Chinua Achebe (1930 – 2013) was a Nigerian poet and writer. His first novel Things Fall Apart often considered his best, is the most widely read book in modern African literature. He won the Man Booker International Prize in 2007. In 1962 he attended an executive conference of African writers in English at the Makerere University College in Kampala, Uganda. He met with important literary figures from around the continent and the world, including Nobel poet Wole Soyinka and US poet-author Langston Hughes. I can write poetry, he said, something short, intense more in keeping with my mood ... All this is creating in the context of our struggle. One of his most famous poems was Refugee Mother and Child who spoke to the suffering and loss that surrounded him.
About The poem Vultures
This first stanza of ‘Vultures’ begins with a
relentlessly long sentence filled with dark, sullen descriptions. Achebe uses alliteration in the second and third lines: “and drizzle of one despondent/ dawn unstirred by harbingers.” But this is an enjambed line and so doesn’t give the ebb and flow usually associated with alliteration. This helps to emphasize the bleak tone Achebe is trying to achieve.
In second stanza, Achebe skillfully contrasts the “light” of love with the “dark” of death by mentioning that in this darkest of environments, the “charnel-house,” a storage place for corpses, there is the presence of love. he personify love itself.
The third stanza throws the poem ‘Vultures’ on its head somewhat. It cleverly constructs the character of the “Commandant at Belsen”. His description is not particularly flattering. The commandant’s only physical description includes his “hairy nostrils” but his actions are kind and very human. He brings chocolate home for his child. A kind gesture and not actions one would probably associate with a war criminal.
In the final stanza, Achebe brings the poem to a close, by describing how even the “ogre” that is the commandant has a soft side, which was shown in the preceding stanza. He emphasizes the solace that should be taken in this small mercy “praise bounteous providence”. His language here is particularly emphatic and evokes fantastic contrasts.
Thematic study of Poem Vultures
Nazism:
Nazism, also spelled Naziism, in full National Socialism, German Nationalsozialismus, totalitarian movement led by Hitler as head of the Nazi party in Germany. In its intense Nationalism mass appeal, and dictatorial rule, Nazism shared many elements with Italian facism. However, Nazism was far more extreme both in its ideas and in its practice. In almost every respect it was an anti-intellectual and atheoretical movement, emphasizing the will of the charsimastic dictator as the sole source of inspiration of a people and a nation, as well as a vision of annihilation of all enemies of the Aryan Volk as the one and only goal of Nazi policy.
in the poem the concept of Nazism can be seen in the third stanza This section is introduced and
concluded with ellipses, as if to
suggest that the train of thought
that the speaker was following
(about the vultures loving each
other, and the surprising
occurrence of love in the most
unlikely places) has now led him to another
example of this same phenomenon – the Nazi
Commandant at the Belsen concentration camp.
Vulture As Metaphor
Human have very scary, or dangerous bird etc concept in mind. Poet tells that in poem vultures eat humans after it's dead and that's the part of their lives. But man are killing humans as the part of their job. So in real sense humans are more harmful or merciless then birds. So here vulture is used as metaphor. Vultures are far better then humans. Because humans can do anything for money or as a part of job.
Ecology:
vultures are known as part of nature. they are also help human in the ecology. Vultures are often overlooked as lowly scavengers. However, they are a key component to maintaining healthy ecosystems. Because of their role as nature’s garbage disposers, vultures are able to keep the environment clean and free of contagious diseases. These birds have an extremely corrosive stomach acid that allows them to consume rotting animal corpses. These scavenged leftovers are often infected with anthrax, botulinum toxins, rabies, and hog cholera that would otherwise kill other scavengers. By ridding the ground of dead animals, vultures prevent diseases from spreading to humans and animals.
The work of vultures is what is often referred to as ecosystem services, and this example from Spain illustrates the benefit the people receive from these birds, often without even realising.
