Thursday 3 February 2022
The Only Story
Sunday 23 January 2022
Gun Island
Gun Island - Amitav Ghosh
Amitav Ghosh’s latest novel, Gun Island, traces familiar crosscultural patterns evident in his earlier novels. There are journeys by land and water, diaspora and migration, experiences aboard ships, the world of animals and sea-creatures. Ghosh foregrounds environmental issues like climate change and the danger to fish from chemical waste dumped into rivers by factories, concerns that carry over from earlier books like The Hungry Tide and The Great Derangement.
Gun Island describes the quest of Deen, a scholar and collector of rare books, who returns from New York, his city of domicile, to the Sunderbans in West Bengal to unravel the mystery and legend of a seventeenth-century merchant, Bonduki Sada-gar, translated “The Gun Merchant,” and his persecution by Manasa Devi, mythical goddess of snakes. In a talk held in New Delhi after the release of the novel, Ghosh stated that the merchant “was a trope for trade.” The merchant and the goddess dramatize “the conflict between profit and the world.” In the novel, the goddess pursues the merchant to make him aware of other realities like the animal world: “Humans—driven, as was the Merchant, by the quest of profit—would recognize no restraint in relation to other living things.”
We learn that the old Arabic name for Venice was al-Bunduqevya, which is also the name for guns. Deen concludes that the name Bonduki Sadagar did not perhaps mean the Gun Merchant but the Merchant who went to Venice. When Deen travels to Venice to research further on the Gun Merchant, he discovers that many Bangladeshis are being employed as illegal migrant labor. Their hazardous journey across the Middle East and Africa and the strong, even militant opposition to their presence in the city by Italian authorities form a major segment of the second part of the novel, contrasting with the Gun Merchant’s past, prosperous journey to Venice (Rita Joshi - World Literature Today).
Genre: Novel, Cli-fi (Climate Fiction)
- What is Cli-fi (Climate Fiction)?
- Climate fiction (sometimes shortened as cli-fi) is literature that deals with climate change and global warming. Not necessarily speculative in nature, works may take place in the world as we know it or in the near future. The genre frequently includes science fiction and dystopian or utopian themes, imagining the potential futures based on how humanity responds to the impacts of climate change. Technologies such as climate engineering or climate adaptation practices often feature prominently in works exploring their impacts on society. Climate fiction is distinct from petrofiction which deals directly with the petroleum culture and economy. (To read more, open this Wikipedia link)
- Brief History of Cli-fi : Freelance writer Dan Bloom coined the term cli-fi in 2011 in a press release for Jim Laughter’s Polar City Red, a novel set amid climate refugees in a future Alaska. Today, Bloom publishes The Cli-Fi Report, an online resource serving all things climate fiction. From his home in Taiwan, he told Means & Matters he sees cli-fi as an urgent genre, a route to “wake people up via storytelling.”
Characters and Summary of 'Gun Island
1. Characters and Summary - 1 | Sundarbans | Gun Island | Amitav Ghosh
2. Characters and Summary - 2 | USA | Gun Island | Amitav Ghosh
3. Summary - 3 | Venice | Part 2 of Gun Island | Amitav Ghosh
Thematic Study of 'Gun Island
1. Etymological Mystery | Title of the Novel | Gun Island | Amitav Ghosh
2. Part I - Historification of Myth & Mythification of History | Gun Island | Amitav Ghosh
Part II- Historification of Myth & Mythification of History | Gun Island | Amitav Ghosh (Click to watch video)
Part III - Historification of Myth & Mythification of History | Gun Island | Amitav Ghosh (Click to watch video)
3. Climate Change | The Great Derangement | Gun Island | Amitav Ghosh
4. Migration | Human Trafficking | Refugee Crisis | Gun Island | Amitav Ghosh
Check your understanding: Appear in Online Test
Worksheets for Flipped Classroom Activities:
Points to Ponder:
- How does this novel develop your understanding of a rather new genre known as 'cli-fi'?
