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Tagore’s Multiculturalism: A Road Map to the Heaven of Freedom
-- Nibir K Ghosh
The paper brings into bold relief the multifaceted genius of Rabindranath Tagore and addresses the Nobel laureate’s multidimensional ability to anticipate and create, in words and deeds, a world without borders, a concept which seems to be much in vogue nearly a century after he envisioned it. If he could articulate the lucid splendor of alabaster in his tribute to the Taj Mahal, he was equally endowed with the infinite capacity to render into eternal songs the more pulsating and vibrant voice of human life in all its manifestations. If a surgeon could read merely a line of Tagore and forget the miseries of the earth, it could easily inspire Aung San Suu Kyi, our contemporary champion of civil liberty and freedom, to understand how a “citadel of endurance can be built on a foundation of anguish.” If he felt completely at home with the tiller ‘tilling the hard ground’ or the pathmaker ‘breaking stones’, he could with equal profundity record the agony of a woman encaged in the oppressive veil of domesticity and outdated customs. Firmly rooted in the soil of his homeland, Bengal, Tagore’s appeal was universal. Like a modern colossus, he rendered ineffectual man-made boundaries and sought to encompass a world beleaguered by violence and discrimination into the cosy confines of Visva-Bharati or “the world in one nest.” He had a profound understanding of the age in which he lived and could also foresee the stirrings of the shape of things to come. Through multicultural renderings, he could effortlessly capture the quintessentially human element across realms of space and time.
© 2014 IUP. All Rights Reserved.
Wordsworth’s “Arab Dream”: My Intertextual Acquaintances with the
Arabian Desert Through Literature and Personal Encounter
--Jalal Uddin Khan
This is an academic yet personal essay, in a somewhat critical yet creative vein, of general interest as distinguished from a research paper or scholarly interpretation of the desert. It is, however, full of references/allusions to the poetical treatment of the desert and the like, real or symbolic, both in the Arabian and Western setting. Beginning and ending with special references to Qatar, it interweaves personal reflections with the picture of literary desert landscape, especially in poetry.
© 2014 IUP. All Rights Reserved.
Uttararāmacarita of Bhavabhuti: Readings into Catharsis and Rasa
--GRK Murty
Catharsis, tragic pleasure, as Lessing (1978) observed, leading to purification—purgation of pity and fear; or to sublimation as moderns felt; or simply put, the emotional stirring to the activity of imagination drawing on the hero’s suffering, was proposed by Aristotle in his discourse on Poetics as the ultimate goal of tragedy. On the other hand, Rasa—sentiment, passion, savor, stimmung, aesthetic experience, poetic emotion—according to Abhinava Gupta, is brought about by the union of the permanent mood with the vibhavâs through the realization of the suggested and the suggestor—vyangya vyanjaka bhâva—in other words, the pratiti, understanding of Rasa is indeed abhivyakti a manifestation through the power of synthesis, resulting in an extraordinary state of relish. Against this backdrop, an attempt has been made here to look at Bhavabhuti’s Uttararâmacarita—a play that portrays the unbearable nature of separation from a beloved person—from the perspective of Aristotle’s Poetics and the Indian doctrine of Rasa.
© 2014 IUP. All Rights Reserved.
Portrayal of Protagonists by Arthur Miller
--Sita Devi and Surender Dalal
The purpose of this paper is to analytically present the “Portrayal of Protagonist by Arthur Miller”. Since the writings of Arthur Miller (1915-2005) are diverse, it seems essential to delimit the scope and sweep of the dimensions of the discussion to only three of his plays: Death of a Salesman (1949), The Crucible (1959), and After the Fall (1964). Before actually opening with the portrayal of protagonist in the plays, it seems essential to briefly highlight the circumstances of his age and life and the urgencies thereof that lead to the formation of a broad framework. This framework, when probed deeply, turns out to be the essential basis for formulating the characteristic features of the concept analyzed. These features or perspectives, put together, form the qualitative framework for discussing and analyzing the essential nature of the protagonists involved. This necessitates a brief but incisive probe into the broad qualitative features of these protagonists. These characteristic features include: (i) Tragic experience of the protagonist pertinent to his thinking, feeling, actions and eventual insight; (ii) The interpersonal relationships of protagonist with various persons around them; and (iii) Probing the individuality of the protagonist as an organism as a whole, showing the protagonist as a social organism where he functions, evolves and operates.
