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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    Ecocritical Study of Kalidasa’s Lyrics and Selected Poems of William Wordsworth
    (Central University of Punjab, 2018) Yeshpal; Kaur, Zameerpal
    The present thesis is based on an Ecocritical analysis of the selected poems of Kalidasa and Wordsworth from a comparative perspective. The main focus of the thesis is to explore the ecological consciousness and aesthetics as manifested in the selected texts; further, the thesis endeavors to construct the organic relationship depicted between the natural world and human culture in both the poets. The thesis traces the evolution of Ecocriticism over the time; different issues of ecocriticism such as ecology, deep ecology, social ecology, romantic ecology, wilderness, and environmental aesthetics, are likewise investigated in the selected texts. The thesis through the study of the selected works of both the writers tries to show how both the writers envision an idealistic view of life which would empower humans to achieve maximum synchronization and interdependence with their natural or physical environment. Kalidasa represented the Hindu way of life in ancient India; his works mirror the socio-cultural milieu of the ancient India, and a system of shared moral and ethical values towards Nature can be gleaned from his works. In the poetry of Kalidasa, Nature is cherished with a profound spiritual passion; for him, Nature speaks to divine balance, divine music, and heavenly harmony. Kalidasa doesn’t merely use nature as an idealised setting for his works but endows it with living attributes and v a personality of its own. While Wordsworth may represent a cloud, Kalidasa sees the cloud in Meghaduta as having a fully developed consciousness; both the poets invalidate the idea of customary anthropocentrism and support ecocentrism. Wordsworth believes that man is a part of nature and nature is a holistic living organism; he believes in the equality of the natural and the human world, the former is not subservient to the latter. Wordsworth considers it indispensable to have an ethical attitude of humility and the reverence to reestablish the severed connections between humans and the natural habitat. Thus, both Kalidasa and Wordsworth can be seen as eco-spiritual poet-thinkers, remarkable for their ecological consciousness and aesthetics, and could be considered precursors of the present-day environmentalists, and ecologists.
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    The Construction of the Mythical Subject in PostColonial Context: A Study of Select Indian Plays
    (Central University of Punjab, 2019) Chandel, Priyanka; Saini, Alpna
    The dramatic foundations of postcolonial Indian dramatists are based on the assimilation of colonial dramaturgical practices into the native dramaturgical traditions which have created a new hybrid space. Earlier the native cultural narratives were used to propagate the hegemonic dominance, but now they have been decentered in such a way that they have paved a way to a unique construction of postcolonial subjectivity. The postcolonial writers translate the native myths and incorporate them in the texts through hybridised language and an entirely new perspective and hence, shift the marginalised colonial subjectivities with the unique postcolonial hybrid subjectivities. The postcolonial playwrights incorporate themes such as the existential interrogations and encounters of postcolonial human, fragmentation, hybridity, disillusionment, isolation, the quest for identity, gender issues, philosophical dualism, and construction of subjectivity. The introduction of pre-colonial past in the forms of aboriginal presentation like rituals, myths, folktales, history, music, songs, dance, local settings, and oral style of storytelling, prove to be effective strategies in restructuring the leading practices of western dramaturgy. They have also assimilated in their works the traditions of some of the famous proponents of modern theatres, such as Samuel Beckett, Bertolt Brecht, and Jerzy Growtowski, etc. The translation of the native texts is also used as a technique to construct a new postcolonial subjectivity and the language used for the translation of native texts is an exclusive new form of nativised language, which is neither a western mimetic form nor a completely native one, but an amalgam of both. Thus, the iv postcolonial playwrights have neither applauded nor judged the native myths, but they have explored the consequences of unyielding codes imposed by culture. Thus, an original, hybrid postcolonial subjectivity, based on the interplay of gender, myth, language, and culture emerges through an exploration of the selected texts.
