Shakespearean Tragedy: A Reading

Nature and Definition

Tragedy is a very difficult concept to define. In spite of all that modern critics have said on this subject, Aristotle’s definition of tragedy in the Poetics still remains the best. According to him, “Tragedy is a representation of an action, which is serious, complete in itself, and of a certain magnitude; it is expressed in speech made beautiful in different ways in different parts of the play; it is acted not narrated; and by exciting pity and fear gives a healthy relief to such emotions.”

Although Shakespeare did not have a conscious conception about tragedy, still from his tragedies and serious plays, we can get together a notion of what constitutes Shakespearean tragedy. For example, one can easily agree with Dowden that Shakespeare conceives tragedy as concerned with the ruin or restoration of the life of a man and of his soul. In many cases, it shows the struggle between good and evil. Similarly, another critic appropriately refers to Shakespearean tragedy as the .apotheosis (exalting to godhood) of the soul of man. By far the most perceptive comments about Shakespearean tragedy are those of Bradley, who almost defines the essence of Shakespearean tragedy as “a tale of suffering and calamity conducting to death.” Although this remark captures what is a common to Shakespearean tragedy, it may be stressed that every Shakespearean tragedy is unique in its way, and that there are very few observations which one may make about one of them which are also applicable to the others.

The Tragic Hero

Shakespeare’s tragedies are definitely built around a single personality who towers above the other characters. In plays like Antony and Cleopatra and Macbeth, the central character, for the most part, may be regarded as a double entity. Shakespeare’s tragic-heroes have many qualities in common. One of them is their intense concern for some one thing or aspect of life. Although it is doubtful whether Shakespeare knows the Poetics, his heroes (with the possible exception of Macbeth) are all essentially good. Even Macbeth has an intensely poetic nature and is quite honest in viewing his own enormities. Shakespeare’s tragic heroes are of an extremely sensitive and poetic temperament, Hamlet being the most intellectual and Othello, the most poetic of them. They also belong to the highest rung of society, the lowest in rank being Othello who is at least a general whose descent may be traced to kings. In every one of the tragedies the hero is faced either with making a moral choice of grave consequence or initiating some action which has far-reaching consequences.

Tragic Flaw

A Shakespearean tragedy is above all a tragedy of Character, though the environment, chance and coincidence also play their own part. Some tragedies, notably Macbeth, include the supernatural also. Still above all, it is some trait in the character of the tragic hero which is the basis of the tragedy. Although we refer to this trait as the tragic flaw, it is not necessarily always a shortcoming in itself. It is only in the particular situation in which the hero is placed that that particular quality of character becomes vitally damaging to him. For example, Hamlet’s habits of carefully weighing the pros and cons of everything before taking action would have proved an asset to Othello, while Othello’s precipitations of action would have cut short Hamlet’s agonies. Thus, it is character in a particular situation which is the causative force behind Shakespearean tragedies, though in a general way it is quite correct to refer to them as tragedies of character. It may be noted that the suffering of the hero is often quite out of proportion to the fault, or faulty choice, of which he is guilty, but it is an admitted fact that in tragedy crime and punishment are never commensurate.

The Role of Chance and Fate

Chance and fate, the latter sometimes in the form of the supernatural, also play their part in Shakespearean tragedies. However, they are never the starting point of the tragedies and are rather admitted into them when the story has already taken a. definite course. The incident of the handkerchief in Othello is an, example of pure chance which is exploited by the villain, but this chance tapes place at a time when the seeds of jealousy have already attained a flourishing growth in Othello’s mind; it is not the cause of Othello’s jealousy. Similarly, even in Macbeth we get the impression that the three witches only give an outward shape to a ‘vaulting ambition’ that is already there in Macbeth’s mind.

Theme and Action

Shakespearean tragedies have a well-defined major theme which is often capable of why expressed in moral terms. For example, it may be said that the major theme of King Lear is regeneration while that of Othello is one of making a moral choice. The tragic action in Shakespeare somehow disturbs universal harmony and order and after the death of the hero, but there are often indications that the disturbed harmony will be restored. Thus the action involves a two-fold conflict–that between man and the universal forces and that in the mind of man. Of those two, it is the latter which is Shakespeare’s prime concern. Shakespeare takes his stories from other sources, most of which have been identified but he makes significant changes in the story as it comes to him from his source. It is these changes which often tell us how Shakespeare’s mind works. The, stories often include sensational incidents such as murder, madness, duels and the like, but they arise naturally and are not incorporated into the story for the sake of sensation. Shakespeare does not conform to the classical view of tragedy which insisted on the purity of genres and in the hands of the neo-classicists also on unities of time and place. For Shakespeare the prime unity is that of tragic effect and he disregards all other unities. Shakespearean tragedies are characterised by a strong sense of inevitability.

Characterisation

Although the tragic hero is the centre of the dramatist’s attention, at least one, tether character near him is also brought into the lime-light. In some tragedies, there are several other, characters who have an important function-in the story and whose characterisation, therefore, receives appropriate, attention. Where we have a double plot, the characters in the second plot parallel those in the major plot although on a smaller scale. Shakespearean tragedies have unforgettable feminine characters though the tragic protagonists are all men. Notable among women characters are Cordelia, Ophelia, Lady Macbeth and Cleopatra (who in fact shares the role of the protagonist with Antony). The tragedies also have minor characters some of whom are delineated wonderfully well although their appearance in the play may be a very brief one. Interestingly, Shakespearean tragedies also have unforgettable ‘comic’ characters among whom one may mention the Porter in Macbeth and the Fool in King Lear. They also have well-delineated villains the most interesting of whom is Iago because of a note of mystery’ about his motives.

Tragic Effect

Even without knowing the Poetics, Shakespeare manages to excite strong pity and terror in his tragedies. However, these are not the only emotions which they excite. In the opinion of Bradley, the characteristic emotion, aroused by Shakespearean tragedies is a profound some of waste. This is derived from the idea of human worth and dignity which the plays express and the missed opportunities or wrong choices which lead to man’s defeat, without affecting his essential dignity. Shakespearean tragedies embody a sense of profound suffering and sadness and some of them end in a number of deaths, the most conspicuous in this respect being Hamlet and King Lear where the stage is literally littered with dead bodies in the last acme, All the same, they do not leave a depressing effect on the mind. There is something towards the close which restores our faith in man’s greatness and Clod’s wise providence. The atmosphere, in fact, is one of calm serenity very well expressed by Milton in the closing lines of Samson Agonistes. We are given the impression that the suffering has not gone waste. It has either enabled the protagonist, other characters, or the audience to attain new insight, or has worked towards a better future. Many Shakespearean tragedies characteristically ‘end on a note of hope.

The Mature Tragedies

According to Traversi, the conceptions elaborated in Shakespeare’s mature tragedies are complex ; they are inter-relations of themes even further extended, but there is no longer any sense of a gap between purpose and achievement. The predominating tragic conflicts correspond to states of feeling more firmly defined, more clearly conceived in terms of a possible resolution. In Othello the heart of the tragic experience is revealed in its full intensity. The emotional unity s reflected in clearer conception of character and in a more truly dramatic presentation of conflict. The subject of all these great plays can be described, in general terms, as the working out to its inevitable_ conclusion of the disruptive effect of the entry of passion into, normal human experience. By this entry the balance, essential to right living, between the passionate and rational elements in the personality is overthrown, and what should have been orderly, vital, and purposeful is plunged into disorder, death, and anarchy.

Passion Verses Reason

The predominant tragic conflict in the mind of the tragic heroes in the mature tragedies is generally between passion and reason as in the plays which preceded them. Now, however, this conflict is no longer shown exclusively in the form of an internal cleavage, and becomes something more truly dramatic, a clash between contrasted and opposed personalities and order. In other words, the opposition between reason and passion, first isolated––through Othello and Iago––in a dramatic conflict of personalities and then projected in Macbeth and Lear, beyond the individual hero to the state and universe which surround him; is merged increasingly into another, of greater significance and profundity, between highly personal conceptions of ‘good’ and ‘evil’.

