Assignment: Paper E-C-203,

Topic: Derrida's Deconstruction,

Student's Name - Pooja N. Trivedi, 

Roll No - 20, 

M. A. Part I, Semester - II,

Submitted To - Dr. Dilip Barad, 

                        Department of English,

                        Bhavnagar University,

                        Bhavnagar.

After New Criticism and Structuralism, the latest development in the technique of literary criticism is Deconstruction which provided a promising alternative to the Freudians, Marxist and others. For the term was conceived by French philosopher and critic Jacques Derrida, who expressed his own deconstruction mainly in ‘Of Grammatology’,

“A philosophy of meaning that deals with the ways that meaning is constructed and understood by the writers, texts and readers.”

One way of understanding the term is that it involves discovering, recognizing, and understanding the underlying and unspoken and implicit assumptions, ideas and frameworks that form the basis for thought and belief. It has various shades of meaning in different areas of study and discussion. M. H. Abrams defines in his ‘A Glossary of Literary Terms’,

“Deconstruction, as applied in the criticism of literature, designates a theory and practice of reading which questions and claims to "subvert" or "undermine" the assumption that the system of language provides grounds that are adequate to establish the boundaries, the coherence or unity, and the determinate meanings of a literary text.”

Typically, a deconstructive reading sets out to show that conflicting forces within the text itself serve to dissipate the seeming definiteness of its structure and meanings into an indefinite array of incompatible and undecidable possibilities. There is a great deal of confusion as to what kind of thing deconstruction is – whether it is a school or as some call it a ‘textual even and determining what authority to accord to a particular attempt at delimiting it.

It is easier to explain what deconstruction is not than what it is. According to Derrida, deconstruction is neither an analysis, a critique, a method, an act, nor an operation. In addition, deconstruction is not properly speaking, a synonym for “destruction”. Rather, according to Barbara Johnson, it is quite specific kind of analytical “reading”

“Deconstruction is in fact much closer to the original meaning of the word analysis itself which etymogically means “to undo” – a virtual synonym for “to de-construct”… If everything is destroyed in a deconstructive reading, it is not the text, but the claim to unequivocal domination of one mode of signifying over another. A deconstructive reading is a reading which analyses the specificity of a text’s critical difference from itself.”

Further, deconstruction is not the same as nihilism or relativism. It is not the abandonment of all meaning, but attempts to demonstrate that western thoughts has not satisfied its quest for a “transcendental signifier” that will give meaning to all other signs. Again to quote Derrida, “Deconstruction is not an enclosure in nothingness, but an openness to other.” and an attempt “to discover the non-place or non-lieu which would be other of philosophy. Thus, meaning is “out there” but it cannot be located by western metaphysics, because text gets in the way.

Thus, deconstruction is really a technique of de-sedimenting the text in order to allow what was already inscribed in its texture to resurface the deconstructive reader expose the grammatological structure of the text by locating the moment in the text which harbours the unbalancing of the equation, the sleight of hand at the limit of a text which cannot be dismissed as a contradiction.

M.H. Abrams argues that the most distinctive part of Derridian theory is that “…he shifts his inquiry from language to ecriture, the written or printed text; and the second that he conceives the text as an extraordinary limited fashion.”

Let us now take up the basic terms that Derrida shakes to demolish traditional criticism and facilitate the act of deconstruction. First of all “writing” and “speech” are the pivot words in the ‘Of Grammatology’. Metaphysics and theology assigned to the written word a secondary place and to the spoken word the primary place. Derrida argues that the traditional concepts of speech and writing have been shaped, conditioned and governed by metaphysics. Deconstruction identifies in the Western philosophical tradition a “logocentricism” or “metaphysics of presence” also known as phallocentrism which holds that speech-thought (the logos) is a privileged, ideal and self present entity, through which all discourse and meaning are derived. Structuralism that is indebted to that concept often claims to have made the study of language and the act of criticism scientific discipline. Derrida shows that this claim is false because the signifier signified concept of language that linguistics has branded down to us is another version of the traditional concept of speech and writing. This logocentricism is the primary target of deconstruction.

Another term that deconstruction introduces is of ‘defferance’ also brings with it the idea of trace. A trace is what a sign differs from. It is the absent part of the sign’s presence. In other words, through the act of difference, a sign leaves behind a trace, which is whatever is left over after everything present has been accounted for. Derrida puts in, “the trace itself does not exist” because it is self effacing that is, “in presenting itself it becomes effaced.” Because all signifiers wholly present nor wholly absent.

