The Joy of Motherhood

 The Joy of Motherhood by Buchi emecheta 

This blog is a response to the thinking activity task on 'The Joy of Motherhood' by Buchi Emecheta. This task was given by Yesha maam.

About Buchi Emecheta:

Florence Onyebuchi "Buchi" Emecheta was a Nigerian-born novelist, based in the UK from 1962,who also wrote plays and an autobiography, as well as works for children. She was the author of more than 20 books, including Second Class Citizen (1974), The Bride Price (1976), The Slave Girl (1977) and The Joys of Motherhood (1979). Most of her early novels were published by Allison and Busby, where her editor was Margaret Busby.

Emecheta's themes of child slavery, motherhood, female independence and freedom through education gained recognition from critics and honours. She once described her stories as "stories of the world, where women face the universal problems of poverty and oppression, and the longer they stay, no matter where they have come from originally, the more the problems become identical." Her works explore the tension between tradition and modernity. She has been characterised as "the first successful black woman novelist living in Britain after 1948".

About The Joy of Motherhood :

The Joys of Motherhood is a novel written by Buchi Emecheta. It was first published in London, UK, by Allison & Busby in 1979 and was first published in Heinemann's African Writers Series in 1980 and reprinted 1982, 2004, 2008. The basis of the novel is the "necessity for a woman to be fertile, and above all to give birth to sons". It tells the tragic story of Nnu-Ego, daughter of Nwokocha Agbadi and Ona, who had a bad fate with childbearing.

"The fear of everybody was that the man might give in and say, "After all, it's her life." However a thing like that is not permitted in Nigeria; you are simply not allowed to commit suicide in peace, because everyone is responsible for the other person. Foreigners may call us a nation of busybodies, but to us, an individual's life belongs to the community and not just to him or her."

 This novel explores the life of a Nigerian woman, Nnu Ego. Nnu's life centres on her children and through them, she gains the respect of her community. Traditional tribal values and customs begin to shift with increasing colonial presence and influence, pushing Ego to challenge accepted notions of "mother", "wife", and "woman". Through Nnu Ego's journey, Emecheta forces her readers to consider the dilemmas associated with adopting new ideas and practices against the inclination to cleave to tradition. In this novel, Emecheta reveals and celebrates the pleasures derived from fulfilling responsibilities related to family matters in child bearing, mothering, and nurturing activities among women. However, the author additionally highlights how the 'joys of motherhood' also include anxiety, obligation, and pain.

The basic narrative lends itself toward neo-feminism. The main female characters struggle to shed the conditioning which forces them to act out roles that bring little fulfilment. With reference to this, study The Joys of Motherhood by applying a feminist theory.

Neo- feminism :

The novel The Joy of Motherhood accommodates the aspect of western feminism which brings in the light gender inequality, sexual difference, and gender oppression within the Igbo society. Novel also highlights the way women are oppressed and silenced by patriarchy. Though “concentrating on gender oppression alone would never make sense for who always experienced sexual and racial oppression as linked and compounded”.

Buchi Emecheta applies Western feminist ideology of ‘Motherhood’ for criticising the African patriarchal aspects of ‘Mothering’. Motherhood is believed to be the central focus of women’s isolation and oppression. It is rightly said that, “the joys of motherhood is a kind of false consciousness, it really is a power relation and women are duped into thinking that it holds any promise of sovereignty or free expression”. The novel The Joy of Motherhood is the story of female protagonist Nnu Ego, who enjoys her life being mother of many children in order to have a comfortable old age. She is ready to sacrifice herself in order to feed and give clothes to children. 

Emecheta tries to offer her critique the patriarchal meaning of motherhood through her character Nnu Ego. Nnu Ego begs money from Nnaife to feed her children but Nnaife asserts that, “I'm not giving you a penny, because I haven’t a penny to give” (Emecheta 1979, 136). Nnaife again said that, “it's your responsibility to feed your children as best you can ''. These words indicate that a woman is a slave of man, she is a subject of oppression by the patriarchal society. It is rightly said that, “she was a prisoner, imprisoned by her love for her children […] it was not fair she felt, the way men cleverly used a woman's sense of responsibility to actually enslave her” (137). Ego has experiences of marginalisation and oppression as a mother, and Emecheta's views of the African patriarchy.

"God, when will you create a woman who will be fulfilled in herself, a full human being, not anybody’s appendage? she prayed desperately."

Nnu is ready to struggle vainly to make both ends meet. Here the narrator describes how she manages the family, “ Nnu Ego still sold firewood, garri and other foodstuffs. Every morning neighbours could hear her calling: “Oshia, Adim, twins, wake up and let us go to the waterside!” There she would buy the firewood for the day’s sale and they would all carry it home. She normally left Nnamdi with Iyawo Itsekiri. As she looked at the children trooping in front of her with their little bundles of firewood, she used to Lsay, “Thank you, my chi, that they are healthy and strong. One day, they will become people”.

Buchi Emecheta criticised the way African patriarchal institutions define the word motherhood. In the absence of her husband, she, being alone, cares for her children in the best possible way in any worst condition. She does petty works, sells wood only for her children. She also saves money for their school fees. She avers, “On my life. I have to work myself to the bone to look after them; I have to give them my all. And if I'm lucky enough to die in peace, I have to give them my soul”. Due to hard work she grows faint. Adim knows that her mother Nnu Ego is not aged but she only looked in her seventies. Thus being a devoted mother, she does sacrifice her youth, life for her children. She never makes many friends, “she had never really made many friends, so busy had she built up her joys as a mother”. In this way she has a lonely death with no children and no friends.

Buchi Emecheta follows Western feminists who demand for educational rights for women, she offers her critique on the African society which offers education only for men. Emecheta depicts her critical views through her character Adaku who represents the liberal woman. She knows that education is a way to women’s freedom, so she tries to educate her daughters. Buchi Emechta tries to encourage African women to be educated in order to acquire "a room of their own" by example of this character Adaku.

