Smart Moves Journal IJELLH (International Journal of English language, literature in humanities)
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A Comparative Study of Kalidasa’s Abhijnana Shakuntalam and Namita Gokhale’s Shakuntala: The Play of Memory
Get PDFShakuntala is one of the most acclaimed women characters of Indian Literature. For the first time Shakuntala’s character originated in The Mahabharata. Since then she has been represented in various texts in various languages of India. The present paper is an attempt to analyze the representation of Shakuntala by the authors from ancient times to the present. For this purpose ancient work Abhijnana Shakuntalam by Kalidasa and the modern work Shakuntala: The Play of Memory by Namita Gokhale are studied.
In Kalidasa’s Abhijnana Shakuntalam Shakuntala is the real daughter of Sage Vishvamitra and nymph Menka. However, she is adopted and brought up by Sage Kanva and his wife Gautmi. She is a rustic girl, brought up in a hermitage. With the progress of the play, she is married to King Dushyanta who forgets her because of a curse. Later, she was adopted by sage Kashyapa and his wife Aditi. She gives birth to a brave child Bharat and finally reunites with her husband.
Shakuntala: The Play of Memory by Namita Gokhale was Published in 2005 and it is a challenging work of Indian English fiction. Like the remakes of films there may be re-invention and re-interpretation of old myths embodied in literary works. In her masterpiece Shakuntala, Namita Gokhale has portrayed the story of a woman named after the heroine of Kalidasa’s classic drama Abhijnana Shakuntalam. In contrast to her legendary namesake, she is bold, spirited and imaginative. Right from her childhood she is conscious of the discrimination towards female. In her marriage with a mahasamant, Srijan, she feels suffocated by social customs. Hungry for experience she deserts home to travel with a Greek horse merchant, Nearchus. Together they travel far and wide and surrender to unbridled pleasures. Shakuntala assumes the identity of Yaduri: the ‘fallen woman.’ But she forsakes this life as well to meet her salvation in her death at Kashi
Oh, Mother, Who Art Thou? : The Heart of Maternal Darkness in the Short Stories of Katherine Mansfield
Get PDFOur culture assumes: No love is as great as that of a mother for her child. Motherhood has been perpetually associated with self-effacement and self-abnegation. Adrienne Rich while making a distinction between the actual lived experience of a mother and the institution of motherhood has argued that motherhood is a cultural construct and a far cry from the real experience of mothering. This article traces and examines representations of motherhood in the select short stories of Katherine Mansfield, in the light of Adrienne Rich’s theories in Of Woman Born. Much like Adrienne Rich, Mansfield discredits the traditional assumption that to be a mother is an essential pre-requisite to be a ‘real woman’. Mansfield’s women characters unleash a plurality of voices that aid the readers at viewing maternity as an ambiguous experience. Instead of romanticizing and idealizing the mother-daughter relationship, she offers a problematic connection between both the figures, often pitting them as rivals against each other. Her women characters progressively revolt from within the four walls of the household by their intermittent display of anger and deliberate attempts at failing to conform to the monolithic ideals of femininity
Merging Fact, Fiction and Myth: Reading TD Ramakrishnan’s Sugandhi Enna Aandaal Devanayaki as a Historiographic Metafiction
Get PDFTD Ramakrishnan’s novel Sugandhi Enna Aandaal Devanayaki is a mixture of the mythological, metaphysical and historical into a fictional space which transcends the boundaries of nation. The novel is a quest for retelling the historical trauma of Sreelanka. In the search for Sugandhi a Tamil liberation activist, the narrator stumbles upon the mythical Sugandhi from the folklore, creating tension between faction and reality. In the search for the mythical Sugandhi Ramakrishnan uses ‘SusinaSupina’ and arrives at Devanayaki belonging to 7th century AD Pallava Dynasty. As fact, fiction and myth blur into the contemporary social space, the myth of Devanayaki merges with Rajani Thirinagame creating the notion of the alternate history from a female perspective. In the novel History blurs into myth, reality into fiction, contemporary into past, individual into society and body into spirit.TD Ramakrishnan deconstructs the millennium old Tamil- Sinhalese political history using the alternate history from mythology and folklore. This paper is an attempt to read the novel Sugandhi Enna AandaalDevanayaki as a Historiographic metafiction
Celebrating ‘Indian\u27s’ in Shashi Deshpande’s The Dark Holds No Terrors and The Roots and Shadows
Get PDFThe aim of this paper is an attempt that Indian cultural values should be revised meticulously and accurately leaving behind western impact and the paper rides on a new pride, as a revival of inspiration, a recuperation from centuries of British domination of India in which Hindu dignity was systematically undermined through the Macaulay education system and the invasion of Mogul. Values are what human beings live by. The value-system of any given culture determines the sense of fulfillment and degree of happiness of its members. Indian value system had been misinterpreted from the point of view of the west and imposed on the psyche of Indian women through new education. The new education has gradually made her conscious of futility or emptiness of the various long-preserved notions and taboos about the woman, and she has started opposing and breaking them. And this crusade at times makes her feel alone and alienated. Their conscious had been colonized according to the impact of western. Nevertheless, it is high time that contemporary Indian women are in position to realize their roots, meaning of life and great value system of India. Hence, tradition is the best of the past that has been carried forward for the future
Luminaries in Shadows: Women in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness
Get PDFJoseph Conrad’s novella Heart of Darkness is a popular modernist work which has often been implored for racist undercurrents. The characterisation of women in the novella remains frail and severely restricted. However, the seemingly mute and insignificant figures of the narrative are an ‘absent presence’ which shapes and directs Marlow’s spiritual quest into the “heart of darkness”. The novella is a text which captures the feminist ethos rising in the contemporary British society as an invisibly powerful undercurrent
