Thinking Activity

Movie Screening:" Vita and Virginia" by Chanya Button.

Here is a blog based on Virginia Woolf’s life, an incident that turns out to be a novel of hers “Orlando: A Biography”, an understanding of Sex/Gender/Orientation and a movie based on Virginia Woolf and a female lover.

   

Vita & Virginia is a 2018 biographical romantic drama film directed by Chanya Button. The screenplay, written by Button and Eileen Atkins, is adapted from the 1992 play Vita & Virginia by Atkins. The film stars Gemma Arterton, Elizabeth Debicki, and Isabella Rossellini. Set in the 1920s, Vita & Virginia tells the story of the love affair between Vita Sackville-West and Virginia Woolf.

The film had its world premiere as a Special Presentation at the Toronto International Film Festival on 11 September 2018. It was released in the United Kingdom on 5 July 2019, and in the United States on 23 August 2019.

1, How far do you feel that Orlando is influenced by Vita and Virginia’s love affair? Does it talk only about that or do you find anything else too?

“I am reduced to a thing that wants Virginia…It is incredible how essential to me you have become,” wrote Vita Sackville-West to the novelist Virginia Woolf in 1926. A popular writer herself, Sackville-West was proclaiming her love for Woolf during the most intense years of their romantic relationship in the 1920s. Although both were married to men, the two women penned hundreds of poetic letters to each other, and their relationship would inspire one of Woolf’s most celebrated works, the 1928 novel Orlando.

As Woolf wrote in her diary: “A biography beginning in the year 1500 and continuing to the present day, called Orlando. Vita; only with a change about from one sex to the other.”

Orlando is not the first piece of fiction about a sex change. Ovid’s Metamorphoses is a playful and serious treatise on the shiftability of form – especially human form, as humans turn into trees or animals, or the gods embody themselves as human to pursue their love interests. In The Arabian Nights, there are both gender switching plots and cross-dressing. Shakespeare loved gender disguises – a girl who’s a boy who’s a boy who’s a girl – and of course as women were not allowed on the London stage in Shakespeare’s day, every female role was cross-gender. Every romance is a bromance.

Woolf’s Orlando begins his journey as a young man living at Knole, the great house in Kent that Sackville-West could not inherit because she was female. The novel starts in an attic, as the young Orlando slices at the preserved head of a Moor. It also begins with a famously disingenuous sentence: “He, for there could be no doubt about his sex … ” and then we spend the rest of the novel doubting exactly that.

Orlando manages his transition with grace and a profound truth. On seeing himself as a herself for the first time in the mirror, she remarks: “Different sex. Same person.”

The relationship was clearly a source of inspiration for both women, but it was Woolf’s 1928 novel Orlando that would cement her status as an established writer and her legacy as a master of modernism. Spanning over 300 years, the novel features a protagonist who switches gender in a fantastical exploration of the self and the other. The book was described as “the longest and most charming love letter in literature” by Vita’s son Nigel Nicholson, and others have called it “the first trans novel in the English language.”

In a 1927 diary entry, Woolf wrote that she was writing Orlando “half in mock style very clear and plain, so that people will understand every word. But the balance between truth and fantasy must be careful. It is based on Vita.” The work was so personal that Woolf wrote to Sackville-West asking for her permission. Vita replied, “My God Virginia, if ever I was thrilled and terrified it is at the prospect of being projected into the shape of Orlando.”

The unexpected result of Vita’s lapses in fidelity, drawn out over a period of several months, was one of the most personal “biographies” in literary history: the fictional account of Vita’s life that was Orlando.

Vita readily agreed. as the writing flowed, Orlando became a version of Vita that, while completely recognizable to anyone who knew her, was also purely Virginia’s; a creation that could not be taken from her, who was safe beyond the lure of other women.It also posed some interesting questions for Virginia as she withdrew, busy writing the fictional Orlando / Vita into existence while the real Vita was continuing to see Mary Campbell. She often wondered in her diary which was the more real.

Their son Nigel would later refer to the book as “the longest and most charming love letter in literature.” Only Vita’s mother disliked it, writing to Virginia, “… probably you do not realise how cruel you have been.”

With Orlando, though, Vita felt as if Virginia truly had “found her out.” All aspects of her character, including those she usually kept hidden even from herself, had been laid bare. She felt as if there was nothing that could now be kept from Virginia.

Reviewers and the reading public were aware that Orlando was based on Sackville-West, and that the book’s gender-switching plot alluded to her bisexual relationships. “People knew it was Vita, and they thought it was fun and playful; that’s why people bought it,” says Smith. Not everyone agreed — as depicted in Vita & Virginia by Isabella Rossellini, Vita’s mother Baroness Sackville was horrified by Orlando, writing that she loathed Woolf for “having changed my Vita and taken her away from me.”

Smith has been teaching Orlando to students for more than two decades, and she says that even though the book was written in the 1920s, it speaks to relevant themes about gender and sexuality now. “It forces students to consider ideas about gender that they hadn’t really considered before,” she says. “Queer theory, being queer and that way of thinking of one’s self have changed pretty radically; it’s part of the discourse of everyday lives in a way that they weren’t 25 years ago. Woolf is just such a marvelous writer, and the way she talks about time and the issues of the self in Orlando are pertinent still.”

2, Who do you think is confused about their identity Vita or Virginia? Explain with illustrations

  

Who were Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West?

