Assignment :- Comparative and translation studies

 Q-1 Write your comments on G N Devy’s essay ‘Translation Theory from an Indian Perspective’.

Ans:-

Introduction:-

‘Translation is the wandering existence of a text in a perpetual exile,’ says J. Hillis Miller. The statement obviously alludes to the Christian myth of the Fall, exile, and wandering. In Western metaphysics translation is an exile, a fall from the origin; and the mythical exile is a metaphoric translation, a post-Babel crisis."Western literary criticism provides for the guilt of translations for coming into being after the original; the temporal sequentiality is held as proof of diminution of literary authenticity of translations. It is of course natural for the monolingual European cultures to be acutely conscious of the act of translation. The philosophy of individualism and the metaphysics of guilt, however, render European literary historiography capable of grasping the origins of literary traditions.

‘Translation Theory from an Indian Perspective’:-

One of the most revolutionary events in the history of the English style has been the authorized translation of the Bible. It was also the literary expression of Protestant Christianity. The recovery of the original spirit of Christianity was thus sought by Protestant England through an act of translation. It is well known that Chaucer was translating the style of Boccacio into English when he created his Canterbury Tales. During the last two centuries, the role of translation in communicating literary movements across linguistic borders has become very important. The tradition that has given us writers like Shaw, Yeats, Joyce, Beckett, and Heaney in a single century the tradition of Anglo-Irish literature – branched out of the practice of translating Irish works into English initiated by Macpherson towards the end of the eighteenth century.

Considering the fact that most literary traditions originate in translation and gain substance through repeated acts of translation, it would be useful for a theory of literary history if a supporting theory of literary translation were available. However, since translations are popularly perceived as unoriginal, not much thought has been devoted to the aesthetics of translation. Most of the primary issues relating to ‘form’ and ‘meaning’ have not been settled in relation to translation. No critic has taken any well-defined position about the exact placement of translations in literary history.

Roman Jakobson in his essay on the linguistics of translation proposed a threefold classification of translations:

 (a) those from one verbal order to another verbal order within the same language system,

 (b) those from one language system to another language system, and

 (c) those from a verbal order to another system of signs

Historical linguistics has some useful premises in this regard. In order to explain the linguistic change, historical linguistics employs the concept of semantic differentiation as well as that of phonetic glides. While the linguistic changes within a single language occur more predominantly due to semantic differentiation, they also show marked phonetic glides. However, the degree of such glides is more pronounced when a new language comes into existence. In other words, whereas linguistic changes within a single language are predominantly of a semantic nature, the linguistic differences between two closely related languages are predominantly phonetic Technically speaking, then, if synonymy within one language is a near impossibility, it is not so when we consider two related languages together.

Structural linguistics considers language as a system of signs, arbitrarily developed, that tries to cover the entire range of significance available to the culture of that language. The signs do not mean anything by or in themselves; they acquire significance by virtue of their relation to the entire system to which they belong. This theory naturally looks askance at a translation which is an attempt to rescue/ abstract significance from one system of signs and towed it with another such system. But language is an open system. It keeps admitting new signs as well as new significance in its fold. It is also open in the socio-linguistic sense that it allows an individual speaker or writer to use as much of it as he can or likes to do.

In most Third World countries, where a dominating colonial language has acquired a privileged place, such communities do exist. In India, several languages are simultaneously used by language communities as if these languages formed a continuous spectrum of signs and significance. The use of two or more different languages in translation activity cannot be understood properly through studies of foreign-language acquisition. Such theories work around the premise that there inevitably is a chronological gap and an order or a priority of scale in language-learning situations.

J.C. Catford presents a comprehensive statement of theoretical formulation about the linguistics of translation in A Linguistic Theory of Translation, in which he seeks to isolate various linguistic levels of translation. His basic premise is that since translation is a linguistic act any theory of translation must emerge from linguistics: ‘Translation is an operation performed on languages: a process of substituting a text in one language for a text in another; clearly, then, any theory of translation must draw upon a theory of language – a general linguistic theory’

Durkheim and Lévi-Strauss. During the nineteenth century, Europe had distributed various fields of humanistic knowledge into a threefold hierarchy: comparative studies for Europe, Orientalism for the Orient, and anthropology for the rest of the world. In its various phases of development, modern Western linguistics has connections with all these. After the ‘discovery of Sanskrit by Sir William Jones, historical linguistics in Europe depended heavily on Orientalism. For a long time, afterward, linguistics followed the path of comparative philology.

Saussure and Lévi-Strauss, linguistics started treating language with an anthropological curiosity. When linguistics branched off to its monolingual structuralist path, comparative literature still persisted in its faith in the translatability of literary texts. Comparative literature implies that between two related languages there are areas of significance that are shared, just as there may be areas of significance that can never be shared. Translation can be seen as an attempt to bring a given language system in its entirety as close as possible to the areas of significance that it shares with another given language or language. All translations operate within this shared area of significance.

The problems in translation study are, therefore, very much like those in literary history. They are the problems of the relationship between origins and sequentiality. And as in translation study so in literary history, the problem of origin has not been tackled satisfactorily. The point that needs to be made is that probably the question of origins of literary traditions will have to be viewed differently by literary communities with ‘translating consciousness’.

We began our discussion by alluding to the Christian metaphysics that conditions the reception of translation in the Western world.  

Translation and Indian Literature: Some Reflections 

Moments of significant change in the history and civilization of any people can be seen to be characterized by increased activity in the field of translation. The European Renaissance was made possible through the massive translation by Arab Muslims from the work of the Hellenic tradition. In the case of India, though there is no consensus about the originary moment of the Indian Renaissance – whether there was an Indian Renaissance at all in the European sense, and if there was one, whether it happened simultaneously in different languages and literature of India or at different times, there is no disagreement about the fact that there was a kind of general awakening throughout India in the nineteenth century and that was made possible through the extensive translation of European and mainly English works in different languages, not only of literature but also of social sciences, philosophy, ethics, and morality, etc. Translation has a special meaning for the people of north-east India because, in some literature of the northeast, the original moment of literature is the moment of translation too. For example, in the case of Mizo, it did not have a script before the European missionaries devised a script to translate evangelical literature into Mizo. Raymond Schwab (1984) in his book, The Oriental Renaissance, has shown how a new kind of awareness took place and curiosity about the Orient aroused in the West through the translation of Persian texts from Sadi, Rumi, Omar Khayyam, and others on the one hand, and Vedic and Sanskrit texts from India on the other.

Translation into English sometimes acts as an instrument of empowerment of the marginalized sections of society – Dalits,  tribals, women -- giving writers who deal with the struggle of the 

disenfranchised in society greater visibility and creating solidarities across the multi-lingual and multi-cultural Indian society. Foremost among such writers in India is, of course, Mahasweta Devi, who has been well-served by her translators in English. But there are others who have been writing with consistency and commitment for several decades but were not known outside their linguistic borders because of the paucity of translations.

conclusion:-

Indian metaphysics believes in an unhindered migration of the soul from one body to another. Repeated birth is the very substance of all animate creations. When the soul passes from one body to another, it does not lose any of its essential significance. Indian philosophies of the relationship between form and essence, structure and significance are guided by this metaphysics. The soul, or significance, is not subject to the laws of temporality; and therefore significance, even literary significance, is ahistorical in Indian view. Elements of plot, stories, characters, can be used again and again by new generations of writers because Indian literary theory does not lay undue emphasis on originality. If originality were made a criterion of literary excellence, a majority of Indian classics would fail the test. The true test is the writer’s capacity to transform, to translate, to restate, to revitalize the original. And in that sense, Indian literary traditions are essentially traditions of translation.

Work cited:-

Asaduddin, M. "Translation And Indian Literature: Translation And Indian Literature: Some Reflections". Ntm.Org.In, https://www.ntm.org.in/download/ttvol/volume3/ARTICLES/01%20-%20Translation%20and%20Indian%20Literature%20-%20%20Some%20Reflections%20-%20M.%20Asaduddin.pdf. Accessed 18 Mar 2022.

Catford, J. C. A Linguistic Theory of Translation: An Essay in Applied Linguistics. Oxford University Press, 1965.

Devy, Ganesh . "“Translation and literary history: An Indian view”." Post-colonial Translation: Theory and Practice 42.2 (2002): 395-406. web. 18 March 2022.

 

Assignment :- Contemporary Literature

Q-1  Explain the title of the novel ‘The Ministry of Utmost Happiness’. ?