Humanism
In first stanza appearance of Vulture is described that it's ugly looking bird.Eating in ugly way. vultures cruelty that is sitting on the branch of dead tree and having eye on dead body.
In next lines poet shows the cruelty of commandant. That they kill the Jews and keep them in charnel house. Animals are not cruel they does things as the part of their system but humans heart are cruel because they have ability to think to go on the path of good or evil. But they choose to be evil it's their choice.
Ego v/s Eco
As we can see in today's time that humans are damaging the nature for satisfaction of their ego. humans are threat to nature. when the animals are better then the humans they are helps the environment and because of the animals Ecology system can be balanced. which is already harmed by humans.
Vulture v/s Humans
Vultures are harmless, despite the chilling role they play in stories and myths. They dine mostly on dead animals and have no incentive to attack humans. In fact, vultures are beneficial for people because they are extremely efficient at removing human and animal waste from our towns, villages and roads.
when the humans are destroy the nature for their needs. they are not even think about environment they are disturbing the ecology system. humans are harming the nature by doing some action.
Conclusion
The ending/conclusion of the poem is ambiguous/two sided. On one hand, Achebe praises God and providence that even the cruellest of creatures can show love. On the other hand, these creatures show love for their families only and continue to commit cruel acts towards others.
Translation is the wandering existence of text in a perpetual Exile
This statement obviously alludes to the Christian myth of fall from origin and the mythical exile is a metaphoric Translation A post babel crisis. Given
this metaphysical precondition of western Aesthetics it is not surprising that literary Translation are not accorded same status as original work
Western literary criticism provides for the guilt of the translation for coming into being after original. the temporal sequentiality is held proof of diminution of literary authenticity of translation. the strong sense of individuality given to western individuals through systematics philosophy and the logic of social history makes them view translation as an intrusion of the 'other'
The philosophy of individualism and the metaphysics of guilt, however, render European literary historiography incapable of grasping the origins of literary traditions. One of the most revolutionary events in the history of English style has been the authorized translation of the Bible.
It is well known that chaucer translating the style of Boccacio into english when he created canterbury Tales. when dryden and pope wanted to recover sense of order they used to tool of translation
During the two century the role of translation in communicating literary movement across linguistic borders has become important. the tradition that has given us writers like shaw, yeats, joyce, bekett heaney in a single century. the tradition Angelo irish literature branched out of the pratice of translating irish work into english initiated by Macpherson towards the end of 18th century.
The settler colonies like Australia, canada, Newzealand have impressive modern tradition of literature which have resulted from the 'Translations of settler from their Homeland to alien Locations post colonial writing in the former spanish colonies in south America.
Most of primary issues relating to the 'form' and 'meaning' too have not been settled in a relation to translation. no critic has taken any well defined position about the exact placement of translation in literary history.
Roman Jacobson writes in his essay on linguistic of translation proposed a three fold classification of translation
a. Those from verbal order to another verbal order within same language system
b. those from one language system to another language system
c. Those from verbal order to another system of science
Structural Linguistics
Structural linguistics considers language as a system of signs, arbitrarily developed, that tries to cover the entire range of significance available to the culture of that language. The signs do not mean anything by or in themselves; they acquire significance by virtue of their relation to the entire system to which they belong. If translation is defined as some kind of communication of significance, and if we accept the structuralist principle that communication becomes possible because of the nature of signs and their entire system, it follows that translation is a merger of sign systems. Such a merger is possible because systems of signs are open and vulnerable. The translating consciousness exploits the potential openness of language systems; and as it shifts significance from a given verbal form to a corresponding but different verbal form it also brings closer the materially different sign systems. If we take a lead from phenomenology and conceptualize a whole community of ‘translating consciousness’ it should be possible to develop a theory of interlingual synonymy as well as a more perceptive literary historiography.