Derrida has grouped metaphysics linguistics and structuralism into one category. All the three disciplines have expelled writing as secondary something that exists only to represent the voice that it embodies, the voice that reveals the meaning.

Derrida calls this concept of writing the “vulgar concept”. He dismisses this vulgar concept and attempts to liberate language and criticism from the totalizing and totalitarian influence of introducing the new concept of writing based on three very complex words: “difference”, “trace” and “arche-writing”. Derrida’s attempt is to demystify our understanding of language. Therefore deconstruction begins with the demystification as well as the demythification of the traditional concepts of language.

Deconstruction urges that the whole problem and history of language must be entirely thought. The result of rethought is the conclusion that language is “writing”. This means all that a critic can do is to partake in the forces of difference and move along the trace. The possible way for deconstructive critic is to criticize a text, is to use the rhetorical, the etymological and figurative analysis and emerges with newer interpretations.

Sankaran Ravindran says that in spite of “difference” that the writer makes between one word and another, he can never express his meaning accurately and exactly. He must always mean more than and something different from what he indicates through writing. The critic, therefore, is to take the words of the poet or writer not as outward meaning but as indicator of his meaning.

Moreover, several of Derrida’s skeptical procedures have been especially influential in deconstructive literary criticism. It is not easy to sum up deconstruction, in two words, as the saying goes.

However, to end with the note of M.H.Abrams, Derrida did not Derrida did not propose deconstruction as a mode of literary criticism, but as a way of reading all kinds of texts so as to reveal and subvert the tacit metaphysical presuppositions of Western thought. His views and procedures, however, have been taken up by literary critics, especially in America, who have adapted Derrida's "critical reading" to the kind of close reading of particular literary texts which had earlier been the familiar procedure of the New Criticism. Paul de Man has said, in a way which reveals that new-critical close readings "were not nearly close enough."

The end results of the two kinds of close reading are utterly diverse. New Critical explications of texts had undertaken to show that a great literary work, in the tight internal relations of its figurative and paradoxical meanings, constitutes a freestanding, bounded, and organic entity of multiplex yet determinate meanings.

On the contrary, a radically deconstructive close reading undertakes to show that a literary text lacks a "totalized" boundary that makes it an entity, much less an organic unity; also that the text, by a play of internal counter-forces, disseminates into an indefinite range of self-conflicting significations. The claim is made by some deconstructive critics that a literary text is superior to nonliterary texts - self-reference – and "right reading" or "correct reading" of a text impossible. The business of the critic is to deconstruct an existing construct and then to reconstruct it so as to liberate it from the concepts of metaphysics.

       

    

Assignment: Paper E-C- 202, 203, 205.

Assignment: Paper E-C- 204,

Topic: Charles Dickens as an Observer of 19th Century English Society

Students Name: Pooja N. Trivedi,

Roll No – 20,

M. A. Part – I, Semester –II,

Batch Year – 2010-2011,

Submitted To – Miss Ruchira Dudhrejiya, 

                                Department of English,

                                Bhavnagar University,

                                Bhavnagar.

“DICKENS IS NOT ONLY A SPOKESMAN OF HIS AGE BUT ALSO IT’S CRITIC.”

Most literary historians and critics have taken some account of the relation of individual authors to the circumstances of the social and cultural era in which they live and write, as well as of the relation of a literary work to the segment of society that its fiction represents or to which the work is addressed. As W.J.Long points out in his ‘History of English literature’:

            “A great book generally reflects not only the author’s life and thought but also Spirit of the age and the ideals of the nation’s history.”

            Literary works are affected by such circumstances as its author’s class status, gender, political and other interests; the ways of thinking and feeling characteristic of its era; the social class, conceptions and values etc. 

            Corruption and evils were running rampant in every nook and corner of the Victorian society and the novelist took upon themselves a self-imposed task to predicate the evils that had already attracted the pens of the intellectuals.  Among the Victorian novelists Dickens was the greatest social reformer who directed his pen to root out the evils of the Victorian society. Charles Dickens’s dissatisfaction with the prevailing social condition and the keenness for social reform led him to satirize social institutions. In almost all his novels whether sad or humorous he laid his finger on the drawbacks and evils of the Victorian society which Shakespeare had already hinted in Hamlet:

            “The oppressor’s wrong the proud man’s contumely.

