The World of Literature and Linguistics

Famous Quotes from "Oedipus Rex" by Sophocles

1. **Tiresias to Oedipus** (on blindness and insight):
*"You mock my blindness, do you? But I say that you, with both your eyes, are blind: You cannot see the wretchedness of your life."*

2. **Oedipus's Curse** (unknowingly condemning himself):
*"I pray that the murderer’s life be consumed in evil and wretchedness."*

3. **Oedipus's Realization** (anagnorisis):
*"I, Oedipus, Oedipus, damned in his birth, in his marriage damned, Damned in the blood he shed with his own hand!"*

4. **Chorus's Reflection** (on fate and human hubris):
*"Pride breeds the tyrant."*
*"Count no man happy till he dies, free of pain at last."*

5. **Jocasta on Prophecy** (ironic dismissal):
*"Why should man fear since chance is all in all for him, and he can foretell nothing?"*

6. **Oedipus on Wisdom** (after learning the truth):
*"How terrible is wisdom when it brings no profit to the man that's wise!"*

7. **Opening Lines** (Oedipus addressing Thebes):
*"My children, latest born to Cadmus old, Why sit ye here as suppliants, in your hands Branches of olive filleted with wool?"*

8. **Oedipus to Tiresias** (accusation of blindness):
*"Blind as you are in eyes, and ears, and mind!"*

9. **Tiresias's Revelation** (dramatic irony):
*"You are the land's pollution."*

10. **Oedipus's Despair** (after self-blinding):
*"What use are my eyes to me? Nothing could be sweet to see, nothing to look at again."*

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Arthur Miller

Arthur Miller (October 17, 1915 – February 10, 2005) was an influential American playwright, essayist, and screenwriter renowned for his exploration of social awareness and character psychology within the context of contemporary American life. Some of his most celebrated works include "All My Sons," "Death of a Salesman," "The Crucible," and "A View from the Bridge." Miller's plays often addressed complex themes related to morality, justice, and the human condition, reflecting his commitment to using literature as a means of addressing societal issues. Additionally, Miller faced controversy during the McCarthy era due to his unwillingness to testify against colleagues accused of having ties to Communism, leading to his blacklisting and legal battles.
what is arthur miller's most famous play

Arthur Miller's most famous play is "Death of a Salesman," which premiered in 1949[1][3]. This seminal work is recognized as one of the greatest plays of the 20th century and won the Pulitzer Prize and multiple Tony Awards[2][5]. Other notable plays by Miller include "The Crucible," "All My Sons," and "A View from the Bridge"[1][2].

Best Arthur Miller plays from the Crucible to Death of a Salesman We rank the best Arthur Miller plays, from the great American playwright's first show on Broadway to his tragic Death of a Salesman

