New Literaria最新文献

{"title":"The Disease Called Fear: Reading Narayan Ganguly’s Short Story \"Pushkara\"","authors":"Subhajeet Sinha","doi":"10.48189/nl.2021.v02i2.007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.48189/nl.2021.v02i2.007","url":null,"abstract":"The fatal shadow of an all-pervasive epidemic may have become a distant memory for our generation because modern medicine and therapy have progressed and our longevity is blessed. Along came Corona virus and the proverbial world of our knowledge went through chaos. We witnessed a new threat along with the microscopic virusthe banality of posttruths. This fear rapidly gets transmitted into the psychology of everyone. And how that fear can infiltrate the common judgement of populace, is the focus of this paper through reading Bengali novelist Narayan Gangopadhyay’s short story, Pushkara. The story is set against the cholera epidemic in rural Bengal, where a priest prepares for a midnight Kali Puja at the cremation ground to ward off the evil of Cholera. The offal offered at the altar is consumed by a local vagrant woman, but the intoxicated and hyper tensed priest and his acolytes assume the woman in the dark to be the corporeal form of the goddess itself. Out of abject psychosis, a divine myth is born. Death and disease mark our existence as Susan Sontag called our duality as realm of night and realm of well-being. To attain the realm of well-being, we are often seen to give in to sad repercussions to mete out our existential dread. This essay will show how that fear is no less powerful than the disease itself. KeywordsEpidemic, Existentialism, Psychoanalysis, Fear, Divinity. “And Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all.” (Poe, 2006, p.42) The entire corpus of human history shares a common thread. Whenever our civilization is threatened to be extinct, be it an epidemic, a war, an apocalypse upon us, all our existence is laced with a certain fear and fear knows little logic. Similarly, in this celebrated short story by Edgar Allan Poe, The Masque of the Red Death, the fateful Prince ordered his castle to be shut from inside, so that the notorious ‘Red Death’ may not claim lives at its whim. But his impressive plan fails miserably with the definitive victory of the epidemic and the subsequent death of all the known living beings. But why does the prince partake in such endeavour to lock his flock in isolation, and not trying to find a cure for the dreadful disease? The answer is probably that fear, abject and hopeless fear which the Pestilence stirs in us, making the mind muddier and judgment cloudy. The situation we witnessed now, inside this virus pandemic in 2020 A.D., is a torrent of fabricated information to be poured over us, helpless and anxious wait for a possible cure, extremely polarized debates over the use of preventive measures, failure of governmental policy in wake of such an unforeseen global catastrophe and the rise of a new threat along with the microscopic virusthe banality of post-truths. That fear grows and the idea of posttruths gnaws at our better judgment slowly and steadily. And how this fear affects the creative imagination of a gifted story-teller, is the focus of this paper till the end. 51","PeriodicalId":205595,"journal":{"name":"New Literaria","volume":"22 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-08-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131402410","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Proselytizing Diseases: Problematising Endemic, Theology and the Caste Question in Bengal","authors":"Prithu Haldar","doi":"10.48189/nl.2021.v02i2.009","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.48189/nl.2021.v02i2.009","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":205595,"journal":{"name":"New Literaria","volume":"80 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-08-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125931334","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Techno-Capitalism and Speculative Fiction: An Ecocritical Analysis of Ray Bradbury's Short Story “A Sound of Thunder”","authors":"Meher Nandrajog","doi":"10.48189/nl.2021.v02i2.005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.48189/nl.2021.v02i2.005","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":205595,"journal":{"name":"New Literaria","volume":"5 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-08-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132044138","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Pandemic; a Political Satire: Re-surfacing the Dysfunctional Government through the works of Stephen King and Robin Cook","authors":"Sanghamitra Ghatak","doi":"10.48189/nl.2021.v02i2.004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.48189/nl.2021.v02i2.004","url":null,"abstract":"Pandemic came as a ubiquitous threat to the entire world. This calls for a situation which can be combated by a huge dependency on the governmental system. But the problem arises when it is the same government which takes recourse to oppression and start tyrannizing its own subject. The global pandemic that had struck us two years back has now become a part of our life. But what was seen most evident during this period of tremendous crisis is the total