Shri Aurobindo's views on Education

Paper Name    :-  Indian Writing in English

Name               :-  Avani N. Dave

Roll No.           :-  2 

Semester         :- M.A- 1

Topic               : - “Shri Aurobindo's views on
                              Education"

Date                 :-  17 /10/12

Year                :-  2012-2013

Submitted to   :- Heenaba Zala

                          Department of English,

                            Bhavnagar University.

                              Before knowing Shri Aurobindo’s views on Education, The Basic Concept of Education is as under.

The Concepts of Education as given by prominent Indian educationists are as follows.

Rigved: "Education is something which makes man self-reliant and selfless".

 Panini: "Human education means the training which one gets from nature".

 Vivekanand: “Education is the manifestation of the divine perfection, already existing  in man."

Tagore: "The widest road leading to the solution of all our problems is education."

Sri Aurobindo: "Education which will offer the tools whereby one can live for the  divine, for the country, for oneself and for others and this must be the ideal of every school which calls itself national".

Meaning:

According to some learned people, the word "Education" has been derived from the Latin term "Educatum" which means the act of teaching or training. A group of educationists say that it has come from another Latin word "Educare" which means "to bring up" or "to raise".

Sri Aurobiondo’s views on Education :-

                  

                                Sir aurobindo always laid great stress on education. He himself had the best education while in Cambridge, and between 1897 and 1906, was a professor in the Bengal National College. So he knew the question in depth. And he had hopes in the young. He trusted that youth can give their good contribution in rebuilding the nation. Sir Auribindo never tired of calling for what he termed “ a national education”. He gave his brief definition for it. :-

                                    The education which starting with the past and making full use of the present builds up a great nation. Whoever wishes to cut off the nation from its past is no friend of our national growth. Whoever fails to take advantages of the present is losing us the battle of life. We must therefore save for India all that she has stored up of knowledge, character and noble thought in her immemorial past. We must acquire for her best knowledge that Europe can give her and assimilate it to her own peculiar type of national temperament. We must introduce the best methods of teaching humanity has developed, whether modern or ancient. And all these we must harmonise into a system which will be impregnated with the spirit of self-reliance so as to build up men and not machines.

                                       Sir aurobbindo had little love for British education in India, which he called a ‘‘  mercenary and soulless education,” and for its debilitating influence on the “ the innate possibilities” of the Indian brain. “ In India,” he said “ the students generally have great capacities, but the system of education represses and destroys these capacities.” As in every field, he wanted India to crave out her own path courageously:

The greatest knowledge and the greatest riches man can possess are India’s by inheritance; she has that for all mankind is waiting but the full soul rich with the inheritance of the past, the widening gains of the present, and the large potentiality of the future, can come only by a system of National Education. It can not come by any extension or imitation of the system of the existing universities with its radically false principles, its vicious and mechanical methods, its dead-alive routine tradition and its narrow and sightless spirit. Only a new spirit and a new body born from the heart of the Nation and full of the light and hope of it’s resurgence can create it.  

                                           Young Indians are increasingly deprived from their rightful heritage, cut off from their deeper roots. He have often found himself in the curious position of explaining to some of them the symbolic meaning of an   ancient Indian myth, for instance or worse, of having to narrate the myth it self. Again, a French or English child will be given at least some semblance of cultural identity, whatever its worth; but here, in this country which not long ago had the most living culture in the world, a child is given no nourishing food only some insipid, unappetizing hodgepodge, cooked in the west and pickled in India. This means that in the name of some irrational principles, India as an entity is throwing away some precious treasures.  As Sri Aurobindo put it :

Ancient India’s culture, attacked by European modernism, overpowered in the material field, betrayed by the indifference of her children, may perish for ever along with the soul of the nation that holds it in its keeping.

             Young Indians are increasingly deprived from their deeper roots. He have often found

Concept of Spiritual Education :-

‘‘Man can not rest permanently until he reaches some highest 

   good.’’

‘‘ To fulfil god in life is man’s manhood. ’’  - Sri Aurobindo

                           A true spiritual education has to teach the students to recognize this relationship of spirit and matter, so that one neither looks down upon matter and all the problems the material life presents, nor shuns spirituality as a less on in escapism.

