English Study Hub

Canonization is the act by which the Roman Catholic Church officially declares a dead man as a saint. In John Donne's famous love-lyric ''The Canonization'' , the poet expresses his desire to be canonized or to be announced as the saint of love through excellent conceits and imageries. The love of the poet and his beloved is supreme and noble, they are models of love. So they will be immortalized and honoured as the saints of love after their death. Though no one will officially declare them to be canonized, he expects that they will be canonized through their love lyrics and sonnets. The lovers are devoted to each other as a saint is devoted to God. Thus, they are canonized by their holy passion of love . The significance of the title of the poem is exceptionally high. John Donne, who is considered to be the founder and leader of the metaphysical school of poetry, has revealed his desire to become legendary and immortal, through his love poems and lyrics. We fin...

Who is the hero of Paradise Lost? Satan or Adam? Discuss with your logics.                         or Satan embodies all the qualities of an epic hero-justify your logics with reference from the book.                            or Critically examine the character of Satan as presented by Milton in ''Paradise Lost'' Much controversy has clustered round the question as to who is the hero of Paradise Lost. The idea that Satan is the hero , or at least a type of hero is widespread, also John Milton never directly mentioned him as the hero. There are very sensible persons who advocate the claim of Satan, and others, that of Adam. Denis Saurat, a French critic puts forward the strange thesis that Milton himself is the hero of Pa...

In Shakespeare's Macbeth , Lady Macbeth is made to act as a catalyst in Lord Macbeth's evil doings. She has definitely the greatest ambition, supremacy of will, cruelty and dissimulation among Shakespearean heroines. She obviously does not lack courage. She has a paucity of intellect. She shows enormous self-control, but very little skill. To Bradley, the laying of the bloody daggers on the pillows of the grooms, as if they were determined to advertise their guilt, was a mistake on her part, which can be explained only to her lack of intellect. In comparison with her husband, she appears extremely dull.    Even though Macbeth is generally the one to have the final say in the many killings that take place in the play, Lady Macbeth plays the role of a villain alongside him. If Macbeth frets over something she has instructed him to do, she mocks him by saying that he would be less of a man if he does not follow their plan. She gives Macbeth a short lecture in deceptiveness wh...

Phaedra , is a play by Roman philosopher Lucius Annaeus Seneca , which recounts the tale of of Phaedra, the queen of Athens, wife of Theseus, and her overwhelming lust for her stepson, Hippolytus. In the view of Greek Mythology and the tragedy Hippolytus by Greek dramatist Euripides , Seneca's Phaedra is one of several aesthetic explorations of this adverse story. Seneca portrays the appellation appearance as alive and absolute in the following of her stepson, while in added iterations of the allegory she is added of an acquiescent victim of fate. This Phaedra takes on the artful attributes and the acrimony generally assigned to the Nurse character. In this play, we find Hippolytus a very poor young man who spends most of his time hunting and sacrifices to Artemis , goddess of Chastity and Hunting. He is a devout disciple of the goddess Artemis. He has an intense aversion towards women. He does not want to pollute his mind with the thoughts of Love. He is a misogynist. He ...

Why is Thomas Kyd called English Seneca? Or Senecan Elements in The Spanish tragedy Lucius Aenius Seneca was a Roman dramatist. He was born in 4BC-65AD. He was the greatest playwright in Roman literature. He wrote 90 dramas in Latin language. Thomas Kyd is the blind followers of the Roman literature especially the Roman Seneca. Thomas Kyd is very much influenced by Senecan drama. That’s why he is called the English Seneca.             At that time Nero was a notorious Emperor of Rome. Seneca was the home tutor of Nero. For this reason Seneca could observe the nature of his mother. She was a vicious woman. This incident influences Seneca to write drama. His drama is full of blood shed, murder and revenge. That’s why Senecan dramas are not suitable for stage. They are suitable for reading in a chamber or on a closet. For this reason they are called chamber drama or closet drama. Now we are going to discuss about the dram...

John Millington Synge, an Irish Literary Renaissance playwright, has always used nature as background, character and symbol in his plays. Nature is the protagonist or antagonist in many of his plays specially in Riders To The Sea where nature fills the minds of the characters and mounds their actions, even their moods and fate. The play is dominated by fate in the shape of sea. In the play we find that the sea is that which provides a living for the characters of the small cottages. At the same time it is also that which causes their sufferings. In Riders to the Sea , the sea represents fate . The sea is a great factor in the life of the people of Aran Islands. It is the source of their living. Moreover, the sea gives them passage to the markets in the mainland where they go to buy or sell things. There is no alternative for them but to ride the sea to maintain their family's existence. But at the same time the sea devours the men-folk as they go out for earning their living...

'Because I Could Not Stop for Death' is one of Emily Dickinson's most enigmatic poems regarding death. The idea of death in this poem is not portrayed as lonely or scared, but as serene and content. She treated death as more like a person rather than just an event in one's life. In this poem the speaker is communicating from beyond the grave, and describing her journey with death. Death is one of the foremost topics in Dickinson's poetry. Death is sometimes gentle, sometimes menacing and sometimes simply inevitable. In 'Because I Could Not Stop for Death', she personifies death and presents it as an actual character who is gentle and kind in nature, who kindly takes away the speaker for the expedition to the eternity. The poem starts with the titled line where death is personified by the use of capital D. The opening stanza immediately establishes what kind of person Death is:      "Because I could not stop for Death -  He kindly stopped ...

The power of immortality is one of the main themes in William Shakespeare's 'Sonnet 18' and 'Sonnet 55'. It is a stock theme which had been used by many poets, but nearly all of them were mainly concerned with their own fame in the future. Shakespeare uniquely thinks poetry as a tool to immortalize his friend. He is not concerned with his own glory. The Roman poets say: “Because of my poems I will never die”. But Shakespeare says: “Because of my poems you will never die”. What distinguishes Shakespeare is that he values the identity of his friend and wants to immortalize him through his verses. Both in 'Sonnet 18' and 'Sonnet 55', we find an impassioned burst of confidence as the poet claims to have the power to keep his friend’s memory alive forever. In 'Sonnet 18', the poet starts with his hyperbolic attitude towards his friend: "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate:"...