American Research Journal of English and Literature

Ms. Mahbuba Shoukot

J.M Coetzee’s Disgrace plot and the Bangladeshi Scenarios are mostly similar; especially in gender discrimination, though the situations and structure of society differ. Surprisingly, this makes me pretty much thoughtful the variances do not make any changes. Gender blindness is everywhere, whether in South Africa or Bangladesh. Women are always the scapegoat by society, religion ethnicity, norms, and rites. They always face violence or hatred in different folds. The essay conveys the forcible sex violations that happened in the novel. The story portrays the two male protagonists who are parallel in the antagonist role as well. Women's roles are used here to show how men prudently play dice to gain power and abduct a woman. Escape from the crime is the easiest way to build a new way out under the male chauvinist regulations.

P.V. Laxmiprasad 

Indian English Poetry is replete with both ancient and modern elements. Pre-independent and post-independent India marked two different phases in poetry. Poets predominantly dealt with conventional themes in the past. But, one distinguishing feature of Post –independent poetry has been to portray a diversified representation of multiple themes. A careful analysis of thoughts, feelings, and psyche of the poets not only genuinely but eloquently reveals urban ‘cynicism and anguish’ and reveals ‘hope and anticipation’ quite aptly. Poets differed according to the age in which they had lived but ultimately, their poetry became a subject matter of anguish and agony. There have been obvious expressions of urban life in the beginnings but as the poets emerged in the early twentieth century, rural side of the life figured prominently in their writings. PCK Prem observes, “Poetry depicting rural background and the inner world of man is also conscious of the collapse of human bonds and aspirations even as sufferings, struggles, and failures dishearten but carry elements of hope, and thus, infuse a spirit to live life persuasively”. (2006: 21) Poetry is not only a study of thoughts or emotions but it also involves reading of a huge poetic landscape, literary yield, political thought process and its evolution, and the social and economic environment. From 1920, after taking into consideration various social and historical facts, one assumes that contemporary Indian English Poetry begins its ambitious journey --- in rising cities and other rural areas, developing towns of various regions to be more specific Indian English Poetry begins its journey. One such element is the delineation of bucolic elements in poetry. India is predominantly a rural country side with 60% of population living in villages. The countryside is a geographic area located outside the cities and towns. Indian villages have low population density and small settlements. The poetry of T.V. Reddy is rooted in bucolic elements. In fact, all his poetry collections carry the hallmarks of rural life, pastoral panorama and idyllic nature. They beautify his poetry against rural background. Rural life in India forms the very basis of economy and essential living conditions. In fact, it is the backbone of development in diversity. Life in cities is always different from life in rural areas.

Krishnaveni KP

The Indian women writers are the one who mainly talks about the male ego and female desire for freedom. Through their writings women writer tries to oppose the male dominance over them. Indian women writers depict the injustices, the anguish and the despair they received in a male dominated society. Many of the writings can be considered as a mutiny against the restraints which the society thrust upon women. In this man-centered world they are trying to bring out the feminine identity through their works. Indian women writers never attempted to adopt any masculine roles to achieve themselves as equal as men, but through their writings they came across all the barrier of class, gender and space boundaries. They try to project masculinity and femininity as equal categories. Though through their works the Indian women writers tries to project women’s responses to gender questions. However, they tried to depict the fact that writings of women need not be differentiated by language or location.

 *Mr. Omar Ezzaoua 

Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights is characterized by the narrative mechanisms and techniques it employs. Building on its structure, the novel is obviously rich in its underlying elements that are worth examining. One of these elements is the choice of multiple narrators and the complex organization of narrative time. This theoretical framework deals mainly with narration and narrative techniques as approached by structuralist narratology. As an approach that examines narration and its major hybrids, narratology delves into a structural study of Wuthering Heights allowing for a deep examination of the underlying narrative elements in the novel. Having said that, it is believed that the study of narratology is pertaining in the sense that it sheds light on how the narrative structure of the novel puts into question the status of the narrators as reliable sources. This structure also mystifies the story giving the reader a chance to decipher the intent of the characters involved as both narrators and characters. Without taking such structure into account, the readers are missing some key elements in understanding and interpreting the stories told by the narrators. 

Acheoah John Emike,

Beatrice Osaro Oreoluwa,

Margaret Nonyerem Agu,

This study attempts an appraisal of Pellets – manuscript of an unpublished anthology of poems1. Selected poems from the anthology are appraised to establish the aesthetic relevance and potency of diction in poetry in particular, and in other literary genres in general. Two theories anchor this study: The Critical Theory and the Lexicalist Theory. In terms of approach and style, poetry differs from other literary genres. It is peculiar for using inflated language, deployed in verse and stanza. Diction is vocabulary stock used by a writer to convey theme(s). Despite the normative properties of language, it has social signification which the literary writer explores, using individualistic linguistic choices that capture the operational forces being addressed. This study concludes that in Pellets – and other creative writings by extension – diction is instrumental in effective, imaginative and creative presentation of themes.