            ………………the law’s delay,

            The insolence of office, and the spurns

            That patient merit of the unworthy takes.”

            In the Victorian society, Dickens became very popular because he harnessed his pen for the amelioration of the suffering and pathetic conditions of the poor factory workers, little children groaning under the whips of tyrannical school-masters, litigants moving about law courts without getting any justice, and prisoners subjected to the hardship of rigorous prison life. Dickens tried to arouse public conscience to these evils, though he alone was not a pioneer in reformative zeal which had appeared earlier in the novels of Defoe, Goldsmith, fielding etc.  But in the novels of Dickens the reformative zeal was particularly emphasized. After the publication of ‘Oliver Twist’, ‘Nicholas Nickley’ and Old Curiosity Shop, he was, to quote W.L. Cross,

“The greatest social reformer for full thirty years.”

            He knew his people best and gave them what they wanted. Dickens never wrote down to his public. He was a part of his public. His books were not made ; they were born. To Dickens, the contemporary scene is always important themes concerned with the problems of mid-nineteenth century society, its familiar scenes and people were the chosen subject of his fiction.

Dickens railed against the social, political, economic and educational drawback of his times. In ‘Oliver Twist’ Dickens exposed the weakness of the Parish administration. Its shows in all the colours the misadventures of a poor parish boy, Oliver, who was born in a workhouse and fell in the hands of thieves and receivers who brought him up in the standards of Fagin’s academy. Here, Dickens uses two fold treatment to uncover the drawbacks of society. On one hand, he shows the workhouses which are the embodiment of obsession, exploitation and evil under the disguise of the laws for helping poor. The workhouse world is full of a bitter and pitiful comedy. Here Dickens irony serves him as a sharp edged sword with which he attacks the demons of cruelty.

In the baby-farm under the care of Mrs.Mann ‘twenty or thirty other Juvenil offenders against the poor laws rolled about the floor all day,without the inconvenience of too much food or too much clothing, under the parental superintendence of an elderly female, Mrs. Mann was a women of ‘wisdom and eperience’ and was great ‘experimental scholar,philosopher , she knew what was good for herself.

Further, Dickens presents how these work houses turn out to be a place for gradual death and exploitation of the poor. As Dickens writes in the second chapter of the ‘Oliver Twist.

  “Oh said the board, looking very knowing we are the fellows to set this to right well stop it all, in no time.’ So they established the rule, that all poor people should have the alternative, of being starved by a gradual process in the houses , or by a quick one out of it.

He considers these practices to be utterly inhuman.

On the other hand he presen dark picture of crime world what a pitiful comedy. Wouldn’t the world be better if men behaved more humanely and decently? And since they don’t what do they mark of the unprotected, neglected starved  and ------ children? The answer is the persons like Dodger, Pagin,Sikes.

            Dickens was a painter of London life. He was unsoundly  the novelist of London life but his art as a portrayer of London life was not that of a photographer. God had endowed him with keen imagination and he gave rich colour of his fecund imagination to whatever he described about London life Hugh Walker says,

            “What Dickens gives us is not the bare hard fact, but the fact suffused with the glow of rich imagination”.

            He makes things more ugly and sordid than what they might have been by his imagination inclined towards  exaggeration. This means that the world Dickens created is the world as we normally conceive it transformed, heightened in a sense cruder more  lightly colored more violent. The beings that inhabit it are much more sharply differentiated one from another than altogether more wicked, i.e. altogether richer in idiosyneracy people seen in real life.’

            The ‘real world’is there all right we are on solid ground but is some ways it seems to be mainly as a starting off place. It is as though the ‘real world’ can suddenly become either the county or fairytale land and we realize reading Dickens that nightmare and fairyland have common frontiers and mere each into the other. The novel ‘Oliver Twist’, Dickens followed is a night mare of a terrified child hunted by ogress.

            Thus Dickens was essential the novelist of London life. It was within his range to portray London streets, lamps,courts and middle class life. The country side had found its storytellers in Scott and Jane Austen and the town life was reflcected in the novels of Fielding and smollet but these social conditions had changed vastly. The changes brought by the Industrial Revolution found the echo in the novels of Dickens. He knew from painful experience the life of the workshop the office and the terrible life of the streets.

