Indianness of Indian English Poetry

Introduction:

Indian English poetry is very different from its western counter part in the theme, language, style of
writing, imagery etc. Every writer has source of inspiration of influence. It is this source that makes
Indian English Poetry Indian. Indian writers are very much influenced by the Indian culture and
customs, traditions etc. The writer also writes for Indian audience, so it has to have an Indian appeal,
which is likable to all people. The writers also write for non-Indian audiences, and to them the feature
of Indianness makes it exotic and gives a deep feeling and experience of real India.

Indian poetry in English is said to have begun with Henry Louis Vivian Derzio who was not only poet
but also a teacher of poetry. He was an Indian in the sense because his mother was an Indian, his
father was a Portuguese. He inherited a great love for India from his mother, and from his father a
strong prejudice against Hindus and Hinduism. His writings were criticized for being too western and
Christian in outlook to think and write as an Indian, yet his writing has stirred many English-educated
to write poetry. His poem such as the harp of India shows his interests for India.

Indianness is an element of the poem, which shows India through its language, imagery, sensibility or
anything, which makes the Indian as Indian. Indianness in a poem is something that is not really
definable yet remains a very remarkable character in Indian poems. Indianness can be defined in
terms of what and how Indians are and what makes them what they are.

Definition:

It is easy to say that being Indian poets, our poets create Indianness in their poetry. However, it is not
easy to define Indianness clearly. Yet, the simple meaning can be sated as follows.

Simply speaking, Indianness is the quality, which must be present in the great works of all Indian
writers. Prof. David McCutchion defines Indianness as life-attitudes and modes of perception.
Prof. V.K. Gokak Defines Indianness as a composite awareness in the matter of race, milieu,
language and religion. Similarly, according to Paul Vergese, Indianness is nothing but depiction of
Indian culture. Thus, Indianness is the sum total of cultural patterns of India, deep rooted in ideas and
ideas which form the minds of India

Qualities of Indianness in Indian English Poetry

Indian Poets writing in English around fifties have produced a fairly voluminous body of verse that is
often deeply rooted in the traditional Indian sensibility and is yet strikingly modern in expression. The
question of Indianness is not merely a question of the material of poetry, or even sensibility, it is tied
up with the factor called the audience. Indian English poets write for Indian audience, but they also
write quite inevitably, for non-Indian, western audience. Thus, consciously or unconsciously they
cannot help using their Indianness at least some of the time, in some way, to a greater or lesser extent.
This had become a way of identifying oneself for the early Indian English poets, even the best modern
Indian English poets continue to exploit Indianness, but in a more subtle and sophisticated manner.

Every human being is influenced by the environment, culture and tradition of his time and place. Just
as western poets show their culture Indian English poets also show the same characteristic. Indian

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English poets such as A.K Ramanujan depict the Hindu tradition of Cremation and the process of
throwing the ashes in the river in The Obituary

Being the burning type,

he burned properly
at the cremation.

It is easier for a writer to write about what he sees and hears. Like William Wordsworth who wrote
about the daffodils after he saw thousands of daffodils in a valley, he is inspired to write a poem by
what he saw. Likewise Kamala Das saw wrote the dance of the eunuchs when she saw them dancing
on the streets of Calcutta. Wordsworth had stated, Poetry is a spontaneous overflow of powerful
feelings, recollected in tranquility. For an Indian English poet living in India what else would touch
the emotion other than India and the things happening in and around it? Therefore, Indianness can be
found in their poems by default.

The best that a poet can hope to do is try to be as natural and honest as possible, and to concentrate
upon the poetical enrichment of material, and not to be content with the decorative use of Indian
imagery. More important than the level of material, the imagery, the detail, is the level of sensibility.
An Indian English poet expressing an Indian sensibility will speak more authentically and achieve
greater depth and possibly greatness, than by assuming cosmopolitan stance.

Now that the Indian English poet is writing in a foreign language, which was adopted and used by
Indians in a very small percentage, mostly for formal, official or professional purpose, and it is not
really a language of the streets. It has been observed that Indians tends to use English that are outdated
and wooden. Due to this the poets also have to write in a language, which the reader will understand
and will feel to be real. This makes it interesting for the non-Indian reader because it gives the Indian
experience more vividly and makes it exotic. Poems such as The Railway Clerk by Nissim Ezekiel
makes intensive use of English as it is used by Indians. The suffix,-ing is used in a wrong manner
unnecessarily; this is very typical for Indian users of English. And the sentence constructions are not
up to the standard use of language but the way Indians use. It is not that the poet is not able to write in
good English but to show how Indians use English and the poet used it as a vehicle for humor and
satire. Yet through the language we can find the Indianness of the poem. Indians writing their poems
in such a language maybe attributed to the fact that most educated Indians are Bilingual or
Multilingual and they hear a lot of language, other than English around them, as there are many
different other languages in India. There are many prominent Indian English writer who also write in
their own language. A.K Ramanujan has published two collections of verse in Kanada and translated
some from Kanada to ancient Tamil. Kamala Das has written prose in Malayalam. In any case the
poets other language will surely affect to the greater or lesser extent the way he or she writes. And the
use of Indian words in their poems is also prominent due to Bilingualism. And all this attributes
contribute towards the Indianness of English.

Indian poet cannot help but to exploit Indianness in their poems. Indian English poets increasingly
feel the need to evolve an Indian Idiom, and not stick to British rule of correctness. The poet may like
to write about the superstitions of crows or those details about the cow but in the readers mind he may
do it for exotic appeal to non-Indian readers, even though the poet may be able to justify his Indian
material for poetic reason. The validity of Indian English poetry depends on the creation of a new
idiom- Indian English Idiom which is distinct from the idioms of the writers all over the world who
write in English. There is a demand as it were in the past for the creation of an Indian English idiom

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to give authenticity and identity to post nineteen-sixty Indian poetry in English. It is a fact that recent
poets like Nissim Ezekiel, Kamala Das, Shiv K. Kumar Daruwalla and a few others have succeeded to
some extent in creating a new Idiom for Indian English. For example, Ezekiel uses a number of Indian
words like guru, goonda, burkha, chapatti, pan etc. These obviously make it more Indian in
sensibility.

Somehow a reader is always able to find what the Indian poet writes as Indian because the Indian
poets are tuned to be Indian consciously or unconsciously. Any other Indian poets in their own
language are free from this entrapment. This is due to the fact that an Indian poet writing in English
will be compared to its western counterpart and therefore its differences are noted. An Indian writer
cannot escape being Indian in His writing because he is an Indian.

Indianness can also have positive effect for a writer. An Indian reader would prefer to read a poem
that they can relate to, while at the same time, the same poem will be read by a western reader, will
have the Indian effect and exoticness of the eastern world. A reader will be able to identify the poem
as a work of an Indian.

Indianness can also have a negative effect. Readers from the west maybe confused with the Indian
usage of English. It is to be noted that Indian English have not achieve a status of its own yet. C.B
Cox notes that We now accept that American English has a character of its own, and that is the
result of a tradition of great American literature. Indian English has yet to achieve this statusthis
creation of living language, a truly Indian English, is the task of the novelist and the poet.

Indian poets have a certain disadvantages when writing in English, but poets always have ways of
coping with handicaps, and sometime talents performs brilliantly with one hand tied at the back. And
Indian poets are still able to perform brilliantly in spite of many handicaps.

Indianness: Illustrations from the Prominent Poets:

1) Jayanta Mahapatra:

All the prescribed poems of Jayanta Mahapatra deal with the Orian Landscape and possess Indian
sensibility. In Dawn at Puri, Mahapatra underlines the importance of Puri and what it means to the
Hindus. Women wish to die at Puri to attain salvation.
Mahapatra writes:

her last wish to be cremated here

twisting uncertainly like light
on the shifting sands

The other points like the worshipping of the widows and their rites, crows cawing and the skull
indicating poverty of India etc.bear Indianness

The poem Exile also presents about an Indian man. The village near the sun burnt hills, dead bodies
burning on pyres, the protagonists ailing parents, the long-haired priest, the logic of good and evil
etc. depict Orian and Indian life. The key lines that reveal Indianness are the following:

Where a countrys ghost

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Pull my eyes towards birth
It is an obscure relative Ive never seen.

