Thinking Activity :- The Joys of Motherhood

 Hello Friends 

I am Nehalba Gohil and I am student of Department of English, MKBU.This blog is a part of my classroom thinking activity and this activity given by Yesha Mam. 

Buchi Emecheta 

Buchi Emecheta OBE (21 July 1944 – 25 January 2017) 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 characterized as "the first successful black woman novelist living in Britain after 1948 

 The Jays 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 reprinted in Heinemann's African Writers Series in 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, the daughter of Nwokocha Agbadi and Ona, who had a bad fate with childbearing. This novel explores the life of a Nigerian woman, Nnu Ego. Nnu's life centers 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 childbearing, mothering, and nurturing activities among women. However, the author additionally highlights how the 'joys of motherhood' also include anxiety, obligation, and pain.  

Characters  

Questions and Answers 

 1) The most celebrated female character in African creative writing is the African mother by Marie . A Umeh according to this is the character of Nnu Ego celebrating motherhood or not  ? Explain 

According to the belief Nnu Ego’s motherhood should have brought her happiness but then in reality her motherhood that was intended to give her “Joy” did not ripe and only at the end in her death the protagonist receive some ‘recognition’, “She [was given] the noisiest and most costly second burial”, (224). As Semenya says “In Joys of Motherhood Emecheta strives to sensitise the readers to the exploitation of mothers. With increased mastery of structure and irony, she describes the humiliation and small joys of a poor, unappreciated Ibo mother. Emecheta analyses the state of mind of women valued for biology rather than their individuality.” [6]Nnu Ego while living with her parents she at least “enjoyed” and had some affiliation to her ancestral patronage. She was literally protected by her culture and she had the protection of her family and was given right to her father’s protection and patronage. The term “brothers” is common in the traditional rural life where everyone shall sense the feeling of being protected by the patriarchal system, though the traditional patriarchy enslaves women in one form or the other it also provides protection and privilege. After the marriage, Nnu Ego’s shift to the city breaks these connections and patronage, the marriage and move to the city had extracted her entire existence instead of joining her to a democratic public sphere. Until marriage the protagonist had not come into contact with any men who worked for the “White” this made her to change her perceptions toward her husband worked for “white people”. Her husband, Nnaife, seems less than a man to her when she comes to know that her husband works to a ‘White’. The native people’s hatred attitude towards the colonizer and for the people who work for them is clearly evident from the text: “If you had dared come to my father’s compound to ask for me, my brothers would have thrown you out. My people only let me come to you here because they thought you were like your brother [a man], not like this.... I would have not left the house of Amatokwu to come and live with a man who washes women’s underwear” (49). This statement is very important in understanding the substantial impact of colonization and the creation of colonized identities in the whole of the Ibo culture. According to Raja, “Nnu Ego realizes that all these men working in the white man’s city were not really men anymore, but rather something different, something deformed by their subjugation”. [8] From the novel one shall understand that the colonizers place in not safe to any worker. The masters don’t have any ethics to care for the servants and their family. The workers can not expect any obligation from their masters in order to raise their family. The protagonist Nnu Ego, had to work hard to survive and educate her children as her husband’s income is insufficient, she managed the expenses through her trading business. Its only her activities that made possible to raise her children and send them to school. The novel is definitely a critique of the colonial and native Ibo culture. It clearly picturizes the life of women in both native and colonial spheres. The women never sense the freedom neither in African patriarchal society nor in the “democratic” colonial society. The novel which shows the affiliation of a woman to her ancestral patronage denies her affiliation after her marriage. Buchi has mastered in narrating the pathetic situation of African women who neither have access to their native community nor the “safety” of the colonizer.Though the women work hard and come across many hardships to raise their children, the success of the children doesn’t bring any accomplishment to them. In Nnu Ego’s case, even though two of her children have successful life after settling in abroad they are confronting her during her last days by not giving any comfort her. In native communities it is believed that the mother would receive some kind of comfort during their last for raising her children but after invasion of colonizers the tradition of taking care of the aged parents has been weakened. In the novel “Joys of Motherhood” the protagonist Nnu Ego’s children fails to give back the love and care which she expects in her lonely world. The story of Nnu Egos can be seen as representation of the native people’s life. In fact, the native people don’t realize that when the woman doesn’t receive the comfort during the last days the deceased spirit cannot be considered as a happy spirit 