            At eleven years of age he went to work in the cellar of a blacking factory. He worked from dawn to dusk for a few pennies and associated with touches and waifs in his brief intervals of labour, but we can see in the sources of that intimate knowledge of the hearts of the poor and outcast which was to be reflected in his novels. His experience of his childhood from the wrap and woof of his novels, and are presented with his acute sensibility and plasimagination to enlist the sumpathy of reader for the suffering humanity.

            Deeper problems of human life are also ruled out from the scheme of the Victorian novels. This limitation is characteristic feature of all the Victorian novelists and of Dickens novels. The most successful creation of the Victorian novelists are characters pains and sufferings of child life. Dickens is primarily interested in presenting the sorrows, sufferings, and privations suffered by his children characters.

            Dickens was a ruthless critic of the Victorian society. A note of social satire runs thoroughly almost all his novels.

            ED MUND WILSON ASSERTS.

            “Dickens was of all the great Victorian writers probably the most antagonist to the Victorian age itself.”

            He was not only gave poetic shape to the better tendencies of English life, he also attacked the advocate of the down trodden and the oppresses.

            Through all these if should be clearly understood that Dickens sought the solution of social problems in the change of spirit in men rather than in any change in the fundamental structure of society. His quarrel is with human feelings, why they are so petty and narrow minded, so brutel. This point admirably quoted by  George Orwell in his essay on Charles Dickens in ‘collected essays’

            “The truth is that Dickens’s criticism of society is almost exclusively moral.           

            He attacks the law, parliamentary government, the educational system and

            Forth, without very clearly suggesting what he would put in their places.”

            Dickens on the whole was no doubts a social reformer , but he himself did not take up the challenges in his hands nor did personally work as a social reformer like shufflary. His role as a social reformer was somply to arouse the public conscience to these evils. To quote Compton ricket rightly remarks.

            “Dickens proved to be that rape type of reformer who could moralize with a smile on his lips and mix his sermonic powders in such excellent jam that his contemporaries did not realize for a while that he was doctoring them for their good.”

            He was truly a Victorian and get hs is for all ages. His revolt was simply and solely the eternal revolt it was the revolt of the weak against the strong says  G.K.Chesterton, “he did not dislike this or that agreement for oppression: he disliked oppression. He disliked a certain look on the face of man when he looks down on another man.

Assignment: Paper E-C- 201,

Topic:  Variety of Themes in 'Wuthering Heights',

Students Name: Pooja N. Trivedi,

Roll No – 20,

M. A. Part – I, Semester –II,

Batch Year – 2010-2011,

Submitted To – Mr. Jay Mehta,

                                Department of English,

                                Bhavnagar University,

                                Bhavnagar.

M.H.Abrams in his ‘ A Glossary of Literary Terms’ points out that The term THEME is more usefully applied to a general concept of doctrine whether implicit or asserted, which art imaginative work is designed to incorporate and make persuasive to the reader.’Wuthering Heights’ is such a strange, agonizing and powerful book that every individual who reads it will give it his own interpretation.

As a novelist Emily is known by her one single masterly production ‘Wuthering Heights’. It is a masterpiece which has been the subject of many ardent eulogies and appreciations almost poetic in their enthusism. It is a work of art extremely strange, wild and elemental in character and requires some poetic fire in the reader to appreciate it fully. It is a novel of extra ordinary power intense passion, fiery emotion , deep love, strong hate and stormy feelings. It is a novel of terror and it thrills us at several places by its lyrical intensity of passion and its emotional exuberance. The novel fully justifies the opinion of Matthew Arnold, that the author’s soul:

“ Knew no fellow for might,

   Passion, vehemence, grief

   Daring, since Byron died.”

The structure of this novel is complex woven with multiplicity of themes of love, revenge, good versus evil etc.

The first and foremost tendency of that presented by Emily Bronte is of the love relationship of Heathcliff and Catherine, but not that of the other lovers as an archetype. It expresses the passionate longing to be whole, to give oneself unreservedly to another and gain a whole self or sense of identiiy back, to be all-in-all for each other. So that nothing else in the world matters andto be loved in this way forever.

For instance Catherine likens her love for Heathcliff to ‘the eternal rocks beneath’ telling the house keeper,

“Nelly, I am Heathcliff !”

Even Heathcliff at the time of Catherine’s death and afterwards also craves for her love. As he speaks,

“ I’ll not lie there by myself; they may burry me twelve feet deep and throw the church down over me, but I won’t rest till you are with me I will never.”

He cries,

“ Oh, Cathy! Oh my life! How can I bear it?”