The Lines express the protagonists or the poets hope for renaissance or renewal of past glory of
India.

Thus Jayanta Mahapatras landscape theme includes all Indian spirit or sensibility and search for roots
themes.

2) A.K. Ramanujan:

Prominent poet A.K.Ramanujans poetry also bears the note of Indianness. Indian sensibility can be
called one of the themes of his poetry. The Indian sensibility of Ramanujan is sharpened by his
Western education and environment. Ramanujan portrays the Indian scene from across the Atlantic
with complete artistic detachment and irony.

In his Poem A River he talks about a river. A river is Indian in theme and location. The place is
Madhurai and particularly Vaikai River. The description of the Vaikai reminds us any Indian river. The
straw and womens hair clogging the Watergates, the stones like buffaloes and crocodiles etc are
Indian images. The names of the cows taken away by the flood, Gopi and Brinda are typically Indian.
The Tamil poet belongs to India. And the Poets style bears Indian sensibility.

Obituary another poem by Ramanujan is also entirely Indian in every sense. The very idea of legacy
is Indian. The things left by dead father are essentially Indian. The English used by the poet is also
typically Indian.

3) Nissim Ezekiel:

The notable poet Nissim Ezekiel too brings out the quality of Indianness in many of his poems. In his
poem The Railway Clerk, the poet brings out the terms of relationships between the railway clerk
and his wife. The poet writes the words of the clerk as follows. The clerk says,

My wife is always asking for more money.

Money, money, where to get money?

This kind of expression and relationships are only possible in India, Thus it shows the Indian situation
very clearly and bears the quality of Indianness.

Conclusion:

Indianness is as inherent and integral to the poets true core as the peels of onion. It finds an authentic
expression on the levels of both experience and idiom. Beliefs attitudes, thought processes, perception
of the past and the present colour, the poets experience while images, allusions, myths, ritualistic
patterns and similar other devices forms the texture of the idiom. On both these levels reader is aware

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of a typical, identifiable Indianness, which affords certain joy of recognition to the native readers and
opens the cave of Ali Baba to the foreign reader.

It is not important for us to judge the work of an Indian English poet as Indian, but to find out if the
poem is good or not. Indianness is just one of the characteristics of Indian English poems. If the poet
is able to write in a good Indian sensibility, it is still a good poem. The language or the subject of
Indian poem brings out the experience of Indian to non-Indian audience. As an Indian, the poet cannot
hope to escape from Indianness, even though the Indianness in the poem maybe very subtle.

Indianness by itself cannot become a criterion or guarantee of aesthetic value. But the poet by being
himself, contribute to the definition of Indianness, for Indianness is what Indians are.

Commonwealth literature

Commonwealth is a traditional English term for a political

community founded for the comman good. Historically, it has sometimes been synonymous with
republic The English noun Commonwealth in the sense meaning public welfare; general good or
advantage dates from the 15th century. The original phrase the commonwealth or the common
weal comes from the old meaning of wealth which is well-being. The term literary meant
common well being.

In the 17th century the definitionof commonwealth expanded from its original sense
of public welfare or commonweal, to mean

A state in which the suprem power is vested in the people; a republic or democratic
state.

In the area of colonialism, it indicates the former British Commonwealth of Nations

i.e. the former British empire consisting of the United Kingdom, its dependencies and certain former
colonies that are now sovereign nations.

The Commonwealth of Nations, also known as the Commonwealth or the British

Commonwealth, has manifested a distinctive literary development, marked by its cultural and
historical diversity. The Commonwealth is an intergovernmental organization of 54 nations which
were formerly part of the British Empire. The Commonwealth aims to provide a framework of
common values, facilitating cooperation between its member states in the field of democracy, human
rights, rule of law, free trade and peace.

In general, Commonwealth literature is a vague term which defines English-language

works written in the former British colonies or place which had the status of dominions. Also known
as New English Literature, it is a body of fictional works grouped together because of the underlying
cultural history and certain recurrent patterns. As Commonwealth writers come from a wide variety of
regions, they win fame in the Anglo-American world because of their exotic setting and characters.

Some scholars, for example Tiffin in her Commonwealth Literature: Comparison

and Judgment

5
 argue that the very notion of Commonwealth Literature is in it
self narrow and misleading. Others criticize the term as anachronism. Debates are centered also on the
distinctions, similarities or overlapping of the term Commonwealth Literature and Postcolonial
Literature. Hence, in an essay entitled Commonwealth Literature does not Exist, Salman Rushdie
defined this type of fiction as

"A body of writing created in the English language, by persons who

are not themselves white Britons, or Irish, or citizens of the United States of America."

However, he complained that the term is patronizing and marginalizes a number of

writers, adding that this body of fiction will never be included in English literature, which will be
always its superior.

The exact characteristics of Commonwealth literature also remain debatable.

Recurrent motifs there are misuse of power, exploitation and alienation as well as post-colonial
society. Apart from the issue of shared characteristics, scholars debate as to which writers to be
included in the Commonwealth canon. Famous names among Commonwealth writers include:

Salman Rushdie,

R. K. Narayan,

Nayantara Sahgal and

Ruth Prawer Jhabvala

Japanese Nobel Kazuo Ishiguro.

Salman Rushdie

Salman Rushdie is one of the key representatives of contemporary Commonwealth

literature. As an Indian-British novelist, he is world famous for his novel Midnight Children (1981),
which won the Booker prize. Most of his books are set in India and have a particular emphasis on
history. He is classified as a magical realist writer. Rushdie triggered protests in the Muslim world
with the release of his novel The Satanic Verses (1989). Even the Iranian government pronounced a
fatwa, or a death sentence, against Rushdie.

Imaginary Homelands

Imaginary Homeland is a collection of essays, reviews, and interviews

which were made from 1981 to 1991. Rushdie's writing deals with the political, cultural, and
imaginative exchanges which took place in the East and the West. Rushdie shows how although past
geo-political colonialism largely continues as a cultural process in the present things are nevertheless
unavoidably changing. Things always have changed, but the difference is that now subaltern groups
are writing their/our own stories.

In Imaginary Homelands Rushdie admits to the fictional polishing up of

history/memory so as to be able to represent it as either history or fiction. (The result is meta- fiction)

6
It is this inquiry into reality and memory, and how one is effected by historic and cultural movement,
translation, migration, that underscores much of Rushdie's writing. He establishes his political context
in the first two chapters, and then, the paper "Commonwealth Literature Does Not Exist" acts as a
kind of preface to the literature he reviews.
Commonwealth Literature' Does Not Exist

In his essay "'Commonwealth Literature' Does Not Exist" , Rushdie describes the category
'Commonwealth Literature' as a ghetto, created by those who practice English literature 'proper'.
"Every ghetto has its own rules" and "one of the rule one of the ideas on which the edifice rests, is that
literature is an expression of nationality", and that culture springs from tradition. He says that "what
we are facing here is the bogy of Authenticity ... (which) is the respectable child of old-fashioned
exoticism. It demands that sources, forms, style, language and symbol all derive from a supposedly
homogeneous and unbroken tradition". An exoticized culture must always show its credentials in
order to prove itself worthy of 'special' attention.While Western cultures are seen as dynamic,
progressive, and developed it is demanded of exoticized cultures to be original, pure, simple and
preferably religious. At its worst, the term postcolonial implies a kind of pre-colonial (primitive)
purity which has become corrupted because it could not resist the colonizers (modern) domination. It
does not take into account that the process of colonization changes both the colonizer and the
colonized and that cultural exchange is heterogeneous and not singular. Racial, cultural, linguistic
singularity, or purity, is not only unlikely but also a pathological pursuit.

What is postmodernism? What are the Characteristics of Postmodern Literature?

