English- MCQ, part 2

Source: https://sites.google.com/site/computer2english/net-tgt-pgt/mcq-english-literature

MIDDLE AGES

97. Which people began their invasion and conquest of southwestern Britain around 450?
a) the Normans
b) the Geats
c) the Celts
d) the Anglo-Saxons
e) the Danes

98. Words from which language began to enter English vocabulary around the time of the Norman Conquest in 1066?
a) French
b) Norwegian
c) Spanish
d) Hungarian
e) Danish

99. Which hero made his earliest appearance in Celtic literature before becoming a staple subject in French, English, and German literatures?
a) Beowulf
b) Arthur
c) Caedmon
d) Augustine of Canterbury
e) Alfred

100. Toward the close of which century did English replace French as the language of conducting business in Parliament and in court of law?
a) tenth
b) eleventh
c) twelfth
d) thirteenth
e) fourteenth

101. Which king began a war to enforce his claims to the throne of France in 1336?
a) Henry II
b) Henry III
c) Henry V
d) Louis XIV
e) Edward III

102. Who would be called the English Homer and father of English poetry?
a) Bede
b) Sir Thomas Malory
c) Geoffrey Chaucer
d) Caedmon
e) John Gower

103. What was vellum?
a) parchment made of animal skin
b) the service owed to a lord by his peasants ("villeins")
c) unrhymed iambic pentameter
d) an unbreakable oath of fealty
e) a prized ink used in the illumination of prestigious manuscripts

104. Only a small proportion of medieval books survive, large numbers having been destroyed in:
a) the Anglo-Saxon Conquest beginning in the 1450s.
b) the Norman Conquest of 1066.
c) the Peasant Uprising of 1381.
d) the Dissolution of the Monasteries in the 1530s.
e) the wave of contempt for manuscripts that followed the beginning of printing in 1476.

105. What is the first extended written specimen of Old English?
a) Boethius's Consolidation of Philosophy
b) Saint Jerome's translation of the Bible
c) Malory's Morte Darthur
d) Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People
e) a code of laws promulgated by King Ethelbert

106. Who was the first English Christian king?
a) Alfred
b) Richard III
c) Richard II
d) Henry II
e) Ethelbert

107. In Anglo-Saxon heroic poetry, what is the fate of those who fail to observe the sacred duty of blood vengeance?
a) banishment to Asia
b) everlasting shame
c) conversion to Christianity
d) mild melancholia
e) being buried alive

108. Christian writers like the Beowulf poet looked back on their pagan ancestors with:
a) nostalgia and ill-concealed envy.
b) bewilderment and visceral loathing.
c) admiration and elegiac sympathy.
d) bigotry and shallow triumphalism.
e) the deepest reluctance.

109. The use of "whale-road"for sea and "life-house"for body are examples of what literary technique, popular in Old English poetry?
a) symbolism
b) simile
c) metonymy
d) kenning
e) appositive expression

110. Which of the following statements is not an accurate description of Old English poetry?
a) Romantic love is a guiding principle of moral conduct.
b) Its formal and dignified use of speech was distant from everyday use of language.
c) Irony is a mode of perception, as much as it was a figure of speech.
d) Christian and pagan ideals are sometimes mixed.
e) Its idiom remained remarkably uniform for nearly three centuries.

111. Which of the following best describes litote, a favorite rhetorical device in Old English poetry?
a) embellishment at the service of Christian doctrine
b) repetition of parallel syntactic structures
c) ironic understatement
d) stress on every third diphthong
e) a compound of two words in place of a single word

112. How did Henry II, the first of England's Plantagenet kings, acquire vast provinces in southern France?
a) the Battle of Hastings
b) Saint Patrick's mission
c) the Fourth Lateran Council
d) the execution of William Sawtre
e) his marriage to Eleanor of Aquitaine

113. Which of the following languages did not coexist in Anglo-Norman England?
a) Latin
b) Dutch
c) French
d) Celtic
e) English

114. Which twelfth-century poet or poets were indebted to Breton storytellers for their narratives?
a) Geoffrey Chaucer
b) Marie de France
c) Chrétien de Troyes
d) a and c only
e) b and c only

115. To what did the word the roman, from which the genre of "romance"emerged, initially apply?
a) a work derived from a Latin text of the Roman Empire
b) a story about love and adventure
c) a Roman official
d) a work written in the French vernacular
e) a series of short stories

116. Popular English adaptations of romances appealed primarily to
a) the royal family and upper orders of the nobility
b) the lower orders of the nobility
c) agricultural laborers
d) the clergy
e) the Welsh

117. What is the climax of Geoffrey of Monmouth's The History of the Kings of Britain?
a) the reign of King Arthur
b) the coronation of Henry II
c) King John's seal of the Magna Carta
d) the marriage of Henry II to Eleanor of Aquitaine
e) the defeat of the French by Henry V

118. Ancrene Riwle is a manual of instruction for
a) courtiers entering the service of Richard II
b) translators of French romances
c) women who have chosen to live as religious recluses
d) knights preparing for their first tournament
e) witch-hunters and exorcists

119. The styles of The Owl and the Nightingale and Ancrene Riwle show what about the poetry and prose written around the year 1200?
a) They were written for sophisticated and well-educated readers.
b) Writing continued to benefit only readers fluent in Latin and French.
c) Their readers' primary language was English.
d) a and c onlye) a and b only

120. In addition to Geoffrey Chaucer and William Langland, the "flowering"of Middle English literature is evident in the works of which of the following writers?
a) Geoffrey of Monmouth
b) the Gawain poetc) the Beowulf poet
d) Chrétien de Troyes
e) Marie de France


121. Why did the rebels of 1381 target the church, beheading the archbishop of Canterbury?
a) Their leaders were Lollards, advocating radical religious reform.
b) The common people were still essentially pagan.
c) They believed that writing, a skill largely confined to the clergy, was a form of black magic.
d) The church was among the greatest of oppressive landowners.e) a and c only

122. Which influential medieval text purported to reveal the secrets of the afterlife?
a) Dante's Divine Comedyb) Boccaccio's Decameron
c) The Dream of the Rood
d) Chaucer's Legend of Good Women
e) Gower's Confessio Amantis

123. Who is the author of Piers Plowman?
a) Sir Thomas Malory
b) Margery Kempe
c) Geoffrey Chaucer
d) William Langland
e) Geoffrey of Monmouth

124. What event resulted from the premature death of Henry V?
a) the Battle of Agincourt
b) the Battle of Hastings
c) the Norman Conquest
d) the Black Death
e) the War of the Roses
125. Which literary form, developed in the fifteenth century, personified vices and virtues?
a) the short story
b) the heroic epic
c) the morality playd) the romance
e) the limerick

126. Which of the following statements about Julian of Norwich is true?
a) She sought unsuccessfully to restore classical paganism.
b) She was a virgin martyr.
c) She is the first known woman writer in the English vernacular.d) She made pilgrimages to Jerusalem, Rome, and Santiago.
e) She probably never met Margery Kempe.

