Influence of the Norman Conquest on English language

Influence of the Norman Conquest on English language The English language we now know would not have been the same if it was not for the events that happened in 1066. In 1066, the Duke of Normandy, William sailed across the British Channel. He challenged King Harold of England in the struggle for the English throne. After winning the battle of Hastings William was crowned king of England and the Norman Kingdom was established. Norman-French became the language of the English court. At the beginning French was spoken only by the Normans but soon through intermarriage, English men learnt French. Some 10,000 French words were taken into English language during the Middle English period and about 75% of them are still in use. One of the most obvious changes that occurred after the Norman...

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Influence of Latin on Old English

Influence of Latin on Old English Latin , the lingua franca of Europe before the rise of English, influenced the development of Old English more than any other non-West Germanic language with which Old English came into contact. Most scholars divide the influence of Latin chronologically into three time periods. The first time period concerns such influence as occurred on the continent prior to the arrival of Anglo-Saxons in England and which arose from contacts between West-Germanic speaking peoples and Latin speakers. The second period of influence spans from the arrival of the Anglo-Saxons in England up to their Christianization ca. 600/650. The last period of influence spans from the time of Christianization up to the arrival of the Normans in 1066. The most readily apparent influence...

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Clytemnestra in Agamemnon:

Clytemnestra in Agamemnon: How far does Clytemnestra draw the readers’ sympathy in Aeschylus’ Agamemnon? Agamemnon, the first play of the ‘Oresteian Trilogy’ is considered the best of all Greek dramas. Aeschylus was the first successful tragedian and his ‘Oresteia’ was the only surviving trilogy of the ancient world of which the first play ‘Agamemnon’ is considered the greatest of all Greek dramas. The primary theme of the ‘Oresteia’ is the continual destruction, inherited from generation to generation but as an individual play the subject of ‘Agamemnon’ is the vengeance which Clytemnestra takes upon Agamemnon because, he sacrificed their daughter, Iphigenia, at Aulis ten years previously. Clytemnestra is often given the bloody attributes for this murder. But if we take the matter neutrally,...

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Agamemnon

Significance of the Red Carpet episode in Aschylus' Agamemnon Agamemnon is the first play of the trilogy the Oresteia, which is considered Aeschylus' greatest work, and perhaps the greatest Greek tragedy. Of the three plays in the trilogy, Agamemnon contains the strongest command of both language and characterization.  ‘The Red Carpet episode’ is the most significant scene in the play .It plays a leading role in the play, Agamemnon” and constitutes the climax of the play.  A red carpet refers to a red colored rug, usually fairly long, that would be rolled out so that various dignitaries would receive what was considered a suitable welcome. Initially, as in plays like Aeschylus’ 5th century BCE play Agamemnon the carpet may have been purple rather than red, although there are...

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Use of Irony in Synge’s The Playboy of the Western World

Use of Irony in Synge’s The Playboy of the Western World At the highest intellectual level, we have the use of irony in writing a literary work .This may be inherent in the language, where we find the incongruous linking of holy terms with unholy actions: “Marcus Quin, God rest him, got six months for maiming ewes and he a great warrant to tell stories of holy terms with unholy actions: “ Marcus Quin, God rest him, got six months for maiming ewes and he a great warrant to tell stories of holy Ireland” (p.17); or, again: “Pegeen; Is it killed your father?Playboy: With the help of God I did surely ad that the Holy Immaulate Mother may intercede for his soul.” More generally, the Catholic Church comes in for some hard knocks, whether through the absurd strictness and narrow orthodoxy of...

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A Marxist Reading of Maupassant’s Story 'The Diamond Necklace'

A Marxist Reading of Maupassant’s Story 'The Diamond Necklace' Literary theories are lenses to look at a literary text through. Here I will try to read Guy De Maupassant’s “The Diamond Necklace” from Marxist perspective. A Marxist reading of the story provides us to look into this short story from a Marxist point of view that means how Karl Marx and Frederic Engels’s Marxist theory implies on this text. Economic condition, according to Marxist theory, determines one’s class and also affects the life of that class in a society. The ultimate result of this class distinction is class conflict where one class is treated as inferior or ‘other’ and dominated by the views or perspectives of ‘Other’ that means the superior class. Exactly same thing happens in the short story “The Diamond Necklace”....