Post-modernism

Post-modernism is the term used to suggest a reaction or response to modernism in the late twentieth
century. So postmodernism can only be understood in relation to Modernism. At its core,
Postmodernism rejects that which Modernism champions. While postmodernism seems very much
like modernism in many ways, it differs from modernism in its attitude toward a lot of these trends.
Modernism, for example, tends to present a fragmented view of human subjectivity and history, but
presents that fragmentation as something tragic, something to be lamented and mourned as a loss.
Postmodernism, in contrast, doesn't lament the idea of fragmentation, provisionality, or incoherence,
but rather celebrates that. In literature, it used to describe certain characteristics of postWorld War II
literature, for example, on fragmentation, paradox, questionable narrators, etc. and a reaction against
Enlightenment ideas implicit in Modernist literature.

Characteristics of Post-modernism:

Because of some similar characteristics of modernism and postmodernism, critics some time become
confuse to differentiate one from the other. It would be more helpful if we discuss the characteristics
of post-modernism in compare and contrast to modernism.
Like modernism, postmodernism also believes the view that there is no absolute truth and truth is
relative. Postmodernism asserts that truth is not mirrored in human understanding of it, but is rather
constructed as the mind tries to understand its own personal reality. So, facts and falsehood are
interchangeable. For example, in classical work such as King Oedipus there is only one truth that is
obey your fate. In contrast to classical work in postmodern work such as in Waiting for Godot, there
is no such thing as absolute truth. All things are relative here.

Whereas Modernism places faith in the ideas, values, beliefs, culture, and norms of the West,
Postmodernism rejects Western values and beliefs as only a small part of the human experience and
often rejects such ideas, beliefs, culture, and norms.

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Whereas Modernism attempts to reveal profound truths of experience and life, Postmodernism is
suspicious of being "profound" because such ideas are based on one particular Western value systems.

Whereas Modernism attempts to find depth and interior meaning beneath the surface of objects and
events, Postmodernism prefers to dwell on the exterior image and avoids drawing conclusions or
suggesting underlying meanings associated with the interior of objects and events.

Whereas Modernism focused on central themes and a united vision in a particular piece of literature,
Postmodernism sees human experience as unstable, internally contradictory, ambiguous, inconclusive,
indeterminate, unfinished, fragmented, discontinuous, "jagged," with no one specific reality possible.
Therefore, it focuses on a vision of a contradictory, fragmented, ambiguous, indeterminate,
unfinished, "jagged" world.

Whereas Modern authors guide and control the readers response to their work, the Postmodern writer
creates an "open" work in which the reader must supply his own connections, work out alternative
meanings, and provide his own (unguided) interpretation.

Characteristics of Postmodern Writing:

As in postmodernism, all ideas are new, so sometimes it becomes difficult and confusing to properly
understand these terms.

Irony, playfulness, black humor:

Postmodern authors were certainly not the first to use irony and humor in their writing, but for many
postmodern authors, these became the hallmarks of their style. Postmodern authors are very frustrated
for World War II, the Cold War, conspiracy theories. They try to amalgate it from indirect way so,
irony, playfulness, black humor comes. In fact, several novelists later to be labeled postmodern were
first collectively labeled black humorists. : John Barth, Joseph Heller, William Gaddis, Kurt
Vonnegut, Bruce Jay Friedman, etc. It's common for postmodernists to treat serious subjects in a
playful and humorous way.

Some examples of texts that bear the above features--Roland Barthess The Pleasure of the Text. The
central concept of Joseph Heller's Catch-22 is the irony of the now-idiomatic "catch-22", and the
narrative is structured around a long series of similar ironies. Thomas Pynchon in particular provides
prime examples of playfulness, often including silly wordplay, within a serious context. The Crying of
Lot 49, for example, contains characters named Mike Fallopian and Stanley Koteks and a radio station
called KCUF, while the novel as a whole has a serious subject and a complex structure.

Pastiche:

Related to postmodern intertextuality, pastiche means to combine, or "paste" together, multiple

elements. In Postmodernist literature, many postmodern authors combined, or pasted elements of
previous genres and styles of literature to create a new narrative voice, or to comment on the writing
of their contemporaries. For example, William S. Burroughs uses science fiction, detective fiction,
westerns; Margaret Atwood uses science fiction and fairy tales; Thomas Pynchon, uses elements from
detective fiction, science fiction, and war fiction. In Robert Coover's 1977 novel The Public Burning,
Coover mixes historically inaccurate accounts of Richard Nixon interacting with historical figures and
fictional characters such as Uncle Sam and Betty Crocker. Pastiche can also refer to compositional
technique, for example the cut-up technique employed by Burroughs. Another example is B. S.
Johnson's 1969 novel The Unfortunates; it was released in a box with no binding so that readers could
assemble it however they chose.

Intertextuality:

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Intertextuality is the shaping of texts' meanings by other texts. It can include an authors borrowing
and transformation of a prior text or to a readers referencing of one text in reading another. The term
intertextuality has, itself, been borrowed and transformed many times since it was coined by
poststructuralist Julia Kristeva in 1966. As critic William Irwin says, the term has come to have
almost as many meanings as users, from those faithful to Kristevas original vision to those who
simply use it as a stylish way of talking about allusion and influence.[1]An important element of
postmodernism is its acknowledgment of previous literary works. The intertextuality of certain works
of postmodern fiction means the relationship between one text (a novel for example) and another or
one text within the interwoven fabric of literary history. Critics point to this as an indication of
postmodernisms lack of originality and reliance on clichs. Intertextuality in postmodern literature
can be a reference or parallel to another literary work, an extended discussion of a work, or the
adoption of a style. In postmodern literature this commonly manifests as references to fairy tales as
in works by Margaret Atwood, Donald Barthelme, and many other or in references to popular
genres such as science-fiction and detective fiction. An early 20th century example of intertextuality
which influenced later postmodernists is "Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote" by Jorge Luis
Borges, a story with significant references to Don Quixote which is also a good example of
intertextuality with its references to Medieval romances. Don Quixote is a common reference with
postmodernists, for example Kathy Acker's novel Don Quixote: Which Was a Dream. Another
example of intertextuality in postmodernism is John Barths The Sot-Weed Factor which deals with
Ebenezer Cookes poem of the same name.[citation needed] Often intertextuality is more complicated
than a single reference to another text. Robert Coovers Pinocchio in Venice, for example, links
Pinocchio to Thomas Manns Death in Venice. Also, Umberto Ecos The Name of the Rose takes on
the form of a detective novel and makes references to authors such as Aristotle, Arthur Conan Doyle,
and Borges.

Metafiction:

Many postmodern authors feature metafiction in their writing, which, essentially, is writing about
writing, an attempt to make the reader aware of its ficitionality, and, sometimes, the presence of the
author. Authors sometimes use this technique to allow for flagrant shifts in narrative, impossible
jumps in time, or to maintain emotional distance as a narrator. Though metafiction is primarily
associated with Modernist literature and Postmodernist literature, but is found at least as early as
Homer's Odyssey and Chaucer's 14th century Canterbury Tales. Some examples of metafiction
literary texts: At Swim-Two-Birds by Flann O'Brien, Stephen King's Misery and Secret Window,
Secret Garden, Ian McEwan's Atonement, The Counterfeiters by Andr Gide, John Irving's The World
According to Garp, Alone on a Wide, Wide Sea by Michael Morpurgo, A Portrait of the Artist as a
Young Man by James Joyce, Oracle Night by Paul Auster, More Bears! by Kenn Nesbitt, and Cy
Coleman's 1989 Tony Award best musical, City of Angels.

Historiographic metafiction:

This term was created by Linda Hutcheon to refer to novels that fictionalize actual historical events
and characters. Notable examples include Thomas Pynchons Mason and Dixon, for example,
features a scene in which George Washington smokes Pot. Linda Hutcheon coined the term
"historiographic metafiction" to refer to works that fictionalize actual historical events or figures;
notable examples include The General in His Labyrinth by Gabriel Garca Mrquez (about Simn
Bolvar), Flaubert's Parrot by Julian Barnes (about Gustave Flaubert), Ragtime by E. L. Doctorow
(which features such historical figures as Harry Houdini, Henry Ford, Archduke Franz Ferdinand of
Austria, Booker T. Washington, Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung), and Rabih Alameddine's Koolaids: The
Art of War which makes references to the Lebanese Civil War and various real life political figures.
Thomas Pynchon's Mason and Dixon also employs this concept; for example, a scene featuring
George Washington smoking marijuana is included. John Fowles deals similarly with the Victorian
Period in The French Lieutenant's Woman. In regard to critical theory, this technique can be related to
"The Death of the Author" by Roland Barthes.