Virginia Woolf

Born in London in 1882, Adeline Virginia Stephen, or “Ginia” as she was affectionately known, had a love for arts and literature running through her family. Her sister Vanessa was an artist, and when they reached adulthood, the two sisters became the heart of an influential intellectual circle known as the Bloomsbury Group, a collective of radical artists, writers and thinkers during the early 20th century. In 1912, Virginia married Leonard Woolf, a politically active left-wing writer and university friend of her brother’s. While Virginia Woolf’s earlier novels, which included Night and Day (1919), Mrs Dalloway (1925) and To the Lighthouse (1927), were not hugely commercially or critically successful during her time, she is today respected as one of the most important writers of the 20th century and a pioneer of “stream of consciousness” writing.

Vita Sackville

The glamorous writer Vita Sackville-West was 10 years younger than Woolf and came from an aristocratic family. The Sackvilles’ ancestral home was Knole, a sprawling estate in southern England, and Sackville-West was always frustrated that she would never be able to inherit Knole due to her gender, as English aristocratic custom forbid it. (This was a point that Woolf highlighted in perhaps her most openly political and feminist work, the 1929 essay A Room of One’s Own, in which she advocated for women to be financially independent.) Sackville-West married diplomat Harold Nicholson in 1913, who would, like his wife, also come to have same-sex affairs outside of their marriage. In 1917, Sackville-West caused scandal in high society when she eloped with her lover Violet Trefusis to Europe; the pair spent two years on-and-off running away together and being brought back to England by disgruntled family members.

“They came from pretty different places,” says Victoria L. Smith, a professor of English at Texas State University. “That might have provided some of the attraction to Virginia for Vita, certainly. Vita was very attracted to Virginia’s genius.”

I think Virginia is confused about their identity because  As depicted in the film, after meeting Woolf, Sackville-West decided to publish her books with Hogarth Press, which was the Woolfs’ own small independent publishing house. Sackville-West’s books were commercially and critically the more successful during her and Woolf’s lifetimes, although today Woolf’s work is more highly regarded. In 1924, Sackville-West published her short story Seducers in Ecuador with Hogarth Press to help with the Woolfs’ mounting debts, and she followed it six years later with novel The Edwardians, which was a financial success. “Vita sold all these books, but people just didn’t really understand Virginia Woolf’s writing,” says Smith. But Sackville-West recognized that Woolf was the better writer, writing to her in 1925 that “I contrast my illiterate writing with your scholarly one, and am ashamed.”

“I think that Virginia Woolf recognized that she was quite a bit of a better writer than Vita ever could be,” Smith says. “I don’t think Woolf was jealous of Sackville-West’s writing, but she was jealous of her ability to be all these other things: to be a mother, to be beautiful, to have this sense of confidence that Woolf lacked at times about her being in the world, versus her writing.”

3, What is society’s thought about women and identity? Do you agree with them? If Yes then why? If no then why?

Yes, I not agree with them because,“Their relationship was very passionate and very sexual, even though initially their sexual relationship was downplayed and even ignored,” says Smith. And while the two women were open about their relationship, it was also during a time when British society was more socially conservative. While male homosexuality in the U.K. was still a criminal offense at the time, there was no equivalent legislation that targeted gay women. However, in 1921, some lawmakers voted to criminalize “sexual acts of gross indecency” between women, although the law was never passed because politicians feared it would encourage women to explore homosexuality.

Smith says their relationship was hugely significant on Woolf, as Sackville-West made her feel appreciated and adored: “Virginia deeply loved Vita, and she was so happy to recognize in Vita that Vita loved and celebrated women.” In the film, Woolf is depicted as finding it initially difficult to be sexually intimate with Sackville-West; some scholars have suggested this hesitation in real life was because Woolf was a survivor of childhood sexual abuse perpetrated by male members of her family. And while Virginia still loved her husband Leonard, he too saw that Vita had a profound impact on his wife’s life, and her work, and he did not object to their relationship.

A new study exploring the attitudes toward nonheterosexual men and women in 23 Western and non-Western countries found lesbians are more accepted than gay men around the world.

“We found that gay men are disliked more than lesbian women in every country we tested,” according to the study, which was conducted by three New York University psychologists and published in the December issue of the journal Social Psychology and Personality Science.world.Sexual minorities face pervasive discrimination and hostility globally, with same-sex sexual activity still illegal in approximately 70 countries.

4, What are your views on Gender Identity? Will you like to give any message to society?

Gender identity is the personal sense of one's own gender.Gender identity can correlate with a person's assigned sex or can differ from it. In most individuals, the various biological determinants of sex are congruent, and consistent with the individual's gender identity.Gender expression typically reflects a person's gender identity, but this is not always the case.While a person may express behaviors, attitudes, and appearances consistent with a particular gender role, such expression may not necessarily reflect their gender identity. The term gender identity was coined by Robert J. Stoller in 1964 and popularized by John Money.

Gender identity is defined as a personal conception of oneself as male or female (or rarely, both or neither). This concept is intimately related to the concept of gender role, which is defined as the outward manifestations of personality that reflect the gender identity. Gender identity, in nearly all instances, is self-identified, as a result of a combination of inherent and extrinsic or environmental factors; gender role, on the other hand, is manifested within society by observable factors such as behavior and appearance. For example, if a person considers himself a male and is most comfortable referring to his personal gender in masculine terms, then his gender identity is male. However, his gender role is male only if he demonstrates typically male characteristics in behavior, dress, and/or mannerism.