failure of the governmental system in safeguarding the lives of their very own people. It brought out the persistent fractures already prevalent in the society. The systematic approach to brainwash the mass against the viruses, their nature, effects on human body and safeguarding the interest of a selected few by hindering the correct investigation about the origin of the virus exposes the authority that rules over the people. Almost all the governments have faltered in the respect of correct security to their people. However, it is surprising to note that, the very reflection of these dysfunctional services found it's reflect in the world of literature and entertainment as well. A close analysis of the works like Robin Cook's Outbreak and Contagion and Stephen King's The Mist and The Stand will bring forth this same problem of a demolishing government in midst of pandemic affected situations. These pandemic literatures not just focus on the crisis at hand and how to deal with it, but also sheds light on the reasons of their occurrences at the first place. Mostly being a governmental project going wrong, and the ensuing negligence on the part of such authorities to bring on the final doomsday.","PeriodicalId":205595,"journal":{"name":"New Literaria","volume":"21 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-08-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127790818","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Pandemic, Space and Environment in Blindness by José Saramago","authors":"Marinica Tiberiu Schiopu","doi":"10.48189/nl.2021.v02i2.001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.48189/nl.2021.v02i2.001","url":null,"abstract":"Mentioned and praised even by the Noble prize committee, in 1998, Blindness (published in 1995) is a complex novel dealing with the human nature and behaviour in the context of a crisis generated by a sudden and unknown disease. The relevance of reading this book these days, when the entire humanity (and I daresay our planet as an interdependent system) is facing a terrible viral pandemic, is obvious and helpful. The present paper aims to explore José Saramagos novel from a combined geo-ecocritical perspective, emphasizing the interrelatedness of humanity, space, and surrounding environment. The main research questions of this study are: how do humans interact with the places they live in and the ecosphere during a pandemic? and how does a pandemic affect the human behaviour? The geoecocritical approach is due to the interdependence between space and environment, one can hardly explore one of the previously mentioned components of the fictional world without referring to the other. Another aspect that this essay will touch is the alteration of peoples emotions due to the difficulties they face during pandemics and the importance of emotion management in these extreme situations. For the proposed analysis the following methods will be indispensable: close-reading, ecocriticism, geocriticism, and narratology.","PeriodicalId":205595,"journal":{"name":"New Literaria","volume":"20 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-08-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124567280","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"COVID-19 Through the Lens of Camus: Parallels and Solutions from the Absurd in The Plague","authors":"Sneha M. Talwar","doi":"10.48189/nl.2021.v02i2.008","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.48189/nl.2021.v02i2.008","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":205595,"journal":{"name":"New Literaria","volume":"29 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-08-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130097445","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Kant’s Humorous Writings: An Illustrated Guide (2021) by Robert R. Clewis","authors":"Shouvik N.Hore","doi":"10.48189/NL.2021.V02I1.0R2","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.48189/NL.2021.V02I1.0R2","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":205595,"journal":{"name":"New Literaria","volume":"3 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-02-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125493301","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Experiences of Childhood in the Victorian Cultural and Literary World of Carroll’s Alice in Through the Looking Glass","authors":"Meher Nandrajog","doi":"10.48189/NL.2021.V02I1.009","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.48189/NL.2021.V02I1.009","url":null,"abstract":"Regarded as a sequel to the ‘children’s fiction’ novel Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland , Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass is a bildungsroman that presents the adventures of its girl-child protagonist, Alice, in the fantasy world on the other side of her looking glass. Located in a Victorian cultural and literary context, the novel roots itself in the conflicts of the age to which it belongs, and simultaneously presents a parody of Victorian ways and values, thereby questioning the contradictions inherent in them. This essay historically contextualizes Carroll’s novel in Victorian England, and examines Alice as a Victorian middle-class heroine equipped with Victorian values