MEJO The MELOW Journal of World Literature Volume 4 February 2020 ISSN: 2581-5768 A peer-refereed journal published annually by MELOW (The Society for the Study of the Multi-Ethnic Literatures of the World) Sunny Pleasure Domes and Caves of Ice: Utopias and Dystopias in World Literature Editor Manpreet Kaur Kang Volume Sub-Editors Neela Sarkar Barnali Saha 1 Editor Manpreet Kaur Kang, Professor of English, Guru Gobind Singh IP University, Delhi Email: [email protected] Volume Sub-Editors Neela Sarkar, Associate Professor, New Alipore College, W.B. Email: [email protected] Barnali Saha, Research Scholar, 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, Visva-Bharati, Santiniketan Email: [email protected] Himadri Lahiri, Professor of English, University of Burdwan Email: [email protected] Manju Jaidka, Professor, Shoolini University, Solan Email: [email protected] Rimika Singhvi, Associate Professor, IIS University, Jaipur Email: [email protected] Roshan Lal Sharma, Professor, Central University of Himachal Pradesh, Dharamshala Email: [email protected] 2 3 EDITORIAL NOTE MEJO, or the MELOW Journal of World Literature, is a peer-refereed E-journal 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 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 papers 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 fourth volume of MEJO, the MELOW Journal. While the third volume brought out the essays selected from the 2018 conference held at Dharamshala, this issue contains essays from the 2019 conference held at Jamia Milia Islamia, New Delhi. The papers have been selected by a panel of reviewers from the presented and revised submissions. We would like to acknowledge the effort put in by Srishti Sharma, research scholar, in the final proofreading of the draft. We, at MELOW, wish you happy reading! EDITORS 4 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, encourages younger scholars and provides a forum for senior scholars in literature. The MELOW journal existed in hard print for about a decade before it went online in a revamped form in 2016. The present issue comprises a selection of papers presented at the 2019 MELOW Conference held in Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi. MELOW Office Bearers President: Prof Manju Jaidka (Chandigarh) Vice-President: Dr Vijay Sharma (Delhi) Secretary: Prof Manpreet Kaur Kang (Delhi) Jt. Secretary: Prof Roshan Sharma (Dharamshala) Treasurer: Prof Anil Raina (Chandigarh) Executive Members: Prof Sushila Singh (Varanasi) Prof Dipankar Purkayastha (Silchar) Prof Debarati Bandopadhyay (Santiniketan) Prof Ravichandran (Kanpur) Dr Seema Bhupendra (Udaipur) Dr Neela Sarkar (Kolkata) Dr Jyoti Mishra (Chattisgarh) Dr Vandhana Sharma (Jammu) Dr Suneeta Patnayak (Chandigarh) Dr Radha Gautam (Surat) Dr Neepa Sarkar (Bangalore) 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) Prof Sachidananda Mohanty (Orissa, India) Reach us online http://www.melusmelow.blogspot.com/ https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100003036474708&fref=ts Published By: MELOW (The Society for the Study of the Multi-Ethnic Literatures of the World) 11, NAC Manimajra, Chandigarh – 160 101 +91 172 4001614 | [email protected] 5 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. 6 7 CONTENTS 1 Presidential Lecture 10 Space, Place, and Landscape in Literatures of the World Anil Raina 2 “This is My Gift to You”: Aesthetic Value and the Search for Utopia in 14 Amitav Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide Suzy Woltmann 3 “The Castle” by Franz Kafka as a Prefiguration of Dystopia 22 Daniel Kalinowski 4 ISM Awarded Paper 32 Utopias and the Pursuit of Knowledge: Reading Jorge Luis Borges Nishtha Pandey 5 The People Never Have the Power, Only the Illusion of It: 40 Opposing Utopias in Assassin’s Creed Sayan Mukherjee 6 Habitable Utopias and their Preservation: The Case Study of Daniel Boone 47 Nilak Datta 7 The Reworking of Arabic Myth and Folklore in Patrick Graham’s Ghoul 57 Rachit Verma 8 Pushing the Boundaries of Real: Dystopian World of The Queue 62 Navdeep Kahol 9 "Sacred Games" - A Modern Indian Dystopia 70 Nilakshi Roy 10 Of Monsters and Men: Revisiting Frankenstein as an Anti-Utopia 77 Sakshi Sundaram 11 Uncovering the (Dys-)Utopian Reality of The Good Place 86 Kamalpreet Kaur 12 The Men Died, Long Live the Women: A Comparative Analysis of 91 Begum Rokeya Sakhwat Hossain’s Sultana’s Dream and Virgnia Bergin’s Who Runs The World Arusharko Banerjee 8 13 Kafka Beyond the Kafkaesque: Reading Laughter in the ‘Dystopia’ of The Castle 97 Chinmaya Lal Thakur 14 Utopia and Indian Imagination: Revisiting the Ramayana of Valmiki 105 Kalikinkar Pattanayak 15 “Common Utopia” Transcending Across Racism: A Select Study of Amiri Baraka’s 113 Poetry Anita Sharma 16 Self-fulfilling Prophecies – Locating Our World Amongst the Dystopias in Selected 129 Works Sujoy Chakravarthi 17 Utopia of the American Dream: Revisiting Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby 137 Mary Mohanty 18 Bana Yeh Mulk Mashaan Kitna: A Study of the Post Partition Dystopian City 143 Antara Bhatia 19 Godot and the Gate: A Comparative Study of Dystopia in Samuel Beckett’s Waiting 155 for Godot and Basma Abdel Aziz’s The Queue Azhar Uddin Sahaji Mirza Sadaf Fatima 20 Utopian Vision in Master Poems: Tagore and Sri Aurobindo 162 Ranjita Barik 9 Presidential Address Space, Place, and Landscape in Literatures of the World Anil Raina Panjab University, Chandigarh Our last year’s conference was on Space, Place, and Landscape, and in my address last year, I referred to Michel Foucault who, in 1967, had written an essay “Of Other Spaces: Utopias and Heterotopias.” So this year, we thought let us move to the more familiar and the less theoretically taxing part of the ‘other spaces’ that the world literature abounds in, utopias and dystopias. ‘Topos,’ the Greek word for ‘place’ is not a common word in English, but ‘topos’ derivatives have been part of our vocabulary for centuries. Languages, including English, develop and grow by adding prefixes and suffixes to root words. Everyone here would know that in the Greek language, the prefix ‘ou-’ means no, ‘eu-‘ means good and ‘dys-‘ means ‘not good,’ and this conference is going to be about good places that do not exist except in imagination and literature, and bad places that we may have to encounter in real in the future. The theme sounds interesting as the romantic poet, S. T. Coleridge, has been roped in to invite, or may be tempt, scholars to write on sunny pleasure-domes and caves of ice, emblematic perhaps of the utopias and dystopias in world literature.