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PAPERS by Abhik Maiti

Moveable Type, Vol. 15, ‘Movement’ (2023-24), 2024

, Daniel Hrbek, the director of Svanda Theatre in Prague, helmed a novel theatrical production ti... more , Daniel Hrbek, the director of Svanda Theatre in Prague, helmed a novel theatrical production titled 'AI: When a Robot Writes A Play'. This event, the first-ever theatrical work generated by an artificial intelligence, or AI, system, marked a significant milestone in the realm of performing arts. The play achieved widespread acclaim beyond 1 Prague, reaching stages in London, New York, and Chicago where it garnered praise from publications such as The Daily Telegraph, The Times, and the British Theatre Guide. 2 The assimilation of AI technology into theatre practices has inaugurated an expansive frontier of possibilities for both thespians and spectators. In terms of movement, this involves the use of avatars, which inhabit a customary screen milieu (encompassing three-dimensional in-world scenography) that necessitates simultaneous consideration of a tridimensional theatrical space and coexisting performers, within a moment of real-time inception and interconnectedness. This complex confluence raises questions pertaining to the 'avatarisation' of corporeal embodiments on the theatrical stage and the consequent emergence of novel performative methodologies. Within AI-enabled performances, the use 3

Abstracts are invited from interested faculty members, research scholars and students within 300 ... more Abstracts are invited from interested faculty members, research scholars and students within 300 words with 3 to 5 key words to be mailed to cmenglishwebinar@gmail.com by 30 July.

Diaspora is defined by Stuart Hall, as one " defined not by essence or purity, but by recognition... more Diaspora is defined by Stuart Hall, as one " defined not by essence or purity, but by recognition of heterogeneity and diversity, by a conception of identity which leaves with and through despite difference. " Diasporic discourse is marked by its supposed complexities and ambivalences arising, out of the conflict between localities and spatial duplexes. The concept of identity for the Diasporas is precariously bound within an episteme of displacement and the sense of exile. And a zone not defined by ethnicity and nations. The Namesake becomes a culture, hypertext dealing with Bengali culture, and its merging with foreign influences. As in Nikolai Gogol's The Overcoat, the tone of the language and the subject matter of the novel work together, to help the readers find a space in which, to discover his own meanings and contemplate on the inner fables of life.

Memory is the diary that we all carry about with us. "-Oscar Wilde Matthew Arnold once suggested ... more Memory is the diary that we all carry about with us. "-Oscar Wilde Matthew Arnold once suggested that, " the pursuit of perfection is a pursuit of sweetness and light. " In many ways this is exactly what the characters of The Glass Menagerie seek in the play – perfection. They look for it in their future, as they search for a way to find security and hope. Although they find glimmers of hope throughout the story, each time is it extinguished like the candles at the end of the play. The Oxford English Dictionary states memory as, " to commemorate; to preserve a record or memorial of; to record, mention, " But even though Tom is recollects " that quaint period, the thirties " to commemorate his family and their tragic existence, he does so with the " appearance of truth " and " illusions " that proves how fragile and deceitful memory can be. All the characters are unable to accept and relate to this reality. As a result each of them withdraws into a private world of illusion where they find the comfort and meaning that the real world fails to offer.

