55th ALL INDIA
J.K.C.COLLEGE, GUNTUR
10-12 JANUARY, 2011
PREFACE
It is a matter of great joy that the unique opportunity to host the Conference comes to Jagarlamudi Kuppuswamy Choudary College
A word about the theme of the Conference. This age has been rightly called the age of transition and translation. The accelerated pace of migration and globalization posits the very need to celebrate the ever-increasing diversity. Many a problem accosts a translator the moment he/she sets out the journey. First they are bewildered as the grapple in order to be faithful to their translation. It goes without saying that it entails dynamic equivalency preserving the very tenor of textual atmosphere that may be easily lost if we are meticulous about “the fallacy of absolute fidelity”. The translation ought to reflect the original as closely possible allowing the reader to relish the text and feel its vibrant pulse of the original. The translators are supposed to be on their guard, for instance, about gender neutrality as far as possible while preserving the meaning of the original. The reconstruction of the translation process sheds some light on some of the linguistic and cultural issues that might be encountered in literary translation in general and from the Indian vernaculars into English in particular. Indian Literatures in English Translation was deliberately fixed upon as good translation is particularly capable of dispelling the ideological fogs that has for so long spuriously hung over in many parts of the globe.
It is fervently hoped that the promotion of good translation turns out to be fruitful especially in empathizing with the lot of an alien ethos. Hence, The Presidential Address, the Key-note Address, the Symposium on “English Translation in Indian Vernaculars” and the Plenary Sessions with the eminent Professors and erudite Scholars from various states will dwell on all the focal issues on translation and promote informed discussion. Many other sessions are set apart in order to encompass almost all relevant the domains of English language and literature. All these are helpful to approach and understand the dynamics of translation in a better way. We are glad that the practical, theoretical or pedagogical issues of the craft of translation, analyses of authentic translation work, translation practices, procedures, strategies etc., have been deliberated upon.
The onerous task, spanned over many months, has been gladly undertaken with the generous support from various quarters. First our hearty thanks go to the Management for their generosity, Principal and Director, PG Courses for their kind-hearted co-operation, our sponsors for their great support and the Association for keeping faith in us. The members of different committees belonging both to our college and other colleges as well are very helpful in streamlining the activities. The support of retired staff is commendable. All these great people stand by us. Indeed, it is the beauty of group work pursuing the common goal of keeping the college on the pedestal letting His will prevail.
Dear Delegate, this is a unique platform where you can explore new avenues and dimensions of English Studies. We hope that you will enjoy the intellectually stimulating atmosphere all these three days.
55th ALL INDIA
SCHEDULE
DAY 1 : 10/01/2011
8.00 am to 10.am : Breakfast and Registration
10.00 am to 12.00 noon : Inauguration
President : Dr.K.Basavapunnaiah,
President, Nagarjuna Education Society, J.K.C.College.
Chief Guest : Prof. Y.Haragopala Reddy,
Hon’ble Vice-Chancellor, Acharya Nagarjuna University
Conference President : Prof. C.R.Visweswara Rao,
Hon’ble Vice-Chancellor, Vikrama Simhapuri University , Nellore
Spl. Guests : Sri J.Narendernath,
Secretary & Correspondent, J.K.C. College , Guntur
: Dr.K.V.N.B.Kumar,
Principal, J.K.C. College , Guntur
: Sri S.R.K.Prasad,
Director, P.G. Courses, J.K.C. College , Guntur
: Prof. Dr. Pasupathi Jha,
Chairman, AESI.
: Prof. Dr.Padmakar Pande,
General Secretary, AESI.
12.00 noon to 12.20 pm : TEA
12.20 pm to 1.15 pm : Key Note Address
Prof. S.Ramaswamy,
Fellow, Silliman College , Yale University , USA
1.15 pm to 2.00 pm : LUNCH
2.00 pm to 4.45 pm : Symposium on Translation
Participants : 1. Dr.Jayadeep Sarangi (Kolkata)
2. Dr.Lipi Pushpa Naik (Bhubaneswar
3. Dr.T.Sai Chandramouli (Hyderabad
4. Dr.V.Kadambari (Chennai)
5. Dr. Annie George (Kottayam)
6. Dr. N.Santha Naik (Mysore
7. Dr.Supantho Benerjee (Nagpur
8. Dr.Suresh Shukla (Ahmedabad)
9. Dr.Chittaranjan Kar (Raipur
Moderator : 10. Dr. T.S.Chandramouli
4.45 pm to 5.00 pm : TEA
5.00 pm to 6.30 pm : Parallel paper reading sessions
6.30 pm to 7.30 pm : Cultural Programme
7.30 pm on words : DINNER.
DAY 2 : 11/01/2011
8.00 am to 9.00 am : Breakfast
9.00 am to 11.15 am : Plenary Session
Speakers : 1. Prof.C.L.L. Jayaprada,
Prof. of English, Andhra University , Visakhapatnam
2. Prof. S.Murali
Prof. of English, Pondicherry Central University , Pondicherry
3. Prof.Ashok Thorat,
Director, Institute of Adv.
11.15 am to 11.30 am : TEA
11.30 am to 1.15 pm : Parallel Paper reading sessions.
1.15 pm to 2.00 pm : LUNCH
2.00 pm to 4.00 pm : Plenary Session
Speakers : 1. Dr.S.Usha Rani,
Director of Collegiate Education (Rtd.,)
Chennai.
2. Prof. N.K.Ghosh,
Prof. of English, Agra University , Agra
3. Dr. O’ Brien
Prof. of English, Manipur University
4.00 pm to 4.15 pm : TEA
4.15 pm to 5.45 pm : General Body Meeting.
5.45 pm to 6.45 pm : Parallel paper reading sessions.
6.45 pm to 7.30 pm : Creative Writing Session.
7.30 pm on words : DINNER.
DAY 3 : 12/01/2011
8.00 am to 9.00 am : Breakfast
9.00 am to 11.15 am : Plenary session
Speakers : 1. Prof. B.K.Das,
Prof. of English, BudwanUniversity.(West Bengal )
2. Prof.V.Subrahmanyam, Chennai
3. Prof.R.K.Dhawan, Delhi
11.15 am to 11.30 am : TEA
11.30 am to 1.15 pm :Parallel Paper reading session.
1.15 pm to 2.00 pm : LUNCH
2.00 pm to 3.00 pm : Parallel reading session
3.00 pm to 5.00 pm : Valedictory Function
President : Dr.K.Basavapunnaiah,
President, Nagarjuna Education Society & J.K.C. College , Guntur
Chief Guest : Prof. Niruparani,
Ex-Vice-Chancellor, Adikavi Nanaya University , Rajahmundry
Prof. of English, Andhra University , Visakhapatnam
Spl. Guests : Sri J.Narendernath,
Secretary & Correspondent, J.K.C.College, Guntur
: Dr.Padmakar Pande, General Secretary, AESI.
Vote of Thanks
10 January 2011
Conference President’s Address
- C.R. Visweswara Rao
It gives me great pleasure that this 55th All India English Teachers Conference is being organized by the Association for English Studies of India (AESI) in association with J.K.C. College , Guntur
I look forward to this Conference reflecting on the new trends in English studies consequent on borders between disciplines becoming porous and on the gradual shift of interest from theory to praxis. I am sure the Association will play a creative role in preparing the road map for exploring the possibilities for the future of English studies in India
During my four-decade old engagement with English Studies, I have had the unique good fortune of tutelage under great teachers with a holistic perspective. Their integrity of purpose and concern for the unostentatious promotion of academic values embellished their thought and scholarship. It is therefore that on this occasion my thoughts centre on the profession and practice of teaching in tune with a contemporary outlook so as to help us meet the challenges thrown by the ever-widening frontiers of knowledge and the societal demand for a community of teachers committed to the science and craft of teaching. Given the bewildering variety of approaches and schools of thought, it is probably incumbent on the teacher that he possesses what might approximate to what Coleridge would call, “esemplastic imagination” involving an amalgamation, synthesis, of disparate elements / modes of approach which as we see today witnessed in the rapidity with which new theories from out of all old ones are arising, sometimes taking us back to the beginning.
I would like at this juncture to touch upon the contribution to English studies in India by the redoubtable C.D. Narasimhaiah in, among other works, his autobiography, N for Nobody, and by M.K. Naik in his occasional meditations on this subject in the hilarious sketches of his Corridors of Power. I would also refer to Elaine Showalter’s Teaching Literature wherein there is a distillation of her half-century of teaching (along with the experience of scores of other teachers) in a jargon-free blend of manual and memoir which will appeal to readers with a general interest in education. Provocative, evocative, spirited in tone and lucid in structure, this book offers what readers might want to know about teaching undergraduates. Showalter opens with practical matters (like the seven types of anxiety that can plague teachers, lack of training, isolation, performance, evaluation), and then moves on to the theoretical, exploring subject-centred, teacher-centred and student-centred teaching theories. Throughout, she addresses nitty-gritty matters, from preparing syllabi and lectures and leading discussions to grading and "housekeeping." She offers a cornucopia of approaches, peppered with brief reflections from teachers about actual practice.
Similarly, Robert Scholes’ The Crafty Reader is another work to which I may invite your attention. This book from the well-known literary critic deals with reading not as an art or performance given by a virtuoso reader, but as a craft that can be studied, taught, and learned. Those who master the craft of reading, Scholes contends will justifiably take responsibility for the readings they produce and the texts they choose to read. Scholes begins with a critique of the New Critical way of reading, using examples of poems by various writers. He concludes with a consideration of the strengths and weaknesses of the fundamentalist way of reading texts regarded as sacred. To explain and clarify the approach of the crafty reader, the author analyzes a wide-ranging selection of texts by figures at the margins of the literary and cultural canon, including Norman Rockwell, Anaïs Nin, Dashiell Hammett, and J. K. Rowling. Throughout his discussion Scholes emphasizes how concepts of genre affect the reading process and how they may work to exclude certain texts from the cultural canon and curriculum. He advocates reading a poem first for its ordinary meaning, “situating” the poem in its historical context, and considering matters such as whether you are persuaded by the poem, and whether, in fact, you like it. He argues that “human concerns…are the ultimate value of poetry” and that if “poetry does not communicate, it becomes the Mandarin discourse of a comfortable elite.” The diminished status of poetry, he asserts, is as much the fault of “well-intentioned teachers” as that of reluctant students.
I may also invite your attention to some discerning and distinguished scholars like S. Viswanathan, author of Exploring Shakespeare: The Dynamics of Playmaking, Kapil Kapoor (Literary Theory: Indian Conceptual Framework), and G.N. Devy of After Amnesia fame whose remarkable absorption of varied insights and history of ideas in a synergetic vision has contributed significantly to the profession of literary studies in the Indian classroom. K.R. Srinivasa Iyengar, doyen of Indian Writing in English, and M.V. Rama Sarma, steeped in Milton
English departments have become places where mass culture—movies, television, music videos, along with advertising, cartoons, pornography, and performance art - is studied side by side with literary classics and this has not been an easy transition. The novelist Richard Russo captures this mood of an old order department trying to come to terms with a rather new appointee who "wore what remained of his thinning hair in a ponytail secured by a rubber band," and who startled his colleagues by announcing at the first department gathering of the year that he had no interest in literature per se. Feminist critical theory and image-oriented culture were his particular academic interests. Edward Said has caused a stir by lamenting the "disappearance of literature itself from the…curriculum" and denouncing (in MLA Newsletter, Vol. 31, No. 1) the "fragmented, jargonized subjects" that have replaced it. Literature in English has been a respectable university subject for barely a century. The English honours degree was not established at Oxford
In 1925, John Jay Chapman looked at American higher education, and finding Greek and Latin classics on the wane, proclaimed "the disappearance of the educated man." Some fifty years later, Lionel Trilling gave a paper on "The Uncertain Future of the Humanistic Educational Ideal"—a title that understated the pessimism of the paper itself (Trilling, The Last Decade: Essays and Reviews, 1965-75 (Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1979, pp. 160-176). For one thing, the decline in the students of humanities relative to other fields reflects the fact that postwar expansion took place especially in the previously underemphasized fields of science and technology. With increased access to college for many students whose social and economic circumstances would once have excluded them, vocational fields such as business, economics, engineering, and most recently, computer programming have also burgeoned. But it is also true that many "traditional" students (the new term for those who used to be referred to as "college age") are turning away from literature in particular and from the humanities in general. Many who once might have taken time for reading and contemplation now tend to regard college, in Trilling's phrase, "as a process of accreditation, with an economic / social end in view." It is always dispiriting to find young people feeling they have no time to "waste". But these developments do help to explain the mood of the contemporary English department. Literature is a field whose constituency and resources are shrinking while its subject is expanding. Even conservative departments are beginning to take account—belatedly—of the global literature of decolonization, which followed the Second World War. As a subject for study English now properly comprises more than the literature of England , the United States , Canada , and Australia South Africa
Literary "science" has yielded many genuine discoveries. Biographical scholars have uncovered salient facts about authors' lives. Textual scholars have hunted down corruptions introduced by copyists, printers, or intrusive editors into what authors originally wrote. But for most students, especially undergraduates, the appeal of English has never had much to do with its scholarly objectives. Students, at least the discerning among them, turned to English till some time ago because they had the mysterious experience - or some intimation of it - of receiving from a work of literature "an untranslatable order of impressions" that led to "consummate moments".
Matthew Arnold defined culture as the "pursuit of total perfection by means of getting to know…the best which has been thought and said in the world, and through this knowledge, turning a stream of fresh and free thought upon our stock notions and habits." For Augustine, "the best which has been thought and said" was to be found exclusively in scripture; for Arnold Arnold
A view of the purpose of art may be called "moral," Maybe, "existential" would be a far better term, for "moral" carries with it the suggestion of some rigid prescription. This may strike the historical scholar as too much of a concern with the present and the present-minded theorist might consider it too "universalist." In the immediate postwar decades, university departments of English by and large preoccupied themselves with the New Criticism - a term that is stipulative and often taken to designate narrow formalism. The New Criticism, a reaction against certain prevailing modes of historical criticism and subjective aesthetic impressionism, otherwise called ‘appreciation,’ pervaded the scene from the 1920s quite as a pedagogical weapon. The works of John Crowe Ransom, Allen Tate, R.P. Blackmur, Kenneth Burke, Yvor Winter, and later Cleanth Brooks
Though the New Critics came under severe attack at the hands of the Chicago Critics and myth critics, it must, however, be said that they viewed the critics’ function as one of seeing the work “as a totality, a configuration, a gestalt, a whole.” The close reading of the texts that the New Criticism taught us dominated pedagogic discourse for well over four decades. However it must be admitted that cultural awareness was to be found in certain critics of the new critical era. L.C. Knights, F.R. Leavis, and Q.D. Leavis, for example, were uncannily aware of the connections between culture, literature, and language promoting which Leavis untiringly insisted was his life’s mission. But with Structuralism opposing its focus on individual works in isolation, Deconstruction’s view of language rejecting the New Criticism, emphasis began to be laid on the process by which the context of a work was formulated and realized in innumerable ways. For the New Criticism underemphasized the reader and the poet and overemphasized the poem and didn’t take cognizance of what Structuralists and Post-Structuralists emphasize – the flow of textuality and the idea that every text is an inter-text. Milton
Contemplating these patterns and harmonies under the guidance of a good teacher can be a wonderful experience. But in acknowledging what every true writer knows - that words are never quite governable by the will of the author—the New Critics were planting seeds of future trouble for English studies. Paul de Man, who introduced the deconstructionist theory of Jacques Derrida to American readers after the New Criticism had become a received orthodoxy, detected in the New Critics a "foreknowledge" of what he called, borrowing a phrase from the Swiss critic Georges Poulet, "hermeneutic circularity." Writers and good critics have always revelled in language play; but in the 1970s, academic criticism became a "multivalent," "indeterminate," and "undecidable" "speech act" construed differently by different "interpretive communities." All this was evidence that the "referentiality" of language to anything outside itself is an illusion and that sequences of words to which we assign meaning are actually "gaps" filled by the "subjectivity" of the reader.
When all claims to timeless or universal truth became suspect, Deconstruction became the dominant mode. The Structuralists pronounced that the author was dead. Ronald Barthes’ essay “The Death of the Author” stated that “the birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the author.” Genette’s contention was that the language of literature was not subordinate to the message supposedly carried by the text. Then it followed that there was plurality of meanings in a text as a consequence of the absence of authorial intention in literary works. Without the authorial intervention, the critic’s job was no longer to retrieve meaning but produce one which realizes just one of the possibilities contained in the text. Sturucturalist Criticism differed from traditional criticism by not pretending to retrieve a single, definitive meaning from the literary text and by rejecting the traditional ways of perceiving the word, the world, and the text. Marxists, psychoanalysts, and feminists have expressed their reservation about Structuralism in which the signifier and the signified form a unified whole and preserve a certain identity of meaning. Poststructuralists have discovered the unstable nature of signification which Derrida described thus: “the absence of the transcendental signified extends the domain and interplay of signification ad infinitum.” A destabilization of all earlier movements in literature, Derrida’s theory of deconstruction in the late 1960s took the play of signifier, of which language itself was made, as leading to a deferral of meaning. Derrida’s “trace” is “an always already absent present.” As Hillis Miller defines it, “Deconstruction as a mode of interpretation works by a careful and circumspect entering of the textual labyrinth…Deconstruction is not a dismantling of the structure of a text but a demonstration that it has already dismantled itself.”
This Hillis Miller demonstrates by a deconstructive reading of a passage from Paradise Lost, Book IV, wherein the phrase about Eve, “as the vine curls her tendrils”, suggests an already fallen Eve and not Eve under subjection. Thus it indicates an interference of figuration with theology by an unmaking of the construct. This is what Derrida means when he says, “language bears within itself the necessity of its own critique.” Deconstruction thus liberates a past text for present uses. Women’s studies, Cultural Studies, and Minority discourses have profited from deconstructive reading of texts.
Along with its offshoot, "reader-response" criticism, it was an extreme scepticism that regarded all meanings and judgments as contingent on the "subject-position" of the reader. Deconstructionists rejected the idea that a work of the imagination manifests any "presence" (a rubric under which they gathered such notions as meaning, beauty, and authorship), and, they used terms like "aporia" and "absence." One of the implications was that literature was no more or less worthy of study than any other semiotic system. But this view soon turned into the dogma that literature, like any constructed system of meaning, must be assessed in relation to this or that "identity" (race, class, gender, etc.), to the exclusion of every other point of view. Long before the rise of deconstruction, in an essay entitled "The Meaning of a Literary Idea" (1949), Trilling had remarked that "people will eventually be unable to say, 'They fell in love and married,' let alone understand the language of Romeo and Juliet, but will as a matter of course say, “Their libidinal impulses being reciprocal, they activated their individual erotic drives and integrated them within the same frame of reference.” Trilling's parody of the Freud fad of his day was intended to illustrate how "ideas tend to deteriorate into ideology." If a touch of Gramsci and Foucault (among the biggest post-deconstruction influences on literary studies) is to be added, it would read as: "Privileging each other as objects of heterosexual desire, they signified their withdrawal from the sexual marketplace by valorizing the marital contract as an instrument of bourgeois hegemony." Robert Scholes examines these questions in depth in The Rise and Fall of English. In Literature Lost, one of the important books on the crisis, John Ellis deals with the pressure to publish something. Ironically, the publish or perish slogan has only increased the production of books and studies even as the readership for what is published has declined steeply.
The process of changing the assumptions of literary studies began in the late 1950s under the name "structuralism" - a technique by which culture was analyzed as a collection of codes and rituals denoting boundaries that protect against transgression by a threatening "other." Words like "high" and "low" (along with other evaluative terms such as "primitive" and "advanced," or "savage" and "civilized") acquired obligatory quotation marks, and literature, in effect, became a branch of anthropology. "A literary text," Paul de Man wrote in 1970, "is not a phenomenal event that can be granted any form of positive existence, whether as a fact of nature or as an act of the mind." Nor could literature any longer be understood as a body of inspired writings with discernible meanings. "It leads," de Man declared, "to no transcendental perception, intuition, or knowledge….." Under these "postmodern" conditions, "there is no room," de Man wrote, "for…notions of accuracy and identity in the shifting world of interpretation."
Against this background, in the 1970s and 1980s, the dominance of deconstruction was challenged by New Historicism and Cultural Poetics / Materialism which valued the psychic and physical reality of language. These twin movements were, apart from being a reaction against the New Criticism, a recoil from deconstructionist criticism which in its turn functioned under the impression “there is nothing outside of the text” (Derrida), though the statement was meant to be taken “inside-out,” thus letting everything outside the text into the text. Traditional approaches have sought to understand the weltanschauung of the different ages such as the belief in the Great Chain of Being held during the Renaissance. Old historians believed in the progressive nature of history, in the perfectibility of man as expressed for example in E.M.W. Tillyard’s The Elizabethan World Picture and assumed that literary texts were transcendental expressions of a stable and ordered world of values. This was a deterministic view that went unchallenged for centuries. New Historicism, which was historicist rather than historical, was interested in history-as-text and believed in subjectivity shaping culture with social formation and individual identity influencing each other. New Historicism deconstructed the traditional distinction between history and literature and considered literature as another cultural artifact, even as history is. Louis Montrose’s definition of New Historicism centred upon the textuality of history and historicity of the text. The viewing of historical issues through a human “lens” is called self-positioning. New Historicism rejects the old historicism’s marginalization of history and the New Criticism’s fetishization of literature as beyond the realm of history. It views literary texts and their parallel non-literary texts as interrogating, contradicting, and modifying one other. Through this the critics unfold the cultural fabric that carries the work. It draws also from Foucault’s belief that social structures are determined by dominant “discursive practices”.
Stephen Greenblatt’s essay, “Towards a Poetics of Culture,” develops the hypothesis that texts are a product of “collective negotiations and exchange.” In a sense, New Historicism is an attempt at re-writing history in order to champion the marginal. In so far as it is countercultural, it tries, with its antiquarian flavour, to overturn conventional hierarchies, undermine traditional polarities, and efface the distinction between elite and popular culture. This is exemplified in one of Greenblatt’s discussions of Shakespeare’s The Tempest where he develops a link between the playwright and the investors in the Virginia colony at Jamestown
The dialectics of totalization and differentiation and the process of self-fashioning that cultural poetics invokes reveal its capacity to produce profound and illuminating readings. Cultural materialism, which is British, is an outgrowth of Marxism and is overtly political in questioning the dominant forces and in supporting the oppressed groups. Concerned as it is with popular forms of art and culture and with what Raymond Williams would call “structure of feeling”, it situates the text within the political situation of the contemporary period. Greenblatt’s reading of King Lear as a New Historicist differs from that of Dollimore, the cultural materialist, but they both lead us in the direction of how circulation of discourses and power structures affect our lives and how our own self-fashioning influences our interpretation.
If a champion of Reader-Response Criticism like Stanley Fish says “objectivity of the text is an illusion” and that a work is not an achieved structure of meanings, if Wolfgang Iser speaks about the “implied reader”, a phenomenological reader, if Jonathan Culler develops the term “competent reader”, there is the Hermeneutician like E.D. Hirsch who shifts the focus from the evaluative aspect of intention to the interpretative. Wayne Booth’s “implied author” might refer to an intelligence that superintends the work as different from the biographical author. But aren’t the authorial notes to The Waste Land a necessary part of the poem? Hirsch in his Validity in Interpretation (1967) argues in favour of a connection between meaning and authorial intent and reinstates the author because he is the one who is the basis for determining validity in interpretation. Thus, there is a radical departure from the New Critical and Structuralist views showing how the wheel comes full circle. While Hirsch’s essay, “Three Dimensions of Hermeneutics,” draws the distinction between meaning and significance, Deconstructive criticism indeed maintains that it is impossible to unveil the meaning of a text.
Lacan’s theory influenced by Poststructuralism emphasized a method of psychoanalysis which concentrates not so much on the psychology of the author or the characters but on searching the text for uncovering contradictory suggestions of meaning that lie beneath the overt text. Robert Car Davis sums up this method in The Fictional Father: Lacanian Readings of the Text wherein he refers to indeterminate elements constituted on many levels of textuality which he says enable a dismantling of standard presences in literature, such as father figures, mother substitutes, Christ figures, and so on in order to help study functions and transformations in fiction that can be examined critically within the narrative structure. There is then Bloom’s theory of the anxiety of influence showing us the relationship between the contemporary poet and his poetic forefather as one governed by a love-hate relationship and indicating thereby that every text is an intertext. Intertextuality then, with its emphasis on unlayering of dormant sediments of meaning through a tracing of the traces, puts on the shoulders of the students the responsibility of arriving at a knowledge of textuality through the chimerical transformative processes the text under consideration undergoes.
With Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex (1949) Elaine Showalter’s A Literature of Their Own (1977), Kate Millets’s Sexual Politics (1969), and Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar’s The Mad Woman in the Attic (1979), not to speak of Helene Cixous, Adrienne Rich, and a host of others, there has been a proliferation of feminist literary critical re-visionary readings positing woman as reader and as writer and critiquing patriarchal ideology and re-discovering neglected women’s talents. Elaine Showalter describes the vital elements of gynocriticism as questioning the biological essentialism which is the premise of patriarchy. Patriarchal assumptions are that a woman is a womb, a receptacle for male domination, and that women are caught up in the prison-house of language that is male specific. Ecriture feminine as opposed to phallocentric writing is founded upon principles derived from psychoanalytic, Marxist, and deconstructionist theories.
From critical theory in which a good grounding helps the teacher arrive at appropriate enunciative modalities, we move on to postcolonialism which emerged during the 1980s or rather in the early 1990s and has attained wide currency on account of such influential works as Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth (1961), Edward Said’s Orientalism (1978), Homi Bhabha’s Nation and Narration (1980), Helen Tiffin and Bill Ashcroft’s The Empire Writes Back (1984). Said was drawn to Foucauldian analysis of literature and culture as a site of political and ideological struggle. The alienating process which initially served to relegate the postcolonial world to the margin turned upon itself and acted to push that world into a position from which all experience could be viewed as uncentred, pluralistic, and multifarious. Marginality thus became an unprecedented source of creative energy, decentring Eurocentrism. The result of such writing back to the centre can be witnessed in a diaspora of writings. Milan Kundera, the Czech novelist, predicts in his Testaments Betrayed (1995) that the future of the novel lies with the countries of the Third World . Disintegration of indigenous cultures, colonial oppression, mimicry, exile, disillusionment, double consciousness, home land-alien land dialectic, hybridity – these are some of the themes postcolonial critics are preoccupied with. Subverting a text for postcolonial purposes and moving the margins to the centre gave the impetus for new readings of Jane Eyre, Robinson Crusoe, The Tempest, Great Expectation, and Mansfield Park
Coming to the new literatures and the unfolding critique of these, the relation between location and literary aesthetics and creativity has been emphasized by several critics. Malcolm Bradbury, in his discussion of modernist literature, reflects upon the close impact of the metropolitan cities where the movement shaped up, its peculiar kind of stimuli and the freedom and environment they provided to the writers who rebelled against the prevalent literary aesthetic norms and destabilized the earlier aesthetic values. The diasporic writers from Asia and Africa moving to the west have now begun to express their discontent against the hegemonic aesthetics that they have learnt all through their lives - in their reading of literature, in the literary histories, through canonical texts, and in the principles of aesthetic evaluation they have been taught. Subsequently, there has emerged the formulation of an aesthetics of dislocation, redefining practices / principles of reading, and critical evaluation of literature, old and new.