Their love exists on a higher or spiritual plane: they are soul mates two people who have an affinity for each other which draws them together irresistably. For that C.Day Lewis observes,

“ Heathcliff and Catherine represent the essential isolation of the soul the agony of  two souls- or rather, shall we say? Two salves of single soul- for- ever sundered and struggling to unite.”

Their love for each other is so passionate that they can not possibly live apart. “ he shall never know how I love him, and that not because he’s more myself than I am.

Further love of heath cliff and latherine becomes the central theme of the first volume; his revenge and its consequences are the main theme of the second volume.

To quote W.H.Auden’s words,

“Those to whom evil is done do evil in return.”

Revenge of heath cliff, is the dominate theme of the dominant theme of the second half of the novel, al though Heathcliff abandons his plan for vengeance.

The revenge motif of heath cliff is presented in two fold manner, one of that throated and another is the social degradation by her brother. These both circumstances make Heathcliff too much frustrated that he puts himself in the category of lovers who can go u to the extent of crime for their love. One the other hand constant blous of humiliation degradations make him stone sking that he wants to take revenge by look or crook. He is caring pandemonium in  hi s heart. A constant hellfire is burning with in him. He tells to Nelly,

“I am trying to settle how I shall pay Findlay back, I don’t care how long I wait if I can only do it at last. I hope he will not die before I do.”

“No God won’t have the satisfaction that I shall.”

“I only wish I knew the best way”.

Let me alone and I’ll plan if out while  I’m thinking of that I don’t feel pain.”

His craving ;for revenge covers everyone around him rains everyone around him and his ownself . He rages,

“ I have no pity” And claims,

“The more the worms writhe (with in me) the more I yearn to crush out their entrails it is a moral teething and I grind with greater energy in proplation to the increase of pain.”

Upto the extent that cruelty becomes the ;middle name if Heath Clift . But how this revenge motif pains Heathclift is presented as.

Heathclift is , in reality, a man whose soul is torn between love and hate, and because of the depths of his passions he hates as much as he loves. Finally his long revenge turns sour and he starves himself to death in order to reunited to Catherine  underground.

The glimpse of Heathecliff’s revenge motif also can be seen in his treatment of young catlry and Hareton. He is determined to brutal ire Hareton as he himself was brutalized.

Another interpretation would be the conflict between good and evil. [love and hate] Actually the spirit of the novel is a religious one and contends that for a nature to be fully complete it must make contact with an existence beyond this life here on earth.

The good in Heathcliff is turned to evil, which he directs against everyone except Catherine while Catherine herself is torn apcut spiritually , mentally and emotionally seeks release in death. Knowing that only in death will she and Heatclliff be united.

Love is the only element that remains contact. Everything else withers away ambition hate and we find that love conquers even Heathcliff  in the end. The novel triumphs of goodness and presents the slow wearing out of evil from the earth in the defeated intensions of Heathcliff. In the history of English fiction , this novel is unique for its dark and thunderous atmosphere and its powerful fusion of inordinately passionate love and hate.

One shall never really know what Emily Bronte is saying in her look but she seems to be pointing our two things all our strivings on the earth amount to nothing, and it is not until we are dead, and merged with the Almighty being that we shall find our greatest satisfaction the power of good is stronger than the power of evils and will eventually prevail.

Assignment: Paper E-C- 202,

Topic: Elements of Time and Space in the novel 'The Shadow Lines'

Students Name: Pooja N. Trivedi,

Roll No – 20,

M. A. Part – I, Semester –II,

Batch Year – 2010-2011,

Submitted To – Mr. Devarshi Mehta

                                Department of English,

                                Bhavnagar University,

                                Bhavnagar.

‘The shadow lines’ by Amitav Ghosh paints a landscape of symbolism and realism that spans both time and space. As the writer says natonality is an ideal that changes with time and the 21^st century cannot be strait jacketed in the time frame of the 19^th century. In that context of borderlessness in today’s world and today’s India, the writer asserts that ‘the time has come to define nationality beyond the constraints of either the census taker or the mapmaker.’

The concepts of distance and time are uniquely portrayed in Bothe the physical borders that divide countries and the imaginary borders that divide human beings from the image conscious character of the grandmother to the riots that explode in the streets. Exhosh takes the reader on a fascinating journey of exploration dissecting the characters of the story while simultaneously dissecting the human race. ‘ The shadow Lines’ is a stunning book an using seed wise and international in scope. One of the chief features of ‘The shadow Lines’ is that it is not written sequentially the novel moves back and forth with little regard to the chronology of time and distance.

