Paper Name : Cultural Studies

Assignment Topic : Five types of Cultural Studies

Name: Solanki Pintu V

Sem : 2

Roll No : 31

Enrollment No: PG15101037

Email: solankipintu1991@gmail.com

Submitted to :

               M.K. BHAVNAGAR UNIVERSITY

                           Department Of English

TO EVALUATE MY ASSIGNMENT

  v      Cultural Studies:

                Culture is the word which is not possible to describe in one word. Culture is something which reflects in your identity. To know more about culture, we have to study about it. “Culture” itself is so difficult to pin down and “Cultural Studies” is very much hard to define. “Cultural Studies” is not so much a discrete approach at all, but rather a set of practice.

    If we go deeper in meaning of cultural Studies than we find that Cultural Studies is an educational field of critical theory and literary criticism initially introduced by British Academies in 1964 and subsequently adopted by allied academics throughout the world.

    Cultural Studies is an academic discipline aiding cultural researchers who theorize about the forces from which the whole of humankind construct their daily lives. It is not a unified theory, but a diverse field of study encompassing many different approaches methods and academic properties.

v There are five types of Cultural studies. They are:

 1.     British Cultural Materialism

 2.     New Historicism

 3.      American Multiculturalism

 4.     Postmodernism and Popular culture

 5.     Post colonial Studies

(1)          British cultural Materialism

Cultural materialism is “a politicized form of historiography.”

                -Graham Holderness

     Cultural study is referred to as “cultural materialism in Britain. Matthew Arnold sought to redefine the “givens” of British Culture. Edward Burnett Tylor’s pioneering anthropolog1ical study ‘primitive Culture’

     “Culture or civilization, taken in its widest ethnographic sense, is a complex whole which includes knowledge, beliefs, art, morals, law, custom and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society.”

   Cultural Materialism began in 1950s with the work of F.R.Leavis and heavily influenced by Matthew Arnold. Raymond Williams talks about attributes of working class and elite class. As Williams memorably states:

“There are no masses; there are only ways of seeing people as masses.”

          In modern Britain two trajectories for "culture" developed: one led back to the past and the feudal hierarchies that ordered community in the past; here, culture acted in its sacred function as preserver of the past The other trajectory led toward a future, socialist utopia that would annual the distinction between labor and leisure classes. Cultural materialism began in earnest in the 1950s with the work of F.R.Leavis, heavily influenced by Matthew Arnold's analyses of bourgeois culture.

     Cultural materialists also turned to the more humanistic and even spiritual insights of the great student of Rabelais and Dostoevsky, Russian Formalist Bakhtin, especially his amplification of the dialogic form of meaning within narrative and class struggle.

(2)          New Historicism

     New Historicism is a school of literary theory, first developed in 1980. The term ‘new historicism’ was created by the American critic Stephen greenbelts. New Historicism is a literary theory based on the idea that literature should be studied and interpreted within the context of both the history of the author and the history of the critic.

  Ø Definition

  “New Historicism is that it is a method based on the parallel reading of literary and nonliterary texts, usually of the same historical period”.

            New historicism refuses to ‘privilege’ the literary text: instead of a literary, foreground and a historical ‘background’ it envisages and practices a mode of study in which literary and nonliterary texts are given equal weight and constantly inform or interrogate each other.

       In the definition of new historicism given by the American critic Louis Montrose: He defines it as a combined interest in the textuality of history, the historicity of texts’. It involves’ an intensified willingness to read ‘all’ of the attention traditionally conferred only on literary texts’ so new historicism embodies’ a paradox, it is an approach to literature in which there is no privileging of the literary. A new historical essay will place the literary text within the ‘frame’ of a nonliterary text.

      New historicism has made its biggest mark on literary studies of the Renaissances and Romantic periods and has revised motions of literature as privileged, apolitical writing. Much new historicism focuses on the marginalization of subjects such as those identified as witches, the insane, heretics, vagabonds, and political prisoners.

3.      American Multiculturalism

 First we know what is Multiculturalism?

	“Multicultural is involving or relating to several ethnic groups or cultural groups within a society. It includes people who have many different beliefs and customs. It could be designed for cultures of different races.”

      As a philosophy, multiculturalism began as part of the Pragmatism movement at the end of the 19th century in Europe and the United States. American multiculturalism was come into existence   in 1964 with the passing Civil Right Act.

