Vol.2-No.4 - Labyrinth

Table of Contents
Articles
Structural Legacies in Magical Reality: Borges as
A Wandering Teller
- Garima Kalita
5
Colonial Continuities in Post-colonial India: Interrogation of
Society, Culture and Individual in English August
- Hemang Desai
12
The Milestone in the Bridge to Gap the East-West Divide:
Salman Rushdie's East,West: A Study in Characters
- Dibyajyoti Sarma
22
Mahfouz's The Day the Leader was Killed: The Novel as Political
Chronicle
- Abdulrahman Mokbel Hezam
29
Embedding History: A Perspective of Sam Selvon's
The Housing Lark
- M. Rosary Royar
41
J M Coetzee's Alternative Ethics for Human and Non-human
World in Disgrace and The Lives of Animal
- Namrata Nistandra
52
Woman as Object: An Analysis of Ismat Chughtai's Short Stories
- Rani Rathore
59
Trauma and Treatment in Morrison's Novels with Special
Reference to A Mercy - Roya Vakili
64
Destabilising Boundaries and Defying Logic: A Postmodernist
Study of Italo Calvino's The Castle of Crossed Destinies
- Sambit Panigrahi
70
A Carnivalesque Study of Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five
- A.R.N. Hanuman
78
The Theme of Communal Harmony and Renunciation in
Basavaraj Naikar's ''Light in the House''
- P.V. Laxmi Prasad
84
Some Reflections on the Place of Drama in the B.A. (English)
Course
- Ravindra B. Tasildar
89
The Synthesis of Oriental and Occidental: Sri Aurobindo's Poetry
and Philosophy
- Swati Samantray
99
Arbind Kumar Choudhary - A Modern Indian English Poet Par
Excellence
- Sandeep Kumar Sharma
106
Feministic Undertones and Overtones in Anand's Novels
- Bishun Kumar
112
Magic Realism a Remystificative Narration in Amitav Ghosh's
Sea of Poppies
- P. Indu
119
Life in the Woods: Towards an Ecocritical Reading of Thoreau's
Walden
- Anurag Bhattacharyya
122
Quarreling with the Self: Identity Crisis in Milan Kundera's
Novel, Identity
- Naresh Kumar Vats
The Plays of Girish Karnard: A Feminist Study
- Krishna Singh
The Overlapping and Interlacing of Desire, Woman
and Society in Karnard's Naga-Mandala
- Ankur Konar
Anita Desai's Fire on the Mountain: A Postcolonial
Feminist Reading
- R. K. Mishra
The Problem of Evil: A Critique of William Golding's Fiction
- Ravi Bhushan
Self Evaluation: A Divine Tool
- Indira Jha
Einer ruhigen literarischen Kreuzzug gegen den Krieg:
Rereading Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front
- Pinaki Roy
The Society in Transition: A Comparative Study of A Streetcar
Named Desire and The Cherry Orchard
- Balabhadra Tripathy
the sky was an honest blue…: Contemporary Poetry in English
from Assam
- Nigamananda Das
129
135
144
150
157
165
173
182
186
Short Story
Zapy Follows Jesus in The Galilee - Albert Russo
Personal Pleasantries (Short Stories) - Rosaline Jamir
Coming of Age
- N D Dani
195
199
202
Book Review
Manju Roy: The World of Malgudi: Dynamics of Creativity
and Social Ethos in R K Narayan's Novels
- Parmanada Jha
205
Poetry
Sunil Sharma: On Rakshabandhan
Itishri Sarangi: Mystic Force
Hemang Desai: Translated Poems
Our Esteemed Contributors
69
105
118
207
5
Structural Legacies in Magical
Reality: Borges as A Wandering
Teller
- Garima Kalita
Abstract: Maybe it is a fact that Jorge Luis Borges is not strictly read as
an author affiliating towards magical reality; but the ambience he creates
in his fiction, the fantastical element that is introduced thorough the lines
make it very much akin to it. It is our contention that he creates that aura
through the terse form that he adopts, the suggestion that the simple or
ordinary is led to a distance and defamiliarised, so that the
conventionality disappears and a newness, a magical reality replaces the
authenticity of the real or the suprareal and veracity and untruth. It is our
contention that Borges is also a bricoleur who integrates diverse kinds of
myth, legend, landscape, community, ritual, magic and psyche together,
though Borges never accepts that his is a psychological study.
Keywords: Magical Realism, Defamiliarization, Ostranenie,
Structuralism, Signs, Signifier, Signified, Bricoleur Narrativity,
intertextuality
What is narrativity linked with magic realism? Or in a loosely asked
question, how is the 'purpose' or objectivity fulfilled in a narrative by this
extra realistic device that questions the plain and straight statements
about real and factual? These are characteristic seminal queries through
which a narrative or a story reaches forward and in a conventional sense
develops. Obviously the focus is now on a non linear or circular mode of
representation which ensures that the reader is confronted with an
apparatus which structurally and also thematically enriches his
imagination.
But after awhile there is an inevitable pause that falters in more than two
ways. First, the linearity of the fabula calls for a stern scrutiny and the
resultant jumping or jarring episodes link themselves up not as an
integrated whole, rather as autonomous identifying markers. One
associated idea that is hundredth of times elaborated is the forked
endings or multiple pathways through which the narrative is told,
deciphered and registered or kept in abeyance.
Culler's assumption that in a narrative a double reading is almost always
inadvertent, in itself seems to be crude generalizations because a few
specifically specific cases by Freud or the reading of Daniel Deronda do
not offer comprehensive peripherality.. The distinction between Fabula
and Sjuzhet in the first place seems to more preliminary than other
12
Colonial Continuities in Postcolonial India: Interrogation of
Society, Culture and Individual in
English August
- Hemang Desai
Abstract: Against the backdrop of a novel that marvelously chronicles
the litter of socio-political, administrative, linguistic and cultural
pathologies through which a nation toddled and dawdled its tortuous way
from decolonization to the threshold of globalization, the preset paper
seeks to interrogate whether the phenomenon of decolonization has been
accomplished to any appreciable extent at various levels of human life
lived in multi-lingual and multi-cultural India. The legacy of invidious
colonial apparatus comprising the magnanimous discourse of
development, politics of representation, cryptic forms of otherization,
politics of language and education etc. has become a powerful tool in the
hands of home-grown neo-imperialist, exploitative establishment due to
which the nightmare of colonial woes and wretchedness has continued for
the marginalized long after the nation awoke to life and freedom. In this
paper, an effort has been made to pinpoint the locations where colonial
binaries are highlighted or subverted in the novel. The paper also
addresses the dire need to adapt individual, social and cultural identities
to historical realities and internalize and celebrate the phenomenon of
hybridity which can foreclose the colonial binarism, facilitate antimonolithic cultural exchange and liberate and empower the colonial
subject. Finally the paper seeks to examine the roles of individual, society
and political establishment in effecting the unfinished revolution of
cultural reorientation.
Keywords: Colonialism, Post-coloniality, Culture, Identity, Politics,
Society, Hybridity
Using the restless and confused life of a city-bred, westernized, potsmoking and young IAS trainee posted in extremely hot and dusty
Madna as a springboard, English,August marvelously chronicles the litter
of socio-political, administrative, linguistic and cultural pathologies
through which a nation toddled its tortuous way from decolonization to
the threshold of globalization. As it authentically captures the zeitgeist of
one of the most turbulent decades in Indian history i.e. 1980s, the novel
luminously problematizes the ambitious post-colonial phraseology of
nation-building, national integration and inclusive development. As one
races through a narrative that unfolds in an inimitably witty and racy
style, one sullenly realizes that the idealism encapsulated in the
discursive formulations surrounding multiple facets of decolonization
sounds all too facile and hollow in a four-decade old country torn by
22
The Milestone in the Bridge to Gap the
East-West Divide: Salman Rushdie's
East,West: A Study in Characters
- Dibyajyoti Sarma
Abstract: Despite the fact that he is still considered to be an imperialist,
and despite the fact that he himself wrote that East and West can never
meet, Rudyard Kipling was perhaps the first intellectual to grapple with
the cultural phenomenon of the search for a national identity and the
complex realisation what would be known as post-colonial Diaspora.
However, it took several decades and another author to give voice to this
concern in the modern context – Salman Rushdie and his
groundbreaking novel Midnight's Children. It was a long time since 1981
till the publication of Jhumpa Lahiri's The Interpreter of Maladies in 1999
when Diaspora writing emerged as a genre. This paper argues that in
between these landmark achievements, Salman Rushdie's sole collection
of nine short stories, East, West, makes a perfect meeting point of what
happened in the context of the cultural connection between the east and
the west, and what was to come, especially in the writings of second
generation writers of Indian origin.