- How does Amitav Ghosh use myth of Gun Merchant 'Bonduki Sadagar' and Manasa Devi to initiate discussion on the issue of Climate Change and Migration/Refugee crisis / Human Trafficking?
- How does Amitav Ghosh make use of 'etymology' of common words to sustain mystery and suspense in the narrative?
- There are many Italian words in the novel. Click here to view the list of words. Have you tried to translate these words into English or Hindi with the help of Google Translate App? If so, how is Machine Translation helping in proper translation of Italian words into English and Hindi?
- What are your views on the use of myth and history in the novel Gun Island to draw attention of the reader towards contemporary issues like climate change and migration?
- Is there any connection between 'The Great Derangement' and 'Gun Island'?
Additional Reading resources:
- Towards a post(colonial)human culture: Revisiting Amitav Ghosh’s Gun Island as a fall of Eurocentric humanism by Saikat Chakraborty
- Climate and Culture in Crisis - Gun Island
- Surreal Novel about Climate Change and Migration - Gun Island
- The Era of Environmental Derangement: Witnessing Climate Crisis in Amitav Ghosh’s Gun Island
With ‘Gun Island,’ Amitav Ghosh turns global crises into engaging fiction
Q & A Session:
Thematic Study
Friday 7 January 2022
Avoid Plagiarism - Research in Digital Era
Understanding Unintentional Plagiarism | Research in Digital Era
How do students research in the digital age? (Source: Turnitin)
Evaluating Online Sources
Downloads
Tuesday 28 December 2021
The Ministry of Utmost Happiness
The Ministry of Utmost Happiness - A Novel by Arundhati Roy
General Observations about the Novel - 'The Ministry of Utmost Happiness'
Intertextual references to other writers in the novel
About the Characters and Summary of the novel 'The Ministry of Utmost Happiness'
Part 1 | Khwabgah
Part 2 | Jantar Mantar
Part 3 | Kashmir and Dandakaranyak
Part 4 | Udaya Jebeen & Dung Beetle
Thematic Study of 'The Ministry of Utmost Happiness'
Symbols and Motifs in 'The Ministry of Utmost Happiness'
Check your understanding of the novel - Click here to open online test on 'The Ministry of Utmost Happiness'
Additional Reading Resources:
- Arundhati Roy's Fascinating Mess
- Political Overtones and Allusions in Arundhati Roy's The Ministry
- The Poetic Realism of Arundhati Roy in The Ministry
- Outside Language and Power: The Mastery of A. Roy's The Ministry
- Political and Gender Issues in Arundhati Roy's The Ministry
- Ecofeminist Study of 'The Ministry of Utmost Happiness'
- Environmental Concerns in 'The Ministry'
- Timely but not deserving of the Booker
- How to recruit Art and Intertexts in the battle against 'stupidification
Friday 24 December 2021
Kota Factory
Kota Factory is an Indian Hindi-language web series created by Saurabh Khanna and directed by Raghav Subbu for The Viral Fever. The story is set in Kota, Rajasthan, an educational hub famous for its coaching centres. The show follows the life of 16-year-old Vaibhav (Mayur More) who moves to Kota from Itarsi. It shows the life of students in the city, and Vaibhav's efforts to get into IIT by cracking the JEE Advanced examination. It also stars Jitendra Kumar, Ahsaas Channa, Alam Khan and Ranjan Raj in prominent roles.[1]
Saurabh Khanna, the creator of the show, said that he aims to change the popular narrative surrounding Kota and IIT preparation in Indian pop culture to a more positive one via the show.[2] The series premiered simultaneously on TVFPlay and YouTube from 16 April to 14 May 2019. The series received a generally positive response from critics, praising its monochrome setting, realism, and the major technical aspects of the series.[3]
Revolution2020
Revolution Twenty20
Introduction:
“Once upon a time, in small-town India, there lived two
intelligent boys.
One wanted to use his intelligence to make money.
One wanted to use his intelligence to start a
revolution.
The problem was, they both loved the same
girl.”
“Revolution 2020 – a story about childhood friends Gopal,
Raghav and Aarti who struggle to find success, love and happiness in Varanasi.