Samuel Becket’s Waiting for Godot: Revolutionizing Conventional Theatre and Redefining Norms
Get PDFSamuel Beckett’s play Waiting for Godot revolutionized the conventional theatre and redefined norms which shaped twentieth century drama. The play launched an absurdist style of writing on the landscape of drama which gave the life of performance to the intellectual existentialist ideals of Soren Aabaye Kierkegaard´s and Jean-Paul Sartre´s philosophy. This research paper analyses the elements of Existentialism with respect to supportive evidence from the play
\u27That was the Night I Became an Insomniac\u27: Guilt, Trauma and Recovery in Khaled Hosseini\u27s The Kite Runner
No full text‘The Kite Runner’ is the debut novel written by Afghan American author Khaled Hosseini. This novel is the story of Amir and Hassan, who struggles to find their space in the world because of the after-effects and fallout from a series of traumatic childhood events.The story is told by its lead character Amir who is a Pashtun belongs to the upper social class. Hassan is a Hazara who belongs to a socially backward class. Both Amir and Hassan are inseparable best friends until the day when Amir witnesses Hassan being raped by Aseef. Amir could not do anything to save Hassan and also ignores the incident and hides in silence. Rather, he drives away Hassan from his home with a false accusation to forget his trauma. But it actually intensified his guilt and trauma. Later, political instability in Afghanistan forces Amir and his father to flee to Pakistan and later to the United States. Years later Amir gets a call from his uncle when he becomes aware that Hassan has been killed and that he was Amir’s half-brother. He also learns that Hassan’s son Sohrab is in Taliban’s clutches. Amir takes it as a call for his redemption and sets to Taliban ruled Afghanistan to save Sohrab and bring him back to the United States. This study focuses on the role of guilt leading to psychological trauma, socio-cultural factors effecting the individual\u27s and the collective trauma, and also analysing the recovery process of the traumatised characters. The message of this narrative is that social stratification of individuals or groups makes them an easy victim. A broader understanding of social equality can help in preventing traumatic evils thereby creating a safer society
Reflection of Indian Culture in Shashi Deshpande’s A Matter of Time
Get PDFShashi Deshpande is a well-known name in the field of Indian literature and is a contemporary writer from Karnataka. She portrays in her novel "A Matter of Time" the truth of Indian society in Indian families. The importance of culture for Indian women is also discussed. Her novels are distinguished for their genuine depictions of the Indians and their history. She used Indian names and the role of Indian Middle Class Women in her novel A Matter of Time through the character Sumi. She talks about Indian Women, Indian Culture, Indian Religion, Indian Family, Religions and Beliefs, Family Traditions, and Emotions, among other topics. A Matter of Time is a multi-generational novel that moves around the plight and predicament of Indian women whose lives are deeply rooted in Indian beliefs, superstitions, conventions and traditions.
Women have been living and breathing silently for thousands of years under the umbrella of patriarchy and with their "gazing." With the foundation of patriarchy, the disparity between man and woman, in its unwritten form, has developed through language, customs, rituals, myths and practises. Myths, rituals, and customs contribute to the evolution and establishment of human society. They are naturally developed, but are indeed societal buildings and help in developing patriarchal ideologies. They are believed to be natural. They are, therefore, essential to women\u27s subjugation in our society
The Depiction of ‘New Woman’ in Manju Kapur’s Home
Get PDFIt is impossible to overestimate the significance of Indian English Writing in the commitments made by its female pupils. ManjuKapur is one of many who strive to speak to the realities of Indian women, who endure a variety of hardships and tribulations as a result of the city\u27s tradition and modernization have opposing weights. She illustrates the difficult decision-making of middle-class females who transform from quiet victims to ultimate agitators, challenging the male-dominated society\u27s age-old customs, morals, and constraints. ManjuKapur\u27s Home is a great example of self-assurance. ManjuKapur\u27s Home exemplifies this type of self-assertion. The work is situated in a downtown neighborhood, and the key hero Nisha is shown as a lady who fearlessly confronts and overcomes the limits of being a woman. She ultimately achieves her determined journey towards becoming herself. ManjuKapur acknowledges illiterate intellectual Indian women\u27s ability to recognize their impulses for self-discovery in their adolescence as a ‘new woman.\u2
Myth Theory: A Study towards Mythic Tale and It’s Reach in Today’s Life
Get PDFMyth can vaguely be said to have come into existence due to the urge of seeking answers to curious mind about the universe, nature, man or can be the result emerged from the need for religious stability of societal control using certain customs and rituals. Myth when looked with a proper outlook can be termed as meaningful, for it beholds metaphysics, the branch of philosophy that deals with the first source of things, including intangible concepts such as being, identity, time and space in its primary sense while developing close proximity to immediate perception of reality. The universal belief system is held and disseminated with a certain amount of pompousness in language and settings, based on mythic stories of a clan or cult. The purpose of this paper is to establish mythic tales as a vital ingredients for posterity to look upon and validate that the re-reading of mythic tales into fiction opens up a variety of possibilities, including: various perspectives and dimensions to the same story portrayed in/as legendary texts. Humanistic consideration is brought about by individual representation. There are a variety of ways to look at the philosophy that has been passed down through the generations through stories