Keywords: Salman Rushdie, Jhumpa Lahiri, Rudyard Kipling, Diaspora
writing, Indian Writing in English, East-West Divide, Colonial, Postcolonial writing, second generation writers of Indian origin
Between the First & Second Generations
The theory and practice of the writings of the Indian Diaspora has come
a long way since the publication of Salman Rushdie's lone collection of
short stories, East,West (1994). In an increasingly globalised world, in
terms of both economy and culture, especially post 9/11 terror attack in
the US, the contexts and the crises of the Diaspora has undergone a seachange in the recent times. An identity is no longer a cultural binary of
either/or. The homeland, imaginary or otherwise, is no longer a definite
place. The concept of India is no longer the exotic orient. In this context,
East,West gives us a comprehensive understanding of how the things have
changed in the context of our relationship with the West, both in the
context of the Indian Writing in English (IWE) as well as the Diaspora
writing, and also the cultural motivations. Rudyard Kipling famously
said, “…East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet.”
Yet, Kipling was perhaps the first author to try and understand the
political and cultural relevance of the two, the dynamics of the Empire
and the Colony. In doing so, he created at least two memorable
characters who oscillate between two extremes; they conform to neither
and yet inhabit both. Mowgli in Jungle Book is neither a human (in a
cultural sense), nor is he an animal. In Kim, the eponymous protagonist
29
Mahfouz's The Day the Leader
was Killed: The Novel as Political
Chronicle
- Abdulrahman Mokbel Mahyoub Hezam
Abstract: In The Day the Leader Was Killed, Mahfouz returns to the use
of family structure as a means of chronicling the political and social
developments in the Egyptian scene. The study shows Mahfouz's skill to
sum up an entire age in a short novel which, despite its shortness,
incorporates many of his major themes, even those he dealt with three
decades earlier in his trilogy.
Keywords: History, Identity, Revolution, forgetfulness
In his book Real and Imagined Worlds, Morroe Berger writes, “That
fictions and history are related is inevitable, since art must have some
connection with life, even if only to oppose it” (162). Chinua Achebe
argues that literature “must speak of a particular place, evolve out of the
necessities of its history, past and current and the aspirations and
destinies of its people” (Morning 7).The recent history of Egypt has been
the core of Naguib Mahfouz's writing and he was aware of the fact that it
is difficult to separate fiction from history. Even in his early historical
novels, Mahfouz takes stories not only because they are the facts of the
pharoanic past of Egypt but also because when communicated with his
imagination they become embodiments of contemporary themes.
Mahfouz sets for himself the task of rewriting and re-interpreting the
recent history of his country in order to enable his countrymen to
understand their past and present and shape their future. He views the
Egyptian scene with objectivity which makes him an honest and
trustworthy chronicler who fully understands the various forces that play
in the socio-political scene. The term political chronicle is used in the
sense of examining recent historical events and recording the major
events that affected the life of the Egyptian people. In The Day The Leader
Was Killed, Mahfouz sees his task as rewriting the recent history in the
hope of enlightening his people so that history will not repeat itself. The
importance of this task is highlighted by the current events in Egypt and
some parts of the Arab World. These events have shown Mahfouz in a
new light as a man who understood his society and tried to change it. His
vision of that change is realized few years after his death.
In The Day The Leader Was Killed Mahfouz aims at exploring themes of
responsibility in recent history and cutting through the official versions
of it not through using documentary evidence, but through creating a
synthesis of the historical and subjective perspectives in a way that
41
Embedding History:
A Perspective of Sam Selvon's
The Housing Lark
- M. Rosary Royar
Abstract: Sam Selvon interfuses the history of the Empire and
reconstructs the Caribbean history. The Caribbeans move towards
nationhood in spite of their differences and the Mother Country's hostile
attitude. Histories get embedded and interrogated.
Keywords: Imperial, Mother Country, reconstructing, Demythologising, colonials etc
History moves forward to gather in the future as well as
looking backward to gather up the past. -Bill Ashcroft
Postcolonial Writing, setting a different trend, tends to cross over
borders. Literary text carries within itself several functions and coheres
varying disciplines that a reader can decode the text from multiple
points. Representation and misrepresentation in a text conjure and build
worlds of illusoriness and reality, which can in turn be a tactic to impose
and unravel certain specific truths and factualities of happenings. A
literary text making an inscape of historical happening testifies to the
reality of the time/period. Bill Ashcroft claims 'History, indeed
temporality itself, is a construction of language and of culture, and,
ultimately, the site of a struggle for control which post - colonial writing is
in a particularly strategic position to engage' (83). At the same time, he is
conscious of the fact that 'post-colonial interpolation of history occurs in
ways that refuse to leave it intact' and also positions 'the problematizing
of the boundary between literature and history (99). Such is the
intermixing of genres in the hybridized world to express resistance.
Resistance enables to interrogate, to disprove, and to redefine the
imposed identity.
Edouard Glissant perceiving the acute consequences of the western
history for such societies as the Caribbean comments 'History is highly
functional fantasy of the West, originating at precisely the time when it
alone 'made the history of the World'. If Hegel relegated African peoples
to the ahistorical, Amerindian peoples to the prehistorical, in order to
reserve History for European people exclusively, it appears that it is not
because these African or American peoples 'have entered History' that
we can conclude today that such a hierarchical conception of 'the march
of History' is no longer relevant'. His rejection of Western History which
has held the status of the master narrative, the Imperial History that
recognised none other country's history, paves way for interrogation. In
fact, he assures that 'History [with a capital H] ends where the histories
52
JM Coetzee's Alternative Ethics for
Human and Non-human World in
Disgrace and The Lives of Animals
- Namrata Nistandra
Abstract: Disgrace (1999), Coetzee's first novel to be set in postapartheid South Africa, weaves multiple themes together. The country is
going through a profound phase of transition where the power struggles
have now reversed. Apartheid has officially been put to an end; but the
whites are now at the receiving end. The novel is an ironic take on the new
multi-cultural society where far from peace and reconciliation new forms
of bitterness are emerging. David Lurie is a university Professor who is
made to leave his job because he has seduced his student. Unwilling to
compromise because he believes in the rights of 'desire', he seeks refuge in
his daughter's smallholding in the country. The vulnerability of the whites
in the new order is brought home to him in a nightmarish disaster where
Lucy, his daughter, is gang raped by three black men while he is assaulted
and locked in his own house. The aftermath of this incident and Lucy's
choices raise important questions of survival in a violent society. Coetzee
also questions the marginality and abuse of animals under human rule.
This theme occupies more and more textual space as the novel
progresses.
Keywords: Anti-Pastoral, Patriarchy, Apartheid, Eco-feminism
The South African society is a distorted society. Ravaged by decades of
apartheid, there is an air of hatred, power-grabbing, and revenge for the
past atrocities. Land and its ownership are highly sensitive issues and an
ugly social reality is the eviction movement whereby white farmers are
violently evicted from their farms by squatters. Crime rate is touching
abnormal proportions because of poverty and corruption. “Too many
people, too few things. What there is must go into circulation, so that
everyone can have a chance to be happy for a day… Not human evil, just
a vast circulatory system, to whose workings pity and terror are
irrelevant” (Disgrace, 98). The novel defies the image of country life as
one of harmonious existence. Country life is no longer a blissful coexistence of human and non-human elements, rather a sordid picture of
ruthless competition. Disgrace, thus, turns out to be an anti-pastoral
novel in which farmers like Petrus are steeped in evil machinations and
intrigue.
Racial and gender politics work together to degrade women. Lucy
realizes that her violation had very deep roots; it had nothing to do with
her being a woman. She thinks that the wrongs of the historical past are
visiting her and she has to pay a price in order to live. “They see me as
owing something. They see themselves as debt collectors, tax collectors”
(158). What first seems to be a random act unfolds as a deliberate ploy to
59
Woman as Object: An Analysis of
Ismat Chughtai's Short Stories
- Rani Rathore
Abstract: Woman and literature share an interesting relationship which
has been explored by the writers in all the languages. Gender
discrimination, sexual abuse, child marriage and widowhood have been
the key social issues.Ismat Chughtai (1911-91), an Urdu writer gave a
new direction to Urdu short stories. She established the tradition of
understanding and presented issues from women's point of view, which
even the male writers could not dare to write about. Through her works
she gives us glimpses of conflicting emotions and complex psyche and
experiences of woman and a girl child. She portrays the lives of women
and their sexual and psychological problems, with remarkable boldness
and courage. The present paper proposes to explore the sensitive issues
like marriage, child mother, sexual abuse, unsuccessful marriage dealt by
Chughtai in her short stories , like "Gainda" ("Gainda"), "Wedding Suit"
("Chauthi Ka Jora"), "Quilt" ("Lihaaf"), "Home Maker" ("Gharwali") etc.