    “Every American should understand Mexico from the point of view of the observer of the conquest and of the history before the conquest……”

       In 1972 Harvard University study by the geneticist Richard Lewontin found that most genetic differences were within racial groups, not between them. In the new country, if interracial trends continue, Americans will be puzzled by race distinctions from the past since children of multiracial backgrounds may be the norm rather than the exception. And given the huge influx of Mexican Americans into the United States over the last fifty years, immigration patterns indicate that by the year 2050 Anglo-Americans will no longer be the majority, nor English necessarily the most widely spoken language.

     In literary field America existence with different culture which belongs to different idea about literature.  Cultural studies, regarding America with other culture and then their multi production of Literary Forms also. Cultural Studies regards four writers from different culture whose concerns with American Literary field.

 (a)African American writer

                                          

                          African American writers is widely pursued in American literature criticism from the recovery of the eighteenth century poets such as Phillies wealthy to the experimental novel of Toni Morison, In Shadow and Act 1964novel Ralph Ellison Argue that any ''viable theater of Negro American culture obligates us to fashion a more adequate theory of American culture as a what''.

(b)Latin/o Writer:-

          Latina/o Writer Hispanic Mexican American, Puerto Rican Nuyarican Chicane may be Huizhou or Maya. Which names to use/ the choice after has political implications.

  We will use the term'' Latina/o to indicate a broad sense of Ethnicity among Spanish speaking ,people n the united states Mexican American are the largest and most influential of Latina/o Ethnicities in the united states.

(c)American Indian literature:-

                                               In pre dominantly oral cultures, stalling passes and religious beliefs, moral values, political codes and practical lesson of everyday life .For American Indians stories are a source of strength in the face of centuries of silencing by Euro American.

(d)Asian American writer:-

                            Asian American literature is written by people of Asian descent in the United States addressing the experience of living in a society that views them as alien. Asian immigrants were denied citizenship as late as the1950s.Edward said has written of Orientals, or the tendency to objectify and exoticism Asian, and their work has sought to respond to such stereotypes Asian American writer include Chinese Japanese , Korean Filipino, Vietnamese, Asian , Polynesian and many other peoples of as a the Indian subcontinent , and pacific.

(4)          Post modernism and popular culture:-

  Ø Postmodernism

    The term “postmodernism” first entered the philosophical lexicon in 1979, with the publication of The Postmodern Condition by Jean-François Lyotard. It’s a reaction against the philosophical assumptions, values, and intellectual worldview of the modern period of western history. Postmodernism questions everything rationalist European philosophy held to be true.

     Postmodernism possesses several elements which are necessary which given by Jean Baudrillard

·        Any Sign is empty

·        Virtual world

·        Status and Taboos

·        Hyperreal between the private and the public etc.

It also affected in

·        Building

·        Literature

·        Cinema

·        Painting

·        Music

·        Photography etc.

      In the English speaking world, modernism has a very specific meaning among most literature scholars, referring not to the “Modern Age” since the Enlightenment, or to “Modern” in the sense of contemporary, but to the period after World War-1, When T.S.Eliot, James Joyes, W.B.Yeats, Ezra Pound, and Gertrude Stein were in their heyday. Postmodernism offers no suggestion of anything like a comprehensive substitute world- view. Postmodernism means to make a clean break with the past in the sense that the past and its way of looking at the world become the subject of satirical, often sarcastic “play” with historical figures texts, and ideologies. New literature, art, and culture after world war 2 created, Analyzes of those is known as Postmodernism. It is opposed modernism.

  Ø Popular Culture

       Popular culture is the entirely of ideas, perspective, attitudes, images and other Phenomena that are within the mainstream of a given culture, especially   western culture of the early to mid-20th century and the emerging global mainstream of the late 20th and early 21th  century.

          Once we define the term and then it becomes very easy to understand this term as it is also known as Pop-Culture so The term ‘Popular Culture' was coined in the 19th century or earlier. Traditionally, the term has denoted the education and general “culturedness” of the lower classes, as opposed to the “official culture” and higher education emanated by the dominant classe.The stress in the distinction from “official culture” became more pronounced towards the end of the 19th century, a usage that became established by the interbellum period.