Conclusion:

The novel The Joys of Motherhood is about postcolonial feminism in the image of Nnu Ego. Feminism and post-colonialism are both overlapped at many levels, for example superior-inferior,power-powerless. The phases of hybridity, Othering and ambivalence are faced by the protagonist. The protagonist Nnu Ego daughter of Chief Agbadi accepts the inferior status in the colonised African society. Louisa O Brien rightly said that, “Women as doubly colonised, firstly by white colonialism, and secondly by black masculinity are placed at the bottom of a hierarchy of value through the gendered response by the black man to his racial oppression. Those two oppressions are thus irrevocably intertwined: the more feminised the black man is by the white man, the more he is inferior and the more he needs to assert his masculinity, by which I mean his superiority, over the black woman.”

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Plagiarism and Academic Integrity

Plagiarism and Academic Integrity 

This blog is a response to a task assigned by Megha Trivedi ma’am. This blog about  Plagiarism and Academic Integrity.

What is Plagiarism? Write in detail with its consequences, forms.

Plagiarism :

Plagiarism means using someone else’s work without giving them proper credit. In academic writing, plagiarizing involves using words, ideas, or information from a source without citing it correctly. In practice, this can mean a few different things.

Many people think of plagiarism as copying another’s work, or borrowing someone else’s original ideas. But terms like “copying” and “borrowing” can disguise the seriousness of the offence:

According to the Merriam-Webster OnLine Dictionary, to “plagiarise” means

• 1) to steal and pass off (the ideas or words of another) as one's own 
• 2) to use (another's production) without crediting the source
• 3) to commit literary theft 
• 4) to present as new and original an idea or product derived from an existing source. 

In other words, plagiarism is an act of fraud. It involves both stealing someone else’s work and lying about it afterward.

Concesequnces of Plagiarism :

This kind of documentation not only recognizes the work writers do; it also tends to discourage the circulation of error, by inviting readers to determine for themselves whether a reference to another text presents a reasonable account of what that text says. Plagiarists undermine these important public values.

Plagiarists are often seen as incompetent-incapable of developing and express- ing their own thoughts-or, worse, dishonest, willing to deceive others for personal gain. 

When professional writers, such as journalists, are exposed as plagiarists, they are likely to lose their jobs, and they are certain to suffer public embarrassment and loss of prestige. Almost always, the course of a writer's career is permanently affected by a single act of plagiarism. The serious consequences of plagiarism re- flect the value the public places on trustworthy information.

Plagiarism betrays the personal element in writing as well. Discussing the history of copyright, Mark Rose notes the tie between our writing and our sense of self-a tie that, he believes, influenced the idea that a piece of writing could belong to the person who wrote it.

Consequences of plagiarism include:

Destroyed Student Reputation

Destroyed Professional Reputation

Destroyed Academic Reputation

Legal Repercussions

Monetary Repercussions

Plagiarized Research

Forms of Plagiarism :

The most blatant form of plagiarism is to obtain and submit as your own a paper written by someone else (see 2.3). Other, less conspicuous forms of plagiarism include the failure to give appropriate acknowledgment when repeating or paraphrasing another's wording, when taking a particularly apt phrase, and when paraphrasing another's argument or presenting another's line of thinking.

Repeating or Paraphrasing Wording :

Taking a Particular Apt phrase :

Paraphrasing an Argument or Presenting a line of thinking :

Why Academic Integrity is necessary? Write your views. 

Academic integrity means acting in a way that is honest, fair, respectful and responsible in your studies and academic work. It means applying these values in your own work, and also when you engage with the work and contributions of others.

Academic integrity is a set of values and practices that expect us to act with honesty, trust, fairness, respect and responsibility. It means approaching your studies, research and professional life in an ethical way, having the courage to make the right decisions and displaying integrity. Academic integrity is about who you are as a person, and how you act when it matters.

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Literature Review

Hello friends 

Welcome to my blog, this task about literature review. This task is assigned by Prof. Dr. Dilip Barad sir.

Defiine Literature Review :

A literature review is a piece of academic writing demonstrating knowledge and understanding of the academic literature on a specific topic placed in context. A literature review also includes a critical evaluation of the material; this is why it is called a literature review rather than a literature report. It is a process of reviewing the literature, as well as a form of writing.

In a larger piece of written work, such as a dissertation or project, a literature review is usually one of the first tasks carried out after deciding on a topic. Reading combined with critical analysis can help to refine a topic and frame research questions. Conducting a literature review establishes your familiarity with and understanding of current research in a particular field before carrying out a new investigation. After doing a literature review, you should know what research has already been done and be able to identify what is unknown within your topic.

Focusing on different aspects of your literature review can be useful to help plan, develop, refine and write it. 

The review of previous studies is important. Also the writer critically evaluates previous studies.

Why is literature review carried out in research?

Also a great benefit of literature reviews is that as we read, we’ll get a better understanding of how research findings are presented and discussed in your particular discipline. If we pay attention to what we read and try to achieve a similar style, we’ll become more successful at writing for our discipline. Ideas are to be organised thematically with main points relating to the topic of the literature review, showing how sources relate to each other and contribute to knowledge about the topic.

Article : 8 and 9

Article-8 Introduction: History in Translation  by Tejaswini Niranjana 

Hello friends

This Blog-post is a response to the thinking activity task on 'Comparative Studies' given by our professor Dr.Dilip Barad Sir. This  task is group task. I, Bhavna Sosa, Dhvani Rajyaguru and Hinaba Sarvaiya presented  an article on Introduction: History in Translation  by Tejaswini Niranjana.  So here is the presentation and video.

