Songs of Innocence and of Experience

Songs of Innocence and of Experience is an illustrated collection of poems by William Blake. It appeared in two phases. A few first copies were printed and illuminated by William Blake himself in 1789; five years later he bound these poems with a set of new poems in a volume titled Songs of Innocence and of Experience Showing the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul.

"Innocence" and "Experience" are definitions of consciousness that rethink Milton's existential-mythic states of "Paradise" and the "Fall." Blake's categories are modes of perception that tend to coordinate with a chronology that would become standard in Romanticism: childhood is a state of protected innocence rather than original sin, but not immune to the fallen world and its institutions. This world sometimes impinges on childhood itself, and in any event becomes known through "experience," a state of being marked by the loss of childhood vitality, by fear and inhibition, by social and political corruption, and by the manifold oppression of Church, State, and the ruling classes. The volume's "Contrary States" are sometimes signalled by patently repeated or contrasted titles: in Innocence, Infant Joy, in Experience, Infant Sorrow; in Innocence, The Lamb, inExperience, The Fly and The Tyger. The stark simplicity of poems such as The Chimney Sweeper and The Little Black Boydisplay Blake's acute sensibility to the realities of poverty and exploitation that accompanied the "dark satanic mills" of theIndustrial Revolution.

Poems from both books have been set to music by many composers, including Ralph Vaughan Williams, Joseph Holbrooke, John Frandsen, Per Drud Nielsen, Sven-David Sandström, Benjamin Britten, and Jacob ter Veldhuis. Individual poems have also been set by, among others, John Tavener, Victoria Poleva, Jah Wobble,Tangerine Dream, Jeff Johnson, and Daniel Amos. A modified version of the poem "The Little Black Boy" was set to music in the song "My Mother Bore Me" from Maury Yeston's musical Phantom. The folk musician Greg Brown recorded sixteen of the poems on his 1987 album Songs of Innocence and of Experience^[2] and by Finn Coren in his Blake Project. In 2011 Victor Vertunni released a new music album on songs of Innocence and of Experience, another stepping stone in the long tradition.

The poet Allen Ginsberg believed the poems were originally intended to be sung, and that through study of the rhyme and metre of the works, a Blakean performance could be approximately replicated. In 1969, he conceived, arranged, directed, sang on, and played piano and harmonium for an album of songs entitledSongs of Innocence and Experience by William Blake, tuned by Allen Ginsberg (1970).^[3]

The composer William Bolcom completed a setting of the entire collection of poems in 1984. In 2005, a recording of Bolcom's work by Leonard Slatkin, the Michigan State Children's Choir, and the University of Michigan on the Naxos label won four Grammy Awards: Best Choral Performance, Best Classical Contemporary Composition, Best Classical Album, and Best Producer of the Year (classical).^[4]

The composer Victoria Poleva completed "Songs of Innocence and of Experience" in 2002, a chamber cycle on the verses by Blake for soprano, clarinet and accordion. It was first performed by the ensemble Accroche-Note of France.

The Swedish composer David Unger completed "Night songs op. 24", a setting of five poems from Songs of Innocence for solo voice and piano in 2013. It was first performed by baritone Anthony Schneider and pianist Rosemary Barnes in Vienna, Austria the same year.

Popular group Tangerine Dream, based their album 'Tyger' on lyrics by William Blake.

Songs of Innocence was originally a complete work first printed in 1789. It is a conceptual collection of 19 poems, engraved with artwork.

The poems are each listed below:

Introduction

The Shepherd

The Echoing Green

The Lamb

The Little Black Boy

The Blossom

The Chimney Sweeper

The Little Boy lost

The Little Boy found

Laughing Song

A Cradle Song

The Divine Image

Holy Thursday

Night

Spring

Nurse's Song

Infant Joy

A Dream

On Another's Sorrow

songs of experience

Introduction

Earth's Answer

The Clod and the Pebble

Holy Thursday

The Little Girl Lost

The Little Girl Found

The Chimney Sweeper

Nurse's Song

The Sick Rose

The Fly

The Angel

The Tyger

My Pretty Rose Tree

Ah! Sunflower

The Lily

The Garden of Love

The Little Vagabond

London

The Human Abstract

Infant Sorrow

A Poison Tree

A Little Boy Lost (at wikisource)

A Little Girl Lost

To Tirzah

The Schoolboy (at wikisource)

The Voice of the Ancient Bard

(Quoted from http://en.wikipedia.org/)

William Blake

An English poet, painter, and printmaker. Largely unrecognised during his lifetime, Blake is now considered a seminal figure in the history of both the poetry and visual arts of the Romantic Age. His prophetic poetry has been said to form "what is in proportion to its merits the least read body of poetry in the English language". His visual artistry has led one contemporary art critic to proclaim him "far and away the greatest artist Britain has ever produced". Although he lived in London his entire life except for three years spent in Felpham he produced a diverse and symbolically rich corpus, which embraced the imagination as "the body of God", or "Human existence itself".

Considered mad by contemporaries for his idiosyncratic views, Blake is held in high regard by later critics for his expressiveness and creativity, and for the philosophical and mystical undercurrents within his work. His paintings and poetry have been characterised as part of both the Romantic movement and "Pre-Romantic",[6] for its large appearance in the 18th century. Reverent of the Bible but hostile to the Church of England - indeed, to all forms of organised religion - Blake was influenced by the ideals and ambitions of the French and American revolutions, as well as by such thinkers as Jakob Böhme and Emanuel Swedenborg.

