Some of Mailer’s earliest writing, including “The Greatest Thing in the World,” a prizewinner in a 1941 Story magazine contest, reveals that even at a very early age he could write accomplished, imitative apprentice fiction in the modes of Ernest… Read More ›
Larry McMurtry’s (1936 -) best fiction has used the Southwest as its location and the characters typical of that area for its subjects. In the early years of his career, he dealt with life in the dying towns and decaying… Read More ›
Hugh MacLennan (1907-1990) began as a historian, and, in a sense, he remained one throughout his long writing career. His doctoral dissertation, Oxyrhynchus, discussing the history of an area in Egypt during the seven hundred years that it was subject… Read More ›
Thomas McGuane’s (born December 11, 1939) fictional universe is a “man’s world.” His protagonists appear to do whatever they do for sport and to escape ordinary reality. They seek a world where they can, without restraint, be whomever they choose… Read More ›
Ross Macdonald’s (1915–1983) twenty-four novels fall fairly neatly into three groups: Those in which Lew Archer does not appear form a distinct group, and the Archer series itself, which may be separated into two periods. His first four books, The… Read More ›
Carson McCullers’s (February 19, 1917 – September 29, 1967) fiction has a childlike directness, a disconcerting exposure of unconscious impulses in conjunction with realistic detail. She is like the candid child who announces that the emperor in his new clothes… Read More ›
Mary McCarthy’s (June 21, 1912 – October 25, 1989) novels often feature herself, with an assumed name, as protagonist; she also exploited her husbands and other people close to her for fictional purposes. Her characters generally have a superior education… Read More ›
Like British Catholic writer Graham Greene, Cormac McCarthy is reluctant to develop any optimistic themes. He is also reluctant about stating his themes, although some of his titles offer strong hints. For the most part, he merely tells his stories… Read More ›
Alison Lurie’s (born September 3, 1926) novels are known for their comedy and satire, and her acute observation is most often trained on the complications of love, marriage, and friendship as they affect the lives of the upper classes, the… Read More ›
Jack London’s (January 12, 1876 – November 22, 1916) fame as a writer came about largely through his ability to realistically interpret humanity’s struggle in a hostile environment. Early in his career, London realized that he had no talent for… Read More ›
Early reviews praised or condemned Sinclair Lewis (February 7, 1885 – January 10, 1951) for a blend of realism and optimism; indeed, a curious mixture of almost naturalistic realism and a kind of romance characterized Lewis’s fiction throughout his career…. Read More ›
Elmore Leonard’s (October 11, 1925 – August 20, 2013) early short stories and novels were conventional in terms of plot and characterization; however, writing Westerns was good training. Knowing nothing about the West, he learned to depend on research that… Read More ›
When Ursula K. Le Guin (October 21, 1929 – January 22, 2018) has Genly Ai state in The Left Hand of Darkness that “truth is a matter of the imagination,” she is indirectly summarizing the essential focus of her fiction:… Read More ›
The themes and techniques of Jerzy Kosinski’s (1933-1991) fiction are adumbrated in the sociological studies he published within five years of his arrival in the United States. As a highly regarded Polish sociology student in the mid-1950’s, Kosinski was granted… Read More ›
The major emphasis of Margaret Laurence’s (1926- 1987) fiction changed considerably between her early and later works. In a 1969 article in Canadian Literature, “Ten Years’ Sentences,” she notes that after she had grown out of her obsession with the… Read More ›
Barbara Kingsolver’s (born. April 8, 1955) long fiction is best characterized as contemporary versions of the Bildungsroman with a feminist twist. The main character ventures forth to develop herself and find her place in her community. Many books by women… Read More ›
Stephen King (born. September 21, 1947) may be known as a horror writer, but he calls himself a “brand name,” describing his style as “the literary equivalent of a Big Mac and a large fries from McDonald’s.” His fast-food version… Read More ›
Q. 1 Match the following authors with the novels: (Name of Author) (Name of Novel) (a) Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni (i) Inheritance (b) Anita Rau Miami (ii) Listening Now (c)… Read More ›
Jamaica Kincaid (born, May 25, 1949) is known for her impressionistic prose, which is rich with detail presented in a poetic style, her continual treatment of mother-daughter issues, and her relentless pursuit of honesty. More so than many fiction writers, she is… Read More ›
To understand some of the ideas behind the counterculture revolution is to understand Ken Kesey’s (1935 – 2001) fictional heroes and some of his themes. Originating with the 1950’s Beat generation, the 1960’s counterculture youth were disillusioned with the vast… Read More ›