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Temporal distortion:

This is a common technique in modernist fiction: fragmentation and non-linear narratives are central
features in both modern and postmodern literature. Temporal distortion in postmodern fiction is used
in a variety of ways, often for the sake of irony. In this literary the author may jump forwards or
backwards in time, or there may be cultural and historical references that do not fit. For example, In
Flight to Canada, Ishmael Reed deals playfully with anachronisms, Abraham Lincoln using a
telephone for example. Time may also overlap, repeat, or bifurcate into multiple possibilities. For
example, in Robert Coover's "The Babysitter" from Pricksongs & Descants, the author presents
multiple possible events occurring simultaneouslyin one section the babysitter is murdered while in
another section nothing happens and so onyet no version of the story is favored as the correct
version.

Technoculture and hyperreality:

In his essay of the same name, Frederic Jameson called postmodernism the cultural logic of late
capitalism. According to his logic, society has moved beyond capitalism into the information age, in
which we are constantly bombarded with advertisements, videos, and product placement. Many
postmodern authors reflect this in their work by inventing products that mirror actual advertisements,
or by placing their characters in situations in which they cannot escape technology. For example, Don
DeLillo's White Noise presents characters who are bombarded with a "white noise" of television,
product brand names, and clichs. The cyberpunk fiction of William Gibson, Neal Stephenson, and
many others use science fiction techniques to address this postmodern, hyperreal information
bombardment. Steampunk, a subgenre of science fiction popularized in novels and comics by such
writers as Alan Moore and James Blaylock, demonstrates postmodern pastiche, temporal distortion,
and a focus on technoculture with its mix of futuristic technology and Victorian culture.

Paranoia:

Paranoia is the belief that there's an ordering system behind the chaos of the world is another
recurring postmodern theme. For the postmodernist, no ordering system exists, so a search for order is
fruitless and absurd. Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49, long-considered a prototype of postmodern
literature, presents a situation which may be "coincidence or conspiracy -- or a cruel joke". This often
coincides with the theme of technoculture and hyperreality. For example, in Breakfast of Champions
by Kurt Vonnegut, the character Dwayne Hoover becomes violent when he's convinced that everyone
else in the world is a robot and he is the only human.

Magical realism:

Arguably the most important postmodern technique, magical realism is the introduction of fantastic or
impossible elements into a narrative that it seems real or normal. Magical realist novels may include
dreams taking place during normal life, the return of previously deceased characters, extremely
complicated plots, wild shifts in time, and myths and fairy tales becoming part of the narrative. Many
critics argue that magical realism has its roots in the work of Jorge Luis Borges and Gabriel Garca
Mrquez, two South American writers, and some have classified it as a Latin American style. Jorge
Luis Borgess Historia universal de la infamia, regarded by many as the first work of magic realism.
Apart from this, Colombian novelist Gabriel Garca Marquezs One Hundred Years of Solitude,
Salman Rushdie and Elizabeth Graver's "The Mourning Door" are some examples of magic realism.

Stream of Consciousness Technique - Literary Term

The stream of consciousness technique is a definite mode of writing novels developed in the early
twentieth century. We may define stream of consciousness fiction as a type of fiction in which the

10
basic emphasis is placed on the exploration of the pre-speech levels of consciousness for the purpose,
principally, or revealing the psychic beings of thse characters.

According to Melvin Friedman, the stream of consciousness is a large body of such experiments in
technique and method as the interior monologue, the internal analysis, and the sensory impression. In
the words of David Daiches, The Streram of Consciousness technique is a means of escape from the
tyranny of the time dimension.

Virginia Woolf and James Joyce are the two chief practitioners of this kind of novel. Virginia Woolf
(1882-1941) is assuredly the most distinguished woman writer of this generation. James Joyce (1882-
1941) in whom the twentieth century passion for experiment in literary form reached its climax, was
born in Dublin in 1882.

Decay of Plot:

According to Edwin Mure, the plot of the 20th century novel has died because of stream of
consciousness technique. The lives of the characters are easily shown in the novels of Victronian age,
but the writers of modern era refuse to depict the classical way of life, rather they are more inclined to
show it in the light of stream of consciousness technique. The modern novels have abrupt ending
giving multiple chances of interpretations. The incompleteness of the novel represents the
incompleteness of thought, life and belief. For the modernist the life is not a continuous flow but it is
a series of separate events. Thus the novelist, like James Joyce and Virginia Woolf concentrate on the
particular psychological incidents of a character rather than telling them the whole story of their life.
The unity of time and place is neglected in this technique. The writer can move forth and back easily,
so as to take the readers to the subconscious state of character.

Decay of Character:

Along with the decay of plot, there is decay of character in the novels where the author uses stream of
consciousness technique. Earlier the characters are shown either through direct narration or through
dramatic method or through the combination of these two. The manners, habits, physical appearance,
nature and moral character are vividly described by the words of the characters themselves or by what
others say about them. The modern novelists find flaws in this technique because through the outer
presentation, the psychological account of a character is impossible to depict. As per the modern
novelist the ups and downs in the psychological region decide one action and philosophy of life. So
the authors of modern travel into the subconscious and sometimes unconscious mind of the characters
and involve them into the war within themselves. The conflict within self reveals the past and the
possibilities of the future of a character. The true nature of a character is clearly presented by probing
into the inner depths of his mind. The psychological projection of character is in a sense the death of
traditional hero and villain. The heroism of the character is dissolved when we see the conflicting
state of mind in him, he remains no more hero.

Psychoanalysis:

In the early years of the 20th century, Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung propounded the new discoveries
regarding the human psychology. It brought many changes in various sectors: one of them is a novel
which turns into the psychologically dominated novels. It was found that the human consciousness
has mainly three layers named conscious, subconscious and unconscious. The hidden desires and
thoughts of human mind lay in the arena of unconscious and subconscious and they constantly keep
on coming on the surface i.e. conscious mind. The upsurge of subconscious and unconscious bring
change in the human personality. If proper outlet is not given to these suppressed thoughts, then any
volcanic eruption may take place. The great novelists in this genre are Henry James, Joseph Conrad,
James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, Dorothy Richardson, and Elizabeth Bowen.

Themes of the Modern Novel:

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When the plot and character change in the modern novel, then obviously the themes also have an
alteration. The traditional novel generally focuses on the didactic theme, the society, religion, culture,
etc. but the modern novels stay away from these themes and deal with the themes of alienation, absurd
existence, futility of work, loveless life and society, selfishness of people, the quest for self etc. The
social status and social conduct were regarded to hold high in the society of traditional novel but
nowadays these things have nothing to do with the individual but is counted more. The deep
penetration of characters subconscious depicts that every individual is different from each other so
two different personalities cannot be same and one in the society. We have to accept the uniqueness of
an individual and must present them in the novel as they are. David Daiches puts it; the theme of the
modern novelist is not the relationship between gentility and morality, but the relation between
loneliness and love. To sum up, an individual is treated as a little society in a modern novel, giving
him more priority.

2) Stream of consciousness, narrative technique in nondramatic fiction intended to render the flow of
myriad impressionsvisual, auditory, physical, associative, and subliminalthat impinge on the
consciousness of an individual and form part of his awareness along with the trend of his rational
thoughts. The term was first used by the psychologist William James in The Principles of Psychology
(1890). As the psychological novel developed in the 20th century, some writers attempted to capture
the total flow of their characters consciousness, rather than limit themselves to rational thoughts. To
represent the full richness, speed, and subtlety of the mind at work, the writer incorporates snatches of
incoherent thought, ungrammatical constructions, and free association of ideas, images, and words at
the pre-speech level.