Despite these known influences, the singularity of Blake's work makes him difficult to classify. The 19th century scholar William Rossetti characterised Blake as a "glorious luminary," and as "a man not forestalled by predecessors, nor to be classed with contemporaries, nor to be replaced by known or readily surmisable successors".

William Blake and his works have been extensively discussed and criticised over the twentieth and now this century, however previous to that he was barely known. He first became known in 1863 with Alexander Gilchrist’s biography “Life” and only fully appreciated and recognised at the beginning of the twentieth century. It seems his art had been too adventurous and unconventional for the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, maybe you could even say he was ahead of his time? Either way, today he is a hugely famous figure of Romantic literature, whose work is open to various interpretations, which has been known to take a lifetime to establish. As well as his works being difficult to interpret, him as a person has also provoked much debate. Henry Crabb Robinson, who was a diarist and friend of Blake’s at the end of his life asked the question many students of Blake are still unable to conclusively answer:

“Shall I call him artist or genius – or mystic – or madman?” (Lucas, 1998 p. 1)

Born on 28th November 1757 in Soho in London, he had a grounded and happy upbringing. Although always a well read and intelligent man, Blake left school at the early age of ten to attend the Henry Pars Drawing Academy for five years. The artists he admired as a child included Raphael, Michelangelo, Giulio, Romano and Dürer. He started writing poetry at the age of twelve and in 1783 his friends paid for his first collection of verses to be printed, which was entitled “Poetical Sketches” and is now seen as a major poetical event of the 18th century. Despite his obvious talents as a poet, his official profession was as an engraver because he could not afford to do a painter’s apprenticeship and therefore began his apprenticeship with the engraver James Basire in 1772. After completing his apprenticeship six years later, he joined the Royal Academy of Art. At this point his art and engraving remained separate – he wrote and drew for pleasure and simply engraved to earn a living. In 1784 he opened his own shop and in the same year completed “Island in the Moon”, which ridiculed his contemporaries of the art and literature social circles he mixed with. Two years previous to this, he married Catherine Boucher.

Now Blake was an established engraver, he began experimenting with printing techniques and it was not long before he compiled his first illuminated book, 'Songs of Innocence' in 1788. Blake wanted to take his poetry beyond being just words on a page and felt they needed to be illustrated to create his desired effect. Shortly after he completed 'The Book of Thel' and from 1790-3, 'The Marriage of Heaven and Hell', which followed on from his significant Prophetic books. These books were a collection of writings on his philosophical ideas and although they have nothing to do with his poetry, it was a sign of his increasing awareness of the social injustices of his time, which led to the completion of his 'Songs of Experience' in 1794.

One of Blake’s main influences was the society in which he lived. He lived during revolutionary times and witnessed the downfall of London during Britain’s war with republican France. His disgust with society grew as he matured and 'The Songs of Innocence and Experience' depict this transition. As well as having radical religious ideas for the time (he did not believe in “religion of nature or reason, but thought man’s nature was imaginative and mystical” (Lister 1968, p.27)), he also had radical political ideas due to the day-to-day poverty he was forced to witness.

“Living near the end of a century, born in a period of imperialistic wars, coming to maturity during the American Revolution and to the full bloom of his genius during the French Revolution, aware of impending economic change and sick to the bone of ruling hypocrisy, he viewed the evnts of his own days as the fulfilment of prophecy…” (Hagstrum 1964, p. 97-98)

Blake’s preoccupation with good and evil as well as his strong philosophical and religious beliefs remained throughout his life and he never stopped depicting them in his poetry and engravings. He died at the age of sixty-nine in 1827 and although the Blake family name died with him, his legacy as a fascinating, complex man of many artistic talents will no doubt remain strong well into this century. Other famous works include 'Europe', 'America', 'Visions of the Daughters of Albion' and 'The Book of Urizen'.

Although Blake is not well known for being a specifically grotesque artist, it is his experiences and disgust with London society in the late eighteenth century that clearly emulates elements of the grotesque. As it would be impossible to discuss all of Blake’s works, this study will focus on 'Songs of Innocence and Experience', particularly 'Songs of Experience' to learn how he portrayed his views on society and how the grotesque falls into that.

(Totally quoted from http://www.poemhunter.com/)

The General Prologue To Canturbury Tales

The most popular part of the Canterbury Tales is the General Prologue, which has long been admired for the lively, individualized portraits it offers. More recent criticism has reacted against this approach, claiming that the portraits are indicative of social types, part of a tradition of social satire, "estates satire", and insisting that they should not be read as individualized character portraits like those in a novel. Yet it is sure that Chaucer's capacity of human sympathy, like Shakespeare's, enabled him to go beyond the conventions of his time and create images of individualized human subjects that have been found not merely credible but endearing in every period from his own until now.

It is the General Prologue that serves to establish firmly the framework for the entire story-collection: the pilgrimage that risks being turned into a tale-telling competition. The title "General Prologue" is a modern invention, although a few manuscripts call it prologus. There are very few major textual differences between the various manuscripts. The structure of the General Prologue is a simple one. After an elaborate introduction in lines 1 - 34, the narrator begins the series of portraits (lines 35 - 719). These are followed by a report of the Host's suggestion of a tale-telling contest and its acceptance (lines 720 - 821). On the following morning the pilgrims assemble and it is decided that the Knight shall tell the first tale (lines 822 - 858).

