Notes S4 Prose
Dream Children - A Reverie: Charles Lamb
Dream Children : A Reverie , popularly known for convenience as Dream Children is an essay by Charles Lamb. Its
autobiographical elements enhance the charm of the essay, and the imaginative fervour that aids the essayist enriches
the appeal. Lamb is celebrated for his simple, yet not simplistic, personal reflections on daily life, which is always
supplemented with a distinctive sense of both humor and tragedy.
Dream Children , as the essayist himself says, is a reverie. It comes from the pen of a man whose desire for a family
failed owing to strange circumstances. Charles Lamb was in charge of his insane sister, Mary, who had killed their mother
with a knife and was about to kill their father, his love affair with Ann Simmons whom he had met during one of his visits
to Hertfordshire where his grandmother Mrs Field kept the house of the Plumers ended up in the girl marrying a
pawnbroker named Bertram.
Dream Children is a wish-fulfilment in an unreal world. It is a dream that never came true. But it narrates the haunting
dream of the essayist to have two children, a boy and a girl, who would cuddle up to him to listen to his tales about their
great grandmother and their uncle. The character of Mrs Field, the grandmother in the story, has a real basis. The name
is real and real also is the fact that she kept a house in a distant place. While the name of the place is given as Norfolk,
actually it was Hertfordshire. Lamb enriches the tale about his grandmother with an elaborate and fanciful description of
the house she kept, and as the tale was fanciful, it inflamed the fancy of the listeners, John and Alice. Lamb selects the
names for his dream children intelligently. Alice reminds one of Alice in Wonderland, a dream world, and John bears
relation with his brother John. Lamb liberally intermixes facts with fancy. Thus when he speaks of John as a child, he
makes the character so fanciful with all his lustiness that the tale warms up the children, but soon he gets him dead to
make the children fall ‘a-crying’. When he tells the children about Mrs Field, their great grandmother saying how tall,
upright and graceful she was, how in her youth she was esteemed the best dancer, the children’s fun soars up, only to
be subdued a moment later when he tells them how she fell a victim to the cruel disease, cancer. While the nearly
homophonic words – dancer and cancer – arouse our laughter, the hearts of the children ache, and the hearts of the
readers too.
As Lamb speaks how she saw the apparitions of two infants gliding up and down the great staircase near where she
slept, John felt frightened but posed to be courageous. The narrative effect gains momentum as Lamb now and then
describes the reactions of the children. Lamb slips into a dreamy world when he tells the children how he enjoyed
strolling about in the garden with all its trees, vines, orangery and the fish pond. Lamb’s dream transports himself into an
idyllic world, the Romantics loved to traverse. The house of the Plumers in Hertfordshire which Mrs Field kept and which
Lamb visited had all that Lamb speaks of, but what was not there is the charm that the essayist felt within his heart. The
marble statues were there, but it is Lamb who makes them turn alive or himself turn statuesque. The fishpond in which
‘the dace darted to and fro at the bottom of the garden, with here and there a great sulky pike hanging midway down the
water in a silent state’ might have had earthly existence, but the wonder that he felt and described to John and Alice was
only an aerial signal that is only Lamb’s. Fact and fancy, pathos and humour are imperceptibly blended so neatly that the
reader would like to avoid words while describing his impression and prefer silence.
Lamb closes the essay marvellously, describing how he wakes up from the reverie, how the children grew fainter to his
view, receding and receding, and finally shocking him to the truth that they are not the children of Ann Simmons and him,
but of Ann and Bartrum. We can feel the sadness that fills Lamb’s heart when the children are made to utter that they call
Bartrum their father, and they must wait upon the tedious shores of Lethe before they can have an existence and a name.
Lamb gives a twist to the spelling of the name Bartram for obvious reasons; but in spite of all fairness, he cannot conceal
the pining of his heart. Hence, Dream Children is rightly called a Prose poem which appeals to primary feelings of
mankind.