    

                          A Spiritual education would prepare the student to face life armed with a greater faith and face with an outlook which is integral. His recognition of the problems of life will not depend entirely on their appearances. He will be able to grow spirituality through tracking. 

   

                               Sri Aurobindo has been widely acclaimed as a modern seer and a Vedic scholar. He had headed the first National College of Education of Calcutta and had written extensively on the subject of education. His approach to ‘Integral education’ is in itself a unique concept. Education of the body, mind and spirit are each expounded in his writings on education, but their integration is even more significant. He has also dwelt on the social and psychological aspects of education. His thought has been put to practice at Sri Aurobindo Ashram’s educational programmes, The Auroville and several other schools of the country.

"The first principle of teaching is that nothing can be taught". This statement of Sri Aurobindo condenses a whole lot of theories of education and a new form of pedagogy closer to integral approach to education. It puts learning above teaching. It makes learning a self-starting, self propelling process. It redefines the role of the teacher from a mere possessor of information to a facilitator and a guide for the learner. I am not aware of any other profound statement in teaching which has such a permanent validity.''  - Shri Aurobindo        
 
Integral education for the growth of the soul:-

                                            Originally a poet and a politician, not a philosopher, Shri Aurobindo engaged himself for forty-five years out of his seventy-eight years in the practice of Yoga, and developed a philosophy of complete affirmation, affirming the reality of the world from the ultimate standpoint and the meaningfulness of socio-political action from the spiritual standpoint

                                          He was sovereignly aware of the significance of variations in the concept of man, his life and destiny, of the nation and of humanity and the life of human race, which get reflected in the respective philosophies of education, and developed his scheme of integral education rooted in ‘the developing soul of India, to her future need, to the greatness of her coming self creation, to her eternal spirit according to Shri Aurobindo, has seen always in man the individual a soul, a portion of the Divinity enwrapped in mind and body, a conscious manifestation in Nature of the universal self and spirit. In his educational philosophy, Shri Aurobindo upheld the basic but commonly forgotten principle that ‘it is the spirit, the living and vital issue that we have to do with, and there the question is not between modernism and antiquity, but between an imported civilisation and the greater possibilities of the Indian mind and nature,not between the present and the past, but between the present and the future’. In devising a true and living education, three things according to Sri Aurobindo the man, the individual in his commonness and his uniqueness, the nation or people and universal humanity should be taken into account.

 Conclusion :-

                                             thus, Aurobindo conceived of education as an instrument for the real working of the spirit in the mind and body of the individual and the nation. He thought of education that for the individual will make its one central object the growth of the soul and its powers and possibilities, for the nation will keep first in view the preservation, strengthening and enrichment of the nation—soul and its Dharma (virtue) and raise both into powers of the life and ascending mind and soul of humanity. 

Catharsis - Literary Criticism

Paper Name    :-  Literary Criticism

Name               :-  Avani N. Dave

Roll No.           :- 2

Semester         :- M.A 1

Topic               :-  " Catharsis ''

Date                 :-  17/10/12

Year                :-  2012-2013

Submitted to   :- Dr. Dilip Barad

                            Department of English,

                            Bhavnagar University

 Aristotle's concept of catharsis

                          The catharsis theory originated with Aristotle and his play Poetics. Aristotle believed that when people viewed tragedy in plays, it gave them an emotional release. Any negative feelings that they may feel such as fear or anger, were purged when they view characters in tragic events. This theory has been carried over into modern day mass media. It is used to justify the increase in the amount of violence we see in the media.

The Meaning of Catharsis :-

                             

                     ‘‘First, there has been age- long controversy about Aristotle’s meaning, though it has almost always been accepted that whatever he meant was profoundly right. Many, for example, have translated. It is bad to be selfishly sentimental, timid Catharsis as ‘Purification’, ‘correction or refinement’, ‘Reinigung’ , or the like. It has been suggested that our pity and fear are ‘purified’ in the theatre by , disinterested or impartial. It is bad to selfishly sentimental, timid, and querulous; but it is good to pity Othello or to fear for Hamlet. Our selfish emotion has been sublimated. All this is most edifying; but it does not appear to be what Aristotle intended.