Ans:-

Introduction:- 

Arundhati Roy, a much sought-after Indian English writer keeps her readers glued to her works not because of the fulminations but also because of her capability to capture the complexity of human relationships in the flux of time. Like other contemporary novelists, she too calls her works fiction but they transcend what humans face every day though they pass unnoticed. Roy's keen sense of observation and her grasp over psychological underpinnings and her incisive eye arrests the undercurrents camouflaged under the quotidian human life that remains oblivious to numerous crushed desires trampled under the heavy feet of globalization responding to time and space making all the difference. The present paper endeavors to explore the complexity of human relationships that not only binds man to man but also distance him from his fellow humans. Human life is not as easy as it appears and the demands of every age prompt us to make various compromises despite the fact that 'its humdrum surface conceals at its heart a yolk of egregious violence' sparked by political pundits weaving different patterns of meaning in the ever-changing world order. We are reminded of what Shakespeare says, "The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together: our virtues would be proud if our faults whipped them not, and our crimes would despair if they were not cherished by our virtues."

Arundhati Roy:-

Arundhati Roy was born on November 24, 1961, in Shillong Meghalaya, in Bengal, North Eastern India. Her father was a Hindu tea planter, and her mother was a Christian teacher and social activist. Roy began her education at “Corpus Christi,” a school founded by her mother in AymaNam, India. This school was very informal. As a result, Roy developed a way of thinking and writing that differed from those educated at more formal schools. In other words, Roy learned to think for herself. From the beginning of her education, Roy wanted to be a writer. It was her childhood dream.

She demonstrated her independence at the early age of sixteen, leaving her home to live on her own in a small hut with a tin roof. She survived for seven years by selling empty beer bottles for income. She observed the effects of Christianity, Marxism, Hinduism, and Islam in India, which shaped her attitudes and beliefs. Eventually, she grew tired of this poverty-stricken life and decided to enter the Delhi School of Architecture. There, she met her first husband, Gerard Da Cunha. While they were married the couple decided to put their degrees aside and do something simple. The two embarked to Goa on the coast of India where they made and sold cakes to tourists for seven months. But Arundhati lost interest in this lifestyle, ending their marriage within four years.

Roy found a job with the National Institute of Urban Affairs where she met her future husband commuting on a bicycle, a film director Pradeep Krishen. At the beginning of their relationship, Arundhati received a scholarship to study the restoration of monuments in Italy. She began to realize her unique writing abilities in Italy. Upon her return to India, Roy teamed up with her husband to write a screenplay for a television series. Unfortunately, the idea failed, but she continued to write more screenplays that resulted in several films including In Which Annie Gives It Those Ones and Electric Moon.

Beginning with her critique of the film Bandit Queen, which turned into a lawsuit, her work has been controversial from the start. Following the lawsuit, she began to concentrate on her writing. Eventually, this practice became The God of Small Things. This novel proved to be a success as it was published in nineteen countries and sixteen languages. She was compared to Charles Dickens and William Faulkner for the way she deals with the issues of race, class, and society. She was the first Indian writer to receive the Booker Prize, which is the most prestigious literary award in England.

Roy learned to live and think independently from her experiences. She is determined to do and say what she wants, even if her opinion goes against the social norm. To this day, she continues to voice her opinion as a social activist, writing about current events in essay form. Roy is known for her anti-war activist opinions, and she expresses them bravely in her numerous published works and speeches.

ArundhatiRoy'slatest's novel Ministry of Utmost Happiness(2017)is intricately woven into a web of various characters, who strive and suffer because of their individual choices differentiating them into two groups. The first group of characters belongs to hermaphrodite and creates their own world through their passion for music and live life in their own ways. Another group of characters though not suffering from sexual anomaly also finds themselves misfit in the real world because of myriad problems. Roy's array of multiple characters in this novel doesn't reflect her ideological differences against the so-called idea of oneness, which according to her, is the enemy of this novel. In defense of her second novel, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, she says:

Itis a story that emerges out of an ocean of languages, in which a teeming ecosystem of living creatures

official –language fish, unofficial –dialect mollusks, and flashing shoals of word fish—swim around, some friendly with each other, some openly hostile, and some outright carnivorous. But they are all nourished by what the ocean provides. And all of them, like the people in the Ministry, have no choice but to co-exist, to survive, and to try to understand each other.

Roy's rebellious views may prompt over-enthusiastic readers and critics to put her works into ideological straitjacket exploding anti-establishment views. But such a notion belittles the stature of Roy's realism. The depiction of caste that distances the true merit of individuals merely on the basis of color and class consciousness in her debut novel The God of Small Things itself contradicts as she vehemently opposes the Communist government in the said work. Roy is not a slave to any ideology despite vestiges of various transgressions in her work. While Velutha, transgresses the boundary much as other characters, his party men too transgress the limits of propriety and pooh-pooh the established norms and party ideology while destroying the caravan. Neither the policemen nor comrade Pillai relents while Velutha is smashed and his jaws and bones are broken beyond repair. Roy seems best at portraying the social change that prompts the marginalized to break the love laws and face the consequences. 

The novel under discussion got published after two decades and the veteran writer continued her craft of writing grounded in problems and issues affecting ordinary human lives. We have come a long way and several significant developments have emerged worldwide. But Roy's question remains the same. She carves stories out of several issues that appear less literary.

The Ministry of Utmost Happiness where the narrative flows quite lucidly as everyday and commonplace language. The novel in question, if compared with the first novel appears to disappoint ardent readers of Roy. But as a writer of exemplary mettle, she succeeds in weaving the fragmented yarns comprising fact and fiction with equanimity. The Ministry reminds readers not only of the fulminations of another contemporary Indian novelist Aravind Adiga but also takes us back to the one-time champion of the deprived, Mulk RajAnand. It's not unfair to record that both  Adiga and Arundhati are the extended selves of Anand. These writers seem not to sell their soul to  Mephistopheles but create fiction out of their crusade with the oddities of society with changing times. It is this aspect of realism that surfaces repeatedly inArundhatiRoy'sliterary forte.

Since every writer depicts the age he/she lives in,Arundhati Roy too, is not an exception. But in doing so, she does not sacrifice her dharma of a writer's vision. She is aware of the socio-cultural changes taking place from time to time. Her reactions and rebellious views remind us of a celebrated English poet and critic Matthew Arnold who in his famous essay on “Culture and Anarchy” had described the present state as 'an upper class materialized, middles class vulgarized and lower class brutalized'(Arnold). Arnold had advocated that culture should conceive of true human perfection as a harmonious perfection that could develop all sides of our humanity as well as all sides of our society. Roy, like Arnold, reiterates that the excessive materiality and emergence of individuality could not civilize society. Roy's dig on Capitalism apart from other things can also be heard in Aravind Adiga, who inThe WhiteTiger and Last Man in the tower fictionalizes his protest against the capitalistic forces that alienate humans from each other. Balram Halwai in The White Tiger resorts to violence and later establishes his entrepreneurial venture just to avenge his master's cruelties. Likewise, Yogesh Murthy in Last Man in Tower wages a war to claim his space and right in a capitalistic and consumerist world though he is eliminated by the builders. The act of both the heroes appear rebellious but are not devoid of their growing epistemic strength.

Roy's The Ministry depicts various threads of protests manifested through a web of characters. The story begins with the travails of Anjum alias Aftab, the son of Jahanara and Mulaqat Ali, who fail to hide their son's unusual characteristics. Aftab's mother persuades him to undergo surgery but the son rebels and insists on living amid Hizras 'with painted nails and a wrist full of bangles'  and longs to lift his salwar just a little 'to show off his silver anklets'. As luck would have it, Aftab becomes Anjum a famous Hizra, and a disciple of Ustad Kulsoom Bi of the Delhi Gharana, and later participate in different political activities that upset the entire nation from time to time. Having spent several years with fellow Hizras, Anjum feels disillusioned with the state of affairs at Khwabgah. She yearns to live life like an ordinary person who could send her child off to school with her books and tiffin box. A new ray of hope suddenly emerged one day Jama Masjid where she found an unclaimed and abandoned child whom she decided to adopt and explore some joys in rearing the three-year-old infant. Anjum named her Zainab and proffered all her love to her. The child also responded to the affection of Anjum and started calling the former her mummy and other inmates as auntie. The novelist describes this new fond bond in the following lines: “The mouse absorbed love like sand absorbs the sea.

Besides Anjum other members of the Khwabgah also yearned for viable relationships to carve their identities. In this regard, Zainab provided floodgates of filial emotion in Anjum and bred jealousy in Saeeda who also wanted to possess the growing child. Having smelt ofSaeeda's longings, Anjum got cautious and blamed the former for any untoward incident, if any, in the case of Zainab. Calling her illness a result of Saeeda's black magic, she undertook a pilgrimage to Ajmer Sharif to avert all evils befalling Zainab. Anjum's absence provide Saeed enough opportunities to snuggle with Zainab and substitute Anjum's motherly care and concern to the extent that the child started callingSaeeda her mummy.