William Kennedy’s (born, January 16, 1928) fiction is preoccupied with spirit of place, language, and style, and a mystic fusing of characters and dialogue. The place is Albany, New York, the capital city—nest of corrupt politics; heritor of Dutch, English,… Read More ›
Critics, especially academics, have increasingly dismissed James Jones (1921 – 1977) as a “war novelist” committed to outdated naturalistic techniques. Though Ihab Hassan provides an extensive and largely favorable discussion of From Here to Eternity in Radical Innocence, his 1961… Read More ›
Henry James’s (1843 – 1916) distinctive contributions to the art of the novel were developed over a long career of some fifty years. Leon Edel, possibly the most renowned and respected James scholar, has indicated that James’s mature writing can… Read More ›
John Irving’s (born March 2, 1942) fiction is distinguished by a highly personal fusion of seemingly incongruous elements. Irving’s settings, actions, and characters are often bizarre and violent. The world he presents is frequently chaotic and unpredictable, full of sudden… Read More ›
Structural linguistics was developed by Ferdinand de Saussure between 1913 and 1915, although his work wasn’t translated into English and popularized until the late 1950s. Before Saussure, language was studied in terms of the history of changes in individual words… Read More ›
Psychological trauma, its representation in language, and the role of memory in shaping individual and cultural identities are the central concerns that define the field of trauma studies. Psychoanalytic theories on trauma paired with additional theoretical frameworks such as poststructural,… Read More ›
With the advent of sex‐positive third‐wave feminism in the 1990s, notions of femininity and feminism shift, in reaction to the growth of fields like masculinities and transgender studies, but also in response to the activism of women in the previous… Read More ›
Judith Butler’s scholarship and particularly her notion of performativity—which she theorizes throughout Gender Trouble (1990) and in subsequent work—has been foundational for the field of queer theory as discussed by Steven Kruger (Chapter 27 in this volume), but it also… Read More ›
Halberstam’s Female Masculinity (1998) works as a starting point for the discussion of masculinity studies since this text considers the fundamentals of what constitutes masculinity and how the paradigm of female masculinity fits in. Halberstam begins with the assertion of… Read More ›
Globalization describes an economically driven imaginary associated with modernity, capitalism, and Eurocentric forms of imperialism and colonialism. It conceptualizes the world as a single, interconnected unit open to an ever‐expanding drive of capitalist progress and the various processes, economic, cultural,… Read More ›
Like feminist, critical race, and queer approaches to literature and culture, disability studies relates to a specific group: in this case, disabled people, who make up approximately 15 percent of the world population and are among the most poor and… Read More ›
Literariness.org is pleased to announce its First International Article Writing Competition. Applicants are invited to submit a scholarly article on any topic relating to Literary Theory and Criticism. We welcome articles from all disciplines including Cultural Studies, Anthropology, Literature, Film,… Read More ›
Ferdinand de Saussure has been described as the ‘father’ of modern linguistics through his influential Cours de Linguistique Générale (1916). There are three reasons for a belief that linguistics is of very recent origin: Linguistics is a human science, and… Read More ›
While many theories of subjectivity pay little attention to the productive role of gender in the formation of the subject, psychoanalysis, for all its limitations, has always been interested in gender as primary in the production of subjects. Freud articulated… Read More ›
Who or what is human? Animal? And when these terms are coupled with a hyphen, how does that shift the grounds of studying? In human- animal studies the research and intellectual focus is on how animals figure and are configured… Read More ›
Gay/lesbian studies looks at the kinds of social structures and social constructs which define our ideas about sexuality as act and sexuality as identity. As an academic field, gay/lesbian studies looks at how notions of homosexuality have historically been defined… Read More ›
Several strands in feminist theory and practice which show clearly the gradual positioning of feminist knowledge are sometimes grouped under the umbrella term ‘feminist standpoint theory’. This phrase pulls together disparate thinkers and trends in feminist thought (see the special… Read More ›
The revised NET-JRF syllabus. This is effective from January 2019 onwards. The test will continue to be in MCQ format. Subject: English Code No. : 30 Unit –I : Drama Unit –II : Poetry Unit –III : Fiction, short story… Read More ›
Whenever the area of our research comes up, and we respond truthfully about what it is we do, we are immediately asked, “But, why pornography?” This question is incredibly hard to answer; in fact, this whole book is simply that,… Read More ›