The generations that grew up in the 1940s and 50s in the colonized countries were taught English literature and aesthetics of the western tradition, from the classical to the modern. Arun Mukherjee reflects upon this political role of education which, according to her, completely blinds young minds to large areas of the world's geography and history. She realized how one's educational system can de-sensitize one to the really important issues in the literary texts through an over valourization of verbal complexity and plot construction. In Oppositional Aesthetics (1994), she recounts her experiences at teaching the short story of Margaret Laurence, 'The Sea of Perfume", which according to her contains clear political ideas. She discussed the story with her students from her point of view, but in the term papers submitted by them she found these aspects ignored. They had focused instead on characterization and plot. She realized that "their education had allowed them to neutralize the subversive meanings implicit in a piece of good literature, such as the Laurence Story". Emphasis on analyzing metaphors and symbols reduces the text's embedded socio-political and cultural comments and realities. Arun Mukherjee expressly rejects this condescending approach of the white critics towards literature from the Third World . She wrote her essay “The Vocabulary of the ‘Universal’: The Cultural Imperialism of the Universalist Criteria of Western Literary Criticism” in "the white heat of anger" on reading a quotation from Northrop Frye which implied the "assumption that Third World literary works could be read as derivative and intertextually linked with the works of Western European tradition". Mukherjee's two books Oppositional Aesthetics (1994) and Postcolonialism: My Living (1998) have become part of the diasporic exploration of the prevalent canon, literary principles and norms of aesthetics. Emphasis is laid on the specific historical contexts of the writer and the reader's attention is called to the multifaceted cultural sources rather than to the experience of one dominating hegemonic power-wielding group. As a result, one hears “dialogic, heteroglossic polyphony”.
Post-colonialism and cultural studies (and to some extent, postmodernism) intersect at a number of different sites, on a number of different planes. And both face at least three serious challenges. First, both confront the globalization of culture, not merely in terms of the proliferation and mobility of texts and audiences but rather as a movement outside the spaces of any specific language. Consequently, a critic can no longer confidently assume that he or she understands how cultural practices are at work even within their own territories. The new global conception of culture entails a deterritorialization, and a subsequent reterritorialization, and challenges culture's equation with location or place. Second, both cultural and post-colonial studies must confront the limitations of theorizing political struggles organized around notions of identity and difference. Politics of identity are synecdochal, taking the part (the individual) to be representative of the whole (the social group defined by a common identity). Third, both discourses are faced with the need to think about the possibilities of articulation as both descriptive and political. Articulation is not simply a matter of polysemy, but the making, unmaking, and remaking of relations and hence of contexts.
All these problems have emerged as cultural and post-colonial studies have attempted to confront the apparently new conditions of globalization implicating all the peoples, commodities and cultures of the world. In these conditions, the traditional binary models of political struggle - simple models of colonizer / colonized, oppressor / oppressed - seem inapplicable to a spatial conception of power which cannot be reduced to simple geographical dichotomies – First / Third, Centre / Margin, Metropolitan / Peripheral, Local / Global - nor, at least in the first instance, to questions of personal identity. This points to a possible misdirection of cultural studies. For even if we grant that much of contemporary politics is organized around identity, locating it within the broader context of the new spatial economy, we need to ask why identity is a privileged site of struggle. Arjun Appadurai’s discussion of the cultural dimensions of globalization and “de-territorialized identities” and “global ethnoscapes” raises some important questions. But our pedagogy may need to recognize the impact of local cultural production and thus perhaps the lure of the aesthetics of transnationalism in our teaching of cultural difference may have to be examined afresh.
One way of re-thinking the Empire in a post-colonial frame might be to focus on the inter-connections between the histories of ‘metropolis’ and ‘peripheries’ and refuse the simple binary of colonizer and colonized. As post-colonial theorists have argued, the projection of ‘the other’ is also always about repressed aspects of the self. Relations between colonizer and colonized are characterized by a deep ambivalence. ‘The other’ is both an object of desire and derision, of envy and contempt, with the colonizer simultaneously projecting and disavowing difference in an essentially contradictory way. He asserts mastery but constantly finds it slipping away (Bhabha, 1983, 1994). The retreat from grand narratives may have made us re-think totalities. We may not be able to map whole cultures and social formations in ways that once seemed possible.
For Ahmad, Said’s major flaw lies in his reconciliation of Foucauldian theories of discursive regimes (the practices of specific historical eras or epistemes, as Foucault terms them, dominated by specific discourses or ways of structuring representation) with the humanist tradition of a seamless, continuous history of European thought in which Said argues anti-Orientalist features can be discerned from the Greeks to the present. For Ahmad, this is to take on board the myth of a single unfolding history which he resists, preferring to see the humanist vision of a homogeneous European history as a collapsing together of a series of very different periods with radically different economic and social structure at their base.
In Outside in the Teaching Machine Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak says thus: “Postcoloniality is a deconstructive case. Those of us from formerly colonized countries are able to communicate with each other and with the metropolis, to exchange and to establish sociality and transnationality, because we have had access to the culture of imperialism. Can we critique a structure and yet inhabit it intimately? This is the deconstructive philosophical position, and the everyday here and now of postcoloniality is a case of it. Further, nationhood, constitutionality, citizenship, democracy, socialism, even culturalism – terms for which political claims in a decolonized space have been made - are tacitly recognized as coded within the legacy of imperialism. Thus for some of the concept metaphors no historically adequate referent may be advanced from postcolonial space.”
The idea contained in this passage is strikingly at variance with the position that Edward Said maintains. In Said’s essay, “Third World Intellectuals and Metropolitan Culture,” Raritan (Winter 1990), the line of demarcation between the so-called colonial and post-colonial intellectuals is drawn. It is that the colonial ones speak from positions imbibed from metropolitan cultures and the postcolonial ones speak from outside those positions. Now, in Spivak’s formulation, postcoloniality itself equals the heritage of imperialism and the postcolonial critic inhabits this space deconstructively, or as Bhabha would say, “ambivalently”.
In such influential books as The Empire Writes Back, the terms colonial and postcolonial are applied not just to what is generally called the Third World but also to the US , Canada , New Zealand , Australia US was a colony of Europe . Colonialism thus becomes a transhistorical thing, always present, and always in process of dissolution in one part of the world or another. Everyone gets the privilege of being colonizer, colonized, and postcolonial. The fundamental effect of constructing this globalised transhistoricity of colonialism may be that we are evacuating the very meaning of the word, so that we can no longer speak of determinate histories. Nor can we speak of a determinate structure such as that of the postcolonial state and the role of this state in reformulating the compact between the imperialist and the nationalist capitals. There is thus a constant dispersal of meaning. We live in a postcolonial period, hence in a postcolonial world. But not all discourses of this period and this world are postcolonial. In order to be a postcolonial discourse, the discourse must also be postmodern, mainly of the deconstructive kind. Those can be postcolonial that are postmodern.
Bhabha proposes the idea of cultural hybridity which is said to be specific to the migrant, especially the intellectual living in the western metropolis. The figure of the migrant intellectual comes to signify a universal condition of hybridity. It is the subject of a truth that individuals living within a national culture do not posses. Edward Said’s term for such subjects of postcoloniality is “cultural amphibians”. Salman Rushdie’s treatment of migrancy (“floating upward from history, from memory, from time” as he characterizes it) is likewise suggestive of this idea of the migrant having a superior understanding of both cultures to what more ordinary individuals might understand of their own. In Bhabha, the idea of cultural hybridity, as it is available to the migrant intellectual in the metropolis, gains significance as detailed below: “America leads to Africa; the nations of Europe and Asia meet in Australia
Culture is a sort of theatre, as Edward says, where various political and ideological causes engage one another. Culture can even be a battleground where uncritical appreciation of national classics is concerned promoting a sense of parochialism in us. Culture thus often comes to be associated aggressively with the nation. This differentiates ‘us’ from ‘them’. Culture in this sense is a source of identity. This idea of culture involves not only venerating one’s own culture but also thinking of it as somehow transcending the everyday world. Culture conceived in this sense is a sort of protective enclosure, quarantined from its worldly affiliations. But with our knowledge of the history of imperialism and culture we can no longer afford to view culture as either monolithic or “reductively compartmentalized”. There is always an eruption of the forces of separatism and chauvinism in discourse which is part of a totalizing discourse that tends to show the validity of a liberationist zeal, the wish to be independent. Said’s focus is on the point that partly because of empire now all cultures are involved in one another, none is single and pure. All are hybrid, heterogeneous, extraordinarily differentiated, and unmonolithic. The truest eye may be the migrant’s double vision. The idea of the organic intellectual, as Gramsci conceived it, has been thus pushed aside.
Now let us take the idea of comparative literature into consideration in this context. For the pursuit of comparative literature, a field whose purpose is to move beyond insularity and provincialism and to see several cultures and literatures together, an antidote to reductive nationalism and uncritical dogma needs to be worked out. The aim of comparative literature is to get a perspective beyond one’s own nation, though ironically the study of comparative literature originated in the period of high European imperialism and is linked to it. Goethe’s idea of weltliteratur is a concept that prevaricates between the notion of great books and a vague synthesis of all world’s literatures and was important to professional scholars of comparative literature in the early twentieth century. To speak of comparative literature therefore is to speak of the interaction of world literatures with one another. But the field was epistemologically organized as a sort of hierarchy, with Europe and its Latin Christian literatures at its centre and top. Academic criticism in comparative literature carried with it the notion that Europe and the United States together were the centre of the world not because of their political positions but because their literatures were the ones most worthy of study.
Partly because of empire now, all cultures are involved in one another. It is here that translation as a creative and critical activity has a valid place in the province of freeing ourselves from cultural insularity. Again, translation from English to Telugu and vice-versa should derive advantages from hybridization. The Asiatic Society under the patronage of Warren Hastings undertook translations of the Gita (1785) with a foreword by him and also of Hitopadesa (1787) and Manusmriti (1796). If Macaulay’s infamous statement was to the effect that a shelf load of Western Literature was worth more than all the works India has to offer, Hastings England
Curtius’s discovery of common “topoi” in European literature and Rene Wellek’s consciousness of the unity of all literatures put forth a centric theory which can be traced back to Goethe’s notion of weltlileratur or Eliot’s notion of tradition or Arnold Europe disintegrating under the pressures of world wars, and also from a medieval theocentric world-view which envisaged the universe as structured round a centre. The theory also drew inspiration from the Heideggerian interest in Being. Thus in its search for Being and for unity, this theory lay anchored to a transcendental signified capable of generating stable meanings with “truth” and “objectivity.”
Derrida refers to the “ensemble” of signifieds or a central signified as “an absolute archia,” as delimiting the play of signifiers. This leads to the literary text acquiring a “logocentrism” instead of being a differential dissemination. Though John Searle disagrees with Derrida about his hermeneutic of the Western intellectual tradition, Derrida’s attack on the logocentric sign that gives primacy to “voice” and “presence” is unmistakable and this has led to the assertion of epiphanic difference which exposes the inadequacy of the logocentric paradigm. Derrida suggests that “reading must always aim at a certain relationship, unperceived by the writer, between what he commands and what he does not command of the languages that he uses.” This is his perception of “aporia.” The post-structuralist and postmodernist notions of signifier have brought into play the possibility of understanding a literary text in a non-logocentric way. If the text has no prior Being or rules to refer to, and its signifier generates its own essence through its gay game, then the text is a decentred monad. It generates its own energy through its contextual arrangement. Though it is situated in its own cultural problematic, it tends even to “erase” it. In the light of the text’s liberative effort suggested here, the focus of comparative studies on “spiritual relations,” “influence,” “inspiration,” “unity,” and so on need a careful reassessment. That is, the emphasis of the theory of comparative literature needs to shift from unity, semblance, or identity to difference and emptiness.
The idea of comparative literature will emerge only when we take into account the essential plurality underscored by the text. The English version of Medea does not belong to English literature, nor does it belong to Greek, though in some sense it belongs to both. The “amphilingual” status of a work in translation makes the task of critics difficult. T.S. Eliot, in his scathing review of Gilbert Murray’s English translation of Medea complains that Medea in translation stretches “the Greek brevity to fit the loose frame of William Morris and blurs the Greek lyric to the fluid haze of Swinburne,” suggesting the amphilingual status of a translation.
In India
There is then the issue of bhasha literatures and the idea of amnesia put forth by G.N. Devy. The plea that Devy makes for a place for bhasha literatures in the scheme of things in the Indian academic imagination stems from a philosophical position about the crisis that originates in the uncertainty of perspectives about basic aesthetic premises in the Indian context. He argues that colonial experience in India
F.R. Leavis, part of the socio-cultural critical tradition from Coleridge through Arnold
English departments by and large are engaged in an exploration of theories and subfields - feminist, gay and lesbian, postcolonial studies, New Historicism, and more recently, "eco-criticism", and so on. These yield work that illuminates aspects of literature that in the Arnoldian description could be called, "fresh and free thought" and a free “play” of the mind upon ideas. The field of English has become, to use Stanley Fish’s term a "self-consuming artifact." We are seized with the theory fascination syndrome and are riding hobby horses of our predilection and sidetracking the true objective of education: to see things steadily and to see them as a whole and to welcome “cross-pollination” of ideas. May I hope that our journey through the mazes of this life-long education takes us “tomorrow to fresh woods and pastures new.”
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INDIAN LITERATURE IN ENGLISH TRANSLATION
(Ramblings by a Superannuated Man)
Key-note Address
S. Ramaswami
Fellow, Silliman College
Yale university, USA
The translation of Indian literatures into English is concomitant with the introduction of English in India Bengal in 1832. When it came to knowledge of Sanskrit Wilson had no rival.
Max Muller, who called himself, “Sharmanyadeshasya Mokshamoola Bhattacharya” is the editor of the multi-volume Rig Veda. There is a story connected with him which I heard in Oxford Oxford
The translations from Sanskrit classics are so enormous that it is not possible to even touch its fringes here. However, I will be doing injustice if I don’t mention some Poetry and Fiction. First, Poetry. Ashvaghosha’s “Balacharitam” (1894) Sri Harsha’s “Naishadhacharitam” (1934), Jayadeva’s “Gita-Govindam” as “Indian song of Songs” by Sir EdwinArnold (1875), Kalidasa’s “Kumara Sambhavam”, “Meghadutam”, “Raghuvamsham” and “Ritusamharam”. Adi Kavi “Valmiki’s epic “Ramayanam” by Manmath Nath Dutt, Ramesh Chandra Dutt and H.T.S. Griffith, “Mahabharatam” by Kishore Mohan ganguli and R.C. Dutt. In fiction Bana Bhatta’s “Kadambari’, Dandin’s “Dashkumaracharitam”, “Hitopadesha” translated as “Book of Good Counsels” by Edwin Arnold, “Panchatantra” by Ryder and somadeva’s “Kathasaritsagara”(“Ocean of story”).
This cursory book at Sanskrit Literary texts has been undertaken because I wanted to begin at the beginning. This section may be wound up with just one illustration, John Brough’s English translation of two stanzas from Kalidasa’s great epic “Kumara Sambhavam” (Canto III, Verses 40 and 43). The Situation is that the gods have realized that the only hope against the demon, Taraka is General who shall be born as the son of Shiva and Parvathi. But Shiva has no thoughts of marriage and is engaged in profound meditation in the remote mountain forest of Himalaya
Yet Shiva still remained in meditation
Absorbed, although he heard the singing elves,
Can anything have power of perturbation?
Of souls completely masters of themselves?
As on a journey under baleful omen
Trying in fear from Shiva’s eyes to tide,
To the Lord’s sacred ground came Love the bowman
Emerging through creeper thickets from the side.
This English translation is chosen because poetry in translation must also be good English Poetry. Here the British translators have done a good job because they were sound Sanskrit scholars, who naturally were good at English. After all, it is their language! As a transition from Sanskrit into other Indian languages, a point must be made about the difference between translating from one Indian language into another and translating any Indian language into English. Our languages are inflected but un-accented with the result that word order becomes sacrosanct in English – even in poetry. Also the common cultural heritage and tradition naturally unites all Indian Languages. The culture-specificity is a binding force, English being alien to our culture, in translation there can only be an approximation.
English:
Like a City seen in a mirror is the universe,
Seen within oneself but seemingly of Maya born,
As in Sleep;
Yet is it really in the inner Self
Of Him who sees at the point of Light
Within Himself, unique immutable -
To Him incarnate as the holy Guru,
To Sri Dakshinamurti be my salutation.
French:
Telle une ville dans un miroir
L’univers est contenu en Lui
Mais comme produit par mirage
Comme en sone
Et cependant existent en verite dans le Soi,
A lui, qui dans l’eclat de la Pure Conscience
Ne realize que son proper Soi,
A lui donc incarne dans le Maitre Bien – Aime
A Dakshinamurti, notre salutation.
The original Sanskrit is the first stanza of “Daksinamurthy Stotram” of Adi Shankaracharya. It describes the illusory nature of the world and pays a tribute to “Dakshinamurthy” Shiva as teacher who dispels the darkness of ignorance and provides the light, the illumination of Right Knowledge. While in our language the translation makes this perfectly clear, in English, especially in poetry, though it is translated by no less a writer than Raja Rao, the great Indian novelist, the rendering needs explanation. The French translation is excellent but literally true and accurate to the English version. It is by the French Scholar George Fradier who didn’t know Sanskrit. Apart from the inflections, in our languages, there are degrees of respect or familiarity in addressing a person. In Kannada, “Neenu” is familiar singular. However, “Soi” is closes to Sanskrit than “Self” in English. “Neevu”, is respectful plural, “Taavu” is formal. In telugu we would say “Nuvvu”, “Meeru” “Tamaru”. In Hindi, “Tu, Tum, Aap”, In French, a distinction in made between ‘tu’, “vous”, “ca va” – “How are you”, is familiar greeting. “Comment allez vous”, formal, “here, - “You” as singular and “Vows” as respectful and formal, equivalent in Kannada of “Hegiddiya”? and “Tavu Hegiddiri”?
Now, in the second phase, we can look at some English translations of literary works in various Indian languages. First, Bengali. Perhaps the largest number of translations into English are from Bengali Literature – in every genre – Poetry, Drama, Fiction or Non-fiction prose. This being the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of Rabindranath Tagore, we must recognize the fact that he is the most of these. Quite a few works have been translated by the author himself.
Comparatively fewer works seem to have been translated into English from Assamese, Punjabi, Kashmiri, Maithili and Oriya. In Hindi, Kabir’s “Bijak of Kabit” translated by Rev. Shaw was published in Hamirpur (U.R.)(1917). Kabir’s complete “Bijak” was translated by Premchand which was published by Lalit Mohan Sinha in Monghyr (1911). Mirabai’s “Songs of Mirabai” was translated by R.C.Tandon published by Hindi Mandir, Allahabad
As far as “Marathi” is concerned, famous classics have been translated. In Malayalam, more poetry seems to have been translated than from any other genre. Telugu is such a mellifluous and musical language that no English translation can do full justice to the original. Kannada has the distinction of producing seven Jnanapith Award winners, Kuvempu, Bendre, Karanth, Masti Venkatesha Iyengar, Gokak, Anantha Murthy and Girish Karnad. Some work of all these have been translated into English. Anantha Murthy’s “Samakara” has been translated by A.K. Ramanujan published by Oxford University Press, Karnad has translated his own Kannada works into English, also published by Oxford University Press. The early Kannada Classical poets Pampa Oxford
In this section I propose to share my own experience as a translator. My definition of “Experience” is recollection of past mistakes. I have some experience of translating different kinds of texts from Sanskrit and Kannada into English. Translating a religious discourse in Sanskrit into English is characterized by lack of equivalents in English – for example, “Dharma”, “Karma”, “Papa”, “Punya”, “Purushartha”, etc. But translating epistolary literature – letters – presents a different problem. I have already mentioned Vasistha Ganapathy Muni. He wrote many letters in Sanskrit to his Guru, Bhagavan Ramana Maharshi. I had to find the suitable honorific and respectful address in communication in which I was not entirely satisfied. I really had no problem in translating Sanskrit one-act plays (by H.V. Nagaraja Rao) because the subject was modern and also I am a short of “theatre man” myself. However, translating Sanskrit Poetry was difficult and so I found the solution of translating into English prose the “Stotra Kavyas” of Adi Shankara.
To continue with my Kannada translations, I must mention that I work one of the editors of ANIKETANA, a Translation Journal of Karnataka Sahitya Academy devoted only for translation from Kannada into English where we had separate sections on Classics, Modern Writing, Folk and Popular Literature. For lack of space, I won’t go into details but good translations of all these categories were published. It may not be out of place if I mention that my translations of the essas of Kuvempu, Bendre, Karanth, A.N. Murthy Rao and V.Sitaramaiah were published. The last two were my teachers. Another teacher of mine, the famous Prakrit-Buddhist scholar G.P. Rajaratnam’s story about Gomateswara, “Bahubali Vijayam” by name was translated by me elsewhere.
My latest effort at translation has been the translation of a historical play, Ubhaya Bharati, by Padmasri C.K. Venkataramaiah. This full length four-act play is remarkable for recreating 8th Century India
Now I turn to my present occupation as translator, the novels of S.L. Bhyrappa – perhaps the most “translated” contemporary Indian Novelist. How does one introduce a legend? As a colossus who has been striding the literary landscape for more than half a century with twenty three copch-making novels and a stunningly honest autobiography to his credit? As a chronicler of human and predicament, surveying mankind literally from China to Peru Fuji , the Andes and the Alps as with the Himalayas ? As a best selling author whose novels are sold out as soon as they are announced, even before they are on the shelves of book-shops? Yes, Santheshivara Lingannaiah Bhyrappa and is all this and more – much more.
Bhyrappa can read by anyone in India
Sartha (“The Caravan”) is a completely authentic re-creation of eighth century India and as such confronts the translator with his own confidence in translating not only by–gone age but technical, philosophical vocabulary into English without which the metaphysical standpoints and the scholarly disputation Adi Shankaracharya and Mandana Mishra cannot be presented and the …….
It must be noticed that translating from an Indian Language into any other Indian language is not so difficult because there is a common cultural substratum which can be termed ‘Indian’. But translating into English, an alien cultural milieu and a foreign language at that, presents special problems. In fact, the writing of S.L. Bhyrappa is so cultural-specific that any English translation is bound to be unsatisfactory at best to a conscientious translator. Indulging in the latest theories of translation with all the brave new technical terminology is one thing, but to sit down and actually translate is quite another matter. Let me end with just one example. How does one translate dialectal – Mysore Kannada, Dharwad Kannada and Mangalore Kannada become “Standarized” in English unfortunately! The differences are both vertical and horizontal. The Kannada of the cocoanut country of old Mysore region of the uneducated people is different form that of the city folk of Bangalore
Now to sum up, there are some English translations that are being published today but it is not enough. Macmillan has brought out a number of translations into English from various Indian Languages in 1998 for example, Rajee Seth’s “Unarmed” translated from Hindi, by Raji Narasimhan, Dilip Kaur Tiwana’s “Gone are the Rivers” from Punjabi, translated by S.C. Narula and Bhupendra Singh, Suresh Jothi’s ‘Crunmpled Letter”, translated from Gujarati by Tridip Suhrud, Krithika’s “Vasaveswaram” from Tamil translated by T.Sriraman, Kesava Reddy’s “He Conquered The Jungle” from Telugu, translated by C.L.L. Jayaprada and Srikrishna Alanahalli’s “Parasangada Gendethimma” from Kannada, translated by P.P. Giridhar. Oxford University Press brought out Girish Karnad’s “Tughlaq” and “The Fire and Rain” translated by the author himself in 1975 and 1988 respectively. Oxford
Some efforts are being made to keep the art of translation alive. For example, there is a journal emanating from Bangalore Karnataka Sahitya Academy has separate department for translation studies – ANUVADA ACADEMY Mysore
What I have attempted to do in this present “Note” is to provide only a “Key” to the vast treasure house of “Indian Literatures in English Translation”. I am aware that it is neither exhaustive not thorough. I leave it to the universal scholars assembled here from all over India
A Translator’s Odyssey
Dr.C.L.L.Jayaprada, PGDTE, Ph.D.
Professor
Department of English
Celebrated Pakistani novelist and short story writer Intizar Hussain in his preface to Short Stories from Pakistan translated from Urdu into makes a significant point that literature is not a house without doors. “It is a mansion with windows opening out in different directions. The tradition of Pakistani short stories is one such tradition. It is like a mansion with open windows allowing fresh breeze to come from outside.” I would like to expand his vivid metaphor further and state that literary translation is a mansion with wider windows allowing breeze from several directions at the same time. In about twenty years of translating activity, which I began as a frustrated researcher, I learnt translation offers manifold joys and opens vistas into other pertinent fields of enquiry. What began as a short trip then indeed turned out to be an odyssey. Translation gives one the hands-on experience in the application of linguistics, literary production, interpretation and logic. In teaching and training young minds it proved to be a tangible method of conveying intense enjoyment of literature to the uninitiated. In the journeys across the globe which could be quite mind boggling initially, I became aware of the networks that translation can provide in the globalized world, those that can ease not only individual tensions but the tensions of the world. Any serious enquiry into translation theories automatically leads one into other theories related to language, society, psychology and philosophy. In this presentation I would like to explore, step by step, the multiple meanings and validity of translation I gathered through the experience of practicing, teaching and researching in the field.
DISCOURSING NATURE: ECO/LOGICAL THEORIES FOR THE ENGLISH CLASSROOM
Prof MURALI SIVARAMAKRISHNAN
Professor and Head
Department of English
For many of us there is hardly any doubt when it comes to defining Nature: without much further disagreements we would define it as what is outside of us—those that are seen and felt outside the English classroom through the windows and doors—the earth outside, the trees bushes and birds and animals rock and skies. Nature is usually that which is not us. We do not think beyond this simplistic understanding, nor do we often need to or called up on to do so. And seldom do we realize that we are also part of that nature. Of course, we may definitely know this as a cerebral fact but we hardly experientially encounter this fact! And any way why should the average English teacher or the student of English literature in India India
We in India are wont to treat the text with great reverence—probably because of the inbuilt idea of the sacred that’s at the core of Hindu living—treating the word as sacred and incarnate and the written text as divine. The papyrus also becomes sacred on account of its connections to the goddess of learning: Saraswati. The sanctity of the text assumes even more profounder proportions when the given text comes off the shelves of the literary and the aesthetic. The complexity achieves larger dimensions with the English and its colonial trace in this context. We as students and teachers of English literature in India
The discourse of nature is one that is contemporary and relevant—at the same time this is as ancient as the hills! Nature and human nature have been the concern of literature and other aesthetic pursuits over the centuries cutting across cultures and regions! Ecology has by now become a catch word for the present— and the need for this holistic conceptual understanding has also become so dire and drastic. But its implications for the teacher and the student of English in India
There have been no dearth of critical theoretical thinking in the last century— as a matter of fact the twentieth century witnessed drastic transformations in the mode and manner of theorizing as such—from west, east north and south. And the English teacher in the Indian academia has been practically reeling under this impact for over three decades now! The long standing effects of earlier critical enterprises came to be critiqued and inquired into so drastically that the complex geographical landscapes of theories have come to be perceptibly altered and reshaped into a virtually unrecognizable mass—anything is so very possible, and yet so very little is equally actually possible. Language and meaning have been challenged; the death of the author has been pronounced ever so many times over; the transparency of the mode of literary transaction has been questioned, and the location of the reader within and without the periphery of the textual sphere is now shown to be quite so dubious to the extent of even being virtually non existent. Race, class, gender, power, position, locale and reading have all come to transect and bisect the visibility and palpability of the literary text so much so that no text appears to make any meaning—for all reading is equally possible and the virtuosity of the text engenders a host of possible misreadings as well. And any way, once the prison house of language has engaged the human mind there is definitely no beyonding possibility. The endurance of all appears to be the destiny of the critical brain. And yet as one perceptive critic has politely pointed out: language might have trapped us into the cultural constructions of our environment but there is a real world outside which continues to be wounded and harassed critically! So then, speaking of nature is also speaking for nature.[1]
Taking its cue from the Eurocentric concentrates, Indian academic theoreticians had dismissed the very idea of nature as culturally constructed that only within a cultural discourse could the living cosmos be framed to make sense. Various feminist and hosts of post colonial theories have come quite close to promulgating the idea of nature as a critical conceptual tool, but most often shied away from this on account perhaps of the issues of action and its validation that such a view would call for. Writing of nature is one way of not affecting nature but thinking with nature—ontologically and metaphysically. And it certainly goes counter to the contemporary world view bounded by market economics. To invoke nature appears similar to invoking ancient deities and speaking of the sacred thereby is equated with the retrogressive fundamentalism of a Rousseau-ian anti-progressive renegade in today’s world. Nature, ever so silent for so long in human history, does not require the human being to hasten to its aid—but the human being desperately articulating the silent throes of the natural. This is the context of the evolution of ecologically sensitive critical thinking.