Conclusion  

 Buchi Emecheta rather than portraying women simply as a mother who lives in secure Africa, she portrayed women ignored by or inaccessible by African male writers. According to Marie “Male writers lack the empathy, sympathy, and consciousness of their female psyche. They do not know what it means to be an African woman in African society” [1]. The reader can feel Nnu Ego the protagonist's longing for motherhood in the beginning when she was denied by her first husband for not conceiving later, after begetting seven children she doesn’t enjoy the “motherhood” she was longing during her last days. Buchi describes the predicaments of motherhood and the heart-rending death of the protagonist. Nnu Ego faces all sorts of obstacles at all stages of her life, she strongly believed in one thing that the joy of motherhood is to give everything to the children so that during her old age the children give back joy and love. In contrast, Buchi presents the darker side, or we shall say the bitter truth, despite all the hardships the protagonist faces she is neglected by her husband, children and the society. Katherine Frank, “beautifully” condemns the act of her children as “…...millstones around the mother’s neck, or as greedy insects who suck out and drain her life’s blood

Translation Studies Unit 4

I'm Nehalba Gohil Student of Department of English,MKBU. This blog is  my classroom thinking activity and this activity given by Dr.Dilip Barad Sir. We studied Comparative Studies and Translation Studies

1 )  Tejaswini Niranjana Introduction History in Translation siting Translation : History Poststructuralism  and the colonial context 1992 

Abstract : 

Contemporary critiques of representation have not extended themselves to the point of questioning the idea of translation, of re-presenting linguistic meaning in interlinguistic transfers. The translation is made possible by the belief in mimesis, which in turn assumes the purity of the original. Niranjana cites powerful examples from the post-colonial context to show how translation was "a significant technology of colonial domination"  the use of translation to codify Hindu law, for instance, is revealed as imperialist cathexis, "to create a subject position for the colonized") which would "discipline and regulate the lives of" Hindu subjects In other words, the notion of "original" text was itself used to fashion the native's essence-an an instance of colonialism's attempt to erase heterogeneity. In the context of this crisis, Tejaswini Niranjana's examination of translation as a critical practice is made possible. Her analysis seems to amplify and elaborate the possibilities of the claim made by other postcolonial theorists like Gayatri Spivak and Homi Bhabha, as well as feminists such as Jane Gallop and Nancy K. Miller, that deconstruction can be used in politically enabling ways. Insisting that questioning of humanist or Enlightenment models of representation and translation "can underwrite a new practice of translation . . . reinscribing its potential as a strategy of resistance" , Niranjana persuasively shows that a critique of presence can be taken to its limits and yet not incapacitate the interventionist critic.  

Key points 

1)Situating Translation 

2)Translation As Interpellation  

3)The Question of History  

Key Argument

Her purpose to make a modest beginning by examining the “uses” of translation. The rethinking of translation becomes an important task in a context where it has been used since the European Enlightenment to under- write practices of subjectification, especially for colonized peoples. Translation functions as a transparent presentation of something that already exists, although the "original" is actually brought into being through translation. Paradoxically, translation also provides a place in "history" for the colonized. She was, therefore, discuss the pertinence of the critique of historicism to a world undergoing decolonization, given the enduring nature of Hegelian presentation of the non-West and the model of teleological history that authorizes them, a questioning of the model could underwrite a new practice of translation.Another aspect of post-structuralism that is significant for a rethinking of translation is its critique of historicism, which shows the genetic (searching for an origin) and teleological (positing a certain end) nature of traditional historiography. A critique of historicism might show us a way of deconstructing the "pusillanimous" and "deceitful" Hindus of Mill and Hegel. Her concern here is not, of course, with the alleged misrepresentation of the "Hindus." Rather, I am trying to question the with holding of reciprocity and the essentializing of “difference” (what Johannes Fabian calls a denial of coevalness) that permits a stereotypical construction of the other.  

Analysis

A critique of historicism might show us a way of deconstructing the "pusillanimous" and "deceitful" Hindus of Mill and Hegel. Her concern here is not, of course, with the alleged misrepresentation of the "Hindus." Rather, I am trying to question the holding of reciprocity and the essentializing of “difference” (what Johannes Fabian calls a denial of co evilness) that permits a stereotypical construction of the other. The aspect of post-structuralism that is significant for a rethinking of translation is its critique of historicism, which shows the genetic (searching for an origin) and teleological (positing a certain end) nature of traditional historiography. This kind of deployment of translation, I argue, colludes with or enables the construction of a teleological and hierarchical model of cultures that places Europe at the pinnacle of civilization, and thus also provides a position, for the colonized. This work belongs to the larger context of the “crisis” in "English" that is a consequence of the impact of structuralism and post-structuralism on literary studies in a rapidly decolonized world.  

Conclusion 

Since it is part of her argument that the problematics of translation and the writing of history are inextricably bound together, She should briefly go over Spivak's main points regarding the "Subaltern historians. Their strategic use of post-structuralist ideas may help us see more clearly how the notions of history and translation she wish to reinscribe are not only enabled by the post-colonial critique of historiography but might also further strengthen that critique.  

 2 ) E.V. Ramakrishnan, “ Shifting Centres and Emerging Margins: Translation and the Shaping of the Modernist Poetic Discourse in Indian Poetry”, in Indigenous Imaginaries: Literature, Region, Modernity. 

https://www.slideshare.net/Khushbumakwana3/sem4-comparative-studypptx 

Literature Review - Research Methodology

  I am Nehalba Gohil a student of The English Department, MKBUniversity Bhavnagar. In the task given by sir to watch three videos on 'Review of related literature. 

