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Milton’s “Ode on the Morning of Christ’s Nativity”
and Keats’ “To Psyche”: Intertextuality of Poetic Discourse
-- Ram Narayan Panda
This paper attempts an intertextual reading of two important odes, namely, Milton’s “Ode on the Morning of Christ’s Nativity” and Keats’ “To Psyche”. The paper attempts to analyze the two selected odes in the light of the modern theories of intertextuality, which determines the use of poetic conventions and the shape of poetic discourse. While intertextuality is not a search for sources, it can be considered a participation of text in a discursive space of culture. An attempt is made to adopt the notion of interrelationships among texts. In analyzing these relationships in the odes chosen, the context of utterance and the use of speech-acts is considered, and the inherent comparative framework of the odes is brought out.
© 2012 IUP. All Rights Reserved.
A Comparative Perspective on Two Nobel Minds:
Tagore and Tomas Transtromer
-- P Suneetha
Great minds think alike. This is very true in the case of Rabindranath Tagore and Tomas Transtromer, the two Nobel laureates in literature in 1913 and 2011, respectively. In their literary endeavor, one notices most distinct, impressive and appealing similarities. The present paper aims at bringing out the primary concerns of these two literary giants. With about 50 plays, almost 100 books of verse, 40 volumes of novels and shorter fiction, and books of essays and philosophy, Tagore has won acclaim for his variety and versatility. Similarly, Tomas Transtromer has already become famous for his prolific output because of his solid poetry collections, besides multitudes of essays on psychology, music and painting. Besides their prolific output, the present paper discusses factors like modernism, mysticism, imagery and lyricism that bring these two great minds together.
© 2012 IUP. All Rights Reserved.
A Feminist Critique of Gender Issues in Soyinka’s
Death and the King’s Horseman
-- Omolara Kikelomo Owoeye
The paper is an in-depth literary analytical study of gender relations in Soyinka’s Death and the King’s Horseman from a feminist perspective. This exploration of the treatment of the female gender by the playwright and the male characters he creates includes the consideration of such matters as betrothal and marriage, conception and pregnancy, and women’s participation in sociopolitical issues. These issues are treated against the backdrop of a feminist theory that is essentially African in outlook and content, since the term seems to have different meanings to African women from what it does for the others. In a conclusive discussion, the paper posits that the treatment of Girl and other female characters in the play betrays the chauvinism of the playwright and of other male members of the pre-literate African society represented in the play.
© 2012 IUP. All Rights Reserved.
The Arabian Nights: Tales of Perennial Appeal
-- Jalal Uddin Khan
Noting its postcolonial influence as a hybrid oriental text of universal appeal, this paper discusses the modern legacy of The Arabian Nights, its modern English translations and its fine arts illustrations and transformations, with the conclusion that the collection of tales exercises an entertaining and expansive influence on the horizon of human knowledge and understanding, regardless of borders and boundaries. Instead of dividing and walling them out, it accommodates and brings together peoples, cultures, traditions and nations by charmingly speaking to a wide variety of audience and their dreams and views, whims and impulses, and fantasies and peculiarities, both realistic and imaginative.
© 2012 IUP. All Rights Reserved.
Indian English Nursery Rhymes:
Bridging the Gap Between L1 and L2 Education
--Soumyajyoti Banerjee and Amrita Basu
The paper examines the emergence of popular L1 English nursery rhymes in India. Indian culture, like other Asian cultures, emphasizes relationship building, respecting others and knowing one’s position in the great macrocosm of nature and society. Nursery rhymes in L1 Hindi (a national language of India) develop these factors in the Indian child. English L1 nursery rhymes, however popular they might be, showcase a society and culture from which the Indian child is far removed. A cultural disparity is evident when one compares L1 English and L1 Hindi nursery rhymes. Parents in India are increasingly relying on L2 English nursery rhymes which reflect the images that a child can easily assimilate from the day-to-day world. The child can easily relate to what he or she is learning (due to the common gender of the child, gendered pronouns like ‘him’ will not be used) when the sociocultural elements, which form an important part of the Indian ethos, are incorporated in L2 English acquisition.
© 2012 IUP. All Rights Reserved.
Resonant Symbolism in A K Ramanujan’s Poems
-- Anupama Shekhawat
Attipat Krishnaswami Ramanujan (1929-1993) was an eminent scholar of Indian literature who enriched literature in English and Kannada languages. Ramanujan performed multiple roles as an Indian poet, scholar and author, philologist, folklorist, and even playwright. This paper is on cohesive and compressive use of symbols in the poems of A K Ramanujan. His works are a blend of numerous literary articulations. Symbolism was one of them, in which he was a master. His poems are apposite symbolic representation of numerous themes. The works of Ramanujan are extensive, and this paper focuses on a few of his poems—“Obituary”, “A River”, “Epitaph on a Street Dog”, “Love Poem for a Wife”, “Of Mothers Among Other Things”, “Still Another View of Grace” and “Take Care”.
© 2012 IUP. All Rights Reserved.
Arcana Imperii, Neocolonialism and the Dissidence of Arundhati Roy
-- Anindya Sekhar Purakayastha
Through the sociopolitical diatribes in her nonfictional works such as Listening to Grasshoppers: Field Notes on Democracy, An Ordinary Person’s Guide to Empire and The Algebra of Infinite Justice, Arundhati Roy has exposed the coercive sham of today’s comprador democratic state and its neo-imperial policies. Significantly enough, Roy’s concern about the aporias of democracy and state-sponsored terrorism have striking parallels with the writings of contemporary leading European political and critical theorists such as Giorgio Agamben, Derrida and Antonio Negri. Continental philosophy in the post 9/11 age of neo-empire has taken an ethico-political turn which disparages against all forms of totalitarianism and hegemony. Roy’s apprehension is that democracy sometimes may end in lumpenocracy/corporatocracy in the aftermath of Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay and global market economy. Roy’s critique of the pathologies of modern democracy may draw philosophic support from Derrida’s notion of democratie a venir or the futural democracy-to-come. Roy’s focus on state atrocities against dissidents in the name of democracy both in her fictional and nonfictional works may remind us of Agamben’s theory of Homo Sacer and Bare Life. Roy’s works may provide theoretical grounds to reformulate the existing paradigms of democracy and state power in these post-Tahrir Square times.
© 2012 IUP. All Rights Reserved.
Postcolonialism: Independence or Interdependence?
-- Anuradha Basu
Postcolonialism is a study of the interrelationship between the colonized and the colonizer. It is a strange relationship that involves resistance, repression, abhorrence, fascination, dependence and independence. While the colonized fight for independence, they also have a habit of aping the colonizers and glorifying them. In India, Vikram Seth has called it ‘Anglophilia’. Mahatma Gandhi justifiably pointed out that India literally gave away her independence. The blacks also, for instance, suffer from immense trauma because of the unjustified distinctions created in society on the basis of color, as Fanon has vividly pointed out; but the blacks too are moving into an order of resistance and acceptance that is creating a new translucent mixed society. This paper attempts to study this kind of relationship on the basis of the given postcolonial theories.
© 2012 IUP. All Rights Reserved.
Book Review:
Towards Cultural Reawakening
Book Review:
Explorations of Eternal Verities
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