Sigmund Freud considered dreams an important tool in his therapy. Freudian psychoanalysis emphasizes dream
interpretation as a method to uncover the repressed information in the unconscious mind. Freud said that dreams were
wish fulfilling, meaning that in our dreams we act out our unconscious desires. Likewise, Lamb’s dream of two children,
his brother, and the lame-footed boy reflect Lamb’s wishes to have a family, and a supportive, responsible brother.
Stylistic Analysis of the Essay:
Stream of consciousness is the style of writing in which the writer tells or narrates his ideas in the flow as they appear in
his mind. This is for writer’s catharsis, in which the writer repeats certain ideas a number of times within the same piece of
writing. In the essay Dream Children, we can find such few examples. The idea of great-grandmother Field being very
religious has been repeated thrice. This also shows Lamb’s appreciation of morality and religiosity. The idea that
great-grandmother Field always loved all her grand-children has been repeated twice in almost the same manner.
Lamb’s manner of opening his essay is quite conversational and informal. Instead of being aphoristic or didactic, he
appears to begin in such a way as if he intends to share his experience with his audience and make them his secret
sharer. In his brief essay, Lamb employs detailed description of some events and places while he narrates story to his
children. A detailed account of John L- has been given, who represents Lamb’s brother. Moreover, a detailed description
of the great-grandmother Field’s house has been given.
Lamb’s desires marrying Ann, having Children, and having a responsible brother is reflected in his dream. Lamb wanted
to marry Ann; the lady to whom he proposed. However, she rejected Lamb’s proposal and married Bartrum instead. In his
dream, Lamb sees a little girl Alice who looks likes Ann. This reflects Lamb’s desire of marrying Ann. Lamb did not marry
in his life, as he had a mentally sick sister to take care of, as well as that the lady he wanted to marry rejected his
proposal. However, Lamb longed to have a wife and wanted to have children. This desire of Lamb is evident from the very
title of his essay “Dream Children”. Lamb’s elder brother did not support them and never took the responsibility of his sick
sister. In the form of John L – taking care of the lame-footed boy in Lamb’s dream, we observe Lamb’s desire of having
his brother as a responsible and caring person towards Lamb and their sister. The theme of memories and past days is
quite prominent in this essay. Lamb appears to miss a number of people including his grandmother, his brother, his love
Ann and the past days of his childhood he used to spend with his grandmother.
The theme of loneliness appears at the end of essay in the following lines:
“We are not of Alice, nor of thee, nor are we children at all. The children of Alice called Bartrum father. We are nothing;
less than nothing, and dreams. We are only what might have been, and must wait upon the tedious shores of Lethe
millions of ages before we have existence and a name” “…and immediately awaking, I found myself quietly seated in my
bachelor arm-chair, where I had fallen asleep” The bachelor arm-chair symbolizes Lamb’s loneliness and absence of a
wife and family. After reading the above lines, the reader turns from happy children story to gloom as it is discovered that
all that happened earlier was just a dream, and in reality Lamb is alone and does not have any wife or children.
The theme of Lamb's essay is regret and loss: regret for unfulfilled joy, unfulfilled love, lost hope, lost opportunity and lost
joys of life. The first of these is the loss of past happiness as represented by the house--with its carved mantle that a
"foolish rich person pulled ... down"--and by great-grandmother Field and by the speaker's brother John. Both
great-grandmother Field and John died painful deaths while Charles Lamb watched on being then left alone without their
presence, love and care: what he missed most was their presence: "I missed him all day long, and knew not till then how
much I had loved him." The second topic describing regret and loss is his beloved Alice. Lamb courted her "for seven long
years" and, in the end, his suit for her love was a failure. This explains why the dream child is named Alice and this
explains why he becomes confused about which Alice, younger or elder, he is really looking at. This leads to the third
thematic topic: the children who never were. In a surprise ending, in a dramatic (and at first bewildering) twist, we learn
that the children he has been telling stories to--stories of loves and life-joys he regrets losing--are air, are a figment of a
dream in a bachelor's sleep. These are the children that would have been, that could have been, that might have been if
Alice had granted Lamb her love and if they had wed. As it is, they are but phantoms of a dream. All he really has is "the
faithful Bridget [representative of Lamb's sister Mary] unchanged by my side."
