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#Hamlet" is a tragedy written by William Shakespeare that tells the story of Prince Hamlet of Denmark seeking revenge on his uncle Claudius for murdering his father and usurping the throne. The play explores themes of revenge, madness, moral corruption, and the nature of humanity.

Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, is grieving the sudden death of his father, King Hamlet. However, his grief turns to anger and suspicion when his mother, Queen Gertrude, marries his uncle Claudius just weeks after the funeral. Hamlet is visited by the ghost of his father, who reveals that he was murdered by Claudius. Sworn to avenge his father's death, Hamlet plots to expose Claudius' guilt.

Hamlet, feigning madness, begins to act erratically, causing concern among his family and friends. He becomes obsessed with proving Claudius' guilt and seeks to gather evidence through a play reenacting the murder. During this time, Hamlet's relationship with Ophelia, his love interest, deteriorates, leading to her madness and eventual death.

As Hamlet continues to navigate his revenge plot, he accidentally kills Polonius, Ophelia's father, thinking he is Claudius. This tragedy sparks a chain of events, with Polonius' son Laertes vowing to avenge his father's death. Claudius manipulates Laertes into a plan to kill Hamlet in a duel.

In the final scene, the duel takes place, resulting in the deaths of Hamlet, Laertes, Claudius, and Gertrude. Before dying, Hamlet ensures that his story will be told by his friend Horatio. Fortinbras, the prince of Norway, arrives and discovers the tragic scene, taking control of the kingdom.

Throughout the play, Hamlet contemplates the nature of life, death, and the human condition through his famous soliloquies, struggling with his own indecisiveness and the consequences of his actions. "Hamlet" is a complex exploration of revenge, deception, and the consequences of one's choices.

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#LITERATURE. #A_Comppete_explanation_of_this_poem. 

A Short Analysis of Emily Dickinson’s ‘I felt a Funeral, in my Brain’

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

‘I felt a Funeral, in my Brain’ is poem number 280 in Emily Dickinson’s Complete Poems. This intriguing poem presents a number of enigmas for the reader, like many of Emily Dickinson’s poems. In this post it is our intention to offer a short summary and analysis of ‘I felt a Funeral, in my Brain’ and to try to clear away some of the obscurities and ambiguities.

I felt a Funeral, in my Brain,

And Mourners to and fro

Kept treading – treading – till it seemed

That Sense was breaking through –

And when they all were seated,

A Service, like a Drum –

Kept beating – beating – till I thought

My mind was going numb –

And then I heard them lift a Box

And creak across my Soul

With those same Boots of Lead, again,

Then Space – began to toll,

As all the Heavens were a Bell,

And Being, but an Ear,

And I, and Silence, some strange Race,

Wrecked, solitary, here –

And then a Plank in Reason, broke,

And I dropped down, and down –

And hit a World, at every plunge,

And Finished knowing – then –

A brief summary of the poem quickly reveals how odd it is, even by Emily Dickinson’s wonderfully eccentric standards. But then ‘I felt a Funeral, in my Brain’ is about going mad, about losing one’s grip on reality and feeling sanity slide away – at least, in one interpretation or analysis of the poem.

In the first stanza, the poem’s speaker uses the metaphor of the funeral for what is going on inside her head (we will assume that the speaker is female here, though this is only surmise: Dickinson often uses male speakers in her poetry). Her sanity and reason have died, and the chaos inside her mind is like the mourners at a funeral walking backward and forward.

The insistent repetition of ‘treading – treading’ evokes the hammering and turbulence within the speaker’s brain. These mourners sit down and the service takes place, featuring first a drum beating and then – following the creaking lift of the lid of a box – a sound that reminds the speaker of a bell (suggesting the tolling of a funeral bell to announce someone’s death).

Yet, as so often with an Emily Dickinson poem, the meaning is not – cannot – be as straightforward as this. The funeral suggests the loss of something, but is it reason and sanity that are lost, or is it reason and sanity that kill off something else? Who, or what, is this ‘Funeral in my brain’ for? The poem withholds this information.

Note how at the end of that first stanza, Dickinson’s speaker says that ‘it seemed / That Sense was breaking through’. If sense – common sense, reason, sanity – is breaking through, that could suggest that they are making progress, that sense is conquering irrationality and it is unreason, rather than reason, that has died.

This is, perhaps, an inevitable part of getting old: we lose our sense of fun, our childlike irrationality as our mind hardens into reason and sense (and being sensible). Part of the problem lies in how we view the phrase ‘breaking through’, which could either mean ‘coming into view’ (like a shaft of sunlight through a gap in the curtains) or ‘falling and collapsing’ through something, such as the floorboards. (Note, in this connection, the image of the ‘plank’ later in the poem.)