However, it is not easy to attain these in an unfair society that rewards the
corrupt. As Gopal gives in to the system, and Raghav fights it, who will win?” (Blurb on the last cover-page)
Revolution 2020: Love, Corruption, Ambition is a 2011 novel by Chetan Bhagat. Its story is concerned with a love triangle, corruption and a journey of self-discovery. R2020 has addressed the issue of how private coaching institutions exploit aspiring engineering students and how parents put their lifetime's earnings on stake for these classes so that their children can crack engineering exams and change the fortune of the family. While a handful accomplish their dreams, others sink into disaster.
The author stated that the novel is based on the "rampant corruption" apparent in the Indian educational system (Firstpost)
Characters in the Novel:
Thematic Study:
The novel 'R2020' deals with the theme of Love, Corruption, Ambition and Revolution.
Click here to read in detail about these themes.
Narrative Technique:
Popular Literature
Additional Resources
Sunday 5 December 2021
Parkinson's Law
What is Parkinson's Law of Productivity?
If you want to read more on time management and Parkinson's Law, click these links. . .
A Beginners Guide To Parkinson’s Law: How To Do More Stuff By Giving Yourself Less Time
One more interesting video on Parkinson's Law
Monday 29 November 2021
Introduction to Digital Humanities
Introduction to Digital Humanities
Prof. Dilip Barad
Presentation
References
Admin, Dhai. “Nirmala Menon on
Marrying Technology and the Humanities.” DHARTI (blog), October 9, 2020.
https://dhdharti.in/2020/10/09/nirmala-menon/.
“Arts and Humanities Research
Computing.” Accessed November 26, 2021. https://digitalhumanities.fas.harvard.edu/.
“Bichitra :: Online Tagore
Variorum :: School of Cultural Texts and Records, Jadavpur University.”
Accessed November 25, 2021. http://bichitra.jdvu.ac.in/index.php.
“Course | Electronic Literature
| EdX.” Accessed November 26, 2021. https://learning.edx.org/course/course-v1:DavidsonX+D004x+3T2015/home.
DHARTI. “DHARTI.” Accessed
November 25, 2021. https://dhdharti.in/.
Medium. “DHARTI India.” Accessed
November 25, 2021. https://dharti-india.medium.com.
Dr. Kalyani Vallath. Cultural
Studies Terms: Digital Humanities NEW AREA IN RESEARCH IN ENGLISH DEPARTMENTS,
2020. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3VcXXgmY9Rg.
Elijah Meeks. An Introduction
to Digital Humanities - Bay Area DH, 2014. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AvZToQSX244.
“Events – Arts and Humanities
Research Computing.” Accessed November 26, 2021. https://digitalhumanities.fas.harvard.edu/events/.
INDIAN MEMORY PROJECT. “HOME -
INDIAN MEMORY PROJECT - FAMILY PHOTOS & NARRATIVES.” Accessed November 25,
2021. https://www.indianmemoryproject.com/home/.
edX. “Introduction to Digital
Humanities.” Accessed November 26, 2021. https://www.edx.org/course/introduction-to-digital-humanities.
Joe Bray, Alison Gibbons, and
Brian McHale. “The Routledge Companion to Experimental Literature.” Routledge
& CRC Press. Accessed November 29, 2021. https://www.routledge.com/The-Routledge-Companion-to-Experimental-Literature/Bray-Gibbons-McHale/p/book/9781138797383.
Koehler`, Adam. “Composition,
Creative Writing Studies, and the Digital Humanities.” Bloomsbury. Accessed
November 29, 2021. https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/composition-creative-writing-studies-and-the-digital-humanities-9781472591968/.
“Mendeley Chrome Extension -
Google Search.” Accessed June 9, 2022. https://www.google.com/search?q=mendeley+chrome+extension&oq=mendeley+chrome+extension&aqs=chrome..69i57j0i512l2j0i22i30l2j0i390l3.6881j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8.
Moral Machine. “Moral Machine.”
