Shri Aurobindo’s view on India Culture

Name: Joshi Toral

Paper: 4 Indian Writing in English

Topic: Shri Aurobindo’s view on India Culture

SEM: 3,

M.A. part 2.

Year: 2012

Submitted to,

Dr.Dilip Barad,

M.K Bhavnagar University,

Bhavnagar

·       Sri Aurobindo’s View of Indian Culture

·       Introduction:

     India is famous for the myth, heritage and culture. Hear also Aurobindo’s discuss about over religion, spirituality and culture.

      The old Hellenic or Greece Roman civilization perished, among other reasons, because it only imperfectly generalized culture in its own society and was surrounded by huge masses of humanity who were still possessed by the barbarian habit of mind. Civilization can never be safe so long, confining the cultured mentality to a small minority, it nourishes in its bosom a tremendous mass of ignorance, a multitude, a proletariat.

“Either knowledge must enlarge from above or be always in danger of submergence by the ignorant night from below”

Europe boasts of her science and its marvels. But to the braggart intellect of Europe the Indian is bound to reply,

“I am not interested in what you know; I am interested in what you are. With all your discoveries and inventions, what have you become? Your enlightenment is great—but what are these strange creatures that move about in the electric light you have installed and imagine that they are human?”

 Is it a great gain for the human intellect to have grown more acute and discerning, if the human soul dwindles? Man in Europe is descending steadily from the human level and approximating to the ant and the hornet. The process is not complete but it is progressing apace, and if nothing stops the debacle, we may hope to see its culmination in this twentieth century. After all our superstitions were better than this enlightenment, our social abuses less murderous to the hopes of the race than this social perfection.

Ninety years later, what was then behind the veil is now out in the open. We have almost reached the “culmination” of the West’s failure. It has failed in spite of all its achievements because it has ignored what we “are,” scoffed at what we are expected to “become.” And that is precisely, for Sri Aurobindo, the heart of Indian civilization, its constant concern through ages, in art or science or yoga, in every activity of life.

“The laboratory of the soul has been India,”

 Indian culture is simply the culture of man’s inner richness. It is a realization that the entire universe is divine, tree, bird, man and star—and our Mother Earth, whom the West has for two thousand years regarded as a chunk of inanimate matter created to serve our ever-expanding greed.

This great and ancient nation was once the fountain of human light, the apex of human civilization, the exemplar of courage and humanity, the perfection of good Government and settled society, the mother of all religions, the teacher of all wisdom and philosophy. It has suffered much at the hands of inferior civilizations and more savage peoples; it has gone down into the shadow of night and tasted often of the bitterness of death. Its pride has been trampled into the dust and its glory has departed.

Hunger and misery and despair have become the masters of this fair soil, these noble hills, these ancient rivers, these cities whose life story goes back into prehistoric night. All our calamities have been but a discipline of suffering, because for the great mission before us prosperity was not sufficient, adversity had also its training; to taste the glory of power and beneficence and joy was not sufficient, the knowledge of weakness and torture and humiliation was also needed.

I have always laid a dominant stress and I now lay an entire stress on the spiritual life, but my idea of spirituality has nothing to do with ascetic withdrawal or contempt or disgust of secular things. There is to me nothing secular, all human activity is for me a thing to be included in a complete spiritual life.

People care nothing about the spiritual basis of life which is India's real mission and the only possible source of her greatness, or give to it only a slight, secondary or incidental value, a something that has to be stuck on as a sentiment or a bit of colouring matter. Our whole principle is different.

We are sometimes asked what on earth we mean by spirituality in art and poetry or in political and social life—a confession of ignorance strange enough in any Indian mouth at this stage of our national history. We have here really an echo of the European idea that religion and spirituality on the one side and intellectual activity and practical life on the other are two entirely different things and have each to be pursued on its own entirely separate lines and in obedience to its own entirely separate principles. True spirituality rejects no new light, no added means or materials of our human self-development. It means simply to keep our center, our essential way of being, and our inborn nature and assimilate to it all we receive, and evolve out of it all we do and create.

