The Future of Literary Theory

Quo Vadis? The Future of Theory in the Light of Its Past.

Gayatry S. Assistant Professor of English,

TKM College of Arts and Science, Kollam.

The English word “theory” comes from the Greek root “theoria” which means

“looking at,” “viewing” or “beholding.” It can also mean “knowing,” “explaining” or

“understanding.” It has been part of the English vocabulary from at least the sixteenth

century. However it was only in the nineteenth century that the word was subjected to

widespread use.

Though it was Socrates who called down philosophy from the skies, it was Plato who

is looked upon as the first great philosopher of the Western world. He was a very systematic

and meticulous theoretician. The theoretical framework that he developed was

comprehensive, touching practically all areas of human experience.

Plato’s lone rival for the position of the Western world’s first theorist is his disciple,

Aristotle. The relative reputations of Plato and Aristotle have see-sawed through history and

it is now difficult to say which of the two has been more influential on the evolution of

Western theory. Perhaps we should not attempt to identify the father of Western theory.

Theory has two fathers: Plato and Aristotle. Plato has, in general, been more influential in the

humanities and Aristotle in the sciences.

Theory is an ocean. It embraces all spheres of human experience from Astrology and

Astronomy through Chemistry and Climatology, through Economics and Engineering,

through Linguistics and Literature, through Mathematics and Medicine, through Philosophy

and Physics, through Sociology and Statistics to Zen Buddhism and Zoology and even

beyond them. Wherever there is an attempt to observe, analyse, comprehend, evaluate, there

is theory. With some exaggeration one can say that to speak is to theorize.

It may not be out of place here to adumbrate briefly the rise of Anglo-American

literary theory in the twentieth century. An appropriate starting point would be Matthew

Arnold who was never tired of proclaiming not just the aesthetic value of literature but also

its cardinal position in the socio-cultural life of a community, something agreed to by T.S.

Eliot who attempted to trace a great European cultural tradition. Partially sharing the

perspectives, but more focused on the text, was I.A. Richards who developed Practical

criticism in the U.K. and the New Critics of the U.S. The Russian Formalists attempted to

develop a theory of literariness and their influence on English criticism turned out to be

profound. The same could be said of the structuralism practiced by such French theorists as

Claude Levi-Strauss and Roland Barthes which is ultimately rooted in the work of Ferdinand

de Saussure. The developments in Marxism, feminism, black theory and postcolonialism also

need mention. Deconstruction and postmodernism were responsible for the poststructuralist

revolution. This revolution was taken further forward by the work of Michel Foucalt and

Jacques Lacan.And it, in a way resulted in the rise of New Historicism and Cultural

Materialism.

What about anti-theorists? A supreme example of an intellectual who spent an entire

lifetime combating theory is F.R.Leavis. Leavis made it the mission of his life to establish

that there is no such thing as theory. But we theorists are unfazed. We say that Leavis is a

theorist himself, and a very fine one at that; only that his theory is that there is no theory.

The question, “Quo vadis?” remains to be answered. The Latin phrase is much older

than Christianity. However, according to Christian tradition, Peter fleeing from likely

crucifixion in Rome at the hands of the government meets a risen Jesus on the road outside

the city. Peter asks Jesus, “Quo Vadis?” or “Whither goest thou?” or “Where are you going?”

Jesus replies that he is going to Rome to be crucified again. I would like to pose the question,

“Quo vadis?” to theory which appears to laymen to suffer repeated crucifixion at the hands

of its practioners. Students fleeing from theory classes can easily identify themselves with

Peter fleeing from likely crucifixion.

Will theory come to an end? In his 1989 essay “The End of History,” published in the

international affairs journal The National Interest, Francis Fukuyama speaks of history

coming to an end. Of course, he does not mean that events will not happen or that history per

se will cease. He holds that western liberal democracy will be universalized and thus further

sociopolitical evolution will not take place. Similarly, will there be an end of theory? Far

from it, I feel that we are on the threshold of a remarkable expansion of theory. The number

of universities, academic institutions and professional academics has now scaled heights

never before reached. They are working day and night and a theory explosion is inevitable.

Let Jesus be crucified again.

Literary Ecology - Cowper versus Larkin.

Preethamol M.K.

Assistant Professor of English,

Mar Ivanios College.Trivandrum.

