Dickens’ flair for expressing matters of common concern in his own style shows in the very title, Hard Times. The title usually suggest cliché or pun, the theme of human life count down by calculation and routine: for example, according to Cocker, “ Hard Times is of hard heads and soft hearts”. A mare questi…

Character Sketch of Behrman In "The Last Leaf," by O. Henry, Behrman is a seemingly defeated character . Behrman is a very important character as his sacrifice is what eventually saves Johnsy. His outer characterization presents him as a painter who is “past sixty”, “the body of an imp” , …

Intro: Drama is a composite art form. It is mimetic like all other performing arts in literature. It imitates life, particularly reflecting the three unities of time, place and action. “It is designed for representation on the stage by actors who act the parts of the characters of its story, and among wh…

A picaresque novel deals with the adventures of a rogue or villain. Narayan’s Man Eater of Malgudi has almost all the spices to be a picaresque novel surrounded by the picaro man, Vasu. He has been shown as an adventurous and mysterious wanderer. He pretends to be a person of dual personality. Vasu , the proto…

Narayan holds a distinct position in the realm of Anglo-Indian literature . In Man Eater of Malgudi , he depicts the canvas without sounding preachy or cynical. The quiet landscape of  Malgudi  provides a suitable background for his fiction.  Malgudi  is a microcosm, this is a world within a world. Meenakshi Mukh…

World War I , the war that was originally expected to be “over by Christmas,” dragged on for four years with a grim brutality brought on by the dawn of trench warfare and advanced weapons, including chemical weapons. The horrors of that conflict altered the world for decades – and writers reflected that shifted …

“The Restoration comedy of manners reached its fullest expression in  The Way of the World  (1700) by William Congreve, which is dominated by a brilliantly witty couple.” The themes of the Restoration comedy of manners are love, marriage, adulterous relationships amours and legacy conflicts; and the characters…

Blake’s Chimney Sweeper Poems The poem “The Chimney Sweeper” is set against the dark background of child labour, a crude horror of the Industrial Revolution that was well known in England in the late 18 th century. The poems ( Chimney Sweeper in Innocence and Experience) are meant to convey two different …