Contexts of Eco-criticism
Ecocriticism is a fairly recent entry into the vortex of critical theorizing in Indian academic circles. However ecological concerns and ecological wisdom might not be alien to this antique land where civilization had sprouted so many years ago. In anthropological terms the ideas of culture and nature have been seen as binaries, and as human societies grew more complex and established newer relationships within and without their own boundaries nature came to be relegated to the background. This became more evidenced and pronounced in western societies probably because of the advent of urbanization as the strategic norm for guiding and forming human development. Culture and civilisation identified the human being in anthropocentric terms as being in constant confrontation with the more primitive forces of nature. Now as western man advanced into the peripheries of the non-western world this world view also traveled with him. This patriarchal, west-centric, development-oriented, materialistic world-view also traveled and commingled with alter/native visions of human advancement and progress in other parts of the globe. This is not to state that materialism and urbanization were essentially western—modernity and the cultural constructions that it entailed also sprouted in various versions in non-western contexts, they had their structural connections differently oriented. Nevertheless, European Enlightenment hastened in the renascent ideas of perception of man and nature: the real and the rational came to be mutually interlinked.
As Rene Descartes so eruditely phrased it:
All science is certain, evident knowledge. We reject all knowledge which is merely probable and judge that only those things should be believed which are perfectly known and about which there can be no doubts.[2]
And as a consequence the contexts of knowledge and its validity came to be more or less rigidly defined: all knowledge needed to be rationally and logically verifiable, repeatable and scientifically evaluated. From this point onwards, perhaps, one can see the inception of excessive belief in the scientific method: source of knowledge became one pointed and cerebral. The point of its source and organization was the single inner space different from the outer natural. Not that one should take des Cartes solely to task for this excessive validation of the rational. However, in more than many ways, his popularized dictum cogito ergo sum (I think therefore I am) triggered the direction of the age of western enlightenment. Nature came to be segregated from the human being and human’s being stood alienated and separate from the erstwhile integrated whole. The cogito ushered in the dichotomy of the subject and object.
“Such scientific observation came to involve the imposition of a European system of classification upon the rest of the world. Pratt summarises the effects of the European-based system of order, what she calls an ‘anti-conquest’:
The (lettered, male, European) eye that held the system could familiarize (naturalize) new sites/sights immediately on contact, by incorporating them into the language of the system.” [3]
Now more than anything else this essential shift in perspective had effected a drastic consequence, the mechanical view of nature. Further, as the earlier eighteenth century unified sensibility collapsed a new found energizing of the visual sense at the expense of all other senses evolved and the expansion of Europe ’s colonies and development of the industrial culture signaled the death of nature as a fount of energy and recuperative spiritual source. The point worth noting here is the domination and spread of a notion of human-oriented anthropocentric (read, male) idea of history and development the, consequences of which have been drastic and detrimental to nature and the human race!
As we have already seen the view of Nature as alienated and apart from the human’s being-- the Mechanical view of nature– made it amenable to exploitation and manipulation. Knowledge meant the ability to wield power and potentiality, and the ordering of things provided domination and authority. In another dimension of human history the religious systems developed that provided even religious sanction for the domination of nature and the wild/mild.
In many ways the fate of woman had been linked to the fate of nature, and the male values of aggression and dominance were pitted against the feminine values of acceptance and acquiescence. Design and authority went hand in hand. Similarly, as all values other than the rational were secondary and looked upon with doubt, feeling and emotion were considered subjective and irrational and were therefore to be suppressed/repressed. Consequentially all “knowledge” produced through art and literature came to be looked upon with dubiousness in a practical world!
Nature came to be generally equated with wild and wilderness, and culture with the tamed, refined and domesticated. During the Romantic age in Europe there was a violent reaction against this mechanized vision of nature and the idea of the sublime was resuscitated. However, the dominant idea of nature as wild and something to be tamed and submitted to the culture of “man” has compulsively travelled across the world and the resistance to this utilitarian view of nature has been looked upon as a deviant aberration—sometimes even as a mere curio. The wretched idea of nature as a mere source and resource for the human being submerged the idea of sacred nature and anyone “wild” enough to sense anything intrinsically valuable in non-human nature was of course “unnatural”. Henry David Thoreau wrote: I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. (H D Thoreau, Walden) And Mahatma Gandhi pointed out: Earth has enough to satisfy man’s need not enough to satisfy his greed.
Ecocriticism in the academic form we understand it now perhaps, could trace its inception to the American academies; its watermark the formation and organization of ASLE the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment. However, I have always held that the idea of ecologically sensitive criticism had evolved over a period of time in the natural intellectual scheme of theorizing and could be traced to three major spring boards.
1. The rising environmental concerns (ecological conscience)
Given the wayward march of human civilization in the last few centuries, especially after the industrial age and the age of technology, the emergence of ecological sciences and their current relevance cannot be ignored. In fact, ecology itself had been necessitated primarily because of this drastic consequence of human actions. The depletion of earth’s resources and the reduction of natural biodiversities had come to such a pass that human beings had to simply sit up and take stock of their life habits. It is not that human nature interface had not been there in the earlier ages but only that the disastrous consequences became drastic only fairly recently—human development had been in terms of a geometric ratio and the pollution of air, water, earth and the skies thrust themselves into the focus of urgent human attention only fairly recently in earth’s history. In all, the rising ecological concern and the emergence of ecological conscience and wisdom could be one of the major reasons why the world of literature itself came to be so infused with this tempo of conservation, preservation, and the recognition of the natural life balance. Literature and art, as is easily perceivable, had always been concerned with the human nature interface, however, the self-reflexive recognition of this nexus is certainly a twentieth century phenomenon, and the academic sanction of this newly emerging world view came in only through the adoption of ecosensitive critical theories.
So then, the first road to ecocritical theorisng has been through this rise of an ecological conscience. Some of the urgent concerns of this factor have been:
Wayward development or maldevelopment
Pollution of air, water, earth, and skies
Depletion of earth’s resources
Waste management—garbage disposal to nuclear waste
Depletion of biodiversity– unethical dominance of man
2. Crises in human sciences academia
The excessive growth of theorising in the twentieth century could be accounted for in many ways; however, the terminal effects of theory and counter theory had been to bracket off physical nature as we have understood it. When linguists and social scientists argued about the trajectory of language and signs and how we humans have evolved a parallel world of culture and its virtual dimensions, what was at stake was this physical nature. If the world of abstractions that language encompasses were nothing but a collection of socially constructed texts (in the sense of woven fabric) and contexts then the possibilities of encountering the world outside the human mind in its entirety becomes an intellectual impossibility and the human being collapses within his/her own prison house of language! And yet as I have pointed out earlier in this essay, citing a perceptive eco-critic: language might have trapped us into the cultural constructions of our environment but there is a real world outside which continues to be wounded and harassed critically! So then among the post enlightenment problematic the trajectory of theorizing in the world has led us directly to engage with physical nature outside the text, and it was a natural extension of the theoretical debate! The text spills over on to the globe!
3. Post Theoretical Wave, Postfeminisms etc
As argued earlier, the fate nature had been linked to the fate of woman. Feminist theoreticians have argued endlessly over this issue of interlinking woman and nature. While some like Vandana Shiva state that nature in its essential form as Prakriti is integrally linked to the organic existence of the woman, many other postfeminists argue against this view as nothing but another facile move by the ever-powerful patriarchy to surreptitiously hold back the identity of the woman. We read in Vandana Shiva:
The shift from Prakriti [nature] to “natural resources,” from Mater to “matter” was considered (and in many quarters still considered) a progressive shift from superstition to rationality. Yet viewed from the perspective of nature, or women embedded in nature, in the production and preservation of sustenance, the shift is regressive and violent. It entails the disruption of nature’s processes and cycles, and her interconnectedness. For women, whose productivity in the sustaining of life is based on nature’s productivity, the death of Prakriti is simultaneously a beginning of their marginalization, devaluation, displacement and ultimate dispensability. The ecological crisis, is at its root, the death of the feminine principle, symbolically as well as in contexts such as rural India
Either way, the rise and development of ecofeminism has served to reveal the significant contributions of feminist thinking to the fostering of a ecologically sensitive criticism inside the academia as well as outside its periphery.
As I have argued elsewhere; (see Echoing Ecospiritual Values for a New World, Beyond Borders The SAARC Journal, Vol V,No 3&4, 2009; 63-70)
Ecologically sensitive theorizing as it has emerged and developed over the last two decades, has been among the many things an attempt to reintegrate the conceptual and experiential aspect of nature into the mainstream of theory alongside other equally significant aspects of class, race, and gender. As the critical inquiry informed by the mores of cultural studies progressed it naturally became necessary to incorporate the presence and significance of non-human nature at the core of human understanding and to reinstate it at the central position from the peripheral where it had been discarded earlier. Environmental justice movements and eco-critical theory were thus a natural outcome of (among the many other factors leading to and consequent to the several conservation and Green movements) the growing public awareness of profound ecological crisis the world over, as well as the natural culmination of the historical development of contemporary social and critical theory. Of course, the idea of nature has never been one and unchanging, neither monolithic nor homogeneous, and it has thrown open wide uncovered spaces wherein the interplay of nature and human nature could be analyzed, inquired into, critiqued and understood. Truth and meaning of life—all very much a part of the grand narratives of a European, post-enlightenment, modernist epoch—would never be segregated from the non human nature and its immanence in human life any more. A trans-human, spiritual value that recognized the intrinsic quality of all existence human and non human (in more than mere Pantheistic sense) would also find its right meaningful place in any ecologically sensitive critical enquiry.(64-65)
And here, more than anything else the idea of Deep Ecology as developed by Arne Naess is something that reiterates the idea of the sacred at the heart of things. It is an ecosophy.
Deep Ecology
According to Arne Naess b.1912 Naess, “the aim of supporters of the deep ecology movement is not a slight reform of our present society, but a substantial reorientation of our whole civilization.” Hence it is an ecosophy. It concentrates on the human relationship with the natural world and supplies a substantial reorientation to a world run astray. A rejection of anthropocentrism. All life on earth has an intrinsic value irrespective of the human angle.
1) The major tenets of Deep Ecology: A rejection of anthropocentrism. All life on earth has an intrinsic value irrespective of the human angle.
2) Richness and biodiversity are valuable in themselves and humans have no right to reduce this diversity.
3) An identification with all life
4) Caring for the other life forms is part of individual self realization.
5) A critique of instrumental rationality (emphasis should be not on quantity and efficiency but quality)
6) Personal development of a total world view. Individual thinking and action are of utmost significance and later the collective and the social.
This concept of deep ecology is akin to the spiritual. What is aimed at is life enhancing qualitative values very much similar to spiritual enlightenment or artistic fulfillment.
After all, life becomes meaningful only when we start to live fully and selflessly. Deliberately, as Throeau would sanctify the phrase. We need to act in this world recognising the limits to growth and human development – recognising the integrated nature of all and everything: those ethical values that unitethe human and the natural environment have to be respected and upheld.
We read in the Upanishad: iyam prithvi sarvesam bhutanam madhu, asyai prithvyai sarvani bhutani madhu [this earth is like honey for all creatures and all the creatures are like honey for this earth, Brhadarnyaka Upanishad V brahmana1. [Cf Mahatma Gandhi’s ethical vision– simple living high thinking]. We need to recognize and uphold the values and dimensions of self sufficiency and reject overexploitation of nature and natural resources, keeping in mind the Gandhian dictum that “Earth has enough to satisfy man’s need not enough to satisfy his greed!”
New directions, possible expansions
In my earlier book, Nature and Human Nature: Literature, Ecology, Meaning (2009) I had pointed out some of the possible new directions that ecocritical theories could aid and abet in our academic curriculum. Let me list them below:
Rediscover our ties with nature
Incorporate scientific temper into English studies– cf the two cultures debate.
Reorient our critical and conceptual tools
Explore the historical roots of ecocriticism
Intensive study of our tribal and folk culture–to reconnect with our indigenous roots
Extensive study of environmental movements in other parts of the world
Recognizing and coming to terms with responsibility
Theoretically incorporate nature as a conceptual term alongside race, class, gender
The global the Regional and the Local
That the contemporary critical scene is rife with theories of nature and the environment is a moot point—primarily because such ecosensitive theorizing is the necessary order of the day, in whatever format! The point is that ecologically sensitive criticism has been practiced and critiqued in isolation by academics and intellectuals in our part of the world and elsewhere for close to two decades now. However, few significant attempts have been made towards any collaborative venture—towards a theory and practice of eco/logical criticism. The English teacher is called forth to engage with the logic of ecology and rhetoric of the theory, and to inquire into its reach in terms of continuity and interdependence. The history of ecological thinking and the history of literary critical inquiring may have diverse roots, and yet they collate to reinforce the idea of continuity and interdependence—more so in a complex present where all life on planet earth is at stake.
The emergence of ASLE India we believe is something that serves as a collective platform for such debates. When in the last decades of the last century ASLE was formed in the US , we in India Taiwan ASLE , US was convened at the Alps Adriatic University located in the beautiful water-city of Klagenfurt , Austria University of Nevada at Reno Nevada and California Caceres ) in Spain
I would also like to add these two among them: continuities and interdependence. These essays engage with the problematic of ecocriticism and its cultural and aesthetic dimensions. They deal with a diversity of themes and issues—their major concern is the space of nature—the space that nature affords us and how we engage with that space, physically, psychologically and spiritually.
ASLE India was launched in January, 2005 and I wrote in its opening web page the following as its working manifesto:
ASLE India is intended as a national forum for the collective understanding of the intimate relations and biological ties existing between literature, art, culture and the Environment.
We recognize that environment as a concept, for obvious reasons, cannot be seen separate or segregated from the cultural and natural spheres. And literature by virtue of being what it is—creative, imaginative, emotive and expressive— could be seen as engaging with the human mind and the natural world at every point.
The literary and artistic mind of course appears to have perceived this fact in aesthetic terms from prehistoric times, however critical, more specially academic, pursuit of this connection appears to have arisen fairly recently. The now-widespread use of the terms ecological criticism (eco criticism for short), eco-aesthetics, eco-wisdom etc, are to be read as signs in this direction. Of course the rising ecological conscience the world over is one of the main reasons for this.
We recognize the global dimensions of ecological and environmental concerns. Literary and artistic productions by virtue of what they are reflect the deeper cultural preoccupations of a people, and the ecological constitutes a holistic perception. Eco-aesthetics and environmental aesthetics could lead us towards a collective understanding of human and non-human-nature interface.
ASLE India
ASLE India is intended as a forum for creative interaction between intellectuals, academics, environmental activists, naturalists, nature-lovers, and those involved and committed to these issues, and wish to remain equally open to each other’s individual, methodological and disciplinary differences and points of view.
ASLE India
Asle’s first book Nature and Human Nature: Literature, Ecology, and Meaning, was published last year and it received wide readership and reviews. The range of ecocritical theory is spreading and its practitioners are also ever-growing—not only in academic circles but also outside the limited periphery of the intellectuals. Environmental justice movements the world over are raising the conscience of the human nature nexus.
Now, all it remains for the teacher and scholar of English in India
The thrust focus of this conference is literature in translation, and the richness and diversity that Indian regional writings proffer would be the ideal field for the practice of ecological criticism. There is hardly any need to inquire into the bondings of the languages of India with their own regions of origin—they are by virtue of their sprouting native and indigenous; and all that remains for us is to verify the same in the received texts of translation. Any theory of translation needs to incorporate a theory of biocentric multiverse as we have proposed. Because it is not in alienation and estrangement that we continue to exist in our collectives but through an aesthetic of engagement and aesthetic of compassion that does not preclude any aspect of life and living. Nevertheless the groundings of an ecoaesthetic are in a celebration of difference of identities. In our explorations we are certain to recognize this fact that our regional narratives have long cherished this order of bio-centricism and difference. It is my sincere hope that this conference and its deliberations would bear ample testimony to this.
*Some portions of this essay have been incorporated from my Continuities and Interdependence: Literature, Nature and Critical Inquiry—in Ecological Criticism for Our Times: Literature, Nature and Critical Inquiry. New Delhi
WORKS CITED
Macnaghten,Phil and John Urry, Contested Natures. London
Hooker, Michael, ed. Descartes: Critical and Interpretive Essays. Baltimore : Johns Hopkins
Murali,S. “Echoing Ecospiritual Values for a New World ,” Beyond Borders The SAARC Journal, Vol. V, No 3&4, 2009; 63-70.
----------Nature and Human Nature: Literature, Ecology, Meaning New Delhi
Pratt, M. Imperial Eye. London London
Shiva,Vandana. Staying Alive: Women, Ecology and Development. New Delhi
Soper, Kate. What is Nature? Oxford
CROSS CULTURAL EXCHANGE
ANNIE GEORGE
Translating prose came about the same time as translating poetry. Initially, the craft stemmed from an inherent love of discovering the literary riches of the region. Growing up in a region so very diverse from my native place in Kerala (I spent my early years in West Bengal ) helped me look at the language from a different perspective. The cultural gatherings that I attended to provoked the need for a kind of literary barter of regional literature that we were exposed to back home. At a poetry meet past reading ‘Between Sisters’, a fellow poet from Bihar remarked, ‘What you have written is about a personal feature felt in your State, but that is absolutely true about us too.’[4] Yet at another meet, another fellow poet from Karnataka asked me, ‘How come you have written something that I have wanted to write for long!.’ Back home, one day, a woman who knew only her mother tongue also wanted to learn what my poem about sisters was all about, since it was in a language foreign to her. We belonged to different states of India
SUITABILITY OF STYLE AND THEME OF POETRY
As we know, the history of the translation of Indian Literature into English can be broadly divided into three periods, the Orientalist, the period of awakening of the Indian Independence and the post independence.[5] As in other regional languages, the best translations of Malayalam poetry have been of the poets themselves, and therefore rare and few. Dr. Ayyappa Paniker is one such poet who I have dared translate only after his death!. As I set down to translate Malayalam poetry, I felt it wouldn’t be an easy task to bring in the technical tools like rhyme, rhythm of the classical period of Malayalam poetry to the target language. The dark satire of Dr. Paniker’s poems caught my attention. While translating a poem like ‘White Clouds’ seemed effortless, working upon ‘Bhagavathy Kunjamma’s Bharatanatyam’ gave me immense
creative satisfaction.[6] The former was a translation of the original, while the latter turned out to be (my all time favourite) a transcreation.
CAPTURING THE SPIRIT
The experience of translating Dr Ayyappa Paniker, initially though based on style, was a conscious effort on my part, an attempt to carry a little of the flavour and rhythm of the original based on my own knowledge of the performing arts popular to the area. I have brought in the nuances of the classical and folk dance forms, Bharatanatyam and Thiruvathira, as much as I would have expressed them, if I were to write about them or the experience of it, myself.
(Reading of BHAGAVATHYKUNJAMMA’S BHARATANATYAM by Ayyappa Paniker)
While it is the satire of Dr Paniker that reflects life faithfully, it is the irony and powerful imagery used by living poet VR Santhosh that depict vivid and true to life pictures of women in his poems. ‘While Mother is Dishwashing’ is a typical portrait of the lonesome mother deserted by her own family. Poems of Lalitha Lenin, PP Ramachandran and VM Girija are all reflective of the times they live in.[7]
(Reading of WHEN MOTHER IS DISHWASHING by VR Santhosh)
THEMATIC BRILLIANCE OF SHORT STORIES
It is a golden period for the genre of short story in Malayalam literature. However ideal translations of the same are yet to reach the readers. On the lookout for translating suitable stories for a reputed journal, I stumbled upon the short stories of the noted Sahitya Akademi winner, P Surendran. A brilliant story called ‘Edassery’[8] captured my attention. It was the theme and style of narration that led me to translate the story long before I could finish the entire collection!. The protagonist, a late poet by the same name, leads his fellow traveller and poet of a younger generation to a whole world of knowledge about the past and nature, of which the latter is ignorant. As I progressed with the translation of ‘Outdoors’ and ‘Indoors’[9], two micro stories of Surendran, I felt there was more to storytelling than mere narration. Surendran has used various modes of conveying his philosophy of life. He often uses the fable, the allegory, magical realism to convey his social or personal predicament. Full of scenic descriptions of a green landscape, Surendran has proved himself to be a master craftsman of the short story. Many of his stories are as compact as poems, complete and chiseled to perfection by the master craftsman. They can be considered as precious little pearls and gems, dug up deep from the bed of Indian mythology and tradition.
(Reading of INDOORS by P Surendran)
At times, I have felt that the target language is so rich. For example, while translating the story, ‘Pebble’, a tale, rather a dialogue between a little boy and a pebble, I could choose among a variety of words used as synonym for the word ‘stone’ and arrive at the exact one for a stone by a stream.
My primary aim was to translate the life and the culture of the native land to readers beyond its border, but all along, I was also conscious of the need to enlighten the minds of all Malayalees who’d left their land behind in search of fortune and also for those who wished to return in search of their roots. The poet in me prods me on to translating stories like ‘Edassery’. Often, Surendran tells me that his stories are an outcome of his failure to churn out perfect poems and that he feels happy having found a translator in me. There was a time when I had to shelve my own writing in order to translate these great tales. Such is the magical power of Surendran’s stories!. What I have scratched is merely the tip of an iceberg (of Malayalam literature). I must admit that I would never have dared to translate writers in Malayalam, had I not been one myself!
REFERENCES
[1] Annie George, GLADIOLI AND OTHER POEMS, Kairali Books, 2006.
2 A K Mehrotra, AN ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF INDIAN LITERATURE IN ENGLISH, 2003
3 Translations, www.ayyappapaniker.net.
4 Appearing in various issues, www.museindia.com
5 P Surendran, 64 CHERIYA KATHAKAL , DC
6 IUP JOURNAL OF COMMONWEALTH LITERATURE, Jul 2010.
DIALECT IN SHAW’S PYGMALION
Dr. C.J.O’Brien,
Department of English,
Canchipur, Imphal.
Dialects are semi-permanent language varieties of language which vary mainly according to geographical region and social class (Cl. Yorkshire dialect, Lancashire dialect, working class dialect, middle class dialect). But dialects can also be related to other factors. (It is arguable, for example, that male and female language varieties and language differences related to age are dialectal). Many people equate dialects with accents, but accents only account for dialect variation in relation to pronunciation (phonetics), and dialects also vary in terms of other linguistic levels, particularly lexis and grammar.
Many non-linguists assume that Standard English (the English typically spoken, for example, by BBC newscasters and university lectures) is not a dialect, but is ‘proper English’. But linguists would argue that Standard English, the language of the educated, is also really a dialect related to class and educational background which just happens to have a higher status and more widespread use than the other dialects. There are, in any case, many different varieties of Standard English (for example English Standard English is different from American and Australian Standard English, and within the UK linguists often distinguish between Northern and southern varieties of Standard English (mainly, but not exclusively, in terms of accent)
An indication that dialects are semi-permanent is that you can change your dialect, but only if you work at it hard over quite a long time. Think for example, of Eliza Doolittle in George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion. She came from an East London working class background, and Professor Higgins (whose characterization, incidentally, was based on the famous early C20 phonetician Daniel Jones) had to work very hard to win his bet with Colonel Pickering that he could teach her to ‘talk like a lady’. He manages eventually, of course, but in Act 3, when he thinks he’s managed it, he tries her out in a social situation, which works fine until the very end:
LIZA [nodding to the others] Goodbye, all.
FREDDY [Opening the door for her] Are you walking across the Park, Miss Doolittle? If so –
LIZA
Walk! Not bloody likely, [Sensation]. I am going in a taxi. [She goes out].
MRSX EYNSFORD
HILL [suffering from shock] Well, I really can’t get used to the new ways.
Professor Higgins has managed to change her accent, but doesn’t yet quite have control over her lexical choice!
Mick Short’s linguistic history can also be seen as an example. Mick comes from a working class family background. His family lived in the country in East Sussex, and so he grew up speaking a Sussex
Why Should Boys Have All the Fun?:
Woman in Indian Literature
Prof. Nibir K. Ghosh
Being a woman is like being Irish. Everyone says you’re important and nice but you take second place all the same. - Iris Murdoch
The Bible says the Lord God created Eve out of the rib cage of Adam, giving thereby a derivative nature to her existence. The Biblical myth indicates that woman is either an "after thought" of a male God or a playmate created for man as a psychic compensation for his innate loneliness. If the primordial myth gave woman her ritually prescribed status, all literatures since time immemorial expose the desperate marginality of female existence whether these women have lived in solitude, in extended families or in nuclear families, be it in ancient Athens or the world of Manu. These social stereotypes have been reinforced by archetypes for ages, amply supported by Freud’s classic finding that “Anatomy is Destiny.” In the world’s most powerful democracy, when The Statue of Liberty, which portrays a woman holding the torch of freedom, was opened to the public on October 28, 1886, no woman was invited to the ceremonies on this important occasion.
The image of woman in literature emerges out of the existing world. In India
Besides exploring these significant terrains, characterized by the conspiracy of silence, in the context of Western and Indian literature, this presentation will take into account how women and the fiction they write contend with what is written about them. It will also illumine multiple facets of women’s experiences: the power, the passion, the pain, the hopelessness, the fury, the joy that characterize the search of women for themselves. It will be worthwhile to examine and evaluate whether these writings address basic questions and issues like the relationship between such writing and the political involvement of the writers; what are their concerns, and what is the creative energy at work?
The Intricacies of Human Relationship: A Nexus Between The Romantic,The Marital And The Mercenary in RK Narayan’s The Guide
Dr.Kalikinkar Pattanayak Khallikote (Autonomous) College,
Berhampur.
R.K.Narayan's The Guide (1958) is a classic because it delineates the intricacies of human relationship. Raju, the protagonist begins his career as a tourist guide but he turns guide of a lady artist, Rosie, the wife of a scholar of archaeology.Rosie gets attracted to Raju because the latter appreciates the artistic talent of the former, a classical dancer. Absorbed in the contemplation of the dead objects the archaeologist husband fails to rejoice in the lively things his wife takes interest. As a result the extra marital relationship develops between Raju and Rosie which results in separation between Rosie and Macro the legal husband.
The institution of marriage,here collapses but the latent talents of Rosie are brought to light.Art triumphs over marital fidelity. Rosie and Raju grow rich but it doesn't diminish the mercenary craze; Raju lands into the jail on a forgery case; Rosie goes on with her dance programmes alone and refutes that 'frailty! thy name is woman'. The Romantic Raju who turned convict becomes a 'Mahatma' in the eyes of the common people after his release from the jail but in his endeavour to bring rains by fasting he meets his end-his life illustrates the complexity of human relation.
This paper brings out the relation between the romantic and the mercenary,the demerits of traditional marriage system, various dimensions of human relationship and unpredictability of human situation.
Re-Orientation Techniques to improve Spoken English
Dr. B.O.Satyanarayana Reddy
English teaching, in India
The present paper highlights the need of the present learners to equip them selves with the language competence in order to get placements in Global companies. The market dominated relations also have brought in utmost importance to spoken English today. It is a miserable fact, examined here, that even if our teachers have been adapting new methods and techniques to teach English, still the students are not coming up to the desired expectations. So, this situation demands our teachers and students to re-orient themselves to teach and learn the spoken skill respectively. The present paper is an attempt to unearth the root causes of the problems faced by the English teachers and students and some suggestions are offered to overcome the problem.
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF “TRANSME” IN TRANSLATION STUDIES.
Dr. VRIDHACHALEMPILLAY SUBRAMANIAM.,
FORMERLY Jt. DIRECTOR OF COLLEGIATE EDUCATION., CHENNAI.
CURRENTLY FREELANCING TRANSLATOR & ELT CONSULTANT
In formal study of Linguistics, different levels of language Function has been defined by the use of terms such as Phonology, morphology,syntax and semantics. Considerable basic work has been carried out by eminent linguists such as Bloomfield and Sapir, Roman Jakobson and Ferdinand de Sassure , JR Firth and Malinowsky followed by Structralists led by Harris, Descriptivists led by HA Gleason and Robert A Hall Transformationalists led by Noam Chomsky and his MIT group of researchers.
