Indian Narratology

Narratology and the Modern Indian Novel By Dr. Shikha Bhatnagar Narratology and the Modern Indian Novel is an interesting study of narrative inclusive of both Indian and Western narratological traditions and theories, tracing the impact of Indian aesthetic theory and Sanskrit poetics on the modern Indian novel in the employment of certain narrative techniques. It is a purview from Indian aesthetics and structuralist theories. The theme of this book is a negotiation of three important existing theoretical areas: Western criticism, Indian narrative tradition and aesthetic practice, and Translation Studies. The novel has evolved as the most important genre in modern India. It is undoubtedly inspired by the European narrative forms and has drawn considerably on the Indic narrative tradition as well. The Kavya literature provides a viable model for the modern Indian narrative.

This Collection Of Essays Is Meant To Be A Survey Of The Novel In Twelve Major Indian Languages During The Period 1950 To 1980. While Seeking To Bring Into Focus The Major Trends And Tendencies That Characterise The Growth Of The Novel In These Languages, The Book Atempts To Explore The Traditions Being Established In Indian Novel Today And The New Directions The Novel Is Likely To Take In Our Languages. Gobinda Prasad Sarma Convincingly Shows How The Assamese Novel Reflects The Assamese Society And How Experimentation With New Techniques Has Widened The Horizons Of Assamese Novel: And K. Sivathamby, Through A Brilliant Analysis Of The Interconnection Between The Societal Factors And Development Of The Novel, Portrays The Rise Of The Tamil Novel To New Heights During The Period. While I. K. Sharma Shows How Hindi Novel Has Passed Imperceptibly From The Wonderland Of Fancy To The Hinterland Of Society And The Borderland Of Psyche , Shyamala A. Narayan Predicts A Bright Future For Indian English Novel On The Basis Of Her Assessment Of Such Writers As Mulk Raj Anand, R. K. Narayan, Raja Rao, Manohar Malgonkar, Anita Desai And Arun Joshi. Jatindra Kumar Nayak Brings Out The Tension In Post-Independent Oriya Novel Between The Idealism Of The Freedom Struggle And The Values Of A Commercial Society; K. M. Tharakan Describes The Rich Complexity Hints At The Possibility Of A Blend Of Post-Modernist And Leftist Trends: And Ila Pathak Shows How In Gujrati The Traditional Novel And The Experimental Novel Are Growing Side By Side. To Lila Ray, Who Traces The Diverse Trends In Bengali Novel, The Most Remarkable Change Is In The Political Novel; But To Prabhakar Rao, Who Describes The Wide Range Of Exploration In Telugu Novel, The Telugu Novelist Appears Unable To Rise Above The Mediocre . Narinder Singh Sees Punjabi Novel At The Take -Off Stage But Gives A Word Of Caution Against The Increasing Use Of Colloquial Dialect By The Novelists; Seshagiri Rao Traces The Traditions Established In Kannada Novel By The Writers Of The Navodaya Period, Navya Period And The Progressive Movement. Finally, Balachandra Nemade, In His Inimitable Style, Anatomizes The Positive And Negative Trends In The Growth Of Marathi Novel And Gives A Passionate Call To Revolutionise Criticism And Cure Marathi Of Its Present Poverty Of Taste . This Book Is A Gateway To The Edifice Of Contemporary Indian Novel.

How was the post-modernist project contested, subverted and assimilated in India? This book offers a personal account and an intellectual history of its reception and response. Tracing independent India’s engagement with Western critical theory, Paranjape outlines both its past and ‘post’. The book explores the discursive trajectories of post-modernism, post-colonialism, post-Marxism, post-nationalism, post-feminism, post-secularism — the relations that mediate them — as well as interprets, in the light of these discussions, core tenets of Indian philosophical thought. Paranjape argues that India’s response to the modernist project is neither submission, willing or reluctant, nor repudiation, intentional or forced; rather India’s ‘modernity’ is ‘unauthorized’, different, subversive, alter-native and alter-modern. The book makes the case for a new integrative hermeneutics, the idea of the indigenous ‘critical vernacular’, and presents a radical shift in the understanding of svaraj (beyond decolonisation and nationalism) to express transformations at both personal and political levels. A key intervention in Indian critical theory, this volume will interest researchers and scholars of literature, philosophy, political theory, culture studies and postcolonial studies.

