What is the difference between story and plot? What is the difference between plot summary and plot interpretation? How do you analyze the relationship between the main plot and a subplot? What are the purposes of literary elements and literary techniques? What are the writer’s literary devices and reader’s literary devices? How do you recognize and appreciate ways in which writer use language, structure and style to achieve his intended effects on the reader? How do you shift from mere appreciation of a literary text to critical literary appreciation? How do you engage in literary analysis & what is the purpose? What is the difference between topic and theme and how do you arrive at the theme? How do you compare the theme and the moral message? How do you develop an interpretation of a work of literature (drama, poetry and prose) and what is the purpose? How do you present critical appreciations or your individual responses to literary texts composed in different forms and in different periods and cultures? How do you know your individual response is valid? What are the differences between Critical Literary Appreciation, Literary Criticism, and Literary Theory? Why should there be a Literary theory at all?
All imaginative writing in India has had its origin in the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, ten-thousand-year old epics of India. An author picked up an incident or a character out of one of or the other and created a new wok with it, similar to Shakespeare’s transmutation of Holinshed’s Chronicle or Plutarch’s Lives. Kalidasa (1)’s Shakuntala (fifth century AD), one […]
Read moreNew Vistas On the Early History of Sri Lanka by Wijaya DissanayakeAccording to the prevailing myths and legends, as recorded in the chronicles of ancient Sri Lanka and India, Sri Lanka was not an abode where human beings lived before the arrival of North Indian settlers around 500 BCE [1], represented by their leader Vijaya. The indigenous inhabitants of the […]
Read moreFriends of opposite gender Everything is possible is human condition: supreme eminence to ultimate debasement; selfless love to demonic barbarism not to forget sexual love to platonic love. Platonic love between the friends of opposite gender and open declaration of same hasn’t been uncommon in his story of the humankind, even in the Muslim countries. Following is an excerpt from the […]
Read moreBreath your voice to those nightingales Breath your voice to those nightingales, so they may sing sweeter Offer your cheeks to the pink lotus overwhelming the pond, so they look still more rosier Let the jewels hold the sparkle of your eyes tight, so those may shine brighter share your vermilion lips with the tender leaf of Ironweed, so those […]
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The Enchantress of Florence: Salman Rushdie The First minister and greatest wit of the age greeted him at the Hiran Minar, the tower of elephants’ teeth. The emperor’s sense of mischief was aroused. ‘Birbal,” Akbar said, dismounting from his horse, “will you answer us one question? We have been waiting a long time to ask it.” The first minister of […]
Read moreJESUS OF TIBET: MYSTERY YEARS REVEALED The Gospels record Jesus age twelve in the temple. Then about age thirty at the river Jordan. That leaves approximately seventeen years unaccounted for. During those so called lost years, the child ‘increased in wisdom and stature,’ Luke wrote. But was it in the carpenter shop at Nazareth? Nicolas Notovitch’s Accident Near Himis Paintings © […]
Read moreCIA [Central Intelligence Agency] of U.S. A. part 1 AN ACCIDENTAL SPY by Phillip Knightley Who assassinated President John F. Kennedy? Twenty years later I was in Washington working on a documentary film about the exploits of the notorious British traitor Kim Philby, the British Secret Intelligence Service officer who was, all along, an agent of the KGB. The film crew […]
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Karla and Shantaram at Goa is a gleaning from Gregory David Roberts’s Shantaram ‘I love you , Karla,’ I said when we were alone again. ‘I loved you the first second I saw you. I think I’ve loved you for so long as there’s been love in the world. I love your voice. I love your face. I love your […]
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Cold turkey off Heroin Following is a gleaning from Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts ISBN 0-349-11754-3We all cope with anxiety and stress, to one degree or another, with the help of a cocktail of chemicals produced in the body and released in the brain. Chief among them is the endorphin group. The endorphins are peptide neurotransmitters that have pain-relieving properties. […]
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Poppy fields, Opium, Taliban, Mujahadeen, Russians and Americans Following is an extraction from Shalimar the Clown by Salman Rushdie The Russians were in Afghanistan and consuqently many Afghans had fled to Pakistan, and were even to be found at forward camp number 22 in the “free”-Azad-sector of Kashmir. In spite of the enormous numbers of refugees occupying huge, town-sized camps […]
Read moreOpium: Bombay (Mumbai) to Canton (Guangzhou)Following text is a gleaning from River of Smoke by Amitav GhoshLater there would be much discussion on whether the Anahita was struck by the same storm that had hit the Ibis. Such information as was available then made it impossible to come to any reliable determination on this: what was certain was that the […]
Read moreOpium addictionJi, Sethji, said Neel. He ran his eye over the lines and said: It seems that these are excerpts from a memorandum written by a high-ranking Chinese official and sent to the Emperor.Yes, said Baharam. Go on. What does he say?Opium is a poisonous drug, brought from foreign countries. To the question, what are its virtues, the answer is: […]
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Arjuna and Krishna “O Arjuna,”, “in this world I have taught a twofold way of life; the way of knowledge for men who engage in contemplation, & the way of works for men of actions. One cannot maintain even one’s physical life without action. Therefore, do your allotted work regardless of results, for men attain the highest good by doing […]
Read moreThe Daffodils [“I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” ] When we were in the woods beyond Gowbarrow park we saw a few daffodils close to the water side, we fancied that the lake had floated the seed ashore & that the little colony had so sprung up — But as we went along there were more & yet more & […]
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Colonialists in British Ceylon; Robert Knox & The Bible; Joseph Stalin & The American church I IMAGE: Warrior King Rajasinghe the Second, (1629 – 1687), the third king of the kingdom of Kandy, Sri Lanka, who held a melange of Europeans captive (open air -closed kingdom prisoners) within the natural fortress of Kandy surrounded by hills and looped by River Mahawel Ganga; no way out. I have never […]
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