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The Interplay of Reality and Memory in R K Narayan’s Memoir My Days
-- Prerna Vanjani
Writing about the self is a daunting task as it represents its writer’s life as a large matrix of his personality, age, culture and society. It unfolds a life pattern reshaped by recollections, omissions and distortions with the interplay of memory functioning at various levels of existence. This paper provides a glimpse of the uncomplicated life of one of the 20th century’s literary giants, R K Narayan, by analyzing his memoir My Days. The paper highlights various stages of evolution of the self and studies the dynamics of memory that has produced many memorable characters along with the imaginary world of ‘Malgudi’. The paper delineates Narayan’s consciousness as he goes through the arduous process of experimenting with artistic techniques creating his fascinating fictional world. This study also unfolds the making of a sensitive and prolific writer R K Narayan, whose objectivity has made his works appear as psycho anatomies at the realistic level. The thrust is on the different phases of Narayan’s life that give a clear impression of his genius. The paper also brings to light several situations of his life in which he exhibited immense determination in pursuing what his heart desired.
© 2014 IUP. All Rights Reserved.
Portraying the Fantastic in Literary Fiction:
Divakaruni’s The Conch Bearer Trilogy
--P V L Sailaja, N Ramakrishna and C R S Sarma
The sway of magic and occult is a recurring theme in many novels of Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni. This paper analyzes the novels The Conch Bearer (2003), The Mirror of Fire and Dreaming (2005) and Shadowland (2009) which are parts of The Conch Bearer trilogy as they reflect this particular theme. Magic has always been an integral part of different genres like epics, fairytales, adventure stories handed over orally from generation to generation, as well as drama and poetry. The present paper brings out how Divakaruni depicts the three-dimensional nature of reality and human experience and makes her readers experience a fantastic universe which travels across different time and space zones through The Conch Bearer trilogy.
© 2014 IUP. All Rights Reserved.
Magic Realism in Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children and Ann-Marie
MacDonald’s Fall on Your Knees
--Indira Reddy
Magic realism is a literary movement associated with a style of writing that incorporates supernatural events into realistic narrative without questioning the improbability of the events. Here is an attempt to show how the concept of magic realism is applied in two popular magic realist texts—Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children and Ann-Marie MacDonald’s Fall on Your Knees. Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children is one of the classics that incorporated magic realism. By exploring magic realism in Canadian literature by a close reading of Ann-Marie MacDonald’s first novel Fall on Your Knees, one can observe the justification of the formal and thematic dimensions of magic realism by presenting the story of a mixed-race Cape Breton family from a lesbian feminist perspective.
© 2014 IUP. All Rights Reserved.
Supernatural Proximity: Fantasy and Fiction in Charles Dickens’
The Bagman’s Story
--Priyanka Tripathi and Anupma Singh
Charles Dickens is known for using ‘idealized’ characters and highly sentimental scenes to contrast with his ‘caricatures’ to reveal the ugly social truth, hence his early critics tried to portray him as a writer of modern era with no elements of fiction such as ‘supernatural’ which was a major literary technique well-practiced in that era. Our paper explores the supernatural elements in the works of Charles Dickens by discussing his famous short story The Bagman’s Story. Dickens seemingly affirms the supernatural elements in this story, but he continues to refer to the protagonists’ excessive drinking behavior that might be taken as suggestion that these supernatural experiences are nothing but alcohol-induced hallucinations. In our paper, we would further discuss the origin and justification of the supernatural elements in The Bagman’s Story and demonstrate the ways supernatural elements found in Dickens’ works are different from other British writers.
© 2014 IUP. All Rights Reserved.
Bhakti Through Literature:
A Study of Poonthanam and Melpathur Narayana Bhattathiri’s Literary Works
--S Rukmini
In recent years, there has been a surge in bhakti literature and this is evident from the recent developments in Indian writing in English. Bhakti transcends geographical, sociocultural and literary boundaries and the same can be said about bhakti literature as well. India is known for its spiritual and bhakti culture and tradition. Whenever the balance of the universe is disturbed by external interference from any of its parts, the redeemer, as the power of eternal balancing, appears for the protection of those who are in harmony and the rectification of everything disharmonious. This dharma, i.e., the religion of God, the Sanatana Dharma, the eternal religion, has survived even as Abrahamic religions and atheism spread across the world in the last 1000 years primarily because of its inherent patriotism. It is on this that the whole idea of the religion is based. The religion treats the nation as mother. The roots of nationalism can be traced to its spiritual and bhakti traditions. In this Kaliyuga, the means attaining salvation is bhakti alone. The aim of the present paper is to outline the relevance of bhakti literature and its implications to nationalism. Further, it discusses the contribution of Kerala’s bhakti literature in general and Poonthanam’s and Melpathur’s literary contribution in particular to Indian nationalism.