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Role of Max in Richard Wright's Native Son

Role of Max in Richard Wright's Native Son In Richard Wright’s Native Son, Boris Max, the communist attorney, is the mouthpiece of the writer. Wright the first protest novelist, in America, raised his voice against the racial injustice that turned the black people into half human during the 1930s. He expresses all the themes of the novel through Max. Through Max, he describes the overall system of race and class oppression in the United States. Max, on behalf of the novelist, describes all the institutions of power in the country, the press, the courts, the legal system, the psychiatric profession, the housing market, the entertainment, industry and other institutions as oppressive to the Blacks. But through Max, Wright expresses other two important issues. It’s through Max, we can understand...

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A Feminist Critique of Kafka's 'Metamorphosis'

A Feminist Critique of Kafka's 'Metamorphosis' Feminism is a movement for the equal social and political rights of women who are marginalized or ‘other’ in a patriarchal society. However, the emergence of feminist literary criticism is one of the major developments in literary studies in the past forty years or so. Feminist literary criticism seeks to study and advocate the rights of women in the following ways. Women are oppressed by patriarchy economically, politically, socially, and psychologically. Patriarchal ideology is the primary means by which they are kept so. I will first discuss the main ideas of feminism and then three areas of feminist viewpoints according to the book Beginning Theory: An Introduction to Literary and Cultural Theory by Peter Barry.  After this summary,...

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How does Prufrock in T.S Eliot's The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock personify a tormented observer, who is hesitant and unable to commit himself?

How does Prufrock in T.S Eliot's The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock personify a tormented observer, who is hesitant and unable to commit himself? The poem 'The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock' is an examination of the tortured psyche of a prototypical modern man, who is over-educated, eloquent, neurotic, and emotionally stilted. Prufrock, the poem's speaker, is the member of the cultured society of a modern city which may be London, Boston or any other. The hero is different from the traditional hero of the love poems. He is entirely unheroic,a bundle of hesitations and indecisions. At beginning of the poem he seems to be addressing a potential lover, with whom he would like to "force the moment to its crisis" by somehow consummating their relationship. But Prufrock knows too much of...

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Use of Mathematics in Descartes's Philosophy

Use of Mathematics in Descartes's Philosophy Influence of Mathematics on Descartes Descartes and Mathematics René Descartes, the father and originator of modern philosophy, puts great emphasis on mathematics. Of the many men who have been famous as mathematicians and as philosophers, Descartes was perhaps the most outstanding. Living in the first half of the 17th century, he was the father of analytic geometry and of modern philosophy.  Descartes, like all other previous rationalists, holds the idea that reason is universal in human beings; that reason is the most important element in human nature; that reason is the only way to determine what is morally right and good and what constitutes a good society.  But unlike all other rationalists, Descartes gives more emphasis on...

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The Metaphorical Implications of ’digging’ in Seamus Heaney’s Poem ’Digging’

The Metaphorical Implications of ’digging’ in Seamus Heaney’s Poem ’Digging’ Digging ,written by  the famous Irish poet Seamus Heaney, is a metaphorical poem. The very title of the poem ’Digging’ bears the metaphorical implications. In this poem Heany is exploring his ancestry and the roots from where he was brought up. With this poem he establishes many of the themes - a dichotomy of emotions, a questioning of his past and a sense of alienation from his familly. As an autobiographical poem, here we find that the speaker is no one but Heany himself. Throughout the poem, the speaker feels a sense of longing for those old days and expresses his constant regret that he is no longer able to follow his ancestors’ occupation as potato farmers. The poet reflects back on the glorious days...

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A Critical Appreciation of Quartet by Rabindranath Tagore

A Critical Appreciation of Quartet by Rabindranath Tagore Quartet by Rabindranath Tagore. Jagmohan vs Harimohan. Passion vs reason. Eroticism vs asceticism. Sachish vs Sribilash. Ninibala and Damini. Quartet, written by Rabindranath Tagore in 1915 and translated by Kaiser Haq in 1993, is  one of the masterpieces not only in South-Asian literature, but also in the world literature. It is a story of archetypal conflicts---between reason and emotion, orthodoxy and liberalism, mysticism and passion. This is a brief work -more a novella than a full -length novel-but it contains in an appealing narrative structure most of the representative themes of  Tgaore’s longer works. In this novel he drew both on the traditional culture of South Asia and that of Europe, a typical tendency...

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