LIFE AND LITERATURE

  Romeo and Juliet                                                                                 - William Shakespeare Introduction William Shakespeare was a renowned English poet, playwright, and actor born in 23 April, 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon . Shakespeare was a prolific writer during the Elizabethan and Jacobean ages of British theatre. During his time in London, Shakespeare’s first printed works were published. They were two long poems, 'Venus and Adonis' (1593) and 'The Rape of Lucrece' (1594). He also became a founding member of The Lord Chamberlain’s Men, a company of actors. He remained with the company for the rest of his career, during which time it evolved into The King’s Men under the patronage of King James I (from 1603). During his time in the company Shakespeare wrote many of his most famous tragedies, such as   King Lear   and   Macbeth , as well as great romances, like   The Winter’s Tale   and   The Tempest.  Shakespeare wrote 36 plays, 2 n

  COLONIAL WRITERS        The title of the 'Post/Colonial' section of the Great Writers Inspire website is intended to gesture towards a blurring between colonial and postcolonial, eradicating any reductive conception of the two as simple dichotomies or binary oppositions. Included within this subsection, 'Colonial Writers', are authors that embody this complexity. Though there are many writers whose work can be described as distinctly colonial, perpetuating racial stereotypes, social hierarchies, and the cultural and technological superiority that justified the colonizing force - we might think of the imperial romances of Henry Rider Haggard (1856-1925), for example - the writers included in this subsection present richer understandings of exactly what it meant to be a 'colonial', to be writing from a 'colony'. If it is the short stories of Rudyard Kipling, with their subtle critiques of Anglo-Indian society, the bleak ambivalence of Joseph Conrad's

  FROST AT MIDNIGHT                                                                                     -Samuel Taylor Coleridge INTRODUCTION ‘Frost at Midnight’ by Samuel Taylor Coleridge is a conversational poem, a form quite popular in the romantic age. In the poem, the poet, in a moment of solitude, gives voice to his most intimate feelings and expresses his beliefs about nature and the significant role it plays in the life of man. In fact, the poem is a very personal restatement of the abiding themes of English Romanticism. ROMANTICISM Coleridge dwells upon the effect of the beauty of nature on poetic imagination, the kinship of nature and man who endlessly seeks his own self and identity in the objects of the natural world, the role of Mother Nature in nourishing a child, the striking contrast between the claustrophobic city and the wide and open countryside where the mind can roam free. All these are typically romantic concerns that come up in the poet’s mind and finds

                                                               LADY LAZARUS                                                             - SYLVIA PLATH Summary ‘ Lady Lazarus’ by Sylvia Plath is an exceptional piece describing a speaker who bears the burden of failed suicidal trials and discovers her new self at the last attempt. The poem begins directly with the main theme of this piece that is suicidal thoughts and death. According to the speaker, she has tried to kill herself once every ten years. The first time, when she was only ten, was not an attempt at all. It was just an accident. But, the second time she was determined to accomplish her goal of self-destruction. However, that attempt also bore no fruit. It gave rise to bitter emotions in her heart concerning those who were around. She reveals her biggest enemy between her and the goal, is the doctor who saved her. So, before the last attempt, she bluntly says no matter what happens in this attempt. If she gets saved,