(trans. in English by M.Asadudin) with utmost reality.
Keywords: Child mother, gender, widowhood, sexual abuse, object.
Ismat Chughtai (1911-1991) a prolific Urdu writer is remembered as the
writer of short stories. Her short stories hold the mirror up to nature and
life. In her short stories she depicts the lives of a large section of lower
middle class Muslim women and the girl child with great reality.
According to Anu Celly:
When women writers write a short story dealing with aspects of
gender consciousness, they attempt to present facets of female
sensibility, wherewith the women characters question and probe the
links between cultural conditioning, psycho-sexual determinants and
socio-political economic factors which govern their destinies....
(2002:46)
Chughtai's women characters are strong characters but their condition is
pitiable. They are mere objects in the hands of men, who are the
custodian of the society. Discrimination between the sexes in India
begins at birth, or even before it. It starts before the child is born in the
mother's womb. None of the conventional blessings showered upon a
pregnant woman mentions daughters. Finally when the girl is born she
acquires a pre-destined role in a family. As Sudhir kakar observes that
late childhood, " marks the beginning of an Indian girl's deliberate
training in how to be a good woman, and hence the conscious inculcation
of culturally designated feminine roles" (1981:62). From dressing to the
codes of behaviour of a girl child are different. As Mary Wollstonecraft
(1929) points out, "Women are told from infancy, and taught by the
example of their mothers, that... softness of temper, outward obedience,
64
Trauma and Treatment in
Morrison's Novels with Special
Reference to A Mercy
- Roya Vakili
Abstract: Toni Morrison suggests in her novels that in order to survive,
oppressed black people has to visit the past and talk about their suffering
and seek ways to heal themselves by the means of kinship and community
support. The purpose of verbalizing the experience that has caused
mental trauma can lead to healing and recovery. Being heard by a
supportive community is a useful tool of recovery for the victims. Since
the trauma is caused by separation, rejection, discrimination and
dehumanization, being embraced by community can act as a healer.
According to Morrison, it is in the community that a person learns how to
be an individual and himself; how to adore privacy and at the same time
belong to something larger, that is society. This article reveals Florens's
state of mind, a traumatized young slave who shares her story with a black
man whom she considers her security from harm.
Keywords: American Slavery, Racial discrimination, Gender
discrimination, Dehumanization, Trauma, Stress disorder, Community,
Treatment.
Toni Morrison is one of the most talented contemporary American
writers deeply concerned with the issues of race and gender
discrimination, struggles of oppressed people in the society and the
concept of freedom. Retelling slaves' stories, she brings light to the
altogether forgotten aspects of Black American life and in this way she
“give(s) voice to the voiceless and record(s) a history of [faceless,
shadowless] people who have been ignored or purposely forgotten”
(Rayner and Butler 177).
Being part of the serious literature, with sophisticated concepts and
points, her works demand close reading and examination. In order to
give a deeper understanding, at times, one narrator of the story defines
what the other is unaware of. Morrison doesn't simply note the factoids
and concepts from history, but gives back the voice of ordinary people
who were deprived of it for many centuries and lets them tell their story,
their own version of history. In the sense, her works are selfdeconstructive. Commenting on the text being self-deconstructive, Troy
Seaward quotes from John Lye:
It is possible that texts which 'confess' the highly mediated nature of
our experience, texts which themselves throw the reader into the realm
of complex, contested, symbolized, interstitial, interactive mediated
experience, texts which therefore move closer than usual to
deconstructing themselves, are in a sense closer to reality (that is, the
truth of our real experience) than any other texts. (3)
70
De-stabilising Boundaries and
Defying Logic: A Postmodernist
Study of Italo Calvino's The
Castle of Crossed Destinies
- Sambit Panigrahi
Abstract: Italo Calvino's The Castle of Crossed Destinies presents itself as
a classic specimen of postmodern fiction by portraying the themes of the
destabilisation of binary oppositions and the defiance to the modernist
endorsement of the unity of reason and coherence of logic. What this
novel of Calvino presents, instead, is a world where the pre-existing
boundaries and dividing lines between different Manichean binary
oppositions are perpetually faltering and where seemingly illogical and
incoherent worldviews are offered as possible alternatives to the so-called
logical and coherent existence. Inspired by the celebratory endorsement
of a de-regulated, disordered and de-structured condition of existence by
postmodernism, Calvino's The Castle of Crossed Destinies experiments with
a correspondingly unusual narrative technique (typical of
postmodernism) that creates a chaotic and de-regulated fictional world
where heirarchies, distinctions and boundaries are purposefully
transgressed and where the defining conceptual frameworks of The
Enlightenment like logic and reason are thoroughly shattered.
Keywords: Postmodernism, Binary oppositions, destabilisation,
logocentrism, anti-foundationalism, trace, de-centering
A remarkable specimen of postmodernist thinking, Italo Calvino's novel
The Castle of Crossed Destinies deals with two key postmodern themes: 1transgression of boundaries and 2-travesty of logic. The novel is divided
into several segments (in the form of individual stories) that are,
nonetheless, interwoven in an utterly mindboggling and complex
network. In the immense complexity of his narrative, however, Calvino
makes particular efforts to showcase the two above-mentioned
postmodern issues amongst which the former is, of course, an iteration
of Derrida's categorical extirpation of binary oppositions. Echoing a
typical Derridean deconstructive spirit, Calvino dismantles binary
oppositions at various levels—physical, metaphysical, sexual and
temporal.
To start with, we see in the chapter “The Tale of the Alchemist Who Sold
His Soul” a gradual dismantling of the boundaries between the
human/the beast/the vegetable and mineral. The downgrading
transfiguration from the “human” to the “beast” is first located in the
turning of The Wheel of Fortune by human beings where some of them
were uncharacteristically adorned by “animalesque ears and tails”
(Calvino 19).This “bestial metamorphosis,” believes the narrator, is “the
78
A Carnivalesque Study of Kurt
Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five
- A.R.N. Hanuman
Abstract: The paper focuses on the carnivalesque elements in Kurt
Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five. The novel, based on Kurt Vonnegut's own
experience in World War II, is an eye-witness account of a prisoner who
survives the Allied forces firebombing of Dresden. Vonnegut has said that
he always intended to write about the experience but found himself
incapable of doing so for more than twenty years. Slaughterhouse Five, as a
final product of Vonnegut's twenty years of hardship, becomes his most
famous and widely studied work. Its style puts the reader in a thoughtexperiment where the novel can be perceived as an imaginary space where
contradicting notions exist. The novel is unconventional in the sense that
it has no beginning, middle or end - neither in terms of chronological
time-scheme nor of plot development.There is also no suspense and none
of the cause and effect relationships that one finds in realistic fiction.
Vonnegut's pictures debunk the glorification of the advertised image
through an act of degradation, an important aspect of the carnival.
Vonnegut employs parody to highlight the shortfalls of man's ideology.
This paradox of degradation centralizes in all works of parody, since
parody attempts to rethink, redesign, and improve fixed conventions.
Keywords: war, parody, metaphor, degradation, grotesque.
Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (1922-2007) was born to a descendant of a prominent
German-American family. His father was an architect and his mother
was a noted beauty. Both spoke German fluently but declined to teach
Kurt the language in light of widespread anti-German sentiment
following World War I. In 1943 Vonnegut enlisted himself in the U.S.
Army and took part in the Battle of the Bulge, Belgium, where he was
captured by the Germans as a Prisoner of War (POW). Though he has
German roots, he was forced to work at a factory in the city of Dresden.
On February 13, 1945, when Dresden was firebombed, Vonnegut and
the other POWs survived because they were in a meat locker of a
slaughterhouse. The scene of senseless misery and mass destruction at
Dresden played a key role in Vonnegut's development of pacifist views
and his experiences as a soldier had a profound impact on his writings
which reflect the helpless human condition through which he
emphasizes the role of chance in human actions. All of his fourteen
novels are filled with topsy-turvy, carnivalesque images and races of his
own invention.