This essay exhibits the subjects of pain and guilt of getting deprived of the people whom we loved from the core of our
heart. In this essay, the author is brought in a dream world to reveal the sweet recollections of the past days. The essay,
being enhanced with despair, clarifies the worth and necessity of childhood and the loved ones for an individual, without
whom the life appears to be dark and suffocating for the individual. The reaction and response the children in the essay
reflect the effect of the story on their mind and turns the essay dramatic. Moreover, their actions were proof that the story
that has been narrated to them, have a great influence on them and were moved by their father’s description. There is a
shift in the tone of the essay at various points. The shifts in the tone, from humorous to tragic, occurred when the author
describes the scene of his grandmother and beloved brother death. Lamb appears to be nostalgic throughout the essay
and longed for his loved ones. He is depressed at the death of his beloved Alice and feels guilty for not marrying her.
Towards the end of the essay, a twist in the essay comes when all the events in the story turn out to be a dream. This
adds suspense to the essay along with an open end.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/293543795_Dream_Children_as_an_Essay/link/56b978e608ae39ea9905ce05/d
ownload
http://thecriticalliterature.blogspot.com/2015/05/analysis-of-lambs-essay-dream-children.html
https://www.enotes.com/homework-help/what-theme-this-story-dream-children-by-charls-353659
https://www.litpriest.com/browse/essay/dream-children-charles-lamb-summary/
On Familiar Style: William Hazlitt
William Hazlitt is one of the most prolific English prose writers of the romantic period of English Literature. He is well
remembered for his humanistic essays and literary criticism. He is a grammarian and philosopher. His essay “On Familiar
Style” is one of his master pieces that appeared in “Table Talk”, a collection of essays of Hazlitt. A master of invective,
sarcasm, and irony, essayist William Hazlitt was one of the great prose stylists of the 19th century. In "On Familiar Style"
(originally published in the London Magazine and reprinted in Table Talk, 1822), Hazlitt explains his preference for "plain
words and popular modes of construction."
Hazlitt makes out his point that how an author should convey his ideas in a manner that is comprehensible to the reader
in clear terms. According to him, a familiar style uses the best words in common use and the true idiom of the language
and rejects both meaningless and pompous words. The level of diction used in the essay is quite high which acts as an
ironic device. In the essay he looks down upon those who try too hard to use fancy words, "how simple its... to be
pompous without meaning!"
According to Hazlitt, the contents are to be explained in simple, clear and dignified words. It should neither be high
sounding nor flamboyant. Dr Johnson, an English writer, is very fond of using indiscriminate long words from Latin with
English terminations. He uses tall and opaque words taken from “the first row of rubric”. “Rubric” means the portions of a
prayer book, wherein the first letter or first word of each chapter is printed in red ink. Dr.Johnson choses the first big word
that comes to his mind. Such words are obscure and the readers cannot comprehend the meaning easily. Hence Dr.
Johnson`s style of writing displeases Hazlitt. Hazlitt first starts the passage by using an antithesis, "Any one may mouth
out a passage with a theatrical candence, or get upon stilts to tell his thoughts; but to write or speak with a propriety and
simplicity is a more difficult task."
However, Hazlitt makes an exception to Charles Lamb, who revels in rare and archaic words. Lamb however manages,
somehow, to use archaic phrases and yet remain interesting. He takes old writers like Browne and Fuller, as his role
model, borrows their phrases and following their way of writing. But his ideas are not out of date. They are, indeed,
startlingly original. It looks, as if Lamb hides the pungency of his ideas behind the mask of a mannered style. The models
of Lamb seem to help in making the dull reader grasp Lamb`s contents of his writing.
