunger" had become "a panting, unmanageable craving," and her "citylife" began to unravel in chaos.
Joe Trace dates his birth in 1873, and he gives an extensive description of his childhood in Vienna, Virginia, beginning with his life in the home of Rhoda and Frank Williams. The Williams' raised Joe along with six of their own children. While the Williams couple cares for Joe as well as they care for their natural children, they are honest with Joe, informing him that he is not their natural child. When a younger Joe asks Rhoda about his parents she replies, "O honey, they disappeared without a trace." Joe misinterprets the comment and changes his last name after he identifies himself as "the Œtrace'" without which his parents disappeared. Joe identifies "the best man in Vesper County," a man he calls "hunters hunter" as another parental figure in his life as a young orphan.
The narrator begins the chapter intending to understand True Belle's "state of mind when she moved from Baltimore back to Vesper County," to take care of her evicted daughter, Rose Dear, who was purportedly living in an abandoned shack. True Belle was a slave when she left Vesper County for Baltimore, but she was a free woman when she returned in 1888. True Belle convinced her employer (and former master), Vera Louise Gray, that she was dying and wanted to return to Vesper County to live her final days with her family. True Belle lived with Vera Louise Gray in a large house in a sophisticated Baltimore neighborhood. The third occupant, Golden Gray, was Vera's son, named at birth for his radiant golden color. Vera had lived in Vesper County, on the plantation owned by her father, Colonel Wordsworth Gray. In a small community where "nobody could hide much," Vera Louise enjoyed a romantic affair with one of her slaves and after she revealed herself to be pregnant, her parents disowned her. The narrative continues with Golden Gray's journey to Vienna, Virginia to find his father, Henry LesTroy(or Lestory).
Towards the end of his journey by horse and carriage, Golden Gray's concerns that he has lost his way are interrupted by a rustling in the bushes and the startling sight of "a naked berry-black woman." Startled by the presence of Golden Gray's carriage, the woman turns to run away but moves too quickly and without rhythm, banging her head against a tree trunk and falling into unconsciousness. The young man tries to convince himself that the woman was "a vision," but he overcomes his feelings of nausea and approaches the side of the road. The woman is naked, bloody and dirty; she is also extremely pregnant. Wrestling with himself, Golden Gray eventually decides to bring the woman along with him, because the heroic act will be an anecdote. After his sixth hour of travel, Golden Gray arrives at an empty cabin where he decides to rest, suspecting that this is the cabin where his father lives. He sets his trunk on the dirt floor, finds water for his horse and then tends to the woman in carriage, setting her on the bed in the cabin's second bedroom. After surveying the cabin, Golden Gray struggles to set a fire and later gets drunk from the contents of a jug of liquor. A young black boy arrives at the cabin and indicates that Mr. Henry has asked him to tend the animals while he was away.
Henry Lestory (Hunters Hunter, Mr. Henry) is "instantly alarmed" by the presence of Golden Gray and his carriage. Henry views Golden Gray as "a whiteman" and equates his presence with trouble. The father and son do not immediately speak to one another as Henry interrogates the boy, Honor, who explains that the white man has brought the bleeding and pregnant black woman into the cabin. Henry leaves the room and after surveying the cabin and discovering the empty jug of consumed liquor, he curtly asks Golden Gray "Do we know one another?" The impact of the young man's reply, "No. Daddy. We don't." is mitigated by Wild's screams. Honor and Henry assist in the delivery of the child and Honor is sent to inform his mother and the other women of the village, as it is clear that Wild has no intention of nursing her child. The conversation between the father and son is tense and emotionally unrewarding. Henry explains that Vera Louise never informed him of the pregnancy and that "A son ain't what a woman say. A son is what a man do." Golden Gray's sober thoughts are mostly of anger and he considers shooting Henry. Of course, he neither vocalizes nor acts upon the idea.