Nothing indicates when Chaucer began to compose the General Prologue and there are no variations between manuscripts that might suggest that he revised it after making an initial version. It is sometimes felt that the last two portraits, of Pardoner and Summoner, may have been added later but there is no evidence to support this. The portraits do not follow any particular order after the first few pilgrims have been introduced; the Knight who comes first is socially the highest person present (the Host calls him 'my mayster and my lord' in line 837).

The Knight is the picture of a professional soldier, come straight from foreign wars with clothes all stained from his armour. His travels are remarkably vast; he has fought in Prussia, Lithuania, Russia, Spain, North Africa, and Turkey against pagans, Moors, and Saracens, killing many. The variety of lords for whom he has fought suggests that he is some kind of mercenary, but it seems that Chaucer may have known people at the English court with similar records. The narrator insists: "He was a verray, parfit, gentil knight," but some modern readers, ill at ease with idealized warriors, and doubtful about the value of the narrator's enthusiasms, have questioned this evaluation.

His son, the Squire, is by contrast an elegant young man about court, with fashionable clothes and romantic skills of singing and dancing.

Their Yeoman is a skilled servant in charge of the knight's land, his dress is described in detail, but not his character.

The Prioress is one of the most fully described pilgrims, and it is with her that we first notice the narrator's refusal to judge the value of what he sees. Her portrait is more concerned with how she eats than how she prays. She is rather too kind to animals, while there is no mention of her kindness to people. Finally, she has a costly set of beads around her arm, which should be used for prayer, but end in a brooch inscribed ambiguously Amor vincit omnia (Virgil's "Love conquers all"). She has a Nun with her, and "three" priests. This is a problem in counting the total number of pilgrims as twenty-nine: the word 'three' must have been added later on account of the rhyme, while only one Nun's Priest is in fact given a Tale and he is not the subject of a portrait here.

The Monk continues the series of incongruous church- people; in this description the narratorial voice often seems to be echoing the monk's comments in indirect quotation. He has many horses at home; he does not respect his monastic rule, but goes hunting instead of praying. The narrator expresses surprisingly strong support for the Monk's chosen style of living.

The Friar follows, and by now it seems clear that Chaucer has a special interest in church-people who so confidently live in contradiction with what is expected of them; the narrator, though, gives no sign of feeling any problem, as when he reports that the "worthy" Friar avoided the company of lepers and beggars. By this point the alert reader is alert to the narrator's too-ready use of 'worthy' but critics are still unsure of what Chaucer's intended strategy was here.

The Merchant is briefly described, and is followed by the Clerk of Oxenford (Oxford) who is as sincere a student as could be wished: poor, skinny like his horse, and book-loving.

The Sergeant at Law is an expert lawyer, and with him is the Franklin, a gentleman from the country whose main interest is food: "It snowed in his house of meat and drink." Then Chaucer adds a brief list of five tradesmen belonging to the same fraternity, dressed in its uniform: a Haberdasher, a Carpenter, a Weaver, a Dyer and a Tapestry-maker. None of these is described here or given a Tale to tell later. They have brought their Cook with them, he is an expert, his skills are listed, as well as some unexpected personal details. The Shipman who is described next is expert at sailing and at stealing the wine his passengers bring with them; he is also a dangerous character, perhaps a pirate.

The Doctor of Physic is praised by the narrator, "He was a verray parfit praktisour," and there follows a list of the fifteen main masters of medieval medicine; the fact that he, like most doctors in satire, "loved gold in special" is added at the end.

The Wife of Bath is the only woman, beside the Prioress and her companion Nun, on this pilgrimage. Again the narrator is positive: "She was a worthy womman al hir live" and he glides quickly over the five husbands that later figure in such detail in her Prologue, where also we may read how she became deaf. She is a business woman of strong self-importance, and her elaborate dress is a sign of her character as well as her wealth.

From her, we pass to the most clearly idealized portrait in the Prologue, the Parson. While the previous churchmen were all interested in things of this world more than in true christianity, the Parson represents the opposite pole.

He is accompanied by his equally idealized brother, the Plowman, "a true swinker" (hard-working man) "Living in peace and perfect charity." If the Parson is the model churchman, the Plowman is the model lay christian, as in Piers Plowman, one who is always ready to help the poor. It is sometimes suggested that the choice of a Plowman shows that Chaucer had read a version of Piers Plowman.

The series then ends with a mixed group of people of whom most are quite terrible: the Miller is a kind of ugly thug without charm. The Manciple is praised as a skillful steward in a household of lawyers; they are clever men but he is cleverest, since he cheats them all, the narrator cheerfully tells us. The Reeve is the manager of a farm, and he too is lining his own pocket.

Last we learn of the Summoner and the Pardoner, two grotesque figures on the edge of the church, living by it without being priests; one administers the church courts, the other sells pardons (indulgences). Children are afraid of the Summoner's face, he is suffering from some kind of skin disease; he is corrupt, as the narrator tells us after naively saying "A better fellow should men not find." But it is the Pardoner who is really odd, and modern critics have enjoyed discussing just what Chaucer meant by saying: "I trowe he were a gelding or a mare". With his collection of pigs' bones in a glass, that he uses as relics of saints to delude simple poor people, he is a monster in every way, and he concludes the list of pilgrims.

The narrator of this Prologue is Chaucer, but this pilgrim Chaucer is not to be too simply identified with the author Chaucer. He explains that in what follows, he is only acting as the faithful reporter of what others have said, without adding or omitting anything; he must not then be blamed for what he reports. Neither must he be blamed if he does not put people in the order of their social rank, "My wit is short, ye may well understand." This persona continues to profess the utter naivety that we have already noted in his uncritical descriptions of the pilgrims.