The writer of a plain style must also give up the slang and cant. Words must not be given new meanings. Expressions
known only to small groups are not suitable for a familiar style. It is also not advisable to coin new words. According to
Hazlitt, coining new words is a serious crime, as counterfeiting coins/currency; he adds that it is nothing but
counterfeiting King`s English. He draws the attention to an important similarity between coins/currency and words. The
King`s stamp and acceptance by the people are required for the coins/currency. Similar acceptance and “recognized
standards” are required for words too. Hence the expression “King`s English” corresponding to “King`s coinage”,
https://brainly.in/question/5762537#readmore
Nobel Banquet Speech: Albert Camus
● Albert Camus (1913 - 60) is the author of many popular and influential works.
● Albert Camus' Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech (1957) at the Nobel Banquet at the City Hall in Stockholm,
December 10, 1957
● French Existentialist Albert Camus delivered this address on the relationship between literature and truth when he
received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1957. The address examines how the writer must be a servant to truth.
● Albert Camus, Born in a small town in eastern Algeria, from a quasi-proletarian origin, Camus found it necessary
to get ahead in life on his own; a poverty-stricken student, he worked at all sorts of jobs to meet his needs.
● Even in his first writings Camus reveals a spiritual attitude that was born of the sharp contradictions within him
between the awareness of earthly life and the gripping consciousness of the reality of death.
● Camus represents also the philosophical movement called Existentialism, which characterizes man’s situation in
the universe by denying it all personal significance, seeing in it only absurdity. The term “absurd” occurs often in
Camus’s writings, so that one may call it a leitmotif in his work, developed in all its logical moral consequences on
the levels of freedom, responsibility, and the anguish that derives from it. The Greek myth of Sisyphus, who
eternally rolls his rock to the mountain top from which it perpetually rolls down again, becomes, in one of Camus’s
essays, a laconic symbol of human life. But Sisyphus, as Camus interprets him, is happy in the depth of his soul,
for the attempt alone satisfies him. For Camus, the essential thing is no longer to know whether life is worth living
but how one must live it, with the share of sufferings it entails.
● Active and highly creative, Camus is in the centre of interest in the literary world, even outside of France. Inspired
by an authentic moral engagement, he devotes himself with all his being to the great fundamental questions of
life, and certainly this aspiration corresponds to the idealistic end for which the Nobel Prize was established.
Behind his incessant affirmation of the absurdity of the human condition is no sterile negativism. This view of
things is supplemented in him by a powerful imperative, nevertheless, an appeal to the will which incites to revolt
against absurdity and which, for that reason, creates a value.
Walking Tours: R L Stevenson
● In this affectionate response to William Hazlitt's essay "On Going a Journey," Scottish author Robert Louis
Stevenson describes the pleasures of an idle walk in the country and the even finer pleasures that come
afterward--sitting by a fire enjoying "trips into the Land of Thought."
● Stevenson is most well known for his novel's including Kidnapped, Treasure Island and The Strange Case of
Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Stevenson was a famous author during his life and has remained an important part of
the literary canon.
● This essay highlights his lesser-known skills as a travel writer. Stevenson’s essays and fiction share each other’s
conspicuous characteristics. The essays are filled with narrative and with fictive images of military action and
adventure; the stories are marked by passages of sententious meditation.
● Stevenson’s main task in these early essays was to invent his own character, which he presents as a
sympathetic, mildly bohemian onlooker who invites but resists involvement in the affairs that he observes.
● “Walking Tours” (first pub. 1876) generalizes the themes of the earlier travel books and helped to establish a new
cultural role, that of the young man tramping the roads of Europe by himself—but never too far from a friendly
inn—meditating as he goes on life and the surrounding scenery.
● “Walking Tours” is the precursor of the many essays and poems written on this subject by a host of British and
American authors from the 1880s to World War I.
