साहित्यिक लेखन / Literary Writing
Poetry, prose and drama
Introduce the English half's survey of literary forms.
Quotations frame the unit: drama 'holding the mirror up to nature' (George P. Baker), and Shaw's view that writing about 'himself and his own time' means writing about everyone. Form and content are like two sides of a coin.
Poetry uses rhyme and rhythm to stir sense and feeling; its oldest surviving example is the Epic of Gilgamesh; genres are epic, lyric and dramatic; examples here: Subramania Bharati's free-verse 'Wind' and Shelley's rhymed 'Ode to the West Wind'.
Prose: stories came from oral tradition (epics, Panchatantra, Aesop, Arabian Nights); the short story turns on one incident; the novel is its extended form (Mulk Raj Anand's 'The Lost Child' opening shows how to grip a reader).
The essay presents a personal point of view in a clear, organised, simple style; G. N. Devy's 'Tribal Verse' warns that oral tribal literatures are being lost.
Drama began in epic narration and dance; Bharata's Natya-Shastra; Greek tragedy and comedy; Shakespeare, Ibsen, Beckett; Indian folk forms such as Yakshagana, Jatra, Tamasha, Nautanki and Kudiyattam (the only surviving Sanskrit theatre).
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