It is in this way, too, that we should approach the conclusion of the Prologue. Here the Host of the Tabard Inn (Harry Bailey, a historical figure) decides to go with them and ironically it is he, not Chaucer, who proposes the story-telling contest that gives the framework of the Tales. He will also be the ultimate judge of which is the best: "of best sentence and most solas." He is, after all, well prepared by his job to know about the tales people tell! One model for the literary competition would seem to be the meetings of people interested in poetry, known in French as puys, with which Chaucer would have been familiar.

(Totally quoted from http://hompi.sogang.ac.kr/)

Geoffrey Chaucer

Of al this world the large compas
Hit wol not in myn armes tweyne -
Whoso mochel wol embrace,
Litel therof he shal distreyne.1

- Attributed to Geoffrey Chaucer

Geoffrey Chaucer was the greatest English poet of the later Middle Ages. Working in the language now called Middle English, he was a contemporary of the anonymous author of 'Sir Gawain and the Green Knight' and a friend of the man behind 'Confessio Amantis', John Gower. Chaucer is generally considered to be second only to William Shakespeare in terms of his contribution to English Literature.

Chaucer's Life

The year of Chaucer's birth is not known with any accuracy but is guessed to be sometime in the first half of the 1340s. The traditionally accepted date of his death - the date engraved on his tomb in Westminster Abbey - is 25 October, 1400. Information about his life has been gleaned from surviving legal records: lawsuits, wills, lease records, royal pension records and marriage records, for example. Between his birth and death, Chaucer rose from being the son of an obscure minor bureaucrat and wine merchant to being a court official and royal ambassador. Among his acquaintances were the greatest poets of the age and the originals of some characters from Shakespeare's History Plays2. From the records that have survived it seems that Chaucer achieved a state of semi-retirement in the last decade of his life. It was during this decade that he did most of his work on his unfinished masterpiece, The Canterbury Tales.

Chaucer's Works

Chaucer is primarily remembered for the long and complicated collection of poems collectively known as The Canterbury Tales. Chaucer wrote some other works, including other, long, narrative poems and shorter lyrics, as well as a number of prose works.

Prose

Readers of The Canterbury Tales might be familiar with Chaucer's prose from 'The Parson's Tale'. Chaucer composed two other major prose works: Boece, a translation, and A Treatise on the Astrolabe, a scientific work.

Boece

Boece is a translation of The Consolation of Philosophy originally written in Latin by the late Roman senator and philosopher Boethius. Boethius's work was exceptionally influential throughout the European Middle Ages and was translated into many languages. Boethius was also a great influence on Chaucer's thought, but the prose of his translation is, by modern standards, poorly structured and disjointed.

A Treatise on the Astrolabe

Chaucer's scientific paper, an explanation of the use of the Astrolabe, an astronomical instrument, is written with more clarity. Perhaps this clarity is a function of the work being a product of Chaucer's own thoughts rather than an attempt to translate the thoughts of someone long dead.

Poetry

Chaucer's poetry is written in forms of verse derived from Continental traditions rather than the Anglo-Saxon alliterative tradition of poems such as Beowulf. Unlike in the Anglo-Saxon tradition, Chaucer's verse uses consistent rhyme, often in couplets, as in The Canterbury Tales, or in more complicated stanzaic structures, as in 'Troilus and Criseyde' and the love visions. As well, Chaucer's verse has regular meter (usually Iambic), a prosody fundamentally different from the Anglo-Saxon3.

Short Poems

A very small number of short poems by Chaucer have survived, although it is suspected that he wrote a great many. A small majority of the surviving short poems are love lyrics, for example, 'The Complaint to his Lady'. A number of others are in the ballade form and are humorous or religious. In these short poems Chaucer shows a great concern with the technicalities of metrics. As well as being of more general interest, the short poems are of help in understanding the development of English metrical types.

'The Book of the Duchess'

'The Book of the Duchess' is generally considered an occasional poem on the death, in September 1369, of Blanche, Duchess of Lancaster and the first wife of John of Gaunt. The poem is a highly original adaptation of the traditional love vision form to the purposes of an elegy. The result is a touching consolation to the widower that breathes new life into a staid traditional form.

The poem describes the meeting between a dreamer and a knight who is depressed over the way Fortune has treated him. The knight has been the lover of the perfect lady, but death has taken her from him.

'The House of Fame'

'The House of Fame' is also a somewhat conventional love poem that draws heavily on Latin authors such as Ovid and Virgil (it contains a summary of part of the Aeneid). Also Chaucer refers to the works of Italian poet Dante in 'The House of Fame'.

In the dream that structures the poem, Chaucer journeys to two Temples, 'The House of Fame' and 'The House of Rumour', where various aspects of truth and falsehood are revealed by allegorical classical divinities. The poem is unfinished.

'Anelida and Arcite'

'Anelida and Arcite' is a strangely diffuse unfinished retelling of an old Roman story previously retold by the Italian, Boccaccio. The poem begins with two invocations, the first to Mars and Bellona, divinities of War, and the second to the Muses. The irregular stanzaic verse form is the most complicated Chaucer ever used. The story is the unheroic tale of a faithless knight named Arcite who has a habit of abandoning ladies. This narrative seems to serve mainly as a prologue to the unfinished lament of the lady Anelida.