          Popular culture is often viewed as being trivial and dumbed down in order to find consensual acceptance throughout the mainstream. As a result it comes under heavy criticism from various non-mainstream sources (most notably religious groups and counter cultural groups) which deem it superficial, consumerist, sensationalist, and corrupted.

  Ø There are four main types of popular culture studies analyses like:

·        Production Analysis

·        Textual Analysis

·        Audience Analysis

·        Historical Analysis

       So with the help of these an individual can analyze the types as production analysis deals with the production and while on the other hand Textual analysis deals with the text and on the other side we can also say that the third one is audience analysis which has more importance in the popular culture because Audience remains at the center in this kind of analysis while last but not the list kind is Historical analysis which plays vital role in the popular culture or so called Pop-culture.

(5)  Post colonial Studies:

                Post colonialism refers to a historical phase undergone by third world countries after the decline of colonialism. Many third world countries focus on both colonialism and the changes created in post colonial writers are the attempts both to resurrect their culture and to combat the preconception about their culture. At first glance post colonial studies would seem to be a matter of history and political science rather than literary criticism.

                Post colonial literary theorists study the English language within this politicized context, especially those writings that developed at the colonial front such as works by Rudyard Kipling, E.M. Forster, Jean Rhys or Jamaica Kincaid.  Earlier figures such as Shakespeare’s Caliban are re-read today in their new world contexts. Said concept of orientalism was an important touchstone to post colonial studies, as he described the stereotypical discourse about the East as constructed by the event.

                Homi. K. Bhabha’s post colonial theory involves analysis of nationality, ethnicity and politics with poststructuralist ideas of identity and indeterminacy, defining post colonial identities as shifting, hybrid constructions. We can see some powerful conflicts arising from the colonial past in Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children, for example which deconstructs the history of modern India.

                Among the most important figures in post colonial feminism is Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, who examines the effects of political independence upon “subaltern” women in the Third World. Spivak’s subaltern studies reveal how female subjects are silenced by the dialogue between the male dominated west and the male dominated east offering little hope for the subaltern women’s voice to rise up admits the global social institution that opposes her.

                “No culture can live if it attempts to be exclusive”

TO EVALUATE MY ASSIGNMENT

Digital Humanities and Computer Assisted Literary Criticism

   Paper Name : Literary Criticism

Assignment Topic : Digital Humanity

Name: Solanki Pintu V

Sem : 2

Roll No : 31

Enrollment No: PG15101037

Email: solankipintu1991@gmail.com

Submitted to :

               M.K. BHAVNAGAR UNIVERSITY

                           Department Of English 



TO EVALUATE MY ASSIGNMENT

    v Digital Humanities and Computer Assisted Literary Criticism

       What Is Digital Humanities ?

    

      This chapter sets out a definition of “digital humanities”, also known as “humanities computing.” Digital humanities can be defined as a field of study, research, teaching, and invention concerned with the intersection of computing and the disciplines of the humanities. At its core, digital humanities is more akin to a common methodological outlook than an investment in any one specific set of texts or even technologies.

          The digital humanities, also known as humanities computing, is a field of study, research, teaching, and invention concerned with the intersection of computing and the disciplines of the humanities. It is methodological by nature and interdisciplinary in scope.

         It involves investigation, analysis, synthesis and presentation of information in electronic form. It studies how these media affect the disciplines in which they are used, and what these disciplines have to contribute to our knowledge of computing.

         Yet it is also a social undertaking. It harbors networks of people who have been working together, sharing research, arguing, competing, and collaborating for many years. The chapter also traces how digital humanities went from being a term of convenience into something of a movement and presents reasons why digital humanities is associated with English departments.

               

         People who say that the last battles of the computer revolution in English departments have been fought and won don’t know what they’re talking about. If our current use of computers in English studies is marked by any common theme at all, it is experimentation at the most basic level. As a profession, we are just learning how to live with computers, just beginning to integrate these machines effectively into writing- and reading-intensive courses, just starting to consider the implications of the multi-layered literacy associated with computers.