As literary genre the Rubai was tremendously popular in 11th and 12th century Persia. It consists... more As literary genre the Rubai was tremendously popular in 11th and 12th century Persia. It consists of two stanzas which are further divided into Hemistiches, thus making four like altogether. Each of Khayyam’s quatrains forms a complete thought: the first two lines generally pose a situation or problem, the third creates suspense, and the fourth offers a resolution. Khayyam is best known for his Rubaiyat, a collection of verse quatrains composed in the traditional rubai style and arranged in alphabetic order. Each rubai is complete in itself and has no connection with what goes before or follows after. The leading ideas are pleasure, death and fate and the predominant state of mind are the sensuous, the gruesome and rebellious. The term “Vairagya” refers to a deeply ruminative cynicism arising out of wisdom, knowledge and awareness about the ways of the world especially its perplexing transience and man’s search for meaning in the grand scheme of things. No other topic engenders as much vairagic thinking as does the imponderability of life’s purpose, its relevance and meaning. The manifestation of this thinking can be seen in prose tracts, poetry, schools of philosophy, expositions, sayings and aphorisms. Omar Khayyam’s Rubaiyat belongs to this manifestation. With death as the final and unyielding reality it was but natural for Omar Khayyam to bring out the perplexing nature of human existence and passions there in for questioning in his rubai. Like Lucretius before him and Keats after, in Khayyam’s Rubaiyat too, is a constant reference to impermanence of life and attempt to laugh at the fleeting nature of relationships; man’s craving for possessions and the need to accept death as a natural process of life which this essay strives to enlighten upon. Worthy of Jean Paul Sartre or Albert Camus, the thoughts of the Rubaiyat have a surprisingly modern flavour which is not merely the result of Omar Khayyam’s translations. This freedom of tone gives the Rubaiyat a paradoxically uplifting quality despite Omar Khayyam’s pessimism about the human condition.

―Youth grows pale and spectre thin and dies‖ – John Keats, (Ode to Nightingale) Tuberculosis was ... more ―Youth grows pale and spectre thin and dies‖ – John Keats, (Ode to Nightingale) Tuberculosis was one of the most misunderstood and misrepresented diseases of all times. Hailed as Consumption's Poster Child, Keats' life, like Beethoven's, served as a pattern tor the Romantic artist. In acute distress and emotional turmoil, in 1819 masterpiece followed masterpiece. In Keats' poems we see a concreteness of description of the object he contemplates. All the senses-tactile gustatory, kinetic, organic, as well as visual and auditory combine to give the total apprehension of his experience. His experiences often accord closely with his personal, life and the disasters he had. Keats is austere in poetry and yet he keeps high colouring and variety of appeal to the senses and the mind. Tuberculosis remains with us today, especially in sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia where more than a million people die of this disease each year. It is worth recalling its history and its association with literature with special reference to John Keats and his poetry-and specially La Belle Dame Sans Merci that shows a dominant forebrooding over man's mortality from it. La Belle becomes a representation of the disease in Keats's La Belle Dame Sans Merci and reflects the poet's struggle with tuberculosis.

In the human psyche, do ―Contrary impulses exist side by side, without cancelling each other out.... more In the human psyche, do ―Contrary impulses exist side by side, without cancelling each other out. ... There is nothing in the id that could be compared with negation ... nothing in the id which corresponds to the idea of time. ‖ – (Reading Freud: Psychoanalysis as Cultural Theory, Tony Thwaites) The id is the part of the mind in which innate instinctive impulses and primary processes are manifest. It is "the conflict between the drives of the id and the demands of the cultural superego" that gives shape to the human psyche. The id represents the disorganized part of the personality structure that contains a human's basic, instinctual drives while containing the libido-the primary source of instinctual force that is unresponsive to the demands of reality. The id acts according to the "pleasure principle"—the psychic force that motivates the tendency to seek immediate gratification of any impulse—defined as seeking to avoid pain. Alongside the life instincts came the death instincts—the death drive which Freud articulated relatively late in his career in "the hypothesis of a death instinct, the task of which is to lead organic life back into the inanimate state." For Freud, "the death instinct would thus seem to express itself—though probably only in part—as an instinct of destruction directed against the external world and other organisms‖ through aggression. Freud considered that "the id, the whole person ... originally includes all the instinctual impulses ... the destructive instinct as well", as eros or the life instincts. According to Freud the id is unconscious by definition: ―It is the dark, inaccessible part of our personality, what little we know of it we have learned from our study of the dreamwork and of course the construction of neurotic symptoms, and most of that is of a negative character and can be described only as a contrast to the ego. We approach the id with analogies: we call it a chaos, a cauldron full of seething excitations. ... It is filled with energy reaching it from the instincts, but it has no organization, produces no collective will, but only a striving to bring about the satisfaction of the instinctual needs subject to the observance of the pleasure principle. ‖ The id "knows no judgements of value: no good and evil, no morality. ... Instinctual cathexes seeking discharge—that, in our view, is all there is in the id." Regarded as "the great reservoir of libido‖, the instinctive drive to create—the life instincts that are crucial to pleasurable survival, the id manifests the repressed desires and drives while acting from the substrata of the human psyche. It may thus be equated with the notion of the Conradian double where the ―shadow‖ acts as the elusive doppelganger that is, but the latent half of human consciousness. The id becomes a necessary projection in the doppelganger to overcome the polished embargoes laid by society over man and his mind. This paper attempts to expound the dominant overshadow of the concept of the Conradian double in most of Zafon's major works, tracing the roots of the doppelgangers as manifestations of the id of their protagonists. The term ―Idipal‖ is hereby coined to refer to the notion of the double in the human psyche as a deviatory from the suppressed id in man.