Roy as a keen observer of human nature delineates the fact that happiness is completely a feeling of internal realization. While the inmates of the Khwabgah pretended to be happy, they faked happiness. This feigned happiness seemed to offer a sort of retreat to the dreariness and debauchery present in the real world. The novelist makes Khwabgah a mouthpiece to express her angst about the horrendous realities of the real world. The ordinary people albeit surrounded by external problems, the inmates of the Khwabgah face the same internally.

The problems of hermaphrodite outnumber the problems of the common people as they undergo conflicts externally while the former suffers battles of all kinds internally. Khwabgah represents the microcosm of the civilized and normal human world which to the novelist is the macrocosm. Roy, like a neutral observer, expresses the anguish of inmates' identity and also unveils its connections with royal pride. Ustad Kulsoom Bi seems to safeguard the decline of the decreasing regal pride that provided many ancient rulers the safe passage to their tangled relationships.

Kulsoom Bi vouched for the historical significance of the Khwabgah though she cautioned her people against the crumbling of its tradition. She reiterates that such a system still existed and it was not to be written off. The novelist rightly mentions: “What mattered was that it existed. To be present in history even as nothing more than a chuckle, was a universe away from being absent from it, from being written out of it altogether. A chuckle, after all, would become a foothold in the sheer wall of the future”

Human relationships in the novel gain new meanings shrouded in many mysteries not only of the inmates of Khwabgah but also of four university days' friends who in search of their vocation finally separate and rejuvenate at intervals but in different avatars. Their relationships formulate during the rehearsal of a drama but take different shapes because of the volatile political conditions. These relationships are founded on love-hate syndrome spread by a handful of people bent upon creating splits in society just forsome political advantage. Names act as referents to certain faiths and animals become the symbols to ignite racial discrimination. Many characters in the novel change their names justto protectthemselvesfrom the relentless mobocracy, which seemsto have lost all rationale. Roy, a realist, very subtly delineates the merciless murders of innocents in mob frenzy based on baseless allegations. Anjum, a Muslim by caste is shuddered to hear the miserable plight of Dayachand alias Saddam Hussain who had adopted this name simply because of his so-called bravery or butchery against a throng of his avengers. Dayachand had closely watched the brutal murder of his father in the name of cow-slaughter simply because he couldn't bribe the policeman, Sehrawat. It is quite paradoxical that both Dayachand and Sehrawat belong to the same Hindu community which reveres the cow as mother. Roy as a creative writer wants to awaken the sleeping and misguided mankind from the slumber that has sealed their conscience. Her metaphoric ire against the deep-rooted malaise keeps surfacing in the novel to show her authorial intent.

Roy creates stories within a story rooted in a sort of disenchantment with the prevailing order that destabilizes the harmony of fellow beings. What makes the novel exemplary is the novelist's technique of weaving and connecting all other stories into a united structure. The novel apart from depicting the tangled web of human relationships also hints at the split between two communities. This is much in contrast with the inmates of Khwabgah which albeit comprises mostly Muslims yet welcomes people of other communities having different faiths. References to the conflicts between two communities also get mentioned from time to time. The external forces, too, are found taking disadvantage of the splits between two faiths: “The poet-prime minister of the country and several of his senior ministers were members of an old organization that believed India was essentially a Hindu nation and that, just as Pakistan had declared itself the Islamic Republic, India should declare itself a Hindu one”. The lines in context are a dig at the Indian maxim of Vasudhaib Kutumbakam, i.e the entire world is one family. This gets shaken because of the divisive politics of our so-called representatives who perturb the peace of millions of people just to gain access to the corridors of power.

It's quite ironic to note that despite the change of guards at the center nothing changes as such. One community or the other becomes a victim of the years of rebellion simmering in the minds of people. The killing of Mrs. Indira Gandhi, the riot in Gujarat, The Kashmir problem are some such issues that require due attention. But the craze for power keeps the majority of political parties agog with dilly-dallying, sometimes deviating the common masses in the glitter-glitter of globalization and yet at other times soothing their bruises in the name of sympathy. This prompts many idealists to undertake fast unto death, protesting against parochialism on the one hand and red-tapism, on the other. The real issues most often are relegated to the margins.

The novelist is not oblivious to the fact of various relationships which fade because of the political instability. The government policies seem to favor the elite masses and show disregard to the common masses. People in power most often get shielded at the cost of the cold-blooded murder of innocents merely because of the fault of a handful of people or their faith. The craze for a consumerist culture pushes the nativity ode into oblivion and the sprawling cities give everyone the illusion of a shining country where pedestrians find little space either to relax or to revive their lost energies. In such a situation people like Dr.Azad Bhartiya, a triple M.A in Hindi, Urdu, and History undertakes a strike for eleven years. But ironically, this person is kept under surveillance mostly. He has become a crusader and is ostracized by everyone yet what he says has ample substance: “Capitalism is like poisoned honey. People swarm to it like bees. I don't go to it. For this reason, I have been put under twenty-four hours' surveillance. I am under twenty-four hours' remote control electronic surveillance by the American government”

The novel also unfolds the tangled web of Tilo's life which is full of mystery. A foster child of a Christian mother, Tilottama, one of Delhi University's Architecture students gets attracted towards Musa though they take to their professions and get separated. This provides Biplab the chance to try his luck. Attracted initially by Tilo's charm, he is at war with himself thinking what disarmed him towards Tilo and says: “It's hard for me to describe someone who has been imprinted on me, on my souls, like a stamp or a seal of some sort for so many years. I see her as I see a limb of mine –a hand, or afoot. But Tilo negates the question of marriage with anybody and hence this charm comes to an end. Biplab, alias Garson, gets disappointed and his infatuation for Tilo also comes to an end.

Tilo, on the other hand, kept herself tied constantly to Musa and later married him. Musa's yearning for Kashmir's freedom takes him to the disturbing valley where he stealthily starts a family but loses his wife and daughter in police firing. He goes into hiding yet continues to be associated with Tilo. Soon, people come to know about his death. It is later revealed that Musa had a dubious identity and he created the fake news of his death. The insurgency in Kashmir effects and distances them yet they maintain a secret bond. Tilo is trapped in Kashmir but because of Naga, she is rescued in Delhi where she marries him.

Roy as a novelist is not confined merely to literary creativity. As discussed earlier, her first novel The God of Small Things also is not devoid of her political activism. This is amply justified in her later writings grounded more in her poetics of protest than of sheer literary leanings. It is pertinent to quote an observation of Geoffrey Ken, who in his article “Tuning (In or Out) the Big Voice of Arundhati Roy following the God of small things,” .

Roy's persistent general focus has been and remains the exercise of power; within this domain, her attention has passed through several phases from conflict between state or national government agencies and local within India to Indian development of nuclear weapons and Indo-Pak conflicts to the United' response to 9/11, and most recently to theWar onTerrorwhatshe regards as the militaristic Establishment of the American Empire.

Tilo's marriage with Naga, the son of Ambassador Hariharan, and their luxurious life loses its sheen shortly. Out of exhaustion, Tilo leaves Naga as the former wanted 'an insular independence'. She was tired of 'living a life that wasn't really hers at an address she oughtn't to be at'. While Naga wanted to shine as a 'celebrity', Tilo wanted to sink into oblivion. When Naga was packing Tilo's things to be put into a carton, he was wonderstruck by Mariam Ipe's medical reports that disclosed the mother-daughter relationship. He later comes to discover that Tilo's individuality and her unusual quirkiness were the results of her mother's influence on her. He failed to notice that distance from her mother had an adverse effect on Tilo but Naga's realization was too late. The lack of companionship not only forced her to live in a rented house but also to kidnap an unclaimed child at Jantar Mantar. But this also didn't last long as the police started searching for the kidnapper and the suspicion lay on Tilo. The mother of the unclaimed child had reported to the police who suspected Tilo's whereabouts. Tilo was forced to seek shelterin Jannat Guest House established byAnjumand others.

What tangles human relations further in the novel is the mystery behind the kidnapped child later named MissJebeen, the second. The real mother of the child, Revathy sends a letter to Dr.Azad stating her miserable plight and the loathing relationship with the child. She admits with disdain that the child was illegally begotten because the latter was conceived after her rape by police forces. Revathy had joined the Communist party just to avenge her father's atrocities on her mother. But because of her rebellious ways, she was arrested by several policemen who had raped her one after another. She got conceived and gave birth to the accursed child in the forest. She detested the child and named her Udaya, who according to her, had river as mother and forest as a father. The desertion of the child at Jantar Mantar was the result both of Revathy's hatred of her and also of the hope that some good soul would take care of the child.