Definition of Literature Review:- 

A literature review is both a process and a product. As a process, it involves searching for information related to your topic, to familiarize yourself with the relevant research and to identify issues and gaps in the research. In most cases you're seeking to identify the key authors and key arguments that are relevant to your topic, not to exhaustively read everything written on the subject. 

What is a Literature Review?

A literature review is the writing process of summarizing, synthesizing and/or critiquing the literature found as a result of a literature search. It may be used as background or context for a primary research project.

There are several reasons to review the literature:

• Identify the developments in the field of study
• Learn about the information sources and the research methodologies
• Find gaps in the literature that can become research questions
• Validate the originality of a research project
• Evaluate the methods
• Identify errors to avoid
• Highlight the strengths, weaknesses and controversies in the field of study
• Identify the subject experts

When writing your review, there are objectives you should keep in mind:

• Inform the audience of the developments in the field
• Establish your credibility
• Discuss the relevance and significance of your question(s)
• Provide the context for your methodological approach
• Discuss the relevance and appropriateness of your approach.

​The level of detail or comprehensiveness of your literature review may depend on many things, but especially the purpose and audience of your review. For example, if you're writing a literature review that will aid you in writing a thesis or dissertation, you may want to have a very comprehensive lit review that reviews all relevant literature on a topic, as well as relevant sources beyond what is immediately and freely available (e.g. foundational scholarly articles not available through library collections). 

Why literature review is carried out in research ? 

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.

Thinking Activity :- Translation Studies Unit 3

 Hello Friends

I'm Nehalba Gohil  Student of Department of English,MKBU. This blog is a part of my classroom thinking activity and this activity given by Dr.Dilip Barad Sir. The article of translation studies 

Translation and Literary History: An Indian view by 

 Ganesh Devy 

Abstract 

Translation is wandering existence of a text in a perpetual exile says  J. Hillis Miller . The statement obviously alludes to the Christian myth of the fall , exile and wondering. In western metaphysics translation is an exile a fall from the origin and the mythical exile is a metaphoric translation a post Babel crisis . Translation are not accorded the same status as original works. It is well known that Chaucer was translating the style of Boccacio into English when he created his Canterbury Tales . When Dyren and Pope wanted to recover a sense of order they used the tool of translation. In other European languages such as German and  French. The tradition that has given us writes like Shaw  yeates , Joyce, Beckett and Heney in a single century the tradition of Anglo - Irish literature branched out of the practice of  translating Irish works into English initiated by MacPherson toward the end of the eighteenth century. 

Roman Jacobson

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).

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. His basic premise is that since translation is a linguistic act any theory of translation must emerge from linguistics: ‘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’ (Catford, 1965, p. vii).

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

After the ‘discovery’ of Sanskrit by Sir William Jones, historical linguistics in Europe depended heavily on Orientalism. 

And after Saussure and Lévi-Strauss, linguistics started treating language with an anthropological curiosity. 

Analysis 

The translation problem is not just a linguistic problem. 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 translation is not a transposition of significance or signs. After the act of translation is over, the original work still remains in its original position. Translation is rather an attempted revitalization of the original in another verbal order and temporal space. Like literary texts that continue to belong to their original periods and styles and also exist through successive chronological periods, translation at once approximates the original and transcends it. 

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. Elements of plot stories characters can be used again and again by new generation of writers because Indian 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 revitalize the original. And in that sense Indian literary traditions are essentially traditions of translation. 

On Translating a Tamil Poem 

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. The subject of this paper is not the fascinating external history of this literature, but translation, the transport of poems from classical Tamil to modem English; the hazards, the damages in transit, the secret paths, and the lucky by passes.

The chief difficulty of translation is its impossibility. Frost once even identified poetry as that which is lost in translation. As often as not this love like other loves seems to be begotten by despair upon impossibility in Marvells phrase. Let me try to define this impossibility a little more precisely

Here is a poem from an early Tamil anthology Ainkurunuru 203 in modern Tamil script ( Ramanujan 1985 , 230 )  

Part 1 - 2

How shall he divide up and translate this poem he may begin with the sound. He find that the sound system of Tamil is very different from English. For instance, Old Tamil has six nasal consonants: a labial, a dental, an alveolar, a retroflex, a palatal and a velar-m, n, n, ñ, n, n-three of which are not distinctive in English. 

 

How shall we translate a six-way system into a three-way English system (m, n, n)? Tamil has long and short vowels, but English (or most English dialects) have diphthongs and glides. 

Tamil has no initial consonant clusters but English abounds in them school, scratch, splash, strike,etc . English words may end in stop as in cut,cup ,tuck etc. Tamil words do not.  

