Petals of Blood

Petals of Blood 

Hello, I am Emisha Ravani, Writing this blog as a thinking activity which is given by Yesha madam for the text Petals of Blood. where we have to discuss given questions. 

“Words are the food, body, mirror, and sound of thought. Do you now see the danger of words that want to come out but are unable to do so?”

― Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o

Ngugi wa Thiong’o, original name James Thiong’o Ngugi, born January 5, 1938, Limuru, Kenya, Kenyan writer who was considered East Africa's leading novelist. His popular Weep Not, Child (1964) was the first major novel in English by an East African. As he became sensitized to the effects of colonialism in Africa, Ngugi adopted his traditional name and wrote in the Bantu language of Kenya's Kikuyu people. The main themes that he focuses on are the legacy of colonialism, traditionalism, cultural nationalism, and the role of the intellectual in the postcolony. His works navigate the colonial and postcolonial contradictions of Kenyan and Gikuyu society and the tensions between modernity and the past.

Petals of Blood (1977) deals with social and economic problems in East Africa after independence, particularly the continued exploitation of peasants and workers by foreign business interests and a greedy indigenous bourgeoisie.

1. Neo-colonialism: with reference to Petals of Blood

2. Write a note on the first chapter of the novel (Interrogation of all characters)

3. Write a note on the seventh chapter of the novel (changing/developing Ilmorog)

4. Write a note on the last chapter of novel (Karega and his future towards being a communist)

1. Neo-colonialism: with reference to Petals of Blood

What is Neo-Colonialism?

According to Oxford:

The control of the economic and political systems of one state by a more powerful state, usually the control of a developing country by a developed one.

The control of less developed countries by developed ones through indirect means.

In the simple words we can say that this term came after post colonialism. There were settlers who colonized many colonies and they started rule over there. Then when they left at that time the colonized countries were having so poor condition in each aspect. Economically, politically as well as powerless. Then colonizers started to control by various ways from their land only. That is Neo-Colonialism. Here are some posters which will help to understand this term in deep.    

The term neocolonialism was originally applied to European policies that were seen as schemes to maintain control of African and other dependencies. The event that marked the beginning of this usage was a meeting of European heads of government in Paris in 1957, where six European leaders agreed to include their overseas territories within the European Common Market under trade arrangements that were seen by some national leaders and groups as representing a new form of economic domination over French-occupied Africa and the colonial territories of Italy, Belgium , and the Netherlands. The agreement reached at Paris was codified in the Treaty of Rome (1957), which established the European Economic Community (EEC), or Common Market.

Neocolonialism came to be seen more generally as involving a coordinated effort by former colonial powers and other developed countries to block growth in developing countries and retain them as sources of cheap raw materials and cheap labour. This effort was seen as closely associated with the Cold War and, in particular, with the U.S. policy known as the Truman Doctrine. Under that policy the U.S. government offered large amounts of money to any government prepared to accept U.S. protection from communism. That enabled the United States to extend its spheres of influence and, in some cases, to place foreign governments under its control. The United States and other developed countries also ensured the subordination of developing countries, critics argue, by interfering in conflicts and helping in other ways to install regimes that were willing to act for the benefit of foreign companies and against their own country’s interests.

Neocolonial governance is seen as operating through indirect forms of control and, in particular, by means of the economic, financial, and trade policies of transnational corporations and global and multilateral institutions.

Neocolonial Tendencies: Petals of Blood

“… and there was much blood, many motherless, many maimed legs, many broken homes and all because a few hungry souls sick with greed wanted everything for themselves. They took the virtues that arise from that as true virtues of the human heart. They practised charity, pity; they even made laws and rules of good conduct for those they had made motherless, for those they had driven into the streets. Tell me … would we need pity, charity, generosity, kindness if there were no poor and miserable to pity and be kind to?”

― Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o,Petals of Blood

Ngugi aiming to arouse the colonized people's awareness of the prospective risks of acquiring the colonial languages and the emergence of the local elites working in harmony with the white colonizers after formal colonization ends, Thiong’o attempts to be an inspirational source of regaining anti colonialist national culture and system for his society.

His main concerns for the colonialism is the language which is very sharp weapon for colonisers and the elit people who were the later colonisers. As one can consider here the subaltern nation the Africa or the Kenya as well as. Ngugi has used very innovative way to show us the each aspects of the process. 

Wanja = Kenya, Africa. What money wanted was body. Just like the colonizers were desired to African land. 

Let us go to the whole portrayal of Wanja's character in the novel :

Wanja is the granddaughter of Nyakinyua and is an intelligent, passionate, intuitive, and tenacious woman. As a young woman, she had to leave school because she had a relationship with, and became pregnant by, the wealthy businessman Kimeria. Her father wanted little to do with her, so she struck out on her own and ended up as a barmaid and prostitute. She grieved for the child she had borne and then left to die, always desiring to have a child of her own again. She came to Ilmorog to be near her grandmother, which is where she befriended Munira and Abdulla. She had sex with Munira once, hoping to conceive, but did not want to be in a relationship with him. She did have a relationship with Karega, but he left the village. Finally, she saw Abdulla as a true companion, and it is suggested that he is the father of the child that she is carrying at the end of the novel. It was Wanja who was a core figure in the New Ilmorog, helping Abdulla grow his business and then, after the businessmen shut them down, ran a successful whorehouse. She was tormented with the sense of colluding with evil, but her life philosophy was "eat or be eaten."

By this life of the Wanja we can come to know that This is actual position of african women in the society to live in. Women was at the periphery or the 'Oppressed' or 'Other'. Women were the at the edge and to seduce or sexual abusement were the very common. That is why one can say that as Wanja was the seduced physical by the various men's strong desire in a same way the land of Africa was desired by the colonisers.   