To achieve India’s “renaissance,” Sri Aurobindo boldly and repeatedly called on his countrymen to develop the Kshatriya spirit, almost lost after centuries of subjection:

The Kshatriya of old must again take his rightful position in our social polity to discharge the first and foremost duty of defending its interests. The brain is impotent without the right arm of strength.

 It is the education which starting with the past and making full use of the present builds up a great nation. Whoever wishes to cut off the nation from its past is no friend of our national growth. Whoever fails to take advantage of the present is losing us the battle of life. We must therefore save for India that entire she has stored up of knowledge, character and noble thought in her immemorial past. We must acquire for her the best knowledge that Europe can give her and assimilate it to her own peculiar type of national temperament. We must introduce the best methods of teaching humanity has developed, whether modern or ancient. And all these we must harmonies into a system which will be impregnated with the spirit of self-reliance so as to build up men and not machines.

 “Mercenary and soulless education,”

 “I believe that the main cause of India's weakness,”

“Is not subjection, nor poverty, nor a lack of spirituality or Dharma, but a diminution of thought-power, the spread of ignorance in the motherland of Knowledge? Everywhere I see an inability or unwillingness to think.”

This is clearly not the line Indian education has taken. If we see today that nothing even of the Mahabharata or the Ramayana is taught to an Indian child, we can measure the abyss to be bridged. That the greatest epics of mankind should be thrown away on the absurd and erroneous pretext that they are “religious” is beyond the comprehension of an impartial observer. A German or French or English child will be taught something of Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, because they are regarded as the root of European culture, and somehow present in the European consciousness. He will not be asked to worship Zeus or Athena, but will be shown how the Ancients saw and experienced the world and the human being. But Indian epics, a hundred times richer and vaster in human experience, a thousand times more present in the Indian consciousness, will not be taught to an Indian child. Not to speak of other important texts such as the beautiful Tamil epics, Shilappadikaram and Manimekhalai. Even the Panchatantra and countless other highly educational collections of Indian stories—even folk stories—are ruled out.

It would be a tragic irony of fate if India were to throw away her spiritual heritage at the very her spiritual heritage at the very moment when in the rest of the world there is more and more a turning towards her for spiritual help and a saving light. This must not will surely not happen; but it can’t be said that the danger is not there are indeed other numerous and difficult problems that country or will very soon face it.

Various Themes in Robinson Crusoe

Name: Joshi Toral B.

Paper: 2 Neo-Classical Literature

Topic: Various Themes in Robinson Crusoe

SEM: 3, M.A. part 2.

Year: 2012

Submitted to,

Dr.Dilip Barad,

M.K Bhavnagar University,

Bhavnagar

·     Religion and self-discovery:-

The entire tale can be read as illustrating Crusoe’s negotiation with religion and faith. It is on the island that Crusoe rediscovers faith. He opens the Bible at random and this is what he first reads: ‘call on me in the Day of trouble, and I will deliver and thou salt glorify me’.    Crusoe believes: ‘the words were very apt to my case’. He believes how God has constantly ‘delivered him’ and then realizes: ‘But I had not glorified him’.

              The realism of the adventure merges with the spiritual and theological narrative of the Bible when Crusoe locates everything that happens to him within the framework of religion and belief. He finds exact matches between the incidents of his life and the stories in the scripture, thus rediscovering his faith.

But the novel also records Crusoe’s crisis of faith. There are moments when he loses his faith. For instance, when he sees the footprint for the first time, he is struck by fear. This is what he records as his feeling:

“Fear banished all my religious hope; all that former confidence in God, which was founded upon such wonderful experience as I had of his goodness, now vanished.”

Defoe suggests a crisis of faith here, when Crusoe feels the ‘constant snare of the fear of man’ as opposes to the confidence of ‘resting upon Providence’.

The Ambivalence of Mastery

                                          Crusoe’s success in mastering his situation, overcoming his obstacles, and controlling his environment shows the condition of mastery in a positive light, at least at the beginning of the novel. Crusoe lands in an inhospitable environment and makes it his home. His taming and domestication of wild goats and parrots with Crusoe as their master illustrates his new found control. Moreover, Crusoe’s mastery over nature makes him a master of his fate and of himself. Early in the novel, he frequently blames himself for disobeying his father’s advice or blames the destiny that drove him to sea. But in the later part of the novel, Crusoe stops viewing himself as a passive victim and strikes a new note of self-determination. In building a home for himself on the island, he finds that he is master of his life—he suffers a hard fate and still finds prosperity.

