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The Future of Literary Theory
Quo Vadis? The Future of Theory in the Light of Its Past.
Gayatry S. Assistant Professor of English,
TKM College of Arts and Science, Kollam.
The English word “theory” comes from the Greek root “theoria” which means
“looking at,” “viewing” or “beholding.” It can also mean “knowing,” “explaining” or
“understanding.” It has been part of the English vocabulary from at least the sixteenth
century. However it was only in the nineteenth century that the word was subjected to
widespread use.
Though it was Socrates who called down philosophy from the skies, it was Plato who
is looked upon as the first great philosopher of the Western world. He was a very systematic
and meticulous theoretician. The theoretical framework that he developed was
comprehensive, touching practically all areas of human experience.
Plato’s lone rival for the position of the Western world’s first theorist is his disciple,
Aristotle. The relative reputations of Plato and Aristotle have see-sawed through history and
it is now difficult to say which of the two has been more influential on the evolution of
Western theory. Perhaps we should not attempt to identify the father of Western theory.
Theory has two fathers: Plato and Aristotle. Plato has, in general, been more influential in the
humanities and Aristotle in the sciences.
Theory is an ocean. It embraces all spheres of human experience from Astrology and
Astronomy through Chemistry and Climatology, through Economics and Engineering,
through Linguistics and Literature, through Mathematics and Medicine, through Philosophy
and Physics, through Sociology and Statistics to Zen Buddhism and Zoology and even
beyond them. Wherever there is an attempt to observe, analyse, comprehend, evaluate, there
is theory. With some exaggeration one can say that to speak is to theorize.
It may not be out of place here to adumbrate briefly the rise of Anglo-American
literary theory in the twentieth century. An appropriate starting point would be Matthew
Arnold who was never tired of proclaiming not just the aesthetic value of literature but also
its cardinal position in the socio-cultural life of a community, something agreed to by T.S.
Eliot who attempted to trace a great European cultural tradition. Partially sharing the
perspectives, but more focused on the text, was I.A. Richards who developed Practical
criticism in the U.K. and the New Critics of the U.S. The Russian Formalists attempted to
develop a theory of literariness and their influence on English criticism turned out to be
profound. The same could be said of the structuralism practiced by such French theorists as
Claude Levi-Strauss and Roland Barthes which is ultimately rooted in the work of Ferdinand
de Saussure. The developments in Marxism, feminism, black theory and postcolonialism also
need mention. Deconstruction and postmodernism were responsible for the poststructuralist
revolution. This revolution was taken further forward by the work of Michel Foucalt and
Jacques Lacan.And it, in a way resulted in the rise of New Historicism and Cultural
Materialism.
What about anti-theorists? A supreme example of an intellectual who spent an entire
lifetime combating theory is F.R.Leavis. Leavis made it the mission of his life to establish
that there is no such thing as theory. But we theorists are unfazed. We say that Leavis is a
theorist himself, and a very fine one at that; only that his theory is that there is no theory.
The question, “Quo vadis?” remains to be answered. The Latin phrase is much older
than Christianity. However, according to Christian tradition, Peter fleeing from likely
crucifixion in Rome at the hands of the government meets a risen Jesus on the road outside
the city. Peter asks Jesus, “Quo Vadis?” or “Whither goest thou?” or “Where are you going?”
Jesus replies that he is going to Rome to be crucified again. I would like to pose the question,
“Quo vadis?” to theory which appears to laymen to suffer repeated crucifixion at the hands
of its practioners. Students fleeing from theory classes can easily identify themselves with
Peter fleeing from likely crucifixion.
Will theory come to an end? In his 1989 essay “The End of History,” published in the
international affairs journal The National Interest, Francis Fukuyama speaks of history
coming to an end. Of course, he does not mean that events will not happen or that history per
se will cease. He holds that western liberal democracy will be universalized and thus further
sociopolitical evolution will not take place. Similarly, will there be an end of theory? Far
from it, I feel that we are on the threshold of a remarkable expansion of theory. The number
of universities, academic institutions and professional academics has now scaled heights
never before reached. They are working day and night and a theory explosion is inevitable.
Let Jesus be crucified again.
Literary Ecology - Cowper versus Larkin.
Preethamol M.K.
Assistant Professor of English,
Mar Ivanios College.Trivandrum.