In Writers in Politics (1981) Thiong'o quoted a significant comment Regarding his novel Petals of Blood :

"No country, No people can be truly independent for as long as their economy and culture are dominated by foreigners!...This was what I was trying to show in Petals of Blood: that imperialism can never develop our country or develop us , Kenyans"

By this statement we can get the idea what Ngugi was thinking about the colonialism and the whole process.

Thank you!

Revolution Twenty 20

Revolution Twenty20 by Chetan Bhagat

Hello, I am Emisha Ravani, Writing this blog as a thinking activity which is assigned by Dr. Dilip Barad sir for the chapter of novel Revolution Twenty 20. 

“Once upon a time, in small-town India, there lived two intelligent boys.

One wanted to use his intelligence to make money.

One wanted to use his intelligence to start a revolution.

The problem was, they both loved the same girl.”

Character List – Revolution Twenty 20

Chetan Bhagat – Motivational Speaker / Self (author)

Gopal Mishra – Director, Ganga Tech Institute – Private Academic Institute

Aarti Pradhan – School classmate and friend -Working as Guest Relations Officer, Ramada Hotel

Raghav Kashyap – School Friend, IITian, Journalist, ran journal ‘Revolution 2020’, works with Dainik Media House

Raghav’s father – IITian, Engineer in BHEL (Bharat Heavy Electricals Ltd)

Dubey Uncle – Lawyer, Gopal’s father land dispute legal case

Ghanshyam taya-ji – Gopal’s father’s elder brother + Neeta taya-ji – his wife; Ajay – his son; Bitoo – Ajay’s son

Anil Kashyap – Raghav’s father

Pratap Brij Pradhan – Aarti’s father, District Magistrate; His father (Aarti’s grandfather) – ex-politician – ex-CM Brij Pradhan

Simran Gill – School Teacher

Mr. Jha – Mr. Singh – Mr. Rai – JSR Coaching Class tutors – engineering entrance exams

Baba – Gopal’s father – School teacher – early retired due to ill-health, lives on pension in poor condition

Phoolchand – boatman friend of Gopal – Assi Ghat

Vineet – a Varanasi boy at Kota; he gets in private college after low rank in AIEEE – RSTC-Riddhi Siddhi Technical College – Sari business owner

R L Soni – Landlord – his house room is rented by Gopal at Kota

Manoj Dutta – a room resident at RL Soni’s house who hanged himself

Sanjeev sir ‘Mr Pulley’ – Physics teacher; Mr Verma ‘Trignometry-swamy’ – Maths teacher; Mr Jadeja ‘Balance-ji’ – Chemistry teacher – Shishir sir (partner-owner) at Career Path, Kota

Prateek – a friend at Kota (from Raipur)

Verma Family – Country Liquor business family – now opened a college.

Jyoti Verma – Dean of private college – Chintumal College

Mahesh Verma - Sri Ganesh College

Sunil – Manager, Sunshine Events - helps at an education fair – admission in private college & plans a college with the help of Shukla-ji

MLA Shukla-ji – Raman Lal Shukla; Nikhil and Akhil – his sons, studying in the US

Girish Bedi – experienced Education Consultant

Prof MC Shrivastava – retired prof to be dean of Ganga Tech Education College

Mangesh Tiwari – Vice Chancellor

Amar Trivedi – Marketing Head of Varanasi Times

Shailesh Gupta – sales manager – Dainik

Ashok Kumar – Editor-in-Chief, Dainik

Jhule Yadav – AICTE Inspector – ex-director NIT Allahabad

Bhansali – Inspector Member, AICTE Inspection Team

Nitesh – party worker of Shukla-ji – they ransacked Raghav’s office

Ankit – office boy in Raghav’s R2020 garage-run printing press-cum-office

Bishnu-ji and Keshav – poor old farmer and his son (asking Raghav to make story about sewage problem in Roshanpura)

Bela – Aarti’s colleague at Reception Counter, Ramada Hotel

Vinod – Shukla-ji’s aide – who supplied girls for ‘escort’

Jayant -faculty, Ganga tech College – Placement Coordinator

Mrs. Awasthi – professor of Mechanical engineering

Roshni and Pooja – the call girls sent by Vinod

1) Social realism in the novel

Indian English novelists, Mulk Raj Anand and R. K. Narayan, Chetan Bhagat is very much interested in depicting social issues and evils in his literary works. The author has painted the picture of the young generation of India and the malpractices in the society in his all novels. 

Five Point Someone (2004) criticizes the Indian education system which is based on the bookish knowledge only. His second novel One Night @ the Call Center (2005) depicts the Indian youth fighting against some odds for career in commercial sector. The third novel The 3 Mistakes of My Life (2008) throws light on the sport, commerce and communal carnage on the name of religion. Bhagat’s fourth novel 2 States: The Story of My Marriage (2009) discusses the issue of cultural conflict. His fifth novel Revolution 2020: Love, Corruption, Ambition (2011) delineates the hot topic of corruption in education. Recently, Chetan Bhagat has published his sixth novel Half Girlfriend (2015) centering the youth. Thus, almost all of his novels are overloaded with social realism and the youth shading light on their ambitions, struggle, love affairs, marriage institutes, corrupt politics and media culture. 

By this theme of Social Realism, We can see the evils of society and the side of politics. When we focus on the main aspect we can find that private and corrupt education system is portrayed. The main three characters are wanted to became something and how they going in their lives. In literature, the term ‘realism’ is associated with a number of prefixes that varies its trends of presentation. There may be philosophical realism, magic realism, surrealism, hallucinatory realism, social realism and many more. 

Social realism is a literary technique that presents a true picture of society. It also mirrors the life as it is and offers social commentary. Basically, Writer uses the this theme to show the reality of society to their own people. By this they could throw light to that and expect the change or improvement. 

