LIFE AND LITERATURE

  MILTON’S POETRY AND PROSE Early Years John Milton was born in London on December 9, 1608. His parents were John Milton, Sr. and Sarah Jeffery, who lived in a prosperous neighborhood of merchants. John Milton, Sr. was a successful scrivener or copyist who also dabbled in real estate and was noted as a composer of liturgical church music. The Miltons were prosperous enough that eventually they owned a second house in the country. Milton seems to have had a happy childhood. He spoke of his mother's "esteem, and the alms she bestowed." Of his father, Milton said that he "destined me from a child to the pursuits of Literature, . . . and had me daily instructed in the grammar school, and by other masters at home." Though the senior Milton came from a Catholic family, he was a Puritan himself. Milton's religion, therefore, was an outgrowth of family life and not something he chose at a later period in his maturity. Education Sometime, as early as age seve

  DR. FAUSTUS                                                                            -Chirstopher Marlowe Introduction: Christopher Marlowe, also known as Kit Marlowe, was an English playwright, poet and translator of the Elizabethan era. Marlowe is among the most famous of the Elizabethan playwrights. Christopher Marlowe was an Elizabethan poet and William Shakespeare's most important predecessor in English drama. He is noted especially for his establishment of dramatic blank verse. In a playwriting career that spanned little more than six years, Marlowe's achievements were diverse and splendid. Marlowe is really the father of English drama. Because he is the first to perceive the capacities for noble art inherent in the romantic drama. He adapted it to high purpose by his practice. He saw that the romantic drama, the drama of the people, had a great future before it. “Christopher Marlowe in Doctor Faustus, one of the earliest and the most famous non- Shakespearean Elizabe

  SAMUEL RICHARDSON                Samuel Richardson, (baptized Aug. 19, 1689, Mackworth, near  Derby , Derbyshire, Eng.—died July 4, 1761, Parson’s Green, near London), English novelist who expanded the dramatic possibilities of the novel by his invention and use of the letter form (“ epistolary novel ”). His major novels were Pamela (1740) and Clarissa (1747–48). Richardson was 50 years old when he wrote Pamela, but of his first 50 years little is known. His ancestors were of yeoman stock. His father, also Samuel, and his mother’s father, Stephen Hall, became  London  tradesmen, and his father, after the death of his first wife, married Stephen’s daughter, Elizabeth, in 1682. A temporary move of the Richardsons to Derbyshire accounts for the fact that the novelist was born in Mackworth. They returned to London when Richardson was 10. He had at best what he called “only Common School-Learning.” The perceived inadequacy of his education was later to preoccupy him and some of his crit

                                                  TEACHING ENGLISH GRAMMAR  INTRODUCTION:   Grammar is a descriptive science that describes structures of sentence function of words and their relation to one another at a particular period and of a particular group of people. Grammar is the sum total of rules and regulations of the language.  TWO FORMS OF GRAMMAR:  1. Prescriptive Grammar: Prescriptive grammar prescribes rules for the language to be used and it is taught in a formal way.so it is called formal grammar or traditional type of grammar. It is theoretical grammar dealing with the definitions and rules of the language. In this type of grammar, there are a set of rules. The learners are made to learn the rules first for the formation of tenses, words etc. Any departure from the rule is not allowed. This type of grammar aims at correct English rather than current English and the grammarians do not consider the fact that the language is ever-changing and so ever-growing and they