                             

                           There as strong evidence that catharsis means, not ‘Purification but ‘Purgation’. A medical metaphor. Yet, owing to changes in medical thought, ‘purgation’ has become radically misleading to modern minds. Inevitably we think of purgatives and complete evacuations of water products; and then outraged critics ask why our emotions should be so ill-treated.

                           “ But Catharsis means ‘purgation’, not in the modern, but in the order, wider English sense which includes the partial removal of excess ‘homours’. The theory is as old as the school of Hippocrats that on a due balance. Of these humours depend the health of body and mind alike.” – F.L.Lucas.

                                To translate Catharsis is purgation today is misleading owing to the change of meaning which the word has undergone. The theory of humours is outdated in the medical science. ‘purgation’ has assumed different meaning. It is no longer what Aristotle has in mind. Therefore, it would be more appropriate to translate Catharsis as ‘moderating’ or ‘tempering’ of the passions. But such translation, as F.L.Lucas suggests, ‘keep the sense, but loss the metaphor.’  Anyway, when it is not possible to keep up both, the meaning and the metaphor it is better to maintain the meaning and sacrifice the metaphor in translating Catharsis as ‘moderating’ or ‘temptaing’.

                                 

                                The passions to be moderated are these of pity and fear. The pity and fear to be moderated are, again of specific kind. There can never be an excess in the pity that results into a useful action. But there can be too much of pity as an intense and helpless feeling, and there can be also too much of self-pity which is not a praise-worthy virtue. The Catharsis or moderation of such pity ought to be achieved in the theatre or otherwise when possible, for such moderation keeps the mind in a healthy state of balance.

                               Similarly, only specific kinds of fear are to be moderated. Aristotle does not seem to have in mind the he fear of horrors on the stage which as Lucas suggests are “supposed to have made women miscarry with terror in the theatre”. Aristotle specially mentions ‘sympathetic fear for the characters’. “ And by allowing free vent to this in the theatre, men are to lesson, in facing life thereafter, their own fear of the general dread of destiny.” F.L Lucas

                              

                              Catharsis established tragedy as a drama of balance. Aristotle writes that the function of tragedy is to arouse the emotions of pity and fear, and to affect the Catharsis of these emotions. Aristotle has used the term Catharsis only once, but no phrase has been handled so frequently by critics, and poets. Aristotle has not explained what exactly he meant by the word, nor do we get any help from the Poetics. For this reason, help and guidance has to be taken from his other works. Further, Catharsis has three meaning. It means ‘purgation’, ‘purification’, and ‘clarification’, and each critic has used the word in one or the other senses. All agree that Tragedy arouses fear and pity, but there are sharp differences as to the process, the way by which the rousing of these emotions gives pleasure.

                            Catharsis has been taken as a medical metaphor, ‘purgation’, denoting a pathological effect on the soul similar to the effect of medicine on the body. This view is borne out by a passage in the Politics where Aristotle refers to religious frenzy being cured by certain tunes which excite religious frenzy.

In Tragedy: 

“…pity and fear, artificially stirred the latent pity and fear which we bring with us from real life.” 

          

                              In the Neo-Classical era, Catharsis was taken to be an allopathic treatment with the unlike curing unlike. The arousing of pity and fear was supposed to bring about the purgation or ‘evacuation’ of other emotions, like anger, pride etc. As Thomas Taylor holds:

“We learn from the terrible fates of evil men to avoid the vices they manifest.” 

F. L. Lucas rejects the idea that Catharsis is a medical metaphor, and says that:

“The theatre is not a hospital.”

                             Both Lucas and Herbert Reed regard it as a kind of safety valve. Pity and fear are aroused, we give free play to these emotions which is followed by emotional relief. I. A. Richards’ approach to the process is also psychological. Fear is the impulse to withdraw and pity is the impulse to approach. Both these impulses are harmonized and blended in tragedy and this balance brings relief and repose.

