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Inter-Personal and Intra-Psychic
Defense Mechanisms: Anita Desai's Fire on the Mountain
-- Simmi Gurwara
Anita Desai's Fire on the Mountain delineates what happens when we become alienated from our real selves as a
result of a pathogenic environment. This paper examines the defensive strategies that the principal characters employ
when their fundamental needs for safety, love, belonging and esteem have been turned into insatiable neurotic needs as a
result of having been thwarted. Nanda Kaul, Raka and Ila Das, the trio that make for the story of deprivation and depravity,
try to cope with their basic anxiety by adopting a compliant or self-effacing solution and moving toward people, by
adopting an aggressive or expansive solution and moving against people, or by becoming detached or resigned and moving
away from people. Healthy people move appropriately and flexibly in all three directions, but in neurotic development
these moves become compulsive and indiscriminate. Neurosis is seen as essentially a disturbance in human relationships
which apparently envelops all three characters in general. This disturbance creates basic anxiety against which they
defend themselves by employing the interpersonal and intra-psychic strategies of defense. In each interpersonal defense,
one element involved in basic anxiety gets overemphasized: helplessness in the compliant solution, hostility in the
aggressive solution, and isolation in the detached solution. Under pathogenic conditions, all these feelings are likely to
occur, leading the principal characters to make all three of the defensive moves and giving rise to what is termed as the
`basic conflict'.
© 2011 IUP. All Rights Reserved.
Exploring `Essence' Behind the `Existence':A Study of
Female Characters in Anita Desai's Novels
-- Vaishali Shivkumar
Existentialism as a philosophy is historically and culturally of European origin. Every existentialist puts emphasis on
the importance of the individual as well as his freedom and responsibility for being what he is. Certain aspects of this
school of thought can be easily found in the Western as well as Eastern literature of the
20th century. Modernism and post modernism left a very strong impact on many Indian English writers, too, who have talked about or who are talking
about the existential problems of the human beings, their characters. Anita Desai is one of the eminent writers of
20th century and she has presented her female protagonists facing the problems of existence and responsibility. She projects a tragic
vision in her novels by placing her female protagonists in hostile situations. The modern society, with its ups and downs,
has been depicted in most of her works. She has carved a niche by exploring the emotional world of women and brought
to light the various deeper forces at work in feminine sensibility as well as psychology.
© 2011 IUP. All Rights Reserved.
Indian Women's Short Fiction in English: Exploring the Neglected Form
-- Priyanka Tripathi and H S Komalesha
Beginning with an analysis of how often Indian women writers have been relegated to the limbo while writing a history
of the emergence and evolution of Indian short fiction in English, this paper is an attempt to highlight the contribution
of Indian women writers in shaping the form of short story as we find it today in India. It takes into its purview almost all
the Indian women writers who have published short story collection/collections in English. This paper focuses mainly on
the annotated chronological bibliography of Indian women's short fiction in English as even the information available is
scant and therefore, requires a compilation.
© 2011 IUP. All Rights Reserved.
Three Generations of Jewish-American Women Writers
-- Gustavo Sanchez Canales
It is generally believed that Jewish-American fiction began among others with Abraham Cahan's Yekl: A Tale of the New York Ghetto (1896) and The Rise of David Levinsky (1917), Mary Antin's From Plotzk to Boston (1899) and The
Promised Land (1912), Anzia Yezierska's The Bread
Givers (1925) and Henry Roth's Call It
Sleep (1934). This paper studies the evolution of Jewish-American fiction written by women from its earliest phase—the first generation of Jewish writers
to the present time third generation of Jewish-American writers. In order to better understand how this fiction has
evolved throughout its more than a century of existence, I will focus on the significance of Mary Antin's The Promised Land, Cynthia Ozick's The
Shawl (1989) and Allegra Goodman's The Family
Markowitz (1996), the three key novelists who, respectively, represent first-generation, second-generation and third-generation Jewish-American women writers.
© 2011 IUP. All Rights Reserved.
Travel, Hybridity and Counter-Memory in William Dalrymple's In Xanadu: A Quest
-- Sachidananda Mohanty
Why does the Ian Fleming hero's exotic travel adventure continue to evoke such passion in India and other
non-Western societies? The post-Fleming cinematic
avatars such as "Octapussy" seem to typify the classic hero's tryst with
the Orient. In In Xanadu: A Quest William
Dalrymple positions himself on the recognizable terrain of the Western travel
text. However, despite the self parody, the book seems to be trapped by the overall colonial grid and tapestry. The
powerful sweep of the Western male gaze and the subservience of the colonized subject seem to be part of the larger
hermeneutic. Dalrymple's quest for retracing the footsteps of the Venetian brothers, Marco and Nicolo Polo, replicates the journey
of Alexander the Great and other adventurers/buccaneers/travelers. Although he pushes for a monolithic West and
Christianity, the landscape he goes through affirms a hybrid and heterogeneous world and multiple world views which
uphold at once faith and secular modernity. In the process, despite Dalrymple, In Xanadu becomes a unique contemporary
travel text with a lasting appeal.