                       But this theme of mastery becomes more complex and less positive after Friday’s arrival, when the idea of mastery comes to apply more to unfair relationships between humans. In Chapter XXIII, Crusoe teaches Friday the word “[m]aster” even before teaching him “yes” and “no,” and indeed he lets him “know that was to be [Crusoe’s] name.” Crusoe never entertains the idea of considering Friday a friend or equal—for some reason, superiority comes instinctively to him. We further question Crusoe’s right to be called “[m]aster” when he later refers to himself as “king” over the natives and Europeans, who are his “subjects.” In short, while Crusoe seems praiseworthy in mastering his fate, the praiseworthiness of his mastery over his fellow humans is more doubtful. Defoe explores the link between the two in his depiction of the colonial mind.

The Necessity of Repentance

Crusoe’s experiences constitute not simply an adventure story in which thrilling things happen, but also a moral tale illustrating the right and wrong ways to live one’s life. This moral and religious dimension of the tale is indicated in the Preface, which states that Crusoe’s story is being published to instruct others in God’s wisdom, and one vital part of this wisdom is the importance of repenting one’s sins. While it is important to be grateful for God’s miracles, as Crusoe is when his grain sprouts, it is not enough simply to express gratitude or even to pray to God, as Crusoe does several times with few results. Crusoe needs repentance most, as he learns from the fiery angelic figure that comes to him during a feverish hallucination and says, “Seeing all these things have not brought thee to repentance, now thou salt die.” Crusoe believes that his major sin is his rebellious behavior toward his father, which he refers to as his “original sin,” akin to Adam and Eve’s first disobedience of God. This biblical reference also suggests that Crusoe’s exile from civilization represents Adam and Eve’s expulsion from Eden.

For Crusoe, repentance consists of acknowledging his wretchedness and his absolute dependence on the Lord. This admission marks a turning point in Crusoe’s spiritual consciousness, and is almost a born-again experience for him. After repentance, he complains much less about his sad fate and views the island more positively. Later, when Crusoe is rescued and his fortune restored, he compares himself to Job, who also regained divine favor. Ironically, this view of the necessity of repentance ends up justifying sin: Crusoe may never have learned to repent if he had never sinfully disobeyed his father in the first place. Thus, as powerful as the theme of repentance is in the novel, it is nevertheless complex and ambiguous.

The Importance of Self-Awareness

Crusoe’s arrival on the island does not make him revert to a brute existence controlled by animal instincts, and, unlike animals, he remains conscious of him at all times. Indeed, his island existence actually deepens his self-awareness as he withdraws from the external social world and turns inward. The idea that the individual must keep a careful reckoning of the state of his own soul is a key point in the Presbyterian doctrine that Defoe took seriously all his life. We see that in his normal day-to-day activities, Crusoe keeps accounts of himself enthusiastically and in various ways. For example, it is significant that Crusoe’s makeshift calendar does not simply mark the passing of days, but instead more egocentrically marks the days he has spent on the island: it is about him, a sort of self-conscious or autobiographical calendar with him at its center. Similarly, Crusoe obsessively keeps a journal to record his daily activities, even when they amount to nothing more than finding a few pieces of wood on the beach or waiting inside while it rains. Crusoe feels the importance of staying aware of his situation at all times. We can also sense Crusoe’s impulse toward self-awareness in the fact that he teaches his parrot to say the words, “Poor Robin Crusoe. . . . Where have you been?” This sort of self-examining thought is natural for anyone alone on a desert island, but it is given a strange intensity when we recall that Crusoe has spent months teaching the bird to say it back to him. Crusoe teaches nature itself to voice his own self-awareness

Translation in India

Name: Joshi Toral

Paper: 5 Translation Studies

Topic: Translation in India

M.A.:-II

SEM: 3

Year: 2012

Submitted to,

Dr. Dilip Barad,

M.K. Bhavnagar University,

Bhavnagar

·       Translation:

             Translation is the interpretation of the meaning of a text in one language and the production, in another language, of an equivalent text that communicates the some message.