Following the trends of structural Semantics set up by John Lyons of Edinburgh, the author of this Paper explores the need for setting up “ Transmeme “ in the lexical items that are made available in a Dictionary of Translation. Like a phoneme, morpheme and Tagmeme ( Sarah Gudshinsky), lexeme in lexical studies , a Transmeme is a part and parcel of the semantic process of selection and rejection of an equivalent synonym to convey the meaning of an original Text in the hands of a Translator. Catford JC considers the translation process as a surface level manifestation of a deeper level linguistic processing. Based on that approach what we find as an outcome in the final output of a Translator is in actual practice a final filtered Selection of an appropriate “Transmeme” that suits the Original – Target language according to the langue and parole, use and usage, social and linguistic conventions and sprachefeel, as the Germans would have termed it.
This Paper shall present the need for setting up such an intermediary unit ( however meta-language in Semantic level, that it may represent ) whereby successful and effective Transcreation takes place. Suitable illustrations will be adduced from standard Texts in Dravidian and European Translations.
The Queen and the Rani : Problems of Translating Tagore Literature into English
Dr. Dr
Dr. Dr
Jogesh Chandra Chaudhuri College
If we look to translate one language to another, we rely on skilled human translators. This is because, to date, there is hardly any technology readily available that is all-encompassing and which can really replace the human efficiancy.
The linguistic approach to translation theory focusing on the key issues of meaning, equivalence and shift began to emerge around 50 years ago. This branch of linguistics, known as structural linguistics, features the work of Roman Jakobson, Eugene Nida, Newmark, Koller, Vinay, Darbelnet, Catford and van Leuven-Zwart. It wasn’t long however, before some theorists began to realize that language wasn’t just about structure – it was also about the way language is used in a given social context.
Of course other theorists have contributed to the development of a linguistic approach to translation, but the abovementioned have been singled out for discussion primarily because of their influence, and also because they are perhaps the most representative of the trends of the time.
As do many other Tagore stories, ‘Jibito o Mrito’ equips Bengalis with a ubiquitous epigram which offer interesting and fuzzy zone of translation as cultural journey: Kadombini moriya proman korilo she more nai—"Kadombini died, thereby proving that she hadn't.”
I stand mesmerized,
wondering how you sing
your notes hold the world spellbound -
the light of your music
lights up my universe.
(song 22 of Bengali Gitanjali, song 3 in the English.)
Gitanjali is a collection of 103 English poems, largely translations, by the Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore. This volume became very famous in the West, and was widely translated.
Chitto jetha bhayashunyo (Where the mind is without fear) is among one of the most quoted poems written by Rabindranath Tagore beforeIndia 's independence, it represents Tagore's dream of how the new, awakened India
In my full paper, I would like to apply the inputs of three dominant modes of translation in Tagore’s writings from Bangla to English translation: intralingual ( re-wording or paraphrasing, summarizing, expanding or commenting within a language),interlingual (the traditional concept of translation from ST to TT or the shifting of meaning from one language to another),and intersemiotic (the changing of a written text into a different form, such as art or dance). In my full paper, I would like to analyse the linguistic and thematic distance (if any) in the Bengali Source ‘Rakta Karabi’ and the Target translated text ‘Red Oleanders’.
If we look to translate one language to another, we rely on skilled human translators. This is because, to date, there is hardly any technology readily available that is all-encompassing and which can really replace the human efficiancy.
The linguistic approach to translation theory focusing on the key issues of meaning, equivalence and shift began to emerge around 50 years ago. This branch of linguistics, known as structural linguistics, features the work of Roman Jakobson, Eugene Nida, Newmark, Koller, Vinay, Darbelnet, Catford and van Leuven-Zwart. It wasn’t long however, before some theorists began to realize that language wasn’t just about structure – it was also about the way language is used in a given social context.
Of course other theorists have contributed to the development of a linguistic approach to translation, but the abovementioned have been singled out for discussion primarily because of their influence, and also because they are perhaps the most representative of the trends of the time.
As do many other Tagore stories, ‘Jibito o Mrito’ equips Bengalis with a ubiquitous epigram which offer interesting and fuzzy zone of translation as cultural journey: Kadombini moriya proman korilo she more nai—"Kadombini died, thereby proving that she hadn't.”
I stand mesmerized,
wondering how you sing
your notes hold the world spellbound -
the light of your music
lights up my universe.
(song 22 of Bengali Gitanjali, song 3 in the English.)
Gitanjali is a collection of 103 English poems, largely translations, by the Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore. This volume became very famous in the West, and was widely translated.
Chitto jetha bhayashunyo (Where the mind is without fear) is among one of the most quoted poems written by Rabindranath Tagore before
In my full paper, I would like to apply the inputs of three dominant modes of translation in Tagore’s writings from Bangla to English translation: intralingual ( re-wording or paraphrasing, summarizing, expanding or commenting within a language),interlingual (the traditional concept of translation from ST to TT or the shifting of meaning from one language to another),and intersemiotic (the changing of a written text into a different form, such as art or dance). In my full paper, I would like to analyse the linguistic and thematic distance (if any) in the Bengali Source ‘Rakta Karabi’ and the Target translated text ‘Red Oleanders’.
INTERSTICES OF PAIN AND VICTIMHOOD IN J.M. COETZEE’S
WAITING FOR THE BARBARIANS
K. Narasimha Rao
Assistant Professor
With the appearance of his third novel, Waiting for the Barbarians (1980),
John Maxwell Coetzee is widely read in both the U.S and U.K. Coetzee brings to his
work a unique combination of intellectual power, stylistic poise, historical vision, and
ethical penetration. Coetzee’s principal concern is the nature and crisis of fiction-
writing in South Africa today, the South Africa
called “the interregnum.” The argument is that the discursive-political consequences of
the country’s protracted trauma militate against fictionality. For what kind of authority
can the novel muster if it is to speak in terms commensurable with the times? What
form of address is possible under such conditions? Questions such as these bring into
focus the mere representative crisis of postmodernism and its so-called paralysis
before history, but Coetzee’s achievement is to have found the means, within fiction,
to interrogate this paralysis – indeed, not only to interrogate it but to move beyond it to
a reconstructed position in which fiction begins to speak to the political on its own
terms. This Coetzee manages both by drawing into his fiction the skepticism and
symptomatic sensitivity of post-structuralism, and by searching for ways in which the
novel might recover an ethical basis, in full appreciation of the political context.
Waiting for the Barbarians, deals with an empire imagining itself besieged and
plots a final reckoning with its enemies. Coetzee deriving his title from C.P.Cavafy’s
poem shows this nervous pleasure of the empire quickly turning into anxiety when
barbarians fail to materialize at the city gates. The novel stages this dependency,
dramatizing the terroristic drive of the imperial state to achieve mastery resulting in
pain and victimhood of its subjects. The paper aims at showing this writerliness in the
fictive manipulation of history.
‘THE UNASSIMILABLE’? TRYING TO READ THE UNTRANSLATED PASSAGES IN CHOSEN THREE TRANSLATED NOVELS OF NGUGI WA THIONG’O
Miazi Hazam,
Department of English,
Itanagar.
This paper aims at a study of three of the later novels of Ngugi wa Thiong’o with the view to focus on those passages which have not been translated completely into English and try to understand the reason and the effects of the same on the common reader who might be ignorant of Gikuyu. Considering the controversial position that Ngugi wa Thiong’o occupies in the debate over the conflict between indigenous language and English in the Kenyan (and in general African) context, the focus will also be to see how these passages which have been in some cases been provided with equivalent English translations serve the purpose of informing the readers and what the author gains through such passages in the postcolonial debate over the conflict between Kenyan (here, Gikuyu) and European cultures.
Sudin Ghose’s Cradle of the Clouds: A Chronicle of the Clouds
Dr Parmand Jha
Reader
CM College
Darbhanga
Portrayal of tribal life in Indian English literature has remained a sadly neglected and marginalized phenomenon. However, three novelists- Shudhin Ghose, Arun Joshi and Gita Mehta belonging to three different decades of the post-independence India – have made serious efforts to delineate tribal life , characters, their aspirations and predicament in, at least one each of their novels. Chose’s Cradle of the Clouds is not only the pioneering effort but also the most authentic literary profile of tribal life,. Set in the tribal region of the erstwhile Santhal Paranas, the novel offers a highly convincing account of the tribal’s enthusiasm and jest for life, their innocence and their commitment and devotion to their culture on one hand and a vivid portrayal of the misery caused by natural calamities like drought and exploitative design of the ruling ruffians who want to build a dam unmindful of their travails on the other. The paper aims to evaluate this novel primarily as a chronicle of life in tribal life.
Teaching English as a Second and Foreign Language
Esther Rani.B
Language teaching is a multi-dimensional and I interdisciplinary activity. It’s
dimensions may be said to be: Organizational, (concerned with physical and administrative facilities such as the size of the class, status of the language involved, educational and linguistic policy of the government, national provision of facilities for research development, and information about language teaching.) technological ( facilities for the use of mass media such as radio, television, language laboratories) psychological (motivation aptitude, language behavior, problems of interference, relation between maturation and language learning.) sociological ( use of language in a variety of socially determined situations.) pedagogical ( concerned with the overall organization and coordination of language teaching activities.) and linguistic ( concerned with the scientific description (s) of the language to be taught). The aim of all these activities is to help pupils acquire the basic language skills such as: speaking, understanding, writing, and reading. Language teaching does not mean a simple process of pouring “language” into empty vessels. It is a process of helping students move on from the level of context-
governed performance to that of context-free competence. It is not enough to have our
pupils perform well in doing simple, context-bound exercises. They must be helped to use the language in non-classroom situations, community with a variety of speakers in a variety of contexts. Language teaching is cooperative enterprises in which teachers help their students internalizing the system of the language they are learning.
How does a child acquire his language? This is a question which has not yet
been answered satisfactorily. Our understanding of the concepts of “habit”, “analogy”,
and “rule formation” in the context of second language acquisition is so very limited that
we cannot come out with any definitive statements about second language acquisition. It is
not possible to teach pupils the whole of a language. Therefore every teacher should use his
own intuition, experience and training to select, stage, and grade his materials.
The objective of teaching a language in an atmosphere is not simply to make the
learners learn language skills but to enable them to play their communication roles
effectively and select a language out of their linguistic repertoire, and within the language
or languages chosen to the role or roles they are playing. Teaching a second language is a process of helping our pupils make appropriate register choices out of their total register range Register-shift, i.e., the ability to shift registers according to shifts in situation is one of the crucial conditions for success in handling a second language effectively. “If you do not know your lines, you are no use in the play” (Verma, 1969). Therefore one possible view of the aim of second language is that we are preparing the learner to perform a set of roles in a new language and new culture.
FEMININE FABULATION IN DIVAKARUNI’S NARRATIVES
DR.N.USHA
In her article, “What women share”, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni wonders at the loneliness of epic heroines sans female friends. They were referred/related to only men as wives, daughters, beloved or opponents. They never had any female friends of importance acknowledged in literature.
Based on this phenomenon, Chitra Divakaruni fabulates a feminine narrative “ Sister of my Heart” and its sequel “The Vine of Desire”. She develops female bonding/ sisterhood as a central theme in these texts with Anju and Sudha. In their journey towards identity formation, Anju and Sudha balance the conflicting passions and societal demands and breath through life. Fables are juxtaposed with reality in the structure and Divakaruni uses multiple narrative styles through her fiction. This research paper focuses on the feminine fabulation in Chitra Divakaruni’s “Sister of my heart” and “The Vine of Desire”.
Carnivalesque in Volga ’s play The Six of Them
Rahul Narayan Kamble
Asst. Prof.
Telugu playwright Volga ’s play The Six of Them portrays the six women characters drawn from six different novels by another Telugu novelist Challam. The life these characters are living on the stage is different from the life these characters have spent in their fictional existence in Challam’s novels, though they are carrying the same traits of their characters. Each of the women characters narrates her experience/s with men in and outside the matrix of marriage.
Interpreted in Bakhtin’s terms the play is a carnivalesque. There are all women characters. Their narration of their experiences, though is a counter narrative to male ideology attached with the institution of marriage, is the central argument. The male authority is not only questioned, rejected but even ridiculed. The characters appear in the garb of sympathizers. Their speeches are more elaborate and comment on the man-woman relationship from a very high plane. The ‘home’, ‘child’, and ‘husband’ don’t remain their central metaphors; instead they find space of liberty from these ‘confining’ elements. The claim, that security, sense of comfort and pride which are supposed to be guaranteed by the marriage, is ridiculed vigorously. There is much celebration of their selves by having a procession.
This paper is going to focus on the play The Six of Them to study how the technique of carnivalesque is used by the playwright to deconstruct the male hierarchical set up.
“Pity of War” in Uma Parameswaran’s Sons Must Die
Dr. K. Balachandran
Prof. of English
War is always disastrous. The world has seen two great World Wars (World War I 1914-1918 and World War II 1939-1945) and the damage, disaster and death they caused cannot be measured and tolerated. Though Pakistan and China
Is war necessary in the modern days? Though war heroes had been idolized and idealized in the past, now it is a cruel, barbarous and villainous act. Is it not so? But all countries are not broad-minded and straight forward. Some countries are foxlike and wolflike in trying to grab the territories of their neighbouring country. Though the Kashmir valley has its natural scenery and beauty, it has its part of violence, terrorism, and threat. Living for others and motherland is a great virtue. This virtue, all people cannot have. As “none but the brave deserves the fair,” only the courageous and sacrificing mentality youths will join Army to safeguard the motherland. Mothers send their sons to the battlefront with the fond hope that their sons will save the country. But does this or the reverse happen? Are the mothers happy? Who is our ally? Who is our enemy? What is the impact of war on society? What does the dramatist advocate through this play to the whole world?
The Stories of Adults Told by Children: Ideology and the Paedo-Narrative of Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things
Dr Jibu Mathew George
The English and Foreign Languages University
Arundhati Roy claimed that her novel The God of Small Things (1997) presents the history of South India through the eyes of the seven year-old twins Estha and Rahel. This paper looks at the ideological implications of telling a story about the adult world through the eyes of children, as it happens in Roy
Bordering on to the stranger in Jhumpa Lahiri’s Hell-Heaven
Dr. Binod Mishra
Department of HSS
IIT Roorkee,Uttarakhand.
The concept of the other in literature has to a great extent been to prove someone
different from the same in terms of various practices and thought patterns. Of course, it
has been a matter of hectic deliberations since the evolution of mankind. But there is no
denying the fact that an individual also finds himself attracted towards the other not only
because of the lack of this likeness in them but also because of certain qualities or their
characteristic nuances missing in themselves. But in human relationships, the tendency to
get attracted towards strangers creates ripples at times. This leads to a cause of concern
and can create a sort of obsessive disorder in them. Man not only is in constant struggle
with the outside world but is also in a perpetual conflict within his own where the native
and the alien often meddle with his peace and progress.
The present paper attempts to unravel the psychology that works behind the fascination
towards the stranger in Jhumpa Lahiri’s story entitled ‘Hell Heaven’ in her second
collection of stories Unaccustomed Earth. The characters of this story while trying to
find an alternative home in a diasporic world unsettle settled homes. The urge that brings
them together creates the gaps that even alien forces do not and consequently, the need
for settling in a new world and new order proves self disastrous. The lack of human
warmth in a land where ‘friendship alone can be a sheltering tree’ not only fills us with
insecurity but also with inferiority complex. In this respect while the first generation
immigrants are found suffering and sulking, the second generation seems armed to fight
their predicament since they understand the bigger challenges.
Post-Colonialism and English Literature
Dr. Punita Jha
Dept. of English,
Darbhanga, 846004,
This article endeavors to present an explicative study on the effect of post-colonialism in India English Literature. It is an undisputable fact of literary historiography that no century in human history can surpass the 20th century, after 1950 in terms of paradigm shifts in literature. In literary studies there is now an entire area designated 'Theory' which as in scientific theories, is believed to BE valid across cultures, Students in India have been studying 'Post - structuralism' 'Post-modernism' and 'Post-colonialism'.
So far as the post-colonialism is concerned, it is a discourse of the marginal and the ipso-fact, gives birth to numerous theories of 'Diaspora', 'Migrancy' 'Marginality' and 'Hybridity'. Post-colonialism focuses on global-mixing of cultures and identities. They also pave the way for the emergence of global community. Literature may take up numerous themes and challenges but its function remains the same that is to humanize.
Anita Nair’s the Better Man: A Victory of Human Will over Human Weakness
Dr. Hitendra B.Dhote.
Di- Desaiganj, Gadchiroli.(M.S.)
Anita Nair’s imposing debut novel ‘The Better Man’ (2000) is the story of an
elderly bachelor and retired government employee, Mukundan Nair. Mukundan is forced
by circumstances to return to Kaikurussi, the village he was born in. He had fled the
village when he was a boy of eighteen to escape the tyranny of his domineering father.
His return journey to his ancestral home, however, turns out nothing than coming face
to face with his dead past, millions of grey shadows and ghosts of his dead ancestors,
mostly his mother’s ghost, haunting and tormenting him. The rest of the novel moves
round Mukundan, his redemption from a timid creature to a better man.
Set in contemporary India
northern part of Kerala the novel is thickly populated with Villagers. Nair introduces
these characters, some with strikingly sharp features, in the process of Mukundan's
evolution. Bhasi, one-Screw-Loose Bhasi, is one of them. Once an English lecturer
but now a mere painter and a healer, he touches the heart of a reader and does not leave
long after the novel has finished. Keeping Mukundan at the centre Nair unfolds the
struggle in the lives of these characters in a lucid and refreshingly fresh style. The paper
is an attempt to show that sometimes even the big ones surrender to their weaknesses.
However, weakness can be defeated by strong will. It will be justified through
Mukundan’s from a timid creature to a better man.
Upamanyu Chatterjee’s English, August: A Post-Colonial
Prototype of Indian Bureaucracy
Dr. Manish R. Chakravarty,
Asstt. Prof. of English,
S.K. Porwal College,
Nagapur
Upamanyu Chatterjee’s novel English, August is an ironic and humorous portrayal of an IAS recruit struggling to connect to rural India
The novelist, in naming his protagonist Agastya invites inevitable comparison with the celebrated celestial sage Agastya Maharishi who possessed superhuman powers and whose name is synonymous with selfless service to humanity. However, the great sage’s namesake, Agastya-turned-August is initially completely disinclined to cater to the people he is supposed to serve. Post-independence, the English-educated Indians saddled in the role of administrators have continued the British practice of distancing themselves from the ruled, thereby continuing the colonial tradition in free India
The Value of Learning Structures in Language Acquisition
PN VD Mahesh
M. Narasimharao
The paper dwells on the importance of learning structures in the acquisition of language. The skills of language can best be gained when the students strive to master words, sounds and structures. Of these, structures are of crucial importance for obvious reasons: English language has a unique word order and it is of prime importance; the area is grossly neglected by all the stakeholders. The paper emphasizes on the need to rivert to old structural method combining the new techniques evolved of late.
Kamala Das’ Short Fiction: An Analytical Study
B. Jahnavi
Research Scholar
It is after death, it has been widely acknowledged that Kamala Das has been much maligned owing to her candour which is unacceptable to the parochial patriarchal system. It is her poetry which sparks off such criticism. However, her short stories, if one looks at it closely, do not smack of frankness and therefore remain on the periphery of critics’ attention. A few anthologies of her short fiction were brought out and they endear themselves to the Malayalam readers. When it comes to her short stories, many issues have been touched upon. There are many stories where there is a metaphysical speculation of life and love; the mundane world of riots and rights; and other such themes. The present study primarily focuses on Kamala Das’ probe into philosophy.
Language Studies in Jeopardy: A Study of ELT in Colleges
Ghanta Srinivasu
Ginjupalli Suneetha
The need to emphasize English language and its importance to scale the ladder of success has become the constant refrains these days. But the language teaching and learning has become far from satisfactory. It does not serve the purpose of gaining grasp on the skills of language with the result students get diffident about it. The pathetic sight of students is mindboggling. They are keen on learning the language as it gives them bread and butter. It has been found out that it is all ill-orchestrated and so in due course they give up the hope of learning language. Who should be made accountable for the lamentable state of affairs? It is easy to find fault with the students’ apathy, inordinate show of love for “group subjects” and other such reasons. But on close security, it can be inferred that the faulty education system, the sense of direction and the language teachers’ complacence are some of the root causes. This paper seeks to address all the issues and offer some practical solutions.
INDIAN ENGLISH
Mrs. Zehrabi,
Asst. Professor of English,
We are not yet clear about the status of English in India India
T.B.Macauly introduced English in India India are 3% it places India India
The Para Textual Elements in Translation: An Enquiry into Translating Hindi Folk Drama into English
Dr R. P. SINGH
Reader in English
the world .
When the issue of translating para textual elements arises out of cultural words of any language into other standard language, it becomes a bit difficult. We can brand this translation as transcreations or reincarnation. It is much different from the general purport of translation. I would take liberty to name this practice as translevelization. How and when translevelization happens? I shall be inferring it in my research paper with special reference to the translation of Hindi folk drama into English.
Key Words: Transcreation, Reincarnation, Translevelization, Folk drama.
INTER-RELIGIOUS HARMONY: SOME MARXIST INSIGHTS IN TAMAS
P. ANANTHA LAKSHMI
RESEARCH SCHOLAR
There is much literature on ‘Inter-religious Harmony’. In Indian English
literature, many novels were brought out signifying the importance of harmony in multi-
ethnic and multi-religious society. ‘Life of Pi ‘, ‘Train to Pakistan ’, ‘A Bend
exhaustively. My present preoccupation is with the novel Bhisham Sahni’s
‘Tamas’. Episodic in structure, the primary focus of the novel is the augmentation of
Escalation of disharmony. The novelist himself is a staunch Marxist and therefore would
like to offer a Marxist ideology of communal relations. The novelist avers that the
rich , the Baniya community for instance, would seek to safeguard their vested
interests at the expense of harmony existing among various communities. Further they
incite people against one another so that they can have a political mileage of it. The
novelist subscribes to the idea that just economic order based on equity and equality can
only pave way for good relations. The paper explores all the intricate cobweb of relations of the issue.
Astride the Wheel: A Mystical Novel
Dr. Mary Mohanty
Lecturer in English
Govt. Women’s College, Puri
Astride the Wheel is the English translation of Oriya novel Yantrarudha, written by Chandrasekhar Rath and translated by Jatindra Nayak. It won Hutch Crossword Book Award 2004 for Indian Language Fiction Translation. The Telegraph says about the novel: ‘…A mystical novel…with the wisdom of ancient Hindu texts….A spiritual odyssey.’ The Deccan Herald also highly praises the novel in the following words: ‘…The story moves …to higher planes of consciousness….A priceless contribution to Oriya literature.’
Astride the Wheel is the tale of the life of Sanatan Dase, a fifty-year-old temple–priest, of Lakshminarayan temple in rural Orissa. He performs his priestly duties and quietly accepts what life offers him. A poor man, Sanatan Dase leads a life of unending poverty which makes him ponder upon fate, God, manhood, the soul and the world. During a trip to Lord Dabaleswar, Dase comes across the intellectual Satapathy and discovers the futility of worldly struggle. A turning point comes in his life after the untimely deaths of his wife and son. His family disintegrates and Dase goes on a pilgrimage with Satapathy.
This paper will focus on the mystical experience of Dase at Dakhineswar in Calcutta , Varanasi , Vrindavan and Puri, the four holy places in India
Manju Kapur’s A Married Woman: a Feminist Study
KAMAL KUMAR RAUL
Research Scholar
IIT ROORKEE.
The term ‘Feminism’ has been derived from the Latin word ‘Femina’, that means ‘woman’. Feminism refers to movements aimed at establishing and defending equal political, economic, social rights and equal opportunities for women.
This present paper aims at discussing the feminist approach of Manju Kapur in her second novel A Married woman, where the female protagonist named Astha appears as silent Ibsenite voice and votary of women’s emancipation. The female protagonist in the novel, Astha devise deep in to the women psyche. Kapur’s second novel A Married Woman may be an epoch making literary work that claims and carries two major feministic issues. One is radical feminism and another one is Marxist feminism. Before going to analyze the novel I must define these two terms Radical feminism and Marxist feminism. Radical feminism is a philosophy emphasizing the patriarchical roots of inequality between men and women, or, more specifically, social dominance of women by men. Central to Marxism is the idea of the divisions of labor, which are familiarly evident in the capitalist system. Marxist feminists base their arguments of moral right and wrong in reference to the corruption of wage labor that is in it self an expression of class distinctions. In this way Kapur presents feminist concept in various forms and folds in this novel a married woman that places her in among the front ranking feminist writers parading for the cause of women emancipation in all respect.
ENGLISH AS SECOND LANGUAGE: AN OVERVIEW OF VARIOUS APPROCHES
G.NAGESWRARAO
Assistant Professor in English,Vignan University
K.V.N.K.MURTHY
G.RAMESH BABU
Assistant Professor in English,
English has been used as second language in many countries of the world. The
use of English changes with the change of the needs of the country. Every country adopts its own ways of teaching the language at various levels. The Main objective of our paper is to focus some of such aspects which were brought by various methods of language teaching at various levels. After elucidating our objective, we focus on English as second and its various manifestations of teaching apporaches like E.S.L(English as second language),E.F.L(English as foriegn language) E.A.L(English as additional language).have also been touched upon.
Translations of Sri Aurobindo’s Writings: A Critical Appraisal
S. RUKMINI
Assistant Professor
Waltair-530045
In the recent years, there has been a major thrust on translations of Indian writings
to English. In the colonial era translations of Indian writings have been attempted by the western scholars. It resulted in subversion as they rewrite our histories and cultural etymologies which resulted in distortion of our cultural ethos. The similar happenings occur in the globalized world where English has taken a centre stage and has become
frontline communication across cultures. Language experts have been observing the
corrosion of the vernacular languages due to the impact of English language. Due to
this phenomenon many classical and popular Indian writings are translated to English.
On the other hand, Indian English writers like Sri Aurobindo, Jiddu Krishnamurti etc
works are translated into many Indian languages and foreign languages as well.
While translating spiritual literature, translators need to understand the spirit of the writer and not limit themselves to the meaning of the text. This poses an interesting study
of translations of Indian English writers works, especially of Sri Aurobondo’s writings
as they are of more spiritual in nature. The aim of the paper is to explore the issues
related to translations of Sri Aurobindo’s writings to Indian languages. Sri Aurobindo
works whether it is journalistic writings, poems, plays, essays etc is teemed with his
proficiency of European classical languages and deep spirituality. Thus even if one has
an expertise over English one feels it difficult to understand his works for one may fall
short of comprehending his richness in foreign phrases and lack of a deeper spiritual
insight. To comprehend Sri Aurobindo’s writings it is imperative for one to have spiritual
background and at the same time rich in verbose too. Up till now his writings have
been known only to the educated masses. To make it convenient for every layman to
comprehend Sri Aurobindo’s writings an attempt has been made to explore possibilities
of translating his works into the vernacular languages. Further, the paper will also
discuss the difficulties one may confront while translating such elevated literature.
Re-Organizing the Lives of Women: Gloria Naylor’s The Women of Brewster Place
Dr. Payel Dutta Chowdhury
From time immemorial, the lives of women in all ages, cultures, and countries have been organized and manipulated by the dominance of patriarchy. Whatever patriarchy demands of women has in most of the cases been very different from what women want for themselves. The practice of women relying on one another for direction and strength to re-organize their lives crops up with notable regularity in the novels of African American women. During a 1993 talk in St. Louis
up the absence. These novelists bring forth a new picture of relation among women, of female friendship, sisterhood, and community to protest against racial, and more importantly, gender discriminations. They draw their idea of bonding among the different women in their novels, who in most of the cases, are not even related by blood, from core African notions of ‘everyone is family’ and ‘community othermothers’.
