Satyajit Reviews

William Shakespeare, often nicknamed ‘The Bard”, is beyond any comparison, the most towering name in English Literature. The Tempest, a masterpiece of Shakespeare, explores the consequences of European settlement in the new world. It is generally considered Shakespeare's final play as well as the last of his romance plays.  William Shakespeare (Picture Credit- time.com) Most of the readers of The Tempest look upon Caliban, that "freckled hag-born whelp," as a monster creature, half-man and half-devil, a repulsive creature of brute understanding, stunted faculties, and gross, malignant, moral nature. But there is much to be said in favour of this spawn of Sycorax and the devil. What faults the moon-calf has lie in his physical grossness and in his attempt on the virtue of Miranda; yet the first of these is characteristic of Falstaff, the second is a situation familiar in Elizabethan and Jacobean plays, and neither is uncommon enough to elicit especial censure. Caliban is a...

Jonathan Swift’s magnum opus Gulliver’s Travels is the story of the astonishing voyages of Lemuel Gulliver, who is basically the narrator and protagonist of the tale. A parody of the popular travel narrative, Gulliver’s Travels combines adventure with savage satire, mocking English customs and the politics of the day. The phenomenal and continuing popularity of Gulliver's Travels raises the question that this essay will attempt to answer. Harold Bloom remarks on Gulliver’s Travels: "If the Tale-teller is a Swiftian parody of one side of Swift, the anti-Cartesian, anti-Hobbesian, then Gulliver is a Swiftian parody of the great ironist’s own misanthropy." (2) Swift’s A Tale of a Tub has much to do with our sense of its excess, with its force being so exuberantly beyond its form. Gulliver’s Travels, the later and lesser work, has survived for the common reader, and whereas Swift’s early masterpiece has not.  Gulliver's Travels is the story of Lemuel Gulliver, a married s...

(Spoiler Alert) Are you tired of reading Chetan Bhagat's love stories? Freshen up your mind with exciting mystery thriller -  The Girl in Room 105. Chetan himself was quite tired writing romantic novels. That's why, he picked up a topic which is different from his early books. Bhagat crafted the story with his skilful writing techniques. The story is mostly narrated from first person point of view through the protagonist, Keshav. ( Picture Credit- chetanbhagat.com) Keshav, Zara and Sourabh are the main characters. Keshav Rajpurohit, presently, a tuition teacher at 'Chandan Classes.'  He studied engineering from IIT. He hates his job and was looking for another job, therefore, he updated his bio on LinkedIn. Sourabh is Keshav's best friend and colleague too. Zara Lone, the beautiful girl, is pursuing her Ph.D. from IIT under the guidance of Prof. Saxena. Keshav and Zara were in a relationship for  a long time. But they broke up and Zara moved on and got engaged with ...

Emily Jane Bronte’s magnum opus  Wuthering Heights  is one of those canonical works or classics that reward readers at every level of literary sophistication. Emily Bronte remains a figure whose life and personality are largely shrouded in mystery. She was the second and least worldly of a triumvirate of immensely gifted writing sisters who had managed to overcome the change of fortune of their childhood to burst forth, seemingly out of nowhere, with powerful and entirely unconventional works of the imagination. One of Ellis Bell's (Emily Bronte's pen name) greatest strengths as a writer was her willingness to not spell out everything for her readers but to weave her story in such a way as to draw readers inevitably in, capturing them in a mysterious interconnected web.  Wuthering Heights  is one of those greatest love stories in the English language. Nicholas Marsh remarks: "...the story of Wuthering Heights is too strong, too powerfully alive, to be contained ...

“One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman... It is civilization as a whole that produces this  creature...which is described as feminine.”        – Simone De Beauvoir : The Second Sex (330) John Webster’s masterpiece The Duchess of Malfi is in many ways a remarkable pioneer to the adulterous and tragic heroines found in landmark 19th century novels. The Duchess, the protagonist of the tragedy, is completely an extraordinary figure from the typical Jacobean Era. Webster’s Duchess exercises transgressive, independent sexual agency in defiance of social conventions not through infidelity but through marriage, or more accurately, remarriage. Remarriage in the 17th century was not inevitably a recipe for tragedy. In this play, the Duchess defies social and sexual orthodoxies in ways that are not dissimilar to those of comic widows. Many of the famous critics agree that Webster's second tragedy, The Duchess of Malfi, is a more coherent play than The White Devil. T...

“Morality plays were dramatized allegories of a representative Christian  life in the plot from a quest for salvation, in which  the crucial events are temptations, sinning, and the climactic  confrontation with death.”   - M. H. Abrams (224) Doctor Faustus is the magnum opus of the central Sun of the University Wits, Christopher Marlowe. In the great Elizabethan drama, Marlowe has rightly been called the morning star. This play has been treated as a link between the miracle and morality plays and the illustrious drama of  Elizabethan period. A  morality play is a form of allegorical drama in which the protagonist, representing everyman, is persuaded by personified virtues to choose a divine way of life and shun evil. Marlowe constructed the character of Faustus as an Aristotelian tragedy intended to inspire pity and fear. Christopher Marlowe  (Picture Credit- wikipedia.org) Throughout the sixteenth century morality plays were continued to be perf...

Hello everyone, This is Satyajit Mallick, from Cooch Behar, a small city in the northern part of the Indian state of West Bengal. At present, I'm pursuing my Post Graduation in English Literature from University of North Bengal, Siliguri, Darjeeling. This is my first day of blogging. It's a great platform to share inner thoughts and connect with people and that's why I'm here. This blog intends to provide posts related to English Literature, Book Review, Travelogue and many more things. I would love to share my inner thoughts as well. I convey my heartiest welcome to all of you to my blog. Do let me know if you have any suggestions for me in the comment section below. Thanks for visiting! Happy reading. Jan 19, 2020 Satyajit Mallick NBU, Siliguri