School Of Languages, Literature And Culture

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    Critical Discourse in Punjabi
    (Taylor and Francis, 2023-08-29T00:00:00) Nayar, Rana; Saini, Alpna; Bansal, Tania
    This volume forms a part of the Critical Discourses in South Asia series which deals with schools, movements and discursive practices in major South Asian languages. It offers crucial insights into the making of the Punjabi language and literature, and its critical tradition across a century. The book brings together English translation of major writings of influential figures dealing with literary criticism and theory, aesthetic and performative traditions and re-interpretations of primary concepts and categories in Punjabi. It presents 30 key texts in literary and cultural studies from Punjab from the beginning of development of Punjabi language to its present form, with most of them translated for the first time into English. These seminal essays cover interconnections with socio-historical events in the medieval, colonial and post-independence period in Punjab. They discuss themes such as spiritual and aesthetic visions, poetic and literary forms, modernism, progressivism, feminism, Dalit literature, power structures and social struggles, ideological values, cultural renovations and humanism. Comprehensive and authoritative, this volume offers an overview of the history of critical thought in Punjabi literature in South Asia. It will be essential for scholars and researchers of Punjabi language and literature, literary criticism, literary theory, comparative literature, Indian literature, cultural studies, art and aesthetics, performance studies, history, sociology, regional studies and South Asian studies. It will also interest the Punjabi-speaking diaspora and those working on the intellectual history of Punjab and conservation of languages and culture. � 2023 selection and editorial matter, Rana Nayar, Alpna Saini and Tania Bansal; individual chapters, the contributors; individual translations, the translators. � 2023 selection and editorial matter, Rana Nayar, Alpna Saini and Tania Bansa.
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    Revisiting Cultural Theory Through Baiga Dance-Songs
    (Sage Publications India Pvt. Ltd, 2023-09-16T00:00:00) Raj, Prithvi
    Cultural theory is assumed to be a tool or set of ideas to explain, interpret or analyse cultures or cultural realities. The realisation of embracing and internalising theory as a kind of transcendental signifier, within and beyond our undertaking at the same time, fixes our attention on the validity and prevalence that theory has gained in academic circles. Its ubiquity is perhaps its strength, which sustains it and makes it indispensable across disciples. However, theory has its own internal functioning, often stopping it from achieving the desired results. There is a constant need to weigh theories before we use them as tools to analyse something. The central concern of this article is to interrogate the validity and legitimacy of cultural theory to deal with problems arising in contextualising cultural theories to frame Baiga dance-songs and consequent issues arising out of it. The article points out an inherent discrepancy in cultural theory through Biaga dance-songs. � 2023 South Asian University.
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    Beyond laughter and smiles: analytical paradigms in social media COVID-19 humour studies
    (Cracow Tertium Society for the Promotion of Language Studies, 2023-08-28T00:00:00) Bageshwar, Bageshree Ramdas; Zafar, Shahila
    Amid the deluge of serious social media posts regarding the COVID-19 pandemic, humorous posts brought users much-needed respite. This article reviews studies on social media-based COVID-19 humour in 42 research articles that were selected from four databases, viz. Science Direct, Scopus, Taylor & Francis, and Web of Science. After the classification and analysis of the articles on the basis of some key features, a detailed description and discussion of the findings have been carried out. The results concerning the characteristics and functions of COVID-19 humour reveal that most studies investigated image-text memes; the most important feature found was �humour�, in addition to others like sarcasm, irony, satire, criticism, juxtaposition, and locality. Intertextuality played a significant role in the structure of humorous posts, especially those related to specific countries. Additionally, it shows that although research on COVID-19 humour on social media is still in an early phase, several findings appear stable across various studies included in this review. Moreover, most humour studied is not only about the virus or the disease itself, but also focuses on absurd situations individuals found themselves in due to the pandemic and the lockdown that followed. � 2023,European Journal of Humour Research. All Rights Reserved.
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    Corpus Analysis for Literary Studies: Application and Relevance
    (Springer Science and Business Media Deutschland GmbH, 2021-08-28T00:00:00) Zafar, Shahila; Khan, Zaved Ahmed
    The use of corpus tools for the teaching-learning and research of literary texts is not widespread. The present study attempts to explore the possibility of the use of corpus tools in literature classrooms. It involves the creation of a corpus of representative poetry of major English poets belonging to the Modern period of English literature, W. B. Yeats, T. S. Eliot, and W. H. Auden. Using concordance software AntConc, a corpus of Word Types and Word Tokens was prepared. The corpus data showed the most frequent words, collocations, and concordances used in the selected�poetry of the period. An attempt at juxtaposing the results of the study with the common thematic, narrative, and stylistic interpretations of the poems is made. The results also indicate the potential of enhancing the reliability of the corpus-based analysis of literary texts, especially when corpora were extensive. A significant implication of the study was found to be that the corpus-tools could play a crucial role in promoting learner autonomy in a traditionally teacher-led literature classroom. � 2021, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.