Introduction : History in Translation from BhavnaSosa

Article - 9 Shifting Centres and Emerging Margins: Translation and the Shaping of Modernist Poetic Discourse in Indian Poetry by E.V. Ramkrishnan 

Abstract  :

This chapter examines the role played by translation in shaping a modernist poetic sensibility in some of the major literary traditions of India in the twentieth century, between 1950 and 1970. Translations of major European poets such as Baudelaire, Rilke, Eliot and Yeats contributed towards clearing a space for the modernist discourse in Indian poetry. The chapter will study examples from Bengali. Malayalam + and Marathi, to understand how such translations of modern Western poets were used to breach the hegemony of prevailing literary sensibilities and poetic modes. As the contradictions within the 'high' modernist mode deepened in the politically turbulent 1960s, one witnessed a gradual radicalisation of modernist sensibility in these languages. Translations from African and Latin American poetry played a significant role in this phase of modernism. Poets such as Neruda and Parra were widely translated into Indian languages during this phase. In this context, translation enacted a critical act of evaluation. a creative act of intervention, and a performative act of legitimation, in evolving a new poetic style during the modernist phase of Indian poetry.

Key points :

Modernity/Modernism
Literary/artistic movement of modernism
The reception of Western modernist discourses in India
Translation the course of modernism in Indian Literature

The indigenous roots/routes of modernity and modernism

Analysis:

An elaboration on the relation between 'modernity' and 'modernism in the Indian context will need a separate chapter. It has also been argued that such a modular modernity, as envisaged in Western terms, brought about a rupture in the social and cultural life of India, separating its 'modern period' from what was 'pre- modern'. Such a view may be disputed but it can be convincingly shown that the dynamics of literary expression and the apparatus of cultural transmission came to be redefined in the 'modern' period.

The project of modernity in India was implicated in colonialism and imperialism. This colonial modernity informed literary and cultural movements, beginning from the reformist movement of the nineteenth century to the modernist movement of the mid-twentieth century. The breaching of entrenched traditions resulted in a crisis which had to be tackled creatively by resorting to the resources of alien traditions. While introducing the works of B. S. Mardhekar, a major Marathi modernist, Chitre says. The poet B. S. Mardhekar was the most remarkable product of the cross- pollination between the deeper, larger native tradition and contemporary world culture'.

The term 'modernism' implies a literary/artistic movement that was characterised by experimentation, conscious rejection of the nationalist/ Romantic as well as the popular, and the cultivation of an individualist, Cosmopolitan and insular world view. In the European context. It signified a set of tendencies in artistic expression and writing styles of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries through a new aesthetic that was iconoclastic, insular and elitist. 

The aesthetics of modernism in the West had a transnational, metropolitan worldview that excluded the claims of the local and the national and made no concession to the popular taste. While the modernism that emerged in Indian literature shared many of these defining features, its political affiliations and ideological orientations were markedly different. Due to its postcolonial location, Indian modernism did not share the imperial or metropolitan aspirations of its European counterpart. 

It invested heavily in regional cosmopolitan traditions. It was oppositional in content and questioned the colonial legacies of the nationalist discourse. It was elitist and formalistic and deeply distrustful of the popular domain.

In the context of Bengali as Amiva Dey has observed, 'It was not because they inhibed modernism that the a [modernist] Bengali writers turned away from Rabindranath, on contrary, Modernism was the means by which they turned away from Rabindranath and they had to turn away, for their history demanded itIn the context of Bengali as Amiva Dey has observed, 'It was not because they inhibited modernism that the a [modernist] Bengali writers turned away from Rabindranath, on contrary, Modernism was the means by which they turned away from Rabindranath and they had to turn away, for their history demanded it in Anandamurthy et al 1972. 71. Commenting on the role of Kannada modernists, R. Satidhar writes,

If European modernism was drawn hersee the cupluri and the me in Kannada the precipitare modernism was drawn herwen the Brahminical and the non Brahminical Just as the cuplion and te active modernisms were part of the internal dynamics of modernism elf, also the Brahmanical and the non-Brahmanical modernisms in Kannada were part and parcel of a modernism that came as a reaction to the Nehruvian environment fin Satchidanandan 2001, 34).

Translation enables us to delineate the complex artistic and ideological undercurrents that shaped the course of modernism in Indian literature. To discuss this, we will look at three representative modernist authors from three separate Indian literary traditions-Sudhindranath Dutta (1901-60) from Bengali, B. S. Mardhekar (1909-56) from Marathi and Ayyappa Paniker (1936-2004) from Malayalam. These authors help us see the chronological trajectory of modernism across Indian literature. 

Translation is central to the modernist poetic as it unfolded in these literary traditions. Each of these three authors was bilingual and wrote essays in English as well as their own languages, outlining their new, getic, thus preparing the reader for new poetic modes.

The Romantic poets had made a shift from Sanskritic traditions to folk metres, which was a movement towards open forms. The experimental poetry of the modernists, on the other hand, opened up poetic forms further, by using imagist, suggestive free verse that affirmed that cach poem has its authentic form which cannot be approximated to a metre which functions independent of content.

Conclusion:

The modernist subject was fragmented and fractured in the Indian context, but not for reasons that constituted fragmented selves in the Western context. Colonial modernity operated within the Indian context as a realm of desire which brought into being a new social imaginary. The formalist poetic of modernist poetry corresponded to an inner world of desire that produced a language bristling with disquiet and angst. Translation enabled the displaced self of modernity to locate itself in a language that was intimately private and, also, outspokenly public. The idiom of their expression afforded the possibility of self-knowledge through epiphanies that brought 'momentary stays against confusion'.

sem4 comparative study.pptx from Khushbumakwana3

ARTICLE 6 and 7

 I am Bhavna Sosa, from department of English MK Bhavnagar University. This task is assigned by Prof. Dr. Dilip Barad sir. This thinking activity about  Comparative Literature.

ARTICLE 6 : “Translation and literary history: An Indian view” - Ganesh Devy

Abstract  : 

‘Translation is the wandering existence of a text in a perpetual exile,’ says J. Hillis Miller1. 