Dream Children : A Reverie , popularly known for convenience as Dream Children is an essay by Charles Lamb. Its
autobiographical elements enhance the charm of the essay, and the imaginative fervour that aids the essayist enriches
the appeal. Lamb is celebrated for his simple, yet not simplistic, personal reflections on daily life, which is always
supplemented with a distinctive sense of both humor and tragedy.
Dream Children , as the essayist himself says, is a reverie. It comes from the pen of a man whose desire for a family
failed owing to strange circumstances. Charles Lamb was in charge of his insane sister, Mary, who had killed their mother
with a knife and was about to kill their father, his love affair with Ann Simmons whom he had met during one of his visits
to Hertfordshire where his grandmother Mrs Field kept the house of the Plumers ended up in the girl marrying a
pawnbroker named Bertram.
Dream Children is a wish-fulfilment in an unreal world. It is a dream that never came true. But it narrates the haunting
dream of the essayist to have two children, a boy and a girl, who would cuddle up to him to listen to his tales about their
great grandmother and their uncle. The character of Mrs Field, the grandmother in the story, has a real basis. The name
is real and real also is the fact that she kept a house in a distant place. While the name of the place is given as Norfolk,
actually it was Hertfordshire. Lamb enriches the tale about his grandmother with an elaborate and fanciful description of
the house she kept, and as the tale was fanciful, it inflamed the fancy of the listeners, John and Alice. Lamb selects the
names for his dream children intelligently. Alice reminds one of Alice in Wonderland, a dream world, and John bears
relation with his brother John. Lamb liberally intermixes facts with fancy. Thus when he speaks of John as a child, he
makes the character so fanciful with all his lustiness that the tale warms up the children, but soon he gets him dead to
make the children fall ‘a-crying’. When he tells the children about Mrs Field, their great grandmother saying how tall,
upright and graceful she was, how in her youth she was esteemed the best dancer, the children’s fun soars up, only to
be subdued a moment later when he tells them how she fell a victim to the cruel disease, cancer. While the nearly
homophonic words – dancer and cancer – arouse our laughter, the hearts of the children ache, and the hearts of the
readers too.
As Lamb speaks how she saw the apparitions of two infants gliding up and down the great staircase near where she
slept, John felt frightened but posed to be courageous. The narrative effect gains momentum as Lamb now and then
describes the reactions of the children. Lamb slips into a dreamy world when he tells the children how he enjoyed
strolling about in the garden with all its trees, vines, orangery and the fish pond. Lamb’s dream transports himself into an
idyllic world, the Romantics loved to traverse. The house of the Plumers in Hertfordshire which Mrs Field kept and which
Lamb visited had all that Lamb speaks of, but what was not there is the charm that the essayist felt within his heart. The
marble statues were there, but it is Lamb who makes them turn alive or himself turn statuesque. The fishpond in which
‘the dace darted to and fro at the bottom of the garden, with here and there a great sulky pike hanging midway down the
water in a silent state’ might have had earthly existence, but the wonder that he felt and described to John and Alice was
only an aerial signal that is only Lamb’s. Fact and fancy, pathos and humour are imperceptibly blended so neatly that the
reader would like to avoid words while describing his impression and prefer silence.
Lamb closes the essay marvellously, describing how he wakes up from the reverie, how the children grew fainter to his
view, receding and receding, and finally shocking him to the truth that they are not the children of Ann Simmons and him,
but of Ann and Bartrum. We can feel the sadness that fills Lamb’s heart when the children are made to utter that they call
Bartrum their father, and they must wait upon the tedious shores of Lethe before they can have an existence and a name.
Lamb gives a twist to the spelling of the name Bartram for obvious reasons; but in spite of all fairness, he cannot conceal
the pining of his heart. Hence, Dream Children is rightly called a Prose poem which appeals to primary feelings of
mankind.
