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Carnivalesque and its All-Pervasive Influence in Caryl Churchill’s Cloud Nine

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Hassan Abootalebi & Alireza Kargar

PhD student of  English Language and Literature, Kharazmi University, Tehran, Iran. Email: abootalebi2010@gmail.com

M.A in English Language and Literature, Lorestan University, Khorramabad, Iran. Email: alirezakargar1984@gmail.com

 Volume 12, Number 2, April-June, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n2.08

 Abstract

The current paper is an attempt to scrutinize and shed some light on Caryl Churchill’s play Cloud Nine (1979) with the application of Mikhail Bakhtin’s theories of carnival and carnivalesque explicated in his celebrated book Rabelais and His World (1984) which presupposes a world in which the flouting of, and challenging authority along with disrespect for, and disregard of, what is deemed sacred and valued are vital and instrumental, where individuals are liberated from any restrictions imposed on them outside carnival, and are permitted to pursue what pleases them without the least fear of being castigated, oppressed or interrupted by authorities. The selected work, as argued in the subsequent sections of the present article, presents a world where authority and social constructs as well as  conventions are all undermined and mocked. What is thought of as truth is, therefore, mocked, and the characters are no longer restricted by imposed rules and regulations. It, however, celebrates the subversion and calling into question of gender roles and demonstrates how restrictive and oppressive these roles can be, and what it is like when one is not circumscribed by societal constructions and expectations, and is given the opportunity to enjoy themselves in an unlimited way. In the first act, everyone stands in an already pre-defined position, as expected by the authorities, where no transgression is tenable, and no one seems inclined to go beyond them. The second act, however, is set in London in 1979 and women are no longer restrained by rules, and the characters as a result grow. In what follows, the words carnival and carnivalesque will be first fully defined and elaborated on, and then applied to Caryl Churchill’s Cloud Nine to illustrate the above-mentioned claim.

Keywords: Mikhail Bakhtin, carnival, carnivalesque, Caryl Churchill, Cloud Nine

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Women and Cultural Transformation: The Politics of Representation in the Novels of Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay

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316 views

Sudip Roy Choudhury

Ph.D Research Scholar, Raiganj University, West Bengal, India. Orcid: 0000-0003-4833-7975. Email id: sudiproychoudhury60@gmail.com

 Volume 12, Number 2, April-June, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n2.07

 Abstract

This paper begins by arguing that Bankimchandra, a pioneering novelist and nationalist thinker of India, sought to contain the nineteenth century ‘woman question’ within his nationalist project of ‘cultural transformation’. But this nationalist ideal is based on a gendered differentiation of the nation-culture into spiritual and material which has a far reaching implication in terms of his novelistic re-presentation of the nineteenth century ‘woman question’ and the ‘hierarchical inclusion’ of women in the political space of the nation. Hence, by contextualizing the works of Bankimchandra in a time of colonial encounter the present paper aims to bring out the complexities and paradoxes inherent in Bankimchandra’s formation of the strategy of re-presentation of women and reform in several of his novels.

Keywords: Colonial encounter, cultural transformation, nationalist consciousness, gender, social reform.

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Mythical Motifs in the Furniture of Elamite Civilization

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Neshat Madadi,1 Hassan Ali Pourmand2 & Seyyedeh  Motahareh  Mousavi3

1Department of Public, Qazvin Branch, Islamic Azad University, Qazvin, Iran.

2Associate Professor, Faculty of art & architecture, Tarbiat Modares University, Tehran, Iran.

3 Department of Architecture, Faculty of Architecture and Urban Planning, Qazvin Branch, Islamic Azad University, Qazvin, Iran. Email: motaharehmousavi@yahoo.com

 Volume 12, Number 2, April-June, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n2.06

Abstract

Elamites the first founders of the kingdom in Iranian territory were the pioneers of the use of animal motifs in the design of Iranian furniture. Since their very inception up to their decline, they made use of such motifs as snake, lion, wild goat and duck in designing their furniture. The current essay aims at the identification of the causes of the application, culmination, and decline of these motifs in designing furniture, particularly ancient Elamite thrones. The present study is fundamental research given its objective and is qualitative and exploratory in view of its essence. Data collection is based on library studies. The results show that in Elamite civilization due to the sacredness of snake, this mythic creature is the most popular motif in designing furniture. Elamites in addition to snake used such alternative motifs as lion, wild goat, and duck which enjoyed religious and social acceptability. Such motifs were used by Elamite gods, kings or officials in religious rituals or ceremonies and the reflection of Elamite ideas in relation to these creatures is visible in the design of their furniture.