It is a tendency among us to regret the mistakes which we have done in the past. But
by the time we realise that what we did was wrong, we would have reached another phase of
our life where we will be busy contemplating life altering plans of action with abundant
scope for mistakes/blunders. There also life will give us a chance to regret our mistakes and
we will promise our self never to repeat them. It is another pertinent question whether we
learn from our mistakes or not, but the scope of this whole elaborate circle from recurring is
definitely high. Before we all indulge in the task of thinking about how many mistakes we
have committed and how many we have duplicated, I would like to draw your attention to a
“regretting feature” as I would like to call it, in literature. A study of the representation of the
physical world in literary texts is a move which have been made only in the recent times, to
be specific, only with the emergence of what is now termed as Ecocriticism in the context of
literary theories. Well, no mistake is considered cardinal forever if we learn something from
it. So this “regretting feature” in literature is not terminal as we are doing something to make
us look smarter.
If we take a bird’s eye view of English literature, we can postulate that the Romantic
Period has always been favourable to the non-human world, which celebrated Nature and at
the same time bemoaned though to a less extent its annihilation. This portrayal of the
familiar sights and scenes of the landscape of Nature which we associate with nostalgia and
relaxation has been brilliantly portrayed in some of the most amazing creations by famed
Nature Poets irrespective of Periods. As lovers of literature we have the privilege to pick our
favourites from them and with all due respect I am deviating from all of them and pointing
out William Cowper and Philip Larkin who made me link Nature and Ecocriticism as a field
of academic enquiry. To drive home the point of view of environmental problems and its
associated politics and how they are strongly expressed in a literary context, this paper will
be analysing two poems written by these two diverse writers from two dissimilar epochs in
English literature. One is “The Poplar Field” by the eighteenth century English poet William
Cowper and the other literary creation is “Going, Going” by the renowned twentieth century
English poet Philip Larkin.
Though both the works are not canonical in the correct sense of the word, while
reading the poems, we will be able to get the ecological awareness it exudes. If we get that
feel, then Ecocriticism is working at the level of praxis which is the need of the hour. Thus a
close relation between literature and ecology can be launched. In other words, they should
make us wakeful to the predicaments which are related to our environment. This works well
in a present day class room where we can sensitise a generation to impending problems
which our world faces. It will also go a long way in cultivating a link between literary studies
and environmental activism. But Ecocriticism as a theory emerged prominent much after
arguments and cases relating to environmental problems cropped.
A brief look into the respective ages in which the poems were written will be good in
understanding what the poets had in mind when they wrote the verses. William Cowper is
the renowned eighteenth century English poet who gave this fresh face to nature poetry by
picking images from the English country side and etching it in the readers mind by his
immortal gift of writing poems. “The Poplar Field” is an expression of the personal
experience of the poet. The poem’s vocabulary displays the period in which it was written.
We have the brilliant mélange of the past and the present which takes us deep into the “cool
colonnade” (line 2) of the once existent poplars in the “favourite field” (line 6) of Cowper.
But now “The poplars are felled;” (line1) “And the tree is my seat, that once lent me a shade”
(line 8). Cowper is seen relating his future to what happened to the trees and is distressed that
there will not be another orchard to replace the one lost.
“And I must ere long lie as lowly as they,
With a turf on my breast, and a stone at my head,
Ere another such grove shall arise in its stead.” (14 – 16).
That way an eighteenth century poet who had no serious concern about the
ecological/environmental problems that can emerge with the felling of trees is not
acquainting us with any imminent social problem. Instead, Cowper is alarmed with the
personal snag of not being able to enjoy the familiar feeling of being “charmed” when he
visits his “favourite field”, “To muse on the perishing pleasures of man”. Thus the outlook
the Romantics had about Nature was to give it a holistic perception to the point of
establishing a “sustainable relationship between mankind and the fragile planet on which we
dwell” (McKuisick). Though the first part of McKuisick’s view makes us ponder about
nostalgia related to Nature, the second part obviously should make us reflect on Romantic
literature being the manure ground for ecological awareness. We are able to think along the
latter angle of vision today only because we owe it to the thinking of Jonathan Bates, John
Muir, Aldo Leopold and others who are pioneers on nature writing in modern age. What I am
trying to prove is that nature having scope for ecological issues was not a matter of concern
in the eighteenth century Cowper England. Rather that approach was the least of concerns
among the poets then. It arose much later somewhere around the twentieth century and the
altered trend is seen in the literature of the time too.