What’s more, a funeral is traditionally a solemn and sober affair, formal and orderly: more evocative of sensible reason than wild irrationality. If irrationality (or madness) had broken through and taken over instead, wouldn’t we expect something more chaotic and disorderly to be going on than a funeral, with the mourners ‘seated’ and the mind going ‘numb’?

The latter parts of the poem seem to suggest that we were perhaps right first time, however, and that the speaker has lost her mind: the speaker finds herself along with ‘Silence’, solitary like a shipwrecked person. And then, perhaps helped along by this solitude and silence, a ‘Plank in Reason’ broke, and the speaker describes the following sensation as like falling through the floor. She loses her sense of being grounded and stable, falling ‘down, and down’. It appears that she has lost her reason. Yet the final line of Dickinson’s poem is ambiguous:

And Finished knowing – then –

‘Finished knowing’ as in stopped knowing something, or ended up by knowing something? ‘Finished knowing’ is ambiguous. Does the speaker gain or lose knowledge at the end of the poem? And if she does gain knowledge, knowledge of what?

‘I felt a Funeral in my Brain’ is one of Emily Dickinson’s most puzzling poems in that its meaning could be interpreted in two very divergent ways. The ambiguities aren’t simply a matter of difference in meaning, but of sheer opposition. Whose funeral is it anyway? Our analysis cannot answer that question. We welcome your thoughts on a truly troubling, but brilliant, poem.

About Emily Dickinson

Perhaps no other poet has attained such a high reputation after their death that was unknown to them during their lifetime. Born in 1830, Emily Dickinson lived her whole life within the few miles around her hometown of Amherst, Massachusetts. She never married, despite several romantic correspondences, and was better-known as a gardener than as a poet while she was alive.

Dickinson collected around eight hundred of her poems into little manuscript books which she lovingly put together without telling anyone. Her poetry is instantly recognisable for her idiosyncratic use of dashes in place of other forms of punctuation. She frequently uses the four-line stanza (or quatrain), and, unusually for a nineteenth-century poet, utilises pararhyme or half-rhyme as often as full rhyme. The epitaph on Emily Dickinson’s gravestone, composed by the poet herself, features just two words: ‘called back’.

Continue to explore Dickinson’s poetry with Dickinson’s wonderful snake poem, ‘A narrow Fellow in the Grass’, her ‘My Life had stood – a Loaded Gun’., and her poem ‘Because I could not stop for Death’. If you want to own all of Dickinson’s wonderful poetry in a single volume, you can: we recommend the Faber edition of her Complete Poems.

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#Explaination_in_detail

In this poem, written by William Wordsworth in 1802, the speaker criticises the modern industrialised society, and how it has changed people’s perceptions and led to a loss of humanity and people’s connection with nature.

The Romantic Era

Wordsworth was one of the best known English poets of the Romantic Era along with William Blake, John Keats, Percy Shelly, Lord Byron and Wordsworth’s good friend, Samuel Coleridge. The Romantic Era (or Romanticism) was at its peak approximately between 1800 and 1850. It was a phenomenon that spread from Germany throughout Europe and Britain and eventually to North America. Romanticism was in part a reaction to the age of enlightenment, and the scientific revolution which preceded that. For the Romantics, this so-called ‘age of reason’ seemed to invalidate other genuine and valuable cognitive abilities including intuition, imagination, and particularly, emotion – which the Romantics admired.

One of the outcomes of the advance in scientific knowledge during the Enlightenment was the development of industrial technologies, as well as a greater focus on materialism. The Romantics saw the steady increase of industrial production as being an act of violence against both people and nature. As more and more people flocked to the early industrial centres of England during the industrial revolution which started in the late 1700s, the English poets of the romantic era were horrified with the filth, noise and inhumanity of the workers’ conditions both inside and outside the factories they worked in. Industry was replacing nature; the artificial was replacing the natural.

Consequently, in the early 1800s, Wordsworth wrote several sonnets criticising what he perceived as “the decadent material cynicism of the time.” One of those poems, “The World Is Too Much with Us” reflects Wordsworth’s view that humanity must get in touch with nature to progress spiritually.

The World Is Too Much with Us

By William Wordsworth

The world is too much with us; late and soon,

Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;—

Little we see in Nature that is ours;

We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!

This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;

The winds that will be howling at all hours,

And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;

For this, for everything, we are out of tune;

It moves us not. Great God! I’d rather be

A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;

So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,

Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;

Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;

Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.

