Postcolonial, antistereotypical gender radicalism, and identity constitute the themes of this issue of Rupkatha. Political dimensions of any discourse analysis is always relevant and literary texts which break down walls are therefore revalorized because of this importantly continuing trend in literary studies. Rupkatha has never been unfaithful to the agenda of open and subverted criticism of totalitarian strategies in politics, discourse and the languages of the arts and literature. The analysis of discourse assumes importance in the context of recent political and socioeconomic campaign, all over the world.
Nandini Kalita
Ambedkar University, Delhi
Volume 8, Number 1, 2016 I Full Text PDF
One of the most awaited books of our times, Harper Lee’s Go Set a Watchman(a title derived from Isaiah 21:6); managed to stir up many debates around its genesis when it was published last year after five and a half decades since the author’s magnum opus To Kill A Mocking Bird appeared. Apparently, Go Set A Watchman was written before the book that made Harper Lee one of the most important figures of modern American Literature. In fact, her iconic novel was born when her editor T. Hohoff after reading the manuscript of Watchman suggested her to rewrite her work focusing more on the childhood of the central protagonist.
Though both the works are set in the fictional Maycomb County, have Jean Louise Finch at the heart of its narrative and grapple with the issue of racial segregation; they stand independent of each other. Mockingbird is narrated in the first-person by young and feisty Jean Louise( called Scout by everyone) trying to make sense of the world around her in which racism has dug its feet really deep , whereas Watchman is a third-person narrative, in which the little girl of Mockingbird have grown into a twenty six year old woman briefly back in the same partisan world that she left behind to live in the “big city”[i], New York. Young Scout’s vision of the racist society of Maycomb County in the first published novel is critical but still “rendered with sympathy.”[ii] But her picture of the same world at twenty six is of a hateful, divisive society that will go to any length to safeguard the existing social layout that privileges the white. This shift in the central protagonist’s perspective which radically alters the contours of the narrative in Watchman ; has earned the book severe criticism from some quarters who saw the shift as a radical departure from the original narrative. Keep Reading
Priya Kuriyan, Larissa Bertonasco and Ludmilla Bartscht (Eds.).
(2015).
New Delhi. Zubaan Publishers.
ISBN 9789384757106
Reviewed by
Bhanupriya Rohila
Mohanlal Sukhadia University, Udaipur (Rajasthan)
Volume 8, Number 1, 2016 I Full Text PDF
The issue of uneven equations between man and woman is the long fought over and the most crucial of all human issues. Moreover, this is the most ancient and simultaneously the most contemporary issue too. Indian women who have always been subdued by men, in want of equality and liberation, have produced several pieces of literature that call for justice. Zubaan, an independent feminist publishing house, in its another attempt to give voice to the female psyche has published Drawing the Line: Indian Women Fight Back that has received much critical attention on the literary sphere recently. Keep Reading
Solanki Sandip P, Symbiosis International University, Pune
Sheth Bhagyashree H, Gujarat Technological University, Ahmedabad
Volume 8, Number 1, 2016 I Full Text PDF
Abstract:
Purpose: This study is mainly done in order to find out the relative effectiveness of celebrity-endorsed advertisements verses animated-character-endorsed advertisements on the purchase intention of children. Further, the study is done for the same product and for the low involvement food product. The study finds that for low-involvement food product category, the impact of animated spokes characters and cartoon characters is more than that of celebrity. Regarding the purchase intention of children, it was found that the impact of animated and cartoon characters in advertisements is more than that of celebrities in advertisements especially for low-involvement food product category.
Keywords: Celebrity endorsed, Animated character, Children, Purchase intention, Television, Print, Advertisements. Keep Reading
Graham Russell
Independent researcher on Earth Giants, United Kingdom
Volume 8, Number 1, 2016 I Full Text PDF
INTRODUCTION
Earth Giants (Landscape Giants) are created and formed by the mountains and hills and were at one time believed to represent the living and sleeping forms of our ancestors, gods and mythical beings. Earth giants have mainly survived today through the telling of ancient stories, legends and traditions, and have only really survived because we can still see their presence in the landscape. In this paper, I shall reveal a well kept and explosive secret that has been preserved through ancient sites, traditions and religions through successions of generations of ancient peoples all over the world. Students of ancient religions sensed secrets in the landscape, and many others intuitively sought the secret knowledge of this antiquity, a secret landscape that has been documented in ancient and old sources which literally-clearly confirms the former existence of these earth giants whose key had long since been lost.
Despite the generations of change over the centuries, this secret knowledge of the landscape has remained fairly quiet and secretive, yet the knowledge of these earth giants has remained intact and is only waiting to be rediscovered again. Earth giants are startling things; so startling to our present state of knowledge and climate of thought that many dismiss them out of hand without examining the evidence. But this reception is not unusual for discoveries that are destined to expand.