It is a tendency among us to regret the mistakes which we have done in the past. But

by the time we realise that what we did was wrong, we would have reached another phase of

our life where we will be busy contemplating life altering plans of action with abundant

scope for mistakes/blunders. There also life will give us a chance to regret our mistakes and

we will promise our self never to repeat them. It is another pertinent question whether we

learn from our mistakes or not, but the scope of this whole elaborate circle from recurring is

definitely high. Before we all indulge in the task of thinking about how many mistakes we

have committed and how many we have duplicated, I would like to draw your attention to a

“regretting feature” as I would like to call it, in literature. A study of the representation of the

physical world in literary texts is a move which have been made only in the recent times, to

be specific, only with the emergence of what is now termed as Ecocriticism in the context of

literary theories. Well, no mistake is considered cardinal forever if we learn something from

it. So this “regretting feature” in literature is not terminal as we are doing something to make

us look smarter.

If we take a bird’s eye view of English literature, we can postulate that the Romantic

Period has always been favourable to the non-human world, which celebrated Nature and at

the same time bemoaned though to a less extent its annihilation. This portrayal of the

familiar sights and scenes of the landscape of Nature which we associate with nostalgia and

relaxation has been brilliantly portrayed in some of the most amazing creations by famed

Nature Poets irrespective of Periods. As lovers of literature we have the privilege to pick our

favourites from them and with all due respect I am deviating from all of them and pointing

out William Cowper and Philip Larkin who made me link Nature and Ecocriticism as a field

of academic enquiry. To drive home the point of view of environmental problems and its

associated politics and how they are strongly expressed in a literary context, this paper will

be analysing two poems written by these two diverse writers from two dissimilar epochs in

English literature. One is “The Poplar Field” by the eighteenth century English poet William

Cowper and the other literary creation is “Going, Going” by the renowned twentieth century

English poet Philip Larkin.

Though both the works are not canonical in the correct sense of the word, while

reading the poems, we will be able to get the ecological awareness it exudes. If we get that

feel, then Ecocriticism is working at the level of praxis which is the need of the hour. Thus a

close relation between literature and ecology can be launched. In other words, they should

make us wakeful to the predicaments which are related to our environment. This works well

in a present day class room where we can sensitise a generation to impending problems

which our world faces. It will also go a long way in cultivating a link between literary studies

and environmental activism. But Ecocriticism as a theory emerged prominent much after

arguments and cases relating to environmental problems cropped.

A brief look into the respective ages in which the poems were written will be good in

understanding what the poets had in mind when they wrote the verses. William Cowper is

the renowned eighteenth century English poet who gave this fresh face to nature poetry by

picking images from the English country side and etching it in the readers mind by his

immortal gift of writing poems. “The Poplar Field” is an expression of the personal

experience of the poet. The poem’s vocabulary displays the period in which it was written.

We have the brilliant mélange of the past and the present which takes us deep into the “cool

colonnade” (line 2) of the once existent poplars in the “favourite field” (line 6) of Cowper.

But now “The poplars are felled;” (line1) “And the tree is my seat, that once lent me a shade”

(line 8). Cowper is seen relating his future to what happened to the trees and is distressed that

there will not be another orchard to replace the one lost.

“And I must ere long lie as lowly as they,

With a turf on my breast, and a stone at my head,

Ere another such grove shall arise in its stead.” (14 – 16).

That way an eighteenth century poet who had no serious concern about the

ecological/environmental problems that can emerge with the felling of trees is not

acquainting us with any imminent social problem. Instead, Cowper is alarmed with the

personal snag of not being able to enjoy the familiar feeling of being “charmed” when he

visits his “favourite field”, “To muse on the perishing pleasures of man”. Thus the outlook

the Romantics had about Nature was to give it a holistic perception to the point of

establishing a “sustainable relationship between mankind and the fragile planet on which we

dwell” (McKuisick). Though the first part of McKuisick’s view makes us ponder about

nostalgia related to Nature, the second part obviously should make us reflect on Romantic

literature being the manure ground for ecological awareness. We are able to think along the

latter angle of vision today only because we owe it to the thinking of Jonathan Bates, John

Muir, Aldo Leopold and others who are pioneers on nature writing in modern age. What I am

trying to prove is that nature having scope for ecological issues was not a matter of concern

in the eighteenth century Cowper England. Rather that approach was the least of concerns

among the poets then. It arose much later somewhere around the twentieth century and the

altered trend is seen in the literature of the time too.

