Monday 28 November 2011

Deborah Parsons on Modernism

The beginning of the twentieth century witnessed an international revolution in the arts, as a wide range of cultural groups, aesthetic movements and individual writers and artists sought to extend and transform their relationship with and representation of reality. 

The word ‘modernism’ represents the retrospective fusion of these very diverse aesthetic experiments into the comprehensive style or social and psychological temper of a ‘modern’ age typically dated between 1910 and 1930. In their now classical guide, Bradbury and McFarlane describe Modernism as ‘an art of a rapidly modernizing world, a world of rapid industrial development, advanced technology, ubrbanisation, secularisation and mass forms of social life’, but also ‘the art of a world from which many traditional certainties had departed, and a certain sort of Victorian confidence not only in the onward progress of mankind but in the very solidity and visibility of reality itself has evaporated’ (Bradbury and McFarlane, 1976:57).

This double condition results in a central contradiction: depending on context and perspective, modernism can be seen as a vigorous creative impulse to ‘make it new’, through a determined break with the stultifying artistic conventions of the immediate past and an embrace of the modern, or as a literature of crisis and dislocation, desperately insisting on the power of art to give shape to a world that has lost all order and stability.

Because modernism connotes a cultural sensibility rather than a particular period in time, however, it is not simply interchangeable with strictly historical references such as ‘the early twentieth century’ or ‘the 1920s’, even though it overlaps with them.

The label ‘high modernism’ refers specifically to the canonical account of Anglo-American literary experimentation  between the world wars, characterised by a turn away from direct modes of representation towards greater abstraction and aesthetic impersonality and self-reflexivity. Such aesthetic formalism is typically identified with the canonical figures of Ezra Pound and T.S.Eliot, as well as Joyce and Woolf.

As a result of the insights of post-structuralist, feminist and post-colonial critics, however, the concept of modernism is now widely recognised to be open to much broader interpretation and redefinition than this reading previously acknowledged. 

Work Cited: Parsons, Deborah. Theorists of the Modernist Novel. New York; Routledge, 2007. Print.

Sunday 27 November 2011

Rhetoric Lesson feed - Reg

Dear Students of II BA English Literature,
Hope you've got your textual notes for your IV Semester Paper on Rhetoric.
In case you haven't, please find it uploaded in a easy-to-download and printable format at the link here:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/80768479/Practical-Elements-of-Rhetoric

Regards and all best wishes,
Rufus
Course teacher

Thursday 24 November 2011

Oratory Topics..:

Dear Students of II BA English Litt.,
Your topics for Oratory as part of your Paper on Rhetoric, are given below. You may opt for any one from among the options given. Moreover, kindly check back for updates on the Lesson Plan for the Paper.
1.   Alcohol should be made illegal.
2.   Children should provide room and board for their aging parents.
3.   Studying grammar is more important than practising conversation skills.
4.   Television is the leading cause of violence in today's society.
5.   Dogs make better companions than cats.
6.   Smoking should be permitted in public places.
7.   Girls are better students than boys.
8.   Reading English is more difficult than writing English.
9.   Summer is the best season of the year.
10. College students should wear uniforms.
11. 21 should be the legal driving age around the world.

Tuesday 22 November 2011

Test your Word Power and Memory Power..:

Dear Students, These are the words you need to remember as part of your 'Word Building' schedule in class. Now, try remembering each word given here, by associating it with its corresponding number. All the best:-) 
1. Dishevelled appearance - untidy
2. A baffling problem - puzzling
3. lenient parent - not strict
4. repulsive personality - disgusting
5. audacious attempt - bold
6. parry a blow - ward off/avoid
7. prevalent disease - widespread
8. ominous report - threatening
9. an incredible story - unbelievable
10. an opthalmologist - eye doctor
11. will supersede the old law - take the place of 
12. an anonymous donor - name not known

Saturday 19 November 2011

A Tribute to a Legend..:

The Website inaugural in honour of the memory of Dr.Vishnu Bhat, held at TGP Kalyana Mandapam, Tambaram, on Friday, 18 November 2011, saw a grateful gathering of myriad minds, who had been touched by the spell of this literary wizard in one way or the other. The life of Dr.Vishnu Bhat – the teacher, philosopher, guru and friend was an inspiration and a motivation to innumerable students and staff alike, now spread far and wide across this globe, lightening lives. 

Dr.Jayaraman and Dr.Neelakandan
The programme began at 3.15 pm and ended at 5.30 pm. Many scholars paid their tributes, the notable one being Dr.Jayaraman, his bosom friend and soul mate. Given below are excerpts from the tributes/eulogies in honour of the memory of the late Dr.Vishnu Bhat.

Firstly, Dr.Ganesh, speaking of his Guru, said: 

Dr.Vishnu Bhat breathed literature. The kind of man that he was, was evident in the way in which he helped his students, right from the way in which he helped them prepare for a CA test, or an MA Project or an MPhil project, or a PhD Scholar, with the same enthusiasm and energy, without looking for standard. Sir did not like the word ‘standard’ – a word that any teacher today flaunts. He always said that the interest level must come up. So he will teach anybody anything at anytime. 

Tuesday 1 November 2011

Tackling the Question Paper [Semester III]

Tackling the Question Paper - Semester III - Part II English

The first three Essay questions carry 20x3=60 marks each, and so give your best time and effort to these three questions. You will have one question each from Poetry/Prose/Short Stories with internal choice too!  
Spend between twenty and thirty minutes on each ESSAY question, which totally takes 1 hr and 30 mts of your time.

Essay questions are meant to be at least three to four sides in length. Do not waste answer sheets by writing a mere five or six lines in it. Make sure you write at least a minimum of 14 lines per page.

Tackling the Question Paper [Semester I]

Tackling the Question Paper for Semester I:

Firstly, let us deal with the first three Essay questions that carry 20x3=60 marks each.
Spend between twenty and thirty minutes on each ESSAY question, which totally takes 1 hr and 30 mts of your time. 

For answering essay questions, give a neat, catchy introduction. Use textual quotations to authenticate your views. Do not write extensively about the author’s biography. It is not needed! And, please... do not write the story. The examiner does not expect you to write the story, which even a fourth grader can write down with extreme finesse. On the other hand, the examiner expects you to give a critical evaluation of the text that you have studied. A critical analysis involves a creative analysis.  And, always stick to one tense form. If you start with the present tense, continue in the same tense form till the end of your essay. Finally, while summing up your ESSAY, remember to make it memorable!