The main concern of Vonnegut's novels is to attack a set of beliefs that
men surrender themselves to, thereby, causing misery to themselves.The
significance man attaches to artificial constructs like race, nationality,
even national dogma, forces man to snap the common thread that links
all people. For a broader readership who felt conventional fiction was
84
The Theme of Communal
Harmony and Renunciation in
Basavaraj Naikar's Light in the House
- P.V. Laxmi Prasad
Abstract: This paper focuses on the theme of communal harmony and
renunciation in Basavaraj Naikar's latest novel “Light in the House”. It is a
fictionalized version of the life of Sharif Saheb of Shisunala, who lived in
the nineteenth century India and who was a rare combination of a folk
artist, a spiritual songster, a mystic and an apostle of communal harmony
between Hindus and Muslims. Though born as a muslim, he was taught
by a Virasaiva preacher, Siddaramayya and a Brahmin preacher,
Govindabhatta. His concept of Khadar-Linga is an ample evidence of his
communal harmony which is especially relevant to twenty-first century
India and so necessary for the national integration of the country.Towards
the end, Sharif Sahib realized the ephemerality of worldly life and
therefore developed a deep sense of renunciation. He is often called the
'Kabir' of Karnataka.
Keywords: Communal Harmony, Renunciation, Disillusionment,
Ephemerality of life,Tragic suffering, Social Reformation.
Basavaraj Naikar's Light in the House'' is a hagiographic novel that deals
with the life of the great saint poet Sharif Saheb of Shisunala of North
Karnataka. He is a living embodiment of all the moral and religious
virtues in a secularist approach of Indian society. Naikar depicts the
resolute life of Sharif Saheb who is considered to be a symbol of
communal harmony between the Hindus and the Muslims. As a
philosopher, he is a non-dualist.Though born as a muslim due to the
grace of Hajaresha Khadri of Hulagur village, he was trained in Virasaira
scriptures and vedic lore under the teachings of siddharamayya of
Shisunala, and Gurunatha Govindabhatta of Kalasa respectively. Sharif
Saheb was a precocious child and spiritually oriented from his
childhood. He was born after his parents visited the shrine of Hajaresha
Khadri. His naming ceremony was attended by people from both the
communities. As he grew into boyhood, he started asking endless
questions which were beyond the capacity of his age. The parents were
proud of his intelligence but he was silenced cleverly by his father. His
parents were also secular-minded. His father, Imam Saheb took Sharif to
the open air temple and bowed down to the idol of Lord Basavanna. The
deity was considered to be the Lord of Shisunala by the villagers. Sharif
imitated his father and was worshipped him.
When Sharif Saheb was fit enough to be admitted into a School, his
father took him to Siddharamayya to teach him whatever was possible.
Sharif was tested and later accepted as his student. The teacher
commented: “Dissemination of Knowledge is part of my religious duty.
89
Some Reflections on the Place of
Drama in the B.A. (English)
Course
- Ravindra B. Tasildar
Abstract: In the syllabus of two papers on English Literature for the
Indian Administrative Service (IAS) main examination there are only five
plays against fourteen novels. This makes it imperative to know the place
of drama in English studies in India. Here is an attempt in that direction.
An elective course in English offered only to the students from the Faculty
of Arts at the undergraduate level is known by different names like English
(Honours), English (Major), Principal English, English (Entire), English
(Special) and Special English. Based on the syllabi documents, this paper
is a modest attempt to study the titles, objectives, course content, teaching
methods and evaluation procedures of the papers on drama offered
mainly in the first decade of twenty-first century in the B.A. (English)
courses in six universities in Maharashtra viz. University of Mumbai,
University of Pune, Shivaji University,Yashwantrao Chavan Maharashtra
Open University, Swami Ramanand Teerth Marathwada University and
Shreemati Nathibai Damodar Thackersey Women's University. In the
universities under study, apart from similarity in the objectives of teaching
drama and the recurrence of certain texts, a shift is noticed from the study
of British plays to non-British plays. Though fiction and drama are
considered as equivalent genres, the later is relegated to a secondary place
in the BA (English) course. For instance, whenever there is need to delete
any prescribed text or introduce a new paper, drama has been the first
choice of the policy makers. Paradoxically, it is found that in the B.A.
(English) course the students prefer to study plays over other forms of
literature.
Keywords: B.A. (English), papers on drama, objectives, course content,
British and non-British plays, teaching methods, evaluation procedures,
recommended reading, teaching of drama, discrimination.
Introduction: English literature is one of the optional subjects to be
studied for Civil Service Examination. A cursory look at the syllabus of
English Literature Paper I – (1600-1900) and Paper II – (1900-1990) for
the Indian Administrative Service (IAS) main examination reveals that
in both the papers there are fourteen novels (seven each) against three
plays in Paper I (King Lear and The Tempest by William Shakespeare and
A Doll's House by Henrik Ibsen) and two in Paper II (Look Back in Anger
by John Osborne and Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett). This makes
it imperative to know the place of drama in English studies in India. Here
is an attempt in that direction. The focus of the deliberations on drama
has always been the study of drama at the postgraduate level. The
teaching of drama at the undergraduate level has not received enough
99
The Synthesis of Oriental and
Occidental: Sri Aurobindo's
Poetry and Philosophy
- Swati Samantaray
Abstract: A versatile genius and a revolutionary turned Mahayogi, Sri
Aurobindo (1872-1950) was the visionary of a new world order. He may
be called the most radical spiritual master ever, who challenged not only
perceptions and theories but also our very idea of reality. Aurobindo's
integral vision of life and spirituality, his theory of evolution of not only
consciousness but matter as well, place him at the head of cutting edge
thinkers of all time.This paper presents a bird's eye view of the synthesis of
Eastern and Western philosophy, literature and psychology in his works –
especially his verses. His poetry as well as his philosophy may be regarded
as a happy synthesis of old and new, East and West, realism and idealism,
pragmatism and spiritualism.
Keywords: Spirituality, Brahman, Integralism, Yoga, Mysticism,
Philosophy, Poetry.
Sri Aurobindo (Arbind Ackroyd Ghose) occupies a pre-eminent place
among the philosophers and thinkers of modern India. His life is “a
glorious chronicle of progress from patriot to poet, yogi and seer” as M.
K. Naik epitomises (Naik: 47). He has produced monumental works on
the Veda, the Bhagavadgita and on Yoga and has presented the philosophy
of the Upanishads in a new light, and in all its integrality and depth.
Poetry was his passion besides spiritual seeking. He had the advantage of
both the Occidental and Oriental education. In fact, after spending his
early days in England and then returning to Baroda he reoriented his
western studies with the studies of Sanskrit and modern Indian
languages. Aurobindo's thoughts, ideals and approach to spiritualism are
mirrored in his works, more famous among which are: The Life Divine,
The Synthesis ofYoga, Essays on the Gita, The Human Cycle, The Foundations
of Indian Culture and The Future Poetry (published first of all in the
philosophical monthly of the Ashram, Arya).
Aurobindo's poetic evolution corresponds roughly with the three phases
of his life: 1879-1893, when he was in England for his studies; 18931906 at Baroda and 1906- 1910 at Calcutta were the periods of his deep
involvement in the freedom struggle – this was the time of his intense
personal sadhana, when he also acquainted himself with Indian
Literature and culture: a period of jnana and karma yoga; 1910-1950 is
the third and final stage of his siddha yoga at Pondicherry. He wrote many
lyrics, sonnets, futurist poems in quantitative metre. His early poems –
Songs of Myrtilla, Night by the Sea, Urvasie, Love and Death, Chitrangada,
The Tale of Nala and Baji Probhou are written in a totally romantic style. In
his magnum opus Savitri, (23,813 lines, in twelve books and forty-nine
106
Arbind Kumar Choudhary -
A Modern Indian English Poet
Par Excellence
- Sandeep Kumar Sharma
Abstract: Arbind Kumar Choudhary is a multisided genius and his
contribution to Indo-Anglican poetry is commendable and praiseworthy.
His poetry has a great variety of themes like nature, love, death, sorrow
etc. He is a master of irony, satire, humour and pathos. He is a superb
artist and in his poems each word is used attentively and accurately. His
poetry is the expression not only of the actual and the ideal but also of the
real which blends and transcends them both.
Keywords: imagery, humour, pathos, and nature poetry.
Arbind Kumar Choudhary occupies a prominent, distinctive and
commanding place in the cosmos of Indo-English poetry and his
contribution to poetry is significant, substantial, weighty and valuable.