TRANSLATION IN INDIA: S.K.Verma

India is a multi-lingual and multi-cultural country. Should like to have ere are twenty-two major Indian languages and ten thousand dialects spoken in India. In this network, English has an important role to play. In such a society, for people to move from one language to another, from one culture to another, it is always useful to acquire the skill of translating from one language to another.

            Every language and every piece of creative writing provides a window on the expanding universe around the people using that language. It is exciting and enriching to see the same universe viewed and represented in different ways in different languages. A multi-lingual person man therefore be said to have a multi-focal view of the universe. This leads me on to state that multi-lingual’s is a resource, a boon. In a multi-lingual setting, we would like to have firsthand knowledge of the culture underlying the languages in contact and one of the best ways of doing it is by looking at the translations of the literary texts because it may not be possible for an individual to learn a variety of languages. Translation, looked at from this point of view, not only make us familiar with culture and languages but also enable us to enrich and reinforce our languages as the result of its intense translation-based interaction with other languages.

                             One of the marked properties of the major Indian languages is that they have systems of “address” or a network “politeness strategies” which reflect Indian culture, behavior and pattern thinking and interpersonal relationship that are typically Indian 

 If a translator knows that there are different syntactic mechanisms for bringing as item into focus in English such as: “I like fish/” “It is fish that I like/” “They think that what I like is fish”- he can then consider the possible choices in the target language and select that particular syntactic mechanism which brings out the thematic pressure that he finds in the original text.

·       Role of Translation in India Literature:                 

                                             -K M GEORGE

Do we realize the great significance of translation in a world which has at least 3000 developed languages? I Doubt. Translation is an activity that goes on without any break in every part of the world from and into every important.

Progress in society is measures with reference to the speed of movement of goods, plants, animals and human beings-but above all ideas.  But languages are still barriers in communication and the solution is still translations. Thus, if something important happens in any corner of the globe, within a few seconds the whole worlds comes to know of it.

                                      Varieties of Translation:

 “Art of Translation”

1.    All purely informative statements like announcements at railway platforms.

2.    Ordinary readable prose that has no outstanding characteristics.

3.    Poetry and prose having an enjoyable content, in other words literature.

4.     Learned, scientific, technical and practical writings.

First category is possible, and adds that adequate translation of the second and fourth categories is possible in any cultivated language. However in the case of the third category, translation is an extremely difficult occupation. In place of literature, generally speaking, manner is more important than matter.

         

          In literature itself, a similar categorization is not only possible but natural.

1 The literature of power, where the emotional aspect is dominant and

 2 The literature of knowledge where the content is more important than the manner of exposition is well known. Poetry, drama and fiction belong to the former category and the dominance of the creative element in these makes then more difficult for translation. In genres like biography and autobiography, the creative element is there in some measures. But there are also various kinds of prose writings where the intellectual element dominates, and they can be grouped under discursive prose.

          “Poetry cannot be translated”

—Dr. Johnson

“All translation seems to be simply an attempt to solve an insolvable problem”

—Humboldt

       

“Translation can offer us but a vague equivalent”

—Virginia Woolf

“Poetry is that which is lost in translation”

- Robert Frost.

Indian Literature in English Translation

          There are advantages and disadvantages in translation an Indian literary work into English.

 Even though English and Hindi are link languages in India, an English translation of a literary work has a better all India reach, not to speak of its reach in other parts of the world. And English is a language which has assimilated a good deal of the cultural experiences of a large part of the world and developed its range and aesthetic refinement, such being the case. Translation of the same work into Bengali or Hindi is more difficult. This is despite the great capacity and development of English in the last 150 years, and it is particularly so when the translation is done by a writer who has learnt English only as a second language.

“All translation is a compromise between the effort to be literal and the effort to be idiomatic”

 -Benjamin Jowett’s

Six parts of Tragedy

Name: Joshi Toral B.

Paper: 3

 Literary Criticism & Theory

Topic: - Six parts of Tragedy

SEM: 3,

M.A. II

Year: 2012

Submitted to,

Dr. Dilip Barad,

M.K. Bhavnagar University,

Bhavnagar

Definition of Tragedy:-

“Tragedy that is an imitation of an action that is serious, complete and of a certain magnitude; in the language embellished with each kind of artistic ornaments , the several kinds being found in separate parts of play, in the form of action, not of narrative, through pity and fear effecting the proper purgation, catharsis of  these and similar emotions.”

