School of Undergraduate Studies Ambedkar University Delhi WS2014 COURSE OUTLINES FOR SEMESTER 6

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1 School of Undergraduate Studies Ambedkar University Delhi WS2014 COURSE OUTLINES FOR SEMESTER 6 I MAHABHARATA AND ITS MODERN RENDERINGS IN FICTION, DRAMA AND FILM Course Code: EN16 COURSE COORDINATOR MS. BHOOMIKA MEILING Type of Course: Discipline (English) Cohort for which it compulsory: Not applicable Cohort for which it is elective: English and all other Majors No. of Credits: 04 Semester and Year Offered: Winter Semester, 2014 Pre-requisites: None Aim: Mahabharata has excited the Indian literary imagination since times immemorial. Abundant classical and folk renderings of this epic in different genres have historically shaped the Indian way of thinking about and interpreting texts. In order to acknowledge the web of cultural and literary texts woven around themes from Mahabharata, this course brings together select modern renderings of the epic to the classroom for critical analysis. The larger objective of the course is to acquaint the students with Mahabharata and the possibilities it offers for adaptation. The course seeks to investigate whether a change in genre imposes limits or provides freedom to the viewer/reader in interpreting the epic. It will also probe into the respective political, social, religious and cultural milieus in which each of the adaptations emerged. The chief objective of the course is to introduce the students to the kaleidoscopic world of modern adaptations and interpretations of Mahabharata and to enable them to appreciate the diversity of views which exists in the literary and cultural domains on this issue. Assessment Details with weights: Class Presentations- 30%, Mid-semester Examination- 20%, Class Assignments- 20%, End-semester Examination- 30% Reading List The Epic Mahabharata, C. Rajgopalachari Fiction Yajnaseni (1991), Pratibha Ray Draupadi (1987), Mahasweta Devi Drama Andha Yug (1954), Dharamvir Bharati Film: Yayati (1961), Girish Karnad

2 Hum Paanch (1980), Bapu Kalyug (1981), Shyam Benegal Selections from The Mahabharata (1989), Peter Brook Selections from the TV series Mahabharat (1988), B.R. Chopra II FOLK, ORAL, INDIGENOUS, POPULAR CULTURES Course Code EN17 Course Instructor: Diamond Oberoi Vahali The oral as a literary form is distinct as it travels across time and space, across the borders of various forms and in the process becomes a dialogic means through which the epics and the myths speak to each other. All literature, no matter in what form it is written, embodies within itself elements of the oral. The concept of the oral as the storehouse of a culture s collective memory, from where in the primal myths and narratives are passed down to generations, needs to be developed. A related category is that of the indigenous which emerges from the idea of the Aborigine culture and tradition and involves oral forms of narration in the native tongue of the group. This literature refers to renderings that exist and circulate primarily within a tribe or a community. Indigenous forms are linked inextricably with closed communities and therefore, with issues of ethnicity. Folk forms are distinct from these because they are artistic expressions of the people of a geographical region. Propagated in the vernacular of a particular region, folklore voices the concerns, often even mundane and routine in the form of stories, songs, dance, dramatic performances, paintings, riddles, jokes and proverbs. Just like the indigenous, the folk also is integrally tied up with the oral. The Popular is seen often as the more commercial, pervasive and mass media based younger cousin of the folk. The popular is distinct from the folk in terms of its tremendous reach to a huge audience often through media like films, television, radio, cheap paperbacks, comic books, cassettes, compact discs and now even internet. Folk lore often acts as an important source for the popular. As a cultural category the popular is fraught with politics of consensus and commerce. It has also been problematized as a space where blatant cultural homogenisation is encouraged. However, this has not reduced in any way the importance of the popular and its deep impact on our day-to-day lives. This course aims at interrogating the dynamics of the oral, the indigenous, the folk and the popular. It will also attempt to sensitize students towards the linkages between these categories and their relation with the written word, the mainstream, the high culture and representative aesthetics and the official art and literary forms of a people. As oral transmission of stories can also be through graphics and visual artistic forms, dance, music, rituals, this course will look into the various songs, stories, paintings, dance, music, tapestries, folklore and rituals that circulate in tribal cultures across space and time and will discuss as to how several communities survive as communities because they are bound up by their oral epics, myths and narratives. It will bring to the fore the songs of the itinerant street singers, the folklore and tales of the mystics, lovers, as well as those of ordinary people and will see how the folk imagination weaves tales as if it were weaving a tapestry. References in the Indian context will be made to traditional forms of narration like the Dastangoi, Qissagoi, Brihat Katha, Panchtantra and tales of different languages and regions. References will also be made to the Aborigine African, Australian, New Zealand (Maori), Canadian