                               The ethical interpretation is that the tragic process is a kind of lustration of the soul, an inner illumination resulting in a more balanced attitude to life and its suffering. Thus John Gassner says that a clear understanding of what was involved in the struggle, of cause and effect, a judgment on what we have witnessed, can result in a state of mental equilibrium and rest, and can ensure complete aesthetic pleasure. Tragedy makes us realize that divine law operates in the universe, shaping everything for the best.

                            During the Renaissance, another set of critics suggested that Tragedy helped to harden or ‘temper’ the emotions. Spectators are hardened to the pitiable and fearful events of life by witnessing them in tragedies.

                            Humphrey House rejects the idea of ‘purgation’ and forcefully advocates the ‘purification’ theory which involves moral instruction and learning. It is a kind of ‘moral conditioning’. He points out that, ‘purgation means cleansing’.

                             According to ‘the purification’ theory, Catharsis implies that our emotions are purified of excess and defect, are reduced to intermediate state, trained and directed towards the right objects at the right time. The spectator learns the proper use of pity, fear and similar emotions by witnessing tragedy. Butcher writes:

“The tragic Catharsis involves not only the idea of emotional relief, but the further idea of purifying the emotions so relieved.” 

                             The basic defect of ‘purgation’ theory and ‘purification’ theory is that they are too much occupied with the psychology of the audience. Aristotle was writing a treatise not on psychology but on the art of poetry. He relates ‘Catharsis’ not to the emotions of the spectators but to the incidents which form the plot of the tragedy. And the result is the “clarification” theory.

                             The paradox of pleasure being aroused by the ugly and the repellent is also the paradox involved in tragedy. Tragic incidents are pitiable and fearful.They include horrible events as a man blinding himself, a wife murdering her husband or a mother slaying her children and instead of repelling us produce pleasure.

                               Aristotle clearly tells us that we should not seek for every pleasure from tragedy, “but only the pleasure proper to it”. ‘Catharsis’ refers to the tragic variety of pleasure. The Catharsis clause is thus a definition of the function of tragedy, and not of its emotional effects on the audience.

                               Imitation does not produce pleasure in general, but only the pleasure that comes from learning, and so also the peculiar pleasure of tragedy. Learning comes from discovering the relation between the action and the universal elements embodied in it. The poet might take his material from history or tradition, but he selects and orders it in terms of probability and necessity, and represents what, “might be”. He rises from the particular to the general and so is more universal and more philosophical. The events are presented free of chance and accidents which obscure their real meaning. Tragedy enhances understanding and leaves the spectator ‘face to face with the universal law’.

                               Thus according to this interpretation, ‘Catharsis’ means clarification of the essential and universal significance of the incidents depicted, leading to an enhanced understanding of the universal law which governs human life and destiny, and such an understating leads to pleasure of tragedy. In this view, Catharsis is neither a medical, nor a religious or moral term, but an intellectual term. The term refers to the incidents depicted in the tragedy and the way in which the poet reveals their universalsignificance.

                               The clarification theory has many merits. Firstly, it is a technique of the tragedy and not to the psychology of the audience. Secondly, the theory is based on what Aristotle says in the Poetics, and needs no help and support of what Aristotle has said in Politics and Ethics. Thirdly, it relates Catharsis both to the theory of imitation and to the discussion of probability and necessity. Fourthly, the theory is perfectly in accord with current aesthetic theories.

                               According to Aristotle the basic tragic emotions are pity and fear are painful. If tragedy is to give pleasure, the pity and fear must somehow be eliminated. Fear is aroused when we see someone suffering and think that similar fate might befall us. Pity is a feeling of pain caused by the sight of underserved suffering of others. The spectator sees that it is the tragic error or Hamartia of the hero which results in suffering and so he learns something about the universal relation between character and destiny. 

 To conclude,

                     Aristotle's conception of Catharsis is mainly intellectual. It is neither didactic nor theoretical, though it may have a residual theological element. Aristotle's Catharsis is not a moral doctrine requiring the tragic poet to show that bad men come to bad ends, nor a kind of theological relief arising from discovery that God’s laws operate invisibly to make all things work out for the best.