127. Which of the following authors is considered a devotee to chivalry, as it is personified in Sir Lancelot?
a) Julian of Norwich
b) Margery Kempe
c) William Langland
d) Sir Thomas Malory
e) Geoffrey Chaucer

128.what was the occupation of Chaucer's father?
a. leather merchant
b.civil servant
c. a vintner

129. Chaucer became a page to which king's daughter-in-law?
a. Edward III
b. Richard II
c. Henry IV

130. which of these is not certain about Chaucer?
a. his birth date
b. his death year
c. his father's name

131. which of these kings was not served by Chaucer?
a. Edward III
b. Henry II
c. Richard II

132.what was the duration of hundred year's war?
a.1300 to 1350
b.1337 to 1453
c. 1302 to 1343

133.what did Chaucer's wife use to do?
a. lady-in-waiting to Queen Philip pa of Hainaut
b. nurse of royal court
c. governess to Henry IV

134.one of Chaucer's daughter was............?
a. a musician
b. an astronomer
c. a nun

135. in which year chaucer was imprisoned by the French?
a. 1360
b. 1357
c. 1378

136.chaucer was fined in 1367 or 1366 for..............?
a. beating a friar in a London street
b. for writing poetry against the church
c. for crossing the border of Great Britain

137. Chaucer was made in-charge of many palaces,which of these was not in his charge?
a. Westminster Palace
b. Tower of London
c. St. George's chapel at Windsor
d. Buckingham Palace

138. Chaucer acted as a controller of custom during.............?
a. 1374 to 1385
b. 1350 to 1360
c. 1360 to 1400

139. Chaucer was released from legal action by ........................ in a deed of May 1, 1380 from rape and abduction?
a. Miss Cecily Chaumpaigne
b. Philippa de Roet of Flanders
c. Agnes de Copton

140. Chaucer became a member of Parliament in...........?
a. 1386
b. 1300
c. 1343

141. Chaucer buried in a corner of Westminster, which came to know as.........?
a. Chaucer's corner
b. poet's corner
c. legend's corner

142. what was chaucer's profession?
a. a poet
b. a merchant
c. a civil servant

Maneesh Rastogi

English: MCQs, Part 1

Source: https://sites.google.com/site/computer2english/net-tgt-pgt/mcq-english-literature
Poetry

1. Which poem ends 'I shall but love thee better after death'?
a. How do I love thee
b. Ode to a Grecian urn
c. In faith I do not love thee with mine eyes
d. Let me not to the marriage of true minds

2. Which poet is considered a national hero in Greece?
a. John keats
b. Lord Byron
c. Solan
d. Sappho

3. Which kind of poem is Edward Lear associated with?
a. Nature
b. Epics
c. Sonnets
d. Nonsense

4. In coleridge's poem 'The rime of the Ancient Mariner'where were the three gallants going?
a. A funeral
b. A wedding
c. Market
d. To the races

5. Harold Nicholson described which poet as 'Very yellow and glum. Perfect manners'?
a. e. e. Cummings
b. T. S. Elliot
c. John Greenleaf Whittier
d. Walt Whitman

6. What was strange about Emily Dickinson?
a. She rarely left home
b. She wrote in code
c. She never attempted to publish her poetry
d. She wrote her poems in invisible ink

7. Rupert Brooke wrote his poetry during which conflict?
a. Boer War
b. Second World War
c. Korean War
d. First World War

8. Which Poet Laureate wrote about a church mouse?
a. Betjeman
b. Hughes
c. Marvel
d. Larkin

9. Which American writer published 'A brave and startling truth' in 1996
a. Robert Hass
b. Jessica Hagdorn
c. Maya Angelou
d. Micheal Palmer

10. Who wrote about the idyllic 'Isle of Innisfree'?
a. Dylan Thomas
b. Ezra Pound
c. W. B. Yeats
d. e. e. cummings

11. A pattern of accented and unaccented syllables in lines of poetry

1. rhyme scheme
2. meter
3. alliteration

12. The repetition of similar ending sounds

1. alliteration
2. onomatopoiea
3. rhyme

13. Applying human qualities to non-human things

1. personification
2. onomatopoeia
3. alliteration

14. The repetition of beginning consonant sounds

1. rhyme
2. onomatopoeia
3. alliteration

15. A comparison of unlike things without using a word of comparison such as like or as

1. metaphor
2. simile
3. personification

16. The comparison of unlike things using the words like or as

1. metaphor
2. simile
3. personification

17. Using words or letters to imitate sounds

1. alliteration
2. simile
3. onomatopoeia

18. a description that appeals to one of the five senses

1. imagery
2. personification
3. metaphor

19. A poem that tells a story with plot, setting, and characters

1. lyric
2. free verse
3. narrative

20. A poem with no meter or rhyme

1. lyric
2. free verse
3. narrative

21. A poem that generally has meter and rhyme

1. lyric
2. free verse
3. narrative

Maneesh Rastogi

22. Sylvia Plath married which English poet?
a. Masefield
b. Causley
c. Hughes
d. Larkin

23. Carl Sandburg 'Planked whitefish' contains what kind of imagery?
a. Sea scenes
b. Rural Idyll
c. War
d. Innocent childhood