Friendship and love as the foundations of every human relationship seem to fritter away because of everyone's professional exigency. In this regard Tilo of the Delhi University friends' group keeps all of them tied to one another because of her mysterious charm in mysterious ways. She initially attracts Garson alias Biplab and Naga but these male members though not truly friends, maintain a sort of adversarial relationship. The competing forces of friendship and love distance them both personally and professionally making them rivals to each other. Musa's untimelyexitfromTilo'slife allows Nagy to show advances to her and later their marriage brings some fresh showers though short-lived. While Garson seethes in his lost longings for Tilo, his marriage with Chitra also suffers a breakdown even after so many years. His desertion by his wife and daughters allows some room for his unfulfilled romantic leanings towards Tilo. Years after he derives a faint satisfaction in renting out his apartment to Tilo, the woman who in his 'weak, wavering way', he 'will never stop loving.

Tilo finally seeks refuge in Jannat Guest House where she finds peace in the company of Anjum,  Saddam, Zainab, and Saeeda who are also living borrowed lives. Musa comes out of his hiding in search of Tilo who had preserved his recoveries safely. He finally unites with Tilo and also makes peace with Biplab alias Garson. Biplab also realizes the futility of all his years working in the Bureau as an intelligence officer bent upon toeing the right course of action though in the wrong manner just for a little patch of land. His disillusionment with the state of affairs in Kashmir gives an eye-opener to Whatman has made of man.

The natural urge of humans to transgress the sacrosanct boundaries charted out in past hangs like an Albatross around our necks though we may boast of living in a globalized world. It goes without saying that Indian masses have demystified inter-racial marriages, live-in-relationships, and other issues of sexuality once considered illicit. The depiction of such themes and their deliberations in academia are no more considered profane. Hence, it is the guts, grit, and gumption of Arundhati Roy, who as a writer of realist fiction, doesn't dodge her responsibility but instead reiterates her vision and imagination of tomorrow.

HETEROTOPIC SPACES AS THE SPACE OF THE ‘OTHER’ IN ARUNDHATI ROY’S THE 

MINISTRY OF UTMOST HAPPINESS

Conclusion:-

Thus, Arundhati Roy's novel The Ministry of Utmost Happiness weaves a story that depicts the gaps and ruptures but finally untangles the web of human relationships by reuniting the characters, who despite various grievances against one another make peace. There are some characters who change their names and identities but finally re-surface and reassess themselves for bringing harmony. In this regard, Anjum is overjoyed to see her adopted daughter Zainab tying the knot with Saddam who gets blessed to pay the last rites to his father murdered in cold blood. Musa gets united with Tilo while Biplab mends his fences with Musa. Biplab's idea of starting a music channel with Naga emerges out of his will to harmonize everyone lost on the sands of time. The shattered story of the novel gets dovetailed with the unifying forces of love.

Arundhati Roy thus employs the heterotopias of deviation to console and settle the traumatic psyche of her gendered subalterns. Heterotopia is a widely accepted concept in literature. Heterotopic spaces in the literature provide the author ample space to settle the traumatized psyche of the protagonists. The graveyard and Khwabagh provide Anjum a place to discover her ‘self’. She likes deep-rooted tree that shelters the human and non-human species. Heterotopic spaces redefine their roles and status. They no longer belong to the state of ‘other’ that the patriarchal society has doomed them. These spaces help them to segregate and build their own world against the hegemonic societal norms.

Work cited:-

Joseph, Sherine Allena, and Dr. Ann Thomas. "ISSN 2395-2636 (Print) | Research Journal Of English Language And Literature | The ISSN Portal". Portal.Issn.Org, 2020, https://portal.issn.org/resource/ISSN/2395-2636. Accessed 17 Mar 2022.

Mishra, Binod. "Arundhati Roy's The Ministry of Utmost Happiness: Exploring Human Relationships through Changing Socio-Cultural Lens." Researchgate (2020). web. 18 March 2022. <https://www.researchgate.net/publication/338502746_Arundhati_Roy's_The_Ministry_of_Utmost_Happiness_Exploring_Human_Relationships_through_Changing_Socio-Cultural_Lens>. 

Roy, Arundhati. "Arundhati Roy". Conservancy.Umn.Edu, 2009, https://conservancy.umn.edu/bitstream/handle/11299/166316/Roy,%20Arundhati.pdf?sequence=1. Accessed 18 Mar 2022.

Unit 1 :- Comparative Indian Literature

Unit 1:

1) Sisir Kumar Das, ‘Why Comparative Indian Literature? (ed. Dev and Das,1989) 

1) Abstract:-

At the beginning of the century, some of the scholars tried upon the idea of Indian Literature emphasizing the unity of themes. and forms and attitudes between the different kinds of literature produced in different Indian languages during the last three thousand years. It discovers the essential threads of unity in two ways. Coming back to the nature of Comparative Literature as taught in India, the epigraph by Sisir Kumar Das states the pressing concern of relationships that exist between Indian literature. It is also the comparatist's need to move away from narrow geographical confines and move towards how literature across the subcontinent are to be understood in their totality.

2) Key Arguments:- 

For a country like India which has a history of literary traditions oscillating between script and orature, new methods of teaching and reading were to be envisioned. While dealing with the formal elements that go into the making of any text in India-which shares a similarity with African situations in terms of oral, written, and indigenous sources identification of these methods as contours that aid in the reading of literature would apply. When speaking of kinds of literature in the plural, the succeeding questions point towards the direction in which these pieces of literature tend to inhabit a geopolitical location, otherwise termed a country, which is demarcated by boundaries, social, religious, and linguistic. When reading any text, the value-loaded term 'national', 'international', and 'indigenous' prop up any student pursuing literature.

Subdivisions, generic differences may occur, but identifying these differences and reading them as contours, instead of straight lines is what Comparative Literature sets out to engage with. While questioning the idea of an 'Indian literature' vis-à-vis 'Indian literature', he highlights the notions one attaches to the word 'Indian' which could in itself be a pluralistic outlook of life, wherein the concept of Indian literature as inherently comparative may be considered.

According to Das, the necessity of evolving a framework when two distinct languages/cultures are encountered is inevitable. Das states in this regard: Arabic, Japanese with Chinese, and Indians with the literature of Europe.

All these contacts have resulted in certain changes, at times marginal, and at times quite profound and pervasive, in the literary activities of the people involved, and have necessitated an enlargement of critical perspectives (S. K. Das 18).

Das states how Warren Hastings, the first governor-general of India, in his introduction of Charles Wilkin's translation of Gita (1785), advocated for a comparative study of the Gita and great European literature.

I should not fear' he wrote, to place, in opposition to the best French version of the most admired passages of Iliad or Odyssey, or the 1st and 6th books of our own Milton, highly as I venerate the latter, the English translation of the Mahabharata (S. K. Das 22).

Translation brought world-renown to a number of regional writers. In -The Task of the Translator, Walter Benjamin argues that translation does not conceal the original, but allows it to shine through, for translation effectively ensures the survival of a text (Bassnett 180).

3) Main Analysis:-

For a country like India which has a history of literary traditions oscillating between script and orature, new methods of teaching and reading were to be envisioned. While dealing with the formal elements that go into the making of any text in India-which shares a similarity with African situations in terms of oral, written, and indigenous sources (Thiong'o 1993)- identification of these methods as contours that aid in the reading of literature would apply.

When speaking of literature in the plural, the succeeding questions point towards the direction in which this literature tends to inhabit a geopolitical location, otherwise termed a country, which is demarcated by boundaries, social, religious, and linguistic.

When reading any text, the value-loaded term 'national', 'international', and 'indigenous' prop up any student pursuing literature. Das ascertains how Indian scholars in the ancient period did not endeavor to explore such connections between the two languages. Das has a clear insight into this phenomenon that may be owing to myopic tendencies and the lack of a framework to place literature from two linguistic roots. Das forgets to mention that were no appropriate frameworks to study identity politics that went beyond the frontiers of language in a country strongly informed by caste hierarchies, the subjugation of women, and the suppression of the LGBT. And even when literature shifted from nation bases to identity bases it happened outside the discipline of comparative literature.

4) Conclusion:-

In his article, "Comparative Literature in India," Amiya Dev bases his discussion on the fact that India has many languages and literature thus representing an a priori situation and conditions of diversity. He, therefore, argues that to speak of Indian literature in the singular is problematic. Nonetheless, Dev also observes that to speak of Indian literature in the plural is equally problematic. Such a characterization, he urges, either overlooks or obscures manifest interrelations and affinities.

His article compares the unity and the diversity thesis and identifies the relationship between Indian commonality and differences as the prime site of comparative literature in India. He surveys the current scholarly and intellectual positions on unity and diversity and looks into the post-structuralist doubt of homogenization of differences in the name of unity.

Dev also examines the search for common denominators and a possible pattern of togetherness and Dev underlines location and located inter-Indian reception as an aspect of inter literariness.

It is t/here Dev perceives Indian literature, that is, not as a fixed or determinate entity but as an ongoing and inter literary process: Indian language and literature ever in the re/making.

