GRE Literature in English: Writers

Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy Epic poem in terza rima (tercets or groups of three lines with interlocking rhymes: aba, bcb, cdc, etc.). Italian original. A trilogy: Inferno, Purgatorio, Paradiso. Each volume divided into sections called Cantos. Dante sets himself as the narrator and main character of this epic poem. The Inferno is an account of Dante's own journey, guided by the ancient Roman poet Virgil, through the nine levels of hell. During this journey Dante encounters and holds conversations with the souls of the damned. At the end of the journey, at the bottom of hell, Dante must face Satan and confront the problem of how to escape from the underworld. Beatrice serves as Dante's muse and inspiration. In The Divine Comedy it is Beatrice who, out of love for the poet, initiates Dante's journey because she believes that he has strayed from a righteous path and she thinks that this divine journey will save him from himself. Thus, she leaves her seat in Heaven to descend to Hell where she asks Virgil to serve as Dante's guide. Beatrice meets Dante in Earthly Paradise (Purgatorio) and acts as his guide through Heaven.  

Sherwood Anderson: (1876-1941) Writer whose prose style, derived from everyday speech, influenced American short story writing between World Wars I and II. Anderson made his name as a leading naturalistic writer with his masterwork, WINESBURG, OHIO (1919), a picture of life in a typical small Midwestern town, as seen through the eyes of its inhabitants. Anderson's episodic bildungsroman has been compared often to Edgar Lee Masters' Spoon River Anthology. "primal forces cannot be denied even though the machine-age wants them to be." Encouraged both Faulkner and Hemingway. "The young man's mind was carried away by his growing passion for dreams. One looking at him would not have thought him particularly sharp. With the recollection of little things occupying his mind he closed his eyes and leaned back in the car seat. He stayed that way for a long time and when he aroused himself and again looked out of the car window the town of Winesburg had disappeared and his life there had become but a background on which to paint his dreams of his manhood." (from Winesburg, Ohio)

WH Auden, In Memory of WB YeatsThree different sections memorializing Yeats: Repeating line -- Today was a cold, dark day.

"He disappeared in the dead of winter:The brooks were frozen, the airports almost deserted,And snow disfigured the public statues;The mercury sank in the mouth of the dying day.What instruments we have agreeThe day of his death was a dark cold day.[...]"

"You were silly like us; your gift survived it all:The parish of rich women, physical decay,Yourself. Mad Ireland hurt you into poetry.Now Ireland has her madness and her weather still,For poetry makes nothing happen: it survivesIn the valley of its making where executivesWould never want to tamper, flows on southFrom ranches of isolation and the busy griefs,Raw towns that we believe and die in; it survives,A way of happening, a mouth.(this is the whole of part II)"

"Earth, receive an honoured guest:William Yeats is laid to rest.Let the Irish vessel lieEmptied of its poetry. [...] In the nightmare of the darkAll the dogs of Europe bark,And the living nations wait,Each sequestered in its hate  In the deserts of the heartLet the healing fountain start,In the prison of his daysTeach the free man how to praise."

Honore de BalzacFrench journalist and writer, one of the creators of realism in literature. Balzac's huge production of novels and short stories are collected under the name La Comedie humaine, which originated from Dante's The Divine Comedy. Among the masterpieces of The Human Comedy are Le Pere Goriot, Les Illusions Perdues, Les Paysans, La Femme de Trente Ans, and Eugenie Grandet. In these books Balzac covered a world from Paris to Provinces. The primarly landscape is Paris, with its old aristocracy, new financial wealth, middle-class trade, demi-monde, professionals, servants, young intellectuals, clerks, criminals... In this social mosaic Balzac had recurrent characters, such as Eugene Rastignac, who came from an impoverished provincial family to Paris, mixed with the nobility, pursued wealth, had many mistresses, gambled, and was a successful politician. Henry de Marsay appeared in twenty-five different novels.

Samuel BeckettSamuel Beckett was born to a Protestant family near Dublin, Ireland. He moved to Paris and become good friends with Joyce. Samuel Beckett's first play, Eleutheria, mirrors his own search for freedom, revolving around a young man's efforts to cut himself loose from his family and social obligations. His first real triumph, however, came on January 5, 1953, when Waiting for Godot premiered at the Theatre de Babylone. He wrote all his major plays in French even though English was his native language. Other notable play: Endgame

Albert CamusBorn in Algeria and received a degree in philosophy before relocating to France.' He soon established an international reputation with such works asThe Stranger (1946), The Plague (1948), The Rebel (1954) and The Myth of Sisyphus (1955).' 

Albert Camus, CaligulaThe two most important of Camus' plays are Caligula (performed 1945, written 1938) and Cross Purpose (1944). In Caligula, a young Roman emperor comes face to face with the terrible lack of meaning in the universe after the senseless death of his beloved sister Drusilla. In order to teach the world the true nature of life, Caligula goes on a murderous spree, killing his subjects indiscriminately. After this act of rebellion fails, he chooses to court his own assassination.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Kubla KhanIn his introduction to the poem, Coleridge mentions an "anodyne" which he took before he conceived it. The drug was laudanum--opium dissolved in alcohol--and the vision was an opium dream. (This explains so much.) A poem about nothing:

--Xanadu--pleasure dome--Ancestral voices prophesying war--Abyssinian maid--Mount Abora

"In Xanadu did Kubla KhanA stately pleasure-dome decree :Where Alph, the sacred river, ranThrough caverns measureless to manDown to a sunless sea.So twice five miles of fertile groundWith walls and towers were girdled round :And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree ;And here were forests ancient as the hills,Enfolding sunny spots of greenery."

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