© 2014 IUP. All Rights Reserved.
Warwickshire Dialect in Eliot’s Silas Marner
--Pr Mortad-Serir Ilhem
A good deal of Victorian literature is written in dialect due to many reasons, the foremost being the attempt to render supreme realism where literature is supposed to mirror society. In this way, literary dialect was dominant where compassion for the poor overshadowed the snobbism and education of the rich, with literacy becoming the right of ordinary people, the reading public. Writers relied on a wide range of materials on accents, dialects and linguistic deviation for their novels where different voices interweave a varied fabric, especially at the level of dialog. This paper attempts to elucidate that Eliot’s use of dialect is not accidental in her novel Silas Marner. This leads to the fact that literary dialect is not new to Eliot and is existent in the Victorian novel. It is also important to show that dialect use in English literature is not restricted to popular or oral literature known as dialect literature, since it has been used by Eliot who is supposedly a Standard English writer. This in itself does not prevent her from using dialect in standard literature and for the sake of realism which is a reflection of 19th century literature.
© 2014 IUP. All Rights Reserved.
Revival of Realism in Indian Fiction in English:
A Study of Difficult Daughters and The White Tiger
--P P Sajeev
Indian fiction in English witnessed a spurt in realist novels in the ’80s and ’90s. Realism came to an end in European fiction at the close of the 19th century, but in the Indian scenario, we witnessed its rebirth in the fiction of Mulk Raj Anand, R K Narayan, Raja Rao and many other stalwarts. The nascent Indian society has been suffering from many social injustices and the creative mind of the writers reacted sympathetically to the woes of the downtrodden and the marginalized. In the fictional works of Vikram Seth, Manju Kapur, Aravind Adiga, Arundhati Roy and in many of our new generation writers, realism has made a comeback with an added vigor and vitality. Manju Kapur and Aravind Adiga handle realism with its classical characteristics and their writings are like a mirror held against the uncomfortable realities of Indian society. Manju Kapur’s Difficult Daughters explores the Indian society with all its woes and imperfections and reminds us that patriarchal hegemony is the root cause of its fair sex’s unending subjugation. Aravind Adiga fictionalizes the injustices meted out to its marginalized and explicitly narrates us the tentacles of exploitation that encapsulate Indian society in his The White Tiger. This paper tries to analyze features of realism in the above novels with special emphasis on the social realities reflected in them.
© 2014 IUP. All Rights Reserved.
Innovative Methods of Teaching
English Language to School Students Using Teaching Aids
--Chirag M Patel
Language is a complex specialized skill which develops in a child spontaneously without conscious effort or formal instruction deployed without awareness of its underlying logic. So language teachers have some strategies to teach effectively. Apart from it, English language teachers need to employ innovative ideas in their teaching because in our country most of the students learn English as a second language. The poor performances in English language in most schools are due to the fact that the teaching of it is textbook-based. Teachers do not have regular supply of the teaching aids and where they are available they are inadequate and obsolete. This paper stresses the need for making English language lessons easy and enjoyable through the use of instructional aids/improvisations. It presents innovative methods and techniques to teach English language by using teaching aids. It also aims to make English teachers aware of the strategies to use it in an effective manner.
© 2014 IUP. All Rights Reserved.