Gender identity is usually formed by age three.After age three, it is extremely difficult to change gender identity.Both biological and social factors have been suggested to influence its formation.

 

5,Write a note on the direction of the movie. Which symbols and space caught your attention while watching the moive?

Vita & Virginia” wastes the talents of four people—its two subjects and the two women that play them. It is a deeply frustrating movie, a film that not only can’t find the right tone from scene to scene but feels disjointed in individual moments too. It is a bit of a chamber piece, a bit of a romance, a bit of a commentary on creativity, a bit of social commentary, even a bit of magical realism. At a certain point, I started to wonder if the disjointed nature of “Vita & Virginia” was designed purposefully to replicate the structure and themes of Woolf’s Orlando, but decided I was giving a messy movie too much credit. Sometimes a mess is just a mess.

I loved Virginia's character, she was able to act out even the slightest detail in every emotion which made it so easy for me to empathize with her character. The storyline was incredible yet somewhat tragic, and I love how this was based off of real letters between Vita and Virginia.

6, Vita and Virginia" had to be made into Bollywood Adaptation, who do you think would be fit for the role of Vita and Virginia?

If Vita and Virginia would be a Bollywood adaptation, I would select:

Deepika Padukone in the role of Virginia Woolf and

Katrina kaif in the role of Vita Sackville.

Everyone shall share their blog link with any one of your favourite quotes by Virginia Woolf on Social Media with the hashtag #virginiaandme.

# Virginiaandme

      

Thank you

Thinking Activity

Thinking Activity: The Setting of 20th Century Literature 

▶️Fantasy Literature:

   

Fantasy literature is literature set in an imaginary universe, often but not always without any locations, events, or people from the real world. Magic, the supernatural and magical creatures are common in many of these imaginary worlds.Fantasy is a subgenre of speculative fiction and is distinguished from the genres of science fiction and horror by the absence of scientific or macabre themes, respectively, though these genres overlap.

A large number of fantasy novels originally written for children and adolescents, such as Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, the Harry Potter series, The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit also attract an adult audience.

📌What Is the Fantasy Genre in Literature? 

Fantasy is a genre of literature that features magical and supernatural elements that do not exist in the real world. Although some writers juxtapose a real-world setting with fantastical elements, many create entirely imaginary universes with their own physical laws and logic and populations of imaginary races and creatures. Speculative in nature, fantasy is not tied to reality or scientific fact.

📌How Did Fantasy Originate As a Genre? 

Modern fantasy began in the nineteenth century, following a period of chivalrous European romances and tales whose fantastical elements were still considered somewhat believable. Scottish author George MacDonald, whose novel Phantastes (1858) features a young man drawn into a dream world where he has a series of adventures, is credited with writing the first plainly fictitious fantasy for adults. Englishman William Morris, who’s known for medieval fantasy and specifically his novel The Well at the World’s End (1896), subsequently broke ground in the genre by completely inventing a fantasy world that existed beyond the known world.

Building upon the legacies of MacDonald and Morris, J. R. R. Tolkien penned the first high fantasy, The Lord of the Rings (1954-1955). Both creatively and commercially successful, the epic ushered the genre into the mainstream and influenced countless writers, making Tolkien the undisputed father of modern fantasy. 

In subsequent decades, fantasy has continued to evolve, diversify, and grow in popularity, with Terry Brooks’ The Sword of Shannara (1977) becoming the first fantasy novel to appear on The New York Times trade paperback bestseller list; J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter novels (1997-2007) becoming the best-selling book series of all time; and Hollywood adapting many fantasy stories into hit films and television shows.

📌What Are the Sub Genres and Types of Fantasy?

Fantasy includes a robust and ever-growing number of subgenres, some of which writers combine in their works. There are a few essential subgenres of fantasy:

🔅High or epic fantasy :

Set in a magical environment that has its own rules and physical laws, this subgenre’s plots and themes have a grand scale and typically center on a single, well-developed hero or a band of heroes, such as Frodo Baggins and his cohorts in J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings (1954).

🔅Low fantasy :

 Set in the real world, low fantasy includes unexpected magical elements that shock characters, like the plastic figurines come to life in Lynne Reid Banks’s The Indian in the Cupboard (1980).

🔅Magical realism :

While similar to low fantasy, magical realism characters accept fantastical elements like levitation and telekinesis as a normal part of their otherwise realistic world, as in Gabriel García Márquez’s classic One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967).

🔅Sword and sorcery:

 A subset of high fantasy, it focuses on sword-wielding heroes, such as the titular barbarian in Robert E. Howard’s Conan pulp fiction stories, as well as magic or witchcraft.

🔅Dark fantasy :

 Combining elements of fantasy and horror, its aim is to unnerve and frighten readers, like the gargantuan, otherworldly monsters in H. P. Lovecraft’s universe.

🔅Fables:

 Using personified animals and the supernatural, fables impart moral lessons, like the stories in Aesop’s Fables and Arabian Nights.

🔅Fairy tales:

 Intended for children, these fairy tales and folk tales are typically set in distant magical worlds (with beginnings like “Once upon a time, in a land far, far away…”) where trolls, dragons, witches, and other supernatural characters are an accepted truth, as in the Brothers Grimm’s Grimm’s Fairy Tales (1812).

🔅Superhero fiction:

Unlike stories in which a hero acquires special abilities through scientific means, such as exposure to radiation, these protagonists’ powers are supernatural.