Shakespeare’s Personal Views

Many books have been written on subjects such as ‘Shakespeare’s Religion’, but in the plays themselves there is very little which can be definitely looked upon as coming from Shakespeare himself. On the whole, Shakespeare is the most impersonal writer, and this probably was responsible to some extent for making him the great dramatist that he is. It is only in a rough and ready way that we can surmise some of Shakespeare’s personal likes and dislikes. For example, Shakespeare uses the image of the fawning dog so often and charges it with so much contempt that it may be assumed that this was one of his intense abhorrence’s. Similarly, we may say that Shakespeare regarded ingratitude as one of the worst failings is character. There is little doubt that, whatever his brand of Christianity. Shakespeare was deeply religious and compassionate. Although there are occasional outbursts of cynicism––which must be viewed in the contest of the character––the tendency of the plays on the whole is towards gong humanism. In this context, one pray quote the very W observation of one of Shakespeare’s modem biographers. Ivor Brown remarks with justice.

In the case, of an author who left personal papers and whose writings are mainly in dramatic form … it is not easy to be precise about his views and personal traits. Yet many have believed that Shakespeare’s image is fully mirrored in his work. Shaw has claimed that we knew more of him than of Dickens or Thackeray. No writer can wholly disguise himself. Apart from definite expression of opinion, his language and his metaphors betray big predilections and aversions. It is not impertinent, it is not vain, to try to b, the figure behind the glorious hand.

Thus impersonality also is relative, for while there are no explicit ‘autobiographical’ touches in Shakespeare, even he could not have kept his own views, likes and dislikes, entirely out of his writings.

“Othello” And Shakespearean Tragedy

Peculiarity

As a tragedy Othello possesses the questionable distinction of having been ruthlessly criticised by one earlier critic, namely, Rymer, and two celebrated modern critics, namely T. S. Eliot and F. R: Leavis.

While there is no dearth of enthusiastic, and even rapturous appreciation of Othello, the fact remains that there is still a school of thought, a minority school, no doubt, which considers the objections of Rymer to be valid, and the adverse criticism of Eliot and Leavis to be justified. On the positive side, we have a host of critics but one name which cannot escape mention is that of Dr. Johnson, not only because of his stature as a critic, but even more so because he largely meets Rymer’s strictures on their own, viz. neo-classical ground. Among the modern favourable critics, the most celebrated is Bradley.

Rymer’s Attack

Rymer’s primary interest was not critical but social and polemical-he wanted to attack and discredit the English stage, and for this purpose singled out some well-known plays in order to subject them to a mercilessly destructive criticism. Rymer has thus a vested interest in his argument : be is not out to explore with an open mind and reach a just and appropriate conclusion. His polemics may become more understandable if we remember that he was a lawyer by profession who took to the study of drama as a hobby. In his discussion of Othello, he gives a scene-by-scene hostile analysis of the play, exultingly bringing out and elaborating every improbability, and leading to the general conclusion that Othello is a veritable compendium of shortcomings, Rymer was not lacking in sharpness of wit and intelligence, but it was his chosen task to rehabilitate the English stage on the lines, of “classical” French drama, and to do so it was of the utmost necessity that Shakespeare” should first be debunked and made to clear the way for neoclassical French playwrights. In a way, Rymer’s attack is an oblique compliment to Othello: he concedes that it was the popular favourite among Shakespeare’s tragedies.

Major Arguments

Rymer’s first objection is that the plot of Othello is incredible. And as a neo-classicist, he finds the behaviour of both Iago and Othello to be untrue to life because it is not typical of the soldier class to which they belong. Rymer is also critical of the alleged lack of moral in the play––unless, he sneers, it be that women should be careful about their: linen. Thus Rymer’s first objection is that the play violates the classical doctrine of generality, and he cannot brook the fact that Iago is “a close, dissembing, false, insinuating rascal, instead of an open-hearted, frank, plain-dealing soldier, a character constantly worn by them for some thousands of years in the world.” Rymer finds Othello lacking the loftiness which is requisite in a tragedy. He asserts that there is nothing for the audience to carry home with them from this play for their use and edification.

Excerpts

Some excerpts from A Short View of Tragedy would help to bring in the actual flavour of Rymer’s fare. After reproducing a dialogue between Othello and Iago where the perplexed and near-crazed Moor stalks incoherently of being naked a-bed and not meaning harm, Rymer comments:

At this gross rate of trifling, our General and his Ancient march on most heroically, till the jealous booby has his brains turn’d, and falls in a trance. Would any imagine this to be the language of Venetians, of soldiers and mighty captains ? no Bartholomew droll could subsist upon such trash.

Rymer finds Shakespeare’s handling of the major incidents in the plot to be contrarious. He argues Iago had some pretence to be discontent with Othello and Cassio : And what passed hitherto was the operation of revenge. Desdemona had never done him harm, always kind to him and to his wife, was his country-woman, a dame of quality: for him to abet . her murder shows nothing of a soldier, nothing of a man, nothing of Nature in it … Iago could desire no better than to set Cassio and Othello, his two enemies, by the ears together, so he might have been revenged on them both at once: And chusing for his own share the murder of Desdemona, he had the opportunity to play booty, and save the poor harmless- wretch. But the poet must do everything by contraries, to surprise the audience still with something horrible and prodigious beyond any human imagination.

The Incident of the Handkerchief

Rymer not only ridicules Shakespeare’s management of the incident of the handkerchief but has his own view about how the handkerchief should have been employed:

Desdemona dropped her handkerchief, and missed it that very day after her marriage; it might have been rumpled up with her wedding sheets: and this night that she lay in her wedding sheets, the Fairey Napkin (whilst Othello was stifling her) might have started up to disarm his fury and stop his ungracious mouth. Then might she (in a trance for fear) have lain as dead ; then might he touched with remorse, have honestly cut his own throat, by the good leave and, with the applause of the spectators : who might thereupon have gone home with a quiet mind, admiring the beauty of Providence, fairly and truly represented on the theatre.

Verdict

Rymer’s verdict on this great tragedy is a very harsh one. He first castigates the author for not providing some obvious moral lesson for the spectators: “What can remain with the audience to carry home with them for this sort of poetry for their use and edification? How can it work, unless (instead of settling the mind and purging our passions) to delude our senses, disorder our thoughts, addle our brain, pervert our affections, hair our imaginations, corrupt our appetite, and fill our head with vanity, confusion, and jingle-jangle, beyond what all the parish-clerks of London with their Old Testament farces and interludes, in Richard the Second’s time, could ever pretend to ? Our only opts for the good of -their souls can be that these people go to the playhouse as they go to Church, to sit ‘still, look on one another, make_ no reflection, nor mind the play more than they would a sermon.” Upon this follows Rymer’s astounding verdict ‘There is in this play some burlesque, some humour and ramble of comical wit, some show and some mimicry to divert the spectators ; but the tragical part is none other than a bloody farce, without salt or saviour.”

Johnson’s Rejoinder

Samuel Johnson, himself a neo-classicist, effectively counters Rymer’s criticism in the Preface to this edition of Shakespeare’s plays. This is how Johnson disposes of the criticism that Shakespeare’s characterisation violates the canons of generality:

Shakespeare always makes nature predominate over accident and, if he preserves the essential character, is not very careful of distinctions superinduced and adventitious. His story requires Romans or kings, but he thinks only on men … These are the petty cavils of petty minds ; a poet overlooks the casual distinction of country and condition, as a painter, satisfied with the figure, neglects the drapery.

On the alleged lack of a moral in the play (a charge conceded by many other critics) Johnson once again comes to the defence of Shakespeare. His argument is recorded in Boswell’s Life of Johnson, and occurs in reply to a question of his biographer. Johnson replies:

‘In the first place, Sir, we learn from Othello this very useful moral, not to make an unequal match; in the second place, we learn not to yield too readily to suspicion. The handkerchief is merely a trick, though a very pretty trick; but there are no other circumstances of reasonable suspicion, except what is related by Iago of Cassio’s warm expressions concerning Desdemona in his sleep ; and that depended entirely upon the assertion of one man. No, Sir, I think Othello has more: moral than almost any play.’