The phenomenon of “post-truth” rocketed to public attention in November 2016, when the Oxford Dictionaries named it 2016’s word of the year. After seeing a 2,000 percent spike in usage over 2015, the choice seemed obvious. Among the other contenders… Read More ›
Surveillance studies is new. That is to say, until very recently something called surveillance studies did not exist. People studied surveillance, but in isolated, piecemeal and unsystematic ways. Over the past 20 years or so, surveillance has become an increasingly… Read More ›
The concept of postfeminism as associated with a time after, or even reaction against, feminism, can in part be attributed to Susan Faludi’s book, Backlash (1992). Faludi’s analysis of discussions of feminism in the media suggested that the term ‘postfeminism’… Read More ›
Thomas Aquinas (1225-74) was born of a noble family at Roccasecca, Italy. From the age of five he began studying at the Benedictine abbey of Monte Cassino. In 1239 he went on to the University of Naples, where he studied… Read More ›
Augustine (AD 354-430) was born in Thagaste and died in Hippo, both places in North Africa. Intellectually he straddles the gap between the philosophers of ancient Greece and those of medieval Christian Europe; he lived through the decline of the… Read More ›
B.A. English Programme (CUCBCSS UG) University of Calicut (CUCBCSS UG) Core Course, Complimentary, Elective and Language Elective (World Classics in Translation) To Download the pdf, Click the following link. www.literariness.org Previous Questions B.A. English Calicut University
The play of fear and laughter has been inscribed in Gothic texts since their inception, an ambivalence that disturbs critical categories that evaluate their seriousness or triviality. The uncertainty perpetuates Gothic anxieties at the level of narrative and generic form,… Read More ›
The high-culture tradition is essentially a conservative one. It encompasses a defence of a narrowly defined high or elite ‘culture’, in the classic sense of Arnold’s ‘the best that has been thought and said’ (Arnold, Culture and Anarchy, 1869). This… Read More ›
The play between mythological and modern significance, between mystical and scientific visions of horror and unity, sexuality and sacred violence, is focused in the figure of the vampire. In Mary Braddon’s ‘Good Lady Ducayne’ (1896) the vampire theme signals the… Read More ›
The critical race theory (CRT) movement is a collection of activists and scholars engaged in studying and transforming the relationship among race, racism, and power. The movement considers many of the same issues that conventional civil rights and ethnic studies… Read More ›
Popular culture has become segmented into a myriad of forms, genres, audiences, tones, styles and purposes, so much so that it cannot meaningfully be talked about as a monolith. While some so-called ‘popular culture’ is produced en masse (and has… Read More ›
The term queer has often puzzled outsiders.Why call yourself that? This too has its story. For a long time queerwas, of course, a derogatory term for male homosexuals. That began to change when it began to be widely used in… Read More ›
Cultural studies of fashion have been, for the most part, less concerned with formulating broad theories of fashion than with observing its social uses in relation to broader issues of social power. Two early influences on this work were the… Read More ›
Foucault’s archaeological and genealogical studies both indicate that, rooted in institutional practices, discourse evolves distinct configurations which oppose ruling class aims but still regulate the body, institutions, and even society. This contingent, historical view of discourse repudiates the Althusserian opposition… Read More ›
University of Calicut V Semester B.A. English Core Paper Methodology of Literature (EN5B03) Methodology of Literature PDF (To Download the Material Click on the Above Link) Topics Covered Russian Formalism, New Criticism, Archetypal Criticism, Myth Criticism, Deconstruction, Poststructuralism, Reader Response… Read More ›
A LADY VANISHES Towards the end of Rue Ordener, Rue Labat (1994), the terse and elegant autobiographical fiction she wrote just before terminating her life, Sarah Kofman (1934-94) inserts a brief episode relating her admiration for Alfred Hitchcock’s The Lady… Read More ›
Of all the film-philosophies of the twentieth century, it is perhaps Deleuze‘s that is most of the cinema. It attempts to belong to cinema rather than simply be about it. It shows us film thinking for itself. The magnanimity Deleuze… Read More ›
Whilst fascist dictatorship in Italy came to an abrupt end near the close of the Second World War, a fascist regime continued to rule in Spain up till the death of General Franco, in 1975. After that, a gradual process… Read More ›
Between 1922 and 1943 Italy was ruled by a fascist dictatorship which used mainstream cinema as a means of disseminating officially sanctioned conceptions of national identity. A national regulatory body, the Direzione Generale della Cinematografica, was established in 1934 in… Read More ›
