|
Beyond
`Cultural Specifics': Raja Rao's Kanthapura and Chinua Achebe's Things
Fall Apart
-- S
S Prabhakar Rao Every
significant writer is inevitably influenced by the race, the milieu and the moment
of his actuality, and his writing is bound to be his sensitive response, evoking
the cultural specifics of his race. But a durable writer can and ought to rise
above the immediacies of reality, and can envision and present through his literary
constructs "the universal" and "the timeless" in human imagination.
Two writers, separated by vastly variant cultures and climesIndia and Nigeria
and a 20-year time differencein their novels Kanthapura (1938) and Things
Fall Apart (1958), articulate their passionate attachment to their specific
native culture, and yet reach out to cultural universals, which invests their
work with durable significance and timeless relevance. The paper, analyzing the
cultural analogies in the works of the two undisputed masters from India and Nigeria,
is a modest homage to the Literary Titan of the Indian Literature in English,
Raja Rao, "the man of silence", who was stilled into eternal silence
on July 8, 2006 at Austin, USA. ©
2006 IUP . All Rights Reserved. Class,
Culture, and Capital in Sister Carrie
--
Nina
Markov
Class
has not been an important constituent of American literature and culture, partly
due to the myth that America is a "middle-class society" without significant
class-conflict. The paper departs from classic Marxists/structuralist definitions
of class, which assume a necessary relation between economics and class. It draws
on the work of Pierre Bourdieu, whose focus on class cultures allows for a richer,
more complex and subtle understanding of the workings of class than that permitted
by a strictly economic or structuralist approach. It offers an in-depth exposition
of the class concerns in Theodore Dreiser's Sister Carrie (1900) in relation
to Dreiser's own struggle for status in the literary and artistic field of the
late 19th century New York. Class conflict during this period is seen
to be a battle for cultural legitimacy as well as for economic power. To become
a member of the privileged class, one needs to possess not only economic but also
cultural capital. The relationship between the heroine, Carrie Meeber, and Robert
Ames is presented as the locus of class conflict in the novel. The paper explores
the tension between a lifestyle based on an unrestrained desire born of deprivation
and an ascetic attitude made possible by a disdain for material excess. The second
half of the paper takes up Dreiser's writing career, the publication history of
Sister Carrie, and the literary and cultural milieu of late 19th
century New York, in order to show how the conditions of literary production,
the author's efforts to gain admittance into the literary elite, are inscribed
in the very structure and meaning of the novel. The paper concludes with Dreiser's
ambivalent approach to class as it emerges in the novel. ©
2005 Dreiser Studies. The paper was originally published in Dreiser
Studies, Vol. 36, No. 1. Reprinted with permission. Subversive
Implosion in Bharati Mukherjee's Fiction: A Theoretical Reading
--
Rajasekhar
Patteti
The
theories of post-colonialism, feminism, structuralism, post-structuralism, deconstruction,
post-modernism, and new historicism have been much debated in academic circles
as part of speculations on creative writings. They have been and continue to be
widely adopted by literary scholars in their attempts to decode the meanings contained
in various texts. This paper looks at the fiction of the South Asian American
expatriate writer, Bharati Mukherjee, from a predominantly feminist and post-colonial
perspective. Taking up a study of the novels, The Tiger's Daughter, Wife and
Jasmine, the author enters Mukherjee's fictional world through the insights
offered by literary criticism. This paper examines the predicament of women immigrants
in America, as reflected in the lives of the women protagonists. Life in America,
with its immigrant problems, turns out to be chaotic. The paper also highlights
the confusion of gender boundaries, the creation of `mini narratives' (as against
`meta narratives'), the treatment of the notions of hyperrealism and the historical
implications of cross-cultural phenomena, as they emerge in Mukherjee's fiction.
By using Bakhtin's notions of Carnivalism and Dialogic, the paper brings out the
complexity of the fictional world of Mukherjee. Further, the domestic structure
embedded in her fiction makes it accessible to a structuralist approach. Finally,
the protagonists are seen to be Derridian in their `deconstructive' acts of survival. ©
2006 IUP . All Rights Reserved. The
Green Tradition in American Literature
--
E Nageswara Rao
The
founding fathers of the United States cherished the pastoral landscape of the
New World. Jefferson wanted to build small, rural, agricultural communities rather
than large cities as in Europe. Native Americans showed their reverence for nature
in their songs and stories. For over two centuries, the Edenic myth inspired the
American writers. The central theme of American literature, broadly viewed, is
the individual and his environment. Bryant, a New England poet, praises the beauty
in nature in "The Prairies", "A Forest Hymn", etc. Emerson's
"Nature" is a plea for living in harmony with nature. Thoreau demonstratesthrough
his retreat to Waldenhow the basic needs of man could be met without damaging
nature and its processes. Thorean is critical of technology and industry, which
deform the landscape. Hawthorne, Melville, Cooper, Mark Twain, and others also
celebrate the wilderness and the frontier. The demands of the civil war changed
the American environment. Industries, urbanization, and mass consumption destroyed
the older, simpler community life. The 20th century writers from Anderson
to Ginsberg express their anguish over environmental degradation. Thoreau's Walden
pond, Cooper's forests and plains, Hemingway's African jungles, and Frost's New
England pastures are all variations on the same Edenic ideal. ©
2006 IUP . All Rights Reserved. The
Smile that Launched a Thousand Lines: The Mona Lisa and the Poetics of Ekphrasis
-- O J Joycee
Comparisons
between the visual and verbal arts and the barrier between poetry and painting
