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Lockwood, unreliable narrator in Wuthering Heights

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Lockwood - unreliable narrator in Wuthering Height Lockwood functions in the novel as the intermediary through whom the eyewitness account of the events and the circumstances given by Nelly are communicated to the readers. The author’s intention in introducing Lockwood was to give us the point of view of a detached and impartial and objective observer. Lockwood can be considered an unreliable narrator due to his characterisation as a complete outsider to the state of affairs at the Height and the Grange. He mistakes Miss Catherine to be the widow of Heathcliff’s son and Hareton to be Heathcliff’s servant. When Nelly later clarifies this, the text actually confuses the readers, taking quite a bit of time to adjust and digest these character reversals and to get back on track with the novel smoothly. By doing so he brings confusion to the reader's minds. He also introduces the main characters in the novel by the brief impression he gets on his first two visits to Wuthering Heights....

Importance of Victorian Period

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The Victorian period is  hallmarked by Queen Victoria's rule from June 1837 to January 1901.  The period saw the British Empire bloom to become the major players in international trade. The Victorian Era was a time of contrasts—poverty as well as prosperity, degrading manual labor as well as technological progress, and depravity as well as virtue. In many ways it was paradoxically “the best times” and “the worst of times” as quoted from Charles Dickens novel Tale of Two Cities. Conflicts of Faith and Doubt The foundation of evolutionary theory, On the Origin of Species , was published by Charles Darwin in 1859. He stirred up a huge cloud of doubt into the Victorian society through this seminal piece of work. The religious society began to question their faith and went in search of facts.  Darwinism, coupled with the new science discoveries being made, posed serious problems for the church and society, causing people to challenge their religious beliefs and have many doub...

Fra Lippo Lippi critical analysis

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"We would rather have Fra Lippo Lippi than any essay on Realism in art" - George Eliot The Victorian poet, Robert Browning is famously known for his dramatic monologues and is a poet who aspires to draw upon the true nature of reality. He aims to bring forth in his writing, a depiction untainted by falseness or obscurity. And the poem Fra Lippo Lippi echoes this aspect of his poetry. The main focus of the poem is to question the readers as to what should be the right representation of art - should it be the idealistic form of art, with only the soul, something beyond the reality or should it hold up a mirror to life. Hence giving his readers food for thought. Like many of Browning dramatic monologues, the listener is completely the silent interlocutor and is subjugated and mesmerised by the speaker’s speech. And tells the readers a short account of the speaker and his life through the poem. The poem starts in media res, a common feature Browning employs to his poetry. We lear...

The Scholar Gipsy critical analysis

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 The Scholar Gipsy analysis  "The Scholar Gipsy" by Matthew Arnold, revolves around the seventeenth-century Oxford story taken from philosopher Joseph Glanvil's The Vanity of Dogmatizing (1661). The poem is a take on the conflicts that prevailed in seventeenth-century Victorian Society. This period was a time of confusion and doubt. People grew more fascinated by the modern encroachments sprouting in their society. Developments in science questioned the very base of people's religious beliefs and many were put into a trance of scepticism. The publication of Charles Darwin’s monumental work ‘Origin of species’ released the Victorian conflict of ‘religion vs science Arnold has based this poem on a story from Glanvil’s work where he tells the tale of a poor Oxford scholar who left his University life and his studies behind to join a band of wandering gipsies. The Oxford Scholar is mesmerised by the wonders of mysticism practised by the gipsies and decides to learn every ...

Origin of English Drama

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The Beginning Drama originated in classical Greece. Athens, the cultural centre of Greece produced three genres of drama: Tragedy, Comedy, and Satyr. The famous dramatists of this time were Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides, and the comic writers Aristophanes and, from the late 4th century, Menander. From Greece, the drama entered the Roman empire. Three Dramatic Unities  The Greek and Roman critics recommended three dramatic unities which must be observed by a good dramatist. They are Unity of Time, Unity of Place, and Unity of Action. Unity of Time implies that the action in a play should not exceed the limit of twenty-four hours; Unity of Place means that the scene should not change too often from place to place, and the Unity of Action means that the Tragedy and Comedy should not be intermixed. Origin of English Drama The origin of the drama is deep-rooted in the religious predispositions of mankind. The same is the case not only with English drama but with dramas of other nat...