Therefore distance in ‘The Shadow Lines’ is challenge to be overcome by the use of imagination and desire until space melts. Time and space coalesce in a seamless continuity. Both Tridib and the narrator are engaged in the  creation of the world as it comes alive to them or to their powerful imagination.

The title of the novel is perhaps the most philosophical statement Ghosh makes assenting that

‘The Shadow Lines’ or the lines that not only define our human shape but our inner struggles to choose between darkness and light, are an intricate part of all human existence Shadow, like time are both tangible and intangible at any given moment or realm of perspective. They are a fleeting, generically depicted, generally distorted representation of ourselves, they can only be viewed in the proper light Ghosh uses Shadow lines as a way of telling us that the wazy we view ourselves is not always the way that others view us , and until we can gain a deeper understanding in the Shadows of our own enlighten.

The theme of ‘The Shadow Lines’ is that the time and distance are shadows. The novel makes a smooth transition from present to the past and from past to the future without causing any friction. The novel lights the reality of the fiction people create around their lives. Tridib says that every one live in the story for stories are all there to live in it is just the reliving of the events the narrator had imagined sitting in Calcutta. These events, however, do not bring about  any  dislocation because in time and space actual and imagined  have a harmonious co-existence.

Narrator believes in the reality of space, that the distance separates but is sadly mistaken. He felt that the two piece of land would slip away from each other like the tectonic plates of Gondwanaland but is amazed to find that there had never been a moment in the four thousand –year- old history of that map when the places they knew as Dhaka and Calcutta were more closely bound to each other than they had drawn their lines.

“ I couldn’t persuade her that a place doesn’t really exist that is has to be invented in one’s imagination; that her practical hustling London was no less invented than mine neither more or nor less true, only very far apart. It was not her fault that she couldn’t understand, for as tridib  often said of her the invention she lived in moved with her, so that although she had lived in many places , she had never travelled at all.”

Ghosh manages to speak excessively of shadows,darkness and light, weaving them subtly into the context of what he is trying to convey. He uses the terms both realistically and metaphorically to show that the shadow we cast, the one other people can see, is not always an accurate reflection of who we really  are. Nick was not the hero he seemed to be and when may reveal this to the boy, they are in the process of moving from light to dark, both in physical environment and knowledge of the truth.

In a way, a shadow is like a “ fair weather friend “ in that it appears to us only when the sun is directly overhead. While every human being casts a unique shadow, a common theme can be seen in them all, namely that they are detached from us. This is another realm in which ghosh metaphorically uses the elements of shadow lines to tell his story.

Throughout literature’s long history, shadows have been used as metaphors for secrets. Things hidden in the shadows, things hidden in the shadows, things which we cannot see though we can vaguely make out their outlines there are the traditional metaphors which  Ghosh cannot avoid. Ghosh demonstrates that when secrets come out from behind the shadows and are exposed to the stark, revealing brilliance of daylight , they do not immediately evaporate. Secret tend to linger long after they have been exposed because athe fact that they were hidden in the first place casts strong shadows of doubt upon the person keeping the secret, the revelation of these secrets can have severe consequences , such as being kicked out of school or being labeled a lier. Though the grandmother’s “ letter from the grave” is eventually dismissed it’s were existence taught the boy some valuable lessons.

Glimpses of three generation of prices, thamma’s  nationalist ceal, snippets of second world war….   All these shreds are blended amicably without giving feeling of bumpy ride. And this has been possible only because time and distance have been so closely interwoven and discharged at thime in the novel that they seem to be in seamless continuity.

While be is astonished by his grandmother’s ability to see past the shadows  and into the light he is equally annoyed by it . it seems to him that a person ought to be able to keep some secrets hidden like his “visits to the wemen” but at the same time he respects his grand mother’s insight.

There is a very fine coaling of time and space in the ‘shadow lines’. Distance and time are shdows in the novel and therefore illusory, however it does not give dislocation or  cause a split in the plot time and distance have been blended ceremoniously and it does not cause faction.  

While tge tutke ‘the shadow line’ can be read a thousand different ways, and the significance of shadows throughout the novel can be interpreted with vast distinctions, one thing remains clear. The shadows that all human bengs reflect are as unique to the individual as each written word is to a talented other like amitav ghosh.

Assignment: Paper E-C- 205.

