Vol 13 No 2 2021

Critiquing Child characters as Heroes, Villains, and Victims in Ru Freeman’s On Sal Mal Lane

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Sneha Choudhary1, Priyanka Chaudhary2

1Department of Languages, Manipal University Jaipur, Rajasthan, India. csneha46@gmail.com

2 Professor, Department of Languages, Manipal University Jaipur, Rajasthan, India. priyanka.chaudhary@jaipur.manipal.edu

 Volume 13, Number 2, 2021 I Full-Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n2.54

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Abstract

Social behaviour and filial background define the formation and development of a character that is bound by cultural influence in South Asian fiction. Ru Freeman weaves numerous characters and their stories in a single lane as a synecdoche of Sri Lankan history. On Sal Mal Lane (2014) showcases the different social groups defining Sri Lankan conflict in the 1980s with the presence of child characters who are unaware of the extent of the ethnic conflict swirling in the background of the narrative. This paper tries to define the concepts of heroes, villains, and victims through the socio-emotional development of the characters to determine the contradiction between their intentions and subsequent actions. The study uses Character Theory and elements of Affect Control Theory for critical analysis. The paper analyses the change in personality traits of child characters in response to the violence wrought by Sri Lankan ethnic prejudices and the extent of destructive development from the unstable familial and societal environments.

Keywords: Character Theory, On Sal Mal Lane, Socio-emotional Development, Sri Lankan ethnic war, Affect Control Theory, Child characters

The ten kinds of conditionals and Chrysippus’ criterion

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Miguel López-Astorga

Institute of Humanistic Studies “Juan Ignacio Molina”, University of Talca, Talca Campus (Chile). ORCID ID: 0000-0002-6004-0587. Email address: milopez@utalca.cl

 Volume 13, Number 2, 2021 I Full-Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n2.52

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The theory of mental models proposed ten possible interpretations for the conditional. In particular, Johnson-Laird and Byrne provided those interpretations in 2002. On the other hand, in ancient times, Chrysippus of Soli claimed that conditionals have to fulfill a requirement: the negation of their consequents must be inconsistent with their antecedents. This paper considers the ten interpretations of the conditional the theory of mental models indicates as ten different kinds of conditionals. Thus, it analyzes those ten types from Chrysippus’ requirement. The results show that the ten kinds of conditionals that can be derived from the theses of the theory of mental models follow the criterion given by Chrysippus. Accordingly, it can be thought that the criterion refers to an essential characteristic of the conditional.

Keywords: Chrysippus’ criterion, conditional, possibility, state-description, theory of mental models

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Spatializing the Musicking Of an Expressive Urban Imagination: A Trans-Cultural Evaluation of the Early-Modern Rock Music of Bengal

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Shankhadeep Chattopadhyay

Research Scholar, Department of English, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, 221005, India, shankhamanu@gmail.com, ORCID id – 000-0003-4678-3031.

 Volume 13, Number 2, 2021 I Full-Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n2.51

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The technological reproduction of the imaginary has always reflected a polarization in urban consciousness, considering the city as the urban ‘body’—which retains a space for contemporary imaginations. Rock music of the American 60s radiates exactly such urban consciousness by constantly experimenting with lyrics, sounds, images and celebrations, which continually harmonize with the changing industrial and technocratic city structures. This paper explores a progressive cultural synthesis between the American and the early-modern rock music of Bengal. The city of Kolkata in West Bengal has always been repleted with a vibrant ‘representational space’ with a high rate of western-music consumption since the late 1970s, thus reflecting western urban ethos into the Indian urban imagination through modern Bengali rock music. Lefebvre (1974) suggests that the potential for genuine social change is possible only through the city as practised rather than the city as planned; on this note, this paper analyzes how the Indian urban imagination negotiated with the everyday urban experience of distant musical and cultural behaviours through ‘musicking’ by producing a musically reflective space where thought, feelings and different moods are crafted and performed. Further, how, in the age of technical reproduction, rock music produces a ‘counter-space’ by projecting urban ethos, which acts as an exegetic tool for the symptomatic reading of any expressive culture, and makes the city claim its spatial identity.

Keywords: representational space, counterculture, rock music, urban ethos, musicking.

Empire Style as a Model of the Embodiment of Patriarchal and Orthodox Ideas in European Culture and Music of the Restoration Era

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Olha V. Muravska

Department of Theoretical and Applied Culture, Odessa National A.V. Nezhdanova Academy of Music, Odesa, Ukraine. ORCID: 0000-0002-8840-3853.