To analyse the changed trend in the literature of the Modern age, the poem “Going,

Going” by Philip Larkin, a twentieth century post war English writer is best suited. It is

rather a lengthy poem which will strike the reader as modern because of the use of some

words and expressions. The Poet is guiding us very conveniently through an outburst of the

pain he feels when his thoughts shift to what the planet is in for. He says “For the first time I

feel somehow/That it isn’t going to last, (line 36-37). Also the seriousness of the problem/the

cruelty we are inflicting on this dear planet of ours is best expressed by Larkin. He talks

about “Chuck filth in the sea” (line 16) and the end of the ultimate English dream.

And that will be England gone,

The shadows, the meadows, the lanes,

… but all that remains

For us will be concrete and tyres. (44-49).

Larkin is showing us the expanding nature of environmental problems like the

intrusion of new buildings in the form of concrete jungles, owing to the cutting down of

trees. It is in the form of a hazard to our natural world because of the encroaching of city life

into sleepy “fields and farms”. Larkin speaks about the problem not from a personal

perspective like Cowper but rather as a grave social crisis. The world in which we live is

subject to excessive exploitation of all kinds, a portion of which is made sentient through the

literature of our times. Larkin’s “Going, Going” is no exception. But English Literature has

progressed from the age of eighteenth century Cowper to the post war twentieth century

Larkin. Owing to that we can say that “Going, Going” evidently has its focus on the disasters

of “industrialization, development, pollution and ecocide”- (Pramod K Nayar). Or this is

what Ecocriticism is all about. The poet is making the issue personal though on a different

note from Cowper. The urgency of the crisis is felt, though left unsaid, probably because

there is no fast escape from it. The title “Going, Going” is catchy enough to grab our

attention in this sphere.

Ecocriticism is a recent critical discourse which has carved out a neat terrain for itself

in the claustrophobic arena of literary theories. The most halting and curious feature is its

interest in things urban and exurban and realities which are human and non human. Both the

poems highlight the loss of natural countryside. Ecocriticism strongly upholds that the views

of an age and how it treats nature will be reflected in its literary, visual and other replicas of

external expression. “The Poplar Field” and “Going, Going” by Cowper and Larkin

respectively are no different. Though Cowper had absolutely no idea about ecology and

biological disaster, Larkin had. This is evident from the way each Poet has presented their

views in this slightly different and exotic manner of expression, though not entirely alien –

Poetry.

Works Cited

Cowper, William. “The Poplar Field”. The Golden Treasury. Ed. Palgrave, Francis T.

London: Macmillan, 1875.

Larkin, Philip. “Going, Going”. The Complete Poems by Philip Larkin. Ed. Burnett,

Archie. London: Farrar Straus Giroux, 2007.

McKuisick, James C. Introduction: Romanticism and Ecology. The Wordsworth

Circle (Summer 1997):123-24.

Nayar, Pramod K. Contemporary Literary and Cultural Theory. New Delhi: Pearson,

2010. Print.

Cartographing Nature: An Ecocritical Reading of Select Short Stories of Kunal Basu.

Dr.Anjana. J.

Assistant Professor of English,

N.S.S. College, Pandalam.

The interconnectedness between the anthropocentric world and the bio/zoocentric

world has become a promising area of interest in literary deliberations. It is beyond any

argument that the psychological space of characters gets affected by the vagaries of their

immediate environment. A spectrum of new theories infused with ecological consciousness

has evolved in critical circles which projects how human world gets conditioned and guided

by the natural world. Ecologically sensitive literary criticism aims at the study of inextricable

link between literature and physical world and to provide an earth centered approach to

literary studies. The fundamental interdependence and interrelationship between man and

nature has been of perpetual interest for writers for centuries. In the introduction to The

Ecocriticism Reader, Cheryll Glotfelty traces the development of environmental

consciousness in literary studies. Ursula. K. Hein clarifies the term ecocriticism in Science

and Ecocriticism stating that “it investigates how nature is used literally or metaphorically in

certain literary and aesthetic genres and tropes….” They collectively acknowledged that

everything is connected to everything else as if in an intricately patterned web in this world.

Kunal Basu, being a young promising writer adeptly negotiates the human and non

human world in his stories. This paper attempts to read the interrelationship of man and

nature and how it gets mediated in two select short stories of Kunal Basu- The Japanese

Wife, and Tiger! Tiger! They portray multiple facets of nature and how it interferes with lives

of the characters. The overwhelming presence of Nature forms a subtext in these stories.