Topic: What is Comparative Literature? A Comparative Study of 'Natyashastra' and 'Poetics'.

Students Name: Pooja N. Trivedi,

Roll No – 20,

M. A. Part – I, Semester –II,

Batch Year – 2010-2011,

Submitted To –  Dr. Dilip Barad

                          Department of English,

                          Bhavnagar University,

                           Bhavnagar.

             Comparative literature is inherently a difficult term to define. The difficulty arises from the vast and uncertain territory the discipline is covering and from the already controversial nature of the two words constituting its name. It can be and often is an extremely confusing term. Its constitutions alone are prone to many controversies concerning their meaning. Essentially “to compare is a kind if day-to-day activity in which one involves without being aware of that. It is the act of putting together two or more object and revealing their resemblances and difference. On the other hand, any literary analysis is essentially the same. Hence every literary study is necessarily “corporatist” to some extent.

               However, many scholars and corporatist have tried to set certain view points, and definitions of comparative literature. They all agree on one point that comparative literature implies a study of literature which use comparison as it s main instrument. The question confronts here are. What is comparative study? What is the object of study? How can comparison be the object of anything what might a comparative cannot be what to compare? It is discipline?

              The simplest answer is what given by Susan Bassnet in her essay ‘what is comparative literature today?’ in her book ‘Comparative Literature: A Critical Introduction’ [1993].

 “Comparative Literature involves the study of texts acres cultures that is interdisciplinary and that is concerned with the pattenrs of connection in literature across both time and place.”

            Comparative Literature endeavors in the first place, to discover general laws which transcend any one literature, such as the development of types and forms under the progressive relationship of different literatures. In the second place, it seeks to reveal relation of affinity within two or more literatures. Finally, though the discovery of similarities and differences by means of comparison, it endeavors to explain the inception and growth of individual works. That is like all scientific studies of literature.

            One step ahead and Henry Remark propounds to widen the horizons and tells about the  scope of comparing literature with other disciplines. As he puts in,

            “Comparative literature is the study of literature beyond the confines of one particular country, and the study of the relationship between literature on one hand and other areas of knowledge and belief such as the arts, the sciences, religion etc.”

            However, the surfeit of practice of comparative literature, the most essential aspect, to such an extent that a critic like Henry Levin complained “we spend far much of our energy talking about comparing the literature”, Hence following this view and taking into consideration some distinct view points in the assignment. I have tried to present a comparative study of two different literary theories. The principal aim is to confront the rival theories of criticism WESTERN AND INDIAN with a view to drawing conceptual parallel and difference s between them with special reference to Bharat Muni’s ‘Natyashashtra’ and Aristotle’s  poetics.  

            In the assignment I have tried to some compare two different books of literary theories from Western and Indian poetics. To start with, literary criticism in India is often traced back to the earliest known works in Sanskrti like the Vedas or the Itihasas, but a system atic exposition of the principles of poetics is said to being with works like Bharat Muni’s Natyasastra . Literary criticism in the West similarly may be tracced  back to the earliest Homeric hymans, while a systematic study starts with the writings of Plato and Aristothe . Thus it may be said that in both place the period of its development covers more than two thousand years.

A comparative study of these two traditions reveals Three types of relationship.

1.Similarities and Parallelisms

2.Divergences and Contradictions

3.Differences which can be mutually complementary.

  Among the similarities , in both Indian and western systems, very often both Indian and western systems, very often the concepts and terms used in certicism are adapted from religion or ethics or metaphysics . ‘ Natyasastra’ holds that the dramatic art was invented by the creator of the world , that is , brahma In the same way one cannot understand the full implications of Aristotle ‘s writings without taking into account the various systems of Greek philosophy .This interconnectedness is a basic point of similarity . In fact the very dialogue from  used both in Indian and in Western works reveal active involvement .’Poetics’ is aesthetics in relation to poetery or literature in general.’Natyasastra’too is basically concerned with the fundamentals of art , although it devotes some attention to the details of the process.

The Greek word poet means maker and goes well with the Sanskrit notion of a poet as prajapati. The prophetic power associated with the poet in such expressions as ‘ Kavi Kantadarsi and ‘ nanrishi kavi’ is also convered by the Latin word for the poet , Vates , meaning seer of forser. Thus ,this notion of the poet as semi-divine is same if both theories.

Secondly,Western classical critics have held that the function of poetry is to provide pleasure along with moral in struction for instance Dryden speaks,

“Delight is the chief yet not only the function of literature”.