     —Cynthia Selfe, “Computers in English Departments: The Rhetoric of Technopower”

       A New Computer Assisted Literary Criticism by RAYMOND G. SIEMENS

  Ø Literary Studies and Humanities Computing: Modeling,

Points of Intersection :-

          Perhaps the best historical model for documenting the accepted points of intersection shared by literary studies and humanities computing is that expressed several decades ago by John Smith in his seminal article, “Computer Criticism.” Within, one finds computing applications for language and literary studies divided into two groups based on their resultant products: one consisting of those“in which the computer was used to produce through textual manipulation conventional aids for future research (dictionaries, concordances, etc.),” and the other made up of “those in which the computer was used in the actual analysis of specific works of literature (thematic analyses, stylistic studies, etc.)”.

      Escaping my quotation above, but clearly evident in Smith’s larger argument, is the founding of each in and on the literary text in electronic form. Indeed, and as the humanities computing community has reminded itself a number of times, literary studies is largely defined by its reliance on and its attention to the literary text, broadly construed: the textual artefact and its intellectual contents. Not surprisingly, the literary text in the computing-enabled form that our community has explored it has, for some time, been accepted as the central point in the relationship between literary studies and computing.

          While such a focus has remained constant, not all has been static. Of note is that the idea of the literary text in its ultimate electronic scholarly form – the electronic scholarly edition of historical texts and what we might call the “electronic literature” of contemporary texts – has undergone considerable change, invention, and reinvention since Smith’s work of the late 1970s. Equally significant is the considerable rise in acceptance of computing approaches within the literary studies community since that time.

         And yet, even with such change in the electronicallycast object of our focus and the increasing acceptance of computing enhanced approaches, a model with the widespread application and utility of that expressed by Smith, a model that might best assist us in broad scoped consideration of the changing and increasingly positive relationship between literary studies and humanities computing, has rarely been articulated since Smith’s expression over two decades ago; the several exceptional literary-computing theories that have seen expression of late – such as those that have treated hypertext and its embodiment of literary theoretical principles, narrative studies as it relates to the electronic medium, and other aspects of electronic literary textuality – focus on points of intersection shared by literary studies and computing that are of the utmost importance, to be sure, but operate with a scope considerably less than that of Smiths work.

  Ø 2. Computing Tools and Computer Criticism / High and

Low Criticism :-

          It is well worth establishing something as basic, and essential, as the foundation of a general model that allows us to examine the intersection of humanities computing techniques and the pursuits of those in literary studies in a broad way, in an environment typified by changing notions of the literary text and, perhaps, with reference to changing levels of acceptance of computing-influenced work. Such a foundation is most clearly informed by Smith’s work, but that model does not explicitly take into account the relationship among the many types of work carried out in the literary studies community. For this purpose in particular, a model worth presenting alongside Smith’s is one more recently articulated by literary/textual scholar Tim William Machan.

      In the introduction to his Medieval Literature: Texts and Interpretation, Machan succinctly expresses a division of literary critical and scholarly work into two chief categories: what he terms “Lower Criticism,” which is chiefly textual and bibliographical in nature, and “Higher Criticism,” which is typified by interpretive studies. Lower criticism, Machan notes, is most “commonly viewed as the more factual or ‘scientific’; it provides numerical, analytical, and categorical information which is used to define . . . realities” ; higher criticism is often seen as “the spirit which gives life to the letters established by the Lower Criticism; it is the intellectual and aesthetic activity which, depending on one’s critical viewpoint, reveals, constitutes, or disassembles the meanings of a text” . As one might expect – and as one who works with either knows – the relationship between the two is mutually influential, for “without the traditional Lower Criticism’s constructing of texts, there can be no focus for the theorizing of Higher Criticism, just as without the traditional Higher Criticism’s interpretation of texts there can be no contexts within which Lower Criticism can identify facts” . In short, each is somewhat distinct, but each also necessarily assists in the definition and development of the other.