© 2011 IUP. All Rights Reserved.
Evolving Faces of Delhi: Exploring Mughal Remains and Punjabi New
Delhi with William Dalrymple's City of Djinns
-- Poonam Arora
This paper is an exploration to reveal various faces of Delhi presented in Williwam Dalrymple's City of Djinns. Moving from 1984 anti-Sikh riots to the site of Indraprastha, Delhi has undergone many changes and what we see today is
the eighth city that has been rebuilt after the destruction and reconstruction of previous faces of Delhi. The study
endeavors to examine the effect of Operation Blue Star, anti-Sikh riots and the partition of 1947 on the religious face of Delhi with
the help of Puris, the land lords of the author and other migrants from Pakistan. The impact of these riots can still be
visualized in the eyes of many Punjabis who had to sacrifice their religious symbols-hair and beard. Many times Delhi had
faced this brutality and now in the
21st century it is the New Delhi with its metro and all modern facilities as compensation
to what it had suffered in the past. However, an effort has been made in the study to establish that Delhi is
transforming itself in every phase and therefore, it justifies its position as the capital of India. It is a true representative of cultural
and religious diversity of India and thus arouses interest of all to probe into it.
© 2011 IUP. All Rights Reserved.
Trends in the General English Courses in Indian
Universities
-- Ravindra B Tasildar
To cater to the evergrowing job market demand for communicative English in the
21st century, Indian universities have modified mostly the General English (GE) courses. This paper studies the GE courses offered in the conventional
and professional degree programs in India with the help of some reports of commissions and committees and the past and
the present syllabi of some universities in Maharashtra. It is noticed that GE courses offered in the professional
degree programs are more updated with respect to the objectives, weightage to communication skills, interactive
teaching methods and evaluation procedures. The focus of the GE courses appears to enhance the employability potential of
the students studying in professional colleges.
© 2011 IUP. All Rights Reserved.
Language Learning and Concept Expansion: An Experimental Study
-- G Suvarna Lakshmi
Concepts are mental representation of knowledge. Knowledge and expression of concepts need language. However,
just the knowledge of language without concepts also would make the learners successful in careers. This paper
discusses the theoretical aspects of formation of concepts and relationship between concepts and language. The learning
theories in relation to expansion of concepts are presented. Based on these theoretical aspects, an experimental study
was conducted in five phases where a tremendous change in the performance of the students was observed. The
phases include expressing the existing concepts (self and surroundings), expansion of concepts through familiar genres,
i.e., stories and anecdotes (spiral learning), increasing the pace of expansion through other inputs like news stories and
the fifth phase was through academic texts. The performance of the learners after executing the experimental techniques
was on par with the other group of students. Hence it can be concluded that the concept expansion techniques
would enhance the language proficiency levels of the learners along with knowledge levels.
© 2011 IUP. All Rights Reserved.
Ecocritical Reading of William Golding's Lord of The Flies
-- Rohitash Thapliyal and Shakuntala Kunwar
William Golding's Lord of the Flies, is a study of basic human nature and psyche. With the help of his young
characters, he portrays the horrors of evil which
reside nowhere but inside human beings. Though the young kids are in a place which is
far from corruption, a place with no outside influence, still the evil, inherently present inside human, the insatiable thirst
to conquer and to tame the external anyhow unleashes itself, which leads to the destruction of both nature and the order
and harmony provided through it. This paper would be an attempt to study man's anthropocentric nature in the context
of Golding's novel, and how the nature within becomes a threat to the nature surrounding. The characters of Ralph,
Simon, Piggy, Samneric seem to signify the code of nature. These are the characters who are the carriers of order and harmony
which are best seen in nature and can be learnt through it, as Ralph and his conch - nature and the order, Piggy - wisdom, Simon
- the spiritual side, Samneric - sense of togetherness. These teachings of nature are hardly understood by man, and the
beast residing within soon overpowers all order and wisdom. `Mankind's essential illness' at last comes into force. This
ill-force is represented by Jack and his team which at the onset is referred as `something dark'. This force creates a system of
anarchy where the only objective is to conquer and tame everything. In this quest to conquer, wisdom and spirituality are
butchered and togetherness is subdued. Golding through all the events and characters presented in a way tries to offer the
`anthropocentric' attitude of man. He brilliantly portrays this destructive attitude of man to nature. He presents human as
entropic, contrary to nature which is a system of symbiosis. This anthropocentric human leaves nature "shuddering in flame".
This approach makes man claim everything for him, forgetting that nature is
a separate self-balancing entity.
© 2011 IUP. All Rights Recserved.
BOOK REVIEW
Pulsating Portraits of Telugu Rural Life
--
GRK Murty
C Subba Rao
© 2011 IUP holds the copyright for the review. All Rights Reserved.
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