But in the later style and especially in his socio-economic writings, the sentences are simpler and they are not so overloaded with ornament as in. John ruskin 1. Words flow as rhythmically as the waves in a sea : “……sick, we do not enquire for a physician who takes less than, The other salient feature of Ruskin’s style is the length of his sentences. He studied painting, and became a graceful and accurate draftsman, but he early transferred his main energies from the production to the criticism and teaching of art. In the last paragraph of this lecture, one will be astonished to find not less than ten of the texts accumulated. John Ruskin : JOHN RUSKIN (1819–1900), the greatest master of ornate prose in the English language, was born in London and educated at Oxford. By the following April, the book was finished. profnaeem@outlook.com “According to him it is easier to acquire a reading knowledge of a language than to acquire a speaking. Ruskin differs from these predecessors both in the poetic power of his prose and in his distinctive—and widely influential—insistence that art and architecture are, necessarily, the direct expression of the social conditions in which they were produced. Only loving observation and the trained eye of the landscape artist and the student of paint­ing could make possible such a description as that of the Carshalton pool at the beginning of the Introduction : “Just where the welling of stainless water, trembling and pure, like a body of light, enters the pool of Carshalton, cutting itself a radiant channel down to the gravel, through warp of feathery weeds, all waving, which it traverses with its deep threads of clearness, like the Chalcedony etc.” The description is the outcome of poetic imagination. The use of too many Biblical allusions make the style obscure and boring. The author expounds these and many other ideas with exceptional passion and knowledge, expressed in a masterly prose style. His educational ventures were not successful, however, although one of his students, David Garrick, later famous as an actor, became a lifelong friend. ( Log Out /  Change ), You are commenting using your Facebook account. ’s work for achieving perfection in their style but this advice does not hold good in the case of Ruskin. He is fully saturated with its spirited and Biblical phrases which came to him without any effort. It is not self-revelatory like that of Lamb or Montaigne. The writer shows the mastery of sound, colour and motion of words. There is a sense of being clamoured at rather than of being persuaded. Change ), You are commenting using your Twitter account. (1843–60), The Seven Lamps of Architec Choice of words and the beauty of his imagery create the rhythm : “Ye sheep without shepherd, it is not the posture that has been shut from you, but the presence.”. He is the first writer since the seventeenth century who dared indulge in sentences of twenty or thirty lines and even more of a whole page. (b) John Ruskin (1819-1900) In the general prose literature of the early Victorian period Ruskin is ranked next to Carlyle. Birthplace: London, England Location of death: Brantwood, England Cause of death: Influenza Remains: Buried, St. Andrew Churchyard,. He argues that a carpenter can make no more than an imitation of the reality, and the bed he makes is once removed from the truth. D r. West conducted an extensive research and experiments on the problems of teaching English as a foreign language in India . Among other things, Ruskin argued vehemently in his writings against the use of steel for architectural purposes. History of English Literature- Albert, 2. There is rhyme in ‘blunt’ and ‘stunt.’ Ruskin’s great power lies in the skilful handling of mono-syllabic words. Change ). It is written in the most luminous style which even the nineteenth century, that great age of English prose, can show. From an early age he was dominated by his mother, a devout Puritan and strict disciplinarian who was responsible for … In his lecture on Work, he makes use of nearly sixty Texts of scripture. Dr. Johnson advised people to devote their days and nights to the study of. The sentences contain 200 words or more, 250, nay 280 words without a single pause—each sentence with 40, 59, 60 commas, colons and semi-colons and yet the whole symphony flows on with such just modulation, the images melt so naturally into each other, the harmony of tone and the ease of words are so complete that we hasten through the passage in a rapture of admiration. mill and Herbert Spencer , too , Perhaps no discussions of Victorian prose is complete without that of Arnold . We should find out the remaining which are need but nobody done till now. The Biblical references and episodes are very useful when the common people who believe in the Bible, are addressed. There are brilliant descriptive passages which demon­strate his feeling for beauty of form and colour and a tendency to go into superlatives. Architecture is an exalting discipline that must dignify and ennoble public life. THE WORKS OF LIBRARY EDITION JOHN