          Recalling the central role of the electronic literary text in the intersection of computing and literary studies, it is important also to note that one such embodiment of that text, the electronic scholarly edition, occupies an important place when we think about that which both Machan and Smith address: respectively, the influence of lower criticism on higher criticism and, further, the influence of humanities computing tools on higher literary critical concerns in the form of what Smith calls “computer criticism.” In addition to being a flagship of sorts today for the work of humanities computing in the field of literary studies, electronic editions of several sorts – primarily dynamic (which combine electronic text and text-analysis software such that the text indexes and concords itself) and hypertextual (which use links to facilitate a reader’s interaction with the apparatus that traditionally accompanies scholarly editions) – represent the culmination of decades of humanities computing work that has both supported and directly participated in interpretive studies. Dynamic interaction with a text – a process which is, essentially, enacting accepted lower critical practices upon a text – is a critical process that duplicates the sorts of tasks that Smith outlined as making up much of computer criticism; restated, such interaction is, itself, part of an interpretative process, with the computer enabling the lower-critical tasks to be carried out swiftly and seamlessly

          Truly, it is through the electronic scholarly edition that, today, one can most easily witness the influence of that which is chiefly textual and bibliographical in nature upon that which is more interpretive by nature – as well as the concomitant influence that schools of interpretation exert upon that which is bibliographic in nature; this latter point is best evinced by Schreibman’s paper, second in this collection, and the former given considerable support by Best.

           Such a meeting and mutual information of high and low critical endeavours in the electronic literary text is implicit in most papers in this collection – as is the observation that the electronic scholarly edition is only one type of such a text; truly, as Schreibman and Best both note in their consideration of aspects of the edition, even this type of electronic literary text is undergoing considerable change, reflecting intended or possible applications well-beyond those of earlier-generation editions. At their very essence, Winder suggests, recent literary critical schools and methodologies have combined with computing technology to force us to reconsider aspects of the literary text and its textuality – aspects not as disparate as one might think, Van Pelt convinces us, from the meaning that we are able to construct from its contents. Indeed, and as treated most directly by the contributions of Soules, Rockwell, and Grigar, new forms of textual narrative and communicative interaction in new electronic literary texts have themselves opened up previously unavailable points of intersection between the humanities computing and literary studies communities.

  Ø 3. Papers Towards a New Computer-Assisted Literary

Criticism :-

               The papers of this collection demonstrate well the broad range of new work in computing-influenced areas of literary criticism. They suggest a number of things both positive and valuable: that trends within the literary studies community at large have expanded that community’s notion of how computing relates to it – both explicitly and implicitly; that, while at times disputed, there is a strong sense of continuity among past work in humanities computing that addresses literary studies and similar work being carried out a present; and that there is a strong sense of continued promise for, and easily apparent value in, work taking place at the intersection of literary studies and computing.

           Expounding and exemplifying the benefits of the electronic edition, Michael Best’s “The Text of Performance and the Performance of Text in the ElectronicEdition” explores the notion of the “performance crux” – a moment, puzzling to the director and actors, that calls for some kind of stage business to justify or explain action – in the surviving texts of many of Shakespeare’s plays. Using the example of such a crux in Romeo and Juliet, he suggests how a modern, multimedia electronic edition can provide tools for the reader or actor to explore the possibilities both of the basic text and the performance that grows from it, ultimately treating the mutual illumination of text and performance in the dramatic electronic scholarly edition.

         In her article, “Computer-mediated Texts and Textuality: Theory and Practice,” Susan Schreibman continues concern with the scholarly electronic edition, beginning  with the observation that the majority of literary archives in electronic form within have been conceived more as digital libraries than disquisitions that utilise the medium as a site of interpretation – tracing this situation to the underlying philosophy of texts and textuality implicit in TEI-SGML. In her treatment of electronic textual theory, she urges that our understanding of electronic texts and textuality deepens as advances in technology allow for the realization of presentations and readings of electronic textual materials that could not, previously, be implemented in HTML or SGML.

          

            Beginning with the observation that one high literary critical mode, French neostructuralism, is built directly on the achievements of structuralism using electronic means,WilliamWinder’s “Industrial Text and French Neo-structuralism” discusses that mode in the context of its origins in reaction to French post-structuralist theorization and examines a number of exemplary approaches to text analysis in this vein. Further, he considers how computer-assisted accumulation of text-based expertise in the world at large complements this approach, ultimately concluding that we can anticipate the direction of critical studies to be radically altered by the sheer size of the economic stakes implied by a new kind of text, the industrial text which lies at the centre of an information society.

          Exploring further the cross-fertilization of theoretical approaches and computing is Tamise Van Pelt’s “The Question Concerning Theory: Humanism, Subjectivity, and Computing.” Within, Van Pelt surveys the shift from humanist, to anti-humanist, to posthumanist assumptions in literary critical circles and questions whether today’s computing environments can still be approached through late twentieth century anti-humanist theories or whether electronic texts demand new, media-specific analyses.