The statement obviously alludes to the Christian myth of the Fall, exile and wandering. In Western metaphysics translation is an exile, a fall from the origin; and the mythical exile is a metaphoric translation, a post-Babel crisis iii. Given this metaphysical precondition of Western aesthetics, it is not surprising that literary translations are not accorded the same status as original works. Western literary criticism provides for the guilt of translations for coming into being after the original; the temporal sequentiality is held as a proof of diminution of literary authenticity of translations. The strong sense of individuality given to Western individuals through systematic philosophy and the logic of social history makes them view translation as an intrusion of ‘the other's. This intrusion is desirable to the extent that it helps define one’s own identity, but not beyond that point.

Analysis  :

One of the most revolutionary events in the history of English style has been the authorised translation of the Bible. It was also the literary expression of Protestant Christianity. The recovery of the original spirit of Christianity was thus sought by Protestant England through an act of translation. It is well known that Chaucer was translating the style of Boccacio into English when he created his Canterbury Tales. When Dryden and Pope wanted to recover a sense of order, they used the tool of translation. Similar attempts were made in other European languages such as German and French.

The tradition that has given us writers like Shaw, Yeats, Joyce, Beckett and Heaney in a single century – the tradition of Anglo-Irish literature –branched out of the practice of translating Irish works into English initiated by Macpherson towards the end of the eighteenth century.

Most literary traditions originate in translation and gain substance through repeated acts of translation, it would be useful for a theory of literary history if a supporting theory of literary translation were available. 

Roman Jakobson in his essay on the linguistics of translation proposed a threefold classification of translations: 

(a) those from one verbal order to another verbal order within the same language system, 

(b) those from one language system to another language system, and 

(c) those from a verbal order to another system of signs (Jakobson, 1959, pp. 

232– 9). 

Structural linguistics considers language as a system of signs, arbitrarily developed, that tries to cover the entire range of significance available to the culture of that language. The signs do not mean anything by or in themselves; they acquire significance by virtue of their relation to the entire system to which they belong. This theory naturally looks askance at translation which is an attempt to rescue/ abstract significance from one system of signs and to wed it with another such system. But language is an open system. It keeps admitting new signs as well as new significance in its fold.

The concept of a ‘translating consciousness v and communities of people possessing it are no mere notions. In most Third World countries, where a dominating colonial language has acquired a privileged place, such communities do exist. In India several languages are simultaneously used by language communities as if these languages formed a continuous spectrum of signs and significance. The use of two or more different languages in translation activity cannot be understood properly through studies of foreign-language acquisition. 

 In Chomsky’s linguistics the concept of semantic universals plays an important role. However, his level of abstraction marks the farthest limits to which the monolingual Saussurean linguistic materialism can be stretched. 

And in the absence of a linguistic theory based on a multilingual perspective or on translation practice, the translation thought in the West overstates the validity of the concept of synonymy. 

J.C. Catford presents a comprehensive statement of theoretical formulation about the linguistics of translation in A Linguistic Theory of Translation, in which he seeks to isolate various linguistic levels of translation. 

‘Translation is an operation performed on languages: a process of substituting a text in one language for a text in another; clearly, then, any theory of translation must draw upon a theory of language – a general linguistic theory.The privileged discourse of general linguistics today is closely interlinked with developments in anthropology, particularly after Durkheim and Lévi-Strauss. During the nineteenth century, Europe had distributed various fields of humanistic knowledge into a threefold hierarchy: comparative studies for Europe, Orientalism for the Orient, and anthropology for the rest of the world. In its various phases of development modern Western linguistics has connections with all these. After the ‘discovery’ of Sanskrit by Sir William Jones, historical linguistics in Europe depended heavily on  Orientalism.

Comparative literature implies that between two related languages there are areas of significance that are shared, just as there may be areas of significance that can never be shared. Translation can be seen as an attempt to bring a given language system in its entirety as close as possible to the areas of significance that it shares with another given language or languages. All translations operate within this shared area of significance. Such a notion may help us distinguish synonymy within one language and the shared significance between two related languages.

It is an aesthetic and ideological problem with an important bearing on the question of literary history. Literary translation is not just a replication of a text in another verbal system of signs. It is a replication of an ordered sub-system of signs within a given language in another corresponding ordered sub-system of signs within a related language.

The problems in translation study are, therefore, very much like those in literary history. They are the problems of the relationship between origins and sequentiality. And as in translation study so in literary history, the problem of origin has not been tackled satisfactorily. The point that needs to be made is that probably the question of origins of literary traditions will have to be viewed differently by literary communities with ‘translating consciousness’. The fact that Indian literary communities do possess this translating consciousness can be brought home effectively by reminding ourselves that the very foundation of modern Indian literatures was laid through acts of translation, whether by Jayadeva, Hemcandra, Michael Madhusudan Dutta, H.N. Apte or Bankim Chandra Chatterjee. 

 Conclusion:

When the soul passes from one body to another, it does not lose any of its essential significance. Indian philosophies of the relationship between form and essence, structure and significance are guided by this metaphysics. Indian literary theory does not lay undue emphasis on originality. If originality were made a criterion of literary excellence, a majority of Indian classics would fail the test. The true test is the writer’s capacity to transform, to translate, to restate, to revitalise the original. And in that sense Indian literary traditions are essentially traditions of 

translation.

ARTICLE- 7 : On Translating a Tamil Poem by A. K. Ramanujan

Abstract  : 

How does one translate a poem from another time, another culture,another language? Ramanujan translated poems from Tamil were written two thousand years ago in a comer of south India, in a Dravidian language relatively untouched by the other classical language of India, Sanskrit. Frost once even identified poetry as that which is lost in translation.

