The Egoist :: Free Essays Online

The Egoist George Meredith's The Egoist: A Literary and Critical History George Meredith was an English author, critic, poet, and war correspondent. He was considered to be a successful writer. He published several works of fiction and poetry. These works included: The Ordeal of Richard Feverel, The Tragic Comedians, Modern Love Poems of the English Roadside, and Poems and Lyrics of the Joy of Earth among many others. Toward the end of his career, after the tragic deaths of his wife and son, Meredith received the Order of Merit. He was born in 1828 and died in 1909 (Casal). The Egoist is arguably his greatest work of fiction and "is celebrated as a major in the history of the British novel. It presents Meredith's learned insight into psychology, sociology and Social Darwinism in a highly refined and stylized prose"(DiMauro 250). The novel is about Sir Willoughby Patterene, a highly narcissistic gentleman, in his quest to find a socially acceptable wife. In Willoughby's youth his two aunts nurtured his narcissism. He was the self-proclaimed "son of the house." Which is a reference to Louix XIV, who believed that he was the center of the entire universe (DiMauro 250) Throughout the narrative Sir Willoughby has little luck with women. "His first fiancà ©e, Constantia Durham, abandons him three weeks before the wedding; the second, Clara Middleton, grows to abhor the cynosure, leaving Willoughby to court Laetitia Dale, the daughter of a cottager on the Patterne estate, whom Willoughby had once renounced as being below his station" (DiMauro 250). The Egoist is a fictionalized work rooting from a lecture Meredith gave at the London Institute called, On The Idea of Comedy The Uses of the Comic Spirit. This lecture later became book titled An Essay on Comedy (Casal). French dramatist, Jean Baptiste Molirà ©re, primarily influenced Meredith's comic views, particularly the novel Tartuffe. Being that the novel was born out of Meredith's comic findings, the full title of the work is called The Egoist: A Comedy in Narrative. The story of The Egoist is: Based upon drama rather than fiction and reflects Meredith's understanding of comedy as a means of criticizing society and analyzing the individual. Meredith was the first to replace an elaborate plot structure with careful psychological analysis of characters, an innovation that would greatly influence the modern novel. (DiMauro 250) Meredith was fifty years old when he began work on The Egoist. In 1879 he gave the manuscript to his publisher, Charles Kegan Paul. The Egoist :: Free Essays Online The Egoist George Meredith's The Egoist: A Literary and Critical History George Meredith was an English author, critic, poet, and war correspondent. He was considered to be a successful writer. He published several works of fiction and poetry. These works included: The Ordeal of Richard Feverel, The Tragic Comedians, Modern Love Poems of the English Roadside, and Poems and Lyrics of the Joy of Earth among many others. Toward the end of his career, after the tragic deaths of his wife and son, Meredith received the Order of Merit. He was born in 1828 and died in 1909 (Casal). The Egoist is arguably his greatest work of fiction and "is celebrated as a major in the history of the British novel. It presents Meredith's learned insight into psychology, sociology and Social Darwinism in a highly refined and stylized prose"(DiMauro 250). The novel is about Sir Willoughby Patterene, a highly narcissistic gentleman, in his quest to find a socially acceptable wife. In Willoughby's youth his two aunts nurtured his narcissism. He was the self-proclaimed "son of the house." Which is a reference to Louix XIV, who believed that he was the center of the entire universe (DiMauro 250) Throughout the narrative Sir Willoughby has little luck with women. "His first fiancà ©e, Constantia Durham, abandons him three weeks before the wedding; the second, Clara Middleton, grows to abhor the cynosure, leaving Willoughby to court Laetitia Dale, the daughter of a cottager on the Patterne estate, whom Willoughby had once renounced as being below his station" (DiMauro 250). The Egoist is a fictionalized work rooting from a lecture Meredith gave at the London Institute called, On The Idea of Comedy The Uses of the Comic Spirit. This lecture later became book titled An Essay on Comedy (Casal). French dramatist, Jean Baptiste Molirà ©re, primarily influenced Meredith's comic views, particularly the novel Tartuffe. Being that the novel was born out of Meredith's comic findings, the full title of the work is called The Egoist: A Comedy in Narrative. The story of The Egoist is: Based upon drama rather than fiction and reflects Meredith's understanding of comedy as a means of criticizing society and analyzing the individual. Meredith was the first to replace an elaborate plot structure with careful psychological analysis of characters, an innovation that would greatly influence the modern novel. (DiMauro 250) Meredith was fifty years old when he began work on The Egoist. In 1879 he gave the manuscript to his publisher, Charles Kegan Paul.