🔅Mythological:

Fantasies that involve elements of myths and folklore, which are typically ancient in origin and often help to explain the mysteries of the universe and all of its elements—weather, the earth, the existence of creatures and things, etc—as well as historical events. The most well-known are Greek and Roman mythology; for example, stories about the Greek Gods and heroes like Hercules have been retold countless times through fantasy films. Major examples include Homer’s epic tales The Iliad and The Odyssey.

📌Examples of Fantasy Literature:

➡️Alice in Wonderland (1865) by Lewis Carroll

➡️The Hobbit (1937) by J. R. R. Tolkien

➡️The Lord of the Rings (1954–1955) by J. R. R. Tolkien

➡️The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (1950) by C. S. Lewis

➡️One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967) by Gabriel García Márquez

➡️The Princess Bride (1973) by William Goldman

➡️The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger (1982) by Stephen King

➡️The Golden Compass (1995) by Philip Pullman

➡️A Game of Thrones (1996) by George R. R. Martin

➡️Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (1997) by J. K. Rowling

🔶Example 1

Fantastic stories of kings and queens, princes and princesses, knights and dragons have been entertaining people for centuries. One of the oldest and most important pieces of English literature is the epic fantasy poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. In this medieval tale, a green knight challenges King Arthur in a match that involves each opponent taking one stroke of an axe to their neck. Below is a selection from the tale, when one of Arthur’s knights steps up to take the challenge in place of the king, and the Green Knight goes first…

    

The Green Knight adjusts himself on the ground, bends slightly his head, lays his long lovely locks over his crown, and lays bare his neck for the blow. Gawayne then gripped the axe, and, raising it on high, let it fall quickly upon the knight’s neck and severed the head from the body. The fair head fell from the neck to the earth, and many turned it aside with their feet as it rolled forth. The blood burst from the body, yet the knight never faltered nor fell; but boldly he started forth on stiff shanks and fiercely rushed forward, seized his head, and lifted it up quickly.

Here, we see the extent of the Green Knight’s supernatural abilities—he is decapitated by the axe and picks up his own head, otherwise seemingly unharmed. King Arthur and his knights, however, are humans, without supernatural abilities. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is a classic example of a medieval fantasy featuring human protagonists and supernatural antagonists.

🔶Example 2

   

With his creation of The Hobbit and the subsequent The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien changed fantasy literature as the world knew it. The most influential part of his writing is the fact that the stories take place in a fantasy world—a world completely external to our own—now known as high fantasy or epic fantasy. In such a setting, elements of fantasy are a standard part of that world. 

Before Tolkien, the genre of fantasy was composed of stories that took place in our world, but included fantastic elements. Middle Earth is not part of the human earth, and it is home to races, creatures, languages, histories, and folklore that were completely created by Tolkien. In his world, things we see as fantastic are natural parts of the universe he developed. Tolkien also developed a full geography, history, mythology, ancestry, and fourteen languages of Middle Earth.

📌Examples of Fantasy in Pop Culture:

Fantasy has a particularly large presence in popular culture, much more so than most other genres. Many now-famous books and films have developed massive fan bases seemingly overnight, from fantasy classics like The Lord of the Rings and The Chronicles of Narnia, to modern day favorites like the Harry Potter series, the Twilight saga, and Percy Jackson and the Olympians.

🔶Example 1

   

Literally sold by the billions, the most popular series of books ever written to date is J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series. In fact, the size of the Harry Potter universe within popular culture is immeasurable. The fan following of these fantasy books is both historical and remarkable, as is the resulting relationship between the author and her fans. Rowling even made a special dedication to her fans with Harry’s last journey in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows:

 

As a result of their popularity, the seven Harry Potter books have been made into eight blockbusters (some of the most successful in cinematic history), which led to an expansive merchandise and videogame business, and then further to the opening of the Wizarding World of Harry Potter at Universal Studios—to name a few things. Furthermore, the dedication and enthusiasm of her fan base led Rowling to develop Pottermore, an online interactive world set within the storyline of the Harry Potter series, where fans can become virtual wizards and students at Hogwarts, and is still releasing content years after the publication of the final book. When it comes to fantasy in popular culture, Harry Potter is a powerhouse.

  

    

🔶Example 2

One of the most watched series on television is HBO’s Game of Thrones, based on the book series A Song of Ice and Fire by George Martin. Like J.R.R. Tolkien’s work, Game of Thrones is set in an imaginary world. These stories are unique, however, because the elements of fantasy that are part of the books—dragons, white walkers, giants, etc—are all mentioned, but are thought to have become extinct or ceased to exist years and years before. Thus, the dragons are even more magical and terrible to behold because people believe they are gone from the world.

📌Conclusion:

In conclusion, fantasy is one of the most popular and significant genres in both popular culture and literary history. From its dozens of subgenres, to its compatibility with other genres, to its ability to be adapted into any form of media, fantasy’s influence cannot be compared to many other styles.

⭐2, Science fiction (Sci-Fi)

 

Science fiction is one of the most creative genres in literature. Sci-fi novels take readers on adventures from faraway galaxies to underwater worlds and everywhere in between, introducing them to otherworldly characters and technologies along the way.

Science fiction (sometimes shortened to sci-fi or SF) is a genre of speculative fiction which typically deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, parallel universes, and extraterrestrial life. It has been called the "literature of ideas", and it often explores the potential consequences of scientific, social, and technological innovations.

Science fiction can trace its roots back to ancient mythology, and is related to fantasy, horror, and superhero fiction, and contains many subgenres.