The narrator then confirms Joe's exodus out of Vienna, after racist's burned the town down. Soon after the fires' onset (they burned for months), Joe returned to the cane field to search for Wild, hoping to communicate with her and confirm that she is his mother. Additionally, Joe is worried that fires may have confused Wild and she could have easily wandered herself into a doomed situation. During one of the childhood trips with Hunters Hunter, Joe joked about hunting the wild woman and interprets Hunter's stoic response: "Šthat woman is somebody's mother and somebody ought to take care," as an intimation that Wild was his mother. Joe takes three journeys to find his mother, traveling into her favorite cane fields and much of the nearby forest.
At the end of the novel, Felice has decided to visit the Traces. She too, has heard Joe Trace sobbing in the windows and she decides to make an effort to cheer him up. Perhaps Joe is crying because Violet has returned the photograph of Dorcas to her aunt, Alice Manfred. Felice makes her visit to the Traces in the middle of her errands. When she enters their apartment, she is carrying the Okeh record and butcher's parcel of meat that her mother requested she bring when returning home.
As Violet is in the kitchen, preparing a catfish dinner for the three of them, Joe speaks expresses his gratitude to Felice and tells her that her visits and kind words are helping them get their lives back together. Felice confesses to Joe that there is more information that she has not given him, a message that Dorcas asked her to relay as she was dying. The message is: "There's only one apple. Just one. Tell Joe." Felice intends to cheer Joe up, telling him that he was the last thing on Dorcas' mind. Still, Joe is more sad than pleased. After the dinner, they hear music "floated inŠthrough the open window." The Traces start dancing, "funny, like old people do" and they invite Felice to join in, though she declines. Joe sits down when the music ends and says that the apartment needs some birds. Felice adds that a Victrola (record player) would be suitable as well and that she'll being some records to play for them
Syllabus of MA English Part-1 GCUF
Government College University, Faisalabad
Department of English
9. Syllabus of MA English
Part-1
PAPERS MARKS
Paper 1 (Classical Poetry) 100
Paper II (Drama) 100
Paper III (Novel) 100
Paper IV (Prose) 100
Paper V (American Literature) 100
TOTAL 500
(SYLLABUS AND COURSES OF READING)
PAPER I (CLASSICAL POETRY)
1. Chaucer The Prologue to The Canterbury Tales
2. Milton Paradise Lost Books I & IX
3. Donne Love/Divine Poems
4. Pope The Rape of the lock
5. Wyatt The Long Love That in My Thought: Doth Harbor,
Whose List to Hunt,
Madam Withouen Many Words,
They Flee from Me
Is it Possible Forget Not Yet
What should I say stand who so list
6. Surrey My Friend the Things That do Attain Love
That Doth Reign and Live Within My Thought
26
So Cruel Prison
Wyatt Resteth Here
PAPER PATTERN
Question No 1 is Compulsory.
Explanation with reference to context from the prescribed texts:
Four stanzas to be attempted out of eight .
PAPER II: (DRAMA)
1. Sophocles Oedipus Rex
2. Marlowe Dr. Faustus.
3. Shakespeare Othello
The Winter’s Tale
4.Wilde The Importance of Being Earnest.
PAPER PATTERN
First question is compulsory.
Explanation with reference to the context:
Attempt 3 out of 5 passages
PAPER III: (NOVEL)
1. Trollope Barchester Towers
2. Jane Austen Pride & Prejudice
3. G. Eliot Adam Bede
4. Dickens A Tale of Two Cities
5. Hardy The Return of the Native
27
PAPER IV: (PROSE)
1. Bacon Essays: Of truth, Of Death, Of Revenge, Of Adversity,
Of Simulation and Dissimulation, Of Parents
and Children, Of Great Place, Of Nobilities, Of
Superstition, Of Friendship, Of Ambition, Of
Studies.
2. Jonathan Swift Gulliver’s Travels
3. Bertrand Russell Unpopular Essays
4. Edward Said Introduction of Culture & Imperialism
5. Seamus Heaney The Redress of Poetry
PAPER V: (AMERICAN LITERATURE)
Poetry
1. Adrienne Rich Diving into the Wreck
Aunt Jennifer’s Tiger
Final Notation.