Analysis :

The  paradigms make for metonymies and metaphors, multiple contextual meanings clusters special to each language, quile untranslatable into another language like Tamil. Even when the elements of a system may be similar in two languages, like father, mother, brother, mother-in-law, etcIn kinShip, the system of relations and the feelings traditionally encouraged by each relative are also culturally sensitive and therefore part of the expressive repertoire of poets and novelists. Ramanujan took two different poems about love (What She Said) and war ( A Young Warrior ) and made the point that, when we move from one to the other we are struck by the associations across them forming a web not only of the akam and puram genres. But also of the five landscape.; with all their contents signifying moods. And the themes and motifs 0f love and war.

Love and war become metaphors for one another. In the poem “A Leaf In Love And War '' we see entwines the two themes of love and war - in an ironic juxtaposition. A wreath of nocci is worn by warriors in war poems and a nocci leaf skirt is given by a lover to his woman in a love poem. Example God Krishna: both lovers and warriors. Ramanujan takes a closer look at the origin of Kapilar’s poem Ainkurunuru 203. And he points out that The word annay (in spoken Tamil, ammo), literally 'mother', is a familiar term of address for any woman, here a 'girlfriend'. So I have translated it as 'friend', to make clear that the poem is not addressed to a mother (as some other poems are) but to a girl friend.

Impossible intricate task, foredoomed of failure. What makes  it possible at all?  At least four things. Maybe even four articles of faith.  help the translators.

Structural Mimicry

Systematicity 

Interiorized contexts 

Universals

1) Universals: 

If such universals did not exist, as Voltaire said of God, we would have had to invent them. Universals of structure in both signifiers and signifieds are necessary fictions. The indispensable as ifs of our fallible enterprise. 

2) Interiorised Contexts: 

One is also translating this kind of intertextual web, the meaning- making a web of colophons and commentaries that surround and contextualise the poem. 

3) Systematicity: 

One translates not single poems but bodies of poetry that create and contain their original world. 

4) Structural mimicry: 

The structures of individual poems, the unique figures they make out of all the given codes of their language, rhetoric , and poetics, become the points of entry. So one attempts a structural mimicry, to translate relations, not items not single words but phrases, sequences, sentences; not metrical Units but rhythms; not morphology but syntactic patterns.

Conclusion : 

The translation must not only represent,, but re- present, the original. One walks a tightrope between the To-language and the From-language, in a double loyalty. A translator is an 'artist on oath'. Sometimes one may succeed only in re-presenting a poem, not in closely representing it. At such times one draws consolation from parables like the following.If the representation in another language is not close enough, but still succeeds in ’carrying’ the poem in some sense, we will have two poems instead of one. 

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Unit 2 Articles

  Hello friends 

I am Bhavna Sosa from the Department of English MKBU. Welcome to my blog. In our syllabus of M.A. Sem- 4. We had one paper on Contemporary literature and Translation Studies. Dilip Barad assigned us this article in the Group presentations Task as well as the Thinking Activity task. 

Article -4 : What is Comparative Literature Today ? -Susan Bassnett 

Abstract :

Sooner or later, anyone who claims to be working in comparative literature has to try and answer the inevitable question : What is it ? The simplest answer is that comparative literature involves the study of texts across cultures, that it is interdisciplinary and that it is concerned with patterns of connection in literature across both time and space. 

Susan Bassnett says that most of the people do not start with comparative literature but they end up with it in some way or other. Generally, we first start reading the text and then we arrive at a comparison. I mean to say, we start comparing that text with another that has similarities and dissimilarities. Comparative Literature emerged in the 19th century. Comparative Literature is different from national literature, general literature and world literature. It was begun as “Literature Compare” in 1860 in Germany. Comparative literature got recognition as a study in 1897. In 1848, Matthew Arnold had used this term “Comparative Literature “for the first time in English. He defines this term. He says...

“Everywhere there is connection. Everywhere there is illustration. No single event, no single literature is adequately comprehended except in relation to other events, to other literatures.”

Goethe gave the term “World Literature (Weltliteratur) to Comparative literature because by comparing them, the comparatists compare one literature to another one. In a way, comparative literature removes all borders and brings nearer to all literatures and spreads harmony. What is common in different literature? That is the main function of comparative literature.

       What is the object of study in comparative literature? How can comparison be the object of anything? If individual literatures have a canon what might a comparative canon be? How does the comparative select what to compare? Is comparative literature a discipline? Or is it simply a field of study? All these questions can be raised. Rene Wellek defined as “the crisis of comparative literature.”

    Benedetto Croce argued that comparative literature was a non- subject, contemptuously dismissing the suggestion that it might be seen as a separate discipline. He discussed the definition of Comparative literature as the exploration of “the vicissitudes, alterations, developments and reciprocal difference” of themes and literary ideas across literatures, and concluded that ‘there is no study more arisen than research of this sort. This kind of work, Croce maintained, is to be classified, in the category of erudition purely and simply. Instead of something called comparative literature, he suggested that the proper object of study should be literary history.

“ the comparative history of literature is history understood in its true sense a s complete explanation of the literary work, encompassed in all its relationships, disposed in the composite whole of universal literary history (where else could it ever be placed ?), seen in those connections and preparations that are its raison d’être.”

       Croce’s argument was that the term “Comparative Literature” was obfuscator, disguising the obvious, that is, the fact that the true object of study was literary history. Here, we can see Croce’s different views regarding comparative literature that he is against the concept of comparative literature. This shows various comparative literatures. All cultural differences disappear when readers take up great works; art is seen as an instrument of universal harmony and the comparator is one who facilitates the spread of that harmony. Moreover, the corporatist must possess special skills; Wellek and Warren in their “Theory of Literature “ a book that was enormously significant in Comparative literature when it first appeared in 1949, suggest that:

“Comparative Literature... will make high demands on the type of linguistic proficiencies of our scholars. It asks for a widening of perspectives, a suppression of local and provincial sentiments, not easy to achieve.”