In the first story he portrays the shifting moods of the river- The Matla and in Tiger! Tiger

he narrates the story of tiger poaching in the Sunderban islands. The two stories are included

in his collection of short stories of the name The Japanese wife. Obviously it is the most

popular among these stories which inspired the veteran film maker Aparna Sen to make a

film of the very same name. It is an intensely innocent and fiercely powerful love story of a

Bengali school teacher and a Japanese woman. Their disembodied love story unravels in the

backdrop of river Matla. Their pen friendship grows into a pen marriage exchanging vows

over letters. Even in their letters the river became a permanent topic. “He wrote about his

college, aunt and the river” (5). Matla is the only access for that remote village to the outer

world and hence it functions both as a character as well as a backdrop. Snehamony, the

protagonist’s life has been designed by the ebb and flow of the river. Capra in his The Web of

Life has remarked that ecological consciousness is spiritual in its deepest sense. The river is

not an inanimate entity as far as Snehamony was concerned. “As always, he brought his

woes to the river, and as always, it cleared the slate for him. Certainly, it was no stranger to

her letters or his. Over the past twenty years he had consulted it at every critical bend…. And

the river had spoken…. (7) Arne Naess, a Norwegian philosopher states that deep ecological

consciousness leads to the expansion of self in order to get identified with nature.

There seem to be a radical interdependence between Snehamony and the river. Though it

had snatched his parents in his swollen state he loved its presence, spoke to it, fought with it

and “felt light, almost lightheaded” (8) after talking to it. The river resonated with the psyche

of Snehamony. Ironically it was during one of its horrendous days of flood and storm that

Snehamony succumbs to the killer mosquito. The writer makes oblique reference to the

depletion of mangroves which results in excessive flooding of Matla. Mangroves are an

inevitable part of the ecosystem since they form natural shields against natural disasters. In

The Japanese Wife one can delineate the delicate intimacy of the characters with the might

and glory of the river and how they treat it as their own. But the second one Tiger! Tiger!

depicts the unscrupulous ecocide by the insensitive, inhuman, egocentric man. The

dichotomy of treatment is palpable in the very beginning of the story which provides a

glimpse of man’s absolute control over land and Nature by presenting the carnivalesque

celebration of the villagers when a tigress transgresses into human habitat:

A roar had brought her out of the lodge that she had rented for her research visit to

the Sunderbans, poised ideally on the banks of Matla- the “Mad River’- and looking

out towards the forest. Not a tiger’s roar, but the crowd’s- she found the whole village

gathered at Canning’s jetty…. Cries went up at the sight of the tigress, tranquilized

and lying like a docile cat at the feet of the forest officer…. (121)

Ms. Rowena Hawthorne, a scholar from England is doing research in Sundarbans on its

tigers and tiger poachers. The life of the entire village in and around Sundarbans is in one

way or the other connected with the ‘Mad River’, Matla and the forest. The forest officer

assumes a heroic stature there. Anwar, the master poacher narrates the way in which he does

tiger poaching and what he earns from it. The anthropocentric world takes a heavy toll on the

flora and fauna of Sundarbans. . It gives a candid picture of the mafia who unwittingly

destroys and loots nature. In Tiger! Tiger! Basu narrates gruesome pictures of injustice that

the greedy and the megalomaniacs do to the animal world by jeopardizing the natural order

of symbiosis:

A shoal of Gangetic dolphins had been trapped with mechanized trawler nets, and

shipped off to an unknown destination. A gang had descended on the crocodile farm

and slaughtered dozens of crocs to skin them for profit” (131).

The narrator gives an account of the poachers turned spies and the spies turned poachers

and how each one of them in their own way exploits Nature; be it trees, tigers, snakes,

turtles, just for monetary benefits. Basu responds to this sensitive issue through this powerful

story. The forest, animals and rivers are interconnected with the lives of the characters. In

Deep Ecology, Arne Naess observes:

The struggle of life and the survival of the fittest should be interpreted in the sense of

ability to co-exist and cooperate in complex relationships, rather than ability to kill,

exploit and suppress. “Live and let live’ is more powerful ecological principle than

either ‘you’ or ‘me’. (121)

A camouflaged picture of the eternal struggle between Man and Nature is deftly defined.