Let us look at the grammar briefly if he separate and display the meaningful units of abov poem 

The transaction piece by piece would be : 

Mother,may { you }- live ,desire ( to listen) ,mother,/ our garden - honey - mixed - with - milk- than sweet ( er ) / ( is ) his land's ( in ) leaf - holes - low , animals - having - drunk - ( and ) leftover, muddied water/ 

In my English rendering it becomes the following : 

WHAT SHE SAID 

to her girl friend, when she returned 

from the hills 

Bless you, friend.Listen 

Sweeter than milk 

mixed with honey from our gardens

is the leftover water  in his land 

low in the waterholes 

covered with leaves and muddied by animals 

Kapilar . Ainkurunuru 203 

He attend to syntax he see that Tamil syntax is mostly left ranching. Even a date like the 19th of June 1988 Tamil would look like 1988 June 19 a phrase like 

Woollcott argued that English does not have leftbranching possibilities, but they are a bit abnormal. Hopkins and Thomas used those possibilities stunningly Thomas's A Refusal to Moum the death by Fire of a children in London 

Hopkins's and Thomas's poetry the leftward syntax is employed for special poetic effects-it alternates with other, more 'normal', types of English sentences. In Tamil poetry the leftward syntax is not eccentric, literary or offbeat. but part of everyday 'natural' speeches 

 Part - 3

Universals

 If there were no universals in which languages partic- ipate and of which all particular languages were selections and combinations, no language learning, translation. comparative studies or cross-cultural understanding of even the most meagre kind would be possible. If such universals did not exist, as Voltaire said of God, we would have had to invent them. They are at least the basic explanatory fictions of both linguistics and the study of literature. Universals of structure in both signifies and the  signifies are necessary fictions. 

Interiorised contexts 

However culture-specific the details of a poem are. poems like the ones I have been discussing interiorise the entire culture. Indeed, we know about the culture of the ancient Tamils only through a careful study of these poems Later coloptions and com mentaries explore and explicate this knowledge carried by the poems. settings them in context using them to make lexicon and chatting the fauna and flora of landscapes 

Systematicity

The systematicity of such bodies of poetry, the way figures, genres, personae, etc., intermesh in a master-code, is a great help in entering this intricate yet lucid world of words. One translates not single poems but bodies of poetry that create and contain their origins world.  Even if one chooses not to translate all the poems Tamil arrangement as a poetic device.

Structural mimicry

 Yet, against all this background, the work of translating single poems in their particularity is the chief work of the translator. In this task, I believe, the structures of individual poeins, the unique figures they make out of all the given codes of their language, rhetoric, and poetics, become the points of entry. The poetry and the significance reside in these figures and structures as much as in the un- translatable verbal textures. One attempts a structural mimicry to translate relations not items not single words but phrases sequences sentence not metrical units but rhythms not morphology but syntactic patterns .  

Conclusion:- 

The engineers decided that the best and quickest way to do it would be to begin work on both sides of the mountain, after precise measurements. If the measurements were pre- cise enough, the two tunnels would meet in the middle, making a single one. (But what happens if they don't meet? asked the emperor. The coun- sellors, in their wisdom, answered, (If they don't meet, we will have two tunnels instead of one. So too, 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. 

Thinking Activity :- Unit 2 Plagiarism and Academic Integrity

 Hello Friends

  I am Nehalba Gohil, student of Department of English,MKBU.This blog is a part of my classroom thinking activity 

Questions and Answers 

1 ) what is Plagiarism and what are it's Consequences ?  

Definition of Plagiarism 

 Derived from the Latin word plagiarius ("kidnapper"), to plagiarize means "to commit literary theft" and "to present as new and original idea or product derived from an exciting source.(Merriam Webster's Collegiate Dictionary) Plagiarism is of two kinds, using another person's ideas, information or expressions without acknowledging that person's work constitutes intellectual theft and passing off another person's ideas, information, or expressions as your own to gain some advantages constitutes fraud. Plagiarism is sometimes a moral and ethical offense rather than a legal one.  

What is Plagiarism ?

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 offense.Plagiarism is the representation of another author's language, thoughts, ideas, or expressions as one's own original work. In educational contexts, there are differing definitions of plagiarism depending on the institution. Plagiarism is considered a violation of academic integrity and a breach of journalistic ethics. 

Four types of plagiarism:

• Direct Plagiarism
• Mosaic Plagiarism
• Self-Plagiarism
• Accidental Plagiarism

What is Consequences ? 

With plagiarism detection software so readily available and in use like Urkund, plagiarism can be easily caught, results of that can be personal, professional, ethical, and legal. Once anyone is accused of plagiarism, a person will most likely always be regarded with suspicion and provoke skepticism. The charge of plagiarism is a serious one for all writers, journalists, research scholars, faculties and students. Plagiarists are often considered as incapable of developing and expressing their own original thoughts, ideas or opinions and willing to deceive others. Professional writers like journalists when accused of Plagiarism they can lose their jobs and suffer public embarrassment and loss of prestige. 