'Parliament of Fowls'

'The Parliament of Fowls' is yet another love vision. In a dream, Chaucer wanders into the Garden of Nature on St Valentine's Dayand there witnesses the birds coming together to choose mates. There is a conflict between a flock of male eagles for the female eagle on the Goddess' hand. The males hold a debate and Nature is the judge, but she defers the decision to her eagle. The female eagle judges that she must have a year to decide.

'Troilus and Criseyde'

'Troilus and Criseyde' is a rarity in the works of Chaucer in that he managed to finish it. As well, the poem captures Chaucer at the height of his artistic power. He achieves great elegance and fluidity in the difficult Rhyme Royal4 measure while depicting vivid characters and emotions within a coherent plot.

The story was an old one when Chaucer took it over, but not as old as it pretends to be. Chaucer took the story over from Boccaccio'sIl Filostrato, making some changes to characters, lengthening the story, and vastly improving it. Boccaccio himself borrowed the story from an earlier Italian, Guido delle Colonne. Guido got his version from the Frenchman Benoit de Ste-Maure in the Roman de Troie, who pretended that he got it from the Romans Dares Phrygius and Dictys Cretensis. The works of Dares and Dictys do not mention anything approaching the story of 'Troilus and Criseyde' (although the character Troilus is mentioned, as referenced inHomer's Iliad - which also contains a similarly named Cressida). In fact, the story of 'Troilus and Criseyde' bears only the most superficial of links to the Classical legends of the Trojan War; for the most part it is a wholly medieval invention.

But what a story it is! Troilus, a prince of Troy, has fallen in love with Criseyde, the daughter of a Trojan seer, Calchas. Calchas has fled Troy to the enemy Greek camp, taking his daughter with him. Troilus's uncle, Pandarus, arranges for the couple to exchange letters and, finally, for them to share a night in the privacy of his house. Calchas convinces the Greeks to demand his daughter in exchange for the release of a Trojan prisoner. Both young lovers are distraught, but Criseyde promises to return to Troilus in ten days. On the tenth day, she is seduced by a Greek prince, Diomedes and remains with the Greeks. Through dreams and prophecies from his sister Cassandra, Troilus learns rumour of Criseyde's betrayal, but is only convinced when he sees Criseyde's brooch on Diomedes' armour. Troilus then runs into battle in a rage, fighting Diomedes whenever he can, and finally being killed by the great Greek warrior, Achilles. The story was picked up by Robert Henryson in The Testament of Crisseid and retold by Shakespeare inTroilus and Cressida. The tale of separated lovers and ensuing tragedy is arguably a source for the plot of Romeo and Juliet, and the lover's facilitator, Pandarus, is immortalised in the modern English verb 'to pander'.

The Legend of Good Women

'The Legend of Good Women' is yet another unfinished love vision. In the prologue, Chaucer wanders out on a May morning and falls asleep in the meadows. And he dreams. He dreams that he meets the god of love and Queen Alceste, a metamorphosed daisy. These two dream figures berate Chaucer for writing 'Troilus and Criseyde' and for translating The Romaunt of the Rose5. They argue that men have been turned away from courtly love because he has depicted unfaithful women. Chaucer sets out to balance his previous work with a tribute to good women. The rest of the poem is the beginning of a catalogue, gleaned from myth and literature, of such women.

The Canterbury Tales

The Canterbury Tales is a collection of 24 tales, mostly in verse, introduced by 'The General Prologue'. The collection closes with a short prose piece known as 'Chaucer's Retraction' in which the author asks that the reader ascribe all that is good in the work to the Lord. All that is bad in the Tales should be ascribed, not to the author's will, but to his lack of skill, for he would 'ful fayn have seyd bettre if I hadde had konnynge.'

'The General Prologue' introduces the structure of the collection. While on a pilgrimage to the shrine of St Thomas in Canterbury, Chaucer falls in with a number of pilgrims at the Tabard Inn, in Southwark. The pilgrims come from all walks of Medieval English life, and their appearances and characters are vividly described in the 'Prologue'. As the pilgrims set out together in the morning, they come to an agreement to entertain each other on the long road by telling two tales each on the way to and from St Thomas' Shrine. Sadly, Chaucer was never able to complete even one tale for each of the described pilgrims. But the existing 23-verse tales with their prologues, together with the prose 'Parson's Tale' and 'The General Prologue' present a rich and varied pageant of Medieval life, and the verse tales offer examples of most Medieval poetic genres.

The Canterbury Tales grows out of a continental tradition of tale collections that reached its pre-Chaucerian height with Boccaccio'sDecameron. Chaucer, however, in The Canterbury Tales, takes the original step of carefully matching the tales to their tellers, so that the teller's personality is expanded by the tale he or she tells. Chaucer was continuing to struggle with this matching at the time he died, as evidenced by the fact that parts of a tale told by a woman seem to be being told by a man. Obviously some parts of the Taleswere far from their final form when Chaucer took his leave.

While The Canterbury Tales remains unfinished (like so much of Chaucer's work), we know from internal evidence that he intended 'The Knight's Tale' to follow 'The General Prologue' at the beginning of the collection and 'The Parson's Tale' to close. Even in this incomplete form, the knight's tale of courtly love, the parson's dry sermon on the Seven Deadly Sins, and all the tales in between give us an hilarious and unparalleled view into a world far away in time and yet so very, very close to who we are today.