What is being highlighted in these novels is the importance of traditional cultural values and communal bonding for the African American women in an attempt to re-organize their lives and also as resistance to oppression from different sources. Since the early seventeenth century, the time since when the African American people were fighting the political battle of regaining the lost sense of identity, the community as an entity has been the buffer against any and repeated attempts at disrupting continued existence. The
paradox of slavery, reconstruction, and the experience of segregation have been that when the 'other' was comparatively focused and sharply defined in terms of binary oppositions, the construction and sustenance of the sense of the bond of community beyond the individual and the familial was more focused and hence, achievable. The representation of the community in the various categories of oral
modes of black expression and the slave narratives establish the urge of the slaves to associate with each other to protest against the trauma of shame, pain, suffering, and the struggle for survival and thereby, overcome the sense of loneliness. This urge for bonding in a quest of self-identity, self-awareness, and self-empowerment was all the more felt by the women who were the victims at a dual level – race and gender.
The manner in which contemporaries, such as, Toni Morrison, Paule Marshall, Ntozake Shange, and others negotiate the representation of the African American women’s position provides the context in which Naylor and Walker’s achievement may be postulated.
ANALYSIS OF METAPHOR: AN INTERACTIONIST VIEW
Leelawati Patil
Assistant Professor
A metaphor is an intriguing concept. It is used implicity as well as
explicitly at different levels. Basically metaphor is a linguistic device. It is used
to compare certain objects, feelings and attitudes with others. It is a figure of
speech used to achieve effect via association, comparison and resemblance.
A metaphor is a creation; for its creation requires genius. The English word ‘metaphor’ has its origin in Greek word ‘Metaphora’ which means ‘carry over’ or ‘to transfer’. Terence Hawkes puts in his celebrated In Metaphor (1972:1): ‘Traditionally, a metaphor is taken to the most fundamental form of figurative language’. Figurative language is somewhat different but derived from literal language. Figurative language deliberately interferes with the system of literal usages by its assumption that forms literally related to one object can be transferred to another object. The interference takes the form of transference with its aim of achieving new, special or more precise meaning. It means
language turns away from literal meaning towards figurative meaning. Hence
a metaphor is a figure of speech. A metaphor can be analysed using different parameters. I.A. Richards analyses metaphor into ‘tenor’ and ‘vehicle’. Interaction between tenor
and vehicle is possible only when there is some likeness between them.
Hence ‘ground’ or ‘context’ of comparison is the third parameter. There
are some other parameters which are hacked from the study of different
approaches to metaphor such as tenor-vehicle relationship, nature of
grammatical device, transfer feature, domain of metaphor and form and
function of metaphor. To analyse metaphor one has to go through these
parameters. Identification and formalization of parameters is essential for
getting meaning from metaphor.
The Critique of Woman’s Image in Margaret Lawrence’s The Stone Angel
B. Yamini
Asst Professor
Margaret Lawrence is a celebrated Canadian writer. Her won accolades owing to her creative and critical prowess. Her novel is The Stone Angel is remarkable for the graphic portrait of an old woman, Hager Shipley in her nineties through various cycles of her life. It is remarkable that she does not like to subject herself to the caprices of old age and is keen on “knowing herself” without indulging in the blame game. Here is the woman who at the fag end of her life makes a retrospective account of her life in order to voice her feelings and wriggle out of the death-clasp of life. Set in a fictional prairie, the novel is narrated by an old woman in her nineties. She shows readiness to own responsibility for her failures. As she was growing, she had been within the clutches of her father, her husband and finally her son. As she grapples with the intrinsic meaning of her life, she comes to a conclusion that life’s meaning eludes her as she has been within the confines of somebody. She longs to find out meaning for it can only set her free from life and helps her rejuvenate. I try to unravel the text with aid of many a new criticism like post-modernism, feminism and the like.
Immigrant Experiences in Manju Kapur`s Immigrant
Dr. Ram Sharma,
Dr. Ram Sharma,
Baraut, Baghpat, U.P.
Manju Kapur is the most talked and appreciated current Indian English
woman novelist. She is the author of four acclaimed novels, Difficult
Daughters, A Married Woman, Home and Immigrant. .Difficult Daughters
won the Commonwealth Writer`s Prize [ Eurasia] in 1998 and Home was
shortlisted for the Hutch Crossword Book Award in 2006 .
Immigrant psyche shows the interaction of traditional culture within
the culture of an adopted alien land and bring about a transformation
in the inherited tradition and culture of the immigrant.
The immigrant experience is a composite one made up of collectivities
, multiple journeys, still points and border crossings .Experiences
are shaped by economic positions, personal skills and political
relationships between country of origin and of adoption.
Migration that leads to separation may be seen as rebirth , rebirth in
a new place / city/ country marked by a new culture , different flora
and fauna , new adjustments and so on .But even if `` Migration is
reincarnation `` it takes the memory back to the earlier birth even as
the migrants have to ` build a new world only to die in hope and
dread``. My preoccupation is to bring out an immigrant’s consciousness in the novel.
Manju Kapur is the most talked and appreciated current Indian English
woman novelist. She is the author of four acclaimed novels, Difficult
Daughters, A Married Woman, Home and Immigrant. .Difficult Daughters
won the Commonwealth Writer`s Prize [ Eurasia] in 1998 and Home was
shortlisted for the Hutch Crossword Book Award in 2006 .
Immigrant psyche shows the interaction of traditional culture within
the culture of an adopted alien land and bring about a transformation
in the inherited tradition and culture of the immigrant.
The immigrant experience is a composite one made up of collectivities
, multiple journeys, still points and border crossings .Experiences
are shaped by economic positions, personal skills and political
relationships between country of origin and of adoption.
Migration that leads to separation may be seen as rebirth , rebirth in
a new place / city/ country marked by a new culture , different flora
and fauna , new adjustments and so on .But even if `` Migration is
reincarnation `` it takes the memory back to the earlier birth even as
the migrants have to ` build a new world only to die in hope and
dread``. My preoccupation is to bring out an immigrant’s consciousness in the novel.
NEGOTIATING IDENTITY AND SPACE ACROSS THE DIASPORA – INTERCULTURAL EXPERIENCES
N. Lakshmi,
Associate Professor in English
The diaspora is a consequence of contemporary globalization as individuals move across regional barriers. Tensions, conflicts, moral and cultural issues, issues of colonialism, dispossession, alienation, multi-cultural dilemmas, negotiations, adjustments, reconstructions of self are all characteristics of shifting borders and boundaries. India
The various cultural conflicts faced by Indians across the borders is analyzed through the literary jottings of a few Indian diasporic writers. The works of women writers like Anita Desai, Bharati Mukherjee and Jhumpa Lahiri are taken to reflect the intercultural experiences across the diaspora.The inner psyche of the characters is juxtaposed with the external circumstances in their vicinity. Loneliness is a manifestation of both inner and external worlds. The individual’s inner needs become prominent under the external pressures and a ‘sense of otherness’ makes its visibility.Cultural identity is the crux of the problems of immigrants. The magic solution lies in intercultural assimilation in a global world.
Major Themes and Writers in American Literature
at Its Origin
at Its Origin
B. Varalakhsmi
The paper seeks to focus the major concerns of American literature within a limited time framework. The first period (1607-1775) is considered Colonial Period. The writings during this period were religious, practical and historical. Writers like William Bradford, John Winthrop, Cotton Mather, Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson were predominant during this period. The writings of the said writers have defined the nationhood of America and propelled America
The period (1775-1828) is known as the early Nation Period and triumph of Jacksonian Democracy. This period is considered The period of emergence of National Imaginative Literature. The First American comedy, The Contrast (1787) was produced by Royal Tyler. The earliest American Novel The Power of sympathy (1789) was written by William Hill Brown. This is also the period of the long series of slave narratives and autobiographies by the Black Writers. The period (1828-1865) from Jacksonian era to the American Civil War is called the Romantic Period in American Literature. This period is particularly known as the American Renaissance. This period is also declared as the Age of Transcendentalism. God is another name for Human Intelligence. Under the influence of idealist philosophers like Immanuel Kant, Hegel, Schelling, Transcendentalism emphasized individualism implicit in Unitarianism. It is developed by Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Bronson Alcott, and Margaret Fuller who preferred intuition to reason, freedom to institution.
IMPORTANCE OF SOFT SKILLS IN ENGINEERING EDUCATION
B.Sripala
K.JaganMohanRao
.
To impart sustainable real world training for the engineering students and hone their skills, appropriate communication skills are necessary. Soft skills enable them to be ready to take up the real world problems and also empower them to adopt innovative solutions
for the difficult challenges that are being faced by the present day Industry. The training
in soft skills in turn paves way for the development of various technical fields and also
economic growth. Further, training of students helps to bridge the gap between education
system and Industry and improves inter personal skills. The training also ensures the
students more employable and makes them professionally ready for the work. This
necessitates the implementation of various skills development programs at student level
itself. The present paper briefly discusses the some of the training methods related to
development of soft skills adopted in engineering education including their outcomes.
Keywords: Soft skills; Engineering Graduate; Language Problems; Training Methods
Semiotic Approach of Translation in
Theatre:A Study of Ghasiram Kotwal
Dr Archana Gupta, Lecturer,
English,Pt.D.D.U.G.G. College,
Vijay Tendulkar , best known for his emotionally charged protest plays
and film scripts, chooses a different genre for Ghasiram Kotwal – that of
musical historical set in Maharastra the late eighteenth century. It
recounts a power game played out in terms of caste ascendancy in
politics. The language of theatre is distinct from the
language of the dramatic text. The language of theatre includes not only
the text but also factors such as lightening, casting, performance, music,
and costumes etc. To see the different vocabulary that exist within
dramatic space as a system of signs permits a reading of dramatic
performance as a text. Dramatic text is the script designed for stage
representation and constructed according to particular dramatic
conventions. The text gets translated into the performance text though the
physical conditions of performance the actor’s body and its ability to
materialize discourse within the theatrical space .This paper attempts a
dramatic analysis of Ghasiram Kotwal on the assumption that an
analysis from the point of view translation theory yields a number of
fresh perspectives on how the performance works.
A Feminist Thrust in Mahesh Dattani’s Tara
Dr. R. K. Mishra
Mahalaxmi Nagar
Bolangir
Indian English drama appears with a new attire in the creative
hands of Mahesh Dattani who invigorated it by imparting to it a new
dimension and magnitude. One of his sensational plays is Tara in which the playwright projects his feminist thrust to espouse the cause of women. He has
dramatized most remarkably the emergence of a new woman in the
socio-cultural scenario in India
M. K. Mishra a critic of Mahesh Dattani remarks “Dattani reflects
on the predicament and plight of Indian women in the past and contrasts
their position in the present scenario.” The playwright formed a new
concept of a new woman who has emerged out of the age-old traditional
prejudices and sex discrimination. In the play Tara , Dattani ascribes
the plight of women of traditional attitude to their passive resignation to
patriarchal dominance and their adherence to tradition and old value.
In this play he depicts the central character.Tara as a victim of social prejudices and animosity against women.The position of women in Indian society has been jeopardized due to clash of traditions and concepts of value. Dattani has sought to recount how inhumanely and brutally men persecute women and how they
disparage their abilities in order to subordinate them. In consequence
of such discriminatory treatment, modern women have come to flout
the instructions and decisions thrust upon them by their fathers and
husbands. Mahesh Dattani has deliberately woven the fabric of the story of
the play Tara to implant an impression of feminist ideology in the mind of
the audience. Tara is therefore, widely recognized as a play with a
feminist perspective.
The Relevance of Romanticism
Dr. Samir Kumar Sharma
The article deals with the origin of Romanticism and the affinity among
Indian, French and English writers. The aim of this article is to make modern man realize
how destructive will be the result if we ignore the principles of Romanticism in which
Nature is all. The significant part of Romanticism is that the writers experimented with
new subjective modes of expression and of the linguistic bases and cultural functions of
art. Wordsworth advocated for poetry the language ‘really used by men.’
Romanticism believes in acceptability and includes all – socialism, anarchism,
cult of irrationalism, revival of tradition and religion. It believes that human nature is
intrinsically good rather than as fallen and theologically depraved. It exalts the state of
childhood and innocence of perception. Therefore, there is a need to turn to mysticism
and Nature, simple, primitive and uncorrupted lifestyle. Only then life will be filled with
sweetness and light.
Emerson and Thoreau as Rebels
Dr. Vikas Sharma
DAV (PG) College , Bulandshahr (UP)
By 1840, the intellectuals of the world realized that
the monarchs were despots and hence political powers should
not be entrusted to them. In England
imposed a lot of taxes upon the people so as to generate money
for war. Leaders like Cromwell and Milton raised their voice
against the tyrants and supported the rights of common people.
The Americans got victory against the foreign rule on the British
Channel and declared independence. The victory inspired the
French intellectuals and they created awakening among the masses
in favour of general will. Thinkers like Montesquieu, Robespierre,
Rousseau and others prepared the background for intellectual
revolution after 1750 and the French people learnt much from the
American independence. William Godwin asserted the importance
of justice. Now, it had become difficult for Catholic priests to
control their followers with the help of dogmatic and orthodox
traditions. Since Addition Steele, Swift, Dr.Johnson and Henry
Fielding exposed the evils of feudal system, people hated the
Lords, Earls and Barons. And Napoleon Bonapart came into power
after 1800; they developed a disliking for autocracy too.
It is true that Emerson admires Napoleon and Thoreau
appreciates the courage and bravery of Sir Walter Raliegh.Yet both
of them hated the selfish and corrupt politicians as they cheat the
ignorant masses in a cunning manner. As advocates of discipline,
liberty, equality and fraternity, Emerson and Thoreau condemned
crafty politicians and avaricious supporters. This paper is an attempt to establish Emerson and Thoreau as true rebels, who did not give any ‘ism’ in their essays.
The Mystic Masseur
The Making of a West Indian Politician
Dr. R. Prabhakar
The Mystic Masseur (1957), the first published novel of V.S. Naipaul, explores the pangs and pains of Ganesh Ramsumair, a postcolonial who achieves international recognition in the end. He is a victim in the beginning but later an exploiter of the gullible immigrants in the post-independent Trinidad .
Ganesh’s vast reading and wisdom have made him the first masseur, only to become ultimately a religious and psychological adviser, a pundit, and a renowned politician who exploits the gullible people for his personal advantage. The mock biographer of Ganesh Ramsumair, is innocent, sentimental, and naive, on one hand, and cunning, sophisticated, and active on the other. The Mystic Masseur satirizes the Trinidadian society and its inhabitants’ attributes such as ignorance, superstition, trickery, quackery, knavery, opportunism, fatalism, tradition, and modernity, and treatment of women.
Dr. R. Prabhakar, Assistant Professor, Dept. of English, Vikrama Simhapuri University, Nellore, Andhra Pradesh.
Indian Writing in English: A Critical Perspective
Dr. Deepika Sharma
The present paper is a polite attempt to critically estimate the unbiasedness, so called in
view of the author, of current Indian writers in presenting the Indian scenario. In the last
couple of decades or so, Indian writers have achieved a special niche in the world literature. Eminent authors of pre and post independence period magnified the culture and at the same time tried to awake the marginalised Indians by depicting the darker side of the society requiring the reform. Contemporary literature in India
The Note of Transcendence and Attainment of the Self Sylvia Plath’s Poems
Dr.J.S.Vyas
Smt.K.L.College,
If one throws even a cursory glance at the poetry of Plath, it becomes very apparent that the atmosphere created by her poetry is that of utter despair, pain and anguish. This makes the readers associate it with the very fragile plane on which she lived as a result of many sociological and psychological causes or incidents in her life that preceded the writing of her poems. However, the present paper highlights the other aspect in Plath’s poetry that escapes notice of a casual reader i.e. the transcendental element. It clearly means that beyond the anguish and turmoil in her poetry there is something which dawns upon her mind as she passes through the labyrinthine passages of her bitter experiences. In Plath’s last poems readers experience the mystery and confusion. Throughout her poetic career, Plath gives voice to the inner emptiness of the soul; however, finally she plunges into the very depth of this emptiness and transcends it. The enigmatic appeal is due mainly to the journey she undertakes to reach the dark recesses of her mind, of her inner world and her realization of the self.
Teaching-Learning Process of English in an Engineering Classroom
Dr. N. George Mathew
CSS Department, K L University,
Guntur
CSS Department, K L University,
The success of the students is measured on the basis of the written examinations at the end of a course. Teachers have to follow the evaluation pattern given by the universities and their opinions are neither sought nor considered while designing a curriculum. A majority of the English teachers in India
English teachers have an important role in the classroom teaching-learning process. Further, the educational background and training of the English teachers may influence classroom teaching. A study was conducted on English teachers in the engineering colleges across the state of Andhra Pradesh. The Findings of this study (2009) gives insights on important issues related to the teaching-learning process, teacher development and teacher training and is significant for teacher educators.
Catch 22 and Lithography
G.Immanuel,
Lecturer in English ,
Thandalam
Joseph Heller (May 1, 1923 – December 12, 1999) was an American satirical novelist,
short story writer and playwright. He wrote the influential novel Catch-22 about American servicemen during World War II. The title of this work entered the English lexicon to refer to absurd, no-win choices, particularly in situations in which the desired outcome of the choice is an impossibility, and regardless of choice, the same negative outcome is a certainty. Heller is widely regarded as one of the best post-World War II satirists. Heller's principle emphasis is on the internal struggle with conflicting values and the characters' evolution. Catch-22 is a general critique of bureaucratic operation and reasoning. Resulting from its specific use in the book, the phrase "Catch-22" is common idiomatic usage meaning "a no-win situation" or "a double bind" of any type. Within the book, "Catch-22" is a military rule, the self- contradictory circular logic that, for example, prevents anyone from avoiding combat missions.Logotherapy was developed by neurologist and psychiatrist Viktor Frankl. It is considered the "Third Viennese School
Adler's individual psychology. It is a type of existentialist analysis that focuses on a will tomeaning as opposed to Adler's Nietzschean doctrine of will to power or Freud's will to pleasure.Rather than power or pleasure, logotherapy is founded upon the belief that it is the striving tofind a meaning in one's life that is the primary, most powerful motivating and driving force in humans.This Frankl’s “Logotherapy” and Joseph Heller’s “Catch-22” and explains in detail the reflectionsof the psychological concepts advocated by Viktor K. Frankl under logotherapy in Catch -22 paper discusse the well knit connection between Viktor. K.
New Dimensions of Feminism: A Reading of Toni Morrison’s Sula
Dr. T. Jeevan Kumar,
PVKK PG College,
Anantapur, A.P.
The twenty-first century is likely to witness the richest vein of women literature that contributed much to the new dimensions of feminism. Feminist writers have made remarkable strides in the field of literature and generously expressed their frustrations, struggles, sufferings, and also their successful experiences in their writings. Of these, the Black women have reshaped and redefined the feminism in Afro-American literature because they suffered from the ‘twin burden’ of being Black and female. Being black they suffered from racism; being females they were the victims of sexual atrocities at the hands of the white patriarchs as well as the blacks.
Most of the Black writers have been successful in presenting their protagonists as womanists who succeed in creating a new social order based on love and respect for all living things. As a writer inspired by such a noble vision, Toni Morrison tries to project the black experience, particularly the black female experience, and celebrates the black community. In the present paper a study is made on the various facets of feminism. Toni Morrison’s Sula focuses on a young black girl named Sula, who matures into a strong and determined woman in the face of adversity and the distrust. Morrison delves into the strong female relationships between the novel’s women and how these bonds both nurture and threaten individual female identity.
Feminine Voice of Assertion
Dr.Madhavi Pawar
In Indian classical literature, a woman is always shown as subordinate to man. A symbol of purity, faithfulness and devotion towards husband.But known the structure of the society has changed due to different political and social ideologies. Women have to come out their protective shells and help their partner, besides keeping the traditional role which was imposed on her, but this was not appreciated by the society. She was scorned, humiliated in this process. There came a time when she had to exhibit her potentials and thus assert herself. This assertion of feminine identity may be regarded as the expression of feminism in the Indian context.
The present research paper attempts to scan the unnoticed things in the writings of Indian women novelists, who had proved their mettle and who had made tireless effort to assert their identity in a male dominated patriarchal society. Among these are Shashi Deshpande and Shobha De. Women’s repression is a many coloured fabric in which many strands- individual, social, physical, psychological, local and universal are interwoven. One of the purposes for working on a selection of novels by too writers is that together they might contribute to more or less complete picture of the forces shaping women’s lives in India.
Bhakti Voices of India
Dr. Beena V. Rathi
Associate Professor,
.Amravati
A Royal princess by birth, Mirabai the renowned Hindu mystical poetess was born at Medta in Nagaur district of Rajasthan in a Rathore Rajputana family. Her compositions which are at least thirteen hundred in number are prayerful songs called bhajans. They are a treat not only to the listeners but to the singer as well because they are the best examples of ‘Bhakti Ras’.
They say she was born around 1498 to god fearing parents. Her mother who used to be busy during the day with her domestic chores gave little Mirabai who was six years old then, a figurine of Krishna to play. She unknowingly told the little child that this was her husband. The words were taken so literally by little Mira that she began to play sing and talk to her doll Krishna just as her mother did to her father.
Many of the details of Mira’s life are peices strung together from her poetry and little of her life history are anecdotes recounted by the members of her community.
These may or may not be true because the historical authenticity of her story is a subject of controversy and debate but there can be no second opinion to the fact that her bhajans are an ultimate source of inspiration to the bhakti tradition. They are passionately written as love poems in the praise of her lord Krishna .
Mirabai was an ardent disciple of Shri Guru Ravidas, who taught her to pour her heart out if she wanted to reach her beloved. And she did. Her outpourings are so soulful and prayerful that today by general consensus she is regarded as the greatest saint in the Bhakti tradition. It is a legacy of unimitable poetry sung and performed not only all over India
INDIAN English
S.Rajeswari
Nalla Malla Reddy Engineering College
English has been with India India
Indian English or South Asian English comprises several dialects or varieties of English spoken primarily in the Indian subcontinent. Indian English morphology is very creative and is filled with new terms and usages. Indian English uses compound formation extensively. When bringing Indian words into English, terms such as roti (bread), which are already plural, will be pluralized for English by the addition of –s (roties). Most pronunciations of Indian English are rhotic, but many speakers with higher education are non-rhotic.
The output of good writers of English in India
When Indians use English, it is often a mixture of English, Hindi and other languages. Some Indians complain that English brings in too much Western thought, but English in India
INFLUENCE OF SALMAN RUSHDIE ON INDIAN WRITERS
Dr P.Indira Devi
Midnight’s Children, Rushdie’s popular Magic Realist text with its masterful use of English language, is one of the landmark works of English literature of the latter half of the Twentieth Century. It has been acclaimed not just for its literary merits, but also for the influence it has had on subsequent generations of writers.
A number of authors, both Western and Eastern, have found in Rushdie a writer worthy of emulation, and South Asian writers in particular have been candid in their acknowledgement of Rushdie’s influence. Rukun Advani, Shashi Tharoor, Rajiva Wijesinha, Adam Zammenzad, and Chitra Baneree Divakaruni, to name a few, have shaped their writing in ways that clearly echo Rushdie.
Midnight’s Children signified a major thematic and technical breakaway from Indian English novels written before the 1980s inspiring a host of formal and linguistic experiments that were to be found in the Indian writing in the decades to come. It possesses a dexterous use of language, an irreverent tone and a defiant and vigorous challenge to the power of history and received traditions. It was a “liberating” force for the Indian writer to break away from the colonial ghosts that plagued his country.
Rushdie’s success in the literary circuit has had a great impact on Indian writing in English, with contemporary writers like Rohinton Mistry, Vikram Seth, Anita Rau Badami and Amithav Ghosh being influenced by his works. Many such writers have built on that influence and gone on to establish their own tradition of expressive realism along with the tradition of the Nineteenth Century Fiction. This article aims to study the impact of Rushdie’s writing, Midnight’s Children in particular, on Indian writing in English.
LIETRATURE IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHING: A PERSPECTIVE
K.V.Satish
Research Scholar
Literature is a major component in study programs at various levels, the students are more inclined to develop their language skills, but the students devote less time for reading literature. The language competency of students at the beginning of their study programs is a major setback in using literature into foreign syllabus. Lack of good appreciation for literature, traditional teaching methods, difficult and uninteresting area makes the students to withdraw themselves away from the literature. Teaching literature helps for teaching both basic language skills i.e. Reading
This paper discusses, why a language teacher should use literary texts in the language classroom, what sort of literature language teachers should use with language learners, literature and the teaching of language skills, and the benefits of different genres of literature to language teaching. Literature is an essential tool in teaching English as a second or foreign language.
English for Future Careers of Globalization for Technical Students
B.Raghavamma Assistant professor of English
N.B.K.R.I. Science and Technology
English is accepted by almost all the universities in India India
Teaching English Language through Translations of Regional Literature
Dr. S.D.
Mahatma Gandhi Degree College
Guntur
In the post-modern deconstructionist age, translations of regional literature is widened including a kind of humanizing and warm reading across cultures in the context of globalization establishing a favourable mind set in the mind of the young learners. The big focus today is that translations may become a powerful aid in language teaching enabling the students to understand cultures different from their own in time and space. At the same time the bi-lingual texts can deal with universal themes such as love, war and loss to widen wakefulness among learners of all levels promoting tolerance and understanding.
The translated texts that can be studied inside and outside the ELT classroom -Short stories, Poems, Novels, Plays and Song Lyrics - offer a rich source of linguistic input by helping learners to practise the four - speaking, listening, reading and writing - skills and by engaging with such texts they may procure exemplifying grammatical structures and presenting new vocabulary as well.
Literary texts in translation are emblematic of the spirit of India
To Articulate the Inarticulate: Images and Symbols in the Poetry of Ted Hughes
Syed Mujahid
Dept. of English
S V University P.G.Centre
Kavali
Though the use of symbols and images has been there in the figurative language employed by the poets in the past, it was only for ornamental purpose. The Imagist and Symbolist movement gave an impetus to the poets to describe their emotions and ideas implicitly through metaphors, similes and other figures of speech.
Edmund James Hughes, the British Poet Laureate, popularly known as Ted Hughes is one of the best poets of his generation who put the images and symbols to the maximum use to articulate the changed emotions of his themes. His uncompromising obsessive preoccupation with birds, animals, plants, insects, landscapes in the natural world is clearly seen in almost all of his poems to articulate the inarticulate – a greater metaphysical dimension, a conception of nature and its relationship with man. Thus the images and symbols employed by Ted Hughes do not just record his visual impressions but they do present the symbolic significance. He weaves great philosophy around them and draws inferences about human behaviour.
Hughes’ animals - hawks, jaguars and macaws represent the fierce nature, the heroic endurance and fortitude at the hours of crisis which deserve emulation by men. They may be conceived as the aesthetic shapes and sources of life to combat the sterility of the poetic lines. They serve him as the poetic masks to reach the world of the spirit and reality.
To sum up, Ted Hughes’ symbols and images are spontaneously drawn from a wide variety of sources; yet the subtlety of his sole purport of self-analysis and self-expiation through suffering unites them all. There is an inevitability about his obsessive squaring up to the problem of modern man’s self-alienation from nature and the consequent spiritual torpor.
The Image of Woman in Shashi DeshPande’s Novel Roots and Shadows
U.V. Ramana Kumar
Dr. Zakir Hussain Degree College, Ibrahimpatnam
Highly talented and celebrated novelists have enriched Indian fiction in English. They include Anita Desai, Nayantra Sahgal, Santha Ramarao, Shashi Deshpande and others. They have written of Indian women, their conflicts and predicaments against the background of contemporary India
AUDIO LINGUAL METHOD IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHING
V.ARUNA,
Asst.Professor of English,
Narasaraopeta Engg.College,
Narasaraopet.
G.Ramesh Babu
Faculty Member,
Language is a means of communication. English Language is an easy means of communication in the international arena of life. For almost two centuries now. It has been playing an important role in our educational system as well as in our national life.
The incorporation of the linguistic principles of the Aural-oral approach with state-of the-
art. Psychological learning theory in 1950. That led to method that came to be known as
Audio-lingualism. The need for a radical change and rethinking of foreign language teaching methodology was prompted by the first Russian satellite. Audio lingualism the term was coined by Prof. Nelson Brooks in1964. Audio lingualists could now turn to the design of language teaching courses and materials. Audiolingualists demanded a complete re orientation of the foreign language curriculum.