He has earned name and fame all over the world after the publication of
three well known poetic works—'My Songs', 'Eternal Voices' and
'Universal Voices'. Choudhary justifiably a safe place along with other
remarkable and towering personalities of Indo English literature like
Kamla Das, Keki Daruwala, Jayanta Mahapatra, Manohar Shetty,
Aurobindo Ghose, Adil Jassawala, Sarojini Naidu, Dr. Bijay Kant Dubey,
Nissim Ezekiel and R. Parthasarthy. The themes of his poems are widely
varied i.e. nature, love, birds, injustice, death, sorrow, society and life etc.
and the most significant thing is that he has given a very realistic, graphic
and crystal clear description of life in his poems. The poetry of Arbind
Kumar Choudhary has the realism of Chaucer, the dulcet dreaminess of
Spenser, the universality of Shakespeare, the sublimity of Milton, the
energy of Dryden and the polish of Pope. He has the naturalism of
Wordsworth, the romanticism of Coleridge, the force of Byron, the lyric
loveliness and the ethereal imagination of Shelley, and the seriousness of
Keats. He has the consummate art of Tennyson, the robust optimism of
Browning, the Classic repose of Arnold and the mysticism of Francis
Thompson.
Arbind Kumar Choudhary is a genius of extraordinary vitality, fecundity
and versatility. His genius is not only lyrical but also dramatic and epical.
He is not only a subjective idealist but an objective realist. He is not only a
superb artist with unlimited poetical and technical art but also one of the
most inspired poets. Choudhary is a master alike of irony and satire, of
humour and pathos and horror of 'thrilling fears' and 'sympathetic tears'.
He is in short, one of the most perfect men of letters the world has yet
seen. Infact he is not only a man of letters but he is also a painter, a
composer, a musician, and a histrionic artist of superb skill and exquisite
112
Feministic Undertones and
Overtones in Anand's Novels
- Bishun Kumar
Abstract: Mulk Raj Anand is a ruthless social critic and pioneering
humanist rather than a gynocritic. Since women are complementary part
of human society therefore, he can not ignore the suppression and
oppression of women, sexist remark on them, biased treatment with them,
and male's perception of women as a commodity for men's physical
pleasure. Feministic undertones of Anand begin with his very first novel
Untouchable and continue in all his early novels. His undertones turn into
overtones in his later novels. Physical exploitation of Sohini in
Untouchable, Leila in Two Leaves and a Bud and Lakshmi in Private Life of
an Indian Prince are evidence of his feministic concerns. Suppression and
distortion of Parvati into Paro, oppression and physical exploitation of
Mumtaz in Morning Face raise feminist issues. Biased treatment of Maya
in The Village and of Gauri in The Old Woman and the Cow and their
transformation into revolutionary 'new women' is an evidence of his
feministic overtones that paves the path for a 'newly born woman' Ganga
Dasi in Private Life of an Indian Prince.
Keywords: gynocritic, Feministic undertones and overtones, oppression,
suppression, new woman, distortion, exploitation.
Mulk Raj Anand is a paramount social critic and a humanist rather than a
feminist. But suppression of women is one of the uncountable evils in the
society. Therefore, a social critic cannot ignore incorporating the
miserable condition of women. Only one novel The Old Woman and the
Cow is gynocentric and all his novels are andocentric. Feminism studies
suppression and oppression of women, their physical exploitation, their
mental betrayal, their position in the society, stereo-typed roles given to
them, and marginalization from the main stream of confidence and
development. Mary Wollstonecraft is first woman to realize the plight of
women and expressed her wish in her ground breaking work 'A
Vindication of Rights of Woman'. Says she;
I earnestly wish to point out in what true dignity and happiness
consist, I wish to persuade women to endeavor to acquire strength
both of mind and body- - - and to show that elegance is inferior to
virtue that the first object of laudable ambition is to obtain a character
as a human being regardless of the distinction of sex….
(Wollstonecraft, 5)
Tentative study of Anand's novels reveals that he took the task of
propagating Mary Wollstonecraft's wish, for novel after novel from
Untouchable to Gauri we find gradual upliftment and up-gradation of
women, resistance against cultural stereotypes and effort for attaining
119
Magic Realism a Remystificative
Narration in Amitav Ghosh's
Sea of Poppies
- P. Indu
Abstract: Realism is a doctrine or universal concept followed by every
writer to idealize the realities in their work. There are five types of realism.
They are social realism, psychological realism, historical realism, mythic
realism and magic realism. The magic realism deals with the realism that
shifts from realism to a magic world and vice versa. It is one of the
characteristic features of post colonialism. As Amitav Ghosh is a post
colonial writer, he has incorporated magic realism in his novels to
fantasize the reality. In this article I have dealt with the application of
magic realism by Ghosh in his novel Sea of Poppies.
Keywords: Post colonialism, Magic Realism, psychological realism,
mythic realism
Realism is a doctrine or universal concept followed by every writer to
idealize the realities in their work. There are five types of realism. They
are social realism, psychological realism, historical realism, mythic
realism and magic realism. Social realism deals with the reality that one
encounters in the contemporary society. The psychological realism deals
with the hidden thoughts of an individual and is expressed in their
interior monologue. The historical realism reconstructs the past using
myth.The magic realism deals with the realism that shifts from realism to
a magic world and vice versa. It marks the thematic transition in
literature.
As fiction is a combination of fact and imagination, magic realism is one
of the amenable narrative techniques. It aims to grasp the union of
opposites that is the reality and the non reality. It is a kind of art which
entertain or depict the enigmas of reality. It reconfigures the
supernaturalism to reality and arise the question whether it is supposedly
true or not. The tone of depicting magical elements explores the culture
of a particular nation. It is a mixture of rationality and irrationality and is
left to the reader's view. The recognition of reality depends upon the
reader's own consciousness. Roshin George says magic realism is a post
colonial narrative device. Since Amitav Ghosh is a post colonial writer,
he uses this narrative technique in most of his novels. This article is
concerned with the magic realism dealt by him in his work Sea of Poppies.
It is a novel that narrates the 19th century India and is an amalgamation of
five realisms. Here the magical elements are blended into the realistic
atmosphere to access a deeper understanding of the reality. The novel
itself begins with the touch of magic realism. The young Bihari woman,
Deeti seeing the apparition of a two masted ship during her bath in the
122
Life in the Woods: Towards an
Ecocritical Reading of Thoreau's
Walden
- Anurag Bhattacharyya
Abstract: Ecocriticism is a comprehensible introduction to the
study of the relationship between the physical environment and
literature. Cheryll Glotfelty defines ecocriticism as “the study of
the relation between literature and the physical environment”
(Glotfelty:xviii). Ecocriticism calls for a paradigm shift from the
human-centric to the bio-centric, which transcends the mutually
exclusive categories of centre and periphery. This paper examines
Henry David Thoreau's Walden as an ecocritical text applying the
trope of pastoral tradition. The pastoral concept has become
synonymous with a threefold literary tradition that includes the
pursuit of the countryside as a refuge from the city, the contrast
between urbanity and rurality, and the idealization of rural life that
hides the hard realities of work. Walden may be read as the report of
an experiment in transcendental pastoralism. Thoreau is
considered to be the most important figure in shaping American
preservationist and environmentalist thought. He is the patron
saint of American environmental writing.
Keywords: Thoreau, Ecocriticism, Transcendental, Pastoralism,
Man, Nature
Ecocriticism, as a theory of literary criticism, rises and begins to flourish
in 1990s in Europe and America. Ecocriticism calls for a paradigm shift
from the human-centric to the bio-centric, which transcends the
mutually exclusive categories of centre and periphery. Just as Feminist
criticism examines language and literature from a gender conscious
perspective, and Marxist criticism brings an awareness of modes of
production and economic class to its reading of texts, ecocriticism takes
an earth-centred approach to literary studies. Literary theory, in general,
examines the relations between writers, texts and the world. In most
literary theory “the world” is synonymous with society-the social sphere.
Ecocriticism expands the notion of “the world” to include the entire
ecosphere.