    Current work in new media, she asserts, suggests that the dominant discourse on the subject – the rational individual of the humanistic enlightenment, which gave way to the constructed subject of the mid-twentieth century (the discourse underlying much contemporary critical theory) – is being challenged by an emergent discourse of the posthuman.

          Marshall Soules, in his “Animating the Language Machine: Computers and Performance,” explores how we consider a recently-emergent type of text – the computer-mediated writing space – as a unique performance medium with characteristic protocols. Drawing on contemporary performance theory, literary criticism, and communication theory, Soules proposes that technologists, academics, and artists are developing idiomatic rhetorics to explore the technical and expressive properties of the new “language machines” and their hypertextual environments.

         The role of improvisation, and its cross-disciplinary protocols, provides a further focus in the discussion of computing practice and performance.

          In “Gore Galore: Literary Theory and Computer Games,” Geoffrey Rockwell provides a brief history of another recently-emergent type of text, the computer game, and asserts that they have not been adequately theorized. Rockwell develops a topology of computer games and a theory, based on Bakhtin’s poetics of the novel, that views them as rhetorical artifacts well-suited for critical study.

          Bookend to this introduction is Dene Grigar’s examination of the genre of adaptive narrative. In her “Mutability, Medium, and Character,” Grigar explores the future of literature created for and with computer technology, focusing primarily on the trope of mutability as it is played out with the new media. In its speculation about the possibilities of this new genre, it explores ways in which we may want to think when developing future theories about literature – and all types of writing – generated by and for electronic environment.

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Poem analysis of Robert Browning

TO EVALUATE MY ASSIGNMENT

Paper Name : Victorian Literature

Assignment Topic : Poem analysis of Robert Browning

Name: Solanki Pintu V

Sem : 2

Roll No : 31

Enrollment No: PG15101037

Email: solankipintu1991@gmail.com

Submitted to :

                 M.K. BHAVNAGAR UNIVERSITY

                                Department Of English

       Poem analysis of Robert Browning

v ROBERT BROWNING (1812-89)

  

         

        He was an  English poet and play write whose mastery of Dramatic verse, specially dramatic monologues , made him one of the leading Victorian Poets.  In 1846, Browning married Elizabeth Barrett, a poetess, more highly regarded than him. He became admirer of the Romantic poets, especially Shelley.

       His father  was connected with the bank of England. The future poet educated semi-privately. As a child he was talented, and began to write poetry at the age of twelve.  In 1882 Oxford conferred upon him  the degree of D.C.L.. He died in Italy, and was buried in Westminster Abbey.

          Browning is possibly most famous for his use of the dramatic monologue, a poem written from the point of view of someone who has dramatic vital to argue for him or herself. This form fits Browning's interests perfectly, since it allows him to empathize with perspectives he likely did not hold himself, thereby considering myriad human perspectives, and to examine the remarkable human ability for rationalizing our behaviors and beliefs.

v Robert Browning: Poems Themes

       Many of the themes and meanings of Victorian poetry mirror a conflicted sense of self. At once many poems by Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Browning portray a longing for the ideals of the Romantic period in literature but they are stunted it seems by the unique period and its new use of language, the changing and ever-growing economy in the active city of London, and of course, the changing views of religion and its place in such a complex world.

      Through the poems from the Victorian era of both Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Matthew Arnold, the recurrent themes of shifting religious ideas, language usage, and the economy are clear.

v The Patriot by Robert Browning Analysis

                           

             

                     The'' Patriot'' is one of the many poems English A level will have to study. Like with many of Browning's poems, this is a dramatic monologue being that the character is talking to himself in a 'dramatic' way. The poem tells the story of somebody's completing in front of the public: for which he is being misunderstood and should not be killed. It relates very much to the fall of leaders who, like the patriot, are misunderstood and killed because of this.

          The analysis starts in the very title, 'The Patriot'. A patriot is someone who fights/works for their country. They love their country and will do anything for their country too.

       The speaker of the poem is a patriot. He thinks of his glorious past. A year ago he was given a grand welcome on his arrival to the town. People had thrown roses and myrtle in his path. The church-spires were decorated with bright flags.