2) Significance of the title 'Revolution Twenty20'

Chetan Bhagat has given the title to the novel in the very intelligent way. It is too artistically written. As we can see that subtitle is 'Love. Corruption. Ambition'. Bhagat has woven that three themes in the story very well. All characters are representative of the youth of India as well as the political side and how corruption is widespread in the India and still go on. How privatization is happening in the education system. What are the ethics , values and ambitions of the students and the educators as well. How one's wrong ambition make him/her corrupt because of their strong desire and the ambition which dragged into the ocean of corruption. What indian youth is thinking about Love. How they make it so important rather than their right way of spending youthful and powerful days for the career and life itself. 

One interpretation can be done is that the way 'TWENTY20' is written. When novel got the shape at that time there was the trend of cricket match and might Bhagat has got the inspiration from that to put title in this way. Title is like spelled in an unique way like the spelling of 'Love' is in the 'Revolution'. When we go the story we find that this the story of love more than the revolution. Because Bhagat has make it happen by the side of love and might that is the only intention to make Gopal's character as a narrator and he tells the whole story.    

3) Do you think that an opportunity of a good novel is wasted because the story is told from Gopal's perspective? Can it be better if narrated from Raghav or Aarti's perspective? How would it be better if it was narrated from Raghav or Aarti's perspective?

The story is told by the Gopal's perspective as we can see that it is the story of love and one cay say love triangle rather than the revolution. Which is reflected in the title of the novel even. When we go the character we find :

Gopal = Love , Corruption  

Raghav = Revolution

By the portrayed characteristics of the characters we can found this and based on that we can say that if the story would narrated by the Raghav's perspective it would be better because we got this from Gopal's perspective so it is more the side of the theme of Love and if it would go with Raghav's perspective then may it get the revolutionary stance. And by that quality it could at the top row. 

What is Storytelling?

Storytelling is the social and cultural activity of sharing stories, sometimes with improvisation, theatrics or embellishment. Every culture has its own stories or narratives, which are shared as a means of entertainment , education, cultural preservation or instilling moral values. Crucial elements of stories and storytelling include plot, characters and narrative point of view. The term "storytelling" can refer specifically to oral storytelling but also broadly to techniques used in other media to unfold or disclose the narrative of a story.

When we go to this novel as it is coming to us might Chetan Bhagat wants to show us the many purposes that why he made Gopal as narrator of the story and why he is telling by his perspective. It is always there when people tell any story in which they have played a role at that time they always like to be the story by their side more likely. That is one of the common human tendencies. So we can see the personal traits of the character as a narrator here.   

When we think of Aarti's perspective, We feel that if Aarti become the narrator of the story then she would complain more about her family and novel might be turn into the story which revolves around her life only and may be it also become woman centric more rather than man centric. 

In a nutshell, This novel has a story of young three people who are having very different ambitions in life. And Chetan Bhagat has given platform to perform their ambitions. 

Thank you!

Unit - 3 The Mechanics of Writing

Unit - 3 The Mechanics of Writing

Hello, I am Emisha Ravani, Writing this blog as a thinking activity for the paper of research methodology which is assigned by Megha Ma'am. Where we have to write the discussion which happened in the videos by experts.

Research may start for one of many reasons: someone sees a problem with a business practice, has the desire to innovate and create something new, seeks to understand some natural process, or seeks to know more about an issue in order to make things work better or mitigate a condition. All these and more are reasons to conduct research. Good research starts with selecting a researchable problem.

Once you have your research question solidified, start your literature review as soon as possible. One reason to search the related literature right away is to make sure that someone else has not already researched the same topic. Keep in mind that if someone has already done the study you would like to do, you can still check their conclusions to see if they have recommended an area of further research. Also, check the date of their study. If it was quite some time ago, replicating their study with a few new twists just might expose some interesting conclusions. There are several other reasons to conduct a thorough literature review:

- It will increase your confidence in your topic….

- It can provide you with new ideas and approaches….

- It can inform you about other researchers whom you may wish to contact….

- It can show you how others have handled methodological and design issues….

- It can reveal previously unknown sources of data….

- It can introduce you to new research tools and techniques tested by other researchers….

- It can reveal methods of dealing with problem situations….

- It can help you interpret and make sense of your findings.

Video 1 By Kalyan Chattopadhyay

Formal vocab and informal vocab

Academic writing is a formal style of writing used in universities and scholarly publications. You’ll encounter it in journal articles and books on academic topics, and you’ll be expected to write your essays, research papers, and dissertation in academic style.

Academic writing aims to convey information in an impartial way. The goal is to base arguments on the evidence under consideration, not the author’s preconceptions. All claims should be supported with relevant evidence, not just asserted.

To avoid bias, it’s important to represent the work of other researchers and the results of your own research fairly and accurately. This means clearly outlining your methodology and being honest about the limitations of your research.

The formal style used in academic writing ensures that research is presented consistently across different texts, so that studies can be objectively assessed and compared with other research.

Because of this, it’s important to strike the right tone with your language choices. Avoid informal language, including slang, contraction, clichés, and conversational phrases.

Kalyan sir starts his lecture with very good explanation of what is formal vocab and informal vocab with examples.  

Subjective, objective

The problem of using subjective term and objective term. How one can use both the term at the specific place and time.

Contradicts

The contradicts which can be used to put argument which are opposites.

perspective (Hardy’s nature study with new fresh idea of ecology concern)

In this point, the discussion is like when we do research we are responsible to give a new argument or the direction by our perspective.

• Examples of formal and informal texts

1. These findings are replicated.

2. the discussion in this paragraph will be confine to a general description of the problem.

Both are formal because passive and objective language is feature of academic writing.

• Couple of techniques for academic writing

1. Divide your texts into paragraphs. these paragraphs develop a particular aspect. Causley related. topical sentences. Supported sentences. Concluding sentences(summary). Findings.

2. Sudden(signalling) expressions. Therefore, usually, generally etc.

• Indicate the breakup or turn of the argument.