2 ) Short Note 

1) Forms of Plagiarism

Any text, phrase, sentence, in formation etc. without proper documentation, is considered as plagiarism. The most obvious form of plagiarism is to present and submit your own paper written by someone else.

Writing a research paper a researcher has to be aware of different forms of plagiarism in order to avoid the plagiarism. There are many types of plagiarism, some of the most common identified by MLA are, repeating or paraphrasing wording, taking a particularly apt phrase, paraphrasing an argument or presenting a line of thinking,

CTL Yale categories plagiarism in three, major forms as, they are 

1. Using a source’s language without quoting

2. Using information from a source without attribution 

3. Paraphrasing a source in a form that stays too close to the original. 

2 ) when Documentation is not needed 

Documentation is required for any work that you quote from or paraphrase. Whether that reference is to a specific place in the source (a page, a chapter) or to the source as a whole, youwould need to cite it. However, documentation is not required for every type of borrowed materia 

1. Common Knowledge

Common knowledge includes information widely available in reference works such as • Biographical facts about prominent persons • Dates and circumstances of major historical events 

2. Passing Mentions

No documentation is required when you mention a work or author in passing Ex. My favorite book is To Kill a Mockingbird. Ex. The Fray’s best album is Scars and Stories. 

 3. Allusions

 When you are making an allusion (making an indirect or partial reference to a well-known passage), you usually do not need to cite a source 

3 ) Issues related to Plagiarism 

Plagiarism is considered academic dishonesty or academic fraud, and offenders are subjected to academic censure, up to and including expulsion.(Wikipedia)

Issues related to plagiarism and academic integrity includes reusing research paper, collaborative work, research on human subject and copyright. 

Reusing a Research 

When it comes to earn grades, some researchers present a paper twice in two different courses, this practice is deceitful. As a result of this practice a researcher lose an opportunity to improve knowledge and skills. 

Collaborative work

Collaborative work is a group project/work joint participation in research and writing is common, and in fact encouraged in many course and in many profession. It does not constitute plagiarism provided that credit is given for all contributors. But many times it is not clearly mentioned that which part is written by whom. Thus everyone gets equal points.  

Research on Human subject

Many academic institutions have policies governing research on human subjects. Examples of research involving human subject includes clinical trials of drug or personal interviews for psychological study. Institutions usually require that researchers obtain the informed consent of human subjects for such projects. Although research for a paper in high school or college are rely involves human subjects.

Copyright infringement

Whereas summaries, paraphrases, and brief quotations in research papers are normally permissible with appropriate acknowledgement, reproducing and disturbing an entire copyrighted work or significant portion of it without obtaining the permission to do so from the copyright holder is an infringement of copyright law and a legal offense, even if the violator acknowledges the sources.(MLA)

Thinking Activity :- Comparative literature and Translation studies Unit 2

 Hello everyone I am Nehalba Gohil a student of the department of English MKBU . In this blog Im going to discuss about the article of comparative studies. 

Susan Bassnett what is Comparative literature Today ? Comparative literature : A critical introduction 1993

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 literatures across both time and space. Susan Bassnett gives a critical understanding of Comparative literature. She says that there is no particular object for studying comparative literature. Another thing is, we cannot give a definite term for comparative literature. Different authors of literature give various perspectives about comparative literature. 

Key Arguments :

  Critics at the end of the twentieth century,in the age of postmodernism,still wrestle with the same questions that were posed more than a century ago: “What is the object of the study in comparative literature? How can comparison be the objective of anything? If individual literatures have canon,what might a comparative canon be? How can be comparatist select what to compare ?Is comparative literature a discipline? Or is it simply a field of study ?” Susan Bassnett argues that there are different terms used by different scholars for comparative literature studies. Therefore, we cannot put in a single compartment for comparative literature. The second thing she argues is that the west students of 1960 claimed that comparative literature could be put in single boundaries for comparative literature study, but she says that there is no particular method used for claiming. 

What is the object of the study in comparative literature?

How can comparison be the objective of anything? 

If individual literature have cannon what might a comparative cannon be ? 

How can be Comparative select what to compare ? 

Is comparative literature a discipline ? Or is it simply a field of study ? 

Conclusion :- 

Comparative Literature has traditionally claimed translation as a subcategory,but this assumption in 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 isin a pre-revolutionary phase,then translation plays a vital part. Comparative Literature have always claimed that translation as a subcategory,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 i its own right could finally and definitely be shelved.  

Comparative literature in the Age of Digital Humanities :  On Possible Futures for a Discipline  

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. This article focuses on the questions like it is essential that humanists assert and insert themselves into the twenty - first century cultural wars, which are largely being defined, fought, and won by corporate interests.  Both the impact of print and the discovery of the New world were predicated on networking tecnologies which not only enabled the dissemination of knowledge into new cultural and social spheres but also brought together people nations cultures and languages that were previously separated. 