West comparative literature began to gain ground in the rest of the world. New programmes in comparative literature began to emerged in China, in Taiwan, in Japan, and other Asian countries, based, however, nor on any ideal of Universalism but on the very aspect of literary study that many Western comparison had sought to deny: the specificity of national literatures, Swapan Majumdar puts it:

“It is because of this prediction for National Literature- much developed by the Anglo-American critics as a methodology- that comparative Literature has struck roots in the Third World nations and in India in particular.”

Conclusion:

Comparative Literature has traditionally claimed translation as a sub-category,but this assumption is now being questioned.The work of scholars such as Toury,Lefevere,Hermans,Lembert and many others has shown that translation is especially at moments of great cultural changes. Evan Zohar argued that extensive translation activity takes place when a culture is in a period of translation :when it is expanding,when it needs renewal,when it is in a pre-revolutionary phase,then translation plays a vital part. When a culture is solidity established, when it is in an imperialist stage, when it believes itself to be dominant, then translation is less important. 

Comparative Literature have always claimed that translation as a sub-category,but as translation studies establishes itself firmly as a subject based in inter-cultural study and offering a methodology of some rigour, both in terms of theoretical and descriptive work, so comparative literature appears less like a discipline and more like a branch of something else. Seenin this way, the problem of the crisis could then be put into perspective,and the long,unresolved debate on whether comparative literature is or is not a discipline in its own right could finally and definitely be shelved.

Article- 5 : Comparative Literature in the Age of Digital Humanities: On Possible Futures for a Discipline by Todd Presner.

Abstract :

After five hundred years of print and the massive transformations in society and culture that it unleashed, we are in the midst of another watershed moment in human history that is on par with the invention of the printing press or perhaps the discovery of the New World. With the invention of the printing press, communication, literacy and the state of knowledge completely changed, providing the conditions of possibility for the reformation, the Enlightenment, the age of humanism, and the rise of mass media.

Key points and analysis : 

Nicholas Negroponte once asserted in his wildly optimistic book Being Digital (Negroponte, 1995 ), for they always have an underbelly: mobile phones, social networking technologies, and perhaps even the hundred - dollar computer, will not only be used to enhance education, spread democracy, and enable global communication but will likely be used to perpetrate violence and even orchestrate genocide in much the same way that the radio and the railway did in the last century (despite the belief that both would somehow liberate humanity and join us all together in a happy, interconnected world that never existed before) (Presner, 2007 ).

Paul Gilroy analysed in his study of “ the fatal junction of the concept of nationality with the concept of culture ” along the “ Black Atlantic, ” voyages of discovery, enlightenment, and progress also meant, at every moment, voyages of conquest, enslavement, and destruction. Indeed, this is why iany discussion of technology cannot be separated from a discussion about formations of power and instrumentalized authority.

N. Katherine Hayles, I find myself wondering – as we ponder various possible futures for Comparative Literature in the second decade of the twenty - first century – how to rouse ourselves from the “ somnolence [of] five hundred years of print ” (Hayles, 2002 : p. 29). Of course, there is nothing neutral, objective, or necessary about the medium of print; rather it is a medium that has a long and complex history connected to the formation of academic disciplines, institutions, epistemologies, and ideologies, not to mention conceptions of authorship and scholarly research.

Darnton ’s assessment seriously that we are now in the fifth decade of the fourth information age in the history of humankind, it seems to me that we ought to try to understand not only the contours of the discipline of Comparative Literature – and for that matter, the Humanities as a whole – from the perspective of an information - and media - specific analysis, but that we also ought to come to terms with the epistemic disjunction between our digital age and everything that came before it.

Walter Benjamin did in The Arcades Project (1928 – 40; 1999), it is necessary, I believe, to interrogate both the media and methodologies for the study of literature, culture, and society. The “ problem ” of Comparative Literature is to figure out how to take seriously the range of new authoring, annotation, and sharing platforms that have transformed global cultural production.

Comparative Media Studies 

Comparative Data Studies 

Comparative Authorship and Platform Studies

1)Comparative Media Studies : 

 Digital media are always already hypermedia and hypertextual.For Nelson, a hypertext is a Body of written or pictorial material interconnected in such a complex way that it could not conveniently be presented or represented on paper [ … ] Such a system could grow indefinitely, gradually including more and more of the world ’ s written knowledge. 

2)Comparative Data Studies:

 Spurred by the work of Lev Manovich and Noah Wardrip - Fruin, the field of “ cultural analytics ” has emerged over the past five years to bring the tools of high - end computational analysis and data visualisation to dissect large - scale cultural datasets. Jerome McGann argues with regard to the first in his elegant analysis of “ radiant textuality, ” the differences between the codex and the electronic versions of the Oxford English Dictionary. The data of comparative data studies is constantly expanding in terms of volume, datatype, production and reception Platform and analytic strategy.

3)Comparative Authorship and Platform Studies :

 Just browse and passively consume predigested contenbut are actively engaged in the production and evaluation of digital media and software thanks to the open source movement. James Boyle points out, there are many corporate entities eager to regulate the public domain and control the “ commons of the mind. ” 10 For Boyle, the real danger is not unauthorised file sharing but “ failed sharing ” due to enclosures and strictures placed upon the world of the creative commons (Boyle, 2008 : p. 182).Scholars such as McKenzie Wark and Kathleen Fitzpatrick have even “ published ” early versions of their entire books on Commentpress.

Conclusion :

This article mainly focuses on this twenty-first century in terms of digital humanities how we are doing comparative studies. After discussing various arguments, we come to know that to date, it has more than three million content pages, more than three hundred million edits, over ten million registered users, and articles in forty - seven languages (Wikipedia Statistics). This is a massive achievement for eight years of work. Wikipedia represents a dynamic, flexible, and open - ended network for knowledge creation and distribution that underscores process, collaboration, access, interactivity, and creativity, with an editing model and versioning system that documents every contingent decision made by every contributing author. At this moment in its short life, Wikipedia is already the most comprehensive, representative, and pervasive participatory platform for knowledge production ever created by humankind. In my opinion, that is worth some pause and reflection, perhaps even by scholars in a future disciplinary incarnation of Comparative Literature.