T. S. Eliot’s View

T. S. Eliot was perhaps the first great modern critic to pass a hostile judgment on Othello. His criticism relates mainly to the, character of Othello himself. Where Swinburne looked upon Othello as the noblest man of man’s making, Eliot viewed him as ‘cheering himself up’ in his last speech, and applied to his attitude the expressive word ‘Bovarysme’. This view is best countered by Nevill Coghill who establishes that Eliot’s view of Othello is such as no actor could have effectively portrayed on the stage, and therefore could hardly have been the one intended by Shakespeare. On Eliot’s side we have Heilman who regards Othello as the least heroic of Shakespeare’s tragic heroes. The adverse criticism of the play is further elaborated by F. R. Leavis, while the best appreciation perhaps still continues to be that of Bradley. The two critical stances are opposed in every detail. Bradley locates they complexity of play within the personality of Iago, since he is inclined to look upon Othello as entirely blameless, and he therefore devotes considerable space to exploration of Iago’s mind. Leavis is critical of this approach, regarding it as no better than a waste time to study the inner reaches of Iago’s mind. In his view Iago is sufficiently convincing as a person, but he is subordinate and merely ancillary––­not much more than a necessary piece of dramatic mechanism. He believes that Othello’s tragedy is precipitated principally by Othello’s own shortcomings––his egoism, his merely sensual love of Desdemona and his lack of any real knowledge of the woman he loves. According to Leavis Othello’s habits of thought and speech, while they served him well enough in a life of martial adventure, would never have fitted him for the reciprocity of marriage, so that the very relationship of Othello and Desdemona has tragedy inherent in it and the moment of crisis shows gaping weaknesses in Othello : “The self-idealisation is shown as blindness and the nobility as here no longer something real, but the disguise of an obtuse and a brutal egoism.”

Defence

The strongest refutation of the view of Leavis, as of Eliot, is our experience in the theatre. There we are certain that we are seeing the overthrow of a strong and great man; no mare egotist could have wrung our beasts by his fall as Othello does. Bradley recognises that Iago is less than perfect as a human being, and he has a better and more correct appreciation of the nature of Othello’s tragedy than most other critics. Iago’s character had no place for love in it, and this brought about the destruction of those around him as of Iago, himself. As Bradley puts it, Iago was destroyed by the power that he attacked, the power of love, and he was destroyed by it because he could not understand it ; and he could not understand it beams it was not in him.

Defence of Iago

One of the most curious pieces of criticism on Othello is the defence of logo attempted by ‘a Gentlemen of Exeter’ in 1790, entitled ‘An Apology for the Character and Conduct of logo’. He bases himself on what is to him an incontrovertible fact––the good reputation which Iago enjoys. He maintains that if throe bad been any real wickedness in him it would have come to somebody’s notice during the twenty-eight years of his life. Some other critic also have justified Iago by maintaining that Othello had reply cuckolded him––which would give him a good motive for revenge and save him from being branded a monster. Even some twentieth century critics have found substance in such an approach, and taken the words ‘honest Iago’ at their face value. Not only is there a controversy about this particular motive of Iago’s actions, but a strong difference of opinion exists about what his real motive is, or even whether he has any motive at all, or suffers, in the words of Coleridge from ‘motiveless Malignity’.

Critically comment on Dr. Johnson’s defence of tragi-comedy in his ‘Preface to Shakespeare’

The most remarkable passage in the Preface, according to Wimsatt, is surely the one concerning Johnson’s defence of tragi-comedy. His defence is marked by his realistic approach. By the rules of critics (and also by the practices of ancient Greek and Roman dramatists), the mixture of tragedy and comedy in a play stands condemned but ‘there is always,’ says Johnson, ‘an appeal open from criticism to nature.’ There are two natural grounds to justify it: that the alternation of pleasure and pain in a play pleases by its variety; and that life itself is a mingled yarn, pleasure and pain together. Secondly, the tragi-comedy by partaking of both tragedy and comedy ‘approaches nearer than either to the appearance of life.’

As practised by Shakespeare, tragi-comedy is even a distinct species of the dramatic art ‘exhibiting the real state of sublunary nature, which partakes of good and evil, joy and sorrow, mingled with endless variety of proportion and innumerable modes of combination; and expressing the course of the world, in which the loss of one is the gain of another; in which, at the same time, the reveller is hastening to his wine, and the mourner burying his dead; (and) in which the malignity of one is sometimes defeated by the frolic of another…’

Though Shakespeare has been much criticized by critics and writers for mixing comic and tragic scenes, yet Johnson defends him very intelligently, logically and realistically. His defence is based on the following arguments:

1. In his mixing of the tragic and the comic, Shakespeare is true to nature. In real life also there is a mingling of the good and evil, joy and sorrow, tears and smiles, and so in mixing tragedy and comedy, Shakespeare merely holds a mirror to nature. This may be against rules, but ‘there is always appeal open from rules in criticism to nature.’
2. Tragi-comedy is nearer to life than either tragedy or comedy, and so it combines within itself the pleasure as well as the instruction of both. In tragi-comedy the high and the low combine, both for instruction and pleasure.
3. The interchange of the serious and the gay, of the comic and tragic, does not interrupt the progress of the passions, i.e., it does not result in any weakening of effect.
4. Moreover, it should be remembered that all pleasure consists in variety. Tragi-comedy can satisfy a greater variety of tastes, “and continued melancholy is often not pleasing.” Shakespeare can always move whether to tears or to laughter.

Critics have pointed out that Dr. Johnson’s defence of tragi-comedy is not very convincing. P. A. W. Collins writes: “Johnson’s defence of tragi-comedy is inadequate.” “When Shakespeare’s plan is understood, most of the criticisms of Rymer and Voltaire vanish away, but an understanding of Shakespeare’s plan is not much furthered by suggestions that these plays exhibit ‘the real state of sublunary nature, which partakes of good and evil, joy and sorrow’, that they are doubly instructive because they may ‘convey all the instruction of tragedy or comedy’, and that anyway ‘all pleasure consists in variety’—and least of all by the assertion that Shakespeare’s disposition led him to comedy … In tragedy he is always struggling after some occasion to be comic’. Shakespeare’s ‘variety’, both in his whole canon and within each play, can observe. Johnson appreciated; but neither he, nor any of his contemporaries, understood the unity-in-complexity of either his plotting or his poetry, let alone the interrelation between his plotting, his poetry and his characterization.

George Watson also thinks that Johnson’s justification of tragi-comedy is based on conflicting grounds. He says: “It will hardly do to justify tragi-comedy on Dryden’s grounds that contraries set off each other, and then to excuse ‘the rules of criticism’ on the grounds that ‘there is always an appeal open from criticism to nature’, and ‘the mingled drama’ can be shown to have instructed as well as pleased : this is a characteristically Johnsonian use of the escape-clause.”

It is, however, to be remembered that Johnson’s main forte was his robust common sense. He could not indulge in the niceties of the modern Shakespeare scholars and critics. His approach was highly pragmatic and his defence of Shakespeare’s tragi-comedy is the natural product of that approach. It is therefore at once the strength and the weakness of Johnson’s critical sensibility.

As Johnson’s criticism is closely allied with his deep intuitions, his defence of tragi-comedy assumes a new dimension. It is not ‘a mere abstract and thin cerebration which for some reason he undertook in opposition to his own genuine response’. As W. K. Wimsatt says, “It is difficult to imagine any external reason which could have coerced him. The defence of mingled drama is indeed a testimony to Johnson’s theoretical intelligence, but at the same time it would seem to be tied into something very deep, though sometimes less articulate and clear, in Johnson’s nature—that is, his strongly religious sense of mystery in the universe of the inscrutable—the supernatural. This sense, when it is operating, induces in him a much less demanding attitude towards the terrestrial distribution of good and evil, rewards and punishments. It is this sense largely which moves the Johnson who wrote the pleasantly darkened fable of Rasselas, the Johnson who turned his withering scorn or he complacent rationalism of Soame Jenyns’s Free Inquiry Into the Na ‘are and Origin of Evil."