Introduction and conclusion should not be same. That should be in passive.

Using qustions – self asking questions.

Careful thought – analysis- comparison- decision making.

Writing critically

By this point, Sir made clear that academic writing and critical writing is so different to each other. Further He has given the definition and how these are differ that also.

‘Padding’

Argument, comparison, accepted, rejected, supported sentences.

Remove Irrelevant sort of details.

Critics argument – why their arguments are important to our research.

Academic writing and critical writing are different. Seminal thinkers of research area.

Established own voice

When we do research we are doing that to find new and fresh gap or idea so we can use scholars findings or arguments to support our findings or arguments but we must put or establish our own voice in our work.

You can not use all the read materials

Hit the main thing of your research

In our introduction we have to specify our main quota of research so the readers of our work can find easily and they do not find boring to read. 

Importance of defence

Emotive, (with emotions)

This how in this video Kalyan sir explained things very precise and also how people, scholars, critics and researcher can look at our work. What can be their problems that discussed very well. 

Video 2 By Atanu Bhattacharya

General overview of academic writing

Basic principles

1.What not to do

2.What can be done

3.Web tools

4.Case study

The scale in academic writing

Publication scale – recognize journal

Technical terms, huge number of jargons, wide theoretical work

Alan David Sokal

How the problematic research can be painful by example of breast cancer.

A few takeaways

1. Writing has material effects

2. Avoid massive jargonization

3. Research and publication ethics

4. Carefully choose the topic

• Writing it up: a few tips

Introduction last

Create as indexed literature review

Be sure of the triangulated methods

• Do not repeat the same arguments

• Use available digital tools

• Follow the literature

Suggested many helpful digital tools for references as well as language

• Zotero
• Mendeley
• MS Word
• Language help
• Grammarly
• OWL (Online Writing Lab)
• Reverso
• Excelsior Online writing lab

Avoiding plagiarism

Plagiarism is presenting someone else’s work or ideas as your own, with or without their consent, by incorporating it into your work without full acknowledgement. All published and unpublished material, whether in manuscript, printed or electronic form, is covered under this definition. Plagiarism may be intentional or reckless, or unintentional. Under the regulations for examinations, intentional or reckless plagiarism is a disciplinary offence.

There are many reasons to avoid plagiarism. You have come to university to learn to know and speak your own mind, not merely to reproduce the opinions of others - at least not without attribution. At first it may seem very difficult to develop your own views, and you will probably find yourself paraphrasing the writings of others as you attempt to understand and assimilate their arguments. However it is important that you learn to develop your own voice. You are not necessarily expected to become an original thinker, but you are expected to be an independent one - by learning to assess critically the work of others, weigh up differing arguments and draw your own conclusions. Students who plagiarise undermine the ethos of academic scholarship while avoiding an essential part of the learning process.

You should avoid plagiarism because you aspire to produce work of the highest quality. Once you have grasped the principles of source use and citation, you should find it relatively straightforward to steer clear of plagiarism. Moreover, you will reap the additional benefits of improvements to both the lucidity and quality of your writing. It is important to appreciate that mastery of the techniques of academic writing is not merely a practical skill, but one that lends both credibility and authority to your work, and demonstrates your commitment to the principle of intellectual honesty in scholarship.

• Types:

Verbatim of rephrasing without acknowledgement

Inappropriate collaboration

Other assistance without acknowledgement

Cheating (copying others’ work)

Duplication (submitting same work for different courses/ programs/ degrees)

Research fabrication and falsification

Using computer networks for false attribution

• In term of technology study for example,

Mapping the terrain of colonial sci tech

Tracing the responses to this terrain

Early narrative forms in Bengal

Contemporary manifestations

• Sum up:

Linguistics choices – the ‘pitching’ of the paper/dissertation/thesis

Discourse choices – how do we organize it, lines or argument etc.

Topic choices- availability / non-availability of material, synchronic/diachronic

Ethical choices- plagiarism etc.

Video 3 By Atanu Bhattacharya

1.Triangulation method

2.What are the advantages of the merging two chapters like first of introduction and literature review?

3. humanities and social sciences

4. questionnaire method and its limitations (unreliable)

5. thematic analysis

• Language writing in academic writing

Formulating propositions/ defining

Can, may, often etc.

Whatever we are going to state in our research is not final so we should be with these kind of propositions.

• Swales’s CARS Model

Definition

Comparative Literature & Translation Studies - Unit 4

Comparative Literature & Translation Studies - Unit 4

Hello, I am Emisha Ravani, writing this blog for the thinking activity which is assigned by Dilip Barad sir for the comparative Literature & Translation Studies. Here, I will discuss the three essays by various writers. 

1. 

I am sharing 'I am sharing 'Introduction _ History in Translation ' with you' with you.pptx from HinabaSarvaiya

2.Shifting Centres and Emerging Margins: Translation and the Shaping of Modernist Poetic Discourse in Indian Poetry

This chapter examines the role played by translation in shaping a modernist poetic sensibility in some of the major literary traditions of India in the twentieth century, between 1950 and 1970.

The chapter will study examples from Bengali, Malayalam and Marathi, to understand how such translations of modern Western poets were used to breach the hegemony of prevailing literary sensibilities and poetic modes. Many of the major Indian poets - such as Buddhadeb Bose, Agyeya, Gopalakrishna Adiga, Dilip Chitre and Ayyappa Paniker - were also translators. Their translations were 'foreignising' translations that disrupted cultural codes that legislated regimes of reading and writing poetry. Little magazines that played a critical role in opening up the poetic discourse.

Poets such as Neruda and Parra were widely translated into Indian languages during this phase. In this context, translation enacted a critical act of evaluation, a creative act of intervention, and a performative act of legitimation, in evolving a new poetic during the modernist phase of Indian poetry.