24. Which influential American poet was born in Long Island in 1819?
a. Emily Dickinson
b. Paul Dunbar
c. John Greenleaf Whittier
d. Walt Whitman

25. In 1960 'The Colossus' was the first book of poems published by which poetess?
a. Elizabeth Bishop
b. Sylvia Plath
c. Marianne Moore
d. Laura Jackson

26. In his poem Kipling said 'If you can meet with triumph and . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . '?
a. Glory
b. Ruin
c. Disaster
d. victory

27. Which of the following is not a literary device used for aesthetic effect in poetry?
a. Assonance
b. Onomatopaea
c. Rhyme
d. Grammar

28. True or false: Writing predates poetry.
a. True
b. False

29. What is the earliest surviving European poem?
a. The Homeric epic
b. The Gilgamesh epic
c. The Deluge epic
d. The Hesiodic ode

30. Which of the following is not a poetic tradition?
a. The Epic
b. The Comic
c. The Occult
d. The Tragic

31. What is the study of poetry's meter and form called?
a. Prosody
b. Potology
c. Rheumatology
d. Scansion

32. Shakespeare composed much of his plays in what sort of verse?
a. Alliterative verse
b. Sonnet form
c. Iambic pentameter
d. Dactylic hexameter

33. Which poet invented the concept of the variable foot in poetry?
a. William Carlos Williams
b. Emily Dickinson
c. Gerard Manly Hopkins
d. Robert Frost

34. Who wrote this famous line: 'Shall I compare thee to a summer's day/ Thou art more lovely and more temperate…'
a. TS Eliot
b. Lord Tennyson
c. Charlotte Bronte
d. Shakespeare

35. From what century does the poetic form the folk ballad date?
a. The 12th
b. The 14th
c. The 17th
d. The 19th

36. From which of Shakespeare's plays is this famous line: 'Did my heart love til now?/ Forswear it, sight/ For I never saw a true beauty until this night'
a. A Midsummer Night's Dream
b. Hamlet
c. Othello
d. Romeo and Juliet

37. What is a poem called whose first letters of each line spell out a word?
a. Alliterative
b. Epic
c. Acrostic
d. Haiku

38. Auld Lang Syne is a famous poem by whom?
a. Sir Walter Scott
b. William Butler Yeats
c. Henry Longfellow
d. Robert Burns

39. How has Stephen Dunn been described in 'the Oxford Companion to 20th Century Poetry?
a. A poet of middleness
b. Capturing a sense of spiritual marooness
c. One of the leading prairie poets
d. Has some distinction as a critic

40. 'The Cambridge school' refers to a group who emerged when?
a. The 1900's
b. The 1960's
c. The 1920's
d. The 1930's

41. Margaret Atwood was born in which Canadian city?
a. Vancouver
b. Toronto
c. Ottowa
d. Montreal

Maneesh Rastogi

42. Which of the following words describe the prevailing attitude of High-Modern Literature?
a.Skeptical
b.Authoritative
c.Impressionistic
d.Confident
e.Both a & c

43. Which Welsh poet wrote "Under Milk Wood?"
a.Anthony Hopkins
b.Richard Burton
c.Tom Jones
d.Dylan Thomas

44. Who wrote Canterbury Tales?
a.Geoffrey Chaucer
b.Dick Whittington
c.Thomas Lancaster
d.King Richard II

45. Who wrote "The Hound of the Baskervilles?"
a.Agatha Christie
b.H Ryder-Haggard
c.P D James
d.Arthur Conan Doyle

46. Wlliam Shakespeare is not the author of:
a.Titus Andronicus
b.Taming of the Shrew
c.White Devil
d.Hamlet

47. ___________is a late 20th century play written by a woman?
a.Queen Cristina
b.Top Girls
c.Camille
d.The Homecoimg

48. Which of the following writers wrote historical novels?
a.Jane Austen and Charlotte Bronte
b.Sir Walter Scott and Maria Edgeworth
c.William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge
d.Mary Shelley and Percy Bysshe Shelley

49. Who wrote "Ten Little Niggers?"
a.Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
b.Irvine Welsh
c.Agatha Christie
d.None of above

50. Which of the following are Thomas Hardy books?
a.The Poor Man and the Lady
b.The Return of Nativec.Chollttee
d.None of the above

51. Which of the following is not a work of John Keats?
a.Endymion
b.To some ladies
c.To hope
d.None of above

52. Who wrote the poems, "On death" and "Women, Wine, and Snuff?"
a.John Milton
b.John Keats
c.P.B. Shelley
d.William Wordsworth

53. "Of Man's first disobedience, and the fruit Of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste Brought death into the world, and all our woe, With loss of Eden."
This is an extract from:
a.Paradise Lost
b.Paradise Regained
c.Samson Agonistes
d.Divorce Tracts

54. William Shakespeare was born in the year:
a.1564
b.1544
c.1578
d.1582

55. Which of the following is not a Shakespeare tragedy?
a.Titus Andronicus
b.Othello
c.Macbeth
d.Hamlet
e.None of the above

56. Who wrote 'The Winter's Tale?'
a.George Bernard Shaw
b.John Dryden
c.Christopher Marlowe
d.William Shakespeare

57. What is the difference between a simile and a metaphor?
a) No difference. Simply two different ways in referring to the same thing.
b) A simile is more descriptive.
c) A simile uses as or like to make a comparison and a metaphor doesn't.
d) A simile must use animals in the comparison.

58. What is the word for a "play on words"?
a) pun
b) simile
c) haiku
d) metaphor

59. Which represents an example of alliteration?
a) Language Arts
b) Peter Piper Picked Peppers
c) I like music.
d) A beautiful scenery with music

60. What is the imitation of natural sounds in word form?
a) Personification
b) Hyperboles
c) Alliteration
d) Onomatopoeia

61. The theme is ...?
a) a plot.
b) an character
c) an address
d) the point a writer is trying to make about a subject.

62. Concentrate on these elements when writing a good poem.
a) characters, main idea, and theme
b) purpose and audience
c) theme, purpose, form, and mood.
d) rhyme and reason

63. Which is not a poetry form?
a) epic
b) tale
c) ballad
d) sonnet

64. Which is an example of a proverb?
a) Get a "stake" in our business.
b) You can't have your cake and eat it, too c) The snow was white as cotton.
d) You're driving me crazy.