TOK wok

TOK Writing Assignment â€Å"When the only tool you have is a hammer, all problems begin to resemble nails. † (Abraham Maslow) How might this apply to ways of knowing, as tools, in the pursuit of knowledge? Ways of knowing embody memory, language, emotion, intuition, sense perception, reason, imagination, and faith, which take part in the process of acquiring knowledge. For instance, language can be considered as a means of exchanging the knowledge with each other and emotion is a way to express our personal feelings and convey the message to other people.We are able to use hese ways of knowing as a tool to obtain knowledge, therefore understanding the world around us. Speaking of tool, the quote above might suggests that if we only have a hammer, thus it becomes the only way to solve all the problems, which means all the problems are naturally seemed as nails in our mind, even if they are essentially not. In this case, the hammer impacts the viewpoint towards all the problems . That being said, we are likely to determine the things around us, even the world, based on the tool we are holding.This concept provides an idea that if ways of nowing is conceived as a tool, like a hammer, it will affect how we evaluate the problem first, consequently impacting the way we solve the problems and even shaping the way in which we think about the world around us. Sense perception, one way of knowing, is defined as a mechanism by how we obtain knowledge on stimulation of senses. In simple terms, we use senses to look and feel, in order to understand the world.Seeing and hearing are two common materials contributing to sense perception, which play a significant role in impacting how we think about the world. An example of it happened to me, which made me strongly feel the power of sense perception on the view towards the world. Since now I am studying in Canada, a multi-culture country, my friends at school are from all over the world, who have different skin and hair color. It is easy to see people of different nationalities, while I am walking on the street.In stark contrast, it is rare to find people with different hair color in the country where I come from, especially the time when my great grandmother grew up. By chance, I showed my great grandmother the photos of my riends here; she was totally shocked by all kinds of different hair color she saw. She sat stunned for a while and said, â€Å"Oh, how come they don't have black hair! They look completely different from us. Unbelievable, can't imagine, that's not true†¦ This is the first time, my great grandmother actually saw people in different hair color and she was shocked by that, even doubted herself at the first few seconds. It is because she thought that everyone in the world had black hair and yellow skin, more interestingly, she has never even thought about other countries in her realm of knowledge. However, for a ninety-eight-year-old person in China, what she saw every day we re people with black hair and everything she heard was about the xanthoderm. It is not surprising that she naturally had this viewpoint of the world according to what she saw and heard.This simple example demonstrates the idea that sense perception, as a way of knowing, has the ability to influence how we look the problem, in this case, the world, and then drawing a conclusion of the problem. Not only the sense perception as a way ot knowing can steer the pursuit ot knowledge, faith also shows its strong effect on it. With regard to faith, it reminds me of a poem I read in my English class. The poem â€Å"Limbo†, wrote by Seamus Heaney, portrays a depressive story that a Catholic mother attempted to kill her baby by putting him in the sea in 1970s.The reason why she did that is because this is an illegitimate infant and she thinks it is the right thing to do based on her strong Catholic faith. In comparison to the Buddhism, they would never put it in the same way, because kil ling a baby regardless of if the baby is an illegitimate or not can be considered as a sin according to their faith. Catholicism and Buddhism both believe in different faith, which leads two completely opposite Judgments towards the same thing.In other words, different faiths allow people to Judge differently as they look from the different angles towards one thing, in the second place, leading to make different decisions. Simply put, the concept that ways of knowing could shape the way we estimate problems and coming up with different ways to solve them is verified by this example. Nevertheless, there is a common counterclaim states that the way we solve a problem is based on the problem itself, furthermore how we look t the problems does not change the essential meaning or property of the problems.Although it might be true, during the process of estimating a problem and solving it, we unconsciously interpret the problems in our own unique way. Hence when we convey those problems o r ideas to other people by languages, what they acquire is the personal