Aristotle’s Definition of Tragedy: Its Implications

Aristotle defines tragedy as, “the imitation of an action, serious complete, and of a certain magnitude, in a language beautified in different parts with different kinds of embellishment, through action and not narration, and through scenes of pity and fear bringing about the ‘Catharsis’ of these (or such like) emotions.” This definition has wide implications. It falls, naturally, into two parts. The first part, from “The imitation of an action” to, “and not narration”, is concerned with Tragedy as one of the imitative arts, and points out its medium, objects, and manner of imitation. The second part is concerned with the function and emotional effect of Tragedy.

First, the definition distinguishes tragedy from other forms of poetry. Its object of imitation are, ‘serious action’, and hence it is different from Comedy which imitates the non-serious. Secondly, Tragedy on the basis of its manner of imitation is distinguished from the Epic which ‘narrates’ and does not represent through action. Thirdly, on the basis of its medium it is distinguished from the lyric. It employs several kinds of embellishments in different parts, i.e. verse in dialogue and song in the choric parts.

Next, Aristotle examines the plot of Tragedy. Tragedy imitates ‘action’ and its plot consists of a logical and inevitable sequence of events. The ‘action’ it imitates is its plot. The action must be complete, i.e. it must have a beginning, a middle and an end. “The beginning is that from which further action flows out, and which is intelligible in itself, and not consequent or dependent on any previous situation.” A satisfying end is that which follows inevitably from what has gone before, but which does not lead to further action. It marks the completion of the tragic action. The middle is that which follows inevitably upon what has gone before, and also leads on to an inevitable conclusion. At all points, “Aristotle emphasises that the tragic action must be in accordance with the laws of probability and necessity.”

The action of a tragedy must be of certain. ‘magnitude’, and the word may be taken to have been  used in the sense of, ‘size’ or, length’. It must be long enough to permit an orderly development of action to a catastrophe. Too short an action cannot be regarded as proper and beautiful, for its different parts will not be clearly visible, as in the case of a very small living creature. Neither should it be too long, for in that case it will not be taken in as an artistic whole by the memory. The action should be proportionate in the relation of the different parts to each other and to the whole. It must be an ‘organic’ whole.

William Blake: Theory of Contrariness

Songs of Innocence and of Experience is a collection of short lyric poems accompanied by Blake’s original illustrations. The two sections juxtapose the state of innocence and that of experience. Many of the poems in Blake’s words they were meant to show “the two contrary states of the human soul”; the illustration of innocence and experience. The tone of the first series is admirably sounded by the introductory “Piping down the valleys wild” and that of second the dark picture of poor babes “fed with cold and usurious hand”.

Blake is bitter against those who go “up to the Church to pray” while the misery of the innocent is around them. His theory of Contraries is summarized in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell: “Without Contraries is no progression. Attraction and repulsion, reason and energy, love and hate, are necessary to human existence.” The essence of Blake’s theory is that, in some paradoxical way, it is possible for the contraries of innocence and experience to co-exist within a human being. The crime of “religion” was its attempt “to destroy existence” by ignoring or minimizing the essential oppositions in human nature.  The word ‘contrary’ had a very specific and important meaning for Blake. Like almost all great poets, he was an enemy of dualism. Western thought has been intensely dualistic, seeing everything as composed of warring opposites, head and heart, body and spirit, male and female as though the split between the hemispheres of the human brain were projecting itself on everything perceived. A study of the poems in the two groups shows the emotional tensions between the two Contrary States.

“Piping down the valleys wild”

In the “Songs of Innocence”, Blake expresses the happiness of a child’s first thoughts about life. To the child, the world is one of happiness, beauty, and love. At that stage of life, the sunshine of love is so radiant that human suffering appears only temporary and fleeting. In the Introduction to the first series, Blake represents a laughing child as his inspiration for his poems. And in the poems that follow in this series, Blake gives us his vision of the world as it appears to the child or as it affects the child. And this world is one of purity, joy, and security. The children are themselves pure, whether their skin is black or white.  They are compared to lambs “whose innocent call” they hear. Both “child” and “lamb” serve as symbols for Christ. Joy is everywhere—in the “Joy but two days old”; in the leaping and shouting of the little ones; in the sun, in the bells, in the voices of the birds; in the Laughing Song all Nature rejoices. But, above all, there is security. There is hardly a poem in which a symbol of protection, a guardian figure of some kind, does not occur. In The Echoing Green, the old folk are close by, while the children play. Elsewhere there is the shepherd watching over his sheep; there are the mother, the nurse, the lion’, the angels, and, most important of all, God Himself. There is spontaneous happiness and delight in these groups of poems as “The Infant Boy” illustrates, ‘‘I happy am/ Joy is my name’.

“These flowers of London town!

Seated in companies they sit

with radiance all their own”

In the first Holy Thursday, poor children sit “with radiance of their own”; while in the second Holy Thursday, the poet deplores the fact that there should be so many poor and hungry children depending on charity in a country which is otherwise rich and fruitful. The second poem is very moving, as it was intended to be. We thus have pictures of contrary states. In the “Songs of Innocence”, the prevailing symbol is the Iamb, which is an innocent creature of God and which also symbolizes the child Christ. In the “Songs of Experience” the chief symbol is the tiger as expressed by the first stanza:

“Tiger! Tiger! burning bright

In the forests of the night”

Where ‘forests of the night’ symbolize experience. The tiger burns metaphorically with rage and quickly becomes for some a symbol of anger and passion. The poet asks a crucial question here. Did God Who made the lamb also make the tiger? The lamb, innocent and pretty, seems the work of a kindly, comprehensible Creator. The splendid but terrifying tiger makes us realize that God’s purposes are not so easily understood. The tiger represents the created universe in its violent and terrifying aspects. It also symbolizes violent and terrifying forces within the individual man, and these terrifying forces have to be faced and fully recognized. The two poems called The Lamb and The Tiger do, indeed, represent two contrary states of the human soul. No contrast could have been more vivid and more striking. Blake sees exploitation in the songs of experience as exemplified by the following lines from, ‘London’.

“And mark in every face I meet

Marks of weakness, marks of woe”

The poems in the second group record the wounds and cruelties of the civilized world. Some of them are bitter comments on the restraints forged by custom and law. Here Blake deplores the dominance of reason, religion, law, and morality, and he deplores the suppression of natural impulses, and more especially the suppression of the sexual impulse. Instead of innocence, joy, and security, Blake finds guilt, misery, and tyranny in the world. The protective guardians have disappeared and in their place are the tyrants. The rigors of sexual morality are depicted in A Little Girl Lost, The Sick Rose, The Angel, and Ah, Sunflower. The Sick Rose shows the destructive effects of sexual repression. In The Angel, the maiden realizes too late what she has missed. Ah, Sunflower shows the youth “pining away with desire”, and the “pale virgin shrouded in snow”, because both of them were denied sexual fulfillment.

The contrasts Blake sets forth in the Songs are echoes of English society's approach to the social and political issues of his era—a time characterized, on the one hand, by increasing desire for personal, political, and economic freedom, and on the other, by anxiety regarding the potential consequences of that freedom for social institutions. Several of the poems directly address contemporary social problems, for example, “The Chimney-Sweeper” deals with child labor and “Holy Thursday” describes the grim lives of charity children. The most fully-realized social protest poem in the Songs is “London,” a critique of urban poverty and misery. Thus contrariness are a must.  The language and vision not just of Blake but of poetry itself insists that the contraries are equally important and inseparable. ‘Without contraries is no progression', wrote Blake. He sought to transform the energies generated by conflict into creative energies, moving towards mutual acceptance and harmony. Thus, by describing innocence and experience as ‘contrary states of the human soul’, Blake is warning us that we are not being invited to choose between them, that no such choice is possible. He is not going to assert that innocent joy is preferable to the sorrows of experience.