Comparative_Literature_in_the_Age_of_Digital_Humanities.pptx from VachchhalataJoshi

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The piano and The Drums by Gabriel Okara

 This blog is in response to a task assigned by Yesha ma’am based on The Piano and The Drums by Gabriel Okara.

About poet :

Gabriel Okara is a Nigerian poet and novelist whose work has been translated into several languages. After his first poem, “The Call of the River Nun,” won an award at the Nigerian Festival of Arts in 1953, several of his poems were featured in the Nigerian literary journal Black Orpheus. In his poetry, Okara draws from Nigerian folklore and religion while exploring extremes within daily life through circular patterns. In addition to a novel, and several books of adult poetry, including The Fisherman’s Invocation (1978), Okara has published two collections of children’s poetry, Little Snake and Little Frog (1992) and An Adventure to Juju Island (1992).

About 'The Piano and The Drums' :

In the poem, the piano and the drums, the poetic persona shows the difference between the normal lifestyle of Africans and that of the modern world. The setting of the poem, as is seen in the poem, dates from the advent of civilization to the modern time. The central theme of the poem hinges on the effect of foreign culture to Africans. This theme he elaborates using the effect of music on the poetic persona as an analogy. The poem tries to emphasize the purity of African content before the interference of civilization.

In essence, Gabriel Okara perceives the desecration of the African way of life from the musical perspective, and comes out to lament about it through the instrument of 

Analysis of the poem, The piano and The Drums 

Stanza One : 

In this stanza, the poetic persona speaks of the sound of the jungle drum. This sound of the drum he feels is mystical, that is, there are so many supernatural things that come with it. The sound of the drum to him, creates agility, strength and quickness of action. This can be seen from lines 3 to 4 as he runs into imagination to the primordial time picturing what this sound would do to the jungle residents:

“… Speaking of

Primal youth and the beginning

I see the panther ready to pounce

The leopard snarling about to leap

And the hunters crouch with spears poised”

 All is action and natural. The poetic persona with a straight use of imagery and comprehensible words draws the readers’ attention to the fact that everything about this sound is in their natural states using words like, “riverside, jungle, raw, fresh,” names of animal in the jungle – natural habitat, and the last line of the stanza speaking of a hunter with spear ready to strike and hunt.

Everything about this stanza depicts the freshness of nature and life as of the old.

Stanza Two : 

Once again, the poetic persona remembers of years back when he was still an infant in his mother’s laps suckling her breast (lines 9 to 11). Suddenly, he is walking the paths of the village with no new ideas of a way of life different from the one he is born into:

“At once I’m walking simple

Paths with no innovations,

Rugged, fashioned with the naked

Warmth of hurrying feet and groping hearts

In green leaves and wild flowers pulsing.”

Stanza Three : 

Then, here in stanza three, reality changed as the poetic persona came in contact with a different sound from a faraway land:

“Then I hear a wailing piano

Solo speaking of complex ways in

Tear-furrowed concerto;

Of far-away lands”

The change in the sound came with a different instrument other than African native drum, and it also produces a sound that is different with so many musical technicalities which the poetic persona expresses with musical dictions in words like, “concerto, diminuendo, crescendo.” He deploys them to emphasize the difficulty in understanding this new sound

 “… but lost in the labyrinth

Of its complexities…”

Consequently, in the last four lines, the poetic persona laments on the level of confusion the new sound brings when it mixes with the drums:

 “And I lost in the morning mist

Of an age at a riverside keep

Wandering in the mystic rhythm

Of jungle drums and the concerto” 

On a general note, the poet discusses the confusion that is created when western culture mixes with African culture. Any attempt to unify the two results in confusion and disorder. Therefore, one is keenly advised to abhor such a lifestyle. If you want to be African, be it, otherwise, live like the white man.

The poetic persona is not against choosing any of the cultures, but don’t mix them together. Indirectly, he warns us against becoming whiter than the white themselves or more civilized than civilization.

Themes of the poem The Piano and The Drums : 

Celebration of nature :–

 In stanza one, the way the poetic persona expresses the details of the jungle drum depicts his appreciation of the normal natural environment of things.

No place like home: –

 Although, this theme cannot be identified on a surface level in the poem, but, when the poetic persona laments over the confusion that emanates from the contact of the two instruments: piano and drum (African lifestyle and western lifestyle), he shows how comfortable one can be at home with the things and way of life that he is familiar with. There was no confusion when it was all African and their drums until civilization came.

Living a double standard lifestyle :– 

By emphasizing the confusion that comes out from the marriage of the piano and drum sounds, the poetic persona tells us that living two contracting lives can only breed confusion and complexities.

Acculturation: – 

The notion of acculturation is brought into the poem with the contact of the piano and the drums. Acculturation is when two distinct cultures meet and start to adopt and absorb each other’s norms.

Cultural conflicts :–

 The poem also shows that two distinct cultures cannot stay together as any such attempt will result in conflict of norms, traditions and beliefs. For instance, as many analyst has proposed, the conflicts in Nigeria that appear in the forms of ethnicity(tribalism), favoritism, nepotism, nonchalant attitude to public work and so on, is as a result of the incompatibility of the three major tribes in Nigeria and the many others. However, irrespective of these abnormalities, Nigeria still calls for unity in diversity.

Structures of the poem, Piano and The Drums :

It is a poem of three stanzas with 29 lines. It has no consistent rhyming scheme, hence one can say that it is mainly a free verse.

Thank you 

 

Vultures by Chinua achebe

This blog is in response to a task assigned by Yesha ma’am based on Chinua Achebe’s African poem ‘Vultures’.