The stream-of-consciousness novel commonly uses the narrative techniques of interior monologue.
Probably the most famous example is James Joyces Ulysses (1922), a complex evocation of the inner
states of the characters Leopold and Molly Bloom and Stephen Dedalus. Other notable examples
include Leutnant Gustl (1901) by Arthur Schnitzler, an early use of stream of consciousness to re-
create the atmosphere of pre-World War I Vienna; William Faulkners The Sound and the Fury (1929),
which records the fragmentary and impressionistic responses in the minds of three members of the
Compson family to events that are immediately being experienced or events that are being
remembered; and Virginia Woolfs The Waves (1931), a complex novel in which six characters
recount their lives from childhood to old age.

Indian English Literature

Indian English Literature pertains to that body of work by writers from India, who pen strictly in the
English language and whose native or co-native language could be one of the numerous regional and
indigenous languages of India. English literature in India is also intimately linked with the works of
associates of the Indian diaspora, especially with people like Salman Rushdie who was born in Indian
but presently resides elsewhere.

Development of Indian English Literature

Indian English literature precisely conforming to its gradual evolution had all begun in the summers
of 1608 when Emperor Jahangir, in the court of the Mughals, had welcomed Captain William
Hawkins, Commander of British Naval Expedition Hector, in a gallant manner. Though India was
under the British rule, still, English was adopted by the Indians as a language of understanding and
awareness, education and literary expression with an important means of communication amongst
various people of dissimilar religions.

Indian English literature, quite understandably, spurs attention from every quarter of the country,
making the genre admired in its own right. Creative writing in English is looked at as an integral part
of the literary traditions in the Indian perspective of fine arts. In early times of British rule, the
novelistic writing, indeed the Indian English dramas and Indian English poetry, had tremendously
arrested attention of the native masses. Every possible regional author was dedicated in their

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intelligence to deliver in the `British mother tongue`, highly erudite and learned as they were even in
such periods. The man that comes to surface more than once in all the genres of Indian English
literature is Rabindranath Tagore, who possibly was an unending ocean of knowledge and intellect,
still researched as an institution in him.

The truthfulness and honesty of the writers writing in English is often made a theme of suspect in
their own country and in other English-speaking countries they are indeed addressed as `marginal` to
the mainstream of English literature. Indian English literature writers are sometimes incriminated of
forsaking the national or regional language and penning in a western, "alien" language; their
dedication to the nation is considered in much suspicion, a rather unfortunate sensibility for such
intelligent and cultured wonders.

Indian literature in English dates back to the 1830s, to Kashiprasad Ghosh, who is considered the first
Indian poet writing in English. Sochee Chunder Dutt was the first writer of fiction, thus bringing in
the tremendous attraction and brilliancy of admiration of Indian English novels. In the beginning,
however, political writing in the novel or essay format was dominant, as can be seen in Raja Ram
Mohan Roy and his extraordinary output. He had written and dedicated pages about social reform and
religion in India, solely in the medium of English.

Style of Indian English Literature

`Stylistic influence` from the local languages appears to be an exceptional feature of much of the
Indian literature in English - the local language construction and system is very much reflected in the
illustrations, as is mirrored in the literal translation of local idioms. Yet one more breathtaking and
praiseworthy feature of these English Indian writers is that they have not only `nativised` the `British
mother tongue` in terms of stylistic features, but, they have also acculturated English in terms of the
`Indianised context`. A broad view that the mother tongue is the primary means of literary creativity is
still generally held across cultural diversity. Creativeness in another tongue is often measured as a
deviation from this strict norm. The native language is considered `pure`, it is addressed as a standard
model of comparison. This however have caused difficulties for non-native writers of Indian English
literature and it is more than infrequently that they have to guard themselves writing again, in English.

Writers of Indian English literature

Besides the legendary and hugely venerated Indian English literary personalities like Rabindranath
Tagore (Sadhana) or R K Narayan ( Malgudi days), later novelists like Kamala Markandaya (Nectar
in a Sieve, Some Inner Fury, A Silence of Desire, Two Virgins), Manohar Malgaonkar (Distant Drum,
Combat of Shadows, The Princes, A Bend in the Ganges and The Devil`s Wind), Anita Desai (Clear
Light of Day, The Accompanist, Fire on the Mountain, Games at Twilight) and Nayantara Sehgal,
have ceaselessly captured the spirit of an independent India struggling to break away from the British
and traditional Indian cultures and establish a distinct identity.

Dur ing the 1980`s and 90`s, India had emerged as a major literary nation. Salman Rushdie`s
`Midnight`s Children` had become a rage around the world, even winning the Booker Prize. The
worldwide success of Rushdie`s ` Midnight`s Children ` made him the first writer of the Indian
Diaspora to enter the sphere of elite international writers and leave an indelible mark on the global
literary scene. Other Indian English literature Novelists of repute of the contemporary times include -
V.S. Naipaul, Shobha De (Selective Memory), G.V. Desani, M Ananthanarayanan, Bhadani
Bhattacharya, Arun Joshi, Khushwant Singh, O.V. Vijayan, Allan Sealy (The Trotternama), Sashi
Tharoor (Show Business, The Great Indian Novel), Amitav Ghosh (Circle of Reason, Shadow Lines)
and others.

The writer in the genre of Indian English literature, who took the world with a storm, was Arundhati
Roy, whose `The God of Small Things` won the 1997 Booker Prize and became an international best-
seller overnight. Rohinton Mistry, Firdaus Kanga, Kiran Desai (Strange Happenings in the Guava
Orchard), Sudhir Kakar (The Ascetic of Desire), Ardeshir Vakil (Beach Boy) and Jhumpa Lahiri
(Interpreter of Maladies) are some other renowned writers of Indian origin. Former Prime Minister

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P.V. Narasimha Rao`s The Insider; Satish Gujral`s A Brush with Life; R.K. Laxman`s The Tunnel of
Time, Prof. Bipin Chandra`s India After Independence, Sunil Khilnani`s The Idea of India, J.N.
Dixit`s Fifty Years of India`s Foreign Policy, Yogesh Chadha`s Rediscovering Gandhi and Pavan
K.Varma`s The Great Indian Middle Class, are also outstanding works of the recent times.

The mid-20th century Indian literature in English had witnessed the emergence of poets such as
Nissim Ezekiel (The Unfurnished Man), P Lal, A K Ramanujan (The Striders, Relations, Second
Sight, Selected Poems), Dom Moraes (A Beginning), Keki .N . Daruwalla, Geive Patel were
profoundly influenced by literary movements taking place in the West, like Symbolism, Surrealism,
Existentialism, Absurdism and Confessional Poetry. These authors heavily had made use of Indian
phrases alongside English words and had tried to reproduce a blend of the Indian and the Western
cultures.

Indian English literature is an honest enterprise to demonstrate the ever rare gems of Indian writing in
English. From being a singular and exceptional, rather gradual native flare-up of geniuses, Indian
English has turned out to be a new form of Indian culture and voice in which India converses
regularly. While Indian authors - poets, novelists, essayists, dramatists - have been making
momentous and considerable contributions to world literature since the pre-Independence era, the past
few years have witnessed a gigantic prospering and thriving of Indian English writing in the global
market. Not only are the works of Indian authors writing in English surging on the best-seller list, they
are also incurring and earning an immense amount of critical acclamation. Commencing from Mulk
Raj Anand, R. K. Narayan, Anita Desai, Sarojini Naidu, Toru Dutt to Salman Rushdie, Vikram Seth,
Allan Sealy, Amitav Ghosh, Jhumpa Lahiri, Chitra Banerjee, Arundhati Roy, Vikram Chandra - the
panache of fine Indian writers is long and much augmented.

A.D. Hope Australia

Alec Derwent was one of Australias greatest poets, who touched the lives of many throughout the
world.
Within the 7 stanzas of Australia, A.D hope gives us a very negative one-sided approach to the
poem. His poetry explores the spiritual poverty of our land. He insinuates that it takes so much to
survive which has prevented Australians from reflecting upon their journey through life. A.D hope is
looking down on Australia and our way of life. The sombre images of a nation of trees, drab green
and desolate grey indicate that Australia is a monotonous and dreary place.

Each stanza consists of four lines with the rhyme scheme being ABBA. Little enjambment exists in
the poem; most of the stanzas stand alone as paragraphed.
..drab green and desolate grey
Her rivers of water down among inland sands
Floods her monotonous tribes from Cairns to Perth.

