English, Irish Modernism

More Poems

"Leda and the Swan" A sudden blow: the great wings beating still Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed By his dark webs, her nape caught in his bill, He holds her helpless breast upon his breast. How can those terrified vague fingers push The feathered glory from her loosening thighs? How can anybody, laid in that white rush, But feel the strange heart beating where it lies? A shudder in the loins, engenders there The broken wall, the burning roof and tower And Agamemnon dead. Being so caught up, So mastered by the brute blood of the air, Did she put on his knowledge with his power Before the indifferent beak could let her drop? "Crazy Jane Talks with the Bishop" I met the Bishop on the road And much said he and I. 'Those breasts are flat and fallen now, Those veins must soon be dry; Live in a heavenly mansion, Not in some foul sty.' 'Fair and foul are near of kin, And fair needs foul,' I cried. 'My friends are gone, but that's a truth Nor grave nor bed denied, Learned in bodily lowliness And in the heart's pride. 'A woman can be proud and stiff When on love intent; But Love has pitched his mansion in The place of excrement; For nothing can be sole or whole That has not been rent.' Stanza VI from "Among School Children" Plato thought nature but a spume that plays Upon a ghostly paradigm of things; Solider Aristotle played the taws Upon the bottom of a king of kings; World-famous golden-thighed Pythagoras Fingered upon a fiddle-stick or strings What a star sang and careless Muses heard: Old clothes upon old sticks to scare a bird. "The Dolls" A doll in the doll-maker's house Looks at the cradle and bawls: 'That is an insult to us.' But the oldest of all the dolls, Who had seen, being kept for show, Generations of his sort, Out-screams the whole shelf: 'Although There's not a man can report Evil of this place, The man and the woman bring Hither, to our disgrace, A noisy and filthy thing.' Hearing him groan and stretch The doll-maker's wife is aware Her husband has heard the wretch, And crouched by the arm of his chair, She murmurs into his ear, Head upon shoulder leant: 'My dear, my dear, O dear, It was an accident.'

Lawrence's non-fiction

"Edgar Allen Poe" - This essay extensively describes Poe's writing style, which he describes as mechanical and scientific. He says that Poe's stories are not stories at all, but a series of cause and effect. He says the Poe does not look at the human side of characters and instead treats them as inanimate objects with human characteristics (but still human). "Thomas Hardy" - Lawrence chastises writers such as Thomas Hardy and Leo Tolstoy, who, he argues, defile their own passionate impulses when in their emplotted judgments they side with social law against the primitive nature of their characters. "Why the Novel Matters" - "The novel is the book of life. In this sense, the Bible is a great confused novel. You may say, it is about God. But it is really about man alive. Adam, Eve, Sarai, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Samuel, David, Bath-sheba, Ruth, Esther, Solomon, Job, Isaiah, Jesus, mark, Judas, Paul, Peter: what is it but man alive, from start to finish? Man alive, not mere bits. Even the Lord is another man alive, in a burning bush, throwing the tablets of stone at Moses's head." (from 'Why the Novel Matters,' 1956)

*Aspects of the Novel

*Aspects of the Novel The major idea to come out of this book of criticism is the idea of "flat" characters and "round" characters. Forster believed that Dickens was a strong writer of both types.He also asserts that novles should strive to be more than just stories. He differentiates between "form" and "content." He differentiates between a story ("the king died.") and a plot ("the queen then died of grief.").

A.E. Housman (1859-1936)

Alfred Edward Housman was an English poet and classical scholar, now best known for his cycle of poems A Shropshire Lad.

J. M. Synge

Although he came form a middle-class Protestant background, Synge's writings are mainly concerned with the world of the Roman Catholic peasants of rural Ireland and with what he saw as the essential paganism of their world view. Christy Mahon The Playboy of the Western World (1907)- an unflattering portrayal of the working class Irish. It is set in a cottage in County Mayo (on the North-West coast of Ireland) during the early 1900s. It tells the story of Christy Mahon, a young man supposedly running away having killed his father. Christy arrives at the cottage, and the locals are more interested in vicariously enjoying his story than in condemning his morality. The Shadow of the Glen (1905)

Samuel Beckett (1906-1989)

An Irish playwright, novelist and poet. Beckett's work is stark, fundamentally minimalist, and deeply pessimistic about human nature and the human condition, although the pessimism is mitigated by a great and often wicked sense of humor. His later work explores his themes in an increasingly cryptic and attenuated style. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1969.

"And Death Shall Have No Dominion"

Beautiful commentary here: http://www.humanities360.com/index.php/poetry-analysis-and-death-shall-have-no-dominion-by-dylan-thomas-7336/ And death shall have no dominion. Dead man naked they shall be one With the man in the wind and the west moon; When their bones are picked clean and the clean bones gone, They shall have stars at elbow and foot; Though they go mad they shall be sane, Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again; Though lovers be lost love shall not; And death shall have no dominion. And death shall have no dominion. Under the windings of the sea They lying long shall not die windily; Twisting on racks when sinews give way, Strapped to a wheel, yet they shall not break; Faith in their hands shall snap in two, And the unicorn evils run them through; Split all ends up they shan't crack; And death shall have no dominion. And death shall have no dominion. No more may gulls cry at their ears Or waves break loud on the seashores; Where blew a flower may a flower no more Lift its head to the blows of the rain; Though they be mad and dead as nails, Heads of the characters hammer through daisies; Break in the sun till the sun breaks down, And death shall have no dominion.

George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

Born in Dublin but working in London, Shaw was a freethinker, feminist, socialist, and vegetarian whose more than 50 plays dealt with social issues of his day. Shaw's plays focus on the conflict between thought and belief.

To The Lighthouse

Characters: Mrs. Ramsay - Mr. Ramsay's wife. A beautiful and loving woman, Mrs. Ramsay is a wonderful hostess who takes pride in making memorable experiences for the guests at the family's summer home on the Isle of Skye. Affirming traditional gender roles wholeheartedly, she lavishes particular attention on her male guests, who she believes have delicate egos and need constant support and sympathy. She is a dutiful and loving wife but often struggles with her husband's difficult moods and selfishness. Without fail, however, she triumphs through these difficult times and demonstrates an ability to make something significant and lasting from the most ephemeral of circumstances, such as a dinner party. Mr. Ramsay - yeah, him. Lily Briscoe - A young, single painter who befriends the Ramsays on the Isle of Skye. Like Mr. Ramsay, Lily is plagued by fears that her work lacks worth. She begins a portrait of Mrs. Ramsay at the beginning of the novel but has trouble finishing it. The opinions of men like Charles Tansley, who insists that women cannot paint or write, threaten to undermine her confidence. Charles Tansley - A young philosopher and pupil of Mr. Ramsay who stays with the Ramsays on the Isle of Skye. Don't think I need to review summary.