Gabriel
2. Sylvia Plath Ariel
Morning Song
The Bee Meeting
The Arrival of the Bee Box
You’re
3. Richard Wilbur Still Citizen Sparrow
After the Last Bulletin
Marginalia
4. John Ashbury Melodic Train
28
Painter
Drama:
1. O’Neill Mourning Becomes Electra
2. Miller The Crucible
Novel:
1. Ernest Hemingway For Whom the Bell Tolls.
2. Toni Morrison Jazz
Chairperson,
Department of English
29
Government College University, Faisalabad
Department of English
Department of English
9. Syllabus of MA English
Part-1
PAPERS MARKS
Paper 1 (Classical Poetry) 100
Paper II (Drama) 100
Paper III (Novel) 100
Paper IV (Prose) 100
Paper V (American Literature) 100
TOTAL 500
(SYLLABUS AND COURSES OF READING)
PAPER I (CLASSICAL POETRY)
1. Chaucer The Prologue to The Canterbury Tales
2. Milton Paradise Lost Books I & IX
3. Donne Love/Divine Poems
4. Pope The Rape of the lock
5. Wyatt The Long Love That in My Thought: Doth Harbor,
Whose List to Hunt,
Madam Withouen Many Words,
They Flee from Me
Is it Possible Forget Not Yet
What should I say stand who so list
6. Surrey My Friend the Things That do Attain Love
That Doth Reign and Live Within My Thought
26
So Cruel Prison
Wyatt Resteth Here
PAPER PATTERN
Question No 1 is Compulsory.
Explanation with reference to context from the prescribed texts:
Four stanzas to be attempted out of eight .
PAPER II: (DRAMA)
1. Sophocles Oedipus Rex
2. Marlowe Dr. Faustus.
3. Shakespeare Othello
The Winter’s Tale
4.Wilde The Importance of Being Earnest.
PAPER PATTERN
First question is compulsory.
Explanation with reference to the context:
Attempt 3 out of 5 passages
PAPER III: (NOVEL)
1. Trollope Barchester Towers
2. Jane Austen Pride & Prejudice
3. G. Eliot Adam Bede
4. Dickens A Tale of Two Cities
5. Hardy The Return of the Native
27
PAPER IV: (PROSE)
1. Bacon Essays: Of truth, Of Death, Of Revenge, Of Adversity,
Of Simulation and Dissimulation, Of Parents
and Children, Of Great Place, Of Nobilities, Of
Superstition, Of Friendship, Of Ambition, Of
Studies.
2. Jonathan Swift Gulliver’s Travels
3. Bertrand Russell Unpopular Essays
4. Edward Said Introduction of Culture & Imperialism
5. Seamus Heaney The Redress of Poetry
PAPER V: (AMERICAN LITERATURE)
Poetry
1. Adrienne Rich Diving into the Wreck
Aunt Jennifer’s Tiger
Final Notation.
Gabriel
2. Sylvia Plath Ariel
Morning Song
The Bee Meeting
The Arrival of the Bee Box
You’re
3. Richard Wilbur Still Citizen Sparrow
After the Last Bulletin
Marginalia
4. John Ashbury Melodic Train
28
Painter
Drama:
1. O’Neill Mourning Becomes Electra
2. Miller The Crucible
Novel:
1. Ernest Hemingway For Whom the Bell Tolls.
2. Toni Morrison Jazz
Chairperson,
Department of English
29
Government College University, Faisalabad
Department of English
What Is Apic
An epic (from the Ancient Greek adjective ἐπικός (epikos), from ἔπος (epos) "word, story, poem"[1]) is a lengthy narrative poem, ordinarily concerning a serious subject containing details of heroic deeds and events significant to a culture or nation.[2] Oral poetry may qualify as an epic, and Albert Lord and Milman Parry have argued that classical epics were fundamentally an oral poetic form. Nonetheless, epics have been written down at least since the works of Virgil, Dante Alighieri, and John Milton. Many probably would not have survived if not written down. The first epics are known as primary, or original, epics. One such epic is the Old English story Beowulf.[3] Epics that attempt to imitate these like Milton's Paradise Lost are known as literary, or secondary, epics. Another type of epic poetry is epyllion (plural: epyllia), which is a brief narrative poem with a romantic or mythological theme. The term, which means 'little epic', came into use in the nineteenth century. It refers primarily to the erudite, shorter hexameter poems of the Hellenistic period and the similar works composed at Rome from the age of the neoterics; to a lesser degree, the term includes some poems of the English Renaissance, particularly those influenced by Ovid.[citation needed] The most famous example of classical epyllion is perhaps Catullus 64.