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    The Subaltern Speaks: The Construction of Marginal Identities in Selected Films on Partition of India
    (Central University of Punjab, 2018) Singh, Barjinder; Saini, Alpna
    Recognising the excruciating pain and trauma the Partition of India has caused to the lives of the millions of people in the Indian sub-continent, the present thesis embarks on to study a hitherto unexplored area concerning Partition studies, e.g., construction of marginal identities in Partition films. The present thesis contends that the selected Partition films— that I taxonomise as Subaltern Partition Cinema—as a distinct voice from the mainstream Bollywood cinema, depict Partition history in a radically different way than that of the official, colonialist and nationalist historiographies, giving voice to the subalterns of Indian Partition; like women, Dalits, minorities, and refugees. Taking Rosenstone’s views on the relationship between film and history as a springboard, it considers cinema as a significant medium to engage with Partition history, and attempts to foreground how cinematic narratives and practices can be vital resources for rethinking Partition history. Subaltern Studies’ methodology has been used to demarginalise the subaltern experience in the selected film texts; an attempt is made to study the structure and dynamics of film language concerned with the representations of history, memory, violence (abduction, rape, killing), in the selected films. The methodology of the research work involves an in-depth mise-en-scene analysis and other formal aspects of film semiotics wherever possible. The thesis attempts to retrieve the subaltern historiography of Partition of India as it emerges from the selected films; v further, to see such subaltern revisionings of history as alternative forms of history and as counter-narratives to the perspectives of mainstream history. The analysis of the sufferings of the subaltern identities as portrayed in the selected films entails a critique of the communal nationalisms in South Asia. The post-Partition Hindi cinema can be seen as a site of cinematic heterotopia to dispel the dominant nationalistic perceptions about 1947 perpetuated by the conflicting terrains of the elite nationalist histories of the two nation-states. The study of the representations of history in the films like Gandhi and Jinnah points out the highly discursive nature of Partition history as well as cinema’s potential in the promotion as well as destabilisation of the received history. The study also points out how the refugee experience in the cinema of Ritwik Ghatak can be seen as a cinematic displacement of his latent angst against the idea that the East Bengal and the West Bengal constitute two different cultural or national identities and could be divided on the basis of religion. Partition films should not be seen as capturing the exact picture of the past that must be faithful to the contemporary reality. But these films must also be considered as creative reconstructions, constructions or deconstructions of the past to the extent the specificities of the medium allow.
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    Exploring Dalit Experiences: A Comparative Study of the Autobiographical Narratives of Balbir Madhopuri, Tulsi Ram, Sharankumar Limbale and Siddalingaiah
    (Central University of Punjab, 2018) Gora, Devendra Kumar; Sen, Rajinder Kumar
    Dalits have been regarded and perceived inferior and substandard within the wisely constructed hierarchical society in which caste controls the behaviour pattern of the subjects. This research tries to explore the marginalisation, oppression, and exploitation of Dalits in Indian social set-up by undertaking the comparative analysis of autobiographical narratives of Balbir Madhopuri, Tulsi Ram, Sharankumar Limbale and Siddalingaiah. The selected four writers represent contemporary Dalits of the different geographical locations Punjab, Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra and Karnataka respectively. Being the representative of Dalits, these authors deal with the cause of Dalits in their literary creations. They voice against the victimisation of subjugated Dalits into the diverse socio-cultural locations. The research interrogates social and cultural norms in different episodes of selected autobiographies and use the personal experience of writers to expose the discrimination and subjugation of Dalits. A thematic approach from Dalit perspective has been adopted for this study. The research probe into the positioning of Dalits in hierarchical structure and how the basic rights are violated. The study comprehensively exhibits the effort of the writers to create new space using education as the mean for upward mobility.
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    REPRESENTATION OF DALIT VOICES IN LITERATURE: A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF SHORT STORIES OF OMPRAKASH VALMIKI AND S. R. HARNOT
    (Central University of Punjab, 2018) Chitra; Sen, Rajinder Kumar
    Marginalisation of Dalits denotes their wretched conditions in the Indian society. They are socio-economic-cultural and politically exploited for ages. After many years of independence, they are still facing discrimination and untouchability. Every human being has right to entertain their Human Rights freely but the Human Rights of Dalits are also violated. Dalit discourse voices the humiliated and stigmatised experiences of the underprivileged. They are fighting for survival in the society and trying to claim their rights. This research examines the attempt of Dalits in constructing an identity under the influence of education. By exposing exploitation, suppression, human rights violation and assertion of Dalits have been critically expressed in this research work by focusing on the short stories of Omprakash Valmiki and S. R. Harnot. Apparently, both writers belong to different geographical locations, both revealed and exposed the present scenario of Dalits in their literary works bluntly. The primary objective of this research work is to understand how they are facing and fighting with their caste based identity and how they are trying to overcome from their situations, this work raises question regarding ages long suppression of Dalits and also tries to locate some suggestions to the problems of Dalits.