65. Which is an exaggeration?
a) Alliteration
b) Haiku
c) Hyperbole
d) Prose

66. Which of the following is not a poet?
a) William Shakespeare
b) Terry Saylor
c) Elizabeth B. Browning
d) Emily Dickinson

67. Who has defined 'poetry' as a fundamental creative act using languages?
a. H. W. Longfellow
b. Ralph Waldo Emerson
c. Dylan Thomas
d. William Wordsworth

68. What is a sonnet?
a. A poem of six lines
b. A poem of eight lines
c. A poem of twelve lines
d. A poem of fourteen lines

69. What is study of meter, rhythm and intonation of a poem called as?
a. Prosody
b. Allegory
c. Scansion
d. Assonance

70. Which figure of speech is it when a statement is exaggerated in a poem?
a. Onomatopeia
b. Metonymy
c. Alliteration
d. Hyperbole

71. There was aware of her true love, at length come riding by - This is a couplet from the Bailiff's Daughter of Islington. What figure of speech is used by the poet?
a. Metaphor
b. Synecdoche
c. Euphemism
d. Irony

72. Which culture is known for their long, rhymic poetic verses known as Qasidas?
a. Hindu
b. Celtic
c. Arabic
d. Arameic

73. Complete this Shakespearan line - Let me not to the marriage of true minds bring:
a. Impediments
b. Inconveniences
c. Worries
d. Troubles

74. Which of the following is a Japanese poetic form?
a. Jintishi
b. Villanelle
c. Ode
d. Tanka

75. What is the title of the poem that begins thus - 'What is this life, if full of care, we have no time to stand and stare'?
a. Comfort
b. Leisure
c. Relaxation
d. Tranquility

76. Which of the following is not an English poet (i. e.  from England)?
a. Victor Hugo
b. Alexander Pope
c. John Milton
d. Samuel Taylor Coleridge

77. Who was often called as the Romantic Poet as most of his poems revolved around nature?
a. William Blake
b. William Shakespeare
c. William Morris
d. William Wordsworth

78. What is a funny poem of five lines called?
a. Quartet
b. Limerick
c. Sextet
d. Palindrome

79. How did W. H. Auden describe poetry?
a. An awful way to earn a living
b. A game of knowledge
c. The soul exposed
d. An explosion of language

80. Sassoon and Brooke wrote what kind of poetry?
a. Light verse
b. Romantic
c. Political satire
d. War poems

81. Where did T. S. Eliot spend most of his childhood?
a. Denver
b. St Louis
c. Cuba
d. Toronto

82. Ted Hughes was married to which American poetess?
a. Carolyn Kizer
b. Mary Oliver
c. Sylvia Plath
d. Marianne Moore

83. How old was Rupert Brooke at the time of his death?
a. 24
b. 31
c. 21
d. 28

84. In what form did Dylan Thomas's 'Under Milk Wood' first become known?
a. Book of poetry
b. A radio play
c. A stage play
d. a short film

85. The magazine 'Contemporary Poetry and Prose' was inspired by which exhibition?
a. The Festival of Britain
b. The Surrealist Exhibition
c. People of the 20th Century
d. Drawing the 20th CEntury

86. Why did 'Poetry Quarterly' cease publication in 1953?
a. Owner convicted of fraud
b. Fall in Sales
c. Rise in taxation on magazines
d. Shortage of paper

87. Aldous Huxley was a poet, but was better known as what?
a. Politician
b. Dramatist
c. Novelist
d. Architect

88. Of which poet was it said 'Even if he's not a great poet, he's certainly a great something'?
a. Elliot
b. Kipling
c. Cummings
d. Brooke

1.which of these is magnum opus of chaucer?
A. Troilus and criseyde
b. House of fame
c. The canterbury tales
d. Parliament of fowls.

89. Where were the pilgrims going in the canterbury tales?
A. To the shrine of st. Peter at canterbury cathedral
b. To the shrine of saint thomas becket at canterbury cathedral

90.in which language the stories of canterbury tale are written?
A. French
b. Latin
c. Middle english
d. English

91.chaucer's franklin was guilty of which sin?
A. Lust
b. Corruption
c. Theft
d. Gluttony

92. How many languages did chaucer know?
A.2
b.4
c.1
d.5

93.from which language the name ''chaucer'' has been driven?
A.french
b.latin
c.italian
d.english

94. Where did chaucer bury?
A.westminster abbey
b.kent church
c.chapel at windsor
95.chaucer was imprisoned during----------------------?
A.hundred years' war
b. Black death
c. Peasant revolt

96 .how many children chaucer had?
A.4
b.1
c.0
d.2

Education in India: Macaulay's Era

Source: https://swarajyamag.com/culture/how-india-made-britain-more-literate-the-beautiful-tree-beyond-dharampal

How India Made Britain More Literate: The ‘Beautiful Tree’ Beyond Dharampal

It wasn’t India which improved its schooling system by imitating Britain’s. Rather, it was the other way round.

Every Indian learns at some point about how India was educated by the British and how that brought about a cultural renaissance to a degenerated and stagnant India. Linked to this, Indian students also learn how two centuries prior to the colonization of India, Europe had undergone a renaissance and Lutheran reformation. 

This had allowed Europe in general and Britain in particular to assume the role of civilizing the heathen world. How true is this grand narrative of the civilizing mission of the British?

The missing links

Mainstream European historiography has always presented Christianity as a positive influence over Pagan Europe. Thus Constantine is shown relieving the lot of slaves, highlighting his appreciation of allowing Church fathers to free a slave in a Church congregation. 

In reality such a practice of freeing a slave existed not just for clergy but for all slave owners in Pagan Europe and the ceremony happened at Pagan temples. Factually though, religion became an additional chain for slaves and the slaves who escaped to “barbarian” lands resisting conversions had their feet cut off by Constantine. And this is seldom mentioned in such grand narratives.