To analyse the changed trend in the literature of the Modern age, the poem “Going,
Going” by Philip Larkin, a twentieth century post war English writer is best suited. It is
rather a lengthy poem which will strike the reader as modern because of the use of some
words and expressions. The Poet is guiding us very conveniently through an outburst of the
pain he feels when his thoughts shift to what the planet is in for. He says “For the first time I
feel somehow/That it isn’t going to last, (line 36-37). Also the seriousness of the problem/the
cruelty we are inflicting on this dear planet of ours is best expressed by Larkin. He talks
about “Chuck filth in the sea” (line 16) and the end of the ultimate English dream.
And that will be England gone,
The shadows, the meadows, the lanes,
… but all that remains
For us will be concrete and tyres. (44-49).
Larkin is showing us the expanding nature of environmental problems like the
intrusion of new buildings in the form of concrete jungles, owing to the cutting down of
trees. It is in the form of a hazard to our natural world because of the encroaching of city life
into sleepy “fields and farms”. Larkin speaks about the problem not from a personal
perspective like Cowper but rather as a grave social crisis. The world in which we live is
subject to excessive exploitation of all kinds, a portion of which is made sentient through the
literature of our times. Larkin’s “Going, Going” is no exception. But English Literature has
progressed from the age of eighteenth century Cowper to the post war twentieth century
Larkin. Owing to that we can say that “Going, Going” evidently has its focus on the disasters
of “industrialization, development, pollution and ecocide”- (Pramod K Nayar). Or this is
what Ecocriticism is all about. The poet is making the issue personal though on a different
note from Cowper. The urgency of the crisis is felt, though left unsaid, probably because
there is no fast escape from it. The title “Going, Going” is catchy enough to grab our
attention in this sphere.
Ecocriticism is a recent critical discourse which has carved out a neat terrain for itself
in the claustrophobic arena of literary theories. The most halting and curious feature is its
interest in things urban and exurban and realities which are human and non human. Both the
poems highlight the loss of natural countryside. Ecocriticism strongly upholds that the views
of an age and how it treats nature will be reflected in its literary, visual and other replicas of
external expression. “The Poplar Field” and “Going, Going” by Cowper and Larkin
respectively are no different. Though Cowper had absolutely no idea about ecology and
biological disaster, Larkin had. This is evident from the way each Poet has presented their
views in this slightly different and exotic manner of expression, though not entirely alien –
Poetry.
Works Cited
Cowper, William. “The Poplar Field”. The Golden Treasury. Ed. Palgrave, Francis T.
London: Macmillan, 1875.
Larkin, Philip. “Going, Going”. The Complete Poems by Philip Larkin. Ed. Burnett,
Archie. London: Farrar Straus Giroux, 2007.
McKuisick, James C. Introduction: Romanticism and Ecology. The Wordsworth
Circle (Summer 1997):123-24.
Nayar, Pramod K. Contemporary Literary and Cultural Theory. New Delhi: Pearson,
2010. Print.
Cartographing Nature: An Ecocritical Reading of Select Short Stories of Kunal Basu.
Dr.Anjana. J.
Assistant Professor of English,
N.S.S. College, Pandalam.
The interconnectedness between the anthropocentric world and the bio/zoocentric
world has become a promising area of interest in literary deliberations. It is beyond any
argument that the psychological space of characters gets affected by the vagaries of their
immediate environment. A spectrum of new theories infused with ecological consciousness
has evolved in critical circles which projects how human world gets conditioned and guided
by the natural world. Ecologically sensitive literary criticism aims at the study of inextricable
link between literature and physical world and to provide an earth centered approach to
literary studies. The fundamental interdependence and interrelationship between man and
nature has been of perpetual interest for writers for centuries. In the introduction to The
Ecocriticism Reader, Cheryll Glotfelty traces the development of environmental
consciousness in literary studies. Ursula. K. Hein clarifies the term ecocriticism in Science
and Ecocriticism stating that “it investigates how nature is used literally or metaphorically in
certain literary and aesthetic genres and tropes….” They collectively acknowledged that
everything is connected to everything else as if in an intricately patterned web in this world.
Kunal Basu, being a young promising writer adeptly negotiates the human and non
human world in his stories. This paper attempts to read the interrelationship of man and
nature and how it gets mediated in two select short stories of Kunal Basu- The Japanese
Wife, and Tiger! Tiger! They portray multiple facets of nature and how it interferes with lives
of the characters. The overwhelming presence of Nature forms a subtext in these stories.