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    The confluence in the contemporary art world of literature and postmodern visual arts in jeff vande zande�s landscape with fragmented figures
    (Aesthetics Media Services, 2020-12-07T00:00:00) Thakur, Smriti; Babu, Dinesh P.
    The American poet, novelist and editor, Jeff Vande Zande�s Landscape with Fragmented Figures (2009) is a novel that deals with the contemporary world of art, which brings forth the intricacies of the art forms such as collage, action paintings, and drop cloths that have established a crucial distance between the present and the past world of pre-modern art. As the novel revolves around the world of postmodern visual arts and brings this subject into the literary world, it necessitates an interdisciplinary approach, which not only brings the two different academic disciplines of arts together for a critical appreciation, but also creates a new aesthetic experience in the reader, wherein visual arts is seen through the lens of literature, which helps foreground the hidden patterns and motives behind the art work, and the literary work is appreciated with a greater knowledge and understanding of the practices in and theories of the modern and postmodern art. By looking at the symbiotic relationship between visual art and literature through the novel, this study makes an attempt to contribute to the aesthetic appreciation of the engaging confluence of postmodern visual arts and literature in the contemporary world of art. By analysing the text, the study explores the phenomena that have reduced the difference between the original and copy in the contemporary art-world wherein the artist�s aesthetic sensibility seems to derive from other sources, and thus brings into critical discourse those factors that have determined the use of parody, pastiche, irony, and collage in contemporary art forms. � AesthetixMS 2020. This Open Access article is published under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. For citation use the DOI. For commercial re-use, please contact editor@rupkatha.com.
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    The Legacy of the Empire: A New Historicist Study of the Colonial and Postcolonial Agenda in Selected Indian and Western Cinema
    (Central University of Punjab, 2020) Singh, Jagdish; Saini, Alpna
    The term Empire refers to an expansion of territory by including other countries or other continents under the rule of a powerful state. The concept of Empire Cinema is focused on the agenda of using some specific kind of films for propagating and justifying the existence of colonial forces on the colonised land. Empire Cinema fulfils this need for the imperial powers. New Historicist analysis of the films helps to analyse, to relate and to reinterpret the focussed colonial issues in the selected films with respect to the Postcolonial period. The study of these films helps to have a glimpse into the colonial socio-cultural as well as political encounter between colonial powers and the colonised subjects. The analysis of the empire films also exhibits the politics of film censorship.The films are becoming a vital and interesting medium for describing the events of the past. The selected films offer representation from both colonial and colonised perspectives while at the same time dealing with the representation of colonial and postcolonial issues like the thugi cult, sati, the communal violence in colonial era, the Indian- British individual interactions, the dilemma of Anglo-Indians and Indian resistance to the British Empire. The New Historicist study highlights the dual role of cinema; as an art form and as medium to propagate a specific ideology by targeting a particular kind of audience, at a specific point of time. The selected films can be analysed to represent the colonial nostalgia in the postcolonial era and remain a useful medium of revisiting the colonial history of a nation.
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    Towards an Eco-Poetic Vision of the Poetic Works of Agha Shahid Ali and Sylvia Plath: A Comparative Study
    (Central University of Punjab, 2019) Pala, Aadil Muzafar; Kaur, Zameerpal
    The environmental problems became of supreme importance with the dawn of twenty first century. These issues which are faced by both biosphere and human life are flourishing at an alarming speed and are posing a threat to the life proportions upon the earth. There was a time when man was considered as having a close relationship with his surroundings and was nurtured and nourished by it, but with the passage of time man came under the influences of many newly introduced experiences and philosophies that altogether changed the vision of the civilisations towards anthropocentrism. Human being began to develop egotism which ultimately paved way for him to think himself as superior to the entire visible world and hence exploit it to meet his own ends. This new idea replaced man’s earlier thinking of being sentimental towards his survival without the presence of the nature. Nature by no means can be treated as a pleasure giving property to the human being rather it is the precondition for his very survival and prosperity. With the gradual growth of human civilisations on the earth the plundering and exploitation of the natural resources significantly increased by man’s selfglorification and self-indulgence by destroying the trees for his shelter and for iv industry, devastating the beautiful landscapes replacing them with the setting up of industrial establishments, roads, buildings etc. Ecocrticism is an approach to spread awareness and play a role to save the planet earth as it can be seen concerned with the relationships which show how the physical environment is dealt with in literature. It is a unique study which seems to project a natural science and a discipline based on humanistic approach. The present research work focuses on the theoretical framework of Ecocriticism considering its concepts like Ecopoetics and Ecopsychology and their application upon the poems of Agha Shahid Ali and Sylvia Plath. It further focuses on the narratives which explores the elements of nature and environment and the aspects of man nature relationship in the poetry of the selected poets. There can be seen an oriented quest where the ways emotions and feelings get an impact from the nature and vice-versa, the impact of culture on the nature which is seen proving helpful in creating the poetic stance.