Translation was integral to the project of modernism in Indian languages, in assimilating a new poetic into the horizon of the 'native' reader's expectations as well as in contesting the claims of prevailing aesthetic norms by breaching its autonomy and authority.

The communal riots and killings that followed the Partition, the perceived failure of the Nehruvian project of modernity and the consequent erosion of idealism which had inspired an earlier generation of writers committed to socialist realism and Romantic nationalism.

André Lefevere's concept of translation as refraction/ rewriting, the chapter argues that 'rewritings' or 'refractions' found in the 'less obvious form of criticism..., commentary, historiography (of the plot summary of famous works cum evaluation type, in which the evaluation is unabashedly based on the current concept of what "good" literature should be), teaching, the collection of works in anthologies, the production of plays' (2000, 235) are also instances of translation. Hence, an essay on T. S. Eliot in Bengali by Sudhindranath Dutta, or a scathing critique in Malayalam on the poetic practices of Vallathol Narayana Menon by Ayyappa Paniker, can also be described as 'translational' writings as they have elements of translation embedded in them.

Modernist writers were responding to the internal dynamics of their own traditions in selectively assimilating an alien poetic that could be regressive or subversive depending on the context and the content.

An elaboration on the relation between 'modernity' and 'modernism' in the Indian context will need a separate chapter. For the purpose of our discussion, it may be broadly stated that 'modernity' designates an epochal period of wide-ranging transformations brought about by the advent of colonialism, capitalist economy, industrial mode of production, Western models of education, assimilation of rationalist temper, resurgence of nationalist spirit and emergence of social, political, legal, juridical and educational institutions that constituted a normative subjectivity embodied with cosmopolitan and individualist world views.

The project of modernity in India was implicated in colonialism and imperialism. This colonial modernity informed literary and cultural movements, beginning from the reformist movement of the nineteenth century to the modernist movement of the mid-twentieth century.

When ideologies like nationalism and spirituality become apparatuses of the state, a section of the intelligentsia has no option other than to seek refuge in bunkers of individualism'.

The term 'modernism' implies a literary/artistic movement that was characterised by experimentation, conscious rejection of the nationalist/ Romantic as well as the popular, and the cultivation of an individualist, cosmopolitan and insular world view. In the European context, it signified a set of tendencies in artistic expression and writing styles of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries through a new aesthetic that was iconoclastic, insular and elitist.

While the modernism that emerged in Indian literatures shared many of these defining features, its political affiliations and ideological orientations were markedly different. Due to its postcolonial location, the Indian modernism did not share the imperial or metropolitan aspirations of its European counterpart. It invested heavily in regional cosmopolitan traditions. It was oppositional in content and questioned the colonial legacies of the nationalist discourse. It was elitist and formalistic and deeply distrustful of the popular domain.

How are we to evaluate the modernisms that emerged in the postcolonial phase in India? Critics such as Simon Gikandi, Susan Friedman, Laura Doyle and Laura Winkiel, and Aparna Dharwadker have argued that non-Western modernisms are not mere derivative versions of a European hegemonic practice.

The Eurocentric nature of the discourse on modernism can be laid bare only by documenting the 'modernisms that emerged in non-Western societies. This will enable us to reimagine the centre-periphery dialectic in terms of a dialogic between peripheries.

The emerging problematic will have to contend with issues of ideological differences between the Western modernism and the Indian one, the different trajectories they traversed as a result of the difference in socio- political terrains and the dynamics of the relations between the past and the present in the subcontinent, which has a documented history of more than five thousand years. The problematic that informs this argument is manifest in the critiques of Eurocentric accounts of modernism by Gikandi, Friedman, Doyle and Winkiel, and Rebecca L. Walkonwitz, in different ways.

In the context of Bengali, as Amiya Dev has observed, 'It was not because they imbibed modernism that the adhunik [modernist] Bengali writers turned away from Rabindranath; on the contrary, Modernism was the means by which they turned away from Rabindranath and they had to turn away, for their history demanded it' Commenting on the role of Kannada modernists, R. Sasidhar writes,

If European modernism was drawn between the euphoric and the reactive, in Kannada the precipitate modernism was drawn between the Brahminical and the non-Brahminical. Just as the euphoric and the reactive modernisms were part of the internal dynamics of modernism itself, so also the Brahmanical and the non-Brahmanical modernisms in Kannada were part and parcel of a modernism that came as a reaction to the Nehruvian environment. (in Satchidanandan 2001, 34)

Translation enables us to delineate the complex artistic and ideological undercurrents that shaped the course of modernism in Indian literatures. To discuss this, we will look at three representative modernist authors from three separate Indian literary traditions - Sudhindranath Dutta (1901-60) from Bengali, B. S. Mardhekar (1909-56) from Marathi and Ayyappa Paniker (1936-2004) from Malayalam. These authors help us see the chronological trajectory of modernism across Indian literatures.

Translation is central to the modernist poetic as it unfolded in these literary traditions. Each of these three authors was bilingual and wrote essays in English as well as their own languages, outlining their new poetic, thus preparing the reader for new poetic modes.

Buddhadeb Bose, another Bengali modernist, rendered 112 poems of Charles Baudelaire's The Flowers of Evil into Bengali, apart from translating Rainer Maria Rilke, Friedrich Hölderlin, Ezra Pound, e. e. cummings, Wallace Stevens and Boris Pasternak. Ayyappa Paniker translated European poets into Malayalam, while B. S. Mardhekar's Arts and the Man (which was published in England in 1937) was a treatise on formalist aesthetic that legitimated modernist practice.

Their profound understanding of Western philosophy and artistic/literary traditions equipped these three writers with the critical capacity to see the significance and limitations of the West.

The case for the modernist poetic is argued in a persuasive manner in the context of the everyday world and its needs. In another essay, 'The Highbrow", he observes, 'I agree with Virginia Woolf that creative artists must from time to time seek shelter within the much maligned Ivory Tower'.

