The Silver Tassie: A Melange of Dramatic Techniques

Dramatic criticism of any playwright has almost always taken two divergent directions, one considering plays as literature and the other considering them as theatre. It is true of O'Casey's plays also. Critics of the first direction, notable among whom are T.R. Henn, Raymond Williams, Ronaki Peacock and Moody Prior, have expressed dissatisfaction with O'Casey's achievement as a playwright because his plays are not good literature. On the other hand, theatre critics like John Gassner, George Jean Nathen, Brooks Atkinson and Maxwell Anderson hold O'Casey in high esteem for his remarkable sense of the theatre. When Yeats criticized The Silver Tassie, of course unjustifiably,1 he was of the party of the first group of critics

The Thematic Warping and Woofing of God and Nature in the Tapestry of Tagore’s Gitanjali

Tagore is a man of versatile genius—a painter, a dramatist, a short story writer, a teacher and primarily a poet—Tagore is primarily a poet. He himself explains “I am a poet and nothing else” (Tagore). He is a poet par excellence. He believes that art is the illumination of feelings. For Tagore, art was not for art’s sake. He strongly opined that, poetry elevates us to a higher world and interprets to us the lessons of nature and the mysteries of God. According to Tagore, the object of poetry is to elevate man’s soul from the worldly pursuits and to strike a harmonious chord and perfect communion between man, his immediate surroundings and the ultimate reality. He felt that there should be unity between the individual and the universe. Tagore felt that the purpose of poetry is to ennoble mankind and emancipate man’s soul from materialism which militates against the essential goodness of man. Poetry should aim at striking a harmonious balance between man and his relatedness to the universe. Tagore believed that, to achieve creative unity between man and the universe, what is required is emotion. He felt that emotions are essential for the creative writings especially poetry. Defining poetry, Tagore writes in ‘What is Art?

Teacher Competency and the Needs of the Learner

In any educational system there are broadly speaking, five clearly defined components. They are: (1) students, their needs and expectations; (2) teachers, their competencies and commitment; (3) infrastructure which includes buildings, libraries, laboratories and classrooms; and (4) syllabi of courses, their framing and execution; and (5) most importantly a clearly conceived and unambiguously stated objective. Detailed discussions on the theoretical aspects of these components can go on ad infinitum. In order to make our discussions meaningful and relevant, it will, of course, be desirable to read our analysis of the related issues in the context of our own situation in the country. It will not be an exaggeration to assert that the area which attracted the least serious attention of those responsible for the governance of our educational system during the post-independence period is education. We may gloat over the unbridled proliferation of educational institutions and explosion of student-population flocking to these institutions. But the big question remains and that is whether our educational system as a whole is founded on any definite objective which alone can provide a sustainable direction. Flexibility in objectives is understandable but a radical deviation from the age-old purpose of liberal education meant for shaping humans into a worthwhile creation of God can only prove disastrous. Education should aim at primarily developing students' personality and chiselling those inherent traits in him with which he is born in God's own image. This assertion may sound too holistic to utilitarian ears. But it has stood the test of time since humanity came into existenc

George Eliot’s Classic Pattern of Characterization in Middlemarch

George Eliot’s complex art of character portrayal has drawn wide-applause. Critics have analyzed her profound and subtle psychological probing into the psyche of her fictional personae, besides drawing their parallelism with actual persons she might have come in contact with. They have also studied the spiritual and ethical solidity or emptiness as well as the moral, mundane, intellectual and transcendental concerns of her characters. To this already adequate and varied studies on Eliot’s art of character portrayal I wish to add another dimension, a structural one, which has hitherto escaped critical scrutiny. In the present paper an attempt has been made to show that sometimes Eliot uses, unconsciously though, the structural pattern of classical tragedy in her delineation of some of her chief protagonists. The theoretical critical framework for this presentation has been taken from Francis Ferguson,1 and the character chosen for analysis is Dorothea Brooke in Eliot’s fictional masterpiece, Middlemarch

The Harvest Festival: Seed-Bed for Future Innovations

Sean O'Casey came in the limelight with his Dublin Trilogy of which the first play, named, The shadow of a gunman, was premiered at the Abbey in 1923.  But he had earlier written three plays- The Frost in the Flower (1917), The Harvest Festival (1918) and The Crimson in the Tricolor (1920)- which were rejected by the Abbey directorate. Of these the first and the last named above are still untraceable and it is "unlikely that either will ever be recovered now."1 However, Luckily the manuscript of The Harvest Festival was acquired by the Berg Collection of the New York Public Library in 1969 and was not available to scholars until 1978. Robert Patrick Murphy has said, "I have not been able to examine. The Harvest Festival. Lola L. Szladits, Curator of the Berg collection of the New York Public Library, considers the holograph a 'museum piece' and maintains an official policy of discouraging access by students."2 it was first published in America in 1978 and in Ireland and Britain in 19809.  It is logical, therefore, that no study on the play could be made until this time, though references to it do occur in a number of book- length studies on O'Casey's plays. But even these stray remarks on the play are made on the basis of what O'Casey himself has to say about it in his Innisfallen Fare thee Well,3 and not on that on any close reading of the text. It is pertinent to notice that even seventeen years after its publication the play is yet to be performed. During his life time O'Casey himself showed no interest in the play in his writings and correspondence; his venture to revise the play remained incomplete; only the first Act is partly revised John O'Riordan has regretted: "The dramatist himself in his meridian years never strove to promote it."4 Even the O'Casey Annual and Sean O'Casey's Review, two major journals aiming at promoting fresh studies and researches on the unexplored areas of O'Casey's writings, have shown singular neglect of this play. Perhaps, drawing a clue from the dramatist himself, some of the major O'Casey scholars in their studies have disparaged the play

A Note on Ambiguity in W.B. Yeats’ “Sailing to Byzantium”

W.B. Yeats is a poet of great artistic honesty and integrity. In his critical statements he has candidly stated his artistic intentions and preoccupations.  For such students of Yeats as have been puzzled by the artistic intentions of the poet in regard to the subject matter of his poetry, he has clarified his stance in his cryptic remark, “I remake myself” in my poetic compositions. Yeats, as every scholar knows it, is paradoxically a very complex and a simple poet.  His complexity lies in his reader’s bewilderment at the contradictory artistic issues and his simplicity lies in its being a key to the unlocking of some of the ambiguities lurking in some of his poems. In his poetry, sometime he raises an issue which develops logically but the conclusion seems to stultify his explicit poetic statement, because the conclusion of the poem is deliberately made meaningfully ambiguous.  His “Sailing to Byzantium” is a poem of this type of complex simplicity.  &nbsp