RUSKIN EDITED BY E. T. COOK AND ALEXANDER WEDDERBURN LONDON GEORGE ALLEN, 156, … Such lengthy sentences remind us of, the Sanskrit author. It must preserve the purity of the materials it uses; and it must serve as a source of power and renewal for the society that produces it. He satirises, “It is only Lord’s cricket ground without the turf —a huge billiard table without the cloth, and with pockets as deepas the bottomless pit : but mainly a billiard table, after all.” Again, he speaks of, there—rattling, growling, smok­ing, stinking—a ghastly heap of fermenting brick-work, pouring out poison at every pore.”, Ruskin’s style is thus, effective, incisive, imaginative and lucid. He is speaking and we are listening. Ed., UGC- NET Qualified Chief Critical Approaches of Dr. Johnson are: Johnson tried teaching and later organized a school in Lichfield. Ruskin’s style abounds in irony and sarcasm. Phone: Rhythm is the principal weapon of Ruskin. John Ruskin (1819-1900) occupe une place importante et singulière dans l'Angleterre du XIXe siècle. John Ruskin’s masterly prose begins by deploring the onset of the industrial revolu-tion and the malignance of free-enterprise. Drop any query, suggestion or comment here. Ruskin occupies a prominent place in the history of English prose. Both developed aesthetic theories shaped in part by their philosophies. Don’t forget, French artist Gustave Courbet ‘s 1866 painting, The Origin of the World, provokes outrage even to this day because it portrays a woman’s vagina in its full realistic glory. He increased the range of English prose by adding to harmony and animation the resources of the richest imagination and colouring. “It is indeed, very far from a perfect style : much less is it in any sense a model style or one to be cultivated, studied or followed.” Despite these obvious defects, Ruskin is a great master of an English style, of faultless ease and simplicity. Living in an age, when grand style was popular, he made his contribution to English prose without indulging in “Lylyan antitheses and similes or Johnsonian parellelism and balance.” Language is a flexible instrument in his hand and he bends it to many uses—argu­ment, pictorial description, eulogy, invective, persuasion, passionate appeal. In the words of, , “It is a type of clearness, wit, eloquence, versatility and passion.” It can be simple, and sublime, complex and grand, persuasive, expository, sarcastic or ironical. Although probably best known for compiling his celebrated dictionary, Johnson was an extremely prolific writer who worked in a variety of fields and forms. We have the simple mono-syllabic words—base, bind, etc. Some say he went mad or fell into dementia; many say his later writings show signs of a troubled man. It is rhythmic and sonorous—”Through this exuberance of rhythmic and sonorous language there runs a more familiar, more spontaneous vein : that of some works, like the, where the artist no longer, strained, instead of exhausting his temperament, draws upon the accumulated energy of his passion and his faith and most happily reconciles forcefulness with simplicity.”, There are certain defects in Ruskin’s style. In these circumstances the critic was obliged to create in words an effective sensory and emotional substitute for visual experience. John Ruskin Edinburg Conferences I ... Ruskin did this in a prose style peculiarly well adapted to the discussion of the visual arts in an era when there was limited reproductive illustration and no easy access to well-stocked public art galleries. After Carlyle the next great Victorian non-fictional prose writer is John Ruskin who wrote remarkably on art and the social and economic questions of his time in a style that was delicate, graceful and almost lyrical. This gave him an opportunity to have a peek at the newly forming high classes and middle classes of the society. So the teacher’s chief concern should be to develop the habit of purposeful silent reading in the children and not the habit of oral reading. As a child sitting at the knees of his mother, he had read or listened to the reading of the Bible, many times over and some of the passages he had got by heart and he had early learnt to think in terms of the Biblical phrases and situations about the incidents of everyday life. This profuse use of Biblical references and phrases, contributes so vitally to the moral earnestness and prophetic fervour of Ruskin. Christian Justice then becomes the butt of the author’s irony : “Christian Justice has been strongly mute and seemingly blind; and, if not blind, decrepit, this many a day; she keeps her accounts still, however—quite steadily–doing them at nights, carefully, with her bandage off, and through acutest spectacles.” There is again irony in the following words from the lecture on Traf, “But your railroad mounds, prolonged masses or Acropolis, your railroad stations, vaster than the Parthenon and innumerable ; your chimneys, now much more mighty and costly than cathedral spires.” Like irony, the other powerful instrument with Ruskin is satire.