Bapsi Sidhwa's An American Brat: Themes

In An American Brat Sidhwa highlights the predicament of the Pakistani people in general and of the Parsi community in particular. Thus, while in Ice-Candy-Man Sidhwa grapples with the realities of the pre-Independence period, in An American Brat she highlights the phenomenon of neo-colonialism in Pakistan.

What is most remarkable about her work is her dual perspective, which is based on both the Pakistani and the Parsi point of view. She speaks both for the Pakistanis and the marginalized Parsi community. This theme is further developed in her next novel An American Brat, where the Parsi community is shown actively participating in Pakistani politics. Instead of keeping a neutral, detached stance, Ginwalla family is passionately involved in the country’s current political crisis. Zareen at one point voices her concern over her daughter’s intense involvement in “Bhutto’s trial.” Her concern for her daughter, however, does not stop her from working in “many women’s committees with Begum Bhutto.” Feroza even when she is in America, remains acutely concerned about the crisis in her country. She is totally shocked to hear of Bhutto’s hanging. On coming back to Pakistan, she voices her disappointment at being inadequately informed about Pakistan‘s current political scenario: “I want to know what’s going on here. After all, it’s my country!” Thus Sidhwa exhibits that the Parsis, both in the pre and post-Independence period, instead of showing indifference to the country’s politics, have been actively involved in it.

In An American Brat, almost every word and phrase of the native language employed in the novel is translated by the writer in a “Glossary” at the end of the novel. For instance: “Badmash: scoundrel,” “Gora; white, in Urdu,” “Heejra: eunuch or transvestite.” What such a translation of individual words does? Bill Ashcroft et al in The Empire Writes Back observe that such translation of individual words is the most obvious and most common authorial intrusion in cross-cultural texts. Juxtaposing the words in this way suggests that the meaning of a word is its referent. But the simple matching of words from the native language with its translated version in English reveals the general inadequacy of such an exercise. The moment a word from a native language is juxtaposed with its referent in English, instead of clarifying the meaning, it shows the gap between the word and its referent.  In An American Brat, she voices the social and political chaos in Pakistan generated by the forces of neo-colonialism. In both the novels, she has succinctly adapted the English language to suit her purposes. Further, she has not just provided the marginalized Parsi community with a voice but also a large number of Pakistani readers. An American Brat has been extolled by many reviewers as a compelling delineation of both the coming of age process and the immigrant experience in the United States. However, several critics have noted Sidhwa’s use of stock social and cultural stereotypes in all of her novels, particularly in An American Brat.

The plotting of An American Brat has additionally been judged by several reviewers to be weak and predictable, but a majority of critics have found Sidhwa’s representation of American culture to be insightful and unique. An American Brat (1993). Her lightest and least characteristic novel, it is also, in a strange and subversive way, her most daring, dealing as it does with issues of diaspora and questions of cultural identity and racial difference. In its seemingly innocuous portrayal of the (mis)adventures of its young protagonist Feroza, in the USA, it actually describes the painful process of losing and replacing homes, presenting, in the process, an indirect metaphor for the ambivalent position of so many diasporic writers today. And though its heroine is a Parsi, she could be a young woman of any of the subcontinent’s religious communities, choosing between a period of rampant sectarianism at home and the experience of more covert prejudice abroad. With this novel, Bapsi stakes another claim, on Asian American territory; and it isn’t surprising that writers like Gish Jen have been quick to write of their own communities in similar ways. The ambiguous, transitional nature of this work convinces me—and many other readers, I’m sure—that another major work is in presently in Bapsi’s imaginative laboratory. Meanwhile, this omnibus volume of Bapsi Sidhwa’s novels is a welcome addition to the work of the writer who has done so much to put Pakistan on the map of the English-speaking literary world.

In her novel An American Brat, Sidhwa deals with the inter-faith marriage in the Parsi community. Feroza Ginwalla the rebellious daughter of Cyrus and Zareen moves to Colorado from Lahore to improve her lot. Sidhwa here shows the protagonist Feroza adapting to an alien culture. Her room mate Joe instructs her into American way of life.  Feroza becomes bold enough to shed her hesitation. Now she discovers that she has attained an independent personality and thinking. She no longer needs guardians and protectors. She intends to marry David Press, an American Jew. Her family at Lahore is disturbed as no one had in their family marriage outside the parsi community. Here Sidhwa’s treatment of theme, subject and characters provides a valuable insight into the Parsi psyche. She also provides an ironic exposure of the Parsi attitude to inter-faith marriage.  Feroza’s mother Zareen later realizes that her attitude towards interfaith marriage is no better than the Mullahs of Pakistan. Sidhwa also touches the problem of fundamentalism in Pakistani society. She does not intend to criticize a community but its orthodoxy and out-dated values. She employs irony to expose fundamentalism. “She criticizes the ‘mullah mentality’ that “girls must not play hockey or sing or dance!” The Parsi community’s own brand of fundamentalism.”

Bapsi Sidhwa has emerged as a trendsetter in English novel in the Indian sub-continent. She provides insights into the antiquity of the Parsi faith with their tolerance of other beliefs and their cultural values. She lets her readers to know about the Parsi community with their rites, customs, traditions, beliefs and mannerism. One psychological factor behind the restrictions in Parsi community is the small population and its closed society.  As a Parsi, Sidhwa’s writings show her quest for the continuation of her community. “She aptly reflects the cultural multiplicity in which she has lived. It is Sidhwa’s sexual and excretory candour and depiction of enforced sexual innocence in a touching manner,” observes Novy Kapadia. Sidhwa’s attempt to show the heart and soul of the Parsi community has been successful. She presents realistically the reaction of the Parsi community towards the question of loyalties and Swaraj. The Parsis have also been presented a culturally hybrids in their faiths and mannerism.

In An American Brat there are many experiences that me and my family actually went through personally or heard about after migrating to the United States. Otherwise I would not have dared to write about America.  Most other writers who have come here from the subcontinent have not taken that step yet. In retrospect, I am not sure it was such a good idea to attempt to create so many American characters in An American Brat. But I wanted to do it. I didn’t want to sit in America and write only about the expatriate community here, or about the community I left behind. I could have done that even in Pakistan. I am having new experiences here everyday, and they need to be incorporated in fiction. There is a great dearth of candid writing about our expatriate community here and its experiences with the mainstream American community. So far only Bharati Mukherjee has attempted to write on this theme and has done a good job. But even she has created few American characters. This is not easy to do. I have been here only a few years and don’t know American culture very well. Trying to interpret it can be quite dangerous. But American readers have, on the whole, appreciated my attempts, and found my observations about America revealing. Some Indian reviewers, however, have been somewhat offended by the book, and I am not very sure why. Maybe the current antagonisms between the two countries and my Pakistani origins have contributed to this hostility. I was a bit disappointed by this, because I feel myself part of the subcontinent. I don’t feel myself “other” from India. In fact, I have been an Indian citizen also.