have long been a source of theoretical debate and have generated a large body
of critical discussion. It is believed that the discussions about ekphrasis do
not lay sufficient emphasis on the poet-reader/viewer/spectator, and the reader
of the poem as a spectator or the ekphrasic spectator. Most writers frequently
overlook the role of modern critical theories like Reader response and Spectator
response in the analyses of ekphrastic poems. The spectator is either clubbed
with the reader with a slanting bar (reader/spectator) implying no difference
between the two or is assigned a passive role compared with the reader's. The
reader of an ekphrasic poem is also a spectator. Being a spectator involves reading
poems, which, in fact, are reading paintings or sculptures. In this context, the
reader is therefore different from an ordinary reader, for he is both a reader
and a spectator. The inter-art text within the text, studied from this angle,
unfolds the plurality of meaning as well as different aspects of culture, race,
gender and so on. This paper examines the poems written on one art object, The
Mona Lisa, the western icon of art and beauty. The poems chosen are those of Yeats,
Angelina Weld Grimke and John Stone. ©
2006 IUP . All Rights Reserved. Spaces
of `Home': Boman Desai's Asylum, USA
-- Pramod
K Nayar
This
essay looks at Boman Desai's new novel, Asylum, USA and its exploration
of diasporic consciousness. The search for "home", the essay demonstrates,
is a series of negotiations of space. It involves the ordering and re-ordering
of power relations as they are embodied in space. Further, it argues that the
sense of "home" or "belonging" is achieved through a dialectic
of two major spaces: intimate space and spaces of framing, or what I term "parergonal"
spaces. This dialectic, the essay argues, is the protagonist's relationship with
individuals and the larger community, USA. ©
2006 IUP . All Rights Reserved. The
Prompter's Box: Toward a Close Reading of Modern Drama --
Alan Ackerman
In
dramatic presentation, creativity is inherent in linguistic and literary self-reflexiveness.
The paper, "Prompter's Box", seeks to prompt thinking "outside
the box". Drama is inter-subjective and is intended for actualization in
time and spacenot a rigid, unimaginative approach. In dramatic criticism, it is
necessary to replace literary model with performance model and examine drama in
the social, economic context. It cannot be isolated from temporality of experience.
One cannot make sense out of drama without referring to the theater. Attempt should
also be made to assess the value of drama to modern life. The paper looks at the
tension between text and performance and argues that drama should be studied in
relation to other arts like music, dance and painting. It must not be considered
`autotelic' and the relationship of `the producer' and `the product' should be
examined, as `drama' is derived from the Greek root, dran, which means
`to do', `to perform'. The critic should emphasize the `performative' aspect of
drama. ©
2006 University of Toronto Press. The paper was originally published in Modern
Drama, Vol. 59, No. 1. Reprinted with permission. The
Polemics of Decolonization in Ngugi's Weep Not, Child and Meja Mwangi's
Striving for the Wind
--
Jaiwanti
Dimri
The
struggle for independence from oppressive foreign rule, the eventual success in
the endeavor, the replacement of foreign tyranny with the native version, and
the second struggle for `independence'the cycle seems to be replicated in every
third world country in Asia and Africa. Decolonization and its depiction in literature
appear to be perpetually embroiled in controversy. In this context, this article,
examines two novels from AfricaWeep Not, Child by Ngugi Wa Thiong'o, set
in precolonial era and Striving for the Wind by Meja Mwangi, set in postcolonial
timesand studies the different phases of colonial history depicted in the texts.
Ngugi presents the confrontational phase, while Mwangi evokes the transitional
phase of postcolonialism, which is not a posture of anti-colonialism, but an inclusive
attempt to promote composite culture blending the best in the traditions of the
native and of the colonizer. ©2002
Re-Markings. The paper was earlier published in Re-Markings, Vol.
I, No. 1. Reprinted with permission. To
Start at Ground Level : Hubris
and Redemption in J M Coetzee's Disgrace
-- R
Swarnalatha
The
interconnectedness of all things, which is at the heart of eco-critical awareness,
holds that the life of the earth and the life of the mind are one and the same.
J M Coetzee's Disgrace, which is set against the backdrop of apartheid
and the dispensation of the old order in South Africa, is situated in this holistic
awareness. This novel is a tragedy of hubris. At the center of the novel is David
Lurie, a professor of literature, who disgraces himself by an act of seduction
involving his student, Melanie Isaacs. Lurie is compelled to leave the university
because he declines to repent. He pleads guilty but refuses to repent because
he believes that "repentance belongs to another world, another world of discourse".
Seeking escape from his sterile and meaningless existence in Cape Town, Lurie
tries to take refuge in his daughter Lucy's small holding in the dusty South.
Lucy lives close to nature, and believes that there is "no higher life".
She is raped by three black men. Lurie, witness to this act of disgrace, is broken
both physically and emotionally. Lucy, however, does not press the charges of
rape or even report the fact of her violation. She accepts the bastard foetus
and the protection of the complicit black neighbor. Lucy's staying on in the farm
is an act of endurance, which is required to heal the old scars of racial hatred.
Lurie, is thrown into a wilderness, which forces him to explore what it means
to be human and what it is not to be human. As Lurie's self-absorbed and sheltered
world collapses, he steps into a greater reality of living totally in the present
moment in the ravaged hinterlands of South Africa. This novel situates the understanding
of the hubristic act of tragedy in the natural world where the protagonist achieves
a Zen-like clarity of mind observing "the gentle sun, the stillness of mid
afternoon and bees busy in a field of flower". ©
2006 IUP . All Rights Reserved. |
