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Jane
Austen: Postcolonial Readings
--
Meenakshi Mukherjee
This
paper looks at some of the new ways in which Jane Austen is
being read today—bringing her out of the seclusion of
a pastoral pre-industrial England and placing her in the grid
of a globe, where slave routes and trade routes were intersecting
in the oceans, and large parts of the world were being commercially
explored by Britain before they were actually colonized. It
tries to examine `postcolonial' as a term and cites examples
to show how the postcolonial perspective has changed the ways
we look at the texts of 18th and 19th
century British fiction. The paper also takes note of the
sudden spurt in films either directly based on Jane Austen's
novels or obliquely drawing from them.
©
2007 IUP . All Rights Reserved.
Solzhenitsyn
and Exile
-- D Venkataramanan
This
paper discusses the Russian writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's
(1918-) views on exile. Solzhenitsyn was exiled to the United
States of America in 1974 and returned to the erstwhile Soviet
Union after its break-up. Unlike most émigrés
who normally reflect a blind fascination for their homeland,
Solzhenitsyn maintained a balance between his attitude towards
Russia and the West. This paper explores Solzhenitsyn's dialogic
manner of thinking about the problems faced by the two nations
and cultures. The subject position, he takes, poses a difficulty
in fixing Solzhenitsyn's standpoint—the extent to which
he is for or against both Russia and the West. It is this
view of Solzhenitsyn that makes him a `Man of Letters', one
who can contribute towards the rebuilding of contemporary
Russia in the present context of globalization.
©
2007 IUP . All Rights Reserved.
English
in India: Countering the Prejudices
--
Rajeshwar Mittapalli
This
paper seeks to answer some of the charges often leveled against
English in India. It endeavors to give the English teachers
some well-reasoned arguments to counter the attacks from the
detractors of English. This kind of defense is perhaps necessary
in the context of globalization and the role English is poised
to play in India's economic and social life, and the persistence
of old prejudices against it. It is time for the Indians to
take a pragmatic view and accept English as indispensable
for progress.
©
2007 IUP . All Rights Reserved.
Task-based
Learning and Lateral Thinking: A Viable Approach to ELT in
India
-- Sunitha Mishra and
C Muralikrishna
English
Language Teaching (ELT) has always been a challenge in India.
English has been taught in various ways depending on the availability
of infrastructure and expertise. Teaching the language through
group activities, however, is an effective alternative, especially
when it is being taught with the purpose of developing communicative
abilities. However, the kind of English to be taught has remained
a point of contention. While some stress on the importance
of teaching `Standard' English, others talk about the necessity
of teaching Indian English, the way it has evolved. Given
the inherent Indian culture trait to learn, adapt and operate
in various kinds of languages, it will be profitable for our
students to look at English as one of the Indian languages.
A case is made for tapping the efficacy of task-based learning
with emphasis on role-plays and problem solving. While insights
from DeBono's "Lateral Thinking" inform the paper
on the subject, task-based activities, creatively drawn from
a popular O' Henry short story, illustrate the ideas presented
in the paper. Therefore, the purpose of the paper is not to
discuss teaching Standard English, but to facilitate students
to communicate in reasonably good and intelligible English
by equipping them with the competence to take advantage of
the growing market opportunities.
©
2007 IUP . All Rights Reserved.
`The
Almond Aura of a Byzantine Limbo': The Poetry of Palestine
and Iraq
-- Hoshang Merchant
Hoshang
Merchant lived in Nablus and Jerusalem between 1982-1986 where
he taught at An-Najah and Hebrew Universities besides Abu
Dis College of Science (now the University of Palestine).
In this article, he reads some famous Palestinian poets like
Darwish, Qabbani, Kanafani, Fadwa Tuqan, and Iraqi poets like
Al-Malaika and Al-Sayyab. He links the poets to the struggle
against Israel in the case of Palestine, and against Arab
dictators in the case of Iraq. In order to be evenhanded as
a witness to the conflict, he quotes poignant examples of
both the Arab and Jewish life he observed in Israel. In conclusion,
he refers to the Israeli modern poetry of Yehuda Amichai,
which could be read for reconciliation between enemies. The
postscript is on Genet, apostle of Love.
©
2007 IUP . All Rights Reserved.
In
Quest for Reality: An
Approach to Indian Novel in English
-- A
Rama Krishna Rao and S Durga Malleeswari
This
paper attempts to analyze how the Indian novels are in a continuous
quest for the Indian reality. The themes of the novels range
from being a medium for social commentary to a pragmatic representation
of the sociopolitical Indian reality, with the protagonists
often struggling hard to come out of the constraints of society.