In the East, the most famous works of epic poetry are the Ramayana and Mahabharata, with the Iliad and the Odyssey, which form part of the Western canon, fulfilling the same function in the Western world
When we refer to epic poetry in the context of ancient literature, we usually refer to the two Greek poems attributed to
I. Homer,
1. The Iliad (about the role of Achilles in the Trojan War), and
2. The Odyssey (about the misadventures of Odysseus trying to return from the Trojan War and the shenanigans of the suitors trying to usurp his place back in Ithaca),
II. and the derivative one in Latin by Vergil,
• The Aeneid (about the travails of the Trojan prince Aeneas on his way from the Trojan War to Italy where he founds a new home for the future Romans).
These book-long poems are unlike most other poems we are familiar with, and not just for their length. They are different in that:
1. they switch around from scene to scene and
2. there is dialogue, like a play.
Epic = Drama + Narrative
Speeches make up so much of epic poems that Plato called epic poetry a mixture of dramatic and narrative literature, according to classical scholar Albin Lesky.
Oral Tradition of Epic Poetry
Lesky says the speeches might be a throwback to the oral tradition of epic, where the epic story was passed down, from master storyteller to pupil, possibly within a family. The storyteller or "rhapsode" played a lyre as he sang his improvised epic song. The epic song was composed of elements from myth and folklore welded into place by means of the rhapsode's skilled insertion of formulaic elements.
Epic Hero
The central figure of ancient epic poetry is the hero. In the 3 major ancient classical epics, the heroes are
1. the Greek Achilles, in the Iliad,
2. the Greek Odysseus in the Odyssey, and
3. the Trojan Aeneas in the Aeneid.
Characteristics of Epic Poetry
• Epic heroes come from the heroic era, which precedes the Archaic Age in ancient Greece and the founding of Rome by the legendary king Romulus.
• The heroes of epic literature are bound by a code of honor.
• The form of the epic is verse -- Dactylic Hexameters -- marking it immediately as poetry.
• The language of epic poetry is often formulaic.
• The material of epic poetry is elevated; it does not dwell on the banal details of life.
• Epic poetry tends to have catalogues. Catalogues (of things like ships or booty) tend to be long.
• Speeches are frequent.
Albin Lesky, A History of Greek Literature, translated by James Willis and Cornelis de heer. New York: Thomas Y. Cromwell Company. 1966.
The epic is generally defined: A long narrative poem on a great and serious subject, related in an elevated style, and centered on a heroic or quasi-divine figure on whose actions depends the fate of a tribe, a nation, or the human race. The traditional epics were shaped by a literary artist from historical and legendary materials which had developed in the oral traditions of his nation during a period of expansion and warfare (Beowulf, The Odyssey, The Iliad).
Epic Conventions, or characteristics common to both types include:
1. The hero is a figure of great national or even cosmic importance, usually the ideal man of his culture. He often has superhuman or divine traits. He has an imposing physical stature and is greater in all ways than the common man.
2. The setting is vast in scope. It covers great geographical distances, perhaps even visiting the underworld, other wortlds, other times.
3. The action consists of deeds of valor or superhuman courage (especially in battle).
4. Supernatural forces interest themselves in the action and intervene at times. The intervention of the gods is called "machinery."
5. The style of writing is elevated, even ceremonial.
6. Additional conventions: certainly all are not always present)
1. Opens by stating the theme of the epic.
2. Writer invokes a Muse, one of the nine daughters of Zeus. The poet prays to the muses to provide him with divine inspiration to tell the story of a great hero.
