Brief Questions Literature and Society

Answer

Brief Questions: Literature and Society 

• What responds comfortably to the undirected formula?

Ans: Certain major interests of the writer himself respond comfortably to the undirected formula.

• What did the writer have no difficulty in?

Ans: He had no difficulty in deciding what suited him best to do.

• What does Mr. Eliot’s early prose emphasize?

Ans: It emphasizes not only individual talent but also external influences and conditions.

• Who formulated the idea of Tradition?

Ans: T. S. Eliot formulated the idea of Tradition.

• Where did the Augustan tradition originate?

Ans: It originated in the great changes of civilization in the late seventeenth century that emphasized social order and good form.

• What was closely associated with the code of Good Form in the Augustan Age?

Ans: The essential modes and idioms of Augustan culture were closely linked with the code of Good Form.

• What was the Queen Anne period confident of?

Ans: It was confident of its flourishing cultural health and refinement.

• Whom does Leavis consider a genius in the late eighteenth century?

Ans: He considers William Blake a genius of that period.

• What did Blake essentially do?

Ans: He reversed the shift of emphasis from the social to the individual.

• What was the nature of Blake’s reversal?

Ans: It was the movement of stress from the social to the personal or individual.

• What did not make Blake self-sufficient?

Ans: The support of language and culture did not make him self-sufficient; he needed a deeper social support he lacked.

• What was Bunyan’s aim in The Pilgrim’s Progress?

Ans: His aim was to preach his Puritan religious ideals.

• What did Christian ask Faithful?

Ans: He asked Faithful whether he had heard any news about his neighbour Pliable.

• What did Faithful answer?

Ans: He answered that Pliable had fallen into the Slough of Despond.

• How did the Southern Appalachians acquire their culture?

Ans: Their culture, language, and manners were passed down through generations.

• What does Bunyan himself show?

Ans: He shows how popular culture could merge with literary culture at a high artistic level.

• How do Blake and Wordsworth differ?

Ans: Blake was interested in the people and their spirit, while Wordsworth focused on nature and the external world.

• What happened after Wordsworth’s death?

Ans: The Industrial Revolution destroyed traditional folk culture.

• What can only trained familiarity with literature bring?

Ans: It brings sensitivity to language and insight into the link between abstract thought and real experience.

• When will social and political thinking lose its power?

Ans: When it lacks the literary sensitivity to language and human experience.

• What are the “other things” present in literary history and criticism?

Ans: They are social influences, environments, and extra-literary conditions affecting art.

• What did the Romantic critical tradition stress?

Ans: It stressed inspiration and the power of individual genius.

• How does the Marxist approach to literature appear?

Ans: It appears unprofitable to Leavis.

• What is The Pilgrim’s Progress?

Ans: It is the greatest work of John Bunyan and the most widely read book in English.

• What should the poet be alert to?

Ans: He should realize that art never improves, though its material and the human mind evolve.

• Who wrote The Pilgrim’s Progress?

Ans: John Bunyan wrote The Pilgrim’s Progress.

• What did the Romantic poets emphasize, according to Leavis?

Ans: They emphasized inspiration and individual genius.

• What was Eliot’s early prose directed against?

Ans: It was directed against the Romantic tradition.

• What does Leavis call the Romantic critical tradition?

Ans: He calls it an atmosphere of the unformulated and vague.

• Whom does Leavis regard as a genius in the late eighteenth century?

Ans: He regards William Blake as a genius of that age.

• What is Marxist literature?

Ans: Literature based on Karl Marx’s economic theory is called Marxist literature.

• Who was John Bunyan?

Ans: He was an English preacher and author of The Pilgrim’s Progress (1678).

• Why does Leavis consider the phrase “The Romantic attitude” misleading?

Ans: Because it gives a vague and inaccurate idea of Romantic thought and criticism.