A.D Hope uses imagery as a means to convey meaning to the poem. The dark colours portray the
insipidness of the landscape. Monotonous tribes refer to the fact that there is no individualism
throughout Australia everyone looks and thinks the same. The alliteration helps to once again convey
an image drab green and desolate grey. She is the last of lands, the emptiest.. A. D Hope uses this
metaphor to give the concrete reality that Australia does have human qualities an abstract idea. The
tone is mocking Australian culture, our history, our land and they way we live our life.

A.D Hope gives Australia human qualities he refers to the land as a women they call her a young
country. Australia is Hope's criticism of general Australian society and the country itself.
a women beyond her change in life, a breast
still tender but within the womb is dry
Refers to the fact that Australia is empty the inability to bear children, being infertile a change of life
insinuates or implies menopause meaning baron and the land being empty. The poem is reflecting on

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Australia by how it is both a new and old country, geographically old but politically new, and how it is
both European colonial and naturally individual.

The poet suggests that Australians are vacuous without songs, architecture, history. He talks about
the wilderness in the centre of Australia and how if you move away from the population centres of the
coastal plain you can escape. Part of A.D Hopes criticism is aimed towards the illicit of the average
Australian. He uses derogatory remarks about Australia by calling us second hand Europeans
referring us to second-class citizens. He calls Australia stupid and devoid of culture and he calls the
society-cultured apes. He suggests that such a harsh land like Australia does not create thinkers.

Indian writing in English

Raja Rammohan Ray was the first Indian to effectively express himself in black and white through
English though he was initiated to the language when he was in his teens. Thereafter Vivekananda
showed his perfect masterly over the language through his evocative prose, which made the west sit
up and take notice of the greatness of Hinduism.

Tagore also had written some poems in English. However, there is no denying the fact that Indian
writings in English were extremely few far between. Jawaharlal Nehru and M.K. Gandhi were also
great masters of the English language. Nehrus Discovery of India, Glimpses of World History etc. are
glaring testimony to not only his profound scholarship but also his absolute mastery over writing lucid
prose in the foreign language. Gandhiji used the language in his writings with utmost precision and
desterity.

They were followed by the great triumvirate of Anand-Rao-Naryan, who were the first to make Indian
writing in English popular among a sizable section of our English educated people. They primarily
wrote fiction and their elegant styles soon caught the imagination of the common reader. Indian
writing in English had finally arrived in 1930s after a marginal existence for over a century.

Mahatma Gandhi: Though Gandhi used his mother tongue, Gujarati, to write his famous
autobiography, later translated into English by his secretary Mahadev Desai under the title The Story
of My Experiments with Truth (1929), he used Hindi and English with masterly skill and use. As he
lived through a eventful life among his people, who were attempting to liberate themselves from
moral decadence, economic exploitation, and cultural subordination, Gandhi wrote, day and night, in
and out of prisons, for his two journals, Young India and Harijan.

Rabindranath Tagore: The national awakening in Asia found its expression first in the Indian
literature, and its formost representative writer was Tagore (1861-1941). Tagore was the first Asian
writer to win the Nobel Prize for Literature (1913). Tagore represents a happy combination of the
ancient Indian tradition and the new European consciousness. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for his
slim volume of poems entitled Gitanjali. Tagore gave Indian poetry a new type of lyric. Through his
collection of stories entitled Galpa Guchchha, running into three volumes, Tagore set the pace of the
modern short story in India. His famous novels, Gora and Ghare Baire reflect the genius of a ...

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... supreme visionary.

In 1930s emerged the first major figures in the field of English literature in the shape of the Big
Three of Indian fiction: Mulk Raj Anand, Raja Rao and R.K.Narayan. Mulk Raj Anand is the most
westernized of the trio; Rao, while writing in English and using the genre of the novels has his roots
in Sanskrit culture; Narayans work occupies a middle ground between the approaches of his two
illustrious contemporaries.

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Anands reputation was first established by his first two novels, Untouchable (1935), which gives an
account of a day in life of a sweeper, and Coolie (1936), which follows the fortunes of a peasant
boy uprooted from the land. His trilogy The Village (1939), Across The Black Waters (1940) and The
Sword and the Sickle (1942) is an epic account of the gradual growth of the protagoniss
revolutionary consciousness which may be seen as a microcosm of Indias movement towards an
awareness of the need for independence.

Raja Raos first novel Kanthapura (1938) is his most straightforward. It gives an account of how her
villages revolt against a domineering plantation owner comes to be informed by the Gandhian ideal
of nonviolence. Raos major work The Serpent and the Rope (1960) is regarded by some Indian critics
as the most important Indian novel in English to have appeared to date. Rao has also publiched the
short novels The Cat and Shakespeare (1965) and Comrade Kirillov (1976).

Nirad C. Chaudhari is being regarded as the most controversial of Indian writers in English. He
emerged on the scene with his book The Autobiography of an Unknown Indian (1951). When he
visited England, he recorded his experiences in A Passage to England (1959). In The Continent of
Circe (1965) he puts forward the thesis that the Aryan settlers of India became enfeebled by the
climate of North India. He has also published To Live or not to Live (1970) and a second volume of
autobiography, Thy Hand, Great Anarch (1987).

R.K. Narayans early novels include the triology Swami and Friends (1935), The Bachelor of Arts
(1937) and The English Teacher (1945). The novels of his middle period represent his best works;
these include Mr. Sampath (1949), The Financial Expert (1952), The Guide (1958), The Man Eater of
Malgudi (1961) and The Sweet-Vendor (1967). They explore conflicts between traditional Hindu
values and western incursions into the society. Narayans more recent novels include The Painter of
Signs (1976), A Tiger for Malgudi (1983) and Talkative Man (1986). He has also published several
volumes of short stories, including An Astrologers Day (1947) and Lawley Road (1956).

Vikran Seths first novel, A Suitable Boy has made him the most hyped-up first-time novelist in the
history of Indian literature. The Golden Gate, a novel in verse had hit the bestsellers lists in 1986-87.
The Golden Gate was followed by three collections of verse: The Humble Administrators Garden, All
You Who Sleep Tonight and Beastly Tales From Here and There.

Salman Rushdie won the 1981 Booker Prize for Midnights Children (1981). Shame (1983)
approaches political events in Pakistan. He has also published Grimus (1975), a science fiction novel,
and The Jaguar Smile (1987), a journal about war-torn Nicargua and of course, the banned book
Satanic Verses.

Anita Desai has written Fire in the Mountains (1977), Clear Light of Day (1980) and The Village by
the Sea (1982), Cry the Peacock (1963), Bye-Bye Black Bird (1971) and In Custody (1984). Her
subtle unostentatious prose and her sensitive evocation of the inner lives of her characters make her
one of the finest talents at work in the Indian novel.

Other Novelists

The period around Independence provided Khushwant Singh and Manohar Malgonkar with the
subject matter of their best novels: Singhs A Train to Pakistan (1956) and Malgonkars A Bend in the
Ganges (1964) deal with partition; Singhs I Shall Not Hear the Nightangle (1959) is about the
movements of a Sikh family in the Punjab in the uncertain period before partition and Malgonkars
The Princes (1963) a sympathetic account of the tragedy of a family who represents the local elite that
ruled many native states during the Raj. Kamala Markandyas novels, which include Nector in a
Sieve (1954), A Handful of Rice (1966) and The Coffer Dams (1969) are mainly about rural and urban
poverty and dispossession.

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Nayantara Sahgal, a niece of Nehru, writes about the Indian elite of today and yesterday. Her novels
include This Time of Morning (1965), The Day in Shadow (1971), A Situation in New Delhi (1977),
Rich Like Us (1985) and Plans For Departure (1986), she was winner of the Eurasian section of the
1987 Commonwealth Writer Prize.

Arundhuti Roy: Although she has written only one novel, she managed to gain international
recognision as the popularity of her maiden novel, The God of Small things transcended
geographical boundaries and thereby made her presence feel among the contemporary literacy greats
of the west. She also won tremendous critical acclaim for her immative use of the language and her
lyrical and yet honest presentation of her life and times of a Kerala village which culminated with her
winning the prestigious Booker Prize ($20,000), for her debut literacy venture.