Integrated Communicative and Functional Approach
to Teaching English Proficiency Course
--A Ratna Malathi
English has become a universal language. Proficiency in English language has become a yardstick in placements and recruitment criteria. Paying attention to this aspect, many universities, especially Deemed universities, are opting for introducing special courses in English regardless of regular English subjects; one among them is Vignan University. The University has designed a course, ‘English Proficiency Course (EPC)’, to make the students proficient in English. The present paper is based on Training of Trainers (TOT) workshop organized by Vignan University in 2013 on EPC. The basic aim of the workshop was to explore the effective use of communicative and functional approach to English language teaching and learning. This paper is written in two sections: first, a discussion of theoretical perspectives of exploring issues and concerns to use communicative and functional approach in EPC classes to engage students in learning process; second, a presentation of some of the activities employed in the workshop for better learning outcome. It also believes that there is a wide scope of research for experimenting various teaching methods and approaches to special proficiency courses offered by universities.
© 2014 IUP. All Rights Reserved.
New Technological Tools and EFL Writing: The Case of First-Year
Master Students of English at Djillali Liabes University of Sidi Bel Abbes, Algeria
--Melouk Mohamed
The technological explosion of the last 50 years has impacted all domains of our daily life. Education is no exception to this; it has not remained inflexible towards the profound changes taking place in other areas of knowledge. The impact of those changes on the educational areas is increasing and broadening. The first question that might be raised when considering whether to introduce computers into the writing classroom is: Do computers improve the writing of learners? The answer, surprisingly, is that we are not sure, but it is worth trying. In spite of the contradictory or inclusive research on the qualitative changes effected in writing, any word-processing system like the computer does improve students’ writing at certain more specific levels. The present paper sheds light on the advantages of using computers in writing instructions. The paper presents the first-year Master students’ case to show their attitudes and readiness to use ICT in EFL classes in general and writing in particular. It also stresses the aim of using new technologies in writing instructions to provide a variety of perspective writing research and to facilitate the discovery and critical analysis of the possibilities of teaching language skills. The last part of the paper identifies some of the educational uses of the Internet and how it can be applied in a writing classroom.
© 2014 IUP. All Rights Reserved.
Teaching the Rationale of Reading Critically at the Advanced Level
--K Narasimha Rao
The research conducted over the last three decades has changed our view of reading as a mere process of decoding. Grabe describes reading as an … active process of comprehending [where] students need to be taught strategies to read more efficiently (e.g., guess from context, define expectations, make inferences about the text, skim ahead, etc. (1991, p. 377). This means that one does not read all the sentences in the same way, but one relies on a number of ‘cues’ to get an idea of what kind of sentence or an explanation that is likely to follow. Moreover, Krashen’s (1981) hypotheses on language acquisition have greatly influenced the research and practice in reading comprehension, and in particular the effect of “the Schema Theory.” Specific attention is paid to interactive approaches to reading, which argue that reading comprehension is a combination of identification and interpretation skills. Grabe (1991) lists the five most important areas of current research which are still prominent: “schema theory, language skills and automaticity, vocabulary development, comprehension strategy training, and reading-writing relations” (p. 375). The paper aims at discussing in brief the tenets of reading comprehension, the cognitive tasks involved in reading as well as the various activities teachers use in teaching reading comprehension.
© 2014 IUP. All Rights Reserved.
An Alternative Approach to Classification
of Phrasal Verbs
--Abdolvahed Zarifi and Jayakaran Mukundan
The current paper touches upon some major available approaches to the identification of different types of combinations subsumed under the category of phrasal verbs. Although literature offers a number of tests for the identification of phrasal verbs, these tests are rather complicated, including seven to eleven items. They are subject to exceptions and counterexamples as well. Moreover, they tend to differentiate Verb + Real Particles from Verb + Prepositions but remain silent on how they are distinct from Verb + Adverb particles. Therefore, a new test, called Zar-Test of Initialization, has been developed to help distinguish among these combinations. The new approach simply consists of one single-item test that is applied in three stages. The simplicity of the approach, it is hoped, will do a great service to both the language teachers and learners as well.
© 2014 IUP. All Rights Reserved.
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