The term “Ecocriticism” was coined by William Rueckert in “Literature
and Ecology: An Experiment in Ecocriticism”, in 1978 but its
antecedents stretch back much further. By ecocriticism Rueckert meant
“the application of ecology and ecological concept to the study of
literature” (Glotfelty xviii). Cheryll Glotfelty in her introduction to The
129
Quarreling with the Self:
Identity Crisis in Milan Kundera's
Novel, Identity
- Naresh Kumar Vats
Abstract: The term 'Identity' cannot be defined precisely. Every one of
us lives a biography reflexively organized in terms of flows of social and
psychological information about possible ways of life. How to behave,
what to wear (expressions as well as clothes) and who to be are the
decisions one makes every day. A person understands the self reflecting
upon his/her biography. Personhood is a concept, and what a person is
understood to be in one culture may not be the same in the other cultures
– culture is simply the ways we live. The traits from which biographies are
constructed may be understood and interpreted variously in different
societies and cultures. However there are elements that are common to all
cultures. With this basic understanding I attempt to study Milan
Kundera's novel, Identity. The novel deals with identity which is ever
shifting, fleeting and complex like self. The novel explores the question of
human identity and whether it is possible for the two people in love
(Chantal and Jean Marc) to understand each other in a world eternally
trapped on the level of the physical, and the psychological. The female
protagonist, Chantal is quite unsure about her comfortable present that
her past seems to threaten her from all the sides. She exhibits a paranoid
personality. She fears her past, fears her passing youth, and fears that soon
no one would like her. She is all body, a physical being, a material. To her,
very existence means sexual attention. She has lost control over her life,
her thoughts, her wants and desires. It is this loss of control that has
weakened her self-image. Her obsession with sexual attention is so
overpowering that it seeps deep into her consciousness and smears her
dreams with obscenities and erotic suggestions. “She recalled her
metaphor and saw a rose withering, rapidly as in a time-lapse film until all
that was left of it was a skinny blackish twig, and disappearing forever in
the white universe of their evening: the rose diluted in the whiteness.”
(Identity, 39)
Keywords: Identity crisis, Culture, dream, paranoia, delusion, self
image, erotic, personality
The term 'Identity' cannot be defined precisely. Everyone of us lives a
biography reflexively organized in terms of flows of social and
psychological information about possible ways of life. How to behave,
what to wear (expressions as well as clothes) and who to be are the
decisions one makes everyday. A person understands the 'self' reflecting
upon his/her biography. Personhood is a concept, and what a person is
understood to be in one culture may not be the same in the other cultures
– culture is simply the ways we live.The traits from which biographies are
constructed may be understood and interpreted variously in different
135
The Plays of Girish Karnad:
A Feminist Study
- Krishna Singh
Abstract: The paper endeavours to analyse the plays of Girish Karnad
from a feminist perspective. Theme/motif, characterization, image and
psychology of the women have been targeted with the purpose to evaluate
Karnad's vision, attitude, concern and treatment of the feminine issue.
Keywords: subalternity, dialectical relationship, cultural polarity.
Karnad's deep-rooted humanism allowed him to give voice to the
silenced majority through his plays. Karnad was well acquainted with
feminist ideologies and the havoc wrought by patriarchal ideologies in
Indian society. The plays of Karnad abound with subalterns especially
women and lower caste people subjected since ancient time by
patriarchy or upper hierarchy of the society. Karnad has not only exposed
their subalternity but also fused energy in their lives so that they can
speak; shifted their position from “margin” to “centre”. Yayati, Tughlaq,
Hayavadana, Naga-Mandala, Tale-Danda,The Fire and the Rain, Flowers,
Broken Images and Wedding Album etc. amply exemplify the above notion.
Devayani, Sharmishtha and Chitralekha in Yayati, Kapil and Padmini in
Hayavadana, Rani and Kurudavva in Naga-Mandala, lower caste people
in Tale-Danda, tribals, Nitilai and Vishakha in The Fire and the Rain,
Radhabai and Yamuna in Wedding Album display subalternity of the class
they represent. Karnad as a cultural administrator goes beyond this and
attempts to provide them their due space and defy the traditional
hierarchies prevalent in Indian society. The paper endeavours to analyse
the plays of Girish Karnad from a feminist perspective. Theme/motif,
characterization, image and psychology of the women have been
targeted with the purpose to evaluate Karnad's vision, attitude, concern
and treatment of the feminine issue. His deep-rooted humanism and
concern for the upliftment of Indian women have produced two sets of
characters—one the traditional representing the gendered subalternity;
another progressive which mark the evolution of womenfolk. Devayani,
Sharmistha and Chitralekha in Yayati, Padmini in Hayavadana, Rani and
Kurudavva in Naga-Mandala, Vishakha and Nitilai in The Fire and the
Rain, Chandravati in Flowers, Manjula Nayak and Malini in The Broken
Images, Vidula Nadkarni, Pratibha Khan and Hema, Radhabai, Mira,
Vatsala and Yamuna in Wedding Album define the feminine world of
Karnad which embodies several aspects possessing modern relevance.
Yayati, the first play of Karnad which is based on the myth ofYayati in the
Mahabharata is highly relevant as far as the socio-psychological study of
144
The Overlapping and Interlacing
of Desire, Woman and Society in
Karnard's Naga-Mandala
- Ankur Konar
Abstract: Allied with the strategical binary formation the
conceptual note of public men and private woman, my article
maps the social issues that continuously surveys on the identity of
the women in our society. By taking Karnard's disturbing text
Nagamandala as a socio-political text, it will be revealed that
patriarchal parade is still in its full force that resists the growth of
women liberation. Compression or suppression of powerful
passions of woman is a strategic shift of our gendered society.
Keywords: Identity, Right, Desire, Woman, Feminism, Domestic
Violence, Positional Politics and Society
Dharwadker's rigid statement that “In many respects, Naga-Mandala is a
companion piece and 'sequel' to Hayavadana rather than a work of
striking originality” (Dharwadker viii) gives the play an absolutely new
dimension of meaning that ultimately has made the text much popular at
least in the academic discipline. Naga-Mandala: Play with a Cobra, a play
originally written in Kannada and later translated in English by the
dramatist himself, opens with the Prologue that projects the disturbing
sense of an unsatisfied Man, a failed playwright. The Man's intense
desire has been put on the conditional point that has been attributed by
the personified 'Story'.The story telling method discussion of this artistic
method in the Prologue of the drama gives the play a cult Indian
dimension because story telling method has deeply been ingrained in the
Indian psychology; R K Narayan in The Guide and Raja Rao in
Kanthapura have exploited that oral genealogy to the maximum.
Achievement of the Man's whims has been resisted by his previous vow:
“I have just now taken a vow not to have anything to do with themes,
plots or acting. If I live, I don't want to risk any more curses from the
audiences” (04). Vis-à-vis such statement Naik and Narayan read the
play totally on that direction of artistic story-making: “The tale of the
failed playwright seems to suggest that art demands everything from the
artist and that he will die if he cannot fulfill his mission. The RaniAppanna- Cobra tale is evidently an allegory of the nexus between the
world of art and the world of mundane reality.That the cobra finally finds
permanent refuge in the hair of Rani is perhaps indicative of the
permanent alliance between art and imagination.” (Naik and Narayan 203,
my emphasis) In fact, unsatisfied desires bring the divisive ideologies of
abstruse subject, working through the clandestine activities. In such a
socio-religious setting where the 'idol is broken' (01), fulfillment of
150
Anita Desai's Fire on the Mountain:
A Postcolonial Feminist Reading
- R. K. Mishra
Abstract: The present paper attempts to add a new feather to the
scholarship of Anita Desai. With this intention, important insights of
'postcolonial feminism' have been picked up to exhaust and evaluate Fire
on the Mountain with novelty. Postcolonial feminism is a relatively novel
wing of feminine scholarship. Postcolonial feminism or 'third world
feminism' emerged in response to Western mainstream feminism.Western
feminism has never been mindful to the differences pertaining to class,
race, feelings, and settings of women of once colonized territories.
Postcolonial feminism rejects Western feminism on the ground of its utter
'eurocentricism'. Hence it is fallacious to hope postcolonial females to be
valued, appreciated and justified by the Western hands. Of course, the
long Western tendency to homogenize and universalize women and their
experiences led to the emergence of 'postcolonial feminism'. Postcolonial
feminism is a hopeful discourse. It seeks peaceful solutions for all world
marginalized women. Postcolonial feminists imagine a world in which
differences are celebrated and enjoyed. Anita Desai in the novel argues
like 'postcolonial feminists' for social, cultural, economic, and religious
freedoms for women.
Keywords: Colonialism, Postcolonialism, and Postcolonial feminism.
In the very beginning I would like to articulate frankly that it is over
simplistic to hold that Western feminists can represent and justify the
stand of women living in once-colonized countries. Since lives,
experiences and circumstances of postcolonial women differ utterly from
that of Western women, so feminists of postcolonial origin should come
forward and make differences visible and acceptable; otherwise be ready
to take on colonized clothes of identity. If lives, experiences, and
circumstances of women of postcolonial settings are divergent, they
should be judged, evaluated, and treated as such. In this paper it has been
intended to view Anita Desai's Fire on the Mountain (1977) from the
perspective of 'postcolonial feminism'.