Concept of Translating Consciousness
The concept of a ‘translating consciousness’ and communities of people possessing it are no mere notions. In most Third World countries, where a dominating colonial language has acquired a privileged place, such communities do exist. The use of two or more different languages in translation activity cannot be understood properly through studies of foreign-language acquisition. Owing to the structuralist unwillingness to acknowledge the existence of any non-systemic or extra- systemic core of significance, the concept of synonymy in the West has remained inadequate to explain translation activity. And in the absence of a linguistic theory based on a multilingual perspective or on translation practice, the translation thought in the West overstates the validity of the concept of synonymy.
J.C. catford presents a comprehensive statement theoretical the formulation about the linguistic of translation in A linguistic theory of translation in which he seeks to isolate various linguistic levels of translation
Translation is an operation performed on languages:
a process of substituting a text in one language for
a text in another; clearly, then, any theory of translation
must draw upon a theory of language – a general linguistic theory’
Problems of Translation Studies
The translation problem is not just linguistic problem. it is aesthetic and ideological problem with an important bearing on the question of the literary history. Literary translation is not just replication of a text in other verbal system of signs.it is a replication of an ordered sub system of signs within a related language in another corresponding ordered sub systems of signs related languages.
The problems of translation studies are therefore, very much like those literary History .they are the problems of relationship between origin and sequentiality . the problem of origin has not been tackled satisfactorily.
Conclusion
To conclude The article alluding to Indian metaphysics, Indian metaphysics believes in an unhindered migration of the soul from one body to another. Repeated birth is the very substance of all animated creations. When the soul passes from one body to another, it does not lose any of its essential significance. Elements of plot, stories, characters, can be used again and again by new generations of writers because Indian literary theory does not lay undue emphasis on originality.
This article divided in three parts here i have tried to write all three parts with detailed information
Part I
Ramanujan begin the first part with the question that how one does translate a poem from another time another culture another language? the poems i translate from tamil were written two thousands years ago in the corner of south india. over two thousands poems of diffrant lengths by four hundred poets arranged nine anthologies have survived the vagaries of politics and war changes of taste and religion the crumbling of palm leaves the ravages of insects, Heat, cold, water, fire.
The transport of poems from classical tamil to modern English the hazards the damages of transit the secret paths, and the lucky bypasses.
The chief difficulty of Translation is its impossibility Frost once even identified poetry as that which is lost in translation. Once we accept that as a premise of this art, we can proceed to practice it, or learn.
here the writer question about how shall one can divide up and translate a poem? what are the units of translation? then he also find the answer about this particular question that as he begin with sound that the sound system of Tamil is very different from the English . Tamil has six nasal consonants A labial, A dental, An Alveolar, retroflex, palatal and velar. tamil has long and short vowels but english have dipthongs and glides.
we can map system on to another but never reproduce it
Later he talks about Meter that tamil meter depends on the presence of long vowels and double consonants and on closed an open syllable defined by such vowels and consonants.
further he talks about Grammar briefly, Tamil has no copula verbs for equational sentences in the present tense, as in Englishe.g., 'Tom is a teacher'; no degrees of adjectives as in English, e.g., 'sweet, sweeter, sweetest’;
no articles like 'a, an, the': and So on.
Tamil expresses the semantic equivalents of these grammatical devices by various other means. The lies and ambiguities of one language are not those of another.
further he talk about syntax that tamil syntax is mostly left branching while english syntaxis by and large right ward the tamil sentence is the mirror image of english one this would also be true for other languages.
After that the writer is talk about the lexicon for lexicon culture is specific terms for fauna, flora caste distinction, kinship systems, body parts even the word donate number are culturally loaded. words are emmeshed in other words in collocations in what can go with what, a white elephant, purple. words are participate in sets, contrast, in mutual recalling. even when the elements of the system may be similar in two languages like mother, father, brother, mother-in-law etc. in kinship the systems of relations and feelings traditionally encouraged.