The Importance of Being Earnest

Characters: John Worthing, Algernon Moncrieff, Rev. Canon Chasuble, Merriman, Lane, Lady Bracknell, Gwendolen Fairfax, Cecily Cardew, Miss Prism Algernon, a wealthy young Londoner, pretends to have a friend named Bunbury who lives in the country and frequently is in ill health. Whenever Algernon wants to avoid an unwelcome social obligation, or just get away for the weekend, he makes an ostensible visit to his "sick friend." In this way Algernon can feign piety and dedication, while having the perfect excuse to get out of town. He calls this practice "Bunburying." Algernon's real-life best friend lives in the country but makes frequent visits to London. This friend's name is Ernest...or so Algernon thinks. When Ernest leaves his silver cigarette case at Algernon's rooms he finds an inscription in it that claims that it is "From little Cecily to her dear Uncle Jack". This forces Ernest to eventually disclose that his visits to the city are also examples of "Bunburying," much to Algernon's delight. In the country, "Ernest" goes by his real name, John Worthing, and pretends that he has a wastrel brother named Ernest, who lives in London. When honest John comes to the city, he assumes the name, and behaviour, of the profligate Ernest. In the country John assumes and more serious attitude for the benefit of Cecily, who is his ward. John himself wishes to marry Gwendolen, who is Algernon's cousin, but runs into a few problems. First, Gwendolen seems to love him only because she believes his name is Ernest, which she thinks is the most beautiful name in the world. Second, Gwendolen's mother is the terrifying Lady Bracknell. Lady Bracknell is horrified when she learns that John is a foundling who was discovered in a handbag at a railway station. John's description of Cecily appeals to Algernon who resolves to meet her. Algernon soon gets the idea to visit John in the country, pretending that he is the mysterious brother "Ernest." Unfortunately, unknown to Algernon, John has decided to give up his Bunburying, and to do this he has announced the tragic death of Ernest. A series of comic misunderstandings follows, as Algernon-as-Ernest visits the country (as a dead man, as far as the hosts are aware), and John shows up in his mourning clothes. There he encounters John's ward, Cecily, who believes herself in love with Ernest - the non-existent brother she has never met. After Lady Bracknell arrives, it is discovered that John is a nephew of Lady Bracknell who was lost by Miss Prism, Cecily's governess, who was then working for Lady Bracknell's sister. It is also discovered that John's real name is Ernest. It is suggested at the end of the play that Ernest/John will marry Gwendolyn and Algernon will marry Cecily. The play contains many examples of Wilde's famous wit.

Joseph Conrad

Conrad is not, strictly speaking, a British author, but since he lived in England for such a long time and wrote in English, I don't feel I've done him too much harm by including him here. For the exam, you definitely want to equate the name Marlowe with Conrad, since Marlowe is the character that narrates both of Conrad's major works, lord Jim and Heart of Darkness. Heart of Darkness Heart of Darkness is a novella (published 1902) by Joseph Conrad. This highly symbolic story is actually a story within a story, or frame tale, narrated by a man named Marlow to colleagues at an evening gathering. It details an incident earlier in Marlow's life, a visit up the Congo River to investigate the work of Kurtz, a Belgian trader in ivory in the Congo Free State. Attack on Imperialism, among other things.

Dylan Thomas (1914-1953)

Dylan Marlais Thomas was a Welsh poet and writer. He is widely considered to be among the greatest poets of the 20th century; his most famous poems include "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night" and "And Death Shall Have No Dominion." Dylan Thomas is widely considered one of the greatest 20th century poets writing in English, frequently mentioned alongside Frost, Yeats, and T. S. Eliot in lists of the century's most important poets. He remains the leading figure in Anglo-Welsh literature. His vivid and often fantastic imagery was a rejection of the trends in 20th Century verse: while his contemporaries gradually altered their writing to serious topical verse (political and social concerns were often expressed), Thomas gave himself over to his passionately felt emotions, and his writing is often both intensely personal and fiercely lyrical. Thomas, in many ways, was more in alignment with the Romantics than he was with the poets of his era (Auden and Eliot, to name but two). He is particularly remembered for the remarkable radio-play Under Milk Wood, for his poem "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night," which is generally interpreted as a plea to his dying father to hold onto life, and for the short stories "A Child's Christmas in Wales." and "The Outing".

E. M. Forster

Forster has a lot of books that could appear on the test. Pay close attention to the names associated with each and you should do fine. Also take note of the idea of "flat" and "round characters" that Forster propounds in Aspects of the Novel. Forster's views as a secular humanist are at the heart of his work, which often features characters attempting to understand each other ('only connect...', in the words of Forster's famous epigraph to Howards End) across social barriers. His humanist views are expressed in the non-fictional essay "What I believe." Sexuality is another key theme in Forster's works and it has been argued that Forster's writing can be characterized as progressing from heterosexual love to homosexual love. All of his major work was published by 1924.

**"The Second Coming"

From this poem comes the name of Chinua Achebe's novel Things Fall Apart. Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all convictions, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity.Surely some revelation is at hand; Surely the Second Coming is at hand. The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert A shape with lion body and the head of a man, A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun, Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds. The darkness drops again; but now I know That twenty centuries of stony sleep Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle, And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

Endgame

Hamm, Clov Beckett's absurd comic masterpiece follows Hamm, a blind man unable to stand, and his servant Clov, who is unable to sit. Pestered by his parents, Hamm directs this unusual family through their daily rituals, awaiting the end of everything. Swerving from the magnificent to the miniscule and from the profound to the profoundly ridiculous.

The Critic as Artist (1891)

His aesthetic philosophy Dialogue in two parts The essay is a conversation between its leading voice Gilbert and Ernest, who suggests ideas for Gilbert to reject. Unlike Arnold and McNeill Whistler, Wilde sets out to argue that only critical faculty enables any artistic creation, while criticism is independent of the object it criticises and not necessarily subject to it. The essay champions contemplative life to the life of action. Critical contemplation is guided by conscious aesthetic sense as well as by the soul. The soul is wiser than we are, writes Wilde, it is the concentrated racial experience revealed by the imagination. Criticism is above reason, sincerity and fairness; it is necessarily subjective. It is criticism rather than emotional sympathies, abstract ethics or commercial advantages that would make us cosmopolitan and serve as the basis of peace.

Howards End

Howards End Names: ~Margaret, Helen, and Tibby Schlegel ~Charles, Paul, and Evie Wilcox On the one hand are the Schlegel sisters, Margaret and Helen, and their brother Tibby, who care about civilized living, music, literature, and conversation with their friends; on the other, the Wilcoxes, Henry and his children Charles, Paul, and Evie, who are concerned with the business side of life and distrust emotions and imagination. Helen Schlegel is drawn to the Wilcox family, falls briefly in and out of love with Paul Wilcox, and thereafter reacts away from them. Margaret becomes more deeply involved. She is stimulated by the very differences of their way of life and acknowledges the debt of intellectuals to the men of affairs who guarantee stability, whose virtues of 'neatness, decision and obedience ... keep the soul from becoming sloppy'. She marries Henry Wilcox, to the consternation of both families, and her love and steadiness of purpose are tested by the ensuing strains and misunderstandings. Her marriage cracks but does not break. In the end, torn between her sister and her husband, she succeeds in bridging the mistrust that divides them. Howards End, where the story begins and ends, is the house that belonged to Henry Wilcox's first wife, and is a symbol of human dignity and endurance.