We can break up it into seven parts.

1.     Tragedy involves mimesis.

2.     Tragedy is serious

3.     The action is complete and with certain magnitude

4.     Tragedy is made up of language with the “aesthetic ornaments” of rhythm and harmony.

5.     These “aesthetic ornaments” are not used throughout, but are introduced in separate parts of the work so that for instance some bits are spoken in verse and other bits are sung.

6.     Tragedy is performed rather than narrated.

7.     Tragedy arouses the emotion of pity and fear and accomplishes a catharsis of these emotions.

                    Aristotle asserts that any tragedy can be divided into six parts. Every tragedy is made up of these six parts with nothing else besides.

 1. Plot

 2. Character

 3. Thought

4 .Diction

5. Melody

6. Spectacle

                    So let us discuss about “Hamlet” as a tragic drama.

                    A Shakespearean tragedy has been defined as a story of exceptional calamity leading to the death of a man occupying a high position or status. A tragedy by Shakespeare is concerned chiefly with one man and is a tale of suffering and misfortunes leading to that man’s death and of the deaths of a few others also. The hero must be a man holding a lofty position and commanding respect and the suffering of misfortunes must be of an extraordinary kind so as to produce strong tragic feelings, especially the feelings of pity and terror and awe. Hamletis primarily and chiefly the tragedy of hamlet the prince of Denmark. Hamlet was a well known, honored and well beloved figure in the political life of Denmark of the time at which the incidents of the play are supposed to have taken place. The play depicts the mental suffering and torture which Hamlet endures as a result of what he rightly considers to be the shameless conduct of his mother of the death of his first husband, and in having married this time a man who is in every respect inferior to her first husband. Hamlet subsequently undergoes even greater mental suffering because he finds himself unable to avenge the murder of his father promptly on account of a temperamental drawback and ultimately he dies as a result of the would which is inflicted on him by Laertes, with a poisoned dagger but before dying he stabs the murderer of his father and thus at last takes his revenge. Besides hamlet and the king others who die in this play are Polonius, Ophelia the queen and Laertes.

The Hero , A person of high rank:-

A Shakespearean tragedy may be defined as a story of exceptional calamity leading to the death of a man occupying a high position. Hamlet is primarily and chiefly the tragedy of Hamlet, the prince of Denmark. He was a well-known, honored. He was a well beloved figure in the political life of Denmark. Hamlet’s distress over the conduct of his mother is clearly reflected in his very first soliloquy in which he says:

           

          “How weary, state, flat and unprofitable,

              Seem to me all the uses of this world!”

                In this soliloquy he contrasts his dead father with the present king so excellent a king” the conduct of his mother leads him to this generalization:” frailty, thy name is woman Hamlet’s mental suffering is intensified by the revelation which the ghost makes to him and by the task which the ghost now imposes on him. Unable to avenge the murder of his father promptly because of a temperamental inability, Hamlet should not be allowed to happen. This postponement of his revenge, this irresolution, constitutes a serious flaw in his character and is, as has already been said, chiefly responsible for his tragedy.

The element of fate:-

              It has been pointed out above that although a defect of character is chiefly responsible for the tragic end of the hero, that defect is not solely or wholly responsible for it. Fate or destiny also plays a part in the tragic dramas of Shakespeare. Hamlet certainly produces a feeling in us that there is some mysterious power working in this universe and that this power upsets human hopes, plans and calculations. The very appearance of the ghost in this play is a situation for which fate is responsible. The fact of the late king having been murdered by Claudius is revealed to Hamlet not by any human being but by a spirit from others world. The appearance of the ghost therefore arouses a sense of mystery and creates a feeling that fate is playing a deliberate part in human affairs. The ghost imposes a task on Hamlet. The fact that Hamlet is required to perform that task when he is temperamentally and constitutionally incapable of it is nothing but a manifestation of fate. Commenting on this task, Hamlet says:

                     The time is out of join;-o cursed spite,

                       That ever I was born to set it right!