University Wits

             

Paper Name    :-  Renaissance Literature

Topic                 :-  " University Wits''

Name               :-  Avani N. Dave

Roll No.            :-  2

Semester          :- M.A 1

Date                   :-  17/10/12

Year                   :-  2012-2013

Submitted to   :- Dr. Dilip Barad

                                Prof. & Head,

                                Department of English,

                                Bhavnagar University

University Wits :-

Ø Introduction :-

                           Because of the establishment of theatres there came competition in the production of drama. Novelty in drama is always needed for success. The managers were finding such men who could patch up old plays with new matters. At the end of the 16^th century, there was a group of men who studied at oxford or Cambridge. They revised the old drama and wrote many new plays. Comedies came into existence. Tragedy began to take shape. Plot and characterisation were developed. They were Marlow, Kyd, Greene, Nash, Lyly, Peele, and Lodge So They were known as university wits because they were scholars. They brought many changes in the field of drama. They were seven in a group. So they are known as “The seven Stars of the Cosmos.”

Ø  Contribution :-

Ø     They brought many changes in mistry and morality plays

Ø      Because of them comedies came into existence. Nicholas

 Udall wrote the first comedy ‘Ralph Roister Doister’.

Ø     They gave a new shape to tragedy.

Ø     Their plots were loose but they were first to think about

 plot because of them.

Ø    They developed the art of characterization. Characters

 become more real.

Ø   They were interested in great heroic theme.

  

Ø     Heroic theme needs a heroic treatment. So they gave a

 heroic treatment to drama such as gratefulness, variety,

 splendid descriptions and long attractive speeches.

Ø    Their comedies lacked humour. There was coarse and

 immature humour later.

ØThey often worked together as Marlowe worked with

Fletcher.

Ø  They wrote the plays and also acted in the plays.

Ø  Some of them (Lyly and Peele) made drama poetic.

Ø   They chose to write for the public stage, taking over   native traditions.

Ø They brought new coherence in structure, and real wit  and poetic power to the language.

Ø   The decade of the 1590s, just before Shakespeare started

 his career, saw a radical transformation in popular   

 drama.

Ø They transformed the native interlude a short, simple

   dramatic entertainment and chronicle play into a

   potentially great drama by writing plays of quality and

   diversity.

Ø      Thus in the words of Allardyce Nicoll, 
 ‘‘they  laid a sure basis for                            English Theatre.’’

 Personl Contribution :-

  

(1)          John Lyly (1554-1606):-

                          His plays contain attractive lyrics. The first dramatist to write essentially high comedy. His plays are extremely witty in character. It foretold the kind of literature that would be coming from the University Wits for the next decade.  His name is also attached to a series of Court plays performed by the children’s companies throughout the ’80s.

Wyatt and Collins said:

‘‘Lyly’s greatest service to drama consists in his writing plays in prose. Lyly’s sparkling dialogues gave Shakespeare an excellent model to follow.”

His best plays are:

    1.   A lexander and campase.

    2.   Midas.

    3.   Enimion.

    4.   Sapho and Phao.

(2)          George Peele (1558-1597) :-

                   He is noted for his poetic Style and decorative phrases. His contributions are flowery. He made no original contribution to drama. He was a graduate   of Christ Church College Oxford. At a point he broke with his earlier career as a Wit, providing official encomia and writing and directing pageants for the City and his alma mater.  He’s credited with writing the only play to be identified with the first Blackfriars Theater - The Arraignment of Paris in 1581, while suggestions that he was the author of the various other plays claimed for him are too uncertain to take on faith.

His main plays are:

   1.   The Araygnement of Paris.

   2.   The Famous Chronicle of king Edward – I.

   3.   The old wives’ Tale.

   4.   The love of king Dacid and Bathsheba.

(3)        Robert Greene (1558- 1592):-

                          He is Powerful for Romantic setting. He made  notable contribution in plot Construction and characterization. He gave excellent Portraits of women. He was a poet, pamphleteer, proto-novelist and playwright.  Though not the first to appear in print- his first pamphlet, Mamillia, was registered with the Stationers in 1580, the year after John Lyly’s Euphues-but he was the most prolific: 20 works published over the next 12 years.