Dutta highlights Eliot's commitment to tradition as 'revolutionary in the fullest sense of the term'. He adds, "But I am convinced that if civilization is to survive the atomic war, Mr. Eliot's ideal must become widely accepted, so that in the oases that may escape destruction it may be cherished through the interregnum' (55). Obviously, Dutta's endorsement of Eliot's world view has to be seen in relation to his critique of contemporary Indian society. Modernism in India was part of a larger decolonising project. It was not a mindless celebration of Western values and the European avant-garde.

Kurkshetram is a poem of 294 lines in five sections. The opening lines of the Bhagavad Gita are cited as the epigraph of the poem, thus setting a high moral and critical tone in relation to contemporary life and society. As in Eliot's The Waste Land, Kurukshetram's opening lines communicate a pervasive decline of moral values and a disruption of the organic rhythms of society:

The eyes suck and sip The tears that spurt;

The nerves drink up the coursing blood;

And it is the bones that

Eat the marrow here

While the skin preys on the bones

The roots turn carnivore

As they prey on the flowers While the earth in bloom

Clutches and tears at the roots. (Paniker 1985, 14-15)

The title, 'Kurukshetram', signifies the place where the epic battle that forms the…

The second section of the poem retreats into a private space, away from these public images. The inner movement of the poetic structure signifies the undercurrents of a conflict that cannot be paraphrased in moral terms. In this sense, the poem defies the representational structure of the mimetic type. Lines such as, 'Rose of my dream, why do you wear the fevered look? / Singer of my vision, why do you droop and wilt!" (18), invoke subterranean depths of the mind from where memories of an organic community speak to the poet. But this vision of harmony is short-lived, as the self once again relapses into its infernal vision of collapse and disruption. The torments of dream, desire and despair interrupt the existence: poem, and the poet recognises the futility…

The third section returns to the public world of conflicts. The mythical characters of Sugriva, Vibhishana, Vashistha, Lord Ram, Arjuna and Oedipus are invoked in this section. The wisdom encoded in myths is now inaccessible to modern men and women, who are diminished into fragmented dehumanised figures. Since the self inhabits a violated space, it lacks the power to know itself.

sem4 comparative study.pptx from Khushbumakwana3

Comparative Literature & Translation Studies - Unit 3

Comparative Literature & Translation Studies - Unit 3

Hello, I am Emisha Ravani, writing this blog for the thinking activity which is assigned by Dilip Barad sir for the comparative Literature & Translation Studies. Here, I will discuss the three essays by various writers.1. Translation and Literary history : An Indian View Ganesh Devy" 2. On Translating a Tamil Poem by A.K Ramanujan. 

1. Translation and Literary history : An Indian View Ganesh Devy"

Translation and literary History An Indian View by Ganesh Devi.pptx from Nilay Rathod

2. On Translating a Tamil Poem by A.K Ramanujan

In this article, there are three parts and it is about Tamil literature history and it's development during that the problems has being face and all possible solutions. 

It is starting like 'How does one translate a poem from another time, another culture, another language? Of, the literatures of the world at that time, Sanskrit in India, Greek and Latin in Europe, Hebrew in the Middle East, and Chinese in the Far East were Tamil's contemporaries. By this argument he is making clear front of us that Tamil is as old as these languages.

The subject of this paper is not the fascinating external history of this literature, but translation, the transport of poems from classical Tamil to modem English; the hazards, the damages in transit, the secret paths, and the lucky bypasses.

Further, He out the question like ' How shall we divide up and translate this poem? What are the units of translation? We may begin with the sounds. We find at once that the sound system of Tamil is very different from English. For instance, Old Tamil has six nasal consonants: a labial, a dental, an alveolar, a retroflex, a palatal and a velar-m, n, n. ii, n, n-three of which are not distinctive in English. How shall we translate a six-way system into a three-way English system (m, n, n).

English words may end in stops, as in 'cut, cup, tuck,' etc.; Tamil words do not. When we add up these myriad systemic differences, we cannot escape the fact that phonologies are systems unto themselves (even as grammatical, syntactic, lexical, semantic systems too are, as we shall see). Any unit we pick is defined by its relations to other units. So it is impossible to translate the phonology of one language into that of another-even in a related, culturally neighboring language. We can map one system on to another, but never reproduce it. A poem is identical only with itself-if that.

We should translate metrical systems. Metre is a second-order organization of the sound system of a language, and partakes of all the above problems and some more. So by putting this he going towards the Metre in his article.

Tamil Metre depends on the presence of long vowels and double consonants, and on closed and open syllables defined by such vowels and consonants. For instance. in the first word of the above poem, annay, the first syllable is heavy because it is closed (an-), the second is heavy because it has a long vowel. There is nothing comparable in English to this way of counting feet and combinations (marked in the 'text above by spaces). Even if we take familiar devices like rhyme, they ':do not have the same values in different languages. English has a long tradition of end-rhymes-but Tamil has a long tradition of second syllable consonant-rhymes. In the above poem the first, second and fourth . . ,lines have n as the second consonant in the line-initial words annay, ten "and man.

The 'tradition of one poetry would be the innovation of another.

Looking at the Grammar briefly, Tamil has no copula verbs for equational sentences in the present tense, as in English, e.g., 'Tom is a teacher'; no degrees of adjectives as in English, e.g., 'sweet, sweeter, sweetest’; no articles like 'a, an, the': and So on. Tamil expresses the semantic equivalents of these grammatical devices by various other means. The lies and ambiguities of one language are not those of another.

No translation can be 'literal,' or 'word for word'. That is where the impossibility lies. The only possible translation is a 'free' one.