Shoba De: This queen of pulp fiction, she intelligently uses the very special Indian English or
Hinglish in her racy, raunchy sensual novels. Though her works are of little literacy value but she has
achieved more popularity than many of her contemporaries. She can be regarded as a trend settler in
the genre of sensational novels, written, with the sole purpose of selling.

Amitav Ghosh: He has carved a distinctive niche for himself with his profound works such as circle
of reason, Calcutta chromosome, shadow lines etc. every work at his amply displays his penchant for
inquisitiveness, serious research and diversity.

Essay on Indian Writing in English!

English is a foreign language but since the British came to India the language has had an impact on
several fieldsin education, literary effort and as a medium of communication.

Indian English Literature refers to that body of work by writers from India, who writes in the English
language and whose native or co-native language could be one of the numerous regional and
indigenous languages of India. English literature in India is also linked with the works of writers of
the Indian diaspora born in India but residing elsewhere.

A pioneer of this literature was Raja Rammohan Roy whose prose works is noteworthy. There were
poets who are considered the first of the Indian English poets: Henry Vivian Derozio, Madhusudan
Dutt, Aru and Toru Dutt, and Manmohan Ghose. Indian literature in English actually dates back to the
1830s to Kashiprasad Ghosh, who is considered the first Indian poet write in English.

Sochee Chunder Dutt was the first writer of fiction. In the beginning, however, political writing in the
novel or essay format was dominant, as can be seen in Raja Rammohan Roy works. An outstanding
Indo-Anglian writer was Aurobindo Ghose whose poetic magnum opus is Savitri an epic. In prose his
most effective work is The Life Divine outlining his metaphysics in a rich language.

Some of Rabindranath Tagores works were originally written in English Sadhana Personality and The
Religion of Man Yet another Indian writer in English was Sarojini Naidu, the Nightingale of India,
who rendered familiar things with an essence of colour and romance. The Golden Threshold, The Bird
of Time and The Broken Wing are her important works. Jawaharlal Nehrus prose works, The
Discovery of India and Glimpses of World History, are famous.

In the genre of novel, three early writers made a mark. Mulik Raj Anands Coolie, Untouchable, The
Big Heart and other novels are about the underprivileged in India. R.K. Narayan has become famous
for creating the imaginary Malgudi as the locale for most of his novels. He has a humorous manner
and an eye for the comic in the world around him. His works include Swami and his Friends.

The Dark Room, the Guide, Waiting for the Mahatma and The Man Eater of Malgudi Raja Rao is a
good short story writer and has written only four novels but they are significant. They include
Kanthapura, The Serpent and the Rope, and The Cat and Shakespeare. Besides the legendary and

17
hugely venerated Indian English literary personalities like Rabindranath Tagore or R K Narayan, later
novelists like Kamala Markandaya (Nectar in a Sieve, Some Inner Fury A Silence of Desire, Two
Virgins), Manohar Malgaonkar (Distant

Drum, Combat of Shadows, The Princes, A Bend in the Ganges and The Devils Wind), Anita Desai
(Clear Light of Day, The Accompanist, Fire on the Mountain, Games at Twilight) and Nayantara
Sehgal, have ceaselessly captured the spirit of an independent India struggling to break away from the
British and establish a distinct identity. Khushwant Singh (Train to Pakistan), Bhabani Bhattacharya
(So Many Hungers, He Who Rides Tiger, Music for Mohini) are other Indian novelists famous for
their writing in English.

In the recent past, we have had a crop of fresh talent. During the 1980s and 1990s, India had emerged
as a major literary nation. Salman Rushdies Midnights Children had become a rage around the
world, winning the Booker Prize. Other Indian English literature novelists of repute of the
contemporary times include V.S. Naipaul, Shobha De (Selective Memory), G.V. Desani, M.
Ananthanarayanan, Arun Joshi, O.V. Vijayan, Allan Sealy (The Trotternama), Shashi Tharoor (Show
Business, The Great Indian Novel) and Amitav Ghosh (Circle of Reason, Shadow Lines). Vikram Seth
wrote a novel in verse. The Suitable Boy, which is equally famous for the stupendous advance he got
from his publishers. Upamanyu Chatterjee (English August) has made a name for himself as a
foremost modern novelist.

Arundhati Roys The God of Small Things won the 1997 Booker Prize and became an international
best-seller overnight. Rohinton Mistry, Firdaus Kanga, Kiran Desai (Strange Happenings in the Guava
Orchard), Sudhir Kakar (The Ascetic of Desire), Ardeshir Vakil (Beach Boy) and Jhumpa Lahiri
(Interpreter of Maladies) are some other renowned writers of Indian origin. Satish Gujrals A Brush
with Life, R.K. Laxmans The Tunnel of Time, Prof. Bipin Chandras India after Independence, Sunil
Khilnanis The Idea of India, J.N. Dixits Fifty Years of Indias Foreign Policy, Yogesh Chadhas
Rediscovering Gandhi and Pavan K.Varmas The Great Indian Middle Class, are also some notable
works of recent times.
The mid-20th century Indian literature in English had witnessed the emergence of poets such as
Nissim Ezekiel (The Unfurnished Man), P. Lai, A.K. Ramanujan (The Striders, Relations, Second
Sight, Selected Poems), Dom Moraes (A Beginning), Keki N. Daruwalla and Geive Patel.

These authors make use of Indian phrases alongside English words and have tried to reproduce a
blend of the Indian and the Western cultures. While Indian poets, novelists, essayists, dramatists have
been making momentous and considerable contributions to world literature since the pre-
Independence era, the past few years have witnessed a thriving of Indian English writing in the global
market. The works of Indian authors writing in English are often to be found on the best-seller list.
They are also incurring and earning an immense amount of critical fame.

Twentieth Century Novels and Prose

The novels of the nineteenth century were written at a time when there was confidence and stability in
British society. But the twentieth-century novels are influenced by the changes in beliefs and political
ideas after the events of the First World War and the disappearance of the British Empire. This change
can be noticed if we look at the works of the two writers who are not so far from other in terms of
time.

August Wilson

His novels present a picture of modern twentieth century life and its problems. But he uses the
traditional form of novel. His novels contain various sorts of characters, but all of them belong to the
same middle class social group. His stories, which belong to his earlier collections, are satirical and

18
express moral judgments indirectly. His Anglo Saxon Attitude is about a historians life who is
compelled by some events to tell the truth. His another novel The Middle Age of Mrs. Eliot is about a
womans life who makes herself familiar with the outside world around her, in spite of the familys
suggestion to live a lonely life after her husband. Her other novels are No Laughing Matter and As If
By Magic.

E. M. Forster

Forster wrote novels a short time later than Kipling. He held the different view of India and the British
Empire. The main theme of this novel was human relationship. Howards End explores the relation
between inward feeling and outward behavior. There are two families The Wilcoxes and the Schlegel,
who believes in two different aspects of life, material and spiritual, respectively. Fosters theme is
how to connect these two aspects of life, the outer and the inner. Only this connection will make
human love of a higher and greater kind.

A Passage to India is a Forsters masterpiece in which he takes the relations between the English and
the Indians in the early 1920s. Adela Quested, and English girl comes to India to marry an English
officer. She makes friendship with some Indians and travels with them. Once she accuses an Indian of
sexually attacking her in the cave. The case begins in the court. This incidence breaks the relationship
between the English and the Indians. Forster as a liberal humanist is on the side of Indian
independence. His main theme in this novel is the importance of bringing together opposites in order
to create unity.

Arnold Bennett

He used the traditional form of the novel, but with realistic presentation of the details of the
characters. Most of his novels are set in the five towns, the center of English Pottery industry. His
novels deal with the lives of the same sort of people of the industrial society. They present the dull
and difficult picture of life. His famous novels include, Clayhanger, Hilda Lessways and These Twain.