The classical Tamil poetic tradition uses an entire taxonomy. A classification of reality, The five landscapes of the Tamil area, characterized by hills. seashores, agricultural areas, wastelands, and pastoral fields; each with its forms of life, both natural and cultural. trees, animals, tribes, customs. arts and instruments- all these become part of the symbolic code for the poetry. Every landscape, with all its contents, is associated with a mood or phase of love or war. The landscapes provide the signifiers. The five real landscapes of the Tamil country become, through this system, the interior landscapes of Tamil poetry. The five landscapes with all their contents signifying moods, and the themes and motifs of love and war.
Part II
In the second part ramanujan talk about the poem Ainkurunuru in english it can be translated as the 'what she said'and his translation, quoted earlier in this essay. The word annay (in spoken Tamil, ammo), literally 'mother', is a familiar term of address for any woman, here a 'girlfriend'. So he have translated it as 'friend', to make clear that the poem is not addressed to a mother (as some other poems are) but to a girl friend.
My pharse to order in english tries to preserve the order and syntax of themes not of single words
1.His land's water followed by
2.leaf covered waterholes
3.muddied by Animals
his poem is a kurinci piece, about the lovers' first union, set in the hillside landscape. My title ('What she said to her girl friend, when she returned from the hills') summarizes the whole context (speaker, listener, occasion) from the old colophon that accompanies the poem. The progression is lost if we do not preserve the order of themes so naturally carried by the left-branching syntax of Tamil. More could be said about it from the point of view of the old commentaries.
Thus, poem follows poem with the same paradigm of parson detalis of landscape often the same phrases but playing different tune on the same string making different figure evoking different mood within same theme.
The love poems get parodied subverted and played within comic poems and the war poems provide models and motifs for religious poem god like krasna both lovers and warriors.
The intertextuality is concentric a pattern of membership as well as neighbourhood of likeness and unlikeness.
Part III
If attempting a translation means attempting an impossibly intricate task, foredoomed to failure. what makes it possible at all'? At least four things-
1.Universals-
if there were no universals which languages participate and of which particular languages were section and combinations no language learning, translation, comparative studies or cross cultural understanding of even the best meagre kind would be possible. they are at least basic explanatory fiction of both linguistic and study of literature.
2.Interiorised contexts-
Poems interiorize the entire culture. Indeed we know the culture of the ancient Tamils only through a careful study of these poems. Later colophons and commentaries explore and explicate this knowledge carried by the poems setting them in context using them to make lexicons and charming the fauna and flora of landscape . when one translate classical tamil poem one is also translating also this kind of intertextual web the meaning of making web of colophones and commentaries that surround and contextualise the poem.
3. Systematicity-
Systematicity of such bodies of poetry, the way figures, genres, personae etc., intermesh in a master-code, is a great help in entering this intricate yet world of words. Even if one chooses not to translate all the poems, one chooses poems that cluster together, that illuminate one another so that allusions, contrasts and collective designs are suggested, of their world, re-presenting it. Here intertextuality is not the problem, but the solution .
4. Structural mimicry-
In translating poems the structures of individual poems, the unique figures they make out of all the given codes of their language, rhetoric and poetics, become the points of entry. The poetry and the significance reside in these figures and structures as much as in untranslatable verbal textures. So one attempts a structural mimicry, to translate relations, not items- not single words but phrases, sequences, sentences; not metrical units but rhythms; not morphology but syntactic patterns.
conclusion
To translate is to 'metaphor', to 'carry across'. Translations are transpositions, re-enactments, interpretations. The translation must not only represent, but re-present, the original. loyalty.
With the anecdote of Chinese emperor, Ramanujan say even if the representation in another language is not close enough, but still succeeds in 'carrying' the poem in some sense, we will have two poems instead of one.
This blog is a response of Task, which is given by Dr. Dilip Barad sir. This blog deals with three article which is of Comparative & Translation studies
. In this blog we are supposed to write abstract, key points / arguments and concluding remarks on all two articles of Unit 2 of paper Comparative Literatures and Translation Studies. It also includes the recording of class presentations presented by respective students.
