Modern English Poetry

Snake as a poem by D.H.Lawrence is so much Blakian, Wordsworthian as well as Coleridgean in the sense it reminds and refreshes us the things with which the things are composed off, elemental and conflicting and contradictory from the perspective of nature and natural phenomena and bodily composition and existence. What it is life, how the creation, the things of the world, life and nature and this existence of ours!Life-force is more important, life-consciousness is more. The horrible and the terrible also form the composition of it.

This is a new (2021) study of Dylan Thomas's engagingly cryptic poem "The Conversation of Prayer". The essay particularly explores the poet's singular use of short, everyday words to present his images and the enigmatic nature of the 'conversation' and its absorbing outcome. The distinctive rhyme scheme is examined in some depth together with various aspects of the poetics, specifically:- the use of phonemic patterns, syntax and enjambment, repetition, alliteration and the poems tone and mood. The essay is directed towards both students of poetry and fellow Dylan Thomas enthusiasts.

The tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, is presumably the most written about literary work in English language. High frequency of research work on Hamlet is well substantiated by different literary theories in an effort to interpret the distress and dilemma of the protagonist Hamlet and his course of action throughout his journey from a mere ‘avenger’  to ‘revolutionary'. This study seeks to interpret Hamlet, the play, in terms of religious principles and show that Hamlet’s (the protagonist) metamorphosis is motivated, guided and precipitated by his religious awareness, knowledge and guidance stemming from the insightful discovery of the life hereafter and the eternal punishment in it.

From the beginning (1919) to the end (1972) of his publishing career, Mikhail Bakhtin very often wrote about the force of creativity. This is a secondary theme, but also a freedom-valuing variant of his grand themes of dialogism, chronotope, carnival, great time. Bakhtin's definition, which works to disentangle the existing given from the newly-created, helps us in 2015 to rescue creativity from debased usages in the public sphere. One purpose of this essay is to rectify a valuable term: to show what Bakhtin means by "the co-creativity of those who understand." Another purpose is to specify, with Bakhtin's help, the type of creativity Alexandr Pushkin achieves in his historical moment, in lyric, narrative, and meditative poems. To the extent we are successful, we continue an ongoing project in Bakhtin studies: to show how his thinking aids in the interpretation of poetry as verbal art. * What is praxis? Or, What links active thought to action in the world? My answer is: Creativity. As Mikhail Bakhtin defines creativity over fifty years of his writing career, this is one variant meaning of praxis, a term he never used. For Bakhtin, creativity is a politics of art as well as an art of politics. For him, the action of art, while shrewd about historical conjunctures, is an agency both formative and generous. In his response to verbal art, he deliberately condemns and avoids the Formalist need to bracket-off history, to detach the word from dialogue, to draw back from action. For him art-speech simply does not allow the loose and hopeful thinking that the term creativity usually drags along with it.