viewpoint towards those problems, not the problem itself, which means we indirectly change the property of the problems when we deliver them by using the tool we has. This implicates language, another way of knowing, is able to shape ow we look and interpret things around us.As a foreign student, English is my second language which I am using as a tool to exchange ideas with other people now. I always find that it is really hard for me to translate Chinese directly into English, vice versa. It is because the way we compose a sentence, the structure of the sentence and the order of the sentence constituents are all different. For instance, when we describe an object, we chronically put all the adjectives in front of the object; however, English-speakers prefer to describe an object following with a subordinate lause, which means the important part of the object is actually appearing after it.As I have been speaki ng mandarin for almost sixteen years, an entrenched idea exerts a great impact on me as I unconsciously value the things with the description in front of them more than those having the description after them at the time I see or hear them. Since I habitually pay more attention to that, I would somehow miss the part where my Canadian friends are trying to emphasize by using the way they describe a thing, which leads to misunderstandings or estimating things differently.However, ccording to my situation now, living in an English-speaking country, I should drop my mandarin hammer and pick up the English hammer, in order to nail the right thing with the right tool. All in all, the idea that ways of knowing have the ability to impact how we formulate ideas, derive conclusions, and thus gaining knowledge has been demonstrated by exploring different ways of knowing such as sense perception, faith, and language. Throughout my essay, we are able to conclude we use different ways of knowing as tools to seek the treasure of knowledge and allowing these tools to decide what (1243) kind ot treasure we are going to tind

A Rose For Emily By William Faulkner - 1780 Words

In 1930, William Faulkner wrote a five-part story entitled â€Å"A Rose for Emily† that follows the life of a young woman named Miss Emily Grierson. Faulkner sets his story in the Old South, soon after the ending of America’s Civil War, and represents the decaying values of the Confederacy (Kirszner Mandell, 2013a, p. 244). One of these values which the text portrays quite often in â€Å"A Rose for Emily†, is the patriarchal custom of society viewing men as having more importance than their female counterparts. Through a very shallow reading of Faulkner’s text, a reader might observe the seeming independence of Miss Grierson; however, to delve deeper into the text itself reveals that nearly every aspect of Emily’s life, and the description†¦show more content†¦Sequentially, the succeeding occurrence of foreshadowing appears in section three, when Miss Grierson seeks out â€Å"the best kind [of poison]† that the druggist sells, and s hortly after the narrator reveals that Homer â€Å"was not a marrying man† (Falkner, 2013, 248). The last incidence, that to some readers may have been the confirming revelation to their hypothesis, is the disappearance of Homer Barron entirely—last spotted by a neighbor entering the Grierson front door (Faulkner, 2013, p.249). At the conclusion of the story, all of these cases of foreshadowing amount to the revelation that Barron was entombed within Emily’s house after he decided not to marry her, and was poisoned with Arsenic by Miss Emily herself (Faulkner, 2013, pp. 248-250). However, the plot twist that was not foreshadowed, was the eerie detail that she had been sleeping with his corpse all these years (Faulkner, 2013, p. 250). A surface-level reader might conclude that because Miss Grierson has lived most of her life as a single woman, preceded in death by her father, she is a strong and independent female—free from the patriarchy that afflicted post-Civil War America. However, to take a feminist perspective upon the text â€Å"A Rose for Emily† reveals a much different conclusion. To begin our feminist criticism of â€Å"A Rose for Emily†, it is imperative to note that a male by the name of William Faulkner authored the text. Faulkner himself lived during the Civil War period in theShow MoreRelatedA Rose For Emily By William Faulkner923 Words   |  4 PagesA Rose for Emily; A Tale of The Old South William Faulkner was born in New Albany, Mississippi in 1897 but lived most of his life in Oxford, a small town nearby. After dropping out of high school then briefly joining the Canadian Air Force, he returned home and completed three terms at the University of Mississippi (Fulton 27). During his early twenties Faulkner spent time in New Orleans and Europe before returning to Oxford and publishing his first book of poems. In 1929 he married Estelle FranklinRead MoreA Rose For Emily By William Faulkner1729 Words   |  7 PagesJune 24, 2015 â€Å"A Rose for Emily† In every neighborhood