" Wars have no memory, and nobody has the courage to understand them until there are no voices le... more " Wars have no memory, and nobody has the courage to understand them until there are no voices left to tell what happened, "-Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Shadow of the Wind. The literature of war is a literature of paradoxes, the greatest of which is the fact that it comments continuously on its own failure. War writers often lament their incapacity to describe the realities of armed combat, the inexpressible nature of the subject matter, the inadequacy of language, and the inability of their audiences to understand. Tim O'Brien writes of the war he experienced in Vietnam: " There is no clarity. Everything swirls. The old rules are no longer binding, the old truths no longer true. Right spills over into wrong. Order blends into chaos, love into hate, ugliness into beauty, law into anarchy, civility into savagery. The vapors suck you in. You can't tell where you are, or why you're there, and the only certainty is overwhelming ambiguity. " From ancient Nordic ballads to Masai folk songs or Red Indian sagas, war has always been a predominate theme in literature. Zafon in The Shadow of the Wind portrays a war ravaged Barcelona and comments, " There's something about that period that's epic and tragic " for like the Old English Elegiac poetries, the Arthurian Romances, Gorky's Mother or Tolstoy's War and Peace, the literature of the Great Wars have altered human perception and the very fabrics of literature. However, we witness a distinct line between the literature of both world wars. The Second Great War threatened the humankind like never before. It was a manmade crisis which threw us to the brink of extinction, and thus displaying the futility of human existence. As humanity experienced the terror of the 'absurdity' of reality, the philosophy if 'nothing to be done' surfaced in their consciousness. This paper aims to evaluate the marked change in the form of poetry written in the two Great Wars and how far the Second World War was responsible for the advent of Modernism.

" This self-deceit, this fatal weakness of mankind, is the source of half the disorders of human ... more " This self-deceit, this fatal weakness of mankind, is the source of half the disorders of human life. " (Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments.)Children's literature is essentially a literature of deception. Just as Aesop's Fables preach moral truths in the guise of fables, many nursery rhymes born of contemporary socio economic turbulence, bespeaks of trauma, murders, gore, sexuality or death through the apparent lucidity of nursery rhymes. Just as Rossetti's Ferry Me across the River may be read as a deep philosophical poem on Death and the Final Passage over the river Lethe, her Goblin Market (often read as a children's rhyme) bespeaks of homosexuality and hides a feminist subtext. From Swift's Gulliver's Travels, often included in the domain of children's fiction to Philip Pullman's Dark Matter Trilogy for children permeates with its re-readings of Anti-Christian ideology, it is hardly surprising that most nursery rhymes have meanings deeper than the reach of their intended audience. So the question arises-" How and why do people tell a lie? One useful approach to addressing this question is to elucidate the neural substrates for deception. Recent conceptual and technical advances in functional neuroimaging have enabled exploration of the psychology of deception more precisely in terms of the specific neuroanatomical mechanisms involved. A growing body of evidence suggests that the prefrontal cortex plays a key role in deception, and some researches have recently emphasised the importance of other brain regions, such as those responsible for emotion and reward. However, it is still unclear how these regions play a role in making effective decisions to tell a lie " (Nobuhito, Abe). How the Brain Shapes Deception. Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, US) But deception arises with a need for concealment, here, in the case of nursery rhymes, often to hide the more obnoxious dimensions of the truth. An obvious choice is to tell an outright lie, but it is also possible to deceive others by avoiding the truth, obfuscating the truth, exaggerating the truth, or casting doubt on the truth. Just as these processes are useful in deceiving others, they can also be useful in deceiving the self. Why would people deceive themselves? What is the mental architecture that enables the same person to be both deceiver and deceived? How does self-deception manifest itself psychologically? And how far do its roots travel into nursery rhymes are some questions that intend to be addressed in this paper.