Long history of prejudices and inhuman remarks against females
prevailed over countless social and cultural texts ultimately led to the
emergence of feminism in late 60's and early 70's of twentieth century in
the West. Since then feminists went all out to reexamine issues of sex,
gender, and even language (as by-products of patriarchy) in literary and
cultural discourses. Feminism like Marxism and Post colonialism
invalidates unjust power relationships. Feminists having an oppositional
stance started questioning their inferior status and asked for
amelioration in their social position (Freedman, 3). As such it calls for
equal justice and equal opportunities for females. In short feminism as a
concerted attempt aims to get the nature of gender inequality, gender
157
The Problem of Evil: A Critique
of William Golding's Fiction
- Ravi Bhushan
Abstract: The twentieth century will be best remembered perhaps for
its two world wars and the degree of social movements and moral
dilemma which they brought in their wake. Increasing knowledge on
various fronts- psychological, economical, philosophical, anthropological
etc- led only to an increase in moral unease and strengthening of the
notion that religion and ethical systems are relative rather than absolute.
Thinking men stared questioning the belief in the essential rightness of
western ways of behaviour. It was in such an atmosphere of intellectual
ferment that William Golding stared writing. War experience gave him a
chance of observing the melee of humanity at close quarters. The
brutalities of war drove home to him the savagery, cruelty and lust
inherent in man's nature. With this Golding firmly came to believe that
man is tainted with evil. This very philosophical drift was to become the
basis of his fiction.
Keywords: Evil, God, Human
What is Evil? No single statement can ever really answer this apparently
simple question. The ambiguous and ubiquitous nature of evil therefore
makes every definition incomplete, if not suspect. Thinkers and
theologians throughout human history have grappled with the subject,
but the mystery of evil abides. A simplistic approach to this complex
problem may enable us to regard it as an aspect of the eternal clash
between illusion and reality. The real contrast is, between those who take
evil and suffering as undeniable and those who view evil as a grotesque
dream, ugly but unreal. The belief in an all-wise, all-loving, omnipotent
and omniscient God seems to negate the existence of evil. If not a blade
of grass could stir without His will, as the scriptures say, why hold man
responsible for anything at all? The whole and related questions have
been expressed powerfully by Persian poet Omar Khayyam in one of his
great quatrains: “The moving finger writes and having writ moves on: nor
all thy piety nor wit shall lure it back to cancel half a line, nor all the tears
wash out a word of it” (Ranjit K. Kapoor, 1987).
All great writers have been, in the course of their confrontation with
reality, obliged to acknowledge the problem of evil. Some of the world's
greatest books – Oedipus, King Lear , Moby Dick, The Brothers Karamazov,
etc were written as a result of such a long and terrible peep into the heart
of reality. The word evil originated from the Anglosaxon term 'yfel', the
opposite complement of good, the term is almost always defined
negatively. Evil is defined as that which is opposed to the divine order of
the universe, which is bad or morally wrong or that which causes harm,
pain or misery. The important question to be asked is, do people choose
165
Self-evaluation: A Divine Tool
- Indira Jha
Abstract: To err is human, not to accept it is an act of stupidity. To
accept and rectify it, is more than human and not to repeat it, is divine.
Keeping this motto in mind teachers need to reflect on the responsibilities
which they are expected to undertake in the present society. In the present
context self –evaluation basically means the ability of a teacher to judge
his or her own teaching honestly and to see how much learning is taking
place in the class. The purpose of teaching is to help students to learn. So
we can only judge teaching by seeing how well students succeed in
learning.The teacher can improve students' chances of learning by:
· Creating a good class-room climate. The class-room climate is
affected by the teacher's own attitude and behavior eg, how he or she
controls the class, how much he or she uses English in the class etc.
· Being sensitive to the needs of individual learners and recognizing
that each student has different needs and problems.
So the teacher should try to find out more about each student, eg, by
getting them to talk and write about themselves, and by finding time to
talk to students outside the class. Counselling is essential to channelise
the students to courses suited to their abilities and aptitudes. The
importance of triangle, the relationship among teachers, students and
parents or community should receive prime consideration. For a good
teacher who, does all the things above, likes his/her job, other things that
students appreciate in them are punctuality, their marking home-work
and class-work on time and willingness to help outside the class-room.
Self –monitoring, self-assessment. self-observation and self- evaluation
are wonderful tools to measure our inner growth.
Keywords: Class dynamics, Mechanics of Language,Text Construction.
The teacher's role, like most professional roles, is defined by the society
in which the teacher works. Different social groups have different
perceptions of different professions, and these change with time. The
teacher or Guru in ancient Indian society was next only to God and one's
parents. Teaching is an art in which the relationship between human
beings, between teacher and taught, is crucial to real success. Learning to
teach is not to pick up formulae but to act on internalized principles – to
borrow terminology from religious instructions, we are concerned not
with outward and visible signs, but with inward and spiritual graces. The
signs are the conventions of particular times and places, but the internal
motivation and sensitivity of the good teacher will transcend the
limitations of particular local conventions through the process of relating
to people – the class. Each teacher recreates the principles of teaching in
relation to each new class and each new student. Some teachers do it
better than others, of course, but all teachers will attest to gradually
getting a 'feel' for teaching, as they become more experienced. We can
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Einer ruhigen literarischen Kreuzzug
gegen den Krieg: Rereading
Remarque's All Quiet on the
Western Front
- Pinaki Roy
Abstract: Erich Maria Remarque's All Quiet on theWestern Front (1929),
through which he wages a 'quiet literary crusade against war' and
militarism, is one of the more famous anti-belligerence works to have
been ever written. Originally written in German as ImWesten nichts Neues,
the novel, which is often read against Ernest Hemingway's A Farewell to
Arms (1929) as a convincing testimony of the numerous horrors of the
First World War (1914-18), is exhaustive in its depiction of the hardships
and miseries that the twenty-year-old German army recruit, Paul
Bäumer, and his comrades experience while fighting against the Allied
troops on the Western Front. “Einer ruhigen literarischen Kreuzzug gegen
den Krieg: Rereading Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front” seeks to
offer a critical interpretation of the different aspects of Remarque's novel,
much maligned for its pacifism, that have had helped it to retain its
readership, popularity, and relevance even after eighty three years from
the date of its first serialisation in the German newspaper, Vossische
Zeitung. Select critical views on the 1929 novel have also been mentioned
in the essay.
Keywords: Remarque, Hemingway, pacifism, war, anti-belligerence
mood, suffering, quietude, frustration.
In the year 1929, two of world's more famous and poignant war novels –
Erich Maria Remarque's Im Westen nichts Neues (famously translated by
Arthur Wesley Wheen in 1930 as 'All Quiet on the Western Front') and
Ernest Miller Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms – were published –
respectively in German and English. The two respective writers –
Remarque (1898-1970) and Hemingway (1899-1961) – had military
backgrounds and own shares of misfortune. Conscripted into the
German Armed Forces in 1916, Remarque was transferred to the Western
Front, and as a soldier of the 15th Reserve Infantry Regiment, he was
grievously wounded on 31 July 1917 by shrapnel in left leg, right arm,
and neck, fighting between Torhout and Houthulst, Belgium. He was
immediately transferred to an army hospital in Germany where he
recuperated until the First World War was over and his country had lost it.
Hemingway, on the other hand, voluntarily joined the American Red
Cross services in 1918, and on 8 July 1918, was fatally shredded in legs by
mortar fire while attending to the Italian soldiers at Fossalta di Piave,
near Venice. Despite his injuries, he carried a wounded Italian soldier to
safety, earning for himself an Italian Silver Medal of Bravery. He
convalesced for six months at the Milanese Red Cross Hospital, where he
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The Society in Transition:
A Comparative Study of A Streetcar
Named Desire and The Cherry Orchard
- Balabhadra Tripathy
Abstract: Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire and Anton
Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard focus on the suffering of certain sensitive
individuals in a society in transition. Both these plays have strong
resemblance as both of them portray the fading aristocracy's last struggle
for existence against a dominating materialistic civilization. The
protagonists are lost in a particular point of time where they are unable to
give up their traditional way of life in order to adjust with prevalent social
forces. This leads to some psychological and emotional problems in the
life of these characters.
Keywords: Transition, Aristocracy, Decay, Mercantile, Existential
loneliness, Aesthetic Sensibility.
The aim of the present paper is to study the crisis of a society in transition
with particular references to Tennessee Wllliams' A Streetcar Named
Desire and Anton Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard. Both these plays have
strong resemblances as both of them portray almost identical problems.