2) Amiya Dev, "Comparative Literature in India." CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture 2.4 (2000) :-

1) Abstract:-

The essay gives an overview of the trajectory of Comparative Literature in India, focusing primarily on the department at Jadavpur University, where it began and to some extent the department of Modern Indian Languages and Literary Studies in the University of Delhi, where it later had a new beginning in its engagement with Indian literature.

The department at Jadavpur began with the legacy of Rabindranath Tagore's speech on World Literature and with a modern poet-translator as its founder.

While British legacies in the study of literature were evident in the early years, there were also subtle efforts towards a decolonizing process and an overall attempt to enhance and nurture creativity. Gradually Indian literature began to receive prominence along with literature from the Southern part of the globe. Paradigms of approaches in comparative literary studies also shifted from influence and analogy studies to cross-cultural literary relations, to the focus on reception and transformation. In the last few years, Comparative Literature has taken on new perspectives, engaging with different areas of culture and knowledge, particularly those related to marginalized spaces, along with the focus on recovering new areas of non-hierarchical literary relations.

2) Key Arguments:- 

Tagore used the word 'visvasahitya" (world literature), and stated that the word was generally termed 'comparative literature". His idea of 'visvasahitya" was complex, marked by a sense of a community of artists as workers building together an edifice, that of world literature. The notion of literature again was deeply embedded on human relationships. and hence the aesthetic sense was linked with the sense of the human.

Bose, also well-known for his translations of Baudelaire, Hoelderlin, and Kalidasa, wrote in his preface to the translation of Les Fleurs du Mal (The Flowers of Evil) that his intention in turning to French poetry was to move away from the literature of the British, the colonial masters, while in his introduction to the translation of Kalidasa's Meghdutam, he wrote that it was essential to bring to life the literature of ancient times in a particular tradition in order to make it a part of the contemporary.

Comparatists dealing with Indian literature also necessarily had to look at the interplay between the mainstream and the popular, the elite and the marginalized and also to some extent foreground intermedial perspectives as different forms existed together in a composite manner, particularly in earlier periods in which textual and performative traditions existed simultaneously.

The department continues to develop teaching material on various aspects of Indian literature from a comparative perspective, beginning from language origins, manuscript cultures, performative traditions along with painting, sculpture, and architecture, the history of print culture, and questions related to modernity. That Comparative Literature studies necessarily had to be interdisciplinary was highlighted by the pedagogy practiced in the department.

T.S. Satyanath developed the theory of a script-centric, body-centric, and phono-centric study of texts in the medieval period leading a number of researchers in the department to look for continuities and interventions in the tradition that would again lead to pluralist epistemologies in the study of Indian literature and culture.

In 1986 a new full-fledged department of Comparative Literature was established at Veer Narmad South Gujarat University, Surat, where the focus was on Indian literature in Western India

Also in 1999 a department of Dravidian Comparative Literature and Philosophy was established in Dravidian University, Kuppam. It must also be mentioned that comparative poetics, a core area of comparative literature studies and dissertations, particularly in the South, was taken up as a central area of research by the Visvanatha Kaviraja Institute of Comparative Literature and Aesthetics in Orissa.

During this period two national associations of Comparative Literature came into being one at Jadavpur called Indian Comparative Literature Association and the other in Delhi named Comparative Indian Literature Association.

The two merged in 1992 and the Comparative Literature Association of India was formed, which today has more than a thousand members in the early years of the Association, a large number of creative writers participated in its conferences along with academics and researchers, each enriching the horizon of vision of the other.

3) Main Analysis:-

Again while Shelley and Byron were often critiqued, the former for having introduced softness and sentimentality to Bengali poetry, they were also often praised for upholding human rights and liberty in contrast to the imperialist poetry of Kipling. Contemporary political needs then were linked with literary values and this explained the contradictory tensions often found in the reception of romanticism in Bengal. It must be mentioned that Shelley, the poet of revolt, began to have a very positive reception when the independence movement gathered momentum.

In another context, a particular question that gained prominence was whether Shakespeare was imposed on Indian literature, and comparatists showed, as did Sisir Kumar Das, that there were different Shakespeares. Shakespeare's texts might have been imposed in the classroom, but the playwright had a rich and varied reception in the world of theatre.

From reception studies, the focus gradually turned to cross-cultural reception where reciprocity and exchange among cultures were studied. For example, one tried to study the Romantic Movement from a larger perspective, to unravel its many layers as it traveled between countries, particularly between Europe and India. The translation of several texts from Sanskrit into German played a role in the emergence of the Romantic movement and then in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries Romanticism came back to India, though in different shades.

Reception studies both along vertical and horizontal lines formed the next major area of focus - one studied for instance, elements of ancient and medieval literature in modern texts and also inter and intraliterary relations foregrounding impact and responses.

While one studied Vedic, Upanishadic, Buddhist and Jaina elements in modern texts, one also looked at clusters of sermons by Buddha. Mahavira and Nanak, at qissas and katha ballads across the country, the early novels in different Indian literatures, and then the impact of Eastern literature and thought on Western literature and vice versa.

With the introduction of the semester system the division was abandoned and certain other courses of a more general nature such as Cross-cultural Literary Transactions, where Rudyard Kipling's Kim and Rabindranath Tagore's Gora, were taken up, or sometimes in courses entitled Literary Transactions one looked more precisely at the tradition of Reason and Rationalism in European and Indian literatures of the eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries

The department of English and Comparative Literary Studies at Saurashtra University, Rajkot, took up the theme of Indian Renaissance and translated several Indian authors into English, studied early travelogues from Western India to England and in general published collections of theoretical discourse from the nineteenth century.

The Department of Assamese in Dibrugarh University received the grant and published a number of books related to translations, collections of rare texts and documentation of folk forms.

The department of Comparative Literature at Jadavpur University also received assistance to pursue research in four major areas, East-West Literary Relations, Indian Literature, Translation Studies and Third World Literature. Incidentally, the department had in Manabendra Bandyopadhyay, an avid translator who translated texts from many so-called "third-world countries.

From a very different perspective it was felt that stories poems, songs and performances from oral traditions that were found in most parts of the country had their own knowledge systems that could provide valuable and sustainable alternatives to contemporary urban modes of life and living and in several cases also reveal certain cultural dynamics and value systems that were constantly replenishing mainstream expressive traditions.

The second area in the Centre for Advanced Studies was the interface between literatures of India and its neighbouring countries. The first preliminary research in this area led to links that suggested continuity and a constant series of interactions between and among Asian cultures and communities since ancient times and the urgent need for work in this area in order to enter into meaningful dialogue with one another in the Asian context and to uncover different pathways of creative communications. Efforts towards this end led to an International Conference on South-South dialogues with a large number of participants from Asian and European countries. An anthology of critical essays on tracing socio-cultural and literary transactions between India and Southeast Asia was published.

 Among the projects planned under the inter-Asian series was one on travelogues from Bengal to Asian countries and here an annotated bibliography that could provide an initial foundation for the study of inter-literary relations was published. A second project involved working on the image of Burma in Bengali and Oriya literature in late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Travel narratives and diaries, newspaper articles from old periodicals, excerpts from literature and pictorial images of Burmese people in the Indian press were compiled.

4) Conclusion:-

It must be mentioned at this point that Comparative Literature in the country the 21st century engaged with two other related fields of study, one was Translation Studies and the other Cultural Studies.Translation Studies cover different areas of interliterary studies. Histories of translation may be used to map literary relations while analysis of acts of translation leads to the understanding of important characteristics of both the source and the target literary and cultural systems.As for Cultural Studies, Comparative Literature had always engaged with different aspects of Cultural Studies, the most prominent being literature and its relation with the different arts.

Cultural Studies may also be a key component in different kinds of interdisciplinary courses within the discipline. For instance, a course in Delhi University takes up the theme of city and village in Indian literature and goes into representations of human habitat systems and ecology in literature. looks for concepts and terms for such settlements, goes into archaeological evidences and the accounts of travellers from Greece, China, Persia and Portugal to demonstrate the differences that exist at levels of perception and ideological positions.

It is evident that Comparative Literature in the country today has multifaceted goals and visions in accordance with historical needs, both local and planetary,

As in the case of humanities and literary studies, the discipline too is engaged with issues that would lead to the enhancement of civilizational gestures, against forces that are divisive and that constantly reduce the potentials of human beings. In doing so it is engaged in discovering new links and lines of non-hierarchical connectivity, of what Kumkum Sangari in a recent article called "co-construction", a process anchored in "subtle and complex histories of translation, circulation and extraction (Sangari 50).