His main plays are:

    1.   The chemical history of alphonsus king of Aragon.

    2.   A looking glass for London and England.

    3.   Friar Bacon and friar Bungay.

    4.   The history of Orlando Furioso.

    5.   The Scottish for a romantic setting.

(4)        Thomas Nash (1567- 1601):-

                        He made notable contribution to comedy. His comedies  attack so many current abuses in the state.  He and Greene should be credited with launching the English periodical press as a viable industry.

He wrote,

1.   Unfortunate Traveller.

2.   The Terrors of the Night.

3.   Summers Last, will and Testament.

4.   The Isle of Dogs.

5.   The Anatomy of absurdity

6.   Have With you to Saffron-Walden

(5) Thomas Lodge (1558- 1625):-

                              He was popular for   Romance  Exa. Rosalynde connects with this group through all three factors: time, location, and works.  Educated at the  Merchant Taylor's School during the period when the students occasionally performed at Court, then at Oxford during the period that John Lyly and George Peele were attending. did produce one work that was later turned into a masterpiece

He wrote,

   1.   Rosalynde.

   2.   Euphues Golden Legacie.

   3.   An Alarum against Usurers.

   4.   Scillaes Metamorphosis.

   5.   In A Fig for Momus.

(6)  Thomas Kyd (1558- 1994):

                              He brought the Senecan taste of horror ghost, hanging, stabbing, madness , pistolling and suicide. He influenced Shakespeare also. His authorship of the groundbreaking play The Spanish Tragedy is based on nothing more than three words by Meres and a passing mention by Thomas Heywood 30 years later, which, if nothing else, has made him a favorite with scholars as the purported author of dozens of anonymous works including the mythical-Hamlet.  Arrested by Cecil’s agents in May 1593, Kyd was imprisoned and racked into turning state’s evidence against Marlowe.  Though released following Marlowe’s assassination, he died the following year, shortly after the murder of their patron, Lord Strange.

His plays are:

   1.   Spanish Tragedy.

   2.   Householder's Philosophy.

(7)  Christopher Marlowe (1564- 1593):-

                      He reflected the renaissance spirit of freedom and individualism.He made heroic theme popular. Exa. Tamburlaine. He gave life and reality to his Characters. “Characters in the hand of Marlowe were no longer puppets pulled by a string but living and breathing realities.” He made improvement in the field of tragedy. He brought passion, vehemence and force. GHe added poetic grandeur and poetic excellence to drama.

The most popular university wit has written:-

         1   Tamburlaine.

         2   The Jew of Malta.

         3   Doctor Faustus.

         4   Edwars- II

vConclusion :-

                             As a group, then, these contemporaries illustrate well the possible attitudes of an educated man of theirtime toward the drama. Midway between Lyly and his successful practice of the drama, which for the mostcultivated men and women of his day, maintained and developed standards supplied to him, at least inpart, by his university, and Thomas Lodge, who put the drama aside as beneath a cultivated man ofmanifold activities, stand Nashe, Peele and Greene. Nashe, feeling the attraction of a popular and financially alluring form, shows no special fitness for it, is never really at home in it and gives it relativelylittle attention. Peele, properly endowed for his best expression in another field, spends his strength in thedrama because, at the time, it is the easiest source of revenue, and turns from the drama of the cultivatedto the drama of the less cultivated or the uncultivated. Greene, from the first, is the facile, adaptivepurveyor of wares to which he is helped by his university experience, but to which he gives a highly popular presentation. Passing through the hands ofLyly, Greene and even Peele, it comes to Shakespeare something quite different from what it was beforethey wrote.University-bred one and all, these five men were proud of their breeding. They were always ready to take arms against theunwarranted assumption, as it seemed to them, of certain dramatists who lacked this university training,and to confuse them by the sallies of their wit. One and all, they demonstrated their right to the titlebestowed upon them—“university wits.”