In the first story he portrays the shifting moods of the river- The Matla and in Tiger! Tiger
he narrates the story of tiger poaching in the Sunderban islands. The two stories are included
in his collection of short stories of the name The Japanese wife. Obviously it is the most
popular among these stories which inspired the veteran film maker Aparna Sen to make a
film of the very same name. It is an intensely innocent and fiercely powerful love story of a
Bengali school teacher and a Japanese woman. Their disembodied love story unravels in the
backdrop of river Matla. Their pen friendship grows into a pen marriage exchanging vows
over letters. Even in their letters the river became a permanent topic. “He wrote about his
college, aunt and the river” (5). Matla is the only access for that remote village to the outer
world and hence it functions both as a character as well as a backdrop. Snehamony, the
protagonist’s life has been designed by the ebb and flow of the river. Capra in his The Web of
Life has remarked that ecological consciousness is spiritual in its deepest sense. The river is
not an inanimate entity as far as Snehamony was concerned. “As always, he brought his
woes to the river, and as always, it cleared the slate for him. Certainly, it was no stranger to
her letters or his. Over the past twenty years he had consulted it at every critical bend…. And
the river had spoken…. (7) Arne Naess, a Norwegian philosopher states that deep ecological
consciousness leads to the expansion of self in order to get identified with nature.
There seem to be a radical interdependence between Snehamony and the river. Though it
had snatched his parents in his swollen state he loved its presence, spoke to it, fought with it
and “felt light, almost lightheaded” (8) after talking to it. The river resonated with the psyche
of Snehamony. Ironically it was during one of its horrendous days of flood and storm that
Snehamony succumbs to the killer mosquito. The writer makes oblique reference to the
depletion of mangroves which results in excessive flooding of Matla. Mangroves are an
inevitable part of the ecosystem since they form natural shields against natural disasters. In
The Japanese Wife one can delineate the delicate intimacy of the characters with the might
and glory of the river and how they treat it as their own. But the second one Tiger! Tiger!
depicts the unscrupulous ecocide by the insensitive, inhuman, egocentric man. The
dichotomy of treatment is palpable in the very beginning of the story which provides a
glimpse of man’s absolute control over land and Nature by presenting the carnivalesque
celebration of the villagers when a tigress transgresses into human habitat:
A roar had brought her out of the lodge that she had rented for her research visit to
the Sunderbans, poised ideally on the banks of Matla- the “Mad River’- and looking
out towards the forest. Not a tiger’s roar, but the crowd’s- she found the whole village
gathered at Canning’s jetty…. Cries went up at the sight of the tigress, tranquilized
and lying like a docile cat at the feet of the forest officer…. (121)
Ms. Rowena Hawthorne, a scholar from England is doing research in Sundarbans on its
tigers and tiger poachers. The life of the entire village in and around Sundarbans is in one
way or the other connected with the ‘Mad River’, Matla and the forest. The forest officer
assumes a heroic stature there. Anwar, the master poacher narrates the way in which he does
tiger poaching and what he earns from it. The anthropocentric world takes a heavy toll on the
flora and fauna of Sundarbans. . It gives a candid picture of the mafia who unwittingly
destroys and loots nature. In Tiger! Tiger! Basu narrates gruesome pictures of injustice that
the greedy and the megalomaniacs do to the animal world by jeopardizing the natural order
of symbiosis:
A shoal of Gangetic dolphins had been trapped with mechanized trawler nets, and
shipped off to an unknown destination. A gang had descended on the crocodile farm
and slaughtered dozens of crocs to skin them for profit” (131).
The narrator gives an account of the poachers turned spies and the spies turned poachers
and how each one of them in their own way exploits Nature; be it trees, tigers, snakes,
turtles, just for monetary benefits. Basu responds to this sensitive issue through this powerful
story. The forest, animals and rivers are interconnected with the lives of the characters. In
Deep Ecology, Arne Naess observes:
The struggle of life and the survival of the fittest should be interpreted in the sense of
ability to co-exist and cooperate in complex relationships, rather than ability to kill,
exploit and suppress. “Live and let live’ is more powerful ecological principle than
either ‘you’ or ‘me’. (121)
A camouflaged picture of the eternal struggle between Man and Nature is deftly defined.