that she uses to confront the Looking Glass world of upturned logic and language. It also examines the way in which Carroll’s book not only reflects the conventional prescriptions for the age and genre to which it belongs, but questions and negotiates with them as well. The essay thus looks at the novel as a function of its location in the Victorian cultural context through an examination of the qualitative aspects of children’s literature available at the time, the literary representation of children in Victorian texts, and the conflicts with Victorian values as experienced by Alice in such a context. When analyzed through these frameworks, Through the Looking Glass presents itself as a text with satiric and subversive possibilities, which are hidden in its upturned language and logic of ‘nonsense’. This is what the essay examines.","PeriodicalId":205595,"journal":{"name":"New Literaria","volume":"22 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-02-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130653799","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Nation and the Narratives of Violence: Violent Embeddings of Nationalism","authors":"S. Balyan","doi":"10.48189/NL.2021.V02I1.019","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.48189/NL.2021.V02I1.019","url":null,"abstract":"Post colonialism is not restricted to the aftermath of colonialism. Before entering into post colonialism and neo- colonialism there is an imagined space that negotiates identities, worlds and languages. Covid 19 may have given us an opportunity to connect to the world from every nook and corner but connecting is far from gaining an identity and space. The issues of space and identity are secondary. It is rather more important to be able to connect with one's own culture and diversity. This does not resolve the negotiations that the regional writers and languages have to go through. There are translated memories and experiences and generations that bear the brunt of the violence that took place years ago. The answer to that violence is not non-violence. The existence of the third space or world is not enough anymore. To begin with, the writers in the North- East region (North East India) have to justify the use of English in writing. The dilemma faced by these writers over the use of the language is equally and sometimes more important than the content. For them the content is as important as the language. They are not only using language as a tool to resist but also as a tool to gain access to the world outside their immediate worlds. However, a lot is lost during this translation of experiences and words. It is this battle of crossing over that needs to be recognised first. Violence at the level of expression needs to be addressed before physical and psychological.","PeriodicalId":205595,"journal":{"name":"New Literaria","volume":"5 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-02-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130069902","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Magical Immunization: Occult and the Pandemic in Nora Roberts’ Year One","authors":"Isha Biswas","doi":"10.48189/nl.2022.v03i1.015","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.48189/nl.2022.v03i1.015","url":null,"abstract":"With the world in topsy-turvy strained under the tides of a pandemic that shows no sign of ebbing, there has been a massive surge in consumption- no pun intended- of supernatural fiction and fantasy literature. Either as a means of escape from reality, or as a deep-dive into an allegorized society in crisis (or a world directly and terrifyingly reflective of the 2020s), fantasy with a dystopian, apocalyptic setting has always found a large readership. Concomitantly, there has been a re-popularization of the occult in real life as well: and this paper shall investigate Nora Roberts' Year One keeping that in mind in the context of the author's creation of the supernaturally-aided and supernaturally-quelled pandemic in her novel. Alarmingly predictive of the Covid-19 horror, Roberts' narrative follows the life of the survivors of a disastrous, self-mutative airborne virus that levels more than half of the world population in weeks. I shall investigate socio-literary implications of how most of the unaffected are revealed to possess magical abilities which are shown to be genetically and generationally coded, thus causing a divide between them and the non-magical victims, culminating into a eugenicist drive of culling which turns into an actual \"witch\"-hunt. Taking into account the cultural connotations of choosing Scotland as Roberts' preferred setting for the genesis of the plague coupled with her use of Scottish legends about dark forces, the paper will further delve into possible evocation of Celtic pagan mythologies, occult medical lore, and the inspiration drawn from the accusation and persecution of marginalized \"white witch\"/ \"witch doctor\"/ \"wise women\" healers during Black Death and witch trials in early modern Scotland.","PeriodicalId":205595,"journal":{"name":"New Literaria","volume":"8 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-01-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123803633","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}