© 2014 IUP. All Rights Reserved.
Tennessee Williams’ Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and Summer and Smoke:
A Study in Sexual Difference
--Ram Narayan Panda
The treatment of sexuality and gender at the hands of American playwrights in general, and Tennessee Williams in particular has intrigued critics over the last 50 years. This paper seeks to address this issue in terms of a feminist reading of two important plays of Tennessee Williams, namely Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and Summer and Smoke. The two plays under consideration, in fact, provide various interesting dimensions for gender-related explication even though Williams’ creativity strives to implement the ideal of objectivity or ‘negative capability’
© 2014 IUP. All Rights Reserved.
The Female Quester in Paul Auster’s In the Country of Last Things
--V Neethi Alexander
Paul Auster’s literary repertoire has predominantly been examined for its experimental stylistics and postmodern musings on contemporary America. The author’s 1987 dystopic novel In the Country of Last Things, however, can be distinguished from the rest of his artistic creations for its engagement with themes such as Jewishness and the Holocaust. Moreover, it is the first and only novel in the author’s oeuvre that focuses on the experiences of a female protagonist and represents a feminized quest narrative. Given its uniqueness in the Auster canon, the present paper scrutinizes the novel’s epistolary-adventure narrative form vis-à-vis its protagonist, Anna Blume, whose intrepid endeavors and remarkable resilience posit her as an alternative to the celebrated questing persona of the adventurous male hero. To prove this, the present paper argues that Anna takes recourse to female bonding in adopting the role of a nurturer and in engaging in the act of chronicling in order to survive and transcend her tragic circumstances. Finally, the paper claims that the novel inverts the celebratory discourse around traditional quest narratives involving male heroes and their demonstrably grand masculinized acts of bravery by presenting an alternative account of feminized heroism.
© 2014 IUP. All Rights Reserved.
Emerging Image of Women in Virginia Woolf’s
Mrs Dalloway and To the Lighthouse
--Deepali Prakash
Virginia Woolf was an English novelist and essayist, regarded as one of the foremost modernist literary figures of the 20th century. In the 20th century, she was one of the prominent writers who produced literature asserting her female identity. In her novels, Woolf portrays her characters, especially the female, as vulnerable, earthly beings, pulsating with life. Through her writings, she gives a new dimension, new color, new awareness to the thinking, consciousness, and expression of a woman. By studying her two novels, Mrs Dalloway (1925) and To the Lighthouse (1927), I wish to analyze the emerging image of women. In these novels, she has tried to explore the true character of a new woman through the technique of “stream of consciousness”. In her novels, she has tried to liberate the woman from male domination. The present study portrays that very struggle between the traditional and the ‘emerging’ images of women.
© 2014 IUP. All Rights Reserved.
G V Krishnarao’s Stories: An Analysis of Their Complex Range of Concerns
--GRK Murty
Dr. G V Krishnarao (1914-1979) published two anthologies of short stories in Telugu1: Chaitraradham with seven stories and Udabinduvulu with five stories. All the stories in Chaitraradham were written during 1939-42, while the stories in Udabinduvulu were written in 1947 except the story, “Udabinduvulu”, which was written in the year 1963. GVK, a Marxist turned Royist2, but essentially a rationalist, choosing local incidents, crafted his stories that articulate universal themes. His characters might be rooted in the Andhra region but they are the prototypes of the suffering humanity across the planet. His handling of these characters with a keen social perception and a large-hearted and open-minded rationalism made them emerge as the bright rallying-flags of man’s ability to overcome weakness and despair. Against this backdrop, the present paper attempts to examine the multidimensional human concerns that GVK’s stories expounded.
© 2014 IUP. All Rights Reserved.
The Effectiveness of Cooperative Learning in Enhancing
Life Skills Through Language
--C V Padmaja and B Sai Lakshmi
The globally growing demand for better communication, both written and oral, calls for innovative teaching methodologies with greater participation of the learners. Today, the industry needs team effort. Individuals need to be assertive. The competition promotes aggressiveness and either they become passive or lose the race or win the race. But the need of the hour is to cooperate and move forward. Therefore, it calls for an effective method to improve communication skills and soft skills in technical undergraduate students. This paper proposes a method that will not only enhance language learning or develop communication, but also help the students in applying the strategies involved in Cooperative Learning to all subjects even at the optional level.
© 2014 IUP. All Rights Reserved.
Body Language: An Effective Communication Tool
--Dipika S Patel
Body Language is a significant aspect of modern communications and relationships. Body language describes the method of communicating using body movements or gestures instead of, or in addition to, verbal language. The interpretation of body language, such as facial expressions and gestures, is formally called kinesics. Body language includes subtle, unconscious movements, including winking and slight movements of the eyebrows and other facial expressions.
© 2014 IUP. All Rights Reserved.
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