*"In Memory of W.B. Yeats"

I He disappeared in the dead of winter: The brooks were frozen, the airports almost deserted, And snow disfigured the public statues; The mercury sank in the mouth of the dying day. What instruments we have agree The day of his death was a dark cold day. Far from his illness The wolves ran on through the evergreen forests, The peasant river was untempted by the fashionable quays; By mourning tongues The death of the poet was kept from his poems. But for him it was his last afternoon as himself, An afternoon of nurses and rumours; The provinces of his body revolted, The squares of his mind were empty, Silence invaded the suburbs, The current of his feeling failed; he became his admirers. Now he is scattered among a hundred cities And wholly given over to unfamiliar affections, To find his happiness in another kind of wood And be punished under a foreign code of conscience. The words of a dead man Are modified in the guts of the living. But in the importance and noise of to-morrow When the brokers are roaring like beasts on the floor of the Bourse, And the poor have the sufferings to which they are fairly accustomed, And each in the cell of himself is almost convinced of his freedom, A few thousand will think of this day As one thinks of a day when one did something slightly unusual. ***What instruments we have agree The day of his death was a dark cold day. II You were silly like us; your gift survived it all: The parish of rich women, physical decay, Yourself. Mad Ireland hurt you into poetry. Now Ireland has her madness and her weather still, For poetry makes nothing happen: it survives In the valley of its making where executives Would never want to tamper, flows on south From ranches of isolation and the busy griefs, Raw towns that we believe and die in; it survives, A way of happening, a mouth. III Earth, receive an honoured guest: William Yeats is laid to rest. Let the Irish vessel lie Emptied of its poetry. In the nightmare of the dark All the dogs of Europe bark, And the living nations wait, Each sequestered in its hate; Intellectual disgrace Stares from every human face, And the seas of pity lie Locked and frozen in each eye. Follow, poet, follow right To the bottom of the night, With your unconstraining voice Still persuade us to rejoice; With the farming of a verse Make a vineyard of the curse, Sing of human unsuccess In a rapture of distress; In the deserts of the heart Let the healing fountain start, In the prison of his days Teach the free man how to praise.

"The Lake Isle of Innisfree"

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree, And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made; Nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for the honeybee, And live alone in the bee-loud glade. And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow, Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings; There midnight's all a-glimmer, and noon a purple glow, And evening full of the linnet's wings. I will arise and go now, for always night and day I hear the water lapping with low sounds by the shore; While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements gray, I hear it in the deep heart's core. Ezra Pound parodied this with The Lake Isle in which he invokes the muses and Roman gods to give him a little tobacco shop. *******.

"What I Believe"

In this essay Forster outlines his creed as a secular humanist. E.M. Forster starts out by saying that he does not believe in creeds; but there are so many around that one has to formulate creed of one's own in self defence. Three values are important to Forster: tolerance, good temper and sympathy. Forster cautiously welcomes democracy for two reasons: * It places importance on the individual (at least more than authoritarian regimes) * It allows criticism Thus, he calls for "two cheers for democracy" (also the title of the book which contains his essay) but argues that three are not necessary. Forster goes on to argue that, although the state ultimately rests on force, the intervals between the use of force are what makes life worth living. Some people may call the absence of force decadence; Forster prefers to call it civilization.

Portrait of the Artists as a Young Man

It is the story of the growth and education of Stephen Dedalus, named after the Grecian mythological craftsman Daedalus. A Portrait is one of the key examples of the Künstlerroman in English literature. Joyce's novel traces the intellectual and religio-philosophical awakening of young Stephen Dedalus as he begins to question and rebel against the Catholic and Irish conventions he has been brought up in. He finally leaves for Paris to pursue his calling as an artist. Passages to be familiar with: The opening: Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a moocow coming down along the road and this moocow that was coming down along the road met a nicens little boy named baby tuckoo His father told him that story: his father looked at him through a glass: he had a hairy face. He was baby tuckoo. The moocow came down the road where Betty Byrne lived: she sold lemon platt. O, the wild rose blossoms On the little green place. He sang that song. That was his song. O, the green wothe botheth. When you wet the bed first it is warm then it gets cold. His mother put on the oilsheet. That had the queer smell. The famous declaration of Stephen Dedalus: APRIL 26. Mother is putting my new secondhand clothes in order. She prays now, she says, that I may learn in my own life and away from home and friends what the heart is and what it feels. Amen. So be it. Welcome, O life, I go to encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience and to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race.

James Joyce

James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was an expatriate Irish writer and poet, widely considered to be one of the most influential writers of the 20th century. He is best known for his short story collection Dubliners (1914), and his novels A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916), Ulysses (1922), and Finnegans Wake (1939).Although most of his adult life was spent outside the country, Joyce's Irish experiences are essential to his writings and provide all of the settings for his fiction and much of their subject matter. His fictional universe is firmly rooted in Dublin and reflects his family life and the events and friends (and enemies) from his school and college days. Due to this, he became both one of the most cosmopolitan and one of the most local of all the great English language modernists. For the exam, absolutely be able to identify the passages from Ulysses and A Portrait.

Lord Jim

Jim Marlow Patna (ship) Patusan (native-ruled state) The novel falls into two parts, a psychological tale about Jim's moral lapse aboard the pilgrim ship Patna, and an adventure story about Jim's rise and fall amongst the people of Patusan, a native-ruled state somewhere in the interior of one of the islands of the East Indies. Some critics have said that the second part of the story is inferior to the first, but it is necessary to the working out of the psychological drama established in the first part. The novel is remarkable for its sophisticated manipulation of point of view. The bulk of the novel is told in the form of a story recited by the character Marlow, and the conclusion is presented in the form of a letter from Marlow.

Man and Superman (1902)

John ("Jack") Tanner Ann Mr. Whitefield Roebuck Ramsden This title comes from Nietzsche's philosophical ideas about the "Superman." The plot centers around John Tanner, author of "The Revolutionist's Handbook and Pocket Companion" and a confirmed bachelor, and the lovely Ann's persistent efforts to make him marry her. Mr. Whitefield has recently died, and his will indicates that his daughter, Ann should be left in the care of two men, Roebuck Ramsden and Jack Tanner. Ramsden, a venerable old man, distrusts Jack Tanner, an eloquent man with revolutionary ideas. In spite of what Ramsden says, Ann accepts Tanner as a guardian, and she defies Tanner's revolutionary beliefs with her own beliefs. Tanner's dedication to anarchy is unable to disarm Ann's charm, and she ultimately persuades him to marry her. Eventually, Ann chooses Tanner over her more persistent suitor, a young man named Octavius Robinson. Ann is referred to as "The Life Force" and represents Shaw's view that in every culture, it's the women who force the men to marry them, rather than the men taking the initiative.

"Lay your sleeping head, my love"

Lay your sleeping head, my love, Human on my faithless arm; Time and fevers burn away Individual beauty from Thoughtful children, and the grave Proves the child ephemeral: But in my arms till break of day Let the living creature lie, Mortal, guilty, but to me The entirely beautiful. Soul and body have no bounds: To lovers as they lie upon Her tolerant enchanted slope In their ordinary swoon, Grave the vision Venus sends Of supernatural sympathy, Universal love and hope; While an abstract insight wakes Among the glaciers and the rocks The hermit's sensual ecstasy. Certainty, fidelity On the stroke of midnight pass Like vibrations of a bell, And fashionable madmen raise Their pedantic boring cry: Every farthing of the cost, All the dreaded cards foretell, Shall be paid, but from this night Not a whisper, not a thought, Not a kiss nor look be lost. Beauty, midnight, vision dies: Let the winds of dawn that blow Softly round your dreaming head Such a day of sweetness show Eye and knocking heart may bless, Find the mortal world enough; Noons of dryness see you fed By the involuntary powers, Nights of insult let you pass Watched by every human love.

