English Cosmos by Dr Mukesh Pareek

Riders to the Sea This article is about the play. For the opera, see  Riders to the Sea (opera) . Sara Allgood  as Maurya, photo taken by  Carl Van Vechten , 1938 Riders to the Sea  is a play written by  Irish Literary Renaissance  playwright  John Millington Synge . It was first performed on 25 February 1904 at the Molesworth Hall,  Dublin , by the Irish National Theater Society with  Helen Laird  playing Maurya. A one-act  tragedy , the play is set in the  Aran Islands ,  Inishmaan , and like all of Synge's plays it is noted for capturing the poetic dialogue of rural Ireland. The plot is based not on the traditional conflict of human wills but on the hopeless struggle of a people against the impersonal but relentless cruelty of the sea. Background Important characters Plot synopsis Maurya has lost her husband, and five of her sons to the sea. As the play begins Nora and Cathleen receive word from the priest that a body, ...

Contemporaries O moral Gower, this book I directe To the and to the, philosophical Strode, To vouchen sauf, ther nede is, to correcte, Of youre benignites and zeles goode. Troilus and Criseyde (Book 5, l. 1856-1859) Richard II was a great patron of the arts and a literary culture flourished at his court in the second half of the Fourteenth Century. Chaucer was widely known amongst the literati of the day, and his circle included influential figures such as Sir Lewis Clifford, Sir Richard Stury and Sir John Montagu. He was also friendly with other contemporary writers, including Thomas Hoccleve, Henry Scogan, Ralph Strode and John Gower. He seems to have been particularly close to ‘Moral’ Gower, as he dubs him in  Troilus and Criseyde , giving him power of attorney when he left for Italy in 1378. In the first version of his  Confessio Amantis , Gower makes a flattering reference to Chaucer as composing ‘ditees and songes glad’ in the flower of his youth. Often referred to as th...

Summary Part 1 The setting is in the evening on a country road with a single tree present.  Estragon  is trying to pull off his boot, but without success.  Vladimir  enters and greets Estragon, who informs him that he has spent the night in a ditch where he was beaten. With supreme effort Estragon succeeds in pulling off his boot. He then looks inside it to see if there is anything there while Vladimir does the same with his hat. Vladimir mentions the two thieves who were crucified next to Christ. He asks Estragon if he knows the Gospels. Estragon gives a short description of the maps of the Holy Land at which point Vladimir tells him he should have been a poet. Estragon points to his tattered clothes and says he was. Vladimir continues with his narrative about the two thieves in order to pass the time. Estragon wants to leave but Vladimir forces him to stay because they are both waiting for Godot to arrive. Neither of the two bums knows when Godot will appear, or ev...

The Ecstasy BY  JOHN DONNE Where, like a pillow on a bed          A pregnant bank swell'd up to rest The violet's reclining head,          Sat we two, one another's best. Our hands were firmly cemented          With a fast balm, which thence did spring; Our eye-beams twisted, and did thread          Our eyes upon one double string; So to'intergraft our hands, as yet          Was all the means to make us one, And pictures in our eyes to get          Was all our propagation. As 'twixt two equal armies fate          Suspends uncertain victory, Our souls (which to advance their state          Were gone out) hung 'twixt her and me. A...

Frank e leyn was in his compaigny e . Whit was his berd as is the day e sy e ; Of his complex i oun he was sangwyn. Wel loved he by the morwe a sop in wyn; To lyven in delit was evere his won e , For he was Epicurus owen e  son e , That heeld opin i oun that pleyn delit Was verraily felicitee parfit. An housholdere, and that a greet, was he; Seint Julian he was in his contree. His breed, his ale, was alweys after oon; A bettre envyn e d man was nowher noon. Without e  bak e  mete was nevere his hous, Of fissh and flessh, and that so plent e vous, It snew e d in his hous of mete and drynk e , Of all e  deyntees that men koud e  thynk e , After the sondry sesons of the yeer; So chaung e d he his mete and his soper. Ful many a fat partrich hadde he in muw e , And many a breem and many a luce in stuw e . Wo was his cook but if his sauc e  wer e Poynaunt and sharp, and redy al his geer e . His table dormant in his halle alway Stood redy cover e d al the long e ...

Francis Bacon.  (1561–1626).   Essays, Civil and Moral. The Harvard Classics.   1909–14.   VI   Of Simulation and Dissimulation     D ISSIMULATION  is but a faint kind of policy or wisdom; for it asketh a strong wit and a strong heart to know when to tell truth, and to do it. Therefore it is the weaker sort of politics that are the great dissemblers.   1   Tacitus saith,  Livia sorted well with the arts of her husband and dissimulation of her son;  attributing arts or policy to Augustus, and dissimulation to Tiberius. And again, when Mucianus encourageth Vespasian to take arms against Vitellius, he saith,  We rise not against the piercing judgment of Augustus, nor the extreme caution or closeness of Tiberius.  These properties, of arts or policy and dissimulation or closeness, are indeed habits and faculties several, and to be distinguished. For if a man have that penetration of judgment as he can ...

Summary  Throughout the novel, the Dedalus family makes a series of moves into increasingly dilapidated homes as their fortunes dwindle. His mother is a devout Catholic. When Stephen is young, he and the other Dedalus children are tutored by the governess  Dante , a fanatically Catholic woman. Their  Uncle Charles  also lives with the family. The book opens with stream of consciousness narrative filtered through a child's perspective; there is sensual imagery, and words approximating baby talk. We leap forward in time to see young Stephen beginning boarding school at Clongowes. He is very young, terribly homesick, un-athletic and socially awkward. He is an easy target for bullies, and one day he is pushed into a cesspool. He becomes ill from the filthy water, but he remembers what his father told him and doesn't tell on the boy. That Christmas, he eats at the adult table for the first time. A terrible argument erupts over politics, with John Casey and Stephen's fathe...