In the final combat, man falls as a victim. The forest officer who has the power to “shoot the

beast right there and then” (120), finally falls prey to the savage revenge of the tiger. Basu

weaves into the fictional fabric the exigency of an ecological balance to be maintained

between the human and the animal world. Every living thing has a rightful claim for

existence in this world which sustains biodiversity essential for all life forms. The basic

principles of ecology according to Capra are interdependence, recycling, partnership,

flexibility and diversity all of which help to promote sustainability. He stresses the

fundamental significance of proliferating ecoliteracy. He envisions a paradigmatic cultural

metamorphosis leading to an ecologically sustainable human society. Through these stories

Basu mediates his anguish and concern for the detrimental mayhem committed to the

environment. There is a seamless blending of the thematic content not only with the watery

presence but also with the sights and sounds of nature. He tries to project the diverse attitude

of mankind and the need to have an ecologically sustainable symbiotic state of existence.

Man with the unique gift of consciousness and the concomitant flair of language has

great responsibility towards the natural world. The divine circuit of interconnectedness is

stressed in the story. In the seminal book The Comedy of Surreal: Studies in Literary

Ecology, Joseph Meeker writes:

Human beings are the earth’s only literary creatures…. If the creation of literature is

an important characteristics of human species, it should be examined carefully and

honestly to discover its influence upon human behavior and the natural environment-

to determine what role, if any, it plays in the welfare and survival of mankind and

what insight it offers to human relationships with other species and with the world

around us. (3-4)

Works Cited

Basu, Kunal. The Japanese Wife. New Delhi: Thomson Press, 2008.

Capra, Fritjof. The Web of Life: A New Synthesis of Mind and Matter. London: Fantana,

1996.

Heise, Ursula K. “Science and Ecocriticism”. The American Book Review. 18.5.

Meeker, Joseph. The Comedy of Surreal: Studies in Literary Ecology. New York: Charles

Scribner’s Sons, 1974.

Naess, Arne. “Deep Ecology.” Key Concepts in Critical Theory: Ecology. Ed. Carolyn

Merchant. Jaipur and New Delhi: Rawat, 1996. 120-24.

Beyond Realism

Deepa. R.

Assistant Professor of English,

M S M College, Kayamkulam.

Ancient aesthetes and philosophers conceived quest of Truth as the seminal mission

in the cerebral expeditions of all disciplines of learning. Plato insisted that Idea or Truth

existed prior to the material world. Idealist and Spiritual schools defined humans in relation

to the superhuman expanse of cosmos and subjugated human will to the cosmic will. Indian

schools of philosophy deciphered material world as illusion of Truth and Plato reduced it to

the transient mimicry of the eternal idea or Truth. With the rise of humanism and emergence

of common man as a considerable social force, reality became the dominant centre of

discourse unseating Idea or Truth.There occurred a shift from theo-centrism to

anthropocentrism and from idealism to materialism. Reality was conceived as a composition

of matter and idea, truth and lie as it accepted a character like Iago, untrue to the bottom,

who is not what he is, as integral substance of human reality.

Realism took shape of a great movement in art and literature, with the growth of

reality discourses in various disciplines of learning. Reality then became the central criterion

that defined the meaning and objective of existence. August Strindberg defined realism as

exclusion of god from art and literature and the movement definitely cultivated secular ethos

that influenced the historical course of art and literature. Spirituality, morality, faith and all

such ideological super structures are part of reality but reality in realist literature is founded

upon material space and time. Raymond Williams identified realism with the literary art of

novel that defied established theses with respect to choice of theme, space and time in

literature as it preferred rational to imaginary, contemporary to archaic, sordid to pleasant,

ugliness to bogus dignity and material objectivity to romantic idealism. It insisted that

loyalty or faithfulness to reality subsisted with the discipline that the author should never

demonstrate anything that violates what is probable by the laws of nature. Naturalism, a

breed of realism went to the extremes of reducing humans to the original biological elements

of lust and sexuality. Even before Marx, Darwin and Freud, literature down to earth,

conforming to the laws of probability and laws of necessity gained momentum in art and

literature. Nothing supernatural violating the laws of probability was entertained in the

explication of reality. A truthful, detailed disinterested portrayal of what is absorbed by the

sense organs was the basic material upon which works of realism were set in motion.

Raymond Williams observes that realism marked the rise of the individual in history and it

represented the integration of the individual consciousness with the interlocking social

relations.