The Secret Sharer

Leggatt The Captain The Secret Sharer is narrated by a sea captain many years after the event has happened, which reveals its significance. The story takes place during his first command of a merchant ship. His new ship is anchored at the head of the Gulf of Siam, "at the starting point of a long journey." There is no suggestion that it is a journey involving special hazards. The young man leans on his "ship's rail as if on a shoulder of his trusted friend." He feels that he is a stranger to the ship. He is something of a stranger to himself. He is the youngest man on board except the second mate. He is inexperienced, considering his position, which involves the fullest responsibility. The Captain's "strangeness" makes him sleepless and he decides to set anchor-watch. He sets himself to remain to remain on deck during the earlier part of the night. One result is that he goes to pull a rope ladder, which is on the side of the ship. He sees a naked man clinging to it. As soon as the stranger knows he is speaking to the Captain, he introduces himself as one Leggatt. He is obviously a good swimmer for he has been in the water practically since nine o'clock. The question for the swimmer now is whether he should let go of this ladder and go on swimming till he sinks from exhaustion or to come on board. The Captain of the ship feels this is no mere formula of desperate speech, but a real alternative in the view of a strong soul. He gathers from this that he is young. In fact, it is only the young who are confronted by such clear issues. But at that time, it is pure intuition on his part. A mysterious communication is established between the two in the face of the silent, darkened tropical sea. The Captain too is young enough to make no comment. The man in the water begins suddenly to climb up the ladder. The Captain hastens away from the rail to fetch some clothes. In a moment, the stranger conceals his damp body in a sleeping-suit of the same gray-stripe pattern as the one which the Captain wears, like his double. It is thus that the secret sharing begins. The "mysterious communication" between the two is established before the Captain learns anything of Leggatt's circumstances. Leggatt soon tells his story. He has swam from "The Sephora," a ship at anchor two miles away. He has been the first mate on board the ship. During the crisis of a terrible storm, he has seized and strangled an incompetent and disobedient member of the crew. Now he has made a bid to escape the law. The Captain accepts at once, without any indication of internal debate, that it is his duty to harbor Leggatt. However, it is difficult for the Captain to remain unperturbed. The dangers of the situation and a degree of identification with Leggatt make it almost impossible for him to preserve a rational behavior before his officers and crew. Leggatt remains self-possessed. "Whenever was being driven distracted, it was not he." But the Captain knows what he must do. He must steer sufficiently near the land to give the fugitive a fair chance to swim to safety. In this shore beneath "the black mass of Koh-ring." Consequently, his ship is in terrible danger. All those on board the ship are amazed and shocked. Finally, Leggatt departs and it is all over. The ship is saved by a hat, which the Captain has given him for protection against the sun. In fact, it serves at a crucial moment to show when the vessel has gathered stern way. Already the ship is drawing ahead. The Captain is alone with her. No one in the world should stand now between them, throwing a shadow on the way of silent knowledge and mute affection. It is the perfect communion with the season with his first communion with the seamen with his first command. The Captain is in time to catch a glimpse of his white hat, which is left floating on the water. It marks the spot where the secret sharer of his cabin as though he were his second self, had lowered himself into the water to take his punishment. He is now "a free man, a proud swimmer striking out for a new destiny."

"The Horse Dealer's Daughter"

Mabel Dr. Joe Ferguson This story is about a girl named Mabel who tries to commit suicide by drowning herself in a pond. A young doctor, Joe Ferguson, saves her. She then believes that he loves her. Although this idea never occurred to Joe, he begins to find that he indeed loves her. However, Mabel thinks she is "too awful" to be loved, and finds that when Joe declares over and over that he wants her and that he loves her, she is more scared about that than of Joe not wanting her.

Mrs. Dalloway

Mrs Dalloway details one day in Clarissa Dalloway's life about post-World War I England. The novel follows Clarissa Dalloway throughout a single day in post-Great War England in a stream of consciousness style narrative. The basic story is that of Clarissa's preparations for a party she is to host that evening. Using the interior perspective of the novel, Woolf moves back and forth in time, and in and out of the various characters' minds to construct a complete image, not of just Clarissa's life, but capturing the Edwardian social structure in the space of a single day. Because of structural and stylistic similarities, Mrs Dalloway is commonly thought to be a response to James Joyce's Ulysses, a text that is commonly hailed as one of the greatest novels of the Twentieth Century. Woolf herself derided Joyce's masterpiece, even though Hogarth Press, run by her and her husband Leonard, initially published the novel in England. Fundamentally, however, Mrs Dalloway treads new ground and seeks to portray a different aspect of the human experience. To the Lighthouse **The famous opening words: "Yes, of course, if it's fine tomorrow," said Mrs Ramsay. "But you'll have to be up with the lark," she added.

Murphy (novel):

Murphy is a "seedy solipsist, who begins working as a male nurse at the urging of his lover Celia Kelly, and finds the insanity of the patients an appealing alternative to conscious existence. Murphy, gone to ground in London lodgings and then in the hospital, is pursued by a ragtag troupe of eccentrics from his own country, each with their own often-conflicting motivations. Neary, a practitioner of eastern mysticism, seeks Murphy as a love rival and then as compatible friend in the absence of all others. Miss Counihan's attachment to Murphy is romantic. Among Wylie's motivations, Miss Counihan is perhaps the strongest. And Cooper, Neary's simpleton servant and fixer, joins the trail for money, alcohol, and to serve his master. Murphy shows his fascination with chess in the novel. Murphy plays a game of chess with Mr. Endon, a patient who is "the most biddable little gaga in the entire institution". But Murphy cannot replicate his opponent's symmetrical and cyclical play, just as he is unable to will himself into a blissful state. Resigns, and dies shortly afterwards. Murphy returns to nothingness, and his ashes are properly spread amidst the grime of a bar after immolating himself with the assistance of gas in his bedroom at the hospital. Celia also discovers the beauty of nothingness, as she loses her love, Murphy, and her grandfather's health declines. Murphy's mind-body is inspired with Spinoza, Descartes, and Arnold Geulincx

D. H. Lawrence

My feeling is that Lawrence isn't all that likely to appear on the exam. The short stories and the non-fiction seem to me to be more likely to appear than the novels. David Herbert Lawrence was one of the most important, prolific and certainly controversial English writers of the 20th century, whose output spans novels, short stories, poems, plays, essays, travel books, paintings, translations, literary criticism and personal letters. These works, taken together, represent an extended reflection upon the dehumanising effects of modernity and industrialisation. In them Lawrence confronts issues relating to emotional health and vitality, spontaneity, sexuality, and instinctive behaviour, making him iconic in an age influenced by Freud and Nietzsche. Lawrence's unsettling opinions earned him many enemies and he endured hardships, official persecution, censorship and the misrepresentation of his creative work throughout the second half of his life, much of which he spent in voluntary exile, self defined as a 'savage pilgrimage'. At the time of his death his public reputation was that of a pornographer who had wasted his considerable talents. E. M. Forster, in an obituary notice challenged this widely held view; describing him as 'the greatest imaginative novelist of our generation'. Later the influential Cambridge critic F. R. Leavis championed both his artistic integrity and his moral seriousness, placing much of Lawrence's fiction within the canonical 'great tradition' of the English novel. He is now valued as a visionary thinker and a significant representative of modernism in English literature, although some feminists have questioned the attitudes to women and sexuality to be found within his works.

Where Angels Fear to Tread (1905)

Names to know: ~Caroline Abbott ~Lilia Herriton On a journey to Tuscany with her young friend and travelling companion Caroline Abbott, widowed Lilia Herriton falls in love with both Italy and a handsome Italian much younger than herself, and decides to stay. Furious, her dead husband's family send Lilia's brother-in-law and his sister to Italy to prevent a misalliance, but they arrive too late. Lilia marries the Italian and in due course becomes pregnant again. When she dies giving birth to her child, the Herritons consider it both their right and their duty to travel to Monteriano to obtain custody of the infant so that he can be raised as an Englishman. Secretly, though, they have no regard for the child; only public appearances.