Article:1
What is comparative Literature Today?
The Article begin with the question what is comparative studies? the simplest answer is that comparative literature involves study of text Across cultures that is interdisciplinary and concerned with patterns of connection in literature across both time and space.
Matthew arnold in his inaugural lecture at oxford in 1857 when he said
"Everywhere there is connections, Everywhere there is illustrations no single event no single literature is adequately comprehended except other relation to other events other literature."
By reading chaucer we came across Boccaccio we can trace Shakespeare source material through Latin French, Spanish, Italian we can study the ways romanticism develop in Europe at the similar moment of time follow the process through Baudelaire's fascination with Edgar Allan Poe.
One can be assume that comparative literature is nothing more than common sense, a stage of reading by the availability of translations.But if we slightly change our perspective we find a history of debate that goes right back to the usage of the term at the beginning of the nineteenth century and still continues today.
What is the object of comparative literature? how can comparison be object of anything? if individual literature has canon what canon be? how comparatist select what to compare?
is comparative literature a discipline or is simply field to study?
Rene wellek defined as the Crisis of comparative Literature and warren in theory of comparative literature a book that enoromausly siginificant when in comparative literature when it first appeared it is suggest that
Comparative Literature will make high demands on the linguistic proficiencies of our scholar it ask for wideing of perspective a suppression of local and provincial sentiment not easy to achieve?
Swapan Majumdar says-
‘It is because of this predilection for National Literature - much
deplored by the Anglo-American critics as a
methodology - that Comparative Literature has struck
roots in the Third World nations and in India in particular.’
Homi Bhabha sums up the new emphasis in an essay discussing the ambivalence of post- colonial culture, suggesting that:
‘Instead of cross-referencing there is an effective,
productive cross- cutting across sites of
social significance, that erases the dialectical, disciplinary
sense of 'Cultural' reference and relevance’.
Wole Soyinka and a whole range of African critics have exposed the pervasive influence of Hegel, who argued that African culture was 'weak' in contrast to what he claimed were higher, more developed cultures, and who effectively denied African history.
Ganesh Devy's argument that comparative literature in India coincides with the rise of modern Indian nationalism is important, because it serves to remind us of the origins of the term 'Comparative Literature' in Europe, a term that first appeared in an age of national struggles, when new boundaries were being erected and the whole question of national culture and national identity was under discussion throughout Europe and the expanding United States of America.
Conclusion
Comparative literature has always claimed translation as a sub-category, but as translation studies establishes itself firmly as a subject based in inter-cultural study and offering a methodology of some rigor, both in terms of theoretical and descriptive work, so comparative literature appears less like a discipline and more like a branch of something else. Seen in this way, the problem of the crisis could then be put into perspective, and the long, unresolved debate on whether comparative literature is or is not a discipline in its own right could finally and definitely be shelved.
ARTICLE 2
Comparative Literature in the Age of
Digital Humanities
Todd Presner
On this particular article i(Hirva pandya) and my classmate vachhalata joshi we have presented overview of this particular article here i have embed video recording of article as well as ppt which we have prepared
This blog is a response of Task, which is given by Dr. Dilip Barad sir. This blog deals with three article which is of Comparative & Translation studies
. In this blog we are supposed to write abstract, key points / arguments and concluding remarks on all three articles of Unit 1 of paper Comparative Literatures and Translation Studies. It also includes the recording of class presentations presented by respective students.
ARTICLE 1
why comparative Indian Literature
Sisir Kumar Das
Abstract
Article begins with an idea of attempt of finding unity is literature of India, the beginning of the century a group of scholars have been trying to project the idea of Indian literature emphasizing the underlying unity of themes and forms andattitudes. It is commendable but these attempts in discovering the basic unity of the Indian creative mind are made at the risk of ignoring the plurality of expressions in our creative minds.