The problem is that of the people who live in an intermediate period of
transition between the outgoing conservative, aristocratic civilization
and an upcoming commercial, bohemian culture. As it is, transition is a
state of tensions. A sense of insecurity, uncertainty and anxiety clouds
the people's minds. People of the outgoing generation are in a difficult
situation. Their necessity to part with the past and their inability to make
adjustments with the present form the core of this situation. The tension
is in the psychological and emotional nature of these characters. Both
these plays present this tension in the life of the people of the outgoing
generation who are confronted with a challenge to choose between two
contradicting worlds: their beautiful but useless aristocracy and the
upcoming commercial civilization. So, it is the last desperate struggle of
the dying aristocracy to resist the drift. The struggle continues and the
tension deepens until the emissaries of the past get alienated from the
mainstream of the society. Conflicting ideologies, multi-focal ethical
values and metaphysical questions of an uncertain kind crowd in both
the plays, making them socio-ontological studies of a society in
transition.The crisis of a transitional period registers a conflict between
an order that has exhausted its freshness and an order that is yet to gain
acceptance.The resulting situation is a psychological no-man's land.The
period is characterized by conflicting loyalties. People are thrown into a
quagmire of doubts and uncertainties, fear and anxiety. People, with
their inherited values and the new experiences are constantly bewildered
and perplexed. They live in a troubled world, a world torn between two
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the sky was an honest blue…:
Contemporary Poetry in English
from Assam
- Nigamananda Das
Abstract: The paper explores poetry in English from Assam since 1960
onwards. This poetry includes translations from Assamese poetry both
religious and secular by various translators and poetry written originally
in English. Those who have written originally in English are Lakshahira
Das, Bhupati Das, Dayananda Pathak, Umakanta Sarma, Rupanjali
Baruah and others. Assamese poets writing in Assamese are seldom
obscure. The publications of Assamese poets writing in English do not
reflect the essence of the Assamese culture significantly. In this regard it is
different from the English poetry written in other Indian provinces.
Keywords: Neo-Vaishnavite Faith, jikir songs, mystical expressions,
skylark of Northeast India, agonising turbulence.
In 1960 Hem Barua published Modern Assamese Poetry, a select
collection of English translations of Assamese poems. In this collection,
out of the twenty six Assamese poets, nine poets translated their own
poems into English. This shows that in 1960 in Assam there were poets
who could have written in English. Assamese poetry which has yet to
renounce romanticism is quite different from the poetry of the other
provinces of India in its emotional effects and aspects. Even, at present,
except a few, Assamese poets writing in Assamese are seldom obscure.
The publications of Assamese poets writing in English do not reflect the
essence of the Assamese culture significantly. In this regard it is different
from the English poetry written in other Indian provinces.
The poetry in English from Assam abounds in a good quantum of
translations from folk and religious vernacular literatures and ethnic
literatures. The Bhagavat, Kirtan, Namghosha, Bhaona and other forms
Vaishnavite or ethnic literatures have been translated into English, which
have enriched the reservoir of poetry in English. Discussion of a few
samples will provide us some information about the works in this field.
Pradip Acharya, Ajit Barua and some other English teachers of Assam
have published commendable works in this field. Mahapurush
Sankardeva (1449-1569) who propagated Ekasarannamdharma, the
neo-vaishnavite faith of surrendering to the single Lord by chanting His
holy name etched a good number of songs that dilate the glory of the
Almighty. Some of these verses bear mark of literary excellence of
universal appeal:
Numbered are the years that measure your life;
Half the life slips away in the hours of sleep;
A score of years fly in the winds of boyish pranks;
Ten years go in counting coins on the finger-tip.
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Our Contributors
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Garima Kalita is an Associate Professor in the Department of English,
Cotton College, Guwahati, Assam. She has published two books of
literary criticism in Assamese titled Adhunik Manuhar Asukh and Pratiti
aru Prakalpa and a monograph on Florence Nightingale. She is keenly
interested in Film studies and has edited Perspectives on Cinema of Assam
published by Gauhati Cine Club.
Hemang Desai is a poet, fictionist and a translator working in Gujarati,
his mother-tongue and English. He is the Head of English Department
at Shri N.V.Patel College of Pure and Applied Sciences, Vallabh
Vidhyanagar, Anand, Gujarat. His books of translation, 'Anuvidhan'
and 'Thirsty Fish and other Stories' are published by Lajja Publisher and
Gujarati Sahitya Parishad respectively.
Dibyajyoti Sarma works as Senior Copy Editor,Times of India-Pune,
Maharashtra. He has published a volume of poetry, 'Glimpses of a
Personal History' from Writer's Workshop, Kolkata.
Abdulrahman Mokbel is currently working as Co-ordinator , Dept. of
English Language and Translation, Faculty of Sciences and Arts,Taibah
University- Al-Ola, K.S.A.
M. Rosary Royar is Associate Professor in English at Fatima College,
Madurai,Tamil Nadu.
Namrata Nistandra is Assistant Professor at Department of English,
Doaba College, Jalandhar, Punjab.
Rani Rathore is Assistant Professor at Department of English, The IIS
University, Jaipur, Rajasthan.
Roya Vakili is Research Scholar at English Department, Bangalore
University, Bangalore, Karnataka.
Sambit Panigrahi is a lecturer in English in Ravenshaw University,
Cuttack, Odisha. He specializes in Postmodern Literature and
Environmental Literature.
A.R.N. Hanuman is Assistant Professor of English at Dept. of
Humanities and Social Sciences College of Engineering, Andhra
University,Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh.
P.V. Laxmi Prasad, a critic, reviewer, poet is Associate Professor of
English at Govt. Degree College at Karimnagar, Andhra Pradesh.
Ravindra B. Tasildar is as an Assistant Professor in the Dept. of
English, S.N.Arts, D.J.M. Commerce and B.N.S. Science College,
Sangamner, Ahmednagar, Maharashtra. He specializes in ELT and has
published research articles in national and international journals.
Swati Samantaray is Associate Professor at School of Humanities,
KIIT University, Bhubaneswar, Odisha.
Sandeep Kumar Sharma is Lecturer in English at D. M. College,
Moga, Punjab. Currently, he is pursuing his research in Punjabi
University, Patiala, Punjab.
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Labyrinth | Vol.2 No.4 (Oct. 2011)
Bishun Kumar is Asst. Professor, at Institute of Technology and
Management, BKT, Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh.
P. Indu is Research Scholar at Research Centre in English, V H N S N
College,Virudhunagar,Tamil Nadu.
Anurag Bhattacharyya is Assistant Professor at Department of
English, Dibrugarh University, Dibrugarh, Assam.
Naresh K. Vats is an Assistant Professor in University School of
Humanities and Social Sciences, Guru Gobind Singh University,
Dwarka, New Delhi.
Krishna Singh is Asst. Professor of English at Govt. P.G. College,
Shahdol, M.P. His field of specialization is Drama and Criticism.
Ankur Konar he teaches at Burdwan Raj College, Burdwan, West
Bengal. He has authored a critical book entitled On Drama In Dattani
(2010). He has interest in Indian Drama in English and Cultural
Studies.
R.K. Mishra Asstt. Prof. of English, FASC, MITS Deemed University,
Lakshmangarh, Sikar, Rajasthan.
Ravi Bhushan is working as an Assistant Professor of English in Bhagat
Phool Singh Women University, Khanpur Kalan (Sonipat), Haryana.
He is a recognized Trainer cum Examiner of Cambridge University
ESOL Examinations department. Presently he is working on the UGC
sponsored Major Research Project on status of ELT at primary,
secondary and tertiary level in his home State.
Indira Jha is Reader at Department of English, C.M. College (LNMU)
Darbhanga , Bihar.
Pinaki Roy is Assistant Professor of English of Malda College, Malda,
West Bengal. He is also a military historian who has published
numerous essays and articles on Elizabethan literature, postmodernism,
postcolonialism, feminism, and war and Holocaust literatures in
different international and national journals. He is currently engaged in
postdoctoral research on Second World War literature.
Balabhadra Tripathy is Lecturer at P.G. Department of English,
Berhampur University, Berhampur, Ganjam, Odisha.
Nigamananda Das teaches at Dept. of English, Nagaland University,
Kohima, Nagaland.
N. D. Dani is Associate Professor in the Dept. of English at JNPG
College, Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh.
Rosaline Jamir is Professor of English at Assam University
Durgakona , Silchar, Assam.
Itishri Sarangi is Assistant Professor in Trident Academy of Creative
Technology, Bhubaneswar, Odisha.
Paramanda Jha is Reader and Head at Department of English, C.M.
College, Darbhanga, Bihar.