Accessed November 29, 2021. http://moralmachine.mit.edu.
Partition Archive, 1947.
“Www.1947partitionarchive.Org |.” Accessed November 25, 2021. https://in.1947partitionarchive.org/.
“Project Madurai.” Accessed
November 25, 2021. https://www.projectmadurai.org/.
“Projects – Arts and Humanities
Research Computing.” Accessed November 26, 2021. https://digitalhumanities.fas.harvard.edu/projects/.
Ryan, Marie-Laure, ed. Cyberspace
Textuality : Computer Technology and Literary Theory. Bloomington : Indiana
University Press, 1999. http://archive.org/details/cyberspacetextua0000unse.
Serious Science. Digital
Humanities - Jeffrey Schnapp, 2014. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYRExzsRC9w.
T, Shanmugapriya, and Nirmala
Menon. “Infrastructure and Social Interaction: Situated Research Practices in
Digital Humanities in India.” Digital Humanities Quarterly 014, no. 3
(September 25, 2020).
Wolfreys, Julian. “Introducing
Criticism in the 21st Century.” Accessed November 29, 2021. https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-introducing-criticism-in-the-21st-century.html.
Sunday 21 November 2021
Metaphysical Poetry
Metaphysical Poetry
1. Metaphysical Poets:
Metaphysical poet, any of the poets in 17th-century England who inclined to the personal and intellectual complexity and concentration that is displayed in the poetry of John Donne, the chief of the Metaphysicals. Others include Henry Vaughan, Andrew Marvell, John Cleveland, and Abraham Cowley as well as, to a lesser extent, George Herbert and Richard Crashaw.
Their work is a blend of emotion and intellectual ingenuity, characterized by conceit or “wit”—that is, by the sometimes violent yoking together of apparently unconnected ideas and things so that the reader is startled out of his complacency and forced to think through the argument of the poem. Metaphysical poetry is less concerned with expressing feeling than with analyzing it, with the poet exploring the recesses of his consciousness. The boldness of the literary devices used—especially obliquity, irony, and paradox—are often reinforced by a dramatic directness of language and by rhythms derived from that of living speech.
Esteem for Metaphysical poetry never stood higher than in the 1930s and ’40s, largely because of T.S. Eliot’s influential essay “The Metaphysical Poets” (1921), a review of Herbert J.C. Grierson’s anthology Metaphysical Lyrics & Poems of the Seventeenth Century. In this essay Eliot argued that the works of these men embody a fusion of thought and feeling that later poets were unable to achieve because of a “dissociation of sensibility,” which resulted in works that were either intellectual or emotional but not both at once. In their own time, however, the epithet “metaphysical” was used pejoratively: in 1630 the Scottish poet William Drummond of Hawthornden objected to those of his contemporaries who attempted to “abstract poetry to metaphysical ideas and scholastic quiddities.” At the end of the century, John Dryden censured Donne for affecting “the metaphysics” and for perplexing “the minds of the fair sex with nice speculations of philosophy when he should engage their hearts . . . with the softnesses of love.” Samuel Johnson, in referring to the learning that their poetry displays, also dubbed them “the metaphysical poets,” and the term has continued in use ever since. Eliot’s adoption of the label as a term of praise is arguably a better guide to his personal aspirations about his own poetry than to the Metaphysical poets themselves; his use of metaphysical underestimates these poets’ debt to lyrical and socially engaged verse. Nonetheless, the term is useful for identifying the often-intellectual character of their writing. (J.E. Luebering)
The term Metaphysical poets was coined by the critic Samuel Johnson to describe a loose group of 17th-century English poets whose work was characterised by the inventive use of conceits, and by a greater emphasis on the spoken rather than lyrical quality of their verse. These poets were not formally affiliated and few were highly regarded until 20th century attention established their importance. (Click here to read more)
2. Explore Metaphysical Poetry
3. Video Resources
About John Donne
4. Analysis of Poems
Analysis of 'Ecstasy' - Another analysis
Analysis of 'To his Coy Mistress'