Material reality hidden under ideology was explored in realism, but reality thus

established was imperfect as it ignored the role of mind in defining material substance. Mind

is a construct of interaction between human sense organs and socio-material space and time;

the accumulated spatial and temporal experiences are processed by the cerebral system which

remembers and cultivates mind. Mind is the source and power centre of reality and the

scientific sanctioning of the unconscious mind at the individual as well as the racial or

collective level subverted the definition of reality as rooted in material objectivity of the

present. Freud stated that the unconscious that worked like a dream is not an absurd mass of

impressions but a system of expressionist symbols that suggested actual material

experiences. Dreams are irrational but interpretation of dreams brings out real material

happenings, repairing the impaired logic of time and space. The actual collective experiences

of a race in the past may be transmitted from generations to generations; it may lie

suppressed in the collective unconscious of the race. Past lives in memory and so

demonstration of material contemporaneity fail to comprehend reality. The argument that it

is mind that matters and reality may be unearthed from the repressed area of unconscious is

the major conviction of surrealism; a deconstruction of realism to deeper levels. Andre

Breton claimed that surrealism is a tumultuous voyage beyond reality reverberating in

contemporaneity; it excavates great riches of reality from the night side of life from the

ocean of unconscious.

Surrealism was anthropocentric; but it violated laws of probability and what is

rational by the laws of necessity. It celebrated death of god in sarcastic terms submitting

approbation to the prophet of darkness Nietzsche and accomplished the idea of exclusion of

god emphatically. It released the potentials of realism that have been suppressed by the

materialistic rationalist prescriptions. Consequent on the world wars shattering the

interlocking social relations and the integrity of the social individual, things fell apart and

fragmentation set in. Stream of Consciousness, and Psychological Realism did triumphant

portrayal of human reality and the broken pieces of Benjy’s psyche with the mass of sound

and fury around it, exemplifies truthful portrayal of substance that is terribly human.

Magic realism, another version of realism generated out of the socio-material

premises of Latin America in 1960s is queer ironic discourse of Amerindian racial stuff

blended with politics, soil, water, trees, birds animals human flesh blood and cerebral mass.

If Surrealism was the historical product of the insecure feeling world wars spread, Magic

Realism was the literary outcome of tyranny and repression suffered by the Latin American

people thrown back to their earth, filth and dust by the murderous guns of frequent civil

wars. The Latin American writers strove hard to revive the magical charm that lay deep with

primitive ecological sense and sensibility to build resistance to the politics of domestic

colonialism as well as the neo colonial repressions set in motion at the global level.

Surrealism was a psyche-centered programme of art with stress upon the unconscious. There

was nothing supernatural or super human in it as the violation of laws of probability was

consistent with the nature of the unconscious that is profoundly human. Magic realism on the

other hand was not psyche centered though figures and rituals drawn from primitivism are

central to the theme of magic. There is nothing superhuman or super natural with the concept

of magic as magic is inherent in matter. Magic realism seeks scientific sanction to the

enlarged metaphors of magic. It is closely associated with ecological memory tapped out of

the wild habitat of primitive Latin America. The practice of black magic or witchcraft is a

Pagan feature influential even in modern South America. The magic that redefines reality in

Magic Realism is similar to a magician performing miracles by hand trick, curtaining the

eyes of viewers wide open. The artist, by a sleight of hand applies alchemy into the politics

of sex and power. In sex there is irrepressible magic, sometimes tyrannical, sometimes

sacrificial. The central metaphor that lies subdued all through the literature of magic realism

is that of Alchemy. Sex performs miracles; birth is such a miracle though common place.

The lord of power performs miracle, as by a sleight of hand he converts a hut to a mansion

subverting Saussure’s linguistic morphology. The chemistry of vanishing ice cube, when

applied to the vanishing humans in the sky in Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude, it

happens to be a magical mutation of nonliving substance and living humans. Back to the

chemistry of matter and ecological memory, from the space and time of unconscious

portrayed in surrealism, is the project of reality discourse in Magic Realism.

Metafiction which lays bare the technique as foreseen by Viktor Shklovsky in

the analysis of Tristram Shandy and other formalists, issues a formalist reality discourse.

Literariness as conceived by formalists is a constructed quality. The basic question- where

lies reality, and in what aspect of fiction is it cited - is projected in metafiction. Reality lies in

common man’s language as Wordsworth and early realists put it, but metafiction theorists

argue that it lies in language constructed by technical devices. Metafiction states that reality

as well as literature is a sum of literary devices and it rules out the relevance of ‘real

language’ of humans in which a truthful portrayal of objective space and time are truthfully

portrayed. It gives emphasis to technique and often reminds readers that it is technique and

not material space and time that matters. This is expansion of the formalist, structuralist

approach that places structure or pattern above content or matter which is antithetical to the

schools of social realism and naturalism. Meaning is the factor that matters but meaning is

arbitrarily generated by signs, and not by material object, space or time, states Saussure. In

the present age of technocracy, where technology defines reality to a great extent,

metafiction lays bare the devices and endorses their relevance in generating signifieds, the

reader is reminded that what they feel as fiction or reality is a play of technical devices;

material space or time or object do not generate meanings. The expressionist structures of

the deeper unconscious or the chemistry of magic inherent in natural material are not

accounted relevant in defining reality proposed by fiction or fictional devices.

