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Proceedings of National Seminar on Postmodern Literary Theory and Literature , Jan. 27-28, 2012, Nanded in personal matter such as love. So, the furniture is full of dust, suggesting that everything goes against her expectation. The phrase ‘the last night’s cheese and sepulchral bottles’ connotes that the lady’s life is similar to them, rather ragged, useless and scattered and her body is like an empty tomb. She is alive just in her shadow-like existence. The verbs used are dynamic, depicting some kind of action. For example, ‘relieved of’, ‘stalking’ ‘shrugged’, ‘went out’, ‘to dust’, ‘was in love again’. These verbs seem to have a negative meaning attached to them. They indicate the fruitless expectations of the lady and her cunning companion’s indifference to her emotions. The diction used is formal. There are no contractions, no dialectal terms, and no colloquial expressions. The words used are simple. Some of them are long, having four syllables, such as ‘picturesque’, ‘companion’, ‘delineate’; some have three syllables, such as ‘relentless’, ‘furniture’, ‘contending’; majority of them have two syllables, such as ‘milkman’, ‘granted’, ‘sounded’, ‘pleaded’ ‘moulding’, ‘throughout’, etc. And some of the words are monosyllabic, for example, ‘love’, ‘dust’, keep’, etc. Suffixes such as—‘-less’ as in ‘relentless’, ‘-ian’ as in ‘Persian’, ‘-ly’ as in ‘coldly’, etc., are used. Poetic license is not used. The picture depicted is realistic in nature. Syntax: The poem consists of 26 lines. A full stop is used four times, after second, in the middle of the fourth, after the seventh, and at the end of the last line. In the third, fifth, fifteenth, seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth, a comma is used in the middle. An apostrophe is used two times (i.e. in the words – milkman’s, night’s). Dash (-) is used at the end of the thirteenth line and a semi- colon is used three times, viz. after the first, the eleventh, and the eighteenth line. The poem is not divided into stanzas and looks like a unified whole. Rhythm: The poem is in blank verse, that is, an unrhymed iambic pentameter verse as each line consists of ten syllables (five feet) and in the lines, the unstressed syllable is followed by a stressed one. The General Interpretation: The poem ‘Living in Sin’ depicts the life of two persons, living together but a separate life. From the title, it is noticed that they are not husband and wife. The situation depicted appears to be an imposed one on the lady. They seem to be young, and they may continue to live the same type of life, but know well that their worlds have to be separate mentally rather than physically. The title itself is very apt. The diction used in the poem and the situation projected indirectly throw light on the kind of life in the twentieth century. It is the age of two world wars-- spreading frustration, corruption everywhere. Poverty, unemployment, and loss of the means of livelihood are the major problems that the people have been facing. Another problem is that women are always taken for granted in a male-dominated society. From the description, it appears, the poem depicts an upper middle class lady, leading a solitary life. Due to the monotonous life, she is frustrated and sad at heart, but life moves on and her ‘night’s companion’ remains careless about it. Such phrases as- ‘shrugged at the mirror’, ‘went out for cigarettes’ indicate his carelessness. The phrase ‘rubbed at his beard’ points out the daily routine of the mates and ‘relentless milkman’ describes the tedious life of the companions. ‘Last night’s cheese’ and ‘sepulchral bottles’ throw light on their nightly activities where she has to help herself with drink to submit to her male-counterpart. The line - ‘she was back in love again though not so wholly but throughout the night’ brings the realisation that she is taken for granted and compelled to submit herself to the man physically. Although the poem is pessimistic in tone, the hope gleams through intermittently. Everything goes against her expectations. Still she desires, there should be no dust upon her ‘furniture of love’. That is why she goes on dusting the table top with a towel. The diction used reinforces the meaninglessness, the uselessness of her stereotyped existence. The piano is out of use. 88 PLTL-2012: ISBN 978-81-920120-0-1
Proceedings of National Seminar on Postmodern Literary Theory and Literature , Jan. 27-28, 2012, Nanded So, it is covered with a Persian shawl; ‘a plate of pears’ is put just for decoration. ‘A cat stalking the picturesque amusing mouse’ shows the imposed state that she has to face during the night hours, though rather unwillingly. Nightly affair becomes boredom as both of them get involved just physically, but not emotionally. Ultimately, both of them remain unsatisfied with their loveless state. Reading the poem one is reminded of what Adela Quested, in E. M. Forster’s novel A Passage to India thinks: Physical union without love is rape. The long lines of the poem are suggestive of the monotony, the relentless repetition of the same routine, everyday boredom. The poem, thus, reflects the frustration of the lady, who is “taken for granted”, along with the boredom of the postmodern life which is mechanical, monotonous, unfeeling, and devoid of any moral and spiritual force. It is observed that in formalist approach to literature, the emphasis is laid on the analysis of form or structure. In new or practical criticism, meaning is also considered of prime importance along with the form. A poem, for Empson, is ambiguous; for Allen Tate, the real strength of a poem lies in its ‘tension’. Cleanth Brooks’s Understanding Poetry in collaboration with R. P. Warren is a milestone since it comprises the techniques of new criticism to be used in the classroom. Thus, in the new critical approach, the technique of interpretation of literature, formed on the basis of diction, imagery, paradox, irony, verse movement, etc. has got a sound foundation as it becomes concrete due to its experiments with the students. The abstract form of criticism in the formalist approach is rendered into a physical one in new criticism. 2. Seturaman, V.S., C.T. Indra, T. Sriraman. (eds.) Introduction. Practical Criticism. Mumbai: Macmillan, 1990, 8. 3. Eliot, T. S. “Tradition and Individual Talent”. S. Ramaswami and V. S. Sethuraman (eds). The English Critical Tradition: An Anthology of English Literary Criticism. Vol.2. New Delhi: Macmillan, 2007,172. 4. Abrams, M.H. A Glossary of Literary Terms. VI edition. Bangalore: Prism, 1993, 246. 5. Eliot, T. S.op. cit.,175. 6. Eliot, T. S. “Hamlet”. Selected Essays by T. S. Eliot. London: Faber and Faber, 1980,145. 7. Seturaman, op. cit., 18. 8. Guerin, Wilfred, L., Earle Labor, Lee Morgan, J.C. Reesman, J.R. Willingham. A. Handbook of Critical Approaches to Literature. V edition. New Delhi: Oxford, 2007, 101. 9. Das, B.K. “Basic Tenets of New Criticism”. Twentieth Century Literary Criticism. V edition. New Delhi: Atlantic, 2005, 29-30. 10. Wellek, Rene. “Literary Criticism”. Leonard, S. Klein (ed). Encyclopaedia of World Literature in the 20 th Century. Vol. III. New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing Co., 1983, 122. References: 1. Krishnaswami, N., John Varghese, Sunita Mishra. “Anglo American Practical/ New Criticism”. Contemporary Literary Theory: A Student's Companion. Mumbai: Macmillan, 2001, 113. 89 PLTL-2012: ISBN 978-81-920120-0-1
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