Historically speaking, women have been considered symbolic objects of use in a masculine structur... more Historically speaking, women have been considered symbolic objects of use in a
masculine structure and linguistic tokens, rather than wielders of words in their own right. Deleted
or distorted by male-manipulated language, the female's quest for self-respect and fulfillment has
been lost from culture and even consciousness for centuries. In the works of a writer like Steinbeck,
who had strong confidence in his thorough understanding of "women's heart of hearts,” one might
encode indices of a forgotten language, decipherable hieroglyphs. The primary theme of the story
The Chrysanthemums is one that appears throughout Steinbeck’s canon, the issue of creative
frustration. While The Long Valley is undeniably rich in female portraits, and in the portrayal of
husband-and-wife relationships, Elisa’s and Mary’s portraits stand out as two sides of one
conception: they seem to have been produced one after the other, if not conjointly, and to
corroborate each other in the formulation of a correct relation of humans to their environment.
Here understood through Elisa’s constant efforts at establishing herself as a successful planter of
chrysanthemums, belittled by her materialistic, practical-minded husband, Henry Allen and
betrayed rather robbed emotionally by the stranger with assurances of false dreams finally making
her realize that her seeds of creative desire shall always be wasted. Some critics have viewed Elisa
as a feminist figure, trying to express her identity but failing constantly in a patriarchal postdepression
American Labour Class Society.
KEYWORDS: male-manipulated language, Steinbeck’s women, repressed desires, silenced and
objectified feminity.

The Raft of the Medusa (French: Le Radeau de la Méduse) is an oil painting of 1818–1819 by the Fr... more The Raft of the Medusa (French: Le Radeau de la Méduse) is an oil painting of 1818–1819 by the French Romantic painter and lithographer ThéodoreGéricault (1791–1824). Completed when the artist was 27, the work has become an icon of French Romanticism. It is an overlifesize painting that depicts a moment from the aftermath of the wreck of the French naval frigate Méduse. According to critic Jonathan Miles, the raft carried the survivors "to the frontiers of human experience. At least 146 men and one woman—were piled onto a hastily built raft after Medusa ran aground on a sandbank off the West African coast, near the present day Mauritania. Crazed, parched and starved, the survivors slaughtered mutineers, ate their dead companions and killed the weakest." After 13 days, on 17 July 1816, the raft was rescued by the Argus by chance—no particular search effort was made by the French for the raft. By this time only 15 men were still alive; the others had been killed or thrown overboard by their comrades, cannibalized brutally, died of starvation, or thrown themselves into the sea in despair. (Wikipedia)
The Raft of Medusa that inspired many artistic endeavours is a classic portrayal of the ingrained violence in human nature that surfaces in a state of unalloyed freedom from societal bondages. This display violence is not a stray phenomenon, as civilized people of Europe can also engage into barbaric and inhumane act under certain circumstances. This particular event stripped humanity of all their glory, education and proud civilized ideas, naturally it affected deeply to the masses as well as to the artists. This paper aims to evaluate the predominance of violence in human nature hidden under the guise of an apparent civilised being. William Golding’s Lord of the Flies explores the same theme and Rockstar Games’ Grand Theft Auto brings the motif of violence into one that may be lived through in the form of virtual reality in the game-space.

Arianna Dagnino in her essay Transcultural Literature and Contemporary World Literature points ou... more Arianna Dagnino in her essay Transcultural Literature and Contemporary World Literature points out that “with the denationalizing wave of globalization, even national literatures are under pressure to find new arrangements of form and content to adapt to a changed cultural and social paradigm. In other words, a mutation is under way within the global acumen of letters where new notions of belonging, as well as definitions of selfhood and identity are externalized through new creative artistic and literary processes. Within this emerging social, cultural, and literary scenario, scholars feel the urge to identify new relevant literary paradigms, especially when dealing with the so-called "New Literatures in English" represented by the works of, say, Zadie Smith, Hanif Kureishi, Kamila Shamsie, Michael Ondaatje, or Joy Nozomi Kogawa” or recently through Anime with its heavy borrowing of motifs from western canonised literature and its gradual popularity as an emerging form of literary creativity.