Works Cited

Elliott, Michael. A. The Culture Concept: Writing and Difference in the Age of Realism.

London: University of Minnesota Press, 2002.Print.

Abrams, M.H and Geoffrey Galt Harpham. A Glossary of Literary Terms. U S A:

Wadsworth, 2012.Print.

Stern,J.P. On Realism. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1973.Print.

Ironical Overtones: Celebrating the ‘gulf’ Between Hope and Reality in Benyamin’s

Goat Days.

Arshad Ahammad A.

Research Scholar

TKM College of Arts and Science, Kollam.

Human life as the greatest irony; sometimes invalidates what man plans and proposes.

Ordinary jokes and harsh realities of life simultaneously create irony. In other words, irony

juxtaposes both the serious and the silly to proclaim that life is absurd or paradoxical. As

human life is the subject of literature, writers use the device of irony in order to present both

the sunny and the smithy realities of life.

Migration to the Arabian Gulf following the oil boom of the 1970s was a turning

point in Kerala’s social and economic scenario. The Gulf now harbours about fifteen million

expatriates. The post-Gulf Boom era has witnessed human confinement and brutality in

unprecedented magnitude. But this psychological alienation and the trauma of separation did

not engender any significant literary artifact before Goat Days, leave alone a few verse

creations in the form of of film songs or mappila songs, the most popular among them being

letter songs or kathupattukal.

Goat Days voices both the untold and retold sufferings of the ordinary Malayali in the

Gulf. Like every Keralite who wishes to go to the Gulf countries, Najeeb, a modest sand-

miner from Kayamkulam, travels to Riyadh in the early 1990s with the dream of earning his

fortunes, only to become trapped in an unimaginable vortex of human predicament. He is

enslaved for over three years in the interior desert of Saudi Arabia on a goat farm (masara) at

the mercy of a cruel master (arbab). Goat Days is also the story of the journey Najeeb makes

from incarceration to freedom, including a perilous desert voyage,

The Language of the novel helps the reader visualise a true but strange picture of the

trauma and alienation which the protagonist suffers. The simile used in the closing sentence

of the novel renders the summing up of the experiences of the protagonist during the last

three years. Najeeb compares the scene of travelers walking towards the flight for their return

journey to their homeland to “herding a flock of goats back into a ‘masara!” (253). Najeeb’s

life is fused with the goats to that extent. Najeeb dehumanises and identifies himself as

another ‘goat’. He puts the garb of a goat and walks, eats, behaves and even ‘thinks’ like a

goat and thus moves far away from the human world. Once he explains the reason for not

asking the arbab for his unnecessary anxiety over the safety of the goats as goats never talk

to men! He also tries to humanise his goat-amigos by giving them names of men and women

whom he knows well in his native place. Najeeb perceives a goat’s face as quite similar to

that of a human’s. He names the goats by considering their physiognomy, character traits or

even their slight mannerisms. Of the various names he awarded to the goats, he asks the

readers, “Would you believe me if I told you that in my masara we had goats that laughed

like Jagathy, walked like Mohanlal, stammered like EMS?” (164).

Both the verbal and the situational irony are abundantly exploited in Goat Days.

Barry Brummett articulates in Techniques of Close Reading, "Irony is a kind of winking at

each other, as we all understand the game of meaning reversal that is being played"(56). The

best instance of verbal irony is seen in the letter which Najeeb writes to his wife. The readers

very well know that the contents of the letter are the exact opposites of the actualities.

Having only khubus and water as food and being alienated without a human company,

Najeeb writes:

Ah, the food. How many new and unseen items the arbab brings for me! I

started writing this letter after eating khubus with chicken curry and mutton

masala, and a glass of pure milk. . . . Some of our local people are here with

me: Ravuthar, Raghavan, Vijayan, Pokkar, and so on. . . . The arbab has a

houri of a daughter. . . Her name is Marymaimuna. (130)

It is ironical and interesting to note that Ravuthar, Raghavan, Vijayan, Pokkar and

Marymaimuna are not humans but only some ‘famous’ goats in the masara.

