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Literature As History; History in Literature

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Literature As History; History in Literature MEJO The MELOW Journal of World Literature February 2018 ISSN: Applied For A peer refereed journal published annually by MELOW (The Society for the Study of the Multi-Ethnic Literatures of the World) Facts, Distortions and Erasures: Literature as History; History in Literature Editor Manpreet Kaur Kang 1 Editor Manpreet Kaur Kang, Professor of English, Guru Gobind Singh IP University, Delhi Email: [email protected] Editorial Board: Anil Raina, Professor of English, Panjab University Email: [email protected] Debarati Bandyopadhyay, Professor of English, Viswa Bharati, Santiniketan Email: [email protected] Himadri Lahiri, Professor of English, University of Burdwan Email: [email protected] Manju Jaidka, Professor of English, Panjab University Email: [email protected] Neela Sarkar, Associate Professor, New Alipore College, W.B. Email: [email protected] Rimika Singhvi, Associate Professor, IIS University, Jaipur Email: [email protected] Roshan Lal Sharma, Dean and Associate Professor, Central University of Himachal Pradesh, Dharamshala Email: [email protected] 2 EDITORIAL NOTE MEJO, or the MELOW Journal of World Literature, is a peer-refereed Ejournal brought out biannually by MELOW, the Society for the Study of the Multi-Ethnic Literatures of the World. It is a reincarnation of the previous publications brought out in book or printed form by the Society right since its inception in 1998. MELOW is an academic organization, one of the foremost of its kind in India. The members are college and university teachers, scholars and critics interested in literature, particularly in World Literatures. The Organization meets almost every year over an international conference. It seeks to maintain academic standards, encourages and grooms younger scholars, and provides a forum for senior scholars in literature. The essays presented at MELOW conferences are screened, selected, edited and published by a Board of Editors especially appointed for the purpose. Whereas in the initial years the Society favoured a book publication, in subsequent years it was a journal that was published annually. With the changing times, MELOW decided to move on to online publication. The result is MEJO. Dear readers, this is the third issue of MEJO, the MELOW Journal. While the first two issues brought out the essays selected from the 2016 conference held at Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha University, Delhi, in February 2016, this issue contains essays from the 2017 conference held at Chandigarh. The papers have been selected by a panel of reviewers from the presented and revised submissions. We, at MELOW, wish you happy reading! EDITOR 3 About MELOW MELOW (The Society for the Study of the Multi-Ethnic Literatures of the World) was first set up in 1998 as MELUS-India. It is an academic organization, among the foremost of its kind in India. The members are college and university teachers, scholars and critics interested in literature, particularly in world literatures, and literature across borders of time and space. The organization meets every year over an international conference. It seeks to maintain academic standards, encourage younger scholars and provides a forum for senior scholars in literature. The MELOW revamped journal has existed in hard print for about a decade. The present issue comprises a selection of papers presented at the 2017 MELOW Conference in Chandigarh. MELOW Office Bearers President: Prof Anil Raina (Chandigarh) Vice-President: Dr Vijay Sharma (Delhi) Secretary: Prof Manju Jaidka (Chandigarh) Jt. Secretary: Prof Manpreet Kaur Kang (Delhi) Treasurer: Dr Meenu Gupta (Chandigarh) Executive Members: Prof Sushila Singh (Varanasi) Prof Ashis Sengupta (Darjeeling) Prof Debarati Bandopadhyay (Kolkata) Prof Ravichandran (Kanpur) Dr Roshan Sharma (Dharamshala) Dr Seema Bhupendra (Rajasthan) Dr RG Kulkarni (Shangli) Dr Neela Sarkar (Kolkata) Dr Jyoti Mishra (Chattisgarh) Dr Vandhana Sharma (Jammu) International Advisory Board Prof Giorgio Mariani (U of Rome, Italy) Prof Shirley Geok Lim (UCSB, USA) Prof Rajeshwari Pandharipande (U of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, USA) Prof Mukesh Williams (Soka University, Japan) Prof Pawel Jędrzejko (U of Silesia, Katowice, Poland) Reach us online http://www.melusmelow.blogspot.com/ https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100003036474708&fref=ts Published By: GRAPHIT INDIA, SCO 12, Sector 28 C, CHANDIGARH – 160 002 +91 93169 77111 | [email protected] 4 ISAAC SEQUEIRA MEMORIAL FUND Professor Isaac Sequeira (5 January 1930—7 September 2006) Professor Isaac Sequeira from Hyderabad, who worked at the Osmania University and was closely associated with the ASRC, Hyderabad, was a mentor and patron to several generations of academics in India. His sad demise in 2006 created a void hard to fill. We, at MELOW, wish to keep alive the memory of our Patron and guiding light who played a key role in all the activities of our organization. We have set up an Isaac