What is most strikingly new about the transcultural is its sudden ubiquity. Following in the wake of previous concepts in cultural and literary studies such as creolization, hybridity, and syncretism, and signalling a family relationship to terms such as transnationality, translocality, and transmigration, 'transcultural' terminology has unobtrusively but powerfully edged its way into contemporary theoretical and critical discourse. The four sections of this volume denote major areas where 'transcultural' questions and problematics have come to the fore: theories of culture and literature that have sought to account for the complexity of culture in a world increasingly characterized by globalization, transnationalization, and interdependence; realities of individual and collective life-worlds shaped by the ubiquity of phenomena and experiences relating to transnational connections and the blurring of cultural boundaries; fictions in literature and other media that explore these realities, negotiate the fuzzy edges of 'ethnic' or 'national' cultures, and participate in the creation of transnational public spheres as well as transcultural imaginations and memories; and, finally, pedagogy and didactics, where earlier models of teaching 'other' cultures are faced with the challenge of coming to terms with cultural complexity both in what is being taught and in the people it is taught to, and where 'target cultures' have become elusive. The idea of 'locating' culture and literature exclusively in the context of ethnicities or nations is rapidly losing plausibility throughout an 'English-speaking world' that has long since been multi- rather than monolingual. Exploring the prospects and contours of 'Transcultural English Studies' thus reflects a set of common challenges and predicaments that in recent years have increasingly moved centre stage not only in the New Literatures in English, but also in British and American studies.

This volume explores the extraordinary contribution that classical poetics has made to twentieth and twenty-first century theories of narrative, aiming not to argue that modern narratologies simply present 'old wine in new wineskins', but rather to identify the diachronic affinities shared between ancient and modern stories about storytelling. By recognizing that modern narratologists bring a particular expertise to bear upon ancient literary theory, and by interrogating ancient and modern narratologies through the mutually imbricating dynamics of their reception, it seeks to arrive at a better understanding of both. Each chapter selects a key moment in the history of narratology on which to focus, providing an overview of significant phases before offering detailed analyses of core theories and texts, from the Russian formalists and Chicago school neo-Aristotelians, through the prestructuralists, structuralists, and poststructuralists, up to the latest unnatural and antimimetic narratologists. The reception history that thus unfolds offers some remarkable plot twists and yields valuable insights into the interpretation of some notoriously difficult ancient works. Plato in the Republic is unmasked as an unreliable narrator and theorist, while Aristotle's On Poets reveals a rare glimpse of the philosopher putting narrative theory into practice in the role of storyteller. Horace's Ars Poetica and the works of ancient scholia by critics and commentators evince a rhetorically conceived poetics and sophisticated reader-response-based narratology which indicate a keen interest in audience affect and cognition - anticipating the cognitive turn in narratology's most recent postclassical phase.

These articles are mostly lectures delivered in the past many years on Tagore in different forums within India and abroad and also during my stay at Edinburgh Napier University as First Tagore Chair. These lectures on different aspects on Tagore are mostly concerned with his time and his multifaceted creativity, a discussion on myth, orality and folklore with reference to Tagore, intellectual conflict and companionship between Tagore and Gandhi. There are similarly articles on Tagore and his intellectual cum logical and reasoned relationship with Jagadish Chandra Bose, Mahalanobis and Ramananda Chattopadhyay and their idea about India. This idea of India was further elaborated with reference to Swami Vivekananda and also with reference to post colonialism. One will also find how Tagore could renounce his long time friendship with Kakuzo (Tenshin Okakura for the sake of establishing peace against war in the world. The book also relates the story of Gitanjali and people's false publicity that W. B. Yeats corrected English of the poems of Gitanjali. With reference to Gitanjali there is a long discussion on Medieval Indian Bhakti Poetry of Conversion and Subversion and Continuity of a Tradition. This book deals with the life and his much splendored creativity under the big sun umbrella of Indian Renaissance whose reality was for the first time was brought into focus of public domain. —Indra Nath Choudhuri

This volume argues against Gérard Genette’s theory that there is an “insurmountable opposition” between drama and narrative and shows that the two forms of storytelling have been productively intertwined throughout literary history. Building on the idea that plays often incorporate elements from other genres, especially narrative ones, the present study theorises drama as a fundamentally narrative genre. Guided by the question of how drama tells stories, the first part of the study delineates the general characteristics of dramatic narration and zooms in on the use of narrative forms in drama. The second part proposes a history of dramatic storytelling from the Renaissance to the twenty-first century that transcends conventional genre boundaries. Close readings of exemplary British plays provide an overview of the dominant narrative modes in each period and point to their impact in the broader cultural and historical context of the plays. Finally, the volume argues that throughout history, highly narrative plays have had a performative power that reached well beyond the stage: dramatic storytelling not only reflects socio-political realities, but also largely shapes them.