Indo-English poetry began to be written and until rather recently continued to be written under the influence of the English romantic poets such as Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, Keats, Byron and even Walter Scott. The poetry of the period is marked by a highly subjective tone and uninhibited expression of personal feeling. Also, nature and its variegated scenes form a background, especially nature in its natural untamed manifestations. Witness for example these lines from Toru Dutt’s (1856-1877) poem “Sindhu”, where she presents a beautiful description of the sunset on an Indian lake: Upon the glassy surface fell The last beams of the day, Like fiery darts, that lengthening swells, As breezes wake and play Osiers and willows and on the edge And purple buds and red, Leant down, - and, mid the pale greens edge The louts raised its head And softly, softly hour by hour Light faded and a veil Fell over tree, wave, and flower On came the twilight pale(Dutt1986:90). These romantic poets value spontaneity in thought and expression. Words and images were chosen to turn the familiar into a thing of beauty and tenderness. This early poetry is generally sentimental and sad. Indo-English poetry was first written by Kashiprasad Ghoshe (1809-1873) in 1830. He in ‘The Shair and other Poems’ shares the influence of Walter Scott while ‘The Captive Ladie’ (1849) by Miachel Madhusudan Dutt (1824-1873) is considered to be a long metrical romance written under the influence of Byron(Dwiedi 1980:10-18). After the passing of the ‘Dutt Era’, Nobo Kissen Gosse (1837-1918) and Manmohan Ghose (1869-1924) continued the twin streams of ballad and lyric poetry.Nobo Kissen showed his craftsmanship in the handling of the ballad measure as in ‘Da... ... middle of paper ... ... P.1984. “Modern Indian English Women Poets: An Overview.” Perspective on Indian Poetry in English, Ed. M. K. Naik. New Delhi: Abhinav Publication. Cuddon, J.A.1979. A Dictionary of Literary Terms, Great Britain: Penguin Books. De Souza, Eunice,1997. ed. Nine Indian Women Poets: An Anthology, New Delhi: Oxford. Dwivedi, A.N.1980. Indian Poetry in English: A Literary History and Anthology, New Delhi: Arnold Heinemann Publication. Friedan, Betty.1971. The Feminine Mystique, Harmaodsworth: Penguin Publication. Krishnaswamy, N., Johan Varghese, and Sunita Mishra.2001. Comparative Literary Theory: A Student’s Companion, New Delhi: Macmillan Publishers. Macnicol, Margaret,1923, ed. Poems by Indian Women, Calcutta: Association Press. Rumens, Carol, 1985,ed. Making For the open: The Chatto Book of Post-Feminist Poetry 1964-84, London: Chatto and Windus Publications.
Armstrong, Isobel. 'A Music of Thine Own': Women's Poetry. in: Joseph Bristow, Victorian Women Poets. Emily Bronte, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Christina Rossetti. Basingstoke and London: Macmillan Press Limited, 1995, 32-63.
Everett, Nicholas From The Oxford Companion to Twentieth-century Poetry in English. Ed. Ian Hamiltong. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994. Copyright 1994 by Oxford University Press.
Feldman, Paula R. British women poets of the Romantic era: an anthology. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins UP, 2000. 68, 683.
Taboo issues have become the talk of the day in the early 1960s. Poetry, written by American female figures, begins to flourish in the mid-twentieth century. Women take the initiative to write in verse form. The reason behind a tremendous “emphasis on poetry performance” hinges on the “public role [that] poetry could play” as Kim Whitehead points out (qtd. in Crown 657). Apart from poetry written by male confessional poets, a new generation of female poets appeared under the umbrella of “Confessional poetry” including Sylvia Plath, Kamala Das, Elizabeth Bishop and Anne Sexton.
Rice, Philip. and Patricia Waugh, eds. Modern Literary Theory. 4th ed. New York: Oxford UP,
A metrical composition; a composition in verse written in certain measures, whether in blank verse or in rhyme, and characterized by imagination and poetic diction; contradistinguished from prose; as, the poems of Homer or of Milton. This is but one of Webster 's definitions of a poem. Using this definition of “poem,” this paper will compare and contrast three different poems written by three different poets; William Shakespeare 's Sonnets 116, George Herbert’s Easter Wings and Sir Thomas Wyatt’s Whoso List to Hunt.
Leonard, K. D. (2009). African American women poets and the power of the word. The Cambridge Companion to African American Women's Literature, 168-187.
1. Rivkin, Julie and Ryan, Micheal. Literary Theory: An Anthology. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 1998.
Poetry like so many other things in life is complicated and easily misunderstood, similar to the poem entitled “Poetry” by Marianne Moore. Through her unique way of writing Moore uses literary devices imagery and personification to make the readers question why it is she has come to “dislike”(line 1) poetry. In particular, her word choice leaves a lot of room to wonder exactly why she has chosen to write it this way. A main theme that is represented in this poem is conformity and whether or not it is something to be followed.
Raman Selden, Peter Widdowson, and Peter Brooker. A Reader's Guide to Contemporary Literary Theory. 4th ed. London: Prentice Hall and Harvester Wheatrsheaf. 1997.
Klages, M. (2006). Literary Theory: A guide for the perplexed . London: Continum International Publishing Group.
Recent years have witnessed a large number of Indian English fiction writers who have stunned the literary world with their works. The topics dealt with are contemporary and populist and the English is functional, communicative and unpretentious. Novels have always served as a guide, a beacon in a conflicting, chaotic world and continue to do so. A careful study of Indian English fiction writers show that there are two kinds of writers who contribute to the genre of novels: The first group of writers include those who are global Indians, the diasporic writers, who are Indians by birth but have lived abroad, so they see Indian problems and reality objectively. The second group of writers are those born and brought up in India, exposed to the attitudes, morale and values of the society. Hence their works focus on the various social problems of India like the plight of women, unemployment, poverty, class discrimination, social dogmas, rigid religious norms, inter caste marriages, breakdown of relationships etc.
Michael Ryan. Literary Theory: an Anthology. 2nd ed. Malden, MA: Blackwell Pub., 2004. 365-77. Print.
Wordsworth has been considered to be one of the most significant romantic writers in history. The romantic period was one of the most influential time periods of British literature and was referred to as incidents of life. Romanticism followed little of the same old boring rules and left authors free to write as they felt. Most literature from this period was based on love, fascinations, obsessions, myths, and nature, these and other such emotions or areas of interest are what changed the eighteenth-century ideas of poetry forever. Wordsworth is considered a romantic poet, because his writings were very imaginative, emotional, and visionary. A majority of Wordsworth’s literature expressed his obsession with nature. He had many literary works, some on nature and some on humanist topics. Although Wordsworth considered himself to be a humanist writer, most of his readers still consider him to be more of a writer on nature. Once a reader has begun to read some of Wordsworth’s poetry they soon realized he is a naturalist romantic.
Showalter, Elaine, Ed. The New Feminist Criticism: Essays on Women, Literature and Theory. New York: Pantheon Books, 1985.