According to Isaac Asimov, "Science fiction can be defined as that branch of literature which deals with the reaction of human beings to changes in science and technology."

Although examples of science fiction can be found as far back as the Middle Ages, its presence in literature was not particularly significant until the late 1800s. Its true popularity for both writers and audiences came with the rise of technology over the past 150 years, with developments such as electricity, space exploration, medical advances, industrial growth, and so on. As science and technology progress, so does the genre of science fiction.

📌What Is Science Fiction Literature?

Science fiction is a genre of speculative fiction that contains imagined elements that don’t exist in the real world. Science fiction spans a wide range of themes that often explore time travel, space travel, are set in the future, and deal with the consequences of technological and scientific advances.

📌The History of Science Fiction Literature:

The science fiction genre dates back to the second century. A True Story, written by the Syrian satirist Lucian, is thought to be the first sci-fi story, which explored other universes and extraterrestrial lifeforms. Modern science developed during the Age of Enlightenment, and writers reacted to scientific and technological advancements with a wave of sci-fi stories like New Atlantis by Francis Bacon (1627), Somnium by Johannes Kepler (1634), and Comical History of the States and Empires of the Moon by Cyrano de Bergerac (1657).The most influential science fiction stories to date are undoubtedly the George Lucas’s Star Wars films; further examples include the TV series Star Trek and novels like H.G. Wells’ The War of the World’s and Douglas Adams’ series The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

📌Science fiction is divided into two broad categories: Hard sci-fi and soft sci-fi.

🔅Hard sci-fi novels are based on scientific fact. They’re inspired by “hard” natural sciences like physics, chemistry, and astronomy.

🔅Soft sci-fi novels can be two things: Either they are not scientifically accurate or they’re inspired by “soft” social sciences like psychology, anthropology, and sociology.

📌Sub-genres and Related Genres of Science Fiction:

🔅Fantasy fiction:  

Sci-fi stories inspired by mythology and folklore that often include elements of magic.

🔅Supernatural fiction:

 Sci-fi stories about secret knowledge or hidden abilities that include witchcraft, spiritualism, and psychic abilities.

🔅Utopian fiction: 

Sci-fi stories about civilizations the authors deem to be perfect, ideal societies. Utopian fiction is often satirical.

🔅Dystopian fiction: 

 Sci-fi stories about societies the authors deem to be problematic for things like government rules, poverty, or oppression.

🔅Space opera: 

A play on the term “soap opera,” sci-fi stories that take place in outer space and center around conflict, romance, and adventure.

🔅Space western:

 Sci-fi stories that blend elements of science fiction with elements of the western genre.

🔅Cyberpunk:  

Sci-fi stories that juxtapose advanced technology with less advanced, broken down society.

🔅Steampunk: 

Sci-fi stories that blend technology with steam-powered machinery.

📌Examples of Science fiction novels:

➡️20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne (1870): features underwater exploration and a technologically advanced submarine—two things that were primitive at the time the novel was written.

➡️The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells (1898): tells the story of Martians invading Earth and includes themes of space, science, and astronomy.

➡️Brave New World by Aldous Huxley (1932): set in a futuristic dystopian world with many scientific developments where people are genetically modified.

➡️Who Goes There? by John W. Campbell (1938): tells the story of an alien creature that’s a shape-shifter and has the gift of telepathy.

➡️Foundation by Isaac Asimov (1942): follows a galactic civilization after their empire collapses.

➡️1984 by George Orwell (1949): set in a dystopian version of the year 1984 where the world has succumbed to extreme levels of government interference in daily lives.

➡️Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury (1953): set in a futuristic dystopian society where books are banned and will be burned if found.

➡️Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein (1961): tells the story of a human who was born on Mars and raised by Martians who comes to live on Earth.

➡️The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick (1962): set 15 years after the end of World War II, offers an alternate history of what could happen if the Axis Powers had defeated the Allied Powers.

➡️Dune by Frank Herbert (1965): set in an interstellar society in the distant future.

➡️2001: A Space Odyssey by Arthur C. Clarke (1968): tells the story of ancient aliens who travel the galaxy and help develop intelligent life forms in other worlds.

➡️The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood (1985): tells the story of the women who lose their rights after a totalitarian state overthrows the U.S. government.

📌Examples of Science Fiction in Literature:

🔶Example 1

A genre-defining piece of science fiction literature is H.G. Wells’ 1898 novel The War of the Worlds, which tells the story of an alien invasion in the United Kingdom that threatens to destroy mankind. The following is a selection from the novel’s introduction:

No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man’s and yet as mortal as his own; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinized and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinize the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water. With infinite complacency men went to and fro over this globe about their little affairs, serene in their assurance of their empire over matter…No one gave a thought to the older worlds of space as sources of human danger.

Here, the narrator describes a time when mankind was naive. He is setting up for the story of when Earth was unexpectedly attacked by an alien race, and how they were completely unprepared and too proud to believe that any other force in the universe could threaten them. Though only a story, War of the Worlds addressed a scientific concern and possibility that is a mystery for mankind.

🔶Example 2

Published in 1949, George Orwell’s 1984 shows the future of mankind in a dystopian state. It is set in what is now the United Kingdom, and shows society under tyrannical rule of a government that has their population under constant surveillance and threat of imprisonment for having wrong thoughts. Throughout the novel is the constant theme that “Big Brother” is watching.