Robert Browning as a Victorian poet.
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Robert Browning is naturally considered a Victorian poet, considering that he wrote during the time period of Victorian England. And yet Browning’s work is simultaneously a revolt against some of the most well-defined aspects of that time, and a reflection of its characteristics.
Victorian England, named after Queen Victoria, who was crowned in 1837, is marked by several social qualities: repressed s*xuality, strict morality, an expansion of English imperialism, a focus on human inventiveness, and nascent doubt over man’s place in the universe. With the world changing so quickly over the roughly 70 year-period, artists, scholars and scientists created and wrote from a place of unrest. Where perhaps most of them came down strong on one side of the period’s many questions, Browning embraced the uncertainty of his time as a facet of human nature and psychology, and his poetry reflects not strong opinions but rather our tendency to waver between opposing views.
Perhaps the most well-known aspect of Victorian England was its ‘prudish’ attitudes on s*x. Operating under the belief that women were not to be consumed with s*xual lust, laws and social strictures forced men and women into entirely separate spheres. The hope was that secure, happy families could be created and by default a moral society. Browning’s work takes great issue with such repression. Though he is by not means a libertine, he reflects in many poems the cost of such repression as an equally vicious reaction. Poems like “Porphyria’s Lover” or “Evelyn Hope” show the grotesque side of such assumptions. Further, the class element of this Victorian idea (that women should prepare a nice home for a man’s success) is shown to be equally vicious in poems like “My Last Duchess” and “The Laboratory.”
Browning’s most important poetic message regards the new conditions of urban living. By the middle of the nineteenth century, the once-rural British population had become centered in large cities, thanks to the changes wrought by the Industrial Revolution. With so many people living in such close quarters, poverty, violence, and s*x became part of everyday life. People felt fewer restrictions on their behavior, no longer facing the fear of non-acceptance that they had faced in smaller communities; people could act in total anonymity, without any monitoring by acquaintances or small-town busybodies. However, while the absence of family and community ties meant new-found personal independence, it also meant the loss of a social safety net.
Thus, for many city-dwellers, a sense of freedom mixed with a sense of insecurity. The mid-nineteenth century also saw the rapid growth of newspapers, which functioned not as the current-events journals of today but as scandal sheets, filled with stories of violence and carnality. Hurrying pedestrians, bustling shops, and brand-new goods filled the streets, and individuals had to take in millions of separate perceptions a minute. The resulting over stimulation led, according to many theorists, to a sort of numbness. Many writers now felt that in order to provoke an emotional reaction they had to compete with the turmoil’s and excitements of everyday life had to shock their audience in ever more novel and sensational ways. Thus, violence became a sort of aesthetic choice for many writers, among them Robert Browning. In many of his poems, violence, along with s*x, becomes the symbol of the modern urban-dwelling condition. Many of Browning’s more disturbing poems, including “Porphyria’s Lover” and “My Last Duchess,” reflect this notion.
This apparent moral decay of Victorian society, coupled with an ebbing of interest in religion, led to a morally conservative backlash. So-called Victorian prudery arose as an attempt to rein in something that was seen as out- of-control, an attempt to bring things back to the way they once were. Thus everything came under moral scrutiny, even art and literature. Many of Browning’s poems, which often feature painters and other artists, try to work out the proper relationship between art and morality: Should art have a moral message? Can art be immoral? Are aesthetics and ethics inherently contradictory aims? These are all questions with which Browning’s poetry struggles. The new findings of science, most notably evolution, posed further challenges to traditional religious ideas, suggesting that empiricism—the careful recording of observable details—could serve as a more relevant basis for human endeavor, whether intellectual or artistic.
Though Browning was not explicitly a political poet, his work does reflect doubts in the supremacy of England as Victorianism saw it. Consider poems like “Caliban upon Setebos,” which proffer the thesis that we are all of us flawed creatures who know nothing of anyone save ourselves. The argument implicitly counters the Social Darwinist ideas that justified England’s extreme imperialism.
All in all, Browning was a man of his time, both in the way he reflected the new Victorian learning and questioned some its assumptions on morality and behavior.

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Alfred Lord Tennyson
Alfred Lord Tennyson (1809-1893) is by far the most representative poet of the Victorian era. Born on August 6, 1809, in the Lincolnshire rectory of Somersby, he, with his brother Charles, published a small volume of poetry entitled Poems by Two Brothers. He was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge and won the Chancellor's English medal with a poem, Timbuctoo.

In 1832 appeared Poems by Alfred Tennyson which at once established his reputation as a poet. His Poems include The Lady of Shalott, The Palace of Art, The Lotos-Eaters. Poems (1842) contain his famous poems like Ulysses, Locksley Hall, Sir Galahad etc. The death of his friend, Arthur Henry Hallam was a stunning blow to Tennyson and he wrote In Memoriam (1850) which starting as an elegy for his friend, soon became a "long philosophic poem dealing with universal questions of life, death and hereafter". His other works include The Princess (1847), Maud (1855), Idylls of King (1859-1865), Tethonus (1868) and Enoch A'rden (1864). In 1850, he accepted the Poet Laureateship after the death of Wordsworth.

