R.K. Narayan's Fictional World of "Malgudi": An Overview on Postcolonialism

R.K. Narayan's Fictional World of
Author: Dr. Afsar Nawaboddin Shaikh
Publisher: Lulu.com
Total Pages: 72
Release: 2018-05
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1387550535

English language was transplanted in India by the British rulers who ruled country more than 150 years. People believed that English is a language of Britishers and hence it must go with them. But to learn English language does not mean that people would evolve a slave mentality. In the present scenario, English language with its great literary heritage is no longer a language of particular country or a race. It has become global lingua franca. It is a medium of an international mutual contact among the natives of all over the world. It has thrown open a vast panorama of world-wide scientific, literary, cultural and political world of knowledge.

R. K. Narayan

R. K. Narayan
Author: John Thieme
Publisher: Manchester University Press
Total Pages: 268
Release: 2013-07-19
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1847795366

R.K. Narayan’s reputation as one of the founding figures of Indian writing in English is re-examined in this comprehensive study of his fiction, which offers detailed readings of all his novels. Arguing against views that have seen Narayan as a chronicler of “authentic” Indianness, John Thieme locates his fiction in terms of its specific South Indian contexts and cultural geography and its non-Indian intertexts. The study also considers the effect that Narayan’s writing for overseas publication had on novels such as Swami and Friends, The Guide and The Man-Eater of Malgudi. Narayan’s imaginary small town of Malgudi has often been seen as a metonym for India. Thieme draws on recent thinking about the ways in which place and space are constructed to demonstrate that Malgudi is always a fractured and transitional site, an interface between older conceptions of Indianness and contemporary views that stress the ubiquitousness and inescapability of change in the face of modernity. The study also shows that Malgudi is seen from varying angles of vision and with shifting emphases at different points in Narayan’s career. As well as offering fresh insights into the influences that went into the making of Narayan’s fiction, this is the most wide-ranging and authoritative guide to his novels to have appeared to date. It provides a unique account of his development as a writer.

South Asian Novelists in English

South Asian Novelists in English
Author: Jaina C. Sanga
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages: 325
Release: 2003-03-30
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0313016968

With the publication of Salman Rushdie's Booker Prize winning novel, ^IMidnight's Children^R in 1981, followed by the unprecedented popularity of his subsequent works, the cinematic adaptation of Michael Ondaatje's ^IThe English Patient,^R many other best-sellers written by South Asian novelists writing in English have gained a tremendous following. This reference is a guide to their lives and writings. The volume focuses on novelists born in South Asia who have written and continue to write about issues concerning that region. Some of the novelists have published widely, while others are only beginning their literary careers. The volume includes alphabetically arranged entries on more than 50 South Asian novelists. Each entry is written by an expert contributor and includes a biography, a discussion of major works and themes, a summary of the novelist's critical reception, and primary and secondary bibliographies. Since many of the contributors are personally acquainted with the novelists, they are able to offer significant insights. The volume closes with a selected bibliography of studies of the South Asian novel in English, along with a list of anthologies and periodicals.

R.K. Narayan’s Malgudi Milieu

R.K. Narayan’s Malgudi Milieu
Author: Sravani Biswas
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Total Pages: 202
Release: 2019-01-29
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1527527212

This book projects R.K. Narayan as a writer who, unlike many of his contemporaries was able to address his times and country of birth without giving in to the ruling influences of certain ideologies which made the works of many of his peers monologic, and even pedagogic. It underscores the influence of colonial capitalism in India and the advent of a new and strange class of people who responded to the market economy with gusto. The book also shows how Narayan’s approach is ethical in nature without being harsh on the people he critiques. Through the application of Bakhtin’s theories, Narayan is here positioned as a writer who was deceptively simple, but who can be considered as one of the foremost post-modern writers of India. He wrote at a time when the Gandhian influence had motivated writers so much that they could not envision the other side of the coin, the constant subversion of this ruling influence. Narayan depicted that reality effectively in a grotesque form.

Reworking Postcolonialism

Reworking Postcolonialism
Author: P. Malreddy
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 260
Release: 2015-04-22
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1137435933

An interdisciplinary collection of essays, Reworking Postcolonialism explores questions of work, precarity, migration, minority and indigenous rights in relation to contemporary globalization. It brings together political, economic and literary approaches to texts and events from across the postcolonial world.

Postcolonial Satire

Postcolonial Satire
Author: Amy L. Friedman
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 223
Release: 2019-10-16
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1498571972

Postcolonial Satire: Indian Fiction and the Reimagining of Menippean Satire positions postcolonial South Asian satiric fiction in both the cutting-edge territory of political resistance writing and the ancient tradition of Menippean satire. Postcolonial Satire aims to disrupt the relationship between postcolonial literature and magic realism, by discussing the work of writers such as G. V. Desani, Aubrey Menen, Salman Rushdie, and Irwin Allan Sealy as one movement into the entirely subversive realm of satire. Indian fiction, and the fiction of other colonized cultures, can be re-construed through the lens of satire as openly critical of a broad spectrum of political and cultural issues. Employing the strengths of postcolonial theory and criticism, Postcolonial Satire expands upon the postcolonial works of these authors by analyzing them as satire, rather than magical realism with satirical elements.

THEMATIC CONCERNS IN THE NOVELS OF R. K. NARAYAN

THEMATIC CONCERNS IN THE NOVELS OF R. K. NARAYAN
Author: Dr. Nawkhare Nitin Ramchandra
Publisher: Horizon Books ( A Division of Ignited Minds Edutech P Ltd)
Total Pages: 158
Release: 2021-05-06
Genre: Comics & Graphic Novels
ISBN: 9386369664

The book is basically athematic study of R.K. Nrayans novels and a reference to his short stories has been made only in passing. The major themes that emerge from Narayans novels are love and marriage or man woman relationship family relationships under scoring the father son relationship socio cultural and political scene of the country during the last fifty years and the Hindu ethos highlighting renunciations as an ideal of the Hindu way of life. For the first time the major themes of Narayans novels have been clearly worked out and the identity of Malgudi has been convincingly established by the author.

The Postcolonial Country in Contemporary Literature

The Postcolonial Country in Contemporary Literature
Author: L. Loh
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 260
Release: 2013-11-25
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1137314613

By situating a range of contemporary literary texts against the backdrop of the legacies of a vast rural network of empire, this book collectively critiques not only the rural heritage industry of the 1980s in Britain but also the effect of neocolonial globalisation on postcolonial rural spaces.

The Routledge Companion to Literary Media

The Routledge Companion to Literary Media
Author: Astrid Ensslin
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 817
Release: 2023-08-30
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1000902455

The Routledge Companion to Literary Media examines the fast-moving present and future of a media ecosystem in which the literary continues to play a vital role. The term ‘literary media’ challenges the tendency to hold the two terms distinct and broadens accepted usage of the literary to include popular cultural forms, emerging technologies and taste cultures, genres, and platforms, as well as traditions and audiences all too often excluded from literary histories and canons. Featuring contributions from leading international scholars and practitioners, the Companion provides a comprehensive guide to existing terms and theories that address the alignment of literature and a variety of media forms. It situates the concept in relation to existing theories and histographies; considers emerging genres and forms such as locative narratives and autofiction; and expands discussion beyond the boundaries by which literary authorship is conventionally defined. Contributors also examine specific production and publishing contexts to provide in-depth analysis of the promotion of literary media materials. The volume further considers reading and other aspects of situated audience engagement, such as Indigenous and oral storytelling, prize and review cultures, book clubs, children, and young adults. This authoritative collection is an invaluable resource for scholars and students working at the intersection of literary and media studies.