In her next novel An American Brat (1994) Bapsi Sidhwa moves the- locale from Pakistan to the United States of America. In it, she takes up the issues like globalisation, brain-drain from the third world. “In An American Brat, Bapsi Sidhwa handles the change in theme and locale, expertly, with a lot of humour and from a contemporary perspective. This novel marks her entry into the orbit of diasporic fiction in which other South Asian novelists have already made a mark,” writes Novy Kapadia. The genius of Bapsi Sidhwa as a writer is better revealed in her novel An American Brat which brings out her gift of keen observation, heightened sense of story and character alongwith her moral vision of her Parsi community. In the narrative of An American Brat, the protagonist Feroza Ginwalla the rebellious daughter of Cyrus and Zareen Ginwalla moves from Gulberg, Lahore to Denver, Colorado, U.S.A. with her ambitious, hopes and dreams. The novelist delineates the character of Firoza “adapting to an alien culture and the stress that accrues when colliding cultures clash.” On many occasions, Firoza finds, herself in an awkward situation whom she fails to understand the nuances of a foreign language. Her room mate -Joe teaches her various Americanism. This helps Firoza to grow and make herself fit in a new system. In the last pages of the novel, Firoza has shed her old persona of Lahore and she finds herself a new with an independent attitude. “The perennial Parsi problem of inter-faith marriage arises when Feroza wants to marry David Press, an American Jew. The family assembles at Lahore and treat the situation like a dire emergency. Sidhwa through the guise of humour, shows how elders exert the pressures of conformity and tradition on the youngsters by applying forms of emotional blackmail. Reprimanding a young cousin who defends Feroza’s choice of marriage, Grandmother Khutlibai contrived to make her vigorous person look crumpled and close to death while she spoke, so that the spirit of rebellion in Bunny and other youngsters was nipped in the bud.” This novel caused alarm in the Parsi orthodox people.

In her novels, Bapsi Sidhwa also provides a glimpse of her comtemporary political condition in Pakistan. In her novel, An American Brat, she provides a backdrop to the fundamentalism prevailing in Pakistan during the reign of General Zia. Sidhwa is ironical while discussing the problem of fundamentalism in Pakistan. Sidhwa’s indictment of fundamentalism is not restricted only to the Muslim community but also to other communities. She also exposes the parochial attitude and narrow-mindedness of American society. Sidhwa with her astute characterization, positive outlook and humour tackles some of her contemporary problems. Her writings show the cultural multiplicity of which she has been a part. “It is Sidhwa’s sexual and excretory candour and depiction of enforced sexual innocence in a touching and humorous manner which also makes her novels unique. The strain of extrovert ribaldry in her work has given a new dimension to sub-continental English fiction…,” observe Dhawan and Novy Kapadia. Sidhwa has been a trend-setter in less inhibition and open views on sex Saadat Hussin Manto, Asmat Chughtai.

King Lear: Themes

Justice

King Lear is a brutal play, filled with human cruelty and awful, seemingly meaningless disasters. The play’s succession of terrible events raises an obvious question for the characters—namely, whether there is any possibility of justice in the world, or whether the world is fundamentally indifferent or even hostile to humankind. Various characters offer their opinions: “As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods; / They kill us for their sport,” Gloucester muses, realizing it foolish for humankind to assume that the natural world works in parallel with socially or morally convenient notions of justice (4.1.37–38). Edgar, on the other hand, insists that “the gods are just,” believing that individuals get what they deserve (5.3.169). But, in the end, we are left with only a terrifying uncertainty—although the wicked die, the good die along with them, culminating in the awful image of Lear cradling Cordelia’s body in his arms. There is goodness in the world of the play, but there is also madness and death, and it is difficult to tell which triumphs in the end.

Authority versus Chaos

King Lear is about political authority as much as it is about family dynamics. Lear is not only a father but also a king, and when he gives away his authority to the unworthy and evil Goneril and Regan, he delivers not only himself and his family but all of Britain into chaos and cruelty. As the two wicked sisters indulge their appetite for power and Edmund begins his own ascension, the kingdom descends into civil strife, and we realize that Lear has destroyed not only his own authority but all authority in Britain. The stable, hierarchal order that Lear initially represents falls apart and disorder engulfs the realm. The failure of authority in the face of chaos recurs in Lear’s wanderings on the heath during the storm. Witnessing the powerful forces of the natural world, Lear comes to understand that he, like the rest of humankind, is insignificant in the world. This realization proves much more important than the realization of his loss of political control, as it compels him to re-prioritize his values and become humble and caring. With this newfound understanding of himself, Lear hopes to be able to confront the chaos in the political realm as well.

Reconciliation

Darkness and unhappiness pervade King Lear, and the devastating Act 5 represents one of the most tragic endings in all of literature. Nevertheless, the play presents the central relationship—that between Lear and Cordelia—as a dramatic embodiment of true, self-sacrificing love. Rather than despising Lear for banishing her, Cordelia remains devoted, even from afar, and eventually brings an army from a foreign country to rescue him from his tormentors. Lear, meanwhile, learns a tremendously cruel lesson in humility and eventually reaches the point where he can reunite joyfully with Cordelia and experience the balm of her forgiving love. Lear’s recognition of the error of his ways is an ingredient vital to reconciliation with Cordelia, not because Cordelia feels wronged by him but because he has understood the sincerity and depth of her love for him. His maturation enables him to bring Cordelia back into his good graces, a testament to love’s ability to flourish, even if only fleetingly, amid the horror and chaos that engulf the rest of the play.

The School for Scandal: Themes

Honor

Initially honor seems to be in short supply in School for Scandal: The gossips are completely without honor; Lady Teazle is considering abandoning the lessons about honor that she learned growing up in the country; Joseph is ready to betray his brother to secure a wealthy wife; and Charles is hopelessly in debt to moneylenders. Even Sir Oliver, whose honor should be above question, is ready to assume a disguise to test his nephews’ honor. By the conclusion of the play, however, it is clear that only the gossips have no true honor. Lady Teazle realizes that she values her husband and that she has more honor than her friends had supposed. Charles, though foolish and intemperate with gambling and money, is honorable. He pays his debts, if slowly, and he is willing to help a poor relation without being asked. Sir Oliver’s deception unmasks Joseph’s hypocrisy. And the moneylender, Moses, is a man of so much honor that he assists Charles in managing his debts.

Morality

Sheridan asks his audience to question the morality of society in this play. Slandering one’s neighbors, acquaintances, and friends is an entertainment. There is no real interest in the truth — and even less consideration is given to the damage that such gossip causes. In the early acts of School for Scandal, the subjects of such gossip are not known to the audience, who cannot determine the truth of Lady Sneerwell and Mrs. Candour’s observations. But by the last act, it becomes clear that these gossips need absolutely no element of truth to fuel their stories. The felling of the screen in Joseph’s library — and the confrontation that took place immediately after — are fresh in the audience’s mind. This earlier scene serves as a nice contrast to the speculation and innuendo that engages the gossips. Although it is all comedy, it is comedy that teaches a lesson to the audience.

Sentiment

School for Scandal is generally regarded as a refutation of the sentimental drama that was prevalent on the London stage prior to and during Sheridan’s era. Sentiment was much admired as a replacement for the debauchery of Restoration comedy, but it often proved bland and boring. Often the protagonists were pure to the point of generic blandness. In Sheridan’s play, Joseph Surface is much admired for his sentiment. Conversely, his brother Charles is chastised because he is not the man of sentiment that his brother is: “He is a man of sentiment . . . there is nothing in the world so noble as a man of sentiment.” That Joseph is really not at all noble or admirable makes Sir Peter’s compliment more damning and more a mockery of this eighteenth-century convention.

Truth and Falsehood

Trying to determine the truth occupies much of Sheridan’s play. Lady Sneerwell and Snake are engaged in deception and falsehood, and Joseph is willing to bend the truth to get what he wants. When Sir Oliver, disguised as old Stanley, approaches Joseph to ask for money, Joseph easily lies that he has no money. He even blames his brother, Charles, stating that Charles’s free-spending has left Joseph without funds. Of course the gossips have no interest in the truth; their goal is to entertain one another with wild speculation. When compared to such exciting exaggerations as theirs, reality — and the truth — is boring.

Wealth

This is certainly a play about wealth. The poor in London were much too busy trying to find shelter and food to engage in such idle distractions as gossip or gaming. Wealth really sets the characters in this play apart from the rest of society. For instance, Sir Peter complains that his wife spends too much on silk dresses and fresh out-of-season flowers. Charles spends his money gaming and drinking with his friends, and the moneylenders are on their way to being wealthy, thanks to idle young men such as Charles. Maria is the object of Joseph’s plotting only because she is wealthy, and Sir Oliver is primarily interested in the morals of his nephews because he plans to leave them him wealth.