They believe that ‘Poesy is an art of imitation , for so Aristotle term art of imitation , for so Aristotle term in the word Mimesis , is ,a representing figuring forth to speak metaphoricaly a speaking picture; with this end, to teach and delight’.

On the subject of the funcation of poetery,Indian aestheticians too have the same refrence .Natyasastna says that drama or natya which presents the gods , demons , kings of other people enhances our knowledge and will give enterainment.

“Uttamadmamamadhynam

Naranam Karmasamrayam

Hitopadesajanam

Natyametat bhavisyati

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Dukharttnam sramarttanam

Sokarttanam tapasvinam

Visrantijnanam kale

Natyametat bhavisyati.”

           In Indian poetics the concepts of Hitopadesajnanam[instruction]and visrantijananam[relief]along with Vinodajananam[entertainment]seem to continue the aim end function of art.

            The dramatic theory in the ‘poetics’ can be said to consist of four principals of ancient classificatory system. First, the concept of mimesis, which is common to all arts; secondly the treatment of various genres of poetry, Thirdly the division of tragedy and Fourthly, catharsis upheld by western critical  tradition  as principal of Aristotelian aesthetics.

            In the Natyashashtra, there is a verse, in sixth chapter which can be referred as Bharat Muni’s own summary of his dramatic theory.

            “ Rasa bhava hybhinayah dharma vrttipravrnayah siddhih svarasthatodyam gaman rangasca sangrahah.

            The combination called natya is a mixture of rasas,bhavas, abhinayas, dharmas, vrttis ,pravrttis,svaras, etc.

            The use of the term mimesis by Aristotle and the term anukaranam by Bharata has been elaborately commended on Both words convey the idea of imitation but something more or less than simple imitation.

            But in spite of this commonness of purpose, the distinctiveness of the Greek and Indian experience of life as a whole, must have found some expression in the dramatic theory of each culture those features of their theories that set them apart and distinctive quality of their vision.

            The theory of literature as reflection of life arose from this belief . The basically humanist approach to truth, viewing man as an end in himself as the ultimate value, has led to a notion of time as clock measured each individual is a self contained entity: hence death is a finality. This notion lies at the back of western tragedy.

            In Indian drama, there is neither comedy nor tragedy in the western sense, because death is seen only as a passage to another form of existence. ‘Swargaorohana’ or ‘moksa’ is of time as an endless continuum is related to the view that good and evil are both essential to the cyclical process of life; they are like oxygen and carbon dioxide.

            It may be noted that in  their magnitude and content the ‘poetics’ and the ‘natyashashtra’ are diagonally different.

            The most important difference which has remained unnoticed is, that the poetics was written well after the best had been achieved in classical Greek theatre, where as the ‘Natyashashtra’ was known much before the extent plays came to be written. The poetics while stating the general features of tragedy and comedy also provides a stance on literary criticism and instances of the best plays. The Natyashashtra on the contrary avoids all references to plays. It is primarily concerned with formulating principles of performance  and not with examining examples of literary excellence. There is another major difference of approach between them. As Bharat Gupt points out in his book.

            ‘Dramatic Concepts Greek and Indian’[ A study of the poetics and the Natyashashtra.’

            “Whereas Aristotle has taken up the whole subject of poetics and dealt with theater as one part of poetics, Bharat Muni has taken up theater and dealt with poetry, literary forms as part of natya.”

            In a nutshell, After analyzing connection between ‘Poetics’ and ‘Natyashashtra’ the words of Mathew Arnold prove to true here:

            “Everywhere there is connection everywhere there is illustuction.

            No single event, no single literature is adequately comprehended

            Except  in relation to other events to other literature.”

            Hence, Among the differences between the Indian and Western traditions of literary criticism some are of a mutually complementary nature. Because the intellect acquires critical acumen by familiarity with different traditions. One does not really understand everything merely by following one’s reasoning as Bharathari said. At this point argument can be made that while these differences are natural, there is no reason why one system should not learn from the other.

            Comparative aesthetics should make it possible for a modern scholar in the west to benefit from an understanding of the principles of Indian poetics especially those which are not there in Western criticism, just as some of the scholars in Indian in recent times have found an application of certain concepts of West in study of  Indian literature. While slavish imitation of everything foreign is bed, selective adaptation of whatever is substantial in itself and useful for the Indian context and viseversa.