According to Merriam-Webster dictionary, anime is "a style of animation originating in Japan that is characterized by stark colorful graphics depicting vibrant characters in action-filled plots often with fantastic or futuristic themes." While Oxford Dictionary dictates anime as "A style of Japanese film and television animation, typically aimed at adults as well as children", the Urban Dictionary explains anime as "a style of animation that originated and is still heavily centered in Japan." However like any other art form, confining this art within just few words would be highly unjust. Still to provide a more technical approach, we can look forward to animenewsnetowrk.com's definition of anime, which perhaps shed more light on this complicated matter. According to them anime is "Japanese word for cartoon and animation. In Japan, "anime" refers to any and all animation or cartoon - regardless of the genre, style, or nation of origin. Outside of Japan the word "anime" has come to refer specifically to animation of Japanese origins, or animation of a particular style..."

The vast world of anime has its roots embedded very deep inside light novels, manga, visual novels, games and much more, which altogether known as the ‘otaku culture’ in Japan. Japan’s existence as an island civilization, far separated geographically from the mainland of Asia has led to the development of its own distinct culture and Anime is a reflection of Japan’s own cultural heritage; far distinct from its pan-Asian counterpart. It can be said that anime is a high quality art form, a much ignored one though. But it is an art form of purest quality which have protected itself from the cultural imperialism and proved itself truthful to regional originality for almost a century. The growth and popularity of anime was quite evident since its origin. Anime first surfaced as propaganda feature films during World War II, later it fully bloomed in the hands of 'Godfather of Anime' Osamu Tezuka. Just like Walt Disney's works, it made strong appeal to children. However later the plots and arts became more oriented towards the young-adults too. Certainly it paved anime's way towards a constant growth. As researchomatic.com states “... However, the familiarity of anime and manga is not restricted to the adolescents; but, it has been successful in attracting adults over a period of time...” Another reason for its growth could be its intricate character detailing and building, to which the audience can easily relate themselves and emphasize. One must not ignore the metaphysical aspects of anime too, as a Quora user Sawyer Cotherman points out “People watching a live-action show relate the show's universal metaphysics more to our own universe (reality). In an animation, we do not relate the metaphysical laws in its universe to our own as much and we are more ready to accept what is posited, therefore, we may concentrate on the other aspects which an animation presents: the relationships which characters have between one another, the human virtues, justice, ambition, and other human qualities of life." And perhaps this strong harmony of metaphysics and escapism which has provided anime this alluring enigma throughout the ages.

Though it is true that anime and serious literature have always been hostile towards each other, however with the coming of the new century new hope arises as more liberal minds are considering different arts as part of literature, such as music and painitings. One can hope in near future anime shall be considered as a serious art form too. To state that fact the Otaku stereotype was a prevalent theme in almost every literary work from the literature review. While very little of the western canonized literature has been adapted into anime, yet some of the exceptional and remarkable works are, Howl's Moving Castle, Romeo × Juliet, Agatha Christie no Meitantei Poirot to Marple, The Story of Cinderella, Jungle Book Shōnen Mowgli, The Secret World of Arrietty , Gankutsuou: The Count of Monte Cristo , World Masterpiece Theater, Tales from Earthsea, Nils no Fushigi na Tabi, Blast of Tempest, Takarajima, Tokyo Godfathers, Pandora Hearts or Miyuki-chan in Wonderland.

However, it seems that the negativity toward Otaku culture progressively lessened as the articles approached modern times. There is still a slight negative stigma to anime, despite attempts to educate people on the nature of anime, and people still believe anime to be a violent art form (Borrelli, 2002). Acceptance of Otaku culture and the anime wave has become more acceptable, however, as more scholarly research is conducted and more libraries stock anime (Halsall, 2010).” (Samantha Nicole Inëz Chambers, Anime: From Cult Following to Pop Culture Phenomenon).