E-mail: muravska5907@tanu.pro

 Volume 13, Number 2, 2021 I Full-Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n2.49

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The article is devoted to the consideration of the qualities of Napoleonic and Alexanderian empire as a “style of empire” and their manifestation in the musical and historical tradition of France and Russia in the first half of the XIX century. The typology of this style is directly associated with the essence of the concept of “empire” as a universal state, pursuing the goals of world domination or leadership and possessing a kind of cultural civilizational mission. For the French absolutism of the New Age and its imperial “hypostasis” in the XIX century, the emphasis on the enlightening and civilizing mission is indicative, while in the history of the Russian Empire, throughout all stages of its existence, the spiritual-messianic idea of understanding Russia as a guardian has been consistently upheld (as “Third Rome”) Orthodoxy inherited from Byzantium. The musical “signs” of the empire became those genre spheres in which the scale of design and ideas were combined with reliance on typical, universally significant means of musical expression, the genesis of which often goes back to the spiritual and religious tradition. The empirical qualities of French musical culture are considered in the example of the poetry of the musical theater of G. Spontini, summarizing the cultural and historical realities of France of the era of the first empire, while the choral polonaises of O. Kozlovsky, which absorbed the sacred genesis and typology of edging, anthem and polonaise, become a sign-symbol of the Alexanderian Empire and its associated imperial court culture.

 Keywords: empire “signs”, Empire style, polonaise, musical theater, Russian culture.

Agency and Self Expression: Fan Writing as Life Writing

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345 views

Renu Elizabeth Abraham

Assistant Professor of English and Cultural Studies, Christ University, Bengaluru. ORCID: 0000-0003-2043-1919. Email: renu.elizabeth@christuniversity.in

 Volume 13, Number 2, 2021 I Full-Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n2.47

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Fans, fandoms and fan activities have been part of every culture from time immemorial. Homer’s epics, Plato’s work all could be considered in a broad sense as belonging to the larger domain of fan activity or fan ‘art’ as they are termed in modern-day parlance. This paper examines India Forums a digital fan community based in India for audiences and fans of Indian television soaps/serials and attempts to understand how fanfiction and fan activities within this forum act as means of self-expression and enable its fans to develop a sense of agency that is indigenous to the space in itself. This community is predominantly populated by women or ‘gender anonymous’ and function as a space that allows fans to construct their own voices, identities and thereby agency, which is most often restricted to that space alone. The fans though not subaltern, in the technical sense of the term, as they belong to the urban space, have access to a computer and can read, write and speak English although not fluently, are still urban middle-class women who have been spoken for and never spoken themselves; and India Forums enable these unheard voices to be heard. This reading analyses the dynamics of this agential space, the politics of this agency and argues that all fan writing within this space functions as life writing within a hypertextual metaconversational paradigm which is not necessarily reflective of traditional forms of life writing using notions of revisionist Freudian psychoanalysis and paradigms of life writing.

Keywords: Fanfiction, fandoms, life writing, self-expression, hypertextuality, Hindi TV soaps, psychoanalysis

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Literature in New Media: A Comparative Study of Literary Affordances of Lance Olsen’s “10:01” in Traditional and Digital Medium

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R.Ramya1 and Dr.Rukmini.S2

1PhD Scholar, Department of English, School of Social Sciences and Languages, VIT, Vellore. ORCID id: 0000-0002-7298-5959. Email: ramyarajakannan7@gmail.com

2Senior Assistant Professor, Department of English, School of Social Sciences and Languages, VIT, Vellore. ORCID id: 0000-0001-8414-3145. Email: rukminikrishna123@gmail.com

 Volume 13, Number 2, 2021 I Full-Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n2.45

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The recent advances of the digital era invoke an array of new media for communication. This impressive feat of technology purveys a wide range of new affordances to communication unviable in print. The new media affordances of the electronic and the digital have impacted the creative literary compositions, providing innovations in contemporary literature. Postmodern literature being the initiation of experimental works has strived to reinvent the affordances of literary fiction. It has now advanced into resorting to digital technological affordances to maximize narrative inventiveness. Lance Olsen’s “10:01”, a postmodern novel adapted as hypertext fiction, is an exemplar of such feat. This research examines the literary affordances of the chosen text in print and its hypertext adaptation within the framework of affordance theories.  The study unveils the inlaid new media aesthetics and viabilities of the digital in relation to the traditional medium of print by focusing on affordances. The paper asserts the significance of theorizing the aesthetics involved in digital textuality by holding print and electronic literature at the intersection. This study aims to establish the shift in literary analysis paradigms of text due to the emergence of New media.

Keywords: Electronic literature, New media, Literary Affordances, Print vs Digital, Hypertext fiction, Postmodern Literature, New media Aesthetics.

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What is Performance Studies?

Richard Schechner Tisch School of the Arts, New York University  Download PDF Version Because performance studies is so broad-ranging and

Tactics of Survival: Social Media, Alternative Discourses, and the Rise of Trans Narratives

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Khushboo Sharma1 and Arun Dev Pareek2

1Research Scholar, Department of Languages, Manipal University Jaipur, Jaipur-303007, Rajasthan, India.

