Pride of Place: An Anthology of Telugu Poetry 1981-2000 (original) (raw)
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Dalits, aboriginals, subalterns, slaves, serviles, tribals, etc., are connected with an umbilical cord of the same section of the hapless society. Dalits and subalterns in India, aboriginals in Australia and Canada, Afro-Asians in the UK and the USA have sprouted and taken full-fledged areas of creative aesthetics in literature. A plethora of articles, books, monographs, autobiographies, memoirs, novels and poems have emerged as powerful visible forms of protest against the prolonged and chequered history of agony, anguish, exploitation, cruelty, maltreatment, malice and malevolence. Migration from one place to another has taken place to protect themselves from and protest against the sovereign/superior/colonizing and consumerist class. Earlier, misuse and mishandling of the marginalized communities became the subject matter of literary practices by few including the widely accepted 'holy trinity', M. R. Anand, R. K. Narayan and Raja Rao, who penned down and set the milestones in the literary sphere. With the passage of time, people from the beleaguered and subjugated class came forward to protest their subdued status in the society. They professed their creative articulations avowedly and started writing in the indigenous languages in several regions of India. Since they confined their writings in a particular language/dialect, the readership, therefore, was restricted to the speakers of the same language or was cramped in the same territory. Thanks to the translation studies in India which emerged from the late nineteenth century, the original texts in Hindi, Braj, Awadhi, Bhojpuri, Punjabi, Haryanvi, Rajasthani in northern India and Kannada, Telugu, Tamil and Malayalam in south India received recognition by the academicians, researchers and creative writers. Thus, the need of translation came to the fore to get wider readership. When many bilingual writers began writing both in their native languages and in English, the publishers, too, came forward to encourage them. The writers, poets and playwrights-cum-activists, such as Ananthamurthy, Ramanujan, Karnad, Manoj Das, Niranjan Mohanty, and Arun Kolatkar, Kamla Das and Mamta Kalia, carried forward the legacy of bi/multilingualism of Tagore, Firaq Gorakhpuri and Bachchan. But there is a brigade of authors, poets, novelists, travel writers, especially from pre-colonial India, who originally wrote and published in their native languages. Afterwards, there emerged a line of academicians who attempted in translation to get esteemed degrees, fellowships and certificates of appreciation. Few institutions of high approbation like Sahitya Akademy, New Delhi, were founded to promote and promulgate vernacular works in translation. Some publishers, such as the Writers Workshop, Seagull Books, Samya, Zubaan, Harper Perennial, Penguin
Issues of Contemporary Indian Poetry
Indian literature cannot be defined by its linguistic singularity; rather it celebrates due to its plurality. It is the literature which is being written in different languages of the nation. Therefore various attempts have been made by the scholars to discuss about the ethos behind the literature written in different languages. The contemporary Indian society is undergoing through some significantly rapid changes, therefore the depiction of the issues reflected in literature is also changing. The societal politics is in a position that the tradition of India has also been challenged. The colonial legacy and the fight to re-establish the identity was a common feature of the post-independence Indian literature. But the neo-colonizers have guided us to such a position that we even feel ambiguous in searching the right path towards identity. The Indian poetry of the contemporary age has nicely picked up such issues of the contemporary society. In this paper, an attempt has been made to discuss about how the poets have attempted to focus about the existence of the primeval feelings of being Indian through the poems. The established beliefs on the issues like society, identity, individuality, existence etc. has been challenged by the contemporary happenings. The poets of the contemporary India has tried to focus such issues including the challenges. By citing some examples of a few contemporary Indian poets, some of the major issues of contemporary Indian poetry will come to light and this will be helpful in further discussion about the present and future of Indian poetry.
Reviewed by Dr. S.A.R. Abidi
Indian Poetry in English is remarkably great. The conflict between tradition and modernity at various levels – social, cultural, familiar, national and cosmopolitan is well marked in the works of modern poets. It can be said about the modern Indian poetry in English that with every passing decade an increasing immediacy and heightened awareness of actual Indian experience is noticeable. Gradually with passing time the English language poetry became more Indianized in nature. It is discernible in works of modern Indian poets of English. The book under review is a collection of fourteen critical papers. It explores the works of modern Indian poets who are significant voices of our time. For more books please visit: http://www.arsartium.org/Catalogues.html OR http://waoar.org/research-publications/books/
Perception of Places and Locations in Indira Goswami's Select Novels
Indira Goswami, 2022
This book engages with the life and works of Indira Goswami, the first Assamese woman writer to win the highest national literary award, the Jnanpith Award, in 2001. From sociological treatises to a springboard of a socio-political milieu, Goswami's texts are intersections of the local and the global, the popular and the canonical. The writer's penchant for transcending boundaries gives a new contour and shape to the social and cultural domains in her texts. That every character is a representative of the society, that the context comes alive in every evocation of class struggle, power play, caste discrimination and gendered narratives add an interesting semantic load to her texts. While tracing the trajectories discussed above, this book foregrounds Goswami's act of going beyond the margins of varied kinds, both abstract and concrete, in search of egalitarian and democratic spaces of life. The book looks at Indira Goswami's works with a special emphasis on the author situated within the Assamese literary canon. It not only discusses the themes and issues within her writing, but also focuses on the distinct language and style she uses. The volume includes non-fictional prose, excerpts from her short stories and novels, viewpoints of critics, letters and entries from diaries, as well as interviews with Goswami about her writing and personal life. It engages with her works in the context of her multifaceted, almost mythical life, especially her avowed 'activism' against animal sacrifice and militancy in her latter career. Part of the Writer in Context series, this book will be useful for scholars and researchers of Indian literature, Assamese literature, English literature, postcolonial studies, cultural studies, global south studies, gender studies and translation studies. Namrata Pathak is an academic, poet and critic. She has published three academic books and a book of poetry. She received her MPhil and PhD degrees from English and
Politics of Literature : Contemporary Telugu Katha
This paper maps the politics of the contemporary Telugu Katha. It is an attempt to locate the history of Telugu katha in order to contextualize the politics of anthologizing literature over a period of time. With the advent of print culture the literary and cultural forms of oppressive social groups such as Dalits, women, adivasis, Muslims got marginalized and literary elite who happened to be brahminical class managed to establish their social experience and their literary imagination as 'the Telugu literature' in whatever the form it be. With intensified struggles of these submerged groups, there comes a new literary consciousness with the emergence of middle classes from these sections. It will focus on how the struggles of society marked the literature, and especially in contemporary times from the late eighties. On the one hand they are resisting the brahminical hegemony and on the other questioning the existing abstract idea of 'class' and 'progressive' literature by enriching their literature with the concrete life experiences/struggles. This paper argues that there is a need to redefine 'progressiveness' contextually by explaining through diverse claims of 'best short story' in Telugu literature. It concludes that the methods of evaluation of the 'best story' has to be changed by considering specificity of the problems faced by particular social group and their unique style of expression rather generalising.