In the final combat, man falls as a victim. The forest officer who has the power to “shoot the
beast right there and then” (120), finally falls prey to the savage revenge of the tiger. Basu
weaves into the fictional fabric the exigency of an ecological balance to be maintained
between the human and the animal world. Every living thing has a rightful claim for
existence in this world which sustains biodiversity essential for all life forms. The basic
principles of ecology according to Capra are interdependence, recycling, partnership,
flexibility and diversity all of which help to promote sustainability. He stresses the
fundamental significance of proliferating ecoliteracy. He envisions a paradigmatic cultural
metamorphosis leading to an ecologically sustainable human society. Through these stories
Basu mediates his anguish and concern for the detrimental mayhem committed to the
environment. There is a seamless blending of the thematic content not only with the watery
presence but also with the sights and sounds of nature. He tries to project the diverse attitude
of mankind and the need to have an ecologically sustainable symbiotic state of existence.
Man with the unique gift of consciousness and the concomitant flair of language has
great responsibility towards the natural world. The divine circuit of interconnectedness is
stressed in the story. In the seminal book The Comedy of Surreal: Studies in Literary
Ecology, Joseph Meeker writes:
Human beings are the earth’s only literary creatures…. If the creation of literature is
an important characteristics of human species, it should be examined carefully and
honestly to discover its influence upon human behavior and the natural environment-
to determine what role, if any, it plays in the welfare and survival of mankind and
what insight it offers to human relationships with other species and with the world
around us. (3-4)
Works Cited
Basu, Kunal. The Japanese Wife. New Delhi: Thomson Press, 2008.
Capra, Fritjof. The Web of Life: A New Synthesis of Mind and Matter. London: Fantana,
1996.
Heise, Ursula K. “Science and Ecocriticism”. The American Book Review. 18.5.
Meeker, Joseph. The Comedy of Surreal: Studies in Literary Ecology. New York: Charles
Scribner’s Sons, 1974.
Naess, Arne. “Deep Ecology.” Key Concepts in Critical Theory: Ecology. Ed. Carolyn
Merchant. Jaipur and New Delhi: Rawat, 1996. 120-24.
Beyond Realism
Deepa. R.
Assistant Professor of English,
M S M College, Kayamkulam.
Ancient aesthetes and philosophers conceived quest of Truth as the seminal mission
in the cerebral expeditions of all disciplines of learning. Plato insisted that Idea or Truth
existed prior to the material world. Idealist and Spiritual schools defined humans in relation
to the superhuman expanse of cosmos and subjugated human will to the cosmic will. Indian
schools of philosophy deciphered material world as illusion of Truth and Plato reduced it to
the transient mimicry of the eternal idea or Truth. With the rise of humanism and emergence
of common man as a considerable social force, reality became the dominant centre of
discourse unseating Idea or Truth.There occurred a shift from theo-centrism to
anthropocentrism and from idealism to materialism. Reality was conceived as a composition
of matter and idea, truth and lie as it accepted a character like Iago, untrue to the bottom,
who is not what he is, as integral substance of human reality.
Realism took shape of a great movement in art and literature, with the growth of
reality discourses in various disciplines of learning. Reality then became the central criterion
that defined the meaning and objective of existence. August Strindberg defined realism as
exclusion of god from art and literature and the movement definitely cultivated secular ethos
that influenced the historical course of art and literature. Spirituality, morality, faith and all
such ideological super structures are part of reality but reality in realist literature is founded
upon material space and time. Raymond Williams identified realism with the literary art of
novel that defied established theses with respect to choice of theme, space and time in
literature as it preferred rational to imaginary, contemporary to archaic, sordid to pleasant,
ugliness to bogus dignity and material objectivity to romantic idealism. It insisted that
loyalty or faithfulness to reality subsisted with the discipline that the author should never
demonstrate anything that violates what is probable by the laws of nature. Naturalism, a
breed of realism went to the extremes of reducing humans to the original biological elements
of lust and sexuality. Even before Marx, Darwin and Freud, literature down to earth,
conforming to the laws of probability and laws of necessity gained momentum in art and
literature. Nothing supernatural violating the laws of probability was entertained in the
explication of reality. A truthful, detailed disinterested portrayal of what is absorbed by the
sense organs was the basic material upon which works of realism were set in motion.
Raymond Williams observes that realism marked the rise of the individual in history and it
represented the integration of the individual consciousness with the interlocking social
relations.