Latter day praise of the Protestant movement is seen as a continuum of the same humanizing spirit of Christianity. A closer look reveals Protestant movement more as a reaction to the inevitable raise of modernism in Europe. And the modernism which was on the ascent in Europe was principally because of the rediscovery of philosophical traditions long dismissed as ‘pagan’. 

Thus Martin Luther, the founder of Protestantism, in his infamous tract against the rebellious peasants opposing the crushing taxes of the high-born nobles, stated without mincing words

If the peasant is in open rebellion, then he is outside the law of God...Therefore, let everyone who can, smite, slay and stab, secretly or openly, remembering that nothing can be more poisonous, hurtful or devilish than a rebel. It is just as when one must kill a mad dog; (3)

Luther’s advice was religiously followed by the princes and Dukes and Counts who put to sword not less than 5000 peasants at Frankenhausen. And Luther delighted at the massacre of these peasants and declared with pride:

I, Martin Luther, slew all the peasants; all their blood is on my head for I commanded them to be slaughtered; all their blood is on my neck. But I pass it on to our Lord God, who commanded me to give this order.

England also fared no better in the treatment of its labour population which was mostly hereditary. Illiteracy of labourers, was intentional and was justified with religious reasons. In 1807, in the House of Commons, a British scientist Davies Gilbert vehemently opposed attempts to school the masses claiming that the education for the labouring classes

…would in effect be prejudicial to their morals and happiness: it would teach them to despise their lot in life, instead of making them good servants to agriculture and other laborious employments to which their rank in society had destined them….it would enable them to read seditious pamphlets, vicious books and publications against Christianity. (5) 

Education – as a tool for social control

Even those who supported education for the peasant-labourer community considered it as a means of social control than any means of social emancipation of the toiling masses. Thus Sir James Phillips Kay-Shuttleworth, the First Baronet (1804 –1877), first secretary of the committee formed by the Privy Council to administer the Government grant for the public education in Britain, repeatedly stressed the point that the aim of the schools for the peasants’ children, “was to raise a new race of working people – respectful, cheerful, hard-working, loyal, pacific and religious.” 

Often, education was taken up by churches and bundled with Sunday Bible classes. As such, the educational standards were abysmally low. For example in the strongly Methodist mining districts of Cornwall where more than 40,000 attended their Sunday schools in 1858, the Child Labour Inquiry found only one school teaching writing. 

Data from Nottingham for the same year reveals that of the 22 children who attended only Sunday schools 17 children could not write . However the Sunday schools were praised by the elite Britons for they inculcated into the children of working class “moral restraint” . The educational missionary activity in London’s silk-weaving district of Spitalfields was prompted by need for social control which was felt after the strike in 1844 by coal miners .

The teachers were chosen not by their expertise in the subjects they taught but how well they had “a thorough knowledge of the saving powers of the Gospel of Jesus Christ” . One son of a farmer who attended the village school remembered vividly how the children were taught to be “truthful, honest and obedient” to the authority failing which the children were shown by the teacher “a picture of what was said to be the devil – a dreadful looking person with a pitch fork…would deal with all wicked children and put them in the fire with this fork.” 

The trends continued well into nineteenth century and the malaise also affected the colonies as we will see later. However, by the first quarter of 19th century there was another wave building up from London and its suburbs. And their origins were from the coasts of India.

Re-discovery of the ‘Beautiful Tree’

The remark by Gandhi at the Royal Institute of International Affairs, London, on 20 October, 1931 about the more literate India is today well-known thanks to the pioneering work done by Dharampal. The metaphor of ‘beautiful tree’ for the Indic educational system has become famous at least among the Indo-philes. Sir Philip Hartog, the vice-chancellor of Dhaka University joined issue with Gandhi. 

He commenced a correspondence with him, spanning almost a decade. Hartog had time and the bureaucratic services of an Empire at his dispense. He meticulously poured through reports and marshaled facts that suited him. Gandhi was at that time in the midst of freedom struggle spending most of his time in British prisons.

Hartog was invited to give a series of lectures in the University of London in order to allay the rising feeling among Indians that the British systematically destroyed the indigenous education. His lectures were promptly published as a book.

It was only after independence that Dharampal, the off-beat historian, set forth on the road less traveled going beyond the handed down wisdom of colonial frameworks and started going through the archives. The discoveries he made amazed him. 

Reports after reports that the East India Company had made in the early nineteenth century in an exhaustive survey of indigenous education system commissioned by Col. T. Munroe revealed a far decentralized, more egalitarian system of education than the one existing in contemporary England. When Dharampal wished to publish his work the only person who was ready to do it was a Hindu nationalist historian and a publisher, Sitaram Goel.

Dharampal’s book ‘The Beautiful Tree’ contains a 1823 report by Ballari district collector. The collector mentions a curious fact:

The economy with which children are taught to write in the native schools, and the system by which the more advanced scholars are caused to teach the less advanced and at the same time to confirm their own knowledge is certainly admirable, and well deserved the imitation it has received in England.

This is the British acknowledgement of Indian system being imitated in Britain. With respect to how the saplings of ‘the beautiful tree’ were transported and transplanted in India Dharampal provides a mention of one Andrew Bell. 

Carrying forward the work of Dharampal

Some decades after Dharampal’s work was published, James Tooley a British educationist was given a copy of “The Beautiful Tree” by an old book vendor in the old city of Hyderabad. That opened up new doors for Tooley who was already working on cost-effective quality education with specific focus on the developing countries. The result is a book titled “The beautiful tree: a personal journey into how the world’s poorest people are educating themselves” (Penguin Books India 2009) 

Tooley started working on how the old educational system in India was financed. He also worked simultaneously on how educational system evolved in Great Britain. He discovered the extent to which the Indian education system was adapted or rather imitated in England. He started with Andrew Bell who was a “reverend”. In the words of Tooley, as he researched on the life of this Rev. Andrew Bell, what he discovered ‘seemed like dynamite’ to him. 

For they vividly showed how the “economical” method of teaching in the private schools for the poor in India became translated into a method that transformed education in Victorian England and beyond.