Sigmund Freud considered dreams an important tool in his therapy. Freudian psychoanalysis emphasizes dream
interpretation as a method to uncover the repressed information in the unconscious mind. Freud said that dreams were
wish fulfilling, meaning that in our dreams we act out our unconscious desires. Likewise, Lamb’s dream of two children,
his brother, and the lame-footed boy reflect Lamb’s wishes to have a family, and a supportive, responsible brother.
Stylistic Analysis of the Essay:
Stream of consciousness is the style of writing in which the writer tells or narrates his ideas in the flow as they appear in
his mind. This is for writer’s catharsis, in which the writer repeats certain ideas a number of times within the same piece of
writing. In the essay Dream Children, we can find such few examples. The idea of great-grandmother Field being very
religious has been repeated thrice. This also shows Lamb’s appreciation of morality and religiosity. The idea that
great-grandmother Field always loved all her grand-children has been repeated twice in almost the same manner.
Lamb’s manner of opening his essay is quite conversational and informal. Instead of being aphoristic or didactic, he
appears to begin in such a way as if he intends to share his experience with his audience and make them his secret
sharer. In his brief essay, Lamb employs detailed description of some events and places while he narrates story to his
children. A detailed account of John L- has been given, who represents Lamb’s brother. Moreover, a detailed description
of the great-grandmother Field’s house has been given.
Lamb’s desires marrying Ann, having Children, and having a responsible brother is reflected in his dream. Lamb wanted
to marry Ann; the lady to whom he proposed. However, she rejected Lamb’s proposal and married Bartrum instead. In his
dream, Lamb sees a little girl Alice who looks likes Ann. This reflects Lamb’s desire of marrying Ann. Lamb did not marry
in his life, as he had a mentally sick sister to take care of, as well as that the lady he wanted to marry rejected his
proposal. However, Lamb longed to have a wife and wanted to have children. This desire of Lamb is evident from the very
title of his essay “Dream Children”. Lamb’s elder brother did not support them and never took the responsibility of his sick
sister. In the form of John L – taking care of the lame-footed boy in Lamb’s dream, we observe Lamb’s desire of having
his brother as a responsible and caring person towards Lamb and their sister. The theme of memories and past days is
quite prominent in this essay. Lamb appears to miss a number of people including his grandmother, his brother, his love
Ann and the past days of his childhood he used to spend with his grandmother.
The theme of loneliness appears at the end of essay in the following lines:
“We are not of Alice, nor of thee, nor are we children at all. The children of Alice called Bartrum father. We are nothing;
less than nothing, and dreams. We are only what might have been, and must wait upon the tedious shores of Lethe
millions of ages before we have existence and a name” “…and immediately awaking, I found myself quietly seated in my
bachelor arm-chair, where I had fallen asleep” The bachelor arm-chair symbolizes Lamb’s loneliness and absence of a
wife and family. After reading the above lines, the reader turns from happy children story to gloom as it is discovered that
all that happened earlier was just a dream, and in reality Lamb is alone and does not have any wife or children.
The theme of Lamb's essay is regret and loss: regret for unfulfilled joy, unfulfilled love, lost hope, lost opportunity and lost
joys of life. The first of these is the loss of past happiness as represented by the house--with its carved mantle that a
"foolish rich person pulled ... down"--and by great-grandmother Field and by the speaker's brother John. Both
great-grandmother Field and John died painful deaths while Charles Lamb watched on being then left alone without their
presence, love and care: what he missed most was their presence: "I missed him all day long, and knew not till then how
much I had loved him." The second topic describing regret and loss is his beloved Alice. Lamb courted her "for seven long
years" and, in the end, his suit for her love was a failure. This explains why the dream child is named Alice and this
explains why he becomes confused about which Alice, younger or elder, he is really looking at. This leads to the third
thematic topic: the children who never were. In a surprise ending, in a dramatic (and at first bewildering) twist, we learn
that the children he has been telling stories to--stories of loves and life-joys he regrets losing--are air, are a figment of a
dream in a bachelor's sleep. These are the children that would have been, that could have been, that might have been if
Alice had granted Lamb her love and if they had wed. As it is, they are but phantoms of a dream. All he really has is "the
faithful Bridget [representative of Lamb's sister Mary] unchanged by my side."