Key Argument 

Who is an author? What is a work? What constitutes a text, particularly in an environment in which any text is readerly and writerly by potentially anyone?

Comparative Media Studies thus enables us to return to some of the most fundamental questions of our fi eld with new urgency: Who is an author? What is a work? What constitutes a text, particularly in an environment in which any text is readerly and writerly by potentially anyone? 

Comparative Media Studies 

While there is little doubt that the scholarship of comparative literature has been positively inflected by the so called visual turn of twentieth century opening the horizon of comparative literary and textual studies to the fields of art history. 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. (Nelson, 2004: pp. 134 – 145)

Comparative Data Studies:- 

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 visualization 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. Digital books exist in what he calls N Dimensional Space . The data of Comparative Data studies is constantly expanding in terms of volume ,data type production and reception platform and analytic strategy. 

Comparative Authorship and Platform Studies : 

This is an economy based on abundance creative commons open access and the proliferation of copies not one based on scarcity property trade secrets and the sanctity of originals although as 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 unauthorized 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 :-  

 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. 

Thinking Activity : Unit 4 poems

 Hello readers

This blog is my classroom thinking Activity this activity given by Yesha Mam. I would like to talk about the poem 

You laughed and laughed and laughed 

About Poet

Gabriel Okara :- 

Gabriel Imomotimi Okara (24 April 1921 – 25 March 2019) was a Nigerian poet and novelist who was born in Bumoundi in Yenagoa, Bayelsa State, Nigeria. 

The first Modernist poet of Anglophone Africa, he is best known for his early experimental novel, The Voice (1964), and his award-winning poetry, published in The Fisherman's Invocation (1978) and The Dreamer, His Vision (2005).In both his poems and his prose, Okara drew on African thought, religion, folklore and imagery,and he has been called "the Nigerian Negritudist". According to Brenda Marie Osbey, editor of his Collected Poems, "It is with publication of Gabriel Okara's first poem that Nigerian literature in English and modern African poetry in this language can be said truly to have begun."Okara's equally well-known poetry is also poised between European and African modes of expression. 

 You laughed and laughed and laughed

This poem is written in 1950, it was later published in 1957 in the influential Ibadan University-based African literature periodical Black Orpheus and has remained one of his most widely read poems.

In this poem you means white people and laughed and laughed and laughed means white people are making fun of dance, colour , culture, sounds and actions of black people.

This poem focuses on how white people laughed at African people. There is loss of happiness due to conflict of the African cultures with the Western cultures, subjugation of the African people accompanied by loot, rape and pillage, the loss of identity of the African people, their homes being devastated, the imposing of the cultural norms of the colonizer on the colonized and the imposition of the colonizer’s language on the colonized. The literature of the African people talking about their state of freedom in the pre-colonial times contrasted with their state during the colonial times and then the promise of freedom in the deplorable state of affairs holds for them. Here is the poem,

Themes 

• Colonialism
• Racism 
• Cultural conflict
• Modernism
• Nationalism 

Live Burial Poem 

Wole Soyinka

 Wole Soyinka was born on 13 July 1934 at Abeokuta, near Ibadan in western Nigeria. During the civil war in Nigeria, Soyinka appealed in an article for cease-fire. For this he was arrested in 1967, accused of conspiring and was held as a political prisoner for 22 months until 1969. Soyinka has published about 20 works: drama, novels and poetry. He writes in English and his literary language is marked by great scope and richness of words.

Wole Soyinka is best known as a playwright. Alongside his literary career, he has also worked as an actor and in theaters in Nigeria and Great Britain. His works also include poetry, novels, and essays. Soyinka writes in English, but his works are rooted in his native Nigeria and the Yoruba culture, with its legends, tales, and traditions. His writing also includes influences from Western traditions - from classical tragedies to modernist drama. 

Poem Analysis 

The poem Live Burial explicitly tries to explain the painful torture of what the military government at the time in Nigerian tried to impose on Soyinka's mind while the poet was

imprisoned for two years.

The footsteps in the poem emphasizes the severe limitations that the walls place on his freedom, and the acknowledgement of pacing, especially with such exact numbers to reveal the poet's restless energy to seek any outlet possible, which brings us to the opening stanza of the poem the "Sixteen paces by twenty-three," to explain the space available to live in for 24 months.

The government denied him reading and writing materials so he had to use toilet papers make up items to write and free his mind. The poet takes this experience into this poem "Live Burial" as a reflection on his prison of what the government intended to do to his mind, kill it and that ultimately buries him alive.