A Passage to India (1924)

Names: ~Adela Quested ~Dr. Aziz ~The Marabar Caves A Passage to India deals with the tensions between natives of India and British colonials when a white woman, Adela Quested, accuses a native man, Dr. Aziz, of attempted rape. The accusation takes place after Adela's unidentified traumatic experience while touring a local natural attraction, the Marabar Caves. The ensuing court trial increases the racial tension between the Indians and the British, threatening to tear apart the colonial society of Chandrapore, India.

A Room with a View

Names: ~Charlotte Bartlett-overbearing chaperone of the below, cousin, her elder ~Lucy Honeychurch- young English woman traveling ~Mr. Emerson ~George Emerson-young man, son of the above. Elopes with Lucy ~Mr. Beebe ~Eleanor Lavish ~Cecil Vyse A Room with a View tells the story of a young Englishwoman whose encounter with a handsome young man in Florence may interfere with her marriage plans.

Fern Hill

Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green, The night above the dingle starry, Time let me hail and climb Golden in the heydays of his eyes, And honoured among wagons I was prince of the apple towns And once below a time I lordly had the trees and leaves Trail with daisies and barley Down the rivers of the windfall light. And as I was green and carefree, famous among the barns About the happy yard and singing as the farm was home, In the sun that is young once only, Time let me play and be Golden in the mercy of his means, And green and golden I was huntsman and herdsman, the calves Sang to my horn, the foxes on the hills barked clear and cold, And the sabbath rang slowly In the pebbles of the holy streams. All the sun long it was running, it was lovely, the hay Fields high as the house, the tunes from the chimneys, it was air And playing, lovely and watery And fire green as grass. And nightly under the simple stars As I rode to sleep the owls were bearing the farm away, All the moon long I heard, blessed among stables, the nightjars Flying with the ricks, and the horses Flashing into the dark. And then to awake, and the farm, like a wanderer white With the dew, come back, the cock on his shoulder: it was all Shining, it was Adam and maiden, The sky gathered again And the sun grew round that very day. So it must have been after the birth of the simple light In the first, spinning place, the spellbound horses walking warm Out of the whinnying green stable On to the fields of praise. And honoured among foxes and pheasants by the gay house Under the new made clouds and happy as the heart was long, In the sun born over and over, I ran my heedless ways, My wishes raced through the house high hay And nothing I cared, at my sky blue trades, that time allows In all his tuneful turning so few and such morning songs Before the children green and golden Follow him out of grace. Nothing I cared, in the lamb white days, that time would take me Up to the swallow thronged loft by the shadow of my hand, In the moon that is always rising, Nor that riding to sleep I should hear him fly with the high fields And wake to the farm forever fled from the childless land. Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means, Time held me green and dying Fern Hill (1945) is a poem by Dylan Thomas, first published in the October, 1945, Horizon magazine, with its first book publication as the last poem in Deaths and Entrances. The poem starts as a straightforward evocation of his childhood visits to his Aunt Annie's farm: Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green, In the middle section, the idyllic scene is expanded upon, reinforced by the lilting rhythm of the poem, the dreamlike, pastoral metaphors and allusion to Eden. By the end, the poet's older voice has taken over, mourning his lost youth with echoes of the opening: Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means, Time held me green and dying Though I sang in my chains like the sea. The poem uses internal half rhyme and full rhyme as well as end rhyme. Thomas was very conscious of the impact of spoken or intoned verse and explored the potentialities of sound and rhythm, in a manner reminiscent of Gerard Manley Hopkins. He always denied having conscious knowledge of Welsh, but "his lines chime with internal consonantal correspondence, or cynghanedd, a prescribed feature of Welsh versification".

Oscar Wilde

Oscar Wilde was an Anglo-Irish playwright, novelist, poet, short story writer and Freemason. One of the most successful playwrights of late Victorian London, and one of the greatest celebrities of his day, known for his barbed and clever wit, he suffered a dramatic downfall and was imprisoned after being convicted in a famous trial for gross indecency (homosexual acts). Two prose pieces of Wilde's that may appear on the GRE are "The Decay of Lying" and "The Critic as Artist."

"Terence, this is stupid stuff"

Poem LXII, "Terence, this is stupid stuff", is a dialogue in which the poet, asked for "a tune to dance to" instead of his usual "moping melancholy" verse, offers the example of the old King Mithridates who tasted a little of every poison until he inured himself to them all. Similarly, Housman advises the speaker that it is wise to occasionally contemplate and encounter the less-than-merry side of life. Therefore, since the world has still Much good, but much less good than ill, And while the sun and moon endure Luck's a chance, but trouble's sure, I'd face it as a wise man would, And train for ill and not for good. "Terence, this is stupid stuff" 'TERENCE, this is stupid stuff: You eat your victuals fast enough; There can't be much amiss, 'tis clear, To see the rate you drink your beer. But oh, good Lord, the verse you make, It gives a chap the belly-ache. The cow, the old cow, she is dead; It sleeps well, the horned head: We poor lads, 'tis our turn now To hear such tunes as killed the cow. Pretty friendship 'tis to rhyme Your friends to death before their time Moping melancholy mad: Come, pipe a tune to dance to, lad.' Why, if 'tis dancing you would be, There's brisker pipes than poetry. Say, for what were hop-yards meant, Or why was Burton built on Trent? Oh many a peer of England brews Livelier liquor than the Muse, And malt does more than Milton can To justify God's ways to man. Ale, man, ale's the stuff to drink For fellows whom it hurts to think: Look into the pewter pot To see the world as the world's not. And faith, 'tis pleasant till 'tis past: The mischief is that 'twill not last. Oh I have been to Ludlow fair And left my necktie God knows where, And carried half way home, or near, Pints and quarts of Ludlow beer: Then the world seemed none so bad, And I myself a sterling lad; And down in lovely muck I've lain, Happy till I woke again. Then I saw the morning sky: Heigho, the tale was all a lie; The world, it was the old world yet, I was I, my things were wet, And nothing now remained to do But begin the game anew. Therefore, since the world has still Much good, but much less good than ill, And while the sun and moon endure Luck's a chance, but trouble's sure, I'd face it as a wise man would, And train for ill and not for good. 'Tis true, the stuff I bring for sale Is not so brisk a brew as ale: Out of a stem that scored the hand I wrung it in a weary land. But take it: if the smack is sour, The better for the embittered hour; It should do good to heart and head When your soul is in my soul's stead; And I will friend you, if I may, In the dark and cloudy day. There was a king reigned in the East: There, when kings will sit to feast, They get their fill before they think With poisoned meat and poisoned drink. He gathered all the springs to birth From the many-venomed earth; First a little, thence to more, He sampled all her killing store; And easy, smiling, seasoned sound, Sate the king when healths went round. They put arsenic in his meat And stared aghast to watch him eat; They poured strychnine in his cup And shook to see him drink it up: They shook, they stared as white's their shirt: Them it was their poison hurt. —I tell the tale that I heard told. Mithridates, he died old.

*Pygmalion (1913)

Professor Henry Higgins, prof of phonetics, and Eliza Doolittle. Shaw used Pygmalion, the mythological sculptor who fell in love with his creation, as the basis for his play. It is the story of Professor Henry Higgins, a professor of phonetics, who wagers that he can turn a Cockney flower girl, Eliza Doolittle, into the toast of London society merely by teaching her how to speak with an upper-class accent. In the process, he becomes fond of her and attempts to direct her future, but she rejects his domineering ways and marries a young aristocrat.