Remarkably, Tamil syntax is mostly left- branching. English syntax is, by and large, rightward. Even a date like 'the 19th of June, 1988,' when translated into Tamil, would look like '1988, June, 19.' The Tamil sentence is the mirror image of the English one and will also be true for English Languages. Postpositions instead of prepositions, adjectival clauses before nominal phrases, verbs at the end rather than in the middle of sentences.

What is everyday in one language must be translated by what is everyday in the 'target' language also, and what is eccentric must find equally eccentric equivalents. If Poetry is made out of, among other things, 'the best words in the best order', and the best orders of the two languages are the mirror images of each other, what is a translator to do?

The most obvious parts of language cited frequently for their utter untranslatability are the lexicon and the semantics of words. For lexicon are culture-specific. Terms for fauna, flora, caste distinctions, kinship systems, body parts, even the words that denote numbers, are culturally Loaded. Even when the elements of a system may be similar in two languages, like father. mother, brother, mother-in-law, etc. In kinship, the system of relations and the feelings traditionally encouraged other each relative are culturally sensitive and therefore part of the expressive repertoire of poets and novelists.

Add to this the entire poetic tradition, its rhetoric. the ordering of different[ genres with different Functions in the culture, which by its system of differences, distinguishes this particular poem.

The classical Tamil poetic tradition uses an entire taxonomy. A classification of reality, The five landscapes of the Tamil area, characterized by hills. seashores, agricultural areas, wastelands, and pastoral fields; each with its forms of life, both natural and cultural. trees, animals, tribes, customs. arts and instruments- all these become part of the symbolic code for the poetry. Every landscape, with all its contents, is associated with a mood or phase of love or war. The landscapes provide the signifiers. The five real landscapes of the Tamil country become, through this system, the interior landscapes of Tamil poetry. The five landscapes with all their contents signifying moods, and the themes and motifs of love and war.

Thus a language within a language becomes the second language of Tamil poetry. When one translates, one is translating not only Tamil, its phonology, grammar and semantics, but this entire intertextual web, this intricate yet lucid second language of landscapes which holds together natural forms with cultural ones in a code, a grammar, a rhetoric, and a poetics.

Ramanujan takes a closer look at the original of Kapilar's poem, Ainkurunuru 203, 'What She Said', and his translation, quoted earlier in this essay. The word annay (in spoken Tamil, ammo), literally 'mother', is a familiar term of address for any woman, here a 'girlfriend'. So he have translated it as 'friend', to make clear that the poem is not addressed to a mother (as some other poems are) but to a girl friend.

Note the long, crucial, left-branching phrase in Tamil: '. . . hisland's / [in- leaf-holes low /animals- having- drunk- / and]- leftover, muddied water’(in a piece-by-piece translation). In his English, it becomes 'the leftover water in his land, low in the water holes / covered with leaves and muddied by animals.' His phrase order in English tries to preserve the order and syntax of : themes, not of single words: (I) his land's waler, followed by (2) leaf– covered waterholes, and (3) muddied by animals.

The poem is a kurinci piece, about the lovers' first union, set in the hillside landscape. My title ('What she said to her girl friend, when she returned from the hills') summarizes the whole context (speaker, listener, occasion) from the old colophon that accompanies the poem. The progression is lost if we do not preserve the order of themes so naturally carried by the left-branching syntax of Tamil. More could be said about it from the point of view of the old commentaries.

The love poems get parodied, subverted and played with in comic poems about poems. In a few Centuries, both the love poems and the war poems provide models and motives for religious poems. God like Krsna the are both lovers and Warriors.

Thus any single poem is part of a set, a family of sets, a landscape, a genre. The intertextuality is concentric on a pattern of membership as well as neighborhoods of likenesses and unlikeness. Somehow a translator has to translate each poem in ways that suggest these interest, dialogue and network.

If attempting a translation means attempting an impossibly intricate task, foredoomed to failure. what makes it possible at all'? At least four things-

1.Universals-

If there were no Universals in which languages participate and of which all particular languages were selections and combinations, no language learning, translation, comparative studies or cross-cultural understanding of even the most meager kind would be possible. if such universals did not exist we would have had to invent them.

2.Interiorised contexts-

Poems interiorize the entire culture. Indeed we know the culture of the ancient Tamils only through a careful study of these poems. Later colophons and commentaries explore and explicate this knowledge carried by the poems setting them in context using them to make lexicons and charming the fauna and flora of landscape .

3. Systematicity-

Systematicity of such bodies of poetry, the way figures, genres, personae etc., intermesh in a master-code, is a great help in entering this intricate yet world of words. Even if one chooses not to translate all the poems, one chooses poems that cluster together, that illuminate one another so that allusions, contrasts and collective designs are suggested, of their world, re-presenting it. Here intertextuality is not the problem, but the solution .

4. Structural mimicry-

In translating poems the structures of individual poems, the unique figures they make out of all the given codes of their language, rhetoric and poetics, become the points of entry. The poetry and the significance reside in these figures and structures as much as in untranslatable verbal textures. So one attempts a structural mimicry, to translate relations, not items- not single words but phrases, sequences, sentences; not metrical units but rhythms; not morphology but syntactic patterns.

To translate is to 'metaphor', to 'carry across'. Translations are transpositions, re-enactments, interpretations. One can often convey a sense of the original rhythm, but not the language-bound metre: one can mimic levels of diction, but not the actual sound of the original words. Textures are harder to translate than structures, linear order more difficult than syntax, lines more difficult than larger patterns. Poetry is made at all these levels- and so is translation.

The translation must not only represent, but re-present, the original. loyalty. A translator is an 'artist on oath'. Sometimes one may succeed only in re-presenting a poem, not in closely representing it.

With the anecdote of Chinese emperor, Ramanujan say even if the representation in another language is not close enough, but still succeeds in 'carrying' the poem in some sense, we will have two poems instead of one.