And comparatists work with the knowledge that a lot remains to be done and that the task of the construction of literary histories, in terms of literary relations among neighbouring regions, and of larger wholes, one of the primary tasks of Comparative Literature today has perhaps yet to begin. In all its endeavours, however, the primary aim of some of the early architects of the discipline nurture and foster creativity continues as a subterranean force.

3) Subha Chakraborty Dasgupta, “Comparative Literature in India: An Overview of its History”, Comparative Literature & World Literature, Volume 1 Number 1 Spring 2016

1) Abstract :-

Professed autonomy of national literatures, by shifting the theoretical focus towards plurality and dynamism. We imagine that the minimum requisite of a comparative study is to start with at least two literatures. But as Das has reminded us, Comparative Literature is a method, not an object of study - hence we are interested in how to study literature.In his article, "Comparative Literature in India," Amiya Dev bases his discussion on the fact that India has many languages and literatures thus representing an a priori situation and conditions of diversity.

2) Key Arguments :-

Richard Pierre mentioned that In studying comparative literature, you will consider literature from different genres,locations, and time periods simultaneously. Beyond that, comparative literature thinks across different disciplines, like literature and music on literature and anthropology. Finally, comparative literature is also the de facto home of literary theory; some consider the field to be concerned with the general makeup of literature itself, or literariness.

Choudhari said, “Our culture has taught us to ask questions and our literature is a compilation of all answers thus found. It is our culture to learn by asking questions as having discussions and arguments are part of upbringing.” (the times of india , February 15 , 2019)

3) Main Analysis :-

Is Indian literature, in the singular, a valid category, or are we rather to speak of Indian literatures in the plural Eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Western  Indologists were not interested in this question, for Indian literature to them was mainly Sanskrit, extended at most to Pâli and Prakrit. For example, with all his admiration for Sakuntala, William Jones was oblivious of literatures in modern Indian languages. Non-Indian Indianists today, too,  are more often than not uninterested in the question. Although they do not consider Sanskrit-Pâli- Prakrit as "the" only literature of India, these scholars are still single literature specialists. Similarly, literary histories written in India by Indian scholars also focused and still focus on a single literature.

Gurbhagat Singh who has  been discussing the notion of "differential multilogue" . He does not accept the idea of  Indian literature as such but opts for the designation of literatures produced in India. Further, he rejects the notion of Indian literature because the notion as such includes and promotes a nationalist identity

Aijaz Ahmad's In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures. Ahmad describes the construct of a "syndicated" Indian literature that suggests an aggregate and  unsatisfactory categorization of Indian literature . Ahmad also rules out the often argued analogy of Indian literature with that of European literature by arguing that the notion of "European literature" is at best an umbrella designation and at worst a pedagogical imposition while Indian literature is classifiable and categorizable.

4) Conclusion :-

Amiya Dev suggests that we should first look at ourselves and try to understand our own situations as thoroughly as possible. Let us first give full shape to our own comparative literatures and then we will formulate a comparative literature of diversity in general.

Assignment :- African Literature

 Q-1 Wole Soyinka depicts a dystopian past as well as a dystopian present and future. Explain?

Ans:-

Introduction:-

Although very few critics have ventured to analyze Wole Soyinka's A Dance of the Forests owing to its apparent difficulty, those who have attempted simply see it as a metaphorical commentary of the sociopolitical situation in Nigeria. While their observations might be valid, taking into cognizance that the play was written in 1960 as part of the celebration of Nigeria's independence, the problem with such readings is that it does not take into account the structure of the play in which Soyinka traces the past to the present to forecast a dystopian future. While a utopic past and a dystopic present are often enacted as a narrative gesture that concomitantly leads to a utopian future, the reverse is the case in this play. What Wole Soyinka depicts is a dystopian past as well as a dystopian present and future. Therefore, my proposition in this paper is that more than being a work of post-independence disillusionment, Soyinka's A Dance of the Forests links the hopeless past with the fruitless present to project a bleak future. In this way, my point of departure in this essay is that while the writing of the play has been motivated by the betrayal of the common trust and hope as it relates to the Nigerian socio-political climate, the message of the play has a universal underpinning. In this respect, Soyinka insists that the atrocities that have so often characterized human interactions generally are unavoidable. Yet, by portraying the unavoidability of these human atrocities, Soyinka invariably quests for futurity that is utopian. My conclusion, therefore, is that within the aesthetic trajectory of Soyinka, the boundary between dystopian and utopian visions is not clear-cut: they are one and the same.

Wole Soyinka:-

Wole Soyinka, in full Akinwande Olu Wole Soyinka, was born on July 13, 1934, in Abeokuta, Nigeria. A member of the Yoruba people, Soyinka attended Government College and University College in Ibadan before graduating in 1958 with a degree in English from the University of Leeds in England. Upon his return to Nigeria, he founded an acting company and wrote his first important play, A Dance of the Forests, for the Nigerian independence celebrations. The play satirizes the fledgling nation by stripping it of romantic legend and by showing that the present is no more a golden age than was the past.

He wrote several plays in a lighter vein, making fun of pompous, westernized schoolteachers in The Lion and the Jewel and mocking the clever preachers of upstart prayer-churches who grow fat on the credulity of their parishioners in The Trials of Brother Jero and Jero’s Metamorphosis. But his more serious plays, such as The Strong Breed, Kongi’s Harvest, and even the parody KingBaabu, reveal his disregard for African authoritarian leadership and his disillusionment with Nigerian society as a whole. Other notable plays include Madmen and Specialists, Death and the King’s Horseman, and The Beatification of Area Boy. In these and Soyinka’s other dramas, western elements are skillfully fused with the subject matter and dramatic techniques deeply rooted in Yoruba folklore and religion. Symbolism, flashback, and ingenious plotting contribute to a rich dramatic structure. His best works exhibit humor and fine poetic style as well as a gift for irony and satire and for accurately matching the language of his complex characters to their social position and moral qualities.

From 1960 to 1964, Soyinka was co-editor of Black Orpheus, an important literary journal. From 1960 onward, he taught literature and drama and headed theatre groups at various Nigerian universities, including those of Ibadan, Ife, and Lagos. Soyinka was the first black African to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1986. After winning the Nobel Prize, Soyinka also was sought after as a lecturer, and many of his lectures were published notably the Reith Lectures of 2004, as Climate of Fear. Though he considered himself primarily a playwright, Soyinka also wrote novels The Interpreters and Season of Anomy and several volumes of poetry. The latter include Idanre, and Other Poems and Poems from Prison, published together as Early Poems; Mandela’s Earth and Other Poems and Samarkand and Other Markets I Have Known.

Wole Soyinka’s A Dance of the Forests is a complex play in which there is a “gathering of the tribes” in a festivity in which the living asks their gods to invite some of their illustrious ancestors. But instead of legendary ancestors, Forest Father/Head the supreme divinity in Soyinka’s fictionalized world, sends the living “two spirits of the restless dead” referred to in the play as Dead Man and Dead Woman. Owing to the apparent difficulty of the play, very few critics have ventured to analyze it. Derek Wright points to the difficulty and elusiveness of the play when he states that it is “the most uncentered of works, there is no discernible main character or plotline, and critics have been at a loss to say what kind of play it is or if it is a play at all and not a pageant, carnival or festival” . Similarly, Mathew Wilson describes the play as a “baffled incomprehension” and “a resistant text that resists assimilation”

Soyinka stretches the expressionistic mode of dramaturgy beyond its normative form in this play, most critics have avoided it in their hermeneutic exercises. A Dance of the Forests denounces different forms of pollution such as deforestation, earth erosion due to trees cut, topsoil, air and water contamination by petrol fumes and other waste Consequently, forest inhabitants are not happy; they send the living two restless dead instead of glorious ancestors for the gathering of the tribes. This situational irony poisons the feast where different nations ought to celebrate their achievements. Since the forest may stand for nature, its rebuke to humans may stand for climate change that affects both humans and non-humans.