Material reality hidden under ideology was explored in realism, but reality thus
established was imperfect as it ignored the role of mind in defining material substance. Mind
is a construct of interaction between human sense organs and socio-material space and time;
the accumulated spatial and temporal experiences are processed by the cerebral system which
remembers and cultivates mind. Mind is the source and power centre of reality and the
scientific sanctioning of the unconscious mind at the individual as well as the racial or
collective level subverted the definition of reality as rooted in material objectivity of the
present. Freud stated that the unconscious that worked like a dream is not an absurd mass of
impressions but a system of expressionist symbols that suggested actual material
experiences. Dreams are irrational but interpretation of dreams brings out real material
happenings, repairing the impaired logic of time and space. The actual collective experiences
of a race in the past may be transmitted from generations to generations; it may lie
suppressed in the collective unconscious of the race. Past lives in memory and so
demonstration of material contemporaneity fail to comprehend reality. The argument that it
is mind that matters and reality may be unearthed from the repressed area of unconscious is
the major conviction of surrealism; a deconstruction of realism to deeper levels. Andre
Breton claimed that surrealism is a tumultuous voyage beyond reality reverberating in
contemporaneity; it excavates great riches of reality from the night side of life from the
ocean of unconscious.
Surrealism was anthropocentric; but it violated laws of probability and what is
rational by the laws of necessity. It celebrated death of god in sarcastic terms submitting
approbation to the prophet of darkness Nietzsche and accomplished the idea of exclusion of
god emphatically. It released the potentials of realism that have been suppressed by the
materialistic rationalist prescriptions. Consequent on the world wars shattering the
interlocking social relations and the integrity of the social individual, things fell apart and
fragmentation set in. Stream of Consciousness, and Psychological Realism did triumphant
portrayal of human reality and the broken pieces of Benjy’s psyche with the mass of sound
and fury around it, exemplifies truthful portrayal of substance that is terribly human.
Magic realism, another version of realism generated out of the socio-material
premises of Latin America in 1960s is queer ironic discourse of Amerindian racial stuff
blended with politics, soil, water, trees, birds animals human flesh blood and cerebral mass.
If Surrealism was the historical product of the insecure feeling world wars spread, Magic
Realism was the literary outcome of tyranny and repression suffered by the Latin American
people thrown back to their earth, filth and dust by the murderous guns of frequent civil
wars. The Latin American writers strove hard to revive the magical charm that lay deep with
primitive ecological sense and sensibility to build resistance to the politics of domestic
colonialism as well as the neo colonial repressions set in motion at the global level.
Surrealism was a psyche-centered programme of art with stress upon the unconscious. There
was nothing supernatural or super human in it as the violation of laws of probability was
consistent with the nature of the unconscious that is profoundly human. Magic realism on the
other hand was not psyche centered though figures and rituals drawn from primitivism are
central to the theme of magic. There is nothing superhuman or super natural with the concept
of magic as magic is inherent in matter. Magic realism seeks scientific sanction to the
enlarged metaphors of magic. It is closely associated with ecological memory tapped out of
the wild habitat of primitive Latin America. The practice of black magic or witchcraft is a
Pagan feature influential even in modern South America. The magic that redefines reality in
Magic Realism is similar to a magician performing miracles by hand trick, curtaining the
eyes of viewers wide open. The artist, by a sleight of hand applies alchemy into the politics
of sex and power. In sex there is irrepressible magic, sometimes tyrannical, sometimes
sacrificial. The central metaphor that lies subdued all through the literature of magic realism
is that of Alchemy. Sex performs miracles; birth is such a miracle though common place.
The lord of power performs miracle, as by a sleight of hand he converts a hut to a mansion
subverting Saussure’s linguistic morphology. The chemistry of vanishing ice cube, when
applied to the vanishing humans in the sky in Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude, it
happens to be a magical mutation of nonliving substance and living humans. Back to the
chemistry of matter and ecological memory, from the space and time of unconscious
portrayed in surrealism, is the project of reality discourse in Magic Realism.
Metafiction which lays bare the technique as foreseen by Viktor Shklovsky in
the analysis of Tristram Shandy and other formalists, issues a formalist reality discourse.
Literariness as conceived by formalists is a constructed quality. The basic question- where
lies reality, and in what aspect of fiction is it cited - is projected in metafiction. Reality lies in
common man’s language as Wordsworth and early realists put it, but metafiction theorists
argue that it lies in language constructed by technical devices. Metafiction states that reality
as well as literature is a sum of literary devices and it rules out the relevance of ‘real
language’ of humans in which a truthful portrayal of objective space and time are truthfully
portrayed. It gives emphasis to technique and often reminds readers that it is technique and
not material space and time that matters. This is expansion of the formalist, structuralist
approach that places structure or pattern above content or matter which is antithetical to the
schools of social realism and naturalism. Meaning is the factor that matters but meaning is
arbitrarily generated by signs, and not by material object, space or time, states Saussure. In
the present age of technocracy, where technology defines reality to a great extent,
metafiction lays bare the devices and endorses their relevance in generating signifieds, the
reader is reminded that what they feel as fiction or reality is a play of technical devices;
material space or time or object do not generate meanings. The expressionist structures of
the deeper unconscious or the chemistry of magic inherent in natural material are not
accounted relevant in defining reality proposed by fiction or fictional devices.