Themes 

Sadism 

• Tricks to torture
• Government officials 
• Guards 
• Doctors 
• Voice of rebellious people
• Psyche of sadism 
• Galileo genius 

Greed Mythology 

• Antigens
• Stygian
• Muse 

Imprisonment

• Space of cell 
• Guards 
• Tortures  
• Doctors and their statment

Metaphor

• Three gaurds 
• Doctors 
• Government of Nigeria 

Thinking Activity: Unit 1 Comparative studies

 Hello everyone

 I am Nehalba Gohil a student of the department of English MKBU . In this blog Im going to discuss about the article of comparative studies. 

Sisir Kumar Das why Comparative Indian literature? ( Dev and Das 1989) 

(1)

About Sisir Kumar Das

1)Sisir Kumar Das was a poet playwright translator comparatist and a prolific scholar of Indian literature. He is considered by many as the doyen of Indian literary historiographers 

2)Almost singlehandedly Das buit an integrated history of Indian literature a task that had seemed to many important scholars of Indian literature to be a historians despair.

In the beginning of the century, some of the scholars tried upon the idea of Indian Literature emphasizing the unity of themes and forms and attitudes between the different kinds of literature produced in different Indian languages during the last three thousand years. It discovers the essential threads of unity in two ways.  

India is a Multilingual and Multiriligious country. “Coming back to the nature of Comparative Literature as taught in India, the epigraph by Sisir Kumar Das states the pressing concern of relationships that exist between Indian literature. It is also the comparatist’s need to move away from narrow geographical confines and move towards how literature across the subcontinent are to be understood in their totality.”(Das:96–97).

“For a country like India which has a history of literary traditions oscillating between script and orature, new methods of teaching and reading were to be envisioned. While dealing with the formal elements that go into the making of any text in India—which shares a similarity with African situations in terms of oral, written and indigenous sources” (Thiongʼo 1993)— identification of these methods as contours which aid in the reading of literature would apply. When speaking of literatures in the plural, the succeeding questions point towards the direction in which these literatures tend to inhabit a geopolitical location, otherwise termed a country, which is demarcated by boundaries, social, religious and linguistic. When reading any text, the value-loaded term ‘national’, ‘international’ and ‘indigenous’ prop up any student pursuing literature. 

Comparative literature in Indian by Amiya Dev 

In his article, "Comparative Literature in India," Amiya Dev bases his discussion on the fact that India has many languages and literatures thus representing an a priori situation and conditions of diversity. He therefore argues that to speak of an Indian literature in the singular is problematic. Nonetheless, Dev also observes that to speak of Indian literature in the plural is equally problematic.

In his article, "Comparative Literature in India," Amiya Dev bases his discussion on the fact that India has many languages and literatures thus representing an a priori situation and conditions of diversity. He therefore argues that to speak of an Indian literature in the singular is problematic. Nonetheless, Dev also observes that to speak of Indian literature in the plural is equally problematic. Dev also examines the search for common denominators and a possible pattern of togetherness and Dev underlines location and located inter-Indian reception as an aspect of inter literariness. It is t/here Dev perceives Indian literature, that is, not as a fixed or determinate entity but as an ongoing and inter literary process: Indian language and literature ever in the re/making. 

(2)

Amiya Dev by  Comparative literature in Indian 

Abstract :- 

In his article, "Comparative Literature in India," Amiya Dev bases his discussion on the fact that India has many languages and literatures thus representing an a priori situation and conditions of diversity. He therefore argues that to speak of an Indian literature in the singular is problematic. Nonetheless, Dev also observes that to speak of Indian literature in the plural is equally problematic.

In his article, "Comparative Literature in India," Amiya Dev bases his discussion on the fact that India has many languages and literatures thus representing an a priori situation and conditions of diversity. He therefore argues that to speak of an Indian literature in the singular is problematic. Nonetheless, Dev also observes that to speak of Indian literature in the plural is equally problematic. Dev also examines the search for common denominators and a possible pattern of togetherness and Dev underlines location and located inter-Indian reception as an aspect of interliterariness. It is t/here Dev perceives Indian literature, that is, not as a fixed or determinate entity but as an ongoing and interliterary process: Indian language and literature ever in the re/making

Key points :- 

Comparative literature in India 

Problem of looking Indian literature as written in single language Sanskrit. 

Single Focus perspective is a result of both a colonial and a post- colonial perspective. 

Gurbhagat , singh -"Differential Multulogue".

Problems with regard to the concept of mutuality

Key Arguments :-

It has Binary opposition, focusing on dialectical.

The concept of the Hegelian and Marxist approach.

The Unity vs Diversity.