This introduction into earth giants is a brief account and comes from a vast amount of work, with over 23 years of thorough research. My quest in writing this paper is to highlight to the reader, the real reasons why the landscape has been, since ancient times, associated with being sacred and holy land. The reader is introduced to a plethora of mysteries, myths, inspirational theories and photo evidence. So sit back and prepare yourself for an amazing adventure into this world of earth giants and their mysteries. Keep Reading
Shahryar Sorooshian, Universiti Malaysia Phanag, Malaysia
Dinara Tolgambayeva, Independent researcher, Kazakhstan
Volume 8, Number 1, 2016 I Full Text PDF
Abstract
This report focuses on the effects of cultural diversity (CD) on team performance among university students and explores the relationship between team performance and CD. It identifies that there is a strong indirect relationship between these two concepts. Therefore, the nature of this relationship was investigated in details. The report identified that there are positive and negative effects of CD on intermediate outcomes of the team. The analysis has been performed to further develop the understanding of the subject of CD and the effects on team performance. The results of the analysis have been discussed in details with providing the required information in the analysis part..
Keywords: Cultural diversity (CD), Team performance, International students. Keep Reading
Fatemeh Ahani & Iraj Etessam
Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran
Volume 8, Number 1, 2016 I Full Text PDF
Abstract
Following the publication of Adolf Loos’s famous article “Ornament and Crime” in 1908, arguments against ornaments reached an unprecedented level which led to its elimination from the majority of architectural practices in western countries during the first half of the 20 century. The ornamental approach, despite being severely criticized by postmodernist critics in 1960’s, never completely ceased to exist. In an attempt to discover the reasons behind the long-lasting presence of such a practice, this paper looks into different directions of ornament criticism in modern architectural literature. Modern critics condemned ornamentation by ascribing several defects such as deception, decadence, disutility, wastefulness, recession and lack of spontaneity. As a result of such associations, designers repress in themselves what they consider as defective and internalize anti-ornament beliefs of modernism in a form of self-control. This leads to the marginalization of ornament in architectural discussions and practices even after the demise of the modernist movement in architecture.
Keywords: Architectural Ornament, Criticism, Repression, Naming, Defect Keep Reading
KBS Krishna
Central University of Himachal Pradesh, Dharamshala
Volume 8, Number 1, 2016 I Full Text PDF
Abstract:
Identity becomes a problematic issue, especially in the modern era, where it clashes with individuality. The failure to fit into categories prescribed by societies leads to crisis of identity. This crisis is experienced by people of all classes. The article looks at two Indian novels in English – Upamanyu Chatterjee’s English, August and Rupa Bajwa’s The Sari Shop, where a civil servant and a shop attendant struggle to discover their identity in a world where divisions are watertight.
Keywords: Identity, Individuality, Individualism, English August, The Sari Shop Keep Reading
Robert Tindol
Guangdong University of Foreign Studies, China
Volume 8, Number 1, 2016 I Full Text PDF
Abstract
One of the noteworthy songs to come out of the Beatles’ celebrated 1968 trip to India was “Dear Prudence”, authored by John Lennon. “Dear Prudence” is unique in its conjoining of Eastern sounds with a childlike Western theme, and as such it is particularly evident of the way in which Lennon in particular understood the possibilities of artistic hybrids involving the East and West. Moreover, the song can be analyzed by employing Homi Bhabha’s The Location of Culture as well as Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari’s Capitalism and Schizophrenia two-volume series. With such an interpretation in mind, the call for Prudence to “come out and play” involves the sharing of attention of newfound interest in the East with a continued grounding in the familiar West. This is a new “plateau” that does no violence to the past nor to any actor in the present, but instead leads to a peaceful new beginning.
Keywords: Beatles, Gilles Deleuze, Felix Guattari, Anti-Oedipus Keep Reading
Yemi Atanda
Kwara State University, malete, Nigeria
Volume 8, Number 1, 2016 I Full Text PDF
Abstract
This study focuses on the revolutionary aesthetics of Olu Obafemi and Ahmed Yerima in The New Dawn and Attahiru respectively. For Olu Obafemi, the aesthetics of his drama relies principally on Marxist ideology, while Ahmed Yerima’s dramaturgy is rooted in Hegelian critical theory. The reason for the intellectual debate between the ‘idealist’ and the ‘materialist’ signifies the roots that anchor the dramatist oeuvre of the radical/social playwright and the critical/liberal playwright is purely ideological. The idealist situates everything on the praxis of consciousness and that ideas control the world, while the materialist says that man’s existence is on the primacy of matter as reflected in the works of the two playwrights and this ambivalence flourishes in the understanding of nature and life. The link between the two ideological divides is that social realism and critical realism have their roots in revolutionary aesthetics. This revolutionary aesthetics of both the social realism and critical realism is what I term as dialectics of revolution. The import of these divides in the body of African literature is that man is at the epicentre of these debates. African playwrights may have to rely on history, culture, socio-political, and economic situations of their society in their dramaturgies, and some factors such as personal visions, periodic essence, ideology and socio-economic and political realities may be considered by African critics as they evaluate African play-texts. Dialectics of revolution, therefore, is the dramatic search for a just society, it remains a veritable source of criticism in order to understand the inherent values in any given ideology. This study, therefore, projects that the application of dialectics of revolution developed in the theories of Revalorization for literary criticism will help to advance the course of humanity.
Keywords: revolutionary aesthetics, realism, revalorization, African, Olu Obafemi, Ahmed Yerima Keep Reading