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    The Patriarchal Perspectives on Female Subjectivities in the Selected Plays of Atamjit and Mahesh Elkunchwar
    (Central University of Punjab, 2019) Kaur, Amandeep; Saini, Alpna
    The present research is aimed at critically exploring the selected Marathi and Punjabi plays namely Pooran, Farash Vich Uggya Rukh, Main Tan Ik Sarangi Han by Atamjit and Old Stone Mansion, Garbo and Sonata by Mahesh Elkunchwar who are both well-known playwrights of the second half of the 20th century. Their plays are concerned with many social and political problems and divulge various dimensions which help construct female subjectivity. Both demonstrate woman as victim of the caste, class and gender discrimination. Inferior conditions of middleclass women, sexual issues like prostitution, violence, extramarital affairs, rape, murder, gender discrimination, exploitation, psychological disorders have been examined with special reference to construction of a woman’s subjectivity. This research work is significant as these two are important contemporary authors who raise questions about the marginalisation and subjectivities of women in two different societies, languages and cultures of India. The selected plays analyse different women characters in the selected plays who sometimes accept the supremacy of a man, and resist at other times while also representing the psychological constitution of a woman in terms of her gender and her cultural placement. The present study has also undertaken a comparative study of selected plays in order to explore the typically patriarchal perspectives of the two authors in their given cultural locations on how a woman is constructed in contemporary Indian drama. The thesis employs readings of the plays in consultation with diverse disciplines such as Psychoanalysis, Marxism, Gender Studies and Performativity. This study will help forge an understanding of the female subjectivities from varying standpoints under the light of various discourses prevalent in the contemporary Indian locations, particularly, those of the selected playwrights.
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    Dialectics of South Asian Subjectivity across Borders: A Critical Study of Selected Contemporary English and Vernacular Diasporic Fiction
    (Central University of Punjab, 2019) Kaur, Pardeep; Singh, Amandeep
    The present thesis examines the dialectics of South Asian subjectivity across borders of nation-state, gender, religion, class, culture and ethnicity through the critical study of eight novels by diasporic writers in English and vernacular languages. The thesis is organised into six chapters. The introductory chapter comprises major trends in contemporary South Asian diasporic literature, the review of existing literature, brief introduction to the selected texts, historically theorising the term subjectivity from the Enlightenment to the postmodern era. The second chapter explores the perceptions of different generations regarding tradition, modernity, assimilation and acculturation, evolved through conflicts and dialogue. The third chapter explores how spatial and temporal contexts keep on shaping individual subjectivity, while at the same time personal and collective history spiral together for determining the historical positioning of these subjects. The fourth chapter examines the contestation between normative discourses (heterosexuality, patriarchy, religion, nationalism etc.) and the existing alternative discourses (homosexuality, hybridity, cosmopolitanism etc.) leading to the dynamic process of South Asian subjectivity construction. The changing definitions and nature of culture, existence of plurality of cultures, multicultural overtones represented in the contemporary fiction constitute the fifth chapter of this study. The concluding chapter presents a composite South Asian subjectivity which cannot be claimed as a definite portrayal because subjectivity is not an event but a process. A pattern can be seen through the analysis of these works which shows the common frames of reference in the subjectivity formation of this community through the dialectics among different notions of existence. The critical study of selected diasporic texts shows that subjugated and muted subjectivities occupy the narrative spaces in contemporary English and vernacular fiction.
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    Exploring Female Identity: A Comparative Study of the Selected Novels of Shashi Deshpande and Mridula Garg
    (Central University of Punjab, 2019) Nancy; Sen, Rajinder Kumar
    Female identity is a very complicated concept in the contemporary era. In addition to that, it becomes more complicated when discussed in reference to gender socialisation, violence, and exploitation. Women have been viewed and perceived within the constructed patriarchal structure of gender difference. In the domain of patriarchal culture, the woman is a social construct. The present research work tries to probe into the silences, subordination and voices of exploited women by undertaking a comparative study of the selected novels of Shashi Deshpande and Mridula Garg by using feminism as a theoretical framework. The contemporary writes are critiquing the unspoken voices to explore their exploitation in various domains. Feminism is a highly innovative concept representing a significant departure from the traditional mode of critical evaluation. In the selected novels both the writers represent the series of female characters who have exploited. They project realistically the women’s plight and exploitation in the patriarchal society. It explores how men establish their masculine power and fulfil their desire by assaulting women. Through the feminist theory, the present study tries to explore the female identity which is constructed by the socio-cultural aspect.