In the introduction to The Cambridge Introduction to the American Short Story (2006), Martin Scof... more In the introduction to The Cambridge Introduction to the American Short Story (2006), Martin Scofield, quotes the famous Irish short story writer Frank O‟Connor, who commented, “The short story in America has for almost two centuries held a prominent, even pre-eminent place in the American literary tradition. For the Americans the short story had become „a national art form‟” (Scofield: 2006). This short story, carrying close affinities with many novelistic elements, is perfect in the hand of American narrator O‟ Henry . Taking one of his most celebrated stories “The Last Leaf ” this short paper attempts to see him as a master of masterpiece in the field of „the art of storytelling‟. Henry James had once described short stores as a “slice of life” and for nearly a hundred years, thousands of Americans have found in O. Henry‟s short stories the magic key to their own brand of Arabian Nights entertainment. In the ten years of his greatest activity from 1900 to 1910, he wrote nearly three hundred stories filled with good-humored comments on the fortunes of men and women and touched the deals routine of city life with the brush of romance and partaking of local colours bearing stylistic similarities with Joyce and Cowed. H.W. Wells, regarding the course of a short story wrote that a short story is or should be a simple thing: „it aims at producing one single vivid effect. It has to seize the attention at the onset, and never relaxing, gathering until the climax is reached.‟ As Tagore said about the ending of a short story „ses hoyeo hoilo na ses‟ (it doesn‟t end even after ending), the Last Leaf begins in the text but end in the reader.

At the centre of the existential angst, dominating the great movements of life, there lays an ess... more At the centre of the existential angst, dominating the great movements of life, there lays an essential absurdity. England in the aftermath of the two wars inherited this absurdity that upheld the human predicament in a world where “nobody thinks, nobody cares. No beliefs, no convictions and no enthusiasm.” Camus in The Myth of Sisyphus diagnoses humanity’s plight as purposeless in an existence out of harmony with its surroundings. This irrationality and pointlessness of experience is transferred to the stage where by all semblance of logical construction and all intellectually viable argument is abundant. In the same strain, developed the Angry Plays of the Theatre of the Absurd. Beckett, Adamor and Pinter with the difference of attempting to seek value in a valueless world, to make sense out of what appears as senseless and fragmented action as the words of Amis, Waterhouse and Braine show. “In the depth of winter, I finally learnt that within me lay an invincible summer” These words of Albert Camus perfectly befits John Osborne who, after struggling a lot in the depths of his creativity, gave birth to Jimmy Porter, the protagonist of his most successful play, Look Back in Anger. All the other characters along with Jimmy languish in the self-imposed prison of their own design and burn in the purgatory fire called life. Camus says that “for Jimmy it’s neither, but a looking back in anger. He cannot recover and he does know the way to suicide; so he stays on his routined existence trying to create a why in the others.”

Hailed as " The New Zealand Chekov " , Katherine Beauchamp Mansfield was one of the leading expon... more Hailed as " The New Zealand Chekov " , Katherine Beauchamp Mansfield was one of the leading exponents of the genre of short story in the twentieth century literature. The Fly, included in The Dove's Nest is one of the shortest in the genre that deals with the protagonist's encounter with the fly that had fallen into his inkwell-the slightest of incident being, but a pretext for the hidden tension, both emotional and physical that comes to the forefront. Sylvia Berkman observes, " no note of pathos or anguish in the story but a relentless grim depiction of the caprices of destiny " In the classical example of fictional compression, one encounters a complex reading of moods and characters, associated with the modern short story. The Fly, is often compared to Chekov's Small Fry in which the discontented clerk crushes a cockroach to cease the gnawing of his heart. Thus Mansfield, like Chekov also used the moment of cruelty to unravel the sadist's nature of man that lies beneath the veneer of affection and goodness.