            Finding hamlet irresolute, fate again intervenes so that Hamlet again sees the ghost, this time in his mother’s closet, and is told by it that it has come to “what they almost blunted in us by the incident of a pirate vessel attacking the ship by which Hamlet is proceeding to England under the command of a pure accident. The course of the story would have been different if fate had not manipulated this encounter between the two ships resulting in Hamlet’s return to Denmark. Finally, the sense of fate in this play receives further emphasis by the words of Hamlet in act V, when he says that there is divini8ty which shapes human ends, and that there is providence even in the fall of a sparrow.

The element of conflict:-

              Conflict is the essence of a Shakespearean tragedy. This conflict is of two types: (a) outward conflict among the various characters and (b) inner conflict in the mind of the hero. Both these types of conflict exist by side in a Shakespearean tragedy. In Hamlet, the out ward conflict takes place between and Claudius. Hamlet seeks to avenge his father’s murder by putting on end to the life of Claudius, while Claudius seeks to get rid of Hamlet in order to ensure his own security and stability. Towards the end of the play an out ward conflict also takes place between Hamlet and Laertes, because Leartes seeks to avenge his own father’s murder by killing Hamlet. The inner conflict takes place in the mind of Hamlet and is revealed to us in Hamlet’s successive soliloquies. The most celebrated of these soliloquies is the one that begins: “to be or not to be –that is the question” which contains perhaps the most agonishing debate in Hamlet’s mind. This inner conflict also appears very poignantly in the soliloquy which begins: “how all occasions do inform against me!” in this soliloquy, Hamlet asks himself whether his failure to avenge his father’s murder is due to an element of cowardice in his nature. He feels greatly dispersed by the thought that he feels lived up to his own notion of honor which demanded that he should put an end to the life of his father’s murderer.

The greatness of the hero and its two fold effect:-

       The tragic heroes of Shakespeare are built on a grand scale. A hero in a Shakespearean tragedy has either nobility of mind or strength of character or, genius, or immense force which in spite of his defect or flaw excites our admiration and sympathy for him. Sense of honor his heart is full of devotion to   his dead father. He has a noble mind. These qualities win him our admiration and sympathy in spite of his lack of a capacity for quick action and his tendency to procrastination. The greatness of a hero in Shakespearean tragedy has two results: (a) since the hero is represented as noble and morally great, the effect of the tragedy is never depressing. We feel that man is not mean or wretched though he may be a victim of suffering and misfortune. A Shakespearean tragedy does not; therefore leave us cynical or desperate. (b) Such greatness perishing and getting destroyed fills us with a sense of waste. Both these results are to be sense in the case of Hamlet. Here the noble character of Hamlet creates in us a feeling of appreciation for the dignity and greatness of human nature. At the same time, a feeling of waste is around in us when we witness that the nobility and greatness of Hamlet come to noting and when we realize what immense good he could have done to his country under different circumstances.

Development in the hero’s character:-

           In a tragedy the hero normally comes to the realization of a truth of which he had been hither to unaware. There is as Aristotle says, “But in Greek tragedy this may be little more than the clearing up of a mistaken identify. Not so with the tragedies of Shakespeare’s maturity. In Hamlet and King Lear, for instance, there is a transformation in the character of the hero. Toward the close of the play Lear is the opposite of what he had pride, and the pomp and circumstance of kingship. To which he had attached great importance, are to him no more than an interesting spectacle. Hamlet is in a state of depression. The world to him is “an unwedded garden” from which he would willingly depart. He has found corruption not only in the state but in existence itself. We soon learn that he had not always been so. Ophelia tells us that he had been the ideal Renaissance prince-soldier, scholar, courtier, etc. and though we catch glimpse of his former self in his conversation with Horatio, his state of depression continues. By the final scene, however his composure has returned. He no longer appears in slovenly dress. He apologizes to Laertes and he treats Claudius with courtesy up to the point at which Gertrude’s death disclose the king’s treachery and compels him to the act of vengeance.