(Totally quoted from http://www.bbc.co.uk/)

DREAMS

THE BEAUTY OF FRIENDSHIP

UNREQUITED LOVE

LOVE'S ETERNAL SEAL

NATURE

FATE

HAPPY NEW YEAR

A RED RED ROSE BY ROBERT BURNS

The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

Amir lives with his father, Baba, in Kabul, Afghanistan. His mother, who had died during childbirth, had left behind a collection of Sufi literature. From early childhood, Amir likes to read stories from her books to his servant and playmate, Hassan. While Amir is privileged and able to go to school, Hassan is busy with housework. However, in their free time they are good friends. To commemorate these happy times, Amir carves their names on a pomegranate tree.

Living in a single-parent home, Amir yearns for his father’s attention and gets jealous of Hassan when his father bestows favors on Hassan, favors like arranging cosmetic surgery for his harelip. Amir’s desire for his father’s affection also stems from his father’s indifference toward his son’s interest in books. When it is time for the local kite-flying contest, Amir gets excited because he knows that his father will be watching him with genuine interest.

Hassan is excited about the contest, too, and after Amir wins, Hassan runs and catches the prizewinning kite for his friend. Unfortunately, the neighborhood bully, Assef, and his companions stop Hassan and demand the kite from him. Hassan does not surrender the kite and is physically assaulted and raped by Assef. Amir sees the assault but, fearing confrontation with the bully, does nothing—an act of betrayal that will affect Amir into adulthood and forever change his relationship with Hassan.

Both Amir and Hassan know the social gap that defines their identities. In Afghan culture, Amir is a Pashtun and Hassan is a Hazara, which makes him a servant. Religious difference also sets them apart, even though they both are Muslim: Amir is Sunni, and Hassan is Shia. Pashtuns, the majority ethnic group in Afghanistan, make fun of Hazaras, a minority ethnic group, treating them as pariahs. Children taunt Hassan’s father, Ali, as “a slant-eyed donkey,” and Assef insults Hassan as a “flat-nosed” Hazara who does not belong in Afghanistan.

Amir is not disturbed with his servant-master friendship until the kite incident. Even as a twelve-year-old kid, he is old enough to know that he has not been good. Hassan’s presence reminds him of his own guilt, so he asks his father to get new servants. Baba refuses but, instead, frames Hassan, accusing him of theft; Hassan and his father leave Kabul. A few years later, because of the Russian invasion, Baba and Amir secretly leave Kabul, too. They cross the border into Pakistan after a difficult journey and emigrate to the United States.

Baba adjusts to the cultural and economic challenges of living in the United States and is happy with Amir’s educational success. Amir had majored in English to pursue a writing career, his childhood dream. On weekends, he helps his father sell at the local flea market, where he meets Soraya, the daughter of an expatriate Afghan general. Amir and Soraya soon fall in love, and Amir’s father makes lavish arrangements for a grand wedding. Baba, who has been suffering from cancer, dies one month after the wedding.

Amir and Soraya are happy together, but they remain childless for many years. Twenty years later Amir is a successful novelist in the United States. An old friend of his father, Rahim Khan, calls Amir on the phone and invites him to Pakistan. Amir meets him and soon learns that Baba had sold his home to Rahim. Rahim had then brought back Hassan and his family to live with him. Unfortunately, in Rahim’s absence, Talibs had come to the house and shot Hassan and his wife; their son, Sohrab, ended up in an orphanage.

Rahim also reveals that Hassan was actually Baba’s son, and Amir’s half-brother. Amir is outraged by this belated discovery, but he also recalls his own guilt. Thus, he embarks on a dangerous journey to Afghanistan to atone his past sins and to rescue Sohrab, his nephew.

Afghanistan is now under the oppressive control of the Taliban. After a great deal of searching, Amir meets a Talib, who agrees to arrange a meeting with Sohrab. Amir goes to the appointed place and recognizes Assef, the neighborhood bully from their younger days, who is now a Talib; Assef practically owns Sohrab. Assef says he will release Sohrab only if Amir will engage in one-on-one physical combat with him, and win. In this mismatched fight, Amir is seriously injured. Sohrab hits Assef in the eye with something fired from his slingshot, and Amir and Sohrab manage to escape.

Sohrab and Amir flee to Pakistan, and Amir is hospitalized. He plans to return to the United States with Sohrab after he recovers from his injuries, but because he is not a legal guardian of the child, he cannot obtain a U.S. visa for him. A lawyer advises Amir that to legally adopt Sohrab, it would be necessary to place Sohrab in an orphanage. When Amir reveals this plan to Sohrab, the child is devastated and feels betrayed; Amir had promised him that he would never send him to an orphanage. Sohrab attempts suicide, and Amir finds his nephew’s body in the bathroom, covered with blood. Amir screams for help and vows to become a devout Muslim if God will spare Sohrab’s life. Sohrab lives, but he no longer talks or smiles.

Finally, Amir is able to return to the United States with Sohrab after Soraya obtains a humanitarian visa for the child. The couple do their best to make Sohrab happy in his new home, and Amir forbids his father-in-law from ever referring to Sohrab as a Hazara. Later, Sohrab shows signs of a faint smile as Amir runs after a prizewinning kite.

(source: http://www.enotes.com/)

A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini

Mariam and her mother, Nana, a former housekeeper for Mariam’s wealthy father, Jalil, have been banished to a hut near a small Afghan village to avoid humiliating Jalil’s three wives and nine children in Herat. Nana bitterly disparages both Mariam and Jalil, who visits his daughter weekly. Even though the village mullah urges Nana to send the girl to school, she refuses, insisting that the only skill a woman needs is endurance.