Herbert Ernest Bates was a prolific author who enjoyed several phases of popularity during his li... more Herbert Ernest Bates was a prolific author who enjoyed several phases of popularity during his lifetime. He initially garnered critical attention in the late 1920s with novels and short stories set in the rural English midlands. In these works Bates employed pastoral imagery and a lush prose style to vividly evoke mood and atmosphere while focusing on ordinary yet significant events in the lives of his characters. During World War II, Bates was commissioned Royal Air Force to write about the experiences of fighter pilot, leading to a series of esteemed short stories that examine effects of war on soldiers and civilians. Later in his career Bates returned to rural settings and themes, frequently depicting poignant incidents in the lives of children or elderly characters. Among his most popular later works are those which feature protagonists who vigorously pursue the sensual pleasures of life and nature. Bates also wrote The Modern Short Story, a respected literary study of short fiction. Bates is perhaps best known for his short stories, particularly those written during the late 1920s and 1930s and collected in several volumes, including Day's End, and Other Stories and Seven Tales and Alexander. The setting of these early works, noted V.S. Pritchett, " was usually the traditional life of the small farms, cottages and holdings, his people the hedgers ditchers thatchers and local carriers–a horse-and-cart England in the main, the England of rural haggling and feelings which had changed very little for centuries and often sounds Chaucerian and ripe in speech. " Critics have frequently compared his early stories to the works of Anton Chekhov, citing their minimal plot lines, thematic emphasis on everyday activities, and lucid evocation of atmosphere and emotions.

Abstract: “Then- as the manner of our country is- In thy best robes uncover’d on the bier, Thou s... more Abstract:
“Then- as the manner of our country is-
In thy best robes uncover’d on the bier,
Thou shalt be borne to the same ancient vault.”
(Romeo and Juliet, IV,I 109-111)
The spirit of the Renaissance was not only instrumental in heralding the advent of a new epoch in the history of Europe in the field of inventions, artistic manifestations or new discoveries, but it brought from Florence and Italy a new form of fashion that affected every form of design, completely altering the fashion of costume and obliterating the Gothic, Biblical or Byzantine features prevalent in contemporary stage and society. It was a time when sumptuous fabrics, new dyes and exuberant dresses would come to prevail. In “Costume in Shakespeare’s England: An Account of the Life of His Age” (Clarendon Press, 1917, pp.91-118) Macquoid traces how Shakespeare himself, no stranger to fashion, adopted this elaborate and dramatic mode of styling and costume in his plays which became the most important visual element in his stage-works. Although notoriously indifferent to historical accuracy, the different types of apparels in which Shakespeare decked his characters may be classified into- “Ancient” or out of style clothing to represent another period; “Antique” clothing to distinguish classical or mythological characters, his “Dreamlike” or fanciful clothing for plays like “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” (where costume also serves as a medium of deception) or “Traditional” clothing for the general players. Also called the “Peacock Age”, this was a period when science and mathematics influenced greatly on the clothing as they were based on geometrical shapes, rather than showing the natural body shape and used shoulder and hip pads to provide the “stiff” square look for men and gave the “hour-glass” shape for the female decked in a belled skirt, the bosom tightly lifted at the plunging neckline. Shakespearean stage fashion emphasized on gallantry and beauty and involved in his theatrics, an astounding array of costumes like basquine, enseigne, canions, the crescent hat, gorget, farthingale, zipone and zornea, ruff, stomacher, or codpieces along with wigs and shaving off the eyebrows and foreheads to provide his characters with an air of intellect using a receded hairline. Repeated reference to fashion impregnates all of Shakespeare’s plays with Portia, describing her English admirer, saying “I think he bought his doublet in Italy, his round hose in France, his bonnet in Germany” (Merchant of Venice, I. ii) “O ill-starr’d wench! Pale as thy smock” (Othelo, V. ii) Shakespeare’s plays continued to be performed in contemporary costumes until about a hundred and twenty years ago when Charles Kemble and Macready startled theatrical London with their historically accurate and elaborate production. In 1923, the first of a series of innovative modern dress of Shakespeare plays, Cymbeline, directed by H.K.Ayliff opened at Barry Jackson’s Birmingham Theatre in England. Academy Award nominee costume designer Sandy Powell and Lisa Westcott invokes the Renaissance spirit of Shakespeare’s times to life on celluloid “Shakespeare in Love” (1998) where the audience spots Joseph Fiennes as Shakespeare in a green leather jacket, signifying the modernisation and evolution of fashion in this sphere. British actress Emily Blunt garnered a Golden Globe award for her performance on “The Young Victoria” (2009) and the singularity in adapting the fashion of the age. Charles L. Hayter complains about “updating” Shakespeare and Sir Alec Guinnes in his essay “Shakespeare in Modern Dress” comments “I believe that modern dress will often pay rich dividends in presentation. Modern dress will often breathe fresh air on an old play and give it a fair chance of revaluation, firmly pointing out how little the human heart changes through the centuries, and how remarkably alike we are to our forebears.” The impact of fashion on Shakespeare’s stagecraft and its gradual evolution from classical antiquity to the modern era provides an interesting dimension to the students of literature.