Meaning of the poem

The poem explores how modernity has eroded not just people’s connection to nature, but also people’s sense of individual identity and agency. The poem suggests that modern city life has lead to a sort of uniformity of experience and that people have lost the ability to live naturally.

The beginning the poem presents loss in the economic sense, and blames urban life for the change in people’s relationship with nature. Because the urban world has “too much” control over our lives, we are always “late and soon” or “Getting and spending.” This lifestyle comes at a price: it destroys our power to identify with nature, or to appreciate the world around us. By focusing their “powers” on material things, people lose awareness of their surroundings. By describing nature as something that can be owned or possessed, the poem implies that humans have lost the ability to think of their lives in anything but economic terms.

The poem next talks about spiritual loss. “We have given our hearts away,” it says. The price of material gain and industrial progress is the human heart itself, a symbol of life and emotion. In exchange, people receive a “boon”, but it is “sordid”, dirty and immoral. In exchange for industrial progress, people have reduced themselves to an almost less-than-human state. This reveals a sense of individual suffering and loss beneath sweeping societal change.

The final lines, which look out upon a limitless ocean horizon, might suggest the possibility of a fresh, more hopeful set of relationships between the individual, society, and nature. But if that’s the case, then it’s no more than that—a suggestion. Regardless of how the speaker goes on to change his or her perspective, the poem’s final tone is one of dejection.

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#In_Detail_Explained

Written in 1915 in England, "The Road Not Taken" is one of Robert Frost's—and the world's—most well-known poems. Although commonly interpreted as a celebration of rugged individualism, the poem actually contains multiple different meanings. The speaker in the poem, faced with a choice between two roads, takes the road "less traveled," a decision which he or she supposes "made all the difference." However, Frost creates enough subtle ambiguity in the poem that it's unclear whether the speaker's judgment should be taken at face value, and therefore, whether the poem is about the speaker making a simple but impactful choice, or about how the speaker interprets a choice whose impact is unclear.

Read the full text of “The Road Not Taken”

“The Road Not Taken” Summary

The speaker, walking through a forest whose leaves have turned yellow in autumn, comes to a fork in the road. The speaker, regretting that he or she is unable to travel by both roads (since he or she is, after all, just one person), stands at the fork in the road for a long time and tries to see where one of the paths leads. However, the speaker can't see very far because the forest is dense and the road is not straight.

The speaker takes the other path, judging it to be just as good a choice as the first, and supposing that it may even be the better option of the two, since it is grassy and looks less worn than the other path. Though, now that the speaker has actually walked on the second road, he or she thinks that in reality the two roads must have been more or less equally worn-in.

Reinforcing this statement, the speaker recalls that both roads were covered in leaves, which had not yet been turned black by foot traffic. The speaker exclaims that he or she is in fact just saving the first road, and will travel it at a later date, but then immediately contradicts him or herself with the acknowledgement that, in life, one road tends to lead onward to another, so it's therefore unlikely that he or she will ever actually get a chance to return to that first road.

The speaker imagines him or herself in the distant future, recounting, with a sigh, the story of making the choice of which road to take. Speaking as though looking back on his or her life from the future, the speaker states that he or she was faced with a choice between two roads and chose to take the road that was less traveled, and the consequences of that decision have made all the difference in his or her life.

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 # Anglo-Saxon period 

*The Anglo Saxon Period*

- 410 CE to 1066 CE

*The Anglo Saxon Period in English Literature*

- Literature and history are closely connected to the Anglo-Saxon period.

- This period is crucial for understanding England before and after the arrival of the Germanic Saxons, Angles, and Jutes.

- Understanding the Anglo-Saxon literature requires knowledge of the Celts and the Romans.

*England before the Anglo Saxon Period*

- The Celtic and Gaelic tribes

- The Celts

- Arrival and Fall of the Roman Empire in England (43 CE- 410 CE)

- The Dark Age in England (410 CE - 1066 CE)

*The Anglo Saxon Period*

- 410 CE to 1066 CE

- The Anglo Saxons were a group of Germanic tribes that ruled England from 410 CE to 1066.

- The Anglo Saxons practiced paganism and worshipped multiple deities such as Norse, Woden, Thunor, etc.

- The Anglo Saxon society was a rich society where loyalty was the single most important virtue.

- Marriages used to be political and practical affairs.

- Women in Anglo Saxon period held an integral position and were considered the weavers of both cloth and the society.

- They enjoyed hereditary rights to property and even owned kingdoms.

- The Anglo Saxons were great poets and were extremely fond of riddles.

- However, we must note that they did not record or write any of their works.