Rev. Bell was in India to work in the asylum for the progeny of British soldiers through native Indian women, whom of course the soldiers abandoned. The imported teachers for these children were not exactly enthusiastic. One day as he was riding along Madras beach he noticed a native school session. He saw “little children writing with their fingers on sand, which after the fashion of such schools, had been strewn before them for that purpose” and he also saw “peer teaching - children learning from one another.” (

Bell had his Eureka moment. He experimented successfully with this method and in 1797 published the description of his “Madras method” in England. Tooley discovered that the new National Society for the Education for the Poor in 1811 adapted this Madras method and by 1821, 300,000 children were being educated by Bell’s principles . 

Meanwhile Jospeh Lancaster has launched his famous Lancastrian schools for furthering education in England. Bell and Lancaster entered into a bitter controversy as to the intellectual property of the particular system of education. But Tooley points out that “it wasn’t invented by either Bell or Lancaster. It was based precisely on what the Rev.Dr.Andrew Bell had observed in India”. 

Tooley further elaborates:

the cost-effective teaching methods used in the indigenous private schools of 19th century India were in fact a manifest strength; so much so...they were imitated in Britain , then across Europe and then the world and did so much to raise educational standards.

What is even more important is the way the funding of education changed in England. James Mill, father of John Stuart Mill observed in 1813, particularly around London the “rapid progress which the love of education” was making among “the lower orders in England”. 

Funding of these schools, Tooley observes, was done through school fees and private schools for the poor were increasing in Victorian England. By 1851 of the 2,144,278 children put in day schools 85 percent were in private schools funded the same way the private schools of early 19th century India were funded. By 1861, 95 percent of the children were in school for an average of nearly six years. The horses of literacy were galloping in England. 

But in India…

In India in 1854, Thomas Babington Macaulay had established his first school in India. Tooley under the appropriate heading “The men who uprooted the beautiful tree” states:

By 1858 this new system had delivered 452 schools and colleges with a total enrollment of 20,874 in 21 districts of Madras Presidency. But 36 years earlier Munro had found that a total of 11,575 schools and 1094 colleges with 157195 and 5431 students respectively!

The rate of growth of literacy in India under the British controlled Macaulay education system began to fall way back compared to the rate of growth of literacy in Britain under the Indic method of private school enrolment. The Macaulay system itself needed 60 years to improve upon the enrolment figures of Indian educational system. But even to achieve the kind of literary growth that the British society achieved under the Indic education system transplanted in England, the Macaulay system took seventy one years. Tooley observes wryly:

If the dynamics of the India private education system had been anything like those of the parallel system in England we would have seen a much larger growth in enrollment than had the British not intervened at all.

Macaulay system also perpetuated and amplified the social distances among the different occupational groups in India. Tooley states:

...completely against the committee’s explicit intentions, the new schools were excluding everyone apart from the elite, the Brahmins. Why? One source suggested that the government “was uneasy about low-caste people being admitted to the ...Schools. It was feared that, if they were encouraged the upper classes would show resentment and withdraw their support.” So the new public schools became a vehicle to promote caste privilege, rather than a vehicle for improvement of all. Again it would seem that the indigenous system had unnoticed strengths in promoting education of all including the lowest castes.

Though Government spoke of the resentment of upper class Indians the fact is that the British educational system in its very nature was elitist and often prevented people form lower strata of the society into echelons of higher education. It was almost a universal phenomenon of colonialism. Economist Clark Kerr points out:

The British system of higher education until the middle of the nineteenth century was elitist, and largely hereditary elitist. Entry into Oxford and Cambridge was limited by rule to males who were members of the Anglican Church and in fact mostly to sons of the gentry and the upper middle classes. ...Sub-Sahara Africa with its missionary schools and French lycees followed the meritocratic elite system then in effect in Britain and France.

It should also be noted that while British policy of education to masses was as a means of social control, the indigenous education in India was for empowering and liberating the individuals and the society. Nineteenth century South Travancore, one of the first victim states of colonialism, social stagnation and caste oppression reached the levels of social lunacy. 

But here the most successful social revolutionaries were all (Ayya Vaikundar, Sri Narayana Guru and Ayyan Kali - to name a few) those who studied through native educational system. The cost-effective universal education which gave England its advantages over other European nations, also owes its positive features to that beautiful tree that stood in India, which as Gandhi stated was destroyed by the very British who benefited by it. 

References:

1. James Sands Elliott , Outlines of Greek and Roman Medicine, BiblioBazaar, LLC, 2008 p.112 (Here the author after depicting Constantine’s appreciation of Christian system in vivid and glowing terms, simply notes, “In pagan times there was a somewhat similar system of a master being able to redeem a slave and register the redemption in one of the temples.” 

2. Entry for “Mutilation of the Body” in Encyclopaedic Dictionary Of Christian Antiquities (Ed. William Smith, Samuel Cheetham), Concept Publishing Company, 2005, p.244

3. Roland Bainton, Here I Stand - A Life of Martin Luther, READ BOOKS, 2007 p.280

4. Martin Luther quoted in Erasmus - The Right to Heresy, (Staffan Z Weig, READ BOOKS, 2008, p.145)

5. Hansard , 13 July 1807, quoted in John Rule, The Labouring Classes in Early Industrial England 1750-1850: Chapter 10: Education for the labouring classes, Longman 1986, p 235

6. R. Johnson, ‘Educational policy and social control in early Victorian England’, Past and Present, no.73, 1976: quoted in John Rule, The Labouring Classes in Early Industrial England 1750-1850: Chapter 10: Education for the labouring classes, Longman 1986, p.246

7. J.G.Rule, “The Labouring Miner in Cornwall circa. 1740-1870: a study in social history’, PhD Thesis, University of Warwick, 1971, pp.324-6

8. P.Gaskell, Artisans and Machinery, 1836, pp.243-4: quoted in R. Johnson, ‘Educational policy and social control in early Victorian England’, Past and Present, no.73, 1976: quoted in John Rule, The Labouring Classes in Early Industrial England 1750-1850: Chapter 10: Education for the labouring classes, Longman 1986 p.248

9. Phillip McCann ,Popular education, socialization and social control : Spitalfields-1812-24, Popular education and socialization in the nineteenth century, Methuen, 1977 pp.1-29