Keywords: Iranian Furniture, Motif, Elamite Civilization.

Realms of the Dead and the Living: George II’s Allegorical Presence, Politics of Nonsense and Ignorance in Henry Fielding’s The Author’s Farce

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Samia AL-Shayban

Associate Professor, Department of English Language and Literature, College of Arts, King Saud University. ORCID ID:  0000-0003-3229-0834. Email: samia700@hotmail.com

 Volume 12, Number 2, April-June, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n2.05

Abstract

Ideologically, Fielding’s Author’s Farce is read as an attack on Sir Robert Walpole and his corrupt government.  Dramatically, it is perceived as a play with two separate plots, a factor that denies it any literary merits. This paper attempt to read Fielding’s play as a disguised multifaceted attack against King George II of England who is accused of deliberately corrupting London’ s literary scene to secure the Hanoverian hegemony. Fielding achieves his design through complex dramatization of the Realms of the dead and living. At the center of both realism stand George II who is metaphorically presented by the poor poet Luckless who resides in the land of the living and Nonsense the underworld goddess. The comparison between George Augustus who later became Prince of Wales and crowned as George II is based on detailed biographical and ideological similarities. The biographical and ideological affinities lead to the conclusion that King George II is the originator and protector of literary corruption. To strengthen the attack against the king, the court of Goddess Nonsense which appeared in Luckless’ play that depicts the land of the dead is connected to George II’s court through the prominent presence of opera and ignorance. Thus, Fielding’s literary dramatization is used as a medium to expose the role of the King in devaluing the English literary scene and turns it into a circus that makes the public ignorant with no literary taste and resigns authors to poverty. The scene is the result a deliberate tactics designed to disempower authors and public as a way to spread the Hanoverian hegemony and silence criticism of the corrupt political system.

 Keywords: Patriarchy, Margin, Center, George II, Power, Hobbes, Machiavelli.

Transport, Mobility and Mobile Groups in Bengal: Deconstructing Colonial Myths of Movement and Migration in the Eighteenth Century

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298 views

Baijayanti Chatterjee

Assistant Professor of History, Seth Anandram Jaipuria College, Calcutta University.

ORCID: 0000-0003-1176-6557. Email: chatterjeebaijayanti@gmail.com

 Volume 12, Number 2, April-June, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n2.04

 Abstract

This article sets out to dismiss the European notion of a lazy and static Bengali perennially averse to movement, by looking at transport networks, mobility and mobile groups in eighteenth century Bengal. The article argues that Bengali society was highly mobile, owing to the presence of an efficient system of transport by land and water which sustained movement. The so-called ‘indolence’ of the Bengali and his reluctance for movement was in fact a ‘myth’ created by the Europeans with a vested interest to disparage native society and to justify European domination over Bengal.

 Keywords: Colonial myth-making, transport & mobility, eighteenth-century Bengal

Role of Code-Switching and Code-Mixing in Indigenous Communicative Contexts: A Study of The God of Small Things

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Sangeeta Mukherjee1 & Devi Archana Mohanty2

1Senior Assistant Professor, VIT University, Tamil Nadu, India. Orcid: 0000-0002-5488-2876. Email:  sangeetamukherjee70@gmail.com

2Assistant Professor, NIET, Greater Noida, India. ORCID: 0000-0001-7103-7079. Email: devi1archana@gmail.com

 Volume 12, Number 2, April-June, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n2.03

 Abstract

Communicative strategies like code-switching and code-mixing have interested researchers the world over. These strategies have traversed from real life situations to creative writings to social networking domains and are dominant in bilingual or multi-lingual societies for multifarious reasons. While majority of the research was conducted in the spoken form from the real-life contexts, a few were directed towards the written forms in literary genres and computer-mediated communication. However, a significant gap becomes noticeable and needs to be explored in Indian English fiction where creative writers have dexterously used these communicative strategies. Keeping the above in mind, the present paper attempts to analyze the role of these strategies in indigenous interpersonal communicative contexts in Indian English fiction. The text chosen for this purpose is Arundhati Roy’s TheGod o Small Things and the analysis is based on the grammatical and pragmatic explanation of indigenous words which mostly belong to the area of interpersonal communication. The study shows how the author has skillfully used these strategies to unravel the indigenous cultural and social customs and mindset of the people within a particular indigenous community as well as the role-relationship between the interlocutors in a particular communicative context.