*Neenu. C and **Dr. D. Jaisankar 

THE RESEARCH FEATURED BY A BRIEF STUDY OF THE AUTHOR AND HIS NOVEL A THOUSAND SPLENDID SUNS TO UNDERSTAND THE NOVEL. IT IS OUR HOPE THAT THE RESEARCH HERE WILL ELEVATE THE READER TO ENRICH THEIR QUEST FOR CRITICAL APPRECIATION. THE PERSISTENT CONDITIONS OF CONFLICT AND VIOLENCE IN AFGHANISTAN, CONTINUING FOR ALMOST FIFTY YEARS NOW, HAS CAUSED HUGE DESTRUCTION IN TERMS OF HUMAN AND MATERIAL LOSSES. IT HAS ALSO LED TO A RADICAL TRANSFORMATION IN ITS SOCIO-CULTURAL FABRIC ALMOST IRREVERSIBLY. BECAUSE OF THEIR VULNERABLE POSITION IN ITS SOCIETY, THE AFGHAN WOMEN HAVE ENDURED A TOUGH EXISTENCE AS THEY CAME TO GRIPS WITH A DOUBLE SUBJUGATION IN THE FORM OF PATRIARCHAL AUTHORITY AND THE OPPRESSION EMANATING FROM THE PERSISTENT CONDITIONS OF THE CONFLICT. HOWEVER, THERE IS OFTEN A TENDENCY TO CAST AFGHANISTAN AND ITS PEOPLE IN ESSENTIALIST TERMS BOTH IN ACADEMIC AND NON-ACADEMIC ENDEAVOURS. BY CONTEXTUALISING THE AFGHAN WOMEN’S EXPERIENCE IN A SPECIFIC SET OF HISTORICAL, POLITICAL AND SOCIAL FACTORS, THIS WOULD HOPEFULLY OFFER AN ALTERNATIVE VIEW OF THE CONDITION OF AFGHAN WOMEN RATHER THAN THE USUAL STEREOTYPED DESCRIPTIONS. I CONCLUDE THAT THE RESEARCH MAY BE IMPERFECT AS IT IS NOT ABLE TO SATISFY EVERY READERS AND THEIR TASTE.

EA Gamini Fonseka, BA (Kelaniya), MA (Edinburgh), PhD (Vaasa)

Snake is a reptile, very much respected in many cultures throughout the world, depending on what species it is. Ornate snake sculptures in Sri Lanka, India, England, China, Greece, Rome, Egypt, Africa, America, Australia, etc. (Steel, 2021) are evidence of the respect the reptile earned in most of the ancient civilisations by becoming a seminal influence in the mythologies, folklores, beliefs, values, morals, rituals, and arts that have evolved in them. Coming from a Western Christian elite socio-cultural background, D.H. Lawrence gets fascinated by the asp rattler that he meets in Sicily in 1920, and in a while tries to kill it under the influence of his zoological knowledge and the warnings he has had on the deadliness of its venom. Later he feels relieved that his attack did not hurt the snake and yet regrets his being indecent to the creature. Lawrence’s delayed realisation of the snake’s right to existence tallies the example of unreserved compassion towards life, irrespective of what species it is, the Buddha sets during his two famous encounters with lethal snakes. Unlike Lawrence’s silent snake, one of the two snakes the Buddha encounters protects him from the rain, and the other vertically challenges him, spraying his deadly venom at him. Nevertheless, the Buddha’s only reaction to them both is to unveil his compassion indiscriminately. Unlike Lawrence, he concludes both encounters without regret. Taking the respective behaviours of Lawrence and the Buddha in the presence of snakes, this paper proposes that, in preventing regret, while managing interactions with other forms of life, compassion inspired by spirituality transcends all other emotions engendered by fascination and apprehension that are part and parcel of Lawrence’s religion, “flesh and blood”.

Acheoah John Emike1, Garba Azika Jega2 and Okoh Gloria Onyemariechi2

This study is a socio-pragmatic analysis of selected utterances of interlocutors whose discourse subject is “Covid-19”. In using language, it is not enough to be grammatical; language use should be underpinned by contextual nuances because this is a good way of using language as actions that produce results or effects. Therefore, the analysis of the selected linguistic structures in this study is an investigation of linguistic competence demonstrated through lexical choices and speech act sequencing. The approach explored in the study is discursive and integrative; for example, instead of strictly listing the speech acts performed in each utterance, they are mentioned in terms of how they impinge on the on-going interaction. The study underscores who says “what?”, “how?” and “why?”. Although this study is mainly hinged on the Pragma-crafting Theory, Bach and Harnish’s [1] speech act taxonomy is explored in the classification of the speech acts performed in the utterances. On the whole, the study concludes that the socio-pragmatic use of language is underpinned by the psychological and situational context(s), and produces expected results due to speaker-hearer shared knowledge.

Ms. Anwesa Chattopadhyay

The Orientalist psychology has been persistently shaped by an ideological demarcation between Westerners and Arab-Orientals; “the former are (in no particular order) rational, peaceful, liberal, logical, capable of holding real values without natural suspicion; the latter are none of these things” (Said, p. 49). The Orientalist perspective has remained ingrained in the Western mind across the decades, persistently shaping the colonialist ideology in an era of mass migration. The latter decades of the nineteenth century witnessed a rapid upsurge in the migration of Arabs, a major part of whom settled in the United States. The continuous upsurge in the Arab migration and settlement was concurrent with the growing spur of racism, which forms the basis of the victimization of the Arab-American populace. In this regard,Steven Salaita (an eminent critic of Islamophobia and a spokesperson for the “Anti-Arab Racism” in the USA) observes, “The origin of American racism is a combination of European colonial values and interaction with Blacks and Indians” (p. 5). In the light of the above statement, this paper aims to study Laila Halaby’s novel Once in a Promised Land (2007) from an orientalist perspective, and locate the traces of Islamophobia that had victimized the Muslim immigrants in America after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.