The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890)

Proposes the idea of "art for art's sake." Basil Halliwell paints a striking portrait of an English aristocrat, Dorian Gray. Gray wishes to always remain young as he is in the portrait and instead of him, the portrait starts to age. Starts living a life of debauchery-Sibyl Vance (young actress) falls in love with him and kills herself. Dorian kills Basil after he shows him the painting. In the end, Dorian kills himself by stabbing the painting. "But beauty, real beauty, ends where an intellectual expression begins. Intellect is in itself is a mode of exaggeration and destroys the harmony of any face. The more he knew, the more he desired to know.' He had mad hungers that grew more ravenous as he fed them" I still don't understand why, if a writer believes in aestheticism, in art for art's sake, why s/he would write a novel with a pedagogical agenda, that is, why s/he would create something for something other than its own sake. In most other ways, a good novel, though.

Arms and the Man

Raina Arms and the Man is a comedy, the title of which comes from the opening words of Virgil's Aeneid: "Arma virumque cano" (Of arms and the man I sing). The play was first produced in 1894, and published in 1898 as part of Shaw's Plays Pleasant volume. Shaw's plays often point out the hypocrisy or worthlessness of Victorian values, and Arms and the Man is no exception. Its satirical target is the people who think war is "glorious" or "noble." The play takes place during the 1885 Serbo-Bulgarian War. Its heroine, Raina, is a young Bulgarian woman engaged to one of the heroes of that war, whom she idealizes. One night, a Swiss voluntary soldier to the Serbian army bursts into her bedroom and begs her to hide him, so that he is not killed. Raina complies, though she thinks the man a coward, especially when he tells her that he doesn't carry rifle cartridges, but chocolates. During the course of the play, Raina comes to realize the hollowness of her romantic idea and her fiancé's values, and the true nobility of the "chocolate-cream soldier."

**"Musée des Beaux Arts"

See also William Carlos Williams' "Landscape With the Fall of Icarus". Also, see this painting (Breughel's Icarus) referenced in the poem: http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/polis/files/2010/07/icarus.jpg About suffering they were never wrong, The Old Masters; how well, they understood Its human position; how it takes place While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along; How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting For the miraculous birth, there always must be Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating On a pond at the edge of the wood: They never forgot That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse Scratches its innocent behind on a tree. In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry, But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky, had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

The Ballad of Reading Gaol

Somewhat confusingly, The Ballad of Reading Gaol is not the work that Wilde wrote while imprisoned for moral (in his case, homosexual) offences in 1895. That work was De Profundis, published five years after his death, in 1905. The Ballad of Reading Gaol was written after his release and in France, in 1897, though it was published in 1898. His works during this exile were published under the name Sebastian Melmouth, and this is the most famous. He would die in 1900. The poem is written in memory of "C.T.W." who died in Reading prison in July 1896 and it traces the feelings of an imprisoned man towards a fellow inmate who is to be hanged. They are "like two doomed ships that pass in storm", and Wilde creates a solemn funereal tone in his rhyme made sad and familiar by certain repeated phrases ("each man kills the thing he loves", "the little tent of blue/ Which prisoners call the sky"). The narrator's emotions are filtered through an uncertainty about the law that has condemned them although he is certain that they are joined together in sin. There is a longing for the outside, innocence and crucially beauty, the last of which is undermined in the latrine-like cells. The poem seems to offer some limited comfort in the possibility of the thief's entrance to Paradise. It is a work of startling contrasts between light and shade, drawn together with a keen eye and a sense of the beauty in sadness itself. He did not wear his scarlet coat, For blood and wine are red, And blood and wine were on his hands When they found him with the dead, The poor dead woman whom he loved, And murdered in her bed. He walked amongst the Trial Men In a suit of shabby grey; A cricket cap was on his head, And his step seemed light and gay; But I never saw a man who looked So wistfully at the day. I never saw a man who looked With such a wistful eye Upon that little tent of blue Which prisoners call the sky, And at every drifting cloud that went With sails of silver by. Other EXCERPTS: By each let this be heard. Some do it with a bitter look, Some with a flattering word. The coward does it with a kiss, The brave man with a sword! ... Ah! Happy they whose hearts can break And peace of pardon win! How else may man make straight his plan And cleanse his soul from Sin? How else but through a broken heart May Lord Christ enter in? ... Epitaph on his tomb And alien tears will fill for him, Pity's long-broken urn, For his mourners will be outcast men, And outcasts always mourn.

Sons and Lovers (1913)

Sons and Lovers (1913) Paul Morel It tells the story of Paul Morel, a young man and a budding artist. This autobiographical novel is a brilliant evocation of life in a working class mining community.

The Road to Colonus

Summary Mr. Lucas Ethel Lucas Mr. Lucas, an Englishman, is growing old. He has always wanted to visit Greece and has finally achieved this, accompanied by his unmarried daughter, Ethel, who will, it has been assumed, dedicate her life to taking care of him in his old age. In Greece, Mr. Lucas becomes restless and resistant to the idea of an expected passive, peaceful death from old age. He wants to "die fighting." Something mysterious happens: he finds a great old hollow tree from which a spring of water flows. He climbs into the tree and experiences an epiphany: he suddenly sees all things as "intelligible and good." But when the rest of his party find him, he is oddly repelled by them. He does not feel that anyone can share the revelation he has experienced, and he becomes afraid that if he leaves the place he will lose the feeling himself. He decides not to leave, and says he plans to stay at an inn near the old tree, but the others are horrified, and force him to leave with them. Back in England, some time later, Ethel is now about to be married. Mr. Lucas has become a perpetually disgruntled old man, complaining about everything (especially the sound of water in the plumbing--the mystical Greek spring has been reduced to this annoyance--he says, "there's nothing I dislike more than running water"). His sister, Julia, whom he hates, is going to take care of him once Ethel is married. Then a gift arrives from a friend in Greece, wrapped in a Greek newspaper. In it Ethel reads the news that on the night they left, the old tree was blown down, and fell on the family who kept the inn nearby, killing them all. Ethel is upset, and says how lucky it was that they hadn't stayed there that night, calling it a "marvellous deliverance," but Mr. Lucas dismisses the story without interest. He no longer cares. COMMENTARY Forster anchors this story in Greek tragedy, explicitly identifying Mr. Lucas with Oedipus and Ethel with his daughter, Antigone. The story's meaning lies largely in its departure from the Greek one. After discovering the horrible truth of his parentage and putting out his own eyes (at the end of Oedipus the King), Oedipus leaves Thebes and he and Antigone wander until they reach Colonus. He refuses to leave the place and dies there (see Sophocles's Oedipus at Colonus). For Oedipus there is no road from Colonus. In Forster's version, Mr. Lucas is forced to relinquish his vision of meaning and the dramatic death he desired and which was, evidently, awaiting him in the tree's fall. He must return to England, to be abandoned by his Antigone, and to age and die slowly and without much dignity. In return, he abandons his glimpse of meaning and his dream of a good death, becoming disaffected and selfish and lonely. The Greek kind of tragedy with its heroism and its sense that the world is intelligible even when most painful is replaced by a more modern kind of tragedy, where meaning is lost to failed communication and social dictates (the English party won't stay at the inn because they consider the Greek family dirty and foreign and low-class). A powerful reminder of the importance of respecting the insights and needs of the aging. The others patronize Mr. Lucas because he seems unreasonable, even incompetent. They think they have rescued him. Instead he has been diminished, fatally.