Indian Literature in English Translations
YAGAPRIYA
PEETHAMBRAVALLI C.N.
CHENNAI
Translation essentially entails a word or a sentence being interpreted from
one language into another language, which is further governed by the parameters of
popularity and understanding. Translations for authors and writers denote the exceedingly
efficient permanship of a literary body of work, which can be communicated in a written
version, from its original language into a secondary or primary one. For instance, in the
Indian context, with Hindi being regarded as the official language, several of the English
or regional literary works have been translated into Hindi by various esteemed writers.
The arrival of British Empire and the historic reign of the Raj were the primary
beginners, who had introduced the concept of teaching and imparting English and its
literary body of works into the Indian indigenous languages. Hence, it is an apprehensible
matter that teaching in itself is an act of translation. Indian English Literature has
a relatively recent history, it is only one and a half centuries old. The first book
written by an Indian in English was by Sake Dean Mahomet, Titled ‘Travels to Dean
Mahomet’ ; Mahomet’s travel narrative was published in 1793 in England
writers used English unadultered by Indian words to convey an experience which
was essentially Indian. Raja Rao’s ‘Kanthapura’ is Indian in terms of its storytelling
qualities. Rabindranath Tagore wrote in Bengali and English and was responsible for the
translations of his own work into English.
Translation is not just ‘mechanical transfer ‘ of propositional content from a
text in one language to another, but is rather a complex compounding of ‘interpretive
expertise’ and ingenious accomplishments. Translation is not only the art of decrypting
a text which is a critical natural process, but also an art of encrypting a text in another
language which requires creative capacity. Thus translator is not just a labourer as is
most commonly comprehended, but is actually an individual with bilingual literary and
linguistic proficiency. Translation is also a way of establishing connections; it indeed
connects and bridges not only two languages and cultures, but also spanning space and
time.
The Cultural Shift in Shobha De’s Novels
A.Purna Chandrara Rao
Asst. Professor Usha Rama College
Telaprolu, Krishna
Indian culture is unique in its own way which is rich and diverse in comparison with
any culture all over the world. The place of woman is defined in different dimensions through the patriarchal society in ancient India India India India
of which keeps women as passive objects devoid of sexual satisfaction. Mikki in Sisters fights against the male dominance to get economic freedom. It is evident that these illustrations show the cultural mutation in postmodernism.
ARTHUR MILLER – REVISIONARY REALISM
Dr. Meetu Bhatia Kapur
Asst. Prof.
The equivalent form of tragedy with a wide popular appeal called melodrama emerged as a recognized type of theatre in the 19th century. Other new forms included tragedies that dealt with middle class characters and serious play about middle class life, often called dramas. At the beginning of the 19th century, dramatists made conscious decisions to break with earlier tradition. A tendency towards realism and the depiction of situations and characters with whom audiences could identify accelerated over the course of the century. A generation of dramatists and theorists sought a drama which would represent the texture of everyday life. By the end of the 19th century, American drama was moving steadily towards realism, illuminating the rough or seamy side of life and creating more believable characters. Realism remained the dominant trend of the 20th century in both comedies and tragedies. American drama achieved international recognition with the psychological realism of play by Eugene O’Neill and their searing investigation of character’s inner lives. As the century advanced the number of topics considered suitable for drama broadened to encompass race, gender, sexuality & death. Realism continued to be a primary form of dramatic expression in the 20th century, even as experimentation in both the content & the production of plays became increasingly important. Such renowned American playwrights as Eugene O’Neill, Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller reached profound new levels of psychological realism, commenting through individual characters and their situations on the state of American society in general.
Realism in Chetan Bhagat's Novels
Mr.Shitalbabu A.Tayade
Ramkrushna Mahavidyalaya, Darapur.
Tq.Daryapur Dist- Amravati ,Maharashtra
The main purpose of this paper is to bring out the thematic style of Chetan Bhagat's writing along with the way in which he presented his characters. This paper will also discuss the concept of realism and concept of modernity and how through the delineation of the various characters Chetan Bhagat portrays the contemporary reality.
Five Point Someone - What not to do at IIT describes how all the major characters are care free in their attitude and behavior and how they don't care for the outcome of their actions which sometimes lead to catastrophe. In fact it also describes how bad things can get if one doesn't think straight. It is the story of three friends whose measly five points (GPA) come in the way of everything - their friendship, their love, life and their future.
In Five Point Someone the parent sent wards to get higher technical education but the overburden of study creates feelings of detachment. Following lines bring out reality of educational system.
one night @ the call center
The 3 Mistakes of my life unfolds the story of three friends Govind, Ish and Omi. The three of them open a shop in Ahmedbad, however, nothing comes easy in a turbulent city. To realise their goal, they have to face religious and political calamities, unacceptable love and above all their own mistakes.
2 States - The Story Of My Marriage brings out the story of Tamil Girl and Punjabi boy. These two states i.e. Tamil and Punjab are the two poles of India
Today’s Need For Teaching English Pronunciation
Prof ( Dr) Indira Jha
Ben Johnson rightly remarked that speaking and speaking well are two different things. Speaking well depend not only on the content but pronunciation too It will not be out of place to mention here that the teaching and learning of pronunciation constitute only a part of the whole business of teaching and learning a language. In order to get a complete picture of language we have to understand the other systems and sub-systems that compromise language. For example, morphology, syntax, semantics, lexicon, grammar etc. constitute to the total picture of language. However as per today’s need there is lot of focus on pronunciation and phonology. Phonology of English stands for the sound system, word accent, rhythm and intonation..
Usually there is a standard form of written English all over the world. But even in countries where English is spoken as a native language there is a variation and variety of speech. If we look at UK’S English the variations can be noticed between the speech of England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland and again within each of these areas there will be a wide variety of accents i.e. ways of pronunciation. In India
English is no longer the properties of England India
THE PROBLEMS INVOLVED IN USING ICT IN HIGHER EDUCATION
P.Madhurima. V. Saravanan
Asst.Prof in English Lecturer in English, Chaitanya Bharathi Institute of Technology (CBIT), Velammal Engineering College
Hyderabad-500075. Chennai
This paper explores about ‘The Use of Information Communicative Technology and Communicative Language Teaching’. Globalization and technological change have created a new global economy “powered by technology, fueled by information and driven by knowledge.” The emergence of this new global economy has serious implications for the nature and purpose of educational institutions. As the half-life of information continues to shrink and access to information continues to grow exponentially, schools and colleges cannot remain mere Venues for the transmission of a prescribed set of information from teacher to student over a fixed period of time. Rather, schools must promote “learning to learn,” i.e., the acquisition of knowledge and skills that make possible continuous learning over the lifetime.
ICTs stand for information and communication technologies and are defined, as a “diverse set of technological tools and resources used to communicate, and to create, disseminate, store, and manage information.” These technologies include computers, the Internet, broad casting technologies (radio and television) and telephony.
Concerns over educational relevance and quality co-exist with the imperative of expanding educational opportunities to those made most vulnerable by globalization– developing countries in general; low-income groups, girls and women, and low-skilled workers in particular. Global changes also put pressure on all groups to constantly acquire and apply new skills.
Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) - which include radio and television, as well as newer digital technologies such as computers and the Internet- have been touted as potentially powerful enabling tools for educational change and reform. When used appropriately change and reform, different ICTs are said to help expand access to education, strengthen the relevance of education to the increasingly digital workplace, and raise educational quality by, among others, helping make teaching and learning into an engaging, active process connected to real life.
However, the experience of introducing different ICTs in the classroom and other educational settings all over the world over the past several decades suggests that the full realization of the potential educational benefits of ICTs is not automatic. The effective integration of ICTs into the educational system is a complex, multifaceted process that involves not just technology but also curriculum and pedagogy, institutional readiness, teacher competencies, and long term financing, among others.
Redefining Americanness: A study through Leslie Marmon Silko’s
Ceremony
Dr. Rabi Narayana Samantaray
A close reading of Silko’s Ceremony brings about a radical change in our understanding of American values. In her novel, Ceremony, Leslie Marmon Silko illustrates the many paradoxes of American culture, values, and history. While Tayo grapples with his own internal struggles, the struggles of America America America America America America America
The Autonomy of Wife Leading to Self-Depression of Husband: Shashi Deshpande’s The Dark Holds No Terror
Dr Shamez
Shashi Deshpande is one of the leading novelists of contemporary Indian Society. Although there are many other women writers who are enriching the Indian novel, Deshpande has a distinct place as she consistently addresses the question of selfhood with its many ramifications in her novels. In recent decades, the output of Indian women writers has been abundant and the focus of their writings has been on gender and the role of women in society.
The problem of adjustment with the husband and within the home has been the most consistent theme in the novels written by Deshpande. Her work reflects the conflict between tradition and modernity as manifested within the context of the family. She also deals with many major contemporary problems existing in society but the basis of all the problems hinges on the relation of man to woman. The lopsided relationship of man to woman is the foremost cause of problems existing in society. This conflict and maladjustment is portrayed in the novels of Shashi Deshpande.
The Dark Holds No Terror is the novel of Deshpande that has the theme of autonomy and the striving for balance between the feminine and the feminist selves of the protagonist- Sarita. It is the story of Sarita who attempts to free herself from the terrifying complexes of guilt which threaten to engulf her from her childhood. In this novel Sarita comes back to her parent's house after fifteen years when her mother dies. It is a story of the inner conflict of a woman caught between traditional and modern ways. Saru, the protagonist is caught between these two different cultural worlds while she searches for her identity. The novel explores the myth of man’s unquestionable superiority and woman being a paragon of all virtues. It is based on the problems faced by a career woman who is professionally better than the husband.
Rabindranath Tagore as a Poet of Nature
N.Nateshkumar,
Assistant Professor of English,
Karpagam Institute of Technology,
Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) was a multi-faceted personality. He was a freedom-fighter, poet, novelist, short-story writer, mystic, philosopher and a humanist. He is best known to the western world with the publication of his poetry collection, Gitanjali for which he was bestowed the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913. He is an outstanding figure in the realm of Indian English Literature. His advocacy of divine love stands as a significant contribution to the modern world.
Tagore is among the great poets of Nature and his Nature poetry is rich and full of endless variety. It may be recalled that it was his contact with Nature which made Tagore write beautiful lines of poetry and he again and again turns to this inexhaustible source for inspiration and comfort. Tagore’s Nature poetry has a distinctive greatness about it. The manifold colours and forms of Nature, its moods, both gay and fierce, the pageant of the seasons, the flowing rivers and cascades, streams and springs – all these come out transmuted into songs in Tagore’s poetry.
Tagore is not only a poet of Nature but also a philosopher of nature. It is for him a mystic symbol and a serene medium for attaining unity with God. Nature is a perennial source not only for poetic inspiration but also for moral guidance to him. This paper is a meagre endeavour to analyze some of the nature poems and mystic elements found in Gitanjali.
Humour as an Effective strategy in Teaching English for the Students from Rural Backgrounds
N.Sudheer Kumar
Anurag Engineering CollegeNalgonda
People with good sense of humour are always accessible and make the others feel comfortable. In this paper, I would like to explain how humour helps students feel comfortable in the language classroom. In the second part of this research paper, the various benefits of using humour in the language classroom are illustrated. Some of them are: humour eases the tension in the classroom, gets and maintains the attention of the students; helps the students in understanding and memorize some difficult concepts. The benefits may appear quite obvious for the teachers. In spite of knowing all the benefits, the teachers are reluctant to use the humour in the language classroom. The reasons for the reluctance to utilize such an effective strategy are given and critically evaluated in this paper. In the later part of the paper, some tips and techniques to utilize humour in the classroom are elucidated with examples. The last part of the paper deals with effectiveness of using humour from the real life experience in teaching various concepts in the language classroom.
Genesis of Titles and Evolution of Themes in the Plays of Girish Karnad
Dr. Krishna Singh,
Assistant Professor of English, Govt. P.G. College
Shahdol, M.P.
Girish Karnad, a versatile genius acclaimed as a noted actor, producer, director, TV artist and cultural administrator occupies prominent place in Indian English Drama. His plays are the medium where through he discusses socio-political and cultural problems of India India
Theme of Loneliness in the Poetry of Vikram Seth: A Perspective
Dr. Meeta Ajay Khanna
Guru Ghasidas Vishwavidyalaya
Bilaspur (C. G.)
The theme of loneliness is treated in the writings of poets, novelists, theologians, and philosophers in varied manner. Loneliness, whether a state of being alone, feeling lonely, or experiencing solitude, is portrayed as an essential aspect of human existence, an inescapable fact of life. Psychologist R.S. Weiss defines loneliness as a response to the absence of a particular type of relationship or attachment and stressed on two types: emotional loneliness and social loneliness. Vikram Seth, who occupies a prominent place as a poet in the arena of Indian writings in English deals with the subject of loneliness in a unique manner. Major themes of Seth’s work are love, relationship and marriage. While dealing with these themes he reveals the aspect of loneliness, isolation and alienation effectively. Vikram Seth’s first novel The Golden Gate was published in 1986. It elicited enthusiastic critical response, with commentators praising it as a work of technical virtuosity suffused with wit and accessible language that moves from elevated literary allusion to colloquial speech. Although a number of reviewers have argued that Seth overemphasized rhyme to the detriment of the story's depth and character development but it is worth analyzing the work from the point of view of the theme of loneliness. The present paper aims to focus on Seth’s treatment of the theme of loneliness in The Golden Gate and few other poems and his approach of coping with it in the light of few phenomenological studies of loneliness. In particular, a phenomenological approach helps highlight processes that cause lonely persons to choose certain coping strategies over others. Many of the poems of Seth show a close relation between change in culture, the loneliness associated due to such changes and the approach adopted by him to cope with such a state of lonesomeness. They describe his experiences and his attempt to deal with it.
Achebe’s Things Fall Apart: From Postcolonial Perspective
Dr Kiran Kumar
Until the lions have their own historians, the history of the
hunt will always glorify the hunter
Chinua Achebe
Postcolonial Studies is an interdisciplinary field that examines the global impact of European colonialism, from its beginning in the fifteenth century up to the present. Broadly speaking, it aims to describe the mechanism of colonial power, to recover excluded or marginalized “subaltern” voices, and to theorize the complexities of colonial and postcolonial identity, national belonging, and globalization. Similarly Postcolonial literary criticism focuses specifically on literature produced by subjects in the context of colonial domination, most notably in Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean . Building on knowledge of the institutions of western education and the hybrid nature of culture, the analysis of postcolonial literature characteristically explore the complex interactions and antagonisms between native, indigenous, “precolonial” cultures and the imperial cultures imposed on them.
The present paper is an attempt to present this encounter between the East and the West -- the colonized and the colonizer. I sought to bring to fore this domination and resistance encapsulated wonderfully by the great Nigerian novelist Chinua Achebe in his widely acclaimed and most celebrated literary sensation Things Fall Apart.
Chinua Achebe has rightly been called the father of modern African Fiction. His fiction presents exemplary texts of nationalistic contestation of colonialist myth and distortion of Africans and Africa . He is very critical of aesthetic aspect of literature as Art for Art’s Sake , and strongly believes in ‘Art for Society’s Sake’. He presupposes a social theory of art and holds the view that art reflects and propagates social views and values. In his Novelist as a Teacher, he underscores literature’s pedagogical mission and its ethical and political responsibilities. His mission is to reclaim the glory of Africa and African culture, and at the same time he foregrounds the seamy side of it with utmost sincerity and objectivity.
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Diasporic Sensibility in Bharati Mukherjee’s Jasmine
Anupama Sharma
Research Scholar
Department of English
Diaspora literature is very significant feature of the postcolonial approach. Literally the very word ‘Diaspora’ stands to show ‘scattering or dispersion of human beings’. From the point of Etymology the term ‘Diaspora’ is originated from the Greek term dispersion, from ‘Dia’ (across) and ‘sperien’ (to sow or scatter seeds). The Greek translation of the Hebrew Scripture, Septuagint, firstly delineated the term ‘Diaspora’ which describes the dispersion of the Jews after the Babylonian exile. In modern context the term ‘Diaspora’ is used to represent a sort of people who have been dislocated from their native land through the process of migration or exile.
This paper is a modest attempt to explore the diasporic sensibility in Bharati Mukherjee’s significant novel Jasmine (1989). Unlike V.S. Naipaul, Bharati Mukherjee is a free diasporic who is so well reconciled to both the home culture and host culture. She has a sort of global sensibility also in her mind. The diasporic novel Jasmine explores cross- cultural journey of protagonist Jasmine. The novel describes gender bias, racial discrimination, love of the country, its culture, history and traditions.
The cross- cultural confrontation is a major concern of Bharati Mukherjee’s novels. She emphasizes the re-inventing of a new immigrant woman who goes through to adapt to the ‘NEW’ world. As a diasporic writer, Bharati Mukherjee is very enthusiastic to mingle to the American culture. We can see her total Americanization in her significant novel Jasmine (1989). Her protagonist Jasmine delineates a very positive approach towards the assimilation of a new culture. She accepts her new identity and ready to cope with a new culture. She never looks back to her past. The quest for self- realization forays Jasmine to carve out a future for her. Sometimes, in this quest, she has to face isolation and alienation.
THE PROBLEM OF PREMARITAL PREGNANCY IN MARGARET DRABBLE'S NOVEL
Dr. Ashok Kumar Azad
Principal
The Present article is mainly focused on the problem of premarital pregnancy in Margaret Drabble's novels . She is one of the major British Novelists. In her novels , Margaret Drabble's shows the problem of unmarried pregnancy . The unmarried motherhood constitutes a major concern in women's fiction today . Behind the very idea of motherhood , it is taken for granted , that the mother is a married woman. In the west, however, the society is freer . Many relaxations are granted to women . So conceiving before marriage is a quite common phenomenon . But it does not mean that premarital conception is the celebrated norm . It is not gladly accepted but it does not doom the woman's life .
The point to be taken into account here is that pregnancy, whether of a married woman or of an unmarried woman, is the natural consequence of the instinctive urge for sex common to all living beings . In this way a mother is a mother only; her marital status should make little difference . But the problem arises because of the clash between nature and culture . Nature and culture are also two streams . Certain impositions are made on nature by culture to bring about a pattern in society as well as in life . Hence, following social norms means going against the natural needs of human beings . Of course, premarital pregnancy and illegitimacy are not evils in the eyes of nature, but society terms them as such which leads to certain maladjustment . So the women protagonists in Drabbles novels suffer socially and psychologically a lot being unmarried mother and their children , if any are termed as illegitimate creatures .
To conclude, the woman protagonists in Drabble's novels suffer at the hands of society because sexual relationship before marriage is quite unimaginable . This shows that even in the European world , unmarried and seduced mothers are supposed to be helpless creatures because they lack social recognition .
Harold Pinter as a Cryptic Feminist: A Critical Study of the Play
The Homecoming
Dr. Anshu Pandey
C.M.P Degree
Harold Pinter may easily be considered the most challenging contemporary British dramatist. Bulk part of the literary circle emphasis Pinter as an absurdist, but the other part of Pinter's writing remains untouched. My aim through this paper is to propagate that Pinter has shown women a very powerful and authoritative as far as their rights are concerned. Though Pinter never assets that he is a feminist but his plays projects female characters very powerful. At the same time, they have out shined their male counterparts in his plays.
Feminism is a somber Endeavour to make the question concerning subordinate situation of women in endocentric world or discrimination which the women suffer on account of sex and gender. In any culture and civilization, a woman represents beauty auspiciousness and prosperity. She is worshipped as Goddess. Women are the part and parcel of Society. The contribution of women to economy and human welfare is well known. Feminism strives to undo this titled and indistinct picture of women whose cries for autonomy and equality have gone, and still go, unheard in a patriarchal social arrangement.
Pinter's well known and successful play The Homecoming first performed by the Royal Shakespeare Company at Aldwych Theater, London
Feminism and the Novel of Kamala Markandaya
Dr Vijay Kumar Roy
Assistant Professor of English
Modinagar, Ghaziabad
. Indian English Literature came under the impact of the feministic movement that can easily be traced to the novels of Kamala Markandaya. She has many novels to her credit. Some of her celebrated novels are: Nectar in a Sieve (1954), Some Inner Fury (1955), A Silence of Desire (1960), A Handful of Rice (1966), Possession (1963), The Coffer Dams (1969), The Nowhere Man (1972), Two Virgins (1973), The Golden Honeycomb (1977) and Pleasure Markandaya’s novels deal with the problems of women in Indian society. Her early novels have traditional notes but later she reflects the roles of women and their struggle for emancipation. Her first novel Nectar in a Sieve (1954) is a novel of shock, suffering and sacrifice. The novelist presents all these through Rukmani, the chief character of the novel, and her daughter Irawaddy. The journey of Rukmani’s life is much troublesome and it reaches its climax when she is abandoned by her husband and leads a life of misery. Though, at the end life changes and fortune favours her. Markandaya’s second novel Some Inner Fury (1955) is a tragic novel. Though Mira, the heroine of the novel recollects her tranquillity, but the suffocating death of Premala, a loving character, makes it tragic. The death of Kit and suffering of Richard make the novel more tragic. Her third novel, A Silence of Desire (1960) has the theme of faith and spiritual qualm. It presents a real picture of village people, particularly women who have faith in ‘Swami’ and go to him for cure of illness. Her fourth novel, Possession (1963) is an extension of A Silence of Desire. But the maturity and modernity in its characters make it different from the former. Her fifth novel, A Handful of Rice appeared in 1966. It has an urban setting where Ravi dreams of a respectable life and marries Nalini, the daughter of a poor tailor. But Nalini and Ravi are unable to lead their life purposefully because of the polluted environment. Markandaya’s sixth novel, The Coffer Dams (1969) has a story of the Indo-British confrontation. Written in a new style it has an artistic flavour. Her other novels, The Nowhere Man (1972), The Two Virgins (1973), The Golden Honeycomb (1977) deal with ‘shadowy character’ of Mrs Pickering, miserable condition of Lalitha and Saroja, and love of a slum girl respectively. The present paper is a study of her major novels with feministic view.
Recurring Elements in the Novels of Amitav Ghosh
Dr. Gyanabati Khuraijam
Asstt. Prof.
NIT Agartala
Teaching of English: The new Indian English fiction of the eighties of the last century is free from the shallow idealism and sentimentalism that characterized the work of the older generation of novelists such as Mulk Raj Anand, R. K. Narayan and Raja Rao. The configuration of the novel has changed from time to time, reflecting the changes in period, context and the perception of the writer. There is freshness and vitality and the writers portray remarkable confidence in tackling new themes, and experiment with new techniques and approaches to handle those themes. Amitav Ghosh has, indeed, strengthened the new Indian English novel in more than one way.
Ghosh’s novels brim with interesting themes set against fascinating historical backdrops – the role of the individual in the broad sweep of political events; the dubious nature of borders, whether between nations and people or between one literary genre and another; the role of memory in one’s recovery of identity in the march of time; the role of the artist in society; the importance of narrative in shaping history, etc.
Methods, Problems and Solutions
Dr. Nigamananda Das
Kohima,
Except a few countries, English is taught as a second and foreign language. The
term ‘second language’ is used because it has became a lingua Frenca between
speakers of widely diverse languages. By English as a foreign language is meant
that English is taught as a school subject or an adult level solely for giving
students’ foreign language competence. For both it is essential for English teachers
to teach in such a manner that desired goal can be achieved. But, unfortunately, the methods which are being used by us is not fetching desired result whether it is the Direct Method, the Audio – Lingual Method, the Bilingual Method or the Grammar – Translation Method. So, in the process of teaching English, most of the teachers divide their work into reading, writing, grammar, translation, dictation, composition,
pronunciation, etc. They feel full satisfied if the students are kept busy during the
whole period of teaching . These related aspects of English is treated as separate
subjects. They fail to realize that all these are different means to an end. They
never co-ordinate these different aspects. All the aspects of English should be so graded and correlated that we may have an integrated approach to the teaching of English as one individual subject and for this, we need a new method of teaching English which should be the amalgam of the Grammar – Translation Method and the Direct method . And after
the amalgamation of this two methods a name can be given and this name should
be GTD method. Thus, the research paper is about the study of the teaching of English
.
THE CONTRIBUTION OF WOMEN TO THE PHENOMENON NOVEL:
THE EXEMPLIFIED IMPULSE
Mrs. G. Sundari M.A, M.Phil, PGCTE, (Ph.D)
Assistant Prof. of English
Vijaya Institute of Technology for Women
“Of all departments of literature, Fiction is the one to which,
by nature and circumstance, women are best adapted”.
- H.G. Lewes
A major development in Indian English fiction can be credited to a host of women writers who have made a significant contribution to the genre. They enriched and harvested a great deal in the narrative art. The initial meshes of intrigue and social taboos of all kinds surprisingly transfigured the untruth of fiction into factual reality. What began as a stream in the early fifties took its itinerary by transforming into abroad river with new currents and cross currents. The old traditional method of novel writing gave way to modern techniques after independence and many a plot emerged out from the submerged deluge of the freedom movement. The subjugation of women was the most sought after theme of the novel by women writers. There were new hopes, no doubt, but the problems—social, economic, religious, political and familial, predominantly reflected in their creative art. The penchant passion and the acute simultaneity of mental experience, the extraordinary stimulus and some crystals of happy moments reflected women’s diverse perceptions through the turbulent ages that made them continuously engaged in the marvellous act of composing and renewing the gender-based solidarity among women writers and readers which portrayed a convincing picture of human existence.
The Indian society underwent a metamorphic change during the last two centuries making way for the new phenomenon, novel by women writers. In view of the honest consideration of the women’s creative talent, the present paper traces the course of development of the exemplified impulse, by women novelists in Indian English.
Spiritual Ecology in Birendra Kumar Bhattacharya’s Love in the Time of Insurgency: A Study of Multiple Aspects
Dr. Nigamananda Das
Birendra Kumar Bhattacharya(1924-1997), a prominent Assamese writer, former President of Sahitya Akademi, and recipient of Jnanpith Award (1980) was awarded the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1961 for his novel Yaruingam (1960) which was translated into English by himself as Love in the Time of Insurgency. ‘Yaruingam’ is a Tangkhul Naga term meaning ‘People’s Rule’. Translated into English as Love in the Time of Insurgency, the novel presents a major concern of the time and the Naga community. The novel depicts the ecology of the Naga hills of the pre-Independence era, the spiritual ecology of the Tangkhul Naga community of the Ukhrul district of Manipur during the tenure of Japanese invasion of India (the World War II), the conflict- ridden Naga life, advent of Christianity and conflict between animism and the new religion, the influence of Gandhi and Indian freedom struggle on the Naga society and the innate irresistible nature of the Nagas fighting the unconquerable.
Matthew T. Fox (b.1940), a Roman Catholic priest and professor of Religious Education at the University of St. Thomas, Houston, Texas is the chief exponent of Spiritual Ecology. His writings have stressed a style of spirituality that emphasizes the wonders of creation and reduces the focus on sin and redemption. He defines spiritual ecology/ ecological spirituality within the Christian tradition. Drawing on earlier Christian scholars like Meister Eckhart, Hildegard of Bingen, Francis of Assisi and Julian of Norwich, Fox reintroduces a religious experience that builds on a sense of sacred. Such a religion begins with a sense of awe and wonder, and includes a sense of unconditional love and delight. He proposes four paths to a spiritual ecology: (i) to experience the Divine in terms of delight, awe, and wonder at being present in the world which involves the intuition that creation is a blessing, and response to gratitude (Via Positiva), (ii) to experience darkness, deprivation, suffering and pain (Via Negativa), (iii) to involve in identifying new ecological virtues for living such as vegetarianism, recycling, relearning the sacredness of nature, defending creation through political action, and making new rituals to celebrate sacred places, times and being in nature (Via Creativa), and (iv) to transform to a more compassionate society in which all beings love one another (Via Transformativa). The paper seeks to justify that Bhattacharya’s novel is an experiment with the aspects of spiritual ecology.
THE PROCESS OF MR. DARCEY’S SELF-RECOGNITION
IN JANE AUSTEN’S PRIDE AND PREJUDICE
P. Surya Prakash
Retd Lecturer
Tanuku
.