3. Narrative opens in media res. This means "in the middle of things," usually with the hero at his lowest point. Earlier portions of the story appear later as flashbacks.
4. Catalogs and geneaologies are given. These long lists of objects, places, and people place the finite action of the epic within a broader, universal context. Oftentimes, the poet is also paying homage to the ancestors of audience members.
5. Main characters give extended formal speeches.
6. Use of the epic simile. A standard simile is a comparison using "like" or "as." An epic or Homeric simile is a more involved, ornate comparison, extended in great detail.
7. Heavy use of repetition and stock phrases. The poet repeats passages that consist of several lines in various sections of the epic and uses homeric epithets, short, recurrent phrases used to describe people, places, or things. Both made the poem easier to memorize.
Aristotle described six characteristics: "fable, action, characters, sentiments, diction, and meter." Since then, critics have used these criteria to describe two kinds of epics:
Serious Epic
• fable and action are grave and solemn
• characterrs are the highest
• sentiments and diction preserve the sublime
• verse Comic Epic
• fable and action are light and ridiculous
• characters are inferior
• sentiments and diction preserve the ludicrous
• verse
When the first novelists began writing what were later called novels, they thought they were writing "prose epics." Daniel Defoe, Henry Fielding, and Samuel Ruichardson attempted the comic form. Yet what they wrote were true novels, not epics, and there are differences.
The Epic
• oral and poetic language
• public and remarkable deeds
• historical or legendary hero
• collective enterprise
• generalized setting in time and place
• rigid traditional structure according to previous patterns Comic Epic
• written and referential language
• private, daily experiencer
• humanized "ordinary" characters
• individual enterprise
• particularized setting in time and place
• structure determined by actions of character within a moral pattern
“An extended narrative poem,
usually simple in construction, but grand in scope,
exalted in style, and heroic in theme, often giving expression to the ideals of a nation or race. ”
Sidelight: Homer, the author of The Iliad and The Odyssey, is sometimes referred to as the "Father of Epic Poetry." Based on the conventions he established, classical epics began with an argument and an invocation to a guiding spirit, then started the narrative in medias res. In modern use, the term, "epic," is generally applied to all lengthy works on matters of great importance. The Rhapsodoi, professional reciters, memorized his work and passed it on by word of mouth as part of an oral tradition.
Back to Beowulf or Assignments or Home
In the East, the most famous works of epic poetry are the Ramayana and Mahabharata, with the Iliad and the Odyssey, which form part of the Western canon, fulfilling the same function in the Western world
When we refer to epic poetry in the context of ancient literature, we usually refer to the two Greek poems attributed to
I. Homer,
1. The Iliad (about the role of Achilles in the Trojan War), and
2. The Odyssey (about the misadventures of Odysseus trying to return from the Trojan War and the shenanigans of the suitors trying to usurp his place back in Ithaca),
II. and the derivative one in Latin by Vergil,
• The Aeneid (about the travails of the Trojan prince Aeneas on his way from the Trojan War to Italy where he founds a new home for the future Romans).
These book-long poems are unlike most other poems we are familiar with, and not just for their length. They are different in that:
1. they switch around from scene to scene and
2. there is dialogue, like a play.
Epic = Drama + Narrative
Speeches make up so much of epic poems that Plato called epic poetry a mixture of dramatic and narrative literature, according to classical scholar Albin Lesky.
Oral Tradition of Epic Poetry
Lesky says the speeches might be a throwback to the oral tradition of epic, where the epic story was passed down, from master storyteller to pupil, possibly within a family. The storyteller or "rhapsode" played a lyre as he sang his improvised epic song. The epic song was composed of elements from myth and folklore welded into place by means of the rhapsode's skilled insertion of formulaic elements.
Epic Hero
The central figure of ancient epic poetry is the hero. In the 3 major ancient classical epics, the heroes are
1. the Greek Achilles, in the Iliad,
2. the Greek Odysseus in the Odyssey, and
3. the Trojan Aeneas in the Aeneid.
Characteristics of Epic Poetry
• Epic heroes come from the heroic era, which precedes the Archaic Age in ancient Greece and the founding of Rome by the legendary king Romulus.