Keywords: Code-switching, code-mixing, code-retention, interpersonal communicative context, pragmatic markers.

Literary Recreation of the Colloquial Syntax in La Chanca by Juan Goytisolo

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María Gómez Mesas1, Francisco J. Rodríguez Muñoz2

1 Department of Spanish Language and Literature, IES Los Ángeles, Almería, Spain

2Department of Education, Faculty of Education Sciences, University of Almería, Spain, ORCID: 0000-0001-6071-509X. Email: frodriguez@ual.es

 Volume 12, Number 2, April-June, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n2.02

 Abstract

This paper examines the literary recreation of the colloquial modality in the novel by Juan Goytisolo La Chanca, claiming the syntax as a fundamental level of the stylistic analysis, which arises from a pragmatic-discursive perspective. Consequently, the study focuses on the colloquium syntax and applies the grid analysis developed by the Groupe Aixois de Recherche en Syntaxe. More specifically, attention is paid to the symmetry and enumeration figures, to the suspended statements, and to the cumulative syntax in the work. It is concluded that Goytisolo manages to recreate the colloquial modality in La Chanca, also from the syntactic perspective, capturing not only aspects that are characteristic of the phonetics, the morphology or the lexicon of the diatopic and diastratic variations represented, but also of the constructions which are typical of the colloquial conversation.

Keywords: colloquial syntax, grid analysis, Juan Goytisolo, La Chanca, literary recreation

A Medieval Woman Dares to Stand Up: Marie de France’s Criticism of the King and the Court

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441 views

Albrecht Classen

University of Arizona, USA. ORCID: 0000-0002-3878-319X. Email:  aclassen@arizona.edu

 Volume 12, Number 2, April-June, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n2.01

 Abstract:

While medievalists have long recognized Marie de France’s extraordinary literary abilities, we have not yet fully identified the extent to which she stood up as a social critic who attacked many social ills within her society, not holding back in her sharp attacks both against the figure of the king and against the powerful nobles of her time. Only if we combine her lais and her fables in our analysis, can we gain a full understanding of the far-reaching discourse about the danger of abuse of power at the hand of the mighty and rich in the high Middle Ages. Although we tend to identify that past era as deeply remote from us, as repressive, simple-minded, and submissive, Marie’s strong criticism of the abuses by the high-ranking contemporaries sheds important light on a world that was not really that far away from us in many different ways, with many intellectuals already extensively aware about social injustice and the danger of tyranny.

Keywords: Marie de France, court criticism, criticism of the king, lais, fables

Poems by Himadri Lahiri

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Himadri Lahiri is former Professor, Department of English and Culture Studies, University of Burdwan, West Bengal. Currently, he is Professor of English at the School of Humanities, Netaji Subhas Open University, Kolkata. He has written extensively on Diaspora Studies, Postcolonial Studies and Indian English Literature. His latest publication is Diaspora Theory and Transnationalism (Hyderabad: Orient Blackswan, 2019).  Contemporary Indian English Poetry and Drama (Newcastle on Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2019), co-edited by him, has also been published recently. He writes book reviews for newspapers and academic journals. Contact: hlahiri@gmail.com

Special Collection: Creativity in the Time of the Pandemic 2020>>

The Stranded

The last bus has left the city.
It’s lockdown now.
Why then are you waiting there
with the teeming multitude
from all corners of my country?

A new phrase perhaps – perhaps you didn’t understand.
Or you might have missed the Word
that thundered overhead – loud and clear:
Clear out, clear off!
The annus horribilis on the prowl
and no victory in sight –
On earth, in the sky or on the waters!

Laxmi the maid
who noticed last December
a strange pigmentation in the sky
and dreamt of locusts in the field
is stuck up in the metropolis.