The word comparative however has created some confusion and one wonders whether it is being used to lend some respectability to the study of indian languages by linking up with comparative literature. the main diemma of comparatist then is to reconcile his idea of literature as a single universe of verbal expression with his ability to study totality.
Gothe spoke about Weltliteratur instead of european literature. national literature is now rather than unmeaning term said Gothe conversation with eckermann on 31 January 1827 the epoch of world literature is at hand and everyone must strive to hasten its approach.
A comparatist hardly in a position to exercise any aesthetic judgement choosing best work in all languages of the world. he is mainly concerned with the relationships the resembles and differences between national literatures. the comparatist knows that the comparative literature is method of investigation while world literature as Gothe means is a body of valuable literary works.
Western comparatist has kept itself restricted to Western literature. if one goes through corpus of a work already enormous in size produced by him, one would wonder whether he is aware of existences of any literature other than his own. the contact between both east and west literature began very early in History.
Europe came to know about the hebrew literature the day it accepted Christianity. the Panchatantra reached Europe through arabic and syrian versions before renaissance. La fontaine in the second edition of his fables Acknowledge his debt Pilpay. Europe acquaintance with arabic was even earlier. the court of cordova in spain in a 11th century was a centre of arabic literature.spnish arab poetry particularly work of zaydum of Cordova Ibn Hazon or mutamid is now integral part of literary history in spain. and by the end of 18th century Europe discovered sanskrit which brought revolution in linguistics.
When comparative literature was established in the universities of Europe and america translation of many works in Chinese and Japanese of course in Arabic and Persian were available in European Languages.
Das is ready to admit that the charge of Eurocentrism against the western comparatist is unfair and that his choice of European literatures as the main area of investigation has been prompted more by pragmatism than by prejudice against oriental literatures. Ulrich Weinsstein expressed his hesitation to extend ‘the study of parallels of phenomena pertaining to two different civilizations’,
One can also argue western literature is a study of different national literature while compartive literature is the study of different literature written in many languages. today we have many nation state like india with many languages or soviet union consisting several nationalities.
when the case of comparative indian literature as a valid area of comparative literature in west exclusively study of western literature.
Conclusion
In a recent article towards comparative indian literature Amiya dev said comparison is right reason for us because one we are multilingual two we are Third world. The third world situation that lends Indian comparative literature of greater validity may need further comments. He points out that the tools of Western comparison are hardly adequate to deal with our literary situation.
In his article, "Comparative Literature in India," Amiya Dev bases his discussion on the fact that India has many languages and literatures thus
representing an apriori situation and conditions of diversity. He therefore argues that to speak of Indian literature in the singular is problematic.He surveys the current scholarly and intellectual positions on unity and diversity and looks into the post-structuralist doubt of homogenization of differences in the name of unity. He also examines the search for common denominators and a possible pattern of togetherness and Dev underlines location and located inter-Indian reception as an aspect of inter-literariness. It is t/here Dev perceives Indian literature, that is, not as a fixed or determinate entity but as an ongoing and inter literary process: Indian language and literature ever in the remaking.
There are 22 languages according to census. we have so called major literatures in india, we are confronted by a particular problematic is indian literature in the
singular valid category or are we rather to speak of indian literature in plural?
Single focus perspective is a result of both colonial and post colonial perspective the latter found motto of sahitya Akademi "Indian literature is one through written in many languages" however the perspective was opposed by scholar who argued that a country where so many languages co exist should be understood as a country with literature presently a different kind of resistance has unity thesis in a what may be called hegemonic apprehension in brief "arguments of unity in diversity are in my opinion suspect for they encroach upon individualities of the diverse literature"
Gurbhagat Singh who has been discussing the notion of "differential multilogue". He rejects the notion of Indian literature because the notion as such includes and promotes a nationalist identity. For singh Comparative literature is an exercise in different multilogue. Singh notion of differentmultilogue reflect poststructualist trend in indian discourse today. There would be no resistance unity in diversity and it cannot be denied that in the pursuit of "Indian literature "
Jaidev's notion of an Indian sensus communis is not routine indianess which we often encounter from our cultural ambassador or in the West that is those instance of national and racial image formation which suggest homogeneity and result in cultural stereotyping. It is situs tagore spoke many of his prose text and it is suits that Gandhi consistently practice.