Works Cited
Elliott, Michael. A. The Culture Concept: Writing and Difference in the Age of Realism.
London: University of Minnesota Press, 2002.Print.
Abrams, M.H and Geoffrey Galt Harpham. A Glossary of Literary Terms. U S A:
Wadsworth, 2012.Print.
Stern,J.P. On Realism. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1973.Print.
Ironical Overtones: Celebrating the ‘gulf’ Between Hope and Reality in Benyamin’s
Goat Days.
Arshad Ahammad A.
Research Scholar
TKM College of Arts and Science, Kollam.
Human life as the greatest irony; sometimes invalidates what man plans and proposes.
Ordinary jokes and harsh realities of life simultaneously create irony. In other words, irony
juxtaposes both the serious and the silly to proclaim that life is absurd or paradoxical. As
human life is the subject of literature, writers use the device of irony in order to present both
the sunny and the smithy realities of life.
Migration to the Arabian Gulf following the oil boom of the 1970s was a turning
point in Kerala’s social and economic scenario. The Gulf now harbours about fifteen million
expatriates. The post-Gulf Boom era has witnessed human confinement and brutality in
unprecedented magnitude. But this psychological alienation and the trauma of separation did
not engender any significant literary artifact before Goat Days, leave alone a few verse
creations in the form of of film songs or mappila songs, the most popular among them being
letter songs or kathupattukal.
Goat Days voices both the untold and retold sufferings of the ordinary Malayali in the
Gulf. Like every Keralite who wishes to go to the Gulf countries, Najeeb, a modest sand-
miner from Kayamkulam, travels to Riyadh in the early 1990s with the dream of earning his
fortunes, only to become trapped in an unimaginable vortex of human predicament. He is
enslaved for over three years in the interior desert of Saudi Arabia on a goat farm (masara) at
the mercy of a cruel master (arbab). Goat Days is also the story of the journey Najeeb makes
from incarceration to freedom, including a perilous desert voyage,
The Language of the novel helps the reader visualise a true but strange picture of the
trauma and alienation which the protagonist suffers. The simile used in the closing sentence
of the novel renders the summing up of the experiences of the protagonist during the last
three years. Najeeb compares the scene of travelers walking towards the flight for their return
journey to their homeland to “herding a flock of goats back into a ‘masara!” (253). Najeeb’s
life is fused with the goats to that extent. Najeeb dehumanises and identifies himself as
another ‘goat’. He puts the garb of a goat and walks, eats, behaves and even ‘thinks’ like a
goat and thus moves far away from the human world. Once he explains the reason for not
asking the arbab for his unnecessary anxiety over the safety of the goats as goats never talk
to men! He also tries to humanise his goat-amigos by giving them names of men and women
whom he knows well in his native place. Najeeb perceives a goat’s face as quite similar to
that of a human’s. He names the goats by considering their physiognomy, character traits or
even their slight mannerisms. Of the various names he awarded to the goats, he asks the
readers, “Would you believe me if I told you that in my masara we had goats that laughed
like Jagathy, walked like Mohanlal, stammered like EMS?” (164).
Both the verbal and the situational irony are abundantly exploited in Goat Days.
Barry Brummett articulates in Techniques of Close Reading, "Irony is a kind of winking at
each other, as we all understand the game of meaning reversal that is being played"(56). The
best instance of verbal irony is seen in the letter which Najeeb writes to his wife. The readers
very well know that the contents of the letter are the exact opposites of the actualities.
Having only khubus and water as food and being alienated without a human company,
Najeeb writes:
Ah, the food. How many new and unseen items the arbab brings for me! I
started writing this letter after eating khubus with chicken curry and mutton
masala, and a glass of pure milk. . . . Some of our local people are here with
me: Ravuthar, Raghavan, Vijayan, Pokkar, and so on. . . . The arbab has a
houri of a daughter. . . Her name is Marymaimuna. (130)
It is ironical and interesting to note that Ravuthar, Raghavan, Vijayan, Pokkar and
Marymaimuna are not humans but only some ‘famous’ goats in the masara.