"Sailing to Byzantium"

That is no country for old men. The young In one another's arms, birds in the trees - Those dying generations - at their song, The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas, Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long Whatever is begotten, born, and dies. Caught in that sensual music all neglect Monuments of unageing intellect. An aged man is but a paltry thing, A tattered coat upon a stick, unless Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing For every tatter in its mortal dress, Nor is there singing school but studying Monuments of its own magnificence; And therefore I have sailed the seas and come To the holy city of Byzantium. O sages standing in God's holy fire As in the gold mosaic of a wall, Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre, And be the singing-masters of my soul. Consume my heart away; sick with desire And fastened to a dying animal It knows not what it is; and gather me Into the artifice of eternity. Once out of nature I shall never take My bodily form from any natural thing, But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make Of hammered gold and gold enamelling To keep a drowsy Emperor awake; Or set upon a golden bough to sing To lords and ladies of Byzantium Of what is past, or passing, or to come.

Irish Literary Revival

The Celtic Revival, also known as the Irish Literary Revival, was begun by Lady Gregory, Edward Martyn and William Butler Yeats in Ireland in 1896. The Revival stimulated new appreciation of traditional Irish iterature. The movement also encouraged the creation of works written in the spirit of Irish culture, as distinct from English culture. This was, in part, due to the political need for an individual Irish identity. Figures such as Yeats, J.M. Synge and Sean O'Casey wrote many plays and articles about the political state of Ireland at the time. These were connected with another great symbol of the literary revival, The Abbey Theatre, which served as the stage for many new Irish writers and playwrights of the time.

The Rainbow (1915)

The Rainbow (1915) Ursula Brangwen Gudrun Brangwen For both The Rainbow and Women in Love, you probably only need to be able to recognize the names Ursula and Gudrun Brangwen. It follows three generations of the Brangwen family, focusing in particular on the sexual dynamics of its characters. Lawrence's frank treatment of sexual desire and the power plays within relationships as a natural and even spiritual force of life, though perhaps tame by modern standards, caused The Rainbow to be prosecuted in an obscenity trial in late 1915, as a result of which all copies were seized and burnt. After this ban it was unavailable in Britain for 11 years, although editions were available in the USA.

A Room of One's Own

The essay examines whether women were capable of producing work of the quality of William Shakespeare, amongst other topics. In one section, Woolf invented a fictional "Shakespeare's Sister", Judith, to illustrate that a woman with Shakespeare's gifts would have been denied the same opportunities to develop them because of the doors that were closed to women. Woolf also examines the careers of several female authors, including Jane Austen, the Brontë sisters and George Eliot. The author subtly refers to several of the most prominent intellectuals of the time, and her hybrid name for the University of Oxford and the University of Cambridge - Oxbridge - has become a well-known term in English satire. The title comes from Woolf's conception that to be a successful writer, a woman needed space of her own in which to work and enough money to support herself. It also refers to any author's need for poetic license and the personal liberty to create art. A Room of One's Own is written with supreme irony and sarcasm over the power-balance between men and women, and it is commonly accepted that Virginia Woolf succeeds in convincingly getting her view across to the reader. However one may analyze this book, it nevertheless stands out as one of the most important feminist essays of the early 20th century.

Dubliners

The only story that's very likely to appear from Dubliners is "The Dead." The characters include: * Kate Morkan and Julia Morkan - Sisters who throw an Epiphany party. * Lily - Maid, insulted by Gabriel Conroy when he asks about her love life. * Gabriel Conroy - Professor, the main character of the story. * Gretta Conroy - Gabriel's wife. * Miss Ivors - Fellow professor, very patriotic about Ireland. * Michael Furey - Gretta's first childhood love. **The famous closing paragraph: "A few light taps upon the pane made him turn to the window. It had begun to snow again. He watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark, falling obliquely against the lamplight. The time had come for him to set out on his journey westward. Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead." Awesome story, of course. Gabriel remembers their romantic courtship and is overcome with attraction for Gretta, this attraction is rooted not in love but in his desire to control her. At the hotel, when Gretta confesses to Gabriel that she was thinking of her first love, he becomes furious at her and himself, realizing that he has no claim on her and will never be "master." After Gretta falls asleep, Gabriel softens. Now that he knows that another man preceded him in Gretta's life, he feels not jealousy, but sadness that Michael Furey once felt an aching love that he himself has never known. Reflecting on his own controlled, passionless life, he realizes that life is short, and those who leave the world like Michael Furey, with great passion, in fact live more fully than people like himself. etc.

Mrs. Warren's Profession

The story centers on the relationship between Mrs. Warren (her profession is prostitution, described by Shaw as "on the whole, a genial and fairly presentable old blackguard of a woman,") and her daughter, Vivie. More than about prostitution, the play explores the conflicts of the new women of the Victorian times - the middle-class girls who wanted greater social independence in work and education. Other themes include criticism of the sexual triteness of the times and a want for greater social sexual awareness.

Major Barbara (1905)

The story is about an officer in The Salvation Army, Major Barbara Undershaft, who becomes disillusioned by social ills and the willingness of her Christian denomination to accept money from armament manufacturers, which includes her own father.

"The Odour of Chrysanthemums"

The story's main character awaits her husband's return from work in the mines, but he has been suffocated in a cave-in. The woman reflects on her unhappy marriage.

"To an Athlete Dying Young"

The time you won your town the race We chaired you through the market-place; Man and boy stood cheering by, And home we brought you shoulder-high. Today, the road all runners come, Shoulder-high we bring you home, And set you at your threshold down, Townsman of a stiller town. Smart lad, to slip betimes away From fields where glory does not stay And early though the laurel grows It withers quicker than the rose. Eyes the shady night has shut Cannot see the record cut, And silence sounds no worse than cheers After earth has stopped the ears: Now you will not swell the rout Of lads that wore their honors out, Runners whom renown outran And the name died before the man. So set, before its echoes fade, The fleet foot on the sill of shade, And hold to the low lintel up The still-defended challenge-cup. And round the early-laureled head Will flock to gaze the strengthless dead, And find unwithered on its curls The garland briefer than a girl's

"The Wild Swans at Coole"

The trees are in their autumn beauty, The woodland paths are dry, Under the October twilight the water Mirrors a still sky; Upon the brimming water among the stones Are nine-and-fifty Swans. The nineteenth autumn has come upon me Since I first made my count; I saw, before I had well finished, All suddenly mount And scatter wheeling in great broken rings Upon their clamorous wings. I have looked upon those brilliant creatures, And now my heart is sore. All's changed since I, hearing at twilight, The first time on this shore, The bell-beat of their wings above my head, Trod with a lighter tread. Unwearied still, lover by lover, They paddle in the cold Companionable streams or climb the air; Their hearts have not grown old; Passion or conquest, wander where they will, Attend upon them still. But now they drift on the still water, Mysterious, beautiful; Among what rushes will they build, By what lake's edge or pool Delight men's eyes when I awake some day To find they have flown away?