The sense of a moral order:-   

            The fact that in Shakespearean tragedy the hero is to a great extent himself responsible for his misfortunes has an important result. This fact prevents us from getting the impression that there is causeless suffering in the world. On the contrary, we get the feeling that there is a certain moral order in the universe. The suffering of the hero and the magnitude of the disaster that he meets are no doubt out of all proportion to the hero’s fault of character or the error that he commits, but the fact remains that the catastrophe flaws directly from that fault or error. Shakespearean tragedy does not just show “poetic justice”, because poetic justice in drama means pain or merit of a man. In drama means pain or pleasure strictly in accordance with the demerit of merit of a man. In Shakespearean tragedy, the pain or punishment is out of all proportion to the fault or the error. Hamlet’s fault, as we have seen above, is irresolution and his procrastination in avenging his father’s murder. But the mental suffering that he undergoes and the end that he meets are not strictly justified on the basis of that deficiency in his character. Still we are led to believe that Hamlet’s tragic end is to a large extent due to that deficiency or fault. This creates in our minds a feeling that there is some semblance of a moral order in the universe. Other deaths in play are also largely due to error of crimes of the characters themselves. Polonius is killed because he is a meddling and scheming fool. Claudius dies not only because he is the murderer of the late king but also because he has planned the murder of Hamlet not once but twice. Laertes is a victim of the very plot to which under the influence of the king, he became a party.

Doctor Faustus As a Morality Play

Name: Joshi Toral B.

Paper: 1

Renaissance Literature

Topic: Doctor Faustus As a Morality Play

SEM: 3

M.A.- II

Year: 2012

Submitted to,

Dr.Dilip Barad,

M.K. Bhavnagar University,

Bhavnagar

Doctor Faustus as a Morality play

The morality was one of the early forms of drama. It developed out of the mystery and miracle plays and it flourished during the middle ages, attaining much popularity in the first half of the fifteenth century.

“The morality differed from the miracle play in that it was not concerned with presenting a Biblical story with named characters, but rather a play conveying a moral truth or lesson by means of personified abstractions. The morality at bottom dealt with some problem of Good and Evil”

            The basic benefits of the Christianity are inherent in every line of Doctor Faustus and the doctrine of damnation pervades it. The devil and hell are omnipresent in this play and are terrifying realities. Faustus make a bargain with the devil, and for the sake of earthly learning, earthly power and earthly satisfaction goes down to the to horrible and everlasting perdition. The “Hero” is depicted as a wretched creature who for lover values give up higher ones. Thus, the drama is morality play in which heaven suggested with hell for the soul of Renaissance “Everymen” who the battle on account of his psychological and moral weaknesses.  

          Marlowe establishes the moral value of this play by varies means: by the Chorus, by Faustus’s own recognition by the GOOD Angle, by the OLD Man, by the action itself and even by Mephistophilis. As an example of the pervasive Christian view point, we also witness the deterioration and the coarsening of Faustus’s character and his indulgence in cheap, sadistic fun.

          At the very beginning of Faustus‘s temptation, the good angle argues Faustus to lay aside the damned book of the magic and to read the scriptures. The good angle is the voice of the God and the voice of Faustus’s conscience. But Faustus listens to the Evil Angle, who is the emissary of Lucifer and who encourages Faustus to continue his study of magic.

          The spirits will bring him “gold”, “orient pearl”, “pleasant fruits”, “princely delicates”, and “silk”. Faustus has intellectual pride to an odious degree, but he is also desirous of moor vainglory. He recalls how he puzzled German priests by his clever expositions, and he hopes to acquire the magic skill of Agrippa. Faustus is wholly egocentric. He speaks disparagingly of his opponents, and relishes the inflates sense of his own abilities. Thus, after Mephistophilis has left the stage in order to re-appear in the shape of a friar, Faustus indulges in a delusion of self importance and says,

                                  “How pliant is this Mephistophilis,

                               Full of obedience and humility!

                               Such of the force of magic and my spells.”

                                                                                         (Act I, Scene III, Line 29-31)

                                    “What is a grate Mephistophilis so passionate?

                               For being deprives of the joys of heaven?

                               Learn thou of Faustus’s manly fortitude

                               And scorn those joys thou never shalt possess.

                                                                                         (Act I, Scene III, Line 83-86)

                                    “Had I as many souls as there be stars,

                               I’d give them all for Mephistophilis.

