Literature in English

While a book should not be judged by its covers, the image on the front cover of Mark Froud’s sociocultural study about the concept of the lost child in literature and culture might be seen to provide a succinct pictorial summary of the book, a visual summation of
arguments put forward by the author. The image is a photographic representation of a blindfolded blonde girl in a vintage dress, her mouth slightly open and her arms raised, seemingly searching or feeling her way ahead with the open palms of her hands. As a representation of a child accompanying a text written by an adult for adults, the image
reinforces the point Froud makes in Chapter 2, that in one of the fundamental forms of narrative, namely folk stories, children are objects of adult representation because the stories are not for children, but about children.

Literature has always been a tool to disseminate certain ideologies or to destabilise some of them. Writers, especially of fictional narratives, play an important part in shaping collective conscious and presenting “facts” through fictional narrative that appeal to the readers more than any other philosophical or political books. Pamuk’s novels blend history and fiction to resist deliberate forgetting of history and collective identity in the Turkish context. They attempt to re-interpret Turkish national history which otherwise has been deliberately forgotten or altered by the modern Westernised elite to create subjects according to their own political ideologies. The paper attempts to analyse Pamuk’s novel The Black Book in terms of collective and cultural memory. The paper argues that Pamuk’s novel, through various fictionalised sites of memory, reconfigures the forgotten past in an attempt to resist the post-Republic homogenization of Turkish identity at the cost of history, diversity and Ottoman cultural identity. The paper draws on the concepts of collective memory, cultural memory and sites of memory theorized by Maurice Halbwachs, Jan Assmann and Pierre Nora respectively, followed by a detailed analysis of the novel.
Keywords: Collective Memory, Cultural Memory, History, Orham Pamuk, Sites of Memory Turkey

This paper organizes traditional and modern literary standards and values into objective assessment matrices to establish frameworks for examining contemporary masterpiece poetry within the contexts of the changing roles of literary consumers as well as those of arbiters of literary taste.

At the time of its publication, first in serial form (1931), then as a book (first edition 1932), Kandan, The Patriot meant a lot to patriotic Indians in south India, voicing as it did their feelings in the midst of striving for independence. Freedom movements need powerful literature—songs and stories both—to help people envision what liberty means, and what it costs in terms of self-sacrifice. Literature can hold up an inspiring image of beauty toward which people may grope and strive to realize. As epics inspired devotion for many centuries, a modern novel such as Kandan could dramatize ideals and set standards toward which people could strive in the political arena. Kandan is dedicated to “the unknown volunteers in India’s fight for freedom,” the patriots of local life. It has been called a manifesto of the Indian nationalist cause in the form of a story. As K. S. Venkataramani writes in Kandan, “Freedom riding on the crest of widespread poverty has ever been the most potent cause of political cyclones.” Kandan grew out of the experiences of Indians reaching for independence, and it was one of the works which helped the cause go forward and succeed.

Kandan provided needed impetus for certain people to become more seriously involved in India’s Freedom movement, just as Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin gave a push to the fervency of the anti-slavery movement in America. A novel portraying familiar characters enthusiastically engaged in a noble cause can often make a greater impact for activist movements than pamphlets and poems of reveries. Venkataramani offered readers a rural nationalist English-style novel about Indian people of his times, engaged by their highest hopes, temptations, struggles and comraderies. While Subramania Bharati (1882-1921) the great Tamil poet of the age, with his poignant lyrical call to nationalism and Indian culture wrote poems and songs which could stir Tamil pride and patriotism, Venkataramani was a storyteller whose novel unfolded an inspiring vision of how people, both rich and poor, could work together for a high aim. He wrote Kandan, The Patriot in English, but he also translated and published it in Tamil, so that Tamil people who did not know English could read it too.

This article provides an overview of 2000 years of Irish literature, in both the Irish language (Gaelic) and English. Writers considered include Thomas Moore, Oscar Wilde, W.B. Yeats, James Joyce, Máirtín Ó Direáin, Máirtín Ó Cadhain, Seán Ó Ríordáin, Sean O'Casey, Seamus Heaney and John Banville.

Editor's Introduction:
In Mohamed Eno’s poems, the world of myth and folk tales interact with the "real" world, so that each seems to breach the boundaries of the other: the effect is disturbing, and thought-provoking. Drawing on representations and stories of evil in southern Somalia, Eno creates a world which seems to come without the insulation that myths and tales provide, without the reassurance that there is a storyteller in control. Both poems offer narratives that do not resolve themselves, or that end only in a reduplication of the crisis that sets the narrative in motion: the goose that appears in a graveyard prefigures a vicious king, who has already come: the story is already over, with us, in it. A leader’s burial is pre-empted by a half-human/half-crocodile, who stands watch over the corpse, until the corpse too turns into a hybrid human/animal, as the story continues to replicate itself. Narrative seems to fall apart in these poems, or to obliterate it. It is intolerance that seems to undo old stories, and turn them into hybrids that ward off interpretation, that leave us in the uninterpretable now.
                                          --Noam Scheindlin

Concisely, the fate of South Sudan’s revitalized peace agreement depends on the political will of the stakeholders. “Where there is will there is way”, the common saying asserts.
Politics is an art or science of management of society. It involves compromises and tactics for the sake of leaving a good legacy. Therefore, it is up to the political elites to implement the deal in line with their thoughts on how they would like to be remembered.
Anyhow, the problems of the world lie in perceptions and beliefs. In that regard, our perceptions and beliefs shall determine our destiny.
Above all, it is dependable on the author of humanity and divinity. He decides what to happen at what time and to whom. After all, the biblical philosophy in Ecclesiastes 3:1 has put it clearly to us to understand things in the world. “There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven”. For that reason, nobody can be sure of the future. For future like God is knowable to a limited scope. Future is synonymous with God. Let us wait cautiously and see keenly the fate of the revitalized peace agreement.

Literature in English was introduced to Malaysian secondary schools in the year 2000 as a method of teaching English while assisting in broadening students' cultural and world views. The main problem with this component is its inability to engage students in its texts and thus the program found it difficult to achieve its initial goals. Part of this lies in Malaysia's problematic post-colonial background. English, while being Malaysia's second official language, is still seen by many as the language of the 'West' and carries values that may create friction and resistance to learning the language. This paper suggests a two-pronged approach to tackling this problem: firstly in terms of the selection of the literary texts and secondly, through the method of teaching itself. As the component is aptly named Literature in English instead of English Literature, there are more opportunities to translate Eastern tales and promote cultures which are more relatable to Malaysian students. Instead of largely concentrating on Western cultures and stories, the authors argue that incorporating Chinese, Indian, and Malay stories would instill more interest in students while still broadening their views on the world around them. Another way to incite interest in the learning of literature is by incorporating humor, including but not limited to solidarity-based humor, in the lesson. A growing number of research on the patterns of humor (including educational research) has observed humor's function as a way to arouse interest, build rapport, as well as promote critical and divergent thinking, all of which are elements of a positive classroom climate. These approaches would see implementation from the curriculum as well as the teacher. Integrating both would be a means to indirectly tackle the issue of post-colonialism while encouraging interest in the English language and the learning of literature.