3 and Latin American story telling traditions and cultures. The course will also attempt to look at a few Indigenous systems of healing and nurturing. Thus this course will delve into the indigenous, folk and mass imagination in its varied manifestations. References will also be made to the concept of Interfusional literature which is a mix of both oral and written narratives as though these texts are written yet their grammatical structures, themes and characters are drawn from the oral traditions. READING LIST: Only a few of the texts listed below will be taken up for detailed discussion and analysis. The rest of the texts will be discussed during the process of student presentations. FOLK A.K. Ramanujan A Flowering Tree Vijay Dandetha Duvidha, Paheli Tsitsi Dangrembga s Kare Kare Zvako (Long Time Ago) Mother s Day ( a Shona (African) Folk Tale Sudheer Gupta Anant Kalakar Selections from Shabnam Virmani s films on Kabir Folk Songs- From India and outside The Legend of Heer Ranjha Sadhana Naithani: The Colonizer Folklorist. Journal of Folklore Research. In conjunction with 1857 folk songs Selections from Propp, V. Morphology of the Folktale. Austin: University of Texas Press, Raja Rao, Preface to Kanthapura POPULAR Berlin Wall graffiti (the popular and the political) Vijay Anand, The Guide Soraj Barjatya, Hum Aapke Hain Kaun Anuja Chauhan, Zoya Factor Selections from Christopher Pawling. Ed. Popular Fiction and Social Change. Selections from Pierre Bourdieu Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Selections from the songs of Elvis Presley, Michael Jackson, Madonna, Lady Gaga, Justin Beiber ORAL Selections from G.N. Devy, ed., Painted Words: An Anthology of Tribal literature, Penguin Books, New Delhi, 2002 Selected Vachanas of Mahadeviyakka Verses by Bhakti/ Sufi poets Selections from Anhad Garje, 4 vols., Orature by Ngugi Okot pbitek, Song of Lawino Selections from Temsula Ao s The Ao Naga Oral Traditions INDIGENOUS Selections from Asa Earl Carter, The Education of Little Tree Chief Seathl s letter to the President of USA Selections from Native American Poetry (politics of the indigenous) Bhilli Mahabharata/ Kunkana Ramayana Selections from Munda and Kondh Songs

4 Selections from Anthology of Australian Aboriginal literature ed Anita Heiss and Peter Mirtin McGill Queen s University Press, London 2008 Taboo, NAT GEO Selections from Mahashweta Devi s Dust on the Road: The political Writings of Mahashweta Devi Kalpana Lazmi, Rudali Harlem frescos Blues As Such in Albert Murray,Stomping the Blues The Agency of Sound in African American Fiction in Saadi A.Simawe, Black Orpheus: Music in African American Fiction from Harlem Renaissance to Toni Morrison GENERAL READINGS Selections from Carl Jung, The Collective Unconscious Selections from Levi Strauss, Cultural Anthropology, Vols. 1 and 2 Selections from Bronislaw Malinowski s writings on culture and ethnography Selections from Mikhail Bakhtin, The Dialogical Imagination Joseph Campbell The Mask of Gods III MODERNISM IN EUROPE Course Code: EN 30 Course Coordinator: Sayandeb Chowdhury The literature of experimental Modernism which emerged in the last years of the nineteenth century was an art of cities, especially of the polyglot cities which, for various historical reasons, had acquired high activity and great reputation as centres of intellectual and cultural exchange FromM Bradbury and J Macfarlane, Modernism: A Guide to European Literature This course will look at how Modernismas a congress of ideas and as a symptom and experience of modernitygrew in response and reaction to the rapid urbanisation of Europe in late 19 th and early 20 th century. While London, Paris, Berlin, Zurich (and New York) grew in size and dominance, it also triggered utmost anxiety, alienation and sense of loss. The course will critically discuss how the major movements and works of major European writers and filmmakers during this time responded to the emerging urban modernity as it was being preserved in the feverish change of the urban landscape: the debates over territory, the political edginess, the breakdown of frames of reference, radical art movements, rapid militarisation of skies and seas, urban expansionism, sudden and total alienation of the individual and the search for a personal space in the ruthlessly impersonalising ecosystem of the cities. The artistic response was ambivalent, as much despair at the loss of a familiar and familial climate as that same despair triggering a difficult and productive search for a new idiom, a new language. This search most was productively embedded in the extraordinary burst of art, literature and cinema across the Continent from the mid-19 th century to the beginning of the Second World War. The course