This essay exhibits the subjects of pain and guilt of getting deprived of the people whom we loved from the core of our
heart. In this essay, the author is brought in a dream world to reveal the sweet recollections of the past days. The essay,
being enhanced with despair, clarifies the worth and necessity of childhood and the loved ones for an individual, without
whom the life appears to be dark and suffocating for the individual. The reaction and response the children in the essay
reflect the effect of the story on their mind and turns the essay dramatic. Moreover, their actions were proof that the story
that has been narrated to them, have a great influence on them and were moved by their father’s description. There is a
shift in the tone of the essay at various points. The shifts in the tone, from humorous to tragic, occurred when the author
describes the scene of his grandmother and beloved brother death. Lamb appears to be nostalgic throughout the essay
and longed for his loved ones. He is depressed at the death of his beloved Alice and feels guilty for not marrying her.
Towards the end of the essay, a twist in the essay comes when all the events in the story turn out to be a dream. This
adds suspense to the essay along with an open end.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/293543795_Dream_Children_as_an_Essay/link/56b978e608ae39ea9905ce05/d
ownload
http://thecriticalliterature.blogspot.com/2015/05/analysis-of-lambs-essay-dream-children.html
https://www.enotes.com/homework-help/what-theme-this-story-dream-children-by-charls-353659
https://www.litpriest.com/browse/essay/dream-children-charles-lamb-summary/
On Familiar Style: William Hazlitt
William Hazlitt is one of the most prolific English prose writers of the romantic period of English Literature. He is well
remembered for his humanistic essays and literary criticism. He is a grammarian and philosopher. His essay “On Familiar
Style” is one of his master pieces that appeared in “Table Talk”, a collection of essays of Hazlitt. A master of invective,
sarcasm, and irony, essayist William Hazlitt was one of the great prose stylists of the 19th century. In "On Familiar Style"
(originally published in the London Magazine and reprinted in Table Talk, 1822), Hazlitt explains his preference for "plain
words and popular modes of construction."
Hazlitt makes out his point that how an author should convey his ideas in a manner that is comprehensible to the reader
in clear terms. According to him, a familiar style uses the best words in common use and the true idiom of the language
and rejects both meaningless and pompous words. The level of diction used in the essay is quite high which acts as an
ironic device. In the essay he looks down upon those who try too hard to use fancy words, "how simple its... to be
pompous without meaning!"
According to Hazlitt, the contents are to be explained in simple, clear and dignified words. It should neither be high
sounding nor flamboyant. Dr Johnson, an English writer, is very fond of using indiscriminate long words from Latin with
English terminations. He uses tall and opaque words taken from “the first row of rubric”. “Rubric” means the portions of a
prayer book, wherein the first letter or first word of each chapter is printed in red ink. Dr.Johnson choses the first big word
that comes to his mind. Such words are obscure and the readers cannot comprehend the meaning easily. Hence Dr.
Johnson`s style of writing displeases Hazlitt. Hazlitt first starts the passage by using an antithesis, "Any one may mouth
out a passage with a theatrical candence, or get upon stilts to tell his thoughts; but to write or speak with a propriety and
simplicity is a more difficult task."
However, Hazlitt makes an exception to Charles Lamb, who revels in rare and archaic words. Lamb however manages,
somehow, to use archaic phrases and yet remain interesting. He takes old writers like Browne and Fuller, as his role
model, borrows their phrases and following their way of writing. But his ideas are not out of date. They are, indeed,
startlingly original. It looks, as if Lamb hides the pungency of his ideas behind the mask of a mannered style. The models
of Lamb seem to help in making the dull reader grasp Lamb`s contents of his writing.