About author :

Writer Chinua Achebe was born in the village of Ogidi in eastern Nigeria. His father worked for the Church Missionary Society, and his early education was through the society’s school. At the age of eight, Achebe began to learn English. When he was 14, he was one of a few boys selected to attend the government college at Umuahia, which was one of the best schools in west Africa. In 1948, Achebe enrolled at University College, Ibadan, which was a new school. He intended to study medicine, but he soon switched to English literary studies. The college at Ibadan was affiliated with the University of London, and Achebe’s course of study was very similar to that required by the University of London’s honors degree program. While at school, he contributed stories, essays, and sketches to the University Herald; these pieces were collected in Girls at War and Other Stories.

About poem: 

Vultures’ is one of the famous poems of the Nigerian poet Chinua Achebe. It is a dark and somber piece that focuses on the Belsen concentration camp and a commandant who works there. Chinua Achebe’s ‘Vultures’ is a gritty poem that is hard to read due to the harrowing subject matter. By using several visual and olfactory imagery, Achebe creates a dark and filthy environment in the poem. It depicts a truthful picture of the Belsen concentration camp. The commandant, in the poem, is none other than a representative of a class, who selflessly thinks of his own family even if thousands of families are rotting just around him. The fetid smell of rotting humanity inside him gets featured through the imagery of the vultures.

Tone of the poem :

In much of the poem the speaker’s tone is quite detached, as if he is narrating what he observes and whatever thoughts occur to him. The description of the vultures is quite clinical in the way it recounts in great detail what they ate and did. In the second section, in which the speaker personifies love in the charnel-house, there is an element almost of tender amusement as he describes how she tidies her corner and curls up to sleep with her face to the wall. The description of the Belsen Commandant shows a note of disgust as the speaker mentions ‘fumes of human roast’ and ‘hairy nostrils’. He shows a touchof contemptuous outrage as he mentions the ‘tender offspring’ waiting for ‘Daddy’s return’. In the final section of the poem, the speaker’s tone becomes rather hopeless and pessimistic. He allows the reader to choose thankfulness, ‘if you will’ – the phrase emphasizing his own lack of faith in this option. Clearly his own view is that thepotential for love is the flip-side of the potential for evil.

Structure of the poem ‘vultures’ :

The poem is in free verse, with no rhyme scheme and no formal stanzas. The lines are very short and enjambment is used throughout – commas and full stops are found in the middle of the line rather than the end, and there seems to be no logic to where the lines end. The poem is divided into four ‘sections’ indicated by the use of indented lines and ellipses. 

Themes:

Scavenger

In this poem, is that there are two vultures. When we  think of vultures, we think of Scavengers, big dark bird  that search for rotten/dying food.  However,  in this poem is portraying vultures  as love 'birds' and how there can be love during a war and that whenever there is darkness there is always light somewhere .

Nazism:

Bergen Belson was one of the many notorious Nazi concentration camps. Unlike the death camps such as Auschwitz it did not have gas chambers. Instead prisoners were worked to death on a starvation diet. Conditions were appealing and the cruelty was unspeakable. By the time the camp was liberated by Allied troops 50,000 European citizens had been killed within its fences many of the dead were put into mass graves; others were incinerated in giant crematoria. One its most famous victims was the diarist Anne Frank. 

Vulture as metaphor:

Vultures symbolize death and decomposition. The poet tells us that these symbols of death and evil, who eat the decaying corpses, can have a loving side. This image of love contrasts with their evil nature. Bashed-in head- another image of violence that creates a terrifying picture of them. The poem is an extended metaphor on the nature of evil. It portrays a picture of a concentration camp commander, but begins with an analogy; a description of a pair of vultures who nuzzle 'affectionately' together after gorging on a corpse.

Humanism:

 

Vulture is sitting in the ‘broken bone of a dead tree’. It shows that they fed on dead humans. It represents the violence or evil nature of vultures. They are harmful for nature. But we see at the centre of the concentration camp how the commandant survives on dead bodies. It is very ridiculous. 

Ecology: 

Poem begin with a gloomy atmosphere of  the words 'grayness' . It shows that a very dull and lifeless atmosphere is created. First focus of nature is that it's very gloomy. It's presented as something bad. The next word in the poem is harbinger. Vultures are associated with evil. This creates a sinner atmosphere. Achebe identifies the charnel house as the belsen concentration camp where Jews and other prisoners were killed and their bodies were often burned. 'Human roast' refers to the victims in the concentration camp as if they were being cooked. 

Setting and Context:

 Two vultures roosting by a roadside prompt thoughts on the nature of evil. The poem is set principally in the Biafran war, although this is not mentioned explicitly. The second part of the poem refers explicitly to the Second World War. By implication/suggestion the poem is relevant to all human conflict.The poem begins with a graphic and unpleasant description of a pair of vultures who nestle lovingly together after feasting on a corpse. The poet comments on the strangeness of love existing in places where one would not

expect. He then goes on to consider the love a concentration camp commandant shows to his family, having spent the day burning human corpses, he buys his child sweets on theway home. The ending of the poem is ambiguous/two sided. On one hand, Achebe praises God and providence that even the most cruel of creatures can show love. On the other hand, these creatures show love for their families only and so allow themselves to commit cruel acts towards others.

Conclusion :

The vultures, described in such a disparaging; grim fashion could beconstrued as a metaphor for the people responsible for the atrocities in Belsen and in particular the Commandant. It is the longest part of the poem and this is not a coincidence. The first stanza is a metaphor for the Commandant’s predominant personality traits and this is

why it dominates so much of the poem’s content. The third stanza, the scene with his child, represents a far smaller portion of the poem and this is a metaphor for his spark of humanity. The form of this poem is very clever as it creates a grim and deathly image, it creates a glimmer of hope in the second and third stanzas and then ends on a hopeless and fatalistic note emphasising the futility of the situation. Difference between the vultures and the commandant: Vultures feed on corpses. That is their instinct. It is not something that they choose to do. The Commandant is not acting on instinct. He has the ability to choose. He chooses to be evil.

The Piano and The Drums

Thank you !

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