Devika Panikar
δάσκαλος (dáskalos) means the teacher in Greek. Devika Panikar has been teaching English Language and Literature since 2006. She is an Assistant Professor with the Directorate of Collegiate Education under the Government of Kerala. She teaches at the Government Colleges coming under this directorate and is now posted at the Department of English, Government College for Women, Thiruvananthapuram. This website is a collection of the lecture notes that she prepared by referring to various sources, for her students’ perusal. It has been compiled here for the sake of future generations.
Tagore as a Poet
An outstanding poet, a legend of prose and a perfect philosopher – Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore is the greatest of the Indians writing in English. His fine writings which have been popularly describe...
The Song of the Road
Pather Panchali, a vibrant ballad that begins with joy and ends in determination, chronicles the glorious discoveries along the path of everyday life- from spots for secret picnics and the flavour o...
Speech Sounds
A language can be used in two ways for communication. It can be spoken or written. In most fields of study, language is thought of principally in terms of the written word, for it is in this form that...
The Art of Losing
Tishani Doshi is an Indian English poet born to a Gujarati father and an English mother. This intermixing of two different worlds can be seen in her works. The Art of Losing is a poem that tells us ab...
Describing People
Character descriptions are often the first way one starts to gather together their understanding of people. The most basic character descriptions usually centre around physical details. Physical attri...
The Tragicomedy
Tragicomedy is a genre that blends elements of both comedy and tragedy. Most often seen in dramatic literature, it can be a tragedy with a happy ending or a tragedy with enough comic relief that the...
The Comedy
Comedy is a genre of fiction that is intended to incite laughter and amusement, especially in theatre, television, radio, books, film, stand-up comedy or any other entertainment medium. It dates bac...
Exploration into Individuality
Well-known in her native Poland, Maria Wislawa Anna Szymborska received international recognition when she won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1996. In awarding the prize, the Academy praised her ...
Confusing Contronyms
Many people -native speakers and learners alike -decry English as being illogical. But some other words are just as frustrating: Contronyms. It is a word that is its opposite -like 'fast', which can r...