Tuesday 2 January 2018

Literature and Criticism and Literary Theory

Now that I am young enough to understand what did I do as a child and a student of the elementary education and eventually during my college, I have a lot of disappointing assumptions about everything! There are, nevertheless, many of the pleasant things too. However, the most important disappointment that I had during my education period is the lack of 'Indianness' and I used to boast it when I was young - thinking like an English, living like an English, reading like an English and trying to write as an English as well. And now I think and ask myself - where are we Indians in the conference where the great minds from different parts of the world meet to discuss the various aspects of literature - contemporary to the back-pages. We seldom have the answers because we never cared for it and this is true. 

In the terms of English literature, Indian scholars, whether in the classrooms or as the authors on the book covers, have just learnt the art of appreciating or offering their critical insights on topics, on writers, on different aspects or on anything. Never, However, we have seen some quality critics from India offering something innovative or original which could make the headlines in the terms of English literature and this is certainly our drawback or lacuna which we could never fill with our knowledge or something else! 

English Literature, in the terms of criticism and literary theory, dies in the universities of India (most often) just after the death of T. S. Eliot and we seldom reach the contemporary ones like Deconstruction of different aspects of structuralism. We do lack something but we are never ready to accept that because we are too busy learning to accept anything and make those things the benchmarks. We have to evolve and we have to learn too much and we have to innovate and offer something 'original' as well... 

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