5 will take into account the major movements and sample works of the giants of Modernism: Charles Baudelaire, Garcia Lorca, TS Eliot, WB Yeats, Katherine Mansfield, James Joyce, Albert Camus, Charles Chaplin, Dziga Vertov, Samuel Beckett and others. The course has been structured in the following manner: Part A The Climate of Modernism Module I (Week 1-3) Modern, Modernity, Modernism Understanding the modern metropolis: The architecture of the post-imperial world, Haussmanisation, theflanuer, Belle Époque, migration and the crowd Modernism and others arts: Painting, Music, Photography, Cinema, Architecture Modernism and the foundation of a new poetics Part B Texts and Images Module II: Poetry (Week 4-6) Charles Baudelaire (from)paris Spleen Garcia Lorca (from)the Poet in New York Fernando Pessoa: The Tobacco Shop Osip Mandelstam: We shall meet again, in Petersburg TS Eliot The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock WB Yeats The Second Coming Mina Loy Joyce s Ulysses Module III: Fiction (Week 6-10) Katherine Mansfield The Fly James, Joyce Araby Albert Camus, The Outsider Virginia Woolf Mrs Dalloway Module IV: Cinema (Week ) DzigaVertov Man with a Movie Camera Charles Chaplin Modern Times/City Lights Vittorio De Sica Bicycle Thieves Module V: Theatre (Week -13) Samuel Beckett Waiting for Godot Assessment structure In-class test I: 20% (on Module I) Response Paper II: 20 % on (Module II)

6 Presentation 20% (on Modules III & IV), Class participation: 10% End Semester Test/Term Paper: 30% (End Term) Secondary Reading M Bradbury and J Macfarlane, Modernism: A Guide to European Literature M Levenson, Cambridge Companion to Modernism M Levenson, Modernism M Berman, All That is Solid Melts into Air P Nichols, Modernism: A Literary Guide P Lewis, Cambridge Guide to Modernism Lawrence Rainey, Modernism: An Anthology Edward Timms: Visions and Blueprints: Avant-garde Culture and Radical Politics in Early Twentieth Century Europe A Davis & LM Jenkins (ed), Cambridge Companion to Modernist Poetry P Burger, Theory of Avant Garde B Buchloh, S Guilbant and D Solved (ed) Modernism and Modernity P Brooker and others (ed) Oxford Handbook of Modernisms Murphet, Julian and Rainford, Lydia, editors, Literature and Visual Technologies: Writing after Cinema (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003) David Trotter, Cinema and Modernism (Critical Quarterly Book Series, 2007) IV REALISM AND THE NOVEL Course Code: EN18 Course Coordinator: Dr. Usha Mudiganti Type of Course: Discipline (English) Cohort for which it compulsory: Not applicable Cohort for which it is elective: English and all other Majors of the 6 th Semester No. of Credits: 04 Semester and Year Offered: Winter Semester, 2014 Pre-requisites: None Aim: Fiction, by definition, is a removal from reality. The aim of many major writers of fiction, though, was to mimic the real. In their endeavours to replicate the real, writers rejected the heroic and the aristocratic to embrace the gritty social reality of their times. The focus was on the ordinary person and the ordinary situation. At its best, the realist novel was to be like life itself. However, Realism s claim that it can mime the complexity of life has been contested. Roland Barthes, for instance, states that Realism only offers a reality effect. This course aims to conduct a detailed study of four realist novels to explore notions of time, chronology, consensus, points of view and the narrator, along with other important devices used by the realist writer, to learn the ways in which these contribute in simulating reality in fiction. While Realism as a form emerged in Europe, and owes much to developments in painting, this course restricts itself to the tracing the Realist novel in nineteenth century England and recording the changes the form went through while attempting to capture the real through fiction. Assessment Details with weights: Class Assignments- 20%, Mid-semester Examination- 20%, Class Presentation (Presented paper to be submitted) - 30%, End-semester Examination- 30%

7 Reading List 1. Austen, Jane. Emma. (1816). 2. Dickens, Charles. Hard Times. (1854). 3. Hardy, Thomas. Tess of the D Urbervilles. (1891). 4. James, Henry. Daisy Miller. (1878). A supplementary reading list of critical material and a longer list of novels for class presentation will be given on the first day of class.