Sunday, November 27, 2011

Sansmaran, TV Serial, 1995


English: Reminisces. Sansmaran Is a Doordarshan TV Serial, broadcast in India in year 1995. This is contained in IMDb Sansmaran , 1995. It was Directed by Kannada Director, T.S. Nagabharana, whose other popular work is Tenalirama.

Plot

The serial is about a South-Indian traditional Kannad family whose son has found a job in the USA. This is a narration based story , from the point of view of the old hindu man, whose son is working in the USA. He and his wife go to the USA to meet their son. The son takes them for a trip of the USA wherein the Disney land features. The old man compares the freedom and enjoyment of life in America with his life back at home. It slowly becomes a comparison of the cultures of America and India. In summary, the old man also diagnosis the shortcomings of his native culture after viewing it from the eyes of another culture. Thus, the narration is a broadening of horizon story of a Hindu view point. This serial was telecast around 1995 , at the time Indian Economy had just started to open to foreign investments and Indians were just beginning to dream of going to America for job merged with tourism. Perhaps the congestion of life in India has started to strangulate their thinking. It was coming of age serial which revered the view about the open-ness of American Culture for the people of older ages whose sons were just beginning to find jobs in IT multinationals and were being sent abroad, to the US, on assignment. It was starting to bring them not just money , but also a cultural escapade to their parents who had spent their lifetime in miseries of Indian life only for the well-being of their children. The american culture of open-ness had started to find acceptance not just in Indian youngsters but also in their parents, creditable to the success of this tele-serial.

Tuesday, November 15, 2011

Essay on Criticism ..by Alexander Pope ..General Outline


I came across a very beautiful poem, Essay on Criticism , by Alexander Pope. Here i a attempt to put my understanding of the poem. 
In order to do the paraphrasing, I searched a little bit on the net and found the following 'general outline' helpful for proceeding in my work. Over here I produce that General Outline:

By : Walter Jackson Bate

The Essay on Criticism is more profitably introduced by a topical summary of its themes than by an analysis of its premises. For its premises and aims are those of the entire neoclassic tradition. And the poem itself is a statement or summary of them rather than an individual argument or analysis. The essay may be described as falling into three parts, with the following subdivisions:
I. General qualities needed by the critic (1-200):
A. Awareness of his own limitations (46-67).
B. Knowledge of Nature in its general forms (68-87).
1. Nature defined (70-79).
2. Need of both wit and judgment to conceive it (80-87).
C. Imitation of the Ancients, and the use of rules (88-200).
1. Value of ancient poetry and criticism as models (88-103).
2. Censure of slavish imitation and codified rules (104-117).
3. Need to study the general aims and qualities of the Ancients (118-140).
4. Exceptions to the rules (141-168).
II. Particular laws for the critic (201-559):
Digression on the need for humility (201-232).
A. Consider the work as a total unit (233-252).
B. Seek the author's aim (253-266).
C. Examples of false critics who mistake the part for the whole (267-383).
1. The pedant who forgets the end and judges by rules (267-288).
2. The critic who judges by imagery and metaphor alone (289-304).
3. The rhetorician who judges by the pomp and colour of the diction (305-336).
4. Critics who judge by versification only (337-343).
Pope's digression to exemplify "representative meter" (344-383).
D. Need for tolerance and for aloofness from extremes of fashion and personal mood (384-559).
1. The fashionable critic: the cults, as ends in themselves, of the foreign (398-405), the new (406-423), and the esoteric (424-451).
2. Personal subjectivity and its pitfalls (452-559).
III. The ideal character of the critic (560-744):
A. Qualities needed: integrity (562-565), modesty (566-571), tact (572-577), courage (578-583).
B. Their opposites (584-630).
C. Concluding eulogy of ancient critics as models (643-744).