The issue even becomes more complicated because those who have attempted to analyze it simply regard it as a metaphorical commentary of the socio-political situation in Nigeria. One such critic is James Gibbs, who is a book review of the play, opines that “Nigeria up to and during 1960  the immediate context of the play”. Also, Benedict Mobayode Ibitokun describes the play as “a clean record of and report on the country’s behavioral patterns”. Whereas he applied some concepts in existential psychoanalysis in his reading of the play, he nevertheless concentrated on what he termed “the endemic slur”  of the socio-political situation in Nigeria. In the case of Biodun Jeyifo, though he concentrates on what he terms the “ritual problematic” of the play, he still regards it as an “appropriate response to the dilemmas of post-independence, postcolonial Africa”. Similarly, in consonance with the suggestion of Eldred Jones, most critics have interpreted “the struggle of Esuhoro and Ogun for the half-child” at the end of the play as “a struggle for the life, the soul of the then newly independent nation of Nigeria” 

Whilst their interpretations of the play being one of post-independence disillusionment might be valid, taking into cognizance that the play was written in 1960 as part of the celebration of Nigeria’s independence, the problem with such readings is that it does not take into account the structure of the play in which Soyinka traces the past to the present to forecast a dystopian future. According to Simon Gikandi, creative works of the African post-independence disillusionment are not works “of how colonialism ruined Africa, but of how African leaders aborted the great hopes and expectations of indigenous rule. This was literature bristling with indignation and dripping with venom and vitriol”. Similarly, Nair Supriya appears to suggest that “the phrase ‘Great Expectations and the Mourning After’ aptly sums up the narrative trajectory of post-independence malaise”. While Soyinka’s play under consideration can then be described as a work of post-independence disillusionment since it is concerned with the configuration of things in Nigeria when it was written in 1960, it also transcends such categorization with its foundational structure which compares the present with the past to telescope the future. In other words, it is reductive to see Soyinka’s play as just a work of post-independence disillusionment because it is not just concerned with criticizing the status quo, but also concerned with the criticism of the past. In this context, Soyinka’s characters are not so many victims of the present configuration of their society as they are of their past actions.

Wole Soyinka’s dystopian/utopian vision in A Dance of the Forests:-

The structure of a play is an important ingredient in the determination of the artistic vision of a playwright. But the structure to which I refer in this paper is not the conventional dramatic structure of exposition, complication, climax, anti-climax, and denouement that is the paraphernalia of plays in general; but the plot structure that is distinctive to individual plays or artistic visions. Booker identifies this distinctive plot structure, especially as it pertains to dystopian/utopian artistic vision when he avers that “Utopia and dystopia are very much part of the same project in that both describe the other world, spatially and/or temporally removed from that of the author and/or intended readership”. Therefore, using faraway imagined places is a feature of utopic and dystopic imagination. The only difference perhaps is that whereas in a dystopian landscape the faraway imagined place is in the past, in a utopian poetic space it is in the past as well as in the future. Michelle Erica Green describes Butler’s works as “dystopian because she insists on confronting problems that have occurred so often in human communities”. Those dystopian works confronting “problems that have occurred so often in human communities” imply that it is a work that is not just concerned with human atrocities in the present but also in the past. It is this that figures in Soyinka’s play under consideration. The play takes its readers to “another world” that is far removed and unfamiliar. Arguably, among Soyinka’s plays, it is A Dance of the Forests that takes its readers/or audience to a distant past to the Court of Mata Kharibu about eight centuries earlier. While Biodun Jeyifo sees the structure of the play as being “formalistically extravagant” and as not being controlled as well as polished, the point to be noted is the geographical elusiveness of Soyinka’s setting of a distant past in this play hints at its vision of utopianism or dystopian.

However, while a utopian past and dystopian present are often enacted as a narrative gesture that concomitantly leads to futurity that is utopian, the reverse is the case in this play. What Wole Soyinka depicts is a dystopian past as well as a dystopian present and future. In this way, Soyinka rejects négritude’s glorification and idealization of the African past. Based on this negative reconstruction of the African past, which is antithetical to its glorification in the works of négritude writers, Soyinka insists, to borrow the words of Wendy Brown, that there is no “lost way of life and a lost course of pursuits”. That Soyinka rejects négritude’s idealization of the African past is significant within the aesthetics of utopianism. This is so because in a work that quest for a utopian future, the past must be reconstructed in such a way that the living seeks to recapture the past in the future. But as Anyokwu observes “Soyinka” in this play “dramatizes man’s proclivity to selectively ‘edit’ his past, turn a blind eye to warts and welts of his ignoble past and choose to highlight the halcyon days instead”.

Likewise, according to Glenn A. Odom, what is revealed in this play of Soyinka is that the future will continue to repeat the present”, and one might add “and the past.” So while the “Jews thirsted for the lost kingdom of Isreal; the English, for the Saxon Golden Age; and the Chinese, for the Taoist Age of Perfect Virtue”, what Soyinka posits with his poetic ruminations is that there is nothing glorious in the African past, and nothing euphoric about the present. For instance, the atrocities committed by the actors in the Court of Mata Kharibu eight centuries earlier are repeated by their reincarnated selves under different circumstances in the present world.

Adenebi in his prior existence, eight hundred years ago, was the Court Historian to Mata Kharibu, and he argues that “War is the only consistency that past ages afford us”, thereby facilitating the death of many soldiers in a “senseless war” that he encouraged; and at present, he is the corrupt Council Orator responsible for the death of 65 passengers on a lorry he had licensed to carry passengers beyond its stipulated capacity. Another major character is Rola/Madam Tortoise who in her previous world was a whore, and Mata Kharibu’s wife responsible for the death of Dead Man and Dead Woman. She is in fact likened to Helen of Troy since it is her prostitution that caused the war, which Adenebi described as “divine carnage”. And in her present world, she is still a prostitute responsible for the demise of her two lovers. Also, there is Demoke, the carver who at present killed his apprentice out of envy; and who in his former existence as Court poet to Mata Kharibu tacitly supported bloodshed by not speaking against the waging of a senseless war.

Likewise, Wiegman sees the apocalyptic or dystopic work “which writes the present as the failure of the future”. This is what obtains in A Dance of the Forests in which Soyinka stretches Wiegman’s an explanation/or observation by writing the past and the present as the failure of the future. This is evident, as already noted, from the past and present violent actions of Soyinka’s major characters. This is a play therefore in which the past and the present conflate in a metonymic reenactment of violence and bloodshed. Soyinka traces the history of a hopeless past and compares it with a defective present to forecast a bleak future. It is exactly as noted by Jane Wilkinson that the play invites its audience “to face past and future without any romantic illusions”. In this regard, my argument in this paper is that more than being a work of post-independence disillusionment, Soyinka’s A Dance of the Forests enacts a dystopian vision of humanity in general and the African continent in particular. Sunday O. Anozie says as much when he observes that as much as the play is African, “it is also universal in its application”

The dystopian landscape of the play is further made definite and unambiguous by the storyline in which there is a “gathering of the tribes” in a festivity in which the living asks their gods to invite some of their illustrious ancestors. These illustrious ancestors are supposed to be reminders of a magnificent past, which concomitantly is a telescoping of a glorious future. But instead of legendary ancestors, Forest Father Head the supreme divinity in Soyinka’s fictionalized world, sends the living “two spirits of the restless dead” referred to in the play as Dead Man and Dead Woman. As an all-knowing god in Soyinka’s aesthetic universe, it is significant that Forest Father chooses to send lackeys instead of great forebears. A logical interpretation then is that there are no great ancestors of this community of humans. As hinted in the play, the supposed glory of the empires of Mali, Songhai, Lisa, and Zimbabwe is all a mirage. For instance, the historical Mata Kharibu who Obi Maduakor describes as a “great African warlord”  is anything but great as portrayed in this play.

By creating a situation in which Demoke strikes down his apprentice out of spite and jealousy, Soyinka parodies the festivity of this human community. The supposed symbol of unity of this human community is in fact a symbol of conflict and rancor. Moreover, although the totem was meant to reach the sky, Demoke diminishes its height. This is nothing, but dystopian. That the symbol of this community that is supposed to reach the sky is diminished is a metaphorical manifestation that this community of humans cannot grow beyond their imperfection, nor can they escape it.

It is also significant that the Dead Man and Dead Woman have come not to celebrate with the living, but to judge them. Their repeated imploration “Will you take my case?”, which is also the opening statement of the play is an indication that they have come to right the wrong against them in their previous existence, eight centuries ago. Accordingly, instead of the festivity being characterized by social harmony, what is witnessed is acrimony between citizens, between the living and the dead, and between the divinities of the tribe. For instance, the Dead Man and the Dead Woman have come in judgment against the living, whilst the living tries to get rid of them. In this respect, Soyinka insists that the atrocities that have so often characterized human interactions are unavoidable. Yet, the depiction of the unavoidability of these human atrocities is implicitly a desire for a better world. In other words, the dystopian images in Soyinka’s play are strongly tied to his utopian vision. Jeyifo says as much with his observation that Soyinka’s most ambitious plays, among which is A Dance of the Forests are “appropriate responses to the human and social crises and dilemmas of post-independence, postcolonial Africa and beyond these, the crises and malaise of the modern world”. This appropriate dramatic response takes the form of a corrective through condemnation in Soyinka’s artistic vision.