Complex characters, in general, undergo the process of self-recognition in the work of an author. In Pride and Prejudice, the most popular of Jane Aurten’s novels, Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy (a complex character) falls in love with Elizabeth Bennet (another complex character) and later makes her fall in love with him. Darcy is a rich and proud man. Elizabeth Elizabeth Elizabeth Elizabeth Elizabeth
In fine, from the above discussion, it is evident that the process of Darcy’s self-recognition though long and painful, at first, ultimately results in the correction of errors and a more mature attitude to life, and, is honest and complete.
NATURE OF TRUTH IN ART
Dr Sukriti Ghosal
Principal
MUC Women’s College, Burdwan
Although a number of apologies have been written down the centuries to vindicate the truth-value of art, the issue remains to be conclusively clinched. Truth, which is an attribute suggestive of flawlessness and universality, apparently depends on correspondence to fact. But the paradox of aesthetic truth is that what is unverifiable for being a product of the imagination is here acknowledged as true. Art may borrow from the real but it gets recognition as art only when it transcends the real. Another paradox of art is that here adherence to truth is not a virtue, nor is its transgression a disqualification. A third paradox about art is that although as a form of representation it displaces & replaces the original, we cannot dismiss it as false.
In order to explain the paradox of art Aristotle introduced the concept of probability and held that ‘a likely impossibility is always preferable to an unconvincing possibility.’ Interestingly, although it is the creative imagination that transfigures the actual and adds the value of probability to what is represented, there is no reason to think that a work would be inartistic if it is lifelike. Yet overdose of realism does not add to but rather diminish the truth value of art, for it blurs the distinction between imagination and make-believe by giving us the ‘physically real’ instead of the ‘imaginatively true’. In the final analysis truth in art seems to be a feeling inspired by an artifact and it depends on acceptance rather than correspondence.
ENCHANTING THE READERS THROUGH ENCHANTRESS OF FLORENCE
A STUDY OF SALMAN RUSHDIE’S NARRATIVE STYLE
Devasree Chakravarti
Research Scholar
Postmodern fiction is a mélange of varied literary techniques and styles that best reflect the postmodern condition of cross cultural encounters, fragmentation, alternative perspectives of history and reality. In this vast echoing space of literary innovations and experiments, Sir Salman Rushdie is a name that stands out as a pioneering beacon of light in the arena of contemporary Indian English Fiction integrating the cultures of the East and the West.
The Enchantress of Florence is the tenth novel from the pen of this genius who has enchanted the world audience. The novel is an example of the enchantment of the senses through brilliant word play and a fusion of the realms of fact and fantasy. History blends into fiction into an enthralling tale of a bewitching Mughal Princess, hidden behind the veils of history; her lover- a brave and chivalrous Florentine gallant; the legendary Mughal emperor Akbar, with his visionary skills and his highly imaginative and fictitious wife Jodhabai. A story told in the tradition of the fairy tale, the scherazade is none other than the supposed blood link of the Mughal court with that of Italy, the dubious Mogor dell’ Amore. The present paper is a modest attempt to capture the vastness and proficiency of the novelist in his use of narrative style that enchants, enthralls, confuses and humours through a literary adventure of magic, mystery, complexity and mastery.
Gurazada Apparao: The Herald of a New Dawn in Modern Telugu Drama
Prof. Syed Mukaram
Principal
Kavali
In this paper an attempt is made to show how New Indian Literatures have all the potentialities for critical acumen with their richness and variety being rooted in the social and cultural ethos of India India
Act of Writing; Act of Resistance: Search for Identity in Morrison’s Sula and Beloved:
Shyam Babu
EFL-University
Though in black literary tradition we can easily trace out the sense of resistance against the imperialism of white culture, violence, ethnic and identity crises in general body of writing, the fictional writings of Tony Morrison get origin from a numbers of factors: being African, American and the most importantly feminist writer. Hence her writings where on the one hand are the outlet of marginalized culture or colonial oppression and the recollection of her experience being the female in black male patriarchal community on the other hand they are also the constitution of a ‘rhetorical structure which fictions in response to a complex set of rules’. Thus the resistance and search for identity of characters (which invariably also reflects the writer’s search for a space in the world of writing) in her writings can be sensed at the several levels: subverting the traditional white expectation in terms of structure, use of language, characterization, aesthetics, motif etc. However, the present paper restricts itself to study
Morrison’s Sula and Beloved to chart out the forms of résistance and identity in them.
The study will focus on the different forms of resistance and search for identity in the
mentioned novels. Where the character Sula is the same novel flouts norms of man and society in search of her dreams’ freedom; Sethe murders her own child out of repulsion of slavery that the white men have wielded. Her mother- in- law Baby Suggs says, “there is no bad luck in the world but white folk” proves the act of their resistance against the oppression of white culture in the name of civilizing mission. Both the novels bear the imprint of Morrison’s experience as a black writer and as a feminist writer as she asserts in her forwards to Sula, “I wanted to explore the consequences of what that escape might be, not only a conventional black society, but on female friendship…”
THE ROLE OF LITERATURE IN THE LANGUAGE CLASSROOM
S.KANYA KUMARI
Scholar, ANU
Department of English
Most of us consider literature as a separate subject that has nothing to do with language learning.This assumption is based on a reductive interpretation of the concept of language teaching and learning. The fact, however, remains that there are several benefits that a language learner can derive from the inclusion of literature in the educational curriculum for language learning.
This paper investigates and analyzes the extent and importance of literary discourse in second language acquisition. This paper highlights the use of literature as a popular technique for teaching both basic language skills (i.e. reading, writing, listening and speaking) and language areas (i.e. vocabulary, grammar and pronunciation). Reasons for using literary texts in English language classroom and main criteria for selecting suitable literary texts in English language classes are stressed so as to make the reader familiar
with the underlying reasons and criteria for language teachers’ using and selecting literary texts. Moreover, literature and the teaching of language skills, benefits of different genres of literature (i.e. poetry, short fiction, drama and novel) to language teaching and some problems encountered by language teachers within the area of teaching English through literature are taken into account. The objective of this study therefore is to examine the place of literature in the teaching and learning processes of a second language.
Rabindranath Tagore as a Poet of Nature
N.Nateshkumar,
Assistant Professor of English,
Karpagam Institute of Technology,
Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) was a multi-faceted personality. He was a freedom-
fighter, poet, novelist, short-story writer, mystic, philosopher and a humanist. He is best
known to the western world with the publication of his poetry collection, Gitanjali for
which he was bestowed the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913. He is an outstanding
figure in the realm of Indian English Literature. His advocacy of divine love stands as a
significant contribution to the modern world.
Tagore is among the great poets of Nature and his Nature poetry is rich and full of
endless variety. It may be recalled that it was his contact with Nature which made Tagore
write beautiful lines of poetry and he again and again turns to this inexhaustible source
for inspiration and comfort. Tagore’s Nature poetry has a distinctive greatness about it.
The manifold colours and forms of Nature, its moods, both gay and fierce, the pageant
of the seasons, the flowing rivers and cascades, streams and springs – all these come out
transmuted into songs in Tagore’s poetry.
Tagore is not only a poet of Nature but also a philosopher of nature. It is for him a mystic
symbol and a serene medium for attaining unity with God. Nature is a perennial source
not only for poetic inspiration but also for moral guidance to him. This paper is a meagre
endeavour to analyze some of the nature poems and mystic elements found in Gitanjali.
OV Vijayan's The Legends of Khasak : A Critique of the Text in Translation
Dr. Josh Sreedharan
OV Vijayan is regarded as one of the best modern Indian novelists who cast his spell on the whole new generation in the modern era in Kerala with his debut work in Malayalam “ Khasakkinte Ithihasm” in 1969 which was translated into English by Penguin in 1994. The novel was translated into English by the author himself mainly due to the problems in translation that might occur had it been given to someone else to translate. This paper seeks to probe the issues confronted by the author of the Source text when he himself translates the Target text also. I intend to make a comparative approach while dealing with the English translation The Legends of Khasak which marked a new beginning in modern Indian English fiction in translation.
Since the beginning of English teaching in modern India
amounts of grammar, and memorized many English words, they have commonly been unable to apply their knowledge to real life. Some students feel they have some understanding, but all too often they do not. While listening, they are struggling to grasp each word and the meaning of every sentence. When the listening task is complete, they are disappointed to find they have been unable to understand. Although they might hear every word, they are often unclear about speakers’ intention.
The stress of the situation frequently results in the student forgetting the first sentence when they hear the second one, totally disrupting their efforts to gain meaning. Thus, the goal of developing an integrated language capacity is to achieve teaching that will affect students’ listening comprehension and influence students’ psychological well-being.
Presentation of New Woman in Mahesh Dattani’s
Where there is a will
Leishangthem Amritashwori Devi
Ph.D Research Scolar
In this paper, I study Mahesh Dattani’s Where there is a will. My main focus is on the presentation of New Woman in the play in Kiran Jhavery. There are five characters in the play. One is Kiran Jhavery and other four are Hasmukh, his wife, Sonal, his son, Ajit, and his daughter-in-law, Preeti.
In the play Hasmukh’s character is depicted as a man who is exploiting domination and subjugation over his wife, son and daughter-in-law. To his wife and daughter-in-law he is a patriarch. And to his son, instead of understanding what Ajit wishes to aspire, he is imposing his desire. Throughout his life, he continues to keep imposition and hold over all of them who are under his roof. But, what is surprising and hard to bear is the will which he leaves to further this hold over them even after his death. His will turns them as nothing but mere puppets in his hands who have nothing to do but compel to dance in his wishes. Further, he is the representative of all men who considers woman as objects of sexual gratification only.
According to Hasmukh, his wife is lacking all the good qualities of a devoted wife. She is even unable to gratify him sexually. As such, he needs a woman whom he finds in his employee, Kiran Jhavery. Later he makes her, his mistress and trustee of his will. It is this woman who has been projected as the New Woman of today’s India India
A Study of Sindi’s Search for Identity in Arun Joshi’s The Foreigner
Dr.Akhilesh kumar Singh
Dept.of Functional English
B.N.College, Patna University , Patna
Over the past two decades, the term ‘marginality’ and ‘identity’ have received much critical attention from the scholars in various disciplines. Marginality refers to something that pertains to the edge, border or boundary. Something that is on margin or close to the limit, below or beyond which something ceases to be possible or desirable. Something below level, insignificant, secondary and subsided. Now a day, ‘marginality’ emerges as a literary concept and behavioral model, shaped by societal norms and traditional canons.
Few people have been living on the ‘margins’ of the society that hosted them after their massive exclusion from their native soil on the hands of civilization. They live there as an outsider, a foreigner, a Diaspora. They still adhere to their identity using different survival strategies. Arun Joshi’s first novel The Foreigner (1968) is a study of its protagonist- Sindi’s search for ‘identity’ in materialistic modern society of America and India
Throughout the novel, Sindi Oberoi, the protagonist, considers himself as a misfit and finds lonesome, annoyed, depressed, isolated and almost estranged due to his detachment and non-involvement with his fellow beings. Born of an English mother and an Indian father who died when he was only four, he was brought up by his uncle in Kenya London and America
Arun Joshi’s “The Strange Case of Billy Biswas”: A Study
K.Ravi Sankar
Arun joshi has been an outstanding Indian English novelist who has impressed us immensely with his thoughtful utterances, masterly treatment of existential themes, and skillful weaving of fictional techniques. He sets his novels against the background of the changing scenario of the post independence India
Arun joshi is a great artist of psychological insight that enables him to see into the life of things. In his fictional world he tries his level best to delineate the predicament of the modern man who is confronted by the self and the questions of his existence, which is painfully aware of his precarious in the fundamental sense that he can not control what he is able to foresee. He is torn asunder by a dual code of behavior, and he lives lazily by opportunism, treachery, cowardice, hypocrisy and wit. These absurd situations give rise to existentialist emotions which Joshi has dealt with in the themes of his novels. In all his novels he unravels the facets of identity crisis in modern man’s life. His protagonists are essentially foreigner wherever they go. They happen to be walking metaphors of alienation.
The presentation paper is an attempt to analyze Arun Joshi’s ideas; his experience-based vision of life with special reference to his novel entitled “The Strange case of Billy Biswas”. The novel concerns itself with the crisis of self, the problems of identity, and the quest for fulfillment. It also deals with the treatment of the conflict between the civilized and the primitive norms of life along with spiritual quest through primitive passions.
Saadat Hasan Manto’s Partition Stories : A Critique
Dr. A.Thakur TNB College , Bhagalpur
The partition of India
Saadat Hasan Manto, who originally wrote his short stories in Urdu, is one of such writers who portrayed the trauma of partition in terms of human loss very powerfully. His insights into the events and their consequences are more refreshing, more poignant and more hard-hitting than those of most others.
The present paper aims at exploring some of the stories of Manto to discern the magnitude and intensity of trauma associated with this event.
The Elements of Post Colonialism Delineated in the Novel “The White Tiger” by Arvind Adiga
MEENAKSHI JUMLE
F.E.S. Girls’ college,
Chandrapur
Post colonial criticism emerged as a distinct category in the 1990s. It gained currency through the influence of such books as ‘In other worlds’ (Gayatri Spivak, 1987) : ‘The Empire Writes Back’ (Bill Ashcroft, 1989), ‘Nation and Narration’ (Homi Bhabha, 1999) and ‘Culture and Imperialism’ (Edward Said, 1993)
It refers to texts, practices, psychological conditions and the historical positions. PC is an umbrella term that covers many critical approaches to deconstruct European thoughts in the areas like philosophy, history, literary studies, anthropologies, sociology and political science. It functions under cultural studies. It refers to writings and culturas of nation, people’s communities who were colonized by European power. The post colonical thought focusses an penetration of European thoughts into colonized country that result into subjugation, cultural marginalization.
According to Homi Bhabha, it is a form of social criticism that bears witness to unequal and uneven processes of representation by which the historical experience of once colonized third world comes to be framed in the west.
‘The White Tiger’ is a tale of the boy from Darkness, Balram Halwai. It is an expected journey of a boy into a new India Beijing
Comparison of the narrative skills of Anand,Narayan Raja Rao and Salman Rushdie
Prof.Rhitabrata Chatterjee
W.B.E.S. (Govt. of West Bengal )
Indo-Anglian literature became post-colonial in form and content when it dissociated itself from the King’s English and from respecting European canons. If poetry was slow to evolve (emancipation came only in 1959 with the publication of P.Lal’s and Raghavendra Rao’s Kavita manifesto) novelists seceded as early as the 1920’s when the ink that flew from their pens added to the blood shed by the Freedom Fighters in defense of the national cause. Venkataramani’s Murugan the Tiller and Kandan the Patriot heralded the way. Unfortunately, in these two novels, the political message was too obvious and the books read more like political pamphlets than like works of art. Mulk Raj Anand,Raja Rao and R.K.Narayan were the three angry young men who, in the 30’s and each in his own way, were to develop a new and original style in Indian literature written in English. Although they probably never read it, these three novelists answered the call of The Beacon, a Trinidian paper which asked for cultural emancipation: “One ought to break away as far as possible from the English tradition… .One has only to glance through the various periodicals published in this and other islands to see what slaves we still are to the English culture and tradition”.
Rushdie employs a number of different literary techniques and styles in the telling of Saleem’s story. The novel is at once funny, dark, ironic, allegorical, and historical. The language ranges from colloquial slang to the eloquently lyrical. Sentences stretch for over a page, while one word after another is linked by a hyphen. Saleem even employs a whole new set of literary terms that he has invented to help explain his novel. He stretches and breaks grammatical rules in the creation of a new type of sentence. In addition, there is an obvious relationship between Rushdie’s prose and the cinema, an important part of Bombay
By employing so many different techniques and style, Rushdie attempts to write a novel as large and grand as its subject matter, India
The Exploration of Female Deprivation and Male Dominance in the works of Kamala Das: Paradigm Shift from Bold to Bolder Issues
Dr. Bhavya
Greater Noida
The contemporary times have witnessed a drastic change in the way Literature is being written and perceived by people. One thing that has not changed is that Literature has been the mirror of the society and I believe it will always be. The contemporary time is a time of unrest, despair and helplessness because of the rise in materialism, but it is also a time of rebel and revolt. The traditional beliefs which were adhered to by the society by and large are being scrutinized and questioned like never before. Individuality has taken a primary position in everybody’s life in this post modern era and each individual’s take on this issue is very individual and independent in nature.
One thing that is to be remembered is that each time or era has some positive and negative aspects associated with it. The post modern era has its good and ugly points too. Rise of materialism has given way to a plethora of problems but one thing that is positive about our times is that myriad issues that were always kept under wraps have been able to see the light of the day. Female deprivation has been one such problem which is not an unknown or a new phenomenon. The movement of Feminism has a long history, in America and Britain Asia with its various countries has absorbed it too. The impact of the Feminist movement has been so great that we have a whole range of female writers talking about women centric issues and they have been successful in evoking a different kind of response by readers especially females.
The objective of my paper is to analyze how these issues have become bolder and the reactions louder with the changing paradigms in feminist writings in India
Wole Soyinka’s King Baabu – A Crackpot Satire on Dictatorship
- K. Naveen Kumar,
Ph. D. Research Scholar,
Dept. of English, Annamalai University
King Baabu, a crackpot satire of the plague of dictatorship on the African continent, is a latest satirical revue written by Wole Soyinka, the first Nobel Laureate from African continent. It was first premiered at the National Arts Theatre, Lagos
King Baabu is a satire on the use of power and officialdom. It is a parody on power-mongers in the past and the present in African countries. The major character of the play, Basha Bash, later King Baabu, is a caricature of many African dictators especially, Zimbabwe
Initially the politics portrayed in the play is based on democracy. The word democracy strengthens by the expression of Lincoln
Does the play expose the lust for power by the power-mongers to earn for them and their generations? Does the playwright bring out their actions of encouraging monarchy and ruining the wealth of the country in the name of development? Are their actions accepted by the commoners?
Experience of Love and Suffering in the Select Poems of Kamala Das
K. Ashok Kumar,
Asst. Professor of English,
Villupuram. Tamil Nadu.
Kamala Das is basically a poet of love. Most of her poems deal with the theme of unfulfilled love. All her sufferings are in some way or other due to her unfulfilled desire and love. The poetry of Kamala Das is unconventional and shocking to the orthodox, for, her treatment of the sexual love and human body is free, frank and uninhibited. She is unconventional in her life and is equally unconventional in her poetry too. She refuses to confirm to the traditional role which a woman and wife is expected to perform.
Kamala Das’s greatness as a love poet arises from the fact that her love poetry is rooted in her personal experience. It is an outpouring of her loneliness, disillusionment and sense of frustration. Married, at the early age of sixteen and finding herself tied to a hollow relationship from which she could not escape, she poured her feelings into her poems. The poet exposes her unsatisfied sexual hunger in her poems. Because of her early marriage, she is unable to have faithful relationship with her husband. The husband made her to seek relationship with strangers and because of that Kamala Das develops her anger over her husband. The paper analyses some of her poems to establish her experience of love and suffering.
Religion and Rituals in the Select Poems of K. N. Daruwalla
P. Phanikumar
Ph.D. Research Scholar,
Dept of English, Annamalai University
Keki. N. Daruwalla is one of the most popular poets in Indo-Anglian poetry. His is a poet among policemen. Is religion a must for our day-to-day life? What is the place of religion in one’s life? Many of his poems like “Fire-hymn,” “Vignette I,” “Shiva: At Timarasain,” “Pilgrimage to Badrinath,” “Sixth Moharam in Lucknow
Does Daruwalla have faith in religion? His poetry is narrative and descriptive. His poetry is the poetry of incident and event. Daruwalla has been praised because of his bitter, satiric tone, which is rather exceptional in Indian English. His poetry is an example of a powerful statement on the problems of man who is trying to come to terms with a bewildering variety of change. Is Daruwalla’s poetry authentic and satisfying? It clearly explains he is deeply rooted in the actuality of contemporary situations in India
Is Daruwalla’s poetry a fine example of his just anger? Does it clearly explain the naturalness of themes and structure of his creativity? This paper focuses the religious notions and rituals from the poems of Daruwalla.
Nature and Passions in K. N. Daruwalla’s Poetry
P. Velmurugan,
Asst. Professor of English,
Keki Nasserwanji Daruwalla is certainly one of the major voices in Indo-Anglian poetry. He won the Sahitya Akademi award and he writes with obvious Indian elements in his verses, especially in his use of the landscapes, nature and human passions. His realistic vision of human life and his personal observation are his subjects. His personal observations are not fully facts; they are amalgam of myth and reality. The myth he uses are not taking the reader far away from the reality, because they are an outcome of his observations and extensive consciousness on environment.
Nature and landscapes occupy a vital place among the themes of Daruwalla’s poetry. He has written many poems on places with most powerful and vivid imagery. Poems like “Mandwa,” “Rumination at verinage,” “Boat-Ride along the Ganga ” and “Vignette-II” deal with landscapes. Poems like “In Ray Father’s House,” “The Round of the Seasons” analyse nature and human passions together. Through the poems, he brings out the present reality of nature, and states how the modern man has manipulated it. In his poetry, he interknits both the nature and human passions. The images he uses are very common but the ideas, which the images contain, are very intellectual with a broad sense. Do these poems possess a substantial thematic core, clear visualisation of scene, compact and arresting presentation of incident, evocative imagery and an impressive unity of tone and effect?
NATURE OF TRUTH IN ART
Dr Sukriti Ghosal
Principal
MUC Women’s College, Burdwan
Although a number of apologies have been written down the centuries to vindicate the truth-value of art, the issue remains to be conclusively clinched. Truth, which is an attribute suggestive of flawlessness and universality, apparently depends on correspondence to fact. But the paradox of aesthetic truth is that what is unverifiable for being a product of the imagination is here acknowledged as true. Art may borrow from the real but it gets recognition as art only when it transcends the real. Another paradox of art is that here adherence to truth is not a virtue, nor is its transgression a disqualification. A third paradox about art is that although as a form of representation it displaces & replaces the original, we cannot dismiss it as false.
In order to explain the paradox of art Aristotle introduced the concept of probability and held that ‘a likely impossibility is always preferable to an unconvincing possibility.’ Interestingly, although it is the creative imagination that transfigures the actual and adds the value of probability to what is represented, there is no reason to think that a work would be inartistic if it is lifelike. Yet overdose of realism does not add to but rather diminish the truth value of art, for it blurs the distinction between imagination and make-believe by giving us the ‘physically real’ instead of the ‘imaginatively true’. In the final analysis truth in art seems to be a feeling inspired by an artifact and it depends on acceptance rather than correspondence.
Treatment of Myth in Girish Karnad’s Yayati
Dr. Mukesh Ranjan Verma
Professor
One of the most notable contemporary Indian dramatists, Girish Karnad has made a very effective use of Indian myths in his plays. This is evident from his very first play, Yayati which he wrote in 1960 but translated after a gap of nearly fifty years in 2007. What surprised him when he was writing this play was not only the choice of language which was not English, the language of his literary aspiration, but Kannada, the language he had grown up with, but also the choice of subject taken from a myth “from which I had believed myself alienated.” Even at this early stage, Karnad did not use myth merely for the sake of it but as an ‘objective correlative’ of some contemporary situation or crisis. For this he has added new dimensions to the myth. The myth of Yayati in the Mahabharat is the story of a son’s sacrifice for his father. This is not so in Karnad’s play. While the play reveals the various shades of basic human passions like love, lust, jealousy and hatred, it leaves us face to face with bigger issues of death, old age and celebration of life in its different forms. Though Karnad has stuck to the basic story line of the myth, he has taken liberties with it to weave a complex pattern of themes in that myth. My paper tries to examine the dramatist’s use of myth in this play.
READING JACOBSON’S THE FINKLER QUESTION AS A COMIC NOVEL
DR. K.K.ROUL
DEPTT. OF ENGLISH
U.N.C., F.M.UNIVERSITY
ORISSA
“The Finkler Question is a wonderful book. It is an admixture of humour, irony, satire, anger, fear and tears overall, a beautiful vision to the Jewish Londoners.”
(Andrew Motion, the chief of the Man Booker Committee)
Most powerful British journalist, writer, television personality, Man Booker winner for the year 2010, sixty eight year old Howard Jacobson has been well familiar for his much discussed and debated 320 pages Comic novel The Finkler Question (2010).The story is based upon three Jewish friends: Juliana Treslove, a 49 yr, old gentile, Sam Finkler, a well-known Jewish philosopher and Libor Sevcik, the former teacher. Jacobson has so masterfully and intelligently looks at the lies of Jewish life that stands unique and unchallenged in the history of English fiction. The characters in the story are both individual and type. Self expression of Jewish ness may be the focal point of the story which is elemented with Chaucerian humour, Swiftian irony and Poppean satire from various angular visions as we see the life of Shylock in Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice.
Dining together one pleasant night at Sevcik’s apartment: Two Jewish widowers and the bachelor gentile Treslove share a honeyed anguish evening reminiscing their sweet love and loss, enchantment and muddle of friendship.Treslove makes his way but is attached and mugged outside at a violine dealer’s window. But was unfortunately mistaken and victimized by a crime. As good luck would have it his spiritually regenerated like Lear of Shakespeare’s King Lear and his sense of self will is radically and inherently changed.
Structurally and thematically the romantic comedy of Shkespeare, The Merchant of Venice may be enough to understand Jacobson’s The Finkler Question. In this connection the difference between Shakespeare and Jacobson is far and near. Shakespeare as achristian is harsh and cruel to Jews but Jacobson is soft and kind enough as a man and true neighbors.
Any how, the book The Finkler Question is a funny, furious and fabulous novel based on Lesbianism of wisdom and humanity of maturity. Jacobson’s effort of writing the Jewish Question or The Frinkler Question is endless and infinite based upon wit and intelligence. Hence, the Frinkler Question is Jewish Question: a Metaphor of labyrinthine incomprehensiveness and obscurity.
Adultery and Apartheid in Nadine Gordimer’s My Son’s Story
Ashu Tomar
Bharat Institute of Technology
My Son’s Story is a remarkable work of fiction by Nadine Gordimer, the first woman novelist to be awarded the prestigious Nobel Prize in twenty six years.
Nadine Gordimer situates her novel in the most turbulent phase of South Africa’s apartheid regime which had begun sometime in 1948 when the Right Wing Afrikaner party came to power and started enacting discriminatory laws empowering the government to segregate all coloured, Indian and African people by removing them out of the white localities to separate residential areas, generally inferior and having only nominal public amenities. There were laws which legally forbade any marriage and sexual relationship between the whites and the people of other colours.
The novel has two themes-apartheid and adultery. It is the story of the rise and fall of a black family against the background of the political struggle for freedom in South Africa South Africa
This paper attempts to study the themes of apartheid and adultery in Nadine Gordimer’s My Son’s Story.
TRASLATION : THE NATIONAL WEB
DR. RAJKUMARI INDIRA
Reader in English Deptt.
Translation is a written/or spoken rendering of the meaning of a word or speech, book etc. in another language. It is an activity that promotes communication among people speaking different languages. The act of translation, in the historically multilingual Indian situation, is a very complex act. Its purpose, situations, format, nature and effect or function differ widely. There have been numerous translations within Indian languages and from classical into modern Indian languages. And English is the main language from which/to which most of the translation work involves. In my paper there will be a brief history of translation work in India
Imaging India
Kamlakar K. Askar
The present paper attempts to explore the image of postcolonial India India
After independence India ceased to be the colony of British empire . Constitutionally speaking, India
Antifeminism and Bernard Shaw’s Art
Susheel Kumar Sharma
Rabindra Kumar Verma
MEL Univeristy
For Bernard Shaw drama is not an activity merely for entertainment but it is a serious activity in which a particular message is to be conveyed to the audience. Shaw does not mince any word about his agenda when he announces: “no conflict no drama”. Naturally, some characters in the process become the mouthpiece of the dramatist to convey his ideas, opinions, and convictions. Antifeminism is one such idea that Shaw sides with. In several of his plays, Shaw’s antifeminist ideas have been propagated so subtly that there is sometimes a confusion to regard him as a feminist artist/ dramatist. Therefore, his art is to be scrutinized more closely to arrive at the right conclusion about his projections on feminism.