We need the excuse of a fiction to stage what we really are. (Slavoj Zizek, in The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema [dir. Sophie Fiennes, 2005]) Would you allow this guy to take your daughter to a movie? Of course not…. Read More ›
Fredric Jameson is among the most prominent theorists of postmodernism and one of the foremost Marxist critics of his generation. In Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (1991), film occupies a central place in his account of the… Read More ›
Unlike a number of his contemporaries, Jean Baudrillard (1929-2007) does not provide a single, systematic theory of cinema. Instead, his comments are scattered across a range of works, taking the variant forms of brief asides, longer analyses and remarks made… Read More ›
What are cultural studies of science? While the term “cultural studies of science” designates a stream of research within the broader field of social studies of science, there is no clear consensus about what work is associated with this term…. Read More ›
Claude E. Shannon’s publication of A Mathematical Theory of Communication in the Bell System Technical Journal of July and October 1948 marks the beginning of information theory and can be considered “the Magna Carta of the information age” (Verdú 1998:… Read More ›
I What is life, and what makes human life unique? With the rise of the life sciences and Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection in the nineteenth century, new answers to these questions were proposed that were deeply at… Read More ›
Feminist Science Studies emerged in the mid-1980s as a response to the masculinist paradigms of participation and epistemology in the natural sciences. A survey of initial efforts in the area reveals a schism between the women-in-science movement and feminist critiques… Read More ›
Despite a landmark essay by the novelist Robert Coover, the emergence of literary writing in new media does not signal an “end of books.” Conceivably, there could be an end to literary studies as an autonomous discipline and a cessation… Read More ›
Literary and cultural historians describe science fiction (SF) as the premiere narrative form of modernity because authors working in this genre extrapolate from Enlightenment ideals and industrial practices to imagine how educated people using machines and other technologies might radically… Read More ›
Posthumanism marks a careful, ongoing, overdue rethinking of the dominant humanist (or anthropocentric) account of who “we” are as human beings. In the light of posthumanist theory and culture, “we” are not who “we” once believed ourselves to be. And… Read More ›
Born Vietnam in 1953, Trinh T. Minh-ha came to the United States, studied music and comparative literature at the University of Illinois, and she studied ethnomusicology in France. Her later experience as a researcher in Senegal led directly to her… Read More ›
University of Lucknow M.A. (English) Indian Literature in English Paper X(B) Poetry Notes To Download in PDF Click Lucknow Poetry PDF To Download in DOCClick Lucknow Poetry DOC The Harp of India This is one of the most iconic poems of… Read More ›
UNIVERSITY OF CALICUT V SEMESTER OPEN COURSE APPLIED LANGUAGE SKILLS (EN5D03) OPENPDF OPEN DOC
Until recently, the body has been either ignored or made marginal in philosophical, political and cultural theory. Thus, in philosophy, human agency and the identity of the person were traditionally seen to lie in the mind. The mind (or soul)… Read More ›
The depiction of the events of the Holocaust through fiction, drama and poetry. Some literature about the Holocaust is written as historical fiction that closely follows actual events, adding only imaginary dialogue that is consistent with those events. Other writing… Read More ›
The word ‘tragedy’ in common usage today means little more than a sad or unnecessarily unpleasant event: a motorway crash in which several people died is described as a ‘tragedy’ in the newspapers; a promising career cut short by cheating… Read More ›
Performance Studies is a new academic discipline, developed largely out of university departments of drama or of theatre studies, and driven mostly in USA, especially by Richard Schechner (b. 1934). Schechner was something of a polymath: theatre director with his… Read More ›
When white light hits glass one of two things can happen. Either you have an image, which is faithful if somewhat unexciting, or you have a glorious spectrum which though beautiful is rather a distortion. Light from the past passes… Read More ›
Shakespeare need not be abandoned by the postmodern world.Indeed; the postmodern world does and continues to embrace his works wholeheartedly. Hugh Grady rightly observes “we are now witnessing the emergence of a postmodernist Shakespeare through the development of critical paradigms… Read More ›
Murder in the Cathedral is a historical fiction play with strong Christian themes by the American-born British writer T.S. Eliot. It was first performed in Canterbury Cathedral on June 15, 1935 as part of the annual Canterbury Festival. The play is inspired by the… Read More ›