Archetypal Criticism

The term archetype in literary criticism defines recurring (happening again and again) narrative designs, patterns of action, character types or images which are said to be identifiable in a wide variety of works of literature, myths, dreams and social rituals. Northrop Frye is the best known practitioner and spokesman of archetypal or myth criticism.

Earnest Cassirer, a social anthropologist was an important influence on myth criticism. For Cassirer, reason alone cannot lead to truth, but mythical thinking which focuses on immediate experience is essential. Another important influence was Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961) who used the term archetype to what he called “primordial images”. According to him the “psychic residue” of the repeated patterns of experience in the lives of our ancestors survives in the “Collective Unconscious” of the human race. This is expressed in myth, religion, dreams and private fantasies as well as in works of literature.

Important practitioners of various modes of archetypal criticism are Maud Bodkin, Wilson Knight, Robert Graves, Philip Wheel Wright, Richard Chase and Joseph Campbell. Northrop Frye contributed the most to the mythic method, especially as a school of criticism. In the introduction to his Anatomy of Criticism (1957), Frye argued for a varied field of study called “archetypal criticism’” In this book the four radical platforms correspond to four seasons in the cycle of natural world. They are incorporated in the four major ‘genres’ of comedy (spring), romance (summer), tragedy (autumn) and satire (winter). Frye expanded the theory in his long series of later writings.

Canon

The term canon (‘Kanon’ in Greek signifies a measuring rod or a scale) was originally applied to the Christian religious texts in the middle ages which were designated by the church authorities as comprising the genuine Holy Scriptures. Later the term was used in literature to signify the list of secular literary works accepted as really written by a particular author. Thus we have “the Shakespeare Canon”’ “the Milton Canon” and so on. Now the phrase “literary canon” denotes the works of those authors/writers who are commonly accepted by authorities like the critics, scholars and teachers as major writers and which is often hailed as literary classics. Canon thus refers to authorized texts. The canonical writers are the ones who, at a particular time are the most published, most discussed by critics and likely to be included in the curriculum.

The canon of literature, unlike that of religion, emerges by way of a gradual and unofficial consensus. It is tacit rather than open and has no clear cut boundaries. It is also subject to changes.

New books could be included or excluded from it. The social process by which an author comes to be tacitly and durably accepted as canonical is called “canon formation”. The factors involved in canon formation are complex and disputed. Anyhow, it involves the acceptance of certain works by critics, scholars, teachers and authors with different viewpoints, the use of an author in curriculum and frequent references to the author in discussions within her/his community. All of this points to the fact that, the so-called ‘literary canon’, unquestioningly considered as the ‘great tradition’, has to be recognized as a construct, formed by particular ideologies at particular times. Many English writers of the twentieth century like T.S.Eliot, James Joyce and Virginia Woolf as well as present day writers like V.S.Naipaul and Salman Rushdie amongst others have achieved this status.

At anytime the boundaries of the canon remain unclear, within which some authors are central and others marginal. Some marginal authors later achieve central status. A notable example in twentieth century English literature is that of John Donne who achieved prominence because of the reevaluation made by T.S.Eliot and other New Critics. Once firmly established in the canon, it is very difficult for an author to be excluded from it.

Presently the canon has become an area of dispute. Opposition to the established canon has become an important area of concern for different types of critics like deconstructive, feminist and Marxist critics. The centre of the discussion is what book to be selected for the curriculum. An important accusation is that the standard canon represents the dominant white, male, European Middle to upper class ideology. Gauri Viswanathan in her Masks of Conquests: Literary Study and British Rule in India (1989) has conclusively shown that the canon in English is indirectly related to British imperialism (a system in which one country rules over other one by force).

The canon provokes a lot of debate because since the 19th century it has been viewed as something in which the language achieves its finest expressions. Critics like Mathew Arnold and F.R.Leavis viewed literature as providing a model for social harmony and cultural integration. The theory revolution of the 1970s however seriously challenged the ideology and concept that formed the basis for canon. Allan Bloom’s The Closing of the American Mind (1987), Harold Bloom’s The Western Canon (1995), Dinesh D’souza’s Illiberal Education: The Politics of Race and Sex in Campuses (1991) have all strongly defended pluralism and multiculturalism against elitism and hierarchism in canon formation.

Indian Literature in English: An Historical Perspective

Anyone concerned with the history of Indian writing in English, and with its reception in India and abroad, must be sobered by the consideration that this is the first international seminar that has been held on the subject outside India.  If neither the organizers nor the distinguished participants who are here seem to have been aware of the this fact, that simply emphasis how necessary and how useful it is to have an historical perspective on the subject.

Any historical perspective on a literature must help us to see its age, its volume, and its variety; and that is the scope of this paper.  Dr. Chaudhuri’s paper provides a useful starting point for mine.  If it is easy to take umbrage sometimes at his manner, or to disagree with  the  precise way in which he formulates a particular matter, it is generally difficult to take issue with the substance of what he says.  I make bold, however, to challenge two points he made, to the effect that we could write quite well in English by 1850 and that the world of English in India is a limited one and will always remain so.

I make bold to challenge them because in this particular matter of Indian writing in English, of which Mr. Chaudhuri so blithely declared himself ignorant, I have the inestimable advantage of having actually read the stuff!  My special interest is the history of Indian writing in English – and, as I research it, I become more and more aware of how much is simply not known.

There are, for example, five major bibliographies which include Indian English literature within their ambit – including the most useful short bibliography by Ronald Warwick, published by the Commonwealth Institute.  But the most substantial of these bibliographies, edited by Professor Amritjit Singh et al., (Indian Literature in English – A Guide to Information Sources) published in America last year by Gale Research Company, and running to some 630 pages, commences only in 1827, the date of the publication of the first volume of poems by that remarkable Indian, Henry Derozio.  The year (1827) is the generally accepted date or the commencement of the literature, but it is at least a few decades late.  The pamphlets of no less a person than Raja Rammohan Roy began being published some twenty years earlier, in 1816, while the very first pamphlet written in English by an Indian appears to have been published in 1806.  The first book to be published in English by an Indian, appeared before the end of the eighteen century, in 1794.  We don’t have time to discuss the fascinating man who wrote that volume, Sake Deen Mahomed, but he was only one of many Indians who were writing in English before the end of the eighteenth century.  Though they do not seem to have published any volumes of work, they contributed to Calcutta periodicals at a time when Calcutta was second only to London in its importance in the Empire.  Nineteenth century Calcutta was cosmopolitan, and swayed to breezes not only from Britain and the Continent, as Mr. Chaudhuri reminded us, but also to breezes from as far away as Canada and the United States – which are geographically just about as far from India as it is possible to be.  And yet Calcutta started benefiting from English education only in 1817, while the first school which taught English was actually started hundred years earlier, at Cuddalore, near Madras.

The revolution in Indian intellectual life was so complete by the 1830s that the first autobiography had already been published in English – Raja Rammohan Roy’s.  Why it is the genre of autobiography that so demonstrates this mental revolution will be instantly clear to anyone acquainted with Vedantic philosophy, which believes that our consciousness of being individuals, separate from each other and from nature around us, is not only an illusion, but constitutes precisely that illusion which prevents us from ‘relising’ the absolute Brahman.  To be so absorbed in this ignorant and illusionary self as to actually want to recall, and then pass on to others, the wretchedly transitory detail of life in this illusory world ought to come as close as possible to the unforgivable in Advaitic belief.  Anyway, that sin had been committed by an eminent Indian in the 1830s, and is committed by an increasing number of Indians, eminent and not-so-eminent, every year.  The first play in English, Krishna Mohan Banerjea’s The Persecuted was published in 1831, and the first novel in English, Bankim Chandra Chatterjee’s Rajmohan’s Wife was published in 1864.  Briefly, then, Indian writing in English goes back some two hundred years, and all the major literary forms had begun being practiced some one hundred and twenty years ago.