To celebrate her fifteenth birthday, Mariam begs Jalil to take her to a cinema in Herat, but both parents strenuously object. When Jalil fails to meet her, Mariam walks alone to the city, only to be told that her father is not at home. On her return she discovers that Nana has killed herself.

Reluctantly, Jalil takes Mariam into his home. The three wives, who wish to get rid of her permanently, inform her that they have found a suitor, Rasheed, a forty-five-year-old shoemaker from Kabul, whom she will marry tomorrow. At the wedding, she is ignored by her father. She mopes in Kabul until Rasheed instructs her to behave like a wife. His only son had drowned, and he wants another son. Waiting at the communal oven, Mariam encounters Fariba, a politically and socially liberal neighbor, whose husband, Hakim, is a teacher.

Conservative Rasheed buys Mariam a burka, a floor-length garment that covers her completely; he orders her to wear the garment in public. He also thoroughly disapproves of Fariba, who merely covers her hair with a scarf. Rasheed takes Mariam to a restaurant, buys her a beautiful shawl, and shares her bed that night, but when she miscarries in the public bathhouse, his attitude changes. After four years of marriage and six more miscarriages, which he regards as personal insults, he believes Mariam is a useless nineteen year old; he frequently beats her.

Meanwhile, Hakim and Fariba have a daughter, Laila. Fariba is full of fire until their two sons go on jihad against the invading Soviets. Then, blaming Hakim for permitting them to leave, she retreats to her bed. After the brothers are killed, Laila becomes a caregiver for her parents, preparing her father’s dinner while he helps her with schoolwork. A calm and patient scholar, Hakim urges her to get an education before marrying.

When the Soviets are finally driven from Afghanistan, unrest returns to Kabul, as local warlords turn against each other. Fariba supports the Mujahideen, the Islamic militia that her sons had joined, but Hakim fears them and wants to leave Kabul. As ethnic violence continues, Laila is forced to drop out of school after a fellow student is blown to bits in the street.

Laila’s closest friend, the neighbor boy Tariq, has an artificial leg because of a Soviet land mine. Tariq and Laila become intimate after Tariq announces that his family is going to a refugee camp in Pakistan. Although he begs Laila to come with them, she cannot leave her father, who seems lost without Fariba’s support. Hakim and Fariba are killed when their home is shelled, and Rasheed finds Laila injured in the rubble. Mariam reluctantly tends her as she recovers. Later, Laila is informed that Tariq has died in a Pakistani hospital. Observing her husband with Laila, Mariam realizes that Rasheed, now sixty years old, is courting the fourteen-year-old girl. Mariam attempts to dissuade him, but she is at his mercy, as is Laila, who accepts his marriage offer because she is pregnant with Tariq’s baby. She hopes to deceive Rasheed.

Rasheed keeps his new bride at home, and Mariam serves them both. The two women resent each other until Laila’s baby girl, Aziza, brings them together. In time, Mariam becomes another mother to Laila and a grandmother to the child. Laila begs her to escape with them to Pakistan. They prepare to flee but cannot travel without a male relative. A young husband offers to help but betrays them, keeping their money. They are questioned by police and returned to Rasheed, who hurls Aziza across the room and imprisons the women for three days.

The fundamentalist Taliban seizes Kabul, leading Rasheed to view them as liberators. They distribute strict rules: All men must have beards; no school for girls; no jobs for women, who must stay in their homes unless with a male relative. The university is closed, books other than the Qur՚n are burned, and musicians are imprisoned. Rasheed threatens to send Aziza away or to lie about Laila’s behavior to the authorities. Then Laila discovers she is pregnant with Rasheed’s child.

In labor, Laila goes to the former women’s hospital and is turned away because the hospital now accepts male patients only. She is sent to a small hospital without medicine, clean water, or electricity. She requires a caesarean section and must suffer through the surgery without anesthetics. Her female doctor, who is required to perform her duties while wearing a burka, is unable to properly see through the garment, so a nurse guards the door to warn of any approaching Taliban. Laila gives birth to a boy, Zalmai.

Two-year-old Zalmai loves both parents but favors Rasheed, who is gentle with him while holding his wives in contempt. Although in debt, Rasheed brings home a television for his son, but decides that daughter Aziza, who is six years old, will beg on the streets. Laila objects, and Rasheed slaps her. They struggle, then he shoves a gun barrel in her mouth. Mariam ends up digging a hole to hide the forbidden television.

Rasheed’s shop burns, and he must sell nearly everything. He steals food, but the family begins to starve. Finally, Aziza is sent to an orphanage so she will get some food. The director seems kind and comforts Laila, who is weeping, but Aziza panics when her mother leaves. Laila is permitted to visit her daughter but cannot travel without Rasheed, who often deliberately stops and turns back, forcing her to do the same. Without him, she risks a beating from the Taliban, but she quickly learns to use padding to cushion the potential blows.

Tariq suddenly appears at Laila’s home; the story of his death was false. Son Zalmai, although still an innocent, throws a tantrum, luring his mother away from Tariq. Furious, Rasheed beats her with his belt, but she retaliates. He begins to choke her. Mariam, realizing he will murder both of them if he can, hits him with a shovel. Laila revives from the beating, horrified, but Mariam is very calm. Together they dispose of Rasheed’s body, and Laila tells Zalmai his father has gone away. While Laila, Aziza, and Zalmai disappear, Mariam refuses to escape; she will accept the blame. She is sent to a women’s prison and publicly executed for murdering her husband.