Outside, even through the shut window-pane, the world looked cold. Down in

the street little eddies of wind were whirling dust and torn paper into

spirals, and though the sun was shining and the sky a harsh blue, there

seemed to be no color in anything, except the posters that were plastered

everywhere. The black-moustachio’d face gazed down from every commanding

corner. There was one on the house-front immediately opposite. BIG BROTHER

IS WATCHING YOU, the caption said, while the dark eyes looked deep into

Winston’s own.

This passage describes the story’s setting—dull, colorless, and monitored—and hints at society’s status. At the beginning, Winston is a citizen who wants to fight the system, but by the end, he falls victim to the government’s control tactics.

📌Examples of Science Fiction in Pop Culture:

🔶Example 

The Matrix is a sci-fi action film that thrilled audiences upon its release. It tells the story of a world where human existence is completely controlled, and life on Earth is actually only a simulation occurring in our minds. This simulation is called “the Matrix.” In the following clip, the audience and the main character learn exactly what Earth is actually like behind the simulation:

  

Here, the protagonist, Neo, is presented with the information that his life is all an illusion, and it is almost more than his mind can handle. Eventually, he is given the choice of whether to continue to live in the Matrix, or to live in reality and try to save mankind—a task that is almost impossible, and at times terrifying. 

📌What is the Difference between Fantasy and Science fiction:

🔅Fantasy 

 The genre typically has no basis in scientific fact or speculation. It includes implausible supernatural and magical elements, such as the wizards of J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series, or the dragons, giants, and White Walkers of George R. R. Martin’s A Game of Thrones.

🔅Science fiction 

 By contrast, science fiction features technology and natural or technological scenarios that are currently possible or may realistically become possible in the future. For example, in his short story, “Burning Chrome” (1982) and novel Neuromancer (1984), sci-fi author William Gibson coined the phrase “cyberspace” and wrote about a complex network of computer databases sharing information, predicting the internet.

📌Conclusion:

In conclusion, science fiction is a genre of possibility, imagination, and innovation whose popularity rises in relation to advances in science and technology. Its authors use real science to create fictional stories that explore the possible future of mankind and the universe in a way that is both imaginative and realistic.

Thinking Activity

Bridge Course: T.S.Eliot's Tradition and Individual Talent

"Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality."

  -   T. S. Eliot (1888 - 1965)

   

"Tradition and the Individual Talent"

Tradition and the Individual Talent’ was first published in 1919 in the literary magazine The Egoist. It was published in two parts, in the September and December issues. The essay was written by a young American poet named T. S. Eliot (1888-1965), who had been living in London for the last few years, and who had published his first volume of poems, Prufrock and Other Observations, in 1917.  The essay was first published in The Egoist and later in Eliot’s first book of criticism, “The Sacred Wood”. The essay is also available in Eliot’s “Selected Prose” and “Selected Essays”.

While Eliot is most often known for his poetry, he also contributed to the field of literary criticism. In this dual role, he acted as poet-critic, comparable to Sir Philip Sidney and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. “Tradition and the Individual Talent” is one of the more well known works that Eliot produced in his critic capacity. It formulates Eliot’s influential conception of the relationship between the poet and the literary tradition which precedes them.

 The essay may be regarded as an unofficial manifesto of Eliot’s critical creed, for it contains all those critical principles from which his criticism has been derived ever since. The seeds which have been sown here come to fruition in his subsequent essays. It is a declaration of Eliot’s critical creed, and these principles are the basis of all his subsequent criticism.

A partial or complete break with the literary past is a danger. An awareness of what has gone before is necessary to know what is there to be done in the present or future. A balance between the control of tradition and the freedom of an individual is essential to art.

Eliot said elsewhere that by losing tradition we lose our held on the present. Hence, a writer should be aware of the importance of tradition.

Tradition and individual talent by T.S Eliot summary can The essay consists of three parts.

• Concept of tradition

• Theory of impersonality

• Conclusion

Tradition and individual talent by T.S Eliot summary goes ahead in this way the essay involves the discussion about the tradition of creative and poetic work. He contains all the principles regarding the tradition and the poetic work of the artist.

1, How would you like to explain Eliot's concept of Tradition? Do you agree with it?

Yes, I Agree with it Eliot is of the view that no poetic work can be ideal if there is no glimpse of tradition. The artist must follow the traditional path of his ancestors in order to create the best work. The significance of the poetic work lies in tradition. No one can create the best work if he remains aloof from his tradition. He cannot do anything in isolation. He considers the individuality of the work of the poet or artist if he follows the traditional path. The best part of their work is regarded which reminds the literature of the past. The literature of the past must be the essence of the artist’s work. it will be present in the bones and the soul of the artist if he will follow the path of his ancestors. He must be addicted to gain the influence of his ancestors through the poetic work, The best and the fundamental part of the work will have a history about the past of ancestors and their work.

2, What do you understand by Historical Sense? (Use these quotes to explain your understanding)

"The historical sense involves a perception, not only of the pastness of the past, but of its presence"

The historical sense is the sense of the timeless and the temporal, as well as combination of both. This sense makes a writer traditional. One, who has the historical sense, feels the whole of the literature of Europe from Homer down to his own day. It includes the literature of one’s own country which forms one continuous literary tradition.

This historical sense, which is a sense of the timeless as well as of the temporal and of the timeless and of the temporal together, is what makes a writer traditional. 