       The house-roofs were full of people who wanted to have a look at him. Bells rang to announce the patriots arrival. The frenzy and madness exceeded all limits. People were even ready to catch the sun for him.

         Death is not the end of everything. The patriot hopes that since he did not receive his reward in this world, he will be rewarded in the other world.

       He feels safe in the hands of God. Thus the poem also becomes an expression of Browning’s optimistic philosophy of life. “God is in His heaven and all is well with the world.”

v Porphyria's Lover by Robert Browning

The rain set early in to-night,

      The sullen wind was soon awake,

It tore the elm-tops down for spite,

       And did its worst to vex the lake:

       I listened with heart fit to break.

When glided in Porphyria; straight

       She shut the cold out and the storm,

And kneeled and made the cheerless grate

       Blaze up, and all the cottage warm;

       Which done, she rose, and from her form

Withdrew the dripping cloak and shawl,

       And laid her soiled gloves by, untied

Her hat and let the damp hair fall,

       And, last, she sat down by my side

       And called me. When no voice replied,

She put my arm about her waist,

       And made her smooth white shoulder bare,

And all her yellow hair displaced,

       And, stooping, made my cheek lie there,

       And spread, o'er all, her yellow hair,

Murmuring how she loved me — she

       Too weak, for all her heart's endeavour,

To set its struggling passion free

       From pride, and vainer ties dissever,

       And give herself to me for ever.

But passion sometimes would prevail,

       Nor could to-night's gay feast restrain

A sudden thought of one so pale

       For love of her, and all in vain:

       So, she was come through wind and rain.

Be sure I looked up at her eyes

       Happy and proud; at last I knew

Porphyria worshipped me; surprise

       Made my heart swell, and still it grew

       While I debated what to do.

That moment she was mine, mine, fair,

       Perfectly pure and good: I found

A thing to do, and all her hair

       In one long yellow string I wound

       Three times her little throat around,

And strangled her. No pain felt she;

       I am quite sure she felt no pain.

As a shut bud that holds a bee,

       I warily oped her lids: again

       Laughed the blue eyes without a stain.

And I untightened next the tress

       About her neck; her cheek once more

Blushed bright beneath my burning kiss:

       I propped her head up as before,

       Only, this time my shoulder bore

Her head, which droops upon it still:

       The smiling rosy little head,

So glad it has its utmost will,

       That all it scorned at once is fled,

       And I, its love, am gained instead!

Porphyria's love: she guessed not how

       Her darling one wish would be heard.

And thus we sit together now,

       And all night long we have not stirred,

       And yet God has not said a word!

v Meaning of Porphyria

               You may have noticed that dictionaries define porphyria as a group of diseases characterized by sensitivity to sunlight as well as other symptoms, such as skin blisters and anemia. This information might have led you to conclude Porphyria had this disease and that the narrator murdered her to end her suffering. But such a conclusion would be wrong. Here is why. Browning wrote the poem in 1836. Porphyria was not identified and named as a disease until 1874. 

v Analysis of  Porphyria's Lover

        "Porphyria's lover" is one of the earliest dramatic mono-logues by Robert Browning in which he explores the mind of an insane male lover.  poem about a couple's relationship where the man kills the women because at she told him she loved him.

       Therefore, the man thought by killing her will let her be his forever. As the reader, we are disturbed by this poem from the madness portrayed by the man. Porphyria is the women and Porphyria's lover is the man.

     Few words in the poem make us suggest the Porphyria belongs to an upper class society "from pride and vainer ties dis-sever", she is too weak to fight for her love or admit it to the world. She is only attracted to him physically but when it comes to feeling, she would not accept him as a husband.

         She tells him that she loves him. In the past, she has been reluctant to free her passion from her pride “and give herself to me forever," the speaker says. But this night, the speaker says, she realizes that he is "pale / For love for her" (lines 28-29) and decides to brave the storm to visit him and tell him that she loves him.

     Her expression of her feelings for him makes "my heart swell" (line 34), he says. His elation grows as he considers how to respond to her.

      The power struggle between men and women seems to play a role in this poem. In a sense, Browning seems to be declaring through a sub theme that religion supports male dominance and suppression of female passion.