- Most of the poetry was meant to be sung and was orally transmitted from generation to generation.

- Most works were written later by the Roman monks who came to convert England to Christianity in the 6th century.

*Christianization of Anglo Saxon England (597 CE approximately)*

- Christianization of the pagan Anglo Saxon society began during the 6th century.

- In 597 CE, Augustine was sent by Pope Gregory to lead the mission of Christianization in the south of England and became the first archbishop of Canterbury.

- On the other hand, the Celtic monks Christianized northern England and Scotland.

- Christianization of England during the Anglo Saxon period had the following consequences:

    - There had been no books before Christianity.

    - The Runic alphabets of the Germanic tribes gradually replaced the Roman alphabets.

    - Majority of the written literature was in Latin as it was the language of the Roman Church.

    - The Anglo Saxon England gained presence and visibility in the mainstream Western European culture due to Latin.

*Invasion by the Vikings and King Alfred (793 CE)*

- The Vikings raided and attacked England in the year 793 CE of the Anglo Saxon period.

- Interestingly, they only raided and attacked monasteries as they were guarded by unarmed monks and were vulnerable but rich targets.

- During this time, all the monasteries and libraries housing rich Anglo Saxon literature got destroyed.

- All the damage incurred during the raids and attacks of the Vikings began to get restored during the reign of King Alfred from 848 CE to 899 CE.

- During this time of the Anglo Saxon period, monasteries were revived and English learning was encouraged.

- All the four volumes of Old English verses belong to this period.

- These four volumes are:

    - The Junius Manuscript

    - The Beowulf Manuscript

    - The Vercelli Book

    - The Exeter Book

*Anglo Saxon Period in English Literature or Old English literature*

- Features and Complete list of Works

- Characteristics of Anglo Saxon poetry and prose

- Anglo Saxon Heroic poetry

- Anglo Saxon Religious or Christian Poetry

- Lyrical Elegies in Old English literature

- Anglo Saxon Writers and their Works

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The Merchant of Venice

 by William Shakespeare 

Background :

 William Shakespeare wrote this play between 1596 and 1599. Though this play is a comic work but is famous for its dramatic scenes. The Merchant of Venice summary revolves around a merchant of Venice, Antonio. Antonio is the protagonist of this play. He took a loan from a Jewish moneylender, Shylock, in order to help his friend. But Antonio is unable to pay back the loan.

Shylock demands a pound of flesh from his body in the absence of the repayment. Portia, a rich heiress, disguises as a lawyer and saves Antonio from Shylock. The plot of the Merchant of Venice summary is based on friendship, loyalty, wit, kindness, and humanity.

Main Plot:

 The story starts with Bassanio’s desire to marry Portia, a wealthy heiress of Belmont. In order to become a suitor to her, he is in need of 3000 ducats. He seeks Antonio’s help who is a merchant of Venice and also his friend. But, Antonio says that he is short of cash as his ships and merchandise are expected. However, he assures Bassanio that he can become surety for his loan.

Having been assured by Antonio’s guarantee, Bassanio takes a loan from Shylock, a Jewish moneylender. He names Antonio as the guarantor for the loan. Shylock is already upset with Antonio as Antonio lends money without interest and also holds prejudice towards Jews. However, he agrees to give a loan to Bassanio without interest but puts a condition stating that if Antonio is unable to pay the loan on the specified due date, he will take a pound of Antonio’s flesh.

Antonio signs the contract on seeing that the loan carries no interest, although Bassanio is not in favor of such a contract. However, Bassanio along with Gratiano, his friend leaves for Belmont to marry Portia. The author describes Gratiano as a young, over-talkative, tactless, and frivolous man.

In Belmont, Portia is meeting many suitors. But she is unable to get the right match. As per her father’s will, whoever picks up the right casket shall win Portia’s hand. The suitors get three caskets, namely gold, silver, and lead to choosing from. The Prince of Morocco, the first suitor chooses a gold casket while the Prince of Aragon, the second suitor, chooses the silver casket. But both of them are rejected as they choose the wrong casket. After this, it is Bassanio’s turn to choose a casket. Nerissa, Portia’s maid hints Bassanio by singing a song as Portia had met him before and wanted him to win. He thus picks up the lead casket. He hence wins Portia’s hand. Bassanio marries Portia and Gratiano marries Nerissa.

Meanwhile, Shylock’s daughter, Jessica ran away with Lorenzo, a Christian, and also got converted. Not only this, but she also stole a large amount of his wealth along with a turquoise ring that was a gift from his wife to him. Thus, Shylock became firm about avenging the Christians.