In this regard he says, “Tradition is not anything fixed and static. It is constantly changing and becoming different from what it is.” The function of tradition is, the work of a poet in the present is to be compared and contrasted with work of the past and judged by the standard of the past. Because the past helps us to understand the present and the present throws light on past. Thus we can shift tradition from the individual elements in a given work of art.

3, What is the relationship between “tradition” and “the individual talent,” according to the poet T. S. Eliot?

Individual talent does not cut himself away from the tradition. Tradition for Eliot is an already an existing monument and the individual can only marginally add a bit, extend a bit. According to Eliot Individual is adding a brick in the minarates. Tradition is not dead but a living thing and every new artist extends a bit in the tradition. And individual makes his /her own place in the long history called tradition. At this time he is criticizing the Romantics because of their great deal of emphasis on individual. So Eliot was carrying a thread forward from Matthew Arnold that no individual has sense of his own, One has to compare with the best that is available. Thus Eliot explains the interdependence of the tradition and individual talent.

"Some can absorb knowledge, the more tardy must sweat for it. Shakespeare acquire essential history from Plutarch than most men could from the whole British museum."

T.S.Eliot demands wide reading from the poet as well as from his readers because he himself was the very scholar, highly intellectual and well read person.( Nobel Prize winner!!!!!!) he says that everyone should be well read but what he finds is Shakespeare is an exceptional. If we study Shakespeare’s biography then we will find that there is no mention that Shakespeare went to any university. And dr. Samuel Jonson also says that it seems that Shakespeare was not knowing any other language than English. But then even his works, characters, theme has universal appeal. So what Eliot anticipated is that some body will question him that you are telling that poet should be well read but Shakespeare is not fitting into the principle what you are giving, so he says that he is an exceptional. It seems that Shakespeare has absorbed the knowledge, lived through his age, not through the systematic learning. This is how he is a individual talent. If he (Eliot)can’t do like that then Shakespeare might have become true individual what Romantics were speaking about. So what he does, he says Shakespeare is an exceptional. So he says some can absorb knowledge, And others (tardy) must sweat it.

Conclusion

Eliot concludes the essay by making his judgment about the process of poetic creation. He lays due to stress to the impersonality of the poet. He must surrender himself to the work created by him. He can gain the artistic touch only when he will surrender himself to the literary work. he must consider the individual part of his work as the best one. The impersonality by an artist is only achieved when he resigns himself to his work only. He does not consider his own emotions and ideas. Now, Tradition and individual talent essay by T.S Eliot summary is ended up here with this hope that we have done our work according to readers hopes.

Thinking Activity

Bridge Course: Wordsworth's Preface

Wordsworth's Preface to Lyrical Ballads

     

Introduction:

In Preface to Lyrical Ballads Wordsworth expresses his opinion about the function of a poet and the subject matter of poetry. He rejects the classical concept in his attitude towards poet and poetry. He holds a romantic view in both the cases.

Much before William Wordsworth started writing,the early Romantic poets like James Thomson (1700-48),Oliver Goldsmith (1728-74),Thomas Chatterton (1752-70),Thomas Gray (1716-71),William Collins-59),William Cowper (1731-1800),George Crabbe (1754-1832),Robert Burns (1759-95), and William Blake (1757-1827) deviated from the neo-classic insistence on rules. However, Wordsworth is perhaps the only romantic poet who made his poetic experiences the locus of his critical discourse. Unlike Coleridge, he was not a theorist. Instead he unravelled before us the workings of the mind of the poet, and therefore, Wordsworth’s literary criticism ceases to be criticism in its most literal sense. It comes out as the matrix where the poet’s mind generates emotions and feelings with that much of intensity and passion required for transmitting them into poetic experience which forms the basis of poetic composition. From this perspective, Wordsworth’s Preface to the second edition of Lyrical Ballads in 1800 can be seen as a poetic "manifesto," or “statement of revolutionary aims.”

William Wordsworth:

 

William Wordsworth was born on 7, April, 1770 in cokermouth, a town on the edge of the Cumberland into a lawyer's family. He studied at Cambridge and completed his graduation there. He was a leader of the Romantic Movement in England. Wordsworth was a major English romantic poet but not a critic. However his views on poetry are extremely important and can be found in the preface to the lyrical ballad 1802. He is the most representative poet of English literature. Wordsworth has written a series of poem collaboration of Coleridge entitled "Lyrical Ballad". He gave definition of 'poet' and 'poetry' in his "Lyrical Ballad". His first two collection of poetry would be published in 1793, five years after his first published poem. By the time of his death in 1850 he had produced some of English poetry's greatest work and influenced by future generation of poets.

Lyrical Ballads’ is a collection of poems generally considered to have marked the beginning of the English Romantic movement in literature. The Preface to Lyrical Ballads is considered a central work of Romantic literary theory. The Lyrical Ballads was a manifesto for a radically new approach to the writing of poetry. Wordsworth declared that the most important thing in poetry was the poet's ability to record his spontaneous feelings. Poetry, he said, was "emotion recollected in tranquility".

Wordsworth's Preface to To The Lyrical Ballads:

Wordsworth’s ‘Preface to the Lyrical Ballads’ underwent a number of revisions till it had its present form. The Lyrical Ballads was first published in 1798. Wordsworth came to add a short Advertisement to it. He added a more detailed ‘Preface’ to the second edition of the Lyrical Balladsin 1800. It was extended and modified in 1802 edition of the Lyrical Ballads. Wordsworth aim in writing the ‘Preface’ was not to give an elaborate account of his theory of poetry or to make a systematic defense of his point-of-view. He wanted to introduce his poems with a prefatorial argument He added the ‘Preface’ because he felt that his poems were different in theme and style, and therefore, he should not present them without an introduction. It is a well observed phenomenon that every new poet struggles to carve a niche. That is what Wordsworth tried to do with the help of the ‘Preface’.