H. G. Wells

He also often took characters from a lower social level, but many of his characters are given a chance
of happiness. Kipps and The History of Mr Polly both deal with men working in shops. They think
that money and running away change their lives. But they do not bring them what they hoped for. At
the end of the novels they know better what they need to be happy. Wells also used modern scientific
advances in his novels in a new way. The Time Machine, The War of the Worlds and The First Men on
the Moon, use the material of science. He also wrote Ann Veronica about a girl who wants to choose
for herself what to do in life, which in many ways also looks ahead to the women's movement much
later this century.

D. H. Lawrence

He created a new kind of novel. He believed that a novelists duty is to show how a persons view of
his own personality is influenced by the conventions of language, family and religion and how a
persons relation with other people is always changing. Sons and Lovers is his autobiographical novel,
which deals about his attachment to his mother. Paul Morel, the hero of the novel is brought in the
English Midlands as Lawrence was brought up. The novel is mainly concerned with the relationship

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between Paul and his mother. Paul wants to be a creative artist, but for this he has to free himself from
the influence of his mother and take his own decisions in his personal matters. The novel ends with
the mothers death and a sort of liberation for the hero.

The Rainbow deals with the story of three couples of families of different ages. He takes three
generations and explores all the basic human relationship- relationship between man and his
environment, men and woman, intellect and instinct and different generations. The first couple has a
deep and loving understanding of each other, the second couple has a physical passion for each other,
and the third couple use language as a wall to keep them apart and each tries to force their own wishes
on the other.

James Joyce

He was born and brought up in Ireland. He is noted for his experimental use of language and
exploration of new literary method. Dubliners are his collection of short stories which gives the
realistic pictures of Dublin life with symbolic meaning. The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is
his autobiographical novel in which Joyce has appeared in the form of his hero, Stephan Dedalus, who
is under the influence of Irish nationality, politics and religion. But he realizes that the artist must be
outside the society in order to be objective. So to make himself free he escapes from Dublin life.

James Joyces Ulysses is one of the strangest novels written in English. Stephen Dedalus also appears
as a character in Ulysses. The central character, Leopold Bloom is an antihero rather than a hero. The
characters and some events of the novel have been derived from Old Greek stories, as the title
suggests. The novel is concerned with the artist and the nature of the artistic creation. Joyce has used
stream of consciousness technique a new style of writing, in this novel. It is funny, satirical and partly
realistic work and it contains many literary references and many kinds of language.

Virginia Woolf

She has also used the technique of stream of consciousness in her novels. But unlike Joyce she is
interested to explore the consciousness in her novels. But unlike Joyce she is interested to explore the
consciousness of her novels. To the Lighthouse has an abrupt opening without any background of
setting. A family is on holiday in Scotland. The intense of James Ramsay, a six year boy to visit to the
lighthouse by boat is prevented by his father, Mr. Ramsay. The novel ends with the revisiting of the
house by the same family ten years later. James Ramsay finally goes to the lighthouse with his father
unwillingly. He hates his father both for preventing him to go at the earlier time as well as insisting
him to go at last. The novel presents a fine pattern of symbolic relations and the study of the moral
and psychological problems.

Woolfs Orlando might be called a symbolic biography of the authors friend, Victoria Saukville-
West, with the hero, Orlando. In the novel, Orlando begins as a man in the sixteenth century and ends
as a man in 1928. It is a lively and humorous work containing a considerable number of private jokes.
Woolf also wrote other novels and critical writings.

William Golding

He is a symbolic novelist. His first and well known novel Lord of the Flies has been probably the
most powerful English novel written since the war. It is the story told with clear realism and symbolic

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meaning of a group of small children wrecked on a desert island. The novel shows how the effects of
civilization break down and they return to their essential animal nature. For, Golding it is the essential
nature of all human beings. His later novels also contain his sense of human inadequacy and his own
vision of man.

Anthony Burgess

He wrote various sorts of novels. He praised Joyce and imitated his way of using language. His early
three novels, which have the setting of Malaya take a lot form Forsters A Passage to India. A
Clockwork Orange is his most famous novel, which present the picture of the future in which a
character named Alex willingly chooses the evil course in his life. He intends to hurt the people and to
make them suffer the pain because he takes delight in doing so. Later he is taken to the doctor for
cure. Burgess here wants to make a moral point that Alex can choose both the options, either good or
evil. The language of the novel contains words from other languages, particularly Russian. The
Wanting Seed is his satirical novel, which has the setting of the future England.
George Orwell

He became a very famous writer, mainly because of his political and critical writing. His best works
are written on the political subjects. There is no doubt that he is considered to be the most important
political writer after the war. Orwell presents with great clarity, the realities of social and political life
of this time.

In the novel Nineteen Eighty-Four he describes how government uses language in order to hide the
truth and betray the people. The novel gives a picture of a future world where the state provides a kind
of television for the people to watch. The state slowly changes peoples language and only such words
are left in use among the people, which are suitable for the purpose of the state. Thus, the language
and action are controlled in order to control the people by the state Orwell realizes that people must be
given their freedom and the state should not control them so strictly.

Animal Farm is his best-known novel. It is a political allegory which presents wrong political events
and revolution which were carried out just to capture the power and rule over the country. He satirizes
the absolute power holders who always believed in suppressing the people and fulfilling their selfish
desires. This is very well done by the novelist by using the animal characters. In the story of the
novels the animals on the farm are led by the pigs to dismiss their master Jones. But when they hold
the power, they become as selfish and cruel as their master Jones.

Women Writers of Twentieth Century Novels and Prose

One of the interesting development in the twentieth century literature is the remarkable increase in the
number of women writers especially novelist. Some woman novelist, generally deals with the same
kind of subjects as men do, for example, Virginia Woolf and Iris Murdoch.

Ivy Compton-Burnett

Her novels deal with the family life in a very original way. She presents the reality of Victorian family
life in her novels. Mostly her cruel and evil characters succeed where as good characters remain
unsuccessful in their lives. No force form outside or inside can change her characters. The bad are
never punished and good are never rewarded. In her novels she deals with the traditions of the

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Victorian family to show that the realities of their lives are basically cruel and destructive. Her famous
novels include Brothers and Sisters, Parents and Children and A Heritage and its History.

Margaret Drabble

Her novels also present women as main characters. But they do not express ideas and feelings much
about themselves; rather they are concerned mainly to receive higher education. In her novels, The
Millstone and The Waterfall the central characters who find themselves in loneliness and frustration
are brought into the happy world with love and human feelings. Drabble creates a picture of unhappy
in The Ice Age. The people in the novel are seen unhappy because they only live in one part of their
personality. It is shown as a danger to the whole of society.

Over a few decades there has been a tremendous interest in the books written by and about women.
Virago Press has helped in this field by publishing the books about women and their experience.
Several important women writers from the first half of the country include Rebecca West, Elizabeth
Bowen, Storm Jameson and Rosamond Lehman. They have found a new audience in this way.

Science Fiction

The stories which are based on developments in science technology are known as science fiction.
Because of the development in science many writers have turned to the subject of science in their
writing. Their work includes either exciting developments or fictional developments of the future.
Early science fiction falls into three main areas: -
* If the present scientific developments are carried further, it may be dangerous to man and destroy
the human races.
* What may happen after man has defeated the problem of war, disease and poverty-perhaps he will
be able to go beyond the limits of the human body and gain some of qualities of machines.
* Although man may have lost something of natural life on earth; he can explore the world of space.

Many writers who have been mentioned in terms of their other work have also written science fiction.
One of such writers is H.G. Wells. He was very interested in the scientific advances of his age and
looked ahead to imagine what the result might be in the future. He was optimistic about the
advantages of science. Many of his novels present a struggle between two ways of life, the human and
the non-human. Like Wells there are other writers who have written in the area of science fiction, such
as E. M. Forster, Aldous Huxley, Kingsley Amis and Doris Lessing. George Orwell and Anthony
Burgess also give pictures of a future world in their work.

There is another group of writers who have mainly written science fiction. John Wyndham in The Day
of the Triffids and The Krakam Wakes show a different world after the destruction of present society.
Brian Aldiss has written many books in this area. His Graybeard presents a group of people trying to
be alive even after the destruction of most of the world. Arthur C. Clarke has written many science
fictions, including The City and the Stars. His 2001: A Space Odyssey is about the exploration in the
space.

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