10. John Rule, The Labouring Classes in Early Industrial England 1750-1850: Chapter 10: Education for the labouring classes, Longman 1986 p.249

11. C.T.Trevail, 1927: quoted in John Rule, The Labouring Classes in Early Industrial England 1750-1850: Chapter 10: Education for the labouring classes, Longman 1986 p.249

12. Collector, Bellary To Board Of Revenue:17.8.1823 (Tnsa: Brp: Vol.958 Pro.25.8.1823 Pp.7167-85 Nos.32-33): Dharampal, The Beautiful Tree, Other India Press, 1983:2000, p.190

13. Dharampal, The Beautiful Tree, Other India Press, 1983:2000, p.10

14. James Tooley, The Beautiful Tree: A Personal Journey Into how the World’s Poorest People are Educating Themselves, Cato Institute, 2009, p.229

15. James Tooley, 2009, p.229

16. James Tooley, 2009, p.230

17. James Tooley, 2009, p.230

18. James Tooley, 2009, p.230

19. James Tooley, 2009, p.237

20. James Tooley, 2009, p.235

21. James Tooley, 2009, p.238 22. James Tooley, 2009, p.232

23. Clark Kerr, The Great Transformation in Higher Education, 1960-1980, SUNY Press, 1991,p.8

LIFE of my life, I shall ever try to keep my body pure from Gitanjali

"LIFE of my life" 

from Gitanjali

By Bijay Kant Dubey

The song number four from Gitanjali, beginning with ‘Life of my life, I shall ever try to keep my body pure’ is similar in thought and idea, reflection and rhyming as the other poems are in this poetical series coming down to us as song offerings. After thanking God for this life, creation and the world, singing the songs himself, making the Divine sing, Tagore swears as for keeping the body pure as because only in a pure body a pure heart can. And if the body is not pure, how to approach the Divine? The poet turns to the philosophy of satya, ahimsa and dharma. Where there is a discussion of satya, the talks of ahimsa and shantih will naturally crop as will come relatedly and where is dharma, karma will naturally get tagged to as dharma and karma are related to each other. It is Nirmal Nridaya, Sacred Heart that he talks about, Niscchal Mona, Guileless Inner Mind, Pavitratama, Pure Soul, Sinless And Chaste. Actually, when we start the worship, we start from the confession, soul-cleansing prayer that we are sinners, sinful are our activities, the sinful soul is that of ours, redeem, Thou, my Lord! How to keep pure?, is the thing of discussion here. How to keep chaste and virtuous and righteous? The Pulley and Virtue by George Herbert too tell of the same thing. To see it in the words of George Herbert, God dwells in the temple of heart and ony sweet and virtuous soul is immortal.

The poem starts on a note of undertaking and self-denials. Praying to Life of life, God the Almighty, the poet says that he will try to keep his body pure knowing it that it is He whose living touch is each and every limb of ours. He will try to keep all the untruths away out of his thoughts as because God is the Ultimate Truth and it is His Light which has ignited the dormant portions by kindling reason, flashing upon darkness to dispel it. The light of reason is the best to endow with.

He will try to drive all the evils away from his heart, nurturing goodwill, fraternity, humanism, liberalism, tolerance, love and sympathy for all, which but one makes humane and noble. As a flower is so will try to keep his heart pure and dew-washed, crystal clear and beautiful from its within. To Thomas Hood, in I Remember, I Remember, flowers appeared to be as those made from light and joy, which he held in his childhood. Flower and love are synonymous in image and idea. If the heart is pure and clean only then God can dwell in.

It will be his endeavour to reveal Him in his actions done knowingly or unknowingly as God is in each and every activity of ours. It is his Power which but gives strength.

The word, the .light of reason has a larger connotation as it refers to the periods slid by on the corridors of medieval history full of upheavals and repercussions. Our belief in superstition, witchcraft and others too wreaked havoc and damaged the basic things of our philosophy and culture and we grew more superstitious, fatalistic, blind and inactive.

LIFE of my life, I shall ever try to 

keep my body pure, knowing that thy 

living touch is upon all my limbs. 

I shall ever try to keep all untruths 

out from my thoughts, knowing that 

thou art that truth which has kindled 

the light of reason in my mind. 

I shall ever try to drive all evils away 

from my heart and keep my love in 

flower, knowing that thou hast thy seat 

in the inmost shrine of my heart. 

And it shall be my endeavour to 

reveal thee in my actions, knowing it 

is thy power gives me strength to act. 

Satyameva jayate, truth only prevails, ahimsa paramo dharamah, non-violence is the greatest religion and others have effected this poem in the making. Had he not stressed or borrowed Indian gnan, karma, dharma, mukti, vidya and viveka, he could not have this poem. Only bhakti not, adherence to bind devotion and religiosity cannot take us far and for it, we need to dispel avidya, ignorance through vidya learning which is but light and viveka, mental power of reasoning the faculty of logical wisdom. As because one should know it that fatalism, soothsaying and strong belief in oracles and prophecies have wreaked havoc in terms of chastity and purity. Say you, who is really pure? The fatalists, pundits, palmists, horoscope-makers and astrologers’ India like we not; that of the fortune-tellers, soothsayers’. The aboriginals too have not lagged behind. If we lay them bare, hair will stand on. Gnan, knowledge and karma, activity must go together with. What is gnan, knowledge? Gnan is viveka, logical faculty of reasoning and buddhi, wisdom whose horizon transcends the barriers. Vidya, learning gives gnana, knowledge and from gnana, we get viveka, the faculty of reasoning and mukti, deliverance.

Preface to Lyrical Ballads: Wordsworth

Theory of poetry

“Poetry is the thought and the words in which emotion  spontaneously embodies itself.”         

Thoughts on Poetry and its Variations by Mill.

Wordsworth took the hint and produced the theory of poetry which is contained in Preface to Lyrical Ballads wherein, at least two places; he points out: “All good poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feeling,” and “It takes its origin from the emotion recollected in tranquility”. At first glance, these two are quite opposite to each other—the one is coming on a sudden, and the other deliberately called to memory—but Wordsworth makes no difference between two and tries to explain one by the other.