The writers used the novel to project the `Indianness' through
its men, manners, moments and milieu. With the alien tongue,
the substance for the Indian fiction was already there in
the subconsciousness of the writer, in the landscape, society,
and culture. With Mulk Raj Anand, Raja Rao, and R K Narayan,
the Indian English novel began its long voyage towards a separate
identity of its own. While Narayan portrayed the Indian life
scenario with all its whims in a light-hearted vein, Anand,
with a realistic reflection of contemporary social reality,
articulated the agony of the exploited class with profound
sympathy. Raja Rao dealt with the metaphysical themes and
man's spiritual pursuit of liberty. The emergence of the women
writers has been a major achievement in the Indian literary
setting. They tried to make sense of the changing new world
and their novels have to be read against the backdrop of the
Indian society which assigned only a secondary role to women.
They aptly reflected the changing feminine sensibility and
a redefining of the conventional roles of the Indian woman.
A concern for the changing Indian social scenario is seen
in Kamala Markandaya. With an insider's eye Ruth Prawer Jhabvala
projected an India oscillating between the Western thought
and traditional values. Thus, the chronicle of Indian English
novel is really the story of a changing India, and these novelists
are all in quest of multiple and tantalizing reality.
©
2007 IUP . All Rights Reserved.
(Agri)Culture
in The Grapes of Wrath and Baromas: Beyond Postcolonialism
-- Dharamdas M Shende
The
paper attempts to examine the space beyond post-colonialism,
in the context of all-enveloping globalization, which, according
to thinkers like Frantz Fanon, is a return of the colonizer
in the form of MNCs. The author takes up two novels—The
Grapes of Wrath and Baromas—by John Steinbeck
and Sadanand Deshmukh, writers who are geographically apart,
but are deeply concerned about the inhuman exploitation of
the marginalized. The author argues that (Agri)Culture is
the viable and potent ethic of resistance to contain the onslaught
of globalization. It is in the past that the solutions for
the present problems lie, avers the author. The plight of
the Joad family evoked by Steinbeck in his epic novel and
of the family of Eknath by Deshmukh in his touching novel
brings sharply to the painful awareness of the reader the
baleful impact of over-industrialization in one case and the
heartless urbanization in the other. A timely caution against
excessive enthusiasm for globalization in the backdrop of
literary constructs, the paper calls for reevaluation of the
fashionable economic policies.
©
2007 IUP . All Rights Reserved.
Cultural
Dialogue through Travel Writing: Vikram Seth's From Heaven
Lake: Travels through Sinkiang and Tibet and Amitav Ghosh's
Dancing in Cambodia, At Large in Burma
--
Padma Murale
In
recent times, travel writing has crossed the borderline between
fiction and non-fiction, and has de-centered the prevailing
canons. The accounts of travel today constitute significant
documents of culture, and writers present travel experience
imaginatively and construct or interpret reality from their
own angle of vision. Travel writing, thus, becomes an attempt
to introduce `self' to `the other', providing an opportunity
to the author to explore the other culture and record his
aown experiences in the context of the cultural dialogue in
the `contact zine'. The paper attemots to examine the cultural
exploration and dialogue in From Heaven Lake: Travels through
Sinkiang and Tibet by Vikram Seth and Dancing in the
Cambidia, At Large in Burma by Amitav Ghose, and to map
the individual abilities of the authors to move through varied
experiences in terms of time and space.
©
2007 IUP . All Rights Reserved.
Travelogue
as (Post)Colonial Satire: Mokkapati
Narasimha Sastry's Barrister Parvatheesam
-- K
Suneetha Rani
Mokkapati
Narasimha Sastry's novel Barrister Parvatheesam is
a timeless satire on the problems of cultural interaction
arising from travel. From a postcolonial perspective, the
travelogue narrates a variety of incidents and issues, which
confronted the early 20th century Indian travelers
in the West. Though the controversy whether the work is autobiographical
continues, it skillfully reverses the trajectory of travel
writing concerning India. The author is a pioneer in Telugu
writing in depicting the relations and responses of a citizen
of a colonized country to the so-called "civilized"
country with abundant good humor, but without a trace of rancor.
The paper attempts to place the novel in the tradition of
postcolonial travel writing.
©
2003 K Suneetha Rani. This paper was earlier published in
Jouvert, Vol. 7, No. 2. Reprinted with permission. |