Over the years, Wordsworth’s “Preface to the Lyrical Ballads” has come to be seen as a manifesto for the Romantic movement in England. In it, Wordsworth explains why he wrote his experimental ballads the way he did. Unlike the highbrow poetry of his contemporaries, the late-Neoclassical writers, Wordsworth’s poems in Lyrical Ballads engage with the lives of the peasantry and are written in stripped-down, common language.

Wordsworth was alone in his effort; he penned the Lyrical Ballads with the help of his good friend, Samuel Taylor Coleridge. With friends like Coleridge, Wordsworth hopes to produce a new class of poetry, which will focus on “low and rustic life”—Wordsworth finds that the common people are less restrained and more honest because they are in constant communion with the beauty of nature. This new class of poetry will also use the language of the common people, as this language carries a certain universality and permanence, having none of the fickleness of poetic diction.

Other than these larger ideas about poetry, Wordsworth also briefly digresses into the importance of meter. Wordsworth relates that he has chosen to write poetry and not prose because meter adds a certain charm to the work. Furthermore, the regularity of meter can help temper emotions that may grow to be too much if the work were written with the stylistic freedom of prose. Wordsworth ends the “Preface to the Lyrical Ballads” on the note that there is nothing more he can do except allow the reader to experience his ballads for themselves.

Aims of the Preface

• The primary object which Wordsworth proposed to propagate through the poems was to select incidents and situations from common life.

• The great innovation was to be in the language. The poetic diction of the eighteenth century, sought to substitute the selection of the language really used by men.The “Advertisement” included in the 1798 edition shows Wordsworth’s concern about the language of poetry. Wordsworth says that the poems in the volume are “experiments” since his chief aim is to see if the conversational language in use among the middle and lower classes of society can be employed expediently and fruitfully to write poems.

1, What is the basic difference between the poetic creed of 'Classicism' and 'Romanticism'?

Classicism and Romanticism

Classicism and Romanticism are artistic movements that have influenced the literature, visual art, music, and architecture of the Western world over many centuries. With its origins in the ancient Greek and Roman societies, Classicism defines beauty as that which demonstrates balance and order. Romanticism developed in the 18th century — partially as a reaction against the ideals of Classicism — and expresses beauty through imagination and powerful emotions. Although the characteristics of these movements are frequently at odds, both schools of thought continued to influence Western art into the 21st century.

Classicism

The name "Classical" was given to the Greeks and Romans retroactively by Renaissance writers. Artists and thinkers of the Renaissance, which literally means "rebirth," saw themselves as the heirs of that world following the Middle Ages. Its ideals continued to exert strong influence into the Age of Enlightenment in the 17th and 18th centuries.

In literature, Classicism values traditional forms and structures. According to legend, the Roman poet Virgil left orders for his masterpiece The Aeneid to be burned at his death, because a few of its lines were still metrically imperfect. This rather extreme example demonstrates the importance placed on excellence in formal execution.

Romanticism

Romanticism may be a somewhat confusing term, since modern English speakers tend to associate the word "romance" with a particular variety of love. As an artistic movement, however, it celebrates all strong emotions, not just feelings of love. In addition to emotion, Romantic artists valued the search for beauty and meaning in all aspects of life. They saw imagination, rather than reason, as the route to truth.

The treatment of emotion is one of the primary ways in which Classicism and Romanticism differ. The Romantics placed a higher value on the expression of strong emotion than on technical perfection. Romantics, however, were more likely to indulge in effusive emotional statements, as John Keats did in "Ode on a Grecian Urn": "More love! More happy, happy love!"

2, What is poetic diction? Which sort of poetic diction is suggested by Wordsworth in his Preface?

Poetic diction is the term used to refer to the linguistic style, the vocabulary, and the metaphors used in the writing of poetry.

The poetic diction is the essay as suggested by Wordsworth applies the “real language of men”. He has selected it to communicate and connect it with the other men and common people. He further adds that the selection of the common language can add “vivid sensation” and “pleasure” to the readers as each and every poem has its own “purpose” to share and evoke “pleasure” to the readers.

In addition to this, the selection of such poetic diction to impart the “incidents and situations from common life”. It is only possible for Wordsworth to impart these poetic themes in the poem only with the “real language of men”. He even stated that it will add a “certain colouring of imagination” on the readers so to evoke the ” state of excitement” which the common people share in their everyday lives. The “real language of men” will enable the other men can relate “the manner in which we associate ideas in a state of excitement”.

Moreover, he argues that the “language of men” is refined when the “humble and rustic” elements are used as a setting in the poem. He states that these moment of materials ensure a “plainer and more emphatic language” which become simple and the feelings “coexist” that ensure in more comprehensive and easy to communicate “because the manners of rural life germinate from those elementary feelings”.

Lastly, he further argues about the poetic diction that the reduction of rhetorical devices in his poems has a typical reason. He tries to suggest that the reason behind it was to “bring my language near to the language of men”. He adds that the “pleasure” he imparted in the poems are very different from other sets of poetry and it is only possible to impart it only by the use of “language of men” to be the proper “object of poetry”.