According to him, “Butler does not offer a full-blown utopian ‘blueprint’ in her work, but rather a post-apocalyptic hoping informed by the lessons of the past”. It is within this frame of reference that Soyinka’s dystopian setting of the past, present, and future is concomitantly a desire for a utopian future. G. G. Darah notes that “the satirist discerns beneath the world of vice, wickedness, and failure, a kind of ideal world attainable only if people heed the satirist’s prescription for uprightness implied in his condemnation of individuals”. Similarly, James T. Presley sees utopias as works “which satirize the manners, customs, pursuits, and follies of the age or nation in which the writer lives” . Even though Soyinka’s work is not categorically a satire, yet it condemns the past and present follies of his characters. Giving this context, the Dead Woman’s observation that “A hundred generations have made no difference” is in itself a wish or desire for a better future. Also, the play’s criticism of Adenebi, the corrupt Council Orator responsible for the death of 65 passengers on a lorry he had licensed to carry passengers beyond its stipulated capacity can be read as a warning that such should not repeat itself in the future. In effect, Soyinka uses his play to warn his readers about the essence of learning from the lessons of the past.

As Miller rightly observes, “dystopias motivated out of a utopian pessimism in that they force us to confront the dystopian elements so that we can work through them and begin again”. In this sense, Dead Woman’s observation that nothing has changed after eight centuries is in itself a call for a new beginning that would guarantee a promising future. The past is gone, the present is here, but the future is yet to come. By painting a dystopian past and present, and forecasting a gloomy future, Soyinka warns that the mistakes of the past and the present should be avoided for a better future. It is perhaps in this vein that Sunday O. Anozie remarks that “A Dance of the Forests gave warning of disaster in 1960”. Soyinka’s wish, therefore, is not so much that the disaster or doom he predicts would come to pass, but that it should be avoided.

In an essay entitled “Feminism’s Apocalyptic Futures” in which Robyn Wiegman interrogates the question “Is There Life After Identity Politics?”, she seems to suggest that the import of the question lies not in its predictive element, but in its warning about the need for social transformation in the field of feminist studies, Therefore, the anxiety implicated in the question is not so much that the future of feministic studies is doomed, but the need to revive and re-engineer it. In this wise, artistic predictions are uttered not so much for them to be fulfilled as to avert their fulfillment. This is pointedly the case with Soyinka’s play. Abiola Irele concurs with this argument when he states that “For all the gloom that traverses work, and which is a reflection of our objective condition is in its primary nature a call to an active process of regeneration”. The interpretative burden of Anozie’s and Irele’s remarks as well as Wiegman’s argument is that Soyinka’s play is more of a warning rather than a prophecy.

Despite the dystopian images that populate Soyinka’s play, he still hints at the regeneration of the human world. For instance, the plot which is in itself dystopian still has a utopian element implicated in it. As already stated, the plot of this play is one in which there is a “gathering of the tribes” in a festivity in which the living ask their gods to invite some of their illustrious ancestors. These illustrious ancestors are supposed to be reminders of a magnificent past. But instead of legendary ancestors, Forest Father/Head, the supreme divinity of the play sends the living “two spirits of the restless dead”. It is this action of Forest Father that sets in motion the conflict of the play between the dead and the living, and between humans and the gods. But beyond these conflicts is the new world envisaged by Soyinka: a world in which, to borrow the words of Miller, all that is presently separated are united.

In his comment on Butler’s fictitious world in which humans and aliens inhabit the same space, Miller states that what is explored is “the possibilities for alternative and non-hierarchical definitions of gender and identity within which the difference of aliens and others can be accommodated rather than repressed”. He then adds that “any form of literature that seeks to help us see things anew is driven by a utopian impulse even if the work in question is dystopian”. Similarly, Ulrich Bach in his “Sacher-Masoch’s Utopian Peripheries” maintains that work with a utopian vision must “transcend the status quo”. Also, Karl Mannheim remarks that utopias “evoke images transcending those of the present reality”. This is exactly what obtains in Soyinka’s poetic universe, despite its dystopic and apocalyptic elements. By creating an aesthetic universe in which the living and the dead, and humans and divinities interact freely with one another, Soyinka transcends the status quo and helps his audience to see things anew.

Soyinka’s play under consideration is not an enactment of “what is” but “what could be.” It is not the way the world is, but his perception of how the world should be configured. It is noteworthy that this play is entitled A Dance of the Forests and not Forest. Taking into cognizance the major characters of this play, it can be extrapolated that there are three forests in the play: the forest of the gods, the forest of the dead, and that of the living; and as portrayed in the play, the three forests are in close proximity to one another. The Dirge-Man in this play, for instance, tells the living to “Leave the dead some room to dance”. It then means that in this play Soyinka breaks down the boundaries between life and death, and between humans and the divinities as a way of enacting a new world that is different from the present world. Thus, in contrast to Odom’s argument that the ending envisaged by Soyinka in this play “remains obscure”, it can be seen that he envisages a future utopian world in which all stratificational privileges, divisions, and boundaries would be eradicated.

But what difference does it make if divisions and boundaries are eradicated and there are still conflicts as depicted in Soyinka’s imaginative universe? It is worthy to note that a utopian world is not a perfect world. It is as Green rightly maintains that “a utopia does not have to be a ‘perfect’ society”. And commenting on this, Miller argues that “if this is the case, then utopian fiction has more to do with social/cultural/economic critique than with imagining perfection”. The argument of Green and Miller is that in a dystopian/utopian work; the socioeconomic, sociopolitical, and socio-cultural dynamics are critiqued not so much with the aim of achieving a perfect society, as that of achieving a better community. What is, therefore, significant in a utopian vision is not so much a perfect world as it is a better world or new beginnings in which there is a change in the status quo: what Jim Miller describes as “a post-apocalyptic hoping informed by the lessons of the past”.

This is what Soyinka expects of his readers/audience. More than participating in the making of meaning, he wants his readers/audience, in the same dramatic strategy of Bertolt Brecht in the Good Woman of Setzuan, to write the end to Forest Father’s statement. In the epilogue to Brecht’s play, the playwright acknowledges that the ending is not satisfactory, and he implores the readers/audience to write their own ending. However, in contrast to Brecht’s dramatic strategy of alienation or distancing effect, which impresses on the audience that what they are watching on stage is not real life, Soyinka’s ellipsis forces his readers to be engaged in the consequences of their action based on the play’s warning. Therefore, the end Soyinka’s audience is going to write would be predicated on whether they have heeded his artistic warning or not. Accordingly, despite the acknowledgment of his ineffectuality in the affairs of the human community, Forest Father still hints at a “post-apocalyptic hoping” that is informed by the lessons of the past. As he himself suggests, his fundamental reason for wanting to torture awareness from the souls of the living is that, perhaps, in new beginnings, they are going to have a change of heart, which obviously will lead to a better community.

Thus, while Darko Suvin sees Utopian fiction as “the verbal construction of a particular quasi-human community where sociopolitical institutions, norms, and individual relationships are organized according to a more perfect principle than in the author’s community”, what Soyinka enacts is a reversal of such “quasi-human community” in which the inhabitants have reached perfection.

Conclusion:-

In effect, Soyinka’s imaginative intervention/or contribution to the anthology of Utopian literary genre is that a writer does not necessarily have to create an imaginary future setting in which the inhabitants have attained perfection as in Thomas More’s Utopia and Chancellor Bacon’s New Atlantis as a demonstration of his/her utopian vision. Utopia does not necessarily have to be about a place. Sargisson says as much in her explanation that utopia is “the good place which is no place”. It can, therefore, be about an idea or a change in the status quo. In this respect, Soyinka rearticulates the critical yardstick for measuring and identifying utopian vision in imaginative works.

Furthermore, it can be argued within the framework of this essay that Soyinka’s artistic rumination within the ambit of utopian literary genre is that the past must not be constructed in such a way that it is idealized and romanticized as a projection of a blissful future. For him, the past and the present must be criticized for the future to be hopeful. As can already be deciphered, he critiques the past and the present and forecasts a dystopian future as a means to orient action that would avert its fulfillment. Therefore, Soyinka’s dystopian landscape is strongly tied with his utopian vision. He condemns and criticizes the past and the present actions of his major characters, and predicts a bleak future so that humans in general and Africans, in particular, would avoid the mistakes of the past and the present in the future. It is in this sense that his dystopian vision is concomitantly a desire for a utopian future.

Work Cited:-

(1)  Azumurana, Solomon Omatsola. "Wole Soyinka's Dystopian/Utopian Vision In A Dance Of The Forests". Scielo.Org.Za, 2014, http://www.scielo.org.za/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0041-476X2014000200006. Accessed 18 Mar 2022.

(2) Wole Soyinka – Facts. NobelPrize.org. Nobel Prize Outreach AB 2022. Thu. 17 Mar 2022. <https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/1986/soyinka/facts/>

(3) Soyinka, Wole. "A Dance Of The Forests: Soyinka, Wole, 1934-: Free Download, Borrow, And Streaming: Internet Archive". Internet Archive, 1963, https://archive.org/details/danceofforests00soyi/mode/2up. Accessed 17 Mar 2022.