Situational irony also plays a significant role in the novel as Najeeb expects and

dreams of a better and glamorous Gulf life, but what he gets is unwelcomed and unbearable

hardship that a human being is even unable to imagine. “I dreamt a host of dreams. Perhaps

the same stock dreams that the 1.4 million Malayalis in the Gulf had when they were in

Kerala — gold watch, fridge, TV, car, AC, tape recorder, VCP, a heavy gold chain” (38).

Najeeb once says that in his childhood he often dreamt of being a goatherd. Many prophets

including Muhammad and Moses were shepherds for a considerable period in their life.

Romantic poets loved and cherished this simple but great profession. Najeeb wished to

become another Santiago or Ramanan. Shepherding was for him what dreams were made of.

But when he gets the chance of being a shepherd, he painfully realises the gulf between

expectation and reality. Najeeb says, “We shouldn’t dream about the unfamiliar and about

what only looks good from afar. When such dreams become reality, they are often

impossible to come to terms with” (124).

Goat Days underscores the scathing fact that man is essentially alone in his world. He

finds himself alienated even in the midst of a crowd. Najeeb comes to the desert country with

Hakeem, lives in the masara with a scary figure and his arbab. He escapes from there with

Hakeem and Ibrahim Khadiri. But his companions abandon him or he abandons them in

decisive moments. At a time when Najeeb becomes dear to the arbab, he deserts him.

Hakeem is swallowed by the sand dunes. Ibrahim disappears suddenly. At last he only is

saved and imported to the homeland. In a world of demons, Ibrahim Khadiri appears as an

angel who shows his presence for a limited but critical period only to save Najeeb’s life..

A man sandwiched between burning days and freezing nights, Najeeb is punished

brutally, destructed by loneliness and finds no solace or way out to save himself. This is the

human tragedy, not to be slighted as the plight of an individual. As Sreekumar Varma

comments in a review of the novel published in The Hindu, “this isn’t the angst of the

intellectual or the dissonance of diaspora; it’s the stunned response of an insect as you

trample on it, the struggle for survival”. This realisation is the greatest irony as men consider

a heartbreaking tragic ‘story’ as personal and often extraordinary. But when it happens to

them they have no way but to become another Najeeb. It can be read in the novel as the

protagonist says that all the stories of sufferings which people do not experience directly are

treated as mere fictional accounts.

Works Cited

Benyamin. Goat Days. Trans. Joseph Koyippally. New Delhi: Penguin Books, 2012. Print.

Brummett, Barry. Techniques of Close Reading. London: Sage Publications, 2009. Print.

Varma, Shreekumar. “Life and Times of a Goat.” The Hindu 6 Oct. 2012: 18. Print.

Archaeology, Genealogy and Discourse: The Conceptual Pillars of Foucaultian Theory.

Parvathykutty V. T.

MSM Alumnus.

Michel Foucault (1926-1984) is widely known as a ‘historian of ideas,’ whose

writings on power, knowledge and discourse have been influential in academic circles.

Published in the twenty odd years from The Madness of Civilization to The History of

Sexuality, the purpose of the oeuvre by Foucault is to find the conceptual underpinnings of

some practices in modern culture, placing them in the historical perspective. Foucault uses

history as the main technique to establish his points about various concepts like sexuality,

madness, punishment etc. But Foucaultian history is not a turn to teleology; it doesn’t

involve assumptions of progress or regress. Foucaultian history is often referred to as

‘history of the present’. It does not mean that he is seeking to find out how the present has

emerged from the past. He, on the other hand, problematizes the well-established notions

encircling the various systems of knowledge and disturbs the taken for granted. Foucault

uses history as a way of diagnosing the present.

Archaeology, Genealogy and Discourse are the tools devised by Foucault to give some order

to history at the same time as giving history a power- knowledge twist that makes the

Foucaultian approach so distinctive. This paper “Archaeology, Genealogy and Discourse:

the Conceptual Pillars of Foucaultian Theory” proposes to do a close study of the

Foucaultian concepts of Archaeology, Genealogy, and Discourse. Archaeology equips one to

analyze the statements in our archive; archive being the general system where formation and

transformation of statements occur. Genealogy adds the elements of power in the analysis of

statements stored in the archive. The body of statements forms the discourse which decides

the practices of a particular society.