In Swinburne’s The Forsaken Garden has for its setting the West Undercliff in the extreme south of the Isle of Wight, an Isle off the south coast of England. The choice of one such desolate, far-off place gives us the impression that the place is as distanced from Swinburns as is one extreme corner... Sign in to see full entry.
T.S. Eliot’s poem “The Portrait of a Lady” (composed 1910) is a descriptive monologue concerned with the meetings between a middle-aged society lady and a much younger man during a course spanning ten months. It was suggested by the poet’s visit to one Miss Adelaine Moffat, a well-known Boston... Sign in to see full entry.
Aeschylus’ Agamemnon is the story of a hereditary blood-feud. It deals with only the middle phase in the gruesome happenings which span three generations. Cly·tem·nes·tra ˌklī-təm-ˈne-strə: the wife and murderess of Agamemnon. In the opening scene Agamemnon returns to his kingdom in triumph after... Sign in to see full entry.
Mutability Shelley’s ‘Mutability’, unlike his other poems, is somber and romantically philosophical, with clear and vivid imaginative details drawing a parallel of human experiences to that of Nature’s. This poem was first published in 1816 in the collection, Alastor, or The Spirit of Solitude: And... Sign in to see full entry.
Hailed as one of the greatest Romanian playwrights, Eugene Ionesco wrote his dramas in French. Having spent his childhood in utter poverty, he came to believe that life's paradoxes were absurd and "out of harmony". Thus, the play, Rhinoceros, belongs to the Theatre of the Absurd. – the theatre that... Sign in to see full entry.
Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot is the story of two tramps, Vladimir and Estragon who meet at a country roadside spot, waiting for Godot, an enigmatic being, but he never arrives. His non-arrival provides the only fact about him in the whole pay. Many attempts have been made to identify Godot and... Sign in to see full entry.
Prelude is the greatest long poem in the English language after Paradise Lost. Its comparison with the great seventeenth-century epic is in some respects a happy one since Milton was (after Coleridge) Wordsworth's greatest idol. The Prelude, despite its epic proportions (he wrote it intermittently... Sign in to see full entry.
Modem critics have held many different views of Milton’s Paradise Lost. Among these the major objection has been that the Book, a twelve volume epic, is militantly Christian and does not adhere to diverse viewpoints of the modern age. Milton’s religious views are actually a mirror of the age in... Sign in to see full entry.
No living thing appeared in earth or air, And, save the flowing water’s peaceful voice, Sound there was none - but, Lo! an uncouth shape. Shown by the sudden turning of the road, So near that slipping back into the shade Of a thick hawthorn, I could mark him well Myself unseen. He was of stature... Sign in to see full entry.
“Lycidas”. by John Milton (1608 – 1674) is technically speaking, a pastoral elegy. Death is the inspiration and sole theme of an elegy, and one of its subtype is the pastoral elegy originated by the Sicilian Greek poets – Theocritus, Bion and Moschus, their funeral dirges being known in antiquity as... Sign in to see full entry.