there is always that one house that is a mystery to everyone. A house that everyone wants to know about, but nobody can seem to be able to dig up any answers. It’s the type of place that you would take any opportunity or excuse to get to explore. The littler that is known, the more the curiosity increases about this mysterious place or person. In the short story â€Å"A Rose for Emily† by William Faulkner, this mysterious person is Emily Grierson, andRead MoreA Rose For Emily By William Faulkner949 Words   |  4 PagesIn William Faulkner’s â€Å"A Rose for Emily† it is clear how Emily’s gender affects how the individuals in the town perceive her. Emily’s gender particularly affects how men understand her. Throughout the whole piece Emily is seen as a helpless individual who is lonely and has suffered losses throughout her life. When the reader reaches the end of the story the actions that Emily has taken is unexpected because of the way she is perceived by the narrator. In the beginning of the story, when the wholeRead MoreA Rose For Emily By William Faulkner1577 Words   |  7 Pagesâ€Å"A Sarah Markins Dr. Bibby ENG 107 February 11, 2015 â€Å"A Rose for Emily† by William Faulkner â€Å"A Rose for Emily†, written by William Faulkner in 1931, follows a series of peculiar events in Miss Emily Griersons life. Written in third person limited, Faulkner utilizes flashbacks to tell of the period between the death of Emily’s father and her own passing. Split into five short sections, the story starts out with the townspeople of Jefferson remembering Emily’s legacy and how each new generation ofRead MoreA Rose For Emily By William Faulkner1552 Words   |  7 PagesRyan Dunn Mrs. Williams English 11 March 11, 2016 In the short story â€Å"A Rose for Emily† by William Faulkner, the reader is given a glimpse of the internal conflict of the main character, living in the past, and the involvement of an over involved society causing the reader to look into the consciousness of an individual haunted by a past and lack of a future. The story is set in a post-Civil War town in the South. He is able to give the reader a glimpse of the practices and attitudes that had unitedRead MoreA Rose For Emily By William Faulkner1507 Words   |  7 Pages1897, William Cuthbert Faulkner was born in New Albany, Mississippi. He stands as one of the most preeminent American writers of the twentieth century. His literary reputation included poetry, novels, short stories, and screenplays. Faulkner won two Pulitzer Prizes for Fiction and the Nobel Prize in Literature. â€Å"A Rose for Emily† is a short fascinating story written by William Faulkner and it was his first short story published in a national m agazine. The story involved an old woman named Emily GriersonRead MoreA Rose For Emily By William Faulkner883 Words   |  4 PagesIn the timeless classic, â€Å"A rose for Emily† by William Faulkner we are introduced to Emily Grierson, a matured sheltered southern woman; born to a proud, aristocratic family presumably during the American Civil War. Through out the short story William Faulkner uses many literary devices such as symbolism, metaphors and allegory to play with â€Å"time† and how time reflects upon his main character Emily Grierson. Emily being one who denies the ability to see time for what it is linear and unchangeableRead MoreA Rose For Emily By William Faulkner1270 Words   |  6 PagesWilliam Faulkner’s short story â€Å"A Rose for Emily† thoroughly examines the life of a strange woman name Emily Grierson who lives in the town of Jefferson. If we examine â€Å"A Rose for Emily† in terms of formalist criticism, we see that the story dramatizes through setting, plot, characterization, and symbolism on how Miss Emily’s life is controlled by a possessive love she had for her father and lover. William Faulkner uses Emily’s life as the protagonist to examine from a formalist aspect. In orderRead MoreA Rose For Emily By William Faulkner1277 Words   |  6 PagesMiss Emily Grierson, the main character in the strange short story â€Å"A Rose for Emily† written by William Faulkner. It would be best to examine her in a mental capacity as well as the circumstances that may affect her. Throughout the story, Miss Emily’s unpredictable and eccentric behavior becomes unusual, and the reader, like the townspeople in the story, is left to speculate how Miss Emily has spent years living and sleeping with the body of Homer Barron. An important quote from the story was thatRead MoreA Rose For Emily By William Faulkner931 Words   |  4 PagesShort Stories A Rose for Emily is a short story written by William Faulkner. This story takes place in Faulkner s fictional city, Jefferson, Mississippi, in Yoknapatawpha County. Young Goodman Brown is a short story written by Nathaniel Hawthorne. This story takes place during the 17th century and discusses the Puritan belief that all of humanity exists in a state of corruption, except those who are fortunately born into a state of grace. In â€Å"A Rose for Emily,† Emily’s house is a commemoration