• The heroes of epic literature are bound by a code of honor.
• The form of the epic is verse -- Dactylic Hexameters -- marking it immediately as poetry.
• The language of epic poetry is often formulaic.
• The material of epic poetry is elevated; it does not dwell on the banal details of life.
• Epic poetry tends to have catalogues. Catalogues (of things like ships or booty) tend to be long.
• Speeches are frequent.
Albin Lesky, A History of Greek Literature, translated by James Willis and Cornelis de heer. New York: Thomas Y. Cromwell Company. 1966.
The epic is generally defined: A long narrative poem on a great and serious subject, related in an elevated style, and centered on a heroic or quasi-divine figure on whose actions depends the fate of a tribe, a nation, or the human race. The traditional epics were shaped by a literary artist from historical and legendary materials which had developed in the oral traditions of his nation during a period of expansion and warfare (Beowulf, The Odyssey, The Iliad).
Epic Conventions, or characteristics common to both types include:
1. The hero is a figure of great national or even cosmic importance, usually the ideal man of his culture. He often has superhuman or divine traits. He has an imposing physical stature and is greater in all ways than the common man.
2. The setting is vast in scope. It covers great geographical distances, perhaps even visiting the underworld, other wortlds, other times.
3. The action consists of deeds of valor or superhuman courage (especially in battle).
4. Supernatural forces interest themselves in the action and intervene at times. The intervention of the gods is called "machinery."
5. The style of writing is elevated, even ceremonial.
6. Additional conventions: certainly all are not always present)
1. Opens by stating the theme of the epic.
2. Writer invokes a Muse, one of the nine daughters of Zeus. The poet prays to the muses to provide him with divine inspiration to tell the story of a great hero.
3. Narrative opens in media res. This means "in the middle of things," usually with the hero at his lowest point. Earlier portions of the story appear later as flashbacks.
4. Catalogs and geneaologies are given. These long lists of objects, places, and people place the finite action of the epic within a broader, universal context. Oftentimes, the poet is also paying homage to the ancestors of audience members.
5. Main characters give extended formal speeches.
6. Use of the epic simile. A standard simile is a comparison using "like" or "as." An epic or Homeric simile is a more involved, ornate comparison, extended in great detail.
7. Heavy use of repetition and stock phrases. The poet repeats passages that consist of several lines in various sections of the epic and uses homeric epithets, short, recurrent phrases used to describe people, places, or things. Both made the poem easier to memorize.
Aristotle described six characteristics: "fable, action, characters, sentiments, diction, and meter." Since then, critics have used these criteria to describe two kinds of epics:
Serious Epic
• fable and action are grave and solemn
• characterrs are the highest
• sentiments and diction preserve the sublime
• verse Comic Epic
• fable and action are light and ridiculous
• characters are inferior
• sentiments and diction preserve the ludicrous
• verse
When the first novelists began writing what were later called novels, they thought they were writing "prose epics." Daniel Defoe, Henry Fielding, and Samuel Ruichardson attempted the comic form. Yet what they wrote were true novels, not epics, and there are differences.
The Epic
• oral and poetic language
• public and remarkable deeds
• historical or legendary hero
• collective enterprise
• generalized setting in time and place
• rigid traditional structure according to previous patterns Comic Epic
• written and referential language
• private, daily experiencer
• humanized "ordinary" characters
• individual enterprise
• particularized setting in time and place
• structure determined by actions of character within a moral pattern
“An extended narrative poem,
usually simple in construction, but grand in scope,
exalted in style, and heroic in theme, often giving expression to the ideals of a nation or race. ”
Sidelight: Homer, the author of The Iliad and The Odyssey, is sometimes referred to as the "Father of Epic Poetry." Based on the conventions he established, classical epics began with an argument and an invocation to a guiding spirit, then started the narrative in medias res. In modern use, the term, "epic," is generally applied to all lengthy works on matters of great importance. The Rhapsodoi, professional reciters, memorized his work and passed it on by word of mouth as part of an oral tradition.
Back to Beowulf or Assignments or Home
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