The antifeminist attitude of Bernard Shaw finds projection in his plays in different types of images used against female characters as they are negative in nature. These images describe woman as Lady Mephistopheles, devil, elephant, cat, dog, dolphin and ermine. All these images are derogatory as the connotations associated with them paint their personality in negative light. They help in presenting women as caricatures and types and help in placing male characters superior to the females. These images also project that females have different moral and economic rights than men have. Besides this, Shaw uses certain symbols to project women as subservient creatures. The paper is an attempt to find out antifeminist attitude of Bernard Shaw by studying his dramatic art.
It is concluded that it is urgent need of the hour to accept and execute a radical change at the structural level so that the alternative vision is able to fashion out a more decent, less asymmetrical India
AN ARCHETYPAL APPROACH TO RABINDRANATH TAGORE’S MUKTA-DHARA
Dr. R.Radhiga Priyadharshini
Associate Professor of English
Aristotle lists three aspects of poetry: mythos or plot, ethos, which includes both characters and setting, and dianoia or “thought”. The simultaneity caught by the eye is described as dianoia. Frye observes, “the mythos is the dianoia in movement; the dianoia is the mythos in stasis. The one reason why we tend to think of literary symbolism solely in terms of meaning is that we have no word for the moving body of imagery in a work of literature” (Anatomy of Criticism: 83). The paper aims to study Tagore’s Mukta-dhara in terms of the above said theory of Frye. The flow of the story or narrative shares the unique archetypal mythos of dying Gods. The ethos: character of Abhijit and the aquotic setting of the play is studied archetypally. The dianoia of the play is paralleled with the dragon-killing pattern of the world literature.
Immigrant Dilemma and feminist sensibilities in Chitra Bannerjee Divakaruni’s Arranged Marriage
Dr.Reena Sanasam
Lecturer in English.
Devashree Bhattacharjee
Research Scholar
Deptt. of HSS ,NIT,Silchar.
In Divakaruni’s short stories entitled ,“Arranged Marriage”, we can explore the psychological conflicts playing in the minds of her protagonists , as they venture into the western way of life and culture .The protagonists of her stories struggle between the irony of past memory and new situation. Her characters struggle between these two diverse worlds , and crave to assimilate these two extremes for a new future.They are so entangled in their root and origin that every step they take in their newfound land is approached with a half-hearted will .The protagonists linger in their past life with nostalgia , amidst the claims of an exotic and coveted culture , gradually sucking up and consuming them completely .Somewhere in the deepest terrain of their memories ,they can feel the scars of that long forgotten memories and make them conscious that they still persist .These memories of the past make the characters hesitant to move away freely with their newfound life in America. The author explores India and America as two different worlds epitomizing two different cultures, and for the immigrant Indians , new life in America
THE CHANGING ROLE OF ENGLISH IN INDIA
FROM SOCIO-CULTURAL IDENTITY TO PROFESSIONALISM
Dr.K.Suneetha Reddy
All living languages undergo a process of evolution whereby they continue to change overtime. Although these changes are by and large, linguistically motivated; attitudes to the languages are largely determined by non- linguistically factors, such as political influence, economic prosperity and social prestige. These changes in the language influence on international decision-making, global business and world affairs. Therefore, there is a quest for a leading and dominant language, for a language that will virtually serve as a lingua-franca, for a language having optimal degree of linguistic convergence and uniformity, for a language on the road to universality, for a global language.
Today, communicative fluency is the least mandatory requirement for the global citizenship. However, the fluency needs to have its co-relation with several skills, including personal skills, generic skills, life skills, managerial skills, emotional skills etc. While looking towards English as a spoken language of the corporate world, it has to be thought carefully enough of providing the refined versions of speeches through dialogues, interviews, group discussions, personal interviews, speaking and writing English beyond classrooms. It should have reflection through a self created personality. Among other life skills, language occupies a prime stage where it binds the speaker’s complete personality, attitude style etc. Language builds relationships, but a polished and refined language with an accompaniment of behavarioul skills may utilize maximum of its quality.
THE SUBJECT OF ENGLISH: PUTTING ENGLISH IN PERSPECTIVE
Dr. K. Jayaraju
Asst. Professor in English,
Vinukonda,
N. Thyaga Raju Asst. Professor in English,
Bapatla, Guntur District,
Everyone agrees that the subject ‘English’ is vitally important and typically it is described as the most important of all school subjects, principally because reading, writing, speaking and listening are needed to a greater or lesser degree in every other school subject, and for adult life. However, that is as far as the agreement goes; even attempting a simple, consensual definition proves extremely difficult. English is also the most consistently controversial and debated subject. It might be argued that English is the subject that many interested parties would most like to control. The history of English is simply a history of constant change. Inevitably, this makes teaching it a special kind of challenge, but it also imbues the subject with energy and excitement. All subjects have their debates and passions but English seems to have the most, and they are very often debates and passions but English seems to have the most, and they are very often unusually public and attract plenty of media attention. As media attention is almost inevitably negative, the public perception of English nationally can be that children cannot spell, produce a decent paragraph or even conduct a reasonable conversation; at the same time parents. I.e. members of that ‘public’ will tell you that their children have received excellent English teaching at the local school. This issue of perception will be further discussed in the chapter dealing with professionalism. If you want a quiet life, perhaps you should teach a different subject.
For the teacher of the mother tongue this is a significant issue. Our colleagues in modern languages will tell you emphatically how hard it is to teach pupils another language, partly because of this negative attitude but also because children may lack a language with which to talk about language: this might be called grammatical vocabulary or perhaps a meta-language. We do have pupils who are bi-or even tri-lingual but in British Schools they often hide this capacity. This inaccurate problematising of bilingualism has often led to children for whom English is their second language being treated as if they have special educational needs rather than special linguistic needs and abilities. English must be viewed, therefore, as to some extent a dominating language, and pupils can be encouraged by the culture they inhabit to see this as somehow natural and right. English teachers see it as fundamentally important to challenge these assumptions.
THE CONCEPT OF TRUTH
IN
BACON’S ‘OF TRUTH’ AND IN
INDIAN MYTHOLOGY : A COMPARATIVE STUDY
Dr. Raj Rekha Shukla
Guru Ghasidas Vishwavidyalaya
Bilaspur (Chhattisgarh)
Every religion and literature focuses on Truth in the same way, but in a different form, just as, as someone has said,
“The soul is also one but the body is different.”
So there are different ways of looking at truth and beauty and their interrelationship. Truth is the ultimate goal of human life. Men starts their journey from ‘Ordinarymind’ to reach the level of ‘Overmind’ i.e. ‘Truth’ but are able to reach only upto the level of ‘Higher Mind’ as the stages are very difficult and it needs ‘Mind of Consciousness’, like that of Sri. Aurobindo who, after crossing all the stages of mind finally stationed himself in ‘Overmind’. It is a journey where there is no place for falsehood and which leads and illumines one with Light and Power. Similarly, I have made a modest attempt in the paper to view the journey of truth from the Elizabethan age to the Treta and Dwapar age, although the proposed paper confines itself to a comparison of the philosophical essay of Sir Francis Bacon’s ‘Of Truth’, which is cited with the Biblical references but is shown in the light of modern perspectives, with the concept of truth in the Indian Mythology.
Keywords : Truth, Spirituality, Yoga of Gita ,Philosophy of Life, Elizabethan age, Mahabharata.
Modern Literary Criticism: A Plurality of Approaches to Literature
Upendra Gami
Modipuram, Meerut
The creation of literary art is considered to be as old as the history of human civilization and the interpretation of literary art too must have started almost at the time of the emergence of literary creation. After the mimetic theories of the Greeks and the pragmatic theories of the Romans, there appeared a new interpretive tradition in English literature. The probe into the nature and function of literary creations formed the foundation of the Renaissance tradition of literary interpretation. In course of time, Neo-classical, Augustan, Romantic, and Victorian critical traditions emerged and flourished. In the 20th century appeared Modern literary criticism which is a medley of multiple modes of literary interpretations and theories of literature.
In the modern times, due to the emergence and convergence multiple disciplines of knowledge, a plurality of approaches to interpret literary works emanated and established themselves as distinct from each other. In some approaches which have been in practice for long, the biographical details of the author attracted the attention of the interpreters. In recent times, the focus of the interpretive community shifted from the author to the text and the reader along with the context in which the text was produced. That is the reason why various approaches to literature, such as, Formalism, Psycho-analytic criticism, Archetypal criticism, Phenomenological criticism, Structuralism, Post-structuralism, Deconstruction, Reader-response criticism, Sociological criticism, Marxist criticism, Modernism, Postmodernism, New historicism, Cultural criticism, Feminist criticism, Queer theory, Eco-criticism, and Linguistic criticism, came into existence and they seek to explicate various aspects of literature. These approaches at times crisscross each other. Literary theory and criticism has been pursued as a distinct discipline of its own and practised by academicians and professionals.
Ethnicity and Cultural Plurality in the Contemporary Writers:
A Postcolonial Paradox
Dr. G.A. Ghanshyam
Professor of English,
Ethnicity is a term that literally refers to a person’s belonging to a particular community or group bound by a collective cultural tradition and shared heritage. In effect the term is a reminder of the concept of Western hegemony inherent in colonialism that is still continuing to the present day.
Modern era however is a progeny of the cross-cultural encounter engendered from the period of colonialism that continues to the present day. It is a witness to the growing mix of cultural influences in a world that is multicultural and plural. As such the individual is caught up in the melting pot of cultures confronted with the two edged sword of acculturation and preservation of one’s ethnicity in a harmonious balance.
Literature is a mirror to society and contemporary writers like Salman Rushdie, Bapsi Sidhwa and Kiran Desai have given an apt representation of this conflict of cultures and the struggle of the common man. Modern world has acquired the status of a global village but innate to this village are diversities and variety that need to attain a balance to survive peacefully and in harmony.
The present paper takes up the works of the aforementioned novelists in an attempt to focus on the presence of ethnicity and plurality of cultures inherent in them. The paper will highlight the paradox of postcolonialism faced with the conflict between preservation of ethnic heritage and accommodating plurality.
Portrayal of Women’s Exploitation in Vijay Tendulkars ‘Kamla’
Asst.Prof. Pankaja Ingle
Arts Commerce& Science college, Amravati
Vijay Tendulkar is a prominent playwright in Marathi with thirty plays to his credit. His thought provoking plays question the established values of the society. His play ‘Kamla’ (translated into English by Priya Adarkar) reveals his keen insight into the pitiable status of women in the male dominant urban middle class society. ‘Kamla’ is a two- act play dealing with the prevailing flesh trade in remote areas in India
Jaisingh Jadhav is a well-known investigative journalist working as an Associate Editor in an English language daily who visits a remote village named Luhardarga bazaar in Bihar where flesh trade is still in practice. He brings ‘Kamla’ to his home for just 250 rupees to prove that such auctions take place in India
Mahaswetha Devi’s Women as Victims under Patriarchy
Dr.M.Umar
Mahaswetha Devi has endeavored to depict reality and victim consciousness in her literature. Like Mulk Raj Anand and Bhabani Bhattacharya, Mahaswetha Devi’s writings are based on humanism, showing ' man’s inhumanity to man '. Mahaswetha Devi penetrates deep into the pathos of the people and explores the victimization under social evils. This paper studies women as victims. It articulates both psychological and physical torments experienced by women under patriarchal and male dominated society. It portrays women's anguish for their suppression. She explicates the problems of women and the misery; they undergo in a male dominated society and presents them in her works. Her works Mother of 1084, Bayen and Titumir reflect such affliction under patriarchy. Mother of 1084 speaks of Sujatha, the protagonist who suffers the misery in her family as her husband is dominant, self-caring and self-loving and does not care her feelings. He is a complacent and insensitive man. He never cares for the feelings of his wife. He feels superior and likes always his wishes and wants to be implemented in his house. His superiority and efficacy has a lot of impact on his children. They are influenced and nurtured by their father’s qualities. They also grow obstinate in their self-love. They lose morality in the way. All this, brings mental agony to Sujatha. She lives at odds in her own family
Bayen has its victim in a rural setting. Chandi, the protagonist is a grave digger by profession. She suffers humiliation when she is totally neglected and is branded as a ‘witch’ by her husband. She abandoned from the village by her husband and the society. She suffers a secluded and lonely life divided from her child and family .Her agony has no bounds.
Titumir speaks of Maimuna, Titumir’s wife who is the most neglected woman.Titumir, a revolutionary, is always busy with his mission, neglecting his wife totally, with whom he has promised to live and care for .Throughout the novel we find him never thoughtful about his wife. He leaves her at his home, where nobody is bothered about her welfare. She suffers a neglected life in solitude.
Mahaswetha Devi succeeds in bringing this element to focus and in enlightening the people. She protests the atrocities of men over women, who are deprived of freedom and a status. Her vision over these problems of women reveals the accuracy of their plight in the society. They emphasize on how a woman is treated and subjugated in the patriarchal and male-dominated society and how she is entangled and cornered by the ignorant norms and ideals of the society. They elucidate the cruelty of men who look down upon women as inferior human beings, curtailing them freedom and liberty, they ought to enjoy as men.
Postcolonial Reading of Arvind Adiga’s The White Tiger
Dr M S Wankhede,
The postcolonial study is nit exclusively concerned with literal colonization at all; it distinguishes, as has been pointed out by Antonio Gramisci, between ‘literal political dominance’ and ‘dominance through ideas and culture.’ In this sense the novels written by Jamaican writer Claude McKay’s Banjo and Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart can be studied as postcolonial novels. Today it may be said that colonialism is over but no one would deny that various forms of neo-colonialism has taken its place as most of the nations are still culturally and economically subordinated to the rich industrial states. Hence it can be said that today we have become ‘Eurocentric.’ Nowadays we find native-born dictators and corrupt officials and governments involved in anti-nation activities sucking blood of common people for their selfish motives which may be termed as modern form of colonialism. The term ‘postcolonialism’ should be understood in the broad sense.
Adiga’s Booker Prize winning novel The White Tiger can be explored in the light of postcolonial literature or postcolonial literary theory. The protagonist Balram Halwai is the eponymous ‘white tiger’ that narrates epistolary novel The White Tiger. This ‘white tiger’ narrates his life story to Wen Jiabao, the Chinese Premier, in the series of letters and the whole act of the protagonist can be studied in the light of postcolonial theory. The protagonist intends to tell the ‘truth’ to the Chinese Premier about modern India – the ‘truth’ which may be taken as the new form of modern colonialism in which, we may study and understand, the native-born monarchs are creating ‘hegemony’. According to Balram Halwai in the country like India India
PROF. K.R.SRINIVASA IYENGAR’S CONTRIBUTION TO LITERARY HISTORY OF INDIAN ENGLISH LITERATURE
PALUKURI VIJAYA BABU
M.A, M.A (Edn.), M.L.I.Sc, M.Phil
Associate Professor of English
Kodaganallur Ramaswami Srinivasa Iyengar’s contribution to the literary history of Indian English Literature is distinctly pioneering and evidently vast. His first publication in this genre was a brochure entitled Indo-Anglian Literature, appeared in 1943. He wrote this for the P.E.N. All India Centre that undertook the project of publishing a series of books for popularizing the history of Indian literatures among the general public. It can be said that his little book was the first substantial and systematic attempt in the field and was widely acclaimed as the comprehensive overview of Indo-Anglian literature. A grant Prof. Iyengar received from the University of Bombay
USE OF VISUAL MEDIA IN ENHANCING ENGLISH LANGUAGE SKILLS
Dr.S.A.KHADER,
LECTURER IN ENGLISH,
The increasing use and application of Information and Communication Technology in the field of education has resulted in new trends and tools bringing a new look and vigour into the process of teaching and learning. In the backdrop of the changed scenario, it is pertinent and necessary to devise ways for appropriate and optimum use of ICT in English Language Teaching and Learning. This issue gains momentum and urgency in evolving suitable measures as the standards of English among students have been showing a declining trend due to various reasons. It has become more serious an issue at Higher Education level since a majority of students get ready for employment at this stage. The English language skills of students coming out of higher educational institutions of late, have been found to be inadequate to the requirements of employability in industries.
The question of what could be done to improve the standards and to enhance English language skills of the students acquires greater importance and urgency towards evolving a suitable strategy to tackle it. Globalisation has promoted new tools and techniques in the field of education along with new challenges and threats. It has underlined the need for reforms in the educational system with particular reference to the wider utilization of Information and Communication Technology. As a result, our society is flooded with visual media in today’s digital world and it is the responsibility of all to analyze critically and communicate effectively within the realm of visual media. For students to become effective participants in this digital landscape, education must focus on developing skills. Being literate in contemporary society means being active, critical and creative users not only of print and spoken language, but also of the visual language of film and television, commercial and political advertising along with other relevant emerging fields. It is in this context, this Paper attempts to study and discuss the use of ICT in English Language Teaching and Learning in general and the use of visual media in particular in enhancing the English Language Skills of the students at Higher Education level.
THE ELEMENTAL NATURE IN DYLAN THOMAS’S THE FORCE THAT THROUGH THE GREEN FUSE DRIVES THE FLOWER
M HEMA LATHA
POST-GRADUATE DEPT OF ENGLISH
PB SIDDHARTHA COLLEGE OF ARTS & SCIENCES
Dylan Thomas’ poetry is colored by his times He was widely acclaimed is one of England’s leading poets Much influenced by Freud, Joyce and Hopkins He calls himself a freek user of words but not as a poet. Thomas is seen always occupied with the task of exploring the inner life and formulating an individual vision of nature, man and God The Force That Through The Green Fuse Drives The Flower intricately contrasts love and destruction, birth and death; Thomas’ exuberance and Dionysian energy are seen in his veins The forced that gives life to the flower also gives life to the poet’s youth; the force that explodes or destroys the roots of trees also destroys the poet; the force that forces the water to flow through the rocks also makes the blood circulate or coagulates the poet’s blood; making its flow impossible; the force that causes whirlpools is also responsible for the quicksand He feels his essential kinship with the rest of animal and vegetable nature; and nature’s rhythm warns him of the incomprehensible death which is the end of human life and love In this poem, Dylan Thomas identifies the world’s elemental forces with those which govern the human body The force, or the driving spirit, which operates in the world of Nature and is responsible for both creation and destruction, is the same which animates and destroys the human body The poem generates the power of that encounter when the internal- man’s emotions- find their equivalent forms in the external world of Nature His poetry depicts the process in nature and man as inseparable units
ENGLISH TRANSLATION AND JOURNALISM
AS A PROFESSION IN INDIA
Mrs. S. Anitha
Asst. Professor of English,
Virudhunagar.
Translation is the communication of the meaning of a source-language text by means of an equivalent target-language text. Translators have helped substantially to shape the languages into which they have translated. Due to the demands of business documentation consequent to the Industrial Revolution that began in the mid-18th century, some translation specialties have become formalized, with dedicated schools and professional associations. India
Can the Subaltern Speak? – A Study of Marginalization of Dalits in Bama’s Karukku and Sangathi
Dr.V.Bhavani
Associate Professor and Head,
Department of English,
VIrudhunagar.
The paper focuses on the triple oppression, i.e., caste, class and gender marginalization, experienced by Dalit women as portrayed in Bama’s Karukku and Sangathi. Bama is a living Tamil Dalit writer whose novels have been translated into English, German, French, Telugu and Malayalam. Karukku is a major milestone; for the first time in the history of Tamil Literature, a Dalit woman is speaking in her own voice about her experiences. Karukku views Bama’s life as a woman, Christian and Dalit – the betrayal of her dreams for human dignity and freedom by the caste- and gender-conscious society and also by the Christian religion.
Sangathi moves away from the story of an individual to a perception of the whole Paraiya community. In this sense, this novel is an autobiography of Dalit community. It is the women of the community who interest Bama and she strings Dalit women’s economic exploitation and sexual harassment at the work place and physical violence at home.
Through Lakshmi Holmstrom’s faithful translation of her novels, Bama’s voice for liberty, equality and identity has crossed over the boundaries of time and space.
Learner Centric Activities – A Paradigm of English Language Teaching
C.V. Padmaja,
The ever growing need for communication skills in English has become the ground for a shift from Teacher Centric to Learner Centric Approach, for today’s world requires equipping the learner with all the tools needed for effective communication. This implies refined language materials with which a learner can be comfortable with. Besides, good language skills and fluency in English have become the pre requisite for employability. Today teaching of English is ‘need-fulfilling’ activity. We as the teachers of English should take the lead towards this end for in order to meet the growing demands of the world in the field of Technology. English has become the language of knowledge, language of information. No longer is learning of English examination centric but is knowledge centric. Our educational system should realize the importance of language in this case English as all subjects more so related to Technology are available and taught only in English.
In this scenario learners should be exposed to varied language activities so that they have a hand on experience in using the language. At this juncture a task based/activity based approach alone can involve all the students in the learning process. The present paper focuses on how Task Based/Activity Based Approach yields results in class rooms and facilitates successful language learning based on my experience with engineering graduates at GITAM University , Visakhapatnam
Indigenous Cultural Identity and Ambience”- The River Between
Nagesh
Inturi Kesavarao
VSR and NVR College
Tenali
The term culture although popularly associated with artistic activities only encompasses,more than that and is inevitalbly linked up with a people`s way of living whether they comprise a village , a clan, a tribe or a nation. It is as Ngugi puts it ‘the sum of their art, their science and all their social institutions, including their system of belief and rituals ’ ( Home coming:4)‘The River Between ’sheds light on the importance of love, education and the need for reconciliation between antagonistic beliefs represented by Christianity on the one hand and indigenous tribal beliefs and values on the other.
The river Honia decides the Christianized half of the tribe from the traditional Gikuyu tribe. But it also symbolizes sustenace and new growth. ‘The River Between’ is sought to be analysed in terms of the ancient wisdom embedded in the ‘ways of the hills’ and the creation of myth of Gikuyu people and a strong yearning for peace and reconciliation between the two holistic groups inhabiting the two ridges of kameru and Makuyu.
It examines and evaluates Kenyan history through the two most significant symbols of cultural clash between the natives and the foreign invaders namely education and religion. He discovers the cultural ethos of the society. He explores and identifies the roots of the society and social religious context. It depicts the texture of life of the Gikuyu people in the central Gikuyu land of Kenya
The Making of Khushwant Singh as a writer of Historical Fiction
Ms.Divya Bala Pathak
Research scholar
Bulandshahr(UP)
Khushwant Singh is a well known Indian English writer who has established his supremacy in the writing of historical fiction. He accepts that he does not believe in God and hence he is an atheist. That is why when he started to write fiction, he took themes from historical and political events of his time. He began literary career when the political situation of India Pakistan ’, ‘A shall Not Hear the Nightingale’ and ‘Delhi
This paper is an humble effort to evince Khushwant Singh as the best writer of Indian history since he adopted history as raw material for his creativity. Fortunately, Khushwant Singh succeeded in his effort.
TRADITIONAL SOURCES IN GIRISH KARNAD’S PLAYS
LAKSHMI .K
Girish karnad handles traditional sources as spring boards – a swinger goes back in order to jump forward. His belief is, “Historically men may change in their culture and civilization, in their manners and matters, but their elemental nature is constant. They are basically the same – either barbarous or civilized, literate or illiterate, religious or rustic or sophisticated. One society passes into another.”
Karnad doesn’t retell the old myths. His interest is not in recreating old myths but in revisioning them to suit his artistic purpose. Karnad is not completely faithful to achievement through the handling of the myths and legends. The aim of this paper is to examine the uses of these traditional sources in his plays.A myth is archetypal and so it is a product of past. It is anonymous story rooted in primitive beliefs. It is primordial, ritualistic and related to agricultural civilization. It represents collective conscious of a society as they have been used in oral and narrative traditions in India.Karnad employs myths and legends as a subterfuge to discuss socio- cultural evils. As a sensible writer, Karnad avoids discussing socio- cultural evils openly and directly. While Karnad operates on evils in society, myths and legends serve as a kind of anesthesia. This paper is an exploration of his handling of various traditional themes.
NEGOTIATING IDENTITY AND SPACE ACROSS THE DIASPORA – INTERCULTURAL EXPERIENCES
N. Lakshmi,
Assoc. Professor in English Associate Professor in English
AITAM, Srikakulam
Key words: diaspora, women, culture, exiles, psychological condition, assimilation
The diaspora is a consequence of contemporary globalization as individuals move across regional barriers. Tensions, conflicts, moral and cultural issues, issues of colonialism, uprootment, dispossession, alienation, multi-cultural dilemmas, negotiations, adjustments, reconstructions of self are all characteristics of shifting borders and boundaries. India
NEGOTIATING IDENTITY AND SPACE ACROSS THE DIASPORA – INTERCULTURAL EXPERIENCES
N. Lakshmi,
Professor in English AITAM, Srikakulam
Key words: diaspora, women, culture, exiles, psychological condition, assimilation
The diaspora is a consequence of contemporary globalization as individuals move across regional barriers. Tensions, conflicts, moral and cultural issues, issues of colonialism, uprootment, dispossession, alienation, multi-cultural dilemmas, negotiations, adjustments, reconstructions of self are all characteristics of shifting borders and boundaries. India
interpretation of life it portrays the conscious and unconscious actions of individuals in a society in all its forms. The plurality and the cultural translation which the migrants and exiles face and undergo, the constant trials made by them to reconstruct and recreate a space and an identity in the current scenario is interpreted.
The various cultural conflicts faced by Indians across the borders is analysed through the literary jottings of a few Indian diasporic writers. The works of women writers like Anita Desai, Bharati Mukherjee and Jhumpa Lahiri are taken to reflect the intercultural experiences across the diaspora.The inner psyche of the characters is juxtaposed with the external circumstances in their vicinity. Loneliness is a manifestation of both inner and external worlds. The individual’s inner needs become prominent under the external pressures and a ‘sense of otherness’ makes its visibility.Cultural identity is the crux of the problems of immigrants. The magic solution lies in intercultural assimilation in a global world.
The various cultural conflicts faced by Indians across the borders is analysed through the literary jottings of a few Indian diasporic writers. The works of women writers like Anita Desai, Bharati Mukherjee and Jhumpa Lahiri are taken to reflect the intercultural experiences across the diaspora.The inner psyche of the characters is juxtaposed with the external circumstances in their vicinity. Loneliness is a manifestation of both inner and external worlds. The individual’s inner needs become prominent under the external pressures and a sense of otherness makes its visibility. Cultural identity is the crux of the problems of immigrants. The magic solution lies in intercultural assimilation in a global world.
Translations of Sri Aurobindo’s Writings: A Critical Appraisal
S. RUKMINI
In the recent years there has been a major thrust on translations of Indian writings to English. The colonial era translations of Indian writings by the westerner tried to rewrite our histories and cultural etymologies which resulted in distortion of our culture ethos. In the globalized world English has taken a centre stage and has become frontline communication across cultures. Language experts have been observing the corrosion of the vernacular languages due to the impact of English language. Due to this phenomenon many classical and popular Indian writings are translated to English. On the other hand, Indian English writers like Sri Aurobindo, Jiddu Krishnamurti etc works are translated to many Indian languages and foreign languages as well. While translating spiritual literature translators need to understand the spirit of the writer and not limit themselves to the meaning of the text. This poses an interesting study of translations of Indian English writers works, especially of Sri Aurobondo’s writings as they are of more spiritual in nature. The aim of the paper is to explore the issues related to translations of Sri Aurobindo’s writings to Indian languages. Sri Aurobindo works whether it is journalistic writings, poems, plays, essays etc is teemed with his proficiency of European classical languages and deep spirituality. Thus even if one has an expertise over English one feels it difficult to understand his works for one may fall short of comprehending his richness in foreign phrases and lack of a deeper spiritual insight. To comprehend Sri Aurobindo’s writings it is imperative for one to have spiritual background and at the same time rich in verbose too. Up till now his writings have been known only to the educated masses. To make it convenient for every layman to comprehend Sri Aurobindo’s writings an attempt has been made to explore possibilities of translating his works into the vernacular languages. Further, the paper will also discuss the difficulties one may confront while translating such elevated literature.