        I my opinion, this poem is unexpected and ironic. When you begin to read it you will never expect that this man will kill his be-loved. It was love it self that drove him to murder. At the highest point when he thinks she loves him the most, he strangles her. Why? Because in his mind.

v My Last Duchess - By Robert Browning

That’s my last Duchess painted on the wall,

Looking as if she were alive. I call

That piece a wonder, now; Fra Pandolf’s hands

Worked busily a day, and there she stands.

Will’t please you sit and look at her? I said

“Fra Pandolf” by design, for never read

Strangers like you that pictured countenance,

The depth and passion of its earnest glance,

But to myself they turned (since none puts by

The curtain I have drawn for you, but I)

And seemed as they would ask me, if they durst,

How such a glance came there; so, not the first

Are you to turn and ask thus. Sir, ’twas not

Her husband’s presence only, called that spot

Of joy into the Duchess’ cheek; perhaps

Fra Pandolf chanced to say, “Her mantle laps

Over my lady’s wrist too much,” or “Paint

Must never hope to reproduce the faint

Half-flush that dies along her throat.” Such stuff

Was courtesy, she thought, and cause enough

For calling up that spot of joy. She had

A heart—how shall I say?— too soon made glad,

Too easily impressed; she liked whate’er

She looked on, and her looks went everywhere.

Sir, ’twas all one! My favour at her breast,

The dropping of the daylight in the West,

The bough of cherries some officious fool

Broke in the orchard for her, the white mule

She rode with round the terrace—all and each

Would draw from her alike the approving speech,

Or blush, at least. She thanked men—good! but thanked

Somehow—I know not how—as if she ranked

My gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name

With anybody’s gift. Who’d stoop to blame

This sort of trifling? Even had you skill

In speech—which I have not—to make your will

Quite clear to such an one, and say, “Just this

Or that in you disgusts me; here you miss,

Or there exceed the mark”—and if she let

Herself be lessoned so, nor plainly set

Her wits to yours, forsooth, and made excuse—

E’en then would be some stooping; and I choose

Never to stoop. Oh, sir, she smiled, no doubt,

Whene’er I passed her; but who passed without

Much the same smile? This grew; I gave commands;

Then all smiles stopped together. There she stands

As if alive. Will’t please you rise? We’ll meet

The company below, then. I repeat,

The Count your master’s known munificence

Is ample warrant that no just pretense

Of mine for dowry will be disallowed;

Though his fair daughter’s self, as I avowed

At starting, is my object. Nay, we’ll go

Together down, sir. Notice Neptune, though,

Taming a sea-horse, thought a rarity,

Which Claus of Innsbruck cast in bronze for me!

v MY LAST DUCHESS

     Robert Browning published "My Last Duchess" in 1842. Underneath the title is the name Ferrara, and the poem's sole speaker is the Duke of Ferrara, a character based in part on Alfonso II, Duke of Ferrara in sixteenth century Italy.

        Alfonso's wife died in 1561, and he used an agent to negotiate a second marriage to the niece of the Count of Tyrol.

      In this poem, the Duke of Ferrara speaks to an agent representing the count. The duke begins by referring to "My Last Duchess," his first wife, as he draws open a curtain to display a portrait of her which hangs on a wall.

    She looks "alive," and the duke attributes this to the skill of the Painter. After saying that he opens the curtain, the duke promptly begins a catalogue of complaints about the way his wife behaved.

       The duke’s pride and selfishness are also revealed. He is very proud of his family name, for, as he describes his marriage to his last duchess, he states that he gave her “My gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name” (line 33).

   Yet he never once mentions love or his motivation to emerge from his own ego. Instead, he emphasizes that it is his curtain, his portrait, his name, his “commands” (line 45), and his sculpture. Tellingly, within fifty-six lines he uses seventeen first-person pronouns.

      Themes of this poem reflect on wealth, status, and pride. The Duke, though a wealthy and proud character, is not seen in a good light. Despite thinking very highly of himself, the Duke comes across to the readers as arrogant and unlikable.

      The reader also sees that money cannot buy happiness; although the Duke is wealthy, he is insecure and paranoid about his late wife’s behavior.

      In this short poem, Browning weaves a compelling tale of mystery, murder and plot which in equal parts disgusts and delights the reader. One is shocked at the cruelty and madness of the duke, yet is amazed at the beauty and majesty of the language used, which is in no way below the level of Shakespeare.

TO EVALUATE MY ASSIGNMENT