Tennyson had the supreme task of interpreting the complex life of the age. There is scarcely any movement in the great spheres of human thought-social, political and religious which has not found a reflection in his poetry. The Princess deals with the question of the proper sphere of women in society; Locksley Hall gives expression to the young hopes and aspirations of the liberalism of the early Victorian age, while in Locksley Hall, Sixty Years After the doubts and distrust felt by the conservatism of late Victorian Age find dramatic utterance. In Memoriam deals with the religious problems of the age, while Maud is an expression of the "revolt of a cultured mind against the hypocrisy and corruptions of a society degraded by the worship of Mammon".

There is no doubt that this broadly representative character of his verse made him the most popular poet of the age; "he gained the ears of his age, because he spoke with its voice". But it was at once a source of strength and weakness. He was often called the poet of Victorian compromise. While other writers and thinkers like Carlyle, Ruskin, Arnold, Dickens and Thackeray made idealistic and realistic reactions against the commercialism and loss of faith in the Victorian era, Tennyson in his poetry tried to strike a compromise between the differing loyalties of the age - science and faith, religion and industrial civilization and moralistic preacher, exhorting the age not to fall away from its beliefs. No wonder, the reaction against Tennyson set in, and today among the young men of letters to care for Tennyson's poetry is to be old-fashioned, and to belittle it is to be in the movement. Young men and women of the twentieth century look upon the Victorian era as mean superficial and stupid. Without entering into the vexed question of the Tennysonian reaction, it may be asserted that there is much among the mass of his thoughts which are of perennial interest: by these and his great qualities as an artist, his memory is safe for all time to come.

Tennyson as a poet has a great impact on English poetry. A contemporary critic has justly remarked - "the gifts by which Tennyson will ultimately take his place among great poets are indubitably those of an artist". Tennyson is a supreme lyricist the mantle of Spenser and Keats had fallen on him. In his short lyrical poems, his gift as a craftsman comes out prominent. Such poems as Break, Break, Break, Tears Idle Tears, Crossing the Bar, The Lotos-Eaters, Ulysses, and stanzas of In Memoriam are remarkable for lucidity of verse and excellence of mood and melody. He is a minute observer of nature and his descriptions of Nature have an uncanny accuracy and vividness. His poetic diction is characterized by wonderful richness, avoidance of the common-place and frequent use of repetition, alliteration and assonance.

Alfred Lord Tennyson can produce the effects of harshness, vigor, drowsiness, majesty by the skillful manipulation of the rhythm, the mastery over vowel-music and consonantal effect (cf. The Lotos-Eaters and Ulysses). His similes and imageries, mostly drawn from nature are picturesque and apt (ct. The Lady of Shalott). Even his inspirers, Spenser and Keats could not have more effectively conveyed Tennyson's atmosphere best and among the best English poetry. The poet excels in the lullaby of Sweet and Low, the bugle call the splendor falls on castle walls, the sentimental Home they brought her warrior dead, Now sleep the crimson petal and come down, O Maid, from yonder mountain height are often called the greatest unrimed lyrics in English. Victorian morality and orthodoxy are, however, prominent in his longer pieces like Sir Galahad, Idylls of the King, The Princess, etc.

There were ebb and tide in Tennyson's literary reputation. After his death and on into the early Twentieth century, the almost universal distaste for the bourgeois orthodoxy among intellectuals caused his reputation to decline drastically. Joyce dismissed him as "Alfred Lawn Tennison", and critics vied with one another to assign him lower and lower ranking as a minor figure in English poetry. The chief cause for the decline in his reputation was his advocacy of Victorian orthodoxy and the bourgeois ethos and the moral preachings which predominated in his poetry. He was largely credited with having given the English people their flattering image of the Prince Consort the German husband of Queen Victoria. But Tennyson's reputation at mid-twentieth century, however, was rising, and he is now again rated highly, though significantly not for the qualities that brought him fame in his era. T. S. Eliot in 1936 acclaimed Tennyson as a great poet because of his "abundance, variety and complete competence".