By contrast, Australian literature is generally agreed to begin with the stories of Charles Rowcroft in the 1800s, Canadian literature with T. C. Haliburton’s The Clockmaker in 1836, and New Zealand literature with two volumes published separately by Samuel Butler and F.E. Maning in 1863.  White South Afrian literature, again, begins in the 1800s, but black African literature begins very late – unless one includes the work of black British writers such as Equiano and Sancho in the eighteenth century.  Caribbean literature, if one excludes the seemingly solitary exception of Mary Seacole (who should also properly be considered black British), really begins in the inter-war period in the twentieth century.  India was therefore one of the first countries outside Britain and America to adopt English for literary purposes.

One other fact is often forgotten in nationalist zeal by good Indians: that the British did not generally want to see natives educated in English, partly for the racist reasons of keeping us in our place, and partly for more sophisticated cultural and political reasons.  They were afraid that English education would cause too much trouble.  And of course it did.  Eventually it was English education that was responsible for Britain losing its Indian, and in consequence its world, empire.  So Macaulay, the whipping-boy of those Indian who blindly favour the exclusive use of Indian regional languages, was actually quite enlightened.  In allying himself with the progressive Anglicist lobby on the Committee of Public Instruction which he chaired he was, more importantly, allying himself with a large and growing body of Indian opinion that wanted English education and had already started getting it.  His Minute (which introduced state-supported English-language education into India) was the same Minute which conceded the Indian could already (in 1835) use English with an use, fluency, and precision that would do credit to any Member of Macaulay’s own (British) Committee of Public instruction.  We fought to get State-subsidised English education because we could see its advantages; the English hesitated to give it to us because they too could see the advantages that would accrue to us as well as the corresponding disadvantages to themselves.  This Indian demand for State-supported English-language education created the precedent and the successful model for English-language education which was followed in British colonies in other parts of Asia, Africa and the Caribbean, and thus laid the foundations for the development of English as a world language.

We come, next, to the question of the volume of the literature.  Prose was the first of the literary forms in Indian English literature, and it continues to be the largest and most vigorous form.  Born properly with the reforming zeal of Raja Rammonhan Roy, and aimed at educated people all over the country, the astonishing and irritating flexibility of the language was hammered into an effective weapon of exposition, argument, and exhortation against the British by a long line of eminent patriots such as Brahmabandhab Upadhyay, Jawaharlal Nehru, and Mahatma Gandhi.  More recent practitioners, such as Mr. Chaudhuri and Ved Mehta, have used it at least as effectively and creatively, if to quite different purposes.

As might be expected, poetry was the most important literary form of the nineteenth century, and through it is not of such central importance now, an ever-increasing number of Indian poets are writing and publishing in English.

Fiction in English presents an opposite sort of line on the graph, which compared to poetry, for it shows a steadily increasing popularity at first, and now an algebraic growth rate, both in the number of works published, and in the print runs of individual titles.

Drama in English is of course the last of the literary forms to flower and there have been only some two hundred plays published in English over a period of 150 years.  But then if drama is to thrive, it is self-evident that it needs greater institutional and public support than any other form of literature.

It is also possible to examine the quantity of Indian literature in English by the historical periods into which it naturally falls.  The first of these is roughly up to 1816, what might be called the ‘Pre-Roy’ period (i.e. before Raja Rammohun Roy).  It is during this period that the use of English by Indians was an individual aberration or indulgence.

The second period begins with Roy and is typified by him: it is marked by a steadily increasing use of the language on the part of the growing nationalist class which was, during this period, entirely English-educated.

The third period begins in the 1930s with the arrival of the three major Indo-Anglian novelists, Mulk Raj Anand, R.K. Narayan and Raja Rao.  This coincides with the final phase of the nationalist movement which for the first time in Indian history awoke the masses of our peoples to their political rights and responsibilities.  During this time, India’s conception of  caste, which had strangled social behaviour for some thousands of years, was revolutionized, and Mahatma Gandhi’s Christianised and individual version of Karma and Bhakti was gradually replaced by the philosophical and practical materialism and individualism typified by the urbanizing and industrializing instincts of Jawaharlal Nehru, our first Prime Minister.

Having got rid of the English, the paradoxical Indians turned with a remarkable passion to the language of the  people we had just expelled,: our Constitution, adopted in 1951, was written in English, and recognized two official languages, English and Hindi, which the government has made determined efforts to promote.  With this patronage, Hindi has made significant strides, and the number of publications has been growing steadily.  But what is not often realized is that the number of publications in English is also growing, both absolutely and as a proportion of all books published.  Eight thousand of the seventeen thousand titles published in 1981 were in English, and comprised the bulk of our book exports worth £4.5 million.  It is not surprising that India is among the ten largest publishers in the world; what is a little surprising, and very little known, is that India is now the largest publisher of English-language books in the world, after the United States and Britain.

So powerful has Indian English literature become that novelists who have won prizes for their work in Indian regional languages, such as Narendarpal Singh, have started writing in English: an exact reversal of the situation a hundred years ago when M.M. Dutt and Bankim Chander Chatterjee flirted with English before returning faithfully to Bengali.

Indian writers in English have now won every major literary prize: the Nobel Prize was won by Rabindranath Tagore in 1913, the Booker McConnell Prize for 1981 was won by Salman Rushdie.  The Hawthornden Prize, the Commonwealth Poetry Prie, the Duff Cooper Memorial Award, the Winifred Holtby Award of the Royal Society for Literature, the English-Speaking Union’s Prize for the Best Novel of the Year – all of these have been won by Indian. 

If Indian literature in English is of such quantity, variety, antiquity and quality, why is it so little known and recognised in the West?  One reason is the self-interest of Western individuals and publishing companies.  After independence, the number of opportunities for Western individuals and corporations multiplied in Africa and the Caribbean.  By contrast, opportunities for Westerners in India disappeared almost overnight.  It is therefore understandable that few Western literary scholars are interested in Indian English literature: there are fewer career opportunities. Indian legislation, combined with India’s own vigorous publishing industry means that the market available in India to Western publishers is negligible.  India publishers themselves have only recently made any substantial attempts to promote their books in Britain.

Whereas the cause of Afro-Caribbean studies was given a powerful fillip by the political and social activism of black Americans which has had repercussions all over the world, there has been no similar factor promoting Indian or South Asian studies abroad.  Unlike the African, the Indian diaspora is rarely perceived as a unity; indeed, it is rarely perceived at all.  One has to remind intelligent and well-read people of the fact that the Indian diaspora is both more massive and more widespread than the African, extending to Fiji, Australia, Malaysia and Singapore, Sri Lanka, Mauritius, the Seychelles, the Middle East, Britain and various Continental countries, Canada, the united States, Trinidad and Guyana, in addition to Nigeria and a number of countries in Eastern, Central and Southern Africa.

The Chinese diaspora is perhaps comparable, in both spread and size, but the Indian is more riven by divisions of language, religion, caste and family ties.

There are two other factors within our community that have historically militated against our own interest, and still do so.  I refer to what I call the ‘cut-above syndrome’.  Every Brahmin thinks himself superior to members of every other caste, the Muslim considers himself superior to the idolatrous Hindu, the Bengali thinks that the Punjabi is a philistine, the Punjabi in his turn reviles the cowardly Bengali for eating fish rather than meat, and so on.  There is also what I call the ‘orphan-wish’ of Indian English writers: none of us wishes to acknowledge our literary ancestors, regional, Indian English, British, or whatever; all of us apparently sprang full-grown Minerva-like from Jupiter’s head!   Our attitude is summed up by one of us who, on being asked about other Indian English writers, looked the questioner in the eye and quietly replied, “There are a few … but I am the only one worth reading.”

This sort of attitude is possible only for the extreme egoist (which that writer is not), or for one who is ignorant of the history and the body of the tradition in which he or she is writing.