In this paper, he discuss an apriori placement of comparative literature in terms of features of diversity and unity in India, a country with enormous language diversity and consequently various literatures. Because I believe that in the case of India, the study of literature should include the notion of the interliterary process and a dialectical view of literary interaction, my proposal entails a special view of the discipline of comparative literature. Let me start with a quick overview of linguistic diversity: prior censuses in 1961 and 1971 reported a total of 1,652 languages, while the most recent census in 1981 documented 221 spoken languages (excluding languages with fewer than 10,000 speakers).Of course, many of the 221 language groups are small, and only the eighteen major languages named in the Indian Constitution account for the majority of the population's speakers. In addition to the eighteen languages listed in the Constitution, the Sahitya Akademi (National Academy of Letters) has recognised four additional languages for their literary significance (Assamese, Bengali, Dogri, Indian English, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Kankani, Kashmiri, Maithili, Malayalam, Manipuri, Marathi, Nepali, Oriya, Panjabi, Rajasthani, Sanskrit, Sindhi, Tamil, This number of twenty-two major languages and literatures, however, is misleading because secondary school and university curriculum sometimes incorporate additional languages spoken in the vicinity of the educational institution. 

(3)

Subha Chakraborty Dasgupta Comparative literature in Indian An overview of its History  

Abstract:- 

The essay gives an overview of comparative literature in India focusing primarily on the department at jadavpur university where it began and to some extent the department of modern Indian languages and  literary studies in the university of Delhi where it later had a new beginning in its engagement with Indian literature. The department at jadavpur begun with the legacy of Rabindranath Tagore's speech on World literature and with a modern poet translator as its founder. While British legacies in the study of literature were evident in the early years there were also subtle efforts towards a decolonising process and an overall attempt to enhance and nurture creativity. Gardually Indian literature began to receive prominence along with literature from the southern part of the globe.

Keywords: Decolonizing process, creativity, cross-cultural literary relations, interdisciplinarity.

The beginning :- 

Tagore used the word Visvasahitya and stated that the word was generally termed comparative literature. His ides of Visvasahitya was complex marked by a sense of community of artists as workers building togather an edifice that of world literature. The nation of literature again was deeply embedded on human relationships and hence the aesthetic sense was linked with the sense of the human.

Bose also well known for his translations of Baudelaire . Hoelderlin and Kalidas wrote in his preface to the translation of Les Fleurs du Mal that his intention in turning to French poetry was to move away from the literature of the British the colonial masters while in his introduction to the translation of Kalidas's Maghdutam he wrote that it was essential to bring to life the literature of ancient times in a particular tradition in order to make it a part of the contemporary.

Indian literature as Comparative literature 

T.S Satyanath developed the theory of a scripto centric body centric and phono centric study of texts in the mediaeval period leading a number of researchers in the department to look for continuities and intervention in the tradition that would again lead to pluralist epistemologies in the study of Indian literature and culture.

Centres of Comparative literature studies 

In 1986 a new full-fledged department of comparative literature was established at Veer Narmad South Gujarat University Surat  where fouce was on Indian literature in western Indian. Also in 1999 a department of Dravidian Comparative literature and philosophy was established in Dravidian university Kuppam it must also be mentioned that comparative poetic a core area of comparative literature studies and dissertation particularly in the south was takes up as a central area of research by the Visvanathan Kaviraj institute of comparative literature and aesthetics in Orissa.

The two merged in 1992 and the comparative literature association of India was formed which today has more than a thousand members. In the early years of Association a large number of creative writers participated in its conference along with academics and researchers each enriching the horizon of vison of the other.

Reconfiguration of areas of comparison

 Along with Indian literatures, Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude became a part of the syllabus with a few other texts from Latin American Literatures and then Literatures from African countries were included. 

 As for the other Area Studies components, the department today hosts Centres for African, Latin American and Canadian studies where some research work and annual seminars are organized. A few, like the present author, are of the opinion that given the relatively small number of faculty in the department, the Area Studies programmes led to a division of the scarce resources and also diverted attention from some of the key challenges in comparative literature studies in India, namely, the systematic amalgamation of data related to the Indian context and its analysis from comparative perspectives, and also perhaps the mapping of intercultural relations with and among India’s neighbouring countries. 

 Burns and Wordsworth were very popular and it was felt that their romanticism was marked by an inner strength and serenity. The much talked about ‘angst’ of the romantic poet was viewed negatively. The love for serenity and ‘health’ went back to the classical period and seemed an important value in the tradition. 

Among the projects planned under the inter-Asian series was one on travelogues from Bengal to Asian countries and here an annotated bibliography that could provide an initial foundation for the study of inter-literary relations was published. A second project involved working on the image of Burma in Bengali and Oriya literature in late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Travel narratives and diaries, newspaper articles from old periodicals, excerpts from literature and pictorial images of Burmese people in the Indian press were compiled.

Conclusion :

In all its endeavors, however, the primary aim of some of the early architects of the discipline to nurture and foster creativity continues as a subterranean force.

The comparatist work with the knowledge that a lot remains to be done and that the task of the construction of literary histories, in terms of literary relations among neighboring regions and of larger wholes one of the primary tasks of Comparative Literature today has yet perhaps to begin.