Ulysses

Ulysses chronicles the passage through Dublin by its main character, Leopold Bloom, during an ordinary day, June 16, 1904. The title alludes to the hero of Homer's Odyssey (Latinized version Ulysses), and there are many parallels, both implicit and explicit, between the two works (e.g. the correlations between Leopold Bloom and Odysseus, Molly Bloom and Penelope, and Stephen Dedalus and Telemachus). June 16 is now celebrated by Joyce's fans worldwide as Bloomsday. The famous opening: STATELY, PLUMP BUCK MULLIGAN CAME FROM THE STAIRHEAD, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed. A yellow dressinggown, ungirdled, was sustained gently behind him by the mild morning air. He held the bowl aloft and intoned: —INTROIBO AD ALTARE DEI. Stephen wandering on the beach: INELUCTABLE MODALITY of the visible: at least that if no more, thought through my eyes. Signatures of all things I am here to read, seaspawn and seawrack, the nearing tide, that rusty boot. Snotgreen, bluesilver, rust: coloured signs. Limits of the diaphane. But he adds: in bodies. Then he was aware of them bodies before of them coloured. How? By knocking his sconce against them, sure. Go easy. Bald he was and a millionaire, maestro di color che sanno. Limit of the diaphane in. Why in? Diaphane, adiaphane. If you can put your five fingers through it it is a gate, if not a door. Shut your eyes and see. The famous closing words of Molly: . . . and Gibraltar as a girl where I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.

Virginia Woolf

Virginia Woolf is by reputation one of the foremost modernist literary figures of the twentieth century. Though she is commonly regarded by many as feminist, it should be noted that she herself deplored the term, as she felt it suggested an obsession with women and women's concerns. She preferred to be referred to as a "humanist" . Between the World Wars, Woolf was a significant figure in London literary society and a member of the Bloomsbury Group. Her most famous works include the novels Mrs. Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, Orlando, and her essay A Room of One's Own.

Waiting for Godot

Vladimir ("Didi") Estragon ("Gogo") Pozzo Lucky The play is in two acts. The plot concerns Vladimir (also called Didi) and Estragon (also called Gogo), who arrive at a pre-specified roadside location in order to await the arrival of Godot. Vladimir and Estragon appear to be tramps: their clothes are ragged and do not fit. They pass the time in conversation, and sometimes in conflict. Estragon complains of his ill-fitting boots, and Vladimir struts about stiff-legged due to a painful bladder condition. They make vague allusions to the nature of their circumstances and to the reasons for meeting Godot, but the audience never learns who Godot is or why he is important. They are soon interrupted by the arrival of Pozzo, a cruel but lyrically gifted man who claims to own the land they stand on, and his servant Lucky, whom he appears to control by means of a lengthy rope. Pozzo sits down to feast on chicken, and afterwards throws the bones to the two tramps. He entertains them by directing Lucky to perform a lively dance, and then deliver an ex tempore lecture on the theories of Bishop Berkeley. After Pozzo and Lucky depart, a boy arrives with a message he says is from Godot that he will not be coming today, but will come tomorrow. The second act follows a similar pattern to the first, but when Pozzo and Lucky arrive, Pozzo has inexplicably gone blind and Lucky has gone mute. Again the boy arrives and announces that Godot will not appear, also confessing that Godot beats him and makes him sleep in a barn. The much quoted ending of the play might be said to sum up the stasis of the whole work: Vladimir: Well, shall we go? Estragon: Yes, let's go. They do not move.

W. H. Auden

W. H. Auden Wystan Hugh Auden was an English poet and critic, widely regarded as among the most influential and important writers of the 20th century. He spent the first part of his life in the United Kingdom, but emigrated to the United States of America in 1939, becoming an American citizen in 1946.

"When I was one-and-twenty"

When I was one-and-twenty I heard a wise man say, "Give crowns and pounds and guineas But not your heart away; Give pearls away and rubies But keep your fancy free." But I was one-and-twenty, No use to talk to me. When I was one-and-twenty I heard him say again, "The heart out of the bosom Was never given in vain; 'Tis paid with sighs a plenty And sold for endless rue." And I am two-and-twenty And oh, 'tis true, 'tis true. "When I was one-and-twenty" Housman's most familiar poem is surely "When I was one-and-twenty," number XIII from A Shropshire Lad.

"When You are Old"

When you are old and grey and full of sleep, And nodding by the fire, take down this book, And slowly read, and dream of the soft look Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep; How many loved your moments of glad grace, And loved your beauty with love false or true, But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you, And loved the sorrows of your changing face; And bending down beside the glowing bars, Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled And paced upon the mountains overhead And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

Happy Days

Winnie, the main character, is buried up to her waist in a tall mound of sand. She has a bag full of interesting artifacts, including a comb, a toothbrush and a revolver, which she strokes and pats lovingly. The harsh ringing of a bell demarcates waking and sleeping hours. Winnie is content with her existence: "Ah well, what matter, that's what I always say, it will have been a happy day after all, another happy day." Her husband Willie is nearby, behind Winnie and moving on all fours. Winnie is unable to move, but Willie occasionally comes out and even reads the paper beside his wife (but not facing the stage). In the second act, Winnie is now buried up to her head. She continues to speak, but can no longer reach her bag. At the conclusion of the play Willie crawls up to her, dressed immaculately. Winnie looks lovingly down at Willie, singing a song from the music box she examined in the first act.

Women in Love

Women in Love Gudrun and Ursula Brangwen Gerald Crich Rupert Birkin It was a sequel to The Rainbow (1915), following the continuing loves and lives of the Brangwen sisters, Gudrun and Ursula. Gudrun Brangwen, an artist, pursues a destructive relationship with Gerald Crich, an industrialist. Lawrence contrasts this pair with the love that develops between Ursula and Rupert Birkin, an alienated intellectual who articulates many opinions associated with the author. The novel ranges over the whole of British society at the time of the First World War and eventually ends high up in the snows of the European Alps. Like most of his works, Women in Love caused controversy over its sexual subject matter, and was only initially published for five years after it was first written. One early reviewer said of it "I do not claim to be a literary critic, but I know dirt when I smell it, and here is dirt in heaps - festering, putrid heaps which smell to high Heaven."

William Butler Yeats

Yeats played a part in the Irish Literary Revival, though as a dramatist his role was rather limited. To see more on Yeats and his poetry, check out my page on Yeats in the the poetry section. The Countess Cathleen - dramatizes an Irish fable about those who sell their soul for food during the famine. Yeats is a major player on the GRE, and for this reason all the poems below are well worth studying. Of particular note is "The Second Coming" which appears on the exam with some frequency. William Butler Yeats was an Irish poet, dramatist, mystic and public figure of Anglo-Irish (Protestant) ancestry, brother of the artist Jack Butler Yeats and son of John Butler Yeats. Yeats was one of the driving forces behind the Irish Literary Revival and was co-founder of the Abbey Theatre. Yeats also served as an Irish Senator. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1923 for what the Nobel Committee described as "his always inspired poetry, which in a highly artistic form gives expression to the spirit of a whole nation".

"Do not go gentle into that good night"

You should probably know for the exam that this a classic example of a villanelle. Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Though wise men at their end know dark is right, Because there words had forked no lightning they Do not go gentle into that good night. Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay, Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight, And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way, Do not go gentle into that good night. Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay, Rage, rage against the dying of the light. And you, my father, there on the sad height, Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray. Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Sean O'Casey

a major Irish dramatist and memorist. A committed nationalist and socialist, he was the first Irish playwright of note to write about the Dublin working classes. His plays are particularly noted for his sympathetic treatment of his female characters. The Plough and the Stars - deal with the impact of the Irish Civil War on the working class poor of the city. The Plough and the Stars, an anti-war play, was misinterpreted by the Abbey audience as being anti-nationalist and resulted in scenes reminiscent of the riots that greeted Synge's The Playboy of the Western World in 1907. Innocence and Experience