And the last bus has left the city.

 

Before We Go to Sleep

The locks on the door rattle in restless wind
blowing across the Himalayas.
Inside the gated space
the sane acts insane.
Someone swats at flies invisible,
one crawls on all fours on the muddy floor,
some try how not to act patriots,
one, mad as a hatter, even climbs a podium
from there to announce:
Physician, heal thyself!

Now that we are all shut up
Locked indeed in our own sanatoriums
With no hope of parole
We can hear stomping feet outside!

Who indeed are the ones who stomp outside with heavy boots?
Who beats his own trumpet and threaten retaliation?
The panacea must arrive from the land of herbs and spices!
Who are the ones to announce modifications
and clang metals and burst crackers
to drive away the evil?

Now that we’re inside,
is it growing gloomy?
With a little bit of yoga or some tidbits
we try resistance.

Some of us sleepwalk in dim daylight!

We imagine peacocks in full arrogance in open roads and isolated buildings.
In fading daylight we hear songs of dolphins from distant waters –
are they not singing to us?
Can we then dream of dancing in the sun, hand in hand?
Can we really dream of purged egos and uncontaminated minds
before we go to sleep, finally?

Published on April 18, 2020. © Author. 

Poems by Cyril Dabydeen

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705 views

Cyril Dabydeen’s work has appeared in over 60 literary mags and anthologies, including Poetry (Chicago), Prairie Schooner (US), The Critical Quarterly (UK), Canadian Literature, and the Oxford, Penguin and Heinemann Books of Caribbean Verse and Fiction. Published 20 books of prose and poetry—the latest being God’s Spider (Peepal Tree Press, UK)  He is a former Poet Laureate of Ottawa (1984-87). He has taught Creative Writing at the University of Ottawa for many years. He is of indentured Indian heritage born in Guyana, S. America. Contact: cdabydeen@ncf.ca

Special Collection: Creativity in the Time of the Pandemic 2020>>

A Life Of Crows
Whoever we may have become
watching the crows circling
the house and making
loud cawing noises.
A caterwaul, believe me, sounds
for whoever else is listening,
as my neighbour said it’s only
about those dying.
He would take his dog outside
and look out for everyone—
what the crows know best,
birds’ ways no less, or it’s about
something else as ethologists
like Konrad Lorenz couldn’t tell.
Words left unsaid—
about my neighbour, Manuel,
long gone, broken by illness—
crows looking over now.

 

HEART & LUNGS

The air we breathe is what the lungs
know about, what the ancient Greeks
or the Pharaohs contemplated best
more than Harvey of blood circulation.
Oh the heart and knowing what else
the rib cage tells us about, a distinct
rhythm only I will contend with,
like Odysseus, or some other
I’ve considered less about at
odd moments in distant places,
the imagination indeed, or being
Homer again with mythology.
Ithaca I will aim for, returning
home where I consider brain cells
and start humming to myself
about the liver, kidneys, spleen;
and veins, arteries, aorta, the alveoli,
bronchial tubes as I breathe harder
making sure I’m one step closer
to my own creative self, I know,
but resorting to valves; and those
who will come after with gadgets,
a doctor’s tools yet hanging around
the neck I will again dwell upon
in my own way with a mighty
heave, not unlike real drama
played out on stage, bloodlust
being tragedy from the start.

 

PAEAN

My vessel, your vessel,
speaking in tongues,
my face close to yours

bending forward,
thighs uncorrupted,
feet splayed out

my voice in your ears,
this moment only–
lips pasted together

laughter I hear again,
with more praise,
a tryst starting over

heaving in, time’s
foreshadowing—
the night’s reckoning

what’s yet to come,
beckoning to you–
hands linked together

more than I care to tell
about being who we are,
with everlasting love

 

PRISM

This is a crepuscular time,
dark shades in between,
sun being harnessed–
the formidable heat
in the display of green,
ochre, mystery once again.

Looking around, insides
turned out, vermilion hues;
a body pouring out
this moment when all else
is happening–

Eyes, hands & feet,
further blinking,
somersaulting shadows

And with our salted
brows, the body turning–
a sulphurous sun in
my midst, beating down
from the mirageous
sea of sky.

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