Woody Allen is one of the most prolific artists of the twentieth century. He is a highly praised director and scriptwriter, a successful actor, a dedicated clarinettist, an appreciated playwright, and an awarded short fiction writer. His entire work testifies… Read More ›
Mahasweta Devi’s works can be categorised under the “literature of resistance” the purpose of which, according to Sartre, “was not the enjoyment of the reader but his torment. What it presented was not a world to be contemplated, but to… Read More ›
In a world when issues relating to human rights have been under critical focus, literary depictions of the experiences of marginalized groups have acquired great significance. The modern spurt in Dalit literature in India is an attempt to bring to… Read More ›
The most reassuring thing about the past is that it happened. (From “Exile”, 75) Past has ingenious and insidious ways of reaching present and future through its invisible yet powerful tentacles. It resists fading away without leaving traces. It is… Read More ›
This is the most abridged notes on History of English Literature. To download the content in pdf click the following link History of English Literature CHAPTER 1 OLD ENGLISH LITERATURE The Old English language or Anglo-Saxon is the earliest form… Read More ›
English is descended from an ancient parent language now called Proto-Indo-European, spoken about 5,000 years ago. There are no written records of this ancient language, but we know that it existed because of the many related languages descended from it…. Read More ›
In his book, Television Culture, John Fiske said he faces the problem defining both television as well as culture. He defines television as a bearer/provoker of meaning and pleasure and culture as the generation and circulation of the variety of… Read More ›
The Trickster impulse, which is a symbol of transgression in world literature, is variously defined by anthropologists, sociologists, psychotherapists, cultural theorists, writers and film critics. Enemy of boundaries, trickster figure resists the narrow framing of definition. Creativity- the ability to… Read More ›
Gita Mehta’s A River Sutra is a study of the conundrum of life through expedition stories entwined with a worldly humanistic approach. It offers authentic interpretations of Indian cultural values, music, art forms, heritage and a liberal dose of Indian… Read More ›
The collection of human communities united by a desire to work for common political destiny is termed as a nation. Ernest Renan believes that nation is a ‘spiritual principle’ which perpetually affirms a common life (19). The word nation alludes… Read More ›
The emergence of first representatives of sexually liberated, free thinking woman in American literature who comes to be known as ‘New Woman’ took place in the 19th century literature. Hester Prynne in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, Mrs. Larue in… Read More ›
Feminist Prospective is an attempt to explore and analyze the agonizing condition of woman living in their traditional oppressive milieu of male-dominated society. The main objective of this analysis is to trace the journey of a sensitive soul from conventionalism… Read More ›
Indian English literature has gone through various phases in thematic concerns in the last hundred years. Before partition, Indian English novelists such as Mulk Raj Anand, Raja Rao, R. K. Narayan, laid more emphasis on patriotism and nationalism as a… Read More ›
Herman Melville’s (August 1, 1819 – September 28, 1891) career as a novelist breaks down, somewhat too neatly, into a three-part voyage of frustration and disappointment. The first part of his career is characterized by the heady successes of Typee… Read More ›
ways with words PDF ways with words DOC University of Calicut I B.A./B.Sc./B.Com English Commmon Ways with Words Prepared by www.literariness.org
Choo-o, choo-o, na chee! O je chandalini’r jhi! Noshto hobe je doi, she kotha jaano na ki? (Don’t touch her, don’t touch her, ugh! She’s the daughter of a Dalit woman! Your yogurt will get spoiled, don’t you know?) -Song… Read More ›
The church bell rang Everyone entered in The ajan heard from mosque Everyone entered in The bell of temple rang Some entered in And some stood out.’ -Sharan Kumar Limbale, Marathi Dalit Writer.[1] The construction of the nationalist historiography of… Read More ›
Every attempt has been made to ensure the Answer Key correct. Your suggestions and complaints may be forwarded to nasrullahmambrol@gmail.com 3 Enoch Arden 4 Goethe, Wordsworth, Byron 3 Harold Pinter 2 The Common Wealth 1 Cricket 1 An Idiot 1… Read More ›
Informatics Note PDF informatics notes DOC PREPARED BY www.literariness.org
For much of her career, Zora Neale Hurston (1891 –1960) was dedicated to the presentation of black folk culture. She introduced readers to hoodoo, folktales, lying contests, spirituals, the blues, sermons, children’s games, riddles, playing the dozens, and, in general,… Read More ›
In his novels, Kurt Vonnegut (1922 – 2007) coaxes the reader toward greater sympathy for humanity and deeper understanding of the human condition. His genre is satire—sometimes biting, sometimes tender, always funny. His arena is as expansive as the whole universe… Read More ›