On Translating a Tamil Poem - A. K. Ramanujan.pptx from Nirav Amreliya

Thank you !

The Joys of Motherhood

The Joys of Motherhood

Hello, I am Emisha Ravani, Writing this blog as a thinking activity which is assigned by Yesha Bhatt ma'am for the text 'The Joys of Motherhood'. (Teacher's blog)

Who is Buchi Emecheta?

Buchi Emecheta, in full Florence Onyebuchi Emecheta, (born July 21, 1944, Lagos, Nigeria—died January 25, 2017, London, England), Igbo writer whose novels deal largely with the difficult and unequal role of women in both immigrant and African societies and explore the tension between tradition and modernity.

Emecheta married at age 16, and she emigrated with her husband from Nigeria to London in 1962. She began writing stories based on her life, including the problems she initially encountered in England. These works were first published in New Statesman magazine and were later collected in the novel In the Ditch (1972). That work was followed by Second-Class Citizen (1974), and both were later included in the single volume Adah’s Story (1983). Those books introduce Emecheta’s three major themes: the quests for equal treatment, self-confidence, and dignity as a woman. Somewhat different in style is Emecheta’s novel Gwendolen (1989; also published as The Family), which addresses the issues of immigrant life in Great Britain, as do Kehinde (1994) and The New Tribe (2000).

Most of Emecheta’s other novels—including The Bride Price (1976), The Slave Girl (1977), The Joys of Motherhood (1979), Destination Biafra (1982), and Double Yoke (1982)—are realistic works of fiction set in Nigeria. Perhaps her strongest work, The Rape of Shavi (1983), is also the most difficult to categorize. Set in an imaginary idyllic African kingdom, it explores the dislocations that occur when a plane carrying Europeans seeking to escape an imminent nuclear disaster crashes.

As we have some questions to discuss like given below :

1. “The most celebrated female character in African creative writing is the African mother.” by Marie A. Umeh according to this, is the character of Nnu Ego celebrating motherhood or not? Explain.

2. The basic narrative lends itself toward neo-feminism. The main female characters struggle to shed the conditioning which forces them to act out roles that bring little fulfillment. With reference to this, study The Joys of Motherhood by applying a feminist theory.

3. “God, when will you create a woman who will be fulfilled in herself, a full human being, not anybody’s appendage? I was born alone, and I shall die alone. What have I gained from all this?” Why does Nnu Ego say this? Write your views on this.

4. “The title of Emecheta's novel is patently ironic, for it would seem that there are few joys associated with motherhood after all.” Explain.

The Joys of motherhood from yeshab68

In the Nigerian writings, this is something new where introspective female characters give voice to their emotions. The classic novel, The Joy of Motherhood, challenges the extraordinary expectations of women in the name of the ideal mother and helps to solidify an Africa women’s literary tradition. While articulating this idea from the traditionalist point of view of Nnu Ego, Emecheta gave impetus on the reality that women have the collective accountability to condemn and contribute to the societal order. The novel was given the title borrowed from the closing sentence of Flora Nwapa’s famous novel, Efuru. 

"God, when will you create a woman who will be fulfilled in herself, a full human being, not anybody's appendage? I was born alone, and I shall die alone. What have I gained from all this? Yes, I have many children, but what do I have to feed them on? In my life. I have to work myself to the bone to look after them. I have to give them my all. And if I am lucky enough to die in peace, I even have to give them my soul. They will worship my dead spirit to provide for them: it will be hailed as a good spirit so long as there are plenty of yams and children in the family, but if anything should go wrong, if a young wife does not conceive or there is a famine, my dead spirit will be blamed. When will I be free?"

When we go to the her thoughts which she expresses by her words. In a way she praying to the God that when the free woman will be there who is fulfilled within herself. ' I was born alone, and I shall die alone. What have I gained from all this?' this seems like existential crises in the women life. Further, the concept of Ideal Motherhood, that is to have many children and it symbolise the prosperity. The sacrifice by the side of mother that how she has given her soul to her children. At last she denied to give bliss them by giving the reason very fairly that on which grounds we examine the women's character as mother.   

This novel took place in twentieth century in Africa. The traditions played a vital role in the progression of an idea of motherhood. They believed that motherhood would bring the contended and distinguished life Emecheta employs the technique of mother's introspection in which the protagonist realized that she has not brought fulfillment in the family. Found herself as a doubly colonized mother, Nnu Ego expresses the sufferings as well as sacrifice in her statement just after the arrival of her new twin daughters. Being caught in the web of childbirth and complicated situation, she had one such epiphanic moment. The psychological temperament and grief of a mother expressed in the following statement which presents the Nigerian women's response to a widespread predicament.

Colonised mother --> Double Colonised mother

This concept is being very clear in portrayal of Nnu Ego. That how Her entire journey is presented front of us.

Without motherhood, Nnu Ego feels empty and struggled very hard to be a mother.Emecheta wants to transmit the point that bearing more than five or six children do not mean that a mother is going to be prosperous in her old age. She examines the institution of motherliness, unpleasant experiences mixed up in motherliness, and its shock on the minds of the Nigerian women. According to Katherine Frank, "The complete futility of motherhood that we find in The Joys of Motherhood is the most heretical and radical aspect of Emecheta's vision of the African Women".The chapter titles, "The Mother," "The Mother's Mother,""The Mother's Early Life," "First Shock of Motherhood," “A Mothers Investment”, ‘A FailedWoman” etc., describes the ups and down in the destiny of Nnu Ego. The author has ended the novel by giving ironical title to its chapter as “The Canonized Mother”. Nnu Ego had to experience patriarchal slavery throughout her life and died in solitude. All mothers, Ona,Akadu and Nnu Ego, have been victimized in the patriarchal and traditionally strong Ibo society. But Emecheta’s Nnu Ego challenges the conservative conception that producing numerous children will give a woman much ecstasy.

Thank you !