Sequeira Memorial Fund out of which a cash prize of Rs. 5,000 is awarded for the best paper presented at our conferences (see details below). With effect from the 2010 conference, there is a Special Invited Lecture by a person of eminence funded by the Isaac Sequeira Memorial Fund. Several individuals have come forward to offer contributions towards the corpus and donated generously to the ISM fund. Donations of Rs. 1,000 or more may be sent in cash/by draft payable to MELOW at Chandigarh. Contributions may be mailed by registered post/courier to Prof Anil Raina, Dept of English, Panjab University, Chandigarh-160014. THE ISM AWARD • In the memory of Prof Isaac Sequeira, MELOW annually awards a prize for the best paper presented at its conference. The award comprises a certificate and a cash prize of Rs. 5,000. • The competition is open to Indian citizens who are members of MELOW. The participant/delegate should be less than forty years of age at the time of the conference. The abstract and complete paper should be submitted by the stipulated deadlines before it is presented at the conference. • A panel of Judges is appointed by the Office Bearers of MELOW. • If required, these rules may be amended by a simple majority of members present and voting at the Conference. 5 CONTENTS 1. Keynote Address Apocryphal Canons: The (Post)Modernist Turn of the Spanish Golden Age 7 Manuel Broncano 2. Intentions of History and Literature 25 Mukesh Williams 3. Examining the Personal Accounts of Takeda and Qureshi as Literature and History 33 Ui Teramoto 4. A Postethnic Revisiting of History in Rita Dove’s The Yellow House on the Corner and Thomas and Beulah 41 Lekha Roy 5. History or Story?: Amitav Ghosh’s The Shadow Lines 52 Amit Sharma 6. History/Herstory: Mata Hari and "Madeleine" Noor 60 Nilakshi Roy and Preeta Nilesh 7. Recovering Her-Story of Islamic Revolution: A Critical Analysis of Selected Memoirs of Diasporic Iranian Women 75 Navdeep Kahol 8. We All Bleed History: Alternative Historical Viewpoints Expressed in Maus, All Quiet on the Western Front and Schindler's List 90 Sayan Mukherjee 9. Facticity and Fictionality: Mahesh Dattani’s Where Did I Leave My Purdah? 101 Monika Kaushik and Suman Sigroha 10. Tracing Racial History: Mildred D. Taylor’s The Land 112 Rajeep Kumar Tirkey 11. From the Margins to the Centre: Translation of Folk, Legend and History in The Restless Quest by JP Cross 121 Suman Sharma 12. Voices from the Margins: Her-Story in Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things 133 Shishu Bala and Suman Sigroha 13. Negotiating Contours of Colonial Violence: Applying Fanon’s Studies to Caryl Phillip’s Crossing the River and Jane Harrison’s Stolen 144 Hem Raj Bansal 14. Representation of History in Kuntala Kumari Sabat’s Fiction: Revisiting The Woman with Nine Voices and Raghu, the Orphan 155 Mary Mohanty 15. Fiction as Social History: A Study of Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle as a History from the Other Side 164 Harsh Bhardwaj 16. Gender Dynamics: Struggle of Women in the Black Panther Party 171 Srishti Sehgal and Rohit Phutela 17. Revisiting History Through Memory: A Study of Nawal El Saadawi’s Memoirs from a Women’s Prison 180 Ekjot Kaur 6 Keynote Address Apocryphal Canons: The (Post)Modernist Turn of the Spanish Golden Age Manuel Broncano Professor Texas A&M International University Abstract: Ever since Aristotle established the superiority of literature over history, the debate on the relationship between the two forms of accessing the past has not abated and in our times, this controversy probably is more intense than ever. Poststructuralism and postmodernism have demonstrated the tenuous borderline between the two discourses, since both share many common elements. In this paper I revise briefly the notions of Grand Narrative and Master Narrative, as defined by Jean-Francois Lyotard and others, and propose the notions of Apocrypha and apocryphal as the inevitable contestation to any canonical, authoritative imposition on the part of the State. While master or grand narratives (or even meta-narratives) refer to stories that seem to assimilate different cultures into a single course of history dominated by the West, apocryphal stories / histories subvert the very attempt to encompass the discourse of peoples “without history” into the totalizing speech of eurocentrism. Apocryphal, in this respect, is synonymous with subversive and anti-hegemonic. The counterpart of the apocryphal, the canonical, is the materialization, or better, verbalization, of power, but as long as it is sustained by language, it becomes an aporia. If language is fluid and ambiguous, the canon cannot be fixed and immutable. I base my argumentation on two classic texts from the Spanish Golden Age (16th-17th centuries): The Life of Lazarillo de Tormes, the first picaresque novel, published anonymously by Diego Antonio de Mendoza (1554), and Miguel de Cervantes’ Don Quixote (1605, 1615), the work that paves the road for the modern novel. Keywords: Apochrypha, Aristotle, Don Quixote, Ecclesiastical censorship, Golden age, Eurocentrism, grand narrative, history vs.
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