The notion of "English Archive of English literature came about two decades ago by the suggestion of V.K.gokak and Sujit Mukherjee who were speaking of Indo English corpus of literature that was created out of English translations of major texts. further they are suggested the canonization of their proposal by inserting Indo English corpus into university curricula. Ahmed concern is with hegemony of english although he does not suggested its abolition in a way would be close to Ngugi's arguments. on the other hand Gokak, Mukherjee and Motilal Jotwani who was committee member for drafting the other circular suggested the implement as a function owning to the ever growing corpus of translation of various English literature into english thus, making new corpus of Indo English available to all.
Das's work is similar to K.M. George's two-volume Comparative Indian Literature of 1984-85. George's work was not as comprehensive as Das's: it only dealt with fifteen literatures and that too in a limited way.
The Gujarati poet Umashankar Joshi -- a supporter of the unity approach -- was the first president of the Indian National Comparative Literature Association, and the Kannada writer U.R. Anantha Murthy is the current president of the Comparative Literature Association of India. Comparatists reflect the binary approach to the question of Indian literature as explained.
Through inter-Indian translation we have also access to texts from a fourth and more languages. Now, as readers, consciously or subconsciously we place the texts in additional languages beside our original and first text.
Conclusion:
Comparative Literature has taught us not to take comparison literally and it also taught us that theory formation in literary history is not universally tenable. He suggesting that we should first look at ourselves and try to understand our own situations as thoroughly as possible. Let us first give full shape to our own comparative literatures and then we will formulate a comparative literature of diversity in general.
Comparative Literature In India: An Overview of its history
Abstract:
The essay gives an overview of the trajectory of Comparative Literature in India, focusing primarily on the department at Jadavpur University, where it began, and to some extent the department of Modern Indian Languages and Literary Studies in the University of Delhi, where it later had a new be- ginning in its engagement with Indian literatures. The department at Jadavpur began with the legacy of Rabindranath Tagore’s speech on World Literature and with a modern poet-translator as its founder. While British legacies in the study of literature were evident in the early years, there were also subtle efforts towards a decolonizing process and an overall attempt to enhance and nurture creativity. Gradually Indian literature began to receive prominence along with literatures from the Southern part of the globe. Paradigms of approaches in comparative literary studies also shifted from influence and analogy studies to cross-cultural literary relations, to the focus on reception and transformation. In the last few years Comparative Literature has taken on new perspectives, engaging with different ar- eas of culture and knowledge, particularly those related to marginalized spaces, along with the focus on recovering new areas of non-hierarchical literary relations.
Beginnings
comparative literature as a discipline there were texts focusing on comparative aspects of literature in india both from the points of view its relation with literatures from the other parts of the world particularly persian, Arabian, English and from the perspactive of inter indian literary studies.
Translation activities to be taken a large scale and poets talked of established relations with literatures of the world to promote as the eminent poet- Translator Satyendranath Datta 1904 stated "Relationships of Joy". The talk by Rabindranath Tagore entitled "VishvaSahitya "given at the National Council of Education in 1907 served as a pretext to the establishment of the department of comparative Literature at Jadhavpur
university in 1956.
Indian Literature as Comparative Literature
In 1974, the department of Modern Indian Languages started a post-MA course entitled “Comparative Indian Literature”. A national seminar on Comparative Literature was held at Delhi University organized by Nagendra, a writer-critic who taught in the Hindi department of Delhi University, and a volume entitled Comparative Literature was published in 1977.