Editorial: Indian Literature: Past, Present and Future
Studies in Media and Communication
IntroductionIndian Literature with its multiplicity of languages and the plurality of cultures dates back to 3000 years ago, comprising Vedas, Upanishads, Puranas and Epics like Ramayana and Mahabharata. India has a strong literary tradition in various Indian regional languages like Sanskrit, Prakrit, Pali, Hindi, Marathi, Bengali, Oriya, Tamil, Kannada, Telugu, Malayalam and so on. Indian writers share oral tradition, indigenous experiences and reflect on the history, culture and society in regional languages as well as in English. The first Indian novel in English is Bankim Chandra Chatterjee’s Rajmohan’s Wife (1864). Indian Writing in English can be viewed in three phases - Imitative, First and Second poets’ phases. The 20th century marks the matrix of indigenous novels. The novels such as Mulk Raj Anand’s Untouchable (1935), Anita Nair’s Ladies Coupé (2001), and Khuswant Singh’s Memories of Madness: Stories of 1947 (2002) depict social issues, vices and crises (discrimination, i...
Towards New Horizons in Indian English Literature
Indian English poetry started with the poems of Henry Derozio, Kashiprasad Ghose, Michael Madhusudan Dutt, Manmohan Ghose. These poets were influenced by their English contemporaries of romanticism viz. Byron, Shelley, Keats, Scott and Moore. Toru Dutt was one among these romantic poets who emphasized on India and her heritage by incorporating a large number of Indian legends in her verse. The romantic Toru Dutt is also a predecessor in respect to the use of the tree in verse as demonstrated by “Our Casuarina Tree”, a predecessor in respect of childhood memories recalled with nostalgia or regret.The poets of the second phase, still romantic in spirit were Sarojini Naidu, Rabindranath Tagore, Aurobindo Ghose and Harindranth Chattopadhyaya. The poetic output of these poets was prolific. Romanticism of these Indian poets was fraught with nationalism, spirituality and mysticism. It was therefore different from English romanticism. Indian romanticism widened the poet’s vision. While Aurbindo’s was the search for the Divine in Man and Tagore’s was the quest for the beautiful in Man and Nature. Both were philosopher poets. Sarojini Naidu’s romantic muse underscored the charm and splendor of traditional Indian life and Indian scene. She had a fine ear for verbal melody as she was influenced not only by English poetry but also by the Persian and Urdu ongoing process of openness in form, reliable and unreliable narration with multiple points of view, and shifting focalisation. In this section of the anthology i.e. “Indian English Short Story” there are five well researched papers. The first paper titled “The women as bonded labourers: A study of Mahasweta Devi’s “Dhouli”, “Shanichari” and “The fairytale of Rajbasa” the author of this paper explores the stories of women who dare to transcend the confines of patriarchy, thereby redefining the ambit of the feminine space. The next paper “Women on the Threshold of Change in Shashi Deshpande’s Shorter Fiction” deals with the changing role of women with the changing time. The paper titled “Mother as a symbol of Compliance in Shashi Deshpande’s The Legacy and Other Stories” tries to portray the stains of agonized motherhood, which seem to come out of the pages, are a blot on a man’s face, who has for centuries, remained insensitive to her prayers, pleas and entreaties, what-so-ever. The paper “Myths Restructured in Shashi Deshpande’s Stone Women” puts forth the seemingly high-pedestalled goddesses in true colours, thus bringing home the crude fact that woman may try to change her form, appearance, position, attire and what not, but can never succeed in altering the male psyche, that has been moulded, dried and conditioned in the furnace of male dominance and superiority. The author of the paper titled “Empowered Women of Shashi Deshpande” tries to highlight how the protagonists of Deshpande now wish to have a whiff of free and fresh air for themselves.
Indian Literature in English: New Introductions
International Journal of Research, 2017
Indian Literature in English might as yet appear as a conundrum. India is of course, India, and English the language of England. English in India still reflects the stereotypical colonial hangover. But without resorting to such platitudes like English being an international language, and writing in English in India being one major way of getting noticed overseas etc, I might state that there is as yet little need for pleading the case for the existence and flourishing of Indian writings in English. But in festivals like this one where we are celebrating poetry from India under several sections like women’s writing and Dalit Writing and writing in the regional languages, how do we envisage the situation of the writer in English? A fish out of water? Or a sore thumb? Barring the specific curio aspect of the language the experience of the Indian writer can unarguably be evidenced through this chunk of the Indian literary spectrum—this usually gets noticed in the west but sometimes for ...