In his famous Preface to the Lyrical Ballads, he enunciated his theories that he was going to use “a selection of language really used by men”, and this chiefly “in humble and rustic life” because such men are in hourly communion “with the best objects from the best part of language is originally derived” and,       “at the same time to throw over a certain colouring of imagination, whereby ordinary things should be presented to  the mind in an unusual manner”. He also adds “there neither is nor can be any essential difference between the language of prose and verse”.

Poetry “a hopeless product of intelligence playing upon the surface of life …made out of the interests of society in its great centers of culture” originates in the heart and not in the intellect; and a poet cannot write under any pressure, as Keats says “Poetry should come as natural as leaves to a tree” and again he says “We hate poetry that has a palpable design upon us”. A poet writes only when he is inspired because only then his ideas spontaneously flow out of his mind and he creates poetry of high order and which is: “nothing less than the most perfect speech of man, that in which he comes nearest to being able to utter the truth”.

Wordsworth’s own typical poems—A Moving Sight, Skylark, A Solitary Reaper— were composed in his own manner. The group of Daffodils was also seen during a walk, stored in the memory and recalled in the moments of calm contemplation to be bodied forth into the poem. This is what Wordsworth actually means when he says in Daffodils:       

                        “For oft, when on my couch I lie       
                        In vacant or in pensive mood,           
                        They flash upon that inward eye       
                        Which is the bliss of solitude;
                        And then my heart with pleasure fills,          
                        And dance with the daffodils.”

So the end of poetry is to impart pleasure, this pleasure is not ideal pleasure, but of a profound kind because poetry “is the breath and finer spirit of all the knowledge, the impassioned expression that is in the countenance of all the science”. Poetry aims at winning “the vacant and the vain to noble raptures” and also aims at evoking a feeling of love for mankind. Wordsworth hoped that with his poetry he should be able to “console the afflicted, to add sunshine to daylight by making the happy happier: to lead the young and gracious of every age to see, to think, and to feel, and, therefore, to become more actively and securely virtuous”. The pleasure imparted by poetry ennobles and edifies the readers.

Thus, “The end of poetry is to produce excitement in co-existence with an overbalance of pleasure; but, by the supposition, excitement is an unusual and irregular state of mind; ideas and feelings do not, in that state, succeed each other in accustomed order”. For Wordsworth, the first stage of the progress of poetry, which is “unforced overflow of powerful feelings”, is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings; the next is that of emotion recollected in tranquility; and the last is of its expression in poetry. He always composed his poems with the greatest care, not trusting his first expression which he found often detestable, in his own words, “it is frequently true of second words as of second thoughts that they are the best.”

F.L. Lucas once said “Wordsworth’s famous theory of style is merely a natural revulsion frozen into a foolish rule; and his style in practice is often the very opposite of his own theory, without being any the better for that”. J.K Stephan said, “There are two wholly different Wordsworths. Suddenly in this rough block of granite the mica flashes out, like diamond, beneath the moon; on this blunt, whale-headed fell the sunset strikers, like a great transfiguration, athwart the grey, crawling rags of mists”, until     

                        “…………………… the sky seems not a sky         
                        Of earth, and with what motion move the clouds”.

Despite all criticism, including Eliot’s, who said “poetry is not the turning loose of emotions but an escape from emotions,” Wordsworth’s theory of poetry can hardly be over-estimated or over-praised, thus, Preface gives Wordsworth concept of nature, function and language of poetry which give direction to the nineteenth century poetry. All in all, through the breathless efforts, Wordsworth gives a new trend to poetry.

Wordsworth says that nature obeys certain rules and poetic diction arbitrary and capricious, however, Walter Raleigh declares that Wordsworth hardly observes rules set by himself—but it is said that he writes well when he breaks his own rules. However, Coleridge’s objection is that when a poet begins to arrange words he no longer remains spontaneous.

When we say that Wordsworth did not always practise his theory of poetic diction, we refer to the poems as Tintern Abbey, The Intimation of Immortality Ode, or Simplon Pass, etc. Here, too, however, there is no bombast; the style is not complicated but there is a sonorous “trumpet tone” which is not quite in keeping with his decision to select the real language of men. Many a time, he uses Latinised vocabulary—“incommunicable sleep”, “diurnal course” “unimaginable touch of time”, etc. There is nothing much ordinary with lines such as: 

                        “And O Fountains, meadows, hills and groves          
                         Forebode not every severing of our loves.” 

Dr. Johnson declared that noble and the graceful action is degraded if expressed in ordinary and simple language; and Gray staled: “the language of the age could never be the language of poetry”. So Wordsworth rebelled against the artificial language used by the poets of the preceding sensation, which was known as the Neo-Classical language.

Wordsworth asserts that there is essentially no difference between the language of prose and metrical composition. He gives an example to prove that the meter should not be confused with poetic diction.  Wordsworth gives a false example which has been applied to poetry in which the language resembles life and nature. Here is bad poetry:     

                        “I put my hat on upon the head,                    
                        And walked into the strand    
                        And there must another man
                        Whose hat was in his hand”. 

And here is an example of good poetry:       

                        “The pretty Babies with hand in hand;          
                        Wandering up and down;      
                        But never more they saw the Man    
                        Approaching from the town”.

In both these examples, the words are in prose order and ideas familiar. Yet one stanza is poor poetry and the other is good poetry: where is the difference? Surely not in the words or metre, but in one, the matter is contemptible and in the other interesting images emerges.

In sum, under the influence of Wordsworth, poetry broke through the iron modules of rules and came to be blessed with a sweet music that rose directly from the poet’s heart and went overflowing direct to the heart of the readers.

All in all, to conclude, it must be admitted that Wordsworth gives a new trend to English poetry by eliminating artificial diction from it. He broke a vicious tradition and evolved a simple, unaffected and natural style which reaches the hearts of men. Thus, Wordsworth in his theories was, as he himself remarks “a man fighting a battle without enemies”; whose principle object was “to choose incidents from the common life….to imitate and, as far as possible to adopt the very language of men.”