2Assistant Professor, Department of Languages, Manipal University Jaipur, Jaipur-303007, Rajasthan, India. ORCID: 0000-0001-5427-9906. Email: arundevpareek@gmail.com 

 Volume 13, Number 2, 2021 I Full-Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n2.44

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In 2018, when Nandini Krishnan decided to write a book on trans men of India titled ‘Invisible Men’, perhaps she expected great accolades. After all, she was raising a topic that was relegated to the periphery of peripheries, an identity that often went astray in translation. But was the intent enough to write something impactful and honest? At the same time in Indian Cinema, Akshay Kumar geared up for a stereotyped role as a trans woman. What’s the connecting dot between these two? They ended up being nothing but highly skewed queer representations by cis-folks. Meanwhile, an alternative movement was brewing on social media as Alok Menon narrated poems of subversion, dressed as a challenge to everything heteronormative. The current paper aims to examine these voices of subversion, of trans narratives, as formed and catalyzed on social media and across various mediums of general discourses. The paper would also explore the rise of trans narratives in literature with special reference to ‘Me Hijra, Me Laxmi’ by Laxminarayan Tripathi and ‘A Life in Trans Activism’ by A. Revathi. Both exploratory and descriptive research methods are used for deriving the theoretical analysis from primary and secondary sources.

Keywords: trans narratives, literature, voices, subversion, challenge

 

Revisioning Subalternity: A critical study of Ramayana through Mandavi and Urmila

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Aditi Tiwari1 & Priyanka Chaudhary2

Research Scholar, Department of Languages, Manipal University Jaipur, Rajasthan, India. Orchid id: 0000-0002-3751-5310. Email: meetadititiwari@gmail.com

Professor and Head, Department of Languages, Manipal University Jaipur, Rajasthan, India. Email: priyanka.chaudhary@jaipur.manipal.edu

 Volume 13, Number 2, 2021 I Full-Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n2.43

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Ramayana is a narrative knitted through multiple voices but is written around the story of Rama, neglecting the voices of the minor characters. The contemporary South Asian authors breaking the conventional norms of Ramkatha tradition have provided agency to such characters through their contemporary renderings. The study tries to bring forth such hidden nested narratives of the unheard characters of Mandavi and Urmila who are identified either in relation to Sita or their husbands, to re-define the idea subaltern. The paper will analyse the social and political oppression faced by the two female characters because of the existing gender and power hierarchy existing in the text, the unconscious oppression and suffering neglected by the author, reader and the characters of the text as well. The paper will try to analyse the contemporary renderings as an agency and subaltern space for the voice of these subaltern unsung characters of Ramayana, understanding how the concept of unconscious subaltern and normalization of oppression on these character in the epic, demarcating the related myths.

Keywords: Gender-power hierarchy, Myth, Oppression, Ramayana, Subaltern

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Infidelity to True Story and Novel: Locating the Auteur in Rituparno Ghosh’s Dahan

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Akaitab Mukherjee

Assistant Professor, School of Social Sciences and Languages (SSL), Vellore Institute of Technology (VIT), Chennai Campus, Tamil Nadu, India, akaitab.mukherjee@gmail.com, ORCID id-0000-0001-6410-9898

 Volume 13, Number 2, 2021 I Full-Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n2.42

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Rituparno Ghosh (1961-2013), a celebrated Bengali film director who started making films in 90s, often borrows plots from literary and other cultural narratives.  The essay aims to explicate Ghosh’s early film Dahan (1997) which is an adaptation of distinguished Bengali novelist Suchitra Bhattacharya’s novel with the same title. Bhattacharya’s novel is influenced by the real incident in which a couple was harassed by four youths at Tollygunge Metro Station in Kolkata on 27th November, 1992. The film also acknowledges that it is indebted to the true story. The essay explicates the adaptation of the two sources by the auteur. It examines the duplication of authorial concerns in this adaptation while following the narratives of two texts. Ghosh remains unfaithful to the literary text and the cultural memory of the true story to establish his authorship. As Ghosh’s films portray the middle-class women in a patriarchal society, following Janet Staiger’s reconsideration of the theory of auteur in the context of queer movement and identity politics in the 1970s, the essay argues that the performance of infidelity to the literary and true story to establish authorship is auteur’s “technique of the self”.

Keywords: Auteur, fidelity, Dahan, Based on true story, Rituparno Ghosh

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Review article: The Politics of Gender Hybrid Representation of Delhi

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Shruti Rawal

Department of English, St. Xavier’s College, Jaipur, Rajasthan, India. Email: shrutirawal@stxaviersjaipur.org

 Volume 13, Number 2, 2021 I Full-Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n2.40

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The growth of the metropolitan phenomenon has resulted in the emergence of new power centres in all the countries of the world. These cities have geographical, political and economic significance. The narratives of these cities have been captured by the writers for centuries in their fictional and non-fictional work. The research intends to focus on the representation of the city of Delhi in two prominent works: Khushwant Singh’s Delhi: A Novel and Arundhati Roy’s The Ministry of Utmost Happiness. Both the texts are located in the city of Delhi and have a prominent transgender character at its core and the study aims to understand the writer’s intent and manner of drawing similarities between the city and the character. It also proposes to explore this hybridity of gender as a deliberate tool to represent the city of Delhi. The failure of anyone binary to capture the essence of the city and the advantage of the androgynous approach will be discussed in the paper. It will also endeavour to understand how the phenomenon of cities has led to the creation of spaces that promote hybridity.

Keywords: Delhi, transgender, spaces, androgyny

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