Situational irony also plays a significant role in the novel as Najeeb expects and
dreams of a better and glamorous Gulf life, but what he gets is unwelcomed and unbearable
hardship that a human being is even unable to imagine. “I dreamt a host of dreams. Perhaps
the same stock dreams that the 1.4 million Malayalis in the Gulf had when they were in
Kerala — gold watch, fridge, TV, car, AC, tape recorder, VCP, a heavy gold chain” (38).
Najeeb once says that in his childhood he often dreamt of being a goatherd. Many prophets
including Muhammad and Moses were shepherds for a considerable period in their life.
Romantic poets loved and cherished this simple but great profession. Najeeb wished to
become another Santiago or Ramanan. Shepherding was for him what dreams were made of.
But when he gets the chance of being a shepherd, he painfully realises the gulf between
expectation and reality. Najeeb says, “We shouldn’t dream about the unfamiliar and about
what only looks good from afar. When such dreams become reality, they are often
impossible to come to terms with” (124).
Goat Days underscores the scathing fact that man is essentially alone in his world. He
finds himself alienated even in the midst of a crowd. Najeeb comes to the desert country with
Hakeem, lives in the masara with a scary figure and his arbab. He escapes from there with
Hakeem and Ibrahim Khadiri. But his companions abandon him or he abandons them in
decisive moments. At a time when Najeeb becomes dear to the arbab, he deserts him.
Hakeem is swallowed by the sand dunes. Ibrahim disappears suddenly. At last he only is
saved and imported to the homeland. In a world of demons, Ibrahim Khadiri appears as an
angel who shows his presence for a limited but critical period only to save Najeeb’s life..
A man sandwiched between burning days and freezing nights, Najeeb is punished
brutally, destructed by loneliness and finds no solace or way out to save himself. This is the
human tragedy, not to be slighted as the plight of an individual. As Sreekumar Varma
comments in a review of the novel published in The Hindu, “this isn’t the angst of the
intellectual or the dissonance of diaspora; it’s the stunned response of an insect as you
trample on it, the struggle for survival”. This realisation is the greatest irony as men consider
a heartbreaking tragic ‘story’ as personal and often extraordinary. But when it happens to
them they have no way but to become another Najeeb. It can be read in the novel as the
protagonist says that all the stories of sufferings which people do not experience directly are
treated as mere fictional accounts.
Works Cited
Benyamin. Goat Days. Trans. Joseph Koyippally. New Delhi: Penguin Books, 2012. Print.
Brummett, Barry. Techniques of Close Reading. London: Sage Publications, 2009. Print.
Varma, Shreekumar. “Life and Times of a Goat.” The Hindu 6 Oct. 2012: 18. Print.
Archaeology, Genealogy and Discourse: The Conceptual Pillars of Foucaultian Theory.
Parvathykutty V. T.
MSM Alumnus.
Michel Foucault (1926-1984) is widely known as a ‘historian of ideas,’ whose
writings on power, knowledge and discourse have been influential in academic circles.
Published in the twenty odd years from The Madness of Civilization to The History of
Sexuality, the purpose of the oeuvre by Foucault is to find the conceptual underpinnings of
some practices in modern culture, placing them in the historical perspective. Foucault uses
history as the main technique to establish his points about various concepts like sexuality,
madness, punishment etc. But Foucaultian history is not a turn to teleology; it doesn’t
involve assumptions of progress or regress. Foucaultian history is often referred to as
‘history of the present’. It does not mean that he is seeking to find out how the present has
emerged from the past. He, on the other hand, problematizes the well-established notions
encircling the various systems of knowledge and disturbs the taken for granted. Foucault
uses history as a way of diagnosing the present.
Archaeology, Genealogy and Discourse are the tools devised by Foucault to give some order
to history at the same time as giving history a power- knowledge twist that makes the
Foucaultian approach so distinctive. This paper “Archaeology, Genealogy and Discourse:
the Conceptual Pillars of Foucaultian Theory” proposes to do a close study of the
Foucaultian concepts of Archaeology, Genealogy, and Discourse. Archaeology equips one to
analyze the statements in our archive; archive being the general system where formation and
transformation of statements occur. Genealogy adds the elements of power in the analysis of
statements stored in the archive. The body of statements forms the discourse which decides
the practices of a particular society.
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