                                                                             (Act I, Scene III, Line 102-103)

            The next time we see Faustus, his emotional and intellectual instability is fully revealed.

He wavers between God and the devil. At first he is conscience-stricken: “Now Faustus, must thou needs be damned, and canst thou not is saved.” But in a moment he is ones more the user of egocentric hyperbole.

                                  The god thou servest is thine own appetite,

                             Wherein is fixed the love of Beelzebub

                             To him I will build an altar and a church

                             And offer lukewarm blood of new-born babes.

                                                                                         (Act II, Scene I, Line 11-14)

                                    Homo, fuge: whither should fly?

                             If unto God, he’ll throw me down to hall.

                             My senses are deceived; here’s nothing writ:-

                             I see it plain; hear in this place is write

                             Homo, fuge: yet shall not Faustus fly,

                                                                                         (Act II, Scene I, Line 77-80)

           

                        We can look upon the Good Angle, the Evil Angle, the Old man, and even Helen, Mephistophilis, and Lucifer as part of Faustus. This allegory employs realism as an instrument. Marlowe chooses certain characters that are capable of serving a double purpose: these characters are significant as symbols, by virtue of what they symbolize; but they are significant also as themselves, by virtue of what they are.

                   The Good Angle, for example, represents the principle of goodness, independent of Faustus in that this principle is not affected by whether is loyal to it or not. Faustus can neither increases nor diminish its perfections; nor can he create or destroy it. At the same time Good Angle is symbolizes a part of Faustus’s   nature.

                  

                   Faustus’s life, though single and indivisible, is both in his own and not his own. In much the way same way, Helen is the lust of the eyes and of the flesh, both as these are objects in an external world, other than Faustus, and as they are his own passions, leading him to seek happiness within those objects; inevitably they are part of his living.

         

                   The sole problem, given the Angles are an objected evil and an objective good, is not which of them ought to be followed, but which of them will be followed in fact and what the consequences will be.

                   

                   The consequences are for their fuller comprehension, spread over twenty-four years. Faustus is allowed to explore evil with all patience and all diligence. Evil is a new toy, and Faustus cannot resist any invitations to evil that he may receive. Ones Faustus has chosen evil; he has neither eyes nor ears except for the immediate advantage of having done so.

                   When he asked: “Tell me who made the world” Mephistophilis refuses to answer the whole economy of hell is disturb; Lucifer appears with his companion-prince, Belzebub, and demands obedience. As a substitute for the vision of the God, Lucifer shows him the seven Deadly Sins, and at the end of the parade Faustus says:” O, this feeds my soul”. Then he goes on to express a desire to see hell and return.

                   The old Man reminds him of this. He is seized with fury against an agent of good, and asks for him to be tormented. He begs Helen to make him immortal with a kiss, meaning thereby not that he himself (for to his misfortune, he is immortal already), but hat what remains of youth, the present moment, shall not pass away By the nature of things, this is impossible. The twenty-four years draw to a close and before the allegory ends the last gift of the Evil Angel (namely, Helen) has already crumbled in his hands.

As the attractiveness of evil gradually declines, that of goodness grows. Accordingly the more prominent role which in the earlier scenes fell to the Evil Angel is in the later assumed by the Good Angel and his associates: the Old Man and Faustus’s own conscience.                            

It is only Lucifer who drags a reluctant Faustus from thoughts of heaven. Faustus also drags himself. For Lucifer, like the Good Angle, is hear playing a double role: he is devil, but also he is part of Faustus’s nature. Faustus is thus agent as well as victim in his own torment. We should not therefore question Faustus’s moral freedom.

The allegory in this play is, because of its complications, more than an allegory. The temporal allegory is effective in similar way.  As he is alive, Faustus has hope and therefore pain of this intensity. But at the same time, he has no hope, for he is already dead.

It should be further noted that the allegories not only provide material and machinery for the body of the play, but shape it. The play begins with a monologue, for example and ends with one. He alone can endure the punishment, and is therefore left alone to meet it. But between these toes point’s stage is crowded with figures that, if they cannot commit an act, may influence the act or if not influence, may be influenced by it. In order more fully to exhibit its nature and its workings.