Tuesday, October 21, 2025

Novel and Novella- Paragraphs based on M. H. Abraham's "Literary Forms and Terms"

 

                                                                Novella
                A novella is a narrative prose fiction that occupies a middle ground between the short story and the novel. The term originates from the Italian novella, meaning “a little new thing”. A novella concentrates on a single event, character, or conflict. It maintains the unity and intensity of a short story while providing more development of character and theme. The structure of a novella is compact and unified, with a deliberate focus on economy of design and precision of style. It often presents a crisis or turning point in the protagonist’s life, exploring its psychological or moral implications. Notable examples include Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness (1899), which explores imperialism and human corruption; Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis (1915), a psychological allegory of alienation; and Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice (1912), which examines aesthetic obsession and decay. M. H. Abrams classifies novellas, including the realistic novella, which depicts lifelike situations and characters; the psychological novella, which delves into mental and emotional experiences; and the symbolic or allegorical novella, which uses metaphor to express philosophical or moral ideas. Because of its length and focus, the novella is especially suited to conveying intense emotions and complex ideas within a concise framework. Thus, the novella remains a vital literary form that captures both the precision of art and the breadth of human experience.

 

                                                                            Novel
              According to M. H. Abrams in A Glossary of Literary Terms, a novel is a long prose narrative that depicts fictional characters and events in a coherent plot. It offers a comprehensive portrayal of human life and experience. It differs from shorter narrative forms like the short story or novella in both length and complexity. A novel allows extensive character development, subplots, and social commentary. The novel as a literary form emerged in the early eighteenth century, with works such as Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe (1719) and Samuel Richardson’s Pamela (1740). A novel’s flexibility enables it to encompass a vast range of themes—romantic, social, historical, psychological, and philosophical. There are several types of novels. Each type is defined by its focus or narrative method. The “picaresque novel” (e.g., Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones) follows the adventures of a roguish hero through a series of episodes. The “epistolary novel” (e.g., Richardson’s Clarissa) unfolds through letters. The “historical novel” (e.g., Walter Scott’s Waverley) blends history and imagination. The “Gothic novel” (e.g., Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein) explores mystery, horror, and the supernatural. The “stream-of-consciousness novel” (e.g., James Joyce’s Ulysses) presents the inner flow of thoughts and sensations of the characters. Further important subgenres include the “novel of manners” like Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, which portrays social conventions and class behavior. The “Bildungsroman” or “novel of growth” traces the moral and psychological development of a protagonist from youth to maturity, as seen in The Great Expectations by Charles Dickens. A “Künstlerroman” novel focuses on the growth of an artist or writer as in James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. The “regional novel”, like Thomas Hardy’s Far from the Madding Crowd, vividly represents the customs, dialects, and landscape of a specific locality.  Through such diverse forms, a novel serves as a mirror of society, a vehicle of moral reflection, and a space for psychological and philosophical exploration.

 

Ode to a Nightingale by John Keats- Essay

 

Ode to a Nightingale

-        John Keats

John Keats is one of the major Romantic poets. He wrote six major odes in 1819. He wrote “Ode to a Nightingale” between 26 April and 18 May 1819. It describes a series of conflicts between reality and the Romantic ideal of uniting with nature. It is a profound meditation on mortality, beauty, and the momentary nature of human experience. The poem follows a strict rhyme scheme of ABABCDECDE in every stanza.

Three main thoughts are recurring in the ode. 1. Keats’ evaluation of life; life is filled with tears and frustration. 2. Keats’ wish that he might die and be rid of life altogether. His preoccupation with death can be seen here. 3. The power of imagination or fancy. Keats does not make any distinction between the two and he rejects wine for poetry, the product of imagination.

At the beginning of the poem, Keats is in a state of drowsiness. “My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains.” He is enchanted by the song of the nightingale. He is envious of the imagined happiness of the bird. It “Singest of summer in full-throated ease”. Next, Keats longs for wine which would take him out of himself and allow him to join the bird. The wine would put him in a state in which he would no longer be himself. He is aware that life is full of pain, that the young die, the old suffer. But wine is not needed to enable him to escape. His imagination will serve the purpose.

In the darkness, the poet listens to the nightingale. Now, Keats feels, it would be a rich experience to die, “to cease upon the midnight with no pain”. He confesses that he has been “half in love with easeful Death.” The nightingale is free from the human fate of having to die. The song of the nightingale was heard in ancient times also by emperor and peasant. Perhaps even Ruth, a character from the Old Testament heard it.

The concluding stanza brings back Keats to consciousness. He knows that he cannot escape with the help of the imagination. He writes, “the fancy cannot cheat so well.” The singing of the bird grows fainter and dies away. The experience he has had seems so strange. He is not sure whether it was a vision or a daydream. This poem conveys that neither life nor death is acceptable to Keats and it appears that he “belongs nowhere”.

Keats enriches the poem using many allusions. He refers to Lethe, the river of forgetting that flows through the underworld; Hippocrene, the fountain of the Muses made by Pegasus’ hooves which brings inspiration; dryads, the spirit protectors of the forest; Bacchus, god of wine and debauchery; Ruth and the corn-field is a reference to the book in the Bible; hemlock, the poison that killed Socrates; Flora, the Roman goddess of nature.

Thursday, October 16, 2025

This is the Photograph of Me by Margaret Atwood- Essay

 

This is the Photograph of Me

-        Margaret Atwood

Margaret Atwood’s poem “This is the Photograph of Me” was first published in her poetry collection The Circle Game (1964). It explains and immortalizes female perspective under the male dominated societies. It also voices the experiences of those who feel shut out of their own histories. Themes like Feminism, distortion of reality, and the erasure of marginalized histories are also discussed in this poem.

The speaker of the poem begins to describe an old photograph from many years ago. The speaker says that the photograph is “smeared” or “smudged” and “ blurry”. Then she instructs the reader through a more detailed analysis of the photograph first pointing out a tree that creeps into the frame from one of its left corners. Then the speaker identifies “a small frame house” that sits on a slope as well as “a lake” and “some low hills”. Thus in the first part of the poem the poet describes a natural scenic landscape.

 The speaker admits in a parenthetical statement that the photograph was taken the day after she has drowned in the lake. The speaker makes the reader to look more closely and try to identify the corpse submerged within the lake. Finally, the speaker tells the audience that they have been gazing the photo for a while so that they can identify the speaker. Through this, the speaker uncovers that understanding of the fact or truth is always concerned with subjectivity.

In the first part of the poem, the speaker uses the soft language to portray the scene such as “gentle slope”, “small frame house” and “low hills”. Here, the scene looks so calm and quiet. Suddenly this gentle description disappears, when it is revealed that the photograph was taken on the day after the speaker died. This shows that the speaker’s experience has been hidden in the lake like her body.

The speaker also calls the reflection of sunlight on lake “a distortion”. It suggests that the photograph misrepresents the scene. The word “distortion” conveys that the speaker is unsure of “how large or how small I am”. The parenthesis in the poem reveals that the speaker’s perspective is entirely neglected by the society. Thus “This is the Photograph of Me”, makes an appeal to the readers to pay attention to female perspective and give them their due space.

Novel and Novella- Paragraphs based on M. H. Abraham's "Literary Forms and Terms"

                                                                  Novella                 A novella is a narrative prose fiction that oc...