" Life is so single mindedly awful it seems a conscious, cosmic prank; it starts in pain, is perv... more " Life is so single mindedly awful it seems a conscious, cosmic prank; it starts in pain, is pervaded by painful imitation, dislocation, guilt, desire, fear of responsibility and isolation; and it is always bestial violence and death. " Richard Kasleany in The Shock of Vision sum up approximates Hemingway " s view of life, which is the theme for all his novels. Being a journalist in profession Hemingway had a firsthand experience of the World War I which made him realize the inevitability of death, from this realization Hemingway constituted his philosophy for life that brutality and disappointment are the larger part of the substance of life. In this harsh universe, pleasure and pain are interwoven and inseparable no matter what happens, life goes on the first and final duty is to survive. And man attains his largest stature when he meets the hostile element with style and control. It is the inexplicable strangeness in Santiago that drives him far out into the sea, alone, after eighty four days of failure to take a fish. Though old, he cannot think of fishing in company with other fisherman. Santiago " s lonely trip is profoundly self-educative. William Faulkner in an essay dated in 1952 writes, " This time, he discovered god as creator. Until now, his men and women had made themselves, shaped themselves out of their own clay. Their victories and defeats were, at the hands of each other, just to prove to themselves or to one another, how tough they could be. But this time, he wrote about pity… the old man who had to catch the fish and lose it, the fish had to be caught and lost, the sharks which had to rob the old man of his fish " Through Santiago " s ambitious venture and his combat with an

Unlike in meta-theatre, a novelist might not restrict oneself to stereotyping the other side of t... more Unlike in meta-theatre, a novelist might not restrict oneself to stereotyping the other side of the broken wall to be inhabited by a human only. Narratives on paper allow fluidity and thus one might come across an extremely non-human being acquiring verbal prowess to communicate with the reader. This phenomenon of anthropomorphism is a concretised form of personification, where non-humans acquire human traits. Anthropomorphism floods the world of mythology, folklore, art and literature and is particularly omnipresent in children's literature where it is practiced uncritically in the creation of animal characters and stories with animals. Both anthropomorphism, and the closely related folk psychology, may be expressions of a relational epistemology, a common sense knowing that develops from being in relationship with others and that my inform the literary imagination of authors and readers. Literature is full of animal characters widely understood to be symbolic humans. They are believed to provide the reader with a combination of delight and the neutrality and emotional distance considered necessary for navigating various stages of maturation or complex and charged social issues. In this paper, I ask whether animal characters may sometimes be understood as animal selves and not as symbolic humans and if their presence helps resolve the gap between the reader and his text.

Carlos Ruiz Zafón's first novel, El Príncipe de la Niebla (The Prince of Mist, 1993), earned the ... more Carlos Ruiz Zafón's first novel, El Príncipe de la Niebla (The Prince of Mist, 1993), earned the Edebé literary prize for fiction. The author of three more novels, El palacio de la Medianoche (1994), Las luces de Septiembre (1995) and Marina (1999). The English version of El Príncipe de la Niebla was published in 2010 and followed it closely by La Sombra del Viento (The Shadow of the Wind) -a story "about accursed books, about the man who wrote them, about a character who broke out of the pages of the novel so that he could burn it, about a betrayal and a lost friendship. It's a story of love, of hatred, and of the dreams that live in the shadow of the wind"

Moveable Type, Vol. 15, ‘Movement’ (2023-24), 2024