Antonio’s ships were lost at sea and thus he was unable to repay the loan amount. Hence, Shylock dragged him to the court. On receiving this news, Bassanio and Gratiano leave for Venice carrying the money to repay the loan from Portia.

In the court of Duke of Venice, Bassanio offers twice the amount of loan to Shylock. But he refuses the offer and insists that he needs a pound of flesh of Antonio. The Duke refers the case to Balthazar, a young lawyer. But in fact, that was Portia in disguise. Nerissa also disguises as a man and accompanies Portia as a law clerk. Portia requests Shylock to be kind and merciful but he insists on getting the pound of flesh.

As there was no way out, the court grants permission to Shylock. But as Antonio prepares himself for the knife, Portia says that as per the contract, Shylock can take out only flesh. Thus, if even one single drop of bloodsheds, his property shall be forfeited. She also adds to this by saying that he shall take out exactly one pound of flesh.

Shylock is thus left with no other choice than to accept Bassanio’s offer of money. But Portia argues that there is no need to pay him any amount of money as he has already refused it. She also says that as he is a Jew and wanted to take the life of a Venetian citizen, his property shall be confiscated. Half of the property goes to the State while half of it goes to Antonio. Also, his life is now on the mercy of the Duke.

However, the Duke pardons his life and also his property. Portia states that the Duke can not waive Antonio’s share anyways. Antonio says that he does not mind using Shylock’s half share until Shylock’s death after which he shall give the principal to Jessica and Lorenzo. He also asks Shylock to convert to Christianity. Shylock had to accept all these conditions after the threatening by the Duke to revoke his forgiveness.

Bassanio is unable to recognize Portia. He wishes to give her some presents. Portia asks him to give his wedding ring and Antonio’s gloves. After much persuasion by Antonio, he gives his ring to her. She later teases him about this incidence. In the end, Antonio learns from Portia that his ships have returned safely.

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Pentru mine Iisus este cel mai mare învățător al tuturor timpurilor!

Eu nu cred în Iisus doar pentru că aşa am fost educat de părinţi. Sunt un intelectual trecut prin şcoli, care a căutat să-şi explice lumea. Dar dintre toate marile spirite care au trăit pe Terra (Buda, Confucius, Pitagora etc.) Iisus are cea mai perfectă acoperire ştiinţifică. Pentru că absolut toate cuvintele Lui sunt perfect superpozabile pe științele actuale. Știți ce aduce Iisus în plus față de Buddha? Nu numai Iubirea,  ci si Iertarea. Este extraordinar!

Ce înseamnă Iertarea? 

Din punct de vedere spiritual, înseamnă pace şi armonie.

Din punct de vedere ștințific, știți ce înseamnă Iertare? 

Înseamnă pur și simplu modificări la nivelul ADN ului, adică al fundamentului nostru genetic. Înseamnă ștergerea programului patologic (modelul patologic de boală). Prin Iertare, la nivelul ADN ului, modelul negativ este pur și simplu șters și se instalează în corp o bună chimie și un echilibru energetic. E fantastic, e pur și simplu ca resetarea unui computer. Asta nu se poate șterge decât prin Iertare.

Mai simplu spus: vrei să îți vindeci o boală gravă? Împacă-te cu toți cei care te urăsc! Este exact mesajul Mântuitorului dat celor care veneau și cereau vindecare.

Iisus ar fi putut zice „eu te-am vindecat”, dar a ales să spună „credinţa ta te-a vindecat”. Când crezi, îţi mobilizezi toate mecanismele de vindecare. Dar a şti că Dumnezeu există nu e totul. Doar religia îţi dă trăirea emoţiei transformatoare, acea deschidere a sufletului prin care trăieşti cu adevărat relaţia cu Dumnezeu. Nu doar mersul la biserică e important, ci şi puterea rugăciunii pe care o poţi face oriunde.

Iată, dupa 2.000 de ani, explicat acest fantastic îndemn al lui Iisus, Iertarea prin genetică. 

Realizați că ceea ce spun eu este un adevăr, că Iisus este cel mai mare Învățător al tuturor timpurilor?

Eu discut despre Iisus nu din punct de vedere teologic, pentru că nu este nici competența și nici datoria mea, eu discut despre Iisus din punct de vedere al omului de știință, de cunoaștere ștințifică. Faptul că astăzi putem explica toate cuvintele lui Iisus prin termenii științelor moderne, mie mi se pare extraordinar de important.

Dupa 400 de ani de dispute între știință și religie, noua știință vine să confirme religia, existența Divinității...

Prof. Dumitru Constantin Dulcan