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Lord Byron
Byron was one of the most vigorous and powerful satirists of England during the nineteenth century. His genius was essentially satirical. In satire Byron found the suitable media for his rebellious and passionate nature and it is in satire which turned more joyously from the early years of his life. He had a great liking for Alexander Pope, the prince of satirists in the 18th century and for Gifford, his successor. He closely imitated their form and style in his satires, and almost, all the satirical works of Byron were written under the influence of Pope, Gifford and Swift.

Though Byron was not as studious as Shelley, his attitude towards life was very profound and convincing. He was never happy with the going on customs of the society. He wanted to bring about a revolutionary change in the society. This longing for regeneration makes him a great revolutionary poet and lover of man. Byron was one of the proudest revolutionary poets and the poets of freedom and liberty that England has ever produced. He was a born rebel and the fire of liberty and hatred for tyranny burnt furiously in his veins. "Art for Art's Sake", says Courthope, was abhorrent to his genius. He was the Avtar of the revolutionary movement, where every thought was prompted by revolt against the moral postulates of society.The way in which Byron uses his pictures of European life and manners in the first half of Don Juan to cast ironic light on a whole complex of English evasions and hypocrisies (which he sums up by the single word 'cast') has been well discussed by his critics. But forced by the second half of the poem, in which Juan arrives in England to experience fashionable aristocratic life in London and the big country houses, most writers on Byron become hesitant. Partly this is due to the obvious difficulty that Byron starts a story of romantic intrigue moving, involving Juan's host less, the seemingly glacical (but in fact susceptible) Lady Adetine; the innocent delicate Aurora Raley; and the 'frolic' Duchess of Fitz- Fulke'. Just as events are growing serious with the appearance of 'her frolic race' in Juan's bedroom, the spry breaks off. Byron departed from the Greek war of Independence and the poem was left incomplete. Yet each allowing for this disadvantage it seems strange that 'Don Juan', X to XIV has not around more enthusiasm.
Marriage without love is severely criticized by Byron. Society cannot resist the trends of the illicit love as well as it cannot endure it and so issues a code of crucifixion against them. But why should the tender wishes of these human beings be killed? Why should they be separated by the unwanted force of iron rod? Marriage is an institution legalized by religion and society, but what power does it have to bring about a mental strain completely unknown. Marriage without love may be supported by the society, not by conscious people as it opens ways of immoral illicit affair. This picture has been vividly depicted through the conjugal life of Don Alfanso and Donna Julia.

Byron's scope of satire sometimes crosses the circumscription of morality, as it is often alleged by virtuous critics. But C. N. Bowra associates against their verdict. He hoped that by telling the truth he would awake the world to the evils which delighted its happiness, and expose its respected social system a corrupt and corrupting shame.

Byron attacks not ideal but false and fake exercise of idealism. We must remember that he does not attack the sensibility but false sentiment, not morality but abuse in morality. He does it unhesitatingly and it seems Byron revolts against the moral faults of the current society.

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Geoffrey Chaucer
1. Born in 1343 son of merchant of wine
2. In 1357 page in Elizabeth household
3. Capture by French in 1359 but Ransomed by king
4. 1366 Chaucer married Philippa Roet, a lady in the waiting Queen's household.
5. In 1386 he was elected member of parliament for Kent.
6. In 1389 he was made clerk of the king's work.
7. First poet to be buried in Westminster now known as "The poets corner".
8. John Dryden called him "the father of English poetry". "Here is God's plenty".
9. He was the first national poet of England.
10. Ocleve wrote poem "The Regiment of Princess" on the death of Chaucer.

Anglo Saxon and Norman Period

A prayer without a deed is an arrow without a bowstring:
A deed without a prayer is a bowstring without an arrow.
Ella Wheeler Wilcox