Arriving with the children in Pakistan, Laila and Tariq marry. Once the Taliban are driven from Afghanistan, the family returns to contribute to the rebuilding.Kabul has changed—a seeming normalcy—although the local warlords responsible for so many deaths have also returned. Laila teaches at the orphanage where Aziza once lived, and she is once again pregnant.

(source:http://www.enotes.com/)

Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky

In Crime and Punishment, Dostoevski treats the problem of crime and the criminal mentality. He is not interested in the social aspects of criminal behavior, and there is little said in the novel about the legalities of crime. Dostoevski has an interior view of criminality, a conviction that crime and its inevitable punishment are deeply seated aspects of the human spirit.

Raskolnikov (the novel’s hero) is presented from the inside. The reader knows what he did before knowing why he did it, and the story is told as a gradual revelation of the hero’s motives. That accounts for the uncanny suspense of the first several chapters: The reader continually searches for the reason that Raskolnikov has murdered the pawnbroker. Intertwined with the reader’s suspense is the slowly dawning realization that Raskolnikov himself does not know his motive. This “double suspense” creates a dense texture that gives the novel its complexity, a complexity laid over the relative simplicity of the plot.

As the novel progresses, Raskolnikov’s possible motives become ever more bizarre. The consistent notion behind his behavior is revealed in his confession to the innocent prostitute, Sonia, after the crime, when he blurts out that he did it because he only wanted to see if he could go beyond a normal person’s revulsion against such an act. This admission seems to suggest that Raskolnikov is an egotist, a self-styled superman who wants to see if he can get away with transgressing the law. The reader comes to find, however, that Raskolnikov’s impulses go more deeply than that: Raskolnikov wants to see if he can overstep the limits of evil itself, if he can exert ultimate power over another person. That is what the murder means to him.

Dostoevski’s brilliant unfolding of Raskolnikov’s deepest motive really begins after the confession to Sonia. Before this point in the novel, the reader is puzzled by a welter of seemingly conflicting evidence about the hero’s personality. Raskolnikov says he does not believe in God and that there is no arbiter of absolute good and evil. Yet he is numb with self-doubt. In spite of his logical decision to commit murder, he is troubled and hesitant. His horrible dream of the peasants beating a horse to death causes him to awake trembling at the very thought that he himself might be so cruel. As he later walks along the banks of the Neva, his obsession with committing an evil act alternates with a loathing for the very idea. Then, after the deed has been done, something curious occurs that turns out to be the key to understanding his true motive and the rest of the novel. It becomes clear that Raskolnikov’s response to having committed murder is merely puzzlement. In other words, he shows neither remorse nor joy. He realizes that he feels the same way that he has always felt.

Finally, the reader understands that the loathsome criminality of Raskolnikov’s motive lies in its amorality. He had decided to murder the old woman pawnbroker on strictly logical grounds, but the unease that he continues to feel is not a guilty conscience stemming from a too-strict logicality. Had he murdered for money or out of anger and then been caught, his punishment would have been easier than that which comes to gnaw at him. Having made a cold-blooded sociopathic decision to assert himself at the expense of another’s very identity, he finds his feelings locked into the conventional morality that his intellect so despises. He is thus caught in an emotional vacuum, the most inescapable kind of punishment. Raskolnikov has murdered an old woman, but the inability to have an authentically strong feeling about it has murdered him spiritually. In a dream, he tries to kill her repeatedly, slicing at her skull with an ax, but as he looks closely into her face he can see her laughing horribly. Raskolnikov has really killed himself with the ax of cold-blooded self-assertion. He has no clearly definable motive because he is a sociopathic personality.

In the end of the story, Dostoevski makes clear how problematic such a personality is for society. Once again, the author’s meaning is revealed in a dream sequence. Raskolnikov is ill in Siberia and dreams that he and the rest of the world have been devastated by an infestation of highly intelligent germs. The infestation causes insanity. The infected believe themselves to be logical, scientific, progressive, and morally sound; yet they get sick and go mad from the infection. Anarchy results, and human society disintegrates. Dostoevski’s point is that sociopathic personalities are like these microbes, able to kill everything that they touch.

The sickness of cold-blooded amorality is shown against a background of conventional, commonsensical standards that define the boundaries of good and evil. The relationship between them is seen in the novel’s other characters. Raskolnikov’s sister, Dunya, is about to be married to Luzhin, a manipulative businessman, and the morally grotesque Svidrigailov hovers around them, while the prostitute, Sonia, and the policeman, Porfiry, attempt to maneuver the hero into a confession. Each relationship is flawed by the characters’ tendency toward self-serving logicality, none more self-indulgent than that between Svidrigailov and Dunya, caused for the most part by Svidrigailov’s profligacy. Years of cold philosophizing have left Svidrigailov with no heartfelt values, not even the common sense to distinguish between the most fundamental kinds of good and evil. In order to escape his emotional wretchedness, he fills his days with a sinister kind of debauchery. When his love for Dunya is rejected, he is able to shoot himself with a cool detachment. Sonia, although kindly and sensitive, is nevertheless a prostitute; like the others, she has murdered herself by becoming a tool of the dissoluteness of other people. She, like the others, has defined herself by coolly deciding on a course of action that indulges others in their weaknesses. It is the ultimate punishment that results from sociopathic attitudes and behaviors: Like the crime, the punishment is cold, wretched, impersonal, and ultimately without any satisfaction.

(source: http://www.enotes.com/)