Aijaz Ahmad, traced his voice so aptly that, “the dialectic of unity and difference – through systematic periodization of multiple linguistic overlaps, and by grounding that dialectic in the history of material productions, ideological struggles, competing conceptions of class and community and gender, elite offensives and popular resistances, overlaps of cultural vocabularies and performative genres, and histories of orality and writing and print”
T.S. Satyanath developed the theory of a scripto-centric, body-centric and phono-centric study of texts in the medieval period leading a number of researchers in the department to look for continuities and interventions in the tradition that would again lead to pluralist epistemologies in the study of Indian literature and culture.
Centres of Comparative Literature Studies:
During the seventies and the eighties Comparative Literature was also practiced at a number of centres and departments in the South of India such as in Trivandrum, Madurai Kamaraj University, Bharatidasam University, Kottayam and Pondicherry.
Later in the eighties and the nineties other Centres were established in different parts of the country, either as independent bodies or within a single language department as in Punjabi University, Patiala, Dibrugarh University, Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar Marathwada University, Sambalpur University, Jawaharlal Nehru University and SNDT Women’s University, Mumbai. In 1986 a new full-fledged department of Comparative Literature was established at Veer Narmad South Gujarat University, Surat, where focus was on Indian literatures in Western India. Also in 1999 a department of Dravidian Comparative Literature and Philosophy was established in Dravidian University, Kuppam.
Reconfiguration of areas of comparison:
During the nineties, Area Studies papers on African, Latin American, Canadian literatures and literature of Bangladesh were introduced. Right from the beginning of the discipline in India, cross-cultural relations between Indian literatures and European and American literatures had been in focus.
Reception studies also pointed to historical realities determining conditions of acceptability and hence to complex configurations between literature and history. Contemporary political needs then were linked with literary values and this explained the contradictory tensions often found in the reception of romanticism in Bengal.
Research directions:
The department of English and Comparative Literary Studies at Saurashtra University, Rajkot, took up the theme of Indian Renaissance and translated several Indian authors into English, studied early travelogues
from Western India to England and in general published collections of theoretical discourse from the nineteenth century The Department of Assamese in Dibrugarh University received the grant and published a number of books related to translations, collections of rare texts and documentation of folk forms.
The department of Comparative Literature at Jadavpur University also received assistance to pursue research in four major areas, East-West Literary Relations, Indian Literature, Translation Studies and Third World literature. Incidentally, the department had in Manabendra Bandyopadhyay, an avid translator who translated texts from many so-called “third-world countries”.
The department at Jadavpur University was upgraded under the programme to the status of Centre of Advanced Studies in 2005, and research in Comparative Literature took a completely new turn.
Interface with Translation Studies and Cultural Studies :
As for Cultural Studies, Comparative Literature had always engaged with different aspects of Cultural Studies, the most prominent being literature and its relation with the different arts.
The M Phil course on the subject at Jadavpur University highlights changing marginalities, ‘sub-cultures’ and movements in relation to contemporary nationalisms and globalization, and also sexualities, gender and the politics of identity.
In some of the new centres of Comparative Literature that came up in the new universities established in the last Five Year Plan, diaspora studies were taken up as an important area of engagement. It must be mentioned though that despite tendencies towards greater interdisciplinary approaches, literature
Non-hierarchical connectivity:
Kumkum Sangari in a recent article called “co-construction”, a process anchored in “subtle and complex histories of translation, circulation and extraction” And comparatists work with the knowledge that a lot remains to be done and that the task of the construction of literary histories, in terms of literary relations among neighbouring regions, and of larger wholes, one of the primary tasks of Comparative Literature today has perhaps yet to begin.
Conclusion
The article conclude with Non-hierarchical literary relation. However, the article gives a brief overview of the history of Comparative Literature in India and how it's start from specific university like the department t Jadavpur University and the department of Modern Indian Language
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