The writer of a plain style must also give up the slang and cant. Words must not be given new meanings. Expressions
known only to small groups are not suitable for a familiar style. It is also not advisable to coin new words. According to
Hazlitt, coining new words is a serious crime, as counterfeiting coins/currency; he adds that it is nothing but
counterfeiting King`s English. He draws the attention to an important similarity between coins/currency and words. The
King`s stamp and acceptance by the people are required for the coins/currency. Similar acceptance and “recognized
standards” are required for words too. Hence the expression “King`s English” corresponding to “King`s coinage”,
https://brainly.in/question/5762537#readmore
Nobel Banquet Speech: Albert Camus
● Albert Camus (1913 - 60) is the author of many popular and influential works.
● Albert Camus' Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech (1957) at the Nobel Banquet at the City Hall in Stockholm,
December 10, 1957
● French Existentialist Albert Camus delivered this address on the relationship between literature and truth when he
received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1957. The address examines how the writer must be a servant to truth.
● Albert Camus, Born in a small town in eastern Algeria, from a quasi-proletarian origin, Camus found it necessary
to get ahead in life on his own; a poverty-stricken student, he worked at all sorts of jobs to meet his needs.
● Even in his first writings Camus reveals a spiritual attitude that was born of the sharp contradictions within him
between the awareness of earthly life and the gripping consciousness of the reality of death.
● Camus represents also the philosophical movement called Existentialism, which characterizes man’s situation in
the universe by denying it all personal significance, seeing in it only absurdity. The term “absurd” occurs often in
Camus’s writings, so that one may call it a leitmotif in his work, developed in all its logical moral consequences on
the levels of freedom, responsibility, and the anguish that derives from it. The Greek myth of Sisyphus, who
eternally rolls his rock to the mountain top from which it perpetually rolls down again, becomes, in one of Camus’s
essays, a laconic symbol of human life. But Sisyphus, as Camus interprets him, is happy in the depth of his soul,
for the attempt alone satisfies him. For Camus, the essential thing is no longer to know whether life is worth living
but how one must live it, with the share of sufferings it entails.
● Active and highly creative, Camus is in the centre of interest in the literary world, even outside of France. Inspired
by an authentic moral engagement, he devotes himself with all his being to the great fundamental questions of
life, and certainly this aspiration corresponds to the idealistic end for which the Nobel Prize was established.
Behind his incessant affirmation of the absurdity of the human condition is no sterile negativism. This view of
things is supplemented in him by a powerful imperative, nevertheless, an appeal to the will which incites to revolt
against absurdity and which, for that reason, creates a value.
Walking Tours: R L Stevenson
● In this affectionate response to William Hazlitt's essay "On Going a Journey," Scottish author Robert Louis
Stevenson describes the pleasures of an idle walk in the country and the even finer pleasures that come
afterward--sitting by a fire enjoying "trips into the Land of Thought."
● Stevenson is most well known for his novel's including Kidnapped, Treasure Island and The Strange Case of
Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Stevenson was a famous author during his life and has remained an important part of
the literary canon.
● This essay highlights his lesser-known skills as a travel writer. Stevenson’s essays and fiction share each other’s
conspicuous characteristics. The essays are filled with narrative and with fictive images of military action and
adventure; the stories are marked by passages of sententious meditation.
● Stevenson’s main task in these early essays was to invent his own character, which he presents as a
sympathetic, mildly bohemian onlooker who invites but resists involvement in the affairs that he observes.
● “Walking Tours” (first pub. 1876) generalizes the themes of the earlier travel books and helped to establish a new
cultural role, that of the young man tramping the roads of Europe by himself—but never too far from a friendly
inn—meditating as he goes on life and the surrounding scenery.
● “Walking Tours” is the precursor of the many essays and poems written on this subject by a host of British and
American authors from the 1880s to World War I.
Comments
Post a Comment